Osama bin Laden threatens French troops, France announces pullout from Afghanistan

Osama "hearings", never sightings except by hearsay, continue regularly. Either bin Laden is alive, living in God knows where totally beyond America's vast spy apparatus, or this is an ongoing Orwellian ruse meant to rejuice us with fear and loathing every month or two. Meanwhile, there are many individuals who have claimed he is dead, including the late Benizir Bhutto.

There are two basic possibilities. Either this is another US-NATO act of fraud, a covert act to try to drive western populations into believing that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda still represent real threats to the West and that the West must, therefore, be supported in its continuing criminal wars on Afghanistan and Pakistan; or, we have some jihadis using his name when they should not be. The former possibility is probably the one to be most likely; and there are at least two reasons for believing this. It's strongly similar to the related M.O. of the U.S. for the past several years; often coming out with statements saying that OBL was threatening the US or West again when it provably never was him, it provably was a scam by the US. And the November elections are fast approaching. Election time is always a "good" time for games of deception.

And why would French troops be singled out when many countries are contributing troops to this war on Afghanistan and Pakistan?

Also, the Obama administration recently raised a false alert about there being terrorist strikes that'd soon be committed against Europe and this was promptly denounced as very seriously or extremely exaggerated by the Pakistani government and European intelligence agencies. And this false alert clearly was wittingly fabricated; clearly enough, anyway.

"Barack Obama accused of exaggerating terror threat for political gain"

by Simon Tisdall and Richard Norton-Taylor, Oct. 7th, 2010

www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/07/barack-obama-terror-threat-claims

• Pakistani diplomat launches scathing attack on White House
• European intelligence claims raised terror alerts 'nonsensical'

(snip)

OBL's a funny guy, because if it's really him who very recently threatened to attack French troops, then he's quite a lively ghost; for he most probably died some years ago, like several or more years ago, if not before the end of 2001. So some characters, jihadis or other opponents to the West's war(s), humorously want to keep the ghost of their hero alive; or some malevolant western leaders want to keep the ghost of their scapegoat alive.

It's like the so-called leader of the so-called Al Qaeda in Iraq and I think it was al-Zarqawi, who the US purportedly killed, but then he mysteriously resurrected, so the US purportedly killed him again, and he again resurrected; a few or more times. It's quite a lively ghost story.

And not all is lost for the U.S. even if France, Canada and the Netherlands all pull out of Afghanistan, which they most definitely should. But will they really withdraw their forces? I doubt Canada will. The Cdn government probably will again come up with excuses for prolonging the placement of Cdn forces in Afghanistan, and like in the US, there evidently is awfully little Cdns will be able to do about this.

The following article by Rick Rozoff oddly makes no mention of withdrawals by Canada, The Netherlands, and now France; but what it says about the number of countries contributing, militarily, to the war "effort", I guess that it's fair, say, to say that Canada, France and The Netherlands withdrawing surely couldn't affect the war "effort" much. I'll add a little more about their withdrawals beginning next year further below.

"Towards Military Escalation? U.S. And NATO Drag Asia Into Afghan Quagmire"

by Rick Rozoff, Stop NATO, RickRozoff.wordpress.com, Oct. 29, 2010

www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21676

The US-lead forces for this war are evidently gaining or have gained militarily active partners from many Asian countries. He also says the US or US and NATO are apparently going to take the war into the province of Balochistan in Pakistan, widening the war in that country.

Check his author index linked at the end of the above article, if wanting to look for some of his articles about US-NATO "coalition of the willing" build-up in or for the war on Afghanistan and, I guess anyway, Pakistan.

I'm not expecting that the Cdn government will really withdraw, but perhaps The Netherlands will. While I won't wager either way about France, I'll be surprised if it withdraws its forces; perhaps, especially with Sarkozy still being the PM. But two articles, a little further below, provide strong reasons for not believing statements about withdrawals to begin next year.

