| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Barbara Walker" |
| Date: |
08 Aug 2003 02:52:56 PM |
| Object: |
Re: Fall of the Democrat Party due to its Anti-American rhetoric |
<Bush Screws the Troops> wrote in message
news:vh18jvgk2jde0tlh8dkdv81f16dl2ri8n8@4ax.com...
Colin Campbell <activated_95b@earthlink.net (remove underscore)> wrote:
... BTW exactly what 'international law' did the US violate?
Attacking countries which don't pose any threat is a crime,
True, but that doesn't apply in this instance, since Iraq posed a threat to
the United States, in addition to being in violation of numerous United
Nations resolutions. The American Congress (including many Democrats)
formally authorized going to war against Iraq. Furthermore, Clinton went to
war against Iraq in December of 1998 (even though he wasn't authorized by
Congress to do so, nor had he obtaind UN approval to do so) and almost all
the Democrats (and many Republicans) approved heartily.
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| User: "Barbara Walker" |
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| Title: Re: Fall of the Democrat Party due to its Anti-American rhetoric |
08 Aug 2003 04:04:57 PM |
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"InsuranceBroker" <insurancenj@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20030808160403.10282.00001169@mb-m05.aol.com...
Subject: Re: Fall of the Democrat Party due to its Anti-American rhetoric
From: "Barbara Walker"
Date: 8/8/2003 3:52 PM Eastern Daylight Time
Message-id:
True, but that doesn't apply in this instance, since Iraq posed a threat
to
the United States,
Iraq posed almost no threat to the United States.
Nonsense. Our intelligence agencies, the British intelligence agencies, and
even the masterful Bill Clinton say otherwise.
What credentials do YOU have to offer us which makes YOUR
intelligence-gathering network more substantial and credible than those of
those agencies and individuals I just listed, Broker?
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| User: "Barbara Walker" |
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| Title: Re: Fall of the Democrat Party due to its Anti-American rhetoric |
08 Aug 2003 08:53:24 PM |
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"InsuranceBroker" <insurancenj@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20030808174120.14658.00002007@mb-m04.aol.com...
Subject: Re: Fall of the Democrat Party due to its Anti-American rhetoric
From: "Barbara Walker"
Date: 8/8/2003 5:04 PM Eastern Daylight Time
Message-id: <ZfUYa.65839$cF.21977@rwcrnsc53>
"InsuranceBroker" <insurancenj@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20030808160403.10282.00001169@mb-m05.aol.com...
Subject: Re: Fall of the Democrat Party due to its Anti-American
rhetoric
From: "Barbara Walker"
Date: 8/8/2003 3:52 PM Eastern Daylight Time
Message-id:
True, but that doesn't apply in this instance, since Iraq posed a
threat
to
the United States,
Iraq posed almost no threat to the United States.
Nonsense. Our intelligence agencies, the British intelligence agencies,
and
even the masterful Bill Clinton say otherwise.
Our intelligence agencies...care to post one of there documents. The
british
intelligence agencies...care to post something from them.
What, no interest in asking us to post what Clinton said?
We had destroyed
there air force.
It's spelled "their", and clearly their air force wasn't "destroyed", but
was rather "buried", as the NewsMax photos clearly prove. Same thing
probably happened to their WMD's - they weren't destroyed, but rather were
buried somewhere. We'll find those too, eventually. May take a lot longer
though, because they're a lot smaller than the buried Mig Foxbats.
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| User: "coop" |
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| Title: Re: Anti-American Bush Deserves Impeachment, Trial, Prison, Along With The Rest Of That Treasonous Gang |
08 Aug 2003 06:13:17 PM |
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*****, we and all countries pay iraq for their oil to establish money for
"their economy" and the war was 100% justifed. We don't need no fucking
treaty to tell us when we can go to war to protect ourselves. The
constitution of the US gives us that right. You left wing pukes are so
fucked up it is unfucking real to me to read your *****.
--
"The only thing necessary for evil to triumph
is for good men to do nothing."
--Edmund Burke (1729-97)
"Lord, We pray for peace but understand it is
worth fighting for. Protect our troops as
they protect us. Bless them and their families
for their selfless acts. Amen."
<Bush Screws the Troops> wrote in message
news:itc8jvoc6caeo3e7bvq4via0ouq9u867c1@4ax.com...
"Barbara Walker" <barbara.walker4@verizon.net> wrote:
<Bush Screws the Troops> wrote in message
news:vh18jvgk2jde0tlh8dkdv81f16dl2ri8n8@4ax.com...
Colin Campbell <activated_95b@earthlink.net (remove underscore)>
wrote:
... BTW exactly what 'international law' did the US violate?
Attacking countries which don't pose any threat is a crime,
particularly when it's merely to pillage them of their resources.
No wonder you worship Bush, when you never learned the
difference between right and wrong.
True, but that doesn't apply in this instance, since Iraq posed a threat
to
the United States ...
No, it didn't.
Bush lied about that.
He cashes in on illegal attacks and stolen oil.
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| User: "Barbara Walker" |
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| Title: Re: Another Democrat makes a fool of himself |
09 Aug 2003 10:11:57 AM |
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<Bush Screws the Troops> wrote in message
news:7u2ajvoqq25cvrjba7g6s16p1uvpeqndic@4ax.com...
"Barbara Walker" <barbara.walker4@verizon.net> wrote:
<Bush Screws the Troops> wrote in message
news:vh18jvgk2jde0tlh8dkdv81f16dl2ri8n8@4ax.com...
Colin Campbell <activated_95b@earthlink.net (remove underscore)>
wrote:
... BTW exactly what 'international law' did the US violate?
Attacking countries which don't pose any threat is a crime,
particularly when it's merely to pillage them of their resources.
No wonder you worship Bush, when you never learned the
difference between right and wrong.
True, but that doesn't apply in this instance, since Iraq posed a threat
to
the United States ...
No, it didn't.
Bush lied about that.
Nope.
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| User: "Bush Despises America" |
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| Title: Re: Anti-American Bush Deserves Impeachment, Trial, Prison, Along With The Rest Of That Treasonous Gang |
09 Aug 2003 12:26:50 PM |
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"Barbara Walker" <barbara.walker4@verizon.net> wrote:
<Bush Screws the Troops> wrote in message news:7u2ajvoqq25cvrjba7g6s16p1uvpeqndic@4ax.com...
"Barbara Walker" <barbara.walker4@verizon.net> wrote:
... Iraq posed a threat to
the United States ...
No, it didn't.
Bush lied about that.
Nope.
What you don't know *is* hurting you. Are you into that?
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Anti-American Bush Deserves Impeachment, Trial, Prison, Along With The Rest Of That Treasonous Gang |
09 Aug 2003 12:25:40 PM |
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<Bush Despises America> wrote in message
news:bkbajv4cjkbmm9orajipp10vecgldpdstg@4ax.com...
"Barbara Walker" <barbara.walker4@verizon.net> wrote:
<Bush Screws the Troops> wrote in message
news:7u2ajvoqq25cvrjba7g6s16p1uvpeqndic@4ax.com...
"Barbara Walker" <barbara.walker4@verizon.net> wrote:
... Iraq posed a threat to
the United States ...
No, it didn't.
Bush lied about that.
Nope.
What you don't know *is* hurting you. Are you into that?
How about some proof?
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| User: "Bush Screws the Troops" |
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| Title: Re: Anti-American Bush Deserves Impeachment, Trial, Prison, Along With The Rest Of That Treasonous Gang |
09 Aug 2003 05:55:12 PM |
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<jaybeatty@earthlink.net> wrote:
<Bush Despises America> wrote in message news:bkbajv4cjkbmm9orajipp10vecgldpdstg@4ax.com...
"Barbara Walker" <barbara.walker4@verizon.net> wrote:
<Bush Screws the Troops> wrote in message news:7u2ajvoqq25cvrjba7g6s16p1uvpeqndic@4ax.com...
"Barbara Walker" <barbara.walker4@verizon.net> wrote:
... Iraq posed a threat to
the United States ...
No, it didn't.
Bush lied about that.
Nope.
What you don't know *is* hurting you. Are you into that?
How about some proof?
Why have you given up on ever expecting any from your idol Bush?
Is it because even you are dimly aware that he doesn't have the time of day for you?
You and Bush are the ones with no proof of any threat from Iraq. It's obvious, btw.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Anti-American Bush Deserves Impeachment, Trial, Prison, Along With The Rest Of That Treasonous Gang |
09 Aug 2003 06:49:26 PM |
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<Bush Screws the Troops> wrote in message
news:buuajv4kh8a2029qh2o1b0u97qig9ai6k8@4ax.com...
<jaybeatty@earthlink.net> wrote:
<Bush Despises America> wrote in message
news:bkbajv4cjkbmm9orajipp10vecgldpdstg@4ax.com...
"Barbara Walker" <barbara.walker4@verizon.net> wrote:
<Bush Screws the Troops> wrote in message
news:7u2ajvoqq25cvrjba7g6s16p1uvpeqndic@4ax.com...
"Barbara Walker" <barbara.walker4@verizon.net> wrote:
... Iraq posed a threat to
the United States ...
No, it didn't.
Bush lied about that.
Nope.
What you don't know *is* hurting you. Are you into that?
How about some proof?
Why have you given up on ever expecting any from your idol Bush?
Is it because even you are dimly aware that he doesn't have the time of
day for you?
You and Bush are the ones with no proof of any threat from Iraq. It's
obvious, btw.
So your saying that you don't have any? Though, so thanks for your time
have a nice day!
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| User: "Bush Screws the Troops" |
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| Title: Re: Anti-American Bush Deserves Impeachment, Trial, Prison, Along With The Rest Of That Treasonous Gang |
10 Aug 2003 11:51:20 AM |
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<jaybeatty@earthlink.net> wrote:
<Bush Screws the Troops> wrote in message news:buuajv4kh8a2029qh2o1b0u97qig9ai6k8@4ax.com...
<jaybeatty@earthlink.net> wrote:
<Bush Despises America> wrote in message news:bkbajv4cjkbmm9orajipp10vecgldpdstg@4ax.com...
