I have been reading very carefully through all the Sunday newspapers to try and analyse the truth from all the scores of pages claiming to detail the so-called bomb plot. Unlike the great herd of so-called security experts doing the media analysis, I have the advantage of having had the very highest security clearances myself, having done a huge amount of professional intelligence analysis, and having been inside the spin machine.
So this, I believe, is the true story.
None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn’t be a plane bomber for quite some time.
In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.
What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year – like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests.
Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes – which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn’t give is the truth.
The gentleman being “interrogated” had fled the UK after being wanted for questioning over the murder of his uncle some years ago. That might be felt to cast some doubt on his reliability. It might also be felt that factors other than political ones might be at play within these relationships. Much is also being made of large transfers of money outside the formal economy. Not in fact too unusual in the British Muslim community, but if this activity is criminal, there are many possibilities that have nothing to do with terrorism.
We then have the extraordinary question of Bush and Blair discussing the possible arrests over the weekend. Why? I think the answer to that is plain. Both in desperate domestic political trouble, they longed for “Another 9/11”. The intelligence from Pakistan, however dodgy, gave them a new 9/11 they could sell to the media. The media has bought, wholesale, all the rubbish they have been shovelled.
We then have the appalling political propaganda of John Reid, Home Secretary, making a speech warning us all of the dreadful evil threatening us and complaining that “Some people don’t get” the need to abandon all our traditional liberties. He then went on, according to his own propaganda machine, to stay up all night and minutely direct the arrests. There could be no clearer evidence that our Police are now just a political tool. Like all the best nasty regimes, the knock on the door came in the middle of the night, at 2.30am. Those arrested included a mother with a six week old baby.
For those who don’t know, it is worth introducing Reid. A hardened Stalinist with a long term reputation for personal violence, at Stirling Univeristy he was the Communist Party’s “Enforcer”, (in days when the Communist Party ran Stirling University Students’ Union, which it should not be forgotten was a business with a very substantial cash turnover). Reid was sent to beat up those who deviated from the Party line.
We will now never know if any of those arrested would have gone on to make a bomb or buy a plane ticket. Most of them do not fit the “Loner” profile you would expect – a tiny percentage of suicide bombers have happy marriages and young children. As they were all under surveillance, and certainly would have been on airport watch lists, there could have been little danger in letting them proceed closer to maturity – that is certainly what we would have done with the IRA.
In all of this, the one thing of which I am certain is that the timing is deeply political. This is more propaganda than plot. Of the over one thousand British Muslims arrested under anti-terrorist legislation, only twelve per cent are ever charged with anything. That is simply harrassment of Muslims on an appalling scale. Of those charged, 80% are acquitted. Most of the very few – just over two per cent of arrests – who are convicted, are not convicted of anything to do terrorism, but of some minor offence the Police happened upon while trawling through the wreck of the lives they had shattered.
Be sceptical. Be very, very sceptical.
As DaveBell pointed out, the timing of the huge "terror arrest" in Britan and the resulting harrassement of hapless US airline passengers was quite suspect.
However, there is something that neither Mr. Murray nor anyone else on this comment thread mentioned: The victory of Ned Lamont over Joe Lieberman in Connecticut. Didn't anyone notice that all this hoo-hah occured *the day after* Mr. Lamont's win?
Equally suspicious is the interview that the usually press shy Vice President gave the very next day:
"As the Mideast sits on the brink of regional war, Vice President Dick Cheney spent his time yesterday holding a teleconference to discuss the outcome of the Democratic Senate primary in Connecticut.
Cheney said that to 'purge a man like Joe Lieberman" was "of concern, especially over the issue of Joe's support with respect to national efforts in the global war on terror.'"
He also went on to evoke the name that is supposed to strike fear in the hearts of all who hear it: Al Qaeda.
