Showing posts with label Third Reich. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Third Reich. Show all posts

Saturday, July 07, 2007

Lessons Bush Learned from Hitler

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Bush learned how to slaughter civilians. In Iraq, US troops, commanded by Herr Bush slaughter some 10,000 Iraqi civilians per month. Bush will cite that as proof that his war crime is "winding down" but that's an absurd right wing spin.

The US slaughter rate in Iraq had been as high as 30,000 Iraqis per month, 1,000 per day. It was earlier this year that the Lancet study was made public by the British Guardian, which reported the extent to which Bush is "winning" the war against Iraqi civilians.

A monstrous war crime

With more than 650,000 civilians dead in Iraq, our government must take responsibility for its liesRichard Horton
Wednesday March 28, 2007
The Guardian

Our collective failure has been to take our political leaders at their word. This week the BBC reported that the government's own scientists advised ministers that the Johns Hopkins study on Iraq civilian mortality was accurate and reliable, following a freedom of information request by the reporter Owen Bennett-Jones. This paper was published in the Lancet last October. It estimated that 650,000 Iraqi civilians had died since the American and British led invasion in March 2003.

Immediately after publication, the prime minister's official spokesman said that the Lancet's study "was not one we believe to be anywhere near accurate". The foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, said that the Lancet figures were "extrapolated" and a "leap".
Not surprisingly, Bush responded: "I don't consider it a credible report". Recent updates to the report now estimate the number of civilian dead at well over one million. Bush calls that "kickin' ass". I call it mass murder, a capital crime perpetrated by George W. Bush. Meanwhile, Sydney Blumenthal says Bush knew Saddam had no WMD.
Bush knew Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction

Salon exclusive: Two former CIA officers say the president squelched top-secret intelligence, and a briefing by George Tenet, months before invading Iraq.

Sept. 6, 2007 | On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam's inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.

Nor was the intelligence included in the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which stated categorically that Iraq possessed WMD. No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD as the House of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq. The information, moreover, was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved in operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD.
As Salon broke that exclusive, we learned elsewhere that Bush was yucking it up with another right wing seed pod --Australia's PM, John Howard.
Today the US President will visit the National Maritime Museum to view the bell. It could be construed as an act of symmetry, given if Howard loses the election, this week would be the last time he and Bush see each other in their respective roles.

This was obviously apparent to Bush, who arrived in Australia in a chipper mood.

"We're kicking ass," he told Mark Vaile on the tarmac after the Deputy Prime Minister inquired politely of the President's stopover in Iraq en route to Sydney.
--By George: now it's all the way with Howard J
Bush deliberately defrauded the troops, the nation, the Congress, the world. He calls it "kickin' ass". I call it a capital crime!

Bush is now criminally culpable, subject to prosecution for capital crimes for the deaths of his every victim on either side. Words cannot describe the venal idiocy of this cretin so at ease with his disconnect with common sense and morality, so comfortable wallowing in the misery his lies have caused and continue to cause. Psychologists use the term "lack of empathy" to describe this pathology, better known among the volk as pure "evil"!

From the Third Reich, Bush learned how to exploit "terrorism" to consolidate his dictatorship. Bush is on the Hitler end of the political spectrum opposing the very principles of our founding. What Bush knows he most surely learned by way of his Grandfather's old trading partner --Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Lesson Number he summed up himself in one sentence.
Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death.
--Adolf Hitler
Bush learned how to rule ruthlessly. Hitler never got more than 37 percent of the vote in several elections called over a short period of time ending with an act of terrorism that Hitler would exploit to consolidate his dictatorship. That act was the Reichstag Fire, Hitler's 911.

It's hard to imagine that anyone would dare go back to the well given the press "Reichstag" gets. Nevertheless, the tactic, having proved successful for Nazis, would be tried again. No one ever accused Bush of being imaginative. His gang would simply repeat a tired, old Nazi tactic and expect the people to go along. And, for the most part, the people did precisely that.

On February 27, 1937, Hitler was having dinner with Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels when the phone rang to inform the future Fuhrer: "The Reichstag is on fire!" At the scene, Hitler and Goebbels, found Hermann Goring, later Hitler’s air minister, shouting "at the top of his lungs", blaming communists for an act of terrorism.

