Puppet Masters
An independent bipartisan task force has concluded that it is "indisputable" the United States engaged in torture and the George W. Bush administration bore responsibility. The 11-member Task Force on Detainee Treatment was convened by The Constitution Project after President Obama chose not to support a national commission to investigate the counterterrorism programs. It was co-chaired by Asa Hutchinson, a former Republican congressman from Arkansas, NRA consultant and undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush.
The report concludes that never before in U.S. history had there been "the kind of considered and detailed discussions that occurred after 9/11 directly involving a president and his top advisers on the wisdom, propriety and legality of inflicting pain and torment on some detainees in our custody." While the report focused largely on the Bush administration after 9/11, it also criticizes a lack of transparency under Obama. We speak with Laura Pitter, counterterrorism adviser at Human Rights Watch. [includes rush transcript]
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
Jason Cruz was at New York's JFK International Airport last Thursday. He was scheduled to fly from New York to Los Angeles. The flight from New York to LA is a long one, so Cruz understandably grabbed some food before boarding the plane. He went to a local Astoria deli and grabbed his sandwich of choice, which is nicknamed "The Bomb" because of its explosive flavor.
As it turns out, bringing something called "The Bomb" to an airport isn't the best idea.
At the airport, Cruz was talking to his friend Matthew Okumoto while waiting to pass through security. Referring to his sandwich, Cruz turned to his friend and said he wanted to bring "The Bomb" aboard the plane.
Matthew Keys, the social media editor at Reuters, posted audio of a reporter asking White House Press Secretary Jay Carney if U.S. bombings that kill innocent civilians in Afghanistan constitute an "act of terror" given the labeling of the Boston Marathon bombing as "terrorism". She specifically refers to a U.S. airstrike earlier this month that killed 11 children, just the latest in a seemingly endless line of Afghan civilian deaths at the hands of the U.S. government.
Carney completely dodged the questions, pointing instead to the 9/11 terrorist attacks to justify U.S. bombings in Afghanistan. After a long-winded answer excusing U.S. conduct, Carney concludes, " we take great care in the prosecution of this war."
Tell me, does this look like "great care" to you?
Carney completely dodged the questions, pointing instead to the 9/11 terrorist attacks to justify U.S. bombings in Afghanistan. After a long-winded answer excusing U.S. conduct, Carney concludes, " we take great care in the prosecution of this war."
Tell me, does this look like "great care" to you?
© AP Photo/Naimatullah Karyab
The lifeless bodies of Afghan children lay on the ground before their funeral ceremony, after a NATO airstrike killed several Afghan civilians, including ten children during a fierce gun battle with Taliban militants in Shultan, Shigal district, Kunar, eastern Afghanistan, Sunday, April 7, 2013.
The lifeless bodies of Afghan children lay on the ground before their funeral ceremony, after a NATO airstrike killed several Afghan civilians, including ten children during a fierce gun battle with Taliban militants in Shultan, Shigal district, Kunar, eastern Afghanistan, Sunday, April 7, 2013.
The Branch Davidian compound ablaze near Waco on April 19th, 1993
Today is also the 18th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, when the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building in downtown Oklahoma City was blown up, killing 168 people. The blast was so powerful that 324 buildings within a sixteen-block radius were destroyed or damaged, 86 cars were burned, and glass shattered in 258 nearby buildings. Timothy McVeigh was sentenced to death for his role in the attack, although how a 'truck bomb loaded with fertilizer' caused so much damage remains a mystery. We were told he did it to avenge the Waco massacre and oppose the Federal Government's 'gun control measures'. The Oklahoma City Bombing went down in history as a case of 'domestic terrorism' by wannabe revolutionaries, but everyone ought to know by now that that was a 'Noble' Lie.
Four days ago on April 15th 2013, Tax Day in the U.S., someone set off two shrapnel bombs at the Boston Marathon. The resulting carnage is identical to that seen in Baghdad day in, day out for 10 years. The Boston Tea Party was a key turning point in the growth of the American revolutionary movement. The annual Marathon is always held on the third Monday in April - Patriots' Day - a public holiday in Northeastern U.S. states to commemorate the opening battles of the American Revolutionary War - the Battles of Lexington and Concord - on April 19th, 1775.
What appear to be private contractors, wearing unmarked, matching uniforms and operating an unmarked SUV affixed with communication equipment near the finish line of the Boston Marathon shortly after the bomb blasts - can be seen beforehand, standing and waiting just meters away from where the first bomb was detonated.
