County Police Chief Recommends Arming School Personnel

CBS


St. Louis County Police Chief Tim Fitch says it is time to talk about arming civilian school personnel following Friday’s massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, comparing it to arming airline pilots after September 11, 2001.

“I see it no differently,” he said. “Pilots have been armed now for many many years, we’ve not had another hijacking and the issue is, for the bad guy, he doesn’t know which airplane he’s getting on, if the pilot is armed or not.”

Fitch said the killing will not be stopped by legislation or laws. “If there’s somebody that’s really hellbent on doing something like this, they’re not going to care what the law is.”

The chief is adamant about his plans but realizes his calls for arming school workers will be met with resistance.

“We touched on this issue with heroin problem with schools. When we first were talking about the heroin problem in St. Louis, many of the school officials ran and they just hid out, they said ‘nope, we don’t have a heroin problem in our schools,’” Fitch said.

“They started to find out some of the students were involved in this and some of the students were dying of heroin overdoses. It forced them to have this discussion and to take action, inviting us into their schools to talk about the heroin problem in St. Louis.”
Concerning the possibility of gun control, Fitch said “it’s just not going to happen,” and called for an increased focus on mental health instead.

“One of the first thing governments tend to cut back on in tight times are mental health services,” he said. “We know this individual has a mental health history in Connecticut, we’ve seen that in all the school shootings, and additional resources would be helpful.
But, last resort, somebody’s got to take action and they got to do it quickly.”

Man Attempts to Open Fire on Crowd at Movie Theater, Armed Off-Duty Sheriff’s Deputy Drops Him With One Bullet

San Antonio Police stand guard near the Mayan 14 Theatres after an incident Sunday night, Dec. 16, 2012.

With one shot, an off-duty sheriff’s deputy took down a gunman who attempted to opened fire at a crowded movie theater lobby during a late night showing of “The Hobbit” in San Antonio, WOAI reports.

Police say a gunman, identified as Jesus Manuel Garcia, chased patrons from the nearby China Garden Restaurant into the lobby of the Santikos Mayan 14 movie theater at around 9 p.m. on Sunday. Garcia, an employee of the restaurant, reportedly walked in the establishment looking for a woman.

When the woman, also reportedly a restaurant employee, wasn’t there, Garcia pulled out a gun and attempted to open fire in the restaurant but his weapon jammed.

“It started at the restaurant and then went into the parking lot and then into the movie theater,” Deputy Lou Antu told 1200 WOAI news.

The commotion sent horrified restaurant patrons into the movie theater lobby, but the gunman followed. He again attempted to open fire, and this time his gun didn’t jam.

 Garcia reportedly shot one man in the chest before Antu says an off-duty sheriff’s deputy working security the theater shot him once, dropping him to the floor.

Bexar County sheriff’s Sgt. Lisa Castellano reportedly chased the gunman toward the back of the theater. The 13-year department veteran cornered him after he ran into a men’s restroom and shot him before taking his gun.

“The officer involved, she took the appropriate action to try to keep everyone safe in the movie theater,” Antu added.

Due to the off-duty deputy’s bravery, the gunman was not able to make it into the theater where he could have potentially taken many lives.

Police question a man near the Mayan Theater after an incident late Sunday, Dec., 16, 2012.

Police question a man near the Mayan Theater after an incident late Sunday, Dec. 16, 2012.

The gunman and the man he shot remain hospitalized, according to WOAI. Police say a recent breakup set off the man’s shooting spree on Sunday, MySanAntonio.com reports.

Jesus Manuel Garcia, 19, an employee at a China Garden restaurant next to the Santikos Mayan Palace 14 theater, apparently became upset Sunday night after his girlfriend broke up with him.

He lashed out by sending her a message saying he planned to go to the restaurant and “shoot somebody,” said Bexar County sheriff’s Sgt. Raymond Pollard.

Pollard said the woman called to warn restaurant employees, but by the time she saw his message, Garcia was already outside the China Garden firing a Glock 23 at the front door about 9:25 p.m.

If Garcia survives his attempt at mass murder, officials say he will likely face a charge of attempted capital murder as he allegedly shot at the San Antonia police car on Southwest Military Drive as he ran from the restaurant and into the theater.

'Did We Just Kill A Kid?' — Six Words That Ended A US Drone Pilot's Career

Business Insider
Robert Johnson

The New Mexico desert gets blistering hot, but inside the small windowless container where Brandon Bryant worked as a drone operator for the U.S. Air Force it stays a cool 63 degrees all year long.

Nicola Abé at der Spiegel spoke with Bryant, no longer in the Air Force, who relays a disturbing and tragic scene from his time inside that isolated container in the American desert.

Sixty-three finger numbing degrees and Bryant describes sitting with a group of other pilots looking at more than a dozen computer monitors. The crew are directing drones over Afghanistan 6,250 miles away and the screens jump with a two to five second delay, as infrared video sent from the UAVs whips through the air to New Mexico.

When the order to fire on a target arrives, Bryant paints the roof of a hut with the laser that will guide in a Hellfire missile released by the pilot beside him.

"These moments are like in slow motion," he says to Abé.

No doubt, because on this occasion Bryant says a child walked from behind the building at the last second. Too late for him to do anything else but ask the other pilot, "Did we just kill a kid?"

From der Spiegel:

"Yeah, I guess that was a kid," the pilot replied.

"Was that a kid?" they wrote into a chat window on the monitor.