How Hitler became a dictator is recounted in many sources but William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is still among the very best.
From Goring's Reichstag President's Palace an underground passage, built to carry the central heating system, ran to the Reichstag building. Through this tunnel Karl Ernst, a former hotel bellhop who had become the Berlin S.A. leader, led a small detachment of storm troopers on the night of February 27 to the Reichstag, where they quickly scattered gasoline and self-igniting chemicals and then made their way quickly back to the palace the way they had come. At the same time a half-witted Dutch Communist with a passion for arson, Marinus van der Lubbe, had made his way into the huge, darkened and to him unfamiliar building and set some small fires of his own. This feeble-minded pyromaniac was a godsend to the Nazis. He had been picked up by the S.A. a few days before after having been overheard in a bar boasting that he had attempted to set fire to several public buildings and that he was going to try the Reichstag next.

The coincidence that the Nazis had found a demented Communist arsonist who was out to do exactly what they themselves had determined to do seems incredible but is nevertheless supported by the evidence. The idea for the fire almost certainly originated at the top with Goebbels and Goring. Hans Gisevius, an official in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior at the time, testified at Nuremberg that 'it was Goebbels who first thought of setting the Reichstag on fire' and Rudolph Diels, the Gestapo chief, added in an affidavit that 'Goring knew exactly how the fire was to be started' and had ordered him 'to prepare, prior to the fire, a list of people who were to be arrested immediately after it.' General Franz Halder, Chief of the German General Staff during the early part of World War II, recalled at Nuremberg how on one occasion Goring had boasted of his deed.
At a luncheon on the birthday of the Fuehrer in 1942 the conversation turned to the topic of the Reichstag building and its artistic value. I heard with my own ears when Goring interrupted the conversation and shouted: "The only one who really knows about the Reichstag is I, because I set it on fire!" With that he slapped his thigh with the flat of his hand.
The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich (Touchstone Edition, 1990, p. 192-)
Hitler ordered a round up of the usual suspects, in other words, his opposition, consisting largely of communists whom the Nazis could, with but a shred of credibility, blame for an act of bloody terrorism.

Nazis knew what goppers know now --that frightened and anxious people will willingly surrender the blessings of liberty. From Hitler's experience, Bush learned how to use a "Patriot Act" to crack down on dissent.

Hitler wasted no time. The very next day, he was in President Hindenburg's office urging the aging statesman to issue a patriot act, a decree entitled, “For the Protection of the People and the State.” Justified as a “defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state,” the decree suspended the constitutional guarantees pertaining to civil liberties:
Patriot Act vs, German Enabling Act:
The Decrees of 1933
(a) The February 28 Decree. One of the most repressive acts of the new Nazi government, this one allowed for the suspension of civil liberties ....The president was persuaded that the state was in danger and, hence, that the emergency measures embodied in the decree were necessary. Even though under Art. 48 of the constitution, the decree would have been withdrawn once the so-called emergency had passed, any hope of this happening was prevented by the establishment of Hitler's dictatorship following the Enabling Act (see below). It was in fact never withdrawn and remained until the end as an instrument of Nazi terror against ordinary citizens who ran foul of the regime.


ARTICLE 1. In virtue of paragraph 2, article 48,* of the German Constitution, the following is decreed as a defensive measure against communist acts of violence , endangering the state:
Sections 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further notice. Thus, restrictions on personal liberty [114], on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press [118], on the right of assembly and the right of association [124], and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic, and telephonic communications [117], and warrants for house-searches [115], orders for confiscation as well as restrictions on property [153], are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.


*Article 48 of the German Constitution of August 11, 1919: If public safety and order in Germany are materially disturbed or endangered, the President may take the necessary measures to restore public safety and order, and, if necessary, to intervene with the help of the armed forces. To this end he may temporarily suspend, in whole or in part, the fundamental rights established in Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, and 153 ...........
Patriot Act:
Section 218 which amends the "probable cause" requirement before conducting secret searches or surveillance to obtain evidence of a crime;
Sections 215, 218, 358, and 508 which permit law enforcement authorities to have broad access to sensitive mental health, library, business, financial, and educational records despite the existence of previously adopted state and federal laws which were intended to strengthen the protection of these types of records;
Sections 411 and 412 which give the Secretary of State broad powers to designate domestic groups as "terrorist organizations" and the Attorney General power to subject immigrants to indefinite detention or deportation even if no crime has been committed; and
Sections 507 and 508 which impose a mandate on state and local public universities who must collect information on students that may be of interest to the Attorney General.
Bush learned how to suspend civil liberties after a terrorist attack. It must be noted that Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio is the only candidate for President calling for a repeal of the Patriot Act. That tells me that the Democrats are not up to the challenge of restoring American democracy. The question now is one of some urgency: is it too late to save our nation? Is it too late to stop Bush? Are Americans screwed?

