NSA Tracks All Emails, Texts, Phone Calls in Iraq

My BS meter just kicked up.  Making Iraq the country that is totally spied on takes the heat off  a bit . 

NSA Tracks All Emails, Texts, Phone Calls in Iraq

BY LORENZO FRANCESCHI-BICCHIERAI

In Iraq, the NSA is able to sweep up all emails, text messages and phone location signals in real time. This revelation doesn't come from documents leaked by Edward Snowden, but from the spy agency's own former second-in-command.

Former NSA deputy director John Inglis revealed these capabilities in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. Before outgoing NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander arrived, Inglis said, the agency was only able to intercept "half of enemy signals" in Iraq.

This seems to be the first time such capabilities have ever been revealed, even though the Washington Post reported in July that Alexander had major aspirations for Iraq in 2005. The newspaper wrote that Alexander "wanted everything: Every Iraqi text message, phone call and e-mail that could be vacuumed up by the agency’s powerful computers."

Inglis's words seem to confirm Alexander actually got what he wanted. Naturally, the NSA isn't saying. Reached by Mashable on Monday, an NSA spokesperson declined to comment on Inglis's remarks.

Inglis' casual revelation is especially bizarre given that the NSA has asked The Washington Post to withhold the name of a country where a surveillance program that allows the NSA to record "100 percent" of phone calls is deployed.

"At the request of U.S. officials, The Washington Post is withholding details that could be used to identify the country where the system is being employed," read the article.

For Glenn Greenwald, one of the journalists entrusted with Snowden's top secret trove of documents, the whole affair show how the NSA "manipulates" the media.

"They’ll claim with no evidence that a story they don’t want published will 'endanger lives,' but then go and disclose something even more sensitive if they think doing so scores them a propaganda coup," Greenwald wrote in a post at The Intercept.

The Los Angeles Times story also quoted Alexander, who retired from the NSA on Friday. Alexander defended his work and that of his former colleagues.

"I think our nation has drifted into the wrong place," he said. "We need to recognize that those who are working to protect our nation are not the bad people."

Alexander went on to say that the American public is outraged at the NSA because of sensational and misleading reporting. He believes it unfair to compare the scrutiny currently leveled at the agency to the Church and Pike committees of the 1970s, which investigated widespread illegal surveillance by the CIA, the NSA, and the FBI.

"That's not happening here," Alexander said.

A quote from an anonymous former senior intelligence official who worked under Alexander explains how the NSA viewed its role and its boundaries under Alexander's lead. "Keith's an engineer," the source said. "With Keith, it was always, 'If we can do it, we ought to do it.'"

http://mashable.com/2014/03/31/nsa-iraq/

Torture didn't lead to bin Laden

Senate report: Torture didn't lead to bin Laden

By Bradley Klapper 

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — A Senate investigation concludes waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods provided no key evidence in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to congressional aides and outside experts familiar with a still-secret, 6,200-page report. The finding could deepen the worst rift in years between lawmakers and the CIA.

The CIA disputes the conclusion and already is locked with the Senate intelligence committee in an acrimonious fight amid dueling charges of snooping and competing criminal referrals to the Justice Department. The public may soon get the chance to decide, with the congressional panel planning to vote Thursday to demand a summary of its review be declassified.

From the moment of bin Laden's death almost three years ago, former Bush administration figures and top CIA officials have cited the evidence trail leading to the al-Qaida mastermind's walled Pakistani compound as vindication of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" they authorized after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

But Democratic and some Republican senators have called that account misleading, saying simulated drownings known as waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other such practices were cruel and ineffective.

The intelligence committee's report, congressional aides and outside experts said, backs up that case after examining the treatment of several high-level terror detainees and the information they provided on bin Laden. The aides and people briefed on the report demanded anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly about the confidential document.

The most high-profile detainee linked to the bin Laden investigation was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused 9/11 mastermind who was waterboarded 183 times. Mohammed, intelligence officials have noted, confirmed after his 2003 capture that he knew an important al-Qaida courier with the nom de guerre Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti.

The Senate report concludes such information wasn't critical, according to the aides. Mohammed only discussed al-Kuwaiti months after being waterboarded, while he was under standard interrogation, they said. And Mohammed neither acknowledged al-Kuwaiti's significance nor provided interrogators with the courier's real name.

