Tag: diplomacy

National Security, Anti-Americanism, The “War on Terror” and new methods in public diplomacy

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After Numerous Foiled Plots, Terrorists Have their Way in Amman, Jordan Attacks

(Reuters) - Amman Terror Attacks
At least 60 are dead and over 150 injured following near-simultaneous suicide bombings at three international hotels in Amman.

The explosions occurred around 9 p.m. at the five-star Grand Hyatt, Radisson SAS, and Days Inn hotels in the commercial Jebel Amman district. The hotels are popular with American, European and Israeli businessmen and diplomats and had been the target of foiled terrorist plots in the past.

Jordanian police spokesman Captain Bashir al-Da’jeh told Al Jazeera television: “At 9 this evening, there were three terrorist explosions in three hotels in Amman. There are a number of dead and wounded. They are believed to have been carried out by suicide bombers.”

Photos from Yahoo.

Jordanian authorities thwarted an al-Zarqawi / Abu Zubaydah organized plot to bomb the Radisson SAS in Amman during the 1999 millennium celebrations (part of a dual operation that planned to bomb Los Angeles International Airport on the same night). Four Iraqis were arrested in 2003 for trying to blow up hotels on the same Amman strip.

In July, five Jordanians were indicted on conspiracy charges for planning to attack intelligence agents, tourists and hotels in Amman. Al-Zarqawi has not been linked to this alleged plot.

This is the third major terrorist attack by Islamic militants since the summer. Islamic militants living in the UK killed 56 with suicide bombs in the 7/7 London Underground terror attack. Jemaah Islamiya has claimed responsibility for The October 1, 2005 Bali suicide bombing that killed 27.

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White House & Downing Street cosponsored fish fry

And the fish keep getting bigger.

Less than one week after Dana Priest’s bombshell column in the Washington Post, Senate Republicans are now launching their own probe into what may be yet *another* big-time CIA-related leak originated from one of their own.

“We can’t keep our mouths shut,” admitted Trent Lott, shown here implicating his own men today on CNN.

Dennis Hastert and Bill Frist also raised the red flag in fear that if these leaks go unquelled, they will in fact worsen.

Things are equally shaky for PM Tony Blair on the other side of the pond. Sir Christopher Meyer, the UK Ambassador to Washington at the time the Iraq war began just released a book accusing Blair of being seduced by the power of the U.S. and not taking advantage of the UK’s status as a key ally in negotiating conditions for war.

“Had Britain so insisted,” writes Meyer in ‘DC Confidential, serialized on Monday in The Guardian,’ “Iraq and Saddam might have avoided the violence that may yet prove fatal to the entire enterprise.

Last week a coalition of Labor and Tory members of Britain’s Parliament began an aggressive push for their own investigation into “the conduct of ministers” both before and after the war, according to the Sunday Times.

Unlike the United States, Britain is a signatory to the treaty that set up the International Criminal Court, modeled after the Geneva Conventions and the 1945 Nuremberg Charter. While the U.S. government assumes their refusal to recognize the courts will nullify them from being brought to trial, Downing Street is more than a bit testy over present matters.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has already told the BBC that the US-led invasion was “an illegal act that contravened the UN charter,” and the Nuremberg Charter itself proclaimed in bold letters: “To initiate a war of aggression… is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

Ironically, it is on this exact premise that Saddam Hussein is set to be tried in Iraq.

Finally, when President Bush declared this morning that “we do not torture,” did anyone else have an image of Nixon flash before their eyes demanding, “I am NOT a liar?!?”

As a postscript, here is Time Magazine’s interview of the second of Hussein’s attorneys to be slain, Adil al-Zubeidi, which took place the day before he died.

PPS: A Pew Poll released today shows that 4 out of 5 surveyed consider Scooter Libby’s obstruction of justice to be very important to the country….

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WMD in Iraq – if you can’t find ’em….

La Repubblica reports that the Italian network Rai 24 broadcast a documentary detailing the U.S. military’s use of chemical weapons in the Fallujah campaign of late 2004.

Watch the 27 minute video hosted at Information Clearing House and be forewarned – the content is a day-wrecker.

A better translation of the article can be found at TPMCafe. Gruesome, graphic photographs can be found at the bottom of this page on uruknet.

In the film, both eyewitnesses and ex-U.S. soldiers who served in Iraq confirm that “white phosphorus bombs had been used against civilians in the insurgent-held city,” according to BBC News.

The documentary, titled “Fallujah – the hidden massacre” is being recognized as disinformation by the U.S. government and at this point it is not clear what the legitimacy of the footage and/or the fallout from this will be.

Paper Tigress at Daily Kos posted this Monday morning.

The news stories and video that I have just witnessed are so sickening and upsetting, I can only hope this reference to the use of White Phosphorous on civilians is in fact “disinformation.” Hopefully the current Operation Steel Curtain is going much smoother despite the media’s comparisons to last year’s Fallujah battle.

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Only UK press follows Dana Priest’s lead in exposing CIA torture camps in Poland, Romania

Dana PriestDana Priest left a bold ’emdash’ dangling in the middle of her bombshell expose of the CIA “secret” prison camps in Wednesday’s Washington Post.

Just as every jaw in the land hit the floor she dropped this in the 8th graph:

“The Washington Post is not publishing the names of the Eastern European countries involved in the covert program at the request of senior U.S. officials.”

The reason: “disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts….”

Its not that the Post didn’t know the names, they clearly stated they just wouldn’t print them. A small exchange to ensure the confidentiality of their sources, mind you, and a gold trail from which Joe Journalist could’ve raked up the missing details in his fingernails.

But for fear of following the yellow-cake road.

Priest said this afternoon in a live discussion session at Washington Post.com:

Senior administration officials did persuade The Post not to publish the names of the Eastern European countries we identified. I could say they were not happy about the subject in general, but no one suggested we ditch the whole thing, although I’m sure they felt that way.

The front page article had been on the website for over a day and no broadcast, print or online outlet had anything on the story except a cut/copy/paste including the dead-giveaway “terrorism” insinuation.

Needless to say, it couldn’t have taken much investigation for theFinancial Times
to release (with a WEDNESDAY date-stamp):

A leading human rights group on Wednesday identified Poland and Romania as the likely locations in eastern Europe of secret prisons where al-Qaeda suspects are interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Its not worth dwelling on the idea that exposing the locations of these prisons would endanger counterterrorism. The fact that dangerous terrorists are already contained within these camps is reason enough for publicity, especially considering the fate of Omar al-Faruq, the al-Qaeda chief who escaped a “maximum security” prison guarded by US troops in Afghanistan.

The real danger is that if the CIA goes on record identifying the locations of their “secret terror camps,” they will be stripped of their freedom to boycott International Crimes Court the U.S> gov’t would be fried.

The outsourcing of detainees to Egypt and Syria is no secret, but to torture prisoners of war in countries that do not endorse torture and have relatively clean human rights records is [insert horrifying comparison here].

This administration will be around another few years, most likely, but we CAN get over Libby, we can FORGET Delay – he’s one of many, and enough ? ENOUGH!! buying into the bird flu nonsense. Haven’t we already learned that it doesn’t matter how much money you use if you don’t have a plan?

Lets kick ourselves and stop thinking twice about yesterday’s news – the media army has alot more influence and independence than our helpless warriors in Iraq. I’ll bet they’re pulling for us now more than ever.

m. e. cohen 03.06.05 humorlink.com