The burgeoning war on terror is
doing for the police state what federal officials, in the past,
have pursued following dubious domestic terrorist attacks but
have been unable to deliver because patriotic Americans have roundly
rejected it.September 2, 2002
September 9, 2002
September 16, 2002
September 23, 2002
September 30, 2002
Unable to ignore the obvious signs of rising anti-Americanism, mainstream publications are catching up with AFP.
In a breakthrough for the mainstream media, USA Today examined why the sympathy and support lavished upon the United States by Europe after the terrorist attacks has turned to anger and detachment in a lengthy page on story Aug.14.
In Europe, "politicians ferociously attack U.S. foreign policies, especially the Bush administration plans to attack Iraq," the paper said. "And regular citizens launch into tirades with American friends and visitors.
USA Today continues:
In Britain, the United State's staunchest friend, snide remarks and downright animosity greet many Americans. It's not just religious radicals and terrorists who resent the United States. ‘Now, it's everyone,' says Allyson Stewart-Allen, a consultant from California who has lived in London 15 years.
"Many are enraged by...what is widely regarded abroad as one-sided support for Israel and it's prime minister, Ariel Sharon."
It quotes Mary Kaldor, a London-based scholar on international relations: "My sense is that much of the rampant anti-Americanism we see now is very much linked to a war with Iraq and the Israel-Palestine issue."
Also quoted is Robert Kagen's article in Policy Review magazine saying Europeans have "come to view the United States simply as a rogue colossus, in many respects a bigger threat to their Pacific ideals than Iraq or Iran.
And Tiny Waslandek, a social worker in Amsterdam: "Why do people attack Americans? Because they have a big mouth and they mind everybody's business."
"Secret polls commissioned by British Prime Minister Tony Blair reveal ‘spectacular unpopularity' for President Bush among voters here," USA Today reported.
It noted that the United States has established the Office of Global Communications to enhance the nation's image around the world. The House has approved spending $225 million on cultural and information programs aimed mostly at Muslim countries.
"Meanwhile, the Council on Foreign Relations simultaneously issued a biting report warning the Bush administration that it urgently needs to upgrade its efforts at public diplomacy to counteract the country's ‘shaky' image abroad," USA Today reported.
It quotes Peter Peterson, chairman of the CFR which operates as the propaganda ministry for Bilderberg and the Trilateral Commission:
"Around the world, from the Western Europe to the Far East, many see the United States as arrogant, hypocritical, self-absorbed, self-indulgent and contemptuous of others.
"This is not a Muslim country issue," Peterson said.
"It has metastasized to the rest of the world and includes
some of our closest European allies."
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A former FBI senior agent says contrived terrorist bombings have been exploited to open the door to freedom-robbing legislation.
The burgeoning war on terror is
doing for the police state what federal officials, in the past,
have pursued following dubious domestic terrorist attacks but
have been unable to deliver because patriotic Americans have roundly
rejected it.
Attorneys for the Department of Justice wrote proposed anti-terrorism legislation in the mid 1980s. One of the authors, a female attorney, publicly stated people would have to be killed before Congress would pass it.
On Feb. 26, 1993, a car bomb destroyed portions of the World Trade Center in New York.
According to an Oct. 28, 1993 report in The New York Times, the FBI not only knew in advance of the bombing, it furnished the ingredients for the bomb. The Times described an FBI sting operation in which agents tried to nail the bombers in the act, but moved too late.
Not enough deaths resulted to arouse the ire of Congress and pass so-called anti-terrorism legislation.
On April 19, 1995, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City, Okla., was bombed by Timothy McVeigh, who reportedly used a fertilizer car bomb.
However, independent investigators have shown that besides McVeigh, there were at least 11 others suspected to have been involved including unidentified individuals from the Middle East.
A year later, anti-terrorism legislation was passed that took away many constitutional rights and civil liberties, such as indiscriminate wire taps. In some instances, the rights of the accused to face his accuser were lost. One of the chief sponsors of that legislation was then - Sen. John Ashcroft (R-Mo.), not the attorney general responsible for enforcing the legislation that was crafted in his name.
After two planes flew into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 witnesses say they saw and heard systematic, simultaneous explosions on the top floors of the towers before the buildings collapsed into a pile of rubble - raising the specter that more than just the two planes and the resulting damage caused the building to collapse. This means, of course, that there were either additional bombs inside the WTC buildings or that some outside force was used to bring the buildings down.
Following that terrifying and the cathartic event, citizens are now demanding more protections.
Not surprisingly, Congress and the White House are pressing for more stringent anti-terrorism measures including establishing a massive Homeland Security Department, initiating programs such as having one on every 10 Americans act as a "snitch" and allowing military personnel to enforce laws against the civilian population, in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.
A reliable source has advised that accused 9-11 mastermind Osama bin Laden met with CIA representatives around July 4, 2001, in Dubai.
The common denominator in these terrorist attacks is the Middle East connection. Did our intelligence agencies know in advance of these attacks?
Should our intelligence agencies have known in advance of these attacks? Yes.
Did our intelligence agencies directly of indirectly participate in these terrorist attacks? I suspect so.
Did these terrorist attacks occur in order to take away many
of our civil liberties and constitutional rights, in an effort
to more effectively control the population? I believe so.
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A press briefing drew together experts on Iraq to discuss why it is wrong to be talking of war when no case for war has ever been made.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) took a courageous stand against waging war on Iraq by holding a press briefing Aug. 20 where he and several experts debunked the Bush administration's claim that Iraq is building a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction that it intends to use against the United States.
"I am opposed to war in Iraq," said Kucinich. "There's been no credible information linking the Iraqi regime to the Sept. 11 attack or the anthrax attack. There's been little information concerning Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction or the capability or intent to use the weapons...War with Iraq is neither desirable nor inevitable."
Former chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq, Scott Ritter, stood by Kucinich, questioning how the administration could be calling for war in the absence of compelling evidence showing Iraqis were amassing biological and chemical weapons.
"This has less to do with
national security and more to do with domestic American politics,"
said Ritter. "We have allowed a handful of people to hijack
the national security policy mechanisms of the United States to
pursue their own ideologically driven political ambitions. This
is not a reason to go to war...Iraq has not been found to pose
a threat...If we are to fight this war we must ascertain a threat
from Saddam Hussein."
The "ideologically driven political ambitions" refers to "political investments" made by President Bush and other politicians, who are staking their reputations and careers on taking down Saddam Hussein's regime.
"By demonizing Saddam Hussein, calling him the Middle Eastern Adolf Hitler, the personification of evil, they have removed any other options than confrontation," said Ritter.
Ritter asked secretary of State Donald Runsfeld to "put the cards on the table and back up" his claims that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction or even that he is pursuing such weapons.
"No credible factual information has been brought forward to substantiate Iraq's possession of or attempts to re-acquire weapons of mass destruction today," said Ritter. "We cannot go to war based on rumor, we cannot go to war based on speculation. Before we send tens of thousands of Americans off to fight, kill and be killed in our name we have to be absolutely certain that there is a threat that is worthy of war, worthy of sacrifice."
In 1998, UN weapons inspectors had reported that 90 to 95 percent of Iraq had been disarmed, Ritter said.
"Included in this figure are all of the factories used by Iraq to produce weapons of mass destruction, all of the production equipment, and the vast majority of the products produced by those factories. Iraq was fundamentally disarmed, qualitatively disarmed," said Ritter.
Ritter also lamented over the myth that inspectors were kicked out by Iraq. It was the United States that pulled inspectors from Iraq just before U.S. fighter jets attacked in "Operation Desert Fox," said Ritter.
The second speaker, Phylis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington think tank, and author of several books, echoed Ritter's contention.
"The notion of a pre-emptive strike is not anything that is allowable by international law," said Bennis "International law would be massively violated by a U.S. attack of Iraq. Article 51 of the UN charter allows for self-defense for a nation to use unilateral force if an armed attack occurs. Iraq has not attacked us. There has been no armed attack...there must be a rational; and we don't have that.
"If we are what we claim to be, and that is a nation of law, we cannot act like a rogue state ourselves. If we do not accept as legitimate international law, how can we expect other nations too?" asked Bennis.
The entire world is opposed to an American war against Iraq - even Kuwait, the one country that would seem to profit from the removal of Hussein, said Bennis.
One of the primary platforms that will determine Germany‘s upcoming presidential election is who will oppose the united States war in Iraq the most, she said.
"Across the world we do not have allies," said Bennis. "Do we believe that we will be safer by imposing a coerced coalition on the world, a coalition that is not supported by the people of any country? War in Iraq will further destabilize an already boiling region.
"If we go to a full scale war now we could be risking our own position in the world, we would be antagonizing our friends and allies around the world," said Bennis "and it puts ordinary Americans at risk."
It puts Americans at risk because the United States is seen in the context of a democratic state, where people rule, and allow or disallow issues like war, said Bennis. Every American would be a representative of a rogue state that attacks at will.
Several alternative options to war were presented by the third speaker, Dr. David Cortright, president of the Fourth Freedom Forum and member of several peace organizations.
"We are going to make the terrorist threat worse in two ways," said Cortright. "In one way we will be a western country attacking and occupying an Arab nation, and it will be like a recruiting poster for suicide bombers and political dissidents. It will also undermine the international cooperation against terrorism.
"There are alternative means of addressing our security concerns in Iraq," he said. "Our number one priority should be to get UN inspectors back into the country. Recent communication with Iraq has been clear, inspections could happen."
