Posts Tagged ‘SYRIA’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on September 13, 2016 at 12:30 am
Colonel Brandt: “I wonder what we’ll do after we lose the war.”
Captain Kiesel: “Prepare for the next one.”
–-“The Cross of Iron,” film by Sam Peckinpah
On September 12, 2001, President George W. Bush attended a meeting of the National Security Council.
“Why shouldn’t we go against Iraq, not just Al-Qaeda?” demanded Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense.
Vice President Dick Cheney enthusiastically agreed.
Secretary of State Colin Powell then pointed out there was absolutely no evidence that Iraq had had anything to do with 9/11 or Al-Qaeda. And he added: “The American people want us to do something about Al-Qaeda”–not Iraq.
On November 21, 2001, only 10 weeks after 9/11, Bush told Rumsfeld: It’s time to turn to Iraq.
Liars Club: Condoleeza Rice, Dick Cheney, George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld
Bush and his war-hungry Cabinet officials knew that Americans demanded vengeance on AlQaeda’s mastermind, Osama bin Laden, and not Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. So they repeatedly fabricated “links” between the two:
- Saddam had worked hand-in-glove with Bin Laden to plan 9/11.
- Saddam was harboring and supporting Al-Qaeda throughout Iraq.
- Saddam, with help from Al-Qaeda, was scheming to build a nuclear bomb.
Yet as early as September 22, 2001, Bush had received a classified President’s Daily Brief intelligence report, which stated that there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to 9/11.
The report added that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al-Qaeda.
Even more important: Saddam had tried to monitor Al Qaeda through his intelligence service–because he saw Al-Qaeda and other theocratic radical Islamist organizations as a potential threat to his secular regime.
Bush administration officials repeatedly claimed that Iraq possessed huge quantities of chemical and biological weapons, in violation of UN resolutions. And they further claimed that US intelligence agencies had determined:
- the precise locations where these weapons were stored;
- the identities of those involved in their production; and
- the military orders issued by Saddam Hussein for their use in the event of war.
Among other lies stated as fact by members of the Bush administration:
- Iraq had sought uranium from Niger, in west Africa.
- Thousands of aluminum tubes imported by Iraq could be used in centrifuges to create enriched uranium.
- Iraq had up to 20 long-range Scud missiles, prohibited under UN sanctions.
- Iraq had massive stockpiles of chemical and biological agents, including nerve gas, anthrax and botulinum toxin.
- Saddam Hussein had issued chemical weapons to front-line troops who would use them when US forces crossed into Iraq.
Consider the following:
August 26, 2002: Cheney told the Veterans of Foreign Wars, “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, against our allies and against us.”
September 8, 2002: National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice said on CNN: ”There is certainly evidence that Al-Qaeda people have been in Iraq. There is certainly evidence that Saddam Hussein cavorts with terrorists.”
September 18, 2002: Rumsfeld told the House Armed Services Committee, “We do know that the Iraqi regime has chemical and biological weapons. His regime has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons–including VX, sarin, cyclosarin and mustard gas.”
October 7, 2002: Bush declared in a nationally televised speech in Cincinnati that Iraq “possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons.”
March 16, 2003: Cheney declared on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “We believe [Saddam Hussein] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.”
March 30, 2003: On ABC’s “This Week” program, 10 days into the war, Rumsfeld said: “We know where they [weapons of mass destruction] are.”
Bush never regretted his decision to invade Iraq, which occurred on March 20, 2003.
Even as American occupying forces repeatedly failed to turn up any evidence of “weapons of mass destruction” (WMDs), Bush and his minions claimed the invasion a good thing.
In fact, Bush–who hid out the Vietnam war in the Texas Air National Guard–even joked publicly about the absence of WMDs.
He did so at a White House Correspondents dinner on March 24, 2004–one year after he had started the war.
George W. Bush at the 2004 White House Correspondents’ dinner
To Bush, the non-existent WMDs were nothing more than the butt of a joke that night. While an overhead projector displayed photos of a puzzled-looking Bush searching around the Oval Office, Bush recited a comedy routine.
Click here: Bush laughs at no WMD in Iraq – YouTube
“Those weapons of mass destruction have gotta be somewhere,” Bush laughed, while a photo showed him poking around the corners in the Oval Office.
“Nope–no weapons over there! Maybe they’re under here,” he said, as a photo showed him looking under a desk.
Meanwhile, an assembly of wealthy, pampered men and women–the elite of America’s media and political classes–laughed heartily during Bush’s performance. It was a scene worthy of the court of the ancient Caesars, complete with royal flunkies.
Ultimately, the war that Bush had deliberately provoked
- Took the lives of 4,484 Americans.
- Cost the United States Treasury at least $2 trillion.
- Created a Middle East power vacumn.
- Allowed Iran–Iraq’s arch enemy–to eagerly fill it.
- Killed at least 655,000 Iraqis.
- Bush retired from office with a lavish pension and full Secret Service protection.
- He wrote his memoirs and was paid $7 for the first 1.5 million copies.
- Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice retired to private business, wrote their own memoirs, and lived in comfort as respected elder statesmen.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on September 12, 2016 at 12:23 am
September 11, 2016, marks the 15th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack on United States soil. Inevitably, this is a time to remember all those whose lives were so cruelly snuffed out.
But it should also be a time to remember those who made this atrocity inevitable–by refusing to acknowledge and address the impending threat from Al-Qaeda.
British historian Nigel Hamilton has chronicled their arrogance and indifference in his 2010 biography: American Caesars: Lives of the Presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush.
Hamilton noted that Richard Clarke, the national security advisor on terrorism, was certain that Osama bin Laden had arranged the [USS.] Cole bombing in Aden on October 12, 2000.
Richard Clarke
For months, Clarke tried to convince others in the Bush Administration that Bin Laden was plotting another attack against the United States–either abroad or at home.
But Clarke could not prevail against the know-it-all arrogance of such higher-ranking Bush officials as Vice President Dick Cheney; Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld; Rumsfeld’s deputy, Paul Wolfowitz; and National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice.
