Indict Dick Cheney before he Blows up the entire Planet

[Dig]

"Hey Olmert, do you think they have any idea what we are planning?"



"Monkeyboy, shut up and get the Wahabbi's on board ASAP!"



"But of course puppy Bush, we support the genocide of Shi'ites!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



Lao Tzu: "Lead the monkeys and make them think they did it themselves"

[David Rothscum]

http://www.willthomasonline.net/willthomasonline/Tora_Bora.html
Here it is. Perhaps these criminals should meet the babies born with bulging tumors where there eyes should be, thanks to the Depleted Uranium/Nukes they're using.

A man named Assadullah told the team in February 2003 that his wife had given birth to child so badly deformed he hardly resembled an infant. "When I saw my little boy with those monstrous red tumors, I thought to myself, why is it difficult for Americans to understand that they are hated in our country?” Assadullah said. “If I do this to the child of an American family, that family has the right to pull my eyes out of my eye sockets. I like to tell the Americans that they love to live their lives of luxury at the expense of our extermination."  [European Parliament Verbatim Report of Proceedings Apr 9/02]

Zar Ghoon is the father of another victim of U.S. bombing attacks on Kunduz. In December 2002 he told the medical survey team, "My wife was pregnant and we were happily waiting for the moment to see our second child. When the baby was born, it was hardly a human… When my wife saw the baby, she went into shock and died after five hours."

Why did they hate us again?

[Dig]

www.masters-of-war.org/deathculture2.html


But DU babies is nothing compared to thermonuclear holocaust, wtf?

How is this even being discussed?

What is the purpose?

What we did to Iraq is not enough of a deterrent?

"When the air becomes uranious,
And we will all go simultaneous." - Tom Lehrer 1959

[Dig]

Russia bombers to test-fire missiles in Atlantic
http://prisonplanet.com/articles/january2008/220108Russia.htm
Guy Faulconbridge Reuters Tuesday January 22, 2008



Russia on Tuesday sent two long-range bombers to the Bay of Biscay, off the French and Spanish Atlantic coasts, to test-fire missiles in what it billed as its biggest navy exercise in the area since Soviet times.

British and Norwegian Tornado and F-16 jets were escorting the Russian 'Blackjack' bombers, Interfax reported, quoting the Russian Air Force.

However, the French Defence Ministry spokesman said his country had been informed about the Russian exercises.

Firing missiles off the coastline of two members of the NATO military alliance is the latest in a series of Kremlin moves flexing Moscow's military muscle on the world stage.

The Russian bombers joined aircraft carriers, battleships and submarine hunters from the Northern and Black Sea fleets for the Atlantic exercises, which come as the country enters an election campaign to choose a successor to President Vladimir Putin.

"The air force is taking a very active part in the exercises of the navy's strike force in the Atlantic," Russia's air force said in a statement.

"Today, two strategic Tu-160 bombers departed for exercises in the Bay of Biscay, which ... will carry out a number of missions and will conduct tactical missile launches," it said.

Putin, widely popular as his second four-year term draws to a close, has sought to use such moves to revive domestic and international respect for Russia's armed forces which were shattered by the chaos of the 1990s.

[Optimus]

Russia’s Threat of Preemptive Nuclear Strikes and The Coming War With Iran
http://theuglytruth.wordpress.com/2008/01/21/russia%e2%80%99s-threat-of-preemptive-nuclear-strikes/

Recent statements coming from one of Russia’s highest-ranking military commanders indicates that America and Israel plan to go ahead with war on Iran despite the release of the National Intelligence Estimate late last year.

Russia’s military chief of staff General Yuri Baluyevsky threatened the use of nuclear weapons in case of a major threat saying that although they have no plans of attacking anyone, they nevertheless consider it necessary for everyone around the world community to ‘clearly understand, that to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Russia and its allies, military forces will be used, including preventively, the use of nuclear weapons.”

His statements (which can only have been made in concert with the overall policies established by his boss President Vladimir Putin) come one week after George Bush’s visit to the Persian Gulf in which the recovering alcoholic-turned born-again Christian attempted to rally the nations in that region around US and Israeli plans of ‘confronting Iran’s nuclear program before it is too late’.

Those watching recent events should not be particularly surprised at Baluyevsky’s statement, despite the stark and apocalyptic themes pervading it and despite the fact that such statements have not been made in decades. Over the course of the last year, Russia has taken on an increasingly aggressive/defensive posture with regards to the West as a result of what it sees as an overall plan of encircling her with NATO forces that threaten her in an existential way.

Not just talking the talk, Mother Russia is walking the walk as well. She has resumed long-range bomber patrols (halted with the fall of the Soviet Union) sometimes coming within inches of NATO airspace. She has pulled out of several treaties with the West limiting the size of Russian military forces on Europe’s eastern flank. Incensed at the US plan of using new NATO member nations in Eastern Europe as a staging area for missile defense systems (said to be a necessary defense against Iran) Russia has developed and successfully test fired new missiles–both land and sea-launched that she claims are sophisticated enough to trump any US Missile shield.

Beginning in December (after the release of the NIE) Russia began delivering the nuclear fuel supplies promised to Iran according to their agreement. As of the moment of this writing, 4 shipments have been made totaling 45 tons of the estimated 80 tons necessary for the Bushehr facility to begin refinement. Israel is furious, as evidenced by Israeli Foreign minister Tzipi Livni’s recent meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov wherein she called the fuel deliveries ‘inconceivable’.

What is of particular importance in General Baluyevsky’s statement is his mention of ‘defending the sovereignty and territorial integrity’ of–not just Russia, but as well her ‘allies’. Despite the fact that she may not (as of this moment) have signed formal mutual defense agreements with nations such as Iran and Syria on Israel and America’s list of countries targeted for destruction, they are nevertheless considered important trading partners occupying Russia’s peripheries and therefore a first-line defense of Russian territory.

Throughout this entire nightmare taking place in the Middle East Russia has demonstrated herself to be a sane and rational character. She is famous for the chess players she has produced over the centuries, both in terms of those moving wooden pieces around a checkered board as well as those watching world events and making policy based on them.

By contrast, Israel and–more importantly, the United States under the administration of George Bush–have demonstrated themselves to be highly irrational and unpredictable. Iraq and Afghanistan are unmitigated disasters and the fact that neither the US nor Israel have learned any substantive lessons from these disasters proves they are dangerous to all nations seen as uncooperative in the drive for US and Israeli world hegemony. Indeed, Putin was not being figurative or poetic when he recently referred to Bush as a ‘maniac running around threatening everyone with a razor’.

Baluyevsky’s statements indicate that chess players in Moscow–having watched and analyzed the moves made by George Bush and his handlers in Israel, have concluded that the release of the NIE and its relevant parts dealing with Iran not having a nuclear weapons program means nothing in the overall scheme. Bush is intent upon bringing about Armageddon at any cost, and Russia, seeing this likelihood is warning in the clearest of terms–meaning the preemptive use of nuclear weapons–that it will not be tolerated.

