Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Obama: US won't send fighter jets to intercept Snowden flights
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| The F-35 Lightning II, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF).(Reuters / Tom Reynolds) |
The US will not try to intercept NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s flight, President Barack Obama said during his tour to Africa.
Obama announced that US will not be using military jets to go after Snowden, rejecting reports that America might force down a plane carrying the NSA leaker.
The president specified that the US will not engage in "wheeling, dealing and trading" to extradite Edward Snowden, adding that extradition will be carried out through legal channels.
"We've got a whole lot of business that we do with China and Russia, and I'm not going to have one case of a suspect who we're trying to extradite suddenly being elevated to the point where I've got to start doing wheeling and dealing and trading on a whole host of other issues," Obama said.
Obama said he has not spoken to Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping or Russia’s President Vladimir Putin about whistleblower Edward Snowden’s extradition, adding that he “shouldn’t have to,” Reuters reported.
The president added he is "still concerned about the other documents" Edward Snowden may have, saying "not all of them have been released."
Edward Snowden was charged with espionage by US federal prosecutors on Friday and currently remains in an airport limbo in Russia’s transit zone after he flew to Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport from Hong Kong.
Snowden hasn’t been seen on the latest flight from Moscow to Havana, reports RT’s Irina Galushko, who is among the many journalists hunting for the whistleblower at Moscow’s airport.
Earlier, there were reports that Snowden will be on an Aeroflot’s flight to Havana, Cuba, that will pass through American airspace and that the plane might be forced to land.
Snowden needs to reach Ecuador to get asylum – Interior Minister
At the same time, Ecuador says it cannot grant asylum to Edward Snowden, since he has not reached “any of its diplomatic premises,” i.e. the country itself or the embassy, Interior Minister revealed in a press conference in the capital city, Quito.
However, entering Ecuadorian soil, including the embassy in Moscow is now impossible for Snowden. The US government revoked his passport, which means he neither has a Russian visa nor can he buy a new flight ticket to Ecuador or Havana, a second transit point, RT’s Lucy Kafanov reports from outside Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport.
Earlier, there were reports that Snowden would be on an Aeroflot’s flight to Havana, Cuba, that will pass through American airspace and that the plane might be forced to land.
The government of Ecuador has also renounced US trade benefits to prevent Washington from pressuring the country as it decides over asylum for NSA leaker, Edward Snowden.
"Ecuador will not accept pressures or threats from anyone, and it does not traffic in its values or allow them to be subjugated to mercantile interests," Fernando Alvarado, the Ecuadorian government’s spokesman, said.
Alvarado said that Ecuador has “unilaterally and irrevocably” given up the customs benefits, offering $23 million per year to finance human rights training in the US in return.
The funding would be destined to help "avoid violations of privacy, torture and other actions that are denigrating to humanity," Alvarado explained.
The statement comes after US senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, promised that he would seek to end benefits if Ecuador grants Snowden asylum.
Gitmo protester arrested after scaling White House fence (PHOTOS)
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| image by @codepink |
An activist who has been protesting the continuous operation of the Guantanamo Bay military detention facility was arrested Wednesday after climbing over the fence on the north lawn of the White House.
Diane Wilson, a member of the activism group Code Pink, was arrested Wednesday afternoon in Washington, according to the organization’s official Twitter account.
Wilson, a Texas shrimp boat captain in her sixties, has been regularly demonstrating outside of the White House in an effort to raise awareness of the 166 Gitmo detainees who remain held at the detention facility in Cuba more than four years after President Barack Obama promised to close the prison. Eighty-six of those inmates have been cleared for release, and more than 100 have been participating in a hunger strike that started this past February.
As an act of solidarity with the detainees who have engaged in a month-long hunger strike, Wilson has been fasting for 57 days.
Wilson and other members of Code Pink began demonstrating outside the White House just after 12 noon on Wednesday. Word of her arrest circulated quickly over the internet around one hour later.
