‘America’s Outrageous War Economy!’

 

 

Pentagon can’t find $2.3 trillion, wasting trillions on ‘national defense’

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch

Yes, America’s economy is a war economy. Not a “manufacturing” economy. Not an “agricultural” economy. Nor a “service” economy. Not even a “consumer” economy.
Seriously, I looked into your eyes, America, saw deep into your soul. So let’s get honest and officially call it “America’s Outrageous War Economy.” Admit it: we secretly love our war economy. And that’s the answer to Jim Grant’s thought-provoking question last month in the Wall Street Journal — “Why No Outrage?”

There really is only one answer: Deep inside we love war. We want war. Need it. Relish it. Thrive on war. War is in our genes, deep in our DNA. War excites our economic brain. War drives our entrepreneurial spirit. War thrills the American soul. Oh just admit it, we have a love affair with war. We love “America’s Outrageous War Economy.”
Americans passively zone out playing video war games. We nod at 90-second news clips of Afghan war casualties and collateral damage in Georgia. We laugh at Jon Stewart’s dark comedic news and Ben Stiller’s new war spoof “Tropic Thunder” … all the while silently, by default, we’re cheering on our leaders as they aggressively expand “America’s Outrageous War Economy,” a relentless machine that needs a steady diet of war after war, feeding on itself, consuming our values, always on the edge of self-destruction.
Why else are Americans so eager and willing to surrender 54% of their tax dollars to a war machine, which consumes 47% of the world’s total military budgets?

Why are there more civilian mercenaries working for no-bid private war contractors than the total number of enlisted military in Iraq (180,000 to 160,000), at an added cost to taxpayers in excess of $200 billion and climbing daily?
Why do we shake our collective heads “yes” when our commander-in-chief proudly tells us he is a “war president;” and his party’s presidential candidate chants “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran,” as if “war” is a celebrity hit song?
Why do our spineless Democrats let an incompetent, blundering executive branch hide hundreds of billions of war costs in sneaky “supplemental appropriations” that are more crooked than Enron’s off-balance-sheet deals?
Why have Washington’s 537 elected leaders turned the governance of the American economy over to 42,000 greedy self-interest lobbyists?
And why earlier this year did our “support-our-troops” “war president” resist a new GI Bill because, as he said, his military might quit and go to college rather than re-enlist in his war; now we continue paying the Pentagon’s warriors huge $100,000-plus bonuses to re-up so they can keep expanding “America’s Outrageous War Economy?” Why? Because we secretly love war!

We’ve lost our moral compass: The contrast between today’s leaders and the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 shocks our conscience. Today war greed trumps morals. During the Revolutionary War our leaders risked their lives and fortunes; many lost both.
Today it’s the opposite: Too often our leaders’ main goal is not public service but a ticket to building a personal fortune in the new “America’s Outrageous War Economy,” often by simply becoming a high-priced lobbyist.
Ultimately, the price of our greed may be the fulfillment of Kevin Phillips’ warning in “Wealth and Democracy:” “Most great nations, at the peak of their economic power, become arrogant and wage great world wars at great cost, wasting vast resources, taking on huge debt, and ultimately burning themselves out.”
‘National defense’ a propaganda slogan selling a war economy?
But wait, you ask: Isn’t our $1.4 trillion war budget essential for “national defense” and “homeland security?” Don’t we have to protect ourselves?
Sorry folks, but our leaders have degraded those honored principles to advertising slogans. They’re little more than flag-waving excuses used by neocon war hawks to disguise the buildup of private fortunes in “America’s Outrageous War Economy.”
America may be a ticking time bomb, but we are threatened more by enemies within than external terrorists, by ideological fanatics on the left and the right. Most of all, we are under attack by our elected leaders who are motivated more by pure greed than ideology. They terrorize us, brainwashing us into passively letting them steal our money to finance “America’s Outrageous War Economy,” the ultimate “black hole” of corruption and trickle-up economics.
You think I’m kidding? I’m maybe too harsh? Sorry but others are far more brutal. Listen to the ideologies and realities eating at America’s soul.

1. Our toxic ‘war within’ is threatening America’s soul

How powerful is the Pentagon’s war machine? Trillions in dollars. But worse yet: Their mindset is now locked deep in our DNA, in our collective conscience, in America’s soul. Our love of war is enshrined in the writings of neocon war hawks like Norman Podoretz, who warns the Iraq War was the launching of “World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism,” a reminder that we could be occupying Iraq for a hundred years. His WW IV also reminded us of the coming apocalyptic end-of-days “war of civilizations” predicted by religious leaders in both Christian and Islamic worlds two years ago.
In contrast, this ideology has been challenged in works like Craig Unger’s “American Armageddon: How the Delusions of the Neoconservatives and the Christian Right Triggered the Descent of America — and Still Imperil Our Future.”
Unfortunately, neither threat can be dismissed as “all in our minds” nor as merely ideological rhetoric. Trillions of tax dollars are in fact being spent to keep the Pentagon war machine aggressively planning and expanding wars decades in advance, including spending billions on propaganda brainwashing naïve Americans into co-signing “America’s Outrageous War Economy.” Yes, they really love war, but that “love” is toxic for America’s soul.

 
2. America’s war economy financed on blank checks to greedy

Read Nobel Economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda Bilmes’ “$3 Trillion War.” They show how our government’s deceitful leaders are secretly hiding the real long-term costs of the Iraq War, which was originally sold to the American taxpayer with a $50 billion price tag and funded out of oil revenues.
But add in all the lifetime veterans’ health benefits, equipment placement costs, increased homeland security and interest on new federal debt, and suddenly taxpayers got a $3 trillion war tab!

3. America’s war economy has no idea where its money goes

Read Portfolio magazine’s special report “The Pentagon’s $1 Trillion Problem.” The Pentagon’s 2007 budget of $440 billion included $16 billion to operate and upgrade its financial system. Unfortunately “the defense department has spent billions to fix its antiquated financial systems but still has no idea where its money goes.”
And it gets worse: Back “in 2000, Defense’s inspector general told Congress that his auditors stopped counting after finding $2.3 trillion in unsupported entries.” Yikes, our war machine has no records for $2.3 trillion! How can we trust anything they say?

4. America’s war economy is totally ‘unmanageable’

For decades Washington has been waving that “national defense” flag, to force the public into supporting “America’s Outrageous War Economy.” Read John Alic’s “Trillions for Military Technology: How the Pentagon Innovates and Why It Costs So Much.”
A former Congressional Office of Technology Assessment staffer, he explains why weapon systems cost the Pentagon so much, “why it takes decades to get them into production even as innovation in the civilian economy becomes ever more frenetic and why some of those weapons don’t work very well despite expenditures of many billions of dollars,” and how “the internal politics of the armed services make weapons acquisition almost unmanageable.” Yes, the Pentagon wastes trillions planning its wars well in advance.
Comments? Tell us: What will it take to wake up America, get citizens, investors, anybody mad at “America’s Outrageous War Economy?”

Why don’t you rebel? Will the outrage come too late … after this massive war bubble explodes in our faces?

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Arab world sees Bush’s response to Georgia-Russia crisis as hypocritical

The U.S. president should be ‘too ashamed to speak about the occupation of any country, he is already occupying one,’ one observer says.

 

By Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer 

CAIRO — President Bush’s condemnation of Russia as a bullying intimidator in the Georgian conflict struck a hypocritical note in a Middle East that has endured violent reverberations from the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and where the sharp White House rhetoric against Moscow echoes what many Arabs feel in turn about the U.S.

