When Tulse Hill comes to Stockwell
Surely Tim Hames, not a noted dove, is starting to ask the right questions in the
Times
"The inconsistency bordering on callousness of Scotland Yard has been breathtaking. It was initially suggested that Mr Menezes was under surveillance and had been approached after he walked from his residence in Stockwell to the Tube station. It is now clear that he started his trip from Tulse Hill, where he had stayed at someone else’s home, was watched, was noted wearing bulky clothing, yet was allowed (despite the slaughter at Tavistock Square on July 7 and
the attempted blast on a double-decker at Hackney last Thursday) to board a bus for a 15-minute journey and was challenged only when he sought to buy an Underground ticket. Why was someone whom the police continue to insist was a “potential suicide-bomber” no menace on the No 2 bus, but an urgent threat who had to be taken out when moving in the direction of the Northern Line?
And then there was the attempt to “spin” this situation to suit the police immediately after the shooting. It must have been obvious within minutes that the man concerned had no explosives on him and it is highly likely that he had identifying documentation. Yet for hours on Friday police sources were briefing that this shooting was “directly connected” to their inquiries into the botched bombings of July 21 and over the weekend the implication rumbled on that he had lived in, or perhaps near, or somewhere quite close to, multi-occupancy accommodation that had been deemed “suspicious”."
The Much-Quoted "bomber"
Have a look at this piece of journalism from Sky News. It’s from their website.
It is of course an account of the incident that took place at Stockwell Tube Station on 22nd July.
The headline is enclosed by quotation marks. The reader is invited to accept the phrase the “Bomber looked terrified” as a direct quote from some one. Who described the terrified person as a bomber? Indeed the first sentence magically converts the "bomber" into a "suicide bomber". But I'll let that pass.
Mark Whitby describes the incident. But the expression “Mr Whitby said the suspected bomber….” is not surrounded by quotation marks. In other words, this is not a direct quote.
Teri Godly was in the carriage when the suspected bomber boarded. Again, no quotation marks round “suspected bomber”.
So no help there.
But perhaps the author has used the Metropolitan Police as the source.
Below the Sky piece, are the only two Met press releases of the 22nd July.
From the first, an extract from the Met’s Press conference, no mention of bomber. The incident was “linked to the ongoing and expanding anti-terrorist operation”. The second, and perhaps, more considered drops the suggestion of any link.
Here are the pieces.S
k
Sky Website
“BOMBER LOOKED PETRIFIED”
Eyewitnesses have told of their face-to-face encounter with the suspected suicide bomber.
Mark Whitby said he was sitting on the Tube at Stockwell when the man ran in to the carriage.
He described suddenly hearing people shouting "get down, get down".
Mr Whitby said: "An Asian guy ran on to the train. As he ran, he was hotly pursued by what I knew to be three plain-clothes police officers.
As the man got on the train I looked at his face. He looked from left to right, but he basically looked like a cornered rabbit, like a cornered fox.
"He looked absolutely petrified.
"He half-tripped, was half-pushed to the floor.
"One of the police officers was holding a black automatic pistol in his left hand. They held it down to him and unloaded five shots into him. I saw it. He's dead, five shots, he's dead."
"I'm totally distraught," he added. "It was no more than five yards away from where I was sitting as I saw it with my own eyes."
Mr Whitby said the suspected bomber "looked like a Pakistani" and was wearing a baseball cap and a thick coat.
He added: "He was quite large, big built, quite a sort of chubby guy."
Teri Godly, who was also in the carriage when the suspected bomber boarded, said: "A tall Asian man with a beard and a rucksack got on after me. "Then about eight or nine police with shotguns boarded after him and started shouting to us all 'get out, get out of the station'.
"People started screaming and we all started running quite calmly up the stairs. There were six or seven gun shots behind us. It was very surreal. No one was pushing or shoving. We were in a state of shock.
"It was only afterwards that I realised how lucky we had been."
Chris Wells, a 28-year-old company manager, said he was travelling on the Victoria Line towards Vauxhall when he left the train at Stockwell.
He saw about 20 police officers, some of them armed, rushing into the station before a man jumped over the barriers with police giving chase.
He said: "There were at least 20 officers and they were carrying big black guns.” The next thing I saw was this guy jump over the barriers and the police officers were chasing after him and everyone was just shouting 'get out, get out'."
