May 2009 archive

1. The NY Times reports Joint Chiefs chairman criticizes air strikes in Afghanistan. “The United States cannot succeed in Afghanistan if the American military keeps killing Afghan civilians, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Monday.”

   “We cannot succeed in Afghanistan or anywhere else, but let’s talk specifically about Afghanistan, by killing Afghan civilians,” Admiral Mullen said, adding that “we can’t keep going through incidents like this and expect the strategy to work.”

   Of course, but will the Obama adminstration actually stop the air strikes?

   According to the LA Times, “Afghan officials, including President Hamid Karzai, say the tactic is overused in populated areas. But the Obama administration has rejected Karzai’s calls for an end to airstrikes, saying they are an essential part of the Western arsenal.”

   The LA Times investigates Who is to blame for Afghan civilian deaths? “Afghan officials say at least 140 civilians died, two-thirds of them children and teenagers, in what may prove the most lethal episode of civilian casualties since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.”

   At some point in the late afternoon or early evening, the decision was made to call in airstrikes, a measure most often taken when Western commanders believe an outpost or a field contingent is in danger of being overrun…

   The aircraft summoned to Garani, two F-18 fighter jets and a B-1 bomber that U.S. officials said were based outside Afghanistan, took aim at three targets. In strikes that came about 20 minutes apart, three village landmarks, the mosque and two large compounds, were hit, residents said…

   American officials have advanced the theory that the Taliban killed large numbers of villagers with grenades, infuriating local people who describe buildings clearly blown apart by far larger external blasts.

   “We blame America,” said Saeed Barakat, a father who has three girls in the burn unit as a result of the attack. “With all their technology, they don’t determine who is a fighter and who is an innocent. Now my house is gone. My wife is dead. My children are burned.“

   Spiegel reports the German Army can’t protect Afghan girls’ schools. “Six girls’ schools were closed in the northern province of Kunduz following” letters received by the schools that threatened more “acid and gas attacks” on the teachers and students. “The German army, which has led a reconstruction team in Kunduz since 2003, doesn’t feel able to protect the schools, and the German government doesn’t know how to respond to the threats.” If an army cannot protect people, then what good is it?

   Elsewhere, the NY Times reports Ahmed Wali Karzai, the corrupt younger brother of Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, claims he narrowly escaped assassination by the Taliban fighters “laying in wait for his motorcade while traveling from the eastern city of Jalalabad to the capital.”

   It was likely a drug deal gone bad, in my opinion. According to McClatchy, Karzai “routinely manipulates judicial and police officials to facilitate shipments of opium and heroin… People who accuse Ahmed Wali Karzai of ties to the drug trade often don’t stay around very long.”

Four at Four continues with an update on Pakistan, news from Iraq, the Tamil Tiger leader claimed to be killed, and Alaska’s melting glaciers.

Crossposted from Antemedius

RawStory is reporting this morning that “The Bush administration was given clear and unequivocal advice encouraging a detainee interrogation system that followed humane practices that adhered to US and international law…”

“A detailed memorandum authored by a counselor to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2005 also reveals that the Bush Administration was offered a comprehensive alternative to its use of torture techniques. The author, Rice deputy Philip Zelikow (along with then-acting deputy secretary of defense Gordon England), asserted that the adoption of a clear and humane approach to interrogation would pay dividends for the US in the years to come.”

The Zelikow/England draft memo (.PDF)  stamped “Sensitive But Unclassified” was apparently written in June 2005, and was published May 14, 2009 in a post by Steven Aftergood at Secrecy News, a Federation of American Scientists project website.

It’s Nice To See That

Pakistan Clearly Understands

Its Priorities

More Nuclear Weapons

At Geithner’s Treasury, Key Decisions on Hold

Many Advisers’ Roles Are Undefined And Others Still Awaiting Confirmation

By David Cho

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, May 18, 2009

Seven weeks after the Treasury Department announced that it was ousting General Motors chief G. Richard Wagoner Jr. in the federal bailout of the company, he is still technically on GM’s payroll.

Wagoner’s removal has been held up because senior Treasury officials have yet to decide whether he should get the $20 million severance package that the company had promised him.

The delay is one of many hitches that have slowed a host of important policy actions in the four months since Timothy F. Geithner became Treasury secretary. While Geithner has taken dramatic steps to address flashpoints in the economy, the work of carrying out those policies has bogged down because critical decisions about how to do so aren’t being made, interviews with a broad range of federal officials show.

Pakistan Is Rapidly Adding Nuclear Arms, U.S. Says



By THOM SHANKER and DAVID E. SANGER

Published: May 17, 2009

WASHINGTON – Members of Congress have been told in confidential briefings that Pakistan is rapidly adding to its nuclear arsenal even while racked by insurgency, raising questions on Capitol Hill about whether billions of dollars in proposed military aid might be diverted to Pakistan’s nuclear program.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed the assessment of the expanded arsenal in a one-word answer to a question on Thursday in the midst of lengthy Senate testimony. Sitting beside Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, he was asked whether he had seen evidence of an increase in the size of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal.

USA

Prosecutors Block Access to DNA Testing for Inmates



By SHAILA DEWAN

Published: May 17, 2009

In an age of advanced forensic science, the first step toward ending Kenneth Reed’s prolonged series of legal appeals should be simple and quick: a DNA test, for which he has offered to pay, on evidence from the 1991 rape of which he was convicted.

Louisiana, where Mr. Reed is in prison, is one of 46 states that have passed laws to enable inmates like him to get such a test. But in many jurisdictions, prosecutors are using new arguments to get around the intent of those laws, particularly in cases with multiple defendants, when it is not clear how many DNA profiles will be found in a sample.

The laws were enacted after DNA evidence exonerated a first wave of prisoners in the early 1990s, when law enforcement authorities strongly resisted reopening old cases. Continued resistance by prosecutors is causing years of delay and, in some cases, eliminating the chance to try other suspects because the statute of limitations has passed by the time the test is granted.

 Everything Counts