How a War With Iraq Will Change the World

[Tom Larkins]

Thanks for the links. Bases in North Iraq make sense considering the logistics, although I don't think taking Arab bases by force does IMO and I doubt that report. Sounds like baiting to me.

Wish they would use some of those special purpose bombs to knock out the broadcasts of our news media here in the US.

 

[MAJOR STONER]

They have Rice going around and doing a spin campaign for attacking Iraq, but there is no doctrine of international law which justifies regime change. Then again, Israeli intelligence officials have gathered evidence that Iraq is speeding up efforts to produce biological and chemical weapons, said Sharon aide Ranaan Gissin. "Any postponement of an attack on Iraq at this stage will serve no purpose," Hey, stop rushing us...first one to the end of times doesn't win..US adviser warns of Armageddon:

One of the Republican party's most respected foreign policy gurus yesterday appealed for President Bush to halt his plans to invade Iraq, warning of "an Armageddon in the Middle East".
The outspoken remarks from Brent Scowcroft, who advised a string of Republican presidents, including Mr Bush's father, represented an embarrassment for the administration on a day it was attempting to rally British public support for an eventual war.

The US national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, yesterday spelled out what she called the "very powerful moral case" for toppling Saddam Hussein. "We certainly do not have the luxury of doing nothing," she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. She said the Iraqi leader was "an evil man who, left to his own devices, will wreak havoc again on his own population, his neighbours and, if he gets weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them, all of us".

But while Ms Rice was making the case for a pre-emptive strike, the rumble of anxiety in the US was growing louder. A string of leading Republicans have expressed unease at the administration's determination to take on President Saddam, but the most damning critique of Mr Bush's plans to date came yesterday from Mr Scowcroft.

The retired general, who also advised Presidents Nixon and Ford, predicted that an attack on Iraq could lead to catastrophe.

"Israel would have to expect to be the first casualty, as in 1991 when Saddam sought to bring Israel into the Gulf conflict. This time, using weapons of mass destruction, he might succeed, provoking Israel to respond, perhaps with nuclear weapons, unleashing an Armageddon in the Middle East," Mr Scowcroft wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

The Israeli government has vowed it would not stand by in the face of attacks as it did in 1991, when Iraqi Scud missiles landed on Israeli cities. It claims it has Washington's backing for retaliation.

Mr Scowcroft is the elder statesman of the Republican foreign policy establishment, and his views are widely regarded as reflecting those of the first President Bush. The fierceness of his attack on current administration policy illustrates the gulf between the elder Bush and his son, who has surrounded himself with far more radical ideologues on domestic and foreign policy.

In yesterday's article, Mr Scowcroft argued that by alienating much of the Arab world, an assault on Baghdad, would halt much of the cooperation Washington is receiving in its current battle against the al-Qaida organisation.

"An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardise, if not destroy, the global counterterrorist campaign we have undertaken," Mr Scowcroft wrote.

Both the American and British governments are expected to time a public relations effort to rebuff the critics and build public support in the immediate run-up to an invasion.

Senior Whitehall figures say that crucial in that effort will be evidence that President Saddam is building up Iraq's chemical biological warfare capability and planning to develop nuclear weapons.

The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, confirmed yesterday that the Pentagon was considering a change in the status of a navy pilot shot down over Iraq 11 years ago. He is currently classified as "missing in action".

There have been reports that Lieutenant-Commander Michael Speicher was still being held by Iraq.

If he was reclassified as a prisoner of war, it would represent an additional source of conflict between Washington and Baghdad.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,775532,00.html

 

[MAJOR STONER]

Dream Police.

NASA plans to read terrorist's minds at airports
By Frank J. Murray
THE WASHINGTON TIMES


Airport security screeners may soon try to read the minds of travelers to identify terrorists.

Officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have told Northwest Airlines security specialists that the agency is developing brain-monitoring devices in cooperation with a commercial firm, which it did not identify.
Space technology would be adapted to receive and analyze brain-wave and heartbeat patterns, then feed that data into computerized programs "to detect passengers who potentially might pose a threat," according to briefing documents obtained by The Washington Times.
NASA wants to use "noninvasive neuro-electric sensors," imbedded in gates, to collect tiny electric signals that all brains and hearts transmit. Computers would apply statistical algorithms to correlate physiologic patterns with computerized data on travel routines, criminal background and credit information from "hundreds to thousands of data sources," NASA documents say.
The notion has raised privacy concerns. Mihir Kshirsagar of the Electronic Privacy Information Center says such technology would only add to airport-security chaos. "A lot of people's fear of flying would send those meters off the chart. Are they going to pull all those people aside?"
The organization obtained documents July 31, the product of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Transportation Security Administration, and offered the documents to this newspaper.
Mr. Kshirsagar's organization is concerned about enhancements already being added to the Computer-Aided Passenger Pre-Screening (CAPPS) system. Data from sensing machines are intended to be added to that mix.
NASA aerospace research manager Herb Schlickenmaier told The Times the test proposal to Northwest Airlines is one of four airline-security projects the agency is developing. It's too soon to know whether any of it is working, he says.
"There are baby steps for us to walk through before we can make any pronouncements," says Mr. Schlickenmaier, the Washington official overseeing scientists who briefed Northwest Airlines on the plan. He likened the proposal to a super lie detector that would also measure pulse rate, body temperature, eye-flicker rate and other biometric aspects sensed remotely.
Though adding mind reading to screening remains theoretical, Mr. Schlickenmaier says, he confirms that NASA has a goal of measuring brain waves and heartbeat rates of airline passengers as they pass screening machines.
This has raised concerns that using noninvasive procedures is merely a first step. Private researchers say reliable EEG brain waves are usually measurable only by machines whose sensors touch the head, sometimes in a "thinking cap" device. "To say I can take that cap off and put sensors in a doorjamb, and as the passenger starts walking through [to allow me to say] that they are a threat or not, is at this point a future application," Mr. Schlickenmaier said in an interview.
"Can I build a sensor that can move off of the head and still detect the EEG?" asks Mr. Schlickenmaier, who led NASA's development of airborne wind-shear detectors 20 years ago. "If I can do that, and I don't know that right now, can I package it and [then] say we can do this, or no we can't? We are going to look at this question. Can this be done? Is the physics possible?"
Two physics professors familiar with brain-wave research, but not associated with NASA, questioned how such testing could be feasible or reliable for mass screening. "What they're saying they would do has not been done, even wired in," says a national authority on neuro-electric sensing, who asked not to be identified. He called NASA's goal "pretty far out."
Both professors also raised privacy concerns.
"Screening systems must address privacy and 'Big Brother' issues to the extent possible," a NASA briefing paper, presented at a two-day meeting at Northwest Airlines headquarters in St. Paul, Minn., acknowledges. Last year, the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional police efforts to use noninvasive "sense-enhancing technology" that is not in general public use in order to collect data otherwise unobtainable without a warrant. However, the high court consistently exempts airports and border posts from most Fourth Amendment restrictions on searches.
"We're getting closer to reading minds than you might suppose," says Robert Park, a physics professor at the University of Maryland and spokesman for the American Physical Society. "It does make me uncomfortable. That's the limit of privacy invasion. You can't go further than that."
"We're close to the point where they can tell to an extent what you're thinking about by which part of the brain is activated, which is close to reading your mind. It would be terribly complicated to try to build a device that would read your mind as you walk by." The idea is plausible, he says, but frightening.
At the Northwest Airlines session conducted Dec. 10-11, nine scientists and managers from NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., proposed a "pilot test" of the Aviation Security Reporting System.
NASA also requested that the airline turn over all of its computerized passenger data for July, August and September 2001 to incorporate in NASA's "passenger-screening testbed" that uses "threat-assessment software" to analyze such data, biometric facial recognition and "neuro-electric sensing."
Northwest officials would not comment.
Published scientific reports show NASA researcher Alan Pope, at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., produced a system to alert pilots or astronauts who daydream or "zone out" for as few as five seconds.
The September 11 hijackers helped highlight one weakness of the CAPPS system. They did dry runs that show whether a specific terrorist is likely to be identified as a threat. Those pulled out for special checking could be replaced by others who do not raise suspicions. The September 11 hijackers cleared security under their own names, even though nine of them were pulled aside for extra attention.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020817-704732.htm

 

[MAJOR STONER]

We all remember the eco damage that can arise when Sadam blew the caps off the oil wells and started those fires after the last war. We all know that nuclear weapons have been tested in space, the atmosphere, on the ground, underground, and under the sea. Does anyone know what happens when you nuke an oil field?

 

[MAJOR STONER]

In the waning hours of Operation Desert Fox in 1998, a British missile sheared off the top of a military hangar in southern Iraq and exposed a closely guarded secret. Plainly visible in the rubble was a new breed of Iraqi drone aircraft -- one that defense analysts now believe was specially modified to spread deadly chemicals and germs.