Let all the world hope that staring down the barrel of a nuclear launching tube is enough in sobering up sots such as Bush and his Neocon handlers in Israel who are drunk on their own power and obviously not effected by the carnage they have created.

(Originally appearing in American FreePress Newspaper)

2008 Mark Glenn, Contributing Editor, American Free Press Newspaper

www.americanfreepress.net

[Dig]

Tammy Baldwin (WI-02) Joins Wexler In Calling For Hearings
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/01/22/tammy-baldwin-wi-02-joins-wexler-in-calling-for-hearings/
By: Nicole Belle @ 1:45 PM - PST   


  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

On Dec. 14, I joined with my colleagues on the House Judiciary Committee, Reps. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) and Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), in urging Chairman Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) to conduct hearings on a resolution of impeachment now pending consideration in that committee.

Among my constituents, there are those who say I have gone too far in calling for Congress to examine possible impeachable offenses by the Bush administration. There are also those who argue I have not gone far enough. In letters, emails, phone calls, personal conversations and listening sessions, I have heard passionate arguments from those who think we are losing our democracy and that I should do more to hold the Bush administration accountable for its actions.

The call to impeach is one I did not take lightly. But as we said in our letter to Chairman Conyers, the issues are too serious to ignore. We simply cannot discount or overlook numerous, credible allegations of abuse of power by the Bush administration that, if proven, may well constitute high crimes and misdemeanors under our Constitution. To prove this, we must follow the form of the signers of our own Declaration of Independence who wrote, “let Facts be submitted to a candid world.”

As I said before, I think the framing that Wexler and company are opting for is the absolute right one and one that is difficult with which to argue: call for hearings.  Let’s not put the cart before the horse and determine the outcome (impeachment) and scare off nervous politicos.  Instead, we charge Congress to do their constitutionally mandated job of oversight and simply hold hearing into possible wrongdoing.   Do not forget that the Republican-controlled Congress was adamantly against impeachment of Richard Nixon until what was revealed in the investigations made it untenable for them to support Nixon any longer. 

If you have not signed the petition at WexlerWantsHearings.com, please do so.  My insider sources are telling me that the House leadership is getting very nervous at this growing snowball that is heading towards them.  Let’s make it an avalanche.

[shyoung]

Wasn't it just a few days ago we got, from the Rupert Murdoch owned London Times, a big story about US officials selling nuclear secrets to people in the middle-east to cause nuclear proliferation?

Now we get an article saying proliferation is imminent and we need to nuke someone to stop it?

Did Murdoch just make the case to the world that there is more proliferation than we know, and is being kept secret?  How many nuclear secrets got out?  Can we have an investigation?  No, we are not going to have an investigation.  Everyone's imaginations will run wild, then in the middle of the hysteria someone shouts "Bomb Iran!"

Bush says, "Finally!"

[φυδγε]

war crime tribunal next?

Jan 22, 10:14 PM EST

Study: False Statements Preceded War

By DOUGLASS K. DANIEL
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."

The study was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel did not comment on the merits of the study Tuesday night but reiterated the administration's position that the world community viewed Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein, as a threat.

"The actions taken in 2003 were based on the collective judgment of intelligence agencies around the world," Stanzel said.

The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.

"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida," according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003."

Named in the study along with Bush were top officials of the administration during the period studied: Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.

Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq's links to al-Qaida, the study found. That was second only to Powell's 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaida.

The center said the study was based on a database created with public statements over the two years beginning on Sept. 11, 2001, and information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches and interviews.

"The cumulative effect of these false statements - amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts - was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war," the study concluded.

"Some journalists - indeed, even some entire news organizations - have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, 'independent' validation of the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq," it said.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/MISINFORMATION_STUDY?SITE=NJMOR&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

[pac522]

This report needs to go viral. Don't make this go away like the administration wants it to.

[Optimus]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080123/ap_on_go_pr_wh/misinformation_study;_ylt=AgRvKJTnG8huig5QiNALgW6yFz4D
By DOUGLASS K. DANIEL, Associated Press Writer Wed Jan 23, 6:43 AM ET

WASHINGTON - A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."

The study was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel did not comment on the merits of the study Tuesday night but reiterated the administration's position that the world community viewed Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein, as a threat.

"The actions taken in 2003 were based on the collective judgment of intelligence agencies around the world," Stanzel said.

The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.

"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida," according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003."

Named in the study along with Bush were top officials of the administration during the period studied: Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.

Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq's links to al-Qaida, the study found. That was second only to Powell's 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaida.

The center said the study was based on a database created with public statements over the two years beginning on Sept. 11, 2001, and information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches and interviews.

"The cumulative effect of these false statements — amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts — was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war," the study concluded.

"Some journalists — indeed, even some entire news organizations — have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, 'independent' validation of the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq," it said.

[bigron]

Wednesday, January 23, 2008


935 False Statements that Led a Nation to War


http://www.juancole.com/



The Center for Public Integrity has published a study finding that



'President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration's case for war. '


Although the study starts out in a neutral tone, as you read, it becomes clear that the authors think the database of administration statements they have compiled shows a deliberate pattern of misrepresentation.

The study won't create a lot of controversy, since the American people long ago concluded that BushCo had lied us into a destructive and dangerous quagmire of a war. But it is nice to see someone nail down the specifics of the Goebbels-like propaganda campaign that was run on us.

The report continues,


' # On August 26, 2002, in an address to the national convention of the Veteran of Foreign Wars, Cheney flatly declared: "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." In fact, former CIA Director George Tenet later recalled, Cheney's assertions went well beyond his agency's assessments at the time. Another CIA official, referring to the same speech, told journalist Ron Suskind, "Our reaction was, 'Where is he getting this stuff from?' "

# In the closing days of September 2002, with a congressional vote fast approaching on authorizing the use of military force in Iraq, Bush told the nation in his weekly radio address: "The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given. . . . This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year." A few days later, similar findings were also included in a much-hurried National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction — an analysis that hadn't been done in years, as the intelligence community had deemed it unnecessary and the White House hadn't requested it.

# In July 2002, Rumsfeld had a one-word answer for reporters who asked whether Iraq had relationships with Al Qaeda terrorists: "Sure." In fact, an assessment issued that same month by the Defense Intelligence Agency (and confirmed weeks later by CIA Director Tenet) found an absence of "compelling evidence demonstrating direct cooperation between the government of Iraq and Al Qaeda." What's more, an earlier DIA assessment said that "the nature of the regime's relationship with Al Qaeda is unclear."

