9/11; Before, during and now...

[rooddood743]

It was shortly after the Enron debacle that I started saving news articles. I"m up to 3,342 now, and the hits just keep on coming.
I've selected a few samples, and by doing so, discovered first hand the modus operandi of the Bush admin....Bury us with information. They pull so many stunts, I would need an entire staff just to keep up with the news I'm able to catch, much less everything these sociopaths are up to. Anyway, take a little walk down memory lane with me and Georgie...

Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England,nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
Hermann Goering, President of the Reichstag, Nazi Party, and Luftwaffe Commander in Chief
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Ever wonder why it is that when a company gets caught lying to, and/or cheating investors that they so often settle the case quickly, agreeing to pay millions of dollars back but "without admitting or denying" they did anything wrong?
Simple - because the IRS kicks back a big hunk of the fine to them in the form of a tax write off.

That's right, you and I - through the IRS - subsidize corporate wrongdoing by providing substantial tax breaks to companies that settle shareholder lawsuits or regulatory actions in the right way.

For example, the Wall Street Journal reports that Merrill Lynch will likely harvest a fat $30 million tax write off this year - a 30% kickback of the $100 million it agreed to cough up to settle fraud charges with New York prosecutors. The key here is that company officials insisted that the following magic words be included in their settlement agreement - "without admitting guilt." The company had been charged with an elaborate pump and dump scheme in which its analysts falsely promoted stocks in companies underwritten by Merrill Lynch.

By being allowed to not admit guilt, the $100 million payment could be classified for tax purposes as "compensatory" damages rather than as a "fine" for wrongdoing.
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Michael Rechtenwald, founder and chair of Citizens for Elected Government, who had called the Freedom Zone "pathetic and a violation of the Constitution of the United State," soon joined us. He carried a small sign bearing the logo of his organization. No inflammatory phrases. No insults. Just the title, "Citizens for Legitimate Government." Within minutes, an angry looking Secret Service agent in a blue suit and two uniformed police office bore down on him. Unlike the uniformed police I had dealt with thus far, this man was not polite. "You know where the protest area is," he told Rechtenwald. "You know where you're supposed to be."
When Rechtenwald quietly said he was merely exercising his First Amendment rights, the Secret Service agent replied, "Now you REALLY are pushing it." The agent warned Rechtenwald in no uncertain terms that, unless he left the area, he was "this close" to being arrested for violating a federal protection order, a felony offense.
The agent then told Rechtenwald that two state troopers would escort him back to "the pen" and that if he said a single word, he would be arrested on a felony charge. "If I so much as say a thing, these guys will arrest me?" Rechtenwald asked. "Yes!" declared the agent with serious conviction. Rechtenwald wisely left the area. Throughout this entire confrontation, we could hear Bush's audience cheer and applaud as he used the all too familiar phrases, "homeland security," and "our enemies wish to take away our freedoms." I wondered who had just taken away Michael Rechtenwald's freedom of speech.
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White House officials and Republicans on Capitol Hill are so optimistic about winning control of both chambers of Congress in next month's elections that they have begun mapping how they would use their new power, including the possibility of speeding up tax cuts that were to take effect gradually.With the elections 16 days away and polls showing many crucial races too close to call, Republicans are drawing up plans that would aid a broad array of industries, after hammering business during the corporate responsibility debate touched off by this year's accounting scandals.Business lobbyists said their wish lists include substantial nationwide limits on the amount of damages that can be awarded in medical malpractice cases, plus a major overhaul of the tax code to reduce the burden on corporations. Both measures have been part of President Bush's agenda and would have a better chance of becoming law if the GOP retook control of the Senate and kept a House majority in the Nov. 5 elections.Michael G. Franc, the Heritage Foundation's vice president of government relations, said the mood among business lobbyists and economic conservatives is "guarded optimism, bordering on giddiness." He said they are laying plans to take swift advantage if Republicans complete the triple crown of the White House, the House and the Senate. "It's the domestic equivalent of planning for postwar Iraq," Franc said.

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Children are among the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. (Reuters)
Children held at Camp Xray, US admits The US military has revealed it is holding juveniles at its high-security prison for terrorists at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, known as Camp Xray.The commander of the joint task force at Guantanamo, Major General Geoffrey Miller, says more than one child under the age of 16 is at the detention centre.
However, Maj Gen Miller has revealed little more about their welfare.
Maj Gen Miller says the US is holding "juvenile enemy combatants" at the centre, confirming rumours of children being held.He has refused to reveal how many there are, their exact ages or their countries of origin.He says they are being well cared for and are kept in facilities separate to adult prisoners.The children are still being interrogated and will continue to be held at Guantanamo.

