Ron Paul Open Letter to President Obama ………….

http://www.dailypaul.com

Submitted by JohnPhillipSousaon Tue, 11/01/2011 – 03:47

in

• Ron Paul 2012

LAKE JACKSON, Texas, Sep 20, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) — The Ron Paul 2012 Presidential Campaign today released the following Open Letter from Dr. Paul to President Barack Obama:

“Dear President Obama,

“As a Doctor, an Air Force Veteran, and Congressman, who serves on the Foreign Affairs Committee and has always fought for the best interest of our troops, I was deeply concerned to learn that our military retirees are now facing benefit cuts under your proposed $1.5 trillion dollar tax hike.

“Our military men and women have fought bravely. In exchange, our country made a promise to them, and we must honor it.

“There are trillions of dollars in unwise and unconstitutional spending we must cut. There are few other leaders in Washington willing to cut spending as deeply as I am and truly balance our budget. But, we must make sure we take care of our Veterans who fought to take care of us.

“We have put our troops in harm’s way, and we must honor our promises. And, our troops have paid a heavy price these past ten years. Over 5,000 have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, 40,000 have seen crushing injuries, and hundreds of thousands more suffer from brain injury and post traumatic stress disorder.

“Failing to meet the promises we have made to our troops would be unjust and immoral. The cuts you announced yesterday, combined with the rumored cuts in benefits reported in publications like Army Times, have our soldiers and Veterans deeply concerned.

“Mr. President, instead of cutting our Veterans benefits, I call on you to support our troops. Support them by bringing them home to our shores, to protect our borders and defend our country. Ensure that they are rested and equipped to repel any real credible attack. Re-unite them with their families. And, make sure they no longer play policeman in dangerous foreign civil wars.

“Cutting the benefits of our Veterans benefits while we subsidize the security of other wealthy nations like Germany and Japan and play World Policeman makes no sense. The money we would save extracting our fighting men and women and our equipment from overseas conflicts and regions will more than offset the savings you seek by upending the manner in which veterans receive care.

“Bringing our troops home would ensure that we keep the promise to our Veterans, strengthen our national defense and secure our borders.

“Do not mistake me for a pacifist or a person solely focused on the economics of the unsustainable global security and state-building that has helped our country arrive at the shores of financial ruin. On the contrary, I consider my military service as an Air Force flight surgeon during the Cold War to be among my highest personal and professional achievements.

“Authentic, Constitutionally-sound national security — a strong national defense — begins with guarding our borders and not the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

“Mr. President, I call upon your to support our troops, honor our Veterans, and ensure our wounded get the care they deserve. To do so, we must end these protracted, trillion-dollar wars and bring them home.”

In Liberty,

Ron Paul

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More US Soldiers Committed Suicide Than Died in Combat ………

http://www.projectcensored.org

image source : dailycensored.com

 

For the second year (2010) in a row, more US soldiers killed themselves (468) than died in combat (462). “If you… know the one thing that causes people to commit suicide, please let us know,” General Peter Chiarelli told the Army Times, “because we don’t know.”  Suicide is a tragic but predictable human reaction to being asked to kill – and watch your friends be killed – for a war based on lies.  Perhaps being forced to bag the mangled flesh of fellow soldiers could be another reason why some are committing suicide.

Body Bagging… ever heard the term?  Soldiers in the Marine Corps’ Mortuary Affairs unit at Camp Al Taqaddum, Iraq, are given this job… of collecting and cataloging the bodies of dead marines. They sift through the remains of the soldiers, from prom photos to suicide notes and love letters — and put their remains and effects into bags, metal boxes and refrigerators. (clarify please – are you talking about their physical remains/bodies and their effects – ie. photos, etc. or both?)  One soldier, Jess Goodell, recounts a marine brought into the unit still breathing. She frantically called to her superiors, to which they simply replied, “wait.” She watched while he died. When she returned to the US, Goodell like many others, was diagnosed with deep depression, substance abuse, PTSD and anxiety.

Sources:

“Death and After in Iraq”, Chris Hedges, Truthdig, March 21, 2011.  http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_body_baggers_of_iraq_20110321

 

“More US Soldiers Killed Themselves Than Died in Combat in 2010,” Cord Jefferson,  Good, January 27, 2011.
 http://www.good.is/post/more-us-soldiers-killed-themselves-than-died-in-combat-in-2010

 

“Can You Face the True Consequences of War? The Horror of Bagging Soldiers’ Bodies in Iraq,” Chris Hedges, Alternet, March 21, 2011.
 http://www.alternet.org/world/150322/can_you_face_the_true_consequences_of_war_the_horrors_of_bagging_soldiers%27_bodies_in_iraq/?page=1

 

“Ten Reasons the Iraq War Was No Cakewalk,” Medea Benjamin and Charles Davis, Alternet, March 18, 2011  http://www.alternet.org/world/150297/ten_reasons_the_iraq_war_was_no_cakewalk

 

Student Researcher: Bay Ewald, San Francisco State University

Faculty Evaluator: Kenn Burrows, San Francisco State University

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NATO’s secret weapon – racism …….

http://humanrightsinvestigations.orgPosted on September 1, 2011 by HRI Mark

Human Rights Investigations has been repeatedly warning about the Libyan rebels and it has become increasingly clear that racism lies at the very heart of the conflict in Libya. It now clear that the rebel forces are NATO (and Qatar and UAE)’s proxy fighters on the ground. Many of these fighters have been recruited and motivated on the basis of psy-ops about African mercenaries, fired up by viagra, mass-raping women and pillaging their cities - discredited stories which have been spread and amplified by rebel commanders, NATO ministers, the media and ICC prosecutor Moreno Ocampo.

