tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-385831632024-03-12T21:27:40.762-07:00How Will Iraq War End?Maura Larkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16800561169406889185noreply@blogger.comBlogger49125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38583163.post-80775292536639739532012-11-20T13:40:00.000-08:002012-11-20T13:40:23.831-08:00A ‘Party Drug’ May Help the Brain Cope With Trauma<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/20/health/ecstasy-treatment-for-post-traumatic-stress-shows-promise.html?pagewanted=all">A ‘Party Drug’ May Help the Brain Cope With Trauma</a><br/>
By BENEDICT CAREY<br/>
New York Times<br/>
November 19, 2012<br/><br/>
Hundreds of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans with post-traumatic stress have recently contacted a husband-and-wife team who work in suburban South Carolina to seek help. Many are desperate, pleading for treatment and willing to travel to get it.<br/><br/>
Can a Party Drug Treat Post-Traumatic Stress?<br/><br/>
The soldiers have no interest in traditional talking cures or prescription drugs that have given them little relief. They are lining up to try an alternative: MDMA, better known as Ecstasy, a party drug that surfaced in the 1980s and ’90s that can induce pulses of euphoria and a radiating affection. Government regulators criminalized the drug in 1985, placing it on a list of prohibited substances that includes heroin and LSD. But in recent years, regulators have licensed a small number of labs to produce MDMA for research purposes.<br/><br/>
“I feel survivor’s guilt, both for coming back from Iraq alive and now for having had a chance to do this therapy,” said Anthony, a 25-year-old living near Charleston, S.C., who asked that his last name not be used because of the stigma of taking the drug. “I’m a different person because of it.”<br/><br/>
In a paper posted online Tuesday by the Journal of Psychopharmacology, Michael and Ann Mithoefer, the husband-and-wife team offering the treatment — which combines psychotherapy with a dose of MDMA — write that they found 15 of 21 people who recovered from severe post-traumatic stress in the therapy in the early 2000s reported minor to virtually no symptoms today. Many said they have received other kinds of therapy since then, but not with MDMA.<br/><br/>
The Mithoefers — he is a psychiatrist and she is a nurse — collaborated on the study with researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina and the nonprofit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.<br/><br/>
The patients in this group included mostly rape victims, and experts familiar with the work cautioned that it was preliminary, based on small numbers, and its applicability to war trauma entirely unknown. A spokeswoman for the Department of Defense said the military was not involved in any research of MDMA.<br/><br/>
But given the scarcity of good treatments for post-traumatic stress, “there is a tremendous need to study novel medications,” including MDMA, said Dr. John H. Krystal, chairman of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine.<br/><br/>
The study is the first long-term test to suggest that psychiatrists’ tentative interest in hallucinogens and other recreational drugs — which have been taboo since the 1960s — could pay off. And news that the Mithoefers are beginning to test the drug in veterans is out, in the military press and on veterans’ blogs. “We’ve had more than 250 vets call us,” Dr. Mithoefer said. “There’s a long waiting list, we wish we could enroll them all.”<br/><br/>
The couple, working with other researchers, will treat no more than 24 veterans with the therapy, following Food and Drug Administration protocols for testing an experimental drug; MDMA is not approved for any medical uses.<br/><br/>
A handful of similar experiments using MDMA, LSD or marijuana are now in the works in Switzerland, Israel and Britain, as well as in this country. Both military and civilian researchers are watching closely. So far, the research has been largely supported by nonprofit groups...Maura Larkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16800561169406889185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38583163.post-69520139495254647022011-02-09T18:00:00.000-08:002011-02-09T18:02:48.918-08:00CIA Officers Made Grave Mistakes, Then Got Promoted<span style="font-style:italic;">To me, this sounds typical of just about any human enterprise.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.aolnews.com/2011/02/09/cia-workers-made-grave-mistakes-then-got-promoted/">CIA Officers Made Grave Mistakes, Then Got Promoted</a><br />Feb 9, 2011 <br />Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo<br />AP<br /><br />In December 2003, security forces boarded a bus in Macedonia and snatched a German citizen named Khaled el-Masri. For the next five months, el-Masri was a ghost. Only a select group of CIA officers knew he had been whisked to a secret prison for interrogation in Afghanistan.<br /><br />But he was the wrong guy.<br /><br />A hard-charging CIA analyst had pushed the agency into one of the biggest diplomatic embarrassments of the U.S. war on terrorism. Yet despite recommendations by an internal review, the analyst was never punished. In fact, she has risen to one of the premier jobs in the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, helping lead President Barack Obama's efforts to disrupt al-Qaida.<br /><br />In the years since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, officers who committed serious mistakes that left people wrongly imprisoned or even dead have received only minor admonishments or no punishment at all, an Associated Press investigation has revealed. The botched el-Masri case is but one example of a CIA accountability process that even some within the agency say is unpredictable and inconsistent.<br /><br />Though Obama has sought to put the CIA's interrogation program behind him, the result of a decade of haphazard accountability is that many officers who made significant missteps are now the senior managers fighting the president's spy wars.<br /><br />The AP investigation of the CIA's actions revealed a disciplinary system that takes years to make decisions, hands down reprimands inconsistently and is viewed inside the agency as prone to favoritism and manipulation. When people are disciplined, the punishment seems to roll downhill, sparing senior managers even when they were directly involved in operations that go awry.<br /><br />Two officers involved in the death of a prisoner in Afghanistan, for instance, received no discipline and have advanced into Middle East leadership positions. Other officers were punished after participating in a mock execution in Poland and playing a role in the death of a prisoner in Iraq. Those officers retired, then rejoined the intelligence community as contractors.<br /><br />Some lawmakers were so concerned about the lack of accountability that last year they created a new inspector general position with broad authority to investigate missteps in the CIA or anywhere else in the intelligence community.<br /><br />"There are occasions when people ought to be fired," former Sen. Kit Bond said in November as he completed his tenure as the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee. "Someone who made a huge error ought not to be working at the agency. We've seen instance after instance where there hasn't been accountability."...Maura Larkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16800561169406889185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38583163.post-75507621183557928962010-12-21T17:39:00.000-08:002010-12-21T17:41:44.395-08:00Can the US beat the Taliban by out-greening them?<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/opinion/19friedman.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss">The U.S.S. Prius</a><br />By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN<br />New York Times<br />December 18, 2010<br /><br />As I was saying, the thing I love most about America is that there’s always somebody here who doesn’t get the word — and they go out and do the right thing or invent the new thing, no matter what’s going on politically or economically. And what could save America’s energy future — at a time when a fraudulent, anti-science campaign funded largely by Big Oil and Big Coal has blocked Congress from passing any clean energy/climate bill — is the fact that the Navy and Marine Corps just didn’t get the word.<br /><br />God bless them: “The Few. The Proud. The Green.” Semper Fi.<br /><br />Spearheaded by Ray Mabus, President Obama’s secretary of the Navy and the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, the Navy and Marines are building a strategy for “out-greening” Al Qaeda, “out-greening” the Taliban and “out-greening” the world’s petro-dictators. Their efforts are based in part on a recent study from 2007 data that found that the U.S. military loses one person, killed or wounded, for every 24 fuel convoys it runs in Afghanistan. Today, there are hundreds and hundreds of these convoys needed to truck fuel — to run air-conditioners and power diesel generators — to remote bases all over Afghanistan.<br /><br />Mabus’s argument is that if the U.S. Navy and Marines could replace those generators with renewable power and more energy efficient buildings, and run its ships on nuclear energy, biofuels and hybrid engines, and fly its jets with bio-fuels, then it could out-green the Taliban — the best way to avoid a roadside bomb is to not have vehicles on the roads — and out-green all the petro-dictators now telling the world what to do...Maura Larkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16800561169406889185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38583163.post-33770402857274457092010-12-20T18:48:00.000-08:002010-12-20T18:51:33.236-08:00Pakistani Role Is Suspected in Revealing U.S. Spy’s Name<span style="font-style:italic;">Who revealed the name of a US spy? This time it wasn't a Bush administration official.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/18/world/asia/18pstan.html?_r=4&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a2">Pakistani Role Is Suspected in Revealing U.S. Spy’s Name</a><br />By MARK MAZZETTI and SALMAN MASOOD<br />December 17, 2010<br />New York Times<br /><br />The Central Intelligence Agency’s top clandestine officer in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, was removed from the country on Thursday amid an escalating war of recriminations between American and Pakistani spies, with some American officials convinced that the officer’s cover was deliberately blown by Pakistan’s military intelligence agency.<br /><br />The American spy’s hurried departure is the latest evidence of mounting tensions between two uneasy allies, with the Obama administration’s strategy for ending the war in Afghanistan hinging on the cooperation of Pakistan in the hunt for militants in the mountains that border those two countries. The tensions could intensify in the coming months with the prospect of more American pressure on Pakistan.<br /><br />As the cloak-and-dagger drama was playing out in Islamabad, 100 miles to the west the C.I.A. was expanding its covert war using armed drones against militants. Since Thursday, C.I.A. missile strikes have killed dozens of suspects in Khyber Agency, a part of the tribal areas in Pakistan that the spy agency had largely spared until now because of its proximity to the sprawling market city of Peshawar.