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US Officer Goes On Killing Spree At Army Base

November 9, 2009 By

us officer goes on killing spree at army base_Accustomed to terrible human loss overseas, the United States Army was last night struggling to come to terms with a savage outbreak of violence at home after an officer opened fire on the sprawling Fort Hood military base in Texas, which is at the tip of the spear of regular US troop deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

After hours of confusion when the entire complex – the largest such base in the world – located between Waco and Austin, was on a security lockdown, a military spokesman confirmed that the rampage had ended with the deaths of 12 people and the wounding of 31 others. Most of the injured had been rushed to hospitals across central Texas. The shock that was rippling across the country last night was hardly relieved after the shooter was identified as a trusted officer with medical duties. Officials said that Major Nadal Malik Hasan, a licensed doctor and psychiatrist, was shot and wounded by military police at the scene but not before he had extinguished the lives of 12 people. Military sources added that two other soldiers were apprehended after the slaughter, though by dusk last night one had been released. There was no information on what role the second may have had in the killings if any. Hasan opened fire, they said, with two handguns. There was no reason he should have been bearing arms as a doctor.

Major Hasan, said to be 39 years old, allegedly opened fire at roughly 1.30 pm, Texas time, inside a personnel processing building formally known as the Soldier Rating and Processing Center. It is a building soldiers routinely pass through while getting ready to deploy. However, at least one of the victims, was identified as a civilian.

A motive for the shooting was hard to pin down last night. However, there were reports that Hasan, who was trained also in psychiatry and medicine in Bethesda, Maryland, was preparing for deployment to Iraq and was not happy to be going there. He had previously worked at the Walter Reed veterans hospital outside Washington.

There have been six incidents on the ground in Iraq since the start of the conflict when US troops have been felled by one of their own with the loss of 14 lives. Last May, a soldier opened fire on fellow soldiers in a medical facility at Camp Liberty outside Baghdad killing five.

Lt General Bob Cone spoke to reporters on the perimeter of the base. “We have had a terrible tragedy at Fort Hood today. The situation is ongoing but we are very close to a resolution,” he said, almost three hours after the first shots were fired.

“The numbers that we are looking at are 12 dead and 31 wounded.” The wounded were being treated in hospitals across central Texas, he said.

The shooting will rekindle debate about the strains that have been placed for years on the US military community after eight years of conflict in Afghanistan and almost as many years in Iraq. For months, military leaders have been seeking ways to monitor the mental health of soldiers precisely to guard against such deadly tragedies. Fort Hood is home to a programme set up to help returning soldiers cope with stress incurred by warfare.

In Washington aides kept President Barack Obama abreast of developments at the huge complex that includes housing areas and several schools. Mr Obama called the shootings “horrifying”. Attending a conference on Native American rights, he added: “My immediate thoughts and prayers are with the wounded and with the families of those who have fallen… we will make sure we get answers to every single question about this horrible incident”.

For soldiers who are trained to face possible injury or worse while deployed abroad, there was no emotional preparation for the shock of such an indiscriminate act of mass killing taking place on US soil and indeed within the confines of one of their own bases where they would have considered themselves entirely safe.

“I am horrified just like everyone else,” Kay Bailey Hutchinson, a US Senator for Texas, said of the killings. “This is a base that has sent people time and time again to Iraq and now to Afghanistan. They have borne a lot of the responsibility for the war on terror and for this to happen at this particular base is heartbreaking.”

As many as 500 military personnel were mobilised at one stage to conduct a sweep of the base to ensure its security. Witnesses on the edge of the facility meanwhile saw ambulances coming and going from the main entrance and helicopters landing inside it to ferry the severely wounded to nearby hospitals.

Members of families were also assembled on parking lots on the edge of the base trying to determine whether any of their loved ones may have been hurt or killed in the shootings.

Fort Hood has close to 50,000 soldiers assigned to it. In addition, it is home to many military families. As well as sending solders into harm’s way in war zones – no other military base in the US has lost more men and women in Iraq than Fort Hood – it has seen many wounded soldiers returning from war.

