Thursday, August 11, 2005

The Bulldog Manifesto: Finally, a Mainstream Media Outlet is Questioning 9/11

The Bulldog Manifesto: Finally, a Mainstream Media Outlet is Questioning 9/11

Thursday, August 11, 2005

On August 6, 2005, a UK mainstream newspaper, The Daily Mail, published an article raising many of the serious concerns regarding the 9/11 cover-up. The article is written by Tony Rennell, and was featured on pages 36, 37, and 38 of the newspaper. (They didn't post the article on their online site). Although I don't particularly agree with everything in the article, its at least nice to see a mainstream source raise the questions that have not been answered re: 9/11.

Here is the article:

The plot by America’s military bosses was devilish in both design and intent – to fabricate an outrage against innocent civilians, fool the world and provide a pretext for war. In the pentagon, a top secret team drew up a plan to simultaneously send up two airliners painted and numbered exactly the same, one from a civil airport in America, the other from a secret military airbase nearby.

The one from the airport would have military personnel on board who had checked in as ordinary passengers under false names. The one from the airbase would be an empty drone, a remote-controlled unmanned aircraft.

Somewhere along their joint flight paths, the passenger-carrying plane would drop below radar height, and disappear, landing back at the airbase and unloading its occupants in secret.

Meanwhile, the drone would have taken up the other plane’s designated course. High over the island of Cuba, it would be exploded in mid-air after broadcasting an international distress call that it was under attack from enemy fighters.

The world would be told that a plane load of blameless American holidaymakers had been deliberately shot down by Fidel Castro’s Communists – and that the US had no choice but to declare war and topple his regime.

This ‘agent provocateur’ plan – code named OPERATION NORTHWOODS and revealed in official archives – dates from 1962 when the Cold War was at its height. (Bulldog Manifesto adds: See Operation Northwoods here and here)

Four decades later, there are a growing number of people who look back at this proto-conspiracy and then to the events of 9/11 and see uncanny and frightening modern parallels.

For Cuba, read Iraq, say these skeptics. For the dummy airliner, read the Twin Towers in New York.

The Northwoods plan is crucial to the argument presented in a hugely provocative – many would say fantastical – yet, at times, genuinely disturbing new analysis of 9/11 by two radical British based journalists, Ian Henshall and Rowland Morgan.

Did the CIA actively help the hijackers?

In it, they examine various conspiracy theories that suggest the Bush administration connived in the devastating aerial attacks on New York and Washington four years ago.

The reason? To give Bush the excuse he wanted to push ahead with his secret, long-held plane to invade Iraq and capture its oilfields.

As we shall see. Many of the theories they raise are outlandish in the extreme. It would be easy to dismiss them as hokum, the invention of over-active imaginations among those whose instinct is always to find some way to blame America for the world’s ills.

Are we really supposed to believe that the CIA actively helped the hijackers succeed – or even that the US government staged the whole attack and itself murdered thousands of its own citizens?

Some would say that even in discussing suck notions, we are lending comfort to terrorists and doing a disservice to the dead.

However, much of evidence the authors present is undeniably compelling – and their arguments sound rather less preposterous in the light of OPERATION NORTHWOODS all those years ago. That plan was proposed in all seriousness by America’s Joint Chiefs of Staff in a memo to the Secretary of Defence. It got as far as the Attorney General – Robert Kennedy, brother of the president, John Kennedy, before being vetoed.

It is proof, says Henshall and Morgan, that forces at the top of the US Government are capable of conceiving a deadly, devious and fraudulent plan to further their own secret ends – even under such a supposedly ‘nice guy’ president as JFK.

In which case, can the idea of a 9/11 plot by those who serve the deeply mistrusted Bush really be ruled out with total certainty, without at least considering the arguments?

Of course, the official explanation for 9/11 is that Al Qaeda just got lucky that sunny morning in September 2001.

The terrorists conducted their attacks without outside help, by this account, and intelligence and other blunders by the US authorities that contributed to their terrible success – for example, ignored warnings that an attack involving aeroplanes was likely, or issuing US entry visas to 19 Islamic fanatics set on murder – were just that: blunders.

This is the White House’s version and it was endorsed by a Washington commission of inquiry under Thomas Kean published last year.

But, according to Henshall and Morgan, the story is full of gaping holes and unanswered questions. And the most startling question, which remains unresolved, they say, is why the hijackers’ principal target, the two 110-storey towers at the World Trade Centre in New York crumbled so easily.

No-one who watched each building suddenly cascade into dust and debris in just 20 seconds will ever forget the slow-motion horror. But now the question is asked: was it all too pat, too neat?

Though 30 years old, the towers had expressly been built to survive the impact of a Boeing 707, a plane the same size and carrying as much fuel as the ones that struck. That they collapsed after being hit and fell at such speed was unprecedented in the history of architecture. It astonished many engineers.

The official explanation is known as the Pancake Effect – steel supports melting in the intense fireball, causing the floors to tumble down on each other.

The problem here is that the heat from the explosions was probably not nearly as great as people tend to assume.

There was indeed a lot of kerosene from the aircraft fuel tanks when flight 11 from Boston hit the North Tower between the 94th and the 98th floors but pictures show that most of this fireballed outwards. Experts have questioned whether the fire ever got hot enough to melt the buildings’ steel frames.

Oddly, too, original estimates by firefighters after the second plane, Flight 175, hit the South Tower, were that the blaze was containable.

Two firefighters actually reached the crash zone on the 78th floor and a tape exists of them radioing down that just two hoses would be enough to get the fire under control (The Bulldog Manifesto adds: Here is the tape. Its the firefighters describing the fire inside the building before it collapsed)– in which case the situation should have been little different from a ‘normal’ office fire, and no steel tower ever collapsed as the result of such a blaze.

‘The fire wasn’t hot enough to cause a collapse’

Kevin R Ryan, laboratory director at a US underwriting firm specializing in product safety, was sacked from his job last year after questioning the official explanation. (The Bulldog Manifesto adds: Here are a bunch of links regarding this fact.)

“The buildings should have easily withstood the thermal stress caused by the burning jet fuel”, he said. “If steel did soften or melt, this was certainly not due to jet fuel fires of any kind, let alone the briefly burning fires in those towers. That fact should be of great concern to all Americans.”

Intriguingly, Ryan claimed that his firm had checked and approved the steel used in the towers when they were built. This was later vehemently denied by the bosses who sacked him.

To add to the mystery, the tape of the two firemen was kept secret and when relatives were finally allowed to listen to it, they had to sign strict confidentiality agreements.

If the Pancake Effect theory is wrong, there’s one obvious alternative: that the towers were brought down by the sheer impact of the planes hitting them. But this, according to the skeptics, ignores basic physics. (The Bulldog Manifesto adds: Check this out.)

The initial hit on the North Tower, for example, destroyed 33 of the 59 columns in its north face. This meant the damage was asymmetrical, so any resulting collapse would surely have been lopsided.

In fact, the building fell evenly. The TV aerial on the summit sank vertically, in a straight line.

There were other strange anomalies. According to the Kean Commission, when the first plane struck: ‘A jet fuel fireball erupted and shot down a bank of elevators, bursting into numerous lower floors, including the lobby level, and the basement four storeys below ground.’

Unlikely, say Henshall and Morgan. A firm by a French documentary crew, who by chance were following a New York firefighting team that day, shows the first men arriving. The lobby was covered in fine debris and the windows were shattered but there was none of the soot or oily residue that burning jet fuel would have left behind.

Meanwhile down in the basement, a 50-ton hydraulic press was reduced to rubble and a steel and concrete fire door demolished. Witnesses there said the destruction was less like that from a fireball flash and more like that from a bomb.

Some firefighters told reporters that day that they thought there had been bombs in the building – before apparently being silenced by their chiefs. So had Al Qaeda cleverly placed explosives inside the rowers as well as attacking them from the air?

Or, as conspiracy theorists would have it, had some homegrown agency mined the towers to make sure they fell – but neatly without collapsing over the rest of Manhattan, America’s financial and business heartland?

The authors quote an expert demolition contractor from Pennsylvania, Michael Taylor, who said the fall of the buildings ‘looked like a controlled demolition’.

Another expert, Van Romero, vice-president for research at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, reached the same opinion after studying videos of the disaster, and concluded that ‘explosive devices inside the buildings’ caused them to collapse. (The Bulldog Manifesto adds: Here is a bio on Van Romero.)

Strangely and without explanation, he recanted that view just ten days after going public with it. Might he possibly have been leaned on?

Even stranger, say Henshall and Morgan, was the collapse of a third building on the World Trade Centre site, a smaller 47-storey block known as WTC7, which was largely ignored by the world’s media. (The Bulldog Manifesto adds: Check this out on WTC7. In my view, Building 7 is the easiest way of revealing the truth about 9/11. Building 7 is simple and easy to understand. More than that, it can't be denied!

It had not been hit by a plane yet it, too, mysteriously fell many hours after the Towers had gone.

The official explanation for this was that fuel stores caught fire as a result of debris from the burning towers, the building began to bulge in one corner, and after that it was unsalvageable.

But remember that, according to Henshall and Morgan, a steel-framed building had never collapsed as a result of a fire before this day. And, again according to the authors, WTC7 appears almost untouched by fire in photographs taken at the time.

The landlord of the World Trade Centre site, Larry Silverstein, explicitly suggested at one point that WTC7 was deliberately demolished. He told a US TV documentary that a decision was taken to ‘pull’ the building rather than risk loss of life, though this was later denied.

Certainly, according to Henshall and Morgan, the building’s fall in seven seconds was just as textbook-tidy and suspicious as the collapse of the Twin Towers. Given that it also housed offices of the US Secret Service, the CIA and the Defence Department, this has led conspiracy theorists to give it a key role in the supposed 9/11 plot – as we will see shortly.

Part of the whole problem, according to Henshall and Morgan, is that vital evidence about what happened was destroyed or muddied in the wake of the atrocity.

One expert said there were bombs inside the towers

Ground Zero, the base of the towers, was fiercely protected by the authorities – understandably so because it not only contained human remains but a cache of seized drugs held in an FBI office and more than $1 billion of gold from bank vaults in the Buildings.

