Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Join the Appeal for Truth about 9/11 by Peter Dale Scott and Michael Berger and Janice Matthews
In the last few days Glenn Beck and the Washington Times have forced Van Jones to resign as environmentalist "green jobs" adviser to the White House. His principal offense: having signed a 2004 Statement from 911truth.org calling for a new investigation of the events of 9/11.
This is a moment of truth for all who want America to be an open society. As the Los Angeles Times reported on September 8, "Other conservatives, smelling blood in the water, are sharpening their knives." Why should they not? The White House has just capitulated to a dishonest attack claiming that Jones, because he signed the 911truth Statement, "thinks the Bush administration blew up the World Trade Centers and covered it up." You can check Beck's capacity for accuracy by comparing this claim to the relevant call in the Statement itself: "for immediate public attention to unanswered questions that suggest that people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war."
Supporting Beck are authors like Charles Krauthammer, arguing that “truthers” – those of us who signed the 911truth statement -- are creating “a hallucinatory alternative reality in the service of a fathomless malice.”
In the wake of these attacks, three of the original hundred signers -- Van Jones, the environmentalist Paul Hawken and Jodie Evans of Code Pink -- have asked that their signatures on the 911truth Statement be removed. I am hoping that numbers of other responsible community leaders will stem this flight from rational inquiry by coming forward to sign the statement at this time.
In fact, nine such individuals have done so already at Salon.com. In "Would you still sign the 9/11 Truth petition?", reporter Vincent Rossmeier contacted 30 of the original signatories and asked, simply, "If you had to do it all over again, would you still sign the statement?" Of the responses published, all but two "expressed their full-fledged support for the petition." Several of these people not only reaffirmed their endorsement of the statement, but went on to put forward clear arguments supported by overwhelming facts as to why they now do so.
I am one of the university professors who signed the Statement. One of the many reasons I did so was because of my awareness that Vice-President Cheney had given two conflicting accounts as to whether he was in the White House bunker in precisely the crucial minutes when the most important orders of that day (including the institution of so-called "Continuity of Government" measures which continue to this day) were issued from that place. I discuss this in my book The Road to 9/11 (University of California Press, 2007), pp. 200-03, 228-30, of which the following draft excerpt is available on the Internet:
Cheney himself told Tim Russert of "Meet the Press" on September 16, 2001, in an interview still available five years later on the White House website, that he arrived in the PEOC before the Pentagon was hit, i.e. before 9:37 AM.15 But the 9/11 Report follows a later and very different account in Newsweek, based on an interview with Cheney, which now had him leave his office at 9:35 and arrive in the PEOC "shortly before 10 a.m." We shall see that new evidence, which only surfaced in 2006, corroborates Cheney's first story, and makes his revised time-table extremely unlikely. Clearly one of Cheney's two accounts of his arrival (before 9:37, and around 9:58) must be wrong. Moreover what is at stake is not trivial. Important orders were issued in this hour from the PEOC: one alleged order (whose content is uncertain) which Mineta claims to have heard about 9:30, a second order to ground all planes at about 9:45, and a third tripartite order (which according to Clarke included a shoot-down order) at about 9:50. By Mineta's account, corroborated by Clarke, Cheney had arrived in the PEOC in time to give all three of these orders; by Cheney's second account, he arrived after all three were given.
The case for a new investigation of 9/11 is now far stronger than it was in 2004, because even those responsible for the 9/11 Commission inquiry have since complained that it was flawed. The two co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, noted in their book, Without Precedent, that they were given insufficient time and "a dramatically insufficient [initial] budget of $3 million." Later they wrote in the New York Times (January 2, 2008) that the CIA "failed to respond to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot. [and] obstructed our investigation."
The Washington Post (August 2, 2006) has reported that "Staff members and some commissioners thought that e-mails and other evidence provided enough probable cause to believe that military and aviation officials violated the law by making false statements to Congress and to the commission."
Lee Hamilton has also said that "I don't believe for a minute we got everything right", that the Commission was set up to fail, that people should keep asking questions about 9/11, that the 9/11 debate should continue, and that the 9/11 Commission report was only "the first draft" of history."
Louis Freeh, FBI Director at the time, has written that
"Even the most junior investigator would immediately know that the name and photo ID of [lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed] Atta in 2000 is precisely the kind of tactical intelligence the FBI has many times employed to prevent attacks and arrest terrorists. Yet the 9/11 Commission inexplicably concluded that it 'was not historically significant.' This astounding conclusion--in combination with the failure to investigate Able Danger and incorporate it into its findings--raises serious challenges to the commission's credibility and, if the facts prove out, might just render the commission historically insignificant itself. No wonder the 9/11 families were outraged by these revelations and called for a 'new' commission" (Wall Street Journal 11/17/05)
And Rutgers Law School-Newark Dean John Farmer, Senior Counsel and Team Leader to the 9/11 Commission states in his newly released book, The Ground Truth,
"At some level of government,at some point in time, a decision was made not to tell the truth about the national response to the attacks on the morning of 9/11. We owe the truth to the families of the victims of 9/11. We owe it to the American public as well, because only by understanding what has gone wrong in the past can we assure our nation's safety in the future."
In addition to these community leaders' signatures, 40 family members of 9/11 victims signed the 2004 Truth Statement. The Family Steering Committee for the 9/11 Independent Commission submitted hundreds of questions to the 9/11 Commission as it began its investigation. Although Commissioner Jamie Gorelick told the family members their questions would be used as a "road map" for the investigation, the Family Steering Committee's report, "FSC Questions to the 9/11 Commission with Ratings of its Performance in Providing Answers" found the overwhelming majority of questions were not only left unanswered but were not even addressed in the final 9/11 Commission Report.
I appeal to readers to help ensure that the doubters of the official 9/11 story will not be bullied into silence.
The real issue is to defeat the campaign of media hitmen to punish people who want to know the truth about their country. If you agree, please go to www.911truth.org to read the 2009 Truth Statement and add your name to the voices of those who have signed the 2004 Statement.
The Story of My Shoe By MUTADHAR al-ZAIDI
My Flower to Bush, the Occupier
The Story of My Shoe
By MUTADHAR al-ZAIDI
Mutadhar al-Zaidi, the Iraqi who threw his shoe at George Bush gave this speech on his recent release.
In the name of God, the most gracious and most merciful.
Here I am, free. But my country is still a prisoner of war.
