Category Archives: Middle East

May 16, 2013

Syrian Rebel Leader Filmed Eating Soldier’s Body Organs

Posted on May 16, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

“I swear to God, soldiers of Bashar, you dogs — we will eat your heart and livers! Takbir! God is Great!” al-Hamad says in the video, according to translations in media reports. “Oh my heroes of Baba Amr, you slaughter the Alawites [members of a Shia Muslim denomination to which dictator Assad belongs] and take their hearts out to eat them!” The Sunni rebel then appears to take a bite out of the organ.

Video of a rebel commander in Syria eating the body organs of a soldier loyal to the Bashar al-Assad regime has sparked a global outcry, with human rights groups calling for an immediate end to the savagery and impunity. Western analysts are also once again debating the wisdom of U.S. and European support for the Islamist opposition, backing that has included financing since before the “revolution” began, arms shipments, training, and much more.

The footage in question had been circulating online and in news rooms for at least a week, but experts and reporters were unsure of its authenticity. Now, less than two weeks after the Obama administration announced that it may start overtly arming rebel forces in Syria, the video has been confirmed as authentic. In fact, the cannibalistic militant leader has reportedly even boasted of the crime in interviews with Western media outlets.

The horrific 30-second clip shows “Independent Omar al-Farouk Brigade” chief Khalid al-Hamad, who apparently fights under the pseudonym Abu Sakkar and has been implicated in other atrocities, standing over the dead body of a pro-regime fighter as other rebels celebrate. After cutting out an organ — apparently a lung mistaken for the heart or liver — the commander holds it up and speaks toward the camera.

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Posted in Islam, Middle East, Revolutions/Rebellions

May 15, 2013

Murder of U.S. Marine in Afghanistan Raises Red Flags About War

Posted on May 15, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

During a meal after training, one of the U.S. government-backed Afghan troops indicated to Buckley, Jr. that local forces knew the group of Americans was set to leave soon. It made the U.S. Marines nervous — especially since government policy apparently keeps American forces disarmed while on base with armed Afghans. Buckley, Jr. had already terrified his parents by suggesting that he would not be coming home alive.

Before being murdered by an AK47-wielding “tea boy” on a base in Helmand Province, Lance Corporal Greg Buckley, Jr. (shown in inset) told his parents about a sense that he would not come home from Afghanistan. He was right. Now, his heartbroken family and a growing group of supporters across America want justice.

In an interview with The New American, the then-21-year-old Marine’s father, Greg Buckley, Sr., also raised troubling questions about the U.S. government’s war in Afghanistan, the controversial policies governing American forces there, and much more. He says it is time for politicians to do something for U.S. troops — and for American soldiers to come home now.

“As Karzai has said many times, they don’t want us there. So why should we even be there?” Buckley, Sr. asked. “There are reasons we are there, and one day our government might tell us the truth. But that day might be too late. We are losing too many soldiers out there in Afghanistan. Our government needs to respect our soldiers, give them more protection, or return all of them home immediately.”

On August 10 last year, two days before Lance Cpl. Buckley, Jr. was finally supposed to return home for a surprise visit with his family, he spent the day following orders to train Afghan security forces. Even though he already knew well from personal experience that the Afghans did not want him or his fellow soldiers in the country — many of the locals loathe the American presence with a passion — Buckley, Jr. did what he was ordered to do.

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Posted in Middle East, Military, Murder

May 8, 2013

UN Investigator Claims Evidence Syrian Rebels Used Sarin Gas

Posted on May 8, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

U.S. efforts to “tip the scales” in favor of the overthrow of the Assad regime could turn out to be as “successful” as the much heralded “regime change” in Iraq. The nation might well wonder if we can afford more “success” of that kind.

The “varying degrees of confidence” the Obama administration has claimed for intelligence reports of chemical weapons use by government forces in Syria may become more varied and less confident if evidence cited by a United Nations investigator is substantiated. Reuters reported from Geneva on Sunday that one member of a UN team looking into human rights violations in Syria’s two-year-old civil war said the evidence pointed to use of sarin gas by the rebel forces.

Carla Del Ponte, a former Swiss attorney general and a member of the UN independent commission of inquiry on Syria, said in a Swiss-Italian television interview that the commission’s investigations produced “strong, concrete suspicions” about the origin of the nerve-gas attack.

“Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals and, according to their report of last week which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of Sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated,” Del Ponte said. “This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities,” she added.

Del Ponte, who served as prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, gave no details as to when or where sarin may have been use, Reuters reported. The Geneva-based inquiry into war crimes and human rights violations is separate from the investigation authorized by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon into allegations of chemical weapons use in Syria.

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Posted in Middle East, Revolutions/Rebellions

May 7, 2013

The irrelevant Middle East by Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on May 7, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

For now, Western tourists and students still mostly avoid Amman, Baghdad, Benghazi, Cairo and Damascus. American soldiers are drawing down from the bases of the Middle East. Soon, huge American-bound oil tankers will not crowd each other at the docks of the Persian Gulf. You see, the Middle East is not so much dangerous, challenging or vital to Western interests as it is becoming irrelevant.

Since antiquity, the Middle East has been the trading nexus of three continents — Asia, Europe and Africa — and the vibrant birthplace to three of the world’s great religions.

Middle Eastern influence rose again in the 19th century, when the Suez Canal turned the once dead-end eastern Mediterranean Sea into a watery highway from Europe to Asia.

With the 20th-century development of large gas and oil supplies in the Persian Gulf and North Africa, an Arab-led OPEC more or less dictated the foreign policy of thirsty oil importers such as United States and Europe. No wonder U.S. Central Command has remained America’s military command hot spot.

Yet insidiously, the Middle East is becoming irrelevant. The discovery of enormous new oil and gas reserves along with the use of new oil-recovery technology in North America and China is steadily curbing the demand for Middle Eastern oil. Soon, countries such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iran are going to have less income and geostrategic clout. In both Iran and the Gulf, domestic demand is rising, while there is neither the technical know-how nor the water to master the new art of fracking to sustain exports.

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Posted in Middle East, Victor Davis Hanson

May 5, 2013

Karzai Says He Was Assured C.I.A. Would Continue Delivering Bags of Cash

Posted on May 5, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Current and former Afghan officials who spoke before last week said the payments had totaled tens of millions of dollars since they began a decade ago.


The Afghan leader Hamid Karzai told reporters Saturday that money delivered by the C.I.A. was “an easy source of petty cash.”

The C.I.A.’s station chief here met with President Hamid Karzai on Saturday, and the Afghan leader said he had been assured that the agency would continue dropping off stacks of cash at his office despite a storm of criticism that has erupted since the payments were disclosed.

The C.I.A. money, Mr. Karzai told reporters, was “an easy source of petty cash,” and some of it was used to pay off members of the political elite, a group dominated by warlords.

The use of the C.I.A. cash for payoffs has prompted criticism from many Afghans and some American and European officials, who complain that the agency, in its quest to maintain access and influence at the presidential palace, financed what is essentially a presidential slush fund. The practice, the officials say, effectively undercut a pillar of the American war strategy: the building of a clean and credible Afghan government to wean popular support from the Taliban.

Instead, corruption at the highest levels seems to have only worsened. The International Monetary Fund recently warned diplomats in Kabul that the Afghan government faced a potentially severe budget shortfall partly because of the increasing theft of customs duties and officially abetted tax evasion.

On Saturday, Mr. Karzai sought to dampen the furor over the payments, describing them as one facet of the billions of dollars in aid Afghanistan receives each year. “This is nothing unusual,” he said.

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Posted in Government, Middle East

May 1, 2013

Their War, Not Ours By Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted on May 1, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Congressional war hawks, led by Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, are cawing for air strikes and no-fly zones, which would mean dead and captured Americans and many more dead Syrians.

“The worst mistake of my presidency,” said Ronald Reagan of his decision to put Marines into the middle of Lebanon’s civil war, where 241 died in a suicide bombing of their barracks.

And if Barack Obama plunges into Syria’s civil war, it could consume his presidency, even as Iraq consumed the presidency of George W. Bush.

Why would Obama even consider this?

Because he blundered badly. Foolishly, he put his credibility on the line by warning that any Syrian use of chemical weapons would cross a “red line” and be a “game changer” with “enormous consequences.”

Not only was this ultimatum unwise, Obama had no authority to issue it. If Syria does not threaten or attack us, Obama would need congressional authorization before he could constitutionally engage in acts of war against Syria. When did he ever receive such authorization?

Moreover, there is no proof Syrian President Bashar Assad ever ordered the use of chemical weapons.

U.S. intelligence agencies maintain that small amounts of the deadly toxin sarin gas were likely used. But if it did happen, we do not know who ordered it.

Syrians officials deny that they ever used chemicals. And before we dismiss Damascus’ denials, recall that an innocent man in Tupelo, Miss., was lately charged with mailing deadly ricin to Sen. Roger Wicker and President Obama. This weekend, we learned he may have been framed.

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Posted in Middle East, Military, Pat Buchanan, Republicans/Neo-Cons

Iran source: President Ahmadinejad arrested

Posted on May 1, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

As soon as Ahmadinejad exited the car, he and his security team were involved in an altercation with Guards’ members in which his team was disarmed and communications equipment confiscated. Ahmadinejad was then forced to enter an office belonging to Hossein Taeb, the head of the Guards’ intelligence, located underneath the building.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was arrested and held for seven hours Monday and warned to keep his mouth shut about matters detrimental to the Islamic regime before he was released, according to a source within the Revolutionary Guard’s intelligence unit.

After his visit to Tehran’s 26th international book fair Monday, the source said the head of Ahmadinejad’s security team informed the Iranian president that he had been asked to appear at the supreme leader’s office for an urgent matter.

On the way to the meeting, contact between the security team within the president’s convoy was disconnected while three other cars joined the convoy, instructing the lead car to take a different direction. Ahmadinejad, instead of being taken to the supreme leader’s office, was taken to a secret location in one of the buildings belonging to the Foreign Ministry, which is under the control of the Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence unit.

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Posted in Law & Courts, Middle East

April 19, 2013

Assad: Without me, Syria faces increased ethnic division and Islamization

Posted on April 19, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

In a rare interview, Syria’s President Bashar Assad threatens that the war supported by Arab states who are allies of the U.S. and Israel will spread to neighboring Jordan. If he steps down, he argues, al-Qaida will step up.

“There is no option but victory. Otherwise it will be the end of Syria,” Syrian president Bashar Assad said Wednesday in a rare interview that was interpreted by the Arab press as a prepared speech – since the Syrian president was obviously prepared for all questions. Assad warned that the toppling of his regime would lead to Syria being divided into cantons based on ethnic borders.

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Posted in Islam, Middle East

March 26, 2013

The Disasters That U.S. Intervention Created by Sheldon Richman

Posted on March 26, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

U.S. officials say the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were key to national security after 9/11. Even Barack Obama, who built a presidential campaign on opposing the Iraq war, claims it did much good after all. Nonsense.

Americans have forgotten about the Iraq war, which began 10 years ago this week, and the Afghan war, the longest in American history, but the U.S. government is still throwing its weight around in both countries.

The Iraq war, the pretext for which was nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, officially ended in 2011 with the withdrawal of virtually all of America’s combat troops. But the havoc wreaked by the U.S. invasion and regime change goes on. Over a hundred thousand Iraqis were killed in the war itself, but many more died in the aftermath from sectarian violence and the obliterated infrastructure. (Iraq had never recovered from the destruction inflicted by the U.S. government in the 1991 Gulf War and in the decade of sanctions related to it.) Millions fled their homes.

The U.S. occupation unleashed bitter sectarian violence, complete with U.S.-trained death squads, leading the numerically dominant Shiite Muslims (who are friendly to Iran) to cleanse the Sunnis from Baghdad. A Sunni insurgency against the occupation inflicted heavy casualties until American money managed to have the guns turned on the al-Qaeda affiliate, which was not in Iraq before the U.S. invasion.

On the American side, the deaths approached 4,500, with tens of thousands shattered in body and spirit. For the U.S. taxpayer, the price is over a trillion dollars, with billions lost to sheer corruption in the so-called rebuilding.

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Posted in Democrats/Progressives, Government, Middle East, Military, Radicals, Republicans/Neo-Cons

March 22, 2013

Pat Buchanan: Was Iraq Worth It?

Posted on March 22, 2013 by ifnm| Leave a comment

This generation is eyewitness to how a Great Power declines and falls. And to borrow from old King Pyrrhus, one more such victory as Iraq, and we are undone.

Ten years ago today, U.S. air, sea and land forces attacked Iraq. And the great goals of Operation Iraqi Freedom?

Destroy the chemical and biological weapons Saddam Hussein had amassed to use on us or transfer to al-Qaida for use against the U.S. homeland.

Exact retribution for Saddam’s complicity in 9/11 after we learned his agents had met secretly in Prague with Mohamed Atta.

Create a flourishing democracy in Baghdad that would serve as a catalyst for a miraculous transformation of the Middle East from a land of despots into a region of democracies that looked West.

Not all agreed on the wisdom of this war. Gen. Bill Odom, former director of the National Security Agency, thought George W. Bush & Co. had lost their minds: “The Iraq War may turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in American history.”

Yet, a few weeks of “shock and awe,” and U.S. forces had taken Baghdad and dethroned Saddam, who had fled but was soon found in a rat hole and prosecuted and hanged, as were his associates, “the deck of cards,” some of whom met the same fate.

And so, ’twas a famous victory. Mission accomplished!

Soon, however, America found herself in a new, unanticipated war, and by 2006, we were, astonishingly, on the precipice of defeat, caught in a Sunni-Shia sectarian conflict produced by our having disbanded the Iraqi army and presided over the empowerment of the first Shia regime in the nation’s history.

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Posted in Government, Middle East, Military, Pat Buchanan