ASSORTED FACTS ABOUT THE “WAR ON TERROR”
Sept. 17 (2001) — President Bush Monday repeated his vow to track down Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in last week's terror attacks:
"I want justice," Bush said. "And there's an old poster out West, I recall, that says, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive.'"
ABC News 9/17/01
... Bush downplayed concern on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, saying the accused terrorist mastermind is on the run and "I truly am not that concerned about him."
CNN 3/14/02
*********
When the Twin Towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001, among the thousands killed was the one man who may have known more about Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda than any other person in America: John O'Neill.
... O'Neill's increasing frustration with Washington's lax attitude toward the threat posed by bin Laden, including the possibility that Al Qaeda sleeper cells were already operating within the United States. What John O'Neill was trying to do was get a momentum going in the FBI to look seriously for those cells, Clarke says. It was not one of the priorities in most FBI field offices. By the summer of 2001, O'Neill had been so marginalized by FBI officials that key clues of the looming Sept. 11 plot apparently were never passed on to him
from PBS Frontline Story 10/3/02
*******
The confidential President's Daily Brief (PDB) for August 6, 2001 contained a two-page section entitled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US," and refers to possible hijacking attempts by Osama bin Laden disciples and the existence of about 70 FBI investigations into alleged al-Qaeda cells operating within the United States. The August 6 PDB, an excerpt from which you'll find below, was presented to Bush while he vacationed at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. The digest is prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency, an official from which briefs the president on the report's contents.
*******
The Project for the New American Century, or PNAC, is a Washington-based think tank created in 1997.
The fundamental essence of PNAC's ideology can be found in a White Paper produced in September of 2000 entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century." In it, PNAC outlines what is required of America to create the global empire they envision. According to PNAC, America must:
* Reposition permanently based forces to Southern Europe, Southeast Asia and the Middle East;
Vice President Dick Cheney is a founding member of PNAC, along with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is the ideological father of the group. Bruce Jackson, a PNAC director, served as a Pentagon official for Ronald Reagan before leaving government service to take a leading position with the weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin.
PNAC has recently given birth to a new group, The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which met with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice in order to formulate a plan to "educate" the American populace about the need for war in Iraq.
The PNAC plan calls for the US to take control of the Gulf region with overwhelming and deadly military force. "While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification," the PNAC document explains, "the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." In other words, Saddam is little more than an excuse for "maintaining global US pre-eminence... and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests." After the PNAC document was leaked to the Sunday Herald, Tam Dalyell, the British Labor MP, hit the nail right on the head when he declared, "This is garbage from right-wing think-tanks stuffed with chicken-hawks -- men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war. Men like Cheney, who were draft-dodgers in the Vietnam war."
2/25/03
*******
As a military intelligence officer in the 1980s, [Bruce Pitcairn] Jackson was assigned to the Pentagon in the Reagan and Bush Senior administrations, where he worked under Perle and two other leading hawks, Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney. In the late 1990s, while working for Lockheed Martin, Jackson avidly promoted the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe. Last fall the administration called on Jackson to set up the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. "People in the White House said, 'We need you to do for Iraq what you did for NATO,'" Jackson said in a phone interview.
This year Jackson was able to parlay his NATO connections into support for the administration's war plans for Iraq. As the Bush administration was desperately searching for allies, Jackson helped draw up a declaration from the foreign ministers of the "Vilnius Ten," the 10 Eastern European countries that are up for NATO membership. "The newest members of the European community agree that we must confront the tyranny of Saddam Hussein and that the United Nations must now act," the foreign ministers declared on the same day that Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the United Nations. The declaration provided ammunition for the administration, but it also created a furor in Western Europe and even in some of the Vilnius Ten countries, where the public, and even the governments, did not want to be identified as part of what one Slovenian writer termed the "war coalition."
... the Vilnius Ten declaration, which was the product of a dinner Jackson attended in late January at the Slovak embassy in Washington with representatives of those nations. In a letter from the committee accompanying the text, Scheunemann boasted that it showed "Europe is united by a commitment to end Saddam's bloody regime."
Jackson's particular contribution was to tell the Vilnius Ten foreign ministers that signing the declaration would help win U.S. approval of their membership in NATO. "They clearly wanted to do stuff to impress upon the U.S. Senate the freedom-fighting credentials of these new democracies," he told the International Herald Tribune. According to a United Press International report, "Albania, Croatia, Bulgaria and Macedonia received private and public assurances that their NATO applications now stand a better chance.
5/1/03 article in New American Prospect
A 1997 article in The New York Times described Jackson’s activities in a similar light: “At night, Bruce L. Jackson is president of the U.S. Committee to Expand NATO, giving intimate dinners for Senators and foreign officials. By day, he is director of strategic planning for Lockheed Martin Corporation, the world’s biggest weapons maker.”