Firstly, I give my thanks and my regards to everyone who stood beside me, whether inside my country, in the Islamic world, in the free world. There has been a lot of talk about the action and about the person who took it, and about the hero and the heroic act, and the symbol and the symbolic act.
But, simply, I answer: What compelled me to confront is the injustice that befell my people, and how the occupation wanted to humiliate my homeland by putting it under its boot.
And how it wanted to crush the skulls of (the homeland's) sons under its boots, whether sheikhs, women, children or men. And during the past few years, more than a million martyrs fell by the bullets of the occupation and the country is now filled with more than 5 million orphans, a million widows and hundreds of thousands of maimed. And many millions of homeless because of displacement inside and outside the country.
We used to be a nation in which the Arab would share with the Turkman and the Kurd and the Assyrian and the Sabean and the Yazid his daily bread. And the Shiite would pray with the Sunni in one line. And the Muslim would celebrate with the Christian the birthday of Christ, may peace be upon him. And despite the fact that we shared hunger under sanctions for more than 10 years, for more than a decade.
Our patience and our solidarity did not make us forget the oppression. Until we were invaded by the illusion of liberation that some had. (The occupation) divided one brother from another, one neighbor from another, and the son from his uncle. It turned our homes into never-ending funeral tents. And our graveyards spread into parks and roadsides. It is a plague. It is the occupation that is killing us, that is violating the houses of worship and the sanctity of our homes and that is throwing thousands daily into makeshift prisons.
I am not a hero, and I admit that. But I have a point of view and I have a stance. It humiliated me to see my country humiliated. And to see my Baghdad burned. And my people being killed. Thousands of tragic pictures remained in my head, and this weighs on me every day and pushes me toward the righteous path, the path of confrontation, the path of rejecting injustice, deceit and duplicity. It deprived me of a good night's sleep.
Dozens, no, hundreds, of images of massacres that would turn the hair of a newborn white used to bring tears to my eyes and wound me. The scandal of Abu Ghraib. The massacre of Fallujah, Najaf, Haditha, Sadr City, Basra, Diyala, Mosul, Tal Afar, and every inch of our wounded land. In the past years, I traveled through my burning land and saw with my own eyes the pain of the victims, and hear with my own ears the screams of the bereaved and the orphans. And a feeling of shame haunted me like an ugly name because I was powerless.
And as soon as I finished my professional duties in reporting the daily tragedies of the Iraqis, and while I washed away the remains of the debris of the ruined Iraqi houses, or the traces of the blood of victims that stained my clothes, I would clench my teeth and make a pledge to our victims, a pledge of vengeance.
The opportunity came, and I took it.
I took it out of loyalty to every drop of innocent blood that has been shed through the occupation or because of it, every scream of a bereaved mother, every moan of an orphan, the sorrow of a rape victim, the teardrop of an orphan.
I say to those who reproach me: Do you know how many broken homes that shoe that I threw had entered because of the occupation? How many times it had trodden over the blood of innocent victims? And how many times it had entered homes in which free Iraqi women and their sanctity had been violated? Maybe that shoe was the appropriate response when all values were violated.
When I threw the shoe in the face of the criminal, Bush, I wanted to express my rejection of his lies, his occupation of my country, my rejection of his killing my people. My rejection of his plundering the wealth of my country, and destroying its infrastructure. And casting out its sons into a diaspora.
After six years of humiliation, of indignity, of killing and violations of sanctity, and desecration of houses of worship, the killer comes, boasting, bragging about victory and democracy. He came to say goodbye to his victims and wanted flowers in response.
Put simply, that was my flower to the occupier, and to all who are in league with him, whether by spreading lies or taking action, before the occupation or after.
I wanted to defend the honor of my profession and suppressed patriotism on the day the country was violated and its high honor lost. Some say: Why didn't he ask Bush an embarrassing question at the press conference, to shame him? And now I will answer you, journalists. How can I ask Bush when we were ordered to ask no questions before the press conference began, but only to cover the event. It was prohibited for any person to question Bush.
And in regard to professionalism: The professionalism mourned by some under the auspices of the occupation should not have a voice louder than the voice of patriotism. And if patriotism were to speak out, then professionalism should be allied with it.
I take this opportunity: If I have wronged journalism without intention, because of the professional embarrassment I caused the establishment, I wish to apologize to you for any embarrassment I may have caused those establishments. All that I meant to do was express with a living conscience the feelings of a citizen who sees his homeland desecrated every day.
History mentions many stories where professionalism was also compromised at the hands of American policymakers, whether in the assassination attempt against Fidel Castro by booby-trapping a TV camera that CIA agents posing as journalists from Cuban TV were carrying, or what they did in the Iraqi war by deceiving the general public about what was happening. And there are many other examples that I won't get into here.
But what I would like to call your attention to is that these suspicious agencies -- the American intelligence and its other agencies and those that follow them -- will not spare any effort to track me down (because I am) a rebel opposed to their occupation. They will try to kill me or neutralize me, and I call the attention of those who are close to me to the traps that these agencies will set up to capture or kill me in various ways, physically, socially or professionally.
And at the time that the Iraqi prime minister came out on satellite channels to say that he didn't sleep until he had checked in on my safety, and that I had found a bed and a blanket, even as he spoke I was being tortured with the most horrific methods: electric shocks, getting hit with cables, getting hit with metal rods, and all this in the backyard of the place where the press conference was held. And the conference was still going on and I could hear the voices of the people in it. And maybe they, too, could hear my screams and moans.
In the morning, I was left in the cold of winter, tied up after they soaked me in water at dawn. And I apologize for Mr. Maliki for keeping the truth from the people. I will speak later, giving names of the people who were involved in torturing me, and some of them were high-ranking officials in the government and in the army.
I didn't do this so my name would enter history or for material gains. All I wanted was to defend my country, and that is a legitimate cause confirmed by international laws and divine rights. I wanted to defend a country, an ancient civilization that has been desecrated, and I am sure that history -- especially in America -- will state how the American occupation was able to subjugate Iraq and Iraqis, until its submission.
They will boast about the deceit and the means they used in order to gain their objective. It is not strange, not much different from what happened to the Native Americans at the hands of colonialists. Here I say to them (the occupiers) and to all who follow their steps, and all those who support them and spoke up for their cause: Never.
Because we are a people who would rather die than face humiliation.
