posted on September 12, 2003 12:45:04 PM
The true "servants of evil"
By Bev Conover
Online Journal Editor & Publisher
"When they call you a conspiracy theorist, it means you are closer to the truth than they want you to be." —Craig Hulet.
September 11, 2003—On this the second anniversary of the attacks of September 11, may the words George W. Bush spoke yesterday before the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va., about "the servants of evil who plotted the attacks" come home at last to haunt him and his administration.
Bush was correct when he said, "The forces of global terror cannot be appeased and they cannot be ignored. They must be hunted; they must be found; and they will be defeated."
We don't have to hunt farther than 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC, to find them.
While few Americans believe that President John F. Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas nearly 40 years ago by a lone assassin, many don't want to believe the man who currently occupies the White House and those he has chosen to surround himself with would pull or knowingly let happen such a horrendous deed as 9/11, instead opting cling to the blind belief that "our government wouldn't do that to us."
People don't want to believe that a parent would kill his or her child or that a child would kill his or her parent, or a host of other heinous things that seem too vile to contemplate. And yet these things happen. So why is it beyond belief that "our government" would commit the unthinkable or, at the least, stand by and allow it to happen to further its own ends?
The corporate-controlled television networks and print media, which are the propaganda arm of the Bush administration, have labored long and hard to convince people that 9/11 was carried out by 19 suicidal Arabs, under the direction of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, using box cutters to hijack four airliners to crash two of them into the World Trade Center, a third into the Pentagon, and a fourth into a field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people in the process. And, oops, it happened because of a massive failure of all the US intelligence agencies. End of story.
If such a thing had happened on any other administration's watch, we would be up to our eyeballs in investigations—those by various congressional committees and more than likely Congress would have authorized an independent investigation, too. Instead, Congress let itself be bullied by Bush and Dick Cheney, both of whom wanted no investigation at all, then went along with a whitewash worse than the Iran-contra investigation and even withheld documents from that limited probe by a joint committee of Congress, plus removed 28 pages from its final report. Are we to expect anything better next May when the allegedly independent National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States makes its report?
How fortuitous 9/11 was for George W., who, after losing the popular vote—despite the efforts of his brother Jeb, the governor of Florida, and the infamous Katherine Harris, who served as both Florida's secretary of state and co-chairman of George's Florida campaign, to steal that state's election—was installed in the White House by five justices on the US Supreme Court and needed something to divert public attention from the collapse of "Kenny Boy" Lay's (GW's buddy) Enron and whose corporate-media inflated popularity was sinking faster than the economy. Bush had hit his "trifecta," but it was an even better trifecta than he had envisioned: the 9/11 attacks that paved the way for the endless "war on terror," the creation of a police state at home and the invasion of two sovereign nations—Afghanistan and Iraq.
And now along comes Gerald Posner, the author who put the final coat of whitewash on the Kennedy assassination, who, in his new book, "Why America Slept: the Failure to Prevent 9/11," says much of the blame rests with Bill Clinton. Clinton did some awful things while president (sex wasn't one of them), even though his supporters prefer not to take notice of them, but 9/11? This sounds like a replay of Ronald Reagan's Jimmy Carter was responsible for everything that went wrong during the Reagan-Bush administration. Whatever would the right-wingers do if they didn't have Bill Clinton to scapegoat?
No, the Democrats' hands aren't clean in hyping that we had to take measures to protect "the homeland"—a phrase they used—from "terrorists." It was Jimmy Carter's man, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew K. Brzezinski, who, in his book, "The Grand Chessboard," championed American global hegemony and laid out his blueprint for achieving Pax Americana. But it was the war-mongering neocons at the Project for the New American Century who came up with using the military to achieve empire and called for a "new Pearl Harbor."
Those who raise the questions about 9/11 that desperately need to be raised are dismissed by both the right and the self-appointed gatekeepers of the left, with the gatekeepers being even more vehement in their dismissal of skeptics and determined researchers as "conspiracy wackos."
But such dismissals don't explain what really happened that day; what Bush knew and when he knew it; why the administration has scapegoated the FBI and CIA after turning a deaf ear to them and a host of foreign intelligence services; or who countermanded normal procedure and ordered the stand-down of the military planes that would have scrambled to intercept the hijacked airliners. Nor do they explain how an administration that claims it never gave thought to airliners, used as weapons, being crashed into buildings, so quickly knew who the alleged hijackers were and that bin Laden was the alleged mastermind of the attacks. Of course, they would never entertain the thought that bin Laden, who with the blessing of the Reagan-Bush administration and the help of the CIA set up al Qaeda to push the Soviets out of Afghanistan, might have been doing George W.'s bidding, which might point to the hunt for him as a charade.
