Were The CIA Told "Don't Kill Bin Laden"?

The UK Telegraph takes from an interview with Michael Scheur, the former head of the Bin Laden unit inside the CIA, that "he was repeatedly ordered not to stop the al-Qaeda chief".

The story is interesting, not only for its potted history of Osama Bin Laden, but for some fascinating revelations, besides the fact the CIA apparently did not want Bin Laden dead for most of the 2000s.

From the UK Telegraph :

In August 1998 al-Qaeda killed 12 Americans and 200 others in bombings at two American embassies in east Africa. President Clinton ordered the CIA to dismantle al-Qaeda and, in Scheuer’s words, “take care” of bin Laden. The Pentagon launched cruise missile attacks on bin Laden’s training camps, but he had left the compound hours earlier. Scheuer estimates they had at least eight further opportunities to assassinate bin Laden in the following months.

“I’m not saying it would have been simple to take care of the problem, but it got progressively harder when we didn’t take those opportunities. One 50 cent round could have put us all out of our agony.”

In June 1999, he sent off an angry memo to senior officers asking why his men were risking their lives on someone America apparently had no interest in stopping. “I don’t know what you are doing when you talk to the President but he will not get a better opportunity than this,” he told them.

Scheuer was dismissed from his job and spent the next two years running counter-heroin operations in Pakistan and the Middle East. On September 11, 2001, he was back at CIA headquarters in Langley.

Arriving home exhausted at 11.30pm, he took a shower and crawled into bed when his phone went. It was his successor at the bin Laden unit. “We need you back,” he said.

Three months later British and American special forces were at Tora Bora, bin Laden’s heavily defended cave complex in Afghanistan, when they heard his voice over a captured radio.

It was the last time they had a fix on him for nine years. The Afghans let bin Laden walk out of Tora Bora and head for Pakistan during a ceasefire.

Scheuer continued to act as an adviser to the bin Laden unit until 2004 when he resigned in disgust at the way in which the public was being lied to over the opportunities to capture the terrorist leader.

His books have pointed out the many failings of American policy in the Middle East, not least their inability to address the other causes of western unpopularity in the region while portraying a myopic image of bin Laden as a lunatic.

He retains a sneaking regard for the quarry he hunted in vain for so long. “I respect his piety, integrity and skills,” he says. And the next generation of al-Qaeda? “They will be even more cruel and bloody-minded.”

The Full Story Is Here

Rumsfeld Blamed For Bin Laden's Escape In Tora Bora

A US Senate report reveals that in late 2001, in the Tora Bora mountains of Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden was cornered by US forces, who had "massive force" at their disposal.

The idiot US defence secretary apparently concluded that a show of force could trigger a 'backlash' and was not completely confident the intelligence was correct. This is the same guy who thought Osama Bin Laden was living inside a hollowed out mountain complex like something out of a James Bond movie.

In other words, Rumsfeld let Osama Bin Laden get away :

The report by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee asserts that the failure to kill or capture bin Laden in December 2001, three months after the September 11 attacks, has had lasting and disastrous consequences. Bin Laden's escape laid the foundation for today's reinvigorated Afghan insurgency and inflamed the internal strife now endangering Pakistan, it says.

In an introduction to the report, which will be published on Monday, Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, writes: "When we went to war less than a month after the attacks of September 11, the objective was to destroy Al Qaeda and kill or capture its leader, Osama bin Laden and other senior figures ... Our inability to finish the job in late 2001 has contributed to a conflict today that endangers not just our troops and those of our allies, but the stability of a volatile and vital region."

The report, entitled: "Tora Bora revisited: how we failed to get Bin Laden and why it matters today" will offer some support to President Obama as he prepares to announce this week that he is to send another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan.

Senator Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, has argued for some time that the Bush administration missed a chance to get the al-Qaeda leader and his top deputies when they were holed up in the forbidding, mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan only three months after September 11. He commissioned the report as Mr Obama was trying to decide whether he should boost troop numbers in Afghanistan.

The report lays the blame for the state of Afghanistan and Pakistan today at the feet of the military leaders who served former President Bush, notably Donald Rumsfeld, the then Defence Secretary, and his most senior military commander General Tommy Franks.

"Removing the al-Qaeda leader from the battlefield eight years ago would not have eliminated the worldwide extremist threat," the report says. "But the decisions that opened the door for his escape to Pakistan allowed bin Laden to emerge as a potent symbolic figure who continues to attract a steady flow of money and inspire fanatics worldwide. The failure to finish the job represents a lost opportunity that forever altered the course of the conflict in Afghanistan and the future of international terrorism."

It states categorically that bin Laden was hiding in Tora Bora when the US had the means to mount a rapid assault with several thousand troops. A review of existing literature, unclassified Government records and interviews with central participants "removes any lingering doubts and makes it clear that Osama bin Laden was within our grasp at Tora Bora" it adds.

"Cornered in some of the most fobidding terrain on earth, he and several hundred of his men endured relentless pounding by American aircraft, as many as 100 air strikes a day," it says. "Bin Laden expected to die," it claims. "His last will and testament, written on December 14, reflected his fatalism. He instructed his wives not to remarry and apologised to his children for devoting himself to jihad."

But the expected final attack never came. "Requests were turned down for US troops to block the mountain paths leading to sanctuary a few miles away in Pakistan," it says. "The vast array of American military power, from sniper teams to the most mobile divisions of the Marine Corps and the Army was kept on the sidelines."

Instead of a massive attack, fewer than 100 US commandos, working with Afghan militias, tried to capitalise on air strikes and track down their prey it says.

"On or around December 16, two days after writing his will, bin Laden and an entourage of bodyguards walked unmolested out of Tora Bora and disappeared into Pakistan's unregulated tribal area. Most analysts say he is still there today.

"The decision not to deploy American fores to go after bin Laden or block his escape was made by Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld and his top commander, General Tommy Franks."

It stresses that there were more than enough US troops in Afghanistan to capture the terror leader and although the ensuing battle would be difficult and dangerous, "commanders on the scene and elsewhere in Afghanistan argued that the risks were worth the reward."

At the time, Mr Rumsfeld expressed concern that a large US troop presence might fuel a backlash and he and some others said the evidence was not conclusive about bin Laden's location.

Gaddafi : All We Are Sayiinnnng, Is Give Bin Laden A Chance

Libya's Muammar Gaddafi has decided he can help out US President Obama with some foreign policy ideas : give Osama Bin Laden the chance to reform and push for a 'one state solution' where Israel, Gaza and the West Bank are renamed 'Isratine'.

It's like something from the satirical newspaper The Onion :

Mr Gaddafi hailed what he called "positive signals" so far from the new Obama administration, including plans to close the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"Terrorism is a dwarf not a giant. Osama bin Laden is a person who can be given a chance to reform," Mr Gaddafi said through an interpreter.

In a speech outlining his views on how to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Mr Gaddafi called for the creation of one state rather than two nations living side by side.

"We can call it Isratine," he said.

If Jews did not accept a one-state solution, he said they could move to Hawaii, Alaska or an island in the Pacific.

"They could live peacefully in an isolated setting," he said.

Then US Secretary of State, Condaleeza Rice welcomed Lybia back from three decades of isolation in September, 2008 :

"We did talk about learning from the lessons of the past," Rice said. "We talked about the importance of moving forward. The United States, I've said many times, doesn't have any permanent enemies."

Gadaffi was a big, big fan of 'Leezza' Rice :

"I support my darling black African woman," he said. "I admire and am very proud of the way she leans back and gives orders to the Arab leaders. ... Leezza, Leezza, Leezza. ... I love her very much. I admire her, and I'm proud of her, because she's a black woman of African origin."

Seven Years Later, Is 'The War' Being Won Against Al Qaeda?