Just as Karl Rove spoke wistfully of a "permanent Republican majority", Hitler planned to establish a "permanent" majority of elected Nazis in the Reichstag. That body would later become Hitler's rubber stamp, passing whatever laws he desired, making all his crimes perfectly legal. Bush's lesson: make legal all the crimes you want and plan to commit; bully Congress into absolving you ex post facto for crimes already committed. Hire Alberto Gonzales to be the "enabler".

Two weeks after the Reichstag fire, Hitler requested the Reichstag to temporarily delegate its powers to him so that he could adequately deal with the crisis. Hitler denounced his opposition, shouting at them "Germany will be free, but not through you!” Hitler won the vote 441 to 84. It gave him a two-thirds majority needed to suspend the constitution. On March 23, 1933, the “Enabling Act”--a patriot act -- made Hitler dictator of Germany. It is not recorded whether he said, as did Bush much later: this would be a whole lot easier if this was a dictatorship ...just as long as I'm the dictator!

Just as Hitler cut a deal with Thyssen, Krupp, I.G. Farben et al, the DUMB-umvirate of Cheney/Bush/Rumsfeld carved up the map of the Middle East with big oil and Halliburton. Just as the Middle East is rich in oil, Poland was rich in coal from which synthetic fuels (to drive the Panzers) could be produced.

Bush used Hitler's play book. And, as it was then, it's all about energy. The esteemed historian John Keegan has written that Hitler might have won WWII had he kept Rommel supplied to seize the oil fields of the Middle East, rather than invading Russia. It would have all been over --save for an "insurgency" that most surely would have opposed Rommel.

Bush learned from his grandfather that there is big money -- a killing in fact --in the industrial murder business. Our own Treasury Department is the source for the following information about how US corporations, primarily US Steel, for whom Prescott Bush was banker, helped Hitler arm and wage war on the world while carrying out mass murder throughout Europe. US steel made it possible for Hitler to arm for war, producing the following percentages of war munitions for Hitler and his Nazi war lords: Pig iron 50.8%; Pipe & tubes 45.5%; Universal plate 41.4%; Galvanized sheet 38.5%; Heavy plate 36%; Explosives 35%; Wire 22.1%.
George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.

The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.

His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.
--
How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power
In effect, Prescott Bush was Hitler’s American banker.

Bush also learned how to outsource murder and atrocity in ways that benefit his right wing supporters. Called "private enterprise", it is, in fact, corporatism, Mussolini's word for farming out the work of killing to partners, robber barons, death merchants and hired murderers like Blackwater! Blackwater is a gang of paid thugs whom National Public Radio charges has strong connections with America's radical, religious, fascist right wing.
NPR: The war in Iraq has been partly outsourced to private military contractors which are performing many of the services that used to be done by the military. My guest, Jeremy Scahill, has written a book about one of those companies, Blackwater, which he describes as "the world's most mercenary army and the embodiment of the Bush administration policy of privatizing military functions." The company, which was founded in 1996, made headlines in 2004 when four of its men were ambushed and set on fire by Sunni gunmen in Fallujah. The charred remains of two of the men were hung on a bridge for public display. The families of the four men are suing Blackwater for wrongful death, raising a lot of questions about accountability and oversight when private contractors play a major role in war. Jeremy Scahill is a Polk Award-winning journalist who is a frequent contributor to The Nation and a correspondent for the radio and TV show, "Democracy Now." Jeremy Scahill -- if you wanted to write about a private military contractor, why did you focus on Blackwater?
Bush is ideologically allied with Hegel, for whom the "state" is "God". That notion opposes every "American" value, including that of truly religious folk who find the equation of "God" with the "state" a blasphemous notion. And so it is, not merely of religion but of reason.

Bushism is anathema to American ideals espoused by real patriots like Thomas Jefferson whom Bush and Dick Cheney would have derided as "pro-French". James Madison who wrote the first draft of our Constitution would have been demonized as "quaint" by idiots like Gen. Hayden and Al Gonzales.

Bush must surely hate our Declaration of Independence. In it, Thomas Jefferson sides generally with "insurgencies" against despots. Bush will, of course, have missed or dismissed obvious analogies to Iraqi civilians upon whom the US has waged not a war --but a crime punishable by death under our own federal statutes!

It was William Pitt, Earl of Chatham in England who denounced the British position in our war of independence. His words ring so very true today, words that Bush must surely hate:
If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms -- never! never! never!

--William Pitt the elder, 1st Earl of Chatham, Viscount Pitt of Burton-Pynsent , byname The Great Commoner, 1708-1778
Bush is blinded by raw, ruthless ambition. Like Dick Cheney and the robber barons of privilege, they are blind to obvious analogy. America is not fighting for freedom against terrorism in Iraq. Rather, Bush embodies monolithic corporate totalitarianism and the theft of Iraq's natural resources. Never mind that Iraq was a sovereign nation that had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with 911, Bush's ex post facto lies about it notwithstanding. The record clearly proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Bush's quarrel with Saddam had to do with the fact that Saddam favored lower prices for oil while Bush, OPEC, and the Saudis in particular favored higher prices.

Bush is anti-American. Bush is not fighting for Americans in Iraq. He is fighting to further enrich corporate fascist powers who would enslave you! Bush has more in common with Hitler and Stalin than with Madison or Jefferson.

The American republic at the time Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence was the latest development in a liberal trend that had begun with the English Civil War. Certainly, Oliver Cromwell dismissed Parliament in a fit of pique; certainly he arrogated unto himself the powers of an absolute dictator but stopped short of taking the title. He was, he said, a Lord Protector. Charles I was most certainly England's last absolute despot in the Hobbesian, Hegelian sense of the word.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

911 Culprits? Why the Towers Really Fell

There is probable cause to begin an official investigation of George W. Bush in connection with the mass murders of US citizens on 911. In US law, investigations proceed from probable cause that a crime has been committed. Commonly, it refers to a standard by which an officer may make an arrest in connection with a crime. There are other, related senses of the term -but for our purposes here we focus upon the legal standard by which a grand jury may assert that a crime has been committed and that charges may be brought against a person or persons.

We know that a crime was committed on 911. George W. Bush, of course, quashed all investigations before they could begin. Since when are crimes not investigated? Since the ascension of Ronald Regan who similarly got away with Iran/Contra, an act of treason if there ever was one. Treason, in this case, being "aiding and abetting" an avowed enemy of the United States as defined by the US government itself.

It is not too late, however, to begin such an investigation. There is no statute of limitations on mass murder. Congress should appoint and empower a special prosecutor with whatever authority is needed to subpoena George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice et al. Rumfeld, by the way, is already on record referring to the shooting down of Flight 93 and also to a missile --not an airliner --crashing into the Pentagon. Powell, meanwhile, has already apologized for having presented to the UN a pack of lies about Iraq's alleged WMD. Now is the time to pressure a criminal conspiracy that shows many signs of falling apart. Now is the time to go for the jugular -and the truth -about what this partisan, criminal conspiracy has done to subert the rule of law in this nation.

Critics of 911 officialdom need not tolerate quietly the absurd, blanket criticisms of "conspiracy theorists". Aside from being ad hominem attacks, they merely label. Bush "theories", meanwhile, insult the intelligence of every American with the most absurd official conspiracy theories to ever come down the pike.

If "conspiracies" did not exist, most crimes would be petty except perhaps murder and egregious assaults. Conspiracies are rather common. The law books are full of them. Google or Findlaw the word "conspiracy". You will find at least 200 years of precedent and case law having to do with "conspiracies". I daresay most crimes are conspiratorial in nature. What is a gang, if not a conspiracy? Apparently SCOTUS never got the Bush memo that "conspiracies" do not exist. It might have spared the justices a lot of time deciding cases about something that is said not to exist. Even Bushies felt constrained to posit the existence of a vast conspiracy -al Qaeda! Why are Bush theories, full of gaping holes, logical inconsistencies, and misstatements of fact, given such great weight when Bush is known to have lied about everything else?

