Why I think 9/11 Was An Inside Job

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Why I think 9/11 Was An Inside Job

Here are just a few of the reasons I believe 9/11 was an inside job, primarily masterminded by Dick Cheney with the complicity of George W. Bush. I have ordered them with most important first. This is just a summary. I explore these points in detail later with backup.

1. No steel frame buildings had ever before in history collapsed either from fires or planes hitting them. They are designed to withstand those hazards. On 9/11 three of them fell, and fell perfectly straight down. Why do you think demolition experts spend weeks planting charges and timing the explosions with millisecond precision? To make sure the buildings implode and fall straight down, just as the three WTC towers did. That perfection does not happen by accident. Further, the timing of the falls are indicative of linear controlled demolitions, not accelerating natural gravitational collapse. An engineering failure of this magnitude would normally demand an exhaustive study as to the mechanism of failure to ensure it never happened again, but all the evidence was quickly whisked away and melted down thus ensuring the cause was never discovered.
2. The 1/3 sized wheels, turbofan and diffuser found at the Pentagon crash are not part of a 757, but of a much smaller military aircraft the A-3 drone. Two civilian defense contractor employees — told to remain silent — say other workers quietly retro-fitted missile and remote control systems onto A-3 jets at Colorado public airport prior to September 11. Bush claims a Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon then vaporised, and that is why there was no wreckage, but that is utterly impossible. The titanium used in the 12 tons of engines does not even melt at temperatures reached by mixing jet fuel and pure oxygen much less vaporise. Think about it. Titanium was chosen for the engines because it would not even weaken when subjected to an optimum mixture of jet fuel and air for hours on end during ordinary flight. Further, there were not even broken windows where the engines purportedly hit the Pentagon. And to top it off, photos show no sign of a fuel fire like the ones hitting the two towers. So, according to Bush, not only did the most of the plane vanish, a mysterious shrinking ray made the wheels and turbofans shrink to 1/3 the normal diameter and change into a type used by A-3 military drones. Give me a break! How gullible do you think I am Mr. Bush? Bush is peddling an utterly preposterous lie. It amazing he got away with it so long. See the video Loose Change, part 1 and Loose Change, part 2. So it was an A-3 drone that hit the Pentagon. This is so patently obvious from examining the wreckage that Bush must have know that all along, but decided to lie.
3. The hole in the side of the Pentagon is far too small for Boeing 757 flight 77 to pass through. The wingspan is 124 feet with a fuselage diameter of 13 feet. It is 44 feet from ground to the top of the tail. There was almost no debris, no bodies, no blood, no body parts, no baggage, no wreckage typical of a 757 plane crash, and of course no sheared off wings. Further there was no fire or smoke damage similar to the other two crashes. There should have been. The plane had a similar load of fuel. In contrast, after the shuttle disaster, it was possible to find pieces of the seven astronauts' bodies spread over hundreds of square miles. Some of the rubble appears to belong to a small Global Hawk drone (44 feet long by 15 feet high) including the tiny engine, including a tiny turbofan engine. The Pentagon blatantly lied in its story published by the Washington Post, saying the hole in the Pentagon was five stories high and 200 feet wide. Photos show it is no bigger than 18 feet in diameter. To fit in that tiny hole the wings had to have been sheared off. Where are the wings? Further the Pentagon crash did not show up seismically, because the object that hit was too light. Recall your high school physics. We know object that hit the Pentagon was travelling at 400 mph.
   mass = energy / velocity²
   The low energy of the hit means the object had to have considerably lower mass than a 757. The other two other hits, including another 757, registered seismically. Whatever hit the Pentagon was not nearly heavy enough to be a 757 as the Bush conspiracy theory claims. This is so patently obvious, Bush must have know that all along, but decided to lie.
4. See David Griffin's on-line lecture. This will painlessly give you a brief outline of some of the holes in Bush's story. Griffin has written two books on 9/11.
5. Mike Ruppert's book, Crossing the Rubicon. This book explains exactly how Cheney pulled this off, and provides 700 pages of backup for this admittedly wild-sounding accusation.

   	recommend book⇒Crossing the Rubicon: 9/11 and the Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
   	0-86571-540-8
   	Michael C. Ruppert
   Ruppert is an ex-Cop. He builds a solid case that Dick Cheney is the mastermind behind 9/11.
   amazon.ca amazon.com chapters.indigo.ca powells.com amazon.fr barnesandnoble.com amazon.de amazon.co.uk

6. There were no Arabs aboard flight 77 as claimed by Bush. Without Arabs, you have no hijackers. Without a highjack, why would the three American pilots all suicide unless Bush had threatened their families? The only other explanation is the planes were flown by wire. In other words, either way, 9/11 was an inside job. The key to Bush's conspiracy theory, the Arab highjacking, is a total fabrication. His whole lie comes unravelled just from the passenger and autopsy lists alone.
7. Stanley Hilton, Bob Dole's advisor and lead attorney in the 9/11 victims case says he has both documentary evidence and sworn testimony that Cheny and Bush ordered the 9/11 attack.
8. All of Bush's cabinet met with Mahmoud, the bankroller of 9/11, in the week prior to 9/11.
9. No planes scrambled to intercept the hijackers. This is standard procedure. Normally a plane would be in the air within four minutes. Just prior to 9/11 Cheney inserted himself in the highjack command loop. He is the one who ordered them to stand down.
10. There were all manner of war games in progress on 9/11 some simulating a 9/11 style attack. This deflected most of the airforce out west. It further confused air traffic controllers who had to deal with insertions (fake planes for the war games on their radars). No body was really sure if the attacks were real or part of the game. No cave-dwelling terrorists could have arranged so convenient a distraction. The Pentagon publicly admitted this many times, including when Representative Cynthia McKinney grilled Donald Rumsfeld on C-Span 2005-03-24. transcript.
11. While every one else was in lockdown on 9/11, Bush got the FBI to arrange private jets to collect the bin Laden family and take them safely out of the USA without interrogation. At that point airspace had been reopened to commercial flights but not private flights.
12. Kevin R. Ryan, Site Manager, Environmental Health Laboratories, for Underwriter Labs, wrote that the fires in the World Trade buildings were not nearly hot enough to cause the UL-rated steel to fail.
13. CNN's reporter, Jamie McIntyre, on the scene announced that no plane hit the Pentagon.
14. Rudy Giuliani pre-announced the hit on the Pentagon. How did he know it would happen?
15. Rudy Giuliani announced a hit on the Sears tower. This part of the conspiracy was foiled, but apparently nobody told him. He announced it, as it was planned.
16. Rudy Guiliani gave a series of extremely polished speeches on 9/11. How did he find time to rehearse?
17. All three World Trade Towers fell faster over the first half of the collapse than physics allows by free fall. That meant they had to have an assist, e.g. an explosive push from pre-planted demolition charges, not just gravity pulling them down. The maximum collapse for free fall is computed by
    distance = ½ g t²
    where g is the acceleration due to gravity 32 feet per second per second, and t is time in seconds. In other words, free fall collapse should start out slowly and accelerate faster and faster for the big finale.
18. Why did the terrorists hit the west wing of the Pentagon? That required an extra complex flight manoeuvre. The west wing was being renovated. There were no military people there. Why wouldn't terrorists try to kill the top brass in the east wing?
19. David Ray Griffin's objection from The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11.

    President Bush has also been criticized for behaving somewhat bizarrely on 9/11.

    As he and the Secret Service got word that a second plane had crashed into the World Trade Center and that three planes had been hijacked, there could have been no possible doubt in their mind that the United States was under terrorist attack . . . The most horrendous attack the United States had ever suffered. And they would have had to assume that one or more of them were heading toward President Bush himself. and so upon learning about this, the secret service surely would have whisked him away immediately. In fact, one secret service agent on the scene said, "We're out of here." but obviously he got overruled because president Bush stayed there. After Andrew Card reported the second crash on the World Trade Center, the president just nodded as if he understood and said, "we're going to go ahead with the reading lesson." and he sat there another 15 minutes listening to the children read a story about a pet goat. This was a photo op and when it was over he lingered around talking to the children and talking to the teacher.

    Bill Sammon, of the Washington Times, wrote a very pro-Bush book, yet he comments how casual and relaxed the president was given the fact he'd just learned the country was under attack. He said Bush took his own sweet time and in fact called him "Our Dawdler in Chief." And then the president went on national TV, going forward with an interview that had been planned and announced in advance . . . then they took their regularly scheduled motorcade back to the airport. In other words, [Bush and the Secret Service] showed no fear whatsoever that they would be targeted for attack, which strongly suggests they knew how many aircraft were being hijacked and what their targets were.

    Couldn't it have been that he was trying to project calm in the eye of the storm, that this was Bush projecting Churchillian resolve in the face of calamity?