You can read the article here (with a link to the transcript of the interview) here:
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/08/10/cheney-ct/
Interesting thread. A bit sad to see the usual spider-hole mindsets here (ScottS) babbling status quo talking points chapter and verse. In my estimation, such types are stunningly ignorant of real history. Thus MSM brainwashed, they prefer to remain the sleepwalking sheep they depict. In any case, shaking sandbox worldviews of this kind tends to be pointless.
That said, I would take exception to Craig's statement:
"Why do bad governments seek to amass power? Partly because they delude themselves that they really do know best and it is in everyone's interest if opposition is stifled. Partly because of the perks and buzz of untramelled power. In Reid's case, the point is he has never believed in liberal democracy or shown respect for persons."
But it isn't so much "bad governments" as bad theatre.
"Bad governments" and their MSM have usually been toy poodles for a freeloading cartel elite that has repeatedly hijacked global affairs thru surrogates. In England such policy was traditionally enforced from "the City" and in the U.S. from New York. In either case, the policies foisted do involve mid management poseurs such as rodeo clown GW, Cheney, Blair and Reid.
There doesn't seem to be much "delusion" here except from those targeted as objects of agitprop and Orwellian MSM image control. A program that produces one duped public that pays the costs of war in blood and treasure for private riches. For in the end, once you get into someone's head thru psyops, you essentially own them.
So we have 911 cover-up, bogus "war on terror" and most of DC in bed with the mega-corrupt House of Saud complete with its Bin Laden clan that remains the primary funder of al-Qaeda (not to mention the Islamic Brotherhood).
The reality is an entire DC-MSM-UK puppet complex tends to come off as bad theatre meant to impress good little sheep a la ScottS. Hence do we get a national culture of willful suckers that cling to the wholesale nonsense as desperately as a smack addict to a dealer and the next fix.
scottsa about this "great lie" I think that we have to remember that Dick Cheney was in the Nixon administration here in the usa, and if there's one thing he leanred, watching nixon ruin his presidency and then watch reagan save his, it's that if a president can say "I do not know" and "I can not remember" to an illegal action or lie, he will not be blamed by the american public.
So, there's this Weapons of Mass Destruction lie. Now the thing is, there is a certainty that George W. Bush believed it. He was always told that the best intelligence said that Iraq had them, he was never told otherwise. This is part of a deliberate bubble by Cheney and others to insulate the president from harm. Cheney himself, now he didn't care if it was a lie or not. So, I think give credit where credit is due, Cheney can be blamed for propogating a lie. How about the CIA, who lied there? Certainly the CIA had every type of report, if the president had bothered to read them all, he could have known the truth. You can't blame the CIA for lying.
When the whole muddle is sorted out, it ends up that there is nobody you can blame. Those in the decision making process those in the public eye, were innoculated against possible future action by being kept in a bubble.
Running a presidency like this makes as much sense in a modern world as making sure that you shred your old bank statements before you throw them in the trash. Once an administration has decided on a course of action, learning more than it needs to only makes it culpable. This by the way is the same reason that ever since Richard Nixon, Presidents have not taped their own telephone conversations or meetings. President Johnson did it, Nixon did it, JFK did it, but you just can't keep around records of things which can possible show you to be culpable of any actions.
It's all about plausible deniability. So, so expect that a commission would ever find fault is ridiculous. Of course ever investigation will prove that the whole WMD fiasco was a "miscalculation".
By the way, I'm saying this is how our presidency operates about everything, not just WMDs. You'll find no tape recordings of President Bush talking to intelligence officers, period. You won't even hear him talking to agricultural experts about whether or not we have enough corn. It's just the smart way to run a presidency.
Native, I suggest you take a look at my blog before pigeonholing me in the blithely silly way you did. You might notice, way down below your elevated probiscus, that I am not exactly a follower of the MSM. I do admit however to not being in your camp; one which seems to follow a reductionist mode of thought which tosses everything unrestrictively into a plot meme and elevates it, in spite of a lack of even a shred of proof, to some high TRVTH. How silly.