Jodi Evans, a fellow co-founder of the group, tweeted that Wilson was arrested shortly after climbing over the White House fence in order to demand the detainees’ release. Photos have since spread of Wilson standing on the lawn of the property. Other images show Evans laying on the grass as armed police and guard dogs race to the scene.
Diane Wilson on #Obama side of #WhiteHouse fence before attack dog @CODEPINK #CloseGITMO pic.twitter.com/ZIGnpvdFtz
— Jodie Evans (@MsJodieEvans) June 26, 2013
Diane Wilson on 57th day of Hunger Strike jumps over @WhiteHouse fence for #GITMO prisoners to be released pic.twitter.com/HDf5k1DSeB
— Jodie Evans (@MsJodieEvans) June 26, 2013
Code Pink tweeted that co-founder Medea Benjamin was also apprehended by police after reportedly assisting Wilson. Benjamin made headlines on her own account earlier this year after she interrupted the president during a speech about the detention center.
Cop reaches for camera as @medeabenjamin is shoved to ground violently #CloseGitmo pic.twitter.com/PJI6eVGNDO
— CODEPINK (@codepink) June 26, 2013
“Eighty-six were cleared already. Release them today!" Benjamin yelled during last month’s presidential address in Washington.
“I’m willing to cut the young lady who interrupted me some slack because it’s worth being passionate about,” the President responded. “Is this who we are? Is that something our fathers foresaw? Is that the America we want to leave our children?"
Wilson has previously been arrested for chaining herself to the White House fence, and was sentenced to three months in jail in 2006 after interrupting a speech by then-Vice President Dick Cheney.
Snowden affair: Redefining worldwide democracy
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| A member of German Piraten Partei (Pirates party) holds the portraits of U.S. Army Private First Class Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden (R), a former contractor at the National Security Agency (NSA), during a protest in Berlin's Tiergarten district, June 19, 2013. (Reuters) |
Days after the G8 summit in Northern Ireland brought an awkward meeting between Presidents Obama and Putin, US-Russia relations are put under a new critical test.
This time the name of the game is not “Syria”, but “Snowden”. Moreover, the Snowden story is already evolving into a global debate on what are the do’s and don’t of a decent partnership and the ABC of personal freedoms and genuine democracy.
The detective story of the 30-year old NSA leaker, who landed in Moscow after leaving Hong Kong, added to the growing frustration which has plagued US-Russian relations in recent months.
Unwrapping the riddle of Snowden’s whereabouts President Putin confirmed he is still at the transit area of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport. Denying any accusations against Russia as “nonsense and rubbish” as Snowden “has not crossed” the Russian border, Putin called on the US to turn down anti-Russian rhetoric and finally tried to draw a line under the whole story in his trademark colorful language: “In any case, I would like not to deal with such issues because it is like shearing a pig: there's lots of squealing and little fleece”.
However, as the Snowden saga is far from being over, the scandal has a potential to pave the way for a lengthy period of even more chilled relations between Moscow and Washington; its ups and downs at present can be described not as a “cold war”, but a “cold peace”.
While the Obama administration refrains from further rocking the boat, it is done by US congressmen, who are exercising fresh attacks on President Putin and making thinly-veiled warnings about US retaliation.
“The bottom line is very simple. Allies are supposed to treat each other decently, and Putin always seems almost eager to put a finger in the eye of the United States, whether it is Syria, Iran and now, of course, with Snowden. That’s not how allies should treat one another, and I think it will have serious consequences for the United States-Russia relationship”, -- explains Sen. Charles E.Schumer.
The dominant mood on the large part of the American political elite is seemingly this: the Edward Snowden case comes as another defining moment for US relations with the rest of the world, including Russia. So, by not lending the US a helping hand at this critical point, both Russia and China placed themselves on the other side of global barricades – in a camp of old US adversaries, like Cuba and Venezuela.
