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Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has yet to say anything about Mondays heinous, nihilistic suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England. According to current reporting, the attack has been claimed by ISIS and was carried out by a 22-year-old man born in Manchester to Libyan refugees.

But when Blair does speak, we can be certain he wont mention one key fact: Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq led by the U.S. and U.K., he was forcefully and repeatedly warned by Britains intelligence services that it would lead to exactly this type of terrorist attack and he concealed these warnings from the British people, instead claiming the war would reduce the risk of terrorism.

We know this because of the Chilcot Report, the seven-year-long British investigation of the Iraq War released in 2016. The report declassifies numerous internal government documents that illustrate the yawning chasm between what Blair was being told in private and his claims in public as he pushed for war.

On February 10, 2003, one month before the war began, the U.K.s Joint Intelligence Committee the key advisory body for the British Prime Minister on intelligence matters issued a white paper titled International Terrorism: War With Iraq.

It began:

The threat from Al Qaida will increase at the onset of any military action against Iraq. They will target Coalition forces and other Western interests in the Middle East. Attacks against Western interests elsewhere are also likely, especially in the US and UK, for maximum impact. The worldwide threat from other Islamist terrorist groups and individuals will increase significantly.

And it concluded much the same way:

Al Qaida and associated groups will continue to represent by far the greatest terrorist threat to Western interests, and that threat will be heightened by military action against Iraq. The broader threat from Islamist terrorists will also increase in the event of war, reflecting intensified anti-US/anti-Western sentiment in the Muslim world, including among Muslim communities in the West. [emphasis added in both cases]

The same report concluded that Saddam Husseins Iraq would aspire to conduct terrorist attacks against Coalition interests only in the event of an invasion. Moreover, authoritative reporting suggests that Iraqi Intelligence (DGI) has little reach or [terrorism] capability outside Iraq.

Specifically regarding WMD terrorism, the JIC elsewhere judged that Iraq would be unlikely to undertake or sponsor such terrorist attacks, that the threat of it if Iraq were not invaded was slight, and that there was no credible evidence of covert transfers of WMD-related technology and expertise to terrorist groups.

Tony Blairs case for war, as most clearly expressed in his March 18, 2003 remarks in the House of Commons, essentially turned all of this on its head. The possibility, Blair said, of terrorist groups obtaining WMD from a state like Iraq wasa real and present danger to Britain and its national security.

The real problem, Blair proclaimed, is that, underneath, people dispute that Iraq is a threat, dispute the link between terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, and dispute, in other words, the whole basis of our assertion that the two together constitute a fundamental assault on our way of life. Blair did not mention that the people disputing this included his own intelligence services.

Then Tam Dalyell, a Labor MP from Scotland, asked Blair this key question: What could be more calculated to act as a recruiting sergeant for a young generation throughout the Islamic and Arab world than putting 600 cruise missiles or whatever it is on to Baghdad and Iraq?

Blair did not reveal the explicit warnings from the JIC that exactly this would happen. No, he told Dalyell, Unless we take action against [Al Qaeda], they will grow. That is why we should act. Terrorist organizations wouldnt be motivated, as the JIC had told him, by an invasion of Iraq, because their true motivation was that they detest the freedom, democracy and tolerance that are the hallmarks of our way of life.

Blairs stunningly fraudulent case for war carried the day, 412-149. The current British Prime Minister Theresa May, then a Conservative front bencher, voted for it. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn voted against.

Then exactly what the JIC had predicted occurred. Fifty-two people were killed in July 2005 when four suicide bombers three of whom were British-born carried out attacks on the subway and a bus in London. One of the killers taped himself stating that they were killing their fellow citizens because Western governments continuously perpetuate atrocities against my people all over the world. In a separate tape another said, What have you witnessed now is only the beginning of a string of attacks that will continue and become stronger until you pull your forces out of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Two months ago, a British-born Muslim convert murdered four people with a car on Westminster Bridge, then got out and stabbed a policeman to death. Just minutes before his killing spree he declared via WhatsApp that he was acting in revenge against Western wars in the Mideast.