Iraq has said that it would permit weapons inspectors back into the country provided they would not gather intelligence for the United States or attempt to assassinate Saddam.
After the inspectors have finished and cleared Iraq, the sanctions against Iraq should also be lifted, said Cortright.
Canada has already offered to be a "neutral party" that would conduct weapons inspections and act as an impartial intermediary for action in Iraq.
Three other proposals for dealing with Iraq were enhanced military containment, limiting the amount of money that funnels into Iraq and supporting a democratic revolution by the people of Iraq.
Kucincih said he expects that several of his fellow congressmen
will also announce their opposition to war with Iraq when Congress
returns from its summer break.
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The America First Party adopted a plan for America that would make the Founding Fathers proud.
The America first Party adopted a platform at its founding convention that says that the Constitution prevails and not the whims of judges and the government.
Foreign policy, the party says, should only serve America's interests. The United States is a sovereign nation and the United Nations is a "hostile enemy," it says.
It calls for a crackdown on illegal aliens and for new strictions on legal immigration.
The party would protect American jobs with tariffs on imports, require a federal balanced budget and eliminate the income tax.
It would end abortions, noting that in "the American Holocaust" since Roe v. Wade "There have been 40 million unborn babies slaughtered.
Continuing with a 10th Amendment theme, the party calls for an end to all federal roles in public education and "strongly supports the traditional family as ordained by God" and "the restoration of God to the public square."
America first is "opposed to all so-called ‘hate laws'" or "thought" crimes and calls for the restoration of states's rights. It would eliminate the Federal Reserve Board and follow the constitution mandate that only Congress can coin money.
The fifth Amendment would be enforced, severely limiting the federal government's power to seize private property on "environmental" grounds. Treaties that conflict with the Constitution, including Kyoto, biodiversity and climate control, would be abandoned. It also proposes campaign and elections reforms that are free of First Amendment problems, such as having donors identified and requiring congressional candidates to have at least half of their contributions come from within their states.
"Interpreting the Constitution must be based on the Framers' precise words and the meaning intended at that time," the platform says. It "totally rejects the concept that the Constitution is a ‘living document' in which the meaning can be interpreted and altered as society changes."
It notes the amendment process for changing the Constitution.
"Any alliance, treaty or agreement that commits this nation to participate in foreign conflicts subverts our Constitution and the independence of this nation and is therefore illegal," it says. "The constitution delegates the authority and responsibility for the common defense and general welfare to the Congress - not the president."
The Constitution "does not provide any means for the president
to delegate this authority to any domestic or foreign person or
organization, as has happened with NATO and the UN forces of late,"
the platform says.
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The new America First Party was the topic of discussion on the Aug. 11 broadcast of Radio Free America, the weekly call-in talk forum sponsored by American Free Press with host Tom Valentine.
What follows is an edited transcription of the discussion. Valentine's questions start with a "Q" Responses by the America First Party representatives start with an "R". For more information on the party, you may call its too-free number at 1-866-767-8721 or go to its web site at www.americafirstparty.org.
The America First Party is now fully operational, as a result of its recent first-ever national convention.
Our National committee, which is a continuing body, was established back on April 20, just five days after we broke away from the reform Party.
We now have 19 state affiliates, plus we are organization in another 12 or 15 states. At this convention we adopted a constitution for the party, adopted a platform - nearly unanimously in all cases - and we also elected a complete set of officers and committee chairs.
At our first meeting we adopted a mission statement and we categorized our concerns into five areas: To preserve and protect our people and our sovereignty; to promote economic growth and independence; to encourage the traditional values of faith, family and responsibility; to ensure equality before the law and protecting those rights granted by the Creator; and to clean up our corrupted political system.
We organized our founding principles based on that. Our platform is divided into five sections titled in the same fashion.
We don't have an executive committee. We have an operating committee. We've put all the authority in the hands of the national committee, composed of representatives of the states. The operating committee is made up of the four officers - chair, vice chair, secretary, and treasurer - plus the chairs of each of our seven standing committees.
Eighteen of the 19 states that have affiliated with our party were represented at our convention. Michigan just organized and they weren't able to make it to the convention. We were completely united. Without sacrificing a vigorous debate we managed to get through our three day agenda in just over two days.
Most of the times that third parties get started up, it's during a presidential election year with a great deal of energy around a single candidate. We are starting in a non-presidential year. That's because our focus is not on personalities but on principles and returning our country to the right principles.
Q. Some people may ask why people should go to the America First Party when Howard Phillips already has the Constitution Party in place?
R. quite honestly, there's a great deal of similarity in our platforms. Many of our founding members, watching the Reform Party being destroyed from within, discussed the question of whether we should affiliate with the Constitution Party. In fact, many of us had actually been involved in the Constitution Party, but we felt that something new was needed.
Our attitude has always been that there are many fine people in the Constitution Party and we have great respect for Howard Phillips. However, when we looked at the with sober reflection, we found that the party didn't have forward momentum.
There are also people who have criticized the Constitution Party because they feel that it perhaps has too much of a religious overtone to it and I think we've struck the right tone there.
Our approach to the question of God and faith in a political party is that we feel as though the Founding got it right. They felt that our rights came from a creator and they relied upon divine providence when they pledged themselves to trust in God. We feel that to go any further and make the America First Party more sectarian is not appropriate in politics.
Q. What about the Libertarian Party?
R. Many of us have been involved in the Libertarian Party. However, the party's views on trade, immigration and other issues were incompatible.
Q. Why do you see the Republicans and the Democrats having failed America?
R. They adopted a notion of trade and foreign policy that has badly damaged our industries and our ability to protect our people.
We've got wide open borders that allow terrorists to come among us. The open borders allow our culture to be diminished and our language to be attacked and, quite frankly, they have not allowed us to absorb immigrants in a way that we did in the past, in a way that was healthy for this country.
They have entered into trade agreements but have not actually approved them in a constitutional way.
They've go troops - our sons and daughters - scattered throughout the world in 117 countries. We've had thousands of troops sitting between Israel and Ehypt in the Sinai desert for the last 22 years. I don't think those two countries are on the verge of going to war anytime soon. Why do we need a tripwire force there?
Q. There are 36,000 U.S. troops between North and South Korea. We're policing the world.
R. The real outrage about the Korean situation is the shameless way that both the Republicans and the Democrats have sold America out to the Red Chinese. There are technology transfers and an awful trade deficit that have helped build up the Red Army and the Chinese nuclear missile threat, all of which funnels into the North Korean destabilization of the regime.
Jim Traficant, who is our endorsed congressional candidate in the state of Ohio, was scheduled to be our keynote speaker, but he obviously wasn't able to be there in person. He did provide a 30-minute speech that he taped in Ohio before he was sentenced to jail.
Mr. Traficant laid it all out for us and talked about the threat of these bad trade deals and China.
Q. Traficant once stood on the floor of the house of Representatives and held up a pair of U.S. military boots that were made in Red China. That should have grabbed peoples' attention.
R. It's absolutely astounding. This is on top of the way that our national sovereignty, our jobs and our economic independence are being sold down the river. The American family is being sold down the river. The tax burden is so high that it has forced a major restructuring over the last 40 years. Both spouses now have to have extra money to pay for quality education because the public schools are going down the tubes. So at home and abroad we see an undermining of all the principles and values that have made this country great.
One of the things we call for in our platform is for the elimination of all income tax and all property tax and for replacing it with a simple sales tax, uniform across the board. That's also why we adopted a resolution in support of the fair tax.
We feel that it is not the business of the government to take care of everyone. Wh have a God-given responsibility to take care of each other, but we should do that through our families, our churches and out communities. It makes it very difficult on the American family to give to charity and to their churches when so much of our paycheck is taken away and paid out to causes that we do not support. If we were able to hold on to more of our money, we would be able to change that and channel it into those areas to take care of people.
The other thing about taxes involves the IRS and regulations upon business and deductibility that have totally destroyed and warped our marketplace. You have corporations, large and small, that spend so much time trying to juggle their resources and assets to try to minimize their tax exposure. It is said that 24 percent of the cost of a General Motors automobiles tied up in the tax system. We have adopted platform planks calling for the IRS to be ripped up at its roots.
Whether you believe the 16th Amendment was ever lawfully passed or not, it should still be legally expunged from the Constitution because an income tax is just fundamentally incompatible with the concepts of freedom and individual ism that the Founding Father had.
Q. You've also taken a strong stand against globalist policies that impede on American sovereignty.
R. We take a strong stand against the taking of American land by international organizations such as the United Nations, In fact, we've called for the expulsion of the United Nations from the United states and dropping U.S. membership in the UN.
One of the things that is disturbing about the UN is its callous disregard for human life. Our platform has a strong pro-life plank in it. Without the right to life, freedoms is meaningless.
We believe the framers of our nation were right when they talked about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We believe that all life is precious, from the preborn to the elderly and we take a strong stand on that.
We also have adopted a plank on adoption, making it easier for people to adopt children who need good homes.
We seek to overturn Roe v. Wade, The Supreme Court ruling that allows abortion. We do take a strong stand on that.
Education is a key value as well.
One of the things that has attracted a lot of people to the America First Party is the fact that the U.S. has an education system that both the Democrats and Republicans have signed on to: it's a federal system that keeps on taking more and more poser away from the parents and the local school districts, The result is a system that brainwashes the children into a culture built on bread, beer and circus instead of good solid values and skills they need to read and write and think clearly.