# On May 29, 2003, in an interview with Polish TV, President Bush declared: "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories." But as journalist Bob Woodward reported in State of Denial, days earlier a team of civilian experts dispatched to examine the two mobile labs found in Iraq had concluded in a field report that the labs were not for biological weapons. The team's final report, completed the following month, concluded that the labs had probably been used to manufacture hydrogen for weather balloons.

# On January 28, 2003, in his annual State of the Union address, Bush asserted: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production." Two weeks earlier, an analyst with the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research sent an email to colleagues in the intelligence community laying out why he believed the uranium-purchase agreement "probably is a hoax." '

[larsonstdoc]

     Only 935 but they kept repeating them and repeating them (BRAINWASHING).

[Dan]

Same article here.

http://www6.comcast.net/news/articles/general/2008/01/23/Misinformation.Study/

About time....there only a couple years too late.

[David Rothscum]

Wasn't it just a few days ago we got, from the Rupert Murdoch owned London Times, a big story about US officials selling nuclear secrets to people in the middle-east to cause nuclear proliferation?

Now we get an article saying proliferation is imminent and we need to nuke someone to stop it?

Did Murdoch just make the case to the world that there is more proliferation than we know, and is being kept secret?  How many nuclear secrets got out?  Can we have an investigation?  No, we are not going to have an investigation.  Everyone's imaginations will run wild, then in the middle of the hysteria someone shouts "Bomb Iran!"

Bush says, "Finally!"

Problem-Reaction-Solution. They build up the muslim extremists, so now we had to invade Afghanistan. They build up Saddam Hoessein, so we had to invade Iraq. They spread WMD's, so now we have to start nuking people:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,952196,00.html
(Same guy who applied for Aspartame to be legalised by the way) http://www.prisonplanet.com/101902nkorea.html
http://www.spacewar.com/2006/070802150630.lsjc1thv.html
http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/lateststories/index.ssf?/base/politics-2/108155754465270.xml
And perhaps worst:
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=ac764737-c552-4368-a841-23be59381441&MatchID1=4627&TeamID1=1&TeamID2=6&MatchType1=1&SeriesID1=1165&PrimaryID=4627&Headline=America+fails+the+IQ+test

The worry today about Iran’s nuclear ambitions is the result of US policy in Iran in the 1970s. President Gerald Ford’s Secretary of State Henry Kissinger(I bet none of you are surprised it's him again) supported the idea of Iran developing nuclear power and the US hoped to sell billions of dollars worth of nuclear reactors, spare parts and nuclear fuel to Iran even though the Shah had declared rather indiscreetly that Iran wanted to develop nuclear weapons. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld persuaded Ford in 1976 to offer Iran a deal that would have earned GE and Westinghouse contracts worth $ 6.4 billion — a boon in the aftermath of the Three Mile Island disaster. The offer included a reprocessing facility for a complete nuclear fuel cycle — something that the US does not want Iran to have today. The argument now is that Iran’s desire to have its own enrichment facility for nuclear power proves that it wants to develop a bomb. The Shah fell and the Ayatollahs took over, the Soviets moved into Afghanistan and suddenly it appeared as if the arch rival would be sitting on the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea.

That's as simple as it is. They create the terrorists, they have an excuse to invade countries. They spread the nukes, they have an excuse to use nukes.

[Dig]

Media Study: BushCo lied hundreds of times about Iraq to sell the war
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/01/23/media-study-bushco-lied-hundreds-of-times-about-iraq-to-sell-the-war/
By: John Amato on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008 at 6:30 AM - PST   

Bill Moyers did a wonderful job of exposing the trumped up case the WH made for war with Iraq with a great special called “Buying the War” which focused on the the media and their role in this travesty. Obviously this new report doesn’t come as a shock to anyone in the liberal blogosphere, but I guess if FOX News runs an AP story about these claims then I guess Bill O’Reilly can’t say it’s “a hit job from the liberal media and NBC.” Sorry, I forgot who I was dealing with for a moment.

A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to Al Qaeda or both…read on

Scholars & Rogues has more…

 I dug into the wonderful C&L archives for a perfect example of their lies in action. (originally posted on 02/09/07 ) Here’s Cheney getting caught by Gloria Borger spreading false information about al-Qaeda having ties to Iraq and then denying it almost three years later. Let’s roll the tape.


http://www.crooksandliars.com/Media/Download/14267/1/Hardball-DickCheney-liestoBorger.wmv

In ‘01, Cheney said this on MTP:

CHENEY: It‘s been pretty well confirmed that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April.

on 6/19/04 CNBC, he said:

GLORIA BORGER, TV SHOW HOST: You have said in the past that it was, quote, “pretty well confirmed.”

CHENEY: No, I never said that. BORGER: OK.

CHENEY: I never said that. BORGER: I think that is…

CHENEY: Absolutely not.

[Optimus]

     Only 935 but they kept repeating them and repeating them (BRAINWASHING).

Maybe they meant 935 per day? Yeah, that sound about right. 

[φυδγε]

Here's Reuters' take on the same study.  Check out this statement, "Bush critics including Democrats in Congress charge the administration hyped its case for war. Republicans maintain that the prewar assertions were simply based on faulty intelligence."

I find it odd - don't they next ask WHY we are still at war after if it was all based on fake information.  In rehab they call this kind of reasoning - denial by admission - and I don't mean a river in Egypt.

I guess the media can print anything, even a list of verified war crimes, and nothing happens.  INSANE!

Database assembles U.S. warnings of Saddam threat

Wed Jan 23, 2008 12:10pm EST

WASHINGTON, Jan 23 (Reuters) - The Bush administration's warnings about prewar Iraq, from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's "mushroom cloud" to Vice President Dick Cheney's statements on weapons of mass destruction, were released on Wednesday in a searchable online database.

The Center for Public Integrity, a Washington research group highly critical of U.S. policy in Iraq, put together 935 comments uttered by eight top administration officials including President George W. Bush in the run-up to the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

Much of their case for war has since been discredited, in large part because no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were found despite the administration's prewar warnings that Iraq's arsenal presented a threat to its neighbors and U.S. interests.

Bush critics including Democrats in Congress charge the administration hyped its case for war. Republicans maintain that the prewar assertions were simply based on faulty intelligence.

The remarks compiled by the center, totaling about 380,000 words, are largely well-known and range from assertions that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium to build a nuclear weapon, to warnings of a link between Iraq and the al Qaeda militant network blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Center for Public Integrity, which released the database on its Web site at www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/, said the comments show how Bush and senior administration officials "methodically propagated erroneous information over the two years beginning on Sept. 11, 2001."

One ominous comment came in September 2002, when Rice said in a CNN interview that the United States should not wait for proof of Iraq's nuclear capabilities. "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," warned Rice, then Bush's national security adviser.

An analysis of the data showed that Bush made the largest number of comments, at 260, followed by former Secretary of State Colin Powell with 254, the center said.

