Transcript: The Latest Bin Laden Statement (September 2009)

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Provided by Juan Cole from the US Government's Open Source Center:

Praise be to God, Who created people to worship Him, ordered them to be just, and permitted the wronged to mete out fair punishment to the wrongdoer.

American people: This address to you is a reminder of the causes of 11 (September) and the wars and consequences that followed and the way to settle it once and for all. I mention in particular the families of those who were hurt in these events and who have recently called for opening an investigation to know its causes. This is a first and important step in the right direction among many other steps that have deliberately gone in the wrong direction over eight barren years that you have experienced.

The entire American people should follow suit, as the delay in knowing those reasons has cost you a lot without any noteworthy benefit.

If the White House administration, which is one of the two parties to the dispute, has made it clear to you in the past years that war was necessary to maintain your security, then wise persons should be eager to listen to the two parties to the dispute to know the truth, so listen to what I am going to say.

At the beginning, I say that we have made it clear and stated so many times for over two decades that the cause of the quarrel with you is your support for your Israeli allies, who have occupied our land, Palestine. This position of yours, along with some other grievances, is what prompted us to carry out the 11 September events. Had you known the magnitude of our suffering as a result of the injustice of the Jews against us, with the support of your administrations for them, you would have known that both our nations are victims of the policies of the White House, which is in fact a hostage in the hands of pressure groups, especially major corporations and the Israeli lobby.

One of the best persons to explain to you the causes of the events of the 11th is one of your citizens, a former veteran CIA agent, whose conscience awoke in his eighth decade and decided to tell the truth despite the threats, and to explain to you the message of the 11th. So he carried out some activities for this purpose in particular, including his book Apology of a Hired Assassin.

As for explaining the suffering of our people in Palestine, Obama has recently acknowledged in his speech from Cairo the suffering of our kinfolk there, who are living under occupation and siege. Things will become clearer if you read what your former president, Carter, wrote about the racism of the Israelis against our kinfolk in Palestine, and also if you listened to his statement weeks ago during his visit to the destroyed and besieged Gaza Strip. He said in that statement that the people of Gaza are treated more as animals than human beings. For us God suffices, and He is the best disposer of affairs.

We should have a lengthy pause at this point. Any person with an iota of mercy in his heart cannot but sympathize with those oppressed elderly, women, and children living under the deadly siege. Above that, the Zionists pound them with US-made incendiary phosphorous bombs. Life there is tragic beyond limits, to the point that children die b etween the arms of their parents and doctors due to the lack of food and medicine and the power outages. It is indeed a disgrace for world politicians who are content with that, and their loyalists, who are behaving as such with prior knowledge and premeditation, and under the influence of the Israeli lobby in America. The details of that are explained by two of your fellow citizens. They are John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in their book The Israel Lobby in the United States.

After reading the suggested books, you will know the truth and you will be severely shocked at the magnitude of deception that has been practiced against you. You will also know that those who make statements from inside the White House today and claim that your wars against us are necessary for your security are in fact working along the same line of Cheney and Bush, and propagating the former policies of intimidation to market the interests of the relevant major corporations, at the expense of your blood and economy. Those in fact are the ones who are imposing wars on you, not the mujahidin. We are just defending our right to liberate our land.

If you thoroughly consider your situation, you will know that the White House is occupied by pressure groups. You should have made efforts to liberate it rather than fight to liberate Iraq, as Bush claimed. The White House leader, under such circumstances, and regardless of who he is, is like a train driver who cannot but travel on the railways designed by these pressure groups. Otherwise, his way would be blocked and he would fear that his destiny would be like that of former President Kennedy and his brother.

In a nutshell, it is time to free yourselves from fear and intellectual terrorism being practiced against you by the neoconservatives and the Israeli lobby. You should put the file of your alliance with the Israelis on the table of discussion. You should ask yourselves the following question so that you can determine your position: Do you like the Israelis' security, sons, and economy more than your security, blood, sons, money, jobs, houses, economy, and reputation? If you choose your security and stopping the wars -- and this has been shown by opinion polls -- then this requires that you act to stop those who are tampering with our security on your end. We are prepared to respond to this option on sound and fair foundations that have been mentioned before.

Here is an important point that we should pay attention to with regard to war and stopping it. When Bush assumed power and appointed a defense secretary [Donald Rumsfeld] who had made the biggest contribution to killing more than two million persecuted villagers in Vietnam, sane people predicted that Bush was preparing for new massacres in his era. This was what took place in Iraq and Afghanistan. When Obama assumed power and kept the men of Cheney and Bush -- namely, the senior officials in the Defense Department, like Gates, Mullen, and Petraeus -- sane people knew that Obama is a weak person who will not be able to stop the war as he had promised and that he would procrastinate as much as possible. If he were to decide, then he would hand over command to the generals who oppose this aimless war, like the former commander of troops in Iraq, General Sanchez, and the commander of the Central Command who was forced by Bush to resign shortly before leaving the White House due to his opposition to the war. He appointed instead of him a person who would escalate the war. Under the cover of his readiness to cooperate with the Republicans, Obama made the biggest trick as he kept the most important and most dangerous secretary from Cheney's men to continue the war. The days will show you that you have changed only faces in the White House. The bitter truth is that the neoconservatives are still a heavy burden on you.

Once again, if you stop the war, then that is fine. If you choose not to stop the war, then we have no other option but to continue the war of attrition against you on all possible axes, just as we did with the Soviet Union for 10 years until it disintegrated, with the grace of God. Continue the war for as long as you wish. You are fighting a desperate, losing war that is in favor of others. There seems to be no end in sight for this war.

Russian generals, who learned lessons from the battles in Afghanistan, had anticipated the result of the war before its start, but you do not like those who give you advice. This is a losing war, God willing, as it is funded by money that is borrowed based on exorbitant usury and is fought by soldiers whose morale is down and who commit suicide on a daily basis to escape from this war.

"This war was prescribed to you by two doctors, Cheney and Bush, as a cure for the 11 September events. However, the bitterness and losses caused by this war are worse than the bitterness of the events themselves. The accumulated debts incurred as a result of this war have almost done away with the US economy as a whole. It has been said that disease could be less evil than some medicines.

