Twin Bomb Blasts Kill Scores in Pakistan

(Al Jazeera English: 0431 PT, May 13, 2011) At least 70 paramilitary trainees are killed just 50km from Abbottabad, in an apparent revenge attack by the Pakistani Taliban following the death of Osama bin Laden.

 

 

 
 

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Pakistan Struggles with Bin Laden Controversy

(Press TV: 0243 PT, May 12, 2011) This pro-military rally, apparently urged by the government, was aimed at easing the pressure over the controversy surrounding the death of Osama bin Laden. But the mood was different at a meeting of the country's main opposition party, which was discussing the fallout of the Abbottabad operation that killed Bin Laden. Press TV's Kamran Yousaf reports from Islamabad

 

 

US Attorney General: US Drone Strikes in Pakistan 'Legal'

(Channel 4 News: 0740 PT, May 12, 2011) Eric Holder, United States Attorney General, tells Channel 4 News that US drone strikes in Pakistan are consistent with international law.

 

 

 
 

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Pakistani Groups Protest Against US

(Al Jazeera English: 0910 PT, May 6, 2011) Following the US operation that killed Osama bin Laden, various groups in many Pakistani cities have railed against violations of the South Asian country's sovereignty. Imtiaz Tyab reports.

 

 

US Politicians Criticize Pakistan

(Al Jazeera English: 0910 PT, May 5, 2011) In the days since Osama bin Laden's killing, the Obama administration has been at pains to stress that the US-Pakistan relationship is intact. But other politicians have been much more critical. Al Jazeera's Rosiland Jordan reports.

 

 

 
 

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Was Torture Justified in the Hunt for Bin Laden?

(Al Jazeera English: 0434 PT, May 3, 2011) Peter King, Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, claims waterboarding produced intelligence that helped the US find Osama bin Laden. However, CIA Director Leon Panetta says such techniques may not have been necessary.

 

 

(Democracy Now! 0723 PT, May 4, 2011) Matthew Alexander, a former senior military interrogator in Iraq, claims torture slowed down efforts to find Osama bin Laden.

 

 

(Al Jazeera English: 0446 PT, May 3, 2011) Al Jazeera speaks to Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch about the use of waterboarding and other "enhanced" intelligence-gathering techniques.

 

 

 
 

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Bin Laden Raid Strains US-Pakistan Ties

(Euronews: 0734 PT, May 3, 2011) Two days after the raid that ended Osama bin Laden's life, Washington insists that it shared its knowledge of the location with no other country, including Pakistan. The assertion on the White House website was that secrecy was considered as essential to the raid team's success. The compound is said to be close to both a civilian health centre and Pakistan's top military college.

 

 

US-Pakistan Row Intensified by Osama bin Laden Death

(Press TV: 0927 PT, May 3, 2011) Press TV reports on the latest development on the death of Osama bin Laden and the row between Washington and Islamabad.

 

 

Official: Pakistan 'Hit Below the Belt' Over Bin Laden

(ITN News: 0431 PT, May 3, 2011) Wajid Shamsul Hasan, the Pakistani High Commissioner to the UK, rejects accusations that his country didn't do enough to help capture Bin Laden, and says Pakistan has been at the forefront of the war on terror.

 

 

 
 

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Inside Pakistan: Bin Laden Hiding Under Military's Nose

(Associated Press: 0904 PT, May 2, 2011) Chris Brummitt, AP bureau chief in Islamabad, Pakistan, talks about how the killing of Osama bin Laden happened so close to several Pakistani military installations, and what his death could mean for US-Pakistan relations

 

 

 
 

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World Reacts to Bin Laden Death

(Euronews: 0413 PT, May 2, 2011) World leaders have been reacting to the death of Osama bin Laden. In Kabul, Afghan president Hamid Karzai said that the al-Qaeda leader's killing showed the fight against terrorism should be focused in neighbouring Pakistan. Turkish President Abdullah Gul said Bin Laden's death proved that all terrorist group leaders would eventually face justice. British Prime Minister David Cameron struck a cautious tone, welcoming Bin Laden's death but warning that the threat of terrorism had not yet been defeated.

 

 

(Associated Press: 0606 PT, May 2, 2011) Leaders, experts and citizens around the world are reacting to news of the death of Osama bin Laden in a US military operation.

 

 

(Euronews: 0925 PT, May 2, 2011) Reaction in the Arab world has been mixed. In the Gaza strip, Hamas's leader Ismail Haniyeh was guarded, yet also clear he saw no change for the better coming from it: "If the news is correct, we regard this as a continuation of the American policy that is based on oppression and shedding the Muslim and Arab blood."

 

 

(ITN News: 0724 PT, May 2, 2011) Former UK prime minister Tony Blair responds to death of Osama bin Laden.

 

 

 
 

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Obama: Osama bin Laden is Dead

(Associated Press: 2057 PT, May 1, 2011) Al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden is dead and the United States has his body, President Obama announced at the White House late Sunday. Bin Laden was killed in a mansion close to Islamabad, Pakistan.

 

 

Raw Video: Crowds Cheer Outside White House

(Associated Press: 2057 PST, May 1, 2011) Hundreds of people gathered outside the White House, cheering and chanting after President Obama's announcement that Osama bin Laden was dead.

 

 

 
 

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The War On Islam Is Over, But...

In a clear break from former president George Bush's two national security strategies issued in 2002 and 2006 which endorsed unilateral military action and spoke of the threat posed by "Islamic extremism," President Obama has unveiled a new national security strategy which calls for more global engagement and aims to downplay fears that the U.S. is "at war" with Islam.


President Obama also expressed his desire to break away from the unilateral military approach of "either you are with us or against us" established in the wake of the Sept 11, 2001 attacks.

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"While the use of force is sometimes necessary, we will exhaust other options before war whenever we can and carefully weigh the costs and risks of action against the costs and risks of inaction," President Obama said.


Not since Mr. Obama addressed the Arab and Muslim worlds from a podium at Cairo University on June 4, 2009, pledging "to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims," did the U.S. president send a clear and powerful message that America's foreign policy towards 1.5 billion Muslims across the globe has changed.


The 52-page document, entitled National Security Strategy, distanced the administration of President Barack Obama from the Bush-era doctrine of preemptive war and emphasized global cooperation and robust diplomacy to make the use of military force less likely to be updated every four years. The document omitted some of the most controversial language from the Bush administration, like the phrase "global war on terror" and references to "Islamic extremism".


"Yet this is not a global war against a tactic - terrorism, or a religion - Islam. We are at war with a specific network, al-Qaeda, and its terrorist affiliates."


Earlier on Saturday, the President, while offering a glimpse of his new national security doctrine to the West Point 2010 Cadets, reiterated his administration's position towards Islam and that of the actions of extremists and terrorists.


"Extremists want a war between America and Islam, but Muslims are part of our national life, including those who serve in our United States Army. Adversaries want to divide us, but we are united by our support for you soldiers, who send a clear message that this country is both the land of the free and the home of the brave."


Obama's National Security Strategy has been read carefully across the globe, and he has been widely credited with improving the tone of U.S. foreign policy towards the Arab and Muslim worlds. However, with unfinished wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, nuclear standoff with Iran, and no progress on peace between Palestinians and Israelis, his words remain just words. We understand that the war on Islam is over, but war should end in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine as well.


Article originally published on the Huffington Post
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Lost in Translation

"The buck stops with me," declared President Obama on Thursday as he spoke about the results of an internal investigation into the failed Christmas Day airline bombing attempt. The president avoided blaming any particular agency or official for the security failures that allowed Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board an American airliner heading from Amsterdam to Detroit wearing explosives in his underpants.

Now, after the fact, this incident has sparked a renewed interest in Yemen, a country I warned about as a "powder keg" back in August, and a slew of new security measures at airports to make our travel experience more miserable than it currently is. Travelers will soon get used to going through full-body scanners, like they have gotten used to taking off their shoes at security checkpoints at airports, ever since Richard Reid, aka the shoe-bomber, tried unsuccessfully to take down another airliner in late 2001. Unfortunately, al-Qaeda and other groups will try to find other methods to bypass the new security measures until they succeed.


CIALast summer, Abdullah Asieri, one of Saudi Arabia's most wanted men, avoided detection by two sets of airport security including metal detectors and palace security, by borrowing a trick from the Columbian cartel. Asieri had a pound of high explosives, plus a detonator inserted in his rectum. His target was Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef, head of Saudi Arabia's counter terrorism operations. The bomb was remotely detonated via a cellular phone call, but the Prince miraculously was left lightly wounded. The assassination attempt failed, but al-Qaeda managed to defeat security.

The US security failure is not at airports, but rather with overseas intelligence agencies. The President did not name the agency, but I will: the CIA, which has done a shoddy job of gathering information in Arab and Muslim countries and has relied heavily on information provided by security agencies of corrupt and despotic regimes.

What Americans should be worried about is not the few failed attempts by the likes of Reid or Abdulmutallab, but rather by what happened recently with the suicide bomber, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a medical doctor who had been recruited by Jordanian intelligence and then agreed to work for the CIA. He was assigned a Jordanian handler who had a close working relationship with the CIA and was subsequently sent to Afghanistan to help locate top al-Qaeda leaders. In reality, he was also a jihadist sent to infiltrate US intelligence: a "triple agent!"

The reason this succeeded is due to the fact that Afghanistan is an intelligence nightmare, and the CIA does not have enough Arabic or Pashto speakers on the ground. This is also the case in Yemen, Somalia, and Northern Africa, a fact that was confirmed to me by a former CIA employee. Many of he CIA's so-called Middle East specialists lack the language skills needed to analyze the material provided to them and rely on translations, which, as part of my experience producing a news show from the Middle East, I have discovered can be misleading and inaccurate. Many CIA agents are no different than those so-called experts on al-Qaeda that one sees on CNN or FOX news.

This latest infiltration of the CIA is worse than a thousand Abdulmutallabs, and will certainly cause a setback to the agency for years to come, something that the President did not talk about.

 

Article first published on the Huffington Post

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