Rice initially refused to hold a cabinet-level meeting on the subject. Then she “insisted the matter be handled only by a more junior Deputy Principals meeting” in April, 2001, writes Hamilton.
Wolfowitz, the number-two man at the Department of Defense, said: “I don’t understand why we are beginning by talking about this one man, bin Laden.”
Even after Clarke outlined the threat posed by Al-Qaeda, Wolfowitz–whose real target was Saddam Hussein–said: “You give bin Laden too much credit.”
Wolfowitz insisted that bin Laden couldn’t carry out his terrorist acts without the aid of a state sponsor–namely, Iraq.
Wolfowitz, in fact, blamed Iraq for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Clarke was stunned, since there was absolutely no evidence of Iraqi involvement in this.
“Al-Qaeda plans major acts of terrorism against the United States,” Clarke warned his colleagues. He pointed out that, like Adolf Hitler, bin Laden had actually published his plans for future destruction.
Osama bin Laden
And he added: “Sometimes, as with Hitler in Mein Kampf, you have to believe that these people will actually do what they say they will do.”
Wolfowitz heatedly traded on his Jewish heritage to bring Clarke’s unwelcome arguments to a halt: “I resent any comparison between the Holocaust and this little terrorist in Afghanistan.”
Writing in outraged fury, Hamilton sums up Clarke’s agonizing frustrations:
- Bush’s senior advisors treated their colleagues who had served in the Clinton administration with contempt.
- President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz seemed content to ignore the danger signals of an impending al-Qaeda attack.
- This left only Secretary of State Colin Powell, his deputy Richard Armitage, Richard Clarke and a skeptical Treasury Secretary, Paul O’Neill, to wage “a lonely battle to waken a seemingly deranged new administration.”
Clarke alerted Federal Intelligence agencies that “Al-Qaeda is planning a major attack on us.” He asked the FBI and CIA to report to his office all they could learn about suspicious persons or activities at home and abroad.
Finally, at a meeting with Rice on September 4, 2001, Clarke challenged her to “picture yourself at a moment when in the very near future Al-Qaeda has killed hundreds of Americans, and imagine asking yourself what you wish then that you had already done.”
Seven days later, Al-Qaeda struck, and 3,000 Americans died horrifically–and needlessly.
Neither Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld nor Wolowitz ever admitted their negligence. Nor would any of them be brought to account.
Disgustingly, these were the same officials who, afterward, posed as the Nation’s saviors–and branded anyone who disagreed with them as a traitor, practices the Right continues to exploit to this day.
Only Richard Clarke–who had vainly argued for stepped-up security precautions and taking the fight to Al-Qaeda–gave that apology.
On March 24, 2004, Clarke testified at the public 9/11 Commission hearings. Addressing relatives of victims in the audience, he said: “Your government failed you, those entrusted with protecting you failed you, and I failed you.”
Yet even worse was to come.
On the evening after the September 11 attacks, Bush took Clarke aside during a meeting in the White House Situation Room:
“I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam [Hussein, the dictator of Iraq] did this. See if he’s linked in any way.”
Clarke was stunned: “But, Mr. President, Al-Qaeda did this.”
“I know, I know,” said Bush. “But see if Saddam was involved. I want to know.”
Hussein had not plotted the attack–and there was no evidence proving that he did. But the attack gave “W” the excuse he wanted to remove the man he blamed for the 1992 defeat of his father, President George H.W. Bush.
Bush believed that his father would have been re-elected if he had “gone all the way” into Baghdad during the 1991 Gulf War.
He would finish the job that his father had started but failed to compete.
On September 12, 2001, Bush attended a meeting of the National Security Council.
“Why shouldn’t we go against Iraq, not just Al-Qaeda?” demanded Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense.
Vice President Dick Cheney enthusiastically agreed.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on September 9, 2016 at 12:01 am
It’s that time of year again–yet another anniversary celebration of September 11, 2001.
The day when Islamic terrorists slammed two jetliners into the World Trade Center and a third into the Pentagon.
They would have crashed a fourth jetliner into the White House or Capitol Building except for the heroic resistance of passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93.
In the years immediately following 9/11, politicians of both parties used this anniversary to wave flags and make self-serving patriotic speeches.
This was especially true for officials of the administration of President George W. Bush–which, even as the rubble was being cleared at the Pentagon and World Trade Center, was preparing to use the attack as an excuse to topple Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
Hussein had not plotted 9/11, and there was no evidence that he did. But that didn’t matter to Bush and those planning the invasion and conquest of Iraq.
World Trade Center on September 11, 2001
So here it is, 15 years later, and, once again, politicians are using 9/11 as a prop to advance their careers.
Donald Trump, the Republican Presidential nominee, claims that only he can protect America from Al Qaeda, ISIS and any other Islamic terrorist groups. And if that means using nuclear weapons in the Middle East, so be it.
And Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for President, seeks to out-hawk Trump by promising to escalate the fight against ISIS and overthrow Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.
As on past commemorations of 9/11, those who died will be remembered by friends and relatives of those who knew and loved them.
Tribute to 9/11 World Trade Center Victims
It is in fact appropriate to remember the innocents who died on that day–and the heroism of the police and firefighters who died trying to save them.
But it’s equally important to remember those who made 9/11 not simply possible but inevitable.
And that does not mean only the 19 highjackers who turned those planes into fuel-bombs. It means the officials at the highest levels of the administration of President George W. Bush.
Officials who, to this day, have never been held accountable in any way for the resulting death and destruction.
And who have been allowed to blatantly lie that they “kept us safe” from terrorism.
Obviously, such an indictment is not going to be presented by TV commentators today–not even on such liberal networks as CNN and MSNBC. And most definitely not on the right-wing Fox network.
Fortunately, British historian Nigel Hamilton has dared to lay bare the facts of this disgrace. Hamilton is the author of several acclaimed political biographies, including JFK: Reckless Youth and Bill Clinton: Mastering the Presidency.
In 2007, he began research on his latest book: American Caesars: The Lives of the Presidents From Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush.
Nigel Hamilton
By Nigel Hamilton (Nigel Hamilton picture)
The inspiration for this came from a classic work of ancient biography: The Twelve Caesars, by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus–known as Suetonius.