"Barbara Walker" <barbara.walker4@verizon.net> wrote:
<Bush Screws the Troops> wrote in message news:7u2ajvoqq25cvrjba7g6s16p1uvpeqndic@4ax.com...
"Barbara Walker" <barbara.walker4@verizon.net> wrote:
... Iraq posed a threat to
the United States ...
No, it didn't.
Bush lied about that.
Nope.
What you don't know *is* hurting you. Are you into that?
How about some proof?
Why have you given up on ever expecting any from your idol Bush?
Is it because even you are dimly aware that he doesn't have the time of day for you?
You and Bush are the ones with no proof of any threat from Iraq. It's obvious, btw.
So your [sic] saying that you don't have any? ...
That's quite the poorly-wrought non sequitur you have there.
You're the one with nothing.
It's all the more disgrace for you that you try to hide from that reality.
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| User: "Bush Screws the Troops" |
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| Title: Re: Anti-American Bush Deserves Impeachment, Trial, Prison, Along With The Rest Of That Treasonous Gang |
10 Aug 2003 03:08:41 PM |
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David Casey <davidcasey@spamcop.net> wrote:
He's not trying to prove anything ...
So that's why your idol Bush never has any evidence for any of his claims.
Those false claims are getting our troops killed.
Why are you in favor of getting our troops killed for the lies of crooks?
<jaybeatty@earthlink.net> wrote:
<Bush Screws the Troops> wrote in message news:buuajv4kh8a2029qh2o1b0u97qig9ai6k8@4ax.com...
<jaybeatty@earthlink.net> wrote:
<Bush Despises America> wrote in message news:bkbajv4cjkbmm9orajipp10vecgldpdstg@4ax.com...
"Barbara Walker" <barbara.walker4@verizon.net> wrote:
<Bush Screws the Troops> wrote in message news:7u2ajvoqq25cvrjba7g6s16p1uvpeqndic@4ax.com...
"Barbara Walker" <barbara.walker4@verizon.net> wrote:
... Iraq posed a threat to
the United States ...
No, it didn't.
Bush lied about that.
Nope.
What you don't know *is* hurting you. Are you into that?
How about some proof?
Why have you given up on ever expecting any from your idol Bush?
Is it because even you are dimly aware that he doesn't have the time of day for you?
You and Bush are the ones with no proof of any threat from Iraq. It's obvious, btw.
So your [sic] saying that you don't have any? ...
That's quite the poorly-wrought non sequitur you have there.
You're the one with nothing.
It's all the more disgrace for you that you try to hide from that reality.
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| User: "David Casey" |
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| Title: Re: Anti-American Bush Deserves Impeachment, Trial, Prison, Along With The Rest Of That Treasonous Gang |
11 Aug 2003 03:07:45 AM |
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On Sun, 10 Aug 2003 16:08:41 -0400, Bush Screws the wrote:
[groups trimmed to comply with uma charter]
He's not trying to prove anything ...
So that's why your idol Bush never has any evidence for any of his claims.
But we're not asking Bush to back up what you've claimed. We're asking you
to back up what you've claimed. Stop trying to shift the job to someone
else and be a man for once. ;-)
Those false claims are getting our troops killed.
Which false claims? Also be sure to point out exactly how they're false.
Why are you in favor of getting our troops killed for the lies of crooks?
I'm not, why do you keep putting words into the mouths of others? Is that
the only way you can avoid backing up what you claim?
Dave
--
You can talk about us, but you can't talk without us!
US Army Signal Corps!!
www.geocities.com/davidcasey98
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| User: "Bush Screws the Troops" |
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| Title: Re: Anti-American Bush Deserves Impeachment, Trial, Prison, Along With The Rest Of That Treasonous Gang |
11 Aug 2003 08:54:30 AM |
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The clueless David Casey <davidcasey@spamcop.net> wrote of his
total inability to learn anything for himself, even things of significance:
But we're not asking Bush to back up ...
You, if not your fleas, should start expecting better of your employees
than to tell you lies that get your defenses diminished.
... trying to shift the job to someone
else and be a man for once...
You really ought to go for that if you can.
Which false claims?
Pick anything Bush has said to you. Perhaps your inability to close
your gaping maw is what has your critical thought process shut down.
COVER STORY . VOL 24 #1182 . PUBLISHED 7/30/03
BRING 'EM ON! by Steve Perry
The Bush administration's Top 40 Lies about war and terrorism
Bring 'em On!
By Steve Perry
Editor's note: In the interest of relative brevity I've stinted on citing and quoting
sources in some of the items below. You can find links to news stories that elaborate on
each of these items at my online Bush Wars column, www.bushwarsblog.com.
1) The administration was not bent on war with Iraq from 9/11 onward.
THE EMPEROR HAS NO FLIGHT SUIT
In recent weeks, the press and some Democrats have finally taken up a critical White House
deception about Iraq and uranium. What took them so long? And what about all the other
lies?
HIGH CRIMES & MISDEMEANORS
Throughout the year leading up to war, the White House publicly maintained that the U.S.
took weapons inspections seriously, that diplomacy would get its chance, that Saddam had
the opportunity to prevent a U.S. invasion. The most pungent and concise evidence to the
contrary comes from the president's own mouth. According to Time's March 31 road-to-war
story, Bush popped in on national security adviser Condi Rice one day in March 2002,
interrupting a meeting on UN sanctions against Iraq. Getting a whiff of the subject
matter, W peremptorily waved his hand and told her, "***** Saddam. We're taking him out."
Clare Short, Tony Blair's former secretary for international development, recently lent
further credence to the anecdote. She told the London Guardian that Bush and Blair made a
secret pact a few months afterward, in the summer of 2002, to invade Iraq in either
February or March of this year.
Last fall CBS News obtained meeting notes taken by a Rumsfeld aide at 2:40 on the
afternoon of September 11, 2001. The notes indicate that Rumsfeld wanted the "best info
fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time. Not only UBL
[Usama bin Laden].... Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not."
Rumsfeld's deputy Paul Wolfowitz, the Bushmen's leading intellectual light, has long been
rabid on the subject of Iraq. He reportedly told Vanity Fair writer Sam Tanenhaus off the
record that he believes Saddam was connected not only to bin Laden and 9/11, but the 1995
Oklahoma City bombing.
The Bush administration's foreign policy plan was not based on September 11, or terrorism;
those events only brought to the forefront a radical plan for U.S. control of the
post-Cold War world that had been taking shape since the closing days of the first Bush
presidency. Back then a small claque of planners, led by Wolfowitz, generated a draft
document known as Defense Planning Guidance, which envisioned a U.S. that took advantage
of its lone-superpower status to consolidate American control of the world both militarily
and economically, to the point where no other nation could ever reasonably hope to
challenge the U.S. Toward that end it envisioned what we now call "preemptive" wars waged
to reset the geopolitical table.
After a copy of DPG was leaked to the New York Times, subsequent drafts were rendered a
little less frank, but the basic idea never changed. In 1997 Wolfowitz and his true
believers--Richard Perle, William Kristol, ***** Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld--formed an
organization called Project for the New American Century to carry their cause forward. And
though they all flocked around the Bush administration from the start, W never really
embraced their plan until the events of September 11 left him casting around for a foreign
policy plan.
2) The invasion of Iraq was based on a reasonable belief that Iraq possessed weapons of
mass destruction that posed a threat to the U.S., a belief supported by available
intelligence evidence.
Paul Wolfowitz admitted to Vanity Fair that weapons of mass destruction were not really
the main reason for invading Iraq: "The decision to highlight weapons of mass destruction
as the main justification for going to war in Iraq was taken for bureaucratic reasons....
[T]here were many other important factors as well." Right. But they did not come under the
heading of self-defense.
We now know how the Bushmen gathered their prewar intelligence: They set out to patch
together their case for invading Iraq and ignored everything that contradicted it. In the
end, this required that Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al. set aside the findings of analysts
from the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (the Pentagon's own spy bureau) and stake
their claim largely on the basis of isolated, anecdotal testimony from handpicked Iraqi
defectors. (See #5, Ahmed Chalabi.) But the administration did not just listen to the
defectors; it promoted their claims in the press as a means of enlisting public opinion.
The only reason so many Americans thought there was a connection between Saddam and al
Qaeda in the first place was that the Bushmen trotted out Iraqi defectors making these
sorts of claims to every major media outlet that would listen.
Here is the verdict of Gregory Thielman, the recently retired head of the State
Department's intelligence office: "I believe the Bush administration did not provide an
accurate picture to the American people of the military threat posed by Iraq. This
administration has had a faith-based intelligence attitude--we know the answers, give us
the intelligence to support those answers." Elsewhere he has been quoted as saying, "The
principal reasons that Americans did not understand the nature of the Iraqi threat in my
view was the failure of senior administration officials to speak honestly about what the
intelligence showed."
3) Saddam tried to buy uranium in Niger.
Lies and distortions tend to beget more lies and distortions, and here is W's most
notorious case in point: Once the administration decided to issue a damage-controlling
(they hoped) mea culpa in the matter of African uranium, they were obliged to couch it in
another, more perilous lie: that the administration, and quite likely Bush himself,
thought the uranium claim was true when he made it. But former acting ambassador to Iraq
Joseph Wilson wrote an op-ed in the New York Times on July 6 that exploded the claim.
Wilson, who traveled to Niger in 2002 to investigate the uranium claims at the behest of
the CIA and ***** Cheney's office and found them to be groundless, describes what followed
this way: "Although I did not file a written report, there should be at least four
documents in U.S. government archives confirming my mission. The documents should include
the ambassador's report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by the
embassy staff, a CIA report summing up my trip, and a specific answer from the agency to
the office of the vice president (this may have been delivered orally). While I have not
seen any of these reports, I have spent enough time in government to know that this is
standard operating procedure."
4) The aluminum tubes were proof of a nuclear program.
The very next sentence of Bush's State of the Union address was just as egregious a lie as
the uranium claim, though a bit cagier in its formulation. "Our intelligence sources tell
us that [Saddam] has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for
nuclear weapons production." This is altogether false in its implication (that this is the
likeliest use for these materials) and may be untrue in its literal sense as well. As the
London Independent summed it up recently, "The U.S. persistently alleged that Baghdad
tried to buy high-strength aluminum tubes whose only use could be in gas centrifuges,
needed to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. Equally persistently, the International
Atomic Energy Agency said the tubes were being used for artillery rockets. The head of the
IAEA, Mohamed El Baradei, told the UN Security Council in January that the tubes were not
even suitable for centrifuges." [emphasis added]
5) Iraq's WMDs were sent to Syria for hiding.
