Left I on the News

Today's news of the latest Wikileak has to be one of the bigger cases of misdirection I've seen in a while. The title of the top-secret CIA document is "What If Foreigners See the United States as an Exporter of Terrorism?" But it turns out what the CIA means by that isn't that the "United States" (i.e., the government) is an "exporter of terrorism," but rather that some Americans carry out terrorist acts abroad. And the Americans they're talking about are people like Baruch Goldstein, who emigrated from the U.S. to Israel and killed 29 Palestinians, or Pakistani-American David Headley who allegedly helped in the Mumbai attacks that killed 160 people.

Of course the United States is an exporter of terrorism without any question. Hundreds of thousands of American terrorists are operating abroad as we speak, dropping bombs on unsuspecting civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and no doubt other countries we don't even know about. Not a word about them in the CIA report.

Other "exported terrorists" like Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles who were trained, financed and quite possibly acting under the direct orders of the U.S. government, roam the streets of the U.S., shielded from the legal consequences of their actions to this day (with Obama just the same as Bush continuing to ignore the legitimate extradition order filed by the Venezuelan government for Posada for 73 counts of murder).

And who can forget the terror that rained down on the Lebanese people in the summer of 2006, as the U.S. rushed to resupply Israel with vital weapons being used to terrorize (and, of course, kill) the Lebanese people?

FAIR reminds us of a recent New York Times article showing just how that terrorism works, in this case in a December strike in Yemen. First came the American story (or tall tale, more accurately):

The initial American strike in Yemen came on Dec. 17, hitting what was believed to be a Qaeda training camp in Abyan Province, in the southern part of the country. The first report from the Yemeni government said that its air force had killed “around 34” Qaeda fighters there

Later came the truth:

A Navy ship offshore had fired the weapon in the attack, a cruise missile loaded with cluster bombs, according to a report by Amnesty International. Unlike conventional bombs, cluster bombs disperse small munitions, some of which do not immediately explode, increasing the likelihood of civilian causalities. The use of cluster munitions, later documented by Amnesty, was condemned by human rights groups.

An inquiry by the Yemeni Parliament found that the strike had killed at least 41 members of two families living near the makeshift Qaeda camp. Three more civilians were killed and nine were wounded four days later when they stepped on unexploded munitions from the strike, the inquiry found.

Needless to say I'm only brushing the surface. The U.S. as an "exporter of terrorism"? You betcha'.