Tuesday 31 December 2013

US Drones towards Commercialization

U.S. takes a new step toward commercial drones


Re Edited By: Kanwal Abidi (Pakistan Correspondent)

Reporting By: Alison Harding, CNN
Not there yet, but the future of drone flight in the United States took another important step on Monday.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) selected six research sites to help it test and map out the best way to safely bring unmanned aircraft into the heavily used U.S. airspace.
FAA Administrator Michael Heurta said the facilities, strategically located, will work with the agency to develop standardized procedures and regulations -- elements that govern all areas of aviation.
"With these sites, what we have is the platform to conduct broad based research considering a wide variety of different factors, and we'll see where the research takes us as we introduce these into the national airspace system," Huerta told reporters.
Photos: Military drones Photos: Military drones
The six sites are: the University of Alaska, the state of Nevada, Griffiss International Airport in Rome, New York, the North Dakota Department of Commerce, Texas A&M University -- Corpus Christi, and Virginia Tech. Virginia Tech's research will also include a collaboration with Rutgers University in New Jersey.
The FAA said it considered a number of factors in selecting the sites, including differences in climate and geography, available infrastructure, aviation experience, aviation traffic volume, and specific research proposals.
It is currently working with the selected applicants to determine the airspace for conducting research, including test flights.
Research will cover safety and logistical concerns, including that drones can detect and avoid other aircraft, and that they operate safely if they lose their link to their pilot, who is at the controls in another location.
The research will also concentrate on environmental impact of drone use, and developing pilot training and standardized regulatory requirements.
Current law requires a case-by-case certificate of authorization in order to fly an unmanned aircraft in U.S. airspace.
The facilities are part of a comprehensive roadmap that the FAA has developed at the behest of Congress to develop a plan to safely integrate privately operated unmanned aircraft by 2015.
Huerta said the FAA will work to get all six facilities up and running as soon as possible, but Congress requires at least one facility be operational within six months. The sites will operate until February 2017.
Unmanned aircraft systems are currently used for a variety of reasons, including border surveillance, scientific and environmental research, and to support law enforcement.
Overseas, drones have become a key counterterror tool.
But rapidly changing technology has opened the door to privately operated drone use for recreational and commercial purposes domestically.
Amazon recently announced 30-minute package delivery system using drone-like "octocopters." The FAA has not yet signed off on Amazon's plans, which CEO Jeff Bezos says he hopes to have in place by 2015.
There also have been concerns raised in Congress and elsewhere over privacy issues involving expanded domestic drone use.
Huerta said he envisions a staged process as drone technology and usage evolves, and as "we learn a lot more about what these aircraft are, how they interact with other aircraft, and what are the things that we have to consider as we integrate them into differing airspace and climatic considerations."

"The important thing about today's announcement is it provides the platform for this research to really be carried out a very large scale across the entire country," Huerta said.

Monday 30 December 2013

US Senate and Al Qaeda Non Affiliation with Benghazi Attack

US Senate Intelligence Committee Dispute NYT Assertion That al-Qaeda Had No Role in Benghazi Attack

