Year: 2007

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Ziocon Feith Nailed

Although no charges against Feith and his co-conspirators are forthcoming at this stage at least, the truth behind the ziocon push to illegal war against Iraq is being exposed unequivocally for public view at last.

“A leading figure in the Bush administration’s march to war in Iraq helped justify the 2003 invasion by undercutting the CIA with questionable intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s links to al Qaeda, a Pentagon watchdog agency said in a report on Friday.

Former U.S. defense policy chief Douglas Feith presented the White House with claims of a “mature symbiotic relationship” between Iraq and al Qaeda as if they were facts, while ignoring contradictory views from the intelligence community, the report by the Pentagon inspector general said.

“They did not show the other, dissenting side,” Defense Department acting inspector general Thomas Gimble told the Senate Armed Services Committee at a hearing.

A claim by Feith’s office that September 11 hijacking ringleader Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi official months before the 2001 attacks could not be verified by intelligence, he said.

Gimble, who produced the classified report after a one-year review, concluded that Feith was authorized by former deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to pursue alternative intelligence conclusions and that the action was lawful.

But Feith’s actions were sometimes “inappropriate” because they “did not clearly show the variance with the consensus of the intelligence community,” said an unclassified two-page executive summary of the report released by the inspector general’s office.

As a result, Feith’s office “did not provide ‘the most accurate analysis of intelligence’ to senior decision-makers,” it said.”

The New York Times presentation on the Inspector General’s report goes into more depth and quotes Gimble more extensively:

“Mr. Gimble told the committee today that, while the Pentagon’s in-house intelligence-gathering was not illegal or unauthorized, ‘the actions, in our opinion, were inappropriate, given that all the products did not clearly show the variance with the consensus of the intel community, and in some cases were shown as intel products.'”

Feith starts covering himself and dragging in his co-conspirators:

“On Thursday, as details of Mr. Gimble’s report were beginning to come out, Mr. Feith issued a statement saying his office’s activities had been authorized by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Deputy Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, and that his office properly shared its findings.”

Further questions remain to be answered:

“However, Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, drew from Mr. Gimble a statement that Mr. Feith had not been entirely consistent in his intelligence briefings, in ways Mr. Gimble said he could not go into for security reasons.’He changed the briefing for his audience?’ Mr. Reed asked.

‘There were adjustments made depending on the audience,’ Mr. Gimble replied.

‘Well, why would he do that?’ the senator asked. ‘Why would he make changes based on the audience?’

‘I don’t think I’m in a position to make a comment on why he would do what he did,’ Mr. Gimble said.”

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Coalition of the Gobbling vs Iran V

Brzezinski, grand master of the Great Game and unrepentant original architect of the rise of Bin Laden and the Afghanistan mess, has thrown the book at the mad chimp, warning that he is seeking a pretext to whack Iran, ironic considering Brzezinski’s own Machiavellian manipulations and designs on preventing the “barbarians”, Russia, China and Iran, from coming together.

Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser in the Carter administration, delivered a scathing critique of the war in Iraq and warned that the Bush administration’s policy was leading inevitably to a war with Iran, with incalculable consequences for US imperialism in the Middle East and internationally.

Brzezinski, who opposed the March 2003 invasion and has publicly denounced the war as a colossal foreign policy blunder, began his remarks on what he called the “war of choice” in Iraq by characterizing it as “a historic, strategic and moral calamity.”

“Undertaken under false assumptions,” he continued, “it is undermining America’s global legitimacy. Its collateral civilian casualties as well as some abuses are tarnishing America’s moral credentials. Driven by Manichean principles and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional instability.”

Brzezinski derided Bush’s talk of a “decisive ideological struggle” against radical Islam as “simplistic and demagogic,” and called it a “mythical historical narrative” employed to justify a “protracted and potentially expanding war.”

“To argue that America is already at war in the region with a wider Islamic threat, of which Iran is the epicenter, is to promote a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he said.

Most stunning and disturbing was his description of a “plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran.” It would, he suggested, involve “Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks, followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure, then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the US blamed on Iran, culminating in a ‘defensive’ US military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.” [Emphasis added].

This was an unmistakable warning to the US Congress, replete with quotation marks to discount the “defensive” nature of such military action, that the Bush administration is seeking a pretext for an attack on Iran. Although he did not explicitly say so, Brzezinski came close to suggesting that the White House was capable of manufacturing a provocation—including a possible terrorist attack within the US—to provide the casus belli for war.

That a man such as Brzezinski, with decades of experience in the top echelons of the US foreign policy establishment, a man who has the closest links to the military and to intelligence agencies, should issue such a warning at an open hearing of the US Senate has immense and grave significance.

Brzezinski knows whereof he speaks, having authored provocations of his own while serving as Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser. In that capacity, as he has since acknowledged in published writings, he drew up the covert plan at the end of the 1970s to mobilize Islamic fundamentalist mujaheddin to topple the pro-Soviet regime in Afghanistan and draw the Soviet Union into a ruinous war in that country.

Following his opening remarks, in response to questions from the senators, Brzezinski reiterated his warning of a provocation.

He called the senators’ attention to a March 27, 2006 report in the New York Times on “a private meeting between the president and Prime Minister Blair, two months before the war, based on a memorandum prepared by the British official present at this meeting.” In the article, Brzezinski said, “the president is cited as saying he is concerned that there may not be weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq, and that there must be some consideration given to finding a different basis for undertaking the action.”

He continued: “I’ll just read you what this memo allegedly says, according to the New York Times: ‘The memo states that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation.’

“He described the several ways in which this could be done. I won’t go into that… the ways were quite sensational, at least one of them.

“If one is of the view that one is dealing with an implacable enemy that has to be removed, that course of action may under certain circumstances be appealing. I’m afraid that if this situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate, and if Iran is perceived as in some fashion involved or responsible, or a potential beneficiary, that temptation could arise.”

At another point Brzezinski remarked on the conspiratorial methods of the Bush administration and all but described it as a cabal. “I am perplexed,” he said, “by the fact that major strategic decisions seem to be made within a very narrow circle of individuals—just a few, probably a handful, perhaps not more than the fingers on my hand. And these are the individuals, all of whom but one, who made the original decision to go to war, and used the original justifications to go to war.”

None of the senators in attendance addressed themselves to the stark warning from Brzezinski. The Democrats in particular, flaccid, complacent and complicit in the war conspiracies of the Bush administration, said nothing about the danger of a provocation spelled out by the witness.

Following the hearing, this reporter asked Brzezinski directly if he was suggesting that the source of a possible provocation might be the US government itself. The former national security adviser was evasive.

The following exchange took place:

Q: Dr. Brzezinski, who do you think would be carrying out this possible provocation?

A: I have no idea. As I said, these things can never be predicted. It can be spontaneous.

Q: Are you suggesting there is a possibility it could originate within the US government itself?

A: I’m saying the whole situation can get out of hand and all sorts of calculations can produce a circumstance that would be very difficult to trace.

Vid of Brzezinski’s testimony here …

PDF download of testimony.

Brzezinski testimonies to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee since the above:

Strategic Assessment of U.S.- Russian Relations (06/21/2007)

OIL, OLIGARCHS, AND OPPORTUNITY: ENERGY FROM CENTRAL ASIA TO EUROPE (06/12/2008)

U.S. STRATEGY REGARDING IRAN (03/05/2009)

FINDING COMMON GROUND WITH A RISING CHINA (06/23/2010)

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Thoughts on Buddha

“Those who really seek the path to enlightenment dictate terms to their mind. They then proceed with strong determination.” – Buddha.

I dictate terms to my mind. These terms go something like this – if I don’t speak out against oppression and oppressors I may as well take the blue pill and join the mindless vassals, reminiscent of the Eloi in H.G. Wells “The Time Machine”, who along with their Morlock masters suck off the planet and give nothing in return.

> Who is to say what is more praise worthy?

That’s the point of Buddha’s message in my view. Dictate your own terms to your mind. Derive your praise from yourself from being true to yourself on your own terms, and don’t be the mindless vassal of something/someone else.

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Populate and Perish

“the human population is out of control
unfortunately, it looks like we are in for a cull
the odds are stacked against us
it’s like a constipated pizza eating champ
or a rolling stones groupie…
she’s gonna blow”

Sarcophagus, 3/2/07 (quoted with permission)

Whilst many run round like headless chooks, either in denial or desperately quoting biblical prophecy to comfort themselves that after the horrific end times *they* will be saved by their manufactured insane sky fairy and thus can continue to worship their deity’s gifts of very large motor cars and luxury homes, breeding a bevy of more insatiable humans just like them and indulging in other nihilistic foibles – wars, colonialism, corruption and social inequality – which have created majorly the planetary ecological collapse, others have the courage to tackle the situation head on. The recent Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) conference considers that global warming will impact on developing countries the most.

“The average temperature of the Earth is set to rise by a whopping 3 degrees C this century if greennhouse gas emissions are not curbed significantly. The Stern review of 2006 issued by the UK government highlighted that the 3 degree C temperature rise would translate into severe water shortages and lower crop yields around the world, with climate change already causing setbacks to economic and social progress in developing countries.”

Yet it is the developed countries which cause the lion’s share of carbon emissions. How to change the intemperate habits of lifetimes within the short period of time available for damage control? Choices available to governments are cynically restricted when political careers depend on presenting goodies, not hardships, to voters. And the third world, whose industrialisation follows the western model will undoubtedly speed up global warming manifold, is unlikely to adopt adequate measures to curb temperature or population growth.

Continue reading “Populate and Perish”