Up to a dozen of the unmanned airplanes were spotted inside the hangar, each fitted with spray nozzles and wing-mounted tanks that could carry up to 80 gallons of liquid anthrax. If flown at low altitudes under the right conditions, a single drone could unleash a toxic cloud engulfing several city blocks, a top British defense official concluded. He dubbed them "drones of death."

Today, Iraq's drones loom even larger as the Bush administration weighs a possible new strike against Saddam Hussein. The United States and Britain have charged that the Iraqi president is working to obtain chemical, biological and possibly nuclear weapons. A key unanswered question is whether Iraq has the means to deliver such weapons.

According to U.S. and allied intelligence officials and U.N. documents, Iraq has worked with apparently mixed success to diversify a patchwork collection of delivery vehicles that now includes not only Scud missiles, which it launched during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, but also a variety of novel machines for spraying pathogens and poisons from aircraft. Iraq deployed but never used chemical and biological weapons in the 1991 war.

The military significance of the threat posed by such an arsenal remains less clear. Drones are easy to shoot down, and it is far from certain that an aircraft-mounted chemical or biological attack would work -- especially against troops, experts familiar with the weapons systems note. Meanwhile, Iraq's missile industry, which struggled to tame the unreliable Scud before the 1991 war, is hobbled by U.N. trade sanctions, which are now in their 12th year.

But at a minimum, the analysts agree, Iraq's expanded capabilities appear to offer new ways to terrorize civilian populations, including the cities of Israel, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, among others that could bear the brunt of Iraqi retaliation.

"These aircraft are intended to fly below radar so the Israelis can't detect them -- the Iraqis themselves have said so," said a British biowarfare expert who investigated Iraq's experiments with aircraft-mounted biological weapons. "From that altitude, you can do a lot of damage over a very large area."

The delivery systems believed to be available for such an attack include at least some of the dozen drones targeted in the British raid four years ago. The L-29 aircraft, as the drones are known, are one of at least three types of pilotless planes Iraq has tested for use in biological and chemical attacks, according to U.S. intelligence officials and U.N. documents.

In addition, Iraq is known to have converted crop-dusting gear into a germ-spaying device mounted on helicopters, U.N. files show. It also has developed biowarfare "drop tanks" that can be mounted on Iraq's fastest fighter aircraft.

These little-noticed innovations -- many of them discovered by U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq -- supplement an established Iraqi ballistic missile program that Pentagon officials say is slowly being rebuilt after being nearly destroyed in previous U.S.-led attacks.

Both the CIA and the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency believe that Iraq's missile arsenal now includes two types of short-range missiles and a small number of medium-range Scuds that Iraq's military managed to hide from U.N. inspectors after the Gulf War. In addition, they say, Iraq probably retains dozens of missile warheads and possibly many more rockets and artillery shells that were filled with biological or chemical weapons years ago.

But large gaps exist in the West's knowledge of each of these programs.

The unknowns are critical, because they bear directly on the central question in the Iraq debate: whether Iraq's weapons of mass destruction pose a significant threat to the United States and its allies.

The precise nature of Iraq's arsenal of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons is also unclear. The CIA maintains that Iraq has residual stocks of biological and chemical weapons it manufactured before the 1991 war. U.S. intelligence officials also believe Iraq is secretly seeking to acquire new weapons, citing accounts by Iraqi defectors and satellite photos showing old weapons factories being rebuilt. Iraq's progress in acquiring nuclear weapons is uncertain. Former U.N. inspectors say Iraq was only months away from making a crude nuclear device when Operation Desert Storm began.

Airborne Threats


Before inspections abruptly ended in 1998, U.N. officials crisscrossed Iraq searching for a rumored new drone that could carry biological and chemical munitions. But not a shred of evidence turned up until Dec. 17 of that year, when British Tornado jets swooped over Iraq's Talil air base southeast of Baghdad and reaped an intelligence bonanza.

Photos of the ruined base revealed rows of the new drones, which Iraq had hidden inside a hangar at the remote base. The aircraft were identified as Czech-made L-29s, a light trainer jet Iraq had purchased years ago and converted to unmanned flight. The tanks for spraying biological and chemical agents appeared to be a unique Iraqi adaptation.

Small and maneuverable, the drones in theory could fly low over troop concentrations or cities and release a deadly mist of toxins. After reviewing the data, then-British Defense Minister George Robertson concluded that the aircraft were intended to inflict massive casualties on civilian populations.

U.S. intelligence officials are more skeptical of the L-29's capability, but they acknowledge that the drones and similar devices have given Iraq a number of options for using whatever biological and chemical resources it still has.

"Their [missile] warheads were not very good," said Charles Duelfer, the former deputy executive chairman of the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq, known as UNSCOM. "Most of the [biological and chemical] agent would incinerate on impact. That's why they became interested in other delivery methods, like remotely piloted vehicles."

UNSCOM discovered that Iraq had experimented with at least two unmanned aircraft before the 1991 war, including a modified version of the Russian-made MiG-21. In interviews with inspectors, Iraqi scientists revealed that Hussein became interested again in drones around 1995 and ordered a crash program to manufacture new ones.

Tests were apparently still underway in 1998 when the Talil hangar was struck. But at least some of the drones survived. Two years later, in 2000, U.S. surveillance aircraft documented what appeared to be a new series of aerial tests involving L-29s, the CIA revealed in a report to Congress released earlier this year.

"These refurbished trainer aircraft are believed to have been modified for delivery of chemical or, more likely, biological warfare agents," the CIA report said.

Besides the drones, two other kinds of airborne delivery systems were developed by Iraq and observed by U.N. officials during the final months of inspections, according to documents and interviews with former inspectors. Both devices appeared to be in the development stage, and U.N. officials were never able to determine how many of them Iraq possessed and what happened to them.

One of the machines, dubbed the "Zubaidy" device after its Iraqi inventor, was an adaptation of an industrial aerosol sprayer used for crop-dusting. The nozzles were modified for spraying bacteria, and the device was prepared for mounting on helicopters for close-range attacks, former inspectors said.

The other device, judged by former UNSCOM inspectors to be the most troubling of all, was a simple aircraft "drop tank," a torpedo-shaped container mounted on the wings of fighter jets as a reserve fuel tank. Iraqi engineers added a British-made electric valve and aerosol sprayer adapted for biological and chemical warfare, U.N. documents show.

UNSCOM found and destroyed four such tanks that had been designed for mounting on Iraq's top-of-the-line fighter, the French-made Mirage F-1. But at least eight other tanks the Iraqis acknowledged making were never found.

"The drop-tank project appears to have been pursued with utmost vigor," UNSCOM concluded in a 2000 report. While internal documents revealed that Iraq had tested the tanks using an anthrax-like bacterial simulant, Iraq's government "flatly refused to acknowledge the plan for this project," the report said.

Former inspectors found the drop tanks worrisome because they can carry greater payloads -- more than 500 gallons per tank. And, unlike drones and helicopters, the supersonic F-1 would pose a tougher target for antiaircraft batteries.

Still, the potential killing power of the device could be limited by many factors, including wind, sunlight and even the size of the aerosol droplets.

"Droplets that are too large may not be inhalable," said a British biological weapons expert familiar with the tanks. "But if they're too small, they may never fall to the ground."

Scuds and Other Missiles


Iraq has not attempted to hide all of its progress in weapons systems. Last year, at an annual military parade, Iraq displayed two short-range missiles, the Al-Samoud and the Ababil, and mobile launchers, the CIA told Congress.

"We believe that development . . . is maturing, and that a low-level operational capability could be achieved in the near future," the CIA concluded, citing in part images captured on videotape from the parade.

Both the liquid-fuel Al-Samoud -- which was successfully tested by Iraq two years ago -- and the solid-fuel Ababil are technically permitted under U.N. disarmament rules that allow Iraq to develop defensive missiles with a range of less than 150 kilometers, or about 100 miles. But intelligence officials believe Iraq is skirting the U.N. rules and secretly conducting research on missiles capable of reaching more distant targets.

"Baghdad also wants a long-range missile," Robert Walpole, the CIA's strategic and nuclear programs officer, said in testimony before the Senate in March. Even after devastating losses during the Gulf War and Desert Fox, Walpole said, Iraq "has been able to maintain the infrastructure and expertise necessary to develop longer-range systems."

It is relatively simple to extend the range of the Al-Samoud and Ababil by modifying payloads and fuel tanks, according to former U.N. inspectors and experts familiar with the missiles. Although there is no proof, many of the experts believe that Iraq is using its know-how to craft new medium-range missiles from the junked remains of outlawed Scud-B rockets obtained from the Soviet Union more than a decade ago. U.N. inspectors concluded that Iraq could have salvaged the equivalent of up to 25 Scuds from old engines and assemblies that escaped U.N. demolition crews.