Then, someone they didn't know answered, someone sitting in a military command center somewhere in the world who had observed their attack. "No. That was a dog," the person wrote.

They reviewed the scene on video. A dog on two legs?

The article follows another widely publicized story from the Marine Times about children killed by Americans on Afghan soil published just weeks ago. While obviously a tragedy for the victims and their families, Bryant describes the incredible toll taken on U.S. troops required to obey orders producing such dire results.

From his mother's couch in Missoula, Montana Bryant talks of his 6,000 Air Force flight hours and says he used to dream in infrared. "I saw men, women and children die during that time," he says. "I never thought I would kill that many people. In fact, I thought I couldn't kill anyone at all."

The three part article digs deeply into the life of a troubled former servicemember and the war-fighting policies that don't look to be changing anytime soon.

Niloufer Bhagwat presents to the 9/11 Revisited conference in Kuala Lumpur

Corbett Report


 Niloufer Bhagwat, Professor of Comparative Constitutional Law at University of Mumbai, presents to the “9/11 Revisted: Seeking the Truth” conference in Kuala Lumpur on November 19, 2012.

 

Ben Swann: "No Country Would Tolerate Missiles From Outside

When Propaganda Masquarades as News

Global Research
Prof. James F. Tracy

The week-long Israeli onslaught against largely defenseless Palestinians in Gaza that began on November 14 provides a basis for assessing how Western corporate media whitewash the war crimes of America’s foremost ally in the Middle East. There are three often intertwined techniques consciously applied to such news coverage—historical context, sourcing, and objectification of the enemy to be targeted. Such practices can readily transform journalism into propaganda that acts to abet such crimes while at the same time allowing journalistic institutions to still claim the mantle of “objectivity.”

Such methods are on full display in the reportage of Israel’s most recent operation in Gaza. The use of such propaganda fits within a broader campaign of media disinformation that subdues potential outrage—particularly in the US—over Israel’s overwhelming use of force against an oppressed and vulnerable people, most of whom are civilians.

Meaningful historical context for understanding Israel’s aggression is almost entirely absent from most Western news coverage of the event. If present, such context would illuminate Israeli government officials’ true motivations for a military venture that involved 750 airstrikes in four days alone. “’Operation Pillar of Defense,’” Nile Bowie observes,

launched just months away from Israel’s elections, is a calculated component of the Netanyahu government’s strategy to topple Hamas and continue absorbing Palestinian territory. Decades of occupation and apartheid have shaped the current scenario; Israel has dehumanized an entire people by seizing their land and forcing them into prison-like ghettoes. Adherents to political Zionism have shown contempt for a genuine political solution to the Palestinian conflict, and the Netanyahu administration is poised to crush all opposition to the Jewish state.[1]

Major Western media focused instead on the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) November 14 assassination of Hamas leader and Palestinian hero Ahmed al-Jabari, while blatantly omitting the fact that he was also a major figure in negotiations for a long-term truce between Hamas and Israel freshly brokered by Egypt. Hours before Hamas strongman Ahmed Jabari was assassinated,” Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported the day following the assassination, “he received the draft of a permanent truce agreement with Israel, which included mechanisms for maintaining the cease-fire in the case of a flare-up between Israel and the factions in the Gaza Strip.”[2]

Apart from Western alternative media such critical details were quickly dispatched to the memory hole. Major news outlets almost systematically relied on Israeli government, military, and intelligence sources to shape its coverage, where Jabari was reviled as “the commander of the military wing of Hamas.” Reuters, for example, proceeded to source an IDF spokeswoman who proceeded to lay out the dominant frame for the coverage. “This is an operation against terror targets of different organizations in Gaza,” she declared. “Jaabari [sic] had ‘a lot of blood on his hands.’ Other militant groups including Islamic Jihad were on the target list.”[3]

A similar report in the UK Telegraph taking the tack of Israeli official pronouncements beings with the lead, “Ahmed Jabari probably didn’t event hear the missile that killed him, launched from a drone in the skies over Gaza City as he drove an ordinary saloon car through a quiet residential street.”[4] Emphasis on Jabari’s military status and alleged criminal and terrorist activities invariably legitimates Israel’s flagrant barbarism. Further, by holding Jabari up as a dangerous renegade supposedly representative of the Palestinian people the stage is set for attacks on civilians that are much more readily rationalized in the public mind.

Honest contextualization of the crisis leading readerships to greater understanding would involve consulting and publicizing both Israeli and Palestinian perspectives—an undertaking Western journalists are now adept at through their routine discussions with Syrian “activists” reporting on the alleged atrocities committed by the Syrian Army against Syrian citizens and the gallant Free Syrian Army “rebels” in that close by theatre.

Palestine Defended on the BBC (a rare moment)

A Look at How Israeli War Crimes Affect Palestinians

Is this child dead enough for you?

PressTV

To all those now hailing the re-election of Barack Obama as a triumph of decent, humane, liberal values over the oozing-postule perfidy of the Republicans, a simple question:

Is this child dead enough for you?

This little boy was named Naeemullah. He was in his house — maybe playing, maybe sleeping, maybe having a meal — when an American drone missile was fired into the residential area where he lived and blew up the house next door.

