xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxThe day after Clair George’s arraignment, we turned to Robert Gates. The Senate intelligence committee’s hearings on his appointment to head the CIA were scheduled to begin within a few days. Craig Gillen and I met the committee’s chairman, David Boren, and ranking minority member, Frank Murkowski, and staff counsel in Boren’s office. Reiterating what I had already told Boren, we said that two questions had not been answered satisfactorily: Had Gates falsely denied knowledge of Oliver North’s Contra-support activities? Had Gates falsely postdated his first knowledge of North’s diversion of arms sale proceeds to the Contras?We then described what our investigation had turned up about Gates. Alan Fiers had told us that he had kept Gates generally informed of his Contra-support activities, through written reports and regular face-to-face presentations, although his oral reports had been guarded because Gates had not always had a note-taker present. The CIA now claimed it could not find the notes of these meetings. (more…)

A Palestinian official has accused Israel of state terrorism after an attack in Gaza that killed 18 civilians, and said Israeli apologies for such incidents were insincere and no longer acceptable.

Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian UN observer, told an emergency UN Security Council meeting on Thursday: “This is terrorism, this is state terrorism.

“These are war crimes for which the perpetrators must be held accountable under international law.”

But an Israeli diplomat insisted that Wednesday’s deadly shelling in Beit Hanoun had been accidental. (more…)

A Muslim cleric has claimed to have been tortured with electric shocks, left in a cell where rats crawled on him and threatened with rape after he was allegedly kidnapped from a Milan street by CIA agents three years ago.

The claims of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, appeared in an affidavit provided to Milan prosecutors investigating his alleged abduction in February 2003, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported yesterday.

Prosecutors say that the cleric, who was formerly suspected of links to terrorism, was driven to the Aviano military air base and flown via Germany to his native Egypt before being secretly interrogated for six months. (more…)

Tony Blair today backed the assessment of the head of MI5 that the “very real” threat from terrorism would last a generation.

In a rare public speech yesterday, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, director general of the intelligence agency, expressed concern at the rate at which young people, including teenagers, were being radicalised and indoctrinated.

She said MI5 was tracking more than 1,600 individuals who were actively engaged in promoting attacks here and abroad. Many of these were British-born and had connections with al-Qaida, she said. (more…)

Saginaw’s City Council meeting featured a shocking incident Monday night. A Saginaw Valley State University student was TASERed after he became unruly after being asked to take off his baseball cap.There is a new rule at Saginaw City Council meetings. Men are required to take their hats off. Evidently, they are pretty serious about this new rule.

The man was wearing a Los Angeles Dodgers hat. Officer Doug Stacer of the Saginaw Police Department asked him to remove the hat. The man raised his voice and did not remove the hat.

As the officer tried to grab the hat and then tried to grab the man, the man with the hat tried to kick Saginaw Police Chief Gerald Cliff, who was coming to help out.

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Former Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind has accused the US of delaying the verdict in Saddam Hussein’s trial to coincide with the mid-term polls.
He told BBC One’s Question Time he had no evidence but the timing of the verdict was “deeply suspect”.

The former president of Iraq was this week sentenced to death by hanging for crimes against humanity.

The White House has dismissed similar accusations as “preposterous” and said the Iraqi judges determined the timing. (more…)

With the Democrats and Democratic Party voters euphoric over a purported election victory, and a possible “change of course” in Iraq, the Bush administration quietly added poison to the Democrats’ celebration champagne by dredging up former CIA Director and Iran-Contra participant Robert Gates to replace Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary.

The “war on terrorism” will not only continue, it will expand and deepen with Gates heading the Pentagon.

Who is Robert Gates? (more…)

For the first time yesterday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert addressed in public the possibility that the United States may withdraw its forces from Iraq following the victory of the Democratic Party in the mid-term congressional elections. Olmert warned against a hasty withdrawal that may undermine the balance of power in the Middle East and endanger the moderate regimes in the region.

“From our point of view every withdrawal needs to be carefully planned,” Olmert said, “in order not to undermine the very delicate balance of moderate countries and emirates in the Middle East. This is the main consideration, and America will be very careful before it makes a step that will endanger the very delicate balance in this region of the world - which is important to the stability of much larger regions of the world.”The Prime Minister believes that U.S. policy will not change in a hurry. (more…)

ZAGARIT, Iraq — Hashim al-Menti smiled wanly at the Marine sergeant beside him on his couch. The sergeant had appeared in the darkness Wednesday night, knocking on the door of al-Menti’s home.

When al-Menti answered, a squad of infantrymen swiftly moved in, making him an involuntary host.

Since then Marines had been on his roof with rifles, watching roads where insurgents often plant bombs.

Al-Menti had passed the time watching television. Now he had news. He spoke in broken English. “Rumsfeld is gone,” he told the sergeant, Michael A. McKinnon.

“Democracy,” he added, and made a thumbs-up sign.

“Good.” (more…)

Manitoba had third largest group of subversives

The federal government had detailed lists of political activists and subversives it planned to arrest in the aftermath of a nuclear war or other national emergency, keeping such plans on the books until at least the early 1980s, according to new records obtained by an Ottawa historian.

Anywhere from 700 to 2,500 people, including babies, would have been held in internment camps before being shipped off to more permanent detention facilities.

Under the 1969 version of the plan, the majority of people were to be picked up in Ontario with the second-largest group coming from British Columbia. Manitoba had the third-largest number of subversives to be arrested. In the Maritimes, only two people were targeted. (more…)