Many in the region are angered by what they see as the president’s swaggering style and frequent veiled threats of military force. His administration has been accused of alienating Muslims and instigating turmoil in a misguided war on terrorism.

Now Bush’s spirited criticism of Russia’s invasion of neighboring Georgia has raised derisive smirks among Arab commentators, who say the U.S. president is condemning the same power politics he practices.

Bush should be “too ashamed to speak about the occupation of any country, he is already occupying one,” said Mohammed Sayed Said, editor in chief of the Egyptian independent daily Al Badeel. “U.S. forces have been in Iraq for five years and they still fight in an unacceptable manner that violates human rights conventions. Bush had better talk about his own occupation of Iraq.”

Bitterness and suspicion toward Washington are easily summoned, from Cairo to Beirut to Baghdad. The Iraq war, the sense of drift over the Palestinian question, and Washington’s perceived failure to pay more than lip-service to promoting democracy and human rights have all undermined American standing.

The conflict in Georgia is Russia’s largest military engagement outside its borders since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Read more > > >

• Comparative size of Russian, Georgian armed forces
Details of how Georgian and Russian armed forces compare. Read more > > >

• Complete coverage of the Conflict in the Caucasus • Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili helped oust former Soviet Foreign Minister and Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze in the 2003 to became Europe’s youngest leader.

• Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is the 3rd and current president of Russia. He won the presidential election held on March 2, 2008 with about 70% of the vote.

• Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, an intelligence officer and politician, served as the country’s president from 1999 to 2008.

It is also widely noted here that Washington stood by uncritically during Israel’s military incursion into southern Lebanon in its 2006 war with Hezbollah.

So when Bush declared Friday that “bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century,” many dismissed his statement as a double standard.

“The U.S. administration is stumbling in the Middle East without considering any horizons for the future,” said Sateh Noureddine, political analyst and columnist at the Lebanese daily As Safir. “It is totally obsessed with the idea of its war against terrorism and this makes it lose even in the simplest political sense.

“The U.S. administration has done more harm to its allies in Georgia and the Middle East than to its enemies.”

But the Arab view is not solely driven by what goes on in the region. Some see a game of disingenuous revisionism in the administration’s backing of an independent ethnic-Albanian Kosovo — part of Serbia until this year — and its anger at Russia for sending troops into the Georgian separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Moscow says its tanks and battalions entered the former Soviet republic to stop atrocities committed by Georgian troops and paramilitaries against Russian sympathizers.

“Bush did not realize that by intervening heavily in other countries’ affairs, he would give the same right to other players,” said Gamal Abdel Gawad, an analyst with Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. “The U.S. had no problem to interfere and separate provinces from bigger states like it did with Kosovo.

“This is exactly what Russia is doing now: intervening to prevent the annexation of certain provinces to Georgia. Russia is using the same logic that the U.S. used.”

Others have a nuanced view of Bush’s motivations. Iraqi Deputy Foreign Minister Labeed Abbawi said there was no comparison between Russia’s actions in Georgia and the U.S. assault on his country.

“In Iraq we were dealing with a fascist government, which was hated by all Iraqis because of the suffering that was inflicted on them,” he said. “Saddam Hussein’s regime threatened regional stability and made war with neighboring countries.”

But the prevailing street-level opinion is simply that this is how big powers behave, with Russia acting the same way the U.S. would.

“Why should Bush care what Russia does to Georgia unless he or his administration has an interest in the issue to start with?” said Mohammed Abdullah, an Iraqi electrician. “The news is saying that the Americans trained the Georgians and apparently wanted them to join NATO. I can’t blame the Russians for doing what they’re doing. There’s a threat in their immediate vicinity and they decided to take care of it.

“What would the United States do if suddenly Mexico became an Iranian or Russian ally? They’d crush every last Mexican one way or another.”

jeffrey.fleishman

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Another despicable US crime in Iraq banned on tape

 

The American Military Crisis

 

All you really need to know is that, at Robert Gates’ Pentagon, they’re still high on the term “the Long War.” It’s a phrase that first crept into our official vocabulary back in 2002 but was popularized by CENTCOM commander John Abizaid in 2004 – already a fairly long (war-)time ago. Now, Secretary of Defense Gates himself is plugging the term, as he did in April at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, quoting no less an authority than Leon Trotsky:

“What has been called the Long War is likely to be many years of persistent, engaged combat all around the world in differing degrees of size and intensity. This generational campaign cannot be wished away or put on a timetable. There are no exit strategies. To paraphrase the Bolshevik Leon Trotsky, we may not be interested in the Long War, but the Long War is interested in us.”

The Long War has also made it front and center in the new “national defense strategy,” which is essentially a call to prepare for a future of two, three, many Afghanistans. (“For the foreseeable future, winning the Long War against violent extremist movements will be the central objective of the U.S.”) If you thought for a moment that in the next presidency some portion of those many billions of dollars now being sucked into the black holes of Iraq and Afghanistan was about to go into rebuilding American infrastructure or some other frivolous task, think again. Just read between the lines of that new national defense strategy document where funding for future conventional wars against “rising powers” is to be maintained, while funding for “irregular warfare” is to rise. The Pentagonization of the U.S., in other words, shows no sign of slowing down. Here, by the way, is the emphasis in the new Gates Doctrine – from a recent Pentagon briefing by the secretary of defense – that should make us all worry. “The principal challenge, therefore, is how to ensure that the capabilities gained and counterinsurgency lessons learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the lessons relearned from other places where we have engaged in irregular warfare over the last two decades, are institutionalized within the defense establishment.” Back to the future?

And here’s a riddle for our moment: How long is a Long War, when you’ve been there before (as were, in the case of Afghanistan, Alexander the Great, the imperial Brits, and the Soviets)? On the illusions of victory and the many miscalculations of the Bush administration when it came to the nature of American military power, no one in recent years has been more incisive than Andrew Bacevich, who experienced an earlier version of the Long War firsthand in Vietnam. His new book, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, has just been published. Short, sharp, to the point, it should be the book of the election season, if only anyone in power, or who might come to power, were listening. (The following piece, the first of two parts this week at TomDispatch, is adapted from section three of that book, “The Military Crisis.”) But if you want the measure of our strange, dystopian moment, Barack Obama reportedly has a team of 300 foreign policy advisers – just about everyone ever found, however brain-dead, in a Democratic presidential rolodex – and yet Bacevich’s name isn’t among them. What else do we need to know? Tom

Illusions of Victory

How the United States did not reinvent war… but thought it did
by Andrew Bacevich

“War is the great auditor of institutions,” the historian Corelli Barnett once observed. Since 9/11, the United States has undergone such an audit and been found wanting. That adverse judgment applies in full to America’s armed forces.

Valor does not offer the measure of an army’s greatness, nor does fortitude, nor durability, nor technological sophistication. A great army is one that accomplishes its assigned mission. Since George W. Bush inaugurated his global war on terror, the armed forces of the United States have failed to meet that standard.

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, Bush conceived of a bold, offensive strategy, vowing to “take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge.” The military offered the principal means for undertaking this offensive, and U.S. forces soon found themselves engaged on several fronts.

Two of those fronts –- Afghanistan and Iraq – commanded priority attention. In each case, the assigned task was to deliver a knockout blow, leading to a quick, decisive, economical, politically meaningful victory. In each case, despite impressive displays of valor, fortitude, durability, and technological sophistication, America’s military came up short. The problem lay not with the level of exertion but with the results achieved.

