BUSH WATCH...Evelyn Pringle

Iraq - Greatest Strategic Disaster In US History
Evelyn Pringle

Its time to withdraw our troops from a war that should never have been waged. There never was any real justification for sending our young men and women to die in Iraq, and there is even less justification to keep them there now.

On October 5, 2005, the former head of the National Security Agency, Retired Lt General William Odom, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying: "The invasion of Iraq, I believe, will turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history."

I totally agree with the General.

The lies, deception, and dirty tricks by officials at the highest level of our government, coupled with the torture scandals, and blatant war profiteering by the Bush family and administration officials, have damaged the nation's reputation to a point from which it will never recover.

The portrayal of our intelligence agencies as corrupt and incompetent, has left our nation in a state of world-wide disgrace. Bush has stirred up more anger and contempt towards Americans than any President in history.

The administration took our country to war against a nation that did not pose even a minimal threat to our security. Close to 2500 US soldiers, along with an estimated 100,000 Iraqi civilians are now dead.

There are those who still insist that we are duty-bound to fix Iraq now that we have broken it. I used to be among them. No more.

We are stuck in a quagmire with no good options. However, the worst option by far, would be to continue on with more of the same, and watch the body count grow. It is clear that Rumsfeld's ill-fated military planning is not working yet Bush refuses to change the course.

Iraq has become a haven for terrorists that it was not before Bush made the choice to invade the country. Nearly a year ago, on CNN, Cheney was asked about the progress in Iraq, and he responded without blinking an eye: "I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."

He was dead wrong.

Forty-some years ago, in reference to the war in Viet Nam, then Congressman Rumsfeld stated: "The people of the United States must know not only how their country became involved, but where we are heading."

The people in the US today deserve to know the truth about how we became involved in Iraq and where we are heading. But even more important, our troops deserve a plan from their Commander-in-Chief.

The Vice President has labeled criticism of the administration’s war in Iraq as "dishonest and reprehensible." A statement that came on the heel of similar comment from Bush.

"What bothers me is when people are irresponsibly using their positions and playing politics," he said. "That’s exactly what is taking place in America," he added.

Questioning policies that are costing the nation thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars is not playing politics. The fact is, after 3 years, we are engaged in a mission with no definition and no benchmarks for measuring success.

The President keeps saying we will not leave Iraq until win. Win what?

On October 6, 2005, during a speech to the National Endowment for Democracy, Bush said: "We never back down, never give in and never accept anything less than complete victory."

How are we supposed to know when victory is "complete" if we cannot even define it?

While the mission remains undefined, the troops are overstretched, and even friendly Iraqis are begging us to leave.

Bush has said that he plan's to keep the troops in Iraq for “as long as it takes.” That's not good enough. Who knows how long it will take to institute order in Iraq.

In addition to the steady stream of lost lives and injured soldiers, the war is costing a fortune in national wealth with a price tag of well over $1 billion a week.

According to the Congressional Research Service, by October 2005, Congress had already appropriated $310 billion to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as a new bill was set to add another $50 billion to the tab.

Analysts predict that the cost will rise to more than $400 billion this year. But $400 billion is only the visible expense. There are unseen costs buried in the government's books.

For instance, in June 2005, the Department of Veterans Affairs revealed a major shortfall in its budget. How could the VA run out of money at a time like this? Easy. Because the administration failed to budget enough money to care for the injured troops returning home from the war.

In addition to their medical needs, wounded troops require compensation for their injuries. According to the Department of Defense, by October 2005, more than 15,000 soldiers had returned to the US after being seriously wounded in combat.

There is also the revenue that the Treasury will never see because troops are deployed overseas, and while serving in combat, they are exempt from income tax.

The American people are not being told about these hidden expenses. The administration has never provided a detailed estimate of what the war is really costing. Americans deserve to know how much of their hard earned money is being flushed down the toilet by this administration in Iraq.

The Congressional Budget Office, estimates that $85 billion more will be spent this year. That's $85 billion that will have to be added to the national debt for payment by our grandchildren's children.

After 3 years of watching our soldiers being slaughtered day in and day out, Americans want answers. But every time questions are posed, the White House falls back into the same old worn-out routine of attack, spin, obscure - attack, spin, obscure.

The staged capture of Saddam in 2003, the handover of sovereignty in 2004, as well as the elections and new constitution in 2005, have all been overblown as signs of progress. The American people are sick and tired of this game.

It’s time for the deceptions and distortions to end. Bush needs to explain once and for all, what he plans to do about Iraq. --posted April 24, 2006

In the Libby indictment, Fitzgerald says that on June 12, 2003, Cheney informed Libby that Valerie worked at the CIA's Counter-proliferation Division. The CPD is part of the operations directorate, the CIA's clandestine services.

In fact, the indictment says that Scooter learned of the information about Valeria from other administration officials as well in June of 2003. On June 11, he learned about her from an Under Secretary of State and sometime prior to July 8, Scooter learned the information from someone else in Cheney's office. On June 14, 2003, he discussed the matter with a CIA briefer and was complaining that the CIA was leaking information or making critical comments about the administration and brought up Joe and Valerie to the briefer.

He also discussed the her at lunch with White House Press Secretary, Ari Fleischer, on Monday, July 7, 2003, which means that we have Scooter telling Ari something on Monday that he claims to not have learned from Russert until Thursday.

There was also a discussion the next day on July 8, in which Scooter asked the Counsel for the Vice President what paperwork the CIA would have if an employee had a spouse going on a trip.

In the end, Scooter had 7 discussions with government officials prior to the day when he claims he learned the information as if it were new from Russert.

In addition, the story he gave to the FBI and grand jury was that he told reporters Cooper and Miller on July 12. However, according to filings in the case, Scooter discussed Valerie at least 4 times with these reporters prior to July 14, 2003; three times with Miller, and once with Cooper.

The first discussion with Miller was on June 23; within days after an article was published online by The New Republic, quoting some critical comments from Wilson.

He spoke about Valerie with Miller again on July 8, in a discussion that was in background as a “senior administration official,” after which he instructed Miller to change the attribution to a “former Hill staffer.”

During that conversation, Scooter said that Valerie was working for the CIA, and he discussed her employment status again with Miller on July 12.

In his conversations with Miller, Scooter never said this is what other reporters told me. He never said I don't know if it's true, or I don't even know if Wilson has a wife, according to Miller.

So, Rove and Scooter were the 2 administration officials who leaked the information to the press and the top officials in the Bush administration knew it from day one and allowed a charade of an investigation to stretch on for years on the tax payer‘s dime.

However, another cat is said to be ready to leap out of the bag and Rove’s “demotion“ yesterday is probably the least of his worries.

According to an article published today by investigative reporter, Jason Leopold, for Truthout.org, Fitzgerald is said to have presented more evidence alleging Rove lied to FBI investigators and the grand jury when he was asked about how he found out that Valerie worked for the CIA and whether he gave that information to the media.

“Fitzgerald told the grand jury,” Leopold said, “that Rove lied to investigators and the prosecutor eight out of the nine times he was questioned about the leak and also tried to cover-up his role in disseminating Plame Wilson's CIA status to at least two reporters.”

Mr Fitzgerald needs to keep it simple, wrap up the investigation, and reserve a row of prison cells in Cuba.

April 17, 2006

You Can't Wash the Blood Off Your Hands This Time

Not So Fast, Mr. Powell

By EVELYN J. PRINGLE

This week I read an article by Rorbert Sheer, that said Colin Powell now says that he and his department's top experts never believed that Iraq posed an imminent nuclear threat, but that Bush followed misleading advice from Dick Cheney and the CIA in making the claim.

To that I say, not so fast Mr Powell, the time to come clean has long passed. In fact, the window of truth-telling time for you ended when the first US soldier was killed in Iraq.

This admission proves that Colin knew the truth and could have stopped the freight train long before it made it to Iraq.

Picture this. The day before Congress is to vote on the resolution, Colin Powell, the only Bush administration official with any hands-on experience with war, schedules a public news conference on all the major television networks, and says:

"Saddam does not pose an imminent threat, I do not believe we need to go to war in Iraq, and I am quitting my job today because the administration is about to engage us in a war I cannot support."

Think about that for a minute. And then think about how many members of Congress would have voted differently if Colin Powell had stepped up to the plate.

But no, he just kept right on lying. For whatever reason, it matters not.

Mr Sheer asked Colin about the Niger statement in Bush's State of the Union speech.

"That was a big mistake," Colin said. "It should never have been in the speech."

"I didn't need Wilson to tell me that there wasn't a Niger connection," he told Mr Sheer.

"He didn't tell us anything we didn't already know," Colin said. "I never believed it."

When Mr Sheer asked why Bush played up the nuclear threat, he responded like a little kid tattling on another kid to save his own butt, and pointed the finger at the Vice President. "That was all Cheney," he said.

That dog won't hunt. The fact is, of the liars who worked the hardest at selling the case for war, Colin Powell holds the title for giving the longest sales pitch on record when it comes to the nuclear threat, and for that matter, for all WMDs in general.

Who among us can forget the tune Powell was singing when he took center stage at the UN on February 5, 2003, and started his speech by swearing to the truth of the evidence he was about to present.

"My colleagues," he told the world on live TV, "every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources."

"These are not assertions," he continued.

"What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence," he said, "I will cite some examples, and these are from human sources."

Here's where Colin tells us about a big find by intelligence officials in Iraq at the home of a nuclear scientist.

"When they searched the home of an Iraqi nuclear scientist," he said, "they uncovered roughly 2,000 pages of documents."

To prove this "fact" Colin pulled out a few visuals. "You see them here being brought out of the home and placed in U.N. hands," he told the audience.

"Some of the material is classified and related to Iraq's nuclear program," he added.

Next, Colin presented a litany of "facts" about Saddam's nuclear threat. "Let me turn now to nuclear weapons," he said.

"We have no indication that Saddam Hussein has ever abandoned his nuclear weapons program," he warned.

"On the contrary," he continued, "we have more than a decade of proof that he remains determined to acquire nuclear weapons."

