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News Release Archive | war | Accuracy.Org

Rethinking Afghanistan and Debating the Strategic Partnership Agreement

March 19, 2012

ANAND GOPAL, anandgopal80 at gmail.com, @Anand_Gopal_
Available for a limited number of interviews, Gopal is an independent journalist who has reported extensively from Afghanistan for the Christian Science Monitor, the Wall Street Journal and other publications. He is currently at work on a book on the war in Afghanistan. He was recently interviewed by The Real News: “Afghan Killings Product of Failed Strategy.”

RICK REYES, rickreyes at me.com, @rick_reyes
Reyes is a co-founding member of Veterans for Rethinking Afghanistan. He said today: “We’ve stretched out our resources way too thin — we’ve exhausted our troops and reached the breaking point. The latest attack is an indicator of things much worse to come.”

HAKIM, weeteckyoung at gmail.com,
Hakim (Afghans frequently only have one name) is a member of the the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, which just published the piece “Will the Afghan Parliament, the U.S. Public or the UN Debate the U.S. Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement?” which states: “Currently, citizens of Syria and the world can at least discuss Mr Kofi Annan’s warning that the situation in Syria should be handled ‘very, very carefully’ to avoid an escalation that would de-stabilize the region, after an earlier warning against further militarization of the Syrian crisis. The crisis in Afghanistan is as severe as the one in Syria, and it is more chronic. Two million Afghans have been killed in the wars of the past four decades. But not a single diplomat is warning against the further militarization of the Afghan crisis. …

“Military and foreign policy elites in Washington have encouraged a conventional presumption that the ‘war on terror’ requires a long-term U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. Underlying that presumption is a deeper assumption that ‘terrorism’ can be resolved through war, that is, a supposition that humanity can somehow counter ‘terrorism’ by killing as many ‘terrorists’ as possible, regardless of the deadly ANGER these killings, so similar in themselves to terrorist acts, must necessarily fuel, not to mention the costly ‘collateral damage.’ …

“An interesting article dated July 11, 2011 had this to say about possible UN silence over Afghan public sentiment on the U.S. Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement: ‘The Afghan public has outrightly rejected the U.S. plans as the results of a survey conducted by UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan suggest. UNAMA with its 23 offices in Afghanistan conducted the survey across the country some two months back and hasn’t published it. Although the survey’s findings are widely known, if published, the stark survey results will undermine the U.S.’ future strategic plans.’

“If this remains true, global citizens should request that the UN disclose the wishes of the Afghan public as reflected in the survey, and demonstrate that it is still committed to diplomatic solutions and the interests of the people of Afghanistan.”

The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers have launched the campaign “Two Million Candles to End the Afghan War.”

Tagged With: Afghanistan, Anand Gopal, Middle East, Rick Reyes, US Troops in Afghanistan, US-Afghanistan Relations, war,

Killings in Afganistan

March 12, 2012

KATHY KELLY, kathy.vcnv at gmail.com
Kelly is just back from Afghanistan and may be sentenced to prison today along with other peace activists for protests outside the base. She is with the group Voices for Creative Nonviolence. She was on “Democracy Now!” this morning along with a representative from the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers. She said today: “President Obama and U.S. military brass are depicting a U.S. soldier killing 16 Afghan civilians as an exceptional event. But in fact, this tragedy reflects and encapsulates the U.S. war of choice in Afghanistan. Groups of U.S. soldiers have been breaking into Afghan homes and killing people, without cause or provocation, for the last 11 years. Civilians have been afflicted by aerial bombing by helicopter gunships, drone surveillance and attacks, and night raids.

“In the recent past, Afghan civilians have been appalled and agitated by news of U.S. soldiers that went on killing sprees, cutting off body parts of their victims to save as war trophies. They’ve been repulsed by photos of U.S. soldiers urinating on the corpses of Afghans whom they have killed. The burning of the Quran further enraged civilians. One of the greatest factors contributing to public dismay and hostility towards the foreign forces is the practice of night raids. As many as 40 of these raids happen around the country on some nights, and the U.S. military reports an average of 10 a night. U.S. /NATO soldiers burst into people’s homes and attack people in their sleep.