In Afghanistan, U.S. forces failed to eliminate the leadership of al-Qaeda. Although they toppled the Taliban regime that had ruled most of that country, they failed to eliminate the Taliban movement, which soon began to claw its way back. Intended as a brief campaign, the Afghan War became a protracted one. Nearly seven years after it began, there is no end in sight. If anything, America’s adversaries are gaining strength. The outcome remains much in doubt.

In Iraq, events followed a similar pattern, with the appearance of easy success belied by subsequent developments. The U.S. invasion began on March 19, 2003. Six weeks later, against the backdrop of a White House-produced banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished,” President Bush declared that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended.” This claim proved illusory.

Writing shortly after the fall of Baghdad, the influential neoconservatives David Frum and Richard Perle declared Operation Iraqi Freedom “a vivid and compelling demonstration of America’s ability to win swift and total victory.” Gen. Tommy Franks, commanding the force that invaded Iraq, modestly characterized the results of his handiwork as “unequaled in its excellence by anything in the annals of war.” In retrospect, such judgments – and they were legion – can only be considered risible. A war thought to have ended on April 9, 2003, in Baghdad’s al-Firdos Square was only just beginning. Fighting dragged on for years, exacting a cruel toll. Iraq became a reprise of Vietnam, although in some respects at least on a blessedly smaller scale.

A New American Way of War?

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Just a few short years ago, observers were proclaiming that the United States possessed military power such as the world had never seen. Here was the nation’s strong suit. “The troops” appeared unbeatable. Writing in 2002, for example, Max Boot, a well-known commentator on military matters, attributed to the United States a level of martial excellence “that far surpasses the capabilities of such previous would-be hegemons as Rome, Britain, and Napoleonic France.” With U.S. forces enjoying “unparalleled strength in every facet of warfare,” allies, he wrote, had become an encumbrance: “We just don’t need anyone else’s help very much.”

Boot dubbed this the Doctrine of the Big Enchilada. Within a year, after U.S. troops had occupied Baghdad, he went further: America’s army even outclassed Germany’s Wehrmacht. The mastery displayed in knocking off Saddam, Boot gushed, made “fabled generals such as Erwin Rommel and Heinz Guderian seem positively incompetent by comparison.”

All of this turned out to be hot air. If the global war on terror has produced one undeniable conclusion, it is this: Estimates of U.S. military capabilities have turned out to be wildly overstated. The Bush administration’s misplaced confidence in the efficacy of American arms represents a strategic misjudgment that has cost the country dearly. Even in an age of stealth, precision weapons, and instant communications, armed force is not a panacea. Even in a supposedly unipolar era, American military power turns out to be quite limited.

How did it happen that Americans so utterly overappraised the utility of military power? The answer to that question lies at the intersection of three great illusions.

According to the first illusion, the United States during the 1980s and 1990s had succeeded in reinventing armed conflict. The result was to make force more precise, more discriminating, and potentially more humane. The Pentagon had devised a new American Way of War, investing its forces with capabilities unlike any the world had ever seen. As President Bush exuberantly declared shortly after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, “We’ve applied the new powers of technology … to strike an enemy force with speed and incredible precision. By a combination of creative strategies and advanced technologies, we are redefining war on our terms. In this new era of warfare, we can target a regime, not a nation.”

The distinction between regime and nation was a crucial one. By employing these new military techniques, the United States could eliminate an obstreperous foreign leader and his cronies, while sparing the population over which that leader ruled. Putting a missile through the roof of a presidential palace made it unnecessary to incinerate an entire capital city, endowing force with hitherto undreamed-of political utility and easing ancient moral inhibitions on the use of force. Force had been a club; it now became a scalpel. By the time the president spoke, such sentiments had already become commonplace among many (although by no means all) military officers and national security experts.

Here lay a formula for certain victory. Confidence in military prowess both reflected and reinforced a post-Cold War confidence in the universality of American values. Harnessed together, they made a seemingly unstoppable one-two punch.

With that combination came expanded ambitions. In the 1990s, the very purpose of the Department of Defense changed. Sustaining American global preeminence, rather than mere national security, became its explicit function. In the most comprehensive articulation of this new American Way of War, the Joint Chiefs of Staff committed the armed services to achieving what they called “full-spectrum dominance” – unambiguous supremacy in all forms of warfare, to be achieved by tapping the potential of two “enablers” – “technological innovation and information superiority.”

Full-spectrum dominance stood in relation to military affairs as the political scientist Francis Fukuyama’s well-known proclamation of “the end of history” stood in relation to ideology: Each claimed to have unlocked ultimate truths. According to Fukuyama, democratic capitalism represented the final stage in political economic evolution. According to the proponents of full-spectrum dominance, that concept represented the final stage in the evolution of modern warfare. In their first days and weeks, the successive invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq both seemed to affirm such claims.

How Not to “Support the Troops”

According to the second illusion, American civilian and military leaders subscribed to a common set of principles for employing their now-dominant forces. Adherence to these principles promised to prevent any recurrence of the sort of disaster that had befallen the nation in Vietnam. If politicians went off half-cocked, as President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had back in the 1960s, generals who had correctly discerned and assimilated the lessons of modern war could be counted on to rein them in.

These principles found authoritative expression in the Weinberger-Powell Doctrine, which specified criteria for deciding when and how to use force. Caspar Weinberger, secretary of defense during most of the Reagan era, first articulated these principles in 1984. Gen. Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the early 1990s, expanded on them. Yet the doctrine’s real authors were the members of the post-Vietnam officer corps. The Weinberger-Powell principles expressed the military’s own lessons taken from that war. Those principles also expressed the determination of senior officers to prevent any recurrence of Vietnam.

Henceforth, according to Weinberger and Powell, the United States would fight only when genuinely vital interests were at stake. It would do so in pursuit of concrete and attainable objectives. It would mobilize the necessary resources – political and moral as well as material – to win promptly and decisively. It would end conflicts expeditiously and then get out, leaving no loose ends. The spirit of the Weinberger-Powell Doctrine was not permissive; its purpose was to curb the reckless or imprudent inclinations of bellicose civilians.

According to the third illusion, the military and American society had successfully patched up the differences that produced something akin to divorce during the divisive Vietnam years. By the 1990s, a reconciliation of sorts was under way. In the wake of Operation Desert Storm, “the American people fell in love again with their armed forces.” So, at least, Gen. Colin Powell, one of that war’s great heroes, believed. Out of this love affair a new civil-military compact had evolved, one based on the confidence that, in times of duress, Americans could be counted on to “support the troops.” Never again would the nation abandon its soldiers.

The all-volunteer force (AVF) – despite its name, a professional military establishment – represented the chief manifestation of this new compact. By the 1990s, Americans were celebrating the AVF as the one component of the federal government that actually worked as advertised. The AVF embodied the nation’s claim to the status of sole superpower; it was “America’s Team.” In the wake of the Cold War, the AVF sustained the global Pax Americana without interfering with the average American’s pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. What was not to like?

Events since 9/11 have exposed these three illusions for what they were. When tested, the new American Way of War yielded more glitter than gold. The generals and admirals who touted the wonders of full spectrum dominance were guilty of flagrant professional malpractice, if not outright fraud. To judge by the record of the past twenty years, U.S. forces win decisively only when the enemy obligingly fights on American terms – and Saddam Hussein’s demise has drastically reduced the likelihood of finding such accommodating adversaries in the future. As for loose ends, from Somalia to the Balkans, from Central Asia to the Persian Gulf, they have been endemic.