Praise be to God, we are carrying our weapon on our shoulders and have been fighting the two poles of evil in the East and the West for 30 years. Throughout this period, we have not seen any cases of suicide among us despite the international pursuit against us. We praise God for this. This proves the soundness of our belief and the justice of our cause. God willing, we will continue our way to liberate our land. Our weapon is patience. We seek victory from God. We will not give up the Al-Aqsa Mosque. We hold on to Palestine more than we hold on to our souls. Continue the war as long as you wish, we will never bargain over it (Palestine).

"Endless war will not tire me
For I am now fully grown and strong
For this, my mother begot me (lines of poetry)
Peace be upon those who follow guidance.

Afghanistan: The Difficulties of "The Necessary War"

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Amidst the drumbeat from media, "experts", and many politicians for further US military intervention in Afghanistan, Stephen Walt's concise but effective survey of the complications of "the necessary war", posted on his blog for Foreign Policy, is a depressing but essential read, "These (and other) contradictions might help us understand why the current effort in Afghanistan is likely to fail, even if we devote a lot more resources to it and even if the people in charge do their best":

Why is Afghanistan so hard?

Why is Afghanistan so hard? It's not difficult to think of reasons: 1) the long-standing divisions among the various tribal/ethnic groups that make up Afghan society, 2) the mountainous, inhospitable terrain, 3) lack of infrastructure, 4) weak governmental institutions and little history of centralized authority, 5) the destructive effects of many years of warfare, 6) endemic corruption, 7) traditional hostility to foreign occupation, etc. ... Given all that, it is hardly surprising that outside efforts to rebuild the country and establish a legitimate central government have thus far failed to accomplish very much.

If that weren't enough, our efforts there are also hampered by some inherent strategic contradictions. In particular, most of the things the United States might do to improve the situation tend to make other aspects of the problem worse. Even if we make progress on one dimension, it tends to set us back in some other way. Here are five reasons why running harder seems to leave us in the same place.

1. If the U.S. does more, others do less.

The United States didn't want NATO's help when it first went into Afghanistan in 2002. As one U.S. official put it at the time, "the more allies you have, the more permissions you have to get." Those days are long past, however, and the Obama administration would love to get more help from its allies. Unfortunately, working with lots of allies creates obvious coordination problems (e.g., the recent airstrike at German instigation that killed a number of Afghan civilians), and public support for the war is visibly waning in Europe (as it is in the United States). Even worse, there is a basic contradiction between the Obama administration's decision to increase US force levels and its desire to get greater allied assistance. As the well-known theory of collective goods tells us, the more we do, the more that other states will be tempted to "free-ride," leaving Uncle Sam holding the bag.

2. The more money we put in, the more corrupt Afghanistan will become.

Afghanistan has two main industries: opium growing and international assistance. It also has an endemic problem with corruption. Even if various forms of external assistance do accomplish some worthy tasks, it also tends to reinforce the other dysfunctional behaviors that have plagued the Karzai regime since its inception. In short, even well-intentioned and admirable efforts to help the Afghan people in concrete ways may not leave us in a better position overall.

Read rest of article...

Video, Transcript, and Analysis: Gates Interview with Al Jazeera (7 September)

On Tuesday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates spoke to Al Jazeera on a range of issues including the situation in Iraq, the Iran nuclear progamme, the "necessary war" in Afghanistan, the role of Pakistan in the region, and the ties of United States with Latin America.



The most critical point Gates made was on the Iranian pursuit of uranium enrichment. It appears that the US is trying to neutralise Israeli opposition to a peace process with the "threat" of Palestine by offering an incentive of dealing with the greater "threat" from Iran. Washington will lead a political campaign rallying Arab states against Tehran's ambitions if Israel in turn meets some of the Arab concerns by engaging in genuine discussions with the Palestinian Authority:

I think there's a central question or a central point here to be made and it has to do both with our friends and allies in the region, our Arab allies, as well as the Iranian nuclear programme, and that is one of the pathways, to get the Iranians to change their approach on the nuclear issue, is to persuade them that moving down that path will actually jeopardise their security, not enhance it.

So the more that our Arab friends and allies can straighten their security capabilities, the more they can strengthen their co-operation, both with each other and with us, I think sends the signal to the Iranians that this path they're on is not going to advance Iranian security but in fact could weaken it.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Q - There are rumblings of discontent with the war in Afghanistan among many Americans. Is that cause for concern to you personally as secretary of defence?

Americans know that our country has been at war for a number of years ever since we were attacked in 2001.

Obviously we've lost a lot of our young men and women in combat, not to mention the casualties in New York and Washington and Pennsylvania on September 11.

And so there is a sort of war awareness on the part of the American people.

By the same token, I believe that they and members of our congress vividly remember that it was from Afghanistan that the attack was launched.

And that the Taliban did not just provide a safe haven for al-Qaeda, but actively co-operated with them, colluded with them and provided them with a worldwide base of operations.

And so I think the American people know that we have to work with the Afghan government and people so that they can establish control over their own territory and prevent Afghanistan from being used as a base for al-Qaeda in the future.

The reality is also that al-Qaeda has killed many more Muslims than it has Americans, Europeans and others.

So this is a challenge we all face and I am confident the American people will sustain their committment to help the Afghan people.

Q - How much is the US in a pickle in Afghanistan?

I think the picture is mixed. It's clear that the Taliban have had success in reinfiltrating back into the country.

They have intimidated a lot of Afghans. And so we and our allies and a lot of the security forces, clearly have our work cut out for us.

The situation is serious, but General [Stanley] McChrystal and, I must say, the Afghan defence minister [Abdul Rahim] Wardak have told me that we can be successful.

Q - In light of the US attack in Kunduz, which resulted in the killing of many civilian Afghans, how much of a real problem are civilian deaths in Afghanistan?

I think it's a real problem, and General McChrystal thinks it's a real problem too.

Clearly, we regret any loss of civilian life in Afghanistan, and I've addressed this issue while in Afghanistan as well in the United States. And one of the central themes of General McChrystal's new approach in Afghanistan is significant change in our tactical approach to try and minimise the number of innocent civilians that are killed.

So he has changed the rules in terms of air power. He has issued a directive that convoys obey Afghan traffic laws, and, in fact, that our troops take some additional risk to themselves to avoid innocent Afghan casualties.

