RUMMY TO THE RESCUE
The most significant ‘political’ event of the week was yesterday’s announcement that the President is dispatching an envoy to try to prevent a nuclear conflagration between India and Pakistan over the disputed territory of Kashmir.
Normally such a mission would be the purview of the Secretary of State Colin Powell.
But instead it is Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who is jetting off to New Delhi and Islamabad to try to calm down these bitter rivals.
Rummy’s selection is a major blow to Powell’s prestige - and a major win for Rumsfeld in a long-running feud between the two headstrong inside-the-beltway players.
As reported here 18 months ago, Vice President Cheney selected his old boss, Rummy, specifically to ‘counter’ the egotistical and power-crazy Powell. Cheney knew Powell from their Pentagon days and knew how petulant and difficult Powell can be. Plus, Powell often steps into areas he is not prepared for.
Not wanting to be the ‘check’ on Powell, Cheney searched and searched for an ‘insider’ who could trade elbows with Powell. Rummy – long out of government after a distinguished career in Congress, the Cabinet and as White House Chief of Staff – was the one official 25 years ago who could do battle with Henry Kissinger and win. So Rummy was brought back to his old Pentagon post ostensibly to neutralize the inevitable power grabs of Powell.
The War on Terrorism has catapulted Rummy to national icon status. His performance running the war and his daily Pentagon briefings have made him the only ‘star’ so far to emerge from the 9/11 debacle – very much the way Powell and Stormin’ Norman became household names in the 1991 Gulf War.
And the mess in the Middle East has reduced Powell’s prestige. His failed mission five weeks ago to Yasser Arafat – and his prima donna behavior – have soured many of the White House staff on Powell.
The political significance of Rummy’s ascendancy is the race for the 2004 vice presidential nomination should Cheney not choose to run or if his health prevents it. In that case, the race is on – because it means a leg up for the 2008 GOP Presidential nomination. Already we know that Senator Bill Frist is campaigning for this veep slot; Homeland Security chief Tm Ridge is also being mentioned. Powell, too, has carefully begun campaigning by trotting out his son, FCC Chairman Michael Powell, to C-SPAN one day to say his father “would accept” it if offered. That was/is a big change from the previous Powell position of not wanting to run for elective office because his wife is against it.
As has been written here long before 9/11, the most logical choice to replace Cheney is Rummy. They are two peas in a pod – with one exception. Their careers mirror each other: Congressmen, White House Chief of Staff, Defense Secretary and corporate CEO. Seasoned, wise – and politically savvy, they both supplement the Bush Team. The exception is that Rummy has never been close to G.H.W. Bush. The two were young rivals in the House 38 years ago and Rummy began running in 1986 for the GOP Presidential nomination against then-Vice President Bush before ultimately dropping out. Rumsfeld harbored presidential aspirations for 35 years but just never made it. However, Rummy’s performance and loyalty – as contrasted to Powell’s Lone Ranger PR Campaign – has made Rummy a W favorite.
Powell will greatly resent the selection of Rumsfeld to journey to the Sub-Continent. Look for some leaks to the friendly – and liberal – DC press corps to try to undermine Rummy’ mission. That’s typical of the Powell Team’s Modus Operandi.
But Rummy is even cleverer. He anticipates Powel’s every move – and pounces when he shows weakness.
He is the Star of the Bush Team. Now the question is: will there yet be a Rumsfeld Team?
BEWARE THE SUPER SQUAD
Never – ever – would we ever have thought that the CIA would be allowed to place a team of its agents right smack-dab inside FBI HQ - actually inside the J. Edgar Hoover Building – with the power to analyze all incoming FBI intelligence. Hoover himself would die all over again if he saw his agency reduced to an adjunct of the despised-CIA.
Indeed, if Hoover could have placed an FBI team over in Langley he would happily have done it. But by accepting a CIA team to man the new ‘Office of Intelligence’ the FBI has now allowed itself to become a sub-agency of George Tenet’s ever-increasingly-powerful CIA.
Watching FBI Director Robert Mueller’s press conference today in which he outlined the sweeping ‘reorganization’ of the FBI, it is clear that this is a CYA-inspired plan – devised out of total desperation – and a reaction to the daily revelations that the FBI indeed knew much more than they will admit prior to 9/11 about an imminent domestic attack. It also seems that Agent Coleen Rowley’s memo is the ‘precipitating’ event that has shaken up the FBI.