Der Speigel asks seven terrorism experts their opinions on the progress of the
WoT :

Most of the world now has a new understanding of "security." Global terrorism of the sort practiced by al-Qaida finds targets that are not always easy to comprehend: a Danish embassy in Pakistan, nightclubs on Bali, trains in London and Madrid, wedding parties in Jordan, a synagogue in Tunisia, a British bank in Istanbul.

To protect themselves, Western as well as non-Western states have passed new laws, some of them draconian. The United States set up a prison at Guantánamo Bay which has yet to be dismantled.

The CIA has kidnapped and transported terror suspects all over the world, including people who weren't especially suspect and have long been proved innocent. Arab nations have signed dubious extradition treaties to move terrorist suspects back and forth. Russia and China use the "war on terror" for their own purposes -- to declare Chechens and Uighurs potential terrorists, for example. The debate over torture, once thought to be settled in civilized nations, has enjoyed an unexpected and in some ways ignoble renaissance.

And al-Qaida?

Al-Qaida is not beaten. Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri are still at large. A number of high-ranking members of the organization have been killed or arrested, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi bin al-Shibh and others. But terrorism hasn't stopped. Al-Qaida has retreated in Iraq, perhaps, but in Pakistan as well as North Africa, it has gained influence and space.

But there is no single, clear image of al-Qaida or its current status. It has changed from an organization of militias into something nobody recognizes. Is it more of a movement? Are al-Qaida's capabilities weaker than before, or is another 9/11 still possible? Are there fewer members of al-Qaida now, or more?

The Full Story Is Here

Al Qaeda's New Strategies In Its 'War On Infidels'

Pepe Escobar, Asia Times :

Al-Qaeda is back - with a vengeance of sorts. Listen to Mustafa Abu al-Yazeed - a senior al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan, in a very rare interview with Pakistan's Geo TV, shot in Khost, in eastern Afghanistan.

"At this stage this is our understanding - that there is no difference between the American people and the American government itself. If we see this through sharia [Islamic] law, American people and the government itself are infidels and are fighting against Islam. We have to rely on suicide attacks which are absolutely correct according to Islamic law. We have adopted this way of war because there is a huge difference between our material resources and our enemy's, and this is the only option to attack our enemy."

The interview is not only about defensive jihad. Yazeed delves into classic al-Qaeda strategy - inciting a cross-border Taliban jihad against the US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces and blasting a state, in this case the government of Pakistan. According to him, "Sadly, it is the government of Pakistan which has most damaged our cause. President [Pervez] Musharraf violated the trust of Muslims and contributed to the destruction of the Islamic government of Afghanistan ... Musharraf and his government have made big mistakes, there is no such example in other Islamic states."

Yazeed also said al-Qaeda was responsible for the suicide car bombing on the Danish Embassy in Islamabad in early June, when six people were killed.

So why is al-Qaeda feeling so emboldened to have one of its top commanders on camera - and on a foreign TV network to boot, not as-Sahab, al-Qaeda's media arm?

Jihadis now assess that the new Afghan jihad - against the "infidel" US and NATO troops combined - is more important at the moment than Iraq. So in this sense, Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama has got it right - Afghanistan, and not Iraq, is "the central front in the war on terror".

But it's much more complicated than that. The central front is actually in Pakistan. Al-Qaeda basically wants a pan-Islamic caliphate. The neo-Taliban, based in Pakistan, are not that ambitious. They already have their Islamic Emirate - it is in the Waziristan tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan. What they want most of all is to expand it. They also know they would never stand a chance of taking over the whole of Pakistan. A Pakistani expert on the tribal areas, currently in Washington, describes it as "a class struggle - almost like an evolving peasant revolution. Baitullah Mehsud [the neo-Pakistani Taliban leader] is but a peasant from a poor family."

What is startling is that the neo-Taliban are now practically in control of North-West Frontier Province on the border with Afghanistan - whose capital is fabled Peshawar. They already control several Peshawar suburbs.

The Pakistani state has virtually no power in these areas. The Taliban enforce strict sharia law. If local security people refuse to obey, they are simply killed. No wonder the neo-Taliban now have subdued scores of middle- and low-ranking Pakistani officials. They even issued a deadline to the new secular and relatively progressive regional government to release all Taliban prisoners - or else. As for the government, the only thing it can do is to organize some sort of neighborhood watch to prevent total Taliban supremacy. This state of affairs also reveals how the Pakistani army seems to be powerless - or unwilling - to fight the Taliban.

Across the border, in Kunar and Nuristan provinces in Afghanistan, the Taliban now control almost all security checkpoints. No wonder Yazeed - speaking for al-Qaeda, envisions a war without borders. He said, in his Geo TV interview, "Yes, we cannot separate the tribal area people from Afghanistan which are part of Pakistan and the Pakistani people. Yes, we are getting support from tribal people in Pakistan, and in fact it is obligatory for them to render this help and it is a responsibility that is imposed by religion. It is not only obligatory for residents of the tribal regions but all of Pakistan."

In a recent high-profile al-Qaeda meeting in Miramshah in North Waziristan, the al-Qaeda leadership made it clear it not only expects - it wants the new Afghan war/jihad to spill over to the tribal areas in Pakistan.

And this is what al-Qaeda will get - according to what Obama told CBS News' Lara Logan, "... what I've said is that if we had actionable intelligence against high-value al-Qaeda targets and the Pakistani government was unwilling to go after those targets, then we should."

The Pentagon for its part is preparing the battlefield - it has already sent Predator drones, repeatedly, over the tribal areas. An air war is in the works - not to mention scores of Pentagon covert special ops.

Al-Qaeda's strategy is to suck in the US military - this is classic Osama bin Laden ideology, according to which the US should be dragged to fight in Muslim lands. Al-Qaeda is reasoning that an attack on the tribal areas, in fact a real third front in the "war on terror" (so dreaded by chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen) will have Pakistani public opinion so outraged that the Pakistani army would be powerless to follow the US track. And al-Qaeda, in the end, would be left with an even freer hand.

Read The Full Story Here

The Talibanisation Of Pakistan

Bin Laden's "Walking Dead" Cross Into Afghanistan As Suicide Bombings Quadruple

The Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan are finding no shortage of new recruits in Pakistan, as jihadists gear up, and bomb up, for what are expected to be increasingly deadly clashes with NATO forces in the coming months.

While Pakistan's President Musharraf appears to remain a 'favourite' of the United States and the UK, there was a swirl of rumours last month that he, the leader of a military coup, was going to fall victim to another military coup, off the back of some extremely public protests by white collar professionals, mostly lawyers and doctors, in open defiance his dictatorship.

For now, Musharraf appears to have crushed any such dissident plans to overthrow him. But the pressure grows on Musharraf to do something about the steadily increasing number of jihadi militants crossing into Afghanistan from Pakistan, and infiltrating the neighbouring nation of Waziristan, where a small-scale tribal war has erupted.

Musharraf did a deal last year with supposedly non-Taliban aligned tribal leaders near Pakistan's border that was supposed to see a decrease in manpower support for the Taliban. The Taliban and Al Qaeda simply went recruiting in Pakistan instead.

The Pakistan military are sometimes openly aligned with the Taliban, and Afghanistan's President Karzai now accuses Musharraf of allowing Al Qaeda and the Taliban to train and recruit inside Pakistan's borders.

The much-hyped 'Spring Offensive' in Afghanistan appears to be drawing near, at least in propaganda terms. The Taliban now claims it has deployed thousands of suicide bombers to all of Afghanistan's cities, where they will wait for the right foreign targets to show themselves before attacking. Such claims are dismissed by the Afghan government as the stuff of fantasies, but NATO forces are clearly gearing up for some major confrontations.

The Australian government is about to announce a new deployment of SAS, which will double Australia's troop commitment to the war. Such SAS forces are highly regarded by both NATO country armies and the Taliban itself. They respect Australian SAS because they've killed so many Taliban fighters during 2001, 2004 and 2006.

