Clinton said bin Laden’s death at the hands of U.S. forces in Pakistan nearly a decade after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks proved the United States was committed to tracking down the perpetrators of extremist violence and bringing them to justice.

“Even as we mark this milestone, we should not forget that the battle to stop al-Qaida and its syndicate of terror will not end with the death of bin Laden,” she said.

Turning to deliver a direct message to bin Laden’s followers, she vowed: “You cannot wait us out. You cannot defeat us but you can make the choice to abandon al-Qaida and participate in a peaceful political process.”

Clinton’s message comes as the U.S. and its partners in Afghanistan are trying to convince Taliban militants to renounce ties with al-Qaida and join Afghan society as part of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s reconciliation program.

She said the U.S. would continue to boost counterterrorism cooperation with other nations, including Pakistan.

Clinton also said the U.S. was committed to supporting the people and government of Pakistan and defending their people and democracy from violent extremism. She said that bin Laden had also declared war on Pakistan and had ordered the killing of Pakistani men, women and children.

Clinton said that history would record that bin Laden’s death had come at a time when people in the Middle East and North Africa were rejecting the “extremist narrative” and were standing up for freedom and democracy. She said there was “no better rebuke to al-Qaida and its heinous ideology.”

Shortly after President Barack Obama announced bin Laden’s death, the State Department issued a worldwide travel alert, warning U.S. citizens traveling or living overseas of the heightened risk of anti-American violence in the wake of the operation.

It did not specify individual countries of concern, but on Monday the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, as well as the U.S. consulates in Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar were closed for all but emergency services.

The embassy in Islamabad released a notice advising Americans “of the possibility of violent protests and demonstrations in major cities of Pakistan,” specifically near the U.S diplomatic missions. “Spontaneous protests in reaction to the recent events could erupt at any time at locations perceived as Western, including restaurants and areas where foreigners are known to congregate and may turn violent,” it said.

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Sadly, no. As the “War on Terror” prison established by President Bush begins its tenth year of operations, and as it begins to be forgotten that President Obama swept into office issuing an executive order promising to close the prison within a year, but failed spectacularly to do so, the bleak truth is that, for a majority of the 173 men held at Guantánamo, their chances of being released, or of receiving anything resembling justice, have receded to such an extent in the last two years that most face indefinite detention without charge or trial, and may still be in Guantánamo a year from now, two years from now, or even five, ten or twenty years from now.

The key to understanding how we reached this grim impasse two years into Barack Obama’s presidency is the review of all the prisoners’ cases that was conducted by the Guantánamo Review Task Force, a sober and careful collection of 60 career officials and lawyers from various government departments and the intelligence agencies, who reviewed all the cases throughout 2009, and issued recommendations a year ago regarding the “disposition” of the remaining prisoners.

Although the Task Force’s appraisal was infected with credulity regarding the quality of the Bush administration’s supposed evidence against the men (which is largely unreliable, as it was extracted under duress and torture), and the members were desperate not to make any mistakes by releasing men who might then prove to be dangerous, the Task Force nevertheless cleared 89 of the remaining 173 prisoners for release.

That’s an impressive figure, considering that it is rarely mentioned in the mainstream media that the government itself has conceded that it no longer wishes to hold over half of the remaining prisoners, but, a year after the Task Force issued its report, these men are still held, and it is this failure — and the explanations provided for it — that lead me to conclude that it is appropriate to describe them as political prisoners.

Of the 89 men, 58 are Yemenis, part of the largest national group at Guantánamo, consisting of 89 men in total. Just 23 Yemenis have been freed throughout Guantánamo’s long history, for a variety of reasons, but primarily because the Saudis, held in similar numbers but largely released in 2006 and 2007, had a government which is a closer ally of the US than Yemen, was prepared to argue more aggressively on their behalf, and was also able to create a state-of-the-art rehabilitation center to re-educate the men on their return, and to provide them with support and financial assistance to reintegrate into Saudi society.

Nevertheless, the Task Force approved 58 of the Yemenis for release (or, to use the careful language of lawyers, approved them for transfer). There was, however, a caveat. 28 were approved for immediate release, but 30 others were designated in a special category of their own, who “should not be transferred to Yemen in the near future,” and should be held in “conditional” detention — a novel category of detention — until “the security situation improves.”

While it could be argued that the “conditional” detention of these 30 men made them political prisoners a year ago, developments on Christmas Day 2009 ensured that the other 28 cleared Yemenis would also be held as political prisoners as well. The trigger for the administration’s refusal to honor the Task Force’s findings regarding these 28 men was the failed plane bomb plot of a young Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. When it was discovered that he had been recruited in Yemen, President Obama capitulated to a wave of unprincipled hysteria by announcing a moratorium on the release of any more Yemenis from Guantánamo, a moratorium which still stands a year later, which shows no sign of being abandoned, and which, by subjecting the men in question to collective punishment, or guilt by nationality, ensures that all 58 of the cleared Yemenis can legitimately be regarded as political prisoners.

