AfghaniPakIraq

Confidential Memo Reveals US Plan to Provoke an Invasion of Iraq

By Jamie Doward, Gaby Hinsliff and Mark Townsend

June 22, 2009 "The Observer" -- - A confidential record of a meeting between President Bush and Tony Blair before the invasion of Iraq, outlining their intention to go to war without a second United Nations resolution, will be an explosive issue for the official inquiry into the UK's role in toppling Saddam Hussein.

The memo, written on 31 January 2003, almost two months before the invasion and seen by the Observer, confirms that as the two men became increasingly aware UN inspectors would fail to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) they had to contemplate alternative scenarios that might trigger a second resolution legitimising military action.

Bush told Blair the US had drawn up a provocative plan "to fly U2 reconnaissance aircraft painted in UN colours over Iraq with fighter cover". Bush said that if Saddam fired at the planes this would put the Iraqi leader in breach of UN resolutions.

The president expressed hopes that an Iraqi defector would be "brought out" to give a public presentation on Saddam's WMD or that someone might assassinate the Iraqi leader. However, Bush confirmed even without a second resolution, the US was prepared for military action. The memo said Blair told Bush he was "solidly with the president".

The five-page document, written by Blair's foreign policy adviser, Sir David Manning, and copied to Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the UK ambassador to the UN, Jonathan Powell, Blair's chief of staff, the chief of the defence staff, Admiral Lord Boyce, and the UK's ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, outlines how Bush told Blair he had decided on a start date for the war.

Paraphrasing Bush's comments at the meeting, Manning, noted: "The start date for the military campaign was now pencilled in for 10 March. This was when the bombing would begin."

Last night an expert on international law who is familar with the memo's contents said it provided vital evidence into the two men's frames of mind as they considered the invasion and its aftermath and must be presented to the Chilcott inquiry established by Gordon Brown to examine the causes, conduct and consequences of the Iraq war.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22880.htm

Obama's Undeclared War On Pakistan Continues
Despite Attempts to Downplay It

By Jeremy Scahill

June 22, 2009 "Rebel Reports" -- Three days after his inauguration, on January 23, 2009, President Barack Obama ordered U.S. predator drones to attack sites inside of Pakistan, reportedly killing 15 people. It was the first documented attack ordered by the new U.S. Commander in Chief inside of Pakistan. Since that first Obama-authorized attack, the U.S. has regularly bombed Pakistan, killing scores of civilians. The New York Times reported that the attacks were clear evidence Obama "is continuing, and in some cases extending, Bush administration policy." In the first 99 days of 2009, more than 150 people were reportedly killed in these drone attacks. The most recent documented attack was reportedly last Thursday in Waziristan. Since 2006, the U.S. drone strikes have killed 687 people (as of April). That amounts to about 38 deaths a month just from drone attacks.

The use of these attack drones by Obama should not come as a surprise to anyone who followed his presidential campaign closely. As a candidate, Obama made clear that Pakistan’s sovereignty was subservient to U.S. interests, saying he would attack with or without the approval of the Pakistani government. Obama said if the U.S. had "actionable intelligence" that "high value" targets were in Pakistan, the U.S. would attack. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, echoed those sentiments on the campaign trail and "did not rule out U.S. attacks inside Pakistan, citing the missile attacks her husband, then-President Bill Clinton, ordered against Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1998. ‘If we had actionable intelligence that Osama bin Laden or other high-value targets were in Pakistan I would ensure that they were targeted and killed or captured,’ she said."

Last weekend, Obama granted his first extended interview with a Pakistani media outlet, the newspaper Dawn:

Responding to a question about drone attacks inside Pakistan’s tribal zone, Mr Obama said he did not comment on specific operations.

'But I will tell you that we have no intention of sending U.S. troops into Pakistan. Pakistan and its military are dealing with their security issues.'

There are a number of issues raised by this brief response offered by Obama. First, the only difference between using these attack drones and using actual U.S. soldiers on the ground is that the soldiers are living beings. These drones sanitize war and reduce the U.S. death toll while still unleashing military hell disproportionately on civilians. The bottom line is that the use of drones inside the borders of Pakistan amounts to the same violation of sovereignty that would result from sending U.S. soldiers inside the country. Obama defended the attacks in the Dawn interview, saying:

"Our primary goal is to be a partner and a friend to Pakistan and to allow Pakistan to thrive on its own terms, respecting its own traditions, respecting its own culture. We simply want to make sure that our common enemies, which are extremists who would kill innocent civilians, that that kind of activity is stopped, and we believe that it has to be stopped whether it’s in the United States or in Pakistan or anywhere in the world."

Despite Obama's comments about respecting Pakistan “on its own terms,” this is how Reuters recently described the arrangement between Pakistan and the U.S. regarding drone attacks:

U.S. ally Pakistan objects to the U.S. missile strikes, saying they violate its sovereignty and undermine efforts to deal with militancy because they inflame public anger and bolster support for the militants.

Washington says the missile strikes are carried out under an agreement with Islamabad that allows Pakistani leaders to publicly criticize the attacks. Pakistan denies any such agreement.

Pakistan is now the biggest recipient of U.S. aid with the House of Representatives recently approving a tripling of money to Pakistan to about $1.5 billion a year for five years. Moreover, U.S. special forces are already operating inside of Pakistan, along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in Baluchistan. According to the Wall Street Journal, U.S. Special Forces are:

training Pakistan’s Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force responsible for battling the Taliban and al Qaeda fighters, who cross freely between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the officials said. The U.S. trainers aren’t meant to fight alongside the Pakistanis or accompany them into battle, in part because there will be so few Special Forces personnel in the two training camps.

A senior American military officer said he hoped Islamabad would gradually allow the U.S. to expand its training footprint inside Pakistan’s borders.

In February, The New York Times reported that U.S. forces are also engaged in other activities inside of Pakistan:

American Special Operations troops based in Afghanistan have also carried out a number of operations into Pakistan’s tribal areas since early September, when a commando raid that killed a number of militants was publicly condemned by Pakistani officials. According to a senior American military official, the commando missions since September have been primarily to gather intelligence.

It is clear -- and has been for a long time -- that the Obama administration is radically expanding the U.S. war in Afghanistan deeply into Pakistan. Whether it is through U.S. military trainers (that’s what they were called in Vietnam too), drone attacks or commando raids inside the country, the U.S. is militarily entrenched in Pakistan. It makes Obama's comment that "[W]e have no intention of sending U.S. troops into Pakistan" simply unbelievable.

For a sense of how significant U.S. operations are and will continue to be for years and years to come, just look at the U.S. plan to build an almost $1 billion massive U.S. "embassy" in Islamabad, which is reportedly modeled after the imperial city they call a U.S. embassy in Baghdad. As we know very clearly from Iraq, such a complex will result in an immediate surge in the deployment of U.S. soldiers, mercenaries and other contractors.

Jeremy Scahill is the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He blogs at RebelReports.com.