Germany, meanwhile, is sending over new fighter jets, and the United States is still pressuring EU nations not already committed to deploy military forces into Afghanistan if they want to see the 'War on Terror' ever get a recognisable victory.

Meanwhile, dozens of Taliban fighters are being killed each week, on average, while NATO forces lose three or four troops to gun fights and suicide bombings, the incidence of which has increased four-fold in the last twelve months from the year before.

The death toll on all sides, however, is expected to increase dramatically in the coming months, previewed by the defence ministers of NATO countries with forces already deployed hitting the local media hard and talking of sacrifice in order to prepare their constituents for what is expected to be a brutal increase in fighting, and dying.

The Washington Times has a curious, disturbing story on new Al Qaeda fighters, known as Bin Laden's "walking dead". They are suicide bombers, trained in Pakistan madrassas, who then literally walk into Afghanistan loaded with explosives. When they've completed their missions, they leave behind only "two feet and a lot of flesh" :

Orphaned by war and schooled in anti-American religious madrassas, the bombers often smile for a final video testament in Pakistan before walking or riding to their deaths in Afghanistan. As new explosives technology and tactics from the war in Iraq arrive in this remote corner of South Asia, suicide bombing attacks in the past 12 months have more than quadrupled from fewer than half a dozen in the previous year.

At least some of the bombers cross the border with a blessing from Ayman al-Zawahri, bin Laden's bespectacled ideological lieutenant, said Lutfullah Mashal, a senior intelligence official with Afghanistan's National Security Council.

Afghan and U.S. officials say the bombers are trained in Waziristan, a tribal-administered border region of Pakistan. Several weeks of reporting along the rugged border suggests that al Qaeda and its affiliates are regrouping with charitable funds from Gulf Arab states, assistance from rogue elements of Pakistan's intelligence services and profits from the heroin trade.

Pakistan, which sanctioned U.S. bombing raids on suspected al Qaeda hide-outs last year, has all but retreated from its effort to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda in border areas, say Western diplomats.

Suicide bombing was unheard of during the long war against Soviet forces in the 1980s, when locals prided themselves on their skill in shooting down Soviet helicopters, rows of which still line the edge of the airport here.

As elsewhere in the Islamic world, al Qaeda is usually a facilitator of terrorism, rarely the direct instigator. Bin Laden's operatives exploit anti-American sentiment within home-grown Islamist groups and dispatch young men over the mountains toward martyrdom.

Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders in nearby Pakistani community of Miram Shah, mimicking similar martyrdom celebrations in the West Bank and parts of the Arab world, throw lavish parties for the families of the suicide bombers...

Time Magazine has an excellent, in depth look at the 'Talibanisation' of Pakistan 's border frontiers leading into Afghanistan. This is easily one of the most important investigative stories they've run in the entire history of the 'War on Terror', but in a blinding sign of just how little importance the US mainstream media places on the Afghanistan war, Time use the 'Talibanisation' story as its international edition cover story, but buried this historical feature behind a celebrity fluff piece cover story for its American edition.

Time Magazine's 'Talibanisation' (excerpts follow) :

...the tribal region of Pakistan, a rugged no-man's-land that forms the country's border with Afghanistan (is) rapidly becoming home base for a new generation of potential terrorists.

Fueled by zealotry and hardened by war, young religious extremists have overrun scores of towns and villages in the border areas, with the intention of imposing their strict interpretation of Islam on a population unable to fight back.

Like the Taliban in the late 1990s in Afghanistan, the jihadists are believed to be providing leaders of al-Qaeda with the protection they need to regroup and train new operatives. U.S. intelligence officials think that Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, may have found refuge in these environs. And though 49,000 U.S. and NATO troops are stationed just across the border in Afghanistan, they aren't authorized to operate on the Pakistani side.

Remote, tribal and deeply conservative, the border region is less a part of either country than a world unto itself, a lawless frontier so beyond the control of the West and its allies that it has earned a name of its own: Talibanistan.

Since Sept. 11, the strategic hinge in the U.S.'s campaign against al-Qaeda has been Pakistan, handmaiden to the Taliban movement that turned Afghanistan into a sanctuary for bin Laden and his lieutenants. While members of Pakistan's intelligence services have long been suspected of being in league with the Taliban, the Bush Administration has consistently praised Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for his cooperation in rooting out and apprehending members of bin Laden's network. But the Talibanization of the borderlands--and their role in arming and financing insurgents in Afghanistan--has renewed doubts about whether Musharraf still possesses the will to face down the jihadists.

Because Musharraf also heads Pakistan's army, it's unlikely that he will be forced from office. But a loss of support from his moderate base could deepen his dependence on fundamentalist parties, which are staunch supporters of the Taliban. If the protests against Musharraf continue, he will be even less inclined to crack down on the militants holding sway in Talibanistan--grim news for the U.S. and its allies and good news for their foes throughout the region. Says a senior U.S. military official in Afghanistan: "The bottom line is that the Taliban can do what they want in the tribal areas because the [Pakistani] army is not going to come after them."

In fact, the territory at the heart of Talibanistan--a heavily forested band of mountains that is officially called North and South Waziristan--has never fully submitted to the rule of any country.

After 9/11, Islamabad initially left the tribal areas alone. But when it became obvious that al-Qaeda and Taliban militants were crossing the border to escape U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Pakistan sent in the first of what eventually became 80,000 troops. They had some success: the Pakistani army captured terrorist leaders and destroyed training camps. But the harder the military pressed, the more locals resented its presence, especially when civilians were killed in botched raids against terrorists.

As part of peace accords signed last September with tribal leaders in North Waziristan, the Pakistani military agreed to take down roadblocks, stop patrols and return to their barracks. In exchange, local militants promised not to attack troops and to end cross-border raids into Afghanistan. The accords came in part because the Pakistani army was simply unable to tame the region. Over the past two years, it has lost more than 700 troops there. The change in tactics, says Gul, was an admission that the Pakistani military had "lost the game."

The army isn't the only one paying the price now. Since Pakistani forces scaled back operations in the border region, the insurgency in Afghanistan has intensified. Cross-border raids and suicide bombings aimed at U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan have tripled, according to the senior U.S. military official. He concedes that "the Pakistanis are in a very difficult position. You could put 50,000 men on that border, and you wouldn't be able to seal it."

The troop drawback has allowed Pakistani militants allied with the Taliban to impose their will on the border areas. They have established Shari'a courts and executed "criminals" on the basis of Islamic law. Even Pakistani-army convoys are sometimes escorted by Taliban militants to ensure safe passage...

The emergence of Talibanistan may directly threaten the West too. Locals say the region has become one big terrorist-recruitment camp, where people as young as 17 are trained as suicide bombers.

"Here, teenagers are greeted with the prayers 'May Allah bless you to become a suicide bomber,'" says Obaidullah Wazir, 35, a young tribesman in Miranshah. National Intelligence Director John McConnell told the Senate Armed Services Committee last month that "al-Qaeda is forging stronger operational connections that radiate outward from their camps in Pakistan to affiliated groups and networks throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Europe."

....the Bush Administration is beginning to recognize that to stabilize Afghanistan and prevent the rebirth of al-Qaeda, it has to contain the growth of Talibanistan.

Bin Laden's "Walking Dead" Quadruple Rate Of Suicide Bombings In Afghanistan Over Past Twelve Months

Taliban Claim They Have Deployed "Thousands Of Suicide Bombers" To Cities To Attack Foreigners

12 Taliban, 3 Nomads Killed in Clashes With Afghan/Coalition Forces In Helmand

Suicide Bomber Rams Army Convoy, Kills Five Children

Waziristan : 10 Killed, Scores Injured in Fighting, Tribal Leaders Call For All Foreigners To Be Expelled From Region

Taliban Execute Three NATO-Linked Informants - Body Hangs In Town's Main Street

Australian Special Forces, Fully Rested, Prepare For Return To Afghanistan

Pakistan Says It Wants And Needs A Stable Afghanistan - 3 Million Afghan Refugees In Pakistan

US Military In "Death Spiral"

Iraq War Has Left United States With No 'Ready' Brigade To Effectively Defend International Interests

The US Army and Marine Corps ares running out of trained troops and equipment at an unprecedented rate.