However, the recommendations she made – especially that the FBI field offices have more autonomy - were trashed today by Mueller’s plan. Quite to the contrary of her memo – and using CIA as the model – all decisions and power will now be centralized in DC.
In staffing up the Office of Intelligence with a CIA team – to be known as the Super Squad - sent over by Tenet, let us ask a basic question: when FBI now receives any piece of information, is this going to be analyzed by FBI agents or will it first be sent over to Langley?
This question is critical because CIA will use this information for its own purposes – and will ‘legally’ violate the law. As things now stand, CIA cannot legally conduct Intel operations on U.S. soil. But with this new FBI ‘reorganization’ they’re going use the FBI to do their dirty work for them – and their hands will be clean!
We should all be worried.
Any time a federal agency expands its own powers, it does so at a cost – either financially to the taxpayers or in reduced rights and liberties of the people.
It is a fact that already the CIA – with the help of ‘friendly’ federal judges – breaks the law and conducts domestic espionage. In fact a secret operation based in World Trade Center #7 was going on when the planes hit #’s 1&2. Number seven collapsed that afternoon from collateral damage. A ‘friendly’ federal judge has since admitted that only CIA personnel were allowed to collect the remnants of the building – thus preserving whatever proof of the illegal ‘op’ remained.
With the FBI now serving as a ‘cover’ for CIA operations, God help us all.
Director Mueller’s announcement today of a Super Squad to take on the high-profile terrorist threats - under CIA supervision - is the most worrisome aspect of the New FBI. This Super Squad is going to become yet another too-powerful government force, cloaked in secrecy, unaccountable to the Congress (who are useless anyway these days) or to we, the American people.
Just wait until this Super Squad starts knocking on doors in the middle of the night and dragging American citizens away for ‘interrogation.’ Don’t laugh; it can and will happen. First they’ll say it was a ‘mistake.’ The next time it will go unnoticed. And eventually we won’t be able to stop it.
The entire War on Terror so far has been all PR and CYA. It has been a shameless display of career-protection and, in the case of Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, career-enhancement and agency-enhancement.
We are being warned to death – and scared to death – with unspecified threats from everyone from scuba divers to private plane pilots to apartment renters. How long until we are told that ballroom dance instructors and dental hygienists are now secretly al Qaeda suspects?
It is high time that we Americans get off the defensive and make our enemies – including the Saudis - worry about who and where we are going to strike next.
FIBBIES’ FIB
FBI Special Agent Coleen Rowley of the Minneapolis field office has written a memo, dated May 21, 2002, to FBI Director Robert Mueller that is one of the most devastating indictments of a failed bureaucratic system ever written. (http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020603/memo.html)
Agent Rowley, a 21-year FBI agent and a single mother of four children, has laid her life, career – and reputation – on the line by so publicly disagreeing with Director Mueller’s repeated statements that “had we known about possible terrorists training in the flight schools we might have prevented the 9/11 attacks.”
In fact, FBI Headquarters in D.C. did know much about not only Phoenix agent Kenneth Williams’ warning but also the repeated implorings from Minneapolis that Zacarias Moussaoui, who was being held in jail on an INS violation, was linked to al Qaeda. Minneapolis repeatedly tried to get FBIHQ (headquarters) to okay an affidavit for a court order to inspect Moussaoui’s computer. Instead of allowing this, D.C. tried to stall and then to edit and rewrite this affidavit. And all that time, September 11 approached.
Even after 9/11, FBIHQ tried to stall on opening the computer - even when it was known that Moussaoui was the 20th hijacker!
When they ultimately looked in the computer, by the way, they found the phone number of Mohamed Atta’s roommate in Germany. Can you imagine how a thorough investigation, using this one piece of information – prior to 9/11 – might have altered history?
Rowley wrote, “I have deep concerns that a delicate and subtle shading/skewing of the facts by you and others at the highest levels of FBI management has occurred and is occurring. …
“Even after Sept. 11, the fear was great … that the same FBIHQ personnel would continue their “filtering” with respect to the Moussaoui investigation, and now with the added incentive of preventing their prior mistakes from coming to light.”
These statements by a respected veteran FBI agent should cause the Congress to launch a major investigation of the FBI – from top to bottom. The same holds true for the CIA.
