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Huffington Post Censors Ventura About 9/11
Jesse Ventura wrote an article about 9/11 on the Huffington Post that quickly disappeared off the website leaving a message Editor’s Note: The Huffington Post’s editorial policy, laid out in our blogger guidelines, prohibits the promotion and promulgation of conspiracy theories — including those about 9/11. As such, we have removed this post. Here is what they didn’t want you to see.:
“WHAT REALLY HAPPENED ON SEPTEMBER 11TH?
You didn’t see anything about it in the mainstream media, but two weeks ago at a conference in San Francisco, more than one thousand architects and engineers signed a petition demanding that Congress begin a new investigation into the destruction of the three World Trade Center skyscrapers on 9/11.
That’s right, these people put their reputations in potential jeopardy – because they don’t buy the government’s version of events. They want to know how 200,000 tons of steel disintegrated and fell to the ground in 11 seconds. They question whether the hijacked planes were responsible – or whether it could have been a controlled demolition from inside that brought down the Twin Towers and Building 7.
Richard Gage, a member of the American Institute of Architects and the founder of Architects and Engineers for 9-11 Truth, put it like this: “The official Federal Emergency Management [Agency] and National Institute of Standards and Technology reports provide insufficient, contradictory and fraudulent accounts of the circumstances of the towers’ destruction.” He’s especially disturbed by Building 7, whose 447 stories came down in “pure free-fall acceleration” that afternoon – even though it was never hit by an aircraft.
This is a subject I take up in my new book, American Conspiracies , published this week by Skyhorse. An excerpt follows:
Some people have argued that the twin towers went down, within a half hour of one another, because of the way they were constructed. Well, those 425,000 cubic yards of concrete and 200,000 tons of steel were designed to hold up against a Boeing 707, the largest plane built at the time the towers were completed in 1973. Analysis had shown that a 707 traveling at 600 miles an hour (and those had four engines) would not cause major damage. The twin-engine Boeing 757s that hit on 9/11 were going 440 and 550 miles an hour.
Still, we are told that a molten, highly intense fuel mixture from the planes brought down these two steel-framed skyscrapers. Keep in mind that no other such skyscraper in history had ever been known to collapse completely due to fire damage. So could it actually have been the result of a controlled demolition from inside the buildings? I don’t claim expertise about this, but I did work four years as part of the Navy’s underwater demolition teams, where we were trained to blow things to hell and high water. And my staff talked at some length with a prominent physicist, Steven E. Jones, who says that a “gravity driven collapse” without demolition charges defies the laws of physics. These buildings fell, at nearly the rate of free-fall, straight down into their own footprint, in approximately ten seconds. An object dropped from the roof of the 110-story-tall towers would reach the ground in about 9.2 seconds. Then there’s the fact that steel beams that weighed as much as 200,000 pounds got tossed laterally as far as 500 feet.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) started its investigation on August 21, 2002. When their 10,000-page-long report came out three years later, the spokesman said there was no evidence to suggest a controlled demolition. But Steven E. Jones also says that molten metal found underground weeks later is proof that jet fuel couldn’t have been all that was responsible. I visited the site about three weeks after 9/11, with Governor Pataki and my wife Terry. It didn’t mean anything to me at the time, but they had to suspend digging that day because they were running into heat pockets of huge temperatures. These fires kept burning for more than three months, the longest-burning structure blaze ever. And this was all due to jet fuel? We’re talking molten metal more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Probably the most conclusive evidence about a controlled demolition is a research paper (two years, nine authors) published in the peer-reviewed Open Chemical Physics Journal , in April 2009. In studying dust samples from the site, these scientists found chips of nano-thermite, which is a high-tech incendiary/explosive. Here’s what the paper’s lead author, Dr. Niels Harrit of the University of Copenhagen’s chemistry department, had to say about the explosive that he’s convinced brought down the Twin Towers and the nearby Building 7:
“Thermite itself dates back to 1893. It is a mixture of aluminum and rust-powder, which react to create intense heat. The reaction produces iron, heated to 2500 degrees Centigrade. This can be used to do welding. It can also be used to melt other iron. So in nano-thermite, this powder from 1893 is reduced to tiny particles, perfectly mixed. When these react, the intense heat develops much more quickly. Nano-thermite can be mixed with additives to give off intense heat, or serve as a very effective explosive. It contains more energy than dynamite, and can be used as rocket fuel.” [i]
Richard Gage is one of hundreds of credentialed architects and structural engineers who have put their careers on the line to point out the detailed anomalies and many implications of controlled demolition in the building collapses. As he puts it bluntly: “Once you get to the science, it’s indisputable.”
Jesse Ventura on The View – (03/10/2010)
Media Coverup: Why Illegal Wars Last Forever
US soldier commits suicide in Indiana movie theater
WSWS
October 20, 2009
A National Guard soldier home on a 15-day leave from the war in Afghanistan committed suicide in a Muncie, Indiana, movie theater October 12. Jacob W. Sexton, a 21-year-old from rural Farmland, Indiana, shot himself in the head, approximately 20 minutes into the violent comedy Zombieland, with friends and siblings sitting around him. The suicide underscores once again the psychological damage done to soldiers charged with carrying out the brutal colonial occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Sexton’s death came as a shock to his family and military cohorts, who told the Muncie Star Press they had not seen any symptoms of suicidal behavior or post-traumatic stress disorder. Yet the young man’s behavior before the film showing revealed that the war’s violence was on his mind. When asked by the theater manager for identification proving the group was of age to see the movie, Sexton reportedly snapped at him, “I shot 18 people and you want to see my identification?”
Sexton’s father, Jeffrey Sexton, told the Associated Press, “We just need to watch these boys and the girls coming back home. Something’s just not right. Too much is happening.”
Like many active-duty military members, Sexton had served multiple tours in both Middle East occupations. After serving one tour of duty in Iraq, where he drove Humvees, he volunteered for another tour in Afghanistan. There he was a member of Alpha Company, Second Battalion, in the 151st Infantry Regiment, a unit that responds to attacks on military installations and convoys in the Kabul area.
According to the Star Press, Sexton was in a firefight his first week in Afghanistan and witnessed others during his time there. The area around Kabul is the scene of intense fighting that has resulted in high coalition casualties and untold numbers of deaths and injuries of Afghans. Sexton doubtless experienced the constant threat of violence in Iraq, as well, where Humvee drivers are at constant risk of injury and death from IEDs planted in the road.
Read Full Article Here
U.S. History They Won’t Teach In Schools
Ex-Intel officer: U.S. Seeks Occupation of Pakistan
Press TV
Seppember 14, 2009
The US seeks to establish new military bases in Pakistan to keep the country destabilized and control its nuclear weapons, says a former head of Pakistan’s intelligence service.
In an exclusive interview with Press TV on Sunday, Hamid Gul said that Washington planned to expand its embassy and increase its security guards in Pakistan.
“There are already three thousand five hundred of them [US security guards] and one thousand more are coming,” Gul said.
He also noted that Americans seek to set up a large intelligence network inside Pakistan under the pretext of giving financial aid to the country.
“They [Americans] are going to set up a large intelligence network inside Pakistan. They say because we are spending money directly on projects, therefore we need the security guards and we are bringing in the contractors,” said Gul.
US officials “want to go for Pakistan’s nuclear assets. They are inching close to those nuclear assets day by day,” he added.
When asked about Washington’s long-term goal in Pakistan, the former Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) said that the United States wants to keep the country destabilized.
Washington’s decision to expand its embassy in Pakistan has also rung alarm bells in China with Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan, Luo Zhaohui, expressing concern over the planned measure.
“China has concerns over the expansion of the US Embassy in Islamabad and the United States should expand its Embassy by materializing rules and regulations of Pakistan,” Zhaohui said at a news conference.
Washington’s “good war”
Death squads, disappearances and torture in Pakistan
WSWS
September 16, 2009
As the Obama administration prepares a major escalation of the so-called AfPak war, reports from Pakistan’s Swat Valley, near Afghanistan’s eastern border, provide a gruesome indication of the kind of war that the Pentagon and its local allies are waging.
While touted by Obama and his supporters as the “good war,” there is mounting evidence that the Pentagon and the CIA are engaged in a war against the population of the region involving death squads, disappearances and torture.
The Pakistani army sent 20,000 troops into Swat, part of the country’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP), last April to wage war against ethnic Pashtun Islamist movements (routinely described as the Pakistani Taliban) that have supported fellow Pashtuns across the border who are resisting the US-NATO occupation of Afghanistan.
This offensive, which was carried out on the direct and highly public insistence of US envoy Richard Holbrooke and senior American military officers during repeated trips to Islamabad, unleashed a humanitarian catastrophe. In what amounted to a massive exercise in collective punishment, many civilians were killed or wounded and some 2.5 million people were driven from their homes.
Now, the Pakistani military continues to occupy the area, carrying out a reign of terror in which individuals identified as opponents of the government and the US occupation across the border are being picked up and tortured to death.
According to a report published September 15 in the New York Times, with the military occupation of the Swat Valley “a new campaign of fear has taken hold, with scores, perhaps hundreds, of bodies dumped on the streets in what human rights advocates and local residents say is the work of the military.”
While the Pakistani military has denied responsibility for this wave of killings—blaming them on civilians seeking revenge against the Islamists—the Times quotes local residents, politicians and human rights workers as blaming the army. They point, the article states, to “the scale of the retaliation, the similarities in the way that many of the victims have been tortured and the systematic nature of the deaths and disappearances in areas that the military firmly controls.”
In addition to bearing marks of brutal torture, many of the bodies are discovered with their hands tied behind their backs and with a bullet in the back of the neck. In some cases corpses have been beheaded.
On September 1, the Pakistani newspaper Dawn quoted government officials as saying that 251 bodies had been found dumped along the roadside in the Swat Valley since July. On August 27, the newspaper reported that 51 bodies had been found in the area in the space of just 24 hours.
Dawn has also reported the discovery of a number of mass graves containing victims of the military and referred to local residents who had “witnessed the crude and inhuman lumping together of the living and the dead.”
The Times cites the case of Akhtar Ali, 28, arrested by the military at his electrical repair shop on September 1. While military officials repeatedly told his family that he would be released, four days later his corpse was dumped on their doorstep, bearing cigarette burns and with nails hammered into his flesh. “There was no place on his body not tortured,” his family said in a petition seeking justice.
American officials have praised the Pakistani military for its campaign in the Swat Valley, with US Ambassador Anne Patterson visiting Mingora, Swat’s largest town, last week to congratulate the army.
Now US officials are pressing the Pakistani government to replicate this bloody campaign in South Waziristan. A similar offensive is already underway in the Khyber Agency, site of the Khyber Pass, a key route for supplies to the US occupation force in Afghanistan. UN officials report that 100,000 people have been displaced by the attack.
Washington stands behind the atrocities being carried out against the Pakistani people. It is funding the Pakistani military operations, with some $2.5 billion in overt military aid this fiscal year. Meanwhile, CIA drone attacks continue, having claimed nearly 600 Pakistani victims over the past year, the majority of them civilians.
There is every reason to suspect that the wave of disappearances, torture and death squad assassinations in Pakistan is also “made in the USA.”
Before becoming the US commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal headed the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the secret special operations unit that investigative journalist Seymour Hersh described as an “executive assassination wing.”
US special forces “trainers” are operating on Pakistani soil, instructing Pakistani forces in the kind of tactics favored by JSOC—tactics that yield the bound and battered bodies dumped in the streets of Swat.
These tactics fit a long pattern of US counterinsurgency warfare, from Operation Phoenix in Vietnam to the US-backed death squads that terrorized the population of El Salvador in the 1980s.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen warned again Tuesday in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee that the military will almost certainly seek an increase in troop levels over the 70,000 American soldiers and Marines that are to be deployed in Afghanistan by the end of this year.
Citing diplomatic sources, Dawn reported that Gen. McChrystal is calling for a shift in the war’s focus to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area.
Having lost control of most of Afghanistan after nearly eight years of US occupation, the Pentagon is preparing to launch a new wave of bloodletting and terror against the population on both sides of the border in the hope of breaking popular resistance.
The administration of Barack Obama, elected on a wave of antiwar sentiment, is already implicated in war crimes that rival those carried out by his predecessor. Support for the war within the US has declined to levels approaching those reached over Iraq, with the latest CNN poll showing 58 percent of Americans opposing the US occupation of Afghanistan and only 39 percent supporting it.
Driven by the interests of the US ruling elite, the escalation of this dirty war, together with the escalating assault on jobs and living standards at home, is creating the conditions for the emergence of a mass political movement of working people against the Obama administration and the profit system which is the driving force of imperialist war.
761 U.S. Military Bases Across the Planet
Alternet
September 8, 2008
Here it is, as simply as I can put it: In the course of any year, there must be relatively few countries on this planet on which U.S. soldiers do not set foot, whether with guns blazing, humanitarian aid in hand, or just for a friendly visit. In startling numbers of countries, our soldiers not only arrive, but stay interminably, if not indefinitely. Sometimes they live on military bases built to the tune of billions of dollars that amount to sizeable American towns (with accompanying amenities), sometimes on stripped down forward operating bases that may not even have showers. When those troops don’t stay, often American equipment does — carefully stored for further use at tiny “cooperative security locations,” known informally as “lily pads” (from which U.S. troops, like so many frogs, could assumedly leap quickly into a region in crisis).
At the height of the Roman Empire, the Romans had an estimated 37 major military bases scattered around their dominions. At the height of the British Empire, the British had 36 of them planetwide. Depending on just who you listen to and how you count, we have hundreds of bases. According to Pentagon records, in fact, there are 761 active military “sites” abroad.
The fact is: We garrison the planet north to south, east to west, and even on the seven seas, thanks to our various fleets and our massive aircraft carriers which, with 5,000-6,000 personnel aboard — that is, the population of an American town — are functionally floating bases.
And here’s the other half of that simple truth: We don’t care to know about it. We, the American people, aided and abetted by our politicians, the Pentagon, and the mainstream media, are knee-deep in base denial.
Now, that’s the gist of it. If, like most Americans, that’s more than you care to know, stop here.
Where the Sun Never Sets
Let’s face it, we’re on an imperial bender and it’s been a long, long night. Even now, in the wee hours, the Pentagon continues its massive expansion of recent years; we spend militarily as if there were no tomorrow; we’re still building bases as if the world were our oyster; and we’re still in denial. Someone should phone the imperial equivalent of Alcoholics Anonymous.
But let’s start in a sunnier time, less than two decades ago, when it seemed that there would be many tomorrows, all painted red, white, and blue. Remember the 1990s when the U.S. was hailed — or perhaps more accurately, Washington hailed itself — not just as the planet’s “sole superpower” or even its unique “hyperpower,” but as its “global policeman,” the only cop on the block? As it happened, our leaders took that label seriously and our central police headquarters, that famed five-sided building in Washington D.C, promptly began dropping police stations — aka military bases — in or near the oil heartlands of the planet (Kosovo, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait) after successful wars in the former Yugoslavia and the Persian Gulf.
As those bases multiplied, it seemed that we were embarking on a new, post-Soviet version of “containment.” With the USSR gone, however, what we were containing grew a lot vaguer and, before 9/11, no one spoke its name. Nonetheless, it was, in essence, Muslims who happened to live on so many of the key oil lands of the planet.
Yes, for a while we also kept intact our old bases from our triumphant mega-war against Japan and Germany, and then the stalemated “police action” in South Korea (1950-1953) — vast structures which added up to something like an all-military American version of the old British Raj. According to the Pentagon, we still have a total of 124 bases in Japan, up to 38 on the small island of Okinawa, and 87 in South Korea. (Of course, there were setbacks. The giant bases we built in South Vietnam were lost in 1975, and we were peaceably ejected from our major bases in the Philippines in 1992.)
Provocateurs Call For Violence to Demonize DNC Protesters
Media reports attempt to link individuals who screamed “Kill Michelle Malkin” to talk show host Alex Jones
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
August 26, 2008
The spectacle of two individuals caught on camera calling for violence and then affiliating themselves with peaceful demonstrators in Denver has raised questions about who is behind apparent “agent provocateurs,” intent on demonizing legitimate protest groups at the Democratic National Convention.
Several news outlets reported that nationally syndicated radio talk show host Alex Jones had “threatened” neo-conservative pundit Michelle Malkin during a confrontation between the two yesterday.
The same websites then claimed that people affiliated with Jones had screamed “Kill Michelle Malkin” and advocated violence against the columnist.
“Jones and his lackeys chased Michelle around the protest threatening to kill her!” claims the Gateway Pundit blog.
Other news sources, including People’s Press Collective and Political Byline, re-iterated the false charge and alleged that Jones had threatened Malkin.
In reality, the You Tube video of the incident shows two young men in court jester outfits approach Jones, claim they are fans of his and then put their arms around him for a photo opportunity. They then go off camera and advocate the murder of Malkin, continuing their threats despite the best efforts of Jones’ colleague Luke Rudkowski to make them cease their outburst.:
Tellingly, the man in green (and Jones’ “lackey” according to the reports) also shouts, ”Alex Jones is a capitalist stooge.”
This incident was clearly a staged set-up to fool the watching media into thinking that people affiliated with Jones were calling for violence, thus demonizing Jones himself and the rest of the peaceful protesters who were confronting Malkin.
It was “frat-boy type” instigators, notes Aaron Dykes, editor of The Jones Report, “wearing court jester hats and making inflammatory statements.” Dykes further states that, after chanting for Malkin’s death, these instigators asked why Alex had called for violence against Malkin.
Alex Jones nor any of his colleagues have ever called for violence against Michelle Malkin or any other individual. Confrontational protest is one thing, but assault and death threats are something that Alex Jones has vehemently denounced throughout his years of activism.
For clues about who the mysterious “court jesters” really belong to, consider the fact that members of the Re-Create 68 protest group, a self-proclaimed left-wing anarchist organization, voiced their support for right-wing Malkin throughout the confrontation with Jones, with one member, Kenneth Sanchez, at one point yelling “Michelle Malkin is a true patriot!”
According to other protest groups, Re-Create 68 is a COINTELPRO-style project designed to discredit legitimate antiwar groups by instigating violence in Denver during the DNC. According to Alex Jones, members of Re-Create 68 have habitually attempted to taunt police and provoke riots during the first few days of the convention.
Discovering the true identity and affiliation of the two individuals seen in the video calling for violence is key to preventing the wholesale demonization of legitimate protest groups as well as stopping a potential police crackdown which may come as a result of these instigators provoking riots.
Malkin’s Photographer Caught On Tape Attempting To Frame Alex Jones
Prison Planet
August 27, 2008
One of Michelle Malkin’s stooges is caught on tape lying to police in an attempt to frame Alex Jones, claiming that Alex punched her bodyguard and shouted death threats, when in reality Malkin’s bodyguard assaulted Alex and his crew, and the death threats were made by provocateurs completely unaffiliated with Alex Jones.
Media Distorts Malkin Confrontation
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
August 26, 2008
Reading Fort Collins Now, formerly Fort Collins Weekly, one has to ask if Julia Cobb got her journalism degree out of a crackerjack box. Reporting on the events outside the DNC yesterday, Cobb describes Alex Jones’ confrontation with the neocon Michelle Malkin as follows:
But soon, the attention was diverted from the peaceful protest by an altercation between a member of the conservative media and a citizen attending the protest. This was the second incident of its kind; on Sunday, protesters took exception to a Fox News reporter trying to question Ward Churchill, controversial former professor at the University of Colorado. Today it was radical Alex Jones, from the group 9/11 Truth, which believes that the September 11 terrorist attacks were planned by the U.S. government, verbally confronting Michelle Malkin, a conservative columnist and Fox News contributor.
“You support torture. Shame on you, you fascist piece of trash,” Jones yelled. He also accused Malkin of supporting the U.S. Marines when they drown puppies.
Malkin found an ally in Recreate 68’s Sanchez, who pushed his way into the crowd of TV cameras to yell at Jones: “Michelle Malkin is a true patriot!”
