Six months ago, on Jan. 10, President Bush announced his plan to send more than 20,000 more troops into Iraq. The Gavel has highlights of what has happened since that time:
590 U.S. soldiers have died and 3,575 have been wounded in Iraq since January 10, 2007. [icasualties.org, 1/10/07-7/9/07]
At least 13,463 civilians and members of the Iraqi Security Forces have died since January 2007, according to media reports. [icasualties.org]
According to an internal military assessment, the U.S. military’s plan to secure Baghdad against a rising insurgency is falling far short of its goal. Fewer than one-third of Baghdad’s neighborhoods are under the control of U.S. and Iraqi forces. [New York Times, 6/4/07]
No progress has been made on the political benchmarks the Iraqi government was supposed to have met already. Oil sharing legislation, the reversal of deBaathification, new election laws, scheduling of provincial elections, amending the constitution and efforts to disband the militias are all languishing either in parliament or in negotiations among the three parties. [Washington Post, 7/8/07]
UPDATE: The Washington Post reminds us that the administration “initially envisioned a troop increase lasting six to eight months,” but is now anticipating “keeping the extra troops in place until next spring and then beginning to pull them back, one brigade at a time.”
UPDATE II: Atrios has quotes by various pundits from one Friedman ago.
One thing is for certain: this is not the Republicans’ fault. It’s always somebody else’s fault.
July 10th, 2007 at 9:48 amMy fault!!!!
July 10th, 2007 at 9:49 amThe surge is working. The surge is working. The surge is working.
All together now…
THE SURGE IS WOR….. Oh, forget it.
July 10th, 2007 at 9:49 am“No progress has been made on the political benchmarks the Iraqi government was supposed to have met already. ”
That’s ok, we’ll give them another Friedman unit. Or, we’ll do what Bush is recommending, lower our expectations.
The Iraqi government is not going to do anything to stabilize their country as long as they have us to do their work for them. It’s time to take away the pacifier and let them stand on their own two feet.
July 10th, 2007 at 9:51 amThe surge started six months ago. Six months after the allies invaded Normandy, they were in Germany already.
July 10th, 2007 at 9:53 amDo Republicans know how to DO ANYTHING RIGHT? It doesn’t seem so.
Unless we count having sex with a prostitute.
July 10th, 2007 at 9:53 amLet’s not forget: to delay things they also made sure the ISG report came out after the election, then Bush “looked” at it and gave it his special form of “deliberation”, then they came up with the surge idea.
All to run out the clock.
July 10th, 2007 at 9:53 amC’mon guys, Bush has a plan. He knows exactly what he’s doing…. he’s drawing this thing out so the next president has to fix his mistakes. His HUGE bucket of mistakes.
July 10th, 2007 at 9:55 amNow the republicans need to take responsibility and vote with the dems to end this national embarrassment.
Wait, that’s grammatically incorrect. You can’t put “republicans” and “responsibility” in the same sentence.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:05 am“Six months ago, on Jan. 10, President Bush announced his plan to send more than 20,000 more troops into Iraq.”
actually, he announced that the surge was already underway, whether we liked it or not… shades of Gen. Jack D. Ripper!
July 10th, 2007 at 10:07 amSix-month anniversary of escalation in Iraq.
Six months ago, on Jan. 10, President Bush announced his plan…
So… in relation to the escalation, that would make this the 6 month anniversary of absolutely nothing at all then.
In other news, Scooter Libby has had his sentence commuted by the President who considered it excessive.
If Scooter Libby had started his sentence this month it he would not have been released for more than 4 years after Bush announced in October 2003 that anyone found to have leaked information would be punished.
Hey this this bullshit misrepresentation of news stuff is easy. And fun. Try it at home kids.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:10 amiraqi forces will be able to stand up in 6 months….. that was 4 f*cking years ago. but i do love hearing them say that about every 6 months…… who ya gonna believe?
July 10th, 2007 at 10:16 ambush math: 1 + 2 = chair….. yeah figure that one out.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:16 amAll the troops didn’t arrive six months ago. You know TP is to military strategy what Bill Clinton is to ethics.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:19 amI’d like just a little indication that Bush knows what he’s doing, but I’ve been waiting over six years for that. He’s had plenty of opportunity to prove himself a competent leader, but hasn’t, and worse is that he doesn’t seem to care.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:19 amIt’s time to take away the pacifier and let them stand on their own two feet.
Comment by Katie — July 10, 2007 @ 9:51 am
I agree Katie wasnt that what the dems were elected to do?
July 10th, 2007 at 10:19 amUPDATE: The Washington Post reminds us that the administration “initially envisioned a troop increase lasting six to eight months,†but is now anticipating “keeping the extra troops in place until next spring and then beginning to pull them back, one brigade at a time.†9:46 am
Which would make it 8 months from now.
Wow. Lucky you got that late breaking update in there to tell us that they suggest they will stick to their original plan as per a 6 month old statement.
The spin never stops here eh ?
July 10th, 2007 at 10:21 ami would love to see cindy kick nancys ass in 08′
July 10th, 2007 at 10:21 amOK — this isn’t working (which is a big surprise — NOT). But with 18 months left in office, they can’t just run out the clock — they need to snap the ball a few more times. So what’s the next brilliant plan to come from the White House?
July 10th, 2007 at 10:21 amI don’t see how you say the surge isn’t working!
Aren’t troops dying? Aren’t car bombs killing children?
Are we or are we not still building our bases and generating huge Cost-Plus Contract profits for Halliburton,GE,Lockheed Martin, Goldman Sachs, and all the rest?!
Come on!
Aren’t we already staking out our new oil fields? What do you people want?
This is progress.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:23 amLet’s not forget: to delay things they also made sure the ISG report came out after the election, then Bush “looked†at it and gave it his special form of “deliberationâ€, then they came up with the surge idea.
All to run out the clock.
Comment by Zappatero — July 10, 2007 @ 9:53 am
No I think Bush had a grand plan and expected the Dems to force withdrawl. His plan had one mistake in it he assumed the dems had some balls. Even if they were only teeny tiny ones.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:23 amWe ALL knew at the time that the Administration was simply lying about the prospects for any success that might results from the ill-named “surge.” The FACT is that this administration does not seek victory in Iraq - not in any sense of the word that you comprehend.
The Victory that they seek is OCCUPATION, DEPOPULATION and OWNERSHIP OF THE OIL, while Israel gets the territory and the water (and ultimately the oil too - thanks to blackmail).
We are in opposite world, and you have to invert every word they say in order to understand their true intent.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:25 amHey, If I could get a contract to wash 1000 bags of laundry a week for $98 per bag, I would call that progress.
I would progress right up the old Status ladder into a house in Nantucket; a 7 series BMW; and enough political clout to keep me there.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:26 amThe surge is working perfectly it is creating more pain and anger among Iraqis and muslims in gereral. When the mideast explodes he wants it BIG.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:27 amsee what happens when your vp is a DEFENSE CONTRACTOR?!?!?!?!
jesus.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:28 amLOSING THE IRAQ WAR ON PURPOSE:
The following takes a few twists and turns to prove my point, but once you read through it, you will be hard pressed to conclude that Donald Rumsfeld ever had any intention to WIN & LEAVE Iraq.
It’s time to view the global strategic game with fresh eyes, and realize that our assumptions about traditional victory and success run completely contrary to those of the GLOBALISTS who have stolen our country from us – and reside in our White House.
First there is this:
September 18, 2006 at 09:49:22
U.S.-Israel-Iran Alliance: The Great Game Updated
Excerpts:
“The public leadership is put in place by power brokers with unlimited global access to high-level military, intelligence, economic, and strategic analysts, policy-makers, influence brokers, and puppet-masters. The broader objective of extending the power of the military/industrial elite without regard to national interest.
The ideology of a ruling elite both determines and reinforces favored decision-making algorithms that, despite their complexity, generally result in the same rather obvious determinations: exploitation of labor, strategic use of military force, allocation of resources for purposes of social control rather than social empowerment, and even choosing which party and candidates can best represent the elite’s interests in national elections.
This kind of strategic chess game has been going on for centuries unabated. Manipulating a few dozen national entities and a few core industries simply does not require a unique brand of “smarts”.