As we all know, these drone missiles are, like the president who wields them, super-smart, a triumph of technology and technocratic expertise. We know, for the president and his aides have repeatedly told us, that these weapons — launched only after careful consultation of the just-war strictures of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas — strike nothing but their intended targets and kill no one but “bad guys.” Indeed, the president’s top aides have testified under oath that not a single innocent person has been among the thousands of Pakistani civilians — that is, civilians of a sovereign nation that is not at war with the United States — who have been killed by the drone missile campaign of the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

Yet somehow, by some miracle, the missile that roared into the residential area where Naeemullah lived did not confine itself neatly to the house it struck. Somehow, inexplicably, the hunk of metal and wire and computer processors failed — in this one instance — to look into the souls of all the people in the village and ascertain, by magic, which ones were “bad guys” and then kill only them. Somehow — perhaps the missile had been infected with Romney cooties? — this supercharged hunk of high explosives simply, well, exploded with tremendous destructive power when it struck the residential area, blowing the neighborhood to smithereens.

As Wired reports, shrapnel and debris went flying through the walls of Naeemullah’s house and ripped through his small body. When the attack was over — when the buzzing drone sent with Augustinian wisdom by the Peace Laureate was no longer lurking over the village, shadowing the lives of every defenseless inhabitant with the terrorist threat of imminent death, Naeemullah was taken to the hospital in a nearby town.

This is where the picture of above was taken by Noor Behram, a resident of North Waziristan who has been chronicling the effects of the Peace Laureate’s drone war.  When the picture was taken, Naeemullah was dying. He died an hour later.

He died.

Is he dead enough for you?

Dead enough not to disturb your victory dance in any way? Dead enough not to trouble the inauguration parties yet to come? Dead enough not to diminish, even a little bit, your exultant glee at the fact that this great man, a figure of integrity, decency, honor and compassion, will be able to continue his noble leadership of the best nation in the history of the world?

Welcome to America: Texas Police Sniper Guns Down Immigrants From Helicopter

Information Liberation

Remember a few months ago how a DEA helicopter was used to gun down two pregnant women and tw o 14-yr-old boys in Honduras because they were "suspected" of being drug dealers? Well, those same tactics are now being used in America. After being pulled over for having a suspect "covered truck bed," a vehicle which fled from Texas game wardens was shot at by Texas "Department of Public Safety" agents with a sniper rifle from a helicopter. While the police claim they were intending to disable the car, they instead killed two passengers, and sent another to the hospital. No drugs were found, and the DPS says their shooting was "within policy." My San Antonio reports: LA JOYA — Skid marks and a patch of dried blood in the gravel of a desolate country road were about the only signs left Friday of a deadly pursuit that happened here. Two men from Guatemala died Thursday when a Department of Public Safety helicopter opened fire on a red pickup suspected of smuggling immigrants. A third person was hospitalized and six were arrested in the latest in a string of smuggling attempts that turned deadly while packed vehicles flee from state or federal authorities. Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman Tom Vinger said the chase began when Texas Parks and Wildlife game wardens attempted to pull over the truck they thought was carrying drugs. When the driver didn't stop, the wardens called DPS for assistance.

“During the pursuit, the vehicle appeared to have a typical ‘covered' drug load in the bed of the truck,” Vinger said. “DPS aircraft joined the pursuit of the suspected drug lord, which was traveling at reckless speeds, endangering the public. A DPS trooper discharged his firearm from the helicopter to disable the vehicle.”

No drugs were found in the truck.

During interviews at a Border Patrol facility, survivors told consular officials that the men died from gunfire, and that their cover was flimsy and blowing off, enough so that the trooper in the helicopter could see them.

Vinger said the officer who discharged his weapon was placed on administrative leave.

[...]The policy warns that when shooting at a vehicle “there may be a risk of harm to occupants of the suspect vehicle who may not be involved, or involved to a lesser extent, with the actions of the suspect creating the threat.”

Use of force expert Geoffrey Alpert, a professor at the University of South Carolina who has studied pursuits at police departments across the country, said he'd “never heard of” law enforcement agencies allowing officers to shoot at vehicles from helicopters.

“There's a trend to restrict officers from shooting at vehicles at all,” Alpert said. “It's not an efficient or effective policy to let officers shoot from vehicles, and certainly not from a helicopter.”

[...]“We can't give up swaths of land to organized thugs and criminals,” DPS Director McCraw said recently. Indeed, we can't "give up huge swaths of land to organized thugs and criminals," that's why we need to shut these out of control police and border patrol down immediately.
_
Chris runs the website InformationLiberation.com, you can read more of his writings here. Follow infolib on twitter here.

America’s Permanent War Agenda: Secret Kill Lists, Global Drone Wars, Special Forces

Global Research
Stephen Lendman

Call it elevating Murder, Inc. to a higher level. A Washington Post Special Report discussed America’s permanent war agenda.
It includes targeted killings, Obama’s secret kill list, global drone wars, and White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan’s new rules for war playbook.

Established in 2003, Washington’s National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) provides terrorist related information for America’s intelligence community. Brennan initially ran the agency. It devised Washington’s so-called “disposition matrix.”

If America had a motto it would be war is good, the more wars the better. How else can generals add stars and profiteers cash in big?

Human lives don’t matter. Inviolable rule of law principles are trashed. Wealth, power and dominance alone matter. Imagine national policy wanting to destroy humanity to control it.

Democrat Obama has that in mind and more. Imagine what Romney’s planning. Think about it November 6. Voting either major party ticket assures permanent wars, destroying social America, and cracking down hard on resisters.

On October 23, the Washington Post headlined “Plan for hunting terrorists signals US intends to keep adding names to kill lists,” saying:

Information came from “dozens of current and former national security officials, intelligence analysts and others….” Evolving US counterintelligence policies are examined. Two follow-up articles are planned.