Ansar sl Sharia members in Benghazi
With an al-Qaeda banner as backdrop, members of Ansar al-Shariah protest in Benghazi on September 14, 2012, two days after the U.S. Consulate in the city was attacked. (AP Photo/Mohammad Hannon, File)
(CNSNews.com) – Republican and Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee on Sunday questioned a central assertion in a major New York Times investigative report, that neither al-Qaeda nor “other international terrorist groups” were involved in the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya.
The Times report by David Kirkpatrick focuses on Ansar al-Shariah – a group that has long been  implicated as having played a key role in the deadly attack – but disputes that it has links to al-Qaeda.
Republican arguments appear to conflate purely local extremist organizations like Ansar al-Shariah with al-Qaeda’s international terrorist network,” he wrote.
House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) told “Fox News Sunday” that the assertion Ansar al-Shariah does not have links to al-Qaeda was wrong – disputed by “the intelligence, to a large volume.”
“Now, did they have differences of opinion with al-Qaeda core? Yes. Do they have affiliations with al-Qaeda core? Definitely,” he said. (“Core” al-Qaeda is the Pakistan-based, Ayman al-Zawahiri-led part of the terrorist network, which has affiliates in Yemen, Iraq/Syria and north and east Africa.)
Rogers pointed out that the committee he chairs had carried out an in-depth investigation into the attack, which cost the lives of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, foreign service officer Sean Smith and Navy Seals Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.
“We have gone through some 4,000 different classified cables leading up to the event, talked to people on the ground during the event, done the postmortem on the event through the committee investigation.”
Appearing on the same program, a Democratic member of the committee, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, also hinted that intercepted intelligence contradicted some of the Times assertions.
“They didn’t have the same access to people who were not aware that they were being listened to,” he said. “They were heavily reliant, obviously, on people that they interviewed who had a reason to provide the story that they did.”
(The Times said its investigation “centered on extensive interviews with Libyans in Benghazi who had direct knowledge of the attack there and its context.”)
Schiff did add that there were times secret intercepts could also be problematic.
“Sometimes, though, the intelligence which has the advantage of hearing what people say when they don’t know they are being listened to, that could be misleading as well, when people make claims, they boast of things that they were not involved in, for various purposes.”
Schiff said he agreed with Rogers that “the intelligence indicates that al-Qaeda was involved, but there were also plenty of people and militias that were unaffiliated with al-Qaeda that were involved.”
He concluded that the Times report “does add some insights, but I don’t think it’s complete.”
Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), another member and former chairman of the Intelligence Committee, also disputed the newspaper’s assertion that al-Qaeda was not involved.
“Ansar al-Shariah,” he told Fox News earlier, “is considered part of the al-Qaeda network, supporters of al-Qaeda, and they have a training camp right out near Benghazi. So I’ve known all along it was Ansar al-Shariah, and I consider that to be an al-Qaeda affiliate.”
“This is an academic debate,” King continued. “The fact is, this is an al-Qaeda-supporting organization, and there’s certainly links between al-Qaeda and Ansar al-Shariah. And that’s the new world we face, where you’re going to have these start-up organizations around the world.”
‘Affiliated with Islamic terrorists’
Among documentation released by the Obama administration to Congress during its probes into Benghazi was an unclassified email in which then-acting assistant secretary of state for the Near East Beth Jones wrote on Sept. 12, 2012 that she had told the Libyan ambassador “that the group that conducted the attacks, Ansar al-Shariah, is affiliated with Islamic terrorists.”
Although Jones did not specifically say “al-Qaeda,” her use of the term “Islamic terrorists” rather than, say, “local militias” is of note. The email was made public during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing last May.
Thomas Joscelyn of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Long War Journal, who has reported extensively on Benghazi, recalled Sunday that about six weeks after the attack, the Times published a report in which it said that “American officials” named three groups as having participated in the assault – “Ansar al-Shariah, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and the Muhammad Jamal network, a militant group in Egypt.”
Benghazi Investigation
<b>In this Sept. 14, 2012 file photo, Libyan military guards check one of the U.S. Consulate's burnt out buildings during a visit by Libyan President Mohammed el-Megarif, not shown, to the U.S. Consulate to express sympathy for the death of the American ambassador, Chris Stevens and his colleagues in the deadly attack on the Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. (AP Photo/Mohammad Hannon</b>)
The new Times investigation does touch briefly on the claim of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) involvement but suggests it’s not credible (because in an internal letter three weeks after the Benghazi attack AQIM leaders had listed acts of terrorism the group had carried out in the region but “made no mention of Benghazi or any other attacks in Libya.”)
The Times investigation is silent, however, on the third group named in that earlier report, the Muhammad Jamal network (MJN).
Muhammad Jamal is an Egyptian militant whose involvement with al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri dates back to the 1990s when Zawahiri led the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) and Jamal headed its operational wing. (Zawahiri later folded EIJ into the nascent al-Qaeda and was a signatory of Osama bin Laden’s 1998 infamous fatwa declaring war on America.)
According to the State Department, Jamal also has links to both AQIM and al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen, AQAP.
Last October the United Nations Security Council added Jamal to its al-Qaeda sanctions list. The entry states in part, “Muhammad Jamal set up a training camp in Libya where Libyan and foreign violent extremists were trained. Some of the attackers of the U.S. Mission in Benghazi on 11 September 2012 have been identified as associates of Muhammad Jamal, and some of the Benghazi attackers reportedly trained at MJN camps in Libya.”
Joscelyn says that “the Jamal network’s part in the Benghazi story is enough alone to undermine” the claims made by Kirkpatrick in the Times report that the attackers were exclusively locals.
On NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, Kirkpatrick declared, “There’s just no chance that this was an al-Qaeda attack – if by al-Qaeda you mean the organization founded by bin Laden.”
The only way that lawmakers’ insistence that al-Qaeda was involved made sense to him, Kirkpatrick continued, was “if you’re using the term ‘al-Qaeda’ to describe even a local group of Islamist militants who may dislike democracy or have a grudge against the United States – if you’re going to call anybody like that al-Qaeda, then okay.”

