lw: I sent this article with the links earlier. why dont you provide
links?
On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 1:27 AM, Lone Wolf <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Washington secretly authorized military raids on 20 countries since
> 2004
> By Bill Van Auken
> 11 November 2008
>
> Since 2004, the Bush administration has secretly authorized military
> raids against up to 20 countries without any declaration of war or
> even any explicit congressional authorization for armed action,
> according to a report published Monday in the New York Times.
>
> The report, which cites recent attacks on targets in Pakistan, Syria
> and Somalia, establishes that under an order issued by then-Defense
> Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and approved by President George W. Bush in
> the spring of 2004, the US military's Special Operations forces were
> given license to attack alleged al Qaeda targets "anywhere in the
> world."
>
> Citing unnamed senior US officials, the Times reported that the
> authorization provided a "sweeping mandate to conduct operations in
> countries not at war with the United States." It confirmed that the US
> military has used the authority to "carry out nearly a dozen
> previously undisclosed attacks."
>
> Among the attacks carried out under the order was the October 26 raid
> on the Syrian village of Sukkiraya, near the Iraqi border, in which
> four US attack helicopters participated. Two of the helicopters landed
> Special Forces troops while the other two provided covering fire. The
> troops shot at civilians working on a farm, killing eight, including
> four children, and wounding a number of others. The raid sparked
> demonstrations in Damascus and the Syrian government denounced it as a
> "war crime" and a "terrorist act of aggression."
>
> According to the Times account, the raid, ostensibly aimed at an
> individual involved in smuggling fighters into Iraq, was not the first
> time that the US military had carried out such an operation on Syrian
> territory.
>
> Similarly, on September 3, a US strike force believed to be composed
> of Navy Seals was helicoptered into Pakistan's Waziristan region, near
> the Afghan border, to attack three houses. Between 15 and 20 people
> were killed in the raid, reportedly including eight women and
> children.
>
> The Times report also established that this was not the first such
> attack on Pakistani soil. It revealed that in 2006, a similar Navy
> Seal team raided a compound in Pakistan's Bajaur region, an operation
> that was filmed by a pilotless Predator drone and watched in real time
> by officials at the CIA's Counterterrorism Center in Langley,
> Virginia.
>
> The September 3 operation, in which at least 20 people were killed,
> was launched based on another secret order signed by Defense Secretary
> Robert Gates last July with Bush's approval. The order directed the
> military—in collaboration with the Central Intelligence Agency—to
> prepare cross-border raids by Special Operations forces into
> Pakistan's tribal areas. The authority for these operations was based
> on the previous order issued in 2004.
>
> A January 2007 strike carried out by AC-130 gunships against southern
> Somalia, in which scores of civilians were killed, was also conducted
> under the authority of the executive order. Special Operations troops
> were subsequently landed in the area near the Kenyan border to sift
> through the rubble to determine if any of those killed by the
> aircrafts' heavy cannons were actually targeted Islamist militants.
>
> In addition to the raids that were carried out, the Times reports, up
> to a dozen more had been planned but were then scrapped after
> administration officials decided that they were "too risky" or "too
> diplomatically explosive."
>
> The decision authorizing these operations, known as "Al Qaeda Network
> Exord" (for executive order), represented a practical corollary to the
> so-called "Bush doctrine," which arrogated to the United States the
> "right" to wage aggressive war anywhere in the world in the name of a
> global struggle against terrorism. In enunciating this doctrine in a
> June 2002 speech at the US Military Academy at West Point, Bush spoke
> of the need for the US military to "be ready to strike at a moment's
> notice in any dark corner of the world."
>
> What is involved in many of these operations is the use of special
> task forces known as "hunter-killer teams," in essence assassination
> squads. In most of them, however, the military has utilized air
> support resulting in the deaths of large numbers of civilians.
>
> The Times report traces the executive order back to a campaign by
> Rumsfeld to take over operations that had traditionally been carried
> out by the US Central Intelligence Agency, whose utilization of such
> methods had earned it the nickname "Murder Inc." Rumsfeld, the paper
> reported, "pressed hard to unleash the military's vast firepower
> against militants outside the combat zones of Iraq and Afghanistan."
>
> While the Times account describes the order issued by Rumsfeld as
> "secret" and "classified," there is every reason to suspect that, like
> the orders involving the use of waterboarding, extraordinary
> rendition, domestic spying and other criminal actions associated with
> the Bush administration's "global war on terror," the directive
> authorizing the US military to freely conduct raids in violation of
> the sovereignty of nations across the globe was made known to and
> received tacit approval from the Democratic leadership in Congress.
>
> Moreover, any illusion that such practices are about to fade into
> history with the end of the Bush administration and the coming to
> office of Barack Obama in January would be wholly unfounded.
>
> The Democratic president-elect made his advocacy of precisely such
> raids against targets in Pakistan a persistent theme in his campaign
> for the Democratic nomination and the presidency. Moreover, his
> platform prominently features the call for not only the expansion of
> US troop strength by another 100,000 soldiers and Marines, but also
> the "building up" of the military's Special Operations forces for just
> such acts of aggression.
>
> Obama's advisers, the Democratic leadership in Congress and the Bush
> administration are all sending signals that the shift in
> administrations will be characterized more by continuity than any
> radical change in US foreign policy.
>
> This was spelled out most clearly by Obama foreign policy adviser
> Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as US national security advisor in the
> Carter administration, playing a key role in the US strategy of
> promoting and funding the war by Islamist forces—elements of which
> went on to found al Qaeda—against the Soviet-backed regime in
> Afghanistan.
>
> Speaking to Deutsche Welle last Friday, Brzezinski cautioned against
> expectations of "a dramatic change" in US foreign policy. "You have to
> think of foreign policy as, for example, a boat moving on the sea," he
> said. "A huge ocean liner doesn't change its course in the way that a
> fast motor boat does. Therefore it is not possible for the United
> States to dramatically change every one of its policies."
>
> Meanwhile, on Saturday, Vice President Dick Cheney delivered a speech
> to cadets at the Virginia Military Institute in which he described
> "jihadists" as a "strategic threat to the United States" on a par with
> that once posed by Nazi Germany. He vowed an unending war against
> them, while promising a "smooth and graceful transition of power to
> President-Elect Obama and Vice President-Elect Biden, as they take up
> the duty of protecting America."
>
> >
>
--
*~@):~{>
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
