Freedom Rider: Obama’s Killing Spree

By Black Agenda Report editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Created 05/04/2011

Obama receiving standing ovation after Osama raid.

OBAMA is certainly living the thug life, an international gangster without parallel. What is to lesser humans a planet is, to Obama, a spherical theater of war, a free-fire zone. With two more notches in his gun, the First Black President is ensuring that Black Americans will be viewed as just another brand of ugly, violent Americans set loose on the world. And “the Peace Prize winner will once again give a lofty, well written speech about why it makes no sense to be peaceful.”

“Extrajudicial killing is now the rule, and not the exception for the United States.”

Barack Obama was trying for a double homicide this weekend. He hoped to kill both Muammar Gaddafi [7] and Osama bin Laden [8] in one fell swoop. Bin Laden’s luck ran out, but Gaddafi used up another of his nine lives and survives while his son and three of his grandchildren are dead, killed in a NATO attack on their home.

The United States government murdered members of Gaddafi’s family in a blatant violation of American and international law. The peace prize laureate is in fact a typical American president, using lies and outright thuggery in order to promote the dictates of the American empire.

That empire is on its way out, but the final demise may take years, or decades, and the raw power of American military might well continue to bring devastation to the world. The Gaddafi family and Osama bin Laden are but the latest victims in the body count.

Not only were these killings assassinations and therefore illegal under American law, but they play a terrible role in promoting beliefs in exceptionalism and exceptional suffering. Judging from the gloating and celebration invoked by bin Laden’s death, one would think that Americans were completely innocent of bringing bloodshed to any part of the world.

Obviously that is not true. Not only is America guilty of many crimes committed both within and outside of its borders, but the terrorist attacks that took place on September 11, 2001 became the pretext for an orgy of even greater numbers of killings. Thousands of Afghan civilians have died for the simple reason that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda planned the attacks while using that country as a base. The occupation of Iraq was born out of an utter and complete lie, a claim that Saddam Hussein was, like al Qaeda, a threat to the safety of Americans.

“One would think that Americans were completely innocent of bringing bloodshed to any part of the world.”

The Obama administration is not quite so ham fisted as the Bush regime, but Muammar Gaddafi has taken on the role played by Saddam Hussein. Just last year, we were assured that Gaddafi was a friend and an ally of the United States, and that the Reagan era attempt to kill him was a long distant memory, never to be repeated because Gaddafi was now on the good list of foreign policy makers.

How times have changed. Last month Obama, British prime minister Cameron, and French president Sarkozy issued a joint statement which said in part, “Colonel Gaddafi must go, and go for good.” Well, killing someone certainly insures they are gone for good, and the three intended to make good on that threat.

Extrajudicial killing is now the rule, and not the exception for the United States. Not only that, but our court system, which in the pre-Bush days were used for terrorism trials, are now off limits politically. When the Obama administration briefly planned to try Khalid Sheik Muhammad in New York, all hell broke loose. New Yorkers were told, falsely, that their lives would be at risk and their city would have to shut down. Of course, the expense would have been great, but it would have been possible to carry out a civilian court trial had the Obama administration not knuckled under to pressure to ignore the rules of law.

Obama, the so-called change agent, has proven to be exactly like his predecessors. His poll numbers are high because he killed people in a far away place. One of the victims was a perpetrator of a crime against Americans, but had the country not fallen into such a lawless state, he might have been brought to trial in a courtroom. The United States is now less civilized than ever, and even if Obama had been inclined to do so, most Americans would howl and moan at the prospect of bin Laden receiving true justice. It is a pity. It would have been wonderful indeed for the United States to make even a small attempt to live up to the ideals it once followed. Even the Nazi leadership were tried in open court.

“The United States is now less civilized than ever.”

On Thursday Obama will go to the site of the old World Trade Center and make a speech about why he had to kill bin Laden and why it was right to do so. The Peace Prize winner will once again give a lofty, well written speech about why it makes no sense to be peaceful.