IRAN's Centrifuge R & D



Centrifuge R&D seen as holdup in implementing Iran nuclear deal


Edited by: Kanwal Abidi
Political Analyst / Journalist

Differing interpretations over whether Iran can conduct research on more advanced centrifuges under a nuclear deal signed last month is among the key issues to be resolved for the agreement to enter into force, nonproliferation experts suggested Sunday.

Technical experts from Iran and six world powers are scheduled to resume talks on implementing the Joint Plan of Action in Geneva on Monday, December 30th.
“What may be happening here is that Iran has notified the P5+1 that it plans to install additional IR-2M centrifuges at the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Facility at Natanz where it has historically conducted centrifuge research and development,” Jofi Joseph, a former US official who worked on Iran nuclear issues, told Al-Monitor.
“Throughout the diplomatic talks that culminated in the Geneva agreement, Iran has insisted upon the right to continue unfettered research and development for its centrifuge program that should fall outside any limits on its centrifuges producing enriched uranium,” said Joseph, who recently wrote about potential pitfalls to the Nov. 24 interim Iran nuclear deal at the Atlantic Council website. “The P5+1 always pushed back, seeking to protect against a scenario where Iran could use this R&D loophole as a back door to expand its centrifuge capacity even as a [confidence building measure] CBM agreement took effect.”
The Joint Plan of Action, signed by Iran and the P5+1 November 24th, states that: “Iran will continue its safeguarded R&D practices, including its current enrichment R&D practices, which are not designed for accumulation of the enriched uranium.”
“The P5+1 likely interprets this language to mean that Iran will not expand the level, scope,or sophistication of its centrifuge R&D beyond existing practice,” Joseph suggested. “While Iran probably takes a more expansive view, arguing instead that, so long as it not expanding the numbers or types of centrifuges in the production-related areas of Natanz or Fordow, it remains in compliance with the Geneva agreement.”
Iranian negotiators did not respond to a query from Al-Monitor Saturday if that was the main issue holding up the JPA entering into force. But Iranian officials seemed to allude to the matter in comments to Iranian news media this week. “A new generation of centrifuges is being built, but they should undergo all tests before mass production,” Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) and MIT-educated former Iranian foreign minister, was cited by Iranian news media as saying Sunday.
“The negotiations are proceeding slowly as there are misunderstandings over interpretation of some elements of the accord,” Iran’s deputy foreign minister and deputy nuclear negotiator Abbas Araghchi told Mehr News Agency, the AFP reported Sunday, adding that “ff expert-level talks are fruitful, a date [for implementing the deal] will be decided, which I guess will be at the end of January.”
The parties should be able to resolve such ambiguities and differences to make way for the JPA entering into force, nonproliferation expert Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told Al-Monitor in an interview Sunday.  “This is not a technical problem,” Hibbs said. “There’s a huge amount of documentation – reams and reams and reams of technical discussion between Iran and the US, [on] how to do this….[there are] lots of ways of skinning the cat.”
Negotiators in Geneva last fall, led by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, US Secretary of State John Kerry and Iran Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, made the deal in a hurry. “Now what they need to do is nail down all the technical details,” Hibbs said. “What needs to happen [to] close on some of this stuff is just very complicated…for example, verification procedures…questions about what specific piping they have to inspect, who gets access, all these things.”
“The real problem is not that there cannot be a technical solution. Because there can,” Hibbs said. “The real problem is [that] the absence of closure on technical details [could] reignite all of the latent lack of trust.”
But he did not think the parties would let the agreement break down. The Obama administration sees the agreement as “confidence-building; there’s a premium on deal-making,” Hiibbs said. “And the Iranians, like anyone else, want to get the best deal they can.”
(Photo: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry shakes hands with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at the United Nations Palais in Geneva November 24, 2013. )






