New Memos Detail Early Plans for Invading Iraq

New Memos Detail Early Plans for Invading Iraq
By John Daniszewski
The Los Angeles Times

Wednesday 15 June 2005

British officials believed the US favored military force a year before the war, documents show.

London - In March 2002, the Bush administration had just begun to publicly raise the possibility of confronting Iraq. But behind the scenes, officials already were deeply engaged in seeking ways to justify an invasion, newly revealed British memos indicate.

Foreshadowing developments in the year before the war started, British officials emphasized the importance of U.N. diplomacy, which they said might force Saddam Hussein into a misstep. They also suggested that confronting the Iraqi leader be cast as an effort to prevent him from using weapons of mass destruction or giving them to terrorists.

The documents help flesh out the background to the formerly top-secret "Downing Street memo" published in the Sunday Times of London last month, which said that top British officials were told eight months before the war began that military action was "seen as inevitable." President Bush and his main ally in the war, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, have long maintained that they had not made up their minds to go to war at that stage.

"Nothing could be farther from the truth," Bush said last week, responding to a question about the July 23, 2002, memo. "Both of us didn't want to use our military. Nobody wants to commit military into combat. It's the last option."

Publication of the Downing Street memo at the height of Britain's election campaign at first garnered little notice in U.S. media or other British newspapers. But in the weeks that followed, anger has grown among war critics, who contend that the document proves the Bush administration had already decided on military action, even while U.S. officials were saying that war was a last resort.

The new documents indicate that top British officials believed that by March 2002, Washington was already leaning heavily toward toppling Hussein by military force. Condoleezza Rice, the current secretary of State who was then Bush's national security advisor, was described as enthusiastic about "regime change."

Although British officials said in the documents that they did not think Iraq's weapons programs posed an immediate threat and that they were dubious of any claimed links between the Iraqi government and Al Qaeda, they indicated that they were willing to join in a campaign to topple Hussein as long as the plan would succeed and was handled with political and legal care.

The documents contain little discussion about whether to mount a military campaign. The focus instead is on how the campaign should be presented to win the widest support and the importance for Britain of working through the United Nations so an invasion could be seen as legal under international law.

Michael Smith, the defense writer for the Times of London who revealed the Downing Street minutes in a story May 1, provided a full text of the six new documents to the Los Angeles Times.

Portions of the new documents, all labeled "secret" or "confidential," have appeared previously in two British newspapers, the Times of London and the Telegraph. Blair's government has not challenged their authenticity.

They cover a period when reports had begun appearing that the Bush administration was forming plans to go after Hussein in the next phase of its "war on terrorism." A Feb. 10, 2002, article in the Los Angeles Times, for instance, said that the U.S. was considering action against Hussein that might require a massive number of U.S. troops.

Published accounts, including those by the Washington Post's Bob Woodward and former U.S. counter-terrorism chief Richard A. Clarke, said that Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld began focusing on Iraq soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

In his Jan. 29, 2002, State of the Union address, Bush described Iraq, Iran and North Korea as part of an "axis of evil."

The documents present a picture of a U.S. government fed up with the policy of containing Iraq, skeptical of the U.N. and focused on ousting Hussein.

Blair's advisors were weighing how Britain could participate in a war. The need to establish a policy on Iraq led to a flurry of meetings between senior U.S. and British officials and internal British government memos in advance of a Bush-Blair summit in April 2002 at the president's ranch near Crawford, Texas. (According to one of the subsequent documents that has been leaked, a British Cabinet briefing paper written in July 2002, Blair gave Bush a conditional commitment at the Texas summit to support military action to remove Hussein.)

In one memorandum, dated March 14, 2002, and labeled "secret - strictly personal," Blair's chief foreign policy advisor, David Manning, described to the prime minister a dinner he had had with Rice.

"We spent a long time at dinner on Iraq," wrote Manning, now the British ambassador to the U.S. "It is clear that Bush is grateful for your [Blair's] support and has registered that you are getting flak. I said that you would not budge in your support for regime change but you had to manage a press, a Parliament and a public opinion that was different from anything in the States. And you would not budge either in your insistence that, if we pursued regime change, it must be very carefully done and produce the right result. Failure was not an option."