The contractor-types had moved away from the bomb's location before it detonated, and could be seen just across the street using communication equipment and waiting for similar dressed and equipped individuals to show up after the blasts.
Image: An already widely distributed photo showing the contractor-types on the bottom left, just left of where the bomb was placed and detonated. The men are wearing matching, unmarked uniforms, large black bags, and appear to be waiting, separately, and "behind" the rest of the crowd. In the upper left corner, a wooden structure forming one half of a temporary photography "bridge" over the finish line can be seen and serves as a useful reference when establishing the contractor-types' position in other photos.
The contractor-types had moved away from the bomb's location before it detonated, and could be seen just across the street using communication equipment and waiting for similar dressed and equipped individuals to show up after the blasts.
© Global Research
The test's location at Three Mile Island outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania - the site of the worst commercial nuclear accident in U.S. history - had no special significance, according to state and federal officials.
The test on Tuesday simulated an attack by a group of eight armed men, according to Peter Herrick Jr., spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
In November 2011, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission required that the country's 65 nuclear power plants test their preparedness for terrorist incidents every two years.
The second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings was taken into custody Friday night, bringing to an end a massive manhunt in the tense Massachusetts capital worried by warnings the man was possibly armed with explosives.
After announcing the arrest on Twitter, Boston police tweeted: "CAPTURED!!! The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won. Suspect in custody."
Authorities confirmed the man in custody is 19-year-old Dzhokar Tsarnaev, who escaped an overnight shootout with police that left his older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev -- the other man wanted in the bombings -- dead.
The younger Tsarnaev was in serious condition, Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said at a news conference. He was being treated at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, hospital spokeswoman Kelly Lawman said.
Heavily armed FBI and police SWAT teams combed through Watertown, Mass. in a massive manhunt for Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Video: YouTube/Scott Sassone, YouTube/David Tamang.
Authorities said they captured the 19-year-old suspect in the deadly marathon bombings late Friday after one of the biggest manhunts in U.S. history paralyzed an entire metropolis.
Police and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents converged on a house in the Boston suburb of Watertown late Friday, and took into custody Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of two brothers alleged to have exploded two homemade bombs in downtown Boston, killing three people and injuring more than 175.
Residents who have been on edge and trapped inside of their homes all day burst into applause upon hearing the news. As police pulled away from the scene where Mr. Tsarnaev had been trapped and surrounded by law enforcement for hours scores people lined the street clapping and screaming.
"We are so happy, we are relieved," said Ashot Davtian. "I feel bad for the people who lost their lives but I am happy it's over."
© clusterbombs.us
Ahmed Kamel, 12-year old Iraqi, victim of US cluster bomb
Ahmed Kamel, 12-year old Iraqi, victim of US cluster bomb
In sync with media outlets across the country, the New York Times put a chilling headline on Wednesday's front page: "Boston Bombs Were Loaded to Maim, Officials Say." The story reported that nails and ball bearings were stuffed into pressure cookers, "rigged to shoot sharp bits of shrapnel into anyone within reach of their blast."
Much less crude and weighing in at 1,000 pounds, CBU-87/B warheads were in the category of "combined effects munitions" when put to use 14 years ago by a bomber named Uncle Sam. The U.S. media coverage was brief and fleeting.
One Friday, at noontime, U.S.-led NATO forces dropped cluster bombs on the city of Nis, in the vicinity of a vegetable market. "The bombs struck next to the hospital complex and near the market, bringing death and destruction, peppering the streets of Serbia's third-largest city with shrapnel," a dispatch in the San Francisco Chronicle reported on May 8, 1999.
And: "In a street leading from the market, dismembered bodies were strewn among carrots and other vegetables in pools of blood. A dead woman, her body covered with a sheet, was still clutching a shopping bag filled with carrots."
Pointing out that cluster bombs "explode in the air and hurl shards of shrapnel over a wide radius," BBC correspondent John Simpson wrote in the Sunday Telegraph: "Used against human beings, cluster bombs are some of the most savage weapons of modern warfare."
Comment: Once again, we see that the people entrapped by the FBI to take the fall for a 'terror plot' were groomed ("counselled") by the FBI for years beforehand.
Fake Terror And The War For Your Mind
The Boston bombings in context: How the FBI fosters, funds and equips American terrorists
FBI Organizes Almost All Terror Plots in the U.S.