Thursday 26 December 2013

Isreal's Concern over US led diplomacy

By:                    Kanwal Abidi
                     Political Journalist

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dedicated a large part of his speech on Dec.18 at the Likud Party convention to the Iranian nuclear program. He behaved in an alien way, dismayed by the Iran deal - as if “no agreement” had been signed between the world powers and Iran. He carried same old threatening tone with the bottom line that “Israel will not accept a nuclear bomb.”
The Likud activists present at the party convention did not welcome the Netanyahu’s speech about Iran and termed it as an anachronistic speech, lacking in vision, and most of all, detached from the international reality
In Washington, the decision to turn a new chapter in relations with Iran, for the first time in decade has, begun to repair operational, bureaucratic and ideological constraints that have defined US policies in the region. Consequently, there is more room for critical thinking by the Washington policymaking bureaucracy.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s lack of insight towards Obama’s efforts on Natanz and Itamar – could result him to troubles in the months ahead.
The mere significance of the fact that “world powers are giving diplomacy a chance”, but only in Netanyahu’s world the diplomacy time clock been frozen. 
During an October visit to Rome, Netanyahu acknowledged that “the solution of the Iranian issue may have a decisive influence on the Palestinian issue — for bad and for good.” Obama has left no doubt that the train on Iran has left the station, apparently without Netanyahu aboard.
Keeping Israel happy on the grounds, President Obama, therefore, stated in a recent address on 8 Dec in Washington that “the United States’ military cooperation with Israel has never been stronger. Our intelligence cooperation with Israel has never been stronger. Our support of Israel’s security has never been stronger."
PM Netanyahu responded to the flattery words of Obama not with zest and fervor, but exhibited serious cause of concerns over Natanz – the Iranian nuclear fuel enrichment site and Itamar – one of the Israeli settlements in the west bank.  
There are widespread fears fewer in number but more virulent, of the relationship between Natanz and Itamar, that is, the connection between Iran’s relations with the West and Israel-Palestine peace. Upon this issue, John Kerry remarks leaves no doubt that the Obama administration considers these two threats to regional security to be conceptually connected.
In both Natanz and Itamar, US is adopting the standard of increasing mutual security through agreement — not through war, or by force, or continuing occupation — and enabling a US-led diplomacy to create a stable framework for peace that will in each case increase Israel's security. Netanyahu sees only the looming dangers of this holistic connection and the challenges it presents to the world.
President Obama in his year - end news conference, from the White House, on 20 Dec, Friday, spoke on various issues of Obamacare, health laws and diplomacy pursued with the Iran. Obama categorically stated few facts and came out forceful in his speech that “America has nothing to fear from Iran.”
“We lose nothing under this negotiation deal” stated Obama and further added “if negotiations would fail – Iran knows very well, they can come under high economic pressure.” He assured the American nation that we can do it in “one day” any day to burden Iran, once again by the sanctions.  American political analysts’ state that in Obama’s speech was a hidden message for Netanyahu that he does not need to worry about Iran anymore - as he has everything under the table set to
 At the end, he wished his nation and the world a “happy new Year” with a concrete and a definite message of “diplomacy as an end unto itself.” But, on the other hand, PM Netanyahu has serious reservations for Iran and US diplomacy game and has left the message that “Deal is a Christmas present” for @Iran.
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KANWAL ABIDI                                                          
Political Analyst & Journalist / President Mishal Welfare Trust / Peace Activist