The memo went on to say:

"Condi's enthusiasm for regime change is undimmed. But there were some signs, since we last spoke, of greater awareness of the practical difficulties and political risks…. From what she said, Bush has yet to find answers to the big questions:

• How to persuade international opinion that military action against Iraq is necessary and justified;
  
  
• What value to put on the exiled Iraqi opposition;
  
  
• How to coordinate a US/allied military campaign with internal opposition (assuming there is any);
  
  
• What happens the morning after?"

Manning told Blair that given Bush's eagerness for British backing, the prime minister would have "real influence" on the public relations strategy, on the issue of encouraging the United States to go first to the United Nations and on any U.S. military planning.

Manning said it could prove helpful if Hussein refused to allow renewed U.N. weapons inspections.

"The issue of weapons inspectors must be handled in a way that would persuade Europe and wider opinion that the U.S. was conscious of the international framework, and the insistence of many countries on the need for a legal basis. Renewed refusal by Saddam to accept unfettered inspections would be a powerful argument," Manning wrote Blair.

Four days after the Manning memo, Christopher Meyer, then the British ambassador in Washington, wrote to Manning about a lunch he had with Paul D. Wolfowitz, then the U.S. deputy secretary of Defense and a leading proponent in the administration of confronting Hussein. Meyer said in the memo that he had told Wolfowitz that U.N. pressure and weapons inspections could be used to trip up Hussein.

"We backed regime change," he wrote, "but the plan had to be clever and failure was not an option. It would be a tough sell for us domestically, and probably tougher elsewhere in Europe."

Meyer wrote that he had argued that Washington could go it alone if it wanted to. "But if it wanted to act with partners, there had to be a strategy for building support for military action against Saddam. I then went through the need to wrong-foot Saddam on the inspectors and the [U.N. Security Council resolutions] and the critical importance of the [Middle East peace process] as an integral part of the anti-Saddam strategy. If all this could be accomplished skillfully, we were fairly confident that a number of countries would come on board."

Another memo, from British Foreign Office political director Peter Ricketts to Foreign Secretary Jack Straw on March 22, 2002, bluntly stated that the case against Hussein was weak because the Iraqi leader was not accelerating his weapons programs and there was scant proof of links to Al Qaeda.

"What has changed is not the pace of Saddam Hussein's WMD programs, but our tolerance of them post-11 September," Ricketts wrote. "Attempts to claim otherwise publicly will increase skepticism about our case….

"U.S. scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda is so far frankly unconvincing," he said.

Ricketts said that other countries such as Iran appeared closer to getting nuclear weapons, and that arguing for regime change in Iraq alone "does not stack up. It sounds like a grudge between Bush and Saddam." That was why the issue of weapons of mass destruction was vital, he said.

"Much better, as you [Straw] have suggested, to make the objective ending the threat to the international community from Iraqi WMD before Saddam uses it or gives it to terrorists," he said. A U.N. Security Council resolution demanding renewal of weapons inspections, he says, would be a "win/win."

"Either [Hussein] against all the odds allows Inspectors to operate freely, in which case we can further hobble his WMD programs, or he blocks/hinders, and we are on stronger grounds for switching to other methods," he wrote.

The arguments that Iraq had illegal, hidden weapons of mass destruction, programs to develop more of them, and that it might give them to terrorists were to become some of the Bush administration's chief reasons for the war. When no weapons were found, the administration blamed faulty intelligence and said the war still was justified because it ended Hussein's brutal dictatorship and allowed an emerging democratic government.

In November 2002, the U.S. and Britain managed to get a toughly worded resolution through the Security Council that reintroduced arms inspectors into Iraq for the first time since 1998. However, it fell short of authorizing the use of force against Hussein's government.

Straw, writing to Blair on March 25, 2002, expressed concern about a lack of support among members of Parliament from the governing Labor Party.

"Colleagues know that Saddam and the Iraqi regime are bad," he wrote. "But we have a long way to go to convince them as to: The scale of the threat from Iraq, and why this has got worse recently; what distinguishes the Iraqi threat from that of e.g. Iran and North Korea so as to justify military action; the justification for any military action in terms of international law; and whether the consequences really would be a compliant, law-abiding replacement government.

"Regime change per se is no justification for military action; it could form part of the method of any strategy, but not a goal," he said. "Elimination of Iraq's WMD capacity has to be the goal."

The new documents also include an earlier 10-page options paper, dated March 8, 2002, from the overseas and defense secretariat of the Cabinet Office, sketching out options for dealing with Iraq. The thrust of the memo was that the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War were likely to fail, and that, in any case, the U.S. had already given up on them.

