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Iraq          top

     
  • ENDLESS WAR

    The Honorable Barack Obama President of the United States The White House Washington, DC    September 15, 2011

    Dear President Obama:

    The United States has invested significant resources in Iraq over the last eight years. Under your leadership and that of your predecessor, America has helped Iraq’s fledgling democracy emerge as a symbol to other peoples of the region, becoming, in the words of former Secretary of Defense Gates, “a multi-sectarian, multi-ethnic society in the Arab world that shows that democracy can work.”

    We are thus gravely concerned about recent news reports suggesting that the White House is considering leaving only a residual force of 4,000 or fewer U.S. troops in Iraq after the end of this year. This number is significantly smaller than what U.S. military commanders on the ground have reportedly recommended and would limit our ability to ensure that Iraq remains stable and free from significant foreign influence in the years to come.

    While the Iraqi Security Forces have become increasingly capable of defending Iraq against internal threats, they are not yet able to defend Iraq from external forces. As a result, Iraq’s troops will require after the end of this year continued U.S. assistance in combined-arms training, border protection, air and naval capabilities, logistics, and intelligence. It is also essential that we maintain a significant military presence at multiple places along Iraq’s disputed internal boundaries to allow the United States to assist Kurds and Arabs in the disputed zones with confidence-building.

    In recent months, Iran has increased its attempts to expand its influence in Iraq, including through the killing of American forces and support to Iraqi political parties. Maintaining a robust American presence in-country would blunt these efforts, and help ensure Iraq remains oriented away from Iran and a long-term ally of the United States.

    We therefore urge you to ensure that an adequate number of U.S. troops in Iraq remain after 2011. We were encouraged by your pragmatism in 2009 as you showed flexibility in the pace of America’s drawdown. We believe that the same pragmatism would counsel a significantly larger force than 4,000 U.S. troops in Iraq after the end of this year.

    Failure to leave a significant U.S. military presence in Iraq will leave the country more vulnerable to internal and external threats, thus imperiling the hard-fought gains in security and governance made in recent years at significant cost to the United States. A successful, democratic Iraq will remain a model for other emerging Arab democracies and one day, its neighbor, Iran. However, a failing state in the heart of the Middle East would destabilize the region, empower Iran, and make vain more than eight years of efforts by the United States in Iraq.

    You have fulfilled your campaign commitment to the nation to end the war in Iraq. Now, we request that you ensure that in doing so, we do not lose the peace.

    Sincerely,

    Gary Bauer, Ash Jain, Danielle Pletka, Max Boot, Kenneth M. Jensen, John Podhoretz, Ellen Bork, Frederick Kagan,  Karl Rove, Paul Bremer,  Robert Kagan, Kori Schake, Norm Coleman, Kimberly Kagan, Randy Scheunemann, Seth Cropsey,  Lawrence Kaplan, Gary Schmitt, Thomas Donnelly, William Kristol, Dan Senor, Colin Dueck, Tod Lindberg Michael Singh, Eric Edelman, Herbert London, Marisa Cochrane Sullivan, Jamie Fly, Michael Makovsky, Marc ThiessenReuel, Marc Gerecht, Cliff May, Daniel Twining, Abe Greenwald, Joshua Muravchik, Peter Wehner, John Hannah, Andrew Natsios, Kenneth Weinstein, Bruce Pitcairn Jackson, Michael O'Hanlon, Paul Wolfowitz

  •  PressTV Sina al-Shibabi The Iraqi cabinet has removed the longtime governor of the country's central bank after he and other senior bank officials were targeted in a probe into an alleged financial impropriety. Ali al-Moussawi, a spokesman for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said parliament voted on Tuesday to replace Sinan al-Shabibi, who has led the bank since shortly after the US-led invasion in March 2003.  A special parliamentary committee is investigating to determine whether the officials at the Central Bank of Iraq (CBI) had intentionally weakened the value of the Iraqi dinar against the US dollar.  "The cabinet decided to authorize Abdelbasset Turki, the head of the Board of the Supreme Audit, to run the central bank indefinitely," Al-Moussawi said.  He added, "The parliament today made a unanimous decision to vote for Abdelbasset, who is already handling many financial governmental decisions including the country's fiscal budget."  "Subsequently, a decision was made to remove powers from al-Shabibi as central bank governor," the prime minister's spokesperson noted.  Meanwhile, chairman of the parliamentary anti-corruption committee, Baha al-Araji, said 30 warrants had been issued, including for Shabibi and his deputy Mudher Saleh. Haider al-Abadi, a member of the investigating committee and the chairman of the parliamentary finance committee, also said authorities were trying to establish whether the actions of the CBI officials were a reckless oversight or intentional.  "There was a huge pressure on the currency, with the difference between buying and selling increasing in the local market, affecting the mass public," he said. 
  • WMR July 28-31, 2011 -- Civil suit planned against Bush officials over Iraq torture ...   Three individuals involved in blowing the whistle at an early stage on the systematic torture and abuse of Iraqi detainees at the outset of the U.S. occupation of Iraq plan to file suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against senior political and military officials in the Bush administration. Named in the lawsuit will be former Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and top U.S. military commanders of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The plaintiffs include retired Sgt. Frank Greg Ford, who served with the 223rd Military Intelligence Battalion in Iraq and who was unceremoniously removed from Iraq in 2003, strapped to a gurney, after he cited several cases of prisoner abuse in Iraq. Ford was one of the first U.S. military members to report prisoner abuse at detention facilities in Iraq. His reports of prisoner abuse resulted in a determination by his senior officers that he was not fit for service in Iraq and he was detained and flown out of Iraq to a U.S. military hospital in Germany after leveling charges of prisoner torture, including witnessing U.S. troops forcing lit cigarettes into the ears of teenage Iraqi boys.    ...   Ford will reportedly be joined in the lawsuit by retired Army officer Janis Karpinski, the former commander of the 800 Military Police Brigade, which had cognizance over U.S. military detention facilities in Iraq, including the now-infamous Abu Ghraib prison, the scene of repeated acts of prisoner abuse and torture. A number of Army enlisted personnel were sentenced to prison as a result of the torture scandal, however, it is alleged that the U.S. military personnel were following orders from senior officials of the Bush administration. Karpinski was reduced to the rank of colonel as a result of the Army's investigation, however, she contends, with the support of other senior U.S. military officers, that she had no access to the wing of Abu Ghraib, which was under the strict control of military intelligence and the CIA, where the prisoner abuse was taking place.    ...   Also reportedly joining the lawsuit is Stanford University professor emeritus Philip Zimbardo, a former president of the American Psychological Assocation, who has conducted pioneeting research, including the Stanford Prison Experiment, which examined the effects of torture on prisoners.    ...   The lawsuit against the Bush administration officials is expected to be filed in September.    ...   A large list of defendants and witnesses is being developed by the plaintiffs' legal team. Former President George W. Bush may also be called to testify in the trial. There is a precedent for testimony by former presidents. In 1992, former President Ronald Reagan was called to testify before Iran-contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh on his knowledge of the Iran-contra scandal.
  • WMR July 22-24, 2011 -- SPECIAL REPORT. UN representative in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, assassinated in 2003 by U.S. operatives ...   On August 19, 2003, at 5:37 pm, a van exploded at the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, the headquarters for the UN Peace Mission for Iraq. The blast ripped through a wall of the building causing a side of the building to collapse. Twenty-two UN employees were killed in the blast, blamed by the U.S. occupation forces and echoed by the corporate media on a suicide bombing. An additional 100 people inside the building, including U.S. military personnel, were injured. Trapped under the rubble but alive for a number of hours before he died of his injuries was Sergio Vieira de Mello, a Brazilian diplomat who was the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Other UN staff members killed in the blast included nationals of Egypt, Britain, Italy, United States, Spain, Canada, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, and the Philippines.    ...   In an exclusive to WMR, a senior U.S. flag rank officer in Baghdad at the time of the bombing of the UN mission has revealed that the bomb blast that killed de Mello and his colleagues was not a suicide attack but the result of a remote-controlled bomb placed in the van that was parked directly next to de Mello's office inside the U.S. military-controlled access zone. U.S. rescue teams were under orders not to excavate de Mello from the rubble of the Canal Hotel until after it was determined that he was dead.    ...    The U.S. flag rank officer had met with de Mello on August 18. During the meeting, de Mello told the high-ranking U.S. Army officer that he was compiling evidence of U.S. troops in Iraq torturing Iraqi detainees. The Army officer relayed de Mello's concern up the chain-of-command. The next day, de Mello was dead, along with 21 members of his UN mission. A second bombing of the UN mission the following month resulted in the UN withdrawing its 600 member mission from Iraq. The authorization for the twin bombings of the UN mission came from the highest levels of the Bush White House, according to our source. However, in typical fashion, responsibility for the bombings came from "Al Qaeda's" chief in Iraq, Abu Musab Zarqawi.    ...    Zarqawi was said to have been killed in a targeted precision-guided bombing of his safe house in Iraq by U.S. Air Force F-16s.    ...   De Mello also expressed concern to the U.S. officer about outside actors involved in torture in Iraq, elements later identified as Israelis. The torture by U.S. forces of Iraqi detainees was not reported by the media until April 2004.   ...   De Mello was the highest-ranking victim of a terrorist assassination since Count Folke Bernadotte, the UN mediator in Palestine, was killed by Zionist terrorists in 1948 and UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold's plane was shot down over Northern Rhodesia by Belgian mercenaries from Katanga that were linked to the CIA.    ...   In 2008, the UN General Assembly voted to designate August 19 as World Humanitarian Day in honor of those UN workers who were killed in Baghdad. In light of the revelation that the Bush White House ordered the assassination of de Mello and members of his staff, the day should be known as World Humanitarian and Awareness of U.S. Sponsored Terrorism Day.
  • WMR February 17, 2011 -- Details of U.S. false flag attacks in Iraq revealed    ....    WMR has been informed by a strictly anonymous source that many of the "terrorist" attacks in Iraq that have been blamed on "Al Qaeda" and its allies were, in fact, carried out by CIA-supported Sunni cells. US Special Forces teams seconded to the CIA units provided protection to the Sunni cells as they carried out their terror missions.    ...   The CIA and Special Forces teams ensured that the Sunni terrorist cells hit their pre-determined targets. In some cases, when the certain Sunni teams were thought to be unreliable, the CIA and Special Forces overseers would execute the Sunnis.    ...    In other cases, a remotely-controlled car bomb would prematurely detonate, requiring the CIA-Special Forces units to cleanup the evidence and chalk the terrorist event off as a "suicide bomb." The media would be fed press releases that "confirmed" the bombing as a suicide attack. Our source worked with two different Sunni terrorist cells in Iraq.    ...   On June 24, 2009, WMR reported: "WMR has learned from an intelligence source who served in 2007 at the Tallil Air Base in Iraq, also known as Camp Adder by the U.S. Army and Ali Air Base by the U.S. Air Force, that United States intelligence services imported Afghan mercenaries into Iraq in order to attack Iraqi civilians and military personnel, as well as coalition forces, including U.S. service personnel. The Afghans were recruited from Taliban ranks and were paid for their services in Iraq. WMR has learned that during 2007, Iraqi police stopped a truck hauling a 40-foot trailer on the Kerrada Bridge in Baghdad. When the Iraqi police officers checked the truck's trailer they were amazed to discover between 30 and 40 Afghan Taliban. They said they were brought into Iraq by the United States and were tasked with stirring up trouble in Iraq., much of it ascribed by U.S. military commanders as the work of the dubiously-named Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn (Organization of Jihad's Base in the Country of the Two Rivers) or, more commonly known as 'Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia.'"     ...   The case of Raymond Davis, the so-called U.S. diplomat arrested in Lahore, Pakistan after shooting two Pakistani men, indicates that the CIA is carrying out similar false flag terrorist attacks in that country. Pakistani police recovered from Davis's car a pistol, facial make-up, ATM cards from five different banks, a Global Positioning System device, a telescope, two mobile telephones, maps, a wireless radio, a passport, photos of different possible target locations in Multan, Sargodha, and Lahore. Concerned that Davis may spill the beans to Pakistan about CIA false flag terrorist attacks in Pakistan, the Obama administration is demanding Davis's immediate release and repatriation to the United States, citing the CIA officer's diplomatic immunity. The Davis case has opened a wide rift in U.S.-Pakistani relations.    ...   On September 13, 2010, WMR reported: "WMR has learned from a deep background source that Xe Services, the company formerly known as Blackwater, has been conducting false flag terrorist attacks in Pakistan that are later blamed on the entity called 'Pakistani Taliban.' . . . it is Xe cells operating in Karachi, Peshawar, Islamabad, and other cities and towns that have, according to our source who witnessed the U.S.-led false flag terrorist operations in Pakistan. Bombings of civilians is the favored false flag event for the Xe team and are being carried out under the orders of the CIA. However, the source is now under threat from the FBI and CIA for revealing the nature of the false flag operations in Pakistan. If the source does not agree to cooperate with the CIA and FBI, with an offer of a salary, the threat of false criminal charges being brought for aiding and abetting terrorism looms over the source . . . Responsibility for the recent bomb attack of a pro-Palestine Shi'a rally in Quetta that killed 54 people was claimed by the Pakistan Taliban, but it was actually carried out by one of the Xe covert cells in the country, acting in concert with the CIA, Israeli Mossad, and Indian Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). The ultimate goal is to destabilize Pakistan to the point where it has no choice but to allow the Western powers to secure its nuclear weapons and remove them from the country. . ." 
  • PressTV  "A US war veteran has accused the Pentagon of launching a nuclear attack on southern Iraq in the final day of the first Persian Gulf War.   ...   Jim Brown, a mechanic in the Army's 10th Mountain Division at the time, told Italian state news channel RaiNews24 that Washington dropped a nuclear bomb in a deserted area outside the city of Basra near the Iranian border in 1991.   ...  The bombing, which took place on the last day of the war in Iraq on February 27th, caused an explosion equal to a five-kiloton blast.   ...  The allegations draw parallels with the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945, which created a blast equivalent to about 13 kilotons of TNT.   ...   According to a number of US military heavyweights, the devastating attack on Japan was not necessary as the country had already been seeking a way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'.  "The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender," said William D. Leahy, a former admiral and chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff."
WMR: Alberto Gonzales covered up torture by American contractors under DOJ investigation,  December 20, 2010 --
A top U.S. military source involved with the ostensibly-U.S. military run detention camps and prisons in post-U.S. invasion and occupation Iraq has told WMR that a number of private contractors who were responsible for ordering and committing abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad and at other detention facilities were former U.S. state and federal prison guards who were under criminal investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice while also working in Iraq. The contractors, many of whom used aliases like "James Bond" and "007" were accused of abusing prisoners at U.S. federal and state prisons while working as guards.

However, a deal was worked out between then-White House Chief Counsel Alberto Gonzales and Commander of Combined Joint Task Force 7 General Ricardo Sanchez that resulted in all the pending criminal investigations of the former U.S. prison guards dropped in return for their "service" in Iraq. The deal to lift the pending Justice Department investigations of the former U.S. prison guards was worked out by the Prisons Department, which reported to Coalition Provisional Authority head Paul "Jerry' Bremer.

WMR's Army source revealed that when asked by military personnel about their assigned jobs at the Iraq prisons, many of the civilian interrogators replied, "If I told you, I'd have to kill you." WMR has also learned that many of the interrogation contracts with companies like CACI and Titan were arranged through the auspices of the CIA, not the Department of Defense.

Aside from some Israelis present at Abu Ghraib and other prisons, none of the contractor interrogators spoke Arabic and most were in Iraq on lucrative 90-day contracts. After the expiration of their 90-day contracts, the civilian interrogators were shipped to the Hilton Hotel in Kuwait where they re-negotiated their original contracts at double and triple their original salaries. The Hilton contract re-negotiation interlude was punctuated by drinking parties and orgies with prostitutes, according to our source.

WMR has learned of one such interrogation contractor who was being paid by CACI at the same time he was working as a Naval Security Group reservist and thus was being paid twice for doing the same job. The individual had been assigned to Saudi Arabia as a signals intelligence operator during the first Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm in the early 1990s and re-appeared as a SIGINT operator at the U.S. embassy in Muscat, Oman during Operation Iraqi Freedom. From Muscat, the SIGINT operator ended up working at Bremer's headquarters in threw Green Zone. There is a possibility that the contractor in question may have had ties to Israeli intelligence, and, thus, represented an Israeli penetration of National Security Agency (NSA) operations in Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Iraq. No criminal charges for his involvement in the abuse of prisoners at Avbu Ghraib, or possible espionage, were ever brought against the contractor.

The bottom line at Abu Ghraib and some twenty other detention facilities around Iraq was that there was no military control and very little civilian control over the activities of the civilian interrogators and detention operatives.

 

Oil Control          top

   
  • Montrealserai Progressive news
  • Niquash, production sharing agreements, history Iraq oil, the prize
  • OhmyNews  The President's New Clothes The nuclear issue isn't the problem -- it's the oil, stupid!
  • OilEmpire election coups, 911, fascism & peak of petroleum production 
  • Oil for Food, UN Program special announcements
  • Patriotic Union of Kurdistan search on oil
  • Political Strategy suggest strategy
  • Pravda English, Oil
  • PublicI Champaign IndyMedia
  • Red Pepper search on iraq oil yielded over 100 articles
  • ReliefWeb Iraq humanitarian relief
  • Rense  Iraq oil, more, search
  • Rusmarket rusinellect
  • SundayHerald.UK Carving up the new Iraq
  • Trent Univ.ca international power imbalances
  • Victory News .net Progressive Islamic news
  • The Wisdom Fund (US)
  • WhoDies and thrives from Bush lies
  • World Oil Markets
  • Socialist Worker search: production sharing agreements.
  • Notes:
  • ABC News, Kyle 'Dusty' Foggo  (No. 3 in CIA) ".... investigation of bribery and corruption (Iraq defense contracts)  in Congress has spread to the CIA....Foggo oversaw contracts involving at least one of the companies accused of paying bribes to Congressman Randall "Duke" Cunningham.... Foggo is a longtime friend of Brent Wilkes, listed as unindicted co-conspirator No. 1 in government documents filed in the Cunningham investigation...He was appointed to the post by CIA director Porter Goss..."  and see The Hill
  • Reference
  • Aljazeerah.info search: Oil Law, Baker Botts and "Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil, Part I, Part II
  •  

 

wmrWayneMadsenReport ... Bush and Hitler, the Unappetizing Similarities by WAYNE MADSEN

Bush and Hitler, the Unappetizing Similarities

by WAYNE MADSEN

Adolf Hitler would be proud that an American President is emulating him in so many ways. Hitler, it will be remembered, routinely ignored his military, other world leaders, and the clergy. Bush seems to think that this policy, which ultimately failed for Hitler, will work for him.

First, we should consider what Christian leaders are saying about Bush.

The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in America, Frank T. Griswold III, says “I’d like to be able to go somewhere in the world and not have to apologize for being from the United States” and blasts George W. Bush for his saber rattling. Apparently, poppy Bush, an Episcopalian, believes that the head of his church is wrong and his wayward son is right.

From the Vatican, Pope John Paul II fires a shot over the bow of the Bush administration by declaring, “war cannot be decided upon, even when it is a matter of ensuring the common good, except as the very last option and in accordance with very strict conditions.”

In a television ad, the chief ecumenical officer of the United Methodist Church, Bishop Melvin Talbert, says that his fellow Methodist’s rush to war “violates God’s law and the teachings of Jesus Christ.”

jeb

The Anglican House of Bishops has warned, “without compelling new evidence to confirm that Iraq was stockpiling chemical or biological weapons, war could not be morally justified.”

Bush, who, during one of the presidential debates, said his favorite philosopher was Jesus Christ, has apparently decided to ignore his teachings.

Maybe Bush has decided to turn away from Jesus Christ and instead seek Providence from a tequila bottle, as his State of the Union address with numerous examples of slurred speech would seem to indicate.

Bush, a so-called compassionate conservative and born-again Christian, can only find religious support from the same group of hackneyed pseudo-Christians, hate mongers, and religious cult leaders like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Franklin Graham, and Sun Myung Moon. Bush opts for this band of zealots and ignores South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu who asked, “When does compassion, when does morality, when does caring come in?” His words fall on deaf ears in the Oval Office.

Content with ignoring the church, Bush has also decided to play with dynamite by ignoring some of America’s top military minds.

One of them is retired General Norman Schwarzkopf, the military commander of Desert Storm. He told The Washington Post that he has yet to be fully convinced that war with Iraq is necessary. Schwarzkopf’s comments mirror those of other retired top generals, including Anthony Zinni, Wesley Clark, John Shalikashvili, Brent Scowcroft, Joseph Hoar, and Merrill McPeak. Pentagon sources report that the obviously mentally ill Donald Rumsfeld threatened to fire some members of his Joint Chiefs of Staff for not supporting the war against Iraq. These included former Marine Corps Commandant and now NATO commander General James Jones and Army Chief of Staff General Erik Shinseki. Another recipient of Rumsfeld’s wrath is the commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command General Charles Holland who Rumsfeld accused of having a “case of the slows” in carrying out Bush’s war plans.

Pentagon sources report that morale among senior military commanders is at an all time low. Rumsfeld rubbed salt into open wounds when he ordered his “CINCs” (Commander-in-Chief) to drop that title, declaring that there is only one “commander-in-chief” and that is Bush. Neither did it help when Rumsfeld said military draftees never added any value to the service.

Pentagon sources report that some officers are digging out old message traffic that emanated from the Nixon White House in 1974 during the height of the Watergate crisis. One particular order from then Chief of Staff Al Haig stated that military commanders were to ignore any orders from Nixon unless they were authorized and co-signed by Haig. The fear then was that Nixon might have ordered a military move on the Congress during the impeachment hearings and cite national security as the reason for suspending the congressional proceedings against him.

In the end, however, Nixon understood the gravity of his constitutional responsibilities. He resigned. Bush, on the other hand, has done more to shred the Constitution than any of his predecessors.

Of course, there was once another fanatic war-possessed leader who tore up his constitution and routinely berated his generals and ignored their advice. On July 20, 1944, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg strode into a conference room in Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair compound with a briefcase bomb. Although the plot to rid the world of Hitler once and for all failed, it confirmed that a number of Germany’s top generals, including its most famous, Erwin von Rommel, were strongly opposed to Hitler’s fanaticism.

War making and saber rattling is not the only similarity of Bush to Hitler. The German leader, along with Joseph Goebbels, was also a master of propaganda. The Bush administration, obviously putting its propaganda arm, the White house Office of Global Communications, into full gear, convinced nine European leaders to take out an ad, billed as an ‘article,” in several European newspapers supporting the Bush administration. Some of the usual suspects signed on to the article, including Tony Blair, who, in addition to Barney and Spot, is Bush’s favorite lap dog. But it is interesting to point out some of the other leaders who backed Bush. They include the Prime Ministers of Poland and Hungary and President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic. These countries, which joined NATO a few years ago with the provision that they buy billions of dollars of American warplanes, tanks, and other hardware, are virtual subsidiaries of America’s military-industrial complex.

