Images and Symbols -- Deconstructing the Iraq War

Slowly but surely the war crimes of the american military are coming to light. But, if history is any indication, the criminals will never be punished. Dubya should be sitting in the court with Saddam Hussein.
Here`s link to a video.
http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002589.htm

The life-fate of the modern individual depends not only upon the family into which he was born or which he enters by marriage, but increasingly upon the corporation in which he spends the most alert hours of his best years; not only upon the school where he is educated as a child and adolescent, but also upon the state which touches him throughout his life...If the centralized state could not rely upon the inculcation of nationalist loyalties in public and private schools, its leaders would promptly seek to modify the decentralized educational system, If the bankruptcy rate among the top five hundred corporations were as high as the general divorce rate among the thirty-seven million married couples, there would be economic catastrophe on an international scale. If members of armies gave to them no more of their lives than do believers to the churches to which they belong, there would be a military crisis.

Within each of the big three (economic, political and military institutions), the typical institutional unit has become enlarged, has become administrative, and, in the power of its decisions, has become centralized. Behind these developments there is a fabulous technology, for as institutions, they have incorporated this technology and guide it, even as it shapes and paces their developments.

The economy-once a great scatter of small productive units in autonomous balance-has become dominated by two or three hundred giant corporations, administratively and politically interrelated, which together hold the keys to economic decisions.
The political order, once a decentralized set of several dozen states with a weak spinal cord, has become a centralized, executive establishment which has taken up into itself many powers previously scattered, and now enters into each and every crany of the social structure.

The military order, once a slim establishment in a context of distrust fed by state militia, has become the largest and most expensive feature of government, and, although well versed in smiling public relations, now has all the grim and clumsy efficiency of a sprawling bureaucratic domain.

In each of these institutional areas, the means of power at the disposal of decision makers have increased enormously; their central executive powers have been enhanced; within each of them modern administrative routines have been elaborated and tightened up.

As each of these domains becomes enlarged and centralized, the consequences of its activities become greater, and its traffic with the others increases. The decisions of a handful of corporations bear upon military and political as well as upon economic developments around the world. The decisions of the military establishment rest upon and grievously affect political life as well as the very level of economic activity. The decisions made within the political domain determine economic activities and military programs. There is no longer, on the one hand, an economy, and, on the other hand, a political order containing a military establishment unimportant to politics and to money-making. There is a political economy linked, in a thousand ways, with military institutions and decisions. On each side of the world-split running through central Europe and around the Asiatic rimlands, there is an ever-increasing interlocking of economic, military, and political structures. If there is government intervention in the corporate economy, so is there corporate intervention in the governmental process. In the structural sense, this triangle of power is the source of the interlocking directorate that is most important for the historical structure of the present. (C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite, 1956)

``I might point out here that colonialism or imperialism, as the slave system of the West is called, is not something that is just confined to England or France or the United States. The interests in this country are in cahoots with the interests in France and the interests in Britain. It`s one huge complex or combine, and it creates what`s known not as the American power structure or the French power structure, but an international power structure. This international power structure is used to suppress the masses of dark-skinned people all over the world and exploit them of their natural resources.`` (Malcolm X)

#186, SR <<< In the above mentioned alternatives (incompetence vs ``conspiracy``) as the underlying reasons of US administration`s policies it is the same thing... >>>

These thugs are extremely ``competent`` where it comes to getting what they want, they feign incompetence where it comes to deliberate criminal neglect of their own and world populations, exposing the ``criminal`` part of thier ``neglect`` is termed ``conspiracy`` by them.

``Help Us Impeach George Bush Now!
Submitted by bob fertik on Wed, 2006-01-25 20:46. About ImpeachPAC

Welcome to ImpeachPAC!

52% of Americans think Bush should be impeached for wiretapping Americans without a judge`s approval

53% of Americans think Bush should be impeached for lying about Iraq``

One day -- post 2008 -- this gang of four War criminals -- Wolfowitz, Rumsfield, Cheney and Bush -- MUST and WILL be tried for their WAR CRIMES.....against Iraq.

Re: # 185 HP

---

criminally neglegent incompetence OR cold criminal complicity?

The subtle difference between the above two alternatives is merely academic. If a drunk driver kills my child, it matters not in the least whether he left the pub intending to look for a child to run over or whether he simply failed to handle the steering wheel competently.