Both agencies failed us badly - and need to be gutted and rebuilt, from the bottom up.
“Filtering” and “preventing prior mistakes from coming to light” are code words either for major ineptitude, intentional interference – or covering up for others. Whatever the case, the Rowley memo shows us that from the top down, the FBI failed the American people on 9/11 – and for that they need to be torn apart and put back together.
The CIA is a tougher nut to crack. Shrouded in ‘national security,’ they use this dodge as an excuse to shield their mistakes, transgressions and naked grabs for power. CIA, too, needs to be thoroughly ‘aired out’ – and then rebuilt. But, sadly, under the Bush administration, this will not be done. Just as Clinton ruined the FBI by making it a political arm of his corrupt White House, the Bushes adore and revere everything about the CIA and wouldn’t think of changing a thing – other than repeatedly increasing CIA’s already astronomical and bloated budget.
Whenever this Bush White House seeks to lay the blame for yet another intelligence failure on the Clinton years, we should ask: “Then why is the only Clinton holdover in the Bush administration the very man who ran the Clinton Intel operation – George Tenet?”
Tenet is no dummy. He clearly has ingratiated himself with former President Bush and he rarely leaves this President Bush alone. Tenet plays a powerful role in all aspects of Bush White House planning. Yet he has never had to answer for the failures to prevent 9/11 – including missed opportunities to whack Osama – and the failure to get him now.
Unfortunately, in the ‘secret’ culture of the CIA, there can be no Coleen Rowleys to blow the lid off a festering, rotten, CYA-filled, complacent – and cocky – agency.
We must have a top-to-bottom house cleaning of both FBI and CIA. If we don’t, we are as
threatened by our own agencies’ ineptitude and turf protection as we are by the unseen
terrorists planning their next attacks.
THE YACHT BOMB
Osama bin Laden and his cohorts are not going to rest until they demolish the symbol of freedom, democracy and liberty: the White House.
Undoubtedly, Flight 93 – had it not been brought down by those brave passengers – was headed to D.C. to dive-bomb right into the White House.
Just as the terrorists came back to complete the job after the 1993 failed attempt to bring down the World Trade Center Twin Towers, they will come back with a new plan to give the world one lasting image: the White House as a pile of smoking, radioactive rubble.
How will they do this?
Certainly if another plane even approached 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue now, it would be shot down.
Similarly, barricades have been erected all around the White House to prevent car or truck bombings.
But there is one scenario that has yet to be prevented.
Once Osama or any other enemy of the United States acquires a small nuclear device – and that day is inevitable and probably sooner rather than later – they have the problem of how to get it into the United States.
We hear that our commercial ports are being checked with Geiger counters for radiation; similarly, the airports have supposedly been tightened up. But what is to prevent these obviously well-funded terrorists from getting a big ocean-going yacht somewhere in the Mideast, putting the device on board, and setting sail for the East Coast of the United States.
If you’ve ever visited any marinas up and down our coasts, you will see scores of multimillion-dollar behemoth yachts with every conceivable device on board, ranging from satellite TV to radar, sonar, helicopters, speed boats and crews of a dozen or more. Many are registered from Mideast countries. From East Hampton and Sag Harbor on Long Island to Hilton Head and Kiawah Island – owned, by the way, by Arabs – down to Jacksonville, Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Miami, private marinas are crawling with foreigners with big bucks, who come into this country unchecked!
If a yacht crosses the Atlantic and arrives in a private marina, there is no customs or INS there to search it. None!
The Coast Guard does not, as of today, search each and every expensive yacht.
Thus, the terrorists could easily pilot this nuke-carrying yacht right into the Potomac River and berth it within a mile of the White House!
From there all it takes is one middle-of-the-night van ride with the device up to Pennsylvania Avenue, where they could park it mere blocks from the White House. Depending on the strength of the bomb, they might even be able to accomplish two goals at the same time: Leave both the White House and the Capitol in a pile of debris. Not to mention the thousands dead.
What a picture for eternity. What a symbol of the defeat of the United States. That is exactly what these bastards want!
This awful scenario could happen.
Let us hope our government – too concerned with their own careers, re-elections and CYA – will wake up to this and immediately begin stopping each and every yacht and boat that even approaches our coasts. If necessary, the U.S. Navy should be used to supplement the Coast Guard – before it is too late.