And, lastly, I say that I am independent. I am not a member of any politicalparty, something that was said during torture -- one time that I'm far-right, another that I'm a leftist. I am independent of any political party, and my future efforts will be in civil service to my people and to any who need it, without waging any political wars, as some said that I would.
My efforts will be toward providing care for widows and orphans, and all those whose lives were damaged by the occupation. I pray for mercy upon the souls of the martyrs who fell in wounded Iraq, and for shame upon those who occupied Iraq and everyone who assisted them in their abominable acts. And I pray for peace upon those who are in their graves, and those who are oppressed with the chains of imprisonment. And peace be upon you who are patient and looking to God for release.
And to my beloved country I say: If the night of injustice is prolonged, it will not stop the rising of a sun and it will be the sun of freedom.
One last word. I say to the government: It is a trust that I carry from my fellow detainees. They said, 'Muntadhar, if you get out, tell of our plight to the omnipotent powers' -- I know that only God is omnipotent and I pray to Him -- 'remind them that there are dozens, hundreds, of victims rotting in prisons because of an informant's word.'
They have been there for years, they have not been charged or tried.
They've only been snatched up from the streets and put into these prisons. And now, in front of you, and in the presence of God, I hope they can hear me or see me. I have now made good on my promise of reminding the government and the officials and the politicians to look into what's happening inside the prisons. The injustice that's caused by the delay in the judicial system.
Thank you. And may God's peace be upon you
The translation is by McClatchy’s special correspondent, Sahar Issa.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
9/11 Commission "played with fire"
Lebanese student pilot Ziad Jarrah, according to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the "911 Commission," was said to have been the pilot of the United Airlines Boeing 757-200 that crashed into the ground near Shanksville, Pennsylvania on the morning of September 11, 2001.
WMR has previously reported that based on numerous sources within the National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, and the U.S. Air Force, United 93 was shot down by the Air Force over Pennsylvania by two F-16s. A Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle was also in the vicinity of the doomed Boeing 757 and crashed where the large passenger plane was reported to have crashed.
In a compendium to the 9/11 Commission report titled, "Terrorist Travel," which contains travel documents allegedly used by the hijackers, a photograph of the U.S. visa of Ziad Jarreh is shown. The visa is said to have survived the crash of the Boeing 757 but miraculously, the fireball from the exploding aircraft managed to save that part of the visa that shows Jarrah's head shot photograph and part of his visa number.
Jarrah was born in Lebanon to Sunni Muslim parents but volunteered much of his time working with disabled and orphaned children at a Catholic school and church. There has been much speculation about whether Jarrah was ever a member of Mohamed Atta's "Hamburg cell" and whether he even boarded United flight 93 on 9/11. His background was remarkably secular.
However, based on videos of questionable origin and the visa from the crash site in Pennsylvania, spared from total obliteration by what can only be described as an "intelligent fire," is all the FBI had to conclude that Jarrah was the hijack team pilot of Flight 93. German authorities never obtained any evidence linking Jarrah to the Hamburg cell of Atta and the other accused hijackers.
Atta's visa (above) and Ziad Jarrah (below). The fire from the explosion of United 93 apparently "stopped on a dime" and left Jarrah's photo and U.S. visa number largely intact, largely proving to the FBI that he was the pilot of the hijacked airliner. All that. of course, if the 9/11 Commission is to be believed. Six out of the nine members of the commission believe that they were lied to and sandbagged by the Bush administration and top government officials. Click here for enlargement.
The following is excerpted from the 9/11 Commission report on the hijackers' travel documents:
May 25 [2000] -- Ziad Jarrah, a native of Lebanon, applied for and received a five-year B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) visa in Berlin. The consular officer who issued the visa could not recall whether he interviewed Jarrah. However, our review of Berlin visa policy for third-country nationals suggests that Jarrah was a strong visa candidate, given his long residence in Germany (approximately four years), academic involvement in Germany (at two universities), and Lebanese nationality. Third-country nationals with more than two0 years of residency in Germany met a threshold for visa approval. The officer who adjudicated his visa has stated that wealthy Lebanese families often send their children to school in Germany as a way to keep them out of the Middle East turmoil, and that Jarrah looked like one of those wealthy expatriates."
Not only was Jarrah a model visa candidate in the eyes of the Berlin consular officer but the visa issued would have a charmed existence, surviving a fiery plane crash to reveal Jarrah's photo and visa number.
And not only did the Berlin consular officer have a faulty memory in his interview of Jarreh but the Lebanese national's visa application was destroyed by the State Department along with those of other hijackers. From page 45 of the 9/11 travel document compendium:
"Of the 23 hijacker visa applications, five were destroyed routinely along with other documents before 9/11 and before their significance was known. The visa applications of Nawaz al Hazmi, Kahlid al Mihdhar (in 1999), Mohamed Atta, Marwan al Shehhi, and Ziad Jarrah were destroyed."
The report does not state what "other documents" were destroyed by the State Department prior to 9/11. Nor does the report explain why it was "routine" to destroy visa applications for visitors who were still in the United States.
The report does state that Jarrah's electronic record of Jarrah's visa application still existed at the State Department, along with his photo. Of course, electronic records are easily manipulated. The report states: "DOS record, NIV Applicant Detail of Ziad Jarrah, Nov. 8, 2001. Jarrah's original visa application was destroyed, but an electronic record, including his photograph, remains in the State Department's electronic records. A partly-burned copy of Jarrah's U.S. visa, recovered from the crash scene of Flight 93, is attached in Appendix A."
The report states that a "burned copy" of Jarrah's visa was found at the crash scene. However, such a visa would have been the original visa and attached to a page in Jarrah's Lebanese passport. The photo clearly shows what appears to be other passport pages behind the original visa.
There is an interesting footnote to the strange saga of Ziad Jarrah. Last year, two Lebanese brothers -- Ali Jarrah and Youssef Jarrah -- were arrested by Lebanese authorities who linked the pair to an espionage cell responsible for the car bombing assassination of Hezbollah military commander Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus in February 2008. The Jarrah's were found by the Lebanese Army in possession of "communication devices and other sophisticated equipment."
The Jarrahs arrested by the Lebanese had been recruited by the Mossad in the 1980s when Israel occupied a large section of Lebanon. And for a Paul Harvey-like "rest of the story," they are related to Ziad Jarreh, the man who was said to have been a close associate and fellow hijacking planner of Mohamed Atta and whose American visa was found with photo and visa number largely intact in a field in Pennsylvania on 9/11.
