Saturday, May 05, 2007

BBC: 'Bottom Line, 911 is an inside job'

Will the Government kill its own citizens? It always has done. More about that later. But first - a fresh look at what the BBC calls "America's biggest crime scene":

The Conspiracy Files investigates the growing number of conspiracy theories surrounding the 9/11 attacks.

Incredibly some believe the American Government allowed or actively helped the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Those who question the official version believe the World Trade Center buildings were actually demolished by explosives; others ask why there was so little damage to the Pentagon's outer wall if a plane really had hit it.

- BBC

This documentary, as no American piece has dared, critically examines Bush's "official conspiracy theory" of the events of 911. It is a fact that the US air force was out to lunch, arriving at least 15 minutes late when the smoke had all but cleared. Why? The government has never explained that. Considering that 911 was never really investigated, the time to re-examine events is way overdue.

There are several glaring holes in Bush's official conspiracy theory. Some of them are enough singly to discredit the entire official theory. The missing wreckage in PA and at the Pentagon are good examples. No wreckage = no truth to the official terrorist conspiracy theory.

Another glaring red flag is the deliberate pulling of Building 7, ordered pulled by building owner Larry Silverstein. He is on record with the BBC, admitting that he, in fact, ordered Building 7 pulled:

The point must be made that it takes time to pull off a controlled demolition. Building 7 fell into its own "footprint" within an hour, perhaps 30 minutes, of Silverstein's order. That means the building had been prepared, in advance, for a controlled demolition. Someone knew of the "attacks" well in advance and prepared to take advantage.
The violent blasts and billowing dust clouds may look chaotic, but a building implosion is actually one of the most precisely planned, delicately balanced engineering feats you'll ever see.

...

Demolition blasters load explosives on several different levels of the building so that the building structure falls down on itself at multiple points. When everything is planned and executed correctly, the total damage of the explosives and falling building material is sufficient to collapse the structure entirely, so cleanup crews are left with only a pile of rubble.

In order to demolish a building safely, blasters must map out each element of the implosion ahead of time. The first step is to examine architectural blueprints of the building, if they can be located, to determine how the building is put together. Next, the blaster crew tours the building (several times), jotting down notes about the support structure on each floor. Once they have gathered all the raw data they need, the blasters hammer out a plan of attack. Drawing from past experiences with similar buildings, they decide what explosives to use, where to position them in the building and how to time their detonations. In some cases, the blasters may develop 3-D computer models of the structure so they can test out their plan ahead of time in a virtual world.

- How Stuff Works

It was most certainly Silverstein himself who made the decision . On another BBC video that I have not been able to acquire, Silverstein is seen giving the order to "pull".

To sum up this point: you can't just order a pretty, neat, perfectly controlled demolition and have it take place perfectly within thirty minutes to an hour. The most probable culprits are those who had been in charge of WTC security (GWB's brother, Marvin), the City of New York, the White House. They must think us stupid.

The burden of proof has always been with Bush and his evil minions. Bush would have it otherwise. I remain unconvinced that two airliners, however spectacular the crash, would have created - perfectly - the conditions required for such neat pancakes. Bushies have expected us to believe an outlandish tale though they have made no case.

Then there is Bush himself claiming absurdly to have seen the first airliner crash the first tower. That's impossible. There was no network news coverage simply because "no one" knew it was going to happen. Or did they? Did Bush know?
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Jordan. Well, Jordan, you're not going to believe what state I was in when I heard about the terrorist attack. I was in Florida. And my Chief of Staff, Andy Card -- actually, I was in a classroom talking about a reading program that works. I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on. And I used to fly, myself, and I said, well, there's one terrible pilot. I said, it must have been a horrible accident.

But I was whisked off there, I didn't have much time to think about it. And I was sitting in the classroom, and Andy Card, my Chief of Staff, who is sitting over here, walked in and said, "A second plane has hit the tower, America is under attack."

- Orange County Convention Center Orlando, Florida, President Meets with Displaced Workers in Town Hall Meeting

Bush could only have seen the first crash had there been a closed circuit system set up in advance, perhaps installed by the CIA for the purpose of showing the attacks to Bush. The implications of such a system are staggering. Bush's comments - taken at face value - amount to evidence that such an installation had been prepared in anticipation of the attacks. If that should turn out to be true, it is evidence of Bush's criminal complicity in an act involving the mass murder of US citizens. Such an act is not only mass murder, it is high treason, a betrayal of a nation and its people. I cannot think of a more heinous crime short of Hitler's campaign of genocide against the Jews of Europe. Should that turn out to be the case, hanging is too kind; a firing squad too honorable.

Another troubling factor: the official conspiracy theorists have never produced a crashed airliner. Not a single scrap has ever been traced to any airliner, let alone Flights 77 or 93. I have often challenged: show me the wreckage.

As a journalist, I never covered a plane crash that did not leave lots of identifiable wreckage and bodies. The Pentagon site is something else. There is no wreckage that is identifiable as being from an airliner. The entry hole is much too small. There is a "a punch out" hole in one of the innner rings, but again, it is much, much too small to have been made by the fueselage. But it may be about the right size for a missle. That might account for Rumsfeld's slip when he referred to "...the missile that struck this buildling."
Here we're talking about plastic knives and using an American Airlines flight filed with our citizens, and the missile to damage this building and similar (inaudible) that damaged the World Trade Center.

-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Department of Defense Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense,Public Affairs News Transcript


Would the US government kill its own citizens? Law abiding American citizens have been shot and killed for exercising the very first "freedom" guaranteed them by our founding fathers. That is, they were murdered for opposing what they believed to be wrong and daring to say so publicly.

It was called the Kent State massacre. Four died. Despite the fact that the National Guard must surely have been deliberately armed with live ammunition, no one, to this day , has been held to account for this crime against the people of the United States.

The Kent State shootings, also known as the May 4 massacre or Kent State massacre, occurred at Kent State University in the city of Kent, Ohio. Guardsmen fired off 67 shots in 13 seconds. Four students were killed and nine others wounded.

The students were protesting the American invasion of Cambodia which President Richard Nixon launched on April 25, and announced in a television address five days later.


Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young: Ohio

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
Four dead in Ohio.
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

If you are too young to have memories of that time, I must tell you that the President of the United States was Richard Nixon who would later resign his office in disgrace - not because he waged an illegal war, ordered "carpet bombing" or sanctioned the pernicious use of "agent orange" but because he would most surely have been impeached for having played a role in covering up the GOP break-in of Democratic headquarters. I have often wondered if that is the date on which the GOP ceased being a political party and became a criminal conspiracy, a crime syndicate.

It is equally interesting that in the three articles of impeachment drawn up against Richard Nixon, there is nary a word about his illegal orders to bomb and invade Cambodia, a neutral country. There is not one word about US support for a "string of faceless" generals in South Viet Nam, most of whom assumed power backed by the CIA. There is no justice if Slobadan Milosovic can be brought to trial in the International Court while American "presidents" routinely retire in peace, like Roman Emperors, to write their memoirs beyond the reach of international justice and international law.

