Turning a blind eye to war crimes

The US torture policy approved by George Bush and Dick Cheney should spark a public outcry. So where's the outrage?

Noting the war crimes now known and admitted to by George Bush and Dick Cheney, George Washington University's highly-respected constitutional law professor Jonathon Turley asked MSNBC's Keith Olbermann last week: "If someone commits a crime and everyone's around to see it and does nothing, is it still a crime?"

The Semantics of Bush's Torture Policy

"The Bush administration built a legal framework – relying on semantics and secrecy – to subject detainees at Guantanamo Bay to brutal interrogation techniques and then to hide the reality from human rights observers, according to internal government documents."

Why I Believe Bush Must Go by George McGovern

"Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses. They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after time. Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world. These are truly "high crimes and misdemeanors," to use the constitutional standard."

IRAN INVASION PUT ON HOLD

"Bush, like a gambler who refuses to believe that his pair of kings can not beat his opponent’s royal flush, is not backing down. Having pulled a skunk out of the magic hat rather than a rabbit, his response is in effect that “Although Iran halted her program in 2003, that doesn’t mean she couldn’t start it back up again.”"

Keith Olbermann: You sir, have no business being president

One of Keith's better "special comments." Keith is the best the MSM has to offer ~ the most disappointing is Hardball's Chris Matthews.

Rudy or Hillary: Pick Your Poison

"Americans are unable to connect their dissatisfaction with the current political leadership with their choice of new leaders. All polls show that Hillary Clinton is far in the lead for the Democratic presidential nomination and Rudy Giuliani is far in the lead for the Republican nomination These are the only two candidates guaranteed to be worse than Bush/Cheney."

Did McClellan Accuse Bush of Lying to Federal Prosecutors?

"The text reads: “not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy this Pres. asked to stick his head in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others.” However, the words “this Pres.” Have been struck through and replaced with “that was.” Thus in the original text, Cheney appears to be implicating Bush directly in a cover-up plan. And so does the McClellan disclosure."

Bush's Plame-gate Cover-up

"In early fall 2003, George W. Bush joined in what appears to have been a criminal cover-up to conceal the role of his White House in exposing the classified identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson."

A plan to attack Iran swiftly and from above

"Massive, devastating air strikes, a full dose of "shock and awe" with hundreds of bunker-busting bombs slicing through concrete at more than a dozen nuclear sites across Iran is no longer just the idle musing of military planners and uber-hawks.

Like General Powell said, "these guys are fu*king nuts!"

Olbermann on McClellan's Revelations

Looks like Cheney was indeed "The Man." And, Bush knew all along. Now, don't that just fill you with pride in your country and trust in your president?

Former Aide Blames Bush for Leak Deceit

In this Friday, May 5, 2006, file photo, White House press secretary Scott McClellan smiles after finishing his last news briefing. In an excerpt from his forthcoming book, McClellan blames President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for efforts to mislead the public about the role of White House aides in leaking the identity of a CIA operative. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)

Well, you don't say...

Obama: Cheney is 'a crazy uncle in the attic'

Obama is sworn into the Senate by his eighth cousin, Vice President Cheney.

CNN News - Nov 3, 2007

At a campaign event Saturday, Sen. Barack Obama called his distant cousin, Vice President Dick Cheney, "a crazy uncle in the attic."

Obama was referencing the recent revelation by the Vice President's wife, Lynne Cheney, that he and the Vice President are distantly related.

"For the first time in a long time, the name George Bush will not appear on the ballot," he told the crowd of about 500 people at Converse College in Spartanburg.

"The name Dick Cheney, my cousin, will not appear on the ballot," Obama said. "We had been trying to hide that cousin thing for a long time. Everybody's got a black sheep in the family. A crazy uncle in the attic."

NSPD-51 and the Potential for a Coup d'Etat by National Emergency

by William H. White - Nov 5, 2007

Can you think of anyone better than George W. Bush with whom to entrust the dictatorial powers hinted at in NSPD-51? Or perhaps you are unwilling to trust anyone with such powers, even Bush. That is not an option in NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE 51 (NSPD-51), signed by Bush and released without comment by the White House on May 9, 2007. To quote from NSPD-51: “This policy establishes ‘National Essential Functions,’ prescribes continuity requirements for all executive departments and agencies, and provides guidance for State, local, territorial, and tribal governments, and private sector organizations in order to ensure a comprehensive and integrated national continuity program that will enhance the credibility of our national security posture and enable a more rapid and effective response to and recovery from a national emergency.” What one would expect, but for some of its few details.

Under NSPD-51, only limited ‘National Essential Functions’ of government will continue, which may or may not include Congress and the courts. NSPD-51 assures us: “Enduring Constitutional Government means a cooperative effort among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the Federal Government, coordinated by the President, as a matter of comity with respect to the legislative and judicial branches...” This “matter of comity,” which usually refers to the informal and voluntary recognition of jurisdiction among courts, is troublesomely ambiguous in this context. Is Bush claiming that he, rather than the U.S. Constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court, determines which functions the three branches of the federal government shall continue to perform? Does the president decide for himself, as he "coordinates," which laws and court orders to faithfully execute?

NSPD-51 claims that it "provides guidance” to state and local governments, when in fact it does the opposite because it revoked the then existing Presidential Decision Directive 67 of October 21, 1998 ("Enduring Constitutional Government and Continuity of Government Operations"), including “all Annexes thereto.” And replaced them with NSPD-51, along with: “Annex A and the classified Continuity Annexes, attached hereto.” But then the rabbit disappears as NSPD-51 soldiers on: “This directive and the information contained herein shall be protected from unauthorized disclosure, provided that, except for Annex A, the Annexes attached to this directive are classified and shall be accorded appropriate handling, consistent with applicable Executive Orders.” In other words, all the details are secret and even the non secret “Annex A” remains undisclosed by the White House.

Having revoked on May 9, 2007 the nation’s then existing emergency plan for continued national governance without explanation, Bush’s NSPD-51 calls for: “The Plan shall be submitted to the President for approval not later than 90 days after the date of this directive.” One assumes, during this lapse in emergency plans, no emergency was expected, or at least presented less risk than leaving that old Clinton plan in place. Since the national media, except one story each in the Washington Post and Boston Globe, have ignored NSPD-51, Bush has not bothered to explain any of this.

Especially if such explanations might raise questions about the decision to revoke the existing plan before finishing work on the new plan, which some might conclude serves only to rush the review of one of the most complex and sensitive plans in government in an attempt to slip something by the rest of us. Whatever the motive, abruptly revoking the existing plan, while mandating a new plan within 90 days, exhibits the same reckless, delusional optimism that characterizes much of Bush's planning record. Clearly Bush is confident he can do far better than Clinton, whose administration labored for years on that old plan. Much of the old plan may even be in the new plan, who knows?

Among those who do not know are members of the House Committee on Homeland Security. The Bush administration has repeatedly denied the committee access to NSPD-51, about which Oregon Rep. Peter DeFazio (D) complained in a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives. What we do know is those 90 days passed without a new plan approval being announced. Perhaps no plan gives the president exactly the maximum power and minimum accountability desired; or, perhaps the plan's approval is secret as well. Apparently, the "matter of comity"among the three branches of government, referred to in NSPD-51, does not include allowing NSPD-51 to be read by members of Congress, which the Congress, in a continuing pattern of acquiesce, has not challenged.

This almost entirely secret directive can be invoked when the president decides “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions” occurred. Bush alone will decide when he must assume this burden, though surely only upon prayerful contemplation during the time saved not having to consult Congress. In addition, because of a change to the Insurrection Act of 1807, enacted as part of the 439-page 2007 Defense Authorization Bill signed into law in October 2006, Bush need no longer obtain a governor’s consent to take control of a state’s national guard units. This same bill overturns the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which limited the use of US military forces within the United States for law enforcement. In addition, Bush issued an executive order on July 17, 2007 authorizing the government to seize the assets of anyone "undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq" under provisions of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Could this include critics of the Iraq war, whom Bush has repeatedly accused of undermining the war effort?