We're going to turn the Department of Education into a block grant program that would be phased out over a number of years. Almost half the money spent by Washington on education never leaves the District of Columbia since it is spent on the bureaucracy of the Department of Education.
You turn that into a block grant that diminishes over time and gives local people and schools control. When parents are involved, students succeed.
Any time the government takes over anything - including education - it is bloated and inefficient. Forty percent of the cost of elementary and secondary education is compliance with federal regulation.
Q. A strong educational system would make a strong America.
R. When we say that we put America first, we mean it when we are talking about jobs and American industry. We're firmly opposed to GATT, NAFTA, the World Trade Organization, the World court and all of those things.
We're not ashamed to be America chauvinists when it comes to the American economy. We think we should look out first for American jobs, American productivity. We've seen our heavy industry leave the country. We see our jobs going across the border to Mexico, especially industrial jobs. We believe in fair trade, not free trade, and we've adopted a strict "Buy American" policy in our platform that favors American goods and raised revenue by placing tariffs on imports.
Bear in mind that the corporations have bought their influence with the major parties. Another plank in our platform severely limits the way in which corporations can make contributions to candidates and to parties.
What our platform says in that the only people who should be permitted to campaign of political candidates are registered voters. Only registered voters should be permitted to influence the political process. We just don't believe when it comes to politics that corporations have First Amendment rights. They are not real people.
Roger Simmermaker, our Florida state chairman, has written a book showing how Americans can "Buy American." Year after year it gets more difficult, but that's our goal. We have some knowledgeable and tremendously talented people involved in our party, working to build a real choice for America.
The Democrats and Republicans have hundreds of millions of dollars of corporate money and foreign money. They can hire people to do their work to get them elected. We aim to elect patriots to office who are committed to our platform. That's why we want people who join our party to really get involved.
We have a candidate in New Jersey named Ken Feduniewicz. He's running in New Jersey's Third Congressional District. We have Jim Giles running in Mississippi, running in the Third District.
Our premiere candidate is, of course Rep. Jim Traficant, running as an independent but endorsed by the America First Party. In an amazing outpouring of support, even after he was indicted, the voters signed petitions to put him on the ballot.
The Youngstown Vindicator newspaper has been very hostile to Traficant, but they have conducted scientific polls and Traficant is getting better than 50 percent of the vote against both his Democratic and Republican challengers. The people in his district know him best and know the people who went against him to get him convicted. They know that he was railroaded and that he's done what's right for them in the past. We're hopeful for his chances in November.
If we are going to build a party, though, we also need some local candidates.
For example, we've got James Edwards, who is running for the state house of representatives in Tennessee in the 97th district around Memphis.
We've got Cameron Bates, a decorated police officer, who is running for city council in Port St. Lucie, Fla. Bates is the first third party candidate in the history of the AFL-CIO to get the AFL-CIO's endorsement. It's amazing. They even rejected the Democratic candidate and went with Bates because he's the best choice.
Q. What is the America First Part's policy toward the Federal Reserve System?
R. We have real problems with the Federal Reserve and call for its dissolution. The constitution doesn't give any power for a corporate entity such as the Federal Reserve banks to control our money supply. We want to see the return of U.S. Treasury Notes and the abolition of Federal Reserve Notes.
We take a very strong stand in favor of the Constitution and the reinstitution of all of the constitutional provisions, not just some of them, and especially those that are protected by the 10th Amendment. Restoring sound money and abolishing the Federal Reserve is high on our agenda.
One of the things that will happen if our tax policies are enacted is that, regardless of what the Federal Reserve does before we eliminate it, interest rates are going to go down automatically. We are going to see prices come down and the tax burden actually spread among all of the people instead of seeing a tax burden that makes serfs of some, welfare recipients of others, and criminals of all of us.
Q. The America First Party is taking a tough stand in opposition to the proposed U.S. war against Iraq.
R. One of the things the America First Party believes in is the advice given to us by our first president, George Washington, who admonished us not to have permanent alliances with other nations.
So we believe in a foreign policy that put America first and keeps America strong so that if anyone raises their hand against us, we are ready to massively retaliate to protect our people and our land. That doesn't mean going around trying to police the world and babysitting all of the Bickering parties.
In particular, we adopted a resolution making it very clear that at present that there is no reason to go to war with Iraq, unless the country of Iraq actually strikes at the American people.
In fact, if the president doesn't follow the Constitution and get a declaration of war from Congress - which is the only way that the Founding Fathers would permit this country to send troops to battle - we are going to call for his impeachment.
We're ready to die in the defense of our country and our freedom,
but we're not ready to die in the defense of other countries of
some vague foreign or internationalist scheme.
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Two unexplained "spikes" in the seismic record from Sept. 11 indicate huge bursts of energy shook the ground beneath the World Trade Center's twin towers immediately prior to the collapse.
American Free Press has learned of pools of "molten steel" found at the base of the collapsed twin towers weeks after the collapse. Although the energy source for these incredibly hot areas has yet to be explained, New York seismometers recorded huge bursts of energy, which caused unexplained seismic "spikes" at the beginning of each collapse.
These spikes suggest that massive underground explosions may have literally knocked the towers off their foundations, causing them to collapse.
In the basements of the collapsed towers, where the 47 central support columns connected with the bedrock, hot spots of "literally molten steel" were discovered more than a month after the collapse. Such persistent and intense residual heat, 70 feet below the surface, in an oxygen starved environment, could explain how these crucial structural supports failed.
Peter Tully, president of Tully Construction of Flushing, N.Y., told AFP that he saw pools of "literally molten steel" at the World Trade Center.
Tully was contracted after the Sept. 11 tragedy to remove the debris from the site.
Tully called Mark Loizeaux, president of Controlled Demolition, Inc. (CDI) of Phoenix, Md., for consultation about removing the debris. CDI calls itself "the innovator and global leader in the controlled demolition and implosion of structures."
Loizeaux, who cleaned up the bombed Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, arrived at the WTC site two days later and wrote the clean-up plan for the entire operation.
AFP asked Loizeaux about the report of molten steel on the site.
"Yes," he said, "hot spots of molten steel in the basements."
These incredibly hot areas were found "at the bottoms of the elevator shafts of the main towers, down seven [basement] levels," Loizeaux said.
The molten steel was found "three, four, and five weeks later, when the rubble was being removed," Loizeaux said. He said molten steel was also found at 7 WTC, which collapsed mysteriously in the late afternoon.
Construction steel has an extremely high melting point of about 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit.
Asked what could have caused such extreme heat, Tully said, "Think of the jet fuel."
Loizeaux told AFP that the steel-melting fires were fueled by "paper, carpet and other combustibles packed down the elevator shafts by the tower floors as they ‘pancaked' into the basement."
However, some independent investigators dispute this claim, saying kerosene-based jet fuel, paper, or the other combustibles normally found in the towers, cannot generate the heat required to melt steel, especially in an oxygen-poor environment like a deep basement.
Eric Hufschmid, author of a book about the WTC collapse, Painful Questions,* told AFP that due to the lack of oxygen, paper and other combustibles packed down at the bottom of elevator shafts would probably be "a smoky smoldering pile."
Experts disagree that jet-fuel or paper could generate such heat.
This is impossible, they say, because the maximum temperature that can be reached by hydrocarbons like jet-fuel burning in air is 1,520 degrees F. Because the WTC fires were fuel rich, as evidenced by the thick black smoke, it is argued that they did not reach this upper limit.
The hottest spots at the surface of the rubble, where abundant oxygen was available, were much cooler than the molten steel found in the basements.
Five days after the collapse, on Sept. 16, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) used an Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) to locate and measure the site's hot spots.
Dozens of hot spots were mapped, the hottest being in the east corner of the South Tower where a temperature of 1,377 degrees F was recorded.
This is, however, less than half as hot at the molten steel in the basement.
The foundations of the twin towers were 70 feet deep. At that level, 47 huge box columns, connected to the bedrock, supported the entire gravity load of the structures. The steel walls of these lower box columns were four inches thick.
Videos of the North Tower collapse show its communication mast falling first, indicating that the central support columns must have failed at the very beginning of the collapse. Loizeaux told AFP, "Everything went simultaneously."
"At 10:29 the entire top section of the North Tower had been severed from the base and began falling down," Hufschmid writes. "If the first event was the falling of a floor, how did that progress to the severing of hundreds of columns?"
Asked if the vertical support columns gave way before the connections between the floors and the columns, Ron Hamburger, a structural engineer with the FEMA assessment team said, "That's the $64,000 question."
Loizeaux said, "If I were to bring the towers down, I would put explosives in the basement to get the weight of the building to help collapse the structure."
SEISMIC ‘SPIKES'
Seismographs at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., 21 miles north of the WTC, recorded strange seismic activity on Sept. 11 that has still not been explained.
While the aircraft crashes caused minimal earth shaking, significant earthquakes with unusual spikes occurred at the beginning of each collapse.
The Palisades seismic data recorded a 2.1 magnitude earthquake during the 10-second collapse of the South Tower at 9:59:04 and a 2.3 quake during the 8-second collapse of the North Tower at 10:28:31.
However, the Palisades seismic record shows that—as the collapses began—a huge seismic "spike" marked the moment the greatest energy went into the ground. The strongest jolts were all registered at the beginning of the collapses, well before the falling debris struck the Earth.
These unexplained "spikes" in the seismic data lend credence to the theory that massive explosions at the base of the towers caused the collapses.