Part of the challenge here is that the Taliban actively target innocent civilians and they also create circumstances where they mingle among innocent civilians.

And they are willing to put innocent civilians at risk.

But we are trying to figure out new tactics that minimise this.

But it is a challenge. Central to the success of the 42 nations that are trying to help the Afghan people and government at this point is that the Afghan people continue to believe that we are their friends, their partners and here to help them.

So civilian casualties are a problem for us and we are doing everything conceivable to try and avoid that.

I think that based on the latest polling that we have, nationwide, in Afghanistan, fewer than 10 per cent of the people support the Taliban.

The Taliban's approach is one principally of intimadation of villagers and others, and Afghans don't want to live under those circumstances. They don't want to live under the Taliban rule again.

While they may not actively support the US, neither do they support the Taliban.

The Afghan people have been at war for over 30 years. What they want is peace and security. Over time, we and all of the international community with us, along with the Afghan security forces, are in a position to try to bring that to them.

Q - Do you think saying the US is in Afghanistan to help the people holds water despite the fact that Afghans have traditionally been hostile to foreign forces in their country? In the past they rejected occupation, first by the British and later on by the Soviets, for example.

I think that the historical rejection of foreign powers has been because the Afghan people have come to see those powers, whether it's Britain or the Soviet Union or anyone else, as being there for their own imperial interests, rather than being there in the interests in the Afghan people.

We have no interest in a permanent presence in Afghanistan; no interest in bases in Afghanistan.

What our interest is, is in giving the Afghan people the capacity to protect its own people and to prevent Afghanistan from being a centre for violent extremists again. And then we'll leave.

And I think that's an important message from us to the Afghan people. We want to give them the capacity to protect their own security as well as the security of other nations around the world from threats emanating from Afghanistan, and then we'll be gone.

Q - When Barack Obama said the war in Afghanistan was a war of necessity, did he say that because he knew it could be a winnable situation or because if he said otherwise and he talked about exiting Afghanistan, people would say President Obama does not have what it takes to look after the national security concerns of Americans?

I do not believe that President Obama would have made trhe committment he has made if he did not believe we could achieve our objectives in Afghanistan, which as I have described are giving them the capacity to secure their own territory and prevent al-Qaeda from returning to Afghanistan.

If he didn't think, he could achieve those objectives, I don't believe he would have committed the additional forces he has, or made the statement in support of the strategy as he did a few weeks ago.

Q - So you think the war in Afghanistan is winnable?

I don't like to speak in terms of winning or losing. I think we need to speak in terms of achieving our objectives.

This is not just about the United States, it's about the Afghan government and people, about dozens of nations and nongovernmental organisations that are in Afghanistan that all share the same objectives that I have just described.

Which is to bring peace and security to the Afghan people and to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a haven for violent extremists.

I think that those objectives are achievable and I think that's the way we ought to think about it.

Q - There is a debate about the level of US troops in Afghanistan. Some people say to secure the gains the US makes in Afghanistan, the troop level needs to be increased. Others say the more you increase the level of troops, the more you increase the targets for the Taliban.

We are not yet beginning to think about significant troops in Afghanistan.

The next step for us is to evaluate General McChrystal's assessment of the situation and the way he intends to implement the president's strategy going forward. And once we've done that, then we will look at the question of whether additional resources are needed to achieve those objectives.

I have been concerned about ... I have had a number of reservations about the number of US troops.

One of those is - as we were just talking - about whether our forces come to be seen by the Afghans at some point as occupiers rather than partners.

General McChrystal's point, which I think has great validity, is: it's really how those forces are used and how they interact with the Afghan people that determines how they are seen by the Afghans.

And I think that the approach that he has taken, in terms of partnering with the Afghans, and interacting with the Afghan people, and supporting them, mitigates the concerns that I had.

There are issues on both sides of [the argument] and, frankly, I haven't made up my own mind at this point, in terms of whether more forces are needed.

Q - So, as far as you are concerned, thinking about withdrawing the US militarily from Afghanistan, even thinking about it, is out of the question?

That's my view.

Q - This takes me back to the original point you made about 9/11. President Bush made the original decision to go to war in Afghanistan, which he did, and then subsequently made the decision to go to war in Iraq, opening himself to criticism that he diverted crucial attention from Afghanistan to Iraq. And yet, now we have President Obama saying that it is a war of necessity. A lot of people would argue it was a war of necessity then, but having moved away from it, then come back to it again, it's become a war of choice.

It is a matter of first of all, this gets very tied up into US politics and the controversies of the war in Iraq and so on. I think that success in achieiving our objectives in Afghanistan has been a consistent theme since 2002, for both the Bush administration and the Obama administration.

I think President Obama would say as you suggested that our attention was diverted by Iraq and now it is important to focus, again, on the situation in Afghanistan, and the truth is the situation in Afghanistan has changed, and it really began to change in 2005 and 2006.

Frankly, when agreements were reached on the Pakistani side of the border, it essentially relieved the pressure from the Pakistan side, on the Taliban who were then in Pakistan.

And so we have seen a steady increase in violence that really began late in 2005 and early 2006, and the Taliban have gotten better and better over that time.

You also now have alliances of convenience between the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Haqqani network, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar - his group - and al-Qaeda. So it is now perhaps a more complex situation than it was in 2002.

But in terms of the determination to deal with this problem and partner with the Afghans in achieving these objectives, the president is absolutely firm.

Q - When you say the situation now is much more complex, to what extent is that synonymous with saying we, US politicians, missed the bandwagon?

The way I would phrase it, and the way we have phrased, it is that we did not provide the resources in Afghanistan early enough to stem this change in the situation in 2005 and 2006.

And we have to speak frankly: because of the troop commitments in Iraq, we didn't have the resources to move in reinforcements if you will as the situation in Afghanistan began to deteriorate.

When I first arrived in this job, I extended one brigade in Afghanistan in January 2007 and added another brigade later in spring 2007 but that was really about all the resources that we had at that time.

As we have drawn down in Iraq, more capability has become available.

Q - I would like to ask you about the 'shenanigans' with the news agency Associated Press over the publication of the picture of the dead US marine. Doesn't that put you in a difficult position, leaving you open to the accusation of infringing or violating freedom of expression?

