War on Terror News

links checked October 11, 2003

February 22, 2004: Pentagon Tells Bush that Global Warming is the Biggest National Security Threat.   Holy crap!  This is scary.  Not that it surprises me at all, but it's pretty disturbing when the Pentagon has to warn Bush that flooding and other environmental problems resulting from pollution will cause more terrorism, war and anarchy than Al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein.

January 30, 2004: Let Their People Go! Ted Rall's eloquent satire captures the very essence of my criticisms of the Bush-Hussein War.  The WMD's aren't the only lie, and the Bush isn't the only liar.  It's much, much bigger than that.  (originally at Yahoo news, now archived at P2P Zone)

October 11, 2003: Christian Reconstructionist spokesperson Pat Robertson threatens to use a nuclear weapon to blow up the U.S. State Department.  (originally a Yahoo story, but now I've linked the actual CBN interview, which quotes Robertson's terrorist threats in his own words, for his own people) For more info on Reconstructionism and Dominion Theology click here.  Since he has now demonstrated to us that he is as big of a threat to national security as Saddam Hussein, can we ship him off to a cozy cell in Guantánamo Bay where he can get a more intimate understanding of Islam?  There's something kind of satisfying about the mental image of Robertson in an American concentration camp on the island of Cuba, but we all know that Robertson and pusher man Limbaugh will be ignored by the Justice Department.

'If I could just get a nuclear device inside Foggy Bottom (neighborhood in D.C. where the State Department is located), I think that's the answer.' ... 'We've got to blow that thing up,'"  ... "It's like an entrenched bureaucracy that has their own agenda, and it doesn't comport with the will of the American people. How do we get rid of them?" 

October 8, 2003:  Donald Rumsfeld is pleading for more time for weapons inspectors before the media drops the big bombs on the Crawford, TX White House.  We can already see the Republicans scrambling--some are sacrificing themselves as human shields to defend Operation Iraqi Liberation (O.I.L.).  Others are running for cover--Michael Savage this morning announced that Dubyah isn't conservative enough for him.  "He's joined the checked pants conservatives."  Imagine the scandal and treason!  This man is questioning our president during war time.  Shouldn't we bring back the sedition act just for him?  He was one of the most vocal proponents of the idea of imprisoning liberals for protesting against this poorly conceived hornswoggle of a war.  It's only fair, isn't it?  Bush is many things, but too liberal isn't one of them.  

But, just to strengthen a strand of Michael Savage's case against Bush, I'd like you all to think about this:  If  the Bush administration is involved in a war against terrorism, ask yourself why the Bushies are begging and demanding that we pay his buddies (Bechtel/Schultz, Haliburton/Cheney and Motorola/Rumsfeld) to rebuild Iraq and to build a missile defense system when the World Trade Center was destroyed with box cutters and airliners?  Ask yourself why they increased conventional military spending by 44 billion dollars, while increasing intelligence spending by only 1 billion dollars.   All the experts tell us that this war cannot be fought in conventional ways, but Rumsfeld doesn't want to hear it.  Ask yourself why they are completely obsessed with Saddam Hussein in spite of the fact that Al Qaida is still out there and North Korea is selling weapons to Yemen, which Bush forced Spanish allies to let go through.  Ask yourself why they ignored, distorted and squelched the vehement warnings from the CIA that Saddam presents little danger unless we attack him, but Al Qaida is a very serious and immediate threat.  Ask yourself why Al Qaida and Osama Bin Laden are alive and well in Pakistan, a country that makes lots of nuclear weapons that they use threaten our ally India, and that they sell to crackpot dictators like Kim Jong Il of North Korea.  Ask yourself why the military, already severely handicapped by a lack of Arabic translators, dismissed six Arabic linguists because they are gay.  The War on Terror is a smoke screen they set up to justify a checked pants fascist coup d'etat and enormous profits to defense contractors and oil tycoons who funded him.  WAKE UP!!!! STAND UP!!!!

I have been shifting much of the emphasis to the Iraq page, since the War on Terror has been put on the back burner while Bush carpets Baghdad with depleted uranium and cruise missile rubble.  Future posts to this page will relate specifically to domestic issues, Total Information Awareness and actual War on Terror activities.

The Cyberportal's War on Iraq page

AlterNet: Top Ten Conspiracy Theories of 2002--true or not, there is sufficient verisimilitude among most of these to make one wonder if one or more isn't true.  True or not, there are many people outside the US and quite a few inside the US who believe one or more of them.  True or not, this article is an excellent introduction to the sort of information the American media is suppressing, and the Bush administration has been stonewalling.

First World War page--wonderful historical documents, images, posters and audio that show how this was the first modern propaganda war. Especially interesting in light of the ironic parallels to Germany and Washington DC.  

• Cheney's Halliburton (who will make enormous amounts of money from war in Iraq) demonstrated their incompetence working in a poor, violent country engaged in ethnic cleansing and Islamic-Christian violence.  Working on a drilling project, they let someone steal nuclear materials ideal for a dirty bomb stolen from Halliburton in Nigeria. [more: 1 ]  At best, this means they are incompetent for an important contract in a dangerous place like Iraq.  At worst, this suggest they may be helping give Bush more persuasive capital by letting terrorists prove to us how bad they are.  Either way, this kind of "accident" surely deserves harsh punishment--at least the loss of their military contract in Iraq.  But, this story is being kept out of the liberal American media.  
• Artistic Sign Language: Symbols of the Coming Bush Fall: By Bernard Weiner.  Outstanding article on art in this time of war.  Powerful historical argument to the extent that people like Bush don't last long.  He may destroy the world before it happens, but he will go down on the wrong side of the history books, if there are any.  
• The February 2003 Orange Alert was a fabricated false alarm?  You don't suppose they want to scare us, do you?  Nah... couldn't be.  At least they are telling us now that that duct tape and plastic isn't such a great idea after all.
• Return of the Son of Patriot Act--if you thought the first one was a needless restriction of civil rights, wait till you see the creepy sequel, coming soon to the House of Representatives.  This document, probably generated by Ashcroft's thugs, has been kept secret, but was leaked to the media and Bill Moyers on Feb 7th.  Even with the current and new Patriot Acts on the books, September 11 would still have happened.  Americans and Ann Coulter don't like to admit that the reason national security was (and still is) so easily breached is a failure of analyzing information that is gathered--not a failure to gather information or arrest suspicious people.  Turning America into a police state will only harm innocent citizens.  The only effective solution is to figure out how to analyze the intelligence we already get.  (Or better yet, stop pissing off the rest of the world.)  This is looking more and more like an attempt to create a general fascist police state rather than an attempt to stop terrorism.  
• Pictures from the January 18th protest in Washington DC. at News from Babylon
• Ten Worst and Ten Best things about 2002
• Is the US Turning into a Surveillance Society? "Big Brother" is no Longer a Fiction--From the American Civil Liberties Union
• Iran-Contra Convict, John Poindexter was appointed way back in February 2002 by the Bushleague as head of yet another government program designed to spy on Americans--the Information Awareness Office.  The Liberal Media suppressed this one, although Mr. Poindexter "was convicted of conspiracy, lying to Congress, defrauding the government, and destroying evidence in the Iran Contra scandal." If the stories of CIA cocaine trafficking to fund mercenary terrorists in Nicaragua are true, this is the big man who oversaw it all. This could be the man who brought crack to LA, and now he's in charge of one of Bush's fascist Big Brother organizations.   Click for Poindexter bibliography.
• Congress moves to block Total Information Invasion & questions the virtues of Poindexter.
• Henry Kissinger--appointed to investigate 9/11??  Given the FACT that UNOCAL was negotiating with the Taliban before 9/11 to build a pipeline through Afghanistan, and given the FACT that Kissinger and the current leader of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai both have deep connections to UNOCAL, (more on this, and more) and given the rumor that UNOCAL, with American support threatened the Taliban with a military strike if they didn't comply, and given the FACT that Afghanistan's Taliban was clearly an important target in the attack after 9/11, is it not horribly ironic and suspicious that Bush would appoint Kissinger to investigate 9/11??  Read more about Henry Kissinger's record.  December 13th, he resigned the position! Don't think that means he has gone away, though.  He's still out there. 
• John O'Neill--The Man who Knew--(PBS) the story of the FBI man who tried to stop Al Qaeda, and was shut down by the FBI.  He also died in the World Trade Center.  
• John Ashcroft protecting terrorists?  The devoutly religious, pro-life, anti-immigrant, chief of patriotic secret police wants to use immigration records, drivers' license records, phone calls, e-mail and where you've been on the internet.  Now they're even doing secret probes of on-line computers.  He is violating civil rights all over the place, except for one: using gun buyer instant background check records to look for terrorists and felons.  They definitely don't want you to know that Al Qaida training manuals have explicit instructions on how to use American gun laws to their advantage.  Read Bill Moyer's report on this repulsive scandal.  On the show, we were treated to shocking footage of Ashcroft's heated and emotional refusals to let the FBI and ATF see these records--in front of Congress.  
• Homeland Security and Autism: What do the war on terrorism and the drug lobby have in common?  Dick Armey slips a favor to Eli Lilly in on the Bush administration's sequel to the Patriot Act to protect them from lawsuits over their mercury-based preservative that caused autism in children.  Eli Lilly was a big donor to Republicans.
• The Nazification of America Phase 3: Norman D Livergood at The New Enlightenment site.  Effective comparison of George W. Bush and Adolph Hitler.
• "My SUV helped put Mohammed Atah through flight school!"  "Fighting against light rail construction ensures the financial viability of Al Qaeda!"  "Every time I fill up my 4x4 king cab, I help Saddam buy anthrax warheads."  Arianna Huffington points out the simple stupidity of Bush's new anti-drug campaign by pointing out an even more direct link than the one they are trying to make between buying "reefer" and supporting terrorists.  By the way,  Buy a Marlboro and Help a Terrorist!  here's proof that big tobacco is part of the same evil loop, laundering drug money from Colombia.  That means that the tobacco state politicians are helping launder drug money, which helps terrorists too!  Only in America, eh?
• 2025: Maxwell Air Force Base Air University study of the future.  Fascinating foray into futurism.  
• Bush is God -- in a land where a certain political party won't let a mother terminate an unwanted pregnancy, or an ALS victim commit suicide because a theoretical God doesn't like it (according to interpretations of a book supposedly written with help from that theoretical God), and where we are all supposed to be united under this God who commands us "Thou shalt not kill." Mr. George Bush now has the divine authority to order your secret execution by CIA assassins.  All it takes is a little paper work and a phone call, and if the Bushleague doesn't like an American citizen, POW! S/he's dead.  
• Fascists Vs Fags -- a mean-spirited, ironic look at the history of fascism, homophobia, repressed homosexuality and the war mongers.  This essay is useful understanding the 2002 Election results, if you're wondering what happened.
• The Anti-Antiwar vs Antiwar debate. This interesting menage et trois of journalists discusses the current and past historical peace movements without the typical partisan idiocy.  One point I strongly agree with--it is most unfortunate that more extreme voices supported by radical political organizations tag on all sorts of "Bonkerist" demands with the peace rallies, thus alienating the more moderate and even right wing people who might join the war protests.  I am sympathetic to general demands for social and economic justice, but I have frequently heard offensive, questionable and pointless nonsense screamed rhythmically at protests.  
• Botox, the Naked Empire & War on Iraq by Frank Bardacke at Counterpunch.  This is a great article that unravels the possible motives for Bush's imperialistic behavior, and wraps it up with a cute metaphor.
• The CIA released a letter on October 8th (read the CNN McNews version of the story) stating that they do not believe there is evidence that Saddam represents an immediate risk, but if we attack him, we run a very great risk of destabilizing the region, inspiring more terrorists, accelerating recruiting for Al Qaida, and justifying the use of weapons of mass destruction on our troops, on Israel, and against America.  Listen folks.  This is the CIA talking.  Our leading experts on espionage and international terrorism.  Bush is an incompetent CEO looking for oil money.  The congress is loaded with worthless slugs who are afraid to stand up to him.  The CIA itself slapped him in the face.  But then George Tenet stated in truly surreal fashion that this CIA interpretation of the story is not inconsistent with Bush's chest pounding and cries for war.  This debate is getting more bizarre by the day. 
• Even the diabolical, libertarian/conservative Cato Institute is against war with Iraq? Since these are the intellectual, pro-corporate, greedy, individual rights, no-taxes, small government folks, then I guess that Rush Limbaugh is merely a puppet attack dog of the Bush family and their Republican faithful.  Even more interesting, Charles V. Pena of Cato points out that in a world of pre-emptive strikes against rogue states, there is no need for a missile defense system--except to give tax dollars to government contractors owned by Bush cabinet gangsters.  Even a Mussolini wannabe like Bush can't have both sides of the argument.  
• Al Gore gets a real spine, stands up and beats the tar out of Bush's cowboy rhetoric.  Read the whole speech!
• A Stake, not a Mistake--Jared James tells the awful truth: American policy is not mistaken or misguided.  They are fully aware of what they are doing.  The goal is to keep the rich rich and the poor poor by means of violence and economic abuse.  We should stop wasting time trying to explain to our Cato-controlled politicians and media that they are doing the wrong thing.  They are doing it on purpose.  They are not ignorant.   But, what does this mean?? What do we do next?  Mr. James' proposals are perhaps too extreme.  Check out the full version with instructions on how to replace capitalism with libertarian-leftist democratic neighborhoods.  Interesting, but implausible and extreme.
• Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, a document obviously followed by the Bush administration, written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC).  It basically describes their plans to attack Iraq as part of a plan of global domination. 
• Keys to 9/11--Michelle Mairesse connects the intelligence dots that ought to have led the CIA, FBI, NTSB to prevent four planes from being used quite effectively as weapons of mass destruction.  This is based on lots of public information, but the media refuses to connect these dots for us.  The picture that it draws is simply too terrifying to behold.  How did the FBI have a list of 19 hijackers in only 3 days?  They were conducting undercover surveillance of flight schools based on overwhelming evidence that a plot like this was in the making.  Why are 7 of these 19 actually still alive?  Why doesn't the media tell us this?  Why aren't we hearing what Moussaoui has to say?  Why do the trails of crime converge on Florida?  Why do Saudis now and in the past get exceptionally and comparatively lenient treatment by US immigration officials--even after 17 Saudis supposedly used US airliners as suicide missiles? EVERY airline crash in history has had a major NTSB investigation.  Why are the four 9/11 flights the ONLY exceptions?  No investigation???  Why not? 
• Connecting the Energy Dots to Afghanistan (AlterNet).  Further proof that there isn't even a shred of integrity in our battle on Iraq.  No wonder Bush built his cabinet out of all those oil executives.  This piece is guaranteed to make you want to puke and strip the flag sticker off your automobile.  
• New York Mean Time: In a time when humor is scarce, especially in regards to this confusing and emotional anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, this tongue-in-cheek review of right wing talk radio windbag Michael Savage's remarks about asserting American power are both disturbing and hilarious.  In my opinion, this is one of the best pieces of irony to come out of these events--on a par with "A Modest Proposal."  However, I think that Savage is serious.  
• Political Prisoners or Enemy Combatants?  Ashcroft & Rumsfeld want to shred the Constitution to create a full-fledged fascist-racist regime.  From Yahoo News, which is a little surprising.  
• The International Association of Fire Fighters condemns and challenges Bush  Funding for first responders is being held up for typically stupid political reasons.  Expect to see a confrontation over World Trade Center Cough syndrome soon too.  Firefighters' lawsuit
• Rumsfeld Key Player in Iraq--(MSNBC) the extent to which the Reagan/Bush Sr. regimes aided and created Saddam Hussein is now surfacing for all to see.  Donald Rumsfeld's involvement in the deal is rather deep.  Anyway, it all makes sense--the Taliban and Mujahadeem were their way to contain and undermine the Soviet Union, whereas Saddam Hussein was their way to contain and undermine the Islamist revolution in Iran.  This is utilitarianism at its absolute worst--any means are justified when it comes to fighting against governments that shut out the "free market" parasites.   
• Brainwashing America by Norman D. Livergood--fabulous images, great analysis that compares Bush's fascist agenda to Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany.  Chilling stuff, but the vintage Ad Council spoofs are soooo good.  
• The Reichstag Fire and the Rise of the Nazi Party: The German Parliament is torched by an arsonist, and the right wing nazis blame it on terrorist communists.  Historians think Hitler's own people may have started it.  Anyway, this article was written in 1995 after Clinton started us on the path to fascism with his crackdown on militias, which created the precedent of Americans accepting losses of civil liberties for the sake of "security."  This guy is comparing Oklahoma City to Berlin, but it's even more spooky and ironic now to read this as a ghostly echo from the past reverberating in the skyscraper canyons of Manhattan.   
• Bill Moyers speaks out on the war, the state of democracy and the greedy, corporate goons who are using this tragedy to ruin America by using patriotism as a sleight of hand distraction.  Highly Recommended.
• The School of the Americas--America's version of the Al Qaida training camps where terrorists and dictators have been coming for years to learn about bombs, torture techniques, and all those things you need to become an effective puppet dictator.  Illustrious alumni have gone on to torture and kill civil rights activists in El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia and Panama.  One of the more well-known grads is Manuel Noriega.  In spite of vehement protests against their activities, the SOA is alive and well, by means of a series of name changes--WHISC, and now WHINSEC.  School of the Americas Watch site maintains its vigillance of this institution.  The actual Fort Benning WHINSEC (That's the new name) web site.  They have a nice page on their commitment to human rights, but it's not as extensive as their list of the activities of their war criminal grads, or the attempts by the US congress to shut them down.  It would appear that they especially enjoy killing leftist Catholic priests, nuns and Jesuits--the idea that communism can be very Christian (and obviously harmonious with the Gospels) is deeply subversive to global capitalist mythology.
• Free the Five: America harbors and trains anti-Cuban terrorists, and arrests Cuban anti-terrorism agents working in Florida to protect themselves from the endless string of American-sponsored terrorism against the country--further, this arrest of anti-terrorism agents occurred AFTER 9/11.  Among the charges made by Cuba are the bombing of a Cuban jet liner, the perpetrator of which is protected from international law by American anti-Cuban wackos.  Who else would be responsible for terrorist bombings of Cuban tourist hotels??  
• Bic Lighters and the War on Terrorism: Michael Moore asks the unaskable: is there really a war on terrorism?  
• Bushies and Bin Laden--were Bush, Cheney and Rice more interested in a pipeline across Afghanistan than letting the intelligence community follow the Al Qaeda trail?  There is more than sufficient evidence to suspect that 9/11 could have been prevented--a lot more evidence than there was that the Clintons did anything illegal in the Whitewater deal.  Even the media has been sniffing around this one.
• Saudi Arabia might fall to Al-Qaeda? the media here and in Saudi Arabia do not want you to know anything about the massive protests going on because of the monarchy's overt pro-Western policies.  The people and many government officials are apparently headed toward overthrowing their government, which would severely undermine the "war on terrorism" and the rumored war on Iraq.  I wonder if there's any coincidence to the fact that Iraq would make a great route for another oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea area?
• Bill Clinton and Middle East Wars--those of us whose political convictions reside to the left of the Democratic party and have little appreciation for this smiling, slick pro-corporate pseudo-liberal president won't be surprised by the fact that Clinton came out with a smarmy, double-speak response to Al Gore's harsh criticism of Bush's war cries.  It's probably not much of a surprise that he chose a rinky-dink forum like Good Morning America to make his ambiguous remarks in support of bombing Iraq.  However, in spite of the shockingly hypocritical and idiotic remarks of right wingers who blame Clinton for 9/11 and all of our ills, I recommend this article as an appropriate response--every attempt made by Clinton to stop Al Qaida and Hussein was met with snipey, sinister resistance from Republicans who treated everything he did as an attempt to draw attention away from his penis--which they apparently found more interesting and important.  Karma proves itself true by giving president-appointed Bushleague a similar plague in which every word he states is interpreted by his opponents in light of his innumerable conflicts of interest and naked venal motives--an attempt to draw attention away from the fact that his family and Newt Gingrich's cadre of pro-corporate vampires are to blame for the economic collapse that started BEFORE 9/11.