"...And like Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame Wilson, who stood in the way of the neo-con efforts to trump up bogus weapons of mass destruction (WMD) intelligence against Saddam Hussein, Ford, although not as high ranking and high profile, was also deemed a threat to the Bush administration..."

WAYNE MADSEN REPORT

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/Ford.htm

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Another vicious Bush administration attack on a U.S. intelligence professional

By Wayne Madsen

A WMR Exclusive, Copyright 2005

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Greenbelt, Maryland -- December 1, 2005 -- For former National Security Agency (NSA) analyst Kenneth W. Ford, what occurred on January 11, 2004 was like a scene out of the movie "Enemy of the State." Ford, a tall, slim, intelligent, and well-mannered four year member of the uniformed branch of the U.S. Secret Service who guarded President Bill Clinton and George W. Bush at the White House and even conversed with Clinton during late night walks with first pet "Buddy," found himself face-to-face in the basement of his Waldorf, Maryland home with abusive and threatening agents of the FBI and NSA. Ford's ordeal was not merely life imitating art, it was, and continues to be, a living nightmare.

Ford was being accused of illegally possessing a cache of classified NSA documents at his home. In reality, Ford had been set up by NSA's Security and Counterintelligence Directorate and FBI after they had contracted the services of a Florida woman with a long criminal record and an income stream that can only be attributed to her past use by the FBI as a professional confidential informant (CI).

Ford had been an up-and-coming NSA intern/analyst during the 9-11 attacks, Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, and the ramping up to the Iraq war and the war itself. As both an intern and a computer whiz, Ford worked in various parts of the massive signals intelligence complex: the Cyber Incident Analysis Division (X72) in the Information Assurance Directorate and in NSA main operations. He transferred from NSA's operations (Signals Intelligence) Directorate (SID), where he worked in the Iraqi section (called the "Iraqi shop"), to the Technical Exploitation Center (TEC), a highly classified building on the NSA campus dominated by a large white "golf ball" or radome on its roof. Two boxes, one  containing his unclassified files, notebooks, VHS tapes, and office supplies and the other containing classified files and documents, were transferred by Ford's supervisor and NSA's internal classified material control personnel from Ops to TEC.

At Ford's trial today at the U.S. Court House in Greenbelt, Maryland, FBI agents with Evidence Response Team testified that they took possession of two boxes of classified material at Ford's home on the evening of January 11, 2004. However, none of the FBI agents could say how the boxes made their way from NSA's classified material custodians and internal mail handling system to the kitchen in Ford's Waldorf home. NSA does not seem to have the internal records that such a transfer of classified material within the agency would have normally generated. In addition, the FBI could not comment on how some of the documents from the boxes were found scattered about Ford's home -- in the kitchen pantry, in his bedroom, and, very curiously, in the suitcase of a mysterious house guest who is central to the case.

To answer that question, it is time to introduce one Tonya Tucker, a Florida resident with no visible means of support who met Ford through a web site called Blackplanet.com, which runs a dating service for African-American professional singles. Ford and Tucker knew each other for some nine weeks. But that is all the time it took for Ford to become ensnared in the same web of government deceit, corruption, and retaliation that has damaged or destroyed the careers of honest and hard working intelligence and law enforcement professionals in the NSA, CIA, FBI, Defense Intelligence Agency, Army, Air Force, Homeland Security Department, and other agencies.

And like Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame Wilson, who stood in the way of the neo-con efforts to trump up bogus weapons of mass destruction (WMD) intelligence against Saddam Hussein, Ford, although not as high ranking and high profile, was also deemed a threat to the Bush administration. While assigned to the SID's "Iraqi shop" at NSA, Ford authored an intelligence analysis report on Iraqi WMDs -- which stated simply, that WMDs did not exist. That report eventually wound up on the desks of the major perpetrators of the war -- Vice President Dick Cheney, his indicted Chief of Staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and other White House Iraq Group (WHIG) players. Ford went from being an NSA analyst, to an "Enemy of the Bush State." The retaliation was as sloppy as it was venal.

Tucker, who once told Ford she was "paid to lie," falsely claimed to be an attorney, an employee of the consulting firm Bearing Point, and a Defense Department contractor for SPAWAR (Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command) with a Top Secret clearance. NSA Special Agent Robert McCaslin confronted Ford on the night of his arrest with an allegation that he and FBI agents found a classified NSA document in Tucker's suitcase in Ford's home. How a classified document could have ended up in Tucker's suitcase is a mystery, considering she had no security clearance. It is also noteworthy that the FBI did not arrest Tucker for carrying a classified document in her suitcase from her hotel to Ford's residence. Also suspicious is the fact that while FBI agents were quick to seize the two boxes of classified material they failed to secure Tucker's suitcase, in which one of the classified documents was found stuffed in a FEDEX envelope. The FBI later said they simply "forgot" to seize the suitcase.

Tucker meets all the criteria for an FBI C.I. or confidential informant. While staying in Maryland, Tucker resided in a deluxe suite at the Homestead Suites hotel in Annapolis, where such rooms currently cost $128.99 per day. Tucker, who has been arrested for credit and check violations in Florida, paid for the room with an American Express card, then a VISA card, cash, and finally, a cashier's check. Two Sun Bank receipts from Florida were discovered in the same suitcase that contained one of the classified documents: one for $5000 deposited in the checking account of her father and the other for $270 deposited to her own account.

Tonya Tucker, is also known as Kayla Walker, Tonya Stewart, and seventeen other aliases. Tucker was arrested in Florida in December 2002 and placed on probation until 2007. However, the terms of that probation were suddenly revoked in 2003. Her rap sheet includes arrests for credit card and check fraud and possession of fraudulent documents. Although there is no record of Tucker having worked for Bearing Point, phone records indicate she made two calls to Bearing Point's Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania office on January 9, 2004, two days prior to Ford's arrest. It is also significant that Tucker had in her possession the phone number of an agent of NSA's Security and Counterintelligence Associate Directorate (ADS&CI), a number that is not readily available to members of the public, let alone someone with a criminal record. In addition, Tucker's Homestead Suites records indicate that her bills were paid by a "Universal Technology Systems." A Google search shows the only company with a similar name is "Universal Systems & Technology" of Centreville, Virginia, a company that is contracted to the FBI, DIA, and the Justice Department, specializes in maritime and aviation security, and which has an office in Tucker's hometown of Orlando and another in Norfolk, Virginia, where Tucker traveled on occasion, according to sources close to the case.

According to the government prosecutors, the documents contained in the two boxes planted in Ford's home were what one could expect to find on an NSA's employee's desk: Top Secret documents with header and footer classifications, along with lateral markings: TOP SECRET/COMINT/NOFORN, TOP SECRET/COMINT/X1, and SECRET/COMINT. Some of the documents, obviously over-classified, dealt with training courses, NSA's intern program, and such subjects as "Global Network," "Intern Checklist," and "NET-A." One document dealt with a classified NSA database known by its cover term PINWALE.

Assistant U.S. Attorney David A. Salem curiously placed a great deal of relevance on the issue of Ford having a paper shredder in his home as if that is unusual during a time when more and more people are buying shredders to destroy mail and other paperwork containing the type of personal information used for identity theft.

Ford, as required by NSA regulations, earlier reported a threatening e-mail sent to him at his America On Line address a month and a half before his arrest. The e-mail was sent by a "Dr. Takiya," who claimed to be a friend of Tucker. "Takiya" threatened Ford that his security clearance would soon be revoked.

Realizing that NSA's penchant for outsourcing to private contractors meant that he could increase his salary while continuing to do work for NSA, Ford opted to leave the agency on January 5, 2004 for Northrop Grumman. Arrested in January 2004 and not indicted until May of this year, in the interim Ford was fired by both Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin after their government clients exerted pressure on the firms.

In addition to the charge of illegally posessing classified material, the government has also charged Ford with making a false statement on his Lockheed Martin security clearance application. The government maintains that Ford never mentioned his arrest by the FBI. However, a close perusal of a copy of the application form plainly shows that in answer to the question about ever having been arrested, Ford checked "Yes," with an explanatory statement of  "2004/01/12 False Arrest. No police record, No charge." Further, Ford explained he was falsely accused by a woman who contacted the FBI.

The nightmare for Ford has extended to his parents, Kenneth Sr. and Gloria. Mr. Ford worked for the U.S. Postal Service at the Brentwood Postal Facility in Washington, DC, the trans-shipment point for the anthrax-laden letters that were sent to the Democratic leadership in the US Senate, a still unresolved bio-terrorist act that disrupted the legislature during the time the draconian USA-PATRIOT Act was being forced by the Bush administration. Two of Ford's co-workers in the processing section died as a direct result of anthrax inhalation.

Kenneth Ford, Sr. actually retired the same day -- October 15, 2001 -- that the anthrax letters came through Brentwood. However, he was still required to take Cipro because of possible exposure to the deadly bacteria. A number of Brentwood employees later became ill from the after effects of either anthrax exposure or adverse reactions to Cipro and other antibiotics. Mrs. Ford is also a longtime Federal government employee. The Fords cannot understand how the government could be so callous in setting up their son, their only child, in a carefully contrived and planned trap.

The Ford family joins a growing list of families -- the Wilsons, the Edmonds, the Tices, the Ritters, the Sheehans, and many, many others, who have greatly suffered merely for doing what is right for America and being good citizens.

SIDEBAR:

WMR has in the past reported on the severe abuses carried out by members of NSA's private security force, the Associate Directorate for Security and Counter-intelligence (ADS&CI). The virtually independent Stasi-like force has terrorized NSA's work force with psychological abuse, coercive tactics, sexual harassment, and frame ups. The American taxpayers are paying for the salaries of these individuals and their various toys that include Humvees with DVD players. In the public interest, it is time for America to get to know these folks much better. WMR has obtained a For Official Use Only (FOUO) organization chart of Q2 (NSA Personnel Security) from January of this year. Informed sources say the chart remains relatively up-to-date.


For easier reading go to IMAGE SOURCE link OR the article link directly.

http://lnk.nu/nytimes.com/6md.html

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December 2, 2005

In C.I.A. Leak, More Talks With Journalists

By RICHARD W. STEVENSON and DOUGLAS JEHL

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WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 - A conversation between Karl Rove's lawyer and a journalist for Time magazine led Mr. Rove to change his testimony last year to the grand jury in the C.I.A. leak case, people knowledgeable about the sequence of events said Thursday.

Mr. Rove's lawyer, Robert D. Luskin, spoke in the summer or early fall of 2004 with Viveca Novak, a reporter for Time. In that conversation, Mr. Luskin heard from Ms. Novak that a colleague at the magazine, Matthew Cooper, might have interviewed Mr. Rove about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the case, the people said.

Time reported this week that the prosecutor in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, has summoned Ms. Novak to testify about a conversation she had with Mr. Luskin, but provided no explanation of what Mr. Fitzgerald might be looking for. The account provided Thursday by people with knowledge of the discussions between Ms. Novak and Mr. Luskin suggests that Mr. Fitzgerald is still trying to determine whether Mr. Rove was fully forthcoming with investigators and whether he altered his grand jury testimony about his dealings with reporters only after learning that one, Mr. Cooper, might identify him as a source.

Ms. Novak declined to comment, as did Mr. Luskin and Randall Samborn, Mr. Fitzgerald's spokesman. Jim Kelly, Time's managing editor, said he would not comment on the matter. Mr. Cooper and James Carney, the magazine's Washington bureau chief, also declined to comment.

The people who agreed to discuss the case were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter and could face reprisals if they did so. Ms. Novak's involvement is the latest twist in a case that has cast light on the close relationships between journalists, lawyers and government officials in Washington. I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, is the only person who has been charged with a crime, in an indictment that says he misled a grand jury and investigators about his conversations in 2003 with journalists about the Central Intelligence Agency officer, Valerie Wilson.

Lawyers in the case have said that Mr. Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, remains in legal jeopardy because his initial statements to investigators and to the grand jury were not accurate.

Months before the conversation between Ms. Novak and Mr. Luskin, Mr. Rove testified to the grand jury that he had held a conversation about the C.I.A. officer with only one journalist, Robert D. Novak, the syndicated columnist. Mr. Rove did not disclose that he had also spoken to Mr. Cooper either in his first grand jury testimony, in February 2004, or in an earlier interview with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

But after his conversation with Ms. Novak, who is not related to the columnist, Mr. Luskin asked Mr. Rove to have the White House search for any record of a discussion between Mr. Rove and Mr. Cooper around the time that Ms. Wilson's identity became public in July 2003.

The search turned up an e-mail message from Mr. Rove to another senior White House official, Stephen J. Hadley, who was the deputy national security adviser, that recounted a conversation between Mr. Rove and Mr. Cooper. On Oct. 14, 2004, Mr. Rove went before the grand jury again to alter his earlier account, by saying he had also discussed the C.I.A. officer with Mr. Cooper.

Associates of Mr. Rove said that he did not initially recall the conversation with Mr. Cooper amid the hundreds of calls and e-mail messages he deals with each day, and that once the message to Mr. Hadley was uncovered he took it to prosecutors and testified fully.

They have said that Mr. Rove had signed a waiver to allow reporters to testify about their confidential discussions with him and that he testified about his conversation with Mr. Cooper long before Mr. Cooper did.

But Mr. Fitzgerald appears to be evaluating whether Mr. Rove came forward with the e-mail and his new testimony only after it became apparent that Mr. Cooper might be compelled to testify about it. It is not clear precisely what Ms. Novak told Mr. Luskin, or what the context for their conversation had been.

People involved in the case said that at a minimum Ms. Novak communicated to Mr. Luskin that Mr. Rove might face legal problems because of potential testimony from Mr. Cooper, her colleague. They said Ms. Novak had told Mr. Luskin that Mr. Cooper might have been in contact with Mr. Rove about Ms. Wilson in the days before her identity became public. Mr. Cooper helped write an article on Time's Web site in July 2003 that was among the first, after Mr. Novak's column, to divulge Ms. Wilson's identity, using her maiden name, Valerie Plame.

The article said "some administration officials" had told Time and the syndicated columnist Robert Novak that "Valerie Plame is a C.I.A. official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction."

The article also noted that she was the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former diplomat who had recently written an article in the Op-Ed page of The New York Times questioning one of the rationales, on Iraq's weapons program, offered by the Bush administration for the Iraq war. Mr. Wilson based his criticism on a trip he had taken to Niger for the C.I.A.

More than a month after he indicted Mr. Libby, Mr. Fitzgerald continues to weigh whether to indict Mr. Rove on charges related to lying or misleading investigators. He appears to be focused most intently on two months in the late summer and fall of 2004 and the events leading up to Mr. Rove's altering his testimony.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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"If only lies left semen stains." Jon Stewart, Comedy Central´s Daily Show

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8198

(NUMEROUS Supporting Links at Source URL)

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December 2, 2005

Bush's 'Great Leap Forward'

Our Great Helmsman is steering us toward disaster

by Justin Raimondo

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There is no real need for a line-by-line analysis of the speech delivered yesterday by the Trotskyite-in-chief: a succinct summary will suffice. The president's response to the polls, which show overwhelming opposition to the Iraq war, is: screw you. To those Republican members of Congress who rightly fear for their seats as election day approaches, a similar message of disdain has been delivered. It's "victory or death" – the death of the GOP, that is, which is likely to lose control of the Senate, or the House of Representatives, and quite possibly both. In this, our president resembles those suicide bombers who are wreaking havoc in Iraq: he is willing to go down in flames, supremely indifferent that innocents are consumed in the resulting conflagration.

Such fanaticism masquerades as "idealism," but is in reality a mental affliction, a kind of madness akin to megalomania in which the victim believes himself to be endowed with god-like powers. As Seymour Hersh and others relate, the president lives in a fog of "religious idealism": his apparent belief in his own near-supernatural abilities would seem to exempt him from the laws of God and man, and endow him with a mission that must be finished no matter what. The problem is that there is no end in sight, as the very sharp Karen Kwiatkowski put it recently:

"This is, in fact, unfinishable. It is unfinishable in the sense that the objective never included a U.S. military withdrawal. It is unfinishable because it was never intended to liberate Iraqis, or to ensure their self-determination. It is unfinishable because 'success' requires the ongoing maintenance of regional lines of communication and a large number of massive military bases in Mesopotamia. It is unfinishable because the invasion was conducted precisely to facilitate and create new operational missions against Syria, Saudi Arabia, and later Iran and Pakistan."

Bush and his fan club believe history will absolve him. More than a few bystanders may suffer in the process, but 20 or 30 years from now he'll be hailed as a far-seeing leader who resisted the naysayers and pulled off a stunning success – a success only visible in hindsight. His is a greatness for the ages!

As a senior White House aide once confided to writer Ron Suskind:

"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"

It is futile to argue with this administration, to debate the terms of our engagement in the Middle East – or anywhere else, for that matter. Every attempt to remind them of the facts of reality runs up against a wall of indifference to the truth: these people believe they can create their own truth, by sheer coercion. The interaction of neoconservative intellectuals and administration policymakers is, in this instance, a perfect illustration of the co-dependence of what Ayn Rand called "Attila and the Witch Doctor." As Attila moves in for the kill, the Witch Doctor rationalizes the carnage – without referring to facts, but to nebulous aims, goals, and words, words, words.

To such people, words have a mystical – even magical – significance. In the mind of an ideologue, words have the power to transform reality, to defy the laws of nature and overcome all earthly powers. Are we losing the war? Well, then, let us have more words – a presidential speech, preferably delivered before an audience of adoring Praetorians, is enough to turn the tide.

Are the insurgents gaining popular support, to the point where even the elected Iraqi government our soldiers are dying to protect has declared that Iraqis have the "right of resistance"? Well, then, the answer is to re-name them "rejectionists," denounce them as "terrorists," and insist that we will henceforth describe them as "enemies of the legitimate Iraqi government" instead of insurgents. As Arianna Huffington wittily put it, it's "victory through vocabulary." This sums up not only Bush's "victory plan" but also the radical subjectivist mindset of the War Party.

This is the essence of Bushevism – the same radical subjectivism that worships "revolutionary will" and led Mao to decree the creation of backyard steel furnaces during China's "Great Leap Forward." No steel was produced by those Maoist mini-foundries, however: instead of going forward, China slid back into a state of economic and political chaos.

As the disaster unfolded, the Maoist high command – Mao and the "Gang of Four," including his wife, C'hiang C'hing – ignored the consequences as best they could, and, through their control of the massive machinery of propaganda, managed to hold on to power, all the while painting a rosy portrait of China embarked on the road to a communist paradise.

It wasn't until the crisis reached its height, and the Chinese state apparatus started to come apart at the seams, that Mao relented and reined in the Gang – albeit not until they had inflicted much damage. It took China decades to recover from the traumatic "Cultural Revolution" inaugurated by Madame Mao and her clique.

The "Great Leap Forward" being attempted by this administration is the democratization of the entire Middle East, a goal explicitly referred to in the recently-published "Victory Plan." This document, which is nothing more than a glorified PowerPoint presentation, constantly invokes the need to inspire and otherwise assist a wave of "reform" supposedly sweeping through the region. It doesn't matter that this wave is an upsurge of enraged nationalism and religious fanaticism, inspired by opposition to the invasion of Iraq: those aren't Egyptian Jeffersonians who are being elevated to power and prominence by that nation's recent elections, but members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that combines Islamist fanaticism with a hatred of all things Western. The neoconservatives, who have been running our foreign policy since 9/11, believe in deception as a matter of policy, especially self-deception, a practice they have elevated to a high art.

The War Party, backed into a corner, is snarling its defiance at the American people: far from pulling back, they are barreling full speed ahead with their messianic mission. Led by a president who believes God has chosen him to carry out His divine will, we are headed to Syria, to Iran, and perhaps a lot further afield than that. Confronted with an increasingly assertive Congress, the strategy is to reframe the debate in terms of supporting the troops or failing to do so. This president is daring Congress to cut off the funds that make this war possible – and counting on their cowardly refusal to do so.

The gathering antiwar opposition, led by Rep. Jack Murtha – and, in the GOP, by Walter B. Jones and Ron Paul – is calling on George W. Bush to establish a timetable for withdrawal. Yet the president has made clear he's having none of it, and the ball is back in the congressional court. Congress must set the timetable, and declare: after six months, we'll cut off your funding.

A war is like any other government program, except that its destructive effects are immediately and dramatically apparent: once started, they are almost impossible to end, because so many powerful groups in society are benefiting. With the advent of the American empire, a new wing of the ruling elite – the colonial class – has emerged full-grown like Athena from the head of Zeus. Since they are almost exclusively native to Washington, D.C., and environs, they are extremely well-placed to lobby for the continuation of an imperialist foreign policy. The colonial class is made up of administrators, policy wonks, publicists, and party hacks – such as the Lincoln Group, which, as the Los Angeles Times reported, is funneling "news" stories to Iraqi newspapers on behalf of the U.S. government, planting items to give a good "spin" to the occupation.

Too clever by half, these geniuses have come up with a novel method of implanting an pro-American regime in hostile soil: push anti-Americanism for all it's worth. This is done indirectly, in the first place, by bombing civilians – in what Seymour Hersh calls the great unreported story of this war, bombing raids are causing massive civilian casualties and creating enemies out of the people we pledged to "liberate." When we aren't bombing them, we're using Iraqi civilians for target practice – and videotaping ourselves doing it. And as the tide of anti-Americanism reaches tsunami proportions, we've put the scribes of the Lincoln Group to work invoking it explicitly in the Iraq media, as the New York Times reports:

"Titled 'The Sands Are Blowing Toward a Democratic Iraq,' an article written this week for publication in the Iraqi press was scornful of outsiders' pessimism about the country's future. 'Western press and frequently those self-styled "objective" observers of Iraq are often critics of how we, the people of Iraq, are proceeding down the path in determining what is best for our nation,' the article began."

Those evil Americans, you know how they are: so arrogant and self-centered that they don't understand how Iraq's death squads are really instruments of "democratic" righteousness. They fail to see that Ahmed Chalabi, instead of being a scoundrel, is a hero, the Iraqi version of George Washington. After all, he fooled the Americans, didn't he? Why, those clueless peaceniks – why don't we go out and kidnap a bunch of them?

To be fair, much of the outrage we hear over this manufactured "news" operation in Iraq is feigned. After all, the same methods were used by the Clinton administration during the Kosovo war: remember those "psy-ops" guys who were taken on at CNN? We didn't hear much of anyone protesting when that operation was exposed. The Rendon Group conducted an "information war" in cyberspace, setting up a "Balkan Information Exchange" Web site to get out the Clintonian pro-war message. This is the same Rendon Group, by the way, that virtually created the Iraqi National Congress and that sold Chalabi as our exile leader of choice. However, unlike my distinguished "libertarian" colleagues over at the Cato Institute, I'll take my outrage, real or feigned, where I can get it. Timothy Lynch, director of Cato's Project on Criminal Justice, observes that Clinton, too, lied us into war – in Bosnia, he says, although it was Kosovo. Lynch demands an end to this double-standard, and avers that if an investigation into prewar intelligence is going to be conducted in the case of Iraq, then we must do the same with our Balkan misadventure. Barring that, he says,

"Congress ought to establish some neutral criteria for prewar representations regarding future conflicts, criteria that can lay down markers for all presidents in all circumstances. Does an impeachment proceeding for deception depend upon which political party controls the White House? Does honesty and candor about war depend upon the particular war aims of the president? Does impeachment for deceit depend upon how well the war is going? Or is candor on such a fundamental matter simply indispensable to the proper functioning of a constitutional republic in all circumstances? Let's put some neutral criteria to a vote so that we can get some of these opportunistic and hypocritical politicians on the record."

Lynch, in short, wants to regulate how and under what circumstances our government can lie to us. We need "neutral criteria" to tell us when to impeach a public official for misrepresenting facts before we rashly condemn them – after all, government officials have feelings, too! Besides that, this president is forging ahead with his bold plan to "transform" the Middle East – not just mucking about in the Balkans, as Clinton did. Yes, Clinton got away without incurring a single American casualty, although hundreds of Yugoslavs were killed in the bombing raids, but do we really want to hold our commander-in-chief to that standard – do idealistic motives count for nothing? Finally, candor is not always the bedrock of good statecraft, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt showed. That this is Lynch's view is implied when he brings up the example of how an American president lied us into World War II "for our own good," citing Professor Thomas Bailey of Stanford University:

"'Because the masses are notoriously shortsighted and generally cannot see danger until it is at their throats, our statesmen are forced to deceive them into an awareness of their own long term interests,' writes Mr. Bailey. Presidents must therefore act like physicians, who must sometimes tell lies 'for the patient's own good.'"

Lynch doesn't dare come right out and say he agrees with Professor Bailey, but the implication is clear:

"Can you imagine the uproar if Messrs. Bush and Cheney responded to the recent Democratic attacks by saying, 'Yes, we did lie about Iraq, but it was for the good of the country'? Sen. Ted Kennedy would doubtless call for impeachment proceedings."

Well, then, why shouldn't he? In Lynch's view, such a call for impeachment would be misguided: after all, would Sen. Kennedy call for impeaching the great Roosevelt?

This is how to tell that someone is a neocon, the genuine article and not a cheap imitation: for them, it is always 1938. Roosevelt, Pearl Harbor, and Hitler – always Hitler, looming just beyond the horizon. Candor, in the neocon view, is not only quite dispensable, it is impossible to express: all that they can really be honest about is their program, which is about creating reality rather than responding to it.

"Neutral criteria" my ass – the neocons just want the public to shut up and Congress to mind its place as a subordinate extension of the Imperial Presidency. That the formerly libertarian Cato Institute is reduced to this – invoking the shade of That Man in the White House to head off a congressional investigation and popular outrage over a costly and ill-conceived war – marks their final degeneration into a grotesque mutant species of regime "libertarians." As Charles V. Pena, former director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute, put it in an article for the Beirut Daily Star:

"The right, or conservative, side of the policy marketplace spectrum essentially espouses the now familiar Bush administration talking points, first for going to war against Iraq and then for spreading democracy. Conservative – even libertarian – organizations have signed on to a Republican version of Wilsonianism, at least in Iraq if not in the rest of the Middle East and the world. Seeking coveted access to the White House, they allow themselves to believe that they are influencing administration thinking. The reality is just the opposite: it is the administration that is shaping think-tank policy. As a result, the institutions are becoming cheerleaders and losing one of their most important qualities in the process: independence, which in turn erodes their credibility."

No wonder Cato hasn't published anything of consequence on the Iraq war since June: they don't want their grassroots base among authentic libertarians to know that they've become shills for the War Party, just yet. After all, sometimes people have to be lied to "for their own good" – you know, like that great libertarian, Franklin Roosevelt.

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

Cato was founded by the man who inspired this Web site: Murray N. Rothbard, the libertarian economist and philosopher, whose works provide the ideological inspiration for this writer as well as the editorial staff of Antiwar.com. That the institute he originated, and named, in a series of strategy memos written in the 1970s, has now become one of the major ideological props of the Washington War Party is obscene, a breathtaking betrayal that needs to be noted and deplored by real libertarians everywhere.

If you've ever given Cato a dime, you've been ripped off, my friend. If you ever had confidence in them – and I did, at one time – you've been let down, bigtime. These guys are going around claiming to be "libertarians" – and they're putting out swill like Lynch's apologia for a regime of liars and war criminals. If you're a libertarian, surely that pisses you off. Why not let them know how you feel? You can contact their media relations department by e-mailing: jdettmer@cato.org

Or just give them a call (be polite!): (202) 842-0200.

Oh, and be sure to tell them Justin Raimondo sent you…

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"I'm the commander - see, I don't need to explain - I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being president." - From 'Bush at War' by Bob Woodward

http://www.thecatsdream.com/blog/2005/12/face-of-war.htm

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Thursday, December 01, 2005

The Face of War

By Gabriele Zamparini (*)

It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder. - Albert Einstein

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I get the title for this article from Dahr Jamail’s website. (1) “The Face of War” is a collection of 82 images embedded journalists in the mainstream media should be forced to watch, before deciding to work for the Pentagon.

A few days ago, the BBC News website ran an article on the 60th anniversary of the Nuremberg trials. The article reads:

“BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus says the Nuremberg trials set an important legal precedent, which laid the ground for subsequent international war crimes prosecutions and the International Criminal Court. (...) The defendants were charged with the then-new offences that have since become fixed in international law, including waging a war of aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity. (...) The Nuremburg cases were also the first time government leaders were held personally responsible for their actions during war. They mostly claimed that they had not known, or were not responsible for what happened.” (2)

The BBC is right. In 1946 those judges wrote:

"To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." - Judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Trial of German Major War Criminals - Nuremberg, Germany 1946

Kofi Annan echoed these words in 2004:

“The United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has told the BBC the US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN charter.” (3)

In the words of the Nuremberg trials, “the supreme international crime.“

Through silence and lies, most of the Western mainstream media have been cooperating with the “US-led invasion of Iraq”, and therefore they are directly responsible for “an illegal act that contravened the UN charter” or, to use the Nuremberg trials’ words, “the supreme international crime.“

Mainstream media keep lying till to the point to write, as the BBC did a few days ago, outrageous pornography:

“Washington is not a signatory to any treaty restricting the use of white phosphorus against civilians.” (4)

As Karen Parker, Chief Counsel of the Association of Humanitarian Lawyers said:

“The comment ‘Washington is not a signatory to an international treaty restricting the use of the substance [WP] against civilians.’ assumes that therefore civilians may be targeted by WP weapons. This is an outrageous assumption because civilians may NEVER be the target of military operations -- whether using bows and arrows or white phosphorous, or any other weapon.” (5)

On the other side of the Atlantic, All The News That’s Fit To Print published an article where the only honest thing was the date. In “US Is Slow To Respond To Phosphorous Charges” Scott Shane writes:

“Italian public television showed a documentary renewing persistent charges that the United States had used white phosphorus rounds, incendiary munitions that the film incorrectly called chemical weapons, against Iraqis in Falluja last year.” (6)

Five days earlier, Professor Paul Rodgers, of the University of Bradford's department of peace studies, had told the BBC:

"It is not counted under the chemical weapons convention in its normal use but, although it is a matter of legal niceties, it probably does fall into the category of chemical weapons if it is used for this kind of purpose directly against people." (7)

Let alone that a US Department of Defense’s de-classified report I brought to the attention of the media on November 21, calls WP “CHEMICAL WEAPONS”. (8)

In his NYT’s article (sic!), Scott Shane also writes:

“Firsthand accounts by American officers in two military journals note that white phosphorus munitions had been aimed directly at insurgents in Falluja to flush them out. War critics and journalists soon discovered those articles.” (9)

“War critics and journalists soon discovered those articles”?

On November 8, 2005, after reading my article “EXCLUSIVE: the BBC is WRONG!!! Fallujah, the RAI NEWS 24 documentary and my e-mail exchange with the BBC” (10) Mark Kraft of insomnia.livejournal.com sent me two pieces of information:

1) "The Fight for Fallujah," a "memorandum for record" by Captain James T. Cobb, First Lieutenant Christopher A. LaCour, and Sergeant First Class William H. Hight, published in the March-April 2005 issue of the US Army's Field Artillery magazine.

2) Darrin Mortenson’s "Violence Subsides for Marines in Fallujah," published in the North County Times, on 10 April 2004.

Wednesday morning, November 9, 2005 I wrote “BBC and Fallujah: War Crimes, Lies and Omertà” (11) and I sent my article to many on-line publications and through my e-newsletter which also goes to many journalists working in the mainstream media.

The Guardian (12) here in London picked up the story on Tuesday, November 15, 2005 ONLY AFTER the US State Department on November 10, 2005 had been forced to issue a “NOTE” admitting that WP was indeed used in Fallujah as a weapon.

If we had to rely on the ‘respectable’ media, we would still be talking about fairy tales:

“ ‘It's discredited the American military without any basis in fact,’ said John E. Pike, an expert on weapons who runs GlobalSecurity.org, an independent clearinghouse for military information. (…) ‘The story most people around the world have is that the Americans are up to their old tricks - committing atrocities and lying about it,’ Mr. Pike said. ‘And that's completely incorrect.’ ” (13)

On December 3, 2002, I interviewed Reed Brody for my documentary XXI CENTURY. Reed Brody is a veteran human rights defender and special counsel with Human Rights Watch in New York. He told me:

“You know, war is no longer two armies fighting it out from trench to trench. In modern wars unfortunately 90 percent of the casualties are civilians. We see that in civil wars, but we also see it in international wars - so any war is going to have a devastating impact on civilian populations.” (14)

In those same days, too many were beating the drums for war. It wasn’t just Bush, Blair and the psychopaths of the Project for the New American Century. While millions of people all over the world were demonstrating and organizing to stop this slaughter, the “supreme international crime” was being prepared by the corporate media months before the invasion officially started.

And it wasn’t just the FOX News and the other Murdoch’s gems of journalism. The “liberal” (sic!) media were adding their candid voice, singing the ‘liberation of the oppressed Iraqis’. So full of nobility!

We must remember those days, now that many among these "liberal-hawks" have become running mice abandoning the sinking boat.

But careful to the big rats!

In the United States, a country where people fight every day against the occupation of their land by the Business Party that controls the political-economical system through its two factions, the big names are running in support of the Bush junta.

[If the United States pulled out now] "Sunni Iraq would become the very terrorist hotbed they were accused of being before." said former President Clinton (15)

The day after, his wife and Sen. Clinton added ''I think that [an immediate troop pullout from Iraq] would cause more problems for us in America'' (16)

Shameless promotion. There is a beautiful picture at page 143 of my book ‘American Voices of Dissent’. It was taken in Washington, DC on October 26, 2002. Next to a smiling face of Ms Clinton, the words “voted yes to WAR”. Underneath, the WANTED sign reads: WARMONGERING AND COWARDICE.

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NOTES:

(1) Dahr Jamail’s website

(2) “Germany marks Nuremberg tribunals”, BBC News website, Sunday, 20 November 2005

(3) “Iraq war illegal, says Annan”, BBC News website, Thursday, 16 September, 2004

(4) Shameless Bbc: When Misinformation Means War Crimes. Exclusive interview with Karen Parker, Chief Counsel of the Association of Humanitarian Lawyers By Gabriele Zamparini, The Cat’s Blog, Thursday, November 17, 2005

(5) See Note 4

(6) Us Is Slow To Respond To Phosphorous Charges, By Scott Shane, The New York Times, November 21, 2005

(7) Iraq probes US phosphorus weapons, BBC News, 16 November 2005

(8) A De-Classified Report from the US Department of Defense calls WP “CHEMICAL WEAPONS” by Gabriele Zamparini, The Cat’s Blog

(9) See Note CC

(10) EXCLUSIVE: the BBC is WRONG!!! Fallujah, the RAI NEWS 24 documentary and my e-mail exchange with the BBC, by Gabriele Zamparini, The Cat’s Blog

(11) BBC and Fallujah: War Crimes, Lies and Omertà, by Gabriele Zamparini, The Cat’s Blog

(12) The US used chemical weapons in Iraq - and then lied about it, by George Monbiot, The Guardian, Tuesday November 15, 2005

(13) See Note 6

(14) XXI CENTURY, PEACE! and AMERICAN VOICES OF DISSENT, by Gabriele Zamparini and Lorenzo Meccoli - The Cat's Dream

(15) Bill Clinton Says U.S. Must Stay In Iraq, By Liz Anderson, The Journal News, November 21, 2005

(16) Sen. Clinton: Immediate Iraq Exit ‘Mistake’, by the AP, November 22, 2005

(*) Gabriele Zamparini is an independent filmmaker, writer and journalist living in London. He's the producer and director of the documentaries XXI CENTURY and The Peace! DVD and author of American Voices of Dissent (Paradigm Publishers). He can be reached at info@thecatsdream.com - Find out more about him and his work at http://TheCatsDream.com

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"They have engaged and they are in a conspiracy to wage aggressive war for which people were convicted at [the Nazi war crime tribunals at] Nuremburg." - Daniel Ellsberg

http://lnk.nu/chris-floyd.com/6mc.php

(Supporting Links at Source URL)

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Death Mask: The Deliberate Disintegration of Iraq

by Chris Floyd

Thursday, 01 December 2005

This is an extended version of a column appearing in the Dec. 2 edition of The Moscow Times.

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The recent revelations about the virulent spread of death squads ravaging Iraq have only confirmed for many people the lethal incompetence of the Bush Regime, whose brutal bungling appears to have unleashed the demon of sectarian strife in the conquered land. The general reaction, even among some war supporters, has been bitter derision: "Jeez, these bozos couldn't boil an egg without causing collateral damage."

But what if the truth is even more sinister? What if this murderous chaos is not the fruit of rank incompetence but instead the desired product of carefully crafted, efficiently managed White House policy?

Investigative journalist Max Fuller marshals a convincing case for this dread conclusion in a remarkable work of synthesis drawn from information buried in reams of mainstream news stories and public Pentagon documents. Piling fact on damning fact, he shows that the vast majority of atrocities now attributed to "rogue" Shiite and Sunni militias are in fact the work of government-controlled commandos and "special forces," trained by Americans, "advised" by Americans and run largely by former CIA assets, Global Research reports.

We first reported here in June 2003 that the U.S. was already hiring Saddam's security muscle for "special ops" against the nascent insurgency and re-opening his torture haven, Abu Ghraib. Meanwhile, powerful Shiite militias – including Talibanic religious extremists armed and trained by Iran – were loosed upon the land. As direct "Coalition" rule gave way to various "interim" and "elected" Iraqi governments, these violent gangs were formally incorporated into the Iraqi Interior Ministry, where the supposedly inimical Sunni and Shiite units often share officers and divvy up territories.

Bush helpfully supplied these savage gangs – who are killing dozens of people each week, Knight-Ridder reports – with American advisers who made their "counter-insurgency" bones forming right-wing death squads in Colombia and El Salvador. Indeed, Bush insiders have openly bragged of "riding with the bad boys" and exercising the "Salvador option," lauding the Reagan-backed counter-insurgency program that slaughtered tens of thousands of civilians, Newsweek reports. Bush has also provided a "state-of-the-art command, control and communications center" to coordinate the operation of his Iraqi "commandos," as the Pentagon's own news site, DefendAmerica, reports. The Iraqi people can go without electricity, fuel and medicine, but by God, Bush's "bad boys" will roll in clover as they carry out their murders and mutilations.

For months, stories from the Shiite south and Sunni center have reported the same phenomenon: people being summarily seized by large groups of armed men wearing police commando uniforms, packing high-priced Glocks, using sophisticated radios and driving Toyota Land Cruisers with police markings. The captives are taken off and never seen again – unless they turn up with a load of other corpses days or weeks later, bearing marks of the gruesome tortures they suffered before the ritual shot in the head. Needless to say, these mass murders under police aegis are rarely investigated by the police.

Earlier this year, one enterprising Knight-Ridder reporter, Yasser Salihee, actually found several eyewitnesses willing to testify to the involvement of the U.S.-backed commandos in 12 such murders. The offer was shrugged off by the Interior Ministry's spokesman – an American "adviser" and veteran bones-maker from the Colombian ops. In the end, it didn't matter; Salihee was shot dead by a U.S. sniper at a checkpoint a few days afterwards.

The Bushists may have been forced to ditch their idiotic fantasies of "cakewalking" into a compliant satrapy, but they have by no means abandoned their chief goals in the war: milking Iraq dry and planting a permanent military "footprint" on the nation's neck. If direct control through a plausible puppet is no longer possible, then fomenting bloody chaos and sectarian strife  is the best way to weaken the state. The Bushists are happy to make common cause with thugs and zealots in order to prevent the establishment of a strong national government that might balk at the ongoing "privatizations" that have continued apace behind the smokescreen of violence, and the planned opening of Iraq's oil reserves to select foreign investors – a potential transfer of some $200 billion of Iraqi people's wealth into the hands of a few Bush cronies, the Independent reports.

The violence is already dividing the county intomore rigid sectarian enclaves, the New York Times reports, as Shiites flee Sunni commandos and Sunnis flee Shiite militias in the grim tag-team of their joint endeavor. It's all grist for the Bushist mill: an atomized, terrorized, internally riven society is much easier to manipulate. And of course, a steady stream of bloodshed provides a justification for maintaining a substantial American military presence, even as politic plans for partial "withdrawal" are bandied about.

There's nothing new in this; Bush is simply following a well-thumbed playbook. For example, in 1953 the CIA bankrolled Islamic fundamentalists and secular goon squads to destabilize the democratic government of Iran – which selfishly wanted to control its own oil – and pave the way for the puppet Shah, as the agency's own histories recount. In 1971, CIA officials admitted carrying out more than 21,000 "extra-judicial killings" in its "Phoenix" counter-insurgency operation in Vietnam. (The true number of victims is certainly much higher.) In 1979, the CIA began sponsoring the most violent Islamic extremist groups in Afghanistan – supplying money, arms, even jihad primers for schoolchildren – to destabilize the secular, Soviet-allied government and provoke the Kremlin into a costly intervention, as Robert Dreyfus details in his new book, Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. Later, Saudi magnate Osama bin Laden – whose family firm helped kick-start George W. Bush's business career – joined the operation, and his men were sent to America for "anti-Soviet" terrorist training, as Greg Palast reports.  And of course, these examples only scratch the scorched-earth surface of America's double-dealings in this deathly shadow world.

This bi-partisan policy has been remarkably consistent for more than half a century: to augment the wealth and power of the elite, American leaders have supported – or created – vicious  gangs of killers and cranks to foment unrest, eliminate opponents and terrorize whole nations into submission. The resulting carnage in the target countries – and inevitable blowback against ordinary Americans – means nothing to these Great Gamesters; it's merely the price of doing business. Bush's "incompetence" is just a mask for stone-cold calculation.

CF

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"In the eyes of empire builders men are not men but instruments" - Napoleon Bonaparte