Just the wacky thinking of "conspiracy theorists," eh?
But consider that Bush lied from the get-go and when he couldn't tell a bald-faced lie, he waffled. To wit, the lie about being a "compassionate conservative. The lie about being "a uniter not a divider." The lie about not wanting to get caught up in "nation building." The whopper about restoring "honor and dignity" to the White House, then giving jobs to felons and scumbags. He waffled about his desertion from the Texas Air National Guard and compounded it with the lie that he completed his service. He waffled on questions about his alcohol and drug use.
Now he exploits the victims of 9/11, using them to instill fear in the American people of more "attacks" to come. He exploited both to bomb Afghanistan to smithereens so his energy buddies can build a pipeline through that shattered country and played on the fears of the people to get them to surrender their freedoms for the false promise of "security." He exploited the victims of 9/11 to convince many Americans that Saddam Hussein was in bed with al Qaeda and might give his nonexistent "weapons of mass destruction" to Osama's boys, if he didn't use them on us first, and therefore the US had to take the "evil" Saddam out and "liberate" the Iraqi people, who not only would greet us with flowers and kisses for doing so, but would gladly turn their oil over to Bush's buddies as the price for rebuilding their country that we had devastated through sanctions for 12 years and we were about to destroy—and have destroyed, along with the looting of their national treasures.
And on this day he has proclaimed Patriot Day of all things, having mired the US military in the depleted uranium laden sands of Iraq, showing no remorse for all the innocent people whose deaths he caused, telling the countries on whom he spit they have a duty to help rebuild what he has destroyed, and, after depriving his own people of vitally needed services, asking Congress for another $87 billion as partial payment on the tab he ran up—not to mention the unprecedented $500 billion hole his policies and tax cuts for the rich have put the country in—he further exploits the victims of 9/11 by sacrificing our troops on the altar of his ego and ignorance.
Talk about "servants of evil." All George W. has to do is look into a mirror to see one. He and his administration are the force of global terror that cannot be appeased or ignored. Only by putting the truth before the American people and the world can they be defeated and locked way in that dark place from which they came.
Usually his reminder is more subtle, but Bush is invoking the terrorist hijackings frequently as he ramps up his reelection campaign and tries to defuse the political risk posed by persistent joblessness, setbacks in Iraq and accusations that he exaggerated evidence on the road to war.
In the past six weeks, Bush has cited "9/11" or Sept. 11, 2001, in arguing for his energy policy and in response to questions about campaign fundraising, tax cuts, unemployment, the deficit, airport security, Afghanistan and the length, cost and death toll of the Iraq occupation.
But Mr. Bush's advisers were greedy; they saw 9/11 as an opportunity to get everything they wanted, from another round of tax cuts, to a major weakening of the Clean Air Act, to an invasion of Iraq. And so they wrapped as much as they could in the flag.
Now it has all gone wrong. The deficit is about to go above half a trillion dollars, the economy is still losing jobs, the triumph in Iraq has turned to dust and ashes, and Mr. Bush's poll numbers are at or below their pre-9/11 levels.
Paul Klugman
posted on September 13, 2003 04:21:34 PM
"Reality is a question of perspective."
Never were those words truer than in the realm of politics and public opinion polls now. With Democratic presidential candidates and political pundits salivating over President Bush's slipping job approval numbers, this might be a good time to put the numbers into some perspective. So, for my first Roll Call column, here's a reality check.
posted on September 13, 2003 04:51:57 PM
Proof positive that skylit is a clone of dolly.
Birds of a Feather
"Al Jazeera aired new footage of Osama bin Laden ... It's the usual stuff. Called Bush evil, called him the Great Satan, called him a warmonger. The same stuff we heard last night at the Democratic presidential debate."
- Tonight Show host Jay Leno, 9/9/03
Veritas vos Liberabit"..... (the truth will set you free)
[ edited by TXPROUD on Sep 13, 2003 05:22 PM ]
By FORREST BERKSHIRE
Washington has played an increasingly prominent role in the Kentucky governor's race, and the state Democratic Party is looking for the Bluegrass state to become the first hole in what they perceive as a vulnerable national Republican Party.
