By John Daly
UPI International Correspondent
Washington, DC, Jun. 13 (UPI) -- Insider notes from
United Press International for June 8
A former Bush team member during his first administration is now
voicing serious doubts about the
collapse of the World Trade Center on 9-11. Former chief
economist for the Department of Labor during President
George W. Bush's first term Morgan Reynolds comments
that the official story about the collapse
of the WTC is
"bogus" and that it is more likely that a
controlled
demolition destroyed the Twin Towers and
adjacent
Building No. 7. Reynolds, who also served
as director of
the Criminal Justice Center at the National
Center for
Policy Analysis in Dallas and is now
professor emeritus at
Texas A&M University said, "If demolition
destroyed
three steel skyscrapers at the World Trade
Center on
9/11, then the case for an 'inside job' and
a government
attack on America would be compelling."
Reynolds
commented from his Texas A&M office, "It is
hard to
exaggerate the importance of a scientific
debate over the
cause of the collapse of the twin towers
and building 7. If
the official wisdom on the collapses is
wrong, as I believe
it is, then policy based on such erroneous
engineering
analysis is not likely to be correct
either. The
government's collapse theory is highly
vulnerable on its
own terms. Only professional demolition
appears to
account for the full range of facts
associated with the
collapse of the three buildings."
Two years after President George W. Bush proclaimed
"mission accomplished" in Iraq, some
thoughtful officers
are beginning to question who the
insurgents actually are.
In a recent interview the head of the US
42nd Infantry
Division which covers key trouble spots,
including Baquba
and Samarra Major General Joseph Taluto
said he could
understand why some ordinary Iraqis would
take up arms
against U.S. forces because "they're
offended by our
presence." Taluto added, "If a good, honest
person feels
having all these Humvees driving on the
road, having us
moving people out of the way, having us
patrol the
streets, having car bombs going off, you
can understand
how they could (want to fight us). There is
a sense of a
good resistance, or an accepted resistance.
They say
'okay, if you shoot a coalition soldier,
that's okay, it's not
a bad thing but you shouldn't kill other
Iraqis.'" Taluto
insisted however that the other foreign
forces would not
be driven out of Iraq by violence,
observing, "If the goal is
to have the coalition leave, attacking them
isn't the way,"
he said. "The way to make it happen is to
enter the
political process cooperate and the
coalition will be less
aggressive and less visible and eventually
it'll go away."
Taluto's comments are sure to raise hackles
at the
Pentagon, which insist that all insurgents
are either
Baathists or al-Qaida. Taluto observed that
"99.9 per
cent" of those captured fighting the U.S.
were Iraqis.
-0-
Ah well, there's always Argentina. The
German
government is reportedly blocking the
deportation of Nazi
war crimes suspects from the U.S. back to
Germany to be
tried and punished. The German interior
ministry has
refused to accept the suspects even though
the United
States already has stripped them of their
citizenship
because of their World War II history and
has asked
Germany to accept them; German officials
worry the
suspects might join neo-Nazi groups. Deputy
director of
the Office of Special Investigations at the
Department of
Justice Jonathan Drimmer said, "By and
large we're
talking about concentration camp guards,
we're talking
about collaborators, people who were
involved in
indigenous police forces, that kind of
thing." German
interior ministry officials said that
Washington had not
given Berlin enough proof that the suspects
were war
criminals, despite repeated requests from
Germany.
Deportation in U.S. court cases requires
not criminal, but
just civil, proceedings, with a burden of
proof of "clear,
convincing, and unequivocal evidence."
German Interior
ministry officials noted that if Germany
accepted the
deportees, they would be supported by the
German social
system and possibly would involve
themselves in the
extreme right or anti-Semitic political
activities.
-0-
The first conflict that the newly
independent United
States engaged in began in 1801 with the
Barbary States;
now descendents of those corsairs have
participated in
naval exercises with their former enemies.
On June 7
Algerian and U.S. Coast Guard warships
conducted a joint
naval exercise, improving interoperability
and developing
cooperation in securing the western
Mediterranean. The
vessels conducted maritime patrol missions,
testing their
joint capabilities to monitor and board
suspicious
vehicles and interdict illegal migration.
U.S. Coast Guard
Capt. Robert Wyner said Washington regards
Algeria as a
strategic partner in the war against
terrorism and that
Algeria would play a major role in U.S.
efforts to bolster
the stability of North Africa and counter
the threat of
al-Qaida. Interestingly enough, former
counterterrorism
adviser Richard A. Clarke closed Boston
harbor on 9-11
because of concerns that al-Qaida
terrorists were
stowaways aboard liquefied natural gas
tankers from
Algeria bound for Boston's Everett LNG
facility.
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20050613-102755-6408r.htm
g adds.
MONEY , what a concept
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