Iraq is in ruins, U.S. corporate interests have taken the U.S. taxpayer debt incurred by the war and destruction and converted it into windfall profits, the U.S. has control of Iraqi oil, the country is in the midst of a violent conflagration that creates a power vacuum that strengthens both Israel and Iran, and we’re building massive military bases and the world’s largest and most heavily fortified embassy as a governor’s mansion for our new 51st state. Of course, 3,000 U.S. troops have died with many more severely wounded, and who knows how many Iraqis. U.S. casualties are especially tendered by Americans as proof of the catastrophic handling of the war. But this concern represents a total misreading of the mindset of military command.
Perhaps it’s time to get this straight: 3,000, even 10,000, dead soldiers means nothing to the Pentagon or the Defense Department. When will Americans get that through their heads?
Barton Kunstler, Ph.D
http://www.opednews.com/ articles/ opedne_barton_k_060918_u_s__israel_iran_all.htm
More of my own thoughts follow:
I was told directly by someone with intimate knowledge that the State Department had learned that Rumsfeld planned to FOMENT CHAOS in Iraq from the outset…and that literally all of the apparent failures in Iraq were part of Rumsfeld’s goal prior to the invasion of Iraq. If ETERNAL OCCUPATION and PERMANENT BASES are your ultimate goal, this strategy makes sense – as peace and stability would eliminate the justification for US boots on the ground.
The recent revelation that Rumsfeld actually threatened to fire any General who continued to work on the planning for the aftermath of the invasion (“The future Of Iraq Projectâ€) makes total sense when you consider that the actual goal of Donald Rumsfeld was to “AVOID WINNING.â€
THE FUTURE OF IRAQ PROJECT:
Washington, DC, September 1, 2006 - The National Security Archive is today posting State Department documents from 2002 tracing the inception of the “Future of Iraq Project,” alongside the final, mammoth 13-volume study, previously obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. “The Future of Iraq Project” was one of the most comprehensive U.S. government planning efforts for raising that country out of the ashes of combat and establishing a functioning democracy. The new materials complement previous postings on the Archive’s site relating to the United States’ complex relationship with Iraq during the years leading up to the 2003 invasion:
http://www.gwu.edu/ ~nsarchiv/ NSAEBB/ NSAEBB198/ index.htm
http://www.sourcewatch.org/ index.php?title=Future_of_Iraq_Project
RUMSFELD HAD THIS ADVICE, AND NOT ONLY CHOSE TO IGNORE IT, BUT THREATENED TO FIRE ANYONE WHO CONTINUE TO WORK ON IT IN THE LEAD UP THE WAR.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ archives/ individual/ 2006_09/ 009469.php
Our troops, and the citizens of Iraq, are dying needlessly as the direct result of a dishonest strategy, intentionally designed to result in quagmire. They got the best advice the State Department had to offer, then intentionally chose to do EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE in order to guarantee failure, which in their view, meant success.
The Rumsfeld / Bush / Cheney plan from the outset, contrary to ALL LOGIC, was to both allow for the complete destruction of this civil society AND to stay there with troops in place forever.
IMPEACHABLE LIES REVEALED:
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s newly-issued chapters showed that top Administration officials, including the President, Vice President, then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, repeatedly misrepresented intelligence community findings, to support the Iraq invasion with lies that Iraq was tied to al-Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks, and had advanced WMD programs.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:28 amSo what’s the next brilliant plan to come from the White House?
Comment by missmolly — July 10, 2007 @ 10:21 am
Bomb Iran.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:29 amyup bomb iran, hey what do you say we move another carrier over there to the waters off iran…. oh wait:
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/ rtrs/ 20070710/ tpl-uk-usnavy-carrier-9562ed3.html
July 10th, 2007 at 10:30 amRUMSFELD’S EVIL REVEALED…
HOW RUMSFELD STEAMROLLED THE STATE DEPARTMENT IN ORDER TO ENSURE THE UTTER DESTRUCTION OF IRAQ AND THE QUAGMIRE – WHICH WAS ALWAYS HIS GOAL:
INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD HAASS
ADVISOR TO COLIN POWELL ON IRAQ WAR PLANNING
Q.
Why did we go to war?
A.
I think the first thing to say about this war is that it was an elective war. It was a war of choice. We didn’t have to go to war against Iraq; certainly not when we did, certainly not how we did it. It wasn’t as though the Iraqis were poised to suddenly do something or break out. So the decision to go to war — which obviously was the president’s decision — like everything else about this war, was an elective decision.
Q.
Did we do enough to plan for the postwar?
Q.
Is it fair to say that the Pentagon were too optimistic about the postwar situation?
A.
I’ll let you make the judgment and characterizations. I would just simply say that the aftermath has proven to be far more expensive in every sense of the word, in terms of human expense, in terms of the financial expense. I think in part, it was based upon some planning assumptions. I think part also, what made it a lot more difficult was in the immediate aftermath of the war, the degree of looting that took place. Looting doesn’t really capture the degree of physical destruction that took place. [It] meant that the job suddenly grew in magnitude and some precious time was lost. So the entire undertaking became far more demanding because of what happened in the initial days and weeks afterwards. …
The question that I think is legitimate to ask is, should we have had more forces ready to deal with the so-called peace stabilization side of things? Should we perhaps have been more sober in our expectations of how the Iraqis would react once the thumb of Saddam Hussein and his henchmen was lifted? So one can argue that the coalition forces at that point, there simply weren’t enough of them and they weren’t involved enough to deal with it. Or to put it another way, there was too long of a lag between war fighting and then dealing with the war’s aftermath.
Q.
Your view on that would be that we didn’t have enough troops on the ground.
A.
In part number, in part mission; we were slow to transition from war fighting to dealing with the afterward. That either would have argued for additional forces or a more rapid transition from one mission to another. Though to be fair, it was a difficult call to make — how fast to make that transition — because you still had the reality or the possibility of residual resistance from the Iraqis.
Q.
You were making recommendations about the postwar period while you were in the State Department. You made recommendations to Secretary Powell. What were your recommendations as to what that situation was going to look at and what it was going to require?
A.
I’m not going to go into every detail of what sort of advice or recommendations I made. What I simply did was look at the history of these situations, really going back to Germany and Japan and looking back over the more than one dozen experiences the United States had had since the German and Japanese occupations after World War II and ask questions. What it was we could likely expect? What is it we needed to be prepared for?
My view was that we should be thinking very large; that we were talking about a situation that would be very demanding; that we should try to use local forces as much as possible; that while we should dismantle the upper level of those, say, who had been involved in the Ba’ath Party, we should try to take advantage of the lion’s share of the army and police.
Interestingly enough, after World War II, the initial thinking about de-Nazification was to get rid of lots of people. But very quickly on, the United States and others realized that we really needed to work with the existing German forces and only get rid of the top level. So that was a lesson that I thought we should apply here.
But essentially, also I was arguing that we should make this as international as possible. There was no reason to hoard this to ourselves in some “victor gets the spoils” mentality, but rather that we should see this as something to be shared with others — for two reasons.
ACTUALLY THERE WAS ONE REASON…THE PERSONAL GREED OF THE PEOPLE IN CHARGE.
“We did not want this to drain the human and financial resources of the United States.â€
YOU FAILED – IT DID.
Q.
When did you hear Chalabi being flown into Nasiriyah?
A.
Pretty much when everybody else heard about it. When it became public. …
Q.
But you’re in charge of policy, I mean, you’re at a high level. Presumably, you would have known.
A.
I learn never to use the word “presumably” when it comes to government. All I can tell you is, I didn’t know about it in advance, and I don’t know who of my colleagues might have known about it. … I don’t know that anyone knew about it in advance. All I can say is, in my own view, such initiatives were and are unwise, because they’re an attempt to get too involved in the internal politics of Iraq. I just don’t think that’s the sort of thing that’s wise or sustainable.
Q.
I spoke to General Garner. He told me that he was instructed by Secretary Rumsfeld to shelve the “Future of Iraq Project.â€
A.