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Environmental Protection Agency criminal agents are being diverted from their normal investigative work to provide security and drivers for agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman -- and getting long lists of do's and don'ts to keep her happy.EPA agents assigned to investigate environmental crimes have at times been ordered to perform more personal tasks, such as returning a rental car for Whitman's husband after a trip or sitting at a table until the administrator arrived for a restaurant reservation, according to interviews with several EPA senior managers.
The lists of do's and don'ts instruct agents who chauffeur the EPA administrator to rent only a Lincoln Town Car, tune the radio to smooth jazz or classical music and set the volume low, and keep an eye out for a Starbucks coffee shop or Barnes & Noble bookstore.
The "professional conduct" lists say the former New Jersey governor prefers to be addressed as "Governor," rather than "Ma'am" or "Administrator."
After the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, senior managers in the EPA's Office of Criminal Enforcement, Forensics and Training were instructed to help with homeland security and Whitman's protection detail by providing agents who normally investigate environmental crimes, according to memos written last year by office heads.
The agents are pulled from offices around the country for several days at a time, depending on where Whitman travels, and the added duties are
straining already overtaxed resources in the crime unit, the managers
said. They spoke only on condition of anonymity, for fear of reprisal.
The agents normally investigate alleged violators of environmental laws, gathering evidence for criminal prosecutions.
One manager said an agent on a security detail was directed by Whitman to return her husband's rental car to the airport so the Whitmans could catch a flight together.
A second manager said an agent was told by the head of Whitman's personal security team to hold a reserved restaurant table until Whitman arrived for dinner. The agent is paid $100,000 a year to investigate environmental crimes, the manager said.With agents already designated for homeland security tasks, the regional offices sometimes are left without investigators for days at a time when Whitman is in town."Up to a week, all work will shut down in an area office to facilitate the protective service detail," one manager said.

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In February, the Defense Policy Board, a group of outside advisors to the Pentagon, got a classified presentation from the super-secret Defense Intelligence Agency on crises in North Korea and Iraq. Three weeks later, the then-chairman of the board, Richard N. Perle, offered a briefing of his own at an investment seminar on ways to profit from possible conflicts with both countries.
Perle and his fellow advisors also heard a classified address about high-tech military communications systems at the same closed-door session in February. He runs a venture capital firm that has been exploring investments in that very area.
The disclosures in recently released board agendas and investment documents are the latest illustrations of how Perle's private consulting and investment interests overlap with his role on the board, which advises the secretary of Defense.

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Hundreds of thousands of veterans of earlier U.S. military conflicts might also no longer qualify for VA health care or might be forced out by rules proposed by the Bush administration to relieve an overburdened system. The changes would increase veterans' out-of-pocket costs by increasing co-payments for out-patient care and prescription drugs, as well as require many to pay a $250-a-year enrollment fee just to stay in the VA health-care system.
That, critics say, will force many veterans to say goodbye to a health-care system they had assumed would be available all of their lives.
VA officials say they must focus on veterans with the greatest needs - those with the most serious service-related illnesses and injuries and those too poor to afford other health care. But many veterans - and the organizations that represent them - say it is a broken promise.
"Young men and women go off and fight for their country and are told that their needs will be taken care of," said Ronald Conley, national commander of the 2.8-million member, Indianapolis-based American Legion. "To change the rules on them when they get back is wrong."
The Bush administration's proposed changes cut off enrollment for veterans who make more than about $24,000. Those who are above that threshold and are already enrolled in the system would have to pay an annual $250 fee to keep their health-care benefits. In addition, the Bush administration is proposing increasing co-payments for higher income patients from $15 to $20 per outpatient visit and from $7 to $15 for prescription drugs.
The Republican-controlled Congress recently passed a budget for veterans' health care of about $30 billion for 2004, an increase of about $3.4 billion over this year's budget. But the Democrats say some of this money will have to come from co-payments and the veterans using the system. "They are squeezing people out of the system and making those left behind pay," said U.S. Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Lucasville, a member of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. "It's just wrong."

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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."
Nor is the US response after 9/11 any better. No serious attempt has ever been made to catch Bin Laden. In late September and early October 2001, leaders of Pakistan's two Islamist parties negotiated Bin Laden's extradition to Pakistan to stand trial for 9/11. However, a US official said, significantly, that "casting our objectives too narrowly" risked "a premature collapse of the international effort if by some lucky chance Mr Bin Laden was captured". The US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Myers, went so far as to say that "the goal has never been to get Bin Laden" (AP, April 5 2002). The whistleblowing FBI agent Robert Wright told ABC News (December 19 2002) that FBI headquarters wanted no arrests.
And in November 2001 the US airforce complained it had had al-Qaida and Taliban leaders in its sights as many as 10 times over the previous six weeks, but had been unable to attack because they did not receive permission quickly enough (Time Magazine, May 13 2002). None of this assembled evidence, all of which comes from sources already in the public domain, is compatible with the idea of a real, determined war on terrorism.
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"