I have, in a letter that I sent to the head of the Associated Press, I said this is not a matter of law, this is not a matter of policy, this is not a constitutional issue, this is a question of judgement, of common decency, and out of respect for the family.

What I asked was, that they defer to the wishes of the family that these pictures of their maimed and stricken child not be provided the newspaper all over the United States. They chose to go ahead and do it anyway.

Q - And you are not concerned that this may have been interpreted as an infringement on the freedom of press?

No I don't think. There is no question, no issue of infringement of the freedom of the press whatsoever. I was asking them, I didn't pressure them, I didn't threaten them.

All I did was ask the. In fact, the words that I used with the head of the Associated Press was that "I beg you to defer to the wishes of the father of this marine".

That's all I asked. That's not an infringement of the freedom of the press. That's an appeal to common decency.

Q - [Washington Post columnist] George Will recently wrote about Pakistan, saying that it is the country that really matters. What do you make of that, given that the implications are that Afghanistan does not really matter, that the US should get out of Afghanistan?

Pakistan is very important. It is important intrinsically to the United States.

We have been a friend of Pakistan's for a long time and an ally of Pakistan's. We've had a very close relationship and we look forward to building that relationship, going forward completely independent of Afghanistan.

I think one of the new aspects of the president's strategy with respect to Afghanistan is the recognition that the problem we face there, we and the Afghans, is a regional problem.

And as we've seen in recent months, it is a problem that the Pakistani government faces and so I think Pakistan clearly is important.

It is important in its own right to the United States, as a friend and ally, but it is also important in terms of violent extremists that cross back and forth across that border and put both the government of Afghanistan and the government of Pakistan at risk.

Q - Given the difficulties that successive Pakistani civilian governments have had, how dependable, from a US point of view, do you think the current government in Pakistan is, in terms of being able to deal not only with the volatility of Pakistan but also the regional volatility, Afghanistan, India and so forth?

I think if you look back, 15 or 16 months, the Pakistani government has performed admirably.

No one I think would have predicted the political consensus that has emerged in Pakistan in terms of the effort to take on these violent extremists in the North West Frontier Province, in the Fata [Federally Administered Tribal Areas] and in that area.

I think people would not have predicted the success of the Pakistani army. I think people would not have predicted the success in the Pakistani government's effective dealing with internally displaced persons as a result of a military operation and how many of them have returned to Swat and how effective the Pakistani government has been in this respect.

So all of that is simply to say I believe that the Pakistani government, both the civilian side and the military side, have performed better than almost anyone's expectations in the region, or in this country, or elsewhere, and we are very impressed by that and we are prepared to be helpful, to help the Pakistanis in any way we can.

Q - Given the serious misgivings that the United States had in the past about the role of Pakistani intelligence, in terms of dealing with the Taliban, there were accusations to the Pakistani intelligence at that time that they were actually lending a hand of support to the Taliban. Are you 100 per cent satisfied now that that has stopped and that you, the US, the Pakistani military and the Pakistani civilian government are all in the same trench, working for the same goal?

First of all, I believe we are in the same trench, working for the same goal.

I think you have to go back a little bit in history. I was very much involved in the American effort 20, 25 years ago in co-operation with Pakistan to support the muhajidin in Afghanistan when they were fighting against the Soviet Union.

One of the vehicles that we used in that effort was the connection between the Pakistani intelligence and various muhajidin groups within Afghanistan.

So these relationships with groups in Afghanistan and with Pakistanis go back a long way and at that time we were very productive and very useful.

My own view is that the connections were maintained largely as a hedge because the Pakistanis are very concerned about the stability of their border area and about the stability of Afghanistan and they weren't sure whether we would continue our efforts in Afghanistan.

So I believe we're on the same page, I believe we're working for the same goals. I have a lot of confidence in the Pakistanis.

Q - Basically the implication of what you're saying is that the United States will not do again what it did after the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, which is to cut loose and leave the regional players to fend for themselves, undermining the credibility of the US in that part of Asia?

I think that's absolutely right. And I have to say I was in the American government at the time we did that and it was a serious strategic mistake.

As soon as the Soviets left Afghanistan, we turned our backs on Afghanistan and we did not cultivate our relationship with the Pakistanis properly. And so I think we gave rise to doubts in the region about whether we are prepared to stay there and be their partner on a continuous basis, and I believe we've learned our lesson and that both Afghanistan and Pakistan can count on us for the long term.

Q - In terms of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, you are absolutely categorically sure that there is no risk that they may fall into the wrong hands given the pressures that the Taliban in Afghanistan are exerting not just on the Pakistanis but also on the United States in Pakistan?

I'm quite comfortable that the security arrangements for the Pakistani nuclear capabilities are sufficient and adequate.

Q - What sort of guarantees do you have to cover that?

I would say it's based both on our own understanding of the security arrangements that the Pakistanis have for their weapons and their capabilities, their laboratories and so on. But also the insurances we have been given by the Pakistanis.

Q - Were you baffled by President Obama's envoy Richard Holbrooke, when he was asked how he would measure progress and he said 'we will know it when we see it'?

I probably would have answered the question differently.

Q - How would you have answered it?

I would have answered it: I believe that success or progress will be as when we see the Afghan national security forces, the army and the police, assuming a greater and greater role in security operations protecting Afghanistan and the Afghan people, so that we can recede, first into an advisory role and then leave altogether.

So in some way, it's somehow comparable to the situation in Iraq where our role has become less and less prominent, where the Iraqis have taken a more and more prominent role protecting their own security, and I think that will be one way we will be able to measure success in Afghanistan as we see the Afghan security forces taking a more and more prominent and leading role in protecting their own security.

Q - In the latest press conference that you gave, together with Admiral Mike Mullen, you talked about the analogies people often make between Afghanistan and Iraq. You said that the fundamental difference is that in Iraq there has been a strong central government but in Afghanistan, there has never been a strong central government. And in terms of fighting al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, that's obviously making your work a lot more difficult. How confident are you that the Iraqi central government, led by Nuri al-Maliki, at the present time, can hold the country together after you leave?

I think we have real confidence that they can do that and I think the best evidence that a sense of Iraqi nationalism has returned is that al-Qaeda has made very strong efforts in recent weeks and months to try and provoke a renewal of the sectarian violence between the Sunnis and the Shias in Iraq through suicide bombers, and what has been interesting and encouraging is that they have failed in that effort.