I can’t speak to that. I don’t know what sort of instructions or communications went on within the Pentagon. I would just simply hope it’s not true, because I thought a lot of good work went into that project.
Q.
That’s what he said. He said that he looked at the papers. He talked to the some of the people in the State Department. He thought it was good work. He wanted to use the work. But then he was instructed not to. Does that surprise you?
A.
Yes.
RUMSFELD & CHENEY TOOK THE BONE-HEADED INITIATIVE TO FLY IN CHALABI ON THEIR OWN, AND IN SO DOING, DESTROYED US CREDIBILITY WITHIN IRAQ.
HERE IS A POLICY EXPERT WHO FORMULATED POLICY FOR COLIN POWELL. HIS ADVICE WAS
A. TO KEEP THE POLICE AND MILITARY IN PLACE TO ENSURE LAW AND ORDER.
B. TO ALLOW THE IRAQIS TO DETERMINE THEIR OWN FORM OF GOVERNMENT AND ELECT THEIR OWN LEADERS WITH NO OUTSIDE INTERFERENCE.
C. TO BRING IN THE MAXIMUM NUMBER OF FOREIGN PARTNERS TO SHARE IN THE JOB OF SECURING THE COUNTRY, AND IN SO DOING, TO SHARE IN THE “SPOILS OF WAR.â€
http://www.pbs.org/ wgbh/ pages/ frontline/ shows/ truth/ interviews/ haass.html
The War in Iraq is about “SUCCESSFUL FAILURE.â€
In the words on Chalabi: “We are heroes in error.â€
Dead soldiers and civilians are of virtually no consequence to Rumsfeld and the rest of the criminals in charge. Picture a chessboard, and we are all merely pawns.
THE FAILURE IN IRAQ IS THE DIRECT RESULT OF THE PERSONAL HUBRIS AND GREED OF RUMSFELD, CHENEY AND BUSH ON BEHALF OF THEIR GLOBALIST OVERLORDS.
Your leadership does not represent your interests.
IMPEACH.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:30 amAnd LyingBastard Tony Faux said yesterday that the troops have only been in place a couple of weeks.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:30 amWeeks, months, it ain’t gonna make a damn bit of difference.
Failed strategy, failed premise, you can’t make an omelet out of eggs that are broken all over the pig pen.
The surge started six months ago. Six months after the allies invaded Normandy, they were in Germany already.
Meanwhile Dresden, Berlin and uncountable other German cities were being bombed to ashes, French cities were demolished and French civilian casualties were considered acceptable losses in the effort, every weapon and tactic in the inventory was used to defeat the German armies and every ally or supporter of Germany was given the same treatment. It was total war in every sense of the word.
Understand the difference from the Iraq war, you historically ignorant twit?
July 10th, 2007 at 10:31 amZalmay Khalilzad warns that the invasion and occupation of Iraq has opened “a Pandora’s box,” spreading “conflict,” as Cornwell describes it, across the Middle East. In fact, this is precisely what the Straussian neocons want–chaos and conflict spreading like an uncontrollable wild fire, scorching Muslim and Arab culture, eating away at the very societal cohesion of the region, thus leaving it decimated and malleable to reorganization along the lines envisioned by the Straussian neocons….
the actions of the Straussian neocons, following a well-established pattern, are anything but mistakes. Iran realizes this….
….Bush, the useful idiot sock puppet, unelected, court-appointed president of the Straussian neocons, is in the process of jettisoning democracy…. For the Straussian neocons, those of us alarmed and moved to action by the in-your-face onslaught against the Bill of Rights are considered the enemy. “Opponents of the ruling cabal, whatever their stripe, are ‘them.’ Indeed, since the cabal of philosophers is deceiving everyone else, even those who have joined the cause out of religious zeal are, in a real sense, ‘them.’ A small circle of initiates who repel the advances of everyone else is a feature of the Straussian State. These initiates are philosophers who rely on reason, and nihilistic reason tells them there are no rules, none, in this domestic battle,” [Michael] Doliner continues.
In order to construct the Straussian hierarchical society required to wage total, unrelenting, generational war, those opposed to the plan must be systematically eliminated, a process well under way with the illegal use of the NSA’s massive high-tech snoop apparatus. Of course, this apparatus is not employed, as we are assured by a complicit corporate media, to ferret out “al-Qaeda” telephone calls and email messages, but rather to locate and compile electronic dossiers on critics of the Straussians, who will be dealt with in coordinated manner after the next “Pearl Harbor” event occurs–and no doubt the Iranians will endeavor to provide this event after their country is brutally invaded, as Javad Vaeedi promises.
“More dangerous an enemy of the US and its traditional values than Muslims, neo-Jacobins have seized control of the Bush presidency and US foreign policy. They will stop at nothing to achieve their goal of World War IV in the Middle East,” [Paul Craig] Roberts warns. “The neo-Jacobins are rushing to get America involved in a general Middle Eastern war before Americans have time to think. The terrorist scare which worked the first time is being employed again. Once we have attacked other sovereign Islamic countries, we will have to bring back the draft in order to raise the necessary armies or resort to nuclear weapons…. If the American public falls for the second round of neo-Jacobin propaganda [in the current context, against Iran], neither do they deserve, nor will they have, liberty and democracy.”
http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=278
July 10th, 2007 at 10:33 amBomb Iran.
Comment by toasterhead — July 10, 2007 @ 10:29 am
yup bomb iran, hey what do you say we move another carrier over there to the waters off iran…. oh wait:
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/ rtrs/ 20070710/ tpl-uk-usnavy-carrier-9562ed3.html
Comment by Fan_of_Man — July 10, 2007 @ 10:30 am
EEK!
I was just being sarcastic…
July 10th, 2007 at 10:33 amNo I think Bush had a grand plan and expected the Dems to force withdrawl. His plan had one mistake in it he assumed the dems had some balls. Even if they were only teeny tiny ones.
Comment by Troll — July 10, 2007 @ 10:23 am
You may be right Troll. That way he & all of his black-hearted cohorts could then blame the ensuing chaos & carnage on them.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:34 amExcept he’s not a defense contractor.
He’s just in the pocket of a defense contractor.
And you can’t name anyone with the ability to run for the Presidency on the basis that they’ve got congresional experience on either ticket that isn’t.
WTF you think goes on ? That half of all discretionary spending in the US goes on defense by accident ? Think that stopped as of November last year ?
July 10th, 2007 at 10:34 am29. Comment by RUCerious
That’s the new spin “The clock hasn’t started yet! Start the clock NOW! Now we get 6 months!”
July 10th, 2007 at 10:34 amKilo, you are an
July 10th, 2007 at 10:35 amKilo you are an idiot and a liar.
And you can’t name anyone with the ability to run for the Presidency on the basis that they’ve got congresional experience on either ticket that isn’t.
Comment by Kilo
Dennis Kucinich has never taken a penny from any defense industry contractor. Period. End of story. Now shut th f up
July 10th, 2007 at 10:37 amLMAO. Yeah that’s the spin here.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:37 amGot any ideas why only yesterday TP was referencing the start of the surge in June when it came to measuring how it’s progressing ?
#34 he is in more pockets than just defense contractors, and as far as last november, i mean elect a gop lite day…. well we all know what time it is.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:38 amHasn’t Denis Kucinich done enough to demonstrate repeatedly that he can’t run for President ?
July 10th, 2007 at 10:40 amWhat more would he need to do ?
Die during his campaign launch ?
he cant? hmmm….
July 10th, 2007 at 10:41 amGot any ideas why only yesterday TP was referencing the start of the surge in June when it came to measuring how it’s progressing ?
Comment by Kilo
Because it was a direct quote from Tony Faux? Chief White House Teller of the Weekly Lies.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:42 amComment by ace — July 10, 2007 @ 10:30 am
Hey dickhead, post a link instead of copy/pasting 200 lines eh.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:43 amWhat is this, your first time on the internets unsupervised ?
Ace,
July 10th, 2007 at 10:44 amI think you are on to something. They did not need a post war plan for the purpose was to begin the pan-muslim war, let them destroy each other and then the muslims woulld beg the west to intercede. We would reestablish the empire, occupy a decimated middle east for another 100 years and have all the oil we need. If only the dems would pull our troops out.