Monday, September 14, 2009
A/H1N1 was re-assorted in a lab
A virologist who has been researching the A/H1N1 virus has concluded after months of research that the "novel" influenza was re-assorted in a laboratory from eight genes consisting of avian, swine and human type influenza A virus.
The scientist does not believe, based on intensive laboratory research of the A/H1N1 virus, that its sudden appearance in Mexico this past Spring was a natural occurrence.
The reassortment of viruses occurs when one or more complete genes are exchanged enabling the virus to adapt to a new host. An example is when the avian virus switches gene with a human virus. In the case of A/H1N1, three genes were exchanged, from avian, swine, and human influenza viruses, resulting in the ressortant virus now expected to launch another deadly wave of infections in early October.
There are also signs that adaptation leading to mutation has occurred in the A/H1N1 strain. Several cases of mutated A/H1N1 have been reported from around the globe rendering treatment with anti-A/H1N1 drugs and A/H1N1 vaccines ineffective.
Adaptation takes place when a small change takes place in the virus and sometimes that can be one amino acid alteration. The adaptation permits the virus to thrive in its new host. A/H1N1 is believed to be a laboratory strain because a specific amino acid was discovered that appears to have made several passage in eggs. The vaccine industry usually amplifies viruses by isolating them in eggs and after several passages, the mutation can be discovered.
The mutation of A/H1N1 has been discovered by our virologist source to have been more rapid than is naturally possible. The following is what was described in scientific terms about the rate of mutation of A/H1N1:
"Mutation takes time to occur, up to the rate of amino acid substitution. For example, for HA gene, or "duck virus," HA has a substitution rate about 3 x 10e-4 per site per year which is slower compare to human and swine HA (about 10e-3 per site per year). If the total nucleotide number in influenza A virus HA is 1,700, then it takes three years for making a single change in the duck virus, or 1.7 year in the case of human and swine virus."
The natural rate of mutation for a complete gene mutation, according to the virologist, takes "thousand of years to be established."
As far as the reassortant A/H1N1 virus is concerned, there is a fear that a human was used as a laboratory "guinea pig" to permit the exchange of genes between humans, pigs, and fowl. The reasoning is that an individual was infected by avian, human and swine virus simultaneously, and the viruses exchanged genes inside the individual's body, creating a new virus having mixed genes and then rapidly spreading to others.
Herein lies the suspicions concerning the purposeful creation of A/H1N1 and its infection of a human host. WMR's virologist source stated:
"The host should have efficient receptor for those three different derived hosts. So far, human virus tends to infect human, because it is suited to a human receptor. Avian virus tends to infect birds, because it is suited to bird receptors. Pigs have both human and avian type receptors, so it is believed that pig serves as the 'mixing vessel'. However, some researchers tried to prove the 'mixing vessel' theory by trying to infect pigs with human and avian viruses to create a reassortant virus."
The test involving the infection of pigs with reassortant human and avian viruses failed.
While it is common for pigs to become infected with human and avian viruses but there are no reports that pigs shed the reassortant A/H1N1 virus and infected new hosts, either human or bird.
What is known is that the first A/H1N1 virus was found in a human. Although some pigs and turkeys were infected with the A/H1N1 virus by farm workers, there is no evidence that the opposite occured.
Reassortant genes also require ancestor viruses. According to the virologist:
"If you check the phylogenetic tree, it shows the NA and M genes derived from avian virus, PB1 from human H3N2; other genes (PB2, PA, HA, NP, NS) from swine triple reassortant, swine H1N2 and Eurasian swine (H1N1/H3N2). The triple reassortant swine actually derived from human H3N2 which infected pigs, and has been circulating in North America for at least 20 years. When people say it is 'swine virus,' it's actually human virus."
It has also been discovered that suspected ancestor viruses are coming from old isolates. The NA gene comes from a 1996-2001 isolate, the M gene from 1990-1993 isolates, and the others even older, somewhere between 1979 to 1980's isolates. The consensus virologist community contends that the A/H1N1 virus has been in existence for over twenty years without ever being detected. WMR's virologist states that it is impossible for a virus existing for twenty years without being detected given the amount of virus medical surveillance that takes place around the world.
The virologist has not detected any evidence of 1918 influenza RNA/DNA in A/H1N1. However, the 1918 flu, like A/H1N1, began in a first wave in the spring and came back with a vengeance in October. The 1918 flu killed an estimated 50 million people around the world. Although no genetic evidence of a link to 1918 flu has been discovered by the virologist, the same scientist who has conducted research into A/H1N1 and may have received DNA samples from the buried corpse of an Inuit woman in Fort Brevig, Alaska who died of the pandemic in 1918 is also financially linked to an A/H1N1 vaccine firm.
The virologist has asked an alarming question about A/H1N1, "How can you mix avian, human and pig virus at one time? The viruses must have come from Europe, America and Asia, without any detection?"
The virologist adds, "the virus emerged suddenly in Mexico. I can't explain how. I wish I could. For me as a virologist, it's impossible . . . on the other hand, technology can create any kind of virus you want."
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Friday, September 11, 2009
Fifty questions on 9/11 By Pepe Escobar
THE ROVING EYE It's September 11 all over again - eight years on. The George W Bush administration is out. The "global war on terror" is still on, renamed "overseas contingency operations" by the Barack Obama administration. Obama's "new strategy" - a war escalation - is in play in AfPak. Osama bin Laden may be dead or not. "Al-Qaeda" remains a catch-all ghost entity. September 11 - the neo-cons' "new Pearl Harbor" - remains the darkest jigsaw puzzle of the young 21st century.
It's useless to expect US corporate media and the ruling elites' political operatives to call for a true, in-depth investigation into the attacks on the US on September 11, 2001. Whitewash has been the norm. But even establishment highlight Dr Zbig "Grand Chessboard" Brzezinski, a former national security advisor, has admitted to the US Senate that the post-9/11 "war on terror" is a "mythical historical narrative".
The following questions, some multi-part - and most totally ignored by the 9/11 Commission - are just the tip of the immense 9/11 iceberg. A hat tip goes to the indefatigable work of 911truth.org; whatreallyhappened.com; architects and engineers for 9/11 truth; the Italian documentary Zero: an investigation into 9/11; and Asia Times Online readers' e-mails.