The distinction in the US establishment`s case is only one of intent and not one of impact, effect and consequence. Intent is a factor in assessing the degree of individual culpability in a criminal case, but it has no objective relevance where internationl affairs of historical significance are concerned. Did Czar Nicholas II intend to supress the peaceful crowds assembled before the Winter Palace on Bloody Sunday, or whether he was oblivious of the situation and was out vacationing is of little relevance. The historical consequences of the massacre on that day remain unchanged.

In the above mentioned alternatives (incompetence vs ``conspiracy``) as the underlying reasons of US administration`s policies it is the same thing. In either case the greater harm done is the same and therefore the historical blame that the US has to carry will also be the same. It is small comfort that the harm was done by fools and not by demons. In either case they are still the villians.

...SR

#184 SR

From the article above:

“During the first nine months of 2001, the US administration pretended that it was not paying attention to Jihadis and was not interested in going after them, as the outgoing Clinton administration had suggested.”


Now read this:

(The rhetoric about Bush is non sense but the fact presented are telling)

9/11 & Bush`s `Negligence`

By Robert Parry
March 24, 2006


In the U.S. government’s pursuit of the death penalty for Zacarias Moussaoui, FBI officials have inadvertently revealed how an even mildly competent George W. Bush could have prevented the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people – and set the country on a dangerous course for revenge.

FBI agent Harry Samit, who interrogated Moussaoui weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, sent 70 warnings to his superiors about suspicions that the al-Qaeda operative had been taking flight training in Minnesota because he was planning to hijack a plane for a terrorist operation.

But FBI officials in Washington showed “criminal negligence” in blocking requests for a search warrant on Moussaoui’s computer or taking other preventive action, Samit testified at Moussaoui’s death penalty hearing on March 20.

Samit’s futile warnings matched the frustrations of other federal agents in Minnesota and Arizona who had gotten wind of al-Qaeda’s audacious scheme to train pilots for operations in the United States. But the agents couldn’t get their warnings addressed by senior officials at FBI headquarters.

Another big part of the problem was the lack of urgency at the top. Bush, who had been President for half a year, was taking a month-long vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, and shrugged off the growing alarm within the U.S. intelligence community.

Separate from the FBI field agents, the Central Intelligence Agency was piecing the puzzle together from tips, intercepts and other scraps of information. On Aug. 6, 2001, more than a month before the attacks, the CIA had enough evidence to send Bush a top-secret Presidential Daily Briefing paper, “Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US.”

The CIA told Bush about “threat reporting” that indicated bin-Laden wanted “to hijack a US aircraft.” The CIA also cited a call that had been made to the U.S. Embassy in the United Arab Emirates in May 2001 “saying that a group of Bin Laden supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives.”

“The system was blinking red” during the summer of 2001, CIA Director George Tenet later told the 9/11 Commission.

Bush’s Justice Department and FBI headquarters were in the loop on the CIA reporting, but didn’t reach out to their agents around the country, some of whom, it turned out, were frantically trying to get the attention of their superiors in Washington.

Then-acting FBI Director Thomas Pickard told the 9/11 Commission that he discussed the intelligence threat reports with FBI special agents from around the country in a conference call on July 19, 2001. But Pickard said the focus was on having “evidence response teams” ready to respond quickly in the event of an attack.

Pickard “did not task field offices to try to determine whether any plots were being considered within the United States or to take any action to disrupt any such plots,” according to the 9/11 Commission’s report.

Contrasting Styles

Amid this bureaucratic inertia, Bush’s role was crucial. As President, he was the best-positioned official to force the various parts of the government to undertake a top-down review of what was known, what evidence was being missed, what could be done.

Richard Clarke, who had been President Bill Clinton’s counterterrorism chief and stayed in that job after Bush took office, said the Clinton administration reacted to such threats with urgent top-level meetings to “shake the trees” at the FBI, CIA, Customs and other relevant agencies.

Clarke said senior managers would respond by going back to their agencies to demand a search for any overlooked information and to put rank-and-file personnel on high alert, as happened when an al-Qaeda plot to bomb Millennium celebrations was thwarted in 1999.

“In December 1999, we received intelligence reports that there were going to be major al-Qaeda attacks,” Clarke said on CNN’s “Larry King Live” two years ago. “President Clinton asked his national security adviser Sandy Berger to hold daily meetings with the attorney general, the FBI director, the CIA director and stop the attacks.