"The U.S. has lost confidence in containment," the document said. "Some in government want Saddam removed. The success of Operation Enduring Freedom [the military code name for the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan], distrust of U.N. sanctions and inspection regimes, and unfinished business from 1991 are all factors.

"Washington believes the legal basis for an attack already exists. Nor will it necessarily be governed by wider political factors. The U.S. may be willing to work with a smaller coalition than we think desirable," it said.

The paper said the British view was that any invasion for the purpose of regime change "has no basis under international law."

The best way to justify military action, it said, would be to convince the Security Council that Iraq was in breach of its post-Gulf War obligations to eliminate its store of weapons of mass destruction.

The document appeared to rule out any action in Iraq short of an invasion.

"In sum, despite the considerable difficulties, the use of overriding force in a ground campaign is the only option that we can be confident will remove Saddam and bring Iraq back into the international community," it said

DOWNING STREET UPDATE - Senators Question

DOWNING STREET UPDAT

Raw Story | June 22, 2005
By Larisa Alexandrovna

Senator Kerry (D - MA) sends letter to Senate Intelligence Committee pressing for answers on the Downing Street Memo and other Downing documents. The letter leaked to Raw Story, is also signed by Senators Johnson, Corzine, Reed, Lautenberg, Boxer, Kennedy, Harkin, Bingaman, and Durbin. The text of the letter is below.

The Honorable Pat Roberts, Chairman
The Honorable John D. Rockefeller, IV, Vice Chairman United States Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence
SH-211
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Roberts and Senator Rockefeller:

We write concerning your committee's vital examination of pre-war Iraq intelligence failures. In particular, we urge you to accelerate to completion the work of the so-called "Phase II" effort to assess how policy makers used the intelligence they received.

Last year your committee completed the first phase of a two-phased effort to review the pre-war intelligence on Iraq. Phase I-begun in the summer of 2003 and completed in the summer of 2004-examined the performance of the American intelligence community in the collection and analysis of intelligence prior to the war, including an examination of the quantity and quality of U.S. intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and the intelligence on ties between Saddam Hussein's regime and terrorist groups. At the conclusion of Phase I, your committee issued an unclassified report that made an important contribution to the American public's understanding of the issues involved.

In February 2004-well over a year ago-the committee agreed to expand the scope of inquiry to include a second phase which would examine the use of intelligence by policy makers, the comparison of pre-war assessments and post-war findings, the activities of the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group (PCTEG) and the Office of Special Plans in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and the use of information provided by the Iraqi National Congress.

The committee's efforts have taken on renewed urgency given recent revelations in the United Kingdom regarding the apparent minutes of a July 23, 2002, meeting between Prime Minister Tony Blair and his senior national security advisors. These minutes-known as the "Downing Street Memo"-raise troubling questions about the use of intelligence by American policy makers-questions that your committee is uniquely situated to address.

The memo indicates that in the summer of 2002, at a time the White House was promising Congress and the American people that war would be their last resort, that they believed military action against Iraq was "inevitable."

The minutes reveal that President "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

The American people took the warnings that the administration sounded seriously-warnings that were echoed at the United Nations and here in Congress as we voted to give the president the authority to go to war. For the sake of our democracy and our future national security, the public must know whether such warnings were driven by facts and responsible intelligence, or by political calculation.

These issues need to be addressed with urgency. This remains a dangerous world, with American forces engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other challenges looming in Iran and North Korea. In this environment, the American public should have the highest confidence that policy makers are using intelligence objectively-never manipulating it to justify war, but always to protect the United States. The contents of the Downing Street Memo undermine this faith and only rigorous Congressional oversight can determine the truth.

We urge the committee to complete the second phase of its investigation with the maximum speed and transparency possible, producing, as it did at the end of Phase I, a comprehensive, unclassified report from which the American people can benefit directly.