"We assess that Iraq has a couple of handfuls" of missiles derived from the Scuds, said a senior Pentagon intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The parts are probably dispersed, but on short notice you could pull them together into a working missile and shoot it."

Iraq has long known how to outfit its missiles with biological and chemical warheads, despite technical problems that persistently plagued such efforts. In a declaration to the United Nations in 1995, Iraq acknowledged filling 25 Scud warheads with biowarfare agents, including anthrax spores and deadly botulinum toxin. But despite seven years of intensive inspections, the warheads were never found or accounted for.

Timothy V. McCarthy, a former UNSCOM deputy chief inspector and one of the agency's top missile experts, scoffs at Iraq's claims that the warheads were unilaterally destroyed, arguing that unconventional weapons are far too valuable to Hussein to be lightly discarded.

"Iraq demonstrated amply its ability to deliver chemical and biological weapons before the war," McCarthy said. "If one assumes Iraq retained its missile system, then that capability is still there."
http://www.un.org/Depts/unscom/

 

[Russ]

Originally posted by Lud:
...it seems that this article is the same as almost every other article on the subject I have read recently - it brings up a lot of interesting points while missing THE point.

THE point is what, specifically, is the vision for the future of the region

It's often said that we've never been to war with a country that has McDonald's. We simply need to export our capitalist, baseball-loving, SUV-driving culture to the Mideast and displace their medieval, suicide-bombing culture. We should start by jamming Al Jazeera and beaming in MTV in its place. In about 20 years there'll be McDonald's all over the Mideast.

------------------
Russ
'91 black/black

[This message has been edited by Russ (edited 08 September 2002).]

 

[Sig]

Lot's of interesting viewpoints. Although I must say it was quite funny to read a statement indicating that Sadaam is a legit head of state. Not trying to open a debate, but that is hilarious.I guess it is easy to be the "legit head of state" when you kill off all those who oppose you.

I think the most ironic thing about the whole Iraq mess is the hypocracy of all the so called human rights activists. They piss, moan, and take to the streets and airwaves about things like terrorists being held in military prison camps and the evil mosquitoes that might bite said terrorists.... But they don't whisper a peep about a regime that uses chemical weapons to kill thousands of its own people. I guess the Kurds and the Iraqi people aren't important enough for all the picket lovers to campaign for.

The only thing worse than fighting is not having anything worth fighting for. I believe there is a good deal of truth in that statment and relates directly to knowing when to draw the line.

I would also contend that a long-term vision for Iraq is necessary as Lud indicated, as is removing a regime that is trying to become the wholesaler of serious weapons to terrorist groups to use against U.S. interests. Lately, it is interesting to hear that some of the strongest proponents of ousting Sadaam aside from the administration are democrat leaders like Gephardt and Biden.
There are reasons govt can not reveal all they know about Iraq, but if they could I bet even the most steadfast treehugger in Berkely would pull the trigger. Obviously it's not that simple.
Another ironic thing about this mess is the Saudi position. I think they are quite scared that if Sadaam falls, that in time we will be purchasing a lot more oil from Iraq thus decreasing the influence Saudi Arabia has on the U.S.

 

[Sig]

This is how to ensure you never lose power:

Taken from a teaser for an upcoming article:

"
WHITE HOUSE WANTS GRAPHIC VIDEO SHOWING SADDAM ASSASSINATING OPPONENT

To help make the case for toppling Hussein, the White House is working hard to track down one graphic exhibit: a video, which is said to show Saddam presiding over the execution of one of his political opponents!

TIME magazine will report in Monday editions, Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan has told Bush about the video -- and the hunt is on. "

 

[MAJOR STONER]

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-12115835,00.html

 

[MAJOR STONER]

In 1992, a U.S. House Banking Committee investigating U.S. dealings with Iraq, found that the Bush administration deliberately helped Iraq with military equipment and training while remaining silent on Hussein's human rights atrocities. Fuel air explosives, nuclear plant equipment, bacterial research technology—all were sold to Iraq, sometimes directly to the Iraqi Defence Department.

And the U.S. was not alone in it's support of Hussein. John Tirman, former reporter for Time and executive director of the Winston Foundation for World Peace, reported that the Soviet Union and much of Western Europe, as well as the U.S., were assisting Iraq with military intelligence and loans. Bernstein reports that 86 German corporations had engaged in transactions with Iraq. British and French companies also cashed in with government approval.

The relationship between Western forces and Hussein was so tight that Iraq could get away with killing American troops. In May 1987, while the U.S. Navy was in the Gulf assisting Hussein in his use of chemical and biological weapons against Iran, the Iraqi military attacked the USS Stark, killing 37 of its crew members. The U.S. response amounted to a "slap on the wrist", according to Professor Chomsky.

Far from deny their support for the Iraqi dictator, U.S. officials were anxious to express their attitude toward Iraq as part of a great and honourable plan. After questioning the State Department in December 1989 as to why strategic and financial aid was being furnished to Iraq, Professor Chomsky was informed that such aid was putting the U.S. "in a better position to deal with Iraq on human rights issues".

It's an interesting exercise to compare the December 1989 position to that 12 months later when sanctions and threats of bombing were more fashionable methods of dealing with Iraq's human rights abuses.

The public record shows that before he invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Saddam Hussein was a trusted friend and trading partner of the U.S./UK, a fact ignored by most mainstream media when covering the current events and a fact seemingly forgotten by this administration and it's "civilised" colleagues.

Dick Cheney was Bush's Defense Secretary while Bush Sr. covertly armed and funded Hussein's military right up to the invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, eventually leaving the American taxpayers holding $2 Billion in defaulted Iraqi debt. Was Cheney simply "out of the loop" or asleep at the wheel? Or something worse?

Secretary of State James Baker was Bush's right hand man in the Iraqgate scheme. "And it emphasized the striking fact -- buried deep in a 1991 Washington Press piece -- that Secretary of State James Baker, after meeting with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz in October 1989, intervened personally to support U.S. government loan guarantees to Iraq."

Prior to the invasion, Kuwait had been slant drilling at the Iraq-Kuwait border into Iraq's oil, with equipment from National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft's former company. Bush's ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, told Hussein that the US "took no position" on Iraq's dispute with Kuwait. Five Days later, Iraq invaded. Then Bush ramped up Operation Desert Shield. During this phase Bush refused any offers from Hussein to withdraw and save face. The result was full-scale war -- Desert Storm.

 

[MAJOR STONER]

On 18 February 1998, a young substitute teacher from Columbus, Ohio faced off with one of the most powerful people in the world.

Dressed neatly in a white shirt and tie, Jon Strange was given the freak opportunity of putting a question to U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright live on national television.

Flanked by Clinton Administration heavyweights, Secretary Albright cast an arrogant and formidable image.

The question was clear and striking. Why bomb Iraq when other countries have committed similar violations? asked Mr Strange. Turkey slaughters its Kurdish population, Saudi Arabia persecutes religious and political dissidents, Israel slaughters and brutally imprisons Palestinians, Indonesian forces massacre East Timorese. Yet, in those cases, the issue of use of American force is never raised. Why the double standard?

The double standard of American foreign policy is glaringly obvious to anyone who knows a little about international affairs. And Jon Strange articulated it perfectly. Mass murder and execution by U.S. allies marches on in the face of stony silence, while enemies of the U.S. are condemned, starved and bombed for committing similar atrocities.

Albright's response could at best be described as evasive. What makes Hussein different, according to the Secretary, is that he has a proven record of repeatedly using chemical and biological weapons against his own people. "[T]he U.S. and the civilised world cannot deal with somebody who is willing to use weapons of mass destruction on his own people, not to speak of his neighbors."

This is part of the relentless and persistent line run by the Clinton Administration and its clients (including Australia). The pro-bombing forces have worked hard to swamp the mainstream media with their message: Saddam Hussein must be stopped because he has shown a propensity to use chemical and biological weapons against his own people.

Of course, there is overwhelming evidence that Hussein used chemical and biological weapons against his own people. On the public record are UN reports from the 1980's outlining Iraq's use of chemical weapons on Iranians and Kurds. And the U.S. and UK today rightly condemn Hussein for such atrocities.

But what was the U.S./UK response at the time of those atrocities?

The answer to this question reveals a somewhat less righteous position.

Putting aside the double standards of U.S./UK foreign policy in treating Hussein with contempt while overlooking other vicious dictators and regimes, let us focus on the U.S./UK attitude toward Iraq in relation to Hussein's use of chemical and biological weapons against his own people, as outlined by Secretary Albright.

The response to the 1988 massacre of Kurds at Halabja provides a good case study of the U.S./UK attitude. In March of that year, Hussein, encouraged by the results of using chemical and biological weapons in the war against Iran, engaged in the mass slaughter of Kurds at Halabja using nerve gas.

We find that the U.S./UK response at the time was quite different to that of today.