Or Iran, or.... "They shipped them out!" was a rallying cry for the administration in the
first few nervous weeks of finding no WMDs, but not a bit of supporting evidence has
emerged.
6) The CIA was primarily responsible for any prewar intelligence errors or distortions
regarding Iraq.
Don't be misled by the news that CIA director George Tenet has taken the fall for Bush's
falsehoods in the State of the Uranium address. As the journalist Robert Dreyfuss wrote
shortly before the war, "Even as it prepares for war against Iraq, the Pentagon is already
engaged on a second front: its war against the Central Intelligence Agency. The Pentagon
is bringing relentless pressure to bear on the agency to produce intelligence reports more
supportive of war with Iraq. ... Morale inside the U.S. national-security apparatus is
said to be low, with career staffers feeling intimidated and pressured to justify the push
for war."
In short, Tenet fell on his sword when he vetted Bush's State of the Union yarns. And now
he has had to get up and fall on it again.
7) An International Atomic Energy Agency report indicated that Iraq could be as little as
six months from making nuclear weapons.
Alas: The claim had to be retracted when the IAEA pointed out that no such report existed.
8) Saddam was involved with bin Laden and al Qaeda in the plotting of 9/11.
One of the most audacious and well-traveled of the Bushmen's fibs, this one hangs by two
of the slenderest evidentiary threads imaginable: first, anecdotal testimony by isolated,
handpicked Iraqi defectors that there was an al Qaeda training camp in Iraq, a claim CIA
analysts did not corroborate and that postwar U.S. military inspectors conceded did not
exist; and second, old intelligence accounts of a 1991 meeting in Baghdad between a bin
Laden emissary and officers from Saddam's intelligence service, which did not lead to any
subsequent contact that U.S. or UK spies have ever managed to turn up. According to former
State Department intelligence chief Gregory Thielman, the consensus of U.S. intelligence
agencies well in advance of the war was that "there was no significant pattern of
cooperation between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist operation."
9) The U.S. wants democracy in Iraq and the Middle East.
Democracy is the last thing the U.S. can afford in Iraq, as anyone who has paid attention
to the state of Arab popular sentiment already realizes. Representative government in Iraq
would mean the rapid expulsion of U.S. interests. Rather, the U.S. wants westernized,
secular leadership regimes that will stay in pocket and work to neutralize the politically
ambitious anti-Western religious sects popping up everywhere. If a little brutality and
graft are required to do the job, it has never troubled the U.S. in the past. Ironically,
these standards describe someone more or less like Saddam Hussein. Judging from the state
of civil affairs in Iraq now, the Bush administration will no doubt be looking for a
strongman again, if and when they are finally compelled to install anyone at all.
10) Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress are a homegrown Iraqi political force,
not a U.S.-sponsored front.
Chalabi is a more important bit player in the Iraq war than most people realize, and not
because he was the U.S.'s failed choice to lead a post-Saddam government. It was Chalabi
and his INC that funneled compliant defectors to the Bush administration, where they
attested to everything the Bushmen wanted to believe about Saddam and Iraq (meaning,
mainly, al Qaeda connections and WMD programs). The administration proceeded to take their
dubious word over that of the combined intelligence of the CIA and DIA, which indicated
that Saddam was not in the business of sponsoring foreign terrorism and posed no imminent
threat to anyone.
Naturally Chalabi is despised nowadays round the halls of Langley, but it wasn't always
so. The CIA built the Iraqi National Congress and installed Chalabi at the helm back in
the days following Gulf War I, when the thought was to topple Saddam by whipping up and
sponsoring an internal opposition. It didn't work; from the start Iraqis have disliked and
distrusted Chalabi. Moreover, his erratic and duplicitous ways have alienated practically
everyone in the U.S. foreign policy establishment as well--except for Rumsfeld's
Department of Defense, and therefore the White House.
11) The United States is waging a war on terror.
Practically any school child could recite the terms of the Bush Doctrine, and may have to
before the Ashcroft Justice Department is finished: The global war on terror is about
confronting terrorist groups and the nations that harbor them. The United States does not
make deals with terrorists or nations where they find safe lodging.
Leave aside the blind eye that the U.S. has always cast toward Israel's actions in the
territories. How are the Bushmen doing elsewhere vis-à-vis their announced principles? We
can start with their fabrications and manipulations of Iraqi WMD evidence--which, in the
eyes of weapons inspectors, the UN Security Council, American intelligence analysts, and
the world at large, did not pose any imminent threat.
The events of recent months have underscored a couple more gaping violations of W's
cardinal anti-terror rules. In April the Pentagon made a cooperation pact with the
Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), an anti-Iranian terrorist group based in Iraq. Prior to the 1979
Iranian revolution, American intelligence blamed it for the death of several U.S.
nationals in Iran.
Most glaring of all is the Bush administration's remarkable treatment of Saudi Arabia.
Consider: Eleven of the nineteen September 11 hijackers were Saudis. The ruling House of
Saud has longstanding and well-known ties to al Qaeda and other terrorist outfits, which
it funds (read protection money) to keep them from making mischief at home. The May issue
of Atlantic Monthly had a nice piece on the House of Saud that recounts these connections.
Yet the Bush government has never said boo regarding the Saudis and international
terrorism. In fact, when terror bombers struck Riyadh in May, hitting compounds that
housed American workers as well, Colin Powell went out of his way to avoid tarring the
House of Saud: "Terrorism strikes everywhere and everyone. It is a threat to the civilized
world. We will commit ourselves again to redouble our efforts to work closely with our
Saudi friends and friends all around the world to go after al Qaeda." Later it was alleged
that the Riyadh bombers purchased some of their ordnance from the Saudi National Guard,
but neither Powell nor anyone else saw fit to revise their statements about "our Saudi
friends."
Why do the Bushmen give a pass to the Saudi terror hotbed? Because the House of Saud
controls a lot of oil, and they are still (however tenuously) on our side. And that, not
terrorism, is what matters most in Bush's foreign policy calculus.
While the bomb craters in Riyadh were still smoking, W held a meeting with Philippine
president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Speaking publicly afterward, he outlined a deal for
U.S. military aid to the Philippines in exchange for greater "cooperation" in getting
American hands round the throats of Filipino terrorists. He mentioned in particular the
U.S.'s longtime nemesis Abu Sayyaf--and he also singled out the Moro Islamic Liberation
Front, a small faction based on Mindanao, the southernmost big island in the Philippine
chain.
Of course it's by purest coincidence that Mindanao is the location of Asia's richest oil
reserves.
12) The U.S. has made progress against world terrorist elements, in particular by
crippling al Qaeda.
A resurgent al Qaeda has been making international news since around the time of the Saudi
Arabia bombings in May. The best coverage by far is that of Asia Times correspondent Syed
Saleem Shahzad. According to Shahzad's detailed accounts, al Qaeda has reorganized itself
along leaner, more diffuse lines, effectively dissolving itself into a coalition of
localized units that mean to strike frequently, on a small scale, and in multiple locales
around the world. Since claiming responsibility for the May Riyadh bombings, alleged al
Qaeda communiqués have also claimed credit for some of the strikes at U.S. troops in Iraq.
13) The Bush administration has made Americans safer from terror on U.S. soil.
Like the Pentagon "plan" for occupying postwar Iraq, the Department of Homeland Security
is mainly a Bush administration PR dirigible untethered to anything of substance. It's a
scandal waiting to happen, and the only good news for W is that it's near the back of a
fairly long line of scandals waiting to happen.
On May 26 the trade magazine Federal Computer Week published a report on DHS's first 100
days. At that point the nerve center of Bush's domestic war on terror had only recently
gotten e-mail service. As for the larger matter of creating a functioning organizational
grid and, more important, a software architecture plan for integrating the enormous mass
of data that DHS is supposed to process--nada. In the nearly two years since the
administration announced its intention to create a cabinet-level homeland security office,
nothing meaningful has been accomplished. And there are no funds to implement a network
plan if they had one. According to the magazine, "Robert David Steele, an author and
former intelligence officer, points out that there are at least 30 separate intelligence
systems [theoretically feeding into DHS] and no money to connect them to one another or
make them interoperable. 'There is nothing in the president's homeland security program
that makes America safer,' he said."
14) The Bush administration has nothing to hide concerning the events of September 11,
2001, or the intelligence evidence collected prior to that day.
First ***** Cheney personally intervened to scuttle a broad congressional investigation of
the day's events and their origins. And for the past several months the administration has
fought a quiet rear-guard action culminating in last week's delayed release of Congress's
more modest 9/11 report. The White House even went so far as to classify after the fact
materials that had already been presented in public hearing.
What were they trying to keep under wraps? The Saudi connection, mostly, and though 27
pages of the details have been excised from the public report, there is still plenty of
evidence lurking in its extensively massaged text. (When you see the phrase "foreign
nation" substituted in brackets, it's nearly always Saudi Arabia.) The report documents
repeated signs that there was a major attack in the works with extensive help from Saudi
nationals and apparently also at least one member of the government. It also suggests that
is one reason intel operatives didn't chase the story harder: Saudi Arabia was by policy
fiat a "friendly" nation and therefore no threat. The report does not explore the
administration's response to the intelligence briefings it got; its purview is strictly
the performance of intelligence agencies. All other questions now fall to the independent
9/11 commission, whose work is presently being slowed by the White House's foot-dragging
in turning over evidence.
15) U.S. air defenses functioned according to protocols on September 11, 2001.
Old questions abound here. The central mystery, of how U.S. air defenses could have
responded so poorly on that day, is fairly easy to grasp. A cursory look at that morning's
timeline of events is enough. In very short strokes:
8:13 Flight 11 disobeys air traffic instructions and turns off its transponder.
8:40 NORAD command center claims first notification of likely Flight 11 hijacking.
8:42 Flight 175 veers off course and shuts down its transponder.
8:43 NORAD claims first notification of likely Flight 175 hijacking.
8:46 Flight 11 hits the World Trade Center north tower.
8:46 Flight 77 goes off course.
9:03 Flight 175 hits the WTC south tower.
9:16 Flight 93 goes off course.
9:16 NORAD claims first notification of likely Flight 93 hijacking.
9:24 NORAD claims first notification of likely Flight 77 hijacking.
9:37 Flight 77 hits the Pentagon.
10:06 Flight 93 crashes in a Pennsylvania field.
The open secret here is that stateside U.S. air defenses had been reduced to paltry levels
since the end of the Cold War. According to a report by Paul Thompson published at the
endlessly informative Center for Cooperative Research website
(www.cooperativeresearch.org), "[O]nly two air force bases in the Northeast region... were
formally part of NORAD's defensive system. One was Otis Air National Guard Base, on
Massachusetts's Cape Cod peninsula and about 188 miles east of New York City. The other
was Langley Air Force Base near Norfolk, Virginia, and about 129 miles south of
Washington. During the Cold War, the U.S. had literally thousands of fighters on alert.
But as the Cold War wound down, this number was reduced until it reached only 14 fighters
in the continental U.S. by 9/11."
But even an underpowered air defense system on slow-response status (15 minutes,
officially, on 9/11) does not explain the magnitude of NORAD's apparent failures that day.
Start with the discrepancy in the times at which NORAD commanders claim to have learned of
the various hijackings. By 8:43 a.m., NORAD had been notified of two probable hijackings
in the previous five minutes. If there was such a thing as a system-wide air defense
crisis plan, it should have kicked in at that moment. Three minutes later, at 8:46, Flight
11 crashed into the first WTC tower. By then alerts should have been going out to all
regional air traffic centers of apparent coordinated hijackings in progress. Yet when
Flight 77, which eventually crashed into the Pentagon, was hijacked three minutes later,
at 8:46, NORAD claims not to have learned of it until 9:24, 38 minutes after the fact and
just 13 minutes before it crashed into the Pentagon.
The professed lag in reacting to the hijacking of Flight 93 is just as striking. NORAD
acknowledged learning of the hijacking at 9:16, yet the Pentagon's position is that it had
not yet intercepted the plane when it crashed in a Pennsylvania field just minutes away
from Washington, D.C. at 10:06, a full 50 minutes later.
In fact, there are a couple of other circumstantial details of the crash, discussed mostly
in Pennsylvania newspapers and barely noted in national wire stories, that suggest Flight
93 may have been shot down after all. First, officials never disputed reports that there
was a secondary debris field six miles from the main crash site, and a few press accounts
said that it included one of the plane's engines. A secondary debris field points to an
explosion on board, from one of two probable causes--a terrorist bomb carried on board or
an Air Force missile. And no investigation has ever intimated that any of the four terror
crews were toting explosives. They kept to simple tools like the box cutters, for ease in
passing security. Second, a handful of eyewitnesses in the rural area around the crash
site did report seeing low-flying U.S. military jets around the time of the crash.
Which only raises another question. Shooting down Flight 93 would have been incontestably
the right thing to do under the circumstances. More than that, it would have constituted
the only evidence of anything NORAD and the Pentagon had done right that whole morning. So
why deny it? Conversely, if fighter jets really were not on the scene when 93 crashed, why
weren't they? How could that possibly be?
16) The Bush administration had a plan for restoring essential services and rebuilding
Iraq's infrastructure after the shooting war ended.
The question of what the U.S. would do to rebuild Iraq was raised before the shooting
started. I remember reading a press briefing in which a Pentagon official boasted that at
the time, the American reconstruction team had already spent three weeks planning the
postwar world! The Pentagon's first word was that the essentials of rebuilding the country
would take about $10 billion and three months; this stood in fairly stark contrast to UN
estimates that an aggressive rebuilding program could cost up to $100 billion a year for a
minimum of three years.
After the shooting stopped it was evident the U.S. had no plan for keeping order in the
streets, much less commencing to rebuild. (They are upgrading certain oil facilities, but
that's another matter.) There are two ways to read this. The popular version is that it
proves what bumblers Bush and his crew really are. And it's certainly true that where the
details of their grand designs are concerned, the administration tends to have postures
rather than plans. But this ignores the strategic advantages the U.S. stands to reap by
leaving Iraqi domestic affairs in a chronic state of (managed, they hope) chaos. Most
important, it provides an excuse for the continued presence of a large U.S. force, which
ensures that America will call the shots in putting Iraqi oil back on the world market and
seeing to it that the Iraqis don't fall in with the wrong sort of oil company partners. A
long military occupation is also a practical means of accomplishing something the U.S.
cannot do officially, which is to maintain air bases in Iraq indefinitely. (This became
necessary after the U.S. agreed to vacate its bases in Saudi Arabia earlier this year to
try to defuse anti-U.S. political tensions there.)
Meanwhile, the U.S. plans to pay for whatever rebuilding it gets around to doing with the
proceeds of Iraqi oil sales, an enormous cash box the U.S. will oversee for the good of
the Iraqi people.
In other words, "no plan" may have been the plan the Bushmen were intent on pursuing all
along.
17) The U.S. has made a good-faith effort at peacekeeping in Iraq during the postwar
period.
"Some [looters] shot big grins at American soldiers and Marines or put down their prizes
to offer a thumbs-up or a quick finger across the throat and a whispered
word--Saddam--before grabbing their loot and vanishing."
--Robert Fisk, London Independent, 4/11/03
Despite the many clashes between U.S. troops and Iraqis in the three months since the
heavy artillery fell silent, the postwar performance of U.S. forces has been more
remarkable for the things they have not done--their failure to intervene in civil chaos or
to begin reestablishing basic civil procedures. It isn't the soldiers' fault.
Traditionally an occupation force is headed up by military police units schooled to
interact with the natives and oversee the restoration of goods and services. But Rumsfeld
has repeatedly declined advice to rotate out the combat troops sooner rather than later
and replace some of them with an MP force. Lately this has been a source of escalating
criticism within military ranks.
18) Despite vocal international opposition, the U.S. was backed by most of the world, as
evidenced by the 40-plus-member Coalition of the Willing.
When the whole world opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the outcry was so loud that it
briefly pierced the slumber of the American public, which poured out its angst in poll
numbers that bespoke little taste for a war without the UN's blessing. So it became
necessary to assure the folks at home that the whole world was in fact for the invasion.
Thus was born the Coalition of the Willing, consisting of the U.S. and UK, with Australia
caddying--and 40-some additional co-champions of U.S.-style democracy in the Middle East,
whose ranks included such titans of diplomacy and pillars of representative government as
Angola, Azerbaijan, Colombia, Eritrea, and Micronesia. If the American public noticed the
ruse, all was nonetheless forgotten when Baghdad fell. Everybody loves a winner.
19) This war was notable for its protection of civilians.
This from the Herald of Scotland, May 23: "American guns, bombs, and missiles killed more
civilians in the recent war in Iraq than in any conflict since Vietnam, according to
preliminary assessments carried out by the UN, international aid agencies, and independent
study groups. Despite U.S. boasts this was the fastest, most clinical campaign in military
history, a first snapshot of 'collateral damage' indicates that between 5,000 and 10,000
Iraqi non-combatants died in the course of the hi-tech blitzkrieg."
20) The looting of archaeological and historic sites in Baghdad was unanticipated.
General Jay Garner himself, then the head man for postwar Iraq, told the Washington Times
that he had put the Iraqi National Museum second on a list of sites requiring protection
after the fall of the Saddam government, and he had no idea why the recommendation was
ignored. It's also a matter of record that the administration had met in January with a
group of U.S. scholars concerned with the preservation of Iraq's fabulous Sumerian
antiquities. So the war planners were aware of the riches at stake. According to
Scotland's Sunday Herald, the Pentagon took at least one other meeting as well: "[A]
coalition of antiquities collectors and arts lawyers, calling itself the American Council
for Cultural Policy (ACCP), met with U.S. Defense and State department officials prior to
the start of military action to offer its assistance.... The group is known to consist of
a number of influential dealers who favor a relaxation of Iraq's tight restrictions on the
ownership and export of antiquities.... [Archaeological Institute of America] president
Patty Gerstenblith said: 'The ACCP's agenda is to encourage the collecting of antiquities
through weakening the laws of archaeologically rich nations and eliminate national
ownership of antiquities to allow for easier export.'"
21) Saddam was planning to provide WMD to terrorist groups.
This is very concisely debunked in Walter Pincus's July 21 Washington Post story, so I'll
quote him: "'Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon
to a terrorist group or individual terrorists,' President Bush said in Cincinnati on
October 7.... But declassified portions of a still-secret National Intelligence Estimate
(NIE) released Friday by the White House show that at the time of the president's speech
the U.S. intelligence community judged that possibility to be unlikely. In fact, the NIE,
which began circulating October 2, shows the intelligence services were much more worried
that Hussein might give weapons to al Qaeda terrorists if he were facing death or capture
and his government was collapsing after a military attack by the United States."
22) Saddam was capable of launching a chemical or biological attack in 45 minutes.
Again the WashPost wraps it up nicely: "The 45-minute claim is at the center of a scandal
in Britain that led to the apparent suicide on Friday of a British weapons scientist who
had questioned the government's use of the allegation. The scientist, David Kelly, was
being investigated by the British parliament as the suspected source of a BBC report that
the 45-minute claim was added to Britain's public 'dossier' on Iraq in September at the
insistence of an aide to Prime Minister Tony Blair--and against the wishes of British
intelligence, which said the charge was from a single source and was considered
unreliable."
23) The Bush administration is seeking to create a viable Palestinian state.
The interests of the U.S. toward the Palestinians have not changed--not yet, at least.
Israel's "security needs" are still the U.S.'s sturdiest pretext for its military role in
policing the Middle East and arming its Israeli proxies. But the U.S.'s immediate needs
have tilted since the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Now the Bushmen need a fig
leaf--to confuse, if not exactly cover, their designs, and to give shaky pro-U.S.
governments in the region some scrap to hold out to their own restive peoples. Bush's
roadmap has scared the hell out of the Israeli right, but they have little reason to
worry. Press reports in the U.S. and Israel have repeatedly telegraphed the assurance that
Bush won't try to push Ariel Sharon any further than he's comfortable going.
24) People detained by the U.S. after 9/11 were legitimate terror suspects.
Quite the contrary, as disclosed officially in last month's critical report on U.S.
detainees from the Justice Department's own Office of Inspector General. A summary
analysis of post-9/11 detentions posted at the UC-Davis website states, "None of the 1,200
foreigners arrested and detained in secret after September 11 was charged with an act of
terrorism. Instead, after periods of detention that ranged from weeks to months, most were
deported for violating immigration laws. The government said that 752 of 1,200 foreigners
arrested after September 11 were in custody in May 2002, but only 81 were still in custody
in September 2002."
25) The U.S. is obeying the Geneva conventions in its treatment of terror-related
suspects, prisoners, and detainees.
The entire mumbo-jumbo about "unlawful combatants" was conceived to skirt the Geneva
conventions on treatment of prisoners by making them out to be something other than POWs.
Here is the actual wording of Donald Rumsfeld's pledge, freighted with enough qualifiers
to make it absolutely meaningless: "We have indicated that we do plan to, for the most
part, treat them in a manner that is reasonably consistent with the Geneva conventions to
the extent they are appropriate." Meanwhile the administration has treated its
prisoners--many of whom, as we are now seeing confirmed in legal hearings, have no
plausible connection to terrorist enterprises--in a manner that blatantly violates several
key Geneva provisions regarding humane treatment and housing.
26) Shots rang out from the Palestine hotel, directed at U.S. soldiers, just before a U.S.
tank fired on the hotel, killing two journalists.
Eyewitnesses to the April 8 attack uniformly denied any gunfire from the hotel. And just
two hours prior to firing on the hotel, U.S. forces had bombed the Baghdad offices of
Al-Jazeera, killing a Jordanian reporter. Taken together, and considering the timing, they
were deemed a warning to unembedded journalists covering the fall of Baghdad around them.
The day's events seem to have been an extreme instance of a more surreptitious pattern of
hostility demonstrated by U.S. and UK forces toward foreign journalists and those
non-attached Western reporters who moved around the country at will. (One of them, Terry
Lloyd of Britain's ITN, was shot to death by UK troops at a checkpoint in late March under
circumstances the British government has refused to disclose.)
Some days after firing on the Palestine Hotel, the U.S. sent in a commando unit to raid
select floors of the hotel that were known to be occupied by journalists, and the news
gatherers were held on the floor at gunpoint while their rooms were searched. A Centcom
spokesman later explained cryptically that intelligence reports suggested there were
people "not friendly to the U.S." staying at the hotel. Allied forces also bombed the
headquarters of Abu Dhabi TV, injuring several.
27) U.S. troops "rescued" Private Jessica Lynch from an Iraqi hospital.
If I had wanted to run up the tally of administration lies, the Lynch episode alone could
be parsed into several more. Officials claimed that Lynch and her comrades were taken
after a firefight in which Lynch battled back bravely. Later they announced with great
fanfare that U.S. Special Forces had rescued Lynch from her captors. They reported that
she had been shot and stabbed. Later yet, they reported that the recuperating Lynch had no
memory of the events.
Bit by bit it all proved false. Lynch's injuries occurred when the vehicle she was riding
in crashed. She did not fire on anybody and she was not shot or stabbed. The Iraqi
soldiers who had been holding her had abandoned the hospital where she was staying the
night before U.S. troops came to get her--a development her "rescuers" were aware of. In
fact her doctor had tried to return her to the Americans the previous evening after the
Iraqi soldiers left. But he was forced to turn back when U.S. troops fired on the
approaching ambulance. As for Lynch's amnesia, her family has told reporters her memory is
perfectly fine.
28) The populace of Baghdad and of Iraq generally turned out en masse to greet U.S. troops
as liberators.
There were indeed scattered expressions of thanks when U.S. divisions rolled in, but they
were neither as extensive nor as enthusiastic as Bush image-makers pretended. Within a day
or two of the Saddam government's fall, the scene in the Baghdad streets turned to
wholesale ransacking and vandalism. Within the week, large-scale protests of the U.S.
occupation had already begun occurring in every major Iraqi city.
29) A spontaneous crowd of cheering Iraqis showed up in a Baghdad square to celebrate the
toppling of Saddam's statue.
A long-distance shot of the same scene that was widely posted on the internet shows that
the teeming mob consisted of only one or two hundred souls, contrary to the impression
given by all the close-up TV news shots of what appeared to be a massive gathering. It was
later reported that members of Ahmed Chalabi's local entourage made up most of the throng.
30) No major figure in the Bush administration said that the Iraqi populace would turn out
en masse to welcome the U.S. military as liberators.
When confronted with--oh, call them reality deficits--one habit of the Bushmen is to deny
that they made erroneous or misleading statements to begin with, secure in the knowledge
that the media will rarely muster the energy to look it up and call them on it. They did
it when their bold prewar WMD predictions failed to pan out (We never said it would be
easy! No, they only implied it), and they did it when the "jubilant Iraqis" who took to
the streets after the fall of Saddam turned out to be anything but (We never promised they
would welcome us with open arms!).
But they did. March 16, ***** Cheney, Meet the Press: The Iraqis are desperate "to get rid
of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do
that.... [T]he vast majority of them would turn on [Saddam] in a minute if, in fact, they
thought they could do so safely").
31) The U.S. achieved its stated objectives in Afghanistan, and vanquished the Taliban.
According to accounts in the Asia Times of Hong Kong, the U.S. held a secret meeting
earlier this year with Taliban leaders and Pakistani intelligence officials to offer a
deal to the Taliban for inclusion in the Afghan government. (Main condition: Dump Mullah
Omar.) As Michael Tomasky commented in The American Prospect, "The first thing you may be
wondering: Why is there a possible role for the Taliban in a future government? Isn't that
fellow Hamid Karzai running things, and isn't it all going basically okay? As it turns
out, not really and not at all.... The reality... is an escalating guerilla war in which
'small hit-and-run attacks are a daily feature in most parts of the country, while
face-to-face skirmishes are common in the former Taliban stronghold around Kandahar in the
south.'"
32) Careful science demonstrates that depleted uranium is no big risk to the population.
Pure nonsense. While the government has trotted out expert after expert to debunk the
dangers of depleted uranium, DU has been implicated in health troubles experienced both by
Iraqis and by U.S. and allied soldiers in the first Gulf War. Unexploded DU shells are not
a grave danger, but detonated ones release particles that eventually find their way into
air, soil, water, and food.
While we're on the subject, the BBC reported a couple of months ago that recent tests of
Afghani civilians have turned up with unusually high concentrations of non-depleted
uranium isotopes in their urine. International monitors have called it almost conclusive
evidence that the U.S. used a new kind of uranium-laced bomb in the Afghan war.
33) The looting of Iraqi nuclear facilities presented no big risk to the population.
Commanders on the scene, and Rumsfeld back in Washington, immediately assured everyone
that the looting of a facility where raw uranium powder (so-called "yellowcake") and
several other radioactive isotopes were stored was no serious danger to the populace--yet
the looting of the facility came to light in part because, as the Washington Times noted,
"U.S. and British newspaper reports have suggested that residents of the area were
suffering from severe ill health after tipping out yellowcake powder from barrels and
using them to store food."
34) U.S. troops were under attack when they fired upon a crowd of civilian protesters in
Mosul.
April 15: U.S. troops fire into a crowd of protesters when it grows angry at the
pro-Western speech being given by the town's new mayor, Mashaan al-Juburi. Seven are
killed and dozens injured. Eyewitness accounts say the soldiers spirit Juburi away as he
is pelted with objects by the crowd, then take sniper positions and begin firing on the
crowd.
35) U.S. troops were under attack when they fired upon two separate crowds of civilian
protesters in Fallujah.
April 28: American troops fire into a crowd of demonstrators gathered on Saddam's
birthday, killing 13 and injuring 75. U.S. commanders claim the troops had come under
fire, but eyewitnesses contradict the account, saying the troops started shooting after
they were spooked by warning shots fired over the crowd by one of the Americans' own
Humvees. Two days later U.S. soldiers fired on another crowd in Fallujah, killing three
more.
36) The Iraqis fighting occupation forces consist almost entirely of "Saddam supporters"
or "Ba'ath remnants."
This has been the subject of considerable spin on the Bushmen's part in the past month,
since they launched Operation Sidewinder to capture or kill remaining opponents of the
U.S. occupation. It's true that the most fierce (but by no means all) of the recent
guerrilla opposition has been concentrated in the Sunni-dominated areas that were Saddam's
stronghold, and there is no question that Saddam partisans are numerous there. But,
perhaps for that reason, many other guerrilla fighters have flocked there to wage jihad,
both from within and without Iraq. Around the time of the U.S. invasion, some 10,000 or so
foreign fighters had crossed into Iraq, and I've seen no informed estimate of how many
more may have joined them since.
(No room here, but if you check the online version of this story, there's a footnote
regarding one less-than-obvious reason former Republican Guard personnel may be fighting
mad at this point.)
37) The bidding process for Iraq rebuilding contracts displayed no favoritism toward Bush
and Cheney's oil/gas cronies.
Most notoriously, ***** Cheney's former energy-sector employer, Halliburton, was all over
the press dispatches about the first round of rebuilding contracts. So much so that they
were eventually obliged to bow out of the running for a $1 billion reconstruction contract
for the sake of their own PR profile. But Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown Root still
received the first major plum in the form of a $7 billion contract to tend to oil field
fires and (the real purpose) to do any retooling necessary to get the oil pumping at a
decent rate, a deal that allows them a cool $500 million in profit. The fact that *****
Cheney's office is still fighting tooth and nail to block any disclosure of the
individuals and companies with whom his energy task force consulted tells everything you
need to know.
38) "We found the WMDs!"
There have been at least half a dozen junctures at which the Bushmen have breathlessly
informed the press that allied troops had found the WMD smoking gun, including the
president himself, who on June 1 told reporters, "For those who say we haven't found the
banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them."
Shouldn't these quickly falsified statements be counted as errors rather than lies? Under
the circumstances, no. First, there is just too voluminous a record of the administration
going on the media offensive to tout lines they know to be flimsy. This appears to be more
of same. Second, if the great genius Karl Rove and the rest of the Bushmen have
demonstrated that they understand anything about the propaganda potential of the
historical moment they've inherited, they surely understand that repetition is everything.
Get your message out regularly, and even if it's false a good many people will believe it.
Finally, we don't have to speculate about whether the administration would really plant
bogus WMD evidence in the American media, because they have already done it, most visibly
in the case of Judith Miller of the New York Times and the Iraqi defector "scientist" she
wrote about at the military's behest on April 21. Miller did not even get to speak with
the purported scientist, but she graciously passed on several things American commanders
claimed he said: that Iraq only destroyed its chemical weapons days before the war, that
WMD materiel had been shipped to Syria, and that Iraq had ties to al Qaeda. As Slate media
critic Jack Shafer told WNYC Radio's On the Media program, "When you... look at [her
story], you find that it's gas, it's air. There's no way to judge the value of her
information, because it comes from an unnamed source that won't let her verify any aspect
of it. And if you dig into the story... you'll find out that the only thing that Miller
has independently observed is a man that the military says is the scientist, wearing a
baseball cap, pointing at mounds in the dirt."
39) "The Iraqi people are now free."
So says the current U.S. administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, in a recent New York Times
op-ed. He failed to add that disagreeing can get you shot or arrested under the terms of
the Pentagon's latest plan for pacifying Iraq, Operation Sidewinder (see #36), a military
op launched last month to wipe out all remaining Ba'athists and Saddam partisans--meaning,
in practice, anyone who resists the U.S. occupation too zealously.
40) God told Bush to invade Iraq.
Not long after the September 11 attacks, neoconservative high priest Norman Podhoretz
wrote: "One hears that Bush, who entered the White House without a clear sense of what he
wanted to do there, now feels there was a purpose behind his election all along; as a
born-again Christian, it is said, he believes he was chosen by God to eradicate the evil
of terrorism from the world."
No, he really believes it, or so he would like us to think. The Palestinian prime
minister, Mahmoud Abbas, told the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz that Bush made the following
pronouncement during a recent meeting between the two: "God told me to strike at al Qaeda
and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I
am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East."
Oddly, it never got much play back home.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
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This was truly a collaborative effort from start to finish. It began with the notion of
running a week-long marathon of Bush administration lies at my online Bush Wars column
(bushwarsblog.com). Along the way my e-mail box delivered more research assistance than
I've ever received on any single story. I need to thank Jeff St. Clair and the
Counterpunch website (counterpunch.org), which featured the Lies marathon in addition to
posting valuable reportage and essays every day; I also received lots of lies entries and
documentary links from BW readers Rob Johnson, Ted Dibble, and Donna Johnson, as well as
my colleagues Mark Gisleson, Elaine Cassel, Sally Ryan, Mike Mosedale, and Paul Demko.
Dave Marsh provided valuable editing suggestions.
I also found loads of valuable information through Cursor and Buzzflash, the two best news
links pages on the internet, and through research projects on the Bushmen posted at
Cooperative Research (cooperativeresearch.org), Whiskey Bar (billmon.org), and
tvnewslies.org.
But the heart of the effort was all the readers of Bush Wars who sent along ideas and
links that advanced the project. Many thanks to Estella Bloomberg, Vince Bradley, Angela
Bradshaw, Gary Burns, Elaine Cole, George Dobosh, Deborah Eddy, David Erickson, Casey
Finne, Douglas Gault, Jean T. Gordon, Doug Henwood, George Hunsinger, Peter Lee, Eric
Martin, Michael McFadden, George McLaughlin, Eric T. Olson, Doug Payne, Alan W. Peck,
Dennis Perrin, Charles Prendergast, Publius, Michele Quinn, Ernesto Resnik, Ed Rickert,
Maritza Silverio, Marshall Smith, Robert David Steele, Ed Thornhill, Christopher Veal, and
Jennifer Vogel. And my apologies to anyone else whose e-mails I didn't manage to save.
©2003, City Pages Media
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| User: "David Casey" |
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| Title: Re: Anti-American Bush Deserves Impeachment, Trial, Prison, Along With The Rest Of That Treasonous Gang |
11 Aug 2003 01:38:22 PM |
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On Mon, 11 Aug 2003 09:54:30 -0400, Bush Screws the wrote:
[groups trimmed to comply with uma charter]
The clueless David Casey <davidcasey@spamcop.net> wrote of his
total inability to learn anything for himself, even things of significance:
Nice touch but overdone. You should try something more original like facts
in your posts. ;-)
But we're not asking Bush to back up ...
You, if not your fleas, should start expecting better of your employees
than to tell you lies that get your defenses diminished.
So you can't back up what you claim? It's so much easier if you just admit
it, but to each their own! Some folks do have a hard time admitting
they're wrong and it would appear you have major problems with that.
... trying to shift the job to someone
else and be a man for once...
You really ought to go for that if you can.
Shift the job to someone else? What job? I'm not making any claims here,
you are.
Which false claims?
Pick anything Bush has said to you. Perhaps your inability to close
your gaping maw is what has your critical thought process shut down.
I don't have to pick anything because I haven't made the claim Bush is
lying. You have. So, let's see examples *in your own words* of where Bush
is lying. Do your own work for a change and stop being a mouthpiece for
the conspiracy folks out there. Unless you're unable to come up with your
own opinions on things.
[snip rest of same old crap]
Dave
--
You can talk about us, but you can't talk without us!
US Army Signal Corps!!
www.geocities.com/davidcasey98
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| User: "Bush Screws the Troops" |
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| Title: Re: Anti-American Bush Deserves Impeachment, Trial, Prison, Along With The Rest Of That Treasonous Gang |
12 Aug 2003 03:56:25 PM |
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40X Fool David Casey <davidcasey@spamcop.net> wrote:
...let's ...
You're trying to pretend you'd represent others when you do not.
see examples *in your own words* ...
What's the matter, were there too many syllables in all those ones
from the experts for you to handle?
COVER STORY . VOL 24 #1182 . PUBLISHED 7/30/03
BRING 'EM ON! by Steve Perry
The Bush administration's Top 40 Lies about war and terrorism
Bring 'em On!
By Steve Perry
Editor's note: In the interest of relative brevity I've stinted on citing and quoting
sources in some of the items below. You can find links to news stories that elaborate on
each of these items at my online Bush Wars column, www.bushwarsblog.com.
1) The administration was not bent on war with Iraq from 9/11 onward.
THE EMPEROR HAS NO FLIGHT SUIT
In recent weeks, the press and some Democrats have finally taken up a critical White House
deception about Iraq and uranium. What took them so long? And what about all the other
lies?
HIGH CRIMES & MISDEMEANORS
Throughout the year leading up to war, the White House publicly maintained that the U.S.
took weapons inspections seriously, that diplomacy would get its chance, that Saddam had
the opportunity to prevent a U.S. invasion. The most pungent and concise evidence to the
contrary comes from the president's own mouth. According to Time's March 31 road-to-war
story, Bush popped in on national security adviser Condi Rice one day in March 2002,
interrupting a meeting on UN sanctions against Iraq. Getting a whiff of the subject
matter, W peremptorily waved his hand and told her, "***** Saddam. We're taking him out."
Clare Short, Tony Blair's former secretary for international development, recently lent
further credence to the anecdote. She told the London Guardian that Bush and Blair made a
secret pact a few months afterward, in the summer of 2002, to invade Iraq in either
February or March of this year.
Last fall CBS News obtained meeting notes taken by a Rumsfeld aide at 2:40 on the
afternoon of September 11, 2001. The notes indicate that Rumsfeld wanted the "best info
fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time. Not only UBL
[Usama bin Laden].... Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not."
Rumsfeld's deputy Paul Wolfowitz, the Bushmen's leading intellectual light, has long been
rabid on the subject of Iraq. He reportedly told Vanity Fair writer Sam Tanenhaus off the
record that he believes Saddam was connected not only to bin Laden and 9/11, but the 1995
Oklahoma City bombing.
The Bush administration's foreign policy plan was not based on September 11, or terrorism;
those events only brought to the forefront a radical plan for U.S. control of the
post-Cold War world that had been taking shape since the closing days of the first Bush
presidency. Back then a small claque of planners, led by Wolfowitz, generated a draft
document known as Defense Planning Guidance, which envisioned a U.S. that took advantage
of its lone-superpower status to consolidate American control of the world both militarily
and economically, to the point where no other nation could ever reasonably hope to
challenge the U.S. Toward that end it envisioned what we now call "preemptive" wars waged
to reset the geopolitical table.
After a copy of DPG was leaked to the New York Times, subsequent drafts were rendered a
little less frank, but the basic idea never changed. In 1997 Wolfowitz and his true
believers--Richard Perle, William Kristol, ***** Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld--formed an
organization called Project for the New American Century to carry their cause forward. And
though they all flocked around the Bush administration from the start, W never really
embraced their plan until the events of September 11 left him casting around for a foreign
policy plan.
2) The invasion of Iraq was based on a reasonable belief that Iraq possessed weapons of
mass destruction that posed a threat to the U.S., a belief supported by available
intelligence evidence.
Paul Wolfowitz admitted to Vanity Fair that weapons of mass destruction were not really
the main reason for invading Iraq: "The decision to highlight weapons of mass destruction
as the main justification for going to war in Iraq was taken for bureaucratic reasons....
[T]here were many other important factors as well." Right. But they did not come under the
heading of self-defense.
We now know how the Bushmen gathered their prewar intelligence: They set out to patch
together their case for invading Iraq and ignored everything that contradicted it. In the
end, this required that Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al. set aside the findings of analysts
from the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (the Pentagon's own spy bureau) and stake
their claim largely on the basis of isolated, anecdotal testimony from handpicked Iraqi
defectors. (See #5, Ahmed Chalabi.) But the administration did not just listen to the
defectors; it promoted their claims in the press as a means of enlisting public opinion.
The only reason so many Americans thought there was a connection between Saddam and al
Qaeda in the first place was that the Bushmen trotted out Iraqi defectors making these
sorts of claims to every major media outlet that would listen.
Here is the verdict of Gregory Thielman, the recently retired head of the State
Department's intelligence office: "I believe the Bush administration did not provide an
accurate picture to the American people of the military threat posed by Iraq. This
administration has had a faith-based intelligence attitude--we know the answers, give us
the intelligence to support those answers." Elsewhere he has been quoted as saying, "The
principal reasons that Americans did not understand the nature of the Iraqi threat in my
view was the failure of senior administration officials to speak honestly about what the
intelligence showed."
3) Saddam tried to buy uranium in Niger.
Lies and distortions tend to beget more lies and distortions, and here is W's most
notorious case in point: Once the administration decided to issue a damage-controlling
(they hoped) mea culpa in the matter of African uranium, they were obliged to couch it in
another, more perilous lie: that the administration, and quite likely Bush himself,
thought the uranium claim was true when he made it. But former acting ambassador to Iraq
Joseph Wilson wrote an op-ed in the New York Times on July 6 that exploded the claim.
Wilson, who traveled to Niger in 2002 to investigate the uranium claims at the behest of
the CIA and ***** Cheney's office and found them to be groundless, describes what followed
this way: "Although I did not file a written report, there should be at least four
documents in U.S. government archives confirming my mission. The documents should include
the ambassador's report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by the
embassy staff, a CIA report summing up my trip, and a specific answer from the agency to
the office of the vice president (this may have been delivered orally). While I have not
seen any of these reports, I have spent enough time in government to know that this is
standard operating procedure."
4) The aluminum tubes were proof of a nuclear program.
The very next sentence of Bush's State of the Union address was just as egregious a lie as
the uranium claim, though a bit cagier in its formulation. "Our intelligence sources tell
us that [Saddam] has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for
nuclear weapons production." This is altogether false in its implication (that this is the
likeliest use for these materials) and may be untrue in its literal sense as well. As the
London Independent summed it up recently, "The U.S. persistently alleged that Baghdad
tried to buy high-strength aluminum tubes whose only use could be in gas centrifuges,
needed to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. Equally persistently, the International
Atomic Energy Agency said the tubes were being used for artillery rockets. The head of the
IAEA, Mohamed El Baradei, told the UN Security Council in January that the tubes were not
even suitable for centrifuges." [emphasis added]
5) Iraq's WMDs were sent to Syria for hiding.
Or Iran, or.... "They shipped them out!" was a rallying cry for the administration in the
first few nervous weeks of finding no WMDs, but not a bit of supporting evidence has
emerged.
6) The CIA was primarily responsible for any prewar intelligence errors or distortions
regarding Iraq.
Don't be misled by the news that CIA director George Tenet has taken the fall for Bush's
falsehoods in the State of the Uranium address. As the journalist Robert Dreyfuss wrote
shortly before the war, "Even as it prepares for war against Iraq, the Pentagon is already
engaged on a second front: its war against the Central Intelligence Agency. The Pentagon
is bringing relentless pressure to bear on the agency to produce intelligence reports more
supportive of war with Iraq. ... Morale inside the U.S. national-security apparatus is
said to be low, with career staffers feeling intimidated and pressured to justify the push
for war."
In short, Tenet fell on his sword when he vetted Bush's State of the Union yarns. And now
he has had to get up and fall on it again.
7) An International Atomic Energy Agency report indicated that Iraq could be as little as
six months from making nuclear weapons.
Alas: The claim had to be retracted when the IAEA pointed out that no such report existed.
8) Saddam was involved with bin Laden and al Qaeda in the plotting of 9/11.
One of the most audacious and well-traveled of the Bushmen's fibs, this one hangs by two
of the slenderest evidentiary threads imaginable: first, anecdotal testimony by isolated,
handpicked Iraqi defectors that there was an al Qaeda training camp in Iraq, a claim CIA
analysts did not corroborate and that postwar U.S. military inspectors conceded did not
exist; and second, old intelligence accounts of a 1991 meeting in Baghdad between a bin
Laden emissary and officers from Saddam's intelligence service, which did not lead to any
subsequent contact that U.S. or UK spies have ever managed to turn up. According to former
State Department intelligence chief Gregory Thielman, the consensus of U.S. intelligence
agencies well in advance of the war was that "there was no significant pattern of
cooperation between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist operation."
9) The U.S. wants democracy in Iraq and the Middle East.
Democracy is the last thing the U.S. can afford in Iraq, as anyone who has paid attention
to the state of Arab popular sentiment already realizes. Representative government in Iraq
would mean the rapid expulsion of U.S. interests. Rather, the U.S. wants westernized,
secular leadership regimes that will stay in pocket and work to neutralize the politically
ambitious anti-Western religious sects popping up everywhere. If a little brutality and
graft are required to do the job, it has never troubled the U.S. in the past. Ironically,
these standards describe someone more or less like Saddam Hussein. Judging from the state
of civil affairs in Iraq now, the Bush administration will no doubt be looking for a
strongman again, if and when they are finally compelled to install anyone at all.
10) Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress are a homegrown Iraqi political force,
not a U.S.-sponsored front.
Chalabi is a more important bit player in the Iraq war than most people realize, and not
because he was the U.S.'s failed choice to lead a post-Saddam government. It was Chalabi
and his INC that funneled compliant defectors to the Bush administration, where they
attested to everything the Bushmen wanted to believe about Saddam and Iraq (meaning,
mainly, al Qaeda connections and WMD programs). The administration proceeded to take their
dubious word over that of the combined intelligence of the CIA and DIA, which indicated
that Saddam was not in the business of sponsoring foreign terrorism and posed no imminent
threat to anyone.
Naturally Chalabi is despised nowadays round the halls of Langley, but it wasn't always
so. The CIA built the Iraqi National Congress and installed Chalabi at the helm back in
the days following Gulf War I, when the thought was to topple Saddam by whipping up and
sponsoring an internal opposition. It didn't work; from the start Iraqis have disliked and
distrusted Chalabi. Moreover, his erratic and duplicitous ways have alienated practically
everyone in the U.S. foreign policy establishment as well--except for Rumsfeld's
Department of Defense, and therefore the White House.
11) The United States is waging a war on terror.
Practically any school child could recite the terms of the Bush Doctrine, and may have to
before the Ashcroft Justice Department is finished: The global war on terror is about
confronting terrorist groups and the nations that harbor them. The United States does not
make deals with terrorists or nations where they find safe lodging.
Leave aside the blind eye that the U.S. has always cast toward Israel's actions in the
territories. How are the Bushmen doing elsewhere vis-à-vis their announced principles? We
can start with their fabrications and manipulations of Iraqi WMD evidence--which, in the
eyes of weapons inspectors, the UN Security Council, American intelligence analysts, and
the world at large, did not pose any imminent threat.
The events of recent months have underscored a couple more gaping violations of W's
cardinal anti-terror rules. In April the Pentagon made a cooperation pact with the
Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), an anti-Iranian terrorist group based in Iraq. Prior to the 1979
Iranian revolution, American intelligence blamed it for the death of several U.S.
nationals in Iran.
Most glaring of all is the Bush administration's remarkable treatment of Saudi Arabia.
Consider: Eleven of the nineteen September 11 hijackers were Saudis. The ruling House of
Saud has longstanding and well-known ties to al Qaeda and other terrorist outfits, which
it funds (read protection money) to keep them from making mischief at home. The May issue
of Atlantic Monthly had a nice piece on the House of Saud that recounts these connections.
Yet the Bush government has never said boo regarding the Saudis and international
terrorism. In fact, when terror bombers struck Riyadh in May, hitting compounds that
housed American workers as well, Colin Powell went out of his way to avoid tarring the
House of Saud: "Terrorism strikes everywhere and everyone. It is a threat to the civilized
world. We will commit ourselves again to redouble our efforts to work closely with our
Saudi friends and friends all around the world to go after al Qaeda." Later it was alleged
that the Riyadh bombers purchased some of their ordnance from the Saudi National Guard,
but neither Powell nor anyone else saw fit to revise their statements about "our Saudi
friends."
Why do the Bushmen give a pass to the Saudi terror hotbed? Because the House of Saud
controls a lot of oil, and they are still (however tenuously) on our side. And that, not
terrorism, is what matters most in Bush's foreign policy calculus.
While the bomb craters in Riyadh were still smoking, W held a meeting with Philippine
president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Speaking publicly afterward, he outlined a deal for
U.S. military aid to the Philippines in exchange for greater "cooperation" in getting
American hands round the throats of Filipino terrorists. He mentioned in particular the
U.S.'s longtime nemesis Abu Sayyaf--and he also singled out the Moro Islamic Liberation
Front, a small faction based on Mindanao, the southernmost big island in the Philippine
chain.
Of course it's by purest coincidence that Mindanao is the location of Asia's richest oil
reserves.
12) The U.S. has made progress against world terrorist elements, in particular by
crippling al Qaeda.
A resurgent al Qaeda has been making international news since around the time of the Saudi
Arabia bombings in May. The best coverage by far is that of Asia Times correspondent Syed
Saleem Shahzad. According to Shahzad's detailed accounts, al Qaeda has reorganized itself
along leaner, more diffuse lines, effectively dissolving itself into a coalition of
localized units that mean to strike frequently, on a small scale, and in multiple locales
around the world. Since claiming responsibility for the May Riyadh bombings, alleged al
Qaeda communiqués have also claimed credit for some of the strikes at U.S. troops in Iraq.
13) The Bush administration has made Americans safer from terror on U.S. soil.
Like the Pentagon "plan" for occupying postwar Iraq, the Department of Homeland Security
is mainly a Bush administration PR dirigible untethered to anything of substance. It's a
scandal waiting to happen, and the only good news for W is that it's near the back of a
fairly long line of scandals waiting to happen.