When it came to the Weinberger-Powell Doctrine, civilian willingness to conform to its provisions proved to be highly contingent. Confronting Powell in 1993, Madeleine Albright famously demanded to know, “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about, if we can’t use it?” Mesmerized by the prospects of putting American soldiers to work to alleviate the world’s ills, Albright soon enough got her way. An odd alliance that combined left-leaning do-gooders with jingoistic politicians and pundits succeeded in chipping away at constraints on the use of force. “Humanitarian intervention” became all the rage. Whatever restraining influence the generals exercised during the 1990s did not survive that decade. Lessons of Vietnam that had once seemed indelible were forgotten.

Meanwhile, the reconciliation of the people and the army turned out to be a chimera. When the chips were down, “supporting the troops” elicited plenty of posturing but little by way of binding commitments. Far from producing a stampede of eager recruits keen to don a uniform, the events of 9/11 reaffirmed a widespread popular preference for hiring someone else’s kid to chase terrorists, spread democracy, and ensure access to the world’s energy reserves.

In the midst of a global war of ostensibly earthshaking importance, Americans demonstrated a greater affinity for their hometown sports heroes than for the soldiers defending the distant precincts of the American imperium. Tom Brady makes millions playing quarterback in the NFL and rakes in millions more from endorsements. Pat Tillman quit professional football to become an army ranger and was killed in Afghanistan. Yet, of the two, Brady more fully embodies the contemporary understanding of the term patriot.

Demolishing the Doctrine of the Big Enchilada

While they persisted, however, these three illusions fostered gaudy expectations about the efficacy of American military might. Every president since Ronald Reagan has endorsed these expectations. Every president since Reagan has exploited his role as commander in chief to expand on the imperial prerogatives of his office. Each has also relied on military power to conceal or manage problems that stemmed from the nation’s habits of profligacy.

In the wake of 9/11, these puerile expectations – that armed force wielded by a strong-willed chief executive could do just about anything – reached an apotheosis of sorts. Having manifestly failed to anticipate or prevent a devastating attack on American soil, President Bush proceeded to use his ensuing global war on terror as a pretext for advancing grandiose new military ambitions married to claims of unbounded executive authority – all under the guise of keeping Americans “safe.”

With the president denying any connection between the events of Sept. 11 and past U.S. policies, his declaration of a global war nipped in the bud whatever inclination the public might have entertained to reconsider those policies. In essence, Bush counted on war both to concentrate greater power in his own hands and to divert attention from the political, economic, and cultural bind in which the United States found itself as a result of its own past behavior.

As long as U.S. forces sustained their reputation for invincibility, it remained possible to pretend that the constitutional order and the American way of life were in good health. The concept of waging an open-ended global campaign to eliminate terrorism retained a modicum of plausibility. After all, how could anyone or anything stop the unstoppable American soldier?

Call that reputation into question, however, and everything else unravels. This is what occurred when the Iraq War went sour. The ills afflicting our political system, including a deeply irresponsible Congress, broken national security institutions, and above all an imperial commander in chief not up to the job, became all but impossible to ignore. So, too, did the self-destructive elements inherent in the American way of life – especially an increasingly costly addiction to foreign oil, universally deplored and almost as universally indulged. More noteworthy still, the prospect of waging war on a global scale for decades, if not generations, became preposterous.

To anyone with eyes to see, the events of the past seven years have demolished the Doctrine of the Big Enchilada. A gung-ho journalist like Robert Kaplan might still believe that, with the dawn of the 21st century, the Pentagon had “appropriated the entire earth, and was ready to flood the most obscure areas of it with troops at a moment’s notice,” that planet Earth in its entirety had become “battle space for the American military.” Yet any buck sergeant of even middling intelligence knew better than to buy such claptrap.

With the Afghanistan War well into its seventh year and the Iraq War marking its fifth anniversary, a commentator like Michael Barone might express absolute certainty that “just about no mission is impossible for the United States military.” But Barone was not facing the prospect of being ordered back to the war zone for his second or third combat tour.

Between what President Bush called upon America’s soldiers to do and what they were capable of doing loomed a huge gap that defines the military crisis besetting the United States today. For a nation accustomed to seeing military power as its trump card, the implications of that gap are monumental.

Andrew Bacevich, professor of history and international relations at Boston University, retired from the U.S. Army with the rank of colonel. This piece is adapted from his new book, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (Metropolitan Books, 2008). He is also the author of The New American Militarism, among other books. His writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, the Atlantic Monthly, the Nation, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=13289

 

How 888 Is Beating 666

 

 

 

By Benjamin Fulford

 

Historians are certain to write that 2008 08 08 was the date when Western rule of the world came to an end.

 

 

The Beijing Olympic opening ceremonies were attended by 80 heads of state and watched by 4 billion people. This ceremony formalized a transition that is already a statistical reality, The West controls 40% of world GDP and 17% of the world’s population. Asia now accounts for a fast growing 40% share of world GDP , 63% of global financial assets and 65% of the world’s population., In addition China is about to end the US’s 100 year rule as the worlds largest manufacturing nation.

 

 

More important than these statistics, however, is the moral dimension. The G8 summit held this July in Japan was proof of how far the West has fallen from its former position as a moral beacon for the world. If you read the transcripts of the press conferences held by the 22 world leaders who were at that summit, you will see that the Zionist controlled nations: Canada, Germany, the US, England and France have become isolated from the rest of humanity. World leaders were disgusted to hear of the suppressed World Bank report that proved these countries were subsidizing world starvation by paying farmers to grow fuel instead of food.

 

 

Furthermore, the world now is fully aware that it is the Zionist powers who are responsible for almost all terrorism in the world. The world knows the Taleban, Al CIA Duh, the Tibetan “freedom fighters” etc. are funded and set up by the petroleum and military lobbies that control the West.

 

 

The cornered Zionists are now trying, in their last desperate ploy, to start WW3. They are hoping to provoke a war with Iran and get Russia and China involved. However, the people of the world know that no matter how brainwashed the Western majority may be, they are not brainwashed enough to start a war that could kill billions on behalf of a few thousand plutocrats. Furthermore, China and Russia are not stupid enough to fall into the Zionist trap in Iran.

 

 

This is not how a transition from Western elite rule to rule by the human majority was supposed to be. It is not too late for the West to marshal all its resources for a massive campaign to end environmental destruction, poverty and war before handing over a pristine planet to the future generations of humanity.

 

 

We must not let the cornered beasts have any excuse to carry out their planned genocide. They suffer from collective insanity and so we need to help them escape from their nightmare reality of eternal warfare, disease, starvation and mass slavery. The West must show the world what it is really made of. It is now or never.

 

 

Benjamin Fulford

 

Russians out of South Ossetia?

Americans out of Iraq and Afghanistan!