Scott Stupid Ass wrote:
"Oh, and lets not forget Bush and the entire US state department, CIA and Secret Service, most of whom have, according to you, access to these top secret documents as well."
ROFL!!
Two things here:
First, Bush and the US State Department and the CIA have no credibility here. None. Zero. Nada.
Second, the Secret Service is not an intelligence agency. Not in any way, shape, or form. If Scotty-Poo knew anything at all about such things, he would know this.
These two things clearly establish that he is an utter fool at best, but most likely just a LIAR, the same as the liars he is defending.
I think this is a very beleivable account, of a quite unbelievable plot.
But i wonder whether you are embelishing the story a bit by saying that John Reid used to beat up CP members who did not follow the party line at Stirling University?
Not only is this red-baiting, but seems highly unlikely. Do you have any evidence for this? I think you weaken the credibility of your argument about the bomb plots by also including in the same account very unlikely charges against Dr Reid, and the CP.
Well, I was President of a Scottish University Students' Union myself. It is not only credible but not altogether untypical of the CPGB in Scotland in the period, I am afraid to say. And I have had first-hand accounts of Reid's behaviour at Stirling.
I have, incidentally, no great antipathy to communism as a theoretical construct, though I find apologists for Stalin risible and am generally hostile to authoritarian states of any hue.
Craig
Craig said above:
"Why do bad governments seek to amass power? Partly because they delude themselves that they really do know best and it is in everyone's interest if opposition is stifled. Partly because of the perks and buzz of untramelled power."
Can we widen the 'why'? Why has the UK government been doing what it's been doing – in the Near and Middle East alone? What makes the madness and mayhem worthwhile? Did they really think that invading Afghanistan and Iraq would do anything other than multiply human misery a million times? What parts do corporations and the military play in UK political decisions? What do UK leaders get out of their apparent subservience to the US? Why is it not attractive to take a principled, thoughtful, independent, statesmanlike approach to world issues? Why is it not seen as essential to support, improve and empower international institutions such as the UN? And what exactly are the perks?
I often wonder – naively, of course – how it might have been if Britain, faced with the US reaction to 9/11, had said something like:
"No, stop, think. We need to find out why they did this. Perhaps it is an extreme expression of something felt widely by millions. Maybe it has something to do with the relentless drive by powerful groups in the West to dominate everyone else at home and abroad – economically, environmentally, politically, militarily, socially, culturally, psychologically. Perhaps we ought to cut capitalism back a bit, be more tolerant of other cultures, and allow the good parts of our societies to rub off on others by communication and example. We could have a go at catching criminals, but more wars, killing, humiliation and mass political imprisonment are likely to make things worse. Above all, this would fit in quite well with the urgent need to work together to slow down our general destruction of the planet."
Silly is as silly does, ScottSA?
I simplified for the sake of a blog but what I've put down is essentially accurate and thus not reductive. A distinction that clearly eludes the palate of the gullible.
And I have indeed slogged across your screeds that are at best scatty and at worst, na?ve piffle. For you to label anyone here "reductionist" is pure fantasy projection coming from a mind that gleefully buys one status quo red herring after the next.
It's apparent you have less than no clue as to what and who runs the system. I merely have some grasp because I've bothered to look. My network also happens to include merchant bankers and Intel pros that can't afford delusions official or otherwise. But it doesn't take a brain trust to know the forest for the trees. Beyond that, it's not my job to lead rude bumpkins from worldviews that approximate a child's view. So let's chalk up what follows to your fellow bloggers that have been more than patient with you.