When might Bush invoke NSPD-51? My own guess would be Spring ‘08, after Bush is "forced" to attack Iran, perhaps with nuclear weapons, and Iran then fails to cooperate, attacking US ships in the Gulf and Mediterranean instead of accepting our offers of assistance. Even if Iran denied Bush his basic objective by refusing to be goaded into reacting beyond its own borders, the resulting global economic chaos and spontaneous popular reactions beyond Iran could compel Bush to invoke NSPD-51, quite apart from whatever our new enemy might undertake. On the other hand, under NSPD-51 any provocation of Bush could lead to him creating a pretext for declaring a national emergency. For example,Ralph Nader quotes Massachusetts Rep. John W. Olver (D), who has a PhD from MIT, when presented with the votes of 13 Town Meetings [real Town Meetings, not the media events staged for candidate performances] in Olver's congressional district calling for impeachment of Cheney and Bush, Olver responded that he opposed any impeachment move against Bush because "the current autocratic executive [Bush] would attack Iran from the air, declare a national emergency, institute marshal law, and call off the 2008 elections were the Democrats to initiate impeachment."

Should Bush declare a national emergency and begin exercising the many powers available to him in law, as well as the ever expanding powers he claims by fiat, our nation would cross into a world increasingly difficult to predict, largely beyond our national experience, except perhaps for our revolution and civil war, subject to ad hoc, unchecked decision making, with genuine rule of law no longer an available guide. It would likely become increasingly difficult, in the absence of reliable information, to understand and deal with the originating crisis, however real or contrived. And to distinguish it from the difficulties arising from the declaration of a national emergency itself. However, this sort of thing has sadly occurred in many other countries, with much the same result likely here: a self-sustaining crisis, in which the chief rationales for continuing the national emergency are the effects of the national emergency themselves, compounded by errors in governance and crimes by those who seized power, sustained by their fear for what would happen to them should they give it up. The longer term prospect would likely include national decline and insurrection, with an even more unpredictable array of international consequences starting with a widening war.

In the short term, one can imagine Congress, demonstrating its usual wisdom and courage, expressing concern about the clearly large, though secret, number of American citizens "detained," surprise at the scope of firearm and asset seizures, discomfort with the pace of executions under the Military Commissions Act of 2006, and outrage at being locked out of its capital offices due to a classified biological threat of undetermined duration, thus preventing Congress from voting to set benchmarks for Iran and to demand our readmission to NATO. But Congress would likely find some comfort in the "delay" of the 2008 elections, given Bush's decision to allow all incumbents, including those temporarily detained, to remain in office, which many in Congress would praise for its "unifying bipartisan comity," and await the president's determination when it is safe for Congress and the Supreme Court to actually meet again. Just as many in corporate American would appreciate the need to "defer" collecting capital gains and corporate taxes in the interests of helping the economy in a time of national crisis. Besides, how could anyone resist the perfectly Orwellian logic of declaring a dictatorship to insure "Constitutional Continuity" for the “homeland,” while setting aside the actual Constitution of the United States?

Whatever unknowable future a declaration of national emergency might bring, clearly many are going to be profoundly unhappy with such a turn of events. And that may be why Kellogg Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, is already building detention centers around the nation to “support the rapid development of new programs” that could accommodate those incompatible with Constitutional Continuity, the dead-enders who actually protest or resist, plus the usual suspects who might think to object.

But how would all those potential incompatibles, certainly tens of thousands and likely far more, find their way to an appropriate detention center? After all, the Bush administration has managed to prosecute only a handful of businesses for hiring illegal aliens who number in the millions. Its clearly a matter of priorities. So, despite such distractions as hurricane Katrina, the Justice Department has been conducting mass arrest exercises code named Operation Falcon, whereby thousands of law enforcement officers from federal, state, county and local agencies arrested some 10,000 individuals within seven days, working from lists provided by the U.S. Marshall’s Service, all coordinated to commence across the country simultaneously. Since practice makes perfect, three mass arrest exercises have been conduced: Two national (Falcon I April 4-10, 2005 arresting 10,340; Falcon II April 17-23, 2006 arresting 9,037); and one “eastern half of the country” (Falcon III October 22-28, 2006 arresting 10,733).

What can not be found among these data is mention of any legitimate law enforcement purpose served by these mass arrests. While some arrested were serious criminals, most were of the unanswered warrantee and support payment delinquent sort, soon released. The important element here appears to be getting operational experience and, perhaps most critically, habituating state and local police agencies to conducting mass arrests from lists provided by the federal government. In the eastern regional Falcon III alone, 103 state agencies, 430 county sheriff's offices/departments and 482 police departments did just that according to the U.S. Marshals Service web site. At the current pace, perhaps Falcon IV, for the western half of the U.S., will be the last drill and then the real thing: Operation Falcon V.

So its likely, when Bush addresses his fellow citizens after declaring the national emergency, many of his critics will be listening most attentively to detention camp loud speakers. As for how detainees will be treated, one can assume every effort will be made to maintain our current standards for indefinite detention without trial and torture assisted interrogation, where little slip-ups under the press of numbers and emergency conditions are likely to be of little consequence. What is certain, should coup d'etat by national emergency take place, is it will be denied even as it unfolds, and this is likely to be followed by assurances it will be temporary, lasting "not one day more than it needs to," followed by accusations the resistors are responsible for prolonging the state of emergency, and finally appeals to turn in others if you want your own relatives released soon from detention or your property/assets returned; all lies to sustain a long planned, permanent state of national emergency.

What is likely to be important in most corporate media is demonstrating our determination to carry on by shopping as well as selecting the proper anthem for our new world order. I'm hoping for something stirring along the lines of "Deutschland Uber Alles," except with a touch of Texas twang as in "Dallas Uber Alles," in an arrangement using fewer trombones plus a weeping steel guitar. However, since this is such an important decision, our new anthem, with its companion national prayer and corporate logo, should be selected by ‘We the people of the United States’ from among three finalists chosen by our First Lady, in our first-ever national referendum, proving yet again our commitment to democracy and putting all those new voting machines to use in November '08 after all.

Or you might send this and/or additional such materials to others, including your congressional delegation as well as the press, to warn about the danger Bush’s NSPD-51 presents, and demand steps be taken to prevent it. Since the courts are hopelessly slow given the immediate danger, Congress must do its duty. And we must do our duty and demand Congress end its reluctance to stand up to Bush's repeated, escalating, bullying contempt: if its unnecessary, it should be easy; if its not easy, it is all the more necessary.

NOTE TO THE READER:

It is entirely true that each real event cited here has alternative, plausible explanation, and those participating in these events may be entirely unaware of the darker ends to which their work may be put. The essay's many conjectures are exactly that. However, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance not good faith or trust. Nor is the US Constitution based on trust, but rather on checks and balances, in a arrangement designed to avoid the gravest of follies and to contain inevitable mischief, embracing sound assumptions about the weaknesses of human nature rather than its virtuous pretenses. Knowing the Bush administration's record of reckless lawlessness and radical mind set, the possibility of a coup d'etat by national emergency can not be ignored, especially within the context of recent institutional actions that can be reasonably interpreted as being consistent with and preparatory to such an undertaking. These include Bush's relentless assault on and blatant affront to the constitutional limits on executive power, exemplified by the brazenly sly release without comment of NSPD-51, and encouraged by congressional failure to stand up to his flagrant excesses. I believe the risk to our republic is real. And needs to be confronted immediately, with the objective of using existing congressional power and establishing additional safeguards, formal and informal, to prevent it. Better to prevent what some may claim was never going to happen, than to suffer betrayed good faith, with the appalling costs of experiencing and undoing this grave folly Bush appears to be edging toward, as relentlessly as he undertook the invasion of Iraq from the first days of his administration.

Further reading:

Congressional Research Service Report - National Emergency Powers

Operation Falcon and the Looming Police State by Mike Whitney

The Bush Push to Militarize America by Jerome Corsi

US Cannot Be Said To Be Good

by Philip J Cunningham - Nov 4, 2007

George W. Bush may indeed be the worst president ever, and Dick Cheney the worst vice-president imaginable but that does not exonerate the American people because Americans have the constitutional right and responsibility to remove miscreants from office.