Christopher King

 

 

The USA’s efforts to stop a European/Russian superstate August 10, 2008 Christopher King argues that the “US and NATO are behind the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia” but have misjudged Russian resolve. He says it is time for Europe to distance itself from NATO, which has become a US tool, and to choose whether it wants Russia as a friend or an enemy. The European Union needs to re-evaluate its relationship to both the United States and NATO. I’ve said recently (see “The USA, Russia and the spinoff from Iraq and Iran” and “Iran’s ‘provocative missile test’”) that US plans to instal a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic are designed to cause trouble between Europe and Russia as well as distracting Europe from US Middle Eastern outrages. These missiles, under US control, are supposed to protect Europe and if you believe that, you probably believe in the tooth fairy. US negotiations for these missiles don’t appear to be going very well since the Poles and Czechs don’t much like the idea of being targeted in response by Russian missiles and the Russians have been musing about installing their missiles in Cuba for a re-run of the Cuban missile crisis and near nuclear war of the 1960s. That would not be popular with US voters. What do do? Are there any trouble spots that can be stoked up to show Russia as an aggressor? What about Georgia and the South Ossetia separatists on Russia’s southern border?   So we’ve arrived at having a US/NATO-sponsored provocation with Georgia invading its breakaway semi-independent province. South Ossetia’s declaration of independence was supported by almost all its residents. The South Ossetian argument is that if the West and NATO supported Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, they should support its independence from Georgia. That sounds reasonable. No? Of course, no! The difference is that South Ossetia wants ties with Russia and the US has been pressing for Georgia to join NATO. Condoleeza Rice predictably, was quick to call on the Russians to withdraw from South Ossetia. President Bush says sanctimoniously that Georgia is a sovereign nation and that its territorial integrity should be respected. That is pretty rich (hypocritical) as we say in the UK. Before Condoleeza or anyone else in the US takes that position they could prevail on President Bush to leave Iraq and Afghanistan where they are looting oil, killing hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, driving millions of refugees from their homes and creating general disaster half a world away from their own country. While she is about it, Condoleeza could also call on the Israelis to leave Palestinian and Syrian territory outside their 1967 borders and allow the ethnically cleansed Palestinians and their descendants to return and re-claim their property that was stolen by the Israelis. To return to South Ossetia and Georgia, we should note that NATO rejected South Ossetia’s referendum in favour of independence. “What’s this? What does a national referendum, particularly in a non-NATO country, have to do with NATO?” you might wonder; “Isn’t NATO our warrior arm, dedicated to defend us against armed aggression?” Not any more. It’s now a political organization as well. The EU countries should seriously consider whether it is a good idea to allow its military arm to make political decisions, particularly when it is driven by US rather than European interests. NATO has also taken on a role in formulating conspiracy theories against Russia, for example Russia’s “Gas OPEC plans“, reported by the Financial Times. There seems to be no evidence for this whatever and even if it were true, (a) What does it have to do with NATO and (b) Would it matter more than our existing oil OPEC? Russia still wants to sell its gas and can do so on any terms it wishes whether NATO or the EU like them or not. The new non-Communist free-market Russia, that the US and Europe wanted and got, is a disaster for NATO because it no longer has an enemy. The only way to save careers and maintain funding is for NATO officers to create enemies and new threats. Its presence in Iraq and Afghanistan is no longer popular so a prod at Russia through South Ossetia has doubtless been designed to produce a response that can be spun as Russian aggression. The new Russia is also a disaster for the US. Russia is creating strong economic ties with Europe. There is serious talk of a free trade agreement between the EU and Russia and the possibility of Russia becoming an EU member is being talked about. Russia is, after all, historically a part of Europe. You can imagine how the idea of such an economic superpower is perceived in the US with its declining oil reserves and economy. As matters stand, rather than having the purely defensive joint military force with the US that was its original purpose, Europe finds itself supporting, through NATO, the US’s aggressive foreign policies in the Middle East. Worse still, NATO is formenting trouble between Europe and Russia, which should be thought of as a valuable friend and future EU partner, rather than an enemy. To be blunt, NATO has become a tool for the extension of US influence and foreign policy. This is argued cogently by F. William Engdahl whose article I have resisted plagiarising. One might consider why Finland rejects NATO membership. The main reason given by opponents of membership in a poll 18 months ago is that Finland could be drawn into conflicts that have no direct bearing on their country. This seems to be a polite refusal to fight wars for the US and Israel. Indeed, Israel has recently joined a NATO exercise and Italy’s defence minister has proposed that Israel should join NATO. Certainly it might, when it withdraws to its pre-1967 borders, abandons its settlements on stolen Palestinian land and gives right of return to the Palestinians. Alternatively, a single state with right of return and equal rights might do. The evidence is clear. NATO has become not only counter-productive to European interests but an immediate danger to the EU as an arm of the US military-industrial complex. The South Ossetia conflict is an unmistakable warning. The US and NATO provocateurs have shown their hand and have gone too far. Russia has acted with commendable restraint in relation to the US’s outrageous attempts to bribe new EU countries to accept its missiles on Russia’s borders. There can be no doubt that the US and NATO are behind the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia but have misjudged Russian restraint for unwillingness to act. What they now have is called, I believe, “blowback”. The EU needs to reassess NATO from fundamental principles of its defensive needs. The current senior command of NATO has clearly been politicized by the US. This is unacceptable as also is NATO’s current role as tool of the US. The EU should make some decisions about its links and future with Russia, its economically important and militarily powerful neighbour. The choice is simple: to have Russia as a friend in the short term and EU member eventually or make it an enemy. It is clear that the USA’s military-industrial complex needs Russia as an enemy, not only to stay in business but to prevent a European Union/Russian superstate developing. Europe needs to pursue its own peaceful interests, ideally keeping a good relationship with the US while working with Russia toward closer economic integration. If the US does not like that, it is too bad. The US has used up its global credibility and goodwill. Russia has had a bad press in the West for the last 60 years, not always undeserved. We should recall, however, that the man who set Russia and the Soviet Union on its post-war course, created Churchill’s “iron curtain”, the nuclear arms race and the repressive character of the Soviet post-war state, was not Russian at all. Josef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, otherwise known as Stalin, was Georgian, born in Gori, just south of South Ossetia.

http://uruknet.info/?p=m46335&s1=h1

FALLUJAH: BBC News changed title!!! And now, admits white phosphorus WAS used (article text restored)

The West media cover-up

EXCLUSIVE: the BBC is WRONG!!!

AN EMAIL EXCHANGE WITH THE NEW YORK TIMES

Final BBC admission of incendiary use, quoting US Lt Col Venables

The BBC News website has just changed the title of its short and opinionated article on Fallujah. The original title was:
US ‘used chemical arms’ in Iraq

The new title now is:

US ‘uses incendiary arms’ in Iraq

http://web.archive.org/web/20051130014902/http://www.medialens.org/board

---

Fallujah Documentary 1 warning graphic, shows victims of US white phosphorus chemical attacks on civilians. RAI

 

 

 

______________________________________________
EXCLUSIVE: the BBC is WRONG!!!

Fallujah, the RAI NEWS 24 documentary and my e-mail exchange with the BBC

By Gabriele Zamparini

On Tuesday morning, November 8, 2005, the BBC NEWS website published an article with the title US ‘used chemical arms’ in Iraq

This was after RAI NEWS 24 documentary “Fallujah. La strage nascosta” (Fallujah. The Concealed Massacre) depicting the use of white phosphorous on civilians in Falluja last year was broadcast the same morning from the Italian TV channel.

The film however had been available on the internet since the day before (November 7, 2005) when many alerts and comments appeared on websites and blogs around the world.

On my blog I posted an alert about the RAI NEWS 24 documentary as well as an email I sent to the BBC, asking when and where we would see the documentary now that another “hard evidence” had been provided.