The debate over how investigators put the pieces together is significant because years later, the courier led U.S. intelligence to the sleepy Pakistani military town of Abbottabad. There, in May 2011, Navy SEALs killed bin Laden in a secret mission.

The CIA also has pointed to the value of information provided by senior al-Qaida operative Abu Faraj al-Libi, who was captured in 2005 and held at a secret prison run by the agency.

In previous accounts, U.S. officials have described how al-Libi made up a name for a trusted courier and denied knowing al-Kuwaiti. Al-Libi was so adamant and unbelievable in his denial that the CIA took it as confirmation he and Mohammed were protecting the courier.

The Senate report concludes evidence gathered from al-Libi wasn't significant either, aides said.

Essentially, they argue, Mohammed, al-Libi and others subjected to harsh treatment confirmed only what investigators already knew about the courier. And when they denied the courier's significance or provided misleading information, investigators would only have considered that significant if they already presumed the courier's importance.

The aides did not address information provided by yet another al-Qaida operative: Hassan Ghul, captured in Iraq in 2004. Intelligence officials have described Ghul as the true linchpin of the bin Laden investigation after he identified al-Kuwaiti as a critical courier.

In a 2012 news release, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., acknowledged an unidentified "third detainee" had provided relevant information on the courier. But they said he did so the day before he was subjected to harsh CIA interrogation. "This information will be detailed in the Intelligence committee's report," the senators said at the time.

In any case, it still took the CIA years to learn al-Kuwaiti's real identity: Sheikh Abu Ahmed, a Pakistani man born in Kuwait. How the U.S. learned of Ahmed's name is still unclear.

Without providing full details, aides said the Senate report illustrates the importance of the National Security Agency's efforts overseas.

Intelligence officials have previously described how in the years when the CIA couldn't find where bin Laden's courier was, NSA eavesdroppers came up with nothing until 2010 - when Ahmed had a telephone conversation with someone monitored by U.S. intelligence.

At that point, U.S. intelligence was able to follow Ahmed to bin Laden's hideout.

Feinstein and other senators have spoken only vaguely of the contents of the classified review.

But they have made references to the divergence between their understanding of how the bin Laden operation came together and assertions of former CIA and Bush administration officials who have defended harsh interrogations.

Responding to former CIA deputy director Jose Rodriguez's argument that Mohammed and al-Libi provided the "lead information" on the bin Laden operation, Feinstein and Levin said, "The original lead information had no connection to CIA detainees."

They rejected former CIA Director Michael Hayden's claim that evidence on the couriers began with interrogations at black sites and Attorney General Michael Mukasey's declaration that intelligence leading to bin Laden began with Mohammed.

The facts, they said, show that the CIA learned of the courier, his true name and location "through means unrelated to the CIA detention and interrogation program." They have cited a "wide variety of intelligence sources and methods."

Terror suspects who were waterboarded "provided no new information about the courier" and offered no indication of where bin Laden was hiding, the senators said.

Feinstein will hold a vote of her 15-member committee Thursday to release of a 400-page summary of the report, according to aides. Approval would start a declassification process with the CIA that could take several months before documents are made public. Among her strongest backers are Levin and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who was tortured in a North Vietnamese prison during the U.S. conflict in Vietnam.

Senate investigators and CIA officials have yet to cool their dispute, which boiled out into the open earlier this month. Feinstein accused the agency of improperly monitoring the computer use of Senate staffers and deleting files, undermining the Constitution's separation of powers. The CIA alleges the intelligence panel illegally accessed certain documents.

http://www.stripes.com/news/senate-report-torture-didn-t-lead-to-bin-laden-1.275432#.UzoAA6hRHX5

UN adopts Pakistan resolution against drone strikes, discards US objection

The United Nations late Friday adopted a resolution, jointly presented by Pakistan, Yemen and Switzerland, against drone strikes, a private news channel reported on Saturday.

Six countries including United States, France and Britain voted against the resolution, but they fell short in majority to get it disposed off.

According to sources, the UN called on all states to ensure that the use of armed drones complies with international law, backing a proposal from Pakistan seen as taking aim at the United States.

