Fidel Castro claims Osama bin Laden is a US spy

Former Cuban president says the 9/11 mastermind is in the pay of the CIA and cites WikiLeaks as his source

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration plans to sell advanced F-15 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia but won’t equip them with long-range weapons systems and other arms whose inclusion was strongly opposed by Israel, diplomats and officials said.

The proposed $30 billion, 10-year arms package, which would be one of the biggest single deals of its kind, has been a source of behind-the-scenes tension during months of negotiations. Israeli officials have repeatedly conveyed their concerns in private that the U.S. risks undermining its military advantage by equipping regional rivals with top-flight technologies.

U.S. officials say they provided “clarifications” in recent weeks about the deal to help damp Israel’s qualms. Two officials close to the negotiations said Israel still had some reservations, but that the country isn’t expected to challenge the sale by lobbying Congress, which can hold up the deal or push for assurances of its own. The administration is expected to formally notify Congress of its plans as early as next month.

The information-sharing with Israel is part of a longstanding commitment by successive U.S. administrations to maintain its military edge in the region. Congress has the power to block any weapons sales deemed detrimental to Israel’s military advantage.

The tussle is a window into the White House’s delicate balancing act in the Middle East. The administration has championed advanced weapons sales to Gulf states as a way to check Iranian power. In addition to Saudi Arabia, the U.S. has moved to sell arms to the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf states, as well as support on a smaller scale the Lebanese army and Palestinian security forces in the West Bank.

Iran is far from the only security challenge facing Saudi Arabia, which has considerably beefed up its standing army since Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, when the ruling Saud family began to see potential border troubles as a more serious threat.

Earlier this year, Saudi armed forces sustained heavy losses during extended skirmishes with Yemeni rebels on the southern border, the kind of flare-up a new crop of fighter jets would seemingly be ideal to fight.

… Continue Reading

MAIDAN SHAHR, Afghanistan — For months, reports have abounded here that the Afghan mercenaries who escort American and other NATO convoys through the badlands have been bribing Taliban insurgents to let them pass.

Then came a series of events last month that suggested all-out collusion with the insurgents.

After a pair of bloody confrontations with Afghan civilians, two of the biggest private security companies — Watan Risk Management and Compass Security — were banned from escorting NATO convoys on the highway between Kabul and Kandahar.

The ban took effect on May 14. At 10:30 a.m. that day, a NATO supply convoy rolling through the area came under attack. An Afghan driver and a soldier were killed, and a truck was overturned and burned. Within two weeks, with more than 1,000 trucks sitting stalled on the highway, the Afghan government granted Watan and Compass permission to resume.

Watan’s president, Rashid Popal, strongly denied any suggestion that his men either colluded with insurgents or orchestrated attacks to emphasize the need for their services. Executives with Compass Security did not respond to questions.

But the episode, and others like it, has raised the suspicions of investigators here and in Washington, who are trying to track the tens of millions in taxpayer dollars paid to private security companies to move supplies to American and other NATO bases.

Although the investigation is not complete, the officials suspect that at least some of these security companies — many of which have ties to top Afghan officials — are using American money to bribe the Taliban. The officials suspect that the security companies may also engage in fake fighting to increase the sense of risk on the roads, and that they may sometimes stage attacks against competitors.

The suspicions raise fundamental questions about the conduct of operations here, since the convoys, and the supplies they deliver, are the lifeblood of the war effort.

“We’re funding both sides of the war,” a NATO official in Kabul said. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was incomplete, said he believed millions of dollars were making their way to the Taliban.

Firms Tied to Officials

The investigation is complicated by, among other things, the fact that some of the private security companies are owned by relatives of President Hamid Karzai and other senior Afghan officials. Mr. Popal, for instance, is a cousin of Mr. Karzai, and Western officials say that Watan Risk Management’s largest shareholder is Mr. Karzai’s brother Qayum.

The principal goal of the American-led campaign here is to prepare an Afghan state and army to fight the Taliban themselves. The possibility of collusion between the Taliban and Afghan officials suggests that, rather than fighting each another, the two Afghan sides may often cooperate under the noses of their wealthy benefactors.

“People think the insurgency and the government are separate, and that is just not always the case,” another NATO official in Kabul said. “What we are finding is that they are often bound up together.”

The security companies, which appear to operate under little supervision, have sometimes wreaked havoc on Afghan civilians. Some of the private security companies have been known to attack villages on routes where convoys have come under fire, Western officials here say.

Records show there are 52 government-registered security companies, with 24,000 gunmen, most of them Afghans. But many, if not most, of the security companies are not registered at all, do not advertise themselves and do not necessarily restrain their gunmen with training or rules of engagement. Some appear to be little more than gangs with guns.

In the city of Kandahar alone, at least 23 armed groups — ostensibly security companies not registered with the government — are operating under virtually no government control, Western and Afghan officials said. On Kandahar’s chaotic streets, armed men can often be seen roaming about without any uniforms or identification.

“There are thousands of people that have been paid by both civilian and military organizations to escort their convoys, and they all pose a problem,” said Hanif Atmar, the Afghan interior minister. (Mr. Atmar resigned under pressure from President Karzai on Sunday.) “The Afghan people are not ready to accept the private companies’ providing public security.”