“Every day they went back from the White House to the FBI, to the Justice Department, to the CIA and they shook the trees to find out if there was any information. You know, when you know the United States is going to be attacked, the top people in the United States government ought to be working hands-on to prevent it and working together.

”Now, contrast that with what happened in the summer of 2001, when we even had more clear indications that there was going to be an attack. Did the President ask for daily meetings of his team to try to stop the attack? Did (national security adviser) Condi Rice hold meetings of her counterparts to try to stop the attack? No.”

In a March 19, 2006, speech in Florida, former Vice President Al Gore also noted this contrast between how the Clinton administration reacted to terrorist threats and how the Bush administration did in the weeks before Sept. 11.

“In eight years in the White House, President Clinton and I, a few times, got a direct and really immediate statement like that (Aug. 6, 2001 warning), in one of those daily briefings,” Gore said.

“Every time, as you would want and expect, we had a fire drill, brought everybody in, (asked) what else do we know about this, what have we done to prepare for this, what else could we do, are we certain of the sources, get us more information on that, we want to know everything about this, and we want to make sure our country is prepared.

“In August of 2001,” Gore added, “such a clear warning was given and nothing – nothing – happened. When there is no vision, the people perish.” [To see Gore’s speech on C-Span, click here.]

Gone Fishing

After receiving the CIA’s Aug. 6, 2001, warning, Bush is reported to have gone fishing and cleared brush at his ranch. There is no evidence that he did anything to energize or coordinate the government response to the expected attack.

“No CSG (Counterterrorism Security Group) or other NSC (National Security Council) meeting was held to discuss the possible threat of a strike in the United States as a result of this (Aug. 6) report,” the 9/11 Commission wrote. “We have found no indication of any further discussion before Sept. 11 among the President and his top advisers of the possibility of a threat of an al-Qaeda attack in the United States.”

Talking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on April 4, 2004, the commission’s chairman and vice chairman, New Jersey’s Republican former Gov. Thomas Kean and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., said they believed the Sept. 11 attacks were preventable.

“The whole story might have been different,” Kean said, citing a string of law-enforcement blunders including the “lack of coordination within the FBI” and the FBI’s failure to understand the significance of suspected hijacker Moussaoui’s arrest in August 2001 while training to fly passenger jets.

However, from the recent testimony at Moussaoui’s sentencing hearing, it’s now clear that FBI agents in Minnesota did grasp the significance of the flight training and did send alarming messages to Washington-based FBI officials responsible for counterterrorism. But those officials at headquarters apparently missed or ignored the warnings.

Moussaoui’s defense attorney, Edward B. McMahon Jr., asked Michael E. Rolince, who was chief of the FBI’s International Terrorism Operations Section, if he was aware that FBI agent Samit had sent a memo to Rolince’s office on Aug. 18, 2001, warning that Moussaoui was a potential terrorist.

“No,” Rolince answered. “What document are you reading?”

Samit’s report “sent to your office,” McMahon replied. Rolince said he never saw the urgent memo. [Washington Post, March 22, 2006]

When the 9/11 Commission interviewed Rolince for its 2004 report, Rolince “recalled being told about Moussaoui in two passing hallway conversations but only in the context that he [Rolince] might be receiving telephone calls from Minneapolis complaining about how headquarters was handling the matter,” though the calls never came, the report said.

But Rolince was not the only senior FBI official oblivious to the missed clues. The 9/11 report said acting FBI director Pickard and assistant director for counterterrorism Dale Watson weren’t briefed on Moussaoui prior to Sept. 11, either.

The significance of the new information from Moussaoui’s hearing – which followed his guilty plea to charges that he had conspired with al-Qaeda to commit acts of terrorism – is that there’s no longer any doubt that key pieces of the puzzle were tantalizing close to the FBI officials who could have done something.

FBI headquarters also blew off a prescient memo from an FBI agent in the Phoenix field office. The July 2001 memo warned of the “possibility of a coordinated effort by Usama Bin Laden” to send student pilots to the United States. The agent noted “an inordinate number of individuals of investigative interest” attending American flight schools.

No action was taken on the Phoenix memo before Sept. 11.

How Incompetent?

Yet, if President Bush had demanded action from on high, the ripple effect through the FBI might well have jarred loose enough of the pieces to make the overall picture suddenly clear, especially in view of the information already compiled by the CIA.

