Anti-War

Did President George W. Bush and his governing consortium know of the impending attack on the Trade Towers and the Pentagon and intentionally allow it to occur?  

This question seems almost unthinkable, yet it is so obviously in need of an answer that it may as well be written across the sky.  The report of the House and Senate intelligence committees does not address the question, which now belongs to the National Commission on Terror Attacks Upon the United States, chaired by Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, to report by May 2004.  The following narration is meant to enable the reader to understand the situation giving rise to the question.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, one of the main architects for the war in Iraq, admitted for the first time that Iraq had nothing to do with the September 11 terrorist attacks, contradicting public statements made by senior White House and Pentagon officials whose attempt to link Saddam Hussein and the terrorist organization al-Qaeda was cited by the Bush administration as one of the main reasons for launching a preemptive strike in March against Iraq.  

In an interview with conservative radio personality Laura Ingraham, Wolfowitz was asked when he first came to believe that Iraq was behind the 9-11 terrorist attacks.  

"I'm not sure even now that I would say Iraq had something to do with it," Wolfowitz said in the interview, aired Friday, a transcript of which can be found at www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030801-depsecdef0526.html

The invasion of Iraq – a country severely weakened by 12 ½ years of genocidal sanctions and disarmed by the U.N. at the insistence of the attackers – was not a war. It was a war crime. It appears now that the real problem wasn’t bad intelligence, but rather the “misrepresentation” of intelligence on weapons of mass destruction to the U.S. public and the rest of the world. (Washington Post, June 7, 2003) In the rush to implement the vision of total world domination by U.S. military force rooted in the “Defense Planning Guidance” written by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz in 1992, a constant barrage of lies about connections to terrorism and weapons of mass destruction were hurled at the United Nations and at the U.S. public through the corporation-controlled media to justify an illegal “preventive” war.

President Bush has asked Congress for $76 billion to pay the initial costs of the war in Iraq. For the same amount of money, we could hire 1,155,715 elementary school teachers to educate America’s Children.

One second of war in Iraq ($12,730) = Twice what the U.S. spends per year, per child, in primary education ($6,043)
Digest of Education Statistics.

One minute of war in Iraq ($763,000) = Headstart Education for 115 children ($6,633 per child)
National Priorities Project.

2.8 hours of war in Iraq ($45.8 million per hour) = Nutrition supplements for 200,000 eligible families not covered ($130 million)
Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

Five days of war in Iraq ($1.1 billion per day) = Eliminate illiteracy worldwide ($5 billion)
World Game Institute

Compiled by Frida Berrigan, Senior Research Associated, World Policy Institute.

While the mainstream media debates whether the President was misinforming, exaggerating or misleading the U.S. public, they miss the bigger story – their obvious complicity with the Bush administration’s Nazi-style propaganda prior to the war.

George W. Bush and his administration deliberately undertook a massive campaign to wage illegal and aggressive war against the people of Iraq. The narrow focus on one fraudulent claim in the State of the Union address regarding Iraq buying uranium from Africa ignores the much broader campaign of falsification used to whip the people into a war frenzy.

In statements from his Congressional office and on the campaign trail, Kucinich continued today to urge a change of direction in Iraq. His advocacy of a U.S. to U.N. transition is in stark contrast to other Democratic candidates; Howard Dean, for example, supports sending additional U.S. troops to Iraq (Meet the Press, 6/22).

Kucinich said today: "This weekend, with the deaths of 5 US troops, we were once again reminded of the dangers facing US troops in what has become a quagmire. To date 243 U.S. troops have died in Iraq. It is time that the United States begins the process of withdrawing our troops, and allow a UN peacekeeping force to take over the reconstruction of Iraq.

"In their rush to war, the Administration failed to adequately prepare for the post-invasion period. Negotiations for an exit must begin now. An exit agreement with the United Nations must involve the US letting go of the contracting process.

Last weekend, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz explained that the United States at times relied on "murky" intelligence in trying to link Iraq to the al-Qaeda terrorist group, but the war against Iraq was justified despite the fact that the White House is now being dogged by questions about the accuracy of its prewar intelligence.  

"The nature of terrorism intelligence is intrinsically murky," Wolfowitz said on "Meet the Press. "If you wait until the terrorism picture is clear, you're going to wait until after something terrible has happened."    

But the reasons behind the murky intelligence used by the White House to build a case for war against Iraq may have more to do with the people who provided the Pentagon and the White House with its information on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction than the difficulties the intelligence community already faces in trying to obtain reliable intelligence from a variety of sources.  

Dear Friends and Family,

Greetings in this mid-summer time. It is nice to be able to communicate more frequently now by e-mail, and feel more connected with you.

This past week we have spent time looking at apartments and homes to rent, and today settled on an apartment in the Karrada area, not far from the Al Dar Hotel where I lived much of the winter in Baghdad. So, when we move on Sun. it will be like coming back home for me. It is more of a residential neighborhood, and we already know many families and shopkeepers in the area. It is also considered a safer area, and people are freer in walking along the streets and shops are open in the evenings. Another big advantage is that we will be reducing the rent we pay by two thirds the price, which will help a lot. We will have less electricity (they only have a back up generator for limited times of the day).

We are expecting two more men to come and join the team in the next three weeks, so that will expand possibilities for our work.

A half-dozen former CIA agents investigating prewar intelligence have found that a secret Pentagon committee, set up by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in October 2001, manipulated reams of intelligence information prepared by the spy agency on the so-called Iraqi threat and then delivered it to top White House officials who used it to win support for a war in Iraq.

The former CIA agents were asked to examine prewar intelligence last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and CIA Director George Tenet. The former agents will present a final report on their findings to the Pentagon, the CIA and possibly the Senate and/or Congress later this year.

More than a dozen calls to the White House, the CIA, the National Security Council and the Pentagon for comment were not returned.

Last week Democratic presidential candidate and Vermont Governor Howard Dean called out a compelling series of questions to President Bush from Des Moines, Iowa. Read the text and hear a portion of the speech at the link below.

www.deanforamerica.com/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6998&news_iv_ctrl=1301