US special forces death squads operate in 120 or more countries. CIA agents kill globally. US citizens may be targeted at home or abroad. No one anywhere is safe.

Summary judgment means rule of law principles don’t apply. Last spring, Obama appointed himself judge, jury and executioner. Extrajudicial authority is official administration policy. Diktats decide who lives or dies.

Anyone can be targeted anywhere in the world for any reason or none at all. Obama usurped the power of life and death. He’s got final kill list authority.

Policy prioritizes killing by drones, death squads, or other means. Only eliminating America’s enemies matter. Whether real or imagined makes no difference.

Targeted victims are people who want to live free from America’s imperium. Washington calls them terrorists. Names go on kill lists.

Those around him say killing comes easy to Obama. Waging war on Islam is policy. So is take no prisoners. Counterterrorism is cover for wholesale or retail slaughter. Collateral deaths don’t matter.

Post writer Greg Smith said for “the past two years, the Obama administration has been secretly developing a new blueprint for pursuing terrorists, a next-generation targeting list called the ‘disposition matrix.’ ”

It contains names of terrorist suspects, covert plans to eliminate them, and in some cases sealed indictments. Officials interviewed said a “database (being compiled) is designed to go beyond existing kill lists, mapping plans for the ‘disposition’ of suspects beyond the reach of American drones.”

Regardless of whether US wars continue or end, killing America’s enemies remains policy. Suspects are guilty by accusation. Due process and judicial fairness are off the table. One unnamed official said:

“We can’t possibly kill everyone who wants to harm us. It’s a necessary part of what we do….We’re not going to wind up in 10 years in a world of everybody holding hands and saying, ‘We love America.’ ”

Smith didn’t say plans are to make sure they don’t. Peace and stability defeat America’s imperium. Violence and instability are essential to advance it.

He also didn’t expose Washington’s bogus war on terror. At issue is inventing global enemies, waging wars against them, and destroying democratic freedoms in the process. At stake is unchallenged dominance no matter how many corpses it takes to achieve it.

Other omissions including failing to explain coverup is policy. So is aggressive killing in multiple theaters. Mostly civilians are killed. Populations are terrorized.

At most, only 2% of victims are high-level combatants. Drone attacks are the recruiting tool of choice for militants, and targeted killings violate fundamental international law.

Like his predecessor, Obama claims success. It’s always in the eye of the beholder. Bin Laden’s alleged killing is cited. No matter that he died naturally in December 2001. Even modern technology can’t kill a dead man. Claiming it was staged hokum.

Big plans are being made. “White House counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan is seeking to codify the administration’s approach to generating capture/kill lists, part of a broader effort to guide future administrations through the counterterrorism processes that Obama has embraced.”

US forces blow up Afghan civilian dead bodies: protesters

PressTV

Anti-US protesters in southern Afghanistan say US-led forces have blown up the dead bodies of three civilians, who were recently arrested and killed by the foreign forces in the country.

Hundreds of angry protesters blocked the Kandahar-Kabul highway in the city of Qalat on Monday, in response to the killings.

Foreign forces have reportedly refused to return the bodies of the victims to their families.

Protesters say the victims were all civilians and they had no connections with the Taliban militants.

This is while over Sunday and Monday, at least eight people were killed in US-led airstrikes in the Wardak and Kandahar provinces respectively situated in central and southern Afghanistan.

The loss of civilian lives at the hands of US-led foreign forces is a highly sensitive issue in Afghanistan, which has dramatically increased anti-American sentiment and triggered anti-US protests across the war-torn country.

The issue is also a major source of friction between Kabul and Washington.

The United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001 under the pretext of combating terrorism.

The offensive removed the Taliban from power, but insecurity continues to rise across Afghanistan, despite the presence of thousands of US-led troopers in the violence-scarred country.

CIA chiefs face arrest over horrific evidence of bloody 'video-game' sorties by drone pilots

Daily Mail
David Rose

The Mail on Sunday today reveals shocking new evidence of the full horrific impact of US drone attacks in Pakistan.

A damning dossier assembled from exhaustive research into  the strikes’ targets sets out in heartbreaking detail the deaths of teachers, students and Pakistani policemen. It also describes how bereaved relatives are forced to gather their loved ones’ dismembered body parts in the aftermath of strikes.

The dossier has been assembled by human rights lawyer Shahzad Akbar, who works for Pakistan’s Foundation for Fundamental Rights and the British human rights charity Reprieve.

Filed in two separate court cases, it is set to trigger a formal murder investigation by police into the roles of two US officials said to have ordered the strikes. They are Jonathan Banks, former head of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Islamabad station, and John A. Rizzo, the CIA’s former chief lawyer. Mr Akbar and his staff have already gathered further testimony which has yet to be filed.

How the attacks unfolded

‘We have statements from a further 82 victims’ families relating to more than 30 drone strikes,’ he said. ‘This is their only hope of justice.’

In the first case, which has already been heard by a court in Islamabad, judgment is expected imminently. If the judge grants Mr Akbar’s petition,  an international arrest warrant will be issued via Interpol against the  two Americans.

The second case is being heard in the city of Peshawar. In it, Mr Akbar and the families of drone victims who are civilians are seeking a ruling that further strikes in Pakistani airspace should be viewed as ‘acts of war’.