    People who want to believe such things can, of course, imagine such scenarios. But the president in a situation like that does not make the decisions; the Secret Service team makes the decisions. And the guys in the Secret Service are trained to be ready for a catastrophe like this where they make snap decisions and whisk the president to safety immediately. They would have had an escape route planned; they would have had contingencies planned — they always do. It is at least not very plausible to think they would have remained there and endangered the lives of all the children and teachers at that school in order to exude that Churchillian confidence.

    Consider that the event was publicly scheduled and presumably known to any terrorists. A school is not a very secure location. Bush was recklessly endangering the lives of the children he was with unless of course he knew there was no danger because this was an inside job.

20. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were busy discussing the Iraq war in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Why were they so unconcerned about 9/11 unless it were an inside job?

    “I expected to go back to a round of meetings [on 2001-09-12], examining what the next attacks could be, what our vulnerabilities were, what we could do about them in the short term. Instead, I walked into a series of discussions about Iraq. At first I was incredulous that we were talking about something other than getting al Qaeda. Then I realised with an almost sharp physical pain that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were trying to take advantage of this national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq. Since the beginning of the administration, indeed well before, they had been pressing for a war with Iraq. My friends in the Pentagon had been telling me that the word was we would be invading Iraq sometimes in 2002.”
    ~ Richard A. Clarke, White House Counter Terrorism Chief, Against All Enemies

21. The alleged hijackers on their eve of a supposed religiously-motivated suicide attack went to a strip bar, drank alcohol and ate pork, all in public. They left copies of the Qu'ran behind presumably to help witnesses remember them. Devout Muslims are insanely fanatical about avoiding pork. They would sooner eat feces. In Saudi Arabia, drinking alcohol is considered so shameful it could get you killed. That is not plausible behaviour for religious fanatics about to face judgement day. bin Laden is a Puritanical religious fanatic.
22. Seismic evidence shows the two main world trade towers were taken down by demolition.
23. A FOX reporter reported the plane that hit South Tower II of the World Trade Center had a blue logo. UA Flight 175 would have had a black and red United logo. The US airforce uses a white star on a blue circle.
24. Bush at first tried to get noted war criminal Henry Kissinger to handle the 9/11 commission whitewash.
25. Put options (short selling) for American Airlines and United Airlines were massively above normal just prior to 9/11. Investors made a killing off foreknowledge of 9/11. Cheney claims he investigated these investors but claims no wrongdoing and he refused to say who profited from the carnage or to explain why he thought that. Some of the investors would have been people jumping on a bandwagon, not knowing what was afoot, just presuming insiders must know. But at the core were people who knew the day of the attack. How did they know?
26. Bush at first refused to testify at the 9/11 commission, and then agreed only reluctantly under the condition he and Cheney always appear together so could keep their stories straight.
27. As if they had prior knowledge, within four minutes after the Pentagon crash, FBI agents quickly confiscated:
    • video tape from a gas station security camera aimed directly at the exact point of impact while recording the size of the plane and/or missile.
    • security camera video film from a nearby Sheraton hotel.
    • film from a Virginia Transportation Department freeway overpass camera.
    They have never released these tapes, nor any of the on-grounds security camera tapes. What's the big secret?
28. Rumsfeld accidentally told the truth:

    “Here we're talking about plastic knives, and using an American Airlines flight filled with our citizens, and the missile to damage this building, and similar (inaudible) that damaged the World Trade Center.”
    ~ Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of War, 2001-10-12 Parade Magazine interview.

29. Larry Silverstein, the leaseholder of tower 7 confesses on tape he had the building demolished to prevent the spread of fire. This building was not hit by any planes. Larry Silverstein look out long term leases on all the WTC numbered buildings three months before 9/11. He insured them to the max. He not the building's owners was the beneficiary. He was able to get double the usual payout by arguing the attacks were sufficiently separated in time to count as two separate attacks.
30. Marvin P. Bush, the president’s younger brother, was a principal in a company called Securacom that provided security for the World Trade Center, United Airlines, and Dulles International Airport. Bush's company had an ongoing contract to handle security at the World Trade Center up to the day the buildings fell down.
31. The following evidence is not available to the public. Either it does not exist, somebody destroyed it, or Bush is withholding it. In all three cases Bush is deceiving the public.
    • Airport lobby video showing alleged hijackers on the targeted flights.
    • Evidence tying bin Laden to the crime. All we have is Bush's say so. One day he claimed he had no idea the attack was coming, and the next he was 100% sure who did it.
    • Recordings of air traffic controller communications with the flights. These were shredded and thrown into five different garbage cans.
    • Remains of any of the targeted planes.
    • Remains of the Twin Towers and Building 7.
    • Blueprints of the Twin Towers and Building 7.
    • Black boxes from any of the targeted planes.
    • Photographs documenting the crime scenes before they were disturbed.
32. Mike Delbert Vreeland tried to warn the Canadian authorities of the coming 9/11 attacks. He was incarcerated, so his warnings were ignored. However, he was correct about the targets and the date of the attack.
33. Two days after 9/11, Michael Powell, (Colin Powell's son) chair of the FCC, moved to eliminate the few remaining restraints on media concentration. In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the majority of all news media in the United States. Today only six do: Time Warner, Disney, archconservative Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. (Fox’s parent company), Bertelsmann, Viacom and General Electric Co. It was as though Powell has this all ready to go, and waited for the right moment to spring it, behind a smokescreen. His behaviour implies he knew 9/11 was coming. The technique is similar to one favoured by Canadian politicians to pass unpopular legislation on Christmas eve when no one is looking.
34. Cheney and Ashcroft claim they drafted the 600-page Patriot Act in less than a week. It is a very complicated document. It even included unrelated pork for pharmaceutical companies like Merck, to get them of the hook for legal liability for contaminated vaccines, past, present and future. I can't believe they could have put this intricate, deceptively worded document together in only a week. They must have had it ready before hand waiting for the right moment to spring it, behind a smokescreen. Legislators passed it in a panic without even reading it first. It annulled the Bill of Rights. This behaviour implies Cheney and Ashcroft knew 9/11 was coming. The technique is similar to one favoured by Canadian politicians to pass unpopular legislation on Christmas eve when no one is looking.
35. Carmen bin Ladin (she spells her name differently), bin Laden's estranged sister in law, says in her book Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia that the bin Laden family all believe Osama had nothing to do with 9/11.
36. Bush used 9/11 as a pretext to invade Afghanistan, even though Saudis ostensibly committed the deed. He then installed ex-Unocal men to run the country. They built a pipeline for Unocal and raised trillions by restarting the opium trade.
37. Bush used 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq even though he later admitted the two had no connection. "We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11th attacks."
    ~ George W. Bush, 2003-09-17.
38. Bush used 9/11 as a pretext for the Patriot Act to nullify important constitutional rights such as habeas corpus, freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.
39. In 1976 the US Army prepared a plan to take down the two World Trade Towers using commercial airliners, using plastic box cutters to get through security, as part of its "antiterrorism" activities. In 1976, Rumsfeld was Secretary of State, Bush 41 was CIA Director, Nelson Rockfeller was Vice President, Ford was president, Cheney was chief of staff, almost the same crew as was in charge for 9/11.
40. The elaborate Patriot Act was allegedly written in a few days after 9/11, but Cheney and Ashcroft somehow found time to insert some irrelevant pork to get Merck off the hook for contaminating vaccines with mercury, freeing it from liability for the autism it allegedly caused. They must have had the act ready prior to 9/11. They cleverly panicked the house and senate into passing it without even taking time to read it.
41. No high-rise buildings have collapsed before or since from fire elsewhere, yet three supposedly did on 2001-09-11 in New York City. Whomever chose those two buildings to hit either did a detailed engineering study to discover their vulnerability to collapse by fire, or took the buildings down with demolition. I have trouble imagining cave dwellers pulling either of those two feats off. Blind luck would be plausible if it were not for the fact Bush 41 had a detailed plan in place to take them out formulated in 1976 using airliners and boxcutters. Bush had the rubble quickly shipped to China to be melted, even though it is illegal to destroy rubble from an engineering failure or a crime scene. You have to investigate precisely what caused the failures so that you can build safer buildings in future.

America's Secret War in Iraq

Tomgram: Nick Turse, America's Secret Air War in Iraq

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Just last week, in a typical air strike of the Iraq War, two missiles were fired at targets somewhere in the city of Ramadi, capital of al-Anbar province in the heartland of the Sunni insurgency, in the course of a battle with American forces stationed there. According to newspaper accounts, "18 insurgents" were killed.

Air power has, since World War II, been the American way of war. The invasion of Iraq began, after all, with a dominating show of air power that was meant to "shock and awe" -– that is, cow -- not just Saddam Hussein's regime, but the whole "axis of evil" and other countries the Bush administration had in its mental gun sights. Among the largest of America's "permanent" megabases in Iraq is Balad Air Base with the sorts of daily air-traffic pile-ups that you would normally see over Chicago's O'Hare Airport. And yet, as Tomdispatch.com has written numerous times over these last years, reporters in Iraq almost determinedly refuse to look up or report on the regular, if intermittent, application of American air power especially to heavily populated neighborhoods in Iraq's cities.

Now, the Bush "surge" is officially beginning. Little about it is strikingly new or untried -- except possibly the unspoken urge to ratchet up the use of air power in Iraq, the only thing a Pentagon with desperately overstretched ground forces really has to throw into the escalation breach (as in recent months it has drastically escalated the use of air power in Afghanistan). Pepe Escobar, the superb globe-trotting correspondent for Asia Times, has recently warned that the new Bush administration "plan" signals "the dire prospect... of a devastating air war over Baghdad" in which "Iraqification-cum-surge" will prove "a disaster mostly for every Baghdadi caught in the crossfire."

Just last week, Julian E. Barnes of the Los Angeles Times reported that the U.S. Air Force has the Iraqi itch and is getting ready to scratch it. Air Force commanders are preparing for a "heightened role in the volatile region." They are, he reported, already "gearing up for just such a role in Iraq as part of Bush's planned troop increase" -- an expansion of air power that "could include aggressive new tactics designed to deter Iranian assistance to Iraqi militants… [and] more forceful patrols by Air Force and Navy fighter planes along the Iran-Iraq border to counter the smuggling of bomb supplies from Iran."

Until now, U.S. air power in Iraq has been a non-story -- if you weren't an Iraqi. In the coming months, however, it may force its way onto the front pages of our papers and onto the nightly TV news -- but not if the Pentagon has anything to say about it. Doing some journalistic sleuthing, Nick Turse has discovered just how secretive the Pentagon has been about offering any significant information on the size, scope, and damage involved in its air operations over Iraq. The story of this secret American air war is now told for the first time -- and at this website. Tom


Bombs over Baghdad
The Pentagon's Secret Air War in Iraq
By Nick Turse
A secret air war is being waged in Iraq -- often in and around that country's population centers -- about which we can find out little. The U.S. military keeps information on the munitions expended in its air efforts under tight wraps, refusing to offer details on the scale of use and so minimizing the importance of air power in Iraq. But expert opinion holds that the forms of aerial assault being employed in that country, though hardly covered in our media, may account for most of the U.S. and coalition-attributed Iraqi civilian deaths there since the 2003 invasion.

While some aspects of the air war remain a total mystery, Air Force officials do acknowledge that U.S. military and coalition aircraft dropped at least 111,000 pounds of bombs on targets in Iraq in 2006. This figure, 177 bombs in all, does not include guided missiles and unguided rockets fired, or cannon rounds expended; nor, according to a U.S. Central Command Air Forces (CENTAF) spokesman, does it take into account the munitions used by some Marine Corps and other coalition aircraft or any of the Army's helicopter gunships. Moreover, it does not include munitions used by the armed helicopters of the many private security contractors flying their own missions in Iraq.

Air War, Iraq: 2006

In statistics provided to Tomdispatch, CENTAF reported a total of 10,519 "close air support missions" in Iraq in 2006, during which its aircraft dropped 177 bombs and fired 52 "Hellfire/Maverick missiles." These air strikes presumably included numerous highly publicized missions ranging from the January air strike outside the town of Baiji that reportedly "killed a family of 12," including at least three women and three young children, to the December attack on an insurgent safehouse in the Garma area, near Fallujah, that reportedly killed "two women and a child" in addition to five guerillas. Then there were the even less well remembered events, such as those on July 28th when, according to official reports, an Air Force Predator unmanned aerial vehicle destroyed an "anti-Iraqi forces" vehicle with Hellfire missiles, while Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcons "expended a GBU-12, destroying an anti-Iraqi forces location," both in the vicinity of the city of Ramadi.

The latter weapon, Guided Bomb Unit-12, a laser-guided bomb with a 500-pound general purpose warhead, was the most frequently used bomb in Iraq in 2006, according CENTAF statistics provided to Tomdispatch. In addition to the ninety-five GBU-12s "expended," sixty-seven satellite-guided, 500-pound GBU-38s and fifteen 2,000-pound GBU-31/32 munitions were also dropped on Iraqi targets last year, according to official Air Force figures.

One weapon conspicuously left out of this total is rockets -- such as the 2.75-inch Hydra-70 rocket which can be outfitted with various warheads and is fired from fixed-wing aircraft and most helicopters. The number of rockets fired is withheld from the press so as, according to a CENTAF spokesman, not to "skew the tally and present an inaccurate picture of the air campaign." The number of rockets fired may be quite significant as, according to a 2005 press release issued by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who helped secure a $900 million Hydra contract from the Army for General Dynamics, "the widely used Hydra-70 rocket… has seen extensive use in Afghanistan and Iraq… [and] has become the world's most widely used helicopter-launched weapon system." Early last year, Sandra I. Erwin of National Defense Magazine noted that the U.S. military was looking to the Hydra to serve as a low-cost weapon for Iraq's urban areas. "The Army already buys and stockpiles thousands of the 2.75-inch Hydra rockets, and is seeking to equip as many as 73,000 with the laser kits, under a program called 'advanced precision kill weapon system,' or APKWS. The Navy would purchase 8,000 for Marine Corps helicopters," she wrote.

The number of cannon rounds fired -- some models of the AC-130 gunship, for instance, have a Gatling gun that can fire up to 1,800 rounds in a single minute-- is also a closely guarded secret. The official reason given is that "special forces often use aircraft such as the AC-130" and since "their missions and operations are classified, so therefore these figures are not released."

Repeated inquiries concerning another reporter's statistics on cannon rounds fired by CENTAF aircraft prompted the same official to emphatically state in an email: "WE DO NOT REPORT CANNON ROUNDS." His superior officer, Lt. Col. Johnn Kennedy, the Deputy Director of CENTAF Public Affairs, followed up, noting:


Glad to see you appreciate the tremendous efforts [my subordinate] has already expended on you. Trust me, it's probably much more significant than the relentless pursuit of the number of cannon rounds.
But the number of cannon rounds and rockets fired by U.S. aircraft is not an insignificant matter, according to Les Roberts, formerly an epidemiologist for the World Health Organization in Rwanda during that country's civil war and an expert on the human costs of the war in Iraq. According to Roberts, who was last in Iraq in 2004 (where, he says, he personally witnessed "the shredding of entire blocks" in Baghdad's Sadr City by aerial cannon fire), "rocket and cannon fire could account for most coalition-attributed civilian deaths." He adds, "I find it disturbing that they will not release this [figure], but even more disturbing that they have not released such information to Congressmen who have requested it."

Non-CENTAF military officials were equally tight-lipped about such munitions -- at least with me. A Public Affairs officer from U.S. Central Command told me that the Command didn't track such information. When I questioned a coalition spokesman in Baghdad about the number of rockets and cannon rounds fired by Army and Marine Corps helicopters in Iraq in 2006, I was told, "We cannot comment on your inquiry due to operational security."

I then pointed out that just last month, in National Defense Magazine, Col. Robert A. Fitzgerald, the Marine Corps' head of aviation plans and policy, was quoted as saying that, in 2006, "Marine rotary-wing aircraft flew more than 60,000 combat flight hours, and fixed-wing platforms completed 31,000. They dropped 80 tons of bombs and fired 80 missiles, 3,532 rockets and more than 2 million rounds of smaller ammunition."

When asked if this admission had endangered operational security, the spokesman responded, "I cannot comment on the policies or release authority of a Marine colonel."

While the Marine Corps' statistics presumably include totals of munitions used in Afghanistan, where American air power has played a large role in the fighting, they do remind us that the minimal figures given out by CENTAF don't give an accurate picture of the air war in Iraq. These particular totals are, according CENTAF, "separate from the data provided" to Tomdispatch on Iraqi bomb and missile expenditure in 2006.

"Relentless Pursuit"

Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the American air war in Iraq, often targeting urban areas, has been given remarkably short shrift in the media. In 2004, Tom Engelhardt, writing at Tomdispatch, called attention to this glaring absence. Seymour Hersh's seminal piece of reportage, "Up in the Air," published in the New Yorker in late 2005, ushered in some mainstream attention to the subject. Articles by Dahr Jamail, an independent journalist who covered the American occupation and war in Iraq, before and after the Hersh piece, are among the smattering of pieces that have offered glimpses of the air campaign and its impact. To date, however, the mainstream media has not, to use the words of Lt. Col. Kennedy, engaged in a "relentless pursuit of the number of cannon rounds" fired or any other aspect of the air war or its consequences for the people of Iraq.

While we will undoubtedly never know the full extent of the human costs of the U.S. air campaign, just a few dogged reporters assigned to the air-power beat might, at the very least, have offered some sense of this one-sided air war. Since this has not been the case, we must rely on the best available evidence. One valuable source is a national cross-sectional cluster sample survey of mortality in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. Carried out by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health and Iraqi physicians organized through Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, it estimated 655,000 "excess Iraqi deaths as a consequence of the war." The study, published in the British medical journal, The Lancet, in October 2006, found that from March 2003 to June 2006, 13% of violent deaths in Iraq were caused by coalition air strikes. If the 655,000 figure, including over 601,000 violent deaths, is anywhere close to accurate -- and the study offered a possible range of civilian deaths that ran from 392,979 to 942,636 -- this would equal approximately 78,133 Iraqis killed by bombs, missiles, rockets, or cannon rounds from coalition aircraft between March 2003 when the invasion of Iraq began and last June when the study concluded.

There are indications that the U.S. air war has taken an especially grievous toll on Iraqi children. According to statistics provided to Tomdispatch by The Lancet study's authors, 50% of all violent deaths of Iraqi children under 15 years of age, between March 2003 and June 2006, were due to coalition air strikes.

The Lancet study used well-established survey methods, which have been proven in conflict zones from Kosovo to the Congo, and interviewers actually inspected death certificates from 92% of the households surveyed where they were requested (which they did 87% of the time). The Iraq Body Count Project, a group of researchers based in the United Kingdom who maintain a public database of Iraqi civilian deaths resulting from the war, carefully restricts itself to the sparser media reports of civilian fatalities that come out of Iraq. While a much lower number (currently the range of media-reported deaths stands at: 55,441-61,133) than the The Lancet's findings, an analysis of their carefully limited data also offers a glimpse of the human costs of the air war.

Statistics provided to Tomdispatch by the Iraq Body Count Project show that since the U.S. invasion in 2003, coalition air strikes have, according to media sources alone -- which as we know have covered the air war poorly -- caused between 15,593-17,067 Iraqi civilian casualties, including 3,625-4,093 deaths. Last year, media reports listed between 169-200 Iraqis killed and 111-112 injured in twenty-eight separate coalition air strikes, according to the IBC project.

These numbers also appear to be on the rise. In an email message to Tomdispatch last month, John Sloboda, the co-founder and spokesperson for the IBC Project, notes that the "vast majority [of lethal air strikes] have been in the last half of the year."

When asked about the modest air power casualty figures provided by the Iraq Body Count Project and whether CENTAF accepts them, Lt. Col. Kennedy dodged the question, telling Tomdispatch, "We do not track such numbers and so cannot comment on the Project's efforts or validity." He had a similar answer when it came to The Lancet study's findings.

Asked about the assertion that the second half of 2006 was much deadlier for Iraqis due to U.S. air strikes and the possible reasons for this, Kennedy waxed eloquent, "War, by its very nature has ebbs and flows, and we constantly review the application of airpower to best support the forces on the ground in theater. We view this as simply part of our contract to the warfighters. As we do not discuss operational aspects of missions, I'll decline further comment."

Kennedy went on to say that the U.S. makes "every effort" to "minimize collateral damage regardless of whether the enemy is on open ground or within the confines of a city." Just days ago, in the Los Angeles Times, Lt. Gen. Carrol H. "Howie" Chandler, the Air Force's Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Plans and Requirements, expanded on this line of thought, noting, "I wouldn't automatically write off air power in an urban environment for fear of collateral damage… We have the capability with precision targeting and the new weapons to operate in an urban environment."

Sarah Sewall, who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense from 1993 to 1996 and is now Director for the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard, agrees that air power has a role to play in urban operations, and may even mitigate civilian harm in certain instances. She warns, however, "I have a lot of skepticism about the applicability of air power for all types of problems and particularly for the types of problems that we see commonly, on a day to day basis, in Iraq today." As she told Tomdispatch, "The problem comes when you think it is the functional equivalent of ground forces."

The Pace Quickens

In 2005, CENTAF reported using 404 bombs and missiles in Iraq. In 2006, an apparent lull (whether in lethal attacks or just in their reporting) in the first half of the year seems to have given way to a rise in deadly attacks during the second half. Only days into 2007, the U.S. military had already conducted air strikes in three nations -- Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. And in Iraq, the air war may be increasing in pace and ferocity. For example, on January 9th, the U.S. unleashed its air power on Baghdad's Haifa Street, a "mostly Sunni Arab enclave of residential buildings and shops." According to the Washington Post, "F-15 fighter jets strafed rooftops with cannons, while the Apache[ helicopter]s fired Hellfire missiles." Elsewhere in Iraq that day, according to Air Force reports, F-16s strafed targets near Bayji with cannon fire, while others dropped GBU-38s on targets near Turki Village; and F-15Es provided "close-air support" to troops near Basrah.

That same evening, back in the U.S., a broadcast of Fox News Channel's "Special Report with Brit Hume" offered a brief glimpse of the air war in a story by reporter David Macdougall who was, said Hume, "embedded with the Air Force in a location we cannot identify, where not only fighter jets, but bombers roared into the air headed for other targets in Iraq." Macdougall reported that the B-1B Lancer, the long-range bomber that carries the largest payload of weapons in the Air Force was, for the first time in over a year, again being employed in combat in Iraq.

"These B-1 bombers were central to the raid. We're told they flew a ten-hour mission, and by the looks of their empty bomb bays, these planes dropped thousands of pounds of munitions. They bombed 25 targets deep inside Iraq," he said. At one of these sites, he reported, Army troops sent in after the air strike reportedly found a "command and control center, insurgent hospital, and a closet-sized room covered in blood." We may never know if that "room covered in blood" was a torture center, part of the hospital, or if it became "covered" in the same manner that caused the 280 Iraqi civilian casualties from air strikes reported in the media, and the many more that undoubtedly went unreported and ignored, last year. This is yet another facet of the air war that will remain a mystery.

The Secret Air War

While reporting on the air war has often been barely evident, except as the odd paragraph in daily round-up battle pieces from Iraq (which rely mainly on military handouts or press briefings), the gaps in our knowledge about the air war have been facilitated by the U.S. military's failure to be honest and forthcoming with both data and doctrine. In this respect, the military has been the media's enabler.

Given CENTAF's knowledge that, no matter how "smart" their munitions or how precise their targeting, noncombatants, especially in urban neighborhoods, are sure to die in air strikes, I had a question for Lt. Col. Kennedy: Could he explain how CENTAF decided what was an acceptable level of civilian caualties it was willing to sacrifice for military aims? His answer: "Not in a sufficient manner that you would be happy with."

Kennedy's response echoed a running theme in his replies to my questions. At one point in our exchanges, he actually suggested that an article on the air war in Iraq was not "a viable story" and told me not to contact him again until I was under contract to produce an article that met his standards. He later claimed that his viability comment was due to my "apparent freelance status" and the fact I had not provided "a copy of any contract, nor contacts with a publisher."

"When you provide such information I'll be happy to entertain your questions," he wrote. After providing proof that I was, indeed, a journalist, he deigned to answer me again, concluding, "This is the last email I will respond to from you."

Kennedy was just one of a number of U.S. military officials who thwarted attempts to uncover the barest outline of the real extent and nature of the American air war and its toll on Iraqis. Aside from the Air Force's daily release of airpower summaries of dubious worth, the military's efforts have kept almost all substantive aspects of the air war essentially a secret from Americans at home.

During the Vietnam War, the United States conducted a clandestine air war in Cambodia, lied about it to the press, and hid it from the American public. In Iraq, the military has, these last years, engaged in a different kind of secretive air campaign, but their methods of keeping it a mystery appear to have certain similarities. A few years ago, at a meeting at a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace event, Les Roberts, a co-author of The Lancet study and now on faculty at Columbia University's Program on Forced Migration and Health, recalls a Pentagon spokesman's declaration that, aside from some sites in Najaf and al-Anbar province, the military had refrained from any attacks on mosques in Iraq. Roberts said that the spokesman's rhetoric differed markedly from the facts on the ground, recalling that "just weeks before I had seen helicopter gunships destroy a beautiful Mosque about an hour south of Baghdad."

When I asked Lt. Col. Kennedy why CENTAF did not track figures on civilian casualties of the air war, he laid the blame on higher headquarters, namely the Office of the Secretary of Defense: "Go ask OSD as we do not set policy here," he wrote.

"I think that it's a red herring," Sewall, the former Pentagon official, told Tomdispatch. "They spend a tremendous amount of energy using computer models to predict where the glass shards are going to go, and then they don't actually care about whether or not that effort to control the direction of the glass shards results in killing fewer people, because they've never bothered to find out whether it, in fact, succeeded in killing fewer people." As she pointed out in a telephone interview, it is "a rather absurd position."

"If they wanted to, they could certainly, as a matter of their own internal procedures, do it," Sewall said of tracking civilian casualties. "I think it's inexcusable that they don't do a better job."

Nick Turse is the associate editor and research director of Tomdispatch.com. He has written for the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Nation, the Village Voice, and regularly for Tomdispatch.

U.S. Airstrikes Take Toll on Civilians

U.S. Airstrikes Take Toll on Civilians
Eyewitnesses Cite Scores Killed in Marine Offensive in Western Iraq

By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service


RAMADI, Iraq -- U.S. Marine airstrikes targeting insurgents sheltering in Iraqi residential neighborhoods are killing civilians as well as guerrillas along the Euphrates River in far western Iraq, according to Iraqi townspeople and officials and the U.S. military.

Just how many civilians have been killed is strongly disputed by the Marines and, some critics say, too little investigated. But townspeople, tribal leaders, medical workers and accounts from witnesses at the sites of clashes, at hospitals and at graveyards indicated that scores of noncombatants were killed last month in fighting, including airstrikes, in the opening stages of a 17-day U.S.-Iraqi offensive in Anbar province.

"These people died silently, complaining to God of a guilt they did not commit," Zahid Mohammed Rawi, a physician, said in the town of Husaybah. Rawi said that roughly one week into Operation Steel Curtain, which began on Nov. 5, medical workers had recorded 97 civilians killed. At least 38 insurgents were also killed in the offensive's early days, Rawi said.

In a Husaybah school converted to a makeshift hospital, Rawi, four other doctors and a nurse treated wounded Iraqis in the opening days of the offensive, examining bloodied children as anxious fathers soothed them and held them down.

"I dare any organization, committee or the American Army to deny these numbers," Rawi said.

U.S. Marines in Anbar say they take pains to spare innocent lives and almost invariably question civilian accounts from the battleground communities. They say that townspeople who either support the insurgents or are intimidated by them are manipulating the number of noncombatant deaths for propaganda -- a charge that some Iraqis acknowledge is true of some residents and medical workers in Anbar province.

"I wholeheartedly believe the vast majority of civilians are killed by the insurgency," particularly by improvised bombs, said Col. Michael Denning, the top air officer for the 2nd Marine Division, which is leading the fight against insurgents in Anbar province.

In an interview at a Marine base at Ramadi, Anbar's provincial capital, Denning acknowledged that a city was "a very, very difficult place to fight." He said, however, that "insurgents will kill civilians and try to blame it on us."

But some military analysts say the U.S. military must do more to track the civilian toll from its airstrikes. Sarah Sewall, deputy assistant secretary of defense from 1993 to 1996 and now program director for the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard, said the military's resistance to acknowledging and analyzing so-called collateral damage remained one of the most serious failures of the U.S. air and ground war in Iraq.

"It's almost impossible to fight a war in which engagements occur in urban areas [and] to avoid civilian casualties," Sewall, whose center is a branch of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government that focuses on issues such as genocide, failed states and military intervention, said in a telephone interview.

"In a conflict like Iraq, where civilian perceptions are as important as the number of weapons caches destroyed, assessing the civilian harm must become a part of the battle damage assessment process if you're going to fight a smart war," she said.

The number of airstrikes carried out each month by U.S. aircraft rose almost fivefold this year, from roughly 25 in January to 120 in November, according to a tally provided by the military. Accounts by residents, officials and witnesses in Anbar and the Marines themselves make clear that Iraqi civilians are frequently caught in the attacks.

On Nov. 7, the third day of the offensive, witnesses watched from the roof of a public building in Husaybah as U.S. warplanes struck homes in the town's Kamaliyat neighborhood. After fires ignited by the fighting had died down, witnesses observed residents removing the bodies of what neighbors said was a family -- mother, father, 14-year-old girl, 11-year-old boy and 5-year-old boy -- from the rubble of one house.

Survivors said insurgents had been firing mortars from yards in the neighborhood just before the airstrikes. Residents pleaded with the guerrillas to leave for fear of drawing attacks on the families, they said, but were told by the fighters that they had no other space from which to attack.

Near the town of Qaim one day last month, a man who identified himself only as Abdul Aziz said a separate U.S. airstrike killed his grown daughter, Aesha. Four armed men were also found in the rubble of her house, he said.

"I don't blame the Americans. I blame Zarqawi and his group, who were using my daughter's house as a shelter," said Abdul Aziz, referring to Abu Musab Zarqawi, leader of the foreign-dominated group al Qaeda in Iraq.

Abdul Aziz spoke beside his daughter's newly dug grave, in a cemetery established for the 80 to 90 civilians who Anbar officials said were killed in the first weeks of the offensive. Several dozen new graves were evident, and residents said more than 40 victims of the fighting were to be buried that day alone. Witnesses saw only 11, all wrapped in blankets for burial. Residents said two of the 11 were women.

Abdul Aziz's grandsons ascribed blame for their mother's death more pointedly. "She was killed in the bombing by the Americans," said Ali, 9, the oldest of three brothers.

Operation Steel Curtain is representative of a series of offensives in western Anbar that began in late April. Brig. Gen. James L. Williams of the 2nd Marine Division described them as a town-by-town campaign to drive out insurgents and establish a permanent Iraqi army presence in the heavily Sunni Arab region. Iraqi and foreign insurgents use the Euphrates River communities for bases and for logistics support to funnel money, recruits and ordnance from Anbar and neighboring Syria to fighters planning attacks elsewhere in Iraq.

Steel Curtain involved 2,500 U.S. Marines, soldiers and sailors and about 1,000 soldiers of the U.S.-trained Iraqi army, including newly established units of locally recruited scouts commissioned mainly for their knowledge of the area, the Marines said. As the Iraqi and U.S. forces moved through Husaybah, Karabilah and other towns, Marines said, they encountered scores of mines and insurgent-rigged bombs made from artillery shells or other ordnance. Ten Marines and 139 insurgents died in the offensive, the Marines said. They gave no totals for known civilian deaths.

Statements issued by the U.S. military during the offensive reported at least two incidents that were described as airstrikes unwittingly conducted on buildings where civilians were later found to have been present.

On Nov. 8, a man in Husaybah led U.S. and Iraqi forces to a house destroyed by U.S. airstrikes the previous day, Marines said. Searching the rubble, Iraqi troops and U.S. Marines found two wounded civilians -- a young girl and a man -- and recovered five bodies.

The Marines were told that fighters loyal to Zarqawi had forced their way into the house, killed two of the people inside and locked the rest of the family on a lower floor before using the building to attack Iraqi and U.S. forces clearing the neighborhood.

"The soldiers and Marines had no knowledge of the civilians being held hostage in the home at the time of the attack," Marines said in a statement. It could not be determined if that airstrike was the same as the one described by witnesses who watched removal of the dead family.

On Nov. 15, U.S.-led forces called in an airstrike after coming under small-arms fire from a building in the hamlet of New Ubaydi. Two men ran from the building waving white flags after the airstrike, followed by 15 male and female civilians, a U.S. Marine statement said.

Marines described other instances of insurgents hiding among civilians in Anbar, including occasions when they dressed as women and tried to pass unnoticed among townspeople fleeing the battles. Residents, local officials and emergency workers said insurgents often sheltered among civilians in urban neighborhoods.

Arkan Isawi, an elder in Husaybah, said he and four other tribal leaders gathered to assess the damage while the operation was still underway and identified at least 80 dead, including women and children. "I personally pulled out a family of three children and parents," he said.

An exact count, however, was impossible, he said. "Anyone who gives you a number is lying, because the city was a mess, and people buried bodies in backyards and parking lots," with other bodies still under rubble, Isawi said.

Townspeople, medical workers and officials often exaggerate death tolls, either for effect or under orders from insurgents. However, accounts from other officials and residents are borne out at least partially by direct observation of bodies and other evidence.

The accounts of U.S. Marines and Iraqi civilians of airstrikes often diverge sharply.

On Oct. 16, for instance, a U.S. F-15 pilot caught a group of Ramadi-area insurgents planting explosives in a blast crater on a road used by U.S. forces, Denning said. The F-15 dropped a bomb on the group, and analysis of video footage shot by the plane showed only what appeared to be grown men where the bomb struck, Denning said. After the airstrike, he said, roadside bombs in the area "shut down to almost nothing.

"That was a good strike, and we got some people who were killing a lot of people," Denning said.

Capt. Jeffrey S. Pool, a spokesman for the 2nd Marines, said it was not possible that children were killed in that strike unless they were outside the range of the F-15's camera.

Residents, however, said the strike killed civilians as well as insurgents, including 18 children. Afterward, at a traditional communal funeral, black banners bore the names of the dead, and grieving parents gave names, ages and detailed descriptions of the children they said had been killed, witnesses said. The bodies of three children and a woman lay unclaimed outside a hospital after the day's fighting.

American commanders insist they do everything possible to avoid civilian casualties, but overall, Denning said, "I think it would be very difficult to prosecute this insurgency" without airstrikes.

The precision-guided munitions used in all airstrikes in Anbar "have miss rates smaller than the size of this table," Denning said in the bare-bones cafeteria of one of several Marine bases around Ramadi. He said that officers at Ramadi and at the Marines' "lessons learned" center in Quantico coordinate each attack using the best intelligence available. "I have to sell it to about two or three different chains of command: 'What are you doing to make sure there are no civilian casualties?' " Denning said.

Sewall, the former Pentagon official, also said air power often is the best means for taking out a target more cleanly than ground forces could. But, she said, U.S. forces don't do enough after the airstrikes to figure out whether each one succeeded in hitting the intended targets while sparing civilians.

Marine officers said their lessons-learned center at Quantico did not try to assess civilian casualties from attacks. At the Pentagon, routine bomb-damage assessments rely heavily on the examination of aerial photos and satellite images, which Sewall said were "good for seeing if a building was hit, but not as good for determining who was inside."

"I have enormous respect for the extent to which U.S. air power has become discriminate," Sewall said. "But when you're using force in an urban area or using force in an area with limited intelligence," and facing an enemy actively "exploiting distinctions between combatants and noncombatants, air power becomes challenging no matter how discriminate it is.

"When it comes to the extent to which they are minimizing civilian harm, the question becomes: How do you know?" Sewall said.

Ben Affleck: Join ONE Vote '08 - Politics on The Huffington Post

Ben Affleck: Join ONE Vote '08 - Politics on The Huffington Post


A noble effort Ben. One I can easily back, and will.
However, I question, and am deeply disappointed in your association with Bill Frist when it comes to this.

He is one of the most shameful examples in the Republican Party:

- He "diagnosed" Terry Schiavo from 600 miles away. Prompting a special session of Congress in order to interject in a private medical case.
An autopsy later revealed that Frist's diagnosis of the viability of her brain was not only incorrect, it was impossible due to extensive deterioration over the years.
- He remains under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for insider trading of family stock (HCA) two weeks before bad earnings report is filed and the stock value plummets.
- His family's company, HCA, fined $1.7 BILLION for fraudulent billing practices. The largest fraud settlement in United States history.
- His 2000 Senate campaign was found in felony violation of federal campaign finance laws. The Federal Election Commission fines Frist 2000, Inc., $11,000.

There are plenty of Republican senators with popular profiles and far more credibility if you're trying to give the appearance of a non-partisan or bi-partisan effort.

PLEASE....don't give Frist this opportunity to sanitize his resumé with some PR visibility.

Good Riddance, Attention Whore" ...by Cindy Sheehan

Monday, May 28th, 2007
"Good Riddance, Attention Whore" ...by Cindy Sheehan

I have endured a lot of smear and hatred since Casey was killed and especially since I became the so-called "Face" of the American anti-war movement. Especially since I renounced any tie I have remaining with the Democratic Party, I have been further trashed on such "liberal blogs" as the Democratic Underground. Being called an "attention whore" and being told "good riddance" are some of the more milder rebukes.

I have come to some heartbreaking conclusions this Memorial Day Morning. These are not spur of the moment reflections, but things I have been meditating on for about a year now. The conclusions that I have slowly and very reluctantly come to are very heartbreaking to me.

The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a "tool" of the Democratic Party. This label was to marginalize me and my message. How could a woman have an original thought, or be working outside of our "two-party" system?

However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the "left" started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of "right or left", but "right and wrong."

I am deemed a radical because I believe that partisan politics should be left to the wayside when hundreds of thousands of people are dying for a war based on lies that is supported by Democrats and Republican alike. It amazes me that people who are sharp on the issues and can zero in like a laser beam on lies, misrepresentations, and political expediency when it comes to one party refuse to recognize it in their own party. Blind party loyalty is dangerous whatever side it occurs on. People of the world look on us Americans as jokes because we allow our political leaders so much murderous latitude and if we don't find alternatives to this corrupt "two" party system our Representative Republic will die and be replaced with what we are rapidly descending into with nary a check or balance: a fascist corporate wasteland. I am demonized because I don't see party affiliation or nationality when I look at a person, I see that person's heart. If someone looks, dresses, acts, talks and votes like a Republican, then why do they deserve support just because he/she calls him/herself a Democrat?

I have also reached the conclusion that if I am doing what I am doing because I am an "attention whore" then I really need to be committed. I have invested everything I have into trying to bring peace with justice to a country that wants neither. If an individual wants both, then normally he/she is not willing to do more than walk in a protest march or sit behind his/her computer criticizing others. I have spent every available cent I got from the money a "grateful" country gave me when they killed my son and every penny that I have received in speaking or book fees since then. I have sacrificed a 29 year marriage and have traveled for extended periods of time away from Casey's brother and sisters and my health has suffered and my hospital bills from last summer (when I almost died) are in collection because I have used all my energy trying to stop this country from slaughtering innocent human beings. I have been called every despicable name that small minds can think of and have had my life threatened many times.

The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing. His precious lifeblood drained out in a country far away from his family who loves him, killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think. I have tried ever since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful. Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most.

I have also tried to work within a peace movement that often puts personal egos above peace and human life. This group won't work with that group; he won't attend an event if she is going to be there; and why does Cindy Sheehan get all the attention anyway? It is hard to work for peace when the very movement that is named after it has so many divisions.

Our brave young men and women in Iraq have been abandoned there indefinitely by their cowardly leaders who move them around like pawns on a chessboard of destruction and the people of Iraq have been doomed to death and fates worse than death by people worried more about elections than people. However, in five, ten, or fifteen years, our troops will come limping home in another abject defeat and ten or twenty years from then, our children's children will be seeing their loved ones die for no reason, because their grandparents also bought into this corrupt system. George Bush will never be impeached because if the Democrats dig too deeply, they may unearth a few skeletons in their own graves and the system will perpetuate itself in perpetuity.

I am going to take whatever I have left and go home. I am going to go home and be a mother to my surviving children and try to regain some of what I have lost. I will try to maintain and nurture some very positive relationships that I have found in the journey that I was forced into when Casey died and try to repair some of the ones that have fallen apart since I began this single-minded crusade to try and change a paradigm that is now, I am afraid, carved in immovable, unbendable and rigidly mendacious marble.

Camp Casey has served its purpose. It's for sale. Anyone want to buy five beautiful acres in Crawford, Texas? I will consider any reasonable offer. I hear George Bush will be moving out soon, too…which makes the property even more valuable.

This is my resignation letter as the "face" of the American anti-war movement. This is not my "Checkers" moment, because I will never give up trying to help people in the world who are harmed by the empire of the good old US of A, but I am finished working in, or outside of this system. This system forcefully resists being helped and eats up the people who try to help it. I am getting out before it totally consumes me or anymore people that I love and the rest of my resources.

Good-bye America…you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can't make you be that country unless you want it.

It's up to you now.

Letters: GOP blocks Gonzales no-confidence vote - Salon

• Let the obnoxious, smirking little turd stay on the job

  It's almost better to keep all the Bush administration criminals in the public eye. I wish Rumsfeld was back too.

  This whole administration is such an insult to the country that it's better they all go to the bitter end. That way, at least, the failure will be totally on them. They can't say Congress or the Democrats stymied them, held them back, crippled them.

  Every miserable failure of the mis-administration is 100 percent on them.

  Let it be.

  -- Garry Owen
  [Read Garry Owen's other letters]
  Permalink Monday, June 11, 2007 03:42 PM

• What Gives?

  Salon please help me understand this. I thought the Dems won the Senate in the '06 elections. But every time they try to act, we hear they need not 50, but 60 votes. Yet when the Gops held the Senate, the Dems were unable to stop the Gop; and the Gops threatened to "go nuclear" if the Dems mentioned the word "filibuster" or so much as looked the wrong way at even the most extreme Bush-Cheney judicial nominees.

  Can someone please explain why the Gops controlled the Senate with 50 votes, but the Dems are unable to pass anything with 51? What was the point of my voting in '06?

  -- WeikuBoy
  [Read WeikuBoy's other letters]
  Permalink Monday, June 11, 2007 03:47 PM

• Lieberman

  One word: Lieberman.

  Another word: pussies.

  that's what Dems are. cuz you're right. even though Lieberman pretty much controls congress with his swing vote, the dems are still pussies. Bush has just discovered his veto pen, and u know he'll just keep vetoing anyting sent his way that's not what he wants. And since the Dems don't have balls, they'll always end up giving Bush what he wants.

  say what u will about Newt, at least he tried to stand up to Bill. Dems won't do it cuz we're pussies. short 'n simple.

Impeachment Resolution passes

June 7th, 2007 3:06 am
Impeachment resolution passes

County representatives urged to push investigation of Bush, Cheney By Timothy Cama / Ithaca Journal

ITHACA, NY — After almost an hour of debate, the Tompkins County Legislature passed a resolution Tuesday evening to urge the county's representatives in the state legislature to recommend that the United States Congress investigate charges against President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to determine if they warrant impeachment.

Nine legislators voted in favor of the resolution, as submitted by Pamela Mackesey, D-City and Town of Ithaca, while six opposed it.

The resolution declared that “substantial evidence has been gathered that indicates that President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney have committed high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Among the charges listed were “Misleading Congress and the nation about ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda,” and “authorizing the unlawful use of torture and extraordinary rendition.”

After public comments, Chairman Tim Joseph, D-Town of Ithaca, ruled to debate and vote upon the resolution, which the Legislature recognized as “Resolution No. o” immediately, as it would usually have been put off until later in the meeting. A motion to overrule his decision failed.

A motion was then set forth to table the resolution indefinitely, because, as Richard S. Booth, D-City and Town of Ithaca, said, it is beyond the Legislature's jurisdiction. The motion failed as well, opening debate about Resolution No. o.

“It is absolutely within our job to listen to you,” said Martha Robertson, D-Town of Dryden.

Robertson also spoke in depth about the effects that the War on Terror has had locally in order to underscore her idea that the resolution is within the Legislature's purview.

For example, housing subsidies have been cut 80 percent since the war began, Robertson said.

Robertson warned against the idea that “if the president does it, it's legal.”

“I couldn't figure out why you're here,” Michael J. Sigler, R-Town of Lansing, said in opposition to the resolution.

Specifically in response to the allegations against the National Security Agency's wiretapping programs, which Bush supported, Sigler said he believes they weren't illegal. Nonetheless, the program ended in January.

By the end of the meeting, most of the legislators who spoke against the resolution spoke simply about whether or not it is within the Legislature's purview to pass such legislation. This reflects a resolution passed June 2 by the Tompkins County GOP, declaring that such actions are “wholly inappropriate.”

About 30 people supporting the resolution held an afternoon rally at the center of The Commons. By the time of the Legislature's meeting, organizers had gathered a petition of about 2,600 signatures in support of the resolution, according to organizer Alexis Alexander.

Greg Potter spoke specifically to the sentiment that a local body such as the County Legislature does not have the authority to pass resolutions about federal issues, such as impeachment.

“That is absolutely not the case,” Potter said. In speeches at the rally and at the Legislature's meeting, Potter compared government to nature. If one part is “sick,” it will “contaminate and destroy other parts.”

Marty Luster, a former New York state assemblyman, spoke about his grandchildren and the questions he predicts they'll ask him in the future.

“Why didn't Congress impeach Bush and Cheney?” Luster said. “Was it all right that they lied to the American people?”

Responding to himself, Luster said, “I'll have to say, ‘No, we did not approve.'”

David Jacobus, a law student at Cornell University and a member of Cornell Students Against the War, said that $165 million of the money that has been spent on the war came from Tompkins County.

Following the rally, participants walked to the Tompkins County Courthouse on North Tioga Street, bearing signs that read “Guilty of War Crimes” or “Impeach Bush and Cheney.” The group chanted during their walk, with statements such as “Hey hey, ho ho, Bush and Cheney have got to go” or “What do we want? Impeachment! When do we want it? Now!”

About 20 of the resolution's supporters packed into the two rows of seating in the Courthouse's Board Room, while others watched a live video feed of the meeting from outside the room.

Each speaker was granted three minutes to speak. One after another, supporters of the resolution spoke about their individual reasons for supporting it.

“There is no greater threat to our constitution than the current administration,” said Potter, largely repeating what he had said earlier.

Alexander told the Legislature that 11 U.S. states have introduced legislation to call for investigations that may lead to impeachment. She urged the Legislature to join the 72 municipalities in the country that have passed similar legislation. Her research showed that Tompkins County may be one of the first counties to enact such legislation.

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June 7th, 2007 3:06 am
Impeachment resolution passes

June 7th, 2007 1:20 am
Bush war adviser was skeptical on Iraq

June 5th, 2007 4:00 pm
Michael Moore Talks 'SiCKO' on 'The Oprah Winfrey Show'

May 31st, 2007 9:28 pm
Congressman Conyers Supports Movement to Impeach Bush, Cheney

May 31st, 2007 7:28 pm
Protesters At Statehouse Call For Bush Impeachment

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Gore Blasts Bush !!!

Gore Blasts Bush in 'The Assault on Reason'

Former Vice President's Book a Searing Assault on the Bush Administration

By JAKE TAPPER

May 21, 2007 —

When former Vice President Al Gore hosted "Saturday Night Live" in December 2002 he appeared in a skit that compared his vice presidential selection process from two years before to the dating reality TV show "The Bachelor." In one scene Gore appeared in a hot tub with a faux Joe Lieberman, both of them shirtless, drinking champagne, arms locked, romance in the air. Anyone then looking for clues to see if Gore would run for president in 2004 probably had no trouble discerning that an exploratory committee was not in the cards.

Almost five years later, Gore still says he has no plans to run for president, but his latest book, "The Assault On Reason," is so searingly critical of the Bush administration it's hard to discern what his plans may be.

On the one hand, Gore has written an un-nostalgic look back at the previous six years that lays out his case as to how the world might look today had the chads fallen another way -- a world where U.S. troops would not be fighting in Iraq, Abu Ghraib would just be a town's name and the nation would have been better prepared for Hurricane Katrina, global warming, and, yes, perhaps even Sept. 11.

But on the other hand, "The Assault On Reason" is an assault on President Bush, 308 pages of professorially rendered, liberal red meat that shuns the cautious language employed by any politician standing to the right of Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, and the left of Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo.

Gore: 'I'm Not a Candidate'

"I'm not a candidate and this is not a political book, this is not a candidate book," Gore told Diane Sawyer on "Good Morning America" Monday. "It's about that there are cracks in the foundation of American democracy that have to be fixed."

In the book, Gore is accusatory, passionate, and angry. He begins discussing the president by accusing him of sharing President Richard Nixon's unprincipled hunger for power -- and the book proceeds to get less complimentary from there. While Gore stops short of flatly calling for the impeachment of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, he certainly gives the impression that in his view such a move would be well deserved. He calls the president a lawbreaker, a liar and a man with the blood of thousands of innocent lives on his hands.

Most of Gore's ire stems from, not surprisingly, the war in Iraq, a war that Gore opposed from the beginning. Bush, he writes, "has exposed Americans abroad and Americans in every U.S. town and city to a greater danger of attack because of his arrogance and willfulness."

"History will surely judge America's decision to invade and occupy (Iraq)&as a decision that was not only tragic but absurd," Gore writes.

The Democratic Conversation

"The Assault On Reason" begins as an academic discourse about the one-sided, corporate-controlled television medium with no interactivity.

Gore argues that television not only creates a dynamic that runs contrary to Thomas Jefferson's desire for a "well-informed citizenry" but lulls viewers in a partially immobilized state and allows unreasoned communicators to sell false bills of goods, such as, say, that there was a connection between the Sept. 11 hijackers and Saddam Hussein.

As an example of the failed democratic conversation, Gore said Monday that prior to the war in Iraq, "if we had a full debate and a full airing of the pros and cons of the invasion that brought out the fact that Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with attacking us on 9/11 then we would have been much less likely to have these troops trapped over there now in the midst of a civil war."

Sept. 11, Iraq and al Qaeda

But in the book Gore sheds his inner Marshall McLuhan for his inner Michael Moore, saying that if "Bush and Cheney actually believed in the linkage (between Iraq and al Qaeda) that they asserted -- in spite of all the evidence to the contrary presented to them contemporaneously -- that would by itself in light of the available evidence, make them genuinely unfit to lead our nation. On the other hand, if they knew the truth and lied, massively and repeatedly, isn't that worse? Are they too gullible or too dishonest?"

(Gore said Monday that the 2006 midterm successes of the Democrats were not an example of democracy's conversation failing, but "a belated response to some of the perceived mistakes of the current administration. But I think the threshold for change was way too high.")

Gore writes that since "Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack&then that means the president took us to war when he didn't have to and that over 3,000 American service members have been killed&unnecessarily."

When asked if that meant U.S. troops had died in vain, Gore said Monday that "those who serve our country are honored in memory" but that the issue is "there is hardly anybody left in America&who doesn't believe that it was a terrible mistake to invade a country that didn't attack us. But all of the evidence necessary to make that judgment before we invaded was available&We have been making a series of really important, really big mistakes, and the question is how can we reinvigorate the role of 'We the People' in American democracy so that we're part of the conversation and so that those (in power)&are listening to reason, are looking at the facts and not brushing past them."

It seems likely that even if Gore opts not to run for president in 2008, this book may serve to drive presidential candidates, including Sens. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., Barack Obama, D-Ill., and former Sen. John Edwards, even further to the left, both in rhetoric and substance. The former Tennessee congressman and senator accuses his former colleagues on Capitol Hill of complicity with what he sees as nefarious deeds committed by the Bush administration. The book opens with Gore wondering why Senate Democrats were so silent during the debate before going to war in Iraq and toward the end faults them for being so silent about the administration's warrantless surveillance program.

Naming Names

He doesn't assail any Democrats by name. Bush, however, he names. Over and over.

"President Bush has repeatedly violated the law for six years," Gore charges, regarding the warrantless surveillance program. He argues that the president does not need the enhanced domestic surveillance powers he has sought and received, often in secret, but that the competent use of the information already available would have been sufficient. Such as, for instance, the fact that Sept. 11 terrorists Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almidhar were already on a State Department/INS watch list.

He does not flatly state that Sept. 11 would not have occurred during a Gore administration. But, he writes, "Whenever power is unchecked and unaccountable, it almost inevitably leads to mistakes and abuses. In the absence of rigorous accountability, incompetence flourishes."

Then, using a study from the Markle Foundation, Gore shows how better and quicker analysis -- not the increased data sought by the Bush administration -- would have led to other hijackers. Salem Alhazmi, then Mohammed Atta and Marwan al Shehhi. And so on.

But instead, Gore writes, incompetence rules the day and Bush has pushed for Orwellian powers a la "1984."

What might cause some to speculate that Gore isn't ruling out a third White House run (he also campaigned as a centrist "New Democrat" in 1988) is the cautious wording he uses about two claims against the administration, sensitive ones regarding Bush's religious views and whether or not the war in Iraq was a war for oil. Gore raises them, but even among his many incendiary charges, doesn't claim them as his own.

Gore's Charge to the Nation

As for what now? Gore says the nation, indeed the world, is at a fork in the road. Gore calls for the United States to rejoin the international community and lead the war on crises involving global warming, water, terrorism and pandemics such as HIV/AIDS. He calls for a repeal of the Patriot Act, and for the Bush administration to disclose all of its interrogation policies. He wants more transparency in political TV commercials and an expediting of the shift from television toward the Internet as a method of communication.

Gore told ABC News Monday he's focused not on running for president but on solving the climate crisis, but "in order to solve the climate crisis, I'm convinced that we're going to have to address these cracks in the foundation of democracy, these basic problems with the way we're approaching decision-making."

After Random House published 200,000 copies of "Putting People First: How We Can All Change America" -- the soporific campaign tome purportedly written by then-Gov. Bill Clinton and then-Sen. Al Gore -- the ill-fated re-election campaign of then-President George H.W. Bush filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission. Republicans alleged that the book deal constituted an illegal corporate contribution to the Democratic ticket, which didn't directly profit financially from the book though the publicity certainly didn't hurt. How quaint that book must now seem to those Republicans.

Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures

Why I hate Tom Friedman

Those of you who know me know that I Hate Tom Friedman. My disgust with him and his approach to reality is so thorough that when asked why I Hate Tom Friedman, I usually make something of a game out of it - let me pick a random op-ed and see how many sentences get my blood pressure up.

But I can’t imagine playing that game any more, because if I ever read this article again, my head is going to explode. Seriously - I Fucking Hate Tom Friedman:

The “real reason” for this war, which was never stated, was that after 9/11 America needed to hit someone in the Arab-Muslim world. … The only way to puncture that bubble was for American soldiers, men and women, to go into the heart of the Arab-Muslim world, house to house, and make clear that we are ready to kill, and to die, to prevent our open society from being undermined by this terrorism bubble. Smashing Saudi Arabia or Syria would have been fine. But we hit Saddam for one simple reason: because we could, and because he deserved it and because he was right in the heart of that world. And don’t believe the nonsense that this had no effect. Every neighboring government — and 98 percent of terrorism is about what governments let happen — got the message. If you talk to U.S. soldiers in Iraq they will tell you this is what the war was about.

You should, too.

Please John Conyers: Impeach Bush NOW

Please John Conyers: Impeach Bush NOW

Submitted by Bob Fertik on March 3, 2006 - 9:19pm.

• Impeachment

On Thursday, Harper's Magazine held a truly outstanding forum on impeaching George Bush (photo by Kate Anne).

The panel could not have been more distinguished. It included former Rep. Liz Holtzman, who became famous through her diligent service on the House Judiciary Committee when it adopted Articles of Impeachment that forced Richard Nixon to resign; John Dean, Nixon's White House Counsel whose conscientious refusal to cover up Nixon's crimes played a crucial role in Nixon's downfall; Harper's editor Lewis Lapham, who has analyzed American politics with profound insight for decades; Michael Ratner, the passionate human rights lawyer from the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is leading the legal battles to stop Bush's torture; and Rep. John Conyers, the civil rights legend who is Bush's most passionate and determined critic in Congress.

If anyone came to the forum doubting Bush deserves to be impeached, that doubt was dispelled immediately when all of the panelists emphatically agreed that Bush's war in Iraq, his torture of prisoners, his illegal wiretapping, and his assertion of dictatorial powers all rose to the level of High Crimes as intended by the Founding Fathers.

Sam Seder of Air America Radio, who was an excellent moderator, tried to play devil's advocate, but even he found it impossible to come up with a reason not to impeach Bush.

So the question for the evening was not whether to impeach Bush, but how - and when.

Obviously the primary obstacle is Republican control of Congress. Only Lapham thought a few Republicans might rise above partisanship to join Democrats. Salon's Michelle Goldberg described that idea as "a delusion almost as great as Bush's conviction that God, not William Rehnquist, made him president."

So the question shifted to whether Democrats could win a majority in Congress. Holtzman declared her faith in the voters, who will wake up to the enormity of Bush's crimes and demand impeachment - or sweep Republicans out of office for standing in the way.

As the panel wrapped up, those fired-up voters in the audience headed for the microphones. When my turn came, I echoed Holtzman's remarks by providing concrete evidence of the tremendous grassroots passion for impeachment.

I have good news: there is a grassroots movement for impeachment, and you can find it at ImpeachPAC.org. We have raised over $60,000 to support pro-impeachment candidates, and we have endorsed two so far. But our main problem is that very few candidates are willing to call for impeachment. Mr. Conyers, why don't you introduce Articles of Impeachment so ImpeachPAC can endorse you?

My question was not meant as an attack on Conyers, who is far and away my favorite Member of Congress, and has done more than any other Member to make impeachment a genuine possibility, however remote it seems. But Conyers was a bit exasperated.

My goodness, please look at H.Res. 635, which calls for an investigation that could lead to impeachment. But I cannot call for impeachment now, before we have investigated all the facts.

My time was up, so I could not continue the debate. But if I could, these are the arguments I would make for the immediate introduction of Articles of Impeachment.

First, the Articles of Impeachment have been written. You can find them in Michael Ratner's brand new book. We don't need a committee to struggle for months over the wording; Conyers and his allies can simply "throw the book" at Bush.

Second, when House Republicans impeached President Clinton in 1998, they emphasized ad nauseum that "impeachment" is merely the equivalent of an indictment, the determination that there is sufficient evidence to charge a suspect with a crime. Impeachment, like an indictment, leads to a trial, in which a jury (in this case the Senate) determines whether the evidence is sufficient for conviction. The evidence we have in hand (as presented in Michael Ratner's book, as well as John Conyers' thorough report on the Iraq War lies, The Constitution in Crisis) is far more than is needed for an indictment. There is absolutely no reason for Conyers' proposed Select Committee to do the work of the Senate in weighing the evidence.

Third, Bush's criminal activity is ongoing and must be stopped. Our occupation of Iraq has already cost 2,300 American lives and at least 28,636 Iraqi lives, if not well over 100,000. We are committing war crimes by torturing and murdering prisoners, using chemical weapons and depleted uranium, and pushing Iraq to the brink of civil war. Bush is still wiretapping countless Americans without a warrant, in direct violation of the FISA law. And even though Bush's crimes are flagrant and obscene, the Republican Congress refuses to either investigate them or stop them.

Finally, as the panelists made clear, the American people are truly in a state of despair that George Bush is able to commit these unspeakable crimes without any effort to hold him accountable. By introducing real Articles of Impeachment - even if only a few Members do so - those Members will make a powerful statement that they are determined to challenge that despair and demand accountability. That act of leadership, in and of itself, would galvanize the 52% of Americans (when last measured in January, long before Dubai and the Katrina tapes) who support impeachment. And it would most likely persuade even more Americans that Bush's impeachment was both necessary and urgent. So if 55% or 60% or even 65% of Americans supported impeachment, Republicans in Congress would have a very difficult time standing in the way - especially as they faced a disastrous election in November.

After four distinguished decades in Congress, John Conyers is not a man who acts rashly. But all of us who have watched Bush shred the Constitution know that Conyers has tried to stop him every step of the way by sending urgent letters, filing Freedom of Information requests, and proposing Resolutions of Inquiry. Through those diligent efforts, Conyers has laid the most solid groundwork possible for impeachment.

So please John Conyers, I honestly beg you to introduce Articles of Impeachment now.

Action items:

1. Send this article with a few words of your own to campaign@johnconyers.com

2. Urge your Representative and Senators to support Impeachment:
http://democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/65

3. C-Span taped this outstanding forum but it does not appear on C-Span's schedule for Saturday, Sunday or Monday. Email viewer@c-span.org and urge them to broadcast it.

4. The New York Times is one block from Town Hall, yet it did not even mention this historic event. Email Executive Editor Bill Keller executive-editor@nytimes.com and Public Editor Byron Calame public@nytimes.com and demand to know why.

5. Link to this article from your favorite blogs and ask the blog owner to join ImpeachPAC's Citizens Impeachment Commission.

6. Register to join in local protests:
http://www.democrats.com/user/register

7. Read the whole protest plan:
http://www.democrats.com/cd

8. Organize your congressional district:
http://pdamerica.org/orgs/cdpp-form.php

9. Support our efforts by contributing to ImpeachPAC.

Thank you for continuing your tireless efforts to save American Democracy!