Posts Tagged ‘TERRORISM’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on May 23, 2019 at 12:07 am
“If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again!”
So threatened President Donald Trump in a tweet on May 19.
Meanwhile, a debate raged among American military and Intelligence officials about the latest intentions of the Iranian government.
Some officials believed that Iran or its militias might be planning to attack American military bases in the Middle East. Others believed that Iran might be acting defensively to counter possible American aggression.
“I just don’t want them to have nuclear weapons, and they can’t be threatening us,” Trump said that same evening in an interview with Fox News.
Donald Trump
“And with all of everything that’s going on, and I’m not one that believes—you know, I’m not somebody that wants to go into war, because war hurts economies, war kills people most importantly—by far most importantly.”
That same day, Major-General Hossein Salami, the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps, responded: “Iran is not looking for any type of war, but it is fully prepared to defend itself.”
The Trump administration has aggressively tried to effect “regime change” in Iran. Its methods have included diplomatic pressure, economic sanctions, hawkish rhetoric and increasing the number of American soldiers and weaponry deployed in the Middle East.
If this seems familiar to those Americans with a sense of historical perspective, there is good reason for it.
These are precisely the methods used by the George W. Bush administration in its build-up to invading Iraq in March, 2003.
Even as the rubble was being cleared at the Pentagon and World Trade Center, President George W. Bush was preparing to use the attack as an excuse to topple Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
World Trade Center on September 11, 2001
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.
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.
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.
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In History, Law, Military, Politics, Social commentary on May 17, 2019 at 12:06 am
Right-wingers, who support many of the same policies of Adolf Hitler, often attack liberals as Nazis.
This was especially true when President Barack Obama held office.
But in 2016 a genuine authority on Fascism came forward to assess the front-runner for the Republican Presidential nomination.
“If Donald Trump become[s] the next president of the United States it would be a complete disaster. I think he is acting like another Hitler by inciting racism.”
So said Eva Schloss, the stepsister of Holocaust victim Anne Frank. As a survivor of Auschwitz, Schloss knows something about Nazis.
Eva Schloss
Then 86, Schloss met Anne in Amsterdam as a fellow refugee. Both their families had taken refuge there after fleeing Nazi Germany.
Anne Frank spent four years hiding in an attic and keeping a diary. But in 1944 she was discovered by the Nazis and sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
She was 15 when she died there of typhus in March, 1945. After the war, Eva Schloss’ mother, Fritzi, married Otto Frank, Anne’s father.
Anne Frank
Eva was detained at the same time as Anne and sent to Auschwitz. She survived when the camp was liberated on January 27,1945.
In a January 27, 2016 essay for Newsweek, Schloss warned of dire consequences if Donald Trump became President:
“During his U.S. presidential campaign he has suggested the ‘total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,’ as well as pledging to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico to keep illegal immigrants out.”
She was 11 when her family immigrated to Belgium after Hitler forcibly annexed Austria in 1938.
“We were treated as if we had come from the moon. I felt as if I wasn’t wanted and that I was different to everybody. It is even harder for today’s Syrian refugees who have a very different culture….
“I am very upset that today again so many countries are closing their borders,” said Schloss, who lives in London. “Fewer people would have died in the Holocaust if the world had accepted more Jewish refugees.”
And on February 18, 2016, Pope Francis also waded into the 2016 Presidential race with his own assessment of Trump.
During a six-day trip to Mexico, a reporter asked the Pontiff: What did he think of Trump’s campaign pledge to build a wall along the entire length of the U.S.-Mexican border and expel millions of illegal aliens now living in the United States?
“A person who only thinks about building walls, wherever they are, and not in building bridges, is not Christian,” replied the Pope. “This is not the gospel.”
Pope Francis
Francis said he would “give the benefit of the doubt” to Trump because he had not heard Trump’s border plans independently.
But he added: “I say only that this man is not a Christian if he has said things like that.”
Trump, a Presbyterian, responded minutes later: “For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful.”
Trump has repeatedly accused President Barack Obama—a self-described Christian—as a secret Muslim.
Donald Trump
On February 21, 2016, for example, he tweeted: “I wonder if President Obama would have attended the funeral of [Supreme Court] Justice [Antonin] Scalia if it were held in a mosque.”
Obama had paid tribute to Scalia at the Supreme Court on the day prior to the funeral. He declined to attend the service because his heavy security detail might disrupt the ceremony.
“I am proud to be a Christian,” added Trump, “and as president I will not allow Christianity to be consistently attacked and weakened.”
Nor did he stop there: “If and when the Vatican is attacked by the ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria], which as everyone knows is ISIS’s ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president.
“ISIS would have been eradicated, unlike what is happening now with our all talk, no action politicians.”
Trump thus implied that the Pope’s future security depended on the United States generally—and on Trump in particular.
And he ignored the fact that, since September, 2014, the United States Air Force had been bombing ISIS convoys in Iraq and Syria.
On Easter Sunday, 2019—more than two years into Trump’s Presidency—ISIS bombed a series of churches and hotels in Sri Lanka, killing at least 321 people.
Trump has long been critical of the Pope’s stand on immigration.
As the Pope undertook his trip to Mexico, Trump told Fox Business Network that he didn’t think Francis understood “the danger of the open border we have with Mexico.
“I think Mexico got him to do it because they want to keep the border just the way it is,” he said. “They’re making a fortune, and we’re losing.”
