Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Bush at New Ruskin College

www.NewRuskinCollege.com

Lecture Notes: 06-10-05

He sends our soldiers off to war, and then he can not be bothered to make the case. No speeches. No report to the nation. No explanation. No leadership.

Why?

I told you on election day. He does not need us anymore.

“Never before in this country’s history has a president ordered American soldiers into battle, without fully explaining why they are asked to risk life and limb. One would never know from the administration’s public stance that senior officials, including the President, believe that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks.

Iraq was indeed involved in those assaults. There is considerable information to that effect, described in this piece and elsewhere. They include Iraqi documents discovered by U.S. forces in Baghdad that U.S. officials have not made public.

We are now engaged in the most difficult military conflict this country has fought in thirty years. Even before the fiasco at Abu Ghraib became widely known, both the American public and international opinion were increasingly skeptical of U.S. war aims.

In taking on and eliminating the Iraqi regime, Bush corrected a policy blunder of historic proportions. His decision for war was both courageous and necessary. Now, he needs to make it clear just why that decision was made.” (
http://www.mail-archive.com/sam11@erols.com/msg00295.html )

----- Laurie Mylroie was adviser on Iraq to the 1992 campaign of Bill Clinton and is the author of Bush vs. the Beltway: How the CIA and the State Department tried to Stop the War on Terror. (HarperCollins) She can be reached through www.benadorassociates.com.


Middle East NewsYemen: Three former Iraqi intelligence face trialMay 29, 2005, 10:59 GMT
(
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/middleeast/article_1003043.php/Yemen_Three_former_Iraqi_intelligence_face_trial )

SANAA, Yemen (UPI) -- Yemeni judicial sources said Sunday three Iraqi intelligence officers from the former Saddam Hussein regime are to be tried in a terrorism court.
A court official said the three men will be tried next week on charges of involvement in plotting to blow up the American and British embassies in Sanaa.

On condition of anonymity, he said the former intelligence officers were accused of forming "an armed gang aimed at destabilizing the security of the country and planning terrorism acts against foreign targets."

The source said Yemeni authorities arrested the three Iraqis two years ago and found plans for their attacks, official documents issued by the former Iraqi regime and explosives.

The official did not say why the suspects had been held without trial for the past two years.

Copyright 2005 by United Press International

Edward J. Epstein


CNSNews.com Publishes Iraqi Intelligence Docs By David Thibault CNSNews.com Managing Editor October 11, 2004 . . . But in light of other assertions on Wednesday, widely reported by the mainstream media, that Saddam did not pose any significant threat prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, we felt it was time to publish as many of the Iraqi intelligence documents as possible. What follows are copies of 30 of the 42 pages that are in our possession. Pages 29 through 40 were excluded because they replicate, though in a different person's handwriting, earlier documents. Upon clicking on the individual pages of Arabic documents, readers will have an opportunity to click on the unedited English translation of those documents. We hope this serves to further illuminate a very important element of the ongoing debate.

Muhammad Atta, 33, an Egyptian, the leader of a 20-member group that committed the attack against the United States in September 2001 that left nearly 3,000 dead in its wake, flew to Prague for the first time on May 30, 2000. He had applied for a visa four days earlier and sat on a plane in Hamburg, although his application had not yet been acted on, and he must have known that Czech officials would not admit him to Czech territory. And, indeed, they didnt: Atta spent six hours in the duty-free zone of the Prague airport and then flew back to Germany.

Saddam Hussein's spies planned a wide-ranging scheme to bribe members of the French political elite in the run-up to the Anglo-American invasion, including an offer to help fund President Jacques Chirac's 2002 re-election campaign.

Beheading suspects 'led by Saddam's nephew' Luke Harding in Baghdad Saturday May 22, 2004 The Guardian The mystery of who killed Nick Berg, the freelance contractor beheaded on video, took a new twist last night when Iraqi police claimed they had arrested four suspects with links to Saddam Hussein's family. Iraqi security officials said Berg's alleged killers were part of a group led by a close relative of Saddam - his nephew Yasser al-Sabawi. The men were seized a week ago after a tip-off, they said. All were former members of the Fedayeen Saddam, the para military group notorious for its loyalty to Iraq's ex-president.

Wall Street Journal February 7, 2005 REVIEW & OUTLOOK Warning to Damascus Among the notable parts of President Bush's State of the Union speech last week was its blunt warning to Syria, next door enemy of free Iraq. "Syria still allows its territory, and parts of Lebanon, to be used by terrorists who seek to destroy every chance of peace in the region," Mr. Bush said. "We expect the Syrian government to end all support for terror and open the door to freedom." Let's hope the President finally means it, because this is only the latest U.S. warning to Damascus since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003. Colin Powell visited Bashar Assad soon thereafter -- despite Pentagon objections that the Syrian dictator would consider it a sign of U.S. weakness. And sure enough, Syria has been adding to our troubles in Iraq ever since.

<<>> New York Times June 5, 2005 U.S. Uncovers Vast Hide-Out of Iraqi Rebels By EDWARD WONG BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 4 - American marines have discovered an elaborate series of underground bunkers used recently by insurgents in central Iraq, with heavy weapons, a kitchen and fresh food, furnished living quarters, showers and even a working air-conditioner, the military said Saturday.

Sure you have screwed me. But look: you are screwing over our troops too!

You are going to let the Syrian kill our young people in Iraq because the President is incapable of rallying the nation. Incapable? Or he just can not be bothered?

With me I have heard one excuse after another. I am “unimportant.” I should not have kept a journal. I am too “controversial,” that must be why these rich powerful people decided to interfere with my employment, spy on me, harasse me, torment, oppressed for the last fifteen years. I should have expected all this when I wrote those letters to the Senate. “Words have consequences.”

OK

So what did those young soldiers whom you sent to Iraq do to deserve this treatment? Why are you ignoring them? Why will Mr. Bush not restate the case for Iraq? Why will he not speak?

The Army can not meet the enlistment quota, and yet the President, the Commander in Chief, can not be bothered to speak to the nation. The Syrian are killing them and he can not . . .

But see how this is only one case.

Have you ever heard the Republican speak out against the exclusionary zoning? Building codes designed to drive up the cost of housing? Any criticism? Ever just one thing to expand opportunity? Have they ever questioned the corruption around the public highway billion dollar bureaucracy? They say they support vouchers in education but now with the House, and Senate, and the White House (sort of), even now they do not even mention vouchers. No Open University of the US.

This President supports racial quotas, supports “open borders,” failed to establish a new Iraqi government because he did not want to “impose” a government, refused to accept the surrender of the old Iraqi army, then disbanded it but failed to provide any alternative, no civil conservation corps. or do anything, anything at all, will not even now speak out . . . review the evidence . . . Oh, but he does think the Patriot Act should be made permanent . . . God! What folly . . . he opposes stem cell research because some nucleuses when taken from their cells might be “destroyed.”

Nucleuses!

When I blow my brains out in front of the KQED building three trillion cellular nucleuses will be destroyed.

But then I think: I am not alone.

You have betrayed our young people in Iraq too.

I am in good company.

“Death is perfectly safe.”
---- Stephen Levine, A Year To Live



From: The Age
Feb 1 2003
(
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/01/31/1043804523375.html?oneclick=true)

Ramzi Yousef is serving 240 years in a US prison for masterminding the 1993 attacks. Raised in Kuwait, he is known to have collaborated with Iraq during the occupation of Kuwait.

Yousef - known as "the chemist" - became crucial to al Qaeda's spread into Asia, setting up links as early as 1989 with Abu Sayyaf extremists in the Philippines.
When police in the Philippines arrested nine members of Abu Sayyaf in 1995, they identified six of the nine as Iraqi agents. They believed this cell had operated under instructions from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, one of bin Laden's senior lieutenants.

In September, 1992, Yousef travelled to the US on an Iraqi visa, and under a false identity. He was granted asylum after claiming to have been beaten by Iraqi soldiers.

Six months later, he fled, having constructed the truck bomb that fellow Islamic extremists drove into the basement of the trade centre. While in hiding in Manila, he then drew up plans to bomb 11 American passenger airliners over the Pacific.

The plot misfired, and in 1995 he was arrested in Islamabad, near the Iraqi embassy, and handed over to the US.

An accomplice of Yousef in the World Trade Centre bombing was Mohammed Salameh, a Palestinian. His maternal uncle, Kadri Abu Bakr, was jailed for 18 years in Israel for terrorism, before being deported.
Kadri took up residence in Baghdad, becoming second-in-charge of the so-called "Western Sector", a PLO offshoot operating under Iraq's direct influence.
Western intelligence sources have claimed Kadri took calls from a dull-witted nephew in the lead-up to the WTC bombing. [Calls which are monitored by Iraq’s police state security.]

A third co-conspirator in 1993 was Ahmed Rahman Yasin. After the bombing, he fled the US to Jordan. He now works in Iraq for the Saddam Government.
Then, there is Hikmat Shakir, linked to a host of terrorist plots, including the first WTC bombing, and the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen. He is being sought by US authorities as one of the planners of September 11.

Shakir is an Iraqi, aged in his late 30s. He, too, has spent time in this region, attending the al Qaeda summit in Kuala Lumpur in January, 2000. Today, he is believed to be in Baghdad, out of reach of international police.

Another prominent name is Omar al-Faruq, arrested last year in Indonesia and now in US custody. An Iraqi, born Mahmoud Ahmad Mohammed Ahmad, he, too, has travelled on false Kuwaiti passports.


From:
(
http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/ops/911-key.htm)

Hambali (Riduan Isamuddin)Al Qaeda's success in fostering terrorism in Southeast Asia stems largely from its close relationship with Jemaah Islamiah (JI). In that relationship, Hambali became the key coordinator.

In addition to staging actual terrorist attacks in partnership with al Qaeda, Hambali and JI assisted al Qaeda operatives passing through Kuala Lumpur. One important occasion was in December 1999-January 2000. Hambali accommodated KSM's requests to help several veterans whom KSM had just finished training in Karachi. They included Tawfiq bin Attash, also known as Khallad, who later would help bomb the USS Cole, and future 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar. Hambali arranged lodging for them and helped them purchase airline tickets for their onward travel. Later that year, Hambali and his crew would provide accommodations and other assistance (including information on flight schools and help in acquiring ammonium nitrate) for Zacarias Moussaoui, an al Qaeda operative sent to Malaysia by Atef and KSM.


Volcker: U.S. Economic Crisis Imminent NewsMax.com Wires Friday, June 10, 2005 Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker said he doesn't see how the U.S. can keep borrowing and consuming while letting foreign countries do all the producing. It's a recipe for American economic disaster. On Thursday the Wall Street Journal reported bluntly that "Mr. Volcker thinks a crisis is likely." Volcker believes that investor confidence could fade "at some point," he said, with "damaging volatility in both exchange markets and interest rates."

After Britain reforms its roads will the USA or Britain be more Market oriented?: Official research suggests national road pricing could increase the capacity of Britain's network by as much as 40 per cent at a stroke. (Drudge)

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