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Saturday, August 30, 2003
Counting the Bodies
by James Ridgeway
Village Voice | Mondo Washington
Publication Date September 3 - 9, 2003
Hard to Keep Track of the Dead in Iraq
Amid increasing suspicions that the U.S. media have been underestimating Iraqi casualties, here are the latest more or less reliable figures culled from several sources, including the government:
Iraq Body Count (iraqbodycount.net) reported that the number of civilian deaths in Iraq ranges from 6,113 to 7,830. Military.com reports that as of August 28 a total of 281 U.S. soldiers have been killed since the start of the invasion-that includes 143 since major fighting was declared "over" on May 1. The Iraq Coalition Casualty Count (lunaville.org/warcasualties/summary.aspx), based on tallies from Centcom, the Defense Department, and the British Ministry of Defence, shows that, as of August 27, 281 U.S. soldiers, 50 British soldiers, and two "other" coalition soldiers have been reported killed. The estimated wounded? 1,212.
But by far the most interesting and quite possibly most realistic report comes by way of Jude Wanniski, the supply-side economist and ex-Wall Street Journal reporter who has struck up a correspondence with Mohammad al-Obaidi, an Iraqi doctor living in Britain. Al-Obaidi coordinates the small Iraqi Freedom Party, which favors free enterprise and is both anti-Saddam and anti-U.S. Al-Obaidi tells the Voice that members of his family have been tortured and killed by Saddam's secret police, and others have been killed in American air and ground attacks. Al-Obaidi, whose brother is a retired general now living in Iraq, says he has no ties with any intelligence service and has nothing to do with the American stooge Ahmed Chalabi.
Al-Obaidi told Wanniski that "hundreds of our party's cadre" spent five weeks interviewing undertakers, hospital officials, and ordinary citizens in all of Iraq (except for what's controlled by the Kurds) and came up with a total figure of 37,137 civilians killed since the beginning of the invasion, 6,103 of them in Baghdad. Those figures, according to al-Obaidi, do not include members of unofficial militias, paramilitary groups, or Saddam's Fedayeen units.
accesswater2030@yahoo.com 8:31 PM
Group sex claims come back to haunt Schwarzenegger
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
30 August 2003
The rocky campaign by Arnold Schwarzenegger for California governor was shaken further yesterday when groups from left-wing feminists to religious conservatives expressed dismay at a interview from 1977 in which the young body-builder talked about "fags", smoking pot and participating in group sex.
The interview, in the defunct men's magazine Oui, appeared on the internet and promptly became the talk of the campaign circuit. Mr Schwarzenegger - who had a reputation at the time for making deliberately outrageous statements - referred to women as "chicks", discussed their prowess in bed and described going on the prowl for sex the night before body-building competitions.
At one contest, he said, "we had girls backstage giving head". On another occasion, a young black woman appeared naked at a gym and a group of men - including Mr Schwarzenegger - took her upstairs and jumped on her.
Right-wing radio and television hosts, who like to preach sexual abstinence before marriage, expressed disgust at Mr Schwarzenegger's behaviour. Gay groups, mean-while, strongly objected to his use of the word "fag", saying it was analogous to calling black people "nigger".
One lesbian advocate, Toni Broaddus, said that Mr Schwarzenegger's description of group sex was "very troubling, because it did seem close to rape. It just didn't sound like the kind of thing that you want the leader of the world's sixth-largest economy bragging about," she told the San Francisco Chronicle.
Mr Schwarzenegger was dogged by questions on the interview when he campaigned in Central Valley, California. "I have no idea what you are talking about," he told reporters three times, claiming he had "no memory of any of the articles I did 20 or 30 years ago".
But that was not the answer he gave hours earlier to a Sacramento radio show. He told KFBK: "Obviously, I have made statements that were ludicrous and crazy and outrageous and all those things, because that's the way I always was."
To assess the political damage the article will do is difficult. Mr Schwarzenegger was known not to have been a choirboy when he entered the race for the governorship. But the Oui article raises new questions on his appeal to conservative Republicans - the party's grass roots whose support he needs to win the recall election on 7 October.
The reaction from liberals, over his language as much as in response to his behaviour, also suggests there may be a threat to his standing with moderate voters.
accesswater2030@yahoo.com 7:23 PM
Saturday, August 30, 2003
Who's Losing Iraq? Cheney, the Real Acting President, Rove -- And We'll Add Rumsfeld. Bush is Just the Chickenhawk Puppet. Cut the Strings and He'll be a Bowl of Blueblood Jello Once Again.
The New York Times
August 31, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Who's Losing Iraq?
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
Karl Rove has got to be nervous.
The man who last year advised Republican candidates to "focus on war" is finding out that the Bush doctrine of pre-emption cannot pre-empt anarchy.
Now, General Rove will have to watch Democratic candidates focus on war.
We're getting into very volatile territory in the Middle East.
As Paul Bremer admitted last week, the cost of the Iraq adventure is going to be spectacular: $2 billion for electrical demands and $16 billion to deliver clean water.
We're losing one or two American soldiers every day. Saddam and Osama are still lurking and scheming — the "darkness which may be felt."
After a car bomb exploded outside a Najaf mosque on Friday, killing scores of people, including the most prominent pro-American Shiite cleric, we may have to interject our troops into an internecine Shiite dispute — which Saddam's Baathist guerrillas are no doubt stoking.
With Iraqis in Najaf screaming, "There is no order! There is no government! We'd rather have Saddam than this!," we had one more ominous illustration that the Bush team is out of its depth and divided against itself.
You can't conduct a great historical experiment in a petty and bickering frame of mind. The agencies of the Bush administration are behaving like high school cliques. The policy in Iraq is paralyzed almost to the point of nonexistence, stalled by spats between the internationalists and unilateralists, with the national security director, Condoleezza Rice, abnegating her job as policy referee.
The State Department will have to stop sulking and being in denial about the Pentagon running the show in Iraq. And the Pentagon will have to stop being dogmatic, clinging to the quixotic notion that it only wants to succeed with its streamlined force and its trompe l'oeil coalition. Rummy has to accept the magnitude of the task and give up running the Department of Defense the way a misanthropic accountant would.
Big deeds need big spirits. You can't have a Marshall Plan and a tax cut at the same time.
It has also now become radiantly clear that we have to drag Dick Cheney out of the dark and smog. Less Hobbes, more Locke.
So far, American foreign policy has been guided by the vice president's gloomy theories that fear and force are the best motivators in the world, that war is man's natural state and that the last great superpower has sovereign authority to do as it pleases without much consultation with subjects or other nations.
We can now see the disturbing results of all the decisions Mr. Cheney made in secret meetings.
The General Accounting Office issued a report last week noting that the vice president shaped our energy policy with clandestine advice from "petroleum, coal, nuclear, natural gas, electricity industry representatives and lobbyists."
Favoritism to energy pals led to last week's insane decision to gut part of the Clean Air Act and allow power plants, refineries and other industrial sites to belch pollutants.
Another Bush-Cheney energy crony is Anthony Alexander of Ohio's FirstEnergy Corporation, which helped trigger the blackout after failing to upgrade its transmission system properly since deregulation. He was a Bush Pioneer, having raised at least $100,000 for the campaign.
This logrolling attitude has led to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers allowing Halliburton — which made Mr. Cheney a rich man with $20 million worth of cashed-in stock — to get no-bid contracts in Iraq totaling $1.7 billion, and that's just a start.
All this, and high gas prices, too?
When he wasn't meeting secretly with energy lobbyists, Mr. Cheney was meeting secretly with Iraqi exiles. The Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi and other defectors conned Mr. Cheney, Rummy and the naïve Wolfowitz of Arabia by playing up the danger of Saddam's W.M.D.'s and playing down the prospect of Iraqi resistance to a U.S. invasion.
According to The Los Angeles Times, U.S. and allied intelligence agencies are investigating to see if they were duped by Iraqi defectors giving bogus information to mislead the West before the war.
Some intelligence officials "now fear that key portions of the prewar information may have been flawed," the story said. "The issue raises fresh doubts as to whether illicit weapons will be found in Iraq."
Karl Rove has got to be nervous.
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | Help | Back to Top
accesswater2030@yahoo.com 7:11 PM
Friday, August 29, 2003
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GAO's Final Energy Task Force Report Reveals that the Vice President Made A False Statement to Congress
By JOHN W. DEAN
----
Friday, Aug. 29, 2003
This month, the General Accounting Office (GAO) - the investigative and auditing arm of Congress - issued a report that contains some startling revelations. Though they are couched in very polite language, they are bombshells nonetheless.
The report - entitled "Energy Task Force: Process Used to Develop the National Energy Policy" - and its accompanying Chronology strongly imply that the Administration has, in effect, been paying off its heavy-hitting energy industry contributors. It also very strongly implies that Vice President Dick Cheney lied to Congress.
The Background: How Cheney Stonewalled GAO
In a sense, this story begins during the close 2000 Presidential election, when energy industry special interests were big-dollar contributors to the Bush-Cheney campaign. (In 2004's re-election campaign, they will doubtless be called upon once again.)
After he was elected - and very much beholden to those contributors - Bush put Cheney in charge of developing the National Energy Policy. To do so, Cheney convened an Energy Task Force. (Details about the Task Force can be found in my prior column.)
Cheney's selection alone was ominous: He had headed Halliburton, just the kind of big-dollar Republican energy industry contributor that had helped Bush-Cheney win the election in the first place.
The Energy Task Force might have operated in absolute secrecy, were it not for GAO. GAO is a nonpartisan agency with statutory authority to investigate "all matters related to the receipt, disbursement, and use of public money," so that it can judge the expenditures and effectiveness of public programs, and report to Congress on what it finds.
To fulfill its statutory responsibility, GAO sought documents from Vice-President Cheney relating to Energy Task Force expenditures. But in a literally unprecedented move, the White House said no.
Amazingly, it did so without even bothering to claim that the documents sought were covered by executive privilege. It simply refused.