Met Press conference 22.7
I can say as part of operations linked to yesterday's incidents, Met police officers have shot a man inside Stockwell Underground Station at approximately 10am this morning. London Ambulance Service and the air ambulance both attended and the man was pronounced dead at the scene. I understand Stockwell tube station remains closed.
The information I have available if that this shooting is directly linked to the ongoing and expanding anti-terrorist operation. Any death is deeply regrettable. I understand the man was challenged and refused to obey. I can't go any further than that at this stage…
Met Press Release 22/7
Man Shot at Stockwell Tube station.
We can confirm that at just after 10am this morning, Friday 22 July, armed officers from the Metropolitan Police entered Stockwell tube station in south London. A man was challenged by officers and was subsequently shot.
London Ambulance Service and the Helicopter Emergency Service attended the scene.
The man was pronounced dead at the scene.
Stockwell tube station is closed and cordons of 200 metres are in place.
As is routine, officers from the Met's Directorate of Professional Standards have been informed.
It's interesting to compare the accuracy of the BBC website report. No mention of bombers, no mention of suicide bombers.
Cheers
t
So Mr Blair We're Winning?
According to
Iraq body Count/Oxford Research Group's latest terrifying report:
- 24,865 civilians were reported killed in the first twoyears of the war
- Women and children accounted for almost 20% of all civilian deaths
- US-led forces killed 37% of civilian victims
- Post-invasion criminal violence accounted for 36% of all deaths
- Anti-occupation forces/insurgents killed 9% of
civilian victims
- Post-invasion, the number of civilians killed was
almost twice as high in year two (11,351) as in year one (6,215)
Speaking at the launch of the report in London yesterday, Professor John Sloboda, FBA, one of the reports authors said:
"The ever-mounting Iraqi death toll is the forgotten cost of the decision to go to war in Iraq. On average, 34 ordinary Iraqis have met violent deaths every day since the invasion of March 2003. ....It remains a matter of the gravest concern that, nearly two and half years on, neither the US nor the UK governments have begun to systematically measure the impact of their actions in terms of human lives destroyed.
The Breamish Valley
Within 30 minutes from the centre of Newcastle upon Tyne you can be in one of the last widernesses in England
Northern Exposure
The North-East culture is not all Broon Ale and Whippets. On Sunday this week, 1700 hundred threw away their clothes for a few hours to take part in American artist Spencer Tunick's intallation work.
And before you ask, no, the Rambler was not amongst the performers/installers on a rather chilly morning.
The same artist created a similar work in Barcelona in June 2003. Bet it was a bit warmer there!
Cheers
t
Remember that drivel about the Iraq insurgency being in its last throes spouted by
Dick[ appropriate or what?] Cheney a couple of weeks ago?
Well this is the latest episode.
Learning from History
Commentary by Niall Ferguson.
He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR. Beirut, Lebanon.
"I think that this could still fail." Those words - uttered by a senior American officer in Baghdad last month - probably gave opponents of the war in Iraq a bit of a kick. Judging by the polls, a majority of Americans probably now share that view. According to Gallup, 57 percent of Americans say it was not worth going to war in the first place. Around the same percentage say things are going badly today.
Yet history strongly suggests that an American withdrawal from Iraq in the near future would be a disaster. As another U.S. officer told The New York Times recently: "If we let go of the insurgency ... then this country could fail and go back into civil war and chaos."
People in Lebanon need no reminder that failed American interventions can leave "civil war and chaos" in their wake. But what happened in Beirut in 1983 is part of a pattern going back to Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1970s, and forward to Haiti in the 1990s. To talk glibly of "finding a way out of Iraq," as if it were just a matter of hailing a cab and heading for Baghdad airport, is to underestimate the danger of a bloody internecine war after the American exit.
Already, a substantial section of the Sunni minority in Iraq is engaged in a campaign of violence designed to prevent a stable majoritarian regime from emerging. The Shiites are preparing to defend their newfound political power by force of arms. Meanwhile, many young Kurds are preparing to fight a war of independence. Indeed, it is not too much to say that civil war in Iraq has already begun, since the majority of people killed in this year's bombings have been Iraqis, not Americans.
Instead of throwing up their hands in an irresponsible fit of despair, Americans need to learn from the past: not just from their other premature departures, but also from earlier victories over insurgencies. For not all insurgencies are successful. Indeed, of all the attempts in the past century by irregular indigenous forces to expel regular foreign forces, around a third have failed.