A resolution presented by Pakistan on behalf of co-sponsors including Yemen and Switzerland did not single out any state. The United States is the biggest drone user in conflicts including those in Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan and Somalia.

“The purpose of this resolution is not to shame or name anyone, as we are against this approach,” Pakistan’s ambassador Zamir Akram told the UN Human Rights Council.

“It is about supporting a principle.”

The United States prizes drones for their accuracy against al Qaeda and Taliban militants. Pakistan says they kill civilians and infringe its sovereignty.

“The United States is committed to ensuring that our actions, including those involving remotely piloted aircraft, are undertaken in accordance with all applicable domestic and international law and with the greatest possible transparency, consistent with our national security needs,” Paula Schriefer, US deputy assistant secretary of state, told the talks.

The resolution was adopted by a vote of 27 states in favour to six against, with 14 abstentions at the 47-member Geneva forum. The United States, Britain and France voted against.

The Council “urges all states to ensure that any measures employed to counter terrorism, including the use of remotely piloted aircraft or armed drones, comply with their obligations under international law … in particular the principles of precaution, distinction and proportionality”.

The text voiced concern at civilian casualties resulting from the use of remotely-piloted aircraft or armed drones, as highlighted by the U.N. special investigator on counter-terrorism Ben Emmerson in a recent report.

It called on UN human rights boss Navi Pillay to organise expert discussions on armed drones and report back in September.

The United States, Britain and France said it was not appropriate for the forum to put weapons systems on its agenda.

The Obama administration preferred to discuss drones under an initiative of Switzerland and the International Committee of the Red Cross, which it hoped would provide a “non-politicised forum” where military experts can discuss law of war issues, Schriefer said.

Akram, speaking before the vote, said opposition “can only lead to the conclusion that these states are guilty of violating applicable international law and demonstrate that they are afraid of being exposed in the expert panel”.

A separate UN human rights watchdog called on the Obama administration on Thursday to limit its use of drones and to curb US surveillance activities.

http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2014/03/29/national/un-adopts-pakistan-resolution-against-drone-strikes-discards-us-objection/

A Divided Kingdom

Cracks in the House of Saud

by PATRICK COCKBURN

President Obama flew to Saudi Arabia to patch up relations with King Abdullah at the end of last week in his first visit in five years. The alliance had been strained by Saudi anger over US negotiations with Iran on its nuclear programme and Obama’s refusal to go to war in Syria to overthrow Bashar al-Assad last year. For its part, the US is upset by Saudi Arabia covertly supporting al-Qa’ida-type movements in Syria and elsewhere.

The US-Saudi relationship is a peculiar one in that it is between a reactionary theocratic monarchy – it is the only place in the world where women are not allowed to drive – and a republic that claims to be the chief exponent of secular democracy. The linkage is so solid that it was scarcely affected by 9/11, though al-Qa’ida and the hijackers had demonstrably close connections to Saudi Arabia.

The Saudis want to persuade the US to make a greater effort to overthrow Assad in Syria. Saudi Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz told the Arab League in Kuwait last week that “the legitimate Syrian resistance has been betrayed by the international community and left easy prey to tyrant forces”. This is a bit rich, coming from the potential ruler of a state in which every expression of dissent is being crushed, and the number of political prisoners could be as high as 30,000. Minor criticism of the state on Twitter is enough for Saudis to be called in by the security services.

On 3 February, King Abdullah promulgated a decree that made Saudi jihadis fighting abroad liable to 20 years in prison on their return. The idea is to choke off the supply of Saudi recruits volunteering to fight in Syria, said to number 2,500 at present. Previously, Saudis were able to reach Syria with ease, a sign that the government was turning a blind eye, but now it is saying it will jail them if they come back.

The U-turn may not work: fighting in Syria has popular support in Saudi Arabia; Wahhabism, a puritanical and intolerant variant of Islam, is the ideology of the Saudi state which regards Shia and Sufi Muslims as heretics little different from Christians and Jews. Having stoked hostility to Iran and Shia Islam for so long, the government may not find it easy to demonise and punish Saudis who fought against them.

The criminalisation of the jihadis is designed in part to persuade the Americans that Saudi Arabia is not encouraging Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis), both al-Qa’ida-type groups, to take over northern Syria and western Iraq. On the contrary, the Saudis say they want to fund and supply a third military force in Syria that will fight both President Assad and the anti-Assad jihadi forces.