CIA’S SPREADING TENTACLES
Last week’s report that in 1999 the Clinton administration was specifically told that al Qaeda might use hijacked planes to dive-bomb into American buildings comes from a little-known source.
“Suicide bombers belonging to al Qaeda’s Martydom Brigade could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and Semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency or the White House,” concluded the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress.
A little digging reveals that the Federal Research Division “provides customized research and analytical services on foreign and domestic topics to United States Government and District of Columbia agencies on a cost-recovery basis.”
In other words, CIA and many other U.S. government intelligence agencies – instead of doing their own analysis – subcontract out the work to the Library of Congress. With an intelligence budget in excess of $60 billion a year, why does the CIA need to “sub out” its main responsibility: analysis?
The answer could be that the agency wants to extend its ‘tentacles’ throughout more and more of the U.S. government. By having more personnel on the payroll in more agencies and departments, CIA thus has more ‘control’ over the government’s actions.
The Library of Congress – seemingly a storehouse of the nation’s books and papers – thus takes an active role in ‘intel gathering.’ For example, an author reports that while he toils in the Library of Congress researching material for a book that may very well embarrass the U.S. government, suspicious ‘clerks’ hover nearby and take note of which material he checks out.
A NewsMax reader last year wrote me an e-mail reporting that he knew for certain that CIA personnel were ‘doubling’ as innocuous workers in the Library of Congress:
To: jlebout@newsmax.com
" Leboutillier: You are right about the CIA infiltrating their people into the government. I work at the Library of Congress, run by "ex"-CIA James Billington. Billington has changed the agenda of the Library to joint projects with Russia, including the Russian Leadership Program funded by Soros and taxpayers. Funds have been diverted for years for his personal projects which, we can assume, serve some other intelligence purpose as well as personal enrichment for Billington (he used his office to fund, as well as take money from Vladmir Gusinsky, his PBS special. He then got the Copyright Office, in the Library (!), to write a special arrangement for royalties. And, oh yes, Congress excused him from the law, permitting him to take over $100,000 in "salary" for the video). What else is going on?"
Congressmen and senators and their staffs often get papers written for them by the Library of Congress on all sorts of issues. The LOC does an incredibly good job of preparing research papers for use in crafting legislation and position papers. Now it is clear: CIA knows – because they are doing the prep work – everything the senators and congressmen are planning!
The Librarian of Congress, James Billington, is a ‘former’ CIA analyst, with a specialty in Russian affairs. Perhaps he sees his role as turning the LOC into an adjunct of the CIA.
This pattern of ‘planting’ CIA personnel in other departments and branches of government is widespread. Up on Capitol Hill, the CIA carefully places people on the staffs of key senators and congressmen – and on the staffs of the intelligence committees.
Similarly the Defense Intelligence Agency over in the Pentagon – normally a rival to CIA – for years has been infiltrated by CIA people in military uniforms.
All of this so CIA can watch and listen to our own government – when what they ought to be doing is watching and listening to our enemies.
By the way, what good is all of this ‘sub contracting’ if, in the end, the very event that 1999 paper warned us about happened without the slightest attempt to thwart it?
That is a question no one has even addressed yet. A 1999 warning about suicide planes hitting the Pentagon – and no surface-to-air missiles were ready to fire? No airborne fighters were ready to warn away all planes – with a threat to shoot them down?
We have many problems. One of them is a CIA that has lost sight of its mission. Instead of finding and killing Osama bin Laden, it spends too much time ‘finding’ more U.S. government departments to infiltrate and influence.
CIA CYA>
“What did he know – and when did he know it?”
The famous Watergate question aimed 30 years ago by Senator Howard Baker at President Nixon is now being used by the national news media in light of stunning revelations that President G.W. Bush was indeed warned prior to 9/11 of possible Osama bin Laden jet hijackings.
The reports – only reluctantly admitted to by White House officials late last night – are but the tip of an iceberg of intelligence reports certain now to be surfaced in preparation for Senate Intelligence Committee hearings next month on our intelligence failures leading to the 9/11 attacks.
The White House ‘spin’ is that while the President was indeed told of a ‘general’ threat of hijackings of jets by Osama’s forces, “no one anticipated the jets would be used as missiles.”
