Nato knew terrorists would gain from toppling Gadaffi

Britain’s military knew that fighters from an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist organisation were benefiting from the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi in 2011, but continued to support Nato airstrikes in Libya for another two months.

The revelation raises serious questions about British foreign policy and whether the UK’s then prime minister David Cameron misled parliament.

In early September 2011, Cameron updated the House of Commons about the situation in Libya, telling MPs: “This revolution was not about extreme Islamism; al-Qaeda played no part in it.”

However, the Ministry of Defence (MOD) had assessed the month before that: “The 17 February Brigade is likely to be an enduring player in [the] transition” away from Gaddafi’s regime and had “political linkages” to Libya’s rebel leadership, the National Transitional Council.

The 17 February Brigade, also known as the 17 February Martyrs Brigade, was a hardline Islamist militia named after the date the uprising began against Gaddafi. Its ranks included Salman Abedi, who went on to murder 22 innocent people in the Manchester Arena terrorist attack in 2017.

The MOD assessment said, “Many 17th February Brigade fighters have affiliations with the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups, such as the Libyan Islamic Movement for

— source markcurtis.info | Phil Miller, Mark Curtis | Jul 30, 2022

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The Path to a New 1914?

Then came the attack of September 11th. Like the starting gun of a race that no one knew he was to run, this explosion set the pack of nations off in a single direction — toward the trenches. Although the attack was unaccompanied by any claim of authorship or statement of political goals, the evidence almost immediately pointed to al-Qaeda, the radical Islamist, terrorist network, which, though stateless, was headquartered in Afghanistan and enjoyed the protection of its fundamentalist Islamic government. In a tape that was soon shown around the world, the group’s leader, Osama bin Laden, was seen at dinner with his confederates in Afghanistan, rejoicing in the slaughter.

Historically, nations have responded to terrorist threats and attacks with a combination of police action and political negotiation, while military action has played only a minor role. Voices were raised in the United States calling for a global cooperative effort of this kind to combat al-Qaeda. President Bush opted instead for a policy that the United States alone among nations could have conceivably undertaken: global military action not only against al-Qaeda but against any regime in the world that supported international terrorism.

The president announced to Congress that he would “make no distinction between the terrorists who commit these acts and those who harbor them.” By calling the campaign a “war,”

— source tomdispatch.com | Jonathan Schell | Jul 24, 2022

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This Is Racist Terrorism

I was at a meeting talking about the violence in our area. I actually was on my way to that meeting. I had just left my daughter’s graduation. And when I got to the meeting, I let, you know, one of the advocates that I work with — let him know what was going on as far as the shooting, the information that I had gotten.

We left that meeting and went over to the scene, where there were, like, bodies in the parking lot, a lot of chaos. People did not know where their loved ones were. The police didn’t seem to really — they weren’t communicating with each other. So, it was chaos. So I just tried to do what I could as far as a citizen, as a concerned person, a person who goes to that store, just a concerned community person. I tried to be like a buffer between the police and the people who were looking for their loved ones. The police wanted people to move. The families wanted to know if their loved ones were OK. And so, you know, eventually, there was a school that was opened for them to go to where they were finding out if their loved ones were in there or if they had been one of the victims.

— source democracynow.org | Jun 03, 2022

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How America Made ISIS

Whatever your politics, you’re not likely to feel great about America right now. After all, there’s Ferguson (the whole world was watching!), an increasingly unpopular president, a Congress whose approval ratings make the president look like a rock star, rising poverty, weakening wages, and a growing inequality gap just to start what could be a long list. Abroad, from Libya and Ukraine to Iraq and the South China Sea, nothing has been coming up roses for the U.S. Polls reflect a general American gloom, with 71% of the public claiming the country is “on the wrong track.” We have the look of a superpower down on our luck.

What Americans have needed is a little pick-me-up to make us feel better, to make us, in fact, feel distinctly good. Certainly, what official Washington has needed in tough times is a bona fide enemy so darn evil, so brutal, so barbaric, so inhuman that, by contrast, we might know just how exceptional, how truly necessary to this planet we really are.

