Thank you C-Span:
Michael Scheur, formerly of the CIA, said in 2002 and 3, Bin Laden and his supporters were talking back and forth. They don’t have to do another 9-11, they can just bleed our economy to death. Bush’s attack on Iraq is the biggest drain, but making grandmothers take off their shoes at airports is also very expensive.
He also pointed out the free publicity Osama receives, as Muslims across the world are seen being killed on TV, from the Phillipines to Kashmir to the West Bank. His book is Imperial Hubris.
Peter Bergen, author of Holy War…, said the seeds for 9-11 were planted when the first Bush based our troops in Saudi Arabia, to attack another Muslim country. “How would you like it if we put a Jihad base in the Vatican?” is what a Pakistani asked him.
He went on to say that Saudi Arab escaped colonization by the British and French. But the U.S did it. 2 years almost to the day, 2 of our embassies were bombed. Michael Scheur believes the world is going Bin Laden’s way, as Muslims see the hypocrisy of our actions these past 50 years.
There was more. C-Span has a website, and this debate was from
www.worldaffairs.org.
Or how about “from the Archives”, or Dig the Web?
Bush threatening China yesterday. The U.N was founded with the Nationalist Party on Taiwan representing China? Then Nixon “flip-flopped”, kicked them out, and installed Communist China instead? After 20-some years? And now Taiwan isn’t even in the U.N, and was it last year Bush more or less told them to cool it and don’t get CC mad?
Also, Afghanistan never really produced opium on an industrial scale until Bill Casey thought it was a great way to make money and addicts of the Soviet troops? An old Tom Hundley article in the Chicago Tribune said so. Our CIA started up the drug trade? Previously had they done it in Indochina?
Bob Woodward said Bill Casey also ordered a bombing in Lebanon to kill one Muslim cleric/terrorist. It missed him but killed 80 people? Is that true? Shouldn’t we know about that before we go to war with Syria? Didn’t our navy also shell Lebanon, killing how many?
And Fred Kaplan on Slate.com gave a succinct summary of what Clinton did when North Korea threatened, contrasting it with Bush’s “reckless” actions. Another article told how Rummy and the Pentagon would still control the Intelligence Apparatus. “Trust but verify” is quoted over and over from Reagan. We’re trusting our government to be Christian, without verifying same. Remind you of “The Godfather” scene where Michael is at the Baptism renouncing the devil, while his “troops” are out killing his enemies”?
news2notice@msn.com
Over 1400 Americans dead, 10,000+ injured, $200,000,000,000.00 gone, and Adnan Chalabi is Prime Minister material?
Wasn’t he convicted of some kind of fraud in Jordan? Did we insult the King of Jordan, who was our strong ally, by giving him shelter? How did we end up paying an anti-Saddam group Chalabi led, $300,000.00 a month, was it? For how long?
When Chalabi turned up last week, you didn’t say, “Wait a minute”? The last we heard he was selling our secrets to Iran.
The “Media” is like the joke about Alzheimers; every day you make new friends?
Also, a Mideast expert from Michigan State on C-Span, wondered why we didn’t insist on a Senate like ours, for the Iraqi government. That would guarantee some power for minority parties, as it does for our small states.
The news today of “negotiations” in Iraq makes me wonder if Bush is pushing for Chalabi, as he previously ignored Tenet’s dismissal of Chalabi as a charlatan, if I remember correctly.
On C-Span 2-15-05 : Custer Battles, I think was that the name of a security firm accused of stealing millions from the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. One founder had the last name Custer, and the other the last name Battles. Cheating the CPA is not the same as cheating the U.S. of A- one of them told an assistant U. S attorney. One of the congressmen at this hearing asked for the name of the government official to whom this was said, as it was blatant disrespect for taxpayers.
An attorney for many who tried to blow the whistle on Custer Battles gave that and many other examples of egregious corruption, and wondered why the Bush administration has not done anything for over a year now. We wonder also, as many millions of our $$ were given to this firm.
Even more frightening was that a former FBI agent who worked for them, and who accused them of dishonest practices, was stripped of all his weapons, and left alone in the middle of Bagdad. The whistleblowers’ lawyer described his harrowing journey to safety.
Listening to Eliot Spitzer on C-Span: The ratio of CEO salaries to ordinary workers’ was 43 to 1 in 1980. Today, its 530 to 1.
When asked about private accounts for Social Security: If there had been good rules that were enforced when Bush started, the market would not have been a safe place to invest. But Enron, World Com, etc. happened, and even now, it is very hard to make the necessary reforms.
Democrats are the ownership society. All that Franklin Roosevelt did made the Middle class possible. Spitzer is chagrined that Bush has co-opted Democrats’ very accomplishments and claimed them as his own vision. Spitzer said it better.
I don’t often get to read the NY Times, but there it was in the Recyclables bin. How did “campaign on terror” become as accepted as “the sun rises and sets”? For millennia people believed the sun revolved around the earth. That was a hard language habit to break, and why bother, since we all know the facts?
But The New York Times printing “campaign on terror”, without defining it as George Bush’s slogan, is the reverse. A reversion to the fear of falling off the edge of the earth. Legitimizing it as fact.
Al Qaeda did the 9-11 attack. We know who they are, and the campaign should be against them. Certainly not against a word. The Times acceptance of George Bush’s language is like Galileo submitting to the Pope.