Suetonius, a Roman citizen and historian, had chronicled the lives of the first twelve Caesars of imperial Rome: Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus and Domitian.
Hamilton wanted to examine post-World War II United States history as Suetonius had examined that of ancient Rome: Through the lives of the 12 “emperors” who had held the power of life and death over their fellow citizens–and those of other nations.
For Hamilton, the “greatest of American emperors, the Caesar Augustus of his time,” was Franklin D. Roosevelt, who led his country through the Great Depression and World War II.
His “”great successors” were Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy–who, in turn, contained the Soviet Union abroad and presided over sustained economic prosperity at home.
By contrast, “arguably the worst of all the American Caesars” was “George W. Bush, and his deputy, Dick Cheney, who willfully and recklessly destroyed so much of the moral basis of American leadership in the modern world.”
Among the most lethal of Bush’s offenses: The appointing of officials who refused to take seriously the threat posed by Al-Qaeda.
And this arrogance and indifference continued–right up to September 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center and Pentagon became targets for destruction.
Among the few administration officials who did take Al-Qaeda seriously was Richard Clarke, the chief counter-terrorism adviser on the National Security Council.
Clarke had been thus appointed in 1998 by President Bill Clinton. He continued in the same role under President Bush–but the position was no longer given cabinet-level access.
This put him at a severe disadvantage when dealing with other, higher-ranking Bush officials–such as Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld’s deputy, Paul Wolfowitz and National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice.
These turned out to be the very officials who refused to believe that Al-Qaeda posed a lethal threat to the United States.
“Indeed,” writes Hamilton, “in the entire first eight months of the Bush Presidency, Clarke was not permitted to brief President Bush a single time, despite mounting evidence of plans for a new al-Qaeda outrage.” [Italics added]
Nor did it help that, during his first eight months in office before September 11, Bush was on vacation, according to the Washington Post, 42% of the time.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 22, 2016 at 12:04 am
Americans are suckers for children.
Even if many of them might come wrapped in suicide vests.
On September 2, 2015, the body of a three-year old Syrian boy named Alan Kurdi washed ashore on a beach in Bodrum, Turkey.
He and his family had boarded a small rubber boat to reach Europe amid the carnage of the Syrian civil war. The boat capsized.
The resulting photo flashed around the world and triggered international demands by humanitarian organizations that the West “do something.”
Drowned Alan Kurdi lies on a Turkish beach
Only eight days later, on September 10, 2015, the Obama administration announced that it would take in at least 10,000 displaced Syrian refugees over the next year.
That was in addition to the 2,000 Islamic refugees the United States had already accepted.
Almost one year later–on August 17, 2016–another photo captured the world’s attention.
It depicted a five-year-old Syrian boy named Omran Daqneesh sitting in an ambulance. Covered head to toe in dust, his face bloodied, he seemed dazed. He had been pulled out of a building hit by an airstrike in Aleppo, Syria.
Once again, demands arose among liberal interventionists, especially in the United States: “We must do something.”
All of which overlooks the increasing threat posed to the United States by Islamic terrorism.
According to U.S. Census data, America legally welcomes about 100,000 Muslim immigrants each year. This represents the fastest growing segment of immigrants coming to the United States.
The Pew Research Center estimates there are 2.5 million Islamics in the United States. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) puts the figure at seven million.
The Troubling Math of Muslim Migration | National Review Online
Meanwhile, the FBI is being overwhelmed by the demands of countering Islamic terrorism against the United States.
On July 8, 2015, FBI director James Comey testified before Congress about the increasing burdens his agency faces in combating terrorism.
“We are stopping these things [Islamic terror plots] so far through tremendous hard work, the use of sources, the use of online undercovers.
“But it is incredibly difficult. I cannot see my [agency’s] stopping these [plots] indefinitely.”
The FBI has only 35,000 agents and analysts–against seven million potential suspects. And only a portion of those agents and analysts are charged with investigating terrorism.
And even children, for all their supposed innocence, are not to be ignored as potential weapons of Islamic terrorist organizations.
On August 20, a suicide bomber aged between 12 and 14 attacked a Kurdish wedding party in Gaziantep, Turkey, killing at least 51 people.
Preliminary evidence indicates that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was behind the attack.
Palestinian child suicide bomber
America may well become a similar target for child suicide bombers.
How did all of this come to be?
On March 15, 2011, protests broke out in Syria, with demonstrators demanding political reforms and the ouster of dictator Bashar al-Assad.
These protests, met with government repression, continued to grow into a wholesale civil war.
By April 23, 2016, the United Nations estimated that 400,000 Syrians had so far died in the conflict.
Put another way:
- More than 400,000 potential or actual Islamic terrorists will never again pose a threat to the United States or Western Europe.
- Additional thousands are certain to follow their example.
- And the United States cannot be held in any way responsible for it.
But Americans and Europeans have chosen to see these positives as negatives.
The United Nations refugee Agency, UNHCR, estimates that 366,402 refugees and migrants crossed the Mediterranean Sea to Europe in 2015.
And while the West has thrown open its doors to fleeing Syrians, the reaction of neighboring Islamic nations has been entirely different.
This was brutally but accurately depicted in a cartoon of wealthy Arab rulers looking on indifferently at the body of Alan Kurdi.
While European nations are being swamped by hundreds of thousands of these uninvited “guests,” the Arab world’s wealthiest nations are doing almost nothing for Syria’s refugees.
According to Amnesty International, the “six Gulf countries–Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain–have offered zero resettlement places to Syrian refugees.”
These nations are far closer to Syria than are Europe and the United States. And they contain some of the Arab world’s largest military budgets and its highest standards of living.
Note the contradiction: Democratic, non-Islamic countries are exposing themselves to increasing numbers of potential–if not actual–Islamic terrorists.
Meanwhile, the Arab world–awash in petrodollars and land–is closing its own doors to Syrian refugees
The Arab world’s wealthiest nations are doing next to nothing for Syria’s refugees – The Washington Post
* * * * *
During the 1980s, the United States waged a cold war against Islamic nations. Their acts of anti-American terrorism were seen as simply crimes, and not acts of war.