Fort Hood: The world’s largest military base

* Fort Hood, near Austin, Texas, is the world’s largest military installation, occupying 340 square kilometres.

* It is home to more than 65,000 soldiers, civilian personnel and family members.

* Two armoured divisions are based there, and up to 40,000 US troops.

* It was opened in 1942, as a place to test anti-tank guns that were crucial to combating German blitzkrieg tactics.

* 75 troops at the base have committed suicide between the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and July this year – more than at any other army post.

* The base is home to III Corps, the official counteroffensive force, who are known as “America’s Hammer.”

* In January 2003, then President George W Bush addressed 4,500 troops at the base, and told them to be ready for war.

* The base’s Fourth Infantry Division captured Saddam Hussein in 2003.

By David Usborne, The Independent

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Clinton Points Out Advances Notched in Mideast, Pakistan

November 6, 2009 By

clinton points out advances_Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, wrapping up a weeklong mission to Pakistan and the Middle East, shrugged off criticism of her diplomatic tactics and said she made important advances in her efforts to broker Arab-Israeli peace and promote stronger U.S. ties with the Islamic world.

Mrs. Clinton received qualified support Wednesday from Egypt’s leaders, who held three hours of talks in Cairo on the Mideast peace process with the top U.S. diplomat and her advisers.

Mrs. Clinton has been seeking Arab backing for a relaunching of direct Israel-Palestinian peace talks without the total freeze on Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem that President Barack Obama has repeatedly demanded.

The chief U.S. diplomat’s push has been rejected in recent days by many Arab leaders, as well as the Palestinian leadership, as a concession to Israel. But Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s government, a key player in Mideast politics, refrained from criticizing Mrs. Clinton’s plan and suggested there was a way forward for the negotiations.

“The United States and the secretary feel that there has been progress … about the issue of freezing the settlements, even if it’s not fully complete,” said Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit at a news briefing with Mrs. Clinton. “Here we feel that we need to focus on the endgame.”

Mr. Gheit blamed Israel for any failure in the talks. “We feel that Israel is hindering the process,” he said.

The Egyptian position helped Mrs. Clinton end a week of diplomacy on a relatively high note. Her trip was marked by public attacks on U.S. foreign policy and charges she backtracked on a key U.S. commitment to its Arab allies on the settlement issue.

Her public praise of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Saturday was widely seen as a diplomatic gaffe that undercut the Obama administration’s hopes of being seen as an honest broker between the Arabs and Israelis.

Mrs. Clinton’s swing through Pakistan, Israel and three key Arab states this week marked her most ambitious mission since taking office in January.

Some have seen the former first lady as a second-tier player within the Obama administration on Washington’s urgent foreign-policy challenges, particularly Iran, Afghanistan, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Initially, Mrs. Clinton appeared to define her role as secretary by focusing on environmental, developmental and women’s issues.

Over recent days, Mrs. Clinton significantly shook up this perception.

In Islamabad, she met senior Pakistani generals and intelligence officials and pressed the U.S. fight against al Qaeda militants. In the Middle East, Mrs. Clinton stepped out of the shadow of the administration’s special envoy to the region, former Sen. George Mitchell, and pushed Israeli and Arab leaders to move toward peace.

The secretary and her advisers said they will continue pushing the Arabs and Israelis to return to peace talks — and also explore new mechanisms to better define the diplomatic path. By Jay Solomon, Wall Street Journal

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You Are Not Alone, Hillary Assures Pakistan

October 30, 2009 By

you are not alone_When she arrived in Pakistan, United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared she wanted to engage directly with the people of Pakistan to remove their misunderstandings about America and its role in the region.

On the second day of her three-day visit, Ms. Clinton flew to Lahore and spent a considerable amount of time doing exactly that, and was rewarded with a first-hand feel of the suspicions and mistrust that most Pakistanis have about the U.S. and its relationship with their country.

