"...President Bush's "compassionate conservatism" appears neither particularly compassionate, nor conservative (nor particularly efficient: with all of the reconstruction work largely conducted via contractors and sub-contractors, it is difficult to see how the government will effectively monitor the funds provided for this exercise). But it does reward political loyalty..."

http://www.counterpunch.org/auerback11222005.html

November 22, 2005

Neither Compassionate, Nor Conservative

Bush's "Compassionate Converatism", a Report Card from the Front

By MARSHALL AUERBACK

"Couple a multi-state disaster of Katrina's magnitude, (including some of the poorer and less well-governed states in the union), add on a dysfunctional federal bureaucracy that had deteriorated in recent years, and a chief executive whose motto seemed to be, until yesterday, the buck stops there, and we get a helluva mess."

--Richard Murray, Houston-based public policy expert quoted in the Washington Post

"The worst storm in our history proved perfect for exposing this president because in one big blast it illuminated all his failings: the rampant cronyism, the empty sloganeering of 'compassionate conservatism,' the lack of concern for the 'underprivileged' his mother condescended to at the Astrodome, the reckless lack of planning for all government operations except tax cuts, the use of spin and photo-ops to camouflage failure and to substitute for action."

--Frank Rich, NY Times

Describing the President's panicked political response to his falling poll numbers as "compassionate conservatism", (as New York Times columnist David Brooks did last Sunday, "A Bushian Laboratory", September 18, 2005), borders on the ludicrous. Mr Bush has now overseen the fastest increase in domestic spending of any president in recent history. Furthermore, he has never resolved the inherent contradiction between his so-called "compassionate" spending policy and his small-government tax policy (which was ostensibly designed to "kill the beast" of Big Government once and for all, according to the President's conservative apologists). And his casual dismissal of the remnants of civilian authority in the Gulf basin - "It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces -- the institution of our government most capable of massive logistical operations on a moment's notice" - evokes something more along the lines of Mussolini-style fascism than any coherent, mainstream conservative, philosophy.

Hurricane Katrina is only the latest example of the President's extraordinary fiscal largesse - this time, borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars under the guise of "clear[ing] away the legacy of inequality." Sixty-two billion dollars has already been appropriated in the storm's aftermath, but total spending on hurricane relief could hit $200bn before all is said and done. This for an area in which a substantial proportion of people are unlikely to return. Occurring so late in the fiscal year, the hurricane will have little effect on federal spending in 2005, when the deficit is forecast to come in around $330bn, but the 2006 deficit is looking likely to hit the $450bn mark. No wonder the gold price hit a fresh 17-year high last week.

Not even the most liberal social engineers would dare to have been as bold as the Bush administration. The President gives no accounting of how the money will be found. His governing philosophy appears to be: "It's going to cost whatever it's going to cost" in contrast to the vision of "focused and effective and energetic government", David Brooks imputes to him. Mr Bush has left the oversight in the hands of his political operative, Karl Rove, suggesting that this a major PR exercise, rather than (per Brooks) "a positive use of government that is neither big government liberalism nor antigovernment libertarianism".
For all of the talk of the President's radical foreign policy, an even more remarkable metamorphosis has taken place domestically: The Republican Party has come full circle from, "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem" to an acceptance of the primacy of government responsibility for all things. The man elected ostensibly to curb the excesses of the "spendthrift Democrats" has presided over an expansion the likes of which put FDR and LBJ to shame. According to the Heritage Foundation (not exactly a liberal propagandist), the rebuilding effort in New Orleans follows a 33 percent expansion of the federal government since 2001, a period that saw:

* The 2001 No Child Behind Act, the most expensive education bill in American history, which led to a 100 percent increase in education spending;

* The 2002 Farm Security and Rural Investment Act, the most expensive farm bill in American history;

* The 2003 Medicare Modernization Act, the most expensive Great Society expansion in history;

* A war in and the rebuilding of Iraq that, while justified, could cost between $300 and $600 billion, in total;

* International spending leap 94 percent;

* Housing and Commerce spending surge 86 percent;

* Community and regional development spending jump 71 percent;

* Health research spending increase 61 percent;

* Veterans' spending increase 51 percent; and

* The number of annual pork projects leap from 6,000 to 14,000

This from a Federal government, which has hitherto shown a singular inability to conduct an evacuation and relief effort properly, but is now expected to lead the way in reconstructing New Orleans, a city in which the school system is virtually bankrupt and racked by corruption (the U.S. Education Department reported in February that $70-million in federal funds for low-income students had been misspent or could not be accounted for), presumably to be part-administered by a mayor whose stunning failure to mobilize resources to evacuate car-less residents and hospital patients - despite warning signals from the city's botched response to the threat of Hurricane Ivan in September 2004 - demonstrates that ineptitude extends to all levels of government.

What a change in course from just a mere year ago when the administration pressured Congress to cut $71 million from the budget of the Army Corps' New Orleans district despite warnings of the epic hurricane seasons close at hand. In fact, during the early stages of the Bush Presidency, then director of FEMA, former Bush campaign manager Joe M. Allbaugh, (now a lobbyist for Kellogg Brown & Root Services, a subsidiary of Halliburton), decried disaster assistance as "an oversized entitlement program" and urged Americans to rely more upon the Salvation Army and other faith-based groups.

The reality today is that there remains a fundamental contradiction between the planned Gulf Opportunity Zone approach (is there a Wizard of GOZ?) which rhetorically fits the Ownership Society theme of this Administration, and the actual botched dirigiste response to date, which further begs the question: what good has all that money dropped into homeland security done if the government cannot execute natural disaster relief effectively? So much for a consistent governing philosophy!

To be fair, one element of consistency has always been evident during the Bush Presidency: that of cronyism. Within days of this disaster striking, Halliburton was awarded a Navy contract for repairing naval installations. This company's ongoing involvement in the operations of the US Federal government is nothing new, but it is not the only beneficiary from the latest example of "compassionate conservatism". Many other Bush-allied companies that have performed so well in the field of Iraqi "reconstruction" are getting the lion's share of new no-bid contracts, while smaller, local businesses (which arguably have a far greater stake in the economic survival in the region) are essentially being locked out of the rebuilding effort. According to the St. Louis Post Dispatch,

"Tom Cason, president of Kingston Environmental Services in Kansas City, said his company had plenty of experience in hauling away contaminated soil and water. He even has a business license in Louisiana for his line of work.

But thus far, his calls and e-mails 'have gone into a black hole somewhere,' he said.