<br /><br />American officials said the C.I.A. station chief had received a number of death threats since being publicly identified in a legal complaint sent to the Pakistani police this week by the family of victims of earlier drone campaigns.<br /><br />The American officials said they strongly suspected that operatives of Pakistan’s powerful spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, had a hand in revealing the C.I.A. officer’s identity — possibly in retaliation for a civil lawsuit filed in Brooklyn last month implicating the ISI chief in the Mumbai terrorist attacks of November 2008...Maura Larkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16800561169406889185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38583163.post-18106208687772398422010-12-16T16:58:00.000-08:002010-12-16T17:00:27.366-08:00Sunni police officer gives his life to save Shiites in Iraq suicide bombing<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/17/world/middleeast/17hero.html">In Seconds Before Blast, the Making of a Hero</a><br />By JACK HEALY<br />December 16, 2010<br /><br />As the suicide bomber clutched the detonator to his explosive belt, preparing to spray fire and shrapnel into a religious procession here, an Iraqi police officer named Bilal Ali Muhammad faced a choice between his own life and something larger.<br /><br />If he ran and took cover, Mr. Muhammad, 31, had a chance to save himself, to continue supporting his widowed mother, to help put his younger brother through college and to watch his three young daughters grow up.<br /><br />Instead, the officer — a Sunni Muslim — threw himself onto the bomber, blunting the explosion’s impact on the Shiite worshipers.<br /><br />“He gave his soul to the country,” said his mother, Alaahin Hassan, holding two of his daughters in her lap as dozens of black-veiled women filled her living room this week with ritualized wails of grief. “He believed in God. That made him great.”<br /><br />In a country fractured by sect and ethnicity, from villages like this all the way to the government that is finally forming in Baghdad, Mr. Muhammad’s last act was a burst of heroism and humanity set against the viciousness that still stalks Iraq.<br /><br />Many Iraqis see the police and the army as corrupt, incompetent and brutal, still unprepared to secure the country as the Americans withdraw over the next year. But Mr. Muhammad’s death, one of thousands among Iraqi security forces, offers a counterpoint to that view...Maura Larkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16800561169406889185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38583163.post-88461792346510780202010-11-26T10:07:00.000-08:002010-11-26T10:09:29.252-08:00<a href="http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/11/20/christian-right-activist-blasts-medal-of-honor-as-feminized-s/">Christian Right Activist Blasts Medal of Honor as 'Feminized,' Sparks Fury</a><br />Nov. 21, 2010<br />David Gibson<br />Politics Daily<br /><br />While a divided nation last Tuesday finally rallied around one bright shining moment of patriotic glory -- President Obama's awarding of the Medal of Honor to Afghan hero Army Sgt. Salvatore Giunta -- a popular right-wing Christian commentator sharply split opinions even within his own camp. He blasted the award as "feminized" because it honors Giunta for saving his comrades rather than killing the enemy.<br /><br />The Army's official citation details how Giunta "exposed himself to withering enemy fire" during a daring effort to engage the enemy and extract his wounded comrades from an ambush. But Bryan Fischer, a columnist for the American Family Association who has often provoked headlines and consternation with his commentaries, read the narrative as hardly the sort of thing American soldiers were once known for.<br /><br />President Obama awards Medal of Honor to Army Sgt. Salvatore Giunta"When we think of heroism in battle, we used the think of our boys storming the beaches of Normandy under withering fire, climbing the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc while enemy soldiers fired straight down on them, and tossing grenades into pill boxes to take out gun emplacements," wrote Fischer, director of issue analysis for the AFA, a longtime lobby on the Christian right. "That kind of heroism has apparently become passé when it comes to awarding the Medal of Honor. We now award it only for preventing casualties, not for inflicting them."<br /><br />"So the question is this: when are we going to start awarding the Medal of Honor once again for soldiers who kill people and break things, so our families can sleep safely at night?" he asked.<br /><br />Fischer based his claim on a line in a column in The Wall Street Journal by William McGurn, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush. In the midst of his high praise for Giunta's heroism, McGurn noted that rather than "Rambos decorated for great damage inflicted on the enemy," every Medal of Honor awarded from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan "has been for an effort to save life."<br /><br />In fact, that's not exactly the case. The official account of the first Medal of Honor given for service in Iraq, to Army Sgt. First Class Paul R. Smith, shows how, among other courageous acts, Smith "braved hostile enemy fire to personally engage the enemy with hand grenades and anti-tank weapons," losing his life in the process."...Maura Larkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16800561169406889185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38583163.post-31982025688656642082010-07-31T10:36:00.000-07:002010-07-31T10:38:39.265-07:00Why is Iran still holding US hikers?<a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0731/Why-is-Iran-still-holding-US-hikers">Why is Iran still holding US hikers?</a><br />By Scott Peterson<br />Christian Science Monitor<br />July 31, 2010<br /><br />A year ago, Iranian soldiers arrested three Americans along the border with Iraq.<br />Skip to next paragraph<br />Related Stories<br /><br /> * In ironic twist, Iran detained US hikers critical of Israel and America<br /> * US hikers' moms take more aggressive tack with Iran<br /><br />Accused of espionage and of crossing illegally into Iran, which says it has "evidence" of contact with US intelligence agencies, they have been in prison ever since.<br /><br />But the three friends say they were innocent hikers, inadvertently caught up in a regional tug of war between archenemies Iran and America.<br /><br />The US news magazine The Nation in June cited Iraqi eyewitness accounts stating that Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer, and Josh Fattal were arrested on the Iraqi side of the poorly marked border by Iranian guards who briefly crossed a few yards into Iraq to pick them up. It reported that the man likely responsible for their arrest – the head of the Revolutionary Guard intelligence for the region – has since been imprisoned for a string of kidnappings and murders...Maura Larkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16800561169406889185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38583163.post-56270123329496200342010-06-06T23:05:00.001-07:002010-06-06T23:21:07.169-07:00Bush administration to Arab-Americans: spy for us, and after you give us the intelligence you collect, we'll play politics with your life<a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/26/60minutes/main6335794.shtml">The Case Against Nada Prouty</a><br />Scott Pelley Investigates The Case Against The Former Terrorism Fighter; Was She A Patriot Or A Traitor?<br />CBS<br />March 28, 2010<br /><br />Nada Prouty's identity was once a closely held national secret. She was an FBI agent, then a CIA officer with top security clearances who penetrated terrorist organizations overseas. Her fellow CIA officers say she risked her life often, volunteering for dangerous missions. And because she's originally from Lebanon, she speaks native Arabic, a rare skill for an American intelligence officer.<br /><br />But Prouty's daring career was destroyed. In those years after 9/11 when rooting out terrorists at home was an obsession at the Justice Department, federal prosecutors launched investigations and even Prouty was accused of supporting terrorism. Was a traitor exposed? Or did America lose a patriot?...<br /><br />Prouty's missions for the FBI and CIA read like a history of America's fight against terrorism. She investigated the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, the attack on Americans at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, and, in Pakistan, she interrogated a terrorist who killed 20 people on a Pan Am plane and got him to confess.<br /><br />"Nothing prepares you to meet a terrorist, a real-life terrorist, someone who's killed Americans, someone who’s vowed to always kill Americans," Prouty explained.<br /><br />Asked what happened to the terrorist she interrogated, Prouty told Pelley, "He's in a jail in Colorado, where he gets to see daylight one hour a day." ...<br /><br /><br />"She was absolutely dogged. She would never quit," Bob Grenier remembered. He met Prouty when he was CIA station chief in Islamabad, Pakistan.<br /><br />He retired in 2006 as a 27-year veteran, who headed the CIA's Counter-Terrorism Center.<br /><br />"She was involved in virtually all the high profile terrorism cases during those years," Grenier said...<br /><br />Asked if she saved American lives, Grenier said, "I think that's fair to say."<br /><br />But while Prouty was hunting terrorists overseas, an investigation began back home that would destroy her career. The Bush administration was working to break up terrorist financing. And by 2004, federal prosecutors in Detroit were looking at the large Arab-American population around Dearborn, Mich.<br /><br />Suspicion fell on a Lebanese-American restaurant owner named Talal Chahine. And as it happened, Chahine was married to Prouty's sister. In 2005, FBI agents came to CIA headquarters to ask Prouty a few questions...<br /><br />And, in fact, the investigation into whether she'd passed classified information turned up nothing. But prosecutors Eric Straus and Kenneth Chadwell kept digging and they stumbled on something that all those background investigations had missed or dismissed: it turned out that 18 years earlier, when she first came to the United States, Prouty had taken a fateful shortcut to citizenship.<br /><br />She had arranged a sham marriage. "I understood it was wrong." ...<br /><br /> Under pressure, Prouty agreed to waive the 10-year statute of limitations on immigration fraud and plead guilty to two felonies related to the sham marriage. She also pled guilty to one misdemeanor count of unauthorized use of an FBI computer, a charge she now denies.<br /><br />"I've made that mistake when I was a 19-year-old teenager. And I shouldn't have made it. And I own up to it. But I did not look into FBI ACS system without authorization. I did not mismanage or mishandle any classified information," she told Pelley.<br /><br />Asked why she pled guilty to that charge when she now says it wasn't true, Prouty said, "I had to make a decision. I could not see our limited financial resources disappear in front of our own eyes."<br /><br />"From attorney's fees that amounted in the hundreds of thousands of dollars," she added.<br /><br />But pleading guilty wouldn't be the end of it: prosecutors didn't have the evidence to make a terrorism case in court so they made one in the media.<br /><br />In a November 2007 press release the prosecutors said, "It's hard to imagine a greater threat" than someone like Nada Prouty. They said that she had "exploit[ed] her access to sensitive counter-terrorism intelligence."<br /><br />And, later, the Detroit office boasted it had uncovered "the only known case of an illegal alien infiltrating U.S. intelligence agencies with potential espionage implications," as if Prouty had plotted from the age of 19 to infiltrate the CIA. All the worse, there it was, a word never uttered in court -- "espionage."<br /><br />Prouty was branded a traitor in the national news media.<br /><br />"My family was destroyed. Neighbors wouldn't talk to us,” Prouty recalled. “When my daughter would go out in the neighborhood, her friends would scatter away. They told her, 'We don't wanna talk to you 'cause your mommy is bad.’” ...<br /><br />"One of the New York papers called you ‘Jihad Jane,’" Pelley remarked.<br /><br />"That's the Jane that went to Iraq and put her life on the line," Prouty said.<br /><br />Before she was sentenced, the CIA launched its own investigation to find out if Prouty was a Hezbollah spy. Bob Grenier, the CIA's former head of counterterrorism, told Pelley what the Agency found.<br /><br />"There was a full investigation which included multiple polygraph examinations," he said. "She was completely exonerated." ...Maura Larkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16800561169406889185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38583163.post-59367657649511744772010-05-30T20:53:00.000-07:002010-05-30T20:55:12.417-07:00Drone operators blamed in airstrike that killed Afghan civilians in February<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/29/AR2010052901390.html">Drone operators blamed in airstrike that killed Afghan civilians in February</a><br />By Karin Brulliard<br />May 30, 2010<br /><br />KABUL -- A biting U.S. military report released Saturday criticized "inaccurate and unprofessional" reporting by operators of unmanned drones for contributing to a mistaken February airstrike that killed and injured dozens of civilians in southern Afghanistan.<br /><br />As many as 23 people were killed in the attack in Uruzgan province, where a strike intended for what military officials believed was an insurgent force hit a civilian convoy. The incident was condemned by the Afghan cabinet as "unacceptable," and it prompted Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, to apologize to Afghan President Hamid Karzai.<br /><br />The U.S. military said in a statement that four senior officers were reprimanded and two junior officers were admonished in connection with the strike -- disciplinary actions that could damage their careers. In a memo accompanying the military report, McChrystal announced bolstered training to prevent similar incidents in the future, and he asked the U.S. Air Force to investigate the Predator team.<br /><br />McChrystal has made it a top priority to reduce civilian casualties as the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan has shifted from killing Taliban members to protecting the Afghan populace. He has restricted the use of airstrikes, night raids and home searches, all in a bid to quell public hostility.<br /><br />"Inadvertently killing or injuring civilians is heartbreaking and undermines their trust and confidence in our mission," McChrystal said in a statement.<br /><br />The Feb. 21 incident in Uruzgan occurred when a U.S. helicopter fired Hellfire missiles and rockets on a three-vehicle convoy approaching the village of Khod, where U.S. Special Forces and Afghan troops were battling Taliban fighters. A Special Forces ground commander had determined the convoy was carrying militants arriving to provide backup to the fighters, according to the report, written by Maj. Gen. Timothy P. McHale.<br />ad_icon<br />Click here!<br /><br />But the four-page report said that judgment was based on flawed information from "poorly functioning" ground command posts and faulty reports from Predator drone operators, who were tracking the convoy from their stations at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. Those operators, the report said, "deprived the ground force commander of vital information" as they tracked the convoy for 3 1/2 hours.<br /><br />Those observing the convoy reported adult men "moving tactically and appearing to provide security during stops." But Predator operators failed to notice women in the convoy, the report said, and though they did spot two children nearby, the information they provided led the ground crew to believe the vehicles carried only "armed military-aged" men.<br /><br />The report said the aircraft crew stopped firing when its members spotted brightly colored clothing, leading them to believe women might be at the site. By then, 23 men had been killed and 12 had been wounded, including one woman and three children, the report said...Maura Larkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16800561169406889185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38583163.post-2743411205556064822010-03-08T13:26:00.000-08:002010-03-08T14:32:14.372-08:00Research Reveals New Profile of Suicide Bombers<a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=28891288">Bombing Probe Leads to Iraqi Psychiatric Hospital</a><br />NPR<br />by Peter Kenyon<br />February 27, 2008<br /><br />U.S. military officials in Baghdad say they're investigating whether the acting director of a psychiatric hospital in the Iraqi capital was involved with two female suicide bombers who killed nearly 100 people earlier this month.<br /><br />Fear that al-Qaida in Iraq or other insurgents are using mentally ill Iraqis as bombers swept through the al-Rashad hospital, where records show the two women had been treated. Doctors say the panicked reaction has added to their many problems.<br /><br />Until this month, the al-Rashad psychiatric hospital in eastern Baghdad was known as just another struggling medical facility, with some 1,200 patients under the care of just eight doctors.<br /><br />Then, on Feb. 1, two women exploded suicide vests at pet markets in Baghdad, killing 99 people in the bloodiest attack in more than nine months.<br /><br />Nine days later, U.S. forces raided the hospital, arresting Dr. Sahi Aboub, the facility's acting director, and confiscating computers and medical records. Some media quoted anonymous officials as saying the two suicide bombers had Down syndrome and speculated that the director may have been supplying patients to insurgents.<br /><br />Several days later, Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a military spokesman, said there was no evidence that the women had Down syndrome. But, he said, they had been treated for depression or schizophrenia, and the military still thinks al-Qaida in Iraq was pursuing mentally ill patients, possibly through the Rashad doctor, who remains in custody...<br /><br /><br />March 8, 2010<br /> <br /><br />March 7, 2003<br /><a href="http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/transcripts/2003/mar/030307.joyce.html">Research Reveals New Profile of Suicide Bombers</a><br />BOB EDWARDS, host:<br /><br />This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News.<br /><br />...Mr. SCOTT ATRAN (Anthropologist): There's this knee-jerk reaction that people who do this have to be maniacs or cowards, uneducated or miserable or in despair, and none of this seems to be true at all.<br /><br />JOYCE: Working at the University of Michigan and the National Center for Scientific Research in France, Atran has collected surveys of failed suicide bombers and of the families of successful bombers. These surveys were done by Pakistani relief workers, as well as Israeli and Western psychologists and economists. They also interviewed members of terror organizations and studied their literature. What the researchers found contradicted the stereotype of the terrorist fanatic.<br /><br />Mr. ATRAN: These people are fairly well educated, mostly from middle class and not acting at all in despair.<br /><br />JOYCE: Atran summarizes these findings in today's issue of the journal Science. He notes that the government of Singapore recently published a similar report on Asian terrorists linked to al-Qaeda that found the same trend.<br /><br />At Princeton University, economist Alan Krueger has studied not only bombers but the views of the Palestinian public on terror attacks aimed at Israelis. Again, surveys found no link between poverty and illiteracy and support for terror.<br /><br />Mr. ALAN KRUEGER (Princeton University): I think there's very little connection between economic circumstances and support for terrorism or maybe even an opposite relationship, from what most people suspect.<br /><br />JOYCE: As for the bombers themselves, Krueger says terrorist literature indicates they are more likely to come from the ranks of middle-class college students.<br /><br />Mr. KRUEGER: I think that in the West, we think very much in terms of materialistic terms. And we think, you know, `Who could possibly want to give up their lives for a cause? It must be someone who has nothing to live for,' whereas I don't think that's what's motivating the people who participate in terrorism.<br /><br />JOYCE: What does motivate suicide bombers then? Eyad Sarraj has some ideas on that. Sarraj is a Palestinian psychiatrist and director of the Mental Health Community Center in Gaza. He talked with NPR last year after a spate of attacks by suicide bombers.<br /><br />Dr. EYAD SARRAJ (Mental Health Community Center Director): We're not talking about all of them, but most of them are usually very nice, timid, introvert, have had a problem with power in their childhood, and most of them have had personal experience with serious traumatic events in their lives and particularly witnessing the helplessness of their fathers and the humiliation of their fathers.<br /><br />JOYCE: But suicide bombers rarely act alone. They are recruited and supported by terrorist organizations. Scott Atran at the University of Michigan says these organizations often use religion and religious rites to create a sort of ritual communion, or bonding, among would-be bombers.<br /><br />Mr. ATRAN: And this sort of ritual communion often includes gestures of submission and trust, kneeling, bowing, prostrating, baring throats and chests, as well as courtship and bonding. And you find that in forming their suicide cells, the sponsors, these often charismatic sponsors of suicide terrorism, consciously manipulate these kinds of communion to form very tight-knit groups willing to die for one another...<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />NPR News<br />March 8, 2010<br /><a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18310289">Who Carries Out Suicide Bombings?</a><br /><br />...Fair says another obstacle is that Afghan suicide bombers are not celebrated like their counterparts in other Arab nations. Afghan bombers are not featured on posters or in videos as martyrs, and their remains are not carried through town in raucous funeral parades.<br /><br />"Many parents don't even seem to know that their child or their relative blew themselves up in this act," Fair says.<br /><br />She says there is another difference between bombers in Afghanistan and other countries. A bomber in Afghanistan kills an average of three victims, compared with an average of 12 elsewhere. Also, United Nations interviews with would-be bombers in Afghanistan have found that most are young and poorly educated.<br /><br />"So, the good news is that they are not as lethal as they are in other theaters.Maura Larkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16800561169406889185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38583163.post-26827509442148283142010-01-10T14:53:00.000-08:002010-01-10T14:56:27.542-08:00DID THE EARTH SHAKE BEFORE THE SOUTH TOWER HIT THE GROUND?<a href="http://journalof911studies.com/volume/2009/MacQueen_EarlyEarthShake.pdf">DID THE EARTH SHAKE BEFORE THE SOUTH TOWER HIT THE GROUND?</a><br />Graeme MacQueen<br />July 9, 2009<br /><br />In the debate over the collapses of the Twin Towers on 9/11, the shaking of the earth that accompanied these collapses has played an important role. This shaking registered clearly on seismographs. Less clear, however, are its causes and the times it began. The National Institute of Standards and Technology emphasizes the role of the debris from the collapsing buildings in producing the seismic signals. In assessing NIST’s hypothesis I focus on the collapse of the South Tower and attempt to determine the time the collapse began, the time the debris from the Tower struck the ground, and the temporal relation of these events to the shaking of the earth that accompanied the collapse. <br /><br />I consider both the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory’s seismic evidence and the evidence provided by a less studied form of seismic instrument, the video camera. I also draw on witness testimony. I conclude that key statements by NIST are false. <br /><br />Major shaking of the earth, and corresponding seismic signals, started well before the debris hit the ground. In fact, it seems certain that the shaking of the earth started before visible signs of building<br />collapse.Maura Larkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16800561169406889185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38583163.post-77255585828103204812010-01-10T14:28:00.000-08:002010-01-10T14:56:45.370-08:00Why didn't Dick Cheney order that the plane that hit the Pentagon on 9-11 be shot down?Why did a hijacked plane hit the Pentagon on 9-11?<br /><a href="http://journalof911studies.com/volume/2009/WhatHitPentagonDrLeggeAug.pdf"><br />Outtakes of paper by Frank Legge (BSc, PhD)</a><br />21 October 2009<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Nothing should have hit the Pentagon. This implies that a stand-down order existed, as appears to be confirmed by Mineta’s testimony to the 9/11 Commission.</span><br /><br /><br />...Crucial to this debate is the video testimony of the Secretary for Transportation, Norman Mineta, to the 9/11 Commission. He entered the PEOC (Presidential Emergency Operations Center) under the White House and saw that the Vice President, Dick Cheney, was already there. <br /><br />A young man came in and said to Cheney "The plane is 50 miles out", then "The plane is thirty miles out", and when it got down to 10 miles out the young man also said "Do the orders still stand?" and Cheney angrily confirmed that they did. <br /><br />Shortly after this something catastrophic happened at the Pentagon, causing many deaths. <br /><br />There is little doubt that Cheney had it in his hand to shoot down this plane but had a reason not to do so...<br /><br /><br /><br />There is evidence that the hijackers were more interested in learning to fly than to take off or land. That was suspicious in itself and caused some FBI reports to be made which were apparently blocked. <br /><br />It is the release of the so called “Phoenix memo” which has exposed the<br />improper actions of the FBI at this time. Michael Ruppert suggests it was Dave Frasca who saw to it that the reports did not get through...Maura Larkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16800561169406889185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38583163.post-82359813295359057442009-07-30T15:13:00.000-07:002009-07-30T15:31:00.121-07:00Judge Orders Release of Young Detainee at GuantánamoHow old was this Afghan youth when arrested? We don't know, but he's grown 5 inches since he was placed in Guantanamo. Government lawyers disagree, saying a bone density test showed he was age 17--virtually full grown--when arrested. So why did he grow so much?<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/07/judge_orders_obama_administrat.html">Judge Orders Release of Young Detainee at Guantánamo</a><br />By WILLIAM GLABERSON<br />New York Times<br />July 30, 2009<br /><br />WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Thursday ordered that one of the youngest detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, be released by late August in a case that drew wide attention because of rulings that he had been tortured by Afghan officials and abused in American custody.<br /><br />Mohamed Jawad<br /><br />“Enough has been imposed on this young man to date,” the judge, Ellen Segal Huvelle, said in a courtroom crowded with people drawn by what had become a confrontation between the judge and the Obama administration...<br /><br />The ruling on Thursday came after a concession by the government last week that it could no longer defend Mr. Jawad’s military detention in the habeas corpus case before Judge Huvelle. She had declared that the administration’s case for continuing his detention after nearly seven years was “riddled with holes” and that virtually all of the government’s evidence came from confessions he made after being threatened with death...<br /><br />Mr. Jawad’s military lawyer, Maj. David J. R. Frakt, said he would file court challenges to any effort by the administration to move his client to the United States to face charges. But Major Frakt conceded that the Aug. 21 deadline Judge Huvelle gave the government to send Mr. Jawad to Afghanistan also gave prosecutors time to work on a grand jury investigation.<br /><br />“We have won the battle,” he said outside the federal courthouse here. “Have we won the war? Perhaps it remains to be seen.”<br /><br />The Obama administration had asked for the 22 days to comply with a recently passed provision requiring that Congress be given 15-days notice of any detainee transfer. The administration said it needed an additional week to prepare the notice.<br /><br />Mr. Jawad’s age is unknown, but his lawyers say he was 14 or 15 at the time of the grenade attack. Military prosecutors have been pursuing war crimes charges against Mr. Jawad in the military commission system at Guantánamo. But their case foundered after a military judge ruled last year that it was largely based on confessions Mr. Jawad gave after being tortured...<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/07/judge_orders_obama_administrat.html">Judge Orders Obama Administration To Release Young Gitmo Detainee</a><br />July 30, 2009<br />By Frank James<br /><br />Federal Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle ordered the Obama Administration to release Mohammed Jawad, a youth who essentially grew up in Guantanamo after being seized by U.S. troops in Aghanistan.<br /><br />NPR's Ari Shapiro reports:<br /><br /> .... Jawad was in his early teens when Americans picked him up in Afghanistan. During his seven years at Guantanamo he has grown five inches, according to his lawyers. <br /><br /> The Justice Department says it needs a week to finalize an agreement with the Afghan government about returning Jawad to his family in Afghanistan.<br /><br /> Then the Administration must give Congress two weeks' notice.<br /><br /> So Jawad could be home by August 21st at the earliest.<br /><br /> But the Attorney General has not ruled out indicting him, either. <br /><br /> Judge Huvelle urged against that. <br /><br /> She said there would be serious speedy trial problems, since he's been in custody for so long.<br /><br /> Huvelle said Jawad may not be competent to stand trial, since he was tortured.<br /><br /> He was originally accused of wounding American soldiers by throwing a grenade at them. <br /><br /> Huvelle told government lawyers, "enough has been imposed on this young man to date."<br /><br /><br /><br />Judge Orders Young Guantanamo Detainee's Release<br />By Del Quentin Wilber<br />Washington Post <br />July 30, 2009<br /><br />...The lead prosecutor at Jawad's military commission hearing, Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, resigned because he said the evidence against Jawad was obtained <br /><br />...Given the uncertainty about Jawad’s age at the time of his arrest and the ambiguity about his alleged actions, his indefinite detention as an enemy combatant has become a notorious example of the abuses associated with President George W. Bush’s detention policies.<br /><br />“U.S. personnel at Bagram [Air base in Afghanistan, where Jawad was detained after his arrest] subjected Mr. Jawad to beatings, forced him into painful ’stress positions,’ deprived him of sleep, forcibly hooded him, placed him in physical and linguistic isolation, pushed him down stairs, chained him to a wall for prolonged periods, and subjected him to threats, including threats to kill him, [his family], and other intimidation,” the ACLU said in a July 1 legal brief.<br /><br />“While in an isolation cell, Mr. Jawad remained hooded and restrained with handcuffs. Guards made him stand up and, if Mr. Jawad sat down, he was beaten. Guards also kicked Mr. Jawad and made him fall over, as he was wearing leg shackles and was unable to take large steps. Sometimes guards fastened Mr. Jawad’s handcuffs to the door of his isolation cell so that he was unable to sit down.”<br /><br />U.S. authorities later transported Jawad to Guantanamo, where he was subjected to the notorious “frequent flyer” sleep deprivation program and other harsh interrogation methods, his lawyers said. Eventually, Jawad tried to commit suicide in his cell by slamming his head repeatedly against the wall.<br /><br />U.S. Air Force Major David Frakt, another attorney representing Jawad, said, “It is astonishing that even after conceding that the bulk of the evidence against Mr. Jawad was obtained through torture, the government is even considering proceeding with its bankrupt case. It is long past time to return Jawad home to his native Afghanistan in the face of the absence of any evidence against him.”...<br /><br />A military judge, Army Col. Stephen R. Henley, threw out the statements to Afghan police after he determined that the interrogators had threatened to kill Jawad or his family if he didn't confess.<br /><br />The judge also tossed out statements that Jawad gave that night to U.S. soldiers because his fears of being harmed "had not dissipated." <span style="font-weight:bold;">The case received publicity last year when a military prosecutor quit his post over Jawad's treatment.<br /></span><br />The former prosecutor also called for the detainee's release. At a hearing two weeks ago, Huvelle sharply criticized the government's evidence, saying it was "riddled with holes."Maura Larkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16800561169406889185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38583163.post-74723177302777236612009-07-01T14:32:00.000-07:002009-07-01T14:37:29.109-07:00At the Pentagon, Marc Garlasco recommended targets in Iraq; now he works for human rights<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_BEag4Ij-NBI/SkvXCl1nwHI/AAAAAAAABjg/k97x8UOj4I0/s1600-h/garlasco_200.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_BEag4Ij-NBI/SkvXCl1nwHI/AAAAAAAABjg/k97x8UOj4I0/s400/garlasco_200.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353609021576691826" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89460867">Assessing the Human Cost of Air Strikes in Iraq</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=89460867&m=89460864">Listen Now</a> <br /><br />Marc Garlasco is the senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch. <br /> <br /><br />Fresh Air from WHYY, April 8, 2008 · As chief of high-value targeting for the Pentagon, Marc Garlasco helped plan the targets of laser-guided bombs during the invasion of Iraq. Now a senior analyst with Human Rights Watch, he visits war zones where he assesses the damage being done to civilians by bombs and lobbies for greater deliberation in the use of air power. Garlasco has provided assessments for Human Rights Watch throughout the world, including Israel and Iraq.Maura Larkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16800561169406889185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38583163.post-16096675781890314492009-06-30T20:11:00.000-07:002009-07-01T13:09:19.808-07:00Meet Erik Prince, the Master of War<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_BEag4Ij-NBI/Sku0Am4RekI/AAAAAAAABjY/48uXYTqGubM/s1600-h/ErikPrinceMasterOfWar.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 66px; height: 100px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_BEag4Ij-NBI/Sku0Am4RekI/AAAAAAAABjY/48uXYTqGubM/s400/ErikPrinceMasterOfWar.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353570504589539906" /></a> After reading the first chapter of <span style="font-style:italic;">Master of War</span> by CNN producer Suzanne Simons, I'm already an admirer of Erik Prince, a man who designed his own life from an early age. It seems that he incorporated his parents' conservative values into his life plan, rather than being drawn into any plan of his parents. I am also terrified of Mr. Prince. His personality seems to consist almost entirely of driving ambition, with little room left for contemplation.<br /><br />The first sentence of Suzanne Simons book is, "Erik Prince's body bounced off the hood of the North Carolina Parks Development pickup truck before vanishing over a steep embankment next to a mountain road." The story goes on to prove that nothing gives this man pause.<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780061886997/Master_of_War/index.aspx">Master of War</a><br />By Suzanne Simons <br />Introduction by publisher:<br /><br />The name Blackwater, the world's largest private military contractor, became infamous early in the Iraq War, when four of its men were seized by a mob in Fallujah, murdered, and hung from a bridge for the world to see. Since then, Blackwater has expanded dramatically; its men have been involved in major scandals, including a shooting spree in Iraq that has now caused the Iraqi government to blacklist the company... <br /><br />He publicly reassures everyone that Blackwater only works for the U.S., and would never become a mercenary organization for other governments, yet he has another entire company dedicated to doing just that...<br /><br />In addition, he has a private spying company, run by former top CIA men, employing extraordinarily sensitive methods and technical sophistication, for rent by any interested party... <br /><br />He has given Suzanne Simons hours of interviews; access to his staff; invitations to join him on trips to Afghanistan; and more. He is a fascinating figure, part deeply conservative, evangelical patriot; part rebellious, go-it-alone kingpin. He is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and his companies are worth billions. His empire dwarfs all of its competitors, to such a degree that even if the military wanted to wash its hands of him, they wouldn't be able to replace him.Maura Larkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16800561169406889185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38583163.post-33141434315292211962009-06-18T22:26:00.001-07:002009-06-19T12:11:21.851-07:00How did the Iraq war start? With the FBI leadership thwarting Ken Williams and Colleen RowleyThe evidence indicates that the people at the top of the FBI, such as Dave Frasca, might have demonstrated incompetence and arrogance toward FBI field agents before 9-11.<br /><br />July 10, 2001: <br /><a href="http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a071001williams#a071001williams">FBI Agent Sends Memo Warning that Unusual Number of Muslim Extremists Are Learning to Fly in Arizona</a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_BEag4Ij-NBI/SjviVj_ETaI/AAAAAAAABiE/lnWU3FTIg-M/s1600-h/444_ken_williams2050081722-8040.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 116px; height: 170px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_BEag4Ij-NBI/SjviVj_ETaI/AAAAAAAABiE/lnWU3FTIg-M/s400/444_ken_williams2050081722-8040.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5349117842497490338" /></a> FBI agent Ken Williams sends a memorandum warning about suspicious activities involving a group of Middle Eastern men taking flight training lessons in Arizona...<br /><br />The memo...focuses on Zakaria Soubra, a Lebanese flight student in Prescott, Arizona, and his connection with a terror group in Chechnya that has ties to al-Qaeda.<br /><br />Names nine other suspect students from Pakistan, India, Kenya, Algeria, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia... <br /><br />Hijacker Hani Hanjour, attending flight school in Arizona in early 2001 and probably continuing into the summer of 2001...is not one of the students, but, as explained below, it seems two of the students know him.<br /><br />Notes that he interviewed some of these students, and heard some of them make hostile comments about the US. Additionally, he noticed that they were suspiciously well informed about security measures at US airports. [Die Zeit (Hamburg), 10/1/2002]<br /> <br /><br />Notes an increasing, “inordinate number of individuals of investigative interest” taking flight lessons in Arizona. <br /><br />Suspects that some of the ten people he has investigated are connected to al-Qaeda. One person on the list, Ghassan al Sharbi, will be arrested in Pakistan in March 2002 with al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida (see March 28, 2002). Al Sharbi attended a flight school in Prescott, Arizona. He also apparently attended the training camps in Afghanistan and swore loyalty to bin Laden in the summer of 2001. He apparently knows Hani Hanjour in Arizona (see October 1996-Late April 1999). He also is the roommate of Soubra, the main target of the memo. [Los Angeles Times, 1/24/2003; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 521]<br /><br />Discovers that one of them was communicating through an intermediary with Abu Zubaida. This apparently is a reference to Hamed al Sulami, who had been telephoning a Saudi imam known to be Zubaida’s spiritual advisor. Al Sulami is an acquaintance of Hanjour in Arizona (see October 1996-Late April 1999). [Mercury News (San Jose), 5/23/2002; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 520-521, 529]<br /><br />Discusses connections between several of the students and a radical group called Al-Muhajiroun. [Mercury News (San Jose), 5/23/2002] This group supported bin Laden, and issued a fatwa, or call to arms, that included airports on a list of acceptable terror targets. [Associated Press, 5/22/2002] Soubra, the main focus of the memo, is a member of Al-Muhajiroun and an outspoken radical. He met with Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, the leader of Al-Muhajiroun in Britain, and started an Arizona chapter of the organization. After 9/11, some US officials will suspect that Soubra has ties to al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. He will be held two years, then deported to Lebanon in 2004. [Los Angeles Times, 10/28/2001; Los Angeles Times, 1/24/2003; Arizona Republic, 5/2/2004; Arizona Monthly, 11/2004] Though Williams doesn’t include it in his memo, in the summer of 1998, Bakri publicized a fax sent by bin Laden to him that listed al-Qaeda’s four objectives in fighting the US. The first objective was “bring down their airliners.” (see Summer 1998). [Los Angeles Times, 10/28/2001]<br /><br />Warns of a possible “effort by Osama bin Laden to send students to the US to attend civil aviation universities and colleges” [Fortune, 5/22/2002] , so they can later hijack aircraft. [Die Zeit (Hamburg), 10/1/2002]<br /><br />Recommends that the “FBI should accumulate a listing of civil aviation universities and colleges around the country. FBI field offices with these types of schools in their area should establish appropriate liaison. FBI [headquarters] should discuss this matter with other elements of the US intelligence community and task the community for any information that supports Phoenix’s suspicions.” [Arizona Republic, 7/24/2003] (The FBI has already done this, but because of poor FBI communications, Williams is not aware of the report.)<br /><br /><br />Recommends that the FBI ask the State Department to provide visa data on flight school students from Middle Eastern countries, which will facilitate FBI tracking efforts. [New York Times, 5/4/2002]<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The memo is addressed to the following FBI Agents:<br /><br />Dave Frasca, chief of the Radical Fundamentalist Unit (RFU) at FBI headquarters;</span><br />Elizabeth Harvey Matson, Mark Connor and Fred Stremmel, Intelligence Operations Specialists in the RFU;<br />Rod Middleton, acting chief of the Usama bin Laden Unit (UBLU);<br />Jennifer Maitner, an Intelligence Operations Specialist in the UBLU;<br />Jack Cloonan, an agent on the New York FBI’s bin Laden unit, the I-49 squad; (see January 1996 and Spring 2000).<br />Michael S. Butsch, an agent on another New York FBI squad dealing with other Sunni terrorists. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 7/10/2001 pdf file; US Congress, 7/24/2003, pp. 135 pdf file]<br /><br />However, the memo is not uploaded into the FBI’s information system until the end of the month and is apparently not received by all these people (see July 27, 2001 and after). <br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />Williams also shares some concerns with the CIA </span>(see (July 27, 2001)). [Mercury News (San Jose), 5/23/2002] One anonymous government official who has seen the memo says, “This was as actionable a memo as could have been written by anyone.” [Insight, 5/27/2002] However, the memo is merely marked “routine,” rather than “urgent.” <br /><br />It is generally ignored, not shared with other FBI offices, and the recommendations are not taken. One colleague in New York replies at the time that the memo is “speculative and not very significant.” [Die Zeit (Hamburg), 10/1/2002; US Congress, 7/24/2003, pp. 135 pdf file] Williams is unaware of many FBI investigations and leads that could have given weight to his memo. Authorities later claim that Williams was only pursuing a hunch, but one familiar with classified information says, “This was not a vague hunch. He was doing a case on these guys.” [Mercury News (San Jose), 5/23/2002]<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_BEag4Ij-NBI/Sjvg3p2OKhI/AAAAAAAABh0/rUkPbL-9hIc/s1600-h/rowley265x322.300wide.365high.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 365px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_BEag4Ij-NBI/Sjvg3p2OKhI/AAAAAAAABh0/rUkPbL-9hIc/s400/rowley265x322.300wide.365high.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5349116229163297298" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_BEag4Ij-NBI/SjvgEFGZYyI/AAAAAAAABhs/Qjhh_-CY5Hs/s1600-h/135_coleen_rowley.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 203px; height: 250px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_BEag4Ij-NBI/SjvgEFGZYyI/AAAAAAAABhs/Qjhh_-CY5Hs/s400/135_coleen_rowley.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5349115343125701410" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=coleen_rowley"><br />Coleen Rowley</a><br />Employee FBI Minnesota field office<br /><br />Coleen Rowley was a participant or observer in the following events:<br />August 20-September 11, 2001: FBI’s Radical Fundamentalist Unit Unhelpful with Moussaoui Search Warrant<br /><br /><br />The FBI Minneapolis field office wishes to search Zacarias Moussaoui’s belongings, which will later be found to contain enough information to potentially stop 9/11 (see August 16, 2001). <br /><br />To do so it must get the approval of the Radical Fundamentalist Unit (RFU) at FBI headquarters. <br /><br />However, the RFU throws obstacles in the warrant request’s path:<br /><br />RFU chief Dave Frasca stops the Minneapolis office from pursuing a criminal warrant (see August 21, 2001);<br /><br />When French authorities say that Moussaoui is connected to the Chechen rebels, RFU agent Mike Maltbie insists that the FBI representative in Paris go through all telephone directories in France to see how many Zacarias Moussaouis live there (see August 22, 2001);<br /><br />Maltbie stops Minneapolis from informing the Justice Department’s Criminal Division about the case (see August 22, 2001);<br /><br />When RFU agent Rita Flack, who is working on the Moussaoui case, reads the Phoenix memo suggesting that bin Laden is sending pilots to the US for training, she apparently does not tell her colleagues about it, even though it was addressed to several of them, including Frasca (see July 10, 2001 and August 22, 2001);<br /><br />The RFU does not provide the relevant documentation to attorneys consulted about the request. In particular, Flack does not tell them about the Phoenix Memo, even though one of the attorneys will later say she asked Flack if anyone is sending radical Islamists to the US to learn to fly (see August 22-28, 2001);<br /><br />When Minneapolis learns Moussaoui apparently wants to go on jihad, Frasca is not concerned and says jihad does not necessarily mean holy war. However, a top Justice Department attorney will later say “he would have tied bells and whistles” to this comment in a request for a search warrant had he known this (see August 17, 2001 and August 29, 2001);<br /><br /> Maltbie tells the Minneapolis office that getting a warrant will “take a few months” (see August 24, 2001). He also tells Minneapolis, “We know what’s going on. You will not question us.” (see August 27, 2001);<br /><br />Maltbie weakens the warrant request by editing it and removing a statement by a CIA officer that Chechen rebel leader Ibn Khattab was closely connected to Osama bin Laden, despite their being intelligence linking that leader to bin Laden (see August 28, 2001);<br /><br />In a key meeting with an attorney about the request, Maltbie and Flack, who are submitting the warrant, are adamant that it is not sufficiently supported (see August 28, 2001);<br /><br />Frasca opposes a plan to put an undercover officer in the jail cell with Moussaoui to find out more information about his connections to Islamic militants (August 29, 2001 and Shortly After);<br /><br />The RFU does not want a Minneapolis agent to accompany Moussaoui when he is deported (see (August 30-September 10, 2001));<br /><br />The RFU does not re-consider getting a criminal search warrant after a decision is taken not to seek a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (see After August 28, 2001);<br /><br />Frasca and Maltbie are said to oppose a search warrant after 9/11 (see September 11, 2001).<br /><br />It is unclear why the RFU opposes the warrant so strongly. The Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General will later criticize the RFU staff, but will conclude that they did not intentionally sabotage the warrant application. [US Department of Justice, 11/2004, pp. 101-222 pdf file] <br /><br />A 2004 book by independent researcher Mike Ruppert will speculate that Frasca is actually a CIA agent. Ruppert suggests that the CIA placed Frasca in the FBI to prevent CIA operations from being compromised by FBI investigations. But he does not provide any direct evidence of ties between Frasca and the CIA (see October 1, 2004). The Minneapolis agents will offer a different interpretation of RFU actions. Coleen Rowley will say, “I feel that certain facts… have, up to now, been omitted, downplayed, glossed over and/or mischaracterized in an effort to avoid or minimize personal and/or institutional embarrassment on the part of the FBI and/or perhaps even for improper political reasons.” <br /><br />She asks, “Why would an FBI agent deliberately sabotage a case? The superiors acted so strangely that some agents in the Minneapolis office openly joked that these higher-ups ‘had to be spies or moles… working for Osama bin Laden.’… Our best real guess, however, is that, in most cases avoidance of all ‘unnecessary’ actions/decisions by FBI [headquarters] managers… has, in recent years, been seen as the safest FBI career course. Numerous high-ranking FBI officials who have made decisions or have taken actions which, in hindsight, turned out to be mistaken or just turned out badly… have seen their careers plummet and end. <br /><br />This has in turn resulted in a climate of fear which has chilled aggressive FBI law enforcement action/decisions.” [Time, 5/21/2002] Minneapolis FBI agent Harry Samit will agree with explanation, telling the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General that the RFU is guilty of “obstructionism, criminal negligence, and careerism.” [Associated Press, 3/20/2006] Samit will also say that Maltbie even told him he was acting this way to “preserve the existence of his advancement potential” in the FBI. [Newsday, 3/21/2006]<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />August 21, 2001: FBI Headquarters Blocks Criminal Investigation into Moussaoui<br /><br /><br />Dave Frasca of the FBI’s Radical Fundamentalist Unit (RFU) denies a request from the Minneapolis FBI field office to seek a criminal warrant to search the belongings of Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested on August 15 as part of an intelligence investigation (see August 16, 2001 and August 16, 2001). Minneapolis agents believe they had uncovered sufficient evidence that Moussaoui is involved in a criminal conspiracy, and want to obtain a criminal search warrant instead of a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). <br /><br />But because they originally opened an intelligence investigation, they cannot go directly to the local US attorney’s office for the warrant. In order to begin a parallel criminal investigation, they must first obtain permission from the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR) so they can pass the information over the “wall.” [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 3/9/2006] Harry Samit, a Minneapolis FBI agent on the Moussaoui case, calls Dave Frasca, the head of the Radical Fundamentalist Unit (RFU) at FBI headquarters, to discuss the request. Samit tells Frasca that they have already completed the paperwork for a criminal investigation, but, according to Samit, Frasca says, “You will not open it, you will not open a criminal case.” Frasca says that argument for probable cause in seeking a criminal warrant is “shaky” and notes that if they fail to obtain a criminal warrant, they will be unable to obtain a warrant under FISA. Samit, who has only been with the FBI since 1999, defers to his superior, and writes on the paperwork, “Not opened per instructions of Dave Frasca.” Samit then tells his Chief Division Counsel, Coleen Rowley, about the conversation, and she also advises him that it would be better to apply for a warrant under FISA. When the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) interviews Frasca after 9/11, he will claim he never spoke to Samit about this matter, and that the conversation was with Chris Briese, one of Samit’s superiors. However, Briese will deny this and the OIG will conclude that the conversation was between Samit and Frasca. [US Department of Justice, 11/2004, pp. 128-132 pdf file; US Department of Justice, 3/1/2006 pdf file] To get a FISA search warrant for Moussaoui’s belongings the FBI must now show there is probable cause to believe Moussaoui is an agent of a foreign power. [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 3/9/2006] A criminal warrant to search Moussaoui’s belongings will be granted only after the 9/11 attacks (see September 11, 2001).<br /><br />Entity Tags: David Frasca, Coleen Rowley, Harry Samit, FBI Headquarters, Zacarias Moussaoui, Radical Fundamentalist Unit, FBI Minnesota field office<br /><br />Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline<br />Bookmark and Share<br />August 23-27, 2001: Minnesota FBI Agents ‘Absolutely Convinced’ Moussaoui Plans to Hijack Plane; They Are Undermined by FBI Headquarters<br />Edit event <br /><br />Zacarias Moussaoui’™s laptop, not opened until after 9/11.Zacarias Moussaoui’™s laptop, not opened until after 9/11. [Source: FBI]In the wake of the French intelligence report (see August 22, 2001) on Zacarias Moussaoui, FBI agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, are “in a frenzy” and “absolutely convinced he [is] planning to do something with a plane.” Agent Greg Jones tells FBI headquarters that Moussaoui might “fly something into the World Trade Center.” [Newsweek, 5/20/2002; US Department of Justice, 11/2004, pp. 153 pdf file] Minneapolis FBI agents become “desperate to search the computer lap top” and “conduct a more thorough search of his personal effects,” especially since Moussaoui acted as if he was hiding something important in the laptop when arrested. [Time, 5/21/2002; Time, 5/27/2002] As the Radical Fundamentalist Unit (RFU) at FBI headquarters has already blocked an application for a criminal warrant (see August 21, 2001), the FBI’s Minneapolis field office must apply for one under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Minneapolis agent Harry Samit completes an application for a warrant to search Moussaoui’s belongings on August 25. To obtain the warrant, he has to show there is probable cause to believe Moussaoui is an agent of a foreign power. The memo states that Moussaoui recruited a fighter for a particular Chechen rebel group connected to al-Qaeda, so he is connected to al-Qaeda through the Chechens. However, the RFU at FBI headquarters believes that the Chechen rebels should not be described as a foreign power and that the link between the Chechens and bin Laden is not strong enough. [US Department of Justice, 11/2004, pp. 128-132 pdf file; US Department of Justice, 3/1/2006 pdf file] <br /><br />However, earlier in 2001 the FBI had received information indicating that this Chechen group and bin Laden were planning to attack US interests (see Before April 13, 2001). Minneapolis FBI agent Coleen Rowley later sums up how the Minneapolis agents feel at this point, when she says FBI headquarters “almost inexplicably, throw up roadblocks” and undermine their efforts. Headquarters personnel bring up “almost ridiculous questions in their apparent efforts to undermine the probable cause.” One of Jones’ e-mails to FBI headquarters says they are “setting this up for failure.” That turns out to be correct. [Time, 5/21/2002; Time, 5/27/2002; US Department of Justice, 11/2004, pp. 161 pdf file]<br /><br />Entity Tags: World Trade Center, Zacarias Moussaoui, Harry Samit, Radical Fundamentalist Unit, FBI Headquarters, FBI Minnesota field office, Greg Jones, Coleen Rowley, Clinton administration<br /><br />Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline<br />Bookmark and Share<br />August 29, 2001 and Shortly After: FBI Headquarters Rejects Plan to Place Undercover Officer in Moussaoui’s Cell<br />Edit event <br /><br />After failing to obtain a warrant to search Zacarias Moussaoui’s belongings (see August 28, 2001), the FBI’s Minneapolis field office considers inserting an Arabic speaking undercover officer into Moussaoui’s cell “in an attempt to learn the name or description of the recognized foreign power with whom Moussaoui is aligned.” Minneapolis sees no problem with the idea and contacts the Radical Fundamentalist Unit (RFU) at FBI headquarters about it. <br /><br />RFU chief Dave Frasca replies, “Let us look into this asap. Do NOT go forward with the [undercover officer] until we weigh in…” Frasca then discusses the idea with an expert at the FBI’s International Terrorism Operations Section, who says the proposal is “ridiculous” and should not be implemented. Frasca also tells Minneapolis the idea is problematic because in the event of criminal proceedings the undercover officer will not be in a position to testify. <br /><br />The plan is abandoned and the FBI continues with preparations to deport Moussaoui (see (August 30-September 10, 2001)). [US Department of Justice, 11/2004, pp. 166-7 pdf file]<br /><br /><br />September 11, 2001: FBI Agents Obtain Warrant for Moussaoui Too Late<br /><br /><br />Two pages from Moussaoui’s notebooks mentioning Ahad Sabet (Ramzi bin al-Shibh’s alias), plus phone number and mention of his residence in Germany.Two pages from Moussaoui’s notebooks mentioning Ahad Sabet (Ramzi bin al-Shibh’s alias), plus phone number and mention of his residence in Germany. [Source: FBI]<br /><br />Within an hour of the attacks of 9/11, the Minnesota FBI uses a memo written to FBI headquarters shortly after Moussaoui’s arrest to ask permission from a judge for the search warrant they have been desperately seeking. <br /><br />After the WTC is hit for the first time, Mike Maltbie of the Radical Fundamentalist Unit (RFU) at FBI headquarters calls the Minneapolis field office and talks to Coleen Rowley. When Rowley says it is essential they get a warrant to search Moussaoui’s belongings, Maltbie instructs her to take no action, because it could have an impact on matters of which she is not aware. Rowley replies that it would have to be the “hugest coincidence” if Moussaoui were not related to the attack. She says that Maltbie replies that coincidence is the right word. Maltbie will later say he does not recall using the word “coincidence” in the conversation. Maltbie then consults an FBI attorney, who says Minneapolis should seek the warrant. <br /><br />While Rowley is waiting for Maltbie to call back, one of her colleagues, Chris Briese, talks to RFU chief Dave Frasca. According to Briese, Frasca initially says there is not enough evidence for a criminal warrant, but when they find out the Pentagon has been hit Frasca consents. <br /><br />Frasca says that he consents immediately. [Time, 5/21/2002; US Department of Justice, 11/2004, pp. 178-9 pdf file] Briese later tells Samit that Frasca also initially claims it was just “a coincidence.” [Minneapolis Star Tribune, 6/4/2006] A federal judge approves a criminal search warrant that afternoon. [New Yorker, 9/30/2002; US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 3/9/2006] The Radical Fundamentalist Unit at FBI headquarters had previously blocked requests for criminal and intelligence search warrants (see August 21, 2001 and August 28, 2001). <br /><br />Minnesota FBI Agent Coleen Rowley notes that this very memo was previously deemed insufficient by FBI headquarters to get a search warrant, and the fact that they are immediately granted one when finally allowed to ask shows “the missing piece of probable cause was only the [FBI headquarters’] failure to appreciate that such an event could occur.” [Time, 5/21/2002] <br /><br />After the warrant is granted, the belongings are then rushed to an evidence response team, which discovers documents linking Moussaoui to eleven of the hijackers (see August 16, 2001). <br /><br />Rowley later suggests that if they had received the search warrant sooner, “There is at least some chance that… may have limited the September 11th attacks and resulting loss of life.” [Time, 5/27/2002]Maura Larkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16800561169406889185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38583163.post-65654253822467986592009-06-16T12:13:00.001-07:002009-06-16T12:19:24.001-07:00Inconguous results in Iran presidential election 2009<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/06/16/iran.election.questions/">Analysts pore over 'ambiguous' Iran results</a><br />By Matt Smith<br />CNN<br />June 16, 2009<br /><br />Iranian presidential challenger Mir Hossein Moussavi's hometown of Tabriz is Exhibit A for his supporters as they argue that last week's election was rigged.<br />Mir Hossein Moussavi lost last week's Iranian presidential election, according to official numbers.<br /><br />Official results from Friday's polls show that the city and its surrounding province, dominated by ethnic Azeris like Moussavi, voted to re-elect hard-line incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It's a result many observers of Iranian politics find incongruous but just one of the things that have raised eyebrows among Western analysts.<br /><br />There were no exit polls conducted in Friday's balloting and little polling before the election. Nate Silver, who runs the U.S. election Web site fivethirtyeight.com, said the official results were "ambiguous."<br /><br />"The fact that you had some areas where conservatives got only 20 percent of the vote in 2005 and got 70 percent of the vote this time -- things like that have people who already had doubts about those numbers scratching their heads," Silver said...Maura Larkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16800561169406889185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38583163.post-73285373591064280022009-06-15T17:47:00.000-07:002009-06-17T10:36:22.408-07:00Why were the remains of World Trade Center towers shipped to China?<a href="http://english.people.com.cn/200201/24/eng20020124_89243.shtml">Baoshan Group Buys Steel Debris from WTC</a><br />Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, January 24, 2002<br />[This is Google's cache of http://english.people.com.cn/200201/24/eng20020124_89243.shtml. It is a snapshot of the page as it appeared on Apr 7, 2009 13:49:28 GMT. The current page could have changed in the meantime.]<br /><br />The Baoshan Iron and Steel Company Group has bought 50,000 tons of steel debris from the World Trade Center destroyed by terrorists on September 11 last year.<br />The company plans to feed the debris, purchased for 120 US dollars per ton, into a furnace to make new steel.<br /><br /><br />The Baoshan Iron and Steel Company Group has bought 50,000 tons of steel debris from the World Trade Center destroyed by terrorists on September 11 last year.<br /><br />A cargo vessel carrying the steel debris is due to arrive at Shanghai Port this Friday, Beijing Youth Daily reported Wednesday.<br /><br />The newspaper quoted sources from the conglomerate as saying that the steel debris was purchased for 120 US dollars per ton.<br /><br />The Shanghai-based conglomerate plans to feed most of the debris into a furnace to make new steel.<br /><br />Cut, melted, reforged<br />At least 400,000 tons of steel debris has resulted from the destruction of the twin towers.<br /><br />A New York-based iron and steel administrative company has been selling most of the steel debris globally, and New York City is said to keep part of the WTC debris to commemorate the innocent people killed in the terrorists' attack.<br /><br />The charred steel girders from the World Trade Center - cut, melted and reforged - will soon end up in hundreds of thousands of soup cans, appliances, car engines and buildings across the world, according a recent report by New York Daily news.<br /><br />About 60,000 tons of steel from the twin towers' once-magnificent skeleton have been cut into manageable 3- to 5-foot lengths and loaded onto barges.<br /><br />While mostly bound for mills in South Korea, shipments also have made their way to Malaysia, Chicago and Florida.<br /><br />The steel's swift journey from the smoldering piles at Ground Zero to recycling furnaces is the result of a controversial decision by the city to send the girders, columns and beams to scrap yards in New Jersey - which then put them up for sale.<br /><br />Disgrace, profit, memorial?<br />"This is a disgrace to the memory of the nearly 3,000 people killed," said Sally Regenhard, the mother of Firefighter Christian Regenhard, who died Sept. 11.<br /><br />She is part of a group of victims' families, structural engineers and fire-safety experts who want the recycling halted until the steel can be examined more thoroughly.<br /><br />Metal Management Northeast of Newark and Hugo Neu Schnitzer East of Jersey City won the initial bidding for the city contracts to recycle the Trade Center steel - and continue to bid on subsequent portions of the nearly 300,000 tons of steel at Ground Zero. Few details have been released.<br /><br />Industry experts estimated the steel is being sold by the city Design and Construction Department to the recyclers for $75 to $100 a ton. Once cut and reforged, it can sell for $220 to $600 a ton. Still, the companies say their profit has been modest.<br /><br />The recycling process is so quick, industry experts said, that little more than four months after the terrorist attacks, tons of the steel probably have been mixed with virgin ore, melted and reused.<br /><br />Amid the piles on the firm's dock is a charred boulder pierced with steel rods. The chunk of concrete and steel, which Metal Management workers call The Meteorite, contains three to four floors of a building compressed into a 5-by-7-foot ball.<br /><br />Marked "For PA" in chalk, it will one day be part of a Port Authority memorial in honor of the nearly 3,000 people killed at Ground Zero.<br /><br />However, the vast majority of the steel Metal Management receives - generally the larger pieces from the disaster site - is being recycled. Barges containing up to 1,200 tons of steel regularly leave piers in lower Manhattan and head to the Newark scrap yard.<br /><br />US recyclers are increasingly turning to Asian markets, where mills pay from 5% to 10% more than domestic firms.<br /><br />The recycling work will likely take up to a year to complete.<br /><br />Metal Management has donated several pieces of wreckage to organizations seeking to establish WTC memorials. Less than half a mile from its dock, two 8-foot I-beams form a replica of the towers in an unfinished shrine at Stella Maris Seamen's Church.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />The following New York Times article discusses the government's report about the collapse of World Trade Center building 7. A week after this article was written, a high school physics teacher and others <a href="http://learningboosters.blogspot.com/2009/06/california-high-school-physics-teacher.html">challenged the accuracy of the government report</a>, and it was changed.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/nyregion/22wtccnd.html">Fire, Not Explosives, Felled 3rd Tower on 9/11, Report Says</a><br />New York Times<br />By ERIC LIPTON<br />August 21, 2008<br /><br />Fires in the 47-story office tower at the edge of the World Trade Center site undermined floor beams and a critical structural column, federal investigators concluded on Thursday, as they attempted to curb still-rampant speculation that explosives caused the building’s collapse on Sept. 11, 2001.<br /><br />No one died when the tower, 7 World Trade Center, tumbled, as the estimated 4,000 office workers there at the time had evacuated before it gave way, nearly seven hours after the second of the twin towers came down.<br /><br />But the collapse of 7 World Trade Center — home at the time to branch offices of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Secret Service and the Giuliani administration’s emergency operations center — is cited in hundreds of Web sites and books as perhaps the most compelling evidence that an insider secretly planted explosives, intentionally destroying the tower.<br /><br />A separate, preliminary report issued in 2002 by the Federal Emergency Management Agency questioned whether diesel fuel tanks installed in the tower to supply backup generators — including one that powered the Giuliani administration’s emergency “bunker” — might have been to blame.<br /><br />But S. Shyam Sunder, the lead investigator from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, based here in the suburbs of Washington, also rejected that theory on Thursday, even as he acknowledged that the collapse had been something of a puzzle.<br /><br />“Our take-home message today is the reason for the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is no longer a mystery,” Dr. Sunder said at a news conference at the institute’s headquarters. “It did not collapse from explosives or fuel oil fires.”...<br /><br />During the last four decades, other towers in New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles have remained standing through catastrophic blazes that burned out of control for hours because of malfunctioning or nonexistent sprinkler systems. <br /><br />But 7 World Trade Center, which was not struck by a plane, is the first skyscraper in modern times to collapse primarily as a result of a fire. <br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />Adding to the suspicion is the fact that in the rush to clean up the site, almost all of the steel remains of the tower were disposed of, leaving investigators in later years with little forensic evidence...<br /></span><br />The skeptics — including several who attended Thursday’s news conference — were unimpressed. They have long argued that an incendiary material called thermite, made of aluminum powder and a metal oxide, was used to take down the trade center towers, an approach that would not necessarily result in an explosive boom. They also have argued that a sulfur residue found at the World Trade Center site is evidence of an inside job.<br /><br />Dr. Sunder said the investigators chose not to use the computer model to evaluate whether a thermite-fueled fire might have brought down the tower, since 100 pounds of it would have had to have been stacked directly against the critical column that gave way, which he said they did not believe had occurred.<br /><br />To the skeptics, it was a glaring omission.<br /><br />“It is very difficult to find what you are not looking for,” said Shane Geiger..Maura Larkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16800561169406889185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38583163.post-73060227997290665862009-05-30T19:48:00.001-07:002009-05-30T19:51:48.293-07:00A clear winner has emerged in the Iraq War: insurance companies!<a href="http://www.thewarscomehome.org/">The Wars Come Home</a><br /> <br /><br />Our government's failure to take care of its War Casualties and the lives left hanging in the balance.<br /><br />Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury are often undiagnosed and untreated.<br /><br />Leishmaniasis, often undiagnosed, is a dangerous blood borne parasite that can live in stored blood for up to 30 days and is transmitted sexually, congenitally, and by blood transfusion.<br /><br /><br />Hospital acquired infections were proliferated in the overburdened military evacuation system and some strains have grown to be completely resistant to every antimicrobial available.<br /><br />These Superbug strains were spread from the military facilities, to the VA facilities, to community hospitals and long term care facilities all across the US and any country where a contractor or soldier was repatriated via the US military.<br /><br /><br />The winners in the battle for medical care, disability, and death benefits are the insurance companies like AIG and CNA who are paid by the taxpayer to insure the Contractors under the Defense Base Act.Maura Larkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16800561169406889185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38583163.post-91385643625256224472009-05-30T19:33:00.000-07:002009-05-30T19:46:09.090-07:00Blackwater makes money by defrauding injured contractors<a href="http://www.fayobserver.com/article_ap?id=140485">ALJ William Dorsey Deals Blow to Blackwater Families</a><br /><br />Blackwater <a href="http://www.dbacomp.com/Taxes.html">misrepresents their employees as contractors</a> so they don't have to pay taxes but they magically become employees so the taxpayer has to pay for their Defense Base Act insurance.<br />This insurance for PSC's runs 50% and more of their yearly salary.<br /><br />Isn't this either tax evasion or fraud? <br /><br />And what about this? <a href="http://www.daylife.com/article/06Cd3oc51Cgah/articles/all/1">Blackwater Dodged Millions in Taxes</a>Maura Larkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16800561169406889185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38583163.post-22532827704840131182009-05-30T18:55:00.000-07:002009-05-30T19:47:13.826-07:00Don't Contractors Count When We Calculate the Costs of War?<a href="http://www.americancontractorsiniraq.com/">AMERICAN CONTRACTORS IN IRAQ</a> website has links to these articles and more:<br /><br />Pentagon’s IG to Examine AIG Insurance Provided to Private Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan<br /><br />The Defense Department's inspector general is preparing a possible audit to examine allegations that inadequate oversight by federal officials allowed AIG and other major carriers to deny medical benefits due civilian contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.Maura Larkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16800561169406889185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38583163.post-83632604630111149942009-02-22T14:15:00.001-08:002009-02-22T14:17:10.339-08:00<a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090222/ap_on_re_us/army_s_stingy_charity_abridged">AP INVESTIGATION: Army charity hoards millions</a><br />Jeff Donn, Ap National Writer<br />Feb. 22, 2009<br /><br />FORT BLISS, Texas – As soldiers stream home from Iraq and Afghanistan, the biggest charity inside the U.S. military has been stockpiling tens of millions of dollars meant to help put returning fighters back on their feet, an Associated Press investigation shows.<br /><br />Between 2003 and 2007 — as many military families dealt with long war deployments and increased numbers of home foreclosures — Army Emergency Relief grew into a $345 million behemoth. During those years, the charity packed away $117 million into its own reserves while spending just $64 million on direct aid, according to an AP analysis of its tax records.<br /><br />Tax-exempt and legally separate from the military, AER projects a facade of independence but really operates under close Army control. The massive nonprofit — funded predominantly by troops — allows superiors to squeeze soldiers for contributions; forces struggling soldiers to repay loans — sometimes delaying transfers and promotions; and too often violates its own rules by rewarding donors, such as giving free passes from physical training, the AP found.<br /><br />Founded in 1942, AER eases cash emergencies of active-duty soldiers and retirees and provides college scholarships for their families. Its emergency aid covers mortgage payments and food, car repairs, medical bills, travel to family funerals, and the like.<br /><br />Instead of giving money away, though, the Army charity lent out 91 percent of its emergency aid during the period 2003-2007. For accounting purposes, the loans, dispensed interest-free, are counted as expenses only when they are not paid back.<br /><br />During that same five-year period, the smaller Navy and Air Force charities both put far more of their own resources into aid than reserves. The Air Force charity kept $24 million in reserves while dispensing $56 million in total aid, which includes grants, scholarships and loans not repaid. The Navy charity put $32 million into reserves and gave out $49 million in total aid...Maura Larkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16800561169406889185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38583163.post-89679113727796572882009-01-05T11:32:00.000-08:002009-01-05T11:34:13.527-08:00The 2008 presidential election in one minuteClick below to see the <br /><a href="http://www.236.com/video/2008/watch_presidential_campaign_in_9955.php">2008 election in one minute.</a>Maura Larkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16800561169406889185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38583163.post-27719000475272974922008-11-02T12:37:00.000-08:002008-11-02T12:43:25.901-08:00Iraq must be dividedIt seems clear that democracy is not an option for a unified Iraq. It won't work for us, because it would mean that the Shiites would be in control, and would almost certainly unite with Iran. And democracy won't work for Iraq, because the Sunnis aren't disposed to accept being the underdogs.<br /><br />It seems to me that the only option is to divide the country. Before hostile tribes can work together, they need independence and respect. Then they will slowly discover that it's in their best interest to cooperate.<br /><br />Ethnic cleansing has separated ethnic groups over the past five years, so it shouldn't be difficult to draw the dividing lines, with Bagdad as a divided city like Berlin and Jerusalem once were.<br /><br />The only problem is to figure out a formula for sharing oil revenue.<br /><br />Then we can leave.Maura Larkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16800561169406889185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38583163.post-68962412369691631732008-08-07T09:56:00.000-07:002008-08-07T09:58:34.368-07:00John McCain and Britney Spears agree on one thingBritney Spears and John McCain <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPEV6twzxmE">agree about whom they trust.</a>Maura Larkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16800561169406889185noreply@blogger.com0