When I read the BBC NEWS website article US ‘used chemical arms’ in Iraq I wrote the BBC the following email:
Dear Mr Tarik Kafala,

I have just read on the BBC Website “US ‘used chemical arms’ in Iraq”.

I have tried to find in the article and on the web page where it appears the link to the Rai News 24 video. Unfortunately I couldn’t find it.

On the Rai News 24 website, there is also an English version of the video. Don’t you think that giving the link would be a good service to your readers?

Here it’s the link

Thank you for your attention.

Kind regards,
Gabriele Zamparini

This is Mr Kafala’s reply:
Hello Mr Zamparini,

This is an informal reply to your enquiries and comments.

I’ve seen the Rai film through the link you sent me. We cannot link to it at the moment for a number of reasons. We do not have rights and would have to clear access with Rai. We will need to do some investigation on the making of the film before broadcasting it on the web.

Thank you for pointing me to the IRIN report yesterday. I look at the IRIN site regularly, but I missed this. Please feel free to pass any well sourced news material of this kind to me.

Regarding our general reporting on Iraq. I’m sure you are aware of the difficulties of reporting the story. I freely concede that there is an overdependence on official sources, but this is currently unavoidable due to the difficulty of gaining access to the areas many of the military operations occur in. We are always very careful to state what the source of a particular report or piece of information is.

To get around the reliance on official sources we have tried several techniques:
Please take a look at these:
One day in Iraq
Eyewitness: Farewell to Falluja

Please keep in touch.

Best regards,
Tarik

I had not read yet Mr Kafala’s email when I noticed that the BBC NEWS website had changed the title to the article. From US ‘used chemical arms’ in Iraq to US ‘uses incendiary arms’ in Iraq.

At this point I wrote Mr Kafala’s the following email:
Dear Mr Tarik Kafala,

The BBC News website has just changed the title of its short and opinionated article on Fallujah.

The original title was:
US ‘used chemical arms’ in Iraq

The new title now is:
US ‘uses incendiary arms’ in Iraq

However the link to the Rai News 24 documentary is still absent.

I would be grateful if you could consider to answer this email.

Thank you.

Kind regards.

Gabriele Zamparini
A few minutes later I received Mr Kafala’s reply:

Mr Zamparini,

A little research has indicated that White Phosphorous is not a chemical weapon, nor is the US a signatory to conventions restricting its use.

We are doing our best with a complicated report. Our story is not opinionated, it is both accurate and balanced. The Rai report may have at its heart an important truth, but it is factually inaccurate and misleading.

I will not be responding to every email commenting on a minute detail of our coverage.

Yours faithfully,

Tarik Kafala
In the meanwhile two things happened:

1) The BBC NEWS website article changed (again!). In this new version (the last?), the reader now can find these new paragraphs:
Rai says this amounts to the illegal use of chemical arms, though such bombs are considered incendiary devices.

The US military admits using the weapon in Iraq to illuminate battlefields.

But US military officials deny using it in built-up areas. Washington is not a signatory of an international treaty restricting white phosphorus devices.
2) A box with details of white phosphorus has been added to the article:
- Spontaneously flammable chemical used for battlefield illumination
- Contact with particles causes burning of skin and flesh
- Use of incendiary weapons prohibited for attacking civilians (Protocol III of Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons)
- Protocol III not signed by US

A little research, and here it’s my reply to Mr Tarik Kafala:
Dear Mr Tarik Kafala,

In your last email you write that “White Phosphorous is not a chemical weapon”. I believe it’s for this reason the article in the BBC NEWS website changed again. The article now starts with: “Rai says this amounts to the illegal use of chemical arms, though the bombs are considered incendiary devices.” And again for this reason I believe the article’s title changed from US ‘used chemical arms’ in Iraq to US ‘uses incendiary arms’ in Iraq

The statement “White Phosphorous is not a chemical weapon” is in fact incorrect.

If you had the time to follow this link and click the “Play” under the photo on the right at the bottom of the page, you would learn directly from the voice of Peter Kaiser (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) that “any chemical that is used against humans or animals that causes harm… is considered chemical weapons… prohibited behavior”

Considering what I have written above, the accusation you made in your email against the RAI report, namely “The Rai report may have at its heart an important truth, but it is factually inaccurate and misleading” not only did happen to be wrong but it’s indeed the BBS NEWS website to be wrong and – using your words – “factually inaccurate and misleading” .

I hope this may clarify the picture and I want to hope the BBC will take the due steps to correct its reporting.

Kind regards,
Gabriele Zamaprini

http://web.archive.org/web/20051130014902/http://www.thecatsdream.com/blog/2005/11/exclusive-bbc-is-wrong.htm

---

AN EMAIL EXCHANGE WITH THE NEW YORK TIMES
The following was submitted by a reader attempting to get the New York Times submtitting the Italien TV show about chemicals weapons used in Fallujah. It is very obvious that this alleged reporter viewed only a minute of the video, then dismissed it as “about Vietnam”, then when called on his or her mistake, got defensive. This is an object lesson as to just what sort of mentality one finds at the corporate media these days.

---

Watched the video— disgusted, appalled, ashamed. Still shaking with anger and sheer frustration.

I’ve gone ahead and written to the media, insisting that they talk about this. Funnily/sadly/pathetically enough, someone at the NY Times’ Executive Editor’s Desk (I wonder if it’s the same one who whizzed off an immature screed a few months ago when I wrote about the Downing Street Memo) has chosen to respond, albeit tersely and not particularly effectively. The following is our “dialogue” so far. It really doesn’t paint a pretty picture of the Times:

Editors:

Knowing that you are currently receiving many, many more emails just like this one, I will keep this correspondence brief, since any elaboration on my part would surely only repeat the same points everyone else is making on the subject.

I am writing about that major taboo topic in American discourse, until now: What we did in Fallujah.

Certainly by now you are well aware of the Italian documentary— circulating on the web and being viewed by millions here and abroad— chronicling the American war crimes in Fallujjah, planned well in advance of the November election but held off until immediately after Bush was handed the Presidency. White phosphorus— a chemical weapon no different from napalm in its lethality— was massively dropped on the people of Fallujah, killing them in the most excruciating manner I could imagine. This was a massacre, case closed.

The independent and foreign press and the blogging community had long ago reported that America had committed major war crimes in Fallujah, but not until now has the world been able to see as clearly the level of pure evil done during those days. Still, here in this country I have yet to see any acknowledgment of these newly-revealed facts in the mainstream media. The bloggers and the independent press are keeping this story up front where everybody can see it; when will the Times be joining in, I wonder.

So far, there has been nothing.

Certainly you are well aware of the video, and probably have already seen it. Just in case you need to see it again to remind yourselves of how you are failing this country with your silence, I have provided a link to the documentary.

The world already knows, whether you look the other way or not.

XXXXXXXXXXXXX
San Francisco CA

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10907.htm

NY TIMES-

The video you attached is of Viet Nam.
- Show quoted text -

ME-

The first few minutes are of Vietnam, the remainder is of Iraq. The makers of the documentary wished to make the point that America is doing the same thing over again, and thus included the Vietnam footage at the beginning.

They also were assuming that their viewers had a long enough attention span to be able to figure this out for themselves. Not too much to assume, really— everyone else, particularly in the blogosphere and the independent press, figured it out without my help.

Skip ahead in the video by two or three minutes to get to the beginning of the Iraq footage, if you can’t wait.

Shall I assume that your response is indicative of how the Times handles research and investigative reporting?