Yet what went on behind all the heavy security?

After most air disasters, the wreckage of the planes is meticulously gathered up and pieced together in search of clues.

Extraordinarily, in the course of removing the rubble from the Twin Towers to a nearby landfill site, the 9/11 salvage operation seems to have ‘lost’ four six-ton aircraft engines, besides failing to find the ‘black box’ flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders from either of the planes.

These data boxes – which could have revealed exactly what happened in the doomed jets – are deliberately designed to withstand heavy impacts and exceptionally high temperatures. It is, according to experts, very rare for them not to be recovered after an accident.

Unfortunately, according Henshall and Morgan, there was a singular lack of official zeal even to establish the very basic fact that the aircraft that hit the Twin Towers were the same as those that took off from Boston.

Perhaps, with almost the entire world watching the attacks on TV, it hardly seemed necessary to prove the glaringly obvious. But this failure to follow standard procedures for accident investigation once again gave encouragement to the conspiracy theorists.

And then there was the oddity of the single passport. The black boxes may have been destroyed and steel girders melted – yet somehow one of the hijackers’ passports avoided this inferno and was found intact in a nearby street by ‘a passer-by’. (The Bulldog Manifesto adds: Here is a good resource regarding the "miracle passport".)

To Henshall and Morgan, that seems absurd, as does the almost instant identification of this person as a hijacker rather than a passenger or a Twin Towers office worker. Conspiracy theorists suspect the passport was planted to help establish the official story in the first, critical hours after the disaster.

Why didn't fighter planes intercept the hijackers?

Still more unanswered questions surround what happened at the Pentagon in Washington, in the third successful terrorist attack that day.

After taking off from Dulles Airport, Washington, American Airlines Flight 77 dropped off the radar screens for 36 minutes when its transponders sending signals back to air traffic control were switched off.

When the blip reappeared, it was closing on the city but where precisely the aircraft had been for the past half an hour was a mystery. Nor could anyone in air traffic control figure out what it was.

Experienced officials apparently watched its speed and maneuverability and thought it must be a military plane. Conspiracy theorists maintain this is precisely what it was.

In a repeat of New York, no evidence has ever been produced from the wreckage to prove that it was Flight 77 that hurtled into the side of the Pentagon at 350mph.

Photographs show that the hole it made was large enough for the fuselage of a Boeing 757 but not for the wings and the tail, though these supposedly disappeared through the gap and then vapourised.

For the conspiracy theorists, this points to a conclusion that what hit was not Flight 77, and not even a jetliner.

Some witnesses claim the plane they say hit the Pentagon was a small one, an eight – or 12-seater, and that it did not have the roar of an airliner but the shrill whine of a fighter plane, One witness is convinced it was a missile.

The authors say the matter could be cleared up by CCTV footage of the crash from a nearby filling station, a hotel and traffic surveillance cameras. Unfortunately, the FBI seized all three videos within minutes of the crash and they have never been released.

In essence, to the extreme conspiracy theorists, what took place on 9/11 was a repeat of the aborted OPERATION NORTHWOODS.

Far from being an attack by Islamic terrorists, they say, the events were a complete hoax, a conjuring trick by the US government in just the same way that Kennedy’s generals wanted to fool the world over Cuba.

Planes were swapped, ‘drones’ slammed into the World Trade Centre (which was mined with explosives as well) and the Pentagon, and the identities of alleged hijackers from the Middle East were stolen or invented to put the blame on Al Qaeda. (The Bulldog Manifesto does not subscribe to the remote contol theory. Its pure speculation at this point to assume that.)

Along with the ‘passengers’ who apparently boarded the planes, the ‘suicide hijackers’ are now either dead or living under different identities, just as the pentagon planned fro the military personnel it was going to use back in 1962. (The Bulldog Manifesto adds: See this BBC article) )

The theory seizes on the fact that, like the plane that apparently hit the Pentagon, both Flight 11 and Flight 175 switched off their transponders on their way to the Twin Towers and disappeared from Radar screens. According to the skeptics, this gave them time and opportunity to land at the handily located Griffiss Air Force Base, a Pentagon command center which also houses research laboratories into advanced computers and radar. There, they were supposedly replaced by remote-controlled substitutes.

In technical terms, this is not as far fetched as it sounds. The US military experimented with unmanned aircraft as far back as World War II and there have been successful jet models since. Well-connected conspirators, so the theory goes, would have little difficulty getting their hands on a system to fit in an airliner. (The Bulldog Manifesto adds: Once again, I don't subscribe to the 'drones' theory. There aren't any real facts there..)

The switch would supposedly be foolproof because, as we have seen, the aircraft in the ruins would not be properly identified.

Then there was the smaller building known as WTC7. It was the obvious point from which to run the New York end of the scam, guiding the planes into their target. Afterwards, of course, the evidence had to be destroyed, hence its demolition.

Taken as a rush, and without looking at the detail this might seem vaguely plausible. But could we really have been so totally and utterly conned?

Common sense says no. An operation of such intricacy and complexity would require the co-operation – and the silence until death – of thousands of people. Everything we have read about the victims on the planes, and their heartbroken relatives, would be a carefully constructed sham.

It might just be possible in a totalitarian society but surely not in a flawed yet robust democracy like America. And with four missions (the hijackers of the fourth plane, Flight 93, were overthrown by its passengers), not just one as in OPERATION NORTHWOODS? No.

To be fair to Henshall and Morgan, they make it clear that they themselves are not advocating such an extreme theory of empty planes and hoax attacks.

They admit the Pentagon’s radar reconstructions suggest the planes were not switched, and that alleged Al Qaeda ringleaders are said by their interrogators to have confirmed the official account.

Instead of retreating into fantasy, they simply insist that something is being held back – that we have not been told the full story. And it’s hard to discount all their arguments.

Why, they ask, were air traffic controllers so slow to report suspected hijackings to the military that day in breach of standard procedures, with the result that fighter planes arrived too late to intercept?

Flight controllers in four separate incidents were unaccountably slow to realize that something was wrong and alert the military authorities. Even after one plane was definitely known to have been hijacked, they failed to respond promptly when others went missing. The air force scrambled from the wrong base.

For some reason, too, when fighter planes eventually were scrambled to New York, they were from an airbase 150 miles away, rather than the much closer one in New Jersey. The Twin Towers were ablaze before they got there.

All the while the local TV channels were smoothly getting eye-in-the-sky helicopters into the air over the World Trade Centre. In the words of the authors: “Their routine mobilizations stand in stark contrast to the apparent impotence and indecisiveness of the $350-billion-a-year US military.

Yet for all the shortcomings of the Federal Aviation Authority and the US Air Force that day, no-one was ever fired or reprimanded.

One explanation for this paralysis is that there was, as fate would have it, an air defence exercise going on in US airspace that same day, codenamed Vigilant Guardian. The air traffic controllers were confused by this, thinking the planes disappearing from their screens might be part of the exercise.

Coincidence? No say the 9/11 sceptics. This was exactly the sort of smokescreen operation that anyone wanting to make life easier for the hijackers would launch to paralyse any authorities that might get in the way.

When the first evidence came that hijackings were taking place, traffic control officials wasted valuable time wondering whether or not this was part of the Vigilant Guardian exercise.

Suck a smokescreen fits well with two types of government-inspired plot postulated by 9/11 sceptics – popularly known as ‘LIHOP’ and ‘MIHOP’.

‘LIHOP’ – ‘Let It Happen On Purpose’ – holds that since the turn of the new century, radical right-wingers in Washington (the so-called new-cons) had been keen to get a US military presence in the Middle East oilfields and were also desperate to do something about Al Qaeda, which had been targeting US interests overseas.

When evidence came in of an impending terrorist attack, they decided to ignore it. They intended that it should succeed. It would act at the very least as a ‘wake-up’ call to their apathetic fellow countrymen and at best as an excuse for war.

In the much the same way, some historians believe, President Roosevelt knew in advance from broken codes about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941 – but let it happen, at the cost of 2,400 lives, because he wanted an excuse to join World War II.

‘MIHOP” takes a step on from this – ‘Make it Happen On Purpose’. This theory has the same motivation but the active involvement of US agents. Planted in Al Qaeda, they helped organize the plot, or at the very least cleared a path for the hijackers.

These agents may even have tried to keep down casualty figures, which some think were suspiciously small in the circumstances.

The plane that hit the Pentagon was seen to swerve at the last minute and hit an area of the building that was largely unoccupied – and which had just been fitted with reinforced external walls and blast-resistant windows. A crash into the other side would have killed and maimed many thousands instead of just 125.

In New York, too, more than 50,000 inhabitants of the Towers were targeted but just 2,600 killed – not least because of the orderly way in which the buildings collapsed, after most of the occupants had been evacuated. Was this an example of a ‘managed’ atrocity?

For most observers, the idea of US involvement in the attacks still strains credulity beyond breaking point. Yet that catalogue of unanswered questions remains troubling.

Some are very basic. How, for example, did the hijackers manage to slip past airport security with weapons?

The White House explanation is plastic knives, but there has never been any independent confirmation of how the men were armed. Some passengers who made phone calls from the doomed planes said they witnessed stabbings but others spoke of bombs and even guns being used.

To some, the official recourse to ‘plastic knives’ smacks of a cover-up to conceal security lapses – or worse, a deliberate turning of blind eyes.

Doubts are even raised over the gung-ho story of Flight 93, the fourth plane in the attacks, which passengers apparently seized back from the hijackers, causing it to crash into a field but miss Washington.

The legend of the heroic cockpit-storming, launched to cries of ‘Let’s Roll’, was a product of tapes that have never been authenticated or released to anyone other than the victims’ relatives, who were sworn to secrecy.

Henshall and Morgan say the matter could be cleared up if recordings or billing evidence from phone companies were produced but they never have been.

This call for transparency is the thrust of their whole argument. It is time, they say, for a full and truly independent inquiry into 9/11 that will reveal all the facts and silence the rumours.

