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:link 1The web of collusion and spiesMR Hurst has frequently claimed some members of the RUC, UDR and Army colluded with terror groups. The statement portrays a wilderness of mirrors in which every organisation has the other penetrated to some degree and “all sources have a shelf life”. It talks of British agents in the Garda, Garda agents in Northern Ireland, IRA agents in the RUC and Garda and RUC agents in the IRA. It states “the fact that a Garda was passing information to the IRA did not bother me any more or any less than in the same way members of the RUC/UDR/BA (British Army) passed information to the IRA and members of various loyalist paramilitaries. It was a matter for HQNI and the RUC and way above my pay grade ... in other words it was a strategic and not a tactical problem”. It concludes that none of this “registered massively on the Richter scale, it was just a fact of life, indeed it was well within the rules of our game!”
:link 3If such a person is “seen to be giving out orders,” the official continued, or is armed, or “has undertaken actions that connote integration into the terrorist group, al-Qaida and/or one of its designated affiliates,” the US reserves the right to kill them. The official did not list knowing the person’s name as a threshold for marking them for execution.“This is a process of analysis. It is based on all the information, including sensitive intelligence, available to us,” the official said.Drone strikes, synonymous with Obama in many parts of the world, are a legacy issue for the administration. An executive order issued on Friday required increased training, technological innovation and other “feasible precautions” to reduce civilian casualties from future drone strikes, as well as mandating the annual public release of an updated death toll from counterterrorism operations. The order wrapped drone strikes, which can target individuals who have not attacked the US, in the mantle of “the Nation’s inherent right of self-defense”.
:link 4Between 2009 and 31 December 2015, the administration claimed that it launched 473 strikes, mostly with drones, that killed between what it said were 2,372 and 2,581 terrorist “combatants”.
:link4In 2013, senior Republican senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said that drone strikes had killed 4,700 people, some 2,000 more deaths than the upper limit the administration released on Friday.
:link 4The US has killed people whose identities it does not know, for fitting into what it considers patterns of life associated with terrorism, an anonymous method of killing known as signature strikes. But despite the executive order’s emphasis on steps to “ensure military objectives and civilians are clearly distinguished”, senior administration officials indicated that Obama will permit signature strikes to continue.
:link 2Out of the 494 cases related to terrorism the US has tried since 9/11, the plurality of convictions – 18% overall – are not for thwarted plots but for "material support" charges, a broad category expanded further by the 2001 Patriot Act that permits prosecutors to pursue charges with tenuous connections to a terrorist act or group.In one such incident, the initial basis for a material-support case alleging a man provided "military gear" to al-Qaida turned out to be waterproof socks in his luggage.
Nearly all of the highest-profile domestic terrorism plots in the United States since 9/11 featured the "direct involvement" of government agents or informants, a new report says.Some of the controversial "sting" operations "were proposed or led by informants", bordering on entrapment by law enforcement. Yet the courtroom obstacles to proving entrapment are significant, one of the reasons the stings persist.The lengthy report, released on Monday by Human Rights Watch, raises questions about the US criminal justice system's ability to respect civil rights and due process in post-9/11 terrorism cases. It portrays a system that features not just the sting operations but secret evidence, anonymous juries, extensive pretrial detentions and convictions significantly removed from actual plots."In some cases the FBI may have created terrorists out of law-abiding individuals by suggesting the idea of taking terrorist action or encouraging the target to act," the report alleges.
:linkAccording to a September 2016 study by Alex Nowrasteh at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, some 3,024 Americans died from 1975 through 2015 due to foreign-born terrorism. That number includes the 9/11 terrorist attacks (2,983 people) and averages nearly 74 Americans per year.Since 9/11, however, foreign-born terrorists have killed roughly one American per year. Six Americans have died per year at the hands, guns, and bombs of Islamic terrorists (foreign and domestic).
:link"I once asked a guy at [the National Institutes of Health] how much we should spend on preventing a disease that kills 6 per year, and he looked at me like I was crazy," John Mueller, a foreign policy expert at the Ohio State University and co-author of the book "Chasing Ghosts: The Policing of Terrorism", told Business Insider in an email.
:link 1U.S. government support for Iraq was not a secret and was frequently discussed in open session of the US Senate and House of Representatives. On June 9, 1992, Ted Koppel reported on ABC's Nightline that the "Reagan/Bush administrations permitted—and frequently encouraged—the flow of money, agricultural credits, dual-use technology, chemicals, and weapons to Iraq."
:link 2More recent efforts to rebuild and equip the Iraqi army have once again resulted in a massive arms flow into Iraq.
:link 3The report titled, “‘IS’ supply channels through Turkey,” confirms what has been reported by geopolitical analysts since at least as early as 2011 – that ISIS subsides on immense, multi-national state sponsorship, including, obviously, Turkey itself.Looking at maps of ISIS-held territory and reading action reports of its offensive maneuvers throughout the region and even beyond, one might imagine hundreds of trucks a day would be required to maintain this level of fighting capacity. One could imagine similar convoys crossing into Iraq from Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Similar convoys are likely passing into Syria from Jordan.In all, considering the realities of logistics and their timeless importance to military campaigns throughout human history, there is no other plausible explanation to ISIS’s ability to wage war within Syria and Iraq besides immense resources being channeled to it from abroad.
:link 4The private prosecution seeks the trial in a British court of Blair, the foreign secretary in 2003, Jack Straw, and Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general at the time the government was deciding to join the invasion of Iraq.It seeks their conviction for the crime of aggression and is based on the damning findings of last year’s Chilcot report into the British decision to join the invasion of Iraq, under the false pretext that Saddam Hussein’s regime had weapons of mass destruction.
link 5Newly published official figures reveal that the UK won defence orders worth £7.7bn last year. It now has about 12% of the global defence export market and, over the last decade, has shored up its position as the second largest arms exporter in the world.There is still much to play for. The government’s own figures suggest that the global defence export market in 2015 was worth a fraction under $100bn, a 17% increase on 2014.As the market has expanded, successive governments have gone to extraordinary lengths to promote the sector. Tony Blair intervened to prevent an investigation into arms exports to Riyadh; Cameron assiduously courted Saudi royalty; earlier this year the defence secretary, Michael Fallon, led a UK delegation to Qatar to promote sales of the Eurofighter jet.The Middle East is considered by the government to be a priority market. Two-thirds of all arms exports go to the region. In the last two years the UK has agreed arms deals worth £388m with the United Arab Emirates, £170m with Qatar, £120m with Oman and £24m with Bahrain.Other countries with questionable human rights records have also become major customers. In the last three years the UK has sold £450m of arms to Turkey, despite its increasing authoritarianism and political instability, and £116m of weaponry to Egypt, despite its recent coup and worsening human rights situation.
If the word 'Zombie' can be attached to any part of the question of the OP, it is to describe the lack of action to address the reality of the Middle East conflict on the part of the 'general public' in the UK and the USA who are partially responsible via their taxes for funding this evil state of affairs.
And just to make it clear, in case anyone gets hold of the wrong end of the stick...I am a pacifist who is against all types of violence and oppression.