Denmark’s Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen is only in power because of the support he receives from a rabidly anti-immigrant party that mirrors John Ashcroft’s brand of conservatism. Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi heads a party that has maintained strong links to Italy’s neo-fascist movement whose founding father was Benito Mussolini. Likewise, the parties of Spain’s Jose Maria Aznar and Portugal’s Jose Barroso have historical links to the fascist movements of Francisco Franco and Antonio Salazar, respectively.

Bush’s borrowing liberally from Hitler’s play book was not lost on Germany’s former Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin, who last September said Bush wanted a war with Iraq to divert attention from domestic problems. She added, “That’s a popular method. Even Hitler did that.”

Bush, who is content to win the support of Pentagon stooges in Eastern Europe and neo-fascists elsewhere, has chosen to ignore people like former South African President Nelson Mandela who made no secret of his disgust for Bush when he declared at a women’s forum, “One power with a president who has no foresight — who cannot think properly — is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust.”

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who did more to bring peace to the world in a couple of years than either of the Bush’s have done in two presidential terms, said last year that George W. Bush is a threat to world peace and that his plans to attack Iraq will destroy the international coalition in the war on terrorism. Former President Jimmy Carter and Nobel Peace Prize laureate warned that a pre-emptive US attack on Iraq would have catastrophic consequences.

Bush’s disparaging of the United Nations, world opinion, and international statesmen is reminiscent of an April 28, 1939 speech by Hitler before the Reichstag:

“Members of the German Reichstag: The President of the United States of America has addressed a telegram to me, with the curious contents of which you are already familiar . . . The President of the United States believes that in conference rooms as in courts it is necessary that both sides enter in good faith, assuming that substantial justice will accrue to both. German representatives will never again enter a conference that is for them a tribunal . . . Mr. Roosevelt asks that assurances be given him that the German armed forces will not attack, and above all, not invade, the territory or possessions of the following independent nations. He then names as those to which he refers: Finland, Lithuania, Latvia,’ Estonia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain , Ireland, France, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Poland, Hungary, Rumania, Yugoslavia, Russia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iraq, the Arabias, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Iran. I have first taken the trouble to ascertain from the states mentioned, firstly, whether they feel themselves threatened, and, what is most important, secondly, whether this inquiry by the American President was addressed to us at their suggestion or at least with their consent. The reply was in all cases negative, in some instances strongly so . . . I have reunited the territories that have been German throughout a thousand years of history-and, Mr. Roosevelt, I have endeavored to attain all this without bloodshed and without bringing to my people and so to others, the misery of war . . . For my world, Mr. President, is the one to which Providence has assigned me and for which it is my duty to work. Its area is much smaller. It comprises my people alone. But I believe I can thus best serve that which is in the hearts of all of us a*” justice, well-being, progress and peace for the whole community of mankind.”

As Congress cheerfully applauded Bush’s State of the Union address, the Reichstag gave Hitler a thunderous reception. Although Hitler’s oratory skills were light years beyond Bush’s, the two speeches had something extremely fundamental in common– they were packed with lies.

WAYNE MADSEN is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist. He wrote the introduction to Forbidden Truth.

 

 

CENTRE DE RECHERCHE SUR LA MONDIALISATION The deep politics of regime removal in Iraq : Overt conquest, covert operations BY LARRY CHIN vendredi 20 décembre 2002, 

 