In 1917 British forces successfully invaded Mesopotamia, got to Baghdad, overthrew its Ottoman rulers and sought - in the words of the general who led them - to "liberate" its people. The British presence in Iraq was legitimized by both international law (it was designated a League of Nations mandate) and by a modicum of democracy (a referendum was held among local sheikhs to confirm the creation of a British-style constitutional monarchy). Despite all this, in 1920 there was a full-scale insurgency - the official term at the time - against the continuing British military presence.
Some may object that warfare today is a very different matter from warfare 85 years ago. Yet the striking thing about the events of 1920 is how very like the events of our own time they were. No doubt, both the United States and Britain had greater firepower than their rivals. But the advantages tend to cancel one another out. The reality of what is sometimes called "asymmetric warfare" is how very symmetrical it really is. When highly trained professional soldiers are pitted against indigenous insurgents, much of the high-end weaponry possessed by the former is rendered useless. In practice, insurgency is about leveling the military playing field, exploiting the advantages of local knowledge to stage hit-and-run attacks against the foreign occupiers, as well as anybody thought to be collaborating with them.
Indeed, if there is asymmetry, it lies in the advantages enjoyed by the insurgents. The cost of training and equipping an American soldier is relatively high; by contrast, life is tragically cheap among the young men of Baghdad and Fallujah. Even if the insurgents lose 10 men for every one that they kill, they are still winning.
Why, then, was it that the British were able to crush the insurgency of 1920? Three lessons stand out.
The first is that the American enterprise in Iraq today is dangerously undermanned. When General Eric Shinseki, then army chief of staff, estimated in February 2003 that "something of the order of several hundred thousand soldiers" might be needed to stabilize Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion, he was dismissed by then Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz as "wildly off the mark." I think he was indeed off the mark - but only because he almost certainly underestimated how many troops were needed.
In 1920, when the first Iraqi insurgency began, total British forces in Iraq numbered around 120,000, of whom around 34,000 were trained for actual fighting. During the insurgency, a further 15,000 or so troops arrived as reinforcements, bringing the total force to around 135,000.
Coincidentally, that is very close to the number of American military personnel currently in Iraq (around 138,000). The trouble is that the population of Iraq was probably just over 3 million in 1920, whereas today it is in the region of 24 million. That means that the ratio of Iraqis to foreign forces was then, at most, 23 to 1. Today, by contrast, the ratio of Iraqis to American service personnel is around 179 to 1. To arrive at a ratio of 23 to 1 today, the number of American troops would need to be in the region of one million.
Two other problems besides the manpower problem currently beset the American presence in Iraq. In 1920 the British quelled the insurgency with great ruthlessness. They relied on air power and punitive expeditions to inflict harsh collective punishments on villages believed to have supported the insurgents. The United States has not been above using brutal methods in Iraq. Yet it is impossible to believe that the now notorious practice of humiliating and indeed torturing captives has yielded any significant benefits when compared with what it has cost America's reputation. What the Germans used to call schrecklichkeit, or "frightfulness," may have its place in warfare; the British certainly believed so. But the American brand of schrecklichkeit has been almost entirely counter-productive.
The third problem has to do with timing and expectations. It was revealing that last month The Wall Street Journal reported Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's recent pronouncement that American forces should aim to work to a "10-30-30" timetable: 10 days should suffice to topple a rogue regime; 30 to establish order in its wake; and 30 to prepare for the next military undertaking. I am all in favor of the 10-30-30 timetable - so long as the metric is years, not days. For it may well take around 10 years to establish order in Iraq; another 30 to establish the rule of law; and quite possibly another 30 years to create a stable democracy.
Those American officers who say that it could take "years, many years" to succeed in Iraq are therefore right. But the Bush administration has just three and a half years left. Is it credible that American troops will still be in Iraq for even another four years after that? The insurgents are confident they will not be. They know that American democracy puts time on their side. Once again, the contrast with the British experience is instructive. Although Iraq was formally granted its independence in 1932, there was still some form of British presence in the country until the later 1950s, around 40 years after the original occupation.
If we acknowledge that the United States simply does not have the luxury of time that the British enjoyed and cannot be similarly ruthless, can it at least increase the manpower at its disposal in Iraq?
The official answer is that Iraqi security forces will soon be ready to play an effective role in policing. Past experience suggests that this may be unrealistic. It is just as probable that the training Iraqi soldiers are currently receiving will prove useful to them only when they fight one another in the coming Iraqi civil war.