They argue that means the Pakistan Air Force should try to shoot down the drones and that the government should sever diplomatic relations with the US and launch murder inquiries against those responsible.

According to a report last month by academics at Stanford and New York universities, between 2,562 and 3,325 people have been killed since the strikes in Pakistan began in 2004.

The report said of those, up to  881 were civilians, including 176  children. Only 41 people who had  died had been confirmed as ‘high-value’ terrorist targets.

Getting at the truth is difficult because the tribal regions along the frontier are closed to journalists. US security officials continue to claim that almost all those killed are militants who use bases in Pakistan to launch attacks on Western forces across the border in Afghanistan.

In his only acknowledgement that the US has ever launched such attacks at all, President Barack Obama said in January: ‘This is a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists, who are trying to go in and harm Americans.’

Missile attacks in in Pakistan have had devastating affects, the dossier revealed

The plaintiff in the Islamabad case is Karim Khan, 45, a journalist and translator with two masters’ degrees, whose family comes from the village of Machi Khel in the tribal region of North Waziristan.

His eldest son, Zahinullah, 18, and his brother, Asif Iqbal, 35, were killed by a Hellfire missile fired from a Predator drone that struck the  family’s guest dining room at about 9.30pm on New Year’s Eve, 2009.

Asif had changed his surname because he loved to recite Iqbal,  Pakistan’s national poet, and Mr Khan said: ‘We are an educated family.  My uncle is a hospital doctor in  Islamabad, and we all work in professions such as teaching.

‘We have never had anything to do with militants or terrorists, and for that reason I always assumed we would be safe.’

Mr Khan said: ‘Zahinullah, who had been studying in Islamabad, had returned to the village to work his way through college, taking a part-time job as a school caretaker.

UK may speed troop pullout in 2013 over Marines shooting scandal

Russia Today

A British soldier (C) of the 1st batallion of the Royal Welsh
patrols jointly with French soldiers of the 21st RIMA in the streets of
Showal in Nad-e-Ali district, Southern Afghanistan,
in Helmand Province.

The UK plans to pull troops out of Afghanistan in 2013 following the arrest of 9 Marines for the suspected murder of an unarmed militant. Britain is also under pressure to quit the costly war as the economic downturn has drained military coffers.

British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond told the BBC on Sunday that he expected the 2013 withdrawal to be“significant, which means thousands, not hundreds.” He did “not expect it to be the majority,” however.

This would result in a withdrawal of around 4,500 military personnel out of the 9,500 currently stationed in Afghanistan; 500 troops are scheduled to leave the country by the end of this year.

All UK personnel are officially due to leave Afghanistan alongside the 2014 US troop pullout, but growing financial problems in Britain and rising tensions between alliance forces and their Afghan counterparts may speed up the withdrawal process.

Hammond’s announcement came shortly after the arrest of nine Royal Marines in connection with the murder of a wounded insurgent in 2011. The Ministry of Defense said on Sunday that it had charged five of the soldiers with murder.

Seven of the nine Marines were arrested on Friday after a colleague came forward claiming that a disarmed insurgent had been killed in a manner that broke the UK military’s strict rules of engagement in Afghanistan.

The Ministry of Defense confirmed the arrests, and stressed that no civilians were involved in the 2011 incident: "The RMP has referred the cases of the remaining five Royal Marines to the independent Service Prosecuting Authority… these Marines have now been charged with murder.”

The Afghanistan issue has come to the forefront of UK politics over the last month following Chancellor George Osborne’s appeal to the National Security Council to immediately bring British troops home. British PM David Cameron later criticized the Chancellor, dismissing them as “provocative.”

Osborne voiced concern over financing continued UK troop deployments in Afghanistan, given that military operations in the country have already added some 17 billion pounds ($27 billion) to defense expenditures.

The eurozone crisis has forced London to scale down its military budget in order to fund new tax cuts.

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Rising tensions between alliance forces and Afghan security recruits have led to a rise in so-called 'green-on-blue' killings this year, with over 50 soldiers killed by insider attacks since January. In 2011, 35 alliance troops were killed in similar attacks in what NATO dubbed a minor problem.

Since UK forces deployed in Afghanistan with the US in 2001, more than 430 British troops have died in the fighting.

Thousands of Pakistanis rally against US drone strikes

Nine-mile convoy led by Imran Khan heads towards South Waziristan as local officials say it will not be allowed to proceed

Thousands of Pakistanis, joined by US anti-war activists, have headed toward Pakistan's volatile tribal region to protest against American drone strikes despite threats from the Taliban.

The demonstrators, headed by former cricketer turned politician Imran Khan, say the strikes violate Pakistani sovereignty and kill civilians.

The rally is heading into a part of the country where the Pakistani military has been battling a violent Taliban uprising. The motorcade started from Islamabad on Saturday morning and, after an overnight stay in the city of Dera Ismail Khan, departed for the tribal belt. Local officials said the convoy would not be allowed to reach its destination in South Waziristan because of security concerns.

In a televised speech before the convoy got under way on Sunday morning, Khan thanked his supporters.

"We have achieved the goal of this march. Our message of peace has reached the world. I am thankful especially to the American group that came a long way here to join this protest against drone attacks," he said.

Thousands turned out on the road outside Dera Ismail Khan to cheer on Khan and the convoy of supporters and accompanying media, which stretched to a length of nine miles. Supporters packed into vehicles waved flags for Khan's political group and chanted: "We want peace."