One thing it could consider would be the anthrax attack on America three weeks after 9/11. Five recipients of contaminated letters died, postal facilities were closed, as were office buildings on Capitol Hill where hundreds of lawmakers and staff were tested and given an antibiotic.

At the time, this was seized on by the Washington power-brokers pressing for action against Iraq. ‘Who but Saddam Hussein could have supplied Arab terrorists with anthrax,’ they asked.

By contrast, skeptics about 9/11 see this as this finishing touch to the grand plot – an attempt to distract attention from any doubts about the atrocities and the lessons to be learned from them.

They may have a case. The letters mysteriously stopped and the anthrax spores were identified by scientists as a particular strain stemming only from the government’s own labs in Maryland.

But by then the scare had shut down congress at a crucial time, when questions about 9/11 were beginning to surface, and helped deepen the mood of fear and paranoia among ordinary Americans.

It was those fears, say the skeptics, that Bush exploited to get his way on Iraq. Had he plotted it that way all along? Henshall and Morgan raise enough awkward points to make it a thought that cannot simply be laughed out of court.

After all, Bush and Blair, took us to war assuring us that ‘the Iraq regime continues to possess some of the most lethal weapons ever devised’. Yet those weapons of mass destruction have not been found and many doubt they existed.

With public trust one of the major casualties of the war, can any of us be absolutely sure we have not been caught up in a lie and perhaps a bigger one even than we ever though possible?

In their inquiries Henshall and Morgan may have discover no smoking guns – but they have certainly left a whiff of something sinister in the air.

The Bulldog Manifesto: If You **** with Cindy Sheehan, You Will Pay!

The Bulldog Manifesto: If You *** with Cindy Sheehan, You Will Pay!


Words from Your Blogger: so-called curse words follow...

If You Fuck with Cindy Sheehan, You Will Pay!
Message to the heartless Bush crime family: Stop fucking with Cindy Sheehan, or else!

You can smear a former ambassador. You can vengefully reveal the identity of a CIA operative. You can lie and take this country to war. You can profit from the war in Iraq. You can steal elections. You can bastardize the democratic process. You can surround yourself with phony journalists and shield yourself from the public. You can spend 20% of your time in office on vacation. You can fake terrorist attacks and/or exploit them for your own self-interest and profit. You can use fear to rape us of our liberties. You can hide yourself behind a cross that you certainly know nothing about. You can cover yourself in a flag while systematically destroying what the flag stands for. You can torture children. You can manipulate poor and patriotic people to die for your bank accounts. You can ignore a genocide in Sudan. You can negligently ignore the AIDS pandemic in Africa. You can hire Exxon executives to manipulate scientific reports on the environment. You can squeeze the middle class. You can step on the lower class. And you can go out of your way to protect your friends in the defense, oil, and gun industries......

But if you fuck with a mother who lost a son in your pitifully conceived war, you will pay a heavy price with the American people! We will never forget it!

Do not fuck with her!

Lightning Crashes II


Lightning Crashes II
Originally uploaded by D.James.
There was such a response to this photo, so I decided to post another shot from last night.

Same night, same storm as this photo.

However, something with the surge in this bolt turned everything teal-green. Mother Nature was surely showing her beauty.

CBS News | Cabbie: Amway Tale Didn't Wash | August 11, 2005�12:00:20

CBS News | Cabbie: Amway Tale Didn't Wash | August 11, 2005�12:00:20: "They claimed they were heading to a sales conference of Amway, the household goods manufacturer. But, says Wagers, 'They didn't strike me as the Amway type, because, to be honest, they weren't very pushy about their product. And I've dealt with (Amway salespeople) before. So that was my only real suspicion. "

'Australian accent' heard in militant broadcast. 10/08/2005. ABC News Online

'Australian accent' heard in militant broadcast. 10/08/2005. ABC News Online
Last Update: Wednesday, August 10, 2005. 11:01am (AEST)
'Australian accent' heard in militant broadcast
By Europe correspondent Rafael Epstein

Arab television has broadcast a video showing a masked militant with an apparent Australian accent criticising British Prime Minister Tony Blair over Iraq.

The man is shown holding an automatic rifle and boasting about a recent attack that killed United States troops in Afghanistan.

The video, aired on Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television, featured blurred footage said to be of a rocket attack on a helicopter that killed 16 US soldiers in June.

The masked man, wearing a black balaclava and combat gear, claims a group of Al Qaeda "fighters" carried out the operation.

"The Honourable Sons of Islam will not just let you kill our families in Palestine, Afghanistan, Kashmir and the Balkans, Indonesia, the Caucuses and elsewhere," the militant says in what seems to be an Australian accent.

"It is time for us to be equals. As you kill us, you'll be killed. As you bomb us, you will be bombed."

The Federal Government says ASIO will be looking closely at the video but there is no official word on whether the footage is authentic.




© 2005 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Copyright information: http://abc.net.au/common/copyrigh.htm
Privacy information: http://abc.net.au/privacy.htm

WagNews: Gay Meteorite in Pedophile Coup Bid

WagNews: Gay Meteorite in Pedophile Coup Bid

Comments from Your Blogger

This post at breakfornews.com is best understood in the context of understanding disinformation and its current role at some internet web sites.

This discussion is about those in the audience disenchanted with the Mainstream Media (MSM): those who may have been seeking truth from alternatives on the internet. It does seem that the nature of alternative media outlets (be they internet radio, late night radio talk, web sites) depends on creating a mystique or compelling reason to lure the target audience back for more. If you think of a TV sitcom based on romantic tension of two characters, you are aware of how letting the couple marry and live happily ever after will tend to destroy the comic tension and interest.

In that regard, as you realise that if the current state of affairs is a alluring in some ways like a mystery novel, you may agree that if the mystery is solved, the most immediate result of this is the need find a new mystery to solve. And, why would any producer or web content master want to have to spend precious time doing that (finding new material) when you can milk the current story episode after episode. On top of that, when you throw in the intelligence personnel who are organized and paid to cover up the truth, you have the recipe for why so many "truth" sites become an endless distraction. Listen and see what you think of Fintan's and Kathy's analysis.


So what does all this mean. Do you, the reader, have a reason to trust this blog as less of a run-around? Should we believe that breakfornews.com is less of a run-around? How much money do Fintan and Kathy make from the Neemwell business? To what extent will that go to to draw web traffic? Who are the outside supporters who injected money a few months ago? What if I think the http://www.treeincarnation.com/ (another of Fintan's web sites) has very little of value regarding truth and science of life? What if his analysis of the "faked" (photoshopped) pic of the London bombers is wholly incorrect? I don't have answers to any of these questions.


End of Blogger's Comments


New Audio show: A send up of the latest Coup & Nuke scare story from the CIA's fearmonger crew; also some interesting information on the as yet unmentioned Abu Ghraib connection.
with Fintan Dunne & Kathy McMahon.
How a link on WhatReallyHappened leads to a story on PrisonPlanet about a Coup and a fake Nuke Attack on the U.S. --the same story being also on CloakandDagger with a link to a report on WhatDoesItMean --the website of David Booth who was on Coast toCoast, Rense and MysteriesOfTheMind in Feb, 2004 with a previous scare of imminent destruction --which never happened. And how lurid tales of pedophilia on MysteriesOfTheMind about 'Johnny Gosh', have been layered onto the widely known Jeff Gannon story.

All part of a plan to smear an aura of tabloid sleaze around 'conspiracy' on the Internet, thus discrediting 9/11 skeptics and others with 'conspiracy theories.'

Hat tip to greatscat! (greatscat.blogspot.com)

MeetWithCindy.org

MeetWithCindy.org

"WE ARE INSULTED when people like Bush say that America has to 'stay the course' in Iraq to 'honor our children's sacrifices.'
Not one more drop of blood should be shed for the lies and deceptions."
- Cindy Sheehan, mother of Casey Sheehan, KIA 04/04/04

You owe her an explanation, Mr. President.

Our mission is to persuade President Bush to meet with Cindy Sheehan and answer her questions about why the war that took her son's life was started and why it is being continued.
Come to Crawford

We need your support. There is power in numbers. Join us in Crawford now!

Crawford Peace House

Directions to get here.
Help Others

If you can't come to Crawford, please contribute to a fund to cover the costs of assisting others with their travel and their stay in Crawford. For details, contact the Crawford Peace House.
Contact the Media

Ask the media to cover Cindy Sheehan's request to meet with the President, and to cover the contrast between pre-war claims for why war was needed and current knowledge of what the facts were known to be.
Call the White House

Call the White House and ask the staff there to contact the President on his ranch and ask him to meet with Cindy Sheehan.

Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
FAX: 202-456-2461
E-Mail comments@whitehouse.gov
Contact Congress

Sen. George Allen (Republican, Va.) has publicly encouraged the President to meet with Cindy Sheehan. Has your Congress Member and each of your Senators done so?
Ask them to!

*CARLY'S POEM*
A Nation Rocked to sleep

by Carly Sheehan
Sister Casey KIA 04/04/04
Sadr City Baghdad

Have you ever heard the sound of a mother screaming for her son?
The torrential rains of a mother's weeping will never be done
They call him a hero, you should be glad that he's one, but
Have you ever heard the sound of a mother screaming for her son?

Have you ever heard the sound of a father holding back his cries?
He must be brave because his boy died for another man's lies
The only grief he allows himself are long, deep sighs
Have you ever heard the sound of a father holding back his cries?

Have you ever heard the sound of taps played at your brother's grave?
They say that he died so that the flag will continue to wave
But I believe he died because they had oil to save
Have you ever heard the sound of taps played at your brother's grave?

Have you ever heard the sound of a nation being rocked to sleep?
The leaders want to keep you numb so the pain won't be so deep
But if we the people let them continue another mother will weep

Cindy Sheehan has a friend

The Huffington Post | The Blog
08.10.2005 Thomas de Zengotita

Cindy Sheehan has a friend
I haven't seen Bill O'Reilly so flummoxed since Al Franken took him down at that LA book fair last year, though this was much subtler. He had to grin and swallow it all because he was interviewing the mother of a dead soldier. I can only assume he was misled by his booker, or maybe his booker was misled by Dolores Kesterson herself—who knows? But Bill obviously thought he was going to get this woman to acknowledge that her son died "in a noble cause" in Iraq on tonight’s O'Reilly Factor,around 8:30, NYC time it was.