The Shia understand this is al-Qaeda trying to provoke that kind of a conflict and they're having none (...) so there has not been any renewal of sectarian violence.

Our generals have very high regard of the Iraqi army and, increasingly, Iraqi police, and I think we would not have felt comfortable agreeing to the arrangements we have to pull out of Iraqi cities, and to put a deadline on the withdrawal of American combat troops, if we didn't have confidence in the Iraqis. I think [commander of US forces in Iraq] General [Ray] Odierno would say they have developed better and faster than he would have anticipated.

So we are very encouraged by the developments in Iraq with respect to the security situation despite these suicide bombings that we think are mostly the efforts of al-Qaeda.

Q - A lot of the people in the region will look at Iraq post-2003, now that you say al-Qaeda has been trying to stoke up sectarian strife in Iraq. A lot of people will look at 2003, and at what the United States did post 2003, and say: Actually that was the engine of sectarian strife in Iraq in the first place.

Well, I wasn't in government at the time and I was no expert on Iraq before I came into government. I wouldn't pretend to be an expert now either but ...

Q - But would you say the US getting out of Iraq would necessarily put an end to sectarian strife or would it actually increase the prospects of sectarian strife?

I think that what we have already seen in Iraq, despite the provocations by al-Qaeda, the Iraqis are ready to move beyond the violence of the last several years and to grove their economy and to have peace.

I think that's why you have not seen renewed sectarian violence and that's why we are comfortable with the arrangements in which we have withdrawn from cities and in which we will withdraw all our combat troops by the end of August next year.

We are very comfortable with that, and that means we do not believe there will be a renewal of the sectarian violence with our departure.

Q - My understanding is that President Obama has pledged that the US will not build any permanent military bases in Iraq after leaving. Does that pledge still stand?

Absolutely.

Q - Now how do you define permanent? Because bases in Germany have been there for about 60 years now. In Korea for a similar period of time. How do you define permanent and how do you define temporary?

Temporary is based on the fact that another part of this agreement is that all US forces will be out of Iraq by the end of 2011. That is the agreement that we have with the Iraqi government: all US forces. No bases, no forces.

Q - Unless the Iraqis ask you to stay?

Unless there is some new agreement, or some new negotiation which would clearly be on Iraqi terms.

But we will not have any permanent bases in Iraq. We have no interest in permanent bases in Iraq and we are now planning on withdrawing all American military forces by the end of 2011.

Q - A lot of people, including some of your closest allies in the Gulf, think that at the end of the day, the real winner after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, is Iran, and, you listen to US politicians here in DC, you have a real problem with Iran.

I think Iran has been a challenge for the United States, and for the international community for that matter, for 30 years. I think that a strong and democratic Iraq, particularly one with a multi-sectarian government, becomes a barrier to Iranian influence and not a bridge for it.

So I think, in the short term, perhaps Iran's position was strengthened somewhat but I think if you look to the longer term, and the role that Iraq can play in the region going forward, I think that Iran's position may well be diminished.

Q - But many people feel that you took out one fundamental bastion against Iranian influence in the region and that is the regime of Saddam Hussein. You changed the political configuration in the country, bringing a Shia government to power. Everybody knows there are Iraqi politicians in the Iraqi government who are very close to Iran or have some sort of sensibility that makes them close to the government of Iran. How is that going to be a bastion against Iranian influence even in the long term?

Well, I think first of all we've seen over the past years a genuine assertion of Iraqi nationalism from Prime Minister Maliki and from other leaders inside Iraq.

I have no doubt that at the end of the day, the leaders in Iraq are first and foremost Iraqis. After all none of them have forgotten the eight years of war that they fought with Saddam Hussein and they haven't forgotten that Saddam Hussein started that war.

So I think that, by all accounts that we can see and the actions we have seen the government of Iraq take, including for example Prime Minister Maliki's offensive in the Basra area over a year ago, made clear they are most concerned with maintaining Iraqi sovereignty.

If the United States has learned anything in the last year as we have negotiated the framework agreement with the Iraqis it is that the Iraqis are very sensitive about their sovereignty and, as with almost any other country, are not going to tolerate other countries trying to interfere in their internal affairs.

Q - Let's assume for a minute that in the short term, or medium term even, that the Iranians have strengthened their hand in Iraq, and that's going to change in the long term. Hasn't Iran been able to increase its influence in neighbouring Iraq, and therefore strengthened its hand in dealing with the West over its nuclear programmme?

No, I don't agree with that. I think that the situation in Iraq has little bearing on Iran and its nuclear programme.

Q - Can you, for example in the case the Israelis resort to military action, as they seem to be itching to do, against Iranian nuclear facilities, can you guarantee that Iranians will not use Iraq to retaliate against the Unites States for example?

Well, I'm not going to address hypothetical situations. Our view is that there is still an opportunity for diplomacy and political and economic pressures to bring about a change of policy in Iran, so getting into hypotheticals about military reaction, I think doesn't take us very far.

And I'm confident that we still have some opportunities in that area.

Q - Hypotheticals aside, if you say you still have some time for manoeuvring in that area, to what extent are you reading from the same hymn sheet as the Israelis?

Every country looks at a given situation through the lens of its own security. Our view, and the view that we have shared I might say strongly with all our friends and allies in the region as well as elsewhere, is that the way to deal with the Iranian nuclear programme at this point is through diplomatic and economic efforts.

Q - The issue of Iran and Israel is obviously rattling a lot of countries in the region, the Israelis, the Gulf states, who are thinking about buying more and more weapons, and indeed there has been some sales authorised by the United States. Some estimates put the weapons packages to the Gulf states and Israel at about $100bn. How much substance is there to that?

That figure sounds very high to me. But I think there's a central question or a central point here to be made and it has to do both with our friends and allies in the region, our Arab allies, as well as the Iranian nuclear programme, and that is one of the pathways, to get the Iranians to change their approach on the nuclear issue, is to persuade them that moving down that path will actually jeopardise their security, not enhance it.

So the more that our Arab friends and allies can straighten their security capabilities, the more they can strengthen their co-operation, both with each other and with us, I think sends the signal to the Iranians that this path they're on is not going to advance Iranian security but in fact could weaken it.

So that's one of the reasons why I think our relationship with these countries and our security co-operation with them is so important.

Q - I mentioned $100bn and you said that doesn't sound right to you. What does sound right to you as a figure?

I honestly don't know.

Q - But there are a lot of weapons being asked for by the countries in the region?

We have a very broad foreign military sales programme and obviously with most of our friends and allies out there, but the arrangements that are being negotiated right now, I just honestly don't know the accumulated total.

Q - You're asking the Iranians to give up their intentions to build nuclear weapons. They are saying they're not building nuclear weapons. On the other hand, a lot of people in the region feel that you know that the Israelis do have nuclear weapons and they say why doesn't the West start with Israel, which is known to possess nuclear weapons rather than with the Iranians, who are suspected of having them. What do you say to that argument?

First of all, it's the Iranian leadership that has said it wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Those threats have not been made in the other direction. It is the Iranian government that is in violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions with respect to these programmes, so focus needs to be on the country that is feuding the will of the international community and the United Nations.

Q - But you decided that the rhetoric of the Iranians reflects the reality of what's going on in Iran in terms of nuclear weapons. Isn't that a leap of faith?

Well, we obviously have information in terms of what the Iranians are doing. We also have what the Iranians themselves have said, so we only are taking them at their word.

Q - So you know for sure that they are working on a nuclear bomb?

I would not go that far but clearly they have elements of their nuclear programme that are in violation of UN Security Council resolutions.

We want them to adhere to these resolutions and we are willing to acknowledge the right of the Iranian government and the Iranian people to have a peaceful nuclear programme if it is intended for the production of electric power so on. What is central, then, is trying to persuade the Iranians to agree to that and then to verification procedures under the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency].

That gives us confidence that it is indeed a peaceful nuclear programme and not a weaponisation programme.

The truth of the matter is that, if Iran proceeds with a nuclear weapons programme it may well spark and arms race, a real arms race, and potentially a nuclear arms race in the entire region.

So it is in the interest of all countries for Iran to agree to arrangements that allow a peaceful nuclear programme and give the international community confidence that's all they're doing.

Q - But the Obama administration seems to have a difficult circle to square because on one hand they're saying that they want improved relations with the Muslim world. On the other hand, any pressure on Iran, is seen by people in the Muslim world as an indication the US is not genuine in wanting to improve those relations because many Muslims say Israel has nuclear weapons, and the US is not doing anything about it.

The focus is on which country is in violation of the UN Security Council resolutions. The pressure on Iran is simply to be a good member of the international community.

The neighbours around Iran, our Arab friends and allies, are concerned about what is going on in Iran, and not just the governments.

So the question is how does Iran become a member in good standing of the international community. That's in the interest of everybody.

Q - A last issue, relations between the US and Latin America: There have been a lot of angry noises coming out of Latin America over the issue of military bases in Colombia. How much of a problem is the issue of bases in Colombia to the United States and its relations with Latin America?

I think that's an issue that has been exploited by certain governments down there such as the Venezuelan government.

I think for most of the continent it's not a problem. These are not American bases. This is a co-operative arrangement, negotiated with the government of Colombia, for counter-narcotic purposes.

That's all it is and nothing more, no permanent US base, no US base at all, but use of Colombian facilities in co-operation with the Colombians.

Q - But doesn't it concern you that even President Lula [da Silva] in Brazil, who is not really known for being over-vocal in his criticism of the United States, has actually been quite vocal recently in terms of criticising what is described by President [Hugo] Chavez of Venezuela, for example, as belligerent intentions on the part of the United States in Latin America?

Well, they are clearly not belligerent intentions on part of the United States and I believe that when the other governments that may be concerned in South America fully understand the nature of the co-operation agreement with the Colombians, they will understand that this is a very limited operation tightly focused on counter-narcotics.

Video and Transcript: Gates-Mullen Briefing on Afghanistan (4 September)

On Thursday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, held a press briefing to discuss developments in Afghanistan. The appearance came days after the submission of a review by General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, to President Obama recommending American strategy.

We'll have a full analysis tomorrow on this, but here's the key point, beyond the spin and bluster about a "new" approach to "protect the Afghan people". While Gates and Mullen would not comment on the troop increase in McChrystal's review, there will now be a process of several weeks in which the Administration will strike a serious pose about the build-up, possibly even spinning against the military to assert its authority and maintain some limits, before a "compromise" of another 20,000 to 25,000 US troops is authorised. That will bring the total of American forces, when you add in the "private" contractors and security units to about 150,000, more than the Soviets had in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Meanwhile this morning, the US-NATO strategy of protection killed up to 90 Afghans when jet bombers struck two hijacked fuel tankers.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

SEC. GATES: Good afternoon. I want to start today with an update on where we stand with General McChrystal's assessment on Afghanistan, and then turn things over to Admiral Mullen for his perspective.

First, some context. Soon after taking office, President Obama approved the deployment of some 21,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan to help cope with the anticipated Taliban spring offensive and to provide additional security for the Afghan elections last month. Our allies and partners also sent significant additional troops to provide for election security.

In late March, the president announced a comprehensive new civil, military and diplomatic strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the goal of disrupting, dismantling and defeating al Qaeda in order to prevent them from launching another major attack against our country.

A new military commander, General McChrystal, was appointed to implement the military component of the new strategy. When General McChrystal took command in June, I asked him to report back to me in about 60 days with his assessment of the security situation and his thinking on the implementation of the president's new strategy.

I received that report two days ago and informally forwarded a copy to the president for an initial read.

I've asked General Petraeus, the commander of Central Command, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the chairman to provide me with their evaluation of the assessment and the situation in Afghanistan, and will send their views plus my own thoughts to the president early next week. I expect that any request for additional resources would follow after this process and be similarly discussed by the president's national-security team.

All of this is being done as part of a systematic, deliberative process designed to make sure the president receives the best military information and advice on the way ahead in Afghanistan. As I said earlier, what prompted my request for this assessment was the arrival of a new commander in Afghanistan, not any new information or perceived change in the situation on the ground. My request and General McChrystal's response both are intended to help us effectively implement the president's March strategy, not launch a new one.

Admiral?