Oh, yeah?
Back in 1995 when Ramzi Youssef was arrested for the first (1993) World Trade Center bombing, he and his roommate in Manila had specific written plans in their apartment detailing the hijacking of several American airliners. Their plan was to put homemade bombs on each jet and then dive bomb them into CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
So why in the world is the Bush White House now proclaiming their ‘shock’ and “surprise’ that terrorists would use passenger jets as kamikaze bombers?
CYA – that’s why.
Our intelligence community is a joke – and they have once again been caught with their pants down. Thus, the “spin” that “we had some general idea that an attack might be coming, but no one could anticipate that they would use jets as missiles.”
CIA Director George Tenet delivered most morning briefings to President Bush. Apparently the Osama/pre-9/11 hijacking report was delivered to Mr. Bush at his Crawford Ranch in August by Tenet.
Eight months later, Director Tenet is still in charge. In fact, his role and his agency’s role and budget have been increased despite the most massive intelligence failure in US history.
Last fall I wrote of this – repeatedly – and was heavily criticized for it (http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/11/8/174016.shtml). But time has proven that there is much more to be uncovered than we, the people, have been told by this White House.
There is the Phoenix FBI agent and his memorandum warning of imminent trouble emanating from foreigners at our flight schools. And there is yet to come the other 9 agents now represented by David Schippers – all of whom warned superiors prior to the attacks and were told to “shut up or you will be prosecuted under the National Security Act.” Schippers is the real deal – and his clients must be, as well.
What this country needs is a gigantic housecleaning of each and every intelligence agency from top to bottom.
Sunlight needs to be let into these dark and dusty corridors of unchecked and out-of-control power.
The Achilles’ heel of former President Bush was always his years in the CIA. He had to cover for too many other people and “keep the lid on” too many hidden scandals.
Now his son is about to be bedeviled by the same problem: an intel community that has become a government unto itself.
LIFE AFTER ‘DEATH’
Two weeks ago in the Green Room at the Fox News Channel – (the Green Room is the waiting area for guests who are about to appear on the air) – political commentator Dick Morris walked in as I was waiting to go on the Hannity & Colmes Show.
Morris, well known as the Clintons’ political guru for two decades, was very pleasant and polite. But he said something that struck me as particularly significant. After we introduced each other he began quizzing me about my elected political career. When I mentioned to him that I lost my reelection fight in 1982, Morris asked, “How’s life after death?”
I chuckled as he said it – and thought to myself that I have heard this phrase from him on TV before. ‘Death’ – as in defeat – is a terrible concept because of what it makes incumbents do. When an office-holder running for reelection equates losing that election to death, then he or she is going to do anything – and everything – to win that election.
It used to be that losing an election was not seen as a disgrace or a rejection of one’s manhood. In fact, there was a certain honor to losing as long as you championed the ‘higher moral plane.’ But lately politics has rivaled Vince Lobardi’s old axiom: “Winning isn’t everything; it is the only thing.”
Today’s candidates view their own ascension to office as more important than a cause or an issue or a position in a moral struggle. And this is probably why politics has sunk below used car salesmen in the view of the American people.
The days of the Revolution or the anti-slavery movement before the Civil War or other great causes in our history brought out candidates with a passion for a ‘greater good.’ Elective politics were the means to campaign for that ‘good’ – and sometimes losing only furthered the cause until times had changed enough to make the previous ‘losing cause’ a ‘winning reality.’
Look at the career of Ronald Reagan. Twice he ran for the GOP presidential nomination – in 1968 and 1976 – and lost. He was ridiculed both times as a lightweight, an extremist and a B movie actor. Then, in 1980, he wins one of our nation’s biggest landslides and goes on to two terms of unprecedented popularity. What had been viewed as ‘extremist’ in 1968 was suddenly ‘mainstream’ in 1980.
Reagan was not afraid to lose. He did not view a loss – or two losses – as ‘death.’
In fact, those two losses were the opposite of death; they were the seeds of his ‘re-birth’ in the next election.
The Dick Morrises of this world play to the worst instincts of our politicians. Equating an electoral loss to death makes that loss worse than it is. I have won and I have lost – yes, winning is preferable – but history is replete with ‘losers’ who come back to win another time.
The bigger issue is why you run for office in the first place.
