In the News – 9/8

Apparently there is some question about where the Taliban got the weapons they are using to kill our troops in Afghanistan.

In support of the official United States assertion that Iran is arming its sworn enemy, the Taliban, the head of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Dennis Blair, has cited a statement by a Taliban commander last year attributing military success against North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces to Iranian military assistance.

But the Taliban commander's claim is contradicted by evidence from the US Defense Department, Canadian forces in Afghanistan and the Taliban themselves that the increased damage to NATO tanks by Taliban forces has come from anti-tank mines provided by the United States to the jihadi movement against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s…

Inserted from <Asia Times>

The Reagan Administration provided substantial aid the Afghan rebels.  They even gave Osama bin Laden $300 million taxpayer dollars to help finance the formation of Al Qaeda, which was intended to commit terrorists acts against the Russians.  That came back to bite us in the arse, didn’t it?  Were it not or the GOP’s willingness to invest in terrorism, 9/11 would nave never happened, and we would not be in this mess today.  And this is not an isolated incident GHW Bush gave Iran arms for hostages at the same time that he was financing Saddam’s war against Iran.  Donald Rumsfeld brokered the deal whereby Saddam first acquired chemical weapons, and GW Bush, aka Crawford Caligula, installed the corrupt Karzai regime in Afghanistan.  I hope that Obama will do better and realize that there is no way to sleep with dogs without getting fleas.

Elsewhere Human Rights Watch has issued a call or the investigation of Rumsfeld and Tenet for torture.

The United States should name a special prosecutor to investigate the culpability of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and ex-CIA Director George Tenet in cases of detainee torture and abuse, Human Rights Watch said in releasing a new report today.

The report, Getting Away with Torture? Command Responsibility for the U.S. Abuse of Detainees, is issued on the eve of the first anniversary of the publication of the Abu Ghraib photos (April 28). It presents substantial evidence warranting criminal investigations of Rumsfeld and Tenet, as well as Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, formerly the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Gen. Geoffrey Miller the former commander of the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

“The soldiers at the bottom of the chain are taking the heat for Abu Ghraib and torture around the world, while the guys at the top who made the policies are going scot free,” said Reed Brody, special counsel for Human Rights Watch. “That’s simply not right.”

Human Rights Watch said that there was now overwhelming evidence that U.S. mistreatment and torture of Muslim prisoners took place not merely at Abu Ghraib but at facilities throughout Afghanistan and Iraq as well as at Guantánamo and at “secret locations” around the world, in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the laws against torture…

Inserted from <Salem News>

In my opinion, the US should name a special prosecutor to investigate Bush, Cheney and at least a dozen other top officials in their regime.  US Law requires it.  How can re ever regain credibility in the eyes of the world, if we ignore our own law to protect the perpetrators of some of the most outrageous crimes in our nation’s history?