Whether it is the three million jobs lost nationwide or the 67,000 lost in the state, Democratic nominee Ben Chandler and his party have accused Congressman Ernie Fletcher and other Republicans of failed policies that have hurt Kentuckians.
"We're not running against (President) Bush," said Mark Riddle, executive director of the Kentucky Democratic Party. "We're running against an administration in Washington that's been a miserable failure. We're running against Ernie Fletcher and the Republican Party."
Riddle said he looks for Kentucky to influence the presidential election in 2004, and politicians and party leaders from both sides are watching this governor's race.
posted on September 15, 2003 07:54:45 AM
So...David Kay was expected not to find weapons of mass destruction but at least "programs" of mass destruction with some evidence that Saddam was planning to build "something". Cheney said, "David Kay’s task is to look for the people that were involved in the program, to find documentary evidence to back it up, to find physical evidence when he can find that. It’s a hard task, but I have got great confidence that he can do this"...Now, it is being reported that Kay's report will not be forthcoming and the only reasonable conclusion that we can draw from that is that Kay and his team found nothing substantial.
The Sunday Times of London is reporting that "Britain and America have decided to delay indefinitely the publication of a full report on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction after inspectors found no evidence that any such weapons exist."
Why hasn't George Bush encountered the same storm of criticism in the US over his intelligence claims on Iraq as Tony Blair has received in the UK?
After all, Tony Blair's difficulties hinge largely on a single allegation. But the White House made numerous allegations in the run up to the war which turned out to be wrong.
Last summer, US officials claimed Saddam Hussein was close to acquiring nuclear weapons. On 7 August, Vice President Dick Cheney set the ball rolling by saying, "it's the judgement of many of us that in the not-too-distant future, he [Saddam Hussein] will acquire nuclear weapons".
Within a month, President George W Bush had shortened that timeframe.
Standing next to Tony Blair at Camp David, he declared that Saddam Hussein was only "six months away" from developing a nuclear bomb.
He claimed to be quoting an IAEA report, but the IAEA appeared never to have made such a claim.
A White House official later said that the president had been "imprecise" but no-one noticed.
Hoax
On 5 February, US Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations that Iraq was importing high-strength aluminium tubes as part of a uranium enrichment programme yet more proof that Iraq was apparently building nuclear weapons.
There was also the case of the "yellow cake" uranium that was supposedly being smuggled into Iraq from Africa. That was mentioned by the president in his State of the Union speech in January, which the White House now admits was based on a hoax. After 11 September, Bush knew if he told the people he needed to attack Iraq they would support him
So, did the White House ride roughshod over the CIA and other intelligence agencies? Well, both yes and no.
The American intelligence system is very different to the British one. There is no Joint Intelligence Committee, which assembles the intelligence from multiple anonymous sources.
Each intelligence agency in the US is a powerful fiefdom in its own right, and is not afraid to speak its mind.
In the case of the aluminium tubes, there was a fierce debate over whether they were for enriching uranium or for building ordinary military rockets.
Four agencies said they were nuclear. Two said they weren't. So Colin Powell was correct when he said that "most analysts" believed they were for enriching uranium.
The disadvantage of this system is that, although it gives the individual agencies more clout, the White House can cherry pick the bits of each report it wants. Or ignore the reports altogether.
Mission
The CIA now claims that it warned the White House about the difficulties there would be in Iraq after the war.
But, as one intelligence source told the Washington Post rather huffily this week, "the reports were written; we don't know if they were ever read".
Last summer, the White House was on a mission to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
The intelligence agencies agreed that he probably possessed weapons of mass destruction. But they had no hard evidence.
Most of their intelligence was five years out of date. Ever since the last UN inspectors left in 1998, the CIA had basically been "guesstimating" the size of the Iraqi stockpile.
On the eve of a war, US intelligence agencies always draw up a formal, secret assessment of the threat, known as a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). But the White House did not want a document with all the usual intelligence analysts' caveats.
The NIE only happened after Congress wrote and insisted on it. CIA director George Tenet claims that "no one told us what to say", which is probably true.
The White House did not need to tell them. If the Estimate did not fit their view, they could simply ignore it.
In the end, George Bush did not need the intelligence to make his case, in the same way that Tony Blair did.
After going through the trauma of 11 September, Mr Bush knew that if he told the American people he needed to attack Iraq they would support him.