As this report goes to press, a new round of UN "weapons inspections" has begun. This charade, designed to create the appearance of an international consensus, will delay, but not stop, the American rampage. In absence of suitable evidence implicating Iraq, evidence will be produced. In the absence of justifications, new pretexts will be manufactured, and old ones, dusted off and repeated. The head of UN inspections, Hans Blix, the man entrusted with deciding whether Iraq is harboring weapons of mass destruction, "cannot guarantee that his inspection teams does not include Western spies". Complete text. Originally published as a five-part series (October 24-November 22, 2002) I Into the abyss The Bush administration is putting the finishing touches on an invasion of Iraq, and possibly Saudi Arabia, Iran and beyond. The next phase of the long-planned and sequential 9/11 War will involve the removal of Saddam Hussein, and either the installation of a new puppet regime or US military occupation, or the takeover and partitioning of Iraqi territory by US surrogates (Jordan, Kuwait and the Kurds). This report will attempt to explain the means by which Iraq is likely to fall, the groups and individuals who will carry it out, and the various hidden agendas that the mainstream media have refused to analyze, much less report. The Middle East : the 9/11 War's key prize "Regime change," the criminal toppling of sovereign nations, has been casually bandied about by the Bush administration and the US media for months, but it is hardly news. The Iraq Liberation Act, which was passed by the US Congress and signed into law in 1998, explicitly calls for regime change. Washington's predatory interest in Iraq is bluntly stated by the President's National Security Strategy : "The purpose of US engagement, as espoused in the NSS is to protect the United States' vital interest in the region---uninterrupted, secure US/Allied access to Gulf oil." www.milnet.com/pentagon/centcom/chap1/stratgic.htm#USPolicy Additionally, the "easing of US access to Persian Gulf supplies" is a priority stated in the US National Energy Policy Report of 2001-the notorious "Cheney Report". In the short-term, the Bush administration's goal is to break the back of OPEC, head off an impending crash of the US oil industry, and rescue a plundered US economy that is on the verge of collapse. Capturing Iraq would accomplish this. As reported by Ed Vulliamy, Paul Webster and Nick Paton Walsh in The Observer (10/6/02), "The current high price of oil is dragging the US economy further into recession. US control of the Iraqi reserves, perhaps the biggest unmapped reservoir in the world, would break Saudi Arabia's hold on the oil-pricing cartel OPEC, and dictate prices for the next century." Washington insiders have not bothered to disguise their blood-for-oil zeal. Lawrence Lindsey, George W. Bush's economic adviser, said, "When there is a regime change in Iraq, you could add 3 million to 5 million barrels of production to world supply. The successful prosecution of the war would be good for the economy." Former CIA Director James Woolsey echoed this sentiment : "Iraq is exporting only 1 million barrels of oil a day, and that under US occupation, output could be increased by 3 to 4 million barrels a day as a price control measure." Another former CIA operative, Reuel Marc Gerecht, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, added, "OPEC is already significantly fractured, and US control of Iraq oil would already add to its internal frictions. It would definitely diminish the Saudis' influence (over the United States) and would cause the Iranian regime a lot of trouble." The Big Rollover The true long-term agenda driving the planned Middle East operation is the pursuit of the largest remaining reserves of oil in a world running out of oil. This nightmarish scientific fact, which has been well understood by the world's elites, has been studiously kept from the public. (See www.dieoff.com ) As explained in a series of reports by Dale Allen Pfeiffer, geologist and Contributing Editor for Energy for From the Wilderness, "based on the Hubbert Curve (a standard measure of world oil production peaks and declines), in five years, we will no longer be able to produce enough oil to meet the needs of our oil civilization." The Background is Oil What Will Be the Next Target of the Oil Coup ? Is the Empire About Oil ? Is China the Endgame for Oil ? http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/102302_campbell.html Professor Richard Heinberg, editor of The Museletter writes : "After that 'Big Rollover,' as one USGS geophysicist has dubbed it, there will be a few percentage points less oil available each year to meet the rising world demand, regardless of what anyone does." In the context of this looming cataclysm, the Bush administration's sequential capture of the world's major oil supplies (Central Asia, Middle East, Balkans, Venezuela, Colombia, South China Sea, etc.), under the pretext of a "war on terrorism", is as predictable as it is brazen : Iraq has 113 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, second worldwide only to Saudi Arabia. Iraq controls 11 percent of the oil on the planet. The US Department of Energy estimates that Iraq has as much as 220 billion barrels in undiscovered reserves. There are 70 known oil fields in Iraq, only 15 of which have been developed. Saudi Arabia, which is on the brink of civil war, and a convenient simultaneous target of a US conquest, owns another 25 percent of the world's oil supply. "Together the two countries, which have not yet peaked in production capacity, and which are the only two nations capable of an immediate increase in output, possess 36 percent of the world's known oil" according to Michael C. Ruppert (From the Wilderness , 8/12/02) Michael Klare, author of The Resource Wars, adds : "Iraq is the only country besides Saudi Arabia that can add millions of barrels per day in additional production over the next 10 to 20 years." "In the coming years," writes Pfeiffer, "continued US hegemony will depend upon maintaining control and access to the world's dwindling hydrocarbon reserves, most of which are contained in the Middle East." And the oil elite, led by the Bush administration, will stop at nothing to secure the remaining riches and dictate their use. Against this canvass of global crisis, the explicit policy of the US towards Iraq has been regime change, a process first begun under the George H.W. Bush administration. As noted by Joe Taglieri (From the Wilderness 10/1/02), a close-knit cabal of current and former White House officials and hawkish war planners affiliated with conservative think tanks has been developing strategies for removing the Iraqi regime since 1991. In the most recent plan penned by Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, and reported by Stratfor , Iraq will disappear, and the nation itself will be split into three parts . The central part of Iraq, currently populated by the Sunni Arabs, would become part of Jordan and ruled by Jordanian King Abdullah. The Kurdish region of northern and northwestern Iraq, including Mosul and the vast Kirkuk oilfields, would become an autonomous state. Southwestern Iraq would become a part of Kuwait. Another Washington blueprint reported in the Wall Street Journal (11/12/02) involves a plan similar to post-World War II Japan---a military occupation headed by an American and assisted by US-allied Iraqi exiles and technocrats. Based on lists produced by Iraqi opposition operatives, current Ba'ath Party officials would be tried as war criminals. As evidenced by the establishment of new permanent military bases throughout the Middle East and Central Asia, and new long-term war appropriations (such as a five-year contract signed on August 5, 2002, between the US Navy and Maersk Shipping Line to operate vessels to ferry tanks, ammunition and other weaponry from Diego Garcia to the Persian Gulf), the US appears committed to a major Middle East conflict . The region is completely encircled by US forces, which continue to be built up on a daily basis. According to Reuters, "Washington believes that if US forces were to attack Iraq the best conditions would be in the first few months of next year." The fully complicit US Congress has already "rubber stamped" the war. Intransigence from certain members of the United Nations will delay but not likely stop it, as back-door deals continue to be negotiated over the parceling of the post-Saddam spoils. Fronting for the Masters It is no surprise that the "unsavory" regimes of Jordan, Kuwait and Turkey are assisting the US effort. The ruling Jordanian monarchy has been closely connected to Washington for decades. The late Jordanian King Hussein enjoyed a relationship with the CIA going back to the 1950s. The current Jordanian regime was installed by the United States. According to the Guardian (2/17/99), "at the beginning of 1999, a combination of CIA manipulation, palace intrigue and pressure from Hussein's American wife, Queen Noor, resulted in long-time Crown Prince Hassan being dumped in favor of Abdullah, son of Hussein's British wife and commander of Jordan's Special Forces. And so, Abdullah II becomes King of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan". Jordan is also the headquarters of the CIA-connected Iraqi National Accord, one of the preferred Iraqi opposition groups. Similarly, the Kuwaiti regime, headed by the al Sabbah family, is also deeply tied to Washington and the Bush family. It was Kuwait's slant-drilling into Iraq, coupled with George H.W. Bush's numerous provocations (including an international oil price-fixing scheme) that baited Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait in 1990. Kuwait also assisted the Bush administration in creating some of the most deceptive propaganda of the Gulf War. According to UPI correspondent Morgan Strong, the virulent anti-Saddam Hussein propaganda produced during the Gulf War was created by members of the Kuwaiti regime and a Washington, DC, public relations firm with close ties to the Bush administration. "While Iraqi troops did commit atrocities in Kuwait, they never tore little babies from incubators and murdered them", wrote Strong. "The young woman who testified to the horror before Congress ? She was the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to Washington. She was in Paris when the Iraqi's invaded Kuwait. She never worked in a hospital ; she never worked in her life. Her father was a scion of the immensely wealthy dynasty that rules Kuwait. The woman who testified before the General Assembly ? She was not in Kuwait at the time of the invasion either. She was the wife of the information minister of Kuwait." Turkey, a long-time ally of the US, has been offered direct shares of Iraqi oil, and more funding for the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline in exchange for its assistance. According to Kurdish journalist Husayn Al-Kurdi, "CIA involvement in Turkey is as old as the agency itself, and the United States supports Turkey and its right wing paramilitary groups to the hilt." 9/11 : the Mother of All Fabricated Pretexts The man in the street does not notice the devil even when the devil is holding him by the throat. --Goethe The legitimacy of the next major war hinges upon the official 9/11 narrative, which promotes the myth that the United States is under attack by crazed foreign terrorists. Based on documentary evidence compiled and analyzed by Professor Michel Chossudovsky www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO210A.html , the "war on terrorism"-which now includes by extension the "war on rogue states" (Iraq)-is a massive fraud. In fact, a preponderance of the evidence compiled over the past year indicts the Bush administration for its complicity in the 9/11 attacks, and likely involvement in numerous incidents of post 9/11 terrorism-all of which appear to be sophisticated intelligence operations carried out by cutouts controlled by the CIA and the highest levels within the Bush administration. As summarized by Ruppert : "We now know that Bush et al knew enough…to prevent it but did not. It has already been shown that CIA-linked members of the Pakistani intelligence service helped fund it ; that five of the hijackers received flight training at US military installations ; that no fighters were scrambled in time to do anything ; and that President Bush lied when he said he had no idea that planes could be used as weapons. We know that it is a state secret as to whether the intelligence agencies told Bush what we now know they knew." "Successive US administrations have supported, abetted and harbored international terrorism," writes Chossudovsky. Since the Cold War, the US has continued to harbor the "Islamic Militant Network" and other terrorist groups as an explicit tool of US foreign policy. Furthermore : The "Islamic Militant Network" was a creation of the CIA, specifically created to fight the Soviet Afghan War as a tool of US foreign policy starting in the Carter administration under its pioneer, Zbigniew Brezezinski, who remains at the forefront of US policy planning. Post-Cold War militant Islamic groups, including al Qaeda are US intelligence assets. Through proxy groups, many of which are not aware of who and what funds and controls them, the CIA continues to use terrorism to manage US and western geo-economic interests. The CIA wields substantial control of its terrorist proxies, and monitors its cells in real time through a number of sophisticated methods. There was no "intelligence failure" on 9/11, nor is there one today. For months, the Bush administration has compounded its "war on terrorism" lie with a crescendo of new lies about Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction." These lies have been repeatedly exposed. In a closed session with Bush administration officials, Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) asked repeatedly whether they had evidence of an imminent threat from Hussein against US citizens. "They said 'no'," she said. "Not 'no, but', or 'maybe', but 'no'. I was stunned. Not shocked. Not surprised. Stunned." (San Francisco Chronicle, 9/20/02) According to former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who has provided clear proof that Iraq poses no credible threat, "President Bush refuses to take "yes" for an answer. The Bush administration's actions lay bare the mythology that this war is being fought over any threat posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. It has made it clear that its objective is the elimination of Saddam Hussein." A War of Terrorism : American Terrorism It comes as no surprise that Iraqi regime removal will feature yet another cast of US-bred "unsavory" paramilitaries, criminals, and armed groups carefully run by the CIA since the Iran-Iraq War. The Bush administration and the CIA are cobbling together a coalition similar to the Afghan "Northern Alliance," which itself consisted of bandits, narco- traffickers, rapists, criminal warlords and war criminals. The Iraqi exile and opposition groups now receiving additional last-minute training by the CIA and US Special Forces will participate in the ground assault. Its major leaders are likely to play major roles in the new puppet regime(s), once the slaughter ends. The pandora's box is wide open. II The CIA and the Iraqi/Kurd opposition groups If an invasion of Iraq goes as scripted by the Bush administration and Washington's elite fraternity of war planners, the world will witness a nightmarishly familiar spectacle. A CIA scion (a Bush) will remove a former US ally, CIA asset and business partner (Saddam Hussein) using CIA-supported paramilitaries, cutouts, and opposition groups to install new CIA-affiliated client regimes controlled by and beholden to US interests. Saddam Hussein : a long-running CIA game and US obsession Real power plays all sides of any conflict, alternately supporting and subverting (from within and without), playing one side against another, "managing the tension", until desired results are achieved. A well-documented example is Afghanistan, where, in the wake of the Afghan-Soviet War, the US has installed and then violently overthrown successive regimes (Rabbani, Hekmatyr, Northern Alliance, Taliban), until a satisfying result was eventually achieved : a US puppet government, headed by former Unocal consultant and CIA asset Hamid Karzai, narco-trafficking warlord/bandits of the Northern Alliance, and helped along by US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, Pentagon-intelligence insider, former Unocal consultant, and assistant to current Deputy Defense Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz. In Iraq, the US and CIA have been playing a similar game for decades, running paramilitaries and armed groups with roots going back to Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s and beyond. "Americans have been left in the dark concerning CIA maneuvers in the Middle East, fed a steady diet of fantasy mush in which Arabs and Muslims are inexorably tagged as irrational, fanatical terrorists," wrote Kurdish journalist Husayn Al-Kurdi. "The actual history of CIA involvement in the region tells a far different story." The CIA's direct role in Iraq stretches back to the 1950s. Saddam Hussein himself was a US creation, a US ally and a CIA asset. As noted by Al-Kurdi, "after propping up the corrupt regime of Nuri Said, the USA went after Abdul Karim-Kassem, whose popularly-supported coup eliminated the old British agent Nuri in 1958. Among those whom the CIA recruited to do its dirty work were the Iraqi Baath Party, including a brash power-hungry adventurer named Saddam Hussein." The CIA then engineered the overthrow and assassination of Kassem in 1963, with Saddam playing a major role in the Kassem hit and subsequent liquidations of Communists. Throughout the ensuring decades to the start of the Gulf War in 1990, Saddam was a key US ally in the region, as well as a US trading partner, and a business associate of George Herbert Walker Bush. (In another hemisphere, Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega played a similar role over the same period.) The Bush administration's National Security Decision Directives (exposed in an LA Times investigation in 1992), as well as records detailing the Bush-Saddam relationships through the notorious BCCI and Banco Nacional del Lavoro (BNL), offer clear evidence that Saddam Hussein's government was explicitly and knowingly armed and financed by the US and personally involved with Bush. After the Gulf War, in the guise of a "Kurd safe haven", the CIA created a protectorate and base for covert activities designed to destabilize the Iraqi regime, while allowing the suppression of Kurds and Muslims to continue simultaneously. Under George H.W. Bush, the CIA reportedly spent $20 million in anti-Saddam propaganda, and at least $11 million in aid to a number of Iraqi and Kurd opposition groups. As Al-Kurdi points out : "It was clear from the beginning that the "safe haven" was an operation to provide "cover" for CIA operations against Iraq and Turkish crackdowns on Kurds---not "comfort", as its official designation implied. A state of dependence was reinforced in which the 'providers' could keep their Kurdish puppets on short strings." When Shi'ite Muslims in southern Iraq staged a revolt against Saddam in the spring of 1991 under the watchful eye of the CIA, the Bush I administration permitted Saddam's Iraqi troops to crush the revolt. To prevent a popular Islamic movement within Iraq (one that could threaten western oil interests and business interests), Bush did nothing as his former partner and vanquished foe crushed the revolt. Keeping Saddam Hussein alive but neutered (via sanctions, no-fly zones, etc.) allowed the US to keep military forces in Saudi Arabia, while plans for an eventual Iraq regime change were debated. In the meantime, the rebuilding of Iraq, and various forms of covert trade, was lucrative to a number of western corporations (such as Halliburton, General Electric and others). The black market was also means of control. "By turning a blind eye to smuggled oil," writes former CIA operative Robert Baer in his book See No Evil, "the US managed to turn the Kurdish opposition against itself even as it helped Saddam pay for his praetorian guard, just what you'd expect of a clever superpower that was secretly supporting the local despot." By the mid-1990s, the Clinton-era CIA began pursuing two primary strategies against Saddam. One involved a military operation involving a popular insurrection led Iraqi National Congress (INC) and Kurdish paramilitaries. The second strategy focused on a "palace coup" by the CIA-British MI6-created Iraqi National Accord (INA), a group of former Iraqi military officers based out of London. Disguised as "humanitarian aid", the US government's "Operation Provide Comfort" served as a cover for these and other operations. In 1994, the INC led an insurrection from a base in Iraqi Kurdistan with CIA backing. In March 1995, the CIA assisted a combined INC-Kurdish operation to capture the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, and a simultaneous rebellion by Iraqi troops. Without US support, the operation fell apart, allowing Saddam Hussein's forces to invaded the safe haven and destroy the opposition. Some 130 INC members were executed. The Clinton administration's last minute pullout infuriated the CIA. To cover up their policy blunder in northern Iraq, the Clinton administration fired cruise missiles into southern Iraq. The UN Security Council resumed the Oil-For-Food Program. The CIA's efforts throughout the 1990s, which resulted in a handful of uprisings, assassination attempts (the CIA and British MI6 plotted to assassinate Saddam Hussein in 1995), failed due to infighting among Kurdish opposition groups, security leaks and betrayals, and bickering between hawkish elements within the CIA and the Clinton White House. George W. Bush unleashes hell Upon seizing power, George W. Bush promised to fully implement the Iraq Liberation Act, which was signed in law by Congress and signed by Clinton in 1998, but treated cautiously by a Clinton administration not prepared to unleash a Middle East war. In early 2002, Bush (who had boasted during his presidential campaign that he would "take out Saddam") gave the CIA and US Special Forces the authority to use lethal force and "all available resources" to kill or capture Saddam Hussein, and conduct covert operations aimed at toppling his regime. This executive order called for increased support to Iraqi opposition groups (money, training, intelligence and equipment) and a ramping up of CIA intelligence collection within Iraq. US officials have worked continuously with the Iraqi opposition throughout 2002. Former Iraqi officers met in March 2002 at a Washington military installation to discuss plans to topple Saddam Hussein and form a post-Saddam government. In April 2002, Kurdish leaders traveled to Frankfurt, Germany and then to a CIA training base in southern Virginia to discuss coup strategies. In June, according to the Scotsman, local Kurdistan sources reported that "US and UK troops have already started installing communications equipment in the Sulaimaniya province in the Kurdish region of Iraq." Between July 12-15, 2002, some 70 exiled Iraqi military officers and leaders of various Iraqi opposition groups met at an undisclosed location near London to plan a new revolt to overthrow of Saddam Hussein by force, and to call for a major role in the upcoming US operation, along with military aid (training and equipping of fighters). Heading this meeting was the Iraqi National Congress, the umbrella opposition group with close ties to exiled Iraqi military officers and the CIA. In August, officials from six different Iraqi opposition groups met in Washington at the request of a "joint invitation" from the Defense Department and the State Department. Attending this summit meeting : -Donald Rumsfeld -Marc Grossman, undersecretary of state for political affairs -Doug Feith, undersecretary of defense -Dick Cheney (via video conference, from Wyoming) -Colin Powell -Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs -Ahmed Chalabi (Iraqi National Congress) -Jalal Talabani (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan) -Major General Tawfiq al-Yassiri (Iraqi National Coalition) -Hoshyar Zebari, aide to Massoud Barzani (Kurdish Democratic Party) -Ayadh Allawi (Iraqi National Accord) -Shaif Ali Bin Hussein Constitutional Monarchy Party -Abdelaziz Al-Hakim brother of SCIRI leader Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim -Major General Saad Obeidi, former head of Iraqi psychological warfare -Prince Hassan of Jordan, the uncle of King Abdullah of Jordan. In another mid-August meeting, according to Knight-Ridder, "top US officials and members of the Iraqi opposition plotted the details of a post-Saddam government in Iraq, right down to the number of seats in the parliament." "Dozens of US troops and intelligence services have been sent into northern Iraq" according to Agence France-Presse (10/12/02). CIA chief George Tenet had "personally visited northern Iraq during his last tour of the region and had given orders to start the security plan after US President George W. Bush approved a decision to ask the CIA to overthrow Saddam". Jordanian King Abdullah was given orders to clear two military airports in Jordan for US forces. About 2,000 US troops have been deployed in Jordan so far. Dozens of these US soldiers, along with CIA agents, have been sent into Iraq territory. Who are the opposition groups ? Iraqi National Congress (INC) The Iraqi National Congress, a coalition of Iraqi royalists, Kurds, and Iraqi Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims, is a creation of the CIA. The group was formed in 1992 when the two main Kurdish factions, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), participated in a meeting which was the first major attempt by anti-Saddam factions to join forces. The group was provided with its name by CIA and has received over $100 million in covert funding throughout the early 1990s, then received overt funding after the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act was signed. It currently receives $8 million annually from the US government. The CIA has, among other things, funded the INC's radio and television stations in northern Iraq. The INC is headed by American-educated Ahmed Chalabi, a close friend of Dick Cheney, whom some have pegged as "Cheney's protégé". He enjoys close ties to the American Enterprise Institute and has attended the think tank's retreats in Beaver Creek, Colorado. After fleeing Iraq in the wake of the INC's failed coup in 1995, Chalabi co-signed a letter with forty "prominent Americans" an open letter to President Clinton in 1998 that later became the Iraqi Liberation Act of 1998. Signers of the letter included current Vice President and former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, current Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, current Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former Defense Secretary and Iran-Contra participant Caspar Weinberger, former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, current Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith, and current Deputy Secretary of State and Iran-Contra participant Richard Armitage. Chalabi is an exiled Shi'ite banker and a felon. In the early 1990s, Chalabi was convicted for money laundering in Jordan, and has reportedly "lost" $4 million in funds obtained from Washington. He hails from a wealthy Iraqi Shi'ite banking family and has a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Chicago. After a period following the Gulf War in which the INC received some $15 million to $100 million in funding from Washington, Chalabi fell out of favor among certain elements of the CIA and Clinton administration. The US State Department temporarily halted aid to the INC after the INC attempted to scuttle a State Department-sponsored conference of Iraqi exiles that did not include the INC. When George W. Bush seized power in January 2001, INC funding resumed. Currently, the INC receives $8 million annually. Chalabi's 'End Game' strategy papers have circulated throughout Washington and received attention from various think tanks for a decade. This plan involves a popular revolt and a military coup, carried out by Kurdish factions and Iraqis dissidents, using US weapons. Since September 11, 2001, Chalabi has lobbied a new battle plan, featuring a firebase inside Iraq, declaration of a provisional government (with quick US recognition, no doubt), recruitment among Iraq's Shi'a Muslims, heavy US bombing and the deployment of thousands of US Special Forces. This plan also calls for military assistance from Iran. Based on promises of funding from the US Treasury's Department of the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the Khatami regime in Iran agreed to permit INC forces to cross the Iranian border into southern Iraq. In a February 2002 interview with the Guardian of London, Chalabi said that "all he needed was '11 weeks of training for his followers, anti-tank weapons, air cover, the support of Special Forces and some protective gear against chemical or biological attack'. Once these needs were met, he claimed, his forces would be ready to cross the Kuwait border into the Basra region and organize mass resistance. His position would be protected by US air power, which would presumably clear a path for him and his army to Baghdad." Despite Washington's general support of the INC as a "democratic alternative" through the years, top US officials have doubted the INC's limited military expertise, as well as its ability to maintain a government in the wake of a coup. Chalabi's INC-PUK-KDP effort failed in 1995, forcing him to move his operational base to London. There is another reason why Chalabi is favored in Washington : oil. The INC proposes the creation of a consortium of American companies to develop Iraq's oil fields. According to the San Francisco Chronicle (9/29/02), "Chalabi has stated that should the INC lead a new Iraqi government, it would be the US oil companies that would get the contracts. Russian and French companies would be junior partners at best." The Group of Four and the Kurdish opposition The Group of Four consists of the Iraqi National Accord (INA, or Waffik), the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), and the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). As reported by Al-Kurdi, the two main Kurdish groups, led by the PUK and KDP have "fearsome security agencies which carry out death-squad style repression against Kurds who oppose them. Both parties have earned the disgust of Kurds with their gangster-like operations in the safe haven." It is estimated that the KDP and PUK have a combined force of up to 40,000 to 70,000 fighters. Since the 1990s, the two main groups have at times fought against each other in their respective bids to control the proceeds of smuggling and other economic activities, while ferociously repressing the Kurdish population in the process. According to the New York Times (7/6/02), "Kurdish leaders are riven by internal disputes and have yet to come to any agreement with the CIA to allow American intelligence officers, special forces trainers or diplomats to set up camp there". They are reluctant to support a US operation "unless they get strong guarantees that the Bush administration plans to go all the way to Baghdad" and the Kurdish cities are protected from an Iraqi onslaught. Iraqi National Accord (INA) The Iraqi National Accord was founded in 1990 and is a creation of the CIA, the British MI6 and Jordanian intelligence, on the initiative of Turki ibn Faisal. Former CIA agent Ralph McGehee confirmed that "the INA is heavily sponsored by the United States and under the influence of the CIA" and quoted another Iraqi opposition figure as saying that "it is common knowledge among Iraqi dissidents that the Accord is directly financed by the CIA." The INA is headed by Shi'ite Ayad Alawi. The INA seeks to bring down Saddam Hussein using former Iraqi officers and top Baghdad officials, while preserving the Iraqi state. They are terrorists, who have claimed responsibility for the bombing of civilian targets, including a Baghdad cinema and newspaper offices. According to INA insiders, these activities were carried out in order to "impress the CIA". According to the Federation of American Scientists, Saddam Hussein's son-in-law Husayn Kamil al-Majid (an architect of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs), defected to Jordan" to work with the INA, which suggested to many in the region that Saddam's grip on power had weakened. But in June 1996, the INA coup was exposed, leading to the arrest of 100 INA officers, and the execution of 30 others. The INA was able to regroup after this debacle, with support from Jordan. Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) Its founder, Mulla Mustafa Barzani, worked for CIA as early as the 1960s. "A secret agreement was reached between the CIA and Mulla Mustafa Barzani in August 1969. In the 1970s, the KDP battled the Iraqi government at the behest of Iran, Israel and the US. The elder Barzani was a staunch US ally, who promised to turn Iraqi oil fields over to the US. After Iran and Iraq came to terms, spelling the end of the need for the KDP rebellion, Barzani wound up living in exile in the US, where he died in 1979. The KDP is currently led by Massoud Barzani, the son of the founder. KDP seeks to form a Kurdish state in northern Iraq, while maintaining control of the Kirkuk oil field. The group has feuded with its rival, the PUK, over a variety of issues, such as oil smuggling revenues. This conflict continued throughout the mid-1990s. Barzani's contempt for Jalal Talabani and the PUK was so strong that he helped Saddam Hussein crush the PUK and push the INC out in the late 1990s. Barzani did not attend a number of critical Bush-Iraqi opposition summit meetings in Washington, despite being offered a private plane (to fly him from southeastern Turkey) and a personal visit with Bush. His absence was, according to the New York Times (8/15/02) was "a blow to Bush administration officials who had orchestrated the meeting in part to demonstrate that Iraqi opposition forces were unified behind a new campaign". Barzani was upset over the Bush administration's refusal to provide assurances that it would protect Kurdish areas from a pre-emptive Iraqi attack. Dick Cheney reportedly gave a typically ambiguous non-answer : "US forces would respond at a time and place of its choosing". The subsequently-penned Cheney-Wolfowitz "Hashemite" plan addresses some of Barzani's concerns. Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) The PUK was established in the 1960s by its current leader, Jalal Talabani, a former member of the KDP. A master opportunist, he has earned a reputation as "everybody's agent". PUK's primary goal is the removal of Saddam Hussein, and the establishment of a Kurdish state. According to Al-Kurdi, the PUK "posits a 'modern' approach to Kurdish politics, cooking Kurdish interests in every conceivable sauce, with flavors meant to edify and attract supporters among the governments of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, the United States, and a host of others.The PUK leader Talabani has openly courted Israel, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Saddam Hussein and Turkey, entering in a variety of "understandings" with all of these states in recent times." Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) The SCIRI consists of southern Iraqi Shi'ites and is backed by Iran. Its guerrilla force numbers between 7,000 and 15,000. Ayatollah Mohammad Bakr al-Hakkim heads the SCIRI. The group is opposed to a US invasion of Iraq, but will support an internal US-assisted operation to topple Saddam, and a one-year transitional government followed by elections. Mohammad al-Harari, Lebanon representative of SCIRI, said in an interview with Reuters in July 2002, "any military action must be in the hands of the Iraqis, not in foreign hands from abroad" and that the group opposes an attack that causes "unnecessary suffering among the Iraqi people". The SCIRI was selected by the US for funding through the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, but the group refused. Other opposition groups In addition to main groups, there are another 60 smaller Iraqi opposition groups and scores of individuals involved in anti-Saddam activities, many of whom have ties to the CIA. According to the New York Times (August 18, 2002), they include Nizar al-Khazraji, who assisted in the poison gassing of Iran during the late 1980s, aided by the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. Iraqi National Liberal (INL) is an opposition group made up of other exiled former Iraqi military officers. According to the Center for Cooperative Research, the INL has recently attempted to recruit General Nizar al-Kharraji, who is under investigation in Denmark for a 1988 slaughter of 100,000 Kurds. Iraqi National Movement (INM) was established in 2001, a Sunni-dominated INC splinter group comprised of up to 100 former military officers and political officials. The group recently met with Wayne Downing, the US Deputy National Security Adviser for Combatting Terrorism. Subsequently, the State Department authorized $315,000 to the group. Iraqi National Coalition (or Iraqi National Council) is an umbrella group founded in 2000 by former Iraqi military officers headed by former Brigadier Tawfiq al-Yasiri, head of Iraq's military academy, and General Saad Ubeidi, former head of Iraqi army psychological operations. This group favors an uprising triggered by US air strikes, but opposes a US invasion. A former CIA official describes the Iraqi/Kurd opposition In a posted internet discussion about CIA operations in Iraq from the late 1990s at Ralph W. McGehee, former CIA agent and longtime critic of the Agency, said that the "gung-ho" attitude of then-CIA Director John Deutch and his Director of Operations, David Cohen, was also "reflected in the chain of command via the Chief of Division of Near East Operations and CIA's Iraqi Chief of Station, 'Bob'." "Bob" referred to former CIA case officer Robert Baer, agent in charge in Iraq during that period, whose book "See No Evil" contains a 42-page firsthand account of the CIA's Clinton-era coup attempts against Saddam, and detailed observations of the INC, PUK and KDP. [Baer's memoir is a biased work that portrays the CIA as a "defanged" and "dispirited" institution that lacks sufficient "human sources". The disgruntled Baer is an advocate for a return to the "good old days" of unrestrained clandestine operations conducted by Americans. Besides overlooking the effectiveness of "outsourcing" to non-American assets and affiliated branches such as the Pakistani ISI, and new spy technology, Baer's charge is contradicted by the statements of CIA officials including CIA Deputy Director James Pavitt, who bragged "I have more spies stealing more secrets than at any time in the history of the CIA." http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/pavitt_04262002.html Baer's book is, however, useful primarily for its revealing and unintentionally damning anecdotes.] On CIA and US government support for a Iraq coup : "I wasn't running a rogue CIA operation that the National Security Council didn't know about. (Anthony) Lake's assistant for the Near East, Martin Indyk, personally authorized the CIA to set up a clandestine base in northern Iraq, the one I now headed." "We want Saddam out. It's the Iraqi people who've kept him in power all these years', I said." "The only beacon I had to go by was what I understood American policy to be : that we would support any serious movement to get rid of Saddam Hussein. Those were my orders as I understood them [my emphasis-LC], the reason I had brought my team into northern Iraq. And I took my orders seriously." "Not long afterward, Saddam started trading oil for food, which eased the suffering inside Iraq, just enough to stem the tide of defections from his army. So if we want him out now, it will probably take a war, not a coup.[my emphasis-LC]." On Ahmed Chalabi (INC) : "Marching across the lobby of the Key Bridge Marriott in his Saville Row suit, $150 Italian silk tie and hand-stitched calfskin oxfords, he looked more like the successful Levantine banker he once had been than like someone who was going to ride into Baghdad on the top of a tank. Short and overweight, his body showed the side effects of too many long business lunches at first-class European restaurants. When he shook my hand, I picked up the faint smell of scented soap. As incongruous as Chalabi's appearance was, his resume offered even less promise that he might one day lead a successful Iraqi opposition…. Outside of Iraq, Chalabi was a felon ; inside he remained almost completely unknown." "He had produced a lengthy position paper entitled 'End Game' on how to jump-start the March 1991 uprisings, when the Shi'as and Kurds had taken advantage of the end of the Gulf War to try to wrest power from Saddam. The paper had been well shopped around Washington by the time Chalabi presented me with a copy---at a sushi restaurant in Georgetown, two days after our first meeting---but if the thinking wasn't particularly new, 'End Game' did help him stand out in the crowd." (Baer, responding to Chalabi's question about Washington support for an INC-led insurrection) "'Schedule one and then ask', I answered." On Masoud Barzani (KPP) : "When it came to convincing the Kurds to join the uprising, the hardest nut to crack was Barzani. My own relations with Barzani went sour from the start…Once when I told (Barzani) that the US was fed up with the Kurds and would abandon the north one day, Barzani lost his temper. He walked over to where I was sitting, pointed his index finger at me and hissed through his clenched teeth, 'Don't threaten me'." "Operation Provide Comfort, the air protection provided by American planes, came free of charge---the US almost never attempted to interfere in his (Barzani's) affairs---and by late 1994, Barzani had a nice little business in smuggled Iraqi oil." On Iraqi oil smuggling : "The smuggled oil was also a lifeline for Saddam, who used the money to fund his intelligence services and Special Republican Guards---the forces that kept him alive. Indeed everyone seemed to profit from smuggling except Talabani, who wasn't getting a penny because no part of the smuggling route passed through his corner of Kurdistan. With Barzani accumulating money in his war chest, smuggled oil began to dangerously destabilized the north. You only had to drive a few miles into the north to understand the dimensions of the smuggling operations. Trucks carrying oil were lined up bumper to bumper, often for as long as twenty miles, waiting to cross into Turkey." "Washington knew all about the smuggling, but pretended it wasn't happening. As far as I know, neither the State Department nor our embassy in Ankara ever challenged Turkey, which could have shut down the whole operation with a single phone call." "What I couldn't understand was why the White House didn't intervene. All it had to do was ask Saudi Arabia to sell Turkey a hundred thousand barrels of discounted oil. It was almost as if the White House wanted Saddam to have a little walking-around money. [my emphasis-LC]" On Jalal Talabani (PUK) : "Talabani enjoyed the role of a likeable rogue. Talabani was an Iraqi nationalist. He believed that the Kurds should have a degree of autonomy but he didn't want to see Iraq partitioned among its ethnic groups. Unlike Barzani, Talabani seemed to genuinely want Saddam gone and was ready to make any sacrifice to accomplish that aim." Not a matter of if, but when Although it is not clear how the war and "erasure" of Iraq will actually be conducted, the brazen Cheney-Wolfowitz "Hashemite" plan www.stratfor.com/fib/fib_view.php ?ID=206509 appears to remove many of the previous obstacles in the way of "regime removal". The establishment of an autonomous Kurdish state will appease the KDP and PUK. Having US surrogates, Jordan and Kuwait, in charge of the two remaining portions of the territory ensures "stability"---US control---over the most important oil spoils. It goes without saying that any such "operation" will involve political and ethnic cleansing, atrocities and widespread destruction, trigger a widening conflict across the entire Middle East into Central Asia, and threaten humanity itself. What kind of people would open such a pandora's box ? In The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks wrote, "Despite occasional dreams of grandeur on the part of some of its clandestine operators, the CIA does not on its own choose to overthrow distasteful governments or determine which dictatorial regimes to support. The agency's methods and assets are a resource that come with the office of the Presidency." III The US war lobby : the disciples of NSC-68 The roots of the George W. Bush administration's policy for Iraq "regime change" can be traced to strategies formulated since the early 1990s by a small network of inveterate Cold Warriors linked by philosophical lineage and war-intelligence policy collaborations. This tightly-knit cabal stretches across the current and previous White Houses, the State Department, the CIA, the National Security Council, the boards of neo-conservative think tanks and the boards of transnational corporations (including Washington-linked energy and war-technology companies). Virtually all of the players are members of elite planning bodies (such as the Council on Foreign Relations). Many of them are indicted criminals---five individuals were direct participants in the Iran-Contra operation. All have, over the course of their intertwined careers, advocated imperialist policies involving 1) pre-emptive wars, 2) the conquest of Iraq and Iran, and the breakup of Saudi Arabia, 3) hard-line support of Israel, and 5) the encirclement and containment of Russia and China. Tracking the Iraq regime change network : the gang's all here 1. 1992 Pentagon Defense Planning Guidance. As noted by Joe Taglieri (From the Wilderness 10/1/02), this was one of the first official regime removal plans, prepared for then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. Its writers : Current Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz I. Lewis Libby 2. The Open Letter of 1998. In February 1998, forty "prominent Americans" a signed an open letter to President Clinton http://www.iraqwatch.org/perspectives/rumsfeld-openletter.htm , which formed the basis of the Iraqi Liberation Act of 1998. This letter calling for an insurrection, and recognition of the (CIA-backed) Iraqi National Congress as the official government of Iraq, was spearheaded by Ahmed Chalabi of the INC, and was based on Chalabi's prior Saddam coup plans. Signers of this letter : Wolfowitz Chair of the Defense Policy Board Richard Perle VP Dick Cheney Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Former CIA Director James Woolsey Defense Undersecretary Doug Feith Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Frank Gaffney Deputy Secretary of State and Iran-Contra participant Richard Armitage Former CIA operative and Iran-Contra participant Duane "Dewey" Clarridge NSC official, former Secretary of State and Iran-Contra participant Elliott Abrams Former Defense Secretary and Iran-Contra participant Caspar Weinberger Former Defense Secretary and Carlyle Group chairman Frank Carlucci Zalmay Khalilzad, current US envoy to Afghanistan, former UNOCAL consultant and RAND Corporation official Former National Security Adviser and Iran-Contra participant Robert McFarlane 3. Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. The Act itself www.fcnl.org/issues/int/sup/iraq_liberation.htm was promoted in Congress by Woolsey, Clarridge, and current Deputy National Security Advisor for Counter-terrorism Wayne Downing. The Act (a piece of bombastic anti-Saddam propaganda full of historical falsehoods) passed Congress and signed by Clinton, with scant attention from the public at large. Its major sponsors : Wolfowitz Cheney Rumsfeld Feith Woolsey Clarridge Downing Carlucci Armitage Newt Gingrich 4. 1998-Bush II foreign policy team selected. In the summer of 1998, in meetings arranged by former President George H.W. Bush in Kennebunkport, Maine, and headed by Condoleeza Rice, the George W. Bush foreign policy team---the "Vulcans"--- is chosen. "If the brain trust reflects who the governor would put in office if elected president, his administration would be to the right not only of his father's but also of Ronald Reagan's," reported Robert Novak to the Washington Post. Among group's leading members we find : Perle Wolfowitz Fast-forwarding to the present, we find this network driving Bush administration policy, inside the Pentagon as well as from the outside. 5. Defense Policy Board. This "civilian" advisory board, which makes Pentagon policy "recommendations" to the Defense Department (Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith) Perle (chair) Woolsey Gaffney Eliot Cohen, chairman of the PNAC Henry Kissinger Former CIA Director James Schlesinger Gingrich 6. Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). This Johns Hopkins University think tank is well known for churning out policies based on US aggression. Associated with SAIS are : Perle Wolfowitz Woolsey Zbigniew Brezezinksi Gaffney Cohen Thomas Donnelly 7. The Project for a New American Century (PNAC). This think tank published a plan for toppling Iraq in 2000 based on the Wolfowitz-Cheney-Libby 1992 Defense Planning Guidance. Wolfowitz Cohen (chair) Cheney Rumsfeld Gaffney Donnelly Abrams Jeb Bush 8. Center for Security Policy (CSP). Gaffney (chair) Perle Woolsey Feith (former chair) 9. Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). On the board of this think tank is a cross-section of the most hawkish members of the Iraq war lobby, along with more "diplomacy-oriented" former officials : Former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft (chair) Cheney Woolsey Kissinger Schlesinger Ray Lee Hunt (Hunt Oil, Texas) 10. Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Scowcroft (chair) Former CIA Director John Deutch Hunt 11. American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Perle Former Reagan national security consultant Michael Ledeen Former CIA operative Reuel Marc Gerecht 12. Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). Advocacy group calls for total war in the Middle East. Ledeen Perle Woolsey Gaffney Abrams 13. US-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce. As documented by Professor Michel Chossudovsky in War and Globalisation, the GUUAM (Georgia-Ukraine-Uzbekistan-Azerbaijan-Moldava) alliance formed by NATO in 1999 sits at the hub of Caspian oil and gas wealth. Central to the GUUAM is the US client-state of Azerbaijan. Its Chamber of Commerce reads like a 9/11/Iraq War who's who : Wolfowitz Perle Cheney Armitage Brezezinski Kissinger Schlesinger Scowcroft Former Secretary of State James Baker Former Senator Lloyd Bentsen 14. Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI).A Washington "advocacy" group and spin-off of the Project for a New American Century. Formed in November 2002. Bruce Jackson, former VP Lockheed Martin Randy Scheunemann, former advisor to Senator Trent Lott Perle Rice Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley Gaffney Downing McCain Former Senator Bob Kerry Former Secretary of State George Schultz Where it all began : Nitze and NSC-68 Most if not all leaders of the Iraq war lobby are disciples, protégés and students of proto-hawk Paul H. Nitze and the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Nitze, a former Dillon, Read investment banker (whose company floated loans for the Third Reich) and member of the Council on Foreign Relations, founded the SAIS in 1944. Nitze advised five US presidents and held high-level cabinet positions in every presidential administration (except Jimmy Carter's) until his retirement in 1989. The 1950 NSC Memorandum 68, written by Nitze (for then-Secretary of State Dean Acheson) was the policy basis of the Cold War. Every successive US administration has implemented hard-line policies that can be directly traced to NSC-68, which calls for the destruction of the Soviet Union and unrivaled US military power. According to former CIA agent Philip Agee, NSC-68 was the remilitarization plan that led to the establishment of a permanent war economy and an eternal "national security" apparatus. The memo also asserted for the first time, in the name of national security, pre-emptive US claims on scarce economic and social resources anywhere in the world. NSC-68 specifically stated that "Soviet domination of the potential power of Eurasia, whether achieved by armed aggression or by political and subversive means, would be strategically and politically unacceptable to the United States." The 9/11 War itself is the realization of the "Eurasian" imperative of NSC-68. Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Nitze protégé, SAIS board member has long been obsessed with "Eurasia". His "Clash of Civilizations" geostrategy, which included the creation and nurturing of militant Islam, is spelled out in the book "The Grand Chessboard"---a virtual map of the current conflict. Another prominent figure on the Johns Hopkins faculty is Fouad Adjami, who has, over a decade, popped up on TV news programs as a Middle East expert to castigate "crazy man" Saddam Hussein and express his support for US wars in the region. The Perle-Wolfowitz Cabal Two other Nitze disciples, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, are arguably the key drivers of the Bush war policy. The two fanatical hawks have collaborated for over two decades. As revealed in an article in the New York Times (10/12/01), members of the Perle/Wolfowitz faction met for more than 19 hours on September 19-20, 2001 to "make the case" for a war against Iraq, the removal of Saddam Hussein, and the seizure of Iraqi oil, immediately after the conclusion of the war in Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld attended these meetings. Part of the discussion focused on how to tie Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks. Before becoming Deputy Defense Secretary, Wolfowitz was the chairman and dean of the SAIS. He has been a "strategist" since 1973, and has held a number of high level defense posts and was undersecretary of defense during George H.W. Bush's administration. Since 9/11/01, Wolfowitz has pushed aggressively for unilateral US military action in Iraq, and anywhere in the world. Immediately following 9/11, Wolfowitz submitted a plan (referred by Pentagon insiders as "Operation Infinite War") that called for the bombing of Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. Perle has earned the nickname "The Prince of Darkness" for his fanatical views, which include the use of nuclear weapons. Perle, a militant supporter of Israel, seeks to "bring the Muslim world to its knees." Perle was an assistant secretary of defense for international security during the Reagan administration, and is a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute. Perle currently sits as chairman of the powerful Defense Policy Board and advises (and many believe controls) the Bush defense team. He is privy to classified information (despite being a "civilian") and has reportedly manipulated information in order to further the policy goals of his faction. In a (friendly) interview with David Corn of The Nation (5/10/02) regarding plans for an Iraqi coup, the arrogant Perle declared that it would only take forty thousand troops to "take control of the north and the south, cut off Saddam's oil, make him a pauper". James Woolsey : Iraqi opposition agent Former CIA Director Woolsey is another important Nitze disciple, member of the Defense Policy Board, SAIS board member and Perle-Wolfowitz colleague. Nitze hired Woolsey for the SALT I negotiating team during the Carter years. Woolsey served Perle as general counsel of the Senate Armed Services Committee. During the Reagan-Bush era, Woolsey worked with Brent Scowcroft's strategic forces commission and on other defense assignments. Woolsey also sits on the board of such spy-military industrial companies as DynCorp, Martin Marietta, British Aerospace Inc, Fairchild Industries. Along with a number of US elites, he is deeply involved Central Asian oil politics and sits on the US-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce. Immediately after the September 11, 2001 attacks, Woolsey went to the media to immediately blame the operation on Saddam Hussein. Woolsey flew to London in October 2001 with officials of the Defense and State Departments to gather evidence linking Hussein to 9/11. At a July 24, 2002 Washington symposium hosted by the Institute of World Politics, Woolsey told the audience, "We are in a world war, we are in World War Four". He also declared that it had begun on 9/11, and he called for a pre-emptive strike against Iraq---even without a "smoking gun". In his speech, Woolsey declared that Saddam's "general support of terrorism" was enough justification. Woolsey's anti-Saddam stance is no surprise, considering that he is a partner in the law firm of Shea & Gardner. Shea & Gardner is registered as a "Foreign Agent" for the Iraqi National Congress. In 1998, Woolsey defended six INC-affiliated Iraqi resistance fighters whom the Clinton administration was trying to deport back to Iraq. http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/mideast/wools.htm Woolsey eventually negotiated a deal that domiciled five of the Iraqi agents in Nebraska. Woolsey was so incensed with the Clinton administration, and the intelligence community that had "spurned" him, that he bitterly called America "a fascist country." Woolsey's intemperate "get Iraq" views continue to be featured prominently throughout the media. Salon.com published a typical offering, in which Woolsey connected 9/11 to the 1993 World Trade Center bombings and suggested that Ramsey Youssef was an Iraqi agent (not a member of Al Qaeda). Rumsfeld "goes massive" On 9/11/01, barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq - even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks. On 9/11, according to CBS correspondent David Martin (9/5/02) : "Rumsfeld ordered the military to begin working on strike plans (against Iraq). And at 2 :40 p.m., the notes quote Rumsfeld as saying he wanted "best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H." - meaning Saddam Hussein - "at same time. Not only UBL" - the initials used to identify Osama bin Laden. "Go massive," the notes quote him as saying. "Sweep it all up. Things related and not." Now, nearly one year later, there is still no evidence Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. But if these notes are accurate, that didn't matter to Rumsfeld." In an August 11, 2002 New York Times article, the sinister Rumsfeld stated with callousness, "Wouldn't it a wonderful thing if Iraq were similar to Afghanistan, if a bad regime was thrown out, people were liberated, food could come in, borders could be opened, repression could stop, prisons could be opened ? I mean, wouldn't it be fabulous ?". Rumsfeld, a long-time supporter of the Iraqi National Congress, was also directly responsible for the arming of Saddam Hussein during his tenure as Middle East envoy during the Reagan presidency. Journalist Jeremy Scahill, "in 1984, Donald Rumsfeld was in a position to draw the world's attention to Saddam's chemical threat. He was in Baghdad as the UN concluded that chemical weapons had been used against Iran. He was armed with a fresh communication from the State Department that it had available evidence Iraq was using chemical weapons. But Rumsfeld said nothing." Notes on other players In addition to being a long-time ally of the INC and other Iraqi opposition groups, Dick Cheney exploited post-Gulf War Iraq as the CEO of Halliburton. According to the Washington Post (2/20/00), Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll-Dresser Pump, subsidiaries of Halliburton Corporation, played a dominant role in the reconstruction of Iraq's oil industry. While the United States and Britain waged almost daily airstrikes against military installations in northern and southern Iraq, Halliburton was doing business with Saddam Hussein's government and helping to rebuild its battered oil industry. Halliburton is believed to have earned $1 billion by illegally exporting oil through black-market channels. Like Cheney, John Deutch has had it both ways in Iraq. As CIA Director, he oversaw some of the Agency's mid-late 1990s coup and assassination attempts. But Deutch profited in post-Gulf War Iraq as a board member of Schlumberger, the second largest US oil services company (he remains on the board today). The company won at least three contracts for well-logging equipment and geological software to Iraq via a French subsidiary, Services Petroliers Schlumberger, and through Schlumberger Gulf Services of Bahrain. Deutch is well-situated. In addition to being an Institute Professor at MIT, a director of Citigroup, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission and a Bilderberger, Deutch sits on the board of Raytheon. In 1999, the CIA suspended Deutch's security clearance after concluding that he had mishandled national secrets on his home computer. Wayne Downing is the current Director of Combating Terrorism for the Homeland Security Defense Board. As reported by journalist Seymour Hersh (New Yorker, 12/20/01), Downing ran Special Forces command during Gulf War, and was involved in a Delta Force operation that killed or wounded an estimated 180 Iraqis, with no US losses. According to Hersh, "Downing loved it." In 1997-1998, Downing co-wrote a plan with CIA veteran Duane "Dewey" Clarridge to overthrow Saddam Hussein using Kurdish and Shi'ite fighters. Clarridge was CIA Division Chief, and chief of CIA Contra support operations from 1982-1984. Clarridge met regularly with Manuel Noriega, Jorge Morales and other narco-traffickers. He helped Oliver North establish the Ilopango air base in El Salvador as a staging point for contra supply/CIA cocaine operations. A major Iran-Contra player who was indicted on seven counts of perjury by Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh. He also supplied logistics help that sent US arms to Iran. In his notorious final act as president, George H.W. Bush pardoned Clarridge, Elliott Abrams, Caspar Weinberger and Robert McFarlane----all of whom have played active roles in recent anti-Saddam operations. Rifts within the war lobby While there is unanimous agreement within the Bush administration about an Iraq "regime change" (and strong support from Congress, including Senators Lieberman, Biden, McCain and Daschle), there have been disagreements among the hawks about how it should be done. The militant Perle-Wolfowitz faction has butted heads with elites favoring a more "international consensus"-oriented approach (Powell, Kissinger, Scowcroft). Even Deputy Secretary of State and career covert operative Richard Armitage, an original signatory to the original 1998 anti-Iraq letter and a supporter of the Iraq Liberation Act, has viewed some of the Perle-Wolfowitz-Iraqi National Congress plans with suspicion. In the most embarrassing flap to date, at a July 10, 2002 Defense Policy Board briefing, RAND analyst and Perle protégé Laurent Murawiec identified Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the United States. Many believe that Perle planned this move, which caused worldwide turmoil and angered other members of the Bush cabinet. It remains to be seen which war faction wins out, and what manner of rampage will be unleashed. IV Saddam Hussein and George H.W. Bush : unfinished business In a much-publicized CNN interview on September 18, 2002, former president and CIA Director George H.W. Bush declared that he "hates" Saddam Hussein. This canard-filled propaganda display was designed to cloak the historical fact that the elder Bush "loved" Saddam Hussein---as a key Middle East ally, a CIA asset, and partner in numerous illegal business partnerships. Indeed, the recalcitrant Saddam Hussein poses a grave threat---to the secrecy that cloaks the Bush family's involvement in some of the most unsavory episodes in American history. "Read my lips, I'm lying" "I hate Saddam Hussein," the trembling former president told interviewer Paula Zahn. http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/18/elder.bush.saddam/ "I don't hate a lot of people. I don't hate easily, but I think he's, as I say, his word is no good and he's a brute. I have nothing but hatred in my heart for him." Bush added, threateningly, "He's got a lot of problems, but immortality isn't one of them." Not satisfied with simply offering deceptive opinion, the elder Bush began reeling off historical falsehoods, starting with the now-classic Saddam Hussein "gassing" legend. "He's used poison gas on his own people !", Bush declared, not mentioning, of course, that he and other members of the Reagan-Bush administrations armed the Iraqi regime with this poison gas, and encouraged their use. As documented by US Congressional records, the Reagan administration ---with VP George H.W. Bush spearheading top-level policy---furnished Iraq with the biological and chemical materials, throughout the 1980s. This continued through Bush's administration, right up to the start of the Gulf War. Poison gas used in the Iran-Iraq War was manufactured using ingredients reportedly supplied by LaFarge Corporation, of which Bush was a substantial owner, and Hillary Rodham Clinton was a Director. On July 3, 1991, the Financial Times reported that a Florida company run by an Iraqi national had produced cyanide-- some of which went to Iraq for use in chemical weapons -- and had shipped it via a CIA contractor. According to investigative journalist Tom Flocco www.tomflocco.com , Baker & Botts, the law firm of then-Secretary of State James Baker, maintained numerous legal and financial ties with a Boca Raton, Florida chemical company headed by Iraqi terrorist Ihsan Barbouti. This connection continued, according to Flocco, "during the period when illegal nerve gas precursors were shipped by the Boca Raton company to Iraq just months prior to the outbreak of Gulf War hostilities". With the help of then-Attorney General Richard Thornburgh, Bush manufactured a "conflict of interest waiver" that absolved his administration from criminal prosecution. Of course, this waiver was kept secret from Congress. Details of another direct Bush-Iraq tie emerged in September 1992, when a six-month investigation by John Connolly in Spy Magazine exposed that Wackenhut Corporation (a CIA front company) ferried equipment for the manufacture of chemical weapons to Iraq in 1990. George Wackenhut is a close friend of the Bush family, and has made enormous contributions to the campaigns of all Bush family members who have run for office. A recent New York Times page one story (8/18/02), "Officers Say US Aided Iraq in War Despite Use of Gas", revealed that the Reagan administration provided Iraq with battle planning assistance despite knowledge that chemical weapons were being used against Iran. Members of the current Bush administration, leftovers from the previous Bush reign, were also heavily involved. Journalist Jeremy Scahill http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0802-01.htm reported that in 1984, "Donald Rumsfeld was in a position to draw the world's attention to Saddam's chemical threat. He was in Baghdad as the UN concluded that chemical weapons had been used against Iran. He was armed with a fresh communication from the State Department that it had available evidence Iraq was using chemical weapons. But Rumsfeld said nothing." Reagan-Bush also provided Saddam with dual-use technology -- computers, armored vehicles, helicopters, chemicals---through a vast network of companies, based in the U.S. and abroad. Apologists for Bush might insist that, regardless of US involvement, the Iraqis still gassed the Kurds. Not entirely true. According to UC Berkeley Professor Peter Dale Scott http://socrates.berkeley.edu/ pdscott/qfiraq3.html , Stephen Pelletiere, chief of the CIA Iraq desk at Langley in the 1980s (and author of Iraq and the International Oil System : Why America Went to War in the Gulf) confirms that several hundred Kurds were likely killed by Iran---not Iraq. Furthermore, these deaths were caused by cyanide gas, which Iraq had not used in the war against Iran (they used mustard gas), and which, says Pelletiere, they had no ability to produce. Pelletiere argues that the gassing deaths of 100,000 Kurds claimed by former Secretary of State George Shultz was a complete fabrication, and that to this day no bodies were ever found. Scott concludes that although there is evidence that both sides used gas, and Iranian gas killed the Kurds, this information was not revealed until 1990--- leaving the impression that only Iraq was involved, and cementing the "Saddam gassed Kurds" legend into place---to be exploited and repeated endlessly. Poppy Bush went on to explain to Zahn why Saddam was left in power. "I know what would have happened. I know that the coalition would have shattered. My only regret is that I was wrong, as was every other leader, in thinking that Saddam Hussein would be gone." This explanation is deceptive. In fact, Saddam was deliberately left in place (albeit disarmed and crippled) as a "lingering threat" so that the US could 1) justify a permanent military presence in Saudi Arabia (and other neighboring countries) and throughout the immediate region to police Middle East oil, and 2) organize a coup or insurrection, and install a new puppet regime in Baghdad acceptable to the US (The second step has been in the works since 1991, and has been difficult to execute. http://onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Chin103102/chin103102.html ), and 3) curtail the ability of OPEC to influence world oil prices. In a final deception, Bush said in response to Zahn's question about what the country should do with the Iraqi leader now, "That's the problem facing the president of the United States of America, not me." In fact, the elder Bush remains intimately involved with his son's administration, and many believe that he initiates policy. In July 2001, Bush personally contacted Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to "clarify" his son's Middle East policies. Also during the summer of 2001, Bush forwarded his son a North Korea policy plan penned by "Asia expert" and former ambassador to Korea, Donald Gregg. Gregg is a 31-year CIA veteran and the elder Bush's former national security adviser whose expertise involved participation in the Vietnam-era Phoenix Program (death squads), Air America heroin smuggling, "pacification" efforts in El Salvador and Guatemala, the "October Surprise", and the Iran-Contra operation. A few months later, North Korea was named to George W. Bush's "Axis of Evil", right alongside Iraq---no doubt influenced by the Bush-Gregg "suggestions". Bush continues to be briefed by the CIA, a "privilege" granted to all former US presidents. But Bush receives these briefings more frequently than other ex-presidents. The BCCI-BNL-Iraqgate skeletons that keep rattling As CIA Director, and throughout the Reagan-Bush administrations, Bush funneled money to Saddam Hussein without congressional approval, through the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) and Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL). It was through these loans and other covert arrangements that Iraq's war machine was armed. BCCI itself was a product of the original Soviet-Afghan War, the primary covert bank for the CIA, global crime syndicates, and virtually every world government. Officials of both US political parties were deeply involved. Among BCCI's other clients were the Medellin Cartel, Manuel Noriega, Golden Triangle heroin warlord Khun Sa. The connection between the Bush family and BCCI (and its agents and later incarnations) remains intact today. Former BCCI executive and Carlyle Group investor Khalid bin Mahfouz is the banker for the Saudi royal family, and connected to both Bush and bin Laden families. A business association with Texas investment banker and CIA-connected James Bath ties George W. Bush directly to Osama bin Laden and BCCI. Bath served in the Texas Air National Guard and co-owned Arbusto Energy with junior Bush. Bath is a broker for the bin Laden financial empire, and bin Mahfouz' portfolio manager. As noted by Russ W. Baker in the Columbia Journalism Review (March/April 1993) http://www.cjr.org/year/93/2/iraqgate.asp , the obscure Atlanta branch of BNL, "relying partially on U.S. taxpayer-guaranteed loans, funneled $ 5 billion to Iraq from 1985 to 1989. Some government-backed loans were supposed to be for agricultural purposes, but were used to facilitate the purchase of stronger stuff than wheat. In February 1990, Attorney General Dick Thornburgh blocked U.S. investigators from traveling to Rome and Istanbul to pursue the case. More damningly, we know now that mid-level staffers at the commerce department altered Iraqi export licenses to obscure the exported materials' military function -- before sending the documents on to Congress, which was investigating the affair. According to the Financial Times, top officials at the International Monetary Fund and the Pentagon expressed alarm over Export-Import Bank loan guarantees to Iraq, which abetted the development and stockpiling of a major chemical warfare capability in Iraq. Among the companies shipping technology to Iraq were Hewlett-Packard, Tektronix, and Matrix Churchill, through its Ohio branch. ABC's Nightline, which had been looking at Iraqgate for some time, hooked up with the Financial Times in an unusual and productive arrangement. On May 2, 1991, the team reported the secret minutes of the President's National Advisory Council, at which, despite earlier reports of abuses, an undersecretary of state declared that terminating Iraqi loans would be 'contrary to the president's (Bush's) intentions.'" In his book Defrauding America, investigator and former Federal inspector Rodney Stich documents the BNL-Iraqgate case in even greater detail : "Some of the money furnished by the US was used to purchase poison gas that was used on Iraqi Kurdish village, much of it purchased through Cardeon Industries in Chile, a CIA asset. According to documents, CIA deliberately withheld evidence of the transactions. US District Judge Marvin Shoob : "The employees of BNL were pawns or bit players in a far larger and wider-ranging sophisticated conspiracy that involved BNL-Rome and possibly large American and foreign corporations and the governments of the United States, England, Italy and Iraq." The manager of the Atlanta branch of BNL, Christopher Dragoul, was ordered by his superiors in Rome, who in turn received orders from US representatives, to fund the fraudulent diversion of funds and falsify the paperwork. Britain was involved in the diversion of funds. As early as 1984, Kissinger Associates was involved in arranging some of the loans from BNL to the Iraqi government to finance its arms acquisitions from a little-known subsidiary of Fiat Corporation. Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger were employed by Kissinger. George H.W. Bush was subpoenaed. Testimony and evidence showing Bush's involvement in this fraud were blocked repeatedly, by both Bush and Clinton Justice Departments." Stich's Defrauding America details two other explosive accounts of hidden Gulf War-related Bush administration misconduct : Several days prior to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on July 25, 1990 (which was set up and provoked by the Bush administration and the government of Kuwait), Bush prepared a secret deal with Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev, in which the USSR would not intervene if the US invaded Iraq. In exchange for this agreement, the US would provide the USSR with large amounts of financial aid. Naval Intelligence/ONI-CIA operative Gunther Russbacher was one of eight people (along with CIA Director William Webster and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft) who flew on four CIA SR-71 aircraft to Moscow to secure Gorbachev's signature. Russbacher spoke Russian, had been assigned to the US Embassy in Moscow and knew Gorbachev personally. Russbacher, who participated in numerous CIA deep-cover operations, including the "October Surprise"(he was one of the pilots who flew Bush to Paris), Inslaw, Iran-Contra and looting (via CIA front companies), was promoted following this Moscow mission. Because posed a serious threat to high officials as a whistleblower, Russbacher was charged with numerous federal offenses, jailed, and silenced. CIA/ONI/ Navy Seal Commander Robert Hunt participated in a 1992 war game exercise known as Operation Auger Mace. According to Hunt : "Our mission was to go into Baghdad and actually try to bring Saddam back to the United States. The purpose was to help President Bush win re-election. Bush knew at that point in the game that he was in trouble. So we went into Bahrain, and from Bahrain, we went to Tel Aviv, working with an Israeli General by the name of Uri Simhoni. He was an attaché at the Israeli Embassy in Washington at one time. He was a Major General and with his intel network we were to go into Baghdad, extract Saddam Hussein, bring him back, similar to what we did with Noriega. This operation was put together with my unit and also a Delta unit, and we were to go in there with the Israeli and extract him from his quarters, right outside of Baghdad, and just take him on out." Like Russbacher and other whistleblowers, Hunt has jailed on trumped-up charges (and later released). The tag-team looting of billions According to investigator Sherman Skolnick www.skolnicksreport.com , Bush and Saddam Hussein enjoyed a lucrative personal relationship that went far beyond official diplomatic business. In documents obtained in Case No. 90C 6863, The People of the State of Illinois ex rel Willis C. Harris vs the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (US Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit, Chicago), the suppressed bank records of BNL involved secret private joint business partnerships between Bush and Saddam Hussein, who reportedly split $250 billion in Persian Gulf oil kickbacks between 1980 and 1990, which were funneled through BCCI. In these records, Bush is also implicated in other enormous business deals with other "unsavory" world leaders, including Manuel Noriega. Skolnick and his team were the only journalists who attended this court hearing. He claims that he interviewed participants in the case repeatedly, and that they confirmed the Bush-Hussein transactions. Skolnick has maintained for years that he has a complete record of the Bush-Saddam case, including an affidavit of the CIA General Counsel, which warned that revealing the details of the documents would violate national security. Skolnick is the founder/chairman of Citizen's Committee To Clean Up the Courts, a public interest group that investigates judicial bribery and political murders. His investigations have sent numerous judges to jail. To date, no one has refuted Skolnick's charges, nor the facts of the Harris v. 