Some 40% of the US Army and Marine Corps. vehicles, weapons and general equipment has been consumed by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the only training now being undertaken is to deal with "the insurgencies at hand".

A stunning story from the Washington Post quotes 'officials' as claiming the US Army and Marine Corps is in a "death spiral".

The main points from the story :

* The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have left the US Army in a such a state of disrepair, it will take years and tens of billions of dollars for the Army and Marine Corps to get back up to pre-War on Terror levels of efficiency, maintenance and readiness.

* Senior officers of the US Military warn the risk to the United States is "serious and deepening."

* The US Military has been left with a gaping deficit of reserve ground troops required if they are to deal "quickly and decisively with potential foreign crisis", with Iran, Pakistan and North Korea cited as being of particular concern.

* The Bush-backed troop "surge" into Baghdad is believed to have left "critical Army overseas equipment stocks for use in another conflict...depleted."

* Keeping the troop "surge" at the levels demanded by President Bush beyond August this year - more than 32,000 extra combat troops - would become "a challenge".

* The US Army currently does not have one single brigade standing ready and equipped to immediately deploy to a foreign "hot spot" should hostilities break out that put at risk American interests.

From the Washington Post :

Equipment is also lacking among Army units in the United States, the vast majority of which are rated "not ready" by the Army, based on measures of available gear, training and personnel, according to senior military officers and government officials. Active-duty Army combat brigades in the United States face shortages of heavy, medium and light tactical vehicles such as Humvees; radios; night-vision goggles; and some weapons, Cody said.

The shortages have deepened as scarce equipment and personnel are funneled to those units next in line to deploy overseas, creating ever bigger holes in the units that will leave later. "It's like a hurricane drawing everything into the center of the eye," said a senior Army officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.

Under current Army and Marine Corps plans, it will take two to three years after the Iraq war ends and about $17 billion a year to restore their equipment levels. It will take five years and at least $75 billion for the Army to increase its active-duty ranks to 547,000 soldiers, up from the current 509,000, and for the Marine Corps to increase its numbers to 202,000, up from 180,000.

It's almost impossible to believe that the US Military, until recently internationally recognised as the most powerful and effective fighting force on the planet, has been so depleted by the Iraq War, particularly, that its interests internationally now stand all but defenceless, according to the on and off the record interviews cited in the Washington Post story.

It's almost impossible to believe that the US Military, until recently internationally recognised as the most powerful and effective fighting force on the planet, has become so utterly depleted and so thoroughly weakened by the Iraq War; that its interests internationally now stand all but effectively undefendable, short of air or naval support, according to the on and off the record interviews cited in the Washington Post story.

You may recall that Osama Bin Laden said, before the Iraq War began, that Al Qaeda's primary strategy to defeat the United States was to draw the US into war fighting on numerous fronts, where its military forces would then be worn down over years of fighting, while the costs of maintaining multiple wars would eat into the strength of the American economy, break down American homefront and military morale and deplete the resources of its fighting forces.

It's sickening to realise today, as the Coalition of the Willing enters the fifth year of the Iraq War that Osama Bin Laden's strategy to "destroy America" has been so completely embraced and so effectively played out by President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Osama Bin Laden must be marvelling at just how easy it was to draw the Bush administration into carrying out his long-term vision of destabilising the military and financial strength and global standing of the United States.

Iraq War Veteran : 10% Of Returned Soldiers Suffer Brain Injuries
War Protests Continue Across the US

Australian PM Prepares To Increase Troops To Iraq, Vows To Stay The Course

Terrorists Attack Iraqis With Chlorine Truck Bombs, Hundreds Sickened

7 Americans Troops Killed In One Day, Four Die In One IED Attack - Al Sadr Tells Muslims To Stop Killing Each Other

1/3 Of Iraq's Children Malnourished - 5000 Iraqis Leave Country Every Day

Iraq Poll - Only 18% Of Iraqis Trust, Have Faith, In US Soldiers - 86% Of Iraqis Live In Fear Of Family Member Being Killed

CLAIM : OSAMA BIN LADEN IS DEAD

DIED FROM TYPHOID ON AUGUST 23

The story so far : Osama Bin Laden contracted typhoid, a water-borne illness, sometime in early August. He was hiding out in Pakistan. He grew seriously ill. Being the most wanted man in the world, and one of the most famous, he was concerned about seeking medical attention and died on August 23.

This information was contained in a 'defence secret' report from the French intelligence services, based on information provided by Saudi intelligence sources, which was leaked to a French newspaper.

French President Jacques Chirac, and the most senior members of the French government, were briefed on the 'defence secret' report on Thursday, but now Chirac is denying knowing whether or not Bin Laden is actually dead.

The French government has launched an inquiry into who leaked the report to the French newspaper.

Curiously, Chirac is not denying that there is a report seen by him that says Bin Laden is dead, and that it was was leaked. He told journalists today, "this information is in no way confirmed."

He was speaking at a press conference alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"I am a little surprised that a confidential DGSE (French foreign intelligence service) note should be published," Chirac (said)...

The leaked French report (based on Saudi reports) claimed that Bin Laden "might have succumbed to a very serious case of typhoid fever resulting in partial paralysis of his lower limbs while in Pakistan on August 23, 2006.

"His geographic isolation provoked by constant fleeing is believed to have made medical assistance impossible (and) on September 4, 2006, the Saudi security services received preliminary information of his death."

Go To 'Your New Reality' For The Full Story And Updates

BUSH VOWS TO GO AFTER BIN LADEN IN PAKISTAN

BUT CIA SAYS BIN LADEN HUNT HAS GONE "STONE COLD"

From Bloomberg :

U.S. forces hunting Osama bin Laden and other terrorists in Afghanistan will cross into Pakistan if necessary, U.S. President George W. Bush said, as the leaders of the two neighboring countries traded blame over the insurgency.

"We would take the action necessary to bring them to justice,'' Bush said in an interview with Cable News Network yesterday. When asked if he would order U.S. troops into Pakistan to capture or kill bin Laden, if intelligence indicated he was hiding there, Bush responded: "Absolutely.''

Bin Laden has been on the run since a U.S.-led coalition ousted the Islamist Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001. Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, who sheltered the al-Qaeda chief and hosted his training camps, has also evaded capture.

The guerrilla war being waged by Taliban rebels is a source of tension between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. The pair clashed at the United Nations General Assembly in New York yesterday, each saying the other must do more to tackle the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Bush will hold talks with Musharraf and Karzai in Washington on Sept. 27 to discuss the joint fight against terrorism, White House spokesman Tony Snow said.

"I view President Musharraf as somebody who would like to bring al-Qaeda to justice,'' Bush told CNN, when asked whether the Pakistani leader was doing enough to track down terrorists in tribal regions bordering Afghanistan. ``There's no question there is a kind of a hostile territory in the remote regions of Pakistan that makes it easier for somebody to hide.''

Musharraf, who has faced opposition from Islamist groups for supporting the U.S.-led war on terrorism, said his government would oppose any U.S. action in Pakistan.

"We wouldn't like to allow that at all,'' he told reporters in New York. "We will do it ourselves.''

A January 13 U.S. air strike on suspected al-Qaeda figures in a village in northwestern Pakistan killed 18 people and sparked protests against the U.S. across the country.

Musharraf and Karzai have been at odds over efforts to dislodge Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters hiding along the mountainous border between the two countries.

"We must look beyond Afghanistan to the sources of terrorism,'' Karzai said in a speech to the General Assembly yesterday, without mentioning Pakistan. ``We must destroy terrorism sanctuaries beyond Afghanistan, dismantle the elaborate networks in the region that recruit, indoctrinate, train, finance and deploy terrorists.''

Musharraf took issue with Karzai's comments and said his government is pursuing a "massive, multi-pronged'' political and military strategy to tackle insurgents.

"The problem lies in Afghanistan,'' he said, adding that Omar was sheltering in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province. "Military action is required against him and his commanders,'' Musharraf added.

The Pakistani president defended an accord signed this month with pro-Taliban tribal leaders in the North Waziristan region to expel foreign al-Qaeda-linked fighters, in return for scaling back the number of Pakistani troops in the area.

"We need to take the influential tribal elders on our side,'' Musharraf said yesterday, according to the Associated Press of Pakistan. "We have to tackle Talibanization,'' he said, adding it was important to "wean away the population from getting on their side.''

From the Asia Times :

The al-Qaeda leader recently traveled from the South Waziristan tribal area in Pakistan to somewhere in the eastern Afghan provinces of Kunar and Nooristan, or possibly Bajour, a s mall tribal agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Area of Pakistan in North-West Frontier Province.

According to a witness, bin Laden traveled in a double-cabin truck with a few armed guards - not in a convoy. Apparently, this is how he now prefers to move around.

Bin Laden, with a US$25 million bounty on his head, has not been sighted for some time, and he has not been seen on any new videotape since late 2004, although audio tapes purporting to be him speaking surfaced this year.

At the same time, a close aide responsible for bin Laden's logistics and media relations told Asia Times Online that bin Laden had recovered from serious kidney-related ailments.

In Tuesday's attack in Damascus, four men tried to drive two explosives-laden cars into the US Embassy compound. Four of them and a security official were killed. One of the cars exploded outside the compound.

The incident not only carries al-Qaeda hallmarks, it is also very much in line with the al-Qaeda leadership's focus, agreed on during the Israel-Hezbollah war, to extend the flames of conflict across the region.

In this vein, bin Laden's No 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, warned on Monday that the Persian Gulf region and Israel would be the next targets of al-Qaeda. He was speaking in a video message released to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

In addition to bin Laden's improved health, al-Qaeda has in the past few months gained some breathing room to regroup and solidify its logistics as a result of the situation in the semi-autonomous North and South Waziristan tribal areas.

This area has long been home to al-Qaeda elements, but until recently they had been under intense pressure from Pakistan's security forces. However, as the tribals gained more strength - some Taliban-affiliated districts have even been declared independent of Islamabad - the authorities realized they were fighting a losing battle.

This culminated last week in security officials and the "Pakistani Taliban" agreeing to a temporary ceasefire. Previously choked channels between the Waziristans and other parts of Pakistan were now fully opened, allowing al-Qaeda to start moving money again.

A new dynamic among militant groups has emerged in Egypt to complement al-Qaeda's designs in the Middle East. Tuesday's Damascus attack could also be an illustration of this.

Many youths previously associated with the militant Gamaa Islamiya of Egypt have formed independent cells, while some Egyptian youths of Palestinian origin have created underground organizations to target the pro-Israeli Egyptian government and US interests.

Credit goes to al-Qaeda that in the past six months it established inroads into these organizations, to the extent that they are now directly under the command of the al-Qaeda leadership.

This was confirmed by Zawahiri last month in a videotape aired on Al-Jazeera news network: "We announce to the Islamic nation the good news of the unification of a great faction of the knights of the Gamaa Islamiya ... with the al-Qaeda group."

Al-Qaeda has evolved into more of an ideological inspiration to sharpen Muslim reaction against the West and create a backlash than a militant group. Five years of the US-led "war on terror" damaged its structure and it was forced to melt into the local resistance movements of Iraq and Afghanistan. Already, the Taliban and Iraqi resistances complement each other, sharing experience, skills and even logistics.

From this position, al-Qaeda will work to bind all local resistance movements into one coordinated unit against the US and its allies, with the ultimate aim of creating a universal Muslim backlash against the West.

The Israel-Hezbollah war proved the ideal starting point for this plan. The successful defense of Lebanon by Hezbollah was largely taken in the Arab world as the first Arab victory against Israel. Sentiment on the streets of the Middle East turned noticeably against the US, Israel and pro-West Muslim rulers.

Al-Qaeda wants to keep this mood, and inflame it even further. Attacks like the one in Damascus could be such pot-boilers. More, and bigger, ones are most likely being plotted by the masterminds sitting in the tribal areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

From the Washington Post :

The clandestine U.S. commandos whose job is to capture or kill Osama bin Laden have not received a credible lead in more than two years. Nothing from the vast U.S. intelligence world -- no tips from informants, no snippets from electronic intercepts, no points on any satellite image -- has led them anywhere near the al-Qaeda leader, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials.

"The handful of assets we have have given us nothing close to real-time intelligence" that could have led to his capture, said one counterterrorism official, who said the trail, despite the most extensive manhunt in U.S. history, has gone "stone cold."

But in the last three months, following a request from President Bush to "flood the zone," the CIA has sharply increased the number of intelligence officers and assets devoted to the pursuit of bin Laden. The intelligence officers will team with the military's secretive Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and with more resources from the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies.

War in Pakistan will now increase. Where US troops go, so terrorism tends to follow.

CLAIM : BIN LADEN IN HIS LAST DAYS, UNABLE TO MOVE

BUT THE "ANTI-UNITED STATES RESISTANCE" SPREADS ACROSS THE WORLD

An edit of a story in The Asia Times :

Osama Bin Laden is ill and invisible, but five years after September 11, 2001, his al-Qaeda movement has become the fulcrum of a global, Islamic resistance against the United States.

Asia Times Online has learned from an operative close to the al-Qaeda leadership that bin Laden languishes on a dialysis machine, in rapidly declining health.

"Sheikh [Osama] was in a poor condition when my father last visited," said the operative, who uses the name "Abdullah". Abdullah's father, known as Sheikh Ibrahim, is number two after Tahir Yuldeshev in the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IUM), a group closely allied with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and operating in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan.

Sheikh Ibrahim's meeting with bin Laden took place "a few weeks ago", Abdullah told Asia Times Online in an interview at the end of June in a northern Pakistani city.

"He [bin Laden] asked all of us to pray for his health. For the past many months he has been on dialysis and just cannot move. My father never told me where he was when he met Osama ... but he was worried about his fast-waning health."

Nevertheless, said Abdullah, the al-Qaeda leadership remains in Afghanistan and still serves as the nucleus of the movement.

"Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri [bin Laden's number two] is very active in Afghanistan and controlling affairs. Most of the Arab fighters left Afghanistan after the US invasion of Iraq and many went there to fight. But the main leadership of al-Qaeda continued to stay in Afghanistan," Abdullah said.

He confirmed Asia Times Online reports that bin Laden had been short of funds, hampering al-Qaeda operations. Still, Abdullah maintained that the al-Qaeda leadership would remain in Afghanistan despite all difficulties, because of the country's identification with Bilad-i-Khurasan - a land, Muslims believe, where Muslim armies will finally regroup and go to liberate the "land of Abraham" from the Anti-God (Dajal).

Abdullah also revealed that international players are aligning themselves with al-Qaeda and the Taliban in a global Islamic alliance to fight the US.

Go Here For The Full Story From The Asia Times

ZARQAWI BETRAYED FOR $25 MILLION BOUNTY

CLAIM : 'SCHEDULED FOR MATYRDOM' BY AL QAEDA

"Today Zarqawi was defeated," said the Iraqi PM, Nouri al-Maliki.

"This is a message to all those who use violence killing and devastation to disrupt life in Iraq to rethink within themselves before it is too late," he added.

