Guantanamo’s longest-serving prisoner has been freed after nearly two decades in detention without charge.

Saifullah Paracha, 75, was transferred to the detention center in 2004 after his capture in an FBI operation in Thailand. Paracha, who was 56 at the time, was accused of meeting with Osama bin Laden and helping the 9/11 orchestrators “facilitate financial transactions and propaganda.”

The Pakistani national, who was never charged with a crime but was deemed too dangerous to be released, has since been repatriated, the Pakistani government said in a statement.

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs completed an extensive inter-institutional process to facilitate the repatriation of Paracha. We are glad that a Pakistani citizen detained abroad is finally reunited with his family,” the statement read.

At the time of his capture, Paracha was a legal resident of the United States. He lived in the New York borough of Queens and ran several businesses, including real estate, travel agencies and a media company, the New York Times reported.

Paracha, who obtained permanent residency from him in 1980, denies any involvement in the 9/11 attacks and his affiliation with Al Qaeda.

During the undercover operation, Paracha was duped by officials posing as Kmart representatives, who told him they needed to meet with him in Bangkok, Thailand to discuss a deal. In July 2003, he was captured by FBI agents at the airport.

(Taken from Independent in Spanish)

The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan

In “Getting bin Laden,” Nicholas Schmidle’s New Yorker report on the assault on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, here’s the money sentence, according to Noah Shachtman of Wired Magazine’s Danger Room blog: “The Abbottabad raid was not DEVGRU’s maiden venture into Pakistan, either. The team had surreptitiously entered the country on ten to twelve previous occasions, according to a special-operations officer who is deeply familiar with the bin Laden raid.”  DEVGRU is the acronym for the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, better known as SEAL Team Six (think “SEAL-mania”), the elite special operations outfit that killed bin Laden.

His assassination — and Schmidle’s piece makes clear that his capture was never an objective — brought on a blitz of media coverage.  But without reading that single, half-buried sentence, who knew that the same SEAL team had been dropped into Pakistan to do who knows what 10 to 12 times before the bin Laden mission happened?   Not most Pakistanis, nor 99.99% of Americans, myself included.  Keep in mind that this was only a team of 23 elite troops (plus a translator and a dog).  But there are now about 20,000 full-time special operations types, at least 13,000 of them deployed somewhere abroad at this moment.  In other words, we simply don’t know the half of it.  We probably don’t know the tenth of it — neither the breadth or number of their missions, nor the range of their targets.  According to Schmidle again, on the day of the bin Laden raid, special operations forces in nearby Afghanistan conducted 12 other “night raids.” Almost 2,000 of them have been carried out in the last couple of years.

These are staggering figures.  And since we didn’t know that U.S. special operations forces were secretly conducting Pakistan missions in such numbers, it might be worth asking what else we don’t know.  Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, speaking to the press in 2002 about the lack of evidence linking Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to the 9/11 attacks, made a famous (or infamous) distinction among “known knowns,” (things we know we know), “known unknowns” (things we know we don’t know), and “unknown unknowns” (things we don’t know we don’t know).  How apt those “unknown unknowns” turn out to be when it comes to the ever-expanding special operations forces inside the U.S. military.

Think of them, in fact, as the unknown unknowns of twenty-first century American warfare.  Fortunately, thanks to TomDispatch regular Nick Turse, we now have a far better idea of the size and scope of the global war being fought in our name by tens of thousands of secret warriors fighting “in the shadows.”  Tom

A Secret War in 120 Countries
The Pentagon’s New Power Elite
By Nick Turse

Somewhere on this planet an American commando is carrying out a mission.  Now, say that 70 times and you’re done… for the day.  Without the knowledge of the American public, a secret force within the U.S. military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world’s countries.  This new Pentagon power elite is waging a global war whose size and scope has never been revealed, until now.

After a U.S. Navy SEAL put a bullet in Osama bin Laden’s chest and another in his head, one of the most secretive black-ops units in the American military suddenly found its mission in the public spotlight.  It was atypical.  While it’s well known that U.S. Special Operations forces are deployed in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and it’s increasingly apparent that such units operate in murkier conflict zones like Yemen and Somalia, the full extent of their worldwide war has remained deeply in the shadows.

Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported that U.S. Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency.  By the end of this year, U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that number will likely reach 120.  “We do a lot of traveling — a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq,” he said recently.  This global presence — in about 60% of the world’s nations and far larger than previously acknowledged — provides striking new evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.

The Rise of the Military’s Secret Military

Born of a failed 1980 raid to rescue American hostages in Iran, in which eight U.S. service members died, U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) was established in 1987.  Having spent the post-Vietnam years distrusted and starved for money by the regular military, special operations forces suddenly had a single home, a stable budget, and a four-star commander as their advocate.  Since then, SOCOM has grown into a combined force of startling proportions.  Made up of units from all the service branches, including the Army’s “Green Berets” and Rangers, Navy SEALs, Air Force Air Commandos, and Marine Corps Special Operations teams, in addition to specialized helicopter crews, boat teams, civil affairs personnel, para-rescuemen, and even battlefield air-traffic controllers and special operations weathermen, SOCOM carries out the United States’ most specialized and secret missions.  These include assassinations, counterterrorist raids, long-range reconnaissance, intelligence analysis, foreign troop training, and weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation operations.

One of its key components is the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, a clandestine sub-command whose primary mission is tracking and killing suspected terrorists.  Reporting to the president and acting under his authority, JSOC maintains a global hit list that includes American citizens.  It has been operating an extra-legal “kill/capture” campaign that John Nagl, a past counterinsurgency adviser to four-star general and soon-to-be CIA Director David Petraeus, calls “an almost industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine.”

This assassination program has been carried out by commando units like the Navy SEALs and the Army’s Delta Force as well as via drone strikes as part of covert wars in which the CIA is also involved in countries like Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen.  In addition, the command operates a network of secret prisons, perhaps as many as 20 black sites in Afghanistan alone, used for interrogating high-value targets.

Growth Industry

From a force of about 37,000 in the early 1990s, Special Operations Command personnel have grown to almost 60,000, about a third of whom are career members of SOCOM; the rest have other military occupational specialties, but periodically cycle through the command.  Growth has been exponential since September 11, 2001, as SOCOM’s baseline budget almost tripled from $2.3 billion to $6.3 billion.  If you add in funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has actually more than quadrupled to $9.8 billion in these years.  Not surprisingly, the number of its personnel deployed abroad has also jumped four-fold.  Further increases, and expanded operations, are on the horizon.

Lieutenant General Dennis Hejlik, the former head of the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command — the last of the service branches to be incorporated into SOCOM in 2006 — indicated, for instance, that he foresees a doubling of his former unit of 2,600.  “I see them as a force someday of about 5,000, like equivalent to the number of SEALs that we have on the battlefield. Between [5,000] and 6,000,” he said at a June breakfast with defense reporters in Washington.  Long-term plans already call for the force to increase by 1,000.

During his recent Senate confirmation hearings, Navy Vice Admiral William McRaven, the incoming SOCOM chief and outgoing head of JSOC (which he commanded during the bin Laden raid) endorsed a steady manpower growth rate of 3% to 5% a year, while also making a pitch for even more resources, including additional drones and the construction of new special operations facilities.

