Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 5:17 pm Post subject: Conspiracy of Mlitary Escalation
US bases pave the way for long-term intervention in Central Asia
By Patrick Martin
11 January 2002
Recent statements by US government officials and reports in the American and international press indicate that the Bush administration and the Pentagon are carrying out a military buildup in Central Asia whose object is not merely support for the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan, but a permanent military presence in the oil-rich region.
The US government has acquired basing or transit rights for passage of warplanes and military supplies from nearly two dozen countries in Central Asia, the Middle East and their periphery, a projection of American power into the center of the Eurasian land mass that has no historical precedent.
On January 9, US military personnel showed off the latest acquisition, a huge air base being built in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, a landlocked country which borders China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, and was once virtually inaccessible as far as American imperialism was concerned.
The new base, on 37 acres at the airport in Manas, 19 miles from the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek, is to be a major military hub. It now has temporary barracks for 300 members of the 86th Rapid Deployment Unit, who are building facilities that will eventually house 3,000 military personnel. The Manas base will service fighter jets, C-130 cargo planes and KC-135 refueling planes. Last month the Kyrgyz parliament gave its approval to unrestricted American use of the facility, including combat missions in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Pentagon officials said the new base in Kyrgyzstan, only a few minutes flying time north of Kabul, would give them the flexibility to continue the war in Afghanistan even if the escalating conflict between India and Pakistan makes it more difficult to use the bases in the latter country, which are currently major staging areas for US operations.
Four KC-135s will arrive next week, along with a squadron of F-15E fighter jets by the end of January. A US officer working at Manas told the press, “In addition to the air force, there will be ground troops. This will be the first air base that will offer serious support to Operation Enduring Freedom,” the official name for the US war in Afghanistan. British, French and Danish forces will be stationed at Manas in addition to American troops.
New US base agreements have also been concluded with Pakistan and two other former Soviet republics, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. US warplanes are already deployed at Kandabad air base at Karshi, Uzbekistan, backed by 1,000 US ground troops, and a US military assessment team has visited three potential bases in Tajikistan, at Kulyab, Khojand and Turgan-Tiube. American forces are stationed at several locations in Pakistan, and combat engineers are improving runways and erecting housing and other facilities for what is clearly intended as a long-term stay.
Four other former Soviet republics—Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan—have pledged various forms of direct military cooperation with the US attack on Afghanistan. Armenia and Azerbaijan granted overflight rights, which are critical for operations in landlocked Central Asia. They were rewarded December 19, when Congress, at the urging of the Bush administration, lifted a decade-long embargo on military aid to the two countries.
Bases and pipelines
Kazakhstan, which holds the lion’s share of the oil wealth of the Caspian basin, is reportedly offering several locations for possible US military bases. Turkmenistan is viewed as the prime location for the terminus of largely US-financed pipelines which would bring the oil and gas reserves of the region to the world market, possibly running across Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean.
Locations of other US bases in the region include Camp Bondsteel, the headquarters for US military forces in Kosovo, in the former Yugoslavia; Bulgaria, also regarded as a potential site for a pipeline to bypass the chokepoint of the Turkish straits; Turkey, where Incirlik Air Base has been used for a decade to carry out bombing attacks on Iraq; and Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman in the Persian Gulf.
In Qatar the US has built, in virtual secrecy, a huge $1.5 billion airbase at Al Adid whose 15,000-foot runway is one of the longest in the Gulf. Construction began after a visit by Clinton’s defense secretary William Cohen in April 2000. Qatar already hosts pre-positioned equipment for a US Army brigade.
While US forces were initially stationed at Qatar in conjunction with the war against Iraq in 1990-91, a top Pentagon official said last year that the Qatar base was “not focused at one particular country or another, but part of a system we would like to have in place.”
Central Command spokesman Rear Adm. Craig R. Quigley told the press, “There is great value, for instance, in continuing to build airfields in a variety of locations on the perimeter of Afghanistan that over time can do a variety of functions, like combat operations, medical evacuation and delivering humanitarian assistance.”
The Al Adid airbase has already begun to attract local hostility. Last November 7, an Arab man was shot to death by US and Qatari guards after he allegedly opened fire on them at the base perimeter.
General Tommy Franks, the head of Central Command, announced that the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines had all adopted policies of regular troop rotation in the Central Asian theater, a further sign that their presence will be open-ended in duration.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz discussed the bases in an interview with the New York Times. “Their function may be more political than actually military,” he said. The new bases “send a message to everybody, including important countries like Uzbekistan, that we have a capacity to come back in and will come back in.”
A framework for intervention
While supporting the Afghan war is the pretext for many of the base agreements, the American forces deployed in Central Asia will have a much broader strategic scope. The Manas base in Kyrgyzstan, for instance, is only 200 miles from the border with China’s westernmost province of Sinkiang, putting that country’s main nuclear testing facility at Lop Nor within easy reach of US air strikes. In the opposite direction, Manas is equally close to oilfields in Uzbekistan.
Both American and Russian combat forces are now stationed in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Russian President Vladimir Putin has publicly supported the deployment of American troops on the territory of the former Soviet-Union, but there is reportedly deep concern in the Russian national security establishment over this prospect. Much of Russia’s highest security military, nuclear and space infrastructure is located in northern Kazakhstan and western Siberia—areas which were once the furthest points on the globe from any US military facility, but are now easily reached even by short-range US jets.
Then there is Afghanistan itself, where the United States has deployed 1,000 Marines at a base at Kandahar airport, now being replaced by an equivalent number of soldiers from the Army’s 101st Airborne Division, whose mission is one of semi-permanent occupation. The US has taken over the Bagram air base outside of Kabul, the country’s capital, which was once the center for Soviet military operations during the 1979-89 war.
These bases have been occupied in the course of the US-backed campaign to overthrow the Taliban regime. But they provide facilities that could well serve the American military in interventions deeper into the region, especially in the oil-rich area along the Caspian Sea coast, which includes Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan.
Summing up the strategic significance of the new base structure, Los Angeles Times special correspondent William Arkin wrote January 6: “Behind a veil of secret agreements, the United States is creating a ring of new and expanded military bases that encircle Afghanistan and enhance the armed forces’ ability to strike targets throughout much of the Muslim world.
“Since Sept. 11, according to Pentagon sources, military tent cities have sprung up at 13 locations in nine countries neighboring Afghanistan, substantially extending the network of bases in the region. All together, from Bulgaria and Uzbekistan to Turkey, Kuwait and beyond, more than 60,000 U.S. military personnel now live and work at these forward bases. Hundreds of aircraft fly in and out of so-called ‘expeditionary airfields.’”
Arkin noted that while US military arrangements with foreign countries during the Cold War were usually spelled out in public legal documents called “status of force agreements,” many of the post-Cold War pacts are classified to protect the host governments from domestic opposition to military subordination to the United States. These include agreements with Kuwait, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
http://wsws.org/articles/2002/jan2002/base-j11.shtml
US bases pave the way for long-term intervention in Central Asia
China-Russia treaty: a reaction against aggressive unilateralism in Washington
[23 July 2001]
http://wsws.org/articles/2001/jul2001/chin-j23.shtml
China-Russia treaty: a reaction against aggressive unilateralism in Washington
Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 6:45 pm Post subject: Conspiracy of Military Escalation
What's Behind Bush's War with Iraq?
By
Michelle Mairesse
Cry “havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war
President George W. Bush appears to be obsessed with Iraq, even though that country cannot reasonably be considered a terrorist nation. (Multiple sources conclude that Iraq is not in league with Al Queda and does not possess weapons of mass destruction.) This obsession is no new thing. Less than three months after the September 11 terrorist attack, we were hearing that President Bush was about to unleash the dogs of war. He intended to give armed support to dissident groups in Iraq. He had ordered the C.I.A. and his senior military commanders to draw up detailed plans for a military operation that could begin within months. 1 (The Observer (December 2, 2001)
For the oddly assorted alliance that joined Bush Junior’s "war on terror," this was too much. The Americans and the Saudis had actually backed Iraq during its eight-year war against Iran (1980-1988). America alone had sold Iraq $50 billion worth of weapons when Bush Senior was president.
Margie Burns writes that the U.S. Department of Commerce licensed 70 biological exports to Iraq between 1985 and 1989, including at least 21 batches of lethal strains of anthrax. Under President Bush, shipments continued four more years, after the Iran-Iraq war ended in 1988.
"Also between 1985 and 1989, Iraq's Atomic Energy Commission got 17 batches of 'various toxins and bacteria.' In 1985, the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) shipped at least three samples of West Nile Fever virus to Basra University. Other lethal samples included botulins and E. coli.
"In 1994, Senator Don Riegle (D-MI, 1976–94) reported a list of lethal bio-products sent to Iraq. Their presence was verified by UN inspectors in Iraq.
"Too many US corporations supplied Iraq with chemicals to list here; a class-action lawsuit filed by more than a thousand Gulf War vets in Galveston, Texas, in 1994 (Coleman et al v Alcolac et al) names several, including Alcolac, Phillips Petroleum, Unilever, Allied Signal, and Teledyne."
The Boston Globe reported in November 1993:
"Several congressional committees had found evidence that senior members of the Bush administration knowingly approved US-guaranteed loans for Iraq and technology transfers that were diverted into Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons program, his chemical weapons and ballistic missiles. They also discovered evidence suggesting obstruction of Congress, false statements and perjury."
The House Judiciary Committee called for a special prosecutor to investigate the evidence, but Bush Senior claimed executive privilege, and the Congress stood down. He knew how to use his experience as C.I.A. director to obstruct every investigation of his criminal behavior as Vice President (Iran-Contra) and President (Iraq arms sales).
Creating Mujahideen Monsters
The American government has armed and trained terrorists since the Carter Administration. Influential national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski persuaded President Jimmy Carter to sign a secret executive order in 1979 providing funding for the new Islamic mujahideen terrorist movement, which the CIA subsequently trained in America, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. American "advisors" trained and instructed young Muslim recruits in the finer points of guerilla warfare and terrorism.
During the eighties, the Americans trained and armed Afghans to fight the Soviets.
"Over the years the United States and Saudi Arabia expended about $40 billion on the war in Afghanistan. The CIA and its allies recruited, supplied and trained almost 100,000 radical mujahideen from forty Muslim countries, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Algeria, and Afghanistan itself. Among those who answered the call was rightwinger Osama bin Laden and his cohorts." 2 (Michael Parenti, 9-11 Terrorism Trap: September 11 and Beyond, (2000), City Lights Books, San Francisco, p. 5
"Largely created and funded by the CIA, the mujahideen mercenaries now took on a life of their own. Hundreds of them returned home to Algeria, Chechnya, Kosovo, and Kashmir to carry on terrorist attacks in Allah’s name against the purveyors of ‘corruption.’" 3 (Michael Parenti, 9-11 Terrorism Trap: September 11 and Beyond, (2000), City Lights Books, San Francisco, p. 62)
Afghan children stating that Osama bin Laden was created by the U.S.
Osama bin Laden imported engineers and equipment from his father’s Saudi construction company to build tunnels for guerilla hospitals and arms dumps near the Pakistan border. The C.I.A. paid for the project. After the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, the C.I.A. and the Pakistani intelligence agency sponsored the Taliban organization, a movement composed of the fanatic Wahhabi Islamic sect, the same sect dominant in Saudi Arabia.
The Wahhabi Taliban had the blessings of the Saudi royal family, the bin Laden family, the al Ahmoudi family, and the Mahfouz family--the richest and closest-knit clans in that medieval kingdom (Khalid bin Mahfouz is bin Laden’s brother-in-law). The desert oligarchs profited from world-wide investments as well as sleazy banking schemes like the infamous Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), a money-laundering, dope-dealing, extortionist bank, while covertly funneling money to fundamentalist organizations through fake charities. Members of the Saudi oligarchy, ambitious to dominate the Muslim world, covertly support radical Islamists throughout the world, but give them only faint encouragement at home because they fear that the Islamic extremists could overthrow the Saudi regime.
In 1989, bin Laden established al Qaeda (the Base) in Afghanistan to organize extremist Wahhabis and disperse their networks throughout the country. A year later, he returned to Saudi Arabia and founded a welfare agency for Arab-Afghan veterans. Bin Laden hoped to organize the veterans as a kind of religious-military army, but King Faud discouraged the venture. When King Faud invited 540,000 American troops to the kingdom to fight in the Gulf War, bin Laden lambasted the royal family and urged religious authorities to issue fatwahs (religious rulings) condemning the American infidels.
Bush Senior’s War for Oil in the Gulf
After the American Ambassador assured Iraq that America was neutral in the new quarrel over oil drilling rights between Iraq and Kuwait, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in a rash attempt to seize the disputed oilfields while increasing Iraq’s narrow access to the Persian Gulf. Turkey and Saudi Arabia immediately severed Iraq’s pipelines inside their countries and condemned Iraq’s expansionist tactics. President Bush Senior announced that he was sending troops to Saudi Arabia at that country’s request, adding, in a moment of unwonted candor, "Our own freedom and the freedom of friendly countries around the world would suffer if all the world’s great oil reserves fell into the hands of that one man, Saddam Hussein." 4 (Extra! May 1991, p.9)
Did Iraq actually pose a threat to the Saudis? Hardly. Throughout the eighties, the United States assisted the Saudis in a giant military buildup. Together, the Americans and Saudis installed airfields, ports, and bases throughout the kingdom, awarding many of the contracts to the largest construction company in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Binladen Group. Iraq would have had nothing to gain from attacking the high-tech hardened bunkers in Saudi Arabia.
As it turned out, Iraq had nothing to gain from its invasion of Kuwait, either. Whereas the war with Iran had lasted eight years, the war with the American-led 28-nation coalition lasted less than three months. Although Bush likened Saddam Hussein to Hitler and promised to liberate Iraq from the despot, the allies completed their mission to control Iraq’s oil supply but stopped short of toppling the dictator. Faced with staggering military and civilian casualties, Saddam Hussein agreed to a humiliating peace treaty.
The victors were not magnanimous. By the terms of the treaty, Iraq agreed to destroy all chemical and biological weapons. United Nations commissions regularly searched the country for evidence that Iraq was constructing or storing such weapons. Soon Iraq’s oil-based economy foundered under the weight of heavy embargoes that prohibited Iraq from selling oil or buying weapons until such time as the United Nations would declare Iraq in full compliance with terms of the peace treaty.
Sanctions continue to this day, as well as incessant quibbling over the makeup and findings of the inspection teams. Cynics predict that the sanctions will not be lifted until the petroleum pashas no longer profit from stanching Iraq’s competing oil production, which formerly had been second only to that of the Saudis.
As recently as January 31, 2002 the head of the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iraq had cooperated fully with its routine annual inspection of factories and other potential facilities for the production and storage of weapons. Nothing was found.
Recent inspection teams searching for chemical or biological weapons made similar reports. Hans von Sponeck, United Nations humanitarian aid coordinator for Iraq from 1998-2000, upon returning from Iraq in July 2002 said that all of the facilities the U. N. inspectors had previously destroyed were still disabled or destroyed.
He is troubled by Bush Junior’s stance.
"One does not need to be a specialist in weapons of mass destruction to conclude that these sites had been rendered harmless and have remained in this condition. The truly worrying fact is that the US Department of Defence has all of this information. Why then, one must ask, does the Bush administration want to include Iraq in its fight against terrorism? Is it really too far-fetched to suggest that the US government does not want UN arms inspectors back in Iraq? Do they fear that this would lead to a political drama of the first order since the inspectors would confirm what individuals such as Scott Ritter have argued for some time, that Iraq no longer possesses any capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction? This indeed would be the final blow to the ‘war against Iraq’ policy of the Bush administration, a policy that no one else wants." 5 (The Guardian, July 22, 2002)
Von Sponeck is correct in saying that the U.S. government knows Iraq does not have any weapons of mass destruction.
"According to the CIA itself, Iraq does not pose a threat to the West. A week after the axis of evil speech, the New York Times reported that 'the CIA has no evidence that Iraq has engaged in terrorist operations against the United States in nearly a decade, and the spy agency also is convinced that Saddam Hussein has not provided chemical or biological weapons to al-Qaeda or related terrorist groups.'"6 (Brendan O'Neill, "Bush's Gulf War Syndrome,"
Finally, one of Jeff Rense’s readers translated a sobering report from the Swedish Aftonbladet.
"UN's weapons inspectors were pressured to engage in espionage on Iraq by the US, among others, said the former Chief of Inspection Forces, Ambassador Rolf Ekeus, on the Swedish radio program Goodmorning World.
The inspectors were searching for information about Iraqi intelligence and were also requested to find out where Saddam Hussein was located. Ekeus also said that controversial inspections were made deliberately to provoke conflicts with Iraq."
Attacks on America
When the C.I.A- and Saudi-backed Taliban took Kabul in September 1996, the American State Department immediately established diplomatic relations with the Taliban rulers. Both the American and Saudi governments approved the partnership of American oil company UNOCAL with the Saudi Delta oil company in their efforts to build a gas pipeline from the Caspian Sea region through Afghanistan into Pakistan and the Persian Gulf. If the huge oil and gas reserves in Central Asia and the Caspian region were to be piped to markets in Asia, a stable government in Afghanistan was not merely desirable but necessary. The puritanical Wahhabi Taliban appeared to be the answer to a number of fervent prayers.
Other kinds of prayers for other ends were offered in the mosques frequented by fundamentalist Islamists, who determined to replace secular states and their laws with theocratic Islamist states under the law of sharia, based on a literal interpretation of the Koran. In 1991, Osama bin Laden and a coterie of Afghan veterans agitated in Sudan for a holy war against the enemies of Islam. In 1992, he claimed responsibility for the attack on American soldiers in Yemen, and again for attacks in Somalia in 1993. He was mum about the terrorist truck bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, the explosion that killed six people and injured more than a thousand, but investigators knew bin Laden had donated heavily to the religious "charity" that financed the bombing operation.
John O’Neill, Scourge of Terrorists
In February 1995, John O'Neill was appointed chief of the F.B.I.'s counter-terrorism section in Washington. Literally before he had unpacked his bags, he immediately assembled and coordinated a team to capture Ramzi Yousef, who was en route from Pakistan to Afghanistan. Yousef was strongly suspected of planning and directing the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. In three days, the kingpin of the World Trade Center bombing was in custody, and O’Neill went on to to accumulate damning evidence against the 1993 World Trade bombers that led to their conviction in American courts. For the next six years, John O’Neill tirelessly investigated terrorist strikes against Americans and American interests in Saudi Arabia, East Africa, and Yemen, often encountering American officials’ roadblocks on the way.
Even in 1996, after Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl turned himself in at the American Embassy in Eritrea and divulged details of bin Laden’s and al Qaeda’s organization and operations, the State Department refused to list al Qaeda as a terrorist organization.
In February 1998, bin Laden assembled a number of terrorist groups, including Islamic Jihad, and issued a fatwa calling for the deaths of all Americans.
On August 7, 1998, 226 people died in the simultaneous bombing of embassies in Tanzania and Kenya . Investigators blamed bin Laden for the attacks.
On August 20, 1998, President Clinton amended Executive Order 12947 to add Osama bin Laden and his key associates to the list of terrorists, thus blocking their US assets--including property and bank accounts--and prohibiting all U.S. financial transactions with them. The United States conducted a missile attack against bin Laden's facilities in Afghanistan.
"A relationship that appeared smooth and even symbiotic to the outside world was rent by disillusionment, anger and petty one-upmanship. A country the U.S. considered a terrorists' paradise was, in the view of many of the terrorists who arrived there from other lands, more like a hell: They couldn't trust the locals, the food was bad, they considered the Taliban leader a bumpkin, and their work was stymied by the near-medieval backwardness of the place.
"'This place is worse than a tomb,' wrote a bin Laden associate from Egypt to comrades back home, after checking out Afghanistan. 'The country,' he said in a message stored on a computer found by The Wall Street Journal in Kabul, 'is not suitable for work.'
"The Taliban, in turn, grumbled that Mr. bin Laden was arrogant, publicity-seeking and disrespectful. The rift ran so deep that some of his entourage of Arab revolutionaries expected to get booted out of Afghanistan, as they had been earlier from Sudan. Indeed, by the summer of 1998, according to a former Saudi intelligence chief, Mullah Omar had agreed to send Mr. bin Laden packing.
"But then came the 1998 lethal bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa, to which the U.S. replied by raining down cruise missiles on a bin Laden camp in Afghanistan. The retaliation had fateful consequences. It turned Mr. bin Laden into a cult figure among Islamic radicals, made Afghanistan a rallying point for defiance of America and shut off Taliban discussion of expelling the militants. It also helped convince Mr. bin Laden that goading America to anger could help his cause, not hurt it."