The administration comments were assembled from a number of sources including news articles and government reports and speeches. (Reporting by David Morgan, Editing by Frances Kerry)

http://www.reuters.com/article/featuredCrisis/idUSN23620048

[independentWV]

Good News !!!!!!!
Kucinich Starts New Impeachment Drive
By David M. Herszenhorn, New York Times

Kucinich to Introduce Articles of Impeachment Against Bush on Monday, January 28, State of Union Day
Submitted by davidswanson on Wed, 2008-01-23 19:56. Congress | Impeachment
Kucinich Starts New Impeachment Drive
By David M. Herszenhorn, New York Times

Representative Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio may get excluded from Democratic presidential debates, as he has been recently, but no one can deny him the floor in the House.

And today Mr. Kucinich took to the floor to fire off his latest salvo at the Bush administration: his plans to introduce Articles of Impeachment against President Bush on Jan. 28 — the day of Mr. Bush’s State of the Union speech.

Accusing the administration of lying about the need for the war in Iraq, Mr. Kucinich said he did not need to hear the president’s
assessment. “We know the State of the Union,” he declared. “It’s a lie.”

He also fired a volley at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California
who has maintained that impeaching Mr. Bush is not on the table for Congressional Democrats. “If impeachment is off the table,” Mr. Kucinich said, “truth is off the table. If truth is off the table
then this body is living a lie.”

Mr. Kucinich introduced Articles of Impeachment against Vice
President Dick Cheney last April and in November, with the surprise help of Republicans seeking to embarrass the Democrats, he nearly succeeded in securing an hour of debate on the House floor. House Democratic leaders blocked that, however, by referring the impeachment effort back to the Judiciary Committee.

Anti-Bush groups have been urging Mr. Kucinich to undertake an
effort to impeach the president.

[jflack]

I posted this 935 false statements story on my blog today and lo and behold I received a comment from a curious person.  Ray Robison.  Author of "Both In One Trench: Saddam’s Secret Terror Documents"

His comment to my blog was, "A new book shows Saddam did support al Qaeda and the Taliban:  ‘Both In One Trench: Saddam’s Secret Terror Documents’
http://www.bothinonetrench.com

His biography states, "Hi folks, I am a military analyst living in Huntsville, Alabama. Before that I was an army officer and also a member of the Iraq Survey Group.  As a side job I do some straight journo stuff and opinion pieces."

I find out that the Iraq Survey Group was CIA-directed.

He also writes for and appears on FOX News.

My guess is that he's searching around the web looking for all the stories about the 935 false statements and doing a little damage control.

I haven't decided just yet how I'll respond.

[Dig]

Perino Dismisses CPI Study: Truth On How We Sold The Iraq War Is Not ‘Worth Spending Time On’
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/01/23/perino-cpi/
A new study by the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism found that the Bush administration issued 935 false statements about the threat from Iraq in the two years following 9/11. President Bush “led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”

In today’s press briefing, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino attacked the study. Perino claimed the study “is so flawed” because it “only looked at members of the administration” and not “people around the world”:

I hardly think that the study is worth spending time on. It is so flawed, in terms of taking anything into context or including — they only looked at members of the administration, rather than looking at members of Congress or people around the world.

Because, as you’ll remember, we were part of a broad coalition of countries that deposed the dictator based on a collective understanding of the intelligence.

Watch it:
 
http://video.thinkprogress.org/2008/01/perinocpi.320.240.flv

Perino argues that “we thought as a collective body that there” were WMDs. “The actions taken in 2003 were based on the collective judgment of intelligence agencies around the world,” added spokesperson Scott Stanzel.

The entire world community, however, didn’t endorse the Bush administration’s pre-war claims. For example, the IAEA’s Mohamed ElBaradei, Hans Blix, and other U.N. inspectors were all skeptical of Bush’s WMD allegations. Members of Congress who received the administration’s classified intelligence briefings raised similar concerns.

Dan Froomkin reports today that the Senate Intelligence Committee’s long overdue Phase II report on “whether the White House intentionally deceived the public” prior to the war will be out “before the end of spring.”

Transcript:

QUESTION: Any reaction to the study out from the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism, when they did what they called a count of hundreds of false statements made by the president and top administration officials regarding the threat posed by Iraq. And they counted during the two years after 9/11.

PERINO: I hardly think that the study is worth spending time on. It is so flawed, in terms of taking anything into context or including — they only looked at members of the administration, rather than looking at members of Congress or people around the world.

Because, as you’ll remember, we were part of a broad coalition of countries that deposed the dictator based on a collective understanding of the intelligence. And the other thing that that study fails to do is to say that after realizing that there was no WMD, as we thought as a collective body that there was, that this White House, the president set about to make reforms in the intelligence community to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.

[bigron]

Web Site Assembles U.S. Prewar Claims : Students of how the Bush administration led the nation into the Iraq war can now go online to browse a comprehensive database of top officials’ statements before the invasion, connecting the dots between hundreds of claims, mostly discredited since then, linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda or warning that he possessed forbidden weapons.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/Default.aspx?src=project_home&context=key_false_statements&id=946


Key False Statements

 On September 8, 2002, Bush administration officials hit the national airwaves to advance the argument that Iraq had acquired aluminum tubes designed to enrich uranium. In an appearance on NBC's Meet the Press, for example, Vice President Dick Cheney flatly stated that Saddam Hussein "now is trying through his illicit procurement network to acquire the equipment he needs to be able to enrich uranium."

Condoleezza Rice, who was then Bush's national security adviser, followed Cheney that night on CNN's Late Edition. In answer to a question from Wolf Blitzer on how close Saddam Hussein's government was to developing a nuclear capability, Rice said: "We do know that he is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. We do know there have been shipments going into . . . Iraq, for instance, of aluminum tubes that really are only suited to—high-quality aluminum tools that only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs."

In April 2001, however, the Energy Department had concluded that, "while the gas centrifuge application cannot be ruled out, we assess that the procurement activity more likely supports a different application, such as conventional ordnance production." During the preparation of the September 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, the Energy Department and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research stated their belief that Iraq intended to use the tubes in a conventional rocket program, but the Central Intelligence Agency's contrary view prevailed.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence subsequently concluded that postwar findings supported the assessments of the Energy Department and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

______________________________

There was dissent within the intelligence community in the first 48 hours after 9/11 over the connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Richard Clarke, President Bush's chief counterterrorism adviser, has written that President Bush asked him on September 12 to "see if Saddam did this. See if he is linked in any way. . ." Clarke said that he responded by saying, "Absolutely, we will look . . . again," and then adding, "But you know, we have looked several times for state sponsorship of al Qaeda and not found any real linkages to Iraq."

