Month: September 2011

I’ve written extensively about US aid to tyrannies in the Middle East as a method to keep governments in place that will obey US demands and that will prevent the populations from interfering with policymaking. And a government ain’t a government without that essential ingredient: weapons.

This CRS report details how the US ranks first in the world in weapons welfare to dependent dictatorships. It’s an interesting read. It also explains how the world’s top weapons suppliers are responding to the economic downturn by expanding their base of buyers to additional developing nations they otherwise ignored in order to keep the military industrial complex fat and satisfied in the face of international pressure to cut budgets. But I found this list an interesting illustration of the specifics of US weapons welfare; we often hear about it, but without much detail.

Among the larger valued arms transfer agreements the United States concluded in 2010 with developing nations were: with Israel for 19 F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft for $2.75 billion; with Taiwan for 60 UH-60M Blackhawk helicopters for $2.4 billion; with Saudi Arabia for M1A2 and M1AS tank support and spare parts for $384 million; with Saudi Arabia for maintenance, support, and spare parts for F-15 fighter aircraft for $250 million; with Egypt for one Fast Patrol Craft for $227 million, and for Harpoon Block II anti-ship missiles for $104 million; with Pakistan for mid-life upgrades and support for F-16 fighter aircraft for $220 million; with India for CBU-105 sensor fused bombs, and associated items, for $384 million; with Jordan for a M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket system for $182 million, and for Javelin anti-tank missiles for $124 million. Other 2010 U.S. contracts include several score of missile, ordnance, and weapons systems support cases worth tens of millions of dollars each with U.S. customers in every region of the developing world.

And the most popular quantities and types of arms the US sold to Near East nations:

We’ve had the recent benefit of other detailed explanations of US weapons welfare to Mid-East dictatorships, showing blatantly the effects of these arms transfers. As Yemeni protesters were facing repression from the Saleh government, a cable from 2005 with a detailed list of the weaponry the US government gave to Yemen surfaced. Included were shotguns, machine guns, ammunition, grenade launchers, body armor, communications equipment, warships, transport trucks, etc. And direct military-to-miltary training as well. Then, as Bahraini protesters were likewise suffering under a brutal dictatorship intent on suppressing any democratic progress, the Obama administration finalized their latest arms transfer to that dictatorship. Similar murder machinery were included, like bunker buster missiles, armored vehicles, rocket launchers, and more.

So, there are some details of overweening US policy in the Middle East. In the context of the Arab Spring, of course, the US will do anything it can to prevent authentic freedom and progress in the region. This, in part, is how.

Charlie Savage at the New York Times has a piece up from yesterday citing declassified documents revealing that the Federal Bureau of Investigation often keeps suspects on their terrorist watch list even if they have been found not guilty in a court of law.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is permitted to include people on the government’s terrorist watch list even if they have been acquitted of terrorism-related offenses or the charges are dropped, according to newly released documents.

…The database now has about 420,000 names, including about 8,000 Americans, according to the statistics released in connection with the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. About 16,000 people, including about 500 Americans, are barred from flying.

…The 91 pages of newly disclosed files include a December 2010 guidance memorandum to F.B.I. field offices showing that even a not-guilty verdict may not always be enough to get someone off the list, if agents maintain they still have “reasonable suspicion” that the person might have ties to terrorism.

Normally, it is explained, a not guilty verdict will result in getting off the terrorist watch list, but that in “exceptions” the FBI keeps a separate special file for people who, regardless of what the courts say, stay on the list anyways. These people, the FBI decides, “pose a national security risk even though they are not the subject of any active investigation.”

Reading this piece from AlterNet, the picture seems even starker. It explains the national security surveillance state,

pumps out some 50,000 intelligence reports every day into the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database (which contains over a million names, including aliases). This error-ridden “master list” is not to be confused with the National Counterterrorism Center’s Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE)system, which held 640,000 identities in March 2011. There arereported to be about a dozen terrorism watch lists or databases, and a single tip from a credible source is all it takes to get into one or more of them, while there is no reliable way to get out.

How can this be? If individuals pose a national security risk, there should be sufficient evidence to prosecute them for it, no? This is pretty perplexing, until we use the longstanding definition that the government has used for “national security risk” (n. 1. one who is disliked and who may hold dissenting views. 2. one who is a threat to power.). That was certainly the definition used to claim that Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are a national security risk. Not a single case has been pointed to in which any individual either in government or outside of it has been put in danger as a result of their leaked material. Instead, they fall under “national security risk because Julian Assange and WikiLeaks provided a conduit through which the truth was able to get out. The truth is a check on government power and abuse, thus it’s a threat.

The presumption of innocence is not only an antiquated principle merely serving as a nuisance to federal government henchmen, but it is so prevalent and matter-of-fact that they feel fine about releasing the details of this practice through a FOIA request. Plainly, the government doesn’t care if you’re innocent. They have other reasons for monitoring you or keeping you on watch lists.

