THE POSTS MOSTLY BY GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION

THE POSTS MOSTLY BY GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION

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Boston artist Steve Mills - realistic painting

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Congressman confirms report of heated argument between Netanyahu and US envoy


Congressman confirms report of heated argument between Netanyahu and US envoy
It was like ‘nothing at that level that I’ve seen in all my time,’ says Mike Rogers. Ambassador Shapiro had denied breaking protocol and called the original Israeli article ‘a very silly story’

By Yoel Goldman
September 07, 2012 "
Times Of Israel" - -  A report claiming there was a dramatic verbal bust-up between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro late last month — which was flatly denied this week by Shapiro in a TV interview — was confirmed by a congressman who was present at the meeting, which covered divergent US and Israeli policies on Iran.
The exchange was like “nothing at that level that I’ve seen in all my time,” said Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican from Michigan.
The State Department would not comment Thursday on the apparent contradiction.
Rogers told a Detroit radio station that the Netanyahu-Shapiro interchange, at the meeting on August 24 in Jerusalem, featured “very tense,” “agitated” and “elevated” exchanges, and that Netanyahu was “at wit’s end” with what the prime minister saw as a lack of US clarity on the Iran issue.
“It was very, very clear that the Israelis had lost their patience with the administration,” Rogers, chairman of the House intelligence committee, was quoted by the Washington Post Thursday as saying.
His account contradicted statements made by US envoy Shapiro, who went on television earlier this week to flatly deny the original report in Yedioth Ahronoth as “a very silly story.”
According to the Yedioth article, Ambassador Shapiro grew enraged by Netanyahu’s remarks about President Barack Obama’s handling of the Iranian threat, broke diplomatic protocol, and snapped at the PM for misrepresenting the US president’s position. “Sparks and lightning were flying,” an unnamed source told the paper.
But in an interview Sunday with Channel 2 News, the ambassador was dismissive when asked about the newspaper’s account of the closed-door meeting.
“The published account of that meeting did not reflect what actually occurred in the meeting,” Shapiro said. “The conversations were entirely friendly and professional. They always are. I always speak respectfully with the prime minister, just as the prime minister always speaks respectfully with me. And that really characterizes all of the dialogue between our governments.”
The envoy continued: “We’re such close allies, we have so many common interests… that we speak together in the most friendly, the most professional way. Even on an occasion that we have a disagreement, that’s how we work together. And that was certainly the case in the (recent) meeting.”
There was no argument, no verbal skirmish, no disagreement, the interviewer persisted? “Sorry to disappoint you,” Shapiro responded.
But Rogers, who was interviewed Tuesday on the Detriot radio program, gave a version of the meeting that reinforced the Yedioth story. He said there were “elevated” exchanges between Netanyahu and Shapiro, adding: “We’ve had sharp exchanges with other heads of state and other things, in intelligence services and other things, but nothing at that level that I’ve seen in all my time, where people were clearly that agitated, clearly that worked up about a particular issue, where there was a very sharp exchange.”
He said that Netanyahu does not believe Obama would attack Iran, and that the prime minister was frustrated that the US has not defined “red lines” for Iran and its nuclear program.
State Department spokesman Edgar Vasquez declined Thursday to address Rogers’ comments, saying only that America’s relationship with Israel remains extremely strong.
Asher Zeiger contributed to this report.

9/11, Bin Laden and the Tyranny of the Corporate Media


9/11, Bin Laden and the Tyranny of the Corporate Media

By Prof. James F. Tracy
This essay originally appeared on September 21, 2001 in my Daily Iowan column, “Firing Line.” The piece uses George Orwell’s 1984 as a basis to suggest how from the very beginning the corporate media played a central role in setting the stage for the prevalent Osama bin Laden-Al Qaeda myth, the related “blowback” thesis vigorously embraced by the progressive-left community, and the assemblage of rearguard actions defending such perspectives and reflexively labeling all accounts conflicting with government pronouncements as “conspiracy theories.”
An expertly orchestrated barrage of 9/11 propaganda in the weeks and months following the attacks had a devastatingly traumatic effect on a majority of the US population while simultaneously rendering many of the most legitimate and important questions to the sidelines. Together these discursive elements have helped to create an environment where, as Orwell envisaged, essential civil liberties have been forsaken and perpetual war has become the norm. -JT
In the age of the concentration camp, castration is more characteristic of social reality than competitiveness. -Theodor Adorno
September 09, 2012 "Information Clearing House" - -  Students in my media theory class couldn’t be reading 1984 at a more opportune time. Orwell’s thesis, articulated shortly after World War II, was a disturbingly prescient scenario of the world geopolitical order in the late 20th century and what it would be like to inhabit that then future world.
The dire anti-utopian predictions were largely informed by Orwell’s activities as an engaged European socialist who, in 1947, believed that the greatest obstacles to human liberation were Soviet and U.S. imperialist conquest and the human inability to collectively imagine a world free from tyranny and bloodshed.
The means of technological communication were central to the project of perpetuating a condition wherein the very soul of individuals was replaced by lockstep allegiance to the state. Protagonist Winston Smith is a peon bureaucrat who refashions the past to be in accord with present edicts of the ruling party’s inner circle.
The higher strata of the social order are lulled into a rabid nationalism rationalized by the Manichean representations of Big Brother, warm paternal protector, and Emanuel Goldstein, Party traitor and embodiment of all evil. The good/evil dichotomy and state of siege prove sufficient in keeping obtuse party members in line, while the more humane must undergo a concerted brainwashing.
The U.S. media function in an entirely similar fashion, particularly with regard to U.S. foreign policy and coverage of the horrific bombings of the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Indeed, it is in what the media have willfully omitted or feigned in such coverage that would have likely made Winston’s role as censor much easier, if not entirely expendable.
In June, a French judge did what the U.S. is now attempting with Osama bin Laden in summoning the former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to the French Hall of Justice for questioning about the 1973 Chilean coup. Kissinger’s track record makes bin Laden look like the Good Humor man, and when Kissinger fled the country the next day, the U.S. media never batted an eye. Does two plus two equal five?
Earlier this year, CNN President of News Gathering Eason Jordan confirmed that the U.S. military’s special Psychological Operations Group (Psy-ops) had personnel working at CNN during the Kosovo conflict. A U.S. Army spokesperson remarked, “Psy-ops personnel, soldiers and officers, have been working in CNN’s headquarters in Atlanta through our program ‘Training with Industry.’ They worked as regular employees of CNN. They helped in the production of news.”
CNN is [among] the most widely circulated means of electronic news in the world. Whether Psy-ops personnel returned to assist in coverage of “911″ is a matter for consideration.
While journalists seldom missed an opportunity to pursue grieving and petrified New Yorkers with vampire-like zeal, they dismissed the story of an Iranian man who, along with German authorities on Sept. 10 made 14 attempts to contact the U.S. State Department and the CIA about a possible attack; he was hung up on.
Nor was it examined in any detail that since August, the World Trade Center has been on “heightened security alert.” Or that a censored ABC videotape purportedly showed an F-16 Fighter trailing the second passenger jet that hit the WTC.
Canadians were shown video footage of Yasser Arafat giving blood on Sept. 12—U.S. viewers were not. And on Sept. 15, thousands went to mark a national day of mourning for victims of the terrorism and to protest plans to deploy massive military action in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Although the events were covered in mainstream media, the calls for peace were conveniently edited out.
Finally, that our elaborate $30 billion per year intelligence and surveillance apparatus had no foreknowledge of the attacks may have been laughable if the circumstances were not so dire. That story has been dismissed and with it government accountability to the families of the 6,300 [sic] missing or deceased and to the remaining U.S. citizenry.
At a time when information is crucial and thousands if not millions more innocent lives may be lost, U.S. journalists are again “stenographers to power” -obsequiously conveying the pronouncements of saber rattling military and government officials screaming quixotic bloodlust at an enemy that remains undefined.
As Hitler, Stalin , and Big Brother well knew, the more poorly defined’ the enemy, the stronger the blind allegiance given the state in fighting it and the greater willingness of the polity in repudiating its own civil liberties. The fear is real, and the enemy this time around isn’t Jews, Gypsies, Formalists, or Eurasians. The new enemy is us.
The Daily Iowan and James F. Tracy, 2012

Netanyahu Can ‘Squeeze’ Obama


Netanyahu Can ‘Squeeze’ Obama

US media and Congress will take his side if he attacks Iran

By Philip Weiss 
September 09, 2012 "
Information Clearing House" - -  What is the role of the Israeli government in American political life? Well, apparently we must defer to Netanyahu. "To Attack of Not to Attack" is by Zaki Shalom, a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, Tel Aviv University, writing in a journal of the French Institute for International Relations. Breathtaking. Boldface is mine: 
We must take into account that the Prime Minister is raising the bar for threats toward Iran, inter alia, because he recognizes that the current US administration is seeking to prevent an Israeli action before the elections at any price. It would probably be no exaggeration to say that the prime minister is going around with the feeling that the political future of President Obama is to some extent, perhaps even a large extent, in the Prime Minister’s hands. An Israeli action at the present time would almost certainly expose the president to serious criticism for his fecklessness, which forced Israel, a close ally of the United States, to act alone. Various segments in the US administration, especially the Congress, will make demands to support Israel.
All this, when the consequences of an Israeli action for the stagnant US economy are liable to be serious. Under these circumstances, it is not inconceivable that the Prime Minister believes that currently, he can “squeeze” from the president far-reaching commitments in Israel’s favor in exchange for Israeli restraint on Iran. This compensation will presumably be mainly in the areas of defense and the economy. Israel, the prime minister can argue, is prepared to take a strategic risk on the Iranian issue, if it knows that the US administration will support it and will be prepared to give it aid that under normal circumstances, it would not be prepared to give...
The Prime Minister can assume that an Israeli attack prior to the November 2012 elections will make it very difficult for the Obama administration to criticize Israel openly. He can assume with near certainty that as soon as the attack begins, members of Congress, the media, Jewish leaders, and Republican Party leaders will issue statements supporting Israel and even demand that the administration back Israel and defend it. The Obama administration cannot ignore such expressions of support in the period leading up to the elections.
Bruce Wolman, who tipped me off to this article, adds:
It's a win-win for Netanyahu. If he is not serious about attacking Iran, he still gets the max from the USA with his blackmailing. If he is serious, he puts Obama in a box such that he has to rescue the IDF. Netanyahu doesn't even have to decide between the two until the day of the election. He can just keep us all guessing. (However, I can't believe our $300B intelligence services don't know whether Israel is serious or not.)
I disagree that Obama has no choice. He could take on Netanyahu and AIPAC and win. Why? The military has his back on this one. But Obama is not such a risk taker. He is a campaign machine, nothing more. If he has an ideology, it is moderate Republican economic values. If he faced Netanyahu head on, a lot of non-Jewish Americans would support him. There is war fatigue in this country and in the military. But the longer he waits, the more trapped Netanyahu has him. 
If Obama had led on this issue, he could have used it to his political advantage. Obama could easily parry the statements of Republican leaders, and he is not going to get the Christian Zionists to vote for him anyhow. Even many Jews do not want us to go to war with Iran. But Obama won't take this risk, because he doesn't want to upset his Jewish donors. 
Netanyahu traps him with each passing day because the U.S. administration keeps validating Israel's talking points in an effort to appease the Israeli government. That makes it harder for Obama to reverse the rhetoric and not look opportunistic. 
Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net
This article was originally posted at Mondoweiss

Planned war on Iran and the General who said No!


Planned war on Iran and the General who said No!

Gordon Duff – Press TV August 22, 2012

Today, General Dempsey, Chairman of America’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, the man who flew to Tel Aviv and informed Netanyahu that America wanted no part of his scheming against Iran was the subject of an assassination attempt in Afghanistan.
This wasn’t an act of terrorism or Taliban militants. It was a “mob hit” against someone who failed to kiss the feet of Netanyahu. His response was to unleash killers, not a fact for the public but a fact just the same, one the American military knows very well. Netanyahu has a problem with “hubris.”
The culprits, “militants,” managed to escape undetected from the most sophisticatedly defended real estate on earth, the perimeter of Bagram Air Force Base. Lucky for them they attacked at night, a time when America’s 5th generation night vision, ground radar and other detection systems were mysteriously disabled.
The rocket detection systems, early warning blimps with ground penetrating synthetic aperture radar and the continual coverage by UAV drones using infrared detection, $2 billion in technology on this one perimeter alone, cost the plane of America’s top military commander and wounds were sustained by two crew members.
(See: Two hurt as rocket hits plane of US general in Afghanistan[BELOW])
Dempsey had just left Tel Aviv where he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the following:
“I may not know about all of [Israel's] capabilities, but I think that it’s a fair characterization to say that they could delay but not destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities.”
Dempsey then told waiting reporters:
“We compare intelligence, we discuss regional implications, and we’ve admitted to each other that our clocks are turning at different rates, we have to understand the Israelis; they live with a constant suspicion with which we do not have to deal.”
There are those close to President Obama who don’t accept the attack on Dempsey at face value, with a public admission by the Taliban of complicity. Such statements, which would certainly cost dearly in reprisals by the US, are most often found on Internet sites lacking a credible connection to any Islamic source.
To some Americans, the attack appears to be a reprisal against Dempsey who, out of coincidence, cited the motive in his own appraisal of Israel’s judgment, their “constant suspicion.”
News agencies buried the failed attack, knowing Dempsey is hated by Netanyahu and respected by the Taliban as both “truthful and fair.”
Netanyahu longs for the days when General Myers held Dempsey’s job, under Bush (43), both flawed and narcissistic, predictable puppets, the perfect fodder for Netanyahu’s machinations.
Only two weeks ago, Presidential hopeful, Mitt Romney, returned from a trip overseas, coming back to America with $60 million dollars collected in Israel and Britain while accompanied by Casino boss Sheldon Adelson who’s Las Vegas and China organizations have long been reputed to be the center of worldwide organized crime.
The business, gambling, drugs, prostitution, money laundering and now war, is seeking its own president and war on Iran is the only issue driving the American campaign.
Romney, as a state governor, was, if anything, to the “left” of President Obama. Romney’s support of government health care and widespread gun controls run totally opposite to the core constituency of the Republican Party, the weapons lobby and the medical racketeers.
Romney has found, however, that, though it is illegal for any American candidate to accept money overseas, while overseas, from overseas, at home from those who are citizens of other countries, he feels himself above the law, in the sweet and motherly arms of the Israeli controlled American media.
Now drowning in illegal cash, much from London bankers, his most interesting catch was the private dinner he shared with the Tel Aviv “blood diamond” smugglers who donated up to $25 million dollars in one night.
Key to his financial successes is his lifelong history of working closely with organized crime. His investment company, Bain, was funded initially by cash infusion from El Salvador death squads many years ago. These investors are still at his side despite charges of mass murder and corruption.
Bain Capital is Romney’s money laundering and tax avoidance company with thousands of secret bank accounts in “safe havens” around the world, invisible billions, hidden transactions, unseen profits and unseen “clients.”
Now Romney has found the “mother of all causes,” selling the promise of an American war, fought by Americans, financed by Americans, American dead, American blood, American collapse, a war demanded by, not Jews of the world but by organized crime groups operating through Israel’s Likudist party, dominated by the Koch Brothers, American gasoline speculators, Sheldon Adelson, whose reputation would fill volumes and Rupert Murdoch, whose spy organization is now proven to have blackmailed three consecutive British government, well proven, and likely to have been even more successful in the United States, Germany, Canada, Australia and a dozen other nations.
Most embarrassing to both Russia and the United States has been the ability of criminal organizations to secure sanctions against Iran when both nations are burdened by official reports stating with comprehensive clarity that Iran has no nuclear program.
Even more embarrassing for Russia, who refused to veto sanctions as they did with Iran’s ally Syria, is the fact that Iran’s peaceful nuclear program is built, in near entirety on Russian technology, a Russian nuclear reactor and 3000 Russian technicians.
Statements by Obama directly contradict America’s National Intelligence Estimate. The estimate stated that Iran has no nuclear program. Russia’s Putin has similarly ignored, not just his own intelligence agencies but the fact that Russia is actually building Iran’s reactor and has 3000 technicians in Iran, all of whom probably are not entirely deaf and blind.
Obama has no rational claim to ignorance. His behavior is like that of the playground, all the other children are eating dirt, he feels he has to do the same. In this case, however, when known falsehoods likely to end in a destructive war are agreed to out of fear of retaliation by a former furniture salesman (Netanyahu) or gambling boss, the real importance of the presidency comes into doubt.
A problem no one will mention, is the behavior of Putin in Tel Aviv, backing Netanyahu’s claims of Iran’s violation of voluntary agreements based on no facts other than the statements of one of the world best known pathological liars. What does the failed furniture salesman from Philadelphia have on Uncle Vladimir?
Neither leader has dealt with the simple fact, Iran has the right to build anything it wants for any reason it wishes.
Similarly, the United States, under Bush, both withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 and withdrew from participation in the International Criminal Court at The Hague.
The latter, the withdrawal from the court, is a veritable admission of complicity in war crimes with key U.S. officials facing indictment and arrest across the globe.
Were one to be honest, the entire Bush administration is under a privileged form of “house arrest” as is Britain’s Tony Blair. All face criminal proceedings and continually make plans to travel but end up cancelling, sometimes out of public outcry for justice or to actually avoid arrest.
Despite his pronouncements, even with an election upcoming and the need to parrot childish threats in order to please the Israeli press a prerequisite, Obama has made it clear he will not attack Iran. It is time the public realizes that by opposing war and running against Romney, an agent of a hostile foreign power and longtime organized crime affiliate, the president and those around him are at great risk.
The carefully choreographed and very public attempt on the life of General Dempsey is a greeting card from the Adelson/Romney/Netanyahu camp.
Several appropriate responses, RSVPs as it were, come to mind, some partially fatal. Is an American president really the leader of the free world, as we so often say, if any “two bit thug” can dictate policy?
Despite that position, Obama controls well over 80% of the Jewish vote in the United States where, as pointed out in an earlier article, studies have shown only 4% of Jewish voters in America feel Iran is any threat to Israel.
A critical part of understanding organized crime requires the study of its origins, particularly in America, during the 19th century.
While London, from the earliest days of what America had believed to be freedom from British rule, in actuality ran America’s economy, and was, itself, subjected to rule by continental bankers.
Britain, the colonizer of the world was, itself, no more than a client of the Bauer/Rothschild group who underwrote the British pound.
The real criminal groups running American politics developed from among the immigrant gangs that settled America’s cities. There were German, Irish, Italian and Jewish gangs. All that survive now are the remnants of the Mafia, the Jewish gangs who now run Washington and Wall Street and the new threats from Kosovo and Albania, the latest round of criminal immigration into America.
With the full cooperation of FBI Director Hoover, tasked with protecting America from criminal organizations, the government stood aside while every aspect of American life, every necessity from water to electricity to medicine, leaving nothing out, came under assault by criminal groups grown fat on profiteering from war, narcotics and, during the Prohibition years, the sale of illegal alcohol.
For decades, America’s media has been tasked with blaming all ills on Italian Americans and corrupt trade unions while America has been little but a colony of key European banking families who created wars, suppressed technologies, manipulated currencies, raised and crushed stock markets and national economies and, in the end, became as a hydra, the multi-headed beast of Greek mythology, ruling all.
What drew Adelson, Romney and even Putin to Israel at this critical time as the world sits on the brink of nuclear war over Syria is simple. We are again reminded of Putin’s visit to Israel.
No Israeli citizen was spoken to, no public concerns were addressed, no, a visit to Israel is a visit to the “safe haven” for worldwide organized crime that controls and manages the vast and endless wealth of the Russian continent as easily as it runs Britain or dances its Washingtonian puppets into discarding laws and traditions and becoming a surrogate bully, not for a nation but for an international criminal conspiracy.
The language of politics must be replaced with the language of crime as the solutions to what are misconstrued as political problems are and have long been responses to the depredations of criminal organizations.
It isn’t as though Iran were the only target, simply the public target where control of the United Nations Security Council can be exercised, a demonstration of the raw power of evil.
The mistake made by so many is to use principles of geopolitics to describe the world condition, the continual entropy, the centralization of wealth and the rapid deterioration of human rights as wars rage without end.
Even the educated classes, searching for patterns and rationales to explain how 2000 trillion dollars represented by “derivative debt” could encumber all the world’s currencies, a staggering amount created by an unseen hand through a process none have yet been able to describe.
Debt, or as it is known in criminal circles as “loan sharking,” is the business of the world. Controlling currencies was not enough, thus controlled governments, bribed, threatened, blackmailed and bought looked away while the wealth and hope of a hundred generations was stolen overnight, a few lines of text, a few entries on computers and generations of our progeny are changed, in that moment, from citizens of the world to “useless eaters,” as Henry Kissinger would describe them.
Armies may march, air forces may bomb, drones may attack but none of this is war or politics, nor has it been for centuries. This is where we went awry. We chose to play chess while our opponents simply put a pistol on the table and emptied our pockets.
America is living this today, as it looks on an upcoming election. The very few can escape the packaged news, scripted in Hollywood or Washington or Tel Aviv, our political life is a theatrical production, a comic tragedy without the Shakespearean irony.
This is a government that Sheldon Adelson, the man who believes he will be America’s real next president, believes he can take to war, a systematic conquest of the Middle East and Central Asia, done for the criminal elements some call Israel, done, quite simply, to prove the power of evil over good.
Gordon Duff is a Marine Vietnam veteran, a combat infantryman, and Senior Editor at Veterans Today. His career has included extensive experience in international banking along with such diverse areas as consulting on counter insurgency, defense technologies or acting as diplomatic representative for UN humanitarian and economic development efforts. Gordon Duff has traveled to over 80 nations. His articles are published around the world and translated into a number of languages. He is regularly on TV and radio, a popular and sometimes controversial guest.
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*Two hurt as rocket hits plane of US general in Afghanistan - sparking fears over security leaks

By ANTHONY BOND
PUBLISHED: 10:13 GMT, 21 August 2012 |

Target: Two insurgent rockets struck the vast Bagram air field, pictured, overnight

A rocket fired on a U.S. airbase in Afghanistan early today damaged the aircraft of America's top military officer and wounded two maintenance crew.
Two insurgent rockets struck the vast Bagram air field overnight, with one causing damage to the C-17 used by General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, who later left the base using another plane.
Shrapnel from the rocket struck the door of the plane while it was parked on the runway, with two American maintenance crew suffering minor injuries in the attack, Dempsey's spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan said.
The rockets posed no threat to the safety of Dempsey or his staff, who were asleep in their quarters at the time of the incident in the early hours of the morning, officers said.
A spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) described the rocket hitting the general's plane as simply a lucky shot.
'It was a C-17 that looked just like every other C-17 on the tarmac,' he told AFP.
'Indirect fire is not unusual at Bagram and there is absolutely no indication that this was an attack specfically targeting that plane,' the spokesman said.
Dempsey had been visiting Kabul to meet commanders of the NATO-led force and Afghan top brass amid a surge in assaults by Afghan security personnel on their international colleagues.

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A total of 10 soldiers, mostly Americans, have lost their lives at the hands of their Afghan allies in the past two weeks, and the attacks have caused almost one in every four coalition deaths in the war so far this month.
The total of 40 deaths so far this year amount to 13 percent of all international coalition fatalities in 2012.
The assaults have confounded the international force, which has touted its partnership with Afghan troops as the key to withdrawing its combat troops over the next two years.
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President Barack Obama, who spoke to Dempsey before the attack by phone while he was in Kabul, said Monday the United States was watching the rise in insider attacks with 'deep concern', telling a White House news conference: 'Obviously, we have to do more.'
NATO and American officers have suggested the Afghan government has failed to come to grips with the problem but Dempsey said he came away 'reassured' after discussions with his Afghan counterpart, General Shir Mohammad Karimi.

'I am reassured that the Afghan leaders, military and civilian, understand how important this moment is,' Dempsey said.
Taliban insurgents have taken credit for the so-called green-on-blue assaults while NATO officers say an internal review showed only about 10 percent of them were the result of infiltration.
NATO has blamed the incidents on a mixture of cultural differences, personal vendettas and propaganda by Islamist militants.

The attacks are unprecedented in US military history and they have spawned so much mistrust that foreign troops have been ordered to be armed at all times, even within bases, officers said.
Afghan authorities have adopted more rigorous vetting of recruits and NATO has bolstered counter-intelligence but the measures have failed to stem the problem.
NATO has about 130,000 soldiers fighting an insurgency by Taliban Islamists, but they are due to pull out in 2014 and now work increasingly with the Afghans they are training to take over.
Dempsey, on the first leg of a trip to Afghanistan and Iraq, said the insider violence would not alter the timetable for withdrawal or the coalition's emphasis on cooperating with Afghan recruits.
But the growing number of attacks is likely to add to pressure in NATO nations for an early exit from the increasingly unpopular conflict, now nearly 11 years old and America's longest war.

Cairo airport allows gun-toting Briton to catch connecting flight


Cairo airport allows gun-toting Briton to catch connecting flight

Press TV – September 9, 2012

Officials at Cairo International Airport have surprisingly allowed a British man carrying four bags full of weapons to get on an airliner bound for the Yemeni capital Sana’a.
Metal detectors and X-ray scanners at the airport showed that the Briton had a large quantity of armaments, ranging from sniper rifles to ammunition, in his luggage, the Aden Press news website reported.
Although the security forces were immediately notified about the contents of the bags, the foreign national was simply allowed to pass through the departure lounge and get on an Egypt Air passenger plane.
When asked why the British man was allowed to leave Cairo International Airport even though Egyptian security forces knew he had firearms in his baggage, airport officials said the Briton was allowed to pass since he was only going through the transit hall after arriving on a flight from Copenhagen.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has taken advantage of the weakness of the Yemeni central government during about a year and eight months of anti-government demonstrations to expand their presence in the impoverished country.
Al-Qaeda loyalists have carried out a spate of deadly attacks against Yemeni security forces since Ali Abdullah Saleh’s successor, President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi, came to power in February 2012.
In May, the Yemeni military launched an all-out offensive and retook a string of towns in the southern province of Abyan where al-Qaeda loyalists had established themselves.
MP/HGL