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Uncovered: The Whole Truth about the Iraq war

Robert Greenwald - 56 min

video.google.com/ ... -7371253996117324045

The War on Iraq, filmmaker Robert Greenwald chronicles the Bush Administration's determined quest to invade Iraq following the events of September 11, ...

Eisenhower Was Right

fff.org/ ... 0402

A small article on page A12 of the January 29 issue of the New York Times is revealing with respect to the extent of the power of the military-industrial complex in American life. The article reports that the Army’s chief of staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, told the House Armed Services Committee that he is going to increase the size of U.S. forces by 30,000.

Did Congress authorize the increase? No. And when a few congressmen indicated to the general that they’d be pleased to have Congress authorize the increase, the general responded that Congress didn’t need to trouble themselves with providing such authority — that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld had already authorized the temporary increase under his “emergency� power — and that the “emergency� would justify the increase for the next four years. In other words, “Don’t worry your pretty little heads, elected representatives of the people; the military bureaucracy has the situation well under control. Go back to your knitting.�

Combine that kind of military power (the power to increase military forces without congressional approval) with the enormous economic dependency on military bases of states and cities all over the country and with the Pentagon’s newly claimed power to arrest, jail, and punish American citizens without due process of law and a jury trial, and you might begin to understand what President Eisenhower meant when he warned the American people back in 1961,

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

To gain an excellent understanding of the overwhelming power and influence of the military-industrial complex in American life — and the tremendous damage it has done to our nation — and the threat it poses to the freedom and well-being of the American people, I highly recommend The Sorrows of Empire by Chalmers Johnson, president of the Japan Policy Research Institute and professor emeritus at the University of California. Here’s what Johnson says in his introduction to this insightful book:

As militarism, the arrogance of power, and the euphemisms required to justify imperialism inevitably conflict with America’s democratic structure of government and distort its culture and basic values, I fear that we will lose our country. If I overstate the threat, I am sure to be forgiven because future generations will be so glad I was wrong. The danger I foresee is that the United States is embarked on a path not unlike that of the former Soviet Union during the 1980s. The USSR collapsed for three basic reasons — internal economic contradictions driven by ideological rigidity, imperial overstretch, and an inability to reform. Because the United States is far wealthier, it may take longer for similar afflictions to do their work. But the similarities are obvious and it is nowhere written that the United States, in its guise as an empire dominating the world, must go on forever.

Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president, Defense and Foreign Policy Studies, at the Cato Institute wrote, “Chalmers Johnson’s searing indictment of America’s flirtation with imperial foreign policy should be required reading for all concerned citizens.

"We're An Empire Now...We Create Our Own Reality"

dailykos.com/ ... 1022
I hadn't read the NY TIMES MAGAZINE article by RON SUSKIND yet, but I knew it must be good since the jerkoffs on FOXNEWS were bitching about it this afternoon. BOB HERBERT's column for tomorrow's paper deals with how you can't deal with a problem & lead, if you can't accept there is one. Herbert quotes one of the most chilling passages from the Suskind article where he talks with a WHITE HOUSE aide...

...According to Mr. Suskind, "The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' " The aide told Mr. Suskind, "That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act we create our own reality."

Got that? We may think there are real-world consequences to the policies of the president, real pain and real grief for real people. But to the White House, that kind of thinking is passé. The White House doesn't even recognize that kind of reality.

Where Is Your Detention Facility?

huffingtonpost.com/ ... 42226
The responses to my last post (360 as of Monday night) were certainly startling to me, especially, I have to say, the one that located my nearest detention facility between Laguna Seca and Fort Ord on the Monterey Peninsula. I immediately went to Google maps and started scanning the area looking for a center large enough to hold 20,000 people. and the best I could come up with was a gated golf course community (one way in, one way out) that sits on the hillside between the raceway and the fairgrounds. Or Tehama, Clint Eastwood's country club. Which doesn't mean that I am not taking this martial law thing seriously. So--back to you responders. I have two questions and a topic of discussion.

Question one: Do you know where your local detention facility is, and what it is currently being used for? Have you seen it? Do you know anyone who is or was employed in building it? And do you know how it is set up inside?

Question two: If, indeed, Blackwater, Titan and other military outsourcing companies are being used to train mercenaries whose ultimate job will be to subdue the American population (in other countries, these paramilitary organizations might be known as "rightwing death squads"), do you know anyone who belongs to one, has been trained to join one, or has left one? If so, what do they say about the purposes and intentions of these groups, and how do they feel about them? In other words, what do they say would be their justification for, let's say, rounding up you and your friends and family?

Many of you made a logical case for the idea that we are in the midst of the development of a military state, a fascist state, and certainly the editorial in yesterday's New York Times about the unprecedented firing of seven diligent federal prosecutors, such as Carol Lam (who busted Duke Cunningham) is worrisome in this context.

9/11 Press for Truth (Jersey Girls)

video.google.com/ ... -8666444901186351024

The documentary 9/11 Press for Truth premiered on September 10th in
Washington, DC. The film played at the nearly packed Landmark E Street Cinema just around the corner from FBI headquarters. While the irony was not intentional, it was clearly appropriate.

In the film’s first five minutes, we hear FBI Director Robert Mueller tell us that the agency simply had no idea that terrorists would ever use planes to attack the United States. Apparently, he also had no idea that one of his top agents sent reports of suspicious Middle Eastern men in commercial flight schools well before 9/11. He had no idea that a 1996 plot was foiled involving the use of planes as weapons against the United States. He also forgot that at the G8 conference of world leaders in Italy just before 9/11, defenses were set up to meet the threat of airplanes used as weapons. This sequencing in the film typifies the skillful presentation of information and themes throughout 9/11 Press for Truth.

Martial Law 9/11: Rise of the Police State (Alex Jones)

VIDEO AEJ Productions - 2 hr 36 min

video.google.com/ ... -6495462761605341661

... Martial Law: 9/11 Rise of the Police State was filmed primarily during the Republican Party's 2004 national convention in New York City. The Republican Party's choice ...

Bush's War on the Press
thenation.com/ ... alterman

All Presidents try to keep secrets; it comes with the job description. Following 9/11, the need for secrecy increased significantly. Bush, however, has taken advantage of this new environment to shut down the natural flow of information between the governing and the governed in ways that have little or nothing to do with the terrorist threat. As Charles Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity points out, "The country has seen a historic, regressive shift in public accountability. Open-records laws nationwide have been rolled back more than 300 times--all in the name of national security." Federation of American Scientists secrecy specialist Steven Aftergood adds, "Since President George W. Bush entered office, the pace of classification activity has increased by 75 percent.... His Information Security Oversight Office oversees the classification system and recorded a rise from 9 million classification actions in fiscal year 2001 to 16 million in fiscal year 2004."

Some of these efforts may be justified as prudent preparation in the face of genuine threats, but this is hard to credit, given the contempt the Administration has demonstrated for the public's right to information in non-security-related matters. Upon entering office, Bush attempted to shield his Texas gubernatorial records by shuttling them into his father's presidential library. That was followed by an executive fiat designed to hide his father's presidential records, as well as those of the Reagan/Bush Administration, by blocking the scheduled release of documents under the Presidential Records Act of 1978 and issuing a replacement presidential order that allowed not only Presidents but also their wives and children to keep their records secret. (The records had already been scrubbed for national security implications.)

In the aftermath of 9/11, Administration efforts to prevent accountability accelerated to warp speed. Attorney General Ashcroft reversed a Clinton Administration-issued policy governing FOIA requests that allowed documents to be withheld only when "foreseeable harm" would likely result, to one in which merely a "sound legal basis" could be found. And that was just the beginning. Even when documents were not withheld de jure, Administration officials often withheld them de facto. When People for the American Way sought documents on prisoners' cases being litigated in secret, the Justice Department required it to pay $373,000 in search fees before officials would even look. "It's become much, much harder to get responses to FOIA requests, and it's taking much, much longer," David Schulz, the attorney who helps the Associated Press with FOIA requests, explained to a reporter. "Agencies seem to view their role as coming up with techniques to keep information secret rather than the other way around. That's completely contrary to the goal of the act."

In addition, as Aftergood notes, "an even more aggressive form of government information control has gone unenumerated and often unrecognized in the Bush era, as government agencies have restricted access to unclassified information in libraries, archives, websites and official databases." These sources were once freely available but are now being withdrawn from view under the classification "sensitive but unclassified" or "for official use only." They include: the Pentagon telephone directory, the Los Alamos technical report library, historical records at the National Archives and the Energy Department intelligence budget, among many others. Even more alarming is the web of secrecy surrounding the operations of what has become the equivalent of a police state at Guantánamo Bay and other military prisons around the world, where the accused are routinely denied due process and traditional rules of evidence are deemed irrelevant. Exactly two members of Congress, both sworn to secrecy, are being briefed by the CIA on these programs. The rest of Congress, the media and the public are given no information to judge the legality, morality or effectiveness of these extralegal machinations, some of which have already resulted in officially sanctioned torture and possibly even murder.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this war against the media has been the fact that members of the media have largely behaved as if it is just business as usual. In fact, much of the success of the effort derives from the cooperation, both implicit and explicit, of the press. No one, after all, forces local TV stations to run official propaganda videos in lieu of their own programming, or without identifying them as such, and no one forces CNN Newsource, among others, to distribute them. And why did the curious mystery of "Gannon," despite its obvious newsworthiness--and sex appeal--receive so little critical coverage and virtually no outrage in the mainstream press? (Washington Post media critic and CNN talking head Howard Kurtz even went so far as to blame the scandal on "these liberal bloggers, [who] have started investigating his personal life in an effort to discredit him," and the National Press Club invited Gannon to be an honored guest on a panel on blogging and journalistic credibility.) Mike McCurry, White House press secretary under Bill Clinton, says he marvels at the willingness of the press corps to swallow the various humiliations offered them by Bush & Co. He told a recent gathering of Washington reporters and editors, "I used to think that if I ever tried to control the message as effectively as the current White House did, that I would have been run out of the White House press briefing room. But clearly I misjudged the temperament that exists."

The media's failure to resist this assault is perhaps understandable. Members of the profession are under siege from so many directions simultaneously they may feel they can hardly keep up with each incoming salvo. Not only is much of the traditional media controlled by multinational corporations that view their operations not as a public trust but as profit centers to be squeezed, but newspapers are facing an alarming decline in readership (and more than a few are admitting to having padded those numbers all along). Broadcast news has been steadily losing audience share for decades. In a vicious cycle, the results of such declines are more declines, as resources are cut to match reduced profits and pressure escalates from above to do more with less. Meanwhile, more and more "news" programs are succumbing to the tabloid temptation, and the lowering of quality has been ac-companied by a proliferation of factual errors, plagiarism and outright fiction proffered as reportage , further undermining public respect for the field. As Philip Meyer recently wrote in The Columbia Journalism Review, there is a sense that journalism itself "is being phased out. Our once noble calling is increasingly difficult to distinguish from things that look like journalism but are primarily advertising, press agentry, or entertainment." Throw in the nonstop ideological assault from the self-intoxicated section of the (mostly conservative) blogosphere, from (even more conservative) talk-radio and cable loudmouths like Limbaugh and O'Reilly, plus the fact that members of generations X and Y seem more likely to commit acts of terrorism than pick up a newspaper or watch a news broadcast, and it seems almost a luxury to worry about the Bush Administration's attack as well.

STASI
villagevoice.com/ ... hoberman

The Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS / Ministry for State Security), commonly known as the Stasi (from Staatssicherheit), was the main security (secret police) and intelligence organization of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). The Stasi was headquartered in East Berlin, with an extensive complex in Lichtenberg and several smaller complexes throughout the city. Widely regarded as one of the most effective intelligence agencies in the world, the Stasi's motto was "Schild und Schwert der Partei" (Shield and Sword of the Party), showing its connections to the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, the equivalent to the CPSU of the Soviet Union. Another term used in earlier years to refer to the Stasi was Staatssicherheitsdienst (State Security Service).

The Stasi was founded on February 8, 1950. It was modeled on the Soviet MGB, and was regarded by the Soviets as an extremely loyal and effective partner.

New Stasi style UK Anti-Terror campaign encourages reporting your neighbours

infowars.net/ ... Stasi_London

London Underground Bombing 'Exercises' Took Place at Same Time as Real Attack

prisonplanet.com/ ... bombingexercises

Culpability cover scenario echoes 9/11 wargames

A consultancy agency with government and police connections was running an exercise for an unnamed company that revolved around the London Underground being bombed at the exact same times and locations as happened in real life on the morning of July 7th.

On a BBC Radio 5 interview that aired on the evening of the 7th, the host interviewed Peter Power, Managing Director of Visor Consultants, which bills itself as a 'crisis management' advice company, better known to you and I as a PR firm.

Peter Power was a former Scotland Yard official, working at one time with the Anti Terrorist Branch.

Power told the host that at the exact same time that the London bombings were taking place, his company was running a 1,000 person strong exercise which drilled the London Underground being bombed at the exact same locations, at the exact same times, as happened in real life.

White House Targeted 20 Democrats For 2008 Defeat

sq-sq.com/ ... white-house-targeted-20-democrats

GSA Director Lurita Alexis Doan may have violated the 'Hatch Act,' which prohibits federal employees from using their positions for political purposes. Doan is alleged to have suggested that she could use GSA contracts to help Republican Members of Congress hold their seats in the House.

Kyle Sampson was in line to be UTAH U.S. Attorney
forums.therandirhodesshow.com/ .. lofiversion t110634

or

forums.therandirhodesshow.com/ ... 110634

att.net/ .. busharrest

Double Standards of Morality
The Age of Terror
By ROBERT FISK

counterpunch.org/ ... 10092006

When Daniel Fried, the US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs visited Paris last year, he lectured European and Arab diplomats on what he called "the US-European imperative to support democratic reform and democratic reformers in the Middle East"--forgetting, it seems, that just such a man, Khatami, existed in Iran but had been snubbed by the US. His failure as a genuinely elected president produced his somewhat cracked successor. Fried, however, insisted that bringing democracy to the Middle East "is not for us a question of political theory, but of central strategic importance", something that clearly didn't matter less than a year later in Lebanon and certainly not when the Palestinians participated in genuine elections, of which more later.

Fried took the risky step of quoting the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville to back his claim that democracy, far from being a fragile flower, was "robust, and its applicability is potentially universal". The former French foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine, was invited to reply to respond to Fried's words and he cynically spoke of "people who have historical experience, who have seen how past experiences turned out", the subtext of which was: "You Americans have no sense of history." Vedrine spoke of meeting with Madeleine Albright when she was the US Foreign Secretary. "I told her we had no problem regarding the objective of democracy, but I asked whether it was a process, or a religious conversion, like Saint Paul on the road to Damascus." And he quoted the Mexican writer, Octavio Pas: "Democracy is not like Nescafe, you don't just add water." For historical reasons, Vedrine told Fried, "Beca! use of colonialism, the Middle East is the region of the world where external intervention is most at risk of being rejected."

And when it is imposed, as America says it would like to do in Damascus, what will happen? A nice, flourishing electoral process to put Syrians in power or another descent into Iraqi-style horrors with a Sunni-Muslim regime in place in Damascus?

And so to "Palestine"--the inverted commas are more important than ever today--and its own act of democracy. Of course, the Palestinians elected the wrong people, Hamas, and had to suffer for it. Democratic Israel would not accept the results of Palestine's democratic elections and the Europeans joined with America in placing sanctions against the newly elected government unless it recognised Israel and all agreements signed with Israel since the Camp David accords of the 1970s. Even when Ariel Sharon was staging his withdrawal of 8,500 settlers from Gaza last year, he was shifting 12,000 more settlers into the West Bank, and George W Bush had effectively accepted this illegality by talking of the "realities" of the Jewish settlements still being enlarged there. And that was the end of UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 upon which the "peace process" was supposed to be based--Israeli w! ithdrawal from territories occupied in the 1967 Middle East war, in return for the security of all states in the area.

One of the few honourable American statesmen to grasp what this portends is ex-President Jimmy Carter, who wrote after the Palestinian elections in May this year that "innocent Palestinian people are being treated like animals, with the presumption that they are guilty of some crime. Because they voted for candidates who are members of Hamas, the US government has become the driving force behind an apparently effective scheme of depriving the general public of income, access to the outside world and the necessities of life... The additional restraints imposed on the new government are a planned and deliberate catastrophe for the citizens of the occupied territories, in hopes that Hamas will yield to the economic pressure." Oh, for the years of the Carter administration...

And now we have the wall--or the "fence" as too many journalists gutlessly call it. The Palestinians went to the International Court in the Hague to have it declared illegal because much of its course runs through their land. The court said it was illegal. And Israel ignored the court's decision and, once more, the US supported Israel. Here was another lesson for the Palestinians. They went peacefully--without violence or "terrorism"--to our Western institutions to get justice. And we were powerless to help them because Israel rejected this symbol of Western freedoms.

A War Economy...
... But without the Usual Wartime Stimulus?

James K. Galbraith prospect.org/ ... galbraith

There is thus no chance that events will right themselves in a few weeks or that we will be saved by productivity growth, as Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan professes to believe; nor will the economy be rescued by lower interest rates or the provisions of the recent tax act, most of which take effect after 2004. Rather, we are in for a crisis; the sooner this is recognized and acted upon, the better.

Normally in wartime, largescale support to the domestic economy is not needed, because of vast increases in military expenditure. But what we face so far is a veneer of military action over a worldwide diplomatic and police offensive. In a $10-trillion economy, the $40 billion already appropriated for the military and for relief is minor.

How about monetary issues? Federal Reserve policy has completely lost domestic effect. Cuts in interest rates on September 17 had no discernible impact on the largest one-week decline in stock prices since 1933 and also none on economic activity. In wartime the Federal Reserve plays very little role; it must simply bring down long-term bond rates and hold them down. But even then, wartime monetary policy runs into a contradiction: It is inconsistent with a stable dollar, openly traded.

The modern system of floating exchange rates and unregulated international capital markets is only 30 years old. It may very well now prove unable to support a return to prosperity in the United States. This being so, planning for a transition toward a more stable system should begin soon; we may need to fix parities with the euro, yen, and sterling before long. And comprehensive debt relief for cooperating countries--Pakistan, to begin with--is needed now, as a down payment on a system of stable development finance after this conflict.

If inflation cannot be avoided by preemptive means, then the entire experience of the New Deal and the war economy will seem pertinent once again.

Nuclear War on Iran Plans, Sen. Biden at Conference
waronfreedom.org/ ... 911truthorg
The American public is being prepared for another undeclared war for corporate empire in the name of the interest of US citizens and the "war on terror". In the first hour he reports on Cheney's provocation speech against Russia in Lithuania this week calling for more CIA funded so-called "color revolutions", such as the ones in Ukraine and Georgia, using the "resource grab" code word "democracy" while meaning "puppet democracy". Cheney then took his anti-Russian mission to Kazakhstan. Rice is beating the war monger drum against China in Australia this week.

Tarpley reports that on May 1 Henry Kissinger, Delaware Senator Joe Biden, and Vice President Dick Cheney attended the Princeton University conference titled "Islam & the West" and they celebrated the 90th birthday of British Arab Bureau chief agent Bernard Lewis, proponent of the Balkanization of countries like Iraq and Iran as a strategy to seize oil resources and advance corporate geo-political control of the Middle East.

Tarpley reports that Sen. Joe Biden called for the division of Iraq into 3 separate nations. He said that the conference discussed the possibility of "dividing Iran" into several parts. Professor Tarpley cites the British and US use of terrorist groups inside Iran and the creation of a propaganda campaign in the corporate media to set the stage for the US to use nuclear weapons on Iran in the guise of stopping an inflated and distorted threat by this signatory to the Non Proliferation Treaty (while giving a pass to Israel's secret nuclear program).

Tarpley goes on to criticize Justin Raimondo of the Libertarian antiwar.com site for saying that we are all "doomed" to deal with an inevitable war on Iran. Tarpley optimistically advocates that spreading 9/11 Truth is the way to overturn these expansive new global wars and their attendant repression at home. Webster Tarpley is the author of 9/11: Synthetic Terror. He posits that as many as 15 "war game" drills on the day of 9/11 went "live" and were the cover for the "invisible government" of Neo Con moles to orchestrate the attacks. He then introduces Janice Matthews, Executive Director of www.9/11Truth.org and Gabriel Day, organizer of the upcoming 9/11 Truth Conference on the weekend of June 2-4 in Chicago with co- sponsors Muslims, Jews, and Christians for 9/11 Truth (MUJCA) Welcome to MUJCA-NET

Scholars, government whistle-blowers, former members of the Bush administration, and grass roots activists will be gathering for another round of education and strategy sessions to move the growing movement forward before it is too late, before fascism based on false flag terror and phony patriotism is completely victorious in the USA.

Callers from all over the country discuss everything from the new movie "United 93" based on impossible cell phone conversations at 35,000 feet and the failure to discuss why the plane debris was spread over an 8 mile radius, to the lack of evidence provided for the Pentagon attack, to the scientific basis that shows the use of controlled demolition at the World Trade Center, to the fact that many questions simply remain unanswered. The show ends with the question of why so many in the anti-war movement will not take on the murder of their fellow Americans and basic 9/11 truth questions. Gabriel Day said that it took him a year after 9/11 to seriously question what really happened and to consider the awful possibility that it was an inside job. For him, the turning point was a gentle request by a friend for him to watch a DVD movie. From then on, he was into the 9/11 Truth movement.

Listen to the show, and you will be in the know!!!

mime11.com

THE FINAL SOLUTION!

PLEDGEtoIMPEACH.org

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"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will."

-- Frederick Douglass, 1857

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