What, then, of unused American resources? Almost no one (least of all the military) wants to go back to the draft. So could the existing system of an all volunteer force somehow be expanded to double (at least) the forces available? It seems unlikely. Indeed, the current system is already showing alarming signs of stress and strain as more and more is asked of the supposed "weekend soldiers" of the Reserve and the National Guard, who account for roughly two-fifths of the force in Iraq. In December, the Army National Guard admitted that it had fallen 30 percent below its recruiting goals in the preceding two months. Many members of the Individual Ready Reserve have been contesting the army's right to call them up.
How did the British address the manpower problem in 1920? The answer is that they depended heavily on soldiers from India, who accounted for more than 87 percent of combatant troops in the counter-insurgency campaign.
Perhaps, then, the greatest problem faced by the Anglophone empire of our own time is very simple: The United Kingdom had the Indian Army; the United States does not. Indeed, by a rich irony, the only significant auxiliary forces available to the Pentagon today are none other than ... the British Army. Unfortunately, British troops are far too few to be analogous to the Sikhs, Mahrattas and Baluchis who fought so effectively in Iraq in 1920.
No one should wish for an over-hasty American withdrawal from Iraq. It would be the prelude to a bloodbath of ethnic cleansing and sectarian violence, with inevitable spillovers into and interventions from neighboring countries. Rather, it is time for all concerned to acknowledge just how thinly stretched American forces in Iraq currently are. There is a desperate need to address this problem, and soon, whether by finding new allies (is it time to send U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to New Delhi?), radically expanding the accelerated citizenship program for immigrants, or lowering the (historically high) educational requirements currently demanded by military recruiters.
Yes, as that anonymous officer admitted, the Bush administration's policy in Iraq could indeed still fail. The point too few American liberals seem to grasp is how high the price will be if it does fail. It is a point, unfortunately, that also eludes most of America's allies. Does it also elude Rumsfeld? If "10-30-30" are the numbers that concern him, I begin to fear that it does. The numbers that matter right now are 179 to 1. That is not only the ratio of Iraqis to American. It is starting to look alarmingly like the odds against American success.
16th June 2005
Niall Ferguson is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and a senior
fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford. His latest book, "Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire," has just been published in paperback by Penguin.
Thanks to the Texas Whip:
Anyone noticed the frightening similarity between the Pope and The Emperor from Star-Wars?
The Honourable Fiend comments:
Step 1: Use the UK presidency of the EU to force biometric ID cards on all member states
Step 2: Claim you're only introducing them because of a Europe-wide agreement
Step 3: Conveniently neglect to mention that there would be no Europe-wide agreement if you hadn't forced it on them.
A quick note for those of you stupid enough to not have realised this yet:
All the bombers in Madrid used their own identities, and all the bombers in London would be 100% entitled to one of Tony's new ID cards. ID cards will not prevent terrorist attacks.
Blowback
Anyone noticed just how deceitful Blair is becoming? And how the broadcast media are letting let him off the Iraqi hook?
Deceitful- well nobody is really suggesting there is an unbroken thread from Basra to Kings Cross. But Blair responds to that unasked question; a lawyers trick to avoid getting struck off by fibbing to a court .
What
Galloway, and
Pilger assert is that Blair's foreign policy has contributed significantly to what happened last Thursday. How the Blair/Bush's policy in Iraq has caused the increase in terrorism worldwide; how Muslim opinion has been inflamed not only by the invasion of Iraq with a Christian Crusade, but also the manner in which the war and subsequent occupation have been conducted. Not just Abu Graib and Camp Breadbasket, but the criminal bombing of Fallujah with the loss of nearly 1000 civilians. I find it difficult to distinguish between that and what happened last Thursday. ( I notice the meedja has lapsed into calling it 7/7 as if it equated, in any way, with "9/11"!).
People forget, and the BBC, having reverted to its supine post Hutton mode, seem reluctant to remind our PM what
"Blowback" the intelligence services told him we could expect as a result of the illegal invasion of Iraq; increased terrorists and the increased risk that we would be targeted. Once again it's not Blair's honesty that's in question, but his judgement.
The sadness is that Iraq seems to be getting worse by the day;
beyond the quagmire . There now seems a craven willingness by the "coalition of the willing", having broken all the china in the shop, to avoid paying by declaring the Iraqi forces in charge and then to cut and run. There is now a serious risk of a "three state solution" in Iraq.
And there's still Afghanistan simmering away.
Makes you want to vomit.