Dolores was slated to be the anti-Cindy Sheehan.

Oooops. O'Reilly was obliged to blend his most unctuous pretense-of-fairness manner ("I'll give you the last word") with his most over-bearing bullyboy style as he tried to manipulate and finally bludgeon this poor woman into conceding his point with questions like—(rough quote) "You know Michael Moore, you know he hates our country. If you had to choose between him and President Bush, who would you choose?" Answer, a bit fumbled, delivered under huge pressure by a woman with no media experience: (rough quote) "Well, I don't really know everything that Michael Moore stands for, but I know he hasn't caused anybody to be killed for no good reason..."

And so on...

Brad DeLong's Website: Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (Vroom Vroom Vroom Department)

Brad DeLong's Website: Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (Vroom Vroom Vroom Department)

Hilzoy performs the painful task of reading Charles Krauthammer on stem cells. She writes:

Obsidian Wings: Krauthammer On Stem Cells: Krauthammer gets the science wrong. He writes this about the President's stem cell policy:

It failed practically because that cohort of embryos is a diminishing source of cells. Stem cells turn out to be a lot less immortal than we thought. The idea was that once you created a line, it could replicate indefinitely. Therefore you would need only a few lines. It turns out, however, that as stem cells replicate, they begin to make genetic errors and to degenerate. After several generations some lines become unusable.

In addition, there has been a new advance since 2001. Whereas stem cells in those days had to be grown on mouse feeder cells, today we can grow stem cells on human feeder cells. That makes them far more (potentially) therapeutically usable.

I don't know who the 'we' is who were surprised that when you get DNA to copy itself repeatedly, errors creep in. It certainly wasn't the scientific community, which warned against this from the get-go. The only 'we' I know of who ever thought the President's policy made enough lines available consists of George Bush, Tommy Thompson, and (apparently) Charles Krauthammer. And it's an understatement to say that lines not grown on mouse feeder cells are 'far more (potentially) therapeutically useful' than the lines the President's policy lets people work on, since the latter are almost certainly not usable therapeutically at all. I mean, you could also say that driving a car is a far better way of getting from one place to another than sitting on the ground and saying 'vroom vroom vroom'. It's true, but it rather understates the difference...

Thanks..


Thanks..
Originally uploaded by MaD Gi®L•™.
THanks To all My Friends For Passing By and..adding such a sweet comments.. On My pics.. everyday..

sometimes i dont replay on some of the comments but it dosen't mean that i ignore them.. and i Dedicate This Pic to all of u..

Yosemite During the Big Fire 2004

Some deadwood for the deleteme group! For the story of this photo, please see my post below.

Reflection



Originally uploaded by pїήkїe.

Saquarema - Church


Saquarema - Church
Originally uploaded by magic_eye.
Igreja Nsa De Nazaré, Saquarema, RJ, Brasil

Uploaded by magic_eye on

The Holliston View: Official Government 9/11 Story Takes A Big Hit

The Holliston View: Official Government 9/11 Story Takes A Big Hit

One year before the 9/11 attacks, Pentagon intelligence program "Able Danger" identified a terrorist cell in Brooklyn New York, in which one member of the cell was identified as the 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta. It is alledged that Pentagon attorneys did not pass on this important information to the FBI, because the 'green cards' the suspects carried protected them from further investigation. A ruse argument indeed.

The 'coverup' doesn't stop there. During the 9/11 Commission investigation an intelligence officer claims the follow:


“I personally talked with [Philip] Zelikow [executive director of the 9/11 Commission]about this........for whatever bizarre reasons, he didn’t pass on the information.”


Why not? Lest we forget Mr. Zelikow's appointment to the 9/11 Commission had, in itself, posed a huge conflict of interest in the investigation, because after the 2000 Presidential election, Bush appointed Zelikow to the National Security Council transition team under Condelezza Rice. Yes, the same Rice that was forewarned of the impending terrorist attacks.

Fiscal Indiscipline

Comment by Your Blogger: These High Officials are Frauds

Fiscal Indiscipline - Newsweek Politics - MSNBC.com

Whatever happened to the presidential promise to impose stricter spending limits? Plus, critters in Crawford.

WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Richard Wolffe and Holly Bailey
Newsweek
Updated: 4:16 p.m. ET Aug. 10, 2005


Aug. 10, 2005 - When George W. Bush was running for president in 2000, he promised to usher in what he called The Responsibility Era. That was in contrast, of course, to the Clinton-era of irresponsible behavior, a culture that Bush described as “If it feels good do it, and if you’ve got a problem, blame somebody else.” But when it comes to being responsible with the nation’s finances, it’s clear that President Bush remains far behind his predecessor and all too ready to blame somebody else for his problems.

On Tuesday, Bush met with his economic advisers at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, in a session described by a White House official as an “annual retreat.” In remarks to reporters afterward, Bush said one way to encourage economic growth was to make sure Congress followed stricter spending limits, something the president has repeatedly mentioned as a major goal of his second term. “It’s very important to Congress, as they work on appropriations bills, to adhere to the budgets they’ve passed so that we can continue to send the signals to people around the country that we’re serious about being fiscally responsible with people’s money,” Bush said. Yet even Bush’s staunchest conservative supporters are questioning the White House’s commitment to fiscal discipline.

The following day Bush traveled to Illinois to sign into law a $286 billion highway bill—the most expensive public works bill in U.S. history, according to congressional legislators. The White House and Congress had battled over the scope of the bill for more than two years. Earlier this year, Bush threatened to veto any bill that exceeded $250 billion. That was later upped to $270 billion, but in a bid to show progress on domestic priorities, the White House last month signaled that it would support a $284 billion bill. Yet Congress didn’t even adhere to that price tag, approving a bill in the final days before the August recess that surpassed Bush’s goal by another $2 billion.

Why so expensive? At the last minute, Congress added nearly $25 billion in so-called pork-barrel projects—the priciest round ever, according to the conservative group Taxpayers for Common Sense. One project funded by the bill: a $300 million bridge in Alaska named after Rep. Don Young, chairman of the House Transportation Committee. Designed to be one of the largest bridges in North America, the project has been described by critics as “the road to nowhere” since it will link a tiny Alaskan fishing town along the state’s southern tip to an even tinier island, which boasts less than 50 inhabitants.

In addition, lawmakers last week admitted that the bill’s cost will actually near $295 billion, thanks to a last-minute number fudging. To keep the price tag at $286 billion, Congress has pledged to repay an extra $8.5 billion included in the bill before the legislation expires in 2009. Arizona Rep. Jeff Flake, one of the House’s most passionate fiscal conservatives, had urged Bush to veto the bill. “The transportation bill ought to carry the same warning that drivers see on their rearview mirror,” Flake says. “Items are larger than they appear.”

White House officials have been noticeably defensive about the legislation, as well as questions about Bush’s own commitment to curb federal spending. “Listen, this president is the one that’s keeping spending under control,” Allan Hubbard, a top Bush economic adviser, told reporters Tuesday. “There were a number of members of Congress who wanted a $400 billion highway bill. Because of this president, it is a $286 billion highway bill.” When asked if Bush thinks the bill is too expensive, Hubbard looked irritated. “The president is very happy with this bill,” he said. “Next question.”



Ranch Dressing
Crawford has been invaded by more than just White House reporters this month. In a bout of unfortunate timing, Bush’s five weeks at the Western White House have come during what local officials have described as the height of the central Texas cricket season. Conditions are even worse than usual.

Recent heavy rains and humid conditions sparked a mating season unlike any in recent memory, producing a scourge of chirping critters worthy of an Old Testament plague. Most reporters traveling with Bush were alerted about the cricket “proliferation” by a memo posted in their hotel rooms. Yet one unfortunate White House correspondent learned of the scourge through a 2 a.m. wake-up call sung by a lone cricket hiding in the air vent of his seventh-floor hotel room. The bugs have been spotted everywhere—on the sidewalks, in the hallways, even in the press vans used to ferry reporters out to the Bush ranch.

Not even the commander in chief is safe. Before Bush’s press conference Thursday, White House staffers spent several minutes clearing crickets away from the presidential photo op, which was held in a helicopter hanger near the entrance of the president’s ranch. The aides flicked bugs that had hopped onto the American flags displayed as a backdrop and used brooms to sweep them away from Bush’s podium.

But the White House can’t control everything. During the president’s remarks, an airborne cricket emerged from nowhere, appearing to fall from the sky above Bush’s head. The larger-than-average insect landed inches away from Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, who showed no visible reaction to her near encounter. Afterward, as Bush exited the room and the cameras were turned off, one White House aide could no longer conceal her disgust. “Ew!” she said, shuddering and making a sour face. “That thing is disgusting!” She wasn’t talking about the reporters.


© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.

Rigorous Intuition: Things go sliding (General Kevin P. Byrnes)

Rigorous Intuition: Things go sliding

Things are going to slide in all directions
Won't be nothing you can measure anymore - Leonard Cohen

Is this what it's like when things fly apart?

90 miles an hour down a dead-end street. That's what it feels like I'm doing, just reading the news today. Oh, boy.

There's four-star General Kevin P. Byrnes, near retirement, suddenly relieved as commander of US Army Training and Doctrine Command, headquartered at Fort Monroe, Virgina. The cause was initially vaguely described as "personal conduct," and later refined to "sexual misconduct."

Where's the story? Four-star generals are not relieved for such reasons. Not for any reason, for that matter: "an Army spokeswoman...said records...show no cases in recent history in which a four-star general has been relieved of duty for disciplinary reasons." Listening to Kay Griggs (and though I have problems with some of her analysis, I still find her find-hand testimony convincing and corroborative of what we've learned elsewhere), sexual misconduct would seem to be a common rite of passage up the chain of command in the US military. It's the accusation, and not the practice, which leaves an indelible stain upon a reputation.