PM Al-Maliki also confirmed the $25 million reward for information leading to al-Zarqawi's confirmable death or capture would be paid.

"We will meet our promise."

Early reports reveal a combination of intelligence and tip-offs from inside Iraq, and the terrorist's homeland of Jordan, revealed his location to the US and Iraqi forces.

Al-Zarawai was meeting in a house eight kilometres north of Baquba, outside of Baghdad, with at least seven other people. The US military hit the house with two 500 pound bombs, levelling what appears to be a small block of buildings. At least two women and a number of children were believed to be in the building at the time.

US General George Casey revealed : "Tips and intelligence from Iraqi senior leaders from his network led forces to al-Zarqawi and some of his associates...

"Iraqi police were first on the scene after the air strike, and elements of Multinational Division North, arrived shortly thereafter. Coalition forces were able to identify al-Zarqawi by fingerprint verification, facial recognition and known scars."

Early reports also claimed that al-Zarqawi survived the initial bombing, but was seriously injured, dying shortly before the MDN forces arrived on the scene.

Incredibly, StrategyPage.com predicted al-Zarqawi's death less than 24 hours before the airstrikes, with a short piece entitled 'Al-Zarqawi Scheduled For Matyrdom'.

In the piece, the writer muses that al-Zarqawi is causing big problems with mainstream Muslims by being, ahhh, too radical for even Al Qaeda - killing an unacceptable number of civilians (including the apparently ultra-controversial attacks in Jordan) and spouting conspiracy theories that the US, Iran and Shia leadership "are in cahoots to destroy Islam."

Less than a day later, the big tips of where al-Zarqawi is meeting roll in and airstrikes are launched. Now that's some pretty impressive intelligence :

Given that Zarqawi has become a loose cannon and that his actions are handicapping Al Qaeda's efforts, it seems reasonable to expect that an accident may befall him at some point in the near future.

If handled right it can be made to look like he went out in a blaze of glory fighting American troops or that he was foully murdered. Either way, al Qaeda gets rid of a problem and gains another "martyr."

Washington Post has a good story here that covers most of the early news.

There's also an interesting piece here on how al-Zarqawi 'hijacked' the Iraqi insurgency.

Statement From US Forces In Iraq :

“Ladies and Gentlemen, Coalition Forces killed al-Qaida terrorist leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi and one of his key lieutenants, spiritual advisor Sheik Abd-Al-Rahman, yesterday, June 7, at 6:15 p.m. in an air strike against an identified, isolated safe house."

The US right wing blogosphere is already in tears that not all the media is rejoicing in the death of Zarqawi. First they complained the mainstream media focused on al-Zarqawi too much, now not enough.

Most people who don't glory in the deaths of anyone, including the most hated enemies of the 'War On Terror' understand that while Zarqawi's death is a pscyhological triumph, and a morale booster for deployed troops, it won't actually stop terrorists attacks there.

The statement from US Forces confirms exactly this :

"Al-Zarqawi’s death is a significant blow to al-Qaida and another step toward defeating terrorism in Iraq.

“Although the designated leader of al-Qaida in Iraq is now dead, the terrorist organization still poses a threat as its members will continue to try to terrorize the Iraqi people and destabilize their government as it moves toward stability and prosperity."

The death of al-Zarqawi will swallow up most media headlines for the day, but it is unlikely to last far beyond that.

The story is his death, and how that death came about.

Once all those facts are known, mainstream media attention will quickly turn back to the investigations into the alleged massacres by US soldiers on Iraq civilians and the daily carnage on the streets of Baghdad.

For the record : Here is one of the first reports this morning, from ABC News America :

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was expected to make an important announcement at a news conference Thursday, amid a report that al-Qaida in Iraq chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi may have been killed, his adviser said. Al-Maliki adviser Adnan al-Kazimi told The Associated Press that he had heard a report that Jordanian terrorism master mind Abu Musabd al-Zarqawi may have been killed late Wednesday in Baghdad.


MORE BACKGROUND ON THE LIFE AND TERRORISM OF AL-ZARQAWI

From an April 26 story on this blog :

"What is coming is more painful," said Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of the terrorist group al-Qa'ida in Iraq, in a new half video released on the internet yesterday.

He praised mujahedin fighters for fighting hard in Iraq : "Your mujahedin sons were able to confront the most ferocious of crusader campaigns on a Muslim state. They have stood in the face of this onslaught for three years."

He claimed : "Any government which is formed in Iraq now - whether by Shias or Zionist Kurds, or those who are dubbed Sunnis - would only be a (US) stooge."

He directed questions to US President Bush : "Why don't you tell people that your soldiers are committing suicide, taking drugs and hallucination pills to make them sleep?

He issued hard warnings : "By God, your dreams will be defeated by our blood and by our bodies. What is coming is even worse."

And he pointed out that the West was offered a truce, which was rejected outright by the US : "Our emir, Sheikh Osama bin Laden, has offered you a truce, which was good for you if you had accepted. But you turned it down, because of your arrogance."

Investigative journalist Dahr Jamail went in search of al-Zarqawi last year, in his home country of Jordan.

This report confirms some of the legend of al-Zarqawi, but shattered much of the US propaganda, designed to both question the terrorist's motivations and to raise his profile to that of a 'worthy enemy', which many times seem way beyond the capacity of just one man, with a small number of followers and militants working on his behalf :

A remarkable proportion of the violence taking place in Iraq is regularly credited to the Jordanian Ahmad al-Khalayleh, better known as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and his al-Qaeda-linked organization in Iraq.

Sometimes it seems no car bomb goes off, no ambush occurs that isn't claimed in his name or attributed to him by the Bush administration. Bush and his top officials have, in fact, made good use of him, lifting his reputed feats of terrorism to epic, even mythic, proportions (much aided by various mainstream media outlets).

Here's a story from 2004 by journalist Paul McGeough, easily the most comprehensive investigation into the life of al-Zarqawi to be found on the internet.

Zarqawi and the small army he calls Tawhid Wa'Al-Jihad have expanded their area of operations, taking control of vital thoroughfares in the capital and forcing swaths of country to be declared no-go zones for US forces. At the same time, Zarqawi wrestles with nationalist Iraqi fighters for control of the insurgency's post-Saddam agenda. American crackdowns have little success in curbing the crisis.

THE US FAILS TO FIND MOMENTUM FOR ACTION ON IRAN

CHINA, RUSSIA TELLS THE US TO BACK OFF

THE NEW WORLD ORDER COMES TOGETHER, BUT WHERE IS THE US AND THE UK?

Opinion

By Darryl Mason

Iran has announced it will defy any further calls by the UN to stop its program of enriching uranium for civilian, peaceful purposes. At the same time, the US has declared the UN Security Council must act now in order to save its credibility.

But China and Russia have warned the US not to do anything stupid, or dangerous, when it comes to Iran. And Iran has told the US it will strike back "beyond belief" if there is an invasion or round of aistrikes, or even a solid slab of sanctions.

The US has crowed too loud this time.

The UN Security Council is unlikely to impose sanctions on Iran, and certainly won't okay military action, because two of its key members, China and Russia, hold vetoes and don't want any action on Iran, even if they are found to have nuclear weapons in development.

The US and Israel might not be able to live with Iran having nuclear weapons, but Russia and China are not so bothered. Iran is a powerful ally in the region now, where the US has become a dangerous liability.

After a solid month of leaked information about US military strike plans on Iran, and wall to wall television debates on the subject, US Secretary of Defence, Condileeza Rice, is finding it hard to be taken seriously when she declares that the US prefers diplomacy over war. She said it before, but the media didn't notice. They were too fixated on how the US will strike Iran.

Such talk of diplomacy will now be seen as a major backdown by the US, especially back home, even though Rice is singing the same song she has sung since the start of the year.

And the same for Bush. Neither have announced an intention to bomb Iran, but the major media in the US has talked about it ceaselessly - how it will be done, why it must be done, why it can't be done, when it will be done and, occasionally, if it will be done.

Bush, however, hasn't helped the global perception of the US being a war-wanting nation when he has thumped podiums and grinned speciously while talking about how no options have been taken off the table yet when it comes to Iran, "including the nuclear option".

Rice now finds herself unwelcome as she tours Middle East and EU countries. The diplomats may still like her, and trust her, but she is bad for local business. A War On Iran is shaping up, in Europe and the East at least, as the most unpopular confrontation in decades.

Condi Rice's quick "pop-in" to Iraq on Wednesday, teamed up with the Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, just as the Iraqi government was breaking a crippling deadlock over leadership and its constitution, was not widely viewed as affirmation of democracy in Iraq, but as further interference by the US.

"What are you doing here?" the uncomfortable Iraqi faces glared at Rice and Rumsfeld, who looked extremely uncomfortable themselves. Rice put on a good show, but Rumsfeld was grim and bitter and obviously had a lot on his mind.

Their visit was widely seen in Iraq, and across the Middle East, as the US giving its blessing to the new moves by the Iraq government, where no blessing was required.

The fact that this visit by Rice and Rumsfeld was undertaken with a wall of US media in tow didn't do much to wind back the idea that these are simply PR trips. The locals don't buy it, and now neither do the majority of Americans.

Rice is having an awfully hard time trying to round up enthusiasm and support for some hardcore UN sanctions on Iran, let alone military action, even now it is clear Iran will not stop pursuing their homegrown nuclear energy drive.

China and Russia are already doing big business with Iran and don't want their profit margins affected by sanctions that would clearly benefit the US, by giving a major leg-up to Iraq and all the US corporations now basing themselves there in the hope that Iraq will serve as a new American gateway to the riches of the Middle East.

"Help us on Iran," Rice says, seemingly desperate now, but so many countries are scared of getting involved with the US, this time.

Rice says "diplomacy", Bush says "all options, including nuclear, are on the table" in dealing with Iran, and suddenly it is the US, not Iran, who looks like the rogue state, the drunken sword swinger in the diplomatic ballroom.

And the US is not getting much help from the media this time.

There was resistance to the War On Iraq in the major media in the US, for a period, but once it seemed a lock-in that the War was on, they fell into line. Once Rumsfeld and then Secretary of State Colin Powell handed out the 'confidential' memos, intelligence reports and fake photos, the media took the bait and ran with it all the way to the front page.

But not this time.

Shocked, mortified, by their original enthusiasm for the War On Iraq, and the hellstorm of response from their readers that followed, and continues still, growing even stronger, journalists and editors across the US are suspicious of everything Rice, President Bush and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have to say about "options" on Iran.

The media is wary. They are stand-offish. "You lied before, how do we know you aren't lying this time?"

Scanning through dozens of newspapers online, from the US, across the EU, along with (translated) Russia and Chinese media portals, it appears the US faces nothing but opposition to any action at all to solve the Iran Crisis.

The international media didn't believe the US on Iraq from the beginning, and they seem to be literally doing everything they can to hammer the US now, to codify them, to nullify their once formidable projection of power and dominance.

Perhaps it's easier for the media to simply believe Iran is telling the truth when it says it only wants to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. Or easier to believe the US is lying, and wants to bomb Iran regardless of whether or not they are "nuking up".

There has been some extraordinary changes in the world since the start of the War On Iraq, and a huge slab of those changes have come directly from new energy and trade deals forged between the rising mega-powers which are China, Iran and Russia.

And there is the boom in Latin America as well, with new socialist democratic governments storming through, rich with fat oil dollars and major investment capital from China and the East.

All the while that this new order has been cutting deals and firming fresh ties, the US has been distracted by Iraq War fallout back home - 2300+ dead soldiers, torture scandals, intelligence scandals, battles over who lied about what and when, and the wall of opposition to the wartime implementation of hard security measures on freedom-focused Americans.

And perhaps worst of all, the money is now running out. The US can barely afford another War, and the American people now know this. It took a while, but once fuel prices leapt above $3 a gallon, suddenly every American wanted to know why.

China and Russia are working together and working with Iran, cutting energy deals for gas and oil worth half a trillion amongst themselves, and bringing India and Pakistan (two nations that most definitely are nuclear) into their breezily formed zone of energy security.

China has also made stunning inroads into Africa as well, just this week, locking up major supplies of oil from Niger.

The new global order of China, Iran, Russia, with India and Pakistan almost on board, and the leftist Latin America unification, is rich and powerful and popular.

The US, the UK, Australia, these countries are neither needed, nor especially wanted, in the new global order. We might have some resources they can use, but to not get coal and gas and uranium from the West will not cripple the new global order's rise and dominance. China and Russia will just go elsewhere to get what they need, which is why Iran and African countries like Niger are now so important to them.

But the US wants to freeze out Iran, shut down their rising world status, and isolate them from their ties with China and Russia, and pipeline deals with Pakistan and India.

Iran with the bomb is a country that will be hard to hold back from dominating the Middle East, particularly with China and Russia standing tall behind them, if that is actually what China and Russia will allow.

Iran has more readily available oil and gas today than Iraq does, and far more stability, for now, in the face of US pressure, which has caused the dissenters to go quieter, instead of rising up as might be expected, to cash in on the US pressure.

And Latin America, led by Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, is gradually pulling out of the US oil market and finding new customers, in the Bahamas, in Iran, in China and Russia.

In the Middle East, outside of Israel, it is not Iran that is viewed as the greatest danger, or the most repressive of the regimes. That black honour falls on the Saudi Kingdom, one of the strongest US allies in the world. And yet is a brutocracy that appears to be fragile, a few shoves away from finally toppling over.

The US doesn't want this, of course. The Saudis are friends, and good business partners, despite the torture and brutality used to hold onto power, and despite being the producer of September 11 terrorists and Osama Bin Laden.

The US shouts for freedom and democracy, and Bush sermonises about how every human soul longs to be free, but young people in the Middle East wonder why they don't start with the Saudi kingdom first, and then perhaps Syria, and then move on from there.

How will the US get back on top? How will they regain their position as the stable, most trustworthy, mega-power in the world? No-one seems to know, including the US.

They are being played for fools by Iran, by Venezuela. While demand for oil, and refining problems, are bumping up the cost of oil, the insecurity borne of the talk of war has added substantially to the storming rise in fuel costs of the past three months.

Iran threatens the US and appears dangerous, and unstable, and oil goes up. Iran makes money. And so does Venezuela, another so called 'wild-card' nation in the Americas that is cleaning up from the US' current vulnerability, thanks to the Iraq War fiasco.

The US has been set up, quietly, subtly, by all these countries that now point out how exposed they are, how vulnerable. Did the US walk into a trap by invading Iraq? Perhaps. Osama Bin Laden himself said it was what he wanted, and he stated that the price of oil was too cheap, when it was only $50 a barrel, that it should in fact be closer to $100.

Right now it's almost too easy for Iran to destabilise the US simply by banging together a few swords and raging against Israel. They must be laughing oil heading towards Bin Laden's preferred market price. Who gets rich from all this? Not the average American. But the chiefs of the oil companies do, no matter in which country they are based. They're all cleaning up.

Does a War On Iran loom larger today? Hardly. Russia and China would not allow it, for starters, let alone the US Congress, let alone every other country in Middle East, with the exception of Israel.

There was the appearance that Iran was buying time, baffling the UN and the IAEA, delaying the inevitable while it rushed towards building nuclear weapons. But perhaps next week it will will be revealed that it was actually the US buying time.

Time enough to prove invading Iraq was the right thing to do, that it would be a success.

Time enough to show the world that they are still in control, that they are still number one.