Neocons would stick to the point which long before the Snowden saga was articulated by some leading Republicans, including presidential hopeful Mitt Romney during the 2012 presidential race. Mr.Romney repeatedly spoke of an informal global alliance of non-democratic regimes, which is trying to hinder the interests of the US and their Western allies world-wide, whenever the situation allows, at every possible point (the policy of “putting a finger in the eye”).
Following this way of understanding things, the Snowden scandal is seen by some as another lively episode of a grand battle “democracies” versus “autocracies”. The list of the countries which has adopted non-cooperative approach on the Snowden case is becoming highly symbolic: China, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador (either regular autocracies, like China or Cuba, or troubled democracies sliding to autocratic rule, like Russia). So, it looks as if the whole story illustrates the slogan of the day once coined by Andrew Kuchins ” Autocracies of the world, unite!
Truly, in the Snowden case democracy is a core divisive issue, but things are not that simple. Ironically, it is Edward Snowden who is waging the battle for democracy on his own, posing as another “warrior of truth” – but not a traitor. He explained that what made him become a whistleblower was the credibility gap between the state and civil society. So, on his part it was not an act of national betrayal, but a decent protest move to expose US crimes and human rights violations both at home and abroad. In a way, he hinted he wanted to help President Obama who is more and more often described as “George Obama” (but not a reincarnation of President Kennedy).
The Snowden case pinpoints a certain tendency. After Bradley Manning, the 25-year old US soldier, accused of passing classified files to WikiLeaks, we have another story of a young American citizen, who is behind an important leak of classified information. While some in Washington tend to describe it as a global plot against the US, with Russia siding with US adversaries, the cases of both Manning and Snowden have a lot in common. Both cases spilt America into those, who consider whistleblowers traitors, putting US national security at risk and those who describe them as a brave citizens, who were not scared to expose the US government wrongdoing in the interests of Americans themselves.
No surprise, that the story of Snowden has already triggered a global debate on what is the delicate balancing act between democracy and security, which make uneasy bedfellows. In his recent interview to RT President Putin hinted that surveillance "is becoming a global phenomenon in the context of combating international terrorism", and that "such methods are generally practicable". However, "the question is how well those security agencies are controlled by the public."
"I can tell you that, at least in Russia, you cannot just go and tap into someone’s phone conversation without a warrant issued by a court. That’s more or less the way a civilized society should go about fighting terrorism with modern-day technology. As long as it is exercised within the boundaries of the law that regulates intelligence activities, it’s alright. But if it’s unlawful, then it’s bad”, said Putin.
So, it is probably high time for President Obama to answer a tough question about what went wrong in the US to produce the phenomena of Manning-Snowden. It is not President Putin who is “putting finger in the eye of the United States”, but a growing army of disenchanted Americans, who are not buying President Obama’s notion that “you can’t have 100 per cent security and 100 per cent privacy”.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Obama picks official who approved of dragnet NSA surveillance to head FBI
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| US Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey (AFP Photo / Mark Wilson) |
President Barack Obama announced Friday afternoon that he’s selected James Comey to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Comey, 52, worked as the deputy attorney general for the United States under President George W. Bush and will replace outgoing FBI Director Robert Mueller when he steps down later this year after he is confirmed by the Senate.
All three men were on hand at the White House Friday afternoon when President Obama formally made his pick after weeks of speculation suggested Comey would be the likely nominee. Comey, said Obama, embodies the “core principals of fidelity, bravery and integrity” expected of FBI agents and applauded “his fierce independence and his deep integrity.” In fact, that independence is the focus of perhaps the most widely reported instance from the Bush White House involving Comey. While serving as deputy attorney general in the Department of Justice, Comey rejected the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program that has recently reemerged as the center of controversy.