So why Byrnes? The Pentagon does not lightly make examples of its officer corp, let alone its four-star generals. As "glooperoo" writes on the RI forum, Byrnes commanded "the military institutions associated with formulating standards of conduct and training soldiers in that conduct." And one of the top military intelligence officers in Iraq when the scandal of Abu Ghraib broke, Major General Barbara G. Fast, recently took command of the US Army Intelligence Center, which operates under the authority of Byrnes' former US Army Training and Doctrine Command.

I don't know what Byrnes' dismissal means, but I know it doesn't mean what it says. And when generals' heads start rolling, it usually means some folks in civvies have gone way beyond nervous.

And if that's not enough, Fort Monroe is holding a little exercise this month:

FORT MONROE, Va. -- Here’s the scenario…A seafaring vessel transporting a 10-kiloton nuclear warhead makes its way into a port off the coast of Charleston, S.C. Terrorists aboard the ship attempt to smuggle the warhead off the ship to detonate it. Is this really a possibility?

Joint Task Force Civil Support (JTF-CS) here is planning its next exercise on the premise that this crisis is indeed plausible.

Sudden Response 05 will take place this August on Fort Monroe and will be carried out as an internal command post exercise.

And there's this modified, limited hang-out with a half-twist: a classified intelligence unit called "Able Danger" identified Mohammed Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers as members of an al Qaeda cell in 1999, but "failed to tell law enforcement." Former co-chair of the Kean Commission, Bush family fixer Lee Hamilton, huffs that "had we learned of it obviously it would've been a major focus of our investigation." It always seems too little, and then suddenly, it's too late.

In these perverse times, officially bumping back the date of recognition for Atta et al is viewed as good news for the Bush camp, because hey, 9/11's back, but now it's Bill Clinton's fault. (Clinton's fault, Bush's fault: these aren't serious positions. The fault lies far deeper, beneath the sham spectacle of "partisan politics," and only a few heads, such as Dick Cheney's, ever come bubbling to the surface of public life.) Coincidentally, it was Tommy Franks, mastermind of Osama bin Laden's Tora Bora getaway, who commanded Able Danger, and let Atta take his own powder.

Cascading novelty and truth seepage (the CIA told the Dutch to back off bombmaker Abdul Khan). Crises converging upon a singularity (Iran removes the remaining UN seals on its Isfahan nuclear facility), while a man who really likes the Longhorns is beseiged in his bolt hole by one mother's holy fury.

Is it starting to feel a lot like 2012, or what?

posted by Jeff at 3:00 PM
7 Comments:

Anonymous said...

I refer readers to network movie from the 1980s "Special Bulletin" in which exactly the South Carolina scenario is played out - quite terrifying, I wonder if the planners of the maneuvers have seen it?
3:12 PM
Anonymous said...

I don't know if I've been reading too much RI or what, but damn if it doesn't seem we are being prepped for something.
4:04 PM
Anonymous said...

Wayne Madsen (http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/)has something about the Byrnes case on his website today:

Sudden resignation of TRADOC Commander, Gen.

There's much more to this story than a "sexual indiscretion." The sudden firing of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine (TRADOC) Commander, four star General and New York City native Kevin P. Byrnes, one of only 11 four star generals in the Army, has much more to do with an anonymous Pentagon-reported case of his involvement in an alleged "extra-marital affair." Although Byrnes has recently been involved in divorce proceedings, Pentagon insiders report that Byrnes was fired for insubordination. Byrnes' firing fits a pattern of neocon demonizing of policy opponents by tossing out unsubstantiated charges from "anonymous source." For example, when Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski was demoted to Colonel over trumped up charges over her role as commander of Iraqi prisons during the time of the prisoner abuse (and after she revealed the presence of Israeli interrogators in Iraqi prisons), the Pentagon spin machine, joined at the hips with neo-con think thanks and media outlets in Washington, cited a dated and totally unsubstantiated shoplifting accusation against her. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker, who Donald Rumsfeld hauled out of retirement to head up the Army after Gen. Eric Shinseki was fired and after no other active duty general wanted the job, relieved Byrnes of his command at Fort Monroe, Virginia. Byrnes had previous run-ins with the neo-cons in the Pentagon. In 2002, Byrnes was faced with being retired at Lt. Gen. after he clashed with then-Rumsfeld aide Stephen Cambone over proposed troop strength cuts. Then Army Secretary Thomas White, intervened on behalf of Byrnes and he received his fourth star. White was later fired by the Pentagon neo-cons.

What has not been reported is that recently, one of Byrnes' subordinate commands, Fort Rucker in Alabama, had been told to stand by for an influx of 50,000 military trainees -- a level the base has not seen since the Vietnam War. Byrnes' relief of command came on the heels of the Pentagon announcing that might permit Spanish-language entrance examinations. Byrnes, who was in charge of Army training, would not only face recruits with lower education levels, criminal records, but a lack of proficiency in English. Pentagon insiders report that it was Byrnes' policy disagreements with the Pentagon neo-cons over the new recruitment policies and the potential for calling up Army retirees and reinstating military conscription without adequate TRADOC funding that resulted in his firing. The personal misconduct charges were concocted by the Pentagon to cover up the fact that there are serious disagreements with Bush and Rumsfeld among the flag officer ranks in the military.

Byrnes was also associated with a group of officers who spent time at the U.S. Army War College at Carlisle Barracks in Pennsylvania.

The Army War College has been a center of opposition to the war in Iraq and it is believed that Byrnes was recognized by the neo-cons as one of the unofficial leaders of a group of Army flag rank opponents of Bush's war in Iraq and potential military action against Iran.
4:34 PM
enkidu said...

Kinda odd that on the day of this post, Jeff, one of the "stickies" on the discussion board seems to have broken loose and is drifting downstream--
4:45 PM
Anonymous said...

Two comments:
1) Able Danger is a crock of crap--it's being pushed by Rep. Curt Weldon, who alos touted the "intelligence" of Iran-Contra scamster Menachim Ghobanifar (speeling?. Curtie-poo is also one of the Moonie boys--recall the coronation of the Moon Man in the US Capitol? Weldon was involved in that.
2) TRADOC is much more than merely involved in training and doctrine. A close relative worked for TRADOC as a civilian and prior to that, in its prior incarnation, the Army Security Agency, which was involved in intelligence work--radio intercept to start with, then later as techology developed, all sorts of ELINT and EW. In fact, it's not too much of a stretch to say that one of the reasons that we have reliable and affordable computers is in part due to the Army's need to develop all sorts of reliable battlefield compure equipment.
There could be all sorts of thing going on behind the scenes.
5:03 PM
Anonymous said...

Here's my take on things: given the proclivity for intelligence and 'anti-terror' drills to run coincidentally with major 'terror' attacks, it seems we are being set up for another 9/11 and 7/7 style big Kahuna event. Look for it around Tisha B'av this year to provide a convenient excuse to enact CONPLAN 8022 - the tactical nuclear assault on Iran.

The nuke drill in SC coincides with mainstream media fear mongering about Al-Qaeda suitcase nukes already in the U.S. That a four star general was abruptly relieved of command indicates to me that this level of Operations Northwoods style treason was too much even for that hardened state servant to stomach. Watch out for the service record of that general's successor.
5:38 PM
Steven Lagavulin said...

This strange convergence of seemingly disparate crises has interested me for several years now. And I agree with you completely that things seem to be "speeding up". I really hate to use the term "perfect storm", but...well...there, I just did. That would seem to be what lies in our future. In fact it's this close interconnectedness of all these systems-in-crisis that leads me to believe our problems are not really part of some human "master plan"...they're part of some non-human master plan....

But personally, from my own intuition, while this year has long felt like it was spinning toward an important inflection point, I don't sense a really BIG inflection point before us just yet. As veteran trader Ed Yardini used to say back when CNBC was worth a damn, "we may be going straight to heaven or to hell in a handbasket--but we'll trade our way there!" So in other words, nothing happens in linear fashion--and if we do see a crisis event break upon us soon, my guess is that it will only be a stepping-stone toward something larger, later.

Anyway, my main point in throwing my hat into the ring here is to say that the movement in oil prices lately smells desperate. The term Peak Oil has finally entered the mainstream, and even though the debate in public is pretty glossed-over, traders aren't stupid. I think they're smelling fear...fear fuelled by the realization that the American situation in the Middle-East has reached make-or-break time.

And if that's so then we may see a race to lock-in prices on a dwindling supply of the most important resource in the world. However, on the other hand, our public officials and the media will go into full-scale damage-control mode, so whatever happens...well, we'll trade our way there.

Time will tell.

Four Star General Fired For Organizing Coup Against Neo-Cons?

Four Star General Fired For Organizing Coup Against Neo-Cons?

Reporter suggests Brynes discovered plan to turn nuke exercise into staged terror attack

Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones | August 10 2005

The head of Fort Monroe's Training and Doctrine Command, four star general Kevin P. Byrnes, was fired Tuesday apparently for sexual misconduct according to official sources.

Other sources however have offered a different explanation for Byrnes' dismissal which ties in with the Bush administration's unpopular plan to attack Iran and the staged nuclear attack in the US which would provide the pretext to do so.

According to reporter Greg Szymanski, anonymous military sources said that Brynes was the leader of a faction that was preparing to instigate a coup against the neo-con hawks in an attempt to prevent further global conflict.

Indications are that, much like popular opinion amongst the general public, half the military oppose the neo-con's agenda and half support it.

Further revelations were imparted by journalist Leland Lehrman who appeared today on The Alex Jones Show.

Lehrman's army sources, including a former Captain in intelligence, became outraged when they learned that the official story behind 9/11 was impossible.

They told Lehrman that the imminent Northcom nuclear terror exercise based in Charleston, S.C, where a nuclear warhead is smuggled off a ship and detonated, was originally intended to 'go live' - as in the drill would be used as the cover for a real false flag staged attack.

This website has relentlessly discussed similar style drills which took place on the morning of 9/11 and on the morning of 7/7 in London.

"Speculation exists that he had potentially discovered the fact that it was gonna go live and that he was trying to put a stop to it or also speculation indicates that he may be part of a military coup designed to prevent the ridiculous idea of doing a nuclear war with Iran, " said Lehrman.

