Tag Archives: War on Terror

US ignoring Saudi link again

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Serious news about the “trust-fund terrorist” and the attempted Christmas Day bombing (NYT):

[…] the Saudi arm of Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attempted attack and said it was in retaliation for recent American-backed attacks on its members in Yemen, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks militant Islamist Web sites.

In a statement issued on jihadist forums, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula boasts the success of the “Nigerian brother” in breaking through security barriers and of its own explosives technology, SITE reported, blaming a technical fault for the low-power detonation. The group has mounted attacks within Yemen and Saudi Arabia and in 2004, captured and beheaded a 49-year-old American engineer working in Riyadh, Paul M. Johnson Jr.

Government terror experts said the Qaeda claim was apparently legitimate.

 
This announcement comes on the heels of rising rhetoric and news attention to terrorists based in Yemen. President Obama himself today implied that the US would be increasing military action in Yemen in response to this attack:

We will continue to use every element of our national power to disrupt, to dismantle and defeat the violent extremists who threaten us, whether they are from Afghanistan or Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia, or anywhere they are plotting attacks against the U.S. homeland.

 
We already have the CIA and special forces involved there. We conducted cruise missile strikes there ourselves, and we helped the Yemeni army’s attacks on terrorists. So this new bombing attempt looks like it will set in motion even more involvement.

However, this raises a more serious question about our priorities. Obama lists Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. But what about Saudi Arabia? Osama bin Laden and many of the leaders in and financiers of al Qaeda hail from Saudi Arabia. Fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were Saudi Arabian. These connections have long been known. Now the Saudi Arabian branch of al Qaeda (Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) is claiming responsibility for planning and nearly executing a large bombing in the US. Another attack plan, another Saudi link. At what point do we stop trying to solve everything with airstrikes on disorganized countries with much lower oil exports, which the group claims was the motivation here specifically, and face the facts that our oil-rich “ally” is a serious threat to our security?

Yes, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (a merger of Al Qaeda in Yemen and Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia) includes Yemen in its sphere of operations, but they’re primarily aimed at bringing down the Saudi monarchy, so that’s their big target and Yemen is just a base of operations. However, we’ve entangled ourselves by aiding Yemen and the Saudi regime, and thus we’ve drawn the terrorists’ attention back onto the United States. I can see how there’s an argument that we don’t want Salafist radicals to seize control of the Arabian Peninsula… but it still seems like we’re just in it for the oil, which is why we continue to prop up an unjust, undemocratic, unpopular regime in Saudi Arabia, rather than pressuring the government to make reforms that would undercut the radicals. Basically, we’re taking the most expensive and most dangerous route on dealing with radicalism in the Middle East by ignoring the Saudi problem. Bombing more of Yemen will just make things worse and won’t get to the root of the problem.

This post originally appeared on Starboard Broadside.

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Lieberman wants US into Yemen

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Yesterday I did a post on Yemen and terrorism, and I filled it with many links to recent news stories about that topic, which had been heating up even before the failed Christmas Day airline bomber (nicknamed the “trust fund bomber” because of his affluent background) was connected to Yemen. What I wrote yesterday was

The Yemen connection, however, is most interesting to me because of how much news there has been regarding terrorist and rebel activities in Yemen over the past few months.

 
What I was thinking, but decided not to write, was that this connection and all the news about Yemeni terrorists really interested me because I wondered how soon some hawk in the US government would start demanding war with Yemen. I chose not to write it because it sounded like a conspiracy theory to me. Well, it didn’t take even a day for me to realize I wasn’t being unreasonable, even if the people making that case are being unreasonable.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (ID-CT), chair of the Homeland Security committee in the United States Senate, and always a super-hawk who wants to bomb anything that moves, has announced his support for direct, pre-emptive action in Yemen. Somehow, he is under the impression that this would prevent us being bogged down in a war there like we are in Afghanistan… I beg to differ, but that’s actually almost beside the point when you consider that the US is already providing logistical support to the Yemeni government against terrorists and has admitted to launching two recent cruise missile strikes in Yemen.