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Arming Iraq and the Path to War by John King U.N. Observer & International Report 31 March 2003 2003-03-31 source: Ratical.org
The following is mirrored from its source at: http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout5.php&id=815&blz=1 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Arming Iraq and the Path to War by John King U.N. Observer & International Report 31 March 2003 2003-03-31 | This is an accurate chronology of United States' involvement in the arming of Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war. It is a powerful indictment of the current bush administration attempt to sell war as a component of his war on terrorism. It reveals our ambitions in Iraq to be just another chapter in the attempt to regain a foothold in the Mideast following the fall of the Shah of Iran. A crisis always has a history, and the current crisis with Iraq is no exception. Below are some relevant dates. September 1980. Iraq invades Iran. The beginning of the Iraq-Iran war.[8] February 1982. Despite objections from Congress, President Reagan removes Iraq from its list of known terrorist countries.[1] December 1982. Hughes Aircraft ships 60 Defender helicopters to Iraq.[9] 1982-1988. Defense Intelligence Agency provides detailed information for Iraq on Iranian deployments, tactical planning for battles, plans for air strikes and bomb damage assessments.[4] November 1983. A National Security Directive states that the U.S would do "whatever was necessary and legal" to prevent Iraq from losing its war with Iran.[1][15] November 1983. Banca Nazionale del Lavoro of Italy and its Branch in Atlanta begin to funnel $5 billion in unreported loans to Iraq. Iraq, with the blessing and official approval of the U.S. government, purchased computer controlled machine tools, computers, scientific instruments, special alloy steel and aluminum, chemicals, and other industrial goods for Iraq's missile, chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.[14] October 1983. The Reagan Administration begins secretly allowing Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Egypt to transfer United States weapons, including Howitzers, Huey helicopters, and bombs to Iraq. These shipments violated the Arms Export Control Act.[16] November 1983. George Schultz, the Secretary of State, is given intelligence reports showing that Iraqi troops are daily using chemical weapons against the Iranians.[1] December 20 1983. Donald Rumsfeld, then a civilian and now Defense Secretary, meets with Saddam Hussein to assure him of US friendship and materials support.[1][15] July 1984. CIA begins giving Iraq intelligence necessary to calibrate its mustard gas attacks on Iranian troops.[19] January 14 1984. State Department memo acknowledges United States shipment of "dual-use" export hardware and technology. Dual use items are civilian items such as heavy trucks, armored ambulances and communications gear as well as industrial technology that can have a military application.[2] March 1986. The United States with Great Britain block all Security Council resolutions condemning Iraq's use of chemical weapons, and on March 21 the U.S. becomes the only country refusing to sign a Security Council statement condemning Iraq's use of these weapons.[10] May 1986. The U.S. Department of Commerce licenses 70 biological exports to Iraq between May of 1985 and 1989, including at least 21 batches of lethal strains of anthrax.[3] May 1986. US Department of Commerce approves shipment of weapons grade botulin poison to Iraq.[7] March 1987. President Reagan bows to the findings of the Tower Commission admitting the sale of arms to Iran in exchange for hostages. Oliver North uses the profits from the sale to fund an illegal war in Nicaragua.[17] Late 1987. The Iraqi Air Force begins using chemical agents against Kurdish resistance forces in northern Iraq.[1] February 1988. Saddam Hussein begins the "Anfal" campaign against the Kurds of northern Iraq. The Iraq regime used chemical weapons against the Kurds killing over 100,000 civilians and destroying over 1,200 Kurdish villages.[20][8] April 1988. US Department of Commerce approves shipment of chemicals used in manufacture of mustard gas.[7] August 1988. Four major battles were fought from April to August 1988, in which the Iraqis massively and effectively used chemical weapons to defeat the Iranians. Nerve gas and blister agents such as mustard gas are used. By this time the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency is heavily involved with Saddam Hussein in battle plan assistance, intelligence gathering and post battle debriefing. In the last major battle with of the war, 65,000 Iranians are killed, many with poison gas. Use of chemical weapons in war is in violation of the Geneva accords of 1925.[6][13] August 1988. Iraq and Iran declare a cease fire.[8] August 1988. Five days after the cease fire Saddam Hussein sends his planes and helicopters to northern Iraq to begin massive chemical attacks against the Kurds.[8] September 1988. U.S. Department of Commerce approves shipment of weapons grade anthrax and botulinum to Iraq.[7] September 1988. Richard Murphy, Assistant Secretary of State: "The US-Iraqi relationship is . . . important to our long-term political and economic objectives."[15] December 1988. Dow chemical sells $1.5 million in pesticides to Iraq despite knowledge that these would be used in chemical weapons.[1] July 25, 1990. U.S. Ambassador to Baghdad meets with Hussein to assure him that President Bush "wanted better and deeper relations." Many believe this visit was a trap set for Hussein. A month later Hussein invaded Kuwait thinking the U.S. would not respond.[1] August 1990. Iraq invades Kuwait. The precursor to the Gulf War.[8] July 1991. The Financial Times of London reveals that a Florida chemical company had produced and shipped cyanide to Iraq during the 80's using a special CIA courier. Cyanide was used extensively against the Iranians.[11] August 1991. Christopher Droguol of Atlanta's branch of Banca Nazionale del Lavoro is arrested for his role in supplying loans to Iraq for the purchase of military supplies. He is charged with 347 counts of felony. Droguol is found guilty, but U.S. officials plead innocent of any knowledge of his crime.[14] June 1992. Ted Koppel of ABC Nightline reports: "It is becoming increasingly clear that George Bush, Sr., operating largely behind the scenes throughout the 1980s, initiated and supported much of the financing, intelligence, and military help that built Saddam's Iraq into [an aggressive power]."[5] July 1992. "The Bush administration deliberately, not inadvertently, helped to arm Iraq by allowing U.S. technology to be shipped to Iraqi military and to Iraqi defense factories . . . Throughout the course of the Bush administration, U.S. and foreign firms were granted export licenses to ship U.S. technology directly to Iraqi weapons facilities despite ample evidence showing that these factories were producing weapons." Representative Henry Gonzalez, Texas, testimony before the House.[18] February 1994. Senator Riegle from Michigan, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, testifies before the senate revealing large U.S. shipments of dual-use biological and chemical agents to Iraq that may have been used against U.S. troops in the Gulf War and probably was the cause of the illness known as Gulf War Syndrome.[7] August 2002. "The use of gas [during the Iran-Iraq war] on the battle field by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern . . . We were desperate to make sure that Iraq did not lose." Colonel Walter Lang, former senior U.S. Defense Intelligence officer tells the New York Times.[4] This chronology of the United States' sordid involvement in the arming of Iraq can be summarized in this way: the United States used methods both legal and illegal to help build Saddam's army into the most powerful army in the Mideast outside of Israel. The U.S. supplied chemical and biological agents and technology to Iraq when it knew Iraq was using chemical weapons against the Iranians. The U.S. supplied the materials and technology for these weapons of mass destruction to Iraq at a time when it was known that Saddam was using this technology to kill his Kurdish citizens. The United States supplied intelligence and battle planning information to Iraq when those battle plans included the use of cyanide, mustard gas and nerve agents. The United States blocked U.N. censure of Iraq's use of chemical weapons. The United States did not act alone in this effort. The Soviet Union was the largest weapons supplier, but England, France and Germany were also involved in the shipment of arms and technology. So what do these events have to do with the current conflict? Just this: If we do go to war with Iraq, it is important to know why! War will not really be about terrorism! Twenty years ago the United States threw its support behind Saddam Hussein in a geopolitical bid for enhanced access to oil. The trajectory given him by our support lead directly to the Gulf War and to the current crises. War, after all, will be about a history of misdeeds and miscalculations. And war will not be about morality. War will be about cynicism, deceit and a thirst for oil that knows no boundaries. John King, Long Prairie, MN, USA. Sources 1. Michael Dobbs, "U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup - Rumsfeld Helped Open Door to Trade in Weapons That Is Now Deplored," (after its original publication the subhead to this headline was changed from "Rumsfeld Helped . . ." to "Trade in Chemical Arms Allowed Despite Their Use on Iranians, Kurds"), Washington Post, December 30, 2002. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1230-04.htm See Also: Jeremy Scahill, "The Saddam in Rumsfeld's Closet," commondreams.org, August 2, 2002. http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0802-01.htm "Top-secret Iraq Report Reveals U.S. Corporations, Gov't Agencies and Nuclear Labs Helped Illegally Arm Iraq," Democracy Now!, December 2002 http://www.democracynow.org/Zumach.htm 2. Jonathan Broder, Nuclear Times, Winter 1990-91 3. Kurt Nimno, "Bush Senior: Hating Saddam, Selling Him Weapons," alternet.org, September 23, 2002. http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14160 4. Patrick E. Tyler, "Officers Say U.S. Aided Iraq in War Despite Use of Gas," New York Times, August 29, 2002. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0818-02.htm 5. ABC Nightline. June 9, 1992; See footnote 14. 6. Elson E. Boles, "Helping Iraq Kill with Chemical Weapons: The Relevance of Yesterday's US Hypocrisy Today," CounterPunch, October 10, 2002 http://counterpunch.org/boles1010.html 7. Riegle Report: United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/medsearch/FocusAreas/riegle_report/riegle_report_main.html Hearing: United States Duel-Use Exports to Iraq and Their Imapct on the Health of the Persian Gulf War Veterans. May 25, 1994 http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/medsearch/FocusAreas/riegle_report/hearing/hearing_index.htm Report: U.S. Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual-Use Exports to Iraq and Their Possible Impact on the Health Consequences of the Persian Gulf War. May 25, 1994 http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/medsearch/FocusAreas/riegle_report/report/report_toc.htm Committee Staff Report: U.S. Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual Use Exports to Iraq and Their Possible Impact on the Health Consequences of the Persian Gulf War. October 7, 1994 http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/medsearch/FocusAreas/riegle_report/staff_report/staff_report_index.htm 8. Timeline: A walk Through Iraq's History. U.S. Department of State, 16 January 2003 http://www.azcentral.com/news/specials/iraq/maintimeline.html 9. Doing Business: The Arming of Iraq, 1974-1993, compiled by Daniel Robicheau and Saul Bloom. 10. Glen Rangwala, Labor Left Briefing, September, 16 2002. 11. Financial Times of London. July 3, 1991. See Boles, footnote 6, and Larry Chin, "The deep politics of regime removal in Iraq: Overt conquest, covert operations. Part Four: The unfinished business between Saddam Hussein and George H.W. Bush," Online Journal, November 14, 2002. http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Chin111402/chin111402.html 12. Boles, "Helping Iraq Kill with Chemical Weapons," op. cit. 13. Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988, iranchamber.com, http://www.iranchamber.com/history/iran_iraq_war/iran_iraq_war1.php 14. Russ W. Baker, "Iraqgate, The Big One That (Almost) Got Away, Who Chased it -- and Who Didn't," Columbia Journalism Review, March/April 1993. http://www.cjr.org/year/93/2/iraqgate.asp 15. Tim Reid, "How U.S. Helped Iraq Build Deadly Arsenal," Times Online, December 31, 2002. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-528574,00.html 16. Murray Waas and Craig Unger, "In the Loop: Bush's Secret Mission," The New Yorker, November 2, 1992. http://www.jonathanpollard.org/2002/111402.htm 17. Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia: Iran-Contra Affair. http://gi.grolier.com/presidents/aae/side/irancont.html 18. Representative Henry B. Gonzalez, "Bush Administration Had Acute Knowledge of Iraq's Military Industrialization Plans," Congressional Record, July 27, 1992. http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/congress/1992/h920727g.htm 19. Bob Woodward. "CIA Aiding Iraq in Gulf War; Target Data From U.S. Satellites Supplied for Nearly 2 Years," Washington Post, December, 15 1986. 20. Case Study: The Anfal Campaign (Iraqi Kurdistan), 1988. http://www.gendercide.org/case_anfal.html Strategic Pastoral Action PO Box 3272 Holland, MI, 49422-3272 USA www.spanweb.org [email protected] Nonviolence Advocacy Project: http://www.rehberg.net/nonviolence.html Please also read: Iraq-Gate; How The United States Illegally Armed Saddam Hussein http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1412.htm Copyright © 2003 John King Reprinted for Fair Use Only. http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/armIraqP2W.html (hypertext) http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/armIraqP2W.txt (text only) http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/armIraqP2W.pdf (print ready)