A Vatican spokesman replied: “The pope always talks about migration problems all around the world, of the duties we have to solve these problems in a humane manner, of hosting those who come from other countries in search of a life of dignity and peace.”
For millions of Jews and Christians, the election of 2016 has turned into a referendum: Am I serving the Lord—or Satan?
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 16, 2019 at 12:02 am
On August 11-12, 2017, white supremacists from across the country gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia, for a “Unite the Right” rally. Among the organizations represented:
- The Ku Klux Klan (KKK);
- The Alt-Knights;
- The “Militia Movement”;
- The American Nazi Party;
- The Confederate League of the South.
They marched through the streets carrying flaming tiki torches, screaming racial epithets and frightening the local citizenry. Echoing Nazis in 1930s Germany, they shouted: “Blood and Soil!” and “Jews will not replace us!”
On August 13, a Nazi sympathizer rammed his car into a group of counter-protesters, killing a woman and injuring 19 other demonstrators.
President Donald Trump stated: “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.”
But he refused to specifically denounce the Fascistic demonstrators.
Donald Trump
White supremacists were elated.
“He didn’t attack us. He just said the nation should come together. Nothing specific against us,” wrote Andrew Anglin, founder of the neo-Nazi website, The Daily Stormer.
“No condemnation at all. When asked to condemn, he just walked out of the room. Really, really good. God bless him.”
Another Trump admirer: Former Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard David Duke.
“Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa,” Duke tweeted after the news conference.
Fascistic groups make up a pivotal constituency for Trump. Without their support, he might not have become President. He can’t afford to alienate them.
But more than 50 years ago, another President was willing to declare all-out war against white supremacists: Lyndon B. Johnson.
The reason: The murders of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi—Michael “Mickey” Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney—-on June 21, 1964.
Poster for missing civil rights workers
Johnson ordered the FBI to find the missing activists.
Two hundred FBI agents interrogated 480 Klansmen. After the civil rights workers’ bodies were found buried near a dam, Johnson gave FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover a direct order: “I want you to have the same kind of intelligence [on the Klan] that you have on the communists.”
For decades, Hoover had refused to tackle white hate groups. And, in truth, there had not been any President willing to give him the order to do so.
But now a President had given him such an order. And Hoover was approaching the mandatory retirement age of 70—which could be waived by a sympathetic President. If he wanted to stay on as director of the agency he loved, he had no choice.
So the FBI launched a counterintelligence program—in Bureau-speak, a COINTELPRO—against the Ku Klux Klan.
Klansmen had shot, lynched and bombed their way across the Deep South, especially in Alabama and Mississippi. Many Southern sheriffs and police chiefs were Klan sympathizers, if not outright members and accomplices.
Ku Klux Klansmen in a meeting
The FBI’s covert action program aimed to “expose, disrupt and otherwise neutralize” KKK groups through a wide range of legal and extra-legal methods. Seventeen KKK groups were targeted, So were nine others, including the American Nazi and National States Rights parties.
After the Klan murdered Lemuel Penn, a black army reserve lieutenant, the FBI targeted every major Klan group in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.
“My father fought the Klan in Massachusetts,” recalled William C. Sullivan, who headed the FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Division in the 1960s. “I always used to be frightened when I was a kid and I saw the fiery crosses burning in the hillside near our farm.
“When the Klan reached 14,000 in the mid-sixties, I asked to take over the investigation of the Klan. When I left the Bureau in 1971, the Klan was down to a completely disorganized 4,300. It was broken.
William C. Sullivan
“They were dirty, rough fellows. And we went after them with rough, tough methods.”
Among those methods:
- Developing informants within Klans—usually by paying small fortunes for information. (“There would be a meeting of 10 Klansmen, and six of them would be reporting back to us the next day,” recalled an FBI agent.)
- Planting electronic surveillance devices in Klan meeting places.
- Carrying out “black bag jobs”—burglaries—to steal Klan membership lists.
- Contacting the news media to publicize arrests and identify Klan leaders.
- Informing the employers of known Klansmen of their employees’ criminal activity, resulting in the firing of untold numbers of them.
- Illegally obtaining Klansmen’s tax returns.
- Sending anonymous letters/postcards to Klansmen warning: “Someone KNOWS who you are!”
- Falsely accusing other Klansmen of being FBI informants.
- Breaking up the marriages of Klansmen by circulating rumors of their infidelity among their wives.
- Beating and harassing Klansmen who threatened and harassed FBI agents.
The FBI’s counterintelligence war against the Klan ended in 1971.
Over the next 40 years, Klan membership steadily rose again. In 2017, its membership rose sharply.
By June, 2017, an estimated 3,000 Klan members belonged to 42 different Klan groups in 22 states. And the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) tracked Klan activity to 11 other states, including liberal ones like California.
Only when America has a President who’s not beholden to the Fascistic Right can there be another COINTELPRO aimed at white hate groups.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 15, 2019 at 12:22 am
At the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., the following sign is prominently displayed: WARNING SIGNS OF FASCISM.
Beneath that are listed the signs to beware of an approaching Fascistic dictatorship:
- Powerful and continuing nationalism
- Disdain for human rights
- Identification of enemies as a unifying cause
- Supremacy of the military
- Rampant sexism
- Controlled mass media
- Obsession with national security
- Religion and government intertwined
- Labor power suppressed
- Disdain for intellectuals and the arts
- Obsession with crime and punishment
- Rampant cronyism and corruption
- Fraudulent elections
During the 1930s and 1940s, Fascism was clearly on the rise, and Western democracies seemed unable to cope with it.
