Commented on sureshmehcnit's review
Mar 10, 2004 03:21 PM
hi suresh, thanks for ur m2m, lately i m not gettng the chance to come on mouthshut, but ur m2m forced me to, and i m glad i did, it's a nice review of a very nice movie. i think i m gonna watch it. loved ur description of the scenes of senthils life.
Reviewed Ronin Movie
Jan 15, 2004 07:22 PM
3041 Views
(Updated Jan 15, 2004 07:22 PM)
In John Frankenheimer's RONIN a nagging question has been answered once and for all - have car chases become dull and predictable to film audiences in this age of blockbuster effects and computer graphics enhanced features? In this thriller, starring Robert DeNiro and Jean Reno, Frankenheimer de...Read more
Commented on coolnfundu's review
Jan 15, 2004 01:43 PM
Excellent Khichaai of a really @#%$$ movie.
keep it rolling! I was wondering how you made it till the end!
regards
altaf
Commented on own review
Jan 15, 2004 01:35 PM
In the immediate aftermath of September 11, there were press reports—again, largely overseas—that US intelligence agencies had received specific warnings about large-scale terrorist attacks, including the use of hijacked airplanes. It is quite possible that a decision was made at the hig...hest levels of the American state to allow such an attack to proceed, perhaps without imagining the actual scale of the damage, in order to provide the necessary spark for war in Afghanistan.How otherwise to explain such well-established facts as the decision of top officials at the FBI to block an investigation into Zaccarias Massaoui, the Franco-Moroccan immigrant who came under suspicion after he allegedly sought training from a US flight school on how to steer a commercial airliner, but not to take off or land?
The Minneapolis field office had Massaoui arrested in early August, and asked FBI headquarters for permission to conduct further inquiries, including a search of the hard drive of his computer. The FBI tops refused, on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence of criminal intent on Massaoui’s part—an astonishing decision for an agency not known for its tenderness on the subject of civil liberties.
This is not to say that the American government deliberately planned every detail of the terrorist attacks or anticipated that nearly 5,000 people would be killed. But the least likely explanation of September 11 is the official one: that dozens of Islamic fundamentalists, many with known ties to Osama bin Laden, were able to carry out a wide-ranging conspiracy on three continents, targeting the most prominent symbols of American power, without any US intelligence agency having the slightest idea of what they were doing.
The End, Finally!!
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Commented on own review
Jan 15, 2004 01:33 PM
Confirming Naiz Naik’s account of the secret Berlin meeting, the two French authors add that there was open discussion of the need for the Taliban to facilitate a pipeline from Kazakhstan in order to insure US and international recognition. The increasingly acrimonious US-Taliban talks were br...oken off August 2, after a final meeting between US envoy Christina Rocca and a Taliban representative in Islamabad. Two months later the United States was bombing Kabul.
The politics of provocation
This account of the preparations for war against Afghanistan brings us to September 11 itself. The terrorist attack that destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon was an important link in the chain of causality that produced the US attack on Afghanistan. The US government had planned the war well in advance, but the shock of September 11 made it politically feasible, by stupefying public opinion at home and giving Washington essential leverage on reluctant allies abroad.
Both the American public and dozens of foreign governments were stampeded into supporting military action against Afghanistan, in the name of the fight against terrorism. The Bush administration targeted Kabul without presenting any evidence that either bin Laden or the Taliban regime was responsible for the World Trade Center atrocity. It seized on September 11 as the occasion for advancing longstanding ambitions to assert American power in Central Asia.
There is no reason to think that September 11 was merely a fortuitous occurrence. Every other detail of the war in Afghanistan was carefully prepared. It is unlikely that the American government left to chance the question of providing a suitable pretext for military action.
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Commented on own review
Jan 15, 2004 01:32 PM
By way of corroboration, one should note the curious fact that neither the Clinton administration nor the Bush administration ever placed Afghanistan on the official State Department list of states charged with sponsoring terrorism, despite the acknowledged presence of Osama bin Laden as a guest of ...the Taliban regime. Such a designation would have made it impossible for an American oil or construction company to sign a deal with Kabul for a pipeline to the Central Asian oil and gas fields.
Talks between the Bush administration and the Taliban began in February 2001, shortly after Bush’s inauguration. A Taliban emissary arrived in Washington in March with presents for the new chief executive, including an expensive Afghan carpet. But the talks themselves were less than cordial. Brisard said, “At one moment during the negotiations, the US representatives told the Taliban, ‘either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs’.”
As long as the possibility of a pipeline deal remained, the White House stalled any further investigation into the activities of Osama bin Laden, Brisard and Dasquie write. They report that John O’Neill, deputy director of the FBI, resigned in July in protest over this obstruction. O’Neill told them in an interview, “the main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were US oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it.” In a strange coincidence, O’Neill accepted a position as security chief of the World Trade Center after leaving the FBI, and was killed on September 11.
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Commented on own review
Jan 15, 2004 01:31 PM
The Guardian summarized: “The threats of war unless the Taliban surrendered Osama bin Laden were passed to the regime in Afghanistan by the Pakistani government, senior diplomatic sources revealed yesterday. The Taliban refused to comply but the serious nature of what they were told raises the... possibility that Bin Laden, far from launching the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon out of the blue 10 days ago, was launching a pre-emptive strike in response to what he saw as US threats.”
Bush, oil and Taliban
Further light on secret contacts between the Bush administration and the Taliban regime is shed by a book released November 15 in France, entitled Bin Laden, the Forbidden Truth, written by Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie. Brisard is a former French secret service agent, author of a previous report on bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network, and former director of strategy for the French corporation Vivendi, while Dasquie is an investigative journalist.
The two French authors write that the Bush administration was willing to accept the Taliban regime, despite the charges of sponsoring terrorism, if it cooperated with plans for the development of the oil resources of Central Asia.
Until August, they claim, the US government saw the Taliban “as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of an oil pipeline across Central Asia.” It was only when the Taliban refused to accept US conditions that “this rationale of energy security changed into a military one.”
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Commented on own review
Jan 15, 2004 01:30 PM
The participants included Naik, together with three Pakistani generals; former Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations Saeed Rajai Khorassani; Abdullah Abdullah, foreign minister of the Northern Alliance; Nikolai Kozyrev, former Russian special envoy to Afghanistan, and several other Russian offici...als; and three Americans: Tom Simons, a former US ambassador to Pakistan; Karl Inderfurth, a former assistant secretary of state for south Asian affairs; and Lee Coldren, who headed the office of Pakistan, Afghan and Bangladesh affairs in the State Department until 1997.
The meeting was convened by Francesc Vendrell, then and now the deputy chief UN representative for Afghanistan. While the nominal purpose of the conference was to discuss the possible outline of a political settlement in Afghanistan, the Taliban refused to attend. The Americans discussed the shift in policy toward Afghanistan from Clinton to Bush, and strongly suggested that military action was an option.
While all three American former officials denied making any specific threats, Coldren told the Guardian, “there was some discussion of the fact that the United States was so disgusted with the Taliban that they might be considering some military action.” Naik, however, cited one American declaring that action against bin Laden was imminent: “This time they were very sure. They had all the intelligence and would not miss him this time. It would be aerial action, maybe helicopter gunships, and not only overt, but from very close proximity to Afghanistan.”
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Commented on own review
Jan 15, 2004 01:29 PM
The US threatens war—before September 11
In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, two reports appeared in the British media indicating that the US government had threatened military action against Afghanistan several months before Septe...mber 11.
The BBC’s George Arney reported September 18 that American officials had told former Pakistani Foreign Secretary Niaz Naik in mid-July of plans for military action against the Taliban regime:
“Mr. Naik said US officials told him of the plan at a UN-sponsored international contact group on Afghanistan which took place in Berlin.
“Mr. Naik told the BBC that at the meeting the US representatives told him that unless Bin Laden was handed over swiftly America would take military action to kill or capture both Bin Laden and the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar.
“The wider objective, according to Mr. Naik, would be to topple the Taliban regime and install a transitional government of moderate Afghans in its place—possibly under the leadership of the former Afghan King Zahir Shah.
“Mr. Naik was told that Washington would launch its operation from bases in Tajikistan, where American advisers were already in place.
“He was told that Uzbekistan would also participate in the operation and that 17,000 Russian troops were on standby.
“Mr. Naik was told that if the military action went ahead it would take place before the snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest.”
Four days later, on September 22, the Guardian newspaper confirmed this account. The warnings to Afghanistan came out of a four-day meeting of senior US, Russian, Iranian and Pakistani officials at a hotel in Berlin in mid-July, the third in a series of back-channel conferences dubbed “brainstorming on Afghanistan.”
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Commented on own review
Jan 15, 2004 01:28 PM
At this stage of military planning, the US and Russia were to supply direct military assistance to the Northern Alliance, working through Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, in order to roll back the Taliban lines toward the city of Mazar-e-Sharif—a scenario strikingly similar to what actually took pla...ce over the past two weeks. An unnamed third country supplied the Northern Alliance with anti-tank rockets that had already been put to use against the Taliban in early June.
“Diplomats say that the anti-Taliban move followed a meeting between US Secretary of State Colin Powell and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and later between Powell and Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh in Washington,” the magazine added. “Russia, Iran and India have also held a series of discussions and more diplomatic activity is expected.”
Unlike the current campaign, the original plan involved the use of military forces from both Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, as well as Russia itself. IndiaReacts said that in early June Russian President Vladimir Putin told a meeting of the Confederation of Independent States, which includes many of the former Soviet republics, that military action against the Taliban was in the offing. One effect of September 11 was to create the conditions for the United States to intervene on its own, without any direct participation by the military forces of the Soviet successor states, and thus claim an undisputed American right to dictate the shape of a settlement in Afghanistan.
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Commented on own review
Jan 15, 2004 01:27 PM
War plans take shape
With the installation of George Bush in the White House, the focus of American policy in Afghanistan shifted from a limited incursion to kill or capture bin Laden to preparing a more robust military intervention directed at the Taliban regime as a whole.
The British-based Ja...ne’s International Security reported March 15, 2001 that the new American administration was working with India, Iran and Russia “in a concerted front against Afghanistan’s Taliban regime.” India was supplying the Northern Alliance with military equipment, advisers and helicopter technicians, the magazine said, and both India and Russia were using bases in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan for their operations.
The magazine added: “Several recent meetings between the newly instituted Indo-US and Indo-Russian joint working groups on terrorism led to this effort to tactically and logistically counter the Taliban. Intelligence sources in Delhi said that while India, Russia and Iran were leading the anti-Taliban campaign on the ground, Washington was giving the Northern Alliance information and logistic support.”
On May 23, the White House announced the appointment of Zalmay Khalilzad to a position on the National Security Council as special assistant to the president and senior director for Gulf, Southwest Asia and Other Regional Issues. Khalilzad is a former official in the Reagan and the first Bush administrations. After leaving the government, he went to work for Unocal.
On June 26 of this year, the magazine IndiaReacts reported more details of the cooperative efforts of the US, India, Russia and Iran against the Taliban regime. “India and Iran will ‘facilitate’ US and Russian plans for ‘limited military action’ against the Taliban if the contemplated tough new economic sanctions don’t bend Afghanistan’s fundamentalist regime,” the magazine said.
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Commented on own review
Jan 15, 2004 01:24 PM
A CIA secret war
McFarlane’s revelations come in the course of a bitter diatribe against the CIA for “betraying” Abdul Haq, failing to back his operations in Afghanistan, and leaving him to die at the hands of the Taliban. The CIA evidently regarded both McFarlane and Abdul Haq ...as less than reliable—and it had its own secret war going on in the same region, the southern half of Afghanistan where the population is predominantly Pushtun-speaking.
According to a front-page article in the Washington Post November 18, the CIA has been mounting paramilitary operations in southern Afghanistan since 1997. The article carries the byline of Bob Woodward, the Post writer made famous by Watergate, who is a frequent conduit for leaks from top-level military and intelligence officials.
Woodward provides details about the CIA’s role in the current military conflict, which includes the deployment of a secret paramilitary unit, the Special Activities Division. This force began combat on September 27, using both operatives on the ground and Predator surveillance drones equipped with missiles that could be launched by remote control.
The Special Activities Division, Woodward reports, “consists of teams of about half a dozen men who do not wear military uniforms. The division has about 150 fighters, pilots and specialists, and is made up mostly of hardened veterans who have retired from the US military.
“For the last 18 months, the CIA has been working with tribes and warlords in southern Afghanistan, and the division’s units have helped create a significant new network in the region of the Taliban’s greatest strength.”
This means that the US spy agency was engaged in attacks against the Afghan regime—what under other circumstances the American government would call terrorism—from the spring of 2000, more than a year before the suicide hijackings that destroyed the WTC & Pentagon.Read More
Commented on own review
Jan 15, 2004 01:19 PM
Finally, according to McFarlane, Abdul Haq “decided in mid-August to go ahead and launch operations in Afghanistan. He returned to Peshawar, Pakistan, to make final preparations.” In other words, this phase of the anti-Taliban war was under way well before September 11.
While the Ritchi...es have been portrayed in the American media as freelance operators motivated by emotional ties to Afghanistan, a country they lived in briefly while their father worked as a civil engineer in the 1950s, at least one report suggests a link to the oil pipeline discussions with the Taliban. In 1998 James Ritchie visited Afghanistan to discuss with the Taliban a plan to sponsor small businesses there. He was accompanied by an official from Delta Oil of Saudi Arabia, which was seeking to build a gas pipeline across Afghanistan in partnership with an Argentine firm.
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Reviewed Afghanistan - General
Jan 15, 2004 01:09 PM
6003 Views
(Updated Jan 15, 2004 01:09 PM)
Insider accounts published in the British, French and Indian media have revealed that US officials threatened war against Afghanistan during the summer of 2001. These reports include the prediction, made in July, that “if the military action went ahead, it would take place before the snows...Read more
Commented on own review
Jan 15, 2004 12:57 PM
Nandu - Thanks, I completely agree with your perception.
Prashanth - Thanks for the comments and I m glad that I was helpful to you in correcting you.
Lyla - You are right that it's upto the Iraqi people now, but we just cant turn deaf and blind to their plight and just turn our backs, as if it's ...got nothing to do with us. The least we can do is voice a concern.Read More
Commented on own review
Jan 14, 2004 01:33 PM
Now, confronted with overwhelming evidence that a US administration launched an unprovoked war against a country that posed no threat to the American people based on lies and fabrications whose like has not been seen since the days of Adolf Hitler, the response is to invent “moral” alibi...s.
Implicit in this attempted whitewash is the idea that the American people have no right to know why the government sends its soldiers to kill and die in another country, much less to exercise any influence on the decision to go to war.
The situation is perfectly summed up by Herman Goering, the number-two man in Hitler’s Third Reich, he had described the same concept quite well in an interview conducted in his Nuremberg jail cell: “Naturally, the common people don’t want war, neither in Russia nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship...All you have to do is tell them that they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
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Commented on own review
Jan 14, 2004 01:31 PM
An avowed advocate of war, Friedman found himself compelled to admit that in public appearances around the country, “there was not a single audience I spoke to where I felt there was a majority in favor of war in Iraq.”
Faced with the same dilemma, the administration bombarded the publi...c with phony propaganda about “weapons of mass destruction.” It sought to terrorize the American people into supporting a war. It claimed repeatedly that Saddam Hussein’s regime had a huge stockpile of nerve gas, biological weapons and possibly even atomic bombs, and was preparing to hand them over to the same band of terrorists that leveled the World Trade Center.
That this is no big deal for the leading foreign affairs columnist at the New York Times is itself a testimony to the degeneration of the media and the disappearance of any significant base of support for democratic rights within the ruling elite, including its supposedly liberal wing.
Quite interestingly,the Times, the Washington Post and others had created a furor over Richard Nixon’s secret bombing of Cambodia, not to mention his lying over what his administration tried to dismiss as a “second-rate burglary” at the Watergate complex some three decades ago.Read More
Reviewed War on Iraq: Case For 'No'
Jan 14, 2004 01:25 PM
4290 Views
(Updated Dec 08, 2006 04:33 PM)
In the face of a mounting international scandal over US and British falsehoods about weapons of mass destruction, advanced to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Thomas Friedman, the New York Times’s chief foreign affairs columnist, has leapt into the breach to assure the paper’s reader...Read more
Reviewed True Lies Movie
Jan 13, 2004 08:45 PM
2662 Views
(Updated Jan 13, 2004 08:45 PM)
James Cameron doesn't make small movies. TRUE LIES was another grande' dollars production, it is quite a bit more than what's seen in those dime-a-dozen action pics rolling off Hollywood's assembly line each year. What makes TRUE LIES different is what makes it better, and what makes it better i...Read more
Reviewed Mask Of Zorro Movie
Jan 13, 2004 07:30 PM
2892 Views
(Updated Jan 13, 2004 07:30 PM)
THE MASK OF ZORRO is like a breath of fresh air. It's refreshing to see an action/adventure film which is devoid of four-letter words and excessive blood, downplays the pyrotechnics and special effects, and focuses instead on character and story development. Kudos to scriptwriters Ted Elliot, Te...Read more