Proof of 911 cover-up thru to its groundless "war on terror" (read war OF terror) abounds thru any number of works and via sites that people continually bring up on venues like this. Hence, I'll address a few sources for de facto corporate cartel rule that masquerades as Orwellian "democracy" over "free market capitalism". A parasitic fraud that makes more than less a killing joke of both practices wherever they are foisted:
http://www.wealth4freedom.com/creature.htm
http://www.wealth4freedom.com/creature_Chapter_10…
http://www.mises.org/content/mnr.asp
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard66.ht…
The following quotes are from men that did not trade in lite comedy or rumor on the issue at hand:
"THE REAL TRUTH OF THE MATTER IS, AS YOU AND I KNOW, THAT A FINANCIAL ELEMENT IN THE LARGER CENTERS HAS OWNED THE GOVERNMENT EVER SINCE THE DAYS OF ANDREW JACKSON."
PRESIDENT FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT (describing oligarch rule in a letter to handler "Colonel" Edward M. House, confidence man for the cartel and founder of the Council on Foreign Relations. House also handled President Wilson and the creation of a private and unconstitutional "Federal Reserve" Corporation and its IRS in 1913. FDR speaks of monopolists at cartel centers of New York & London that own the U.S. Government. November 21st, l933)
"WE WILL HAVE WORLD GOVERNMENT WHETHER OR NOT WE LIKE IT. THE ONLY QUESTION IS WHETHER WORLD GOVERNMENT WILL BE ACHIEVED BY CONQUEST OR CONSENT."
JAMES PAUL WARBURG (in testimony before the US Senate. Warburg was an agent of the Rockefeller-Rothschild bloc and chief architect of the "Federal Reserve" Corporation, an unconstitutional private bank monopoly set up for cartel hegemony. James Paul Warburg was the son of Paul Moritz Warburg, nephew of Felix Warburg and of Jacob Schiff, both of the Rothschild front Kuhn, Loeb & Co that financed and setup Lenin and Trotsky's "Bolshevik Communist Revolution" thru James' brother Max, banker to the German government. February 17, 1950.)
"IF YOU WANT TO BE THE SLAVES OF [PRIVATE CARTEL] BANKS AND PAY THE COST OF YOUR OWN SLAVERY, THEN LET THE BANKS CREATE MONEY?"
SIR JOSIAH STAMP (Governor of the Bank of England and the 2nd richest individual in Britain. A man in service to the Rothschilds.1920)
"BRITAIN IS THE SLAVE OF AN INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL BLOC."
BRITISH PRIME MINISTER DAVID LLOYD GEORGE (on the money cartel June 20, 1934)
Having some explosives experience myself (Navy EOD and NASA KSC propellants engineer), my first reaction to the "liquid explosives carried in hair gel bottles to blow up airplanes" was a resounding @#$%^&! The more I heard of the story, the more @#$%^! it sounded like. And then, when the Bush Crime Cartel's spin machine immediately (no planning ahead of time, right? the shameless cabal even used the exact same phrases in a dozen "individual" speeches) used it to attack the winner of the Democratic primary, Lamont, over their favorite mole, AIPAC's poster-boy Lieberman, well, even CNN and Faux were shamed into admitting that they were aware of the "suspicious" timing of the memos passed back and forth between Blair's handlers and Bush's handlers the day before the primary election.
As for troll ScottSA, those people demonstrate the typical bushvoter's inability to face reality. ("Bushvoter" means not only breathtakingly stupid, but also living in a fantasy world to an extent that would land a ten-year-old in psychiatric treatment.) The Bush Dictator-wanna-be Regime has made no secret whatsoever of their agenda of total world domination by force, including using nuclear weapons if they sense themselves losing power. Look up the word "Dominionists."
I am no fan of anarchy, but when the alternative is BushDick style anarchy and Poodle Blair's spineless complicity, well, those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
To ScottSA ref: Being pigeonholed by Native.
I took your advice and visited your web blog, and whether Natives proboscis is elevated or not I agree with his assertion that you are unaware of any real history. In reading your various posts one in particular stood out called, "Let's Stop Pretending". In it you show several pictures of security forces from countries Britian, Canada, France, America, and Australia and then you try to infer that this is proof that these countries are under civil siege. Continuing on you dismiss any underlying causes for this and make the huge jump in logic to Islam by showing a picture of worshippers at Mecca.