On August 2, 2001, Vice President Cheney sent a letter - personally signed by him - to Congress demanding, in essence, that it get the Comptroller off his back. In the letter, he claimed that his staff had already provided "documents responsive to the Comptroller General's inquiry concerning the costs associated with the [Energy task force's] work." As I will explain later, this turned out to be a lie.
In the end, GAO had to go to court to try to get the documents to which it plainly was entitled. On December 9, 2002, GAO lost in court - though, as I argued in a prior column, the decision was incorrect.
Then, on February 9, 2003, the Comptroller General announced GAO's decision not to appeal. He said he feared that another adverse decision would cause the agency to lose even more power, more permanently. Several news accounts suggest that it was the Republican leadership of Congress that stopped the appeal.
This August's Report Reveals Cheney Lied About Providing Responsive Documents
Then this August's Report was issued. It was not the thorough, comprehensive Report GAO wanted it to be. (Indeed, GAO's Comptroller General has stressed that "the Vice President's persistent denial of access to" records "precluded GAO from fully achieving our objectives and substantially limited our analysis.") But it is enough to shock, and disturb, the reader.
The Report shows that Cheney's claim to Congress, in the August 2, 2001 letter, that responsive documents were provided to GAO, was plainly false.
According to the Report, Cheney provided GAO with 77 pages of "documents retrieved from the files of the Office of the Vice President responsive to" GAO's inquiry regarding the Energy Task Force's "receipt, disbursement, and use of public funds."
To any lawyer, a mere 77-page document production seems suspiciously slim - especially when it is meant to represent information from a group of people on a fairly broad topic. Surely there were more documents that were not turned over.
Moreover, it turned out, as the Report reveals, that the documents that were turned over were useless: "The materials were virtually impossible to analyze, as they consisted, for example, of pages with dollar amounts but no indication of the nature or purpose of the expenditure." They were further described as "predominantly reimbursement requests, assorted telephone bills and random items, such as the executive director's credit card receipt for pizza."
In sum, the incomplete document production was not only nonresponsive - it was insulting. So the GAO pressed for responsive documents numerous times in different ways: letters, telephone exchanges and meetings.
Perhaps the most pointed of these was a July 18, 2001 letter from the Comptroller to the Vice President. It noted that GAO had "been given 77 pages of miscellaneous records purporting to relate to these direct and indirect costs. Because the relevance of these records is unclear, we continue to request all records responsive to our request, including any records that clarify the nature and purpose of the costs." (Emphasis added.)
Cheney's False Statement About the Responsive Documents Was Plainly Intentional
Despite receiving this letter, Cheney still claimed to Congress, a few weeks later, on August 2, that responsive documents had been produced.
Of course, Cheney is a busy man. Yet there can be no question as to whether he was aware of the July 18, 2001 letter from the Comptroller complaining about the 77 pages of documents' being unresponsive: He even attached it to his own August 2 letter to Congress, as part of a chronology. And again, he personally signed that August 2 letter.
Nor can there be any question that Cheney knows what it means to produce responsive documents - and not to do so. In the same paragraph of the August 2 letter in which he claims he was responsive to the Energy Task Force request, he makes a lesser claim with respect to another GAO request - stating that there, he had merely "provided substantial responses." (Emphasis added.)
Plainly, Cheney knows the difference between being responsive; offering a substantial response; and sending insulting non-responsive materials, featuring unexplained phone bills, columns of unidentified figures, and a pizza receipt.
Thus, Cheney's claim to have produced responsive documents was a false statement and, all evidence suggests, an intentional one. That means it is also a criminal offense - a false statement to Congress. (In a previous column, I discussed the false statements statute and its application.)
GAO's Polite Tone Belies The Shocking Evidence Its Report Offers
The straight arrows at GAO were no doubt horrified that the Vice President of the United States, who is the Constitutional presiding officer of the U.S. Senate, would deliberately mislead the Congress with such blatant misinformation.
Being nonpartisan, they refrained from accusing the Vice President of this crime. But as their Report shows, they included evidence that makes the crime evident for all to see. They also provided evidence of what the motive for the crime was.
The Report quietly - but tellingly - notes that the Vice President's team "solicited input from, or received information and advice from nonfederal energy stakeholders, principally petroleum, coal, nuclear, natural gas, and electricity industry representatives and lobbyists." (Emphasis added.)
In other words, if the Vice President is not trying to cover up the fact that he met with big energy interests - including past contributors - and allowed them a large role in settling our nation's energy policy, why all the secrecy ? That is what other observers have suspected - and what has been rumored from the beginning. Thanks to Cheney's obfuscation, we still can't know for certain. Yet thanks to GAO, we do now know for certain that he lied to Congress to cover up something, and there is little doubt in my mind as to what he is hiding.
John W. Dean, a FindLaw columnist, is a former counsel to the President.
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accesswater2030@yahoo.com 10:10 PM
August 29, 2003
Fistfuls of Dollars
By PAUL KRUGMAN
It's all coming true. Before the war, hawks insisted that Iraq was a breeding ground for terrorism. It wasn't then, but it is now. Meanwhile, administration apologists blamed terrorists, not tax cuts, for record budget deficits. In fact, before the war terrorism-related spending was relatively small — less than $40 billion in fiscal 2002. But the costs of a "bring 'em on" foreign policy are now looming large indeed.
The direct military cost of the occupation is $4 billion a month, and there's no end in sight. But that's only part of the bill.
This week Paul Bremer suddenly admitted that Iraq would need "several tens of billions" in aid next year. That remark was probably aimed not at the public but at his masters in Washington; he apparently needed to get their attention.
It's no mystery why. The Coalition Provisional Authority, which has been operating partly on seized Iraqi assets, is about to run out of money. Initial optimism about replenishing the authority's funds with oil revenue has vanished: even if sabotage and looting subside, the dilapidated state of the industry means that for several years much of its earnings will have to be reinvested in repair work.
At a deeper level, the wobbling credibility of the occupation undermines that occupation's financing. American officials still hope to raise money by selling off state-owned enterprises to foreign investors, though they have backed off on proposals to sell power plants and other utilities. But after the bombing of U.N. headquarters, who will buy? Officials have also floated the idea of pledging future oil revenues in return for loans, but it's far from clear whether an occupying power has the right to make such deals, let alone whether they would be honored by whoever is running Iraq a few years from now.
So Mr. Bremer was telling his masters that they can no longer fake it: he needs money, now.
The biggest cost of the Iraq venture, however, may not be Mr. Bremer's problem; it may not even come in Iraq. Our commitment of large forces there creates the need for a bigger military, even as it degrades the effectiveness of our existing forces.
These days it's hard to find a military expert not reporting to Donald Rumsfeld who thinks we have enough soldiers in Iraq. But to those who say, "Send in more troops," the answer is, "What troops?"
Gen. Eric Shinseki, then the Army's chief of staff, prophetically warned that the postwar occupation would require more soldiers than the war itself. In his farewell address he made a broader point, that if we're going to do this sort of thing, we need a bigger military: "Beware the 12-division strategy for a 10-division Army."
The rule of thumb, according to military experts, is that except during crises, only one brigade in three should be deployed abroad. Yet today 21 of the Army's 33 combat brigades are deployed overseas, 16 of them in Iraq. This puts enormous stress on the troops, who find that they have only brief periods of rest and retraining between the times spent in harm's way. For example, most of a brigade of the 82nd Airborne that is about to go to Iraq returned from Afghanistan only six months ago.
So unless we can somehow extricate ourselves from Iraq quickly, or persuade other countries to bear a lot more of the burden, we need a considerably bigger military. And that means spending a lot more money.
For now, the administration is in denial. "There will be no retreat," President Bush says — Churchillian words, but where are the resources to back them up?
Mr. Rumsfeld won't admit that we need more troops in Iraq or anywhere else. We could use help from other countries, but it's doubtful whether the administration will accept the kind of meaningful power-sharing that might lead to a new Security Council resolution on Iraq, which might in turn bring in allied forces.
Still, even the government of a superpower can't simultaneously offer tax cuts equal to 15 percent of revenue, provide all its retirees with prescription drugs and single-handedly take on the world's evildoers — single-handedly because we've alienated our allies. In fact, given the size of our budget deficit, it's not clear that we can afford to do even one of these things. Someday, when the grown-ups are back in charge, they'll have quite a mess to clean up.
accesswater2030@yahoo.com 7:19 AM
ZNet | Terror War
Needed: An Inquiry Into A Slaughter
by John Pilger ; The New Statesman; August 28, 2003
The 1994 inquiry by Lord Justice Scott into the scandal of Britain's illegal supply of weapons to Saddam Hussein produced memorable moments. There was Mark Higson's detailed description of "a culture of lying" at the Foreign Office, where he was the Iraq Desk Officer. And there was the anxious moment when it seemed that Margaret Thatcher might walk out. "Lady Thatcher," said His Lordship, "we'll try and trouble you with as few papers as possible".
The Scott inquiry produced a mountainous report and opaque conclusions. No politician was prosecuted; a few reputations were ruffled. The English establishment is expert at this. Tim Laxton, an auditor who examined the books of two British arms companies, believes that if there had been a full and open inquiry, "hundreds" would have faced criminal prosecution. "They would include," he said, "top political figures, very senior civil servants throughout Whitehall: the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence, the Department of Trade and Industry... the top echelon of government."
The Hutton inquiry into the circumstances of Dr David Kelly's death has its memorable moments, too. The warning of Jonathan Powell, the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff, not to "claim that we have evidence that [Saddam] is a threat", points directly to Blair's lying. However, that was exceptional. What is emerging is a pattern of protecting Blair, who is being subtly spun as a restraining influence, a peacemaker, even a guardian of Dr Kelly. A criminal abuse of power is not on any charge sheet: it is not within Hutton's brief, yet the British people and the memory of the thousands of innocent lives cut short in Iraq deserve nothing less.
Credible research shows that up to 10,000 civilians were killed in the attack on Iraq, together with perhaps 30,000 Iraqi soldiers, many of them teenage conscripts. A slaughter. These people were killed by weapons designed to reduce human beings to charcoal or to shred them. The British Army littered urban areas with cluster bombs, while the Americans did the same and in greater quantity, adding uranium-coated munitions, whose radiation poison is ingested with the desert dust.