Videos posted on Pakistani media showed barricades with hundreds of police in riot gear, a sign of concerns that the motorcade would be attacked or become unruly.

After three years of military operations in South Waziristan, which borders Afghanistan to the west, the Pakistani military is still struggling to suppress militants.

A senior official in the South Waziristan administration, Hameedullah Khattak, vowed that the motorcade would not be allowed to enter the tribal area. "We will not let them in South Waziristan for security reasons. Here is major security situation and we cannot provide them security," he said.

Factions of the Taliban have threatened to attack the march. On Saturday, a statement from a faction said to be based in Pakistan's eastern Punjab province warned that militants would target the protesters with suicide bombings.

The main Pakistani Taliban group, which is based in South Waziristan, issued a statement on Friday calling Khan a "slave of the west" and saying that the militants "don't need any sympathy" from such "a secular and liberal person".

Khan brushed aside the criticism but indicated that if the protesters are not allowed into South Waziristan, they will simply hold a rally wherever they end up.

Khan has seen his popularity surge in recent years, as the government, led by the Pakistan People's Party of Asif Ali Zardari, has disappointed many.

The US says its drone strikes are necessary to battle militants that Pakistan has been unable or unwilling to control.

Was it worth it? Afghanistan 11 years later

Global Research
Tanya Carlina Hsu

October 7 marked the eleventh anniversary of the US war in Afghanistan. More than 2,000 American soldiers have now been killed, and as the US presidential candidates debate each other to lead the most dominant power on Earth, perhaps it is time for someone to ask them: Was it worth it?

On September 11th 2001, 2,977 people were killed. Almost 700 people in one firm alone (Cantor-Fitzgerald) died; 343 fire fighters and paramedics were killed, as were 60 police officers. Only 291 bodies were ever found ‘intact’. Over half of the families who lost loved ones that day received not a single piece of remains. Within three months 300 fire-fighters went on leave due to respiratory problems, almost half a million New Yorkers are being treated for post-traumatic stress disorders, and 1,000 first responders have since died from acute illnesses related to clean-up activities.

Wall Street shut down for 6 days, and as a direct result of 9/11 more than 146,100 people lost their jobs. Within the first month New York City alone exceeded $105 billion in economic losses.

Was it worth it?

America then went to war. But not just Iraq and Afghanistan: Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia have also been attacked. So have the citizens of the United States: freedoms, privacy and civil rights once taken for granted are gone, in the name of ‘national security’.

Operation Iraqi Freedom officially lasted for eight years and eight months. By December 2011, 4,486 US and 318 non-US troops had been killed fighting in Iraq, more than 1,800 more than who died on September 11^th. However, according to the New York Times, a year after operations ceased US Special Operations units have quietly begun re-entering Iraq at the behest of the Iraqi government.

In Afghanistan, the war that began on October 7^th 2002 still marches on. Operation Enduring Freedom is not due to end until 2014, an exact century after the onset of World War One. So far Afghanistan has taken the lives of 3,196 soldiers: 2,130 American, 433 British, and 158 Canadian. Forces killed in Afghanistan also amount to more than all the lives lost on 9/11.

Thus 8,000 troops have been killed for the 2,977 lost on September 11^th 2001.

Was it worth it?

It gets worse. Once soldiers return from the theatre of operations the numbers keep climbing. For every single death in Afghanistan or Iraq, twenty-five soldiers commit suicide. During the first six months of 2012 there were 187 Army suicides, 55 Air Force, 32 Marine Corps, 39 Navy and 5 Coast Guard. The cumulative effect of multiple deployments and post-traumatic stress disorders et alia suggest, however, tens of thousands of additional deaths.

Each year, 6,500 veteran suicides are documented at a rate of one every 80 minutes. Only the Army releases figures and it is unclear if this includes active duty personnel or veterans of other wars. Although only 1% of Americans have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, they account for a massive 20% of the total annual rate. The Department of Veterans Affairs claim 18 veteran suicides per day, and for every successful suicide 20 are attempted yet fail. Rates of death were far higher in both World Wars: permanent disabilities now affect veterans today who otherwise would have died on the field. In World War One, an average of 57% of all soldiers mobilised were killed; in World War Two, more than 55 million soldiers and civilians died. In other words, the wounded from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are a testimony to modern medicine saving lives that in the past would certainly have been lost, but can lead to tragic results nevertheless.

If the lowest suicide rate to assume is one per day by active duty or Iraq/Afghanistan vets, more than 4,000 must be added to the numbers killed above. And if we assume only half of the 6,500 veterans suicides per year are as a result of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an additional 36,000 deaths could be included to the totals. Whether suicides account for a further 4,000 or 40,000 deaths, they bring the ratio to between 4:1 to 16:1 deaths in payback for the 2,977 victims of 9/11.

These are just coalition losses of course. The official number of victims in Iraq has been stuck on 100,000 since 2004, not revised upwards since. But, in 2007 the British Opinion Research Businesssurvey calculated that up to 1.5 million Iraqis had been killed in the war. This confirmed an earlier British survey by the Lancet that calculated 655,000 to 1 million Iraqis had died in just three years, from 2003-2006. Although the war continued for a further five years the studies have not been repeated nor revised to account for additional Iraqi casualties, arguably due to intense American criticism.

There are almost no figures for Afghanistan casualties, but Human Rights Watch recorded 1,000 civilian deaths in 2006 and the UN estimates 12,000 deaths since 2007. There are no statistics for the first five years of the war.