2013, May ...WMR US Marketing Torture Packages to Foreign Countries...

WMR has learned from a former U.S. intelligence operative who served in Iraq that the Obama administration has decided to market to other countries a comprehensive "kidnapping to detention to torture" package for use against those considered to be threats against national security.

During the Bush administration, the CIA and Pentagon developed a system to intimidate Muslim detainees into becoming informants and intelligence assets by subjecting them to sexual humiliation and then threatening to provide photographs and videos of the abuse to their relatives and friends if they did not agree to work with U.S. intelligence. One of the preferred sexual humiliation tactics was known as "bottle torture," whereby a broken bottle was inserted into a detainee's anus. At Abu Ghraib, U.S. prison guards forced seven Iraqi detainees to strip, be stacked into a human pyramid, forced to masturbate, and, of course, as dictated by the blackmail portion of the intelligence recruitment program, photographed.

Army Major General Antonio Taguba's May 2004 report on prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib also contained examples of sexual humiliation of Iraq detainees:
Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees
Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing
Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time
Forcing naked male detainees to wear women’s underwear
Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped
Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them
Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture
Writing “I am a Rapest” [sic] on the leg of a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked
Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee’s neck and having a female Soldier pose for a picture
A male MP guard having sex with a female detainee
The U.S. military guards who conducted such sexual humiliation on Iraqi prisoners were following the dictates of officers who were in charge of carrying out the project on behalf of the CIA, Department of Defense, and Bush White House. Sexual humiliation procedures for use against Muslims and Arabs were drawn up by cultural anthropologists and psychologists on the CIA's and Pentagon's payroll who ascertained that Muslim victims of sexual torture would forever carry the stigma of sexual humiliation and, if revealed publicly, would ensure they would be ostracized by their families and community. For that reason, many opted to become agents for U.S. intelligence rather than suffer the consequences of photographs and videos being made available to their families and friends. Although men were usually the targets for such blackmail, women were also sexually abused in order to recruit them as intelligence assets and collaborators.

The core of the Enhanced Interrogation Technique program was the product of John Bruce Jessen and James Elmer Mitchell, psychologists and former Air Force officers who, while on active duty, developed the Air Force's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape" (SERE) program. In 2005, they established their own firm, Mitchell Jessen and Associates, which was among the companies that marketed the comprehensive torture and sexual humiliation program to clients abroad. Jessen and Mitchell are also active in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Mormons. Mitchell Jessen and Associates, headquartered in Spokane, Washington, is recorded as being inactive since 2009.

Clues about worse photos and videos of abuse may be found in Israeli files about similar abuse of Palestinian and other Arab prisoners. In March 2000, a lawyer for a Lebanese prisoner kidnapped in 1994 by the Israelis in Lebanon claimed that his client had been subjected to torture, including rape. The type of compensation offered by Rumsfeld in his testimony has its roots in cases of Israeli torture of Arabs. In the case of the Lebanese man, said to have been raped by his Israeli captors, his lawyer demanded compensation of $1.47 million. The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel documented the types of torture meted out on Arab prisoners. Many of the tactics coincide with those contained in the Taguba report: beatings and prolonged periods handcuffed to furniture. In an article in the December 1998 issue of The Progressive, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb reported on the treatment given to a 23-year old Palestinian held on "administrative detention." The prisoner was "cuffed behind a chair 17 hours a day for 120 days . . . [he] had his head covered with a sack, which was often dipped in urine or feces. Guards played loud music right next to his ears and frequently taunted him with threats of physical and sexual violence." If additional photos and videos document such practices, the Bush administration and the American people have, indeed, "seen nothing yet."

Although it is still largely undocumented if any of the contractor named in the report of General Antonio Taguba were associated with the Israeli military or intelligence services, it is noteworthy that one, John Israel, who was identified in the report as being employed by both CACI International of Arlington, Virginia, and Titan, Inc., of San Diego, may not have even been a U.S. citizen. The Taguba report states that Israel did not have a security clearance, a requirement for employment as an interrogator for CACI. According to CACI’s web site, "a Top Secret Clearance (TS) that is current and US citizenship" are required for CACI interrogators working in Iraq. In addition, CACI requires that its interrogators "have at least two years experience as a military policeman or similar type of law enforcement/intelligence agency whereby the individual utilized interviewing techniques."

Speculation that "John Israel" may be an intelligence cover name has fueled speculation whether this individual could have been one of a number of Israeli interrogators hired under a classified contract. Because U.S. citizenship and documentation thereof are requirements for a U.S. security clearance, Israeli citizens would not be permitted to hold a Top Secret clearance. However, dual U.S.-Israeli citizens could have satisfied Pentagon requirements that interrogators hold U.S. citizenship and a Top Secret clearance. Although the Taguba report refers twice to Israel as an employee of Titan, the company claims he is one of their sub-contractors. CACI stated that one of the men listed in the report "is not and never has been a CACI employee" without providing more detail. A U.S. intelligence source revealed that in the world of intelligence "carve out" subcontracts such confusion is often the case with "plausible deniability" being a foremost concern.

In fact, the Taguba report does reference the presence of non-U.S. and non-Iraqi interrogators at Abu Ghraib. The report states, "In general, US civilian contract personnel (Titan Corporation, CACI, etc), third country nationals, and local contractors do not appear to be properly supervised within the detention facility at Abu Ghraib."

The Pentagon is clearly concerned about the outing of the Taguba report and its references to CACI, Titan, and third country nationals, which could permanently damage U.S. relations with Arab and Islamic nations. The Pentagon’s angst may explain why the Taguba report is classified Secret No Foreign Dissemination.

The leak of the Taguba report was so radioactive, Daniel R. Dunn, the Information Assurance Officer for Douglas Feith’s Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Policy (Policy Automation Services Security Team), sent a May 6, 2004, For Official Use Only Urgent E-mail to Pentagon staffers stating, "THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS REPORT IS CLASSIFIED; DO NOT GO TO FOX NEWS TO READ OR OBTAIN A COPY." Considering Feith’s close ties to the Israelis, such a reaction by his top computer security officer, a Certified Information System Security Professional (CISSP), is understandable, although considering the fact that CISSPs are to act on behalf of the public good, it is also regrettable..

The reference to "third country nationals" in a report that restricts its dissemination to U.S. coalition partners (Great Britain, Poland, Italy, etc.) is another indication of the possible involvement of Israelis in the interrogation of Iraqi prisoners. Knowledge that the U.S. may have been using Israeli interrogators could have severely fractured the Bush administration’s tenuous "coalition of the willing’ in Iraq. General Taguba’s findings were transmitted to the Coalition Forces Land Component Command on March 9, 2004, just six days before the Spanish general election, one that the opposition anti-Iraq war Socialists won. The Spanish ultimately withdrew their forces from Iraq.

During his testimony before the Senate Armed Service Committee, Rumsfeld was pressed upon by Senator John McCain about the role of the private contractors in the interrogations and abuse. McCain asked Rumsfeld four pertinent questions, ". . . who was in charge? What agency or private contractor was in charge of the interrogations? Did they have authority over the guards? And what were the instructions that they gave to the guards?"

When Rumsfeld had problems answering McCain’s question, Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, the Deputy Commander of the U.S. Central Command, said there were 37 contract interrogators used in Abu Ghraib. The two named contractors, CACI and Titan, have close ties to the Israeli military and technology communities. Last January 14, after Provost Marshal General of the Army, Major General Donald Ryder, had already uncovered abuse at Abu Ghraib, CACI’s President and CEO, Dr. J.P. (Jack) London was receiving the Jerusalem Fund of Aish HaTorah’s Albert Einstein Technology award at the Jerusalem City Hall, with right-wing Likud politician Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski in attendance. Oddly, CACI waited until February 2 to publicly announce the award in a press release. CACI has also received grants from U.S.-Israeli bi-national foundations.

Titan also has had close connections to Israeli interests. After his stint as CIA Director, James Woolsey served as a Titan director. Woolsey is an architect of America’s Iraq policy and the chief proponent of and lobbyist for Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress. An adviser to the neo-conservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs, Project for the New American Century, Center for Security Policy, Freedom House, and Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, Woolsey is close to Stephen Cambone, the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, a key person in the chain of command who would have not only known about the torture tactics used by U.S. and Israeli interrogators in Iraq but who would have also approved them. Cambone was associated with the Project for the New American Century and is viewed as a member of Rumsfeld’s neo-conservative "cabal" within the Pentagon.

Another person considered by Pentagon insiders to have been knowledgeable about the treatment of Iraqi prisoners is U.S. Army Col. Steven Bucci, a Green Beret and Rumsfeld’s military assistant and chief traffic cop for the information flow to the Defense Secretary. According to Pentagon insiders, Bucci was involved in the direction of a special covert operations unit composed of former U.S. special operations personnel who answered to the Pentagon rather than the CIA’s Special Activities Division, the agency’s own paramilitary group. The Pentagon group included Arabic linguists and former members of the Green Berets and Delta Force who operated covertly in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan. Titan also uses linguists trained in the languages (Arabic, Dari, Farsi, Pashto, Urdu, and Tajik) of those same countries. It is not known if a link exists between Rumsfeld’s covert operations unit and Titan’s covert operations linguists.

Another Titan employee named in the Taguba report is Adel L. Nakhla. Nakhla is a name common among Egypt’s Coptic Christian community, however, it is not known if Adel Nakhla is either an Egyptian-American or a national of Egypt. A CACI employee identified in the report, Steven Stephanowicz, is referred to as "Stefanowicz" in a number of articles on the prison abuse. Stefanowicz is the spelling used by Joe Ryan, another CACI employee assigned with Stefanowicz to Abu Ghraib. Ryan is a radio personality on KSTP, a conservative radio station in Minneapolis, who maintained a daily log of his activities in Iraq on the radio’s web site before it was taken down. Ryan indicated that Stefanowicz (or Stephanowicz) continued to hold his interrogation job in Iraq even though General Taguba recommended he lose his security clearance and be terminated for the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

In an even more bizarre twist, the Philadelphia Daily News identified a former expatriate public relations specialist for the government of South Australia in Adelaide named Steve Stefanowicz as possibly being the same person identified in the Taguba report. In 2000, Stefanowicz, who grew up in the Philadelphia and Allentown areas, left for Australia. On September 16, 2001, he was quoted by the Sunday Mail of Adelaide on the 911 attacks. He said of the attacks, "It was one of the most incredible and most devastating things I have ever seen. I have been in constant contact with my family and friends in the US and the mood was very solemn and quiet. But this is progressing into anger." Stefanowicz returned to the United States and volunteered for the Navy in a reserve status. His mother told the Allentown Morning Call in April 2002 that Stefanowicz was stationed somewhere in the Middle East but did not know where because of what Stefanowicz said was "security concerns." His mother told the Philadelphia Daily News that her son was in Iraq but she knew nothing about his current status.

The humiliation operation was part of the COPPER GREEN interrogation and intelligence program. The humiliation tactic used to recruit Muslim agents was also known by its classified cover name MATCHBOX.

U.S. military guards and CIA interrogators officially masked their sexual abuse as "cavity searches" of detainees. The sexual humiliation was part of an "enhanced interrogation" program put together by CIA and Defense Department personnel that also included isolation, extreme temperatures, and sleep deprivation. President Obama officially announced that his administration was abandoning the enhanced interrogation practices and, instead, relying on the procedures set forth in the U.S. Army Field Manual on Interrogation.

WMR has learned that the enhanced interrogation procedures are now marketed by Defense Department contractors to nations with dismal human rights records, including Jordan, Australia, Poland, United Kingdom, France, Greece, Morocco, United Arab Emirates, Italy, India, Singapore, Sweden, Canada, Japan, and Germany.

A large part of the U.S. "enhanced interrogation" program targeting Arabs and Muslims had been adopted from the Israelis who engaged in such procedures at Camp 1391, dubbed the "Israeli Guantanamo," and located between kibbutz Barkai and kibbutz Ma'anit in northern Israel.

The following is a Titan Corporation contract Arabic translator report on abuse of Iraqi detainees in Iraq. He was later fired by Titan. Titan and another interrogation support contractor, CACI, were known to have adopted some of the sexual humiliation procedures carried out by Israeli Shin Bet interrogators on Palestinian detainees. Both companies reportedly used Israeli sub-contractors who were involved in enhanced interrogations of detainees in Iraq.

The following was published by CounterPunch:

May 10, 2004
The Israeli Torture Template Rape, Feces and Urine-Dipped Cloth Sacks

Rape, Feces and Urine-Dipped Cloth Sacks
by WAYNE MADSEN
With mounting evidence that a shadowy group of former Israeli Defense Force and General Security Service (Shin Bet) Arabic-speaking interrogators were hired by the Pentagon under a classified "carve out" sub-contract to brutally interrogate Iraqi prisoners at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison, one only needs to examine the record of abuse of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in Israel to understand what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld meant, when referring to new, yet to be released photos and videos, he said, "if these images are released to the public, obviously its going to make matters worse."

According to a political appointee within the Bush administration and U.S. intelligence sources, the interrogators at Abu Ghraib included a number of Arabic-speaking Israelis who also helped U.S. interrogators develop the "R2I" (Resistance to Interrogation) techniques. Many of the torture methods were developed by the Israelis over many years of interrogating Arab prisoners on the occupied West Bank and in Israel itself.

 

WMR December 10-11, 2014 -- Senate Torture Report exposes bizarre sexual voyeurism of Cheney, others

publication date: Dec 10, 2014
  
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December 10-11, 2014 -- Senate Torture Report exposes bizarre sexual voyeurism of Cheney, others

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's Study of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program, otherwise known as the "Torture Report," contains a number of references to male sexual abuse also seen in past reports about torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Guantanamo.

The sexual abuse centers around inserting objects into the rectums of detainees. In the recent Senate report this activity also borders on coprophilia, a fetish that WMR exposed in the past on this website as one of Vice President Dick Cheney's more prurient interests. Coprophilia is defined as "paraphilia involving sexual arousal and pleasure from feces." Upon its release by Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Cheney was quick to defend the interrogation and detention practices revealed in the report.

Not only does the report state that detainees, including Abu Zubaydah, were subject to frequent rectal examinations but they were also subjected to "rectal fluid resuscitation" for "partially refusing liquids." The report states that Majid Khan, a legal resident of the United States from Pakistan, was "very hostile to rectal feeding and removed the rectal tube as soon as he was allowed to." 

In addition, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, charged as the planner of the 9/11 attack, was "subjected to rectal rehydration without a determination of medical need, a procedure that KSM interrogator and chief of interrogations, [redacted] would later characterize as illustrative of the interrogator's 'total control over the detainee.'" Another detainee, Marwan al-Jabbur, a native of Pakistan who was later released after being held at various CIA black sites, was subjected to what was originally called an "enema," but was later acknowledged to be rectal rehydration. The report states that Abdul Rahim al-Nashiri, charged with being the mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, and Majid Khan were subjected to rectal feeding. The CIA destroyed tapes of al-Nashiri being waterboarded at the CIA black site, called the "Blue Site," in Poland. Three detainees, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Khallad bin
Attash, and Adnan al-Libi, were threatened with rectal rehydration.

Medical professionals contacted by WMR said there is no evidence that any nourishment can be achieved by giving someone a colonic enema or rectal infusion of food matter. The Senate report states that Majid Khan was infused rectally with a pureed "lunch tray" of hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts, and raisins. The CIA's June 2013 Response to the Senate committee failed to address the use of rectal feeding with CIA detainees, but defends the use of rectal rehydration as a "well acknowledged medical technique." Doctors WMR consulted rejected the CIA's statement as nonsense. The report also states that the "CIA leadership, including General Counsel Scott Muller and DDO James Pavitt, was also alerted to allegations that rectal exams were conducted with 'excessive force' on two detainees at DETENTION SITE COBALT [located in Afghanistan and known as the "Salt Pit"]. CIA attorney [redacted] was asked to follow up, although CIA records do not indicate any resolution of the inquiry. CIA records indicate that one of the detainees, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, was later diagnosed with chronic hemorrhoids, an anal fissure, and symptomatic prolapse." Al-Hawsawi, charged with being the financier of the 9/11 attack, remains in detention in Guantanamo.

According to the report, it is quite likely that the "rectal infusions" were contained in CIA videotapes of the interrogations of Zubaydah and al-Nashiri. It is also known that live video streaming of interrogations was viewed by senior U.S. government officials. According to the report, "CIA officers were observing the foreign government interrogations of Ammar al-Baluchi via video feed." Al Baluchi, a native of Kuwait accused of being an Al Qaeda financier in Pakistan and Dubai, was held in a CIA black site and is currently in Guantanamo.

After the Senate Intelligence Committee expressed interest in the torture videotapes, the CIA destroyed them on November 9, 2005, according to the report. The number of videotapes held by the CIA and destroyed is not disclosed. The report indicates that other videotapes of torture were destroyed by the CIA beginning in December 2007.

WMR previously reported that live video streaming equipment used by Vice President Cheney and his aides to view torture sessions in his Old Executive Building office was destroyed by a suspicious fire. On May 28, 2009, WMR reported: "On December 22, 2008, WMR reported on the high-tech support provided the Bush-Cheney White House by Mike Connell's GovTech Solutions and his close colleague Jeff Averbeck's firm SmarTech. Connell died last December when the plane he was piloting crashed short of landing in Akron, Ohio. We have now learned that Connell and Averbeck may have been behind the installation of live streaming black boxes in the White House and the Eisenhower Old Executive Office Building used to stream live video of torture sessions in Guantanamo, Cuba and Abu Ghraib to the Old Executive Office Building office of Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief Counsel David Addington and into the White House, itself."

Addington is mentioned a number of times in the Senate report as being a key player in the torture program.  WMR's May 28, 2009 report continued: "The fire that broke out in an 'electrical closet' in the Old Executive Office Building on December 19, 2007, near Cheney's ceremonial office likely contained the live streaming boxes used to stream torture sessions from Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, according to our sources who added that SmartTech and Airnet have been in the live streaming video business since 2002. With the recent statement of retired U.S. Army General Antonio Taguba that rape and other sexual molestation sessions were prevalent at Abu Ghraib and that they were photographed, the stories of the suspicious death of Connell and the White House fire have taken on new relevancy. As reported by WMR on January 10, 2008: 'Army Major General Antonio Taguba's report on Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse stated that the abuse included 'A male MP guard 'having sex' with a female detainee.' 'Having sex' was an obvious attempt to avoid the use of the word 'rape.' It is obvious that Taguba's report was either altered or some evidence was not shared with him and his investigators . . . Another investigation conducted by Lt. Gen. Anthony Jones and Maj. Gen. George Fay of Abu Ghraib reported male homosexual rape of prisoners but not the rape of female prisoners."

The Taguba report on detainee abuse in Iraq also stated that detainees were sodomized with glow sticks. WMR also reported that U.S. sodomized underage teens at Iraqi detention facilities with broom sticks and flashlights and that videotapes of this abuse were made available to senior White House staff for "entertainment" purposes.The coprophilia angle again came into play when in 2006 photographs from Abu Ghraib prison were released that showed prisoners crawling on the floor naked, being forced to perform sexual acts, and being covered in feces.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld also personally oversaw sexual abuse of at least one detainee. A December 2005 internal US Army Inspector General report leaked to the on-line publication Salon.com described how  Rumsfeld personally monitored by telephone the interrogation of Saudi detainee Mohamed el Qahtani, described as the "20th hijacker." Lt. Gen. Randall Schmidt reported to the Inspector General that the abuse  of Qahtani "looked like Abu Ghraib." Qahtani was forced to wear women's underwear, perform sex acts in front of a woman, and perform "dog tricks" while wearing a leash. The nudity and "stress position" acts were personally approved by Rumsfeld in December 2002.

However, it is Cheney who has been quick to defend the sexually perverse interrogation practices from which he appears to have derived personal gratification. On October 26, 2006, WMR reported that people who knew Dick Cheney in Wyoming before he served in the Nixon administration claimed he always had an unusual penchant for hanging around young girls, some as young as seven-years old. Cheney reportedly walked around his Wyoming home in his underwear, sometimes when his two young daughters' friends were visiting. Cheney did not seem to mind that his activities around his home would inevitably expose his penis to the young girls.


Senate Intelligence Committee report on rectal rehydration appears to match Dick Cheney's most prurient sexual interests. Cheney's staff suppressed the above edition of The Globe from DC metro area supermarkets.

WMR also reported: "Cheney served as a Congressman from Wyoming from 1979 to 1989. This was during a time when two major page scandals, both involving Republican members of Congress, rocked Capitol Hill. They were the Koreagate scandal and the page/prostitutes visiting the White House in the late 1980s. In 1981, Lynne Cheney wrote "Sisters," an Old West novel containing lesbian themes. Dick Cheney's close friend and former chief of staff Scooter Libby penned a novel called "The Apprentice." The following is an excerpt from Libby's book, which features its main character, Yukiko, drawing hair on the 'mound' of a little girl: 'At age 10 the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest.'"

In 2002, Cheney held a reception for the publication of the second edition of Libby's book at the vice president's mansion.

On June 5, 2007, WMR reported on bizarre and kinky sexual practices engaged in by top Bush administration and other Republican officials by clients of "DC Madam" Jeane Palfrey's Pamela Martin & Associates escort service and other services: "The Bush administration's increasing nervousness about Deborah Jeane Palfrey's phone list is understandable after more details have emerged about some of the more bizarre prurient appetites of some past clients of Pamela Martin & Associates clients, said to include top officials of the Bush administration, Congressional members and staffers, and at least two well-known Washington, DC journalists.

Some escorts regularly paid visits to clients with whips and handcuffs as part of their regular ensemble.

Prostitutes hired by Louisiana Senator David Vitter in New Orleans are reporting that Vitter had a bizarre sexual fetish -- he liked to wear diapers during his trysts.

While that may be weird, some other prostitution clients due to be outed in Washington would appear much more bizarre. WMR has learned that certain VIPs who engaged the services of 'fantasy' escorts enjoyed what is known as 'water sports' -- firstly, practices that involve urination and, 'number two,' activities that are even worse.

Cheney's coprophilia fetish was the subject of WMR's April 11, 2008 report, "Cheney, according to knowledgeable sources involved in the Palfrey trial, paid at least one escort to straddle a glass top table and defecate on it while Cheney peered at the bowel 'evacuation' from underneath." The act was performed before Cheney became vice president at a town home next door to his own residence at Madison of McLean, an upscale housing development in McLean, Virginia close to the CIA's headquarters. Palfrey, had been found guilty of racketeering, mail fraud, and money laundering on April 15, 2008, just four days after WMR published its report about her escorts being involved in coprophiliac activities with Cheney. On May 1, 2008, Palfrey was found hanging in a utility shed at her mother's home in Tarpon Springs, Florida. Police ruled the death a "suicide." 

After WMR's report on Cheney's use of Palfrey's escorts ran on the front cover of The Globe supermarket tabloid, the editor was informed that Cheney's aides pressured two local retailers, Giant Food and Safeway, not to carry that issue. However, CVS pharmacy did sell the issue.

The bottom line on the rectal abuse at the CIA black sites, Guantanamo Bay, and Abu Ghraib is that it was performed not to extract any meaningful intelligence but for the sexual gratification of coprohiliacs like Dick Cheney and his closest associates. While squirting a puree of hummus, pasta, nuts and raisins into the rectums of U.S. detainees had no nutritional value for prisoners who refused to eat, the prurient nature of the procedure is in keeping with the bizarre sexual appetites of Mr. Cheney and his entourage.


 

WMR December 13, 2005 -- Cheney's January 2005 trip to Poland to mark the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp may have had a side trip.

publication date: Apr 13, 2007
  
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December 13, 2005 -- Cheney's January 2005 trip to Poland to mark the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp may have had a side trip.

Informed sources in Washington report that when Dick Cheney flew to Poland for the 60th anniversary ceremonies marking the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp last January, his three day visit also included a clandestine visit to a secret CIA camp in Poland where suspected "Al Qaeda" prisoners were being subjected to torture. Cheney was in Poland from January 26 to 28. The Auschwitz solemn ceremonies were on January 27. On January 26, Cheney held talks in Krakow with Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski and Ukraine's President Viktor Yuschenko and he visited the Galicia Jewish Museum.

Poland and Ukraine have been identified by U.S. intelligence sources as the location for secret CIA prisons and airfields. In the case of Ukraine, an intelligence source personally witnessed the defense and intelligence contractor Raytheon providing the logistics for Soviet-era airfields to handle the prisoner flights.

  

Cheney trip to Auschwitz allegedly took in a side trip to a secret CIA prison camp

The Cheney detour allegedly took place on  Friday, January 28, after he paid a quick visit to the Auschwitz camp and wrote in the guest book "may the evils committed here never again darken our world." Cheney's personal party included his wife Lynne Cheney; his daughter Elizabeth Cheney, and Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Two weeks after the Polish visit, Elizabeth Cheney, who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs from 2002 to 2003, was named by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs and Coordinator for Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiatives.

There is particular interest being focused on Lynne Cheney's former colleague at the American Enterprise Institute, Radek Sikorski, Poland's new Defense Minister under its center-right government and a former Deputy Defense Minister who may have served as a liaison between Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon on the establishment of the secret prison network in Poland. It is interesting to note that former CIA director Adm. Stansfield Turner referred to Dick Cheney as the "Vice President for torture." Cheney's and his family's active involvement in overseeing the establishment of secret prisons in Poland may have been what Turner, who obviously still talks to CIA insiders, was referring to.

Although Cheney's Air Force Two Boeing 757 left Krakow ahead of the plane carrying special guests, it arrived at Andrews Air Force Base after the guest plane arrived. It was claimed that Air Force Two had to stop for refueling -- a cover story to hide the fact that it had made another stop so Cheney could visit one of the secret CIA Polish prisons. Poland is now reported to have had the largest number of CIA prisons in eastern Europe. Cheney and Libby's detour may have been to Stare Liejkuty, a secretive and heavily guarded intelligence facility near Szczytno-Szymany in northeastern Poland. There is one recorded CIA flight to Szczynto-Szymany airport  -- a Boeing 737 operated by a CIA front company whose September 2003 route took it from Washington, DC to Prague Ruzyne Airport; Tashkent, Uzbekistan; Kabul, Afghanistan; Szczytno-Szymany; Mihail Kogalniceanu, near Constanta, Romania; Sale, Morocco, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Szczynto-Szymany airport: capable of handling large planes like Cheney's Boeing 757.

Oddly, Cheney's motorcade in Poland, all flown from the United States, had a special decontamination vehicle accompanying it to the location of the camp that once masked gas chambers as decontamination units for incoming prisoners.

WMR ... Rendition and torture in foreign prisons: invented by Mossad

October 3-4, 2013 -- Rendition and torture in foreign prisons: invented by Mossad

A perusal of files maintained for decades by the CIA show that before the agency became influenced by the Mossad culture it looked warily upon its rendition and torture practices in the Middle East, Western Europe, and Africa.

CIA files show that Langley was closely tracking media reports, particularly West German and Swedish news periodicals, about Mossad being given access to foreign prisons to conduct brutal interrogations of Palestinians and Palestinian sympathizers, particularly in West Germany and Kenya. The CIA was also monitoring reports that the Mossad was responsible for carrying out assassinations of prisoners being held in West Germany.

The West German press reported in 1979 that Mossad intelligence officers were given secret access to prisons in Munich, Amberg, Straubing, and Landsberg to interrogate Palestinians and, in some cases extracting confessions from the Palestinians that would be used against the prisoners in West German courts. The Palestinians were never informed that their interrogators were Mossad officers.

Other West German press reports in 1989 monitored by the CIA indicated that Mossad officers tortured and drugged Palestinian prisoners in West German jails, particularly in Straubing. One such prisoner, Abdel Wali Abdel Hafez Aabed, was arrested by German police and jailed in Straubing for four months for allegedly attempting to smuggle explosive material into West Germany. Aabed was reportedly drugged by Mossad agents and was shown photographs of his family in the West Bank and told that if he did not cooperate with Mossad, his family would be harmed. After Aabed was released he traveled to Beirut where he was later found dead from an apparent suicide. Aabed wrote in an alleged suicide letter that he had no other choice but to take his own life to protect his family from the Mossad. The West Berlin press reported that an Arabic-speaking "translator," believed to be a Mossad agent, accompanied West Berlin police ihn the interrogation of Palestinian prisoners held in the western part of the divided city..

In 1979, the Swedish press reported that there were suspicions that Mossad agents were involved in the prison cell assassinations of three members of the Red Army Faction -- Andreas Baader, Jan Carl Raspe, and Gudrun Ensslin -- at Stammheim prison on the night of October 18, 1977. All three were serving life sentences for murder and terrorism. The deaths of the three, including the gunshot deaths of Baader and Raspe, were reported by prison officials to be the result of a suicide pact. The brains of the three were turned over to the Neurological Research Institute of Tuebingen university for scientific research but all three brains later disappeared without a trace. The three had a "contact ban" imposed on them, meaning they could not have any contact with one another or outside visitors. Ensslin was found hanging in her cell from speaker wire while Baader and Raspe died of gunshot wounds. Baader was found to have powder burns on his right hand, however, he was left-handed. Raspe had no powder burns on his hands. Baader was said to have fired his gun from the base of the back of his neck, which exited through his forehead, a physical impossibility.

One West German intelligence officer told Sweden's Aftonbladet: "I believed they [Baader, Raspe and Ensslin] were assassinated, but I don't believe it was our people who killed them."

After 9/11 and the U.S. invasion of Iraq, there were numerous reports of Israeli agents being seen at U.S. prisons at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and other sites interrogating and directing the torture of detainees being held by the United States.

The CIA was also tracking news reports on renditions by Mossad of nationals of other countries. On January 18, 1976, Kenyan security police arrested in the arrivals hall of Nairobi airport two West Germans -- Brigitte Schulz and Thomas Reuter. They and three Palestinians also arrested -- Hussein Hadi al-Attar, Mahmoud Musa Hasan al-Makussi, and Ibrahim Tawfiq Ibrahim Yusuf -- were taken to Kenyan military headquarters in Nairobi, interrogated by Mossad agents, and then transported secretly in a disguised El Al aircraft to Israel where they were imprisoned at a secret detention center. Kenya did not have an extradition treaty with Israel and there was no hearing before a Kenyan court approving the removal of what became known as the "Nairobi Five" to Israel. This template would be adopted by the CIA in the rendition of hundreds of Muslims to "black sites" for torture and interrogation without any formal extradition hearings in the countries where they were apprehended.

The five were held for four months without seeing an attorney and they all reported they were subjected to torture by Shin Bet officers in order to force confessions that they planned to shoot down an El Al plane. During the trial of the two West Germans in April of 1977, only one West German embassy official was permitted to observe the proceedings. The Israeli government permitted no defense witnesses to provide testimony about why the two Germans were in Kenya, their forcible removal from Kenya, or their torture by Israeli interrogators. The Israelis wanted the two Germans to plead guilty on the charge of trying to shoot down an El Al plane. The Germans were promised a five year prison sentence in return for their confession. 

The case against the two Germans was strengthened after the June 27, 1976 hijacking by Palestinians and West Germans of an Air France Airbus, en route from Tel Aviv to Paris, to Entebbe, Uganda. Part of the demands of the hijackers were the release by Israel of the Nairobi Five. Later, a British diplomatic report written by D. H. Colvin, who was assigned to the British embassy in Paris, claimed that the hijacking of the aircraft was an Israeli false flag operation designed to garner sympathy for Israel from the French government and people.

On September 12, 1979, Schulz and Reuter were sentenced to ten years in prison. In reality, the two Germans agreed under duress to plead guilty to unspecific anti-Israeli activities in return for their release in February 1981.  The Israeli kidnapping of the Germans came after a Dutch national, Gerd Dessen, was kidnapped on a ship in international waters between Cyprus and Lebanon. Dessen was a member of the Netherlands Palestine Solidarity Committee, which earned him a week in an Israeli prison. 

The fate of the three Palestinians kidnapped by Mossad from Kenya was never known.

Israel has continued with its rendition program. In 2011, Gaza civil engineer 
Dirar Abu Sisi was bundled off to Israel from Kiev, where he was visiting his brother. Working with Ukrainian police, Mossad agents questioned Sisi in a Mossad safe house in Kiev and then flew him to Israel. Sisi was ultimately jailed in Shikma prison in Ashkelon. With only the flimsiest of evidence, Sisi was charged with being a major cog in the Iranian weapons smuggling network in Gaza.


Shikma Prison in Ashkelon holds renditioned prisoners. The entire concept of kidnapping, rendition, and "enhanced interrogation" is made in Israel.

U.S. military personnel who are aware of the presence of Israeli interrogators and torturers inside current and former U.S. detention centers are under strict gag orders not to speak about the Israelis.
 

WMR ... July 8, 2009 -- Message from Cynthia McKinney after her prison time in the revolting Zionist hell-hole known as "Israel"

publication date: Jul 7, 2009
  
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July 8, 2009 -- Message from Cynthia McKinney after her prison time in the revolting Zionist hell-hole known as "Israel"

Hello,

Well, all I can say is "Thank you!"  Your calls, faxes, protests, and prayers all made a huge difference and helped to secure our protection and our release.  I would also like to thank those at the Tel Aviv Embassy for their work on behalf of the three U.S. citizens held by the Israelis.  For those of you who missed it, here is the statement I put out from the Israeli prison.  Please forgive the undone, but needed edits.  I have tried twice, now, to get into Gaza.  I just got off the phone with George Galloway who extended a personal invitation to me to join him and the US convoy in Viva Palestina!  I'm certainly excited about that.  Maybe I will finally make it to Gaza.

Here's my "Letter from an Israeli Prison:"

Original audio message available here:

http://freegaza.org/it/home/56-news/984-a-message-from-cynthia-from-a-cell-block-in-israel

A funny thing happened to me on my way to Gaza.  Before I left for Gaza, I was giddy with excitement.  The children needed school supplies.  It was a last-minute, but urgent request.  Please bring crayons for the children.  And so I accepted contributions of crayola crayons, #2 pencils, pencil sharpeners, paint brushes, and crayola watercolors.

When I told people that I was going shopping to buy crayons for the children of Gaza, everyone wanted to donate.  By the time I left, my suitcase could hold no more.  So, full of expectation, I entered the airport in the U.S. headed once again to Larnaca, Cyprus where the Hope Flotilla, consisting of the free Gaza" and the "Spirit of Humanity" were to embark to Gaza.