[More to Read: NYT]

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), along with other members of Congress and leading financial experts, is warning that the United States is in danger of being in the same dire situation as Greece – national bankruptcy — in seven to 10 years unless the federal government radically curtails spending.

Last month, Gregg, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said the United States will “essentially be where Greece is in about seven years.”

“If we continue to spend much more than we take in,” he says. “We’ll double our debt in five years and triple it in 10 years and essentially be where Greece is in about seven years,” Gregg told the Fox Business Network in May.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the ranking Republican member of the House Budget Committee, has also said that the United States has been making decisions similar to that which caused Greece’s debt crisis.

“We’re on this trajectory where we will have more takers than makers in society. We’re going to have more people taking from government than living on their own, paying taxes and contributing into it. That is a dangerous position to be in, that’s the position Greece is in,” Ryan said in a radio interview on News/Talk 1130 WISN in May.

Brian Riedl, lead budget analyst at The Heritage Foundation, agrees that unless the federal government radically curtails spending, a debt crisis as severe as or worse than that now happening in Greece will erupt in the United States in as soon as seven to 10 years.

“We can say that we will be at about the Greek level of debt probably in the next seven to 10 years,” Riedl told CNSNews.com. “There is no reason that with the same economic policies at the same level of debt, that the United States won’t face the same economic and financial crisis as Greece.”

But for Reidl, who recently issued his own report on federal spending, seven to 10 years may be too optimistic.

“It’s very tough to predict when a financial crisis will hit, because much of it depends on bond market psychology,” Reidl said. “As soon as the bond market decides the U.S. may not be able to fully service its debts, they will respond with a flight from our currency. When the bond market makes that decision is really anybody’s guess. It could be two to three years from now, it could be 10 years from now.”

Given the relative economic strength of the United States compared to many other nations, and President Obama’s promises of job creation thanks to the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, it may strike some as unfathomable that the United States could sink to the level of Greece’s economy.

Still, the current numbers are frightening. The U.S. national debt now stands at more than $13 trillion, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. In addition, the estimated U.S. federal deficit in 2009 was $1.5 trillion.

In order to compare the economic situations between countries, economists often look at the figures as a percentage of each country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). GDP represents the value of all of the goods and services produced by a country within a given year.

When Greece started to admit its debt problems last November, the government estimated its deficit last year was 12.7 percent of its GDP – a figure that Eurostat, the European Commission’s official statistics agency, said was too low and which it revised to upward 13.6 percent. … Continue Reading

It is like they are fanning the flames, The U.S. aircraft carrier USS George Washington will participate in a joint naval exercise with South Korea next week in the Yellow Sea, the same waters west of the Korean peninsula where North Korea is accused of sinking a South Korean warship last March, ABC News has learned.

A U.S. official said the carrier, which operates from its home port in Japan, “will be sent to the waters off South Korea within coming days to participate in joint exercises” with the South Korean navy.

Slated to begin June 8, the official said this exercise will be “separate and distinct” from an upcoming anti-submarine warfare exercise that Pentagon officials had said recently would be occurring “in the near future.” The upcoming exercise was first reported by South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency.

Another U.S. official says additional U.S warships will be participating in the exercise, including a Japan-based Aegis destroyer and a Hawaii-based nuclear submarine. South Korea will also deploy a destroyer, a submarine and F-15 fighter jets to participate in the exercise.

Last week, South Korea conducted a one-day anti-submarine exercise close to where the incident with North Korea had occurred.

This won’t the first time American aircraft carriers have participated in a major military exercises with South Korea. Last October, the USS George Washington participated in a practice operation in the Yellow Sea with the South Korean navy, and every year in March, the U.S. typically joins its southeast Asian ally for exercises at sea.

But the latest involvement of the U.S. military in South Korean exercises comes at a time of heightened tensions between North and South Korea after 46 South Korean sailors died in March when its warship Cheonan sunk under mysterious circumstances near a disputed maritime border.

Following a months-long international investigation that included salvaging the ship from the ocean floor, South Korea accused North Korea last week of using a mini-submarine to launch a torpedo that sunk the warship.

In a statement issued by the White House after South Korea announced its findings, the United States said South Korea could count on its full support. It also said “U.S. support for South Korea’s defense is unequivocal.”

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said last week that as part of that commitment, the South Korean findings had prompted the U.S. and South Korea to hold two military exercises with South Korea in the “near future.” He said the U.S. had committed to holding an anti-submarine exercise and was in discussions about conducting a maritime interdiction training exercise.

U.S. Has Condemned North Korean Attack

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said during a trip to Asia last week that the evidence against North Korea is “overwhelming and condemning” and it was “important to send a clear message to North Korea that provocative actions have consequences.”

“We cannot allow this attack on South Korea to go unanswered by the international community,” she said. “This will not be and cannot be business as usual. There must be an international, not just a regional, but an international response.”

Defense Secretary Robert Gates will be attending this week’s Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore where among several bilateral meetings with regional Defense officials he will meet with South Korean Defense Minister Kim Tae-young.
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