That anyone could have supported the endless quagmire in Viet Nam, the bombing of neutral Cambodia, the seemingly endless series of atrocities and murders that can be charged to as many as four American presidents, is as unthinkable as is the recent GOP debate of Bush's US policy in Iraq. That anyone opposing this mindless stupidity would have been shot dead for opposing it is even more appalling and horrifying in retrospect.

Bush has since 911 impugned the patriotism of anyone daring to question his official conspiracy theories. Personally, I will tolerate any number of "theories" if they are not intended to deceive as the Bush theories most certainly are. But for the skeptical few who never trusted him, Bush seemed to have succeeded in fooling all of the people at least some of the time. Still - the case for the official conspiracy theory is Bush's to make and he hasn't made it. He's merely stonewalled every investigation and waged war on critics and dissent. It's time Bush be made to put up or shut up. He must step down or be impeached and removed from office. There is probable cause now that he be tried for treason for heinous crimes committed against the people of the United States themselves.

I will tolerate a theory - even official ones put forward in good faith. But no good citizen must be expected to tolerate deliberate, bald faced lies by its government. The Bush administration now lacks any credibility. Just as nothing said by Bush about anything has been true, most of what Bush has said about 911 can be proven false. The rest is either inconsistent, unverifiable or it is, prima facie, a deliberate lie.

Despite the Mugabe regime's perverse use of the law as an instrument of terror and tyranny, there is a recognized right of a people to resort to rebellion against tyranny and oppression. International law, political morality and even Christian doctrine all recognize that the people have an inalienable right to resort to rebellion against tyranny in certain circumstances.

- Adv. Lucas Nkomo, The right to revolt against tyranny

The author of our Declaration of Indepedence may have foreseen this turn of events.
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

- Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence

And from Che Guevarra's Art of Guerilla Warfare
It must always be kept in mind that there is a necessary minimum without which the establishment and consolidation of the first center is not practicable. People must see clearly the futility of maintaining the fight for social goals within the framework of civil debate. When the forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law; peace is considered already broken.

In these conditions popular discontent expresses itself in more active forms. An attitude of resistance finally crystallizes in an outbreak of fighting, provoked initially by the conduct of the authorities. Where a government has come into power through some form of popular vote, fraudulent or not, and maintains at least an appearance of constitutional legality, the guerrilla outbreak cannot be promoted, since the possibilities of peaceful struggle have not yet been exhausted.

- Che Guevarra, The Art of Guerilla Warfare

In other words, Bush's stolen elections do not in themselves justify the taking up of arms against the "government". But in the mass murder of citizens by the state itself may be found every justification for an armed rebellion against the tyranny.

As Jefferson put it, the people may "abolish" the government. As Che put it, "when the forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law; peace is considered already broken." The people of the United States are, therefore, already at war with a rogue and criminal "President" who launched a pre-emptive strike against them. Bush has waged and is waging war against the people of the United States.

A fugue-like counterpoint threads itself through our idealistic youth like Pachelbel's Canon in D. The Beat Goes On. Sadly, the lesson of history is no one ever learns the lessons of history. Georges Santayana may be over-quoted these days but it is not his fault that no one has said it better:
Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it.

- Georges Santayana, American Philosopher

An update:

Ex-CIA analyst: Forged 'yellowcake' memo 'leads right back to' Cheney

A former CIA analyst claims that falsified documents which were meant to show that Iraq's Saddam Hussein regime had been trying to procure yellowcake uranium from Niger can be traced back to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Appearing on MSNBC's Tucker Carlson Show, Ray McGovern who served in the CIA for twenty-seven years, said, "the [forged] memo leads right back to the doorstep of the Vice President of the United States."

According to McGovern, former CIA Director George Tenet told his "coterie of malleable managers" at the CIA to create a National Intelligence Estimate "to the terms of reference of Dick Cheney's speech of August 26, 2002, where Dick Cheney said for the first time Saddam Hussein could have a nuclear weapon in a year, he's got all kinds of chemical, he's got all kinds of biological weapons."

McGovern, who at one time chaired National Intelligence Estimates and prepared the President's Daily Brief, also claimed to have evidence that the memo leads back to Cheney, but he would not say what it was, except that the names of the people involved were "in the public domain."

In an op-ed posted at Buzzflash, McGovern argues, "If any good can come out of the intelligence/policy debacle regarding Iraq, it would be the clear lesson that intelligence crafted to dovetail with the predilections of policymakers can bring disaster. The role that Tenet, McLaughlin, and their small coterie of malleable managers played as willing accomplices in the corruption of intelligence has made a mockery of the verse chiseled into the marble at the entrance to CIA headquarters: 'You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.'"

McGovern also calls Tenet a "pathetic figure" who is trying to "justify himself for unjustifiable activity." Tenet, in his new book, claims that the Bush administration distorted his use of the term "slam dunk" in reference to intelligence that ultimately led to the Iraq war (RAW STORY's coverage is here).
And this just in:

Dick Cheney is the Vice President of Torture


The following is from Damien, a regular contributor to the comments section of this blog. Damien's post is precisely to the point and exceedingly well-researched. It deserves more space than is available in the comments section:

Larissa Alexandrovna has done detailed work on the Niger forgeries. The background is complex. Her conclusion regarding the Niger forgery itself: the focus on Michael Ledeen is misplaced. Look instead to Elliott Abrams, Harold Rhode (also 1 2 3) and Cheney's Office of Special Plans (OSP) for Iraq and the Rendon Group (also 1 2 3 4), a DOD propaganda contractor.

According to Larissa, the White House plans, from even before Bush came to office in 2000, included an attack upon Iran which, at least for now, has been derailed. In this capacity Michael Ledeen was brought in by Cheney - not because of his Iran expertise - but because of his contacts with people like Manucher Ghorbanifar (also here), an expatriate Iranian arms dealer previously banned by the CIA for providing false intelligence. Ledeen's efforts to generate 'marketable intelligence' in relation to Iran put him in contact with Italians, some of whom ended up in delivering the Niger forged document to the US. This has led many to believe - falsely, says Larissa - that Ledeen was involved in the Niger forgery.

She also mentions Lawrence Franklin, a US Air Force Reserve colonel who has pleaded guilty to passing information about US policy towards Iran to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) while working for the DOD.

The problem with this popular account of Franklin's activities is as Juan Cole points out:

"Franklin was not giving the directive to AIPAC in order to provide them with information. He was almost certainly seeking feedback from them on elements of it. He was asking, "Do you like this? Should it be changed in any way?"