Quoting from the CSMonitor.com article:

"There's a fixed date for NATO in the framework of its new strategy, that's the start of 2011, because in 2011 we're going to transfer a whole series of districts to the Afghans,” said France’s Defense Minister Herve Morin in an article by Agence France-Presse. “At that moment, there could be the first movements or first withdrawals of Allied forces from Afghanistan. In any case, that's the calendar set by Barack Obama, that in 2011 the first American troops could quit Afghanistan.”

"U.S. And NATO To Wage War 15-Year War In Afghanistan And Pakistan"

by Rick Rozoff, Oct. 6th, 2010

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m70491

On October 4 President Barack Obama and what the press characterized as his war council conducted a 30-minute video conference with Obama’s Afghan opposite number, President Hamid Karzai, to discuss "a number of topics, including the strategic vision for long term US-Afghan relations, the recent Afghan parliamentary elections, and regional relations."

A statement issued by the White House later in the day added that "The two leaders agreed that they should continue routine engagements to refine a common vision and to align our efforts to support President Karzai’s goal of completing transition to Afghan lead security responsibility by 2014." [1]

The conference also included Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington and commander of all U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces in Afghanistan General David Petraeus and American ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry from Kabul.

(snip)

There are now at least 152,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, 120,000 under NATO command, and according to several recent statements by American and NATO officials most if not all them of them will remain there beyond the 2011 withdrawal date announced by the American administration last year.

If troops from all the major Western military powers in theater remain beyond New Year’s Eve of 2014, they will be engaged in the fifteenth calendar year of the Pentagon’s and NATO’s war in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan. The conflict has also allowed the expansion of American and Alliance military bases into Central Asia – Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – and the elaboration of networks for the transit of troops, military equipment and supplies and for combat training and bombing runs from Estonia and Latvia on the Baltic Sea to Georgia on the Black Sea and Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan on the Caspian Sea as well as in several other nations from Eastern Europe to the so-called Broader Middle East including Pakistan, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Diego Garcia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Kazakhstan.

Excuse me, but the above definitely doesn't sound like any short-term planning is involved.

The fruitless pursuit of the ever more elusive Osama bin Laden and Mullah Mohammed Omar – as such remains the official rationale of the U.S. and the 50 military partners under NATO’s umbrella in the Afghan war zone - ... - has not registered any progress in nine years, though thousands of Afghans and Pakistanis who had no contact with either of the evasive fugitives have been killed in overnight raids, checkpoint shootings, bombing runs and drone missile strikes. ...

And the Afghan resistance, Taliban and others, are not Al Qaeda or under its authority. Plus, the Taliban had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, as Bush himself said, and there are extremely few, if any, actual Al Qaeda members in Afghanistan, with relatively few, if any, real ones in Pakistan; in addition to Osama bin Laden most surely having died years ago.

(snip)

In May U.S. Marine Corps Brigadier General Glenn Walters announced that military drones were being diverted from Africa Command, Pacific Command and Southern Command for Central Command, which covers the Middle East, Central Asia and Afghanistan and Pakistan. Walters also said that the Pentagon’s drone fleet had grown from 200 in 2001 to 6,500 at the beginning of this year and will expand to 8,000 by 2012, an increase of twenty times in slightly over a decade.

These criminals clearly plan for many more years of [their] wars. Some people might say that the HUGE increase in the number of war drones is mostly for profiting the MIC, but it's also much more profitable when the MIC's tech. is used so that it eventually needs to be replaced with new purchases; as I once read from some writer who saw or sees the whole War & MIC, Inc., picture.

(snip)

Not only are American and NATO military forces not leaving Afghanistan in the foreseeable future, they are expanding their nine-year-old war into Pakistan.

Any officials of governments "contributing" to this war "effort" who speak of the withdrawal date for NATO commencing in 2011 are LYING.

And France doesn't seem to be really interested in winding down its involvement in the phony war on terrorism.

"Ongoing Iran War Preparations? Arabian Sea: Center Of West's 21st Century War"

by Rick Rozoff, Oct. 25th, 2010

www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21612

(snip)

A quarter of the world's nuclear aircraft carriers will soon be in the Arabian Sea.

