| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 6:07 am Post subject: A Lie of Historic Proportions |
| A Lie of Historic Proportions
Iraq has been the tragic Lie of Historic Proportions of Washington, DC since before the first Gulf war. For years, Saddam was one of our government’s propped up and militarily supported puppets. Many people have seen the famous footage of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam. I suppose the two are smiling so big for the cameras because they are kindred spirits. After all of the hand-shaking and weapon brokering, when did Saddam become such a bad guy to Bush, Cheney, Halliburton and Co.? (Insert your favorite reason here).
During the Clinton regime the US-UN led sanctions against Iraq and the weekly bombing raids killed tens of thousands of people in Iraq. Many of them were children, but since one of her children didn’t have to be sacrificed to the homicidal war machine, Madeline Albright, thinks the slaughter during the “halcyon” Clinton years was “worth it.” More lies.
Anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of current events understands that this invasion/occupation of Iraq was not about Saddam being a “bad guy.” If that logic is used, then how many innocent Iraqi people have to die before the citizens of America wake up and know that our government is a “bad guy?” We also know that Iraq was not about WMD’s. They weren’t there and they weren’t going to be there for at least a decade, by all reports. Another reason, so wispy and more difficult to disprove, is that America invaded Iraq to bring freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people. When one tries to dispute this particular deception, one is accused of being unpatriotic or hating freedom. Even though correct, the statement “Freedom isn’t Free” is very insulting to me. False freedom is very expensive. Fake freedom costs over one billion of our tax dollars a week; phony freedom has cost the Iraqi people tens of thousands of innocent lives; fanciful freedom has meant the destruction of a country and its infrastructure. Tragically, this fabricated notion of freedom and democracy cost me far more than I was willing to pay: the life of my son, Casey. The Lie of Historic Proportions also cost me my peace of mind, I do not feel free and I do not feel like I live in a democracy.
One of the other great deceits that is being perpetuated on the American public and the world is that this occupation is to fight terrorism: If we don’t fight terrorism in Iraq then we will have to fight it “on our streets.” In fact, terrorist attacks have skyrocketed in Iraq and all over the world. So much so, that the State Department has stopped compiling the statistics and quit issuing the yearly terrorism report. I guess if one doesn’t write a report, then terrorism doesn’t exist. All of Casey’s commendations say that he was killed in the “GWOT” the Global War on Terrorism. I agree with most of GWOT, except that Casey was killed in the Global War Of Terrorism waged on the world and its own citizens by the biggest terrorist outfit in the world: George and his destructive Neo-con cabal.
The evidence is overwhelming, compelling, and alarming that George and his indecent bandits traitorously had intelligence fabricated to fit their goal of invading Iraq. The criminals foisted a Lie of Historic Proportions on the world. It was clear to many of us more aware people that George, Condi, Rummy, the two Dicks: Cheney and Perle, Wolfie, and most effectively and treacherously, Colin Powell, lied their brains out before the invasion. The world was even shown where the WMD’S were on the map. We were told that the “smoking gun” could come at any time in the form of a “mushroom cloud” or a cloud of toxic biological or chemical weapons. Does anyone remember duct tape and plastic sheeting?
Finally, the side of peace, truth and justice has our own smoking gun and it is burning our hands. It is the so-called Downing Street Memo dated 23, July 2002, (almost 8 months before the invasion) that states that military action (against Iraq) is now seen as “inevitable.” The memo further states that: “Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action”, justified by the conjunction of “terrorism and WMD’s.” The most damning thing to George in the memo is where the British intelligence officer who wrote the memo claims that the intelligence to base Great Britain and the US staging a devastating invasion on Iraq was being “fixed around the policy.” Now, after over three years of negligent propaganda, it is difficult to distinguish the proven lies from the new “truth:” that this occupation is bringing freedom and democracy to the people of Iraq.
Casey took an oath to protect the US from all enemies “foreign and domestic.” He was sent to occupy and die in a foreign country that was no threat to the USA. However, the biggest threat to our safety, humanity, and our way of life in America are George and his cronies. Congress made a Mistake of Historic Proportions and waived its Constitutional responsibility to declare war. It is time for the House to make up for that mistake and introduce Articles of Impeachment against the murderous thugs who have caused so much mindless mayhem. It is time for Congress to re-validate itself by holding a hearing about the Downing Street Memo. The reader can help by going onto www.AfterDowningStreet.org and signing a petition to Rep. John Conyers so he will know that the American people are behind him to convene an investigation in the House Judiciary Committee. You can also write your Congressional Representative to help push the inquiry.