The Bush-Cheney administration has not just given freedom a hollow ring, they have not just made a mockery of American democracy and human rights in the present, and they have not just put future generations at risk with reckless deficit spending, environmental degradation and the burden of war without end, but they have effectively caused the past to be rewritten as well. America is beginning to understand what it’s like to be on the wrong side of history.

This point was driven home to me when I read that respected American historian Herbert Bix, author of “Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan” recently pointed out some striking similarities between Tojo’s Japan and Bush-Cheney’s America, particularly the willful disregard of international law, the pursuit of diplomacy by force and failure to account for war criminality.

Let’s consider for the moment that current US policy bears some eerie parallels to that of Tojo’s Japan. Is that a result of having judged militarist Japan unfairly, or has America gotten worse? Is that to say Japan's criminal past was not as bad as we used to say it was, or is it still every bit as bad, only now, we, the American interlocutors, are debased in such a way that the moral distance is less distant?

Scholars have long been familiar with US lapses in civilized behavior, even in the great and just war carried out by the "greatest generation." The enemy was understandably viewed with contempt for his actions, but improperly viewed with racist contempt. Indiscriminate killing took untold innocent life, nowhere more vividly than in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but with equal cold-blooded consequences in the fire-bombing of Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka.

For decades now, scholars have been effectively challenging the Truman era myth that the atomic bombing was necessary and saved millions of lives. While reasonable interpretations differ, the twin atomic bombings remain a uniquely uncomfortable and awkward topic for Americans who subscribe to the otherwise generally positive national narrative that starts with the day of infamy, the day on which the peace-loving US was sneakily attacked at Pearl Harbor, and continues with a series of heroic battles for sea, sky and land control across the Pacific, followed by a generally enlightened occupation of Japan’s home islands.

Given the incessant mutual violence that the war extracted from both sides, epitomized by the brutal battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, it took decades for ordinary soldiers on both sides to be viewed with sympathetic respect --basically unfree men following orders as required by the tragedy of the time. Last year Clint Eastwood did a remarkably even-handed job of conveying the equivalency of the rank and file on both sides of the Pacific with the twin films “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters from Iwo Jima.”

The US occupation of Japan saw many a samurai’s sword turned into treasured souvenir, if not plowshare. It was none other than US war hero Douglas MacArthur who set the tone for sanitizing and containing Japan's war criminality at the elite level by letting the Emperor off the hook and selectively exonerating war criminals who were of utility to the US. But if it wasn't the people, and it wasn't the penultimate leader, then who takes the blame?

To blame everything on a few bad apples is bad history, incongruent with the complex, interactive way things usually happen, but it allows nagging, difficult-to-resolve issues to be buried or put on the back burner as happened at the Tokyo trials. The entirety of Japan’s war guilt was deftly shifted onto the shoulders of Tojo and a handful of "Class A War Criminals."

Scapegoating, even of the obviously odious, is not fair, but it is expedient because it staves off more damaging and nuanced reckonings. That's not to say scapegoated Class A war criminals are innocent in the same way their hapless victims were; the criminality of the Class A men is clearly documented. But they were unfairly singled out and unfairly apportioned more of the blame than even their cruel shoulders could bear. They were made caricatures of evil in contrast to the aloof, doddering emperor and the witless soldier in the field.

George W. Bush publicity handlers take note; better to spin your client as a dodderer playing with something less than a full deck than have him be held accountable. In today’s America, as in wartime Japan, there is plenty of blame to be passed around, but no takers. It's too hurtful to the American ego to even contemplate war criminality. US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says impeachment is not an option. The State Department has granted immunity to the criminally negligible including the thugs of Blackwater. Is this apparent benevolence not just another type of denial, that Americans don't torture, Americans don't commit crimes of war?

Eventually, narratives that blame no one have to round up a few suspects, and that's where the bad apples come in. But this sort of selective justice unduly burdens middling war criminals with more historical agency than they ever possessed.

Does making Tojo an example of evil incarnate exonerate Japanese war veterans, among them mean-spirited soldiers who violated the conventions of war by gratuitously killing, raping and torturing non-combatant Chinese? And what about Japanese civilians on the home front, making weapons, churning out propaganda, feeding the beast? Blame it on Tojo?

What about people like Akira Kurosawa who worked uninterrupted with ample state support during a war that wreaked murder and mayhem on Japan's neighbors under the guise of racial superiority? To hear Kurosawa tell it in his biography, his main beef with the Tojo authorities was over artistic control, not the insane politics of the time.

The bad apple school of thought thrives in national narratives because it aids and abets denial for proud individuals and powerful constituencies.

The problem with Japanese rightists, and America's problem understanding them, is not so much the seemingly futile attempt polish up the bad apples, the futile attempt to make the class A Criminals shine. It's not even the rightists' dubious campaign to re-configure war criminals as honorable Shinto spirits at Yasukuni Shrine. The problem with the rightists is they are bound to honor the penultimate leader at all costs, which short-circuits all other arguments and prevents blame from being fairly apportioned.

The result of this implacable cognitive dissonance is denial. Denial is the worst thing about the Japan's rightists, not their contrarian desire to challenge the America-centric narrative as articulated in the admittedly clumsy and compromised Tokyo War Crimes Trials.

Americans are starting to learn more about war crimes and denial than they ever dreamed of. The divisive words and belligerent actions of George W. Bush, the contempt for diplomacy, the lack of accountability, the tortured rhetoric and the rhetoric defending torture have caused America’s global prestige to drop to an unprecedented low. America is increasingly seen as the crux of the problem rather than a flawed but otherwise normal country, let alone a beacon of hope.

The horror of an unjust and unnecessary war is forcing Americans to confront the opacity of their own self-image, and in doing so, to seek lessons and parallels than now, in a way not possible even four years ago, make it possible to see Tojo and Japan's war criminality in slightly more sympathetic way. This is not to exonerate but rather to heave a heavy sigh of understanding, to acknowledge that even the most refined and civilized of nations can be disfigured and disabled by the politics of fear and denial.

America has been diminished to such an extent under the Bush-Cheney “unitary presidency” that a crime like torture -- once comfortably seen as beyond the pale because it was only associated with the most despicable of enemies-- suddenly resonates in an uncomfortably familiar way.

Just as it should be acknowledged that the people of Japan share a certain culpability in Tokyo’s terrible war, a war that ravaged Asia and eventually Japan itself, Americans have to own up to Iraq. But it can also be said in defense of the average Japanese in the days after Pearl Harbor that there was much they didn’t know and couldn’t talk about; --the media was completely censored and the Kempeitai dealt brutally with domestic opposition.

When the day of reckoning comes for ordinary Americans to assess their culpability in the debacle of Iraq, a hideous and heinous war fought in view of a free media and in the context of relatively unfettered freedom to protest, what will the excuse be?

If Bush is unjust, if he is, as they say, the worst ever, then the free people who support, tolerate and enable him cannot be said to be good.

The Air Force Report on the Minot-Barksdale Nuclear Missile Flight

Incompetence or Cover-Up?

by DAVE LINDORFF - Nov 1, 2007

"It makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck." - Pentagon official

There is something deeply disturbing about the Air Force's official report on the Aug-29-30 "bent spear" incident that saw six nuclear warheads get mounted on six Advanced Cruise Missiles and improperly removed from a nuclear weapons storage bunker at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, then get improperly loaded on a B-52, and then get improperly flown to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana-a report that attributed the whole thing to a "mistake."

According to the Air Force report, some Air Force personnel mounted the warheads on the missiles (which are obsolete and slated for destruction), and another ground crew, allegedly not aware that the missiles were armed with nukes, moved them out and mounted them on a launch pylon on the B-52's wing for a flight to Barksdale and eventual dismantling. Only on the ground at Barksdale did ground crew personnel spot the nukes according to the report. (Six other missiles with dummy warheads were mounted on a pylon on the other wing of the plane.)

