Does the filmmaker whose movie sparked the deadly Libyan assaults even exist? Questions arose Wednesday about the identity of Sam Bacile, who has claimed responsibility for the movie in media interviews. An expert in far-right extremist groups said he had doubts about whether Bacile was a real person, and a consultant on the film said the name was a pseudonym and he was unsure of the man's true identity.
The anti-Muslim video apparently sparked outrage in eastern Libya, where a mob stormed the U.S. Consulate and killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans on Tuesday night.
Puppet Masters
© Gallo/Getty
A recently released FBI 'primer' revealed some of the 'advanced interrogation methods' in use
A recently released FBI 'primer' revealed some of the 'advanced interrogation methods' in use
A 2011 FBI "primer" on overseas interrogations, which became public on August 2, 2012, as a result of Freedom of Information Act action taken by the American Civil Liberties Union, repeatedly cites the Central Intelligence Agency's 1963 KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation. KUBARK was the code name the CIA used for itself.
The FBI briefing also cites the CIA's 1983 Human Resource Exploitation Manual (Honduras version) which was compiled by sections of KUBARK to train interrogators in the art of obtaining intelligence from "resistant sources". This was disseminated to the intelligence services of right-wing regimes in Latin America and south-east Asia in the context of the global "war on communism". In the mid-1980s, these manuals became the subject of Congressional investigations into US-supported atrocities in Central America. Both became public in 1997 as a result of FOIA action by the Baltimore Sun.
The FBI primer favourably invokes the KUBARK manual as a resource to illustrate the value of isolation "for several days before you begin interrogation" as well as during the "multi-session, multi-day process" as a means of prolonging a prisoner's fear prior to interrogation. The encouragement of fear-production through isolation is disturbing for (at least) two reasons. First, it indicates that some elements of the CIA's psychological torture model continue to have currency, despite the scandalous record of US prisoner abuse in the "war on terror" and the Obama administration's pledge to end torture.
Washington - U.S. embassies in at least seven countries in the Middle East, Africa and the Caucasus are warning of possible anti-American protests following the attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans.
The embassies in Armenia, Burundi, Kuwait, Sudan, Tunisia and Zambia, along with the embassy in Egypt, which was hit by a protest on Tuesday, all issued warnings on Wednesday advising Americans to be particularly vigilant.
The warnings, posted on the embassies' websites, do not report any specific threat to Americans but note that demonstrations can become violent.
The protest in Cairo and the attack in Benghazi appear to have been responses to an inflammatory anti-Muslim video posted on the Internet.
(This version CORRECTS APNewsNow. Replaces introductory paragraph to correct spelling of Caucasus; With BC-US--US-Libya.)
Source: The Associated Press
The embassies in Armenia, Burundi, Kuwait, Sudan, Tunisia and Zambia, along with the embassy in Egypt, which was hit by a protest on Tuesday, all issued warnings on Wednesday advising Americans to be particularly vigilant.
The warnings, posted on the embassies' websites, do not report any specific threat to Americans but note that demonstrations can become violent.
The protest in Cairo and the attack in Benghazi appear to have been responses to an inflammatory anti-Muslim video posted on the Internet.
(This version CORRECTS APNewsNow. Replaces introductory paragraph to correct spelling of Caucasus; With BC-US--US-Libya.)
Source: The Associated Press
The United States on Wednesday vowed to track down those behind the killings of its ambassador to Libya and three other Americans amid a regional furor over a film mocking Islam's prophet.
"We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act," said President Barack Obama. "And make no mistake, justice will be done."
The slain ambassador, Chris Stevens, helped save Libya's eastern city of Benghazi during last year's revolution. He died there Tuesday night, along with another diplomat and two State Department security officers, when a mob stormed the U.S. Consulate and set it ablaze in what U.S. sources said Wednesday was a pre-planned attack.
It was one of several American diplomatic missions that faced protests after the online release of a film that ridiculed Muslims and depicted the Prophet Mohammed as a child molester, womanizer and ruthless killer. In the Egyptian capital Cairo, several men scaled the walls of the U.S. Embassy and tore down its American flag.
But the U.S. sources told CNN the attackers used the protest outside the consulate as a diversion, and Obama called the violence unwarranted.
"Since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others," he said. "But there is absolutely no justification for this type of senseless violence -- none."
© Government Press, European Pressphoto Agency
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, with Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, observes an army infantry exercise taking place on the Golan Heights. Netanyahu has been publicly criticizing the Obama administration for refusing to issue a more specific ultimatum to Iran over its nuclear program.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, with Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, observes an army infantry exercise taking place on the Golan Heights. Netanyahu has been publicly criticizing the Obama administration for refusing to issue a more specific ultimatum to Iran over its nuclear program.
Washington - The White House struggled Tuesday to dispel reports that it had snubbed a request for a meeting this month from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as friction between the two allies again burst into the open.
