Bin Laden blame game begins

Tourist season starts again in Abbottabad

The two countries with most to gain or lose from the Osama Bin Laden shoot out are the United States and Pakistan. However, it's a bit like a snakes and ladders game at the moment. The Americans were quick off the mark to blame the Pakistanis for intelligence incompetence. This stung rather badly. It was a day before Islamabad could come up with anything to say. Before that happened many Pakistanis around the compound were putting their ten rupees worth into the mix. The shooting was condemned by some, doubted by others. The Americans then decided to tell the world that the first impressions should not be the lasting impressions. Bin Laden had actually not been armed and the woman thought to be a wife and a human shield was actually alive, albeit with a bullet in her leg. Children, who witnessed the carnage, were being "well treated". As President Obama and his team watched the event he must have seen the "truth". How come the muddle?

The Pakistanis did not react to this. They reacted to the stinging rebuke. Now they say they were tipped off two years ago, but the "world" should have done something about Bin Laden. Can't think what exactly?

In all these kind of events it is the minions that get the blame. So who better to get behind bars and beat the living daylights out of? It is the poor sod who sold the land to Bin Laden so he could build a fortress for himself. Now wouldn't you think the Pakistani authorities would have asked just at least one question whilst this edifice went up. I'd have asked "Who's going to live in this place?" but there are over 1,000 other equally good questions. But no. Nothing. The locals know better. Every time a creepy event occurs, the locals eventually spill the beans.

Mark Mardell of the BBC thinks the Americans never wanted Bin Laden alive. He's got a point. Why bother with the expense of carting him to Guantanamo Bay? You'd need more that an extraordinary rendition. In fact something out of this world. And the reward money has gone up in smoke, I'm sure of it.

David Cameron tells us we should all be on our guard in case Islamic fundamentalists get any ideas. That sort of implies we might have been better off if this episode had not been made such a public spectacle. Time will tell.

Obama ticks off "My Cousin Cheney"!

Who'd have thought it? Dick Cheney and Barack Obama are kin! At least that's what Lynne Cheney thinks. She delved into the ancestral past of hubby Dick only to find that he and Barack share the same French Huguenot forebear. According to Lynne, Obama is a descendent of Mareen Duvall. This French Huguenot’s son married the granddaughter of a Richard Cheney, who arrived in Maryland in the late 1650s from England. However she hasn't given references so it isn't gospel proof.

My Cousin Cheney! I think there should be a film about it all. Including the up to date stuff. Dick Cheney has been sounding off about letting "terrorists" out of Quantanamo. In Dick's world it matters not whether one is innocent or guilty, beaten, framed or tortured, so long as the "War on Terror" makes America safe.

Obama is right to confront such nonsense. As he asks, "How many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by vice president Cheney?" None at all! "It hasn't made us safer," Obama says. "What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment." And what is the point of that?

Dick Cheney had a fairly simple view of the world's problems when he was Vice-President. That simplicity led to disaster abroad. His boss, the verbally challenged Dubya presided over a complete spiral into financial decay for the American people.

"No more foreclosures!" are the hand-written signs going up all over. The people know reality. Dick Cheney is still in his own land of make-believe!

Guantanamo detainee arrives in UK

Binyam Mohamed, a detainee from the Guantanamo camp and a British resident of Ethiopian background is back on British soil. His tale of woe desperately needs examining, because what was done to him was done in our name. He says -

"It is still difficult for me to believe that I was abducted, hauled from one country to the next, and tortured in medieval ways - all orchestrated by the United States government."

George Bush and Dick Cheney receiving truthful reports or adulterated stories? We need to know, because if the truth does not come out, anyone can be lifted from the streets and carted off to a hellhole.

He goes on to say -

"For myself, the very worst moment came when I realised in Morocco that the people who were torturing me were receiving questions and materials from British intelligence.

I had met with British intelligence in Pakistan. I had been open with them. Yet the very people who I had hoped would come to my rescue, I later realised, had allied themselves with my abusers.

I am not asking for vengeance; only that the truth should be made known, so that nobody in the future should have to endure what I have endured."

David Miliband needs to come clean and not hide behind weasel words. His worst nightmare will be somebody exposing his knowledge at a time when he is least prepared for it.

Obama in Guantanamo rear gear shift!

When Barack Obama became president he said he would tackle the issue of Guantanomo Bay. This Cuban-based concentration camp has been just a playground for the sadistic and the purveyors of petty punishments. Humiliation is top of the list. Decent lads are taken into the US Army, trained up to be "fighters", given top level BS about patriotism and let loose to sort out the best ways to tackle the enemy. What they haven't been told is that most of the inmates were scooped off the Afghan plains, sold for a grand to the US Army by slippery sorts, then extraordinarily rendered to end up in this hellhole.

