| Author |
Message |
    
mem
Citizen
Username: Mem
Post Number: 2563
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 7, 2004 - 11:39 am: |     |
Tom,
I think people should be able to do and say whatever they want of course. I can have my opinion about it, without insulting ot hurting anyone personally OR being personally attacked, right? No, I guess not. Whatever! |
Dr. Winston O'Boogie
Citizen
Username: Casey
Post Number: 429
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 7, 2004 - 11:39 am: | |
mem,
you've just been messing with us the whole time, haven't you?
why do I get sucked into these things? |
mem
Citizen
Username: Mem
Post Number: 2564
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 7, 2004 - 11:43 am: | |
Dr. Swinging Booger,
Maybe you get sucked into these things because you suck! Ooops I mean you are easily sucked! In! I mean... oh forget it - Dave kick me off before I hurt myself!!! |
Tom Reingold
Citizen
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 1660
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 7, 2004 - 11:48 am: | |
mem, I try really hard to stick to the topic and not attack the participants. I believed that you had forgotten something, and I don't think that's an attack. I'm sorry I hurt you. Perhaps we were talking past each other, wanting to be heard. It's important to me that people understand that there exists a right to free speech. Since you didn't acknowledge that right, you appeared not to care about it, instead pointing out that sometimes, public protest is ineffective. So you're talking about efficacy -- and you're probably right, too -- and I'm talking about something else entirely, which is the right to free speech.
Tom Reingold
There is nothing
|
Dr. Winston O'Boogie
Citizen
Username: Casey
Post Number: 430
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 7, 2004 - 11:49 am: | |
So I guess that means you weren't messing with us?
I apologize. |
Tom Reingold
Citizen
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 1661
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 7, 2004 - 11:49 am: | |
Um, in other words, I thought you were defending the government's curbing the people's speech. If you were not, then I misunderstood you.
Tom Reingold
There is nothing
|
mem
Citizen
Username: Mem
Post Number: 2566
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 7, 2004 - 11:57 am: | |
No, I am not defending the government's right to curb anything. Please. Seriously, my opinion is that it's a scary and dangerous thing for protesters to go where the president is right now, dangerous for themselves, people around them, and these secret service peoples. I do stand up for their right as an American to do so, however, again, I think it's a waste of time and I feel they can make a better impact if they use their time more cleverly and intelligently, especially if they do it positively vs negatively, or they can at least try.
No, Tom, you didn't hurt me! And Booger, I was messing. |
Dr. Winston O'Boogie
Citizen
Username: Casey
Post Number: 431
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 7, 2004 - 11:59 am: | |
you kept us going for awhile, though.
 |
mem
Citizen
Username: Mem
Post Number: 2567
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 7, 2004 - 12:04 pm: | |
Yes, Dr. Boogs,
Question: Is the hair on top of your head flat as a pancake right now? And is your rocket scientist certificate hanging awry today?
|
cjc
Citizen
Username: Cjc
Post Number: 638
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 7, 2004 - 12:04 pm: | |
ashear -- yes, i do remember that, and right after I posted it I thought "there are some exceptions to my broadside..."
Sorry, and sorry to others in similar agreement with me. |
Don Perkins
Citizen
Username: Cowboy
Post Number: 235
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 7, 2004 - 12:08 pm: | |
God bless the ACLU for cleansing the public life of the United States! |
Tom Reingold
Citizen
Username: Noglider
Post Number: 1662
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 7, 2004 - 12:09 pm: | |
quote:Sorry, and sorry to others in similar agreement with me.
Wow, aren't we all so civil with each other today!
Tom Reingold
There is nothing
|
Ainsworth Hunt
Citizen
Username: Ainsworth
Post Number: 139
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, January 10, 2004 - 12:14 am: | |
The Enemy Within Part I
by Gore Vidal
London, 27 October 2002
The Observer
Gore Vidal is America’s most controversial writer and a ferocious, often isolated, critic of the Bush
administration. Here, against a backdrop of spreading unease about America’s response to the events of 11
September 2001 and their aftermath, we publish Vidal’s remarkable personal polemic urging a shocking new
interpretation of who was to blame.
Contents
Introduction
Why the US needed a Eurasian adventure
Bush and the dog that did not bark
The media’s weapons of mass distraction
A world made safe for peace and pipelines
Suspect states and the tom-toms of revenge
References
Introduction
On 24 August 1814, things looked very dark for freedom’s land. That was the day the British
captured Washington DC and set fire to the Capitol and the White House. President Madison
took refuge in the nearby Virginia woods where he waited patiently for the notoriously short
attention span of the Brits to kick in, which it did. They moved on and what might have been
a Day of Utter Darkness turned out to be something of a bonanza for the DC building trades
and up-market realtors.
One year after 9/11, we still don’t know by whom we were struck that infamous Tuesday, or
for what true purpose. But it is fairly plain to many civil-libertarians that 9/11 applied not
only to much of our fragile Bill of Rights but also to our once-envied system of government
which had taken a mortal blow the previous year when the Supreme Court did a little dance
in 5/4 time and replaced a popularly elected president with the oil and gas Cheney/Bush
junta.
Meanwhile, our more and more unaccountable government is pursuing all sorts of games
around the world that we the spear carriers (formerly the people) will never learn of. Even
so, we have been getting some answers to the question: why weren’t we warned in advance
of 9/11? Apparently, we were, repeatedly; for the better part of a year, we were told there
would be unfriendly visitors to our skies some time in September 2001, but the government
neither informed nor protected us despite Mayday warnings from Presidents Putin and
Mubarak, from Mossad and even from elements of our own FBI. A joint panel of
congressional intelligence committees reported (19 September 2002, New York Times) that
as early as 1996, Pakistani terrorist Abdul Hakim Murad confessed to federal agents that he
was ‘learning to fly in order to crash a plane into CIA HQ’.
Only CIA director George Tenet seemed to take the various threats seriously. In December
1998, he wrote to his deputies that ‘we are at war’ with Osama bin Laden. So impressed was
the FBI by his warnings that by 20 September 2001, ‘the FBI still had only one analyst
assigned full time to al-Qaeda’.
From a briefing prepared for Bush at the beginning of July 2001: ‘We believe that OBL
[Osama bin Laden] will launch a significant terrorist attack against US and/or Israeli
interests in the coming weeks. The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass
casualties against US facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will
occur with little or no warning.’ And so it came to pass; yet Condoleezza Rice, the National
Security Advisor, says she never suspected that this meant anything more than the
kidnapping of planes.
Happily, somewhere over the Beltway, there is Europe -- recently declared anti-Semitic by
the US media because most of Europe wants no war with Iraq and the junta does, for reasons
we may now begin to understand thanks to European and Asian investigators with their
relatively free media.