The Downing Street Memo

June 26, 2005 How the leaked documents questioning war emerged from 'Britain's Deep Throat' It started with a phone call and has now swept across America: Michael Smith tells the tale of his ‘Downing Street memo’ scoop

It began with a phone call from a friend nearly 10 months ago — somebody well-placed who had given me a few stories before. But he wasn’t really a journalistic source, though he has now been dubbed “the British Deep Throat” by some of the US press. He was just a friend. So I had no great expectations of the meeting we arranged in a quiet West End bar. I was just expecting a convivial drink, with the usual exchange of gossip, the catching-up on how our lives were going. Almost immediately it was clear that this time it would be something more. The place was empty, but my friend chose the most secluded spot he could find. He was clearly nervous. He wasn’t sure if I’d be interested in what he had, he said. It was about the run-up to the war. “All the Butler stuff,” he said, referring to Lord Butler, who had reported on the failures of intelligence over Iraq. He thrust two sheets of paper into my hand. It was a “Secret — Strictly Personal” letter from Jack Straw to the prime minister written in March 2002, a year before the invasion. In the letter the foreign secretary said there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein had any weapons of mass destruction worth talking about and that, in part as a result of a lack of US preparation, post-war Iraq was likely to become a very nasty place. It was, in short, remarkably prescient and would make a pretty good story, I said, with some understatement. Well, I’ve got five others just like it from the same period, said my source. “Most say stuff just like that, or worse.” The documents covered the period running up to a summit between George W Bush and Tony Blair at the president’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, in early April 2002. At that time the swift victory against the Taliban in Afghanistan had left hawks in the US administration openly briefing that Iraq was next. Most of the leaked documents were designed to brief ministers or Blair on whether backing the US plans to get rid of Saddam would be sensible and legal. They set out the merits and dangers of taking part. Their gist was that there weren’t many merits. The documents made it pretty clear that it wasn’t sensible, it wasn’t legal and it was very risky. The document that seemed to encapsulate the problems was another “Secret — Strictly Personal” letter to Blair. It was written by his foreign policy adviser, Sir David Manning. “I think there is a real risk that the (US) administration underestimates the difficulties,” Manning wrote. “They may agree that failure isn’t an option, but this does not mean that they will avoid it.” When I reported these documents I was surprised to find that there was no real interest in them in America. The story swiftly died away. Then eight months later, in the run-up to Britain’s general election, with the focus on the attorney-general’s advice to Blair on the legality of war, somebody else gave me further, even more startling documents. They concerned a meeting in Downing Street on July 23, 2002, eight months before the invasion, when Blair was insisting to the public that all options on Iraq were still open. One leaked document was a Cabinet Office briefing paper for a crucial Downing Street meeting held on the day in question. It said the prime minister had promised Bush at the Crawford summit that he would “back military action to bring about regime change”. It added that ministers had no choice but to “create the conditions” that would make military action legal. The other document was the minutes of the actual meeting, chaired by Blair and attended by Straw; Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary; Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general; Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6; John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee; and Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, chief of defence staff.

Dearlove, who had just returned from Washington, said “military action was now seen as inevitable . . . the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action”.

Straw agreed with Dearlove. He said Bush had “made up his mind to take military action. But the case was thin”.

After reporting these secret memos, which revealed the dubious manoeuvrings of government, I expected the US press to react. Surely there would be a storm of anger over the way in which the American public had been deceived into going to war? But still there was no interest. Then slowly something astonishing happened. People power took over.

The Sunday Times website was inundated with ordinary US citizens wanting to read the minutes of the July meeting. Bloggers set to work passing the word.

Six ordinary, patriotic citizens with no political axe to grind were so outraged to discover the truth about the path to war that they set up their own website, naming it after the minutes, which had become known as the Downing Street memo.

Another website called AfterDowningStreet followed. People got together to lobby their local newspapers and radio and television stations to demand to know why they weren’t being told about the memo. There were even T-shirts made with the slogan: “Have you read the memo?” With anger over the war growing, Washington politicians finally acted. More than 120 congressmen wrote to Bush, demanding to know whether the memo was true. They held their own hearings to try to draw attention to it. The issue was forced into the mainstream media.

The focus turned to what may ultimately be the most important part of the memo: the point where Hoon said that the US had already begun “spikes of activity to put pressure on the regime”.

Ministry of Defence figures for the number of bombs dropped on southern Iraq in 2002 show that virtually none were used in March and April; but between May and August an average of 10 tons were dropped each month, with the RAF taking just as big a role in the “spikes of activity” as their US colleagues. Then in September the figure shot up again, with allied aircraft dropping 54.6 tons.

If this was a covert air war, both Bush and Blair may face searching questions. In America only Congress can declare war, and it did not give the US president permission to take military action against Iraq until October 11, 2002. Blair’s legal justification is said to come from UN Resolution 1441, which was not passed until November 8, 2002.

Last week one US blogger, Larisa Alexandrovna of RawStory.com, unearthed more unsettling evidence. It was an overlooked interview with Lieutenant-General T Michael Moseley, the allied air commander in Iraq, in which he appears to admit that the “spikes of activity” were part of a covert air war.