“In a confrontation he has called the most difficult night of his career, [Comey] rushed to the hospital bedside of his boss, John Ashcroft, in 2004 to stop two senior Bush White House aides from getting the ailing attorney general's approval to reauthorize a post-9/11 program that allowed government wiretaps to be used without warrants,” the Associated Press recalled this week. Comey’s insistence in keeping the program off the books was made notwithstanding an earlier decision to favor the surveillance program, though. Glenn Greenwald reported for The Guardian last month that Comey “approved a legal memorandum in 2004 endorsing radical executive power theories and warped statutory interpretations, concluding that the Bush NSA warrantless eavesdropping program was legal, thus making it more difficult to prosecute the Bush officials who ordered it.”
The internal conflict within the administration that erupted years later over that program almost led to Comey, Ashcroft and Mueller offering their resignation, apparently. As Greenwald noted, though, the then-deputy attorney general declined to follow up on his threat after slight adjustments were made to the NSA spy program.
“But the reason they didn't end up resigning ,” he wrote, “was because Bush officials ‘modified’ that NSA program into something those lawyers could and did endorse: the still-illegal, still-radical NSA eavesdropping program that spied on the communications of Americans without warrants and in violation of the law.”
Those practices have come under question in recent weeks after Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former intelligence contractor, leaked documents showing the size and scope of the surveillance programs. Mr. Mueller said those disclosures caused "significant harm'' to the nation’s security and that the admitted leaker is the "subject of an ongoing criminal investigation.''
"One of the great vulnerabilities terrorists understand is their communications,'' Mueller told the House Judiciary Committee last week. "If we lose our ability get their communications, we are going to be exceptionally vulnerable.''
After being picked by Pres. Obama to replace Mueller on Friday, Comey said, “I don’t know whether I can fill those shoes.” Mueller was FBI chief for 12 years, making him the second-longest serving official to ever head the bureau.
Icelandic WikiLeaks collaborators targeted by Obama administration
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| Two Icelandic men formerly tied to the website WikiLeaks were investigated in secret by the US Justice Department |
The Obama administration has admitted to spying on two Icelandic citizens with ties to WikiLeaks in the latest revelation pertaining to both the US government’s widespread surveillance practices and its war against the whistleblower website. Documents surfaced on Friday showing that the United States Department of Justice demanded that Internet giant Google provide federal investigators with the personal emails sent and received by two Icelanders once involved in WikiLeaks, an anti-secrecy website under investigation for publishing hundreds of thousands of classified US documents.
Herbert Snorrason and Smári McCarthy, both known publically as one-time associates of the website, released Justice Department-issued search warrants and court orders for their Gmail accounts on Friday that had up until recently been kept under seal. The documents compelled Google, the owner of the Gmail service, to provide metadata and content pertaining to emails that have passed through the accounts of both men. The documents are redacted in part and are absent of information confirming that the intelligence is sought pursuant to the investigation of WikiLeaks, but Snorrason wrote on his website “it’s not a tricky guess” to figure out why they were targeted.
“All this is pretty much par for the course; I had assumed that I was caught in the dragnet cast around Julian Assange,” Snorrason wrote.
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| Wikileaks founder Julian Assange (AFP Photo / Anthony Devlin) |
Assange, the publisher and founder of WikiLeaks, has been inside of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for one year as of this week. He is wanted for questioning in Sweden for alleged sex crimes, but fears the court-ordered extradition to the Scandinavian country is a step towards sending him to America. There, he assumes, he’d likely be tried for espionage and perhaps sentenced to death. Ecuador's President Rafael Correa has granted Assange asylum, but British authorities have been ordered to arrest him if he exits the embassy. Both Snorrason and McCarthy collaborated with Assange after the WikiLeaks founder visited Iceland while the website was still in its infancy. They have each distanced themselves from the website in the years since but are far from the only individuals being probed by the US Justice Department for their past participation. Perhaps most well-known among the Americans targeted by prosecutors is Bradley Manning, a 25-year-old US Army intelligence analyst currently on trial in Maryland for his alleged role in sending a trove of classified documents to WikiLeaks. If convicted of the most serious of charges, aiding the enemy, Manning could be sentenced to life in prison. In a joint statement authored by Snorrason and McCarthy, the men salute the efforts of both Assange and Manning while condemning the US government’s unforgiving treatment aimed at the WikiLeakers and others who advocate for transparency much to the chagrin of the White House. “The court orders were almost certainly related to the grand jury investigation of the unauthorized public disclosure of information showing considerable misconduct,” the men wrote, “including a number of probable cases of war crimes, by US military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan during their wars in these countries, a list of people being held without trial or legal recourse in Guantanamo Bay and a trove of diplomatic cables detailing the ways the US government have conducted themselves – both good and bad – over many years.” In a pretrial hearing earlier this year in Ft. Meade, Maryland, Manning took credit for sharing with WikiLeaks the material alluded by the Icelanders, including documents that exposed American diplomatic practices described in the press as “embarrassing” and other likely war crimes considered by many as atrocities. Despite this, though, a grand jury investigation into the website has run rampant for years, and several persons, both American and other, are being targeted for their alleged roles within the group.
