Of Family Jewels and Scapegoats

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A missive to Mr. Richard Boucher, US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs

By Anwaar Hussain

danger-sign.jpgMr. Boucher,

Judging by your call to ‘reform the ISI’, you, sir, seem to be in dire need of some advice.

We understand that you are stung by your abject failure in Iraq and the looming near total disaster in Afghanistan, what with the empire now teetering at its outer most edge and your imperial carpetbaggers out in a frenzied search for a scapegoat. It is perhaps on their urging that you now think in ISI you have a scapegoat and in Pakistan an escapegoat. You, sir, are as far from reality as the Mars from planet Earth. Neither will prove to be a goat of any kind for you.

There are reasons that I say this.

First, with a 3-million strong tribal population, with every Pathan armed to the gills and caring not a fig for even his own life and an honor code as primitive and rigid as the Hindukush, and a million strong nuclear armed Pakistan army at their back, you want to tread very softly in this region. The dispute with these Pathans is an internal one and the Pakistanis know how to deal with each other. While between them this dispute may take years to resolve, resolve it will in the end. However, your entering into the fray will instantly evaporate any ill will that the warring parties have for each other, uniting them in an unreserved hate for your country. Despite the well established facts of your limitless ruthlessness as was witnessed against the Iraqis and your ability to lay waste to the entire region, they will go for your collective throat with a ferocity that will make you forget what you have seen thus far. Please be careful in taking Pakistan for an escapegoat or the FATA for an escape route.

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The Dark Side

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The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals.

dark.jpg“In The Dark Side, Jane Mayer, a staff writer for the New Yorker, documents some of the ugliest allegations of wrongdoing charged against the Bush administration. Her achievement lies less in bringing new revelations to light than in weaving into a comprehensive narrative a story revealed elsewhere in bits and pieces. Recast as a series of indictments, the story Mayer tells goes like this: Since embarking upon its global war on terror, the United States has blatantly disregarded the Geneva Conventions. It has imprisoned suspects, including U.S. citizens, without charge, holding them indefinitely and denying them due process. It has created an American gulag in which thousands of detainees, including many innocent of any wrongdoing, have been subjected to ritual abuse and humiliation. It has delivered suspected terrorists into the hands of foreign torturers. Under the guise of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ it has succeeded, in Mayer’s words, in ‘making torture the official law of the land in all but name.’ Further, it has done all these things as a direct result of policy decisions made at the highest levels of government.”

Online discussion: A transcript follows.

Journalist Jane Mayer was online Tuesday, July 15 to discuss her new book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals, which was reviewed in Book World. Mayer is a staff writer for The New Yorker.

She is the co-author of two other books: Landslide: The Unmaking of The President 1984-1988 and Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas.

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Defense Intelligence Agency Seeking “Mind Control” Weapons

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By Tom Burghardt

TS Admin: This article is probably the most important article you will read. The covert human experimentation without consent, the nightmarish technologies already hanging over our heads — and worse — the new mind control weapons in the imminent future are intended to be perpetrated on YOU… the American & global population, unless this is stopped.

main_mind_control.jpgA new report from the National Academy of Sciences’ National Research Council (NRC) argues that the Pentagon should harvest the fruits of neuroscientific research in order to enhance the “warfighting” capabilities of U.S. soldiers while diminishing those of enemy personnel.

The 151-page report issued by a 16-member blue ribbon commission, “Cognitive Neuroscience Research and National Security,” was quietly announced in an August 13 National Academy of Sciences Press Release.

Commissioned by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Pentagon spy shop, the study asserts that the U.S. intelligence “community” must do a better job following cutting-edge research in neuroscience or as is more likely, steering it along paths useful to the Defense Department. According to the NRC,

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ISI of Pakistan

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james.jpgHistory

After independence in 1947, two new intelligence agencies were created in Pakistan called the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Military Intelligence (MI). However, the weak performance of the MI in sharing intelligence between the Army, Navy and Air Force during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947 led to the creation of the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in 1948. The ISI was structured to be manned by officers from the three main military services, and to specialize in the collection, analysis and assessment of external intelligence, either military or non-military. The ISI was the brainchild of Australian-born British Army officer, Major General R. Cawthome, then Deputy Chief of Staff in the Pakistan Army. Initially, the ISI had no role in the collection of internal intelligence, with the exception of the North-West Frontier Province and Azad Kashmir. This however changed in the late 1950s when Ayub Khan became the Commander-in-Chief of Pakistan.

Ayub Khan expanded the role of ISI in safeguarding Pakistan’s interests, monitoring opposition politicians, and sustaining military rule in Pakistan. The ISI was reorganised in 1966 after intelligence failures in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, and expanded in 1969. Ayub Khan suspected the loyalty of the East Pakistan based officers in the Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau or the Internal Bureau (IB) branch in Dacca, the capital of then East Pakistan. He entrusted the ISI with the responsibility for the collection of internal political intelligence in East Pakistan. Later on, during the Baloch nationalist revolt in Balochistan in the mid 1970s, the ISI was tasked with performing a similar intelligence gathering operation.

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Anwaar’s articles appear simultaneously here at Truth Spring and at Soul Vibes in The Pakistan Tribune.


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