Read this first: 70 Reasons to Doubt the official conspiracy theory. Then read Maureen O'Farrell.
Sept. 11 commission co-chair Lee Hamilton's prediction that another terrorist attack is all but certain, for example, when combined with concerns about George W. Bush's imperial ambitions, creates the kind of speculation the founding fathers engaged in, long before FOX News was there to pooh-pooh concerns about tyrannical designs.

And though predictions and conspiracy theories are often speculative and contrived, it must be remembered that the term "tin foil hat" has its roots in historical fact and the tendency to tag a "gate" onto scandals proves that some conspiracy theories do, in fact, turn out to be true.

--Maureen Farrell, Top 10 'Conspiracy Theories' about George W. Bush, Part 1

Let's make something clear at the outset: probable cause that George W. Bush committed a crime is NOT a "theory" of any sort. It is what it is: probable cause, a minimum legal standard that must be met before an arrest and charge. Secondly, I am less interested in any theory, including the official one, than I am in finding the evidence that only a real investigation can turn up. I am interested in the admissible evidence that will prove beyond reasonable doubt that Bush is guilty of the crimes that may be charged him should such an investigation proceed. First, the big holes in Bush's set of official and often contradictory theories:
  • Jet fuel cannot burn hot enough or long enough to melt steel. [See: Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse?]
  • No steel building has ever fallen from fire --but on 911 not one, not two, but three buildings fell into their footprints within seconds of beginning descent.
  • The "hijackers" said to have piloted 757's into the twin towers couldn't even fly Cessnas, let alone airliners.

The 14th-century philosopher William of Occam said multiplicity ought not to be posited without necessity. In other words the simplest solution is most probably correct. Logically, the simplest solution is that solution with the fewest number of unproven assumptions. Or, in the words of Dr. John Lienhard of the University of Houston --we should make no more assumptions than we really need to explain anything. This concept is called Occam's Razor for William of Occam who articulated it.

In Bush's case, the official conspiracy theory explains nothing. Official theories are constantly papered over with new but inadequate hypotheses and, in the end, nothing said by the Bush gang explains anything at all. Nothing at all can be verified in any way. Nothing at all said by Bush about 911 can be believed. That nothing at all can be verified is convenient for Bush but it hardly exculpates him. Lack of evidence itself may not be evidence of guilt but lack of evidence because investigations were quashed or obstructed is something else again.

Had there been any truth to the official conspiracy theory, identifiable wreckage and a black box would have been recovered from the Pentagon. Rumsfeld inadvertently told the truth; he referred to a a "missile" [his word] that struck the Pentagon. That would, of course, explain no black box. It would also explain the lack of airliner wreckage. See how simply "truth" explains what is left inexplicable with lies. Simply, no airliner struck the Pentagon. It is the very vindication of William of Occam.

In the meantime, check the official Arlington National Cemetery Web site. None of those buried in connection with 911 were positively identified. Unknown "ashes" were said to have been hijackers! Oh really? Then why did they not show up on the Flight manifest? Show me some admissible evidence that said hijackers were even on board.

It's time for Bush to put up or shut up or, better, give himself up to Federal Marshalls! If Bush and his PNAC buds are innocent, then Investigate 911! What have innocent people to fear from a fair, complete and real investigation? It's time to put Bush, Marvin Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condolezza Rice, and John Ashcroft under oath. There is probable cause now to have the lot of them arrested by Federal Marshalls. There is probable cause to begin an investigation of the Bush White House for the mass murder of US citizens.

Bush-Linked Company Handled Security for the WTC, Dulles and United

by Margie Burns

George W. Bush's brother was on the board of directors of a company providing electronic security for the World Trade Center, Dulles International Airport and United Airlines, according to public records. The company was backed by an investment firm, the Kuwait-American Corp., also linked for years to the Bush family.

The security company, formerly named Securacom and now named Stratesec, is in Sterling, Va.. Its CEO, Barry McDaniel, said the company had a 'completion contract' to handle some of the security at the World Trade Center 'up to the day the buildings fell down.'

It also had a three-year contract to maintain electronic security systems at Dulles Airport, according to a Dulles contracting official. Securacom/Stratesec also handled some security for United Airlines in the 1990s, according to McDaniel, but it had been completed before his arriving on the board in 1998.

McDaniel confirmed that the company has security contracts with the Department of Defense, including the US Army, but did not detail the nature of the work, citing security concerns. It has an ongoing line with the General Services Administration - meaning that its bids for contracts are noncompetitive - and also did security work for the Los Alamos laboratory before 1998.
...

Marvin Bush joined Securacom when it was capitalized by the Kuwait-American Corporation, a private investment firm in DC that was the security company's major investor, sometimes holding a controlling interest. Marvin Bush has not responded to telephone calls and e-mails for comment.

KuwAm has been linked to the Bush family financially since the Gulf War. One of its principals and a member of the Kuwaiti royal family, Mishal Yousef Saud al Sabah, served on the board of Stratesec.

The managing director at KuwAm, Wirt D. Walker III, was also a principal at Stratesec, and Walker, Marvin Bush and al Sabah are listed in SEC filings as significant shareholders in both companies during that period.

Marvin Bush's last year on the board at Stratesec coincided with his first year on the board of HCC Insurance, formerly Houston Casualty Co., one of the insurance carriers for the WTC. He left the HCC board in November 2002.

It's all an unbelievable series of incredible and fantastic coincidences. I wonder --what are the odds that the brother of occupant of the Oval Office would just happen to be in charge of WTC security at a time when wild al Qaeda "evil doers" were plotting to bring down the very buildings for which which Marvin was responsible.

This just in from the Daily Scare:

New Study from Pilots for 9/11 Truth: No Boeing 757 Hit the Pentagon

By Jim Fetzer

A study of the black box data provided by the government to Pilots for 9/11 Truth has confirmed the previous findings of Scholars for 9/11 Truth that no Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon on 9/11. "We have had four lines of proof that no Boeing 757 hit the building," said James Fetzer, founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth. "This new study by Pilots drives another nail into a coffin of lies told the American people by The 9/11 Commission".

The new society, an international organization of pilots and aviation professionals, petitioned the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) under the Freedom of Information Act and obtained its 2002 report on American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757 that, according to the official account, hit the ground floor of the Pentagon after it skimmed over the lawn at 500 mph plus, taking out a series of lamp posts in the process. The pilots not only obtained the flight data but created a computer animation to demonstrate what it told them. ...
A related development. Michael Moore now says that he wants to get to the bottom of 911.

Excellent 9/11 Resources:

The Bush/Cheney Holocaust in Iraq: Criminality, Immorality, Incompetence and Desperation

70 Reasons to doubt

Washington Post and MSNBC Reveal Growing Power, Prestige of the 9/11 Movement

BBC Article Titled "The 9/11 Conspiracy Movement"

Time Magazine Explores 9/11 Conspiracies and Poll Showing Many Believe 9/11 Cover-up

CNN Gives Major Coverage to 9/11 Cover-up in March 2006 With Charlie Sheen, Others

Ex-FBI Chief Accuses 9/11 Commission of Cover-up in Wall Street Journal

New York Times article on 9/11 movement, 9/11 polls, 9/11 convention

Association of Influential Scholars Challenges 9/11 Commission Results - Miami Herald
Los Angeles Times Questions Official 9/11 Story in Revealing Interview

ABC News: US Military Planned to Orchestrate Terrorism Against US Citizens as War Pretext
What some have called War corporatism, I call fascism or Nazism. It goes far beyond mere "conspiracy theories", a label designed to confuse and distract. The real culprit is called the Project for the New American Century. As pointed out, their goals are hardly secret but that does not excuse them any more than Hitler's boast that he had waged war on the Jew in full view of the world could have expiated him from the execution that most surely awaited him.

My definition of "war corporatism" is simple: Bush, indeed the US government, is in the death business. Just as Adolf Hitler partnered with the likes of I.G. Farben, Thyssen and Krupp, the US government has partnered with the big defense contractors to make of war a racket. Face up to the undeniable implications: the US government, under Bush, is a criminal enterprise. That, not a raggedly band of terrorists up in the hills, is why the towers fell on 911.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Why Bush Cannot Leave Iraq

Sadly, America tasted victory in 1945 and has been fascinated since by war. The US won World War II but failed to learn the lessons of victory. And, again, in 1975, the US lost Viet Nam but failed to the learn the lessons of defeat.

We must not forget Korea, officially ending in stalemate in 1953. Since WWII, then, the US has played at war - Grenada, Panama - hoping recently to undo Viet Nam, hoping to recapture the magic of VE Day. Thomas Wolfe said it best: you can't go home again.

Wouldn't it be easier if Bush suddenly went sane and withdrew from Iraq? He cannot. He cannot do so for several reasons: his metastized ego and effeminate machismo among them. Most importantly, Bush cannot leave because he has not won. Bush cannot leave because the US cannot live with the political vacuum that will be left in its wake. For the same reasons, the US cannot stay.

Let's set the scene. In those halcyon days just prior to the collapse of the Third Reich, it was clear that victory would be complete if shared with Britain and the Soviet Union. The end of Hitler's Reich topped even Wagnerian opera for its Sturm und Drang. As a novel, it would have been over the top. As opera, it is tolerated. We might even have tolerated a thickly orchestrated score. But what of the libretto: a mad dictator holes up to commit suicide after having murdered several million people. What a log line! Who but a opera fan could believe it?

Like a noble Collie that develops a taste for sheep, America got a whiff of blood, a taste of war and liked it. Tragically, nothing since that time has bothered to follow script. Nothing about World War II prepared the US for Viet Nam. Nothing about Viet Nam prepared the US for Iraq.

Having supposedly learned the lessons of Viet Nam, the US would not repeat the mistakes. Bushies assured us that a civil war was unlikely, the US would be greeted as liberators, and, after drafting a Constitution, all would be well. Emperor Bush would wear an embarassingly ill-fitting flight suit.

But the real story in Iraq is one of Bush ineptitude and delusion. The Civil War did break out. We were greeted, eventually, by a resistance not as liberators but as occupiers. The drafting of a Constitution excluded the Sunnis and hardened the resistance. Moreover, if there were no terrorists in Iraq prior to the US invasion, Iraq is now a breeding ground for terrorists:

As the war against Iraq created a political vacuum, the nation has been busy sorting itself out along sectarian lines. Bush had not wanted to take sides but is, in fact, defending with his "surge" a Shi'ite regime against a Sunni insurgency. Thus, Bush has committed the biggest, the worst blunder that he could have made. A regional proxy war is not only a very real possibility, it is extremely likely.

Civil wars are hard to end. In my lifetime, the average length of a civil war has been some 10 years. Civil wars are primarily guerrilla wars or, in the lexicon of Viet Nam, asymetrical conflicts. They are fought by loosely organized resistance groups using tactics best described by Che Guevara (See: Fundamentals of Guerrilla Warfare). The US Civil war was a prominent exception consisting, as it did, of conventional armies and well-defined fronts. Modern conflicts resemble the more recent wars in Algeria, Viet Nam, Colombia, Sri Lanka, and Sudan.

It seems unavoidable at this point. As Juan Cole reports, a Saudi official recently admitted that Riyadh will intervene in Iraq if the US withdraws its troops. This will be the case if Sunnies believe themselves threatened by a US puppet, Shi'ite regime. But that's only part of the story. Iraqi Kurds have all but declared their independence. It is prudent to ask whether Turkey will invade what is now Kurdish territory. And what of Iran? It will most certainly ally with Iraqi Shi'ites.

I am inclined to say that Bush has no options. Events on the ground are completely out of his control. Anything done by Bush now will only confirm the disastrous nature of his decision to go to war. It illustrates the moral value of truth itself. Bush could only have gone to war, as he did, upon a pack of malicious, blackhearted, treasonous lies. A single truth would have prevented a human tragedy of biblical proportions.

But faced with ignominious and humiliating defeat, Bush will try to force the various parties to reach an accommodation. How is he to do this, having lost all credibility? In the weeks ahead, however, you can expect the Bush gang of liars to come up with yet another novel rationale for "staying the course". Withdrawing now, they will say, will divide Iraq. That is GOP-speak for we will have to negotiate with whomever gets the oil. The better alternative is an honest broker negotiating a peace along the lines of Northern Ireland or Lebanon. But it would require a statesman in the White House to pull that off. We haven't had such a man since Jimmy Carter.






Why Conservatives Hate America




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