Beginning apparently in late November 2001, a team in the office of Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith, working independently of the formal intelligence community, reviewed intelligence data related to Al Qaeda. In August and September 2002, this team provided three separate briefings to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet, and finally to high-level White House officials. The briefings, titled "Assessing the Relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda," included the assessment that "Intelligence indicates cooperation [with Al Qaeda] in all categories: mature, symbiotic relationship."

Bush administration officials were soon publicly linking the two. For example, on September 25, 2002, in response to a reporter's question, President Bush said: "They're both risks, they're both dangerous. The difference, of course, is that Al Qaeda likes to hijack governments. Saddam Hussein is a dictator of a government. Al Qaeda hides, Saddam doesn't, but the danger is, is that they work in concert. The danger is, is that Al Qaeda becomes an extension of Saddam's madness and his hatred and his capacity to extend weapons of mass destruction around the world."

Such statements were not supported by the intelligence community's findings. In July 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency had concluded that "compelling evidence demonstrating direct cooperation between the government of Iraq and Al Qaeda has not been established, despite a large body of anecdotal information."

In September, the CIA circulated a draft report titled Iraqi Support for Terrorism, which found "no credible information that Baghdad had foreknowledge of the 11 September attacks or any other al-Qaeda strike." On September 17, CIA Director George Tenet reiterated this point in testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. "The intelligence indicates that the two sides at various points have discussed safe-haven, training, and reciprocal non-aggression," he said. "There are several reported suggestions by Al Qaeda to Iraq about joint terrorist ventures, but in no case can we establish that Iraq accepted or followed up on these suggestions."

The 9/11 Commission Report found that while there may have been meetings in 1999 between Iraqi officials and Osama Bin Ladin or his aides, it had seen no evidence that the contacts "ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship." It added: "Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with Al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States."

______________________________

In a speech on August 26, 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney flatly asserted that "there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."

Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet later wrote that Cheney's statement "went well beyond what our own analysis could support." Tenet was not alone within the CIA. As one of his top deputies later told journalist Ron Suskind: "Our reaction was, 'Where is he getting this stuff from? Does he have a source of information that we don't know about?'"

______________________________

In a national radio address on September 28, 2002, President Bush flatly asserted: "The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given. The regime has long-standing and continuing ties to terrorist groups, and there are al Qaeda terrorists inside Iraq. This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year."

What the American people did not know at the time was that, just three weeks before Bush's radio address, in early September, Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee that there was no National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Such an assessment had not been done in years because nobody within the intelligence community had deemed it necessary, and, remarkably, nobody at the White House had requested that it be done.

The CIA put the NIE together in less than three weeks. It proved to be false. As the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence later concluded, "Postwar findings do not support the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) judgment that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.

______________________________

In his State of the Union address on January 28, 2003, President Bush said: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

But as early as March 2002, there was uncertainty within the intelligence community regarding the sale of uranium to Iraq. That month, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research published an intelligence assessment titled, "Niger: Sale of Uranium to Iraq Is Unlikely." In July 2002, the Energy Department concluded that there was "no information indicating that any of the uranium shipments arrived in Iraq" and suggested that the "amount of uranium specified far exceeds what Iraq would need even for a robust nuclear weapons program." In August 2002, the Central Intelligence Agency made no mention of the Iraq-Niger connection in a paper on Iraq's WMD capabilities.

Just two weeks before the president's speech, an analyst with the Bureau of Intelligence and Research had sent an e-mail to several other analysts describing why he believed "the uranium purchase agreement probably is a hoax." And in 2006 the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded: "Postwar findings do not support the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) assessment that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake' from Africa. Postwar findings support the assessment in the NIE of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) that claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are 'highly dubious.'"

______________________________

In his dramatic presentation to the United Nations Security Council on February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said: "My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. I will cite some examples, and these are from human sources." In preparation for his presentation, Powell had spent a week at Central Intelligence Agency headquarters sifting through intelligence.

One of the "human sources" that Powell referenced turned out to be "Curveball," whom U.S. intelligence officials had never even spoken to. "My mouth hung open when I saw Colin Powell use information from Curveball," Tyler Drumheller, the CIA's chief of covert operations in Europe, later recalled. "It was like cognitive dissonance. Maybe, I thought, my government has something more. But it scared me deeply."

In his presentation to the U.N. Security Council, Powell described another of the human sources as "a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons [of mass destruction] to Al Qaeda." Six days earlier, however, the CIA itself had come to the conclusion that this source, a detainee, "was not in a position to know if any training had taken place."

In a report completed in 2004, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded: "Much of the information provided or cleared by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for inclusion in Secretary Powell's speech was overstated, misleading, or incorrect."

______________________________

In an interview with Polish television on May 29, 2003, President Bush stated: "We found the weapons of mass destruction." Bush was referencing two trailers or "mobile labs" discovered in Iraq.

Just days earlier, the Defense Intelligence Agency had concluded that the trailers "could not be used as a transportable biological production system as the system is presently configured." It was ultimately acknowledged that the trailers had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction and were probably used to manufacture hydrogen employed in weather balloons.

______________________________

On July 30, 2003, in an interview with Gwen Ifill of PBS's NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, Condoleezza Rice said: "What we knew going into the war was that this man was a threat. He had weapons of mass destruction. He had used them before. He was continuing to try to improve his weapons programs. He was sitting astride one of the most volatile regions in the world, a region out of which the ideologies of hatred had come that led people to slam airplanes into buildings in New York and Washington. Something had to be done about that threat and the president to simply allow this brutal dictator, with dangerous weapons, to continue to destabilize the Middle East."

Just two days earlier, David Kay, the Bush administration's top weapons inspector in Iraq, had briefed administration officials. "We have not found large stockpiles," he told them. "You can't rule them out. We haven't come to the conclusion that they're not there, but they're sure not any place obvious. We've got a lot more to search for and to look at."

[bigron]

January 28, 2008 Issue
Copyright © 2007 The American Conservative
http://www.amconmag.com/2008/2008_01_28/review1.html


The Long Fuse to the Iraq War

They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons, Jacob Heilbrunn, Doubleday, 289 pages


by Philip Weiss


It is hard to imagine a title more overdue than They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons. Ever since neoconservatism’s chief contribution to world betterment, the Iraq War, began losing its luster, its adherents have gone into a kind of hiding, and the media has given them cover. Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and New York Times columnist David Brooks, one or both of whom are neoconservatives, have suggested that the word is an anti-Semitic epithet. Others try to avoid it entirely: when Bill Kristol, who was definitely once a neoconservative, was hired by the New York Times as a columnist, the paper called him a “conservative” and said his father Irving Kristol, one of the movement’s founders, was a leader of “modern conservatism.”

Jacob Heilbrunn asserts that neoconservatives have so far gotten away “scot-free” with planning the greatest foreign-policy disaster since Vietnam. And so his book will call them to account. Not quite.

Heilbrunn achieves one important chore: a forthright social narrative of the neocons as a Jewish movement. Tracing ideological currents in the Jewish community from the 1940s to the 1970s, Heilbrunn, a journalist who himself flirted with neoconservatism, describes how the neocons were propelled by resentments against WASP elites—the men who had ignored the Holocaust, they felt, and “frozen out” Jews from the establishment. It would be hard to overemphasize Heilbrunn’s accomplishment. There has been endless prevarication about the fact that neoconservatism is an element of the Jewish experience, even from liberal Jews. Yet Heilbrunn will have none of it. He says that neoconservatism is “intimately linked with the memory of the Holocaust and the allies’ failure to save the Jews during the war” and notes that a “peculiar amalgam of intellectual rigor and ethnic resentment … lies at the heart of the neoconservative outlook.”

And here’s the topper: a “lifelong antipathy toward the patrician class among the neocons … prompted them to create their own parallel establishment.”

The sociological insights in his story are often exciting. Neocon godfather Norman Podhoretz had “the classic Jewish experience with the WASP elite” but became a “social climber” himself Heilbrunn says. The other godfather, Irving Kristol didn’t at first take the late Allan Bloom seriously. Bloom told Heilbrunn that his relationship with Kristol got “easier” once Bloom, like Kristol, had wealth. The neocons didn’t like Kissinger because he was hofjude, “a court jew of the WASP foreign policy establishment.” They didn’t like Zbig Brzezinski because he was Polish and the neocons suspected him of Pale-era anti-semitism.

Boiling resentment meant very little without a political program. The neocons got that in the late 1960s. And not surprisingly, the issues had a Jewish character. “With the trial of Adolph Eichmann in Jerusalem, the 1967 war, and the rise of black anti-Semitism in the United States, neoconservatism was born,” Heilbrunn writes. So now Brzezinski was resented because he was against the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and McGeorge Bundy because he wanted to push Israel to make a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

Neoconservative ideas might have been confined to small magazines, but the neocons stunned themselves in the 1970s by gaining traction in American political life—through the offices of Washington Sen. Henry Jackson (whom a Saudi ambassador called “more Jewish than the Jews”). With Jackson’s support, the neocons staged their first great victory, pressuring the Soviet Union to free Jews. After Daniel Patrick Moynihan won his New York Senate seat with “strong Jewish support” in 1976, the neocons had a second home.

At that time, of course, they were Democrats. Martin Peretz, the once leftwing editor of The New Republic, was so shaken by the Left’s friendliness to the Palestinians, that he provided access in his pages to hawks, and became “a major force in the mainstreaming of neoconservative ideas.” Douglas Feith, an architect of the Iraq disaster, tells Heilbrunn, “I grew up in a liberal Democratic Jewish household.” Again Israel was key. At the age of 15, two years into the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Feith wrote a precocious letter to the New York Times attacking the State Department policy in the Middle East. “It is appalling the State Department can be so blind to historical precedent as to call for a withdrawal from the captured area.” Captured, not occupied.

Israel-centrism made the neocons lousy wardheelers. They turned against Jimmy Carter on foreign policy, and so helped to elect Ronald Reagan in 1980. Not one to slight the power of his subjects, Heilbrunn says that had they not spurned Carter, he might have been re-elected. Neocons came back to the Dems in 1992, again over Israel. George H.W. Bush—“a scion of the WASP establishment”—was “acting like Jimmy Carter when it came to Israel.” Knocking off the Soviet Union gave the neocons a sense of hubris that would doom their ideas about Iraq. Their thinking was also damaged by the fact that the neocons overprized “filial piety”—and so their sons were enlisted in their fathers’ battles without having to develop their own ideas.

Good stuff. Alas, the book’s riches are set in the ancient past: the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. Didn’t the neocons just wreck our image around the world? Heilbrunn doesn’t get to 9/11 till page 228. There are only 60 pages left, and the social insights that have characterized the first half of the book disappear, giving way to a stentorian, op-ed style. The neocons have “debauched” the idea of intervention. They were “hopelessly naïve about the Arab predicament.”

I hoped that this book would do for the parallel establishment what The Best and the Brightest did for the last one in the wake of Vietnam. But Heilbrunn seems to have had only three or four interviews with Iraq war planners and we learn little about their psyches. How do they feel about Israel? How much money do they make? Do they think there is going to be another Holocaust? What was the importance of Cheney’s American Enterprise Institute chapter (both he and his wife have been fellows at AEI) to his inoculation with neocon doctrine? Heilbrunn doesn’t provide answers.

There are two reasons for his failure, the first vocational, the second far more worrisome. Heilbrunn was evidently under a deadline, and having spent years working on the first part of his book, he appears to have rushed the second half. His writing goes downhill. In the galley, two sentences in a row have the verb “would end up.” Twice on the same page former Sen. Bob Kerrey provides “important … cover” for the neocons.

The more troubling reason is self-censorship. It is one thing to write about the past with dispositive energy and quite another to render sharp judgments about the present. Heilbrunn hints at great ideas without the ability to follow through on them. He says the neocons’ obsession with radical Islam as another cold war was a self-delusion—did they also confuse Palestinian suicide bombers with Nazis? He talks about a parallel establishment and “an elite caste,” but doesn’t do anything to explore the huge pots of money available to the neocons and to politicians who stick by Israel. There is no follow through because all these ideas are close to anti-Semitic “canards,” the word the pro-Israel crowd likes to use when anyone tries to address Jewish influence in public life. Heilbrunn is conscious of these tactics. He notes that Francis Fukuyama said much more about the neocons’ love of Israel in an article than he did in his subsequent book and chalks the scholar’s silence up to “the bullying tactics the neoconservatives often employed to avert any criticism of Israel, however mild.” Well, Heilbrunn seems to have worried about the same thing.

As for bullying, what are we to make of Heilbrunn’s own vicious outbursts toward anybody who has tried to change American policy toward the hateful Israeli occupation? Thus George Kennan worried about “so-called ethnic lobbies.” Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer’s groundbreaking 2006 paper, “The Israel Lobby,” is dismissed as an “addled essay”, without another word. Jimmy Carter is accused of “crackpot moralism.” Edward Said was “a smooth, urbane purveyor of much nonsense about the Middle East.”

Between these knifings, Heilbrunn loses his own point of view. He tells us that Bush fell “into the web that the neoconservatives had woven around him.” Sounds like a conspiracy. Twice the author uses the word “cabal.” Harvard’s government department “was the first academic neoconservative cabal.” Later there is “the Pentagon cabal of neoconservatives.” Not even Walt and Mearsheimer used the word, though maybe they should have. Certainly, the neocons have often formed cells and have not been transparent about their ideas or their aims.

The book’s promotional copy teases the reader with that revelation. The boldfaced paragraph on the back of the galley asserts that many believe that a “cabal” of neocons launched a “war primarily on Israel’s behalf.” If Heilbrunn doesn’t believe this, he ought to state why not. As it is the reader is left with the shadowy sense that the neocons have a pro-Israel agenda that they are not upfront about. But it isn’t a conspiracy, Heilbrunn warns. The neocons have convinced themselves that the U.S. and Israel have congruent interests. “They just believe this stuff. They’re not agents,” an anonymous source tells him, speaking of Cheney aide David Wurmser, who is married to an Israeli.

Jacob Heilbrunn’s book should be hailed as a real sign of progress in assessing responsibility for the Iraq War, and yet the real work remains undone. I understand why there are inhibitions. Blaming the neocons’ Israel-first worldview for the war raises deep fears among Jews. The liberal Forward greeted Walt and Mearsheimer’s paper on the Israel lobby with the bitter retort: “In Dark Times Blame the Jews.” We need to get past this sort of defensiveness if we are going to understand our own democracy, let alone the Middle East. What Heilbrunn rightly calls an “elite caste” could lose status, yes. But others’ lives are at stake.   
____________________________________

Philip Weiss is at work on a book about Jewish issues. He blogs at www.philip weiss.org/mondoweiss/

[bigron]

Anti-Iran Coalition in the Gulf? Read This.

Sunday, January 20th, 2008 in News by Jim Lobe| Comment |

http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2008/01/20/anti-iran-coalition-in-the-gulf-read-this/

If President George W. Bush’s main purpose in visiting the Gulf last week — as indicated by his callhttp://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/14/world/middleeast/14prexy.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=abu+dhabi+steven+lee+myers+bush&oref=slogin in Abu Dhabi last Sunday to confront Iran “before it is too late” — was to rally Washington’s Sunni-led regional allies, particularly Saudi Arabia, behind a containment-and-isolation strategy against Iran, especially in the wake of last month’s National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), it appears that he fell far short of his goal. Indeed, it now appears to have been counter-productive.

While in the run-up to Bush’s visit to Saudi Arabia, its foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, was quoted in some of the mainstream press as warning against U.S. efforts to pit the Gulf states against Iran in this way, a remarkably blunt editorialhttp://www.arabnews.com/?page=7&section=0&article=105662&d=15&m=1&y=2008, entitled “Peace Now,” that appeared in the Jeddah-based English-language Arab News on the second day of the president’s sojourn in Saudi Arabia — two days after his Abu Dhabi speech — received virtually no notice. It should have, because it is probably unprecedented in its bluntness about the kingdom’s honored guest, constituting what the former U.S. ambassador to Riyadh, Chas Freeman, today called “a notable …breach of standard Arab etiquette” and one that was presumably condoned, if not approved, by senior members of the royal family. No one from the News has since been publicly admonished or dismissed, let alone arrested; indeed, no official has distanced the government from the sentiments expressed in it. The entire text, which is reproduced below, warrants attention, but the last paragraph — in which U.S. policy is described as “madness” — is not a little breathtaking, considering that the presidential party probably received complimentary copies with their morning coffee.

“Our region is not short of bloodshed and instability. Iraq, Lebanon, the occupied Palestinian territories and Afghanistan are all scenes of past and present conflicts where largely innocent blood has flowed in plenty. We do not need yet another dangerous conflict.

That is why it was so sad, even depressing, to hear US President George W. Bush use his visit to the Gulf to continue his saber-rattling against the Iranians - and over a nuclear weapons program which his own intelligence chiefs say Tehran abandoned five years ago. To any dispassionate observer, US military action against Iran is unthinkable. Unfortunately the Bush administration’s record since 9/11 has not only embraced the unthinkable but, more dangerously, it has embraced it in an unthinking fashion.

To continue such dire warnings was inconsiderate given that Bush was the guest of Gulf states which are on Iran’s doorstep. Such warnings were not what we wanted to hear. As Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal told his Canadian counterpart Maxime Bernier this week in a message that he then repeated to French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, confrontational behavior by Washington toward Iran was not the answer. If Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states had a problem with Iran concerning its nuclear program, then they would talk to Tehran as neighbors should.

Before Bush’s Middle East visit, White House briefers were telling correspondents that the president would be pushing the Israelis for a Palestinian settlement in return for Arab backing of a tough stance with Iran. It was suggested that Israel might be more tractable if the “Iranian nuclear threat” were removed. But the linkage simply is not there. It is because of the enduring injustices visited upon the Palestinians, with US connivance, that the Arab world, not least Saudi Arabia, which has long been a US ally, has been so disappointed by the failure to reward loyalty and friendship by Washington’s driving through a Palestinian settlement.

And further, it is because Israel - again with US connivance - has acquired a nuclear arsenal that Iran and, before it, Saddam’s Iraq even thought of acquiring their own nuclear deterrents.

Purblind US policies and Washington’s desperate failure time and again to listen to the advice and guidance of its Arab friends in the region have brought us to this new moment of tension with Iran. We do not need more threats of war. Warmongering has already created the greatest level of regional instability in 60 years. Bush’s inflammatory threats against Iran ride roughshod over the counsels of peace that he has heard from every Arab government on his Middle East visit.

Whatever threat Iran may constitute, now or in the future, must be addressed peaceably and through negotiations. The consequences of further war in the region are hideous, not least because they are incalculable.

Even Bush, with the ruin of Iraq before him, must surely see that. Yet in his confrontational remarks about Iran, he offers no carrot, no inducement, no compromise - only the big US stick. This is not diplomacy in search of peace. It is madness in search of war.”

Freeman, who was moderating a panel on “Iran’s Strategic Concerns and U.S. Interests,” said it was very doubtful such sentiments were expressed directly to Bush during his stay in Saudi Arabia, particularly given the efforts expended by King Abdullah to establish a warm personal relationship with the president. Other participants, who included Gary Sick, Trita Parsi, Barbara Slavin, and Ray Takeyh, appeared to agree that the administration’s efforts to rally the Sunni Gulf leaders behind a confrontational stance against Iran were unlikely to succeed, with Takeyh asserting that, “You’ve begun to see Arab governments moving to integrate Iran as a means of …disarming” the threat that it poses. The Gulf states’ stance, he went on remains contradictory. “(They) don’t want American-Iranian confrontation, and they don’t want American-Iranian normalization,” he said. Along similar lines, readers might profitably read an interesting analysis http://www.rusi.org/research/studies/menap/commentary/ref:C4784DF6A9E6B2/ published by the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies in London by Neil Partrick, a Gulf specialist with the International Crisis Group, written on the even of Bush’s trip.