"And, he might also have been prepping AIPAC for the lobbying campaign scheduled for early in 2005, when Congress will have to be convinced to authorize military action, or at least covert special operations, against Iran. AIPAC probably passed the directive over to Israel for the same reason--not to inform, but to seek input. That is, AIPAC and Israel were helping write US policy toward Iran, just as they had played a key role in fomenting the Iraq war."


He makes a further telling point:

"The Niger forgeries also try to implicate Iran. Indeed, the idea of a joint Iraq/Iran nuclear plot was so far-fetched that it is what initially made the Intelligence and Research division of the US State Department suspicious of the forgeries, even before the discrepancies of dates and officials in Niger were noticed."

And Cole describes (also here) how in mid 2003 Franklin, Ledeen, Rhode and Ghorbanifar undermined an offer by Iran to turn over five al-Qaida operatives (including al-Zarqawi) in exchange for Washington dropping its support for Mujahadeen el Khalq (MEK), an Iranian terrorist group based in Iraq.

Larissa continues: "Franklin went to Rome to discuss Iran and his intelligence espionage was all about Iran as well. Ledeen, Ghorbanifar, and Franklin all focused on Iran and continued well after the 2003 start of the Iraq war. Rhode, on the other hand, knew Judith Miller and Chalabi quite well, with all three meeting in Iraq in April of 2003. Rhode was part of all of the Rome meetings and most of the Paris meetings. So why has no one ever focused on Harold Rhode? Because everyone has been too busy focusing on Ledeen and the Iran arm of the policy -- myself included, but for a different reason... In the end, it does not matter who actually sticker taped the forgeries together, rather, what is key is who ordered it and who paid for it and how it was then used. To me, that is the story."

The key personnel in regard to the Niger forgery itself according to Larissa, are: Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rhode, the DOD and the Rendon Group all acting through the OSP for Iraq.

The OSP for Iraq was a creation of Rumsfeld (and Cheney) in order to obtain doctored intelligence using the DOD that would support the case for attacking Iraq - 'intelligence' they knew they would not be forthcoming from regular intelligence channels such as the NSA and the CIA because they had no basis in fact.

The OSP:

"The Office of Special Plans, which existed from September, 2002, to June, 2003, was a Pentagon unit created by Donald Rumsfeld and led by Douglas Feith, to supply senior Bush administration officials with raw intelligence (unvetted by intelligence analysts, see Stovepiping) pertaining to Iraq. An allegedly similar unit, called the Iranian Directorate, was created in 2006 to deal with intelligence on Iran."

"In February 2007, the Pentagon's inspector general issued a report that concluded that Feith's office "developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al Qaida relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsisent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers." The report found that these actions were "inappropriate" though not "illegal." Senator Carl Levin, Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, stated that:

"The bottom line is that intelligence relating to the Iraq-al-Qaeda relationship was manipulated by high-ranking officials in the Department of Defense to support the administration's decision to invade Iraq. The inspector general's report is a devastating condemnation of inappropriate activities in the DOD policy office that helped take this nation to war.""

(It's also worth mentioning here that Rice received a memo raising serious questions about the uranium in October 2002, three months before Bush included the Niger reference in his SOTU address. Stephen Hadley, received two memos as well as a phone call warning from Tenet. So both Hadley and Rice were prepared to mislead Congress over Iraq. It should be assumed that they would lie about 9/11 if they felt it were politically expedient to do so.)

All of the OSP guys found an ideological home at the American Enterprise Institute. More here:

According to insiders, Rhode worked with Feith to purge career Defense officials who weren't sufficiently enthusiastic about the muscular anti-Iraq crusade that Wolfowitz and Feith wanted. Rhode appeared to be "pulling people out of nooks and crannies of the Defense Intelligence Agency and other places to replace us with," says a former analyst. "They wanted nothing to do with the professional staff. And they wanted us the fuck out of there."

The unofficial, off-site recruitment office for Feith and Rhode was the American Enterprise Institute...Headquartered at AEI is Richard Perle...chairman of the Pentagon's influential Defense Policy Board. Rhode, along with Michael Rubin, a former AEI staffer who is also now at the Pentagon, was a ubiquitous presence at AEI conferences on Iraq over the past two years, and the two Pentagon officials seemed almost to be serving as stage managers for the AEI events, often sitting in the front row and speaking in stage whispers to panelists and AEI officials.

Just after September 11, 2001, Feith and Rhode recruited David Wurmser, the director of Middle East studies for AEI, to serve as a Pentagon consultant. Wurmser would be the founding participant of the unnamed, secret intelligence unit at the Pentagon, set up in Feith's office, which would be the nucleus of the Defense Department's Iraq disinformation campaign
.

On September 4, 2004, the Washington Post reported that FBI counterintelligence investigators had questioned David Wurmser, along with Harold Rhode, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith about their involvement in passing classified information to Ahmad Chalabi and AIPAC. David Wurmser's wife, Israeli-born Meyrav Wurmser, co-authored for Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996 an Israeli policy document (A Clean Break) that called for the overthrow of Iraq and Iran in pusuit of Israeli security in the Middle East.

What we have is a cabal of right wingers establishing their own intelligence program through the Defence Department and bypassing the CIA and NSA. They have strong ties to AIPAC, support Israel's foreign policy goals (which involve the invasion of countries in the Middle East), possess an ideological home in the AEI, are financially tied to major defense industries. A number of them are former Iran Contra agents willing to lie to Congress. The have utilisied a private industry -the Rendon Group - with a track record of destabilising countries and controlling intelligence in support US foreign policy. And they have been prepared to forgoe pursuing al Qaeda if it conflicts with other foreign policy goals - such as conducting a war against Iran.

The arguments about possible (some say, likely) connections to the events of 9/11 deserve a separate discussion but there is evidence of awareness of the hijackers' activities by various foreign intelligence agencies (1 2 3 4 5 6). There is also evidence that Israeli intelligence was also aware of the activities of the hijackers prior to 9/11 (1 2). And it is not too far a stretch to conclude that it would not have been ideologically beyond the people discussed here to have participated in the events of 9/11.

- Damien









Thursday, May 03, 2007

Poverty Can Make You Get Sick and Die

Several studies prove it. The policies of Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and the GOP, in general, have harmed Americans by attacking the public health, increasing death rates as a result.

But does it matter to Republicans? It matters if you give a damn about your country, yourself, and your neighbor. It matters if you give a damn about anything but your gated community, your golf course, your SUV. So dramatic is this issue as a "cutting" issue, a Republican is very nearly defined by the extent to which he/she doesn't care.

What might have been common sense has been left to researchers to prove: poverty and poor health go hand in hand. Poverty means many things to a growing number of people but two factors are obvious: bad nutrition and unhealthy living conditions. Indeed, every step down the economic ladder worsens overall health.

There is yet another factor. The latest research leads to the conclusion that the mere fact of inequality increases mortality rates. This is an increase having nothing to do with nutrition or living conditions. It is a matter of inequality in and of itself.