A former SEAL who still sometimes accompanies troops into the field, McRaven expressed a belief that, as conventional forces are drawn down in Afghanistan, special ops troops will take on an ever greater role.  Iraq, he added, would benefit if elite U.S forces continued to conduct missions there past the December 2011 deadline for a total American troop withdrawal.  He also assured the Senate Armed Services Committee that “as a former JSOC commander, I can tell you we were looking very hard at Yemen and at Somalia.”

During a speech at the National Defense Industrial Association’s annual Special Operations and Low-intensity Conflict Symposium earlier this year, Navy Admiral Eric Olson, the outgoing chief of Special Operations Command, pointed to a composite satellite image of the world at night.  Before September 11, 2001, the lit portions of the planet — mostly the industrialized nations of the global north — were considered the key areas. “But the world changed over the last decade,” he said.  “Our strategic focus has shifted largely to the south… certainly within the special operations community, as we deal with the emerging threats from the places where the lights aren’t.”

To that end, Olson launched “Project Lawrence,” an effort to increase cultural proficiencies — like advanced language training and better knowledge of local history and customs — for overseas operations.  The program is, of course, named after the British officer, Thomas Edward Lawrence (better known as “Lawrence of Arabia”), who teamed up with Arab fighters to wage a guerrilla war in the Middle East during World War I.  Mentioning Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mali, and Indonesia, Olson added that SOCOM now needed “Lawrences of Wherever.”

While Olson made reference to only 51 countries of top concern to SOCOM, Col. Nye told me that on any given day, Special Operations forces are deployed in approximately 70 nations around the world.  All of them, he hastened to add, at the request of the host government.  According to testimony by Olson before the House Armed Services Committee earlier this year, approximately 85% of special operations troops deployed overseas are in 20 countries in the CENTCOM area of operations in the Greater Middle East: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Yemen.  The others are scattered across the globe from South America to Southeast Asia, some in small numbers, others as larger contingents.

Special Operations Command won’t disclose exactly which countries its forces operate in.  “We’re obviously going to have some places where it’s not advantageous for us to list where we’re at,” says Nye.  “Not all host nations want it known, for whatever reasons they have — it may be internal, it may be regional.”

But it’s no secret (or at least a poorly kept one) that so-called black special operations troops, like the SEALs and Delta Force, are conducting kill/capture missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen, while “white” forces like the Green Berets and Rangers are training indigenous partners as part of a worldwide secret war against al-Qaeda and other militant groups. In the Philippines, for instance, the U.S. spends $50 million a year on a 600-person contingent of Army Special Operations forces, Navy Seals, Air Force special operators, and others that carries out counterterrorist operations with Filipino allies against insurgent groups like Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf.

Last year, as an analysis of SOCOM documents, open-source Pentagon information, and a database of Special Operations missions compiled by investigative journalist Tara McKelvey (for the Medill School of Journalism’s National Security Journalism Initiative) reveals, America’s most elite troops carried out joint-training exercises in Belize, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Germany, Indonesia, Mali, Norway, Panama, and Poland.  So far in 2011, similar training missions have been conducted in the Dominican Republic, Jordan, Romania, Senegal, South Korea, and Thailand, among other nations.  In reality, Nye told me, training actually went on in almost every nation where Special Operations forces are deployed.  “Of the 120 countries we visit by the end of the year, I would say the vast majority are training exercises in one fashion or another.  They would be classified as training exercises.”

The Pentagon’s Power Elite

Once the neglected stepchildren of the military establishment, Special Operations forces have been growing exponentially not just in size and budget, but also in power and influence.  Since 2002, SOCOM has been authorized to create its own Joint Task Forces — like Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines — a prerogative normally limited to larger combatant commands like CENTCOM.  This year, without much fanfare, SOCOM also established its own Joint Acquisition Task Force, a cadre of equipment designers and acquisition specialists.

With control over budgeting, training, and equipping its force, powers usually reserved for departments (like the Department of the Army or the Department of the Navy), dedicated dollars in every Defense Department budget, and influential advocates in Congress, SOCOM is by now an exceptionally powerful player at the Pentagon.  With real clout, it can win bureaucratic battles, purchase cutting-edge technology, and pursue fringe research like electronically beaming messages into people’s heads or developing stealth-like cloaking technologies for ground troops.  Since 2001, SOCOM’s prime contracts awarded to small businesses — those that generally produce specialty equipment and weapons — have jumped six-fold.

Headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, but operating out of theater commands spread out around the globe, including Hawaii, Germany, and South Korea, and active in the majority of countries on the planet, Special Operations Command is now a force unto itself.  As outgoing SOCOM chief Olson put it earlier this year, SOCOM “is a microcosm of the Department of Defense, with ground, air, and maritime components, a global presence, and authorities and responsibilities that mirror the Military Departments, Military Services, and Defense Agencies.”

Tasked to coordinate all Pentagon planning against global terrorism networks and, as a result, closely connected to other government agencies, foreign militaries, and intelligence services, and armed with a vast inventory of stealthy helicopters, manned fixed-wing aircraft, heavily-armed drones, high-tech guns-a-go-go speedboats, specialized Humvees and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, as well as other state-of-the-art gear (with more on the way), SOCOM represents something new in the military.  Whereas the late scholar of militarism Chalmers Johnson used to refer to the CIA as “the president’s private army,” today JSOC performs that role, acting as the chief executive’s private assassination squad, and its parent, SOCOM, functions as a new Pentagon power-elite, a secret military within the military possessing domestic power and global reach.

In 120 countries across the globe, troops from Special Operations Command carry out their secret war of high-profile assassinations, low-level targeted killings, capture/kidnap operations, kick-down-the-door night raids, joint operations with foreign forces, and training missions with indigenous partners as part of a shadowy conflict unknown to most Americans.  Once “special” for being small, lean, outsider outfits, today they are special for their power, access, influence, and aura.

That aura now benefits from a well-honed public relations campaign which helps them project a superhuman image at home and abroad, even while many of their actual activities remain in the ever-widening shadows.  Typical of the vision they are pushing was this statement from Admiral Olson: “I am convinced that the forces… are the most culturally attuned partners, the most lethal hunter-killers, and most responsive, agile, innovative, and efficiently effective advisors, trainers, problem-solvers, and warriors that any nation has to offer.”

Recently at the Aspen Institute’s Security Forum, Olson offered up similarly gilded comments and some misleading information, too, claiming that U.S. Special Operations forces were operating in just 65 countries and engaged in combat in only two of them.  When asked about drone strikes in Pakistan, he reportedly replied, “Are you talking about unattributed explosions?”

What he did let slip, however, was telling.  He noted, for instance, that black operations like the bin Laden mission, with commandos conducting heliborne night raids, were now exceptionally common.  A dozen or so are conducted every night, he said.  Perhaps most illuminating, however, was an offhand remark about the size of SOCOM.  Right now, he emphasized, U.S. Special Operations forces were approximately as large as Canada’s entire active duty military.  In fact, the force is larger than the active duty militaries of many of the nations where America’s elite troops now operate each year, and it’s only set to grow larger.

Americans have yet to grapple with what it means to have a “special” force this large, this active, and this secret — and they are unlikely to begin to do so until more information is available.  It just won’t be coming from Olson or his troops.  “Our access [to foreign countries] depends on our ability to not talk about it,” he said in response to questions about SOCOM’s secrecy.  When missions are subject to scrutiny like the bin Laden raid, he said, the elite troops object.  The military’s secret military, said Olson, wants “to get back into the shadows and do what they came in to do.”

