No ties to Saddam, eh?

[cwsox]

From the 12 November 2002 salon.com is this article:

http://www.salon.com/politics/conason/2002/11/12/bush/

 

That Saddam show

Although Saddam Hussein seems to know that he's often criticized in the Western media -- remember when Bob Dole told him to ignore the pesky press and their carping about human rights? -- the Iraqi dictator still has no clue how he and his regime are perceived outside Iraq. Otherwise it's difficult to understand this week's manipulation of his parliament. Does he truly think that anybody regards a vote in that body as a "message" from the Iraqi people?

 

from some famous quotes of Bob Dole:

http://users.erols.com/kmdavis/dole.html

1990: Saddam Hussein is "a good leader, a leader to whom the United States can talk."

1993: "I had no opinion" on Saddam Hussein before the Gulf War.

 

http://www.polyconomics.com/searchbase/02-19-98.html

Dole and others criticise the US media for not being kind to Saddam:

"On 12 April 1990 Saddam met with five US senators: Robert Dole, Alan Simpson, Howard Metzenbaum, James McClure and Frank Murkowski; the US ambassador [April Glaspie], soon to be famous for her ‘green light’ to Saddam, was also present. No-one reading the various transcripts of this meeting can doubt the general placatory tone. The US senators even criticized the American press in their attempts to propitiate Saddam, emphasizing that there was a difference between the attitudes of the US government and those of the journalists."

 

and of course that isn't enough information so

http://www.sfbg.com/gulfwar/013091.html

 

As Saddam stepped up the shakedown of his neighbors, the Bush administration was winking at him. On April 12, 1990, the Iraqi leader met with a delegation of U.S. senators headed by Minority Leader Robert Dole. Saddam harangued his guests about a Voice of America (VOA) broadcast critical of his regime, as well as efforts in Congress to impose economic sanctions on Iraq over human rights abuses.

 

Dole, saying he was speaking on behalf of the president, reassured Saddam that neither of those actions properly reflected the policy of the Bush administration, according to a transcript of the meeting made public by the Iraqi government. (Dole and the other U.S. participants have not denied the accuracy of the transcript.) A low-level VOA bureaucrat was responsible for the broadcast, Dole explained. Dole also reassured Saddam that the Bush administration was opposed to economic sanctions.

 

When the Iraqi strongman continued to complain about an alleged ``large-scale campaign'' against Iraq by the United States and Europe, Dole shot back that its impetus "was not from President Bush.''

 

Dole met with President Bush when he returned to Washington in late April and counseled forbearance toward Saddam. It was a message George Bush was ready to hear.

 

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Once could go on and on but I think it is time to put G H W Bush and Bob Dole and everyone in the Bush adminsitration on trial for war crimes against humanity for the aid and assitance and support of Saddam Hussein. And the political party that coddled Saddam Hussein should be barred by law from ever nominating a candidate for national office again.

 

Or, in the alternative,

 

the apologists for Bush can quite pretending they have all right and all morality on their side because this war is in direct consequence of their coddling of Saddam when it suited their interests, ignoring 15 years of Saddam's tyranny and atrocities when Dole was toasting Saddam in Baghdad.

 

All the elephant tears now do not obscure the history that every Iraqi who was oppressed by Saddam knows: who supported Saddam in his salad days.

 

Maybe that is one reason why the people of Iraq do not see this through the eyes of the spin regime of the current administration.

 

And the Rumsfelds and the Cheneys and the G W Bush's who were all behind the grievous poilicy mistakes from 1981-90 are no more convincing now than they were then.

 

And when you have to go to war to cover up past horrendous errors in judgment, you not not deserve truyst nor shoudl eb allowed to go to war.

[cwsox]

Blood Money

 

By William Rivers Pitt

 

t r u t h o u t | Perspective

 

Thursday 27 February 2003

 

"In the counsels of Government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the Military Industrial Complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes." - President Dwight Eisenhower, January 1961.