Do you run to do something – or to be a somebody?
Most politicians in both parties today do it for the latter reason.
Too bad. Because we need more who do it for the former.
A WONDERFUL TIME TO BE ALIVE
Amid all the ‘bad’ news that we hear endlessly in our media, there are stories that portend great things. For example, medical and scientific breakthroughs seem to occur almost daily now.
Last Tuesday it was reported that people suffering from retinitis pigmentosa (RP) had real hope of a total cure – and soon! In a new potential treatment for a disease that kills the cells of the retina, scientists at Optobionics in Wheaton, Ill., have built tiny chips that are implanted behind the retina. These artificial chips so far are not only replacing the ‘dead’ cells, but they are also stimulating nearby damaged cells into working again.
These scientists are flabbergasted at this unexpected result.
Indeed, it is too early to know the ultimate success of this treatment. But it gives hope to the millions who suffer from the other major retinal disease, macular degeneration.
Over 20 million people worldwide suffer from these two forms of blindness.
Can you imagine the happiness and joy all of them must feel today just knowing that positive progress is being made in their behalf?
Similarly, spinal cord injuries affect millions and, up until recently, there has been little hope for these paralyzed and often ‘forgotten’ souls. Now, however, scientists in Zurich and elsewhere have made astounding progress in one of medicine’s most vexing problems: how to regenerate central nervous system nerves.
We can have an arm or a leg accidentally cut off and re-attach it and get those nerves to re-grow. But those are our ‘peripheral’ nerves. They will grow back together.
The nerves of our central nervous system are a different story and scientists can’t get them to grow back together. And until they do, paralysis will continue.
I personally witnessed a research experiment in Zurich 11 years ago where rats were intentionally paralyzed and then their spinal cords were induced to grow back together. The problem over the past 11 years is getting the much more complex human spinal cord nerves to re-attach and begin to convey messages from the brain.
My point is this: Every day that goes by – and we read sad, depressing tales of murder, violence and hopelessness – many, many good things are being developed that will give hope to so many downtrodden people.
For that we should all be grateful.
And we should all remember one thing: Whatever woes we may go through, others have it much, much worse.
PROJECT INDEPENDENCE
July 4, 2002
The East Room, the White House at 9 p.m.
Seats filled with members of Congress, auto company executives, oil and
energy company executives and members of the media.
The president and the vice president walk in and stand behind the podium
featuring the presidential seal.
All major networks and cable news stations go "live" to what has been billed
as an "epic" presidential address to the nation.
The president begins:
"My fellow Americans, 30 years ago - in 1972 - Apollo astronauts arrived on the moon and deployed an electric car. Over the next three days of that particular mission they drove for miles around the surface of the moon collecting rock samples and deploying seismic measuring equipment.
"Their Apollo spacecraft that took them to and from the moon was powered by hydrogen fuel cells, which provided them with enough electricity to run the onboard computer systems and pilot what was then the most sophisticated piece of equipment ever made by mankind.
"If we built and used fuel cells 30 years ago - and even drove a
non-petroleum-powered car on the moon - then it is high time we change the
way we manufacture and consume energy here on Earth.
"Furthermore, we must face facts: We are so reliant on imported oil that foreign governments can exert tremendous leverage on us and on our allies. We need to break this reliance - and now!
"And we also need to face one other fact: As good as the internal combustion engine has been to our society and to our needs, it also has contributed to all sorts of pollution problems. The depleted ozone layer, dirtier air and perhaps even global warming all can be traced to these engines and their byproducts.
"Therefore, the vice president and I are here to announce an unprecedented project. Beginning today, I am announcing a joint project combining the best federal scientists and all the federal spending we need with the best private scientists from both the energy companies and the auto industry - plus more money from these private firms - to build and mass-produce fuel cell powered cars, SUVs, vans, trucks and buses within three years.
"The goal: to replace each and every internal combustion engine within five years and to mass-produce fuel cell vehicles for every American consumer at a price that is comparable with present-day cars. And to have America once again lead the world in a new auto technology that we can export worldwide.
"We can no longer be threatened - even subtly - with a potential oil embargo by our so-called allies.
"And we can no longer have our democratically elected allies feeling that we are so reliant on their sworn blood enemies that we may waver in our support in order to keep the pipeline open.