"To fully appreciate the challenge that we face today," he said, "remember that, in 1991, the inspectors searched Iraq's primary nuclear weapons facilities for the first time."

"And they found nothing to conclude that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program," he added.

"But based on defector information in May of 1991," he advised, "Saddam Hussein's lie was exposed."

The next comment is particularly amusing as Colin inserts the word "truth."

"In truth," he said, "Saddam Hussein had a massive clandestine nuclear weapons program that covered several different techniques to enrich uranium, including electromagnetic isotope separation, gas centrifuge, and gas diffusion."

"Saddam Hussein already possesses two out of the three key components needed to build a nuclear bomb," he said.

"He has a cadre of nuclear scientists with the expertise," he added, "and he has a bomb design."

"Since 1998, his efforts to reconstitute his nuclear program have been focused on acquiring the third and last component," Colin said, "sufficient fissile material to produce a nuclear explosion."

"To make the fissile material," Colin explained, "he needs to develop an ability to enrich uranium."

"Saddam Hussein is determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb," he said.

And here's where Colin swings into the "aluminum tubes" fairy tale and briefly brushes up against the truth before getting back on message.

Saddam is so determined, he told the audience, "that he has made repeated covert attempts to acquire high-specification aluminum tubes from 11 different countries, even after inspections resumed."

"By now," Colin said, "just about everyone has heard of these tubes, and we all know that there are differences of opinion."

"There is controversy about what these tubes are for," he admitted.

"Most U.S. experts think they are intended to serve as rotors in centrifuges used to enrich uranium," he said.

"Other experts and the Iraqis themselves," he said, "argue that they are really to produce the rocket bodies for a conventional weapon, a multiple rocket launcher."

"Let me tell you what is not controversial about these tubes," Colin told the audience.

"First, all the experts who have analyzed the tubes in our possession agree that they can be adapted for centrifuge use," he said.

"Second," he continued, "Iraq had no business buying them for any purpose.

"They are banned for Iraq," he said.

"I am no expert on centrifuge tubes," Colin said, "but just as an old Army trooper, I can tell you a couple of things: First, it strikes me as quite odd that these tubes are manufactured to a tolerance that far exceeds U.S. requirements for comparable rockets," he said.

"Maybe Iraqis just manufacture their conventional weapons to a higher standard than we do," he advised, "but I don't think so," he added.

"Second," Colin continued, "we actually have examined tubes from several different batches that were seized clandestinely before they reached Baghdad."

"What we notice," he said, "in these different batches is a progression to higher and higher levels of specification, including, in the latest batch, an anodized coating on extremely smooth inner and outer surfaces."

"Why would they continue refining the specifications," he asked, "go to all that trouble for something that, if it was a rocket, would soon be blown into shrapnel when it went off?"

And here once again, it gets worse as he goes along, because the high tolerance aluminum tubes are only part of the story, according to Colin.

"We also have intelligence from multiple sources that Iraq is attempting to acquire magnets and high-speed balancing machines;" he said, "both items can be used in a gas centrifuge program to enrich uranium."

"In 1999 and 2000," he noted, "Iraqi officials negotiated with firms in Romania, India, Russia and Slovenia for the purchase of a magnet production plant."

"Iraq wanted the plant," he said, "to produce magnets weighing 20 to 30 grams."

"That's the same weight as the magnets used in Iraq's gas centrifuge program before the Gulf War," he explained.

"This incident linked with the tubes," he warned, "is another indicator of Iraq's attempt to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program."

"Intercepted communications from mid-2000 through last summer," Colin said, "show that Iraq front companies sought to buy machines that can be used to balance gas centrifuge rotors."

"One of these companies also had been involved in a failed effort in 2001," he said, "to smuggle aluminum tubes into Iraq."

Now correct me if I am wrong, but the next statement does not indicate to me that Colin never believed Saddam posed a nuclear threat.

"People will continue to debate this issue," he said, "but there is no doubt in my mind, these elicit procurement efforts show that Saddam Hussein is very much focused on putting in place the key missing piece from his nuclear weapons program, the ability to produce fissile material."

"He also has been busy trying to maintain the other key parts of his nuclear program," he advised, "particularly his cadre of key nuclear scientists," he said

"It is noteworthy that, over the last 18 months," Colin continued, "Saddam Hussein has paid increasing personal attention to Iraqi's top nuclear scientists, a group that the governmental-controlled press calls openly, his nuclear mujahedeen."

"He regularly exhorts them and praises their progress," he added, "Progress toward what end?" He noted.

And then there is the little matter of the infamous trailers. Colin had a lot to say on this topic during his presentation at the UN.

"One of the most worrisome things that emerges from the thick intelligence file we have on Iraq's biological weapons," he said, "is the existence of mobile production facilities used to make biological agents."

Next, he went on to share what they had learned about the trailers from "eye witness accounts."

"We have firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails," he advised.

"The trucks and train cars are easily moved," he said, "and are designed to evade detection by inspectors."

"In a matter of months," he explained, "they can produce a quantity of biological poison equal to the entire amount that Iraq claimed to have produced in the years prior to the Gulf War."

Had I been watching this speech live, I know I would have thought, "Wow."

According to Colin, four eye-witness sources confirmed that Saddam had these mobile biological research laboratories.

Here he used the word "know" again.

"We know," he said, "that Iraq has at lest seven of these mobile biological agent factories."

"The truck-mounted ones have at least two or three trucks each," he said. "That means that the mobile production facilities are very few, perhaps 18 trucks that we know of--there may be more--but perhaps 18 that we know of," he advised.

A month after the war began, the administration announced that two weapons vans had been found in Iraq.

On May 21, 2003, in remarks after a meeting with Bahrain's Crown Prince Shaikh Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifa, Colin was still rambling on about the damn trailers.

"The intelligence community has really looked hard at these vans," he said, "and we can find no other purpose for them."

"Although you can't find actual germs on them," he continued, "they have been cleaned and we don't know whether they have been used for that purpose or not, but they were certainly designed and constructed for that purpose," he assured his audience.

"And we have taken our time on this one because we wanted to make sure we got it right," he said.

"And the intelligence community, I think," he said, "is convinced now that that's the purpose they served."

The next day, during an Interview with French Television on May 22, 2003, Colin elaborated further on the great discovery of the "weapons vans."

"So far," he said, "we have found the biological weapons vans that I spoke about when I presented the case to the United Nations on the 5th of February, and there is no doubt in our minds," he said, "that those vans were designed for only one purpose, and that was to make biological weapons."

Remember that, there was no doubt in Colin's mind when it came to the trailers.

And who can forget Bush's remarks to Polish television on May 30, 2003, when he said:

"You remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons," he said. Bush said in an interview before leaving today on a seven-day trip to Europe and the Middle East.

"They're illegal," he advised.

"They're against the United Nations resolutions," he continued, "and we've so far discovered two."

"And we'll find more weapons as time goes on," he said on live TV.

"But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons," he claimed, "they're wrong.

"We found them," he announced.

Throughout the summer of 2003, the Bush administration held up the trailers as trophies and called them "mobile biological laboratories." In late June 2003, Colin declared that the "confidence level is increasing" that the trailers were intended for biowarfare.

However, in the end, the "truth" emerged when the Iraqi Survey Group, which conducted the fruitless search for WMDs, issued a report in September 2004, that said the trailers were "impractical for biological agent production," lacking 11 components that would be crucial for making bioweapons. Instead, the report said, the trailers were "almost certainly designed and built for the generation of hydrogen."

But here come to find out, the administration knew the trailer tale was a big lie, and Bush knew it while he was running his mouth in Poland.

On April 12, 2006, the Washington Post reported that a "secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons."

"Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission," the Post said, "transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement."

But getting back to Colin's speech at the UN, when trying to sell the war, Colin went so far as to tell the world exactly what Saddam was up to with the "weapons vans."

"Ladies and gentlemen," he told the audience, "these are sophisticated facilities."

They can produce anthrax and botulinum toxin, he said. "In fact," he advised, "they can produce enough dry biological agent in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of people."

"We know from Iraq's past admissions," he said, "that it has successfully weaponized not only anthrax, but also other biological agents, including botulinum toxin, aflatoxin and ricin."

But Iraq's research efforts did not stop there, Colin warned the world.

"Saddam Hussein has investigated dozens of biological agents," he said, "causing diseases such as gas gangrene, plague, typhus (ph), tetanus, cholera, camelpox and hemorrhagic fever, and he also has the wherewithal to develop smallpox."

As it turns out, the next line was a big selling point according to some members of Congress.

"The Iraqi regime has also developed ways to disburse lethal biological agents," he warned, "widely and discriminately into the water supply, into the air."

"For example," he said, "Iraq had a program to modify aerial fuel tanks for Mirage jets."

And he even had a video of an Iraqi test flight obtained by UNSCOM some years ago, he said, that showed an Iraqi F-1 Mirage jet aircraft.

"Note the spray coming from beneath the Mirage;" he pointed out, "that is 2,000 liters of simulated anthrax that a jet is spraying."

"There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons," he said, "and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more."

"And," Colin warned, "he has the ability to dispense these lethal poisons and diseases in ways that can cause massive death and destruction."

The next line was another hit with the crowd, when it came to selling the war.

"If biological weapons seem too terrible to contemplate," Colin said, "chemical weapons are equally chilling."

He said, "Saddam Hussein has never accounted for vast amounts of chemical weaponry: 550 artillery shells with mustard, 30,000 empty munitions and enough precursors to increase his stockpile to as much as 500 tons of chemical agents."

Colin then pulled out photos and said, "I'm going to show you a small part of a chemical complex called al-Moussaid (ph), a site that Iraq has used for at least three years to transship chemical weapons from production facilities out to the field."

"In May 2002," he said, "our satellites photographed the unusual activity in this picture."

"Here we see cargo vehicles are again," he pointed out, "at this transshipment point, and we can see that they are accompanied by a decontamination vehicle associated with biological or chemical weapons activity."

"What makes this picture significant," he explained, "is that we have a human source who has corroborated that movement of chemical weapons occurred at this site at that time."

"So it's not just the photo," he said, "and it's not an individual seeing the photo."

"It's the photo and then the knowledge of an individual being brought together to make the case," he advised.

I have to admit that this story sounds believable, and it would be easy to prove as well. Colin can simply produce the photographer and then follow up with the "human source."

Next he told the world about all the chemical weapons that Saddam was hoarding.

"Our conservative estimate," Colin said, "is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent."

"That is enough agent to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets," he advised.

"Even the low end of 100 tons of agent," he continued, "would enable Saddam Hussein to cause mass casualties across more than 100 square miles of territory, an area nearly 5 times the size of Manhattan."

And on top of that, Colin said, "we have sources who tell us that he recently has authorized his field commanders to use them."

"He wouldn't be passing out the orders," he informed the world, "if he didn't have the weapons or the intent to use them."

A thought just occurred to me, I wonder if Saddam was watching this dog and pony show live as Colin was performing. If he was, he no doubt told anybody within ear shot, that the Bush administration sure had a lot of gall calling him a liar.

Bush Has Hog-Tied Fitzgerald and Hung Libby Out To Dry

By Evelyn Pringle

Hands down, yes they were. And a brilliant scheme it was....

A concerted effort to destroy a critic is not a jailable offense. But it would seem that because they knew Valerie Plame was an under-cover operative, and knew the information was classified, that such a disclosure would be in legal terms "willful." In other words, a disclosure of information on purpose, even though they knew it was classified.

Although that may be true, since Bush and Cheney knew they were the culprits at the center of the investigation, they came up with a plan to hog-tie Prosecutor Fitzgerald and sabotage his investigation right from the start.

While it may appear that Bush stepped in to take the fall for Libby, don't believe it for one minute. Bush would never, never take a fall for anyone, probably not even his own mother. Or I should say for sure not his own mother, because he obviously has a lot of unresolved issues with her.

Bush stepped in because he was forced to by Libby's court filings. He knew this day would come but he also knew he was untouchable.

When Libby leaked the name of a CIA operative he released classified information, which would be a crime, if he acted on his own authority, as most of us believed. But now we find out that he was not acting on his own authority, he was acting under instructions from Cheney and Bush and thus, as it turns out, he did nothing illegal.

That is, until he lied, presumably to save the butts of Cheney and Bush. If Libby would have simply went before the grand jury and told the truth, the saga would have ended then and there and the public would have known the truth before the last Presidential election.

In covering for Bush, Libby's lies can be credited for giving Bush a second term. But a lot of good it did him. So long as Bush sticks to the story that unbeknownst to anyone, besides himself, Cheney and Libby, he had "declassified" certain information and told Cheney to instruct Libby to release it, Bush and Cheney walk, but Libby does not.

Fitzgerald knew this was going to happen and this is why it always seemed as if he was talking in circles when discussing Libby's indictment and why he continued to say over and over that Libby was not being charged with leaking the name of a CIA agent, and that furthermore, he did he plan to charge Libby with that crime.

Fitzgerald knows full well that the White House pulled a fast one on him.

He knew it shortly after his investigation got underway. But Libby is still going down, in part, probably because Fitzgerald is ticked off over being had. And in turn, this is why Libby is so ticked off, and why he is now trying to bring Bush and Cheney into the mix.

The "fast one" that got Bush and Cheney off the hook does not apply to him and its disclosure in court filings won't help one bit in defending against the charges he's facing.

Libby needs to accept the fact that he has officially been "hung out to dry."

Apparently, Bush can declassify any information he has a mind to at a minutes notice. Talk about not-so-subtle blackmail. This probably explains why other CIA employees have stayed in lockstep with the line that they did not feel pressured by the administration to hype or distort intelligence in the run up to war.

In fact, it probably explains a lot more about why this White House keeps getting away with murder.

Cheney and Halliburton: Top Earners In Iraq

By EVELYN PRINGLE

People also seem to have forgotten that Cheney continues to own stock in Halliburton. Stock that has risen in leaps and bounds since its former CEO moved into the White House and developed the most prolific war profiteering scheme of all time.

A study released in June 2005, originating from the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA), revealed that overall, Halliburton had received roughly 52% of the $25.4 billion that has been paid out to private contractors since the war in Iraq began.

Halliburton was the top profiteer when it came to funds belonging to the citizens of Iraq as well. A March 18, 2004 audit report by the Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General, titled, “Acquisition: Contracts Awarded by the Coalition Provisional Authority by the Defense Contracting Command-Washington," determined that the CPA and its predecessor, the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, had circumvented federal contracting procedures since the early days of the occupation.

The audit found that federal procurement rules were not followed in 22 of 24 contracts awarded by the Defense Contracting Command and that defense department personnel conducted “inadequate surveillance” on more than half of the contracts; did not “perform or support price reasonableness determinations;” and allowed activity that was “out-of-scope” of the original contracts.

An analysis of the data released in August 2004, showed the CPA had awarded 85% of the contracts to US and UK firms and that Iraqi companies received a mere 2% of the contracts paid for with Iraqi funds. Halliburton received 60% of all contracts paid for with Iraqi money.

Halliburton's contracts are "cost-plus" deals and according to Peter Singer, author of "Corporate Warrior," when the government gives out cost-plus contracts, "essentially it rewards firms when they add to costs rather than rewarding them for cost savings," he said.

Halliburton employees told Knight Ridder about a scam where the company ran up costs by having employees drive empty trucks back and forth across Iraq.

"There was one time we ran 28 trucks, one trailer had one pallet (a trailer can hold as many as 26 four-foot square pallets) and the rest of them were empty," said David Wilson, who was the convoy commander on more than 100 runs. Four other drivers who were with Wilson confirmed his account for Knight Ridder.

Halliburton's contract allows the company to pass on the cost of the truck runs and add between 1% and 3% for profit. "Trucking experts estimate that each round trip costs taxpayers thousands of dollars," according to Knight Ridder.

But if you listen to Cheney, people are just picking on Halliburton because they don't like him. Not so. I would be mad at any company that billed me for driving empty trucks across the desert, but it just so happens that Halliburton is the company at the wheel.

Other whistleblowers described how employees were instructed to abandon or torch new trucks, worth $80,000, if they got a flat tire or had some other minor problems, so that Halliburton could purchase new trucks with taxpayer dollars.

People must have been picking on Halliburton long before Iraq because under Cheney's watch, the company was caught ripping of the government time and time again. In 1997, the GAO caught the company charging $85.98 for a sheet of plywood that only cost $14.06. In a 2000 follow-up investigation, Halliburton was caught billing tax payers for cleaning the exact same office space 4 times a day.

So what happened as a result of these expensive drawn-out investigations? In 2002 Halliburton paid a $2 million fine for defrauding the government. The investigation probably cost more than $2 mill.

In January 2004, two Halliburton employees were caught red-handed taking $6.3 million in kickbacks from a subcontractor in Iraq. The company gave the $6.3 million back, claimed it fired the employees, and went on like nothing ever happened.

I guess Cheney would have us believe that 2 guys stuffed $6.3 million in their back pockets without Halliburton's knowledge. Well call me cynical or whatever, but I don't buy it.

This time around, the Bush team not only ignored the blatant misconduct, it gave Halliburton another $1.2 billion contract, a move that even upset republicans. Rep Tom Davis, Chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform stated: "It's incomprehensible that the [Bush] Administration could give Halliburton another billion-dollar contract without fully investigating such serious criminal wrongdoing."

And that ain't all. In June 2004, the Pentagon's Defense Contract Audit Agency completed a review that found Halliburton had billed for 36% more meals in Iraq than it had served to the troops, resulting in an overcharge estimated to be as high as $186 million.

In July 2004, the GAO reported that when Halliburton acted as a middleman for the operation of dining halls, costs were over 40% higher.

So what kind of punishment did this misdeed bring? The DCAA told Halliburton to send all bills to their agency for approval before submitting them for reimbursement.

In an August 16, 2004, memorandum, the DCAA "identified significant unsupported costs" submitted by Halliburton and said "while contingency issues may have had an impact during the earlier stages of the procurements, clearly, the contractor should have adequate supporting data by now."

When DCAA examined 7 task orders with a combined proposed value of $4.33 billion, its auditors identified unsupported costs totaling $1.82 billion.

On September 16, 2004, the Pentagon found that $34.2 million of the costs associated with KBR's task order of the Iraqi oil infrastructure contract were unreasonable, including $14.9 million in overcharges and $17.7 million in "unsupported" costs.

On March 14, 2005, a Pentagon audit discovered $108 million in overcharges by KBR for delivering gasoline to Iraq. The minority staff of the House Government Reform Committee later determined that the total overpayment through April 1, 2004 was $167 million.

And that still ain't all. In another case of fraud, government auditors found Halliburton claimed to have lost over $60 million worth of government property in Iraq, including trucks, office furniture and computers.

Stuart Bowen, auditor of the now-disbanded Coalition Provisional Authority, said that 6,975 of 20,531 items on Halliburton's ledgers were unaccounted for.

"This occurred because KBR did not effectively manage government property," his report said. "As a result," Bowen said, "we projected that KBR could not account for 6,975 property items from an inventory of 20,531 valued at $61.1 million."

The June 2005 DCAA study revealed new evidence of Halliburton fraud to include the company: (1) overcharged or presented questionable bills for close to $1.5 billion; (2) lost 12 pre-fabricated bases worth over $75; (3) billed $152,000 to provide a movie library for 2,500 soldiers; and (4) submitted inconsistent billings, eg: video cassette players $300 in some instances, and $1000 in others; $2.31 for towels one day and $5 on another.

If Cheney is to be believed, the conspiracy to pick on Halliburton is a global effort because as of July 2004, the French, British, Nigerian and US governments were all investigating Halliburton's activities while Cheney was CEO, for paying over $180 million in bribes to Nigerian officials in exchange for a $6 billion contract to build a natural gas plant in Nigeria.

In this investigation, former Halliburton employees are ratting out Cheney himself. Ex-Halliburton consultant, Attorney Jeffrey Tesler, testified under oath in May, 2004 that he made bribery payments to Jack Stanley, while Stanley was president of Halliburton subsidiary KBR, and also made payments to Halliburton executive William Chaudran. His testimony was backed up by banking records and Tesler said CEO Cheney approved the payments.

Cheney had better not get too comfortable because his criminal empire may soon come crashing down around him. If democrats take back the house and the senate next November, I think its safe to say that investigations will follow. --posted March 31, 2006

Bush Gang Swore Saddam Was Behind 9/11 In Lawsuit

By EVELYN PRINGLE

The fact that the administration's disinformation campaign was entirely successful is evidenced by an October 2004, Harris Poll, taken three weeks before the last presidential election, which reported that 62% of all voters, and 84% of those planning to vote for Bush, still believed that Saddam had ''strong links" to Al Qaeda, and that 41% of all voters, and 52% of Bush backers, believed that Saddam had ''helped plan and support the hijackers" who had attacked the country on 9/11.

As we now know, the basis for these allegations were false but the saddest part of the situation is that many Americans are just now beginning to realize that Bush knew the stories were false for more than a year when he cited them as justification for taking the country to war.

Documents recently declassified and made public show that the administration was warned by the Defense Intelligence Agency in February 2002, that the tale about a trip to Prague by the leader of the 9/11 highjacker, Mohamed Atta, had come from an unreliable drunk, and that the story about Iraq training members of al Qaeda on the use of chemical and biological weapons was deliberately fabricated by an Iraqi defector.

A recent poll conducted by NBC and the Wall Street Journal, indicates that Americans recognize the significance of this revelation, where 57% of Americans now believe that Bush misled the country about prewar intelligence; a 52% majority of those polled say the war was not worth it; and by a 58% to 38% margin, Americans believe that Bush has not given good enough reasons to keep our troops in Iraq.

The debate over who was most responsible for convincing the nation that there was a link between Saddam and 9/11 will probably continue for years but an important piece of the puzzle can be found by zeroing in on a woman by the name of Laurie Mylroie, a person who most people have never heard of.

Mylroie had been pushing for an all-out war against Iraq for a decade. In the run-up to the first Gulf war, Mylroie, along with the recently fired New York Times reporter Judith Miller, wrote a book titled, "Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf."

The Iraq war obsession originated at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative think-tank that served as a home base for the many neocons rendered powerless during the Clinton years, such as Richard Perle, who became chairman of the Defense Policy Board under Bush, and Paul Wolfowitz, who moved into the number-2 position at the Pentagon, and Newt Gingrich and John Bolton, to name just a few.

In the year 2000, at a time when Dick Cheney sat on AEI's board, the group's publishing arm published a book written by Mylroie, along with the help of many neocons, titled, "A Study in Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America."

In the author acknowledgement section of the book, Mylroie thanked a familiar cast of characters for their assistance and included John Bolton and the entire staff of AEI. She also wrote thanks to Scooter Libby for his "generous and timely assistance."

In addition, Mylroie said of Paul Wolfowitz: "At critical times, he provided crucial support for a project that is inherently difficult." She said that Wolfowitz's wife (at the time), had "fundamentally shaped the book."

Top neocon-hawk, Richard Perle, described the book as "splendid and wholly convincing."

If Mylroie is to be believed, Saddam was involved in every anti-American terrorist attack that took place since the early 1990s all over the globe, from the bombings of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, which she states may have been "the work of both bin Laden and Iraq," to the federal building in Oklahoma City.

She accuses Saddam of being involved in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center even though the FBI, the Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York, the US Attorney's office in the Southern District of New York, the CIA, the National Security Council, and the State Department, had all determined that there was no evidence of the Iraq's involvement in the attack back in the mid-1990s.

Mylroie has also claims that the TWA flight 800 which crashed into Long Island Sound was probably an Iraqi plot even after a lengthily investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board determined that it was an accident.

She maintains that in 2000, Saddam provided the expertise for the bombing of the USS Cole, and is responsible for the deaths of 17 sailors, even though no law enforcement agency has ever made such a claim. She even blames Saddam for the anthrax sent through the mail shortly after 9/11.

Once Bush became president, the neocons were brought back into power as either members of the administration or members of the Defense Policy Board and a war against Iraq became the administration's obsession, with Mylroie and the hawks working hand and hand to promote the theory that the war necessary because of Saddam's involvement in every terrorist act against the US over the past decade.

When the neocon's wish for another "Pearl Habor" like attack came true on 9/11, the race towards Iraq was on and the propaganda machine picked up speed. As a first step, they had Harper Collins reissue Mylroie's book under the new title, "The War Against America." The foreword for the second edition was written by DPB member James Woolsey, who described Mylroie's work as "brilliant and brave."

The book's cover displayed an endorsement from Paul Wolfowitz which stated: "Provocative and disturbing ... argues powerfully that the shadowy mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing ... was in fact an agent of Iraqi intelligence."

In the second book's acknowledgment section, Mylroie thanked Wolfowitz for being "kind enough to listen to this work presented orally and later to read the manuscript. At critical times, he provided crucial support for a project that is inherently difficult." She also praised the assistance of John Bolton.

Now, a nutcase like Mylroie, if left to her own devices, would probably have been harmless. But when the neocons made her a consultant to the Pentagon, the job added misplaced credibility to her hair-brained Saddam-bin Laden conspiracy theories.

There is no doubt that she was hired to convince the world that Saddam played a role in 9/11 and although I don't know how much she was paid, its pretty obvious that the Bush team got a lot of bang for the buck.

In February 2003, Mylroie was featured for an interview on Canadian television where she discussed why Bush was going to war against Iraq and at the same time, emphasized the certainty of a Saddam-9/11 link. Shortly after the interview got underway, she stated:

"Listen, we're going to war because President Bush believes Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11. Al Qaeda is a front for Iraqi intelligence…[the U.S.] bureaucracy made a tremendous blunder that refused to acknowledge these links … the people responsible for gathering this information, say in the C.I.A., are also the same people who contributed to the blunder on 9/11 and the deaths of 3,000 Americans, and so whenever this information emerges they move to discredit it."

Contrary to what the Bush team is saying today, according to Mylroie during an interview which took place a month before the war began, it doesn't sound like the CIA was claiming that there was a link between Saddam and bin Laden. It sounds like they were saying the opposite and that Mylroie is blaming the CIA for the 9/11 attacks because the agency had not agreed with the neocon's assessment of Saddam's threat to the US and pushed for war sooner.

On March 12, 2003, Mylroie wrote an article for the New York Sun titled, "Blind to Saddam's 9-11 Role," and tells readers that Bush believes Saddam was in on 9/11 and that is why he is taking the country to war against Iraq:

"Iraq, along with Al Qaeda, was most probably involved in the September 11 attacks, and President Bush understands that. Already on September 17, six days later, Mr. Bush affirmed, "I believe Iraq was involved, but I'm not going to strike them now," as Bob Woodward's "Bush at War" discloses."

"Indeed, at Thursday's press conference, Mr. Bush said that Iraq has financed and trained Al Qaeda and similar terrorist groups," Mylroie added. "That is why Mr. Bush is willing to take the risk entailed in war against Iraq," she said.

At one point, Mylroie attempted to convince the 9/11 Commission that, "there is substantial reason to believe that these masterminds [of both the '93 and 9/11 Trade Center attacks] are Iraqi intelligence agents."

However, her testimony was apparently not persuasive, because in regard to the 9/11 attacks, the Commission's final report states that the “Intelligence Community has no credible information that Baghdad had foreknowledge of the 11 September attacks or any other al-Qaida strike.”

One of Mylroie's more recent ventures included writing a book titled, "Bush vs. the Beltway: How the CIA and the State Department tried to Stop the War on Terror." This title is somewhat baffling in light of the speeches in recent days by Bush himself stating that everyone was in agreement with his assessment of the need to go to war and that it was the evidence produced by the intelligence agencies and not his White House that led to the war against Iraq.

According to its title, this book claims that the CIA tried to "Stop" the war and do not believe for a minute that Mylroie would have chosen this title had it not won the approval of the Bush propaganda and PR team.

The fact is that in the run up to war, Mylroie wore a wide variety of hats. But her most important jobs by far came when she testified as an expert witness in lawsuit filed against a group of defendants that included Saddam, bin Laden, the Taliban, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, and the Republic of Iraq.

The suit was filed by families on behalf of the estates of two 9/11 victims, George Eric Smith, a senior business analyst for Sun Gard Asset Management, and Timothy Soulas, a senior managing director and partner at Cantor Fitzgerald Securities.

The lawsuit represents the one and only time that the truth or falsity of the Saddam-9/11 connection has been put to the test. In the end, the Judge in the case delivered a verdict in favor of the families based on specific claims by Mylroie and top administration officials, that a definite link between Saddam and 9/11 did in fact exist.

US District Court Judge, Harold Baer, entered a default judgment for the plaintiffs in January 2003, because the time allowed for a response by the defendants had passed, and they had failed to file an answer to the plaintiff's complaint.

In March 2003, Judge Baer held two days of hearings to determine the amount of damages that should be awarded to the families. The lawyers for the plaintiff's presented evidence that they claimed established a "conclusive link" between Saddam and 9/11, and included declassified interviews with Iraqi defectors who appeared on a television news show and said that Saddam used a jet airplane in a remote area of Iraq to train hijackers.

However, by far, the most convincing evidence came from testimony by former CIA Director, James Woolsey, a member of the administration's Defense Policy Board, and the statements made by Colin Powell and George Tenet.

On May 8, 2003, Judge Baer released his written findings in the case and awarded damages to the plaintiffs in the amount of $104 million, to be paid by Saddam, bin Laden, al-Qaida, the Taliban, and the former Iraqi government.

In his written findings, Judge Baer explained that he had based his decision on the statements of Woolsey, Powell, Tenet, and Mylroie, all of whom he considered experts on the Saddam-9/11 connection, and said: "The opinion testimony of the plaintiffs' experts is sufficient to meet plaintiffs' burden that Iraq collaborated in or supported bin Laden/al Qaeda's terrorist acts of September 11. . ."

"Their opinions, coupled with their qualifications as experts on this issue," Jude Baer wrote, "provide a sufficient basis for a reasonable jury to draw inferences which could lead to the conclusion that Iraq provided material support to al Qaeda and that it did so with knowledge and intent to further al Qaeda's criminal acts."

He cited a few specific statements by Tenet and Powell, that he relied upon in formulating a believe that there was a link between Saddam and 9/11:

"Both Director Tenet and Secretary Powell mentioned 'senior level contacts' between Iraq and al Qaeda going back to the early 1990s [although both acknowledged that part of the interactions in the early to mid-1990s pertained to achieving a mutual non-aggression understanding];" Baer noted, "both mentioned that al Qaeda sought to acquire poison gas and training in its use from Iraq; both mentioned that al Qaeda members have been in Iraq, including Baghdad, after September 2001. . . ."

"Director Tenet's carefully worded letter included in substance the same allegations," he said, "but with less detail, that Secretary of State Colin Powell made before the U.N. Security Counsel on Feb. 5, 2003, in his remarks about 'the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network. . . .' ," Judge Baer wrote.

He also outlined the testimony provided by Woolsey. "[Former CIA] Director [James] Woolsey," the Judge said, "reviewed several facts that tended in his view to show Iraq's involvement in acts of terrorism against the United States in general and likely in the events of September 11 specifically."

The Judge discussed specific portions of Woolsey's testimony that led to his ruling against the defendants, and stated in part: "First, Director Woolsey described the existence of a highly secure military facility in Iraq where non-Iraqi fundamentalists [e.g., Egyptians and Saudis] are trained in airplane hijacking and other forms of terrorism."

"Through satellite imagery and the testimony of three Iraqi defectors, [he] demonstrated the existence of this facility, called Salman Pak, which has an airplane but no runway," the decision noted. "The defectors also stated that these fundamentalists were taught methods of hijacking using utensils or short knives," Judge Baer wrote.

"Second," Baer continued, "Director Woolsey mentioned a meeting that allegedly occurred in Prague in April 2001 between Mohammad Atta, the apparent leader of the hijackings, and a high-level Iraqi intelligence agent."

"According to James Woolsey," the Judge said, "the evidence indicates that this was an 'operational meeting' because Atta flew to the Czech Republic and then returned to the United States shortly afterwards."

"Third," Baer explained, "Woolsey noted that his conclusion was also based on 'contacts,' which refer to interactions between Hussein/Iraq and bin Laden/al Qaeda that are described in a letter from George Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence, to Senator Bob Graham on October 7, 2002."

In his findings, Judge Baer next focused on the testimony of Laurie Mylroie, and it is apparent that he believes her claims that Saddam was involved in all the terrorist attacks against the US, dating back to the early 1990s.

"Dr. Mylroie described Iraq's covert involvement in acts of terrorism against the United States in the past, including the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993," Baer stated in his opinion.

"Dr. Mylroie testified to at least four events that served as the basis for her conclusion that Iraq played a role in the September 11 tragedy," he explained. "First, she claimed that Iraq provided and continues to provide support to two of the main perpetrators of the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993."

"Second, she noted bin Laden's fatwah against the United States, which was motivated by the presence of U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia to fight the Gulf War against Iraq," his findings explained.

"Third," he wrote, "she noted that threats by bin Laden in late 1997 and early 1998 which led up to the bombing of the U.S. embassies [on August 7, 1998] were 'in lockstep' with Hussein's threats about ousting the U.N. weapons inspectors, which he eventually did on August 5, 1998."

Judge Baer also quoted other portions of her testimony and said, "Dr. Mylroie concluded that 'Iraq, I believe, did provide support and resources for the September 11 attacks. I agree with [Iraqi defector] Captain [Sabah] Khodada when he said that ... it took a state like Iraq to carry out an attack as really sophisticated, massive and deadly as what happened on September 11'."

After hearing the assertions of these top administration officials, Judge Baer concluded that: "Plaintiffs have shown, albeit barely, 'by evidence satisfactory to the court' that Iraq provided material support to bin Laden and al Qaeda."

The judge's decision is proof of the fact that the White House is home to the guilty parties who deliberately mislead Americans. His written findings document the fraud perpetrated on the country by top officials in taking the country to war based on the false claim that Saddam was involved in 9/11.

For those Americans still wondering about a motive, the first and foremost goal of the neocons was to gain control of the world's oil supply and the number two goal, was to set up an elaborate profiteering scheme to funnel billions of tax dollars into their own bank accounts for many years to come. It really is that simple.

My advice to any disbeliever, is to go on the internet and do a google search on each of the top administration officials and policy makers who have been involved in decision making on Bush's bogus "war on terror," and find out who stood to benefit financially off a war in Iraq, and who has benefited the most so far.

To make sure this advice would produce results, I just went and typed 3 words in quotes, "Bush" "war" "profit" and did a google search of the world wide web. The first article on the top of the list was published by the Observer, a well-known newspaper in the UK, and this is what it said in part:

Bush ally set to profit from the war on terror

Antony Barnett and Solomon Hughes

Sunday May 11, 2003

James Woolsey, former CIA boss and influential adviser to President George Bush, is a director of a US firm aiming to make millions of dollars from the 'war on terror', The Observer can reveal.

Further down in the article it said:

Woolsey is not alone among the members of the Pentagon's highly influential Defence Policy Board to profit from America's war on terror.

The American watchdog, the Centre for Public Integrity, showed that nine of the board's members have ties to defence contractors that won more than $76bn in defence contracts in 2001 and 2002. Woolsey's fellow neo-conservative, Richard Perle, had to resign his chairmanship of the board because of conflicts of interest, although he remains a board member.

(Link to actual article) http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:6bYvlvyO9j4J:observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,953563,00.html+%22Bush%22+%22war%22+%22profit%22&hl=en

Next I scrolled down to an article published in the December 2, 2001, San Francisco Chronicle, which showed the first President Bush making money off his son's policies:

As America's military involvement abroad deepens, profits are increasing for the Carlyle Group -- and, it turns out, for thousands of California civil servants.

The Carlyle who, you ask?

The Carlyle Group, as in a secretive Washington, D.C., investment firm managing some $14 billion in assets, including stakes in a number of defense- related companies.

Carlyle counts among its chieftains former Defense Secretary (and deputy CIA Director) Frank Carlucci, former Secretary of State James Baker and, most notably, former President George Bush.

Until October, the Carlyle Group also maintained financial ties with none other than the family of Osama bin Laden, but those links were severed when it was agreed that the relationship was becoming a tad embarrassing for all concerned.

Critics of the Carlyle Group have grown increasingly vocal in recent weeks, particularly over the perception that a private organization with unmistakable links to the White House is benefiting from America's military action in Afghanistan.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/12/02/BU172807.DTL

Let there be no doubt, the roots of the Iraq profiteering scheme are planted firmly in the back yard of the White House, and as demonstrated above, it requires very little effort to verify the allegation that the fruits of the scheme do not far from the tree. --posted November 17, 2005

Bin Ladan Laughing

By EVELYN PRINGLE

Osama himself could not have created the mess that Bush got us into, even if he had tried and he's probably sitting in his cave laughing his fool head off as we speak.

By launching a war against a country that posed no real threat to anyone, Bush not only sabotaged bin Laden's capture, he destroyed our credibility all over the world. As we recently witnessed with Katrina, by over-extending our forces, Bush has lessened our ability to respond to emergencies at home which means we can logically assume that he has lessened our ability to respond to an actual threat of terror should one arise. How Did We End Up With Bush Anyway?

During the 2000 presidential campaign, the Republican platform contained the following statements: * Sending our military on vague, aimless, and endless missions rapidly saps morale. Even the highest morale is eventually undermined by back-to-back deployments, poor pay, shortages of spare parts and equipment, inadequate training, and rapidly declining readiness.

* A comprehensive strategy for combating the new dangers posed by weapons of mass destruction must include a variety of other measures to contain and prevent the spread of such weapons. We need the cooperation of friends and allies."

* Nor should the intelligence community be made the scapegoat for political misjudgments.

The Republican prophets who wrote those comments should get a job in a circus because they were able to predict exactly what would happen in the Iraq war under the Bush administration, with its endless missions, back-to-back deployments, inadequate training, poor pay, shortage of equipment, no cooperation of friends and allies, and blaming the CIA for misjudgments, and on and on and on.

We were told us that Iraqis would welcome us and thank us for getting rid of Saddam. Immediately before the war, in a March 16, 2003, interview, Dick Cheney said, "I really do believe we will be greeted as liberators." I am still waiting for someone to tell me why the Iraqis would thank us. Saddam may be gone, but innocent Iraqis have suffered the same human rights violations at the hands of the occupying forces that they did years ago under Saddam. They live in fear of torture every day; in fact more so than when Saddam was in power. Incidents of rape, murder and kidnapping have skyrocketed since we arrived to "save" them. The number of violent deaths went from an average of 14 a month in 2002, to 357 a month in 2003, the year we went to "save" them.

Iraqis still don’t even have the basic necessities that they had with Saddam in power. Water and electricity continue to operate at lower levels than they did before the war. Joblessness is at a record high. Over half the workers in the country are either without a job or working for less than a living wage, due to the fact that the gang of profiteers made sure the reconstruction contracts went to US companies, rather than Iraqi firms. Why would Iraqis thank us? Or the lucky ones that have managed to stay alive that is.

A Year Of Big Lies

In the months leading up to the war, Bush told the world, that the US had to wage a preemptive war against Iraq, not only due to the imminent threat of WMDs, but also because there were links between Saddam and bin Laden. However, the administration has since said that it never claimed that Saddam posed an "imminent" threat, and therefore, Bush cannot be accused of misleading anyone.

How soon they forget. First of all, many officials did use the word “imminent” and others used words that had the exact same meaning, like "mortal," "urgent," "immediate", "serious and mounting," and "unique." They even went so far as to say that Iraq was actively seeking to "strike the United States with weapons of mass destruction." Yet during a press conference a few months after the war began, when reporters started to question why we were in Iraq, White House spokesman, Scott McClellan said, "Some in the media have chosen to use the word 'imminent'. Those were not words we used." Could that be true? Am I a poor listener? No. It means that either Scott lied, or he has a poor memory, because on February 10, 2003, Scott himself used the "I" word and said, "This is about imminent threat."

He apparently also forgot about the statement made by then, Bush Communications Director, Dan Bartlett, on January 26, 2003, when he said, "Well, of course he is," in response to a reporter's question, "is Saddam an imminent threat to US interests, either in that part of the world or to Americans right here at home?" Hands down, it is Scott who is the poor listener because he even forgot the comment made by his old boss on May 7, 2003. When then Press Secretary, Ari Fliescher, was asked whether or not Iraq was an “imminent threat,” he responded, “Absolutely.” Lets review some of the lies told in speeches and press conferences and cable news shows, to convince Americans and Congress that we had to go to war, beginning with the most masterful liar of all time, Dick Cheney, who said 3 times over a period of only 2 days:

Iraq is "a serious threat to our country, to our friends and to our allies." 1/31/03. Iraq poses "terrible threats to the civilized world." 1/30/03. Iraq "threatens the United States of America." 1/30/03 Before that, on August 29, 2002, Cheney elaborated fully: "Iraq is busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents, and they continue to pursue an aggressive nuclear weapons program," he said.

"These are offensive weapons for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale, developed," Cheney advised, "so that Saddam Hussein can hold the threat over the head of any one he chooses." "What we must not do in the face of this mortal threat," he warned, "is to give in to wishful thinking or to willful blindness." According my computer's Thesaures, "mortal" means "deadly." Is that kinda like "imminent?" Lets move on to the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, whose comments were always over the top. On November 14, 2002, Rummy used the ever present fear over 9/11 to sell the war: "I would look you in the eye and I would say, go back before September 11 and ask yourself this question: Was the attack that took place on September 11 an imminent threat the month before or two months before or three months before or six months before?" he asked. "When did the attack on September 11 become an imminent threat?"

"Now," Rummy said, "transport yourself forward a year, two years or a week or a month ... So the question is, when is it such an immediate threat that you must do something?" he asked reporters. Here’s where Rumsfeld used the nuclear mantra, complete with the now infamous line about Saddam seeking uranium from Africa: "Iraq poses a serious and mounting threat to our country. His regime has the design for a nuclear weapon, was working on several different methods of enriching uranium, and recently was discovered seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa," Rumsfeld claimed on January 1, 2003.

"Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent - that Saddam is at least 5-7 years away from having nuclear weapons," Rumsfeld said, "I would not be so certain." There's that pesky "imminent" word again. "And we should be just as concerned about the immediate threat from biological weapons," Rummy warned on September 18, 2002. "Iraq has these weapons," he added. Here’s where he claims Saddam is the worst threat on earth. "No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq," he said on September 19, 2002.

Colin Powell Plays The Starring Role

While we're at it, lets take some time to review the many statements made by Colin Powell when he landed the starring role on the world stage, with his speech at the UN. Colin knew it would be no easy sell, so he brought photographs along to show where the WMD sites were, and informed the world that he had "human sources," to back up all of his assertions. “My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions," he stated. "What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence." Colin went on to say, "I will cite some examples, and these are from human sources."

He then introduced the pictures and said, “We also have satellite photos that indicate that banned materials have recently been moved from a number of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction facilities." Next he proceeded to hone in on specific photos and explained what each one showed. “Let's look at one," Colin said, "This one is about a weapons munition facility, a facility that holds ammunition at a place called Taji." Of another, he said, "This is one of about 65 such facilities in Iraq. We know that this one has housed chemical munitions." In fact, Colin told the audience, "this is where the Iraqis recently came up with the additional four chemical weapon shells." “Here, you see 15 munitions bunkers in yellow and red outlines," he said of another. "The four that are in red squares represent active chemical munitions bunkers," he added.

For some reason, everyone always seems to want to give Colin Powell a pass on whatever he does. I don't. By now, I would say this to Mr Powell: here’s your chance to redeem yourself. For starters, lets see those photos again, and then explain exactly what happened to those yellow and red bunkers you pointed out in the pictures. After that, I want to meet the photographers who claimed to have taken the pictures. And one more thing, I would request that Colin list the names and whereabouts of each and every one of those solid "human" sources he kept referring to.

In his speech, Colin described the relationships between Al Qaida, Osama and Saddam, that according to his account, had been strong for many years. "Early Al Qaida ties were forged by secret, high-level intelligence service contacts with Al Qaida, secret Iraqi intelligence high-level contacts with Al Qaida," he told the audience. “Going back to the early and mid-1990s, when bin Laden was based in Sudan," Colin said, "an Al Qaida source tells us that Saddam and bin Laden reached an understanding that Al Qaida would no longer support activities against Baghdad."

“We know members of both organizations met repeatedly," he said. In fact, Colin claimed to know that they "have met at least eight times at very senior levels since the early 1990s." "In 1996," Colin continued, "a foreign security service tells us, that bin Laden met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official in Khartoum, and later met the director of the Iraqi intelligence service." He obviously was trying to convince the world that Saddam was ecstatic about all of the terrorist attacks against the US, when he said, “Saddam became more interested as he saw Al Qaida's appalling attacks."

"A detained Al Qaida member tells us that Saddam was more willing to assist Al Qaida after the 1998 bombings of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania," Colin said. "Saddam was also impressed by Al Qaida's attacks on the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000," he added. I say its time for Congress to instruct Powell to produce this “detained" Al Qaida member who gave the administration all of this valuable information. That should be easy enough if the guy is "detained." Later in his speech, Colin made it sound like the Iraqis, Al Qaida, Saddam and Osama were the best of buddies, even houseguests of one another, backed up no less, by another "human source."

“Iraqis continued to visit bin Laden in his new home in Afghanistan," Colin said. So if true, this means that the Iraqis got to visit Osama's "new home" but the world's superpower couldn't find a damn cave. Osama must have really had a good laugh when he heard that line. But in hindsight, it was even more comical when Colin said, "A senior defector, one of Saddam's former intelligence chiefs in Europe, says Saddam sent his agents to Afghanistan sometime in the mid-1990s to provide training to Al Qaida members on document forgery."

Think about that, a forgery college in Afghanistan. Funny thing, the only forgeries I've ever heard about were the ones used by the Bush administration to convince Americans we had to go to war. What were those again? A college student's term paper from many years ago and the documents purporting to show that Saddam was seeking uranium from Africa? As I recall, all were easily identified as fake, but we still have never learned who exactly forged the Africa-uranium documents or why they ended up at the White House. When the truth finally comes out, I suspect that a few members of the Bush gang may wish that they had attended the "forgery training" college in Afghanistan.

Next, Colin held up a photo and told the audience that it showed a poison and explosive training camp, located in northeastern Iraq. “You see a picture of this camp," he said, "The network is teaching its operatives how to produce ricin and other poisons." Colin then proceeded to give the world a chemistry lesson, complete with hand gestures, and said: "Let me remind you how ricin works. Less than a pinch--image a pinch of salt--less than a pinch of ricin, eating just this amount in your food, would cause shock followed by circulatory failure," he explained. He followed up with the dire warning: "Death comes within 72 hours and there is no antidote, there is no cure," he said, "It is fatal.”

If he wants to clear his name, Colin needs to hold a televised press conference and explain to the world exactly what happened to the training camp in that photo, with its pinches of deadly ricin, because it has apparently vanished off the face of the planet. Or being that I'm just a lowly tax payer funding this disaster, would that be too much to ask?

The Puppet In The White House

Last but certainly not least (except IQ-wise), lets review a few statements made by the puppet orchestrating the scheme, President Bush himself Here are a few of the lines that he threw out there to us in the run-up to the war:

"The Iraqi regime is a threat to any American. ... Iraq is a threat, a real threat." 1/3/03 "Saddam Hussein is a threat to America." 11/3/02 "I see a significant threat to the security of the United States in Iraq." 11/1/02. "There is real threat, in my judgment, a real and dangerous threat to America in Iraq in the form of Saddam Hussein." 10/28/02

"There are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place. Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists." 10/7/02 "The Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency." 10/2/02 "There's a grave threat in Iraq. There just is." 10/2/02 "This man poses a much graver threat than anybody could have possibly imagined." 9/26/02

Looking at the above comments with 20/20 hindsight, they may have provided a sign that Bush was back on the bottle. As anyone who has spent time around a drunk knows, drunks have a habit of repeating themselves over and over and over. And that goes double for all that Cheney said, because even after 2 drunk driving tickets, he remained on the sauce, bad ticker and all. Four months into the war, on July 2, 2003, Bush showed signs of being drunk again now that I think about it, when he stated: "Saddam Hussein is no longer a threat to the United States because we removed him, but he was a threat," and then said, "He was a threat. He's not a threat now." This from a guy who swears who he's been on the wagon since age 40.

Tax Payers Left Holding The Bag

In the months leading up to the war, we were told that Iraqi oil would pay for the country's reconstruction after we destroyed it. A March 2003, report by the White House Office of Management and Budget said: "Iraq will not require sustained aid." In testimony before Congress on March 27, 2003, Paul Wolfowitz said Iraq "can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon." As a tax payer, I demand to know when "relatively soon" is going to get here.

On April 23, 2003, Andrew Natsios, head of the US Agency for International Development, gave a televised interview and outlined the costs of rebuilding Iraq to the taxpayers, "the American part of this will be $1.7 billion," he said. "We have no plans for any further-on funding for this." Within 5 months of Natsios' assessment, Bush was back asking Congress for another $20 billion. And being that he has probably never had to balance a check book in his life, Bush obviously has never heard the term "in the red." But then again, why should he care, its only our money. Never mind that Bush has not received a single flower or thank-you note from the Iraqis, the good-hearted fellow that he's known to be, he just keeps telling Congress to go ahead and write out another check to fund a war which he now says is for "freedom."