Now I could do the same thing and replace those photos with people hiking in the woods and smiling at the beach, however that would not be an accurate representation of the public at large either. This is a perfect example of how propaganda is orchestrated.
The posts on your blog are a collection of open ended questions and opinion, however I wouldn't call them convincing arguments, in fact I wouldn't call them arguments at all. One thing is obvious is that you have made up your mind that all Muslims are your enemy.
Post script To: The Die Hard
ScottSa is not a Bush voter. According to ScottSAs bio he is a Canadian like myself. I would ask that the rest of Canadians not be judged by Scotts rants.
Interesting theory Craig, I'm not sure I agree 100% with it. I'm sure the intelligent services have a whole host of people they can pick up and raid should they want to
It is however interesting how people block out certain facts, for example there are now calls for targeted screening of people (i.e. searching people who look middle eastern) however at least 1 (may be 2 I can't remember) of the people being quizzed are white Muslim converts.
I do however agree there's zero chance of it coming to court, the day after the arrests, when the bank of England froze the bank accounts of the suspects, the BBC kindly listed there names on it TV reports. So if the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) did want to press charges all the suspects lawyers would have to do is point to this fact and the case would be thrown out (there's no way they could have a fair trial).
Craig, I don't partiulcrly want to labour the point, and I am ot defending the somewaht undemocratic measures of the CP in the past, but when you say: "It is not only credible but not altogether untypical of the CPGB in Scotland in the period, I am afraid to say. And I have had first-hand accounts of Reid's behaviour at Stirling."
I would just say that it is quite a serious claim that John reid used violence for political aims as a student. So it is necessary to be sepcific abvout what you are alledging. I find it reasonably credible that there was thuggish behaviour in general student politics, and that reid may have played a part in it, but I find it unlikely that this was used within the CP to enforce discipline.
After all most political parties and religious groups enforce discipline through a shared ideology, bonds of loyalty, etc, and violence is exceptional.
Andy,
I'm no where near old enogth to ever have met dr Reid on the left, however…. The SWP now as the CP before them does have a reputation of using violence against other left orginisations, so I wouldn't find it strange that Dr Reid may have a history in that respect, but it's likely to be against other left groups rather than against members of the CP.
P.S. It's due to the way both the CP and the SWP flip-flot there policys depending on who they want to attract at that time, while trying to keep the idea of a principaled politics.
P.P.S. Not all left groups work like that, in fact most as Andy points out gel because of shared ideology. However if you don't…..
Well, as I think I said above, it's a specific allegation and I have met people directly involved. If I didn't believe it would stand up in court, I wouldn't say it.
I do not believe the matters in dispute were ideological. I don't mean to imply that communists in general are violent. But hard left student politics in Scotland forty years ago could be. If you wanted to argue that was no more of a reflection of a tendency to violence in Scottish working class culture of the period, I wouldn't argue.
If anyone reading this knew him at Stirling and wants to chip in…
The following is, I confess, hazy, but someone with better memory or more time to dig…I have a memory of accusations of physically bullying behaviour by Reid over key votes towards potential rebel MPs. Anyone track that down?
But I would like to make the point that Scotland is not a big country, it has a few universities, and quite a tight political class – we tend to know stuff about each other. That is, for example, why I met people who crossed swords with Reid at University, or why the first time I met Robin Cook he was able to tell me several stories about myself.
Craig
Craig
I think that debates on whether Government officials deliberately lie — and whether it is plausible that they should not be caught in those lies — miss the point and misconstrue what has been happening. The problem is not as "innocent" as mere deception: it is rather one of self-deception, which in a sense is much worse. At least deceivers know what the truth is.
