CIA

(See my recent blog entries about how this pattern seems to be playing out again in Afghanistan) Coletta Youngers writes for Foreign Policy in Focus:

A Supreme Court verdict in Peru this week once again shows how the U.S. government has engaged in unholy alliances -- often with those involved in the very drug trade it claims to be combating -- in order to further its short-term drug policy objectives and to the detriment of broader U.S. foreign policy goals.

This is directly related to the earlier item that a "Karzai aide in corruption inquiry is tied to CIA." Greg Miller and Joshua Partlow write for the NY Times:

The CIA is making secret payments to multiple members of President Hamid Karzai's administration, in part to maintain sources of information in a government in which the Afghan leader is often seen as having a limited grasp of developments, according to current and former U.S. officials.

From the New York Times:

KABUL, Afghanistan — The aide to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan at the center of a politically sensitive corruption investigation is being paid by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to Afghan and American officials.

Mohammed Zia Salehi, the chief of administration for the National Security Council, appears to have been on the payroll for many years, according to officials in Kabul and Washington. It is unclear exactly what Mr. Salehi does in exchange for his money, whether providing information to the spy agency, advancing American views inside the presidential palace, or both.

By Dave LIndorff

There are so many things wrong with Obama’s “New and Improved”
Afghanistan War that it’s hard to know where to begin, but I guess the
place to start is with his premise.

If America needs to be fighting in Afghanistan because Al Qaeda
planned and launched the 9-11 attacks from there back in 2001, as the
president claimed in his lackluster address to the cadets at West Point
last week, then we would have to assume either that Al Qaeda is still
there, or that if we were not there fighting, that Al Qaeda would be
back to plan more attacks.

By Dave Lindorff

Next time you see a junkie sprawled at the curb in the downtown of
your nearest city, or read about someone who died of a heroin overdose,
just imagine a big yellow sign posted next to him or her saying: “Your
Federal Tax Dollars at Work.”

Kudos to the New York Times, and to reporters Dexter Filkins, Mark Mazzetti and James Risen, for their lead article
today reporting that Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of Afghanistan’s
stunningly corrupt President Hamid Karzai, a leading drug lord in the
world’s major opium-producing nation, has for eight years been on the
CIA payroll.

Josh Marshall is covering opposition to Obama's choice of Leon Panetta to head the CIA, both from within the CIA and from the outgoing and incoming Democratic chairs of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller and Dianne Feinstein. What is this all about?

Obama's selection of Leon Panetta to head the CIA is welcome news. Panetta was a respected California congressman who headed the Office of Management and Budget under President Clinton. Atrios found this important op ed written by Panetta last March:

By Dave Lindorff

Last week, a US federal district judge, Henry Kennedy, ruled in
favor of a case brought by the survivors of the crew of the USS Pueblo,
a spy ship captured by the North Korean Navy in 1968, who were held
prisoner by North Korea for 11 months, and who were reportedly tortured
in captivity. The judge awarded the men $65 million in damages from the
state of North Korea.

Now I’m happy for the plaintiffs. Torture is flatly banned under
international law, and nobody should be tortured under any conditions
(whatever Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia may think). But let’s
not ignore the irony of this ruling. In general, the federal courts
have been incredibly reluctant about making such rulings against the US
government for doing the same thing that North Korea did, or even worse.

By Dave Lindorff

A new congressional report is belatedly confirming what many have
long known: that the White House and in particular then White House
Counsel Alberto Gonzales, lied to Congress in 2004 when he told them
the Bush administration was not repeatedly warned by the CIA not to
make the claim that Saddam had tried to buy uranium ore from Niger.

What is astonishing about this report,
which documents that the CIA at least four times tried to prevent Bush
and other top officials from presenting that lie to Congress and the
American public in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, is not that it
documents what has long been known, but that Congress and the corporate
media are still pretending that the claim itself was an acceptable
justification for launching a war.

By Dave Lindorff

A month before he takes office, it has become the conventional
wisdom in our conventional media that Barack “No Drama” Obama will not
seek or even allow any prosecution of Bush administration officials for
crimes committed over the past eight years—not even for authorizing and
promoting the illegal use of torture on captives of America’s wars on
Iraq, Afghanistan and “terror.”