In my experience, the unseen deaths are far more numerous. Today, malnourished children are dying from thirst and gastroenteritis because the world's biggest military machine, including the British, fails to restore power and clean running water as its most basic obligations require.
This carnage, wrought in an unprovoked illegal assault on a sovereign country, is a crime by any measure of international law: be it the United Nations Charter or the Geneva conventions. The "supreme international crime", the Nuremberg judges decided, was that of unprovoked aggression, because it contains "the accumulated evil" of all war crimes.
Blair has committed this crime. He shares responsibility for causing violent death and suffering on a vast scale, which the web of deceit spun by his courtiers has failed to justify. His co-conspirators in Washington care nothing about this; only their ascendant power matters. In their concentration camps, at Guantanamo Bay, Bagram in Afghanistan and Baghdad airport, there are no human rights, no recognizable rule of law, no justice. In this Kafkaesque world, people "disappear" while others, charged with nothing, plead for their lives. In the meantime, on the streets of conquered Baghdad, an elite US unit acts as a death squad, shooting people as they drive by.
In Washington the other day, I asked John Bolton, Under-Secretary for International Security at the State Department, the most outspoken of the "neo-conservatives" around President Bush, about civilian deaths in Iraq. I referred to the study that estimated up to 10,000 casualties. He replied: "Well, I think it's quite low if you look at the size of the military operation that was undertaken."
Quite low at 10,000. Puzzled that he should be subjected to such a line of questioning, he said with a laugh: "You must be a member of the Communist Party."
Norman Mailer recently broke the great silence about the true direction of Bush's America when he wondered if his country had entered a "pre-fascist atmosphere". In Washington, I put this to Ray McGovern, a former senior CIA officer, distinguished as a Soviet specialist and cold warrior, a man who counts himself a personal friend of George Bush, the president's father, who said: "I hope [Mailer] is right, because there are others who are saying we are already in a fascist mode... when you see how this war [on terror] is being conducted."
Blair has made himself part of this. He is the fig leaf for what Vice-President Cheney has speculated might be a war lasting "50 years or more", including an attack on North Korea, which has nuclear weapons. The Koreans, Blair told Parliament, might be "next". Watching him accept 18 choreographed standing ovations in Congress, flushed and eager and grateful, was like watching a Stalinist puppet summoned to Moscow. Britain is not yet Bush's America. Fear and loyalty oaths are not the currency here. Two million people filled the streets of London in February, the greatest show of dissent in this country, the British at their best. A critical public intelligence, long denied in much of the media, understands what Blair and his court have done and where the trail of blood leads: that he has handed al-Qa'ida and other jihadi groups a gift in a devastated and humiliated Iraq and, in so doing, has endangered us all.
Why, then, should we accept merely a Hutton inquiry? David Kelly's tragedy deserved public investigation; but so does the epic, unnecessary. tragedy of the thousands of Iraqis whose lives Blair helped to end or scar.
This is not just rhetoric. Robert Jackson, the US prosecutor at Nuremberg in 1946, said: "If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us..."
It is time the issue of "our" criminality entered the public arena - before a media-endowed respectability is allowed to settle over the occupation in Iraq. "There never was a time," said Blair in his obsequious speech to Congress, "when the power of America was so necessary or so misunderstood or when, except in the most general sense, a study of history provides so little instruction for our present day."
Greater demagogues than Blair have said the same about history; Richard Nixon was one of them. In Washington during the Watergate scandal, the unsayable about Nixon was that he was a criminal. Then, as each lie was revealed, as each courtier was exposed and each fall guy fell, the unsayable was finally said, and he went. That took almost two years. Can we, and a peace-loving world, afford to wait that long?
John Pilger is a renowned journalist and documentary film-maker. A war correspondent and ZNet Commentator, his writings have appeared in numerous magazines, and newspapers such as the Daily Mirror, the Guardian, the Independent, New Statesman, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and other newspapers and periodicals around the world. His books include Heroes (2001) Hidden Agendas (1998) and Distant Voices (1994)
accesswater2030@yahoo.com 6:40 AM
Global Eye -- Die Laughing
By Chris Floyd
Here's a headline you don't see every day: "War Criminals Hire War Criminals to Hunt Down War Criminals."
Perhaps that's not the precise wording used by the Washington Post this week, but it is the absolute essence of its story about the Bush Regime's new campaign to put Saddam's murderous security forces on America's payroll.
Yes, the sahibs in Bush's Iraqi Raj are now doling out U.S. tax dollars to hire the murderers of the infamous Mukhabarat and other agents of the Baathist Gestapo -- perhaps hundreds of them. The logic, if that's the word, seems to be that these bloodstained "insiders" will lead their new imperial masters to other bloodstained "insiders" responsible for bombing the UN headquarters in Baghdad -- and killing another dozen American soldiers while Little George was playing with his putts during his month-long Texas siesta.
Naturally, the Iraqi people -- even the Bush-appointed leaders of the Potemkin "Governing Council" -- aren't exactly overjoyed at seeing Saddam's goons return, flush with American money and firepower. And they're certainly not reassured by the fact that the Bushists have also reopened Saddam's most notorious prison, the dread Abu Ghraib, and are now, Mukhabarat-like, filling it with Iraqis -- men, women and children as young as 11 -- seized from their homes or plucked off the street to be held incommunicado, indefinitely, without due process, just like the old days. As The Times of London reports, weeping relatives who dare approach the gleaming American razor-wire in search of their "disappeared" loved ones are referred to a crude, hand-written sign pinned to a spike: "No visits are allowed, no information will be given and you must leave." Perhaps an Iraqi Anna Akhmatova will do justice to these scenes one day.
However, the sahibs' unabashed embrace of their soulmates in the Saddamite security forces did provide some sinister comedy in the Post story. The wary reporters and Raj officials displayed the usual hilarious delicacy in coming up with reality-fogging prose to protect the tender sensibilities of the American people, who must never be told what their betters are really getting up to.
For example, the U.S. alliance with Saddam's killers -- yes, the very ones who inflicted all those human rights abuses which, we're now told, was the onliest reason the Dear Leader attacked and destroyed a sovereign nation in an unprovoked war of aggression -- was described demurely as "an unusual compromise." (As opposed to, say, "a moral outrage," or "a putrid stain on America's honor," or "a monstrous copulation of rapacious conquerors with bloodthirsty scum.") However, the Post hastens to assure us that the wise sahibs do recognize the "potential pitfalls" of hooking up with "an instrument renowned across the Arab world for its casual use of torture, fear, intimidation, rape and imprisonment."
Those kidders! Surely they know this "potential pitfall" is actually one of the main goals of the entire bloody enterprise: to intimidate the "Arab world" until they straighten up and fly right -- i.e., turn their countries over to Halliburton, Bechtel and the Carlyle Group. That's why you buy an "instrument" like the Mukhabarat in the first place. You certainly don't employ professional murderers and rapists if you are genuinely interested in building a "decent, open, democratic society," as the Bushists claim in their imperial PR.
But like vaudeville troupers of old, the media-sashib double act saves the best gag for last. First the Postmen present the seamy Bush-Mukhabarat humpa-humpa as some great spiritual agon -- "an ongoing struggle between principle and-the practical needs of the occupation" -- instead of what it is: business as usual for the American security apparatus, which happily incorporated scores of its Nazi brethren into the fold after World War II, and over the years has climbed into bed with many a casually raping and murdering thug -- such as, er, Saddam Hussein, who spent a bit of quality time on the CIA payroll.
In fact, the entire Baathist organization -- including the Mukhabarat -- was midwifed into power by not one but two CIA-backed coups, as historian Roger Morris reports in The New York Times. And shall we mention the intimate relations between Saddam's regime and U.S. intelligence services back when Saddam was merrily gassing his own people -- and the Iranians -- with the eager connivance of Ronald Reagan, George Bush I and their "special envoy" to Baghdad, Donald Rumsfeld? Yes, let's.
So the new alliance is no "struggle:" It's a veritable Bush family reunion, a happy homecoming for Rummy and his old Mukhers. But "this eternal blazon must not be to ears of flesh and blood" -- or to Post readers, anyway. Our vaudevillians, eager to keep the fleecy Homeland flock nestled comfortably in its cozy amnesia, skip the history and go straight to the punchline: Raj officials say that it's OK to hire the most hardcore killers, rapists and torturers -- as long as you "make sure they are indeed aware of the error of their ways."
You guys! What yocks! "So, Mr. Mukhabarat Man, are you indeed aware of the error of your ways?" "Oh yes, boss, I got my mind right!" "Not going to rape or torture anybody anymore?" "Oh no, boss, no -- not unless you tell me to!" "Okey-dokey then! You're hired! Get on over to Abu Ghraib -- you've got some interrogating to do!"
What? It's not funny? What do you mean? Look at those Iraqi kids over there, those American soldiers -- they're grinning from ear to ear! No, wait -- that's just their skulls. The new Bushabarat are using them for soccer practice.
U.S. Recruiting Hussein's Spies
Washington Post, Aug. 23, 2003
accesswater2030@yahoo.com 6:01 AM
french news
Perle tells French paper of Iraq blunder
PARIS, Aug 28 (AFP) - Top Pentagon adviser Richard Perle admitted Thursday that the United States had made a key blunder in its planning ahead of launching its military campaign in Iraq - the failure to forge close ties with the Iraqi opposition.
Two more US soldiers were killed, and five wounded, in Iraq the previous day as the US military administration struggles to bring the country under control months after declaring the war over.
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The US administration has stepped up its efforts to defend its "noble cause" in Iraq this week after the death toll among US troops since the end of major combat overtook the number killed during the invasion.
However Perle, in an interview published in the French newspaper Le Figaro on Thursday, pointed to a key mistake in the planning for the campaign which has hindered efforts to set up a stable, Iraqi-led administration.
"Our biggest mistake, in my opinion, was the failure to work closely with Iraqis before the war so that an Iraqi opposition could have been able to immediately take the matter in hand," Perle admitted.
"Now the solution is to hand over power to the Iraqis as soon as possible."
However Perle said that the answer did not lie in setting up a UN-led administration in Iraq.
"The United Nations system is not adapted to deal with the new threats, like international terrorism" he said.
"The administration of Iraq by the UN is a bad idea. Where has the UN succeeded in administering the territories where it has been placed in charge?"
Perle is recognised as one of the main architects of Washington's campaign to launch the offensive in Iraq although he has since played down his role in hatching the war plan.
The chief US hawk admitted the question of Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction remained "crucial" but voiced confidence that examples would be found.
"Rest assured we will discover the whole story of these arms and I am sure that we will soon physically find some."
Looking further afield he said it was "undeniable" that Syria has chemical weapons and that Iran is working on a nuclear arms programme.
"It is a fact that the existence of these arms represents for us a serious threat."
Perle attacked France's leaders for their stance. France failed to support the US-led action in Iraq.
France was wrong to call for more time for UN weapons inspectors to work in Iraq before hostilities commmenced, he told Le Figaro.
President Jacques Chirac and Foreign Secretary Dominique de Villepin "are completely wrong about the consequences in the Arab world... And this analysis was the basis of their opposition to our policy," added Perle, who served as as defense secretary under Ronald Reagan.
© AFP
accesswater2030@yahoo.com 5:59 AM
Neocon 101
Some basic questions answered.
What do neoconservatives believe?
"Neocons" believe that the United States should not be ashamed to use its unrivaled power – forcefully if necessary – to promote its values around the world. Some even speak of the need to cultivate a US empire. Neoconservatives believe modern threats facing the US can no longer be reliably contained and therefore must be prevented, sometimes through preemptive military action.
Most neocons believe that the US has allowed dangers to gather by not spending enough on defense and not confronting threats aggressively enough. One such threat, they contend, was Saddam Hussein and his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. Since the 1991 Gulf War, neocons relentlessly advocated Mr. Hussein's ouster.
Most neocons share unwavering support for Israel, which they see as crucial to US military sufficiency in a volatile region. They also see Israel as a key outpost of democracy in a region ruled by despots. Believing that authoritarianism and theocracy have allowed anti-Americanism to flourish in the Middle East, neocons advocate the democratic transformation of the region, starting with Iraq. They also believe the US is unnecessarily hampered by multilateral institutions, which they do not trust to effectively neutralize threats to global security.
What are the roots of neoconservative beliefs?
The original neocons were a small group of mostly Jewish liberal intellectuals who, in the 1960s and 70s, grew disenchanted with what they saw as the American left's social excesses and reluctance to spend adequately on defense. Many of these neocons worked in the 1970s for Democratic Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a staunch anti-communist. By the 1980s, most neocons had become Republicans, finding in President Ronald Reagan an avenue for their aggressive approach of confronting the Soviet Union with bold rhetoric and steep hikes in military spending. After the Soviet Union's fall, the neocons decried what they saw as American complacency. In the 1990s, they warned of the dangers of reducing both America's defense spending and its role in the world.
Unlike their predecessors, most younger neocons never experienced being left of center. They've always been "Reagan" Republicans.
What is the difference between a neoconservative and a conservative?
Liberals first applied the "neo" prefix to their comrades who broke ranks to become more conservative in the 1960s and 70s. The defectors remained more liberal on some domestic policy issues. But foreign policy stands have always defined neoconservatism. Where other conservatives favored détente and containment of the Soviet Union, neocons pushed direct confrontation, which became their raison d'etre during the 1970s and 80s.
Today, both conservatives and neocons favor a robust US military. But most conservatives express greater reservations about military intervention and so-called nation building. Neocons share no such reluctance. The post 9/11-campaigns against regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrate that the neocons are not afraid to force regime change and reshape hostile states in the American image. Neocons believe the US must do to whatever it takes to end state-supported terrorism. For most, this means an aggressive push for democracy in the Middle East. Even after 9/11, many other conservatives, particularly in the isolationist wing, view this as an overzealous dream with nightmarish consequences.
How have neoconservatives influenced US foreign policy?
Finding a kindred spirit in President Reagan, neocons greatly influenced US foreign policy in the 1980s.
But in the 1990s, neocon cries failed to spur much action. Outside of Reaganite think tanks and Israel's right-wing Likud Party, their calls for regime change in Iraq were deemed provocative and extremist by the political mainstream. With a few notable exceptions, such as President Bill Clinton's decision to launch isolated strikes at suspected terrorist targets in Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, their talk of preemptive military action was largely dismissed as overkill.
Despite being muted by a president who called for restraint and humility in foreign affairs, neocons used the 1990s to hone their message and craft their blueprint for American power. Their forward thinking and long-time ties to Republican circles helped many neocons win key posts in the Bush administration.
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 moved much of the Bush administration closer than ever to neoconservative foreign policy. Only days after 9/11, one of the top neoconservative think tanks in Washington, the Project for a New American Century, wrote an open letter to President Bush calling for regime change in Iraq. Before long, Bush, who campaigned in 2000 against nation building and excessive military intervention overseas, also began calling for regime change in Iraq. In a highly significant nod to neocon influence, Bush chose the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) as the venue for a key February 2003 speech in which he declared that a US victory in Iraq "could begin a new stage for Middle Eastern peace." AEI – the de facto headquarters for neconservative policy – had been calling for democratization of the Arab world for more than a decade.
What does a neoconservative dream world look like?
Neocons envision a world in which the United States is the unchallenged superpower, immune to threats. They believe that the US has a responsibility to act as a "benevolent global hegemon." In this capacity, the US would maintain an empire of sorts by helping to create democratic, economically liberal governments in place of "failed states" or oppressive regimes they deem threatening to the US or its interests. In the neocon dream world the entire Middle East would be democratized in the belief that this would eliminate a prime breeding ground for terrorists. This approach, they claim, is not only best for the US; it is best for the world. In their view, the world can only achieve peace through strong US leadership backed with credible force, not weak treaties to be disrespected by tyrants.
Any regime that is outwardly hostile to the US and could pose a threat would be confronted aggressively, not "appeased" or merely contained. The US military would be reconfigured around the world to allow for greater flexibility and quicker deployment to hot spots in the Middle East, as well as Central and Southeast Asia. The US would spend more on defense, particularly for high-tech, precision weaponry that could be used in preemptive strikes. It would work through multilateral institutions such as the United Nations when possible, but must never be constrained from acting in its best interests whenever necessary.
Neocon think tanks, documents, and periodicals.
accesswater2030@yahoo.com 5:47 AM
Statistics fail president on Iraq
The Virginian-Pilot
© August 28, 2003
One year ago, Vice President Dick Cheney addressed the annual Veterans of Foreign Wars convention with these words: ``Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, our allies and against us.''
What a difference a year makes. Twelve months later Americans have learned that the re-creation of Iraq has been anything but simple.
Speaking Tuesday to 6,000 American Legionnaires, President Bush gave an unapologetic defense of the pacification of Iraq, bolstering his argument with impressive numerical evidence of success: 8,200 tons of ammunition seized, 1,100 detainees, 200 raids, 42 out of 55 Iraqis in Saddam's regime captured.
But notably absent were the numbers that Americans have yet to hear: How many U.S. soldiers will be needed to bring peace to Iraq and how many billions to bring it prosperity.
Omitted also was any admission of failure. In his 3,300-word speech, the president used not a single sentence to explain the all-too-obvious mistakes that have mired American efforts. By refusing to acknowledge what has gone wrong, the president makes it harder to win support for the sacrifices required to make things right in Iraq.
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Even as the president persists in painting events in Iraq in only the most flattering light, more Americans every week lose confidence and become disillusioned.
The latest Newsweek poll shows that Americans already believe it's taking too long and costing too much. Sixty percent of those surveyed believe America needs to cut back spending in Iraq. Sixty-nine percent think that America will be trapped in Iraq for years to come.
American impatience should be expected. What is surprising is how ineffectively the White House has countered it. White House wordsmiths have yet to give the president a persuasive message summoning the national patience and purpose that's needed to see this through.
In his speech, the president gave the same homily he has since before the war: ``Building a free and peaceful Iraq will require a substantial commitment of time and resources.'' He's right, but unconvincing.
Bush persuaded the country to trust his decision to wage a war of choice on Iraq. Now, Bush needs to apply the same skills toward persuading Americans of the need to stay in Iraq.
Public opinion is at the tipping point. For the first time, the post-combat death toll of American soldiers surpassed that of the war and there is a growing chorus of experts who believe more troops are required. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said that American commanders in Iraq will have as many soldiers as they need. But both the General Accounting Office and Pentagon insiders have said that our military commitments have stretched U.S. ground forces too thin: The Army simply has no one left to send.
After the blood, sweat and tears shed in Iraq, we can't retreat now. It's in the national interest for Iraq to become a democratic success story. But Americans should be wary of any plan to dispatch more troops there. Public consent will simply take pressure off Bush to do what he should have done from the start -- internationalize the nation-building effort.
Bringing in the United Nations would spread the sacrifice and give the world community a stake and a voice in Iraq's rebuilding. If there is one lesson Americans learned from Vietnam, it is the painful consequences of blind loyalty.
accesswater2030@yahoo.com 5:45 AM
The Pentagon PR
Machine At Work
Steven Rosenfeld is a commentary editor and audio producer for TomPaine.com.
The Pentagon has renamed a small but controversial office that, according to critics, prepared its own analyses of Iraq-related intelligence for use by the Secretary of Defense and White House to justify the war in Iraq. The office was at the center of accusations the administration ignored more measured analyses of the threat posed by Iraq produced by the Central Intelligence Agency and Department of State.
The Office of Special Plans (OSP), which reported to Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, was created in October 2002 to deal with the global terror threat. It was later expanded to assist with planning the military's build-up for the Iraq war and post-conflict reconstruction, various Pentagon spokesmen have said.
A report in New York Newsday on Aug. 12 said military officials this July decided the office should revert to its original name, the Northern Gulf Affairs Office. A Pentagon spokesman confirmed the report, saying the restored name of the regional policy office was a better and more accurate description of its role and responsibilities.