The September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center changed that. For the last 15 years, the United States military has actively fought Islamics in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. And now Syria.
To be admitting huge numbers of a population with which the United States is now waging all-out war is worse than stupid. It is a guarantee of national suicide.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 30, 2016 at 12:17 am
In the 1970 film, Patton, General George S. Patton is a man driven by his obsession to be the best field commander in the war–and to be recognized for it.
George C. Scott as George S. Patton
And he sees British General Bernard Montgomery–his equally egotistical rival–as a potential obstacle to that latter ambition.
So, in Algeria, he conjures up a plan that will sideline “Monty” while he, Patton, defeats the Germans–and bags the glory.
The trick lies in throwing a sumptuous dinner–in the middle of the African desert–for a visiting British general: Harold Alexander.
As Patton (George C. Scott, in an Oscar-winning performance) tells his aide: “I want to give a dinner for General Alexander. I want to get to him before Montgomery does. I want the finest food and the best wine available. Everything.”
The aide pulls off the dinner–where, indeed, “the finest food and the best wine” are on full display, along with attentive waiters and a candelabra.
So think about it:
- In the middle of the desert
- while American and British forces are forced to subsist on C-rations
- and are under repeated air attack by the Luftwaffe
- and tank attack by the Afrika Korps
a handful of ultra-pampered American and British military officers find the time–and luxuries–to throw themselves a fine party.
Now, fast-forward from Algeria in 1943 to Washington, D.C. in 2016.
Returning to Congress after their traditional summer recess, House Republicans planned to cut $23 billion in food stamps for the poor. This would include include ending waivers that allow some adults to get temporary assistance, while they are in school or training for a job.
The cuts could include drug tests of applicants and tougher work rules. As Republicans see it: There’s no point in “helping” the poor if you can’t humiliate them.
The food stamp program, now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, served more than 46 million Americans and cost $74 billion in 2015.
A single person is eligible for food stamps if his total monthly income is under $1,265 ($15,180 per year). A family of four is eligible if their total income is less than $2,584 per month ($31,008 per year).
Republicans claim the program is unbearably expensive at $74.1 billion a year.
Meanwhile, Republicans are eager to spend billions of dollars for another project: An unnecessary war with Syria.
One of these right-wingers is Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard–and one of the leading instigators of the 2003 war with Iraq.
Bill Kristol
He–like senior officials on the George W. Bush administration–falsely claimed that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and planned to use them against the United States.
Another Kristol lie: Hussein planned 9/11 with Osama bin Laden.
He has never apologized for either lie–or the resulting war that killed 4,487 American soldiers and wounded another 32,226.
In a September, 2013 column, Kristol called for a return to slaughter–not only in Syria but Iran as well:
“…Soon after voting to authorize the use of force against the Assad regime, Republicans might consider moving an authorization for the use of force against the Iranian nuclear weapons program.
“They can explain that Obama’s dithering in the case of Syria shows the utility of unequivocally giving him the authority to act early with respect to Iran.”
Former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice–who also helped lie the nation into the needless 2003 Iraq war–is another big promoter of “give war a chance:”
“My fellow Americans, we do not have a choice. We cannot be reluctant to lead–and one cannot lead from behind.”
Among Republican U.S. Senators calling for war are John McCain (Arizona) and Lindsey Graman (South Carolina), who issued a joint statement:
“Using stand-off weapons, without boots on the ground, and at minimal risk to our men and women in uniform, we can significantly degrade Assad’s air power and ballistic missile capabilities and help to establish and defend safe areas on the ground.
“In addition, we must begin a large-scale effort to train and equip moderate, vetted elements of the Syrian opposition with the game-changing weapons they need to shift the military balance against [Syrian dictator Bashar] Assad’s forces.”
Except that there are no “moderate, vetted elements” of the Syrian opposition. The opposition is just as murderous as the Assad regime–and eager to replace one dictator with another.
In addition: A major weapon for “degrading Assad’s air power” would be Tomahawk Cruise missiles. A single one of these costs $1,410,000.
Firing of a Tomahawk Cruise missile
A protracted missile strike would rain literally billions of dollars’ worth of American missiles on Syria.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon is spending about $27 million a week to maintain the increased U.S. Navy presence in the Mediterranean Sea and Middle East region to keep watch over Syria and be prepared to strike.
Navy officials say it costs about $25 million a week for the carrier group and $2 million a week for each destroyer.
Is there a lesson to be learned from all this?
Yes.
Powerful people–whether generals, politicians or the wealthy–will always find abundant money and resources available for projects they consider important.
It’s only when it comes to projects that other people actually need that the powerful will claim there is, unfortunately, a cash shortage.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 29, 2016 at 12:01 am
Even at the height of World War II, citizens of the United States could take comfort in the following:
- Nazi Germany had a capitol–Berlin–and a single, all-powerful leader–Adolf Hitler. Once Berlin was occupied and Hitler dead or captured, the war would be over.
- And, for all their ferocity, German soldiers were easy to recognize: They wore gray uniforms, spoke German and waved flags emblazoned with swastikas or imperial eagles.
Wehrmacht soldiers marching through conquered France
Today, Western nations under attack by Islamic “holy warriors” face none of those advantages. Islam has no single capitol city–or leader.
Nor do Islam’s jihadist legions wear uniforms. Many of them don’t speak Arabic or wear clothing associated with Arabs, such as flowing robes and headdresses.
More ominously, millions of Islam’s potential “warriors” live within the very Western nations they despise. They can get all the instruction and inspiration they need to wreck havoc simply by going to the Internet.
Or, if they have the money, by traveling overseas to such terrorist-recruiting centers as Syria or Afghanistan.
And yet, faced with an unprecedented threat to their security, many Western leaders refuse to publicly acknowledge this fundamental truth:
Even if the West isn’t at war with Islam, Islam is at war with the West.
Leaders like President Barack Obama, who insisted, at a White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism in February, 2015: “We are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam.”