A "sharp spike of short duration" is how seismologist Thorne Lay of University of California at Santa Cruz told AFP an underground nuclear explosion appears on a seismograph.
The two unexplained spikes are more than 20 times the amplitude of the other seismic waves associated with the collapses and occurred in the East-West seismic recording as the buildings began to fall.
Experts cannot explain why the seismic waves peaked before the towers actually hit the ground.
Asked about these spikes, seismologist Arthur Lerner-Lam, director of Columbia University's Center for Hazards and Risk Research told AFP, "This is an element of current research and discussion. It is still being investigated."
Lerner-Lam told AFP that a 10-fold increase in wave amplitude indicates a 100-fold increase in energy released. These "short-period surface waves," reflect "the interaction between the ground and the building foundation," according to a report from Columbia Earth Institute.
"The seismic effects of the collapses are comparable to the explosions at a gasoline tank farm near Newark on Jan. 7, 1983," the Palisades Seismology Group reported on Sept. 14, 2001.
One of the seismologists, Won-Young Kim, told AFP that the Palisades seismographs register daily underground explosions from a quarry 20 miles away.
These blasts are caused by 80,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate and cause local earthquakes between Magnitude 1 and 2. Kim said the 1993 truck-bomb at the WTC did not register on the seismographs because it was "not coupled" to the ground.
"Only a small fraction of the energy from the collapsing towers was converted into ground motion," Lerner-Lam said. "The ground shaking that resulted from the collapse of the towers was extremely small."
Last November, Lerner-Lam said: "During the collapse, most of the energy of the falling debris was absorbed by the towers and the neighboring structures, converting them into rubble and dust or causing other damage—but not causing significant ground shaking."
Evidently, the energy source that shook the ground beneath the towers was many times more powerful than the total potential energy released by the falling mass of the towers. The question is: What was that energy source?
While steel is often tested for evidence of explosions, despite numerous eyewitness reports of explosions in the towers, the engineers involved in the FEMA-sponsored building assessment did no such tests.
Dr. W. Gene Corley, who investigated for the government the cause of the fire at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco and the Oklahoma City bombing, headed the FEMA-sponsored engineering assessment of the WTC collapse.
Corley told AFP that while some tests had been done on the 80 pieces of steel saved from the site, he said he did not know about tests that show if an explosion had affected the steel.
"I am not a metallurgist," Corley said.
Much of the structural steel from the WTC was sold to Alan D. Ratner of Metal Management of Newark, N.J., and the New York-based company Hugo Neu Schnitzer East.
Ratner, who heads the New Jersey branch of the Chicago-based company, sold the WTC steel to overseas companies, reportedly selling more than 50,000 tons of steel to a Shanghai steel company known as Baosteel for $120 per ton. Ratner paid about $70 per ton for the steel.
Other shipments of steel from the WTC went to India and other Asian ports.
Ratner came to Metal Management after spending years with a metal trading firm known as SimsMetal based out of Sydney, Australia.
* Painful Questions (Item# 1051, $20, 160 pages, softcover)
Is available from First Amendment Books, 645 Pennsylvania Avenue
SE, Suite 100, Washington D.C. 20003. Call 1-888-699-6397 to order
by Visa or MasterCard.
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We Americans like to think of ourselves as a strong and independent people who are not afraid to fight and even die for what we believe to be a right and just cause. If we were attacked, as we were at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, we naturally would follow the wishes of elected leaders and fight back.
Students of World War II are well aware that President Franklin d. Roosevelt went before Congress and asked for a declaration of war. Congress went along with his request and voted to involve the United States in a costly and bloody war.
FDR's request and the subsequent action taken be Congress were in accord with Article I, Sec.8 of the Constitution, which holds a declaration of war to be one of the powers of Congress acting on behalf of the people.
That was the last time that Congress declared war. All subsequent U.S. wars and armed interventions, such as in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, the Balkans and elsewhere have been contrived and unconstitutional.
Those erstwhile practitioners of a free and honest press, the various and sundry pundits and talking heads and opinion molders, assert that the president can, without consulting Congress, take the United States to war under that hoary pretext of national security.
They go further and aver that President Bush can follow the example of his father, former President George H.W. Bush, who sent American forces into Iraq to take out Saddam Hussein. But one unconstitutional action does not legitimize another unconstitutional action does not legitimize another unconstitutional act despite the fact the first would be "precedent setting."
In 1990 Saddam deplored the presence of the United States in the Gulf region. He also deplored the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. Furthermore, he charged that Israel and not Iraq was the nuclear and biological threat to the Middle East. Today, no so-called mainstream pundit or news analyst dares bring up this matter which is as relevant today as it was in 1990.
Iraq at that time was in a dispute with oil-rich Kuwait, situated at the head of the Persian Gulf, and charged that sheikdom with helping itself to oil belonging to Iraq in the 1980s. The then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and the then-Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, let it be known that the United states would defend Kuwait if Iraq attacked it.
The U.S. Ambassador to Iraq at the time, April Glaspie told Saddam Hussein that the United states didn't care on way or the other about conflicts between Arab states - meaning between Iraq and Kuwait.
Iraq attacked Kuwait. President Bush immediately dragged us into war. The rest is history.
The United States never vacated Iraq - the "no Fly" zones, for example. As recently as Aug. 20, U.S. fighter jets wounded a group of civilians in a bombing raid in southern Iraq. This has been going on regularly since the war ended in the early 1990s.
So getting rid of Saddam is America's top foreign policy priority. We the People are being convinced that war is inevitable, like it or not. Top officials in the Bush II government are asserting that if the United States attacks Iraq, we would suffer only a few thousand casualties - a small price to pay for national security. What nonsense.
If the United States were to take out Saddam, the consequences here at home would be horrific. Certainly, there would be a wave of terrorism unleashed against the United States.
Actually, we are unable to comprehend what might happen. A bad foreign policy begets bad consequences.
The latest pronouncement of Defense Secretary Donald Rumseld is that Saddam is in league with al Qaeda. This turn of policy is from the cardboard opposition of losers that make up the Iraqi National Congress.
However, many top Republicans disagree. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), who attended Bilderberg in 1999 and 2000, says: "Saddam in not in league with al Qaeda. Of course he cheers and encourages them. But I have not seen any intelligence that would lead me to connect Saddam Hussein with al Qaeda."
The race is on to propel America into war. Congress is afraid to assert its constitutional right to put a stop to this travesty for fear of offending Israel, which covets the territory and the oil of Iraq, and which poses as the ‘best ally" of the United States.
Nobody dares to ask just what the Iraqi government has done to harm the United States. Leaders like dick Cheney talk about the ominous threat Iraq and Saddam pose, but do not specify what he has done. The New York Times has editorially opined that Dubya and his war hawk advisors have yet to make a convincing case to the American people for an aggressive war against Iraq. Convincing how? With lies and double-talk?
As matters stand now, Congress is not about to challenge the irrational plans of the president and his lieutenants to unilaterally go to war against Iraq. The White House has decided that Saddam Hussein must go.
Oil-rich Iraq should be our friend. If we stopped the Iraq boycott, the cost of gasoline could fall to 75 cents per gallon, giving our economy a well-needed boost. Would this course of action be in the best interest of the United States? Of course.
The United States Might be mindful of the adage: "If you don't want to be stung by hornets, keep your hands out of a hornets' nest." Dubya is begging for trouble.
In other words, responsible and advantageous commerce with Iraq is laudable, but meddling in any country's internal affairs is foolhardy.
A wise foreign policy for the United states to follow is in the words of George Washington's Farewell Address: "The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relation, to have with them as little political connection as possible."
The father of our country further stated: "It is our true
policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of
the foreign world; so, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do
it."
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Like their pioneer ancestors, residents of a small western town saved themselves in defiance of federal bureaucrats.
Citizens of the small Arizona town of Clay Springs, in defiance of the federal government, have saved their homes from destruction by a raging wildfire. But their heroism came in violation of federal orders to retreat. Instead, 26 townsmen bulldozed part of a national forest to halt the flames and save their homes.
As the fire approached their town, 24 regular or deputized members of its volunteer fire department disobeyed federal fire commanders. They slipped past roadblocks and used bulldozers, chainsaws and fire hoses and managed to save all but three homes in their community.
The "Renegades," as they are now affectionately known, bulldozed a seven-mile-long firebreak through the tinderbox national forest. The National Forest Service could not have done this without conducting years of study on the potential impact on "endangered species."
A forest that is not burned over, however, is a better "habitat" for "endangered species" than one scorched by fire, locals pointed out.
"In an emergency situation, it can't be a democracy," the head of a federal incident-management team told one newspaper. "Somebody's got to be in charge. And true heroism comes through standing together. This little community tried to maintain its identity to a fault, to a detriment."
"I'm sure we did everything against their rules but our homes are safe," said a resident who used a borrowed bulldozer and what he had learned about fighting fires from a single course at a community college. He cleared tinderbox forests from around his hand-built log house.
There is no word on whether the Renegades will face charges for running the roadblocks and saving the forests.
"I'm going to take full responsibility for anything that was done," a Renegade told The Arizona Republic. "If I get thrown in jail, I'm still going to think I've done the right thing."
More than six million acres have burned this fire season—twice the normal rate—because, some charge, that environmental extremists have prevailed upon the courts and bureaucrats to prevent locals and lumber companies from thinning out smaller trees and clearing the underbrush that feed fires.
The Clinton administration blocked roads and prevented fire trucks from reaching the scene.