The effects of this pernicious propaganda campaign have been seen in Benghazi, Misrata and Tawergha and across the nation and are now being seen on the streets of Tripoli as rebels round up black-skinned Libyans and African guest workers, putting them into football stadiums.

AP reports:

Virtually all of the detainees say they are innocent migrant workers, and in most cases there is no evidence that they are lying. But that is not stopping the rebels from placing the men in facilities like the Gate of the Sea sports club, where about 200 detainees – all black – clustered on a soccer field this week, bunching against a high wall to avoid the scorching sun.         

In the Khallat al-Firjan neighborhood in south Tripoli, Associated Press reporters saw rebel forces punching a dozen black men before determining they were innocent migrant workers and releasing them.     

Racism lies at the heart of many of the NATO campaigns, including in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq where innocents are slaughtered in a way that simply would not be accepted if the victims were white.

NATO’s chief weapon in the Libyan conflict has been and continues to be, not Brimstone or Paveway bombs, Tornados, Typhoons or Tomahawk cruise missiles - but racism.

To appreciate the importance of racism in motivating soldiers please listen to Mike Prysner’s speech made at the 2008 Winter Soldier hearings:

Transcript:

“And I tried hard to be proud of my service but all I could feel was shame and racism could no longer mask the occupation. These were people. These were human beings. I’ve since been plagued by guilt anytime I see an elderly man, like the one who couldn’t walk and we rolled onto a stretcher, told the Iraqi police to take him away. I feel guilt anytime I see a mother with her children like the one who cried hysterically and screamed that we were worse than Saddam as we forced her from her home. I feel guilt anytime I see a young girl like the one I grabbed by the arm and dragged into the street.

”We were told we were fighting terrorists, but the real terrorist was me and the real terrorism is this occupation. Racism within the military has long been an important tool to justify the destruction and occupation of another country. It has long been used to justify the killing, subjugation, and torture of another people. Racism is a vital weapon deployed by this government. It is a more important weapon than a rifle, a tank, a bomber or a battleship. It is more destructive than an artillery shell, or a bunker buster, or a tomahawk missile. While all of those weapons are created and owned by this government, they are harmless without people willing to use them.

”Those who send us to war do not have to pull a trigger or lob a mortar round. They do not have to fight the war. They merely have to sell the war. They need a public who is willing to send their soldiers into harm’s way and they need soldiers who are willing to kill or be killed without question. They can spend millions on a single bomb, but that bomb only becomes a weapon when the ranks in the military are willing to follow orders to use it. They can send every last soldier anywhere on earth, but there will only be a war if soldiers are willing to fight, and the ruling class: the billionaires who profit from human suffering care only about expanding their wealth, controlling the world economy, understand that their power lies only in their ability to convince us that war, oppression, and exploitation is in our interests. They understand that their wealth is dependent on their ability to convince the working class to die to control the market of another country. And convincing us to kill and die is based on their ability to make us think that we are somehow superior. Soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, have nothing to gain from this occupation.

”The vast majority of people living in the US have nothing to gain from this occupation. In fact, not only do we have nothing to gain, but we suffer more because of it. We lose limbs, endure trauma, and give our lives. Our families have to watch flag draped coffins lowered into the earth. Millions in this country without healthcare, jobs, or access to education must watch this government squander over $450 million a day on this occupation. Poor and working people in this country are sent to kill poor and working people in another country to make the rich richer, and without racism soldiers would realize that they have more in common with the Iraqi people than they do with the billionaires who send us to war

”I threw families onto the street in Iraq only to come home and find families thrown onto the street in this country in this tragic, tragic and unnecessary foreclosure crisis; only to wake up and realize that our real enemies are not in some distant land. But not people whose names we don’t know, and cultures we don’t understand. The enemy is people we know very well and people we can identify. The enemy is a system that wages war when it’s profitable. The enemy is the CEO who lays us off our jobs when it’s profitable; it’s the insurance companies who deny us health care when it’s profitable; it’s the banks who take away our homes when it’s profitable. Our enemies are not 5000 miles away, they are right here at home. If we organize and fight with our sisters and brothers, we can stop this war, we can stop this government, and we can create a better world.”

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Americans are tired of wars

http://dprogram.net

June 21st, 2011

(RussiaToday) – Libya is simply the most recent issue, but look at the 100,000 US troops in Afghanistan and the 50,000 in Iraq, not to mention even more under the radar in Pakistan. Still, the NATO assault is continuing in Libya and 72% of Americans, according to the polls, are tired of all the military initiatives the US is involved with and think the country should withdraw.

All of this during such tough times for the country’s economy while jobs are cut, yet the Pentagon’s budgets is growing.RT blogger and US was veteran Jake Diliberto joins Kristine Frazao in the studio to share his experience and opinion on what’s going on inside and outside the country.

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Truckers Report Moving Military Equipment Across U.S, FEMA Involved!

The Intel Hub
Alex Thomas
June 20th, 2011

This is an alert to all truckers. We need your help to confirm this information. Send any tips to tips@theintelhub.com

In the last week, The Intel Hub has reported an extensive amount of military movements throughout the United States.

We now have reports that a huge movement of heavy artillery, tanks, rocket launchers ground to ground ground to air in and around Alexandria Virginia. The trucker reported that his friend was on a secret move and will being moving the stuff to update New York.

“This stuff is being distributed in areas to protect the population.”

One trucker reportedly went through the Mojave County and FEMA was everywhere.

