NATO

Inside the NATO summit bubble

by News Sources 05.22.2012

Michael Hastings writes: On Sunday morning, I picked up my official NATO Summit press credentials, went through an extensive security check from my hotel (dogs, metal detectors, Secret Service, all in the The Hyatt Regency, where most of the NATO media is staying) and boarded a bus to McCormack Place, the massive conference center where [...]

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Video: ‘No NATO, no war’

by News Sources 05.21.2012
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U.S. war veterans tossing medals back at NATO was a heroic act

by News Sources 05.21.2012

Bernard Harcourt writes: “No amount of medals, ribbons, or flags can cover the amount of human suffering caused by this war.” “I have only one word, and it is shame.” “This is for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.” “Mostly, I’m sorry. I’m sorry to all of you. I am sorry…” In the shadow of [...]

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NATO talks security and peace, Chicago has neither

by News Sources 05.21.2012

Gary Younge writes: On Friday morning in Brighton Park, a neighbourhood in southwest Chicago, around half a dozen Latina volunteers in luminous bibs patrolled the streets around Davis Elementary school. The school sits in the crossfire of three gangs; the Kings, the 2/6s and the SDs (Satan’s Disciples). The trees and walls nearby are peppered [...]

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Welcome, NATO, to Chicago’s police state

by News Sources 05.20.2012

Bernard Harcourt writes: With Nato delegates arriving Saturday night, the City of Chicago has been turned into a police state. Courtesy of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who several months ago began implementing new draconian anti-protest measures, Chicago has gone on security lockdown. Starting early Friday night, 18 May 2012, the Chicago Police Department began shutting down [...]

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Scores of unintended civilian casualties in NATO bombing of Libya

by News Sources 12.18.2011

The New York Times reports: NATO’s seven-month air campaign in Libya, hailed by the alliance and many Libyans for blunting a lethal crackdown by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and helping to push him from power, came with an unrecognized toll: scores of civilian casualties the alliance has long refused to acknowledge or investigate. By NATO’s telling [...]

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Why Afghans have come to hate Americans

by Paul Woodward 12.04.2011

U.S. and Afghan government officials are struggling to reach a strategic long-term agreement — the sticking point is Afghan opposition to night raids which have surged under the Obama administration and now happen as often as 40 times a night. NATO officials say they have modified how night raids are conducted in response to the [...]

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Pakistan to boycott meeting on Afghanistan after NATO strike kills troops

by News Sources 12.01.2011

Bloomberg reports: Pakistan stepped up its protests over a NATO airstrike that killed 24 of its soldiers, deciding to boycott an international conference on Afghanistan to be held in Germany next week. The decision to pull out from the Dec. 5 summit in Bonn was agreed at a meeting of the federal Cabinet yesterday, according [...]

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Pakistan stops NATO supplies after raid kills up to 28

by News Sources 11.26.2011

Reuters reports: NATO helicopters and fighter jets attacked two military outposts in northwest Pakistan on Saturday, killing as many as 28 troops and plunging U.S.-Pakistan relations, already deeply frayed, further into crisis. Pakistan retaliated by shutting down vital NATO supply routes into Afghanistan, used for sending in almost half of the alliance’s non-lethal materiel. The [...]

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The murder brigades of Misrata

by News Sources 10.30.2011

Daniel Williams writes: If anyone is surprised by the apparent killing of Moammar Gadhafi while in the custody of militia members from the town of Misrata, they shouldn’t be. More than 100 militia brigades from Misrata have been operating outside of any official military and civilian command since Tripoli fell in August. Members of these [...]

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NTC asks NATO to extend Libya presence

by News Sources 10.26.2011

The New York Times reports: Libya’s interim leader said Wednesday that he had asked NATO to prolong its air patrols through December and add military advisers on the ground, despite his official declaration on Sunday of the country’s liberation after the killing of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. “We have asked NATO to stay until the end [...]

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Libya prepares for liberation ceremony

by News Sources 10.22.2011

The Guardian reports: Libya’s transitional government will finally declare the country liberated on Sunday following the capture and killing of the ousted dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Military official Abdel-Rahman Busin said the governing National Transitional Council (NTC) had begun preparations for a liberation ceremony on Sunday in the eastern city of Benghazi, birthplace of the Libyan [...]