President Bush has said he will try to undo regulations preventing
local communities from taking steps to safeguard their homes from
forest fires.
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A former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says war with the sleeping dragon is becoming inevitable.
America could likely go to war against China in this decade, according to a number of experts including a member of the staff of President Ronald Reagan's National Security Council (NSC) who discussed the growing threat with American Free Press.
This coincides with a recent "Emergency Advisory" issued by retired Adm. Thomas Moorer, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reported NewsMax.com, an Internet news site.
Moorer warned that China is preparing for a major war with the United States in the next two years.
Moorer is viewed by his peers as one of the most capable chairmen of the Joint Chiefs. He said drastic military cuts made under President Bill Clinton, reducing overall strength by about one-half, have been viewed by Beijing as an invitation to invade Taiwan, just across the Formosa Strait from the mainland China.
Moorer led the U.S. military during the Vietnam War but became familiar with Chinese operations during World War II and the Korean War.
As commander of the Pacific Fleet and chief of naval operations he constantly monitored the Chinese military.
Since his retirement Moorer has continued to analyze the Chinese armed forces.
"He has no doubt that China in the near future, perhaps as early as the next two years, will try to take Taiwan and is prepared to precipitate a major, even nuclear, war with the U.S. to get its way," reported NewsMax.com. "In fact, China's leadership and official news outlets have repeatedly stated that not only is war with the U.S. ‘Inevitable' but also China will use nuclear weapons in such a war.
"I not only agree with Adm. Moorer's warning," the former NSC staffer told AfP, "but we had similar thoughts about the potential for a war with China at the NSC while we advised President Reagan on Asian affairs. The give-away of American nuclear and missile technology to the Red Chinese by the Clinton administration has simply allowed them to move up their schedule of aggression against Taiwan."
In his briefing, Moorer points ut America's vulnerability as a result of China's building bases at both ends of the Panama Canal and in the Bahamas - only 60 miles from Florida. This allows "it to covertly strike every U.S. city with atomic weapons delivered by its large arsenal of short- and medium-range missiles."
Moorer claims that China has plans to challenge America on
every continent by exploiting illegal immigration and arming Marxist
guerrillas in Central America. Moorer says he is concerned that
the Chinese have been able to infiltrate the United States with
a highly effective "fifth Column" now already largely
in place.
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Hundreds of thousands of patriots are expected at massive war protests in Washington, San Francisco and other cities.
Former Attorney General Ransey Clark returned from Iraq Sept. 4 to join a broad coalition of Americans in calling for massive war protests.
Demonstrations are planned for Saturday, Oct. 26 - the anniversary of the signing of the Patriot Act - in Washington, San Francisco and other cities. Sponsors said they expect protests in Paris, London, Berlin and other European capitals.
Clark, a pacifist since the Vietnam War who served under President Lyndon Johnson, said Americans support the plan for attacking Iraq because they lack "access to information."
In stressing his opposition to President Bush's planned invasion, Clark noted that the United States' war on Iraq has persisted since Bush the Elder's Desert Storm.
"We attack Iraq every day and scores are killed, sometimes hundreds," Clark said.
Clark told of viewing the results of America's embargo on Iraq: high mortality in the entire population - especially the young and old - and widespread disease due to the lack of medicines and hunger.
Especially chilling was Clark's report that virtually all surgery in Iraq is performed without anesthesia. Patients scream in pain untill they pass out or lapse into often fatal comas.
NO WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
Clark and other speakers said Iraq has no weapons on mass destruction not the ability to deliver them - the main rationale of the Bush administration for a "preemptive strike."
Iraq is "totally disarmed and has no weapons of mass destruction or means of delivering them," said Art Laffin, a Dorothy Day Catholic Worker. The impending war is "about controlling oil."
Numerous organizations are sponsoring the demonstrations under a coalition formed by International ANSWER, which is an acronym for Act Now to Stop the War and End Racism. ANSWER has offices in New York and Washington.
"The drumbeat of war is driven by profits and politics,"
said Mahdi Bray of ANSWER.
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Mass immigration may now be the biggest threat to U.S. security.
With one illegal immigrant entering the United States every minute every day. Approximately one half million have entered America since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon Sept. 11, 2001
This makes unbridled immigration the most serious threat to U.S. national security.
Despite this, the bush administration is seeking to extend the temporary renewal of section 245(I) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, approved last year, legalizing some 900,000 illegal immigrants without adequate background checks or health checks.
Less than two weeks before the terror attacks in New York and Washington, the State Department had issued new visas to more than 140,000 foreigners who entered the United States from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, India Nepal and Bangladesh - all countries currently plagued by chaos and violent internal rebellions.
However, most illegal immigrants travel from Mexico across America's southern border. The Mexican government estimates that their entry into the United States will continue at a rage of between 3.5 and 5 million people per decade until at least 2030.
The Mexican government has also attempted to undermine U.S. immigration law by issuing "consular-cards" at their embassy in Washington and consulates throughout America. Mexican officials are urging U.S. banks, police, public authorities and state motor vehicle registration offices to honor these cards as forms of identification. This would allow the illegals to receive many of the same privileges as U.S. citizens.
According to Border Patrol sources, within the past few months there have been 20 incursions by Mexican troops into U.S. territory. They claim to be pursuing smugglers. However, Border Patrol officers will say "off-the-record" that they are more likely to be protecting drug smugglers than trying to detain them.
Thanks to mass immigration, America has one of the highest population growth rates among industrialized countries, growing at a rate of 13 percent between 1990 and 2000.
The 2000 Census showed that, in a decade, America's population had increased by 32.7 million which was attributed to immigration.
"Immigration accounted for 90 percent of population growth in California and Texas and for 100 percent in Florida and New York in the past decade," according to the Washington-based Population-Environment Balance, an immigration reform group.
According to the group, America will be forced to cease exporting food by 2030 in order to feed it's growing population.
It warns: "If nations bid up the price of food, some Americans will find themselves unable to afford the varied diet that is now almost taken for granted. The U.S. will have to forego approximately $4 billion a year from food export sales at today's prices or its own people will increasingly do without."
According to Population-Environment Balance, "On the average, immigration's net cost to U.S. taxpayers was $70 billion in 1997. If current trends continue, the costs for the 1998-2007 decade will be $932 billion, over $93 billion per year.
A total of 2.3 million American workers have been out of work as a direct result of unfettered mass immigration since 1996. U.S. workers actually lose $133 billion annually because of job displacement and wage depression caused by mass immigration.
For each person added to the U.S. population, reports Population-Environment Balance, about one acre of farm land or wild land is lost, resulting in a total yearly loss of three million acres.
"If we wish to preserve any reasonable standard of living and quality of life for ourselves and future generations," the group says, "we can no longer afford to absorb the world's burgeoning population, which expands by over 80 million a year. Immigration-driven population growth is the primary cause of sprawl which devours the best farmland, and causes the incessant depletion of natural open space from the vast and beautiful American landscape, the increase pollution of our air and water supply, wage depression of American workers, overcrowding of schools and traffic congestion."
Balance is calling for a moratorium on all immigration in excess
of 100,000 per year, which would make the stabilization of America's
population possible.
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An effort to save America's steel industry is gaining ground in Congress.
The Steel Industry Legacy Relief Act (H.R. 4646) took a step forward Sept. 10 when hearings were conducted by a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee.
"It is imperative to pass H.R. 46436 because American steelworkers are suffering through no fault of their own," Rep. Pete Visclosky (D-Ind.) said after the hearing. Visclosky is author of the bill sponsored by Reps. John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Ray LaHood (R-Ill.
Similar legislation, sponsored by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) is pending in the Senate.
"For many years, our government has failed to stop illegally traded foreign steel from flooding our market and more than 125,000 steelworkers lost their jobs or health benefits as a result," said Visclosky, who is also vice chairman of the Congressional Steel Caucus. "We must take action to right this wrong and help the industry survive."
He said the legislation would save jobs, help retired steelworkers and bolster national defense.
With the Bush administration granting 727 exclusions thus far to the tariffs it imposed on March 5, approximately one-fourth of foreign steel suppliers have been allowed back into the U.S. market free and clear, he said.
"The Bush administration has called upon the steel industry to consolidate, but the loosening of the tariffs can only hamper that effort," Visclosky said. "If we are to save steelworker jobs, we must not allow the domestic steel industry to drown once again in a flood of illegally imported steel."
The legislation would also make it easier for steel mills to consolidate into larger, more efficient operations, he said.
The local industry would have "first refusal" rights to buy when a distressed steel mill is sold.
It would make health care plans available to retired steelworkers who lost their benefits when their companies folded.
Free trade policies pursued by Washington are destroying American manufacturing. However, economic nationalists contend that tariffs on imports are the best defense as they even the playing field. Tariffs increase the price of imports and prevent multinational companies from being able to dump cheap products in the United States.
They also provide a great source of government revenue, taking
the burden off hardworking American taxpayers.
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At least one congressman has the guts to question the Bush administration's crusade to "Get Saddam."
For weeks I have been arguing that congress needs to debate the wisdom of a war in Iraq. Recently I gave a speech before the House of Representatives outlining why I believe such a war would be exceedingly unwise.
First, there are practical military reasons not to initiate a war in Iraq. Our military has been severely weakened over the last decade. Conservative estimates call for 200,000 troops to mount a successful invasion of Iraq. Placing 200,000 soldiers in Iraq - with hundreds of thousands already deployed around the globe - will further dilute our ability to defend our own shores.