Response to Terrorism.
This is the Italian Interior Minister Guiseppe Pisanu and this is how his speech to the lower house of the Italian Parliament was reported by
BBC Online by their Rome correspondant David Willey who concentrated on what to British ears must seem insignificant anti terrorist measures.
- doubling to 24 hours the time suspects can be kept in custody without charge
- interrogating suspects without lawyers present
- strengthening of measures to prevent terrorists from financing their operations
- increasing penalties for carrying false documents
- compiling lists of mobile phone users to help police investigating suspected terrorist crime
- monitoring more closely immigrants from outside the EU who are already the subject of criminal investigations. Those considered a threat to public order or state security will be summarily expelled.
Detention before charge increased to 24 hours. Interrogation without a lawyer. Crikey what ever next?
No mention of the part of Pisanu's speech some may consider just as important, and a lesson for our interior minister, Charles Clarke.
Reported by Corriere della Sera:
“No to a clash of civilisations, but yes to a common response to a shared, clearly identified threat”. The minister of the interior added that “we cannot confuse the threat with Islamic religion, culture or civilisation. However, we must grasp its concrete international dimension if we really want to combat it effectively”. “The existence of this threat to our country”, the interior minister continued, “is not confirmed by specific, irrefutable proof. Nevertheless, the examination of converging circumstances and evidence suggests that it is possible. I pray that events will prove me wrong, and at the same time I feel obliged to do everything possible to keep Italy’s doors firmly in place....I want to say at once that no one is contemplating special laws”, said Mr Pisanu. “We cannot restrict citizens’ freedom in order to combat freedom’s enemies. If we did that”, he observed, “we would be granting those enemies a real victory”. Among the immediate measures mentioned by Mr Pisanu is the reinforcement “of the security of urban transport and large-scale port and railway infrastructures. These installations are relatively vulnerable to small or medium-scale terrorist actions”.
ciao tutti
t
All animals are equal....
Today, al Jazeera are reporting that 27 people including four children have been killed by a car bomb in Baghdad.
Rambler's Legs.
Most of England feels like an oven door has been opened and the hot air has enveloped us all. If this is global warming I'm all for it!
On the Coal Coast, the thermometer has been in the roaring twenties celsius for the last three days; and the Met Office predict we are in for another three or four.
It's not often the Rambler's shanks get a public airing, so make the most of this.
Running out of Troops
Thanks to
AmericaBlog for this:
"Quick, someone tell Bush we're at war. It's been almost four years since 9-11 and Bush has failed repeatedly to take the obvious, common sense steps needed to improve security here at home.
We posted a few days ago on
the Coast Guard, which is responsible for guarding our coastlines and protecting our ports -- two areas the 9-11 Commission have singled out as especially vulnerable. It is dramatically underfunded, with aging vessels, most of whch have been around for more than three decades. Bush looked at old plans made BEFORE 9-11, plans to upgrade the Coast Guard by 2025...and decided to delay them even further to 2030. That's mind-boggling.
But that's just one of many, many areas where any reasonable person can see Bush has utterly failed to protect and defend America.
Another area? His abuse of the National Guard and Army Reserve. Even its own military leaders have described those areas as "broken," thanks to Bush's abuse of those troops with a back-door draft. Here's the latest report,
a front page New York Times story that highlights the dramatic decline in available Guard and Reserve forces that are going to be available for overseas duty soon. It also points out that many states have half their forces and vital equipment like helicopters in Iraq when they're desperately needed here at home for their traditional roles of providing public safety in emergencies like Hurricane Dennis and the forest fires that rage annually (that season for fires is about to begin).
That rumour about the British and US planning to pull many troops out in 2006? This story makes clear it might very well happen for the simple reason that WE'LL HAVE NO CHOICE. We are running out of troops."
More on Abu Omar
Corriere della Sera seem to be going stong on this story:
"At the end of summer 2003, CIA field agents sent new information on Abu Omar to the Counterterrorism Center (CTC), the heart of the campaign against Al Qaeda. It was then - say American sources, adding new details to the revelations of the Washington Post - that US agents contacted the Italians to find out their views on a possible abduction. The contacts were technical in nature, and involved intelligence officers. According to the same sources, the CIA proposed an initiative reminiscent of the operation that targeted two Egyptians in Sweden in December 2001. The Italians would seize Abu Omar and taken him to an airport, possibly the US base at Aviano, where a CIA jet would be waiting. A few hours later, the imam would wake up in Cairo. But the plan was greeted with diffidence, and Italian intelligence officers preferred to have nothing to do with it. The Americans insisted. They wanted Abu Omar and requested a political go-ahead. There were two reasons for this. It is standard CIA practice to inform friendly governments, and the Americans were keen to avoid technical glitches.