In February 2003, Rumsfeld predicted that the war "could last six days, six weeks," but "I doubt six months," he said. Well here we sit, 31 months into the war, with an endless stream of casualties day after day, and our country headed towards bankruptcy, and there is no end in sight. On October, 2002, the day the senate voted on the resolution, John Kerry took to the floor of the senate and during a speech, gave the nation a prophetic forecast of what would happen if Bush attacked Iraq without good cause and without other countries. "If we go it alone without reason," Kerry warned, "we risk inflaming an entire region, breeding a new generation of terrorists, a new cadre of anti-American zealots, and we will be less secure, not more secure, at the end of the day, even with Saddam Hussein disarmed."

In closing, Kerry stated: "When I vote to give ... the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam, it is because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security and that of our allies in the Persian Gulf region." The fact is, there was no arsenal of weapons and Saddam was no threat, imminent or otherwise. Bush and his band of chickenhawks lied to Kerry, to other members of Congress, to taxpayers, and the world, in order to pull off their grand profiteering scheme. Now that we know the truth, the whole damn bunch should be tried as war criminals, and once they are convicted and sent to prison, they should be treated every bit as well as they have treated prisoners jailed under their watch over the past 5 years. --posted November 13, 2005

Bush Doing Corporate Bidding While On The Clock

By EVELYN PRINGLE

In the same poll, 75% of those surveyed said they welcomed a visit by Venezuelan President, Hugo Chávez, Bush's staunchest opponent in his up-ill battle to win passage of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

The FTAA, with the exception of Cuba, would include all Caribbean and Latin American countries. If passed, some experts predict that it will be the largest free trade agreement in history, with an expected combined GDP of over $9 trillion, and a market of more than 750 million people.

The FTAA agreement was designed to bring 34 countries into a single market but it missed its deadline for enactment on January 1, 2005. Earlier this year, 10-year drive toward passage of FTAA was derailed completely after talks broke down when Argentina, Venezuela, and Brazil made it clear that they were unwilling to accept the terms set forth by the Bush administration.

In the meantime, the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) was signed in August 2005, to extend the policies of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), to Central American countries to include Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and El Salvador, with a side agreement with the Dominican Republic (DR-CAFTA).

Overall, the FTAA faces widespread opposition in Latin America and for good reason. 20 years of NAFTA's so-called economic reforms have resulted in widespread poverty, high unemployment, massive debt, and a series of other economic crises.

Bush is hoping to get the deal back on track while attending the summit, but his prospects look grim. Protests against his visit were already underway in Argentina, 3 days before he got there, with the blocking of bridges and streets in the capital of Buenos Aires, and posters bearing the slogans “Stop Bush” and “Fuera Bush,” some of which were superimposed over graphic pictures of wounded children in Iraqi.

Argentine Nobel Prize winner, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, recently told a radio audience that Bush is “a torturer, violator of human rights, an assassin, a violator of United Nations resolutions, of international treaties and of the sovereignty of peoples, as has happened in Iraq."

There were even attempts to obtain a court order to bar Bush from entering the county and back in July 2005, Daniel Katz, the mayor of Mar del Plata, described Bush as the “most unpleasant guy in the world."

Same Old GOP Tactics To Pass CAFTA

"Though constituents widely opposed CAFTA, the agreement passed Congress through the use of bribery, threats, and deception," according to the article, Vote-buying and Arm-twisting, by William F Jasper on August 22, 2005.

The Senate and House set new lows for political prostitution, corruption, and betrayal, with the White House and Republican leaders openly propositioning members in the halls of Congress with billions of dollars in federal projects, along with promises of special trade concessions, Jasper maintains, "all to win passage of a misbegotten agreement that will cost America hundreds of thousands of jobs, billions of dollars in foreign aid, additional waves of illegal aliens, and further entanglement in sovereignty-destroying international regulatory regimes," he wrote.

Congressman, Ron Paul (R-Texas), one of the 27 Republicans who voted against CAFTA, said the vote-buying price tag may end up being $50 billion or more. "Most of the bribery is hidden away in projects funded by the massive energy and transportation appropriation bills," he told Jasper.

The truth is, CAFTA will do nothing to improve the US economy. In an August 30, 2005 letter to the Forum, Rep Earl Pomeroy (D-ND), tells how "the economies of the CAFTA countries is smaller than that of the state of Connecticut, just two-thirds that of Minneapolis-St. Paul. The idea that we are instantly going to be sending trucks and ships full of American products – high-quality commodities and goods – to the citizens of these countries, where 40 percent of workers earn less than $2 a day, is simply a myth."

In per capita terms, "the countries range from Nicaragua with a GNI per capita of $730, which the World Bank classifies as a low-income country, to Costa Rica with per capita income of $4,280, which is classified as an upper middle income country. The rest of the countries are classified as lower middle-income countries by the World Bank," according to an August 4, 2005 CRS Report for Congress.

The economies of the countries in Central America are so poor that they cannot afford to buy a significant quantity of any product from the US. "With a combined national income of about $84 billion, the Gross National Incomes (GNI) of the countries range from $5.5 billion for Nicaragua to $23.5 billion for Guatemala," according to the CRS Report.

But then the true goal of CAFTA has never been about making money off these tiny countries. Three years ago the Bush administration admitted that the purpose of CAFTA was to instigate a drive for the passage of FTAA, in a January 16, 2002 press release upon opening of negotiations for CAFTA: “This negotiation will complement the United States’ goal of completing the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) no later than January 2005 by increasing the momentum in the hemisphere toward lowering barriers,” it said.

According to, Protectionism And Free Trade, by Harley Shaiken, “the DR-CAFTA is more a pleading of special interests than a free-trade deal. It manages simultaneously to fleece the people of six poor countries and to put U.S. workers in harm's way,” in Tom Paine, on May 31, 2005.

Bush Lobbies For Pharma By now, the records of the House ethics committee confirm that the Bush administration and its puppets in Congress, do little more than provide a trolley for private gain. I for one am getting tired of watching these lobbyists doing their bidding while on the clock, in addition to tax payers having to foot the bill for all expense paid trips to foreign countries.

While pursuing these trade agreements, Bush is doing the bidding for Pharma, his party's top campaign contributor. CAFTA was clearly designed to protect the interests of large drug companies in Central America. Drug makers currently invested in Costa Rica include Abbott, GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly and Bristol-Meyers Squibb. See Department of Commerce, US Commercial Service, Costa Rica Country Commercial Guide 2002.

CAFTA includes intellectual property rights for pharma, that extend the time a drug maker may keep test data secret which will result in an extension of monopolies because impoverished countries cannot afford to conduct their own clinical studies.

“For American drug companies," Harley Shaiken says, "this agreement extends the time period during which brand-name pharmaceuticals have exclusive access to markets, postponing the entry of generic drugs and thus limiting competition."

"The Bush Administration's trade negotiators have repeatedly pressured the developing countries to forgo their rights ... and to adopt intellectual property standards that impede access to essential medications," says a report by Rep Henry Waxman, (D-CA).

“For Central Americans, the cost of drugs will soar, straining budgets and gutting health care,” Shaiken writes, “The result may be a death sentence for many." Four of the 6 Latin American countries with the highest rate of HIV are in Central America. Hundreds of thousands of HIV patients could die as a direct result of CAFTA.

"In effect, the President's trade representatives have elevated the protection of pharmaceutical patents above the pressing health needs of developing countries," according to, Big Pharma's Free Ride, in Salon Magazine on August 12, 2005 .

War On The Supplement Industry

The dietary supplement industry has become a real threat to pharma as the number of people who stay healthy grows as a result of taking dietary supplements. In response to the threat, pharma has launched an undeclared all-out--global-war against the supplement industry.

The industry has already paid huge fines for illegal conduct aimed at supplement makers. Over the years, the US Department of Justice has brought actions against industry giants, Hoffman La Roche, Merck and others, for conspiring to fix prices of raw materials used to manufacture supplements, in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

In the case of LaRoche, the company was fined a record setting $540,000,000 for price fixing by creating a false shortage of raw materials for vitamin B3, in order to increase sales of their anti-cholesterol drugs.

Considering the fine, it does not require much of an imagination to recognize the financial motives behind the war. The customer base that pharma is after is enormous. Recent polls show that 60 to 70% of North Americans now use complementary medicines and dietary supplements.

In addition to those already discussed above, another gift to pharma is buried in the language of CAFTA in Section 6, which requires that all member countries form a Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary (SPS) committee for the purpose of insuring ongoing harmonization under the terms of the SPS Agreement in the WTO, according to the July 2, 2005, Urgent Alert Health Freedom Is Being Threatened, by Paul Anthony Tayler.

The World Trade Organization's SPS Agreement reads in part: "To harmonize sanitary and phytosanitary measures on as wide a basis as possible, Members shall base their food safety measures on international standards, guidelines or recommendations."

The Codex Alimentarius Commission is the international body charged with setting global food standards. It holds an annual gathering of delegates in Europe each year, many of them trans-national pharmaceutical corporations, who are primarily focused on increasing their market share, by pushing their desired and arbitrary regulatory “standards” into a global standard and forcing it onto the smaller local supplement industry, all in the name of “international regulatory excellence,” according to Eve Hillary in "Codex - The Sickness Indu$try's Last Stand, April 23, 2005.

The Codex subcommittee that specifically deals with supplements is the Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses, which meets in Bonn, Germany each November. This committee establishes guidelines to govern international trade in supplements. In essence, it has the authority to decide whether or not consumers can have vitamins, minerals and other nutrients, in what dosage, and who will be permitted to manufacture and sell the products.

Under CAFTA, the US government must not only harmonize federal laws, it must also force state and local governments to conform their laws with the standards. Many believe there is a real danger that guidelines for supplements could be forced on the US because if it refuses to harmonize, the WTO can apply pressure by withdrawing trade privileges and imposing trade sanctions.

Such sanctions could amount to billions of dollars in tariffs that the WTO could authorize nations to levee on US exports, and not just supplement exports. This sanction would make US goods grossly overpriced and hard to sell. Under such pressure, Congress would likely adopt the anti-supplement regulations. It has already given in on past WTO disputes, to avoid crippling trade sanctions. See Dietary Supplements Under Imminent Threat, James South M.A, January 26, 2005.

A Major Battle At Home And Abroad

Convincing Latin American countries to adopt the FTAA, may be the least of the administration's worries. Considering how much political capital was waged on passing CAFTA, an even greater battle lies ahead in trying to get Congress to pass a plan that would encompass the entire Western Hemisphere.

One need only consider what has occurred in the this country since NAFTA, to recognize the uphill battle Bush is facing. The year before NAFTA was adopted, the US trade deficit with its partners was $9 billion. Last year the deficit hit $111 billion, over ten times what it was before NAFTA.

The Economic Policy Institute determined that the trade deficit has cost US workers nearly 900,000 jobs, and job opportunities, through 2002, and the deficit has grown higher since then. Robert Scott, “The High Price of ‘Free Trade,” Briefing Paper, November 2003.

And life after NAFTA is even worse for our partners. NAFTA promised to raise living standards in Mexico and reduce the flow of illegal immigrants to the US. But in fact, the opposite has happened. Real wages in Mexico today are actually lower than when NAFTA began, the poverty rate is higher, and illegal immigration to the US has soared.

More than a million small farmers have lost their land to floods of agricultural imports and are forced to seek work in factories along the border or in the US, Economist Mark Levinson told the Senate Finance Committee, on April 13, 2005.

Our trade relationship with Canada is not looking that great either. Ottawa, Washington's oldest and largest free trade partner, is close to giving up hope of reaching a fair settlement of its softwood lumber dispute with the US, according to the September 12, 2005, Toronto Star.

Canadian negotiators are refusing to return to the table, to indicate to the world, the ineffectiveness of trying to negotiate with the Bush administration. "The American position is absolutely untenable," said Prime Minister Paul Martin. "We've got to step up with retaliation, in my view," Industry Minister David Emerson told the Star.

The latest flare-up occurred in August 2005, when a final-appeal panel "ruled that the U.S. had no right to impose a 27 per cent levy on Canadian lumber imports. U.S. Trade Representative, Rob Portman, said the US government disagreed with the decision and would disregard it, according to the Star.

"Canadians shook their heads in disbelief," the paper wrote, while "the rest of the world, Latin America in particular, got a vicarious taste of free trade with the US."

It appears that a trade relationship with the US is no longer a sought after prize. According to the Star, "a growing number of countries regard it as a dubious asset." --posted November 9, 2005

John Kerry Did Not Vote To Go To War

By EVELYN PRINGLE

If Kerry is guilty of anything, its of being gullible enough to believe the lies told by the President of the United State, and his fellow liars, on the world stage.

In a speech on the Senate Floor on the day of the vote, Kerry made it clear that he was not voting to go to war when he said, "approving this resolution does not mean that military action is imminent or unavoidable." It means "America speaks with one voice."

Kerry had no reason to think Bush was set to go to war. As he pointed out, any threat posed by Saddam and his WMDs, was “not imminent, and no one in the CIA, no intelligence briefing ... suggests it is imminent. None of our intelligence reports suggest that he is about to launch an attack,” Kerry said. “Every nation has the right to act preemptively, if it faces an imminent and grave threat, for its self-defense ... The threat we face today with Iraq does not meet that test yet."

Kerry said that he would only agree to go to war for one reason, to rid Saddam of WMDs. He emphatically warned Bush that if he did take the country to war for any other reason than an imminent threat, that he would be the first to speak out and demand that Bush be held accountable.

As we know now, there never were any WMDs and so therefore, as Kerry made clear, he would have never voted to go to war.

He clarified what his vote meant when he said, “let me be clear, the vote I will give ... is for one reason and one reason only: To disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, if we cannot accomplish that objective through new, tough weapons inspections in joint concert with our allies," he said.

“In giving the President this authority, I expect him to fulfill the commitments ... to work with the United Nations ... to adopt a new resolution setting out tough and immediate inspection requirements, and to act with our allies at our side if we have to disarm Saddam Hussein by force. If he fails to do so, I will be among the first to speak out.”

"If we do wind up going to war with Iraq, it is imperative that we do so with others in the international community, unless there is a showing of a grave, imminent--and I emphasize "imminent"--threat to this country which requires the President to respond in a way that protects our immediate national security needs."

If my opinion, the day for demanding accountability from Bush has long passed. It should have happened the day he took the country to war in Iraq. That said, I look forward to an opportunity to demand accountability from the Bush administration.

Kerry warned us about what would happen if Bush took us to war without just cause, and without our allies. He speech on the Senate floor on the day of the vote almost seems prophetic in hindsight. Here are a few excerpts from his October 9, 2002 Senate speech:

“The President needs to give the American people a fairer and fuller, clearer understanding of the magnitude and long-term financial cost of that effort.

“The international community's support will be critical because we will not be able to rebuild Iraq single-handedly. We will lack the credibility and the expertise and the capacity.

“The administration may not be in the habit of building coalitions, but that is what they need to do. ... If we go it alone without reason, we risk inflaming an entire region, breeding a new generation of terrorists, a new cadre of anti-American zealots, and we will be less secure, not more secure, at the end of the day, even with Saddam Hussein disarmed.”

Everything Kerry said would happen, happened. The skyrocketing costs of the war, both in lives lost, and tax dollars spent blow Americans away. The country was not prepared to sustain such a drastic drain on its resources. Nor were we prepared for the hatred that has been directed at Americans, not only in Iraq, but also throughout the Middle East.

Just like Kerry predicted, the region has become a magnet for terrorists that hate Americans. And he's right; Saddam's capture provides no consolation when weighed against the mess Bush got us into.

A scheme that turned Iraq into a boomtown for Bush and his fellow war profiteers, has turned into a never-ending nightmare for the rest of the country. First thing we see each morning, when we turn on the TV or pick up a newspaper, is the number of soldiers killed or injured the day before. And there is no end in sight.

John Kerry bears no responsibility whatsoever for the war in Iraq. If he had been president we never would have ended up there to begin with. --November 4, 2005

Yes, Kerry did make a Clintonesque statement about his support for the Iraq war. But, given that he is a politician and was caught in a question in 2004 where he may have given a bad answer give the man a little credit for what he is saying now. At least he is now admitting that we were misled and that if he knew then what we know now he would have voted differently. Most Democrats who voted to authorize the use of force have not admitted they were lied to by Bush-Cheney and made a mistake. At least Kerry is admitting it now. --Wayne Dobbins

I agree, Wayne, Kerry lied last week. What Kerry said was, "As I said more than a year ago, knowing what we know now, I would not have gone to war in Iraq." But he didn't say that more than a year ago during his campaign for the presidency. What he said was, "Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it was the right authority for a president to have." This was in answer to a reporter who asked, knowing what you do now about the lack of WMDs, would you vote today to go to war. The Washington Post (correctly) ran this as a headline: "In Hindsight, Kerry Says He'd Still Vote for War."

Similarly, I have no problem with the facts as presented by Pringle (see above), but I still contend Kerry lied. Here's why:...

In my book, "Big Bush Lies," I define a lie as it's defined in the dictionary: whatever is said with the intention to deceive the listener. (With politicians, such intent is assumed, if the result is deception. see below) I saw Kerry on TV at the Grand Canyon prior to the 2004 election, and a reporter asked him, (paraphrase) if you knew then what you know now about the WMDs, would you have voted to give Bush the authority to go to war? Kerry implied, "yes."

Now he's saying that he said, "no." He's lying.

The vote is what counted. Everything else is politics, and Kerry knew it. And Bush knew it, too. It took courage for 21 of 44 Dems to vote against giving Bush authority to go to war, and most Dems were more interested in keeping their jobs than being branded as traitors by the Bush propaganda machine. The records show that Kerry uniformly votes with those 21 Dems who voted "no."

I find it difficult to believe that the men and women in congress, politicians schooled and stewed in the cynicism of political office with its lies, manipulations, and threats,were willing to believe Bush, who by that time had, along with his administration, a solid record of lying and manipulating to get his way.

Neither Bush nor Kerry said they had secret info that supported going to war, and the reasons Bush gave for going to war were vetted at the time and found lacking by observers, and were reported in the press. Kerry had that information, as did you and I, and he chose to ignore it, giving Bush authority to go to war.

As Charles Jenks, a Kerry constituent, wrote in 2003, "During the lead up to war, much came to light in terms of US and UK deceptions concerning the weapons of mass destruction allegations. Surely, Senator Kerry took note of these developments....In October, 2002, 23 Senators and 133 Representatives voted against the Bush Administration's war resolution. John Kerry voted for it. What did 156 Members of Congress know that Kerry did not know? Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of his constituents had called him, urging him to vote against war....He says he was misled. Perhaps he did not understand what 156 colleagues and thousands of his constituents understood. Or, could a politican in his position have realized the truth and for political reasons went along, knowing that one could claim later - after things had started to go badly - that one had been misled, along with "every one of us."

Kerry also knew who Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and their neocon hawk footsoldiers were, and he knew their positions of power in and around the Bush administration, just as you and I did.

Kerry gave Bush what he wanted in order to go to war, and Bush knew Kerry, like many of the majority of the Dems (23 of 44 Dems voted "yes"), was going to cover his tracks with speeches and press conferences after the fact. Thus, Kerry was able to run for President as a war patriot, allowing him to "report for duty" at the Dem Convention.

Let's put it this way: I believe that Kerry voted to go to war by giving Bush authority to do so, and his speeches and press conferences that followed were relevant to his political needs but not relevant to Bush's drive to war. Pringle believes his speeches and press conferences tell the truth about Kerry's war position, and his vote to give Bush authority to go to war was an example of his "being gullible."

I find it difficult to believe that a U.S. Senator with 20 years experience would last that long in the D.C. jungle by "being gullible" when it comes to such life-or-death votes. Was Kerry the wrong Dem candiate for the presidency because of this serious flaw of gullibility? Or like the irrational Supreme Court in the case of their selection of Bush, was Kerry's gullibility a one-time decision, never to be repeated. I think not. I think Kerry is a skilled politician, capable of holding his own and more in the D.C. jungle. In short, Kerry, like Bush, can lie with the best of 'em, if need be. --Jerry Politex, November 4, 2005

Iraqis to Bush: