NOVANEWS

by crescentandcross

 


By Paul Craig Roberts

In a propaganda piece reeking of US Triumphalism, two alleged journalists, Adam Goldman and Chris Brummitt, of the Associated Press or, rather, of the White House Ministry of Truth, write, or copy off a White House or CIA press release that “Osama bin Laden, the terror mastermind killed by Navy SEALs in an intense firefight, was hunted down based on information first gleaned years ago (emphasis added) from detainees at secret CIA prison sites in Eastern Europe, officials disclosed Monday.”

How many Americans will notice that the first paragraph of the “report” justifies CIA prisons and torture? Without secret prisons and torture “the terror mastermind” would still be running free, despite having died from renal failure in 2001.

How many Americans will have the wits to wonder why the “terror mastermind”–who defeated not merely the CIA and the FBI, but all 16 US intelligence agencies along with Israel’s Mossad and the intelligence services of NATO, who defeated NORAD, the National Security Council, the Pentagon and Joint Chiefs of Staff, the US Air Force, and Air Traffic Control, who caused security procedures to fail four times in US airports in one hour on the same day, who caused the state-of-the-art Pentagon air defenses to fail, and who managed to fly three airliners into three buildings with pilots who did not know how to fly–has not pulled off any other attack in almost ten years? Do Americans really believe that a government’s security system that can so totally fail when confronted with a few Saudi Arabians with box cutters can renew itself to perfection overnight?

How many Americans will notice the resurrection of the long missing bin Laden as “terror mastermind” after his displacement by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Guantanamo prisoner who confessed to being the “mastermind of 9/11” after being water-boarded 183 times?

Americans are too busy celebrating to think, a capability that seems to have been taken out of their education.

Americans are so enthralled over the death of bin Laden that they do not wonder why information gleamed years ago would take so long to locate a person who was allegedly living in a million-dollar building equipped with all the latest communication equipment next to the Pakistani Military Academy. Allegedly, the “most wanted criminal” was not moving from hide-out to hide-out in desolate mountains, but ensconced in luxury quarters in broad daylight. Nevertheless, despite his obvious location, it took the CIA years to find him after claiming to have gained information of his whereabouts out of captives in secret prisons. This is the image of the CIA as the new Keystone Cops.

In an immediate follow-up to the announcement that the Navy SEALs and CIA mercenaries acted in an exemplary fashion following the rules of engagement while a cowardly bin Laden hid behind a woman shield when the gunfire erupted, we have from the pressitutes that “U.S. officials conceded the risk of renewed attack. The terrorists almost certainly will attempt to avenge bin Laden’s death, CIA Director Leon Panetta wrote in a memo. . . . Within a few hours, the Department of Homeland Security warned that bin Laden’s death was likely to provide motivation for attacks from ‘homegrown violent extremists’.”

John Brennan, White House counter-terrorism adviser, told reporters that “it was inconceivable that the terrorist fugitive didn’t have support in Pakistan where his hideout had been custom built six years ago in a city with a heavy military presence.”

So the claimed murder of bin Laden by the US in a sovereign foreign country with which the US is not at war, a crime under international law, has set up three more self-serving possibilities:

Terrorists will avenge bin Laden’s death, says the CIA, setting up another false flag attack to keep
the profits flowing into the military/security complex and the power flowing into the unaccountable CIA.

Homeland Security can extend the domestic police state, abuse of travelers, and arrests of war protestors.

And Pakistan is under the gun of invasion and takeover (for India, of course) for shielding bin Laden.

The Israel Lobby’s representatives in the US Congress quickly fell in with the agenda. Senator Carl Levin, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, declared that the Pakistani Army and intelligence agency “have a lot of questions to answer, given the location, the length of time and the apparent fact that this was actually–this facility was actually build for bin Laden, and its closeness to the central location of the Pakistani army.”

The two reporters question nothing in the government’s propaganda. Instead, the reporters join in the celebration. Nevertheless they let slip that “officials were weighing the release of at least one photo taken of bin Laden’s body as part of what Brennan called an effort to make sure ‘nobody has any basis to try and deny the death.’”

As the Guardian and European newspapers have revealed, the photo of the dead bin Laden is a fake. As the alleged body has been dumped into the ocean, nothing remains but the word of the US government, which lied about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and al Qaeda connections, about yellowcake, about Iranian nukes, and, according to thousands of experts, about 9/11. Suddenly the government is telling us the truth about bin Laden’s death? If you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I’ll let you have for a good price.

My initial interpretation of the faked bin Laden death was that Obama needed closure of the Afghan war and occupation in order to deal with the US budget deficit. Subsequent statements from Obama regime officials suggest that the agenda might be to give Americans a piece of war victory in order to boost their lagging enthusiasm. The military/security complex will become richer and more powerful, and Americans will be rewarded with vicarious pleasure in victory over enemies.

NOVANEWS

LOS ANGELES: Osama bin Laden’s death is blockbuster news for Hollywood, whose attempts to dramatize the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have largely bombed.Instead of churning out little-seen films about death and destruction wrought upon civilians and military personnel, the studios can now tap into resurgent American pride with movies about the hunt for the world’s most wanted man.

 
If only John Wayne were still alive or Arnold Schwarzenegger were younger to star in a gung-ho film about the daring strike by dashing Navy SEAL operatives on a compound in suburban Pakistan. Picture “Black Hawk Down” with a happier ending, or “Die Hard” in Islamabad.
Coincidentally, the Oscar-winning director of “The Hurt Locker” — an Iraq war film that earned just $17 million at the box office — has a chance to reach a wider audience with an aptly named follow-up, “Kill Bin Laden.”
According to entertainment news Web site Deadline.com, Kathryn Bigelow and her “Hurt Locker” screenwriter Mark Boal have been working for some time on their project about an earlier, unsuccessful mission to nab bin Laden.
Details about the film’s plot were sketchy, Deadline reported, but the filmmakers will likely need to rework the script to take into account real-life developments. A spokeswoman for Bigelow said she was not talking.
Television will likely rush out a few quick movies if history is any guide. Within six months of the successful Israeli hostage rescue mission in Uganda in 1976, two television movies had been broadcast. The rescue of U.S. soldier Jessica Lynch by Special Operations forces in Iraq also got a similarly quick turnaround time in 2003.
The Navy SEALs — short for SEa, Air and Land – were notably depicted in a 1990 action thriller of the same name starring Charlie Sheen.
The film’s director, Lewis Teague, said that a new movie should be similar to “United 93,” a semi-factual real-time depiction of events aboard one of the ill-fated 9/11 flights, or to “Touching the Void,” which blended documentary footage and recreations to show a mountaineering mishap.
Ideally, the filmmakers should get full cooperation from the Navy SEALs, especially since Teague said they videotape all their operations.
And don’t forget a few good jokes, said Teague, a Middle East expert who spent about a year working closely with Navy SEALs in San Diego on his project.
“I would definitely do it with humor,” he said. “It takes a very peculiar character to be a Navy SEAL — courage, stamina, dark humor, a witch’s brew of a warrior’s mentality.”
Can’t wait for the film? How about the book? In another strange-but-true coincidence, former Navy SEAL sniper Howard Wasdin is bringing forward the publication of his memoir by two weeks to next week.
“Seal Team Six” is about Wasdin’s Navy SEAL training and his service in Somalia during the 1990s. Even though the book has nothing to do with bin Laden, Hollywood studios barraged Wasdin’s agent on Monday.
“This story is really on everyone in Hollywood’s mind right now so it is probably going to be a race about who can do this type of story,” Scott Miller said. (Reuters)

NOVANEWS

Washington Post

The Obama administration is seeking to use the killing of Osama bin Laden to accelerate a negotiated settlement with the Taliban and hasten the end of the Afghanistan war, according to U.S. officials involved in war policy.

Administration officials think it could now be easier for the reclusive leader of the largest Taliban faction, Mohammad Omar, to break his group’s alliance with al-Qaeda, a key U.S. requirement for any peace deal. They also think that bin Laden’s death could make peace talks a more palatable outcome for Americans and insulate President Obama from criticism that his administration would be negotiating with terrorists.

“Bin Laden’s death is the beginning of the endgame in Afghanistan,” said a senior administration official who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal policy deliberations. “It changes everything.”

Another senior official involved in Afghanistan policy said the killing “presents an opportunity for reconciliation that didn’t exist before.” Those officials and others have engaged in urgent discussions and strategy sessions over the past two days about how to leverage the death into a spark that ignites peace talks.

But actually bringing the various Taliban factions to the negotiating table remains a challenge. Omar’s shadowy organization, based in the Pakistani city of Quetta, does not have a political wing or officials who have been publicly identified as interlocutors. The Obama administration is also depending on deft maneuvering by Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government, which is supposed to be leading the process, and the cooperation of the Pakistani government, whose intelligence service — long a patron of various Taliban groups — could easily interfere with peace overtures.

“We know where we want to go, but getting there won’t be easy,” the second senior official said. “There’s a long and complicated path ahead.”

Even so, bin Laden’s demise comes at what administration officials deem to be a propitious moment: A surge of U.S. military forces over the past year has pushed insurgents out of strategically important parts of southern Afghanistan, increasing the chances that top Taliban leaders may want to pursue negotiations.

The daring helicopter-borne raid on bin Laden’s house by U.S. Special Operations forces further ups the ante, current and former officials said, by signaling to members of the Taliban’s high command that they are not guaranteed safety by living in parts of Pakistan beyond the typical reach of U.S. drones. Bin Laden had been living near the country’s military academy, in a city in the hills north of the capital, for six years.

“It has a tremendous demonstration effect,” said Vali Nasr, who was a senior adviser to the State Department on Afghanistan and Pakistan until last month. “Mullah Omar has to be wondering when he’ll be picked up.”

Nasr said bin Laden’s death “puts more pressure on the Taliban than all of the counterinsurgency [operations] we’ve been doing in Afghanistan.”

A unified strategy

Although a peace deal has long been the preferred outcome for civilian members of the president’s national security team, many of whom question the sustainability of recent military gains, skepticism from Pentagon officials and ground commanders held up a unified U.S. government strategy until this spring.

In a February speech that elicited little attention because of events in the Middle East, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton articulated the outlines of the administration’s new approach. In a significant shift toward encouraging dialogue, she made clear that the Taliban no longer has to renounce violence, break with al-Qaeda or embrace the Afghan constitution as preconditions for talks; now those terms only have to be “necessary outcomes of any negotiation.”

“Reconciling with an adversary that can be as brutal as the Taliban sounds distasteful, even unimaginable. And diplomacy would be easy if we only had to talk to our friends. But that is not how one makes peace,” Clinton said.

Top military officials have expressed concern in internal discussions that calling for negotiations too soon could jeopardize hard-fought gains on the battlefield. They contend that their aggressive campaign is weakening the insurgency, and that if they are left to pursue their strategy without a significant reduction in troops, the Taliban will be forced into a weaker deal, getting no more than a minority role within a U.S.-friendly, democratic government.

But many of the president’s civilian national security advisers contend that the benefits of incremental gains do not merit the cost — in lives and dollars — of such a large military presence. They say negotiations are an essential part of a new war strategy that will allow Obama to announce a substantial reduction in U.S. forces starting this summer but still ensure that the Taliban will no longer rule the entire country.

“How are we going to get there? We can get there by continuing to fight them. I don’t think that’s actually a strategy that is successful. Or we can get there by negotiating with them in such a way to allow a political settlement where they’re part of the government,” Anne-Marie Slaughter, who was the State Department’s director of policy planning until earlier this year, said at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Tuesday.

Bin Laden’s death, she said, “creates a new opportunity to begin real negotiations.”

Another senior U.S. official involved in war policy said the example of a 12-man team of Navy SEALsdescending into a walled compound and shooting the world’s most-wanted terrorist leader could help keep pressure on the Taliban even as Obama withdraws conventional military forces starting this summer.

As another potential catalyst for talks, the administration is hoping to announce the completion of a strategic partnership agreement with the Afghan government that will endorse the long-term presence of a modest number of U.S. troops in the country to continue to train Afghan security forces and to conduct counterterrorism operations.

Peace talks a priority

After weeks of debate among civilian and military leaders, the National Security Council recently endorsed key elements of the State Department’s reconciliation strategy. Starting peace talks has now become the top priority for Marc Grossman, who succeeded Richard C. Holbrooke as the U.S. government’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

On Tuesday, Grossman met in Islamabad with Pakistan’s foreign secretary and Afghanistan’s deputy foreign minister. The three agreed to constitute a “core group for promoting and facilitating the process of reconciliation and peace in Afghanistan,” Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

U.S. officials expressed hope on Tuesday that Pakistan’s failure to find bin Laden — or its possible complicity in sheltering him — could lead Islamabad to adopt a softer position on Afghan reconciliation. They think that Pakistani officials, who have interfered with peace efforts in the past, have an opportunity to play a more constructive role.

“Our hope is that they are so embarrassed by this that they try to save face by trying to help their neighbor,” one U.S. official said.

Pakistani officials have long seen a contradiction in Washington’s effort to target those with whom it wishes to negotiate, and they fear that the U.S. goal is an Afghan government more allied with India, Pakistan’s historical adversary. The Pakistani government believes that Taliban insurgents are the only card it has to play in the game for long-term strategic influence in the region.

Although the Taliban has steadfastly refused to renounce al-Qaeda, U.S. officials think that bin Laden’s death gives Omar an opportunity to distance himself from the group without losing face in front of his followers, because his offer of protection, made more than 10 years ago, was given to bin Laden, not the entire terrorist network.

“It’s not the two-ton gorilla in the middle of the reconciliation issue that it once was,” Nasr said.

And with bin Laden out of the picture, talking to the Taliban could become less politically fraught for Obama. Talking to the Taliban, the second senior official said, “no longer looks like you’re weak on national security.”

“The red lines have become a lot pinker,” Nasr said. “It’s now become a whole lot easier to sell a policy to end the war with negotiations to the American people.”

Correspondent Joshua Partlow in Kabul and staff writer Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report.

NOVANEWS

The daring military operation that killed Osama bin Laden has boosted Americans’ confidence that the United States can succeed in the war against Islamic terrorism and faith in President Obama as commander in chief, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Monday finds.

But those surveyed also are braced for retaliation. More than 6 in 10 say acts of terrorism against the U.S. are likely in the next several weeks, a significant bump and the highest rate of public nervousness in eight years.

For a nation battered by bad economic news, the end of the decade-long manhunt for al-Qaeda’s founder has brought at least a moment of good feeling. Approval for the raid on bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan is nearly universal, and overwhelming majorities give credit to the U.S. military and the CIA.

A majority also credits Obama and former president George W. Bush.

In a separate daily survey by Gallup, Obama’s job-approval rating ticked up a percentage point to 47%. The rolling three-day average includes one night of polling after Americans had heard the news from Pakistan. Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport says the president’s ratings Monday were “somewhat higher” than before

“In the short term his (Obama’s) job approval will go up, but once this period of elation subsides, everything we know suggests the fundamentals will take hold and it will decline to about where it was,” says Richard Eichenberg, a political scientist at Tufts who studies polling.

However, the boost for Obama as a commander in chief who can handle national security issues could endure, Eichenberg predicts. “The long, patient planning; the risk-taking to get it done the way he thought it needed to be done — all that portrays a president who is a very competent decision-maker.”

White House officials are trying to reinforce that impression, releasing a detailed timeline and behind-the-scenes photos. Obama will make what is sure to be an emotional visit to Ground Zero in New York on Thursday, his first as president, and he gives an interview today to CBS’ 60 Minutes to be aired on Sunday.

In the poll:

•On who gets credit, 98% say the U.S. military deserves a great deal or moderate amount of credit for the successful operation, and 88% say that of the CIA. Obama gets credit from 71% and Bush from 52%. However, 47% say Bush deserves “not much” or no credit at all; just 28% say that of Obama.

•On the U.S. war against Islamic terrorism, 39% say they have “a lot” more confidence than before and 34% have “a little” more confidence.

•On Obama as commander in chief, 32% say they feel a lot more confident; 21% feel a little more confident.

Bin Laden’s violent demise could affect attitudes toward the war in Afghanistan, launched in 2001 in response to the 9/11 attacks by al-Qaeda. Obama has promised to begin a drawdown this summer, although how many U.S. troops will come home, and how fast, isn’t clear.

In the poll, 45% agree with a statement that the United States has accomplished its mission in Afghanistan and should bring its troops home. Fifty-two percent say important work remains to be done there.

The poll of 645 adults nationwide has a margin of error of +/–5 percentage points.