Is There Really A War?

The one thing that strikes you when reading this is that there is no war, really. There is mass folly encountered, deadly chaos engaged and a kind of medieval criminality suffered, but no actual war, to which President Obama just committed thousands more troops and trainers -- a human admixture of warriors and therapists, if you will, to battle ghosts and advise an amorphous foreign temperament.

The NY Times piece, the "this" -- "Corruption Undercuts Hopes for Afghan Police," by Richard Oppel Jr. -- is a terrifying 1,500-word descent into another world and another time, which Western modernism has no more hope of organically changing than its subject could change the West.

It's a portrayal, variously and by aggregating bits and pieces, of "extortion by police officers," of "fraud and swindling up the chain of command," of kidnappings and smuggling and protection rackets, of "high-ranking officials [with] immunity from the law," of "provincial officials [likened] to a criminal mafia," and, as if this needed to be added, an utter "lack of competent civilian authority."

You won't read of enemy troops amassed or bases of operations supplied or communications lines established or military tactics determined because, as mentioned, this really isn't a war. What it is -- with advance apologies to my postmodernist friends -- is a cultural cesspool.

Yet we send troops and military advisers to better train and equip the guardians of perpetual chaos.

Tactics? There can be no effective tactics, it seems to me, since effective tactics stem from a comprehensible strategy and a higher, achievable objective -- two little items we don't exactly lack in our own minds, it's just that they're at war with each other. We shall rid Afghanistan of Qaeda elements and the unpacifiable Taliban, we declare, while simultaneously declaring we shall not engage in nation building, which, while admittedly impossible, is absolutely essential.

To be tactically effective we must be engaged in that which we can't. Here, for instance, from the NY Times piece, is just one small example of effectiveness denied: "Referring to one corrupt and high-ranking government official he sees routinely, Maj. Randy Schmeling, a 43-year-old Army National Guardsman who commands the American police mentoring teams in Ghazni [province], said, 'I’d like to break down his door, stomp on his chest, point my 9-millimeter at his head and say, Stop what you are doing!' " -- that being extortion, fraud, smuggling, etc.

Yes, well, that's one way of doing it; next time followed by an unholstered crack splintering the air. The problem, of course, is that the day after that the corrupt official's nephew or brother-in-law would return the dispensation, since human corruption is the one thing Afghanistan possesses an inexhaustible supply of. Hence even effective tactics would be, alas, momentary at best, not to mention ineffective.

As is customarily true in modern war, or police actions, or non-nation-building efforts of curious nation-building personalities, the embattled occupiers on the ground are closest to the reality and see best its immense contradictions. As does First Sgt. John Strain, a philosophical observer involved in training the Afghan police, who told the Times: "The corruption here is a bigger threat to a stable government than the Taliban. If we stay here another year, or another 50 years, I think it’ll probably only take two to three years after we are gone until it reverts to the way it was right before we got here....

"[I]t really breaks your heart, to think that what you are doing is probably not going to turn out to be a hill of beans."

In early December of last year, as President-elect Obama was assembling his domestic and foreign policy teams, the Times' Frank Rich dolorously pondered the "sardonic" term, "the best and the brightest." "The stewards of the Vietnam fiasco," he wrote -- referencing McGeorge Bundy, Walt Rostow, Robert McNamara -- "had pedigrees uncannily reminiscent of some major Obama appointees.... The rest is history that would destroy the presidency of Lyndon Johnson."

But, continued Rich, "that’s not what gives me pause.... No, it’s the economic team that evokes trace memories of our dark best-and-brightest past": Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner.

Rich was right to worry, as much as anyone is about any presidential appointments that harbor checkered pasts of questionable judgments. But on balance, I was convinced then, as I remain convinced now, that those with the much greater and predictable potential to destroy the presidency of Barack Obama are those advising his Afghanistan policy.

For that policy is, in previously stated words, one of immense contradictions mired in assured futility.

The one upside? I also believe Barack Obama himself is among the more authentic best and brightest. And from his reading of history, much like the exceedingly wary Jack Kennedy's, he'll someday declare victory in Afghanistan as a fulfillment of his campaign promise, and then promptly skedaddle -- leaving that cesspool to diplomats and drones.