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German general says NATO Afghan mission has ‘failed’

by News Sources 10.09.2011

Der Spiegel reports: It was 10 years ago that the United States, together with its NATO allies, marched into Afghanistan to put an end to Taliban rule and begin the hunt for al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden. A decade later, the terrorist leader is dead. But, says Harald Kujat, former general inspector of the German [...]

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Libya’s new rulers say fall of Sirte will mean war’s end

by News Sources 10.04.2011

The Guardian reports: Libya’s new leaders are poised to declare the country’s “full liberation” is complete and appoint a new transitional government. The new government will regard the war as won with the fall of Muammar Gaddafi’s home town, Sirte – where there is still heavy fighting. It remains one of the last loyalist holdouts, [...]

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U.S.-Turkey agree on delivery schedule for Predators

by News Sources 09.27.2011

If Israel imagined that Turkey’s reliance on Israeli-made unmanned aircraft might give them some leverage when attempting to mend the two countries frayed relations, the Obama administration is apparently willing to disabuse the Israelis of this hope. Turkey’s recent agreement to install a US-made NATO radar shield against a missile attack in Europe, has no [...]

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Afghanistan is lurching towards a civil war

by News Sources 09.22.2011

Shashank Joshi writes: If Nato’s strategy in Afghanistan seems familiar, that may be because it increasingly seems borrowed from the Black Knight of Monty Python fame, who, after losing both arms, insists that “it’s just a flesh wound”. When Afghan insurgents laid waste to government buildings in Kabul last week, the US ambassador explained, perhaps [...]

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Inside Story – International interest in Libya

by News Sources 09.17.2011
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How the rebels took Tripoli

by News Sources 08.25.2011

Associated Press reports: They called it Operation Mermaid Dawn, a stealth plan coordinated by sleeper cells, Libyan rebels, and NATO to snatch the capital from the Moammar Gadhafi’s regime’s hands. It began three months ago when groups of young men left their homes in Tripoli and traveled to train in Benghazi with ex-military soldiers. After [...]

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Obama, Libya and triumphalism in Washington

by Paul Woodward 08.24.2011

Joe Cirincione writes: This week, in Libya, thousands of people celebrated carrying posters of “The Fantastic Four”: Obama, Rice, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and UK Prime Minister David Cameron. All four played a leading role in supporting the people of Libya in their overthrow of a tyrant. But it was America that played the crucial [...]

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Saif al-Islam not captured by rebels

by News Sources 08.22.2011

The New York Times reports: The euphoria that followed the rebels’ triumphant march in Tripoli gave way to confusion and wariness on Monday, as Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi remained at large, his son Seif al-Islam made a surprise appearance at a hotel with foreign journalists, and pockets of loyalist forces stubbornly resisted rebel efforts to take [...]

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How NATO helped Libya’s rebels

by News Sources 08.22.2011

The New York Times reports: As rebel forces in Libya converged on Tripoli on Sunday, American and NATO officials cited an intensification of American aerial surveillance in and around the capital city as a major factor in helping to tilt the balance after months of steady erosion of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s military. The officials also [...]

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Watch Al Jazeera broadcasting live from the center of Tripoli

by Paul Woodward 08.21.2011

Dennis Kucinich gets the prize for the worst-timed op-ed of the year: “Time to end Nato’s war in Libya” appearing today in The Guardian. As the war enters its sixth month, it is time for the US president and secretary of state to clean up the mess they’ve created with this needless military intervention, and [...]

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Libyan capital rocked by blasts and gunfire

by News Sources 08.20.2011

Al Jazeera reports: Sustained automatic gun fire and a series of explosions have rung out in Tripoli, reports in the Libyan capital said. Blasts and gunfire rocked Tripoli after the break of the dawn-to-dusk fast of Ramadan on Saturday and witnesses reported fighting in the eastern neighbourhoods of Souq al-Jomaa, Arada and Tajoura. A government [...]

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Next stop Tripoli — Libya’s rebels sense victory is within reach

by News Sources 08.19.2011

The Independent reports: Another town falls. Another hook of the trap around Tripoli locks into place. More die, more homes burn, the hatred deepens. But after months of savage strife, there is now a sense that the endgame is at last approaching in Libya’s bloody civil war. The latest battleground was Sabratha, an ancient city [...]

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