On the subject ‘How and Why America was Attacked on 11 September, 2001’, the best,
most balanced report, thus far, is by Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed[1] . . . Yes, yes, I know he is
one of Them. But they often know things that we don’t -- particularly about what we are up
to. A political scientist, Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research and
Development[2] ‘a think-tank dedicated to the promotion of human rights, justice and peace’
in Brighton. His book, The War on Freedom[3], has just been published in the US by a small
but reputable publisher.
|
Ainsworth Hunt
Citizen
Username: Ainsworth
Post Number: 140
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, January 10, 2004 - 12:16 am: | |
Gore Vidal - The Enemy Within Part II
Ahmed provides a background for our ongoing war against Afghanistan, a view that in no
way coincides with what the administration has told us. He has drawn on many sources, most
tellingly on American whistleblowers who are beginning to come forth and bear witness --
like those FBI agents who warned their supervisors that al-Qaeda was planning a kamikaze
strike against New York and Washington only to be told that if they went public with these
warnings they would suffer under the National Security Act. Several of these agents have
engaged David P. Schippers , [ 4 ] chief investigative counsel for the US House Judiciary
Committee, to represent them in court. The majestic Schippers managed the successful
impeachment of President Clinton in the House of Representatives. He may, if the Iraqi war
should go wrong, be obliged to perform the same high service for Bush, who allowed the
American people to go unwarned about an imminent attack upon two of our cities as
pre-emption of a planned military strike by the US against the Taliban.
The Guardian ( 26 September 2001 [ 5 ] ) reported that in July 2001, a group of interested
parties met in a Berlin hotel to listen to a former State Department official, Lee Coldren, as
he passed on a message from the Bush administration that ‘the United States was so
disgusted with the Taliban that they might be considering some military action . . . the
chilling quality of this private warning was that it came -- according to one of those present,
the Pakistani diplomat Niaz Naik -- accompanied by specific details of how Bush would
succeed . . .’ Four days earlier, the Guardian had reported that ‘Osama bin Laden and the
Taliban received threats of possible American military action against them two months
before the terrorist assaults on New York and Washington . . . [which] raises the possibility
that bin Laden was launching a pre-emptive strike in response to what he saw as US threats.’
A replay of the ‘day of infamy’ in the Pacific 62 years earlier?
Why the US needed a Eurasian adventure
On 9 September 2001, Bush was presented with a draft of a national security presidential
directive outlining a global campaign of military, diplomatic and intelligence action targeting
al-Qaeda, buttressed by the threat of war. According to NBC News : ‘President Bush was
expected to sign detailed plans for a worldwide war against al-Qaeda . . . but did not have the
chance before the terrorist attacks . . . The directive, as described to NBC News , was
essentially the same war plan as the one put into action after 11 September. The
administration most likely was able to respond so quickly . . . because it simply had to pull
the plans "off the shelf".’
Finally, BBC News, 18 September 2001: ‘Niak Naik, a former Pakistan foreign secretary,
was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan
would go ahead by the middle of October. It was Naik’s view that Washington would not
drop its war for Afghanistan even if bin Laden were to be surrendered immediately by the
Taliban.’
Was Afghanistan then turned to rubble in order to avenge the 3,000 Americans slaughtered
by Osama? Hardly. The administration is convinced that Americans are so simple-minded
that they can deal with no scenario more complex than the venerable lone, crazed killer (this
time with zombie helpers) who does evil just for the fun of it ’cause he hates us, ’cause we’re
rich ’n free ’n he’s not. Osama was chosen on aesthetic grounds to be the most frightening
logo for our long contemplated invasion and conquest of Afghanistan, planning for which
had been ‘contingency’ some years before 9/11 and, again, from 20 December, 2000, when
Clinton’s out-going team devised a plan to strike at al-Qaeda in retaliation for the assault on
the warship Cole. Clinton’s National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, personally briefed his
successor on the plan but Rice, still very much in her role as director of Chevron-Texaco,
with special duties regarding Pakistan and Uzbekistan, now denies any such briefing. A year
and a half later (12 August, 2002), fearless Time magazine reported this odd memory lapse.
We have only outdone the Romans in turning metaphors such as
the war on terrorism, or poverty, or Aids into actual wars on
targets we appear, often, to pick at random in order to maintain
turbulence in foreign lands.
Osama, if it was he and not a nation, simply provided the necessary shock to put in train a
war of conquest. But conquest of what? What is there in dismal dry sandy Afghanistan worth
conquering? Zbigniew Brzezinski tells us exactly what in a 1997 Council on Foreign
Relations study called The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic
Imperatives.[6]
The Polish-born Brzezinski was the hawkish National Security Advisor to President Carter.
In The Grand Chessboard, Brzezinski gives a little history lesson. ‘Ever since the continents
started interacting politically, some 500 years ago, Eurasia has been the centre of world
power.’ Eurasia is all the territory east of Germany. This means Russia, the Middle East,
China and parts of India. Brzezinski acknowledges that Russia and China, bordering oil-rich
central Asia, are the two main powers threatening US hegemony in that area.
He takes it for granted that the US must exert control over the former Soviet republics of
Central Asia, known to those who love them as ‘the Stans’: Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan,
Tajikstan and Kyrgyzstan all ‘of importance from the standpoint of security and historical
ambitions to at least three of their most immediate and most powerful neighbours -- Russia,
Turkey and Iran, with China signaling’. Brzezinski notes how the world’s energy
consumption keeps increasing; hence, who controls Caspian oil/gas will control the world
economy. Brzezinski then, reflexively, goes into the standard American rationalization for
empire. We want nothing, ever, for ourselves, only to keep bad people from getting good
things with which to hurt good people. ‘It follows that America’s primary interest is to help
ensure that no single [other] power comes to control the geopolitical space and that the
global community has unhindered financial and economic access to it.’
Brzezinski is quite aware that American leaders are wonderfully ignorant of history and
geography so he really lays it on, stopping just short of invoking politically incorrect
‘manifest destiny’. He reminds the Council just how big Eurasia is. Seventy-five percent of
the world’s population is Eurasian. If I have done the sums right, that means that we’ve only
got control, to date, of a mere 25 percent of the world’s folks. More! ‘Eurasia accounts for
60-per cent of the world’s GNP and three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources.’
Brzezinski’s master plan for ‘our’ globe has obviously been accepted by the Cheney-Bush
junta. Corporate America, long over-excited by Eurasian mineral wealth, has been aboard
from the beginning.
Ahmed sums up: ‘Brzezinski clearly envisaged that the establishment, consolidation and
expansion of US military hegemony over Eurasia through Central Asia would require the
unprecedented, open-ended militarisation of foreign policy, coupled with an unprecedented
manufacture of domestic support and consensus on this militarisation campaign.’
Afghanistan is the gateway to all these riches. Will we fight to seize them? It should never be
forgotten that the American people did not want to fight in either of the twentieth century’s
world wars, but President Wilson maneuvered us into the First while President Roosevelt
maneuvered the Japanese into striking the first blow at Pearl Harbor, causing us to enter the
Second as the result of a massive external attack. Brzezinski understands all this and, in
1997, he is thinking ahead -- as well as backward. ‘Moreover, as America becomes an
increasingly multicultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on
foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived
direct external threat.’ Thus was the symbolic gun produced that belched black smoke over
Manhattan and the Pentagon.
Since the Iran-Iraq wars, Islam has been demonized as a Satanic terrorist cult that encourages
suicide attacks -- contrary, it should be noted, to the Islamic religion. Osama has been
portrayed, accurately, it would seem, as an Islamic zealot. In order to bring this evil-doer to
justice (‘dead or alive’), Afghanistan, the object of the exercise was made safe not only for
democracy but for Union Oil of California whose proposed pipeline from Turkmenistan to
Afghanistan to Pakistan and the Indian Ocean port of Karachi, had been abandoned under the
Taliban’s chaotic regime. Currently, the pipeline is a go-project thanks to the junta’s
installation of a Unocal employee (John J Maresca) as US envoy to the newly born
democracy [ 7 ] whose president, Hamid Karzai, is also, according to Le Monde , a former
employee of a Unocal subsidiary. Conspiracy? Coincidence!