It is time to put partisan politics behind us to do what is correct for once and reclaim America’s humanity. It is time for Congress and the American people to work together in peace and justice to rid our country of the stench of greed, hypocrisy, and unnecessary suffering that permeates our White House and our halls of Congress. It is time to hold someone accountable for the carnage and devastation that has been caused. As a matter of fact, it is past time, but it is not too late.
Cindy Sheehan
Mother of needlessly slain soldier, Casey Sheehan.
Cofounder of Gold Star Families for Peace www.gsfp.org
(Organizational Supporters of www.AfterDowningStreet.org)
Scindy121@aol.com
An interview with Cindy Sheehan:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/zeese2.html
Last edited by Alpha on Tue Jun 07, 2005 8:00 pm; edited 2 times in total | |  | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 11:44 pm Post subject: 'Downing Street memo" on Iraq met mostly with silence |
| http://www.insidebayarea.com/sanmateocountytimes/ci_2781868
Article Last Updated: 6/06/2005 01:18 PM
"Downing Street memo" on Iraq met mostly with silence
Bush officials mum despite calls for answers on Brit report
By Josh Richman, STAFF WRITER
Inside Bay Area
It's been more than a month since The Times of London published a secret British government memo from mid-2002 describing the Bush administration's resolve to invade Iraq whether it posed a threat or not.
It's been about a month since 89 House Democrats — including six from the Bay Area — asked the president to explain himself in light of this memo.
And it's been almost three weeks since the White House press secretary said that isn't going to happen.
So now what?
The blogosphere still burns with items about what's often called the "Downing Street memo," named for the site of the British prime minister's home and office.
And House Judiciary Committee ranking Democrat John Conyers, D-Mich., who authored the House Democrats' letter, has put a version of that letter on his campaign Web site, www.johnconyers.com, so the public can add their "signatures" for submittal to the White House; about 89,000had signed by Wednesday.
Otherwise, there's nothing doing.
Apparently authored by a foreign-policy aide to Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Downing Street memo contains minutes from a July 23, 2002, meeting of high-ranking officials. Sir Richard Dearlove, head of the British secret intelligence service MI6, had recently met with CIA officials in Washington and was quoted as saying, "(m)ilitary action was now seen as inevitable."
"Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD (weapons of mass destruction)," the memo says. "But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC (National Security Council) had no patience with the U.N. route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."
The memo also said Foreign Secretary Jack Straw indicated he would discuss the issue with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell later that week. "It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."
Blair's office told The Times the memo contained "nothing new." White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan more than two weeks later said claims that intelligence was fixed to justify the war are "flat-out wrong," adding he hadn't seen the "specific memo" but only reports of its content.
The lawmakers' May 5 letter to President Bush asked him to publicly state, among other things, whether his administration tried to manipulate intelligence and create an ultimatum to justify the war. Among those signing the letter were Barbara Lee, D-Oakland; Pete Stark, D-Fremont; George Miller, D-Martinez; Ellen Tauscher, D-Alamo; Lynn Woolsey, D-San Rafael; and Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose.
McClellan said on May 17 that the White House saw "no need" to respond to the Conyers letter. Stark said Thursday he's not surprised.
"If the President won't respond to the deaths of more than 1,600 U.S. troops and more than 20,000 Iraqi civilians, why would I expect him to respond to a memo?" he said. "America doesn't trust the president or his administration on Iraq, and when further evidence of their lies become public, it's just as expected as the discovery of another shady relationship between a lobbyist and (House Majority Leader) Tom DeLay."
Lee said Friday the memo "is strong evidence that the Bush administration not only manipulated intelligence data to justify the invasion of Iraq, but deliberately misled Congress and the American people about it while telling the truth to the British government.
"Given the gravity of the questions this memo raises, I think the Bush administration's silence speaks volumes. Our nation deserves answers."
Among those who didn't sign the Conyers letter were House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, and Rep. Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, the House International Relations Committee's ranking Democrat.
Pelosi always has said the war lacked adequate justification, spokesman Brendan Daly said Thursday. "This (memo) basically told us what we already knew, it verified what we already knew."