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| Pfc. Bradley E. Manning (AFP Photo / Mark Wilson) |
“Over the last several years we have seen many of our friends, colleagues and allies pestered - for lack of a better term - by overzealous law enforcement, prosecutorial overreach and misapplication of laws which at one point may have been intended to protect democratic values. They have been hunted down, imprisoned and sometimes killed directly or indirectly, all for nothing but their desire to uphold the values our societies hold dear,” Snorrason and McCarthy say in their statement. “No more.” According to a 2011 interview Snorrason gave to the Toonari Post, he began collaborating with WikiLeaks after Assange published a document about an Icelandic bank in July 2009. Snorrason later went on to the group OpenLeaks, a similar organization started by former WikiLeaker Daniel Domscheit-Berg. McCarthy was described as “a former WikiLeaks volunteer” as early as October 2010, according to an article that month in the UK’s Telegraph, but has been tied directly to perhaps the most well-known disclosure published by Assange: a video of a US helicopter engaging in battle with unarmed Iraqi civilians released in 2010 under the name “Collateral Murder” thanks McCarthy in the closing credits. Manning has admitted to sending WikiLeaks the video shortly after being deployed to Iraq in late 2009.
A team of volunteers, including McCarthy, readied the footage for an April 2010 release just weeks before Manning was arrested and charged with disclosing classified intelligence. “It was chaotic and hectic and also sort of very varyingly frayed nerves,” McCarthy said of working on the film in a scene from the just-released movie We Steal Secrets. “It wasn't really cloak and dagger stuff, it was just, you know, yes, another cool project.” In a July 2010 interview with journalist Sam Knight, McCarthy discredited the notion that WikiLeaks volunteers were being surveilled to a significant extent. “I know that it is nonzero. Beyond that it’s hard to estimate,” he said. “I am aware of one person being approached by an undercover US official requesting information about Julian Assange’s whereabouts, but that had absolutely no effect. Honestly, I think the US federal government has a lot of better things to do than trying to monitor WikiLeaks. One suggestion would be that they open up their document repositories and datasets before WikiLeaks does.” Publication of the DoJ documents come amid an escalating scandal involving the US government’s questionable surveillance practices that have pitted President Barack Obama and his administration against the American public and press. Documents leaked by The Guardian newspaper throughout the month of June have exposed evidence that the Nation Security Agency and other authoritative bodies have continuously accumulated information about the telephone habits of millions of Americans daily while also shining light on the little-known FISA court’s secret and undeniable requests for email and other intelligence, similar to what's seen in the court orders sent to Google. President Obama and officials from the NSA and DoJ have applauded the surveillance programs and contest to their constitutional legality, despite a myriad of complaints from privacy-concerned citizens and civil liberties groups.