O’Neill was certain that bin Laden was back of the 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
"O'Neill persuaded [FBI director] Freeh to let the New York office handle the case, and he eventually dispatched nearly five hundred investigators to Africa. Mary Jo White, whose prosecuting team subsequently convicted five defendants in the case, said 'John O'Neill, in the investigation of the bombings of our embassies in East Africa, created the template for successful investigations of international terrorism around the world.’" 8
(Lawrence Wright, New Yorker, January 14, 2002)
During his 1998 investigation of the African embassy bombings, O’Neill seized the computer of al Qaeda military chief Mohammed Atef and discovered a significant e-mail memo. Al Qaeda clearly knew about the continuing negotiations between the Taliban and American officials and business representatives. UNOCAL sought Taliban approval of its plans to construct an oil and gas pipeline across Afghanistan, but the al Qaeda organization did not believe the Taliban would agree.
On December 14, 1999, a border guard in Port Angeles, Washington discovered four timers and material for bomb construction in Algerian Ahmed Ressam’s car. Ressam confessed that his target had been Los Angeles International Airport.
The following day, Jordanian authorities arrested thirteen suspected terrorists who were planning to bomb buildings and sites visited by Western tourists. The suspects carried an Al Qaeda training manual on a CD-ROM. It looked as if the terrorists were planning coordinated strikes.
"Authorities had found several phone numbers on Ressam when he was arrested. There was also a name, Ghani, which belonged to Abdel Ghani Meskini, an Algerian, who lived in Brooklyn and who had travelled to Seattle to meet with Ressam. O'Neill oversaw the stakeout of Meskini's residence and spent much of his time in the Brooklyn command post."
"On December 30th, O'Neill arrested Meskini on conspiracy charges and a number of other suspected terrorists on immigration violations. (Meskini and Ressam eventually became cooperating witnesses and are both assisting the F.B.I.'s investigation of the September 11th attacks.)" 9 (Lawrence Wright, New Yorker, January 14, 2002)
New York’s Joint Terrorism Task Force racked up an impressive record of successful investigations and convictions, convicting "twenty-five Islamic terrorists, including Yousef, six other World Trade Center bombers, the blind cleric Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, and nine of Rahman’s followers, who had planned to blow up the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, the United Nations headquarters, and the F.B.I. offices." 10 (Lawrence Wright, New Yorker, January 14, 2002)
On October 12, 2000, two suicide bombers ignited their boatload of explosives next to the USS Cole, an American destroyer refuelling in Aden, off the coast of Yemen. The blast killed seventeen sailors and wounded thirty-nine others. O’Neill and his investigating team were dispatched to Yemen and hit a stone wall. He had hoped satellite intercepts of phone calls between an al Qaeda operative in Aden and Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan would lead him to the mastermind of the Cole attack, but the American ambassador and the Yemeni officials blocked the investigation at every turn.
O’Neill went home for Thanksgiving, tired and twenty pounds lighter, and never went back. He resigned from the F.B.I. in July 2001 and signed on as security chief for the World Trade Center in September. He died in the attack on September 11, 2001.
The Untouchables
In Forbidden Truth: U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy and the Failed Hunt for bin Laden, two French intelligence analysts, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, claim that the Clinton and Bush administrations impeded investigations of Bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist group in order to maintain good relations with Saudi Arabia and to maintain the stability of the oil market. "As the late John O’Neill told one of the authors [Brisard] of this book, ‘All of the answers, all of the clues allowing us to dismantle Osama bin Laden’s organization, can be found in Saudi Arabia.'" 11
(Thunder's Mouth Press, 2002, p. 20)
In articles and interviews, Brisard has expanded on this statement, pronouncing the official story about bin Laden’s exile from his native Saudi Arabia in 1994 and his frozen assets to be a canard. Not only did O’Neill and the F.B.I. have extensive information concerning the finances of bin Laden and al Qaeda, but also Forbidden Truth documents the intricate connections between the bin Ladens, the Mahfouzes, the al Ahmoudis, and the Saudi royal family.
Although Brisard’s interpretation of events has been disputed, the documentation of Forbidden Truth is impeccable. Clearly, the finances and fortunes of the Saudi oligarchs and the Bush family have been intertwined for many years.
On November 6, 2001, the redoubtable investigative journalist Greg Palast, who has a knack for being miles ahead of the pack, revealed some astonishing information in a BBC broadcast.
Palast: "In the eight weeks since the attacks, over 1,000 suspects and potential witnesses have been detained. Yet, just days after the hijackers took off from Boston aiming for the Twin Towers, a special charter flight out of the same airport whisked 11 members of Osama Bin Laden's family off to Saudi Arabia.
"That did not concern the White House. Their official line is that the Bin Ladens are above suspicion - apart from Osama, the black sheep, who they say hijacked the family name. That's fortunate for the Bush family and the Saudi royal household, whose links with the Bin Ladens could otherwise prove embarrassing. But Newsnight has obtained evidence that the FBI was on the trail of other members of the Bin Laden family for links to terrorist organisations before and after September 11th.
"This document is marked 'Secret'. Case ID - 199-Eye WF 213 589. 199 is FBI code for case type. 9 would be murder. 65 would be espionage. 199 means national security. WF indicates Washington field office special agents were investigating ABL - because of its relationship with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, WAMY - a suspected terrorist organisation. ABL is Abdullah Bin Laden, president and treasurer of WAMY.
"This is the sleepy Washington suburb of Falls Church, Virginia where almost every home displays the Stars and Stripes. On this unremarkable street, at 3411 Silver Maple Place, we located the former home of Abdullah and another brother, Omar, also an FBI suspect. It's conveniently close to WAMY. The World Assembly of Muslim Youth is in this building, in a little room in the basement at 5613 Leesburg Pike. And here, just a couple blocks down the road at 5913 Leesburg, is where four of the hijackers that attacked New York and Washington are listed as having lived.
"The US Treasury has not frozen WAMY's assets, and when we talked to them, they insisted they are a charity. Yet, just weeks ago, Pakistan expelled WAMY operatives. And India claimed that WAMY was funding an organisation linked to bombings in Kashmir. And the Philippines military has accused WAMY of funding Muslim insurgency. The FBI did look into WAMY, but, for some reason, agents were pulled off the trail."
The following day, Palast added that the FBI files were closed in 1996 "apparently before any conclusions could be reached on either the Bin Laden brothers or the organisation itself. High-placed intelligence sources in Washington told the Guardian this week: ‘There were always constraints on investigating the Saudis.'"
"They said the restrictions became worse after the Bush
administration took over this year. The intelligence agencies had been told to ‘back off’ from investigations involving other members of the Bin Laden family, the Saudi royals, and possible Saudi links to the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Pakistan. ‘There were particular investigations that were effectively killed.’" 12
(Thunder's Mouth Press, 2002, p. 20)
On November 10, 2001, The Boston Herald carried this scathing report about the Arabian untouchables:
"Two billionaire Saudi families scrutinized by authorities for possible financial ties to Osama bin Laden's terrorist network continue to engage in major oil deals with leading U.S. corporations.
"The bin Mahfouz and Al-Amoudi clans, who control three private Saudi Arabian oil companies, are partners with U. S. firms in a series of ambitious oil development and pipeline projects in central and south Asia, records show.
"Working through their companies - Delta Oil, Nimir Petroleum and Corral Petroleum - the Saudi families have formed international consortiums with U. S. oil giants Texaco, Unocal, Amerada Hess and Frontera Resources.
"These business relationships persist despite evidence that members of the two Saudi families - headed by patriarchs Khalid bin Mahfouz and Mohammed Hussein Al-Amoudi - have had ties to Islamic charities and companies linked financially to bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization. So far, bin Mahfouz and Al-Amoudi, who have denied any involvement with bin Laden, have been left untouched by the U. S. Treasury Department, which has frozen the assets of 150 individuals, companies and charities suspected of financing terrorism."
Bush’s Grand Strategy
The people behind the coup that installed George W. Bush in the presidency have no qualms about enforcing their agenda on the United States and the world. The attack on the World Trade Center would have been prevented had it not served the cabal’s purpose: to replace the old Cold War enemy with a nebulous, shifting, implacable, hidden enemy who would unite the country behind wars of conquest anywhere in the world--in short, terrorism.
The cabal’s efforts to link Iraq to terrorism or weapons of mass destruction have proved unavailing, so we’ll probably be hearing more lies and more justifications for a war. Odd, isn’t it, that nothing the Saudis do can provoke us, while Saddam Hussein’s mere existence appears to be an affront to humankind and a spur to war.
Eric Margolis lost his idealistic view of war when he enlisted to fight in Vietnam.
Noting that the Pentagon had drawn up plans to invade Afghanistan before 9/11, he points to our permanent military bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and facilities in Kazakstan, "a constellation of air and army bases designed for long-term strategic control of the region, under the command of the newly-activated U.S. 3rd Army, whose HQ was recently moved from the Southern US to Kuwait."
In a paragraph, Margolis sums up the rationale for Bush’s war on Iraq:
"The so-called ‘war on terrorism’ is being used to mask a far grander imperial design: the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. This will allow the US to gain control of Iraq's huge oil reserves, which are second only to Saudi Arabia's, and secure American control of the giant Caspian Oil Basin. The new US bases just happen to follow the route of the planned American pipelines that will bring Central Asia's oil and gas riches – the ‘new Silk Road’ – south through Pakistan. Each day, the US is plunging deeper and deeper into South and Central Asia – which I call the Mideast East. American soldiers could end up fighting there 50 years hence. In fact, the Bush administration seems to be emulating the old British Empire." 13
In the Guardian, September 5, 2002, Mo Mowlam, a former member of Tony Blair's cabinet, states that the increasing rift between America and Saudi Arabia accounts for the Bush administration's animus against Iraq.
"The possibility of the world's largest oil reserves falling into the hands of an anti-American, militant Islamist government is becoming ever more likely - and this is unacceptable.
"The Americans know they cannot stop such a revolution. They must therefore hope that they can control the Saudi oil fields, if not the government. And what better way to do that than to have a large military force in the field at the time of such disruption. In the name of saving the west, these vital assets could be seized and controlled. No longer would the US have to depend on a corrupt and unpopular royal family to keep it supplied with cheap oil. If there is chaos in the region, the US armed forces could be seen as a global saviour. Under cover of the war on terrorism, the war to secure oil supplies could be waged.
"This whole affair has nothing to do with a threat from Iraq - there isn't one. It has nothing to do with the war against terrorism or with morality. Saddam Hussein is obviously an evil man, but when we were selling arms to him to keep the Iranians in check he was the same evil man he is today. He was a pawn then and is a pawn now. In the same way he served western interests then, he is now the distraction for the sleight of hand to protect the west's supply of oil."
Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 7:36 pm Post subject: Conspiracy of Military Escalation
Oil, War And A Growing Sense Of Panic In The Us -
Don't tell me that America would have invaded Iraq if its chief export was beetroot!
by Robert Fisk
October 07, 2003
Independent
Oil is slippery stuff but not as slippery as the figures now being peddled by Iraq's American occupiers. Up around Kirkuk, the authorities are keeping the sabotage figures secret - because they can't stop their pipelines to Turkey blowing up. And down in Baghdad, where the men who produce Iraq's oil production figures are beginning to look like the occupants of Plato's cave - drawing conclusions from shadows on their wall - the statistics are being cooked. Paul Bremer, the US proconsul who wears combat boots, is "sexing up" the figures to a point where even the oilmen are shaking their heads.
Take Kirkuk. Only when the television cameras capture a blown pipe, flames billowing, do the occupation powers report sabotage. This they did, for example, on 18 August. But the same Turkish pipeline has been hit before and since. It was blown on 17 September and four times the following day. US patrols and helicopters move along the pipeline but, in the huge ravines and tribal areas through which it passes, long sections are indefensible.
European oilmen in Baghdad realise now that Iraqi officials in the oil ministry - one of only two government institutions that the Americans defended from the looters - knew very well that the sabotage was going to occur. "They told me in June that there would be no oil exports from the north," one of them said to me this week. "They knew it was going to be sabotaged - and it had obviously been planned long before the invasion in March."
Early in their occupation, the Americans took the quiet - and unwise - decision to re-hire many Baathist oil technocrats, which means that a large proportion of ministry officials are still ambivalent towards the Americans. The only oil revenues the US can get are from the south. In the middle of August, Mr Bremer gave the impression that production stood at about 1.5 million barrels a day. But the real figure at that time was 780,000 barrels and rarely does production reach a million. In the words of an oil analyst visiting Iraq, this is "an inexcusable catastrophe".
When the US attacked Iraq in March, the country was producing 2.7 million barrels a day. It transpires that in the very first hours after they entered Baghdad on 9 April, American troops allowed looters into the oil ministry. By the time senior officers arrived to order them out, they had destroyed billions of dollars of irreplaceable seismic and drilling data.
While the major oil companies in the US stand to cream off billions of dollars if oil production resumes in earnest, many of their executives were demanding to know from the Bush administration - long before the war - how it intended to prevent sabotage. In fact, Saddam had no plans to destroy the oil fields themselves, plenty for blowing up the export pipes. The Pentagon got it the wrong way round, racing its troops to protect the fields but ignoring the vulnerable pipelines.
Anarchy is now so widespread in post-war Iraq that it is almost impossible for international investors to work there. There is no insurance for them - which is why Mr Bremer's occupation administrators have secretly decided that well over half the $20bn (£12bn) earmarked for Iraq will go towards security for its production infrastructure.
During the war, a detailed analysis by Yahya Sadowski, a professor at the American University of Beirut, suggested that repairing wells and pipes would cost $1bn, that raising oil production to 3.5 million barrels a day would take three years and cost another $8bn investment and another $20bn for repairs to the electrical grid which powers the pumps and refineries. Bringing production up to six million barrels a day would cost a further $30bn, some say up $100bn.