The other 31 men cleared for release by the Task Force are still held because, for the most part, they cannot be repatriated as they would face torture or other ill-treatment in their home countries, which include China, Libya, Syria and Tunisia. To its credit, the Obama administration has found new homes in 15 countries for 36 prisoners in a similar situation, but as the pool of willing countries dwindles, it will become harder for the US government to refute allegations that they too are political prisoners, held only because the country responsible for unjustly detaining them in the first place — the United States — has refused to accept its own responsibility to offer them new homes, resisting calls to do so — by a District Court judge, and by White House Counsel Greg Craig — in the Justice Department, in the D.C. Circuit Court, in Congress, and in the Oval Office.

Of the other men, 33 were recommended for trials by the Task Force, but the administration has backed away from proposals to try them in federal court, because of opposition by Congress, or in the Military Commission trial system at Guantánamo, because of opposition from liberals and progressives.

I have no sympathy for the administration’s problems with the discredited Commissions, which should never have been revived after Bush left office, especially because the lowest point in their tawdry history was reached in October last year, when the former child soldier Omar Khadr accepted a plea deal in which he confessed to “war crimes” invented by Congress. These purported to criminalize his participation in a firefight with US soldiers in Afghanistan that led to his capture in July 2002, but the plea deal was met with such disdain around the world that the Obama administration is apparently unwilling to proceed with any further trials at Guantánamo.

Compounding this problem is the administration’s refusal to press ahead with the federal court trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men accused of involvement in the 9/11 attacks, which was announced by Attorney General Eric Holder in November 2009. By failing to proceed with this plan, the administration allowed critics in Congress the opportunity to include a provision banning the transfer of any Guantánamo prisoner to the US mainland to face a trial in a military spending bill passed before Christmas, and when, this week, the President refused to veto the bill, or to issue a signing statement disagreeing with it, the 33 men proposed for trials have been consigned instead to indefinite detention without charge or trial, meaning that they too can realistically be regarded as political prisoners.

The last group of prisoners (leaving aside the three who are held because they lost their trial by Military Commission, or accepted a plea deal) are 48 men explicitly recommended for indefinite detention without charge or trial by the Task Force, on the basis that they are too dangerous to release, but that the information used to justify their detention would not stand up to scrutiny in a court of law.

I should hardly need to explain that this recommendation by the Task Force is fundamentally unacceptable, not only because it perpetuates the very system of arbitrary detention initiated by the Bush administration, which was deliberately designed to subvert domestic and international laws and treaties, but also because, if the government’s supposed evidence would not stand up in a court of law, then it is not evidence at all, but rather hearsay and unverifiable information contained in intelligence reports, which is fundamentally tainted by the torture and abuse to which prisoners were subjected.

The proposal also sidelines the District Court in Washington D.C., where the prisoners’ habeas corpus petitions are ongoing, and where 57 cases have been decided to date, with 38 won by the prisoners. In many of these 38 cases, the judges have exposed exactly these kinds of problems with the government’s supposed evidence. In addition, in the majority of the 19 cases won by the government, the men who have lost their petitions, and who, in all probability, are amongst the 48 men designated for indefinite detention without charge or trial, are nothing more than foot soldiers for the Taliban in the military conflict with the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, which morphed into a “War on Terror” after the US-led invasion in October 2001.

If anything, these men should be held as prisoners of war, not held up as some sort of terrorists, but on this problem, the executive, Congress and the judiciary are all silent, even though it reveals a fundamental problem with the entire detention system invented under George W. Bush and maintained under Obama.

The legislation that supposedly justifies the prisoners’ detention is the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed by Congress the week after the 9/11 attacks, which authorized the President “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.”

President Obama continues to rely on the AUMF, even though it fails to distinguish between al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and even though it perpetuates the Bush administration’s ruinous notion that, instead of criminal suspects and prisoners of war protected by the Geneva Conventions, there is a third category of prisoner — what Bush called “enemy combatants,” and what Obama calls “alien unprivileged enemy belligerents,” as in the case of Omar Khadr — when this, clearly, should not be accepted at all. In Obama’s determination to continue with this dark folly, administration officials recently announced that the President is close to signing an executive order formalizing the indefinite detention of these 48 men, but providing them with some sort of regular review process to ascertain whether they can be released.