“Prepare for a catastrophic event.”

While The Intel Hub has not independently confirmed this report it dose dovetail into recent reports that we have received in regards to suspicious military movements throughout the United States.

Theories to the reason for all the military movements that have been documented in the last week range from an October invasion of Libya, to earth changes, to literal martial law.

The only thing we know for sure is that suspicious military and possible foreign military troop movements have been confirmed and a buildup for something in on the horizon.

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Hundreds of Tanks, APC’s, and Medical Trucks Moving East through TEXAS – March 7, 2011

found on : http://dprogram.net

“Operation Libya”: US Marines on Crete for Libyan deployment

Global Research, March 3, 2011
Crete. © Flickr.com/ana gasston/cc-by-nc Around 400 US Marines were dispatched on Thursday to a US base on the Greek Island of Crete ahead of their deployment on warships off Libya, a US military spokesman said. Earlier this week, the USS Kearsage and the USS Ponce steamed into the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal en route to Libya. The Kearsage amphibious assault ship, with about 800 marines, a fleet of helicopters and medical facilities on board, could support humanitarian efforts as well as military operations. .

9/11 and the Conquest of Iraq

http://dprogram.net

March 1st, 2011

“It’s a system that lies automatically, at every level from bottom to top – from sergeant to commander in chief – to conceal murder.” Daniel Ellsburg, Secrets, (Viking, 2002)

“Beneath all the fakes and lies and all the mental aberrations, however deeply hidden or wildly deformed, the truth still breaks through, still glitters, still breathes.” (Mihail Sebastian, Romanian playwright, as quoted by Nickolson Baker, Human Smoke, Simon & Schuster, 2008)

(FireDogLake) – In the movie, Fair Game, about the travails of Valerie Plame, and her outing as a CIA agent by the Bush administration, Sean Penn, in the character of Joe Wilson, Plame’s husband, exhorts a group of students to “Demand the Truth!” Yet, very few of us have demanded to know the truth about 9/11 and the attacks on the World Trade Center. We have been content with the officially sanctioned explanation. Those who are not so content are ridiculed as “conspiracy theorists.”

It was a conspiracy – 9/11.  That is indisputable. There is no “lone gunman” to confuse matters. To say anything meaningful about 9/11, you have to be a conspiracy theorist. It is only a question of whose theory of the conspiracy you are prepared to believe. It is incredible that anyone still believes anything the Bush administration said about that tragic day.

 

The Center for Public Integrity identified 935 lies, (no doubt, a conservative estimate) Bush/Cheney and their neocon enablers told to justify attacking and occupying Iraq. And, they lied about many other things as well: domestic surveillance, the “war on terror,” torture, the Plame affair, etc. The list is endless.  Yet, our minds recoil at the idea that they lied about the events of 9/11. This is because the implications are just too terrible to contemplate. We are left with Osama Bin Laden, because this is the person the Bush administration identified as the master-mind of these events. To have any other theory of 9/11 labels you a crank or a nut case, and if you are a professional person, raising troubling questions about 9/11 events can get you into a heap of trouble as Prof. Steven E. Jones of Brigham Young University found out to his dismay.

Even men and women of otherwise critical judgment on most issues shrink from drawing  troubling conclusions from the context and results of the 9/11 attacks. Looking over the edge of the precipice makes us squirm; it’s through the looking glass and we really don’t want to go there. That’s why people so often get angry when questions about 9/11 are raised. However dubious the official explanations, they have a patina of authority that is intended to tranquilize and deflect attention. We are invited not to dig deeper, to go about our business, have a nice afternoon at the mall and don’t think too hard about the entire panorama of events that unfolded on September 11^th and what they mean.

Naomi Klein in her excellent book, The Shock Doctrine, The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, (Metropolitan Books, 2007) writes that the shock of September 11^th, “opened up a period of deep disorientation and regression that the Bush administration expertly exploited.”  They capitalized on the fear generated by 9/11, “not only to launch the ‘War on Terror’ but to ensure that it is an almost completely for-profit venture.”  It provided them with an opportunity to do something that would have been impossible without 9/11: “wage privatized wars abroad and build a corporate security complex at home.” Yet, we are told there was no pre-planning involved; it was not that, “the administration deviously plotted the crisis,” but, as Ms. Klein says, they prayed for the crisis like “drought-struck farmers pray for rain,” or Christian-Zionists pray for the rapture. This may be a plausible explanation for the 9/11 attacks if you believe in the power of prayer, instead of the ability of determined men to create their own opportunities.

The context for 9/11, and everything that followed from it, has been in front of us from the start. Zbigniew Brzezinski, in his 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard, “American Primacy and its Geo-strategic Imperatives,” (Basic Books, 1997) laid out the arguments for US global hegemony, although he later seemed stunned by US actions in the Middle East. He argued that Eurasia, a huge area stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok, is the chessboard on which the struggle for global primacy continues to be played. The United States, a non-Eurasian player, had (prior to its occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq) its power deployed on three peripheries of the Eurasian continent, a dominant position that no state could challenge. Professor Brzezinski argued that America’s chief task is to maintain its “global primacy” over this vast area and, “to make certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitrating role.”

Professor Brzezinski devoted particular attention to the Eurasian Balkans, which include nine countries: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia and Afghanistan. All of these countries, with the exception of Afghanistan, form part of the Caspian Sea Basin. Why are these countries important?  According to Professor Brzezinski, “the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea.” He continues, “Access to that resource and sharing in its potential wealth represent objectives that stir national ambitions, motivate corporate interest, rekindle historical claims, revive imperial aspirations and fuel international rivalries.”