From June 2002 until March 20, when the ground war began, the allies flew 21,736 sorties over southern Iraq, attacking 349 carefully selected targets. The attacks, Moseley said, “laid the foundations” for the invasion, allowing allied commanders to begin the ground war.

The bloggers may have found their own smoking gun.

Stop CAFTA Protect America

This Is Your Chance to Score a Major Victory for American Independence by Stopping CAFTA!

Email Alert from STOPCAFTA.com, June 24, 2005 The administration is pushing for a vote on CAFTA by the Senate as early as next week, expecting to get a vote of approval that would put pressure on the House to approve CAFTA soon after it reconvenes the week of July 11th. Please activate your circle of influence now. This really is our best chance in a long time to set back the globalists' plans to destroy our nation's independence and our personal freedom under the Constitution. This is a battle for freedom that we can win!

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This Is It!

Bush Sends CAFTA to Congress (The clock for an up-or-down vote has started!)

The situation is this:

• The Bush administration's game plan for creating an EU-type FTAA hinges on congressional approval of CAFTA.
• Since establishment of the FTAA would spell the end of U.S. independence and constitutional protections of our God-given rights, CAFTA must be defeated.
• The administration is pushing for a vote on CAFTA by the Senate as early as next week, expecting to get a vote of approval that would put pressure on the House to approve CAFTA soon after it reconvenes the week of July 11th.
• The pro-CAFTA forces are competing for "our" votes, so we have to compete for "their" votes while working to stiffen resistance among "our" votes. The pro-CAFTA forces are offering whatever it takes to pressure wavering congressmen into supporting CAFTA. But we can win if we work seriously to build some new constituent pressure.
• Since the pro- and anti-CAFTA votes in Congress are fairly evenly divided, how each and every senator and representative votes is critical.
• Your success in winning over your congressmen to vote NO on CAFTA, or in convincing your congressmen to remain in the anti-CAFTA camp, could be decisive for defeating CAFTA and delivering a major defeat to the globalist forces behind the administration's phony "free-trade" agenda.

The key to convincing your senators and representative to vote NO on CAFTA is to persuade others in your circle of influence to join you in contacting your senators and representative in vigorous opposition to CAFTA. Although both senators and representatives should be contacted, focus your most strenuous efforts on your representative. The House vote promises to be a cliffhanger.

How you can help:

• Activate immediately those in your circle of influence who will contact Congress in opposition to CAFTA based on your say so. You can offer them a link to our STOP CAFTA! website (STOPCAFTA.com) and our online letter to Congress against CAFTA.
• Use the following tools to persuade the remainder of your circle of influence to contact Congress: Our STOP CAFTA! website (STOPCAFTA.com); Will Grigg's hard-hitting, five-minute, STOP CAFTA! video clip; Will Grigg's article, "CAFTA: Exporting American Jobs and Industry"; and our online letter to Congress against CAFTA.
• Emphasize that we cannot be satisfied with mere routine contacts with Congress -- we're talking about sufficient pressure to ensure a NO vote!
• As time and resources permit, write letters to the editor (use Will Grigg's CAFTA article for talking points) encouraging readers to contact their congressmen in opposition to CAFTA and arrange for airing our 30-second STOP CAFTA! radio ads (downloadable under "Resources" on STOPCAFTA.com).

Please activate your circle of influence now!

This really is our best chance in a long time to set back the globalists' plans to destroy our nation's independence and our personal freedom under the Constitution.

This is a battle for freedom that we can win!

			© 2004 http://www.stoptheftaa.org/ is a campaign of The John Birch Society

Pan American Union = Lost Sovereignty

Erasing America

Editorial/Op-Ed

by Frosty Wooldridge

LOUISVILLE, COLORADO -- (OfficialWire) -- 06/27/05 -- Remember a chalkboard full of math problems at the head of a classroom back in grade school? Did you ever erase that board? Did you realize that everything that was recorded on the chalkboard was lost forever once you erased it? It may have been of little consequence back then, but what if you erased your country’s ability to function?

Today, after 229 years of building a successful society, our political leaders and corporations force citizens into an experiment that will erase America. The Free Trade Areas of the Americas will destroy America’s most precious treasure: sovereignty. They’re forcing us into another kind of merger like the European Union. Those are all First World countries. We’re forced to open our borders to failed governments and economies in Mexico, Central and South America.