Sanchez later said he had no idea why Jones was attending the protest and added that Recreate 68 does not support Jones’ ideas. He added that although they strongly disagree with her views, Recreate 68 supports Malkin’s right to free speech.
Drown puppies? Lance Cpl. David Motari didn’t drown a puppy. He threw it over a cliff. This was a big story back in March, but for some reason Ms. Cobb didn’t bother to do any research.
She also did not mention the fact that Michelle Malkin insisted the puppy was not real. “The puppy doesn’t move. It’s clear to me that it’s either dead or a stuffed toy. The sound effects of a dog yapping seem to have been dubbed in,” Malkin wrote on her blog on March 3. “Disturbing whether the dog is real or fake, dead or alive? Yes. A hanging offense? No. But the clip is a useful cultural Rorschach test. Those who buy into the soldier-as-monster narrative are up in arms — demanding that the soldiers be hunted down and shot.”
Malkin then includes a few obscenity laced quotes that accompanied the video on YouTube. “I’m sure Gloria Steinem and the Berkeley City Council would agree,” she adds. This is the same Gloria Steinem who enjoyed “a 10-year association with the CIA,” according to Nancy Borman and the Village Voice. As a member of the CIA’s Mockingbird corporate media — Malkin works for Fox News — it would seem Michelle Malkin has more in common with Ms. Steinem than she would care to admit.
It is bizarre to claim Malkin “found an ally” in Recreate 68’s Kenneth Sanchez, who along with co-founder Mark Cohen attempted to “levitate” the U.S. Mint in Denver. Of course, this is not even original, it was ripped off from Abbie Hoffman. Back in 1967, 50,000 hippies attempted to levitate the Pentagon, turn it orange, and drive out the evil spirits responsible for the Vietnam War. Mark Cohen, wearing a red velvet wizard costume, and Recreate 68 managed to attract 50 people to this less than original stunt.
It makes sense Sanchez would declare Malkin a “true patriot,” although Recreate 68 allegedly disagrees with her views. According to Truth Alliance, Recreate 68 is a COINTELPRO project designed to discredit legitimate antiwar groups by instigating violence in Denver during the DNC. Malkin did her part, adding to the hype on her blog on March 21 when she wrote that Recreate 68 is part and parcel of “the history of left-wing violence against law enforcement” and admonished the cops to “take the nutballs seriously.” In response, nutball Sanchez embraced Malkin and disavowed the “radical” Alex Jones.
“Recreate 68 co-founder Glenn Spagnuolo agreed [with Sanchez] saying [Alex Jones] is “the true agent provocateur, he was so busy hating, he missed all the love.” Spagnuolo’s “love” is rather peculiar, as the point of Recreate 68 is to initiate a re-run of the 1968 police riot in Chicago. Is it possible Mr. Spagnuolo echoes Yippie Jerry Rubin, who wished for martial law in Chicago? Love has nothing to do with bashing heads.
Federally Funded Re-Create 68 Provocateur, Jerry Rubin
Rat Tube
August 26, 2008
Rat Says: Within the first nanosecond of seeing this clown (Jerry Rubin) I thought to myself, ‘could this be any faker’? This guy is void of sincerity and his clown suit seems forced and uncomfortable on him. What is so telling is the formulaic M.O. that the foundations use that hired him….. they are using the same scripts with ReCreate68.
But it takes two to tango and in this case it is Fox that has chosen (or better yet designated) to bed the fake anarchists. What you see on the ‘old media’ is all WWF.
1. Background and finances of the “Chicago 7?. Unknown to the public, Rennie Davis, Tom Hayden, and the others who became the “7?, and persons connected with them in the National Mobilization to End the War in Viet Nam, were funded by federal money, channeled to them through pass-through organizations connected with the government. $192,000 in federal money and $85,000 from the Carnegie Foundation, acting as a conduit for the Central Intelligence Agency, were funneled to Hayden, Davis, et al., through a front calling itself the Chicago Student Health Organization. To maintain the deep “cover” of this latter group, stories were planted in the press describing the group as being “communist” inspired or directed.
Another $193,313 was funneled to the “7? from the federal Office of Economic Opportunity by way of or through subsidiaries of the Institute for Policy Studies, Washington, D.C., an alleged “liberal” think tank posing as a left wing group, but acting as a conduit for the C.I.A. Other substantial funds came from the Roger Baldwin Foundation which has, nationwide, taken over the structure of the American Civil Liberties Union. The A.C.L.U., such as it was prior to 1967, ; no longer exists. The Roger Baldwin Foundation is funded by several pass-throughs, or conduits, for the C.I.A., among others being:
J.M. Kaplan Fund, Inc. [of New York]; New World Foundation; Aaron E. Norman Fund, Inc.
This is shown by a detailed analysis of I.R.S. form 990-A, filed by these foundations [one of the few public record tax returns]. Several persons acting for the C.I.A. sit on the Board of Overseers of the Roger Baldwin Foundation : Jacob M. Kaplan and John L.Saltonstall, among others……..” bellaciao.org
Dallas Morning News Libels Alex Jones
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
August 28, 2008
It’s no longer simply the neocon bloggers spreading lies about Alex Jones. Now the Dallas Morning News has engaged in slander. Mark Davis, described as a “radio guy and contributing columnist” to the newspaper’s “opinion blog,” writes:
Conservative writer and blogger Michelle Malkin was apparently attacked by violent idiots yesterday, egged on by one of the most repugnant human beings attending this convention — and the competition for that title is crowded.
I refer to the cretinous Alex Jones, who hosts what passes for a radio talk show on a few stations unwise enough to carry it. His blend of 9/11 conspiracy bunk and other baseless scaremongering makes him a complete idiot, a designation which gives him plenty of innocent company. But in shouting “Kill Michelle Malkin!” at a protest yesterday, he reveals himself to be not just a dismissible loon, but a despicable soul whom I would identify as a blight on my industry if I actually considered him to be a part of it. (Emphasis added.)In short, according to the Dallas Morning News, Alex Jones called for Michelle Malkin to be murdered. Infowars, Prison Planet, and no shortage of blogs and websites have spent the last two days revealing this for what it is — a complete lie, in fact a neocon dirty trick.
It really is quite amazing the Dallas Morning News would be so careless. It has committed libel, as there is plenty of irrefutable evidence that Alex Jones did not call for Malkin’s murder.
In the opinion of this writer, the Dallas Morning News not only needs to apologize and print a retraction, it needs to fire Mark Davis for violating journalistic ethics.
But then I forgot — the corporate media has no ethics.
Audio: Malkin Entourage Admits Alex Jones Did Not Say “Kill Malkin”
Infowars
August 29, 2008
In a clip taken from a Pajamas Media podcast, PJM producer Ed Driscoll gets an admission from videographer Andrew Marcus and blogger Charlie Martin that Alex Jones did not call for the murder of Michelle Malkin during a demo to “levitate” the Denver Mint on August 25. This admission by Malkin’s people should put to rest the claims, primarily on neocon blogs and, unfortunately, by Mark Davis at the Dallas Morning News, that Alex Jones threatened Malkin. Marcus and Martin, however, attempt to portray Jones as violent and attempting to incite a “mob,” although Malkin was not touched by Alex Jones and he was in no way responsible for the behavior of people in the crowd, including two individuals who acted as agents provocateurs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEng3DLsBNU
Inside Edition Smears Jones For Malkin Confrontation
http://www.prisonplanet.com/inside-e..es-for-malkin-confrontation.html
Alex Jones Confronts Neocon Michelle Malkin — Re-Create 68 Provocateurs Make a Mockery out of the Anti-War Movement
http://noworldsystem.com/2008/0..onts-neocon-michelle-malkin/
Jesse Ventura Talks 9/11 Truth On Howard Stern
Man Charged With Placing 9/11 Stickers On A Plane
http://infowars.net/articles/july2008/300708Utah.htm
At $648 Billion, Cost Of Iraq War Almost Equal To Vietnam
Think Progress
July 26, 2008
In his 1999 book, A Charge To Keep, President Bush said he had “learned the lessons of Vietnam” about “never again ask[ing] the military to fight a political war.” After launching the Iraq war, in April 2004, Bush rejected the analogy that Iraq was turning into a quagmire like Vietnam:
Q: How do you answer the Vietnam comparison?
BUSH: I think the analogy is false.
Last August, however, President Bush reversed course and embraced the Vietnam analogy, stating Vietnam taught us that “the price of America’s withdrawal” is steep and painful.
In a new report, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) reveals that the real similarity between Iraq and Vietnam is in the price of staying. In constant FY2008 dollars, the Vietnam war cost the U.S. $686 billion. The Iraq war, at just over five years old, is priced at $648 billion:
CRS notes, “All estimates are of the costs of military operations only and do not reflect costs of veterans benefits, interest on war-related debt, or assistance to allies.” Thus, the actual costs of the Iraq war are likely much greater, as Nobel Prize economist Joe Stiglitz reported in his book, The Three Trillion Dollar War.
It is unlikely, however, that the White House is concerned about these mounting costs. In October, the CBO conservatively said the wars may cost $2 trillion over the next decade. “I’m not worried about the number,” White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said in response, calling the estimate “pure speculation.”
Indeed, “the price of America’s withdrawal” from Iraq may be an alternative that Bush should strongly consider.
McCain says only World War III would justify draft
Reuters
June 25, 2008
Only World War III would prompt Republican presidential candidate John McCain to bring back the military draft, McCain said on Tuesday.
Many Americans are fearful the U.S. government will be forced to reinstitute the draft given the prolonged Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Asked about that possibility by a potential voter in Florida during a telephone “town hall meeting,” McCain said: “I don’t know what would make a draft happen unless we were in an all-out World War III.”
The United States ended its last military draft in 1973 in the waning years of the Vietnam war, moving to an all-volunteer military force.
McCain, a Vietnam veteran, said the draft during that conflict weighed most heavily on lower-income Americans, and that this should not be repeated.
“I do not believe the draft is even practicable or desirable,” McCain said.
Lieberman Must Go!
Wash. Post omitted that Bush withdrew nomination of FEC chairman who questioned McCain loan
http://mediamatters.org/items/200806250006?lid=401636&rid=10117687
McCain Would Give America’s 200 Largest Corporations $45 Billion In Tax Breaks
http://thinkprogress.org/wonkroom/2008/06/26/fortune-200-report/
McCain: ’I stopped beating my wife just a couple of weeks ago’
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/06/mccain-gambles.html
Wexler: McCain’s ’calculating the value of a terrorist attack’ is ’eerie’
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/W..pattern_of_using_0626.html
U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs documents 73,846 deaths from Iraq Wars as of May 2007
The Canadian
April 6, 2008
U.S. media organizations like CNN, NBC, FOX and others recently reported that the death total of U.S. combatants in Iraq War had just reached 4,000. The problem is that this data seems to be an intentional distortion. Indeed, official U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs data indicates that the death total from the attrition of Iraq Wars had already reached 73,846, as of May 2007. In comparison Sky News reports that during the Vietnam War, 58,000 soldiers were killed between 1964 and 1973, an average of 26 a day. LINK
It is indeed, a well known fact that in a so-called free society, the U.S. President George W. Bush administration has banned media organizations from photographing most of the coffins, along with the maimed military personnel returning into the U.S. from Iraq. And, if you think that the U.S. President Bush administration has followed “freedom of the press” in Iraq, you have made a sudden mistake.
Journalists in Iraq, who have not prostituted themselves into disseminating the Bush administration’s public relations on the “overall success” of the Iraq War, are being subjected to oppressive persecution.
Journalists have complained of fascist-style harassment.
Is this the action of a U.S. President, who is fighting for democracy, that fundamentally relies on transparency toward supporting a critically informed public?
Indeed, award-winning independent Journalist Dahr Jamail reports that “when the United States handed over power to a ’sovereign’ Iraqi interim government, [Paul] Bremer [former U.S. administrator in Iraq] simply passed on the authority to Ayad Allawi.” LINK
Mr. Dahmail further documents that, Mr. Allawi is the “U.S.-installed interim Prime Minister, who has had longstanding ties with the British intelligence service MI6 and the CIA.” LINK
Investigative Journalist Dahr Jamail, also reports that Allawi’s “media commission had sent out an official ’order’ for news organisations to “stick to the government line on the U.S.-led offensive in Fallujah, or face legal action.” The warning was sent on the letterhead of Mr. Allawi.
The result is that Iraq has become under the Bush administration, a far worse “modern Stalinist” police state, than Iraq had ever been under Saddam Hussein. Over 1 million people in Iraq have been reportedly killed, as the direct result of the Bush regime’s pre-emptive War in Iraq. This is in addition to the over 73,000 U.S. military personnel already killed, as documented by U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs.
Mr. Bush has coordinated an effort to limit the American public’s understanding of the current Iraq War, based upon the myth-making presentation of the War. That myth-making” has sought to convince Americans, in part, that the war is taking a far less toll of American lives.
Indeed, it is apparent that the U.S. Bush administration, is anxious to “declare progress” and “victory” in Iraq, so that it can pursue its further military expansionist agenda against Iran. Seymour M. Hersh has sounded alarm bells about the Bush regime’s nuclear war ambitions against Iran. LINK
But, “The Bush administration has rejected comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam, which traumatized Americans a generation ago, with a sad procession of military body bags and television footage of grim wartime cruelty,” observed China Daily. LINK
The intellectual inspiration for the U.S. Bush administration’s public relations management of the Iraq War, is Leo Strauss. Wikipedia notes that “Strauss asks his readers to consider whether it is true that noble lies have no role at all to play, in uniting and guiding the polis.” LINK
In 2003, the magazine Foreign Policy In Focus, noted that thanks to the “Week in Review” section of the 4 May 2003 edition of the New York Times and another investigative article in a recent New Yorker magazine, “The cognoscenti have suddenly been made aware that key neoconservative strategists behind the Bush administration’s aggressive foreign and military policy, consider themselves to be followers of Strauss. LINK
Two other very influential Straussians, noted by Foreign Policy in Focus in May 2003, “include Weekly Standard Chief Editor William Kristol and Gary Schmitt, founder, chairman, and director of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). This is a six-year-old neoconservative group whose alumni include Vice President Dick Cheney and Pentagon [then] chief Donald Rumsfeld, as well as a number of other senior foreign policy officials.” LINK
“PNAC’s early prescriptions and subsequent open letters to President George W. Bush on how to fight the war on terrorism, have anticipated to an uncanny extent precisely what the administration has done.” LINK
The Executive Intelligence Review (EIR), notes that a leading “Straussian” advisor to the Bush Administration has been “Paul Wolfowitz, who was trained by Strauss’ alter-ego and fellow University of Chicago professor Allan Bloom. EIR specifically noted that Wolfowitz has helped champion the “war party” within the civilian bureaucracy at the Pentagon. LINK
Strauss emphasized that ’myths’ are “vitally needed” to “give people meaning and purpose and to ensure a stable society”; and even though he was Jewish, he praised Nazi Germany for embracing the power of myth to control the development of “liberal tendencies” in society. In the view of Strauss, presenting the truth harms society, by liberating “the governed” as “free thinkers” from the “necessary” social control of “elites”.
The Bush administration is inspired by the neo-fascist ideology of Leo Strauss, and has sought to dupe the American public into ignorance about the human suffering of U.S. military personnel in Iraq, by using Straussian techniques of political manipulation.
Shadia Drury, in Leo Strauss and the American Right (1999), argues that Strauss taught different things to different students and inculcated an elitist strain in American political leaders, that is linked to imperialist militarism and to Christian fundamentalism.
Drury accuses Strauss of teaching that “perpetual deception of the citizens by those in power is critical, because they need to be led and because they need strong rulers to tell them what’s good for them.”
Nicholas Xenos in “Leo Strauss and the Rhetoric of the War on Terror,” Logosjournal.com similarly argues that Strauss “was not an anti-liberal in the sense in which we commonly mean ’anti-liberal’ today, but an anti-democrat in a fundamental sense; a true reactionary. Strauss, was somebody who wanted to go back to a previous, pre-liberal, pre-bourgeois era of blood and guts; of imperial domination, of authoritarian rule, and of pure fascism.”
The U.S. President Bush administration’s stated goal of staying in Iraq, to guide Iraq into democracy, and also to combat “terrorists” who threaten American and international security interests, is an apparent clever Straussian ruse. The Bush administration seeks an apparent agenda in Iraq which is far from being the affirmation of democracy and peace.
The lives of Americans have been lost not in the defence of democracy and toward global peace, but as apparent “ritual sacrifices” to the messianic Eugenic ideology of America’s ruling elites. The War on Terrorism appears to being used as a pseudonym for a Eugenics War, that seeks to use the pre-text of terrorists, to execute genocide against Iraqis, through the exploitation of and the “sacrifice” of more than 73,000 U.S. military personnel.
Get the full U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs report: PDF LINK
What military spending is doing to our economy
Daily Kos
March 31, 2008
Massive federal deficits, not enough money for social programs. Where have all our tax dollars gone? The charts below (click for full page versions) show how our income tax dollars were spent in FY2007, which ended last September 30 (data from Budget of the United States Government: Historical Tables Fiscal Year 2009, Table 8.7). As you can see, 52.7% of these discretionary funds went to the military.
These charts exclude expenditures for Social Security, Medicare, and federal highways since these programs are paid from dedicated taxes maintained in separate trust funds. They also exclude interest paid on the national debt since that spending is “mandatory”, not “discretionary”. These charts show the part of the federal budget that Congress and the President directly allocate each year (with the funds derived from our income taxes, corporation taxes, excise taxes, estate and gift taxes, and other miscellaneous taxes).
5 Years Too Many
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iah-ESLQHTs
Blackwater Contract In Iraq Renewed Another Year
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/200..x1VSlDa396qFhpEJ9lOzZa7gF
Iraq War Is A Eugenics Orchestrated Genocide
http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2008/03/29/02304.html
Iraqi casualties at highest level since August
http://www.rawstory.com/new..st_level_s_04012008.html
Cheney Again Links Iraq Invasion To 9/11 Attacks
Mike Sheehan
Raw Story
March 18, 2008
Vice President Dick Cheney, in a press conference during a surprise visit to Iraq, again stated that it was “pretty clear” there was a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda before Sep. 11.
Reminded of the release last week of an exhaustive Pentagon report which concluded that there were no ties between Saddam Hussein and the terror network, Cheney answered, “Well, it says no operational link. But there was, as I recall from looking at it, extensive links with Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Egyptian Islamic Jihad was the organization headed by Zawahiri, and he merged EIJ with al-Qaeda when he became the deputy director of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden’s number two.
“Now, was that a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda?” Cheney asked rhetorically. “Seems to me pretty clear that there was.”
When someone else asked him to reiterate his specific claim, Cheney replied, “You heard what I said. I was very precise.”
The person who first prompted Cheney at the press conference about the link was Stephen Hayes, according to the White House’s own transcript. Hayes, a conservative columnist and, coincidentally, the official biographer of Cheney, wrote a book entitled ’The Connection: How al Qaeda’s Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America’ that made the same argument as the vice president’s about a purported link between Saddam and al-Qaeda.
Additionally, Hayes concluded in a November 2003 article for the conservative Weekly Standard that “there can no longer be any serious argument about whether Saddam Hussein’s Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda to plot against Americans.”
Last week, after the release of the Pentagon report, Hayes wrote another piece for the Standard which insisted that the report actually underscored Cheney’s case rather than undermined it.
As the watchdog site Media Matters notes, Cheney has previously referenced the writing of Hayes as supporting evidence for his Iraq-Qaeda claim, and Hayes has been accused of being a longtime defender of the White House’s Iraq policies.
In an August 2007 appearance on HBO’s ’Real Time with Bill Maher,’ a disgusted Timothy Robbins demanded to Hayes personally that he apologize for promoting Iraq propaganda on behalf of the Bush administration.
As for Cheney, his Baghdad visit, which was accompanied by a series of bombings around the still-dangerous area, marks the fifth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, a conflict which has claimed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives and nearly 4,000 US troops at a financial cost of nearly half a trillion dollars.
Cheney to Troops: Mideast Needs Freedom
AP
March 18, 2008
Rallying troops after an overnight stay at an air base, Vice President Dick Cheney said Tuesday that as long as freedom is suppressed in the Mideast, the region will remain a place of “stagnation, resentment and violence ready for export.”
“You and I know what it means to be free,” Cheney told the troops at an outdoor rally.
“We wouldn’t give such freedoms away and neither would the people of Iraq or Afghanistan, but in both of those countries, they’re facing attack from violent extremists who want to end all democratic progress and pull them once again in the direction of tyranny.
Price of Iraq war now outpaces Vietnam
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Price_of_Iraq_war_now_outpaces_0318.html
Cheney says U.S. will complete mission in Iraq
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL1882330720080318
There WILL be a public inquiry into Iraq, says Brown
http://www.independent.co.uk/..q-says-brown-796851.html
Cheney Says U.S. Support For Iraq Unwavering
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gMKyKJi6ySgbcfMrHzP3p71gMwPg
Citing ’phenomenal’ change, Cheney says ’it’s good to be back in Iraq’
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/..enal_change_Cheney_says_its_0317.html
McCain: It’s “Common Knowledge” That Iran Is Training Al Qaeda
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
March 18, 2008
http://youtube.com/watch?v=kmXaEeuHmig
During another photo-op flying visit to Iraq, John McCain told reporters that it is well known that Iran is training Al Qaeda terrorists, a patently ludicrous claim that had to be immediately corrected by his traveling circus.
Speaking to reporters in Amman, the Jordanian capital, McCain said he and two Senate colleagues traveling with him continue to be concerned about Iranian operatives “taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back.”
The Washington Post reports:
Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it was “common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that’s well known. And it’s unfortunate.” A few moments later, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, standing just behind McCain, stepped forward and whispered in the presidential candidate’s ear. McCain then said: “I’m sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda.”
As anyone with a rudimentary understanding of the conflict in Iraq and middle eastern politics knows, the insurgents now endlessly referred to as “Al-Qaeda in Iraq” are composed of mostly Sunni militants pitched in violent battle against Shi’ites and, by proxy, U.S. forces.
The reigning leaders in Iran are Shi’ite and have welcomed the emergence of a Shi’ite-led government in Iraq. To suggest they would also somehow train Sunni militants is totally backwards.
Indeed, Al Qaeda affiliated right wing terror groups in Iran are very much allied against the Ahmadinejad government and routinely carry out attacks aimed at Iranian soldiers and state figures.
Furthermore, the Bush administration has long asserted that elements of the Iranian security forces have been training and supplying weapons to Iraq’s Shi’ite militias, a claim Iran vigorously denies.
McCain: Don’t Pull Troops From Iraq
Associated Press
March 18, 2008
Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting, said Tuesday that any hasty pullout from Iraq would be a mistake that would favor Iran and al-Qaida.
McCain, who has linked his political future to U.S. success in Iraq, was in the wartorn country on Monday for meetings with Iraqi and U.S. diplomatic and military officials.
“We were very encouraged by the success of the surge and the reduction in U.S. casualties,” McCain told reporters in Jordan, where he stopped on the next leg of a congressional visit that will also take him to Israel, Britain and France.
It was the senator’s eighth visit to Iraq, and his first since emerging as the presumed Republican candidate. He is accompanied by Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., two of his top supporters in the race for president.
“We are succeeding, but we still have a long way to go,” McCain said, pointing at what he described as al-Qaida’s residual power in Iraq and at Iran’s growing influence, as the major remaining threats.
McCain, Cheney US in Iraq long-term
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080317/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq
John ’I’m a War Criminal’ McCain
http://www.lewrockwell.com/gaddy/gaddy34.html
McCain says al Qaeda might try to tip U.S. election
http://www.reuters.com/article/p..eedName=politicsNews&rpc=22&sp=true
McCain More Hawkish Than Bush on Russia, China, Iraq
http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20080312/pl_bloomberg/axq0v7kuajq8
Lord Rothschild Supports McCain
http://www.washingtonpost.com..1403897.html?sid=ST2008031404122
‘Why Are You So Angry?’: McCain Gets Testy Over NYT Reporter’s Inquiry
http://youtube.com/watch?v=9_UFnOUJjRE
Bush offers to lie for McCain: ’If he wants me to say, ’You know, I’m not for him,’ I will. Whatever he wants me to do, I want him to win’
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/03/07/
Former CIA: Warhawks Pray Iran Backs Terror to Justify Military Strike
Here is an excerpt from the New York Times by a former CIA officer who writes that the warhawks pray Iran backs a terror attack that kills Americans to justify a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities
Marc Gerecht
NY Times
February 20, 2008
“What has been the response of most American hawks to this mess? Prayer. They are essentially waiting for (Iran) the clerical regime to do something stupid so that they can galvanize an awareness among Americans that mullahs should not have the bomb. True, the Iranian clerics have often done the wrong thing at the right time, from aiding the bombers of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996 and our African embassies in 1998, to the kidnapping of British sailors and marines last year. It is possible that Tehran, which wants to cause us great harm in Iraq and Afghanistan, could again back a terrorist attack that kills enough Americans to make preventive military strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities mandatory. But the Iranians know this. They know they are in the final nuclear stretch: they will likely play it sufficiently cool to make it difficult for the United States to strike them pre-emptively.“
Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer, is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Ellsberg: Speak out while you can
Press TV
February 22, 2008
US whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg raps those aware of Bush’s violations of the Constitution, saying they should speak out and save lives.
“When they keep silent about their knowledge of that situation, they are themselves violating their oath to support and defend the Constitution,” Ellsberg said in an interview with City Pages.
Advising such people to reveal truths that might save an untold number of lives, the former military analyst explained that there is a high possibility of new military adventurism in the Middle East.
“Don’t wait till bombs are falling in Iran or a new war is started wrongly or thousands more people have died when you know that your bosses are lying the public into a wrongful war or committing other crimes or violating the constitution,” said the former Pentagon official.
According to Ellsberg, there is a good chance that Bush will wage war on Iran in the next year.
“I think that the risk remains significant, and indeed the fact that the President isn’t running again for office may free him in his mind,” he explained.
Daniel Ellsberg, who shocked the world in 1971 by disclosing 7,000 classified pages of a Defense Department report, revealed the existence of a much deeper battle in Vietnam than the public was aware of.
Recent News:
Judge holds reporter in contempt in anthrax case
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-02-19-reporter-anthrax_N.htm
US secretly met Iran banking officials
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080215/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_iran
US will back new Iran sanctions
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/..iddle_east/7260122.stm
France heads for war games in the Gulf
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/77c38c2c-e1a1-11dc-a302-0000779fd2ac.html
McCain: Sanctions, attacks await Iran
The Folly of Attacking Iran: Lessons from History
Chertoff Warns Of “Earth Shattering” Events
Iran plans to launch two more rockets into space
Bush hails ‘headway’ on highlighting Iranian threat
U.S. heading to war in Iran, says former inspector
Key figures in the Israel lobbies support a terrorist group that has fired on US troops
Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg: Bush Likely to Attack Iran, Impeachment a Must
Order given to fire on Iranian speedboat, but it turned away: Joint Chiefs chairman
Buchanan: McCain win would mean war with Iran
Bush’s State of the Union: Mandate for Iran Attack
Man-Made Droughts/Floods To Disrupt Economies
Wired
February 11, 2008
A recently-unearthed U.S. Navy research project calls for creating man-made floods and droughts to “disrupt [the] economy” of an enemy state.
“Weather modification was used successfully in Viet Nam to (among other things) hinder and impede the movement of personnel and material from North Viet Nam to South Viet Nam,” notes a Naval Air Warfare Weapons Division – China Lake research proposal, released last month through the Freedom of Information Act. But “since that time military research on Weather Modification has dwindled in the United States.”
The proposal suggests a study of the latest weather manipulation techniques, to “give the U.S. military a viable, state-of-the-art weather modification capability again.” With that in hand, American forces would be able…
To impede or deny the movement of personnel and material because of rains-floods, snow-blizzards, etc.
(2) To disrupt economy due to the effect of floods, droughts, etc.
The proposal is undated. But it’s pretty clearly from the Cold War. Not only is “the Soviet Union (Russia)” mentioned. The money is also relatively small, by today’s standards — less than a half-million dollars, over two years.
A military in-house newspaper calls “weather modification” an “area of China Lake preeminence. Between 1949 and 1978, China Lake developed concepts, techniques, and hardware that were successfully used in hurricane abatement, fog control, and drought relief. Military application of this technology was demonstrated in 1966 when Project Popeye was conducted to enhance rainfall to help interdict traffic on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.” (Here’s a picture of China Lake’s “Cold Cloud Modification System.”
In 1980, the United States ratified a treaty banning military weather manipulation. But every once in a while, someone in the armed forces floats the idea of doing it again. “Our vision is that by 2025 the military could influence the weather on a mesoscale [theater-wide] or microscale [immediate local area] to achieve operational capabilities,” a 1996 Air Force-commissioned study reads.
Today, Chinese officials are trying to figure out ways to keep it from raining over Beiing, during this summer’s Olympics.
What Vietnam Veterans Think of John McCain
This is the “REAL” John McCain in living color seen belittling Delores Alfond, head of the National Alliance of POW/MIA whose brother went missing in action in Vietnam . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CazKanlYDg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFM1xqqTX_g
McCain: Sanctions, attacks await Iran
Press TV
February 8, 2008
Republican presidential hopeful John McCain says the US and its European allies will adopt unilateral sanctions against Iran.
He stated that if the UN is not prepared to impose stronger political and economic sanctions, the United States and its European partners will take such measures.
He also said that a military solution should remain on the table as a last resort and that Iran is playing ‘a game it cannot win’.
“I intend to make it unmistakably clear to Iran that we will not permit a government that espouses the destruction of … Israel . . .and pledges undying enmity to the United States to possess weapons to advance their malevolent ambitions,” Suddeutschen Zeitung quoted the senator as saying.
The recently published US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) has confirmed that Iran is not developing nuclear arms.
Iran says under the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) it is entitled to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes and that its nuclear activities are aimed at civilian purposes.
McCain wants more EU troops for Afghanistan
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ne..ws/2008/02/10/wafg110.xml
John McCain, To Get Signaled Support From President Bush
http://www.huffingtonpost.com..ets-implicit_n_85666.html
McCain Got $100,000 From Abramoff’s Old Firm
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/12/mcc..-_n_86245.html
Romney To Endorse McCain
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSWBT00839720080214
Bill ‘PNAC’ Kristol is new McCain advisor
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/104/story/27096.html
Did The Republican Establishment Steal the WA Primary for McCain?
http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/2..hment-steal-wa-primary.html
If you read this article on John McCain’s official website you’ll notice he was pushing hard for war with Iraq 6 months before 9/11
http://mccain.senate.gov/publi..2&Region_id=&Issue_id=
McCain’s win in CA questioned
http://markcrispinmiller.blogspot.com/.-win-in-ca-questioned.html
Buchanan: McCain win would mean war with Iran
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ee4XoVSMsJo
McCain: ‘There Will Be Other Wars’
http://youtube.com/watch?v=nl9YE4G8gcY
McCain asked about his pro-open borders staff member who’s a former Mexican government official
http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com..-about-his-pro-open-borders.html
Meet John McAmnesty’s Director of Homeland Security
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ALSnJay7-U8
‘Sen. McCain’s famous temper… suggests a temperament unsuited to wielding great power’
http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/o..tial/article_1967919.php
McCain: ‘I hate the gooks’
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?..2194.DTL
Journalist: Pentagon Fabricated “Non Event” Iranian “Provocation”
Echoes of faked Gulf of Tonkin incident as Pentagon distortions exposed
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
January 16, 2008
A respected American Journalist has accused a Pentagon spokesman of falsifying events surrounding the recent encounter between Iranian patrol boats and a US navy vessel in the Strait of Hormuz, which was eventually labeled a “provocation” by the White House.
Gareth Porter, a journalist who previously broke a story regarding a secret Iranian peace overture to the Bush Administration in 2006, writing for the Asia Times states that the event was hyped up into a major incident after the original press release described the event as somewhat routine and did not refer to any threat to “explode” US ships or any similar confrontation.
the release reported that the Iranian “small boats” had “maneuvered aggressively in close proximity of [sic] the Hopper [the lead ship of the three-ship convoy]. But it did not suggest that the Iranian boats had threatened the boats or that it had nearly resulted in firing on the Iranian boats.
On the contrary, the release made the US warships handling of the incident sound almost routine,” Porter adds. “‘Following standard procedures,’ the release said, “Hopper issued warnings, attempted to establish communications with the small boats and conducted evasive maneuvering.’
The release did not refer to a US ship being close to firing on the Iranian boats, or to a call threatening that US ships would “explode in a few minutes”, as later stories would report, or to the dropping of objects into the path of a US ship as a potential danger.
That press release was ignored by the news media, however, because later that Monday morning, the Pentagon provided correspondents with a very different account of the episode.
The fact that several mainstream reports then emerged at the same time all carrying almost identical accounts of the incident, including the details of threats to explode vessels and dropping white boxes, can be traced back to a press briefing by a top Pentagon official in charge of media relations, Porter divulges.
He identifies Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman’s off the record comments to journalists as the catalyst for the ensuing pandemonium. Porter states that Whitman hadn’t wished to be identified as the source:
In an apparent slip-up, however, an Associated Press story that morning cited Whitman as the source for the statement that US ships were about to fire when the Iranian boats turned and moved away – a part of the story that other correspondents had attributed to an unnamed Pentagon official.
Three days later, at the height of the hype, the Pentagon released a video of the incident into which had been inserted audio of a strange voice threatening to “explode” the US vessel.
Porter reveals that according to Lieutenant Colonel Mark Ballesteros of the Pentagon’s Public Affairs Office the decision on what to include in the video was “a collaborative effort of leadership here, the Central Command and navy leadership in the field”. Porter also reveals that according to an official in the US Navy Office of Information in Washington, who asked not to be identified, the decision was made in the office of the Secretary of Defense.
Shortly after Iranian officials had denounced the video as a fake and had released alternative footage of their boats in contact with the US warship, it became apparent that the audio spliced into the video had not originated from the boats themselves but must have instead come from hecklers, often referred to as the “Filipino Monkey”, who cut in on VHF ship-to-ship radios and make rude comments or threats.
The Pentagon then backed away from claims that it knew the source of the audio or had ever known the source.
By January 11, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell was already disavowing the story that Whitman had been instrumental in creating only four days earlier. “No one in the military has said that the transmission emanated from those boats,” said Morrell.
No one said it but that doesn’t excuse the fact that they spliced the audio into the video of an unrelated incident!
The story then essentially fell apart altogether and dropped off the radar as Navy officials began to discredit the rest of the distortions perpetuated by the Pentagon.
Porter also spoke to a Pentagon consultant who asked not to be identified who told him that many officers have experienced similar encounters with small Iranian boats throughout the 1990s, and that such incidents are “just not a major threat to the US Navy by any stretch of the imagination”.
These revelations show just how easy it is for a non event to be hyped to serve an agenda and how the mainstream media is eager to swallow whole whatever the government feeds them.
The event mirrors that of the August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, where an attack on US warships by North Vietnamese PT Boats, was cited by President Johnson as a legitimate provocation mandating U.S. escalation in Vietnam. However Tonkin was revealed as a staged charade that never took place. Declassified LBJ presidential tapes featured discussions on how to spin the non-event to escalate it as justification for air strikes. In addition, the NSA faked intelligence data to make it appear as if two US ships had been lost. This information was again reiterated in a report released last week.
Fox News Reverses Course After Initially Calling For U.S. Navy To Blow Iran Boats ‘Out Of The Water’
Think Progress
January 16, 2008
KILMEADE: Was this a mistake not to blow these other Iranian speedboats out of the water? […] Why did we not destroy these speedboats? […] We had an opportunity to send a message to a nation that has been needling us for 20 years.
Today, a week after his call for war with Iran, Brian Kilmeade was forced to concede that the verbal threats made against the U.S. ships are “a possible hoax from a man called the ‘Filipino Monkey.'” Kilmeade’s co-host Gretchen Carlson claimed that she knew it all along. “I remember sitting in my office thinking, you gotta be kidding me? That voice does not sound to me like an Iranian accent.” She didn’t say that on-air, however, prior to this morning.
Kilmeade’s other co-host, Steve Doocy, piped in with this comment:
DOOCY: But can you imagine, had we blown those little boats out of the water to find out, you know, that they didn’t have bombs and in fact it was the Filipino Monkey who was somewhere on shore pulling a prank?
Indeed, we would have have, if Fox News had its way. Watch a compilation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZmb3fa22Ek
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDfDHNZdLsI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHt_r7hWVUA
Carlson wrapped up the segment by stating, “Let’s hope it’s not the Filipino Monkey, for our sake. Because I think it’s a humongous embarrassment.”
Olbermann accuses U.S of trying to FAKE new Gulf of Tonkin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WADchtd0Hms
Norman Podhoretz: Bush will bomb Iran before he leaves office
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bLq6pzOc5w
Related News:
Olmert: All options on table regarding Iran
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/S..rticle%2FShowFull
Iran sees end to nuclear crisis ‘very soon’
>http://www.spacewar.com/2006/080116130609.bqenkh5g.html
U.S. option to bomb Iran still on the table
http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2008/01/15/9255.shtml
Iran says Bush’s accusations “words without value”
http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKHAF45102720080114
Bush accuses Iran of undermining peace
http://www.mercurynews.com..091?nclick_check=1
Bush: Iran is the “Worlds Leading State Sponsor of Terror”
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITIC..index.html
Things Have Gotten So Crazy Now a Prankster Could Start World War III!
http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/..-so-crazy-now.html
Mullen: ‘I Have Not Seen’ Iran Act So Provocatively, But Admits ‘I Haven’t Seen The Full Video’
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/01/14/iran-speedboats-mullen/
Gulf allies turn their backs on Bush
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JA16Ak02.html
Huckabee: Deliver Iran to “Gates of Hell”
http://www.truthnews.us/?p=1643
Navy Says It Fired Warning Shots At Iranian Boats
http://ap.google.com/article/A..d09QD8U3TFRG0
Congressman: ‘Sure, there’s less violence, but that’s because we’ve ethnically cleansed most of Baghdad’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poCp59v5HLw
‘The President Has Accepted Ethnic Cleansing’
Spiegel Online
September 28, 2007
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was just in New York (more…) for the United Nations General Assembly. Once again, he said that he is only interested in civilian nuclear power instead of atomic weapons. How much does the West really know about the nuclear program in Iran?
Seymour Hersh: A lot. And it’s been underestimated how much the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) knows. If you follow what (IAEA head Mohamed) ElBaradei (more…) and the various reports have been saying, the Iranians have claimed to be enriching uranium to higher than a 4 percent purity, which is the amount you need to run a peaceful nuclear reactor. But the IAEA’s best guess is that they are at 3.67 percent or something. The Iranians are not even doing what they claim to be doing. The IAEA has been saying all along that they’ve been making progress but basically, Iran is nowhere. Of course the US and Israel are going to say you have to look at the worst case scenario, but there isn’t enough evidence to justify a bombing raid.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is this just another case of exaggerating the danger in preparation for an invasion like we saw in 2002 and 2003 prior to the Iraq War?
Hersh: We have this wonderful capacity in America to Hitlerize people. We had Hitler, and since Hitler we’ve had about 20 of them. Khrushchev and Mao and of course Stalin, and for a little while Gadhafi was our Hitler. And now we have this guy Ahmadinejad. The reality is, he’s not nearly as powerful inside the country as we like to think he is. The Revolutionary Guards have direct control over the missile program and if there is a weapons program, they would be the ones running it. Not Ahmadinejad.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Where does this feeling of urgency that the US has with Iran come from?
Hersh: Pressure from the White House. That’s just their game.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What interest does the White House have in moving us to the brink with Tehran?
Hersh: You have to ask yourself what interest we had 40 years ago for going to war in Vietnam. You’d think that in this country with so many smart people, that we can’t possibly do the same dumb thing again. I have this theory in life that there is no learning. There is no learning curve. Everything is tabula rasa. Everybody has to discover things for themselves.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Even after Iraq? Aren’t there strategic reasons for getting so deeply involved in the Middle East?
Hersh: Oh no. We’re going to build democracy. The real thing in the mind of this president is he wants to reshape the Middle East and make it a model. He absolutely believes it. I always thought Henry Kissinger was a disaster because he lies like most people breathe and you can’t have that in public life. But if it were Kissinger this time around, I’d actually be relieved because I’d know that the madness would be tied to some oil deal. But in this case, what you see is what you get. This guy believes he’s doing God’s work.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: So what are the options in Iraq?
Hersh: There are two very clear options: Option A) Get everybody out by midnight tonight. Option B) Get everybody out by midnight tomorrow. The fuel that keeps the war going is us.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: A lot of people have been saying that the US presence there is a big part of the problem. Is anyone in the White House listening?
Hersh: No. The president is still talking about the “Surge” (eds. The “Surge” refers to President Bush’s commitment of 20,000 additional troops to Iraq in the spring of 2007 in an attempt to improve security in the country.) as if it’s going to unite the country. But the Surge was a con game of putting additional troops in there. We’ve basically Balkanized the place, building walls and walling off Sunnis from Shiites. And in Anbar Province, where there has been success, all of the Shiites are gone. They’ve simply split.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is that why there has been a drop in violence there?
Hersh: I think that’s a much better reason than the fact that there are a couple more soldiers on the ground.
SPIEGEL ONLINE:So what are the lessons of the Surge (more…)?
Hersh: The Surge means basically that, in some way, the president has accepted ethnic cleansing, whether he’s talking about it or not. When he first announced the Surge in January, he described it as a way to bring the parties together. He’s not saying that any more. I think he now understands that ethnic cleansing is what is going to happen. You’re going to have a Kurdistan. You’re going to have a Sunni area that we’re going to have to support forever. And you’re going to have the Shiites in the South.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: So the US is over four years into a war that is likely going to end in a disaster. How valid are the comparisons with Vietnam?
Hersh:The validity is that the US is fighting a guerrilla war and doesn’t know the culture. But the difference is that at a certain point, because of Congressional and public opposition, the Vietnam War was no longer tenable. But these guys now don’t care. They see it but they don’t care.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: If the Iraq war does end up as a defeat for the US, will it leave as deep a wound as the Vietnam War did?
Hersh: Much worse. Vietnam was a tactical mistake. This is strategic. How do you repair damages with whole cultures? On the home front, though, we’ll rationalize it away. Don’t worry about that. Again, there’s no learning curve. No learning curve at all. We’ll be ready to fight another stupid war in another two decades.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Of course, preventing that is partially the job of the media. Have reporters been doing a better job recently than they did in the run-up to the Iraq War?
Hersh: Oh yeah. They’ve done a better job since. But back then, they blew it. When you have a guy like Bush who’s going to move the infamous Doomsday Clock forward, and he’s going to put everybody in jeopardy and he’s secretive and he doesn’t tell Congress anything and he’s inured to what we write. In such a case, we (journalists) become more important. The First Amendment failed and the American press failed the Constitution. We were jingoistic. And that was a terrible failing. I’m asked the question all the time: What happened to my old paper, the New York Times? And I now say, they stink. They missed it. They missed the biggest story of the time and they’re going to have to live with it.
All Iraqis Agree U.S. Occupation Causes Violence
http://www.washington…2/18/AR2007121802262_pf.html
Bush, Maliki Break Iraqi Law to Renew U.N. Mandate for Occupation
http://www.alternet.org/story/71144/
Iraq Vet War Critics Detained at Bragg
http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,158521,00.html?wh=wh
Mobile Labs to Target Iraqis for Death
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/121307.html
Mobile Labs to Target Iraqis for Death
Robert Parry
Consortium News
December 13, 2007
U.S. forces in Iraq soon will be equipped with high-tech equipment that will let them process an Iraqi’s biometric data in minutes and help American soldiers decide whether they should execute the person or not, according to its inventor.
“A war fighter needs to know one of three things: Do I let him go? Keep him? Or shoot him on the spot?” Pentagon weapons designer Anh Duong told the Washington Post for a feature on how this 47-year-old former Vietnamese refugee and mother of four rose to become a top U.S. bomb-maker.
Though Duong is best known for designing high-explosives used to destroy hardened targets, she also supervised the Joint Expeditionary Forensics Facilities project, known as a “lab in a box” for analyzing biometric data, such as iris scans and fingerprints, that have been collected on more than one million Iraqis.
The labs – collapsible, 20-by-20-foot units each with a generator and a satellite link to a biometric data base in West Virginia – will let U.S. forces cross-check data in the field against information collected previously that can be used to identify insurgents. These labs are expected to be deployed across Iraq in early 2008.
Duong said the next step will be to shrink the lab to the size of a “backpack” so soldiers who encounter a suspect “could find out within minutes” if he’s on a terrorist watch list and should be killed.
Duong justified this biometric-data program as a humanitarian way of singling out “bad guys” for elimination while sparing innocent civilians.
“I don’t want My Lai in Iraq,” Duong said. “The biggest difficulty in the global war on terror – just like in Vietnam – is to know who the bad guys are. How do we make sure we don’t kill innocents?”
In Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. military units already are operating under loose rules of engagement that allow them to kill individuals who are identified as suspected terrorists or who show the slightest evidence of being insurgents. American forces also have rounded up tens of thousands of Iraqi military-age males, or MAMs, for detention.
During a summer 2007 trip to Iraq, Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, was briefed on U.S. plans to expand the number of Iraqis in American detention by the end of 2008.
“The detainees have risen to over 18,000 and are projected to hit 30,000 (by the U.S. command) by the end of the year and 50,000 by the end of 2008,” Cordesman wrote in his trip report.
The sweeps have enabled the U.S. military to collect biometric data for future use if and when the Iraqis are released back into the general population.
Test Tube
In effect, the Bush administration is transforming Iraq into a test tube for modern techniques of repression, which already include use of night-vision optics on drone aircraft, heat resonance imaging, and firepower that is both deadly and precise.
CFR’s Hart Suggests False Flag Event For Iran War
Tacit warning to Iranian government suggests staged event may be used to ensure “bombs fall on your head”
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
September 27, 2007
Council on Foreign Relations member Gary Hart, famed for stating that Americans will die en- mass on home soil this century, and for declaring 48 hours after 9/11 that it should be used “to carry out a new world order“, has written a scathing letter to the leaders of Iran clearly warning that the U.S. government has a history of staging provocations in order to initiate conflict with other nations and that Iran could be next.
Hart references the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana harbor in 1898, which led to the Spanish American war, as well as the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which was ultimately the catalyst for airstrikes on Vietnam.
Why does Hart reference these two cases? Because they are both examples of staged managed events that were used to coerce the American public into supporting war.
The sinking of the Maine was immediately blamed on the Spanish, with the innovator of yellow journalism William Randolph-Hearst enflaming anti-Spanish sentiment in his papers by definitively claiming that it was a Spanish plot. No reliable evidence was ever produced linking Spain to the event and it is now widely believed that the event was at best a mechanical failure or at worst a false flag operation.
Similarly the Gulf of Tonkin incident saw President Johnson accuse North Vietnamese PT boats of attacking strike carries in the gulf, the USS Maddox and the USS Turner Joy. Documents and tapes released via the Freedom of Information Act have since shown that Johnson knew that there were no PT boats and no attacks, but still went ahead with lying to the American public on national TV to garner support for escalating the war in Vietnam. Johnson also had the NSA fake intelligence data to make it appear as if the two US ships had been lost.
Hart, one of the instigators of the Homeland Security apparatus that has evolved since 9/11, then goes on to state that American people are reluctant to go to war unless provoked and coldly remarks “For historians of American wars the question is whether we provoke provocations.”
He then mentions the Iraq war and refers to how the public were duped into accepting the invasion via the spectre of 9/11. Hart writes “even in this instance, we were led to believe that the mass murderer of American civilians, Osama bin Laden, was lurking, literally or figuratively, in the vicinity of Baghdad.”
To those who do not read history Gary Hart’s letter makes for a confusing read, but to those who know anything about staged provocations, the intent is clear. Hart is declaring that the elite controlled US government has attacked countries based on false pretenses in the past and will gladly do so again.
Hart’s declarations carry the same sentiment as those of fellow globalist Zbigniew Brzezinski earlier this year. The Former National Security Advisor and founding member of the elite policy making group the Trilateral Commission implicitly warned a Senate Foreign Relations Committee that an attack on Iran could be launched following a staged provocation in Iraq or a false flag terror attack within the U.S.
Brzezinski alluded to the potential for the Bush administration to manufacture a false flag Gulf of Tonkin type incident in describing a “plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran,” which would revolve around “some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the US blamed on Iran, culminating in a ‘defensive’ US military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
Texas Congressman and Presidential candidate Ron Paul has also recently warned that a “Gulf of Tonkin like event” may be used to provoke air strikes on Iran as numerous factors collide to heighten expectations that America may soon be embroiled in its third war in six years.
Here is Gary Hart’s letter in full:
Unsolicited Advice to the Government of Iran
Presuming that you are not actually ignorant enough to desire war with the United States, you might be well advised to read the history of the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana harbor in 1898 and the history of the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964.
Having done so, you will surely recognize that Americans are reluctant to go to war unless attacked. Until Pearl Harbor, we were even reluctant to get involved in World War II. For historians of American wars the question is whether we provoke provocations.
Given the unilateral U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, you are obviously thinking the rules have changed. Provocation is no longer required to take America to war. But even in this instance, we were led to believe that the mass murderer of American civilians, Osama bin Laden, was lurking, literally or figuratively, in the vicinity of Baghdad.
Given all this, you would probably be well advised to keep your forces, including clandestine forces, as far away from the Iraqi border as you can. You might even consider bringing in some neighbors to verify that you are not shipping arms next door. Tone down the rhetoric on Zionism. You’ve established your credentials with those in your world who thrive on that.
If it makes you feel powerful to hurl accusations at the American eagle, have at it. Sticks and stones, etc. But, for the next sixteen months or so, you should not only not take provocative actions, you should not seem to be doing so.
For the vast majority of Americans who seek no wider war, in the Middle East or elsewhere, don’t tempt fate. Don’t give a certain vice president we know the justification he is seeking to attack your country. That is unless you happen to like having bombs fall on your head.
Rove’s good-bye kiss: Critics of ‘clear-eyed’ Bush will be wrong like critic of Vietnam war
Nick Juliano
Raw Story
August 31, 2007
On his last day in the White House, Karl Rove gave President Bush one last politically charged booster shot.
In an essay published by the conservative National Review, Rove predicted that the president he has loyally served for more than a decade would be judged positively by history, and he took the opportunity to bash calls for a withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. Rove reiterated the comparison of a troop withdrawal to the aftermath of Vietnam.
“History will see President Bush as right, and the opponents of his policy as mistaken — as George McGovern was in his time,” Rove wrote.
President Bush made headlines earlier this month when he reminded of the years of turmoil that followed America’s withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975, and some historians said Bush’s analogy to the situation in Iraq was inaccurate.
Rove argued that history’s view of Bush would be more “clear-eyed” than the assessments of current administration critics.
“He will be judged as a man of moral clarity who put America on a wartime footing in the dangerous struggle against radical Islamic terrorism,” Rove wrote.
Rove praised some of the president’s most controversial policies, including his No Child Left Behind initiative, which some states have called intrusive, and his decision not to join the Kyoto agreement, which aimed to reduce global carbon emissions.
The political guru trumpeted Bush’s economic record, claiming the 2003 tax cuts led to economic growth. Bush pursued and aggressive series of tax cuts almost as soon as he was elected, and some say his economic policies have created greater inequality.
On fighting genocide in Darfur, Rove argued that Bush hadn’t “refused to act,” despite his resistance to adding US troops to the region to stop the violence.
“While most of the globe ignored Sudan and Darfur or refused to act, this president labeled the violence there genocide — and pressed world leaders to take action,” Rove wrote of the extent of the president’s involvement.
Rove has nothing but kind words for the man he has known for nearly 34 years. Without another campaign to run for the president, Rove announced earlier this month that he would be leaving his post at the White House. Friday was his last day.
White House spokesman Tony Snow stepping down
Reuters
August 31, 2007
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President George W. Bush on Friday announced the resignation of his press secretary Tony Snow, a former television commentator admired for his skill at sparring with reporters and who is battling cancer.
Bush picked Snow’s deputy, Dana Perino, to replace him when he leaves in two weeks. Perino, 35, will become only the second woman to hold that high-profile position in the White House.
Bush stopped in the White House press room before heading to the Pentagon to pay tribute to Snow, who is credited with livening up the daily news briefings with reporters.
“It’s been a joy to watch him spar with you,” Bush said.
Snow, 52, learned in March that the colon cancer he had fought earlier had recurred and has undergone chemotherapy.
But he said his decision to leave was for financial, not health, reasons. “I ran out of money,” said Snow, who earned much more in his former job as a Fox News commentator than at his government salary of $168,000 a year.
“We took out a loan when I came to the White House, and that loan is now gone. So I’m going to have to pay the bills,” said Snow, who is married with three children.
Snow said that his health has been fine and that tests have not indicated any growth in tumors or any new tumors.
“Right now I’m feeling great. I’ve finally put weight back on. I feel strong,” he said, adding that his thinning hair would come back.
Snow expressed admiration for the White House press corps while noting the often-adversarial relationship reporters have with press secretaries.
He joked with veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas that he someday wants to be sitting in the front row, as she does, “making life a living hell for a press secretary.”
Bush said that Perino, who has often filled in for Snow when he has been away, is someone who could “spell out the issues of the day in a way that people listening on TV can understand.”
“She can handle all of you,” he said.
But Perino, who is petite, said Snow left very big shoes to fill and joked, “I only wear a size 6.”
The only other woman to serve as White House press secretary was Dee Dee Myers, under former President Bill Clinton.
Snow said he plans to give speeches and stay involved in politics. He said he wants to raise awareness about cancer.
“I don’t know what he’s going to do, I’m not sure he does yet either,” Bush said. “One, he’ll battle cancer and win, and secondly he’ll be a solid contributor to society.”
Snow is the latest in a string of high-level White House officials to depart.
Friday was the last day at work for senior White House adviser Karl Rove. Snow described Rove’s final senior staff meeting this morning as emotional.
White House counselor Dan Bartlett, another longtime Bush adviser from Texas, left earlier this year.
Related News:
Bird Cage Liner Changed, Illegal Spying Stays
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/august2007/280807_bird_cage.htm
Clement to stand-in as attorney general
http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Aug27/0,4670,GonzalesClement,00.html
Karl Rove is resigning at the end of August
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/08/13/politics/main3160447.shtml
Gonzales Helped Cover-Up Bush DUI
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Paper_details….sty_0730.html
Exclusive: For Alberto Gonzales, a Decade of Scandals, with a Child Molestation Cover-Up to Boot
http://www.realinsidenews.com/governmentnews007.html
Gonzales Contradicts Prior Statements, Confirms Existence Of Other Spying Programs
Attorney General Gonzales steps down
Report: Chertoff to replace Gonzales
Rove Going, Executive Privilege Staying
Keith Olbermann on Karl Rove Resigning
Payback Time: FBI Raids Home of Suspected NSA Leaker
FBI raids DOJ attorney’s home in search for warrantless wiretap information leaker
Gonzales: I’m Sticking Around To Fix Problems
Rove blamed for Attorney firings in Gonzales hearing; Specter raises prospect of impeachment
Lawsuit Against Wiretaps Rejected
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCmVKwvLJGU
Bush Challenged On Iraq-Vietnam Analogy
IHT
August 22, 2007
WASHINGTON: The American withdrawal from Vietnam is widely remembered as an ignominious end to a misguided war – but one that cleared a path for Vietnam to become a unified and stable nation, with healthy ties to the United States.
Now, in urging Americans to stay the course in Iraq, President George W. Bush is challenging that history.
In reminding Americans on Wednesday that the pullout in 1975 was followed by years of upheaval in Southeast Asia, Bush argued that the lessons of Vietnam provide reason to stay in Iraq, rather than to leave anytime soon. Bush in essence accused his war critics of amnesia over the exodus of Vietnamese “boat people” refugees and for mass killings in Cambodia that upended the lives of millions of people.
Bush is right on the historic record, according to historians and scholars of military and international affairs. But many of those experts also quarreled with his drawing analogies to predict what might happen in Iraq should the United States withdraw.
“It is undoubtedly true that America’s failure in Vietnam led to catastrophic consequences in the region, especially in Cambodia,” said David Hendrickson, a specialist on the history of American foreign policy at Colorado College.
“But there are a couple of further points that need weighing,” he added. “One is that the Khmer Rouge would never have come to power in the absence of the war in Vietnam – this dark force arose out of the circumstances of the war, was in a deep sense created by the war. The same thing has happened in the Middle East today. Foreign occupation of Iraq has created far more terrorists than it has deterred.”
The American withdrawal from Vietnam was hardly abrupt, and lasted much longer than many people remember. The American drawdown actually began in 1968, after the Tet offensive, a military defeat for the communist guerrillas and their North Vietnamese sponsors but one that also illustrated the vulnerability of the United States and its South Vietnamese allies. Although American commanders asked for several hundred thousand reinforcements after Tet, President Lyndon Johnson turned them down, and President Richard Nixon began a process of “Vietnamization” in which power was gradually handed over to local security forces.
“It was not a precipitous withdrawal, it was a very deliberate disengagement,” said Andrew Bacevich, a platoon leader in Vietnam and now professor of international relations at Boston University.
“The Vietnam comparison should invite us to think harder about how to minimize the consequences of our military failure,” he added. “If one is really concerned about the Iraqi people, and the fate that may be awaiting them as this war winds down, then we ought to get serious about opening our doors and to welcoming to the United States those Iraqis who have supported us.’ ‘
To that end, some members of Congress and human rights groups have urged the Bush administration to drop the limits on Iraqi refugees admitted to the United States.
In his speech Wednesday, Bush also sought to inspire renewed support for his Iraq strategy by recalling the years of national sacrifice during World War II, and the commitment required to rebuild two of history’s most aggressive and lawless adversaries, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, into two of this nation’s most reliable and responsible allies.
But historians note that Germany and Japan were homogenous nation-states with no internal feuding among factions or sects, in stark contrast to Iraq today.
The comparison of Iraq to Germany and Japan “is fanciful,” said Steven Simon, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He noted that the American and Allied militaries had completely eliminated the governments of Japan and Germany and assembled occupation forces that were proportionately more than three times as large as the current American presence of 160,000 troops in Iraq.
“That’s the kind of troop level you need to control the situation,” Simon said. “The occupation of Germany and Japan lasted for years – and not a single American soldier was killed by insurgents.”
Senior U.S. military officers, speaking privately, also say that the essential elements that brought victory in World War II – a total commitment on the part of the American people, and a staggering economic commitment to rebuild defeated adversaries – do not exist for the war in Iraq today. The wars in Korea and Vietnam also involved considerable national sacrifice, including tax increases and conscription.
While Bush sought to draw historic parallels for Iraq to America’s overseas battlegrounds, some military officers say the nation’s civilian leaders need to compare their efforts in Washington to those of their predecessors.
“We didn’t win World War II until the Marshall Plan,” said one field-grade American military officer who has served in Iraq. “This is ultimately a long war for the soul of Islam. And we do not yet have a Marshall Plan for the new Middle East. We need to help the moderate governments of the Middle East. We have to have an incredible effort to eliminate poverty and provide housing and jobs across the Islamic world. The scale of the effort would dwarf the Marshall Plan, and we have not even acknowledged that is what is required.”
Vietnam Reacts to Bush Speech
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con….7/08/23/AR2007082300481.html
Hardball MSNBC – Vietnam the Sequel?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ugWIu4a_tk
Bush’s Vietnam Lesson: Stay in Iraq
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/bushs-v….53538.html
noworldsystem.com 