But, says Professor Brzezinski, there is a small problem: how to get the American public to sign on to the imperial venture of global dominance. Unfortunately, he says, “The attitude of the American public towards the external projection of American power has been much more ambivalent. The public supported America’s engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.” He notes that polls conducted in 1995 and 1996 highlighted the public’s preference for ‘sharing’ global power with others, “rather than for its monopolistic exercise.” He says that, “America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad. This limits the use of America’s power, especially its capacity for military intimidation.” Democracy, he laments, is “inimical to imperial mobilization,” except, “in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public’s sense of domestic well-being.”

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was established in the spring of 1997, by a group of now discredited  neo-conservatives, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and William Kristol among others. The goal of the group was to “promote American global leadership.” Their statement of principles included the assertion that, “The United States stands as the world’s most preeminent power. America has a vital role in maintaining peace and security in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. If we shirk our responsibilities, we invite challenges to our fundamental interests.”

In 2000, this group published a report titled: “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century.”  In short, “the United States faces no global rival. America’s grand strategy should aim to preserve and extend this advantageous position as far into the future as possible.” The document is a “blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests.” Unfortunately, this could be a long process, they say, “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”

The idea of US pre-eminence was translated, once George W. Bush took office, into America’s foreign policy doctrine of “pre-emption,” of striking any country before it can become a threat to the global dominance of the United States. The report also provided a justification for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, stating: “The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.”  No word of weapons of mass destruction, bringing democracy to the Middle East or liberating oppressed Iraqis.

As Chalmers Johnson says (Nemesis, 2007), “It is clear today that the Bush administration intended, upon Saddam Hussein’s certain defeat, to create military bases in Iraq similar to those we built or took over in Germany and Japan after World war II. The covert purpose of our 2003 invasion was empire building – to move the main focus of our military installations in the Middle East from Saudi Arabia to Iraq, gain control over Iraq’s oil resources, and make that country a permanent Pentagon outpost for the control of much of the rest of the ‘arc of instability’.”

The analogy to Pearl Harbor, raised by both Brzezinski and the neocons, may be sheer coincidence or a telling prophecy, but the lessons of Pearl Harbor were etched on their minds. Right wing conspiracy theorists, as part of their on-going assault on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s legacy, have for years claimed that FDR and the American Government had prior intelligence about the planned Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. According to this scenario, Roosevelt left Pearl Harbor dangling, undefended, a poisoned pawn, to lure the Japanese to attack as a pretext for getting us into WWII.  The fact that none of the American aircraft carriers were in Pearl Harbor at the time of the attack, fuels the speculation. Robert B. Stinnett in his book, Day of Deceit “The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor,” argues that, “America had ample warning of the pending attack. At those same levels, it was understood that the isolationist American public would not support a declaration of war unless we were attacked first. The result was a plan to anger Japan, to keep the loyal officers responsible for Pearl Harbor in the dark, and thus to drag America into the greatest war of her existence.”

Was September 11^th 2001, also a “day of deceit?” Or was it, as neocon ideology would have it, “A Noble Lie?”

The events of 9/11 clearly provided a catalytic shock to the public’s sense of domestic well being. The national trauma of September 11, 2001, was the pivotal event, “the new Pearl Harbor”, that precipitated the American public’s support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. As Tony Blair admitted, “… to be truthful about it there is no way we would have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a campaign on Afghanistan but for what happened on 11 September,” (Commons Select Committee on Liaison, 16 July 2002). And, the “neoconservatives would not have been able to implement their war agenda had it not been for the trauma of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which filled the American people with fear and anger…” Stephen J. Sniegoski,  The Transparent Cabal, “The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East and the National Interest of Israel,” Engima Editions, 2008)

Was 9/11, then, an elaborately contrived Reichstag fire, or like Pearl Harbor, a poisoned pawn held out to provide the rationale for a strategic war for oil, global dominance and/or the advancement of American/Israeli interests in the Middle East?

Dare we even think in such terms? Would a government contemplate attacking or allowing its own citizens to be attacked? The military certainly has considered such false-flag operations in the past. We know from James Bamford’s book, Body of Secrets (Anchor Books, April 2002), that, “… the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved plans for what may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government. In the name of anticommunism, they proposed launching a secret and bloody war of terrorism against their own country in order to trick the American public into supporting an ill-conceived war they intended to launch against Cuba.”

While some dismiss the significance of these plans as part of “normal” military contingency planning, Bamford tells us that Operation Northwoods, had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It called for innocent people to be shot on American streets, for boats carrying refuges fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas, for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit, planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus providing an excuse, as well as the public and international backing needed to launch a war against Cuba.

We also now know that the Anthrax attacks contained in letters sent to key Democratic senators such as Tom Daschle, following 9/11, were a false flag operation because the letters themselves were written to appear as if they originated from some foreign Islamic group. The letter to Daschle said: “You cannot stop us. We have this Anthrax. You die now, Are you afraid?  Death to America. Death to Israel. Allah is Great.”  The anthrax originated in a highly secure government lab and only someone within the government with a top-level security clearance could have gained access to this very specific material. It certainly wasn’t accessible to any foreign terrorist groups.  But, as the Daily News reported on 2 August 2008, “In the immediate aftermath of the 2001 anthrax attacks, White House officials repeatedly pressed FBI Director Robert Mueller to prove it was a second-wave assault by Al Qaeda. “They really wanted to blame somebody in the Middle East,” a retired senior FBI official told The Daily News.