A couple of hundred students gathered for a “town hall” meeting with Ms. Clinton at the famed Government College of Lahore on Thursday, and shot off questions at her ranging from the U.S.’s perceived partial relationship with India, to the Kerry-Lugar aid legislation and the CIA drone attacks in Pakistan, to whether the U.S. would support a treason trial of former ruler Pervez Musharraf.

On a day after more than 100 people perished in one of the deadliest bombings yet witnessed in this country, the students wanted to know what Pakistan was getting in return for its cooperation with the U.S. in the “war on terror”, commonly described as America’s war.

Mum on drones

Ms. Clinton’s pitch was that this was Pakistan’s war, but Pakistan was not in it alone. The U.S., she said, stood with Pakistan and would help defeat the extremists and the terrorists whose goal was to take over the country.

She side-stepped a question on the drone attacks, and why the U.S. was chary about sharing the intelligence and letting Pakistan do the rest.

The U.S. has never acknowledged the drone attacks, and Ms. Clinton was not about to do that either. She simply responded that “there is a war going on”, and America was there to help Pakistan.

One student wanted to know why the U.S. “always” supported India despite Pakistan’s cooperation with it through difficult situations. Ms. Clinton’s responded that this was a wrong perception.

The Secretary of State conceded that there had been some “ups and downs” in relations with Pakistan, but described bilateral ties as “consistent” and said the U.S. had given far more aid to Pakistan.

“We are friends with both Pakistan and India, we work with both,” she said.

Ms. Clinton also said that while the U.S. encouraged both countries to resolve their differences, it was up to India and Pakistan to do that through bilateral means.

“What we hope is that at some point in the future — which I would like to see in the not too distant future — Pakistan and India can resolve their outstanding differences,” she said.

She predicted that Pakistan “would take off like a rocket in terms of economic development” if it had the benefit of trade and economic relations with India.

“If you had trade opening up to the north, east and west it would make a huge economic difference to your country and one of the major obstacles standing in the way is the distrust and the history between India and Pakistan, which blocks the kind of opportunities for investment that I think could make a huge difference,” she said.

The students posed tough questions on the conditions imposed in the Kerry-Lugar aid legislation, and said what she repeated to Pakistan Muslim League (N) leader Nawaz Sharif at a meeting with him later in the day: Pakistan has a choice to take it or leave it.

Several roads in Lahore were closed for the day, so were schools. There was a heavy presence of police and other security personnel on the streets with Pakistan taking no chances over this visit.

Ms. Clinton’s public relations offensive in Pakistan included visits to the famous Sufi shrine of Bari Imam in Islamabad, and in Lahore, a look-in at the historic Badshahi Mosque built by the Mughal emperor Aurangazeb, and the Lahore Fort next door to it. By Nirupama Subramanian, The Hindu

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US To Pay Taliban To Switch Sides

October 28, 2009 By

us to pay taliban_The US military in Afghanistan is to be allowed to pay Taliban fighters who renounce violence against the government in Kabul. The move is included in a defence bill which President Obama is set to sign.

Such payments have already been widely used by US commanders in Iraq, but it is the first time the system is being formally adopted in Afghanistan.

Early on Wednesday, Afghan troops were engaged in a shootout with suspected militants at a house in Kabul.

A day earlier eight US soldiers were killed in bomb attacks in southern Afghanistan.The deaths make October the deadliest month for American forces in the eight-year war in Afghanistan.

President Obama is yet to decide whether to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan. Mr Obama has said he will not risk their lives “unless it is absolutely necessary”.

The latest attacks come amid heightened tension in Afghanistan in the run-up to the second round of a presidential election marred by widespread fraud in favour of incumbent President Hamid Karzai.

‘Re-integration’ programmes

The Commander’s Emergency Response Programme, or Cerp, was set up to give the US military the means to clear roads, dig wells and provide other urgent humanitarian assistance to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, the BBC’s Richard Lister in Washington says.

But in Iraq, the money can also be given to insurgents provided they switch sides. Backers of the Cerp scheme say it enabled some 90,000 formerly hostile Iraqis to form local militias and protect their towns from militants, our correspondent says. He adds that now the same authority is being given to US commanders in Afghanistan.