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| US President Barack Obama (AFP Photo / Johannes Eiselle) |
On their part, Snorrason and McCarthy say the Justice Department's disclosure of the investigation suggests they may no longer be the targets of the grand jury probe being conducted in secrecy by the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. “This investigation, which appears to be winding down as Justice Liam O’Grady felt it safe to unseal the orders, appears to have been conducted not for the purpose of attributing criminal behavior to those guilty of conducting said war crimes and violations of fundamental human rights, but to punish those who performed the public service of making the world aware of them,” they wrote. “We view the documents which Google has finally provided us with,” the men added, “not as testament to our involvement or lack of involvement with the proceedings . . . but as evidence of the need to eliminate the surveillance state, in its entirety, before what democracy we do have is lost for good.” According to the documents, Google was told by the Justice Department that they were prohibited from disclosing to either Snorrason or McCarthy any information about the investigation until indicated. Google was first compelled for details regarding their online activity in July 2011, and the court unsealed the gag-order on May 2, 2013. Both men published documents that only show that Google was asked for data and that the non-disclosure demands were recently lifted. Jacob Appelbaum, an American hacker with well-documented ties to WikiLeaks, tweeted Friday that the government may be unhappy with the publication of the court orders.
Ok, technically it isn't a leak Google is allowed to send it but I'm guessing @smarimc's publication is considered a leak by the government.
— Jacob Appelbaum (@ioerror) June 21, 2013
“The unsealing document states that I can do whatever I wish with it,” McCarthy tweeted to Appelbaum. “Which, to be fair, wasn’t much.” “I'm not worried about legal consequences or the US attacking extrajudicially. I am enraged by their disregard for the rule of law,” Snorrason tweeted.
Appelbaum spoke on behalf of WikiLeaks during a 2010 conference in New York City and has had his electronic records previously subpoenaed by the government, presumably under the secretive grand jury investigation. The Justice Department has acknowledged the probe but has failed to provide any details. Attorney General Eric Holder said previously that the Justice Department and Pentagon are conducting "an active, ongoing criminal investigation” into the documents that have ended up on WikiLeaks. In a conference call with RT and other organizations earlier this week, Assange said that the probe into WikiLeaks remains open and involves a Federal Bureau of Investigation file about his website that’s 42,135 pages long. He defends his work, however, and says that it is necessary to publish classified documents in order to hold those in elected office accountable. The US, on the other hand, equates that behavior with espionage. “The broad case establishes a precedent that publishing national security related information about the United States is espionage,” Assange said.
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Afghanistan suspends US security talks as Washington readies Taliban peace talks
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| Afghan President Hamid Karzai (Reuters / Omar Sobhani) |
Kabul has suspended talks with Washington on a bilateral security pact - designed to chart Afghanistan's security path following the US withdrawal next year - as well as upcoming discussions with the Taliban. With the US prepared to draw down its troop presence in Afghanistan next year, and the Taliban seemingly determined to make the exit as unpleasant and unpredictable as possible, Washington and Kabul have been working since November on a Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA). But now that initiative is at risk of being abandoned. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has emphasized in the past his desire to hold one-on-one talks with the Taliban. However, those hopes were dashed when US and Taliban officials announced they would begin joint talks - beginning as early as this week - apparently before the Afghan government was consulted on the issue. This provoked a strong response from the Afghan leader. "In a special meeting chaired by President Hamid Karzai, the president has decided to suspend talks about a security pact with the US because of their inconsistent statements and actions in regard to the peace process," Karzai spokesperson Aimal Faizi told Reuters. At the same time, the Afghan leader said his country will not participate in the upcoming Qatar talks with the Taliban. "As long as the peace process is not Afghan-led, the High Peace Council will not participate in the talks in Qatar," Karzai said in a statement, referring to a government body he created in 2010 to seek a negotiated peace with the Taliban. A senior Afghan official told Reuters the government was dissatisfied over the official status being given to the Taliban, who opened an office in Doha on Tuesday.