None of these questions has been convincingly answered - according to the official narrative. It's up to US civil society to keep up the pressure. Eight years after the fact, one fundamental conclusion is imperative. The official narrative edifice of 9/11 is simply not acceptable.
Fifty questions
1) How come dead or not dead Osama bin Laden has not been formally indicted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as responsible for 9/11? Is it because the US government - as acknowledged by the FBI itself - has not produced a single conclusive piece of evidence?
2) How could all the alleged 19 razor-blade box cutter-equipped Muslim perpetrators have been identified in less than 72 hours - without even a crime scene investigation?
3) How come none of the 19's names appeared on the passenger lists released the same day by both United Airlines and American Airlines?
4) How come eight names on the "original" FBI list happened to be found alive and living in different countries?
5) Why would pious jihadi Mohammed Atta leave a how-to-fly video manual, a uniform and his last will inside his bag knowing he was on a suicide mission?
6) Why did Mohammed Atta study flight simulation at Opa Locka, a hub of no less than six US Navy training bases?
7) How could Mohammed Atta's passport have been magically found buried among the Word Trade Center (WTC)'s debris when not a single flight recorder was found?
8) Who is in the possession of the "disappeared" eight indestructible black boxes on those four flights?
9) Considering multiple international red alerts about a possible terrorist attack inside the US - including former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice's infamous August 6, 2001, memo - how come four hijacked planes deviating from their computerized flight paths and disappearing from radar are allowed to fly around US airspace for more than an hour and a half - not to mention disabling all the elaborate Pentagon's defense systems in the process?
10) Why the secretary of the US Air Force James Roche did not try to intercept both planes hitting the WTC (only seven minutes away from McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey) as well as the Pentagon (only 10 minutes away from McGuire)? Roche had no less than 75 minutes to respond to the plane hitting the Pentagon.
11) Why did George W Bush continue to recite "My Pet Goat" in his Florida school and was not instantly absconded by the secret service?
12) How could Bush have seen the first plane crashing on WTC live - as he admitted? Did he have previous knowledge - or is he psychic?
13) Bush said that he and Andrew Card initially thought the first hit on the WTC was an accident with a small plane. How is that possible when the FAA as well as NORAD already knew this was about a hijacked plane?
14) What are the odds of transponders in four different planes be turned off almost simultaneously, in the same geographical area, very close to the nation's seat of power in Washington, and no one scrambles to contact the Pentagon or the media?
15) Could defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld explain why initial media reports said that there were no fighter jets available at Andrews Air Force Base and then change the reports that there were, but not on high alert?
16) Why was the DC Air National Guard in Washington AWOL on 9/11?
17) Why did combat jet fighters of the 305th Air Wing, McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey not intercept the second hijacked plane hitting the WTC, when they could have done it within seven minutes?
18) Why did none of the combat jet fighters of the 459th Aircraft Squadron at Andrews Air Force Base intercept the plane that hit the Pentagon, only 16 kilometers away? And since we're at it, why the Pentagon did not release the full video of the hit?
19) A number of very experienced airline pilots - including US ally Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a former fighter jet pilot - revealed that, well, only crack pilots could have performed such complex maneuvers on the hijacked jets, while others insisted they could only have been accomplished by remote control. Is it remotely believable that the hijackers were up to the task?
20) How come a substantial number of witnesses did swear seeing and hearing multiple explosions in both towers of the WTC?
21) How come a substantial number of reputed architects and engineers are adamant that the official narrative simply does not explain the largest structural collapse in recorded history (the Twin Towers) as well as the collapse of WTC building 7, which was not even hit by a jet?
22) According to Frank de Martini, WTC's construction manager, "We designed the building to resist the impact of one or more jetliners." The second plane nearly missed tower 1; most of the fuel burned in an explosion outside the tower. Yet this tower collapsed first, long before tower 2 that was "perforated" by the first hit. Jet fuel burned up fast - and by far did not reach the 2000-degree heat necessary to hurt the six tubular steel columns in the center of the tower - designed specifically to keep the towers from collapsing even if hit by a Boeing 707. A Boeing 707 used to carry more fuel than the Boeing 757 and Boeing 767 that actually hit the towers.
23) Why did Mayor Rudolph Giuliani instantly authorized the shipment of WTC rubble to China and India for recycling?
24) Why was metallic debris found no less than 13 kilometers from the crash site of the plane that went down in Pennsylvania? Was the plane in fact shot down - under vice president Dick Cheney's orders?
25) The Pipelineistan question. What did US ambassador Wendy Chamberlain talk about over the phone on October 10, 2001, with the oil minister of Pakistan? Was it to tell him that the 1990s-planned Unocal gas pipeline project, TAP (Turkmenistan/Afghanistan/ Pakistan), abandoned because of Taliban demands on transit fees, was now back in business? (Two months later, an agreement to build the pipeline was signed between the leaders of the three countries).
26) What is former Unocal lobbyist and former Bush pet Afghan Zalmay Khalilzad up to in Afghanistan?
27) How come former Pakistani foreign minister Niaz Niak said in mid-July 2001 that the US had already decided to strike against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban by October? The topic was discussed secretly at the July Group of Eight summit in Genoa, Italy, according to Pakistani diplomats.
28) How come US ambassador to Yemen Barbara Bodine told FBI agent John O'Neill in July 2001 to stop investigating al-Qaeda's financial operations - with O'Neill instantly moved to a security job at the WTC, where he died on 9/11?
29) Considering the very intimate relationship between the Taliban and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and the ISI and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), is Bin Laden alive, dead or still a valuable asset of the ISI, the CIA or both?
30) Was Bin Laden admitted at the American hospital in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates on July 4, 2001, after flying from Quetta, Pakistan, and staying for treatment until July 11?
31) Did the Bin Laden group build the caves of Tora Bora in close cooperation with the CIA during the 1980s' anti-Soviet jihad?
32) How come General Tommy Franks knew for sure that Bin Laden was hiding in Tora Bora in late November 2001?
33) Why did president Bill Clinton abort a hit on Bin Laden in October 1999? Why did then-Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf abort a covert ops in the same date? And why did Musharraf do the same thing again in August 2001?
34) Why did George W Bush dissolve the Bin Laden Task Force nine months before 9/11?
35) How come the (fake) Bin Laden home video - in which he "confesses" to being the perpetrator of 9/11 - released by the US on December 13, 2001, was found only two weeks after it was produced (on November 9); was it really found in Jalalabad (considering Northern Alliance and US troops had not even arrived there at the time); by whom; and how come the Pentagon was forced to release a new translation after the first (botched) one?
36) Why was ISI chief Lieutenant General Mahmud Ahmad abruptly "retired" on October 8, 2001, the day the US started bombing Afghanistan?
37) What was Ahmad up to in Washington exactly on the week of 9/11 (he arrived on September 4)? On the morning of 9/11, Ahmad was having breakfast on Capitol Hill with Bob Graham and Porter Goss, both later part of the 9/11 Commission, which simply refused to investigate two of its members. Ahmad had breakfast with Richard Armitage of the State Department on September 12 and 13 (when Pakistan negotiated its "cooperation" with the "war on terror") and met all the CIA and Pentagon top brass. On September 13, Musharraf announced he would send Ahmad to Afghanistan to demand to the Taliban the extradition of Bin Laden.
38) Who inside the ISI transferred US$100,000 to Mohammed Atta in the summer of 2001 - under orders of Ahmad himself, as Indian intelligence insists? Was it really ISI asset Omar Sheikh, Bin Laden's information technology specialist who later organized the slaying of American journalist Daniel Pearl in Karachi? So was the ISI directly linked to 9/11?
39) Did the FBI investigate the two shady characters who met Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi in Harry's Bar at the Helmsley Hotel in New York City on September 8, 2001?
40) What did director of Asian affairs at the State Department Christina Rocca and the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan Abdul Salam Zaeef discuss in their meeting in Islamabad in August 2001?
41) Did Washington know in advance that an "al-Qaeda" connection would kill Afghan nationalist commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, aka "The Lion of the Panjshir", only two days before 9/11? Massoud was fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda - helped by Russia and Iran. According to the Northern Alliance, Massoud was killed by an ISI-Taliban-al Qaeda axis. If still alive, he would never have allowed the US to rig a loya jirga (grand council) in Afghanistan and install a puppet, former CIA asset Hamid Karzai, as leader of the country.
42) Why did it take no less than four months before the name of Ramzi Binalshibh surfaced in the 9/11 context, considering the Yemeni was a roommate of Mohammed Atta in his apartment cell in Hamburg?
43) Is pathetic shoe-bomber Richard Reid an ISI asset?
44) Did then-Russian president Vladimir Putin and Russian intelligence tell the CIA in 2001 that 25 terrorist pilots had been training for suicide missions?
45) When did the head of German intelligence, August Hanning, tell the CIA that terrorists were "planning to hijack commercial aircraft?"
46) When did Egyptian President Mubarak tell the CIA about an attack on the US with an "airplane stuffed with explosives?"
47) When did Israel's Mossad director Efraim Halevy tell the CIA about a possible attack on the US by "200 terrorists?"
48) Were the Taliban aware of the warning by a Bush administration official as early as February 2001 - "Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs?"
49) Has Northrop-Grumman used Global Hawk technology - which allows to remotely control unmanned planes - in the war in Afghanistan since October 2001? Did it install Global Hawk in a commercial plane? Is Global Hawk available at all for commercial planes?
50) Would Cheney stand up and volunteer the detailed timeline of what he was really up to during the whole day on 9/11?
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
In Vietnam, You're Never Just a Tourist
By Larry Hildes
Bellingham , WA specializing in the rights of demonstrators in particular anti-War demonstrators in Olympia , WA Vietnam
and Karen Weill
Larry Hildes's ZSpace Page
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In this time when the
It's too easy as Americans living in the relatively comfortable situation that we do, even as we work to end the wars, to not realize the full impact of the destruction being wreaked in our name.
We are as guilty of that as any. You don't really understand the depth of the war crimes, until you talk to the people and see the places where we inflicted them.
We traveled to
We could not have been more wrong. It is a beautiful country, very different from ours in a million ways both delightful and frustrating, and we're very glad to have gone there, but the War, the American War, as it is known by the Vietnamese, was a daily presence in the lives of the people, the suffering that continues, and the baggage we brought with us.
It came up soon after we arrived, and Karen encountered it first, on a government tour that was given to us by the host committee. We were on different conference tracks, and so went on different days, Karen did the tour of the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, and several fabulous museums and cultural sites on Sunday, two days after we arrived. This was her experience:
We came in to the Mausoleum through the VIP/foreigners' entrance; through a snafu with directions, some members of the tour and I had originally come to the People's entrance, the Vietnamese entrance. The line from there wraps around the huge complex; it looked like it was at least a mile, with 10,000 crammed into the narrow walkway just before the entrance. People come from all over
After you come out of the Mausoleum, the line snakes through the complex to view first the Presidential Palace, built by the French for their French-born governor and then appropriated by the Vietnamese. Ho Chi Minh felt it was too grand for a single, simple man, so he lived in two smaller buildings. One was his primary residence and conference room: above, on the second floor, a two-room simple wooden structure, raised on stilts to provide single wide area below, on the ground, left with a dirt floor, about the size of a small conference room, where the breeze could blow while he and his ministers met around a straight-forward table.
At that point, I spied them: a group of Vietnamese soldiers in the old green uniforms that I had seen so often from pictures of the war with the
For Larry, the first moment was easier and relatively safe, at least for Larry: When I took the tour the day after Karen, we went from Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum and museums to the
A couple of days later, it became more personal.
On the last day of the Congress, Karen and I sat in on an incredible discussion between NLG law students and Vietnamese students, some law, some language students, and after feeling each other out and comparing educational systems, one of the
When the war itself came up, they were staggeringly gracious, differentiating between Lyndon Johnson and the American people. Citing the Mobilization march, and other demonstrations, they are taught in school, and talk about how the American people stood in solidarity with the people of
They talked about how American soldiers were victims and suffer as well.
I had to say something: They gave us way too much credit! It was a struggle then as it is a struggle now to get Americans into the streets, and to actually empathize about the suffering of others, to actually see the world beyond the
Karen, the
One of the Vietnamese quoted Uncle Ho saying that we will drive the Americans out of the country and then, when they ask to come back as equals, to roll out the carpet and welcome us back. And, here we are.
We hugged and cried together, and posed for pictures. It was an amazing connection. Solidarity in beautiful radiance.
The next day, the war was revisited as we traveled as part of a delegation from the IADL to the
At the
Throughout the remainder of our stay, once we knew how to look, we found shrines tucked into street corners and in town squares to the at least two million dead of the American War. The dead are mourned and honored as an ongoing, endless process of scar and healing.
One of the most powerful experiences awaited us on the last full day of our trip.
We were relaxing in
A fellow US delegate had celebrated her birthday while on this trip. She had decided early on that a good way to celebrate would be to find someone who had been harmed in the War, and she would apologize to them. Karen remembered her story of having found a man working as a "cyclo" driver, taking people around on his combination bicycle-taxi, and the words she had used. We, too, said, "Sin Loi" (I'm sorry). He turned back around, and his smile was blinding, and his eyes lit up. With each of us, he took one hand in both of his, shaking our hands so warmly, and bowing. His face remains burned in our memories.
Now that we have returned to the
The Vietnamese, as Iraqis and Afghanis, and the others that we wage war against were claimed not to value life as we do. There is the old stupid cliché spouted during the War and now again about Iraqis, Afghanis, Arabs and Muslims, that they don't value life as we do. As we traveled, met the Vietnamese, and came to understand the effect that the War has had on them, it became very clear, that they value life in ways that we as Americans can barely begin to understand. If we dig, it will not take long to find that that is true of the Iraqis and Afghanis as well.
Another lesson has given us hope as we struggle to end our current wars and feel, as we do, isolated, and hopeless. The students showed us that every little demonstration that we suffer through where we think no one is watching, no media are covering it, and only 50 people show up, makes a difference in solidarity. People are watching, and 30 years from now, young Iraqis will learn about our marches in their history books.
Imperialism can be defeated, by determined nations, under-armed, poor, but determined. The empire cannot maintain occupations in the face of committed resistance, and Empires always fall.
Stay strong and keep fighting. We must, if history is any judge, prevail, and one day we will walk in a free
Former U.S. ambassador Timothy L. Towell, charged with forcing sex on male adult teen
Former U.S. ambassador to Paraguay Timothy L. Towell, 75, was charged in the Superior Court for the District of Columbia w ith having sex with an 18-year old male against the young man's will. According to the Washington Examiner, Towell plied the teen with drinks and then invited him to his house in the Georgetown section of Washington. The teen said he felt threatened when Towell brandished a machete and revolver.
Towell served as America's top envoy to Paraguay under the Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations, from 1988 to 1991. He also served in U.S. diplomatic posts in Brazil, Bolivia, Cuba, and Spain, where he served as an assistant to U.S. ambassador Angier Biddle Duke, and from 1991 to 1993 served as Director for Africa at the Peace Corps. He also served as depity director of the Peace Corps for Asia. Before serving in Asuncion, Towell was the deputy to State Department Chief of Protocol Selwa Roosevelt.
According to the Federal Election Commission, Towell has donated to the presidential campaigns of John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, and Mit Romney, as well as the U.S. Senate campaign of Arlen Specter, Republican-turned-Democrat of Pennsylvania.
On September 13, 2005, the Washington Times reported on a reception at the historic Bacon House in Washington, DC where Washington "flamboyant" lobbyist Edward von Kloberg was remembered by garden party guests, along with Chief Justice William Rehnquist and victims of Hurricane Katrina. Towell, who was present at the party, along with Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, said the death of von Kloberg, the chief of Washington World Group, who lept from the Castle St. Angelo in Rome the previous May, "left a vacuum on the diplomatic scene."
In October 2006, the Cuban news agency Prensa Latina and Paraguayan and other Latin American newspapers reported that Towell was the administrator of a 173,000 acre ranch in the Chaco region of Paraguay on behalf of former President George H. W. Bush, under whom Towell served as U.S. ambassador to the country.
Towell served as U.S. ambassador to Paraguay during the presidency of General Andres Rodriguez, a former close associate of dictator Alfredo Stroessner, who was ousted by Rodriguez and the military in February 1989. Rodriguez, who was supported by Towell and the Bush administration, was accused of involvement in the international narcotics trade. Rodriguez was later charged with misappropriating Stroessner's sizable assets in the country after the dictator fled to exile in Brazil.
In the late 1990's, Towell was a Washington lobbyist for Paraguayan President Juan Carlos Wasmosy, one of Paraguay's richest businessmen. Towell, a Republican, also was chairman of the Paraguay-American Chamber of Commerce. More recently, Towell has supported the political opposition against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Towell has also been active in supporting the independence aspirations of the people of Baluchistan, a separatist region of Pakistan and Iran, and in 1995 attended a Washington lunch for Baluchi leader, Prince Mohammad ben Hassan Mohammad, sponsored by von Kloberg.
In a report on von Kloberg's "dive" from the Roman castle that resulted in his death, the London Daily Telegraph, on May 4, 2005, reported, "Edward von Kloberg III, 63, an American who changed his name [by adding 'van' and later, 'von'] because he thought it would sound better with a German twist, flung himself from the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome -- the site of Tosca's suicide in the Puccini opera. Among items found on his body was an American magazine cover with a picture of him meeting the first President George Bush." The report continued, "Italian newspapers said he had been depressed after a failed attempt at reconciliation with his Lithuanian homosexual lover. His suicide note was reported to include the words: 'The last years have been the darkest of my life. Thinking about what was and what is now no longer. The fact that [the lover] has spoken ill of our affair with others has made me suffer a great deal.'"
Von Kloberg's clients included some of the world's most notorious dictators, including Saddam Hussein, Samuel Doe of Liberia, the Burmese junta, Suriname's drig dealing dictator Deis Bouterse, and Romanian Communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu. Von Kloberg also reprsented the governments of Nicaragua, Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Benin, Cape Verde, Rwanda (prior to the 1994 genocide), Bahrain, Gambia, Dominica, Djibouti, Yemen, Lithuania, Lesotho, Slovakia, Kyrgyzstan, and Slovenia. Von Kloberg, who was apparently fond of "queens," was also an avid supporter of restorations of kings and was a good friend of Rwanda's exiled King Kigeli and Ermias Sahle-Selassie, the exiled prince of Ethiopia.
Von Kloberg bragged that there was one dictator he could not represent because he considered him too corrupt and ruthless: Stroessner of Paraguay, who was ousted from power while von Kloberg's friend Towell served as ambassador in Asuncion.
In an interesting side note, in 1996, the Honduran Apparel Manufacturers Association hired von Kloberg to defend it against charges that sexual abuse and child labor were rampant in Honduras's garment factories.
Pariah regimes form "Axis of Outcasts"
As a follow-up to WMR's report on September 1, 2009, about links between Myanmar's military junta, methamphetamine ("ice") production in Myanmar by Israeli intelligence-connected criminal syndicates, and gun factories in the Wa region along the Chinese border, our Asian sources have reported more details about Israeli intelligence cooperation with the Myanmar junta.
On September 1, WMR reported: "Israeli criminal gangs operating methamphetamine labs in northern Burma (Myanmar), under the protection of a sizable Israeli security and intelligence presence in the country, infiltrated the United Nations poppy eradication program, which seeks to convince ethnic Wa and Kokang's in the "Golden Triangle" region famous for opium production to change to other legal crops and turn in their weapons, mostly Chinese-made AK-47s, for cash." The Mossad became irritated when it was discovered that Iranian agents were buying the AK-47s from the tribal groups and shipping them to Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
WMR has learned that a former Mossad intelligence operative, with the last name of Aron, which may be short for Aronowitz, serves as a Lieutenant Colonel in Myanmar's Tatmadaw military intelligence service. In return for the Israeli intelligence alliance with the Myanmar junta, the Burmese generals receive Israeli intelligence on U.S. and Indian arms development and policies toward the Burmese regime. Israel benefits from the relationship by being allowed to set up "pharmaceutical" laboratories in Myanmar for the export of illegal drugs from the country. When the Israelis discovered that Iranian Revolutionary Guard agents were buying guns from the Wa right under their noses, they wanted revenge. The Myanmar junta then ordered a military offensive against the Wa and Kokang, driving many refugees and guerrillas across the border into China, thus destabilizing China's southern border when it is already facing insurrections in Xinjiang and Tibet.
However, the Israelis also discovered a North Korean angle to the gun factory in the Wa. It is suspected that the Wa were using North Korean advisers to manufacture AK-47 assault rifles.
North Korea, which, like Myanmar, is considered a pariah nation, also has maintained close links to the Mossad. When it was discovered that North Korea was selling missile technology to Iran, Israel countered the Iranian move by offering Pyongyang its own military technology, including security fence technology for its borders with South Korea and China, and investment capital from wealthy Jewish interests in Israel and abroad.
Israel is no stranger to cutting deals with pariah governments. It maintained very close military, economic, nuclear, and intelligence links with the apartheid government of South Africa and intelligence and security links with military dictatorships in Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, Nicaragua (the Anastasio Somoza regime), and other Latin American countries. Israel, through its connections in white minority-ruled Rhodesia, also maintained intelligence contacts with Rhodesia's intelligence and security services.
When practically every country in the world has broken relations with and cut off assistance to the Honduran military junta that ousted President Manuel Zelaya, Israel has agreed to act as the representative of the regime of Honduran junta leader Roberto Micheletti. After the Honduran junta severed diplomatic relations with Argentina, Israel agreed to represent the junta through the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires. The Honduran junta announced that Israel had been the only country to recognize it after the coup, however, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said the Honduran statement was "unfounded."
Private Israeli security contractors were also reportedly very active in Honduras in advance of the coup against Zelaya. Israeli mercenaries and torture advisers had been active in Honduras on behalf of "death squads" formed while John Negroponte was U.S. ambassador in Tegucigalpa. An Israeli unit that arrived in Honduras in 1988, headed by the notorious Yair Klain, also taught Honduran death squads how to carry out terrorist bombings and kidnappings.
The neocons are fond of citing their "Axis of Evil" of Iran, North Korea, and whatever other nation they find irritating to their designs. However, there does exist an "Axis of Outcasts" - a bloc that links Israel with the unsavory regimes ruling Myanmar, North Korea, and now, Honduras.
Afghanistan - like Iraq, another magnet for corporate malfeasance
WMR has discovered from a private security company source who worked in Afghanistan additional details about RA International, the Dubai-based contractor for whom Terry Pearson, the British contractor who blew the whistle on lewd and homosexual-oriented drunken orgies engaged in by security guards at the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, worked until he was forced to resign or face being fired.
Pearson was a supervisor in Afghanistan. He worked under a sub-contract that RA International had at Camp Sullivan where the U.S. embassy guards worked under a State Department contract awarded to ArmorGroup North America, now owned by Wackenhut.
WMR's source described RA International, for whom he once worked, as a "total scam." RA International's Chairman is Soraya Narfeldt, a Lebanese citizen born to a Scottish father and a Lebanese/West African mother. Narfeldt's company has had contracts for UN peacekeeping operations in Sierra Leone, Chad, Uganda, and Darfur, and, under a U.S. government sub-contract from ArmorGroup, in Afghanistan. RA International is a member of the International Peace Operations Association (IPOA), the Washington lobbyist group that represents a number of private military contractors, including MPRI International, Dyncorp International, and Triple Canopy and seeks to expand their presence in U.S. and UN military operations around the world. Narfeldt's husband is a former UN official stationed in Afghanistan and she was named by Arabian Business Online 90th in its ranking of the hundred most influential Arabs.
WMR was told by the ex-RA International employee that the firm received sweetheart contracts with Dyncorp in Afghanistan, as well as the British embassy, the German military missions, and other clients. The former employee stated that RA International employees had French, German, and British security contractors in Kabul who were usually under the influence of prescription drugs and maintained a "hooker house" in Kabul.
As previously reported by WMR, press-ganged young Chinese females serve as prostitutes in Kabul and, against their wishes, double as Chinese intelligence agents. WMR has learned from our former RA International source that a British senior RA International official in Kabul abused the Chinese sex workers on a regular basis. WMR has also learned that RA International routinely supplied weapons to its employees in Afghanistan without the permission of the Afghan government, permitted routine drug use by its employees, purchased food from local Afghan suppliers instead of from parties already under contract, and failed to provide security for personnel or provide secure vehicles for their use. The only security provided was for food storage compounds.
Another senior RA International official in Kabul is known to live in Kabul's Light House brothel among Chinese prostitutes and is tied to a number of local Afghan crime gangs. Some members of President Hamid Karzai's government have complained about the presence of the prostitutes in Kabul and RA International's involvement with them with no response from the United States, Britain, or NATO.
The Department of State's Inspector General is reportedly investigating ArmorGroup's security guards and RA International claims to be cooperating in that investigation.
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