According to the American reconstruction, the request for the green light was passed by Italian intelligence through confidential channels to political authorities. In an informal reply, Rome washed its hands of the affair. The Americans could deal with Abu Omar by themselves as the Italians wanted no direct involvement. This was not formal authorisation, but neither was it an objection. Who gave the all-clear? The CIA says high-ranking intelligence officers, but other sources point to much higher levels.
The CTC passed the file to the CIA’s operations division. In the procedure adopted for most of these “extraordinary renditions”, there is a preliminary inquiry. The CIA scrutinises the file submitted by the informant - in this case the CIA chief in Italy - takes legal advice, examines the options in the field and awaits a political order. In this case, as the Washington Post revealed yesterday, a high-ranking member of the National Security Council signed the order to carry out the apprehension.
Meanwhile in Italy, American intelligence officers were at work. Our sources also confirm that it was the CIA station chief in Rome, whom we will call C, who pressed for the mission to be carried out. In a very effective turn of phrase, the Washington Post claims that C wanted to use the abduction to “add a notch” to his belt. Agent C has been described by those who know him as an “intelligence bureaucrat”, ready to support the CIA’s more robust operations. The international mood was on his side. It was the eve of the invasion of Iraq, fear of Al Qaeda reprisals was rife and the fundamentalists were in ferment. Washington’s hawks had their claws out and Abu Omar, as tapped telephone conversations show, appeared to know a lot. In some passages from his conversations, the Egyptian imam referred to possible attacks and exulted when other organisations carried out bombings.
For agent C, he was the perfect target. Agent C made several trips to Milan to test the terrain. He did not rule out throwing Italian intelligence services off the scent. According to Washington, agent C came up against the CIA station chief for northern Italy, Robert Seldon Lady, one of the officers wanted by Italian magistrates today. Lady shared agent C’s worries about Abu Omar’s activities, and thought that he should be neutralised before he made trouble, but for Lady the kidnapping option was too risky. He thought the operation could be a disaster, as indeed turned out to be the case, and might jeopardise relations with Italian security forces, who were collaborating fully on terrorism-related investigations. Abu Omar was the focus of operations, even though he was not being followed 24 hours a day. In fact, round-the-clock tailing would only be adopted by DIGOS, the special operations branch of the Italian police, a year later for the Egyptian Rabei Osman El Sayed Ahmed, one of the terrorists involved in the Madrid bombing.
The order to go ahead arrived from CIA headquarters in Langley. In January and early February, the advance guard of the CIA’s Special Removal Unit set up its base. Meetings intensified, first at CIA facilities in Camp Peary, then at a front-line base in Europe, as the CIA’s paramilitary branch, the Special Activities Division, began to draft the details of the operation. Reinforcements arrived from Rome and it was Lady who coordinated the mission, as has emerged from the investigations of public prosecutor Armando Spataro. Lady’s direct superior, agent C, supervised. However, time began to drag as the group waited for the moment to strike. Tension built up and the operatives began to feel the stress. It may well have been the protracted preparation that led to the subsequent string of errors. On 17 February, Abu Omar was apprehended, the team split up, and Lady was left holding the smoking gun. When magistrates from Milan closed the case, he was the first in the frame. His friends have hinted that others will soon join him there."
Paolo Biondani
Guido Olimpio
English translation by Giles Watson www.watson.it
07/07
Abu Omar's abduction.
More on this story from Corriere della Sera:
The abducted imam, the CIA, and unanswered questions.
"At the traditional summer round tables, in weighty academic tomes, and in the bitter recollections of aging pioneers of the genre, it is customary to lament the passing of classic investigative journalism. In the view of many, this thinning of the fourth estate’s blood has weakened media credibility. It is therefore a genuine pleasure to salute the work of Guido Olimpo and Paolo Biondani, two newshounds whose meticulous investigations revealed the American Central Intelligence Agency’s clandestine operation to abduct and secretly transfer to Egypt Imam Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, better known as Abu Omar, suspected of organizing fundamentalist terrorist cells.