The problem with this explanation for the first reported case of nukes being removed from a weapons bunker without authorization in 50 years of nuclear weapons, is that those warheads, and all nuclear warheads in the US stockpile, are supposedly protected against unauthorized transport or removal from bunkers by electronic antitheft systems-automated alarms similar to those used by department stores to prevent theft, and even anti-motion sensors that go off if a weapon is touched or approached without authorization.

While the Air Force report doesn't mention any of this, what it means is that if weapons in a storage bunker are protected against unauthorized removal, someone-and actually at least two people, since it's long been a basic part of nuclear security that every action involving a nuclear weapon has to be done by two people working in tandem-had to deliberately and consciously disable those alarms.

Since the Air Force report does not explain how this hurdle to unauthorized removal of the six nukes could have been surmounted by "mistake," the report has to be considered a whitewash, at best, or a cover-up.

That leaves us speculating about what actually happened, and about who might have authorized the removal of those nukes from storage, and why the Defense Department would be covering up the true story. We know that the loading of nuclear-armed missiles or bombs onto an American bomber has been barred since 1991, even for practice and training purposes. We know also that the carrying of nuclear weapons by bombers flying over US airspace has been banned for 40 years. So if the evidence suggests strongly that the removal of the nukes from the bunker was done intentionally and with some kind of authorization from higher authorities, then the loading of nukes onto the plane, and the flight of those nukes to Barksdale have to also be assumed to have been authorized.

This possibility has been dismissed out of hand by the Air Force and Defense Department. The very idea is, in fact, not even discussed in the Air force report released in mid-October.

Yet we are left with the unresolved question of how the weapons could have been moved out of the bunker accidentally.

The Air Force has not been forthcoming about the automated alarm protections on American nuclear weapons, refusing to confirm or deny that they even exist. But we can know that they are in place for several reasons. One is that since writing about this incident in the current edition of ("The Mystery of Minot," Oct. 24, 2007 ed.) and in several online venues, I have been contacted by several active-duty and retired military people who have assured me that such electronic protections are in place. A second is that an article in the Oct. 31 issue of the New York Times, reporting on the early completion of a project by the National Nuclear Security Administration, to secure Russian nuclear weapons, said that the measures implemented at 25 classified sites on 12 Russian nuclear bases included "measures that have long been part of American efforts" to secure nuclear weapons, and that these included "alarm and motion detection systems," as well as "modern gates, guard houses and fighting positions, " and also "detectors for explosives, radiation and metal."

Ask yourselves, would American nuclear weapons be equipped with lesser security systems than those that the NNSA is providing for Russian weapons?

Of course not!

And yet we're asked to believe that some low-ranking ground crew personnel at Minot AFB simply walked out of a nuclear weapons bunker with six nuclear armed Advanced Cruise Missiles, not knowing what they were carrying, and labored for eight hours to mount those missiles and their launch pylon on the wing of a B-52 strategic bomber without ever noticing that they were armed with nuclear weapons. We're asked to believe that none of those electronic alarms and motion sensors built into the system went off during that whole process.

When I mentioned the automated alarm and motion sensors to Lt. Col. Jennifer Cassidy, a public affairs person at the Department of the Air Force, and asked her how the movement of the six nukes could have occurred without those alarms being disabled, she said, "It's an intriguing question, and it makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck."

As it should.

So why isn't it making the hair stand up on the back of the necks of members of Congress?

Incredibly, to date, there has been no demand for public hearings into this frightening incident.

Congress appears ready and willing to accept the Air Force whitewash at face value: It was an accident. It won't happen again.

That is not good enough!

We need honest answers to some hard questions. Among them:

* Who disabled the alarm systems on those weapons and on the bunker itself?

* Who mounted six nuclear weapons on the noses of six cruise missiles and put those missiles onto a B-52 launch platform?

* Who authorized them to perform this operation?

* Who moved the armed weapons out of the Bunker at Minot AFB and mounted them on the wing of a B-52 bound for Barksdale AFB? (Barksdale, it should be noted, bills itself as the main staging base for B-52s being flown to the Middle East Theater.)

* Were the six missiles flyable? Were they fueled up and ready to fire, or were they not fueled at the time of the Minot-Barksdale flight?

* Was there targeting information in the missile's guidance computers and if so, what were those targets?

* What happened to the three military whistleblowers who blew the whistle on this incident and reported it to a journalist at the newspaper Military Times?

* Why hasn't the Air Force or the FBI investigated the 6-8 untimely deaths including three alleged suicides, one of a Minot weapons guard, one of an assistant defense secretary, and one of a captain in the super-secret Air Force Special Commando Group, as well as alleged fatal vehicle "accidents" involving four ground crew and B-52 pilots and crewmembers at Minot and Barksdale? Could any of this strange cluster of deaths have been related to the incident? The Air Force "investigation" didn't even mention these incidents, and my investigation, reported in the Oct. 24 issue of the magazine American Conservative, found that none of the police investigators or medical examiners in those incidents had even been contacted by Air Force or other federal investigators.

The Secretary of Defense appears to have been upset about this incident. Secretary Robert Gates ordered an unprecedented stand-down of all air bases in mid-September to check out and account for the entire nuclear inventory, and a general was dispatched immediately to Minot after the discovery of the wayward nukes on August 30 to investigate what had happened. Following a subsequent Air Force investigation, 70 people at Minot and Barksdale AFBs were removed from their posts and decertified from handling nuclear weapons, including five officers, one of them the Minot base commander.

* But a base commander does not have the authority to order nuclear weapons to be loaded on a plane and flown. So who issued that order and why has no one at a senior level in Washington been sacked?

There is speculation that the order may have come via an alternate chain of command.

Vice President Dick Cheney is known to be pressing within the administration for a war with Iran, to be launched before the end President Bush's second term of office. According to some reports, Cheney has even, on his own authority (or lack thereof), urged Israel to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, in hopes that Iran might retaliate, thus drawing the US into a war.

Could the nation's war-mongering VP have used his neo-con contacts in the Defense Department or some of the Armageddon-believers in the Air Force to bypass the official chain of command and spring those nukes from their bunker?

Was there a plan to use one or more of those nukes-W80-1 warheads that can be calibrated to detonate with an explosive power ranging anywhere from 150 kilotons down to just 5 kilotons-against Iran? The Advanced Cruise Missile, a stealth weapon almost impossible to spot on radar, is designed to be launched from a remote location by a B-52, and then to fly close to the ground to its target, using terrain maps and GPS guidance. It is also designed to penetrate hardened sites, such as Iran's nuclear processing and research facilities.

Or was there a plan for a so-called "false-flag incident, "where a small nuke-made to resemble a primitive weapon of the type a fledgling nuclear power might construct-might be detonated at a US target abroad, or even within the US?

These are terrible and terrifying questions to have to ask, but when you have six nuclear weapons go missing, when the military investigation into the incident is so clearly a whitewash or cover-up, and when you have a vice president who is openly pressing for an illegal war of aggression against a nation that poses no threat to the US, and who, in fact, appears to be conducting his own treacherous foreign policy behind the back of the president and the State Department, they are questions that must be asked, and that demand answers.

In a couple of weeks, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, is planning on calling for a Privilege of the House vote in Congress on moving his Cheney impeachment bill (H Res. 333) to a hearing in the House Judiciary Committee, where it has been stalled by House Democratic leaders since being filed last April 24. Such a hearing should demand answers from the vice president and his staff about his treasonous efforts to push the country into yet another war in the Middle East. It should also grill Air Force personnel about the true nature of the Minot nuclear incident.

Every member of the House of Representatives should have to take a stand on this issue.

The Democratic House leadership, under Speaker Nancy Pelosi, can be expected to try to table Kucinich's privilege motion, which would prevent such a vote.

Americans should demand that Pelosi and other Democratic leaders let Kucinich's privilege motion go forward, and should insist that every member of Congress put their position on the line. Every American should demand that their representative to Congress support the start of impeachment hearings on Vice President Cheney.

We need to know if the Vice President's office was behind the flight of those six warheads.

We need to know in what other treasonous, conspiratorial actions the Vice President has been engaged in his unremitting effort to expand the war from Iraq and Afghanistan into Iran.