Coz Passalacqua, 63, who runs Golden Eagle Marine Services in Rolla, Mo., says he has the equipment to salvage boats as long as 60 feet damaged or destroyed in the storm.But, he added, 'I'm not hearing anything at all, and I figure that it's gotten too late.'"

Among the other recipients who did hear from the Bush administration were California-based Fluor Corp., which has contributed more than $800,000 to political campaigns this decade, about three-fourths of it to the GOP, the Shaw Group Inc. of Louisiana, (another client of consultant Joe Allbaugh), and Kellogg.

President Bush's "compassionate conservatism" appears neither particularly compassionate, nor conservative (nor particularly efficient: with all of the reconstruction work largely conducted via contractors and sub-contractors, it is difficult to see how the government will effectively monitor the funds provided for this exercise). But it does reward political loyalty.

If Halliburton et al actually provided value for money for the American taxpayer, it would be one thing. The reality is quite different: Henry Waxman, a Democrat and the ranking minority member on the House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform has uncovered evidence that Vice President Cheney's former company was being grossly overpaid by the American occupation authorities for the petrol it was importing into Iraq from Kuwait, at a profit of more than $150 million. Waxman and his assistants found, for example, that Halliburton was charging $2.64 a gallon for petrol for Iraqi civilians, while American forces were importing the same fuel for $1.57 a gallon.

The reconstruction of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama provides a fascinating picture of how the Bush administration actually works. His government represents an odd melding of corporatism and cronyism, more in tune with the workings of 1930s Italy or Spain. In fact, if one looks at fascist regimes of the 20th century, it is appears that the Bush administration draws more from these sources than traditional conservatism. Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

(Source: The Fourteen Defining Characteristics of Fascism, Dr. Lawrence Britt, Spring 2003, Free Inquiry)

Perhaps it is unfair to characterise the Bush Presidency in these terms, because it would imply the existence of a coherent governing philosophy.

In fact, the President's actions in regard to the "war on terror", Iraq, and now the reconstruction efforts in the Gulf basin smack of panic and political expediency: When there's a problem, throw money at it. For all of the talk about the President "accepting responsibility" for the fiasco, his speech was certainly not Trumanesque "The buck stops here" oratory; it was rather a promise to rebuild New Orleans with other people's money, saying that his people (not the President himself, mind you) had made mistakes and they would fix them.

Of course, part of the point of fiscal responsibility, after all, is that disasters do happen and the government should have fiscal leeway to respond to them. But the US today has no leeway at all, thanks to this president and his party. The "compassion and resolve of our nation" are amply demonstrated by a whopping huge expenditure, the costs of which are to be imposed on future generations of American taxpayers. Or more accurately, coming during a week which also saw the annual rate of growth in the current account deficit hitting nearly $750 billion, (more than 6% of GDP), the President's latest act of "compassionate conservatism" puts the rest of the world on notice that it is going to have to stump up even more credit for this Argentina of the northern hemisphere. One wonders whether these particular creditors' goodwill is likely to prove as durable as the levees of New Orleans.

Marshall Auerback is an international equity strategist work with RAB Capital in London.

---

Corruption is an obstacle to progress and the antithesis of good governance. It is a stain on the integrity of a nation. It diminishes its moral fibre. Corruption hinders investment, slows growth, contributes to unemployment, leads to a reduction in living standards and reduces government revenues. - Laisenia Quarase

"Where is the mainstream media's reporting of this mass phenomenon?"

http://www.lasvegastribune.com/20050819/headline1.html

August 19, 2005

Chemtrails Are Over Las Vegas

Marcus K. Dalton

Tribune Media Group



Part 1

Editor's Note: Las Vegas residents are increasingly noticing the appearance of chemical trails overhead. They appear EVERY weekend without fail, the only exception being the two weeks after September 11, 2001. Such "chemtrails" are substantially different in appearance to the normal condensation trails left by jet airliners. The difference is that while condensation trails are composed of water vapor that dissipates rapidly, "chemtrails" linger much longer and spread out over time to eventually cover the sky with a thin haze. This week the Las Vegas Tribune begins a two-part article to examine the undeniable and mysterious phenomena of Chemtrails Over Las Vegas.

Last year a concerned reader wrote to the Idaho Observer: "Driving across Idaho and Nevada we saw normal condensation trails in the skies above north Idaho and we were habitually looking up as we drove toward Las Vegas. We had noticed that the sparsely populated areas in Nevada had brilliantly clear blue skies and that the occasional airplane left vapor trails that dissipated normally. But as soon as we neared Las Vegas, in the skies directly above the city, we watched what appeared to be a military C-135 Transports spraying something over the populated areas. When the planes were no longer directly over Las Vegas, they continued flying leaving a vapor trail that dissipated normally."

It has been reported that the "chemtrails" contain ethylene dibromide -- a substance that has been an additive to gasoline and airplane fuels as well as a banned pesticide. Ethylene dibromide has been linked to kidney and liver damage and is an immunosuppressive and a lung irritant.

William Thomas, who has researched chemtrails since their appearance in the latter 90s, has noted stunted plant growth in once-healthy gardens and wilderness areas in Santa Fe and Aspen. Similar plant problems are commonly associated with chemtrails in other regions of the U.S.

A brief history of the chemtrail phenomenon can be traced to a Washington state man who told award-winning investigative reporter William Thomas that he'd become ill on New Year's Day 1999 after watching several jets make strange lines in the sky. Within six months, Thomas, writing primarily for the Environmental News Service, has detailed 1000s of eyewitness reports of chemtrails from 40 states.

"Mainstream newspapers have gone out of their way to dismiss these eyewitness accounts," Thomas told the New Mexican newspaper in June 1999, "It's easier to sell UFOs to major media than a phenomena as close in many cities as the nearest window."

Especially disturbing for residents of heavily chemtrailed communities like Las Vegas is a "chemtrail sickness" associated with heavy spray days leaving many stricken people complaining of the "flu" and acute allergic reactions months after the flu season has ended. Upper and lower respiratory and gastrointestinal ailments remain unusually high in many spray areas, along with debilitating fatigue - and something even more worrying.

What's going on?

Thomas is convinced that we are under "deliberate biological attack" by agents known only to top military and government officials responsible for permitting continuing over-flights by unmarked spray aircraft.

Government officials deny that anything unusual is taking place, yet increasing numbers of concerned observers are seeing 727-like aircraft painted "all-white with a black stripe up the middle of fuselage" laying long and often cries-crossing chemtrail patterns over Southern Nevada and elsewhere. None of the planes carry identifying markings.

Pat Edgar has been watching the jets spraying over eastern Oklahoma since a sunny day in October, 1997 when as many as 30 contrails gradually occluded the sky. "They look like they're playing tic-tac-toe up there," he says. "You know darn well it's not passenger planes." Edgar says he has watched "cob-webbing stuff coming down" from the zigzagging jets flying "all day long, line after line, back-and-forth, like furrows in a farm field." Edgar adds "There is a lot of Lupus in the area now. A lot of women have come down with it."

One source, who spoke to the Tribune under condition of anonymity, working as a civilian archeologist on government land throughout Nevada, began to notice "all white unmarked aircraft" preparing for take-off at Nellis AFB and at the Mancamp Complex near Tonapah in the late-90s. "It was these unmarked planes that were constantly laying down the criss-crossing X patterns of lingering chemical-spray trails over Southern Nevada." When the archeologist asked the military escort who accompanied the civilian research team into 'sensitive' areas around Nellis, about the planes, the reply received was, "You didn't see anything."

Another Las Vegas resident, Sandy Range, grew up within an outdoors field and stream-type family and has been watching the weather and the skies all her life. Holding a degree from Syracuse University, Range moved to Las Vegas in 1989. "I first began to notice the chemtrails in late '96 - 14 criss-crossed miles-long vapor trails that didn't evaporate like the norm. I began to see them weekly, then daily," Range states matter-of-factly.

One early morning in '99 Range was returing from Henderson when a low-flying craft dropped a trail right overhead along Boulder Highway. "It covered my car with a sticky web-like coating and I saved a specimen in a jar. Microscopic fiber-like filaments," Range reports.

Government denials, as usual.

Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio authored the Space Preservation Act of 2001, which sought a "permanent ban against weapons in space," specifically banning "chemtrails" as weapons. But in a subsequent version of the bill, the "chemtrails" language disappeared entirely. The missing words suggest an eyes-wide-open denial, which says as much about the cover-up as it does about the spraying that's plainly visible in the sky.

In a front-page story entitled "Conspiracy theorists look up," the Akron Beacon Journal noted that Kucinich's bill "had been rewrittenand the references to chemtrails and the other types of weapons were quietly eliminated." The Beacon Journal article, linking chemtrails to conspiracies, resulted from massive local pressure. Michel Massullo of Akron provided that newspaper with rolls of photos of plane trails and a sworn affidavit attesting to extensive aerial activity over that city.

The U.S. Air Force Website refutes the "Chemtrail Hoax" as having been around since 1996, "accusing the Air Force of being involved in spraying the U.S. population" with mysterious substances: "Several authors cite an Air University research paper titled 'Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025' that suggests the Air Force is conducting weather modification experiments. The purpose of that paper was part of a thesis to outline a strategy for the use of a future weather modification system to achieve military objectives and it does not reflect current military policy, practice, or capability. The Air Force is not conducting any weather modification experiments or programs and has no plans to do so in the future. The 'chemtrail' hoax has been investigated and refuted by many established and accredited universities, scientific organizations, and major media publications."

Explaining the government's position, Lieutenant Colonel Michael K. Gibson of the U.S. Air Force wrote U.S. Representative Mark Green in August 2000 and stated, "The term 'chemtrail' is a hoax that began circulating approximately three years ago which asserts the government is involved in a joint federal program of covert spraying of the public."

But many intelligent researchers call Gibson's communique a classic non-denial denial: Gibson is denying that the Air Force is secretly spraying U.S. citizens. The reality is the U.S. Space Command and other government agencies are involved in ongoing experiments for military and environmental purposes that involve aerial spraying, and the microfibers and other sprayed chemicals inevitably fall to earth, putting the public at risk.

Before you believe Gibson's and the government's "denial," do an Internet search for the following terms: "Joint Vision for 2020" and "Weather is a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025", a whitepaper by MIT's Bernard Eastlund and H-bomb father Edward Teller. Before he died in 2003, Teller was director emeritus of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where plans for nuclear, biological and directed energy weapons are crafted. In 1997, Teller publicly outlined his proposal to use aircraft to scatter through the stratosphere millions of tons of electrically-conductive metallic materials, ostensibly to reduce global warming.

Two scientists working at Wright Patterson Air Force Base confirmed to the Ohio newspaper, Columbus Alive, that they were involved in aerial spraying experiments. One involved aluminum oxide spraying related to global warming and the other involved barium stearate and had to do with high-tech military communications.

And even in the face of government denials, environmental laboratories have begun to identify an extremely toxic component of the spray drifting over cities and countryside. Several independent sources claim that samples of fallout from the lingering smoke trails and have been independently tested and found to contain ethylene dibromide (EDB).

In 1998, a US Air Force public affairs officer told residents of Las Vegas that their sudden upsurge of respiratory ailments could have come from "routine" fuel-dumping by military aircraft reducing weight for landing.

An extremely hazardous pesticide, EDB was banned by the US Environmental Protection Agency in 1983. But in 1991, the composition of jet fuel used by commercial and military jet aircraft in the U.S. was changed from JP4 to somewhat less flammable JP8. A Department of Defense source says the move "has saved some lives" in air crashes. Ethylene dibromide is a key component of JP8.

The 1991 Chemical Hazards of the Workplace warns that repeated exposure to low levels of ethylene dibromide results in "general weakness, vomiting, diarrhea, chest pains, coughing and shortness of breath, upper respiratory tract irritation" and respiratory failure caused by swelling of the lymph glands in the lungs. "Deterioration of the heart, liver and kidneys, and hemorrhages in the respiratory tract," can also result from prolonged contact with JP8.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's hazardous materials list: "Ethylene dibromide is a carcinogen and must be handled with extreme caution." A seven-page summary of this pesticide's extreme toxicity notes that EDB may also damage the reproductive system. According to the EPA, "Exposure can irritate the lungs, repeated exposure may cause bronchitis, development of cough, and shortness of breath. It will damage the liver and kidneys".

Mark Witten, a respiratory physiologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson where an official US Air Force study on JP8 was carried out, told Scientist in March, 1998 that crew chiefs "seem to have more colds, more bronchitis, more chronic coughs than the people not exposed to jet fuel."

EDB is 6.5-times heavier than air. Unlike normal condensation trails, the thick white streamers being sprayed from downward-pointing tail-booms over at least 39 states does not dissipate, but spreads into an overcast that refracts a purple color in sunlight and appears suddenly as an oily film in puddles and ponds.

Hundreds of photographs and videotapes made by ground observers show pairs or larger formations of aircraft spreading a white mist that thickens and drifts toward the ground. Thousands of eye-witnesses - including police officers, pilots, military and public health personnel - have provided detailed accounts of aerial spraying in characteristic "X"s and east-to-west grid patterns, followed by occluded skies - and acute auto-immune reactions and respiratory infections throughout affected regions.

Severe headaches, nosebleeds, shortness of breath, joint pain and a dry hacking cough "that never leaves" are being reported by countless Americans jamming hospital Emergency Rooms from coast to coast. While December and January are traditionally bad months for asthma sufferers, patients, doctors and nurses across the U.S. report hospital wards filled to overflowing with bronchitis, pneumonia and acute asthma admissions at up to twice-normal winter rates.

"We're getting sprayed real heavily with the chemtrails," a Las Vegas resident told the Tribune. " On some days it's just total saturation."

As over-filled Pennsylvania hospitals were forced to divert respiratory emergencies to other facilities with bed space, a south-central Pennsylvania resident, Deborah Kammerer, looked out her window and watched aircraft "flying and dispersing over the city. It was supposed to be a clear sunny day. It became more overcast as the day progressed. I observed how the white trails widened out and settled down creating a haze over everything."

Where is the mainstream media's reporting of this mass phenomenon? Indications of a concerted cover-up came in February 2003, when a retired Southern Baptist preacher named Everett Burton finally succeeded in reaching C-span. After voicing his opinion on the Clinton impeachment trial, this former minister told Americans to get a copy of the Constitution and read it to realize what they have lost. Rev. Burton then advised viewers not to take his word for what was happening in the US, "just look up in the skies as the planes regularly spray contrails across the skies, spraying people and making them ill." At that point, Rev. Burton was cut off. The screen flipped from C-span to the Tennessee state seal, remained silent for several minutes.

... to be concluded next week.

-

http://www.lasvegastribune.com/20050826/headline3.html

August 26, 2005

'Chemtrails' In Las Vegas Skies

Marcus K. Dalton

Tribune Media Group

(Editor's note: Chemtrails Part 1 appeared in the August 19th edition of Las Vegas Tribune and may be found online at www.LasVegasTribune.com)

Las Vegas residents are increasingly noticing the appearance of long-lingering chemical trails overhead. They appear virtually every weekend and on most weekdays, the only exception being the two weeks after September 11, 2001. Such "chemtrails" are substantially different in appearance to the normal 'condensation' trails left by jet airliners. The difference is that while condensation trails are composed largely of water vapor that dissipates rapidly, "chemtrails" linger much longer and spread out over time to eventually cover the sky with a thin haze.

It has been reported that the "chemtrails" contain ethylene dibromide -- a substance that has been an additive to gasoline and airplane fuels as well as a banned pesticide. Ethylene dibromide has been linked to kidney and liver damage and is an immunosuppressive and a lung irritant.

Especially disturbing for residents of heavily chemtrailed communities like Las Vegas is a "chemtrail sickness" associated with heavy spray days leaving many stricken people complaining of the "flu" and acute allergic reactions months after the flu season has ended. Upper and lower respiratory and gastrointestinal ailments remain unusually high in many spray areas, along with debilitating fatigue.

The U.S. Air Force Website refutes the "Chemtrail Hoax" as having been around since 1996: "... accusing the Air Force of being involved in spraying the U.S. population" with mysterious substances... "The 'chemtrail' hoax has been investigated and refuted by many established and accredited universities, scientific organizations, and major media publications," claims the Air Force.

But contrary to the Air Force website denial, scientists working at Wright Patterson Air Force Base confirmed to the Ohio newspaper, Columbus Alive, that they were involved in aerial spraying experiments. One involved aluminum oxide spraying related to global warming and the other involved barium stearate and had to do with high-tech military communications.

And even in the face of government denials, environmental laboratories have begun to identify an extremely toxic component of the spray drifting over cities and countryside. Several independent sources claim that samples of fallout from the lingering smoke trails and have been independently tested and found to contain ethylene dibromide (EDB).

In 1998, a US Air Force public affairs officer told residents of Las Vegas that their sudden upsurge of respiratory ailments could have come from "routine" fuel-dumping by military aircraft reducing weight for landing.

An extremely hazardous pesticide, EDB was banned by the US Environmental Protection Agency in 1983. But in 1991, the composition of jet fuel used by commercial and military jet aircraft in the U.S. was changed from JP4 to somewhat less flammable JP8. Ethylene dibromide is a key component of JP8.

According to Las Vegas resident and sky-watcher, Sandy Range, "The trails turn on and off like old-time sky-writers and crop dusters... they are a controlled spray typically ended with precision as the trails reach the edge of the populated areas."

One early morning in '99 Range was returning from Henderson when a low-flying craft dropped a trail right overhead along Boulder Highway. "It covered my car with a sticky web-like coating and I saved a specimen in a jar. Microscopic fiber-like filaments," Range reports.

Tommy Farmer, a former engineering technician with Raytheon Missile Systems, has been tracking patterns of jet chemtrails phenomena for more than a year. Farmer has "positively identified" two of the aircraft most often involved in the aerial spraying incidents as a Boeing KC-135 and Boeing KC-10. Both big jets are used by the U.S. Air Force for air-to-air refueling.

Confirming reports from eyewitnesses across the United States, Farmer reports that most chemtrail producing aircraft are painted either solid white or solid black with no other identifying markings visible.

Farmer has collected samples of what he calls "angel hair" sprayed by the mystery aircraft. Farmer says that globular filaments resembling ordinary spider webs, "usually fall in clumps or wads ranging from pencil eraser size to the size of a balled up fist."

Winds often whip the cobweb-like material into filaments as long as 50 feet and that the sticky substance "melts in your hands" and "adheres to whatever it touches."

After repeatedly observing aircraft spraying "in front of and into cloud systems," Farmer is "fairly certain the chemtrail phenomena is one part of a military weather modification and weapons system."

"The huge Xs being traced by formations of tanker jets in the sky can be tracked by satellite and coordinated with electro-magnetic beams to heat the upper atmosphere - changing its temperature and density and enhancing weather effects, theorizes Farmer referring to the government's 'HAARP' project.

Enviromental journalist, William Thomas, is convinced that chemtrails are a "deliberate biological attack" by agents known only to top military and government officials responsible for permitting continuing over-flights by unmarked spray aircraft.

High Altitude Auroral Research Project Based in Gakon, Alaska, the unclassified joint U.S. Air Force and Navy project known as the High Altitude Auroral Research Project (HAARP) has for the past several years been using phased array antennas to steer powerful beams of tightly-focused radio waves to stimulate, heat and steer sections of the upper atmosphere.

Awarded in 1985 to MIT physicist Bernard Eastlund, HAARP's commercial patent claims that directed energy beams of more than one-billion watts can be used for "altering the upper atmosphere wind patterns using plumes of atmospheric particles as a lens or focusing device" to disturb weather thousands of miles away.

Speaking to William Thomas and Environment News Service, a Lycos subsidiary, Eastlund admitted, "I had looked at using this intense beam, which can be angled, to do some experiments in terms of guiding the jetstream, moving it from one spot to another. I presume it is possible, which might lend credence to these other things."

In the U.S. Air Force research study, "Weather as a Force Multiplier" issued in August, 1996, seven U.S. military officers outlined how HAARP and aerial cloud-seeding from tankers could allow U.S. aerospace forces to "own the weather" by the year 2025. Among the desired objectives were "Storm Enhancement," "Storm Modification" and "Drought Inducement."

"In the United States, weather-modification will likely become a part of national security policy with both domestic and international applications," the report goes on to say.

Within 30 years, the Air Force foresees using Weather Force Support Elements with "the necessary sensor and communication capabilities to observe, detect, and act on weather-modification requirements to support U.S. military objectives" by using airborne cloud generation and seeding techniques, the 1996 Air Force report says.

But on its HAARP website, the U.S. Navy says, "The HAARP facility will not affect the weather. Transmitted energy in the frequency ranges that will be used by HAARP is subject to negligible absorption in either the troposphere or the stratosphere - the two levels of the atmosphere that produce the earth's weather. Electromagnetic interactions only occur in the near-vacuum of the rarefied region above about 70 km known as the ionosphere."

Still, according to the Air Force's 1996 report, other routine weather-modification missions will deploy "cirrus shields" formed by the chemtrails of high-flying aircraft "to deny enemy visual and infrared surveillance."

Once fully developed the HAARP facility will consist of 180 antennas on a total land area of about 33 acres will produce

approximately 3.6 million watts of radio frequency power, the HAARP website states. The Air Force says HAARP transmitters have been designed to operate "very linearly so that they will not produce radio interference to other users of the radio spectrum."

Farmer guesses that besides its obvious tactical military applications, aerial-seeding of contrail-clouds aligned in HAARP's characteristic grid-patterns could be part of a secret U.S. government initiative to address the global weather crisis brought about by atmospheric warming.

Dr. Len Horowitz, "Conspiracy Theorist"

You're sick. Your nose is stuffy, your body aches, you're sweaty, and you don't have enough energy to get out of bed. It's not the flu - it's a conspiracy. At least, that's what Dr. Len Horowitz says.

Over the past 10 years, Horowitz has become America's most controversial medical authority. A university-trained medical researcher, Horowitz, 48, charges that elements of the United States government are conspiring with major pharmaceutical companies to make large segments of the population sick. More than that, he charges that these same conspirators created the AIDS epidemic to kill Blacks, Hispanics and gays. And if that's not enough, Horowitz argues that Adolph Hitler created the New World Order to fulfill his twisted dream of world domination.

Horowitz has made these claims in a series of books, videos, public appearances and radio talk shows. Today, Horowitz is best known as one of the most vocal opponents of government-mandated vaccines. He believes that vaccine manufacturers have purposely contaminated their products with a wide range of exotic viruses, including funguses developed by the United States military. He believes contaminated vaccines were intentionally used to create the AIDS epidemic.

Despite his 'wild' claims, Horowitz has a serious academic background. After he received a doctorate in dentistry from Tufts University, he was awarded a fellowship to do behavioral research at the University of Rochester. Horowitz later earned a Master of Public Health degree in behavioral science from Harvard University and a Masters degree in health education from Beacon College. He has also served on the faculties of Tufts University, Harvard University, and Leslie College's Institute for the Arts and Human Development. His published research reports have appeared in a diverse array of scientific, professional, and lay periodicals ranging from "American Health" and "Wellness Management" magazines to the "Journal of Patient Education and Counseling," the "Journal of AIDS Patient Care" and the "British Dental Journal."

Horowitz has traveled the country for years, speaking at both his own seminars and at survivalist-oriented Preparedness Expos, where he has appeared before large, enthusiastic crowds. A dynamic public speaker, Horowitz has presented his conspiracy theories to hundreds of thousands of people over the past decade, personally selling his books and tapes before and after his presentations. He has also appeared on numerous talk radio shows, including the nationally broadcast, locally produced "Art Bell Show".

Speaking to Jim Redden of The Konformist last year, Horowitz pulled no punches on the subject of chemtrails: "I believe the chemtrails are responsible for a chemical intoxication of the public, which would then cause a general immune suppression, low grade to high grade, depending on exposure. An immune dysfunction, which would then allow people to become susceptible to opportunistic infections."

Asked if he believes that high-flying planes are, in fact, spraying something on the population, Horowitz responds: "There's no question that it's real. I first began to investigate chemtrails when some were sprayed over my home in Northern Idaho. I took pictures of them, and then contacted the Environmental Protection Agency of the state. When I contacted their directors, they were clueless and referred me to the Air Force. They then got me in touch with Centers for Disease Control Toxicology, and after about a week I received a letter from one of their chief toxicologists saying, indeed there was some amount of ethylene dibromide in the jet fuel."

Ethylene dibromide is a known human chemical carcinogen that was removed from unleaded gasoline because of its cancer-causing effects. Now suddenly it has appeared in the jet fuel that apparently high-altitude military aircraft are emitting.

But why would a known carcinogen be added to jet fuel after being removed from automotive fuel?

According to the Horowitz conspiracy theory, when you examine who owns the fuel, who are the fuel company directors, you enter into the realm of the Rockefeller family and the royal families - Standard Oil and British Petroleum. And what are their other agendas?

"Suddenly now you see their documents, showing that they have historically funded eugenics, racial hygiene, genocide, depopulation, family planning, maternal and child health - where they make and deliver vaccines - and contaminated blood supplies. These are the 'banksters', the same people who run the blood banking as well as the money banking industries," says Horowitz.

The Rockefellers monopolized American medicine in the 1920s. They, along with I.G. Farben, Germany's leading industrial organization, held the monopoly on the world's chemical and pharmaceutical industries.

Extensive documentation by Dr. Len Horowitz in the Journal Of Degenerative Diseases

link several giant pharmaceutical corporations, the US, Canadian and British military, and powerful families in the US and Britain with 70 years of research and clandestine testing of increasingly sophisticated and "stealthy" bioweapons capable of reducing populations.

While there is as yet no link between these ongoing, documented programs of population reduction and the chemtrails phenomenon, it is striking that spreading outbreaks of flu-like respiratory infections have been traced by Horowitz and others to deliberate and/or accidental releases into North American bloodstreams through vaccines as well as public exposures to industry and military produced carcinogens, like EDB

"These 'weaponized' agents target the elderly and other immune-compromised victims whose deaths go largely unremarked," Horowitz explains.

"The U.S. government has a long history of denying inexcusable covert operations. These are the people who told you about the joys of nuclear radiation, that Agent Orange could defoliate a tropical jungle overnight but was harmless to humans. This is the same government that secretly experimented on its citizens with everything from syphilis to LSD, concludes Horowitz.

The Pentagon would now have the public believe that the mass sightings of chemtrails over Las Vegas and much of North America are collective hallucinations, even though the boys at the government's Lawrence Livermore experimental lab admit that they've discussed massive aerial spraying and run computer simulations on the effects of weather modification for military and peacetime purposes.

Commenting under condition of anonymity a Tribune confidential source speculates: "Whatever this material is, it cannot be good for us. Moreover, it represents another example of Americans taking their liberty and well being for granted. It may be that weather agencies, NASA and National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration know enough to keep their mouths shut."

"The overall scope and agenda behind chemtrails - Operation Clover Leaf, Operation Red Sky, Operation Rain Dance - the code names for these ops - intertwines several overall objectives deemed imperative by the real power in DC, which is the National Security Administration. It should be noted that most of the intel groups that are involved in domestic control are, in varying degrees, in-the-loop on this business and are actively working with the Office of Naval Intelligence and the NSA in seeing this program succeed," concludes the source.

The chemtrails in the skies above Las Vegas are a most troublesome enigma.

---

ADDENDUM FROM ENEMY OF THE STATE



SUGGESTED RESOURCE LINKS:

http://www.willthomas.net/

http://www.carnicom.com/contrails.htm

http://www.lightwatcher.com/chemtrails/smoking_gun.html

http://www.chemtrailpatrol.com/cp_chemtrails_menu.htm

http://www.this-must-stop.com/index.htm

http://www.bariumblues.com

http://www.skyhighway.com/~chemtrails/

http://www.chemtrailcentral.com/

http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?ChannelID=42

http://www.holmestead.ca/chemtrails/haik.html

-

VIDEO: Who Else Wants To Know The Truth About Chemtrails?
http://www.futuretechtoday.net/chemtrails/

-

S. 517: A bill to establish a Weather Modification Operations
and Research Board, and for other purposes
http://lnk.nu/64.233.167.104/6a6

-

SUGGESTED RESOURCE ARTICLES:

http://www.wnho.net/aerosol_radiative_climate.htm

http://educate-yourself.org/ct/

http://www.wnho.net/methodic_demise.htm

http://members.aol.com/doewatch/chemtrailslite.html

http://educate-yourself.org/cn/chemtraildisinfoozoneanduvcontrol.shtml

http://www.rense.com/general59/aerosolandelectromag.htm

http://www.rense.com/general53/chemsd.htm

http://www.weatherwars.info/

http://www.weatherwars.info/pilotsview.htm

http://www.fas.org/spp/military/docops/usaf/2025/

http://www.afa.org/magazine/Dec1996/1296af2025.asp

http://www.chemtrail.de/html/jack_blood.html

http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?noframes;read=51909

http://www.airapparent.ca/library/full_text/chemtrails_fortean_view.htm

WAYNE MADSEN REPORT

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/

November 21, 2005

The Left-Progressive movement is on the march around the world. The neo-cons and their assorted allies are on the run. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon saw the writing on the wall. He announced he is quitting the Likud Party, which he helped to create. That decision will fracture the Israeli right and leave rudderless the neo-cons in Washington, London, Rome, Canberra, and other capitals.

In another dramatic development, Israel's Labor Party dumped the pedantic Shimon Peres and replaced him with social democratic labor union firebrand Amir Peretz, a decision welcomed in Damascus, Cairo, and elsewhere in the Arab world. Peretz is an Arabic-speaking native of Morocco and is on very good terms with Israel's one million-strong Arab community, especially the Arab working class. He says he will scrap the ridiculous pro-Likud American "Road Map" and negotiate directly with the Palestinian Authority. The Likud, which will now be headed by neo-con radical Binyamin Netanyahu, will drift even further to the right and irrelevancy. Look for Peretz to squeeze the Russian-Ukrainian-Israel Mafia of wealthy Russian and other former Soviet gangsters who have seized control of Israel through their alliance with the corrupt Likud Party.

Sharon obviously read the tea leaves and is jumping a sinking corrupt right wing ship dominated by gangsters and religious fanatics (sounds a lot like the Bush administration). Sharon is forming his own "centrist" political party with the ousted Shimon Peres, deeply fracturing the Israeli Right and consolidating the left around Peretz's Labor Party.

The purge of Peres from Labor is being echoed in the U.S. Democratic Party, where Rep. Jack Murtha's anti-war speech last week is putting the spotlight on leading Democrats who oppose a withdrawal from Iraq -- namely, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Joe Lieberman and Representatives Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer. All are "neo con lite" and quikcly becoming irrelevant as the Democratic Party finds its anti-war footing thanks to Murtha, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Russ Feingold, and others.

In Sri Lanka, leftist Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse won the presidency on a platform of nationalization of the economy, a direct slap in the face of the World Bank of Paul Wolfowitz, which abhors state control of any portion of any national economy. His defeated opponent was a free market proponent. Sri Lanka now joins neighboring India (and its ruling Congress Party) in an emerging bloc of leftist governments in South Asia. Seven opposition parties have held talks with Communist rebels in Nepal with a view that Nepal may soon relegate its fascist pro-American King to the ash heap of history.



New Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksae sporting a red scarf. The color red (not as it is viewed in the United States but as the color representing the people and the working class) is growing in popularity worldwide



A new progressive-left day is dawning

In Europe, British Prime Minister Tony Blair faces a rebellion in his own Labor Party and possible impeachment over the Iraq war. France is turning against the right-wing neo-con Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and the Socialists, Communists, and Greens remain strong at the regional and municipal levels. Italy's neo-fascist Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is on the electoral ropes from Italy's leftist coalition, including the Communists. In Norway, the Socialists beat a conservative Prime Minister with ties to the Christian Right in the United States.

It is Latin America that is leading the global progressive resurgence. Michelle Bachelet, tortured by the U.S.-supported Pinochet regime is the front runner to become the next President of Chile. After Pinochet's coup and after being tortured, she moved to the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) to rebuild the Chilean Socialist Party. Bachelet is 24 percentage points ahead of her conservative and global neocon-backed rival. In next year's Mexican presidential election, former Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, is the front runner to succeed conservative Vicente Fox. The election is scheduled for next July 2. Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez is as strong as ever and continues to berate Bush, calling him "Mr. Danger."

Chavez and a phalanx of Latin American leaders of Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Brazil blocked Bush's Free Trade Area of the Americas pro-corporate contrivance at the recent Americas summit in Argentina. In Bolivia, coca growers' union leader Evo Morales leads in polls for the Dec. 18 presidential election. He will reverse privatization and begin a policy of state control of the energy industry. In Nicaragua, Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega stands a good chance of becoming the country's president after elections next year.

The signs are unmistakable that the progressive left is on the march throughout the United States and around the world. Meanwhile, Bush couldn't make it out of a door in Beijing.



---

"Our mission is socialist because it puts social aspects first. Capitalists put capital first." - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez

http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=8117

November 22, 2005

Cheney: WMD Criticism 'Dishonest and Reprehensible'

by Jim Lobe

Amid growing pressure to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq and mounting charges by Democrats that senior administration officials misled the nation into war there, Vice President Dick Cheney appears to have taken charge of defending his boss and taking on the critics.

In his second public appearance in less than a week, Cheney told a specially invited audience at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Monday that suggestions "by some U.S. senators" that President George W. Bush or any member of his administration "purposely misled the American people" before the war was "dishonest and reprehensible."

"The flaws in the intelligence are plain enough in hindsight, but any suggestion that prewar information was distorted, hyped, or fabricated by the leader of the nation is utterly false," he said. "This is revisionism of the most corrupt and shameless variety."

But in what was a clear attempt to refocus the debate in a less partisan way, Cheney, who left AEI without taking any questions from the audience, focused more on the possibly disastrous consequences of a premature U.S. withdrawal that he predicted would bring al-Qaeda to power in Iraq.

"Would the United States and other free nations be better off or worse off with [Abu Musab al-] Zarqawi, [Osama] bin Laden, and [Ayman al-] Zawahiri in control of Iraq?" he asked. "Would be we safer or less safe with Iraq ruled by men intent on the destruction of our country?"

As indicated by his hasty departure from the podium in what could only be considered the friendliest audience imaginable, Cheney's leadership and visibility in the administration's counteroffensive represent something of a gamble.

Not only have the vice president's public approval ratings fallen further and faster than Bush's in recent months – according to one recent poll, only 19 percent of respondents said they held a "favorable" opinion of the vice president – but his office has also been identified by some former officials, as well as Democrats, as being the focal point for the manipulation of intelligence before the war.

Cheney's strong opposition, which he has so far failed to discuss publicly, to pending legislation that would ban torture and inhumane treatment of suspected terrorists has also made him a lightning rod for growing numbers of Democratic and Republican lawmakers.

Cheney's appearance Monday was the latest in a series over the past 10 days by top U.S. officials, including Bush himself, Rumsfeld, and national security adviser Stephen Hadley. The purpose was twofold: to rebut growing charges that the administration manipulated the prewar intelligence on former President Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons-of-mass-destruction (WMD) programs and ties to al-Qaeda to rally the country to war, and to counter growing pressure in Congress to begin withdrawing substantial numbers of troops of Iraq after next month's elections.

While the two are not directly related, recent public opinion polls show that as a majority of the U.S. public has come to believe that the administration did indeed exaggerate the intelligence, a slightly greater majority has come to favor withdrawing U.S. troops sooner rather than later.

The administration was caught off guard early last week after a majority of Republican senators joined Democrats in voting for a resolution that requires it to establish benchmarks for transferring security functions to Iraqis during 2006 and report on progress towards meeting those benchmarks.

While that was widely interpreted as a Republican vote of little confidence in Bush's handling of the war, passions reached a high point late last week after a senior Democratic hawk, Rep. John "Jack" Murtha, called for Washington to withdraw its roughly 150,000 troops from Iraq over a six-month period beginning after the Dec. 15 elections. Murtha's plan would leave a "quick-reaction" force and an "over-the-horizon" Marine presence to prevent al-Qaeda or its affiliates from taking over Iraq or using its territory.

The administration and Republican lawmakers reacted initially with fury, accusing the highly decorated Marine combat veteran of "cutting and running" and giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

After a raucous debate in the House of Representatives over these attacks on Nov. 18, however, party leaders appeared to realize that taking on someone with Murtha's record and stature was a fool's errand, as an unnamed Republican aide told the Wall Street Journal. "If the House of Representatives want to make Jack Murtha the face of the Democratic Party," he said, "then Republicans will really be trounced next year."

That appeared to be the assessment by the White House as well. By Sunday, Bush himself was calling Murtha a "fine man, a good man" and insisted that the pros and cons of withdrawal constituted a legitimate subject of debate.

In his AEI address, Cheney followed the same line. Murtha, he said, was "a good man, a Marine, a patriot, and he's taking a clear stand in an entirely legitimate discussion."

The rest of his speech, however, was boilerplate Republican fire and brimstone, directed particularly against critics who charge that the administration hyped the prewar intelligence and against the "self-defeating pessimism" of those who favor withdrawal.

"The [terrorists'] only chance for victory is for us to walk away from the fight," he said. "They have contempt for our values, they doubt our strength, and they believe that America will lose our nerve and let down our guard," citing a letter purportedly written by the group's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and allegedly intercepted by U.S. forces last July.

"But this nation has made a decision; we will not retreat in the face of brutality, and we will never live at the mercy of tyrants or terrorists," he declared.

Consistent with previous attacks on the critics, Cheney argued that both Democrats and Republicans agreed at the time that Congress voted to authorize military action against Hussein in October 2002 that Iraq's WMD programs constituted a "threat," particularly after the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks.

