Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

This morning a Guantanamo Bay tribunal sentenced Salim Hamdan to five-and-a-half years in jail for providing material support for terrorism.

Taking into account time served, he will be eligible for release in about six months.

But a Pentagon spokesman has confirmed that the Yemeni national will continue to be held as an "enemy combatant".

The Pentagon said before sentencing that Hamdan could be detained for an indefinite period, regardless of the outcome of his trial.

Regardless of the sentence Hamdan has received he will be held in detention for as long as the US likes, because he is an "enemy combatant"

So if he is a POW why are we having show trials? Surely this is against the Geneva Convention.

Article 129

The High Contracting Parties undertake to enact any legislation necessary to provide effective penal sanctions for persons committing, or ordering to be committed, any of the grave breaches of the present Convention defined in the following Article.

Each High Contracting Party shall be under the obligation to search for persons alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed, such grave breaches, and shall bring such persons, regardless of their nationality, before its own courts. It may also, if it prefers, and in accordance with the provisions of its own legislation, hand such persons over for trial to another High Contracting Party concerned, provided such High Contracting Party has made out a prima facie case.

Each High Contracting Party shall take measures necessary for the suppression of all acts contrary to the provisions of the present Convention other than the grave breaches defined in the following Article.

In all circumstances, the accused persons shall benefit by safeguards of proper trial and defence, which shall not be less favourable than those provided by Article 105 and those following of the present Convention.

Article 130

Grave breaches to which the preceding Article relates shall be those involving any of the following acts, if committed against persons or property protected by the Convention: wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, compelling a prisoner of war to serve in the forces of the hostile Power, or wilfully depriving a prisoner of war of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in this Convention.

If Hamdan is a terrorist he has been found guilty and should be released in six months time. If he is an "enemy combatant" or a POW, he should not have been charged, and the Geneva Convention applies, protecting him from torture and inhuman treatment. It seems some US officials are in breach of the convention and risk criminal charges.

While it may no longer capture the popular imagination, we are living in a fool's paradise if we think we're out of the nuclear shadow. The fact is that The Bomb is still very much with us.

The March/April issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists estimates that the United States possesses 5400 nuclear warheads. Of these, the majority — 4075 warheads — are defined as operational. While there are plans to reduce this number by 15% by 2012, this would still leave the US with about 4600 weapons.

According to Joseph Siracusa, professor of global studies at RMIT University, in his recently published book Nuclear Weapons: A Very Short Introduction, about 2000 of the US's weapons are ready to be launched with 15 minutes' warning. More disturbingly still, the power to order a nuclear strike is in the hands of the president alone and need only be justified by considerations of the US's national interest.

The US nuclear stockpile isn't the only menace. Russia's nuclear arsenal alone is large enough to wipe out humanity 29 times. The Nuclear Club's other members include the United Kingdom, China, France, Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea. Then there are the countries such as Iran, whose applications are pending.

The terror of a nuclear war is a threat countries who hold nuclear stockpiles hold over all of us. We send our armies to the middle east to fight "terrorists" with small arms and home made bombs, while the real terrorists sitting in Washington, London, Moscow, Paris and Beijing are threatening to destroy the human race. If a nuclear weapon is not a terror weapon I don't know what is.

No country should hold weapons of mass destruction.

The significance of the anthrax attacks in shaping US policy in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks has largely been forgotten. Enough time has passed since those frenzied days that unmasking the anthrax killer no longer seems to be of urgent importance.

The attacks stopped long ago, and the sense of fear that enveloped the country (and the Western world) — with media personalities gulping the antibiotic Cipro to protect themselves — receded.

But the slowly unfolding attacks — seven separate letters containing the deadly powder were sent to politicians and news organisations over 21 days — greatly amplified the fears of average Americans just weeks after the September 11 attacks.

Were it not for the anthrax attacks, most people would have assumed that the US faced just one enemy, the global terrorist network al-Qaeda, which had a base in Afghanistan and allies in some other countries.

Would the US have invaded Iraq if the anthrax attacks had not occurred? Did the US need the anthrax attacks to justify the invasion of Iraq? Now that we know some of the truth behind the anthrax attacks, we should ask: did the mad scientist act alone or was he under orders? Now that he has conveniently committed suicide we will never know.