[darsie]

This is a very interesting story and probably took the US administration by surprise - in it's frankness and opposition to any military solution the US and/or Israel might be considering against Iran.
The worry is whether the US will heed Saudia Arabia's advice - and not attack Iarn - or will act unilaterally against Iran before Bush's tenure in the White House is completed.

[Dan]

Although I do not trust any MSM outlets, MSNBC was all over this story last night.  Keith Olberman was tearing Bush apart and they had multiple guests on talking about how bad Bush is and how Dick Cheney lied live on air multiple times.  I thought it was pretty cool that at least some MSM people were talking of the falsehoods thrown upon us instead of trying to cover them up and talk about Heath Ledger's death instead like FOX.

It may be just a little anti-Bush/anti-republican move though by a democratically controlled station.  Does anyone know which way MSNBC leans?

Dan

[audrey786]

Hello,
As well French President Nicholas Sarkozy support stiffer sanctions against Iran(whatever that means because he did not say what kind of stiffer resolutions),could it mean neo-con  take-over of Europe?
I will not be surprised, because being French, I witness how France was the first country in Europe to implement compulsory ID card, and guess how? After of course a string terrorist bombs in subway!

France is a police state, everyone need ID at all time, if u don't you are thrown in jail until U can prove who u R , customs can seize UR house, can break in your house arrest u for no reason and without warrant!
French people think they have a free state, when in fact they are totally controlled.
They don't need cameras every where because most people are grassing every thing.
We all thought we were a beacon of freedom, equality. How brainwash I was, how blissfully ignorant i was!!
Fools! When in fact we were loosing more and more rights each day, while we were protesting for more money, we forgot about our freedom, or what it meant..
French were against the war (I suspect Germany as well) because they, the elite had nothing to win from it.
Now that America realise they cannot do it alone(or maybe they planned it that way) they are filling the pockets of the few elites with key position in Europe, (promising them they will become the new super state?)  and soon I bet u will see arabs in France transformed suddenly from European ways(98% are after the same pleasures and way of life of French) to extremist Muslims ALQUAEDA!
Bomb the METRO and hey presto u have the french in the street crying for revenge

[Capt. Obvious]

There's something odd about Sibel Edmonds. I remember when "Shoot the Messenger" came out and I thought it would be all expose and hardhitting, but it was really disappointing. There was no meat to it. Lots of people keeping thinking that sometime she's just going to let loose and reveal something really damaging, but that never seems to happen. For years she's been leading people about "the other things she hasn't said yet." I don't think it's going to happen, and frankly I think it's all suspicious. I am starting to wonder if she isn't a distraction, like the pentagon in a way.

[Dig]

Dude, she basically gave the dotted line that showed Dick Cheney personally profitted and sold nuke tech to iran.

WTF else is she supposed to disclose?  The entire blueprints of Area 51?

No one is reporting her stuff.  You gotta dig for it.  http://bradblog.com has a lot of it.  I and Industria have tried to mirror as much as we can here.

[37]

I still read everything I can find...I'm just saying.  She is hurting her credibility at some point.  IMO...for what it's worth.

[Dig]

I still read everything I can find...I'm just saying.  She is hurting her credibility at some point.  IMO...for what it's worth.

I hear ya.

[Dig]

[Wintermute]

^ Great cartoon, Sane.  Sadly, you could substitute Sibel Edmonds for Ron Paul, vote fraud or 9/11 and it would work just as well.

[Dan]

^ Great cartoon, Sane.  Sadly, you could substitute Sibel Edmonds for Ron Paul, vote fraud or 9/11 and it would work just as well.

You could add

1.  the Iraqi war
2.  the Iranian pre-war
3.  the Federal Reserve
4.  the Patriot Act
5.  the loss of Habius Corpus
6.  the Afganistan war
7.  Blackwater USA
8.  DU
9.  Police brutality
10. McCain being a Bush supporter
11. Hillary being business as usual
12. Builderburg group
13. JFK
14. Drone Planes
15. IRS
16. Income Tax
17. People dying in airport holding cells
18. the economy
19. 9-11 put options
20. insider trading

etc. etc. etc.

So sad

Dan

[Dig]

Can we impeach the speaker, too? 

nope, but she can be arrested for treason.

1st thing to do is freeze her "conflict of interest" income streams.

[chirhonius]

Ha, i love the title of this thread. It reminds me of star wars when the death star is used.

[Dig]

Ha, i love the title of this thread. It reminds me of star wars when the death star is used.

that about sums it up.

The "Death Star" is ignorance and it is consistently used as a tool to keep every citizen from their unalienable rights.

Is is also used to genocide races (like Cheney/Rockefeller are doing with Iraqis as they plan the next "Death Star" move to the heart of Persia).

[lord edward coke]

  Man, this thread is priceless... That dingy with the machine gun and then the "suicide bombers" wearing lifejackets...Too funny!!  That picture of the suicide bombers makes me think of Alex saying, "You can't make this stuff up." 
Thanks for the laughs...

  rotflmao !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!     life jackets !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!      

[jimd3100]

I'm not going to post the articles because most of you have seen them or know about them, but we've got all kinds of ships and other "targets" in the area and according to the articles I've read "the means to respond to an attack".
This looks like a setup. A USS Cole type attack on a ship and then we have an excuse to go after Iran. The official reason for the buildup in the area is "because of threats Iran has made" this is really insane.

This looks like a setup...expect a "terror" attack on one of our sitting ducks, in the region.

[Sasha]

This looks like a setup...expect a "terror" attack on one of our sitting ducks, in the region.

Very likely.  Cheney and Co. have already falsified an attack...
Iran airs own video of US ship incident
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gL5kSNevHghneEm7ryLLGsFDMnfA

... and preemptively attacked Iranian ships.
US-Contracted Ship Fires Toward Iranian Boat
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/25/8533/

[Dan]

Attributing the assertion to Western intelligence officials, Smith asserts that US officials have become increasingly frustrated with Iran's Republican Guard force -- an elite corps of the country's military -- which the Bush Administration has designated a terrorist group. Western officials have accused Iran of helping arming rebel militias in Iraq, and have accused Iran of supplying IEDs.





American officials are opposed to any attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, Smith says. They believe, however, that an attack on a militant camp could send a message to the Republican Guard.

If there is a military entity, supplied by the government, paid for by the government, acknowledged by the government.....how can they be identified as a terrorist organization.  Wouldn't the government be held accountable for the actions of said military group, not the individuals enrolled in the program?  If not, then the US special forces are terrorists also.  Do we not consider any militia based security force to be a terrorist group then?  The Swiss?  I don't think so.  We don't want to invade them, only Iran right now.

An attack on a militant camp could send a message to the Republican Gaurd?  Yeah, how about "I declare WAR!!!"

That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard.

  To attack a recognized unit of the Iranian military is to attck the military itself and therefore, Iran herself, thus declaring WAR.  Or at least instigating a declaration of war from the Iranian government.

Dan