Plan B (for 'bombs') after Iran fantasy fails

by Gareth Porter - Nov 1, 2007

Vice President Dick Cheney and his neo-conservative allies in the George W Bush administration only began agitating for the use of military force against Iran once they had finally given up the illusion that regime change in Iran would happen without it.

And they did not give up the illusion until late 2005, according to a former high-level Foreign Service officer who participated in United States discussions with Iran from 2001 until late 2005.

Hillary Mann, who was the director for Persian Gulf and Afghanistan Affairs on the National Security Council (NSC) staff in 2003 and later on the State Department's Policy Planning staff, observes that the key to neo-conservative policy views on Iran until 2006 was the firm belief that one of the consequences of a successful display of US military force in Iraq would be to shake the foundations of the Iranian regime.

That central belief was conveyed to conservative columnist Arnaud de Borchgrave of the Washington Times in April 2002 by prominent neo-con figures who told him the Bush administration "had decided to redraw the geopolitical map of the Middle East".

The Bush doctrine of pre-emption, they said, "had become the vehicle for driving axis of evil practitioners out of power". The removal of Saddam Hussein, according to the neo-con scenario, would bring a democratic Iraq that would then spread through the region, "bringing democracy from Syria to Egypt and to the sheikhdoms, emirates and monarchies of the Gulf".

Under the influence of this central myth, after the September 11, 2001, attacks, some of Cheney's allies in the Pentagon conceived the objective of removing every regime in the Middle East that was hostile to the US and Israel.

In November 2001, General Wesley Clark, who had recently retired from his post as head of the US Southern Command, learned from a general he knew in the Pentagon that a memo had just come down from the office of the secretary of defense outlining the objective of the "take down" of seven Middle Eastern regimes over five years.

The plan would start with the invasion of Iraq, and then go after Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia and Sudan, according to an account in Clark's 2003 book, Winning Modern Wars. The memo indicated the plan was to "come back and get Iran in five years".

The neo-cons were very serious about going after Syria. In the weeks following the initial US blow at Saddam, Paul Wolfowitz, the chief neo-conservative architect of the Iraq invasion, argued unsuccessfully for taking advantage of the presumed military triumph there to overthrow the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad, according to the right-leaning Insight magazine.

Contrary to the popular notion that the neo-cons believed that "real men go to Tehran", no one was yet proposing that Iran should be the next military target.

In September 2003, Cheney brought in David Wurmser, a close friend and protege of Richard Perle and one of the architects of the neo-conservative plan for regime change in Iraq, as his adviser on the Middle East. Wurmser had previously articulated very specific ideas about how taking down Saddam by force would help destabilize the Iranian regime.

In a 1999 book, Wurmser had laid out a plan for using the Iraqi Shi'ite majority and their conservative clerics as US allies in the "regional rollback of Shi'ite fundamentalism" - meaning the Islamic regime in Iran.

But Wurmser also believed that the Ba'athist regime in Syria was an obstacle to regime change in Iran. Beginning with the "Clean Break" memo to incoming Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which he had co-authored with Perle and Douglas Feith in 1996, he had argued that once Saddam was removed, the next step was to take down the Assad regime in Syria.

In a September 2007 interview with the London Telegraph, after he had left Cheney's office, Wurmser confirmed his belief that regime change in Syria - by force, if necessary - would directly affect the stability of the Tehran regime. If Iran were seen to be unable to do anything to prevent the overthrow of the regime in Syria, he suggested, it would seriously undermine the Islamic regime's prestige at home.

From 2003 to 2005, Wurmser and the neo-cons were in denial about the increasingly obvious reality that the US occupation of Iraq was actually boosting Iranian influence there rather than shaking the regime's power at home, according to former NSC specialist Mann.

She was well acquainted with the neo-conservatives' thinking from her associations with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in the 1990s, and she told Inter Press Service in a recent interview that she was "astounded" to hear neo-cons in the administration suggest as late as 2005 that the situation in Iraq was on track to help destabilize the Iranian regime.

The neo-cons had long viewed the Iranian reformists, led by president Mohammed Khatami, as the primary obstacle to the popular revolution against the mullahs for which they were working. As French Iran specialist Frederic Tellier noted in an early 2006 essay, they believed the electoral defeats of the reformists in 2003 and 2004 would also help open the way to a revolutionary political upheaval in Tehran.

In an appearance on the Don Imus radio talk show on January 21, 2005, Cheney said the Israelis might attack Iran's nuclear sites if they became convinced the Iranians had a "significant nuclear capability". That remark underlined the fact that he was not thinking seriously about a US strike against Iran.

By the end of 2005, however, the neo-cons had finally accepted the reality of the failure of the Bush administration's military intervention in Iraq, according to Mann. She also notes that the electoral victory of Mahmud Ahmadinejad, representing a new breed of nationalist conservative with a base of popular support, in the June 2005 presidential election, spelled the "death knell" for neo-con optimism about regime change in Iran.

Mann observes that the neo-cons had never given up the idea of using force against Iran, but they had argued that less force would be needed in Iran than had been used in Iraq. By early 2006, however, that assumption was being discarded by prominent neo-conservatives.

Former Central Intelligence Agency analyst Reuel Marc Gerecht of the American Enterprise Institute - writing under the pseudonym Edward Shirley - had been more aggressive than anyone else in arguing that Iraq's Shi'ites, liberated by US military power, would help subvert the Iranian regime. But in April 2006, he called, in a Weekly Standard article, for continued bombing of Iran's nuclear sites until the Iranians stopped rebuilding them.

Within the administration, meanwhile, Wurmser was looking for the opportunity to propose a military option against Iran. In his September 2007 interview with the Telegraph shortly after leaving Cheney's office, he insisted that the United States must be willing to "escalate as far as we need to go to topple the [Iranian] regime if necessary".

That opportunity seemed to present itself in the aftermath of Israel's failed attempt to deal a major blow to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in the summer of 2006.

Neo-conservatives aligned with Cheney argued that Iran was now threatening US dominance in the region, through its proxies in Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territory and its nuclear program. They insisted that the administration had to push back by targeting Iran's Quds Force personnel in Iraq, increasing the naval presence in the Gulf and accusing Iran of supporting the killing of US troops.

Although the ostensible rationale was to pressure Iran to back down on the nuclear issue, in light of the previous views, it appears that they were hoping to use military power against Iran to accomplish their original goal of regime change.

Berserker Cheney Escalates Push for World War III

by Jeffrey Steinberg - Oct 31, 2007

The Bush Administration, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, has again escalated its drive for senseless military action against Iran, through a combination of new unilateral sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and a new hyperventilating propaganda push, led by the Vice President and President, aimed at provoking Tehran into providing a pretext for war. At the same time, anti-war forces around the globe-including Russian President Vladimir Putin, and some factions within the Bush Administration itself-have taken some extraordinary actions, aimed at averting an attack on Iran, that would almost certainly escalate out of control to global war.

One of the most stunning denunciations of the Cheney war schemes was delivered in Washington on Oct. 17 by Wesley Clark, a retired five-star general and former candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination. Speaking before several hundred American and Arab policy-makers at the 16th annual conference of the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations (NCUSAR), Clark urged a vigorous public debate on the Iran situation, leading to a new diplomatic dialogue with Tehran, and denounced the Bush Administration's war policies as part of a continuing "political coup d'état" that was carried out, from the White House, after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Clark charged that, following 9/11, a small group inside the Bush Administration imposed a new strategy, without debate, without Congressional authorization, and without consultation with America's allies. Clark recounted a May 1991 private conversation he had with then-Pentagon official Paul Wolfowitz and his deputy Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Clark recounted Wolfowitz's berating of then-President George H.W. Bush, for failing to conclude Operation Desert Storm with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Wolfowitz told Clark that, within "the next 5-10 years," the United States must overthrow a string of "former Soviet client-states," including Syria, Iraq, and Iran. Wolfowitz told the flabbergasted general that the United States would have that window of opportunity to "use military force with impunity" before a new, as-yet unknown "superpower" emerged to challenge American global military hegemony.