 

George W. Bush gave a speech Wednesday night before the Godfather of conservative Washington think tanks, the American Enterprise Institute. In his speech, Bush quantified his coming war with Iraq as part of a larger struggle to bring pro-western governments into power in the Middle East. Couched in hopeful language describing peace and freedom for all, the speech was in fact the closest articulation of the actual plan for Iraq that has yet been heard from the administration.

 

In a previous truthout article from February 21, the ideological connections between an extremist right-wing Washington think tank and the foreign policy aspirations of the Bush administration were detailed.

 

The Project for a New American Century, or PNAC, is a group founded in 1997 that has been agitating since its inception for a war with Iraq. PNAC was the driving force behind the drafting and passage of the Iraqi Liberation Act, a bill that painted a veneer of legality over the ultimate designs behind such a conflict. The names of every prominent PNAC member were on a letter delivered to President Clinton in 1998 which castigated him for not implementing the Act by driving troops into Baghdad.

 

PNAC has funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to a Hussein opposition group called the Iraqi National Congress, and to Iraq's heir-apparent, Ahmed Chalabi, despite the fact that Chalabi was sentenced in absentia by a Jordanian court to 22 years in prison on 31 counts of bank fraud. Chalabi and the INC have, over the years, gathered support for their cause by promising oil contracts to anyone that would help to put them in power in Iraq.

 

Most recently, PNAC created a new group called The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. Staffed entirely by PNAC members, The Committee has set out to "educate" Americans via cable news connections about the need for war in Iraq. This group met recently with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice regarding the ways and means of this education.

 

Who is PNAC? Its members include:

 

* Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the PNAC founders, who served as Secretary of Defense for Bush Sr.;

 

* I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's top national security assistant;

 

* Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, also a founding member, along with four of his chief aides including;

 

* Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, arguably the ideological father of the group;

 

* Eliot Abrams, prominent member of Bush's National Security Council, who was pardoned by Bush Sr. in the Iran/Contra scandal;

 

* John Bolton, who serves as Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security in the Bush administration;

 

* Richard Perle, former Reagan administration official and present chairman of the powerful Defense Policy Board;

 

* Randy Scheunemann, President of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, who was Trent Lott's national security aide and who served as an advisor to Rumsfeld on Iraq in 2001;

 

* Bruce Jackson, Chairman of PNAC, a position he took after serving for years as vice president of weapons manufacturer Lockheed-Martin, and who also headed the Republican Party Platform subcommittee for National Security and

Foreign Policy during the 2000 campaign. His section of the 2000 GOP Platform explicitly called for the removal of Saddam Hussein;

 

* William Kristol, noted conservative writer for the Weekly Standard, a magazine owned along with the Fox News Network by conservative media mogul Ruppert Murdoch.

 

 

The Project for the New American Century seeks to establish what they call 'Pax Americana' across the globe. Essentially, their goal is to transform America, the sole remaining superpower, into a planetary empire by force of

arms. A report released by PNAC in September of 2000 entitled 'Rebuilding America's Defenses' codifies this plan, which requires a massive increase in defense spending and the fighting of several major theater wars in order to

establish American dominance. The first has been achieved in Bush's new budget plan, which calls for the exact dollar amount to be spent on defense that was requested by PNAC in 2000. Arrangements are underway for the fighting of the wars.

 

The men from PNAC are in a perfect position to see their foreign policy schemes, hatched in 1997, brought into reality. They control the White House, the Pentagon and Defense Department, by way of this the armed forces and

intelligence communities, and have at their feet a Republican-dominated Congress that will rubber-stamp virtually everything on their wish list.

 

The first step towards the establishment of this Pax Americana is, and has always been, the removal of Saddam Hussein and the establishment of an American protectorate in Iraq. The purpose of this is threefold: 1) To acquire control of the oilheads so as to fund the entire enterprise; 2) To fire a warning shot across the bows of every leader in the Middle East; 3) To establish in Iraq a military staging area for the eventual invasion and overthrow of several Middle Eastern regimes, including some that are allies of the United States.