A clause in the annual defence appropriations bill says they can use the money to support the “re-integration into Afghan society” of those who have renounced violence against the Afghan government.

Although $1.3bn (£691m) has been authorised for the fund as a whole, no specific sum has been allocated to the re-integration programmes, our correspondent says.

The Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, Senator Carl Levin, has said he envisages the money being used to pay former Taliban fighters to protect their communities. BBC News

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Libya’s Gaddafi “Sorry” For UK Policewoman’s Death

October 26, 2009 By

libya's gaddafi_Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi said “we are sorry” for the 1984 killing of a British policewoman outside the Libyan embassy in London which led Britain to suspend ties between the two countries for years.

Yvonne Fletcher died after being hit by shots fired from the embassy during a demonstration against Gaddafi.

“She is not an enemy to us, and we are sorry all the time and (offer) our sympathy, because she was on duty, she was there to protect the Libyan embassy, but this is the problem that should be solved — but who did it?” Gaddafi said in an interview with Sky News, to be broadcast on Monday.

Britain’s foreign ministry said in a statement: “We agree with him that this issue needs to be resolved.

“Libya can help in the search for answers by allowing the UK police to return to Libya to complete their investigations into the murder of WPC Fletcher.”

Relations with Britain were only resumed 15 years later when Libya “accepted general responsibility for the actions of those within the (embassy)…and expressed deep regret to the family” to whom it agreed to pay compensation.

Gaddafi said Britain and Libya had enjoyed good economic relations, even when diplomatic ties had been broken.

The United States in late 2003 began a process of rapprochement with Libya, after decades of estrangement, because of Tripoli’s decision to abandon the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.

Gaddafi also talked about the release of former Libyan agent Abdel Basset al-Megrahi from a Scottish prison where he had been serving a life sentence for the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing in which 270 people, mainly Britons and Americans, died.

Libya angered Britain and the United States over the warm public reception it gave to Megrahi, who was freed in August on compassionate grounds as he has terminal cancer.

Critics of the move accused the government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and the devolved Scottish administration, of freeing Megrahi to win business deals with Libya.

Gaddafi brushed off the issue saying: “It is a matter of concern for the British, Scots, Americans. We are not really concerned about it.”

NUCLEAR MIDDLE EAST

In the wide-ranging interview, Gaddafi said a future Palestinian state should be allowed nuclear weapons unless Israel, which is widely thought to have such weapons, is disarmed.

Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia should be entitled to develop nuclear weapons as a counterbalance to Israel, he said.

Gaddafi accused the international community of double standards over the way it has handled Israel’s nuclear capabilities and Iran’s nuclear program, saying Libya opposed any country having atomic weapons.

Iran has repeatedly rejected calls to curb enrichment or grant unfettered U.N. inspections aimed at verifying that it is not trying to develop nuclear arms. Israel does not discuss its nuclear capabilities under an “ambiguity” policy.

“If the Israelis have the nuclear weapons and the nuclear capabilities, then it is the right of the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Saudis to have the same — even the Palestinians should have the same because their counterparts, or their opponents, have nuclear capabilities,” he said. “Why not?” CNBC.

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Humble Beginning

October 25, 2009 By

white house_Barack Hussein Obama was born August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. His father, Barack Obama, Sr., was born of Luo ethnicity in Nyanza Province, Kenya. He grew up herding goats with his own father, who was a domestic servant to the British. Although reared among Muslims, Obama, Sr., became an atheist at some point. Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, grew up in Wichita, Kansas. Dunham’s mother went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, they studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through the Federal Housing Program, and moved to Hawaii. Obama’s parents were separated when he was 2 years old and later on divorced.

Obama described how he struggled to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage. He saw his biological father (who died in a 1982 car accident) only once (in 1971) after his parents divorced. In his early teens, he was enrolled in the fifth grade at the esteemed Punahou Academy and graduating with honors in 1979. He was only one of three black students at the school. There, he worked as a community organizer with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on the city’s South Side. During this time, Obama said he “was not raised in a religious household”. Obama entered Harvard Law School in 1988.