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| Afghan security personnel keep watch at the site of a suicide attack in Panjshir province (Reuters / Mohammad Ishaq) |
Meanwhile, there has even been disagreement over the name tentatively chosen for Afghanistan, which apparently does not sit well with the Afghan president. "The president is not happy with the name of the office. We oppose the title the 'Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan' because such a thing doesn't exist," Faizi said. "The US was aware of the president's stance." The Afghan-US standoff hints at political intrigue between Kabul and Washington, as both sides are attempting to exert some semblance of control before next year’s US troop withdrawal commences.
Is the Taliban a reliable partner?
US officials said the American and Taliban representatives will hold bilateral meetings in the coming days. But is this plan realistic or just wishful thinking? Washington intends to sit down at the negotiating table with the Taliban Political Commission, a largely unknown group authorized by the Taliban’s one-eyed leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, the same individual who Washington put on a wanted list for harboring Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda militants prior to the September 11 attacks. US officials said they had no additional information on the identities of the other members of the commission, but “it apparently includes or represents armed insurgent groups that include the Pakistani-based Haqqani network, which has carried out some of the most ambitious attacks on international forces in eastern Afghanistan and in Kabul, the Afghan capital,” the Los Angeles Times reported. President Barack Obama acknowledged problems ahead for Washington as the US troop withdrawal looms.
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| Afghan mourners pray at the grave of a victim of a Taliban suicide attack in Farah province, April 4, 2013 (Reuters / Stringer) |
"This is an important first step toward reconciliation, although it is a very early step," Obama said as he concluded meetings in Northern Ireland with leaders of the Group of 8 industrialized nations. "We anticipate that there will be a lot of bumps in the road." As soon as the US leader finished his speech, the "bumps" immediately became apparent as four US troops were killed in a well coordinated attack by the insurgent group. Taliban spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid said Wednesday that the militants launched two rockets into Bagram Air Base late Tuesday, AP reported. US officials confirmed the military base had come under attack by indirect fire, and that four US troops were killed. Karzai's High Peace Council had been expected to also hold its own discussions with the Taliban a few days later, but the fate of those talks is now uncertain. The Taliban announcement that it would hold bilateral talks with US officials came as Afghan forces formally assumed control on Tuesday from the US-led NATO coalition for security in Afghanistan. US and NATO military forces will now move into a support role. The handover marks the latest step in the withdrawal of coalition forces, which currently number around 100,000 troops from 48 countries, including 66,000 US soldiers. This NATO-led force will be halved by the end of the year, and by the end of 2014 all troops are to leave and be replaced by a smaller force devoted to training and advising the Afghan forces. Despite their differences, Kabul and Washington do seem to agree on one point. Obama said on Wednesday he welcomed Karzai's statement that Afghanistan would soon take responsibility for security from the U.S.-led NATO peacekeeping force.
"We do think that ultimately we're going to need to see Afghans talking to Afghans about how they can move forward and end the cycle of violence there so they can start actually building their country," the US leader said. The United States has lost 2,235 soldiers in the 12-year war.