General Clark recounted that when then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, along with Wolfowitz and Libby, took their "Roman Empire" scheme to National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and President Bush, they were forcefully rebuked. After 9/11, Clark charged, Cheney and Wolfowitz resurrected the scheme, but never informed the American people or the Congress, because "they would have been laughed off the stage," and denounced for "flights of fantasy." Nevertheless, Clark reported, a written plan was circulated in the Rumsfeld Pentagon right after 9/11, listing seven regimes to be overthrown in the next five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Libya, Sudan, and Somalia. Now, Clark concluded, "we are living with the consequences," including the $800 billion spent to date on Iraq and Afghanistan. "The U.S. is weaker, our adversaries are stronger."

In response to a question from EIR, Clark urged diplomacy with both Iran and Syria. "Find common interests, avert war, and help our friends in the region," he demanded, asking, "Aren't we big enough to do this?" The alternative, he warned, is a two- to three-week bombing campaign, that will render Iran "a failed state," but with the most dire consequences for the United States and the world.

Putin Leads War-Avoidance

The message delivered by General Clark resonated throughout the two-day conference. It paralleled an escalation of war-avoidance initiatives by leading international players, including President Putin. The Russian leader has engaged in a whirlwind of diplomacy, beginning with his two-day summit in Moscow earlier this month with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy came in to the Moscow meeting, having joined the Cheney chorus, threatening that Iran's alleged pursuit of a nuclear weapon could lead to World War III. But in the meeting with Putin, Sarkozy, according to informed U.S. intelligence sources, tilted into the war-avoidance camp, under the weight of simultaneous pressure from the Russians and from circles within his own French military/intelligence institutions.

Putin next hosted U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for several days of talks with their Russian counterparts. Putin invited the Pentagon chief to address a Russian military academy, and privately signalled that the American proposal for settling the dispute over the planned deployment of U.S. anti-ballistic-missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, was a positive, albeit insufficient step. According to Washington sources, Gates proposed that Russian military observers could be stationed at the Eastern European missile defense sites, as well as at U.S. command installations.

Gates, in turn, told reporters during a stopover in Europe for a NATO-Russian conference, that the United States could possibly delay activation of the ABM sites, pending firm evidence that Iran possessed missiles capable of striking Europe. As Gates was delivering these hopeful remarks, Bush was issuing the message that the U.S. was hell-bent on deploying the ABM system on Russia's border.

During Putin's historic trip to Tehran, to attend a Caspian Sea heads-of-state meeting, he clearly signalled that Russia would strongly oppose any U.S. military action against Iran, while, at the same time, pressing the Iranian government to avoid any provocation that could give Cheney the pretext to attack. Reportedly, in his private meeting with Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Putin minced no words, in warning that the Bush-Cheney Administration would launch a devastating bombing campaign against Iran, if given the pretext. Russia clearly does not want another American war on its border.

According to U.S. intelligence sources, a huge political brawl is taking place behind the scenes in Tehran, over how to respond to the U.S. provocations and the Putin intervention. The latest Cheney provocation was announced on Oct. 25 by Rice and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson: Economic sanctions against the Revolutionary Guards.

World War III Rhetoric

In response to the wildly provocative speech by Vice President Cheney at the annual conference of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) on Oct. 21, pushing for military strikes against Iran, Putin delivered a tough retort, drawing a parallel to the U.S.-planned deployment of ABM systems in Eastern Europe, to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

In his WINEP speech, Cheney had warned Iran of "serious consequences" if it did not abandon its nuclear enrichment program, and its intervention into Iraq. Practically daring Iran to respond, Cheney ranted, "Given the nature of Iran's rulers, the declarations of the Iranian President, and the trouble the regime is causing throughout the region-including the direct involvement in the killing of Americans-our country and the entire international community cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its most aggressive ambitions. The Iranian regime needs to know," Cheney concluded, "that if it stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences."

In a clear warning to the Bush-Cheney Administration, Putin told reporters in Lisbon, Portugal, during a European-Russian annual summit, that the U.S. ABM deployment was "technologically similar" to the Cuban Missile Crisis of the 1960s. "Let me recall how relations shaped up in a similar situation in the mid-1960s," Putin told reporters. "Similar actions by the Soviet Union, when it deployed missiles in Cuba, provoked the Caribbean crisis. For us, technologically, the situation is very similar." However, Putin concluded that there was no danger of the situation escalating out of control, because Russia and the United States are "not enemies anymore," and President Bush is his "personal friend."

Just days earlier, Bush had babbled to reporters that Iran's pursuit of the "knowledge" of how to build a nuclear bomb could trigger World War III. "I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing Iran from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," the President threatened.

Putin's Israel Play

Days after his Tehran excursion, Putin hosted Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Moscow, for talks also aimed at cooling down the rhetoric for World War III. Immediately after their talks, Putin dispatched a high-level Russian delegation for a week of talks in Israel. The delegation, led by Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Saltanov and special Middle East peace envoy Sergei Yakovlev, assured the Israelis that Russia is equally adamant about preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb, but cautioned, according to Ha'aretz, "The difference between us and you, is that you're basing yourselves on estimates, whereas we're basing ourselves on precise information. When we see that the situation is sufficiently dangerous, we'll know how to stop the Iranians, and if we want to, we can do this without difficulty."

At no point in recent history, has there been so much high-level diplomacy aimed at averting world war. But by the same token, the 9/11 "poltical coup d'état" at the White House, led by Cheney's team of berserkers, has not been defeated, and therefore, the danger of global conflagration cannot be underestimated for a moment.

On Track for U.S. Collapse

by Michael S. Rozeff - Oct 29, 2007

Bush and Cheney are steering the U.S. into a collapse. Only strong public voices by influential people can prevent the coming disaster. We desperately need for men and women who are known to the public and have credibility to speak up in the critical period ahead to avoid catastrophe.

A few weeks ago, Israel bombed a alleged nuclear facility in Syria. This is a warm-up for an attack on Iran.

In the last few days, the U.S. unilaterally tightened sanctions on Iran. Russia and China do not support this move.

A week ago Bush warned Iran that its attainment of nuclear arms would lead to World War III.

Russia, which has been assisting Iran in its nuclear construction program for decades, regards Western military action against Iran as unacceptable.

China has been arming Iran with missiles. Its relations with Iran have been improving for years.

We know that Bush and Cheney are capable of pre-emptive attack. We know that Bush will act if he believes he is right no matter what the costs are. In his distorted worldview, Iran with nuclear weapons is a scenario worth any cost to avoid.

We know that Bush, Cheney, and Rice have repeatedly warned Iran of meaningful consequences if Iran arms itself with nuclear weapons. We know that their terms in office end in 15 months. These are the critical months.

But it is by no means clear that the front-running candidates for office who may replace them hold substantially different views. Hillary Clinton has publicly called for sanctions against Iran and has called Iran a threat to Israel.

Why may an unprovoked attack on Iran lead to WWIII and why may it lead to the collapse of the U.S.?

Imagine this scenario. The U.S. encourages Israel to bomb the Natanz nuclear facility in Iran. Russia attempts to restrain an Iranian response but fails. Iran responds in any of many ways, such as launching missiles on Israel, firing on shipping in the Straits of Hormuz, mining the Straits of Hormuz, sending troops into Iraq, or allying its military with Hezbollah and attacking Israel from Lebanon.

The U.S., citing Iran’s aggressions (that will be the story), launches a full-scale attack on Iran designed to devastate the country. This attack has actually been planned by the U.S. for years. Syria is unable to maintain neutrality and quickly becomes a battleground between Iran and Israel.

The price of oil by this point has already soared to $200 a barrel. The U.S. begins to use its strategic reserve and to divert Iraqi production. Russia responds by taking steps to prevent its oil production from reaching the U.S. China responds by cutting off its support of the U.S. Treasury market. Venezuela halts oil shipments to the U.S. The first stages of WWIII are economic warfare designed to cripple the U.S. and halt its war-making capacity.

