News -n- Views

24 August 2006

Bush Faces Political Opposition on War in Iraq

As reported yesterday, the US President stated on television that Iraq had nothing to do with 911. It is also clear that there were never any weapons of mass destruction, and Saddam has been captured and is on trial.

And yet, despite all of this, Bush is still insisting that the US continue occupying Iraq, as reported yesterday:

“Any sign that says we’re going to leave before the job is done simply emboldens terrorists,” he said at a press conference. “We’re not leaving, so long as I’m the president. That would be a huge mistake.” (Source: Yahoo News: Bush Faces Revolt on Iraq)

What “terrorists”? Iraq had nothing to do with 911. Bush is recorded on tape as saying so himself. And if we compare events in the US with events in Iraq - who is terrorizing who? Who are the real terrorists here? Who are the aggressors? Who is the one who has attacked and occupied another country?

So, Bush wants to “stay the course” in Iraq, even though it is clear that Iraq was, and is continuing to be, attacked without any reason. Or rather, without any reason that normal people would consider a “good reason” - i.e. self-defense. Iraq had nothing to do with 911. Iraq was not going to attack the US with weapons of mass destruction. Iraq was not a threat. And yet, the US attacked and occupied Iraq. Why?

Greed. A hunger for oil and money and control. And a twisted logic that states that preemptive attacks are legitimate against those who are not “with you” - i.e. those who are not good little girls and boys and do what the US tells them to do. As a result of this, Iraq has been decimated and thousands have died, and are still dying at the time of this writing.

It is becoming so obvious now that even some of Bush’s fellow republicans are beginning to change their tune regarding Iraq.

But more than a few politicians and commentators once firmly in Bush’s camp have joined the doubters on the war, which has cost hundreds of billions of dollars and the lives of more than 2,600 US troops.

Republican Representative Walter Jones (news, bio, voting record), who once helped rename French fries “freedom fries” in anger at Paris’s opposition to the conflict, reversed course in June 2005 and urged Bush to set a withdrawal timetable.

Michael Fitzpatrick, another Republican representative who backed the March 2003 invasion, has reportedly branded both his Democratic rival — a decorated Iraq war veteran who supports a US redeployment — and Bush as “extreme.”

“Congressman Fitzpatrick says no to both extremes: No to
President Bush’s ’stay-the-course’ strategy, … and no to Patrick Murphy’s ‘cut-and-run’ approach,” said a Fitzpatrick campaign flier described in the Washington Times.

Moderate Republican Christopher Shays, who backed the use of force to oust
Saddam Hussein, told the Washington Post last week that he would propose a time frame for a US withdrawal from Iraq. […]

(Source: Yahoo News: Bush Faces Revolt on Iraq)

Will any of this sway the US President, even if the opposition grows? It is doubtful. As he said himself: “We’re not leaving, so long as I’m the president.”

Well, with any luck, that won’t be for very much longer - and hopefully, it will be before too many more people are slaughtered on the altar of greed and power.










23 August 2006

Bush Says Iraq Had “Nothing” to do with 9/11

The folks over at thinkprogress.org reported the following earlier this week. So the question arises - what in the world is the US doing in Iraq?

Bush Now Says What He Wouldn’t Say Before War: Iraq Had ‘Nothing’ To Do With 9/11

President Bush was in the midst of explaining how the attacks of 9/11 inspired his “freedom agenda” and the attacks on Iraq until a reporter, Ken Herman of Cox News, interrupted to ask what Iraq had to do with 9/11. “Nothing,” Bush defiantly answered. Watch it.

[VIDEO CLIP]

To justify the war, Bush informed Congress on March 19, 2003 that acting against Iraq was consistent with “continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.”

As ThinkProgress has repeatedly documented, Vice President Cheney cited “evidence” cooked up by Douglas Feith and others to claim it was “pretty well confirmed” that Iraq had contacts with 9/11 hijackers.

More generally, in the lead-up to the war in Iraq, the administration encouraged the false impression that Saddam had a role in 9/11. Bush never stated then, as he does now, that Iraq had “nothing” to do with 9/11. Only after the Iraq war began did Bush candidly acknowledge that Iraq was not operationally linked to 9/11.