In the nick of time, riding to the rescue comes something new under the sun: the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), recently renamed Islamic State (IS). It’s a group so

— source tomdispatch.com | Tom Engelhardt | Sep 2, 2014

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Rightwing propaganda fueled the terrorost attack at Buffalo

in Buffalo, New York, Saturday, when an 18-year-old white supremacist wearing full body armor, carrying an assault rifle, opened fire on a supermarket in a Black neighborhood of Buffalo. We just went to Buffalo. Now we’re joined by Ibram X. Kendi, the Andrew W. Mellon professor in the humanities at Boston University, founding director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research, contributing writer at The Atlantic, where his new piece, published — well, it looks like it was published yesterday, but it was actually published last month, before the attack in Buffalo, headlined “The Danger More Republicans Should Be Talking About: White-supremacist ideology is harmful to all, especially the naive and defenseless minds of youth.” He is also the author of many books, including Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, also author of How to Be an Antiracist and the children’s book Antiracist Baby. He’s got two forthcoming books out in June, How to Raise an Antiracist and the picture book Goodnight Racism.

some of the leading politicians and media figures and intellectuals, particularly over the last two years, if not the last 10 years, have been asserting this idea that antiracism, that critical race theory, that Latinx immigrants, that so-called Black criminals, that Muslim terrorists, that people of color are harming or seeking to replace or even engage in a genocide against white people. That’s the “Great Replacement” theory, that is a dominant talking point particularly among members of the Republican Party. And so, this is certainly not a fringe theory. It was a fringe theory, on many levels, a decade ago, but it’s certainly not now.

— source democracynow.org | May 16, 2022

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Britain supports terrorism

In recent weeks, a number of apparently unrelated news reports have, in sum, told a truth that is never reported. According to Human Rights Watch, thousands of British and American cluster bombs were fired at and dropped on civilian areas in Iraq. British artillery fired more than 2,000 of them at Basra. Each shell scatters bomblets over a wide area, and many fail to explode. Their victims are “not known”, says the Ministry of Defence. They are known. They are often children; Iraq’s population is almost half children.

At the same time, HMS Turbulent, a nuclear-powered submarine, returned to Plymouth flying the Jolly Roger, the pirates’ emblem. This vessel fired 30 American Tomahawk cruise missiles at Iraq, at a cost to the British taxpayer of £21m. What did they hit? How many people did they kill or maim in this nation of sick people and disproportionate numbers of children? The commander would only say that he was “proud to be called forward”.

Readers will remember the patriotic calls to “support the troops” regardless of one’s misgivings about the war. Why a non-conscripted force deserved our “support” in its

— source johnpilger.com | john pilger | 26 May 2003

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Guantánamo’s Youngest Prisoner Cleared for Release 20 Years After He Was Jailed Without Charges

The U.S. government has cleared Guantánamo’s youngest prisoner for release. Hassan bin Attash has been jailed by the U.S. for the last 20 years, even though has never been charged with a crime. He was just 17 years old when he was captured in Karachi by Pakistani security services in 2002 and turned over to the United States. Attorneys say Attash was tortured by the U.S. and its allies for up to 12 hours a day over a two-year period, including at a CIA black site. The Biden administration says Attash will remain at the Guantánamo Bay prison while it tries to find a country willing to offer him rehabilitation.

— source democracynow.org | Apr 28, 2022

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What war on terror missing

Peter Byrne

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Saudi Spy Linked to Prince Bandar Assisted 9/11 Hijackers

Newly released FBI documents reveal a California-based Saudi spy assisted some of the 9/11 hijackers in finding housing in San Diego, and that there was a “50/50 chance” he had “advanced knowledge” of the attack. Omar al Bayoumi had claimed he incidentally befriended the two hijackers but was not involved in their planning. The FBI report found Bayoumi regularly shared his intelligence with Saudi Arabia’s U.S. Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud, who was so close to former President George W. Bush that he earned the nickname “Bandar Bush.” The report was written in 2017 but only declassified last week.

— source democracynow.org | Mar 17, 2022

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9/11 and the Saudi Connection

None of the issues still lingering 20 years after the 9/11 attacks have been as persistent — or as emotionally wrenching for the families of the victims — as the question of whether Saudi Arabia provided funding and other assistance for the worst terrorist attack in American history.

Of the 19 Al Qaeda terrorists who hijacked four U.S. commercial airliners on the morning of September 11, 2001, 15 were citizens of Saudi Arabia — and of course, Osama bin Laden was a member of one of Saudi Arabia’s wealthiest families.

Immediately after the attacks, the Bush administration downplayed the Saudi connection and suppressed evidence that might link powerful Saudis to the funding of Islamic extremism and terrorism. The Bush White House didn’t want to upset its relationship with one of the world’s largest oil-producing nations, which was also an American ally with enormous political influence in Washington, and much of what the FBI discovered about possible Saudi links to the attacks remains secret even today.

“What are they hiding? What is the big secret?” Terry Strada, whose husband was killed in the attack on the World Trade Center, asked in an interview. “We’ve been operating on

— source theintercept.com | Eric Lichtblau, James Risen | Sep 11 2021

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