Once Afghanistan looked to be within the fold, the junta, which had managed to pull off a
complex diplomatic-military caper, -- abruptly replaced Osama, the personification of evil,
with Saddam. This has been hard to explain since there is nothing to connect Iraq with 9/11.
Happily, ‘evidence’ is now being invented. But it is uphill work, not helped by stories in the
press about the vast oil wealth of Iraq which must -- for the sake of the free world -- be
reassigned to US and European consortiums.
As Brzezinski foretold, ‘a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat’ made it
possible for the President to dance a war dance before Congress. ‘A long war!’ he shouted
with glee. Then he named an incoherent Axis of Evil to be fought. Although Congress did
not give him the FDR Special -- a declaration of war -- he did get permission to go after
Osama who may now be skulking in Iraq.
|
Ainsworth Hunt
Citizen
Username: Ainsworth
Post Number: 141
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, January 10, 2004 - 12:17 am: | |
Gore Vidal The Enemy Within Part III
Bush and the dog that did not bark
Post-9/11, the American media were filled with pre-emptory denunciations of unpatriotic
‘conspiracy theorists’, who not only are always with us but are usually easy for the media to
discredit since it is an article of faith that there are no conspiracies in American life. Yet, a
year or so ago, who would have thought that most of corporate America had been conspiring
with accountants to cook their books since -- well, at least the bright days of Reagan and
deregulation. Ironically, less than a year after the massive danger from without, we were
confronted with an even greater enemy from within: Golden Calf capitalism. Transparency?
One fears that greater transparency will only reveal armies of maggots at work beneath the
skin of a culture that needs a bit of a lie-down in order to collect itself before taking its next
giant step which is to conquer Eurasia, a potentially fatal adventure not only for our frazzled
institutions but for us the presently living.
Complicity. The behavior of President George W. Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise
to all sorts of not unnatural suspicions. I can think of no other modern chief of state who
would continue to pose for ‘warm’ pictures of himself listening to a young girl telling stories
about her pet goat while hijacked planes were into three buildings.
Constitutionally, Bush is not only chief of state, he is commander-in-chief of the armed
forces. Normally, a commander in such a crisis would go straight to headquarters and direct
operations while receiving the latest intelligence.
This is what Bush actually did -- or did not do -- according to Stan Goff, a retired US Army
veteran who has taught military science and doctrine at West Point. Goff writes, in ‘ The
So-called Evidence is a Farce ’ [ 8 ] : ‘I have no idea why people aren’t asking some very
specific questions about the actions of Bush and company on the day of the attacks.... Four
planes get hijacked and deviate from their flight plan, all the while on FAA radar.’
Goff, incidentally, like the other astonished military experts, cannot fathom why the
government’s automatic ‘standard order of procedure in the event of a hijacking’ was not
followed. Once a plane has deviated from its flight-plan, fighter planes are sent up to find out
why. That is law and does not require presidential approval, which only needs to be given if
there is a decision to shoot down a plane. Goff spells it out: ‘The planes were hijacked
between 7:45 and 8:10am. Who is notified? This is an event already that is unprecedented.
But the President is not notified and going to a Florida elementary school to hear children
read.’
‘By around 8:15am it should be very apparent that something is terribly wrong. The President is
glad-handling teachers. By 8:45am, when American Airlines Flight 11 crashes into the [North
Tower], Bush is settling in with children for his photo ops . . . Four planes have obviously been
hijacked simultaneously . . . and one has just dived into the . . . twin towers, and still no one
notifies the nominal Commander-in-Chief.
‘No one has apparently scrambled [sent aloft] Air Force interceptors either. At 9:03, . . . Flight
175 crashes into the [South Tower]. At 9:05 Andrew Card, the . . . Chief of Staff whispers to . . .
Bush [who] "briefly turns somber" according to reporters. Does he cancel the school visit and
convene an emergency meeting? No. He resumes listening to second-graders . . . and continues
the banality even as American Airlines Flight 77 conducts an unscheduled point turn over Ohio
and heads in the direction of Washington DC.
‘Has he instructed Chief of Staff Card to scramble the Air Force? No. An excruciating 25
minutes later, he finally deigns to give a public statement telling the United States what they have
already figured out; that there’s been an attack by hijacked planes on the World Trade Center.
There’s a hijacked plane bee-lining to Washington, but has the Air Force been scrambled to
defend anything yet? No. . . .
‘At 9:35, this plane conducts another turn, 360 degrees over the Pentagon, all the while being
tracked by radar, and the Pentagon is not evacuated, and there are still no fast-movers from the
Air Force in the sky over Alexandria and DC. Now, the real kicker: A pilot they want us to
believe was trained at a Florida puddle-jumper school for Piper Cubs and Cessnas, conducts a
well-controlled downward spiral, descending the last 7,000 feet in two-and-a-half minutes, brings
the plane in so low and flat that it clips the electrical wires across the street from the Pentagon,
and flies it with pinpoint accuracy into the side of the building at 460 nauts.
‘When the theory about learning to fly this well at the puddle-jumper school began to lose
ground, it was added that they received further training on a flight simulator. This is like saying
you prepared your teenager for her first drive on [the freeway] at rush hour by buying her a video
driving game . . . There is a story being constructed about these events.’
There is indeed, and the more it is added to the darker it becomes. The nonchalance of
General Richard B. Myers, acting Joint Chief of Staff, is as puzzling as the President’s
campaigning-as-usual act. Myers was at the Capitol chatting with Senator Max Cleland. A
sergeant, writing later in the AFPS (American Forces Press Service) describes Myers at the
Capitol. ‘While in an outer office, he said, he saw a television report that a plane had hit the
World Trade Centre. "They thought it was a small plane or something like that," Myers said.
So the two men went ahead with the office call.’
Whatever Myers and Cleland had to say to each other (more funds for the military?) must
have been riveting because, during their chat, the AFPS reports, ‘the second tower was hit by
another jet. "Nobody informed us of that," Myers said. "But when we came out, that was
obvious. Then, right at that time, somebody said the Pentagon had been hit."’ Finally,
somebody ‘thrust a cellphone in Myers’ hand’ and, as if by magic, the commanding general
of Norad -- our Airspace Command -- was on the line just as the hijackers mission had been
successfully completed except for the failed one in Pennsylvania. In later testimony to the
Senate Armed Forces Committee, Myers said he thinks that, as of his cellphone talk with
Norad, ‘the decision was at that point to start launching aircraft’. It was 9:40am. One hour
and 20 minutes after air controllers knew that Flight 11 had been hijacked; 50 minutes after
the North Tower was struck.
This statement would have been quite enough in our old serious army/air force to launch a
number of courts martial with an impeachment or two thrown in. First, Myers claims to be
uninformed until the third strike. But the Pentagon had been overseeing the hijacked planes
from at least the moment of the strike at the first tower: yet not until the third strike, at the
Pentagon, was the decision made to get the fighter planes up. Finally, this one is the dog that
did not bark. By law, the fighters should have been up at around 8:15. If they had, all the
hijacked planes might have been diverted or shot down. I don’t think that Goff is being
unduly picky when he wonders who and what kept the Air Force from following its normal
procedure instead of waiting an hour and 20 minutes until the damage was done and only
then launching the fighters. Obviously, somebody had ordered the Air Force to make no
move to intercept those hijackings until . . . what?
The media, never much good at analysis, are more and more
breathless and incoherent. On CNN , even the stolid Jim Clancy
started to hyperventilate when an Indian academic tried to explain
how Iraq was once our ally and ‘friend’ in its war against our
Satanic enemy Iran. ‘None of that conspiracy stuff,’ snuffed
Clancy. Apparently, ‘conspiracy stuff’ is now shorthand for
unspeakable truth.
On 28 January 2002, the Canadian media analyst Barry Zwicker summed up on CBC-TV[9]:
‘That morning no interceptors responded in a timely fashion to the highest alert situation.
This includes the Andrews squadrons which . . . are 12 miles from the White House . . .
Whatever the explanation for the huge failure, there have been no reports, to my knowledge,
of reprimands. This further weakens the "Incompetence Theory". Incompetence usually
earns reprimands. This causes me to ask whether there were "stand down" orders.’?? On 29
August 2002, the BBC reports that on 9/11 there were ‘only four fighters on ready status in
the north-eastern US’. Conspiracy? Coincidence? Error?
It is interesting how often in our history, when disaster strikes, incompetence is considered a
better alibi than . . . well, yes, there are worse things. After Pearl Harbor, Congress moved to
find out why Hawaii’s two military commanders, General Short and Admiral Kimmel, had
not anticipated the Japanese attack. But President Roosevelt pre-empted that investigation
with one of his own. Short and Kimmel were broken for incompetence. The ‘truth’ is still
obscure to this day.
The media’s weapons of mass distraction
But Pearl Harbor has been much studied. 11 September, it is plain, is never going to be
investigated if Bush has anything to say about it. On 29 January 2002, CNN reported[10] that
‘Bush personally asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to limit the Congressional
investigation into the events of 11 September . . . The request was made at a private meeting
with Congressional leaders . . . Sources said Bush initiated the conversation . . . He asked
that only the House and Senate intelligence committees look into the potential breakdowns
among federal agencies that could have allowed the terrorist attacks to occur, rather than a
broader inquiry . . . Tuesday’s discussion followed a rare call from Vice President Dick
Cheney last Friday to make the same request . . .’
The excuse given, according to Daschle, was that ‘resources and personnel would be taken’
away from the war on terrorism in the event of a wider inquiry. So for reasons that we must
never know, those ‘breakdowns’ are to be the goat. That they were more likely to be not
break -- but ‘stand-downs’ is not for us to pry. Certainly the one-hour 20 minute failure to
put fighter planes in the air could not have been due to a breakdown throughout the entire
Air Force along the East Coast. Mandatory standard operational procedure had been told to
cease and desist.
Meanwhile, the media were assigned their familiar task of inciting public opinion against bin
Laden, still not the proven mastermind. These media blitzes often resemble the magicians
classic gesture of distraction: as you watch the rippling bright colours of his silk
handkerchief in one hand, he is planting the rabbit in your pocket with the other. We were
quickly assured that Osama’s enormous family with its enormous wealth had broken with
him, as had the royal family of his native Saudi Arabia. The CIA swore, hand on heart, that
Osama had not worked for them in the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Finally, the rumour that Bush family had in any way profited by its long involvement with
the bin Laden family was -- what else? -- simply partisan bad taste.
But Bush Jr’s involvement goes back at least to 1979 when his first failed attempt to become
a player in the big Texas oil league brought him together with one James Bath of Houston, a
family friend, who have Bush Jr. $50,000 for a 5 per cent stake in Bush’s firm Arbusto
Energy. At this time, according to Wayne Madsen ( In These Times -- Institute for Public
Affairs No. 25[11]), Bath was ‘the sole US business representative for Salem bin Laden, head
of the family and a brother (one of 17) to Osama bin Laden . . . In a statement issued shortly
after the 11 September attacks, the White House vehemently denied the connection, insisting
that Bath invested his own money, not Salem bin Laden’s, in Arbusto. In conflicting
statements, Bush at first denied ever knowing Bath, then acknowledged his stake in Arbusto
and that he was aware Bath represented Saudi interests . . . after several reincarnations,
Arbusto emerged in 1986 as Harken Energy Corporation.’[12]
Behind the Junior Bush is the senior Bush, gainfully employed by the Carlyle Group [ 13 ]
which has ownership in at least 164 companies worldwide, inspiring admiration in that
staunch friend to the wealthy, the Wall Street Journal, which noted, as early as 27 September
2001, ‘If the US boosts defence spending in its quest to stop Osama bin Laden’s alleged
terrorist activities, there may be one unexpected beneficiary: bin Laden’s family . . . is an
investor in a fund established by Carlyle Group, a well-connected Washington merchant
bank specialising in buyouts of defence and aerospace companies . . . Osama is one of more
than 50 children of Mohammed bin Laden, who built the family’s $5 billion business.’
But Bush pere et fils, in pursuit of wealth and office, are beyond shame or, one cannot help
but think, good sense. There is a suggestion that they are blocking investigation of the bin
Laden connection with terrorism. Agent France Press reported on 4 November 2001[14]:
‘FBI agents probing relatives of Saudi-born terror suspect Osama . . . were told to back off
soon after George W. Bush became president . . .’ According to BBC TV’s Newsnight (6
Nov 2001)[15], ‘. . . just days after the hijackers took off from Boston aiming for the Twin
Towers, a special charter flight out of the same airport whisked 11 members of Osama’s
family off to Saudi Arabia. That did not concern the White House, whose official line is that
the bin Ladens are above suspicion.’ ‘Above the Law’ (Green Press, 14 February 2002)[16]
sums up: ‘We had what looked like the biggest failure of the intelligence community since
Pearl Harbor but what we are learning now is it wasn’t a failure, it was a directive.’ True?
False? Bush Jr will be under oath during the impeachment interrogation. Will we hear ‘What
is a directive? What is is?’ |
Ainsworth Hunt
Citizen
Username: Ainsworth
Post Number: 142
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, January 10, 2004 - 12:22 am: | |
Gore Vidal - The Enemy Within Part IV
Although the US had, for some years, fingered Osama as a mastermind terrorist, no serious
attempt had been made pre-9/11 to ‘bring him to justice dead or alive, innocent or guilty’, as
Texan law of the jungle requires. Clinton’s plan to act was given to Condeleezza Rice by
Sandy Berger, you will recall, but she says she does not.
As far back as March 1996 when Osama was in Sudan, Major General Elfatih Erwa,
Sudanese Minister for Defence, offered to extradite him. According to the Washington Post
(3 October 2001), ‘Erwa said he would happily keep close watch on bin Laden for the United
States. But if that would not suffice, the government was prepared to place him in custody
and hand him over . . . [US officials] said, "just ask him to leave the country. Just don’t let
him go to Somalia", where he had once been given credit for the successful al-Qaeda attack
on American forces that in ’93 that killed 18 Rangers.’ Erwa said in an interview, ‘We said
he will go to Afghanistan, and they [US officials] said, "Let him."’
In 1996 Sudan expelled Osama and 3,000 of his associates. Two years later the Clinton
administration, in the great American tradition of never having to say thank you for Sudan’s
offer to hand over Osama, proceeded to missile-attack Sudan’s al-Shifa pharmaceutical
factory on the grounds that Sudan was harboring bin Laden terrorists who were making
chemical and biological weapons when the factory was simply making vaccines for the UN.
Four years later, John O’Neill, a much admired FBI agent, complained in the Irish Times[17]
a month before the attacks, ‘The US State Department -- and behind it the oil lobby who
make up President Bush’s entourage -- blocked attempts to prove bin Laden’s guilt. The US
ambassador to Yemen forbade O’Neill (and his FBI team) . . . from entering Yemen in
August 2001. O’Neill resigned in frustration and took on a new job as head of security at the
World Trade Centre. He died in the 11 September attack.’ Obviously, Osama has enjoyed
bipartisan American support since his enlistment in the CIA’s war to drive the Soviets out of
Afghanistan. But by 9/11 there was no Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, indeed there was
no Soviet Union.
A world made safe for peace and pipelines
I watched Bush and Cheney on CNN when the Axis of Evil speech was given and the ‘long
war’ proclaimed. Iraq, Iran and North Korea were fingered as enemies to be clobbered
because they might or might not be harbouring terrorists who might or might not destroy us
in the night. So we must strike first whenever it pleases us. Thus, we declared ‘war on
terrorism’ -- an abstract noun which cannot be a war at all as you need a country for that. Of
course, there was innocent Afghanistan, which was levelled from a great height, but then
what’s collateral damage -- like an entire country -- when you’re targeting the
personification of all evil according to Time and the New York Times and the networks?
As it proved, the conquest of Afghanistan had nothing to do with Osama. He was simply a
pretext for replacing the Taliban with a relatively stable government that would allow Union
Oil of California to lay its pipeline for the profit of, among others, the Cheney-Bush junta.
Background? All right. The headquarters of Unocal are, as might be expected, in Texas. In
December 1997, Taliban representatives were invited to Sugarland, Texas.[18] At that time,
Unocal had already begun training Afghan men in pipeline construction, with US
government approval. BBC News, (4 December 1997)[19]: ‘A spokesman for the company
Unocal said the Taliban were expected to spend several days at the company’s [Texas]
headquarters . . . a BBC regional correspondent says the proposal to build a pipeline across
Afghanistan is part of an international scramble to profit from developing the rich energy
resources of the Caspian Sea.’ The Inter Press Service (IPS) reported[20]: ‘some Western
businesses are warming up to the Taliban despite the movement’s institutionalisation of
terror, massacres, abductions and impoverishment.’ CNN (6 October 1996): ‘The United
States wants good ties [with the Taliban] but can’t openly seek them while women are being
oppressed.’
The Taliban, rather better organised than rumoured, hired for PR one Leila Helms, a niece of
Richard Helms, former director of the CIA. In October 1996, the Frankfurter Rundschau
reported that Unocal ‘has been given the go-ahead from the new holders of power in Kabul
to build a pipeline from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan to Pakistan . . .’ This was a real coup
for Unocal as well as other candidates for pipelines, including Condoleezza’s old employer
Chevron. Although the Taliban was already notorious for its imaginative crimes against the
human race, the Wall Street Journal, scenting big bucks, fearlessly announced: ‘Like them or
not, the Taliban are the players most capable of achieving peace in Afghanistan at this
moment in history.’ The New York Times (26 May 1997) leapt aboard the pipeline
juggernaut. ‘The Clinton administration has taken the view that a Taliban victory would act
as counterweight to Iran . . . and would offer the possibility of new trade routes that could
weaken Russian and Iranian influence in the region.’
But by 1999, it was clear that the Taliban could not provide the security we would need to
protect our fragile pipelines. The arrival of Osama as warrior for Allah on the scene
refocused, as it were, the bidding. New alliances were now being made. The Bush
administration soon buys the idea of an invasion of Afghanistan, Frederick Starr, head of the
Central Asia Institute at Johns Hopkins University, wrote in the Washington Post (19
December 2000)[ 21 ] : ‘The US has quietly begun to align itself with those in the Russian
government calling for military action against Afghanistan and has toyed with the idea of a
new raid to wipe out Osama bin Laden.’
‘Bin Laden does not have the capabilities for an operation of this
magnitude. When I hear Bush talking about al-Qaeda as if it were
Nazi Germany or the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, I
laugh because I know what is there. Bin Laden has been under
surveillance for years: every telephone call was monitored and
al-Qaeda has been penetrated by US intelligence, Pakistani
intelligence, Saudi intelligence, Egyptian intelligence. They could
not have kept secret an operation that required such a degree of
organisation and sophistication.’
--Mohammed Heikal The Guardian, 10/10/01
Although with much fanfare we went forth to wreak our vengeance on the crazed sadistic
religious zealot who slaughtered 3,000 American citizens, once that ‘war’ was under way,
Osama was dropped as irrelevant [ 22 ] and so we are back to the Unocal pipeline, now a
go-project. In the light of what we know today, it is unlikely that the junta was ever going to
capture Osama alive: he has tales to tell. One of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s best
numbers now is: ‘Where is he? Somewhere? Here? There? Somewhere? Who knows?’ And
we get his best twinkle. He must also be delighted -- and amazed -- that the media have
bought the absurd story that Osama, if alive, would still be in Afghanistan, underground,
waiting to be flushed out instead of in a comfortable mansion in Osama-loving Jakarta, 2,000
miles to the East and easily accessible by Flying Carpet One.
Many commentators of a certain age have noted how Hitlerian our junta sounds as it
threatens first one country for harbouring terrorists and then another. It is true that Hitler
liked to pretend to be the injured -- or threatened -- party before he struck. But he had many
great predecessors not least Imperial Rome. Stephen Gowan’s War in Afghanistan: A $28
Billion Racket quotes Joseph Schumpeter who, ‘in 1919, described ancient Rome in a way
that sounds eerily like the United States in 2001: "There was no corner of the known world
where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests
were not Roman, they were those of Rome’s allies; and if Rome had no allies, the allies
would be invented . . . The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was
always being attacked by evil-minded neighbours."’ We have only outdone the Romans in
turning metaphors such as the war on terrorism, or poverty, or Aids into actual wars on
targets we appear, often, to pick at random in order to maintain turbulence in foreign lands.
As of 1 August 2002, trial balloons were going up all over Washington DC to get world
opinion used to the idea that ‘Bush of Afghanistan’ had gained a title as mighty as his
father’s ‘Bush of the Persian Gulf’ and Junior was now eager to add Iraq-Babylon to his
diadem. These various balloons fell upon Europe and the Arab world like so many lead
weights. But something new has been added since the classic Roman Hitlerian mantra, ‘they
are threatening us, we must attack first’. Now everything is more of less out in the open.
The International Herald Tribune wrote in August 2002: ‘The leaks began in earnest on 5
July, when the New York Times described a tentative Pentagon plan that it said called for an
invasion by a US force of up to 250,000 that would attack Iraq from the north, south and
west.’ On 10 July, the Times said that Jordan might be used as a base for the invasion. The
Washington Post reported, 28 July, that "many senior US military officers contend that
Saddam Hussein poses no immediate threat . . ."’ And the status quo should be maintained.
Incidentally, this is the sort of debate that the founding fathers intended the Congress, not
military bureaucrats, to conduct in the name of we the people. But that sort of debate has, for
a long time, been denied us.
One refreshing note is now being struck in a fashion unthinkable in imperial Rome: the
cheerful admission that we habitually resort to provocation. The Tribune continues: ‘Donald
Rumsfeld has threatened to jail any one found to have been behind the leaks. But a retired
army general, Fred Woerner, tends to see a method behind the leaks. "We may already be
executing a plan," he said recently. "Are we involved in a preliminary psychological
dimension of causing Iraq to do something to justify a US attack or make concessions?
Somebody knows."’ That is plain.
Elsewhere in this interesting edition of the Herald Tribune wise William Pfaff writes[23]: ‘A
second Washington debate is whether to make an unprovoked attack on Iran to destroy a
nuclear power reactor being built with Russian assistance, under inspection by the
International Atomic Energy Agency, within the terms of the Nuclear Non-proliferation
Treaty of which Iran is a signatory . . . No other government would support such an action,
other than Israel’s (which) would do so not because it expected to be attacked by Iran but
because it, not unjustifiably, opposes any nuclear capacity in the hands of any Islamic
government.’
Suspect states and the tom-toms of revenge
‘Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it
compromises and develops the germ of every other. As the parent of armies, war encourages
debts and taxes, the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the
few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the executive is extended . . . and all the means
of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people . . .’ Thus,
James Madison warned us[24] at the dawn of our republic.
Post 9/11, thanks to the ‘domination of the few’, Congress and the media are silent while the
executive, through propaganda and skewed polls, seduces the public mind as hitherto
unthinkable centers of power like Homeland Defence (a new Cabinet post to be placed on
top of the Defence Department) are being constructed and 4 per cent of the country has
recently been invited to join TIPS, a civilian spy system to report on anyone who looks
suspicious or . . . who objects to what the executive is doing at home or abroad?
Although every nation knows how -- if it has the means and the will -- to protect itself from
thugs of the sort that brought us 9/11, war is not an option. Wars are for nations not root-less
gangs. You put a price on their heads and hunt them down. In recent years, Italy has been
doing that with the Sicilian Mafia; and no one has yet suggested bombing Palermo.
But the Cheney-Bush junta wants a war in order to dominate Afghanistan, build a pipeline,
gain control of the oil of Eurasia’s Stans for their business associates as well as to do as
much damage to Iraq and Iran on the grounds that one day those evil countries may carpet
our fields of amber grain with anthrax or something.
The media, never much good at analysis, are more and more breathless and incoherent. On
CNN, even the stolid Jim Clancy started to hyperventilate when an Indian academic tried to
explain how Iraq was once our ally and ‘friend’ in its war against our Satanic enemy Iran.[25]
‘None of that conspiracy stuff,’ snuffed Clancy. Apparently, ‘conspiracy stuff’ is now
shorthand for unspeakable truth.
As of August, at least among economists, a consensus was growing that, considering our
vast national debt (we borrow $2 billion a day to keep the government going) and a tax base
seriously reduced by the junta in order to benefit the 1 per cent who own most of the national
wealth, there is no way that we could ever find the billions needed to destroy Iraq in ‘a long
war’ or even a short one, with most of Europe lined up against us. Germany and Japan paid
for the Gulf War, reluctantly -- with Japan, at the last moment, irritably quarrelling over the
exchange rate at the time of the contract. Now Germany’s Schroder has said no. Japan is
mute.
But the tom-toms keep beating revenge; and the fact that most of the world is opposed to our
war seems only to bring hectic roses to the cheeks of the Bush administration (Bush Snr of
the Carlyle Group,[13] Bush Jnr formerly of Harken,[12] Cheney, formerly of Halliburton,[26]
Rice, formerly of Chevron,[27] Rumsfeld, formerly of Occidental). If ever an administration
should recuse itself in matters dealing with energy, it is the current junta. But this is unlike
any administration in our history. Their hearts are plainly elsewhere, making money, far
from our mock Roman temples, while we, alas, are left only with their heads, dreaming of
war, preferably against weak peripheral states.
Mohammed Heikal is a brilliant Egyptian journalist-observer, and sometime Foreign
Minister. On 10 October 2001, he said to the Guardian[28]: ‘Bin Laden does not have the
capabilities for an operation of this magnitude. When I hear Bush talking about al-Qaeda as
if it were Nazi Germany or the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, I laugh because I
know what is there. Bin Laden has been under surveillance for years: every telephone call
was monitored and al-Qaeda has been penetrated by US intelligence, Pakistani intelligence,
Saudi intelligence, Egyptian intelligence. They could not have kept secret an operation that
required such a degree of organisation and sophistication.’
The former president of Germany’s domestic intelligence service, Eckehardt Werthebach
(American Free Press, 4 December 2001[29]) spells it out. The 9/11 attacks required ‘years
of planning’ while their scale indicates that they were a product of ‘state-organised actions’.
There it is. Perhaps, after all, Bush Jnr was right to call it a war. But which state attacked us?
Will the suspects please line up. Saudi Arabia? ‘No, no. Why we are paying you $50 million
a year for training the royal bodyguard on our own holy if arid soil. True the kingdom
contains many wealthy well-educated enemies but . . .’ Bush Snr and Jnr exchange a
knowing look. Egypt? No way. Dead broke despite US baksheesh. Syria? No funds. Iran?
Too proud to bother with a parvenu state like the US. Israel? Sharon is capable of anything.
But he lacks the guts and the grace of the true Kamikaze. Anyway, Sharon was not in charge
when this operation began with the planting of ‘sleepers’ around the US flight schools 5 or 6
years ago.
The United States? Elements of corporate America would undeniably prosper from a
‘massive external attack’ that would make it possible for us to go to war whenever the
President sees fit while suspending civil liberties. (The 342 pages of the USA Patriot Act[30]
were plainly prepared before 9/11.) Bush Snr and Jnr are giggling now. Why? Because
Clinton was president back then. As the former president leaves the line of suspects, he says,
more in anger than in sorrow: ‘When we left the White House we had a plan for an all-out
war on al-Qaeda. We turned it over to this administration and they did nothing. Why?’ Biting
his lip, he goes. The Bushes no longer giggle. Pakistan breaks down: ‘I did it! I confess! I
couldn’t help myself. Save me. I am an evil-doer!’
Apparently, Pakistan did do it -- or some of it. We must now go back to 1979 when ‘the
largest covert operation in the history of the CIA’ was launched in response to the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan. Central Asia specialist Ahmed Rashid wrote ( Foreign Affairs ,
November-December 1999[31]): ‘With the active encouragement of the CIA and Pakistan’s
ISI (Inter Services Intelligence) who wanted to turn the Afghan jihad into a global war,
waged by all Muslim states against the Soviet Union, some 35,000 Muslim radicals, from 40
Islamic countries joined Afghanistan’s fight between 1982 and ’92 . . . more than 100,000
foreign Muslim radicals were directly influenced by the Afghanistan jihad.’ The CIA
covertly trained and sponsored these warriors.
