- Signs of the Times for Thu, 07 Sep 2006 -

• Signs Editorials
• All War, All the Time
• Police State USA
• Danger, Will Robinson!
• Playing Politics
• Killer Climate
• Zionism: War on Humanity
• Strange but True
• Money Matters

"Last October, Iran's President declared in a speech that some people ask -- in his words -- "whether a world without the United States and Zionism can be achieved… I say that this… goal is achievable." Less than three months ago, Iran's President declared to America and other Western powers: "open your eyes and see the fate of pharaoh… if you do not abandon the path of falsehood… your doomed destiny will be annihilation." Less than two months ago, he warned: "The anger of Muslims may reach an explosion point soon. If such a day comes… [America and the West] should know that the waves of the blast will not remain within the boundaries of our region." He also delivered this message to the American people: "If you would like to have good relations with the Iranian nation in the future… bow down before the greatness of the Iranian nation and surrender. If you don't accept [to do this], the Iranian nation will… force you to surrender and bow down."

The strange thing is that the only references for the above quotes come from the web site of the White House itself, with no verifiable references supplied for corroboration. During his speech, Bush made reference to a National Security Council document posted on the White House website entitled: "Strategy for Winning the War on Terror Long-term approach: Advancing effective democracy". The document constitutes an outlining of the current state of the "war on terror" and what the American government is doing to fight it. In the interest of sanity, I took the time to answer the points and allegations in each paragraph of the document with the result that, once again, simple logic forces me to conclude that the entire "war on terror" is nothing but one massive farce of global proprotions. The National Security Council document text is in italics with my comments in blue:

The long-term solution for winning the War on Terror is the advancement of freedom and human dignity through effective democracy. Elections are the most visible sign of a free society and can play a critical role in advancing effective democracy.

Immediate hypocrisy from the White House. It is beyond dispute that a majority of Americans did not vote for Bush in the 2000 election and that he was appointed to the Presidency by a few Judges. There is also much evidence to suggest that his 2004 "win" was based on vote fraud.

Today the UK Observer reports:

The myth of fair elections in America

Everyone remembers the debacle in Florida, 2000. The recounts, the law suits and the eventual deciding of a presidential election - not by the voters - but by the Supreme Court. The memory still causes a collective shudder to America's body politic.

Which makes the fact that America's system of voting is now even more suspect, more complicated, and more open to abuse than ever before so utterly shocking. Across the country a bewildering series of scandals or dubious practises are proliferating beyond control. The prospect of a 'second Florida' is now more likely not less. There are many - and not all of them are conspiracy theorists - who believed it may have happened in Ohio in 2004.

This week the venerable New York Times was the latest of many organisations and institutions to declare that America's democratic system is simply starting to fail. Not in terms of its democratic ideals, or some takeover by a Neocon cabal, but by a simple collapse in its ability to count everyone's votes accurately and fairly. [...]

The National Security Council Document continues:

But elections alone are not enough. Effective democracies honor and uphold basic human rights, including freedom of religion, conscience, speech, assembly, association, and press.

Guantanamo Bay, caged-in "protest zones", a mainstream press that is clearly beholden to the government.

They are responsive to their citizens, submitting to the will of the people. Effective democracies exercise effective sovereignty and maintain order within their own borders, address causes of conflict peacefully

"Address causes of conflict peacefully"?! Clearly this does not apply to the US government and its military.

protect independent and impartial systems of justice, punish crime, embrace the rule of law, and resist corruption. Effective democracies also limit the reach of government, protecting the institutions of civil society.

Right-wing cronies appointed to the Supreme Court by Bush; Bush passing laws to ensure he is never brought to trial; Cheney and Rumsfeld garnering massive government contracts for their friends in big business. Need I say more?

In effective democracies, freedom is indivisible. They are the long-term antidote to the ideology of terrorism today. This is the battle of ideas.

By their own actions then, the US government embraces the ideology of terrorism today as they themselves define it.

To wage the battle of ideas effectively, we must recognize what does and does not give rise to terrorism:

Terrorism is not the inevitable by-product of poverty. Many of the September 11 hijackers were from middle-class backgrounds, and many terrorist leaders, like bin Laden, are from privileged upbringings.

Indeed. Many of the September 11th hijackers area also still alive. And it is a matter of public record that Bin Laden was at one time a CIA asset.

Terrorism is not simply a result of hostility to U.S. policy in Iraq. The United States was attacked on September 11 and many years earlier, well before we toppled the Saddam Hussein regime. Moreover, countries that did not participate in Coalition efforts in Iraq have not been spared from terror attacks.

Indeed. Many armed groups have existed over the course of the last 100 years, and those that claimed America as their enemy did so because of the many transgressions of successive US governments against the populations of countries all over the world. From the installation of Pinochet in Chile to the assisting of the Tamil Tigers in Indonesia, US governments have made enemies and provoked (and often manipulated) grass roots organisations all over the world. Iraq is but the latest in a long list of brutal US government actions in the name of "freedom".