When the space shuttle Columbia burned up during its return to earth, killing all seven astronauts on board, the first reaction of the government was to establish an independent board of enquiry to determine what went wrong. This is how the government usually responds whenever tragic events overtake our society. People want to know what happened – who’s to blame?  Were there technical malfunctions or human errors that caused the tragedy? Contrast this response with the actions of the Bush administration in the wake of September 11, 2001, when more than 3000 of our fellow citizens were murdered at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Rather than immediately set up an independent, expert level investigation, the Bush administration dithered, delayed and stonewalled, asserting that a public enquiry would compromise national security and detract from the war on terrorism. As Vincent Bugliosi says in, “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder,” (Vanguard Press, 2008) “George Bush never wanted (and did everything he could to stop) any investigation of how and why the tragedy happened, and what could be done to prevent it from happening again!!”

Although Congress established a joint committee in February 2002, months went by before it held its first hearings on September 18, 2002, a full year after 9/11. Kristen Breitweiser, the wife of one of those killed in the Trade Center, appeared before the committee and pleaded for the creation of an independent blue ribbon panel to investigate. When the joint committee finally submitted its report in December 2002, 28 pages concerning the possible involvement of foreign governments in 9/11were redacted by the Bush Administration. Were these, by any chance, the same list of foreign governments that collaborated with the CIA in its covert war against the Soviets in Afghanistan? In this regard, see Charlie Wilson’s War, the book, not the movie, by George Crile.

As former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds subsequently reported, the US maintained ‘intimate relations’ with Bin Laden, and the Taliban, right up to “that day of September 11.”  These ‘intimate relations’ included using Bin Laden for ‘operations’ in Central Asia, including Xinjiang, China, and involved using al Qaeda and the Taliban in the same manner “as we did during the Afghan and Soviet conflict,” that is, fighting ‘enemies’ via proxies.

Moreover, Ms. Edmonds’ three and a half hour testimony to the 9/11 Commission has been entirely suppressed, reduced to a single footnote, which refers readers to her classified testimony. In an interview, she says that the information that was classified in her case specifically identifies that the US was using Bin Laden and the Taliban in Central Asia, including in Xinjiang.  Ms. Edmonds says that in suppressing her testimony, the US government claims that it is protecting ” ‘sensitive diplomatic relations,’ protecting Turkey, protecting Israel, protecting Pakistan, protecting Saudi Arabia…”

After a great deal of protest and prodding by 9/11 family members, the Bush administration finally agreed to a Commission, which was not established until November 15, 2002. The sincerity of this gesture was immediately cast in doubt, however, when they tried to appoint Henry Kissinger, as Chairman of the Commission. Kissinger is a figure whose veracity is so tainted that only the most credulous could believe that this was a good faith effort to find the truth, rather than an effort at cover up. Mercifully, Mr. Kissinger resigned from the Commission shortly thereafter, owing to his reluctance to disclose the names of his consulting clients. It was only in mid-December 2002, that Bush named former New Jersey Governor, Thomas Keane, to head the Commission. However, with a budget allocation of only $3 million, compared with the $40 million spent on Monica Lewinsky, the Commission was financially hobbled from the start.

But leaving aside, financial limitations and time constraints, Philip Shenon in his book, The Commission (Hachette Book Group, 2008) documents how tainted the 9/11 Commission and its final report really were, although that is not his conclusion.  What is clear is that the Bush administration played the Commission likely a finely tuned instrument, ensuring that no finger would be pointed in its direction. The Commission composed of representatives from the two political parties, rather than experts and specialists, was structurally flawed from the start. It’s every deliberation and finding was held hostage to political considerations, and any inconvenient truths were filtered out before they saw the light of day.

Even if the Commission were not suspect because of its political composition; its Executive Director, Philip Zelikow certainly made it so. Not only was he a close friend of Condoleeza Rice before he was employed by the Commission, he was immediately hired by her as a State Department counselor when the Commission finished its work. More alarmingly, however, he was the guy who codified the neocon pre-emption doctrine as “The National Security Strategy of the United States,” which laid the groundwork for attacking Iraq. He made repeated attempts during the course of the Commission’s work to weave in a link between Iraq and Al-qaeda to bolster the Bush administration’s justification for the invasion. He also maintained regular, secret contacts with Karl Rove while serving as the Executive Director. Yet, we are asked to believe that the Commission report is an entirely credible account of what happened on that fateful day. As Mr. Shenon recounts, in the end, the Report, “was almost all good news for the White House.”

There is no space here to parse the details of what happened on September 11, many people have done that[1], continue to do that, and it’s not much more productive than trying to agree on what happened in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963. In these cases, the devil is not in the detail, but in the big picture of what happened after the event itself. Anyone looking at President Kennedy’s  murder from outside the country would immediately identify it as a coup d’état that irreversibly changed the leadership of the American government and altered our political history. Of course, we don’t speak in such terms in this country, because political correctness doesn’t allow it; coups don’t happen in America. It is as James Douglass writes, “The Unspeakable.” The “system” has to be protected at all costs, so we maintain our silence and censor our thoughts, lest we lose our jobs, reputations or social standing. Only the “lunatic fringe” has other ideas.

The same is true of 9/11.  We have to step back and look at the big picture of what happened after that day. Whose agenda was implemented as a result of 9/11 – the Bush/Cheney neocon agenda or the agenda imputed to Osama Bin Laden? If Bin Laden’s agenda was to mobilize the Islamic world on a grand jihad against the infidels, he failed miserably and brought untold calumny on the heads of Muslims everywhere. It is difficult to identify even one thing that Osama Bin Laden might have achieved by these attacks. In fact, Bush’s invasion of Iraq did  more to weaken the United States and to mobilize radical jihadists than anything Bin Laden did, or could have done.