Ironically, that is almost the same argument that federal prosecutors are making in seeking Moussaoui’s execution. It’s not that he was directly involved in the Sept. 11 plot, they say; it’s that the government might have been able to stop the attacks if he had immediately confessed what he was up to.

To some civil libertarians, the case raises troubling Fifth Amendment issues by creating a precedent for putting someone to death who didn’t promptly confess and thus didn’t provide clues that might have prevented a separate murder that the defendant didn’t specifically know about and wasn’t directly involved in.

In effect, the government is basing its demand for Moussaoui’s death on the notion that the failure to do something that might have prevented the tragedy of Sept. 11 should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

However, the Bush administration has taken almost the opposite position on its own culpability. Despite a strong case for criminal negligence – beginning with FBI officials and reaching up to the Oval Office – Bush and other senior officials have insisted they have nothing to apologize for.

Indeed, Bush has made his handling of the Sept. 11 terror attacks the centerpiece of his presidential legacy. Arguably, he rode the whirlwind from the attacks right through the war in Afghanistan to the invasion of Iraq to his second term as President.

Only recently – after a similar case of botched leadership during the Hurricane Katrina disaster – has the air whooshed out of the Bush balloon. Add in the disastrous decisions around the Iraq War and many Americans see a pattern of arrogant, incompetent leadership that fails to give adequate heed to evidence or attention to details.

For other Americans, the theory of Bush’s incompetence doesn’t go nearly far enough to explain the breathtaking lapses that let the Sept. 11 attacks happen.

Some 9/11 skeptics have come to believe that the destruction of the Twin Towers and the damage to the Pentagon must have been an “inside job” with some elements of the Bush administration conspiring with the attackers to create a modern-day Reichstag Fire that would justify invading Iraq and consolidating political power at home.

The new Moussaoui evidence, however, tends to support the theory of incompetence, though of a kind so gross that it would border on criminal negligence, at the FBI as well as the White House.

Perceptive field agents did their job in sending up warning flares to Washington, but a vacationing President and an inattentive FBI bureaucracy failed to take note or take the necessary actions to head off the tragedy.

Re: # 175 jang {``fund managers recommend... euro... [for the first time]...``}

Yes, they got the news, a bit late though. This tells me that it may be time to abandon the Zero... Really, the Zero, or the euro as they like to call it, is another dog... only its a dofg with different flees as Gordon Gecko would say... but more about that another time... Right now I logged in to post an article by Scott Ritter.

...SR

It`s Criminal

By Scott Ritter

25 March, 2006


As America reaches the third anniversary of President Bush`s decision to invade and occupy Iraq, there is for the first time the unsettling realization brought about by the clarity of acts that emerges only after the passage of time that something horrible has happened.

This awakening of collective awareness on the part of the American people is reflected not only in the numerous polls which show President Bush`s popularity plummeting to all-time lows, largely because of the war in Iraq, but also the collective shrug of the shoulders on the part of the one-time cheerleaders for the war in Iraq -- the mainstream American media -- when covering the hollow rhetoric of the President as he tries to rally a nation around a cause that has long since lost its allure.

No amount of flowery language and repeated pulls at the patriotic heartstrings of America, no repeated assault on the senses and sensibilities through repetitious referral to the events of 9/11 can jump start a second phase of the kind of mindless nationalistic fervor that greeted the erstwhile Cowboy President when he first herded a compliant America down the path of war with Iraq three years ago.

Looking back on the string of unfulfilled objectives, broken promises, squandered dreams, shattered bodies and eviscerated lives that was and is the war in Iraq, one thought emerges plain and clear. This isn`t simply a result of bad governance. This is criminal.

Bad governance is telling the American people that a war with Iraq would be concluded in a manner of months, and would cost the American taxpayer less that $2 billion, when in fact the war has gone on for three years now, with no end in sight, and over a quarter-trillion dollars have been expended, with untold billions more to be spent.

Criminal governance is the fabrication of a justification for war (weapons of mass destruction), hiding the President’s true intentions from the American people and the Congress of the United States (Bush signed off on the Iraq war plans in late August 2002, and yet continued to publicly state that no decision for military action had been made), and shredding international law by waging an aggressive war of pre-emption void of any United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing such actions.

Bad governance is manipulating war planning on the part of military professionals so that we enter into a conflict with far too few troops for the task, with no plan for how to proceed once the fighting ended and the reality of occupation set in.

Criminal governance is violating every principle of the laws of war in the conduct of the occupation of Iraq, manipulating the economic and political direction of Iraq, suppressing its population, and engaging in wanton acts of widespread murder, torture and abuse of the Iraqi people.

The fact is the war in Iraq has degenerated into one giant hate crime.

American soldiers and Marines are being thrown into a cauldron of our own making, scalded by a conflict with no purpose or direction, with the end result being that in order to survive these fighting men and women have dehumanized the totality of the Iraqi people.

The ancestors of ancient Babylon have become nothing more than ``sand niggers``, ``rag-heads``, ``camel jockeys``, ``ninja women`` or ``haji`` in the hearts and minds of American fighting men who are now killing Iraqis in ever increasing numbers. Gone is any talk of rebuilding Iraq. We are there to destroy it. The criminal nature of the war in Iraq is starting to become common knowledge among observers of the war.

It has long sense been common knowledge on the part of those waging it. In Vietnam Americans were shocked by the revelations of Mai Lai and the murder of innocent Vietnamese civilians by American fighting men. But Mai Lai is repeated in bits and pieces every day in Iraq, with the American military occupation slaughtering family after family of Iraqis in the name of bringing peace and security.

The realization that something has gone horribly wrong in Iraq, however, has not translated into any kind of discernable action on the part of the American people. While pundit after pundit breaks ranks with the Bush administration on Iraq, often repudiating their own pre-war chest beating and encouragement of the war, the fact is that the manifesto which manifested itself in the invasion of Iraq -- the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States -- continues to dictate the manner and nature of America`s interfacing with the rest of the world in unquestioned fashion.

Indeed, President Bush has, on the eve of the third anniversary of the Iraqi war, promulgated a new, improved version of this manifesto, the 2006 National Security Strategy of the United States, which re-affirms America`s commitment to the principles of pre-emptive war. In short, the President has re-certified America as the greatest threat to international peace and security in modern times, especially when one considers that even as America is engaged in the brutal rape and occupation of Iraq, President Bush has his eyes firmly set on another war of aggression in Iran.

What are the American people doing in response? There is a huge difference between becoming aware and taking action. While poll numbers on Iraq reflect a growing unease about the war, this unease has not manifested itself into any discernable reaction of consequence. The Democratic Party has remained largely mute, largely because of the culpability on the part of much of its membership in facilitating and sustaining the Iraqi war and its underlining doctrine of global domination by the United States.

But in the face of the near total subservience on the part of the Republican Party in supporting the policies of President Bush no matter how illegal and harmful they are to America and the world, the Democratic Party must shake itself free of the doldrums it currently finds itself stuck in. The time for passive recognition that the war in Iraq has gone bad is long past.

The time for concrete political action has arrived. The Democrats need to recognize that the political struggle in America today is not a trivial extension of the partisan Red State-Blue State nonsense the American media likes to bandy about, but rather a far more serious struggle of national survival, if one in fact defines the American nation as being reflective of the ideals and values set forth by the Constitution of the United States.

The Iraq War, if anything, is a reflection of the total abrogation of constitutional responsibility and process by the Congress of the United States. As a result, the President has led a nationdown the path of illegal war of aggression which has damaged America`s reputation abroad, and its very fabric here at home. The Republican-controlled Congress has done little to stop this collective march towards national self-destruction, rubber-stamping the president`s illegal actions with little regard to either the rule of law or Congress`s status as a second but equal branch of government.

This must end.

The fact is that America today stands on the brink of having everything we stand for as a nation being swept away by a power-crazed President and a compliant Congress, both of whom are Republican. Whatever direction the Democratic Party takes in the future, it must be with the recognition that the hopes and dreams of saving the United States as a nation of laws founded in the words and principles of the Constitution rest heavily on their shoulders. The Democratic Party must become laser-like in its rejection of the war in Iraq, resolute in condemning this war for what it is, an illegal war of aggression,and determined in fighting for the concept of a nation governed by the rule of law by holding President Bush accountable for his illegal actions.

In short, the rallying cry of the Democratic Party must become impeachment. Given the magnitude of the crimes committed by the United States in Iraq under the direction and leadership of President Bush and his administration, there is simply no other recourse that can bring a halt to the madness in Iraq, and the insanity being planned in Iran and elsewhere.

The remedy is clear. The question now is whether the Democratic Party is up to the task.

Scott Ritter served as chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 until his resignation in 1998.