ADM. MULLEN: Thank you, Mr. Secretary. I would just add a couple of thoughts. First, on process, as the secretary indicated, he's asked the chiefs and myself to review General McChrystal's initial assessment and provide our thoughts, our advice. The chiefs and I have already met twice in the tank this week to discuss it, and we're planning at least one more session later on. My intention is to wrap up our review by Friday.

Our job -- and it's one we take very seriously -- is to provide the secretary and the president our best military advice. And we're going to do that with a clear eye not only on the needs in Afghanistan but also the needs of the force in general and on our other security commitments around the globe.

Second, it's clear to me that General McChrystal has done his job as well, laying out for his chain of command the situation on the ground, as he sees it, and offering in frank and candid terms how he believes his forces can best accomplish the mission the president has assigned to him.

And that is what this whole thing is about: the mission assigned, the strategy we've been tasked to implement. There has been enormous focus on troop numbers and timelines lately, lots of conjecture, lots of speculation.

I understand the interest in those things, and it's legitimate. Those numbers represent real units, real people and real families. But the troop piece of this is just that. It's a piece, critical, but it's not total.

What's more important than the numbers of troops he may or may not ask for is how he intends to use them. It should come as no surprise to anyone that he intends to use those forces under his command to protect the Afghan people, to give them the security they need to reject the influence the Taliban seeks.

Now, you've heard me talk for much of the last two years about Afghanistan. You know how much I remain concerned about the situation there. There is a sense of urgency. Time is not on our side.

I believe we understand that. And I believe we're going to regain the initiative, because we have a strategy. We have a new approach in implementing that strategy. And we have leaders on the ground who know the nature of the fight they are in, leaders who know that the other people and the other families who matter just as much, in this fight, are the Afghans themselves.

Our mission is to defeat al Qaeda and to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven again. We cannot accomplish that alone. We'll need help from other agencies and other countries. But we will also need the support of the local population.

So in my view, the numbers that count most are the number of Afghans we protect. As one villager told a visiting U.S. lawmaker recently, security is the mother of all progress.

SEC. GATES: Lara.

Q Thanks. A question for both of you. New polls show that public support for the war in Afghanistan is eroding. They're coming just as you prepare to go to Congress to ask for funding to fulfill General McChrystal's anticipated resource request. How concerned are you that the fading support will make it harder for those requests to be fulfilled, and how concerned are you both about this idea, that the war is slipping through the administration's fingers, is taking hold with Americans?

SEC. GATES: Well, first of all, I don't believe that the war is slipping through the administration's fingers. And I think it's important -- first of all, the nation has been at war for eight years. The fact that Americans would be tired of having their sons and daughters at risk and in battle is not surprising.

I think what is important is for us to be able to show, over the months to come, that the president's strategy is succeeding. And that is what General McChrystal is putting in front of us, is how best we can, at least from the military's standpoint, ensure that we can show signs of progress along those lines.

But I think it is also -- there is always a difference between the perspective in terms of timing in this country, and certainly in this city, and what's going on in the country. And I think what's important to remember is, the president's decisions were only made at the -- on this strategy were only made at the very end of March.

Our new commander appeared on the scene in June. We still do not have all of the forces the president has authorized in Afghanistan yet, and we still do not have all the civilian surge that the president has authorized and insisted upon in Afghanistan yet.

So we are only now beginning to be in a position to have the assets in place that -- and the strategy or the military approach in place to begin to implement the strategy. And this is going to take some time.

By the same time (sic), no one is more aware than General McChrystal and certainly the two of us that there is a limited time for us to show that this approach is working, and certainly for the secretary of State and the president as well, because there is this broader element of the strategy that goes beyond the military.

But I would just say we are mindful of that. We understand the concerns on the part of many Americans in this area, and -- but we think that we now have the resources and the right approach to begin making some headway in turning around a situation that, as many have indicated, has been deteriorating.

Q And the Chairman doesn't --

SEC. GATES: I'm sorry. Go --

ADM. MULLEN: The only thing I'd add to that is, this has been a mission that has not been well-resourced. It's been under-resourced almost since its inception, certainly in recent years. And it has -- and part of why it has gotten more serious and has deteriorated has been directly tied to that. President Obama has approved the troops, approved the civilians that, as the secretary indicated, are literally in many cases just arriving on scene.

I talked about a sense of urgency, and I do believe we have to start to turn this thing around from a security standpoint over the next 12 to 18 months.

I think the strategy's right. I -- we know how to do this. We've got a combat-hardened force that is terrific in counterinsurgency. And to listen to General McChrystal, he believes it's achievable, and I think we can succeed.

That said, it's complex. It's tough. We're losing people, as everybody knows. And yet that's the mission that the president has given us in the military, and it's the one that we are very fixed on carrying out.

Read rest of transcript...

Torture and Lies: Confronting Cheney --- 7 More Points to Note

Torture and Lies: Confronting Cheney

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We've already vented frustration and anger this morning in our introduction to the excellent piece by Dan Froomkin on Dick Cheney's public-relations campaign to sweep away torture. So we'll just add this article from the investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill:

Seven Points About Dick Cheney and Torture

First of all, Dick Cheney has all sorts of nerve purporting to speak in defense of the CIA. His administration outed a senior CIA operative, Valerie Plame, in retaliation for her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, exercising his freedom of speech (because he exercised it to criticize the Bush administration’s lie-filled, one-way propaganda train to the Iraq war).

Second, CIA interrogators themselves have said that they believed that Cheney’s torture policy put individual CIA personnel in legal jeopardy. As Greg Sargent has pointed out, on page 94 of the recently released Inspector General’s report, we learn the following:

“During the course of this Review, a number of Agency officers expressed unsolicited concern about the possibility of recrimination or legal action resulting from their participation in the CTC program….One officer expressed concern that one day, Agency officers will wind up on some “wanted list” to appear before the World Court for war crimes…”

This is not even to mention, in a broader sense, the risk to any US personnel that possibly ended up in “enemy” hands where captors of US prisoners could justify their own acts of torture by pointing to US tactics.