David Cameron
And leaders like British Prime Minister David Cameron, who said on August 29, 2014: “Islam is a religion observed peacefully by over a billion people. Islamist extremism is a poisonous ideology observed by a minority.”
On June 20, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a censored version of gunman Omar Mateen’s call to a 9-1-1 operator. While taking a break from slaughtering 49 defenseless men and women and wounding another 53, Mateen pledged his loyalty to ISIS.
Fortunately for the United States, the Bureau hasn’t always been so craven.
Ronald Kessler, author of the 2011 book, The Secrets of the FBI, quotes Arthur M. Cummings, the Bureau’s then-executive assistant director for national security:
“I had this discussion with the director of a very prominent Muslim organization here in [Washington] D.C. And he said, ‘Why are you guys always looking at the Muslim community?’”
“I can name the homegrown cells, all of whom are Muslim, all of whom were seeking to kill Americans,” replied Cummings. “It’s not the Irish, it’s not the French, it’s not the Catholics, it’s not the Protestants. It’s the Muslims.”
Occasionally, Muslims will condemn Al Qaeda. But “rarely do we have them coming to us and saying, ‘There are three guys in the community that we’re very concerned about,’” said Cummings.
“They don’t want anyone to know they have extremists in their community. Well, beautiful. Except do you read the newspapers? Everybody already knows it. The horse has left the barn.”
Cummings has no use for such Politically Correct terms as “man-caused disasters” to refer to terrorism. Nor does he shy away from terms such as “jihadists” or “Islamists.”
“Of course Islamists dominate the terrorism of today,” he says bluntly.
In May, 2014, Steven Emerson, a nationally recognized expert on terrorism, posted an ad in The New York Times, warning about the dangers of PC-imposed censorship. And he posed the question: “How can we win the war against radical Islam if we can’t even name the enemy?”
He has a point–and a highly legitimate one.
Imagine the United States fighting World War II–and President Franklin Roosevelt banning the use of “fascist” in referring to Nazi Germany or “imperialist” in describing Imperial Japan.
Imagine CNN-like coverage of the Nazi extermination camps, with their piles of rotting corpses and smoking gas ovens, while a commentator reminds us that “Nazism is an ideology of peace.”
Then consider these Islamic terrorist outrages of our own time:
- The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., which snuffed out the lives of 3,000 Americans.
- The 2004 bombing of Madrid’s commuter train system.
- The attack on the London subway in 2005.
- The killing of 13 U.S. Army personnel at Fort Hood, Texas, by a Muslim army major in 2009.
- The bombing of the Boston Marathon in 2013.
- The kidnapping of 300 Nigerian schoolgirls by Boko Haram in 2014.
- The slaughter of 12 people at a Paris satirical magazine that had published cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed in 2015.
- The murders of more than 100 people in ISIS attacks across Paris in 2015.
- A series of deadly terrorist attacks in Brussels, killing 31 and injuring 270 in 2016.
In every one of these attacks, the perpetrators openly announced that their actions had been motivated by their Islamic beliefs.
In his groundbreaking book, The Clash of Civilizations (1996) Samuel Huntington, the noted political scientist at Harvard University, noted:
“The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.”
The West may not be at war with Islam–as countless Western politicians repeatedly assert. But Islamics have no qualms about declaring that they are at war with the West.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 28, 2016 at 12:06 am
On June 12, Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old former security guard, slaughtered 49 men and women and injured 53 more inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
Mateen was then shot to death by Orlando police after a three-hour standoff.
Omar Mateen
It was the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman in American history–and the deadliest terrorist attack in the United States since the Al Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001.
The massacre was widely decried as an act of Islamic terrorism. But many others insisted it was simply a hate crime.
Among those opting for the latter: Officials at the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
This despite the fact that:
- Mateen, born in New York in 1986 to Afghan parents, praised the highjackers who carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks that slaughtered 3,000 Americans. At the time, he was attending an alternative high school for problem students.
- He also said that Osama bin Laden was his uncle who had taught him how to shoot an AK-47–this while it was not known that bin Laden had masterminded the attacks.
- During the night of the Orlando massacre, Mateen stopped killing long enough to call 9-1-1, take responsibility for the attack and pledge his allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
In releasing a transcript of the 9-1-1 call, the Justice Department claimed that it would withhold some details to avoid putting the victims through any more pain–and to not further the propaganda efforts of ISIS.
The Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice
“What we’re not going to do is further proclaim this man’s pledges of allegiance to terrorist groups and further his propaganda,” Attorney General Loretta Lynch told moderator Chuck Todd on the June 19 edition of Meet the Press.
“We will hear him talk about some of these things, but we are not going to hear him make his assertions of allegiance.”
On the morning of June 20, the FBI released the following edited version of the transcript:
MATEEN: Praise be to God, and prayers as well as peace be upon the prophet of God [in Arabic]. I let you know, I’m in Orlando and I did the shootings.
OPERATOR: What’s your name?
MATEEN: My name is I pledge of allegiance to [omitted].
OPERATOR: OK, what’s your name?
MATEEN: I pledge allegiance to [omitted] may God protect him [in Arabic], on behalf of [omitted].
A firestorm of protest erupted from Republican Congressional leaders, most notably Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Since Mateen’s pledge to ISIS had become widely known, they demanded, what was the point of censoring it in the transcript of his phone call?
“We know the shooter was a radical Islamist extremist inspired by ISIS,” Ryan said in a statement. “We also know he intentionally targeted the LGBT community. The administration should release the full, unredacted transcript so the public is clear-eyed about who did this, and why.”
An additional reason for the fury aimed at the Justice Department: On June 12, ISIS had claimed responsibility for the massacre:
“The armed attack that targeted a gay night club in the city of Orlando in the American state of Florida which left over 100 people dead or injured was carried out by an Islamic State fighter.”
Flag of ISIS
Finally, buckling to pressure, on the afternoon of June 20, the FBI released the full, uncensored transcript of Mateen’s call to 9-1-1:
OPERATOR: Emergency 911, this is being recorded.
MATEEN: In the name of God the Merciful, the beneficent [Arabic]
OPERATOR: What?
MATEEN: Praise be to God, and prayers as well as peace be upon the prophet of God [Arabic]. I wanna let you know, I’m in Orlando and I did the shootings.