Terrorism is not simply a result of Israeli-Palestinian issues. Al-Qaida plotting for the September 11 attacks began in the 1990s, during an active period in the peace process.

Israel was created in 1948 by way of massacre and expropriation of Palestinian land with the direct help of the then US government. Most Middle Eastern resistance groups are indeed a direct result of the clear injustice of the creation of the state of Israel and the ongoing American support of that corrupt little statelet.

Terrorism is not simply a response to our efforts to prevent terror attacks. The al-Qaida network targeted the United States long before the United States targeted al-Qaida. Indeed, the terrorists are emboldened more by perceptions of weakness than by demonstrations of resolve. Terrorists lure recruits by telling them that we are decadent, easily intimidated, and will retreat if attacked.

Arab or Islamic "terrorism" in terms of "al-Qaeda" is to a large extent manufactured by agents of the US British and Israeli governments. In any case, as noted, there is more than enough justified resentment in the Arab world to American, British and Israeli imperialist designs on their land dating back to the beginning of the 20th century.

The terrorism we confront today springs from:

Political alienation. Transnational terrorists are recruited from populations with no voice in their own government and see no legitimate way to promote change in their own country. Without a stake in the existing order, they are vulnerable to manipulation by those who advocate a perverse political vision based on violence and destruction.

Real modern day "terrorism" (justified resistance to oppression), specifically that arising in the Middle East, has been all but neutralized by the American and Israeli government's stranglehold on the region and their tactic of managing any genuine resistance to their oppression by staged terror attacks i.e. attacks on civilian populations carried out by agents of the American, British and Israeli governments themselves.

Grievances that can be blamed on others. The failures the terrorists feel and see are blamed both on others and on perceived injustices from the recent or sometimes distant past. The terrorists’ rhetoric keeps wounds associated with this past fresh and raw, a potent motivation for revenge and terror.

There is nothing "perceived" about the injustices meted out by the American and Israeli government in the Middle East and around the world. Palestinians are still confined to their "ghettos", their land confiscated and their lives in daily peril. The most recent wounds of the Palestinian and Lebanese people are still very much raw and very real.

Subcultures of conspiracy and misinformation. Terrorists recruit more effectively from populations whose information about the world is contaminated by falsehoods and corrupted by conspiracy theories. The distortions keep alive grievances and filter out facts that would challenge popular prejudices and self-serving propaganda.

"Terrorists" (justified resistance fighters) have no need of "conspiracy theories". The entire Arab population of the Middle East have ample evidence of American and Israeli designs on their land and resources in the form of American-made bombs dropping on their homes and heads. This is clear evidence of conspiracy that these people have lived with for at least the last 60 years.

We should note also that the above claim, according to the Bush government, that conspiracy theories are one of the sources of "terrorism" is more than likely a direct reference to US-based 9/11 researchers and other exposers of government conspiracy. In essence, the US government has effectively defined the at least 30% of the American population who believe that the Bush government knew in advance about the 9/11 attacks, terrorists.

An ideology that justifies murder. Terrorism ultimately depends upon the appeal of an ideology that excuses or even glorifies the deliberate killing of innocents. Islam has been twisted and made to serve an evil end, as in other times and places other religions have been similarly abused.

Not in other times and places, in America, today, Christianity is being used by the White House to justify the murder of 250,000 Iraqi civilians. We need only remember that Bush claimed that "god told me to invade Iraq". Similarly, the teaching of the very earthly Zionist religious texts the Talmud and Torah have been used for decades to sanction the murder of innocent Palestinian and other Arab peoples of the Middle East by successive Israeli governments. Real "terrorism" (properly described as 'justified resistance to oppression') has no history of targetting innocent civilians but rather the Western governments that have always been the source of oppression and injustice around the world.

Defeating terrorism in the long run requires that each of these factors be addressed. Effective democracy provides a counter to each, diminishing the underlying conditions terrorists seek to exploit.

In place of alienation, democracy offers an ownership stake in society, a chance to shape one’s own future.

Not in America, where poverty has never been so widespread and the alienation of minorities appears to be an official government policy.

In place of festering grievances, democracy offers the rule of law, the peaceful resolution of disputes, and the habits of advancing interests through compromise.

Not in America, a country with the highest number of incarcerated citizens per capita in the world

In place of a culture of conspiracy and misinformation, democracy offers freedom of speech, independent media, and the marketplace of ideas, which can expose and discredit falsehoods, prejudices, and dishonest propaganda.

Not in America, where the mainstream media simply parrots government propaganda and millions of Americans have been effectively brainwashed into supporting illegal wars and simply ignoring evidence that their government is lying to them.

In place of an ideology that justifies murder, democracy offers a respect for human dignity that abhors the deliberate targeting of innocent civilians.

The history of America over the past 100 years is the history of repeated violations of the sovereignty of other nations together with the terrorising of their populations in order to "secure American interests". America stands for the denigration of human dignity, both in the US and around the world.

