Blood soaked oil money from the terrorist state of Saudi Arabia comes back to America in the form of a mega-million dollar mansion in Beverly Hills, Ca.
A mystery landowner's plan to build an 85,000-square-foot family compound has set off a major kerfuffle in a tony Hollywood hills neighborhood whose residents include Bruce Springsteen, Jay Leno, and David Beckham, the Los Angeles Times reports.
The proposed "mega-mansion"—which would be located in the iconic 90210 zip code—will include a 42,681-square-foot main house, a double-winged "son's villa" of more than 27,000 square feet, a 4,400-square-foot guest house, a 5,300-square-foot staff quarters and a 2,700-square-foot gatehouse.
The owner's identity is being kept secret. But there are indications he could be a member of the Saudi royal family. A special business created to buy the land lists as its president Mansour Fustok of London. Fustok--who described the mansion to the Times as "just a normal Mediterranean-style house"--is the uncle of Prince Abdulaziz ibn Abdullah ibn Abdulaziz al Saud, one of Saudi King Abdullah's sons.
The owner of the 5.2-acre property in Tower Lane has kept his identity well-hidden behind an especially set-up property firm, fuelling rumours he could be a senior Saudi prince.
And the complex may be intended for the prince himself. According to a representative of Fustok's business, the owner is a single father of three. Prince Abdulaziz is divorced and has three children.
But residents of the Benedict Canyon neighborhood—including Hollywood honcho Michael Ovitz (pictured)—are worried about the project's potential for noise, pollution, and environmental damage. They've organized a campaign to block it, arguing that the owners are trying to get around a legally mandated environmental review.
Ovitz may not be the best front-man for the campaign. He himself once proposed a 28,000-square-foot megamansion on property straddling the Los Angeles-Beverly Hills border, which also generated heated opposition. The home, which ultimately was built, sits a stone's throw away from the site of the proposed compound.
One neighbour, Martha Karsh, told the Los Angeles Times: 'It's commercial-scale construction, like building a Wal-Mart in the heart of a quiet residential neighbourhood.'
The project was too big for the area's narrow streets, the house would create mudslide and fire hazards - and claimed the mystery developer wasn't being 'neighbourly'.
The entire development would dwarf even the Griffith Observatory, as well as Spelling's $150million 'The Manor' in Holmby Hills, which covers 56,500 square feet.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the owner of the existing property has created a firm called Tower Lane Properties Inc to buy the three neighbouring plots of land for $12million.
Veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh has broken some massive stories in his day, but uncovering secret societies within the highest echelons of America's military would probably be the biggest of his career.
Well, get ready for the media storm, because that's essentially what Hersh told an audience in Doha, Qatar recently, according to a report published earlier this week by Foreign Policy.
Speaking at a campus operated by Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, Hersh said he was working on a new book that details "how eight or nine neoconservative, radicals if you will, overthrew the American government."
"It's not only that the neocons took it over but how easily they did it -- how Congress disappeared, how the press became part of it, how the public acquiesced," he continued, according to the published quotes.
Hersh also lamented President Obama's continuance of the Bush administration's worst abuses.
"Just when we needed an angry black man, we didn't get one," he reportedly said.
The Foreign Policy report added that in 2003, those "in the Cheney shop" were not concerned about the havoc the invasion of Iraq was destined to cause.
"[The] attitude was, 'What's this? What are they all worried about, the politicians and the press, they're all worried about some looting?" Hersh was quoted as saying. "Don't they get it? We're gonna change moseques into cathedrals. And when we get all the oil, nobody's gonna give a damn.' That's the attitude. We're gonna change mosques into cathedrals. That's an attitude that pervades, I'm here to say, a large percentage of the Joint Special Operations Command [JSOC]."
He further claimed that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Vice Admiral William McRaven and others in the JSOC were members of the "Knights of Malta" and "Opus Dei," two little known Catholic orders.
"They do see what they're doing -- and this is not an atypical attitude among some military -- it's a crusade, literally," Hersh reportedly continued. "They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They're protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function."
He added that members of these societies have developed a secret set of insignias that represent "the whole notion that this is a culture war" between religions.
It was President George W. Bush who first invoked images of a holy war in the Middle East, when he suggested soon after Sept. 11, 2001 that the US was on a "crusade" in the region.
The "Knights of Malta" were a Catholic order founded in 1085 as a group of monks who cared for the wounded. It evolved into a military order that safeguarded Christian pilgrims from Muslims during the nine "Crusades," where Europe's Christian states laid siege to Muslims for control of Jerusalem.
"Opus Dei," popularly depicted in the Hollywood film "The DaVinci Code," was founded in 1928 and officially accepted as part of the Catholic church in 1947. The group's website claimed their principle calling was to bring about a "Christian renewal" around the world.
Doubts, denials and a distinctive trend
Raw Story reached out to Hersh and The New Yorker to confirm the accuracy of his quotes, placing this report on hold until they responded. Both declined to make any further statement, neither confirming nor denying the quotes.
However, one source close to Hersh who spoke to Raw Story off the record, suggested that Foreign Policy's report was indeed correct.
Raw Story followed-up on the quotes due to a widely-reported false claim attributed to Hersh in May 2009, where he'd allegedly said former Vice President Dick Cheney ordered the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
The report, which appeared to have originated in Pakistan, was picked up by The Wall Street Journal and the conservative-leaning American Spectator, but both removed the links after Raw Story published a denial from Hersh. A link to Raw Story's original report was unavailable due to a database malfunction.
Hersh, a Pulitzer-winning author and reporter, has previously reported that the JSOC was set up by former Vice President Cheney as something of an "executive assassination squad" that operated outside of congressional authority.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who resigned after Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings quoted him mocking the US civilian command, led JSOC before taking command of America's war effort in Afghanistan.
In an email to the military's Stars and Stripes publication, McChrystal's spokesman, David Bolger, panned Hersh's claim.
“The allegations recently made by Seymour Hersh relating to General McChrystal’s involvement with an organization called The Knights of Malta are completely false and without basis in fact,” he reportedly wrote. “General McChrystal is not and has never been a member of that organization.”
The religious indoctrination of US soldiers has been in headlines in recent weeks as soldiers who "failed" the "spiritual fitness" portion of the "comprehensive soldier fitness" test claimed they were forced to attend Christian ceremonies and become "born again" by professing love for the Christian deity.
Similarly, GQ magazine uncovered last year a series of top-secret military briefings prepared by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that included passages from the Bible.
Trijicon Inc., a defense contractor, was also discovered last January to have been for years placing scriptural references on gun sights used by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Their actions revealed Trijicon was forced to provide the Pentagon with kits to remove the codes.
The land that brought the USA 15 of the 19 hijackers that 'supposedly' brought down the World Trade Centers and forced America's hand into the Bush led 'War on Terror' now offers a lending hand to a dictator in need.. How charming.. The wonderful country that is filled with rabid Islamists that profess pure hatred for Israel and refuse to allow any Jew into their country, have allowed another dictator protection and asylum in their land. I'm sure the Bush's and their Nazi kin are dancing beneath their white hoods and sheets as I am writing this.
It brings tears to ones eyes as we remember the sweet surrender of George Bush and Prince Abdullah holding hands as they walked along and chatted like schoolgirls.
The two terrorists were obviously enamored in their mutual lust for violence and war..
Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali, the ex-president of Tunisia, has been sent to live in a conservative southern province of Saudi Arabia known for its links to al-Qaeda, according to reports.
Mr Ben Ali flew to the Red Sea city of Jeddah on Friday night after being refused permission to land in France, Tunisia's former colonial master.
He stayed briefly there and is even rumoured to have paid a brief pilgrimage to nearby Mecca. But according to local reports, he has now been found somewhere to stay 300 miles to the south in Abha, the capital of Asir province, which neighbours Yemen.