Defense Daily 04-21-2003
DSCA Signs $3.5 Billion F-16 Sale, $3.8 Billion Financing Agreements With Poland
The Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) last week signed agreements with Poland's Ministry of National Defense for the $3.5 billion sale of Lockheed Martin (LMT) F-16C/D Block 52 fighters and a related $3.8 billion foreign military financing (FMF) package.
Poland decided in December to buy 48 F-16s over rival bids for the JAS-39 Gripen from Sweden's Saab and BAE SYSTEMS and the Mirage 2000- 5 Mk II by France's Dassault Aviation.
*******
19 soldiers from the 343rd Quartermaster Company failed to report for a planned fuel convoy from Tallil Air Base across central Iraq to Taji, a base north of Baghdad, the Army said in a statement issued in Iraq. The unit is headquartered in Rock Hill, S.C., but is currently based in Tallil.
"The unit felt that the vehicles they were required to drive weren't safe, both mechanically and in lacking armor to protect the personnel inside," he said. In addition, he said, the troops had expected to be protected by attack helicopters, but then were told that the aviation escort was unavailable.
CNN 10/21/04
**********
A lawyer defending Specialist Charles Graner, who is accused of being a ringleader in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, argued that piling naked prisoners in pyramids was a valid form of prisoner control.
"Don’t cheerleaders all over America form pyramids six to eight times a year. Is that torture?" said Guy Womack, Sergeant Graner’s lawyer, in opening arguments to the ten-member military jury at the reservist’s court martial.
NY Times 1/10/05
***********
January 11, 2005 AMERICAN FATALITIES KILLED IN ACTION IN IRAQ: 1,357
WOUNDED: 9,844
****
This war, should it come, is intended to mark the official emergence of the United States as a full-fledged global empire, seizing sole responsibility and authority as planetary policeman. It would be the culmination of a plan 10 years or more in the making, carried out by those who believe the United States must seize the opportunity for global domination, even if it means becoming the "American imperialists" that our enemies always claimed we were.
Once that is understood, other mysteries solve themselves. For example, why does the administration seem unconcerned about an exit strategy from Iraq once Saddam is toppled?
from Jay Bookman’s September 29, 2002 column in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution titled:
The president's real goal in Iraq
"I want justice," Bush said. "And there's an old poster out West, I recall, that says, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive.'"
ABC News 9/17/01
... Bush downplayed concern on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, saying the accused terrorist mastermind is on the run and "I truly am not that concerned about him."
CNN 3/14/02
*********
When the Twin Towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001, among the thousands killed was the one man who may have known more about Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda than any other person in America: John O'Neill.
... O'Neill's increasing frustration with Washington's lax attitude toward the threat posed by bin Laden, including the possibility that Al Qaeda sleeper cells were already operating within the United States. What John O'Neill was trying to do was get a momentum going in the FBI to look seriously for those cells, Clarke says. It was not one of the priorities in most FBI field offices. By the summer of 2001, O'Neill had been so marginalized by FBI officials that key clues of the looming Sept. 11 plot apparently were never passed on to him
from PBS Frontline Story 10/3/02
*******
The confidential President's Daily Brief (PDB) for August 6, 2001 contained a two-page section entitled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US," and refers to possible hijacking attempts by Osama bin Laden disciples and the existence of about 70 FBI investigations into alleged al-Qaeda cells operating within the United States. The August 6 PDB, an excerpt from which you'll find below, was presented to Bush while he vacationed at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. The digest is prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency, an official from which briefs the president on the report's contents.
*******
The Project for the New American Century, or PNAC, is a Washington-based think tank created in 1997.
The fundamental essence of PNAC's ideology can be found in a White Paper produced in September of 2000 entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century." In it, PNAC outlines what is required of America to create the global empire they envision. According to PNAC, America must:
* Reposition permanently based forces to Southern Europe, Southeast Asia and the Middle East;
Vice President Dick Cheney is a founding member of PNAC, along with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is the ideological father of the group. Bruce Jackson, a PNAC director, served as a Pentagon official for Ronald Reagan before leaving government service to take a leading position with the weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin.
PNAC has recently given birth to a new group, The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which met with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice in order to formulate a plan to "educate" the American populace about the need for war in Iraq.
The PNAC plan calls for the US to take control of the Gulf region with overwhelming and deadly military force. "While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification," the PNAC document explains, "the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." In other words, Saddam is little more than an excuse for "maintaining global US pre-eminence... and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests." After the PNAC document was leaked to the Sunday Herald, Tam Dalyell, the British Labor MP, hit the nail right on the head when he declared, "This is garbage from right-wing think-tanks stuffed with chicken-hawks -- men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war. Men like Cheney, who were draft-dodgers in the Vietnam war."