Frequent readers will be well aware that Antiwar.com has been subject to such unjustified scrutiny, at least in a preliminary way (we’re still digging into it). The FBI mentioned us in a threat assessment memo which was issued to FBI counter-terrorism offices throughout the country for the high crime of holding dissenting views, and more specifically in one case, publishing a publicly available government document. Coincidentally, a terrorist watch list.

I’ve written previously about government surveillance and even infiltration of peaceful, nonviolent activists. In the midst of all this, the FBI is pressing to loosen what little constraints are left on them in terms of surveillance.

Which brings us back to that AlterNet piece:

In his 2010 report, “A Review of the FBI’s Investigation of Certain Domestic Advocacy Groups,” Glenn Fine, the (now retired – and not replaced) inspector general of the Justice Department, concludes that the FBI had “little or no basis” for investigating many advocacy groups and individuals, and that it made false and misleading statements to the public and Congress to justify its surveillance of an antiwar rally organized by a peace and social justice organization, the Thomas Merton Center of Pennsylvania. Not only did it routinely classify actions involving nonviolent civil disobedience as “Acts of Terrorism matters,” it also, “relied upon potential crimes that may not commonly be considered ‘terrorism’ (such as trespassing or vandalism)” to get people placed on watch lists and their travels and interactions tracked.

Last year, the FBI “raided the homes and seized computers, cell phones and files belonging to peace and justice activists in Illinois, Minnesota and Michigan. Twenty-three of them have been issued with grand jury subpoenas, some for allegedly giving ‘material support‘ to a foreign terrorist organization by meeting with groups in Colombia and Palestine.” In the secret memos the FBI wrote up on Antiwar.com, they were suspicious that we might be funded by foreign entities. Turn the dial just slightly and it’s not so hard to see us being victim to what those activists in Illinois, Minnesota, and Michigan endured. If you throw out the real definition of “national security risk” and use the government’s Orwellian definition, virtually anybody can be victimized in this way. Even if you’re found not guilty.

As former FBI agent and Antiwar.com contributor Coleen Rowley has said “We’re conflating proper dissent and terrorism.”

As in many other places around the globe, the United States has a bad track record of propping up leaders and groups in Somalia, only to watch them crumble months or years later. Siad Barre, the ruthless military dictator of Somalia, was kept in power by the US until the Somali people rebelled in 1991. In 2006, the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) established a pseudo-government that has been credited with bringing order to Mogadishu that hadn’t been seen in years.

Beyond establishing a level of peace and security unknown to the region for more than fifteen years and winning wide support from the Somali public, the UIC had a “severe dampening effect on the activities of maritime piracy in the waters off the Somali coast,” according to a UN Monitoring Group report.

In addition to relative peace and quiet on land, the UIC was successful in reining in pirates that used Somalia as a launch pad. Piracy, especially off of the coast of Somalia, has been of huge concern to American officials because of the volume of oil passing through these waters. It is puzzling, then, that the goal of the US was to abolish the UIC that so successfully policed Somali pirates.

The Official reason for doing away with the UIC was to prevent the establishment of a terrorist safe haven for al Qaeda, al Shabaab and other such groups. There was never, however, any immediate threat of terrorism against the United States by groups in Somalia. Therein lies the source of our beloved officials cognitive dissonance: Somali piracy—a big threat to the global economic order estimated at $12 billion a year—was left nearly unchecked after the US did away with the UIC in order to annihilate a terrorist threat that hardly existed. Such behavior is indicative of paranoia rather than sensible policy making.

The UIC was ousted by American backed warlords and neighboring Ethiopia—a country fiercely hated by most Somalis. While the objective of the American proxy war was bringing stability to the East African country, it hardly did that. Jeremy Scahill explains:

Rather than working with the Somali government to address what Somalia experts considered a relatively minor threat, the United States turned to warlords like Qanyare, and went down a path that would lead to an almost unthinkable rise in the influence and power of Al Qaeda and the Shabab.

Such blowback has been experienced in Somalia before. During the humanitarian intervention in the early 1990’s, many Somalis quickly began to despise the US and UN forces thanks to what was seen as indiscriminate brutality.

By the time of the 3 October battle, literally every inhabitant of large areas of Mogadishu considered the UN and U.S. as enemies, and were ready to take up arms against them. People who ten months before had welcomed the U.S. Marines with open arms were now ready to risk death to drive them out.

American intervention has once again started in Somalia, but this time using drones and proxy forces. It is worth noting that the last Somali intervention was done towards the end of a devastating famine. Somalia is currently in the midst of one of the worst famines ever seen. It should also be remembered that Colin Powell said that the intervention was a “a paid political advertisement” for maintaining the current military budget. Perhaps the recession and growing non-interventionist sentiment in the US has sent Washington a powerful message that Somalia is too expensive to tinker with. This could explain Washington’s newfound love affair with drones instead of Black Hawks.