 

Another PNAC signatory, author Norman Podhoretz, quantified this aspect of the grand plan in the September 2002 issue of his journal, 'Commentary'. In it, Podhoretz notes that the regimes, "that richly deserve to be overthrown and replaced, are not confined to the three singled-out members of the axis of evil. At a minimum, the axis should extend to Syria and Lebanon and Libya, as well as 'friends' of America like the Saudi royal family and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, along with the Palestinian Authority, whether headed by Arafat or one of his henchmen." At bottom, for Podhoretz, this action is about "the long-overdue internal reform and modernization of Islam."

 

This casts Bush's speech to AEI on Wednesday in a completely different light. Weapons of mass destruction are a smokescreen. Paeans to the idea of Iraqi liberation and democratization are cynical in their inception. At the end of the day, this is not even about oil. The drive behind this war is ideological in nature, a crusade to 'reform' the religion of Islam as it exists in both government and society within the Middle East. Once this is accomplished, the

road to empire will be open, ten lanes wide and steppin' out over the line.

 

At the end of the day, however, ideology is only good for bull sessions in the board room and the bar. Something has to grease the skids, to make the whole thing worthwhile to those involved, and entice those outside the loop to get into the game.

 

Thus, the payout.

 

It is well known by now that Dick Cheney, before becoming Vice President, served as chairman and chief executive of the Dallas-based petroleum corporation Halliburton. During his tenure, according to oil industry executives and United Nations records, Halliburton did a brisk $73 million in business with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. While working face-to-face with Hussein, Cheney and Halliburton were also moving into position to capitalize upon Hussein's removal from power. In October of 1995, the same month Cheney was made CEO of Halliburton, that company announced a deal that would put it first in line should war break out in Iraq. Their job: To take control of burning oil wells, put out the fires, and prepare them for service.

 

Another corporation that stands to do well by a war in Iraq is Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton. Ostensibly, Brown & Root is in the construction business, and thus has won a share of the $900 million government contract for the rebuilding of post-war Iraqi bridges, roads and other basic infrastructure. This is but the tip of the financial iceberg, as the oil wells will also have to be repaired after parent-company Halliburton puts out the fires.

 

More ominously is Brown & Root's stock in trade: the building of permanent American military bases. There are twelve permanent U.S. bases in Kosovo today, all built and maintained by Brown & Root for a multi-billion dollar profit. If anyone should wonder why the administration has not offered an exit strategy to the Iraq war plans, the presence of Brown & Root should answer them succinctly. We do not plan on exiting. In all likelihood, Brown & Root is in Iraq to build permanent bases there, from which attacks upon other Middle Eastern nations can be staged and managed.

 

Again, this casts Bush's speech on Wednesday in a new light.

 

Being at the center of the action is nothing new for Halliburton and Brown & Root. The two companies have worked closely with governments in Algeria, Angola, Bosnia, Burma, Croatia, Haiti, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Somalia during the worst chapters in those nation's histories. Many environmental and human rights groups claim that Cheney, Halliburton and Brown & Root were, in fact, centrally involved in these fiascos. More recently, Brown & Root was contracted by the Defense Department to build cells for detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The bill for that one project came to $300 million.

 

Cheney became involved with PNAC officially in 1997, while still profiting from deals between Halliburton and Hussein. One year later, Cheney and PNAC began actively and publicly agitating for war on Iraq. They have not stopped to this very day.

 

Another company with a vested interest in both war on Iraq and massively increased defense spending is the Carlyle Group. Carlyle, a private global investment firm with more than $12.5 billion in capital under management, was

formed in 1987. Its interests are spread across 164 companies, including telecommunications firms and defense contractors. It is staffed at the highest levels by former members of the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations. Former President George H. W. Bush is himself employed by Carlyle as a senior advisor, as is long-time Bush family advisor and former Secretary of State James Baker III.

