Obamanati.info

National Expositor -  “Even if a precise account is elusive,” writes Jane Mayer in the October 26th The New Yorker, “the outlines are clear: the C.I.A. has joined the Pakistani intelligence service in an aggressive campaign to eradicate local and foreign militants, who have taken refuge in some of the most inaccessible parts of the country.”

Based on a study just completed by the non-profit, New America Foundation of Washington, D.C., “the number of drone strikes has risen dramatically since Obama became President,” Mayer reports.

In fact, the first two strikes took place on Jan. 23, the President’s third day in office and the second of these hit the wrong house, that of a pro-government tribal leader that killed his entire family, including three children, one just five years of age.

At any time, the C.I.A. apparently has “multiple drones flying over Pakistan, scouting for targets,” the magazine reports. So many Predators and its more heavily armed companion, the Reaper, are being purchased that defense manufacturer General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, of Poway, Calif., can hardly make them fast enough. The Air Force is said to possess 200.

Mayer writes, “the embrace of the Predator program has occurred with remarkably little public discussion, given that it represents a radically new and geographically unbounded use of state-sanctioned lethal force.” Today, Mayer writes, “there is no longer any doubt that targeted killing has become official U.S. policy.” And according to Gary Solis, who teaches at Georgetown University’s Law Center, nobody in the government calls it assassination. “Not only would we have expressed abhorrence of such a policy a few years ago; we did,” Solis is quoted as saying.

David Kilcullen, a counter-insurgency warfare authority who co-authored a study for the Center for New American Security, of Washington, D.C., has suggested the drone attacks have backfired. As he told The New Yorker, “Every one of these dead non-combatants represents an alienated family, a new revenge feud, and more recruits for a militant movement that has grown exponentially even as drone strikes have increased.”

And because of the C.I.A. program’s secrecy, Mayer writes, “there is no visible system of accountability in place, despite the fact that the agency has killed many civilians inside a politically fragile, nuclear-armed country with which the U.S. is not at war.”

The New Yorker further reports the Obama Administration has also expanded the sphere of authorized drone assaults in Afghanistan. An August Senate Foreign Relations Committee report said the Pentagon’s list of approved terrorist targets held 367 names and included some 50 Afghan drug lords “who are suspected of giving money to help finance the Taliban,” Mayer reports. She quotes the Senate report as stating, “There is no evidence that any significant amount of the drug proceeds goes to Al Qaeda.”

It is the military’s version of the drone assaults that operates in Afghanistan and Iraq, while the C.I.A.’s drones hunt terror suspects in countries where U.S. troops are not based and is “aimed at terror suspects around the world,” Mayer writes. The C.I.A. effort was launched by Obama’s predecessor, and a former aide to President George W. Bush says Obama has left nearly all the key personnel in place.

Running the C.I.A. program is a team of operators that handle Predator flights off runways in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Once aloft, the Predators are passed over to controllers at C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., who maneuver joysticks and monitor events from a live video feed from the drone’s camera.

The magazine article reports the government plans to commission “hundreds more” of the drones, including “new generations of tiny ‘nano’ drones, which can fly after their prey like a killer bee through an open window.”

(Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based writer who formerly worked for the Chicago Daily News and other major dailies. Reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com)

LRC - Faced with the uncomfortable and politically unacceptable reality that there exists no evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon, confirmed by his own intelligence community, President Obama has taken a page from the book of his predecessors FDR, LBJ, GWB, and so on: he simply made something really scary-sounding up to justify his push toward war.

This time it is the artificially manufactured hype around an Iranian uranium enrichment facility that is under construction. Keep in mind that as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Iran, under Article IV of said treaty, has every right to enrich uranium to its heart’s content.  The treaty clearly states: “Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with Articles I and II of this Treaty.”