Some of these conclusions may be found in two studies published by the British Medical Journal. The conclusion is impossible for conservatives and Social Darwinists to refute: The more equally wealth is distributed the better the health of that society. There is the possibility, of course, that America's privileged elite, Bush's base, doesn't really care about the health of society. As they might say in London's East End: Oi'm awlroight, Jack!
Interestingly, states with greater inequality of income distribution also spent less per person on education, had fewer books per person in the schools, and had poorer educational performance, including worse reading skills, worse math skills, and lower rates of completion of high school.

States with greater inequality of income also had a greater proportion of babies born with low birth weight; higher rates of homicide; higher rates of violent crime; a greater proportion of the population unable to work because of disabilities; a higher proportion of the population using tobacco; and a higher proportion of the population being sedentary (inactive).

Lastly, states with greater inequality of income had higher costs per-person for medical care, and higher costs per person for police protection.

- Peter Montague, Economic Inequality and Health

Poorer and working class people in America made great gains after World War II. More enlightened taxation was at the heart of it. In those years, poverty decreased. The Post WWII era was the most egalitarian in American history. It all came to an end with the rise of Ronald Reagan. His improvident tax cut of 1982 ushered in the deepest, longest "recession" since Herbert Hoover's Great Depression. Benefiting only America's elite, Reagan's tax cut ushered in an era in which only the upper quintile would prosper. Everyone else would lose ground.

Incidentally, that trend continued until well into Bill Clniton's second term. The trend abated somewhat at that time but resumed with a vengeance when George W. Bush insisted upon tax cuts that benefitted only his "base", a shrinking elite.



The primary culprit was and continues to be a bill of goods called Supply Side Economics or Trickle Down theory. The policy had been championed by Reagan Budget Director David Stockman who later recanted, calling the bogus theory "a Trojan horse".

"It's kind of hard to sell 'trickle down,' so the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really 'trickle down.' Supply-side is 'trickle-down' theory."

"Yes, Stockman conceded, when one stripped away the new rhetoric emphasizing across-the-board cuts, the supply-side theory was really new clothes for the unpopular doctrine of the old Republican orthodoxy."

"…the Reagan coalition prevailed again in the House and Congress passed the tax-cut legislation with a final frenzy of trading and bargaining. Again, Stockman was not exhilarated by the victory. On the contrary, it seemed to leave a bad taste in his mouth, as though the democratic process had finally succeeded in shocking him by its intensity and its greed. Once again, Stockman participated in the trading -- special tax concessions for oil -- lease holders and real-estate tax shelters, and generous loopholes that virtually eliminated the corporate income tax. Stockman sat in the room and saw it happen."

"'Do you realize the greed that came to the forefront?' Stockman asked with wonder. 'The hogs were really feeding. The greed level, the level of opportunism, just got out of control.'"

-The Education of David Stockman 1981:

And it is still out of control.






Why Conservatives Hate America




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Wednesday, May 02, 2007

The Movement to Impeach Bush/Cheney May be Unstoppable

Just recently I despaired that Bush would get away with murder, literally. There seemed little hope of impeaching him despite his crimes, despite the growing dissatisfaction with his missrule. There was a palpable sense of imprisonment in one's own homeland, a sense of enslavement throughout the "land of the free". That Bush lived in the White House mocked the very idea of responsible and democratic government.

What a difference a few weeks have made. Topping the news was Bush's veto of the military appropriation's bill. Everyone expected it. Not expected was the effect it's had. Bush, who takes false pride in being "resolute" may have thought his veto would put the Democratic majority in Congress on the defensive and shift the agenda back to the White House.

It didn't work out that way. The real effect is two fold: The White House must now play ball with Congress (the Democrats) if it hopes to get a bill at all. Secondly, Bush is seen to have played politics with the lives of American troops. Never had this point been spelled out more forcefully and more dramatically than in the following letter from one of the "commanders" that Bush likes to say he listens to but, in fact, doesn't give a damn.

May 1, 2007

President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

Today, in your veto message regarding the bipartisan legislation just passed on Operation Iraqi Freedom, you asserted that you so decided because you listen to your commanders on the ground.

Respectfully, as your former commander on the ground, your administration did not listen to our best advice. In fact, a number of my fellow Generals were forced out of their jobs, because they did not tell you what you wanted to hear -- most notably General Eric Shinseki, whose foresight regarding troop levels was advice you rejected, at our troops' peril.

The legislation you vetoed today represented a course of action that is long overdue. This war can no longer be won by the military alone. We must bring to bear the entire array of national power - military, diplomatic and economic. The situation demands a surge in diplomacy, and pressure on the Iraqi government to fix its internal affairs. Further, the Army and Marine Corps are on the verge of breaking - or have been broken already - by the length and intensity of this war. This tempo is not sustainable - and you have failed to grow the ground forces to meet national security needs. We must begin the process of bringing troops home, and repairing and growing our military, if we are ever to have a combat-ready force for the long war on terror ahead of us.

The bill you rejected today sets benchmarks for success that the Iraqis would have to meet, and puts us on a course to redeploy our troops. It stresses the need for sending troops into battle only when they are rested, trained and equipped. In my view, and in the view of many others in the military that I know, that is the best course of action for our security.

As someone who served this nation for decades, I have the utmost respect for the office you hold. However, as a man of conscience, I could not sit idly by as you told the American people today that your veto was based on the recommendations of military men. Your administration ignored the advice of our military's finest minds before, and I see no evidence that you are listening to them now.

I urge you to reconsider your position, and work with Congress to pass a bill that achieves the goals laid out above.

Respectfully,

Major General Paul D. Eaton, USA, Retired
There is also the statement by Maj. Gen. John Batiste.
The President vetoed our troops and the American people. His stubborn commitment to a failed strategy in Iraq is incomprehensible. He committed our great military to a failed strategy in violation of basic principles of war. His failure to mobilize the nation to defeat world wide Islamic extremism is tragic. We deserve more from our commander-in-chief and his administration.

--Maj. Gen. John Batiste, USA, Ret.

Why will we, the people, impeach George W. Bush? First, we are sovereign, not Bush, a fact Bush never mastered. Bush works for us, not the other way 'round.

Secondly, Bush violated a trust that is as sacred as possible in a secular society. That is the trust given him by a free electorate. That Bush does not care about those values is the most compelling reason he must go. By refusing to investigate the events of 911, Bush broke with precedent established with Pearl Harbor:

What did Bush have to fear if the official conspiracy theory involving a conspiracy of middle eastern terrorists was correct? Since when are crimes not investigated?

In the next several weeks, possibly months, when Articles of Impeachment are drawn up by Conyer's House Judiciary Committee, specific charges against Bush will be made public. Bush's crimes will prove to be not merely political, they will include charges of a criminal, often heinous nature. There is at least one violation of US Codes that mandates the death penalty.