While already receiving aid from the U.S. and western Europe, Iraq's actions at Halabja resulted in increased financial and strategic support from the West. According to American intellectual dissident Noam Chomsky, Hussein's gassing of Kurds resulted in "no passionate calls for a military strike" against Iraq as is the case today. "[O]n the contrary, the U.S. and UK extended their strong support for the mass murderer".

Although Iraq was a country rich enough to be an exporter of food, Professor Chomsky reports of agricultural and food aid to Iraq following the atrocities at Halabja so as to repair soil damage and make up for production losses due to the deaths of local farmers.

Support for Iraq following the massacre at Halabja is not an isolated incident. There is vast evidence on the public record of U.S. and western Europe support for Hussein throughout the 1980's.

Loans were granted to Iraq by the U.S. Department of Agriculture which, according to former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, were illegally used to purchase 'dual-use' equipment such as jeeps and helicopters.

Dennis Bernstein, a journalist who wrote extensively on the role of Western corporations in supplying arms and equipment to Iraq, reported that in 1987, Vice President Bush not only encouraged Iraq to produce chemical and biological weapons, but was willing to commit U.S. financial and strategic resources to assist Hussein in doing so. According to Bernstein, the U.S. Department of Commerce granted low-interest loans to Iraq which were used to purchase "strategically sensitive" exports.

Further, he reported that the U.S sent technicians to Iraq to advise and train in the development of nuclear weaponry. All of this was done with the international community fully aware of the horrific actions of Hussein against the Kurds and Iranians.

Hussein was extremely useful in providing profits for U.S./UK businesses during the 80's and, through his U.S.-backed war with Iran, was effective in undermining regional solidarity and co-operation.

At some point, U.S./UK policy on Iraq did a backflip. Atrocities that the U.S./UK now condemn and use as justification for bombing and sanctions on Iraq, are the same atrocities which went ignored while U.S./UK support was extended.

Logic tells us that this dramatic change in policy has little to do with Hussein's horrific acts. Those acts were going on the entire time. The change in policy represents a realisation that Hussein was no longer an asset to furthering the interests of the West.

Yet we are now told by straight and solemn faces inn this administration that we must continue to bomb and starve the people of Iraq because Saddam has weapons of mass destruction.

The high morals and humanitarian ideals of this policy toward Iraq are perhaps best illustrated by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who, when questioned on 60 Minutes about her thoughts on the UN reports that the U.S.-led sanctions have killed over half a million Iraqi children in 5 years, replied that "it is a very hard choice" but "we think the price is worth it".

Let that inspire us all.

 

[Sig]

Not sure if those are your words in that last post, but if so.. that is quite a spin you assert in areas of that post. of plain truths as well though.

I do find it interesting that your position on Iraqi sanctions ommits so many key facts. Many of these are the very reasons Sadaam must go, with or without violence. To this day Sadaam uses the monies intended to buy food for his people to construct lavish palaces for himself in addition to his continuing spend on weaponry+scientists to develop new weaponry. If he did care about his people, the sanctions would serve their purpose; force him to feed his people with the money he once spent on weapons/research. Unfortuneately for the Iraqi people, he has little regard for their hunger as he continues to choose his own military desires over them. Sanctions do have a negative side to them, but the intensity of the hardships experienced by the Iraqi people under sanctions is not because of the sanctions, but because of Sadaam choices on how he spends his oil money. I have several friends who's families immigrated from Iraq in the late 80's. From their tellings, civilian life in Iraq is not much different today than it was pre-desert storm. The only way you were comfortable in Iraq was if you were in good with the ruling family.

Out of curiosity, Major, what do you see as a solution to the Iraqi mess. You have obviously put a good deal of mind share into the issue, what has that led you to think will work? From reading your thoughts, I can really only see where you poke holes in current rhetoric and past doings. Right now it looks like "coercive" UN inspections are gaining favor in the international and U.S community. My feeling on these inspections varies. But coercive or not, they will only be effective if they are done with no warning and no scheduled locations. Perhaps this is one way to avoid another all out war.

[This message has been edited by Sig (edited 12 September 2002).]

 

[MAJOR STONER]

As for a solution, there isn't one to be had anymore, we are now part of the problem. God set up the world so that every man could have everything he wants, but that isn't good for Capitalism.


On September 24, President George W. Bush appeared at a press conference in the White House Rose Garden to announce a crackdown on the financial networks of terrorists and those who support them. “U.S. banks that have assets of these groups or individuals must freeze their accounts,” Bush declared. “And U.S. citizens or businesses are prohibited from doing business with them.”


But the president, who is now enjoying an astounding 92 percent approval rating, hasn’t always practiced what he is now preaching: Bush’s own businesses were once tied to financial figures in Saudi Arabia who currently support bin Laden.


In 1979, Bush’s first business, Arbusto Energy, obtained financing from James Bath, a Houstonian and close family friend. One of many investors, Bath gave Bush $50,000 for a 5 percent stake in Arbusto. At the time, Bath was the sole U.S. business representative for Salem bin Laden, head of the wealthy Saudi Arabian family and a brother (one of 17) to Osama bin Laden. It has long been suspected, but never proven, that the Arbusto money came directly from Salem bin Laden. In a statement issued shortly after the September 11 attacks, the White House vehemently denied the connection, insisting that Bath invested his own money, not Salem bin Laden’s, in Arbusto.


In conflicting statements, Bush at first denied ever knowing Bath, then acknowledged his stake in Arbusto and that he was aware Bath represented Saudi interests. In fact, Bath has extensive ties, both to the bin Laden family and major players in the scandal-ridden Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) who have gone on to fund Osama bin Laden. BCCI defrauded depositors of $10 billion in the ’80s in what has been called the “largest bank fraud in world financial history” by former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. During the ’80s, BCCI also acted as a main conduit for laundering money intended for clandestine CIA activities, ranging from financial support to the Afghan mujahedin to paying intermediaries in the Iran-Contra affair.


When Salem bin Laden died in 1988, powerful Saudi Arabian banker and BCCI principal Khalid bin Mahfouz inherited his interests in Houston. Bath ran a business for bin Mahfouz in Houston and joined a partnership with bin Mahfouz and Gaith Pharaon, BCCI’s frontman in Houston’s Main Bank.


The Arbusto deal wasn’t the last time Bush looked to highly questionable sources to invest in his oil dealings. After several incarnations, Arbusto emerged in 1986 as Harken Energy Corporation. When Harken ran into trouble a year later, Saudi Sheik Abdullah Taha Bakhsh purchased a 17.6 percent stake in the company. Bakhsh was a business partner with Pharaon in Saudi Arabia; his banker there just happened to be bin Mahfouz.


Though Bush told the Wall Street Journal he had “no idea” BCCI was involved in Harken’s financial dealings, the network of connections between Bush and BCCI is so extensive that the Journal concluded their investigation of the matter in 1991 by stating: “The number of BCCI-connected people who had dealings with Harken—all since George W. Bush came on board—raises the question of whether they mask an effort to cozy up to a presidential son.” Or even the president: Bath finally came under investigation by the FBI in 1992 for his Saudi business relationships, accused of funneling Saudi money through Houston in order to influence the foreign policies of the Reagan and first Bush administrations.


Worst of all, bin Mahfouz allegedly has been financing the bin Laden terrorist network—making Bush a U.S. citizen who has done business with those who finance and support terrorists. According to USA Today, bin Mahfouz and other Saudis attempted to transfer $3 million to various bin Laden front operations in Saudi Arabia in 1999. ABC News reported the same year that Saudi officials stopped bin Mahfouz from contributing money directly to bin Laden. (Bin Mahfouz’s sister is also a wife of Osama bin Laden, a fact that former CIA Director James Woolsey revealed in 1998 Senate testimony.)


When President Bush announced he is hot on the trail of the money used over the years to finance terrorism, he must realize that trail ultimately leads not only to Saudi Arabia, but to some of the same financiers who originally helped propel him into the oil business and later the White House. The ties between bin Laden and the White House may be much closer than he is willing to acknowledge.


Just like Bin Laden planned the attacks years before the plan was carried out, I think the events taking place with Iraq have been scripted beforehand. I think that we can't legally use our own weapons against ourselves, but...


Here is one:

September 1-10, 2001 - In an exercise, Operation "Swift Sword" planned for four years, 23,000 British troops are steaming toward Oman. Although the 9/11 attacks caused a hiccup in the deployment the massive operation was implemented as planned. At the same time two U.S. carrier battle groups arrive on station in the Gulf of Arabia just off the Pakistani coast. Also at the same time, some 17,000 U.S. troops join more than 23,000 NATO troops in Egypt for Operation "Bright Star." All of these forces are in place before the first plane hits the World Trade Center. [Sources: The Guardian, CNN, FOX, The Observer, International Law Professor Francis Boyle, the University of Illinois.]