[From Antony Loewenstein]

Chaos limited

So, the Iraq war was launched by the Bush administration thanks to a forged letter (according to a new book in the US). And now, due to Wikileaks, more essential background:

“The legal basis for the war itself was, and still is, controversial. There is a military need, at least, at the outset of operations to reinforce the legal base for deployment by clear, unequivocal and timely direction and explanation.”

So states a leaked UK military report into the Iraq war released to the public by Wikileaks. The sensitive 108 page report, written in late 2006, damns UK and US war planning, which “ran counter to potential Geneva Convention obligations” — and lead directly to the post invasion collapse of Iraqi society:

“leaders should not start an operation without thinking…it is not enough just to identify the desired end-state”.

The report reveals that Whitehall had been secretly planning the war during 2002. In fact, the Blair government was so paranoid about leaks that it kept the pending invasion (”TELIC”) secret from all but an inner circle of officers and officials until three months before the start of hostilities:

“In Whitehall, the internal OPSEC (operational security) regime, in which only very small numbers of officers and officials were allowed to become involved in TELIC business, constrained broader planning for combat operations and subsequent phases effectively until 23 December 2002.”

Although the UK wanted UN security council approval, the UK found itself roped to a US ideological agenda and timetable:

“the UK had to work to a timetable and strong ideological views set in the United States. As one Senior Officer put it: ‘the train was in Grand Central Station, and was leaving at a time which we did not control’”

On July 22, nearly seven years after the conflict began on Oct. 7, 2001, the United States lost its 500th soldier in the Afghanistan war.

(The Pentagon says that 563 American service members have died in Operation Enduring Freedom, the umbrella term for the global American-led antiterror campaign that has the Afghanistan war at its center and includes deployments in the Philippines and Africa. Of those deaths, according to an analysis by The New York Times, 510 have occurred in Afghanistan or are directly linked to the war there.)

The risk of losing Afghanistan is very real.

NATO commanders have said they need at least three more brigades — more than 7,500 troops — to turn the conflict decisively in the American-led coalition’s favor. And numerous analysts, international study groups and nongovernmental organizations have warned that in the absence of a redoubled commitment by the United States’ allies, the American-led coalition’s chances of success look poor.

“Afghanistan is not lost, but the signs are not good,” said the International Crisis Group, a nonpartisan group that tries to prevent global conflict, in a February report. “As a reinvigorated insurgency threatens the gains that have been made, and Western capitals, pressured by publics unwilling to accept military casualties, begin to explore endgames and exit strategies, the risk of losing Afghanistan is very real.”

The death toll in Afghanistan continues to climb, and many think the chances of success look very poor.

"Operation Enduring Freedom"

"As this embed report reveals, the situation in Afghanistan is steadily deteriorating. In the past 12 months, over 6,000 Afghans have been killed. Troops are struggling to win over a hostile population.

"How do you turn a communities from bad to good?" ponders Lt Col Woods. Six years after the invasion, the rhetoric has changed. Soldiers no long talk about wiping out the Taliban or hunting down terrorists. Now, the buzz words are tactics of counter insurgency.

"We have to look constantly at ways to do it better and do it differently", states Woods. It's a difficult challenge."

Freedom will be a long time coming for the people of Afghanistan.

"In the morass that is Afghanistan, not just the Taliban are flourishing. So too is opium production, which increasingly finances the group’s activities."

Hey, remember when the logic for not intervening against the Taliban was that they were keeping opium crops down?

Time flies, doesn't it?

the first guidebook of new techniques for American battlefield surgeons to be published while the wars it analyzes are still being fought.Its 83 case descriptions from 53 battlefield doctors are clinical and bone dry, but the gruesome photographs illustrate the grim nature of today’s wars, in which more are hurt by explosions than by bullets, and body armor leaves many alive but maimed....

“I’m ashamed to say that there were folks even in the medical department who said, Over my dead body will American civilians see this,” said Dr. David E. Lounsbury, one of the book’s three authors. Dr. Lounsbury, 58, an internist and retired colonel, took part in the 1991 and 2003 invasions of Iraq and was the editor of military medicine textbooks at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

The US military has tried to censor a guidebook which shows new techniques used by battlefield surgeons. It claims the photos are too horrific to be shown to the public. So much for freedom of the press in the US. In a democracy if we do not understand the true nature of war how are we meant to make our decisions on the continued use of military power?

In the morass that is Afghanistan, not just the Taliban are flourishing. So too is opium production, which increasingly finances the group’s activities. There is no easy way to end this narcotics threat, a symptom of wider instability. Even a wise and coordinated plan of attack would take years to bear real results. But the United States and the rest of the international community are failing to develop one.

It is obvious that the NATO forces in Afghanistan are losing the war. The Taliban are flourishing and opium production is financing terror throughout the world. Unless we take action to remove the opium money we will not win the war. We must get serious or get out.

"Was the hatred of the Jewish people by the Nazis really because of their religion - or the Nazi doctrine of removing any perceived threat to their "perfect society"? And was it the only hatred?"

The Nazi genocide of the Jews had nothing to do with religion. It is of course true that centuries of theological antisemitism, based on the "Christ-killers" myth and vicious blood libels, helped set the stage, as did the sneering antisemitism of the type you have referred to. But it took the lunatic genius of Hitler to lift antisemitism to an altogether new level.

The Nazis murdered every Jew they could get their hands on. They got a lot of help finding them. You will know that a piece of Great Britain was occupied during the war. The Channel Islands. Even there they managed to ferret out a few English Jews, including from memory a young woman. They died along with the rest. It takes no imagination at all to see what would have happened to England's 200,000 or 300,000 Jews had the Nazis invasion plans succeeded.

The Nazis defined who was a Jew. One eighth ancestry was enough. Converting to another religion made no difference. In the Warsaw Ghetto there was a Catholic Church catering for the needs of Catholics who were former Jews. Nearly all were Catholics long before the war and had converted usually because of a Catholic spouse. They were all deported to the death camps along with the rest.

This thing had nothing to do with religion.

The mounting toll inflicted by the insurgents, including nine American soldiers killed in a single attack last month, has turned Afghanistan into a deadlier battlefield than Iraq and refocused the attention of America’s military commanders and its presidential contenders on the Afghan war.

But the objectives of the war have become increasingly uncertain in a conflict where Taliban leaders say they do not feel the need to control territory, at least for now, or to outfight American and NATO forces to defeat them — only to outlast them in a region that is in any case their home.

The stupidity of the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions is the fact that all the Taliban and Al Qeda only have to wait for the NATO to leave. 

Al Qaeda has confirmed the death of a chemical and biological weapons expert whose killing in a suspected United States strike was reported by Pakistan, an Islamist militant website said.

Abu Khabab al-Masri was among a group of "heroes" who joined "the caravans of martyrs," said a statement signed by Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, who is Al Qaeda's general commander in Afghanistan.

They also underline the comprehensive failure of Anglo-American foreign policy. At the time of the invasion of Iraq, no thought was given to the idea that Western economic power was on the wane.

Never underestimate the ability of political leaders to misread history on a monumental scale. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan have both served to hasten Western decline: they have both failed to achieve their objectives and in the process demonstrated an underlying Western impotence.

Martin Jacques in this morning's Age.

The last decade has shown us that the era of Anglo-American dominance has ended. We are moving into a very different world with Western economic and military power continuing to decline. We have to learn to work in cooperation with new players on the block: the BRIC. (Brazil, Russia, India and China).

So much for the "end of history".

what I suggested had come to an end was not the occurrence of events, even large and grave events, but History: that is, history understood as a single, coherent, evolutionary process, when taking into account the experience of all peoples in all times. This understanding of History was most closely associated with the great German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel. It was made part of our daily intellectual atmosphere by Karl Marx, who borrowed this concept of History from Hegel, and is implicit in our use of words like “primitive” or “advanced,” “traditional” or “modern,” when referring to different types of human societies. For both of these thinkers, there was a coherent development of human societies from simple tribal ones based on slavery and subsistence agriculture, through various theocracies, monarchies, and feudal aristocracies, up through modern liberal democracy and technologically driven capitalism. This evolutionary process was neither random nor unintelligible, even if it did not proceed in a straight line, and even if it was possible to question whether man was happier or better off as a result of historical “progress.” Both Hegel and Marx believed that the evolution of human societies was not open-ended, but would end when mankind had achieved a form of society that satisfied its deepest and most fundamental longings. Both thinkers thus posited an “end of history”: for Hegel this was the liberal state, while for Marx it was a communist society.