"In this gloomy future, most American factories are shuttered and the American manufacturing sector has relocated to Central and South America, where wages are far cheaper and workers are willing to work for much longer hours," said Steve Bonta in the New American Magazine, March 2004. "If allowed to manifest, the American economy will consist of service sector jobs. Unemployment in excess of 20 percent will be a permanent feature of the economic landscape."

Bonta continues, "Crime rates will skyrocket as gang warfare among burgeoning rival immigrant communities cripples America’s inner cities, while terrorists’ attacks, both by Islamic extremists and ethnic minority malcontents become commonplace."

Newsweek recently reported a jump of MS-13 Gangs from Central America from 8,000 members in 28 cities to over 11,000 members in 33 states in only 12 months. They distribute the $128 billion annual drug distribution into the USA. They also kill, extort, rape and promote Third World sex trade in our major cities. They are vicious and they’re coming to your city even faster as our borders vaporize with FTAA.

Everyday, the United Nations and powerful financial banking interests plot the destruction of our sovereign nation. It would change or ‘harmonize’ U.S. law to match those of Third World countries like Mexico, El Salvador and Columbia. They are failed governments and failed economies—and, like walking into a tuberculosis ward daily for a month—you too will suffer sickness and possible death. The same thing applies financially. Once our borders open wide, we’re vulnerable.

Where would those wretched millions go if they could? They’ll head to the land of milk and honey: America. When would the line of economic refugees end? Never! In fact, it grows by 85 million annually around the planet.

"America already has a taste of the effects of ‘free trade’ in the form of globalization," Bona said.

How many reading this column have had their jobs outsourced, offshored or insourced? Tell me one of you who likes the H-1B or H-2B visas that displaced you from your job? How many have seen their wages cut or never advanced? How many have seen their pensions suffer? How many can’t find a decent, living-wage job? How many have to compete in your own country with someone who can’t speak English? How many have been colonized by illegal aliens out of a job in construction, paving, hotel, cabbie, truck driver, trade job, landscape, dry wall, roofing and electrical jobs? One look at the 15 million unemployed Americans will give you a clue as to our future.

Meanwhile, our powerful, elite driven corporations, president and Congress will offshore jobs to South America for slave wages with no regulations. The U.S. economy will imitate a Third World profile.

"Beyond the cultural and economic ramifications of a hemisphere-wide trade zone, the FTAA would lead in the long run to the end of American Independence and would be a death knell for our Republic and the Constitution on which it was founded," Bonta said.

We’re witnessing a slow, gradual, deceptive erasing of America. It’s hard to detect and harder to defeat because it moves by not attracting attention. "The FTAA poses this threat because it is a calculated attempt to seize power not by military force but by patient gradualism and deception," Bonta said.

Mexico’s Fox can’t wait for the FTAA to pull Americans down to his country’s levels of economic failure and wretched misery for millions. He can’t wait to get those borders open so he can pour even more millions of his horribly poor and uneducated into America to create parity through mutual economic misery.

If you desire more information on this growing American dilemma, please contact www.thenewamerican.com and become a part of the growing Army of Americans that refuse to give into the growing nightmare of erasing America. Become a part of the Army of Americans who won’t go quietly into the night. Teddy Roosevelt’s prophetic words will manifest if we allow the FTAA to pass: "The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin or preventing all possibility of it continuing as a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities." [And languages]

Write for that 28-point action letter to stop this nation-destroying madness. For you West Coast night owls, every Thursday you can catch yours truly in Las Vegas, Nevada on Mark Edwards’ "Wake Up America" talk show on 50,000-watt KDWN-AM-720 10:00 PM to midnight PT, or on the worldwide internet at www.wakeupamericafoundation.com. On the home page, click on www.americanvoiceradio.com heard around the world. Five nights a week, Edwards engages patriots from across the nation to bring you the latest on this nation-destroying invasion.


More news & views by Frosty Wooldridge


This article was first published on NewsWithViews.com and is re-printed with permission of the author.