That’s the new spin “The clock hasn’t started yet! Start the clock NOW! Now we get 6 months!â€
Comment by willyloman
Yeah that’s the spin here.
Comment by Kilo
Honesty. See that wasn’t so hard.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:45 amComment by ace — July 10, 2007 @ 10:30 am
Good post, ace…thanks.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:47 amNope. It was TP’s own counterpoints about how the surge was progressing.
For some reason they were citing the same start date for the surge that the military does, and referred to the surge starting before this as an ‘allegation’.
But that would make this headline here and the entire premise of the article misleading now wouldn’t it.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:48 amDiscuss.
44. Comments by Ace and Troll
Your are onto something.
If the initial invation had produced stability; if we hadn’t (against the advice of the Generals) broken up the Iraqi Army, then Iraq would be in a position to force us out.
Plus, the administration couldn’t say we are needed there (while building 14 bases).
Without stability, the administration is freer to force the Hydrocarbon Law down the throats of the Iraqi Congress without much attention to it.
This quagmire was planned.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:50 amLoman,
July 10th, 2007 at 10:52 amYou are starting to see. Things are not what they seem. Smoke and mirrors.
Typical.
The surge is FUBAR, and the trolls are arguing Friedman Units.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:52 am#44 Troll
[…We would reestablish the empire, occupy a decimated middle east for another 100 years and have all the oil we need.]
—————————————————————–
I think that’s called ‘robbery’, don’t you think so?!, stealing other’s oil,or whatever…? Is this the way you think as a civilized person? !!
Your wishes will never mature anyway…but your thinking of ‘reestablshing the empire’ and stealing the oil is amazing, indeed.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:53 am49. Comment by Troll
I haven’t spoken to my Father in years because he is retired Navy and ex-Bush lover and I have been saying this to him since 2002.
Never sat well with me the first time they changed the rationale to go into Iraq.
So i started reading. Been a fan of Kucinich ever since.
So, in my mind, after costing me a father, I’ve been seeing, thank you.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:55 amIt’s the same amount of oil nimrod.
What you’re onto is apparently a plan for trying to get that same amount of oil out of a country under different circumstances. Those now being through vulnerable, hostile militia controlled infrastrastructure, past opposing hostile factions which have a political reason to disrupt that, before it can get to sites where it is too dangerous for foreign oil companies to operate safely.
That’s progress on the oil front right ?
Funny thing is Nigerian militants came up with the same strategy as a way to disrupt oil flow in order to gain political power and decrease the influence of foreign oil companies.
So either chaos is a good plan regardless of your motives when it comes to oil production (why did they never adopt this plan in Texas?) or you guys are just full of shit. Guess which.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:56 amWithout stability, the administration is freer to force the Hydrocarbon Law down the throats of the Iraqi Congress without much attention to it.
This quagmire was planned.
Comment by willyloman — July 10, 2007 @ 10:50 am
I don’t buy it. I think it gives the administration too much credit. I think they actually believed Iraq would welcome the liberators and embrace liberal (small L) democracy.
The Iraqi Congress has difficulty even maintaining a quorum, let alone debating about legislation. Do you really think it’s easier in this environment to push through a controversial law?
July 10th, 2007 at 10:57 amWASHINGTON (CNN) — As President Bush faces GOP pressure to change his war strategy, the White House announced Tuesday that an upcoming progress report will result in “the beginning of a new way” in Iraq.
White House spokesman Snow: “Everybody says, ‘We want to do it a new way.’ We agree. It’s now started.”
Six months after announcing an increase of nearly 30,000 U.S. war troops that became known as the “surge,” Bush is scheduled to appear at a town hall meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, on Tuesday where he is expected to push for a “post-surge” phase of the four-year war, senior officials told CNN.
——————————————————————————-
Now matter how many f*cking ways they try to spin this :
This was a War (Occupation) based on lies for Greed, Hegemony and Power.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:58 amBack in the day, I found ion AEI website, an article by Lynne Cheney titled “Ecconomic Reconstruction in a Post Saddam Iraq”.
I should have copied it from the website.
But, alas, it is gone.
I have since wondered if it is not Lynne that is really the brains behind this whole thing.
if any of you can find it, please let me know.
You know, she is still cashing the checks from Lockheed Martin. She was a defense contractor as well.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:00 amOn the six-month anniversary of Bush’s “surge” he will be in Cleveland today to talk about a “post-surge Iraq.” Nothing can shock us anymore, but this arrogant spin on reality is not acceptable.
Tony Snow must be fired for his performance in our White House Press Room yesterday. We pay that man and he purposely ignored and deflected every question on Iraq yesterday. We are mad as hell, and we will not take it anymore from Snow, Bush, and all other WH crooks.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:02 amI don’t buy it. I think it gives the administration too much credit. I think they actually believed Iraq would welcome the liberators and embrace liberal (small L) democracy.
The Iraqi Congress has difficulty even maintaining a quorum, let alone debating about legislation. Do you really think it’s easier in this environment to push through a controversial law?
Comment by toasterhead — July 10, 2007 @ 10:57 am
You probably don’t believe that these same purported incompetents were behind 9/11 either.
They’ve got you thinking EXACTLY the way Fox News tells you to think.
How’s the kool-aid?
July 10th, 2007 at 11:04 am#
Back in the day, I found ion AEI website, an article by Lynne Cheney titled “Ecconomic Reconstruction in a Post Saddam Iraqâ€.
I should have copied it from the website.
But, alas, it is gone.
I have since wondered if it is not Lynne that is really the brains behind this whole thing.
if any of you can find it, please let me know.
You know, she is still cashing the checks from Lockheed Martin. She was a defense contractor as well.
Comment by willyloman — July 10, 2007 @ 11:00 am
CHENEY’S DAUGHTER WORKED FOR ARMITAGE !!!
ARMITAGE ASSOCIATES?
Story cached here:
http://64.233.187.104/ search?q=cache:LBJvw5zYj00J:www.upi.com/ view.cfm%3FStoryID%3D28022002-082742-5255r+cheney%27s+daughter+armitage+associates&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1
Cheney’s daughter offered State Dept. job
By ELI J. LAKE
UPI State Department Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Feb. 28 (UPI) — As Vice President Dick Cheney prepares for his tour of the Arab world next month, the State Department’s Near East Affairs Bureau is wooing his daughter for a high-level post, United Press International has learned.
Earlier this month, the State Department officially offered Elizabeth Cheney-Perry a job as the deputy assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs for regional economic issues, according to State Department and administration officials.
These officials — who spoke on condition of anonymity — tell UPI the new post was created specifically for the vice president’s daughter, adding that she will work primarily on economic development in the Middle East.
Prior to attending law school, Cheney-Perry worked for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development between 1989 and 1993. After 1993, she took a job at Armitage Associates LLP, the consulting firm founded by the current deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage. “She is actually an Armitage person, which a lot of people at the department are,” one senior State Department official told UPI on Thursday.
http://www.alternet.org/story/37490
The Other Cheney Behind the Scenes
By Robert Dreyfuss, The American Prospect. Posted June 13, 2006.
Since 2005, Dick Cheney’s daughter Elizabeth has held a powerful position guiding Middle East policy. And like father, like daughter: Liz is a key player in the push for regime change in Iran and Syria.
At the very heart of U.S. Middle East policy, from the war in Iraq to pressure for regime change in Iran and Syria to the spread of free-market democracy in the region, sits the 39-year-old daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney. Elizabeth “Liz” Cheney, appointed to her post in February 2005, has a tongue-twisting title: principal deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs and coordinator for broader Middle East and North Africa initiatives. By all accounts, it is an enormously powerful post, and one for which she is uniquely unqualified.