"No, my fellow Americans, as longtime oil men, the vice president and I know that the time has come to choose a new path into the future - a path powered by hydrogen extracted from water with no dangerous byproducts and no pollution. Yes, we will still need all the domestically produced oil and gas to run our power plants and to warm our homes. But the fuel cell vehicles will break our dependence on foreign oil and help to clean our atmosphere.
"One other thing, please: In the next few days you will hear the naysayers and the negativists come out of the woodwork to say this cannot be done. We Americans are optimistic people - and now is the time we should not brook negativity and words such as "can't," "never" and "impossible."
"We have been assured that this can be done. Three years and we will all begin driving vehicles the likes of which mankind could only dream of a few years ago.
"So, my fellow Americans - and to all watching around the world on this birthday of the greatest nation God ever created - let us celebrate our past and our future. This will be a future filled with new opportunities and new freedoms.
"And let us celebrate this new chapter in our history - known forever as Project Independence."
NO COINCIDENCE
This evening's suicide bombing in Rishon Letzion, Israel is NO COINCIDENCE!
16 dead Israelis and over 40 injured - just at the very exact moment Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was meeting with President George W. Bush - is a carefully planned event aimed at scuttling any chance for a peaceful resumption of cease-fire talks.
What a disgrace!
Israel should never have 'played ball' with Colin Powell's ham-handed attempt to play both sides. Twenty years ago Arafat was trapped like a rat in Beirut and the Reagan State Department rescued him. We witnessed the awful sight of US Marines escorting this career murderer to safety.
Now, 20 years later, we have done it again. We have freed this killer - and, guess what, he has killed again!
What a disgrace!
Would we be 'rescuing' Osama bin Laden if we knew where he was trapped?
Would we 'rescue' Saddam if rebel forces had him trapped in Iraq?
No!
But, to appease the so-called moderate Arabs - the ones who finance terror - we have once again allowed this cancer to spread his poison.
The so-called Bush Doctrine - we won't harbor or allow anyone to harbor terrorists - is a total sham.
WHY THE DEBUNKING?
This week the Bush Administration – or forces within it – deliberately debunked the Czech intelligence report that lead-hijacker Mohammed Atta had met with an Iraqi agent in Prague just months before the 9-11 attacks.
Within hours of the September 11 attacks, the Czechs had told the US government that they had followed the Iraqi agent because he was suspected of planning an attack on the broadcast headquarters of Radio Free Europe in Prague. During this surveillance the Czechs had seen the agent, Al-Anari, meeting at a café at the Prague airport with Mohammed Atta who then immediately boarded a flight for the United States.
For some inexplicable reason the Bush Administration was never happy with this report. Off the record to members of the media they scoffed at it and downplayed it, often disparaging the source.
This week the Administration tried to kill the Atta-Iraq link once and for all. They simultaneously leaked a story to the WASHINGTON POST, NEW YORK TIMES and NEWSWEEK specifically denying that the Prague meeting ever happened. They even trotted out the new FBI Director to disclaim any evidence that such a meeting ever took place. Director Robert Mueller claims they “exhaustively combed through airport records, car rental receipts and found no evidence that Atta was in Prague on the day in question.”
They also now have the Czech Prime Minister – the very man who originally reported it to us – saying his government no longer stands by this report. (Wonder what pressure and threats to 'change' his story he has experienced from the CIA since he reported the meeting to us?)
Why is the Bush Administration so hell-bent to disprove an Iraqi connection to 9-11?
Especially when the Administration so desperately wants to remove Saddam’s regime from power?
Why not just let the Atta - Al-Anari meeting stand as one further piece of evidence that Saddam has got to go?
Why expend so much energy to prove that such a meeting did NOT occur?
Some conjecture:
1) As a longtime ‘victim’ (in the POW/MIA issue) of USG ‘debunking’ I no longer believe ANYTHING our government says, finds, denies or proclaims. There is ALWAYS an ulterior motive – and the truth is the last consideration.
2) The CIA is somewhere behind this latest example of USG debunking. They have a motive – and we do not yet know what it is.
3) The media is, as usual, the unwitting dupe of the US Government. And this very same media rarely asks a cynical question because they’ll lose their ‘access’ and ‘contacts.’