Bush will be impeached because he made of us a fascist nation. He is, at his hollow core, an anti-American "President" who despises Democracy and prefers a dictatorship. Real Americans find this notion repugant, hateful and despicable. Clearly, Bush did not come to power because he understood the people. Rather, he was appointed by an elite cabal with intricate connections to the Military/Industrial complex warned of by President Dwight Eisenhower.

Following are some of the characterisitics of a fascist state:
  • The truth is revealed once and only once.

    Bush would have us believe that he was appointed by God. It doesn't matter whether Bush sincerely believed himself on a divine mission. I could not worship any "God" who would appoint Bush his messenger.

  • Parliamentary democracy is by definition rotten because it doesn't represent the voice of the people, which is that of the sublime leader.

    This is related to the above characteristic of fascism. A fascist leader, a "Fuhrer", does not merely enforce the laws, der Fuhrer is the source of law. This is repugnant to American values which derive from a sovereign named in the Constitution itself. The people.

  • Doctrine outpoints reason, and science is always suspect.

    The Bush regime is notoriously anti-science with regard to climate change, stem cell research, ecology, and education.

  • Critical thought is the province of degenerate intellectuals, who betray the culture and subvert traditional values.

    The Third Reich defined itself with its crackdown on intellectuals and not only becuase many of them were Jews. Historian Richard Hofstadter identified in America a virulent resentment of intellectuals and traced its origin to the early, colonial churches. More recently, the troglodytes found in Bush, a fuhrer.

  • The national identity is provided by the nation's enemies.

    This is the role played by the war on terrorism, a page out of Hermann Goring's playbook. Every tyrant has sought to rally his subjects by exploiting fear, hate, and prejudice.

  • Argument is tantamount to treason.

    Silencing dissent makes Der Fuhrer all-powerful but only initially. In the end, it deprives the tyrant of crucial information. The fascist state oftens falls by virtue of its own ignorance. Bush, for example, has ignored his commanders. Reality will overtake delusion. His would-be dictatorship will fall.

  • Perpetually at war, the state must govern with the instruments of fear. Citizens do not act; they play the supporting role of "the people" in the grand opera that is the state.








Bush is Out of Control, Deceives the American People

Bush is out of control and the government of the United States is falling apart at the seams as George W. Bush exhibits signs of emotional instability, perhaps paranoia. Amid a showdown between the White House and Bush's petulant veto, US Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) charges: the American people were deliberately misled.

I have news for George W. Bush! Deliberately misleading the "sovereign" is not merely impeachable, it is high treason. Conspiring with his NEOCON buddies to do so is most certainly criminal conspiracy as dealt with in numerous decisions of the Supreme Court. I use the word "sovereign" because, under our Constitution, the people themselves are sovereign. Not Bush. Not Congress. Not the High Court.

Treason is a crime of disloyalty to one's nation and under the US Constitution the nation is the people themselves. Treason connotes treachery, a breach of allegiance. If a President, indeed any US official lies to the people, he lies to the sovereign. A person, even a "President", who betrays his sovereign or cooperates with an enemy (as did Ronald Reagan) is considered to be a traitor. Bush, by deliberately deceiving the "sovereign" for the purpose of perpetrating war crimes including the capital crimes of killing civilians in a war of choice, a war of naked aggression is nothing if not treasonous! In 16th Century England, that would have been enough to get your head chopped off.

What then is to be done about a rogue President so hell-bent on bombing the hell out of the Iraqi people, so hell bent on ordering war crimes against civilians that he would deliberately deceive the Congress and the people of the United States?

‘Big money players up from Texas’ visit Bush.

[S]ome big money players up from Texas recently paid a visit to their friend in the White House. The story goes that they got out exactly one question, and the rest of the meeting consisted of The President in an extended whine, a rant, actually, about no one understands him, the critics are all messed up, if only people would see what he’s doing things would be OK…etc., etc. This is called a “bunker mentality” and it’a not attractive when a friend does it. When the friend is the President of the United States, it can be downright dangerous. Apparently the Texas friends were suitably appalled, hence the story now in circulation.

UPDATE: Sean-Paul Kelley has more.

UPDATE II: Carpetbagger: “Bush has apparently taken to whining about how unappreciated he is. As I recall, Nixon started talking the same way, right before he was driven from office. This isn’t encouraging. In fact, if Bush starts wondering what he can do to prove everyone wrong about his greatness, this kind of thinking could get scary.”

What is to be done about a "President" who is out of control and poses a threat to America and the world? Could it be......impeachment? Rats are readying to jump ship.

Republicans Warn They Will 'Switch Sides' If Surge Fails

Los Angeles Times

Doyle McManus


Posted April 29, 2007 11:00 PM

But nuances no longer might be enough to keep Republicans from breaking ranks. GOP leaders warn that they will need dramatic evidence of progress, something that has been in short supply in Iraq, to maintain support for the war.

"We need to get some better results from Iraq both politically, economically and militarily, and that needs to happen in the foreseeable future," said House Minority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., a Bush administration loyalist.
Pack his bags. The surge is already a dismal failure.

In the meantime, Dennis Kucinich has introduced House Resolution 333 to Impeach Dick Cheney:



It may be appropriate that the HR to impeach Cheney is number 333. After all, Cheney may be only half a "Beast".


It may be time to bone up on the succession.
Section 1. In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.

Section 2. Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

Section 3. Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.

Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.








Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Bush's Orwellian War of Words, Terror, and Lies


The Orwellian use of the term insurgent has done more than anything else to hide the nature of the Iraqi conflict from the American people, indeed, the world. There are, in fact, several conflicts in Iraq. One of them - a civil war between a government and a disenfranchised tribe - will never be accurately described as long as the media unfairly robs one side of all legitimacy with the mere use of one word: insurgent. It is less worrisome to kill an "insurgent" than a "resistance fighter", someone defending his homeland against an illegitimate invader or occupier. Of course, an illegitimate occupier would have the world believe that it is opposed only by terrorists and insurgents. That's nothing new.

Now that almost every myth and almost every lie has been exposed, it's time to expose another -the use of the term "insurgent" to describe those blamed for car and suicide bombings. The dictionary gives "insurgent" the following meanings:
1 : a person who revolts against civil authority or an established government; especially : a rebel not recognized as a belligerent 2 : one who acts contrary to the policies and decisions of one's own political party
In both cases, the media use of the word "insurgent" is incorrect. The "civil authority" in Iraq is a US puppet. The "established government" most certainly does not enjoy the widespread support of the people of Iraq. It is, in fact, dominated by the Shi'ite faction and is not believed to represent the interests of a Sunni minority.

The people of Iraq now consider US forces to be arrogant occupiers. A series of detailed reports by NPR maintain that the US is now seen throughout the middle east as having lied about the stated motives for war against Iraq. Ninety percent of residents of various Middle Eastern countries now say that "Democracy" and "Freedom" had nothing to do with US motives. Ninety percent say that the US was more interested in seizing control of Middle Eastern oil than it was in combating terrorism or in bringing Democracy to Iraq - two of the more common cover stories.