This sounds better than no review process at all, but the truth is that these 48 men are also political prisoners, held as a result of the administration’s refusal to accept that, if soldiers are to be detained, it should be as prisoners of war, and that, if men are suspected of terrorist activities, they should be tried rather than arbitrarily detained forever.

Until these problems are solved, and the Guantánamo prisoners are either tried or released, President Obama’s contribution to this bitter legacy of the Bush administration is to be presiding over the unthinkable: a prison where, however the prisoners have been designated, they are almost all held in indefinite detention, and are, indeed, political prisoners.

It is time for those who believe in justice to call for this miserable situation to be brought to an end.

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Just Weeks Ago He Pledged US Would Be ‘Totally Out of There’ by 2014

The release of large amounts of classified documents has shown how eager the administration is to tell the American public the exact opposite of what they are telling one another. It seems that the classification system isn’t even necessary for this, however, as Vice President Biden, fresh off of pledging to the American people that the US would be totally out of Afghanistan “come hell or high water, by 2014” has now told a completely different story to Afghan officials.

“We are not leaving in 2014,” Biden assured President Hamid Karzai during a news conference in Kabul, insisting that the US was prepared to continue with its military occupation “well beyond 2014.”

Biden, who had previously chastised Karzai for his corruption, praised him today for his “leadership” through nearly a decade of failed NATO military adventures. Karzai, who has recently been condemning the US for killing large numbers of civilians, spent his time praising the US for its “contributions.”

Currently there are some 150,000 NATO troops, predominantly from the United States, and NATO estimates that there are 25,000 Taliban forces in the country, which is the exact same estimate they made a year ago. Despite claims of “progress” in the war, violence is still on the rise across the nation.

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A report from the International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) shows that 92 percent of those surveyed had never heard of the coordinated multiple attacks on US soil on September 11, 2001. It also shows that four in 10 Afghans believe the US is on their soil in order to “destroy Islam or occupy Afghanistan.”

To be sure, the survey can’t claim to be definitive: It only canvassed men, and relied primarily on respondents from Helmand and Kandahar, the two most war-torn provinces in the country. But the results nonetheless show that Western forces fighting insurgents in Afghanistan have largely failed to connect with the local population.

“We need to explain to the Afghan people why we are here, and both show and convince them that their future is better with us than with the Taliban,” ICOS lead field researcher Norine MacDonald said in a statement.

The survey also suggests that Afghans are skeptical of their own government’s ability to protect them, and have little regard for the fledgling democratic institutions the country is building. Fully 43 percent could not name one positive aspect of democracy, and nearly two-thirds — 61 percent — said they didn’t think Afghan forces would be able to keep up the fight against the Taliban if and when Western forces withdrew.

The ICOS study recommends a publicity campaign to explain to Afghans why foreign forces are fighting on their soil. The think tank also proposes a number of other initiatives meant to improve the image of foreign forces in the country, including having NATO forces deliver humanitarian aid where aid groups fear to travel, providing farmland to the poor, setting up women’s councils, and “safe village convoys” which would see foreign troops escort villagers in dangerous rural areas.

ICOS has a permanent presence in Afghanistan and has been studying the nearly decade-long war’s impact on Afghan society. The think tank has previously proposed that Afghanistan license the growing of opium. The group argues that eliminating the opiate trade from Afghanistan is virtually impossible due to its entrenched place in the culture. At the same time, Afghan farmers could earn money by selling opiates to painkiller manufacturers.

Opponents of the idea say that Afghanistan is not stable enough to develop a proper opium-manufacturing industry, and a licensing scheme would only encourage the sale of opium to heroin manufacturers.

The post 92% of Afghans Never Heard of 9/11 appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

Mark Sedwill, the top civilian NATO representative in Afghanistan, said the transition could run “to 2015 and beyond” in some areas that could still face security problems, Reuters reported.

The remarks come as Afghanistan is scheduled to be among top priorities to be discussed when NATO leaders gather for an annual summit in Lisbon this week.

Senior officials in Washington have recently confirmed that American troops will remain in the war-ravaged country for at least four more years. This is while US President Barack Obama had pledged a major withdrawal from Afghanistan by July 2011.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai recently demanded the United States reduce its presence and military operations in the country.

In an interview published on Sunday, President Karzai called on the US military to reduce its visibility and the intensity of its operations in Afghanistan and end its night raids in the country.

“The time has come to reduce military operations,” the Afghan president told The Washington Post.

“The time has come to reduce the presence of, you know, boots in Afghanistan … to reduce the intrusiveness into the daily Afghan life,” he added.

The afghan president’s remarks come as over 100,000 Afghans have been killed since the US-led war began in October 2001.