The raw output of intelligence operations is not "facts", but evidence. Intercepts, documents, gossip, interrogations, purchased information, confidential disclosures etc., often provide a murky, partial, and contradictory picture. They must be sifted and weighed by analysts, who bring expertise and dispassionate judgement to the table, in order to form calibrated conclusions tempered by disclaimers of uncertainty appropriate to the quality of the evidence.
This sort of dispassionate analysis is precisely what did not happen in the case of the "WMD Affair", despite the attempts by many commissions of intelligence experts to clear themselves of responsibility for the debacle.
The fact of the matter is that inside the US intelligence community at least, it was completely clear that serious career damage would occur to anyone expressing doubt about the quality of the evidence for (1) the level of development of various Iraqi WMD programs, and (2) the extent to which those programs could be connected to a terrorist threat. George Tenet himself set the nuance-free tone to be followed by his troops with his "Slam Dunk" rhetoric. And the hatchet job directed by Cheney at Ambassador Wilson — not a member of the intelligence community — for pointing out that the bullshit evidence about Niger uranium was, well, bullshit, leaves one to imagine what the likely consequence would be for an intelligence family member who had the temerity to commit the same sort of points to paper.
Keep in mind that the people running the US International Security establishment are the same people who made names for themselves during the Cold War by complaining vociferously about "soft" CIA analyses about the Soviet threat, and demanding "Team B" re-analyses to confirm their belief that the USSR was preparing to launch an imminent war. They never had any respect for the professional intelligence analysts who are now their subordinates, and who they can now direct to the conclusions that they require. Those subordinates can tell which way the wind is blowing, and either quit or trim their sails.
If a culprit is to be sought in a mentality, then that mentality is not mendacity, but ideology. The senior members of the Bush administration *knew* what the "right" answer was. If you start from the conclusion, then it is not hard to pick a weighting of the available evidence that supports it, the evidence being sufficiently flexible and ambiguous to permit a variety of interpretations. Intelligence analysis is a frail and error-prone business under the best of circumstances, but ideological preconceptions poison it entirely.
Carlo –
Great poat, and I couldn't agree more. I know I keep saying this, but you really should read my book for an inside account of what happened within the British establishment over the "War on Terror". You don't need to buy it – get it from a library.
Craig
Thank you for posting this. I was feeling a bit tinfoil-ly, because that was my take, too.
That's a totally groundless smear:
The UK Passport Authority is actually fairly efficient these days
Petro, I wouldn't be too quick to take off the tinfoil hat yet. It appears that the police do indeed have a great deal of evidence here. It is simply impossible for this to have been some kind of nefarious plot. I have seen nothing here outside of ad hominem, speculation just this side of the Elders of Zion, and massive category errors to suggest that there is any inkling of truth to these allegations.
One poster used the following 'proof': [anything that Bush says is a lie, therefore this must be a lie]. 'Sophomoric' is far too kind a term for this type of argument, if indeed it can be dignified as an argument.
Another poster issued forth with snippets of quotation taken out of context and spanning the entire previous century to prove that there is afoot a worldwide nefarious plot to hold all the world hostage to a sort of restated bureaucratic imperitive based on greed, and presumably world Jewry, if the Rothschild reference is understood by the poster who used it.
Another poster took a small agitprog piece I constructed and painstakingly deconstructed it to show how it conveys a message without taking everything else into consideration and to him I can only point out that he ought really take this up with Gramsci and Lenin, since the intent is obviously not to dissect the subject academically, but to present it starkly. Duh. He should perhaps read instead "Alfred and the complexity of war" if he wants a more analytical take on things.
Some have even visited my blog to announce that the WTC was a CIA plot. Whatever…
Some above, like Carlo, are actually sane, and suggest that instead of bellowing the reductionist "LIE!" at Bush, people instead look at the process by which the Bush administration arrived at its erroneous conclusion, along with the rest of the western world, including even Blix and France, who believed that Iraq had and was building WMD. But even Carlos believes that somewhere, even if at the very top, there was an intentional "lie". Maybe and maybe not, but I have to ask then, why didn't the people who actually collected the evidence, including people like Hans Blix and the intelligence agencies of both france and Germany, simply present the 'true' evidence or lack thereof if it existed? It was in their own best interests to do so, given their stated positions, so why didn't they?