U.S. Holocaust Museum and Memorial
But by April, 1945, Adolf Hitler’s Germany and Benito Mussolini’s Italy were on the ash-heap of history.
After a run of quick victories, they had out-stretched their limited resources—and found themselves overwhelmingly defeated by the combined might of England, the United States and the Soviet Union.
And at the Nuremberg war crimes trials, the infamy of Nazi extermination camps was fully revealed.
And that—believed millions of anti-Fascists throughout the world—was the end of Fascism.
But it wasn’t.
By the time Donald J. Trump took office as President of the United States, Fascism was very much alive and dangerously well.
Specifically: In January, 2019, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) found that Right-wing extremists were linked to every 2018 extremist murder—at least 50—in the United States.
In 2017, there had been 37 such killings by Right-wing extremists.
That same year, the FBI concluded that white supremacists killed more Americans from 2000 to 2016 than “any other domestic extremist movement.”
In 2018, Right-wing extremists killed more people than in any year since 1995, the year that Timothy McVeigh’s blew up the Oklahoma City federal building.
According to the ADL’s Center on Extremism:
- Every perpetrator had ties to at least one Right-wing extremist movement.
- Firearms were used overwhelmingly in Right-wing attacks.
- Forty-two of the 50 deaths in 2018 were caused by guns. Knives or edged weapons accounted for the rest.
- Five of the 17 incidents involved shooting sprees that caused 38 deaths and injured 33 others.
- Five shooting sprees resulted in 38 deaths and left 33 people injured.
Among the five major Right-wing shooting sprees in 2018:
- Tree of Life Synagogue, Pittsburgh, PA: 11 dead;
- Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Parkland, FL: 17 dead;
- Waffle House, Nashville, TN: four dead.
For nearly two decades, United States counter-terrorism strategy has focused almost exclusively on American and foreign-born jihadists, overshadowing Right-wing extremism as a legitimate national-security threat.
Between 2002 and 2017, the United States spent $2.8 trillion—15% of discretionary spending—on counter-terrorism. Between 2008 and 2017, domestic extremists killed 387 people in the United States, according to the 2019 ADL report.
“We’re actually seeing all the same phenomena of what was happening with groups like ISIS, same tactics, but no one talks about it because it’s far-Right extremism,” says P. W. Singer, a national security strategist at the New America think tank.
In 2017, Singer met with senior Trump administration officials to discuss creating a counter-terrorism strategy that encompassed a wider range of threats.
“They only wanted to talk about Muslim extremism,” said Singer. But even before the Trump administration, “we willingly turned the other way on white supremacy because there were real political costs to talking about white supremacy.”
P. W. Singer
Catiline17 [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D
Among those costs:
- Arousing the ire of Southern states, where Right-wing terrorism organizations like the Ku Klux Klan have long been tolerated, if not outright supported.
- About 22 million Americans say it’s “acceptable” to hold neo-Nazi or white-supremacist views, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll taken in the wake of the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally in August 2017.
- About 10% of Americans said they supported the “alt-right.”
- Many police officers don’t see white supremacist groups as a threat. One domestic-terrorism expert who conducts hate-crimes training for police has often been asked by officers: ‘Why aren’t you calling Black Lives Matter or Antifa a hate group?’ The answer is, because they’re not hate groups! But they didn’t see it that way.”
- According to William Fears, one of the most dedicated foot soldiers of the alt-right: Police were far less forgiving of Antifa, whose members consist of anti-fascists, anarchists, Socialists, animal rights activists, immigration rights activists, members of the local Socialist movement and environmental protesters.
- Another white nationalist activist recalled a rally where police posed for pictures with members of the alt-right: “Very buddy-buddy.”
Since taking office as President, Donald Trump has consistently shown his support for Right-wing terrorist groups.
On August 11-12, 2017, white supremacists from across the country gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia, for a “Unite the Right” rally. Among the organizations represented:
- The Ku Klux Klan (KKK);
- The Alt-Knights;
- The “Militia Movement”;
- The American Nazi Party;
- The Confederate League of the South.
Like the Nazis in 1930s Germany, they marched through the streets carrying flaming torches, screaming racial epithets and frightening the local citizenry.
On August 13, a Nazi sympathizer rammed his car into a group of counter-protesters, killing a woman and injuring 19 other demonstrators.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 9, 2019 at 12:11 am
“You know the great thing about the state of Iowa is, I’m pretty sure you all define gun control the same way we do in Texas—hitting what you aim at.
“My wife, Heidi, who is a petite, 5’2 California blonde, she was standing at the tripod unloading the full machine gun with a pink baseball cap that said ‘Frmed and Fabulous.’”
Yes, it was United States Senator Rafael “Ted” Cruz (R-Texas) on the prowl for laughs–-and votes—at a town hall meeting in Iowa.
Normally, Cruz would do his vote-hunting in Texas. But now Cruz had a bigger prize on his mind than simply being re-elected a United States Senator. Cruz wanted to be President in 2016.
U.S. Senator Rafael Cruz
And Iowa held its precinct causes on February 1-2, 2016.