On May 26 the trade magazine Federal Computer Week published a report on DHS's first 100
days. At that point the nerve center of Bush's domestic war on terror had only recently
gotten e-mail service. As for the larger matter of creating a functioning organizational
grid and, more important, a software architecture plan for integrating the enormous mass
of data that DHS is supposed to process--nada. In the nearly two years since the
administration announced its intention to create a cabinet-level homeland security office,
nothing meaningful has been accomplished. And there are no funds to implement a network
plan if they had one. According to the magazine, "Robert David Steele, an author and
former intelligence officer, points out that there are at least 30 separate intelligence
systems [theoretically feeding into DHS] and no money to connect them to one another or
make them interoperable. 'There is nothing in the president's homeland security program
that makes America safer,' he said."
14) The Bush administration has nothing to hide concerning the events of September 11,
2001, or the intelligence evidence collected prior to that day.
First ***** Cheney personally intervened to scuttle a broad congressional investigation of
the day's events and their origins. And for the past several months the administration has
fought a quiet rear-guard action culminating in last week's delayed release of Congress's
more modest 9/11 report. The White House even went so far as to classify after the fact
materials that had already been presented in public hearing.
What were they trying to keep under wraps? The Saudi connection, mostly, and though 27
pages of the details have been excised from the public report, there is still plenty of
evidence lurking in its extensively massaged text. (When you see the phrase "foreign
nation" substituted in brackets, it's nearly always Saudi Arabia.) The report documents
repeated signs that there was a major attack in the works with extensive help from Saudi
nationals and apparently also at least one member of the government. It also suggests that
is one reason intel operatives didn't chase the story harder: Saudi Arabia was by policy
fiat a "friendly" nation and therefore no threat. The report does not explore the
administration's response to the intelligence briefings it got; its purview is strictly
the performance of intelligence agencies. All other questions now fall to the independent
9/11 commission, whose work is presently being slowed by the White House's foot-dragging
in turning over evidence.
15) U.S. air defenses functioned according to protocols on September 11, 2001.
Old questions abound here. The central mystery, of how U.S. air defenses could have
responded so poorly on that day, is fairly easy to grasp. A cursory look at that morning's
timeline of events is enough. In very short strokes:
8:13 Flight 11 disobeys air traffic instructions and turns off its transponder.
8:40 NORAD command center claims first notification of likely Flight 11 hijacking.
8:42 Flight 175 veers off course and shuts down its transponder.
8:43 NORAD claims first notification of likely Flight 175 hijacking.
8:46 Flight 11 hits the World Trade Center north tower.
8:46 Flight 77 goes off course.
9:03 Flight 175 hits the WTC south tower.
9:16 Flight 93 goes off course.
9:16 NORAD claims first notification of likely Flight 93 hijacking.
9:24 NORAD claims first notification of likely Flight 77 hijacking.
9:37 Flight 77 hits the Pentagon.
10:06 Flight 93 crashes in a Pennsylvania field.
The open secret here is that stateside U.S. air defenses had been reduced to paltry levels
since the end of the Cold War. According to a report by Paul Thompson published at the
endlessly informative Center for Cooperative Research website
(www.cooperativeresearch.org), "[O]nly two air force bases in the Northeast region... were
formally part of NORAD's defensive system. One was Otis Air National Guard Base, on
Massachusetts's Cape Cod peninsula and about 188 miles east of New York City. The other
was Langley Air Force Base near Norfolk, Virginia, and about 129 miles south of
Washington. During the Cold War, the U.S. had literally thousands of fighters on alert.
But as the Cold War wound down, this number was reduced until it reached only 14 fighters
in the continental U.S. by 9/11."
But even an underpowered air defense system on slow-response status (15 minutes,
officially, on 9/11) does not explain the magnitude of NORAD's apparent failures that day.
Start with the discrepancy in the times at which NORAD commanders claim to have learned of
the various hijackings. By 8:43 a.m., NORAD had been notified of two probable hijackings
in the previous five minutes. If there was such a thing as a system-wide air defense
crisis plan, it should have kicked in at that moment. Three minutes later, at 8:46, Flight
11 crashed into the first WTC tower. By then alerts should have been going out to all
regional air traffic centers of apparent coordinated hijackings in progress. Yet when
Flight 77, which eventually crashed into the Pentagon, was hijacked three minutes later,
at 8:46, NORAD claims not to have learned of it until 9:24, 38 minutes after the fact and
just 13 minutes before it crashed into the Pentagon.
The professed lag in reacting to the hijacking of Flight 93 is just as striking. NORAD
acknowledged learning of the hijacking at 9:16, yet the Pentagon's position is that it had
not yet intercepted the plane when it crashed in a Pennsylvania field just minutes away
from Washington, D.C. at 10:06, a full 50 minutes later.
In fact, there are a couple of other circumstantial details of the crash, discussed mostly
in Pennsylvania newspapers and barely noted in national wire stories, that suggest Flight
93 may have been shot down after all. First, officials never disputed reports that there
was a secondary debris field six miles from the main crash site, and a few press accounts
said that it included one of the plane's engines. A secondary debris field points to an
explosion on board, from one of two probable causes--a terrorist bomb carried on board or
an Air Force missile. And no investigation has ever intimated that any of the four terror
crews were toting explosives. They kept to simple tools like the box cutters, for ease in
passing security. Second, a handful of eyewitnesses in the rural area around the crash
site did report seeing low-flying U.S. military jets around the time of the crash.
Which only raises another question. Shooting down Flight 93 would have been incontestably
the right thing to do under the circumstances. More than that, it would have constituted
the only evidence of anything NORAD and the Pentagon had done right that whole morning. So
why deny it? Conversely, if fighter jets really were not on the scene when 93 crashed, why
weren't they? How could that possibly be?
16) The Bush administration had a plan for restoring essential services and rebuilding
Iraq's infrastructure after the shooting war ended.
The question of what the U.S. would do to rebuild Iraq was raised before the shooting
started. I remember reading a press briefing in which a Pentagon official boasted that at
the time, the American reconstruction team had already spent three weeks planning the
postwar world! The Pentagon's first word was that the essentials of rebuilding the country
would take about $10 billion and three months; this stood in fairly stark contrast to UN
estimates that an aggressive rebuilding program could cost up to $100 billion a year for a
minimum of three years.
After the shooting stopped it was evident the U.S. had no plan for keeping order in the
streets, much less commencing to rebuild. (They are upgrading certain oil facilities, but
that's another matter.) There are two ways to read this. The popular version is that it
proves what bumblers Bush and his crew really are. And it's certainly true that where the
details of their grand designs are concerned, the administration tends to have postures
rather than plans. But this ignores the strategic advantages the U.S. stands to reap by
leaving Iraqi domestic affairs in a chronic state of (managed, they hope) chaos. Most
important, it provides an excuse for the continued presence of a large U.S. force, which
ensures that America will call the shots in putting Iraqi oil back on the world market and
seeing to it that the Iraqis don't fall in with the wrong sort of oil company partners. A
long military occupation is also a practical means of accomplishing something the U.S.
cannot do officially, which is to maintain air bases in Iraq indefinitely. (This became
necessary after the U.S. agreed to vacate its bases in Saudi Arabia earlier this year to
try to defuse anti-U.S. political tensions there.)
Meanwhile, the U.S. plans to pay for whatever rebuilding it gets around to doing with the
proceeds of Iraqi oil sales, an enormous cash box the U.S. will oversee for the good of
the Iraqi people.
In other words, "no plan" may have been the plan the Bushmen were intent on pursuing all
along.
17) The U.S. has made a good-faith effort at peacekeeping in Iraq during the postwar
period.
"Some [looters] shot big grins at American soldiers and Marines or put down their prizes
to offer a thumbs-up or a quick finger across the throat and a whispered
word--Saddam--before grabbing their loot and vanishing."
--Robert Fisk, London Independent, 4/11/03
Despite the many clashes between U.S. troops and Iraqis in the three months since the
heavy artillery fell silent, the postwar performance of U.S. forces has been more
remarkable for the things they have not done--their failure to intervene in civil chaos or
to begin reestablishing basic civil procedures. It isn't the soldiers' fault.
Traditionally an occupation force is headed up by military police units schooled to
interact with the natives and oversee the restoration of goods and services. But Rumsfeld
has repeatedly declined advice to rotate out the combat troops sooner rather than later
and replace some of them with an MP force. Lately this has been a source of escalating
criticism within military ranks.
18) Despite vocal international opposition, the U.S. was backed by most of the world, as
evidenced by the 40-plus-member Coalition of the Willing.
When the whole world opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the outcry was so loud that it
briefly pierced the slumber of the American public, which poured out its angst in poll
numbers that bespoke little taste for a war without the UN's blessing. So it became
necessary to assure the folks at home that the whole world was in fact for the invasion.
Thus was born the Coalition of the Willing, consisting of the U.S. and UK, with Australia
caddying--and 40-some additional co-champions of U.S.-style democracy in the Middle East,
whose ranks included such titans of diplomacy and pillars of representative government as
Angola, Azerbaijan, Colombia, Eritrea, and Micronesia. If the American public noticed the
ruse, all was nonetheless forgotten when Baghdad fell. Everybody loves a winner.
19) This war was notable for its protection of civilians.
This from the Herald of Scotland, May 23: "American guns, bombs, and missiles killed more
civilians in the recent war in Iraq than in any conflict since Vietnam, according to
preliminary assessments carried out by the UN, international aid agencies, and independent
study groups. Despite U.S. boasts this was the fastest, most clinical campaign in military
history, a first snapshot of 'collateral damage' indicates that between 5,000 and 10,000
Iraqi non-combatants died in the course of the hi-tech blitzkrieg."
20) The looting of archaeological and historic sites in Baghdad was unanticipated.
General Jay Garner himself, then the head man for postwar Iraq, told the Washington Times
that he had put the Iraqi National Museum second on a list of sites requiring protection
after the fall of the Saddam government, and he had no idea why the recommendation was
ignored. It's also a matter of record that the administration had met in January with a
group of U.S. scholars concerned with the preservation of Iraq's fabulous Sumerian
antiquities. So the war planners were aware of the riches at stake. According to
Scotland's Sunday Herald, the Pentagon took at least one other meeting as well: "[A]
coalition of antiquities collectors and arts lawyers, calling itself the American Council
for Cultural Policy (ACCP), met with U.S. Defense and State department officials prior to
the start of military action to offer its assistance.... The group is known to consist of
a number of influential dealers who favor | | | | | | | | | | | | |