Nick Turse is a historian, essayist, and investigative journalist. The associate editor of TomDispatch.com and a new senior editor at Alternet.org, his latest book is The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Verso Books). This article is a collaboration between Alternet.org and TomDispatch.com.

Copyright 2011 Nick Turse

That’s because despite political and U.S. press claims to the contrary, the killing has done nothing to weaken al Qaeda. In fact, according to one counter-terrorism insider, al Qaeda is stronger today than it was 10 years ago, before the strikes of 9/11.

Leah Farrell, a former Senior Counter terrorism Intelligence Analyst for the Australian federal police, reported in the latest Foreign Affairs just this fact.

She writes:

…[S]ince fleeing Afghanistan to Pakistan’s tribal areas in late 2001, al Qaeda has founded a regional branch in the Arabian Peninsula and acquired franchises in Iraq and the Maghreb.

Today, it has more members, greater geographic reach, and a level of sophistication and influence it lacked ten years ago.*

As for Osama, he hasn’t had operational or command and control power for years now. Thus, his loss will have minimal impact on the organizations’s actions or plans.

It’s important to keep in mind that we are discussing a war between one of the most powerful and resourceful states in history, and a group. Seriously, who’s at a disadvantage?

U.S. Special Forces could’ve knocked off Osama the week after Sept. 11th. Why didn’t they?

Because if they did there would’ve been no pretext to invade Iraq. The public, its great thirst slaked by vengeance, would never have supported it — and the neo cons in the White House wanted in –desperately.

So Osama, like Mubarak, Like Ben-Ali, and like Quaddafy, have outlived their usefulness to the empire.

Remember then Gen. Colin Powell’s quip (during the 1st Iraq war)? “We’re running out of boogey-men!”

The media and political establishment like to raise up demons to unsettle American comfort.

Osama fulfilled that function for ten years.

They don’t need him anymore.

[col. writ. 5/2/11] (c) ’11 Mumia Abu-Jamal

(Al Jazeera)

“]

Strauss-Kahn was in the process of making drastic changes in the IMF to benefit the developing world when he was suddenly caught up in a sex scandal [GALLO/GETTY

It will pit on one side “Ophelia”, a Western African Muslim immigrant to the US, a 32-year-old widow who supports herself and her teenage daughter working as a chambermaid in a five-star Manhattan hotel.

On the other side, we find Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK), the 62-year-old French Jewish former head of the International Monetary Fund, former virtual winner of the 2012 French presidential elections, and former heavyweight of advanced capitalism.

Talk about a metaphor of the current civil war inherent to advanced capitalism, or – as a matter of fact – to life as we know it, where might is usually right and democracy has been reduced to a simulacrum.

For the past few days it has been possible to entertain the notion of history delivering some kind of poetic justice in the form of the IMF – thanks to an African Muslim female worker – finally being led by a technocrat from the developing world instead of the fund appointing one of the same old European faces.

That does not seem to be the case anymore.

The ugly sisters

Everyone in Washington and beyond knows that the “ugly sisters”, the IMF and the World Bank, were designed as convenient tools for the West to lay down the law to emerging markets – the whole process sitting upon a supposedly “neutral” or “multilateral” velvet cushion.

Scores of economists who’ve worked for the ugly sisters throughout the past decades have ended up at very prominent positions – from ministries to Central Banks – across the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. This explains – among other absurdities – why they have always insisted in investing their countries’ reserves in debt issued by the US or European Union nations. Well, because it’s “safe”.

At the same time, they’ve all bought into the fiction that the IMF was a “credible partner” to their governments. Well, it wasn’t; the only IMF “credible partner” has always been the US treasury.

Before the 2008 Wall Street-provoked global financial crisis, the IMF’s credibility was risible. Not only because of the way it handled the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis, almost destroying whole economies, from Thailand to Indonesia, with its dreaded one-size-fits-all structural adjustment. Not only because of the way it handled Brazil and Russia. And not only because it did everything it could to destroy Argentina after it defaulted in late 2001.

It’s in this policy wasteland that DSK – a super smart economist, lawyer and negotiator – started to make his mark. He immediately seized the opening of the 2008 crisis being discussed inside the G20 instead of the G8 – and thus including powerful voices from emerging markets.

In 2010, he even convinced the Europeans at the IMF to share some of those obscure leadership quotas with emerging economies. Talk about bias. The US holds no less than 16.8 per cent of voting rights; Europe a whopping 35.6 per cent. Germany, the UK and France, among them, hold over 15.5 per cent. China has only 3.6 per cent. Brazil, which represents nine South American countries, has only 1.3 per cent.

When someone as impeccably progressive as Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz praises your work, you know the IMF is really changing. Stiglitz took no time to recognise how DSK was trying to implement a new model – with less emphasis on Wild West privatisations and hardcore crushing of labour unions.

It’s as if the IMF had seen the light, Blues Brothers-style, and was now on the road to global wealth redistribution; in Stiglitz’s analysis, “strengthening collective bargaining … restructuring tax and spending policies to stimulate the economy through long-term investments, and implementing social policies that ensure opportunity for all.”

No wonder what DSK was trying to do was not exactly praised by great swathes of the Western financial elites. Only a week before his spectacular, arguably self-inflicted demise, he said at George Washington University, “the pendulum will swing from the market to the state” and urged “a new form of globalisation to prevent the ‘invisible hand’ of loosely regulated markets from becoming ‘an invisible fist’”.

The bankers win again

Most of France is convinced DSK was framed. That’s a case for the French to solve reclined on their collective couch. Whatever happened in that suite at the Sofitel near Times Square, the fact is the post-DSK leader of the IMF ($521.000 annual salary plus immeasurable benefits) won’t be near that revolutionary.

German chancellor Angela Merkel, neo-Napoleonic French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Italian Prime Minister Silvio “bunga bunga” Berlusconi, president of the European Commission (EC) Jose Manuel Barroso – they all scrambled to stress the next IMF head should be European. Many justified it by shamelessly invoking the current skewed rules – after all the EU is the IMF’s largest “contributor”.

It’s essential to note that all these apologists range from conservative to ultra-conservative. They are not exactly worried about the developing world; the priority is those packages for suffering European economies such as Greece and Portugal; ie, how to reimburse large European banks to the detriment of local working people.

No matter that China insisted the new leader should come from the developing world. No matter there are competent candidates aplenty, from Turkish Kemal Dervis to South African Trevor Manuel, from Mexican Agustin Carsten to Indian Montek Singh Ahluwalia.

So in the end it may well be Christine Lagarde, 55, once again from France (they led the IMF for 26 of the past 33 years). Another splendid metaphor; a European trying to put the brakes on the vertiginous decline of Europe after Greece threatened to leave the embattled euro and had to be contained, by force, by the powerful European banks who lent it those euros in the first place.

Well, at least this time it would be a woman; a former synchronised swimming champion with a penchant for chic Chanel business suits; former head of the Chicago law firm Baker Mackenzie; former Best Finance Minister in Europe in 2009, according to the Financial Times; and most of all, someone Washington and Wall Street trust won’t come up with “exotic” wealth redistribution ideas.

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times. His latest book is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

Eurasia Review Newsletter

The recent deaths of two terrorists – one famous, one not so much – provides an illuminating examination of how America continues to conduct its controversial war on terror. Making headlines across the United States and called a defining moment in Barack Obama’s presidency, the dramatic raid into Pakistan to kill Osama Bin Laden is one side of the equation. The quiet passing of Orlando Bosch in Miami that elicited scant attention outside the confines of the South Florida community, is the other.

While it would be hard to find an American who hasn’t heard of Bin Laden, the converse is true of Bosch, unless you happen to live in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood. This despite Bosch’s much more protracted career of violence, stretching back to the early 1960s. His terrorism, however, was directed at the Cuban people who have, for the most part, supported the regime that came to power following the Revolution in 1959 and that has been designated an official enemy of the United States. Bosch’s actions were rarely, if ever, recognized as terrorism in the mainstream media, which generally kept silent when it came to describing the consequences of his use of violent methods to oppose the Castro regime. Orlando Bosch

Orlando Bosch

Born in 1926 in a small town East of Havana, Bosch is most infamously linked as one of the masterminds of the bombing of Cubana Airlines Flight 455 on October 6, 1976, killing all 73 on board. It remains the second worst act of air terrorism in the Americas. The first is Bin Laden’s orchestrated destruction on September 11.

A pediatrician by profession, Bosch initially supported the Revolution but quickly turned violently against it. Implicated in a series of bombings, including a number against Cuban-Americans expressing sympathy with the Castro regime, Bosch was arrested in 1968 for firing a bazooka in the Miami harbor at a Polish vessel that was heading for Havana. Given a 10 year sentence for that act, he fled the United States while still on parole.

In his 2010 autobiography, Los Años que he Vivido (The Years I have Lived), Bosch acknowledged his violent past came from a conviction to oust the Castro regime. “The most crucial phase of my life came when I realized that violence was the only method of struggle available to us, the Cubans.’’ In the book he denied responsibility for the Cubana Airlines explosion. The book also failed to mention any of the victims of the incident, like Jorge De La Nuez Jr., who lost his father when he was five years old, or Haymel Espinosa, daughter of co-pilot Miguel.

The Cubana bombing resulted in Bosch’s incarceration in Venezuela for 11 years, until he was released on a technicality. Upon his illegal return to the United States in 1988, he was immediately detained and declared by the FBI to be the Western Hemisphere’s “most dangerous terrorist.” While plans were being made for a deportation order to be written, Bosch instead received a pardon from President George Bush Senior. The pardon was arranged through the insistence of son and future Florida governor Jeb Bush, who at the time was the campaign manager for Miami Congressman (R) Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. The Florida politician has been well known for her viral hatred of Fidel Castro and once publicly called for his assassination. She is now Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

When Bosch died after a long and painful illness, Ros-Lehtinen told the Associated Press that Bosch “Was a freedom fighter for Cuba and passed away without seeing his beloved homeland free of the Castro dictatorship.” Years before she had called him a hero and a patriot.

The death of these two terrorists less than a week apart did elicit something in common — anger. America’s incursion into the sovereign country of Pakistan with no prior warning in the course of conducting a military raid, as well as carrying out what some have called an extra-judicial execution, created a sense of outrage among large portions in the Muslim nation. Demands for the resignation of top Pakistani government and military officials have been heard loudly in the aftermath. American justification that informing the Pakistan government would have compromised the mission is being widely rejected, along with calls for breaking off ties with Washington.

Pakistan’s support for America’s war on terror is also being questioned. Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani heatedly denounced the incursion as a “violation of sovereignty” and warned that Pakistan would retaliate against future unilateral strikes with “full force.”

Cuba’s response to Bosch’s death was relatively muted, with little official comment other than re-iterating opposition to American duplicity, allowing one genre of terrorists to live comfortably in their own backyard while another was killed in what has been described as a violation of international laws.

Throughout the time following the Bush administration, which allowed the conferring of legal residency status on Bosch in 1992, the Cuban
government consistently took issue with how Bosch was portrayed by the hard-right exile community in Miami. Often invited to civic
ceremonies, Bosch was given a day in his honor by the Miami city commission in 1982 while in Venezuelan jail. In 2002 he was photographed in the front row at a speech delivered by President George W Bush, and this past October Bosch was awarded a plaque at an event at the University of Miami to mark 50 years of armed struggle against Cuba.

The Castro regime additionally points to the stark differences in how they have tried to deal with their terrorist problem. Unlike the violence of the American option, the Cuban side has long sent agents to infiltrate anti-Revolutionary organizations in Florida suspected of conducting much of the terrorism. In the mid 1990s, after inviting and demonstrating various material pertaining to anti-Castro Cuban exile groups operating in the United States and elsewhere, the Americans thanked their Cuban hosts, then promptly went back and publicly uncovered the operation, arresting five members who are now serving long jail terms for being unregistered agents and conspiracy to commit espionage. The Cuban Five have languished in American jail for more than a dozen years, and their release remains a matter of the utmost priority for the Castro government.

It would be impossible for the Cubans to follow the American model, as one could imagine the response to a highly trained band of commandos
tracking down and killing Orlando Bosch on US soil. No doubt Americans would again take to the streets, as they did following the announcement of Bin Laden’s demise, this time not out in celebration but in demand for retribution for what would most likely be perceived as an unprovoked attack. Media and politicians would be outraged at this illegal incursion into American territory, and the history of Bosch’s multiple flood of terrorist activities would assuredly be ignored or discounted.

There is one more piece to the puzzle. Yet another Cuban born anti-revolutionary is considered to be an even more dangerous terrorist than Bosch. In fact, he’s been called “the Bin Laden of the Americas” by Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro. Luis Posada Carriles also lives unfettered in Miami, even though his deeds are well known to American officials, yet he receives the same level of immunity from the current Democratic administrators as Bosch enjoyed.

Posada is the other acknowledged architect of the Cubana Airlines bombing. At the time he was connected with Bosch through a group of anti-Castro organizations known as the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU). Their involvement was described in a report issued by acting Associate Attorney General Joe Whitely, who detailed, “Information reflecting that the Cuban airline bombing was a CORU operation under the direction of Bosch.” A declassified CIA document dated October 12, 1976, quotes Posada as saying at a CORU meeting a month before the bombing, “We are going to hit a Cuban airliner… Orlando has the details.”

Besides the Cubana incident, Posada has been implicated in a series of other terrorist acts. He admitted to his role in coordinating a string of bombs that went off in Havana hotels and other tourist facilities catering to European visitors during 1997, outlining in detail how the campaign took place in a set of interviews he gave to the New York Times. Italian tourist Fabio Del Celmo was killed when one of the bombs exploded in the lobby of the Hotel Copacabana. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time, Posada commented years later.

Posada was arrested in 2000 in Panama for planning to blow up an auditorium full of students listening to a speech by Fidel Castro. Sentenced to eight years, he was scandalously paroled after four by then Panamanian President Mireya Monosco, who soon after her term ended moved to Miami, possibly considerably enriched by the passage of time.

Five years later Posada showed up in Miami, and following a series of public appearances the US government finally responded – charging him
for minor immigration fraud and perjury based on his alleged illegal entry into the United States. He was not, and never has been, indicted
for terrorist activities. And even those minor charges no longer bother Posada as he was acquitted on all counts after a three-month-trial in El Paso that ended in March.

Jose Pertierra covered the trial representing the Venezuelan government that continues to ask for Posada’s extradition in connection with the Cubana airlines bombing. The verdict came as no surprise to the Washington based lawyer.

“The United States has never done anything against its own terrorists. It’s not just Orlando Bosch or Posada Carriles. There are dozens of others who have committed acts of terrorism against Cuba, but nothing will be done. The government knows where they live, they know who they are. But they will never be brought to justice. The world understands America has no credibility in its war on terror when they let these terrorists live freely and openly in Miami.”

More than 700 acts of terrorism have been claimed by the Cuban government against its citizens, resulting in the deaths of 3,500. Incidents include biological and psychological terrorism, an assault against a remote village, the murder of more than a dozen teachers during the Literacy Campaign, explosions at department stores and even attacks on theatres and day care centers. Most of these acts have originated from anti-revolutionary organizations in Florida,  the Cuba side maintains.

Commenting on the death of the two terrorists, Pertierra said, “The US knew to kill Bin Laden instead of sending him to El Paso on some minor
immigration charges. There has always been a double standard when it comes to terrorists. Bosch was a bad guy, but even worse are the people who protected him.”

Posada, who had to drive back to Miami from El Paso because he’s on a no-fly list, is one of the last remaining of the exiles who have justified violence against the Cuban Revolution. With Bosch’s passing, there were a number of American officials who breathed a sigh of relief, “Knowing that all his secrets went with him. And they hope for the same thing to happen to Posada, for him to just go away. They have proven to be a problem and an embarrassment to the government,” Pertierra said.

Until that happens, the hypocrisy of American policy regarding its war on terrorism will continue to be alive, but growing older, in Miami.

Keith Bolender is the author of Voices From the Other Side: An Oral History of Terrorism Against Cuba. (Pluto Press, 2010)

This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Fellow Keith Bolender

(Author & journalist)

With the death of Osama bin Laden, there is a perfect opportunity for the Obama administration to bring to an end the decade-long “War on Terror” by withdrawing from Afghanistan and closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The justification for both the invasion of Afghanistan (in October 2001) and the detention of prisoners in Guantánamo (which opened in January 2002) is the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed by Congress on September 14, 2001, just three days after the 9/11 attacks.

Under the AUMF, the President is “authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”

In 2004, in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court confirmed that the AUMF also authorizes the detention of those held as a result of the President’s activities, although, as law professor Curtis Bradley explained last week on the Lawfare blog, “Justice O’Connor’s plurality opinion in Hamdi made clear that the Court was deciding only the authority to detain in connection with traditional combat operations in the Afghanistan theater.” Bradley also noted, “As for the proper length of detention, O’Connor largely avoided the question, although she did refer to the traditional ability under the international laws of war to detain individuals until the ‘cessation of active hostilities.’”

With bin Laden’s death, the route should now be open for the President to assert that he has used “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001,” and to get out of the unwinnable morass that is the ongoing occupation of Afghanistan.

Moreover, with a withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, the justification for holding men at Guantánamo would also vanish, and the government would have the opportunity to return to the detention policies that served everyone perfectly well before the 9/11 attacks: prosecuting those involved with alleged terrorist activities in federal court, and holding soldiers as prisoners of war, protected by the Geneva Conventions, and freeing them at the end of hostilities.

That, however, is too sensible a suggestion for those who, rather than accepting bin Laden’s death as the logical end of a decade of “war” that has been both ruinously expensive and morally and legally disastrous, and that has also led to a chronic loss of life, want exactly the opposite: a springboard for an even bigger “War on Terror,” and a cynical excuse to keep Guantánamo open forever.

On the first point, with reference to the AUMF, a version of the 2012 defense bill, which is currently before the House Armed Services Committee, and which is known as the “Chairman’s mark,” because of the role played in its development by the committee’s chairman, Rep. Buck McKeon, proposes updating the AUMF rather than scrapping it, to “reflect,” as Spencer Ackerman explained in an article for Wired, “that the al-Qaeda of the present day is way different than the organization that attacked the US on 9/11.” Ackerman added, “While the original Authorization tethered the war to those directly or indirectly responsible for 9/11, the new language authorizes ‘an armed conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces,’ as ‘those entities continue to pose a threat to the United States and its citizens.’”

Rep. McKeon has been arguing since last fall that Congress needs to approve, or disapprove of America’s current state of war,  but such a revision to the AUMF — potentially expanding the “War on Terror,” with the explicit approval of Congress, into Pakistan, Yemen, or anywhere the President perceives a threat and wishes to act — is “a big expansion of executive authority,” in Spencer Ackerman’s words, and, according to Karen Greenberg, the executive director of the Center for Law and Security at New York University, is close to “terrorism creep,” It is also, In Greenberg’s opinion, hasty. Before thinking about expanding the “War on Terror,” she explains, the US “need[s] to absorb first what the death of bin Laden means. We need to stop and think and re-think. The idea that we’re going to keep reacting and not have a thoughtful time out is just unacceptable.”

From my point of view, the proposal for the AUMF, as well as opening up new “battlefields” without necessary scrutiny, also breathes new life into a problem that has plagued the “War on Terror” from the beginning, and that should now be coming to an end, rather than being indefinitely sustained: the confusion of the Taliban, fighting a military conflict in Afghanistan (and in the Pashtun parts of Pakistan) with al-Qaeda, a terrorist organization.

This failure to distinguish between the Taliban and al-Qaeda has bedevilled those held at Guantánamo, who were labeled as “enemy combatants” and easily dressed up as terrorists, as the recent release by WikiLeaks of classified military documents relating to the prisoners has shown, when, in fact, the prison has never held more than a few dozen prisoners genuinely accused of involvement with terrorism. As a result, the prison has largely been responsible for demonizing soldiers instead of terror suspects, and this remains as true today, with 172 men still held, as it was when Guantánamo opened.

Despite the new proposal for the AUMF, it is by no means certain that the Obama administration wants a new Authorization. In the wake of bin Laden’s death, John Brennan, the President’s advisor on homeland security and counterterrorism, suggested that bin Laden’s death and the pro-democracy revolts in the Middle East were the beginning of the end for al-Qaeda, and Jeh Johnson, the Pentagon’s top lawyer, is also resistant. In March, he told the House Armed Services Committee that the 2001 AUMF was “sufficient to address the existing threats I’ve seen.”

The administration’s main problem with the proposal for a new version of the AUMF may relate more to Guantánamo, whose closure remains an objective of the administration, as Attorney General Eric Holder explained in the wake of bin Laden’s death, than to military operations in general. The proposal for a new AUMF “would keep Guantánamo Bay open practically forever,” in Spencer Ackerman’s words, because it reintroduces military assessments regarding the threat level posed by the prisoners, prevents the resettlement of prisoners in the US (even if a review panel assesses that they are not a threat), makes it almost impossible to transfer prisoners to other countries, and prevents the administration from buying or adapting a facility to hold Guantánamo prisoners in the US — mostly replays of the abominable additions to this year’s defense spending bill, but with the “military assessments” as a bonus.

Moreover, Rep. McKeon and his supporters are not the only lawmakers intent on keeping Guantánamo open, even though the object of most of the interrogations over the last nine years — Osama bin Laden — is now dead. On May 11, six Senators — the Republicans Lindsey Graham, Kelly Ayotte, Scott Brown, Saxby Chambliss and Marco Rubio, plus Joe Lieberman — introduced the “Detaining Terrorists to Secure America Act,” based on a right-wing response to bin Laden’s death, which, in defiance of expert testimony by numerous interrogators over the last two weeks, relies on a false belief that detention in CIA “black sites,” the use of torture and the existence of Guantánamo all contributed to locating bin Laden.

This mistaken approach to intelligence gathering ignores the truth — that interrogators using lawful, non-coercive methods did not need torture, “black sites” or Guantánamo to secure the necessary information. In fact, Guantánamo, a prison in which randomly seized prisoners were subjected to years of coercion until they told lies about each other, is the opposite of the targeted, specific intelligence from a handful of significant prisoners that was needed to begin the long process of finding bin Laden.

Even so, in comments after the proposed legislation was announced, Sen. Chambliss, the ranking Republican member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, focused specifically on Guantánamo, with the purpose of keeping it open forever and using it for the detention and interrogation of new prisoners, claiming, “The events of last week underscore the importance of information we obtain for detainees, particularly those at Guantánamo Bay.” He added, “For months, we have been asking administration officials where we could hold detainees we may capture. This legislation provides an answer and gives us the chance to gather actionable intelligence to keep our country safe.”

Sen. Chambliss also drew on discredited claims, emanating from the Pentagon, in which it has been claimed, without evidence, that 1 in 4 of the 600 prisoners released from Guantánamo — an impossible total of 150 prisoners — have “returned to the battlefield,” or engaged in terrorist activities against the US. “[A]s recidivism rates are more than 25 percent,” Sen. Chambliss said, “we cannot afford to let more dangerous detainees return to the fight.”

Like the amendments to the 2012 defense bill in the House of Representatives, the “Detaining Terrorists to Secure America Act” would also prohibit the transfer of any prisoner to any facility on the US mainland, preventing the President from closing it, while, as the Senators hope, adding to its population.

With all this opposition, it is difficult to see how the “peace dividend” that should result from bin Laden’s death can be realized, but that, of course, is no reason for opponents of war, of arbitrary detention and torture, of pointless and ruinously expensive foreign policies and counter-terrorism policies to give up. On the contrary, it is time for us to speak up louder than ever.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, on tour in the UK throughout 2011, and available on DVD here — or here for the US), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As published exclusively on the website of the Future of Freedom Foundation.

(Published MHP Literary Agent – Advisor)

It is curious to note that when announcing the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, the CIA did not exhibit his body, like they did, unnecessarily, the body of another “hunting trophy” – Ernesto Che Guevara.

Bin Laden left this life and entered history. There is nothing new about this. History, which few recall, is full of bandits and terrorists whose names and deeds are hardly remembered. The most well known are King Herod; Torquemada, the grand Inquisitor; Queen Victoria, the greatest drug trafficker of all time who fostered the Opium War in China; Hitler; President Truman who dropped atomic bombs on the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Stalin.

The danger is that Osama might move from history to myth and from myth to martyr. His death should not deserve more than a notice on the inside pages of the newspapers. However as the USA is a necrophilic country which feeds on the victims of its wars, Obama transforms Osama into an icon of evil, inciting the imagination of all those who, for some reason, hate US imperialism.

Saddam Hussein, a puppet of the White House manipulated against the Iranian Islamic revolution, proved that sorcery backfires against the sorcerer.

After 1979, the CIA armed Osama Bin Laden using him against the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan. The CIA taught him how to produce explosives and carry out terrorist attacks, to move his fortune through phantom businesses and offshore accounts, operate secret codes and infiltrate agents and controls.

“Bin Laden is the product of the American services” affirmed Swiss author Richard Labévière. In 1990 after the fall of the Berlin Wall Bin Laden began to aim his terrorist arsenal at the heart of Uncle Sam.

Terrorism is abominable, even when practised by the left, for all terrorism only benefits one side: the extreme right. In life, you reap what you sow. This is true both in the personal and social realm. If the USA are attacked so violently today it is because, in some way, they used their power to humiliate peoples and ethnic groups. They have abused of their power for decades, as in the case of the occupation of Puerto Rico, in the naval base at Guantanamo in the heart of Cuba, in the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan and now Libya, in the participation in Central Europe’s wars and in their omission in Arab and African conflicts and dictatorships.

It is time for the USA, as mediators, to induce Arabs and Israelis to reach a peace agreement. All this has been postponed for the sake of Uncle Sam’s hegemony on the planet. All of a sudden hatred erupted in a brutal way, showing that the enemy can also act unethically with the only difference being that it does not dispose of international forums to legitimise its criminal actions, as is the case of the UN’s connivance with the genocides practised by the White House.

Those who know the history of Latin America know very well that during the last 100 years the US interfered directly in the sovereignty of our countries, spreading terror. Maurice Bishop was assassinated by the green berets in Grenada, the Sandinistas fell due to Reagan’s unleashed terrorism, the Cubans continue to be blockaded since 1961 without a right to normal relations with the rest of the countries in the world and one part of their territory, Guantanamo, is still invaded by the Pentagon.

In the 1960s and 70s dictatorships were installed in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, Guatemala and El Salvador sponsored by the CIA and under Henry Kissinger’s orders.

Violence attracts violence, Brazilian bishop Dom Helder Camara used to say. Terrorism leads nowhere, except to harden the right and suppress democracy, prompting the powerful to believe that the people are incapable of governing themselves.

Innocent victims cannot be sacrificed in order to satisfy the profits of imperial governments which judge themselves to own the world and plan to divide the planet like cutting slices in a delicious cake. The September 11 2001 attacks demonstrated that there is neither science nor technology capable of protecting peoples or nations. It is useless for the USA to spend trillions of dollars on sophisticated defence schemes. It would be better to apply that fortune towards world peace, which will come forth only when it is the daughter of justice.

The fall of the Berlin Wall ended the East-West conflict. What now needs to fall is the North-South wall of inequality. If we have no bread, neither the Father nor peace will be ours.[1]

*Frei Betto is a writer, author of “Conversa entre a fé e a ciência” (Conversation on faith and science) (Agir), written together with Marcelo Gleiser. www.freibetto.org twitter: @freibetto

It’s increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law. There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 80 commandos facing virtually no opposition – except, they claim, from his wife, who lunged towards them. In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress “suspects.” In April 2002, the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, informed the press that after the most intensive investigation in history, the FBI could say no more than that it “believed” that the plot was hatched in Afghanistan, though implemented in the UAE and Germany. What they only believed in April 2002, they obviously didn’t know 8 months earlier, when Washington dismissed tentative offers by the Taliban (how serious, we do not know, because they were instantly dismissed) to extradite bin Laden if they were presented with evidence – which, as we soon learned, Washington didn’t have. Thus Obama was simply lying when he said, in his White House statement, that “we quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda.”

Nothing serious has been provided since. There is much talk of bin Laden’s “confession,” but that is rather like my confession that I won the Boston Marathon. He boasted of what he regarded as a great achievement.