As for the letter, Pelosi often supports efforts like this without actually signing on to them, Daly added. "She felt her position was already clear, so she didn't feel a need to sign it."
Lantos spokesman Lynne Weil said Friday that "the Conyers letter escaped notice (in Lantos' office) until after the deadline to sign it had gone by." She didn't comment on what Lantos — who supports the war in Iraq but has criticized President Bush's handling of it — thought of the Downing Street memo.
Critics complain U.S. news media have been mostly silent on the memo. Cursory searches this week turned up four stories about the memo at CNN.com, and one each on the Web sites of Fox News, the New York Times and the Washington Post.
"I think that the media is afraid to follow up on the very grave implications of this story because they have grown accustomed to being bullied by the Bush administration, and because the story implicates the media for giving the Bush administration a free ride in deliberately misleading the American people into an unnecessary and increasingly disastrous war," Lee said. "Sadly, the type of courageous, independent journalism that uncovered the Watergate scandal is nowhere to be found today."
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See the entire Downing Street memo at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607,00.html
See the Congressional letter to President Bush at http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/ letters/bushsecretmemoltr5505.pdf.
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Contact Josh Richman at jrichman@angnewspapers.com. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 1:50 am Post subject: Republican Congressman Walter Jones 'Sees the Light' on the |
| Republican Congressman Walter Jones 'Sees the Light' on the Iraq Quagmire:
http://gorillaintheroom.blogspot.com/2005/05/seeing-light-updated.html
PS: Congressman Jones used Bamford's 'A Pretext for War' book as a guide in his questioning of JINSA/PNAC Jewish (Israel firster) traitor to America Richard Perle... | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 11:21 am Post subject: 'Pretext for War' |
| http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040801/news_lz1v1pretext.html
'Pretext for War'
... finds a slew of flaws and abuses
Reviewed by Michiko Kakutani
August 1, 2004
In the walk-up and wake of the Iraq war, it's no secret that one of the most bitter battles in Washington has been between the CIA and the State Department on one side, and neoconservative hawks in the Pentagon and White House on the other.
Intelligence and State Department officials have characterized the neocons as hawkish ideologues who entered office before 9/11 with an agenda to depose Saddam Hussein. They have accused the hard-liners of cherry-picking and hyping intelligence in order to sell the war against Iraq.
The hawks have characterized the CIA as a bunch of risk-averse, bean-counting bureaucrats, hobbled by what Richard Perle has called "ideologically liberal assumptions." They have accused the agency of continuing intelligence failures, from the overthrow of the shah's government in Iran in 1979 to the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
As James Bamford, the author of two respected books on American intelligence, tells it, there is plenty of blame to go around. His new book, "A Pretext for War," draws a damning portrait of the country's intelligence agencies as woefully ill-equipped to deal with the threats of terrorism and a post-Cold War world. It also draws a scathing picture of ideologues in the Bush administration, manipulating dubious evidence about links between al-Qaeda and Saddam and flawed information about weapons of mass destruction in the push toward war.
In addition, Bamford suggests that the CIA caved to pressure from administration hard-liners. He quotes a CIA case officer who says that in January 2003, one of the agency's higher-ups called a meeting and said, "You know what – if Bush wants to go to war, it's your job to give him a reason to do so." And he writes that the CIA chief George Tenet said of the provocative intelligence about Iraq that Secretary of State Colin Powell presented to the United Nations in February 2003: "I'm standing behind it 100 percent," even though much of that intelligence later turned out to be flawed, and Tenet stated this year that his agency "never said there was an 'imminent' threat" from Saddam.
Much of the information and many of the theories in Bamford's book will be familiar to readers from earlier magazine and newspaper articles, and other books: most notably, Bob Woodward's "Bush at War" and "Plan of Attack"; "Ghost Wars," Steve Coll's exhaustive history of the CIA, Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan; the former counterterrorism czar Richard A. Clarke's best-selling expose of the war on terror, "Against All Enemies"; and "Inside 9-11," a detailed chronicle of the terrorist attacks of 2001 by Der Spiegel journalists.
But Bamford unearths new details about everything from the identity of one of the undisclosed locations used by Vice President Dick Cheney after 9/11 (Site R, a secret military command post on the Maryland-Pennsylvania border) to the failures of a special CIA unit charged with tracking bin Laden, and he connects the many dots, both old and new, to create a vivid, unsettling narrative.