Cruz’ jokes about gun control came on June 19, 2015, only two days after Dylann Roof, a white high school dropout, gunned down three unarmed black men and six black women at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Dylann Roof
Following his remarks, Cruz headed to a shooting range, where he fired off rounds on a semiautomatic .223-caliber Smith and Wesson M&P 15.
Cruz’ remarks no doubt appeared insensitive to those who now mourned for the latest victims of gun violence. But Charles L. Cotton took insulting the dead to a whole new level.
Cotton is a National Rifle Association (NRA) board member who also runs TexasCHLForum.com, an online discussion forum about guns and gun owners’ rights in Texas and beyond.
In a discussion thread on June 18, 2015—one day after the church slaughter—a board member noted that Clementa C. Pinckney, one of the nine people slain, was a pastor and a state legislator in South Carolina.
Cotton responded: “And he voted against concealed-carry. Eight of his church members who might be alive if he had expressly allowed members to carry handguns in church are dead. Innocent people died because of his position on a political issue.”
That discussion thread has since been deleted.
During a subsequent phone interview, Cotton emphasized that he had been speaking as a private citizen—and not as an NRA board member:
“It was a discussion we were having about so called gun-free zones. It’s my opinion that there should not be any gun-free zones in schools or churches or anywhere else. If we look at mass shootings that occur, most happen in gun-free zones.”
If private citizens were allowed to carry guns everywhere, Cotton says, there will be fewer mass shootings because “if armed citizens are in there, they have a chance to defend themselves and other citizens.”
Cotton’s position—“there should not be any gun-free zones”—is exactly that of the NRA itself.
Under such circumstances, America will become a nation where anyplace, anytime, can be turned into the O.K. Corral.
Another point that Cotton didn’t mention: Dylann Roof did believe in concealed-carry–and it cost the lives of nine innocent men and women.
Finally, there is this: Even highly-trained shooters—such as those assigned to the United States Secret Service–don’t always respond as expected.
On May 15, 1972, Alabama Governor George Wallace was campaigning for President in Laurel, Maryland. He gave a speech behind a bulletproof podium at the Laurel Shopping Center. Then he moved from it to mingle with the crowd.
Since the 1968 assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, all those campaigning for President have been assigned Secret Service bodyguards. And Wallace was surrounded by them as he shook hands with his eager supporters.
Suddenly, Arthur Bremer, a fame-seeking failure in life and romance, pushed his way forward, aimed a .38 revolver at Wallace’s abdomen and opened fire. Before he could be subdued, he hit Wallace four times, leaving him paralyzed for the rest of his life.
Arthur Bremer shoots George Wallace
Nor was he Bremer’s only victim. Three other people present were wounded unintentionally:
- Alabama State Trooper Captain E. C. Dothard, Wallace’s personal bodyguard, who was shot in the stomach;
- Dora Thompson, a campaign volunteer, who was shot in the leg; and
- Nick Zarvos, a Secret Service agent, who was shot in the neck, severely impairing his speech.
None of Wallace’s bodyguards got off a shot at Bremer—before or after he pulled the trigger.
On October 6, 1981, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was reviewing a military parade in Cairo when a truck apparently broke down directly across from where he was seated.
Anwar Sadat, moments before his assassination
Suddenly, soldiers bolted from the rear of the vehicle, throwing hand grenades and firing assault rifles. They rushed straight at Sadat—who died instantly under a hail of bullets.
Meanwhile, Sadat’s bodyguards—who had been trained by the CIA—panicked and fled.
Sadat had been assassinated by army officers who believed he had betrayed Islam by making peace with Israel in 1977.
The ultimate test of the NRA’s mantra that “there should not be any gun-free zones…anywhere” will come only when one or more heavily-armed gunmen target an NRA convention.
It will then be interesting to see if the surviving NRA members are as quick to blame themselves for being victims as they are to blame the victims of other mass gun-slaughters.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Self-Help, Social commentary on April 29, 2019 at 12:04 am
More than two million Californians got a rude Christmas gift in 2018.
The Department of Homeland Security informed the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) that the driver’s licenses and identity cards it had issued were worthless.
The DMV had been issuing ID cards and driver’s licenses that didn’t comply with the Federal Government’s standards. So if you’ve received such a card, you won’t be allowed to board an airplane or enter a Federal Building after October, 2020.
The Federal Government is requiring all states to upgrade to the so-called Real ID cards, which are supposedly harder to forge. The “enhancements” were ordered into place after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.
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 licenses issued by some states don’t contain enough identifying information to pass muster with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
One of those states is California.
The others:
- Alaska
- Illinois
- Kentucky
- Maine
- Missouri
- Montana
- New Jersey
- Oklahoma
- Oregon
- Pennsylvania
- Rhode Island
So where did the California DMV go wrong?
Instead of requiring two documents to prove residency, the DMV was only asking for one document from Real ID applicants. The department would then mail the ID card to the applicant’s address, which they believed constituted a second method of verifying the person’s residency.
And how are residents of states like California supposed to cope?
The Federal Government is advising them to get a passport.
And this, in turn, carries an illogic all its own.
As one soon-to-be affected traveler outlined: “To get a passport I’ll first need to get a certified copy of my birth certificate. 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, which gets me a passport, which allows me to fly.”
Sample state ID card that’s acceptable under the Real ID Act
So much of what passes for security is actually security theater. It doesn’t actually make us safer, but it makes us feel safer.
And it makes us feel the government is keeping us safe, even when it isn’t.
For example: In the months after 9/11, National Guard troops were stationed in American airports. They certainly looked impressive.
But passengers would have felt far less reassured had they known the assault rifles they carried had no bullets.
Or take the checking of photo IDs that has become routine to enter State and Federal office buildings.
What exactly does this tell the security guard?
If you’re John Dillinger or Osama bin Laden, it tells him: “This is a very wanted man.”
But if you’re John Q. Public, who’s not notorious as a bank robber or terrorist, showing him your ID tells him nothing.
But people watching the guard performing this ritual assume: “The security guard must know what he’s looking for. So we have to be safer for his checking those IDs.”
In fact, most security guards have little training and even less experience. Many of them don’t carry firearms and lack self-defense skills.
According to Salary.com: The median annual Security Guard salary is $29,204, as of July 29, 2016, with a range usually between $25,857 and $33,522.
Repeated showings of security theater can be seen every weekday at any Federal Building.
To enter, you must show a driver’s license or State ID card.
Then you must remove
- Your belt;
- Your shoes;
- Your watch;
- Your wallet;
- All other objects from your pants pockets;
- Any jacket you’re wearing;
- Any cell phone you’re carrying.
All of these must be placed in one or more large plastic containers, which are run through an x-ray scanner.
Finally, assuming you avoid setting off any alarm system, you’re allowed to enter.
If you want to report a crime to a field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), here’s the procedure.
You take an elevator to the floor its offices are on. You tell a secretary why you want to speak with an agent. She requires you to pass her your driver’s license or State ID card. Then she makes a xerox of this and hands the card back.
Then you must list, on a single-page form, your:
- Name;
- Address;
- Phone number;
- Social Security umber;
- The reason you want to speak to an agent.
You can refuse to fill out the form. But then the secretary will refuse to let you speak with an agent.
The FBI has always encouraged Americans to report anything they consider a threat to national security or a violation of Federal law.
But this demand for so much private information is almost certain to sharply decrease the number of people willing to report knowledge of a crime.
At a time when Federal law enforcement agencies need all the cooperation they can get, this is not a matter to be taken lightly.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 25, 2019 at 12:04 am
So you want to visit the Pentagon and see how America’s military works to protect you? Fine.
Just be prepared to accept the requirements that go with “security theater.”
According to the Pentagon’s webpage: “Tours are available Monday through Thursday from 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. and Friday from 12:00 P.M. to 4:00 P.M., and normally last approximately 60 minutes.”
Here’s what you’ll need to take the tour:
- Ages 12 and under – ID not required.
- Ages 13 to 17 – One form of photo ID or a parent/guardian to vouch for them.
- Ages 18 and up – At least one form of proper identification, which must be current and contains a photograph.
The Pentagon
Let’s break all this down:
“Ages 12 and under – ID not required.” Strapping bombs to children was a favorite tactic of the Viet Cong. And Al Qaeda has not hesitated to make use of the same weapon. It’s not comforting to learn that our military is still looking at children as “babes of innocence” rather than as possible “bombs of convenience.”
“Ages 13 to 17 – One form of photo ID or a parent/guardian to vouch for them.” Great! So long as an adult says, “Yeah, he’s mine,” any teenager can gain entry to America’s most important military center. This includes those teens who resent the American military’s presence around the world.
“Ages 18 and up – One form of ID, which must be current and contains a photograph, such as a driver’s license or U.S. passport.
Knowing a person’s identity is useful—so long as you have a reliable database system to match it against. An example of this is the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC).
Since 1967, the NCIC has been America’s central database for tracking crime-related information. It’s linked with such information repositories as:
- Federal law enforcement agencies
- State law enforcement agencies
- Local law enforcement agencies
- Federal and state motor vehicle registration/licensing agencies.
The NCIC makes available a variety of personal and property records for law enforcement and security purposes, covering:
- Convicted sex offenders
- Criminal convictions
- Foreign fugitives
- Immigration violators
- Persons with active protection orders
- Parolees
- Persons with active arrest warrants
- Secret Service protective alerts
- Terrorist organizations and membership
- Violent gang organizations and membership
Behind this lies a simple but highly effective formula, which was best-expressed in the classic 1973 movie, The Day of the Jackal. An anonymous professional killer has been hired to assassinate French President Charles de Gaulle.
At a government meeting called to thwart the plot, a top security expert says: “The first task is to give this man a name. With a name, we get a face, with a face a passport, with a passport an arrest.”
But if you don’t have a reliable database system to match an ID against, forcing people to “show me your ID” is worthless. What does “John Smith” mean to the average ill-paid security guard?
Even if the person is a wanted criminal, just looking at his ID card is worthless. Unless, of course, the person is so notorious as a criminal that his name is known to almost everyone: “My God, it’s Osama bin Laden!”
That’s presuming that the person is not only notorious but stupid enough to flaunt it. There is, after all, such a thing as a falsified ID. Every teenager who’s ever wanted access to a can of beer knows that.
If it seems impossible that any security official could be so stupid, consider this:
In 2010 a friend of mine decided to rent a P.O. box at his local Postal Service office. He was promptly told he would have to provide two pieces of identification, such as:
- A driver’s license or State ID card
- A passport
- A birth certificate
- A bill from a utility company, such as for phone or electric service.
Now, consider:
- He lived only a few blocks from the post office where he was applying for a P.O. box.
- He had lived at the same apartment building for 22 years.
- The Postal Service had been delivering his mail there that entire time—sometimes knocking at his door to do so.
- When he came to its counter to retrieve mail that was otherwise un-deliverable, his showing a State ID card had been entirely enough.
But, to rent a P.O. box at that very same post office, he had to prove he wasn’t a terrorist. And one of the ways he was to do this was to show a utility bill.
What does paying money to an electric or gas company prove about anyone?
Mohammed Atta faithfully paid all his utility bills on an apartment in Hamburg, Germany, where he planned the 9/11 attacks. He continued paying his utility bills during his stay in Venice, Florida—right up to the day he flew American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World trade Center.
In short: Creating security theater is not the same as providing real security.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on December 20, 2018 at 12:04 am
The headline in the February 6, 2016 edition of The World Post read: “Geneva III: The Stillborn Conference and the Endemic Failure of the International Community.”
Then came the waterworks:
“While approaching the fifth anniversary of the Syrian civil war on March 15 — which claimed more than 300,000 lives, approximately 700,000 wounded, 4 million fled the country, and another 6 million displaced within Syria — the international community has failed to put an end to bloodshed in this war-torn country.”
The Syrian conflict began on March 15, 2011, triggered by protests demanding political reforms and the ouster of dictator Bashar al-Assad.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights—which is safely located in Great Britain—the total number of dead is now more than 310,000.
And who does the Observatory—and The World Post-–blame for this Islamic self-slaughter?
The West, of course:
“The silence of the International community for the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Syria encourages the criminals to kill more and more Syrian people because they have not found anyone that deter them from continuing their crimes that cause to wound more than 1,500,000 people; some of them with permanent disabilities, make hundreds of thousands children without parents, displace more than half of Syrian people and destroy infrastructure, private and public properties.”
Got that? It’s the duty of non-Muslims to bring civilized behavior to Islamics.
And why are all these murderers eagerly slaughtering one another?
Because of a Muslim religious dispute that traces back to the fourth century.
Yes, it’s Sunni Muslims, who make up a majority of Islamics, versus Shiite Muslims, who comprise a minority.
Each group considers the other takfirs—that is, “apostates.” And, in Islam, being labeled an apostate can easily get you murdered.
On April 23, 2016, the United Nations estimated that 400,000 Syrians had died in the war.
There is, however, an optimistic way to view this conflict:
- Put another way: 400,000 potential or actual Islamic terrorists will never pose a threat to the United States or Western Europe.
- The United States cannot be held in any way responsible for it.
In fact, it’s in America’s best interests that this conflict last as long as possible and spread as widely as possible throughout the Islamic community.
Here are four reasons why:
First: In Syria, two of America’s most deadly enemies are waging war on each other.
Yes, it’s Hizbollah (Party of God) vs. Al-Qaeda (The Base).
Hizbollah is comprised of Shiite Muslims. A sworn enemy of Israel, it has kidnapped scores of Americans suicidal enough to visit Lebanon and truck-bombed the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, killing 299 Americans.
Flag of Hizbollah
Al Qaeda—which gave us 9/11—is comprised of Sunni Muslims. It considers Shiites as heretics and seeks their extermination. It has attacked the mosques and gatherings of liberal Muslims, Suffis and other non-Sunnis. And despite the death of its creator, Osama bin Laden, in 2011, it still seeks to destroy the United States.
Flag of Al Qaeda
Second: Since 1979, Syria has been listed by the U.S. State Department as a sponsor of terrorism.
Among the terrorist groups it supports: Hizbollah and Hamas. For many years, Syria provided a safe-house in Damascus for Illich Ramirez Sanchez—the notorious international terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal.
Illich Ramirez Sanches “Carlos the Jackal”
Third: China and Russia are supporting the Assad dictatorship—and the brutalities it commits against its own citizens.
This reflects badly on them—not the United States. And any move by the United States to directly attack the Assad regime could ignite an all-out war with Russia and/or China.
What happens if Russian and American forces start trading salvos? Or if Russian President Vladimir Putin orders an attack on America’s ally, Israel, in return for America’s attack on Russia’s ally, Syria?
It was exactly that scenario—Great Powers going to war over conflicts between their small-state allies—that triggered World War I.
Fourth: While Islamic nations like Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan wage war within their own borders, they will lack the resources—and incentive—to attack the United States.
Every dead Hizbollah and Al-Qaeda and ISIS member makes the United States that much safer. So does the death of every sympathizer of Hizbollah, Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
The peoples of the Middle East have long memories for those who commit brutalities against them. In their veins, the cult of the blood feud runs deep.
When Al-Qaeda blows up civilians in Beirut, their relatives will urge Hizbollah to take brutal revenge. And Hizbollah will do so. Similarly, when Hizbollah does, those who support Al-Qaeda will demand even more brutal reprisals against Hizbollah.
Al-Qaeda terrorists–now taking aim at Hezbollah terrorists
No American could instill such hatred in Al-Qaeda for Hizbollah—or vice versa. This is entirely a war of religious and sectarian hatred.
In fact, this conflict could easily become the Islamic equivalent of “the Hundred Years War” that raged from 1337 to 1453 between England and France.
When Adolf Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, then-Senator Harry S. Truman said: “I hope the Russians kill lots of Nazis—and vice versa.”
That should be America’s position whenever its sworn enemies start killing off each other. Americans should welcome such self-slaughters, not become entrapped in them.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary, Uncategorized on November 1, 2018 at 12:29 am
Increasingly, Republicans have repeatedly aimed violent—-and violence-arousing—-rhetoric at their Democratic opponents. This is not a case of careless language that is simply misinterpreted, with tragic results.
Republicans like Sarah Palin and Donald Trump fully understand the constituency they are trying to reach: Those masses of alienated, uneducated Americans who live only for their guns and hardline religious beliefs—and who can be easily manipulated by perceived threats to either.
If a “nutcases” assaults a Democratic politician and misses, then the Republican establishment claims to be shocked—-shocked!—that such a thing could have happened.
And if the attempt proves successful, then Republicans weep crocodile tears for public consumption.
Since the end of World War 11, Republicans have regularly hurled the charge of “treason” against anyone who dared to run against them for office or think other than Republican-sponsored thoughts.
Republicans had been locked out of the White House from 1933 to 1952, during the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman.
Determined to regain the Presidency by any means, they found that attacking the integrity of their fellow Americans a highly effective tactic.
During the 1950s, Wisconsin Senator Joseph R. McCarthy rode a wave of paranoia to national prominence–by attacking the patriotism of anyone who disagreed with him.
The fact that McCarthy never uncovered one actual case of treason was conveniently overlooked during his lifetime.
The electoral success of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Red-baiting treason slanders proved too alluring for other Republicans to resist.
Joseph McCarthy
Among those who have greatly profited from hurling similar charges are:
- President Richard Nixon
- His vice president, Spiro Agnew
- Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich
- Former Congressman Dick Armey
- President George W. Bush
- Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin
- Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann
- Rush Limbaugh
- Sean Hannity
- Bill O’Reilly.
During the 1992 Presidential campaign, Republicans tried to paint Bill Clinton as a brainwashed “Manchurian candidate” because he had briefly visited the Soviet Union during his college years.
After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Republicans lost their “soft on Communism” slander-line. So they tried to persuade voters that Democrats were “soft on crime.”
When riots flared in 1992 after the acquittal of LAPD officers who had savagely beaten Rodney King, President George H.W. Bush blamed the carnage on the “Great Society” programs of the 1960s.
George H.W. Bush
After losing the White House to Clinton at the polls in 1992 and 1996, Republicans tried to oust him another way: By impeaching him over a tryst with a penis-loving intern named Monica Lewinsky.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted to impeach, but the effort was defeated in the Democratically-controlled Senate.
The 2008 election of Barack Obama pushed the Republican “treason chorus” to new heights of infamy.
Barack Obama
Almost immediately after Obama took office, he came under attack by an industry of right-wing book authors such as Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh.
Among the titles:
- Conservative Victory: Defeating Obama’s Radical Agenda by Sean Hannity
- The Manchurian President: Barack Obama’s Ties to Communists,Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists by Aaron Klein
- The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency by Ken Blackwell
- Why Obama’s Government Takeover of Health Care Will Be a Disaster by David Gratzer
- To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine by Newt Gingrich
- How the Obama Administration Threatens to Undermine Our Elections by John Fund
- Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policicies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America by Christopher C. Horner
- America’s March to Socialism: Why We’re One Step Closer to Giant Missile Parades by Glenn Beck
- Obama’s Betrayal of Israel by Michael Ledeen
- Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them by Steven Milloy
- Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism by Ann Coulter
- Guilty: Liberal “Victims” and Their Assault on America by Ann Coulter
Consider the vocabulary Right-wingers use to describe their political adversaries:
“Liberals,” “radicals, “bankrupting,” “treason,” subversion,” “slander,” “terrorism,” “betrayal,” “catastrophe,” “shattering the American dream,” “leftists,” “Communists,” “government takeover,” “socialism,” “power grab,” “secularism,” “environmentalism.”
And while the Right lusts to constantly compare Democrats and liberals (the two aren’t always the same) to Adolf Hitler, its propaganda campaign draws heavily on the Nazi leader’s own advice.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler laid out his formula for successful propaganda: “All effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare essentials.
“Those must be expressed as far as possible in stereotypical formulas. These slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward.”
“[The masses] more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.”
Thus, Republicans spent the eight years of Barack Obama’s Presidency repeating the lie that he was born in Kenya—not Hawaii, as the long-form version of his birth certificate attests.
The reason: To “prove” that he was an illegitimate President, and should be removed from office.
To Republicans’ dismay, their slander campaign didn’t prevent Obama from being elected in 2008—and re-elected in 2012.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary, Uncategorized on October 31, 2018 at 12:05 am
On June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof, a white high school dropout, gunned down three black men and six black women at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
The evidence made clear that Roof’s slaughter was racially motivated. Yet no 2016 Republican Presidential candidate dared acknowledge it.
But Rolling Stone magazine writer Jeb Lund left no doubt as to what—and who—was ultimately responsible for this crime: Racism and Republicans.
In a June 19, 2015 editorial—published two days after the massacre—Lund noted: “This [crime] is political because American movement conservatism has already made these kinds of killings political.
“The Republican Party has weaponized its supporters, made violence a virtue and, with almost every pronouncement for 50 years, given them an enemy politicized, radicalized and indivisible.
“Movement conservatives have fetishized a tendentious and ahistorical reading of the Second Amendment to the point that the Constitution itself somehow paradoxically ‘legitimizes’ an armed insurrection against the government created by it.
“Those leading said insurrection are swaddled by the blanket exculpation of patriotism. At the same time, they have synonymized the Democratic Party with illegitimacy and abuse of the American order.
“This is no longer an argument about whether one party’s beliefs are beneficial or harmful, but an attitude that labels leftism so antithetical to the American idea that empowering it on any level is an act of usurpation.”
Click here: The Charleston Shooter: Racist, Violent, and Yes – Political | Rolling Stone
On December 15, 2016, Dylann Roof was convicted of 33 Federal hate crime charges. On January 11, 2017, he was sentenced to death. He remains on Death Row to this day.
Yet the leadership of the Republican party whose hate-filled rhetoric inspired Roof escaped indictment—and even widespread condemnation.
The evidence that Republicans have weaponized hatred—with deadly results—was on display long before Dylann Roof opened fire on “uppity blacks” praying in their own church.
Consider:
On January 8, 2011, Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head while meeting with constituents outside a grocery store in Tucson, Arizona. After a miraculous recovery, she continues to struggle with language and has lost 50% of her vision in both eyes.
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords
She vowed to return to her former Congressional duties, but was forced to resign for health reasons in 2012.
Giffords was only one victim of a shooting spree that claimed the lives of six people and left 13 others wounded.
Also killed was Arizona’s chief U.S. District judge, John Roll, who had just stopped by to see his friend Giffords after celebrating Mass.
Although the actual shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, was immediately arrested, those who fanned the flames of political violence that consumed 19 people that day remained unpunished.
Consider the circumstances behind the shootings:
Gabrille Giffords, 40, is a moderate Democrat who narrowly wins re-election in November, 2010, against a Republican Tea Party candidate.
Her support of President Obama’s health care reform law has made her a target for violent rhetoric–-especially from former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.
In March, 2010, Palin releases a map featuring 20 House Democrats that uses cross-hairs images to show their districts. In case her supporters don’t get the message, she later writes on Twitter: “Don’t Retreat, Instead – RELOAD!”
Sarah Palin’s “Crosshairs” Map
As the campaign continues, Giffords finds her Tucson office vandalized after the House passes the healthcare overhaul in March.
She specifically cites Palin’s decision to list her seat as one of the top “targets” in the midterm elections.
“For example, we’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list, but the thing is, that the way that she has it depicted has the cross-hairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they have to realize that there are consequences to that action,” Giffords tells MSNBC.
At one of her rallies, her aides call the police after an attendee drops a gun.
Giffords may have seen the spectre of violence closing in on her. In April, 2010, she supported Rep. Raúl Grijalva after he had to close two offices when he and his staff received threats.
He had called for a boycott of Arizona businesses in opposition to the state’s controversial immigration law.
“This is not how we, as Americans, express our political differences. Intimidation has no place in our representative democracy,” says Giffords. Such acts only make it more difficult for us to resolve our differences.”
John Roll is Arizona’s chief federal judge. Appointed in 2006, he wins acclaim as a respected jurist and leader who pushes to beef up the court’s strained bench to handle a growing number of border crime-related cases.
In 2009, he becomes a target for threats after allowing a $32 million civil-rights lawsuit by illegal aliens to proceed against a local rancher. The case arouses the fury of local talk radio hosts, who encourage their audiences to threaten Roll’s life.
In one afternoon, Roll logs more than 200 threatening phone calls. Callers threaten the judge and his family. They post personal information about Roll online.
Roll and his wife are placed under fulltime protection by deputy U.S. marshals. Roll finds living under security “unnerving and invasive.”
Authorities identify four men believed responsible for the threats. But Roll declines to press charges on the advice of the Marshals Service.
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INVADING IRAQ WAS A DISASTER–SO LET’S INVADE IRAN: PART ONE (OF THREE)
In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on May 23, 2019 at 12:07 am“If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again!”
So threatened President Donald Trump in a tweet on May 19.
Meanwhile, a debate raged among American military and Intelligence officials about the latest intentions of the Iranian government.
Some officials believed that Iran or its militias might be planning to attack American military bases in the Middle East. Others believed that Iran might be acting defensively to counter possible American aggression.
“I just don’t want them to have nuclear weapons, and they can’t be threatening us,” Trump said that same evening in an interview with Fox News.
Donald Trump
“And with all of everything that’s going on, and I’m not one that believes—you know, I’m not somebody that wants to go into war, because war hurts economies, war kills people most importantly—by far most importantly.”
That same day, Major-General Hossein Salami, the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps, responded: “Iran is not looking for any type of war, but it is fully prepared to defend itself.”
The Trump administration has aggressively tried to effect “regime change” in Iran. Its methods have included diplomatic pressure, economic sanctions, hawkish rhetoric and increasing the number of American soldiers and weaponry deployed in the Middle East.
If this seems familiar to those Americans with a sense of historical perspective, there is good reason for it.
These are precisely the methods used by the George W. Bush administration in its build-up to invading Iraq in March, 2003.
Even as the rubble was being cleared at the Pentagon and World Trade Center, President George W. Bush was preparing to use the attack as an excuse to topple Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
World Trade Center on September 11, 2001
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.
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.
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.
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