OPERATOR: What’s your name?
MATEEN: My name is I pledge of allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of the Islamic State.
OPERATOR: OK, what’s your name?
MATEEN: I pledge allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi may God protect him [Arabic], on behalf of the Islamic State.
OPERATOR: Alright, where are you at?
MATEEN: In Orlando.
OPERATOR: Where in Orlando?
[End of call]
J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building
Neither the FBI nor the Justice Department apologized for having censored the transcript.
“Unfortunately, the unreleased portions of the transcript that named the terrorist organizations and leaders have caused an unnecessary distraction from the hard work that the FBI and our law enforcement partners have been doing to investigate this heinous crime,” both the DOJ and FBI said in a statement.
Since September 11, 2001, Americans have been actively at war with Islamic nations such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
Yet high-ranking officials in the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama have repeatedly and loudly denied that America is at war with Islam.
Even if this is true, a large portion of the Islamic world is at war with the United States.
Only Donald Trump–alone of the 2016 Presidential candidates–has dared to say what the vast majority of Americans know: America is at war with Islamics who openly proclaim that their actions are motivated by their Islamic religious beliefs.
And it’s a major reason why Trump is about to receive the Republican nomination for President.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on June 15, 2016 at 12:02 am
Starting in 2016, traveling by air in the United States became more complicated.
In 2005, Congress passed the Real ID Act as a counter-terrorism measure. Its goal was to set security standards for government-issued IDs.
The Act started to be introduced in late 2013. Now in the last phase of its implementation, its enforcers have decided that some states haven’t complied with its requirements.
As a result, driver’s licenses from those states will no longer suffice to pass through airport security. And that includes domestic flights as well as international ones.
Those states: New York, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Louisiana and American Samoa.
The reason: Licenses issued by those states don’t contain enough identifying information to pass muster with the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA).
So how are residents of these states supposed to cope? The Federal Government is advising them to get a passport.
Your old New York driver’s license may make it harder for you to fly in 2016 | syracuse.com
And this, in turn, carries an illogic all its own. As one soon-to-be affected New York traveler outlined:
“To get a passport I’ll first need to get a certified copy of my birth certifcate.
“And to get a copy of my birth certificate I need only to submit a copy of my driver’s license. A copy, no face-to-face, is-that-really you?
“So a New York driver’s license isn’t good enough for flying but it is good enough to get a birth certificate, whch gets me a passport, which allows me to fly.”
Got all that?
Sample state ID card that’s acceptable under the Real ID Act
And while TSA is beefing up security at the back door, the Obama administration is casting aside the front door.
On September 10, 2015, the administration announced that it would accept at least 10,000 displaced Syrians over the next year.
That is in addition to the 2,000 Islamic refugees the United States has already accepted.
According to U.S. Census data, America welcomes about 100,000 Muslim immigrants legally each year. This represents the fastest growing segment of immigrants coming to the United States.
The Pew Research Center estimates there are 2.5 million Islamics in the United States. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) puts the figure at seven million.
The Troubling Math of Muslim Migration | National Review Online
And while all this is happening, the FBI is being overwhelmed by the demands of countering Islamic terrorism against the United States.
On July 8, 2015, FBI director James Comey testified before Congress about the increasing burdens his agency faces in combating terrorism.
“We are stopping these things [Islamic terror plots] so far through tremendous hard work, the use of sources, the use of online undercovers.
“But it is incredibly difficult. I cannot see my stopping these indefinitely.”
Consider the math: The FBI has only 35,000 agents and analysts–against seven million potential suspects.
And only a portion of those agents and analysts are charged with investigating terrorism.
How did all of this come to be?
To start at the beginning: On March 15, 2011, protests broke out in Syria, with demonstrators demanding political reforms and the ouster of dictator Bashar al-Assad.
These protests, met with government repression, continued to grow into a wholesale civil war. Since then, more than 470,000 Syrians people have been killed.
Put another way: More than 470,000 potential or actual Islamic terrorists will never again pose a threat to the United States or Western Europe.
But European nations and the United States have chosen to see this truth as a negative, not a positive.
More than a million Islamic migrants and refugees crossed into Europe in 2015.
And all it took to make this happen was a photo that’s been seen the world over: A photo of a three-year old Syrian boy named Alan Kurdi, lying dead on a Turkish beach.
A cartoon parody of this picture showed a group of wealthy Arab rulers looking on indifferently at Kurdi’s body.
It also highlighted a Politically Incorrect truth:
While European nations are being swamped by hundreds of thousands of these uninvited “guests,” the Arab world’s wealthiest nations are doing almost nothing for Syria’s refugees.
According to Amnesty International, the “six Gulf countries–Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain–have offered zero resettlement places to Syrian refugees.”
These nations are far closer to Syria than are Europe and the United States. And they contain some of the Arab world’s largest military budgets and its highest standards of living.
Note the contradiction: Democratic, non-Islamic countries are exposing themselves to increasing numbers of potential–if not actual–Islamic terrorists. Meanwhile, the Arab world has closed its own doors to Syrian refugees
The Arab world’s wealthiest nations are doing next to nothing for Syria’s refugees – The Washington Post
* * * * *
During the 1980s, the United States government considered Islamic acts of anti-American terrorism as simply crimes, and not acts of war.
The September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center changed that. For almost 15 years, the United States military has actively fought Islamics in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya.
To be admitting huge numbers of a population with which the United States is now waging all-out war is worse than stupid. It is a guarantee of national suicide.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on May 3, 2016 at 12:08 am
Most of America’s 11 to 20 million illegal aliens come from neighboring Hispanic countries. Which means that as soon as they are deported, most of them cross the Mexican border again.
Case in point: Francisco Sanchez, now accused of shooting a woman on a San Francisco pier. With a history of seven felony convictions, he’s been deported to his native Mexico five times, most recently in 2009.
Click here: Report: Most Illegal Immigrants Come From Mexico – US News
More importantly: The governments of those Central and South American countries use the United States as a dumping ground–of those citizens who might demand reforms in their political and economic institutions.