There is also much media discussion of Washington’s anger that Pakistan didn’t turn over bin Laden, though surely elements of the military and security forces were aware of his presence in Abbottabad. Less is said about Pakistani anger that the US invaded their territory to carry out a political assassination. Anti-American fervor is already very high in Pakistan, and these events are likely to exacerbate it. The decision to dump the body at sea is already, predictably, provoking both anger and skepticism in much of the Muslim world.

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s, and he is not a “suspect” but uncontroversially the “decider” who gave the orders to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region.

There’s more to say about [Cuban airline bomber Orlando] Bosch, who just died peacefully in Florida, including reference to the “Bush doctrine” that societies that harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves and should be treated accordingly. No one seemed to notice that Bush was calling for invasion and destruction of the US and murder of its criminal president.

Same with the name, Operation Geronimo. The imperial mentality is so profound, throughout western society, that no one can perceive that they are glorifying bin Laden by identifying him with courageous resistance against genocidal invaders. It’s like naming our murder weapons after victims of our crimes: Apache, Tomahawk … It’s as if the Luftwaffe were to call its fighter planes “Jew” and “Gypsy.”

There is much more to say, but even the most obvious and elementary facts should provide us with a good deal to think about.

p>By Robert Scheer

(Published RSN)

Bin Laden. AP / Al-Jazeera

He was our kind of guy until he wasn’t, an ally during the Cold War until he no longer served our purposes. The problem with Osama bin Laden was not that he was a fanatical holy warrior; we liked his kind just fine as long as the infidels he targeted were not us but Russians and the secular Afghans in power in Kabul whom the Soviets backed.

But when bin Laden turned against us, he morphed into a figure of evil incarnate, and now three decades after we first decided to use him and other imported Muslim zealots for our Cold War purposes, we feel cleansed by his death of any responsibility for his carnage. We may make mistakes but we are never in the wrong. USA! USA!

Kind of like when the CIA assigned the Mafia to assassinate Fidel Castro and the Mafiosi turned out to have their own agenda, or when Pentagon experts anointed the Catholic nutcase Ngo Dinh Diem as the George Washington of predominately Buddhist South Vietnam before they felt the need to execute him. A similar fate was suffered by Saddam Hussein, whose infamous Baghdad handshake with Donald Rumsfeld stamped him as our agent in the war to defeat the ayatollahs of Iran.

Awkward, I know, to point out that bin Laden was another of those monsters of our creation, one of those Muslim “freedom fighters” that President Ronald Reagan celebrated for having responded to the CIA’s call to kill the Soviets in Afghanistan. That holy crusade against infidels was financed by Saudi Arabia and armed with U.S. weapons to oppose a secular Afghan government with Soviet backing but before Soviet troops had crossed the border. In short, it was an ill-fated and unjustifiable intervention by the U.S. into another nation’s internal affairs.

Don’t trust me on this one. Just read the 1996 memoir by former Carter administration security official and current Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a book touted by its publisher as exposing “Carter’s never-before-revealed covert support to Afghan mujahedeen—six months before the Soviets invaded.” This dismissal of the claimed Cold War excuse for the backing of the mujahedeen was acknowledged by President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who, when asked by the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur if he regretted “having given arms and advice to future terrorists,” answered that he did not: “What is most important to the history of the world? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?”

That was said three years before some of those “stirred-up Muslims” like bin Laden and the alleged 9/11 plot mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed—whom bin Laden financed, and whom he first met in Afghanistan when both were U.S.-backed fighters—launched their deadly attacks on the United States. The cost of the American response to that assault has spiraled upward for a decade. A defense budget that the first President Bush had attempted to cut drastically because the Cold War was over was pushed to its highest peacetime level by the second President Bush and now with three wars under way equals the military expenditures of all of the world’s other nations combined.

But while Libya and Iraq have oil to exploit, what will be the argument for continuing the interminable war in Afghanistan now that bin Laden is gone? White House national security experts had already conceded that there were fewer than a hundred scattered al-Qaida operatives in Afghanistan, and that these were incapable of mounting anti-U.S. attacks. Clearly, what remains of al-Qaida is no longer based in Afghanistan, as the location of bin Laden’s hiding place, in a military hub in Pakistan, demonstrated. Nor is there any indication that the Taliban we are fighting in Afghanistan are anything but homegrown fighters with motives and leadership far removed from the designs of the late bin Laden.

It is time to concede that the mess that is Afghanistan is a result of our cynical uses of those people and their land for purposes that have nothing to do with their needs or aspirations. Even if bin Laden had been killed in some forlorn cave in Afghanistan, it would not have made the case that he was using that country as a base. But the fact that he was in an area amply populated by the very Pakistani military and intelligence forces that we have armed, and that should have been able to easily nab him, gives the lie to the claim that Afghanistan is vital territory to be secured in what two administrations have now chosen to define as the war on terrorism.

A few hours after accomplishing that mission in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, home to the most prestigious military academy of that country as well as important combat units, the White House offered the world’s public opinion a carefully drafted version about the death of Osama Bin Laden, the chief of Al Qaeda.

Of course, the world and the international media focused their attention on the issue, thus pushing all other public news into the background.

The US TV networks broadcast the President’s carefully drafted speech and showed images of the public’s reaction.

It was obvious that the world realized how sensitive the matter was. Pakistan is a country of 171 841 000 inhabitants –where the US and NATO have been carrying out a devastating war for ten years now- that has nuclear weapons and is a traditional ally of the United States.

There is no doubt that this Muslim country can not agree with the bloody war that the United States and its allies are waging against Afghanistan, another Muslim country with which it shares the troublesome and mountainous border traced by the British colonial empire. Common tribes live on both sides of the demarcation line.

The American press itself understood that the President was concealing almost the entire information.

The western news agencies –ANSA, AFP, AP, REUTERS and EFE- the press and important websites have published interesting reports about the incident.

The New York Times asserts that facts differed greatly from the official version announced on Tuesday by the White House and top intelligence officials, according to which Bin Laden’s death –who they finally recognized was unarmed, although they said he ‘resisted’- had occurred in the middle of an intense gun battle.

But, according to the New York daily, “the raid, though chaotic and bloody, was extremely one-sided, with a force of more than 20 Navy SEAL members quickly dispatching the handful of men protecting Bin Laden.”

The New York Times states that “the only shots fired by those in the compound came at the beginning of the operation, exactly when Bin Laden’s trusted courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, opened fire from behind the door of the guesthouse adjacent to the house where Bin Laden was hiding.”

“After the SEAL members shot and killed Mr. Kuwaiti and a woman in the guesthouse, the Americans were never fired upon again”, the newspaper states based on reports from said sources, whose identity was not revealed….

On Tuesday, the White House spokesman, Jay Carney, in an account of events, had asserted that in the early hours of Monday morning, the US commando “were engaged in a firefight throughout the operation.”

Leon E. Panetta, the director of the C.I.A., said, “there were some firefights that were going on” as these US elite military were clearing the upper floors of the residential compound where Bin Laden was hiding.

However, the newspaper asserts that, although Bin Laden had not raised any weapon when he was gunned down, the commandos that found him in one of the rooms “saw Osama bin Laden with an AK-47 and a Makarov pistol in arm’s reach.”

Today, May 6, news continue to pour in.

From Washington, one of the agencies reports that a sole gunman had shot against the US forces. It continues to report that, on Sunday evening, “several helicopters ferry 79 commandos towards Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, north of Islamabad, flying low to avoid detection by radar, as Pakistan has not been told of the raid in advance.