Listen folks, I understand that its hard for the western mind to wrap itself around the magnitude of the horror here. I understand also the degree of self-loathing post-colonial Europe subjects itself to. I understand the refusal to accept the almost complete lack of rationality behind these attacks.
But for God's sake guys…there have been attacks…major attacks…across the globe and on a regular basis, including one major attack in London itself. How can you sit there and deny that terror exists and that it is a creation of Islam and not Blair? Has Gandhi made such a profound impact on the British psyche that it has taken his admonishment to "see no evil" literally, and embellished it with "unless we can accuse our own politicians"?
Carlo:
A reasoned assessment. (as an aside, I'll look over Craig's book)
However, I would have to partially disagree with the following:
"I think that debates on whether Government officials deliberately lie — and whether it is plausible that they g the Israel card (that the provisional plan has gone badly awry is unarguable).
Lest we forget, Saddam was palmed off on Iraq by CIA and Brit forces from 1959 to eventually butcher a million Iraqis primarily in trade for Big Oil (Iraq Petroleum Co). Saddam and his Baathists were only cut when officially suckered to take Kuwait and betrayed for the Gulf War. As for intelligence "self-deception" vs. "dispassionate judgment", the CIA (Cartel Intelligence Agency) has overthrown at least 20 democracies since WW2 for corporate cashbox clients.
What remains at stake from Mid East to Eurasian theatres is trillions in Big Oil wealth and water resources that further beggar concepts of self-deception. To socialize the costs of a calculated attempt to manage those resources for elite gains is not theory or ideology. It now occurs on the ground as a matter of practical policy.
Item: Significant wars have always been fought over public wealth (blood money) for private power. Quo Bono?
Only the trusting would assume that the bulk of senior intelligence pros could not see this one coming. Scott Ritter and a minor host of others certainly did. As you more than mentioned, self-serve career survival of intelligence folk on a political firing line was crucial.
And at the risk of being "reductive" this is a vast collective shell game. As with our privately owned central banking systems, the public continues to pick up the cost of its own shackles as it is led and bred to do so thru MSM psyops.
"LET'S LOOK AT IT SIMPLY. THE MOST IMPORTANT DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NORTH KOREA AND IRAQ IS THAT ECONOMICALLY, WE JUST HAD NO CHOICE IN [INVADING AND CONQUERING] IRAQ. THE COUNTRY SWIMS ON A SEA OF OIL."
PAUL WOLFOWITZ (the US Deputy Defense Secretary in effect admitting that the Iraq War was fought over Big Oil factors. He gave this response to a question as to why the U.S. made war on Iraq and not North Korea, a country that is developing nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Quoted from a talk to an Asian security summit in Singapore 5/ 31/03)
I find it hard to believe a diplomat who had the courage to quit rather than be part of a vile system is being made fun of on this forum.
But then again when right wingers can mock the widows of 9-11 victims and get away with it, can one expect anything worse?
Apparently low morals goes with low poll numbers.
Frankly I felt the whole story was one big bag of bull crap the moment it broke. How easily the Israel v Lebanon conflict disappeared from the TV screens was shocking. Not one word on CNN, MSNBC< Fox, and CNN Headline News.
As for upstarts like Anderson Cooper 360 and his ilk, they abandoned their friends in Israel for a free trip to good old London.
After all nothing like Liberals enjoying wine, women, and song along with the Conservatives who brought us this scam in the first place.
Two sides of the same coin!
The drumbeat is incessant. We now have roadside electronic signs beside the interstates in Maryland with Terrorist Hotline telephone numbers. Not surprisingly, Maryland has a Republican governor.
A former high ranking civil servant in a former Commonwealth country, then, Scottie? So that'll be IRELAND or ZIMBABWE.
Unless you mean countries that merged to form other countries that are still members, namely Newfoundland, Tanganyika, and Zanzibar.
There aren't any other former members of the Commonwealth. Anywhere else that left has rejoined.
And you call Craig the former ambassador "of" (presumably a typo for "in") a "tinpot proto-republic". (He was actually the ambassador OF a tinpot American dependency with a local monarch. As for Uzbekistan, well, say what you like about French republics, but the Tashkent regime seems more like proto-Hitlerite, if you really must use the prefix "proto").
You're a phony, try hard as you may.
Craig has my respect as writing what he writes in good faith. You, no.
In the unlikely event that anybody here gives any credence to ScottSA, just click his name and check out his own blog. Any semblance of sanity he might give here is quickly disspelled upon seeing him in his own element.
to: scottsa,//
i am in the audit business and as an investigator of sorts i know that any piece of evidence, no matter how small, can be enough to completely cripple a previously solid argument.//
[excuse the financial spin on this generalised example] if one of my clients were to assert that all purchase orders were checked by the financial director, i'd be inclined to believe them… until i find a single PO that had not been signed off by the FD. this small singular piece of evidence casts the entire process into doubt. note here i say doubt. i don't mean that uncovering this new evidence means that this company is in a state of anarchy and no processes are followed, etc, i just mean that there is reason for further investigation.//
keep an open mind and, as craig says as the very last line of the post, "Be sceptical. Be very, very sceptical."//
key point: craig is only providing probable cause for doubt. posters like you who try and shoot that down only end up looking naive and ridiculous. i say go ahead and believe, but be ready to question when contrary evidence appears.//
-sci
Your comments have now been picked up by major blogs AmericaBlog and Andrew Sullivan.
http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/08/the_uk_t…
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/08/former-br…
To ScottSA
First your statement that includes Hans Blix as someone that believed Iraq had and was building WMD before the war is completely false.
On March 6, 2003 less than two weeks before the outbreak of the Iraq War, Hans Blix testified to the UN Security Council that, "No proscribed activities, or the result of such activities, from the period of 1998-2002 have, so far, been detected through inspections." The following day IAEA Director General Mohamed Elbaradei informed the UN Security Council that, "After three months of intrusive inspection, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq."
Researchers had carefully deconstructed claims made by the Bush and Blair administrations before the Iraq War, but the media did not provide proper analysis of these counterclaims.
So the question is are you purposely lying or is it that you just don't know?
Secondly nobody is saying that there is no terrorist threat, it's the methodology in dealing with it that has to be questioned.
Thirdly your statement that terror exists and that it is a creation of Islam is false.
Some facts that may interest you.
Between 1980 and 2003, there were 315 suicide attacks worldwide for the most part by secular Tamil Tigers.(So did the Tamils create terrorism?) Since the US invasion in Iraq where such attacks were virtually unknown before, they now range as high as 400 and counting.
Do you know what the Nazis called the Dutch resistance in world war two?(Terrorists).
I'm sure you have heard the quote, "One mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter".
Lastly I would ask that you tone down your cavalier, arrogant, and pompous know it all attitude, especially given that your facts are generally skewed and sometimes completely wrong.
For those who throw back 'conspiracy theory' to silence all, I suggest you see Part 3 of the BBC-screened documentary 'The Power of Nightmares'. It shows clearly that there is no Al Queda network. It is a fiction.
The video may be viewed here: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/video104…
Once you factor that in to all you read about the 'war on terror', it will all start to make more sense: absolutely shocking and frightening sense.
We know that power corrupts. Look to the powerful: they have the facility and the motives.
When London train bombers are identified as perfectly normal nice young men and, one year later, police have found not a scrap of evidence to connect them or anyone else with the bombings, you may be pretty certain of one thing: they really were nice young men.
The men: href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22989-1693739,00.html
One year on: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22989-225…