Lieberman also seems not to have noticed the longstanding Yemeni connection to terrorism until the past few weeks because he cited this attempted bombing and the Fort Hood attacks as justification enough for pre-emptive US action now. I wonder if he remembers that the USS Cole was bombed in the Port of Aden in Yemen in 2000? Incidentally, he also cited his position as deriving from a comment by someone in the administration, which is really odd since that person should have been able to tell him about the cruise missile strikes. However, as usual, Lieberman wants to take things that much farther and get the US more openly involved on the ground. I’m not sure how he thinks that will prevent war, since that’s kind of the definition of it.

Military force and enmeshing the US in foreign conflict zones are not the solutions to everything, no matter how excited and powerful they make Joe feel. I’m tempted to label the senator “Joe the Bomber,” but the reference is almost fading out of the political landscape fortunately.

UPDATE @ 10:30 PM: Actually, it sounds like he was even later to this parade than I’d realized myself:

In the midst of two unfinished major wars, the United States has quietly opened a third, largely covert front against Al Qaeda in Yemen.

A year ago, the Central Intelligence Agency sent many field operatives with counterterrorism experience to the country, according a former top agency official. At the same time, some of the most secretive Special Operations commandos have begun training Yemeni security forces in counterterrorism tactics, senior military officers said.

The Pentagon is spending more than $70 million over the next 18 months, and using teams of Special Forces, to train and equip Yemeni military, Interior Ministry and coast guard forces, more than doubling previous military aid levels.

 
However, he does seem to have been paying attention to the covert operations there, according to the article. So this makes it sound more like he’s just warmongering as usual and seizing on the new incidents to expand US operations in Yemen.

Unfortunately, I am now thinking that the writing is on the wall for serious US involvement there. Which is what I was really worrying about with yesterday’s post.

UPDATE II @ 5:40 PM on 12/28: See also my new post, “US ignoring Saudi link again,” now that Saudi-based al Qaeda operatives have claimed responsibility for this attempted bombing.

This post originally appeared on Starboard Broadside.

“CIA official: no proof harsh techniques stopped terror attacks”

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Oh? That headline comes from McClatchy DC:

WASHINGTON — The CIA inspector general in 2004 found that there was no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped the Bush administration thwart any “specific imminent attacks,” according to recently declassified Justice Department memos.

That undercuts assertions by former vice president Dick Cheney and other former Bush administration officials that the use of harsh interrogation tactics including waterboarding, which is widely considered torture, was justified because it headed off terrorist attacks.

 
Unsurprising. Didn’t know it had been found codified yet in an official document. There was a Bush speech in 2006 that explains that a foiled 2002 plot was later identified by torturing KSM in 2003, suggesting that some information was gained but not anything vital or time-sensitive that stopped an attack. The 183 waterboardings just explained to the CIA which plot had been stopped previously by a local arrest of an Al Qaeda agent.

By the way, I skimmed and read parts of the 2005 Bradbury memo, which the McClatchy article above mentions later as citing (and contradicting) the 2004 memo. I didn’t get to that part yet, but I’ll check into it.

This post originally appeared on Starboard Broadside.

Torture “safety measures”

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More disturbing discoveries in the torture memos: doctors were on hand with equipment to perform emergency tracheotomies on detainees in case they stopped breathing properly due to extensive water boarding.

You know, where they cut a hole in your throat so you can get enough air not to die.

I don’t understand how people can still insist this wasn’t torture.

I’ve crawled through several sections of the 2005 memo cited (pdf) myself now. The tracheotomy part can be found in the second paragraph of page 14. (I actually read the memo backward for some reason, but this particular part is on p. 14). I’ve also found from reading it that these rules were created pretty much in response to worse torture before this, such as the repeated waterboarding of KSM 183 times in one month… though they don’t acknowledge that.

This post originally appeared on Starboard Broadside.

Make sure to see this…

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I was away when this story broke, or I would have covered it in more detail, but I want to make sure people read about this story. It was first broken by “emptywheel” on Firedoglake and then picked up by the New York Times.

According to the May 30, 2005 Bradbury memo, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003 and Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002.

 
That’s mind-boggling. It’s almost impossible to understand how that amount of torture was accomplished mathematically, let alone the moral implications.

Most important note of all: No information was gained.

This post originally appeared on Starboard Broadside.