On the other hand, the attacks were apparently very beneficial for Israel, if Benjamin Netanyahu is to be believed. The Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv reported on April 16, 2008 that Netanyahu told an Israeli audience, “We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq, … swung American public opinion in our favor.” Justin Raimondo adds that ‘The American invasion and occupation of the Mesopotamian heartland has empowered the Israelis as never before – and now they are on the offensive, carving out a greatly expanded sphere of influence …,’ (as quoted by Stephen J. Sniegoski).

For America, the main outcome of the 9/11 attacks, as we can see now, was the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Iraq is the smoking gun of 9/11. We know that on the very day of 9/11, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were already urging an assault on Iraq without a shred of evidence that Iraq was involved in the attacks.  At every stage, leading up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and right until this day, Bush/Cheney and the neocons have conjured up the ghosts of 9/11 to justify and advance this one agenda – Afghanistan was just a sideshow and remained such, until President Obama made the tragic mistake of escalating the conflict there.  Not one element of their agenda could have worked without 9/11. As Vincent Bugliosi says, “if there had been no 9/11 there would have been no war in Iraq, certainly not one the American people would have approved of.” Was it just a matter of sublime coincidence, that Bin Laden provided the neocons with the catalyst they needed as a pretext for unleashing their plans on the world? Was it chance or planning?

There are many who might say, it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie, that nothing can be gained by reopening investigations and discussions about what happened on September 11th.  But knowing the truth of what happened, however painful, is essential because so much of what we are doing in the world has been justified on the grounds that this was an attack by foreign terrorists when the truth may be much more sinister. It may be that we can never know the whole truth about 9/11, any more than we can about the Kennedy assassination, but much about 9/11 still remains hidden and unexplored because of the manner in which the 9/11 Commission carried out its work. It might have been hoped that once Bush/Cheney finally left office, it would be possible to have a new enquiry, free from partisan politicians, to pursue many of the issues not adequately explored, or covered up by the Keane/Zelikow Commission. But this now appears to be a vain hope given the Obama administration’s unwillingness to take a hard look at the past.  9/11 remains buried under the officially sanctioned explanations, because, as a people, not only have we failed to demand the truth, it may be that we really don’t want to know the truth.

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[1] See especially, Paul Thompson’s, The Terror Timeline, Harper Collins, 2004. Or go to, http://www.historycommons.org/project.jsp?project=911_project

Source: Fire Dog Lake

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Star Wars In Iraq

http://freeviewdocumentaries.com

Filed under: Military/War by iw2010 

February 19, 2011

Al Ghezali reported that he had seen three passengers in a car all dead with their faces and teeth burnt, the body intact, and no sign of projectiles. There were other inexplicable aspects: the terrain where the battle took place was dug up by the American military and replaced with other fresh earth, the bodies that were not hit by projectiles had shrunk to just slightly more than one meter in height.

As in any war, the war in Iraq left us a dreadful gallery of horror, images of mutilations that not even doctors can explain. The witnesses refer to laser weapons, arms with mysterious effects. We do not know what kind of weapons could produce such terrible effects. We tried to learn more about it by asking for interviews to members of companies manufacturing laser and microwave weapons. Yet, the U.S. Defense Department prevented any information from being released to us, they also did not answer, up to the time to almost edited, the questions we have sent them in order to know whether or not experimental weapons had been tested in Iraq and Afghanistan.

http://freeviewdocumentaries.com

We tracked down the Pentagon press conferences from before the beginning of the second Gulf War to see if they spoke about any new weapons being tested. The words of the Secretary of Defense and General Meyers indicated a willingness to try weapons that had never been used before. And the questions from the press about direct energy and microwave weapons made them visibly uncomfortable.

YEAR: 2006

RUNTIME: 25 min

TORRENT Download

As Egypt Decides Whether To Allow Iran Warships To Pass Suez, Here Is An Update Of US Naval Deployments – Tyler Durden

found on : http://dprogram.net

February 18th, 2011

(ZeroHedge) – While last week the focus of US naval deployment in the Middle East emphasized securing the Suez Canal in the midst of the Egyptian revolution, this week the developing story is the passage of two Iranian warships through this very canal. Not surprisingly, two US naval groups – an aircraft carrier and a big-deck amphibious warfare ship – are now situated at either end of the Red Sea, where the Iranian flotilla is supposedly located. Will the US presence be enough to prevent escalation? Since we believe that Iran has few alternatives to pulling a “wag the dog” scenario with increasing domestic protests, and an increasingly more troubled ruling class, perhaps the increased US presence in the area is geared more toward dissuading a preemptive engagement by Israel. Regardless, expect posturing to increase as Iran is now stuck in a position from which it can only lose face if it does not at least pursue the symbolic passage of the Suez canal. What happens after is unclear.

And here is the formal passage request received by Egypt:

The Egyptian government has received a request from Iran to allow two of its navy ships to pass through the Suez Canal, according to media reports Thursday. “We received a request this afternoon for two Iranian warships to pass through the Suez Canal. We have not yet approved it,” Hossam Zaki, a Foreign Ministry spokesman told the Wall Street Journal. The decision to permit passage to the ships will be made by the military which currently runs the country in the wake of President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation last week, the reports said. Israel has condemned Iran’s plan to deploy warships to Syria as a “serious provocation.