Lehrman said that other sources had told him all army leave had been cancelled from September 7th onwards, opening the possibility for war to be declared within that time frame.

Northcom officials also admitted to Lehrman that CNN had been using its situation room as a studio.

Earlier this week, Washington Post reported that the Pentagon has developed its first ever war plans for operations within the continental United States, in which terrorist attacks would be used as the justification for imposing martial law on cities, regions or the entire country.

American Conservative Magazine recently reported that Dick Cheney had given orders to immediately invade Iran after the next terror attack in the US, even if there was no evidence Iran was involved.

Government and media mouthpieces have been fearmongering for weeks about how a nuclear attack within the US is imminent.

Now would be the most opportune time for the Globalists to stage a major attack, as it would head off any potential indictments against the Bush administration for their involvement in illegally outing CIA agent Valerie Plame.

While rumors circulating about indictments having already taken place against Bush and Cheney should rightly be treated very carefully, the fact that there is an ongoing criminal investigation into the matter is something that's admitted and shouldn't be viewed as speculation.

Portico


Portico
Originally uploaded by hobo_pd.
Arcade in Padova

Added to Cream of the Crop as my most viewed photo

Another Day in the Empire Atta's Green Card and the Bush Whitewash Commission

Another Day in the Empire � Atta�s Green Card and the Bush Whitewash Commission

Bush nine eleven whitewash commission co-chairman Lee Hamilton is in a pickle. As noted here yesterday, the Department of Perpetual War put the finger on the psychopath cat-killer and lap dance addict patsy Mohammed Atta and his al-CIA-duh terror cell (including Marwan al-Shehhi, Khalid al-Mihdar, and Nawaf al-Hazmia) a full year before the nine eleven attacks and did nothing about it (in fact, they made sure not to inform the FBI) and the rest is history, including the murder of nearly 3,000 innocent humans. “The Sept. 11 commission did not learn of any U.S. government knowledge prior to 9/11 of surveillance of Mohammed Atta or of his cell,” said Hamilton. “Had we learned of it obviously it would’ve been a major focus of our investigation.” No doubt Mr. Hamilton is relieved this bit of crucial info did not emerge when he and his co-cover-uppers were “investigating” selective material, otherwise they would have been forced to hurriedly rationalize yet another red flag (as an “intelligence failure”) or ignore it completely, as they ignored just about everything else.

As Sen. Max Cleland, who resigned from the whitewash commission, said at the time, “As each day goes by we learn that this government knew a whole lot more about these terrorists before September 11 than it has ever admitted…. Let’s chase this rabbit into the ground. They had a plan to go to war and when 9/11 happened that’s what they did; they went to war.” In non-Bushzarro world, a sincere investigation would have mentioned not only the drive to war, but historical precedent and cause and effect—for instance, the indisputable fact the United States created what the government and the corporate media now call “al-Qaeda” (as Bev Conover notes, “Osama bin Laden was the CIA’s point man in Afghanistan, during the time the Reagan administration was bent on pushing the Soviets out of that country. Nor does the commission note that al Qaeda is a creature of the CIA, born out of the Afghan Mujahadeen”), or is the fact mentioned that the U.S. has considered covert terrorist attacks in the past (i.e., Operation Northwoods), or did it consider the awful fishy fact the WTC evidence was carted away and sold as scrap well before any investigation commenced (same thing happened in Oklahoma City), or did it dare address the absurd theory that a Boeing 757 (over 124 feet from wingtip to wingtip and, including the tail, over 44 feet high) fit into a impossibly small hole in the Pentagon (see this photo illustration).

As evidence that Bush’s whitewash commission had absolutely no interest in the fact Atta was in the United States, plotting the nine eleven attacks (as micromanaged patsies), Fox News reports the following: “[Rep. Curt Weldon] told FOX News on Wednesday that staff members of the Sept. 11 commission were briefed at least once by officials on Able Danger [the intelligence op that discovered the “al-CIA-duh” cell], but that he does not believe the message was sent to the panel members themselves. He also said some phone calls made by military officials with Able Danger to the commission staff went unreturned,” hardly surprising since the Bush whitewash commission was specifically tasked with covering up the truth and rolling out a “magic bullet” theory of cave-dwelling medieval Muslims being responsible for the highly coordinated attacks.

“A group of Sept. 11 widows called the September 11th Advocates issued a statement Wednesday saying they were ‘horrified’ to learn that further possible evidence exists, and they are disappointed the Sept. 11 commission report is ‘incomplete and illusory,’” and obvious understatement, to say the least. No doubt the September 11th Advocates—indeed the entire country—would be “horrified” to learn the truth surrounding nine eleven: it was a rogue intelligence black op, a classic false flag operation, designed to blackmail Bush and move the country closer to a dictatorship and jackbooted police state and, as well, advance the neocon clash of civilizations agenda for domination in the Middle East (through “World War IV,” as the neocons fondly refer to plan to attack Islamic societies and “reshape” Muslim nations such as Iran and Syria) and also send a message to North Korea, China, Russia, and any other state, especially in Asia or where there are natural resources the neolibs, multinational corporations, and bankers want to steal.

Entry Filed under: Politics

1 Comment Add your own
1. S. Wolf Britain | August 10th, 2005 at 1:49 pm
Coverup, coverup, coverup. That’s all We, The People have seen since at least 1963 with the Warren Commission Report. So, since the U.S. government has clearly been going more and more downhill in the last forty-plus years, it is a foregone conclusion that there are even more coverups, with deeper and deeper ramifications, that the “American” people are being told lies to a greater degree than ever before, and that it is only going to get even worse; yet, most so-called “Americans” act as if “our” government has become MORE honest, for crying out loud; so what hope is there that most “Americans” will wake up and stop supporting this insaniy?! Not much, if not nill, I’m afraid. In fact, we’re no doubt in for a great deal more false flag attacks in the U.S., lies, and the abrogation of civil liberties

Dr. James Howenstine -- Depleted Uranium, Anthrax Vaccine & The Gulf War Syndrome, Part 1 of 4

My Odeo Channel (odeo/78caf13a7869a6cf)
Dr. James Howenstine -- Depleted Uranium, Anthrax Vaccine & The Gulf War Syndrome, Part 1 of 4

By Dr. James Howenstine, MD.
August 14, 2005
NewsWithViews.com

More and more veterans have become chronically ill from a multitude of symptoms since the end of Gulf War I. For many years the U.S. government denied any responsibility for their mysterious symptoms. Only 7,035 men were injured in this war. A total of 580,400 soldiers served in the first Gulf War. By the end of 2000 325,000 of these troops had become disabled This means that 56 % of those who served in the first Gulf War were disabled within less than 10 years.

In August 2004 American Free Press reported that eight out of twenty men serving in one unit during the 2003 invasion of Iraq had developed malignancies. This translates into 40 % of the soldiers in that one unit developing malignancies within a 16 month period of time. What is causing these terrible health problems?

Nine members of the National Guard from New York State recently returned from Iraq. These persons were deployed as Military Police. Two manmade forms of uranium were found in urine specimens from 4 of these 9 soldiers. Certainly soldiers in combat roles would be expected to have even greater exposure to inhaling depleted uranium dust.

Since 1943 the military has been aware of the extreme toxicity of uranium as a gas. A Oct 30, 1943 memo from Manhattan Project physicist James B. Conant to Brig. General L.B. Abrams stated that as a gas warfare instrument the radioactive material would be ground into microscopic particles forming dust and smoke and could be distributed by ground fired projectiles, land vehicles or aerial bombs. In this form it would be inhaled by personnel. They estimated that one millionth of a gram would be fatal. There are no known methods of treatment for such casualties.

The depleted uranium DU was also recommended as a permanent terrain contaminant which could be used to destroy populations by contaminating water supplies and agricultural land with radioactive dust. Current estimates suggest that the damaged soil in Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan will need four and a half billion years to recover from the radioactive effect of DU.

Some of the uranium from shells vaporizes into particles measuring 1/10 of a micron. These particles enter the atmosphere and later fall to the ground with rain. Radioactive debris has been found at both the North and South Poles. In gaseous form the chemically toxic and radioactive uranium easily enters the body through the skin or when inhaled into the lungs. Clothing and gas masks are easily penetrated. Large missiles and bombs can disperse nearly 100 % of the DU into the atmosphere whereas only 30 % of a tank shell disperses when fired. Any soldier or civilian who breathes this gas has a permanent dose of radioactive uranium RAU.

Uranium is quite dense so it is ideal for penetrating armor. The radioactive uranium is shaped into a penetrating rod 18 inches long and ¾ inch in diameter. When these shells are fired some of the uranium contacts air and explodes into flame (pyrophoric quality).

Scientists studying the biologic effects of radiation in the 1960s reported that radioactive uranium targets the DNA. Marion Fulk, a nuclear physical chemist, who had worked for both the Manhattan project and the Livermore Nuclear Weapon Lab interprets the new and rapid development of malignancies in soldiers from the 2003 war as “spectacular and a matter of concern.” She states “This is the perfect weapon (DU) for killing lots of people.”

There are three effects of depleted uranium on biologic systems –radiation, chemical and particulate. The particulate effect of nano-sized particles is the most important of these three. This appears immediately after exposure and targets the master code of DNA. Simply stated depleted uranium “trashes the body.” The DNA damage is so severe these patients develop multiple simultaneous cancers from different causes. This new syndrome has never been reported before and is unique to internal depleted uranium exposure. Such patients were seen in civilians in Yugoslavia after NATO bombing using DU bombs. There is currently an epidemic of cancer in Iraqi children.

Another horrifying consequence of DU exposure is damage to sperm causing many severe deformities in the children born to veterans of the first Gulf War. A group of 251 soldiers from Mississippi, who all had normal babies before service in Iraq, were studied. Sixty seven percent of their post war babies were born with severe birth defects. These children were missing legs, arms, organs or eyes and had immune system and blood diseases. In some Gulf War veterans families the only normal children are those who were born before serving in Iraq. The Department of Defense denies any knowledge of birth defects in Gulf War I veterans.