The carnival atmosphere is growing more awful by the moment. The corporate media (*link lies) immediately told the story of the bin Laden killing by repeating government lies about women used as human shields and has now descended into worship of the black ops, special, wonderful, very elite, calm, cool, collected and totally awesome troops who did the killing. CIA director Leon Panetta is even suggesting who should portray him in a movie. It would be easy to make fun of Panetta, but he knows of what he speaks. Hollywood will come calling and the only question remaining will be who will portray the peace prize winning killer president.

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. [9] Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley@BlackAgendaReport.com.

[10]

Source URL: http://blackagendareport.com/content/freedom-rider-obama%E2%80%99s-killing-spree

Links:
[1] http://blackagendareport.com/category/department-war/attack-libya
[2] http://blackagendareport.com/category/department-war/gaddafi-attempted-assassination
[3] http://blackagendareport.com/category/department-war/obama-peace-prize
[4] http://blackagendareport.com/category/department-war/osama-assassination
[5] http://blackagendareport.com/category/department-war/us-hit-list
[6] http://blackagendareport.com/sites/www.blackagendareport.com/files/obama_free_libya.jpg
[7] http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/04/2011430224755721620.html
[8] http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/2011/05/2011526196121642.html
[9] http://freedomrider.blogspot.com/
[10] http://www.addtoany.com/share_save?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fblackagendareport.com%2Fcontent%2Ffreedom-rider-obama%25E2%2580%2599s-killing-spree&linkname=Freedom%20Rider%3A%20Obama%E2%80%99s%20Killing%20Spree

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Raucous celebration upon bin Laden's death. An unsurprising display considering the chauvinism of politicians and media.

The assassination of Osama bin Laden by US Special Forces in Abbotabad, Pakistan will likely assure Barack Obama’s victory in the 2012 presidential race. Republican hawks will have a hard time pressing their claims that Obama is “soft on terrorism.”

Details about the killing of bin Laden remain obscure. The mission, a joint operation between CIA and Special Forces, appeared to have been mounted from a US-controlled air base in Pakistan – without the advance knowledge of Pakistan’s government. US sources say Osama was shot twice in the head; his son was also killed.

Bin Laden’s body was photographed and then apparently dumped into the sea from a US aircraft. Washington claims this was done to observe Muslim funeral rites calling for almost immediate burial. This sounds preposterous.

The real reason was more likely to prevent bin Laden’s burial site from becoming a shrine and, some cynics will assert, getting rid of the evidence. Expect endless claims that a bin Laden double was killed while the real McCoy still haunts Pakistan’s badlands. Various fakes videotapes used to depict bin Laden as the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks used doubles.

Gleeful Americans are rejoicing that the man credited with the monstrous crime of 9/11 has been killed after a ten year search. More thoughtful ones may stop to ponder the remarkable Quixotic drama of a single man who set out to overturn the mighty American Imperium.

To people of the Muslim world, where many hailed bin Laden as a hero and liberator from Western domination, his killing in Pakistan will recall American gangland rub-outs  and bodies dumped  in New Jersey’s waters and swamps. Particularly after NATO warplanes killed Muammar Gadaffi’s youngest son and three grandchildren in Libya.

Expect already acid US-Pakistan relations to yet worsen as Americans accuse Pakistan of sheltering bin Laden for a decade. This writer has long said that Bin Laden was in Pakistan, and likely with at least some  knowledge of ISI, Pakistani intelligence, though its able former Director General, Hamid Gul, whose word I respect, disputes this claim.

It is most unfortunate that bin Laden was literally rubbed out. If he could have been taken alive, the co-founder of al-Qaida should have been brought to the United States to stand trial in New York City, or, failing that, on a military base – but with lawyers and a civilian jury under full US law.

The whole story of 9/11 and al-Qaida remains murky and confused. Fully a third of Americans don’t accept the official US government version of 9/11, believing the US government or Israel were somehow involved – without any conclusive evidence but a lot of angry questions.

Much of the rest of the world also disbelieves the official 9/11 version. In the Muslim world the percentage of disbelievers rises to over 80%.