4) There may very well be forces inside our government who want to protect Iraq and prevent a war with Saddam. Those forces have from the first few minutes after 9-11 began purposely directed the investigations and attention solely to Osama bin Laden – and away from Iraq.
5) There is strong evidence – never debunked by anyone – that Iraq was behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. And also much evidence that Saddam and Osama have worked together in other attacks on American interests. For the same inexplicable reason, the US Government never seems to want to explore that link. For example, the mysterious trip by Iraq's top nephrologist last May to Afghanistan reportedly to treat Osama for his chronic kidney problems.
Conclusion: something is “going on” that we do not yet – and may never – know.
But it smells fishy – as things emanating from the CIA often do.
How do we, the American people, find the real truth? We need an honest and independent assessment of the intelligence - given under oath - and in public. Therefore, we need a joint House-Senate Committee hearing - on national TV - with witnesses ranging from the Czech Prime Minister to the various FBI agents who have been muzzled so far and threatened not to talk about 'warning's they reported before 9-11.
We need all of this to determine who is telling the truth.
And this Joint Committee can not have any CIA or Executive Branch personnel as staffers, thus rigging the inquiry.
Let us make this - once and for all - a clean investigation so we can all have faith in what we learn.
PEACE CAN NOW HAPPEN
Political Prediction: A comprehensive peace treaty in the Israeli-Palestinian war may indeed now be possible.
The siege and the suicide bombings and the outside pressure and the political realities – combined with the US desire to topple Saddam Hussein – are all contributing to a moment when a peace can be reached. Here is how:
As the New York Times reports today (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/01/international/middleeast/01DIPL.html) President Bush is going to “lean” on Prime Minister Sharon while Crown Prince Abdullah and the other Arabs are going to lean to Yasser Arafat. Their goal is to resuscitate the 2000 peace plan that was almost agreed to before Arafat and his hard-liners tried to extort even more from Ehud Barak and an eager-for-a-legacy Bill Clinton. The current intifada was then launched and everything deteriorated. Israel reacted by electing Ariel Sharon.
Since the current wave of suicide bombings, Israel has moved ‘right’ – and Sharon has never been more popular. Thus, he is where Menachem Begin was 25 years ago: only he can make peace with the Arabs and survive politically.
Similarly, Arafat has shot his wad. He cannot continue the intifada and defy his funders forever. If the Saudis want him to make a peace with Israel, then he will be hard-pressed to refuse.
And George W. Bush has an ulterior motive for helping to bring about a settlement: Iraq.
Clearly Team Bush is determined to remove Saddam before the 2004 election. But they cannot do it unless and until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at least calmed down. And, if it were settled, that would pave the way for an all out assault on Iraq.
Politically, this could happen. Yes, both sides will hold out and try to wrangle everything they can. Who can blame them? That is how to negotiate.
But Israel’s Sharon is a career general who has seen too much death and destruction. Contrary to his public image, he is a warm and caring man who actually showed too much restraint until this current wave of suicide bombings. Indeed, his poll ratings were dropping as he refused to retaliate. His rival from the Right, Bibi Netanyhu, was climbing in those polls. Finally Sharon sent the Israeli Defense Forces into the West Bank to root out the killers and terrorists. Now Sharon is again the most popular politician in Israel.
Now – and perhaps only now – can he sell a deal to his people. It is a “only Nixon can go to China” moment.
Of course there will be the sticky issue of Israeli settlers on the West Bank. Sharon encourages even more settlements. This will have to be resolved. So, too, will be Jerusalem.
But the Time for Peace has arrived. The entire world wants to see this conflict settled. And as long as the United States stands firm behind Israel’s security, then the Arafat dream of “driving Israel into the sea” is not going to happen – ever.
The key will be to see if the un-trustworthy Saudis can make the murderer Arafat buckle and accept peace. He has lived his entire life based on a simple premise: kill Jews. Now he is going to be asked to accept them as neighbors and even as partners.
This will be the real test for Arafat.
Of course the whole deal will be done quietly – and then a huge international ‘Peace Conference’ will be held to dot the I’s and cross the t’s. Many leaders will take credit and there will be smiles all around. The deal will be greased and sweetened by lots of US cash – just the way we arranged things at Camp David 25 years ago. (we still pay Israel and Egypt more than $8 billion per year for Camp David to remain in place.)
And then the US will be free to do what it really wants: get Saddam before he gets us.
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