Among the approaches that could strike a meaningful blow against illegal immigration is one that might well be called “The Zanti Option.”
Viewers of the 1960s sci-fi series,The Outer Limits, will vividly recall its classic 1963 episode, “The Zanti Misfits.”
In this, soldiers at an American Army base in a California ghost town nervously await first-contact with an alien race that has landed a space ship nearby.
The soldiers are warned to steer clear of the ship, and they do. But then an escaped convict (Bruce Dern, in an early role) happens upon the scene–-and the ship.
The Zantis, enraged, emerge–and soon the soldiers at the military base find themselves under attack.
A “Zanti”
The soldiers desperately fight back–-with flamethrowers, machineguns or just rifle butts. Finally the soldiers win, wiping out the Zantis.
But now the base–-and probably America–-faces a wholesale invasion from the planet Zanti to avenge the deaths of their comrades.
So the soldiers wait anxiously for their next transmission from Zanti–-which soon arrives.
To their surprise–-and relief–-it’s a message of thanks: “We will not retaliate. We never intended to. We knew that you could not live with such aliens in your midst.
“It was always our intention that you destroy them…We are incapable of executing our own species, but you are not. You are practiced executioners. We thank you.”
A future Republican President could deal with the tsunami of illegal aliens by launching what might be called “Operation Zanti.”
Rather than deport them to nearby countries–from which they would easily sneak back into the United States–-the Federal Government could ship them off to more distant lands.
Like Afghanistan. Or Iraq. Or Syria.
It’s unlikely they will sneak back across the American border from the Middle East.
Such a policy change would:
- Close the Mexican revolving door, which keeps illegal immigration flowing; and
- Send an unmistakably blunt message to other would-be illegals: “The same fate awaits you.”
Although this might seem a far-fetched proposal, it could be easily carried out by the United States Air Force.
According to this agency’s website: “The C-5 Galaxy is one of the largest aircraft in the world and the largest airlifter in the Air Force inventory.
“The C-5 has a greater capacity than any other airlifter. It [can] carry 36 standard pallets and 81 troops simultaneously.
C-5 transport plane
“[It can also carry] any of the Army’s air-transportable combat equipment, including such bulky items as the 74-ton mobile scissors bridge.
“It can also carry outsize and oversize cargo over intercontinental ranges and can take off or land in relatively short distances.”
Click here: C-5 A/B/C Galaxy and C-5M Super Galaxy > U.S. Air Force > Fact Sheet Display
Instead of stuffing these planes with cargo, they could be stuffed wall-to-wall with illegal aliens.
The United States Air Force has a proud history of successfully providing America’s soldiers–-and allies–-with the supplies they need.
From June 24, 1948 to May 12, 1949, only the Berlin Airlift stood between German citizens and starvation.
The Soviet Union had blocked the railway, road, and canal access to the Berlin sectors under allied control. Their goal: Force the western powers to allow the Soviet zone to supply Berlin with food, fuel, and aid.
This would have given the Soviets control over the entire city.
Air forces from the United States, England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa flew over 200,000 flights in one year, dropping more than 4,700 tons of necessities daily to the besiged Berliners.
The success of the Berlin Airlift raised American prestige and embarrassed the Soviets, who lifted the blockade.
The Berlin Airlift
A similar triumph came during the Yom Kippur War after Egypt and Syria attacked Israel without warning on October 6, 1973.
A Watergate-embattled President Richard Nixon ordered “Operation Nickel Grass” to deliver urgently-needed weapons and supplies to Israel.
For 32 days, the Air Force shipped 22,325 tons of ammunition, artillery, tanks and other supplies. These proved invaluable in saving Israel from destruction.
So the mass deportation of millions of illegal aliens lies within America’s technological capability. Whether any American President would be willing to give that order is another matter.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on May 2, 2016 at 11:22 am
Except in times of war, no nation has ever been invaded by so many alien residents as the United States.
Throughout 2014, tens of thousands of unaccompanied Hispanic minors–all of them uninvited–illegally entered the United States through the Mexican border.
They are backed up by an estimated 11 to 20 million illegal aliens now living more or less openly throughout the country.
Just as sheer numbers of Mexicans overwhelmed the defenders of the Alamo, this similar Hispanic tidal wave has overwhelmed immigration officials.
Mexicans storming the Alamo – March 6, 1836
It’s also forced the Obama administration to declare a humanitarian crisis and open three emergency shelters on military bases in California, Oklahoma and Texas.
The invasion is taking its greatest toll in cities that already have large numbers of immigrants–such as New York and Los Angeles.
Newly-arrived alien children and their relatives are flooding into schools and hospitals that are supposedly intended for American citizens. No sooner do they cross the border than they aggressively seek legal aid in converting their illegal arrival into a lifelong legal stay.
Mexicans storming the United States border – today
For years, Republicans and Democrats have clashed over the subject of illegal immigration. Each side has taken what seems to be an opposing position.
Democrats favor wholesale grants of unearned citizenship to the estimated 11 to 20 million illegal aliens who brazenly violated the law when they sneaked across American borders.
And Republicams favor beefing up security against future waves of such invaders.
But the brutal truth is that neither Democrats nor Republicans truly want to end these invasions. Nor do they want to deport the millions of illegals who have already taken up residence here.
Each party has its own reasons for this.
Democrats, primarily governed by liberal ideology, believe it’s racist for whites to demand control of their own national borders.
They ignore the blunt reality that Mexico–America’s largest source of illegal aliens–strictly enforces control of its own borders.
Mexico has a single, streamlined law that ensures that foreign visitors and immigrants are:
- In the country legally;
- Have the means to sustain themselves economically;
- Not destined to be burdens on society;
- Of economic and social benefit to society;
- Of good character and have no criminal records; and
- Contribute to the general well-being of the nation.
The law also ensures that:
- Immigration authorities have a record of each foreign visitor;
- Foreign visitors do not violate their visa status;
- Foreign visitors are banned from interfering in the country’s internal politics;
- Foreign visitors who enter under false pretenses are imprisoned or deported;
- Foreign visitors violating the terms of their entry are imprisoned or deported;
- Those who aid in illegal immigration are sent to prison.