Remember, we do not know exactly how long this conflict will last. It could be a six-day war, a six-month war, or six years. We ought to listen to the generals and other military experts, including Colin Powell, Brent Scowcroft, Antony Zinne, and Norman Schwarzkopf, who are now advising us NOT to go to war. They under that our troops have been spread to thin around the world, and it is dangerous from a purely military standpoint to go to war today.
There are economic reasons to avoid this war. We can do serious damage to our already faltering economy. An invasion of Iraq may well cost over a hundred billion dollars especially when we cannot know the outcome of duration of the conflict. Our National debt is increasing at a rate of over $450 billion yearly, yet we are talking about spending a hundred billion dollars pursuing another nation-building adventure in Iraq. What will happen to the economy if oil skyrockets to $30 a barrel and lines from at gas stations? Will the current recession deepen? What will happen to the deficit?
We must not kid ourselves about the economic ramifications.
There are clear philosophical reasons for those who believe
in limited government to oppose this war.
Ware is the health of the state," as the saying goes. War
necessarily means more power is given to the state. This additional
power always results in a loss of liberty. Many of the worst government
programs of the 20th century began during wartime "emergencies"
and were never abolished. War and big government go hand in hand,
but we should be striving for peace and freedom.
Finally, there is a compelling moral argument against war in Iraq. Military force is justified only in self-defense; naked aggression is the province of dictators and rogue states. This is the danger of a new "preemptive first strike" doctrine. America is the most moral nation on Earth, hounded on moral principles, and we must apply moral principles when deciding to use military force.
If we once again wage war without a clear declaratin of war by Congress, as we have done on so many occasions since World War II, we futher damage the Constioution. I fear we will engage our troops in a haphazard way, by executive order, or even by begging permission form the anti-American United Nations. This haphazard approach, combined with the lack of a clearly defined goal for victory, makes it almost inevitable that true victory will not come. When Congress evades its responsibilities and allows war to be declared by the president of an international body, it ceases to represent the very people for whom the war supposedly will be fought.
Ron Paul, M.D., represents the 14th district of Texas in
Congress.
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Complaints that U.S. armed forces could be facing another Vietnam if we go to war with Iraq suggest that soldiers are aware of the civilian leadership's treachery.
"If the Israelis aren't secure enough to make a pre-emptive strike on Iraq, why should we be? "The ones most eager for it are the ones who've never seen war, like Dick Perle and Paul Wolfowitz." "If we go after Iraq, Saddam will throw everything at us including the kitchen sink."
The talking points listed above are not excerpts from commentaries published in the independent media or even from the more reasonable talking heads on television. They are being said by America's troops - the soldiers and officers who will be charged with fighting the war with Iraq if the Bush administration calls for it.
According to the reports of civilians working in American military installations, the men and women of our armed forces in all ranks are privately expressing their reservations about the prospect of an American invasion of Iraq.
Civilian employees who spoke to AFP say that the most hawkish discussions heard on military occupation for years to come.
However, recent history suggests that the military is increasingly resisting pressure to spread U.S. forces around the world.
Reports in the mainstream press note that America's elite soldiers are complaining about being tasked with searching caves and holes in Afghanistan for suspected terrorists who they contend have long since left the region.
Many have also expressed concern about the increasing bias against Islamic nations in general and Arabs in particular following 9-11.
"If we are going to have any kind of coordinated counter-terrorist campaign we must have a lot of friends in the Islamic world," said Ernest Evans, a political science professor at Kansas city Community College who frequently lectures at Fort Leavenworth on counter-terrorist strategy. "People at the fort have served all over the world, we have over 100 foreign officers, several from Islamic countries."
When asked how accurate the portrayal of military life has been that has frequented the news in the past year, Evans maintained that military morale remains high.
"There are things at the fort that aren't talked about on the news that are vitally important to us and to the whole prospect of an invasion," Evans said. "A major at the fort will be totally oblivious to a lecture on the history of neo-conservatism and the political clique it represents, but they totally understand the notion of the loudest calls for war coming from men who have never served."
Evans said that the attitude of military officials toward the
impending war with Iraq and the motivation behind it can be best
summed up by the following quote: "If the civilian leadership
wants us to attack Iraq, we'll attack Iraq. But if it blows up
in their face, don't leave us holding the bag. The military community
still remembers Vietnam."
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American public school children have been deliberately "dombed down" and indoctrinated - rather than educated - to accept the global plantation and the dissolutions of American sovereignty and liberty. That's the shocking thesis put forth in a carefully-documented 750-page volume entitled The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, by Charlotte Iserbyt.
A former school board member who sent her children to public schools, Mrs Iserbyt was a longtime supporter of Ronald Reagan and was appointed to the U.S. Department of Education by Reagan, only to be fired in 1982 after she objected to - later leaked documents exposing - top-level agreements between the administration and the Soviet Union for the purpose of redirecting the course of American education.
Mrs Iserbyt was the guest on the Aug. 25 broadcast of Radio Free America, the weekly call-in talk forum sponsored by American Free Press with host Tom Valentine. An edited transcription of the interview follows. Valentine's questions start with a "Q." and Mrs. Iserbyt's responses start with an "R.".
Q. In your book, you charge - and Document that the decline in American education is what you call a deliberate dumbing down of America's public school children.
R. The result has been the changing of our whole society and our whole culture. You can't deny a human being an education and some moral values without having the disastrous results which we now see all around us.
In 1965, when the federal government became actively involved financially in education and they poured millions into it, ostensibly to help the poor, they changed schooling from an academic education, giving children the ability to understand the world around them and other cultures, languages, history, etc. to what is known as "outcome-based education." People think that only happened in the 1990s. The philosophy changed in 1965. This was the internationalization of education.
Education no longer mattered. They were looking at using our children as little tools basically robots in the global, planned economy. And we see the global economy coming in now.
We're seeing children who are only in eight grade being told to make up their minds about what they are going to do with the rest of their lives. This is a socialist, collectivist quota system, a planned economy with a certain number of persons assigned to different slots: we saw in in the old soviet Union, with a certain number of ballet dancers, a certain number of welders. We never dreamed that we would have this failed system here. But we do.
Our dumbed down Congress passed it during the 1980s and 1990s. But they obviously don't know what kind of system we have, since they are a product of a public school system that never taught them that we are a republic, not a democracy; that we are supposed to have a free enterprise system, not a planned economy. So the results are very, very clear.
If you can't see it with the results, then look at the money. How could you spend billions of dollars every year and see test scores continue to decline" Yet, every time test scores go down, people seem to be more enthusiastic about pouring more money in. They seem to forget that prior to 1960 the United states had the finest education system in the world.
In 1895 they had a test for eight graders in which they asked them to answer questions that I don't think I could answer.
Q. I have that test in front of me. Questions include; give nine rules for the use of capital letters; nave the parts of speech and define those that have no modifications; define verse, stanza and paragraph; what are the principle parts of a verb? Define case and illustrate each case. Why is the Atlantic coast colder that the Pacific in the same latitude? They didn't give you multiple choice, you had to write out the answers.
R. Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said recently that the European Union is the new soviet Union. George Bush is giving us another soviet Union here in this hemisphere with the United States, Canada and Latin America. You would never have been able to get the American people 40 or 50 years ago to accept this.
Our children will be nothing but drones in the global economy, working for the global elite. It's the same old totalitarianism. People wouldn't accept it as they do, if they hadn't deliberately changed the country through the schools over a long period of time.
A close associate of Soviet agent Alger Hiss, in a speech to the World Health Organization, suggested "getting rid of the conscience." He recommended that teachers be retrained to be psychiatrists to train students that there's no right and no wrong. We saw those types of teaching programs from the 1960s through the 1990s.
In 1965 along came Professor Benjamin Bloom with his redefinition of education. Bloom's definition was accepted He said, "The purpose of education is to change the thoughts, actions and feelings of students." Not academics. He divined good teaching as "challenging the students' fixed beliefs"
In my study of all of this, I've focused on the Leipzig connection. In the late 1800s many of our American educators went to Germany. You've heard of "The Order" (or Skull and Bones," as it is often called) at Yale. Many of those people were retrained in Germany to consider the child as an animal, basically, not as a human being. The child was to be manipulated through stimulus response, etc.
B.F. Skinner and John Dewey picked up on this. They all worked out of the University of Chicago and Columbia University. They changed he label to "outcome based education" after the so-called "Mastery Learning" had been such a disaster and do may inner city children had dropped out in Chicago.
Yet, President Bush is putting in the same old "Mastery Learning" under the label ‘Direct Instruction." Regardless of what you call it, it is not learning. It is training.
Skinner himself said: "I could make a pigeon a high achiever," by reinforcing it on a proper schedule. So when you hear them say "all children will learn," they are saying, "All children will jump through the hoop." Yes, all children will learn if you reinforce them with a reward. It's like your dog. But our children aren't dogs.
Instead of thinking it's wonderful that the president and the secretary are saying, "All children will learn. No child will be left behind," you must ask yourself what that means. It has nothing to do with education. It has to do with reaching the lowest common denominator and getting rid of any academics because corporations - certainly the multinationals - don't want intelligent workers.
The Carnegie corporation's David Hornback, who has restructured education in many of the states, essentially said in his book, Human Capital, that "We don't want educated workers. They give us a hard time. They quit their jobs. They ask too many questions."
So all of this just didn't happen. The goal has long been world government, but the year 1934 was a very important year. That's when the Now York-based Carnegie corporation published the results of a study commissioned with the American Historical Association. The book was entitled Conclusions and Recommendations for the Social Studies.
Q. Did the work of the Cultural Marxists of the Frankfurt School influence this?
R. The Frankfurt School philosophy was a complete attack on the social fiber of society. But the Carnegie group was more concerned with changing our free market system fo a socialist, collectivist, planned economy. They wanted to change social studies to reflect what was good in socialism versus our past history.
Q. The high-level financial manipulators in American history were actually favorably inclined toward socialism, despite what many people think otherwise.
R. Absolutely. They didn't miss a beat. In the early part of the 20th century, the plans were made to change America, first by creating wars, and then making plans to keep America from sliding back to the way it was before. The Rockefellers and the other financial interests were part of all of this and they focused on the system of education. The Carnegie element focused on the international aspects. The Rockefeller element focused on the national aspects.
In the 1930s, at the same time the Carnegie group was calling for a planned economy and education geared toward that - they called it a "new order" - they were promoting the pilot plan for outcome based education or OBE.
OBE does away with the four years of math and science and individualizes education for children which is necessary for training for the workforce. That was piloted in the 1930s. Then came World War II, which was planned, and after that we had the United Nations (which had actually been created three years earlier).
In 1965 the Carnegie corporation was deeply involved in the Elementary and secondary Education Act. In 1969, Carnegie paid for and developed the National Assessment, which is the test that President Bush has now mandated for the first time that all children will take. This test is 60 percent attitudinal. It measures your children as to whether or not they are politically correct in their outlook. Every child will have to take this test. Every home school or private school that takes a penny of federal money will have to take this test.
In 1985 came what, for many people, was the biggest shocker of all: the Carnegie Corporation and President Ronald Reagan signed agreements with the soviet Union which virtually merged the two educational systems of the two nations.
However, the first agreement was signed with Dwight Eisenhower in 1958. This actually carried out what Norman Dodd was told during the congressional investigations in 1953 of the tax-exempt foundations.
Dodd was told by Rowan Gaither, president of the Ford foundation, that the reason they spent their money the way they did, to develop socialism in this country, was because they got these orders from the white House to change America so that it could be "comfortably merged" with the Soviet Union.
People should do a little checking on the record of so many people whom we thought were good Americans. Eisenhower was president at the time when these orders were issued to the foundations. Eisenhower's administration set up these little cells in our communities to implement socialism in the United States. He was the first president to sign extensive agreements in space, art, music, education, etc, with the Soviets.
However, the agreement that Reagan and Carnegie Corp. signed with the Soviets in 1985 was the most extensive ever. Carnegie got involved with the Soviets in preparing computer-assisted instruction for early elementary education in the area of "critical thinking."
I worked in the Department of Education, so a lot of what I am talking about I learned while working there.
I was fired in 1982 for leaking a very important document related to technology in computer-assisted instruction in all of the schools of the country. I thought I should let the press have it and I did. I knew I was going to get fired so I got a lot of confidential documents which proved exactly what was coming down the line. A lot of these documents appear in my book. It represents a complete internationalization of our education system.
Q. So here we had Ronald Reagan shaking the saber at the "Evil Empire" when he was really dealing with them on a critical matter affecting the future of American education.
R. Before I went into the Reagan administration, I wouldn't listen to those Reagan critics in the United Republicans of California. I thought they were just badmouthing this wonderful guy. I went into the Department of Education and learned the hard way. After I was fired, I wrote him a letter (and I know he got it) but I never got a response.
It was after that I finally read Here's the Rest of Him, by Kent H. Steffgen, the book that was critical of Reagan when he was governor of California. I want people to understand that we all make these mistakes. We all want to believe the best about people. I am certainly on that went that route and I was burned. That's why I had to leak that important document.
People listening have to understand that there isn't any difference between the "Controlled Left" and the Controlled Right." They have an identical agenda and as long as Americans continue to go to those dumb Republican caucuses and vote for the Controlled Republicans we will never be able to cure the problems in this country.
Tragedy and Hope, the book by Bill Clinton's Georgetown University mentor, professor Carroll Quigley relates how these elite families decided early on that they had to control both major parties. Thus, the controlled "sheep" going to the polls would not know what there was really any divverence.
Q. Former Education Secretary William Bennett is widely promoted as a top conservative thinker in reforming American education. But you contend that he is trying to destroy the legitimate home school movement in America. Could you comment on him?
R. In the 1980s Bennett approved a character education program, which I consider a destructive values-clarification type of program which has resulted in incidents like the shooting at columbine school in Colorado.
He's not what people think he is. He's going into states with his kindergarten to grade 12 computer-assisted instruction in all the disicplines. His first state was Ohio where he set up a federally-funded charter school. He's marketing it for home schoolers, especially.
Bennett has big meetings explaining how wonderful it is. If any home schools go for it, they will effectively become public schools. He admits to people that if their children participate in this program: "You will no longer be a home schooler. You will be enrolling in a public chartered school." If a student schooled at home uses that curriculum, he or she is then really a public school student and subject to government control.
Q. You're also quite critical of the Bush administration.
R. Bill Clinton as president was bad enough, but I can really take off with George W. Bush.
Take his faith-based initiative. It does nothing more than provide federal money to the churches to control the churches. Vouchers for education, to get control of education. Community service: Volunteerism? Look at the Community Oriented Policing system: police are assuming the role of social workers.
And Americans are so dumbed down that they don't see anything wrong with that. All of this is to condition our children to the presence of police in their lives, because the future is going to be noting other than that.
Charlotte Iserbyt's book, The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, a massive 750-page volume in large format, is available at $45.95 (including shipping and handling) from: 3D Research Co., 1062 Washington St., Bath, Maine 04530. To order using Visa or MasterCard call (207) 442-0543 or via fax at (207) 442-0551. The web site for the book is www.deliberatedumbingdown.com. The e-mail address for the author is dumbdown@deliberatedumbingdown.com.
Radio Free America broadcasts are now more widely disseminated and a new shortwave station is on line making the weekly program hosted by Tom Valentine easier to hear all across America. The numbers for tuning into the program via shortwave remain the same; Two options 5.085 or 6.890. However, the signal is no longer a single sideband signal, but is picked up by regular shortwave. The newly licensed station, WWRB (World Wide Radio broadcasting) has bee up and running for the past month and the signal is very strong. RFA is aired every Sunday evening for two hours beginning at 9 pm Eastern time, 6 pm Pacific time.
In addition to the short wave, AFP readers and others can not tune in via the internet at any time, any day of the week, and hear the two hour program that was broadcast live the previous Sunday evening. The web site can be accessed at www.americanfreepress.net. You will see Radio Free America on the main menu and you will be able to download, free of charge, Windows Media Player in order to hear the show. Every Monday the previous Sunday night broadcast is placed onto the internet "stream." The toll free call-in number to participate on RFA is 1-800-259-9231.
Radio Free America, hosted by Tom Valentine, is sponsored
by American Free Press. Aired first on July 17, 1988, it
broke the mold at the time of politically correct, liberal, controlled
talk radio. You can always expect uncensored, lively discussion
on the most important topics facing America and the world today.
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The good news is that the orthodox media is finally facing up to the fact — reported previously in this populist newspaper — that the primary motivation for President Bush's insistence for waging aggressive war against Iraq is oil.
Ignore the human costs of the Iraqi war and the $200-$250 billion that the United States would have to spend of taxpayers' money to attack the Middle East country. The outcome of the war could be a bonanza for American and British oil companies.
America's warmongering is fueled by greed — the immense profits Big Oil will realize when Iraq is conquered. That's why the administration is determined to make war even though Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has already surrendered to U.S. demands.
The war rationale had been that Saddam had thrown out the United Nation's inspectors.
Hussein capitulated and told the UN, by letter, that inspectors could return with no conditions attached.
However, the administration still wants war and has sought a resolution from Congress rubberstamping its plans.
"A U.S.-led ouster of President Saddam Hussein could open a bonanza for American oil companies," a recent Washington Post article said, and scuttle huge oil deals between Baghdad and Russia, France, and other countries.
Petroleum experts estimate that Iraq may possess more than 330 billion barrels of oil—making it the richest oil reserve in the world.
The Post article, "When it's over, who gets the oil?" was a front-page story in the International Herald Tribune on Sept. 16.
The article suggests that the administration of President Bush is already using the promise of Iraqi oil profits as future spoils of war to force reluctant countries to support a U.S. and British-led invasion of Iraq.
The article, however, failed to mention the most lucrative spoils: Iraq's estimated 330 billion barrels of probable oil reserves.
"It's pretty straightforward," said former CIA director R. James Woolsey, one of the leading war hawks calling for "regime change" in Iraq. "France and Russia have oil companies and interests in Iraq. They should be told that if they are of assistance in moving Iraq toward decent government, we'll do the best we can to ensure that the new government and American companies work closely with them.
"If they throw in their lot with Saddam, it will be difficult to the point of impossible to persuade the new Iraqi government to work with them," Woolsey said.
Since the Gulf War in 1991, companies from more than a dozen nations, including France, Russia, China, India, Italy, Vietnam and Algeria, have negotiated to develop Iraqi oil fields, refurbish existing facilities or explore undeveloped tracts. Most of the deals are on hold pending the lifting of UN sanctions, which would occur when a new government is installed.
The Russians have recently signed a proposed $40 billion economic agreement with Iraq that reportedly includes opportunities for Russian companies to explore for oil in Iraq's western desert where extensive probable reserves are being explored.