“The U.S. wants the Karzai government to sign a Strategic Protection Agreement that will allow U.S./NATO forces to stay in Afghanistan until 2024 and possibly beyond. This agreement will very likely frustrate possibilities for a negotiated settlement since Taliban forces have repeatedly stated their demand that all foreign troops leave Afghanistan. The Strategic Partnership Agreement has never been presented to the Afghan Members of Parliament for their consideration. No one in the U.S. or Karzai government seems concerned about how ordinary Afghans might view the Strategic Partnership Agreement.

“Arguably, people in Afghanistan are looking for ways to vent long-suppressed anger over having their future dictated by their invaders and occupiers.”

Kelly recently wrote the piece “The Ghost and the Machine: Drone Warfare and Accountability” along with the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers.

Also see from the The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers: “2 Million Candles to End the Afghan War.”

See by Anand Gopal “Night Raids, Hidden Detention Centers, the ‘Black Jail,’ and the Dogs of War in Afghanistan.”

Tagged With: Afghanistan, Kathy Kelly, Middle East, US Troops in Afghanistan, war,

Holder: Kill Jason Bourne

March 6, 2012

The Chicago Tribune reports: “Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. defended the U.S. right to target and kill American citizens overseas in the war on terror … Holder did not take questions from reporters after his remarks, and while he originally was going to answer questions from the law school audience, on Monday morning he abruptly cancelled that plan.”

GLENN GREENWALD, GGreenwald at salon.com
Available for limited number of interviews, Greenwald’s latest book is With Liberty and Justice for Some. He just wrote the piece “Attorney General Holder Defends Execution Without Charges,” which states: “In a speech at Northwestern University yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder provided the most detailed explanation yet for why the Obama administration believes it has the authority to secretly target U.S. citizens for execution by the CIA without even charging them with a crime, notifying them of the accusations, or affording them an opportunity to respond, instead condemning them to death without a shred of transparency or judicial oversight. The administration continues to conceal the legal memorandum it obtained to justify these killings, and, as The New York Times‘ Charlie Savage noted, Holder’s ‘speech contained no footnotes or specific legal citations, and it fell far short of the level of detail contained in the Office of Legal Counsel memo.’ …

“When Obama officials (like Bush officials before them) refer to someone ‘who is a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda or associated forces,’ what they mean is this: someone the President has accused and then decreed in secret to be a Terrorist without ever proving it with evidence.”

MARCY WHEELER, emptywheel at gmail.com
Wheeler blogs at EmptyWheel.net — she just wrote several pieces on Holder’s speech including “Holder’s Unproven Claims about Anwar al-Awlaki the AQAP Leader,” which states: “If the case that Awlaki [who was assassinated by the U.S. government last September in Yemen] was an imminent threat rests on his leadership role, but we don’t really have any proof of that fact (or, worse, our double agent undermined it after OLC [Office of Legal Counsel] had already signed off on the killing), then the entire argument collapses.

“Moreover, if [the Department of Justice] doesn’t have that evidence (they might, but they certainly haven’t shown it), then consider how much more awful this argument is. It’s bad enough that the Attorney General just argued that due process does not equal judicial due process. But he argued it by claiming that Awlaki was someone they haven’t attempted to prove he was.” See: http://www.emptywheel.net/tag/eric-holder

Wheeler wrote the book: Anatomy of Deceit: How the Bush Administration Used the Media to Sell the Iraq War and Out a Spy.

Holder’s speech

Filed Under: Tagged With: civil rights, Glenn Greenwald, Marcy Wheeler, war,

War Protests: From Afghanistan to Hancock Air Base — to Prison?

February 29, 2012

ANN WRIGHT, microann at yahoo.com
Wright, a former State Department diplomat and retired Army colonel, helped re-open the U.S. embassy in Kabul in 2001. She resigned from the State Department in protest of the Iraq invasion in March of 2003. She said: “There’s been real blowback from the burning of the Quran, but there has also been real blowback from the killings from continued drone stikes.” Wright is a defendant in a trial today for protests outside the Hancock Air National Guard Base in New York.

KATHY KELLY, kathy.vcnv at gmail.com
Kelly is just back from Afghanistan and may be sentenced to prison today along with other peace activists for protests outside the base. She is with the group Voices for Creative Nonviolence. Along with Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, she just wrote the piece “The Ghost and the Machine: Drone Warfare and Accountability,” which profiles an impoverished Afghan family with a five-year-old, Aymal, whose father was killed by a drone attack: “Aymal’s grandmother becomes agitated and distraught speaking about her son’s death, and that of his four friends. ‘All of us ask, “Why?’” she says, raising her voice. ‘They kill people with computers and they can’t tell us why. When we ask why this happened, they say they had doubts, they had suspicions. But they didn’t take time to ask “Who is this person?” or “Who was that person?” There is no proof, no accountability. Now, there is no reliable person in the home to bring us bread. I am old, and I do not have a peaceful life.’ …

“In June 2010, Philip G. Alston, then the UN’s Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, appeared before the UN Human Rights Council and testified that ‘targeted killings pose a rapidly growing challenge to the international rule of law … In a situation in which there is no disclosure of who has been killed, for what reason, and whether innocent civilians have died, the legal principle of international accountability is, by definition, comprehensively violated.’ …

“Drone warfare, ever more widely used from month to month from the Bush through the Obama administrations, has seen very little meaningful public debate. We don’t ask questions — our minds straying no nearer these battlefields than in the coming decades the bodies of our young people will — that is, if the chaos our war-making engenders doesn’t bring the battlefields to us. An expanding network of devastatingly lethal covert actions spreading throughout the developing world passes with minimal concern or comment.”

Kelly and other activists face prison time from a symbolic ‘die-in’ at the main entrance Hancock Air National Guard Base (Mattydale, NY), protesting the piloting and maintenance of the hunter/killer Reaper drones at the base. The Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars released a statement today: “Nationally known peace activists Kathy Kelly (Voices for Creative Nonviolence), retired Colonel Ann Wright, Martha Hennessy (NYC Catholic Workers), Elliott Adams (past President of Veterans for Peace) and Jules Orkin (peace walker extraordinaire) will be sentenced on February 29 at 5 p.m. in DeWitt Town Court (5400 Butternut Dr., East Syracuse) by Judge David Gideon. They are the last of the ‘Hancock 38′ Drone Resisters to be sentenced.

“In addition, previously sentenced defendants will return to court. At least eleven people have chosen to send their fines to the Voices for Creative Nonviolence for the benefit of PeaceJam Afghanistan instead of to the court and will present receipts to the judge. Ann Tiffany says ‘To me it is a question of Justice.’ Many will show they do community service on a daily basis despite the judge’s sentence. There will be a press conference at 4 pm, outside of the Court House. Speakers will include Kathy Kelly, Ann Wright, Elliott Adams and Ed Kinane who has redirected his fine.

“The Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars will continue to resist the use of drones. As we argued in court, drone warfare violates the Nuremberg Principles and other international, as well as moral, laws. We resist those who would normalize the use of robotic assassins as a mode of warfare and reject the policy of dehumanization of peoples in other lands.”

Contact for the Coalition: Judy Bello, judith at papillonweb.net; Peg Gefell, peg.fink.gefell at gmail.com; Syracuse Peace Council: carol at peacecouncil.net

Also see from the The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers: “2 Million Candles to End the Afghan War”

Filed Under: Tagged With: Afghanistan, Ann Wright, Kathy Kelly, Middle East, war,

Iran: Propaganda Wars

February 15, 2012

GARETH PORTER, porter.gareth50 at gmail.com
Porter is an investigative journalist and historian specializing in U.S. national security policy. He just wrote the piece: “A Dangerous Game on Iran.” He said today: “There are clearly drumbeats for war in U.S. media coverage of Iran, largely fueled by the Israeli propaganda blast suggesting an array of Iranian assassination attempts with no discernible factual basis. The indications are that there will be a new round of negotiations with Iran relatively soon. What’s being ignored is the fact that Iran was ready to negotiate with the United States on a fuel swap deal that would reduce its stock of enriched uranium and indicated it would cease its enrichment to 20 percent if the Western countries assured it of a supply of fuel for its Tehran Research Reactor. The U.S. should take advantage of that offer.”

