The Pakistani Taliban claimed Friday that they used a turncoat CIA operative to carry out the suicide bombing that killed seven American CIA employees in Afghanistan.

The suicide bomber struck the CIA’s operation at Camp Chapman in eastern Khost province. The base was used to direct and coordinate CIA operations and intelligence gathering in Khost, a hotbed of insurgent activity because of its proximity to Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas, former CIA officials said.

Qari Hussain, a Taliban suicide bombing mastermind, told an AP reporter that a “CIA agent” contacted Pakistani Taliban commanders and said he’d been trained by the agency to take on militants but that he was willing to attack the U.S. intelligence operation on the militants’ behalf. He did not specify the nationality of the “agent.”

Two former U.S. officials told the AP that the bomber had been invited onto the base and not searched. One official, a former senior intelligence employee, said the man was being courted as an informant and that it was the first time he had been brought inside the camp.

The deaths of seven CIA agents in Khost province have brought into the limelight the secretive and dirty war being fought by America’s intelligence agencies in the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Seven officers and contractors were killed and six more wounded in the suicide bomb attack at Forward Operating Base Chapman, CIA Director Leon Panetta said, the second-largest single-day loss for the spy agency in its history. Among the casualties was the agency’s base chief.

The attack on a U.S. compound in Afghanistan devastated what has been a hub of counterterrorism and intelligence operations for the spy agency. The base played a critical role in the CIA’s significant operations in the country, including helping with drone attacks and informant networks in Pakistan. The CIA’s activities on the base were an open secret locally.

The Taliban claimed responsibility Thursday for the bombing, which was carried out by suicide bomber wearing an Afghan National Army uniform. Some senior officials think the bomber may have been given access to the base because he was believed to be an informant, said two former intelligence officials. If so, it would also mark the first time a suicide bomber managed to strike inside a U.S. facility in the country, a sign of the insurgents’ growing sophistication

The CIA’s Khost base was established in the months after the 9/11 attacks as the U.S. launched its CIA-led offensive against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. It began as a makeshift center for CIA-Afghan operations. By mid-2002, it had grown into a major counterterrorism hub for joint operations with CIA, military Special Operations forces and Afghan allies.

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U.S. forces in Iraq were braced for a violent backlash yesterday after an American court threw out all charges against five Blackwater security guards accused of gunning down 17 Iraqi civilians.

The Iraqi government expressed its anger and even the U.S. commander in Iraq said he was ‘upset’ the case had been dismissed.

A government spokesman said in a statement that the Iraqi government was dismayed by the court’s dismissal of the case. “The Iraqi government regrets the decision” he said. “Investigations conducted by specialized Iraqi authorities confirmed unequivocally that the guards of Blackwater committed the crime of murder and broke the rules by using arms without the existence of any threat obliging them to use force.”

The Iraqi government had wanted the guards to face trial in their country and officials there had said they would closely watch how the U.S. judicial system handled the case. Dr. Haitham Ahmed, whose wife and son were killed in the shooting, said the decision casts doubt on the integrity of the entire U.S. justice system.

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American-led troops were accused of dragging innocent Afghan children from their beds and shooting them during a night raid that left ten people dead. Locals said that some victims were handcuffed before being killed.

“This was a joint operation that was conducted against an IED cell that Afghan and US officials had been developing information against for some time,” said a senior NATO insider. But he admitted that “the facts about what actually went down are in dispute”.

President Karzai sent a team of investigators to Narang district, in eastern Kunar province, after reports of a massacre first surfaced on Monday. The investigation found that eight of the victims were aged from 11 to 17.

“The delegation concluded that a unit of international forces descended from a plane Sunday night into Ghazi Khan village in Narang district of the eastern province of Kunar and took ten people from three homes, eight of them school students in grades six, nine and ten, one of them a guest, the rest from the same family, and shot them dead,” a statement on President Karzai’s website said.

Assadullah Wafa, who led the investigation, said that US soldiers flew to Kunar from Kabul, suggesting that they were part of a special forces unit.

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Avatar may well be the biggest anti War film of all time.

Avatar stands against everything the West is identified with. It is against greed and capitalism, it is against interventionalism, it is against colonialism and imperialism.

Avatar puts Wolfowitz, Blair and Bush on trial without even mentioning their names.

[From the blog of Gilad Atzmon]

For the last couple of months Saudi Arabia has been bombarding Yemen with fighter jets. Just recently the US sent cruise missiles into Yemen in a reported attempt to hit Al Qaeda sites. Also, US fighter jets joined the attacks on Yemen. In return, Al Qaeda reportedly issued a warning that it would avenge US raids.

The Detroit bound airline terrorist suspect from Nigeria has supposed links to Yemen. Something smells of a needed convenient incident to help promote the attacks on Yemen and the expansion of our terrorist war there.

As luck would have it, and conveniently, Congresspersons are calling for a needed expansion of the terror wars to include Yemen.

Also parts of the Patriot Act are soon due to expire. Now talk about a real convenience.

[Excerpt from an article by Grant Lawrence]

If you count [the U.S.] occupation of Iraq, our twice-escalated war in Afghanistan, our rapidly escalating bombing campaigns in Pakistan and Yemen, and various forms of covert war involvement in Somalia, one could reasonably say that we’re fighting five different wars in Muslim countries — or, to use the NYT’s jargon, “five fronts” in the “Terror War” (Obama yesterday specifically mentioned Somalia and Yemen as places where, euphemistically, “we will continue to use every element of our national power”).

In the wake of the latest failed terrorist attack on Northwest Airlines, one can smell the excitement in the air — that all-too-familiar, giddy, bipartisan climate that emerges in American media discourse whenever there’s a new country we get to learn about so that we can explain why we’re morally and strategically justified in bombing it some more.  “Yemen” is suddenly on every Serious Person’s lips.

Isn’t it obvious that our five-front actions are going to cause at least some Muslims — subjected to constant images of American troops in their world and dead Muslim civilians at our hands, even if unintended — to want to return the violence?   Just look at the bloodthirsty sentiments unleashed among Americans even from a failed Terrorist attempt.  What sentiments do we think we’re unleashing from a decade-long (and counting and increasing) multi-front “war” in the Muslim war?

Ultimately, we should ask ourselves:  if we drop more bombs on more Muslim countries, will there be fewer or more Muslims who want to blow up our airplanes and are willing to end their lives to do so?

[Full article in Salon]

Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber,” was arrested on December 22, 2001, for trying to blow up American Airlines flight 63, coming into the States from Paris. Reid’s stunt led to the imposition of the take-off-your-shoes rule at airport security

Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, the “lap bomber” was arrested on December 25^th, 2009, coming into the States. Umar’s midair antics have now inspired the Transportation Safety Authority to inaugurate a spate of new regulations: nothing in your lap, please, and no getting up from your seat for a solid hour before landing.

To add yet another touch of déjà vu,the Reid incident occurred at a volatile moment, just as the Bush administration was ramping up to invade both Afghanistan and Iraq. Umar, the lap bomber, also leaps onto the international stage at a sensitive time, when President Obama is launching a major offensive in Afghanistan and the US has “assisted” Yemen in its air strikes on the alleged al-Qaeda stronghold in that country.

Now, eight years later, our mental processes have been quickened to seeming anomalies, such as: why, when Umar’s own father – a prominent banker – contacted the US embassy, and met with the CIA as well as the Nigerian intelligence agency, and warned them his son might pose a danger, was Umar allowed on a plane entering the US? Authorities tell us that he was in a database, consisting of over half a million people, said to pose a risk, but not on the “no fly” list, in spite of his own father’s warning.

Umar is the son of Dr. Umaru Mutallab, former economics minister in the Nigerian government and one of the country’s most prominent bankers: schooled at the exclusive British International School. We are asked to believe that a highly privileged young man, with everything to live for, was suddenly seized with a desire to commit suicide as an act of jihad: that he disappeared from his life of ease, on a street lined with Mercedes Benzes and Ferraris, in a fashionable district of London, and traveled to Yemen, where he received what may have been a defective bomb, which was sewn into his underwear by his jihadist trainers. This bomb then went undetected in Amsterdam airport, where he was let on a plane headed for the US in spite of explicit warnings given by his own father.

How could this happen? Inquiring minds want to know.

[Excerpt of an article by Justin Raimondo]

Why isn’t the “mainstream” media reporting the facts shared by Kurt Haskell, who was on the same flight with Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, specifically where he testifies:

“…I was next to the terrorist when he checked in at the Amsterdam airport early on Christmas … An Indian man in a nicely dressed suit around age 50 approached the check in counter with the terrorist and said ‘This man needs to get on this flight and he has no passport.’ … The ticket taker said ‘you can’t board without a passport.’ The Indian man then replied, ‘He is from Sudan, we do this all the time.’. …The ticket taker then said ‘You will have to talk to my manager,’ and sent the two down a hallway. I never saw the Indian man again as he wasn’t on the flight

“The FBI also arrested a different Indian man while we were held in customs after a bomb sniffing dog detected a bomb in his carry on bag and he was searched after we landed. This was later confirmed while we were in customs when an FBI agent said to us ‘You are being moved to another area because this area is not safe. … I stood about 15-20 feet away from the other Indian man when he was cuffed and arrested after his search.”

In any case, given the veracity of Haskell’s account, it is clear that, contrary to news reports, Umar was no “lone nut,” but had at least one accomplice with him on board the plane. Furthermore, both of his accomplices – the one who got him on the plane without a passport, and the one nabbed by the bomb-sniffing dog – may have been Indians.

The testimony of Jasper Schuringa – the passenger who leapt out of his seat on the other side of the plane, put out the fire, and secured Umar in a headlock –says of the alleged terrorist: “He was shaking. He didn’t resist anything. It’s just hard to believe that he was trying to blow up this plane. He was in a trance. He was very afraid.”

He didn’t resist? This hardly seems like the behavior one might expect of some fanatic jihadist bent on destruction and meeting those virgins in the afterlife.

We are asked to believe that a highly privileged young man, with everything to live for, was suddenly seized with a desire to commit suicide as an act of jihad: that he disappeared from his life of ease, on a street lined with Mercedes Benzes and Ferraris, in a fashionable district of London, and traveled to Yemen, where he received what may have been a defective bomb, which was sewn into his underwear by his jihadist trainers. This bomb then went undetected in Amsterdam airport, where the security arrangements are said to be tight (and a personal interview is conducted), and where he was let on a plane headed for the US in spite of explicit warnings given by his own father.

Meanwhile Joe Lieberman and several Republicans are calling for more preemptive strikes on targets in Yemen, and it’s not hard to see that the US is very close to opening up yet another “front” in our eternal “war on terrorism.”

[From an AntiWar.com article by Justin Raimondo]

A massive mobilization between December 27, 2009 and January 1, 2010 with candlelight vigils, concerts, marches, demonstrations, art installations and movie screenings will assemble all over the world to send a clear message to world leaders: end the siege on Gaza.

December 27 marks one year since the Israeli attack and invasion of the Gaza Strip. Although the Israeli tanks have left, the complete closure of the borders continues.

In order to unite the public to influence public leaders behind the Gaza Freedom March goals, solidarity action organizers harnessed the power of the internet to coordinate a global week of actions. The objective is to draw international attention to the siege and blockade of Gaza which are illegal under international law.

There will be actions at many places around the world: France, United Kingdom, Turkey, Ireland, Germany, Spain, United States, Afghanistan, Australia, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, Jordan, Canada, Israel/Palestine, Poland, Denmark, and Greece.

Israel’s blockade of Gaza is a flagrant violation of international law that has led to mass suffering. The U.S., Egypt and the rest of the international community are complicit.