Discursive in organization, "A Pretext for War" provides selective context for the failure to prevent the attacks of 9/11 and the Bush administration's path to war. Bamford is highly persuasive in recounting the many ways in which American intelligence agencies failed to adapt to the end of the Cold War: They lacked specialists in many key Middle Eastern languages and a sufficient number of analysts to grapple with an avalanche of cyber-age data, and even though Americans like John Walker Lindh had been secretly joining al-Qaeda, operatives appear to have made little effort to penetrate terrorist organizations, preferring the decorous, low-risk tack of trying to recruit foreign embassy officials at cocktail parties.
Bamford does not address the broader question of how Cold War paradigms shaped the thinking of key Bush administration members such as national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Cheney. And unlike James Mann in "Rise of the Vulcans," he does not delve into many of the larger factors shaping the hawks' thinking – from their experiences in dealing with the Soviet Union to their appropriation of the Wilsonian idea of exporting democracy.
What he does focus on is the role that Israel has played in shaping American policy. Bamford contends that "the blueprint for the new Bush policy" on the Middle East "had actually been drawn up five years earlier by three of his top national security advisers" (Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser) for the Israeli prime minister at the time, Benjamin Netanyahu (who rejected the plan), and that when they entered office in January 2001, all these hawks needed was "a pretext" for war against Iraq. Citing a report from the British newspaper The Guardian, Bamford adds that the Office of Special Plans, a Pentagon unit set up by Feith, "forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence unit within Ariel Sharon's office in Israel," which "was designed to go around the country's own intelligence organization, Mossad."
In recounting the failures of intelligence before 9/11, Bamford points to missed clues about the hijackers and the poisonous rivalry (not to mention fatal lack of communication) between the CIA and FBI. He also writes that a special unit of the CIA named Alec Station, which was set up in 1996 "with the sole mission of collecting intelligence" on bin Laden and "disrupting his network," had an abysmal record. He notes that "after four years and hundreds of millions of dollars," it failed "to recruit a single source within bin Laden's growing Afghanistan operation." He adds: "It was George Tenet's biggest secret. Not only was al-Qaeda never penetrated, neither the Counterterrorism Center nor Alec Station ever picked up a single piece of usable intelligence on bin Laden or his organization, the country's greatest threat."
Bamford is equally scorching on the subject of an alternative intelligence gathering operation (called the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group) set up at the Pentagon by Feith and Wurmser, arguing that it "was little more than a pro-war propaganda cell" designed "to produce evidence to support the pretexts for attacking Iraq."
He also denounces the Pentagon's heavy reliance on intelligence acquired through Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress and a longtime friend of many prominent administration hawks. Though much of the information from Chalabi's sources about weapons of mass destruction later turned out to be incorrect or fabricated, Bamford writes, it was funneled to the White House and to the press – most notably, The New York Times – to help sell the "war to the American public."
Both President Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush are taken to task in these pages as well. In describing the country's vulnerability in the face of terrorism, Bamford repeatedly notes that budget cutbacks during the Clinton administration weakened the country's intelligence agencies, and he writes that the now famous Aug. 6, 2001, President's Daily Brief – titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." – seemed "to have made little impression" on Bush.
He observes that when Tenet, the head of the CIA during both administrations, declared war on terrorism – in the wake of the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa – it was so low-key that senior officials at the Pentagon and the FBI had not heard of it. And he points out that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who actually controls a large portion of America's spy world, was "far more concerned with downsizing the Pentagon than reorganizing and reinvigorating the intelligence community" when he entered office.
In the end Bamford's conclusions are alarming, if not unfamiliar ones: that incompetence, timidity and a lack of readiness contributed to the failure to prevent the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and that misinformation, ideological agendas and poor intelligence led to the decision to go to war against Iraq.
©New York Times News Service
A Pretext for War
9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies
James Bamford
Doubleday, 420 pages, $26.95 | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2005 11:59 am Post subject: Turning Point On the War? |
| Turning Point On the War?
This past week, widely scattered newspaper editorialists roused themselves from seeming acceptance of the continuing slaughter in Iraq to voice, for the first time in many cases, outright condemnation of the war.