Iran has, dutifully and ahead of required schedule, notified the International Atomic Energy Agency, tasked with monitoring adherence to the NPT, of its intent to bring this enrichment facility online in approximately 18 months. But where there is no smoking gun, lighter fluid must be ignited: to undercut the Five Plus One talks with Iran scheduled to begin on October first, the Obama administration has invented indignation over discovery of this plant while at the same time holding to the story that the US Intelligence Community has known about this facility, which Obama says is “inconsistent with a peaceful (nuclear) program,” since 2006. As one administration official stated regarding the upcoming talks in light of his “discovery”: “Everybody’s been asking, ‘Where’s our leverage?’ Well, now we just got that leverage.” And right in the nick of time!

But hang on a minute: the US Intelligence Community has known since 2006 that Iran is building a facility to manufacture nuclear weapons but still in 2007 allowed a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran to conclude with “high confidence” that Iran was not pursuing a nuclear weapons program? Considering the discrepancy, one could be forgiven for concluding that either deception or incompetence is the order of the day in our enormously expensive Intelligence Community.

It is 2002 all over again, but worse: this time a good chunk of the antiwar movement will have been sidelined over its fatally wrong-headed decision to sign on with the pied pipers of the war party over the Iranian elections in June. By “going Green” (going pro-opposition instead of remaining neutral) much of the antiwar movement has been effectively silenced, its side-taking giving voice to one of the war party’s most critical claims: “any government that will cheat as horrifically as it did on these elections will certainly cheat on its IAEA reporting obligations.” No further proof needed. It is a refrain we have heard time and time again since June: “you mean you are going to believe them about their nuclear program? A regime that would cheat like that in its elections?” Antiwar movement: largely silenced. Credible proof of outcome-changing fraud: none. Coming cost in death and destruction: priceless.

Army Times - About 3,000 additional troops are headed to Afghanistan — but not as part of any new request from the top U.S. commander there, a senior defense official said Monday.

The troops are what the military calls “combat enablers” — noncombat troops who specialize in areas such as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; explosives ordnance disposal; medical and mental health; and personnel administration. They will deploy in team-sized elements as opposed to larger units, according to the official, who asked not to be identified.

About 1,000 such troops also will deploy to Iraq, the official said, adding that both groups are being sent in response to existing requests by the theater commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The so-called “request for forces” was approved two weeks ago by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the official said.

That request has been forwarded to U.S. Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Va., which is now identifying the troops to be deployed and the services from which they’ll be drawn.

As such, no deployment orders have been signed and no time frame for the deployments has yet been finalized, the official said.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell confirmed that Gates has not signed any such orders but said that nothing has yet been finalized with regard to sending more troops to either theater.

“He’s looking at seeing how he can get more counter-IED capabilities over to our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Morrell said. “He wants to figure out how he can provide them [more] route clearance, explosive ordnance disposal teams, medics, medevac capabilities, intelligence assets, things of that nature. But nothing has been determined yet about how to do this.”

Many in Washington expect a near-term request for more troops out of Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who last week delivered to the Pentagon his initial assessment of the situation in Afghanistan, widely acknowledged to be deteriorating.

This new group of deployments, however, is “not at all” tied to McChrystal’s assessment, said the senior official, who confirmed that McChrystal has not yet made any request for additional troops.

Earlier this year, President Barack Obama approved the deployment of an additional 21,000 troops — 3,500 of them trainers being deployed this month. Once those are in place, U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan will be roughly 65,500.

The fresh enablers would bring the U.S. total in Afghanistan to slightly more than 68,000, the total authorized by Obama to date. Troop strength by year’s end will be slightly more than double the total in country at the end of 2008.

Army Gen. David McKiernan, who the Pentagon unexpectedly replaced with McChrystal this past spring, had told Obama that he wanted an additional 10,000 troops beyond that total. That decision was postponed until later in the year.

In June, according to The Associated Press, Gates told an Army audience at Fort Drum, N.Y., “I think there will not be a significant increase in troop levels in Afghanistan beyond the 68,000, at least probably through the end of the year. Maybe some increase, but not a lot.”

Morrell said that any addition of enablers might not add to the total now in Afghanistan.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean we add at all to the total number of forces that are on the ground in Afghanistan,” Morrell said. “because simultaneous to this internal effort to find those additional capabilities, there are efforts under way such as those by General McChrystal in terms of looking at the kinds of forces he has in Afghanistan as it is now that he feels as though he may not need.