 

Please respond to P.M.'s commentary by leaving comments below and sharing them with the BuzzFlash community. For personal questions or comments you can contact him atfifthcolumnistmail@gmail.com

THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

To Bush's GWOT, RIP

Only problem is, Bob. 

Can we be sure that GWOT is really dead or is it still being run by Cheney and his loyalist who still hold offices in the most important agencies of the executive when it comes to foreign policy?

By Robert Parry
March 31, 2009

President Barack Obama has come under some criticism for slowing his promised withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and for beefing up U.S. forces in Afghanistan, but his 70-day-old administration at least has dumped one part of George W. Bush’s bellicose foreign policy: the phrase “global war on terror.”

Burying the “GWOT,” as it was known in Washington jargon, also is not just a semantic shift or a meaningless word game. Bush’s post-9/11 concept of eliminating “every terrorist group of global reach” created the framework for an endless war covering the entire planet, including U.S. territory. The GWOT was to be everywhere and never ending.

(Terror has been with us since....well,.....forever. It always will be, as long a mankind's head rules, uninformed by mankind's heart.)

It became the justification in 2002 for Bush administration lawyers to craft legal opinions that asserted that the President, as Commander in Chief, possessed “plenary” or total power, thus transforming the American Republic into a new-age national security state with all constitutional and legal rights left to the discretion of George W. Bush.

Justice Department lawyers like John Yoo tossed away U.S. constitutional rights almost casually. The “global war on terror” meant scrapping habeas corpus, the ancient right to challenge arbitrary arrests. Out, too, went the First, the Fourth, the Fifth, the Sixth and the Eighth Amendments. [See, for instance, Consortiumnews.com’s “How Close the Bush Bullet.”]

(John Yoo should be "taken out-back and horse-whipped," as my Grandpa used to say about people whose behavior there was just no rational excuse for, under any circumstances)

The GWOT overrode U.S. treaty and other commitments, opening the door to the torture of detainees in U.S. custody. It permitted the President to dispatch military units and CIA operatives to kidnap or kill suspected terrorists around the world.

Most Americans might have associated the GWOT with the fight against Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. But the “war” actually was much broader, covering any irregular fighting force “with global reach,” which apparently was defined as any group that could pool its resources to buy an airplane ticket, whether they were holed up on an island in the Philippines, in the mountains of Central Asia, in a desert in the Middle East or in the jungles of Colombia.

Beyond intervening in guerrilla conflicts around the world, Bush's GWOT could seek “regime change” against established national governments – in Iraq, Iran and North Korea – the nations he famously labeled the "axis of evil." They were part of the GWOT, though they were not implicated in the 9/11 attacks.

Initially, Iran even joined the coalition against the Taliban as Bush moved to oust the Afghan government which had provided sanctuary to al-Qaeda. Nevertheless, Iran was still lumped into the GWOT. Some Bush administration officials, such as Vice President Dick Cheney, also raised 9/11 suspicions about Iraq, though the allegations turned out to be false.

(Dick Cheney reminds me of the spooky, old woman peaking out from behind her lace curtains.)

Muslim Resentments

Bush’s GWOT became especially unpopular in the Muslim world, which saw the U.S.-led campaign as directed primarily against Islamic militants

.(Who can possibly blame them?)

A Gallup poll in early 2002 found strong anti-American sentiment in U.S. allies and adversaries alike. The countries surveyed included Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

The lowest scores came from Pakistan, a principal U.S. ally in the Afghan war. In nuclear-armed Pakistan, only five percent of the respondents had a favorable opinion of the United States, making any counterinsurgency cooperation with Washington problematic for Islamabad politicians.

Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport said Muslims described the United States as "ruthless, aggressive, conceited, arrogant, easily provoked, biased." Newport added that "the people of Islamic countries have significant grievances with the West in general and with the United States in particular."

(The Muslims aren't by themselves! People from many other nations say the same thing, including my pals in Kiwiland, Oz and Europe.)

How Bush framed the terrorism issue also bred resentment and confusion inside the United States. In answering “why do they hate us?” Bush offered the sophomoric notion that Islamic extremists “hated our freedoms” and wanted to destroy the American Way of Life.