In other words - assuming only $8bn of the $20bn can be used on industry - the Bush overall budget of $87bn which now horrifies Congress is likely to rise towards a figure of $200bn. Ouch.
Since the 1920s, only about 2,300 wells have been drilled in Iraq and those are in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates. Its deserts are almost totally unexplored. Officially, Iraq contains 12 per cent of the world's oil reserves - two-thirds of the world's reserves are in just four other countries, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait and the Emirates - but it could contain 20 per cent, even 25 per cent.
It's possible to argue that it was Saddam's decision to switch from the dollar to the euro in November 2000 that made "regime change" so important to the US. When Iran threatened to do the same, it was added to the "axis of evil". The defence of the dollar is almost as important as oil.
But the real irony lies in the nature of America's new power in Iraq. US oil deposits are increasingly depleted and by 2025, its oil imports will account for perhaps 70 per cent of total domestic demand. It needs to control the world's reserves - and don't tell me the US would have invaded Iraq if its chief export was beetroot - and it now has control of perhaps 25 per cent of world reserves.
But it can't make the oil flow. The cost of making it flow could produce an economic crisis in the US. And it is this - rather than the daily killing of young American soldiers - that lies behind the Bush administration's growing panic. Washington has got its hands on the biggest treasure chest in the world - but it can't open the lid. No wonder they are cooking the books in Baghdad.
Joined: Oct 10, 2001
Posts: 13669
Location: With JRZGRL
Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 10:25 pm Post subject: Re: Conspiracy of Military Escalation
IAM1 wrote:
uxo_tech wrote:
IAM1 wrote:
Was it a coincidence? The Bill to restore the Draft (Universal National Service Act of 2007 (HR.393)) was introduced in the House of Representatives on exactly the same day as President Bush's announcement regarding the "Surge", in which he confirmed, in a nationally televised address, that he was going to send more than 20,000 additional troops to Iraq.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.R.393:
Search Results - THOMAS (Library of Congress)
Oh for the love of god people...
The democrats have been introducing a version of this bill for years now as a protest.
Get a grip on reality will you please.
Or at the very least try and do a little bit of fact checking before you post. 2 seconds on google would have put paid to this one.
Un-freaking-believable.
What in the world is your comment supposed to mean???? Introducing this bill is supposed to be protesting what? Why don't you post the information you've commented about that was left out and should have been checked by doing a two second google search?
IAM1
This has been my arguement about the nonsense you've been posting for months now... Charlie Rangel, among others, has been introducing this bill for at least the last 5 years now, it has been ALL OVER the news, mainstream, or otherwise, and you are clueless to this fact, jumping onto claims of a conspiracy, made by equally as pathetic people, and attempting to build some halfassed conspiracy theory around it...
How bout YOU do a god damned Google search, that doesn't include the word "conspiracy", for once, you halfwit, and perhaps you'll learn to figure out if a theory is feaseable, or not, before posting 60 pages of total bullshit... Oh wait, that suggestion was made to you months ago, and you still haven't done it.
Posted: Sat Feb 03, 2007 4:57 pm Post subject: Conspiracy of Military Escalation
IT's always confirmation for me when the bully crowd looses it and attacks the poster because they are exposing the truth!! They also make a vain attempt at trying to make it look like I don't know what I'm posting . It's obvious for anyone who reads this thread to identify those few who don't have a clue of the real facts involved in/on this topic .
Last edited by IAM1 on Mon Feb 05, 2007 3:27 pm; edited 1 time in total
Posted: Sat Feb 03, 2007 6:02 pm Post subject: Conspiracy of Military Escalation
How Both Bushes Attacked Iraq
By Michelle Mairesse
Prelude to War
In 1990, Hussein was preoccupied with Kuwait (one of the Persian Gulf states the British had carved out in the 1920s), which severely limited Iraq’s access to the Gulf. Not only did that tiny country demand repayment of war loans, but it had also been slant-drilling and siphoning oil from Iraqi territory.
Saddam Hussein had reason to believe that the U.S.A. still backed him. After all, the C.I.A. had helped install him as dictator of Iraq in 1979, and the U.S.A. had supplied him with arms, including chemical and biological weapons, during the war with Iran (1980-1988).
On airing his concerns to U. S. Ambassador April Glaspie in July, Hussein was encouraged by her response. She told Hussein that Washington had "no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait," a statement, she said later, she regretted.
In September 1990, Glaspie told the New York Times, "We didn’t think he’d take all of Kuwait."
The Invasion of Kuwait
As early as April of 1990, both Kuwaiti and American intelligence services were aware of Iraqi invasion plans, and American policy-makers were informed several days beforehand, but there were no public pronouncements or warnings to Hussein.
When Iraqi tanks rolled into Kuwait on August 2, 1990, President George Bush Senior compared the invasion to Nazi Germany’s occupation of the Rhineland [Poppy made a hypocritical and prophetic statement, surprise, surprise! ].
Nevertheless, the day before the invasion, the Bush administration approved the sale of $395,000,000 worth of advanced data transmission devices to Iraq, just one item in the 1.5 billion dollars of advanced technology that both the Reagan and Bush administrations sold to Hussein from 1985 to 1990.
Exploiting the Crisis
The first President Bush, aided by Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Colin Powell, now jumped at the opportunity to justify a more militaristic foreign policy.
Bush proposed "a new world order--free from the threat of terror." The United States would lead a coalition against the aggressor.
Arab leaders suggested a compromise: allow Iraq to annex a small segment of Kuwait after withdrawal. The administration refused that offer and all others, not because the plans were unreasonable, but because the Bush administration had decided on a war designed to enhance American power in the oil-rich Mideast [the Bush's didn't want Saddam Hussein to have any more oil, and or control of it].
Fake Satellite Photos
In early January, Hussein’s troops began to withdraw from Kuwait, but the Pentagon claimed to have satellite photographs showing an enormous buildup of Iraqi forces and weapons, 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1500 tanks massing in the desert for their impending attack on Saudi Arabia. This announcement stunned the anti-war protesters, and world opinion gradually shifted, although no one saw the alleged photos, which were, of course, classified.
Jean Heller, an ace journalist from the St. Petersburg Times in Florida, persuaded her editors to buy two photos from the Russian commercial satellite, the Soyuz Karta, taken September 11 and September 13. The photos proved that the entire Iraqi airforce was parked in Riyadh and that Iraqi troops were nowhere to be found massing in the desert. The editors asked two former Defense Intelligence Agency analysts to examine the photos. They, too, were surprised that the pictures showed American jets arrayed on the Saudi Arabian border but no troops at all on the Kuwaiti border.
Peter Zimmerman, a satellite expert at George Washington University, said,
"We could see clearly the main road leading right through Kuwait, south to Saudi Arabia, but it was covered with sand banks from the wind and it was clear that no army had moved over it. We could see empty barracks where you would have expected these thousands of troops to be billeted, but they were deserted as well."
Then a strange thing happened. Major news organizations, including Newsweek, the Chicago Tribune, and ABC, perused the photos but decided not to publish a story that would contradict the government’s information. The Iraqi military buildup, which did not exist, was Bush’s justification for dispatching troops, yet the American media refused to expose the government’s lie. The only honest American journalists were in St. Petersburg, Florida.
After the war, the House Armed Services Committee concluded that at the beginning of the ground war in February, the Iraqi troops numbered 183,000, not the 250,000 "discovered" by the Pentagon satellite. [The neocons/illuminati lie to the US public all the time!]
The alleged Pentagon satellite photos are still classified.
Fake Dead Babies
The propagandists for the Gulf War had to reach back to World War I for the ultimate staged outrage--our evil enemy attacks innocent babies [Problem-Reaction-Solution is the standard neocon/illuminati tactic/tool].
Here is how it unfolded. Kuwaiti citizen Nijirah al-Sabah, wiped her eyes and described a horrifying scene she saw when she was a volunteer in the Al Adnan hospital in Kuwait City. She had witnessed Iraqi soldiers looting incubators to take back to Baghdad, throwing Kuwaiti babies on "the cold floor to die."
This story, told and retold, incensed the public and congress as nothing else had done. The Senate resolution to go to war passed by five votes. Six senators said the baby-incubator story had overcome their reluctance to send troops. [You see? PRS tactic works every time the neocons use it!]
Months later, Nayirah was exposed as the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington. She had no connection to the Al Adnan hospital, as nurses there would testify. She and several other "witnesses" had been coached by the Hill and Knowlton public relations firm, which had a contract worth over $10,000,000 with the Kuwaiti government.
Brent Scowcroft, Bush’s national security adviser, later said in an interview with the Guardian that the administration had not known at the time that the story was false. He admitted that "it was useful in mobilizing public opinion."
Fake Statistics
After the war, Bush’s Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney said that the government did not know and probably would never know how many Iraqi casualties resulted from the Gulf War.
Beth Osborne Daponte, a Commerce Department demographer, prepared a report estimating that 13,000 civilians were killed by allied forces, 70,000 civilians died from infrastructure damage, and 40,000 troops were killed in battle. Her supervisors dismissed her, confiscated her report, and issued a new one with much lower estimates of Iraqi mortality rates.
Later, after Beth Osborne won her appeal and had been reinstated in her job, U.S. officials provided higher estimates: 100,000 Iraqi soldiers killed, 300,000 wounded, and 2,500 to 3,000 Iraqi civilians killed by bombing. International organizations estimated that the war created 5,000,000 refugees and that sanctions had killed more than 500,000 Iraqi children.
A Grateful Nation
Returning Gulf War veterans experienced the same government obstinacy that Vietnam veterans had run into when they reported illnesses caused by chemical warfare agents. After both wars, the U. S. government insisted that the veterans’ symptoms were psychological and had no known physical cause. [More US government lies and proof that our government treats soldiers like expendable slaves to do their bidding!] After both wars, even sympathetic Veterans Administration physicians were ordered to treat such claims as stress related. [See how our system works! It's worse than disgusting!!!]. As recently as January 23, 2003, the Veterans Affairs Department announced that Vietnam veterans suffering from chronic lymphocytic leukemia probably contracted the disease after exposure to Agent Orange (a defoliant the American army used extensively in the Vietnam War) and were entitled to benefits.
Of an estimated 540,000 Gulf War veterans, two out of five are on disability. Not all disability claims are honored. Veterans suffering from what is known as Gulf War Syndrome are encountering the same official blindness to the after-effects of chemical warfare agents. Despite international opposition to weaponized depleted uranium, the Pentagon is still denying its toxic effects and still employs the radioactive substance in shells and armor. Despite mounting evidence of the health hazards created by the forced inoculations of troops, the Pentagon blandly persists in requiring them [it's so sickening!].
During a press interview in October 2000, the retired commander of French forces in the Gulf War said his French troops took anti-nerve-gas tablets" (pyridostigmine bromide) for four days only. The British and American troops took them for months at a time. General Roquejoffre had never allowed his troops to be inoculated with the untried, controversial American "cocktail" vaccination. British and American troops had all been inoculated. British and American troops who had served in the same areas as the French came down with Gulf War Syndrome, but not a single French soldier suffered from the disease. The Pentagon continues to blow smoke about this issue and still forces troops to be vaccinated [because they've always used soldiers as experimental trials animals like rats/mice, they are a means to an end, they are slaves serving the neocons agenda]. [Think about this next question....]
Question: How many retired military officers own stock in the pharmaceutical companies who make components of the "cocktail"? The anthrax vaccine alone goes for $18 a pop.
Like Father, Like Son
John MacArthur, author of Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War, reminds us that both Bush administrations shared many of the same top officials. "These are all the same people who were running it more than ten years ago," he says. "They’ll make up just about anything-- to get their way." [In other words--to serve their agenda].
It’s the same old crew, all right, the wonderful folks who brought us the too-soon-forgotten Iran-Contra scandal.
Obviously, Big Oil is over-represented in Bush Junior’s administration. The Bushistas, including Vice President Dick Cheney (Halliburton Oil), Commerce Secretary Don Evans (Colorado Oil), National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice (Chevron), Secretary of Commerce and State Department official Richard Haas, have served as executives and consultants for international oil firms. They have traded valuable stock in companies that extract, refine, and market petroleum. They have profited from companies that build pipelines, obtain drilling concessions, and provision the industry. Enron used to be busy in all those capacities.
Robert Zoellick, U.S. Trade Representative, served on Enron's advisory council; I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's Chief of Staff, was a major Enron stockholder; Secretary of the Army Thomas White was an Enron executive for a decade and cashed in millions of dollars in stocks and options before the crash. Karl Rove, Bush Junior’s Gray Eminence, owned about $250,000 worth of Enron stock at the time he conferred with Ken Lay in the White House about Enron’s difficulties with federal regulators.
It’s the same old crew, all right, refusing to negotiate, comparing Hussein to Hitler, accusing him of "gassing his own people" although the preponderance of evidence shows that the Iranians gassed the Kurds during the Iran-Iraq War, while the U.S. was supporting the Iraqis.
Charley Reese reminds us how easily this administration resorts to obfuscation or lies.
“Bush has repeatedly cited the 1988 gassing of Kurds in Halabja as evidence of Iraqi cruelty. Recently, Stephen C. Pelletiere, a former CIA analyst, has reminded us of a Defense Intelligence Study that concluded that (1) the Kurds were casualties in a battle for the city between Iraqi and Iranian forces and not the object of the attack; and (2) that it was the Iranian gas that killed the Kurds.
"I remember reading a story in The Washington Post about this report. Now, one of two things is inescapable: Either the U.S. government was lying when it issued the report, or the president and his people are lying today when they blame it on Iraq. It has to be one or the other.”
No one should be surprised that the majority of hawks, the men who want to go to war rather than resort to diplomacy, have never seen military service. They managed to avoid the draft during the Vietnam conflict. Vice President Dick Cheney boasts, "I was smart enough to get five deferments." Bush Junior served in the National Guard, went AWOL for most of his enlistment. and somehow avoided imprisonment. Abrams, Card, Perle, Thompson, Wolfowitz, Ashcroft, Rove, etc.--none of them served, and all of them are eager to draw blood in Iraq.
The notable exception is Colin Powell, the only Bushista to have credibility in the realm of tactics, strategy, and diplomacy. Unfortunately, he is in the same position he occupied during Bush Senior’s regime when he repeatedly covered up the Iran-Contra crimes. Against what we hope must be his better judgment, he exercises the same function for Bush Junior.
How sad, then, we were to see Powell standing before the United Nations Security Council with a pathetic show-and-tell presentation. The incriminating aerial photographs of Hussein’s hidden weapons facilities could have been a Hollywood set or a Bakersfield truck stop as far as the audience was concerned. The photos required, Powell hastened to explain, expert interpretation. Sigh. Maybe the Pentagon should buy its photos from Soyuz Karta, the commercial Russian satellite.
Powell made points when he read earnestly from the thick British intelligence dossier, only to be ridiculed days later when the "intelligence dossier" proved to have been cobbled together from decade-old public sources, such as Jane’s Intelligence Review and an unattributed article from the Middle East Review of International Affairs written by a lecturer at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School.
While Powell was brandishing his vial of simulated anthrax, he failed to mention the significant facts about the anthrax letters. F.B.I. investigators have concluded that the powdered anthrax mailings were a weaponized form of an American strain produced at an American facility. Furthermore, weapons inspectors declare that Iraq has never possessed a dry preparation of anthrax.
No, General Powell--You had your chance and you blew it. Instead of holding up the vial of white powder and announcing that Hussein could do a whole bunch of damage with a teaspoonful of this anthrax stuff, you should have thrown your head back, swallowed it, and declaimed, "It is a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done before."
http://www.hermes-press.com/anthrax_atrocities2.htm
Anthrax Atrocities
It looks like we’ll be hearing about dead babies pretty soon [again].
Posted: Sat Feb 03, 2007 10:10 pm Post subject: Conspiracy of Military Escalation
Bush Lies to get Control of IRAQ's Oil! and more...
In the September/October Columbia Journalism Review, David Greenberg cited BushLies.net as among the few columnists and Web sites that "framed the [Niger] uranium deceptions as part of the President's familiar M.O., which was to utter untruths with such nonchalance that no one could possibly believe he was deliberately lying.”
Below are just some of the biggest or most egregious lies.
Bush Lies about Iraq & 9/11
The Bush administration repeatedly has constantly tried to link Iraq to the September 11th attacks. In fact, Bush submitted the following certification to Congress to authorize the use of force against Iraq:
I have reluctantly concluded, along with other coalition leaders, that only the use of armed force will accomplish these objectives and restore international peace and security in the area. I have also determined that the use of armed force against Iraq is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organiza-tions, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001. United States objectives also support a transition to democracy in Iraq, as contemplated by the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (Public Law 105-338).
The FACTS about Iraq & 9/11:
Both the Senate Intelligence Committee and the 9-11 Commission found “no credible evidence of a collaborative relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda.” The Commission stressed that “it had access to the same information [that Vice President Cheney] has seen regarding contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraq prior to the 9/11 attacks.” This finding led Jon Stewart to quip, “Mr. Vice President, it’s my duty to inform you that your pants are on fire.” (63)
At the same time as the release of the 9-11 Report, a former Bush intelligence official revealed that the White House knew there was no basis for the link. Former State Dept. intelligence official Greg Thielman stated that the intelligence agencies agreed on the “lack of a meaningful connection to Al Qaeda” and reported this to the White House.” The CIA, FBI and British intelligence have found no link between Al Qaeda and Iraq. One FBI official stated that “[w]e’ve been looking at this hard for more than a year and . . . we just don’t think its there.” British intelligence reports that Hussein and fundamentalist Bin Laden are ideological enemies. (6) The director of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence & Research dismissed the alleged link, claiming that the Bush administration “has had a faith based intelligence attitude.” (20)
In September 2003, Bush finally admitted that there was “no evidence” linking Iraq to 9-11. (36).
Links to Congressional Reports on Iraq Lies
Postwar Findings about Iraq's WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and How they Compare with Prewar Assessments
Senate Intelligence Committee
Iraq on the Record
The Bush Administration's Public Statements About Iraq
House Government Reform Committee Minority Staff
The Bush administration religiously chanted the contention that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction as its basis for a war.
For example, in his address to the nation Bush said the intelligence “leaves no doubt that . . . Iraq . . . continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.” Vice President Cheney also was part of the chorus and declared that “there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”
THE FACTS about IRAQ's alleged WMD’s
The 2006 Senate Intelligence Committee report found that:
*
Findings do not support the 2002 NIE judgment that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.
*
Findings do not support the 2002 NIE assessment that Iraq's acquisition of high-strength aluminum tubes was intended for an Iraqi nuclear program.
*
Findings do not support the 2002 NIE assessment that Iraq was "vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake" from Africa.
*
Findings do not support the 2002 NIE assessment that "Iraq has biological weapons.
*
Findings do not support the 2002 NIE assessment that Iraq possessed, or ever developed, mobile facilities for producing biological warfare agents.
*
Findings do not support the 2002 NIE assessment that Iraq "has chemical weapons" or "is expanding its chemical industry to support chemical weapons."
*
Findings do not support the 2002 NIE assessment that Iraq likely retained covert SCUD SRBMs.
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Findings do not support the 2002 NIE assessment that Iraq and developed a program for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle to deliver biological agents.
Similarly, the CIA’s Duelfer’s Report Iraq concluded that Iraq:
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HAD NO WMD’s.
*
“had no . . . strategy or plan for the revival of WMD after sanctions” ended
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Iraq failed “to acquire long range Iraq’s nuclear program ended in 1991 following the Gulf War.”
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“Iraq unilaterally destroyed is undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter.”
*
In spite of exhaustive investigation, ISG found no evidence that Iraq possessed, or was developing BW agent product systems mounted on road vehicles or railway wagons.”
This is consistent with pre-war findings:
Former Treasury Secretary O’Neil, who was a member of the National Security Council, indicated that “[i]n the 23 months I was there, I never saw anything that I would characterize as evidence of weapons of mass destruction.”
In January 2004, The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report on WMDS in Iraq concluded that the evidence prior to the war indicated that Iraq’s nuclear program had been dismantled and its chemical weapons had lost most of their lethality. In addition, the report concluded that the administration “systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq’s WMD and ballistic missile programs”.
This is consistent with other pre-war reports. For example, in September 2002, the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency concluded “there is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and st
They also make a vain attempt at trying to make it look like I don't know what I'm posting 
. It's obvious for anyone who reads this thread to identify those few who don't have a clue of the real facts involved in/on this topic 