Frosty Wooldridge is a teacher and author who has bicycled 100,000 miles on six continents to see overpopulation up close and ugly. His explosive new book Immigration’s Unarmed Invasion: Deadly Consequences may be obtained by calling tollfree +1 (888) 280-7715 or by visiting www.FrostyWooldridge.com

2004 VOTE FRAUD FACTS SURFACE

2004 VOTE FRAUD FACTS SURFACE Reporter Who Told Story of 2004 Vote Thievery Hushed by Mainstream Media Mogul By Greg Szymanski Some people say Chicago Tribune columnist Robert Koehler works inside the belly of the beast, reporting for a corporate medium that is hungry for money but short on truth telling. Able to spit out a few morsels of truth every now and again, Koehler describes his unique position a little differently, suggesting it’s more like floating helplessly on top of a gigantic whale’s back instead of rumbling around inside its belly. Wherever he sits, one of his recent columns, indicating that the 2004 presidential election was stolen, caused the ugly beast to let out a fierce roar, leading to a heated controversy inside the Tribune newsroom. “It was a definite body blow,” said Koehler this week from his suburban home in Chicago. To fully understand what Koehler means by a “body blow” and the ensuing controversy surrounding his April 14 column entitled “The silent scream of numbers: The 2004 election was stolen,” it’s important to understand how Koehler is positioned in respect to the Tribune, the employer who cuts his paycheck. Koehler wears two hats. First, he’s one of the editors for The Chicago Tribune web site, meaning he manages and distributes the work of other columnists under contract by the Tribune, sending their stories to newspapers across the country who pay the Tribune parent company for this service. Next, Koehler has developed his own column, separate and apart from his editing duties. Today, he’s published in 12 different newspapers, including The Chicago Tribune. Each newspaper, however, is not obligated to run his stories; the decision of what to print is based on content. “Only a few papers decided to run my stolen election piece, and the Tribune wasn’t one of them,” said Koehler about his story that didn’t get much action in the mainstream papers but spread like a wildfire on the Internet. “I want to point out, however, the politics of the Tribune are different than mine. But that’s OK. They are, of course, free to run whatever they’d like, and I respect that.” But what Koehler didn’t like was the way the Tribune bosses responded to his column even though it never appeared in their paper. “Basically, they wrote a rebuttal column criticizing my point of view regarding something that never ran in their newspaper in the first place,” added Koehler, saying this struck him as a bit strange, to say the least. “Frankly, it made me a little angry, and I wanted an explanation.” The rebuttal column, which treated Koehler like “Peck’s Bad Boy” gone mad with conspiracy theories, ran in the Tribune shortly after the controversial story appeared to be gaining momentum in cyberspace, a place where independent thought still roams free without corporate control and censorship. After the Tribune’s response appeared, Koehler and his bosses engaged in an inner-office squabble, leading to Koehler’s decision to write a rebuttal to the rebuttal, a decision Koehler later discarded after being convinced it was better to leave personal inter-office fights out of the newspapers. “I really wanted to write a rebuttal, but later reconsidered sending it over the wires since I thought our office disputes may be leading the reader away from the real issue of potential election fraud,” said Koehler. To get some measure of intellectual satisfaction, Koehler decided to write a common letter to the editor, expressing his displeasure over his own newspaper’s reaction, which the Tribune printed without censorship. After the dust settled and the parties made their peace, Koehler said he learned a valuable lesson about the mainstream media’s obsession with controlling free speech by silencing diverse and controversial opinions. “I understand it’s the Tribune’s call, but basically they made my story sound like a total conspiracy [theory],” said Koehler, who has vowed to keep following the election fraud issue as well as other stories other mainstream journalists may not touch. So what did Koehler write that was considered so controversial by the Establishment press? “Was the election of 2004 stolen?” asked Koehler in his column. “Thus is the question framed by those who don’t want to know the answer. Anyone who says yes is immediately a conspiracy nut, and the listener’s eyeballs roll. So let’s not ask that question.” Listen to the opening paragraphs of Koehler’s controversial column as a shocking reminder of the task ahead: As they slowly hack democracy to death, we’re as alone—we citizens—as we’ve ever been, protected only by the dust-covered clichés of the nation’s founding: “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” It’s time to blow off the dust and start paying the price. The media are not on our side. The politicians are not on our side. It’s just us, connecting the dots, fitting the fragments together, crunching the numbers, wanting to know why there were so many irregularities in the last election. . . . This is not about partisan politics. It’s more like: “Oh no, this can’t be true.” Instead of falling into the “conspiracy nut” classification by making blanket accusations, Koehler then provided facts and details, posing serious questions about voter disfranchisement, electronic voter machine irregularity and ongoing disputes about exit polls not matching the election’s final results. Questions like: Let’s simply ask why the lines were so long and the voting machines so few in Columbus and Cleveland and inner-city and college precincts across the country, especially in the swing states, causing an estimated one-third of the voters in these precincts to drop out of line without casting a ballot. This, mind you, is just for starters. We might also ask why so many Ph.D.-level mathematicians and computer programmers and other numbers-savvy scientists are saying that the numbers don’t make sense. . . . Indeed, the movement to investigate the 2004 election is led by such people, because the numbers are screaming at them that something is wrong. And we might, no, we must, ask—with more seriousness than the [mainstream] media have asked— about those exit polls, which in years past were extraordinarily accurate but last November went haywire, predicting Kerry [winning] by roughly the margin by which he ultimately lost to Bush. This swing is out of the realm of random chance, forcing chagrined pollsters to hypothesize a “shy Republican” factor as the explanation; and the media have bought this evidence- free absurdity because it spares them the need to think about the F-word: fraud.
		Not Copyrighted. Readers can reprint and are free to redistribute - as long as full credit is given to American Free Press - 645 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, Suite 100 Washington, D.C. 20003

