This war on terrorism is bogus (MUST READ)

[T_i_B]

Must read as it is written by a former Blair minister. Michael Meacher MP was environment minister from May 1997 to June 2003. The article covers the PNAC, Oil, 9/11 and should be right many DUer's street. All a bit :tinfoilhat: if you ask me.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1036571,00.html

Massive attention has now been given - and rightly so - to the reasons why Britain went to war against Iraq. But far too little attention has focused on why the US went to war, and that throws light on British motives too. The conventional explanation is that after the Twin Towers were hit, retaliation against al-Qaida bases in Afghanistan was a natural first step in launching a global war against terrorism. Then, because Saddam Hussein was alleged by the US and UK governments to retain weapons of mass destruction, the war could be extended to Iraq as well. However this theory does not fit all the facts. The truth may be a great deal murkier.

We now know that a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush's younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says "while the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."

The catalogue of evidence does, however, fall into place when set against the PNAC blueprint. From this it seems that the so-called "war on terrorism" is being used largely as bogus cover for achieving wider US strategic geopolitical objectives. Indeed Tony Blair himself hinted at this when he said to the Commons liaison committee: "To be truthful about it, there was no way we could have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a campaign on Afghanistan but for what happened on September 11" (Times, July 17 2002). Similarly Rumsfeld was so determined to obtain a rationale for an attack on Iraq that on 10 separate occasions he asked the CIA to find evidence linking Iraq to 9/11; the CIA repeatedly came back empty-handed (Time Magazine, May 13 2002).

[lcordero]

1. there is a lot that I don't like about this "war on terror"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1550366.stm

[Must_B_Free]

2. that's *TWO* so far!!

http://www.deepikaglobal.com/latestnews.asp?ncode=6456

LONDON: A former British cabinet minister who resigned in protest at the war on Iraq, said on Friday France had been right to insist the conflict must have United Nations approval and criticised Prime Minister Tony Blair for "rushing" to join the US invasion of the country.

"There wasn't an imminent threat (from Iraq)," former International Development Secretary Clare Short told BBC radio.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=99815

[Birthmark]

3. I have to ask.

What's so " :tinfoilhat: " about America persuing a strategic interest. We weren't exactly welcome in Saudi Arabia, but wanted a military presence in the Middle East for several reasons. Saddam wasn't exactly a good guy to begin with, so invading Iraq and setting up shop there accomplishes two purposes. Seems fairly straightforward to me.

[w13rd0]

4. Well, except for the undisclosed costs...

...the cronyism, the lies to get the public to go along, the mismanagement of the reconstruction, the unethical and illegal by international standards preemptive invasion and occupation, etc etc...yeah, fairly straightforward.

[Birthmark]

5. I think you misunderstood.

I was merely stating that the idea of going into Iraq for strategic purposes wasn't a tinfoil hat type of idea.

[T_i_B]

7. If you read the article

There is plenty that is :tinfoilhat: particularly with regard to 9/11.

Fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers obtained their visas in Saudi Arabia. Michael Springman, the former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah, has stated that since 1987 the CIA had been illicitly issuing visas to unqualified applicants from the Middle East and bringing them to the US for training in terrorism for the Afghan war in collaboration with Bin Laden (BBC, November 6 2001). It seems this operation continued after the Afghan war for other purposes. It is also reported that five of the hijackers received training at secure US military installations in the 1990s (Newsweek, September 15 2001).

Instructive leads prior to 9/11 were not followed up. French Moroccan flight student Zacarias Moussaoui (now thought to be the 20th hijacker) was arrested in August 2001 after an instructor reported he showed a suspicious interest in learning how to steer large airliners. When US agents learned from French intelligence he had radical Islamist ties, they sought a warrant to search his computer, which contained clues to the September 11 mission (Times, November 3 2001). But they were turned down by the FBI. One agent wrote, a month before 9/11, that Moussaoui might be planning to crash into the Twin Towers (Newsweek, May 20 2002).

All of this makes it all the more astonishing - on the war on terrorism perspective - that there was such slow reaction on September 11 itself. The first hijacking was suspected at not later than 8.20am, and the last hijacked aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania at 10.06am. Not a single fighter plane was scrambled to investigate from the US Andrews airforce base, just 10 miles from Washington DC, until after the third plane had hit the Pentagon at 9.38 am. Why not? There were standard FAA intercept procedures for hijacked aircraft before 9/11. Between September 2000 and June 2001 the US military launched fighter aircraft on 67 occasions to chase suspicious aircraft (AP, August 13 2002). It is a US legal requirement that once an aircraft has moved significantly off its flight plan, fighter planes are sent up to investigate.

Was this inaction simply the result of key people disregarding, or being ignorant of, the evidence? Or could US air security operations have been deliberately stood down on September 11? If so, why, and on whose authority? The former US federal crimes prosecutor, John Loftus, has said: "The information provided by European intelligence services prior to 9/11 was so extensive that it is no longer possible for either the CIA or FBI to assert a defence of incompetence."

[veracity]

6. Too little, too late

The PNAC information has been out there.. on their own website for years. Most Americans never heard of PNAC - even though it was founded by CHENEY! (with Rummy, Wolfowitz, Perle, Kristol, etc.) and have no clue who planned the war and pulls Dummy's strings.

All the information is on the Internet. Has been all along. Someone has to start screaming....

http://tvnewslies.org/html/pnac.html