Now, after bin Laden’s death, we may never really know. Dead men tell no tales. Bin Laden long claimed he had no role in 9/11.   Yet he certainly gave his approval and support after the fact.   Those al-Qaida suspects brutally tortured by CIA into confessions are unreliable sources of evidence that would never stand up in US courts.

One point I want to set to rest: based on my long experience in Afghanistan and Pakistan and with jihadi groups and bin Laden’s mentor and guide, Sheik Azzam, I can say with a high level of assurance that bin Laden never worked for or with CIA, as has been often claimed.   They were merely on the same side during the anti-Soviet struggle.

A big question now is what justification will Washington come up with to keep 150,000 Western troops in Afghanistan?

Hunting down bin Laden was, remember, the primary reason for sending US troops to that remote nation. No doubt Taliban and its leader Mullah Omar will be morphed by the US media machine into a bin Laden stand-ins.

What of al-Qaida? This extremist group, as I have been writing since 1999, was tiny. Never more than 300 men in 2001. Today, the core al-Qaida in Pakistan consists of a handful of hunted men. CIA chief Leon Panetta asserted that there were something less than 50 al-Qaida members in Afghanistan.   There may be a hundred in Pakistan – all on the run.

North America’s media and the Bush administration wildly exaggerated the menace, strength and reach of al-Qaida, panicking Americans into believing, as the analyst Kevin Phillips wrote, that suburban soccer moms in the deepest Midwest were petrified Osama bin Laden was coming for their kids.

The specter of al-Qaida provided a handy pretext to invade Afghanistan to secure strategic territory next to Central Asian oil, keep China out of that region, and double spending on arms.   The invasion of oil-rich Iraq was also justified by patently false White House claims Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with Osama bin Laden over 9/11.

Al-Qaida “affiliates” in North Africa, Arabia, and south Asia are simply small groups of local militants who have taken the al-Qaida brand name without having any organic or communications links to the remnants of the core al-Qaida in Pakistan. They are more a dangerous nuisance than a deadly threat.

Osama bin Laden may well and truly be dead.   He predicted long ago he would die a martyr in a gunfight with US forces. Bin Laden has been more or less retired for the past 8-10 years, spending his time and energies in staying alive with a $25 million price on his head. He had almost become irrelevant.

Al-Qaida’s number two, the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, remains at large and is now titular head of what remains of the organization of which he has been operations chief for many years.   Dr. Zawahiri, who was brutally tortured in Egypt, is a dangerous extremist with much blood on his hands and a lust for revenge.

Bin Laden is dead, but bin-Ladenism lives on.   Osama’s primary goal was to end Western domination of the Muslim world, and exploitation of its resources, which he claimed were being plundered. The Western-backed dictators, generals and kings that ruled the Muslim world as overseers for foreign interests had to be overthrown proclaimed bin Laden.

The Muslim world rejected bin Laden’s bloody-mindedness and his utopian calls for a reborn Islamic caliphate, but many of its people, particularly so younger ones, embraced his calls for revolutions to liberate the region from brutal dictatorships that licked the West’s boots, spread corruption, and betrayed the cause of Palestine.   Husni Mubarak’s Egypt amply fit this description.

Osama bin Laden lived long enough to see the revolutions that he had helped ignite among young people burst into towering flames. In this sense, bin Ladenism will prosper and spread, enhanced by the image of Osama the martyr.

The Saudi revolutionary leaves another legacy. He repeatedly stated that the only way to drive the US from the Muslim world and defeat its satraps was by drawing the United States into a series of small but expensive wars that would ultimately bankrupt it.   The United States under President George W. Bush and then Barack Obama rushed right into bin Laden’s carefully laid trap.

Today, the nearly bankrupt United States is spending hundreds of billons annually waging small wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, and the Sahara.   Grotesquely overblown military spending and debt addiction are crippling United States. That is why the ghost of bin Laden may be smiling.

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copyright Eric S. Margolis 2011

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Patrick Martin and Alex Lantier | 2 May 2011

Obama's approval is likely to bounce upon the death of "America's" arch-enemy. Apparently, not even a Harvard law professor remembers that there is such a thing as an international court of law for all putative criminals.

President Barack Obama announced Sunday that US special forces had killed Osama bin Laden, the long-time leader of Al Qaeda, in a raid on a residence in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Obama issued the statement after 11.30 p.m. Eastern time in the United States, more than an hour after the major media news networks announced that he would be making within minutes a major statement relating to national security. 

Obama’s statement left critical questions unanswered and raised a host of new ones.

First, Obama stated that “shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against Al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle and defeat his network.”

In other words, Obama implied, without offering an explanation, that between 2001 and his inauguration in January 2009, the capture or killing of bin Laden had not been the major priority of the “war on terror.”

Second, the location of bin Laden’s killing is highly significant. Obama stated that US intelligence “had located bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan.” Obama then identified the location more precisely as Abbottabad. He did not explain that this town is located approximately 40 miles from Rawalpindi, the center of the Pakistani military establishment and only a few miles further from Islamabad, the country’s capital. This is the equivalent of a fugitive hiding next to a police station.

Nor did Obama describe the nature of the “compound.” But the press is now reporting that the “most wanted man in the world” was living in a comfortable mansion. Moreover, the town of Abbottabad is located on the strategically critical Route N35, the Karakoram highway, which connects Pakistan and China.

In another cryptic remark, Obama said that “our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding.”

The obvious conclusion to be drawn is that bin Laden—as many have suspected—had enjoyed, at least until very recently, high level protection from powerful forces in the Pakistani government, military and intelligence agencies.

Although Obama called on the country to “give thanks to the countless intelligence and counterterrorism professionals who’ve worked tirelessly to achieve this outcome,” the major factor in the killing of bin Laden was, quite clearly, a shift in the position of his long-time protectors in the Pakistani state. For reasons that will eventually emerge, the Pakistani regime decided to toss bin Laden overboard.

The extraordinary facts relating to the whereabouts of bin Laden make a mockery of Obama’s claim that the United States “went to war against Al Qaeda to protect our citizens, our friends, and our allies.” No, it did not.

While the supposed terrorist mastermind has been protected by the Pakistani state, a critical ally in the “war on terror,” the United States has deployed a huge armed force in Afghanistan for the past ten years. This force has been tripled since Obama took office.

Nothing in Obama’s remarks suggested in any way that the killing of bin Laden will lead to a significant change in American foreign policy—let alone an end to the relentless expansion of military interventions.

The three wars in which the United States is currently engaged—in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya—have nothing to do with the fight against Al Qaeda and the capture of bin Laden. Both the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, which the United States invaded in 2003, and the regime of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, which is now being bombed by US and NATO forces, opposed Al Qaeda. In Afghanistan, Al Qaeda forces are politically and militarily insignificant.

Both Obama’s speech and the press commentary was clearly an attempt to rally public support for wars that have become deeply unpopular. Obama asked Americans to “think back to the sense of unity that prevailed on 9/11. I know that it has, at times, frayed.” Media commentators repeatedly expressed the hope that the killing of bin Laden would restore the morale of soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and justify the loss of thousands of lives.

Bin Laden is indelibly associated with a monstrous crime, the murder of nearly 3,000 people on September 11, 2011, most of them dying in the destruction of the World Trade Center towers in New York City, as well as other bloody terrorist attacks around the world. But he was not the cause of the explosion of American militarism that followed the 9/11 attacks, merely the pretext.

One conclusion can be stated with certainty: the killing of bin Laden will not put an end either to the “war on terror” for which he served as a bogeyman, nor to the imperialist wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, in which American military forces have been deployed to secure strategic positions and oil resources of vital interest to American imperialism.

Patrick Martin and Alex Lantier are senior political analysts with the World Socialist Web Site.

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By Stephen Lendman

The struggle against Egypt's new military Junta continues, although the American media, as usual, have largely dropped the story.

In fact, Egypt under Mubarak and current military leadership is proficient in all of the above. These practices go on daily but unmentioned in US media reports, claiming September elections promise democracy, when, in fact, everything changed but stayed the same.

Each year, the State Department publishes human rights reports on over 190 countries. Its complete one on Egypt can be accessed through the following link:

http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/160456.pdf

Arbitrary or Unlawful Deprivation of Life

In January, security forces attacked other Coptics with automatic weapons after Orthodox Christmas Mass. Seven died, 11 more wounded. Numerous other examples highlight state violence against targeted individuals or groups. Egypt, in fact, is a military junta run police state, tolerating no opposition to its rule.

Disappearances

According to the UN Human Rights Council, dozens were reported, families given contradictory or no information on the whereabouts of their loved ones.

Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

• other forms of torture.

A previous article explained the following:

On February 17, Amnesty International (AI) reported released prisoners saying military personnel used beatings, whippings, electric shocks and other forms of torture and abuse to intimidate them, extract confessions, and get information about others involved in protests.

AI said:

The worst of these practices continue daily.

Prison and Detention Center Conditions

As a result, TB and other diseases are widespread. Abuse is common, and youths are treated like adults.

Arbitrary Arrests or Detention

Police and Security Forces

Arrest Procedures and Treatment in Detention

Emergency Law arrests and indefinite detentions are common, those held kept incommunicado without access to family members or counsel before facing trial. Many are tortured.

Denial of Fair Public Trials

Trial Procedures

Trials are public without juries. Observers need permission to attend. Human rights activists are excluded from most military trials. Lawyers get inadequate access to defendants. Justice at best is hit or miss, mostly the latter.

Political Prisoners and Detainees

Thousands are held at any time without charge indefinitely without access to human rights organizations. Civilians courts also lack independence, especially for politically high-profile cases.

Arbitrary Interference with Privacy, Family, Home, or Correspondence

Speech and Media Freedom

Internet Freedom

Around one-fifth of Egyptians have access, including over 165,000 bloggers, about 20% focusing on politics. Monitoring is routine and occasionally sites are blocked or shut. Moreover, some bloggers and Internet activists are harassed, intimidated, arrested, prosecuted and detained.

Academic and Cultural Freedom

Freedom of Assembly

Freedom of Association

Freedom of Religion

Freedom of Movement, Internally Displaced Persons, Protection of Refugees, and Stateless Persons

Respect for Political Rights

Official Corruption and Government Transparency

Discrimination, Societal Abuses, and Trafficking in Persons

Persons with Disabilities

Discrimination commonly exists despite legal requirements for businesses to fill 5% of their positions with physically or mentally disabled persons. Overall, widespread societal discrimination exists.

Other Societal Violence or Discrimination

HIV/AIDS positive individuals, gays, and lesbians are socially stigmatized in society.

Worker Rights

A previous article explained poverty wages, few benefits, high unemployment, the state-controlled Trade Union Federation (TUC) subordinating worker rights to demands of government and private sector enterprises, prohibition of strikes and collective bargaining, corruption, mismanagement, mistreatment, short-term contracts for temporary workers, and other job related abuses.

A Final Comment

Expect little change after scheduled September elections, installing new faces to continue old practices, unless sustained Arab spring fervor achieves otherwise, a dim prospect but possible.

STEPHEN LENDMAN lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

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Mr. President: Why Medicare Isn’t the Problem, It’s the Solution

Editor’s Note:  We’re happy to reproduce here Prof. Reich’s arguments in favor of “Medicare for All”, the “Duh!” option for any civilized nation, that is, universal, publicly administrated and guaranteed health care.  Articles like these can serve to give good ammo to those who are trying to fight the good fight, convince the confused, and counter the constant pro-business propaganda that envelops all social discourse in the United States. Liberals, however, and the public in general, should not forget that the President and his advisers hardly lack the intelligence, ideas, or facts to know damn well what the correct option is.  Their wrong-headed, often criminal, choices in public policy are not dictated by ignorance but by lack of political will, or, as is the case with Obama, was the case with George Bush 2, and was true for practically every individual who got elected to the top job in the nation for generations, by simply serving the interests of a puny constituency that owns them: the nation’s plutocracy. —P. Greanville

13 April 11