“Two helicopters deliver more than 20 US Navy SEALs to the residence, which has four-to-six meter walls covered with barbed wire. One of the choppers, a MH-60 Blackhawk apparently modified to evade radar, is out of commission due to “mechanical failure,” according to initial reports from US officials.

“One group of commandos moves toward a smaller guest house next to the compound’s main building. Bin Laden’s trusted courier opens fire and is shot and killed, along with his wife.

The courier is the only man at the compound who fires on the Americans, contrary to earlier accounts from the White House that described a firefight throughout the nearly 40-minute operation.

“…Another US special forces team enters the main three-story house.”

“… They encounter the courier’s brother…who was shot and killed”, according to a US official who offered no further details. According to NBC news, the man “has one hand behind his back” when the team entered the room, “causing the SEALs to suspect he may have a gun, which turns out not to be the case.

“The commandos move up the stairs and in one of the rooms meet up with Bin Laden’s adult son, Khalid, who is also killed…”

“On the top floor, they find Bin Laden and his wife in the bedroom. She reportedly tries to move between her husband and the commandos, and is shot in the leg. Bin Laden, who gives no signal of surrender, is shot in the head, and some media say he is also struck in the chest. Earlier versions of the raid said Bin Laden “resisted” and that he had used his wife as a human shield, but the White House later acknowledges those details are incorrect.

“President Barack Obama, following events from the White House, is told the SEALs have tentatively identified Bin Laden. A Time magazine report, based on an interview with CIA Director Leon Panetta, suggests Bin Laden was killed less than 25 minutes into the raid.

-“In Bin Laden’s room, the US team finds an AK-47 assault rifle and a 9 mm Russian pistol. Other weapons are discovered in the compound, but no further details are given.

“The special forces find cash and telephone numbers sown into Bin Laden’s clothing…”

“The Navy SEALs hauled away everything that could offer a lead to further information: note pads, the five computers, 10 hard drives and more than 100 storage devices (CDs, DVDs, USB).

“…The U.S. team destroys the downed helicopter after moving the women and children in the compound to a safe area.

“…Thirty eight minutes after the start of the raid, U.S. helicopters fly away, carrying away the corpse of Bin Laden.”

The AP published information of political and also human interest:

“One of three wives living with Osama Bin Laden told Pakistani interrogators she had been staying in the Al-Qaeda chief’s hideout for five years, and could be a key source of information about how he avoided capture for so long, a Pakistani intelligence official said Friday.”

“Bin Laden’s wife, identified as Yemeni-born Amal Ahmed Abdullfattah, said she never left the upper floors of the house the entire time she was there.

“She and Bin Laden’s other two wives are being interrogated in Pakistan after they were taken into custody following Monday’s American raid on Bin Laden’s compound in the town of Abbottabad. Pakistani authorities are also holding eight or nine children who were found there after the U.S. commandos left.

“Given shifting and incomplete accounts from U.S. officials about what happened during the raid, testimony from Bin Laden’s wives may be significant in unveiling details about the operation.

“Their accounts could also help show how Bin Laden spent his time and managed to stay hidden, living in a large house close to a military academy in a garrison town, a two-and-a-half hours’ drive from the capital, Islamabad.

“The Pakistani official said CIA officers had not been given access to the women in custody.”

“The proximity of Bin Laden’s hideout to the military garrison and the Pakistani capital has also raised suspicions in Washington that Bin Laden may have been protected by Pakistani security forces while on the run.”

The EFE news agency inquired what Pakistan citizens thought about that.

According to that agency, 66 per cent of Pakistanis do not believe that the US Special Forces killed Osama Bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda; they think they killed another person, according to a joint poll ran by the British demoscopic institute, YouGov, and Polis, from Cambridge University.

The poll was said to have been carried out among Internet users, who usually have a higher educational level, in three big cities:  Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore. The poll excluded rural demographic groups, which makes results to be all the more surprising, according to researchers.

Reportedly, 75 per cent of those polled said they also disapproved the violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty by the United States during the operation to capture and kill Bin Laden.

It was also reported that less than three fourths of those polled do not believe Bin Laden approved the 9/11 attacks against the United States, which justified the US invasion in Afghanistan and the war against Islamic terrorism.

According to the poll, 74 per cent think that Washington’s government does not have any respect for Islam and considers itself at war with the Islamic world; 70 per cent disapproves the Pakistani policy of accepting US economic aid.

Eighty six per cent are said to oppose also to the fact that the Pakistani government may in the future –and criticized the possibility that they may have done in the past- authorize attacks using drones against military groups.

Sixty one per cent of the Pakistanis who were interrogated said they sympathized with the Taliban or believed they could represent respectable viewpoints, against only 21 per cent who are radically opposed to them.

Reuters equally published some interesting reports:

“One of Osama bin Laden’s wives told Pakistani interrogators that the Al Qaeda leader and his family had been living for five years in the compound where he was killed by U.S. forces this week, a security official said on Friday.

“The official, who identified the woman as Amal Ahmed Abdulfattah, the youngest of Bin Laden’s three wives, told Reuters she was wounded in the raid.

“The security official said Abdulfattah told investigators: ‘We have been living there for the past five years’.”

“Pakistani security forces took between 15 and 16 people into custody from the compound after U.S. forces removed Bin Laden’s body, said the security official. Those detained included Bin Laden’s three wives and several children.”

According to a report published by ANSA, a US drone killed today no less than 15 persons in Waziristan, north of Pakistan.  Others were seriously injured. But, who would care about those daily killings in that country?

However, I ask myself one question: Why is there so much coincidence between the assassination that was carried out at Abbottabad and the attempt to simultaneously assassinate Gaddafi?

One of Gaddafi’s youngest sons, who was not involved with political issues, Sarif al Arab, was accompanied by his little son and two little cousins at the house where he lived; Gaddafi and his wife had visited him shortly before the attacks launched by NATO bombers. The house was destroyed; Sarif al Arab and the three kids were killed. Gaddafi and his wife had left shortly before the attack. That was an unprecedented event. But the world has hardly known about that.

Was it a mere chance that such an event coincided with the attack against Osama Bin Laden’s refuge, which was perfectly known by the US government, which kept a close watch on it?

News released today by Vatican City reported as follows:

“May 6 (ANSA) – Giovanni Innocenzo Martinelli, Apostolic Vicar of Tripoli, said today to the Vatican’s agency FIDES: ‘I certainly do not want to interfere with the political activity of anyone, but I have the duty to declare that the bombings on Libya are immoral’.

“I am surprised that statements were made on the fact that I should deal only with spiritual matters and that the bombings have been authorized by the UN. The UN, NATO or the European Union doesn’t have the moral authority to decide to bomb Libya, he said.”

“Let mi stress that bombing is not dictated my moral or social conscience of the West or humanity in general. Bombing is always an immoral act.”

Another news published by ANSA on May 6 reports that the governments of China and Russia expressed their deep concern about the war in Libya and said they will work together to call for a cease fire.

According to the Chinese Foreign Minister Jechi Yang, they strongly believed that the most important goal was to achieve an immediate cease fire.

Truly worrying events are happening.

Fidel Castro Ruz

May 6, 2011

8:17 p.m.