The French company Total Fina Elf has negotiated for rights to develop the huge Majnoon field, near the Iranian border, estimated at 30 billion barrels of oil.
These agreements, however, would be worthless if a new Iraqi government, installed by the U.S. and British forces, tears them up.
The U.S. and British governments support the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an organization of Iraqi opposition groups, which may replace the current government in Baghdad. Officials from the INC say they will not be bound by any of the existing deals if and when they are installed in power.
"We will review all these agreements, definitely," said Faisal Qaragholi, a petroleum engineer who directs the London office of the U.S.-backed organization of opposition groups that is backed by the United States. "Our oil policies should be decided by a government in Iraq elected by the people."
Ahmed Chalabi, the INC leader, spoke as if he had already been elected and said he favored the creation of a U.S.-led consortium to develop Iraq's oil fields, according to the Post. "American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil," Chalabi said.
"Administration officials have been unwilling to talk about the specific costs of a war, preferring to discuss the removal of Mr. Hussein in foreign-policy or even moral terms," The Wall Street Journal's Bob Davis wrote. "Discussing the economics of the war could make it seem as if the U.S. were going to war over oil. That would sap support at home and abroad, especially in the Middle East, where critics suspect the U.S. of wanting to seize Arab oil fields."
The cost of the planned U.S.-led war in Iraq would be primarily borne by U.S. taxpayers because, unlike the Gulf War of 1991 in which allies paid $48 billion of the $58 billion total, there are no allies willing to contribute to the war effort other than Britain and Israel.
If Iraq has a "long history of playing games," Britain has an even longer history of meddling in Iraqi affairs.
The nation of Iraq was created from the conquered Mesopotamian provinces of the defeated Ottoman Empire by Britain after World War I.
Iraq was occupied by British troops from 1919 to 1932. During the occupation, Iraqis were not allowed to govern their own affairs and Indians were used as administrators.
Britain actually drew Iraq's boundaries and installed the first king of Iraq, as it did in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the region.
While the recent history and immense oil wealth of Iraq is relevant to the current issue of war, the mainstream media tends to ignore it. CNN and BBC reach millions and have focused intently on Iraq but have avoided discussing its history or immense oil wealth. CNN International is sponsored by the oil giants Royal Dutch Shell and British Petroleum (BP), which has absorbed Amoco and ARCO.
AFP asked the commercial television network BBC World if the fact that Chevron, Texaco and Shell were corporate sponsors had influenced their decision not to discuss Iraq's oil reserves. BBC World spokesman Ciara O'Sullivan said that the editorial content was "completely independent."
The immense oil wealth of Iraq "is going to be the big
story," O'Sullivan said. It is a "major debate that
is going to bubble up."
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A news item in the European press provides some clues as to the military buildup that is currently taking place in preparation for an assault on Iraq.
The U.S. military reserved an unusually large number of air corridors across the Atlantic according to a Sept. 14 report in Portugal's Expresso newspaper.
A source from Portugal's air traffic control told Expresso that 20 corridors, 16 more than usual, had been reserved by the United States.
Portuguese military analysts said the extra corridors were needed to transport military personnel and materiel to the Middle East.
The U.S. military has reportedly been relocating elements of Central Command in Tampa, Fla., to the Arab Gulf state of Qatar to prepare for an invasion of Iraq.
Expresso's Luisa Meireles told AFP that the Portuguese Air
Force would only confirm that the U.S. military had reserved four
corridors on a daily basis.
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Recent reports in the Israeli press may provide vital clues as to if and when America will be launching an attack on Iraq.
Both Israel and Iraq are ready to square off against each other in the war that the Bush administration is planning to remove Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein from power.
Both countries, military experts agree, have weapons of mass destruction ready to release against each other. Will Israel or Iraq us the weapons first?
According to Israeli news reports, the war is likely to come in November.
Following President Bush's recent speech before the United Nations, the Israeli newspaper, Yediot Ahronot, reported that his address "is actually part of a countdown. The significance for us: Until the end of this coming November, Israel must be prepared again for the possibility of unconventional weapons in the Middle East."
Israel is ready to strike at the heart of Iraq at a moment's notice and has squadrons of jet fighter-bombers, armed with nuclear weapons, on standby alert.
The Israeli press is reporting that Iraq has jets ready for take-off, which are loaded with highly radioactive waste and are intended for suicide missions against Israel.
Iraqi planes would serve as "dirty bombs," spreading radioactive waste over large areas where they crash-land, according to Israeli reports.
If these suicide planes were shot from the air before they could reach their targets, a U.S. military source said the material would be spread over wide expanses.
Saddam also has a few Russian-designed Scud missiles left over from Persian Gulf War I, which were fired at targets in Israel in 1991.
"What worries the Pentagon most," a retired Air Force intelligence officer told American Free Press, "is that Israel, which will know when the attack is to begin, will coordinate its own attack against Iraq to coincide with ours. Israeli involvement in the war will inflame the other Arab states of the Middle East and could very easily draw them into the hostilities on the side of Hussein."
A predisposition to strike first is characteristic of Israel Prime Minister ariel Sharon, who has throughout his military career demonstrated that he prefers to be on the Offensive, as when he sent his tanks across the Suez Canal in 1973 or when he invaded Lebanon in 1982.
In 1991, Israel was pressured by the Bush I administration to restrain from striking back against Iraq when it was hit with Scud missiles armed with conventional warheads.
Today?
Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is working diligently to be Sharon's successor, said: "Nobody should have any illusion that we would repeat the restraint of 1991."
Today, some 1.8 million Israeli homes have fortified rooms, in which residents can seek shelter. Common bomb shelters have been built in close proximity to an additional 2.1 million Israeli homes.
Israeli health authorities have stockpiled sufficient smallpox vaccines for the entire population and health authorities are already vaccinating emergency workers. Gas mask kits are being distributed nationwide.
Several sophisticated Arrow antimissile batteries have been
put in place at strategic locations, which allows the Israeli
Army chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, to state: We are well
prepared both in terms of defense and also in terms of an offensive
response... We are prepared so that nothing will reach the area
at all."
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Why is the Bush administration hiding from the American public the fact that it had many warnings of impending disaster before the 9-11 terrorist attacks but bailed to do anything about it?
The government had so much information about impending disaster before the terrorist attacks of Sept.11 that the CIA director had "declared war" on Wsama bin Laden according to a preliminary report by a joint congressional intelligence committee.
Mountains of information emerged from the report and hearing on Sept.18, but this unclassified material is a molehill compared to what is being kept from the public.
What President Bush - who is briefed daily - knew was expunged from the report at the demand of the White House.
The White House refused to put on the public record what bush had been told about bin Laden and possible attacks prior to Sept.11, the committee staff said.
This raises troubling questions: Did the president know that terrorists would use commercial airplanes as missiles and do nothing? Did the intelligence community actually have the information in bits and pieces scattered among the agencies and fail to "connect the dots? What did Bill Clinton know during his eight years in the White House? The warnings date back to 1994.
In July 2001, the CIA warned senior intelligence officials that "based on a review of all-source reporting, over the last five months, we believe that UBL [bin Laden] will launch a significant terrorist attack against U.S. and/or Israeli interests in the coming weeks. The Attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interest. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning."
The National Security Agency reported at least 33 communications intercepts indicating an "imminent" terrorist attack from May to July 2001, Eleanor Hill the committee's staff director, said during the hearing.
U.S. intelligence officials hd received information from 1994 to August 2001 indicating terrorists "seriously considered" using aircraft in attacks, she said.
The FBI was told in August 1998 that a group of unidentified Arabs planned to fly an airplane loaded with explosives into the World Trade Center from a foreign country.
A September 1998 report said that al Qaeda might be planning to detonate an explosives-laden plane at a U.S. airport. Later the same year another report indicated "a bin Laden plot involving aircraft in the New York and Washington, D.C. areas."
"While this method of attack had clearly been discussed in terrorist circles, there was apparently, little, if any strategic assessment of terrorists using aircraft as weapons," Mrs. Hill said.
The administration had long denied that such specific information existed. "I don't think anybody could have predicted...that they would try to use an airplane as a missile," National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice had said following the attacks. "If this president had known a plane would be used as a missile, he would have acted on it."
This points to only two possibilities: the president knew and took no action or he was kept ignorant by mind-boggling incompetency on the part of intelligence agencies.
Mrs. Hill said the CIA refused to declassify documents related to intelligence reports sent to the White House.
Among the many pieces of information gathered before the terrorist attacks.
* In November 1998, bin Laden agreed to pay $9 million for the assassination of four top intelligence officers.
* In August 1999, the U.S. government learned al Qaeda had targeted for assassination the secretaries of state and defense and the CIA director.
* In December 1998, an intelligence assessment concluded that bin Laden "is actively planning against U.S. targets...keenly interested in strike at the U.S. on its own soil."
Throughout the hearing, Mrs. Hill repeatedly refused to discuss the specifics of CIA operations and methods of collecting intelligence. But based on the sheer volume of material related to al Qaeda that had been gather, a knowledgeable observer of the inquiry remarked that the CIA could not have compiled such detailed information if there was not an informant who was close to the group.
In addition, the fact that the Israelis were operating an intelligence from in and around New York at the time of the attacks was never discussed at the probe.
At the culmination of the hearing, Mrs. Hill was asked whether she felt, based on her findings, if 9-11 could have been prevented.
"There's a lot of ‘ifs' involved, but they could
have done a better job,' she said.
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