In February 1990, he was elected the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review. Barack Obama graduated magna cum laude in 1991. On June 3, 2008 he won the Montana primary election giving him enough delegates to become the first Black American presidential candidate to win a major political party’s presumptive nomination for the office of President of the United States, which later on became the first African-American president in America. President Obama also became the first president to light a ceremonial Diya at the White House to mark the observance of Diwali, the “festival of lights.” And in that occasion he sign a new initiative aimed at expanding opportunities for Americans of Asian and Pacific Islander heritage. Gays and lesbians which are still struggling for acceptance and equal rights in the United States, and President Obama has told them “I’m here with you in that fight”.

Moreover, among of Obama’s policies were laid out during his weekly radio and Internet address, Mr Obama said too many small business owners remain unable to get credit despite administration steps to jump-start lending, which was virtually frozen when the financial crisis took hold last year. “These are the very taxpayers who stood by America’s banks in a crisis, and now it’s time for our banks to stand by creditworthy small businesses and make the loans they need to open their doors, grow their operations and create new jobs,” Mr Obama said. Further he stressed that “It’s time for those banks to fulfill their responsibility to help ensure a wider recovery, a more secure system and more broadly shared prosperity.”

Furthermore, President Barack Obama says overhauling the health care system, while helping millions of people, also will test whether policy makers can “serve the national interest despite the unrelenting efforts of the special interests.” The administration is building momentum for the president’s overhaul effort after the Senate Finance Committee voted 14-9 this week for a bill that would extend health care coverage to millions of people. One Republican, Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, supported the bill, and the measure faces considerable opposition from the health care industry, labor unions and large business organizations.

To date, there is no doubt that President Barack Obama deserves the Nobel peace award. His prominence as a world leader, with a distinct and clearly defined posture toward attaining some semblance of peace on this earth, is being recognized by the Nobel Committee. His efforts have been sincere and gallant, against fiercely formidable odds. Receiving a Nobel Peace award is not meant to be an indication that the recipient has attained peace throughout the world, but in recognition of the potential impact of that individual’s effort towards that end. To keep you abreast of recent developments, just visits the above mentioned for more details and information’s.

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Chavez Says Iran Helping Venezuela Find Uranium

October 20, 2009 By

chavez says iran helping venezuela_Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Saturday Iran is helping his country explore for uranium, but stressed his government would only seek to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

Venezuela says it is working with Russia to develop nuclear energy for nonviolent purposes, and the country’s mining minister said last month Iranian officials were helping to look for uranium, with preliminary tests indicating big deposits.

“We’re working with several countries, with Iran, with Russia. We’re responsible for what we’re doing, we’re in control,” Chavez told reporters in the central Bolivian region of Cochabamba during a gathering of leftist Latin American presidents.

U.S. President Barack Obama and other western leaders have accused Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons, and Washington has expressed concern about Venezuela’s increasingly close ties with the Islamic Republic.

Iran supplies the oil-rich South American country with tractors and consumer goods, including bicycles and dairy products, and last month Chavez agreed to supply Iran with 20,000 barrels per day of gasoline.

Chavez said Venezuela would only use nuclear energy for peaceful means, adding that neither Venezuela nor Iran was planning to build a nuclear bomb.

“What we propose is for nuclear bombs to be eliminated. Venezuela will never build a nuclear bomb,” he said, adding that Venezuela had been unfairly singled out for planning to exploit uranium.

“What about those that already have atomic bombs? … Why aren’t the governments of France, the United States, China and Russia under pressure to eliminate their atomic bombs?”, he asked.

Chavez said his government considers the development of a uranium mining industry as “strategic.” Venezuela has known about the presence of deposits of the nuclear fuel, but it has not studied them extensively and uranium is not mined.

Latin American leftist presidents, Chavez, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa and Bolivia’s Evo Morales are fierce critics of U.S. foreign policies and have forged close ties with Iran and Russia in recent years. By Teresa Cespedes, The Star.

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