But there’s another reason why Democrats are keen to grant automatic citizenship to millions of illegal aliens: They see them as a huge constituency.
They don’t care that these illegals’ defiance of American immigration laws:
- Floods the United States with millions of poor non-citizens who don’t speak English;
- Overwhelms the public school system with children–who also don’t speak English–who require bilingual education;
- Overwhelms the public healthcare system–especially emergency rooms–with illegal aliens. As a result, urgently-needed medical care is often denied to American citizens.
Click here: Cost of Unlawful Immigrants to the U.S. Taxpayers
But Republicans are equally guilty of refusing to take a hard stand against deporting those whose presence is a blatant affront to America’s immigration laws.
There are two reasons for this:
- Like Democrats, Republicans want to recruit them as knee-jerk voters.
- Republicans want them as low-skilled, low-wage fodder for their major campaign contributors–such as corporate farms and retail outlets like Wal-Mart.
Unlike Democrats, however, Republicans like to feign outrage at the presence of so many illegal aliens within their midst.
It’s the Republican base that’s demanding an end to illegal immigration.
Those masses of alienated and angry whites who find themselves living in a nation that’s increasingly alien from themselves.
A nation where “Press One for English” is now the norm when contacting government agencies. A nation where illegal aliens can obtain free medical care that’s denied to native-born citizens.
American citizens protesting illegal immigration
It was enraged citizens like this who, on June 10, 2014, cost Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor his bid for re-election. Cantor’s 14-year political career crashed on the fury of Tea Party opposition to illegal immigration.
Still, the question remains: What should be done about the tens of thousands of illegals now swarming into the United States?
Democrats hasten to defend President Barack Obama’s refusal to deport en masse these violators. They claim he is the victim of unpredictable circumstances.
But they don’t offer any solution that involves wholesale deportations of such invaders. It’s as if they believe this onrushing tidal wave will somehow recede on its own momentum.
Meanwhile, Republicans essentially take the position of Mitt Romney, their failed 2012 Presidential candidate: Self-deportation.
This way, the party doesn’t have to actually come out in favor of forcibly returning unwanted foreigners to their respective countries.
But there is a way the United States could deal with this unceasing tsunami of foreign invasions. It might be called “The Zanti Misfits” solution.
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SALUTING THE AMERICANS WHO GAVE US 9/11: PART THREE (END)
In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on September 13, 2016 at 12:30 amColonel Brandt: “I wonder what we’ll do after we lose the war.”
Captain Kiesel: “Prepare for the next one.”
–-“The Cross of Iron,” film by Sam Peckinpah
On September 12, 2001, President George W. Bush attended a meeting of the National Security Council.
“Why shouldn’t we go against Iraq, not just Al-Qaeda?” demanded Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense.
Vice President Dick Cheney enthusiastically agreed.
Secretary of State Colin Powell then pointed out there was absolutely no evidence that Iraq had had anything to do with 9/11 or Al-Qaeda. And he added: “The American people want us to do something about Al-Qaeda”–not Iraq.
On November 21, 2001, only 10 weeks after 9/11, Bush told Rumsfeld: It’s time to turn to Iraq.
Liars Club: Condoleeza Rice, Dick Cheney, George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld
Bush and his war-hungry Cabinet officials knew that Americans demanded vengeance on AlQaeda’s mastermind, Osama bin Laden, and not Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. So they repeatedly fabricated “links” between the two:
Yet as early as September 22, 2001, Bush had received a classified President’s Daily Brief intelligence report, which stated that there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to 9/11.
The report added that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al-Qaeda.
Even more important: Saddam had tried to monitor Al Qaeda through his intelligence service–because he saw Al-Qaeda and other theocratic radical Islamist organizations as a potential threat to his secular regime.
Bush administration officials repeatedly claimed that Iraq possessed huge quantities of chemical and biological weapons, in violation of UN resolutions. And they further claimed that US intelligence agencies had determined:
Among other lies stated as fact by members of the Bush administration:
Consider the following:
August 26, 2002: Cheney told the Veterans of Foreign Wars, “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, against our allies and against us.”
September 8, 2002: National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice said on CNN: ”There is certainly evidence that Al-Qaeda people have been in Iraq. There is certainly evidence that Saddam Hussein cavorts with terrorists.”
September 18, 2002: Rumsfeld told the House Armed Services Committee, “We do know that the Iraqi regime has chemical and biological weapons. His regime has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons–including VX, sarin, cyclosarin and mustard gas.”
October 7, 2002: Bush declared in a nationally televised speech in Cincinnati that Iraq “possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons.”
March 16, 2003: Cheney declared on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “We believe [Saddam Hussein] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.”
March 30, 2003: On ABC’s “This Week” program, 10 days into the war, Rumsfeld said: “We know where they [weapons of mass destruction] are.”
Bush never regretted his decision to invade Iraq, which occurred on March 20, 2003.
Even as American occupying forces repeatedly failed to turn up any evidence of “weapons of mass destruction” (WMDs), Bush and his minions claimed the invasion a good thing.
In fact, Bush–who hid out the Vietnam war in the Texas Air National Guard–even joked publicly about the absence of WMDs.
He did so at a White House Correspondents dinner on March 24, 2004–one year after he had started the war.
George W. Bush at the 2004 White House Correspondents’ dinner
To Bush, the non-existent WMDs were nothing more than the butt of a joke that night. While an overhead projector displayed photos of a puzzled-looking Bush searching around the Oval Office, Bush recited a comedy routine.
Click here: Bush laughs at no WMD in Iraq – YouTube
“Those weapons of mass destruction have gotta be somewhere,” Bush laughed, while a photo showed him poking around the corners in the Oval Office.
“Nope–no weapons over there! Maybe they’re under here,” he said, as a photo showed him looking under a desk.
Meanwhile, an assembly of wealthy, pampered men and women–the elite of America’s media and political classes–laughed heartily during Bush’s performance. It was a scene worthy of the court of the ancient Caesars, complete with royal flunkies.
Ultimately, the war that Bush had deliberately provoked
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