2/25/03
*******
As a military intelligence officer in the 1980s, [Bruce Pitcairn] Jackson was assigned to the Pentagon in the Reagan and Bush Senior administrations, where he worked under Perle and two other leading hawks, Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney. In the late 1990s, while working for Lockheed Martin, Jackson avidly promoted the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe. Last fall the administration called on Jackson to set up the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. "People in the White House said, 'We need you to do for Iraq what you did for NATO,'" Jackson said in a phone interview.
This year Jackson was able to parlay his NATO connections into support for the administration's war plans for Iraq. As the Bush administration was desperately searching for allies, Jackson helped draw up a declaration from the foreign ministers of the "Vilnius Ten," the 10 Eastern European countries that are up for NATO membership. "The newest members of the European community agree that we must confront the tyranny of Saddam Hussein and that the United Nations must now act," the foreign ministers declared on the same day that Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the United Nations. The declaration provided ammunition for the administration, but it also created a furor in Western Europe and even in some of the Vilnius Ten countries, where the public, and even the governments, did not want to be identified as part of what one Slovenian writer termed the "war coalition."
... the Vilnius Ten declaration, which was the product of a dinner Jackson attended in late January at the Slovak embassy in Washington with representatives of those nations. In a letter from the committee accompanying the text, Scheunemann boasted that it showed "Europe is united by a commitment to end Saddam's bloody regime."
Jackson's particular contribution was to tell the Vilnius Ten foreign ministers that signing the declaration would help win U.S. approval of their membership in NATO. "They clearly wanted to do stuff to impress upon the U.S. Senate the freedom-fighting credentials of these new democracies," he told the International Herald Tribune. According to a United Press International report, "Albania, Croatia, Bulgaria and Macedonia received private and public assurances that their NATO applications now stand a better chance.
5/1/03 article in New American Prospect
A 1997 article in The New York Times described Jackson’s activities in a similar light: “At night, Bruce L. Jackson is president of the U.S. Committee to Expand NATO, giving intimate dinners for Senators and foreign officials. By day, he is director of strategic planning for Lockheed Martin Corporation, the world’s biggest weapons maker.”
Defense Daily 04-21-2003
DSCA Signs $3.5 Billion F-16 Sale, $3.8 Billion Financing Agreements With Poland
The Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) last week signed agreements with Poland's Ministry of National Defense for the $3.5 billion sale of Lockheed Martin (LMT) F-16C/D Block 52 fighters and a related $3.8 billion foreign military financing (FMF) package.
Poland decided in December to buy 48 F-16s over rival bids for the JAS-39 Gripen from Sweden's Saab and BAE SYSTEMS and the Mirage 2000- 5 Mk II by France's Dassault Aviation.
*******
19 soldiers from the 343rd Quartermaster Company failed to report for a planned fuel convoy from Tallil Air Base across central Iraq to Taji, a base north of Baghdad, the Army said in a statement issued in Iraq. The unit is headquartered in Rock Hill, S.C., but is currently based in Tallil.
"The unit felt that the vehicles they were required to drive weren't safe, both mechanically and in lacking armor to protect the personnel inside," he said. In addition, he said, the troops had expected to be protected by attack helicopters, but then were told that the aviation escort was unavailable.
CNN 10/21/04
**********
A lawyer defending Specialist Charles Graner, who is accused of being a ringleader in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, argued that piling naked prisoners in pyramids was a valid form of prisoner control.
"Don’t cheerleaders all over America form pyramids six to eight times a year. Is that torture?" said Guy Womack, Sergeant Graner’s lawyer, in opening arguments to the ten-member military jury at the reservist’s court martial.
NY Times 1/10/05
***********
January 11, 2005 AMERICAN FATALITIES KILLED IN ACTION IN IRAQ: 1,357
WOUNDED: 9,844
****
This war, should it come, is intended to mark the official emergence of the United States as a full-fledged global empire, seizing sole responsibility and authority as planetary policeman. It would be the culmination of a plan 10 years or more in the making, carried out by those who believe the United States must seize the opportunity for global domination, even if it means becoming the "American imperialists" that our enemies always claimed we were.
Once that is understood, other mysteries solve themselves. For example, why does the administration seem unconcerned about an exit strategy from Iraq once Saddam is toppled?
from Jay Bookman’s September 29, 2002 column in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution titled:
The president's real goal in Iraq
posted by James Finkelstein (Ga.) at 11:19 PM
1 Comments:
Good to see you posting again, Jim. Don't be a stranger!
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