MUHAMMAD SAHIMI, moe@usc.edu,
Sahimi is a professor at the University of Southern California and lead political columnist for the website PBS/Frontline/Tehran Bureau. He said today: “The attempts to assassinate Israeli diplomats are presumably a blowback by Iran against Israel’s covert war against Iran. Israel has been the culprit behind the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists, has supported Iranian terrorist groups to carry out terrorist operations in Iran and is suspected of having a hand in several explosions in important Iranian military and civilian facilities. At the same time, the Israel lobby in the U.S. has been the primary force for imposing tougher sanctions on Iran…”

See Juan Cole: “Indian Investigators do not Suspect Iran in Israel Embassy Blast.”

Tagged With: Iran, Middle East, Muhammad Sahimi, war,

Who is the Government Jailing? * Environmentalists * Whistleblowers * Peace Activists

March 8, 2011

In response to the question: “Is it illegitimate for people to say that some of those CEOs on Wall Street should have gone to jail?” White House Chief of Staff William Daley said Sunday: “Well, I — look at, I don’t know if it’s illegitimate or not. People have a right to say what they want. But I think if you’re an elected official, you should allow the justice system to take over and move forward. And when there are prosecutions, that’s up to that system.”

BILL McKIBBEN, via Jamie Henn
McKibben is the author of a dozen books on the environment, a scholar in residence at Middlebury College, and founder of 350.org. He recently wrote the piece “As climate crime continues, who are we sending to jail? Tim DeChristopher?” which states: “Let’s consider for a moment the targets the federal government chooses to make an example of. So far, no bankers have been charged, despite the unmitigated greed that nearly brought the world economy down. No coal or oil execs have been charged, despite fouling the entire atmosphere and putting civilization as we know it at risk. But engage in creative protest that mildly disrupts the efficient sell-off of our landscape to oil and gas barons? As [environmental activist] Tim DeChristopher found out [last week], that’ll get you not just a week in court, but potentially a long stretch in the pen.”

JESSELYN RADACK
Radack is homeland security and human rights director of the Government Accountability Project. She said today: “The Obama administration is prosecuting whistleblowers in droves, more than all previous administrations combined. Some of them went through all the ‘proper channels’ to report problems internally [and are being prosecuted] under the Espionage Act, which is meant to go after spies, not truth-tellers. The Government Accountability Project knows of seven ‘leak’ investigations or prosecutions, the most egregious of which is that of Thomas Drake. This is a disturbing trend that sends a chilling message to public servants — especially from an administration that is supposedly devoted to openness and transparency.”

Radack recently wrote a piece titled “War on Whistleblowers Escalating,” which also notes the “Prosecution of FBI linguist Shamai Leibowitz under the Espionage Act; Prosecution of accused Wikileaks source Bradley Manning; Prosecution of former State Department employee Stephen Kim under the Espionage Act; Indictment of former CIA employee Jeffery Sterling under the Espionage Act” and others.

The Project has set up a petition for Drake’s case.

BILL BICHSEL, also via Leonard Eiger, gzcenter.org
Bichsel is an 82-year-old Jesuit priest from Tacoma, Washington. He is one of the “Disarm Now Plowshares,” five activists who were convicted of federal charges in December because they cut through fences where nuclear weapons are stored on Nov. 2, 2009. According to their webpage, each defendant faces possible sentences of up to ten years in prison; they are scheduled to be sentenced on March 28. Once arrested, the five were cuffed and hooded with sand bags because the marine in charge testified “when we secure prisoners anywhere in Iraq or Afghanistan we hood them …so we did it to them.”