Democracy is the antithesis of terrorist tyranny, which is why the terrorists denounce it and are willing to kill the innocent to stop it.

We need only look to current American actions in Iraq. 10 permanent US military bases around the country, a 100 acre US embassy in the middle of Baghdad. An Iraqi government that can do nothing without agreement from the White House. American democracy is tyranny and terrorism, yet the White House, as the psychopathic mind so often does, projects its actions on to others.

Democracy is based on empowerment, while the terrorists’ ideology is based on enslavement. Democracies expand the freedom of their citizens, while the terrorists seek to impose a single set of narrow beliefs. Democracy sees individuals as equal in worth and dignity, having an inherent potential to create, govern themselves, and exercise basic freedoms of speech and conscience. The terrorists see individuals as objects to be exploited, and then to be ruled and oppressed.

Again, we find the truth at 180 degrees from the assertions of the White House. The truth is that American Democracy is based on enslavement. American Democracy seeks to impose a single set of narrow beliefs. American Democracy sees individuals as objects to be exploited, and then to be ruled and oppressed.

Democracies are not immune to terrorism. In some democracies, some ethnic or religious groups are unable or unwilling to grasp the benefits of freedom otherwise available in the society. Such groups can evidence the same alienation and despair that the transnational terrorists exploit in undemocratic states. This accounts for the emergence in democratic societies of homegrown terrorists – even among second- and third-generation citizens. Even in these cases, the long-term solution remains deepening the reach of democracy so that all citizens enjoy its benefits. We will continue to guard against the emergence of homegrown terrorists within our own Homeland as well.

Notice the inherent racism in the comment that: "In some democracies, some ethnic or religious groups are unable or unwilling to grasp the benefits of freedom". This is an attitude that goes to the heart of the US government's idea of "democracy". Talk of alienation as a source of "terrorism" is hubris and an invention of the US government. Genuine resistance groups form for one reason and one reason only - to resist oppression. The fact that the raison d'etre of the US and Israeli governments is to infiltrated, manipulate and oppress the populations of other countries to safeguard its interests, which gives rise to resistance groups, requires that the US and Israeli governments label such groups "terrorists".

Consider the following news article from Sept 6th 2006:

Government Terror Alerts Aid Terrorist Goals, Study Finds

SF Chronicle
07/09/2006

Intense media scrutiny and politicians' rhetoric heighten sense of fear, researchers say.

With the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks fast approaching, President Bush took to the podium Tuesday to speak to Americans about his administration's global war on terror.

Three things can be expected from Bush's speech, according to a new study by three Columbia University researchers: The media will repeat the president's remarks. Public fear of terrorism will increase. And the president's poll numbers will rise.

Those have been the effects of presidential pronouncements on terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks, according to political scientists Brigitte Nacos, Yaeli Bloch-Elkon and Robert Shapiro, in a report prepared for this month's annual meeting of the American Political Science Association.

"These are interesting findings, and confirm what many of us had suspected," said Mark Juergensmeyer, director of Global and International Studies at UC Santa Barbara, who reviewed the research at the request of The Chronicle.

"This public panic benefits the terrorists whose work is made easier by an overactive government response that magnifies their efforts. In an odd way this puts the government and the terrorists in league with one another," he said. "The main loser, alas, is the terrified public."

The National Security Council continues:

The strategy to counter the lies behind the terrorists’ ideology and deny them future recruits must empower the very people the terrorists most want to exploit: the faithful followers of Islam. We will continue to support political reforms that empower peaceful Muslims to practice and interpret their faith. We will work to undermine the ideological underpinnings of violent Islamic extremism and gain the support of non-violent Muslims around the world. The most vital work will be done within the Islamic world itself, and Jordan, Morocco, and Indonesia, among others, have begun to make important strides in this effort. Responsible Islamic leaders need to denounce an ideology that distorts and exploits Islam to justify the murder of innocent people and defiles a proud religion.

Islam has been co-opted by the American and Israeli governments and turned into a religion of terrorists. The US government has wasted no opportunity to talk up the "threat from Islamic terrorism" and then connected Islamic terrorism to ordinary Muslims by murdering 250,000 innocent Iraqi civilians. Note the 2006 terror alerts in the UK and many previous such alerts in the US which have created a climate of fear and racism and ultimately hate towards Muslims in those countries. Note the continuing demonisation of Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians and Iranians as "terrorists" by the US and Israeli governments. The US, Israeli and British governments have waged a conscious and determined policy to no only create "Islamic terrorism" but to associate that concept with the 1 billion people of Muslim faith who whom we share this world. Once ordinary people like you and I, now "terrorists" slated for summary execution at the whim of Western and Israeli "leaders".

Many of the Muslim faith are already making this commitment at great personal risk. They realize they are a target of this ideology of terror. Everywhere we have joined in the fight against terrorism, Muslim allies have stood beside us, becoming partners in this vital cause. They know the stakes – the survival of their own liberty, the future of their own region, the justice and humanity of their own traditions – and the United States is proud to stand beside them. Not only will we continue to support the efforts of our Muslim partners overseas to reject violent extremism, we will continue to engage with and strengthen the efforts of Muslims within the United States as well. Through outreach programs and public diplomacy we will reveal the terrorists’ violent extremist ideology for what it is – a form of totalitarianism following in the path of fascism and Nazism.

Only in the lexicon of the White House could "Islamic terrorists" be a threat to Islamic people. In the reality being crafted by the Neocons and the Zionists, up is down, left is right and black is white. How gullible is the American and world public? How far can the big lie be pushed?

Over the short term: Four priorities of action

The advance of freedom, opportunity, and human dignity through democracy is the long-term solution to the transnational terror movement of today. To create the space and time for this long-term solution to take root, we are operating along four priorities of action in the short term.

Prevent attacks by terrorist networks. A government has no higher obligation than to protect the lives and livelihoods of its citizens. The hard core among our terrorist enemies cannot be reformed or deterred; they will be tracked down, captured, or killed. They will be cut off from the network of individuals, institutions, and other resources they depend on for support and that facilitate their activities. The network, in turn, will be deterred, disrupted, and disabled. Working with committed partners across the globe, we continue to use a broad range of tools at home and abroad to take the fight to the terrorists, deny them entry to the United States, hinder their movement across international borders, and establish protective measures to further reduce our vulnerability to attack.

As noted in the previously mentioned article, the Bush government is in fact fulfilling the alleged goals of the "terrorists" they claim to be fighting. Far from tracking down and killing hard core "terrorists", Bush himself has stated that Osama Bin laden, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, is no longer interesting to the White House. Instead, the Bush government along with the Zionist Israeli government, is waging a campaign of death and destruction in the Middle East against ordinary innocent Muslim Arab peoples.

Attack terrorists and their capacity to operate. The United States and our partners continue to take active and effective measures against our primary terrorist enemies and certain other violent extremist groups that also pose a serious and continuing threat. We are attacking these terrorists and their capacity to operate effectively at home and abroad. Specifically, through the use of all elements of national power, we are denying or neutralizing what our terrorist enemies need to operate and survive:

As can be clearly seen, the only net result of the alleged American "war on terror" has been a decimation of civil liberties in America, an encroaching fascist police state in the US where every citizen is a potential "terrorist" unless they adhere to government dictates, and the murder of hundreds of thousands of Arab civilians in the Middle East. precious few alleged "terrorists" have been captured, yet the US and Israeli government's continue to torture and kill innocent individuals in their internment camps in Guantanamo bay and elsewhere.

Leaders, who provide the vision that followers strive to realize. They also offer the necessary direction, discipline, and motivation for accomplishing a given goal or task. Most terrorist organizations have a central figure who embodies the cause, in addition to several operational leaders and managers who provide guidance on a functional, regional, or local basis. The loss of a leader can degrade a group’s cohesiveness and in some cases may trigger its collapse. Other terrorist groups adapt by promoting experienced cadre or decentralizing their command structures, making our challenge in neutralizing terrorist leaders even greater.

As noted, the ideology of alleged "terror leaders" dovetails with that of the American government to the point that the actions of the American government in its war on terror is achieving the alleged goals of the alleged terrorists.

Foot soldiers, which include the operatives, facilitators, and trainers in a terrorist network. They are the lifeblood of a terrorist group – they make it run. Technology and globalization have enhanced the ability of groups to recruit foot soldiers to their cause, including well-educated recruits. We and our partners will not only continue to capture and kill foot soldiers, but will work to halt the influx of recruits into terrorist organizations as well. Without a continuing supply of personnel to facilitate and carry out attacks, these groups ultimately will cease to operate.

There is much evidence to suggest that the alleged terror training camps in countries like Pakistan are being run directly or by proxy by intelligence agencies affiliated with the US government. The Pakistani ISI for example is widely understood to be an arm of the CIA. The alleged al-Qaeda training camps in Pakistan are reported to be run by the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI, which is fully supported by the CIA.

Weapons, the tools of terrorists and the means by which they murder to advance their cause. Terrorists exploit many avenues to develop and acquire weapons, including through state sponsors, theft or capture, and black market purchases. Our enemies employ existing technology – explosives, small arms, missiles and other devices – in both conventional and unconventional ways to terrorize and achieve mass effects. They also use non-weapon technologies as weapons, such as the airplanes on September 11. Our greatest and gravest concern, however, is WMD in the hands of terrorists. Preventing their acquisition and the dire consequences of their use is a key priority of this strategy.

The international proliferation of weapons, particularly WMDs, is rigorously controlled by the governments of Western countries. American possesses the largest stockpile of both nuclear bombs and banned chemical and biological weapons on the planet. If "terrorists" obtain any such weapons, it can only be with the sanction of Western powers, particularly America. Indeed, there exists the distinct possibility that if a nuclear or other WMD attack is carried out against the population of a Western nation, it will in fact have been the work of covert intelligence assets of the Western nation itself, or Israel's Mossad. Israel possesses at least 200 nuclear weapons and is a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation agreement. It is Israel therefore that poses the greatest threat to world peace due to its long-held goal to remove, by any means, any threat to its Imperialist designs on the Middle East.

Propaganda operations, which are used by terrorists to justify violent action as well as inspire individuals to support or join the movement. The ability of terrorists to exploit the Internet and 24/7 worldwide media coverage allows them to bolster their prominence as well as feed a steady diet of radical ideology, twisted images, and conspiracy theories to potential recruits in all corners of the globe. Besides a global reach, these technologies allow terrorists to propagate their message quickly, often before an effective counter to terrorist messages can be coordinated and distributed. These are force multipliers for our enemy.

A better example of utter fantasy and nonsense you are unlikely to find. Between them, Israel and the US have effectively neutered the worldwide mainstream media. Evidence of this can be found in the fact that for decades the reality of Israel's brutal treatment of Palestinians was utterly denied to Western audiences, leading them to believe that Israel was in fact that victim in the Middle East rather than the aggressor - which it clearly is. We should again take note however of the mention here of the internet and terrorism and 'conspiracy theory'. This appears to be a clear warning to US-based internet conspiracy theorists that their government has them in its sights.

Deny terrorists entry to the United States and disrupt their travel internationally. Denying our enemies the tools to travel internationally and across and within our borders significantly impedes their mobility and can inhibit their effectiveness. They rely on illicit networks to facilitate travel and often obtain false identification documents through theft or in-house forgery operations. We will continue to enhance the security of the American people through a layered system of protections along our borders, at our ports, on our roadways and railways, in our skies, and with our international partners. We will continue to develop and enhance security practices and technologies to reduce vulnerabilities in the dynamic transportation network, inhibit terrorists from crossing U.S. borders, and detect and prevent terrorist travel within the United States. Our efforts will include improving all aspects of aviation security; promoting secure travel and identity documents; disrupting travel facilitation networks; improving border security and visa screening; and building international capacity and improving international information exchange to secure travel and combat terrorist travel. Our National Strategy to Combat Terrorist Travel and our National Strategy for Maritime Security will help guide our efforts.

We are still waiting on an explanation as to how and why alleged chief hijacker Mohammed Atta (whose father claimed he was alive on September 12th 2001) was enrolled as a student at the International Officer’s School of Maxwell Airforce Base, with witnesses recalling him having been introduced around at an officers' club party. Also unanswered is the question of why many members of the bin Laden family were given permission by US government authorities to fly out of the US on September 11th 2001 when suspicion had already fallen on Osama. We are also none the wiser as to why the five Israeli Mossad agents who were caught dancing and cheering and filming the collapse of the WTC were held for two months and then expelled from the US to Israel on "immigration violations". Apparently America's borders are only secure when the US government wants them to be secure.

Defend potential targets of attack. Our enemies are opportunistic, exploiting vulnerabilities and seeking alternatives to those targets with increased security measures. The targeting trend since at least September 11 has been away from hardened sites, such as official government facilities with formidable security, and toward softer targets – schools, restaurants, places of worship, and nodes of public transportation – where innocent civilians gather and which are not always well secured. Specific targets vary, but they tend to be symbolic and often selected because they will produce mass casualties, economic damage, or both.

Here we are reminded of the July 2006 case of the 'Miami Seven' in the US, where an undercover FBI agent, posing as an 'al-Qaeda' operative, approached a group of apparently incompetent half-wits living in a warehouse in Florida. The group's name was "the Sea of David' and far from having anything to do with 'Islamic terrorism' they all claimed to be Christians who "trained through the bible". In a perfect example of how agents of the US government are actively attempting to manufacture Islamic terrorism, the undercover FBI agent:

approached the group and asked them if they wanted to join 'al-Qaeda'

'swore one of them in' as an 'al-Qaeda' member

offered them $50,000

provided them with army boots and a video camera

suggested that they might want to blow up some government buildings

suggested that they wanted to blow up the Sears tower

suggested to them that they wanted to wage "full ground war against the United States."

identified that one of them knew what the Sears tower was and had actually been to Chicago - once

All of this was trumpeted in the mainstream press as evidence of an "Islamic terror cell" working out of Florida and planning attacks against the American people. I kid you not, and not once was the most appropriate word used - entrapment.

The National Security Council document continues:

Deny WMD to rogue states and terrorist allies who seek to use them. Weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists is one of the gravest threats we face. We have taken aggressive efforts to deny terrorists access to WMD-related materials, equipment, and expertise, but we will enhance these activities through an integrated effort at all levels of government and with the private sector and our foreign partners to stay ahead of this dynamic and evolving threat. In July 2006, the United States and Russia launched the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism to establish an international framework to enhance cooperation, build capacity, and act to combat the global threat of nuclear terrorism. This initiative will help drive international focus and action to ensure the international community is doing everything possible to prevent nuclear weapons, materials, and knowledge from reaching the hands of terrorists.

No effort however, has ever been made to do anything about the REAL nuclear threat to the world - America and Israel's massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

Deny terrorists the support and sanctuary of rogue states. The United States and its allies and partners in the War on Terror make no distinction between those who commit acts of terror and those who support and harbor terrorists. Any government that chooses to be an ally of terror has chosen to be an enemy of freedom, justice, and peace. The world will hold those regimes to account. To break the bonds between rogue states and our terrorist enemies, we will work to disrupt the flow of resources from states to terrorists while simultaneously working to end state sponsorship of terrorism.

Notice how "America" suddenly becomes "the world" in this paragraph. Quite clearly, almost every American and British, and certainly every Israeli, administration over the past 50 years have consistently used acts of unmitigated terrorism against other nations and their peoples to achieve their political objectives. See this link for a video of the testimony of ex CIA member John Stockwell on the secret wars of American governments that have caused the death of 6 million innocent people around the world. For committing acts of terrorism therefore, America Britain and Israel stand alone as the most brutal and ruthless perpetrators of crimes against humanity.

End state sponsorship of terrorism. State sponsors are a critical resource for our terrorist enemies, often providing funds, weapons, training, safe passage, and sanctuary. Some of these countries have developed or have the capability to develop WMD and other destabilizing technologies that could fall into the hands of terrorists. The United States currently designates five state sponsors of terrorism: Iran, Syria, Sudan, North Korea, and Cuba. We will maintain sanctions against them and promote their international isolation until they end their support for terrorists, including the provision of sanctuary. To further isolate these regimes and persuade other states not to sponsor terror, we will use a range of tools and efforts to delegitimate terrorism as an instrument of statecraft. Any act of international terrorism, whether committed by a state or individual, is reprehensible, a threat to international peace and security, and should be unequivocally and uniformly rejected. Similarly, states that harbor and assist terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists, and they will be held to account.

Notice how CUBA is now a "terrorist nation" and potential possessor of WMDs. The Bush administration appears confident that it can simply include any nation it chooses in the "terror grouping", and feel no responsibility to provide one shred of evidence. What needs to be understood is that both the US and Israel are in full control of the bogus terrorist threat - they created it and are actively using it to justify their imperialistic designs on many parts of the world. It is an age-old ploy that eminently logic from the point of view of a fighting strategist of a decidedly evil persuasion.

Iran remains the most active state sponsor of international terrorism. Through its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Ministry of Intelligence and Security, the regime in Tehran plans terrorist operations and supports groups such as Lebanese Hizballah, Hamas, and Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Iran also remains unwilling to account for and bring to justice senior al-Qaida members it detained in 2003. Most troubling is the potential WMD-terrorism nexus that emanates from Tehran. Syria also is a significant state sponsor of terrorism and thus a priority for concern. The regime in Damascus supports and provides haven to Hizballah, Hamas, and PIJ. We will continue to stand with the people of Iran and Syria against the regimes that oppress them at home and sponsor terror abroad.

Such claims are spurious and not backed up by any evidence whatsoever save that which the US and Israeli governments invent and peddle as fact. Iran and Syria may be supporting Hizb'allah for example, but they do so simply in an attempt to stave off Israeli and American predatorial designs on the Iranian and Syrian nations, their resources and peoples. Their resistance is a just resistance, yet the American and Israeli governments call such resistance "terrorism", simply because it suits them.

Deny terrorists control of any nation they would use as a base and launching pad for terror. Our terrorist enemies are striving to claim a strategic country as a haven for terror. From this base, they could destabilize the Middle East and strike America and other free nations with ever-increasing violence. This we can never allow. Our enemies had established a sanctuary in Afghanistan prior to Operation Enduring Freedom, and today terrorists see Iraq as the central front of their fight against the United States.

We can wager that most Iraqi citizens also see Iraq as the central front of their fight against the United States, and they understand with equal clarity that it is the US that is engaging in terrorism against the Iraqi people. It is said that 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter', yet this concept can be further refined with the addition of the ideas of right and wrong and justice. Logically we can surely come to a consensus that terrorists are wrong and unjust and freedom fighters are right and justified. While the American government may claim that its troops are freedom fighters and the Iraqi resistance "terrorists", the actions of American troops in Iraq in occupying the country and murdering 250,000 Iraqi civilians are clearly wrong and unjust, leaving it clear just who the real terrorists are.
Comment on this Editorial

The table on Israeli massacres that I posted yesterday was prepared by my sister, Mirvat, for the head of an international agency. She explains that the table is based on: "1. My first translation of Jana Nasrallah; 2. The Lebanese Human Rights Association prepared a list (I got it from their website); 3. The daily updates I was writing to ... since the onset of the assault. I did it for her since she will be attending a conference on Women and Children in times of war. I am happy that you like it. The term chemical was used by the Lebanese Association for Human Rights." (text was changed per Mirvat's request)

Original

The thousands of mercenary security contractors employed in the Bush administration's "War on Terror" are billed to American taxpayers, but they've handed Osama Bin Laden his greatest victories -- public relations coups that have transformed him from just another face in a crowd of radical clerics to a hero of millions in the global South (posters of Bin Laden have been spotted in largely Catholic Latin America during protests against George W. Bush).

The internet hums with viral videos of British contractors opening fire on civilian vehicles in Iraq as part of a bloody game, stories about CIA contractors killing prisoners in Afghanistan, veterans of Apartheid-era South African and Latin American death squads discovered among contractors' staffs and notoriously shady Russian arms dealers working for occupation authorities. One Special Forces operator told Amnesty International that some contractors are in it just because they "really want to kill somebody and they can do it easier there ... [not] everybody is like that, but a dangerously high element."

While most experts believe that Al Qaeda no longer has the ability to mount the kind of sophisticated attacks that brought it so much notoriety in the first place, its media operations are stronger than ever. From their caves -- or wherever they are holed up -- Bin Laden and his henchmen claim that the "War on Terror" is just a thin cover for a U.S.-led war on Islam. Rightly or wrongly, these incidents prove his point to millions of people around the world.

Osama Bin Laden's greatest victories in the crucial media war have been the series of prisoner abuse scandals at Guantanamo Bay, Bagram airbase in Afghanistan and a number of detention centers across Iraq, the most infamous of which is Saddam Hussein's former torture complex at Abu Ghraib.

According to a report by Corpwatch, what ties these facilities together are the abundance of private contractors involved in their operations. The Taguba Report (PDF) named four private contractors in the Abu Ghraib scandal. Steven Stephanowicz, an investigator for CACI, a multinational with extensive government contracts (92 percent of which are in defense), encouraged MPs under his command to terrorize inmates, and "clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse."

Another interrogator at Abu Ghraib was John Israel, who, according to the Taguba Report, didn't even have a security clearance, and should never have been hired for an operation as sensitive as prisoner interrogation in the first place. It's not clear whether Israel worked for CACI or a competitor, Titan Corp. (a target of numerous federal investigations for its work in Iraq and elsewhere), but Titan denies it ever provided interrogators to Abu Ghraib. Another un-named private contractor at Abu Ghraib allegedly raped a teenage boy in his custody.

According to Amnesty, half of the interrogators at Abu Ghraib were private contractors -- about 30 in all. Torin Nelson was a military intelligence officer at Gitmo before becoming a CACI interrogator at Abu Ghraib. After the scandal broke, Nelson resigned and charged the military with scapegoating a handful of low-level soldiers -- the only people who have been brought to trial for the abuses -- to "divert attention away from ingrained problems in the military detention and interrogation system." He said: "The problem with outsourcing intelligence work is the limit of oversight and control by the military administrators over the independent contractors."

CACI's contract to provide interrogators for Abu Ghraib stunningly didn't require the personnel to have had any training whatsoever in military interrogation techniques. According to a report by the Army inspector general, 11 of the 31 CACI interrogators had no training in what most experts agree is one of the most difficult and sensitive areas of intelligence gathering. CACI has become a major player in the private intelligence business in recent years, but its core competence is in information technology, not the incredibly delicate process of prisoner interrogation. They filled the contract like any other order -- with warm bodies that could be listed on an invoice.

"It's insanity," former CIA agent Robert Baer told The Guardian. "These are rank amateurs, and there is no legally binding law on these guys as far as I could tell. Why did they let them in the prison?"

Abu Ghraib was a perfect storm, destined to result in torture and murder. The Department of Justice was redefining torture to be "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure," 90 percent of U.S. troops believed they were in Iraq for "retaliation for Saddam's role in 9/11" and, according to the Army, brigade leaders "failed to supervise or provide direct oversight, to properly discipline their soldiers ... and to provide continued mission-specific training." The results were those all-too-familiar images of grinning soldiers posed next to brutalized corpses on ice, stacks of naked prisoners, hooded prisoners in "stress positions" trussed in electrical cords and all the rest. The only winners -- beside Al Qaeda recruiters -- were CACI's shareholders -- its invoices were duly processed.

Amnesty notes that contractors "neither fall under the Military Code of Justice, nor are they answerable to Iraqi law, having been specifically excluded under a decree issued by Paul Bremer, the head of the U.S.-run administration in Iraq." Theoretically, a recent law, the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, could be used to prosecute contractors, but the administration has not tried it out yet. According to the Legal Times, it's "narrowly crafted and ... may not cover some of the abuses -- and abusers -- involved in the torture of Iraqi detainees at U.S.-run prisons." It doesn't cover intelligence contractors working for the CIA.

That may be the whole point; critics have argued that one reason the United States has employed so many contractors to handle prisoners is to shield members of the military high command and their civilian leadership from culpability for war crimes or other violations of international and domestic laws.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky said that you can tell what a nation is like by the way it treats its prisoners, and by that measure the United States has not exactly been a beacon of light for the world. But what does the fact that we outsource these crimes to big, faceless transnational corporations say about us?

CACI, for California Analysis Center, Inc. (also known as Colonels and Captains), is among the top 10 information providers in the Fortune 500. The company was founded in 1962 as a computer-engineering firm, and later moved into network management for federal, state, and local governments. The company claims that, since Abu Ghraib, it no longer is in the interrogation business, but it remains a major intelligence contractor. Corporate spying has become a booming business -- it's estimated that half of the $46 billion classified intelligence budget is handled by the private sector, including everything from intelligence analysis to managing spy satellites.

To understanding how a company that started out as a dull computer business ended up implicated in torture scandals, one has to go back to the 1980s and 1990s.

In 1983, then-White House budget director David Stockman -- a dedicated supply-sider best known for his recommendation that the Department of Education reclassify ketchup as a vegetable -- issued a directive calling on government to rely only on "commercial sources to supply the products and services the government needs." Two years later, the military created the Logistics Civilian Augmentation Program, LOGCAP, to transfer its logistics functions to the private sector. But the military was slow to implement it in a significant way at first.

Following the Cold War, a convergence of ideological imperatives broke the military's resistance. With the decline of the Soviet Union, there was little reason to continue military spending at the same clip as the United States had done during the previous four decades. However, Ronald Reagan had largely rehabilitated American militarism after it had taken a public hit during Vietnam, and after the Soviets' fall, Washington's strategic class was intoxicated with American hard power.

At the same time, both parties had embraced -- to varying degrees -- a pronounced antipathy towards government, another piece of the Reagan legacy (these were the years following Walter Mondale's crushing defeat at Reagan's hands that gave rise to the Democratic Leadership Council). The goals of downsizing the military, maintaining U.S. firepower and privatizing many of its functions led to military "modernization" -- much of which meant outsourcing to the private sector.

That task, under the first George Bush, fell to then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, who fought a tough battle against the military leadership to eliminate billions of dollars in pet defense projects. Cheney hired Kellogg Brown & Root -- a subsidiary of Halliburton -- to write a classified report detailing how private companies could help support the military in hot spots around the world. Not long after, the Pentagon awarded the first comprehensive five-year LOGCAP contract to none other than Kellogg Brown & Root

The 1992 election brought two of the founding members of the DLC to the White House, and the privatization of defense functions accelerated at a dizzying rate.

Al Gore was tasked with "reinventing government," and he took to it with gusto, attacking a federal government that he called "bloated, inefficient and wasteful." He headed Clinton's National Performance Review (NPR), which was charged with instituting "revolutionary" changes in the way government works and identifying jobs that the government "should simply stop doing."

Writing in the New York Times, Dan Baum explained that Cheney, who became CEO of Halliburton in 1995, got a huge lift under Clinton:

A lot of Halliburton's business depends on foreign customers getting loans from U.S. banks, which are in turn guaranteed by the government's trade-promoting Export-Import Bank. In the five years before Cheney took the helm, the Ex-Im Bank guaranteed $100 million in loans so foreign customers could buy Halliburton's services; during Cheney's five years as C.E.O., that figure jumped to $1.5 billion.

The intelligence community was a laggard, for obvious reasons. But following the attacks of Sept. 11, lawmakers were itching to pour tens of billions of new dollars into intelligence and didn't have the personnel to do it. Firms like CACI were simply at the right place at the right time. They had well-established revolving doors to the defense and intelligence communities -- the hawkish former undersecretary of state Richard Armitage once sat on CACI's board, and Barbara A McNamara, former deputy director of the NSA, continues to do so -- and they hired thousands of former intelligence officials at premium prices to fill a host of new contracts.

John Gannon, a former CIA deputy director for intelligence and now head of BAE Systems' Global Analysis Group, told journalist Sebastian Abbot that an intelligence contractor "is going to look at a government requirement, and it's going to go and find people wherever it can and get the greatest number of people at the lowest price and maximizing the profit to the business to do it." "When I was in government hiring people," he continued, "I was looking for the best possible people I could get ... [but] that is not what the private sector does." Gannon warned that these companies "are not looking to be right or looking to ensure that they are getting access to the best information and expertise; they are looking to please a customer at the lowest common denominator." It's as clear a case of ideology and cronyism trumping common sense as one could find.

"U.S. Accused of Using Cluster Weapons Against Civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan"

"Whatever summer jobs or internships our anchors had in college couldn't be less consequential," she added. He has kept the experience a secret, sources say, out of concern that, if widely known, it might compromise his ability to travel in foreign countries and even possibly put him at greater risk from terrorists.

According to the spokeswoman, Cooper told his bosses at CNN about his time with the agency. But even if he hadn't, says Walter Isaacson, who headed the network from 2001 to 2003 and is now president of the Aspen Institute, it's not the sort of thing that would automatically require disclosure, since the stint was brief and far in the past. "I think what he did was probably fine and cool, and I've got no problems with it," he added.