Although Saudi al-Qaeda members come from all over the country, a high proportion come from relatively conservative, economically underdeveloped provinces such as Asir, including several of the 9/11 attackers. In a recording, Osama bin Laden later said of them: "Asir's tribes formed the lion's share."
Said al-Shehri, deputy commander of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, is from Khamis Mushayt, not far from Abha.
That Mr Ben Ali, who banned Islamist parties and was well known for high-living, has been granted asylum by puritanical Saudi Arabia is already subject of a number of jokes in the Arab world.
According to Mustafa Alani, an analyst based in Dubai with good Saudi connections, he has been allowed to stay in Saudi Arabia on condition he takes no part in politics and does not speak to the media - conditions that also applied to other political leaders who sought refuge there, from Idi Amin of Uganda to ex-prime ministerNawaz Sharif of Pakistan.
In keeping with their tradition of offering a home to former leaders, the kingdom's rulers are likely to resist all calls to have the family returned to face trial, despite assurances by the Tunisian prime minister, Mohamed Ghanouchi, that anyone involved in orders to crack down on last week's protests would face justice.
He is also said to have been joined in Saudi Arabia by his unpopular wife, Leila, after she flew at first to Dubai with a number of her relatives. It is the second marriage for both of the couple, and they have two daughters and a son.
Their two daughters, Nesrine and Cyrine, are staying in Disneyland Paris, along with Nesrine's husband, Sakher El Materi.
Mrs Trabelsi also has a large clan of brothers and nephews, one of whom, Imed Trabelsi, is said to have been killed by an angry mob as he tried to fly out of the country on Friday.
US forces have fired so many bullets in Iraq and Afghanistan - an estimated 250,000 for every insurgent killed - that American ammunition-makers cannot keep up with demand. As a result the US is having to import supplies from Israel.
US forces have fired so many bullets in Iraq and Afghanistan - an estimated 250,000 for every insurgent killed - that American ammunition-makers cannot keep up with demand.
A government report says that US forces are now using 1.8 billion rounds of small-arms ammunition a year. The total has more than doubled in five years, largely as a result of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as changes in military doctrine.
"The Department of Defense's increased requirements for small- and medium-calibre ammunitions have largely been driven by increased weapons training requirements, dictated by the army's transformation to a more self-sustaining and lethal force - which was accelerated after the attacks of 11 September, 2001 - and by the deployment of forces to conduct recent US military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq," said the report by the General Accounting Office (GAO).
Estimating how many bullets US forces have expended for every insurgent killed is not a simple or precisely scientific matter. The former head of US forces in Iraq, General Tommy Franks, famously claimed that his forces "don't do body counts".
But senior officers have recently claimed "great successes" in Iraq, based on counting the bodies of insurgents killed. Maj-Gen Rick Lynch, the top US military spokesman in Iraq, said 1,534 insurgents had been seized or killed in a recent operation in the west of Baghdad. Other estimates from military officials suggest that at least 20,000 insurgents have been killed in President George Bush's "war on terror".
John Pike, director of the Washington military research group GlobalSecurity.org, said that, based on the GAO's figures, US forces had expended around six billion bullets between 2002 and 2005. "How many evil-doers have we sent to their maker using bullets rather than bombs? I don't know," he said.
"If they don't do body counts, how can I? But using these figures it works out at around 300,000 bullets per insurgent. Let's round that down to 250,000 so that we are underestimating."
Pointing out that officials say many of these bullets have been used for training purposes, he said: "What are you training for? To kill insurgents."
Kathy Kelly, a spokeswoman for the peace group Voices in the Wilderness, said Mr Bush believed security for the American people could come only from the use of force. Truer security would be achieved if the US developed fairer relations with other countries and was not involved in the occupation of Iraq. The President, said Ms Kelly, should learn from Israel's experience of "occupying the Palestinians" rather than buying its ammunition.
The GAO report notes that the three government-owned, contractor-operated plants that produce small- and medium-calibre ammunition were built in 1941.
Though millions of dollars have been spent on upgrading the facilities, they remain unable to meet current munitions needs in their current state. "The government-owned plant producing small-calibre ammunition cannot meet the increased requirements, even with modernisation efforts," said the report.
"Also, commercial producers within the national technology and industrial base have not had the capacity to meet these requirements. As a result, the Department of Defense had to rely at least in part on foreign commercial producers to meet its small-calibre ammunition needs."
A report in Manufacturing & Technology News said that the Pentagon eventually found two producers capable of meeting its requirements. One of these was the US firm Olin-Winchester.
The other was Israel Military Industries, an Israeli ammunition manufacturer linked to the Israeli government, which produces the bulk of weapons and ordnance for the Israeli Defence Force.
The Pentagon reportedly bought 313 million rounds of 5.56mm, 7.62mm and 50-calibre ammunition last year and paid $10m (about £5.5m) more than it would have cost for it to produce the ammunition at its own facilities.
Confirmed sources in the Nigerian government tell us, in order to keep former Vice President Cheney out of prison for crimes involving Nigeria, $500,000,000 in bribes have been promised, negotiated by former President George H.W. Bush. Now, only a day later, Cheney faces possible charges, so many charges they can only be imagined, for planning the Pentagon attack on 9/11.
TV host, Jesse Ventura, former Navy Seal, former Governor of Minnesota, on a one hour documentary on prime-time American television, makes an open and shut criminal case tying Cheney, Rumsfeld and officials throughout the US government with complicity in the planning, execution and subsequent cover-up of the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon.
According to experts on 9/11, engineers, pilots, intelligence officers and members of our military, Jesse Ventura “hit the nail on the head.” Ventura, using evidence developed over 9 years by hundreds of individuals, outlines the utter impossibility of the government’s cover story on 9/11 and systematically debunks it using testimony and scientific evidence.
Ventura cites, in an interview with a 9/11 commissioner, a possible motive for the Pentagon attack being included with the attacks on the World Trade Center. $2,300,000,000,000, yes 2.3 trillion US dollars had disappeared, cited only the day before in a televised statement by Secretary Rumsfeld, money “gone missing” from the Pentagon’s accounting. The area of the Pentagon hit by a missile or destroyed by explosives or both contained all records of this missing money.
NO PLANE, NO WAY, NOT EVEN CLOSE
Ventura proves, beyond any doubt that no airplane every hit the Pentagon. As the video shows, not even a highly trained airline pilot was capable of the maneuvers claimed. Long before, it had been proven that the 757 was incapable of the task, either the maneuvers or the speed and trajectory. The plane would have come apart, there is no disagreement with this and hasn’t been for some time, yet nothing had been done. Why?
It is also clearly shown that there is absolutely no evidence of any kind showing a plane hit the Pentagon, no wreckage, no bodies, no luggage. Items claimed to have been taken to Dover Air Force Base, bodies, plane parts, were never at the Pentagon as both video and testimony prove.
There is also proof that the government threatened witnesses, telling them to support the “aircraft scenario.”
NO MUSLIMS, NO HIJACKERS, NO BOX CUTTERS, ALL PROVEN LIES FINALLY
The basis for the conspiracy theory regarding Muslim hijackers with box cutters was based on supposed phone calls made by Barbara Olson, wife of Bush Solicitor General. Solicitor General Olson claimed he talked to his wife on a cell phone, spoke with her at length, while she described the hijackings as now dramatized by Hollywood. When it was proven that a cell phone is incapable of making such calls, Olson claimed it was a “seat back phone.” When it was proven that there were no seat back phones on American Airlines 757 aircraft, nothing further was asked.
Then investigations shows he received one call, lasting “0″ seconds. Ventura questions as to whether Olson was duped or complicit? Should he be arrested too? Was his wife, Barbara, ever really on the plane?
Then Ventura looks into the flight itself. Not only was the flight recorder “dead” but during the flight itself, the transponder was turned off. Even more suspicious, the plane disappeared from radar for 28 minutes.
There is no discussion of this 28 minutes, but speculation, perhaps no longer speculation, has long been that the flight landed. As to what happened then, we cannot guess, or can we. One of my friends, a former Pentagon official, had a friend on that aircraft. Not long ago, he asked me.
“Gordon, what do you think happened to him, do you think he was executed? Bullet in the brain as they stepped off the plane or something even worse?”
Ventura didn’t go there. None of us want to. It requires visualizing a scene out of Auschwitz.
Can Americans be so brutal, so devious, so traitorous? It isn’t just Jesse Ventura that is willing to risk his life to bring it out, Fox News journalist Geraldo Rivera, several weeks ago, debunked the Building 7 collapse at the World Trade Center as “controlled demolition.”
9/11 COMMISSION DUPED, ADMITS THERE WAS NO REAL INVESTIGATION AT ALL
Commission video’s redacted to remove testimony by the Secretary of Transportation, transcripts altered, witnesses blocked, evidence, tons of evidence of government conspiracy withheld, this is the case against the government. Threats, intimidation, going on for years, this is proven. Were there more than threats, murders, “heart attacks” or threats against families? Ventura proves the Pentagon was a government conspiracy, he “names names.” Geraldo makes any other explanation for Building 7 other than “controlled demolition” pure insanity.
IGNORING EVIDENCE, PROOF OF DICTATORSHIP OR ARE ARRESTS PLANNED?
It isn’t as though the evidence presented by Governor Ventura and Geraldo Rivera or even the other stories, Judge Napolitano’s revelations of knowledge of the attacks as early as 1999, was new. All has been know, all highly credible and all systematically ignored, attacked by the press, suppressed by courts, officials at every level.
9/11 and the recent revelations aren’t proof of a conspiracy by 2 men, or Israel. It is proof that there never was an Al Qaeda and that the deaths, two wars, the 9/11 deaths and the carnage across the world wrought by the United States was part of a criminal conspiracy, one that could only be perpetrated by a dictatorship under the guise of representative democracy.
Everything we have seen, and millions around the world have watched, nobody can ignore it anymore, it all says that what has happened is something no American would allow, not if this still were America. Jesse Ventura proved something startling to most, suspected by some. He proved that, at some point in our past, 10 years, more, we don’t know, our government was overthrown.
Nigeria's anti-corruption police have dropped charges against Dick Cheney, the former US vice-president, over a multi-million dollar bribery case after the energy firm Halliburton agreed to pay up to $250m (£161m) in fines.
The move followed the intervention of ex-president George Bush Sr and former secretary of state James Baker, according to Nigerian press reports.
The country's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) said it met officials representing Cheney and Halliburton in London last week after filing 16-count charges relating to the construction of a liquefied natural gas plant in the conflict-ridden Niger delta.
Femi Babafemi, a spokesman for the EFCC, said: "There was a plea bargain on the part of the company to pay $250m as fines in lieu of prosecution."
The sum consists of $120m (£77m) in penalties and the repatriation of $130m (£83m) trapped in Switzerland, he added.
Babafemi said he expected Nigeria's attorney general Mohammed Adoke to ratify the decision . "I can tell you authoritatively that an agreement has been reached."
Several Nigerian newspapers added that Bush and Baker took part in negotiations through conference calls with Adoke and other officials, but Babafemi could not confirm this.
Houston-based engineering firm KBR, a former Halliburton unit, pleaded guilty last year to US charges that it paid $180m in bribes between 1994 and 2004 to Nigerian officials to secure $6bn in contracts for the Bonny Island liquefied natural gas project in the delta. KBR and Halliburton reached a $579m settlement in America but Nigeria, France and Switzerland have conducted their own investigations into the case.
Last week, the EFCC charged Halliburton chief executive David Lesar, Cheney, and two other executives. It also filed charges against Halliburton as a company, which was headed by Cheney during the 1990s, and four associated businesses.
Campaigners in the Niger delta expressed disappointment at the plea bargain. Celestine AkpoBari, programme officer at Social Action Nigeria, said: "I would have loved to see Dick Cheney in chains in our court and facing justice in our prisons. That would have been a very big point that would have lifted Nigeria out of its woes."
Kentebe Ebiaridor, a project assistant at Environment Rights Action, suggested that Bush and Baker took part to protect America's huge oil interests in the region. "They are trying not to jeopardise the relationship," he said. "But if Dick Cheney is guilty, he should be brought to book."
Anyone who has studied the craft of intelligence and of disinformation, a clear pattern emerges in the Wikileaks drama. The focus is put on select US geopolitical targets, appearing as Hillary Clinton put it "to justify US sanctions against Iran." They claim North Korea with China's granting of free passage to Korean ships despite US State Department pleas, send dangerous missiles to Iran. Saudi Arabia's ailing King Abdullah reportedly called Iran's President a Hitler.
Excuse to police the Internet?
What is emerging from all the sound and Wikileaks fury in Washington is that the entire scandal is serving to advance a long-standing Obama and Bush agenda of policing the until-now free Internet. Already the US Government has shut the Wikileaks server in the United States though no identifiable US law has been broken.
The process of policing the Web was well underway before the current leaks scandal. In 2009 Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller and Republican Olympia Snowe introduced the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 (S.773). It would give the President unlimited power to disconnect private-sector computers from the internet. The bill "would allow the president to 'declare a cyber-security emergency' relating to 'non-governmental' computer networks and do what's necessary to respond to the threat." We can expect that now this controversial piece of legislation will get top priority when a new Republican House and the Senate convene in January.
The US Department of Homeland Security, an agency created in the political hysteria following 9/11 2001 that has been compared to the Gestapo, has already begun policing the Internet. They are quietly seizing and shutting down internet websites (web domains) without due process or a proper trial. DHS simply seizes web domains that it wants to and posts an ominous "Department of Justice" logo on the web site. See an example at http://torrent-finder.com. Over 75 websites were seized and shut in a recent week. Right now, their focus is websites that they claim "violate copyrights," yet the torrent-finder.com website that was seized by DHS contained no copyrighted content whatsoever. It was merely a search engine website that linked to destinations where people could access copyrighted content. Step by careful step freedom of speech can be taken away. Then what?
Just a little more background on the “hero” Jullian Assange and Wikileaks…
Wikileaks was started up in Dec. of 2006. Oddly enough, as a supposed “leak” site, a dissident site, it was given a great deal of immediate mainstream attention from the likes of the Washington Post, TIME magazine, and even Cass Sunstein the now Obama administration official who wrote a paper on how to “cognitively infiltrate” dissident groups in order to steer them in a direction that is useful to the powers that be.
The TIME magazine article is curious because it seems that right off the bat they were telling us how to interpret Wikileaks in such a way that sounded strangely familiar to George W. Bush back just after 9/11…
“By March, more than one million leaked documents from governments and corporations in Asia, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and the former Soviet Bloc will be available online in a bold new collective experiment in whistle-blowing. That is, of course, as long as you don’t accept any of the conspiracy theories brewing that Wikileaks.org could be a front for the CIA or some other intelligence agency.” TIME Jan. 2007 (emphasis added)
Now remember and read closely… this article was written PRIOR to Wikileaks’ first big “leak”, which according to the article was to occur sometime in March of 2007.
So why would TIME magazine be writing about them in the first place if they hadn’t done anything yet? Also, let’s not pass up on that delicious irony: this is TIME magazine singing the praises of a supposed “leak” site which will supposedly expose all kinds of “conspiracy theories” while at the same time telling their readers NOT to believe in those silly “conspiracy theories” circulating about Wikileaks. Just so long as you believe the “right” conspiracy theories, you’ll be alright I guess. This of course perfectly matches Jullian Assange’s own statements about 9/11.
TIME goes on to explain that the Wikileaks version will be the “correct” version (even though they had yet to publish anything at that point… pretty far out on that credibility limb for TIME if you ask me…)
“Instead of a couple of academic specialists, Wikileaks will provide a forum for the entire global community to examine any document relentlessly for credibility, plausibility, veracity and falsifiability,” its organizers write on the site’s FAQ page. “They will be able to interpret documents and explain their relevance to the public. If a document is leaked from the Chinese government, the entire Chinese dissident community can freely scrutinize and discuss it…” TIME Jan. 2007
You have to remember, Wikileaks first started targeting China obviously and as we all know from history, typically dissident movements within targeted nations are often funded and run by covert CIA operations. Since Wikileaks started off with a host of Chinese dissidents, it would be logical to assume that at least some of them have links back to the agency. But it gets better.
Few of you might know that just prior to the unveiling of Wikileaks, the intelligence world had an unveiling of their own… a “social media” based resource called “Intellipedia”. Some of you might find this interesting…
“With its own versions of a certain search engine and a certain online encyclopedia, the intelligence community is evolving its use of tools now widespread in the commercial sector, generating both success and controversy.
The new tools include a federated search engine called Oogle and Intellipedia, a controversial intelligence data-sharing tool based on Wiki social software technology.” GCN Sept. 2006
So we see that in Sept. of 2006 there is a concerted effort in the intelligence community to embark on several new “pedia” type programs one which serves as a data-base and another which works like a Google search engine. Why wouldn’t there be a third?
BBCNews, Siprnet: Where the leaked cables came from, 29 November, 2010, accessed in http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11863618
Ken Dilanian, Inside job: Stolen diplomatic cables show U.S. challenge of stopping authorized users, Los Angeles Times, November 29, 2010, accessed in http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sc-dc-1130-hackers-20101129,0,6716809.story
When you need an enemy to justify a war, why not create one?
Bush Pentagon Hired Conspiracy Theorist As Al Qaeda Specialist..
When the Pentagon's internal think tank decided in 2004 it needed a better understanding of Al Qaeda, it turned to an unlikely source: the terrorism analyst Laurie Mylroie, who was known as the chief purveyor of the discredited idea that Saddam Hussein was behind Sept. 11 and many other attacks carried out by Al Qaeda.
Mylroie was paid roughly $75,000 to produce a 300-page study, "The History of Al Qaida," for the Defense Department think tank, known as the Office of Net Assessment, a DOD spokesman tells us. The study, which is dated September 2005, was posted on an intelligence blog last month.
It documents the development of Al Qaeda and spends many pages dancing around the theory that has defined Mylroie's career -- that key Qaeda leaders acted at the behest of the Iraqi regime. She also argues that group-think among U.S. analysts has obscured the true nature of the terrorist group.
Those who know Mylroie's work are shocked that the Pentagon would hire her.
"I think that she has zero credibility on these issues," says terrorism expert Peter Bergen, who dubbed Mylroie "a crackpot" in a 2003 Washington Monthly profile.
Once an assistant professor at Harvard, Mylroie made her name as a Middle East expert in the 1980s. But after the 1993 WTC attack, she became convinced that evidence ignored by virtually everyone else proved Saddam was sponsoring Al Qaeda. She expanded on that theory after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing (which she linked to Iraq) and September 11 (ditto), culminating in the book Study of Revenge: The First World Trade Center Attack and Saddam Hussein's War against America, published by the American Enterprise Institute in October 2001.
Mylroie's allies in the Bush Administration included Iraq hawks Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and others. "The elaborate conspiracy theories she had propounded--dismissed as bizarre and implausible by the U.S. law enforcement and intelligence communities--would have enormous influence within the administration," reported David Corn and Michael Isikoff in their book Hubris.
In the 2005 Pentagon study, Mylroie floats the idea that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohamad and Ramzi Yousef, who planned the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, "are the trained agents of a terrorist state, the expertise and other resources of which enabled the militants to conduct attacks they were incapable of carrying out on their own." She also suggests that that state is Iraq.
The study was not a one-shot deal for Mylroie. TPMmuckraker previously reported that Mylroie produced reports on Saddam Hussein for the same DOD office as late as 2007.
Exactly who within the Pentagon decided Mylroie was the woman for the job is unclear. But the Pentagon work came at a time when her reputation had waned considerably, and her public writings were becoming less and less frequent.
Said DOD spokesman Eric Butterbaugh:
"The study was commissioned in part because of Ms. Mylroie's access to and library of documents she had that were relevant to the history of Al Qaeda. More broadly, the study was commissioned because we believed it would be useful to have a better understanding of Al Qaeda as an organization, the circumstances under which it had formed, how it had evolved over time, and the activities and attacks it had perpetrated."
Mylroie did not respond to a request for comment.
For a taste of the study, which we've posted in full, here's a passage in which Mylroie outlines what she calls Khalid Sheik Mohamed's ethnic links to Iraq. She describes these links his primary motivation for terrorism (emphasis ours):
--- The ethnicity of KSM's clan is significant. These men are Baluch, a Sunni Muslim people, with their own language and their own compact territory, which lies in eastern Iran and western Pakistan. Like the much better-known Kurds, the Baluch aspired to a state of their own in the twentieth century, but failed to achieve one. The United States has very little to do with the Baluch; most Americans are unfamiliar with so much as the name. The Baluch have no evident motive for these murderous terrorist attacks, save one: the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein had deep and extensive ties with the Baluch on both sides of the Iranian-Pakistani border. Going back to the 1970s, Iraq used the Baluch against the Shi'a government in Tehran, with which Baghdad was long at odds, and Baghdad employed the Baluch extensively during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988).
Notably, these Baluch--KSM and his extended family--do not appear to be particularly religious.
I applaud this caller that stood up for America! Wake up people, and take back this country from the Israeli's, where their minuscule speck of arid land is overrun by religious zealots with the ultimate goal of global domination, by sheer destruction if necessary! Stop the BLEEDING America! Israel has no tangible worth to the USA...
There was controversy about a recent interview on C-span about terrorism with former CIA Bin Laden Unit Chief Michael Scheuer that many are complaining was anti-Semitic and were outraged that the C-SPAN host did not counter the remarks. The ADL said "we continue to receive many complaints from C-SPAN viewers about the unchallenged anti-Semitism and bigotry aired by callers to your shows, and we believe those complaints are justified. Recognizing that we share with you a commitment to freedom of speech and the marketplace of ideas, we also believe that respectable journalistic organizations have a responsibility and an obligation, consistent with the First Amendment, to speak out when the forum they provide is used to disseminate hate and anti-Semitism."
The caller who caused the controversy said , "I for one am sick and tired of all these Jews coming on C-SPAN and other stations and pushing us to go to war against our Muslim friends. They're willing to spend the last drop of American blood and treasure to get their way in the world. They have way too much power in this country. People like Wolfowitz and Feith and the other neo-cons -- that jewed us into Iraq -- and now we're going to spend the next 60 years rehabilitating our soldiers -- I'm sick and tired of it."
While his language may sound harsh, the reality is Americans are fed up with the power that the Israeli lobby has over our foreign policy which is costing us lives and treasure in the middle east and until recently has been taboo to even discuss. Those who speak out are labeled anti-Semites.
Michael Scheuer who is a critic of Israeli influence over our foreign policy basically agreed with the caller saying, "yeah. I think that of course American foreign policy is eventually up to the American people. One of the big things we have not been able to discuss for the past 30 years is our policy towards the Israelis. Whether we want to be involved in fighting Israel's wars in the future is something that Americans should be able to talk about. They may vote yes. They may want to see their kids killed in Iraq or Yemen or somewhere else to protect Israel. But the question is: we need to talk about it. Ultimately, Israel is a country that is of no particular worth to the United States."
The host asked Scheuer "strategically?" and he responded, "Strategically. They have no resources we need. Their manpower is minimal. Their association with us is a negative for the United States. Now that's a fact. What you want to do about that fact is entirely different. But for anyone to stand up in the United States and say that our support for Israel doesn't hurt us in the Muslim world, or our support for Hosni Mubarak's dictatorship doesn't hurt us, is to just defy reality."
In response to another called who asked "Why is it that the United States does not want to talk about Israel?," Scheuer said, "why don't we talk about that? Because AIPAC and other influential American Jewish groups are extraordinarily involved in the funding of American political campaigns and have the ability to reach out and make sure that people lose their jobs, or are otherwise hurt, if they dare to criticize Israel."
Scheuer has personal experience with this since he lost a job with the Jamestown Foundation think tank for comments about presidential Obama pandering to the Israeli lobby saying he was "doing the Tel-Aviv Two Step". He claims that the foundations pro-Israel donors ordered his termination. He said that "you know, you always talk about the Israel Lobby and its power, but to see it up close and personal aimed right at me was very educational. In fact, it was worth the experience of losing a job."
Scheuer says that "Israel has every right to do what it needs to do" to defend itself, including the development of nuclear weapons, Scheuer said that the U.S. has no real interest in either Israel or the Palestinian Authority. "That is a religious war in which we have no stake,"
First comment:
Totally correct. The US support in blood and money to Israel to fight against muslim countries is destroying America and the world. Just say NO to Israel - or perish. We are presently sinking into a mire. Ultimately, why are we helping a country which is killing Palestinian civilians?!
Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski Center for Strategic and International Studies 1800 K Street, NW Washington, DC 20006 office tel 202.833.2408 office email zb@csis.org.
Dear Dr. Brzezinski,
My name is William Dean A. Garner and I’m a NY Times bestselling ghostwriter and editor of many books. For example, I edited Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code, among dozens of others. I’m also a former scientist (biophysics), US Army Airborne Ranger (C 1/75 Ranger Regiment), and corporate mercenary for international private military firms I designed and helped build. I did 211 overseas missions in extremely hostile territories over nine years, escorting important people so they could have a voice of peace, freedom and democracy, and a voice against fascism and dictatorial rule.
Please know that I am building a great case against you and your cartel, something the world will hear, even if you murder me and my family.
As a Jeffersonian Patriot, I am prepared to do whatever it takes to defend Thomas Jefferson’s great cause, which is the firm establishment and maintenance of Peace, Freedom and Democracy all over this planet.
In my studies over the past 30 years, I have learned much about you and your actions. I also know you and your colleagues are getting desperate.
I am building a great case against you and your cartel, something the world will hear, even if you murder me and my family.
Witness the events over the past nine years: false-flag 9/11 attacks; illegal passing of The Patriot Act; establishment of the Department of Homeland Security, a modern-day Gestapo; establishment of the Transportation Security Administration; false-flag attack by the Detroit bomber, which led to the great push of installing of full-body scanners in airports and which will be introduced in all transportation hubs and ports, plus major centers of public foot traffic.
I’ve studied evolutionary processes on this planet and, therefore, understand and have decoded your moves and actions to establish a socialist/fascist police state in the United States.
I also know that fascist American Wall Street bankers have tried this before: in 1933 and 1934, Wall Street bankers attempted a fascist putsch and tried to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt and also recruit a two-time winner of the Medal of Honor, MG Smedley Darlington Butler, to lead an army of 500,000 soldiers to march on the White House.
It was all a ruse, staged by The First Sphere of Influence, which needed Roosevelt as its presidential pawn. FDR went on to create what is thought of as the most prolific fascist presidency. [Until George W. Bush came into office.]
These Wall Street fascists knew unequivocally that they could never count on General Butler, a Jeffersonian Patriot of the highest order, who subsequently fell into their trap and alerted Congress and ratted out these fascist Wall Street bankers. The “putsch” was a failure, of course, something left off the American history books. It survived several good books, though, and lives in print today, along with the facts surrounding the ruse.
The First Sphere of Influence, which consists of your cartel and the Rothschild banking empire, in the past has operated under a cloak of darkness, and that darkness is now being washed away with the advent of globalization. Ironically, too, the globalization you so crave for will be the detonator of your undoing: word is now spreading among the masses about your cartel. With a little time, enough people will know about you, and the right people–other Jeffersonian Patriots–will rise up against you. Our tools are becoming more prevalent and accessible: the Internet, the Worldwide Web, and the introduction of greater means of communications like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, email, blogs, websites, etc. Your regime is no longer a black-bag operation that no one knows about, and people like me are now on you like stink on shit and will remain until the members of The First Sphere of Influence wither away.
The Hollywood producer, Irv Thalberg, said on more than one occasion, to the effect: “Writers are the most important part of the filmmaking process, and we must never let them know this.” It was Thalberg’s way of controlling the wages and power of screenwriters during his short reign. When word escaped, screenwriters soon earned hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, for scripts, often surpassing the earnings of actors and some producers.
Likewise, you know that Americans are the most significant and valued part of the entire social and political process, with unlimited power, and you must never let us know it, lest we rise up and drag you and your cartel members back behind the wood pile and execute you. With fascism, one point is abundantly clear, dear sir: it has always fallen and its leaders have always died. Violently, I might add.
Knowledge about you, your cartel and your handlers, the Rothschilds, is spreading and will continue to spread as people finally take note about your nefarious practices. I am personally holding private dinner parties to educate people about you and your cartel, to encourage them to join me in the fight against you and your fascist ways. LIFE FINDS A WAY, Dr. Brzezinski.
Life wants to be free, and you and your cartel cannot contain it. The best you can do is follow my advice: learn about human behavior, neurochemistry, the sociobiology of living creatures. Learn these important subjects so you and your handlers can find ways to use your trillions of dollars and euros and pounds to establish Peace, Freedom and Democracy throughout the world. Your attempts to establish a small colony of slaves on this planet WILL fail.
We’ve already seen that people cannot be contained for too long and that Communism and Socialism do NOT work. LIFE FINDS A WAY TO BE FREE. Your plan WILL fail.
Dr. Brzezinski, all it takes for evil to prevail is for good people like me to do nothing. I feel that with proactive people like me around, evil like you and your cartel will be reduced to your basic atomic components and recycled by the very processes you seek to control or destroy.
In your next life, I see you as a . . . dung beetle. . . .
Sincerely,
William Dean A. Garner
P.S. To start your re-education, please contact me here: start.here@ghostwriter-editor.biz
Cheney/Bush Crime Syndicates, KBR Inc., has been awarded a $35 million Pentagon contract involving major electrical work, even as it is under criminal investigation in the electrocution deaths of at least two U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
The announcement of the new KBR contract came just months after the Pentagon, in strongly worded correspondence obtained by The AP, rejected the company's explanation of serious mistakes in Iraq and its proposed improvements. A senior Pentagon official, David J. Graff, cited the company's "continuing quality deficiencies" and said KBR executives were "not sufficiently in touch with the urgency or realities of what was actually occurring on the ground."
"Many within DOD (the Department of Defense) have lost or are losing all remaining confidence in KBR's ability to successfully and repeatedly perform the required electrical support services mission in Iraq," wrote Graff, commander of the Defense Contract Management Agency, in a Sept. 30 letter.
Graff rejected the company's claims that it wasn't required to follow U.S. electrical codes for its work on U.S. military facilities in Iraq. KBR has said it would cost an extra $560 million to refurbish buildings in Iraq used by the U.S. military, including Saddam Hussein's palaces, which among other problems are based on a 220-volt standard rather than the American 120-volt standard.
KBR announced last week it won a new $35.4 million contract from the Army Corps of Engineers to design and build a convoy support center at Camp Adder in southern Iraq. It will include a power plant, electrical distribution center, water purification and distribution systems, wastewater and information systems and road paving.
Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said the new KBR contract was inappropriate. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., said he has formally asked the Corps of Engineers whether it was confident KBR could accomplish it and whether the Corps had any alternatives.
"This is hardly the time to award KBR a new contract for work they've already failed to perform adequately, and which put U.S. soldiers at even greater risk," Dorgan said in a statement. "Ultimately, contractors must be held accountable, and so should those who continue to award these contracts."
A KBR Criminal spokeswoman, Heather Browne, said the Crime Syndicate is committed to providing quality services and would comply with the military's requirements in its work on the Camp Adder contract.
The AP has learned that Army criminal agents have reopened the death investigation of Staff Sgt. Christopher Lee Everett, 23, a member of the Texas Army National Guard. Everett was killed September 2005 in Iraq when the power washer he was using to clean a vehicle short-circuited. KBR and another contractor, Arkel International, performed the electrical work on the device's generator, according to a civil lawsuit filed by Everett's family.
"I think it's something that needs to be done so these electrocutions don't continue to happen," Everett's mother, Larraine McGee of Huntsville, Texas, told the AP in a phone interview. "There's no excuse for this whatsoever." McGee said the Army's senior criminal investigator at Fort Hood notified her about the reopened investigation.
The AP reported that the Army has reclassified another soldier's electrocution death as a negligent homicide caused by KBR and two of its supervisors. Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth, 24, a Green Beret from Pittsburgh, was electrocuted in his barracks shower. An Army investigator said KBR's contractor failed to ensure qualified electricians and plumbers did the work. The case is under legal review, and KBR has said it was not responsible for Maseth's death.
The deaths of Everett and Maseth are among the 18 under review by the Pentagon's inspector general. Some of the deaths have been blamed on improperly installed or maintained electrical equipment. In three cases, service members were shocked while showering. Families of Maseth and Everett also have sued KBR in federal court for wrongful death; the company is attempting to have the lawsuits dismissed.
The Corps of Engineers said KBR has earned $615 million on 30 similar contracts as the newest it awarded to the company and noted that KBR has not been banned or suspended from winning U.S. government contracts. The government can ban companies in cases of fraud, antitrust violations, bribery, tax evasion or for actions that reflect "a lack of business integrity or business honesty," according to federal rules.
"KBR has not been debarred, suspended, nor have they been proposed for debarment from government contracting," Corps spokeswoman Joan Kibler said.
KBR was previously owned by Halliburton Co., the oil services conglomerate that former Vice President Dick Cheney once led. Democrats have long complained it benefited from ties to Cheney.
Separately, court papers filed in Houston on Friday show KBR is preparing to plead guilty to federal bribery charges for promising and paying tens of millions of dollars in bribes to officials in Nigeria in exchange for engineering and construction contracts between 1995 and 2004.
Browne, the Criminal KBR spokeswoman, said the company had no comment. The company is expected to appear in federal court next week as part of a plea deal.
In an interview with the German television program “Frontal 21,” Professor Manfred Nowak, the United Nations Rapporteur responsible for torture, stated that with George W. Bush’s head of state immunity now terminated, the new government of Barack Obama was obligated by international law to commence a criminal investigation into Bush’s torture practices.
“The evidence is sitting on the table,” he stated. “There is no avoiding the fact that this was torture.” He pointed to the U.S. undertakings under the Convention Against Torture in which the country committed that it would criminally prosecute anyone who tortured, or extradite the person to a state that would prosecute him. “The government of the United States is required to take all necessary steps to bring George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld before a court,” Nowak said.
Manfred Nowak, an internationally renowned law professor at the University of Vienna, currently serves as an independent expert for the United Nations looking at allegations of torture affecting member states. In 2006, he undertook a special investigation of conditions at the U.S. detention facilities at Guantánamo in which he concluded that practices approved by the Bush Administration violated human rights norms, including the prohibition against torture.
The ZDF piece also includes an interview with attorney Wolfgang Kaleck, who brought charges against Rumsfeld before German prosecutors. He states that the Obama administration is “off to a good beginning” with its explicit renunciation of torture, but it still has not shown how it will hold Bush, Rumsfeld, and others to account for their war crimes, nor has it demonstrated its legally obligated duty to provide compensation to torture victims.
Law professor Dietmar Herz clarifies that under U.S. and international law, George W. Bush bears personal responsibility for the introduction of torture. From the point of his departure from office, head of state immunity terminates, and under clear principles of international law, the United States is obligated to commence a criminal investigation and then a prosecution.
Prosecuting these psychotic war criminals would be a good start, but hanging their asses would be too lenient for the horrendous massacres they have levied on the people of the world. 1.3 million Iraqi's slaughtered, hundreds of thousands in Afghan lives lost, 4200 of our own troops killed (that they admit too) and trillions of dollars wasted, not to mention the annihilation of the global economy..
Good job George Hitler Bush, thanks for fucking up the entire planet, and for what? OIL for the Saudi's and exxon, and to feed a sense of power for your small, ape-like brain.. And in the end, even the Saudi's despise your moronic ass!!
Enjoy the backyard BBQ's in Crawford with Osama.. You are truly, truly, a worthless piece of shit. The world can gasp a sigh of relief now..
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says it is "hard" for Israeli troops to spare civilian lives in the densely-populated Gaza Strip.
"It is very difficult in circumstances like Gaza, which is a very densely populated area," Rice told reporters when asked if Israel is living up to its humanitarian obligations during its massive military offensive in blood soaked and battered Gaza.
As night fell on Gaza on 01/10/2009 (Saturday), the army continued its illegal offensive for the 15th day killing 854 Palestinians, including 230 children, 93 women, 92 elderly, 14 medics and three journalists. At least 3681 Palestinians, 50% of them children and women, were wounded, 500 seriously, Dr. Moawiya Hassanen of the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported.
On 01/09, the Israel cabinet rejected a UN Security Council Resolution 1860 which calls for an immediate halt to the ongoing onslaught against Gaza.
UN aid agencies and the Red Cross have halted their activities in the impoverished strip after Israeli forces attacked a number of humanitarian convoys in the region.
UN humanitarian chief John Holmes said Thursday that Israel's actions in Gaza are "shocking" violations of the laws of war, putting more than 20,000 people in a critical state of emergency.
The humanitarian situation in Gaza is spiraling to a critical state as water and sewage systems are collapsing, hospitals are running on backup generators and access to the wounded remains very restricted.
On 01/08, the International Committee of the Red Cross was distraught after its medics found four emaciated children lying beside their dead mothers in a house containing 12 bodies in the Zaytun district of Gaza City.
"This is a shocking incident… the Israeli military must have been aware of the situation but did not assist the wounded. Neither did they make it possible for us or the Palestine Red Crescent to assist the wounded," said Pierre Wettach, head of the aid agency's delegation for Israel and the Palestinian Territories.
An Israeli military official claimed that Israel could not always be concerned about the welfare of Palestinian civilians and that its soldiers remained its priority.
George W. Bush on Friday branded the Hamas rocket attacks on Israel an "act of terror" and outlined his own condition for a cease-fire in Gaza, saying no peace deal would be acceptable without monitoring to halt the flow of smuggled weapons to terrorist groups (and who monitors Israel? No one, they Kill and Destroy on a whim, just like you, George..).
Bush chose his weekly taped radio address to speak for the first time about one of the bloodiest Mideast clashes in decades. It began a week ago. Israeli warplanes have rained bombs on Gaza, targeting the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which has traumatized southern Israel with intensifying rocket attacks.
"The United States is leading diplomatic efforts to achieve a meaningful cease-fire that is fully respected," Bush said. "Another one-way cease-fire that leads to rocket attacks on Israel is not acceptable. And promises from Hamas will not suffice — there must be monitoring mechanisms in place to help ensure that smuggling of weapons to terrorist groups in Gaza comes to an end."
Letting the crisis shift.. Despite Bush's account of a U.S. leadership role, with time running out on his presidency, the administration seemed increasingly ready Friday to let the crisis in Gaza shift (pansy ass doesnt want to piss off his jewish brothers) to Pres-elect Barack Obama. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice briefed Bush on developments in Gaza, and she continued furious (laughable) telephone diplomacy to arrange a truce. Yet, she said she had no plans to make an emergency visit to the region.
More than 400 Palestinians and four Israelis have been killed in the latest offensive. The U.N. estimated Friday that a quarter of the Palestinians killed were innocent civilians. In their waning days in power, Bush and Rice have been working the phones with world allies (because they're too chicken-shit to do anything else).
Bush offered no criticism of Israel (more jewish praise, they are such wonderful, peace loving people, yes?), depicting the country's air assaults as a response to the attacks on its people. The White House will not comment on whether it views the Israeli response as proportionate or not to the scope of rockets attacks on Israel.
The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials.
The long-planned shift in the Defense Department's role in homeland security was recently backed with funding and troop commitments after years of prodding by Congress and outside experts, defense analysts said.
There are critics of the change, in the military and among civil liberties groups and libertarians who express concern that the new homeland emphasis threatens to strain the military and eliminate the Posse Comitatus Act, a 130-year-old federal law restricting the military's role in domestic law enforcement.
But the Bush administration and some in Congress have pushed for a heightened homeland military role since the middle of this decade, saying the greatest domestic threat is terrorists exploiting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, dedicating 20,000 troops to domestic response -- a nearly sevenfold increase in five years -- "would have been extraordinary to the point of unbelievable," Paul McHale, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense, said in remarks last month at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But the realization that civilian authorities may be overwhelmed in a catastrophe prompted "a fundamental change in military culture," he said.
The Pentagon's plan calls for three rapid-reaction forces to be ready for emergency response by September 2011. The first 4,700-person unit, built around an active-duty combat brigade based at Fort Stewart, Ga., was available as of Oct. 1, said Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., commander of the U.S. Northern Command.
If funding continues, two additional teams will join nearly 80 smaller National Guard and reserve units made up of about 6,000 troops in supporting local and state officials nationwide. All would be trained to respond to a domestic chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or high-yield explosive attack, or CBRNE event, as the military calls it.
Military preparations for a domestic weapon-of-mass-destruction attack have been underway since at least 1996, when the Marine Corps activated a 350-member chemical and biological incident response force and later based it in Indian Head, Md., a Washington suburb. Such efforts accelerated after the Sept. 11 attacks, and at the time Iraq was invaded in 2003, a Pentagon joint task force drew on 3,000 civil support personnel across the United States.
In 2005, a new Pentagon homeland defense strategy emphasized "preparing for multiple, simultaneous mass casualty incidents." National security threats were not limited to adversaries who seek to grind down U.S. combat forces abroad, McHale said, but also include those who "want to inflict such brutality on our society that we give up the fight," such as by detonating a nuclear bomb in a U.S. city.
In late 2007, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England signed a directive approving more than $556 million over five years to set up the three response teams, known as CBRNE Consequence Management Response Forces. Planners assume an incident could lead to thousands of casualties, more than 1 million evacuees and contamination of as many as 3,000 square miles, about the scope of damage Hurricane Katrina caused in 2005.
Last month, McHale said, authorities agreed to begin a $1.8 million pilot project funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency through which civilian authorities in five states could tap military planners to develop disaster response plans. Hawaii, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Washington and West Virginia will each focus on a particular threat -- pandemic flu, a terrorist attack, hurricane, earthquake and catastrophic chemical release, respectively -- speeding up federal and state emergency planning begun in 2003.
Last Monday, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates ordered defense officials to review whether the military, Guard and reserves can respond adequately to domestic disasters.
Gates gave commanders 25 days to propose changes and cost estimates. He cited the work of a congressionally chartered commission, which concluded in January that the Guard and reserve forces are not ready and that they lack equipment and training.
Bert B. Tussing, director of homeland defense and security issues at the U.S. Army War College's Center for Strategic Leadership, said the new Pentagon approach "breaks the mold" by assigning an active-duty combat brigade to the Northern Command for the first time. Until now, the military required the command to rely on troops requested from other sources.
"This is a genuine recognition that this [job] isn't something that you want to have a pickup team responsible for," said Tussing, who has assessed the military's homeland security strategies.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the libertarian Cato Institute are troubled by what they consider an expansion of executive authority that threatens the welfare and rights of the entire population of the United States.
The Governor of Alto Paraguay, Erasmo Rodríguez Acosta has admitted to hearing that George Bush Sr. owns land in the Chaco region of Paraguay, in Paso de Patria. Acosta says that rumor has it that Bush owns near to 70 thousand hectares (173,000 acres) as part of an ecological reserve and/or ranch. However, the governor said he had no documents to prove the rumor. Acosta said that some stories credited the land to the Fundación Patria, which Bush would be a member of. The spokespeople of the organization were not available to comment. Supposedly, Timothy Towell , the U.S. Ambassador in Asunción (the capital of Paraguay) is the present administrator of the land. First accounts signaled that Bush had acquired 40,000 hectares (99,000 acres) in the Chaco zone of Fuerte Olimpo, near the Bolivian Border. A spark of the interest in this property may have been Jenna Bush's private visit to Paraguay with Unicef, which started Saturday, October 7, 2006. Supposedly Jenna will travel to the ranch to "observe" several indigenous villages are located on the property.
The original story from Paraguay, in Spanish, from Prensa Latina that identifies the purchaser as George W rather than George HW Bush, but the Chaco purchase strikes me as more likely an initiative of the father than of the son. Bush Sr, let's remember, tootled around Latin America in 1996 as Moon's lapdog and praised him in Buenos Aires as "the man with the vision." (Moon's foresight might have included blackmail, specifically the office of the then Vice President with the Craig Spence call boy scandal. Influence, by any means necessary.) Still, keeping Moon's company is a Bush family enterprise, as Neil accompanied the Reverend last year on his 100-day "global peace campaign."
Paraguay, of course, has been a recent source of alarm to the region for its allowance of its tri-border territory to become a US military beachhead. Now, with the reports of the Bush purchase of an "ecological reserve" alongside Moon's, we have good reason to suspect that US national security has again been seconded to the Bush family business.
The land which is located somewhere near Mariscal Estigarribia is near natural gas reserves, but of more importance, It's near the one of the largest aquafers in N. America.
Argentinean Adolfo Perez Esquivel warned that the real war will be fought not for oil, but for water, and recalled that Acuifero Guaraní is one of the largest underground water reserves in South America, running beneath Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay (larger than Texas and California together).
He termed it “surprising” that the Bush family is trying to settle a few short miles from the US Mariscal Estigarribia Military Base.
Another report notes the land purchase is also nearby a huge tract of land purchased by Sun Myung Moon that sits astride Latin America's largest water aquifer, the Guarani aquifer.
According to this report, Bush and the Carlyle Group are also the owners of major tracts of land along the proposed US super-highway linking Mexico and Canada, land that will be worth hundreds of millions more when the highway is completed.
Do I need to remind everyone that the Nazi's escaped to South America as well?
Facing a growing domestic economic disaster and a failed Iraq war and occupation, a defiant George W Bush will issue his final face saving bluff to his ignorant base ~ elect McCain or we will bomb Iran. Bush see's himself as a patriot and is not about to let the growing Obama wave dismantle his Middle East neocon castle in the sand : Allen L Roland
The handwriting is on the wall ~ the fall Presidential campaign will be between the people's desire for a real change of direction in Washington and the Bush/McCain establishment's desire to maintain the status quo by utilizing the politics of FEAR. Bush see's himself as a patriot and is not about to let the growing Obama wave dismantle his Middle East neocon castle in the sand.
The ultimate fear, as previewed by right wing neocon hack Bill Kristol, will be the implied threat to attack Iran if it appears that Obama will decisively win in November ~ which is becoming more and more likely.
The likely scenario, which I feel will happen, perhaps before November, will be an air strike by Israel against Iran which will be followed by a massive American strike against Iran ~ after Iran retaliates against Israel.
Bush's justification will be protecting Israel and the spineless Democrats will loudly bluster and fold as the Cheney/Bush war machine continues to roll on ~ playing the fear card until it is called.
And the fear card is beginning to be called, as it has by the alternative free press on the internet, including myself, for many years. Here is Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson giving Fox News a piece of his mind on the subject of GW Bush's upcoming visit to the city ~ and do remember that Fox news is Dick Cheney's favorite news outlet. ( Five minute video )http://www.youtube.com/v/Wp_W3SmjvvA&;rel=0&hl=en
The only effective constitutional method to call this war card, besides the nation's leaders speaking out, is the Impeachment card, which John Conyers still holds close to his vest and might yet play ~ particularly since new polling data shows one-fifth of conservatives supporting Obama. See Obama's strange appeal to high priests of US conservatism who are increasingly becoming fed up with the Cheney/Bush neocon conservative ideology.
The Bush administration has made a very dangerous enemy and the present agreement does nothing to lessen that threat. It clearly sends a message to America's rivals that the US can be blackmailed if the stakes are high enough. The United States has been humiliated by a man who many believe is an unstable and ruthless tyrant.
On Thursday, Bush announced that he would remove North Korea from the terrorism list and lift economic sanctions. This follows an earlier decision to provide Kim with massive quantities of oil to meet the North's energy needs; a fact that is ignored by the main stream media. On virtually every issue, N. Korea's leader has gotten whatever he's asked for. This has infuriated many of Bush's biggest supporters. Last week, former United Nations ambassador John Bolton blasted the agreement saying:
“I think it’s a clear victory for North Korea.” They've gained “enormous political legitimacy by being taken off our list of state sponsors of terrorism and out from under the prohibitions of the Trading With the Enemy Act. It’s a very sad day for Bush supporters. It's the final collapse of Bush's foreign policy."
A nuclear-armed North Korea creates bigger challenges for the US in the Middle East. The Wall Street Journal summed it up like this in an editorial on Friday:
"Most troubling is the message all of this sends to Iran, and other rogue states. The lesson is that when you build a weapon, your political leverage increases. Play enough brinkmanship, and you can even receive diplomatic absolution without admitting to having the kind of nuclear device you exploded less than two years earlier. We understand that diplomacy often includes winks and nods, but it shouldn't require denial." (Wall Street Journal, "Leap of Faith")
There's no doubt that Tehran is watching Bush's backpedaling with great amusement or that the Mullahs have seen that the only way to stop the relentless provocation of the US is by building a nuclear weapon. The only difference between North Korea and the last-remaining member of the "axis of evil" (Iran) is five or six 15 megaton nuclear warheads. If that's what it takes to gain the respect of the "international community"; so be it.
The western media has described Bush's capitulation as "a triumph" because Kim blew up the already shut down cooling tower at Yongbyon. Big deal. North Korea did not develop its nuclear weapons at the plutonium plant, but in an underground program which made bomb fuel from enriched uranium. No one denies this. The demolition of the tower was a meaningless public relations photo-op to confuse the American people and help Bush save face. The people who follow developments with North Korea know the truth, that the Bush administration has once again dragged the US through the mud.
The harshest critics of the new deal have been Bush's far-right supporters, like Claudia Rosett, of "The Rosett Report" (a favorite at the Weekly Standard and the American Enterprise Institute) Here's what she says:
"The lesson is that America, faced with a nuclear blackmail, will bow down, dignify tyrants, fork over loot, and celebrate the process as a victory for diplomacy. Were North Korea to detonate a nuclear bomb over Los Angeles tomorrow, I wonder if Condi Rice and Chris Hill, would describe the cataclysm as "troubling" and then re-cast it as a candid and informative addendum to North Korea's promised declaration of its nuclear program."
The message to foreign leaders is clear; the only way to change minds in Washington is by putting a loaded gun to their heads. Countries without WMD simply have no bargaining power. That's the real lesson here and other countries are bound to draw the same conclusion. In 2002, Dick Cheney made his famous statement, “We don’t negotiate with evil; we defeat it”.
Bullshit Dick, you are a coward, and YOU are evil in its purest form...
Immediately after the North detonated a nuclear bomb in 2006, Bush administration officials met in a face-to-face meeting in Berlin. The meeting was kept secret to conceal Bush’s eagerness to meet one-on-one with the North Korean leader. Up until then, the arrogant Bushies had refused to negotiate in person; choosing instead to cower behind the 6 party talks. Kim’s nuclear experiment changed all that and brought about a sudden reversal in the administration’s approach. “According to Japan’s Asashi newspaper, the two sides signed an agreement under which North Korea would make steps towards denuclearization when the US resumes annual shipments of 500,000 tonnes of oil, which were halted in 2002.” (UK Guardian) Bush was only too happy to oblige.
So much for Cheney's "We don’t negotiate with evil". In fact, we don't negotiate; we cave in and give them everything they want, including the farm.
The crisis with North Korea could have been avoided with skillful diplomacy and a willingness to compromise on the central issues. Now Bush has backed himself into a corner and will have to grovel his way out. That means he'll have to engage in two-party negotiations and work out a deal at the bargaining table. Good luck.
Presently, Kim Jong-il has a stockpile of 6 to 10 nuclear warheads. With a few finishing touches to his Taepodong ICBM-system, he'll be able to wipe out the 9 western states with a flip of the switch. Bush's bungling has put half the country in the crosshairs of a man whose sanity has always been in doubt.
Norman Podhoretz, is another Zionist bastard doing everything in his power to depopulate the human race and force Zionist Israel's radical, racial views on the entire planet.
Norman has been called the 'Godfather' of the Neocon agenda, and has expressed his Zionist views towards Bush, and sees Bush attacking Iran (there is NO OTHER OPTION) before leaving office, but then back pedals and says GWB will NOT leave office in 2009!
Army Radio quoted a top official in Jerusalem claiming that a senior member in the entourage of President Bush, who visited Israel last week, said in a closed meeting here that Bush and VP Dick Cheney were of the opinion that military action against Iran was called for.
The official went on to say that, for the time being, "the hesitancy of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice" was preventing the Bush Administration from deciding to launch such an attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The Army Radio report, which resonated widely, stated that according to assessments in Israel, the recent turmoil in Lebanon, where Hizbullah has established de facto control of the country, was advancing an American attack.
Bush, the official said, considered Hizbullah's show of strength evidence of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's growing influence. In Bush's view, the official said, "the disease must be treated - not its symptoms."
...
Days later, in his address to the Knesset, Bush said that "the president of Iran dreams of returning the Middle East to the Middle Ages" and "America stands with you (Israel) in firmly opposing Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions."
"Permitting the world's leading sponsor of terror to possess the world's deadliest weapon would be an unforgivable betrayal of future generations. For the sake of peace, the world must not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon," Bush said.