During the past 15 months, Elizabeth Cheney has met with and bolstered a gaggle of Syrian exiles, often in tandem with John Hannah and David Wurmser, top officials in the Office of the Vice President (OVP); has pressed hard for money to accelerate the administration’s ever more overt campaign for forced regime change in both Damascus and Teheran; and has overseen an increasingly discredited push for American-inspired democratic reform from Morocco to Iran.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:05 amOtherwise known as the job description of that WH press secretary, just like the previous 10 and the next 10.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:06 amARMITAGE KNIGHTED BY THE CROWN:
http://www.btcnews.com/btcnews/1294
4/25/2006
OMG: Meet Richard Armitage, Knight Commander
Richard Armitage, the number two man at Colin Powell’s state department, has been knighted “for services to US-UK relations.†Presumably this is a reference to his diplomatic exertions on behalf of the invasion of Iraq.
Armitage, one of the innumerable Bush administration graduates of the Reagan era Iran-Contra school of murderous skullduggery, was made a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (KCMG).
He was joined on the honours list by several US military officers, including Captain John Peterson.
Peterson’s claim to fame? “Peterson, chief of staff to the commander of the US navy in the Middle East, was awarded a CBE (Commander of the British Empire) for - according to the Pentagon - leading British and American forces “in the campaign to secure Iraqi oil assets†at the start of the 2003 invasion.â€
Absent his outstanding service, Iraq might be a shambles.
The news comes to us courtesy of Chris Floyd, who notes Armitage’s efforts on behalf of US-drug dealing terrorist relations during the Iran-Contra affair, and wonders whether even higher honors might be in store for the future former president, assuming that happy designation ever applies.
“ If Armitage gets this kind of gilded wheeze for mere minioning in some of the most murderous operations of the past half-century, then great googily-moogily, what’s George W. going to get, when he retires, for actually being the trigger-man for the world-convulsing killing spree in Iraq? Not to mention his relentless and ruthless gutting of the U.S. Constitution? What honor would suffice for this sterling service? No mere knighthood or baronage will do; Lizzie will have to adopt him into the royal family or something, name him heir to the throne.
After all, his whole life’s work has been aimed at overthrowing the American Revolution and restoring feudal rule by aristocrats, warlords, religious cranks and simpering courtiers. Why not just bring the whole thing full circle back to Buckingham Palace?â€
Armitage — whose former boss, Powell, was made a Knight Commander of The Most Honourable Order of the Bath (KCB), one letter less but one notch above Armitage’s KCMG, for his services in the first Gulf War — was nominated for the honor by British foreign minister Jack Straw, who is no doubt in line for recognition of his own role in facilitating the Mother of All Train Wrecks in Iraq.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:06 amYou probably don’t believe that these same purported incompetents were behind 9/11 either.
They’ve got you thinking EXACTLY the way Fox News tells you to think.
How’s the kool-aid?
Comment by ace — July 10, 2007 @ 11:04 am
No, I don’t. I don’t buy any of that tinfoil-hat conspiracy crap. Sorry. I’m a progressive, not a moron.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:07 am54. Toasterhead. “I don’t buy it. I think it gives the administration too much credit.”
I mis-spoke. The administration isn’t running this war. Baker and company wrote the Hydrocarbon Law.
AEI wrote “Choosing Victory”
the Bush Doctrine is the Regan Doctrine with some minor modifications.
This adminstration is the front man for an older group.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:07 amAww shucks.
Tell you what, why don’t you post the entire contents of the next 5 websites closest to it on google.
Or just go with a link instead you fuckwit.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:09 amYou probably don’t believe that these same purported incompetents were behind 9/11 either.
They’ve got you thinking EXACTLY the way Fox News tells you to think.
How’s the kool-aid?
I believe it.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:09 amAnd Dead-Eye Dick has blood up to his rotten stinking neck.
Sorry. I’m a progressive, not a moron.
Comment by toasterhead — July 10, 2007 @ 11:07 am
Perhaps you’re a Coincidence Theorist?
Coincidences that seem to have led to a World War…
9/11 (9:00 am) - The CIA began an exercise to simulate a plane crashing into one of it’s buildings.
Ann Tatlock, a CEO at Fiduciary Trust located in the South WTC Tower, is on her way to an early morning charity event at the U.S. Strategic Command Center at Offutt AFB in Nebraska — where Bush later flew to for “safety” — hosted by billionaire Warren Buffett and is escorted by military officers into an officer’s lounge with a TV and watches the 2nd hijacked plane crash right into her offices.
WTC Owner Larry Silverstein is not in his office on the 88th floor of the North Tower because of a “doctors appointment.”
Donald Rumsfeld is in his office at the Pentagon talking about missile defense and the risk of terrorism and predicts there will be a terrorist attack two minutes before the first plane crashes into the WTC.
FAA memo says Flight 11 passenger was shot who happened to be a multi-millionaire elite Israeli military commando who understands Arabic and who happened to be sitting directly in front of one of the alleged hijackers.
On the morning of 9/11, Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) and Rep. Porter Goss (R-FL) — the chairmen of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees — along with Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) and some other members of the House Intelligence Committee are in a meeting at the Capital building with the director of Pakistani intelligence (ISI), Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmad, who authorized a $100,000 wire transfer to alleged lead 9/11 hijacker, Mohamed Atta.
The instant messaging service Odigo, says that two of its workers at their Israeli facility received messages two hours before the Twin Towers attack on September 11 predicting the attack would happen.
The WTC 7’s fire alarm system is placed on “TEST” mode for an eight hour period for “maintenance or other testing” in which any alarms that are received from the system are not shown on the operator’s display and are considered the result of the maintenance or testing and are ignored.
NORAD was in day two of a week long exercise called “Vigilant Guardian” in which some of it’s military participants thought the first reports of the hijackings later on in the day were “part of the exercise.”
A Pentagon rescuer mentions how “eerie” it was that the Pentagon’s MASCAL emergency plane crash plan that he had trained twice for was “very similar to what actually happened”.
Personnel from the Walter Reed Army Medical Center who helped the rescuing efforts at the Pentagon also say that it was “eerie” how an emergency situation they went through just two weeks before the attack helped prepare them for the Pentagon crash.
A group of young men were witnessed on top of a white van celebrating while they were filming themselves with the burning WTC in the background in which they were later arrested and identified as Israeli citizens — some later found to be Israeli spies — with one saying upon being arrested, “We are Israeli. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem.” They were found with large amounts of cash, a box cutter, multiple foreign passports, maps linking them to the blasts, and a bomb-sniffing dogs reacted as if detecting explosives in their van.
Within minutes of the explosion at the Pentagon, the FBI confiscates security videos that had captured the crash from a nearby gas station and hotel.
9/11 (10:31 am) - The commander of NORAD says he didn’t receive the presidential order to shoot down any of the hijacked planes until after Flight 93 crashed and the 9/11 Commission report confirms NORAD didn’t get this order until 28 minutes after the crash.
Video coverage shows Palestinians rejoicing over news of the 9/11 attacks, but later the celebrations were found out to have been staged.
Larry Silverstein, the WTC leaseholder, said he decided that the smartest thing to do to the WTC 7 was to “pull it” when a NYFD commander told him that he wasn’t sure they were going to be able to contain the fire in the building and said after they made the decision to “pull” the WTC 7, they “watched the building collapse.” The term “pull” was used to describe the demolition of the WTC 6 days later.
White House staff are given the powerful anthrax antibiotic Cipro, a full month before the first cases of anthrax were reported.
When Benjamin Netanyahu, former prime minister of Israel and elite special forces member for the IDF, was asked what the 9/11 attacks meant for relations between the United States and Israel, he replied, “It’s very good.”
President Bush’s cousin, Jim Pierce, escaped death from the WTC thanks to a “schedule change” the night before.
FEMA in NYC prior to 9-11 for Project TRIPOD terror drill, scheduled for 9-12
As of this writing, June 2, 2004, the transcript of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s testimony to the 9-11 Commission during the May 18-19, 2004 hearings in New York is the only transcript of that hearing omitted from the Commission website
(http://www.9-11commission.gov).
Did Rudy say something wrong?
“… the reason Pier 92 was selected as a command center was because on the next day, on September 12, Pier 92 was going to have a drill, it had hundreds of people here, from FEMA, from the Federal Government, from the State, from the State Emergency Management Office, and they were getting ready for a drill for biochemical attack. So that was gonna be the place they were going to have the drill. The equipment was already there, so we were able to establish a command center there, within three days, that was two and a half to three times bigger than the command center that we had lost at 7 World Trade Center. And it was from there that the rest of the search and rescue effort was completed.”
July 10th, 2007 at 11:09 amFor the price tag of 12 billion a month, this administration is doing a really bad job in this occupation of a country we supposedly won the war in years ago.
12 Billion a month and many, many lives.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:11 amThis adminstration is the front man for an older group.
Comment by willyloman — July 10, 2007 @ 11:07 am
View EVERYTHING in the context of a decades-long COVERUP of the activities of GHW Bush, W’s Father.
See This:
In November 2001, George W. Bush signed an executive order that upended the 1978 Presidential Records Act and permits the Bush Iran-Contra papers to be kept secret in perpetuity. The executive order also affects 60,000 pages of papers from the Reagan Presidential Library that include details of then-Vice President George H. W. Bush’s role in Iran-Contra. Robert Gates has always been a trusted consigliore for the Bush family.
At the Pentagon, he will undoubtedly use his two years to clean up for Dubya and suppress incriminating information on the Iraq debacle — all in a continuing effort to protect the Bush family legacy.”
waynemadsenreport.com
THIS IS CALLED “EVIDENCE.”
THIS IS CALLED “OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE.”
GHW Bush is the biggest CRIMINAL in America.
All that has transpired since the Kennedy Assassination - he has been a part of.
His entire adult life has been about what he could get away with, and covering his tracks.
No matter what the most significant events have been in the past four-plus decades, 41’s fingers have been in it in some way.
Investigate this for yourself:
“GROUP 40″ - What was 41’s role?
Bay Of Pigs - What was 41’s role?
Kennedy Assassination - What was 41’s role?
http://www.planetquo.com/ The-George-H-W-Bush-JFK-Murder-Connection
James Files, the confessed grassy knoll assassin - What was 41’s role?
http://www.planetquo.com/ The-George-H-W-Bush-JFK-Murder-Connection
Iran Contra - What was 41’s role?
Mena Drug Running - What was 41’s role?
Iraq’s Invasion Of Kuwait - What was 41’s role?
New World Order - What was 41’s role?
Lewinski Sexpionage - What was 41’s role?
Osama Bin Laden - What was 41’s role?
Afghanistan Opium Production -What was 41’s role?
CIA / DEA Drug Running - What was 41’s role?
California Energy Crisis - What was 41’s role?
Carlyle Group - What was 41’s role?
9/11 - What was 41’s role?
Dictating US Policy Today - What IS 41’s role?
GHW BUSH IS STILL PRESIDENT.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:11 amAce; I like you and your passion, but you lose people’s attention with all the cut and paste.
i’m with you. We all know the administration turned a blind eye to intel about the attacks.
Now we know that while the planes were in the air to kill Zawahari (the real mastermind behind this) Rumsfeld turned them around.
I’m with you. you just lose people with the cut and paste.
You got a good voice. Use it and make links to the stuff.
And that will convince alot more people.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:15 amThis adminstration is the front man for an older group.
Comment by willyloman — July 10, 2007 @ 11:07 am
With you there. I don’t doubt that the plans for this war were hatched fifteen years ago by the AEI and the Carlyle Group and lots of others. I just don’t believe that a civil war was part of their plan. They may have expected some minor resistance, but they didn’t anticipate nor plan for this level of instability. I see it as incompetence, not conspiracy.
I think they had absolutely no grounding in Middle Eastern history and politics when they hatched this plan. I personally know experts who briefed officials in the administration before the 2003 invasion and were stunned by the officials’ lack of understanding of Iraqi history and sectarian divisions.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:16 amIf you don’t mind my saying.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:16 amYes we were all just thinking that it was sad you couldn’t copy/paste more entire webpages here as though URLs were some hard-to-master technology.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:16 amControlled by the Jews no doubt.
And the Joooos Willyloman. Don’t forget the Joooos. Ace will fill you in on this.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:19 amAce,
keep the info coming!
-kay
July 10th, 2007 at 11:20 am71. Comment by toasterhead ” I just don’t believe that a civil war was part of their plan. ”
I agree with you.
They wanted instability and weakness that would allow them to install bases and the mock government to pass the Hydrocarbon Law.
They did underestimate the degree of resolve of these people not to be assimilated into our “democracy”.
Much like The Soviet Union didn’t understand in Afganistan.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:20 amWilly”
most of the stuff I post is a combination of prior articles, along with my commentary. Many of the original links to the most powerful FACTS have long since been Sanitized For Your Protection.
I respect your opinion about long posts, but if the links no longer work (thanks to those who seek to hide the truth), then the only option is to make the truth available in long form.
Substance trumps style where the truth is concerned.
Why is this Fox News Story not available on the FOX web site?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7545.htm
Why is this ABC 20/20 piece not available on the ABC News website?
http://www.antichristconspiracy.com/ HTML%20Pages/ ABCNEWS_com_Were_Israelis_Detained_Sept_11_Spies.htm
Why has virtually EVERY article on Haaretz referencing the Dancing Israelis been scrubbed?
July 10th, 2007 at 11:21 amAnd the Joooos Willyloman. Don’t forget the Joooos. Ace will fill you in on this.
Comment by Kilo
What is wrong with you? That you have nothing better to do than show up every day at a site where people present ideas and communicate in an effort to further our understanding of the situation we are in, just to interject lies and misdirect threads with idiotic racial slurs?
Have you considered how sick that is? How desperate for any attention you must be?
July 10th, 2007 at 11:24 amOnly on a blog as lame as this one could you find this.
Only here could you have a whackjob like this question what was George Bush’s role in Bill Clinton’s drug smuggling operations and not only see no criticism of him, but actually see him encouraged….
In his his postings…. on a liberal blog…. about Bill Clinton… being a drug smuggling kingpin.
Why not just petition the owners of TP to remove the comments function ? It would require far less effort for the same result.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:24 amKilo is here using Megaphone software as part of Israel’s Hasbara program, right Kilo?
July 10th, 2007 at 11:25 amThe Crimes of Mena
Given the scope and implications of the Mena story, it may be easy to understand the media’s initial skepticism and reluctance. But it was never so easy to dismiss the testimony arid suspicions of some of those close to the matter: Internal Revenue Service Agent Bill Duncan, Arkansas State Police investigator Russell Welch, Arkansas Attorney General J. Winston Bryant, Congressman Bill Alexander, and various other local law-enforcement officials and citizens.
All of these people were convinced by the late eighties that there existed what Bryant termed “credible evidence” of the most serious criminal activity involving Mena between 1981 and 1986. They also believed that the crimes were committed with the acquiescence, if not the complicity, of elements of the U.S. government. But they couldn’t seem to get the national media to pay attention.
During the 1992 campaign, outside advisers and aides urged former California governor Jerry Brown to raise the Mena issue against Clinton - at least to ask why the Arkansas governor had not done more about such serious international crime so close to home. But Brown, too, backed away from the subject. I’ll raise it if the major media break it first,” he told aides. “The media will do it, Governor,” one of them replied in frustration, “if only you’ll raise it.”
Mena’s obscure airport was thought by the l.R.S., the F.B.I., U.S. Customs, and the Arkansas State Police to be a base for Adler Berriman “Barry” Seal, a self-confessed, convicted smuggler whose operations had been linked to the intelligence community. Duncan and Welch both spent years building cases against Seal and others for drug smuggling and money laundering around Mena, only to see their own law-enforcement careers damaged in the process.
What evidence they gathered, they have said in testimony and other public statements, was not sufficiently pursued by the then U.S. attorney for the region, J. Michael Fitzhugh, or by the l.R.S., Arkansas State Police, and other agencies.
By 1992, to Duncan’s and Welch’s mounting dismay, several other official inquiries into the alleged Mena connection were similarly ineffectual or were stifled altogether, furthering their suspicions of government collusion and cover-up. In his testimony before Congress, Duncan said the l.R.S. “withdrew support for the operations” and further directed him to “withhold information from Congress and perjure myself.”
Duncan later testified that he had never before experienced “anything remotely akin to this type of interference…. Alarms were going off,” he continued, “and as soon as Mr. Fitzhugh got involved, he was more aggressive in not allowing the subpoenas and in interfering in the investigative process.”
In a mass of startling new documentation - the more than 2,000 papers gathered by the authors from private and law-enforcement sources in a year-long nationwide search - answers are found and serious questions are posed.
These newly unearthed documents - the veritable private papers of Barry Seal - substantiate at least part of what went on at Mena.
What might be called the Seal archive dates back to 1981, when Seal began his operations at the Intermountain Regional Airport in Mena. The archive, all of it now in our possession, continues beyond February 1986, when Seal was murdered by Colombian assassins after he had testified in federal court in Las Vegas, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami for the U.S. government against leaders of the Medellin drug cartel.
Mena, from 1981 to 1985, was indeed one of the centers for international smuggling traffic. According to official l.R.S. and D.E.A. calculations, sworn court testimony, and other corroborative records, the traffic amounted to thousands of kilos of cocaine and heroin and literally hundreds of millions of dollars in drug profits. According to a 1986 letter from the Louisiana attorney general to then U.S. attorney general Edwin Meese, Seal “smuggled between $3 billion and $5 billion of drugs into the U.S.”
A former member of the Army Special Forces, Seal had ties to the Central Intelligence Agency dating to the early 1970s. He had confided to relatives and others, according to their sworn statements, that he was a C.l.A. operative before and during the period when he established his operations at Mena. In one statement to Louisiana State Police, a Seal relative said, “Barry was into gunrunning and drug smuggling in Central and South America … and he had done some time in El Salvadore [sic].” Another then added, “lt was true, but at the time Barry was working for the C.l.A.”
In a posthumous jeopardy-assessment case against Seal - also documented in the archive - the l.R.S. determined that money earned by Seal between 1984 and 1986 was not illegal because of his “C.l.A.-D.E.A. employment.” The only public official acknowledgment of Seal’s relationship to the C.l.A. has been in court and congressional testimony, and in various published accounts describing the C.l.A.’s installation of cameras in Seal’s C- 123K transport plane, used in a highly celebrated 1984 sting operation against the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua.
Among the aircraft flown in and out of Mena was Seal’s C-123K cargo plane, christened Fat Lady. The records show that Fat Lady, serial number 54-0679, was sold by Seal months before his death. According to other files, the plane soon found its way to a phantom company of what became known in the Iran-Contra scandal as “the Enterprise,” the C.l.A.-related secret entity managed by Oliver North and others to smuggle illegal weapons to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels. According to former D.E.A. agent Celerino Castillo and others, the aircraft was allegedly involved in a return traffic in cocaine, profits from which were then used to finance more clandestine gunrunning.
F.A.A. records show that in October 1986, the same Fat Lady was shot down over Nicaragua with a load of arms destined for the Contras. Documents found on board the aircraft and seized by the Sandinistas included logs linking the plane with Area 51 - the nation’s top-secret nuclear-weapons facility at the Nevada Test Site.
Seal was scarcely alone in his extensive smuggling operation based in Mena from 1981 to 1986, commonly described in both federal and state law-enforcement files as one of the largest drug- trafficking operations in the United States at the time, if not in the history of the drug trade. Documents show Seal confiding on one occasion that he was “only the transport,” pointing to an extensive network of narcotics distribution and finance in Arkansas and other states. After drugs were smuggled across the border, the duffel bags of cocaine would be retrieved by helicopters and dropped onto flatbed trucks destined for various American cities.
But now the larger implications of the newly exposed evidence seem as disturbing as the criminal enormity it silhouettes. Like his modern freebooter’s life, Seal’s documents leave the political and legal landscape littered with stark questions.
What, for example, happened to some nine different official investigations into Mena after 1987, from allegedly compromised federal grand juries to congressional inquiries suppressed by the National Security Council in 1988 under Ronald Reagan to still later Justice Department inaction under George Bush?
Perhaps most telling is what is so visibly missing from the voluminous files. In thousands of pages reflecting a man of meticulous organization and planning, Barry Seal seems to have felt singularly and utterly secure - if not somehow invulnerable - at least in the ceaseless air transport and delivery into the United States of tons of cocaine for more than five years. In a 1986 letter to the D.E.A., the commander and deputy commander of narcotics for the Louisiana State Police say that Seal “was being given apparent free rein to import drugs in conjunction with D.E.A. investigations with so little restraint and control on his actions as to allow him the opportunity to import drugs for himself should he have been so disposed.”
Seal’s personal videotapes, in the authors’ possession, show one scene in which he used U.S. Army paratroop equipment, as well as militarylike precision, in his drug-transporting operation. Then, in the middle of the afternoon after a number of dry runs, one of his airplanes dropped a load of several duffel bags attached to a parachute. Within seconds, the cargo sitting on the remote grass landing strip was retrieved by Seal and loaded onto a helicopter that had followed the low-flying aircraft. “This is the first daylight cocaine drop in the history of the state of Louisiana,” Seal narrates on the tape. If the duffel bags seen in the smuggler’s home movies were filled with cocaine - as Seal himself states on tape - that single load would have been worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
If the Seal documents show anything, an attentive reader might conclude, it is that ominous implication of some official sanction. Over the entire episode looms the unmistakable shape of government collaboration in vast drug trafficking and gunrunning, and in a decade-long cover-up of criminality.
As recently as March 1995, Arkansas state trooper Larry Patterson testified under oath, according to „The London Sunday Telegraph“, that he and other officers “discussed repeatedly in Clinton’s presence” the “large quantities of drugs being flown into the Mena airport, large quantities of money, large quantities of guns,” indicating that Clinton may have known much more about Seal’s activities than he has admitted.
The crimes of Mena were real. That much is now documented beyond doubt. The only remaining issues are how far they extended, and who was responsible.
http://oraclesyndicate.twoday.net/stories/2543661/
July 10th, 2007 at 11:27 amMe ? You were encouraging ace to post more of what he does so that he could spread his message more effectively.
I was merely pointing out the common and explictly repeated theme of what he posts.
Are you suggesting that the Jews being behind everything is an idiotic racial slur ? Well then why encourage it retard ?
A smarter person might tweak to the fact this has been your second lesson in reading before posting. You of course will miss this and continue making an arse of yourself. Right ?
July 10th, 2007 at 11:29 amwillyloman.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:31 amThe fkn picture.
Are we getting it yet chump ?
Why has virtually EVERY article on Haaretz referencing the Dancing Israelis been scrubbed?
Comment by ace
Don’t stop there? How about no real investigation into the USS Liberty? How about the two messages on the Israeli companies phone 10 minutes before the planes hit? how about the fact that we are the only ones blocking the UN sanctions of Israel Security Council for the illegal occupation of Palistinian land?
How about AIPAC and the connection to AEI and PNAC?
I know this stuff. Most of us here know it. Read it. I am personally a member of a Pro-Palistinian group that is pushing for a peaceful resolution to the conflict there.
Heres a link http://www.endtheoccupation.org/
sign up. be glad to have you.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:32 amExcept that requires people to ID opinion polls relating to Israel and deliver users to it.
This thread had nothing to do with Israel until you injected that here once again idiot.
And judging by the amount of shit you’ve posted here designed to piss everyone off about you and your policies, you might be using the pro-Israel Megaphone 2.0
Why manipulate polls when you can manipulate people’s opinions against you ?
July 10th, 2007 at 11:37 amAce; it is money. and the power that comes with it. it’s money that they buy off our legislators with and money that buys the PR companies time.
Bush isn’t a reflection of the Christians anymore than these Ultraconservative Israelis are a reflection of Judea.
I posted yesterday a list of 10 Israeli Groups that are actively seeking a peaceful resolution to the troubles there.
It’s not the evil Jewish conspiracy. Some just happen to be of that faith, like Bush and company are of Christian faith.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:43 amand Kilo is still an idiot. (just thought I would throw that in)
July 10th, 2007 at 11:44 amComment by Kilo
Shouldn’t you change your name to lazy?
July 10th, 2007 at 11:45 amHey Ace! You’re “aces” with me! The new information you’re furnished here is awesome and everyone needs to bookmark it for future reference. Cheney’s daughter and Armitage….what webs we weave, indeed! I’m still attempting to digest and check out the url’s you’ve provided. The Mena one is especially fascinating.
Thank you, thank you, thank you - for continuing to elevate the veracity of these threads here at TP!!
Kudos to you, Ace!
July 10th, 2007 at 11:49 amKilo, who?? heh- I have an auto delete of all of his posts so I never get to see them.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:50 amRe: “dancing israelis” - scrub-a-dub-dub. They can scrub all they want but a good portion of americans have saved that very video for future reference.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:51 amCan you produce a link to the last time you posted something meaningful or insightful anywhere on this blog ?
Anything you’re proud of which you believe isn’t an example of you being precisely that yourself.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:52 amAce: Saw your note on the previous thread. Thanks for alerting me to some more “TRUTH”. TP needs you and your brand of truth.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:52 amAce: I know that we discussed your other website a few days ago but do you have a venue for us to share in the wealth of information and research you’ve gathered?
July 10th, 2007 at 11:53 amKilo sez:
Here’s one, Kilo…one in which, strangely enough, barfly is providing you with information you were seemingly too lazy to find yourself.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:57 amin a continuing effort to protect the Bush family legacy.â€
waynemadsenreport.com
THIS IS CALLED “EVIDENCE.â€
THIS IS CALLED “OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE.â€
GHW Bush is the biggest CRIMINAL in America.
All that has transpired since the Kennedy Assassination - he has been a part of.
His entire adult life has been about what he could get away with, and covering his tracks.
No matter what the most significant events have been in the past four-plus decades, 41’s fingers have been in it in some way.
Investigate this for yourself:
“GROUP 40″ - What was 41’s role?
Bay Of Pigs - What was 41’s role?
Kennedy Assassination - What was 41’s role?
http://www.planetquo.com/ The-George-H-W-Bush-JFK-Murder-Connection
James Files, the confessed grassy knoll assassin - What was 41’s role?
http://www.planetquo.com/ The-George-H-W-Bush-JFK-Murder-Connection
Iran Contra - What was 41’s role?
Mena Drug Running - What was 41’s role?
Iraq’s Invasion Of Kuwait - What was 41’s role?
New World Order - What was 41’s role?
Lewinski Sexpionage - What was 41’s role?
Osama Bin Laden - What was 41’s role?
Afghanistan Opium Production -What was 41’s role?
CIA / DEA Drug Running - What was 41’s role?
California Energy Crisis - What was 41’s role?
Carlyle Group - What was 41’s role?
9/11 - What was 41’s role?
Dictating US Policy Today - What IS 41’s role?
GHW BUSH IS STILL PRESIDENT.
Comment by ace — July 10, 2007 @ 11:11 am
Ace: We both know (as do many, many americans) that Bush Jr. is his father’s “puppet”. Everything from JFK’s ordered assassination (Bush 41 was head of CIA) to 911 has Bush 41’s sick fingerprints all over it. Pappy Bush has always been a nazi/fascist. His own father, Prescott Bush, was stopped from supplying gas to the Hilter regime for the concentration camps….that is verifiable fact.
People need to do the math…..and connect the dots….back to the origin of all of this and you will discover that old, decayed, pappy-bush is behind it all.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:58 amPoor, lazy, Kilo.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:58 amveritas sez:
Better do more than just bookmark it, veritas…ace’s posts on TP have a disquieting habit of being “disappeared” after a while…
July 10th, 2007 at 11:58 amHow does one as a child growing up integrate his own father’s work with the Hitler regime into his own process? I’d say it becomes quite dysfunctional and, ultimately, results in sadism itself. Obviously, Bush 41 aped his father - and due to lack of physical stature, effected a napoleonic complex (aka bully complex) and passed it down to his Shrub, the 43.
July 10th, 2007 at 12:00 pmTripMaster - I’ve heard that although I’ve not witnessed it myself. What I do is this: I send these posts and articles to every individual I know for them to assess and investigate, as well I do myself. I can’t imagine why a blog which leans toward Truth would censor posts? Could it be that they are being leaned on to do this? If so, the people need to know about it.
July 10th, 2007 at 12:01 pmPersonally, being a total info-junkie, I’ve printed up a lot of ace’s info w/links. I think that we all need to do our own research and ace provides a lot of places to start.
July 10th, 2007 at 12:02 pmI’ve read some biographical works on Bush 41 as well as Bush 43 and the general consensus is that they both had totally dysfunctional childhoods. By the time little Bush came along in the 40’s, Pappy’s pathology must have been fully developed which, of course, he passed on to him by abusing him emotionally.
July 10th, 2007 at 12:03 pmMargaret - Hi! And, yes, Ace is a font of valuable information for all of us. I’ve printed his links and posts as well and am still learning more about what’s going on. I’ve found his reference to Leo Strauss (via Irving Kristol and now his Shrub, William Kristol) to be especially enlightening. I was having difficulty understanding how a group of morons could come up with this philosophy on their own. It reminded me of Hitler’s MO yet was somehow combining what I knew of historic fascism as well. Now I see that they’re not intelligent at all - they’ve usurped the Straussian dogma right out of the book!
Yes, encourage all of your friends to begin their own personal research into all of this. The more informed the public becomes, the more the outrage and ultimate yell for impeachment.
July 10th, 2007 at 12:06 pmOh I get it.
July 10th, 2007 at 12:09 pmTP lies about the contents of a report.
I state it says no such thing.
Guy finds a quote that supports my statement and confirms TP is lying.
I’m lazy for not finding that.
Gotcha. Lazy I am then.
I guess the “fly in the ointment” so to speak in the massive infiltration of these fascists into every facet of our government was actually Allan Bloom, Professor at University of Chicago, who pushed through some 100 PhD’s who now teach in universities and law schools across this country…..producing more little nazis each year. Of course, we know that 150 fascists are sitting in key administration position under Hitler(whoops - Bush’s) regime. That became obvious during some of the hearings where these kids look like deer-in-the-headlights and knew nothing about accountability because they’d been brainwashed by reichwing unirsities like Regent and think tanks like The Federalist Society. Of course, drunk on the possibility of their own power (and the ego perk) they sit in positions and are being made patsys of left and right. Fools and incompetents to believe they have the credibility, education, or experience to even apply for the position - no less function realistically in it. But I digress….sorry….
July 10th, 2007 at 12:11 pmAnd post it all here!!!
Even the stuff about Clinton being a drug smuggling kingpin. It’s all good kids. None of it will be used to ruin the reputation of this blog, honestly.
July 10th, 2007 at 12:12 pmBut what a clever little scheme this was - to put wet-behind-the-ears “kids” into key positions so they could become the administration “fall guys”….gotta admit….THAT was different. Criminal but different.
July 10th, 2007 at 12:12 pmSo, again, thanks Ace for the volume of credible information and scientific data you’ve provided to all of us here at TP! Keep the info flowing…..great stuff!
July 10th, 2007 at 12:14 pmHello veritas! So nice of you to say hi. Ace is the sort of person that I used to think was a bit out there but then, as I got older, I realized that a lot of what used to be labeled paranoid nonsense was proving to be true!
I’m old enough to remember how anyone who dared to say that the cia had anything to do with the coup in Chile (for ex.) was crazy. Well gee, it was all true!
“U.S. officials released documents on Monday acknowledging the CIA had provided covert aid 30 years ago to undermine Chile’s government, but analysts say some of the most important documents have not yet been made public.”
http://archives.cnn.com/ 2000/ WORLD/ americas/ 11/ 13/ cia.chile.02/
Between the neocon Strauss connection, those awful awful Kristols, Cheney and Rummy having had their warped fingers in everything for the last FOUR decades (Bush 41 even longer), well the pieces of the puzzle seem to be forming a picture don’t they!
July 10th, 2007 at 12:20 pmThanks for the numbers; I was planning on looking them up so I could send them to my Congressman (Harry Mitchell, D-AZ 5), who I’m still pretty angry with for voting for the Bush Capitulation Act in May. However, he seems to have gotten the message already as I heard him on the radio yesterday talking about how the surge isn’t working and we need to draw down, so I’ll probably hold off for a bit and see where he goes with it.</