The name change is significant because the Pentagon has a vast and sophisticated public relations operation and does not act without good reason. The OSP had drawn fire from both the press and politicians. Articles in American and British newspapers alleged it was the administration's ideological hub, pushing the hardest for war in Iraq. Democrats in Congress echoed that charge, calling for various investigations, although those efforts have been stymied by the Republican-majority Congress.
Under-Secretary Feith and other Pentagon officials downplayed OSP's significance, saying administration critics who disagreed with the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and Iraq's alleged links to Al Qaida had turned the OSP into a larger-than-life target.
However, press reports that career intelligence officers in the CIA and State Department were also critical of the office prompted Feith and his boss, William Luti, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Near East and South Asian Affairs, to hold a rare press conference on June 4th to address the allegations.
"There have been some people who have kind of concocted a goulash of snippets about this team that was working on the terrorist interconnections and the Special Plans Office, and they mixed them up when there's no basis for the mix," Feith said, according to a transcript of the press conference.
"There were some accounts that asserted that the team dealt with the weapons of mass destruction issue, and there have been a number of stories in recent days that suggested that this was a team that somehow developed the case on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and it didn't -- I mean, it -- and that is also flatly not true."
But the allegations did not go away. On July 24, at a hearing by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Rep. Jane Harmon (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat, summarized the concerns this way, before asking Pentagon officials to comment:
What role did the OSP play in last fall's ever-changing justifications for going to war? And what role did it play in what critics say is a poorly-planned occupation?
"There is swirling around Washington the view that the CIA and our regular intelligence community is not what is being listened to by this White House," Harmon said, according to a transcript. "It is a rogue operation operating out of the Defense Department called the Office of Special Plans, and there's a cell there with a lot of outside consultants who are producing intelligence insulated from adequate collegial vetting and comment by the regular intelligence community."
Officials at the hearing, such as former CIA Director James Woolsey, who now sits on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, shed little light in their response to the panel.
Meanwhile, speculation about the office continued. Several articles in the British press and left-leaning American publications named a handful of OSP staffers, saying people such as Abram Shulsky, who headed the office, had long ties to neo-conservative think tanks -- like other top Pentagon appointees. Articles described shared political histories going back to the 1970s, suggesting that those directing the OSP's work were finally enacting long-held agendas.
But beyond the question of whether the OSP was "a rogue operation," are unanswered questions. What role did it play in last fall's ever-changing justifications for going to war? And what role did it play in what critics say is a poorly-planned occupation?
The office clearly has helped shape the administration's neo-con foreign policy. There's no shortage of articles where ex-defense officials or recent retirees have described how the Pentagon out-maneuvered career diplomats and intelligence officers in formulating the war and occupation plans.
"Without a doubt, the [Pentagon] policy division has the most significant intellectual capabilities in the government," Richard Perle told a Wall Street Journal editorial page editor, in an early August piece praising Douglas Feith and the OSP.
In recent weeks, TomPaine.com has made repeated efforts to obtain a list of the OSP staffers to evaluate these claims, but those efforts have not been successful.
The Pentagon, meanwhile, continues to boast about its postwar operation, issuing daily press releases touting those successes on its Web site, often saying it is now facing problems in Iraq because it was successful in the war. One facet in maintaining that positive drum beat, no doubt, is eliminating the name of the office drawing unwanted criticism -- the Office of Special Plans.
accesswater2030@yahoo.com 5:29 AM
August 28-September 3, 2003
pretzel logic
Print Out
by Howard Altman
The little Secret Service agent at the National Constitution Center seems more interested in John Ashcroft's tight USA Patriot Act spin-tour schedule than any constitutional rights when he stops me from following a flock of television reporters heading for a brief presser with the man who could not even beat a corpse.
"You can't go in here," says the little Secret Service agent, who was very nice to me the last time we met, inside Cuba Libre, when we were both awaiting a visit from that revered cigar aficionado Bill Clinton.
As the flock disappears down a hall in a hurried scurry, the bespectacled woman in the black dress who could have been Ainsley, the perky Republican from The West Wing, looks at me and waxes apologetic.
"I am sorry," she says as the last of the camera crews whiz by. "But he is not talking to print. Only talking to television."
Pens may no longer be as mighty as the camera, but apparently they make Ashcroft and his guardians squeamish.
I protest and try to follow TV.
This time around the little Secret Service agent is not so fun. He orders me escorted away from the scene.
And this in the only museum dedicated to our national principles. In the city where an irascible weekly newspaper editor helped create a nation with his press.
Walking out of the NCC, I steam.
And quickly realize that, more than anything he said in his brief speech to hundreds of law-enforcement personnel -- police chiefs, DAs, AGs, brass-and-line cops, most duded up in their Good Humor man finery -- Ashcroft's print ban speaks volumes as he tries to get the country to swallow his load of bile.
It is very instructive to watch Ainsley and her crew try to redecorate the National Constitution Center podium that Ashcroft will use in about an hour.
The center's logo, Velcroed to the podium, is in the way of the AG's message. So they peel it off and try for about a half hour to come up with a suitable way of maximizing the impact of the blue placard emblazoned with the URL for the Patriot Act website -- www.lifeandliberty.gov.
Some put the placard atop the podium. But that would block Ashcroft.
Others try working with the center's logo, eventually abandoning it in favor of the placard.
That momentous decision made, I stroll out into the museum to find a law enforcement-type's opinion.
Any discussion of the Patriot Act, "is overshadowed, frankly, by the two events that happened yesterday," says District Attorney Lynne Abraham, referring to the truck bomb that exploded outside the U.N. compound in Baghdad and the bus bomb in Jerusalem. "I think many, many Americans look at those images -- and visitors too -- and they are saying, åWe are frightened, we'd better do something about terrorism, we don't want to have our children on those buses.' So I think a bombing like that has a negative impact on most people who might not agree with or like the Patriot Act. It plays into the opposite hands. I think these two bombings are going to have a great benefit to those people who think the Patriot Act is good."
Abraham is quick to point out that she is taking no position, either way, on the Patriot Act.
A few minutes later, Ashcroft has plenty to say about his position. He argues that, given the status quo, the government needs to employ the same kinds of law enforcement techniques against terrorists that it uses against mobsters.
He downplays concerns about diminished liberties by pointing out that law enforcement has checked up on people's library habits and business records before and that the people should trust our government to do the right thing.
Tell that to the little Secret Service agent and the other folks who didn't want the attorney general bothered by a print reporter.
To be honest, when he ordered me off the premises, I was not just steamed, I was flabbergasted.
Surely, these people understand irony? Perhaps they just don't care.
When I get back to my office, I reach out to some journalists I respect to see if they share my sense of outrage or can offer any advice about what to do.
"I think it sucks, but if he wants to talk to TV, there's not much we can do," Nick Fox, a New York Times national editor, responds via e-mail. "The president does that; I can't recall the AG doing it."
Jim Naughton, president of the venerable Poynter Institute, says he is also not amused.
"I'm not sure Poynter has (or should have) a policy on attorneys general acting more like generals than attorneys," he writes. "But I can't imagine anyone here thinking an employee of the public's should be barring any journalist from a press conference. If it had been an interview conducted by one of the networks you might legitimately have been excluded. But if it's a press conference that would seem to be open to the press. Duh."
I will probably never know if anyone at the Justice Department thinks it wrong to bar a journalist from talking to the AG at the National Constitution Center, because my requests for comment went unanswered.
Which figures.
The Patriot Act allows the feds to listen into calls.
It doesn't say anything about returning them.
accesswater2030@yahoo.com 5:26 AM
Manipulating facts
August 26, 2003
Manipulating facts
BOURBONNAIS -- Following the coverage of the debate over Bush's misleading of the American people regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD), has led me to search for more facts. One could come to the conclusion that the media, the "liberal" press are making "much ado about nothing,'' as Bush apparently mistakenly included a reference in his State of the Union address to a report that was known at the time to be false. Further research into the misleading information from Bush reveals that the deceptions about WMD are extensive and I believe show a pattern of deliberate manipulation of the facts. Here is a small sample of published statements by Bush regarding Iraq and WMD:
On Sept. 7, 2002, Bush cited a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which he said proved that the Iraqis were on the brink of developing nuclear weapons. "I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied, finally denies access, a report came out of the Atomic -- the IAEA -- that they were six months away from developing a weapon," he said, "I don't know what more evidence we need." The IAEA did issue a report in 1998, what it said was, "Based on all credible information to date, the IAEA has found no indication of Iraq having achieved its program goal of producing nuclear weapons or of Iraq having retained a physical capability for the production of weapon-useable nuclear material or having clandestinely obtained such material."
Responding to the Bush speech, IAEA chief spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said, "There's never been a report like that issued from this agency."
In his Sept. 12, 2002 address to the United Nations, Bush spoke ominously of Iraq's "continued appetite" for nuclear bombs, pointing to the regime's purchase of thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes, which he said were "used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons." In fact, the IAEA said in a January 2003 assessment, the size of the tubes made them ill-suited for uranium enrichment, but they were identical to tubes that Iraq had used previously to make conventional artillery rockets.
In an Oct. 7, 2002 speech to the nation, Bush warned that Iraq has a growing fleet of unmanned aircraft that could be used "for missions targeting the United States." Actually, the aircraft lacked the range to reach the United States.
This brief listing of misinformation by Bush can lead to only one of two conclusions; either the Bush administration is incredibly inept and naive, or there is a deliberate pattern of lies and deceit. Either conclusion is grave in its consequences for U.S. Citizens and indeed the rest of the world.
Phillip R. Crouch
accesswater2030@yahoo.com 5:24 AM
SF Gate www.sfgate.com Return to regular view
Halliburton's Iraq contracts exceed $1.7 billion
Company was formerly headed by Dick Cheney
Michael Dobbs, Washington Post
Thursday, August 28, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/08/28/MN97396.DTL
Washington -- Halliburton, the company formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney,
has won contracts worth more than $1.7 billion out of Operation Iraqi Freedom and stands to make hundreds of millions more dollars under a no-bid contract awarded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, according to newly available documents.
The size and scope of the government contracts awarded to Halliburton in connection with the war in Iraq are significantly greater than previously disclosed and demonstrate the U.S. military's increasing reliance on for- profit corporations to run its logistical operations. Independent experts estimate that up to one-third of the monthly $3.9 billion cost of keeping U.S. troops in Iraq is going to independent contractors.
The Halliburton contracts exceed even those won by San Francisco's Bechtel Group. The engineering firm was originally awarded an 18-month, $680 million contract for reconstruction work -- a figure U.S. officials in Baghdad have decided to boost by $350 million, the Wall Street Journal reported today.
Services performed by Halliburton, through its Brown and Root subsidiary, include building and managing military bases, logistical support for the 1,200 intelligence officers hunting for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, delivering mail and producing millions of hot meals. Often dressed in Army fatigues with civilian patches on their shoulders, Halliburton employees and contract personnel have become an integral part of Army life in Iraq.
Spreadsheets drawn up by the Army Joint Munitions Command show that about $1 billion had been allocated to Brown and Root Services through mid-August for contracts associated with Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Pentagon's name for the U.S.-led war and occupation. In addition, the company has earned about $705 million for an initial round of oil field rehabilitation work for the Army Corps of Engineers, a corps spokesman said.
Specific work orders assigned to the Halliburton subsidiary under Operation Iraqi Freedom include $142 million for base camp operations in Kuwait, $170 million for logistical support for the Iraqi reconstruction effort and $28 million for the construction of enemy prisoner of war camps, the Army spreadsheet shows. The company was also allocated $39 million for building and operating U.S. base camps in Jordan, the existence of which the Pentagon never publicly acknowledged.
Over the past decade, Halliburton, a Houston-based company that originally made its name servicing pipelines and oil wells, has positioned itself to take advantage of an increasing trend by the federal government to contract out many of its support operations overseas. It has emerged as the biggest single government contractor in Iraq, followed by such companies as Bechtel and DynCorp. of Virginia, which is training the new Iraqi police force.
The government said the practice had been spurred by cutbacks in the military budget and a string of wars since the end of the Cold War that have placed a enormous demand on the armed forces.
But according to Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, and other critics, the Iraq war and occupation have provided a handful of companies with good political connections, particularly Halliburton, with unprecedented money- making opportunities.
"The amount of money (earned by Halliburton) is quite staggering, far more than we were originally led to believe," Waxman said. "This is clearly a trend under this administration, and it concerns me because often the privatization of government services ends up costing the taxpayers more money rather than less."
Wendy Hall, a Halliburton spokeswoman, declined to discuss the details of the company's operations in Iraq, or confirm or deny estimates of the amounts the company has earned from its contracting work on behalf of the military. In an e-mail message, however, she said that suggestions of war profiteering were "an affront to all hard-working, honorable Halliburton employees."
Hall added that military contracts were awarded "not by politicians but by government civil servants, under strict guidelines."
In addition to its Iraq contracts, Brown and Root has also earned $183 million from Operation Enduring Freedom, the military name for the war on terrorism and combat operations in Afghanistan, according to the Army's numbers.
Waxman's interest in Halliburton was ignited by a routine Army Corps of Engineers announcement in March reporting that the company had been awarded a no-bid contract, with a $7 billion limit, for putting out fires at Iraqi oil wells. Corps spokesmen justified the lack of competition on the grounds that the operation was part of a classified war plan, and the Army did not have time to secure competitive bids for the work.
Brown and Root's revenue from Operation Iraqi Freedom is already rivaling its earnings from the Balkans and is a major factor in increasing the value of Halliburton shares by 50 percent over the past year, according to industry analysts. The company reported a net profit of $26 million in the second quarter of this year, in contrast to a $498 million loss in the same period last year.
Waxman aides said they had been told by the General Accounting Office that Brown and Root was likely to earn "several hundred million more dollars" from the no-bid Army Corps of Engineers contract to rehabilitate Iraqi oil fields. Waxman, the ranking minority member on the House Government Reform Committee, had asked the GAO to investigate the corps' decision not to bid out the contract.
In addition to the Army contracts, Halliburton has also profited from other government-related work in Iraq and the war on terrorism and has a $300 million jumbo contract with the Navy. Pentagon officials said the increasing reliance on contractors was inevitable given the multiple demands on the military, particularly since Sept. 11, 2001. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is a champion of "outsourcing," writing in the Post in May that "more than 300, 000 uniformed personnel" were doing jobs that civilians could do.
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback
Page A - 16
accesswater2030@yahoo.com 5:21 AM
How FOXNews, Owned by Rupert Murdoch and Managed by Republican Operative Roger Ailes, Tries to Trivialize The Deaths of Our American Soldiers
Plus, A BuzzFlash Reader Proves Brit Hume is Dead Wrong
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
From Brit Hume's War Time "Grapevine" on FOXNews [LINK]:
California Roughly Same Size As Iraq
Two hundred and seventy seven U.S. soldiers have now died in Iraq, which means that, statistically speaking, U.S. soldiers have less of a chance of dying from all causes in Iraq than citizens have of being murdered in California...which is roughly the same geographical size. The most recent statistics indicate California has more than 2,300 homicides each year, which means about 6.6 murders each day. Meanwhile, U.S. troops have been in Iraq for 160 days, which means they are incurring about 1.7, including illness and accidents, each day.
This, by the way, is straight from the Pentagon and proves that FOXNews is just a megaphone for the administration. A few weeks back, Rumsfeld used a similarly thoughtless comparison, but just not with California.
Brit Hume was an apologist for Bush the Elder, playing tennis with the administration back then. Can you see the collar around his neck, with the leash being held by the White House?
The right wing shills don't give a damn about our soldiers dying. That's just the bottom line. They just want to protect their power base and their careers, at the cost of our young men and women in Iraq.
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
* * *
I'd Rather Be in California
A BuzzFlash Reader Commentary
LETS DO SOME CALCULATIONS
Reshaping the dialogue to ask the real question -- Which is safer, a soldier fearing combat death or death from an accident in Iraq or a person fearing homocide in California?
A:
6.6 average daily murders in California with 38,000,000 people at risk.
(6.6/38,000,000 = probability is 0.0000002)
B:
1.7 average DAILY military related deaths in Iraq with 150,000 solders at risk (1.7/150,000 = probability is 0.00001)
C:
RELATIVE RISK = RISK IN IRAQ / RISK IN CALIFORNIA
= 67.5 (when done on a calculator)
A SOLDIER IN IRAQ IS 66 TIMES MORE LIKELY TO BE KILLED IN COMBAT OR BY ACCIDENT THAN A PERSON KILLED BY HOMICIDE IN CALIFORNIA.
OR
IF YOU ARE COMPARING DEATH IN IRAQ TO MURDER IN CALIFORNIA, CALIFORNIA IS 68 TIMES SAFER.
Lets send Brit Hume to Iraq, in any military uniform.
Also, now you see why FOX News is technically correct and unfair and unbalanced in saying that most of American voted for Bush in 2000 -- this is true if you are counting acreage or square miles (red versus blue on the map) and not people.
Have a great day,
Harry Piotrowski
Oak Park
accesswater2030@yahoo.com 5:19 AM
Greg Palast answers "Was the Iraq War a Bush Cartel Effort to Divert Attention from Saudi Arabia, the Home and Chief Financier of bin Laden?"
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
Why is Greg Palast the person whom we have most frequently interviewed on BuzzFlash.com?
Well, here’s a quote from today’s conversation:
"Our President said in his speech in March that when we go into Iraq, we are going there because Saddam Hussein has harbored, trained and funded terrorists, including those connected to al-Qaeda. If we are going to attack a nation and occupy it because of a connection to al-Qaeda, which never appeared, then what are we doing with Saudi Arabia? They are effectively occupying us financially. We have become a financial colony of the petro-fanatics."
-- Greg Palast
Greg doesn't pull any punches!
Well, it’s become a topic of increasing speculation: Is the Bush Cartel war on Iraq a diversion from having the American press and people demand answers about the Saudi financial support of al-Qaeda – and the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers on September 11th were Saudis, as well as bin Laden? Do the 28 Bush administration censored pages from the Congressional 9/11 report reveal a much broader Saudi royal family involvement in financing charities linked to terrorist groups? Why have so many connections between the Saudi family and terrorists – as well as the large number of Saudis in leadership position in terrorist groups been swept under the rug by the Bush administration?
All good questions indeed. They are particularly relevant as we post this interview with Palast, because the Saudi Foreign Minister is on a visit to America today. Who did he meet with first? Papa Bush yesterday. Who is he meeting with second? Dick Cheney today. You see the Saudi royal family knows who is REALLY running the American government. [LINK]
On July 29th, Prince Saud el-Faisal made an "emergency" visit to Bush the Junior to discuss the 28 censored pages allegedly concerning Saudi financing of charitable organizations that give money to terrorists. As Joe Conason commented on that Crawford ranch tete-a-tete [LINK]:
So regardless of any claims to the contrary, it seems prudent to remember that the White House and the House of Saud are likewise best served by keeping all the sensitive files locked away. Both houses would be unwise to risk speaking candidly about each other now -- a caution that applies with special emphasis when the residents of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue bear the name of Bush….
The U.S. government knows many unflattering stories about the Saudi rulers. Unfortunately, they know many and perhaps worse about ours. The preference for silence and secrecy is understandably mutual.
In the next two weeks, we will be posting an interview with Robert Baer, author of "Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude." We will further explore the Bush Cartel’s cover-up of the Saudi connection to terrorism at that time –- and the inter-relationship between the Bush Cartel financial empire and the Saudis.
Interestingly enough, as we post this interview, the Pentagon has reported that most U.S. Forces have been withdrawn from Saudi Arabia. "The Pentagon has withdrawn most of its forces from the strategic Mideast nation of Saudi Arabia, ending a decade-long buildup started after the first war against Iraq's Saddam Hussein," according to an Associated Press story. [LINK]
What does this mean? As we discuss in the interview with Palast, it means that Bush has met one of bin Laden's key demands of the U.S. Was Iraq invaded, in part, to comply with bin Laden's demand and take the heat off of Saudi Arabia? After all, the Pentagon has said that the bases are no longer necessary because they will build ones in Iraq. Think about it. Was the invasion of Iraq a back-door cover-up for meeting one of Osama's key demands and seizing additional oil reserves for American and British companies? Think about it.
This is BuzzFlash’s sixth interview with Greg Palast.
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BUZZFLASH: You were the first to break the story about how the Bush administration helped members of the Saudi royal family evade questions from the United States by facilitating their rapid departure from this country after 9/11. And you’ve also followed up on the Saudi relationship with the Bush family, their relationship with terrorists, and how Saudi Arabia has basically managed to stay below the radar screen in terms of any involvement with 9/11 -– either on behalf of members of the family or the government. Given your background, what is your reaction to, and what do you think was in, the 28 pages from the Congressional report that the Bush administration would not allow to be released to the public?
First of all, I haven't been successful in exposing what happened. That is, I’ve only put out the reports of the Saudi connection to al-Qaeda at the top of the BBC Nightly News, going out worldwide. But it’s bounced off the electronic Berlin Wall of America. I first broadcast my investigative report for BBC on Nov. 9, 2001. In fact, I just did a new broadcast, an hour-long special for BBC this past month, which included the topic. You can unlock the women and children because you will not see it in America. You are safe in your homes. So I’ve been unable to overcome the disinformation campaign.
BUZZFLASH: But, you do have this material on your Web site, gregpalast.com.
PALAST: Yes, and more is coming. It’s in "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy," the new U.S. edition. We have a document that kind of grew legs and walked out of the FBI’s Washington office, which indicates that FBI agents wanted to investigate two members of the bin Laden family in America for their association with what the FBI called a suspected terrorist organization. They weren't allowed to until Sept. 13, 2001 a kind of unfortunate delay, one might say.
Now, I should say, of course, that the FBI’s idea of a suspected terrorist organization probably includes BuzzFlash. On the other hand, let’s look at these guys that the FBI wanted to investigate -- the group’s called WAMY (World Assembly of Muslim Youth). The BBC has learned that one of their operatives was the conduit from delivering Osama bin Laden’s Valentine tapes to Al Jazerra TV. And this is a group that has recruited jihadists to take on the war against the infidels.
That’s just one of the connections. Now it gets a little bit deeper. It turns out that in 1999 and 2000, Bill Clinton sent two delegations to Saudi Arabia -- this I just reported on BBC -- quietly saying: Here’s a list of royal family members and others around the royals who are giving money to al-Qaeda fronts and people who are trying to kill us. Clinton said, "Knock it off."
Clinton basically got, you know, a fake Lewinsky from the Saudis, but no satisfaction. The Saudi’s response was to hire Vernon Jordan to keep Clinton at bay.
Bush W. comes in -- and the demands on the Saudis come to a dead halt. Further, Bush W. disbands the intelligence unit tracking the Saudi money connection to al-Qaeda. And third, and ugliest, is that Bush –- in particular, his ambassador Barbie Bodine -– pulled the visas of the FBI al-Qaeda investigation team in Yemen, so they’d have to go home. I mean, our own embassy pulled the visas of our own FBI investigators, headed by agent John O’Neill, who was in charge of al-Qaeda prosecutions for the Justice Department.
BUZZFLASH: And he’s become a sort of a revered figure who was trying to get the FBI and the Bush administration to be more aggressive against terrorists, and left the FBI in disgust and became head of Security at the World Trade Center, and ironically was killed in the attack.
PALAST: Yeah, and he had some unprintable words to say about Ambassador Bodine.
One thing I mentioned in the book I’ve learned more about since: In the title chapter of "Best Democracy Money Can Buy," I mention that there’s a meeting in Paris between Saudi billionaires, big-shot international arms dealers, and the al-Qaeda financial arm. This information we have from two very good sources -- one of the intelligence agencies of Europe and from someone who had sent a representative to the meeting.
In this meeting, the Saudis agreed to basically pay off al-Qaeda. It was kind of a shake-down operation of the sheiks. Osama was running his little John Gotti protection racket. "You give me money, I don't blow up your yachts in the Mediterranean; I stay out of Saudi Arabia."
The problem with this is that there was not enough follow up by US intelligence. Clinton started following up, but again, it died. Clinton first let it go. But once the embassies were attacked, he changed his mind and decided he had to go after al-Qaeda. But Bush was not interested. Now why? Why was the FBI agency not permitted to go after the bin Laden family in the U.S.? Why was there no aggressive follow-up in investigating those giving money to al-Qaeda in that meeting? Now again, they weren't giving it willingly, but money is money. You have to follow the money to know what’s happening. In this case, they used the money not only to create some bloody trouble in Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, but some of the money was used for flying lessons in America for people who had no intention of landing.
Why weren't they under intense scrutiny? According to those who knew who was at the meeting, and records of the hotel in Paris, some names come up -– names such as Sheik Bahksh, who certainly isn't a household word in America, but is one very rich Saudi who also happens to be the guy whose money miraculously, mysteriously and out of the sky saved a Texas oil company called Harken, which was George W.’s company. We also, of course, know that there are many other connections between wealthy Saudis and the Bush family, and their retainers.
We know that Arbusto Oil was backed, for example, by James Bath, who was the sole financial representative of the bin Laden family in America at the time. In other words, directly or indirectly, the money for Arbusto came from the bin Laden family, in particular, Salim bin Laden who died in an air crash in Texas in 1988.
Much discussed, of course, is the Carlyle-bin Laden connection. Carlyle had both junior and senior Bush on its payroll. Senior Bush is still on its payroll. But there’s actually many more connections through Carlyle and the Saudis: Carlyle was used as an investment bank, even though it’s not an investment bank. It was used as an investment bank to buy a tenth of Citibank’s preferred stock for the Saudi royal family. And one suspects the only reason why someone would designate a company that is not an investment bank as an investment bank has to do with the tens of millions of dollars in fees for such a transaction, which are just kind of automatic.
Maybe the Saudis had the idea that they would like George Bush and James Baker, Frank Carlucci and the rest of that crew to suddenly have a few million showered upon them. The average partner of Carlyle has $25 million in equity. And the amount they put up, in most cases, is about zero. So it’s the ultimate money for nothing.
So we are left with the embarrassing fact that, at that 1996 meeting, the people that the intelligence agency should have been investigating were, of course, the same people who were investing in the Bush family enterprises.
The Bush family advisors expressed great discomfort with Bill Clinton’s intense effort to get Osama bin Laden -– you know, firing cruise missiles at his camp. As I mentioned, first Clinton hesitated, but after the embassy bombings, he decided that this bin Laden guy had to go. Here’s a good quote for you: Robert Oakley, who was the master of counter terrorism in the Reagan State Department, said, and I paraphrase, "The only major criticism I have in regard to Bill Clinton is his obsession with Osama."
So the Republicans and the Bush crew were very uncomfortable with Bill Clinton’s, you know, almost fanatic desire to get Osama bin Laden. And I guess that’s why we consider George Bush such a great heroic fighter of terrorism -– we’re not going after the guys who funded terrorism. Instead, we’re going after everyone named Ahmed in the Midwest. All the guys who are writing the checks are getting their pictures taken with the President, his arm around them, like they’re going to the prom together.
BUZZFLASH: What do you make of Princess Haifa al-Faisal, the wife of the Saudi ambassador to the United States, who sent a check to one of the roommates of two of the terrorists? The U.S. just dismissed that as, "Oh, she had no knowledge of any potential connection, and wasn't funding terrorism," which she may not have been, but then again, she might have been.
PALAST: There are two different things there. One statement is the truth; one statement’s a lie. Did Prince Bandar bin Sultan’s wife know that the money she was giving to some berzerker in southern California would be used to take down the World Trade Center? I don't think so. That would certainly have knocked her off the cocktail party circuit. Does she know that she gave money to a berzerker who likes to knock down buildings? Yeah, absolutely, because the way that they work is they give money to fronts that they know are basically jihadist fronts, except that they may not realize, or they may prefer not to ask exactly where the next target is.
Another story I have in the book is about how our embassy, then in Jedda, Saudi Arabia, issued visas to characters that a lawyer there at the State Department tells me he knew were fake visas, given to guys who were going to study terrorism –- or what we call "counter-terrorism" in the U.S.A. –- and that they were working for Osama bin Laden.
BUZZFLASH: What years are you talking about?
PALAST: You asked the right question: What years? This is in the late ‘80s when Osama was our boy. One of the problems is that we bring these guys in. They learn the techniques of what we call counter-terrorism, which is terrorism. These guys then went back to Afghanistan. The idea was that they were going to fight the Russians. We forgot that sometimes Frankensteins turn around and devour their creators, as we saw with the Butcher of Baghdad.
One of my favorite lines of the war was Condoleezza Rice saying it was immoral to leave that butcher in Baghdad for the last 12 years. I’m thinking, wait a minute, lady –- he’s been there 24 years. The first 12 years when he was our butcher, where we got our chops. In fact, one of the other stories that I broke in the book, and for BBC, was that I do know that Saddam was trying to build an atomic bomb, because he got $7 billion from the Saudis to build an "Islamic" bomb.
BUZZFLASH: When was this? What time frame?
PALAST: Again, that’s the question. This was in the 1980s, before the "axis of evil," when Saddam was our butcher and he was fighting Iran, which, at that time, was the "epicenter of evil." Now he never completed his bomb program, and the money was moved over to that berzerker maniac killer-dictator, Musharraf of Pakistan. And we’re doing it again. We have cuddled up to Osama to get his help in Afghanistan. We cuddled up to Saddam to get his help against Iran. Now we cuddled up to Musharraf to buy his temporary affections against the Taliban, who, don't forget, he put into power in Afghanistan.
BUZZFLASH: By the way, are you saying "beserker"–B-E-S-E-R-K-E-R?