Given that the Syrian army is on the offensive in and around Damascus, Homs and Aleppo, any Saudi and American backed “third force” operating from Jordan is not going to turn the tide on the battlefield in the foreseeable future. If the Americans go along with this plan, then they are saying, in effect, that they are prepared to conduct a long proxy war in Syria, contrary to all the hypocritical outpourings in Washington and Riyadh about ending the suffering of the Syrian people.

For its part, the US establishment has never taken on board that, when it backed the anti-Assad rebels in Syria, it automatically destabilised Iraq. This is sometimes attributed to the departure of US troops, but it was inevitable that an uprising centred on the Sunni majority in Syria, would energise and radicalise the Sunni minority next door in Iraq. Three years after the protests started in Syria, the whole Euphrates valley from, to Jarabulus, on Syria’s border with Turkey, is in the hand of Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra. In the past week, Jabhat al-Nusra fighters have for the first time broken through to the Mediterranean coast north of Latakia.

A problem for the Saudi government is that it has always used jihadis as an arm of its foreign policy, believing that it could disclaim responsibility for their actions. Private donors and jihadi preachers were allowed to operate unhindered. But the disadvantage of this hands-off approach is that, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria and Iraq, the jihadis were not under total Saudi government control. Those battling in Syria and Iraq today will not be pleased to learn that Riyadh has decided that they have suddenly become outcasts. In recent months, jihadi websites and messages on Twitter have begun to attack the Saudi royal family, one showing a picture of King Abdullah giving a medal to George W Bush with the caption: “medal for invading two Islamic countries”. Another shows trucks packed with armed gunmen with a caption saying they are heading for northern Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi government is showing signs of nervousness. It has backed a counter-revolutionary wave across the Middle East that, in many places, has succeeded. Democratic protesters in Bahrain were crushed in a Saudi-backed clampdown in 2011. In Egypt, it is financially supporting the military regime that overthrew the democratically elected President Morsi in 2013. In Syria, it has ensured that the political opposition is dominated by Islamists and is funded and largely directed by itself.

But, along the way, the Saudi royal family is making a lot of enemies. They range from members of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Gulf who find they are being targeted as “terrorists” despite being peaceful. There are jihadis in Syria who feel they were encouraged and then betrayed. Saudi liberals, who like the new anti-terror laws when applied to jihadis, find that innocuous tweets may land them in jail, and a mildly progressive publisher at the Riyadh International Book Fair this month had its display smashed up, probably by the religious police.

American, British and other foreign visitors to Saudi Arabia usually behave with fawning respect towards their hosts in the belief that it is in their national interest to do so. In the case of President Obama, there are $87bn (£52bn) in proposed US defence sales, including $29bn for F-15s and $31bn for helicopters, to consider. But the Obama visit has brought together a strange alliance in Congress of conservative Christian Republicans and liberal Democrats, 52 of whom signed a letter asking Obama to raise with King Abdullah and other officials the fact that “Saudi Arabian authorities have harassed, intimidated, and imprisoned almost all the country’s leading independent human rights activists”. It mentions Mohammad al-Qahtani and Abdullah al-Hamid, serving long sentences for setting up a local human rights organisation. The letter concludes that “the Government of Saudi Arabia must end its ban on public gatherings, lift restrictions on social media, stop the use of torture, and reform the new so-called ‘anti-terror’ laws that practically criminalise all forms of peaceful dissent”.

The Saudi royal family survived the 2011 uprisings without domestic upheaval. It has since gone a long way to restore the old status quo of authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, but the kingdom itself is becoming ever more divided and unstable.

PATRICK COCKBURN is the author of  Muqtada: Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq. 

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/31/crack-in-the-house-of-saud/

Is Obama Covertly Expanding US Role in Syria?

Is Obama Covertly Expanding US Role in Syria?

Multiple sources cite expanding CIA training and potential anti-aircraft missile shipments as US seeks to repair strained relationship with Saudi Arabia

- Sarah Lazare, staff writer

The Obama administration may green-light shipments of shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles to Syrian opponents of Bashar al-Assad and expand covert CIA training and assistance in an apparent bid to repair frayed relations with Saudi Arabia.

"It is ridiculous, unjust, and outrageous that the U.S. is supposedly seeking to repair relations with Saudi Arabia by escalating the killing in Syria," said Robert Naiman, policy director for Just Foreign Policy, in an interview with Common Dreams. "In whose interest is this?"

President Obama is mulling over whether to okay shipments of man-portable air defense systems (MANPADs), according to statements by an anonymous U.S. official cited in an Associated Press article published Friday. The Saudi government has ostensibly refrained from sending MANPADs to the Syrian opposition due to the past opposition of the Obama administration, which has shipped smaller weapons and ammunition. AP reports that the actual shipments of the missiles could come from the Saudis if Obama gives the go-ahead.

The anonymous official told AP that Obama was considering the change, in part, in a bid to repair strained relations with Saudi Arabia — a key focus of Friday's meeting with Saudi King Abdullah near Riyadh.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration "appears to have decided to expand its covert program of training and assistance for the Syrian opposition," according to a report last Thursday from Washington Post writer David Ignatius. Citing unnamed "knowledgeable officials," Ignatius writes that the plan would likely include, in addition to the MANPADs, the training of roughly 600 Syrian fighters per month by the CIA and, potentially, military personnel.

Even Obama administration lawyers have acknowledged that the U.S. arming of Syrian opposition forces is on shaky ground regarding international law. Said Naiman, "The U.S. government has come up with a story they tell themselves — that the U.S. government is allowed to violate international law if it is done in a covert action through the CIA.

_____________________

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/03/31-4

Crimean crisis: The smell Of American Hypocrisy In The Air

Crimean crisis: The smell Of American Hypocrisy In The Air

By Kourosh Ziabari

The war of words between Russia and the United States is soaring these days over the sovereignty of the Crimean peninsula, and the White House officials are constantly directing accusations and excruciating verbal attacks against Kremlin in what seems to be the most serious dispute between Moscow and the West in the recent years.

The United States has pulled out all the stops to defeat and isolate Russia diplomatically, and has even gone so far as to impose economic sanctions against the Russian individuals and companies, and excluding Russia from the G8 group of the industrialized nations. The 40th G8 summit was slated to be held in Sochi, Russia on June 4-5, but following the suspension of Russia’s membership in the G8, the summit relocated to Brussels, Belgium, and it would be the first time that a G8 leaders’ convention is going to take place in a non-member state country. Some of the Western media outlets have even started to refer to G8 as G7, implying that Russia does not have any position in this influential group of the affluent, developed nations.

But as always, when it comes to flexing the muscles and showing political prowess, the United States and its partners are behaving in an intolerant, duplicitous and hypocritical manner. In a statement, the newly-termed G7 leaders reaffirmed that Russia’s “occupation of the Crimea” was against the principles of the G7 and contravened the United Nations Charter.

It’s interesting that the innumerable violations of the international law, the UN Charter and Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in time of War by the United States in the recent years have never caught the attention of the G8 leaders and never compelled them to at least consider warning the United States to behave more responsibly and respect the internationally recognized conventions and regulations or refraining from destroying and annihilating other nations through its “humanitarian” missions!

If Russia should be punished for sending troops to Crimea, while it’s legally entitled to do so, and if its military intervention in Crimea represents a violation of the UN Charter in the eyes of the Western leaders, then it will be taken for granted that all violations of the international law and the United Nations Charter should be reprimanded and responded appropriately and the wrongdoers should be penalized in a fair manner. If Russia has occupied a sovereign entity – which is of course not the case, and should bear the burden of sanctions and diplomatic isolation, it’s ok, but why shouldn’t the United States be castigated and prosecuted for the same reason? What makes the military intervention of Russia different from the wars the U.S. offhandedly wages across the world?

For those of us who willfully ignore the historical facts, it’s noteworthy that the Partition Treaty on the Status and Conditions of the Black Sea Fleet signed between Russia and Ukraine on May 28, 1997, permits Russia to lawfully maintain up to 25,000 troops, 24 artillery systems, 132 armored vehicles and 22 military planes on the Crimean peninsula. This agreement will be effective until 2017, and so it can be the most convincing logical justification for Russia’s military action in Crimea.

So, what has happened is not an “occupation” as the U.S. leaders claim, but that Russia has exercised its legal right for sending troops to a geographical area where the majority of inhabitants are ethnic Russians and don’t want to remain under the Ukraine autonomy and are overwhelmingly inclined to join Russia.

What every neutral and unbiased observer of the international political developments can easily note is that it’s the United States which is renowned for its hegemonic policies and its imperialistic modus operandi, not Russia. Russia’s intervention in Crimea took place after it felt that its national interests are being seriously endangered on its borders, where 58% of the population is consisted of indigenous Russians who prefer to be reunited with Russia, rather than being seen as an asset and prize for the United States under the leadership of a new government in Ukraine which has neo-fascist backgrounds.

The prominent American syndicated columnist and journalist Ted Rall has recently written on his website that there are traces of neo-fascism and neo-Nazism in the government of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk who has just come to power: “There’s no doubt that a Ukrainian nationalist strain runs deep in the new regime. It has been estimated that roughly 1/3 or more of the supporters of the new government come out of xenophobic, anti-Semitic, neo-fascist movements that draw much of their ideological heritage from the Nazi puppet regime that governed Ukraine under German occupation during World War II.”

So, on March 16, the Crimean parliament and the local government of Sevastopol held a public referendum in Crimea to give the citizens two choices for the future of their territory; either to remain associated with Ukraine or reunite with Russia. With a high turnout of 83.1% of the eligible voters, 96.77% of the participants in the plebiscite voted in favor of joining the Russian Federation. The United States and its allies didn’t hesitate to call the referendum as rigged and invalid, as they usually does with the elections in countries with which they are at odds. Washington even drafted a resolution in the United Nations Security Council to call the referendum null and void, but Russia used its veto power, while China abstained, and the United States simply pushed the General Assembly member states to pass a non-binding resolution, declaring the referendum invalid, which doesn’t seem to have any certain impact on the future of Crimea.

The policy of de-Russanization was long underway in the Crimean peninsula, and many other former Soviet Union republics, as Ted Rall elaborately details. Perhaps the fact that the Ukrainian Parliament Verkhovna Rada voted on February 23 to repeal the 2012 language law that had declared Russian an official language in Ukraine and allowed it to be used in the schools, media and official correspondence, was a driving force for the Crimean people to rise up and call for independence from Ukraine that they believed didn’t respect their cultural and lingual background.

The future of Crimea and the prospects of the marred relations between Russia and the West remain blurred and unknown, but the United States’ accusations that Russia is “occupying” Crimea and exerting military aggression and so should be punished with economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation sound gravely outrageous and entirely hypocritical. The United States has the biggest war machinery in the world, has been directly or indirectly involved in more than 50 wars and military strikes on other countries without the approval of the UN Security Council, and has incontestably perpetrated war crimes and crimes against humanity.

As the prominent American lawyer and legal expert Marjorie Cohn has noted in a recent article, the United States is the largest user of unconventional and forbidden chemical weapons in the illegal wars it has waged across the globe. “The U.S. militarily occupied over 75% of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques for 60 years, during which time the Navy routinely practiced with, and used, Agent Orange, depleted uranium, napalm and other toxic chemicals and metals such as TNT and mercury. This occurred within a couple of miles of a civilian population that included thousands of U.S. citizens,” wrote Prof. Cohn.

“The use of any type of chemical weapon by any party would constitute a war crime. Chemical weapons that kill and maim people are illegal and their use violates the laws of war,” she added.

She also goes on to explain the use of chemical weapons by the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria and also underlines that the majority of wars in which the United States has taken part were not ever approved by the Security Council. Aren’t these crimes a contravention of the UN Charter? Why don’t the G7 leaders and European Council and European Commission officials ever react to these violations? Does the United States have the prerogative to attack other countries and maim their people without any legal or moral justification and then get away with its crimes?