"They hate what we see right here in this chamber -- a democratically elected government," Bush said in his Sept. 20, 2001, address to Congress. "They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other."

(This bit of b.s. was what sent me on trips to Egypt. Bush's explanation didn't make any sense. I wanted to talk with Muslims about why they hated us. As it turns out, they didn't until shock and awe. Imagine sitting in the home of an Egyptian, Muslim family while the bombs fell on Baghdad. As the scenes of death and horrendous violence appeared on their T.V., I simply lost it. Egyptian Muslims were comforting me as I wept for the people of Iraq and the people of the U.S. Ironic, eh?)

Though playing well domestically, this self-serving explanation fell flat with many Middle East experts who recognized that bin Laden's goals were focused much more on Middle East politics and had little to do with American freedoms.

Bin Laden's principal grievance was with the government of his native land, Saudi Arabia, which he viewed as corrupt. Toward this end, he sought to drive U.S. military forces from the Persian Gulf and especially from Saudi Arabia, home of the holiest sites in Islam.

Many Middle Easterners also considered Bush’s “hate our freedom” comments ignorant and insulting because it failed to recognize their legitimate concerns about U.S. policies.

In the seven years since Bush launched the GWOT, Muslims have found many more reasons to resent the United States – the bloody invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal, Washington’s neglect of the Palestinian problem, and Bush’s hypocritical rhetoric about democracy and freedom while favoring many Middle Eastern despots and locking prisoners up indefinitely at Guantanamo.

So, in inheriting Bush’s many messes, President Obama doesn’t only face the problem of two ongoing wars – in Iraq and Afghanistan – but he also must cope with political instability in Pakistan, a strategic challenge from Iran, simmering anger among Arabs over Israel’s recent war in Gaza, and a rise in regional militancy.

In that sense, a small but not insignificant step was taken by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday when she announced that “the administration has stopped using the [‘war on terror’] phrase, and I think that speaks for itself.”

But an RIP for the GWOT is not just a nod to the sensibilities of the Muslim world. Scrapping the phrase further indicates that Obama is abandoning Bush’s rationale for an imperial presidency, even if the new President hasn’t dropped all his predecessor’s policies.

 
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Biden and The Bush/Cheney "War On Terror" Myth

Mr. Biden seems to have trouble with our government committing war crimes.

By Andy Worthington, AlterNet
Posted on August 24, 2008, Printed on August 26, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/96178/

In the end, then, it came down to this: Barack Obama needed a vice-presidential candidate with well-established Washington credentials, foreign policy experience and an ability to connect with blue-collar workers.

And while Joe Biden -- a 65-year old working class Irish Catholic, the Senator for Delaware since 1972, and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — has a far from unblemished foreign policy record (most notoriously in his support for the invasion of Iraq, but also, arguably, in his strenuous support for armed intervention in Kosovo, which, like that of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, paved the way for justifying war on a basis other then that of self-defense), he has since recanted his position on the Iraq war, and has, for many years, also been unafraid to tackle other excesses of the Bush administration's post-9/11 policies; in particular, through his persistent calls for the closure of the "War on Terror" prison at Guantánamo Bay.

Although he initially supported the invasion of Iraq (after trying, and failing, to persuade President Bush to first exhaust all diplomatic efforts), Sen. Biden has since become on of the war's toughest critics in the Senate. He warned of the costs of a long occupation before the war even began, and in 2006 he proposed, with Leslie Gelb, the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, a five-point plan for the future of Iraq, which called for a federalized system of three regional governments (Kurd, Sunni and Shiite) plus a centralized government for the management of "truly common interests" like oil and border defense.

Sen. Biden also has a more personal connection to Iraq. His son Beau, the attorney general of Delaware, is a captain in the Army National Guard, and is set to be deployed to Iraq in the fall, even though, as Sen. Biden explained last year, "I don't want him going. But I tell you what, I don't want my grandsons or granddaughters going back in 15 years. So how we leave makes a big difference."

Sen. Biden has also repeatedly cast doubt on the very notion of a "War on Terror," declaring, in a speech in April 2008, in which he lambasted the Bush administration for making "fear the main driver of our foreign policy," "Terrorism is a means, not an end, and very different groups and countries are using it toward very different goals. If we can't even identify the enemy or describe the war we're fighting, it's difficult to see how we will win."

Reassuringly, for those who care about the Bush administration's assault on fundamental human rights, holding prisoners neither as Prisoners of War protected by the Geneva Conventions nor as criminal suspects to be tried in US courts, Sen. Biden has been unstinting in his opposition to the prison at Guantánamo Bay. In June 2005, he called for Guantánamo to be closed, telling ABC News that it had "become the greatest propaganda tool that exists for recruiting of terrorists around the world."

Sen. Biden also voted against the much-criticized Military Commissions Act of 2006, which reintroduced military trials at Guantánamo after they were declared illegal by the US Supreme Court, and in May 2007 he co-sponsored the Guantánamo Bay Detention Facility Closure Act, which not only called for the closure of Guantánamo, but also proposed moving prisoners against whom a case could be built to the maximum security military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and releasing all those who had not been charged. In July 2007, he followed this with proposals for a National Security with Justice Act, which sought to "prohibit extraterritorial detention and rendition, except under limited circumstances, to modify the definition of 'unlawful enemy combatant' for purposes of military commissions, [and] to extend statutory habeas corpus to detainees."

During his Presidential campaign (which ended in January), Sen. Biden repeatedly stressed his belief in the strength of the laws that existed prior to the 9/11 attacks. When asked, "Do you agree or disagree with the statement made by former Attorney General Gonzales in January 2007 that nothing in the Constitution confers an affirmative right to habeas corpus, separate from any statutory habeas rights Congress might grant or take away?" he replied, "I disagree categorically with Mr. Gonzales. The Constitution guarantees the right of habeas corpus unless in the case of rebellion or invasion it is suspended. My National Security with Justice Act reinforces this Constitutional right by extending by statute meaningful habeas review for all Guantánamo detainees."

For Barack Obama, who has pledged to restore America's standing both at home and abroad by "re-establishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law," the addition of Sen. Biden should ensure not only that finding a solution to the debacle of Iraq will be a priority, but also that the generally less popular issue of holding foreign prisoners without charge or trial in Guantánamo and other locations will be dealt with. To quote Sen. Biden more fully from his speech in April, "[The Bush administration] has destroyed faith in America's judgment. And it has devalued America's moral leadership in the world. Instead, this administration has focused to the point of obsession on the so-called "war on terrorism" and produced a one-size-fits-all doctrine of military preemption and regime change ill suited to the challenges we face. It has made fear the main driver of our foreign policy. It has turned a deadly serious but manageable threat -- a small number of radical groups that hate America -- into a ten-foot tall existential monster that dictates nearly every move we make. Even if you look at the world through this administration's distorted lens, you see a failed policy."

Seems that the political party, who have set themselves up as the epitome of American morality for the last 40 years don't understand that anything built on deception, fear-mongering and stirring the need for vengeance will never be successful.

AlterNet is a non profit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed by our writers are their own.

Andy Worthington is a writer and historian, and author of The Guantánamo Files.

© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/96178/

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

A Casual Mention of 9/11 by the Chicago Tribune

Unlike the Kennedy assassination, which came as such a stunning shock to the nation, at a time when Americans were far less cynical about their government, at a time when there were three broadcast networks and no Internet where people could collect contemporaneous reporting and then form timelines, like that of Paul Thompson, 9/11 and the surrounding events have been recorded and a simple presentation of what we do know for sure can only lead to the conclusion that those responsible for 9/11 are not all in the borderland of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

There were not just a few warnings. There were hundreds of them. George Tenet was running around with his "hair on fire," asking for special meetings with Condi Rice, which he and Richard Clarke received, yet nothing was done.

Condi Rice is a proven liar when she says no one could have imagined that anyone would use planes as flying bombs. There was already one such plot that was busted up by the Clinton administration, coming from the Pacific. There were also a warning, from the government of Egypt about Al Qaeda wanting to hit the G-8 conference in Genoa in June of 2001 with a plane. She had to have known about that warning since Bush and the American delegation slept on a U.S. naval vessel off the coast of Italy for the duration of the conference, so why could she not imagine such a scenario?