How Much Depleted Uranium Has Been Used?

Depleted uranium weapons were developed by the U.S. Navy in 1968. Depleted uranium weapons were given to and used by Israel with U.S. supervision in the Yom Kippur War in 1973 against the Arabs nations. Military research detailed the use of DU weapons at military testing grounds, bombing and gunnery ranges and civilian labs under contracts between 1974-1999. Presently 42 states have contamination from the manufacture, testing and deployment of depleted uranium. The United States has sold DU weapons to 29 countries.

In Gulf War I DU weapons were used against Iraq. Between 315 and 350 tons of depleted uranium was used in that war. The current Iraq war has expended an estimated 5 times more tonnage of DU than was used in the first Gulf War.

Japanese professor, Dr. K. Yagasaki, has calculated that 800 tons of depleted uranium is the atomicity equivalent of 83,000 bombs the size of the one which struck Nagasaki. The U.S. has used more depleted uranium since 1991 than the atomicity equivalent of 400,000 Nagasaki bombs. This includes four nuclear wars (Iraq twice, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan) and is 10 times the amount of radiation released into the air from atmospheric testing. Experts from the Department of Defense say that the U.S. has 100 million tons of DU. Using up the DU in wars afford a convenient way to dispose of some of the radioactive uranium and thus avoid some of the huge expense that careful disposing of tons of DU would entail.

The “clean up” of 34 Abrams tanks and Bradley armored vehicles that were erroneously hit by U.S. missiles during this first Gulf war was supervised by Dr. Doug Rokke. Today he is suffering ill effects from DU that entered his body in the clean up. One of the problems he has is brittle teeth. The uranium displaces calcium in both teeth and bones resulting in teeth that break. The majority of U.S. casualties in this war were from “friendly fire.” Dr. Rokke relates that DU is used because it is the most effective weapon at killing and destroying everything it hits.

Thousands of tons of depleted uranium were used for decades at four bombing and gunnery ranges in Fallon, Nevada. This usage is no doubt responsible for the fastest growing leukemia cluster in the U.S. The military has denied that DU has anything to do with this cluster. The medical profession has been involved in the cover-up—just as they were hiding the adverse effects that low level radiation from atmospheric testing and nuclear power plants were producing.

A physician in Northern California was being trained in the Pentagon with other physicians months before the 2003 Gulf War started. They were told to diagnose and treat soldiers returning from the 2003 war for mental problems only. Medical professionals in hospitals and facilities treating returning soldiers were threatened with $10,000 fines if they talked about the soldiers or their medical problems. They were also threatened with jail[1] terms.

Senator Paul Wellstone informed Joyce Riley R.N., executive director of the American Gulf War Veterans Association, that 95 % of Gulf War I veterans had been recycled out of the military by 1995. Any of those continuing in military service were carefully isolated from each other, preventing critical information from being shared with new troops. One has to wonder if his airplane crash was really an accident.

My initial reaction to the 1993 Gulf War was that it was all about oil which we desperately needed. Now it appears that I was wrong. Currently there is strong evidence that we are preparing to invade Iran. Whether this invasion will be preceded by another “terrorist” attack on the U.S. is obviously unknown. Perhaps a nuclear attack on a U.S. city by “Arabs” would attract sufficient public opinion approval to warrant another U.S. invasion of a sovereign nation.

My impression currently is that there may be a more insidious and sinister aspect to the invasion of Iraq. Could we be using this nuclear war as a way to lower the population of an Arab nation? Exposing all the citizens in a nation to a daily dose of radioactive uranium dust would be certain to produce very premature deaths and inability to reproduce. These irradiated nations will have huge problems with illness of their citizens and the inability of most parents to produce healthy children for succeeding generations.

Who is going to be willing to work in irradiated oil fields knowing that their life expectancy will be reduced by many years and that there is a strong possibility that they will probably never be able to have normal children. Even salaries of a million dollars annually do not sound very attractive to me to work in those irradiation contaminated oil fields.

The new book The High Priests of War documents how Henry Kissinger had planned an attack against the Arab world in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This nicely coincided with a Middle Eastern oil crisis and the development of DU war capabilities.

Mr. Kissinger had been previously involved in plans (later implemented) to lower the population of blacks in Africa by using bio-warfare[2] programs (vaccines contaminated with HIV virus). This CIA plot was code named PROJECT MKNAOMI. The details about the development of the HIV vaccine in the NIH Cancer Division are well documented in Leonard G. Horowtz’s book Emerging Viruses AIDS and Ebola Nature, Accident or Intentional?



When David J. Smith asked Vietnam Special Ops Green Beret Captain John McCarthy “who could have devised this omnicidal plan to use depleted uranium to destroy the genetic code and genetic future of large populations of Arabs and Moslems in the Middle East and Central Asia where most of the world’s oil deposits are located?” he replied “It has all the handprints of Henry Kissinger.”



Zbignew Brezinski’s new book The Grand Chess-board: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives shows a Eurasian chessboard with four regions strategic to U.S. foreign policy. The “South” region corresponds precisely to the regions now contaminated permanently with radiation from U.S. bombs and missiles made from thousands of tons of depleted uranium.

-----> Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Footnotes:

1, Smith David J. Will your DNA code be perverted? Pg 4 April 2005 Newswatch Magazine
2, Horowitz, Leonard G. Emerging Viruses AIDS & Ebola Nature, Accident or Intentional? Pg 299-307



© 2005 Dr. James Howenstine - All Rights Reserved

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Dr. James A. Howenstine is a board certified specialist in internal medicine who spent 34 years caring for office and hospital patients. After 4 years of personal study he became convinced that natural products are safer, more effective, and less expensive than pharmaceutical drugs. This research led to the publication of his book A Physicians Guide To Natural Health Products That Work. Information about these products and his book can be obtained from amazon.com and at www.naturalhealthteam.com and phone 1-800-416-2806 U.S. Dr. Howenstine can be reached by mail at Dr. James Howenstine, C/O Remarsa USA SB 37, P.O. Box 25292, Miami, Fl. 33102-5292.

US Military Rules of Engagement and the Iraq War

Informed Comment


An informed reader sent in what I found to be a fascinating reply to my comment that I thought the U.S. military's rules of engagement were wrong for a clannish society such as Iraq. My point was that as I understood it, the US rules of engagement favor meeting any violent challenge with massive force, whereas the British are more restrained. It is my impression that the force with which US troops often riposte to mortar and other attacks ends up killing innocent bystanders. Iraq is still a clan-based society, such that people know and care about and would avenge their cousins (clan feuds still are fought and deeply felt), how much moreso a sibling or parent or child. So my argument would be that the US military has by now incurred large numbers of clan feuds with Sunni Arab families, and is making more feuds with each passing day.

Rules of engagement below is given as ROE.

My correspondent explains the U.S. military rules of engagement, compares them to those of the British, and questions whether they are that different. In essence, his argument is that I was not complaining about the rules of engagement but rather about a difference in mindset. The British, he says, think of their task in Iraq as a sort of police work, regardless of the rules of engagement.

I should also say that I think it is crucial to separate out the politics of the Iraq war from the question of the safety of US troops. Each and every one of these brave men and women is serving our country under incredibly difficult conditions and deserves our undying thanks and support, whatever we think of the political mission. They removed a Saddamist regime that was frankly genocidal, and that overthrow was in itself a noble act. But the remaining tasks in Iraq (most of them in some way political even when military) are not something it is fair to ask them to stay on for, or to which their training and mindset suits them. I personally think it is time to bring them home.



'The most useful [resource for this discussion] is Chapter 5 of the Operational Law Handbook put out by the Judge Advocate School of the Army. It can be found at this site or by googling hostile act/hostile intent chapter 5. This is actually the first publication we turn to when we are working an operational law issue (not limited to ROE issues). In addition to an outstanding overall explanation of what ROE is, what it does, and how it is developed, it also contains the unclassified portions of the JCS's Standing Rules of Engagement, CJCSI 3121.01A (the "SROE"), as enclosure A. Of particular importance in the SROE is Enclosure A, entitled "Standing Rules of Engagement for US Forces."

A common misconception is that ROE and the Law of War (LOW) are synonymous. While they are inextricably linked, they are not the same. (At least at this point,) LOW subsumes ROE. The ROE cannot authorize anything that would be a LOW violation, but the ROE can prohibit many things (maybe anything) that IS permitted by the LOW. In the final analysis, ROE is essentially a policy decision. It is the commanders, up to and including the President, determining what limitations on the use of force are advisable in order to facilitate accomplishment of the units' missions and the nation's goals.

As you will see by reviewing the SROE, the ROE world is broken down into two distinct components: mission accomplishment and self-defense. [E.g., CJCSI 3121.01A, para. 6.b. "The SROE differentiate between the use of force for self-defense and for mission accomplishment."] When we talk about mission ROE, what we are really talking about are the "supplemental measures" to the SROE. There are two types of supplemental measures, "those that authorize a certain action and those that place limits on the use of force for mission accomplishment." When we talk about the differences between our ROE and the Brits' ROE, we are almost exclusively talking about the difference in the supplemental measures that have been approved for our use versus the supplemental measures that have been approved for their use. For example, one of us might be allowed to use riot control agents, such as tear gas, while the other isn't.

It is crucial to understand and remember, therefore, that "ROE supplemental measures apply only to the use of force for mission accomplishment and do not limit a commander's use of force in self-defense." The reason this is so crucial to remember is because probably more than 95% of what we are doing over there is under the rubric of self-defense. ROE differences can only be the cause of the differences between how we use force and how the Brits use force over there if we have materially different rules for self-defense. We don't.

Our concept of our "inherent right of self-defense" is predicated on our interpretation of Article 51 of the United Nations Charter ["Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations until the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to maintain international peace and security."] The key here is "predicated." We can leave it for another day whether it means that lance corporals can call in B-52 strikes in populated cities to protect themselves and their three other Marines. Time and time again, the phrase, "inherent right of self-defense," is the key that unlocks the door to the use of force. [One might recall Inigo Montoya's remark to Vizzini on his overuse of the word "inconceivable." "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."]