Third, Dick Cheney showed utter contempt for the CIA when he went not once, not twice, but more than a dozen times to Langley to pressure analysts to fit intelligence to his political agenda. He and his top aide Scooter Libby were “attempting to pressure analysts on the subject of weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, according to Vincent Cannistraro, a former counterterrorism chief at the CIA. So when Cheney talks about being “offended as hell,” let’s remember how much faith Cheney had in the CIA in the lead up to the Iraq invasion. I’m sure the CIA analysts who he tried to manipulate were “offended as hell” by Cheney’s actions. “The visits were, in fact, unprecedented,” wrote Ray McGovern, who was vice president George HW Bush’s national security briefer. “During my 27-year career at the Central Intelligence Agency, no vice president ever came to us for a working visit.” Those personal visits were in addition to the ones Cheney received at home. “I enjoyed having the CIA show up on my doorstep every morning, six days a week, with the latest intelligence,” Cheney said on Fox News Sunday.

Fourth, the tactics Cheney apparently loves were a violation of US law, international law and conventions that the US has ratified—including the Convention Against Torture ratified under the militant leftist regime of Ronald Reagan. That dovish draft-dodger who wouldn’t know torture if he endured it for several years, John McCain, pointed out the lawless aspects of Cheney’s torture program on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “I think the interrogations were in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the convention against torture that we ratified under President Reagan,” said McCain. “I think these interrogations, once publicized, helped al Qaeda recruit. I got that from an al Qaeda operative in a prison camp in Iraq… I think that the ability of us to work with our allies was harmed. And I believe that information, according go the FBI and others, could have been gained through other members.”

Fifth, there is no evidence—none—to suggest any of this torture produced any actionable intelligence. “I know specifically of reports that I read, that I saw, that lay out what we learned through the interrogation process and what the consequences were for the country,” Cheney told Sean Hannity back in April on Fox News. “I’ve now formally asked the CIA to take steps to declassify those memos so we can lay them out there and the American people have a chance to see what we obtained and what we learned and how good the intelligence was.”

Well, those documents were released last week. Cheney, clearly knowing that many “journalists” apparently wouldn’t bother reading them, was all over the media claiming the documents absolve him and that torture worked. The problem is, they showed nothing of the sort and actually—upon a close read—indicate that techniques that did not involve torture produced better results. Some portions “actually suggest the opposite of Cheney’s contention: that non-abusive techniques actually helped elicit some of the most important information the documents cite in defending the value of the CIA’s interrogations,” as Spencer Ackerman observed in the Washington Independent.

Let’s remember: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was a blowhard braggart long before he was taken prisoner by the US in March 2003, as Jane Mayer has pointed out. Al Jazeera did not need to waterboard him or put a drill to his head or threaten to rape his wife before he bragged about being the mastermind of 9/11 on the network before being captured. “[T]here’s no evidence that I see in [the declassified documents] that these things were necessary,” observed Mayer. “I spoke to someone at the CIA who was an adviser to them who conceded to me that ‘We could have gotten the same information from tea and crumpets.’”

Also, Mohammed told the International Committee of the Red Cross that he gave misinformation to US interrogators as well. “During the harshest period of my interrogation I gave a lot of false information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to hear in order to make the ill-treatment stop,” Mohammed told the ICRC. “I later told the interrogators that their methods were stupid and counterproductive. I’m sure that the false information I was forced to invent in order tomake the ill-treatment stop wasted a lot of their time and led to several false red-alerts being placed in the US.” This raises an unanswerable question: Who knows how many US lives were put at risk because of bad intelligence obtained from torture?

One of the few people that had actually seen the documents to which Cheney was referring before they were released and had the courage to speak up was Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold. In May, he said: “I am a member of the Intelligence Committee, and I can tell you that nothing I have seen, including the two documents to which [Cheney] has repeatedly referred, indicates that the torture techniques authorized by the last administration were necessary or that they were the best way to get information out of detainees.” Now that the public has had access to these documents, it is clear, as Feingold said months ago, that Cheney was “misleading the American people.” And, with the cooperation of a lazy and pliant media, Cheney continues to run his own televised miseducation camp. And let’s be honest: It ain’t just Fox News. The Washington Post now appears to be a private little Pravda for Cheney and his tiny group of minions formerly employed by the CIA. “The Post management, it seems, is determined to return to its past practice of acting as stenographers for the CIA’s PR machine,” McGovern, the former CIA analyst, recently wrote.

The role that the media should actually play in all of this was summed up well by Shayana Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who rightly points out that the tactics were not limited to waterboarding, but included “threats of rape, of killing children, of blowing cigar smoke into detainee’s faces until they retch, in addition to the power drills and mock executions:”

“We’ve long said that if you televise an execution that will be the end of public support for the death penalty. In a similar way, one hopes that the more the reality of torture is put before the American public, the less support there will be for it. When the issue is presented — as in the earliest leaked torture memos — as a legal abstraction, it’s easier for the public to rationalize the idea that nothing wrong is taking place.”

Sixth, at the end of the day, as Glenn Greenwald has pointed out, the debate about whether torture actually worked is not the central point here:

The debate over whether torture extracted valuable information is, in my view, a total sideshow, both because (a) it inherently begs the question of whether legal interrogation means would have extracted the same information as efficiently if not more so (exactly the same way that claims that warrantless eavesdropping uncovered valuable intelligence begs the question of whether legal eavesdropping would have done so); and (b) torture is a felony and a war crime, and we don’t actually have a country (at least we’re not supposed to) where political leaders are free to commit serious crimes and then claim afterwards that it produced good outcomes.  If we want to be a country that uses torture, then we should repeal our laws which criminalize it, withdraw from treaties which ban it, and announce to the world (not that they don’t already know) that, as a country, we believe torture is justifiable and just.  Let’s at least be honest about what we are.  Let’s explicitly repudiate Ronald Reagan’s affirmation that ”[n]o exceptional circumstances whatsoever … may be invoked as a justification of torture” and that “[e]ach State Party is required [] to prosecute torturers.”

Seventh, one last point about Dick Cheney and his little toadie Chris Wallace when they talk about how there hasn’t been another attack since 9-11. Remember toadie’s sarcastic words: “I just want to point out to the audience that it is purely coincidental that this country has not been attacked since 9/11.” How about the more than 4,300 US troops that have been killed in Iraq as a result of the Bush-Cheney lie factory? That is more American dead than perished on 9/11. Those young men and women would not have died in Iraq had it not been for the policies of Bush and Cheney.