George Bush and Dick Cheney have buggered off. Leaving their corrupted ideals behind them. Obama was giving us the impression he'd clean up this act. Apparently not. Nobody is going to be held to account for the barbarity committed in our names. Obama and the Canadian PM shirked the issue when they met. Our own Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, is in denial. I would have thought of all people, a Jew, he would have wanted to get to the truth of such barbarity. But apparently not.

Inmates have been mentally abused, hung upside down with electricity placed on their genitals in "rendered" rendevouz around the world. By the time they got to Guantanamo Bay, they were like electrified squirrels. The list of disgusting torture goes on. I'd expect that as par for the course from a tyrant like Saddam Hussein. Robert Mugabe has had his eyes and ears diverted whilst the screaming took place. But our own Western democratic leaders? Are they capable of turning a deaf ear? Sounds like they are. And whilst this torture is carrying on, Osama Bin Laden is still at large. Says a lot for the War on Terror!

The truth is trickling out. Those foot soldiers in Guantanamo Bay are speaking out. They are ashamed of what they were asked to do, what they were goaded into doing by fanatical superiors. George Bush talked a lot of crap when he was in office, but I took him for a decent guy deep down. Barack Obama is a decent guy, but it's the shaven-headed military macho types that are poisoning the well. We have Jekyll and Hyde politicians these days. I do hope Obama sees his Mr.Hide and gives him his marching orders.

Guantanamo Bay - the new inmates?

President Obama wants to close down Guantanamo Bay. Before he gets too quick off the draw with this, how about rounding up the real crooks and swapping them with those already there. I'd guess that most of the current inmates have done very little to damage the World's existence. The credit crunchers and legalised money launderers have. Added to this, we've got a whole tranche of dodgy dealings and investment scams on the go.

The credit crunch has mortgaged our children for a generation. Some countries are going the Zimbabwe route to financial helotry. The latest scoundrel on the block is Sir Alan Stanford, who has allegedly been involved in an $8bn investment fraud. He's dwarfed by the Madoff character. Most of this money isn't money at all. It's Monopoly money. But it's no game. It's all deadly serious and deadly frustrating...that those in charge are moving along like a beached whale.

Alistair Darling has only just woken up to the RBS bonus bonanza, now with a couple of damp squibs in the package. The threat of a spell in Guantanamo Bay's prison cells should stop this nonsense dead in its tracks. All those involved in scams own up now, otherwise it's the Cuban shores for you!

Miliband in fake Commons denial!

David Miliband went to the House of Commons to assert that there was no truth in the United States intelligence services putting pressure on the UK authorities over intelligence sharing. This is in connection with the case of Binyam Mohamed, a 31 year old, originally from Ethiopia, once resident in the UK - and now into his fifth year of detention at Guantanamo Bay.

His lawyers are attempting to get him released but the Americans will go to any lengths to stop public knowledge of torture or cruel treatment being disclosed. Miliband's denial rings hollow. Channel 4 News has received a copy of a letter from John B Bellinger at the Department of State to Daniel Bethlehem, QC, at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. It indeed shows pressure is being put on the British.

If President Obama wants to cleanse the world of this travesty of natural justice that is Guantanomo Bay, he will put an end to this ridiculous game of cover-up and camouflage. Otherwise his whole presidency will be marred by the leaks, innuendo and murmerings that are fed by the continuation of this place as a detention centre. These prisoners should be tried or freed, but not incarcerated without any due process.

It is a stain on us all, perpetuated by men prepared to lie and pervert justice in order to satisfy a crazed notion that this place promotes security. I feel far less secure because it is a cancer festering and feeding off the hearts and minds of those we claim we are helping in the "War on Terror".

Guilt by association - Guantanamo style!

I see that a US military jury at Guantanamo Bay has convicted Osama Bin Laden's former driver of supporting terrorism. Salim Hamdan was found guilty of five of eight charges of supporting terrorism but acquitted him of two separate, more serious, charges of conspiracy. So he just drove Bin Laden around knowing he was an arch-terrorist but did not join in with any conspiratorial talk. It's all a bad joke in this kangaroo court land, isn't it?

Do the prosecuting soldiers in this Cuban camp think that by just driving you support the activities of the driven? In that case, the recently jailed crook Lord Black's chauffeur could be pinned against a wall and accused of fraud. Max Mosley's driver could be said to support kinky sex, and Amy Winehouse's driver may be accused of supporting her various antics.

All chauffeurs and personal drivers better watch out. Uncle Sam may have you if your boss gets into trouble. By the way, is anybody questioning George Bush over his past friendliness with the Bin Laden family? Oil and water don't mix, I know, but what of oil and truthful politics? We're still waiting on that one!