“So if there are duplicative forces that have specialties that he doesn’t find particularly worthwhile at this particular point, you can rotate those forces,” Morrell said.

Soldiers dying in Afghanistan keeps us safe from the Al CIAduh that Obamas mentor, Zbignew Brzezinski created.

Press TV - US President Barack Obama says there will be no quick or easy victory over the Taliban, noting that the war in Afghanistan is crucial in protecting Americans from terrorism.

Talking in a meeting of veterans in Arizona on Monday, Obama tried to step up the campaign in Afghanistan. “The insurgency in Afghanistan didn’t just happen overnight and we won’t defeat it overnight,” he said.

US administration is sending 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan, therefore the success or failure of the mission of US forces in the war-torn country is crucial for its future plans in the region.

“This will not be quick, nor easy. But we must never forget this is not a war of choice, this is a war of necessity,” he said. “If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans,” he said.

The remarks came a day after British Prime Minister Gordon Brown trying to ease the growing opposition to the Afghan war said the war in Afghanistan is a “sacrifice” made to make “Britain and the rest of the world” a safer place.

The two leaders however failed to elaborate the dire situation the war-ravaged nation has been facing ever since the US-led coalition forces invaded their country more than eight years ago.

According to UN figures, Afghan civilians remain the main victims of the notorious war which was launched to allegedly destroy the militancy and arrest militant leaders including Osama bin Laden.

This week’s Afghan presidential and provincial elections will be considered as a test of the new US strategy of providing security on the ground.

This is while, Taliban vowing to interrupt the election, have already fired rockets at the Afghan capital twice this month.

A rocket hit Tuesday the presidential palace in the center of Afghan capital, Kabul and a second struck the city’s police headquarters.

Also on Saturday, a suicide car bomb exploded outside the NATO military headquarters in the Afghan capital Kabul near the US embassy, killing seven people and injuring scores.

Bloomberg - President Barack Obama and top U.S. military commanders are being pressed by senators and civilian advisers to more than double the size of Afghan security forces, a move that would cost billions of dollars.

In letters and face-to-face meetings, the lawmakers and the advisers have urged Obama, National Security Advisor Jim Jones and the new U.S. commander in Afghanistan to boost the Afghan National Army and police from current levels of 175,000 to at least 400,000.

“Any further postponement” of a decision to support a surge in Afghan forces will hamper U.S. efforts to quell an insurgency in its eighth year, Senators Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, and Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, wrote to the White House in a July 21 letter obtained by Bloomberg News.

General Stanley McChrystal, the new U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, will recommend a speedier expansion of Afghan forces beyond current targets in an assessment he will give within a month to U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, according to a senior military official familiar with the review.

Later Discussion

McChrystal’s report won’t propose how many additional U.S. or NATO troops may be needed to train those Afghan forces or to boost the U.S. fighting effort, the official said, adding that any discussion of U.S. and NATO troop strength will come later.

U.S. intelligence agencies, in a document submitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee April 24, estimated the Afghan Army alone would need to grow to 325,000 — more than triple its current strength — to mount an effective counterinsurgency.

In a meeting last week with Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, the deputy national security adviser who oversees Afghan policy at the White House, Levin said a substantial expansion of Afghan forces is essential, according to his spokeswoman, Tara Andringa.

In a May 19 letter to Obama, 17 Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee, including Levin, a Michigan Democrat, Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, and Senator John McCain of Arizona, the 2008 Republican presidential candidate, echoed the Afghan government’s view that a doubling of Afghan forces is needed. They cautioned Obama against “taking an incremental approach” that “does not reflect the realities on the ground.”

Fast-Track Effort

So far, the U.S. has agreed to fast-track the buildup of combined Afghan security forces to 134,000 Army personnel and 96,800 police — 230,800 in all — by 2011, according to U.S. Central Command.

The Department of Defense has requested $7.5 billion for fiscal year 2010 to fund the expansion. Training and equipping 160,000 additional forces, as the lawmakers and officials are urging, would balloon costs and require thousands more foreign military advisers, a commitment the Obama administration has been reluctant to make.