In March 1985, President Reagan issued National Security Decision Directive 166,
increasing military aid while CIA specialists met with the ISI counterparts near Rawalpindi,
Pakistan. Jane’s Defence Weekly (14 September 2001) [ 32 ] gives the best overview: ‘The
trainers were mainly from Pakistan’s ISI agency who learnt their craft from American Green
Beret commandos and Navy Seals in various US training establishments.’ This explains the
reluctance of the administration to explain why so many unqualified persons, over so long a
time, got visas to visit our hospitable shores. While in Pakistan, ‘mass training of Afghan
[zealots] was subsequently conducted by the Pakistan army under the supervision of the elite
Special Services . . . In 1988, with US knowledge, bin Laden created al-Qaeda (The Base); a
conglomerate of quasi-independent Islamic terrorist cells spread across 26 or so countries.
Washington turned a blind eye to al-Qaeda.’
When Mohamed Atta’s plane struck the World Trade Centre’s North Tower, George W.
Bush and the child at the Florida elementary school were discussing her goat. By
coincidence, our word ‘tragedy’ comes from the Greek: for ‘goat’ tragos plus oide for
‘song’. ‘Goat-song’. It is highly suitable that this lament, sung in ancient satyr plays, should
have been heard again at the exact moment when we were struck by fire from heaven, and a
tragedy whose end is nowhere in sight began for us.
Copyright © Gore Vidal 2002
Reprinted for Fair Use Only.
References
|
Ainsworth Hunt
Citizen
Username: Ainsworth
Post Number: 143
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, January 10, 2004 - 12:24 am: | |
Gore Vidal The Enemy Within - References
1. Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed, Media Monitors Network
2. Institute for Policy Research and Development, Independent Analysis for the Promotion of Human Rights, Justice and
Peace
3. The War on Freedom: How and Why America was Attacked, September 11, 2001, by Nafeez M. Ahmed, Tree of Life
Publications, Joshua Tree, CA, A Media Messenger Book , A Public Interest Initiative of the Institute for Policy
Research and Development, ISBN 0-930852-40-0, June 2002
Yahoo! Groups: WarOnFreedom
Book Review by Wanda Ballentine, 12/2/02
4. Another Agent Blasts FBI on 911 - FBI Agent Says He’s Prevented From Exposing Agency, by Julie Ziegler,
Bloomberg News, 5/30/02
5. Threat of US strikes passed to Taliban weeks before NY attack , by Jonathan Steele, Ewen MacAskill, Richard
Norton-Taylor and Ed Harriman, The Guardian, 9/22/01
6. The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives, by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Basic Books,
1997
7. See Testimony By John J. Maresca Vice President, International Relations Unocal Corporation To House Committee
On International Relations Subcommittee On Asia And The Pacific, 2/12/98 wherein Mr. Maresca holds forth on three
issues concerning Central Asia oil and gas reserves: "The need for multiple pipeline routes for Central Asian oil and
gas. The need for U.S. support for international and regional efforts to achieve balanced and lasting political
settlements within Russia, other newly independent states and in Afghanistan. The need for structured assistance to
encourage economic reforms and the development of appropriate investment climates in the region."
See Also: 1992-1999 Timeline of Competition between Unocal and Bridas for the Afghanistan Pipeline, from World
Press Review’s Special Report on Pipeline Politics
8. The So-called Evidence is a Farce, by Stan Goff, Narco News, 10/10/01
edited version provides enhances readability
9. The Great Deception - What really happened on Sept. 11th? "9/11 -- Part 2, by Barry Zwicker, CBC-TV, 1/28/02
10. Bush asks Daschle to limit Sept. 11 probes, CNN, 1/29/02
11. QUESTIONABLE TIES - Tracking bin Laden’s money flow leads back to Midland, Texas, by Wayne Madsen, In
These Times -- Institute for Public Affairs No. 25
12. For background on Harken Energy Corporation see:
Bush, Harken and the Center for Public Integrity, 7/15/02 (dates are when docs posted on web):
Bush’s Insider Connections Preceded Huge Profit On Stock Deal, 4/4/00
Bush Violated Security Laws Four Times, SEC Report Says, 10/4/00
[8] More Harken Documents, 7/11/02
[3] More Harken Energy Corporation Documents, 7/12/02
[19] Harken Energy Corporation Internal Documents, 7/19/02
[4] Further Harken Documents, 7/25/02
Harken Energy Corporation NameBase listing from Public Information Research
Special Report: The Truth About Bush and Harken Energy Corp
Bush on defensive over cheap loans, BBC, 7/12/02
"Read My Lips: Oil Was Well with Harken" ( George W’s ’Perfect Storm’ ) by Tom Flocco, Scoop.co.nz ,
7/15/02
Bush is no good trade, by Tom Flocco, WorldNetDaily, 2/18/00
13. For background on the Carlyle Group and Bush Family see:
Arms Buildup Enriches Firm Staffed by Big Guns - Ex-president and other elites are behind weapon-boosting
Carlyle Group, by Mark Fineman, Los Angeles Times, 1/10/02
Carlyle’s way - Making a mint inside "the iron triangle" of defense, government, and industry, by Dan Briody,
RedHerring, 1/8/02
Carlyle profit from Afghan war, by David Lazarus, San Fransisco Chronicle, 12/2/01
The ex-presidents’ club, by Oliver Burkeman and Julian Borger, The Guardian, 10/31/01
Secretive Carlyle plans, by Tina-Marie O’Neill, Business Post, Dublin, Ireland, 6/2/02
The Carlyle Group by Victor Thorn, Babel Magazine, 10/6/02
Meet The Carlyle Group - Former World Leaders and Washington Insiders Make Billions from the War on
Terrorism
Republican-controlled Carlyle Group poses serious Ethical Questions for Bush Presidents, but Baltimore Sun
ignores it, by Alice Cherbonnier, Baltimore Chronicle & Sentinel, 10/3/01
Bin Laden Family Could Profit From Jump In Defense Spending Due to Ties to US Bank, by Daniel Golden,
James Bandler and Marcus Walker, Wall Street Journal, 9/27/01
Carlyle Group Spins the Revolving Door: How Bush and other ex-politos profit from connections and access,
Democracy NOW!, 3/6/01
CHRONOLOGY: The Bushes And The Carlyle Group, by Jerry Politex, Bush Watch, 1/00
BUSHLADEN, by Jared Israel, Emperor’s Clothes, 8 October 2001
14. Bush thwarted FBI probe against bin Ladens, Hindustan Times, Agent France Press, 11/7/01
15. Greg Palest report transcript: Has someone been sitting on the FBI?, BBC TV’s Newsnight, 11/6/01
16. ‘Above the Law’ - Interview with Greg Palast; Bush’s Racial Coup D’Etat and Intelligence Shutdown, Green Press,
2/14/02 [starts about half-way down the file]
17. US efforts to make peace summed up by ‘oil’, by Lara Marlowe, Irish Times, 11/19/01
18. For background on this meeting between the Taliban and Unocal representatives in Texas in 1997 see:
Taleban in Texas for talks on gas pipeline, BBC News, 12/4/97
Give Me A Pipeline Or Give Me Death - The oil connection in the Afghan war, Progressive Review, 2/02
Did Islam Fail in Afghanistan, Part Two, Khilafah.com, 3/22/02
The Slick Business of Oil - Story of Power, Politics, Petroleum and Pipelines, Columnist Hamid Hussain
explores the area of power politics and business, Defence Journal, August 2002
19. Taleban in Texas for talks on gas pipeline, BBC News, 12/4/97
20. UN Considers Arms Embargo on Afghanistan, Inter Press Service, 12/16/97
21. Afghanistan Land Mine, by S. Frederick Starr, Washington Post, 12/19/00
22. Bin Laden: from ’Evil One’ to Unmentionable One, by Alan Elsner, Reuters, 8/20/02
23. Look who’s part of the harsh disorder, William Pfaff, International Herald Tribune, 8/1/02
24. Excerpt from Letters and Other Writings of James Madison, 4 volumes, Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott & Co, 1865
25. See transcript of the Senate Congressional Record for September 20, 2002, pages S8987-S8998, entitled, How
Saddam Happened - Did the U.S. Help Saddam Acquire Biological Weapons? where Robert Byrd reads in the
complete Newsweek article as well as his questioning of Rumsfeld (reproduced as part of the Federation of American
Scientists website’s Intelligence Resource Program)
See also: Following Iraq’s bioweapons trail, by Robert Novak, Chicago Sun-Times, 26 Sept 2002 and Will the U.S.