Source: Zero Hedge

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Pentagon official: US could send troops to fight Mexican “insurgency”

http://www.sott.net

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 00:00 CST

Bill Van Auken
World Socialist Web Site

The second-highest civilian official in charge of the US Army warned Monday that US troops may have to intervene in Mexico to combat what he termed an “insurgency”.

The remarks, made by US Undersecretary of the Army Joseph Westphal at a security forum in Utah, drew an immediate rebuke from the Mexican government. Mexico’s Interior Department issued a statement Tuesday saying it “categorically rejects” the US official’s assertions.

“It is regrettable that this official makes statements … that do not reflect the cooperation that the two governments have been building,” the statement added.

The statement disputed the characterization of the armed conflict in Mexico as an “insurgency,” stressing, “Organized crime is seeking to increase its illegal economic benefits through trafficking of drugs and people, homicide, kidnapping, robbery, extortion and other crimes. They are not groups that are promoting a political agenda.”

In his remarks at the University of Utah’s Hinkley Institute of Politics, Westphal described Latin America and Mexico in particular as one of Washington’s “blind spots” in terms of national security. “As all of you know, there is a form of insurgency in Mexico with the drug cartels that are right on our border,” he said.

He added, “This isn’t just about drugs and about illegal immigrants. This is about, potentially a takeover of a government by individuals who are corrupt.”

While terming his remarks a personal opinion, Westphal said that he had shared them with the Obama White House. He added that he was concerned that “armed and fighting” US troops would have to be deployed on the US-Mexican border “in violation of our Constitution”, or sent “across the border” into Mexico to fight the supposed “insurgency”.

The Army undersecretary was compelled to issue a “clarification” of his remarks within 24 hours of making them. He said in a statement issued Tuesday that he had “mistakenly characterized the challenge posed by drug cartels to Mexico,” adding that his comments “were not, and have never been the policy of the Department of Defense of the US Government toward Latin America.”

While the strongly worded retraction reflects the concerns within the US political establishment over the popular hostility that Westphal’s remarks will provoke in Mexico, the undersecretary’s perspective was hardly unique.

Secretary of State Clinton delivered a similar analysis of Mexico’s crisis just last September. “We face an increasing threat from a well-organized network, drug-trafficking threat that is, in some cases, morphing into or making common cause with what we would consider an insurgency, in Mexico and in Central America,” Clinton told a meeting organized by the Council on Foreign Relations. “It’s looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago.”

The implications of the comparison were clear. In Colombia, Washington concluded a military pact – Plan Colombia – with the government in Bogotá. The pact saw the deployment of hundreds of US “advisors” and military contractors, and the establishment of American military bases in Colombia, in the name of waging a “drug war” and counterinsurgency campaign.

Then, as now, the Mexican government sharply criticized Clinton’s remarks, and President Barack Obama subsequently issued a statement repudiating them.

Westphal’s statements are seen as going somewhat further in explicitly stating the logical conclusion: direct US military intervention.

The Pentagon, however, has previously pointed to such military action. The Joint Operating Environment report issued by the military’s Joint Operating Command in 2008 warned of the potential for a “rapid and sudden collapse” of the Mexican state under pressure from the drug cartels (comparing the country’s crisis to that of Pakistan). It added, “Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone.”

Under the so-called Merida Initiative, also known as “Plan Mexico”, the US has allocated over $1.4 billion to Mexico’s armed forces and police to fight a “drug war” that has seen the deployment of more than 50,000 troops and the deaths of some 35,000 Mexicans since the end of 2006. More than 15,000 were killed in 2010 alone, a 60 percent increase over the previous year.

Last month in a visit to Mexico City, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the Obama administration would seek to dispense at least $500 million worth of the aid in the form of military hardware and training programs this year. While the State Department briefly froze some aid in the face of documented reports that Mexican security forces are carrying out extra-judicial executions, torture and other systematic abuse of the civilian population, Clinton declared her full support for the country’s armed forces and its President Felipe Calderon.

During her visit, Clinton called the murderous violence in Mexico “messy,” noting that it “causes lots of terrible things to be on the news.” She nonetheless urged the Mexican government to continue the militarized campaign against drug trafficking. The state crackdown and the growing death toll are bitterly unpopular with the Mexican public, even as the flow of US guns into the country and the consumption of illegal drugs in the US itself continue unabated.

The secretary of state’s visit to Mexico was seen by many as an exercise in damage control following the release by WikiLeaks of a number of confidential diplomatic cables from the US Embassy in Mexico City. The documents pointed to the growing US dominance over Mexico’s security apparatus as well as Washington’s contempt for the Mexican government.

One of the cables, from May 2008, revealed that the Mexican government has given US intelligence agencies unrestricted access to undocumented immigrants detained on Mexican soil while en route to the US. The majority of these migrants are Central American, but included workers from other countries as well. The cable states that the Mexican Center for Investigation and National Security had given US intelligence the authority to “interview foreign nationals detained at Mexican immigration detention centers dispersed around the country for potential CT [counter-terrorism] information of interest.”

The same embassy cable states, “Rampant lawlessness, widespread corruption and the government’s long-standing inability to confront either had been seen as troubling threat indicators to those watching our southern border for signs of potential terrorist infiltration.”

A secret cable from November 2009 describes the Mexican state intelligence apparatus as “fractured, ad hoc, and reliant on US support”, while asserting that “Sustained US assistance can help shape and fortify” the Mexican agencies.

FLASHBACK : Obama: “You Can Take That To The Bank”

http://dailybail.com/home

 

Video – Obama’s broken promises

The federal government borrowed 43 cents of every dollar spent in the 2010 budget.  The cost of war is bankrupting the United States…

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Cut defense first…

Max Pappas, the vice president of public policy at FreedomWorks and Benjamin H. Friedman, a research fellow at the Cato Institute discuss the possibility of defense cuts and how to move forward. To date, the only US administration to cut defense spending during war time was the Nixon administration.

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Tea Party supports Defense cuts…

Video – Rand Paul on budget cuts

Earlier today…

• Super Bowl Flyover Costs Taxpayers $450,000

• Total Cost Of Wars Exceeds $2.5 Trillion – No Worries! US Media ‘Fluff’ Numbing Nation, Robbing Next Generation

• HOLY GENERATIONAL WAR — U.S National Debt Will Be $19.6 Trillion By 2015 According To New Treasury Report

 

 

 

US American Warships Heading to Egypt

http://www.globalresearch.ca by Washington’s Blog
Global Research, February 6, 2011
Washington’s Blog
Connecticut’s newspaper The Day noted on January 24th: Connecticut National Guard Detachment 2, Company I, 185th Aviation Regiment of Groton has mobilized and will deploy to the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, to support the Multinational Force and Observers. The unit left Connecticut Jan. 15 for Fort Benning, Ga., for further training and validation. The unit operates C-23C Sherpa aircraft and has deployed three times in the last seven years in support of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The unit will provide an on-demand aviation asset to the Multinational Force and Observers commander to support its mission of supervising the security provisions of the Egypt/ Israel Peace Treaty. Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times reported: The Pentagon is moving U.S. warships and other military assets to make sure it is prepared in case evacuation of U.S. citizens from Egypt becomes necessary, officials said Friday. The Kearsarge, an amphibious assault ship carrying 700 to 800 troops from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, and the Ponce have arrived in the Red Sea, putting them off Egypt’s shores in case the situation worsens. Pentagon officials emphasized that military intervention in Egypt was not being contemplated and that the warships were being moved only for contingency purposes in case evacuations became necessary. In addition to the Marines, the Kearsarge normally carries around four dozen helicopters and harrier jets that would permit evacuations and other humanitarian operations, the officials said. More than 1,000 Marines from the Kearsarge were sent to Afghanistan last month on a temporary deployment, leaving roughly one-third still aboard, officials said. The Kearsarge is an attack vessel. As Wikipedia notes: In carrying out her mission, Kearsarge not only transports and lands ashore troops, but also tanks, trucks, artillery, and the complete logistic support needed to supply an assault. The assault support system aboard ship coordinates horizontal and vertical movement of troops, cargo and vehicles. Monorail trains, moving at speeds up to 600 ft/min (3 m/s), transport cargo and supplies from storage and staging areas throughout the ship to a 13,600 square feet (1,260 m2) well deck which opens to the sea through huge gates in the ship’s stern. There, the cargo, troops and vehicles are loaded aboard landing craft for transit to the beach. The air cushion landing craft can “fly” out of the dry well deck, or the well deck can be flooded so conventional landing craft can float out on their way to the beach. Simultaneously, helicopters are brought from the hangar deck to the flight deck by two deck-edge elevators and loaded with supplies from three massive cargo elevators. Kearsarge’s armament suite includes the NATO RIM-7 Sea Sparrow point defense system for anti-aircraft support, RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missiles, 25 mm chain guns and the Phalanx close-in weapon system to counter threats from low-flying aircraft and close-in small craft. Missile decoy launchers augment the anti-ship missile defenses. However, the Kearsarge has also been used in missions to evacuate people stranded in war zones. Wikipedia describes this unique dual capability: Kearsarge is fully capable of amphibious assault, advance force and special purpose operations, as well as non-combatant evacuation and other humanitarian missions. Since her commissioning, she has performed these missions the world over, including evacuating non-combatants from Freetown, Sierra Leone, on 31 May 1997 and rescuing Air Force Captain Scott O’Grady from Serb-controlled territory in Bosnia on 8 June 1995. Additionally, Kearsarge is fully equipped with state of the art command and control (C&C) systems for flagship command duty, and her medical facilities are second in capability only to the Navy’s hospital ships, USNS Comfort (T-AH-20) and Mercy (T-AH-19). These facilities allowed Kearsarge to serve a dual role during the 1999 NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, as a platform for bombing missions against Serb forces in Operation Allied Force, and as a treatment facility for Albanian refugees in Operation Shining Hope. The Los Angeles Times continues: In addition, the aircraft carrier Enterprise is in the eastern Mediterranean. The Pentagon originally announced that the carrier was heading through the Suez Canal for the Arabian Gulf, but the crisis in Egypt appears to have prompted a decision to keep it in the Mediterranean at least temporarily. Egypt borders the Mediterranean Sea (as well as the Red Sea): The Enterprise is the longest naval vessel in the world, and is powered by eight nuclear reactors. The Enterprise does not appear to have any dual role for evacuations, but is simply an offensive aircraft carrier. Therefore, I see no clear indication that the U.S. government has affirmatively decided to directly involve our military in Egypt. However, it is obvious that the government is at least planning for the possibility. Update: Business Insider notes: A “very senior” member of the US Marine corps is telling people “multiple platoons” are deploying to Egypt, a source tells us.There is a system within the US Marines that alerts the immediate families of high-ranking marines when their marine will soon be deployed to an emergency situation where they will not be able to talk to their spouses or families. That alert just went out, says our source. This senior Marine told our source that the Pentagon will deploy “multiple platoons” to Egypt over the next few days and that the official reason will be ‘to assist in the evacuation of US citizens.” Our source was told that “the chances they were going over there went from 70% yesterday to 100% today.”
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