Hundreds of civilians have lost their lives in US-led airstrikes and ground operations in various parts of Afghanistan over the past few months, with Afghans becoming more and more outraged over the seemingly endless number of deadly assaults.

There are currently more than 150,000 US-led foreign forces stationed in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, some 648 foreign troops have lost their lives in Afghanistan so far, making 2010 the deadliest year for the US-led forces since the start of the war in 2001.

The increasing number of troop casualties in Afghanistan has sparked widespread anger in the US and other NATO member states, undermining public support for the continuation of the Afghan war.

In a rare acknowledgement, newly-appointed French Defense Minister Alain Juppe called Afghanistan “a trap for all the parties involved.”

The post 9/11 War Extended Beyond 2014 appeared first on 9/11 Truth News.

The new policy will be on display next week during a conference of NATO countries in Lisbon, Portugal, where the administration hopes to introduce a timeline that calls for the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan by 2014, the year when Afghan President Hamid Karzai once said Afghan troops could provide their own security, three senior officials told McClatchy, along with others speaking anonymously as a matter of policy.

The Pentagon also has decided not to announce specific dates for handing security responsibility for several Afghan provinces to local officials and instead intends to work out a more vague definition of transition when it meets with its NATO allies.

What a year ago had been touted as an extensive December review of the strategy now also will be less expansive and will offer no major changes in strategy, the officials told McClatchy. So far, the U.S. Central Command, the military division that oversees Afghanistan operations, hasn’t submitted any kind of withdrawal order for forces for the July deadline, two of those officials told McClatchy.

The shift already has begun privately and came in part because U.S. officials realized that conditions in Afghanistan were unlikely to allow a speedy withdrawal.

“During our assessments, we looked at if we continue to move forward at this pace, how long before we can fully transition to the Afghans? And we found that we cannot fully transition to the Afghans by July 2011,” said one senior administration official. “So we felt we couldn’t focus on July 2011 but the period it will take to make the full transition.”

Another official said the administration also realized in contacts with Pakistani officials that the Pakistanis had concluded wrongly that July 2011 would mark the beginning of the end of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan.

That perception, one Pentagon adviser said, has convinced Pakistan’s military — which is key to preventing Taliban sympathizers from infiltrating Afghanistan — to continue to press for a political settlement instead of military action.

“This administration now understands that it cannot shift Pakistani approaches to safeguarding its interests in Afghanistan with this date being perceived as a walk-away date,” the adviser said.

Last week’s midterm elections also have eased pressure on the Obama administration to begin an early withdrawal. Earlier this year, some Democrats in Congress pressed to cut off funding for Afghanistan operations. With Republicans in control of the House of Representatives beginning in January, however, there’ll be less push for a drawdown. The incoming House Armed Services chairman, Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., told Reuters last week that he opposed setting the date.

The White House vehemently denies that there is any change in policy. “The president has been crystal clear that we will begin drawing down troops in July of 2011. There is absolutely no change to that policy,” said Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman.

On Tuesday, a White House official who spoke with reporters in a conference call arranged to discuss the December review, said the administration might withdraw some troops next July and may hand some communities over to Afghan authorities. But he said a withdrawal from Afghanistan could take “years,” depending on the capability of the Afghan national security forces.

He also said the December review would measure progress in eight areas, though he declined to specify what those are. Congress will get a report by early next year, but Army Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S.-led international forces in Afghanistan, will not testify.

“This is designed to be an inside the administration perspective,” he said, adding it will “set the policymaking calendar” for the Obama administration’s first six months of next year.

De-emphasizing deadlines also allows the administration greater flexibility in responding to conditions in Afghanistan, officials said.

While the Taliban are facing increasing coalition airstrikes, they have no driving incentive to negotiate with an unpopular government. Officials here quietly worry that while they, too, are seeing some drops in violence and the Taliban’s hold in pockets of Afghanistan, those limited improvements aren’t leading to better governance.

A U.N. report issued in August showed that civilian casualties rose 31 percent during the first half of the year compared with the previous year, 76 percent were caused by the Taliban, it said. So far, more than 400 U.S. troops have been killed this year.

Many officials here privately worry that talk of a withdrawal without results will cost the military credibility, with Americans and Afghans alike.

“What we ultimately need in Afghanistan is good governance,” said one senior military officer. “Right now there is a gap” between security gains and governance.

Christopher Preble, the director for foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, said he’s not surprised that the scope of the December review has narrowed and that Obama administration officials are no longer highlighting the July 2011 date.

“The very players who were arguing so strenuously for a deepening of our involvement in Afghanistan a year ago are unlikely to now declare that their earlier recommendations were faulty,” he said.

(Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay contributed to this article.)

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