The "Free Gaza" was to be donated to the people of Gaa so they could replace some of the boats confiscated or bombed by the Israelis during Operation Cast Lead.

It was a beautiful dream.  And dream it had to be because I had tried to get to Gaza before.  At the outbreak of Israel's Operation Cast Lead, I boarded a Free Gaza boat, with one day's notice, and tried, as the U.S. representative in a multinational delegation, to deliver trhee tons of medical supplies to an already-besieged and ravaged Gaza.  But, during Opertion Cast Lead, U.S.-supplied F-16s raised hell fire on a trapped people.  Ethnic cleansing became full-scale, outright genocide.

 

U.S.-supplied white phosphorus, depleted uranium, robotic technology, DIME weapons, and cluster bombs - new weapons creating injuries never treated before by Jordanian and Norwegian doctors. I was later told by doctors who were there in Gaza during Israel's onslaught that Gaza had become Israel's veritable weapons testing laboratory; and the people used to test and improve the kill ratio of their weapons.

The world saw Israel's despicable violence thanks to al-Jazeera Arabic and Press TV that broadcast in English. I saw those broadcasts live and around the clock, not from the USA but from Lebanon, where my first attempt to get into Gaza had ended because the Israeli military rammed the boat I was on in international waters that carried medical supplies.  That boat, the Dignity, was completely destroyed in its encounter with the Israeli military.

Again, on a humanitarian mission aborted by the Israeli military.  I am now known as Israeli Prisoner #88794.  I am in cell number 5, Ramle Prison.  How could I be in prison for collecting crayons for kids and trying to get the crayons to them?

The Israeli authorities have tried to get us to confess that we committed a crime.  And while in the cellblock, I have access to my clothes and a cell phone, but not the crayons or any clothing that has the word "Gaza" on it.  Zionism has surely run out of its last legitimacy if this is what it does to people who believe so deeply in human rights for all that they put their own lives on the line for someone else's children. Israel is the fullest expression of Zionism, but if Israel fears for its security because Gaza's children have crayons then not only has Israel lost its last shred of legitimacy, but Israel must be declared a failed state.

I am facing deportation from the state that brought me here at gunpoint after commandeering our boat. I was brought to Israel against my will. I am being held in this prison because I had a dream that Gaza's children could color & paint, that Gaza's wounded could be healed, and that Gaza's bombed-out houses could be rebuilt.

But I've learned an interesting thing by being inside this prison. First of all, it's incredibly black: populated mostly by Ethiopians who also had a dream.  My five cellmates have been here for about six months each.  One is pregnant; they are all in their twenties. They thought they were coming to the Holy Land. They had a dream that their lives would be better.  The CIA-installed puppet in Addis Ababa, President Meles, whom I have met, has put the once-proud, never-colonized Ethiopia into the back pocket of the United States, and become a place of torture, rendition, and occupation. Ethiopians must flee their country because superpower politics became more important than human rights and self-determination.

My cellmates came to the Holy Land so they could be free from the exigencies of superpower politics. They committed no crime except to have a dream. They came to Israel because they thought that Israel held promise for them. Their journey to Israel through Sudan and Egypt was arduous. I can only imagine what it must have been like for them. And it wasn't cheap. Many of them represent their family's best collective efforts for self-fulfillment. They made their way to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. They got their yellow paper of identification. They got their certificate for police protection. They are refugees from tragedy, and they made it to Israel. Only after they arrived, Israel told them "There is no UN in Israel."

The police have license to pick them up and suck them into the black hole of a farce for a justice system. These beautiful, industrious, proud young women represent the hopes of entire families. The idea of Israel tricked them and the rest of us. In a widely propagandized slick marketing campaign, Israel represented itself as a place of refuge and safety for the world's first Jews and Christians. I, too, believed that marketing and failed to look deeper.  The truth is that Israel lied to the world. Israel lied to the families of these young women. Israel lied to the women themselves who are now trapped at Ramle.

And what are we to do? One of my cellmates cried today. She has been here for six months. As an American, crying with them is not enough. The policy of the United States must be better, and while we watch President Obama give 12.8 trillion dollars to the financial elite of the United States it ought now be clear that "hope," "change," and "yes we can" were powerfully presented images of dignity and self-fulfillment, individually and nationally, that besieged people everywhere truly believed in.

It was a slick marketing campaign, as slickly put to the world and to the voters of America as was Israel's marketing to the world. It tricked all of us but, more tragically, these young women.

We must cast an informed vote about better candidates seeking to represent us. I have read and re-read Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever imagined that I, too, would one day have to do so. It is clear that taxpayers in Europe and the U.S. have a lot to atone for, for what they've done to others around the world.

What an irony! My son begins his law school program without me because I am in prison, in my own way trying to do my best, again, for other people's children. Forgive me, my son. I guess I'm experiencing the harsh reality which is why people need dreams. I'm lucky. I will leave this place. Has Israel become the place where dreams die?

Ask the people of Palestine. Ask the stream of black and Asian men whom I've seen being processed at Ramle. Ask the women on my cellblock. [Ask yourself:] what are you willing to do?

Let's change the world together and reclaim what we all need as human beings: Dignity.

I appeal to the United Nations to get these women of Ramle, who have done nothing wrong other than to believe in Israel as the guardian of the Holy Land, resettled in safe homes.

I appeal to the United States Department of State to include the plight of detained UNHCR-certified refugees in the Israel Country Report in its annual Human Rights Report.

I appeal, once again, to President Obama to go to Gaza: send your special envoy, George Mitchell there, and to engage Hamas as the elected choice of the Palestinian people.

I dedicate this message to those who struggle to achieve a free Palestine, and to the women I've met at Ramle.

Cynthia McKinney, July 2nd 2009, also known as Ramle prisoner number 88794.

 

 

