President Barack Obama has stated that he has a low threshold for "success" in Afghanistan. He wants an Afghanistan that can no longer serve as a base for any terrorist group that would be able to attack the United States. Assuming that the President of the United States is true to his word, he should perhaps consider the possibility that the minimum objective for an American withdrawal from Afghanistan has already been achieved. If that is so, it is time for the United States to end its de facto occupation of the country and leave the Afghan people to settle on a form of government that will satisfy their needs, not those of a segment of the international community led by Washington.

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=255

In four years of researching and writing about Guantánamo, I have become used to uncovering shocking information, but for sheer cynicism, I am struggling to think of anything that compares to the revelations contained in the unclassified ruling in the habeas corpus petition of Fouad al-Rabiah, a Kuwaiti prisoner whose release was ordered last week by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly (PDF). In the ruling, to put it bluntly, it was revealed that the US government tortured an innocent man to extract false confessions and then threatened him until he obligingly repeated those lies as though they were the truth.

http://www.inteldaily.com/news/173/ARTICLE/12056/2009-10-02.html

Longtime counterintel official acknowledges evidence behind key aspect of allegations against Marc Grossman made by former FBI translator turned whistleblower Sibel Edmonds

George W. Bush's third-highest ranking State Department official, Marc Grossman, who became the Under Secretary of State after previously serving as Ambassador to Turkey, was targeted as part of a "decade-long investigation" by the FBI, according to an 18-year veteran manager of the agency's Counterintelligence and Counterespionage departments.

For still-unknown reasons, the investigation, which also involved a multitude of cases involving Israeli espionage, was ultimately "buried and covered up," according to the official.

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7439

see also:

http://totalwarfiles.com/?p=80

Hey, wasn’t that George W. Bush presidency really fantastic?

You do still remember it, don’t you?

Wasn’t it great?  Don’t you have lots of warm and fuzzy memories of it?  Isn’t it a shame that he couldn’t have a third term?

Okay, so maybe you don’t see it that way.  Maybe the last eight years weren’t such a party for you.  But remember the regressive right?  Remember how much they loved the guy?  Remember how they adored Ol’ Georgie, especially back in 2001, 2002, 2003?  Remember how they gloated and stuck it all in our faces?  Remember how much they loved not only Bush’s politics, but his in-your-face, my-way-or-the-highway, love-it-or-leave-it, macho cowboy routine delivery?

http://www.counterpunch.org/green09252009.html

Gap between top 1% and bottom 90% now worse than at any time since 1928.

Ottawa (10 Sept. 2009) – Two-thirds of all American income gains from 2002 to 2007 flowed to the top 1% of U.S. households, giving that privileged minority a larger share of income at the end of the period than at any time since 1928.

During the period, the average inflation-adjusted income of the top 1% of households soared by 62% compared to a gain of just 4% for the bottom 90% of households.

http://www.nupge.ca/node/2544

Hearings are underway in the US Senate to assess what to do with the 240 detainees still behind bars at Guantanamo Bay, and what will become of the military tribunals and detention without trial that the administration of former US president George W. Bush and a compliant Congress put into place.

The US Congress is also debating what will happen to the detention camp itself, which was established in 2002 to house men who were allegedly “the worst of the worst,” in a setting deliberately framed by Bush attorneys as “legal outer space.”

But are those Senate hearings actually window dressing on a new reality that is just as bad as the old one — and in some ways worse?

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2009/08/09/2003450693

The gagged whistleblower goes on the record.

EDMONDS: Okay. So these conversations, between 1997 and 2001, had to do with a Central Asia operation that involved bin Laden. Not once did anybody use the word “al-Qaeda.” It was always “mujahideen,” always “bin Laden” and, in fact, not “bin Laden” but “bin Ladens” plural. There were several bin Ladens who were going on private jets to Azerbaijan and Tajikistan. The Turkish ambassador in Azerbaijan worked with them.

There were bin Ladens, with the help of Pakistanis or Saudis, under our management. Marc Grossman was leading it, 100 percent, bringing people from East Turkestan into Kyrgyzstan, from Kyrgyzstan to Azerbaijan, from Azerbaijan some of them were being channeled to Chechnya, some of them were being channeled to Bosnia. From Turkey, they were putting all these bin Ladens on NATO planes. People and weapons went one way, drugs came back.

GIRALDI: Was the U.S. government aware of this circular deal?

EDMONDS: 100 percent. A lot of the drugs were going to Belgium with NATO planes. After that, they went to the UK, and a lot came to the U.S. via military planes to distribution centers in Chicago and Paterson, New Jersey. Turkish diplomats who would never be searched were coming with suitcases of heroin.

GIRALDI: And, of course, none of this has been investigated. What do you think the chances are that the Obama administration will try to end this criminal activity?

EDMONDS: Well, even during Obama’s presidential campaign, I did not buy into his slogan of “change” being promoted by the media and, unfortunately, by the naïve blogosphere. First of all, Obama’s record as a senator, short as it was, spoke clearly. For all those changes that he was promising, he had done nothing. In fact, he had taken the opposite position, whether it was regarding the NSA’s wiretapping or the issue of national-security whistleblowers. We whistleblowers had written to his Senate office. He never responded, even though he was on the relevant committees.

http://www.amconmag.com/article/2009/nov/01/00006/

More than 1.5 billion government and private sector records about US citizens and foreigners are stored in an FBI database, declassified documents have revealed.

The database is kept at the FBI's National Security Branch Analysis Center (NSAC) near Washington, according to the documents acquired under a freedom of information request by US magazine Wired.

Data has been drawn from a wide variety of sources, including records of international travel, hotel bookings, car rentals, department store transactions and active aircraft pilots.

http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2009/09/24/237851/fbi-database-holds-records-on-1.5-billion-people.htm

In the debate over the PATRIOT Act, the Bush White House insisted it needed the authority to search people's homes without their permission or knowledge so that terrorists wouldn't be tipped off that they're under investigation.

Now that the authority is law, how has the Department of Justice used the new power? To go after drug dealers.

Only three of the 763 "sneak-and-peek" requests in fiscal year 2008 involved terrorism cases, according to a July 2009 report from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. Sixty-five percent were drug cases.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/23/watch-doj-official-blows_n_296209.html

Hours after the Justice Department announced it would limit its use of the state secrets privilege in new cases, the administration appeared before a federal judge here Wednesday and continued to invoke that defense in a closely watched spy case.

The litigation at issue, now five years old, tests whether a sitting president may bypass Congress and adopt a warrantless surveillance program, as President Bush did in the wake of the 2001 terror attacks.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/09/obama-stands-behind-state-secrets-in-spy-case/

This is the first time [the DOJ] claimed sovereign immunity against Wiretap Act and Stored Communications Act claims. In other words, the administration is arguing that the U.S. can never be sued for spying that violates federal surveillance statutes, whether FISA, the Wiretap Act or the SCA.

http://archive.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/06/obama/index.html