Was it worth it?

Let us not omit the secret wars in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Considering the drone programme is covert the numbers are almost certainly low. We do know however, that in Yemen drones have killed up to 1,026 men, women and children (at least 34) since 2002. Somalia is not on most Americans’ radar-screens but it is on the drones’: since 2007, 170 Somalis are dead from these Unmanned Aerial Vehicle strikes. In Pakistan drones have killed a reported 3,341 (at least 176 children) and wounded a minimum of 1,366 people. The ratio of wounded-to-killed indicates how deadly drone are, in part confirming their ‘precision’. They are surgically precise in that they do not wound: they intentionally tear to pieces anyone nearby.

How about the cost of capture, torture and rendition? Housing a single prisoner at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba costs the US taxpayer $800,000 per year. More than 100,000 men were detained in Iraq, many at the notorious Abu Ghraib; thousands more were held at Bagram Airfield or the infamous (CIA funded) ‘Salt Pit’ torture chamber north of Kabul, Afghanistan. Officers forced scores of detainees to physical, psychological and sexual abuse before shipping them off to even worse prisons around the world.

The non-fiscal cost of the consequences of tortures and imprisonment-without-trial cannot be calculated. For every single death or incarceration there is a father, brother, son, nephew, friend or neighbour who will never forget what these wars have wrought. Revenge lives long—generation-to-generation. We already see the first signs of what the wars have bought, exhibited in riots, uprisings, increased anti-American hostilities, destruction of US sovereign life and property, coups, and civil wars.

Was it worth it?

What about the economic cost? In 2003, George W. Bush estimated that the wars would cost $50 to $60 billion. Yet a 2011 study by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studiesestimated the final cost of the wars to be $4.4 trillion, not including medical costs for injured veterans or rebuilding aid to Afghanistan. Economist Joseph Stiglitz estimated the war in Iraq alone would cost $2.2 trillion. And all of the costs are funded upon borrowed money, demonstrated by the US debt skyrocketing from $6.4 trillion in March 2003 to over $16 trillion as of October 1^st, 2012.

During the Vietnam war, Undersecretary of State George Ball wrote, “[I]n terms of US prestige…we would gain more through enlarging the war.” National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy opined, “[E]ven if it fails, the policy will be worth it” because of US “prestige”.

If the American public—22.5 million now actually (not officially) unemployed—understood the economic price they would have to pay, would they have agreed to so eagerly support the wars? If the US Congress could have foreseen that a bare-minimum of four times as many soldiers as those who died on 9/11would die, would it have been worth it? If the consequences of anger, revenge, blowback—and stratospheric loss of prestige—were considered, would the US have still gone to war?

Was it worth it?

Inhofe Seeks Hearings Addressing the EPA’s Monstrous “Illegal Human Experiments”

IntelHub
Andrew W. Griffin

Just days after Red Dirt Report featured a story out of St. Louis, Mo. addressing the shocking revelation that the U.S. Army was conducting secret experiments on citizens of that city without their knowledge in the 1950’s -by spraying toxic substances on them – we learn that potentially deadly human experimentation is taking place this very day – and sanctioned by the U.S. government, no less! While those Cold War-era tests – some believed to include radiological substances, primarily on lower-income, inner-city folks – took place more than 50 years ago in St. Louis, Corpus Christi, Texas and elsewhere, we learn that the Environmental Protection Agency is currently being sued in federal court for “conducting illegal life-and-health-threatening scientific experiments on human subjects,” according to a JunkScience.com report from September 24th.

And Oklahoma’s senior senator, Tulsa’s Jim Inhofe, is demanding further answers from the EPA, in the meantime. Hearings are likely in coming weeks.

Suing the EPA and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is The American Tradition Institute Environmental Law Center.

This is in response to illegal human experiments involving the 2009 KINGCON study and the 2010 OMEGACON study and exposure to lethal levels of particulate matter. The court document and lawsuit, The American Tradition Institute Environmental Law Center v. United States Environmental Protection Agency and Lisa P. Jackson, Administrator can be read here.

In the court documents, it notes, for instance, that one plaintiff, asthma-sufferer Landon Huffman, participated in human experiments several years ago that he was led to believe would “help people with asthma.”

Huffman, the documents note, “was not informed that the pollution EPA was forcing into his lungs could actually cause him to have an asthma attack. Nor was he ever given anything from EPA that would possibly relieve his asthma.”

One “obese woman with hypertension and pre-experiment evidence of cardiac irritability” was placed in a gas chamber and exposed to small particles “at levels far above what the EPA had published as safe.” She was later hospitalized. Clearly these poor people were seen as expendable by this out-of-control government agency.

A medical ethicist named Dr. John Dale Dunn looked at the post-experiment results and was stunned by what he learned.

Said Dunn: “I am outraged and saddened to know that highly trained and expert physicians would be involved in scandalously unethical and immoral professional research, subjecting humans to toxic or lethal levels of small particles.”

Two other plaintiffs, Steven J. Milloy and Dr. David Schnare, had relatives in Nazi concentration camps. Milloy’s uncle, Zoran Galkanovic, who was incarcerated at the Mauthausen concentration camp, “was forced to … identify those individuals at the concentration camp too ill to work, knowing they would subsequently be executed.” Located in Austria, the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp was known for unspeakable horrors that included all sorts of gruesome and deadly medical experiments.

Camp physician Hermann Richter “surgically removed significant organs – e.g., stomach, liver, or kidneys – from living prisoners solely in order to determine how long a prisoner could survive without the organ in question.”

