Wednesday, May 21, 2003

"A man purporting to be Usama bin Laden's right-hand man, Ayman al-Zawahri, urged ongoing attacks on America and its allies in an audiotape broadcast Wednesday," reports the Bush Ministry of Disinformation. "The crusaders and the Jews only understand the language of the murder, bloodshed and of the burning towers," al-Zawahri supposedly declares."Carry arms against your enemies, the Americans, the Jews... Consider your 19 brothers who attacked America in Washington and New York with their planes as an example."

Just for the record: "Al-Zawahiri ran his own operation during the Afghan war, bringing in and training volunteers from the Middle East," wrote the Guardian before "the world changed," that is to say before September 11."Some of the $500 million the CIA poured into Afghanistan reached his group."

"The story of bin Laden's right-hand man, Ayman 'The Doctor' Zawahiri, and the Balkan activities of the latter's brother, have shocked a large number of people," writes Umberto Pascali. "How is it possible that such a high-level official of the bin Laden gang is able to run a training camp for the KLA near the Kosovo village of Ropotovo, in the middle of an area controlled by the United States? How is it possible that Zawahiri's brother, as reliable sources report, was (and still reportedly is) in charge of KLA operations in the KLA-occupied area of neighboring Macedonia? How is it possible that the Zawahiri-led gang of international mercenaries could move, without any hindrance, from NATO-controlled Kosovo into Macedonia?"

How is it possible? Maybe the guy's a CIA asset, just like bin Laden.

"Many members of the Kosovo Liberation Army were sent for training in terrorist camps in Afghanistan," James Bissett, former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia and an expert on the Balkans, told the National Post."There is no question of their participation in conflicts in the Balkans. It is very well documented."

"The CIA encouraged former Kosovo Liberation Army fighters to launch a rebellion in southern Serbia in an effort to undermine the then Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, according to senior European officers who served with the international peace-keeping force in Kosovo (K-For), as well as leading Macedonian and US sources," notes the Observer.

"The 'Islamic Brigades' are a creation of the CIA," writes Michel Chossudovsky. "In standard CIA jargon, Al Qaeda is categorized as an 'intelligence asset'. Support to terrorist organizations is an integral part of U.S. foreign policy. Al Qaeda continues to this date (2002) to participate in CIA covert operations in different parts of the World. These 'CIA-Osama links' do not belong to a bygone era, as suggested by the mainstream media... The U.S. Congress has documented in detail, the links of Al Qaeda to agencies of the U.S. government during the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as in Kosovo. More recently in Macedonia, barely a few months before September 11, U.S. military advisers were mingling with Mujahideen mercenaries financed by Al Qaeda. Both groups were fighting under the auspices of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), within the same terrorist paramilitary formation."

Is it possible Ayman al-Zawahri is doing precisely what the CIA and the Bushites want -- that is scaring the be-jesus out of Americans? Of course, the war on (some) terrorism is not going away -- it's far too profitable and useful to be won. Besides, there's an election coming up next year. So, maybe, we can expect another major "terrorist event" in the weeks or months ahead.

Wednesday, May 21, 2003

I don't know about you, but I'm sick and tired of right-wing Christian Zionist nut cases running our government and stealing our money so Israel can torture and kill Arabs.

"The land of Israel was originally owned by God," babbled the deluded nut case Gary Bauer (pictured left), president of American Values and a Republican presidential contender in 2000. "Since He was the owner, only He could give it away. And He gave it to the Jewish people." In other words, Bauer's god is a sick puppy, a sadist, a racist who has no problem killing Palestinian babies or torturing pre-teens for throwing stones at IDF goons.

Calling the peace proposal "a Satanic road map," Earl Cox, executive producer and host of Front Page Jerusalem, a radio program, asked, "Do any of you believe [Palestinian leader] Yasser Arafat will embrace traditional family values? There will be a mosque on all the holy sites. How can anyone who's a Jew or a Christian support such a proposal?"

Cox is apparently saying here that if you oppose the half century of Israeli crimes against the Palestinians, if you want peace in the Middle East, you're a meat puppet for Satan. Obviously, for this demented little man, "family values" means you round up Palestinians and either shoot them or beat them silly. It's the Christian thing to do -- and so is shooting peace activists in the head or running them over with tractors. Cox may not like it but Islam shares holy sites with Judaism and Christianity. Deal with it.

Evangelical Christians, estimated to number about 45 million in America, are a source of support for Israel, though to varying degrees.

Translation: there are 45 million Americans who really don't know what's going on in the Occupied Territories or they do know what's going on and are so removed from the words and teachings of Christ -- or their version of Christ is a sadist -- that they support the crushing to death of grandmothers and the shooting in the head of infants.

Evangelical organizations represented at the [Interfaith Zionist Leadership Summit] conference included the Christian Coalition, the Christian Broadcasting Network and the Religious Roundtable... The conference, underwritten by a $100,000 grant from Zionist House, a Boston-based Jewish group, appeared to be closely balanced between Christians and Jews, with a slight Jewish majority. Theological differences were put aside by the speakers, such as Jan Willem van de Hoeven, the Dutch-born founder of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem... "We may have disagreements about who [the Messiah] is," Mr. van de Hoeven said, "but He is not coming back to a mosque but to a third temple."

The Muslim Bayt al Maqdas, known as the Dome of the Rock, and the Al Aqsa Mosque are situated on this chunk of hotly contested real estate. The Zionists and the Christers want to kick the Muslims out and demolish the third holiest site of Islam. This is essential for the Christers, otherwise they can't go to heaven. If they are willing to burn a few million Jews -- those who do not convert to the Anglo-Saxon god of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson before Jesus supposedly returns -- you can only imagine what they are eager and willing to do to Muslims and Arabs.

It's the apex of insanity: holy war, a Crusade of terrible dimensions, possibly even nuclear, based on a fairy tale and a few lines extracted from an old book or myths and stories contrived to keep nomadic Semites in line a few thousand years ago.

Bush the Unelected One reportedly buy into this destructive tripe. Is it possible he "road map to peace" was a red herring all along?

"This statement will be a shot across the bow for this president," [said Frank Gaffney Jr., president of the Center for Security Policy]. Although he is subject to considerable pro-Palestinian pressure, he said, "George W. Bush, I think, is with us in his heart and in his soul." ... One organization distributed bumper stickers saying: "Pray that President Bush will honor God's covenant with Israel."

Yeah, a covenant of mass murder and genocide.

Sunday, May 18, 2003

Photo caption: "Lebanese Hizbollah supporters greet the convoy of Iranian President Mohammad Khatami during his arrival at Beirut airport, May 12, 2003. Khatami said on May 13 that his country was not interested in escalating tension in the Middle East, arguing that would be playing into the hands of Iran's arch-enemy Israel. Khatami's remarks came amid mounting U.S. pressure on Lebanon and Syria to curb Iranian-backed Hizbollah guerrillas as part of its postwar plans for the region, and as Iran faces off with Washington over its nuclear program. (Jamal Saidi/Reuters)"

Khatami may not want escalated tension in the Middle East, but the Bushites and the Likudites in Washington and Israel sure do. In the future envisioned by the Bush-Likudite cabal, there will be no electricity, clean water, or police to contain looters and arsonists, but the women pictured above will no longer have to bundle themselves up. Hey, stuff happens, as Rummy knows. Democracy may not be a bed of roses for the average Arab or Iranian, but it sure will be a good deal for Ariel Sharon, Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former shah of Iran, Halliburton, the so-called "Iraq Project," and various CIA cronies such as convicted bank embezzler Ahmad Chalabi.

--

Here we go again... "The United States has developed intelligence indicating that top al-Qaida leaders operating inside Iran directed Monday's bombing attacks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and have ordered a terrorist strike in East Africa, according to counterterrorism sources," reports Newsday. "[Operational leader Saif] Al-Adil, they said, directed a senior operative, Ali Abed al Rahman al Faq'asi al Ghamdi, also known as Aby Bakr al Azdi, to carry out the Riyadh suicide bombings of three housing compounds, which killed 34, including eight Americans and nine attackers." In other words, Iran has a death wish. Apparently, all Persians and Arabs want the US to invade them, install cronies or monarchs, and steal their oil. So powerful is al-Houndini bin Laden that he can trigger murder by the sound of his voice. "Osama bin Laden singled out Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan as targets for 'martyrdom operations' in a chilling audio tape issued only three months before the latest string of bombings," says the Halifax Herald Limited. "The renewed terrorist activity has obliged American officials to revise their previous optimism that al-Qaida's failure to respond to the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a sign that the group was dying." CIA assets never die, they simply go into hibernation until they are needed.

"With the liberation of Iraq and Afghanistan, we have removed allies of al-Qaeda, cut off sources of terrorist funding, and made certain that no terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from Saddam Hussein's regime," Bush said in his weekly radio address. "These two battles were important victories in the larger war on terror. Yet the terrorist attacks this week in Saudi Arabia, which killed innocent civilians from more than half a dozen countries, including our own, provide a stark reminder that the war on terror continues." Never mind that the US couldn't find WMD in Iraq, that a link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein was never established -- in fact the idea that Saddam Hussein would support al-Qaeda and give them WMD is absurd. Even so, a lot of people believe what the Bushites say without an iota of critical thinking. Big lies worked in Iraq -- so undoubtedly the Bushites believe they will work in Iran. "The National Council of Resistance of Iran, the political wing of the People's Mujahideen Organization, provided a list of names and places at a Washington news conference on Thursday where it said biological weapons were being produced," reports Reuters News Service. "The group, which previously exposed the existence of Iran's Natanz uranium enrichment facility the United States says is part of a nuclear weapons program, did not provide any evidence to back up its new claims on biological weapons, but said its information came from Iranian government sources." Evidence? Who needs evidence?

All that is required in the Big Lie, or rather a series of Big Lies.

"Why does the Bush administration lie so much?" asks Wayne Madsen. "It is mainly because Bush's Svengali-like political adviser, Karl Rove, has taken to heart the advice of Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels: 'If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.' ... A true symbiotic relationship exists between Rove and the neo-cons. Rove provides for them a nurturing host -- the Pentagon -- in which to operate, procreate politically, and periodically ejaculate disinformation... It is their lifeblood. Without it they would be impotent. The neo-con's obsessive use of the lie means that whatever they state, the opposite is true. They are the liars. Those who call them on their lies are the truth sayers... Nazi Reich Marshal Hermann Goering, before committing suicide at the Nuremberg Trials, appeared to be advising the future neo-cons: 'Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.'"

"The National Council of Resistance of Iran, based in Paris, is a government-in-exile that advocates violent overthrow of Iran's religious government," the Associated Press reports. "Officials say they want to install a democratic government in Iran that protects human rights... Although the U.S. State Department says the council is a terrorist organization, its members operate freely in the United States, and some in Congress support removing the terrorist label."

If an Iranian "resistance" group is allowed to set up shop in Washington, you know they have the blessing of the US government. "Today [January, 1999] in Washington the so-called 'Iranian Resistance' (formal name the National Council of Resistance of Iran) is going to be doing its thing -- helping with the containment of post-Shah Iran and setting the stage, on behalf of the Americans and Israelis whether by design or result, for possible military conflict with Iran. When the time comes, those second-generation cruise missiles and stealth bombers are just the tools needed to de-arm Iran, as well as Iraq," writes Mid-East Realities. "The 'National Council of Resistance of Iran' is one of those shadowy groups that have learned, and been taught, how to manipulate and use the media. They [held] an expensive press conference... at the lush Madison Hotel in Washington to denounce Iran's biological weapons program. They claim they have new facts and details. And they probably do. It's pretty clear that the CIA and the Mossad want the word out; and they can't so easily hold such press conferences and pass around hand-outs themselves." "There is a pact emerging between hawks in the administration, Jewish groups and Iranian supporters of Reza Pahlavi [the exiled son of the former shah of Iran] to push for regime change," Pooya Dayanim, president of the Iranian-Jewish Public Affairs Committee, told Forward. "The emerging coalition is reminiscent of the buildup to the invasion of Iraq, with Pahlavi possibly assuming the role of Iraqi exile opposition leader Ahmed Chalabi, a favorite of neoconservatives. Like Chalabi, Pahlavi has good relations with several Jewish groups. He has addressed the board of the hawkish Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and gave a public speech at the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, and met with Jewish communal leaders."

JINSA, neocon swami Irving Kristol, Michael Ledeen, the Wolfowitz gangsters -- these are the people who are calling the shots on US foreign policy in the Middle East. If you have a kid in the military, they may soon be asking him to donate his life to make sure the Likudites in Israel and America get their way.

--

Not only do the Iranians have a death wish, so do the Palestinians. Just as accused war criminal Ariel Sharon was about to trek off to Washington to talk with Bush about his "road map" to peace, a suicide bomber killed seven passengers on a Jerusalem bus, while a second bomber blew himself up on the city's outskirts. It's no secret the Israelis are not interested in any kind of peace with the Palestinians, so this recent bombing should come as no surprise. "Sharon was scheduled to discuss a possible peace plan with President Bush in Washington," reports the Bush Ministry of Propaganda. "The trip has been postponed indefinitely. Instead, Sharon called a meeting with his Cabinet to address the violence." In other words, the Likudites are discussing new attacks on defenseless Palestinians.

"The Islamic militant group Hamas did not issue a formal claim of responsibility, but Bassem Jamil Tarkrouri, a 19-year-old Hamas supporter in the West Bank city of Hebron, was identified by relatives as the assailant. Hamas has carried out scores of bombings since the outbreak of fighting more than two years ago." Hamas, of course, was nurtured by Mossad. "By way of deception, thou shalt do war," is the motto of Mossad, according to former Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky.

"I don't believe the resistance of the Palestinian people has anything to do with political issues," said Hamas official Abdelaziz al-Rantissi. "The only issue of relevance to martyrdom operations is occupation and the continuation of this occupation and hardships facing the Palestinian people." Those hardships, of course, will get worse now that Hamas has killed more Israelis. In fact, the Likudites revel in this sort of mass murder -- it gives them a blank check to demolish any attempt to construct a meaningful peace arrangement. In fact, this is the raison d'�tre of Likud and the fascist settler movement in Israel -- the elimination Palestinian self-determination.

[Back in August of 1995, according to the Jerusalem Post] "the day after the bus bombing in Jerusalem, Arafat decided to come out publicly with these 'revelations' [of a connection between right-wing Israelis and Islamic Jihad suicide bombers]. He not only announced in Gaza that there was collaboration between what he called 'Israeli and Palestinian extremists,' but that he had documents proving it... One of his lieutenants, Secretary-General of the Palestinian Authority Tayeb Raheem, went into details. He said that the Israeli army and other security services contained secret organizations like the French OAS during Algeria's war of independence. They and the Islamic fanatics have a common interest to defeat the Oslo agreement, he said, repeating that the PLO has documents to prove the allegation... On the Voice of Palestine radio he went further, asserting specifically that these 'extremist elements' want to weaken both the PLO and the Israel Labor Party, and that they hope the Likud will return to power. To prove his point he reminded his listeners that the Islamic militants started growing under Likud rule and that there is 'coordination and collaboration' between them."

Saturday, May 17, 2003

It stands to reason, of course, now that the Bushites want a piece of Iran the corporate media reports there's al-Qaeda hiding there. Not only hiding there, but actively planning to kill Americans (in the latest incident in Saudi Arabia, the Americans were CIA agents or CIA mercenaries). "U.S. intelligence agencies are investigating whether senior al-Qaida leaders hiding in Iran may have helped to plan or coordinate the terrorist bombings that killed 34 people, including eight Americans, late Monday in Saudi Arabia," reports Knight Ridder. " Intelligence officials said several al-Qaida leaders, including Saif al Adel, who's wanted in connection with the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa and may now be the terrorist group's third-ranking official, and Osama bin Laden's son Saad have found refuge in Iran, where they remain active." In fact, al-Qaeda will be "active" in any country the US has trained its deadly sights on. "We are concerned about al-Qaida operating in Iran," said Condi Rice.

She's not really concerned, nor should she be surprised, that is if she's the smart cookie the slavering corporate media makes her out to be. "According to intelligence sources, Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda has operations in some 50 to 60 countries providing ample pretext to intervene in several 'rogue states' in the Middle East and Central Asia," writes Michel Chossudovsky. "A major war supposedly 'against international terrorism' has been launched by a government which is harboring international terrorism as part of its foreign policy agenda. In other words, the main justification for waging war has been totally fabricated. The American people have been deliberately and consciously misled by their government into supporting a major military adventure which affects our collective future."

In a letter to Robert Scheer, author of Are We Numb or Dumb? published in the Nation on April 29, Tina Staik writes that it "has become VERY clear to the global population, AND is also becoming VERY clear to many, many Americans, perhaps even the majority -- that is, that LIES are the RULE, not the exception with this administration. In fact, they are Orwellian lies, big brother lies, phony photo-ops, facades, total contradictions, systematically applied with explicit intentions to cripple critical thinking, staged events intended to confuse."

"Bush and his foreign-policy team have told a string of traditional and fact-based lies about Iraq’s links to al Qaeda and 9-11, as well as the magnitude and imminence of the threat Saddam poses to the United States," explains Dennis Hans. "Those lies have helped the president gain far greater support from the public and Congress for his aggressive stance than he would have garnered with a plain-spoken, straight-shooting approach.

Lies and absurd fabrications worked as a pre-text to bomb and slaughter the people of Iraq, so the ambitious (or should I say murderous) Bushites will attempt to do the same thing in regard to Iran. Never mind that Sunnis such as Osama bin Laden and the Shi'ite Iranians don't particularly like each other. Moreover, Iran has said numerous times it has expelled al-Qaeda members, or anti-Western fighters the US likes to call al-Qaeda (these days any Muslim with a beef against the US is likely to be tagged as al-Qaeda). "There isn't any doubt in my mind but that the porous border between Iran and Afghanistan has been used for Al Qaeda and Taliban to move into Iran," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told ABC last year. Rummy apparently based his assertion on the torture extracted confessions of Haji Mohamad Akram, supposedly Osama's cook in the CIA financed and constructed al-Qaeda "training" camps in Afghanistan. "Osama had three offers of escape... from Iraq, Iran, and some mafia types."

According to the attack-Iran advocate and Islamophobe (and "influential" neocon) Michael Leeden, Osama "crossed into Iran relatively early in the war in Afghanistan, wearing a burka, and accompanied by about 125-150 of his family and cohorts. And I'd bet that he got medical treatment for a while, that he met with some fellow terrorists (like Hezbollah's Imad Mughniyah, the most dangerous terrorist leader in the world) and is now in southeastern Iran on R&R." Note the reference to Hezbollah, the Lebanese resistance group that successfully kicked Israel out of southern Lebanon, something that really irks the hell out of Zionists like Ledeen and Ariel Sharon.

Ledeen calls Imad Mughniyah "the most dangerous terrorist leader in the world" because he allegedly masterminded the Beirut bombing of the US marine barracks and the French Multinational Force barracks on October 23 1983. The Israelis want payback not only for Hezbollah and Mughniyah kicking them out of Lebanon -- how embarrassing, a group of freedom fighters defeating the all-powerful IDF -- but also for the bombing of the Israeli embassy in 1992 in Buenos Aires. Hezbollah supposedly took out the Israeli embassy in response to Mossad's assassination of Hezbollah's secretary general Abbas Musawi. Since Hezbollah is a large and respected political party with representation in the Lebanese parliament, this assassination would be like Mossad taking out Tom DeLay.

Iran, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah -- these are ducks the Bushites would love to line up in a neat row. "Whether hard evidence of a direct link between Mughniyeh and Bin Laden will eventually be revealed remains unclear, although there has been speculation that he might have played a key role in the planning of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington," writes Jane's. But then the Bushites hardly need "hard evidence," only the purloined homework of graduate students.

"We'll be on the hunt [for al-Qaeda] and we'll find them and they will be brought to justice," Bush said the other day. Indeed, the Bushites will be "on the hunt" for the CIA created al-Qaeda for some time to come -- or at least until there is "regime change" in Iran, Syria, and until Israel is satisfied its Arab neighbors are no longer a "threat," which is to say they are no longer capable of resisting its territorial aspirations in the neighborhood. Expect al-Qaeda and the now mythical presence of Osama bin Laden to shift form country to country as the Bushites prepare to invade or work to undermine governments in the Middle East.

--

"Since the September 11th tragedy, the Saudi royals have claimed to clamp down on terrorist outfits," writes MSNBC's Joe Scarborough. "But theyÍre still talking out of both sides of their mouths. Yesterday's attacks prove the Saudi kingdom is still the epicenter of Islamic extremism. And last week's botched raid where 19 al-Qaida suspects eluded capture shows that Saudi Arabia is terrified of cracking down on terrorism. And through their acts of omission, the Saudi kingdom is providing aid and comfort to a group whose only goal is to murder as many Americans as possible."

No, Joe, what it proves is that the Saudi monarchy can no longer contain resentment and anger. The "goal" of "al-Qaeda" -- read: any organized group opposed to the US presence in the Middle East -- is not specifically to "murder as many Americans as possible," but to get the Americans to leave the country. Go back and read Osama's 1998 fatwa. Muslims aren't fond of the US "occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples."

Middle class Americans are essentially brain-dead when it comes to understanding what's going on in Saudi Arabia. "This country with pockets once so deep that it bought billions of dollars of U.S. weapons and helped finance U.S.-led military campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, is now deep in debt. Its younger generation is at pains to find jobs and houses in the suburbs, let alone palaces," writes Kim Murphy of the LA Times. "The suicide attacks against foreign residential compounds in the Saudi capital this week point up one of the most potent concerns U.S. officials have in a country seen as one of the United States' most reliable allies in the Arab world: The increasingly perilous economic situation that all in Saudi Arabia but the royalty face today may be a big factor in recruiting young Saudis to terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda."

"As recently as [March, 2002], unrest in the Saudi kingdom was expressed in a series of street protests that started in the eastern part of the country and rapidly spread throughout the nation. Thousands of pro-Palestinian, anti-American protesters were brutally repressed by Saudi security forces," notes Paolo Pontoniere of NCM Online. Thoese Saudi security forces are trained and supported by the Americans attacked earlier in the week.

Wednesday, May 14, 2003

Photo caption: "A wrecked car lies in front of a damaged building after a suicide bomb attack on a compound used by expatriates in Riyadh, May 13, 2003. Suicide bombers in the Saudi capital killed some 91 people, the Vice President Dick Cheney said, making the attack on expatriate housing compounds one of the biggest suspected al Qaeda strikes on Western targets. There remained considerable doubt about the toll, however. (Reuters)

--

It doesn't take much to see beyond the headlines to ascertain what's really going on. The corporate media, of course, characterizes the recent explosions in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as yet another "terrorists attack" engineered by Muslims -- al-Qaeda, naturally, or one of its bastard siblings -- against well-meaning Americans. "These despicable acts were committed by killers whose only faith is hate," roared the unelected one. "The United States will find the killers, and they will learn the meaning of American justice." Right -- the same way Osama bin Laden and now Saddam Hussein have learned the highly selective meaning of American justice. Only low-level grunts make it to Camp X-Ray at Gitmo Bay. CIA assets such as bin Laden are either granted new lives or methodically secreted away.

"It is impossible to understand America's continuing failure in the Middle East without taking into account the misapplication of the CIA's responsibilities and functions in that area," wrote the former (now deceased) CIA spook Wilbur Crane Eveland, "the degree to which its clandestine political action capabilities have been employed as substitutes for sound foreign policy and conventional diplomacy." In the 1960s Eveland went undercover as the vice president of Vinnell Corporation, the admitted target of the attacks in Riyadh. Like DynCorp today, Vinnell was "our own private mercenary army in Vietnam," according to Greg Guma. "Vinnell is a subsidiary of TRW, a major NSA contractor, and employs US Special Forces vets to train Saudi Arabia’s National Guard."

"The history of American foreign and military policy abounds with deception and scandal, with shadowy actors, monied interests and efforts to keep the public out of what are properly public decisions," writes Ken Silverstein. "Now those efforts have taken an unprecedented turn in scale and degree. Privatization, the process by which the responsibilities of government are transferred to unaccountable corporate hands, now occupies the halls of warmaking. With little public knowledge or debate, the government has been dispatching private companies -- most of them with tight links to the Pentagon and staffed by retired armed forces personnel -- to provide military and police training to America's foreign allies. The government has also vastly expanded the use of private firms to support its own overseas military operations..."

Is it possible the reason Bush was so pissed about this particular attack -- beyond the mandatory lip service doled out when US "interests" are attacked -- has anything to do with the business connections of Dubya's daddy? "[The Carlyle Group's] purchase of a company called Vinnell in 1992 confirms the author's [Dan Briody, The Iron Triangle: Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group] worst suspicions. He argues that it illustrates the perils of the iron triangle 'in one neat utterly secretive package.' Vinnell trained foreign armies, and the book quotes an unidentified former board member as saying the company was a front for the C.I.A. But much of the intrigue that is recounted here happened before Carlyle bought the company. It sold the unit to TRW in 1997." TRW has worked with the CIA on satellite snoop projects.

"In 1975, McLean, Va.-based Vinnell Corp. won a $77-million contract to train Saudi Arabian infantry and artillery battalions to defend oil fields," says Esther Schrader. "It was the first time that American civilians had been permitted to sell military training directly to a foreign military. The job was controversial, and Senate Democrats held hearings. But the contract stuck. And other similar firms began to emerge... The major U. S. firms in the field include MPRI, Vinnell, BDM International Inc. of Fairfax, Va., Armor Holdings Inc. of Jacksonville, Fla.; DynCorp of Reston, Va., and SAIC. Armor Holdings was among Fortune magazine's 100 fastest-growing companies in 1999 and 2000... They train armies how to use such complex hardware as armored personnel carriers, surface-to-air missiles, shoulder-fired antitank missiles, ships and aircraft, and other equipment typically sold to foreign armies by the United States. They prep officers in military strategy, run battle simulation centers, and have helped support peacekeeping efforts in troubled regions under contract to the Pentagon and the State Department."

"[Vinnell] has helped the Saudis build their National Guard from 26,000 troops to around 70,000," notes the Times Online. "In the early Eighties Time magazine reported that two employees were embroiled in a failed attempt to overthrow Maurice Bishop, the left-wing Prime Minister of Grenada, and soon after that a former employee was implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal."

In other words, Vinnell, as a CIA front ("No one knows who the original owners were," explains Dan Briody), trains the likes of the Saudi National Guard. "Hundreds of people, including possible prisoners of conscience, were detained during mass arrests, particularly following the bombings of the Saudi Arabian National Guard training center in Riyadh, the capital, in November 1995 and of the us military complex at al-Khobar in June 1996, which together resulted in 26 deaths," reports Amnesty International. "Those arrested included the so-called Arab Afghan veterans, who had returned to Saudi Arabia after taking part in the armed conflicts in Afghanistan and Bosnia... Shi'a Muslim critics or opponents of the government were targeted for arrest throughout the year, particularly after the bombing in June of the us military complex in al-Khobar. The authorities reportedly suspected that the attack had been planned by a foreign force with links with the Shi'a community in the Eastern Province."

"The American government has armed and trained terrorists since the Carter Administration," notes Michelle Mairesse. "Influential national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski persuaded President Jimmy Carter to sign a secret executive order in 1979 providing funding for the new Islamic mujahideen terrorist movement, which the CIA subsequently trained in America, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. American 'advisors' trained and instructed young Muslim recruits in the finer points of guerilla warfare and terrorism." Or as author Michael Parenti describes it:

Over the years the United States and Saudi Arabia expended about $40 billion on the war in Afghanistan. The CIA and its allies recruited, supplied and trained almost 100,000 radical mujahideen from forty Muslim countries, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Algeria, and Afghanistan itself. Among those who answered the call was rightwinger Osama bin Laden and his cohorts." ... "Largely created and funded by the CIA, the mujahideen mercenaries now took on a life of their own. Hundreds of them returned home to Algeria, Chechnya, Kosovo, and Kashmir to carry on terrorist attacks in Allah’s name against the purveyors of ‘corruption.’

So, put the pieces together. "It's not a definitive conclusion, but al-Qaeda is a leading suspect,'' White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters about who the Bushites suspect in the bombing of "residential compounds housing Americans" (i.e., CIA agents) in Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Laden and his so-called al-Qaeda -- actually recycled mujahideen -- were trained and financed by the CIA to wage war against the "infidel" Soviets and it should come as no surprise they are now using that training (the corporate media and the Bushites like to call it "terrorism") to attack other infidels.

Either al-Qaeda has "gone off the reservation," to use spook parlance, or they are doing exactly what the CIA and the Bush military-defense corp dictatorship want: providing an excuse to wage and expand war against the Muslim Middle East for three reasons: 1) it's profitable for the death merchants (i.e., the so-called "defense" industry, amply represented in the Bush administration) and also provides a way for them to test new weapons systems, 2) Bush-Cheney oil interests stand to make out big time (imagine the sound of salivation over the prospect of controlling both Iraq and Saudi Arabia). and 3) it puts forward more draconian "war against (Islamic) terror" measures at home (with associated windfall for "security" corporations and others on the inside track set up by the cynical Bushites). As for the latter, ask neocon Richard Perle.

Photo caption: "An Iraqi boy runs as others look at the burning Central Telecommunications building in downtown Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday May 11, 2003. The cause of the fire was not known. When Saddam Hussein's regime was in power, the department which ran the country's public viewing television channel was housed in the building. (AP Photo/Murad Sezer)"

Some call them the neocons, but I think it's time to give them a new name: the Chaos Cabal, the Gang that Couldn't Conquer Straight. As is becoming increasingly apparent, the Chaos Cabal is clueless when it comes down day-to-day colonialism and managing the vassals. "Bush administration officials confirmed today that Jay Garner, the retired lieutenant general who is the top civil administrator in Iraq, would leave here within a week or two and that other senior officials here will also be replaced," reports the New York Times. "American officials said Barbara K. Bodine, who has been in charge of reconstruction for the Baghdad region, was abruptly given notice and will be leaving within the next day or two... Others expected to leave soon include Margaret Tutwiler, who had been in charge of overall communications under General Garner; Tim Carney, a former ambassador who had been overseeing Iraq's Ministry of Industry and Minerals; David Dunford, a senior Foreign Service specialist on the Middle East, and John Limbert, the ambassador to Mauritania."

These are Washington bureaucrats, not tough Afrikaners or Israelis. Even the Brits in Rhodesia knew how to install effective colonialism -- you bring in some white people that have a vested interest (religion and racism work best) in becoming settlers. But the Chaos Cabal doesn't have what it takes to lord over conquered people. They aren't traditional colonialists. It's all about oil and domesticating the Middle East in the name of Greater Israel, not settling the land. The Chaos Cabal demonstrated it viciousness when it came to bombing and killing thousands of people, but it is sorely lacking in the occupation department. Iraq teeters on the edge of nearly full-blown societal breakdown. Imagine a country-wide version of the L.A. riots -- every day, 24-7 -- and you begin to get an idea of what it's like to live in Iraq. In the old days of colonialism, this wouldn't have been tolerated. Chaos endangers the empire.

"Fearful of going out after dark, waiting up to 10 hours to fill their cars with gas, spreading rumors in the absence of reliable media, watching landmark buildings set on fire and wondering who is in charge, the residents of this capital are growing increasingly impatient with the deepening disorder that is plaguing their lives more than a month after US troops took over the city," writes the Christian Science Monitor. "Security in Baghdad, the top of everybody's list of priorities, including the Americans', is deteriorating. Gunfire is heard more often than it was two weeks ago, thieves drag drivers from their cars in broad daylight, and looters continue to steal whatever is left from public buildings in full view of passers by."

The Chaos Cabal needs a good old fashioned Ba'athist to take control of things. As should be expected, though, former Ba'athist have their own agenda. "Having spent three days trying in vain to contact Hamid Rahman, the former general with a senior position in the pre-war Ministry of Interior who had been identified as the potential Iraqi to run policing through the country, Bob Gifford, a State Department policing expert who did the same job in Afghanistan, turned up at the joint US military-police headquarters in person to confront Mr Rahman when he turned up around midday," writes the Independent. "Mr Gifford told him bluntly: 'There is no control. We are not going to announce this appointment. I want you to go home until we contact you.' Asked about this scene, witnessed by chance by the Independent, an ORHA official conceded that Mr Rahman was 'not the right man for the job'. His background as a senior functionary of the Ba'athist regime coupled with what one US Military Police officer called his tendency to run his 'own mafia, taking big decisions we were paying for without consulting us' appears to be among the reasons for the sacking." In other words, Mr. Rahman had his own agenda and he wasn't too keen on taking his marching orders from a gaggle of white boys from the United States.

It doesn't help either that the US can't seem to find the money to pay policemen in Iraq. Oh, they found all the money they needed to decimate the place with million dollar a throw cruise missiles, but they are hard pinched to come up with money to pay cops. Moreover, the police infrastructure is wrecked. "80 per cent of the actual police stations, in which arrest policy was anyway centrally dictated by the regime, have been rendered unusable by looting. This week, two workers for the charity CARE were reportedly robbed at gunpoint and their cars stolen on the road from Baghdad International Airport to the city center. And there have been reports of AK-47s being used to kill motorists to steal their cars."

Not to worry, though -- there's always Rummy's version of military propaganda TV to reassure jittery Iraqis. "I want TV going to people," said Jay Garner in the days before he lost his job. "The Pentagon, which months ago contracted a major U.S. defense firm to draw up and staff a media operation in coordination with Psychological Operations and White House communications personnel, plans to unveil its own nightly television show," reports the Washington Post. "The program, initially for two hours but projected as a 24-hour full-service network, will include 30 minutes of news each night. The news will be in four segments, said Dan Senor, an aide to Garner's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs (ORHA)... U.S. officials said the hope is that more information will calm Iraqi disquiet over such matters as still-tenuous security and continuing disruptions of electricity, water and medical supplies by explaining the efforts the Americans are making. The television will be transmitted initially from a Baghdad tower and eventually also from Erbil in the north and Umm Qasr in the south. It will be available on satellite for Iraqis with dishes."

That is, for Iraqis that managed to hide their satellite dishes from looters.

Friday, May 9, 2003

Photo caption: "This is a mobile lab that could have been used for manufacturing biological weapons north of the city of Mosul, Friday May 9, 2003, according to US forces. (AP Photo/Pfc. Joshua Hutcheson, 101st Airborne Division)"

Yep, it looks like Los Alamos on wheels to me! Note who the photographer works for.

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"The United States Army commander in Iraq has said that while there is documentary evidence to suggest that the country had an active program for chemical and biological weapons, nothing has been found to show the country's military was prepared to use them on US forces," reports Cox News Service. "And a senior Pentagon official, Stephen Cambone, said on Wednesday that tests were continuing on a trailer captured from a defector that might have been part of a mobile laboratory system."

Yeah, and it might have been trucking cases of Budwesier last month in Tennessee.

Have you noticed how the Bushites repeatedly present "evidence" from "defectors," in other words people who have a vested interest in sucking up. Moreover, the dishonest and cynical Bushites only use the information that will make their case for mass annihilation and the murder of school children. For instance, take the case of Gen. Hussein Kamel, a former Ba'athist insider and son-in-law of Saddam Hussein who defected from Iraq carrying crates of secret documents on Iraq's past weapons programs.

"All weapons -- biological, chemical, missile, nuclear, were destroyed," Kamel told UNSCOM/IAEA. Iraq destroyed its WMD in 1991."According to Newsweek, Kamel told the same story to CIA analysts in August 1995," explains FAIR. "If that is true, all of these U.S. officials have had access to Kamel's statements that the weapons were destroyed. Their repeated citations of his testimony -- without revealing that he also said the weapons no longer exist -- suggests that the administration might be withholding critical evidence. In particular, it casts doubt on the credibility of Powell's February 5 presentation to the U.N., which was widely hailed at the time for its persuasiveness."

"The fact of the matter is, if one reviews the transcripts of the debriefings that the CIA, British intelligence and UNSCOM, the weapons inspectors, had with Hussein Kamel, and I have these transcripts, it's amazing that -- you know, what Hussein Kamel says is that he ordered all the weapons destroyed, that there were no weapons left," Scott Ritter told National Public Radio. "There is no way Iraq could have anthrax or botulinum toxin today unless they reconstitute a manufacturing base, and in order to do that they would have to procure large-scale fermentation units, which again is a controlled item carefully watched by a number of intelligence services, and nobody has provided information that Iraq has done this."

In other words, you can do this stuff in a Peterbilt trailer.

I don't believe a word the Bushites say -- they are repeatedly shown to be inveterate liars and immoral scoundrels. I believe this semi truck -- or, rather this drawing of a semi truck (used at the above mentioned Powell dog and pony show at the UN -- or maybe it was a snake oil salesman presentation) -- is a red herring. Iraq had no biological weapons prior to Bush's invasion. In fact, the last time Iraq had bio and chem weapons, before the Gulf War, they were sold to Saddam by red-blooded US corporations. Of course, back in the day, Saddam was using this nasty stuff on Iranians -- to the glee of Reagan and Dubya's daddy -- and so it wasn't a big deal. Washington was interested in having the Iranians and Iraqis kill each other off -- and thanks to their complicity millions died (remember Iran-Contra?) -- so when these same people (such as Elliot Abrams, Iran-Contra criminal) now say they "liberated" the Iraqi people, you can rest assured they are nothing more than incorrigible liars.

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Just to show how thankful the Bushites and their Republican fellow travelers in Congress are for all the lies, evasions, and fabrications spun by the Ministry of Propaganda -- otherwise known as Fox News -- GOP-controlled House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., R-Wis. remarked the other day, "When my wife doesn't get a good dose of Fox News every day she gets grumpy, so there are some of us who appreciate what you are doing." In other words, the truth makes Ms. Sensenbrenner grouchy.

"News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch's attempt to gain control of the nation's largest satellite television company was warmly received by the GOP-controlled House Judiciary Committee on Thursday as Republican reaction to the $6.6 billion deal fell just short of fawning," reports Reuters.

Murdoch was in Washington the other day because his Fox News apparently does not pollute enough minds. Murdoch wants to buy US satellite provider DirecTV from Hughes Electronics Corp. for $6.6 billion in stock and cash. "DirecTV and its 11.3 million subscribers would provide a big U.S. platform to distribute the news and sports channels it owns, and complement its extensive satellite operations in Europe and Asia," reports Reuters. In other words, the reactionary and Australian-born Murdoch will not rest until his version of "fair and balanced" is the norm. He wants the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department's antitrust division to help him make Fox's all propaganda, all the time programming a reality. No doubt the eager Republicans will oblige.

"The connections between (Fox News chairman and CEO) Roger Ailes and the White House. What the hell is that all about? It's like there's a direct line between the administration and Ailes. You can see it. There are plenty of political and policy implications in that," said Michigan Democratic Rep. John Conyers.

It should come as no surprise that Ailes has the undivided attention of Bush Junior. "According to Bob Woodward, shortly after September 11 Ailes sent Bush an 'important-looking confidential communication' in which Mr. Ailes was offering a 'back-channel message' to Bush, telling him what he should do next to avoid losing the confidence of the American people. Ailes, of course, claims that he was offering his advice 'as a human being and a citizen' -- a human being and a citizen who just happens to run a cable news organization which spends all its time brown-nosing Bush, mind you. Oh, but wait, they're fair and balanced. So of course they wouldn't give Bush any help getting his message across after 9/11, and their chairman was acting completely independently. How foolish of us," opines Democratic Underground sarcastically.

"When they use the term fair and balanced reporting, it really means conservative and biased," said Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif. She told Murdoch hat he was "scaring the hell out of her."

But never mind. The Republicans are thankful for Murdoch's propaganda services. "Thank you for what you've done," fawned Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah. "Thank you for your risk-taking."

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"[Neocon swami Leo] Strauss was neither a liberal nor a democrat," Shadia Drury, author of 1999's Leo Strauss and the American Right, told Jim Lobe recently. "Perpetual deception of the citizens by those in power is critical [in Strauss's view] because they need to be led, and they need strong rulers to tell them what's good for them." Gee, sounds like Wolfie and Rummy and the would-be war profiteer Perle talking.

"Like Plato, Strauss taught that within societies, 'some are fit to lead, and others to be led', according to Drury. But, unlike Plato, who believed that leaders had to be people with such high moral standards that they could resist the temptations of power, Strauss thought that "those who are fit to rule are those who realize there is no morality and that there is only one natural right, the right of the superior to rule over the inferior," writes Lobe.

For Strauss, "'Secular society in their view is the worst possible thing,' because it leads to individualism, liberalism and relativism, precisely those traits that might encourage dissent, which in turn could dangerously weaken society's ability to cope with external threats. 'You want a crowd that you can manipulate like putty,' according to Drury."

"Like Hobbes, he thought the fundamental aggressiveness of human nature could be restrained only through a powerful state based on nationalism. 'Because mankind is intrinsically wicked, he has to be governed,' he once wrote. 'Such governance can only be established, however, when men are united -- and they can only be united against other people.'"

Like maybe united against Iraqis, Syrians, Iranians, and other less than formidable "enemies." No sense going after somebody who might take a chunk out of the empire, say like North Korea with its alleged nukes. No, it's better to pick on helpless Iraqi women and stone-throwing Palestinian kids.

"'Strauss thinks that a political order can be stable only if it is united by an external threat,' Drury wrote in her book. 'Following Machiavelli, he maintains that if no external threat exists, then one has to be manufactured. Had he lived to see the collapse of the Soviet Union, he would have been deeply troubled because the collapse of the 'evil empire' poses a threat to America's inner stability."

Problem is, the neocons are not very adept at manufacturing "external threats." But then, I suppose, considering how gullible the American people are, the Bushites believe they really don't have to pay much attention to detail.

"So don't fall for the liberal line that all people are the same," writes the neocon Michael Ledeen. "They are not. Societies with a majority of good people are rare, and are constantly threatened by the evil-minded world outside. Peace is NOT the normal condition of mankind, and moments of peace are invariably the result of war. Since we want peace, we must win the war. Since our enemies are inclined to do evil, we must win decisively and then impose virtue on their survivors, so that they can't do any more evil to us. Your immediate predecessors did not understand this; those who challenged us all lived to fight another day, and you must now deal with them."

I don't recall Saddam Hussein ever doing "evil" to us, but never mind. Of course, the Palestinians are doing "evil" to the Israelis, but that's usually the result after fifty years of killing their kids and destroying their homes -- and for the neocons, at least the Zionist neocons, what Arabs do to Israelis is more important than what a few Arabs (if they were indeed Arabs) did to the unfortunates in the WTC on the morning of September 11, 2001.

Hide your kids if they are of draft age. These demented folks who happen to control Washington and America's awesome death machine are not going to stop now that they're on a roll. Chances are, sooner or later, they're going to need your son to serve as cannon fodder.

Unfortunately, the only way you're going to get them to stop is to take it to the street.