Twitter @KANWALanalyst

Monday 23 December 2013

"Iran won't be spared" says RICE

U.S. will seek triggers to reimpose sanctions on Iran: Rice

Shared article from CNN Political Blog
HONOLULU Sun Dec 22, 2013 7:33pm EST
U.S. National Security Advisor Susan Rice looks up during a meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama (R) and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the G20 Summit in St. Petersburg, Russia September 5, 2013. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
U.S. National Security Advisor Susan Rice looks up during a meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama (R) and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the G20 Summit in St. Petersburg, Russia September 5, 2013.
CREDIT: REUTERS/KEVIN LAMARQUE
(Reuters) - The United States and its allies will have ways to reimpose sanctions on Iran if the Islamic Republic is caught making bombs after striking a deal to freeze its nuclear program, national security adviser Susan Rice said on Sunday.
In an interview on the CBS news program "60 Minutes," Rice rejected the idea that, once relaxed, the economic sanctions on Tehran would be hard to reinstate.
Any United Nations Security Council resolution that enshrines a final nuclear deal withIran - not the interim six-month deal signed in Geneva in November - could have triggers to automatically reimpose sanctions on Iran if they violate the deal, she said.
"We will not construct a deal or accept a deal in which we cannot verify exactly what they are doing," Rice said. "And if they're caught, we will ensure that the pressure is reimposed on them."
A mechanism for such "automatic triggers" has not been finalized, Rice said. Any deal beyond the current arrangement is still months away.
"We haven't designed that resolution yet. But this is something that's quite doable," Rice said. The United States does not want Iran to be "in a position to race towards a bomb undetected."
Rice said it was still unclear if Iran was hurting enough from existing sanctions on its oil exports and other industries to give up its nuclear ambitions in a "verifiable way."
"We don't know. But the other half of the answer is we have every interest in testing that proposition," she said.
Under November's interim agreement, Iran agreed to curb its nuclear program for six months in exchange for limited relief from sanctions.
The Obama administration has clashed with Congress over the sanctions issue; many lawmakers want to impose tougher sanctions on Iran.

(Reporting by Ros Krasny; Editing by Jan Paschal)

Saturday 21 December 2013

Palestinian Solidarity

BDS Campaign: Permanent Address for Palestinian Solidarity

Edited By: KANWAL ABIDI *Political Analyst & Journalist

Editor’s Note for the Readers:
Waters is a supporter of the BDS campaign opposing Israel’s illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian territory.
 ******
The intellectual dishonesty of Israel’s supporters is appalling. But in some odd way, it is also understandable. How else could they respond to the massively growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign?
When a non-violent campaign—empowered by thousands of committed civil society activists from South Africa to Sweden and most countries in between—leads a moral campaign to isolate and hold into account an Apartheid country like Israel, all that the supporters of the latter can do is spread lies and misinformation. There can be no other strategy, unless of course, Israel’s friends get their own moment of moral awakening and join the BDS flood that has already broken many barriers and liberated many minds from the grip of Israeli hasbara.
According to their logic, and that of the likes of Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, writing in the New York Observer on Dec 12, legendary musician and human rights champion Roger Waters is an ‘anti-Semite’. In fact, according to the writer, he is an ‘anti-Semite’ of the worst type. “I’ve read some heavy-duty attacks on Israel and Jews in my time, but they pale beside the anti-Semitic diatribe recently offered by Roger Waters, co-founder and former front man of the legendary British rock band Pink Floyd.”
Of course, Waters is as far away from racism as Boteach is far away from truly representing the Jewish people or Judaism. But what has earned Waters such a title, which is often bestowed without much hesitation at anyone who dares to challenge Israel’s criminal policies, military occupation, and insistence on violating over 70 United Nations resolutions, is that Waters is a strong critic of Israel. In a recent interview with CounterPunch, Waters stated the obvious, describing Israel as a ‘racist Apartheid regime’, decrying its ‘ethnic cleaning’ of Palestinians, and yes, refusing to perform in a country that he saw as an equivalent to the “Vichy government in occupied France.”
Boteach is particularly daring to go after Waters, a person adored by millions, and not only because of his legendary music, but also of his well-known courageous and moral stances. But once again, the panic felt in pro-Israeli circles is understandable. What Israeli officials describe as the de-legitimization of Israel is reaching a point where it is about to reach a critical mass. It is what Palestinian Gaza-based BDS activist Dr. Haidar Eid referred to in a recent interview as Palestine’s South Africa moment.
In an article in the Israeli daily Haaretz published on Dec 12, Barak Ravid introduced his piece with a dramatic but truthful statement: “Western activists and diplomats are gunning for Israel’s settlements in the Palestinian territories, and if peace talks fail, the rain of boycotts and sanctions could turn into a flood.” Entitled “Swell of boycotts driving Israel into international isolation,” Ravid’s article establishes a concrete argument of why the boycott movement is growing in a way unprecedented in the history of Israel.
I am writing these words from Spain, the last stop on a European speaking tour that has taken me to four European countries: France, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Belgium. The purpose of my tour was to promote the recently published French edition of my last two books, the second being: My Father Was a Freedom Fighter, Gaza’s Untold Story (Resistant en Palestine, une histoire vrai de Gaza). But at the heart of all my talks was the promotion of what I call ‘redefining our relationship to the struggle in Palestine,’ based first and foremost on ‘moral divestment’ from Israel. Only then, can we change our role from spectators and sympathizers to active participants as human rights defenders. The main address of such activities can be summed up in the initials: BDS.
What I learned throughout my tour, well attended and also covered in French media, was even to surprise me. The BDS debate is at such an advanced stage and it has indeed surpassed my expectations. In my last European tour of 2010, many of us were attempting to push the boundaries of the debate facing much resistance, even from groups and movements that were viewed as progressive. The situation has now changed in such an obvious away that on occasions I was compelled by the audience to discuss the most effective BDS strategies, as opposed to defending the very virtue of the tactic.
And within the two weeks of my travels, there was a flood of news of western governments, companies and academic institutions either joining the boycott or deliberating the possibility of doing so. The Romanian government, for example, is refusing to allow its labors to work in illegal Jewish settlements. A few years ago, this kind of news was simply unheard of.
But what changed? In some respects, nothing, and that is the crux of the argument. The Israeli occupation is more entrenched than ever; the illegal settlements are increasing and expanding; and the so-called peace process remains a charade maintained mostly for political self-serving reasons—a cover for the colonial policies of Israel, and a condition for continued US-western financial and political backing of the Palestinian Authority, and so on. But other factors are changing as well. BDS activists have found a common strategy and are formulating a unifying narrative that is finally liberating the Palestinian discourse from the ills of factionalism, empty slogans and limiting ideology. The new platform is both decisive in its morality and objectives, yet flexible in its ability to encompass limitless groups, religions and nationalities.
Indeed, there is no room for racism or hate speech in BDS platforms. What is equally as important is that there can also be no space for gatekeepers who are too sensitive about Israel’s racially-motivated sensibilities, or those ever-willing to manipulate history in such a clever way as to prevent a pro-active strategy in being advanced. The ship has sailed through all of this, and the boycott is vastly becoming the new and permanent address of the international solidarity with the collective resistance and struggle of the Palestinian people.
Of course, when Roger Waters took the stances that he did, he knew well of the likes of Boteach who would immediately denounce him as ‘anti-Semite.’ The fact is, however, the number of ‘Roger Waters’ out there is quickly growing, and the power of their moral argument is widely spreading. Israeli smear tactics are not only ineffective but also self-defeating.

Special Thanks to: Ramzy Baroud


Wednesday 18 December 2013

Post 9/11 CIA interrogations report demanded by US Senate

C.I.A. to Share Its Report on Interrogations
Senator Mark Udall, center, disclosed the existence of the internal C.I.A. report on Tuesday.

Editors" Note: By Kanwal !
After watching the debate in the Senate Session of Pakistan - and comparing it with the Senate Session of US, I feel, we are still living in the stone age where Paki Parliamentarians are indulging in pointing to each other. Aye Aye Sir - is heard and not any conclusive material can be elicited out which I can proudly post here.. look "Yes, In Pakistan our Senators are working for the people, of the people NOT by the Senators.

18th Dec - Senate of Pakistan session, Aitzaz Ahsan did not speak till he was given the right of LIVE coverage at PTV - only because Ishaq Dar got it while delivering his policy statement.
In general, Senators not even discuss any thing which may benefit common man or any constructive work on ANY sub committees) IBA and LUMS grads may run our government better than Paki Senators.

US have "Senate Intelligence Committee" to question the work of anyone and not spare CIA too, if Pakistan can develop a "system of committees" which work "for the people, of the people, by the people", we would have "efficient delivery system". 
Though, there are several task force and sub committess - but the crux is, citizens of Pakistan wants solutions not debate words typed in the documents to be preserved in the "Senate Archive."

How about taking "Raza Bazaar" incident on 10th Mohram to discuss in Pakistan Senate Session and to demande a probe into the incident from Intelligence committe - only if there is one with people of caliber, not Senators of Bollywood Drama
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The committee’s request comes in the midst of a yearlong battle with the C.I.A. over the release of the panel’s own exhaustive report about the program, one of the most controversial policies of the post-Sept. 11 era.
Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, disclosed the existence of the internal C.I.A. report during an Intelligence Committee hearing on Tuesday. He said he believed it was begun several years ago and “is consistent with the Intelligence’s Committee’s report” although it “conflicts with the official C.I.A. response to the committee’s report.”
“If this is true,” Mr. Udall said during a hearing on the nomination of Caroline D. Krass to be the C.I.A.’s top lawyer, “this raises fundamental questions about why a review the C.I.A. conducted internally years ago — and never provided to the committee — is so different from the C.I.A.’s formal response to the committee study.”
The agency responded to the committee report with a vigorous 122-page rebuttal that challenged both the Senate report’s specific facts and its overarching conclusions. John O. Brennan, one of Mr. Obama’s closest advisers before taking over the C.I.A. this year — and who denounced the interrogation program during his confirmation hearing — delivered the agency’s response to the Intelligence Committee himself.
It is unclear what the agency specifically concluded in its internal review.
Mr. Udall, whose public criticisms of the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of telephone data has raised his profile in Congress and won him praise from privacy advocates, said he would not support Ms. Krass’s nomination until the C.I.A. provided more information to the committee about the interrogation program.
Ms. Krass did not respond directly to Mr. Udall’s statements about the internal C.I.A. review. Dean Boyd, an agency spokesman, said the agency was “aware of the committee’s request and will respond appropriately.”
Mr. Boyd said that the C.I.A. agreed with a number of the conclusions of the voluminous Senate investigative report, but found “significant errors in the study.”
“C.I.A. and committee staff have had extensive dialogue on this issue, and the agency is prepared to work with the committee to determine the best way forward on potential declassification,” he said.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who is the Intelligence Committee’s chairwoman, said recently that her committee would soon vote to adopt the report’s executive summary and conclusion, which would then be subject to a formal declassification process before it was publicly released.
Republican members of the committee, angry about what they see as a biased and shoddy investigation by their Democratic colleagues, are planning to make public a rebuttal of their own.
The Senate report, which took years to complete and cost more than $40 million to produce, began as an attempt to document what was perhaps the most divisive of the Bush administration’s responses to the Sept. 11 attacks. But it has since become enmeshed in the complex politics of the Obama administration.
President Obama ended the detention program as one of his first acts in the Oval Office, and has repeatedly denounced the C.I.A.’s interrogation methods under the program. During a speech in May, he said that the United States had “compromised our basic values by using torture to interrogate our enemies, and detaining individuals in a way that ran counter to the rule of law.”
And yet Mr. Obama has repeatedly resisted demands by human rights groups to seek prosecutions for the lawyers who approved the interrogation methods or the people who carried them out, and the White House has been mostly silent during the debate over the past year about declassifying the Senate report.
For all his criticisms of the counterterrorism excesses during the Bush administration, Mr. Obama has put the C.I.A. at the center of his strategy to kill militant suspects in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere.
Human rights groups have tried to pressure the White House to intervene to get the Senate report declassified.
“Whether it’s stalling or concealing, the C.I.A. is trying to avoid reckoning with its past abuse,” said Naureen Shah of Amnesty International USA. “And that’s what makes declassifying the Senate’s report so crucial right now.”
Ms. Krass is a career government lawyer who works at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, the arm of the department that advises the White House on the legality of domestic and foreign policies.
The office was particularly controversial during the Bush administration, when lawyers there wrote lengthy memos approving C.I.A. interrogation methods like waterboarding and sleep deprivation, as well as signing off on the expansion of surveillance by the National Security Agency.
Under Mr. Obama, the office has approved other controversial practices, including the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical cleric living in Yemen who was an American. Mr. Awlaki was killed in September 2011 by a C.I.A. drone strike, launched from a secret base in Saudi Arabia.
Much of Tuesday’s hearing was consumed by a debate about whether the White House should be forced to share Justice Department legal memos.
Under polite but persistent questioning by members of both parties, Ms. Krass repeatedly said that while the two congressional intelligence committees need to “fully understand” the legal basis for C.I.A. activities, they were not entitled to see the Justice Department memos that provide the legal blueprint for secret programs.
The opinions “represent pre-decisional, confidential legal advice that has been provided,” she said, adding that the confidentiality of the legal advice was necessary to allow a “full and frank discussion amongst clients and policy makers and their lawyers within the executive branch.”
Senator Feinstein appeared unmoved. “Unless we know the administration’s basis for sanctioning a program, it is very hard to oversee it,” she said.

Still, it is expected that the committee will vote to approve Ms. Krass.

Re-Edited by: 
KANWAL ABIDI 
(Pakistan Correspondent)

Reported By 
Washington
NY Times Correspondent