PALAST: Well, I tend to write B-E-R-Z-E-R-K-E-R–Berzerker.
BUZZFLASH: So it’s a Greg Palast word.
PALAST: No. "Berzerker" was coined by the Firesign Theatre. A term much needed today.
BUZZFLASH: OK. Given all that background, what do you speculate was in those 28 pages of documents censored by the White House that they would not allow Congress to reveal to the public, even though the Republican chair of the committee thought that they should be released?
PALAST: Well, I’m pretty clear, for example, that the organization that I identified, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, which is based out of Riyadh, was mentioned. It’s the royal charity operation. Again, see, it’s really complex, which is why we get to the money from the Saudi ambassador’s wife.
BUZZFLASH: Do you think that was in the 28 pages?
PALAST: Her money? It’s not clear. We do know that it’s money to charities that would be at the heart of this discussion, because the charities are at the heart of the funding operation. So here’s the question: At what point did they know that the money for, say, World Assembly of Muslim Youth took jihadists to Bosnia? Their staff people carried tapes for Osama Bin Laden. They have propaganda films supporting suicide bombings and other acts of terror against civilian population. They run a recruiting and training camp for this in Florida. I’m not talking Uzbekistan. I’m talking Florida.
BUZZFLASH: Are they still running it?
PALAST: They’re still here. And they are not, by the way, on the list of prohibited terrorist organizations, despite complaints from many quarters and experts, and their odd history. On the other hand, some of their money really does go for things like supporting, for example, soccer leagues for 13-year-old Muslim kids.
BUZZFLASH: Well, isn't that true of many of the charities that were put on the list –- that they were sort of dual use charities?
PALAST: Yes, they are. In all cases, they are dual use.
BUZZFLASH: Hamas is a dual use organization.
PALAST: Hamas provides the example. Everything from bombs to Band-Aids, they are a full-service operation. That’s one of the issues, and it becomes one of the constant covers. Think about this: Look how quickly our government was able to come up with a list of fronts supporting terrorism. It was within days of the Sept. 11 attacks, which means that they had the list beforehand.
BUZZFLASH: So what’s your thinking behind why the Bush administration wouldn't release the 28 pages?
PALAST: It doesn't have a damn thing to do with protecting "intelligence" sources.
In fact, let’s face it, we’ve been amazingly reliant on "stupidity" sources. It has to do with protecting the Bush family and their retainers from unbelievable embarrassment and political questions about the money poisoning of our foreign policy and the oil contamination of our intelligence apparatus. What you won't find in there, by the way, is anything which will suggest that Bush knew about the Sept. 11 attack in advance. That evidence just does not exist.
BUZZFLASH: Shortly after the Congressional report was released, minus these 28 censored or formally known as redacted pages, Saudi Foreign Minister Saudal-Faisal came to Washington to meet with Bush and it seemed a bit of a stunt. The Prince came and claimed that the Saudi name was being besmirched and he was going to plead with Bush to release these pages. And after the meeting, Bush said no, we can't , we’re staying strong against the Saudi request, and we’re not going to release these papers because it would compromise national security. To BuzzFlash, this seemed like a total setup. The Saudis had no interest in having the papers released.
PALAST: Well, you know how open the Saudi government is with requisite information. I have a better idea for the Prince: Why doesn't he release their information on royal connections to funding of these terrorist fronts? Why don't we get the World Assembly of Muslim Youth files from them? The head of state in Saudi Arabia told WAMY that, "there is no such thing as terrorism in defense of religion." What is the signal there? So I’d like to know what information they have. We do know, for example, that a defector from the Saudi diplomatic corps came over with literally thousands of pages of documentation which the FBI refuses to even look at because they did not want to disturb our Saudi brothers. So why doesn't Saudi Arabia release its records of who’s connected to such terrorist so-called charity fronts like Muwafaq ("Blessed Relief")? I don't need the Saudis to tell us to open our records. I need the Saudis to open their records.
BUZZFLASH: Do you think it was a serious request, or that the White House basically had the State Department negotiate in advance the Saudis would request this, knowing that Bush was going to say no?
PALAST: I would say that the only people who would buy the scheme that the Saudis want information released about their connections to terrorism just fell off a watermelon truck. As far as I’m concerned, let’s open up the file cabinets at the Saudi embassy and let’s start opening up where the money for WAMY goes, from Muwafaq and for the International Islamic Relief Organization. We also have one of the perpetrators of the Khobar Towers bombing [Saudi Arabia, 1996], rotting in a Saudi prison, who Bill Clinton, at the request of his dear friend Vernon Jordan, extradited to Saudi Arabia. He’s a huge source of information on al-Qaeda operations. Let’s bring him back for questioning. Let’s bring over some of the characters who are sitting in Saudi Arabia that our Congressmen need for questioning.
Now other than the grandstanding bullshit –- and don't forget that the 28 pages that are themselves redacted are sanitized and wink-and-nod stuff -- the guy to look for who is slowly dripping out little tidbits of info is Bob Graham of Florida. His words are almost exactly the same as Cynthia McKinney’s when she was derided as a nut case for accusing George Bush of knowing about Sept. 11 attack in advance. That’s not what she said. She said he had a lot of information about money going to terrorists in advance and ignored it, and he impeded the actions of our security agencies, and she thought it ought to be investigated.
Well, Bob Graham has said almost exactly Cynthia McKinney’s words, but his last name is Graham, which happens to be the same family that owns the Washington Post, so he’s not a lunatic. He’s allowed to say these things. Watch Bob Graham very carefully. Graham is a conservative Democrat, but he is fighting mad about the cover-up.
BUZZFLASH: Well, isn't he limited as to what he can say? Because otherwise the Bush administration would say he violated national security?
PALAST: You got it. That’s a big problem he’s facing, which is why he turns purple when you mention this issue –- because he’s constrained from saying what he really knows. But he gives a number of hints. In addition, some unhappy Republicans are holding hearings. And they’re saying we don't know what’s in those 28 pages, but we’re holding hearings on such organizations as WAMY. Basically a lot of those people know what’s in those pages, and they’re holding hearings on the matters in those pages.
BUZZFLASH: Okay, so we don't know exactly what’s in there, but there are enough hints. And what you have basically said in your body of work, if we could summarize it here in terms of implications, and what Graham seems to be implying at point, is that the Bush administration has made decisions that ultimately are potentially to the detriment of America’s security, for reasons having more to do with the interests of the Bush family than with the safety of America.
PALAST: There’s no question that they made dumb-ass decisions. No question that these decisions benefited and protected the Bush family from political embarrassment, and, of course, helped them maintain their continuing pipeline of cash into their businesses and financial coffers. What we can't say is: Was there a quid pro quo absolute connection? Did money from Sheik Abdullah Bakhsh to Harken Oil block or create a problem for intelligence agencies trying to investigate?
BUZZFLASH: I recently read a commentary that brought up the speculation that you’re making right now –- that the Bush family may be more worried about what the Saudis could reveal about them than what they can reveal about the Saudis, and that, in away, there’s a quid pro quo here. The Bush administration won't make the public really aware of the Saudis’ relationship to terrorism through financing and the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, and it was basically an operation by Saudis.
PALAST: --funded by Saudis. That’s very important, because don't forget our President said in his speech in March that when we go into Iraq, we are going there because Saddam Hussein has harbored, trained and funded terrorists, including those connected to al-Qaeda. If we are going to attack a nation and occupy it because of a connection to al-Qaeda, which never appeared, then what are we doing with Saudi Arabia? They are effectively occupying us financially. We have become a financial colony of the petro-fanatics.
BUZZFLASH: In the lead-up to Iraq, the Bush administration, primarily through spokespeople, went out of its way to divert attention from the Saudi relationship and to project it on Iraq by claiming Iraq had ties to al-Qaeda. The majority of Americans thought and perhaps still think that the majority of hijackers were Iraqi. And on top of that, [Paul] Wolfowitz, about a month ago or so, admitted in an interview that one of the reasons practically for declaring the war with Iraq a success was it would allow the U.S. to move its Air Force stations from Saudi Arabia to Iraq, which was one of the two main requests of--
PALAST: --Mr. bin Laden.
BUZZFLASH: Mr. bin Laden. So Wolfowitz basically conceded that we conducted a war in part to make a concession to Osama bin Laden and take the heat off of the Saudi Arabia.
PALAST: One of the most stunning things is that while our President did his little Top-Gun, Tom-Cruise number, landing on the ship and running around in that flight suit with his parachute clips around his crotch so he looked like the first chimp in space, at the same time he’s announcing we’re pulling our troops out of Saudi Arabia. And this is stunning – - America doesn't pull its troops out of anywhere. The people of Okinawa have been asking us to leave there for a half a century. World War II is over. We never, ever leave a nation.
The only time we have done it in American history is at the request of Osama bin Laden. In other words, our President got down on his knees and said: Oh, dear Osama, we will do whatever the hell you want.
There is a problem with bargaining with terrorists in that manner. The President can run around in a chimp space suit all he wants, but when he gave into terrorist demands, their answer was pretty clear. They bombed Riyadh a week later. And the reason they did that is that Bush tried to bargain with them indirectly a little bit. Bush said we’re pulling out all our troops, but we’re leaving 500 U.S. specialized troops in Saudi Arabia. And in effect, these 500 troops becomes a Praetorian Guard to protect the royal family.
BUZZFLASH: And so you’re saying the bombing was basically al-Qaeda saying, no, it’s all out.
PALAST: Yeah, they’re saying "that ain't the deal, George." You start bargaining with terrorists, and their method of negotiation is to blow people to pieces. And this is why you don't do it. This is the problem of having a draft dodger as Commander in Chief. Bill Clinton didn't dodge the draft; he didn't want to go and he didn't sign up. George W. used his daddy to get out of the draft. So the problem with chickenhawks is that they like to pretend at war, but they don't have the guts to carry it out. And Bill Clinton was ready to go -– he basically declared war on Osama Bin Laden. And Bush had failed to do that. That’s a real serious business.
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
accesswater2030@yahoo.com 5:17 AM
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