Desmond Tutu wrote recently: “I fully support the nonviolent disarmament witness that took place in the United States on Nov. 2, 2009 to begin to disarm the Trident nuclear weapons. The first strike Trident nuclear missiles are a real threat to all nations, including South Africa. During the struggle against apartheid in South Africa we often used civil resistance and other nonviolent methods. These methods are equally relevant when it comes to the struggle against war and nuclear weapons.” PDF

Bichsel said today: “I see more homelessness — that’s what we deal with here at the Tacoma Catholic Worker. Meanwhile, massive resources are going to war and destruction. Nuclear weapons also contribute to proliferation as others look on in fear and dread of the U.S. and its having the biggest stockpile.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Filed Under: , Tagged With: Environmentalists, Peace, war, Whistleblowers,

Clinton Talks Freedom as Dissident Bloodied and Dragged Off

February 17, 2011

RAY McGOVERN
McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years, whose duties included preparing the President’s Daily Brief and chairing National Intelligence Estimates.

Robert Parry, editor of ConsortiumNews.com just wrote: “Sometimes the hypocrisy is just overwhelming. So, it probably shouldn’t surprise us that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would deliver a speech hailing the peaceful protests that changed Egypt while 71-year-old Ray McGovern was roughed up and dragged away for standing quietly in protest of her support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“‘So this is America,’ said McGovern as he was hustled from the room by two security guards. ‘This is America.’

“McGovern, a former Army intelligence officer and a 27-year veteran of the CIA, was wearing a ‘Veterans for Peace’ t-shirt and, according to witnesses, was standing silently with his back to Secretary Clinton before he was set upon by the two agents who bruised, bloodied and handcuffed McGovern, a cancer survivor. See video:

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Tagged With: Afghanistan, war,

Anti-Drone War Protesters Given Time Served

January 27, 2011

AP is reporting: “A judge says protesters’ moral opposition to drone warfare overseas didn’t absolve them of guilt for trespassing at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada in April 2009. Las Vegas Justice of the Peace William Jansen delivered a 20-page ruling Thursday finding a group dubbing themselves the ‘Creech 14′ guilty of trespassing at the base about 45 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The judge sentenced each to credit for time already served in jail and sent them on their way.

“‘Go in peace,’ he said.”

See Las Vegas Sun report

KATHY KELLY, JOHN DEAR, JIM HABER
Haber is co-coordinator of the Nevada Desert Experience. John Dear is a Jesuit priest. He said today: “Creech Air Force Base is home to the latest high-tech weapons that use unmanned aerial systems to carry out surveillance and increasingly lethal attack missions in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen.”

Kelly, co-founder of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, said today: “It’s criminal for the U.S. people to spend $2 billion per week for war in Afghanistan that maims, kills and displaces innocent civilians who’ve meant us no harm. … [Read more...]

Filed Under: , Tagged With: Afghanistan, drones, Iraq, Pakistan, war, yemen,

Cost of War: Breaking It Down

January 12, 2011

Monday (January 17) is the 50th anniversary of President Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell address, in which he warned of the rise of a “military-industrial complex.”
Martin Luther King Day is also Monday. He said: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
On Tuesday, the LA Times reported, Vice President Biden “backed away from his own recent promise that the U.S. would pull out of the country ‘come hell or high water’ by 2014.” Instead “conceding that the U.S. might retain a presence in Afghanistan when the 2014 deadline hits and beyond.”

JO COMERFORD, CHRIS HELLMAN
Comerford is executive director of the National Priorities Project; Hellman is budget analyst for the group, which as part of the re-launch of its website, CostofWar.com, has just issued “What’s at Stake?” — 50 state-level briefs focused on the impact of war spending. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Tagged With: budget, children, head start, health insurance, renewable energy, war,

Martin Luther King Jr. on Violence

January 12, 2011

“I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. …
“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”
– From Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech “Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence”

JARED BALL
Assistant professor of communication studies at Morgan State University, Ball said today: “While many politicians and media pundits are willing to denounce the violence of the shooting spree in Arizona and even the violent rhetoric which preceded it, few of these same figures will denounce the fundamentally violent nature of this nation’s economic system and racial hierarchies. Nor will they denounce the violence inherent in this nation’s foreign military and economic policies all of which result in daily doses of this kind of violence here and abroad. And these are precisely the systems of violence Dr. King worked so aggressively to end.” [Read more...]

Filed Under: , Tagged With: martin luther king, materialism, militarism, racism, religion, violence, war,
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