NY TIMES-
You can assume nothing- except that I have picked up your internet message.
- Show quoted text -

ME-

Such an assumption on my part was easy to make, and beyond that, a rather fair one, based on your initial response. You watched, most likely, three minutes of the video and then assumed the video was devoted entirely to Vietnam, rather than sticking it out to see where it would go next. Otherwise, I would not have received such a response in the first place.

I highly doubt that either you or myself exist in a vacuum; surely by now you and your colleagues have more than passing familiarity with the contents of this video, regardless of whether you have actually gone ahead and watched the entire thing or not. Thousands and thousands of folks have seen this video and are disgusted— certainly this correspondence is not your first introduction to a subject which is rapidly becoming huge news around the globe.

---

Mike, I really think their juvenile responses speak volumes.

http://web.archive.org/web/20051130014902/http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/exchangewiththetimes.html

---

US used white phosphorus in Iraq

The Pentagon has confirmed that US troops used white phosphorus during last year’s offensive in the northern Iraqi city of Falluja.

“It was used as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants,” spokesman Lt Col Barry Venable told the BBC.

Col Venable denied that the substance – which can cause burning of the flesh – constituted a banned chemical weapon.

For rest of article, see

http://web.archive.org/web/20051130014902/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4440664.stm

Tape: Top CIA official confesses order to forge Iraq-9/11 letter came on White House stationery

Filed by John Byrne
 

In damning transcript, ex-CIA official says Cheney likely ordered letter linking Hussein to 9/11 attacks

 

A forged letter linking Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks was ordered on White House stationery and probably came from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a new transcript of a conversation with the Central Intelligence Agency’s former Deputy Chief of Clandestine Operations Robert Richer.

The transcript was posted Friday by author Ron Suskind of an interview conducted in June. It comes on the heels of denials by both the White House and Richer of a claim Suskind made in his new book, The Way of The World. The book was leaked to Politico’s Mike Allen on Monday, and released Tuesday.

On Tuesday, the White House released a statement on Richer’s behalf. In it, Richer declared, “I never received direction from George Tenet or anyone else in my chain of command to fabricate a document … as outlined in Mr. Suskind’s book.”

The denial, however, directly contradicts Richer’s own remarks in the transcript.

“Now this is from the Vice President’s Office is how you remembered it–not from the president?” Suskind asked.

“No, no, no,” Richer replied, according to the transcript. “What I remember is George [Tenet] saying, ‘we got this from’–basically, from what George said was ‘downtown.’”

“Which is the White House?” Suskind asked.

“Yes,” Richer said. “But he did not–in my memory–never said president, vice president, or NSC. Okay? But now–he may have hinted–just by the way he said it, it would have–cause almost all that stuff came from one place only: Scooter Libby and the shop around the vice president.”

“But he didn’t say that specifically,” Richer added. “I would naturally–I would probably stand on my, basically, my reputation and say it came from the vice president.”

“But there wasn’t anything in the writing that you remember saying the vice president,” Suskind continued.

“Nope,” Richer said.

“It just had the White House stationery.”

“Exactly right.”

Later, Richer added, “You know, if you’ve ever seen the vice president’s stationery, it’s on the White House letterhead. It may have said OVP (Office of the Vice President). I don’t remember that, so I don’t want to mislead you.”

Suskind says decision to post transcript unusual

Suskind posted the transcript at his blog, saying, “This posting is contrary to my practice across 25 years as a journalist. But the issues, in this matter, are simply too important to stand as discredited in any way.” It was first picked up by ThinkProgress and Congressional Quarterly’s Jeff Stein.

Suskind’s new book asserts that senior Bush officials ordered the CIA to forge a document “proving” that Saddam Hussein had been trying to manufacture nuclear weapons and was collaborating with al Qaeda. The alleged result was a faked memorandum from then chief of Saddam’s intelligence service Tahir Jalil Habbush dated July 1, 2001, and written to Hussein.

The bogus memo claimed that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had received training in Baghdad but also discussed the arrival of a “shipment” from Niger, which the Administration claimed had supplied Iraq with yellowcake uranium — based on yet another forged document whose source remains uncertain.

The memo subsequently was treated as fact by the British Sunday Telegraph, and cited by William Safire in his New York Times column, providing fodder for Bush’s efforts to take the US to war.

The Sunday Telegraph cited the main source for its story on Iraq’s 9/11 involvement as Ayad Allawi, a former Baathist who rebelled against Saddam and was appointed a government position after the US occupation.

Nothing in the story explains how an Iraqi politician was privy to the fake memo, but the New York Times column alluded to Allawi and described him as “an Iraqi leader long considered reliable by intelligence agencies.”

“To characterize it right,” Richer also declares in the transcript, “I would say, right: it came to us, George had a raised eyebrow, and basically we passed it on–it was to–and passed this on into the organization. You know, it was: ‘Okay, we gotta do this, but make it go away.’ To be honest with you, I don’t want to make it sound–I for sure don’t want to portray this as George jumping: ‘Okay, this has gotta happen.’ As I remember it–and, again, it’s still vague, so I’ll be very straight with you on this–is it wasn’t that important. It was: ‘This is unbelievable. This is just like all the other garbage we get about . . . I mean Mohammad Atta and links to al Qaeda. ‘Rob,’ you know, ‘do something with this.’ I think it was more like that than: ‘Get this done.’”

Magazine asserts Feith created bogus document

Today, The American Conservative also published a report saying that the forgery was actually produced by then-Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith’s Office of Special Plans, citing an unnamed intelligence source. The source reportedly added that Suskind’s overall claim “is correct.”

“My source also notes that Dick Cheney, who was behind the forgery, hated and mistrusted the Agency and would not have used it for such a sensitive assignment,” the magazine wrote. “Instead, he went to Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans and asked them to do the job. … It was Feith’s office that produced the letter and then surfaced it to the media in Iraq. Unlike the [Central Intelligence] Agency, the Pentagon had no restrictions on it regarding the production of false information to mislead the public. Indeed, one might argue that Doug Feith’s office specialized in such activity.”

 

 

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Tape_Top_CIA_officer_confesses_order_0808.html

What Were The Mossad And Fake New Zealand Passports Doing In Iraq?

 

 

 

By Jerry Mazza

Let’s take a step backwards first to : http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/jul16/israel Mossad spies’ jailed over New Zealand passport fraud.

This July 16th 2004 Guardian article opens with a blast: “The prime minister of New Zealand angrily denounced Israel and imposed diplomatic sanctions on it after two suspected Mossad agents were jailed for six months for trying on false grounds to obtain a New Zealand passport. The plot, which involved obtaining a passport in the name of a tetraplegic man who had not spoken in years, provoked a furious reaction yesterday.”

That’s followed by a March 2005 Peace Researcher article, http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/pr32-123b.html Israel Apologizes to NZ For Bungled Mossad Passports. That reads “PR 30 (March 2005) ran a lengthy article entitled “Mossad Spies Imprisoned In New Zealand: Our Passports Valued For Use By Israeli Covert Killers.

“To briefly recap ­ in 2004, New Zealand authorities became aware of a covert operation mounted by Israel’s external Intelligence agency, Mossad, to secure NZ passports (which are keenly sought after by those who seek hasslefree entry to most countries. Mossad has a long track record of using fraudulently obtained passports of friendly counties, such as Canada, for its agents to commit crimes, including several murders, in countries throughout the world).

“The spy ring consisted of at least three Mossad agents working from Australia (it later emerged that Australia secretly expelled an Israeli diplomat as a result of this scandal in NZ) and one New Zealand Jew. The ringleader, a Mossad agent, and the New Zealander got away to Israel. The two other Mossad agents, Eli Cara and Uriel Kelman, were arrested in the act of accepting delivery of a fraudulently obtained NZ passport.

“They duly pleaded guilty to a single charge and served three months of a six month sentence before being deported back to Israel. They were also each ordered to make a $50,000 payment to the Cerebral Palsy Association, as they had sought the passport in the name of an NZ cerebral palsy sufferer.”

Deep throat in Iraq

According to a reliable source, these Mossad fake New Zealand Passports then showed up in Iraq. That source’s source is inside the G2 Intelligence section of one of the commanding armies in Baghdad. Some of the solders caught these Mossads with the New Zealand Passports on them. The Mossad were subsequently ordered to be let go. The plot thickens.

Our source talks with members of the 3rd Infantry Division and 4th Infantry Division who nailed the Mossads and ordered to let them go. As a result, when these US Army personnel returned to the US, they left their army careers and refused to serve the likes of George Bush and Israel? What could their deeper reasons possibly be?

Could it be that in fact the Mossad agents were caught with high powered sniper rifles, killing American soldiers to ‘aid and abet’ the illusion that America was fighting a legitimate war in Iraq? I repeat, that the Mossad agents were assassinating American soldiers to support the illusion America was fighting a legitimate war in Iraq.

These Mossad agents were caught with IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices), according to our source, and very sophisticated detonation devices to kill American soldiers and otherwise set off “terrorist bomber” bombs anywhere they wanted those bombs to go off.

Some of these “terrorist bombers” did not even know they had a bomb in their cars. It was planted by Mossad and then detonated when and where they wanted it to go off to kill as many as they could. Some Iraqis have noticed their cars were not handling right and stopped to find out what the problem was.

The problem was they were driving a bomb, not just a car, but were not terrorists. They had been set up to be terrorists when the Mossad had the vehicle where they wanted it to be.

Additionally, some of these Mossad agents were at Abu Ghraib prison and torturing Iraqis right along with US soldiers who had crossed that line under orders from Bush and Rumsfeld. Some of those held at Abu Ghraib, later released, had their cars rigged to go off wherever, whenever the Mossad-a-tiers wanted them to go off. In short, the Mossad was invited in to show American soldiers how to torture Arabs. Lord knows they’d had enough practice in Palestine, or is it Israel; oh well, less and less of Palestine and more and more of Israel everyday? See http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3546.shtml Paul Craig Roberts Are You Ready to Face the Facts About Israel?

But these Mossad members were caught red-handed by our red-blooded American solders, just as the British SAS soldiers were caught with a carload of IEDs and detonation devices doing the same awful thing in the Basra area. Both sets of events were hushed up in the news.

Bottom line, resign

Career solders in our US Army, the source reports, came home after these events and resigned, refused to re-up and extend enlistments to serve in the US Army given the above events they witnessed. What they saw obviously sickened their stomachs and souls, especially that a purported ally of the US would send in Mossad assassins to kill US soldiers, just to perpetuate the illusion that George W. Bush and his Zionist pals were conducting more than an obscene scam with the Iraq War.

The source would take solace, great solace, if those U.S. service men and women who witnessed any of these events would step forward and blow the whistle on them and on the cabal of ruthless Mossad who killed their own brothers. RIP.

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer living in New York City. Reach him at mailto:gvmaz@verizon.net”

http://www.rense.com/general82/dzse.htm

 

If we are honest about who is actually murdering and abusing

people, it is the US, Israel, and the UK.

There’s your “axis of evil“

 

 

 

 

By Paul Craig Roberts

Now that military officers selected by the Bush Pentagon have reached a split verdict convicting Salim Hamdan, a onetime driver for Osama bin Laden, of supporting terrorism, but innocent of terrorist conspiracy, do you feel safe?

Or are we superpower Americans still at risk until we capture bin Laden’s dentist, barber, and the person who installed the carpet in his living room?

The Bush Regime with its comic huffings and puffings is unaware that it has made itself the laughing stock of the world, a comedy version of the Third Reich.

Hamdan was not defended by the slick lawyers who got O.J. Simpson off, and he most certainly did not have a jury of his peers. Hamdan was defended by a Pentagon appointed US Navy officer, and his jurors were all Pentagon appointed US military officers with an eye on their careers. Even in this Kangaroo Court, Hamdan was cleared of the main charge.

The US Navy officer who was Hamdan’s appointed attorney is certainly no terrorist sympathizer. Yet even this United States officer said that the rules Bush designed for the military tribunals were designed to achieve convictions. He also said that the judge allowed evidence that would not have been admitted by any civilian or military US court. He said that the interrogations of Hamdan, which comprised the basis of the Bush Regime’s case, were tainted by coercive tactics, including sleep deprivation and solitary confinement. Split verdict in first Guantanamo war-crimes trial, AP, August 6, 2008

Does this make you a proud American?

Do you think you are made more safe when you stand there while “your” government implements its own version of Joseph Stalin’s show trials?

The trial and conviction of Hamdan has made every American very unsafe.

The one certain fact about US law is that it is expanded until it applies to everyone. Consider RICO, for example, the asset freeze law that was intended only in criminal cases involving the Mafia; it wasn’t long before RICO found its way into civil divorce proceedings.

Bush’s multi-year, multi-billion dollar “War on Terror” has been reduced to railroading a low level employee, a driver, for “terrorism.”

One would hope that the Hamdan verdict would be enough shame and ridicule for the US in one day. But no, Bush didn’t stop there. On his way to the Beijing Olympics, President Bush expressed “deep concerns” for the state of human rights in China.

But not in Guantanamo, nor in Abu Ghraib, nor in the CIA’s torture dungeons used for “renditions,” nor in Iraq and Afghanistan where the US is expert at bombing weddings, funerals, children’s soccer games, and every assortment of civilians imaginable.

As the good book says, clean the beam from your own eye before pointing to the mote in your brother’s eye.

But Americans, the salt of the earth, have neither beams nor motes. We are the virtuous few, ordained by God to impose our hegemony on the world. It is written, or so say the neocons.

What would President Bush say if, heaven forbid, the Chinese were as rude as he is and asked Mr. Superpower why the land of “freedom and democracy” has one million names on a watch list. China with a population four times as large doesn’t have a watch list with one million names.

What would President Bush say if China asked him why the US, with a population one-fourth the size of China’s has hundreds of thousands more of its citizens in prison? The percentage of Americans in prison is far higher than in China and is a larger absolute number.

What would President Bush say if China asked him why he used lies and deception to justify his invasion of Iraq. China, unlike Bush, is not responsible for 1.2 million dead Iraqis and 4 million displaced Iraqis.

China’s human rights policy is not perfect. China’s greatest human rights failing is that China is the Bush Regime’s prime enabler of its war crimes and human rights abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan. By financing Bush’s budget deficit, China is financing Bush’s gratuitous wars. Indeed, China can be said to finance the weaponry that the US gives Israel to enable the suppression of the Palestinians and with which to bomb the civilian population of Lebanon.

China is a serious human rights abuser, because China is complicit in Bush’s human rights abuses.

If we are honest about who is actually murdering and abusing people, it is the US, Israel, and the UK. There’s your “axis of evil.”

Paul Craig Roberts email him was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury

http://www.vdare.com/roberts/080806_war.htm