The victim was tailed on a street in Milan, immobilized with a chemical spray, kidnapped, sent in secret to the US air base at Aviano, and from there to the fastnesses of the Mubarak regime, with no legal guarantees whatsoever. Now the Abu Omar case threatens to widen the split between the United States and Italy, following the regrettable aftermath of the Sgrena case and the death of Nicola Calipari. Abu Omar’s abduction took place on the territory of a friendly sovereign state, and ally of Washington, which has courageously supported the postwar peace process in Iraq by sending troops to Nassiriya, thus exposing itself to Madrid-style terrorist reprisals. The fact that, in between dallyings in luxury hotels and expenses James Bond would have baulked at, the CIA chose to act without informing the Italian authorities confirms that the US administration has yet to grasp the scale of the damage wreaked on America’s image by the chains at Guantanamo, the photos of Abu Ghraib, and the covert actions of the CIA, whose strategic aims were explained yesterday to the Corriere della Sera by Robert Baer, a former member of the Directorate of Operations. What is the point of the forthright speech by Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice urging America’s Egyptian and Saudi allies to at last open their societies to democracy if the CIA then sends Abu Omar, illegally abducted in Italy, to Cairo, to be unceremoniously interrogated without lawyers, transparency, or legal process, all considered superfluous luxuries in time of war by Washington hardliners?
The finest moments in American history, from Lincoln to Roosevelt, show that despite all the grey areas, it is possible to defend democracy by force without distorting its spirit. Biondani and Olimpio’s investigation reaffirms that in a free country, a free press has a vigorous, fruitful role to play, if it steers clear of Byzantine plottings and power games, and goes straight for the facts. The Corriere della Sera’s feature poses serious questions about responsibilities. Was this an unauthorized operation by the CIA? Did the White House know? Was the Pentagon informed? How far up did that knowledge filter? Did the Italian authorities give the green light? Or was the light yellow? Did any Italians attend the notification briefings, and if they did, why did they say yes?
Professor Peter Spiro of Georgetown University has few doubts, and claims that the Americans would never collaborate on an operation like this. That may be true, but the Abu Omar case has been picked up by the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, and other leading American newspapers, the ABC and CNN television networks, and hundreds of other papers all over the world, from Britain’s Belfast Telegraph and Independent, Canada’s Calgary Sun, to Australia’s Gold Coast Bulletin. The worldwide outcry will be hard to face down. In fact, it has already been mentioned in the official White House bulletin, hitherto entrenched behind a wall of “no comments.” Soon, arrogant or embarrassed silence will no longer be enough. What is needed is the truth - the whole truth - about an iniquitous violation of Italy’s sovereignty.
Gianni Riotta griotta@corriere.it
English translation by Giles Watson
Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.
Make Poverty History!
This captures everything about these two. On the right, the empty grin of the accomplished liar; on the left, the simple minded driveller. And today, a few of ageing rock stars will give their ailing careers a boost.
Cheers
t
Who are you trying to kid?
There are two views of how Iraq has improved in the last couple of years.
Bush to the soldiers at Fort Bragg a couple of days ago:
"In the past year, we have made significant progress. One year ago today, we restored sovereignty to the Iraqi people. In January 2005, more than 8 million Iraqi men and women voted in elections that were free and fair, and took time on -- and took place on time. We continued our efforts to help them rebuild their country. Rebuilding a country after three decades of tyranny is hard, and rebuilding while at war is even harder. Our progress has been uneven, but progress is being made. We're improving roads and schools and health clinics. We're working to improve basic services like sanitation, electricity, and water. And together with our allies, we'll help the new Iraqi government deliver a better life for its citizens.
"
Ok there are a few weasel words there, but today the Mayor of Baghdad, , Alaa Mahmoud al-Timimi has a rather different view reported in the Union Tribune San Diego:
"According to City Hall, Baghdad produces about 544 million gallons of water per day, some 370 million gallons short of its required amount. Some 55 percent of the water is lost through leakage in the pipes.
Iraqis also complain of shortages of power and fuel.
Electrical shortfalls were common during the Saddam Hussein era and attributed to a poor distribution network, but the situation has worsened due to sabotage and lack of maintenance.
Before the U.S.-led invasion, Baghdad residents had about 20 hours of electricity a day. Today, they get about 10, usually broken into two-hour chunks.
In addition, Iraq is not able to refine enough oil, so must import gasoline. Convoys carrying fuel are often attacked by insurgents and the ensuing shortage has led to a black market in Baghdad."
Cheers
t