Full transcript:

BUSH: The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East.

QUESTION: What did Iraq have to do with it?

BUSH: What did Iraq have to do with what?

QUESTION: The attack on the World Trade Center.

BUSH: Nothing. Except it’s part of — and nobody has suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a — Iraq — the lesson of September 11th is take threats before they fully materialize, Ken. Nobody’s ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq.

(Source: ThinkProgress.org: Bush Now Says What He Wouldn’t Say Before War: Iraq Had ‘Nothing’ To Do With 9/11










8 January 2006

Evidence That a Frozen Fish Didn’t Impact the Pentagon on 9/11, and Neither Did a Boeing 757

New article from Signs of the Times:

Evidence That a Frozen Fish Didn’t Impact the Pentagon on 9/11, and Neither Did a Boeing 757  by Joe Quinn

After the release of the QFG Pentagon Strike Flash Animation on August 23rd, 2004, a veritable onslaught of new articles were published that sought to dismiss the “no plane at the Pentagon” theory. One such article, that is frequently referenced by certain ‘9/11 researchers’ was authored by a member of the forum at the “Above Top Secret” (ATS) website. Interestingly, the article was written just a few weeks after the release of the Pentagon Strike Flash animation, which by then, was winging its way around the world and into the inboxes of millions of ordinary citizens. Perhaps you were one of them…

The claim that promoters of the “no plane at the Pentagon” theory were doing immense damage to the truth/accountability movement was raised in Mike Ruppert’s book Crossing the Rubicon. In a stunning piece of warped logic, Ruppert claimed that, while he is quite convinced that it was not Flight 77 that hit the Pentagon, he chose not to talk about or deal with the subject as part of his overall case for conspiracy because of the “implications”. According to Ruppert, the “implications” are that anyone that suggests that Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon, is then forced to answer the question as to what actually happened to Flight 77. If that’s the case, then we better just wrap up the whole 9/11 Truth Movement and go home and have a beer.

Ruppert balks at the idea of offering an answer to this question to his readers because, he claims, most people would be unable to accept it, and, he suggests, 9/11 researchers serve only to alienate the public support that they wish to attract by stretching the boundaries of the collective belief system. What Ruppert doesn’t explain is why any member of the public would happily accept that U.S. government officials participated in the slaughter of the passengers on Flights 11 and 175 and the occupants of the WTC towers (as he details in his book) yet would be unable to accept the idea that the same government officials played a part in disposing of the passengers of Flight 77 in a much less imaginative way. Let’s be honest here, in the context of 9/11 being the work of a faction of the US government and military, the answer to the question as to what happened to Flight 77 if it didn’t hit the Pentagon is quite obvious - Flight 77 and its occupants were flown to a specific destination and モdisposed ofヤ by the conspirators. That’s pretty simple; cut and dried; no need for much stretching there! But, for some reason, Ruppert (and others affected by this paramoralism) seems to think that killing thousands of citizens by crashing airplanes is easier to accept than cold bloodedly murdering them “in person,” as it were.

Since Ruppert’s declaration about the “no plane at the Pentagon” theory, many other “9/11 researchers”, such as Mark Rabinowitz and Jim Hoffman, have seized upon Ruppert’s idea and even expanded upon it by suggesting that the “no planers” are actually government agents trying to discredit the REAL 9/11 researchers with the ‘kooky’ “no plane” theory.

In order to really understand the insidiousness of this patronising claim that the public could not accept the implications of the idea that a Boeing 757 did not hit the Pentagon, let’s look at the “evidence” as presented by the ATS member that it really was Flight 77 that impacted the Pentagon that bright September morn.

First, however, I would like to make a few observations about 9/11 research in general.

Anyone who takes on the formidable task of digging into the events of 9/11 is immediately at a disadvantage because the US government has already declared the case closed. The government knows how it happened and who did it and have informed the entire world. As a result, there is no possibility of access to the raw data, to the crime scene or analyses of same. Here is where we meet the major obstacle: since the US government is the prime suspect, we cannot simply take as truth everything - or anything - that they say in relation to the case.

Investigation of the 9/11 attacks should be approached like any murder investigation. When confronted with a murder case (like 9/11) and a suspect that has a history of deceit and murder (like the US government and its agencies) and who had an opportunity and a motive to commit the murder, do you take as fact any claims by the suspect that he did not commit the murder? Do you seek to fit the facts around his claim that he did not commit the murder? When you confront evidence that suggests that the suspect is lying about his account of where he was and what he was doing, or you find inconsistencies and logistically impossible scenarios in his account, do you ignore these and focus only on the fact that he said he did not commit the murder and try to find and present evidence that backs up his claim to innocence?

The fact is that researchers coming to the 9/11 investigation after the fact, and after the case has been officially closed, are not only confronted with the task of trying to find out what actually happened - they also face the already well established public belief, by which they themselves are also influenced, that the official story is the truth. The best approach for any 9/11 researcher with honest intentions is to, if possible, wipe from their minds the official version of events and take the attitude of someone who has just returned from a 5 year trip to the outer reaches of the solar system, during which time they had no communication with planet earth. Start with a beginner’s mind, turn off the sound of all the conflicting voices and their claims, and just LOOK at the evidence without prejudice.

Now, if the person with a truly open mind is given all of the publicly available evidence and has been additionally furnished with knowledge of the effects of airplane crashes and that of missile impacts, what would such a person conclude about the most likely cause of the Pentagon damage? Of course, not all of the evidence was made available to the public, but there is still sufficient visual evidence from “ground zero” (both in terms of place and TIME), to form a pretty good “best guess”. For a definitive conclusion to be reached, the “private” evidence, like the video tapes of the event that the FBI confiscated, would have to be released, and we don’t expect that to happen any time soon. Of course, the fact that the definitive evidence of the videos has not been released is in itself a key piece of evidence that suggests that the official story of what hit the Pentagon is not the real story.

The purpose of this small introduction is to prepare the reader for the fact that, in his attempted rebuttal of the no 757 at the Pentagon theory, the ATS article author, CatHerder, appears to have succumbed to the influence of the mainstream media shills that have incessantly parroted the official government story about what happened on 9/11 for the three years prior to the writing of the article. As such, he has failed to don the mantle of objective observer of the available evidence that is so crucial to finding the truth, and instead exerts a lot of effort to make the available evidence fit the government claim that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon on the morning of September 11th 2001. Either that, or he/she is part of the “official government cover-up.” After you read everything below, you can make a call on that one yourself.

Here is the ATS article as it appears on the ATS site with my comments interspersed in blue text.  [….]

For the rest of the article, go to Evidence That a Frozen Fish Didn’t Impact the Pentagon on 9/11, and Neither Did a Boeing 757.













27 July 2005

Cheney’s Plan is to Nuke Iran

This just in from Justin Raimondo at Anti-War.com:

Cheney’s Plan: Nuke Iran

A recent poll shows six in ten Americans think a new world war is coming: the same poll says about 50 percent approve of the dropping of the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. Somewhat inexplicably, about two-thirds say nuking those two cities was “unavoidable.” One can only wonder, then, what their reaction will be to this ominous news, revealed in a recent issue of The American Conservative by intelligence analyst Philip Giraldi:

“The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing – that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack – but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.”

Two points leap out at the reader – or, at least, this reader – quite apart from the moral implications of dropping nukes on Iran. The first is the completely skewed logic: if Iran has nothing to do with 9/11-II, then why target Tehran? As in Iraq, it’s all a pretext: only this time, the plan is to use nuclear weapons. We’ll wipe out the entire population of Iran’s capital city because, as Paul Wolfowitz said in another context, “it’s doable.”

The other weird aspect of this “nuke Iran” story is the triggering mechanism: a terrorist attack in the U.S. on the scale of 9/11. While it is certain that our government has developed a number of scenarios for post-attack action, one has to wonder: why develop this plan at this particular moment? What aren’t they telling us?

I shudder to think about it.

The more I look at it, and the more I think of it, the more I sense a monumental evil casting its shadow over the world, and I have to tell you, it makes me wonder how much more time I want to spend on this earth. In my more pessimistic moments, I doubt whether we can avoid the horrific fate that seems to await us just around the next corner, the next moment, looming over the globe like a gigantic devil stretching its wings and blotting out the sun.

It seems to me that the question of whether life is really worth living anymore is inextricably bound up with the question of whether or not these madmen can be stopped. If not, then the only alternative is to live it up while we can and laugh defiantly in the face of the apocalypse. Why write columns, why comment at all, if we can’t have any effect on the outcome? […]

Read full article here.















30 April 2005

Incoming Cloud Forces Bush into Safe Bunker

The Guardian reported the following yesterday. Odd how a little cloud got the President rushing to safety in a bunker, while on 911, when one would have thought he would have felt in considerably more danger, he was calmly sitting in front of a group of gradeschoolers.

Interesting, that.

Incoming cloud forces Bush into safe bunker

Julian Borger in Washington
Friday April 29, 2005
The Guardian

President George Bush was bundled into an underground bunker, Dick Cheney was evacuated to an “undisclosed location” and heavily armed secret servicemen took up defensive positions when a fast-moving cloud scudded towards the White House, it was reported yesterday.

The cloud that materialised 30 miles south of Washington on Wednesday morning was so dense it triggered radar monitors on the Domestic Events Network, intended to prevent a repeat of the September 11 attacks.

As an anti-aircraft missile battery on the roof of a nearby building was raised to the fire position, a Black Hawk helicopter was scrambled to take a look, but saw nothing except some clouds, one of which turned out to be the suspected aggressor.

The customs and border protection agency did not return calls seeking comment yesterday, but a spokesman, Gary Bracken, told the Washington Post that a cloud was to blame. “It does happen,” he said. “We have to deal with weather anomalies showing up on the radar screen.”

Such false alarms are common, triggered by clouds, flocks of birds or private aircraft wandering off course, but the White House confirmed yesterday that this was not the first time since September 11 2001 that the president has taken refuge in the hi-tech bunker beneath the building, the Presidential Emergency Operations Centre.

It was not clear yesterday what it was about Wednesday morning’s cloud that created such havoc. It was moving at about the speed of a helicopter, disappearing and then appearing again on the radar screen, but the same could be said of many clouds.

The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said the president was in the bunker for only a short time - the all-clear was sounded about 20 minutes after the first alert. US officials claimed that the incident showed how smoothly the alert system was functioning.
By federal law since the September 11 attack, air passengers have to remain strapped in their seats within half an hour’s flight time of Washington. Private aircraft have also been stopped using the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, just across the Potomac river from the Capitol building and the White House, although that ban is expected to be lifted soon.

The Signs of the Times had an interesting comment on this report, relating it to possible UFOs:

Comment: Apart from the pathetic image of macho Bush and Cheney fleeing to a bunker at the approach of a cloud, we note the marked difference in protocol from that which was observed on the morning of September 11th 2001. On that particular day, when the US was clearly being attacked by sources unknown, and it was certainly possible that the life of the President was in danger, Bush was allowed to remain exposed for at least 20 minutes as he sat reading to children at a school in Florida. Why was there no immediate “whisking away” at the first sign of danger then? Is it possible that Bush’s handlers were well aware of the nature of the threat and knew that there was no plan to “take out” the President?

And what type of threat might there be hidden in a cloud? The following is a report on a UFO sighting:

“On many occasions, UFOs are reported to become gradually engulfed in a vapor cloud. The fully developed cloud then looks like any other cloud in the sky and affords the UFO a very convenient “hiding place.”

“The series of photos made by the army private shows not only the rare ring object, but also shows it gradually becoming engulfed in a vapor cloud.”

Could this be what the White House was really upset about?






10 March 2005

The 911 Truth Movement and Peak Oil

Joe Quinn has written a good article about peak oil and the 911 Truth Movement called Ruppert and Hopsicker Co-Opting the 9-11 Truth Movement which I thought might interest a passersby or two.

Be sure and take a look if you’re interested in these two topics.
















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