| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Oct 10, 2004 12:28 am Post subject: Sidelined (Zionist) neo-cons stoke future fires |
| http://www.atimes.com
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FJ09Ak01.html
Middle East
Sidelined (Zionist) neo-cons stoke future fires
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Sidelined by their failed predictions for Iraq and US President George W Bush's efforts to reassure voters he is not a warmonger, prominent neo-conservatives and their Christian Right allies are nonetheless trying hard to prepare the ground for future US adventures in the Middle East.
Echoing increasingly threatening noises from the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon about preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, neo-cons are calling for Washington to undertake covert action, at the very least, to oust what some of them call the "terror masters" in Tehran as part of a more general "World War IV" against alleged Arab and Islamic extremism. (The Cold War is widely considered as World War III.)
Some neo-cons are even complaining that if Bush had been serious about the "war on terrorism", he should have taken on Iran after Afghanistan, rather than Iraq.
"Had we seen the war for what it was, we would not have started with Iraq, but with Iran, the mother of modern Islamic terrorism, the creator of Hezbollah, the ally of al-Qaeda, the sponsor of [Abu Musab al-]Zarqawi, the longtime sponsor of Fatah and the backbone of Hamas," wrote part-time Pentagon consultant Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) this week.
His article also reprised an argument he first made three years ago - that the Iranian people were already rising up against the mullahs and needed only a little nudge from Washington to succeed.
Neo-conservatives are also busy stoking tensions with Syria, even amid indications that Washington and Damascus are feeling their way toward some kind of "modus vivendi" that may even include joint military patrols along the latter's porous border with Iraq.
Last week they heard from a Syrian exile, Farid Ghadry, who apparently aspires to become the Ahmed Chalabi - the neo-con boosted leader of the exiled Iraqi National Congress whose standing in Washington plummeted after it was alleged he passed secrets to Iran - of his homeland.
In addition to lobbying for the pending Syria Liberation Act, which would commit the US government to "regime change" in Damascus, Ghadry charged that the government of President Bashir Assad was building "a new colony of terrorism" for youths in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley.
The neo-conservatives, who led the charge to war in Iraq, have steadily lost influence over US policy in Baghdad since a year ago, when US troops found themselves welcomed by a serious and growing insurgency rather than the flowers and sweets the neo-cons had predicted.
At the same time, Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, was reported to have told unhappy war hawks in the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney's office, the two neo-con strongholds, that Bush's re-election prospects would be greatly enhanced if there was "no war in '04".
Led by arch-realists Secretary of State Colin Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage, the State Department gradually wrested control over policy towards Syria and Iran. With US troops bogged down next door, a policy of confrontation, as advocated by neo-cons, not only risked another war, the realists argued, but could also invite more damaging efforts by both Damascus and Tehran to destabilize Iraq.
Wary engagement with both countries has thus become official policy. The recent visit by a high-level US delegation to Damascus and the invitation of European and Arab allies and Iraq's neighbors to attend a US-sponsored meeting on Iraq in Tehran later this fall mark hard-fought advances in the State Department's agenda.
But while the neo-cons may be down, they are by no means out. As more than one foreign-policy analyst has noted, no neo-con within the administration has resigned or been fired, despite their responsibility for the Iraqi quagmire and public calls by even some senior Republican lawmakers and retired military officers that they be ousted.
Some analysts have argued the neo-cons remain in place only because their departure now would amount to an admission by the administration - and thus Bush himself - that serious mistakes had been made. In this view, Bush would purge them in a second term, as he continued along the State Department's "realist" line.
But a growing number of observers, particularly in the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), are coming to the conclusion that the neo-cons may actually enjoy greater influence if Bush wins re-election.
In just the past few days, for example, an article, The State Department's Extreme Makeover, published by online magazine Slate and attributed to an "anonymous" veteran foreign service officer, made precisely this argument.
It is in this context that neo-cons' recent efforts to focus their fire on Syria and Iran, in particular, should be seen.
Ghadry spoke at an all-day symposium co-sponsored by the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), a predominantly neo-conservative lobby group set up in August, and by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a group created two days after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US, whose views largely mirror those of Israel's ruling Likud Party.
On FDD's board of advisers are prominent neo-cons and Iraq war boosters, including former Defense Policy Board chairman and Ledeen's sidekick at AEI, Richard Perle; AEI fellow Jeane Kirkpatrick; and former CIA director James Woolsey, who also co-chairs the CPD.
Joining them are Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, whose own Project for the New American Century first named Iran and Syria - as well as Iraq and the Palestinian Authority - as targets of the "war on terrorism", in an open letter published just 10 days after September 11.
The conference was addressed briefly by telephone by former secretary of state George Shultz, the group's new co-chair, while Woolsey announced that former Czech Republic president Vaclav Havel and former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar had agreed to head an international chapter.
Keynoters for the symposium, titled "World War IV: Why We're Fighting, Whom We're Fighting, How We're Fighting", included Woolsey, who has long spoken of the fight against "Islamo-fascism" - defined as including "the mullahs of Iran", the Ba'athist parties of Iraq and Syria, and "the Wahhabis", of which the al-Qaeda terrorist group is a part - as the equivalent of a world war.
On hand was Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, whose participation appeared not only to provide an official sanction of the radical agenda, but also to confirm that the neo-con faction within the Bush administration is alive, kicking and unashamed despite the quagmire in Iraq.
Neo-conservative godfather Norman Podhoretz, who has also used "World War IV" as his favored description for the challenges Washington faces in the Near East, in particular, made a rare public appearance.
He called Israeli tactics in the occupied territories a "model for how to fight this kind of war", and asserted that "Iran is unquestionably on the agenda" of a second Bush administration.
"I have no doubt that we're going to have to do it and do it fast," he declared, noting there were "many different instrumentalities" at Washington's disposal for dealing with the mullahs and their nuclear program.
Podhoretz, whose son-in-law Elliott Abrams is the Middle East director on the National Security Council staff, also offered a sweeping vision of what the region might look like when the US triumphed.
Stressing the long-held Likud view that the nations of the region were artificial creations forged out of the defeated Ottoman Empire, he suggested, 'What was done in the aftermath of World War I can be undone in World War IV."
Two days later, the FDD helped convene the Middle Eastern American Convention for Freedom and Democracy to elaborate a foreign policy towards the region by several dozen mostly sectarian groups, including the American Coptic Association, the American Maronite Union, the Southern Sudanese Voice for Freedom, the Assyrian American National Federation, the Chaldean National Congress, the American Middle East Christian Association, Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa and the Washington Kurdish Institute.
(Inter Press Service) | |  | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Oct 23, 2004 6:38 pm Post subject: How to Skew Intelligence |
| The following article (appearing in the New York Times today - October 23rd, 2004) is exactly what James Bamford conveys via the URL below in association with his excellent new book ('A Pretext for War') about how the Zionist (JINSA/CSP/PNAC) neoconservatives (most of whom are Jewish Zionist extremist racists against Arabs) in the Bush regime pushed the US to invade/occupy Iraq for their Likud cronies in Israel.
James Bamford's new book ('A Pretext for War') also conveys how US support of Israel's brutal oppression of the Palestinian people was the root cause for the World Trade Center attacks in 1993 and on 9/11 as well:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/articles/2004/07/22/james-bamford-on-msnbc-hardball-about-a-pretext-for-war.php
From: "Jim Bronke" <jvbronke@comcast.net>
Subject: How to Skew Intelligence
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 08:33:53 -0400
The NY Times finally got it right (after the damage has been done). We have to hold Bush accountable. The reality is that any good sleuth knew this before the war. Hence, the inherent shortcomings of our news media. Anyone who would buy in to an argument that Iraq was a real threat to America is missing some serious screws somewhere.
jb
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/23/opinion/23sat1.html?oref=login
October 23, 2004
EDITORIAL
How to Skew Intelligence
t's long been obvious that the allegations about Saddam Hussein's dangerous weapons and alliance with Osama bin Laden were false. But as the election draws closer, the remaining question is to what extent President Bush's team knew the allegations were wrong and used them anyway to persuade Americans to back the invasion of Iraq.
A report issued Thursday by the senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin of Michigan, shows that on the question of an Iraqi-Qaeda axis, Mr. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and others offered an indictment that was essentially fabricated in the office of Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy.
Mr. Levin's report does not prove that President Bush knew that the Hussein-bin Laden alliance was fiction. But officials like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz - as well as Mr. Cheney's chief of staff and the deputy national security adviser - knew that Mr. Feith's tailored conclusions were contrary to the views of the entire intelligence community. Mr. Cheney presented them to the public as confirmed truth about Iraq and Al Qaeda.
The Levin report is a primer on how intelligence can be cooked to fit a political agenda. It is another sad reminder of this administration's refusal to hold anyone accountable for the way the public was led into the war with Iraq.
It focuses on the intelligence operation set up by Mr. Rumsfeld, who had been advocating an invasion of Iraq long before Mr. Bush took office and wanted more damning evidence against Baghdad after 9/11 than the Central Intelligence Agency had.
This operation, run by Mr. Feith, tried to persuade the Pentagon's own espionage unit, the Defense Intelligence Agency, to change its conclusion that there was no alliance between Iraq and Al Qaeda. When the Defense Intelligence Agency rebuffed this blatant interference, Mr. Feith's team wrote its own report.
It took long-discredited raw intelligence and resurrected it to create the impression that there was new information supporting Mr. Feith's preordained conclusions. It misrepresented the C.I.A.'s reports and presented fifth-hand reports as authoritative, all to depict Iraq as an ally of Al Qaeda.
Bipartisan reports from the 9/11 commission and the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that the intelligence community had been right and Mr. Feith wrong: there was no operational relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and no link at all between Mr. Hussein and the 9/11 attacks.
For those who were confused before the war, and still are, by all the Bush administration's claims - that the hijacker Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi official shortly before 9/11, that a member of Al Qaeda set up a base in Iraq with the help of Mr. Hussein, that Iraq helped Al Qaeda learn to make bombs and provided it with explosives - the evidence is now clear. The Levin report, together with the 9/11 panel's findings and the Senate intelligence report, show that those claims were all cooked up by Mr. Feith's shop, which knew that the C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency had already shown them to be false.
We don't know exactly how much of that the White House knew because Mr. Feith tried to confuse things. He eliminated points that the C.I.A. disputed when he showed the intelligence agency his report, and he put them back in when he sent it to the White House.
The Bush administration called Mr. Levin's report pre-election partisan sniping. It is far more than that, but voters, unfortunately, won't get final answers.
The Senate Intelligence Committee, which has reported on the C.I.A.'s actions before the war, has delayed a review of the administration's behavior until after the election. We also will not see the C.I.A.'s own report because Mr. Bush's new intelligence chief, Porter Goss, has rebuffed a bipartisan request from Congress to release it.
Voters have to decide whether to hold Mr. Bush accountable for the skewed intelligence cooked up by his administration to justify the war.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |
Jim Bronke
This email is an _expression of my personal opinion only and does not represent that of any other entity.
If a friend forwarded this to you and should you wish to be on my list just ask. My listers know they can
be removed at any time if they wish.
jvbronke@comcast.net | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Oct 28, 2004 9:46 am Post subject: Bush or Kerry: Any Real Difference in Foreign Policy? |
| http://www.ihr.org/news/041026_weber.shtml
October 26, 2004
Bush or Kerry: Any Real Difference in Foreign Policy?
by Mark Weber
Oct. 26, 2004
President George W. Bush's fervent support for Israel and its hardline premier is well known. He reaffirmed it, for example, in June 2002 in a major speech on the Middle East. In the view of "leading Israeli commentators," the London Times reported, the address was "so pro-Israel that it might have been written by Ariel Sharon."
Indeed, concern for Israel's security was an important factor in Bush's decision to invade Iraq. This is so widely understood by Washington insiders that US Senator Ernest Hollings was moved in May to declare that Iraq was invaded "to secure Israel," and that "everybody" knows it. Referring to the cowardly reluctance of his Congressional colleagues to openly acknowledge this reality, Hollings said that "nobody is willing to stand up and say what is going on." Due to "the pressures we get politically," he added, members of Congress uncritically support Israel and its policies.
In August 2002, some months before the invasion of Iraq, General Wesley Clark, the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, said in an interview: "Those who favor this attack now will tell you candidly, and privately, that it is probably true that Saddam Hussein is no threat to the United States. But they are afraid at some point he might decide if he had a nuclear weapon to use it against Israel."
In an address to pro-Israel activists at this year's convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Bush said: "The United States is strongly committed, and I am strongly committed, to the security of Israel as a vibrant Jewish state." He also told the gathering: "By defending the freedom and prosperity and security of Israel, you're also serving the cause of America."
Condoleeza Rice, Bush's National Security Advisor, echoed the president's outlook in a May 2003 interview, saying that the "security of Israel is the key to the security of the world."
In light of all this, it's no wonder that millions of people — across the United States and around the world — look with hope to Bush's challenger in this year's presidential election campaign.
But is John Kerry really an alternative? Although he is more polished and articulate than Bush, Kerry's record of emphatic commitment to Jewish and Zionist interests offers little reason to believe that, as president, he would chart a fundamentally different policy in the strife-torn Middle East.
In an advertisement issued by their campaign and published in the Jewish community weekly Forward (Sept. 17), Kerry and his vice-presidential running mate, John Edwards, proclaim that "Israel's cause must be America's cause." They also renew their "commitment to a safe and secure Jewish state of Israel," and pledge to "strengthen our special relationship with Israel." In another ad by their campaign (Forward, Sept. 24), Kerry and Edwards proclaim that they "have always stood firmly with Israel," and that "they stand with American Jews on every issue."
Kerry has named Mel Levine, an ardent Zionist, as his top advisor on Middle East affairs. Levine, a former US Congressman, has been a board member of AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobby organization.
During the presidential campaign debate on Sept. 30, which focused on US foreign policy, neither Bush nor Kerry made a single reference to the Israel-Palestine conflict. To be sure, each did mention Israel, but only to reaffirm his commitment to the Zionist state.
"A free Iraq," said Bush, "will be an ally in the war on terror, and that's essential. A free Iraq will set a powerful example in the part of the world that is desperate for freedom. A free Iraq will help secure Israel. A free Iraq will enforce the hopes and aspirations of the reformers in places like Iran. A free Iraq is essential for the security of this country."
Kerry was no less fervent in his _expression of concern for Israel: "Soldiers know over there [in Iraq] that this isn't being done right yet. I'm going to get it right for those soldiers, because it's important to Israel, it's important to America, it's important to the world, it's important to the fight on terror."
Two decades ago, Admiral Thomas Moorer, one-time Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke with blunt exasperation about the Zionist hold on Washington: "I've never seen a President — I don't care who he is — stand up to them [the Israelis]. It just boggles the mind. They always get what they want... If the American people understood what a grip those people have got on our government, they would rise up in arms. Our citizens certainly don't have any idea what goes on."
Most Americans are still clueless.
Bush and Kerry, like most US politicians, are so beholden to Jewish-Zionist power, and so committed to Israel and its interests, that regardless of who wins the presidential election on November 2, there will be no real change in US foreign policy, and certainly not in the Middle East.
See also: A Look at the 'Powerful Jewish Lobby' | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Oct 30, 2004 9:37 am Post subject: Terribly Convenient Timing: Osama bin Laden, He's Back |
| From: "Couples Company"
Subject: Terribly Convenient Timing: Osama bin Laden, He's Back
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 21:03:10 -0700
Was today insane or what? You know I'll fine tune this over the next several days as new information becomes available:)
Since this is breaking news, any new info I should include or facts now disproven, let me know. Enjoy
http://www.couplescompany.com/Features/Politics/2004/BinLaden.htm
COMMENTARY
Terribly Convenient Timing: Osama bin Laden
He's Back
By Laura Dawn Lewis
On October 29, 2004 Osama bin Laden, via a professionally shot video tape finally stated he ordered 9/11 and further clarified that his assault on the US will not stop until US foreign policy in the Middle East changes. He is quite clear; his beef with the US is what we are doing, not what we are. This position, objecting to US foreign policy remains consistent with interviews he did in 1996 and 1998 with US Media, where he stated the same objections.
This well-timed tape along with its effectiveness at vilifying anyone looking for diplomatic solutions just made the only just and humane resolution impossible insuring this "war" goes on indefinitely
US Policy is defined as: Israel/Palestine, ending the US support of apartheid and ethnic cleansing the United States funds, supports and diplomatically protects from International law; invading countries that did not attack us on false pretense and an end to shielding the governments of Saudi Arabia and other regimes hurting their people. Nearly 70% of the world's people agree that US foreign policy is the problem and cite this as why they are angry with Americans. Some polls have shown this as high as 90%. Americans by comparison remain largely oblivious. Of course bin Laden stated nothing about hating our "Freedom" or that we are "Infidels" which is also consistent with previous interviews. In fact he mocked the Bush Administration's attempt to paint his objectives in such simplistic terms worthy of the kindergarten corner.
Excerpts from the Tape:
"We decided to destroy towers in America," bin Laden said, referring to the World Trade Center.
"God knows that it had not occurred to our mind to attack the towers, but after our patience ran out and we saw the injustice and inflexibility of the American-Israeli alliance toward our people in Palestine and Lebanon, this came to my mind," he said.
In his statement, Bin Laden accused President Bush of "misleading" the American people since the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
"Your security is not in the hands of (Democratic candidate John) Kerry or Bush or Al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands," bin Laden said.
"To the U.S. people, my talk is to you about the best way to avoid another disaster," he said.
"I tell you: security is an important element of human life and free people do not give up their security."
"If Bush says we hate freedom, let him tell us why we didn't attack Sweden, for example. It is known that those who hate freedom do not have dignified souls, like those of the 19 blessed ones," he said, referring to the 19 hijackers.
"We fought you because we are free .. and want to regain freedom for our nation. As you undermine our security we undermine yours."
"Despite entering the fourth year after Sept. 11, Bush is still deceiving you and hiding the truth from you and therefore the reasons are still there to repeat what happened (with new attacks)," Bin Laden added.
Bin Laden also said that Bush's reaction toward the Sept. 11 attacks was slow which gave the hijackers the time they needed to carry out the attacks.
Al-Jazeera 10/29/2004
View the 18 Minute Broadcast
Unlike the discredited Bin Laden tape of December 2001, there is no reason to suspect this latest tape is not genuine, (though rumors our flying that it is not) Bin Laden's statements are consistent with previous statements on PBS, (The discredited version of 2001 was not) and the person on the tape appears to be him; the quality is good and clear.
We'll concede this is the real thing. The next logical question is, why wait three years and nearly two months to claim responsibility September 11, 2001, four days before the election? That has been one of the main sources of doubt and contention with journalists like myself digging, questioning and increasingly becoming alarmed at the inaccuracies and propaganda whipping Americans into a all-out blood lust fear inspired, blindly patriotic frenzy. This tape furthers this emotional smorgasbord, making it awfully convenient on several levels.
John Kerry made a big deal about the fact that we invaded Afghanistan to "Hunt down Bin Laden" then took our eye off the ball so we could invade what we really wanted, Iraq. Cheney made it clear within 5 hours of the planes hitting on 9/11, Afghanistan was a convenience, scribbling a note insisting they find some way to tie Saddam to 9/11. (The Movie Hijacking Catastrophe goes into this in depth). In fact this administration used bin Laden as long as they needed to and then substituted Saddam changing everyone's focus.
This is the first tape in almost three years. Nothing, no appearances, messages, taunts...nothing for three years and now last week we have an obvious American accented "terrorist" promising worse than 9/11. Today Bin Laden suddenly pops up?
Most disturbing, bin Laden articulates what the peace movement and anti-war movements have said, "It's our foreign policy stupid", which is the problem and why terrorism targeted at US interests exists. There is no way around that. US Foreign Policy is the root cause of terrorism. Bush couldn't have asked for a better tool.
Bush and Kerry adamantly declared they will not "Be intimidated or influenced" by anything bin Laden says, suggests or intimates thus positioning anyone stating the problem is our foreign policy as "terrorist sympathizers" rather than rational human beings who object to breaking international law and discarding the constitution via acts considered war crimes when committed by any one other than the US or Israel. It kills the diplomatic solution and supports the force solution, the Bush Doctrine.
Bin Laden's objections to our foreign policy are legitimate. What we are doing by proxy in Palestine is wrong. Not my opinion, that is according to the Hague Resolutions, Geneva Conventions, Rome Statues, The United Nations, our own constitution and International law. For those using the God excuse, it's also against the teachings of the Gospels, which for Christians IS the final word of God and take precedence over all books of the Old Testament. That is another can of twisted worms that Bush's agenda distorted well.
What we are doing in Iraq is wrong. Again, not my opinion. That statement originates with the Hague Resolutions, the Geneva Conventions, Rome Statues, our own constitution and International law. Terrorism's defeat only occurs upon the removal its causes: Oppression, greed, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, occupation, colonization, conquest and invasion, not the branches or seeds illustrated by the people. Our policies cause terrorism both in Palestine and Iraq, and yes the two are intimately connected. Anything other than addressing the realities on the ground of these two policy nightmares feeds terrorism, creates more of these reasons and more baby bin Ladens. Simply put, unless you get the root, the weeds always grow back. We're dead heading by attacking the results of these policies, the terrorists. We're not pulling weeds out by the roots since we continue to fertilize the situations causing terror to grow in the first place.
Unfortunately, this tape provides fuel for Bush's objectives. Our "I'm never wrong and my actions are God inspired" President Bush and "me too" Kerry backed by warmongers and profiteers can now use any attempt addressing the causes of terrorism as being 'influenced by the terrorists'. This well-timed tape along with its effectiveness at vilifying anyone looking for diplomatic solutions eradicates humane resolutions, opting for the barbaric while effectively segregating those promoting diplomacy thus insuring this "war" goes on indefinitely. Concurrently it creates enough fear to insure the money keeps rolling in and the remaining portions of the PNAC plan, now known as the Bush Doctrine can continue to clear the Middle East of any person not 100% behind Israel or the US.
Fox News led the charge beginning at 5PM. O'Reilly set the pace, claiming Emen is siding with the terrorists and an anti-American sympathizer because he opposes the war? And people believe that. It only took one minute for O'Reilly to spin a 360. Not quite a record, but almost. A rap singer is a terrorist sympathizer because he opposes our invading countries that have not attacked us, killing over 100,000 civilians and basically raping their country? Has reason completely left the American mindset? By minute three Mr. O'Reilly insisted we are in World War III...against terrorism, forgetting that terrorism embodies a dynamic, non descript emotional adjective that sometimes serves as a verb or a noun but cannot be defined. Of course he's never explained how an army can fight an ever-changing idea that is a reaction and a tactic. Meanwhile 75% of the women in this country are terrified, just where the President wants them.
A Plea or a Warning?
The language of this statement caught my eye:
"Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or Al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands," bin Laden said.
"To the U.S. people, my talk is to you about the best way to avoid another disaster," he said.
The tape is different in that it is appealing to the American people, What the tape says to me, reading between the lines is:
"Here's your chance America. We don't hate you. We hate what you're doing so we're giving you one last opportunity to change your ways. If you choose to continue killing us, our children, our culture and our faith, you leave us no choice but to fight back. Stop interfering with our ability to live and we'll stop interfering with you. If you don't, you have only yourselves to blame."
I see this as the moral equivalency of a clear conscience from bin Laden's point of view. A way of giving us one last chance to reverse this course. In his mind I'm believe he's saying,
"See I told the American people what they need to do in order to avoid being attacked. I'm not asking them to do anything illegal. I'm just asking them to stop doing what is illegal and return to the principles and values they pretend they espouse. And look, they don't care. They want to kill us. Therefore since they won't stop killing us and messing with our lives, they are not innocent any longer. Not their women. Not their children, none of them. Not innocent in God's eyes and not innocent in mine. They allowed this to happen therefore all are responsible."
Ominous, but I believe realistic.
bottom line
PRIMARILY: My questions show suspicion toward the timing. This administration, and as Kerry is a Senator I consider him part of it, finesses the American people and rarely tells the relevant truth. Cross reference Europe in the 1920's and 1930's and you see the same tactics, logic and agendas at work in the United States today.
Secondly: They've used 9/11 to strip us of our most personal rights and control the American people, basically taking our freedom and convincing us that the loss of freedoms is freedom. They've told us persons against pre-emptive strikes and our consistent violations of international law are unpatriotic, because we want to stop engaging in the policies that create terrorism.
Third: I find it strange that it took three years for bin Laden to claim responsibility for 9/11. Today is the first time; up until this point there was no concrete evidence. Now he's made it clear. Why now? I find it suspicious that he disappeared from consideration until Kerry pounded home the fact we used him to go to war and then changed our direction. He disappeared from the media, now he's back?
Extremely disturbing to me is the convenience of positioning the only sane resolution to ending this war, the addressing and reexamination of our foreign policy, as "intimidation" or caving to terrorists rather than diplomacy. This serves the agenda of those promoting this war by effectively silencing those of us seeking peaceful and humane resolutions inline with our constitution and international law.
Finally the most ominous, I suspect this tape is a gesture, a warning and a last opportunity for peace, which the bullheaded nature of our government now will never approach on the convenience of "being influenced by terrorists". You see with this, even those in the Arab world who may have sympathized with bin Laden's agenda but not his tactics, no longer need to feel guilty. Should another attack come they can say, "He gave the American people the chance to change this and they refused. Anything from this point forward is their own fault. They are all guilty"
The cost of war coming home with the majority of our reservists deployed eight thousand miles away, that is a very frightening thought. But of late nothing surprises me. We can create a win/win here and eliminate terrorism. But to so that we must step out of the fear and actually begin to think. <END>
Copyright © Couples Company, Inc. 1999-2004
All Rights Reserved
http://www.couplescompany.com/Features/Politics/2004/BinLaden.htm | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2004 9:55 am Post subject: Zia Mian on the Zionist PNAC Warmongers |
| The American Century as Imperial Enterprise
Zia Mian gave the keynote address at AFSC New England's Empire is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things conference on October 10, 2003, the first part of which is excerpted below. He is a physicist with Princeton University's Program on Science and Global Security http://www.princeton.edu/~globsec/publications/index.shtml and a lecturer at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He is a regular contributor to Peacework.
There's a funny thing about naming empires. There was the Roman Empire, the British Empire, the French Empire, even the Belgians had an empire. If you haven't read about the Belgian Empire, you should read King Leopold's Ghost about what happens when empire is unleashed in all its ferocity. Those are the kinds of empires that we've grown up with. These are the empires that we read about in history books. They are empires which identify a people and a place as the carriers of that empire.
Yet people seldom, today, refer to the US Empire. The US doesn't like to refer to itself this way. One of the things that's always struck me is that if you go back to the period around World War II, much of what we're seeing now has echoes from that period. In 1941, Henry Luce wrote his famous essay in Life magazine about the American Century. Sixty years later, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) advocates what it calls "American global leadership." The PNAC brings together the likes of Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and other key members of the Bush Administration. They claim the next hundred years are ours.
They're claiming not a place, but every place, for the next hundred years, is ours. So, the US empire is both intrinsically global and not actually, necessarily, about occupying territory per se. The implication, of course, is that whether you want it or not, you're all within the boundaries of the American Empire, whether you are in Pakistan or Botswana or Timbuktu. Because you are all living in the Twentieth Century and now the Twenty-first Century. How do you confront a century?
Empire is not just about geography and history, it's about a relationship. A very interesting and important book, Empires, by Michael Doyle, examines empires in comparative perspective. His definition of empire is very clear. Too often, we use a lazy notion of empire. We think of Roman legions, British ships, American troops chasing up and down. Doyle challenges us to go a little deeper. He says, "Empire is a relationship, formal and informal, in which one state controls the effective political sovereignty of another society. It can be achieved by force, by political collaboration, or by economic, social or cultural dependence."
That's a long, long way from the simple notion of empire, because what it brings out is that there's another side to the imperial relationship. There are those who are willing to collaborate with empire. There are not just economic dependencies in relationships, but social ones and cultural ones. Imperialism, he then goes on, is simply the process or policy of establishing or maintaining an empire.
It's not just a question of where we are sending troops. Where are we building bases? Where are we fighting wars, but also what are our political relationships? Who is collaborating with the US? How are we getting them to collaborate? What are the exercises of economic, social, and cultural power? How are we generating dependence in these areas? That's part of the dynamic of empire.
Now, if you want to read a little bit and understand a little bit about how the social and the cultural relationships of empire have worked and continue to work, there are few books as significant as Culture and Imperialism by the late Professor Edward Said, who passed away about two weeks ago. By analyzing 19th-century British novels, Said pointed out that underneath all the politeness of society, there is this substructure of domination and exploitation at work. Said reminds us to pay attention to what's there, but not spelled out. This is the architecture of the building. Don't just look at the interior décor.
The National Security Strategy
Now the Bush Administration has embraced imperialism as a policy. I don't think this is a matter of any debate or dispute. If you read their most recent imperial edict, it's called the National Security Strategy of the United States, September, 2002 <www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html>. It starts out by saying, and I quote, "The United States possesses unprecedented and unequaled strength and influence in the world." Unprecedented and unequal. Strength and influence. It draws distinctions between these things that are important. So, in other words, we are capable of being imperialists.
Second, this is a time of opportunity for America. In other words, the US government plans to use its strength and influence to extend imperial control. The third part is the classic imperial rationale. The aim of this strategy, it says, is to help make the world not just safer but better. We're going to make the whole world better. How can you argue with that? What do you say? But all empire builders make the same spurious claim.
Many of the people who are in power in the Bush Administration, were also in King George the First's, I'm sorry, the first President Bush's, administration. You see, it comes easily, when you spend time thinking about empires, to be suddenly struck by the fact that fathers and sons rule one after the other. But they produced in 1992 this infamous document called Defense Planning Guidance 1992 <http://www.pnac.info/blog/archives/000045.html>. It was written for Cheney by Wolfowitz and others at the end of the Cold War to say, OK, what do we do now? We won. What do we do?
Our first objective, it says, is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. The strategy requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region. Cheney and friends are not just talking about dominating the world, they're saying we're not even going to let any power arise that can dominate a region of the world, especially a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. In other words, the route to power is through control of the resources that are in regions. We will not let any power gain control over those resources, even in their own region.
These regions include Western Europe (so much for 50 years of alliance politics), East Asia, the area of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia. The document contains great detail about how to prevent the rise of regional rivals. In the section on the Middle East (Southwest Asia), it says, of course, that the US's overall objective is to remain the predominant power in the region and preserve US and Western access to the oil.
Inconsistencies and Contradictions
One of the regions that's missing from their analysis is Latin America. It's as if it doesn't exist. One reason for its absence is that if there's one region that has already suffered the American empire, it is Central and South America. It's suffered so much that it doesn't even exist as a possibility of a threat, something the US planners need to worry about anymore. Some have speculated that what all this translates into, these grand dreams of the Bush administration, is the Latin Americanization of the world. You can have your countries, you can have your flags, you can have your airlines, but you will be docile. You will not pose a threat, and, when "necessary," we will support a military dictatorship if you get uppity democratically elected governments like Salvador Allende's in Chile or Hugo Chavez's in Venezuela. We'll just integrate your economies into ours so that you will do what we want.
But there are inconsistencies, of course, because in the pursuit of empire, of political collaboration rather than just brute force, you have to work with the people who are in charge in all these other countries. Power often only recognizes power. So what does the US do? It says, well, who's the most powerful institution in these countries? It's usually the military. What does the military want? More guns. So, we'll sell them some. Then the military will be our friends and that's the end of that. They won't want to fight us because we sell them guns.
So it should come as no surprise that consistently now, for over a decade, the US has been overwhelmingly the largest global supplier of weapons to the world. As a single state it is now responsible for over 45% of all the arms sales in the world. That leaves the other 192 countries in the world making up the rest. Now, you'd think selling weapons when you're trying to rule the world was a bad idea. But, empire has contradictions. You want to work with institutions that are powerful, you want a currency that you can deal with them in and so then you sell them guns. Sometimes those guns are turned against you, and you're stuck. Since the US has more weapons, it presumes it will prevail.
Now, I'll conclude by saying that those of us who see ourselves as part of what you might call a constituency of resistance face a dilemma. We are relatively small in number, perhaps relatively better informed, but in a democracy that doesn't seem to matter. There are two options I can see for resistance. One is to say, if we elect a Democrat, at least it won't be this bad. Well, it's true, we hope it won't be this bad, right? And in some ways it may not be as bad. But to do that embraces a set of assumptions about identity and responsibility and power which fails to question the empire itself.
The alternative is much more challenging. We have this beautiful picture of the world in space, where we can't see any boundaries. This requires seeking changes of the same magnitude that the Bush Administration strategists are planning, which is to challenge the order of the nation state in place since the 17th century. They want to do it by saying, there will be America and then there will be everybody else. My solution is to offer, as Edward Said and Noam Chomsky and many others have done for a very long time, a vision of humanity without a claim to a national identity that is tied to a place. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2004 10:15 am Post subject: Re: Zia Mian on the Zionist PNAC Warmongers |
| 'Preventive Warriors':
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/11/1623240
Neoconservatism is a Jewish Movement:
http://www.vdare.com/misc/macdonald_neoconservatism.htm
| Alpha wrote: | The American Century as Imperial Enterprise
Zia Mian gave the keynote address at AFSC New England's Empire is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things conference on October 10, 2003, the first part of which is excerpted below. He is a physicist with Princeton University's Program on Science and Global Security http://www.princeton.edu/~globsec/publications/index.shtml and a lecturer at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He is a regular contributor to Peacework.
There's a funny thing about naming empires. There was the Roman Empire, the British Empire, the French Empire, even the Belgians had an empire. If you haven't read about the Belgian Empire, you should read King Leopold's Ghost about what happens when empire is unleashed in all its ferocity. Those are the kinds of empires that we've grown up with. These are the empires that we read about in history books. They are empires which identify a people and a place as the carriers of that empire.
Yet people seldom, today, refer to the US Empire. The US doesn't like to refer to itself this way. One of the things that's always struck me is that if you go back to the period around World War II, much of what we're seeing now has echoes from that period. In 1941, Henry Luce wrote his famous essay in Life magazine about the American Century. Sixty years later, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) advocates what it calls "American global leadership." The PNAC brings together the likes of Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and other key members of the Bush Administration. They claim the next hundred years are ours.
They're claiming not a place, but every place, for the next hundred years, is ours. So, the US empire is both intrinsically global and not actually, necessarily, about occupying territory per se. The implication, of course, is that whether you want it or not, you're all within the boundaries of the American Empire, whether you are in Pakistan or Botswana or Timbuktu. Because you are all living in the Twentieth Century and now the Twenty-first Century. How do you confront a century?
Empire is not just about geography and history, it's about a relationship. A very interesting and important book, Empires, by Michael Doyle, examines empires in comparative perspective. His definition of empire is very clear. Too often, we use a lazy notion of empire. We think of Roman legions, British ships, American troops chasing up and down. Doyle challenges us to go a little deeper. He says, "Empire is a relationship, formal and informal, in which one state controls the effective political sovereignty of another society. It can be achieved by force, by political collaboration, or by economic, social or cultural dependence."
That's a long, long way from the simple notion of empire, because what it brings out is that there's another side to the imperial relationship. There are those who are willing to collaborate with empire. There are not just economic dependencies in relationships, but social ones and cultural ones. Imperialism, he then goes on, is simply the process or policy of establishing or maintaining an empire.
It's not just a question of where we are sending troops. Where are we building bases? Where are we fighting wars, but also what are our political relationships? Who is collaborating with the US? How are we getting them to collaborate? What are the exercises of economic, social, and cultural power? How are we generating dependence in these areas? That's part of the dynamic of empire.
Now, if you want to read a little bit and understand a little bit about how the social and the cultural relationships of empire have worked and continue to work, there are few books as significant as Culture and Imperialism by the late Professor Edward Said, who passed away about two weeks ago. By analyzing 19th-century British novels, Said pointed out that underneath all the politeness of society, there is this substructure of domination and exploitation at work. Said reminds us to pay attention to what's there, but not spelled out. This is the architecture of the building. Don't just look at the interior décor.
The National Security Strategy
Now the Bush Administration has embraced imperialism as a policy. I don't think this is a matter of any debate or dispute. If you read their most recent imperial edict, it's called the National Security Strategy of the United States, September, 2002 <www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html>. It starts out by saying, and I quote, "The United States possesses unprecedented and unequaled strength and influence in the world." Unprecedented and unequal. Strength and influence. It draws distinctions between these things that are important. So, in other words, we are capable of being imperialists.
Second, this is a time of opportunity for America. In other words, the US government plans to use its strength and influence to extend imperial control. The third part is the classic imperial rationale. The aim of this strategy, it says, is to help make the world not just safer but better. We're going to make the whole world better. How can you argue with that? What do you say? But all empire builders make the same spurious claim.
Many of the people who are in power in the Bush Administration, were also in King George the First's, I'm sorry, the first President Bush's, administration. You see, it comes easily, when you spend time thinking about empires, to be suddenly struck by the fact that fathers and sons rule one after the other. But they produced in 1992 this infamous document called Defense Planning Guidance 1992 <http://www.pnac.info/blog/archives/000045.html>. It was written for Cheney by Wolfowitz and others at the end of the Cold War to say, OK, what do we do now? We won. What do we do?
Our first objective, it says, is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. The strategy requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region. Cheney and friends are not just talking about dominating the world, they're saying we're not even going to let any power arise that can dominate a region of the world, especially a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. In other words, the route to power is through control of the resources that are in regions. We will not let any power gain control over those resources, even in their own region.
These regions include Western Europe (so much for 50 years of alliance politics), East Asia, the area of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia. The document contains great detail about how to prevent the rise of regional rivals. In the section on the Middle East (Southwest Asia), it says, of course, that the US's overall objective is to remain the predominant power in the region and preserve US and Western access to the oil.
Inconsistencies and Contradictions
One of the regions that's missing from their analysis is Latin America. It's as if it doesn't exist. One reason for its absence is that if there's one region that has already suffered the American empire, it is Central and South America. It's suffered so much that it doesn't even exist as a possibility of a threat, something the US planners need to worry about anymore. Some have speculated that what all this translates into, these grand dreams of the Bush administration, is the Latin Americanization of the world. You can have your countries, you can have your flags, you can have your airlines, but you will be docile. You will not pose a threat, and, when "necessary," we will support a military dictatorship if you get uppity democratically elected governments like Salvador Allende's in Chile or Hugo Chavez's in Venezuela. We'll just integrate your economies into ours so that you will do what we want.
But there are inconsistencies, of course, because in the pursuit of empire, of political collaboration rather than just brute force, you have to work with the people who are in charge in all these other countries. Power often only recognizes power. So what does the US do? It says, well, who's the most powerful institution in these countries? It's usually the military. What does the military want? More guns. So, we'll sell them some. Then the military will be our friends and that's the end of that. They won't want to fight us because we sell them guns.
So it should come as no surprise that consistently now, for over a decade, the US has been overwhelmingly the largest global supplier of weapons to the world. As a single state it is now responsible for over 45% of all the arms sales in the world. That leaves the other 192 countries in the world making up the rest. Now, you'd think selling weapons when you're trying to rule the world was a bad idea. But, empire has contradictions. You want to work with institutions that are powerful, you want a currency that you can deal with them in and so then you sell them guns. Sometimes those guns are turned against you, and you're stuck. Since the US has more weapons, it presumes it will prevail.
Now, I'll conclude by saying that those of us who see ourselves as part of what you might call a constituency of resistance face a dilemma. We are relatively small in number, perhaps relatively better informed, but in a democracy that doesn't seem to matter. There are two options I can see for resistance. One is to say, if we elect a Democrat, at least it won't be this bad. Well, it's true, we hope it won't be this bad, right? And in some ways it may not be as bad. But to do that embraces a set of assumptions about identity and responsibility and power which fails to question the empire itself.
The alternative is much more challenging. We have this beautiful picture of the world in space, where we can't see any boundaries. This requires seeking changes of the same magnitude that the Bush Administration strategists are planning, which is to challenge the order of the nation state in place since the 17th century. They want to do it by saying, there will be America and then there will be everybody else. My solution is to offer, as Edward Said and Noam Chomsky and many others have done for a very long time, a vision of humanity without a claim to a national identity that is tied to a place. | | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2005 8:59 pm Post subject: The Chechens' American Friends |
| The Chechens' American Friends
The Washington neocons' commitment to the war on terror evaporates in Chechnya, whose cause they have made their own
by John Laughland
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0908-01.htm
Today's New York Times has a piece from Richard Pipes, a semi-retired neocon, who also backs the Chechen cause, in a piece called: 'Give the Chechens a Land of Their Own' Here's an excerpt :
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10A16F93C540C7A8CDDA00894DC404482
In his post-Beslan speech, Mr. Putin all but linked the attack to global Islam: "We have to admit that we have failed to recognize the complexity and dangerous nature of the processes taking place in our own country and the world in general." Reports that some of the terrorists were Arabs reinforce that line of thinking. But the fact is, the Chechen cause and that of Al Qaeda are quite different, and demand very different approaches in combating them.
Terrorism is a means to an end: it can be employed for limited ends as well as for unlimited destructiveness. The terrorists who blew up the train station in Madrid just before the Spanish election this year had a specific goal in mind: to compel the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq. The Chechen case is, in some respects, analogous. A small group of Muslim people, the Chechens have been battling their Russian conquerors for centuries.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20040909/two_three_many_iraqs_next_chechnya.php
So, why should the neo-cons have it in for Putin?
When we are dealing with the neo-cons, the first thing we must realise is that their first priority is their own self-interest, not necessarily a loyalty to any kind of ideological consistency.
With this understanding, we would immediately suggest 3 reasons for the anti-Putin line of much of the British media:
1. The neo-cons, as well as the plutocratic Russian oligarchs, want a soft Russian leader, like Boris Yeltsin, whom they can push around and who will do what they want, in order that they can enrich themselves.
2. In attempting to pull Russia out of the grip of the oligarchs, Putin has upset many of them. They are now using their money and influence -- with a little help from their friends around the world -- to get back at him and attempt to pull him down.
3. Putin was not sufficiently for the Iraq War and has to be punished, just like France has to be continually mocked in the neo-con lexicon.
http://www.sovereignty.org.uk/siteinfo/newsround/neocon.html
Quote:
Simultaneously, efforts are being redoubled to crank into action the various pipelines which are supposed to transport Caspian oil to Western markets. One of these is the Brody pipeline which runs between the Ukrainian town of that name and the Black Sea port of Odessa (a Russian city but also in Ukraine). The Brody pipeline was initially supposed to take US-controlled Caspian oil to Western markets, but it has instead been pumping Russia oil, something the Americans do not like.[v] So the New World Order strategists are determined to put their man in control of Ukraine, at the presidential election on 31st October. Huge influence, and presumably money, is being pumped in to ensure a victory for Victor Yushchenko. Paul Wolfowitz said in Warsaw on 5th October that Ukraine should join NATO;[vi] Mark Brzezinski and Richard Holbrooke have rattled their sabres over Ukraine,[vii] and Anders Aslund, the architect of Yelstin's mass larceny, has eloquently outlined the West's strategic interest in that country.[viii]
Is the U.S. actively trying to undermine Russia's control over FSU oil resources by interfering in Chechnya and Ukraine?
What do you think, Volk?:
http://www.strategytalk.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=32021 | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