It is because of what happened to his family member that Milloy has “(a)ccepted as a family responsibility the fight against any government who subjects its citizens to inhumane treatment.”

Dr. Schnare, meanwhile, worked for the EPA for 33 years and was shocked to learn of the illegal human experimentation by the EPA. He told the American Tradition Institute, based in Burke, Va., that he is a plaintiff because he “abhors current governmental experimentation on humans for the purposes of determining the effect of poisons.”

One new study, called CAPTAIN, is currently ongoing at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, believe it or not. CAPTAIN, according to court documents, “imposes a risk of immediate death from an acute exposure” to dangerous particulates.

The plaintiffs are seeking an end to CAPTAIN and other sinister experiments taking place in the Tarheel State and elsewhere, via the federal courts.

Meanwhile, the EPA scientists, it was revealed, conducted some potentially lethal experiments in Durham, North Carolina. “order(ing) human subjects be placed into a gas chamber and exposed to a lethal gas.” In this case, diesel exhaust.

Three days ago, U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), a ranking member on the Committee on Environment and Public Works, wrote a letter to that committee’s chairwoman, U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), addressing this shocking lawsuit.

Writes Inhofe, in his letter dated September 28th: “As I understand from the complaint, the EPA exposed dozens of human subjects, many of whom were health-impaired (e.g. asthma, metabolic syndrome, elderly) to concentrated high levels of substances like fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and diesel exhaust, which EPA has previously and officially determined can kill people and cause cancer.”

Inhofe continues: “It also appears that the EPA researchers failed to inform the institutional review board and the study subjects of its official views concerning the lethality and toxicity of PM2.5 and diesel exhaust.”

Inhofe also tells Boxer that he would like the committee, which is responsible for EPA oversight, to “conduct hearings on this matter in the upcoming ‘lame-duck’ session.”

Inhofe also says that the EPA “may be held criminally liable for its conduct.” We hope to have more on this story in the coming weeks.

Iraq: Ten Years, a Million Lives and Trillions of Dollars Later

Global Research
Dennis Kucinich

Ten years ago today the debate over the Iraq War came to Congress in the form of a resolution promoted by the Bush Administration. The war in Iraq will cost the United States as much as $5 trillion. It played a role in spurring the global financial crisis. Four thousand, four hundred, eighty eight Americans were killed. More than 33,000 were injured.

As many as 1,000,000 innocent Iraqi civilians were killed. The monetary cost of the war to Iraq is incalculable. A sectarian civil war has ravaged Iraq for nearly a decade. Iraq has become home to Al Qaeda.

The war in Iraq was sold to Congress and the American people with easily disproved lies. We must learn from this dark period in American history to ensure that we do not repeat the same mistakes. And we must hold accountable those who misled the American public.

On October 2, 2002, the day the legislation to authorize war in Iraq was introduced, I sent and personally distributed a memo to my colleagues in Congress refuting point-by-point every reason given by the Bush Administration to go to war.

On October 3, 2002, I held a press conference with 25 Members of Congress and then presented an hour long explanation to Congress on the House Floor, refuting the lies upon which the cause of war was predicated.

It was clear from information publicly available at the time that Iraq did not have Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), that Iraq had no connection to 9/11, and that Iraq was not a threat to the United States. Anyone who wanted to look could have seen the same information that I did.

Yet some of America’s top political leaders bought into the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld drumbeat of war. Two leading Democrats were among those taken in by the White House hype and the WMD argument:

“I believe the facts that have brought us to this fateful vote are not in doubt. Saddam Hussein is a tyrant who has tortured and killed his own people … [I]ntelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists including Al Qaeda members.” Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), October 10, 2002.

“September 11 was the ultimate wake-up call. We must now do everything in our power to prevent further terrorist attacks and ensure that an attack with a weapon of mass destruction cannot happen. … the first candidate we must worry about is Iraq… [Saddam Hussein] continues to develop weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear devices.” Leader of the Democratic Caucus in the House, Richard Gephardt (D-MO), October 10, 2002.

Even the most trusted newspapers around the country blindly repeated as fact grossly incorrect assertions by leaders of both parties.

“No further debate is needed to establish that Saddam Hussein is an evil dictator whose continued effort to build unconventional weapons in defiance of clear United Nations prohibitions threatens the Middle East and beyond.” The New York Times, Editorial Board, October 3, 2002.

Notwithstanding the blizzard of disinformation, one hundred thirty three Members of Congress voted against the resolution that authorized the use of military force in Iraq, including nearly two-thirds of the Democratic Caucus in the House. Seven Republicans, including Ron Paul (R-TX), also voted against the resolution. In the Senate, the vote was 77 to 23 in favor of a war of choice.

Ten years ago Congress voted to wage war on a nation that did not attack us. That decision undermined our fiscal and national security. To this day we are suffering from the blowback. While most of the troops are home, the United States maintains a significant presence in Iraq through the State Department and its thousands of private security contractors.

The war against Iraq was based on lies. Thousands of Americans and perhaps a million Iraqis were sacrificed for those lies. The war in Afghanistan continues. New wars have been propagated in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia pursuant to the never-ending “War on Terror”. This mindset puts us at the edge of war against Iran. Ten years and trillions of dollars later, the American people by and large still do not know the truth. It is time to usher in a new period of truth and reconciliation.

Dennis Kucinich is US Congressman from Ohio