But, unlike recent attacks, he did not assert that lawmakers in Congress had seen the same intelligence that the administration had before the war, a particularly inflammatory charge that has been strongly rejected by Democrats, much of the media, and even some Republicans in recent days.

And while he insisted that the administration had handled the intelligence in good faith, he confined his remarks solely to the prewar assessment of Hussein's WMD programs, omitting any mention of his own repeated assertions, long rejected by U.S. intelligence agencies, that Hussein worked closely with al-Qaeda, possibly in preparing or sponsoring the 9/11 attacks themselves.

Cheney's decision to harp more on the prospect of an al-Qaeda takeover of Iraq suggests that he and his neoconservative supporters believe that prospect to be the strongest barrier to a total collapse of their Iraq policy. In a series of articles and media appearances over the last several days, prominent neoconservatives, such as AEI fellow Richard Perle, and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, have made the same argument.

"What would be intolerable would be to lose to the terrorists in Iraq," wrote Kristol and another prominent neoconservative, Robert Kagan, in The Weekly Standard's lead editorial this week. "Immediate withdrawal from Iraq is a prescription for catastrophe."

At the same time, the fact that the war's defenders have moved so quickly to this argument is testimony to how swiftly the political climate has changed here.

(Inter Press Service)

---

Cheney's Erratic, Bizarre and Intolerable Accusations to Cover His Pathological Behavior Pose an Immediate Threat and Danger to America. Impeachment and Forced Psychiatric Hospitalization or Imprisonment are the Only Options Available to Save This Nation. He is a Desperate Cornered Rat Who Will Stop at Nothing. - BuzzFlash.com 11/22/05

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1072-1878612,00.html

Guest contributors

The Times November 19, 2005

A million martyrs await the call

Kevin Toolis

THEY WERE not hard to spot — the dead tanks — as they littered the sides of the main Baghdad-Tehran highway deep inside Iran. Heavy twisted monsters, blasted by artillery, mounted on stone plinths like trophies as a warning to any other army that came to fight and die here, as Saddam’s divisions had done. After 40 I stopped counting.

On the Iranian border itself the little town of Mehran had become a shrine to martyrdom and death. Like a mini-Stalingrad, it had been razed three times during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88, its streets filled with the corpses of Iranian child soldiers sacrificed in human-wave assaults; but in the end the Iranians expelled the invader at an awesome human cost.

Saddam has gone, but Mehran is once more in the front line of potential war. The Iran-Iraq border is just a few miles to the west of the town on a flat plain — ideal tank country. The border itself is marked by a meandering stream but on either side now are the opposing armies of the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran, all waiting for orders from above. If the Americans do ever invade then it will be here, as the shortest distance to Tehran from Baghdad; and that little stream the Rubicon for a war of unimaginable consequences.

In No10 the tom-toms of war of war are drumming again as Tony Blair warns that he will not tolerate the meddling hand of Iran in the affairs of Iraq. In Washington the neoconservative tom-toms are even louder, warning that the West must “surgically strike” at Iran’s hidden nuclear facilities and robustly challenge Iranian state-sponsored terrorism. Nor it seems can the EU countenance Iran’s rise as a nuclear power either. A new nuclear crisis now looms later this month with the threat of UN Security Council sanctions over Iran’s controversial nuclear programme.

In Tehran the hardline President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has done little for foreign relations with his chilling call for Israel to be wiped off the map. We are, it seems, close to the on-ramp for another spectacular confrontation in the Middle East.

But before we succumb again to the hysterical warnings of our leaders it is worth seeking a cold-eyed measure of this new enemy they would have us fight. Iraq and Iran are very different. Iran is nearly four times the size of its neighbour and six times the size of Britain. How could an already undermanned American army expect to control such a huge territory?

Nor will those already fabled “surgical strikes” by the US Air Force deliver a decisive blow to Iran’s growing nuclear capability. Iran’s nuclear plants are already well hidden across its huge land mass. And all that a partial strike will do is unleash an unstoppable war without significantly damaging the enemy’s capability.

Iran’s population at 70 million is three times that of Iraq’s and it has one of the youngest populations in the world. Iran’s standing army is estimated by the CIA to be 520,000-strong, but each year 817,000 17-year-old Iranian boys are potentially available for military service. That is an awful lot of martyrs or suicide bombers.

The Iranians are Persians, not Arabs, a consideration entirely absent from most neoconservative analyses of Iran’s supposed weakness. Persian imperial dynasties date back to Cyrus the Great, around 530BC, and Xerxes, 486-465BC, who plagued the Greeks.Unlike the chaotic Arab shambles of Saddam’s Iraq, Iran remains a hierarchical society where the vast majority live in rigid terror of the authorities above them, religious or imperial, and will utterly obey their commands.

In many ways Ayatollah Khomeini, who came to power in 1979, was the greatest Persian Emperor, fusing his own version of Shia Islam into a state ideology. And during the Iran-Iraq war he revived the ancient Shia tradition of martyrdom: hundreds of thousands of soldiers, many of them children, died in futile suicidal assaults over minefields. “The Tree of Islam has to be watered with the blood of martyrs,” said Khomeini without regret.

Martyrdom is still the state religion. Huge posters of the war dead and Palestinian and Lebanese suicide bombers dominate every surface in Tehran and every speech of the political leadership. Any attempt to threaten or invade Iran will be a huge asset to a regime longing to re-energise its faded legitimacy among its own downtrodden population. Invasion by the Great Satan would be a godsend.

Nor should we underestimate Iran’s capacity to punish its enemies at long range. In 1982 Iran sent a thousand revolutionary guards to Lebanon to spread the Islamic revolution. The plan failed but Iran was behind three of the greatest acts of postwar terrorism: the American Embassy bombing in Beirut and the blowing up of the US Marine and French paratrooper barracks by suicide bombers in 1983. The French and the Americans left Lebanon in defeat soon afterwards.

Iraq is a mess but widening the conflict by attacking Iran would be an act of madness. That little stream on the western edge of Mehran is a Rubicon we must never cross.

Kevin Toolis is a terrorism expert and a documentary film-maker

---

"He emptied the treasury and, again, spilled the blood of a full division of American soldiers and countless innocent Iraqi civilians only to find out Saddam Hussein was a threat to nobody but his dentist." - Paul Sperry, Ever-Evolving Excuses for War http://www.antiwar.com/sperry/?articleid=8105