NEW YORK TIMES: Pakistan’s top military spy agency has arrested some of the Pakistani informants who fed information to the Central Intelligence Agency in the months leading up to the raid that led to the death of Osama bin Laden, according to American officials. Pakistan’s detention of five C.I.A. informants, including a Pakistani Army major who officials said copied the license plates of cars visiting Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in the weeks before the raid, is the latest evidence of the fractured relationship between the United States and Pakistan. It comes at a time when the Obama administration […]
SH*T MY UNCLE SAYS: Pounding Sand
[Illustration by Ajda Gregor?i?] BY WILLIAM C. HENRY I just finished reading a column in the New York Times by Stanley Fish titled “What’s up with the Jews?” The article poses the question of whether it’s ever possible for any of us to completely eliminate anti-semitic characterizations of Jews from whatever opinions we may form, or conclusions we may draw, with reference to any particular Jewish affected action or stance. In conclusion he offers this statement with respect to the Israeli/Palestinian situation: “Those who offer the criticism can never quite be sure that their distaste for Israel’s actions with respect […]
Ex-Khyber Barkeep Charged in Mumbai Attacks
GUARDIAN: Federal prosecutors accused David Coleman Headley, 49, who lives in Chicago, of conspiracy to bomb public places in India, to murder and maim people, and to provide material support to a foreign terrorist group. The charges come after Headley, also known as Daood Gilani, was accused of involvement in a plot to kill the editor of the Danish paper, Jyllands-Posten, who published cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in 2005 which provoked an angry backlash in the Muslim world. Headley is accused of scouting the three locations in Mumbai – the luxury Taj hotel, a railway station and the Jewish […]
THE AMERICAN GULAG: McClatchy Publishes Hard-Hitting Overview Of Gitmo, Who’s There, How They Got There, And Why Most Shouldn’t Be
BY TOM LASSETER OF MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS An eight-month McClatchy investigation in 11 countries on three continents has found that Akhtiar was one of dozens and perhaps hundreds of men whom the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments. McClatchy interviewed 66 released detainees along with a number of local officials, primarily in Afghanistan, and reviewed available U.S. military tribunal documents and other records. Most of the 66 were low-level Taliban grunts, innocent Afghan villagers or ordinary criminals, the McClatchy investigation found. At least seven […]