Reap What It Has Sown? Byrd Asks, by Paul J. Nyden, Charleston Gazette, 9/27/02
26. For background on the Halliburton see:
Cheney & Halliburton: Go Where the Oil Is, by Kenny Bruno and Jim Valette, Multinational Monitor, May
2001
A discreet way of doing business with Iraq, by Carola Hoyos, United Nations Correspondent, Financial Times,
11/3/00
Halliburton’s Iraq Deals Greater Than Cheney Has Said - Affiliates Had $73 Million in Contracts, by Colum
Lynch, Washington Post, 6/23/01
Halliburton Iraq ties more than Cheney said, by UPI, NewsMax, 6/25/01
Cheney Made Millions Off Oil Deals With Hussein, by Martin A. Lee, San Francisco Bay Guardian, 11/13/00
Cheney’s Money Has Roots in Evil, by Dave Zweifel, Madison Capital Times, 6/5/02
Halliburton’s Destructive Engagement - How Dick Cheney and USA-Engage Subvert Democracy At Home
And Abroad, Introduction and Executive Summary, Earthrights International, 1/17/01 (PDF)
Halliburton in Burma: Cheney’s Role Revisited, Earthrights International, 8/5/02
Cheney Led Halliburton To Feast at Federal Trough - State Department Questioned Deal With Firm Linked to
Russian Mob, by Knut Royce and Nathaniel Heller, The Public i , An Investigative Report of the Center for
Public Integrity, 8/2/00
Soldiers of fortune - Civilian employees of Dick Cheney’s former company are carrying out military missions
around the world - for profit, by Pratap Chatterjee, San Francisco Bay Guardian, 5/1/02
Force Provider: The base-in-a-box
Cheney Ruthless as a CEO - Tale of Two Brothers, The Daily Enron, a project of American Family Voices
Under Cheney, Halliburton Altered Policy on Accounting by Alex Berenson and Lowell Bergman, New York
Times, 5/22/02
27. For more on Condoleezza Rice’s relationship to Chevron, see:
Bush’s Corporate Cabinet: Condoleeza Rice, National Security Adviser, The Bush Years Begin, Multinational
Monitor, May 2001
The United States of Oil - No administration has ever been more in bed with the energy industry -- but does that
mean Big Oil is calling Bush’s shots?, by Damien Caveli, Salon.com, 11/19/01
The Bush Team: Condoleezza Rice’s Chevron Service Could Pose Conflicts , by Erin Bartels, The Public i ,
3/7/01
Critics Knock Naming Oil Tanker Condoleezza, by Carla Marinucci, San Francisco Chronicle, 4/5/01
Chevron redubs ship named for Bush aide Condoleezza Rice drew too much attention, by Carla Marinucci, San
Francisco Chronicle, 5/5/01
Chevron Facing Lawsuit Over Attacks in Nigeria, by Erin Bartels, The Public i, 3/7/01
The Bush Administration Corporate Connections: Condoleezza Rice, opensecrets.org
The Condoleezza Rice Commencement Speech Organizing Page, Stanford Graduating Class of 2002
The Achievements of Condeleezza Rice: National Security Advisor
The Achievements of Condeleezza Rice: Chevron Board Member
Letters to the Editor, Seniors disappointed with selection of Rice, 3/13/02
Be smart: Follow the leader’s friend’s investments, by Martha Smilgis, San Francisco Examiner,
VITAL STATISTICS: Chevron Board of Directors and their Connections, Drillbits & Tailings, 3/31/00
Bush’s Oil Machine, by Catherine Baldi and Danny Kennedy, War Times, 2002
Triple axel of evil, by Bruce LaBruce, eye weekly, 3/7/02
28. ‘There isn’t a target in Afghanistan worth a $1m missile’, Mohamed Heikal, The Guardian, 10/10/01
29. Euro Intel Experts Dismiss ‘War On Terrorism’ As Deception, by Christopher Bollyn, American Free Press, 12/4/01
30. USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, aka "H.R. 3162", aka "Ashcroft’s police-state bill," passed into law on 26 October 2001
31. The Taliban: Exporting Extremism, by Ahmed Rashid, Foreign Affairs, November-December 1999
32. Why? An attempt to explain the unexplainable, by Rahul Bedi, Jane’s Defence Weekly, 9/14/01
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/EnemyWithin.html
|
tjohn
Citizen
Username: Tjohn
Post Number: 2051
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Saturday, January 10, 2004 - 1:27 pm: | |
Ainsworth,
Why not stick with links and pull out the important points. Evidence of plans to use airplanes as weapons is of interest. |
Ainsworth Hunt
Citizen
Username: Ainsworth
Post Number: 152
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, January 10, 2004 - 2:44 pm: | |
Thanks for the suggestion tjohn. |
Nohero
Citizen
Username: Nohero
Post Number: 2687
Registered: 10-1999
| | Posted on Sunday, January 11, 2004 - 2:17 pm: | |
Anyway, back to the thread topic. Apparently, the President visited Knoxville on Thursday, and ...
quote:About 30 minutes before the president's motorcade arrived, however, police ordered the protesters to move about 150 feet west of their location. Police Sgt. Scott Sheppard said he moved the protesters because the motorcade would be passing their location.
The protesters opted to leave the area entirely rather than protest out of sight of the motorcade. Within minutes, however, state employees and Bush supporters lined the State Plaza Building parking lot, armed with signs, American flags and video cameras. Police didn't bother those crowds.
Martha Kopp, 53, of Anderson County held her Bush/Cheney sign aloft and screamed with enthusiasm as the presidential motorcade passed.
"I haven't missed a single one of his visits," said Kopp, the mother of three sons.
Because of the police restrictions on protesters, Bush's motorcade met only signs of support from the time it left the airport to the time it returned. People with no signs and some with pro-Bush signs lined the motorcade route unchallenged by police.
Source: Knoxville News Online: http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/local_news/article/0,1406,KNS_347_2563165,00.html |
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