 

One company acquired by Carlyle is United Defense, a weapons manufacturer based in Arlington, VA. United Defense provides the Defense Department with combat vehicle systems, fire support, combat support vehicle systems, weapons delivery systems, amphibious assault vehicles, combat support services and naval armaments. Specifically, United Defense manufactures the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the M113 armored personnel carrier, the M88A2 Recovery Vehicle, the Grizzly, the M9 ACE, the Composite Armored Vehicle, the M6 Linebacker, the M7 BFIST, the Armored Gun System, the M4 Command and Control Vehicle, the Battle Command Vehicle, the Paladin, the Crusader, and Electric Gun/Pulse Power weapons technology.

 

In other words, everything a growing Defense Department, a war in Iraq, and a burgeoning American military empire needs.

 

Ironically, one group that won't profit from Carlyle's involvement in American military buildup is the family of Osama bin Laden. The bin Laden family fortune was amassed by Mohammed bin Laden, father of Osama, who built a multi-billion dollar construction empire through contracts with the Saudi government. The Saudi BinLaden Group, as this company is called, was heavily invested in Carlyle for years. Specifically, they were invested in Carlyle's Partners II Fund, which includes in that portfolio United Defense and other weapons manufacturers.

 

This relationship was described in a September 27, 2001 article in the Wall Street Journal entitled 'Bin Laden Family Could Profit From Jump in Defense Spending Due to Ties to US Bank.' The 'bank' in question was the Carlyle Group. A follow-up article published by the Journal on September 28 entitled 'Bin Laden Family Has Intricate Ties With Washington - Saudi Clan Has Had Access To Influential Republicans' further describes the relationship. In October of 2001, Saudi BinLaden and Carlyle severed their relationship by mutual agreement. The timing is auspicious.

 

 

There are a number of depths to be plumbed in all of this. The Bush administration has claimed all along that this war with Iraq is about Saddam Hussein's connections to terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, though through it all they have roundly failed to establish any basis for either accusation. On Wednesday, Bush went further to claim that the war is about liberating the Iraqi people and bringing democracy to the Middle East. This ignores cultural realities on the ground in Iraq and throughout the region that, salted with decades of deep mistrust for American motives, make such a democracy movement brought at the point of the sword utterly impossible to achieve.

 

This movement, cloaked in democracy, is in fact a PNAC-inspired push for an American global empire. It behooves Americans to understand that there is a great difference between being the citizen of a constitutional democracy and

being a citizen of an empire. The establishment of an empire requires some significant sacrifices.

 

Essential social, medical, educational and retirement services will have to be gutted so that those funds can be directed towards a necessary military buildup. Actions taken abroad to establish the preeminence of American power, most specifically in the Middle East, will bring a torrent of terrorist attacks to the home front. Such attacks will bring about the final suspension of constitutional rights and the rule of habeas corpus, as we will find ourselves under martial law. In the end, however, this may be inevitable. An empire cannot function with the slow, cumbersome machine of a constitutional democracy on its back. Empires must be ruled with speed and ruthlessness, in a manner utterly antithetical to the way in which America has been governed for 227 years.

 

And yes, of course, a great many people will die.

 

It would be one thing if all of this was based purely on the ideology of our leaders. It is another thing altogether to consider the incredible profit motive behind it all. The President, his father, the Vice President, a whole host of powerful government officials, along with stockholders and executives from Halliburton and Carlyle, stand to make a mint off this war. Long-time corporate sponsors from the defense, construction and petroleum industries will likewise profit enormously.

 

Critics of the Bush administration like to bandy about the word "fascist" when speaking of George. The image that word conjures is of Nazi stormtroopers marching in unison towards Hitler's Final Solution. This does not at all fit. It is better, in this matter, to view the Bush administration through the eyes of Benito Mussolini. Mussolini, dubbed 'the father of Fascism,' defined the word in a far more pertinent fashion. "Fascism," said Mussolini, "should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power."

 

Boycott the French, the Germans, and the other 114 nations who stand against this Iraq war all you wish. France and Germany do not oppose Bush because they are cowards, or because they enjoy the existence of Saddam Hussein. France and Germany stand against the Bush administration because they intend to stop this Pax Americana in its tracks if they can. They have seen militant fascism up close and personal before, and wish never to see it again.

 

Would that we Americans could be so wise.