The United States is imparting a clear message by adopting this insincere and hypocritical approach toward Russia, which is also a message to other countries: We can invade your countries, we can kill your citizens, we can rule you tyrannically, we can behave in any way we desire, but if you do something which doesn’t please us, we will impose sanctions on you, we will banish you from international organizations, and we will come down on you like a ton of bricks. This is how the American hypocrisy works…

Kourosh Ziabari is an Journalist, writer and media correspondent

www.KouroshZiabari.com

http://www.countercurrents.org/ziabari310314.htm

Egypt's al-Jazeera trial was inspired by America's global war on journalism

From a War on Terror to a war on leaks, now comes America's shadow influence on a media crackdown

Rozina Ali in Cairo

Today, Egypt resumes its trial of the three al-Jazeera journalists it has held in captivity since December on the grounds that their coverage threatened national security. Media outlets, advocacy groups and foreign governments – including the United States – have all condemned the arrests and criticized the proceedings as a bold political move to suppress opposition.

Indeed, even as Washington keeps its distance from the upcoming election, the State Department has insisted upon “the free expression of political views without intimidation or fear of retribution”. Last month, the US, along with other signatories, filed a declaration through the United Nations condemning Egypt for its violent suppression of dissent, including against journalists.

But the brazen political rhetoric out of Cairo continues: that al-Jazeera’s Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed are guilty of aiding the Muslim Brotherhood, that the Brotherhood is a terror group, and that counter-terror policy is crucial to democracy at all costs – even at the cost of a free press, that beating heart of democracy.

This rhetoric is not new. Egypt seems to draw inspiration from the very country criticizing it – the United States.

Over the past decade, the US not only detained but tortured al-Jazeera journalists under counterterrorism policies. Now, as its War on Terror diffuses into support for an increasing number of local – and secret – wars on terrorism across the globe, the tactic of imprisoning journalists seems to be catching on.

Ten years ago, the United States also justified its detention of al-Jazeera journalists by claiming a “national security threat”. These arrests could not be cloaked as mere collateral damage in a messy war. The US, then as Egypt does now, made leaping connections between the news network and militants, and specifically targeted those whose coverage did not serve the military’s objectives: Dick Cheney warned that al-Jazeera risked being “labeled as ‘Osama’s outlet to the world’”; Donald Rumsfeld called the network’s coverage of the Iraq war “vicious, inaccurate, inexcusable”.

Over the next several years, US forces arrested and detained al-Jazeera journalists like Sami al Hajj and Salah Hasan Nusaif Jasim al Ejaili. US military forces captured both in separate instances while they were doing their jobs, and tortured them while attempting to establish ties between al-Jazeera and al-Qaida. Neither al Hajj nor al Ejaili received justice for their wrongful detention. After seven years of imprisonment in Guantanamo Bay, the US government released al Hajj to Sudanese authorities, without any reparations. Meanwhile al Ejaili, who was detained at Abu Ghraib, brought a case with other victims against the private military contractor at the prison, alleging it conspired to commit torture and war crimes. But the case was dismissed by the district court. The court perversely ordered al Ejaili and other plaintiffs to pay their alleged torturers for the cost of the suit. The case is pending on appeal.

The reverberations of this misguided War on Terror continue, even if the war has shifted: the Obama administration has famously invoked the Espionage Act more than any other American president, attempting to control press leaks with tactics a report found to be “the most aggressive … since the Nixon administration”.

From a War on Terror to a war on leaks, now comes America’s shadow influence in the global war on journalism: when the US downgraded aid to Egypt after the government violently disbanded protests against the state, for example, it continued to supply the government funds for its counter-terrorism efforts – the same efforts that were used to justify the imprisonment of al-Jazeera journalists in the first place.

No wonder Egypt’s UN delegation questioned those countries signing the recent UN declaration on suppression of dissent:

"We call upon the countries that signed to the statement … to consider the credibility of their positions … when they speak about freedom in the work of journalists and illegally follow their activities and throw them in detention camps and secret prisons without trial under the banner of the war on terror."

Now, as the fate of three journalists rests in the hands of a government mirroring US policies, the reality of America’s media crackdown could not be starker. Absent a commitment to a free press and accountability for those journalists who have been wrongly accused, arrested and tortured, the ongoing – if evolving – hypocrisy of US policy will continue to serve as justification for untold future harms. And whenever the war on terror does eventually end, and if the smoke clears, it’s frightening to envision what might remain.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/31/egypts-al-jazeera-trial-was-inspired-by-americas-global-war-on-journalism