Or time enough to buy their seat at the table of the New Global Order, the New World Order that they were leading, initiated by President Bush's father in the early 1990s.

President Bush may well say that time is running out for Iran, but Iran knows the truth, that the exact opposite is, in fact, true.

With Russia and China as friends, business partners and allies, Iran has all the time in the world now.

(This piece has been corrected since its original publication)

AL-ZARQAWI'S NEW WARNING TO THE WEST

"WHAT IS COMING IS EVEN WORSE"

CLAIMS US SOLDIERS ARE COMMITTING SUICIDE IN IRAQ



"What is coming is more painful," said Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of the terrorist group al-Qa'ida in Iraq, in a new half video released on the internet yesterday.

Alleged to have beheaded American and British hostages (while wearing a mask) and being at the forefront of the most deadly attacks on Shiite and Western forces in Iraq, al-Zarqawi showed off what he said were new weapons in the video, and was seen walking through a desert landscape surrounded by heavily armed security guards. He even showed himself firing a machine gun in the exact same pose, and camera angle, as the character John Rambo in the iconic American movie First Blood.

He praised mujahedin fighters for fighting hard in Iraq :

"Your mujahedin sons were able to confront the most ferocious of crusader campaigns on a Muslim state. They have stood in the face of this onslaught for three years."

He claimed :

"Any government which is formed in Iraq now - whether by Shias or Zionist Kurds, or those who are dubbed Sunnis - would only be a (US) stooge."

He directed questions to US President Bush :

"Why don't you tell people that your soldiers are committing suicide, taking drugs and hallucination pills to make them sleep?

He issued hard warnings :

"By God, your dreams will be defeated by our blood and by our bodies. What is coming is even worse."

And he pointed out that the West was offered a truce, which was rejected outright by the US :

"Our emir, Sheikh Osama bin Laden, has offered you a truce, which was good for you if you had accepted. But you turned it down, because of your arrogance."

Al-Zarqawi is now the most wanted man in the world, alongside bin Laden, and while President Bush and a stream of US, UK and Australian politicians claimed they were not intimidated, and that they were winning the War On Iraq, and the War On Terror in general, the video clearly showed that Al-Zarqawi was in good health and clear in his purpose and intent.

And all the more dangerous for being so.

For the first few days of this week, at least, Al-Zarqawi showed he was winning the propaganda war.

BIN LADEN CLAIMS WAR ON TERROR IS "A WAR AGAINST ISLAM"

CALLS FOR WORLDWIDE JIHAD AGAINST "CRUSADERS"

CITES IRAQ, AFGHANISTAN, SUDAN, KASHMIR, CHECHNYA, PALESTINE AS CURRENT BATTLEFIELDS

Osama Bin Laden is said to be the voice speaking on a tape broadcast, in four parts, by Al Jazeera. The following are excerpts from the transcript published on the Kavkaz website :

"The West is incapable of recognising the rights of others. It will not be able to respect others' beliefs or feelings. The West still believes in ethnic supremacy and looks down on other nations. They categorise human beings into white masters and coloured slaves.

"This is why they established institutions and enacted laws to maintain their supremacy by creating the United Nations and the veto power ...They regard jihad for the sake of God or defending one's self or his country as an act of terror. US and Europe consider jihad groups in Palestine, Chechnya, Iraq and Afghanistan as terrorist groups, so how could we talk or have understanding with them without using weapons?

"On their part, the rulers of our region consider the US and Europe as their friends and allies while looking at the jihad groups that fight against the Crusaders in Iraq and Afghanistan as terrorist groups as well. So how can we reach understanding with those rulers who deny us the right to defend ourselves and our religion without carrying arms?

"The net result of their thinking is for us to abandon jihad and acquiesce to remaining as their slaves...

"What does the destruction of the infrastructure in Iraq mean and the tragedy that befell them mean? And the use of depleted uranium, besieging Iraq for years, causing the death of more than one million children which amazed all who had visited Iraq, including the Westerners themselves? It is a malicious crusade against Muslims.

"What does the reoccupation of Iraq mean by using lies and deception along with murder, destruction, detention, torture and creation of huge military bases to dominate the whole region? It is a Zionist crusade against Muslims."

Bin Laden urged his supporters and followers "to establish jihad in the fields of jihad particularly in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Sudan, Kashmir and Chechnya."

The tape finishes with Bin Laden declaring : "Jihad today is an imperative for every Muslim."

THE BILLION DOLLAR TERROR WAR ONLINE

THE PENTAGON WILL WAGE WAR ON AND ACROSS THE INTERNET

From Scotland's the Sunday Herald :

"Imagine a world where wars are fought over the internet; where TV broadcasts and newspaper reports are designed by the military to confuse the population; and where a foreign armed power can shut down your computer, phone, radio or TV at will.

"In 2006, we are just about to enter such a world. This is the age of information warfare, and details of how this new military doctrine will affect everyone on the planet are contained in a report, entitled The Information Operations Roadmap, commissioned and approved by US secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld..."

It is certainly no great secret that the Pentagon is already deep into a massive 'psy-ops' program focused primarily on winning the War On Terror and destabilising the insurgency in Iraq. This program makes use of fake news stories, fake videos posted online, spreading propaganda through the message and discussion boards of websites around the world and publishing high profile books that may be 80% sensational and revealing fact, with 20% pure falsity.

The Lincoln Group, a media company paid hundreds of millions of dollars by the Pentagon to plant terribly written stories in Iraqi newspapers was recently exposed by the UK's Independent newspaper, along with a stream of US media outlets. Rather than backing down from continuing such a program after exposure, US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rusmfeld, said the Lincoln Group would continue to be funded for its work and that he had no problem with fake 'good news' stories finding their way into Iraqi newspapers.

It is not unreasonable to assume, therefore, that getting exposed may have been part of the Lincoln Group's original plans, as now many Iraqis view their newspapers as possibly containing planted stories. What to believe? What to dismiss as propaganda? The credibility of Iraqi newspapers as being truthful and reliable has been effectively destabilised.

The Pentagon backed psychological operations campaign involves the use of all media, including books, posters, films, the internet, music, personal assistant computer devices (PDAs, Blackberrys), web forums and newspapers. These media forms are used to funnel out black propaganda and misinformation that is aimed at assisting the US government goals and military strategies in the War On Terror.

Rumsfeld admitted in 2005 that Al Qeada was winning the information war online, and when he talked of their successes, he spoke almost in awe. He was most certainly impressed by what they had achieved.

From the shattering footage of beheadings and US tanks being destroyed by roadside bombs, to Osama Bin Laden speeches that were seen by more people than the speeches of President Bush, the Pentagon has been slow to realise the full potential and effectiveness of their enemy in the online world.

Not any more, or so it appears.

SIX SCENARIOS FOR MEGA OIL PRICE RISES

On CNN, a reknowned investment specialist, Bill Browder of Hermitage Capital, has forecast estimates on oil prices for six world crisis scenarios :

$ 79 per barrel - Unrest And Violence In Nigeria
$ 88 per barrel - Resistance In Iraq Repeatedly Hits Major Infrastructure
$ 98 per barrel - Civil War In Nigeria
$111 per barrel - Venezueala's Hugo Chavez Cuts Oil Supply
$131 per barrel - Iran Under War Cuts Oil Supply
$262 per barrel - The House Of Saud Falls

In the same story on CNN Money, George Soros said the following :

"U.S. power and influence has declined precipitously because of Iraq and the war on terror and that creates an incentive for anyone who wants to make trouble to go ahead and make it. Iran is on a collision course and I have a difficulty seeing how such a collision can be avoided..."

In early 2004, oil prices rose and fell and then settled around $40 per barrel.

Osama Bin Laden has stated at least twice in the past two years that oil should be $100 per barrel and that the US should cut its consumption of some ten million barrels a day.

If oil was $40 two years ago, and now it's well over $65, who is winning The War?