As our ROE makes abundantly clear through repetition, restatement, and boldface type, "[t]hese rules do not limit a commander's inherent authority and obligation to use all necessary means available and to take all appropriate actions in self-defense of the commander's unit and other US forces in the vicinity." (Enclosure A, para. 2.a.) Enclosure A, para. 5., reiterates


"Definitions.

a. Inherent Right of Self-Defense. A commander has the authority and obligation to use all necessary means available and to take all appropriate actions to defend that commander's unit and other US forces in the vicinity from a hostile act or demonstration of hostile intent. Neither these rules, nor the supplemental measures activated to augment these rules, limit this inherent right and obligation. At all times, the requirements of necessity and proportionality, as amplified in these SROE, will form the basis for the judgment of the on-scene commander (OSC) or individual as to what constitutes an appropriate response to a particular act or demonstration of hostile intent. . . .

e. Individual Self-Defense. The inherent right to use all necessary means available and to take all appropriate actions to defend oneself and US forces in one's vicinity from a hostile act or demonstrated hostile intent. . . . " (emphasis added)



As you can see, the definition of self-defense has holes that you could drive a truck (or a tank, JDAM, or Cobra gunship) through. It gives the on scene individual (potentially the lowest private) the authority to determine both whether force is a "necessity" and what amount of force is "appropriate." To be sure, there are key definitions that should limit the individual's use of force. Unfortunately, however, due to the vagaries of language and the impossibility of encapsulating all possibilities into a small, readily comprehensible blurb, each definition offers more room for confusion and liberal use of force.

The bottom line is that an individual may use "deadly force" when a "hostile act" occurs or when a force or terrorist exhibits "hostile intent."

"Deadly force" is "that force which a person uses with the purpose of causing, or which he knows or should reasonably know, will cause death or serious bodily harm."

A "hostile act" is "an attack or other use of force by a foreign force or terrorist unit against the United States, U.S. forces, or other designated persons and property, or a use of force intended to preclude or impede the mission of U.S. forces.

"Hostile intent" is the threat of imminent use of force by a foreign force or terrorist unit against the United States, U.S. forces, or other designated persons and property."

Once a hostile act has occurred, or once hostile intent is present, the right exists to use force in self-defense to deter, neutralize, or destroy the threat. Hostile act/hostile intent is not a blank check to use all force available. The force used must still be reasonable in intensity, duration, and magnitude to the perceived or demonstrated threat based on all facts known to the commander or individual. This used to be referred to as the "proportional use of force," but that caused many people to confuse it with the concept of "proportionality," which is a concept that applies to planned missions (i.e., mission accomplishment ROE vice self-defense), and which deals with insuring that "collateral damage" is proportionate to the military advantage of the mission. Confused? So is everyone else. This is being changed in the new SROE which is to be released imminently.

Per Enclosure A, para. 8, you will note that


"All necessary means available and all appropriate actions may be used in self-defense." "When time and circumstances permit, the hostile force should be warned and given the opportunity to withdraw or cease threatening actions." "When the use of force in self-defense is necessary, the nature, duration, and scope of the engagement should not exceed that which is required to decisively counter the hostile act or demonstrated hostile intent and to ensure the continued protection of US forces or other protected personnel or property." "An attack to disable or destroy a hostile force is authorized when such action is the only prudent means by which a hostile act or demonstration of hostile intent can be prevented or terminated. When such conditions exist, engagement is authorized only while the hostile force continues to commit hostile acts or exhibit hostile intent."


Paragraph 8 is eminently cogent and reasonable, but as subject to interpretation as "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion," "The right of the people to be secure . . . against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated," or "Islam will be a main source for legislation."

Although this language is from our ROE, the same concepts for self-defense are all included in the Brits' ROE. They, too, make clear that nothing in their ROE limits a commander's or individual's inherent right of self-defense. They, too, utilize the concepts of hostile act and hostile intent and remind the individual that force used must be reasonable and proportionate to the threat.

Because almost all of our questioned actions have taken place under the penumbra of self-defense, and because our rules for self-defense are materially the same as the Brits', the difference must lie, and does lie, elsewhere. The difference arises primarily from our attitudes and personalities. The Brits explicitly view this as a police action. With that comes a "law enforcement" outlook on the use of deadly force. Specifically, deadly force is justified only when all lesser means have failed or cannot reasonably be employed. They may only use the minimum amount of force necessary to make the threat stop acting like a threat. We see this as a combat operation. Once you demonstrate hostile act/hostile intent, we take that as the green light to eliminate you. This attitude difference also leads to a different interpretation of what constitutes proportionate force. Where the Brits would try to take the utmost care to insure that innocent civilians are not killed and civilian property isn't damaged, our only concern is to insure that we don't recklessly kill more innocent civilians and damage more property then we consider to be reasonably necessary.

This law enforcement/combat ops dichotomy has a profound effect on how we each respond. The Brits really try to do whatever it takes to avoid the need to use deadly force. A British soldier would think, "What's the minimum I can do to cause this person to stop his hostile conduct?" On the other hand, we constantly tell out troops not to be timid. If deadly force is required, use deadly force. Our first thought would be, "What do I have available to me? Artillery? Air support? Grenade launchers?"

This is not to say that there are no differences between the two ROEs. As you can see by various statements made by British troops, the Brits aren't allowed to use deadly force to protect property unless loss of that property would result in an immediate threat to human life, e.g., weapons systems, essential public health facilities, etc. Our ROE allows more latitude for the use of force to protect property. However, our uses of force have seldom relied on this broader authorization. It does not account for any significant difference.

The Brits are also required to provide a warning to the hostile actor before using deadly force. We seldom provide a warning. However, this also isn't really a material ROE difference. As you can see above, a warning is contemplated by the SROE. Our interpretation of the rules as they relate to the reality of the situation in MNF-W, however, is that a warning is often not practicable and in many other cases (such as escalation of force incidents like the shooting of the driver of the Italian journalist) ineffective.

The crucial difference is simply one of mindset. The British ROE is broad enough that, even if we operated under it, we would still be doing everything exactly as we are now. We see everything as an imminent threat to our safety and we believe that it is absolutely necessary, and appropriate, to use all available means to eliminate the threat. I've have heard several people accurately point out that for us, force protection is the number 1 priority. For the Brits, it's A priority, but it is by no means their first priority. To most Americans, the Brits' outlook probably sounds bizarre or naïve. Then again, force protection wasn't the number 1 priority on Iwo Jima; mission accomplishment was. When I brief the battalions that will deploy with us, I always try to remind them that it doesn't help us accomplish our mission if we kill one insurgent on Tuesday, but the way we handle it creates three insurgents on Thursday. However, I don't think any commander, or pundit, is going to be suggesting anytime soon that we're failing at our mission because we aren't taking enough casualties.

I think that many people use the phrase, "Rules of Engagement," to mean "the manner in which you use force." It may have value as shorthand, but because it actually is a term of art with a real meaning, it tends to confuse the issue. When the Brits say they don't like our ROE, they really mean that they think we are a bunch of cowboys who respond with overwhelming lethal fire to every actual or arguable threat. When we say we don't like their ROE, it means something to the effect that we think they don't understand what's really going on over there and that they are a bunch of [expurgated version] namby-pamby wankers who are afraid to do real fighting.

[Potential non-sequitur: I am reminded of an Irish pub song my father used to like where an IRA man taunts the Black and Tans, "Come tell us how you slew, those brave Arabs two by two. Like the Zulus they had spears and bows and arrows. How you bravely slew each one, with your sixteen pounder gun. And you frightened them poor natives to their marrow." As I recall, I thought that wasn't really a song about how brave the Black and Tans were. Maybe I was wrong back then.]

Juan, the real self-defense ROE is summed up in the phrase used by all the troops, "Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six." The troops have an incredibly broad view of what constitutes hostile act. As far as they're concerned, if someone could conceivably be about to do them harm, they think, "better safe than sorry," and "better him than me." With many of our Marines on their third tours over there and no real improvement in the situation, mission #1 is coming home alive.

One of the ways we train our Marines is by going over scenarios with them. In one, I propose that they are traveling down the highway in a convoy. As they approach an overpass, they see a MAM (military age male) standing on the middle of the overpass with something about the size of a baseball (grenade-sized) in his hands. When he sees the convoy, he freezes. What should you do? Most of the Marines will say, "He's demonstrated hostile intent, you need to waste him. He could be holding a hand grenade and be intending to drop it into one of the trucks as you pass under." (This is an actual tactic used by the insurgents).

I change the scenario and say that when he sees you, he drops to the ground on the overpass. Some Marine will invariably answer, to the acclaim of his fellow Marines, "That's a hostile act. He's taking cover because he's about to detonate an IED on you. You need to take him out." (Also something they've actually seen.)

Finally, I change the scenario to say that, when he sees you, he turns around in the direction from which he came and starts running off the overpass (you can see where this is going). The answer is usually that that too is a hostile act or hostile intent because he is clearly trying to get off that overpass before the IED goes off.

Apparently, the only safe action for the MAM to take is to have Scotty beam him up. As far as some Marines are concerned, the presence of an Arab male in proximity to an American convoy may be all you need to find hostile act/hostile intent. This is, of course, highly reminiscent of that quip in Michael Herr's Dispatches, "The ones who run are VC. The ones who don't run are well-disciplined VC."

It would be easy for anyone who doesn't have to drive those highways in a US convoy to castigate our young troops over there for their trigger-happy mentality, but it's just not that simple. Those young Marines are doing the hardest thing the Corps has ever done. At least in Viet Nam there were places where anybody in front of you was definitely a bad guy. Oh, for the simple (though not easy) days of Tarawa and Iwo Jima. They're not a bunch of amoral killers. They're just a bunch of well intentioned, highly trained, and highly armed young men and women stuck in a Serbonian bog with minimal clarity of purpose.

[Additional possible non sequitur: I think every Marine infantry officer has Henry V's "Once more into the breach dear friends" speech memorized. Less remembered is the soldier's remarks before Agincourt when he gets a "little touch of Harry in the night." "But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place.'"] '