Senators argued in their May letter that building Afghanistan’s own forces would be far cheaper than sending more U.S. soldiers. “For the cost of a single American soldier in Afghanistan, it is possible to sustain 60 or more Afghans,” the senators wrote.

Civilian Experts

A similar message was drummed home by a dozen civilian national security experts in meetings with McChrystal and in a written report they gave him after a month in Afghanistan assessing ground conditions.

McChrystal asked the analysts from the secretary of defense’s office, the Congressional Research Service, Washington research institutions, the European Union and a French think tank for help in preparing his assessment.

Gates has given McChrystal more time to finish his review, originally due in mid-August. Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said today Gates expects it by late August or early September.

The calls for the administration to raise the targets for more Afghan forces echo comments to reporters last month by Brigadier General Larry Nicholson, commander of U.S. Marines leading an offensive in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. He said he was “not going to sugarcoat it. The fact of the matter is we don’t have enough Afghan forces” partnering with U.S. troops.

Joint Operations

More Afghan troops would bolster U.S. efforts to conduct joint operations, said Major General Curtis Scaparrotti, the commander for NATO forces in eastern Afghanistan, where the U.S. is the lead nation in the coalition.

“I do see a need for a greater capacity within the Afghan national security forces,” Scaparrotti told reporters at the Pentagon yesterday via video link from Afghanistan. “General McChrystal has stated we look at not only building their competency but building their capacity at a quicker pace.”

Lieberman, who has long advocated an expansion of Afghan forces, said the commitment “is a decision that we have avoided making for far too long.”

“Every day we continue to drag our feet and fail to commit to the indigenous security forces” hinders the fight against extremists and delays the pullout of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Lieberman told Bloomberg News last month.

$25 Billion

Retired Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, a counterinsurgency expert, predicts doubling the size of the Afghan Army would likely be a five-year, $25 billion commitment that would require 12,000 U.S. military trainers. Those troops would have to be reassigned from other duties.

The realization in Washington “of the scope and scale of what would be required in Afghanistan is frankly causing waves,” said Nagl, a member of the Defense Policy Board that advises the secretary of defense. He is president of the Center for a New American Security in Washington.

“The national security community, broadly speaking, recognizes the importance of a much larger Afghan Army” as a prerequisite for an eventual exit by U.S. troops, said Nagl. “The administration has not yet decided to pursue that path.”

Jones, Obama’s national security adviser, in June said the president’s strategy to boost civilian assistance should be given time to work before further commitments are made.

In February and March, Obama pledged 17,000 additional U.S. ground troops and 4,000 trainers, all of whom will be deployed by the end of September, said Major John Redfield, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command.

There are 63,000 U.S. troops and 40,500 non-U.S. NATO forces in Afghanistan, the highest number since the war to oust the Taliban regime began in 2001.

Infowars - President Obama called on the Iranian government to allow protesters to control the streets in Tehran.  Would Obama or any US president allow protesters to control the streets in Washington, D.C.?

There was more objective evidence that George W. Bush stole his two elections than there is at this time of election theft in Iran.  But there was no orchestrated media campaign to discredit the US government.

On May 16, 2007, the London Daily Telegraph reported that Bush regime official John Bolton  told the Telegraph that a US military attack on Iran would “be a ‘last option’ after economic sanctions and attempts to foment a popular revolution had failed.”

We are now witnessing in Tehran US “attempts to foment a popular revolution” in the guise of another CIA-orchestrated “color revolution“.

It is possible that splits among the mullahs themselves brought about by their rival ambitions  will aid and abet what the Telegraph (May 27, 2007) reported were “CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs.” It is certainly a fact that the secularized youth of Tehran have played into the CIA’s hands.

The Mousavi protests have set up Iran either for a US puppet government or for a military strike.  The mullahs are in a lose-lose situation. Even if the mullahs hold together and suppress the protests, the legitimacy of the Iranian government in the eyes of the outside world has been damaged.  Obama’s diplomatic approach is over before it started.  The neocons and Israel have won.