(June 06, 2005) -- Suddenly there seems to be something in the air -- the smell of death? Or something in the water -- blood? In any case, this past week, widely scattered newspaper editorialists roused themselves from seeming acceptance of the continuing slaughter in Iraq to voice, for the first time in many cases, outright condemnation of the war.
While still refusing to use the "W" word in offering advice to Dubya -- that is, "withdrawal" -- some at least are finally using the "L" word, for lies.
Memorial Day seemed to bring out the anger in some editorial writers, who at that time are normally afraid to say anything about a current conflict that might seem to slight the brave sacrifices of men and women, past and present. Maybe it was the steadily growing Iraqi and American death count, or the increasing examples of White House "disassembling" (to quote the president this week), or the horror stories emerging from Gitmo.
Or perhaps it's a hidden trend that might have even more impact than the rest: the writing on the wall spelled out by plunging military recruitment rates. That only adds to the sense that, overall, the Iraq adventure has made America far less safe in this world.
For whatever reason, it's possible that more than a few editorial pages may finally be on the verge of saying "enough is enough." Perhaps they might even catch up with their readers, as the latest Gallup polls find that 57% feel the war is "not worth it," and nearly as many want us to start pulling out troops, not sending more of them.
There were numerous signs of editorial unrest in the past week, too many to cite. The Sun of Baltimore, in its Memorial Day editorial, declared: "If the president truly wished to honor their memory, he would demonstrate to the nation that the government that has botched so much of the war at least has some inkling as to how to draw it to a successful conclusion -- so that the dead will not have died in vain." The Minneapolis Star-Tribune called Iraq "an unnecessary war based on contrived concerns. ... President Bush and those around him lied, and the rest of us let them. Harsh? Yes. True? Also yes."
Steve Chapman, syndicated columnist and editorial writer for the Chicago Tribune (and generally considered a conservative), on Thursday declared: "The dilemma the U.S. faces in fighting the insurgents is that military methods are not enough to solve the problem and may make it worse. If the movement is a reaction to the U.S. military presence, keeping American troops in Iraq amounts to fighting a fire with kerosene.
"That explains why the longer we stay, the more suicide attacks we face. And it suggests that the only feasible strategy is to withdraw from Iraq and turn the fight over to the Iraqi government. The alternative is to stay and keep doing what we've been doing for the last two years. But that approach has shown no signs of fostering success. It only promises to raise the cost of failure."
But perhaps the most powerful denunciation came from an unlikely source, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. An editorial in that Hearst paper this past Wednesday, just after Memorial Day, really thundered, and deserves reprinting here:
"President Bush was among the 260,000 graves at Arlington National Cemetery when he said it. But it was clear Monday that the president was referring to the more than 1,650 Americans killed to date in Iraq when he said, 'We must honor them by completing the mission for which they gave their lives; by defeating the terrorists.'
"Bush insists on clinging to the thoroughly discredited notion that there was any connection between the old Iraqi regime -- no matter how lawless and brutal -- and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"U.S. military action against an Afghan regime that harbored al-Qaida was a legitimate response to the 9/11 attacks. The invasion of Iraq was not.
"As of Memorial Day 2003, Bush had declared major combat operations at an end, predicted that weapons of mass destruction would be found and that U.S. forces were in the process of stabilizing Iraq. One hundred sixty U.S. troops had died.
"The U.S. death toll has grown more than tenfold. No weapons of mass destruction were found. More than 700 Iraqis have been killed since Iraq's new government was formed April 28.
"Bush said of the insurgents at a news conference yesterday, 'I believe the Iraqi government is plenty capable of dealing with them.'
"Of course, this is the same president that assured the world that military intervention in Iraq was a last resort and that the United States would make every effort to avoid war through diplomacy. Giving lie to that as well is the so-called Downing Street War Memo, which shows that as early as July 2002, 'Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD ... the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.'
"Perhaps all presidents' remarks in military graveyards are by nature self-serving. But few have been so callow as the president's using the deaths of U.S. troops in his unjustified war as justification for its continuance."
At the close of the editorial online, the paper polled readers, asking if they thought it was "time to begin the careful but quick withdrawal of American forces from Iraq?" These highly unscientific surveys usually should be ignored. But the result in this case, from over 2,600 votes, was so one-sided it deserves mention: Nearly 92% called for the beginning of a pullout.
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(gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) is the editor of E&P.
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