Admittedly some of the statements and ramblings of the 9/11 truth movement are so far out there as to make anyone who doesn't believe the official conspiracy theory seem like a nutcase. That is, exactly, what some of it is designed to do.

You can count on it. Every time there is public doubt emerging about the official story of some big event or the other, there are the 'disinformationists" who put out stories and scenarios that hardly anyone would believe, when the truth is far more simple, but every bit as criminal.

When one studies Thompson's timeline and, the 9/11 Commission report, there are far to many coincidences and too many unanswered questions for the official story to be true. Just ask any ordinary detective on any police force in America how he or she feels about coincidences and unanswered questions, and then consider that there are ennough of both in the 9/11 investigation to choak a goat.

Many people in our government knew that Osama and his merry band of religious nutcases were planning to hit the U.S.. Some took full advantage of that knowledge and not only allowed it to happen, but probably encouraged it with intel provided to Al Qaeda, either through a certain CIA agent whom the French claim visited Osama in his hospital suite, at the American hospital in Dubai in July of 2001, after there was a "presidential finding" on his head or, perhaps, through FBI agents who knew about several of the hijackers, who were residing in the U.S, long before 9/11. That Intel may have included the fact that there were going to be airforce exercises on 9/11/01, so that no one could tell what was real and what was just part of the exercise. There would be confusion all around on such a day.

Of course, the biggest coincidence of all is found in the words of the PNAC document. After having spelled out the Neocon vision of re-making the middle east in great detail, the authors lamented the fact that their goals would take a very long time to acomplish, unless there was some catalysing event, a new Pearl Harbor, for example.

We now know, that there already existed plans for the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq long before 9/11/01. We also know that the very first cabinet meeting was almost completely consumed with the "need for regime change in Iraq. Bush said, OK. just find me a way to do it." Well, someone did just that, with the aid of the ever helpful Osama bin Laden.

Did Bush know? Probably not, in a formal way. No one said to the president or sent a memo stating that there was going to be an attack on the U.S. and that all security would be stood down in order to allow it to happen. Plausible deniability is a concept well known to the Bushes, both 41 and 42. Did he realize what had happened on the morning of the Pet Goat? Probably. He is no where near as stupid as he would have us believe.

Did Cheney know? I believe that he did. As a matter of fact, I believe that that was what he was doing all those months before 9/11/01. He was the man Bush put in charge of counter-terrorism and yet not one meeting was held about that until days before 9/11. Instead, he was busy, I believe, with terrorism.

Is there any other V.P. in history who had his own foreign policy and Intel/National Security staff, rivaling that of the president? And they were in place long before 9/11. Dick Cheney was in no way ignorant of the warnings coming from all over the place, all summer long.

The people of NYC, those in the Pentagon, which were very few, and the people aboard those planes are collateral damage in the Global War on Terror. Without their horrific deaths there would be no war. Almost nothing that has happened since 9/11 would have been possible without it. Not the war, not the whole-sale gutting of the constitution, not the imperial presidency and a rapidly growing police state, not even a second Bush term would have been possible were it not for 9/11 and that other terrorist activity called the anthrax attacks, which goes little mentioned, while it probably made more ordinary people fear for their personal safety than the events of 9/11 did.

Is this administration complicit in the events of 9/11 and the anthrax attacks? I believe that some members of it are. Others who are complicit are far from known household names. They are probably ex-Intel types or rogue Intel and Military people, but there are very few of them...VERY FEW, and some may not have known what the others were doing, until it was too late. There is no way of knowing how many of them are still alive. As I said, they are anonymous and no one, except their family and friends, would care much about their untimely demises, let alone connect their deaths to 9/11.

Will it ever be proven? I believe it just may, this time. Before the Bush/Cheney disaster is over, Americans may have good motives not to just look the other way and pretend that our government is just not capable of such a dastardly act, even though we all know that such dastardly acts have been committed in the past.

by Mark Karlin
Editor and Publisher of Buzz Flash

May 12, 2008

As we take a reprieve from the 2008 elections for a day, we wanted to take note of a Chicago Tribune editorial that repeats the story of how Dick Cheney approved the shooting down of United Flight 93 on 9/11:

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, after planes had crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Vice President Dick Cheney was in the White House bunker and had to make a momentous recommendation to President Bush, who was in flight aboard Air Force One: that Bush authorize the military to shoot down any civilian airliners that might be hijacked and headed for other targets.

Bush concurred—and shortly after, the moment of truth arrived. A military aide approached Cheney: "There is a plane 80 miles out," he said. "There is a fighter in the area. Should we engage?" Cheney had thought through the complex implications of that question, had discussed it with his boss, and didn't hesitate to answer: "Yes." That plane was United Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania before fighter jets could reach it.

The account originally appeared in the Washington Post years ago and came up in other stories about the post 9/11 frenzy, but nothing much was made of it. (Although whether Bush really had any role in the decision remains open to question.) The mainstream media accepted the White House account that United Flight 93 crashed before it was shot down, even though once Cheney gave his approval to shoot it down, it would probably only take a brief time before it was executed.

We're not passing judgment upon whether Flight 93 should have been shot down or not. That is, indeed, a very difficult decision. But BuzzFlash was watching contemporaneous reports come in at the time, and the first wire service stories strongly indicated that it had been shot down based on witnesses in the area and the details that they provided.

It was only later that a heroic narrative emerged that included a line that became part of the standard Bush "American Spirit" of battle theme: "Let's roll."

BuzzFlash can't say conclusively that Flight 93 was shot down, as Cheney had directed, but it certainly looks that way.

We have often taken issue with the 9/11 Truth Movement because it takes the fact that there are many unanswered questions about 9/11 and tries to answer them with often bizarre speculation. 9/11 was not an inside job, but it was something that probably could have been prevented in August of 2001 if Bush and Rice had listened to a CIA warning about Al-Qaeda preparing hijackings in the U.S. But Bush and Rice did nothing -- absolutely nothing -- to put airports on a heightened security alert.

The reality is that the Bush White House covered up much about 9/11, including its own incompetence. How much we don't know. But we do know that -- if you recall -- Bush would only be interviewed by the 9/11 Commission (which was stacked with white-washers) with Cheney at his side, and with no notes or minutes taken, and with their not being sworn in under oath, and with the "interview" occurring in the Oval Office. That sort of scenario does not inspire a great deal of credibility.

The entire reign of manipulated fear that we have been living under since 9/11 goes back to George W. Bush's cavalier indifference (along with Rice's malfeasance) to clear alarms in 2001 about Al-Qaeda coming our way.

We bring this up today because the item about United Flight 93 emerged so casually in a Chicago Tribune May 12th editorial about the need for Vice Presidents who can stand the heat. (Of course, Bush was off in a Florida elementary school classroom for a long time reading "My Pet Goat" and waiting for his handlers, including Cheney and Rove, to tell him what to do.)

Like the JFK assassination, we may never know the truth about the circumstances surrounding 9/11. The shredders have long since done their work.

But the Tribune editorial reminded us that the likelihood that Flight 93 was shot down, given the first reports and the account of Cheney ordering it shot down, is quite high. Any U.S. government, whether Democratic or Republican, would probably not want to admit that it was responsible for blowing a commercial airliner with U.S. citizens aboard out of the sky.

So a heroic narrative was, it appears, crafted to cover up the reality of what happened. At the time, we speculated that Flight 93 may have been headed for the infamous Three-Mile Island nuclear plant, just a short air distance away from where it went down. Or it may have indeed been flying back with terrorist plans to crash the plane into Congress or the White House.

We'll never know.

But on a scale of 1 to 10, BuzzFlash would put it at an 8 likelihood that Flight 93 was indeed downed by an American missile.

This is one decision, probably the only one, that we can't begrudge Dick Cheney. (If the plane had crashed into Three-Mile Island and set off a nuclear reaction, the death toll could have been catastrophic.)

But perhaps from the next president, we can be treated as adults and told the truth.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.