The US intervention and the orchestrated disinformation pumped out by the western media are so transparent that it is impossible to believe than any informed person or government is taken in.  One cannot avoid the conclusion that the West wants the 1978 Iranian Revolution overthrown and intends to use deception or violence to achieve that goal.

It has become increasingly difficult to believe that facts and truth motivate the western news media.  For the record, I would like to point out a few of the most obvious oversights, to use a euphemism, in the Iran reporting.

According to a wide variety of news sources (for example, London Telegraph, Yahoo News, The Globe and Mail, Asbarez.com, Politico),  “Before the polling closed Mr. Mousavi declared himself ‘definitely the winner’ based on ‘all indications from all over Iran.’ He alleged widespread voting irregularities without giving specifics and hinted he was ready to challenge the final results.”

Other news sources, which might not have been aware that the polls were kept open several hours beyond normal closing time in order to accommodate the turnout, reported that Mousavi made his victory claim the minute polls closed.

Mousavi’s premature claim of victory before polling was over or votes counted is clearly a preemptive move, the purpose of which is to discredit any other outcome.  There is no other reason to make such a claim.

In Iran’s system, election fraud has no purpose, because a small select group of ruling mullahs select the candidates who are put on the ballot.  If they don’t like an aspiring candidate, they simply don’t put him on the ballot.

When the liberal reformer Khatami ran for president, he won with 70% of the vote and served from 1997-2005. If the mullahs didn’t defraud Khatami of his win, it seems unlikely they would defraud an establishment figure like Mousavi, who was foreign minister in the most conservative government, and is backed by another establishment figure, Rafsanjani.

As Mousavi was seen as Rafsanjani’s man, why is it “unbelievable” that Ahmadinejad defeated Mousavi by the same margin that he defeated Rafsanjani in the previous election?

Neoconservative Kenneth Timmerman let the cat out of the bag that there was an orchestrated “color revolution” in the works.  Before the election, Timmerman wrote: “there’s talk of a ‘green revolution’ in Tehran.” Why would protests be organized prior to a vote and announcement of the outcome?  Organized protests waiting in the wings are not spontaneous responses to a stolen election.

Timmerman’s organization, Foundation for Democracy, is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) for the explicit purpose of promoting democracy in Iran. According to Timmerman, NED money was funneled to “pro-Mousavi groups who have ties to non-governmental organizations outside Iran that the National Endowment for Democracy funds.”

The US media has studiously ignored all of these highly suggestive facts.  The media is not reporting or providing objective analysis.  It is engaged in a propagandistic onslaught against the Iranian government.

We know that the US funds terrorist organizations inside Iran that are responsible for bombings and other violent acts.  It is likely that these terrorist organizations are responsible for the burning buses and other acts of violence that have occurred during the demonstrations in Tehran.

A writer on pakalert.wordpress.com says that he was intrigued by the sudden appearance of tens of thousands of Twitter allegations that Ahmadinejad stole the Iranian election.  He investigated, he says, and he reports that each of the new highly active accounts were created on Saturday, June 13th. “IranElection” is their most popular keyword. He narrowed the spammers to the most persistent: @StopAhmadi @IranRiggedElect @Change_For_Iran. He researched further and found that on June 14 the Jerusalem Post already had an article on the new Twitter.

He concludes that the new Twitter sites are propaganda operations.

One wonders why the youth of the world, who do not protest stolen elections elsewhere, are so obsessed with Iran.

The unexamined question is Mousavi and his motives.  Why would  Mousavi unleash demonstrations that are obviously being used by a hostile West to discredit the government of the Iranian Revolution that overthrew the US puppet government?  Are these the actions of a “moderate”?  Or are these the actions of a disgruntled man who kept his disaffection from his colleagues in order to gain the opportunity to discredit the regime with street protests?  Is Mousavi being manipulated by organizations funded with US government money?

John Bolton laid out the US strategy.  First we try to destabilize the regime.  Failing that, we strike them militarily.

As this strategy unfolds, Iranians will pay in lost independence or in blood for the naiveness of its secularized youth and for the mistake the mullahs made in trusting Mousavi.