 

-------

 

William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times bestselling author of two books - "War On Iraq" (with Scott Ritter) available now from Context Books, and "The Greatest Sedition is Silence," available in May 2003 from Pluto Press. He teaches high school in Boston, MA

[Soxplosion]

Once could go on and on but I think it is time to put G H W Bush and Bob Dole and everyone in the Bush adminsitration on trial for war crimes against humanity for the aid and assitance and support of Saddam Hussein.

Better yet, instead of putting his former helpers on trial for helping him, lets put him on trial for commiting the crimes he commited. That sounds much more logical to me...

[cwsox]

Psycho, I would love to see Saddam on trial. However, Bush pulled the US out of the world court/war crimes tribunal so we are left without an agency to try him. More short-sided Bush ineptness.

 

 

Ever wonder where Saddam got his weapons? How Rumsfeld toasted Saddam? A few links that answer those questions follow. My bet is all the pro war pro Bush 18-22 years olds, and others, will not read these because they are afraid of the truth. They can't handle the truth. They will look up a minor leagues rookie leaguers stats and the 8th round draft pick of the 1983 Portland Trail Blazers but not check out something that affects our nation. I will deeply respect anyone who does check all these links.

 

link 1

 

 

 

link 2

 

 

link 3

 

 

Link 4

[LDF]

and as i said, we are paying for our bad judgement now.

 

 

that doesn't exclude the fact that we need to do this. war has made of the strangest bedfellow. but with out the effort to improve the world, we may let another hilter take control and this time with weapons that can cause more destruction that will cost more lost of life.

[cwsox]

saddam is no Hitler, he is a petty tyrant. There were many options other than war and I have stated those enough.

 

The very people who made this situation should not be trusted to wage war to undo their past actions - when you have to go to war to drive attention away from your major, major big time f*** ups, you shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the decision making process. These same people are making short sided decision all over again and as their past decisions have come back to haunt us big time, so will the decisions they make now.

 

At the very least, we are running the best recruitment drive for al Queda possible. And at the very least, this administration should have been honest about their past miscalculations and stop the moral posturing. These people have made the worst decisions ever and share in the blood that Saddam has on his hands. And they are making the US less secure in the future just as their past actions have done.

[LDF]

saddam is no Hitler, he is a petty tyrant.  There were many options other than war and I have stated those enough.

 

The very people who made this situation should not be trusted to wage war to undo their past actions - when you have to go to war to drive attention away from your major, major big time f*** ups, you shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the decision making process.  These same people are making short sided decision all over again and as their past decisions have come back to haunt us big time, so will the decisions they make now.

 

At the very least, we are running the best recruitment drive for al Queda possible.  And at the very least, this administration should have been honest about their past miscalculations and stop the moral posturing.  These people have made the worst decisions ever and share in the blood that Saddam has on his hands.  And they are making the US less secure in the future just as their past actions have done.

in diverting attention from your f*** ups was perfected from the reagan adminstration and later by bush. so you are right there.

 

no matter what will happen, the arabs would never help anyone to overthrow anyone. you saw how many came to kuwatti help when they were invaded? none. it falls on us to keep the sanity of the world.

[bjmarte]

The first link and the fourth link are the same thing.

 

I'm not denying that we helped create a monster but the retelling of the tale can be slanted from any perspective at this point. I'll simply post links to the main pages for the sources for the first two stories and let readers decide whether or not they might be biased:

 

link 1 & 4 - Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq

 

link 2 - Common Dreams

 

I don't know anything about the Federation of American Scientists (source for link 3) and I don't have enough time to do any research on them but the page linked to is a series of transcripted speeches from Sen. Robert Byrd. Again, I'll leave it to the reader to research him and whether or not he is credible & unbiased.

[CubKilla]

I'm not denying that we helped create a monster but the retelling of the tale can be slanted from any perspective at this point.

I don't think anyone was bj but maybe I'm just on the subject.

 

I mean, if you want to get technical, the United States is probably the only country in the world that has ties to nearly every country on the globe..... whether their leaders are good, bad, or somewhere in between.