It cannot be said that the "resistance fighters" are rebelling against their own party. Rather, they are most certainly in complete harmony with their own parties - hence "resistance" to the occupying force. As I recall, the term "resistance" was used in some of the early reporting. I am curious about what might have motivated a switch from "resistance" to "insurgent". Did it begin with a memo at the Washington Post or a more ominous memo from the White House?

The use of the word "insurgent" distorts the increasingly complex nature of the conflict in Iraq. The Bush administration has an interest in promoting a widespread belief that "terrorists" are responsible for "insurgent attacks" against US troops. For example, of 1600 bombs exploded in July of 2005, 90 percent targeted US forces. That's according to an assessment by the US Defense Intelligence Agency. The US military admits, however, that less than 6% of those attacks were by foreign fighters - terrorists, in other words. Ninety-four percent of attacks against US forces are, therefore, not terrorist in nature. They are, rather, attacks by an Iraqi guerilla resistance to the US occupation. The American media will not tell you this. I had to get my information from several independent sources and, in particular, Dahr Jamail who writes Dahr Jamail's MidEast Dispatches.

Consider the following headline: "Iraqi tribes fight Insurgency." It appears to headline a story about how "Iraqi tribes" have organized to attack "insurgents". The first paragraph of the AP story continued:
Tribes in one of Iraq's most volatile provinces have joined together to fight the insurgency there, and they have called on the government and the US-led military coalition for weapons, a prominent tribal leader said Monday.
But was that, in fact, what the story was about?

Dahr Jamail picks picks up the rest of the story:
The story continues: "Tribal leaders and clerics in Ramadi, the capital of violent Anbar province, met last week and have set up a force of about 20,000 men 'ready to purge the city of these infidels,' Sheik Fassal al-Guood, a prominent tribal leader from Ramadi, told the Associated Press, referring to the insurgents. 'People are fed up with the acts of those criminals who take Islam as a cover for their crimes,' he said. 'The situation in the province is unbearable, the city is abandoned, most of the families have fled the city and all services are poor.' Al-Guood said 15 of the 18 tribes in Ramadi 'have sworn to fight those who are killing Sunnis and Shiites and they established an armed force of about 20,000 young men ready to purge the city from those infidels.'"

At this point, either the author of this AP story, or the editor, or both, rightly assume that the reader is not aware that Sheik Fassal al-Guood tried to lead the local resistance against the occupation in Ramadi, but turned against the same resistance group when its members rejected him as a leader because they considered him a corrupt thief. Nor is the reader aware that today, Sheikh Fassal al-Guood lives in the "Green Zone" and happily talks to reporters from behind the concrete blast walls, and that his power in Al-Anbar now equals exactly nothing.

- Dahr Jamail, AP Propaganda About Iraq

It is not only AP that is guilty. The American media and the BBC have fallen into the trap of using the term "insurgent" incorrectly.
We use the term 'insurgent' for the current situation in Iraq because the phrase describes people who are rising in active revolt. We believe it is the most appropriate term to use in situations of rebellion when there is no free-standing government.

-BBC Complaints, Use of term 'insurgent'

But it is because there is no "free-standing government" that "insurgent" is the wrong word. I would have thought the BBC, for so many years a guardian of the English language, would have known better. I am disillusioned and disappointed.

On the whole the BBC has been more dependable than the American media. But that says little. The BBC as well as US networks seem complicit with the Bush administration in what can only be a case of "legitimizing" coalition slaughter of civilians at Fallujah. They have done it with Orwellian weapons of language and words.
Again and again, the impression was given that Allawi was in charge, that he was giving the orders, that he was intent on bringing ‘law and order’, rather than US control, to Iraq. You could not guess from today's BBC lunchtime news that this is in fact a war between illegal foreign occupiers and local resistance fighters.

The impression given was that Iraqis were directing the war being waged on their own people, with Western control and goals whitewashed to invisibility. This has the effect of pacifying and disarming British public opinion, so reducing resistance, so making it easier for the West to continue killing for control and profit.

- Rapid Response Alert: The BBC – Legitimizing Mass Slaughter in Fallujah

It's been over three years since the US military did a Guernica on Fallujah. Residents still tell of continuing violence, ongoing suffering, and lack of jobs even as there has been very little progress toward reconstruction.
Over 27,000 buildings were destroyed by the US assault on Fallujah. Anyone, man, woman or child, caught on the streets of the city was a target for US troops. There is no official count of the death toll, the media were stopped from entering the city following its destruction, except that is, for the ‘embedded’ ones.

- William Bowles, Fallujah: Where is the outrage?

A grim reminder of the US legacy in Fallujah:
A rain of fire fell on the city, the people struck by this multi-coloured substance started to burn, we found people dead with strange wounds, the bodies burned but the clothes intact – Mohamad Tareq, a Fallujah resident
I have watched lots of Fallujah video. I didn't see any insurgents. I saw lots of terrified civilians, children, simple people blown to bits, flattened, or incinerated. Each is one count in the capital crimes indictment that must be returned against the so-called "decider".

The Bush administration has consistently exploited language to distort the nature of its crimes, to reframe its opposition, and to disarm its critics. Even so, Donald Rumsfeld apparently didn't get the "memo" with regard to the words "insurgent" and "insurgency" but he is no less Orwellian. Rumsfeld prefers the word "terrorist" or "the enemies of the government." Official US military statements have often referred to "anti-Iraqi forces" when, in fact, Sunni opposition to a Shia regime is no less "Iraqi".

It is not only the US puppet government that is at issue. It is the US occupation. US troops were never greeted as "liberators" and, after five years of chaos and bloodshed, our perpetual presence must by now be wearing thin. Even a beloved cousin is expected to go home at some point. Who can blame the hard pressed Iraqis for wanting us out now? Only Bush and Chalabi wanted us there. At the end of five years of needless bloodshed, it is time to leave. It is also time to stop the practice of denigrating legitimate opposition to an illegitimate occupation with a single word: "insurgent".

The term "insurgent" has the smell of a GOP focus group about it.









Monday, April 30, 2007

A Scapegoat Fights Back

The Bush administration was asleep at the wheel when warned of imminent attacks from al Qaeda. But later seized upon those attacks and exploited them to invade not just Afghanistan where al Qaeda was, but Iraq where al Qaeda wasn't.

That's the story that seems to be emerging with new revelations, a story that carries with it the weight of former CIA Director George Tenet. It is also a story about which I still have reservations and questions. Given what we know about the Bush administration, this could all be a smokescreen, a distraction from much, much worse. I have been made cynical and suspicious by Bush and events.