The truth is out there, REALLY 'OUT THERE'!
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/

 

[Sig]

Major-

Are you an investigative journalist? or even writing a book?

Not just in this thread, but also in all your other politico statments, your posts always appear pre-written. I always feel like I am reading the page of a book.

At any rate, the entire bin Laden family is an interesting story itself. Let's not forget that Osama has been tossed by his male relatives. In addition the bin Laden family was/is one of the most respected families in Saudi Arabia.

As far as strange ties from Bush's oil companies. Well, it wasn't too long ago, pre-USS Cole/pre desert storm, that even bin Laden himself was looked at as an ally. All kinds of to-be shady characters/enemies were used to battle the Soviets in the 80s. Back to the oil connection. I think it is somewhat near-sighted to single any one oil company out for connections to questionable folks in the Middle East. Just about every oil company in the U.S. and the world for that matter, even the giants, have a long history of connections to the every shady cat in the middle east. Does this make it right.... no. But it is and will be this way due to the amount of black gold those desert nations float on. Power corrupts everywhere, we think it is noticeable in America, sheesh it is 1000x worse in the middle east. Have you ever traveled there? It is absolutely insane the way things work. Very few have power and those that do must be worked with in order to do any business there. This of course is a necessity for those in the oil biz. Every single one of these families that have power are all corrupt to no end. This includes those friendly to the US. I use the word friendly very loosely.

There are way too many protest happy people out there always in search of a cause, even if they don't understand why they are screaming. Do those people ever frustrate someone like yourself.

I find that nothing kills the crediblity of a cause faster than pundants or spokesman that come off looking like fools that just want to protest for the sake of protesting. To those who really care about the cause, not just the activism, it must be like nails on a chalkboard hearing them speak.

I live just outside DC, so I get to see them just about every day on the news or in person. Seems there are always people protesting something, it has somewhat jaded me to all the extreme rants over megaphones and poster board calling for "U.S. out of everywhere"-taken from Lisa Simpson. My personal favorite was last fall when the groups were out protesting for Al Qaeda, becasue "they didn't do this(Sept 11) and America was falsely blaming Muslims because of racism." It still makes me laugh listening to the hippies that flew in from Marin Co, Portland, Or, or wherever they congregrate, vemently stand up for something that was so blatantly missguided. When the cameras turned off of them, they took back to passing around their joints and talking about how terrible of a nation we are.

Major, were you one of those protesters? : )



[This message has been edited by Sig (edited 12 September 2002).]

 

[Auraraptor]

Then again, Israeli intelligence officials have gathered evidence that Iraq is speeding up efforts to produce biological and chemical weapons, said Sharon aide Ranaan Gissin. "Any postponement of an attack on Iraq at this stage will serve no purpose,"

Just like when israel told the us that quadafi had another terrorist plot against us and we droped a missile on his 5 year old daughter. latter turner out to be fake info, and we happily got a wacko (but if someone shot your 5 yr old daughter what would u do)who really hates us.

non nuclear possiblity
As for if saddam attacks israel, israel counterattacks, sending missiles/planes over syria to get to iraq, syria shoots at israel, israel attacks syria, eqypt has to help syria, israel trys to send munistions around syria, crossing saudi and lebanon.
US runs to israel (again like always). other arab countries get pulled in because of US envolvment, US is alone as europe hates israel, polorizing any nato action/help, syria vetos any UN help as they are on the security council, killing UN help...and on and on and on

can we say WW3?



[This message has been edited by Auraraptor (edited 10 September 2002).]

 

[MAJOR STONER]

I don't know what Gephardt and Biden's motivations are, I would have to do some research into their campaign fund raising activities, but nine out of ten times it comes down to money, and who signs the campaign checks. Let us examine the money trail, just follow the oilly residue...

What do the Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea and the Balkans have in common? U.S. domination in these areas serves the interests of corporate multimillionaires such as Dick Cheney. As George Bush's secretary of defense, Cheney was chief prosecutor of Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Humanitarian rhetoric notwithstanding, the bombing of Iraq--which continues to this day--was primarily aimed at keeping the Persian Gulf safe for U.S. oil interests. Shortly after Desert Storm, the Associated Press reported Cheney's desire to broaden the United States' military role in the region to hedge future threats to gulf oil resources.

Cheney is CEO of Dallas-based Halliburton Co., the biggest oil-services company in the world. Because of the instability in the Persian Gulf, Cheney and his fellow oilmen have zeroed in on the world's other major source of oil--the Caspian Sea. Its rich oil and gas resources are estimated at $4 trillion by U.S. News and World Report. The Washington-based American Petroleum Institute, voice of the major U.S. oil companies, called the Caspian region, "the area of greatest resource potential outside of the Middle East." Cheney told a gaggle of oil industry executives in 1998, "I can't think of a time when we've had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian."

But Caspian oil presents formidable obstacles. Landlocked between Russia, Iran and a group of former Soviet republics, the Caspian's "black gold" raises a transportation dilemma. Russia wants Caspian oil to run through its territory to the Black Sea. The United States, however, favors pipelines through its ally, Turkey.

Although the cheapest route would traverse Iran to the Persian Gulf, U.S. sanctions against Iran block this alternative. Cheney has lobbied long and hard, as recently as June, for the lifting of those sanctions, to lubricate the Iran-Caspian connection. This is consistent with his position, described in a 1997 article in The Oil and Gas Journal, that oil and gas companies must do business in countries with policies unpalatable to the U.S.

Cheney also favors the repeal of section 907 of the 1992 Freedom Support Act, which severely restricts U.S. aid to Azerbaijan because of its ethnic cleansing of the Armenians in Nagorno Karabakh, a mountainous enclave in Azerbaijan. Why would Cheney choose to ignore Azerbaijan's human-rights violations? Because Azerbaijan, key to the richest Caspian oil deposits, is, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, "in fact, the focal point of the next round in the Great Game of Nations, a dangerous, hot-headed place with a Klondike of wealth beneath it. It is Bosnia with oil."

Cheney's oily fingerprints are all over the Balkans as well. Last year, Halliburton's Brown & Root Division was awarded a $180 million a year contract to supply U.S. forces in the Balkans. Cheney also sits on the board of directors of Lockheed Martin, the world's largest defense contractor. Replacing munitions used in the Balkans could result in $1 billion in new contracts.
War is big business and Dick Cheney is right in the middle of it.

Meanwhile, our energy and gasoline prices continue to soar in many parts of the United States. OPEC controls the oil production in the Persian Gulf. Cheney, worried about a falloff in investment, spoke in favor of OPEC cutting oil production so oil and gasoline prices could rise.
Cheney is ineluctably invested in keeping the world safe for his investments.

Although he stepped down as CEO of Halliburton, he still owns shares of stock in the conglomerate and his financial interests in the Persian Gulf, the Caspian region and the Balkans will invariably continue. Chosen by George W. Bush to bring foreign-policy expertise to the GOP presidential ticket, we can expect a Republic administration to increase U.S. intervention in regions when it suits Dick Cheney's and George Bush's oil and other corporate concerns.

Here is a timeline of events:

1. 1991-1997 - Major U.S. oil companies including ExxonMobil, Texaco, Unocal, BP Amoco, Shell and Enron directly invest almost billions in cash bribing heads of state in Kazakhstan to secure equity rights in the huge oil reserves in these regions. The oil companies further commit to future direct investments in Kazakhstan of $35 billion. Not being willing to pay exorbitant prices to Russia to use Russian pipelines the major oil companies have no way to recoup their investments. ["The Price of Oil," by Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, July 9, 2001 - The Asia Times, "The Roving Eye Part I Jan. 26, 2002.]

2. December 4, 1997 - Representatives of the Taliban are invited guests to the Texas headquarters of Unocal to negotiate their support for the pipeline. Subsequent reports will indicate that the negotiations failed, allegedly because the Taliban wanted too much money. [Source: The BBC, Dec. 4, 1997]

3. February 12, 1998 - Unocal Vice President John J. Maresca - later to become a Special Ambassador to Afghanistan - testifies before the House that until a single, unified, friendly government is in place in Afghanistan the trans-Afghani pipeline needed to monetize the oil will not be built. [Source: Testimony before the House International Relations Committee.]

4. 1998 - The CIA ignores warnings from Case Officer Robert Baer that Saudi Arabia was harboring an al-Q'aeda cell led by two known terrorists. A more detailed list of known terrorists is offered to Saudi intelligence in August 2001 and refused. [Source: Financial Times 1/12/01; See No Evil by a book by Robert Baer (release date Feb. 2002).

5. April, 1999 - Enron with a $3 billion investment to build an electrical generating plant at Dabhol India loses access to plentiful LNG supplies from Qatar to fuel the plant. Its only remaining option to make the investment profitable is a trans-Afghani gas pipeline to be built by Unocal from Turkmenistan that would terminate near the Indian border at the city of Multan. [Source: The Albion Monitor, Feb. 28, 2002.]

6. 1998 and 2000 - Former President George H.W. Bush travels to Saudi Arabia on behalf of the privately owned Carlyle Group, the 11th largest defense contractor in the U.S. While there he meets privately with the Saudi royal family and the bin Laden family. [Source: Wall Street Journal, Sept. 27, 2001. See also FTW, Vol. IV, No 7 - "The Best Enemies Money Can Buy," -
<http://www.fromthewilderness.com/members/carlyle.html>. ]

7. January, 2001 - The Bush Administration orders the FBI and intelligence agencies to "back off" investigations involving the bin Laden family, including two of Osama bin Laden's relatives (Abdullah and Omar) who were living in Falls Church, VA - right next to CIA headquarters. This followed previous orders dating back to 1996, frustrating efforts to investigate the bin Laden family. [Source: BBC Newsnight, Correspondent Gregg Palast - Nov 7, 2001].

8. Feb 13, 2001 - UPI Terrorism Correspondent Richard Sale - while covering a trial of bin Laden's Al Q'aeda followers - reports that the National Security Agency has broken bin Laden's encrypted communications. Even if this indicates that bin Laden changed systems in February it does not mesh with the fact that the government insists that the attacks had been planned for years.

9. May 2001 - Secretary of State Colin Powell gives $43 million in aid to the Taliban regime, purportedly to assist hungry farmers who are starving since the destruction of their opium crop in January on orders of the Taliban regime. [Source: The Los Angeles Times, May 22, 2001].

10. May, 2001 - Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, a career covert operative and former Navy Seal, travels to India on a publicized tour while CIA Director George Tenet makes a quiet visit to Pakistan to meet with Pakistani leader General Pervez Musharraf. Armitage has long and deep Pakistani intelligence connections and he is the recipient of the highest civil decoration awarded by Pakistan. It would be reasonable to assume that while in Islamabad, Tenet, in what was described as "an unusually long meeting," also met with his Pakistani counterpart, Lt. General Mahmud Ahmad, head of the ISI. [Source The Indian SAPRA news agency, May 22, 2001.]

11. June 2001 - German intelligence, the BND, warns the CIA and Israel that Middle Eastern terrorists are "planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture." [Source: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 14, 2001.]

12. July, 2001 - Three American officials: Tom Simmons (former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan), Karl Inderfurth (former Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian affairs) and Lee Coldren (former State Department expert on South Asia), meet with Pakistani and Russian intelligence officers in Berlin and tell them that the U.S. is planning military strikes against Afghanistan in October. A French book released in November, "Bin Laden - La Verite´ Interdite," discloses that Taliban representatives often sat in on the meetings. British papers confirm that the Pakistani ISI relayed the threats to the Taliban. [Source: The Guardian, September 22, 2001; the BBC, September 18, 2001.The Inter Press Service, Nov 16, 2001]

13. Summer, 2001 - The National Security Council convenes a Dabhol working group as revealed in a series of government e-mails obtained by The Washington Post and the New York Daily News. [Source: The Albion Monitor, Feb. 28, 2002]

14. Summer 2001 - According to a Sept. 26 story in Britain's The Guardian, correspondent David Leigh reported that, "U.S. department of defense official, Dr. Jeffrey Starr, visited Tajikistan in January. The Guardian's Felicity Lawrence established that US Rangers were also training special troops in Kyrgyzstan. There were unconfirmed reports that Tajik and Uzbek special troops were training in Alaska and Montana."

15. Summer 2001 (est.) - Pakistani ISI Chief General Ahmad (see above) orders an aide to wire transfer $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, who was according to the FBI, the lead terrorist in the suicide hijackings. Ahmad recently resigned after the transfer was disclosed in India and confirmed by the FBI. [Source: The Times of India, October 11, 2001.]

16. Summer 2001 - An Iranian man phones U.S. law enforcement to warn of an imminent attack on the World Trade Center in the week of September 9th. German police confirm the calls but state that the U.S. Secret Service would not reveal any further information. [Source: German news agency "online.de", September 14, 2001, translation retrieved from online.ie in Ireland.]

17. June 26, 2001 - The magazine indiareacts.com states that "India and Iran will 'facilitate' US and Russian plans for 'limited military action' against the Taliban." The story indicates that the fighting will be done by US and Russian troops with the help of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. [Source: indiareacts.com, June 26, 2001.]

18. August 2001 - The FBI arrests an Islamic militant linked to bin Laden in Boston. French intelligence sources confirm that the man is a key member of bin Laden's network and the FBI learns that he has been taking flying lessons. At the time of his arrest the man is in possession of technical information on Boeing aircraft and flight manuals. [Source: Reuters, September 13.]

19. August 11 or 12 - US Navy Lt. Delmart "Mike" Vreeland, jailed in Toronto on U.S. fraud charges and claiming to be an officer in U.S. Naval intelligence, writes details of the pending WTC attacks and seals them in an envelope which he gives to Canadian authorities. [Source: The Toronto Star, Oct. 23, 2001; Toronto Superior Court Records]

20. Summer 2001 - Russian intelligence notifies the CIA that 25 terrorist pilots have been specifically training for suicide missions. This is reported in the Russian press and news stories are translated for FTW by a retired CIA officer.

21. July 4-14, 2001 - Osama bin Laden receives treatments for kidney disease at the American hospital in Dubai and meets with a CIA official who returns to CIA headquarters on July 15th. [Source: Le Figaro, October 31st, 2001.]

22. August 2001 - Russian President Vladimir Putin orders Russian intelligence to warn the U.S. government "in the strongest possible terms" of imminent attacks on airports and government buildings. [Source: MS-NBC interview with Putin, September 15.]

23. August/September, 2001 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average drops nearly 900 points in the three weeks prior to the attack. A major stock market crash is imminent.

24. Sept. 3-10, 2001 - MS-NBC reports on September 16 that a caller to a Cayman Islands radio talk show gave several warnings of an imminent attack on the U.S. by bin Laden in the week prior to 9/11.

25. September 1-10, 2001 - In an exercise, Operation "Swift Sword" planned for four years, 23, 000 British troops are steaming toward Oman. Although the 9/11 attacks caused a hiccup in the deployment the massive operation was implemented as planned. At the same time two U.S. carrier battle groups arrive on station in the Gulf of Arabia just off the Pakistani coast. Also at the same time, some 17,000 U.S. troops join more than 23,000 NATO troops in Egypt for Operation "Bright Star." All of these forces are in place before the first plane hits the World Trade Center. [Sources: The Guardian, CNN, FOX, The Observer, International Law Professor Francis Boyle, the University of Illinois.]

26. September 7, 2001 - Florida Governor Jeb Bush signs a two-year emergency executive order (01-261) making new provisions for the Florida National Guard to assist law enforcement and emergency-management personnel in the event of large civil disturbances, disaster or acts of terrorism. [Source: State of Florida web site listing of Governor's Executive Orders.]

27. September 6-7, 2001 - 4,744 put options (a speculation that the stock will go down) are purchased on United Air Lines stock as opposed to only 396 call options (speculation that the stock will go up). This is a dramatic and abnormal increase in sales of put options. Many of the UAL puts are purchased through Deutschebank/AB Brown, a firm managed until 1998 by the current Executive Director of the CIA, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard. [Source: The Herzliyya International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism, <http://www.ict.org.il/>, September 21; The New York Times; The Wall Street Journal.]

28. September 10, 2001 - 4,516 put options are purchased on American Airlines as compared to 748 call options. [Source: ICT - above]

29. September 6-11, 2001 - No other airlines show any similar trading patterns to those experienced by UAL and American. The put option purchases on both airlines were 600% above normal. This at a time when Reuters (September 10) issues a business report stating, "Airline stocks may be poised to take off."

30. September 6-10, 2001 - Highly abnormal levels of put options are purchased in Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, AXA Re(insurance) which owns 25% of American Airlines, and Munich Re. All of these companies are directly impacted by the September 11 attacks. [Source: ICT, above; FTW, Vol. IV, No.7, October 18, 2001,
<http://www.fromthewilderness.com/members/oct152001.html>. ]

31. It has been documented that the CIA, the Israeli Mossad and many other intelligence agencies monitor stock trading in real time using highly advanced programs reported to be descended from Promis software. This is to alert national intelligence services of just such kinds of attacks. Promis was reported, as recently as June, 2001 to be in Osama bin Laden's possession and, as a result of recent stories by FOX, both the FBI and the Justice Department have confirmed its use for U.S. intelligence gathering through at least this summer. This would confirm that CIA had additional advance warning of imminent attacks. [Sources: The Washington Times, June 15, 2001; FOX News, October 16, 2001; FTW, October 26, 2001

32. September 11, 2001 - Gen Mahmud of the ISI (see above), friend of Mohammed Atta, is visiting Washington on behalf of the Taliban. He is meeting with the Chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Porter Goss (R), FL and Bob Graham (D), Fl [Sources: MS-NBC, Oct. 7, The New York Times, Feb. 17, 2002.]

33. September 11, 2002 - Employees of Odigo, Inc. in Israel, one of the world's largest instant messaging companies, with offices in New York, receive threat warnings of an imminent attack on the WTC less than two hours before the first plane hits the WTC. Law enforcement authorities have gone silent about any investigation of this. The Odigo Research and Development offices in Israel are located in the city of Herzliyya, a ritzy suburb of Tel Aviv which is the same location as the Institute for Counter Terrorism which breaks early details of insider trading on 9-11. [Source: CNN's Daniel Sieberg, 9/28/01; Newsbytes, Brian McWilliams, 9/27/01; Ha'aretz, 9/26/01.].

34. September 11, 2001, For 50 minutes, from 8:15 AM until 9:05 AM, with it widely known within the FAA and the military that four planes have been simultaneously hijacked and taken off course, no one notifies the President of the United States. It is not until 9:30 that any Air Force planes are scrambled to intercept, but by then it is too late. This means that the National Command Authority waited for 75 minutes before scrambling aircraft, even though it was known that four simultaneous hijackings had occurred - an event that has never happened in history. [Sources: CNN, ABC, MS-NBC, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times.] Maybe if dead golf pro Payne Stewart, or future billionaire Tiger Woods, were on board, the gets would have been scrambled in the usual time. USA Today report of Stewart's crash http://www.usatoday.com/sports/golf/stewart/stewfs14.htm

35. September 13, 2001 - China is admitted to the World Trade Organization quickly, after 15 years of unsuccessful attempts. [Source: The New York Times, Sept. 30, 2001.]

36. September 14, 2001 - Canadian jailers open the sealed envelope from Mike Vreeland in Toronto and see that is describes attacks against the WTC and Pentagon. The U.S. Navy subsequently states that Vreeland was discharged as a seaman in 1986 for unsatisfactory performance and has never worked in intelligence. [Source: The Toronto Star, Oct. 23, 2001; Toronto Superior Court records]

37. September 15, 2001 - The New York Times reports that Mayo Shattuck III has resigned, effective immediately, as head of the Alex (A.B) Brown unit of Deutschebank.

38. September 29, 2001 - The San Francisco Chronicle reports that $2.5 million in put options on American Airlines and United Airlines are unclaimed. This is likely the result of the suspension in trading on the NYSE after the attacks which gave the Securities and Exchange Commission time to be waiting when the owners showed up to redeem their put options.

39. October 10, 2001 - The Pakistani newspaper The Frontier Post reports that U.S. Ambassador Wendy Chamberlain has paid a call on the Pakistani oil minister. A previously abandoned Unocal pipeline from Turkmenistan, across Afghanistan, to the Pakistani coast, for the purpose of selling oil and gas to China, is now back on the table "in view of recent geopolitical developments."

40. October 11, 2001 - The Ashcroft Justice Department takes over all terrorist prosecutions from the U.S. Attorneys office in New York which has had a highly successful track record in prosecuting terrorist cases connected to Osama bin Laden. [Source: The New York Times, Oct. 11, 2002.]

41. Mid October, 2001 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average, after having suffered a precipitous drop has recovered most of its pre-attack losses. Although still weak, and vulnerable to negative earnings reports, a crash has been averted by a massive infusion of government spending on defense programs, subsidies for "affected" industries and planned tax cuts for corporations.

42. November 21, 2001 - The British paper The Independent runs a story headlined, "Opium Farmers Rejoice at the Defeat of the Taliban." The story reports that massive opium planting is underway all over the country.

43. November 25, 2001 - The Observer runs a story headlined "Victorious Warlords Set To Open the Opium Floodgates." It states that farmers are being encouraged by warlords allied with the victorious Americans are "being encouraged to plant "as much opium as possible."

44. December 4, 2001 - Convicted drug lord and opium kingpin Ayub Afridi is recruited by the US government to help establish control in Afghanistan by unifying various Pashtun warlords. The former opium smuggler who was one of the CIA's leading assets in the war against the Russians is released from prison in order to do this. [Source: The Asia Times Online, 12/4/01].

45. December 25, 2001 - Newly appointed afghani Prime Minister Hamid Karzai is revealed as being a former paid consultant for Unocal. [Source: Le Monde.]

46. January 3, 2002 - President Bush appoints Zalamy Khalilzad as a special envoy to Afghanistan. Khalilzad, a former employee of Unocal, also wrote op-eds in the Washington Post in 1997 supporting the Taliban regime. [Source: Pravda, 1/9/02]

47. January 4, 2002 - Florida drug trafficking explodes after 9-11. In a surge of trafficking reminiscent of the 1980s the diversion of resources away from drug enforcement has opened the floodgates for a new surge of cocaine and heroin from South America. [The Christian Science Monitor, January 4, 2002.

48. January 10, 2002 - In a call from a speaker phone in open court, attorneys for "Mike" Vreeland call the Pentagon's switchboard operator who confirms that Vreeland is indeed a Naval Lieutenant on active duty. She provides an office number and a direct dial phone extension to his office in the Pentagon. [Source: Attorney Rocco Galati; court records Toronto Superior Court.]

49. January 10, 2002 - Attorney General John Ashcroft recuses himself from the Enron investigation because Enron had been a major campaign donor in his 2000 Senate race. He fails to recuse himself from involvement in two sitting Federal grand juries investigating bribery and corruption charges against ExxonMobil and BP-Amoco who have massive oil interests in Central Asia. Both were major Ashcroft donors in 2000. [Source: CNN, Jan. 10, 2002 - FTW original investigation, The Elephant in the Living Room, Part I, Apr 4, 2002.]

50. February 9, 2002 - Pakistani leader General Musharraf and Afghan leader Hamid Karzai announce their agreement to "cooperate in all spheres of activity" including the proposed Central Asian pipeline. Pakistan will give $10 million to Afghanistan to help pay Afghani government workers. [Source: The Irish Times, 2/9/02]

51. Feb 18, 2002 - The Financial Times reports that the estimated opium harvest in Afghanistan in the late Spring of 2002 will reach a world record 4500 metric tons.
October 31 story by Le Figaro - the one that has Osama bin Laden meeting with a CIA officer in Dubai this June.

The story says that, "Throughout his stay in the hospital, Osama Bin Laden received visits from many family members [There goes the story that he's a black sheep!] and Saudi Arabian Emirate personalities of status. During this time the local representative of the CIA was seen by many people taking the elevator and going to bin Laden's room.

"Several days later the CIA officer bragged to his friends about having visited the Saudi millionaire. From authoritative sources, this CIA agent visited CIA headquarters on July 15th, the day after bin Laden's departure for Quetta÷

"According to various Arab diplomatic sources and French intelligence itself, precise information was communicated to the CIA concerning terrorist attacks aimed at American interests in the world, including its own territory."÷

"Extremely bothered, they [American intelligence officers in a meeting with French intelligence officers] requested from their French peers exact details about the Algerian activists [connected to bin Laden through Dubai banking institutions], without explaining the exact nature of their inquiry. When asked the question, "What do you fear in the coming days?' the Americans responded with incomprehensible silence."÷

"On further investigation, the FBI discovered certain plans that had been put together between the CIA and its "Islamic friends" over the years. The meeting in Dubai is, so it would seem, consistent with 'a certain American policy.'"

With reams of disinformation spewing from Washington—much of it designed to keep the odious Saddam Hussein off-balance, some of it scripted to torpedo resumption of U.N. arms inspections—it is difficult to separate fact from fiction in the administration’s plans for Iraq. But one thing is clear: Bush is bent on war.

Tom DeLay’s hyper-jingoistic August 21 speech—“The question is not whether to go to war, for war has already been thrust upon us ... the only choice is between victory and defeat”—was, according to pundit Mark Shields, prepared in careful collaboration with Condoleeza Rice, the president’s hawkish national security adviser. And Dick Cheney’s August 26 speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars—mocking the notion of resumed inspections and all but declaring (without any supporting evidence) that Saddam has nukes—made it crystal clear to any doubters that Dubya and his civilian cronies in the military-industrial complex have made up their minds.

That the superhawks won the debate within the administration has been clear ever since early June, when the White House dumped its principal military anti-terrorism counselor, Deputy National Security Adviser Wayne Downing, over his opposition to a long and destructive air-and-ground campaign in Iraq. But history will undoubtedly record the defining moment as Bush’s Iraq-driven June 1 speech at West Point, which has received insufficient attention. In it, Bush outlined the most radical change in military doctrine since the dawn of the Cold War, consigning deterrence and containment to the dustbin and affirming the U.S. readiness to take “pre-emptive action” (a euphemism for aggression). The result of a year-long reflection by the Bushies, the speech prefigured the Cheney and DeLay’s first-strike drum-beating. (For a brilliant dissection of this speech, see “Pre-emption: A Nuclear Schieffen Plan?” on the indispensable Web site of Defense and the National Interest, a consortium of disillusioned military officials and analysts at www.d-n-i.net.)