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Wikipedia, Jeb Bush
John Ellis "Jeb" Bush (born February 11, 1953) is an American politician. He served as the 43rd Governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007. He is the second son of former President George H. W. Bush and former First Lady Barbara Bush, and is the younger brother of former President George W. Bush. Jeb Bush is the only Republican, and the third person of any party, to serve two full four-year terms as Governor of Florida. Bush grew up in Houston, Texas. He graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts and then attended the University of Texas, where he earned a degree in Latin American affairs. Following his father's successful run for Vice President in 1980, he moved to Florida and pursued a career in real estate development. In 1986, Bush was named Florida's Secretary of Commerce, a position he held until resigning in 1988 to help his father's successful campaign for the Presidency. In 1994, Bush made his first run for office, narrowly losing the election for governor by less than two percentage points to the incumbent Lawton Chiles. Bush ran again in 1998 and beat Lieutenant Governor Buddy MacKay with 55 percent of the vote. He ran for reelection in 2002 and won with 56 percent to become Florida's first two-term Republican Governor.[2] During his eight years as governor, Bush was credited with initiating improvements in the environment, as well as reforming the education system.[3][4] Bush has frequently been mentioned by the media as a possible candidate for president in 2016.[5][6][7][8] On December 16, 2014, Bush announced he would explore the possibility of running for President.[9] Contents [hide] 1 Early years 2 Early career 2.1 Business 2.2 Politics 3 Governor of Florida (1999–2007) 3.1 1998 gubernatorial election 3.2 Education 3.3 Fiscal 3.4 Labor 3.5 Environment 3.6 Gun rights 3.7 Gay rights 3.8 Capital punishment 3.9 Health policy 3.10 Immigration 3.11 Judicial 3.12 Vetoes 3.12.1 Florida High Speed Rail 3.12.2 Parenting coordinators 3.13 2000 presidential election recount in Florida 3.14 2002 gubernatorial election 4 Post-governorship 4.1 Impact on political party 4.2 Political interests and business activities 4.3 Statement about leaving office before term was over 4.4 Contemplated run for U.S. Senate, 2010 4.5 2012 presidential election 5 2016 presidential election 6 Personal life 6.1 Civic and charitable activities 7 Electoral history 8 Bibliography 9 References 10 Further reading 11 External links Early years[edit] Jeb Bush was born in Midland, Texas. When he was six years old, the family relocated to Houston, Texas.[10] The nickname "Jeb" is composed of his initials J.E.B. (John Ellis Bush).[citation needed] He initially attended Grady Elementary School in Houston.[11] Following in the footsteps of his father and older brother George, Jeb attended high school at the Massachusetts boarding school Phillips Academy Andover.[12] Even though he received poor grades at first and occasionally smoked marijuana, Bush made the honor roll by the end of his senior year and served as captain of the tennis team.[13] At the age of 17, he taught English as a second language and assisted in the building of a school in León, Guanajuato, Mexico, as part of Andover's student exchange summer program.[14] While in Mexico, he met his future wife, Columba Garnica de Gallo.[14][15] Bush, who had largely avoided criticizing or supporting the Vietnam War, registered for the draft after his graduation from high school in 1971, but was not selected as the war wound down.[13] Though many in his family had attended Yale University, Bush chose to attend the University of Texas at Austin.[16] In 1973, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Texas with a B.A. in Latin American Studies. He completed his coursework in two and a half years.[17] He is fluent in Spanish.[18] Early career[edit] Business[edit] Bush went to work in an entry-level position in the international division of Texas Commerce Bank, which was founded by the family of James Baker.[19] In November 1977, he was sent to the Venezuelan capital of Caracas to open a new operation for the bank, where he served as branch manager and vice president.[20] Following the 1980 presidential election, Bush and his family moved to Miami-Dade County, Florida. He took a job in real estate with Armando Codina, a 32-year-old Cuban immigrant and self-made American millionaire. Codina had made a fortune in a computer business, and then formed a new company, The Codina Group, to pursue opportunities in real estate.[21] During his time with the company, Bush focused on finding tenants for commercial developments.[22] Codina eventually made Bush his partner in a new development business, which quickly became one of South Florida's leading real estate development firms. As a partner, Bush received 40% of the firm's profits.[23] In 1983, Jeb Bush explained his move from Houston to Miami: "On the personal side, my mother-in-law and sister-in-law were already living here", and on the professional side, "I want to be very wealthy, and I'll be glad to tell you when I've accomplished that goal."[24] During Bush's years in Miami, he was involved in many different entrepreneurial pursuits, including working for a mobile phone company, serving on the board of a Norwegian-owned company that sold fire equipment to the Alaska oil pipeline, becoming a minority owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars, buying a shoe company that sold footwear in Panama, and getting involved in a project selling water pumps in Nigeria.[23] Miguel Recarey, who ran International Medical Centres (IMC), employed Bush as a real estate consultant and paid him a $75,000 fee for finding the company a new location, although the move never took place. Bush did, however, lobby the Reagan administration vigorously and successfully on behalf of Recarey and IMC.[25] Politics[edit] Bush volunteered for his father's campaigns in 1980 and 1988. During the 1980 campaign, Bush worked as an unpaid volunteer, and later said that his father is "the greatest man I’ve ever met or will meet; I can predict that fairly confidently. It was payback time, simple as that."[26] Bush got his start in Florida politics as the Chairman of the Dade County Republican Party in the mid-1980s.[26][27] Dade County played an important role in the 1986 election of Bob Martinez to the Governor's office. In return, Martinez appointed Bush as Florida's Secretary of Commerce.[27] He served in that role in 1987 and 1988, before resigning once again to work on his father's presidential campaign. Bush frequently communicated with his father and his father's staff during George H.W. Bush's time as vice president and president.[28] The younger Bush recommended Dexter Lehtinen for the post of U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida and set up a meeting between the Bush Administration and Motorola.[28] Bush also advocated for the cause of the Cuban exiles, many of whom had settled in South Florida, and Bush supported the Cuban embargo.[28] In 1990, Bush interceded with his father, the president, to pardon Orlando Bosch, a Cuban exile who had been convicted of firing a rocket into a Polish ship which was on passage to Cuba. Bosch was released from prison and granted residency in the U.S.[25] In 1989, he served as the campaign manager of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the first Cuban-American to serve in Congress.[29] Bush launched an unsuccessful bid for the Governor's office in 1994 against incumbent Democratic Governor Lawton Chiles.[29] Bush ran that year as a conservative, and a notable moment in this campaign was when Bush was asked what he would do for African Americans if he gets elected, responding: "It’s time to strive for a society where there’s equality of opportunity, not equality of results. So I’m going to answer your question by saying: probably nothing."[30][31] Bush lost the election by only 63,940 votes out of 4,206,076 that were cast for the major party candidates (2,135,008; 51% to 2,071,068; 49%). In the same election year, his older brother, George, was elected Governor of Texas. Following his election loss, Bush joined the board of the Heritage Foundation and continued to work with Codina Partners.[22] Alongside T. William Fair, the president of the Urban League's Miami affiliate, Bush helped to establish Florida's first charter school.[22] Governor of Florida (1999–2007)[edit] 1998 gubernatorial election[edit] Main article: Florida gubernatorial election, 1998 An earlier portrait of Governor Jeb Bush. In 1998, Bush defeated his Democratic opponent, Lieutenant Governor Buddy MacKay, by over 418,000 votes (2,191,105; 55% to 1,773,054; 45%) to become Governor of Florida. He campaigned as a "consensus-building pragmatist".[31] Simultaneously, his brother, George W. Bush won a re-election victory for a second term as Governor of Texas, and the Bush brothers became the first siblings to govern two states at the same time since Nelson and Winthrop Rockefeller governed New York and Arkansas from 1967 to 1971.[32] In the 1998 election, Bush garnered 61 percent of the Hispanic vote and 14 percent of the African American vote, a surprising showing for a Republican seeking statewide office.[33] Education[edit] Bush's administration was marked by a focus on public education reform. His "A+ Plan" established tough standards, required testing of all students, and graded all Florida schools. From 1998 to 2005, reading scores of 4th grade students in Florida on the National Assessment of Educational Progress increased 11 points, compared to 2.5 points nationally.[34] Bush has been a proponent of school vouchers and charter schools, especially in areas of the state with failing public schools, although to date very few schools have received failing grades from the state. He established the McKay Scholarship Program which provides vouchers for students with learning disabilities to attend a school of their choice. He also established the A+ Opportunity Scholarship Program which provided vouchers to students. This program was struck down by the Florida Supreme Court in 2006.[34] Bush was responsible for creating the Corporate Income Tax Credit Scholarship which provides corporations with tax credits for donations to Scholarship Funding Organizations which must spend 100% of the donations on scholarships for low income students.[34] His policies were also driven by a firm refusal to raise taxes for education, which led Bush to oppose a ballot initiative to amend the Florida Constitution to cap growing school class sizes. Bush said he had "a couple of devious plans if this thing passes".[35][36] Despite his opposition, the amendment passed.[37] In higher education, Bush approved three new medical schools during his tenure and also put forth the "One Florida" proposal, an initiative that effectively ended affirmative action admissions programs at state universities.[38] These moves were among the influencing concerns that led to the faculty of the University of Florida to deny Bush an honorary degree, while the University of Florida Alumni Association made him an honorary alumnus.[39] Fiscal[edit] While Governor, Jeb Bush reduced taxes by $19 billion, reduced the size of state government by 6.6 percent, and vetoed $2 billion in new spending.[34] He increased the state's reserves from $1.3 billion to $9.8 billion and presided over Florida receiving the highest possible bond rating for the first time.[40] In May 2006, as part of a $448.7-million line-item veto of state funding, Bush cut a total of $5.8 million in grants to public libraries, pilot projects for library homework help and web-based high-school texts, and funding for a joint-use library in Tampa.[41] Labor[edit] Bush eliminated civil service protection for over 16,000 state jobs, which had the effect of making it easier to fire employees in those positions. In addition, he issued an executive order which removed racial preferences in state contracting.[40] Environment[edit] Bush at Rookery Bay participating in Earth Day activities in 2004 Bush signed legislation to restore the Everglades as part of an $8 billion project in conjunction with the federal government. He also set aside over one million acres of land for conservation as part of a land purchase program.[34] Gun rights[edit] Bush supported more than a dozen new protections for gun owners.[40] In 2005, Bush signed into law Florida's stand-your-ground law,[42][43] which was the first such state law in the United States.[44] Gay rights[edit] Bush argued against legal protections based on sexual orientation.[45] In 2004 he wrote that "The public policy question is whether homosexuals deserve special legal protection…, or, to put it another way, should sodomy be elevated to the same constitutional status as race and religion? My answer is No. We have enough special categories, enough victims, without creating even more."[45] Capital punishment[edit] Bush oversaw 21 executions as Governor[46] (more than Graham, Martinez and Chiles while they were in office[citation needed]). Bush never agreed to commute any sentence.[47] Bush also presided over switching from electric chair (the only method of executions until 2000, now optional) to lethal injection, after a botched electrocution of Allen Lee Davis (first inmate executed under his administration and last, to date, electrocuted in Florida). After two previous botched executions (Jesse Tafero in 1990 and Pedro Medina in 1997) Governors Martinez and Chiles along with legislature declined to change methods.[48] While he is an advocate of capital punishment, Bush suspended all executions in Florida on December 15, 2006, after the execution of Ángel Nieves Díaz was seemingly botched. The execution took 37 minutes to complete, and required a second injection of the lethal chemicals.[49] Health policy[edit] As Governor, Bush proposed and passed into law major reform to the medical liability system. The Florida Senate, a majority of which were Republican, sided with the trial lawyers against caps on non-economic damages. Bush insisted, and called the legislature into five special sessions. The contentious debate even included a senior Bush staffer calling for primary opposition to Republicans who disagreed with the Governor on the reforms. Eventually, the legislature agreed to the caps and Bush's reforms passed. Bush passed a reform to Florida's Medicaid system that moved recipients into private managed care systems.[40] Also, Florida was the first state in the nation to publish hospital outcomes on the Internet, including cost and information on quality, infections and complications.[50] Bush was involved in the Terri Schiavo case, involving a woman with massive brain damage, who was on a feeding tube for over 15 years, and whose husband and legal guardian, Michael Schiavo, wished to remove the tube. This move was opposed by Terri Schiavo's parents in the courts. Bush signed "Terri's Law", legislation passed by the Florida legislature that authorized him, as Governor, to keep Schiavo on life support.[51][52] The law was ruled unconstitutional by the Florida Supreme Court on September 23, 2004. That decision was appealed to the federal courts. On January 24, 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case, thus allowing the Florida court's ruling to stand.[53] While Governor of Florida, Bush was opposed to abortion.[54] He supported a law requiring parental notification for teen abortions and requested that the courts appoint a guardian for the fetus of a mentally disabled woman who had been raped.[55] Choose Life, a pro-life advocacy group based in Ocala, Florida, submitted a specialty license plate application – previously vetoed by Governor Lawton Chiles—which passed both houses and was signed into law by Bush on June 8, 1999.[56][57] Immigration[edit] In 2004, Bush supported an unsuccessful bill to allow illegal immigrants to be issued drivers licenses by the state.[40] Judicial[edit] During Bush's tenure, the racial and gender diversity of the state's judicial bench increased. However, according to the Wall Street Journal, some of Bush's judicial appointments were criticized by Democrats as being "overtly partisan and political".[40] Vetoes[edit] Florida High Speed Rail[edit] In 1995, the Florida state legislature created the High Speed Rail Authority (HSRA) and came up with a public-private partnership model. Government would build the system leveraging state dollars with federal funds and tax-free bonding. The private sector was to invest money in the project, help design and build the network, and be given the franchise to operate the trains–known as Design-Build-Operate-Maintain (DBOM). Trains would be privately owned, similar to how the airline industry operates in a publicly financed airport.[58] The rail system and its planning was estimated to cost $7–$8 billion.[59] Bush ended the project on his second day in office in 1999.[59] State legislators reacted by adding the project on the 2000 ballot as a constitutional amendment which was ultimately passed by voters. The amendment directed Bush and legislature to start building the railroad system by 2003. Bush vetoed funding for both the project and the board, and led a high-profile campaign to repeal the constitutional requirement that mandated the construction of the high-speed system.[59][58] Voters repealed the constitutional amendment. Many who voted believed they were supporting the train, though in fact a "yes" vote was to approve the repeal.[59] Parenting coordinators[edit] Bush vetoed a 2004 bill about court-appointed parenting coordinators because of his concern that the bill would not adequately protect families as they try to resolve their conflicts.[60] 2000 presidential election recount in Florida[edit] Bush was governor when his brother George W. Bush won an intensely fought election recount in Florida to become President. Jeb Bush recused himself from any official role in the recount.[61] 2002 gubernatorial election[edit] Main article: Florida gubernatorial election, 2002 Bush defeated Democratic challenger Bill McBride in 2002 with 56% to 43%, a greater margin of victory than in 1998. Bush won 44 percent of the state's Jewish vote in the 2002 race.[62] Bush also won the white female vote in the swing-voting battleground of Central Florida's I-4 corridor.[63] However, he was not able to replicate the same success with African American voters (like he had earlier in 1998), winning only 8 percent of the African American vote. Post-governorship[edit] Impact on political party[edit] Nationwide, American conservatives appeared to be positive about Bush, seeing him as committed to upholding core conservative principles.[64] Outside of Florida, fellow Republican leaders throughout the country have sought Bush's aid both on and off the campaign trail. Bush's out-of-state campaign visits include Kentucky, where Republican challenger Ernie Fletcher appeared with Bush and won that state's governorship in 2003,[65] ending a 32-year streak of Democratic governors. Bush has been criticized by some in the Tea Party as not being sufficiently conservative, as he supports positions on immigration and Common Core that are unpopular with some conservatives.[66] Bush publicly criticized the national Republican party for its adherence to "an orthodoxy that doesn't allow for disagreement" on June 11, 2012. In comments shared with Bloomberg View, Bush suggested that former Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush would "have had a hard time" finding support in the contemporary GOP.[67] Political interests and business activities[edit] From 2004 to 2007, Bush served as a Board Member for the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB).[68] Created by Congress, the board's purpose is to establish policy on reports examining K-12 students' academic progress in America's public and private schools. Since then Bush's education foundation has advocated for the Common Core State Standards Initiative.[69] In October 2013, referring to opponents of the standards, Bush said that while "criticisms and conspiracy theories are easy attention grabbers", he instead wanted to hear their solutions to the problems in American education.[70] In April 2007, Bush joined Tenet Healthcare's board of directors.[71] The following August, Bush joined investment bank, Lehman Brothers, as an adviser in its private equity group.[72] Bush has also served on the board of InnoVida, Swisher Hygiene, and Rayonier and has served as an adviser to Barclays.[73] Bush would later return $270,000 in consultancy fees he had been paid by InnoVida after they declared bankruptcy.[74] As of 2014, Bush had received more than $2 million from his work for Tenet, a company that expected to receive $100 million in new earnings in 2014 because of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) and that "aggressively encouraged Americans to sign up for insurance under the program...."[73] Bush has reportedly objected to the ACA at company meetings, but has kept his personal views separate from what is best for Tenet.[73] In April 2013, Bush authored a cover story for Newsmax magazine, urging conservatives to be a movement of "growth and opportunity" and warning that America's entitlement system risked collapse unless there was a course correction in U.S. public policy. Bush touted a six-point plan for the conservative movement that included tax reform, education reform, a welcoming immigration policy, energy independence, regulatory reform, and pro-family policies. [75] In October 2013, Bush called for passage of immigration reform.[76] In April 2014, Bush said of illegal immigration: "It's an act of love. It's an act of commitment to your family. I honestly think that that is a different kind of crime. There should be a price paid, but it shouldn't rile people up that people are actually coming to this country to provide for their families."[77] Statement about leaving office before term was over[edit] In May 2006, Bush was privately approached to become the next commissioner of the National Football League.[78] The former commissioner, Paul Tagliabue, announced that his tenure would soon be over and he was searching for replacements. "I'm flattered", Jeb Bush said May 24, 2006, of the NFL's interest, "but I'm Governor of the state of Florida and I intend to be Governor until I leave—which is January 2007. And I'm not going to consider any other options other than being Governor until I finish."[79] Roger Goodell eventually became the new NFL commissioner. Contemplated run for U.S. Senate, 2010[edit] In 2008, Bush indicated that he was considering running in the 2010 U.S. Senate race for the seat being vacated by Mel Martinez, who announced that he would retire at the end of his term.[80][81][82][83][84] But in January 2009, he announced that he would not run for the Senate.[85] Instead, he supported Marco Rubio for the position. 2012 presidential election[edit] Throughout 2009 and 2010, rumors abounded that Bush would attempt to win the Republican nomination for the 2012 presidential election—rumors that he strongly denied from the beginning.[86] In February 2011, after renewed calls were made for him to run for president,[87][88] In July 2011, he reiterated his position that he was not running, although he was heavily critical of the Obama administration.[89] 2016 presidential election[edit] See also: Political positions of Jeb Bush Jeb Bush speaking at the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in February 2015. Logo for Bush's Right to Rise Super PAC Bush has been considered a potential candidate in the 2016 presidential election since the end of the 2012 election.[90] At a press conference on April 16, 2013, at Bluefield College, Bush stated he had not begun the decision making process about a run but that he would begin to consider a run soon.[91] On October 2, 2014, Bush's brother George W. Bush said that his brother "wants to be President".[92] On December 16, 2014, Bush announced via Facebook that he would be "actively exploring" a 2016 run to become President of the United States and at the end of the year resigned several corporate boards.[93][9] In February 2015, Bush released several thousand emails from his time as Governor online. Most of the emails are in the public record under Florida's Sunshine Laws. However, Bush created controversy by releasing some emails that included some personal details such as social security numbers, names and addresses, as well as the contents of the messages.[94][95] Bush's campaign team subsequently redacted the personal information.[96] In May 2015, it was reported that Bush has been raising money since January 2015, estimated to be close to $100 million, for his super PAC, Right to Rise.[97] Personal life[edit] In 1970 in León, Mexico, where he was teaching English as part of a foreign exchange program, Bush met Columba Garnica de Gallo.[14] They were married on February 23, 1974, in Austin, Texas.[14][98][99] They reside in Coral Gables, Florida.[100] Bush has three children: George Prescott Bush (born April 24, 1976, in Texas),[101][102] went to Gulliver Preparatory School, studied at Rice University, and earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Texas School of Law. In the 2014 election, he was elected Commissioner of the Texas General Land Office.[101] Noelle Lucila Bush was born July 26, 1977,[citation needed] in Texas. John Ellis Bush, Jr., who attended Bolles School,[14] (born December 13, 1983, in Miami)[citation needed] works for a Miami, Florida commercial real estate firm. In addition to his three children, Jeb Bush has four grandchildren; two through his eldest son, and two through his youngest.[103] In 1995, Bush converted from Episcopalianism to Roman Catholicism.[104] In 2004, Bush became a Fourth Degree Knight of Columbus.[105] Bush, a member of Father Hugon Council 3521 in Tallahassee, joined Father Hugon Assembly.[106] Civic and charitable activities[edit] After losing a 1994 election for Governor of Florida against Lawton Chiles, Bush pursued policy and charitable interests. He "volunteered time to assist the Miami Children's Hospital, the United Way of Dade County and the Dade County Homeless Trust".[107] Bush served from 2012[108] to 2015 as co-chair of the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy.[109] He has also worked with The James Madison Institute, a free market public policy think tank based in Tallahassee, Florida. He helped the institute in numerous ways and still has his think tank working in conjunction with it. In June 2008, Bush's Foundation for Excellence in Education partnered with JMI to hold a summit called Excellence in Action: A National Summit on Education Reform.[110] In 1996, The Foundation For Florida's Future published a book that Bush had co-written, Profiles in Character (ISBN 0-9650912-0-1), a clear parallel to John F. Kennedy's 1955 book Profiles in Courage. The foundation also published and distributed policy papers, such as "A New Lease on Learning: Florida's First Charter School", which Bush co-wrote.[111] Bush subsequently wrote the foreword to another book, published by the conservative Heritage Foundation and written by Nina Shokraii Rees, School Choice 2000: What's Happening in the States (ISBN 0-89195-089-3). Bush co-founded the first charter school in the State of Florida: Liberty City Charter School, a grades K-6 elementary school.[112] in a Miami neighborhood that, in 1980, was the site of the first major race riot since the Civil Rights era.[113] The school's co-founder, working alongside Bush, was T. Willard Fair, a local black activist and head of the Greater Miami Urban League. The Liberty City Charter School was closed in 2008 after falling more than $1 million in debt.[114] In 2000, Bush established the Points of Light program to recognize an "exemplary volunteer, organization, or person".[115] Bush is the honorary chairman of the Annual AT&T Jeb Bush Florida Golf Classic, a fundraiser that benefits the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. He first became involved in the benefit after meeting with committee member Lawson Dutton, whose child suffered from cystic fibrosis.[116] Supporters raised more than $722,000 in 2014 at the 19th annual Jeb Bush Florida Classic, exceeding their goals in attendance and revenues raised.[117][118] Since the event’s inception 19 years ago, the total revenue netted has reached over $7.478 million.[117] Electoral history[edit] Florida gubernatorial election, 1994 Party Candidate Votes % ±% Democratic Lawton Chiles (incumbent) 2,135,008 51 Republican Jeb Bush 2,071,068 49 Florida gubernatorial election, 1998 Party Candidate Votes % ±% Republican Jeb Bush 2,191,105 55 Democratic Buddy MacKay 1,773,054 45 Florida gubernatorial election, 2002 Party Candidate Votes % ±% Republican Jeb Bush (incumbent) 2,856,845 56 Democratic Bill McBride 2,201,427 43 Bibliography[edit] Bush, Jeb; Yablonski, Brian (1996). Profiles in Character. Foundation for Floridas Future. ISBN 978-0965091206. Bolick, Clint, Bush, Jeb. Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution. New York: Simon & Schuster. 2013. References[edit] Jump up ^ "The Education Of Jeb Bush Florida`s Popular Secretary Of Commerce Joins His Father`s Campaign For President, And Plots His Own Political Future.". Sun Sentinel. Jump up ^ February 11, 2009, 8:57 PM (2009-02-11). "Jeb Bush Makes History In Florida". CBS News. Retrieved 2013-05-29. Jump up ^ Associated, The (2006-12-14). "Gov. Jeb Bush's environmental legacy during eight years in office". Jacksonville.com. Retrieved 2013-05-29. Jump up ^ "Jeb Bush | StateImpact Florida". Stateimpact.npr.org. Retrieved 2013-05-29. Jump up ^ Davis, Lanny. "Two reasons why Democrats should fear a Jeb Bush 2016 presidential run." FoxNews.com. 2014-06-20. Retrieved 2014-11-09. Jump up ^ Blumenthal, Paul. "George W. Bush Says Jeb Bush 2016 Presidential Run Is 'A Toss-Up'." The Huffington Post. 2014-11-09. Retrieved 2014-11-09. Jump up ^ Thomas, Ken. "George P. Bush Says Father Jeb 'Still Assessing' Presidential Bid." Associated Press (via The Huffington Post). 2014-10-26. Retrieved 2014-11-09. Jump up ^ Robertson, Gary D. "Jeb Bush stumping for Republicans, weighing run for president." Associated Press (via Portland Press-Herald). 2014-09-24. Retrieved 2014-11-09. ^ Jump up to: a b "A Note from Jeb Bush". facebook.com. Jump up ^ "Florida Governor Jeb Bush". National Governors Association. Retrieved 5 May 2014. Jump up ^ "Long-held values shape Public Life of Jeb Bush." The Miami Herald. September 22, 2002. Retrieved on October 15, 2012. "Bush attended public Grady Elementary School in Houston for several years[...]" Jump up ^ "Jeb Bush gives Andover kids Republic insight". Boston.com. Retrieved 5 May 2014. ^ Jump up to: a b Kranish, Michael (1 February 2015). "Jeb Bush shaped by troubled Phillips Academy years". Boston Globe. Retrieved 31 January 2015. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e Guevara-Castro, Lillian (May 5, 1999). "Florida's First Lady: Columba Bush settles into life in the governor's mansion". Ocala Star-Banner (Ocala, Florida). Retrieved March 22, 2015. Columba Garnica Gallo was 16 and John Ellis "Jeb" Bush was 17 when they met in the central Mexican town of Lewn. Jeb was teaching English and helping to build a school as an exchange student from Phillips Academy, a prestigious prep school in Andover, Mass. Jump up ^ "Hispanic consciousness lends weight to Jeb Bush as GOP eyes 2016 presidential race". The Washington Post. April 24, 2013. Retrieved 9 February 2015. Jump up ^ McCrimmon, Ryan (17 March 2015). "In Texas, a Focused Jeb Bush Stood Out From the Crowd". The Texas Tribune. Retrieved 16 April 2015. Jump up ^ Kelley, Kitty. The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty, p. 404 (Doubleday, 2004). Jump up ^ Giroux, Greg (October 6, 2014). "Jeb Bush Speaks Fluent GOP in Spanish-Language Ads". Retrieved February 9, 2015. Jump up ^ "Jeb Bush followed the family game plan: Earn your fortune, then run for public office. A vast network of deals made it possible.". St. Petersburg Times. Retrieved 5 May 2014. Jump up ^ Manuel-Roig Franzia (2013-04-24). "Hispanic consciousness lends weight to Jeb Bush". The Washington Post. Jump up ^ Zweigenhaft, Richard and Domhoff, G. William. Diversity in the Power Elite: How it Happened, Why it Matters, p. 149 (Rowman & Littlefield 2006). ^ Jump up to: a b c MacGillis, Alec (26 January 2015). "Testing Time: Jeb Bush's Educational Experiment". New Yorker. Retrieved 1 February 2015. ^ Jump up to: a b Swasy, Alecia and Trigaux, Robert. "Make the Money and Run", St. Petersburg Times (September 20, 1998). Jump up ^ Morley, Jefferson. "Dirty Money", Miami New Times (February 27, 1991). ^ Jump up to: a b Campbell, Duncan "The Bush dynasty and the Cuban criminals." The Guardian (December 2, 2002). Retrieved September 9, 2010. ^ Jump up to: a b Kyle Pendergast (2008-11-19). "Where are they now? Jeb Bush". Houston Chronicle. ^ Jump up to: a b Date, S.V. Jeb, p. 223 (Penguin, 2007). ^ Jump up to: a b c Eder, Steve; Barbaro, Michael (14 February 2015). "As Dynasty’s Son, Jeb Bush Used His Connections Freely". New York Times. Retrieved 15 February 2015. ^ Jump up to: a b Adams, David and Simon, Stephanie. "Jeb Bush: Party elder statesman or 2016 candidate?", Reuters (June 25, 2012). Jump up ^ Aberbach, Joel and Peele, Gillian. Crisis of Conservatism?: The Republican Party, the Conservative Movement, and American Politics After Bush, p. 189 (Oxford University Press, 2011). ^ Jump up to: a b "Listening Jeb Bush". The Economist. 1998-10-15. Retrieved 2013-05-29. Jump up ^ Richard L. Berke (1998-11-19). "Bush Brothers Provide Light to Republicans After a Dreary Election". The New York Times. Retrieved 2014-12-16. Jump up ^ Nia-Malika Henderson (2014-12-15). "Jeb Bush did really well with Latinos in Florida". The Washington Post. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e "Governor Jeb Bush: A Record of Leadership and Policy Accomplishment" (PDF). Washington Policy Center. Jump up ^ Bush would seek to kill class-size amendment at the Wayback Machine (archived October 8, 2002) Jump up ^ Audio File at the Wayback Machine (archived October 8, 2002) Jump up ^ "Statutes & Constitution :Constitution : Online Sunshine". Leg.state.fl.us. Retrieved 2009-04-03. Jump up ^ James, Joni. Jeb Bush on One Florida, St. Petersburg Times, March 18, 2007. Retrieved June 14, 2008. Jump up ^ "Jeb Bush denied one honor, wins another – Politics – MSNBC.com". MSNBC. 2007-03-24. Retrieved 2009-04-03. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e f Reinhard, Beth (February 18, 2015). "Jeb Bush's Record Offers Cover From the Right". Wall Street Journal. Jump up ^ "American Libraries – Gov. Jeb Bush Vetoes Florida Library Appropriations". ALA. 2006-05-26. Retrieved 2009-04-03. Jump up ^ Jeffers, Jr., Groomer (24 March 2012). "In Arlington, Jeb Bush says ‘stand your ground’ invalid in Trayvon Martin case". The Dallas Morning News. Retrieved 31 January 2015. Jump up ^ Meckler, Laura (16 December 2014). "What Kind of Republican is Bush? His Time as Governor Offers Clues". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 31 January 2015. Jump up ^ "States That Have Stand Your Ground Laws". FindLaw. Thomson Reuters. Retrieved 1 February 2015. ^ Jump up to: a b Knickerbocker, Brad. February 28, 2015. Is Jeb Bush 'evolving' on same-sex marriage and other gay rights issues?. The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved: 19 April 2015. Jump up ^ "Execution List – Florida Department of Corrections". Dc.state.fl.us. Retrieved 2009-04-03. Jump up ^ Clemency – Death Penalty Information Center. Jump up ^ Freedberg, Sydney P. The story of Old Sparky, St. Petersburg Times, September 25, 1999. Retrieved June 14, 2008. Jump up ^ "Botched execution likely painful, doctors say". Associated Press. December 16, 2006. Jump up ^ [1] STATE LEGISLATION & INITIATIVES ON HEALTHCARE-ASSOCIATED INFECTIONS, Updated October 2011 Jump up ^ [2] Florida Governor Jeb Bush intervenes in "right-to-die" case: A cruel pandering to the religious right, 31 October 2003, Joseph Kay Jump up ^ [3]"Eventually, Jeb Bush Will Need to Claim He’s the Conservative Candidate" National Review Online Jim Geraghty December 3, 2014 Jump up ^ [4] "Justices Decline Schiavo Case" March 25, 2005, Washington Post Jump up ^ John, Arit. January 13, 2015. Which Bush is Most Conservative? You Might Be Surprised. Bloomberg. Retrieved: 11 April 2015. Jump up ^ Scott Conroy (2014-04-08). "Could Jeb Bush Win Over the Christian Right in '16?". RealClearPolitics. Retrieved 2015-02-20. Jump up ^ "Florida approves 'Choose Life' license plate" Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, November 24, 1999 Jump up ^ Olszonowicz, Deborah: "Motor Vehicle Registration and License Plates" x, September 1999 ^ Jump up to: a b Florida High Speed Rail – Overview. Florida Bullet Train.org. Retrieved on 2010-11-09. ^ Jump up to: a b c d McCommons, James (2009). Waiting on a Train. White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing Company. pp. 258–259. ISBN 978-1-60358-064-9. Jump up ^ "Bush veto" (PDF). Jump up ^ Getter, Lisa. "Jeb Bush's Recount Role Examined." Los Angeles Times. 2001-07-14. Retrieved 2014-12-06. Jump up ^ Stewart, Russ. Will Iraqi Victory convert Jews to GOP?, Russ Stewart, April 16, 2003. Retrieved June 14, 2008. Jump up ^ "The (Finally) Emerging Republican Majority". Weeklystandard.com. Retrieved 2009-04-03. Jump up ^ "Fiscal Policy Report Card on America's Governors: 2002". Cato.org. 2002-09-20. Retrieved 2009-04-03. Jump up ^ "As Ky. governor, Fletcher vows to 'clean up mess'". enquirer.com. Jump up ^ Collinson, Stephen and Reston, Maeve (January 28, 2015) – "Jeb Bush's Conservative Evolution". CNN. Retrieved January 28, 2015. Jump up ^ Rutenberg, Jim (June 11, 2012). "Jeb Bush Takes Aim at Fellow Republicans". The New York Times. Jump up ^ "Who We Are – Board Members". National Assessment Governing Board. Retrieved 2013-05-29. Jump up ^ Caputo, Marc A. (September 23, 2013). "Read Rick Scott's Common Core letters, order. A Jeb Bush dis? Not quite. Will Legislature abide? Yes". The Miami Herald. Retrieved October 17, 2013. Jump up ^ Leary, Alex (October 17, 2013). "Jeb Bush to Common Core opponents: 'conspiracy theories are easy attention grabbers'". Tampa Bay Times. Retrieved October 17, 2013. Jump up ^ Koenig, David. Jeb Bush joins Tenet Healthcare's board, USA Today, May 10, 2007. Retrieved June 14, 2008. Jump up ^ Wilchins, Dan (August 30, 2007). "Lehman hires Jeb Bush as private equity advisor". Reuters. Retrieved April 3, 2009. ^ Jump up to: a b c Barbaro, Michael (April 21, 2014). "Jeb Bush’s Rush to Make Money May Be Hurdle". The New York Times. pp. A1. Retrieved April 28, 2014. Jump up ^ Gold, Matea (19 January 2015). "Timeline: Jeb Bush and InnoVida". www.washingtonpost.com (The Washington Post). Retrieved 6 April 2015. Jump up ^ Bush, Jeb (April 2013). "We Can Be Great Again". Newsmax. Retrieved November 26, 2013. Jump up ^ Kopan, Tal (October 17, 2013). "Jeb Bush says GOP needs 'agenda'". Politico. Retrieved October 17, 2013. Jump up ^ "Jeb Bush to decide on Republican presidential run by end of year". www.theguardian.com. Guardian News and Media Limited. 6 April 2014. Retrieved 6 April 2014. Jump up ^ "Governor Jeb Bush Confirms Discussing His Interest in NFL Commissioner Job". Fox News. Jump up ^ "Jeb Bush quashes NFL speculation". Usatoday.Com. 2006-05-25. Retrieved 2009-04-03. Jump up ^ "Jeb: I am considering Senate run – Carol E. Lee and Jonathan Martin". Politico.com. Retrieved 2009-04-03. Jump up ^ "Jeb Bush's Prospects in a Florida Senate Race | Newsweek Politics". Newsweek.com. Retrieved 2009-04-03. Jump up ^ Jeb Bush bid for Senate could clear GOP field at the Wayback Machine (archived December 7, 2008) Jump up ^ "Florida: Jeb Bush Shows Interest In Senate Seat". The New York Times. December 4, 2008. Retrieved April 2, 2010. Jump up ^ "Jeb Bush Ponders Florida Senate Run – Marc Ambinder". Marcambinder.theatlantic.com. Archived from the original on 2008-12-03. Retrieved 2009-04-03. Jump up ^ "CNN.com: Jeb Bush not running for Senate". Politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com. January 6, 2009. Retrieved 2009-04-03. Jump up ^ Wallsten, Peter (July 27, 2010). "Jeb Bush Says No to 2012 Run". The Wall Street Journal. Jump up ^ Lowry, Rich (February 7, 2011). "Bush 2012". The National Review. Jump up ^ Martin, Jonathan (February 8, 2011). "Jeb emails: National Review or not, it's still no". The Politico. Jump up ^ "Jeb Bush gives Obama 'F' grade on economy", FOX Tampa Bay. July 22, 2011. Retrieved August 7, 2011 Jump up ^ Rutenberg, Jim; Jeff Zeleny (November 22, 2012). "Jeb Bush in 2016? 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Retrieved: 3 May 2015. Jump up ^ Gedda, George (2001-02-14). "Bush has hemisphere on brain" (PDF). Laredo Morning Times. Retrieved 2006-10-21. Jump up ^ "Jeb Bush's Latin 'Lover:' R-Rated – Bloomberg". Political Capital. Jump up ^ Bush, Jeb. "Jeb Bush: The Things I Really Love About Florida". Gulfshore Life. ^ Jump up to: a b Associated Press. George P. Bush starts small, shuns idea his name, Hispanic heritage can save GOP in Texas, Washington Post, July 20, 2013. Jump up ^ "Texas Births, 1926–1995". Familytreelegends.com. Retrieved May 13, 2015. Jump up ^ "Jeb Bush Welcomes Birth Of New Granddaughter, Vivian Alexandra Columba". The Huffington Post. Jump up ^ "Jeb Bush, Catholic Convert. Will His Brother Convert?". Catholic.org. Retrieved 8 August 2012. Jump up ^ "President Discusses Compassionate Conservative Agenda in Dallas". Retrieved 8 August 2012. Jump up ^ [5] Knights of Columbus, Accessed Jan 8, 2014 Jump up ^ "Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy". Archived from the original on 2009-03-12. Jump up ^ Bello, Marisol (5 March 2014). "Bush foundation celebrates 25 years of family literacy". USA Today. Retrieved 12 February 2015. Jump up ^ Larson, Leslie (1 January 2015). "Jeb Bush resigns from corporate, nonprofit boards to start 2015 afresh". New York Daily News. Retrieved 12 February 2015. Jump up ^ "Cato on "Excellence in Action: A National Summit on Education Reform"". Foundation for Excellence in Education. Foundation for Excellence in Education. Retrieved 2008-08-23. Jump up ^ A New Lease on Learning:Florida's First Charter School (PDF) at the Wayback Machine (archived August 24, 2000) Jump up ^ Liberty City Charter School at the Wayback Machine (archived April 4, 2006) Jump up ^ "African American Registry: Riot erupts in Liberty City!". Aaregistry.com. Archived from the original on June 11, 2008. Retrieved 2009-04-03. Jump up ^ McGrory, Kathleen; Hiaasen, Scott (December 16, 2011). "Charter schools enrolling low number of poor students". The Miami Herald. Retrieved March 21, 2013. Jump up ^ Berrios, Jerry (20 August 2003). "Hero in the Spotlight". The Miami Herald. pp. 1B. Jump up ^ "Golf Tournament – 19th Annual AT&T Jeb Bush Florida Classic Sponsored By The Wasie Foundation Event Time & Tickets." Eventful. Eventful, Inc November 14, 2014 <http://miami.eventful.com/events/golf-tournament-19th-annual-att-jeb-bush-fl-/E0-001-070656699-5 19th annual Jeb Bush Florida Classic ^ Jump up to: a b Jeb Bush Florida Classic History. Retrieved March 19, 2015. Jump up ^ Abraham, Randy. Fundraiser help fight cystic fibrosis Sun Sentinel, December 17, 2014. Retrieved March 19, 2015.
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