A FEW QUESTIONS FOR BARACK OBAMA

Sam Smith

You said we are in a war against Al Qaeda. When did Congress declare it?

Most estimates of Al Qaeda's size are in the thousands, or roughly the size of one American army brigade. Can you cite a previous time when so much of the American military did so badly against such a small force for so long?

Michael Doran, who served as Bush's NSC Middle East director, wrote after 9/11: "The script was obvious: America, cast as the villain, was supposed to use its military might like a cartoon character trying to kill a fly with a shotgun." . . . In a Foreign Affairs article in 1975, David Fromkin wrote: "Terrorism is violence used in order to create fear; but it is aimed at creating fear in order that the fear, in turn, will lead somebody else - not the terrorist - to embark on some quite different program of action that will accomplish whatever it is that the terrorist really desires." To what extent do you think America is doing just what the terrorists want?

Since 2000, according to your State Department, Al Qaeda has killed an average of 480 people globally each year or roughly the same number as are murdered annually in New York City. How do you think our military would do against a larger and more deadly enemy?

In the wake of the attempted bombing of the plane headed for Detroit, you have announced plans for greatly increased virtual strip and search of passengers. How many more attempted bombings will be necessary before you order the torture of air passengers to determine their danger?

Given that you and your predecessor have been unable to deter - by military force and intelligence agencies - several thousand guerillas from their activities, and given that this effort has effectively destroyed constitutional government in our country, might it not be time to experiment with a different course, such as ending our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, establishing civil relations with the Muslim world, and strongly opposing Israeli apartheid?

You and your predecessor have been responsible for more unnecessary American deaths since 2001 than has Al Qaeda. Is it not time, perhaps, to try something different?

AFGHAN CIA BOMBER 'WAS COURTED AS POTENTIAL INFORMANT'

BBC - The suicide bomber who killed seven CIA agents in Afghanistan had been courted by the US as a possible informant, US intelligence sources have said.

They said he had not undergone the usual full body search before entering the base in Khost province, and so was able to smuggle in an explosive belt.

The attack was the worst against US intelligence officials since the US embassy in Beirut was bombed in 1983.

OBAMA EXPECTED TO ADD 56,000 MERCENARIES TO AFGHANISTAN

Walter Pincus, Washington Post - The surge of 30,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan could be accompanied by a surge of up to 56,000 contractors, vastly expanding the presence of personnel from the U.S. private sector in a war zone, according to a study by the Congressional Research Service.

CRS, which provides background information to members of Congress on a bipartisan basis, said it expects an additional 26,000 to 56,000 contractors to be sent to Afghanistan. That would bring the number of contractors in the country to anywhere from 130,000 to 160,000...

The CRS study says contractors made up 69 percent of the Pentagon's personnel in Afghanistan last December, a proportion that "apparently represented the highest recorded percentage of contractors used by the Defense Department in any conflict in the history of the United States." As of September, contractor representation had dropped to 62 percent, as U.S. troop strength increased modestly.

PETRAEUS SAYS IT'S GOING TO BE A LONG,, HARD WAR

Anti-War - CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus conceded again that the war in Afghanistan will continue to "get harder before it gets easier.". . .

But as the war continues to worsen, Gen. Petraeus doesn’t want to hear any complaints, insisting that Congress should “reserve judgement” on the new strategy for at least a year.

Gen Petraeus is just the latest in a growing chorus of military commanders conceding that the record violence of 2009 is going to give way to record violence in 2010. All seem to be keeping on message that the violence is going to eventually drop, but for the time being the effort seems mostly to stifle criticism of the rising casualties.

WHY THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN IS ILLEGAL

Rich Whitney, Green candidate for Illinois governor - Any Presidential order to commit more troops to Afghanistan is illegal under established principles of international law, just as the initial invasion and occupation were illegal. The war against Afghanistan violates international law, including the Charter of the United Nations, the Geneva Conventions, the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and international agreements dealing with the suppression and control of terrorism.

One of the principles that our nation championed during the Nuremberg War Crimes trials was the repudiation of aggressive war as an instrument of foreign policy. International law would have justified aggressive efforts to locate and apprehend Osama Bin Laden and other terrorists following the 9/11 attacks. But no international law or principle of self-defense justified invading an entire sovereign nation, overthrowing its government and continuing to occupy it, while attempting to control both the form and direction of its future government.

Such orders are also illegal under our Constitution. The Authorization to Use Military Force passed by Congress on September 14, 2001, gave the President powers to "use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks" or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism"

This amounts to a permanent delegation of congressional authority to the President, with neither standards to rein in his actions, nor a clear means of regaining control in Congress. As such, it was, and is, an unconstitutional abdication of Congress's exclusive power to declare war.

Another principle established at Nuremberg is the principle that government officials have an overriding duty to disobey illegal orders. The Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal states that government officials have a responsibility not to commit or further "an act which constitutes a crime under international law."If elected Governor of Illinois, I would honor my commitment to the Constitution and established international law, and assert the Governor's right to veto any mobilization of the Illinois National Guard for service in Iraq of Iraq and Afghanistan.

AF-PAK WAR COULD TURN INTO THE WAR AGAINST WHEREVER

CNN - Pakistan's prime minister rejected claims al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is hiding within his country amid mounting global pressure on Islamabad to tackle terrorists linked to escalating conflict in neighboring Afghanistan.

"In fact Pakistan is fighting a war on terrorism," Yousaf Raza Gilani told reporters at a joint press conference with his British counterpart Gordon Brown at 10 Downing Street.

"We have good defense and intelligence cooperation with the U.S.. I don't think Osama Bin Laden is in Pakistan."

Pakistan has regularly been identified as the suspected hiding place of bin Laden since a major military offensive in Afghanistan in the wake of the 2001 al Qaeda attacks in the United States failed to uncover his whereabouts.

BREVITAS

Afghanistan

Sue Sturgis, Facing South - According to the Center for Responsive Politics' Open Secrets database, the top recipient of defense industry money in the 2008 election cycle was Barack Obama, whose haul of $1,029,997 far surpassed Republican contender Sen. John McCain's $696,948.

War Department

McClatchy Newspapers - There are 68,000 U.S. troops and 42,000 from other countries in Afghanistan. The U.S. Army's recently revised counterinsurgency manual estimates that an all-out counterinsurgency campaign in a country with Afghanistan's population would require about 600,000 troops.

Schools

The Denver School Board has hired a marriage counselor to help it work out internal disputes. They will meet at the five-star Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, which should help as well.

Drug busts

Change - It costs $48,000 a year to keep an addict in prison, compared to $4,000 to $5,000 for outpatient treatment. . . A Washington Post report demonstrated that the alternative courts -- which funnel people charged with drug crimes to specific judges and courtrooms equipped to handle their cases wisely and offer a range of alternatives to incarceration -- are working, if you can get into them. Only 10% of drug cases nationwide find their way into drug courts.

GENERAL MCCHRYSTAL'S TORTURE PRISONS STILL GOING STRONG IN AFGHANISTAN

Tom Eley, World Socialist - Recent media reports reveal that the US military continues to carry on torture and illegal detention in Afghanistan at a dungeon known to inmates as "the black prison." The jail, located on the Bagram Air Base next to the notorious Bagram prison north of Kabul, operates under the executive order of President Obama. After entering office, Obama ordered the closure of Central Intelligence Agency prison "black sites"-which were in fact no longer active-but exempted those prisons run by the military's Special Operations, which was headed from 2003 until 2008 by General Stanley McChrystal, now US commander of the Af-Pak theater.

US military officials recently said they had no plans to close the Afghan jail and another like it at the Balad Air Base in Iraq, which they claimed were needed to interrogate "high-value detainees."

Two teenage Afghan boys told the Washington Post that they were beaten, photographed naked, sexually humiliated, denied sleep, and held in solitary confinement by American guards at the prison this year. Interviewed at a juvenile detention center in Kabul, where they have been transferred, "the teenagers presented a detailed, consistent portrait" of the abuse they experienced, the newspaper reported. Their descriptions of the prison were confirmed by two other former prisoners.

In addition to being punched and slapped, Rashid, who the Post describes as "younger than 16," said he was forced to view pornography "alongside a photograph of his mother." He was also forced to strip naked in front of about a half-dozen US soldiers. "They touched me all over my body," he said. "They took pictures, and they were laughing and laughing. They were doing everything."

"That was the hardest time I have ever had in my life," said Rashid, who was arrested this spring. "It was better to just kill me. But they would not kill me. ... I was just crying and crying. I was too young."

On Saturday, the New York Times published interviews with three former inmates who also spoke of the black prison near Bagram. Each informant "was interviewed separately and described similar conditions," the Times notes, and "their descriptions also matched those obtained by two human rights workers who had interviewed other former detainees at the site." One of the three men was arrested months after Obama's inauguration as US president, as were the two teenage boys interviewed by the Post.

All of those interviewed by the Times and the Post maintained that they were not "Taliban." Without being charged with a crime, they were seized by US soldiers, then bound, gagged, and hooded, and taken to the "black prison."

The jail, according to the Times' sources, "consists of individual windowless concrete cells, each illuminated by a single light bulb glowing 24 hours a day." The cells are small; one prisoner said his was only slightly longer than the length of his body. US soldiers throw food into the cells through slots in the door.

Prisoners are exposed to extreme cold and sleep deprivation. The teenage boys told the Post that when they attempted to sleep on the hard floor, US soldiers "shouted at them and hammered on their cells." Prisoners' only respite from this extreme solitary confinement are twice-a-day interrogations, during which some are beaten or humiliated. . .