With Bush decided on a “pre-emptive” war, the only question is: When?

Despite musings in some quarters about a November Surprise, or an all-out military campaign next spring, there is every reason to believe that the war on Iraq will be timed for maximum effect on Bush’s re-election in 2004. The White House reasons that a full-scale invasion of Iraq—the only way to secure its professed goal of “regime change”—will reignite the nationalist fervor unleashed by the 9/11 attacks, guaranteeing the continued quiescence of the Democrats and sending the president’s approval ratings (now around 65 percent in most polls) back into the stratosphere.

The tanking of the economy—too slow so far to offer any measurable improvement of the Democrats’ chances in November, but likely to have accelerated by 2004—and the nagging Harken and Halliburton scandals’ residual potential to tarnish the Bush-Cheney ticket together mean that Bush will need to keep in reserve the option of lighting the counterfire of war fever to ensure his victory. (That’s what Dubya meant when he proclaimed from Crawford, “I’m a patient man.”)

The economic consequences of the war—including soaring oil prices—at the time of a metastasizing budget deficit (the Democratic-controlled Senate Budget Committee is already projecting a deficit of $400 billion-plus without the war) cannot be allowed to hit voters’ pocketbooks until Bush’s second term is assured. Nor can the stream of body bags inevitable in the kind of air-ground campaign envisioned be allowed to give pause too soon to voters used to the infinitesimal U.S. casualty rates of the Gulf and Afghanistan wars.

This is the most poll-driven administration in U.S. history— even more so than during Clinton’s Dick Morris period—and the Bushies’ readings of the numbers tell them the public is not yet ready for war. For example, the August 13 Washington Post/ABC poll showed that, when asked if war on Iraq meant “significant” U.S. casualties, support for it plummeted to 40 percent, while opposition rose to 51 percent. A CBS survey days later produced similar results. And the CNN poll taken near the end of August showed a one-month drop of almost nine points in support for the war.

Numbers like these suggest a significant political opening that the Democrats are failing to exploit against Bush. The Democrats refuse to behave like the opposition party they’re supposed to be. By continuing to hew to the mantra “don’t criticize Bush’s war on terrorism,” the Democrats are not only ignoring a chance to attract increasingly uneasy voters and improve their chances for this November’s issue-less congressional elections, they are sidestepping an opportunity to lay the groundwork for a solid challenge to Bush’s leadership in the presidential elections just two years hence. Of course, they’re also abandoning any claim to moral leadership (an irrelevant quibble with the cynicism that dominates domestic political calculus these days). When they’re not bleating their support for all-out war on Iraq, as Dick Gephardt has done, the Democrats’ silence on Iraq is, to borrow Talleyrand’s famous dictum, worse than a crime—it’s a mistake.

Furthermore, the Bush administration will wait because the United States is not ready for this war, either diplomatically or militarily. Those like James Baker who argue that U.N. approval must be sought for any war on Iraq are whistling in the wind—it would certainly be scuttled by a Security Council veto from China or Russia (unlikely to approve war on a country with which Vladimir Putin has just signed a huge long-term trade deal). Bush will thus be forced to cobble together a coalition outside U.N. auspices. But with whom?

The only solid anti-Saddam ally until now has been Tony Blair. But British support for the war is weakening under public pressure—a U.K. poll released August 28 shows support for the Bush-Cheney line on Iraq has fallen to just 30 percent, with 56 percent of Labour Party supporters opposed to the war. Numbers like these explain why British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw publicly plumped for a political solution based on resumed inspections of Iraq the day after Cheney’s speech rejected them.

Among other NATO allies, Spain’s Jose María Anzar and Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, Bush’s arch-conservative pals—are going no further than generalized condemnations of Saddam, without committing themselves to war. France’s Jacques Chirac is opposed to anything but a political solution. Germany’s Gerhard Schroeder has scored points campaigning as an anti-war candidate, forcing his formerly hawkish opponent Edmund Stoiber to advocate U.N. approval before an attack and favor a “European common attitude” toward the war—inevitably a negative one. The smaller European countries are all against military action.
Turkey, with its U.S. bases, would be a critical component of the anti-Saddam coalition. But the lame-duck administration of Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit has already proclaimed its opposition to the war; and the most likely product of this November’s parliamentary elections—a coalition government of the Islamist party and ultra-right nationalists—would be even more unlikely to allow Turkish soil to be used to launch an attack on Iraq.

According to Aviation Week and Space Technology (noted for its Pentagon sources), planning for the war includes three projected bases in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. But Washington has assured Ankara there will be no independent Kurdish state once the war is over—so there’s little incentive for the Kurds (already betrayed by the United States during the Gulf War) to see the autonomous zone they’ve won destroyed by Bush’s bloodthirsty adventure. They’re getting rich from the handsome rake-offs on nearly all trade with Iraq, for which the territory under their control is the principal route.

Even Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak—America’s lavishly paid client—has thundered that in the absence of an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, “not one Arab leader will be able to control the angry outburst of the masses” if the United States attacks Iraq. That leaves an unsavory gaggle of corrupt and despotic sheikdoms as our allies in the “war for democracy”: the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait. Yet the Kuwaitis, like the Saudis, are opposed to the war because they’re worried Saddam’s forces will blow up their highly vulnerable oil fields, as occurred in the Gulf War. And the huge new U.S. base just south of Doha in Qatar—designed to replace America’s Saudi base in al-Kharg (which the Saudis won’t let us use for the war) as headquarters for the U.S. air command—has not yet been completed. But Qatar’s foreign minister has said his country will follow the Saudis: no use of its bases. (It’s curious that this new base, unlike al-Kharg, is not being constructed with bunkers or other systematic protections against chemical and biological warfare—which would seem logical if U.S. claims about Saddam’s weapons capacity were really true). This helps explain Bush’s repulsive late-August boot-licking of the corrupt and repressive Saudi royal family, in a vain effort to win Saudi support for the war.

Given all this, there’s still time to convince the U.S. electorate that it’s a foolhardy project, illegal under international law, that will only manufacture new generations of terrorists throughout the Islamic world. Such a war would vitiate our preachments on no pre-emptive war to countries with nukes like India and Pakistan and would leave the planet’s only superpower further isolated in world opinion as an aggressor nation.

 

[cojones]

Originally posted by MAJOR STONER:
On 18 February 1998, a young substitute teacher from Columbus, Ohio faced off with one of the most powerful people in the world.

Dressed neatly in a white shirt and tie, Jon Strange was given the freak opportunity of putting a question to U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright live on national television.

Flanked by Clinton Administration heavyweights, Secretary Albright cast an arrogant and formidable image.

The question was clear and striking. Why bomb Iraq when other countries have committed similar violations? asked Mr Strange. Turkey slaughters its Kurdish population, Saudi Arabia persecutes religious and political dissidents, Israel slaughters and brutally imprisons Palestinians, Indonesian forces massacre East Timorese. Yet, in those cases, the issue of use of American force is never raised. Why the double standard?

The double standard of American foreign policy is glaringly obvious to anyone who knows a little about international affairs. And Jon Strange articulated it perfectly. Mass murder and execution by U.S. allies marches on in the face of stony silence, while enemies of the U.S. are condemned, starved and bombed for committing similar atrocities.

Albright's response could at best be described as evasive. What makes Hussein different, according to the Secretary, is that he has a proven record of repeatedly using chemical and biological weapons against his own people. "[T]he U.S. and the civilised world cannot deal with somebody who is willing to use weapons of mass destruction on his own people, not to speak of his neighbors."

This is part of the relentless and persistent line run by the Clinton Administration and its clients (including Australia). The pro-bombing forces have worked hard to swamp the mainstream media with their message: Saddam Hussein must be stopped because he has shown a propensity to use chemical and biological weapons against his own people.

Related to this, how is Israel's going after Arafat and his minions any different from the US going after Bin-Laden ?? or Saddam and Iraq ??

Not questioning moral or other high ground... just curious: how is one "cause" more "worthy" than another ??

re: Cheney et al and any "vested interests", is it creative thought, or just Reaganomics redux (with some microeconomic optimization) ??

 

[Sig]

Though as I said earlier in the thread, you have put a good deal of time writing your posts, which is a huge flag about how passionate you are. But I will say that you are very skilled in selective reporting. You are much worse than any news outlet that you accuse of the very same thing.

Exaggerate the bits that support your view, and minimize or even ignore the other pieces.


[This message has been edited by Sig (edited 12 September 2002).]

 

[McAttack]

Major,

Do you vote?

 

[MAJOR STONER]

Posted for entertainment purposes only:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,787018,00.html