As Netanyahu stepped up his criticism of President Obama's approach to the Iran nuclear threat, Israeli officials disclosed that Netanyahu had sought unsuccessfully to schedule a meeting with Obama at the upcoming United Nations General Assembly session in New York. Netanyahu's office had been told, Israeli officials said, that Obama would not be at the U.N. on Sept. 27 and 28, when Netanyahu would be there.
After a day of news reports about the escalating feud, the White House arranged an evening phone call between Obama and Netanyahu and insisted in a statement that the leaders had discussed "our close cooperation on Iran and other security issues." It denied that the Israelis had asked for a meeting in Washington and added, "nor was a request for a meeting ever denied."
But the Israeli government, in a statement Tuesday night, confirmed that Netanyahu had sought a meeting in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. session, a time when national leaders often confer.
The back and forth came only hours after Netanyahu, in comments in Israel, had unleashed his most scalding criticism of the Obama administration's approach to Iran's nuclear program.
© Fars News Agency
A leading member of Bahrain's Islamic Action Society (Jamaiyyat al-Amal al-Islami) Hashem al-Sabbaq said that American and British military and security advisors are supervising the training courses of Bahraini security forces for suppressing the protesting people.
He lashed out at the Western and Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (PGCC) countries for supporting the Al Khalifa regime.
"These countries are clearly interfering in the domestic affairs of Bahrain, especially in security and intelligence cases," Sabbaq told Al Alam TV network on Tuesday.
In December 2011, the British government admitted in a written report to the parliament that some 130 British troops were stationed in Bahrain at the start of renewed pro-democracy protests in the Arab country.
"There were 130 military personnel stationed in Bahrain in March 2011, the majority in the UK Maritime Component Command," Defense Minister Lord Astor said in a written parliamentary reply published at the time.
Also in 2011, the UK government admitted that members of the Saudi Arabian National Guard sent into Bahrain may have received military training from the British Armed Forces.
"It is possible that some members of the Saudi Arabian National Guard which were deployed in Bahrain may have undertaken some training provided by the British military mission," Armed Forces Minister Nick Harvey said.
© Fars News Agency
The terrorist group has been revived, restructured and trained by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Afghanistan and North Waziristan in Pakistan for a new mission in Syria. The group, sponsored by the head of the Saudi Intelligence Agency, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, has now even found a new command center which is being transferred from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Syria.
Bin Sultan was once titled by King Abdullah as the head of the Saudi Security Council, but he was fired after strategic mistakes and left the Arab state for about 8 months before he returned to the country as the head of the Saudi secret service.
Bandar Bin Sultan who has long been the most hasted figure in the Saudi monarchy in who the king himself held a special grudge against, has come back home and to power to supervise specific projects in the Middle-East, which have been designed by the US and the CIA, one is toppling Iran's strategic ally Bashar al-Assad, and another one is derailing popular Arab revolutions, similar to the recent events in Tunisia in the last few months.
© Fars News Agency
The seized weapons in Salqain district in Idlib included 7.62 guns along with other weapons as well as boxes of gunshots with the words "NATO BALL" carved on them.
The military experts believe that the weapons do not belong to Turkey as the country's weapons always carry some Turkish words.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad earlier in a meeting with his Tunisian counterpart Muhammad Monsef al-Marzouki in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, had warned of the plots hatched by the enemies and NATO to dominate the Muslim nations.
"Today the enemies of the regional nations and NATO forces are ready to dominate all Islamic states," Ahmadinejad said during the meeting on the sidelines of an emergency meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Mecca mid August.
© Fars News Agency
It's also a sense evidently shared by American politicians, especially the presidential candidates. This is because for the first time in a decade, the September 11 attacks and the dismal wars that resulted are not the focus of the election campaigns for both President Barack Obama and his challenger Mitt Romney!
Unlike the other presidential elections following the attacks, polls show those issues are a low priority for voters now. A CBS News/New York Times survey has found "37 percent of voters called terrorism and security extremely important to their vote while 54 percent said the economy and jobs were that important."
It was much different eight years ago, in the first presidential election after the attacks. Back then, about two-thirds of voters said, "Protecting the country was more important than creating jobs." President George W. Bush convinced voters that he was the right man to keep the country safe, and the rest is history.
Comment: While an absolutely great article by Fars News Agency, touching on several important factors, there is an obvious element missing.
Having conducted talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has acknowledged that the Russian position is steadfast: foreign intervention in Syria is intolerable.
"We have to be realistic. We haven't seen eye-to-eye... that may continue," Clinton revealed on Sunday.
Since the Russian and American positions on Syria do not converge, "then we will work with like-minded states to support a Syrian opposition to hasten the day when Assad falls and to help prepare Syria for a democratic future and help it get back on its feet," she declared.
Comment: It's interesting to note that days after the Canadian government chose to close the Canadian embassy in Tehran, this so called "snub" happened by the U.S.. This should be perceived as what it is: a game of good cop, bad cop and it's all part of the show folks.