Gaza and the West Bank are prisons in their own right.    

David Ben Gurion, who would lead the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine) and go on to be the first Prime Minister of Israel, told a meeting of the governing body of the Jewish Yishuv in 1919 "But not everybody sees that there is no solution to this question...We as a nation, want this country to be ours, the Arabs as a nation, want this country to be theirs."

I think David Ben Gurion got it right. What Israel has to come to terms with is that the Jewish community is a minority in a very Arab part of the world. It needs to find a solution or it will not last another 50 years. Global power is shifting; Arab countries are being enriched by petro dollars. Israel's friends are getting weaker. Israel needs to find a peaceful solution equitable to all or it will become a short chapter in Arab history.

In a statement published on the Iranian president's website, Mr Ahmadinejad said: "In whichever negotiation we take part... it is unequivocally with the view to the realisation of Iran's nuclear right, and the Iranian nation would not retreat one iota from its rights."

He said that international agreements meant Iran, like every other country, had the right to engage in uranium enrichment and possess nuclear power stations.

The problem with human rights and the rights of a nation is that they should be universal. If one believes in the right to free speech one should believe that everyone has the right to free speech. This is where the current stance on uranium enrichment is wrong. If one country has the right to enrich uranium then all countries have the right to enrich uranium. Might is right is not the best way to instill good values on anyone. If the world wants to ban nuclear weapons then the ban should be universal.

There should be no second class citizens or nations.

Iran does not have nuclear weapons and no matter how often Israel bleats about it the Ayotallah will not allow them.

Iran has not invaded, attacked, or occupied another country for hundreds of years.

Israel has ethnically cleansed Palestine, attacked Egypt in two pre-emptive strikes and occupied the Sinai, it has attacked Syria and stolen the Golan Heights. It occuppies the West Bank and keeps rule over everything in Gaza.

It has attacked and occupied Lebanon for over 20 of the last 30 years, slaughtered tens of thousands and tortured thousands.

It is believed that every Palestinian man has been imprisoned illegally by Israel at least once in their lives over the last 60 years and all of the settlements are illegal.

Now get a grip on reality.

How best can the blood thirsty half mad genocide threatening fascist scum who run Israel be persuaded to abandon their nuclear weapon program? Alternatively what is the best way to rid the world and the Jewish people of these loopy anti-life ratbags?

Geoff, I have changed just two words in your statement. Can you see how stupid this crap is?

Name calling is going to get us nowhere. Until we show respect for all people and the rights of all sovereign states we are doomed to repeat the follies of the past over and over again.

Mr Mofaz, known for his hard-line stance on Iran, is a candidate to become Israel's next prime minister.

Current Israeli PM Ehud Olmert has announced he will step down in September.

Speaking on a visit to Washington, Mr Mofaz said it was "unacceptable" for Iran to become a nuclear power.

"Our estimation is that already by [2009] Iran will reach enrichment capability and as soon as 2010 will have option to reach [uranium production] at military levels," he said, according to the AFP news agency.

"It's a race against time and time is winning," the Israeli minister added.

Mr Mofaz says it is unacceptable for Iran to become a nuclear power.

Unacceptable to whom?

Israel still faces at least four major strategic choices: how to resolve the faltering peace talks with the Palestinians, how to deal with the growing power of Hezbollah in Lebanon, whether to maintain the fragmentary ceasefire with Hamas, and above all whether take military action against Iran. And it doesn't much matter who the next prime minister is—or even the next U.S. president: the choices that Israel makes will likely be the same. .....

it's fairly clear that across the political spectrum in the United States and Israel, there is agreement that Iran poses the greatest threat-and that the Jewish state's other options are limited. "Whatever the different [Israeli] candidates say in advance of the campaign, the choices that are going to face them are pretty much the same: 40,000 rockets in the north, military options in Gaza that are limited, the overriding threat that Iran presents, and the question of what's possible with the Palestinians," says Ross.

As Ron Tira, an Israeli security expert, puts it: "If you look at the really big picture, there's not only an Iranian aircraft carrier in Lebanon [Hezbollah], but there's another one 45 kilometers from Tel Aviv in Gaza [Hamas]. With those two Iranian aircraft carriers in place and Iran proceeding with its nuclear program, with the prospect of America withdrawing from Iraq in the next two years, and Iran becoming a dominant force there … Israel is in position where it needs to act unilaterally and pay whatever the cost." Miller adds that these huge problems will remain the same "not only for Olmert's successor but for Bush's."

