U.S. Policy Toward Myanmar’s Military Junta

'''Ten days after the inauguration of President Joe Biden, his foreign policy team faced a crisis in

Southeast Asia: how should the United States respond to a military coup in Myanmar?'''

On Feb. 1, 2021, Myanmar’s Army chief Gen. Min Aung Hlaing overthrew the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Myanmar’s armed forces (also known as the Tatmadaw) baselessly claimed that the National League of Democracy had committed electoral fraud and arrested Suu Kyi on multiple charges. She and other party leaders have been under arrest ever since.

A nation-wide civil disobedience movement erupted after the coup, and has sustained itself ever since despite a crackdown from the security forces. The military has arrested over 9,600 people and killed more than 1,220 civilians. Reports suggest that the junta has tortured 131 people to death in government detention. In April 2021, members of the National League of Democracy — with representatives of Myanmar complex ethnic patchwork — established the National Unity Government of Myanmar, largely in exile.

The new Biden administration quickly sanctioned the regime (which calls itself the State Administrative Council) and seized $1 billion in assets. Ever since, however, the White House has done little else but pay lip service to the restoration of democracy and call on the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to do more.

While it may not grab headlines like the collapse of the Afghan government, tensions over Taiwan, or Russian cyber attacks, the military coup in Myanmar and ongoing, deadly civil conflict touches on important elements of Biden’s foreign policy agenda.

https://warontherocks.com/2021/11/u-s-policies-for-ending-myanmars-military-rule/

Military Jury Was Disgusted by C.I.A. Torture

A Navy captain whose letter recommended clemency for a Qaeda terrorist drafted the damning two-page document in 20 minutes.

Capt. Scott B. Curtis, the jury foreman, said it is just that he had the opportunity to express his thoughts in a letter proposing clemency for the prisoner Majid Khan, an al-Qaeda recruit who pleaded guilty to terrorism and murder charges for delivering $50,000 from his native Pakistan to finance a deadly bombing in Indonesia.

But before he started writing, the eight-officer jury sentenced Mr. Khan to 26 years in prison'.

“There was no sympathy for him or what he had done,” said Captain Curtis, who agreed to reveal his identity in an hourlong interview last week. “The crime itself, everyone thought that was an evil act and he should be accountable for that."

"It was the torture that was a mitigating factor.”

On the eve of his sentencing on Oct. 29, Mr. Khan, 41, offered a graphic account of his physical, sexual and psychological abuse by C.I.A. agents and operatives inflicted on him in dungeon-like conditions in black-site prisons in Pakistan, Afghanistan and a third country. He described how he went from graduating from a suburban Baltimore high school in 1999 to becoming a courier and would-be suicide bomber for Al Qaeda to, since 2012, a repentant cooperator with the U.S. government.

The two-hour presentation was so vivid it “kind of riveted us,” Captain Curtis said.

Mr. Khan pulled up a shirtsleeve to show the panel scars from shackles on his wrists. He offered to lift his pant leg to show similar scars on his ankle from the times he was hung in chains from a bar in a darkened cell for so long that his limbs swelled and the shackles cut his skin.

It took the panel just 90 minutes to reach a decision. Not everybody agreed to the lowest end of a possible 25- to 40-year sentence, so they settled on 26 years.

Then, Captain Curtis said, while the other officers chatted among themselves, he spent about 20 minutes writing the two-page, handwritten letter on red-ruled notebook paper — no crumpled up false starts, no rough

drafts.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/06/us/politics/military-jury-cia-torture.html

>>14941317

>>14941317

Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Gina Haspel is a senior national security advisor for King & Spalding’s National Security and Corporate Espionage practice.

https://www.kslaw.com/people/gina-haspel

>>14941442

kek!

BOUNDLESSINFORMANT

Defense budget and nuclear posture review are battlegrounds as Republicans seek to block limits on US use of weapons

This image taken with a slow shutter speed and provided by the US air force shows an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile test launch at Vandenberg air force base, California.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/03/nuclear-arms-joe-biden-pentagon-hawks