The Nimitz class nuclear-powered supercarrier USS Abraham Lincoln arrived in the region on October 17 to join the USS Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group, which in turn had arrived there on June 18 as part of a regular rotation.

The Charles de Gaulle, flagship of the French navy, the country's only aircraft carrier and the sole non-American nuclear carrier, will soon join its two U.S. counterparts. The U.S. possesses half the world's twenty-two aircraft carriers, all eleven supercarriers (those displacing over 70,000 tons) and eleven of twelve nuclear carriers.

(map of Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea, ...)

(snip)

In total, there are as many as 8-10,000 military personnel from NATO nations in Djibouti. The Pentagon has used Camp Lemonnier, the port of Djibouti and the country's international airport for attacks in Yemen and Somalia, and French troops in the country assisted Djibouti in its armed conflict with neighboring Eritrea in 2008. France uses the country to train its troops for the war in Afghanistan and the Pentagon used it to support the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2006.

(snip)

Beforehand, shortly after entering the Mediterranean Sea in May, USS Truman engaged in joint interoperability exercises in Marseille with its French fellow nuclear aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle. French warplanes landed on the Truman's deck and American ones on Charles de Gaulle's.

The French carrier was returned to port for repairs on the day it set sail for "a four-month mission to support the fight in Afghanistan," but "will recover lost time at sea and its itinerary is not likely to change."

Its new mission, the first since 2007, "is to take it to join the fight against piracy off Somalia in the Indian Ocean and the NATO mission in Afghanistan.

"The new mission of the ship is to join the fight against pirates that is taking place off the coast of Somalia in the Indian Ocean [where a] NATO mission is ongoing." [4] Nuclear aircraft carriers are a curious choice for contending with piracy.

(snip)

In May of 2009 French President Nicolas Sarkozy opened a military base in the United Arab Emirates, the first permanent French base in the Persian Gulf and the first overseas base in 50 years. Including a navy and air force base and a training camp, it was seen at the time as a show of force against Iran which contests the Abu Musa island in the Persian Gulf with the Emirates.

NATO forces also operate out of bases in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The North Atlantic Alliance has launched several helicopter gunship attacks inside Pakistan since late last month and on September 30 killed three Pakistani soldiers.

There are 120,000 troops from almost 50 nations serving under NATO's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.

This year NATO has airlifted Ugandan troops to Somalia for the armed conflict there.

The Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier en route to the Arabian Sea to support the war in that country as well for operations off the coast of Somalia was commissioned in May of 2001. Seven months later it sailed to the Arabian Sea to support Operation Enduring Freedom and the war in Afghanistan. On December 19 of that year Super Étendard attack jets and Rafale Ms fighters took off from its deck to conduct bombing and reconnaissance missions, in all over 140.

The following March Super Étendard and Mirage warplanes assigned to Charles de Gaulle carried out air strikes before and during the U.S.-led Operation Anaconda.

When the French carrier arrives in the Arabian Sea this month it will be accompanied by two frigates, an attack submarine and a refuelling tanker, 3,000 sailors and 27 aircraft: Ten Rafale F3 fighters, 12 Super Étendard attack jets, two Hawkeye early warning planes and three helicopters.

According to the commander of the group, Rear Admiral Jean-Louis Kerignard, "the force would help allied navies fight piracy off the coast of Somalia and send jets to support NATO in the skies above Afghanistan."

"The ships will also train alongside allies from Saudi Arabia, India, Italy, Greece and the United Arab Emirates and make two stopovers at the French base in Djibouti before returning to France in February 2011." [6]

(snip)

The West, America and its NATO allies, are escalating military operations across the area, from Asia to Africa to the Middle East. The theater of operations has recently broadened from South Asia to the Arabian Peninsula with drone and helicopter attacks in Pakistan and air and cruise missile strikes in Yemen.

A war that started at the beginning of the century is in its tenth year and gives every indication of being permanent.

It doesn't seem to me that the French leadership is really interested in respecting laws and peace. So why would it suddently change next year?