Tenet tells an unfolding story of incompetence, negligence, and, quite possibly, murderous criminality at the very highest levels. That much of the story is easy to believe. Tenet also denies that the CIA tortures. That assertion threatens to undermine his credibility.

Nevertheless, a believable story has emerged: the story of a "President" who had been warned about 911 and did absolutely nothing. When the day came, he chose to read Goat stories in Florida.

As the former director of the CIA, Tenet is in a position to reveal an inside story that confirms much of what has already been learned. His new book, At the Center of the Storm, charges that Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials "...pushed the country" to war in Iraq without ever conducting a "serious debate" about whether Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to the United States." He describes a heedless rush to war.

Gore Vidal is vindicated by this book. Just one year after 911, Vidal wrote:
Only CIA director George Tenet seemed to take the various threats seriously. In December 1998, he wrote to his deputies that 'we are at war' with Osama bin Laden. So impressed was the FBI by his warnings that by September 20, 2001, 'the FBI still had only one analyst assigned full time to al-Qaeda'.

From a briefing prepared for Bush at the beginning of July 2001: 'We believe that OBL [Osama bin Laden] will launch a significant terrorist attack against US and/or Israeli interests in the coming weeks. The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against US facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning.' And so it came to pass; yet Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Advisor, says she never suspected that this meant anything more than the kidnapping of planes.

- Gore Vidal, The Enemy Within

Tenet's revelations are the most dramatic to date but they are not the first.
Even so, we have been getting some answers to the question: why weren't we warned in advance of 9/11? Apparently, we were, repeatedly; for the better part of a year, we were told there would be unfriendly visitors to our skies some time in September 2001, but the government neither informed nor protected us despite Mayday warnings from Presidents Putin and Mubarak, from Mossad and even from elements of our own FBI. A joint panel of congressional intelligence committees reported (19 September 2002, New York Times) that as early as 1996, Pakistani terrorist Abdul Hakim Murad confessed to federal agents that he was 'learning to fly in order to crash a plane into CIA HQ'.

- Gore Vidal, The Enemy Within

Tenet's allegations are consistent with those made by Bob Woodward in State of Denial, in which it was revealed that the Bush administration "... had communication intercepts and other TOP SECRET intelligence showing the increasing likelihood that al Qaeda would soon attack the United States."

And only this morning this headline among many having to do with revelations by George Tenet:

Rice ignored 9/11 warnings from George Tenet

Washington, D.C. - Former CIA Director George Tenet says he warned then-National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice in the summer of 2001 that "multiple, spectacular attacks" from the al Qaeda terrorist network were imminent and urged a pre-emptive strike on the terrorist network.

In an interview aired Sunday on CBS' "60 Minutes," Tenet said he told Rice that the United States needed "to consider immediate action inside Afghanistan," where al Qaeda was based before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

"Essentially, the briefing says there are going to be multiple, spectacular attacks against the United States. We believe these attacks are imminent. Mass casualties are likely," he said.

But he said Rice delegated his request to subordinates. And Tenet said he never brought the issue up with President Bush, whom he briefed nearly every day on the threats facing the United States, "because the United States government doesn't work that way."

...

- Rice ignored 9/11 warnings from George Tenet
This was the briefing about which Rice was exceedingly "testy" with the 911 Commission, the infamous August 6, 2002 PDB.

Those Bush administration officials who denied warnings about 911 most surely had conspired with Bush to fabricate a WMD case against Saddam Hussein. It was a quick and dramatic turn around when only recently both Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice had denied that Hussein had WMD:


What changed? Perhaps a directive from either Bush or Dick Cheney would have been sufficient to rewrite the official narrative.

By September 8, 2002, Rice had either changed her mind or her talking points.
CONDOLEEZZA RICE, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein's regime is a danger to the United States and to its allies, to our interests.

It is also a danger that is gathering momentum, and it simply makes no sense to wait any longer to do something about the threat that is posed here. As the president has said, "The one option that we do not have is to do nothing."

- CNN LATE EDITION WITH WOLF BLITZER, Interview With Condoleezza Rice; Pataki Talks About 9-11; Graham, Shelby Discuss War on Terrorism
Aired September 8, 2002 - 12:00

Certainly, Afghanistan was no longer a cause celebre.

The cynical view is that an attack pinned on Bin Laden would give the new Bush administration the pretext it needed to secure a planned pipeline through Afghanistan. The war on Iraq could only have been Bush's idea - perhaps his personal vendetta because Saddam had tried to kill his "daddy".

It is difficult, if not absurd, to attribute to Bush reasoning having to do with global strategy or even the outright theft of oil. As Occam's Razor will have it, the simplest explanations are probably the best: simple idiocy on the one hand, crookedness on the other. The bottom line is equally simple. Bush was willing to sacrifice American lives in order to prosecute a personal vendetta.

Additional Resources:

Ralph Schoenman has been at the center of political analysis for over 25 years. He specializes in the Middle East as he was a first-hand witness to the 1982 attack on Lebanon. Ralph does two weekly shows on independant radio. One show is called Guns and Butter, the other is Taking Aim. He hosts both with his partner Mya Shone. Schoenman can cram lots of info into a short amount of time.









Sunday, April 29, 2007

How Bush lost the war, encouraged terrorists, and weakened the American military

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

So much nonsense and outright lies are believed by conservatives about almost everything that liberals and other more thoughtful segments of our society are often overwhelmed. So suspicious we have become that we are tempted to think it a deliberate stratgy.

Indeed, many are awed and intimidated by the sheer magnitude of the big lie. The American right wing has created a complex gestalt of self-reinforcing delusions, myths and outright lies. Some are repeated from ignorance, but others are told deliberately to dupe a gullible public.

Older falsehoods are cited in support of newer lies. It is not merely the thin veneer of PR. This dubious maze of claptrap is, rather, the very foundations of the American conservative movement.

The Republican party depends upon people believing its propaganda. The Bush administration moved forward on so many fronts that single, isolated truths here and there would be drowned out by image, slogan and lies. It is possible, however, to categorize the lies and in retrospect, to create a map, as it were, by which future lies might be spotted or predicted. For example, Foreign Affairs magazine recently stated that the war in Iraq has made terrorism worse and America more vulnerable to another terrorist attack. The Bush administration can be depended upon to cite this as a reason to stay in Iraq. That the US is in greater danger of attack because terrorism has been made worse cannot exculpate a criminal decision to place this nation and its citizens in harm's way.