The U.S., unable to finance its deficits and fund its sovereign debt, is forced into raising interest rates drastically in order to borrow. The Fed is forced to print money. An inflationary spiral occurs. Meanwhile the high interest rates and high oil prices, not to mention the shock of a spreading conflict, drive the U.S. economy into severe decline. The U.S. attempts to raise taxes in order to fund itself, further crippling the economy. Gold soars to $1,500–$2,000 an ounce.

The U.S. attempts to bolster its military forces. The draft is reinstated. The severity of the emergency allows Bush and Cheney to assume emergency powers and begin a dictatorship. Elections are postponed.

The U.S. collapses.

Unfortunately, even if this scenario does not occur, the position of the U.S. is so precarious that any number of other scenarios equally disastrous lie in wait. This house needs urgently to be put in order or it will fall, and especially if it does not terminate its imperial adventures. The very fact that Bush and Cheney (or any major U.S. political officials) gain by starting WWIII is a terrible indictment of our entire political system.

Who can stop this? Who can prevent this? It will only take a few well-placed people to prevent this catastrophe. My guess is 5–20 people could sway public opinion against war or provide enough cover for Congressional dissenters to screw up their courage. Maybe even as few as 3 or 4 influential people could derail the Bush-Cheney train to disaster. They need to speak out at the right times and they must be heard. Previously mute or muted voices simply must speak out. They know who they are. They know that their silence will mean silent approval of a U.S. collapse.

Bush White House begins to disintegrate

by Alcuin and Flutterby Oct 25,2007

The Bush White House is in turmoil. Barbara Bush, the President's mother has accused George Bush Jnr, the President, of destroying the Bush family name. The President himself is drunk much of the time, and important meetings have had to be cancelled or postponed on "medical grounds" because of this. Laura Bush, the President's wife, has had divorce papers prepared and has said that she will only continue to present publicly as George's wife until he leaves office. She has demanded a ten million dollar honorarium for providing this photo shoot service. Laura Bush did not accompany George to the APEC meeting in Sydney in September 2007.

George Bush Jnr and George Bush Snr are at loggerheads on nearly every substantive issue. One by one the Bush family bank and brokerage accounts are being closed down or blocked, and soon George Bush Jnr will find it difficult to pay his staff down home at Crawford, Texas, where he owns the Prairie Chapel Ranch.

The President is beginning to be openly ridiculed. On Thursday 18th Oct 2007, at a televised press conference at the White House, George Bush was attacked by reporters on camera. The reporter for the once-supportive Washington Times said that Bush was now viewed as trivial. The President stammered, glared and then responded that he was not. During this press conference he was angry and spiteful towards the press and threw out hints that if the Russians and Iranians didn’t knuckle under, World War III was certainly coming. It was a PR fiasco created by a President who was visibly out of control.

On the previous day, Wednesday 17th October 2007, CNN commentator Jack Cafferty speculated about how George W. Bush's unilateral grab for presidential power might be reversed. "The president of the United States didn't have the power to spy on Americans ... operate secret prisons ... suspend due process ... torture ... hide the conduct of the government from the public," Cafferty stated. "It's not like anybody gave President Bush any of these powers -- he took them, as a brain-dead Congress just stood there and watched." (Details here)

On Thursday 18th October 2007, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez condemned the US President's war rhetoric on Iran, saying that George Bush belongs in a psychiatric hospital. "The US President made an atomic bomb threat," Chavez said. "In other words, he's threatening a third world war but now with atomic weapons. It's like he should be taken to the psychiatric hospital. I think he's on the edge of the psychiatric hospital." (Details here)

On Friday 26th October 2007, speaking in Lisbon (Portugal), the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, referred to the recently announced Bush sanctions against Iran: "Why worsen the situation by threatening sanctions and bring it to a dead end? It's not the best way to resolve the situation by running around like a madman with a razor blade in his hand." Putin went on to compare Bush's plans for a missile shield in Europe to the Cuban missile crisis of the 1960s. (Details here and here)

George Bush Jnr, the 43rd President of the United States of America, is a sick, exhausted and broken man. He wants out before the end of his presidential term, and he is looking for an exit strategy which can be presented as an honorable retirement. So are many of his senior White House conspirators. Karl Rove led the way. The sheep are looking to follow.

The Vice President, Dick Cheney, is popping pills like Jimi Hendrix at the Isle of Wight. He is as close to dead, physically, as a zombie can be. He is being propped-up by medics like a Soviet-era dictator. Dick Cheney has had at least four heart attacks since 1978. He has contractile dysfunction of the left ventricle. He underwent four-vessel coronary artery bypass grafting in 1988, a coronary artery stenting in November 2000, and urgent coronary balloon angioplasty in March 2001. In 2001, a Holter monitor disclosed episodes of asymptomatic ectopy. An implantable cardioverter-defibrillator has been implanted in his chest. In September 2005, Dick Cheney underwent an endovascular procedure to repair popliteal artery aneurysms. His atherosclerotic disease is progressing despite aggressive treatment. He experiences cardiac-related breathing difficulties. More about Dick Cheney's health can be found here. One of Dick Cheney's silent clone lookalikes appears occasionally for the cameras to maintain an illusion of normality. Look carefully and notice the plastic smile. George Bush Jnr has a nodding mind-controlled clone lookalike, too. It attends some conferences on his behalf.

Behind the scenes, elements of civil war are becoming evident within the White House. On the eve of the IMF/World Bank Annual Meetings at the end of October 2007, Dick Cheney attempted to steal $45 billion from George Bush Jnr. A long-serving banker of Pakistani origin based at the New York office of Credit Suisse diverted $45 billion for a secret personal account held by Halliburton in Dubai for Vice President Richard B Cheney. The $45 billion represented stolen money held in trust for the President of the United States, George Bush Jnr.

This illegal transaction was frustrated by a covert fail-safe mechanism. The Credit Suisse banker was arrested and shortly afterwards, under interrogation, suffered a mysterious heart attack. At about 2.30pm Eastern Daylight Time on Friday 19th October 2007, Credit Suisse domestic banking in the USA collapsed and was taken over by Union Bank of Switzerland. This story has yet to be covered by the mainline media in the USA. More details here, here and here.

On the 25th October 2007, Patrick Bellringer reported that on several occasions recently The Higher Evolution have stopped the Bush-Cheney White House from nuking major USA cities, nuking the major oil depot in Texas City, and creating artificial earthquakes in California. Should such a 911-style homegrown terrorist attack be accomplished again, the USA government would blame the attack on Iranian terrorists, and the long-planned Iran war would be launched. More details here.

The World Court has lodged ten charges of Treason against George Bush Jnr, the 43rd President of the United States of America. These will shortly be served on him by the Adjutant General for the USA accompanied by the Provost Marshall for the USA (Brigadier General Rodney Johnson). More details can be found in a Casper Update of the 21st September 2007 here. It is said that the President is using Patriot Act emergency powers to prevent news of these Treason charges reaching the mainstream media in the USA.

With the NESARA announcements imminent, and Karl Rove gone, the Bush White House is in terminal panic.

White House Leak: Cheney's Plan for Iran Attack Starts With Israeli Missile Strike

By Gregor Peter Schmitz and Cordula Meyer, Der Spiegel. Posted October 26, 2007.

High-ranking military experts say an attack would lead to world economic chaos, or even what Bush calls 'World War III.'

US Vice President Dick Cheney -- the power behind the throne, the eminence grise, the man with the (very) occasional grandfatherly smile -- is notorious for his propensity for secretiveness and behind-the-scenes manipulation. He's capable of anything, say friends as well as enemies. Given this reputation, it's no big surprise that Cheney has already asked for a backroom analysis of how a war with Iran might begin.

In the scenario concocted by Cheney's strategists, Washington's first step would be to convince Israel to fire missiles at Iran's uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. Tehran would retaliate with its own strike, providing the US with an excuse to attack military targets and nuclear facilities in Iran.

This information was leaked by an official close to the vice president. Cheney himself hasn't denied engaging in such war games. For years, in fact, he's been open about his opinion that an attack on Iran, a member of US President George W. Bush's "Axis of Evil," is inevitable.