Ron Paul: ‘Obama’s Syria policy looks a lot like Bush’s Iraq policy’
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| Former US Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) (AFP Photo / Joe Raedle) |
Did the White House’s remarks about Syrian President Bashar al-Assad using chemical weapons sound familiar? Former congressman Ron Paul says the build up to a likely strike on Syria reminds him of the days before the invasion of Iraq. Paul, the longtime Republican lawmaker from Texas who retired last year following an unsuccessful attempt to gain the GOP nomination for the presidency, published a statement on his website this week criticizing the White House for their latest remarks regarding Syria. US President Barack Obama said months ago that any proof of Assad using chemical weapons against Syrians would constitute the crossing of a “red line” that would spur American intervention. Last week, the White House said evidence linked Assad’s government to using chemical warfare to kill as many as 150 opposition fighters during the bloody civil war that has so far costs more than 90,000 Syrians their lives, according to United Nation estimates. Washington is now likely to begin arming Syrian rebel fighters and is pondering a possible no-fly zone over Syria.According to Paul, the latest rhetoric from the White House is something he’s seen before. “Because of this use of gas, the president claimed, Syria had crossed his ‘red line’ and the US must begin to arm the rebels fighting to overthrow the Syrian government,” Paul wrote. But at the same time, Paul called into question a previous report from the Washington Post, in which the paper cited White House officials as having decided “weeks ago” to arm Syrian rebels. “[I]n other words, it was made at a time when the intelligence community did not believe ‘with high confidence’ that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons,” Paul said of that decision. “Further, this plan to transfer weapons to the Syrian rebels had become policy much earlier than that, as the Washington Post reported that the CIA had expanded over the past year its secret bases in Jordan to prepare for the transfer of weapons to the rebels in Syria.” On his website, Paul wrote that things are starting to seem all too similar to what preceded the invasion of Baghdad in 2003. “The process was identical to the massive deception campaign that led us into the Iraq War,” Paul claimed. Just like under President George W. Bush, Paul said the Obama administration is “fixing the intelligence and facts” so it can justify an already determined policy. “And Congress just goes along, just as they did the last time,” Paul wrote. Congress has not formally decided how it will heed any calls to arm Syrian rebels just yet, but a number of influential politicians on the Hill have raised their voices already, particularly in light of the White House’s recent claim. Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona), an outspoken supporter of the efforts to aid the rebels, said last week that the United States’ failure to act already in the civil war is “disgraceful.” “For us to sit by, and watch these people being massacred, raped, tortured in the most terrible fashion, meanwhile, the Russians are all in, Hezbollah is all in, and we’re talking about giving them more light weapons? It’s insane,” he said. “Frankly, every day that goes by and we don’t get rid of Bashar Assad, it becomes more and more complicated and difficult.” Indeed, even Pres. Obama has said that removing Assad from office has been a priority within Washington for quite some time now. But just as with a decade earlier, he’s already finding some opponents in Washington uninterested in opening up another war. Speaking on CBS’ Face the Nation over the weekend, House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Michigan) equated the news coming out of the White House as a lot of huff. "It seems to me they have a great media strategy," Rogers said. "They don't have a great Syrian strategy, and I don't believe any of our members - and we had both Republicans and Democrats on the committee - express concern about where they think we are today, and where we think the administration wants to go.” "What is the plan? Where are we going in Syria? And what do you want to accomplish?" Rogers asked. "Some of the things that they've told us - told the Intelligence Committee - in the past doesn't comport with what they're presenting as the direction they want to go. So we've asked them to come up and say if we're going to move in this direction, you're going to have to come up with a more comprehensive plan." "They've got a lot of explaining to do to come up and say, 'Here's our comprehensive plan on how we move forward on what is a catastrophic situation that's getting worse every single day in Syria,'" Rogers said. Speaking to PBS host Charlie Rose in an interview that aired late Monday, Pres. Obama dismissed the claims from the likes of Mr. Paul that the unrest in Syria would spark another war for his administration to be entwined in. "It is very easy to slip slide your way into deeper and deeper commitments," Obama told Rose, referring to the possibility of another war in the Middle East. "Now, on the other side there are folks who say, you know, 'we are so scarred from Iraq. We should have learned our lesson. We should not have anything to do with it,'" Obama said. "Well, I reject that view as well because the fact of the matter is, is that we've got serious interests there." "The goals are a stable, non-sectarian, representative Syrian government that is addressing the needs of its people through political processes and peaceful processes," added the president. "We're not taking sides in a religious war between Shi'a and Sunni. Really, what we're trying to do is take sides against extremists of all sorts and in favor of people who are in favor of moderation, tolerance, representative government - and, over the long-term, stability and prosperity for the people of Syria." Mr. Obama is currently overseas discussing the Syrian situation with other world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin. Alexei Pushkov, chairman of the Russian parliament’s International Affairs Committee, said in a tweet last week that the White House’s information about the usage of chemical weapons by the Assad regime “is fabricated in the same way as the lie about Hussein's weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq.
