JUDITH MILLER: Bin Laden Got the Death He Deserved

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                Intelligence - OPEN SOURCE

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[ed.note: Enough said…]

End of Discussion

by Judith Miller
Fox News

May 9, 2011

http://www.judithmiller.com/9567/bin-laden-death-deserved

Enough already. The blood of Usama Bin Laden's corpse had barely dried on the Abbottabad compound floor when the complaints about the raid began. By Sunday May 8, the whining had become a veritable Greek chorus.

First came the unseemly dispute between some veterans of the Bush administration and supporters of the White House over who deserves credit for the raid. Bush proponents argued that there would have been no mission without their reform and restructuring of the nation's intelligence and homeland security capabilities. A senior Obama official claimed that President Bush had deliberately downgraded the importance of getting Bin Laden after the U.S. botched the attempt to catch him at Tora Bora and shifted vital intelligence and special forces assets to the war in Iraq, a catastrophic diversion, he called it, from the manhunt.

On his show Sunday, Fareed Zakaria blasted both sides of the debate, calling the argument "silly." "Lots of people deserve credit," he said, sensibly, a view echoed on his program by former Bush national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. She called the stunning raid "a victory across presidencies." (Yes, that includes President Clinton, the first commander-in-chief to sense that Bin Laden was more than a nuisance – a militant Islamist creep mouthing off in remote, Islamist-friendly Sudan.)

Then came the even more ridiculous debate over whether Bin Laden had gotten a proper Muslim burial. Although Bin Laden's body was washed, wrapped in a white shroud, prayed over in Arabic and English and dumped into the sea within 24 hours of his death – which is more consideration that the thousands of his Muslim and non-Muslim victims alike received -- Ahmed al-Tayeb, the sheikh of Al Azhar, Egypt's preeminent authority on Islamic issues, called the burial "inappropriate."

So, too did Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of the Egyptian founder of the Muslim Brotherhood whom the Bush administration had banned from America but to whom the Obama administration gave a visa to speak here.

Bin Laden's death and burial were also attacked by the militant Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza, newly triumphant from its "reconciliation" with the Palestinian Authority's "Fateh" on the West Bank, a merger designed to strengthen the Palestinians' hand against their true enemy, Israel.

Writing in the Evening Standard, Lee Smith gives this idiotic argument about Islamic burial the rhetorical burial it deserves. Examining what leading Islamic authorities have said about disposing of the dead since the birth of Islam, Smith, a frequent critic of the administration's foreign policy, nonetheless concludes that the Obama administration "has more justice on its side here." It's a lengthy, complex discussion, which boils down to this: burial at sea is permissible if a person died at sea or would be difficult to bury on land. The latter was certainly true for Bin Laden, since even his family had disowned him and no country wanted to play host to what might well have become the dead "martyr's" shrine. (Never mind that most fundamentalist Sunni Muslims, including the Wahabi sect that spawned Bin Laden, ban such shrines and bury even Saudi kings in unmarked graves).

The argument was followed by an equally unseemly dispute over whether torture (the euphemism is "enhanced interrogation techniques") played a role in unearthing information that ultimately led to the Abbottabad compound.

Here, former CIA director Michael Hayden cut thru the hyperbole. The man who told George Bush about the existence of a courier who might lead the U.S. to Bin Laden adroitly dodged the specific issue of whether such techniques directly produced the information at the base of the intelligence pyramid that led years later to the raid. But on Zakaria's program, Hayden confirmed that initial clues to Bin Laden whereabouts came from detainees who had been interrogated at the CIA's infamous "black sites," which he still declined to name or locate, and after – how long after he did not say – some of them had been subjected to such extreme measures. Yet no single bit of intelligence had been dispositive, he said. Rather, it was "one pebble" rather than "one brick" at a time. All of the intelligence community's many capabilities – among them "humint," or human intelligence, electronic signals, satellite feeds, wiretaps, etc etc. – had played a role.

A confession here is in order: For me, the issue of whether such measures work – I concede that they sometimes do -- is secondary to the moral aspects of the debate. As a rule, people who believe in civilized government and the rule of law should not engage in such barbaric activity. It's antithetical to everything America stands for, shatters the nation's moral high ground and therefore reduces our reputation and influence at home and abroad. In non-moral, marketing terms, it's bad for the brand.

Finally, we ended the week with a debate over whether Bin Laden's killing was legal. My usually wise friend, Kenneth Rothman, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, whose group has done excellent work in the complex, politically charged arena of domestic and international law, tweeted that Bin Laden's murder was unjust because there had been "no trial" or "conviction." Never mind that the man and his organization explicitly declared war on Americans back in 1998, or that it openly claimed credit for the death of thousands of victims throughout the world – most of them Muslim, incidentally –during his rampage of terror.

Roth's tweet was more proof that our country has too many lawyers. Yes, Bin Laden was unarmed and may not have been given a chance to surrender. And yes, it is still unclear what kind of "resistance" he offered, as the White House called it in its competing descriptions of the raid and his death. No, he was probably not told to drop his weapon, raise his hands above his head and get down on the ground. He was not read Miranda rights.

But in the court of public opinion, this was a no-brainer. Every now and then, law courts and trials are not the only appropriate venues for justice. Bin Laden has gotten what for so long he has so richly deserved. End of discussion.

Amidst all the kvetching, one group may deserve some sympathy. Soon after Obama's announcement, Suzan Shown Harjo, president of the Morning Star Institute, a Washington-based Native rights group, denounced as "shocking" and "insulting" the military's use of the Indian hero Geronimo as a code name for Bin Laden. She had a point, said Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, chairman of the Indian Affairs panel, who called the Navy SEALs' inadvertent comparison of the legendary Indian warrior to a terrorist "unfortunate."

Compared to Bin Laden, Geronimo was a pussycat.

American Influence Wanes in Egyptian 'Mexican Standoff'

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Intelligence - OPEN SOURCE

US/1 – MEMBER CONTRIBUTION

by Judith Miller
NewsMax

February 2, 2011

http://www.judithmiller.com/8713/american-influence-egypt

The Mexican standoff on the Nile turned deadly Wednesday as supporters and opponents of Egypt's ruler Hosni Mubarak clashed in the streets of Cairo and the Obama Administration intensified efforts to persuade the embattled Egyptian president to resign immediately.

Human rights and pro-democracy activists accused the Mubarak regime of having sent undercover police and his state's security forces into the streets to foment the violence between the pro-and anti-Mubarak forces.

The Obama Administration seemed to give credence to the charge Wednesday when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged not President Mubarak, but newly designated Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman to probe the violence and hold those responsible for the mayhem accountable. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley also condemned the street fighting.

At the Pentagon, Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for calm and expressed confidence in the Egyptian military. A Pentagon press release said that Adm. Mullen had spoken by phone with his Egyptian counterpart, Egyptian Army Lt. Gen. Sami Enan, reiterating his desire for a return to calm as well as his conviction that the Egyptian military would be able to secure Egypt both internally and throughout the Suez Canal area.

But Adm. Mullen was also said to have quietly pressed his counterpart to urge Mubarak to step aside so that Omar Suleiman could begin negotiating a transition to a new government with a coalition of opposition figures, including Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.

The Brotherhood, an Islamic party that is Egypt's largest and best organized opposition force, has joined forces with secular human rights and other civil society groups that have been pushing for Mubarak's resignation.

The American statements reflect a much more proactive effort on the part of the Obama administration to persuade the man who has governed Egypt for nearly 30 years as a stalwart American ally to step down. The White House has clearly decided that Mubarak's days are numbered, and that the sooner he leaves, the better the chances that other figures in the regime, such as Suleiman, can negotiate a smooth transition to an as yet uncertain future.

On Sunday, President Obama sent veteran diplomat Frank Wisner, who knew Mubarak well, to urge him privately to step aside in favor of others in his government. But Mubarak dug in. In a broadcast to the nation, he announced that he would not run for a sixth term, but that he would step down only in September – a dignified departure that would enable him to live out what remained of his life in Egypt.

After Mubarak spoke, sources said, he called President Obama to plead for his support of the timetable that Mubarak had outlined in his speech. Obama, however, then took to the air to say that based on his 30-minute telephone conversation with the Egyptian president, Mubarak seemed to recognize that the status quo was not "sustainable" and that to be meaningful, "an orderly transition must be peaceful." And, Obama added, "it must begin now."

While Mubarak made a major concession Tuesday night by announcing that he would not stand yet again for president, he seems to have doubled down on his bet that he can outlast the protesters' fury and stay in office, if only until the fall. In his second speech since Egypt's popular uprising began a week ago, President Mubarak declared that he had worked all of his life for his country and was determined to "die on Egyptian soil."

Daniel Kurtzer, a former ambassador to Egypt now at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School who knows Mubarak well, said that dignity was paramount for the former air force officer-turned president. "The 21-gun salute and a sail off on a yacht as there was for Farouk is not for him," said Kurtzer, referring to the humiliating exile of the king who was deposed by military officers in 1952.

Tarek Heggy, a human rights activist and writer who has close friends in the regime, predicted that President Mubarak would not step down easily. "He is very stubborn," Heggy said in an interview. "His capacity to change is very limited."

Several analysts said the Obama administration has apparently concluded that the Mubarak hangs on, the less likely it will be that Omar Suleiman, the well-respected intelligence chief whom Mubarak chose as his vice president on Friday, would be seen as a plausible interlocutor, capable of presiding over a transition to elections and political reform. Suleiman's standing, Heggy said, was being compromised "with every day that Mubarak hangs on."

David Schenker, a former Pentagon official in the Bush Administration and now an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East policy, warned that President Mubarak's concessions had "only emboldened the crowd." "This, he agreed, risked making Suleiman, "who was initially considered acceptable as a compromise transition overseer, also unacceptable."

Because Suleiman is regarded as extremely competent, not corrupt, and lacking in personal political ambition, Egypt's military and security elite, as well as some anti-Mubarak forces, saw him as someone who could negotiate with all sides.

Now 74 years old – a spring chicken compared to Mubarak, who is 82 and ailing – Suleiman has long handled two of the regime's most sensitive portfolios: Egypt's relations with Israel and its counter-terrorism initiatives. He is also well-known and liked in Washington and Israel.

In secret diplomatic cables leaked to Wikileaks, a U.S. ambassador described Suleiman as a "rock-solid" loyalist to Mubarak who felt that fighting terrorism and solving the Arab-Israeli conflict were the keys to Egyptian stability and that of the region.

His suspicion of Iran and determination to work with the U.S. to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons have also endeared him to American officials, who have long considered the presidential succession issue the "elephant in the room of Egyptian politics," wrote then Ambassador Francis J. Ricciardone, Jr.

Suleiman was also completely trusted by Mubarak, perhaps because he is credited with having saved his life in 1995 by insisting that Mubarak's armored Mercedes-Benz be flown to Ethiopia for his state visit there, Foreign Policy magazine reported. When gun-toting terrorists attacked the convoy, Mubarak escaped unharmed thanks to his armored car.

Mubarak's political fate could be determined in the next two-to-three days by two elements – whether Egypt's military and security elite continue supporting him, and whether the pro-democracy protesters who have filled Egypt's town squares and streets for the past week can sustain their momentum.

Some analyst said that support for Mubarak's determined stance within the military might be softening. While Mubarak must enjoy considerable support among military officers "or he wouldn't have given that speech," Schenker said, "this cannot go on indefinitely."

For their part, the protesters have declared Friday Mubarak's "departure day." They have vowed to fill Tahrir Square and Cairo's streets with an even larger crowd than the one million Egyptians who turned out Tuesday to demand that Mubarak resign.

Bassem Fathy, a member of the Egpyptian Democratic Academy, said that the protesters would have to remain united if they were to get rid of Mubarak – a huge challenge given the movement's lack of organic leadership and the nature of the pro-democracy movement.

The desire for unity and the lack of obvious leaders enabled Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Prize winning former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency to present himself as a unifier of a movement whose members range from tiny non-governmental organizations to Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. Though the Brotherhood favors Islamic law and is hostile to Egypt's peace with Israel, it has found common cause with Mubarak's secular, pro-democracy foes.

Since his most recent arrival on Thursday in Cairo from Vienna, where he lives part-time, ElBaradei has, in fact, assumed a key role in formulating the movement's demands. He is on a new committee formed by various factions to conduct negotiations on the protesters' behalf if and when Mubarak resigns. And he has spoken frequently to American officials, his spokesman told reporters today. It was ElBaradei who said no to President Mubarak's most offer for "dialogue," a rejection that Mubarak cited scornfully in his speech Tuesday night.

Until Tuesday, the Obama administration tried to walk a fine line between positioning itself "on the right side of history," as one senior diplomat put it, and not unceremoniously dumping a leader who has supported American policy on key policies – the search for Arab-Israeli peace, counter-terrorism, and the effort to stop Iran's quest for nuclear weapons.

Yet the administration has apparently concluded that stability can only be restored quickly in Egypt if Mubarak, America's long-standing friend, now departs.

America's influence in the drama unfolding on the Nile, however, is probably limited. Despite spending roughly $2 billion billion a year on assistance to Cairo, Washington is unlikely to dictate either President Mubarak's decisions about when to leave office or how far to go in meeting protesters' demands. Such issues are likely to be shaped far more by internal Egyptian considerations.

The same can be said for the protesters, for whom the United States seems to be a marginal issue in their quarrels with the government. "This is an Egyptian struggle, an Egyptian phenomenon," Fathy said.

Analysts and activists alike predicted that the next two-to-three days would be critical for the protesters and the revolt that was triggered by mass protests last month that led to the resignation and exile of Tunisia's president in less than a month.

But Egypt is not Tunis, Omar Suleiman told visitors in a private meeting before he was appointed vice president. The Egyptian state and military, unlike that in Tunis, were strong. Mubarak would not leave. Whether or not he still believes that in light of Wednesday's bloody confrontations is uncertain.

[Information contained in BKNT E-mail is considered Attorney-Client and Attorney Work Product privileged, copyrighted and confidential. Views that may be expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of any government, agency, or news organization.]

Scott Malone: VACCINE IS HELL

VACCINE IS HELL...

[Ed. Note; re-posted with full permission from original site]

NavySEALs.com/Military.com - October 25, 2004
by Scott Malone
 
In these times of panicked waiting lines for flu vaccine, here comes a new and even more frightening look at the US military's ill-fated anthrax vaccine program.
In "Vaccine - A: The Covert Government Experiment That's Killing Our Soldiers And Why GI's Are Only The First Victims," author Gary Matsumoto tells an amazing, six-year scientific mystery story, unraveled literally strand by strand and lab sample by lab sample. It is a real-life and death CSI show, and perhaps a tragic mistake of gargantuan proportions, affecting thousands if not hundreds of thousands of US fighting men and women.
In a crash effort to boost the effectiveness and lessen the required doses of existing anthrax vaccines, US military researchers apparently turned to squalene, a naturally-occurring oil distantly related to cholesterol. The squalene was added to various "experimental" batches of the vaccine administered to troops destined for the first Gulf War in 1991. But when injected, even in the minutest of amounts, squalene oil can cause the body's immune system to create its own specialized anti-bodies which then indiscriminately attack all such other oils in the body. These auto-immune reactions have the exact same symptoms as those of the victims of the so-called Gulf War Syndrome.
Proving that this additive, called an 'adjuvant' (a word not often heard outside of microbiology), was causing these adverse reactions has been an uphill battle for a handful of dedicated civilian researchers. And it is their stories, along with those of some fearless victims, that become the focus of Matsumoto's book.
Matsumoto has done his research and it shows. He is very precise and careful. His book is also well-written, with the occasional clever turn of phrase, such as "Rube Goldberg immunology," to help walk readers through some of the tougher technical data.
And Matsumoto writes with a sad heart and weeping pen. His father and three uncles all proudly served in the US Army. As a former NBC foreign correspondent he served in Iraq covering the first Gulf War. Matsumoto is also an award-winning magazine journalist, and has even been published in the very prestigious, scientist peer-reviewed journal, "Science." He is clearly not your run-of-the-mill author/journalist.
The book starts off with a very scary, up-close look at a secret outbreak of anthrax in the then dark out reaches of Soviet Russia in 1979, with hemorrhaging patients coughing themselves literally to death. The Soviet Union had reinvented the bug wars. It was to remain a top-secret until after the end of the Cold War. But as US intelligence began to pick up hints at the scale of the bio-warfare program, they were then faced with a dramatic choice--they would have to prepare and update US defenses against such a weapon.
During World War II, the Imperial Japanese Army secretly tested anthrax and other bugs as weapons, and in response, the US and the British did the same. Fortunately for all, they were never used. And in 1969, President Nixon unilaterally put the US military out of the bio-warfare business.
All that remained in the US arsenal was the "weakest [possible] vaccine" for anthrax. US military researchers would soon find themselves secretly following a long tradition of testing new drugs on uniformed military personnel without their informed consent. Despite the precedent of the Nuremburg trials, the US had secretly hired Japanese bio-war criminals and later the CIA conducted unwitting LSD experiments. Unfortunately, because of the nature of war, US military personnel are exempt from such disclosure requirements, and barred by a Supreme Court precedent from ever suing.
During the 1980s, US intelligence began reporting that Iraq had developed a lethal, "dusty" form of anthrax mixed with silica for use against Iran. It was a scary new threat, and the US bio-weaponeers immediately began planning an antidote. The secret US program became a crash program when the Soviet fear factor again raised its ugly head, this time in the form of a Russian bio-weapons defector, in 1989. Not only did the Soviets pose a previously unknown bio-threat, but they were also known to share deadly military technologies with Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
It would be hard to blame US military researchers then, as Matsumoto accurately points out, for preparing for a possible new nightmare threat. If the Iraqis or Soviets had employed anthrax and US troops been caught unprotected, there would have been hell to pay. Just ask the flu vaccine manufacturers of today.
In secret, the military researchers began to labor away with adjuvants, rushing to increase the potency of the weak, but licensed vaccine, before US troops faced a deadly Iraqi anthrax attack. However, these efforts would be labeled as "unique research opportunities," according to a recently declassified US document uncovered by Matsumoto.
But when Persian Gulf War vets later began to return home and complain of a whole myriad of debilitating auto-immune symptoms, the potentially heroic medical efforts to 'boost' the vaccine with squalene were quietly hushed up.
The symptoms included rashes, malaise, fatigue, muscle pain, joint pain, weakness and sweating, neurological problems, pneumonia, and Lupus. And in some cases even blindness and death.
What was most glaring, in hindsight, was that only vaccinated US, British, Australian and Canadian troops had acquired these various maladies. And some US troops had not even actually been sent to the Gulf, but had been vaccinated in preparation. Further, no local Arab troops or even press members, unvaccinated all, ever came down with any of these autoimmune maladies.
While a media controversy revved up for several years over the newly-named Gulf War Syndrome, in 1997 the government floated a red-herring theory in the form of a CIA "simulation" of a possible gas plume from the detonation of Iraq's captured Sarin nerve gas stockpiles. All of the sudden, the simple solution-seeking media lost all interest, even though the "simulation" had totally failed the basic logic test.
Problem was, most of the affected troops were no longer in theater when the detonation occurred on March 10th, 1991. Further, again, none of the indigenous troops suffered any such consequences. And nerve gas exposure is instant, with much different symptoms.
Complicated medical research, however, is not the usual purview of the American media. An 'adjuvant crossover,' with one wrong injected squalene molecule affecting the entire human immune system, was apparently beyond the comprehension of the average journalist, not to mention most medical professionals. What Matsumoto has managed to dig up is not comforting. Military researchers had ignored animal studies clearly showing the autoimmune pathologies of injected squalene as an adjuvant. These animal studies showed precisely the same symptoms as those experienced by the Gulf vets.
During his investigation, Matsumoto soon crossed paths with medical researchers Pam Asa and Bob Garry, who, working through Tulane Medical Center at Tulane University, had actually been the first to measure the actual anti-bodies caused by injected squalene. They began to test veterans for these anti-bodies.
Dr. Garry dug out an old batch of some 300 blood serum samples from veterans sent to him in 1993 by the Veterans Administration. Out of 86 who had served in the Gulf War, 95% of the sick ones tested positive for the squalene anti-bodies. The number of healthy Gulf vets with the anti-bodies was zero.
Enter Patient X, who met with Asa in Memphis. He was suffering from "auto-immune peripheral neuropathy," consistent with the Gulf War Syndrome. But Patient X had never been in the military nor stationed in Iraq or Saudi Arabia. His only exposure had been in a confidential experimental herpes vaccine study. Further, he was a medical doctor. And he knew exactly what the injection was that he had received-"MF59…squalene and water."
Some British anthrax vaccine samples (a sister to the US program) were later found dumped overboard and washed ashore, apparently from a troop ship heading for the Gulf-which, when tested by Granada Television, also contained the squalene adjuvant. And Matsumoto even discovered a patent held by the Army for the potential new vaccine with squalene in one of its several formulations
"It might even be the single most dangerous oil to come out of a hypodermic needle," Matsumoto writes.
Matsumoto has found many nice historical asides, explaining how disease and war have long been intertwined in US history. In 1775, in a desperate ploy to stave off a smallpox epidemic which threatened the collapse of the Continental Army with desertions, Gen. George Washington ordered that healthy troops be "variolated" by having smallpox pus placed into cuts on their arms. It worked, and the rest is history.
The present day vaccine story is not so pretty a tale, however, with descriptions of the occasional horrible death, including one vet who died in excruciating pain as the skin on his entire body withered away. The book is littered with stories of proud US soldiers dealing with amazing pain, medical confusion and bureaucratic betrayal.
"Perhaps it was the importance of their apparent breakthrough [with squalene] that blinded these scientists to do what they had done," Matsumoto can only sadly surmise.
"By 1997, hundreds of millions of dollars had been spent testing the efficacy of vaccines formulated with squalene adjuvants," Matsumoto reports. Scientists were also frantically looking to squalene to help stem the tides of AIDs and cancer. Adverse news about squalene could potentially threaten "billions of dollars worth of HIV research."
A tragic comedy of errors.
Matsumoto presents a long record of seeming deception by medical and military officials at all levels. It apparently continues to this very day, judging by the coming avalanche of press statements emanating from the Pentagon in response to the book's publication.
After Matsumoto wrote a preliminary article about the squalene adjuvant for Vanity Fair magazine back in 1999, the Air Force quickly struck back.
"Let me say this as succinctly as I can," Air Force Surgeon General Charles H. Roadman II told assembled airmen and pilots at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware who had received the vaccine. "There is not, there never has been, squalene as an adjuvant in the anthrax immunization. And that's a fact."
The director of the Anthrax Vaccine Immunization Program, Major Guy Strawder, went so far as to call Matsumoto's article "reckless, irresponsible and wrong."
Yet, Matsumoto subsequently found, "contrary to General Roadman's strenuous protests, that various batches of the new anthrax vaccine [administered at Dover and elsewhere] had contained squalene since 1987." And when the supposedly independent Food and Drug Administration finally found that the vaccine contained some amounts of squalene, they too withheld that information from the public for another year and half.
When Matsumoto requested under the Freedom of Information Act any US contracts for adjuvants containing squalene, he was informed that two contracts "and fifteen purchase orders" had, "unfortunately, all…been destroyed."
Although the book can get bogged down occasionally, (but necessarily), in some rather technical issues, Matsumoto does not overplay his hand, perhaps even erring too closely on the side of caution.
And it even has a shocking surprise ending: Matsumoto reports that scientists have only discovered this past summer that the latest possible victims of adjuvant-induced squalene antibodies are the recently returned Iraq War II veterans-a few even suffering some of the same auto-immune symptoms as their earlier comrades.
While the plot twists and turns throughout this excellent book, by far the most ominous twist is that these vaccines are currently stockpiled for use by US civilians in case of further terrorist anthrax attacks on the general population.
This book is the very definition of "a seminal work"-one that cries out for further studies.
Scott Malone is a multiple Emmy and Peabody award-winning investigative journalist who is currently the editor of NavySEALs.com and its counter-terrorism newsletter, "BlackNET Intelligence."

http://www.military.com/Opinions/0,,Malone_102504,00.html