Given these not-too-secret designs, Democrats and Republicans alike have wondered what to make of the still mysterious Israeli bombing run in Syria on Sept. 6. Was it part of an existing war plan? A test run, perhaps? For days after the attack, one question dominated conversation at Washington receptions: How great is the risk of war, really?

Grandiose Plans, East and West

In the September strike, Israeli bombers were likely targeting a nuclear reactor under construction, parts of which are alleged to have come from North Korea. It is possible that key secretaries in the Bush cabinet even tried to stop Israel. To this day, the administration has neither confirmed nor commented on the attack.

Nevertheless, in Washington, Israel's strike against Syria has revived the specter of war with Iran. For the neoconservatives it could represent a glimmer of hope that the grandiose dream of a democratic Middle East has not yet been buried in the ashes of Iraq. But for realists in the corridors of the State Department and the Pentagon, military action against Iran is a nightmare they have sought to avert by asking a simple question: "What then?"

The Israeli strike, or something like it, could easily mark the beginning of the "World War III," which President Bush warned against last week. With his usual apocalyptic rhetoric, he said Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could lead the region to a new world war if his nation builds a nuclear bomb.

Conditions do look ripe for disaster. Iran continues to acquire and develop the fundamental prerequisites for a nuclear weapon. The mullah regime receives support -- at least moral support, if not technology -- from a newly strengthened Russia, which these days reaches for every chance to provoke the United States. President Vladimir Putin's own (self-described) "grandiose plan" to restore Russia's armed forces includes a nuclear buildup. The war in Iraq continues to drag on without an end in sight or even an opportunity for US troops to withdraw in a way that doesn't smack of retreat. In Afghanistan, NATO troops are struggling to prevent a return of the Taliban and al-Qaida terrorists. The Palestinian conflict could still reignite on any front.

In Washington, Bush has 15 months left in office. He may have few successes to show for himself, but he's already thinking of his legacy. Bush says he wants diplomacy to settle the nuclear dispute with Tehran, and hopes international pressure will finally convince Ahmadinejad to come to his senses. Nevertheless, the way pressure has been building in Washington, preparations for war could be underway.

In late September, the US Senate voted to declare the 125,000-man Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. High-ranking US generals have accused Iran of waging a "proxy war" against the United States through its support of Shiite militias in Iraq. And strategists at the Pentagon, apparently at Cheney's request, have developed detailed plans for an attack against Tehran.

Instead of the previous scenario of a large-scale bombardment of the country's many nuclear facilities, the current emphasis is, once again, on so-called surgical strikes, primarily against the quarters of the Revolutionary Guards. This sort of attack would be less massive than a major strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.

Conservative think tanks and pundits who sense this could be their last chance to implement their agenda in the Middle East have supported and disseminated such plans in the press. Despite America's many failures in Iraq, these hawks have urged the weakened president to act now, accusing him of having lost sight of his principal agenda and no longer daring to apply his own doctrine of pre-emptive strikes.

Sheer Lunacy?

The notion of war with Iran has spilled over into other circles, too. Last Monday Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the US House of Representatives, made it clear that the president would first need Congressional approval to launch an attack. Meanwhile, Republican candidates for the White House have debated whether they would even allow such details to get in their way. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney said he would consult his attorneys to determine whether the US Constitution does, in fact, require a president to ask for Congressional approval before going to war. Vietnam veteran John McCain said war with Iran was "maybe closer to reality than we are discussing tonight."

Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton has also adopted a hawkish stance, voting in favor of the Senate measure to classify the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. Her rivals criticized Clinton for giving the administration a blank check to go to war.

The US military is building a base in Iraq less than 10 kilometers (about six miles) from Iran's border. The facility, known as Combat Outpost Shocker, is meant for American soldiers preventing Iranian weapons from being smuggled into Iraq. But it's also rumored that Bush authorized US intelligence agencies in April to run sabotage missions against the mullah regime on Iranian soil.

Gary Sick is an expert on Iran who served as a military adviser under three presidents. He believes that such preparations mark a significant shift in the government's strategy. "Since August," says Sick, "the emphasis is no longer on the Iranian nuclear threat," but on Iran's support for terrorism in Iraq. "This is a complete change and is potentially dangerous."

It would be relatively easy for Bush to prove that Tehran, by supporting insurgents in Iraq, is responsible for the deaths of American soldiers. It might be harder to prove that Iran's nuclear plans pose an immediate threat to the world. Besides, the nuclear argument is reminiscent of an embarrassing precedent, when the Bush administration used the claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction -- which he didn't -- as a reason to invade Iraq. Even if the evidence against Tehran proves to be more damning, the American public will find it difficult to swallow this argument again.

The forces urging a diplomatic resolution also look stronger than they were before Iraq. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wants the next step to be a third round of even tighter sanctions against Iran in the UN Security Council. Rice has powerful allies at the Pentagon: Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral William Fallon, head of US Central Command, which is responsible for American forces throughout the region.

Rice and her cohorts all favor diplomacy, partly because they know the military is under strain. After four years in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US lacks manpower for another major war, especially one against a relatively well-prepared adversary. "For many senior people at the Pentagon, the CIA and the State Department, a war would be sheer lunacy," says security expert Sick.

Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and now a Middle East expert at the Brookings Institution, agrees. A war against Tehran would be "a disaster for the entire world," says Riedel, who worries about a "battlefield extending from the Mediterranean to the Indian subcontinent." Nevertheless, he believes there is a "realistic risk of a military conflict," because both sides look willing to carry things to the brink.

On the one hand, says Riedel, Iran is playing with fire, challenging the West by sending weapons to Shiite insurgents in Iraq. On the other hand, hotheads in Washington are by no means powerless. Although many neoconservative hawks have left the Bush administration, Cheney remains their reliable partner. "The vice president is the closest adviser to the president, and a dominant figure," says Riedel. "One shouldn't underestimate how much power he still wields."

'Is it 1938 Again?'

Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Tehran last week also played into the hands of hardliners in Washington, who read it as proof that Putin isn't serious about joining the West's effort to convince Tehran to abandon its drive for a nuclear weapon. Moreover, the countries bordering the Caspian Sea, including Central Asian nations Washington has courted energetically in recent years, have said they would not allow a war against Tehran to be launched from their territory.

Cheney derives much of his support from hawks outside the administration who fear their days are as numbered as the President's. "The neocons see Iran as their last chance to prove something," says analyst Riedel. This aim is reflected in their tone. Conservative columnist Norman Podhoretz, for example -- a father figure to all neocons -- wrote in the Wall Street Journal that he "hopes and prays" that Bush will finally bomb Iran. Podhoretz sees the United States engaged in a global war against "Islamofascism," a conflict he defines as World War IV, and he likens Iran to Nazi Germany. "Is it 1938 again?" he asks in a speech he repeats regularly at conferences.

Podhoretz is by no means an eccentric outsider. He now serves as a senior foreign-policy adviser to Republican presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani. President Bush has also met with Podhoretz at the White House to hear his opinions.

Nevertheless, most experts in Washington warn against attacking Tehran. They assume the Iranians would retaliate. "It would be foolish to believe surgical strikes will be enough," says Riedel, who believes that precision attacks would quickly escalate to war.

Former presidential adviser Sick thinks Iran would strike back with terrorist attacks. "The generals of the Revolutionary Guard have had several years to think about asymmetrical warfare," says Sick. "They probably have a few rather interesting ideas."

According to Sick, detonating well-placed bombs at oil terminals in the Persian Gulf would be enough to wreak havoc. "Insurance costs would skyrocket, causing oil prices to triple and triggering a global recession," Sick warns. "The economic consequences would be enormous, far greater than anything we have experienced with Iraq so far."

Because the catastrophic consequences of an attack on Iran are obvious, many in Washington have a fairly benign take on the current round of saber rattling. They believe the sheer dread of war is being used to bolster diplomatic efforts to solve the crisis and encourage hesitant members of the United Nations Security Council to take more decisive action. The Security Council, this argument goes, will be more likely to approve tighter sanctions if it believes that war is the only alternative.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan