The links will open in a
new window. To return to this page, simply close the new
window.
September 11 Showdown
An imminent and potentially nasty confrontation
over an independent commission’s authority to investigate the
White House’s handling of the September 11 terror attacks was
narrowly averted last week—just before President Bush landed
a jet aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in a carefully crafted
ceremony touting the toppling of Saddam Hussein as a major victory
in the war on terrorism.
BUT THE BATTLE over the issue is far from over. In
fact, NEWSWEEK has learned, President Bush’s chief lawyer has
privately signaled that the White House may seek to invoke
executive privilege over key documents relating to the attacks in
order to keep them out of the hands of investigators for the
National Commission on Terror Attacks Upon the United
States—the independent panel created by Congress to probe all
aspects of 9-11. Some commission members now fear a showdown over
the issue—particularly over extremely sensitive National
Security Council minutes and presidential briefing
papers—could be coming in the next few weeks.
[...] Just two weeks ago, one commission member,
Tim Roemer, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana, had
sought to read transcripts of three days of closed hearings that
had been held last fall by the House and Senate Intelligence
Committees—hearings that Roemer, as a member of the House
panel, had actually participated in. But when Roemer went down to a
carefully guarded room on Capitol Hill to read the classified
transcripts—he says to refresh his memory—he was
stunned to learn that he couldn’t have access to them. The
reason, relayed by a congressional staffer, was that Zelikow had
acceded to a request by an administration official to permit
lawyers to first review them to determine if the transcripts
contained testimony about “privileged” material. Roemer
called the deal “outrageous” and 9-11 family members
victims bombarded the panel with angry calls. But late Tuesday,
White House lawyers relented, thereby averting an embarrassing
public escalation of the dispute—and inevitable charges of a
White House cover-up—that could well have marred last
Thursday’s highly publicized ceremony aboard the USS Abraham
Lincoln in which Bush declared the military action in Iraq
“one victory in a war on terror that began on September 11,
2001, and still goes on.”
But that by no means settled the matter, sources
say. Publicly, the White House has pledged cooperation with the
panel ... But privately, talks have been far more problematic.
...White House chief council Alberto Gonzales, the
president’s chief lawyer, [says] he “may seek to invoke
executive privilege” over some documents sought by the
commission.
Executive privilege is a doctrine traditionally
invoked by all White Houses to keep confidential briefings or
advice given to the president. But the precise boundaries of the
doctrine are hardly settled. And it is far from clear how a White
House attempt to withhold material from a congressionally
authorized national commission on 9-11 will play out. Gonzales and
the rest of the White House legal staff are known to feel
particularly passionate about the sanctity of staff advice given to
the president—a view that reflects Bush’s and Vice
President Dick Cheney’s adamant opinion that internal
executive-branch decision-making should be conducted without fear
of congressional or media scrutiny. “Those are like the crown
jewels—we’ll never give those up,” one White
House lawyer predicted to NEWSWEEK recently when asked about
presidential briefing papers that were likely to be sought by the
commission.
...The
invocation of executive privilege could fuel suspicions that the
White House is stonewalling the panel in order to cover up
politically embarrassing mistakes. “I think they have got to
be worried about this,” says one panel member. “This is
a bipartisan commission, and we’ve got the family
members.”
Among the most sensitive documents the commission
is known to be interested in reviewing are internal National
Security Council minutes from the spring and summer of 2001 when
the CIA and other intelligence agencies were warning that an attack
by Al Qaeda could well be imminent. The panel is also expected to
seek interviews with key principals—such as national-security
adviser Condoleezza Rice and her chief deputy, Stephen J.
Hadley—to question them both about advice they gave the
president and about what actions they took to deal with the rising
concerns of intelligence-community officials about the Qaeda
threat.
An equally dicey subject, sources say, is the
commission’s expected request to review debriefings of key Al
Qaeda suspects who have been arrested—such as Khalid Shaikh
Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-Shibh—who played critical roles in
the 9-11 plot. The intelligence community has treated those
debriefs as among the most highly classified material in the
government, and the Justice Department is stoutly resisting a
ruling by the federal judge overseeing the Zacarias Moussoui case
to make bin al-Shibh available to the defense. But commission
members argue that they can’t possibly do their job to write
an authoritative history of 9-11 if they can’t discover what
the federal government has learned from Al Qaeda operatives who
know the most about how the plot was put together.
Comment:
Enjoy the spectacle, folks! Notice how rather
than investigating the planning, organization, and implementation
of the 911 attack from within the walls of the Pentagon itself (and
from its basements), the public is being diverted into questions of
supposed incompetence of US intelligence agencies. Remember a year
ago when this started coming out, at the same time as Shrub's links
to Enron and his poor little rich boy business bailouts. It didn't
take long for the war hysteria to be whipped up to divert
attention.
This commission is giving the
impression of being tough, but it isn't asking the real questions.
But here appears to be someone who is...
Conspiracy
crusader doubts official 9/11 version
...As
Vision TV's media critic for the past 15 years, and as a journalist
with a long list of solid credentials (he's worked at The Globe and
Mail and The Toronto Star, taught at Ryerson University, and was
awarded a Southam Fellowship at the University of Toronto), Zwicker
should be safely out of the line of fire. It's a measure of his
determination to challenge conventional wisdom that he has
willingly kept his head up, instead of down, and tried to look
facts right in the eye.
"You know, the people who just shrug off these
questions with the `conspiracy theorist' epithet should be asked
what they stand for. Unquestioning acceptance of the official
narrative? Sure, there are outlandish theories out there - aliens,
Atlantis - but there have also been real and huge conspiracies,"
Zwicker told me in an interview in his home office.
I knew about some of those conspiracies. Last
January, I wrote a column about American declassified documents
that verify a long history of top-level conspiracies. The U.S.
government, its military and its secret service have plotted to
justify wars and impose their control on other countries through
intricate secret schemes of drug-running, gun smuggling and
assassination. They even considered rigging fake terrorist attacks
that would cost American lives in order to stir the public to
war-ready outrage.
Immediately, I was deluged with hundreds upon
hundreds of approving e-mails from American citizens. Some of them
praised the TV work of Barrie Zwicker - a Globe and Mail colleague
of my youth.
I sat down, with a fair degree of skepticism, to
watch Zwicker's video, The Great Deception, which challenges the
U.S. government's account of what really happened on 9/11. Slowly,
a frightening chill came over me. These were the very questions I
had asked myself on 9/11 and for several weeks after. Failing to
find easy answers, I had locked the subject away.
Why did the United States Air Force fail to
scramble interceptor jets - in defiance of all long-standing rules
and well-established practice - for almost two hours after it was
known that an unprecedented four planes had been
hijacked?
How could the world's most powerful military fail
to react throughout a prolonged, horrifying attack on the financial
and political capitals of the nation?
How did the FBI know the exact identities of the
hijackers within 24 hours of the attacks? If their files were so
readily to hand, why hadn't they been apprehended earlier? After
all, several conscientious FBI agents had raised the alarm about a
number of known Al Qaeda sympathizers at U.S. flight schools, and
had been ignored.
Why did Donald Rumsfeld call for a war on Iraq (not
Afghanistan) the morning after the Saudi hijackers had accomplished
their attack?
Why did the two squadrons of fighter jets at
Andrews Air Force base, 19 kilometres from Washington, not zoom
into action to defend the White House, one of their primary
tasks?
Why did George Bush sit for half an hour in a
Florida classroom, listening to a girl talk about her pet goat,
after his chief of staff told him about the second plane? For that
matter, why did he pretend that he first learned of the attacks in
that classroom, when he had actually been briefed as he left his
hotel that morning?
Why has there been no public investigation into the
billions of dollars "earned" by insider trading of United and
American Airlines stock before 9/11?
Comment:
Trouble is, you start asking these questions,
as well as the most pointed question of them all -What really hit
the Pentagon? - and you see that the whole 9/11 "conspiracy" has
its roots within the US government itself. Who else has profited
from the events of 9/11 to extend its hegemony over the rest of the
world, to backhand the UN and the rest of the governments from
international policy-making? Discussions? Heck, they're just a
waste of time! We have oil to grab and a fascist infrastructure to
impose upon the most dumbed-down country in the world - the US of
A!
WHITEHOUSE STONEWALLING ON 9/11
One thing should be abundantly clear to the
American people by now, and that is that the Bush administration
and the secret agencies have something to hide, something they
don't want anyone to know, and there has been a coverup going on
ever since that day unknown parties flew two jets into the Twin
Towers. Even from the beginning both Bush and Cheney took definite
steps to block an investigation, which is such an unthinkable
thing, not to investigate, which appears extremely suspicious,
almost a confession of sorts right there.
[...] How can the leaders of America staunchly say
"We must not look into this?" They are literally saying that they
don't want the truth known regarding that infamous inhumane act.
And in fact, when one considers the outrage and the shame of the
American people should it become known that 911 was an inside job,
it gives one pause a moment to wonder if perhaps ignorance IS bliss
after all. The idea that the highest levels of government and the
secret agencies could be involved in an attack on their own country
is so horrifying to most people that they can't bear it. Because it
is a depth of corruption that seems unbelievable. Denial is a
natural reaction to a thought so frightening. And the result?
America is now the enemy of all. All prudent nations should clearly
beware of an administration that is out of control, or rather in
the control of some very dangerous men.
[...]
Why are they refusing to provide these documents?
What does it mean? It is the People's government, not the
government of a single man, a dictator, which Bush has joked that
he would like to be. The current administration is the most
dangerous situation the Nation has ever been in. Perhaps the
Founding Fathers should have been a tad more farther looking and
seen the inevitable day when some powerful gang of criminal-thugs
would take over the executive branch. What would they have done to
ensure that could not happen? What must we do now to ammend their
document, the Constitution, adding what they might have added, were
they here with us now? How could this mean and ugly coup-de-tat
have happened? And what are the people to do?
Sen. Bob Graham has evidence regarding the
"stand-down" of the secret agencies, specifically the CIA, which
suggests at least that the attack was purposely allowed to take
place. Especially when it appears there was also a military
stand-down going at the same time! It suggests possible corruption
at the highest military level.
"The problem is that what [Graham] knows - and he knows some very
damaging stuff about the Bush administration's failures before 9/11
to prevent 9/11 - he can't talk about because it's classified," he
explained.
"He's got something on Bush. He just can't figure
out how to use it," he explained. http://www.newsmax.com/showinsidecover.shtml?a=2003/5/7/00601
For me, watching all the efforts of the Bush to
squelch any openminded investigation and to BURY the truth of 911,
to so clearly be against the TRUTH, that is a virtual confession of
complicity. I no longer have any doubt it was an inside job. And
that scares me.
And perhaps the whitewashers are right in one
regard, that knowledge of this treason and betrayal, at the highest
levels, might so enrage the public that there would be riots and
civil unrest, and a lynch-mob fever.
Analysis Of White
House Obstruction Of 9/11 Investigations
The Bush administration, the CIA, and the FBI are
all refusing to cooperate with Congress as the latter tries to
release for publication its 900-page report on the 9/11 terror
attack on the WTC. The report contains numerous critical comments
about administration and intelligence agency mishandling of
forewarnings received by agents in the field-including a warning
from an FBI agent that al-Qaeda supporters might be training in US
flight schools...
This particular Congressional report is unrelated
to the independent 9/11 Commission [http://www.9-11commission.gov/]
that was so slow in getting underway, and will be even slower at
answering the questions presented by representatives of the
victims' families [http://www.911commission.org/]...
A couple of the victims' representatives did ask
some crucial questions, such as why official Defense protocols were
not followed, and why the NY Port Authority delayed evacuation of
the second tower, but they failed to ask any of the really tough
questions that point to government collusion and
provocation:
* Why has the government refused to make public the
recorded pilots' conversations with Air Traffic Control, notifying
them of a hijacking in progress? We know these conversations took
place because the FAA has confirmed having reported the hijackings
to NORAD within minutes of their commencement.
* Why has the government denied having intercepted
Flight 93 over Pennsylvania with 2 F-16s, despite the voluminous
evidence that the airliner was shot down and shadowed to its crash
by an unmarked jet leased to the government?
* Why were most military tower operators in the
area told to ground all flights from taking off, including fighter
interceptors?
* How and why were the reported cell phone calls
from passengers on the hijacked airliners faked? Recent tests have
shown that cell phones at high altitudes do not communicate with
antenna towers on the ground. Almost all cellular and PCS systems
utilize antennas which are only oriented for horizontal
reception--not vertical.
* How did the US so quickly develop complete
profiles and dossiers on all the supposed hijackers, including
their night club activities, if these individuals were not
previously being tracked by government agents? There is also the
question of the long trail of incriminating letters, passports and
flight manuals supposedly left behind by the hijackers at the
airport or, in the case of the intact passport, miraculously
recovered in the WTC debris.
* Why has the government never amended the list of
alleged hijackers given that eight of these names belong to people
still living? The government has never given a rational explanation
for why hijackers would use their real names in any
case.
* Why were the alleged hijackers whose names were
on terror watch lists given visas, without the proper documentation
normally required?
* What is the relationship between Huffman Aviation
(the Venice, FL company that trained two of the hijackers) and the
CIA, which leases space in Huffmanâs hangar through a front
company?
* Why did the hijackers who could barely speak
English attempt (unsuccessfully) to take flying lessons for small
planes when there was an Arab-speaking flight school for major
aircraft in Fort Worth, Texas? [They were covering for training on
major aircraft received elsewhere.]
* Why did certain investors know to short the
stocks of American airline companies prior to 9/11? Along the same
lines, why has the government never attempted to subpoena Wall
Street computer records to find out who these "lucky" investors
were?
* Why have the testimonies of New York firefighters
who heard bomb-like explosions in the towers during the evacuation
process been suppressed?
Bush's actions on
September 11
Bush's actions on September 11 have been the
subject of lively debate, mostly on the internet. Details reported
that day and in the week after the attacks - both the media reports
and accounts given by Bush himself - have changed radically over
the past 18 months. Culling hundreds of reports from newspapers,
magazines, and the internet has only made finding the "truth" of
what happened and when it happened more confusing. In the changed
political climate after 9/11, few have dared raise challenging
questions about
Bush's actions. A journalist who said Bush was "flying around the
country like a scared child, seeking refuge in his mother's bed
after having a nightmare" and another who said Bush "skedaddled"
were fired. [Washington Post, 9/29/01 (B)] We should have a concise
record of where President Bush was throughout the day the US was
attacked, but we do not.
Comment:
The chickenhawks all managed to find some way
to avoid military service themselves. This
animation by an ex-GI who did serve makes that
point.
As for Shrub's own
record....
Bush's Military
Record
The question of George W. Bush's military record is
working its way back into the public discourse, thanks to his ham-
handed antics aboard the USS Lincoln...
Bush blew off his commitment to the Texas Air
National Guard by failing to take a physical, and thereafter
failing to report to his superior officers at his old unit for at
least seven months. His flight status was revoked, and he never
flew again -- at least, not until the Lincoln stunt.
These facts have never been disputed since they
were uncovered, and in fact were acknowledged by Bush's
spokespeople. Moreover, as Joe Conason has already noted, Bush
actually falsified this aspect of his service in his ghost-written
autobiography, A Charge to Keep, describing his pilot's training in
some detail, then concluding: ''I continued flying with my unit for
the next several years." In fact, Bush was suspended from flying 22
months after he completed his training -- a period that does not
even generously fit Bush's description.
[...]
But forget all these unanswered questions. Just
from what we know now, the question that needs answering is this:
Why did Mr. Bush abandon his commitment to his country during
wartime? Why did he blow off his valuable training and remove
himself from flight status?
The question any serviceman should be asking is
this: What if I were to treat my commitment to service just as Bush
did? What if I trained to be a pilot and then refused to take a
physical? And then failed to show up for any subsequent meetings of
my unit? Dropped out of sight for seven months?
And then he ought to think about the big grin Bush
wore along with that flight suit.
Comment:
Typical Bush moves. He finds a rich boy's way
out of his military service, is AWOL hiding under Daddy's skirts,
lies in his autobiography, then starts packing off other American
youth to fight his dirty war. And to top it off, he comes flying
into an aircraft carrier in military garb to announce his "victory"
in Iraq... Just what reality does this psychopath live in? And what
about all those who eat up his antics and keep him in
power?
The War Party is moving quickly to target Damascus,
Teheran, and beyond.
As an indication of what we are in for, check out
what Ms. Eleana Benador, the War Party's equivalent of Paul
("Swifty") Lazar, or Michael Ovitz, has to say. Ms. Benador, as the
proprietor of Benador Associates, is the agent for Woolsey, Richard
Perle, and a long list of neocon publicists, and she recently
described her latest project to the New York Observer:
"Ms. Benador said her job was not only to work
the phones for her clients, but sometimes to help polish their
message. 'There are some things, you have to just state them in a
different way, in a slightly different way,' she said. She
described meeting with a new organization that plans to explore
which rogue regime will be next in line for U.S. intervention
following Iraq.
"'They said their agenda is to see who is next after Iraq,' she
said. 'And I said, 'I don't think that's the right position,
because 'Who is next?' is like you're asking for more war.' And I
said, 'So you can ask, "What is next? What is going to happen
next?"' So I made them change that slightly.
"'See, it's a little word,' she said, "but it makes a difference.
If not, people get scared. …'"
Scared yet? You should be.
Comment:
So as it starts to heat up at home once again
for the Bush Reich, what is "next"? Well, war worked well the last
time, why not try it again! There are a bunch of US troops in Iraq
looking for something to do. They certainly aren't "keeping the
peace" there.
US MOVES ON IRAN
[...] The United States has accused Iran of
secretly embarking on a program to enrich uranium at Natanz in
southern Iran, which it fears could be used to make nuclear
weapons. They said US requests for support have gone out to Russia,
France, Britain, Germany and other members of the 35-nation board -
the key decision maker at the UN nuclear watchdog agency - ahead of
its meeting next month.
[...] More recently, Tehran has said it would not
recognise any US-installed government in Baghdad. And Washington
signed a truce with the People's Mujahideen, which opposes Tehran's
cleric-dominated government, allowing it to keep its weapons,
although the Iraqi-based group is on the US State Department's
terrorist list.
Iranian officials have said they have nothing to
hide because their nuclear program is only meant to generate
electricity.
Comment:
Sounds about as dangerous as Saddam's
stockpiles of Weapons of Mass Destruction. A month after the
"liberation" of Iraq's oil fields, we still haven't been given any
evidence that these stockpiles, the excuse for the war according to
the chickenhawks in Washington, really exist.
I guess they'll find 'em when Bush's oil cronies
start drilling for oil... that must be why the oil fields are so
important to keep guarded while the Iraqui people
starve.
Iraq in danger of starvation says UN
Iraqi agriculture is on the brink of collapse, with
fears that many of its 24.5 million people will go hungry this
summer, according to a confidential report being studied by the
UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation. A special assessment
prepared by the UN agency's staff in Rome, which has been seen by
The Observer, reveals a catastrophe in the making, with crops and
poultry being especially hard hit.
Comment:
Is this the democratic state that we where
going to bring to Iraq? Before starting off on the next chapter of
the Bush Reich's program for bringing"democracy" to the world,
let's check in and see what has been happening in Iraq,
"yesterday's" war.
U.S. recalls top Baghdad official
The U.S.-appointed administrator for central Iraq,
Barbara Bodine, is returning to Washington as part of a shakeup of
the American and British operation to rebuild the
country.
...Her replacement and the reasons for her leaving
were not announced.
The departure comes amid growing criticism over the
U.S.-led reconstruction operation.
Iraqis are increasingly frustrated that their lives
remain in chaos, more than a month after Saddam Hussein was
toppled.
Lawlessness remains a problem, government
ministries aren't working properly and salaries aren't being
paid.
Media reports say it may take more than two months
to fully restore electricity service to Baghdad, a city for which
Bodine was responsible. Raw sewage pours through some streets
because of a failed pumping station.
"A lot of what was dysfunctional about Baghdad
predates the war," Bodine told the Post.
Comment:
So the problems in Baghdad predate the war.
Something to do with the Gulf War, ten years of economic sanctions,
hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi children, depleted
uranium. But Bodine isn't the only official being
recalled:
Frustrated, U.S.
Arms Team to Leave Iraq Task Force Unable To Find Any
Weapons
BAGHDAD -- The group directing all known U.S.
search efforts for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is winding
down operations without finding proof that President Saddam Hussein
kept clandestine stocks of outlawed arms, according to
participants.
The 75th Exploitation Task Force, as the group is
formally known, has been described from the start as the principal
component of the U.S. plan to discover and display forbidden Iraqi
weapons. The group's departure, expected next month, marks a
milestone in frustration for a major declared objective of the
war.
Leaders of Task Force 75's diverse staff --
biologists, chemists, arms treaty enforcers, nuclear operators,
computer and document experts, and special forces troops -- arrived
with high hopes of early success. They said they expected to find
what Secretary of State Colin L. Powell described at the U.N.
Security Council on Feb. 5 -- hundreds of tons of biological and
chemical agents, missiles and rockets to deliver the agents, and
evidence of an ongoing program to build a nuclear bomb.
Scores of fruitless missions broke that confidence,
many task force members said in interviews.
Comment:
It can be disheartening when one first
realizes your country has been lying to you for it's own dark
reasons. Of course, I would not be surprised if weapons of mass
destruction are suddenly "discovered". There may be an attempt to
justify the destruction of Iraq, and perhaps something more than
Colin Powell reading from a plagiarized dissertation would be
handy. There is another war to sell to America and the
world.
To restore peace,
US hires Iraqi looters
BAGHDAD – US Army
officials in the eastern part of the Iraqi capital are taking a
novel approach to stop looters - offering some of them a job that
pays better than stealing government property. In the three days
since the experiment began, the number of looters in a massive
multiacre warehouse and industrial stockyard run by the Iraqi power
company has dropped from several hundred to
zero.
[...] Ultimately, up to Iraqis
US reconstruction experts say that substantial
rebuilding in Iraq cannot be undertaken until a majority of Iraqis
understand and accept that the country no longer belongs to Mr.
Hussein. It will be up to the Iraqi people to either destroy it or
help rebuild it.
Comment:
Of course, as long as the Iraqis are willing
to be yes-men to the Bush family network of companies coming in to
"loot" the country under the imprimateur of US
imperialism...
And those Iraqis who disagree
with Bush's business friends will likely be labelled terrorists and
shot.
The Iraqi
Quagmire The Omens of Occupation are Not Good The Iraqi Quagmire
At a US military checkpoint on the road north of Kirkuk last week
two American soldiers were holding up cardboard placards on each of
which was a message written in Kurdish. One said 'Drivers must get
into one lane' and the other read 'carrying weapons is
forbidden."
The problem was that the soldiers, not being able
to read Kurdish, had mixed up the placards and one of them was
angrily waving the one forbidding weapons in front of a car which
had tried to jump the queue. A hundred yards further down the road
a harassed-looking American officer was asking drivers in English,
which they did not speak, if they were armed and was receiving
benign smiles and thumbs-up signs.
...But it is still extraordinary that the US should
have spent so many months planning a military campaign with so
little thought about the likely political consequences inside
Iraq.
The mass looting of every Iraqi city should not
have come as a great surprise. It is an old Iraqi tradition in
times of war...
The failure to stop the looting has damaged
American prospects for restoring even temporary stability to Iraq.
So too has the slowness in restoring electricity, water and petrol
supplies. Clearly Washington under-estimated the devastating
consequences of the power vacuum which followed the sudden collapse
of Saddam Hussein's regime. The US also seems to have imagined that
the fact that Iraqis were anti-Saddam meant that they would be
pro-US.
...Food rations under the UN's oil-for-food
programme were distributed in advance by Saddam's government before
the war. But 60 per cent of Iraqis are wholly dependent for
survival on this elaborate and efficient rationing system. Without
it they will starve. The US will face mass riots if, over the
coming months, rations are not supplied.
The long term weaknesses of a US occupation ...
will stem rather from whether or not Washington is in effect
planning a classic colonial occupation, giving power only to Iraqis
wholly dependent on the US.
The omens here are not very good. Asked about the
visibly growing influence of the Shia clergy a senior member of the
US administration was quoted as saying: "We don't want to allow
Persian fundamentalism to gain any foothold. We want to find more
moderate clerics and move them into positions of
influence."
It is not an effort likely to succeed. Saddam spent
decades unsuccessfully trying to coerce or co-opt the Shiah clergy
through the noose, torture chamber or assassination
squad.
[...] For the moment the US can probably control
Iraq by main force, by garrisoning the main towns and getting the
Iraqi administration running again. But in the longer term it is
very vulnerable. With the exception of Kuwait none of Iraq's
neighbours wanted the war or like its outcome. For the moment they
are frightened by the large US land army on their door steps. But
as US forces are reduced and fear dissipates they have every reason
to make sure that the US occupation fails.
If the US is very careful and sensitive to the
needs of Iraqis the occupation might stabilise for a few years. But
with such an ideological and divided administration in Washington
this is about the last thing to expect. Will it, for instance, be
able to keep its hands off Iraqi oil? If there is one act of Saddam
Hussein which remains popular it is his nationalisation of the oil
industry in 1972. Iraqi nationalism may be an uncertain quantity,
but all Iraqis are deeply hostile to any threat to their control of
the oilfields.
[...]
In their present triumphant mood there is no sign
that George Bush or Tony Blair appreciate the depth or extent of
the morass which they have now entered. Six months ago an Iraqi
friend told me that he was all in favour of the US going to war to
get rid of Saddam Hussein, but he added: "My only fear is that
before it starts, the US will realise that this war is much against
its own best interests."
Comment:
It seems that the long-term goal of the
puppet masters is to annihilate the peoples of the Middle East.
This is the real reason that the powder keg must be maintained. The
different peoples of the region must be kept at loggarheads to keep
them from uniting. Pure Machiavelli.
Iraq's Crude
Awakening
Just to look at Iraq today, one would never know
that it's an oil giant. it's a country nearly paralyzed by an
energy crisis...
Why is Iraq such a prize? Not only does it have the
potential to become the world's largest producer, but no other
country can do it as cheaply. That's because, for geological
reasons, Iraq boasts the world's most prolific wells. In 1979, the
year before Iraq's oil fields were devastated by the first of three
wars, its wells produced an average of 13,700 bbl. each per day. By
contrast, each Saudi well averaged 10,200 bbl. U.S. wells, which
are gradually drying up, averaged just 17 bbl. It would take more
than 800 U.S. wells to pump as much oil as a typical Iraqi well.
Consequently, production costs in Iraq are much lower. The average
cost of bringing a barrel of oil out of the ground in the U.S. is
about $10. In Saudi Arabia, it's about $2.50. And in Iraq, it's
less than $1, according to Fadhil Chalabi, executive director of
the Center for Global Energy Studies in London and former Under
Secretary of Oil in Iraq. What's more, most of Iraq's known oil
deposits are waiting to be developed. That's why everyone has cast
a covetous eye on the country. And why each one of the world's
major powers and international groups has an agenda for Iraqi
oil.
Comment:
How many times have the warmongerers denied
that the reason for the war in Iraq was oil? Then how come the Oil
Ministry in Baghdad was only one of two Iraqi ministries protected
from looting?
Mexicans Outraged by Immigration/Oil
Move
A move in the U.S. Congress to
link immigration with opening up Mexico's state oil company to U.S.
investment has outraged Mexicans, and newspapers Saturday accused
American lawmakers of arrogance and blackmail.
The House International Relations Committee
narrowly approved the measure Thursday saying that any accord on
immigration issues with Mexico should include an agreement to allow
U.S. companies to invest in the state oil company Pemex.
The measure is a nonbinding "sense of Congress"
amendment in a broad State Department funding bill, and must still
be approved by both houses of Congress.
It went nearly unnoticed in the U.S. news media -
but created a storm in Mexico.
The 1938 nationalization of Pemex is celebrated as
a symbol of national pride and was written into the
constitution.
"Blackmail in the US: Immigration Accord for
Pemex," a leading newspaper, El Universal, said in a front-page
headline Saturday.
Comment:
Can it be any clearer that the Bush Reich is
after oil? In the process are they going to isolate themselves from
the world?
When it gets that clear, you need to keep the press
well-controlled. Can't have people pointing out the emperor has no
clothes.
"The Lies Are Brilliantly Crafted"
TO.ma: Greg welcome back to TO.
Your book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy is currently number 5 on
The New York Times Best Seller list. Why?
GP: The USA is home to the largest, longest,
deepest river of burbling bullshit known to man - home of the brave
and of double-talk, nonsense, half-truths, Tom Brokaw,
disinformation, baloney, CNN, white lies, black lies and Katie
Curic - laughably called 'US media.' "And here, the President is
waving to us from his helicopter!" ... And we're fed up TO HERE
with it. So someone had to write a book with the facts that dare
not speak their name in America: how the Bush clan fixed the
election in Florida, spiked the investigation of the bin Ladins,
peddled America like a cheap tart to every corporate John with
campaign loot, let the World Bank eat Argentina for breakfast and
encouraged Pat Robertson to commit unnatural acts with our Bill of
Rights.
Those few citizens not yet Fox'd to death were ready for this book.
And Michael Moore helped. By bringing over my stories through his
talks and 'Stupid White Men,' he cracked the Propaganda Berlin
Wall, opening the space for my investigative reports to rush
through.
Plus, the new paperback has these cool illustrations by Winston
Smith with 40% new material. Damn, what a bargain - who could
resist?
TO.ma: Some would argue that commercial
journalism has so completely abdicated objectivity that it is no
longer news, but rather public relations. Is the independent media
the last bastion of the free press?
GP: "Independent'' media in America is better called
"starvation'' media: journalists that want to do real reporting
don't survive long - Bob Parry, who uncovered the Iran-Contra
scandal, lost his job at the AP, Seymour Hersh was pushed off the
New York Times - and I'm in exile. Investigative reporting is a
quick career path to disemployment. The 'dependent' media is
killing us with poisoned lies.
And some of the lies are brilliantly crafted. Let me give you an
example: The New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle and god
knows how many others ran a photo in June 2001 under the screamer,
"100,000 MARCH AGAINST VENEZUELAN PRESIDENT.'' Hugo Chavez. It had
to be true: there was the photo. And I was there, in Caracas, so I
know it was true. But what the Times and Chronicle DIDN'T show you
was the demonstration, nearly twice as large, of Venezuelans
marching IN SUPPORT of their President. So the Dependent Media
effectively Stalinized the photos. Comment: Lets face it the popular media serves one purpose only, a
vehicle for state propaganda. The daily papers and news form such
an integral part of peoples lives that programming of the masses by
the state is achieved with ridiculous ease. Our god-given ability
to think for ourselves is no longer required and most defintely not
desired.
New York Times:
Reporter routinely faked articles
NEW YORK (CNN) -- The New York Times has concluded,
after an extensive internal investigation, that one of its former
reporters committed "frequent acts of journalistic fraud."
In a 7,500 word article published Saturday on its Web site, the
prestigious newspaper accuses the reporter of making up reports
from other cities while writing from his apartment in Brooklyn. The
paper says the reporter invented quotes, wrote about scenery from
published photographs and stole material from other news
organizations.
The article, to be published in Sunday's print editions, details
how reporter Jayson Blair, 27, was quickly promoted through the
ranks from intern to the national desk despite a history of
corrections, sloppy reporting and lectures from his
editors.
Comment:
How many other Jayson Blairs are there in the
US media? Truth certainly doesn't seem to be a highly prized
value.
Radical spy plan nearly sneaks in under the
radar
It all happened behind closed doors, like
government mischief typically does. The Bush administration and
Republican leaders in Congress attempted to sneak through a
provision in the intelligence authorization bill pending before
Congress that would give the Central Intelligence Agency and the
military the ability to investigate Americans.
Word of the pending amendment was brought to light last week
through a leak to a public interest organization. (Thank you,
whoever you are.) The amendment would allow the CIA and Pentagon to
issue administrative subpoenas or national security letters to
order businesses such as telephone and credit card companies and
financial institutions to turn over their records on customers -
all without court approval.
Up until passage of the USA Patriot Act in the wake of the Sept. 11
attacks, the FBI could use national security letters under highly
circumscribed conditions: to obtain information for
counterterrorism or counterespionage investigations only when there
was reason to believe the person whose records were sought was a
foreign agent or terrorist. But the Patriot Act wiped away those
specificity and suspicion requirements. Now the FBI can demand
whole databases of records on every customer without any individual
suspicion as long as it is in the context of an authorized
antiterrorism or intelligence probe. That means all our credit card
data, Internet logs and other records are there for the taking upon
the signature of the attorney general or his designee.
[...]
As flagrantly irresponsible as Bush and his inner circle have been
relative to the separation of powers, they have to know it is
sacrosanct to American liberty to keep both the CIA and the
military from intelligence gathering on our soil. As Kate Martin,
director of the Center for National Security Studies, says, "the
whole point of the CIA is to operate outside the law." You
remember, don't you? Assassination attempts, supporting military
coups to protect overseas business interests and markets, a network
of spies with no warrants required.
Comment:
Seems like they are just trying to make
official what runs naturally in the "heart" of all OPs and
psychopaths, the desire to extinguish any and all difference.
Here's what is going on in the US school system.
The War on
Teachers and Students: The Devil in New England
Police states don't exist without help and
acquiescence... Most recently, a cop in the small town of
Barre...took it upon himself to do some reconnaissance in the Bush
war on the world.
According to the Times-Argus (the daily paper that
serves this region of Vermont), office John Mott had heard that one
of the history teachers at the local high school was encouraging
his students to think critically about the war on Iraq and other
controversial actions of the Bush administration. The teacher, Tom
Treece, is a pacifist who has made it clear that he opposes the
current administration's warmongering. Although most of the high
school's students don't seem to have a problem with Treece's stance
and vocal support of it, certain citizens do. Indeed, some of them
have gone so far as to form a small citizen's group called Citizens
Advocating Responsible Education (CARE), to oppose Treece's
teaching. An underlying motive of the group is to scuttle the
school district's budget.
...The facts are these. At 1:30 in the morning of
April 9, 2003, Officer Mott, in full uniform, convinced a custodian
at Spaulding High School in Barre, Vt. To let him in to the high
school and enter Treece's classroom. Mott was on duty at the time
and was out of his assigned jurisdiction. Upon entering Treece's
classroom, Mott began photographing a number of student projects
concerning the war on Iraq and other aspects of Washington's
current policies. Mott defended his actions in the Times-Argus,
stating, "Having spent 30 years in uniform, I was insulted, I'm
just taking a stand on what happens in that classroom as a resident
and a voter and a taxpayer of this community." Mott's recon mission
took place the day after he attended a school board meeting where
CARE presented their complaints to the board regarding Treece's
instructional approach. CARE's founders claim that the issue is not
free speech. To them, "It's an issue of balance and it's an issue
of professionalism."
...According to the Times Argus, one of the opponents of
Treece and his class (called Public Issues) said: "The purpose of
education is to teach students facts and how to use these facts to
compete in the real world." Academic freedom, continued this
speaker, is a waste of time.
...Mott has expressed no remorse over the forced
entry into the school, nor has he expressed any doubt as to his
right to use his police uniform to do so. It's clear that Mott and
his supporters have forgotten (if they ever knew) the reasons that
certain of our country's founders insisted on the Bill of Rights
before they would approve the constitution. It's also clear that
these folks' leaders in Washington like things that way. This is
why the minds of the young are their battleground. After all, if
young people can think critically about their government and its
actions, they might want to change it. If young people start asking
why their friends are being asked to go to war and why there are
military recruiters in their schools and their mailboxes, they
might decide to oppose those wars and the liars who try and sweet
talk them into fighting them. If young people start questioning why
policemen can use their uniform to commit acts that would be
illegal for anyone else, they might want to rein in the
police.
Comment:
Big brother is alive and well and in a
neighbourhood near you! Freedom of speech is most definitely a
thing of the past, especially when even the teachers have been
co-opted to act as state spys and dupes...
Students Investigated By Sercet
Service
Some teachers in Oakland are rallying behind two
students who were interrogated by the Secret Service. That followed
remarks the teenagers made about the President during a class
discussion. The incident has many people angry.
For years the classroom has been the setting for
the free expression of ideas, but two weeks ago certain ideas led
to two students being taken out of class and grilled by the United
States Secret Service.
It happened at Oakland High. The discussion was
about the war in
Iraq. That's when two students made comments about the President of
the United States. While the exact wording is up for debate,
the
teacher didn't consider it mere criticism, but a direct threat
and
she called the Secret Service...
Even worse, they say, is the fact that the students
were grilled by
federal agents without legal counsel or their parents present,
just
the principal.
"When one of the students asked, 'do we have to
talk now? Can we be silent? Can we get legal council?' they were
told, 'we own you, you don't have any legal rights,'" Felson
says.
Nearly 300
Twisters Reported
More tornado warnings were issued Saturday as the
United States nears the end of the most active week of tornadoes on
record.
There appears to be no end in sight for the series
of storms that have battered the Midwest and South and killed 44
people. "We just don't have a down day; that's what's been very
unusual," Rich Thompson, lead forecaster at the Storm Prediction
Center of the National Weather Service, told The Associated Press.
"It just doesn't stop." [...]
Nearly 300 tornadoes have occurred during the past
week in the United States, according to the National Weather
Service. States from Kansas to Georgia have suffered storm damage,
injuries and deaths.
Virgin Mary Apparitions
The Virgin Mary usually arrives about 7:30 in the
evening. Every day but Friday, believers say, she appears at Gianna
Talone Sullivan's home overlooking a golf course near Emmitsburg to
dispense words of wisdom, advice and, sometimes,
warning.
To believers, the details of Mary's apparitions are
well known: She wears a veil, has brown hair and blue eyes, and
emerges from a bright light. Her visits vary in timing and
duration. "It depends on what's going on," said Michael Sullivan,
53, Talone Sullivan's husband and spokesman. "If we're at home and
were not going anywhere, it's usually between 7:30 and
8:30."
Sullivan, a tall, bearded doctor who favors polo
shirts and tasseled loafers, does not see the Blessed Mother when
she appears to his wife. Neither have the thousands who have
flocked to Emmitsburg over the years to receive Mary's messages,
transcribed by Talone Sullivan on spiral notebooks.
|