Emergency response vehicles are parked at the scene of a suspected terrorist attack during a pop concert by Ariana Grande in Manchester, England on May 23, 2017.

Photo: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images

And now we have the slaughter in Manchester. ISIS has declared that the attack was carried out in order to terrorize the polytheists, and in response to their transgressions against the homes of the Muslims.

In her testimony before the Chilcot inquiry, Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller, head of MI5 at the time of the Iraq invasion, explained all of this:

Our involvement in Iraq radicalized, for want of a better word a few among a generation [who] saw our involvement in Iraq, on top of our involvement in Afghanistan, as being an attack on Islam.

An increasing number of British-born individuals were attracted to the ideology of Usama Bin Laden and saw the Wests activities in Iraq and Afghanistan as threatening their fellow religionists and the Muslim world.

If British officials had read the JICs warnings, Manningham-Buller said, they could have had no doubtthat this was likely to happen.

So did Blair read the intelligence, specifically the February 2003 paper on international terrorism?

He absolutely was aware of it, Blair told the inquiry, but I took the view then and take the same view now that to have backed down because of the threat of terrorism would be completely wrong.

But of course this was just another brazen misrepresentation by Blair. He had not taken the view then, at least in public, that invading Iraq would increase the risk that Britons would die in terrorist attacks, but it would be somehow worth it. Instead he had claimed that they would be at greater risk without a war, because if left alone Saddam Hussein would enable WMD-armed terrorism.

Asked how she saw this perspective, Manningham-Buller told the inquiry that It is a hypothetical theory. It certainly wasnt of concern in either the short-term or the medium-term to my colleagues and myself.

In the end, the most plausible explanation of Blairs motivation is simply that he was willing to sacrifice the lives of British citizensso that the U.S. could continue running the world with the U.K. holding its coat. Richard Shultz, a professor of international politics at Tufts whos long been a key national security state intellectual,wrote in 2004that A very senior [Special Operations Forces] officer who had served on the Joint Staff in the 1990s told me that more than once he heard terrorist strikes characterized as a small price to pay for being a superpower.

The victims of the Manchester bombing, among them an 8-year-old girl, are that small price.

Originally posted here:
British Intelligence Warned Tony Blair of Manchester-Like Terrorism if the West Invaded Iraq - The Intercept

Master Sergeant Roberto Oquendo Castro, a Hawthorne resident, will be honored at the borough's Memorial Day parade for serving in the New Jersey National Air Guard. Oquendo Castro also received a proclamation during the May 17 council meeting. Lindsey Kelleher/NorthJersey.com

Master Sergeant Roberto Castro, right, was honored during a recent Hawthorne Council meeting for his service in Iraq. He will be honored this Memorial Day at the Borough's annual parade.(Photo: Lindsey Kelleher/NorthJersey.com)

Master Sgt.Robert Oquendo Castro has been to Iraq.

Oquendo Castro has also been to Kuwait.

And Kyrgyzstanand Afghanistan.

Oquendo Castro was deployed a total of 11 times to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Egypt, Qatar, Kuwait and Iraq between 2000 and 2010 as part of the New Jersey National Air Guard, 108th Civil Engineer Squadron.

For his service, the Hawthorne resident will be honored at the borough's annual Memorial Day parade.

The parade will begin at 1:30 p.m. Mondayat the intersection of Rea and Lafayette avenues and will end at Hawthorne Borough Hall. A service will startat noon.

Oquendo Castro received a proclamation during the Hawthorne Borough Council meeting May 17. In return, he presented an American flag, a New Jersey flagand a Borough of Hawthorne flag,which had been displayed in Iraq for a week in April 2010, when he was stationed there. The flags will be mounted on borough property.

Master Sergeant Roberto Oquendo Castro, a Hawthorne resident, has a pin to show that he served in the New Jersey Air National Guard. He was deployed to Sather Air Base in Iraq. He was deployed 11 times between 2000 and 2010 in support to Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation New Dawn, and Operation Desert Storm.(Photo: Lindsey Kelleher/NorthJersey.com)

In an interview, Mayor Richard Goldberg recalled when he first met Oquendo Castro at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida.

"We ate lunch and talked together," Goldberg recalled. "Then we flew back to New Jersey together."

That December, Oquendo Castro went back to the McGuire Air Force Base in Fort Dix, where he trained until he was deployed to the Sather Air Base in Iraq the following month.

In an interview, he recalled a tense moment whenthe Taliban threw an improvised explosive device into the base. Luckily, he said, servicemen locatedthe device and deactivated it before it could injureanyone.

"We were one of the last units to get out," when President Barack Obama closed the base and started to send the troops home, said Oquendo Castro.

While he was serving in Kyrgyzstan, a Taliban attack on his base was repelled by fighter planes.

"We saw the flash from the mountain coming at us. The mountain lit up like Christmas lights," he said.

The troop he was inresponded quickly, firing back from eight to 10 fighter planes.

"Since that day, they never shot as us again," he said.

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Oquendo Castro was born in Puerto Ricoand joined the Puerto Rico Air National Guard with the 140th Air Control Command in Punta Salinas, according to his proclamation. He was transferred to the New Jersey Air National Guard in 1991, andserved until he retired in September 2016.

Oquendo Castro now works forthe U.S. Postal Service.

The Borough of Hawthorne frequently honors military members and police officers with proclamations during council meetings. Some fallen service members havebeen honored with sections of streets named after them.

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Hawthorne honors Iraq War veteran - NorthJersey.com

SOUTHWEST ASIA, May 23, 2017 U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria yesterday, conducting 27 strikes consisting of 99 engagements, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

Officials reported details of yesterdays strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.

Strikes in Syria

In Syria, coalition military forces conducted 18 strikes consisting of 37 engagements against ISIS targets:

-- Near Dayr Az Zawr, five strikes destroyed four ISIS oil trucks, three ISIS pump jacks, and an ISIS wellhead.

-- Near Raqqa, 13 strikes engaged 11 ISIS tactical units; destroyed 15 fighting positions, two vehicles and a weapons cache; and damaged an ISIS supply route.

Strikes in Iraq

In Iraq, coalition military forces conducted nine strikes consisting of 62 engagements against ISIS targets:

-- Near Abu Kamal, a strike destroyed an ISIS staging area.

-- Near Qaim, a strike destroyed an air artillery system.

-- Near Haditha, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit; destroyed two weapons caches, a fighting position, an ISIS staging area and a house-borne bomb.

-- Near Mosul, five strikes engaged five ISIS tactical units and a sniper; destroyed 20 fighting positions, seven vehicle bombs, six medium machine guns, five rocket-propelled grenade systems, three rocket systems, a weapons cache, a command-and-control node, a vehicle, a mortar system, a house-borne bomb; damaged 21 ISIS supply routes, a tunnel, a fighting position; and suppressed four ISIS tactical units.

-- Near Rawah, a strike destroyed a weapons storage site.

Additionally, a strike was conducted in Syria May 21 that closed within the last 24 hours:

-- Near Dayr Az Zawr, a strike destroyed seven ISIS oil barrels, two ISIS wellheads and one ISIS fuel truck.

Part of Operation Inherent Resolve

These strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to destroy ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The destruction of ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria also further limits the group's ability to project terror and conduct external operations throughout the region and the rest of the world, task force officials said.

The list above contains all strikes conducted by fighter, attack, bomber, rotary-wing or remotely piloted aircraft; rocket-propelled artillery; and some ground-based tactical artillery when fired on planned targets, officials noted.

Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike, they added. A strike, as defined by the coalition, refers to one or more kinetic engagements that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single or cumulative effect. For example, task force officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIS vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against a group of ISIS-held buildings and weapon systems in a compound, having the cumulative effect of making that facility harder or impossible to use. Strike assessments are based on initial reports and may be refined, officials said.

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Counter-ISIS Strikes Hit Terrorists in Syria, Iraq > U.S. ... - Department of Defense

ABU JARBUAH, Iraq (AP) As Omar Rashads combine clutters down the barley field in northern Iraq, the farmer shields his eyes from the scorching sun and points at the tall berm at the end of his land, just past a cluster of agricultural buildings.

The berm he points to marks the de facto border between federal Iraq and its self-governing Kurdish region in the north. It was built in November after Kurdish Peshmerga forces pushed about 5 kilometers (3 miles) into the Nineveh plains outside Mosul with the support of the U.S.-led coalition, retaking a cluster of towns and villages from the Islamic State group.

Now, more than half of Rashads land, some 20 hectares (50 acres), is on the other side of the line in Iraqi federal territory. Crossing over to it is so complicated requiring daily approval from both Iraqi and Kurdish authorities that he has given up.

This is our village and here is the berm. The berm divides our land into two halves, said Rashad, an Iraqi who fled to Kurdish territory when IS militants came to his town. Its our land and we want to plant and harvest there. But now we cant. You can say that we lost that half.

Since 2014, Iraqs Kurds have expanded the territory they control by about half at the expense of Iraq. The status of some of these areas, such as the city of Kirkuk, is supposed to be decided by plebiscite under Iraqs constitution. Others, including most of the governorate of Nineveh, technically belong to Iraq.

The berm, with fortified positions every half kilometer (half mile) or so, cuts through the land in a fairly straight line, but it separates some communities from their land, from their administrative centers and from each other.

If you want to do anything on the other side, you cant. The berm has paralyzed everything, Rashad said. This is my land, my fathers and grandfathers land, how can they divide our land like this?

On the Iraqi side of the berm, in the village of Darawish, farmer Raad Khalil is faced with an additional problem. He, too, has lost access to land about 8 hectares (20 acres) leaving him dependent on aid. But he has also in effect been left without a government.

All government functions are in Bashiqa, he said, referring to the biggest town in the area that is now on the Kurdish side of the line. Health care, education, electricity. Now you have to go to Mosul for everything but then they tell you that we belong to Bashiqa and I must go there.

Crossing from Iraq into the Kurdish region is even more complicated than the other way around because the Peshmerga demand a Kurdish residency permit or a sponsor.

The berm separates these some small communities from themselves, though for now not everybody seems to mind. Arriving in Abu Jarbuah on the Iraqi side of the berm, Shamsaddeen Nouraddeen, a Kurd, said he had been given a day permit to come over for a relatives funeral.

He said he hoped the berm would eventually be removed but added that for now it made him feel safer because he was worried there were still IS sleeper cells in some of the villages on the Iraq side.

The situation is made more delicate by the fact that the inhabitants of these villages are a mix of Sunni and Shiite Shabaks, a Kurdish-speaking minority in northern Iraq. While most Shiite residents fled IS, many of the Sunnis stayed, and that sowed mistrust among the Shabaks.

Back on the Kurdish side of the berm, Omar Rashad, a Sunni Muslim, said he has gone back to his village once but some of his Shiite neighbors made it clear that he wasnt welcome. He was now wearing a pistol and two spare clips on his hip for personal security, he said.

Its like cutting a person in half and thats exactly what happened to us, he said. The Shabaks are a minority who have been damaged by all these rivalries. They have been divided into two as well.

___

Associated Press writer Salar Salim contributed to this report from Darawish.

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Boundary between Iraq, Kurdish territory divides communities - The Seattle Times

(Erbil) Iraqi government-allied troops arbitrarily detained at least 100 men in late April 2017, in some cases torturing them during interrogations, Human Rights Watch said today.

Human Rights Watch interviewed three men from al-Hadar, a village 90 kilometers southwest of west Mosul, who were detained by the Popular Mobilization Forces (known as the PMF or Hashd al-Sha'abi) and two local officials who had knowledge of the detention operations in the area. The men said the fighters detained them as they fled their homes because of the fighting, and held them for up to 15 days in a school building and in one case a home in an area solely under PMF control. Their captors interrogated them about possible Islamic State (also known as ISIS) links, and in two cases beat them with thick metal cables, before releasing them and a small number of other detainees. Other detainees told them they had also been beaten during interrogations.

Given the previous track records of PMF abuse in the area of screening and detaining local men, Baghdad should treat these findings with the gravest concern, saidLama Fakih, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. Authorities should do all in their power to ensure that families fleeing the fighting around Mosul are able to get to safety, not tortured in secret facilities.

Human Rights Watch heard similar accounts from other men fleeing the fighting earlier in 2017 and raised the issue with the government, but the detentions and abuse seem to have continued. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi should issue a decree banning screening and detention by the PMF and hold those who have committed abuses accountable.

One man, Hassan, said that his family and a group of others fled al-Hadar, which was under ISIS control, on April 25, for a camp for displaced people run by the PMF. After two days there, he and 10 of his relatives were then taken to a building they said was a school and held there in a room, along with about 40 others from their village. His family group was interrogated for a week, then released.

Hassan and the other two men interviewed said that they were able to determine that they were being held in a school by speaking to fellow prisoners and guards, and by lifting their blindfolds. A government official from Tal Abta told Human Rights Watch that the PMF held the men in the Tal Abta Janubia primary school and provided the GPS coordinates. The official said that his office had documented the names of 100 men from the area who the PMF had detained as they fled, over the same period, based on calls from their families.

Ali Al-Ahmadi, director of al-Hadar district, told local media outlets on May 1, that the PMF had detained at least 160 people upon their arrival at camps for people displaced by the fighting. The same reports said that the governor of Mosul was calling for a high-level emergency session to discuss these detentions.

Earlier in the Mosul operation, Human Rights Watch documented cases of the PMF arbitrarily detaining, torturing, and executing civilians. Following a Human Rights Watch report, the PMF Commission issued a statement in early February denying that its forces had screened or detained anyone. The statement said the PMF hands over captured ISIS suspects to state security forces who have a mandate to screen suspects.

But in a meeting on February 6, a PMF Commission representative told Human Rights Watch that in limited circumstances they do detain people captured on the battlefield for at least short periods before transferring them to Iraqi authorities with a detention mandate. One man the PMF had detained for eight days and an aid worker confirmed that.

Iraqi authorities should only allow those with the requisite legal authority to screen people. The authorities should ensure that anyone detained is held in a recognized detention center accessible to independent monitors, and granted their due process rights under international and Iraqi law. All detention should be based on clear domestic law, and every detainee should be brought promptly before a judge to review the legality of their detention. Iraqi law requires authorities to take detainees before an investigative judge within 48 hours.

Human Rights Watch has also documented that Iraqi forces, including PMF forces, have used schools for security or military purposes such as for screening and as detention centers. Such use of schools can delay the re-opening of the schools to teach and provide other services to children, and damage classrooms and equipment. Iraqi forces should avoid using schools except as a last resort, when no other facilities are available.

The United Nations Convention against Torture, which Iraq ratified in 2011, obliges member countries to investigate and prosecute torture and to compensate victims.

While there may be grounds to detain some people fleeing the fighting who are suspected of criminal acts under ISISs rule, they have to be given their rights under Iraqi law, Fakih said. That includes the right not to be ill-treated.

Detainees Accounts

Hassan

Hassan said that on April 25, when the village of al-Hadar, where he lived, was still under ISIS control, his family and about 15 others managed to escape in several cars. The convoy spent two nights out in the desert just north of al-Hadar, before unidentified security forces arrived and told the families to go to Jarbua, a PMF-run camp for displaced people, 30 kilometers north of Tal Abta.

After they spent two nights at the camp, Hassan said, at around 9 p.m., a group of fighters with PMF badges rounded him up, along with 10 of his relatives, blindfolded them, then drove them to another location where they were held in a room of a large building. When he was able to, he said, he pulled down his blindfold quickly because his hands were bound in front and saw that he was in a room with about 40 other detainees, all from al-Hadar.

After seven days, guards released him and the other 10 men detained with him without explanation, he said. Throughout his detention, he said, the same guards moved him in and out of the room with the other detainees for interrogation, asking why he had remained living under ISIS, whether he had joined ISIS, and for names of ISIS fighters. Hassan said he was blindfolded throughout his captivity but said that he was held and interrogated by fighters with southern accents whom he thought were from the PMF.

Ahmed

Ahmed said that on the morning of April 26, as Iraqi forces began an operation to retake al-Hadar, more than 60 other families fled the area in cars. Six were families from al-Hadar and the rest were families previously displaced by the fighting, mostly from villages in Tal Abta district, just to the north, he said. When they were about six kilometers north of the village, they reached a base of a large number of fighters carrying flags identifying them as belonging to the PMF unit Ali al-AkbarBrigade (Liwa Ali al-Akbar), with fighters from southern Iraq.

The fighters made them wait for several hours, then checked the mens identity cards. By then it was evening, and the fighters told them it was too late to take them to the nearest camp, which they said was at least 40 kilometers away. They told the families to stay in their cars or erect tents, he said.

At midnight, Ahmed said, he was standing with five of his relatives, including his brother, by their cars when three Ali al-Akbar fighters with PMF badges approached them and said they needed the men to come with them so they could interview them about their area. Ahmed said that the PMF fighters blindfolded him and his relatives, drove them for about five minutes, and then held them in a school, where the fighters detained them for 10 days. His hands were bound in front, so he was able to slip off the blindfold on various occasions. Ali said he saw guards bringing in about 90 men, who told him they were from al-Hadar.

For four days, Ahmed said, guards with southern accents whom he thought were PMF interrogated him blindfolded in a separate room once each day, asking why he had joined Al-Qaeda and ISIS, and beating him for about 10 minutes each time with thick metal cables. Ahmed said that twice the guards held a plastic bag over his head until he lost consciousness. He said he insisted he had not joined any extremist group. After four days of abuse, he asked the 40 or so men held in a room with him if they had confessed and all said they had, to stop the abuse, Ahmed said. He said all his relatives told him the guards also beat them with thick metal cables.

The next morning, Ahmed said, he confessed to being affiliated with ISIS. Later that afternoon, he was again brought into a separate room and a man who sounded different from his interrogators asked if his confession was true, and he admitted it had not been.

While the PMF held them, he and the other two detainees said they were only given one cup of water and limited food every day. The guards moved Ahmed among three rooms. In two he estimates there were a total of another 40 detainees, with one room full of men he did not recognize as from al-Hadar, and about 50 from al-Hadar in the other. After the other man questioned him, Ahmed said, guards loaded him and 11 other men, including his brother and other relatives into cars and drove them to a house about two hours away, where they were held in the same room and interrogated separately for another two days. At that point, guards with the same southern accents as the Ali al-Akbarfighters brought in 20 to 30 men from al-Hadar whom Ahmed recognized as also having been held at the school. One said that PMF fighters had bused all 90 to the house together.

That night, guards with southern accents took him and 10 of the other men, including four of his relatives, to al-Hadar village and let them go. They eventually made their way to displaced camps in Jadah, 54 kilometers northwest, where they rejoined their families. As of May 17, he said, his brother was still in detention.

An official from the area working on the detainees release told Human Rights Watch that the house the PMF detained the men in was referred to as Yaseens house.

Kareem

Kareem said he fled al-Hadhra on April 26, with about 10 families to a nearby village. The next day, they drove 40 kilometers to a PMF checkpoint. Four PMF fighters with badges checked the mens identity cards. The fighters selected him and seven other men, blindfolded them, and bound their hands, then drove them to a nearby large building. Kareem said the building held many other prisoners but he was unable to count because he was afraid he would be caught if he lifted his blindfold.

He said he was held for 15 days and that guards interrogated him daily about ISIS affiliation and beat him with thick metal cables. An older man from his village held with him died from an illness that predated his detention. Kareem said he did not want to speak about what the guards had done to him, but he had visible bruising and scaring around his wrists and up his right arm when he spoke to Human Rights Watch, two days after he was released.

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Iraq: Scores of Men Imprisoned in Schoolhouse - Human Rights Watch