If Israel acts unilaterally against Iran, we are in for a nightmare scenario in the Middle East. The price of oil will send an already shaky global economy into a nose dive. Israel has to realise it must learn to live with its neighbours. Its big brother, the US, will not be able to protect it forever. Israel has nuclear weapons and it must expect other countries in the region to play catch up.

A top U.S. biodefense researcher apparently committed suicide just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal charges against him in the anthrax mailings that traumatized the nation in the weeks following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to a published report.

Looks like the terror caused by the anthrax mailings was an inside job.

How many others have access to these dangerous weapons? How good is US psychological testing? It seems we are more at risk from within than from without. There are probably more potential terrorists in the US than in Afghanistan. It just reinforces my contention that the best force to combat terrorism is the police force.

Geoff Pahoff, I don't get your point?

That New York Times cover page is perfectly consistent with current UN Human Rights Council practice?

So, what are you driving at, exactly?

John Pratt: "The US has been meddling in the Pakistan and Afghanistan area for at least two decades. They have caused untold suffering to the local population and have achieved nothing."

I know. Afghanistan was a haven of peace and tranquility before 1988.

"Initially Soviet deployment of the 40th Army in Afghanistan began on August 7, 1978. The final troop withdrawal began on May 15, 1988, and ended on February 15, 1989."

Yup. A haven of peace and tranquility.

A top Central Intelligence Agency official traveled secretly to Islamabad this month to confront Pakistan's most senior officials with new information about ties between the country's powerful spy service and militants operating in Pakistan's tribal areas, according to American military and intelligence officials.

The CIA emissary presented evidence showing that members of the spy service had deepened their ties with some militant groups that were responsible for a surge of violence in Afghanistan, possibly including the suicide bombing this month of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, the officials said.

I think the term is "Blowback". It was the CIA that encouraged the Pakistan and the Taliban in the first place.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) worked in tandem with Pakistan to create the "monster" that is today Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, a leading US expert on South Asia said here. 

"I warned them that we were creating a monster," Selig Harrison from the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars said at the conference here last week on "Terrorism and Regional Security: Managing the Challenges in Asia."

Six months before the attack on the twin towers the CIA was warned that they were creating a "monster" we now know as the Taliban. The US has been meddling in the Pakistan and Afghanistan area for at least two decades. They have caused untold suffering to the local population and have achieved nothing. The US is now antagonising the population by incursions into and the bombing of Pakistan in an attempt to beat the Taliban into submission.

It is a total stuff up fueled by US incompetence and arrogance. We should realise that we do not have the skills or the power to change the situation on the ground. The longer we stay the greater the risk of destabilising Pakistan and creating even bigger problems for ourselves in the future.

John Pratt: "With the deadline expiring this weekend, Iran show no signs of stopping its nuclear program. There must be a lot of soul searching going on in Israel and Washington. The threat of sanctions doesn't seem to worry the Iranians, but what would happen if Iran stopped exporting oil for a month or two?"

They'd go broke and the country would fall into riotous anarchy.

The leader may be mad, but he aint that mad.

Ayatollah Khamenei’s comments suggest Iran may be preparing to take a hard line on the demands by six nations — United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany — that it stop enriching uranium ahead of a deadline set to expire this weekend. His comments were quoted by state radio, according to news agency reports from Tehran.

On July 19, representatives of the six world powers met with Iranian officials for talks in Geneva. For the first time at such a gathering, a senior United States official took part, although the talks produced no apparent progress on the chief demand: for Iran to stop uranium enrichment.

Iran contends its nuclear program is for peaceful, civilian purposes, but the six powers suspect it may be pursuing nuclear weapons.

With the deadline expiring this weekend, Iran show no signs of stopping its nuclear program. There must be a lot of soul searching going on in Israel and Washington. The threat of sanctions doesn't seem to worry the Iranians, but what would happen if Iran stopped exporting oil for a month or two?

Nations that are used to forcing other nations into meet their demands are not used to being told no.

If you look closely at carbon taxes, you'll see the Zionist fingerprints all over them. Only the corrupt msm will never let the people know about.