I no longer care about Bush's motives. I no longer care that he may be but a front for a shadowy cabal of oil barons and exponents of Zbigniew Brzezinski's The Grand Chessboard played out by a criminal priesthood of NEOCONS, illuminati or worse. I don't care! My concern is to round up the usual suspects (and they know who they are) and bring them to trial for capital crimes. I don't need a theory to read the applicable laws and come to the conclusion that a venal gang of liars, murderers, thieves and con artists have seized the White House in what even Republicans boasted was a coup d'etat!
They are considered only 'socially obnoxious' or hateful personalities, and every one of us knows of someone who fits the description. Corrupt and callous politicians, social or career fast climbers, authoritarian leaders, abusing and aggressive persons, etc., are among them. A common characteristic is that they engage systematically in deception and manipulation of others for personal gain. In fact, many successful and adapted non-violent sociopaths can be found in our society. An NIMH epidemiologic study reported that only 47% of those who met the SPD criteria had a significant arrest record. The most relevant events for these persons occur in the area of job problems, domestic violence, traffic offenses, and severe marital difficulties. (Sabbatini, 1998, p.2-3)

—Sabbatini, R.M.E., Ph.D. (1998). Brain Diseases: The Psychopath's Brain., as quoted by Rebecca Horton, "The Sociopath."
The biggest lies are told by Bush. They are about 911. That a US war on Iraq was but a part of that larger campaign is Bush's most egregious fraud. Again, I have no interest in theories but that applies especially to the Bush administration's official conspiracy theory of 911. There is not a shred of evidence to support it. Nevertheless, the gullible, possibly crooked, mainstream media followed on cue with goosesteps and obeisance.

Let's isolate the nonsense about 911 specifically, the "official" conspiracy theory, an absurd hodge podge of slogans, half-truths, platitudes, factoids, distortions, fallacies and outright lies. What is Al Qaeda if not a "conspiracy"? What is the "Axis of Evil" if not a conspiracy? And, if anything at all said by Bush at any time is in any way true, then what were Hani Hanjour and Atta doing if not conspiring? Why are 7 of the so-called hijackers alive and giving interviews? We are expected not to believe every absurd conspiracy theory but that of the administration when it is the administration that has strained credulity to the breaking point.

Bush lost the war on terrorism by waging and losing the war against the people of Iraq. The people of Baghdad have suffered most. It is doubtful that Bush ever killed, captured, or brought to justice a single bona fide terrorist. It was enough for Bush to produce a body and call it a "terrorist". Bush, of course, assumed for himself the power to define terrorist; therefore, a terrorist now may not have been a terrorist earlier. Bush definitions may be arbitrary. A "terrorist" is whatever Bush says it is. You just have to take Bush's word for it from day to day.

Bush's Orwellian use of the word "insurgent" clouds the issue; it deceives the American people and the world. What Bush calls an "insurgency" is most often a "guerrilla" resistance to the US occupation. It was Dick Cheney who claimed that we would be greeted as liberators in Baghdad. Now those who did not greet the US thus are called "terrorists" or "insurgents". Bushies are not only venal liars, they are naive.

At last, no one in the Bush administration was able to make a convincing case that Iraq had anything at all to do with the events of 911 - the catch rationale for an endless war. This is absurd and especially so when you consider the fact that 911 was never properly or thoroughly investigated.

lin Powell blamed Al Qaeda for 911. But it is clear now that al Qaeda never had a strong presence in Iraq until after the US attack and invasion. Predictably, the Al Qaeda presence now will be cited as reasons the US cannot leave.

Iraq's Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties Were Disputed Before War
The fact of the matter is bluntly this: we don't know who planned or executed 911. We do know that the various "official conspiracy theories" are full of holes. For the most part, we have only Bush's word for an assortment of bunkum and claptrap. We know what his word is worth. Nothing. And we have George W. Bush to thank for forever obscuring the truth about the war against Iraq.

Bush was caught lying about the crash of airliners in New York. From the White House web site itself, you can verify that on two ocassions, Bush said that he had seen the first airliner crash the north tower on live TV, presumably before going into the Florida classroom. But Bush could not have seen any such thing. Footage showing the first impact was not known, let alone broadcast, until later that evening. In total, seven different scenarios were put forward laying out how Bush and Rove might have learned of the first crash. At this point, we know that Bush's statements about having seen the first crash live are absurd and are most probably deliberate lies.

One version of events claimed that Rove told Bush of a plane accidentally crashing into the World Trade Center. That theory doesn't explain the previous, credible warnings of terrorist strikes and hijackings. Claims that Bush implemented CONPLAN, an emergency response plan issued in 1995 is simply not true. The orders were given by lower-ranking federal officials. A live broadcast of that event would have required the presence of a crew with advance knowledge. Indeed, footage taken from a fire station was shown but not until hours later. Even if the school had had a TV on, as Bush told his audiences, he would NOT have seen the crash live. He could only have seen the crash live if a closed circuit TV feed had been arranged in advance. It is fair to ask of a liar: what did you see and how?

Bush promised to track down the terrorists, smoke them out, bring them to justice. In fact, Bush's record with regard to tracking down terrorists is a big zero. I cannot name a single 911 terrorist against whom charges have been proven at the end of Due Process of Law. Amid little fanfare, authorities made an arrest in Detroit about a week after the strike. Miraculously it resulted in two convictions for a terror related "conspiracy". But what about 911? That's as good as it gets for the an incompetent establishment. The case was, typically these days, "rife with prosecutorial" misconduct and was said by astute observers to have been "lame" to begin with. The convictions were eventually overturned and the prosecutors were indicted for lying to the jury. The judge said,
The prosecution materially misled the court, the jury and the defense as to the nature, character and complexion of critical evidence that provided important foundations for the prosecution's case...
Prosecution lies included the identification of "doodles" as sketches of targeted planes and military bases. The prosecutions big witness also turned out to have been a professional con man. Two other witnessess - who might have cast doubt on the prosecution case - had already been conveniently deported.

Later, "a bunch of Buffalo-based Muslims" were found guilty of having attended an al Qaeda training camp, prior to 9/11. But the government presented no evidence that the group had been, at any time, planning any terrorist acts in the United States. Most significantly, no connection to the events of 911 were ever established despite long and intense FBI surveillance, surveillance that had been personally ordered by Bush. The logic that followed the failed case still boggles the mind. FBI agent Ed Needham, told the New York Times, "We were looking to prevent something. And we did. Obviously nothing happened. So we all did our job."

Bush lost the war on terrorism in many ways, but telling lies about it and getting caught at it is highest on the list of culprits. Prominently, Bush never articulated an enemy, and, most certainly failed to identify one. Terrorism is not a philosophy or an ideology. It is a tactic. It may be exploited by bona fide enemies but they are only strengthened when Bush is seen to have overplayed his hand.

The number of those calling themselves enemies of the US has grown since Bush began a war of naked aggression against Iraq. Significantly, Bush enjoyed high ratings at home and abroad when it was perceived, rightly or wrongly, that the US response would be confined to probable culprits amid a responsible campaign to bring them to justice, justly. Instead, Bush chose to lash out blindly even as he exploited terrorism to crack down on legitimate dissent. Bush chose swagger over stealth and instead of reducing the terrorist threat he has made it worse.

When Bush abandoned American ideals he lost the ideal of America.