VFW Action Corps Legislative Alert:Veterans Health Care And Benefits: Brink of Disaster

VFW Action Corps Legislative Alert:Veterans Health Care And Benefits: Brink of Disaster

President Bush recently released his VA budget request for next year. The proposal is completely unacceptable. It provides just four-tenths of one percent increase in veterans health care funding at a time when thousands of young men and women are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. VFW recommends $3.5 billion increase above the President's budget request for veterans health care.

Further, it would require hundreds of thousands of veterans to pay a yearly $250 enrollment fee just for the right to continue to go to the VA hospital. Those same veterans would see the co-payments more-than-double from $7 to $15 for each prescription they receive.

If this budget is passed:

220,000 veterans would stop receiving treatment for their injuries and disabilities at VA hospitals. 28,000 fewer veterans would receive long-term care, such as in nursing homes, and it eliminates funding for construction of care facilities throughout the country. Waiting times for health care would skyrocket because VA would not have enough funding to provide care. Funding for prosthetic research would be slashed by $9 million, despite the many wounded soldiers returning from overseas. Over 3,000 health care workers would be eliminated. 700 veterans benefits staff positions would be cut. Hundreds of thousands of veterans would have to pay hundreds of extra dollars out of their own pocket because of increased co-payments and the enrollment fee. The tiny four-tenths of a percent increase in medical care would be less than the required increase in salaries for VA employees. VA would be forced to collect more money from veterans and from their insurance companies to make up for the funding shortfall. Proposed VFW-supported increases in the death benefits for surviving family members of servicemembers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are not funded. WHAT CAN YOU DO TO FIGHT THIS BATTLE? Contact your Representative and two Senators to express your outrage with the President's budget for veterans health care. Let them know the devastating effect it would have on veterans seeking their earned health care and that all veterans expect them to fully fund the VA health care system, by providing $3.4 billion more than the president requested, as called for by the VFW and the Independent Budget. We have a short time until Congress sets the budget. To get them to increase veterans health care funding, you must call their local district offices soon. (Phone numbers should be available in your local phone book.) Next week Congress is on recess, it would be a great time to schedule an appointment or visit their local office. They really care about what the people back home think. With your efforts at home, together, we can make a huge difference in the lives of thousands of veterans and returning servicemembers. For your legislator's contact information, check your local phone book or click here. For background information on the budget, click here to read veterans' groups remarks. Click here to read VFW press release. Click to read the Independent Budget, the VFW's version of what the VA health care budget should be.

Former MI5 Agent Says 9/11 An Inside Job

Former MI5 Agent Says 9/11 An Inside Job
Attack Was 'Coup de'tat,' Buildings Were Demolished By Controlled Demolitions

Prison Planet | June 27 2005

Former MI5 agent David Shayler, who previously blew the whistle on the British government paying Al Qaeda $200,000 to carry out political assassinations, has gone on the record with his conviction that 9/11 was an inside job meant to bring about a permanent state of emergency in America and pave the way for the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq and ultimately Iran and Syria.

David Shayler joined MI5 in October 1991 and worked there for five years. He started at F Branch (counter-subversion) in January 1992, and worked in T Branch (Irish terrorism) from August 1992 until October 1994. He left the organization in 1996.

Shayler appeared on The Alex Jones Show to kick off what will be a wider public campaign to educate the public on 9/11 issues and government corruption.

Shayler again risked jail by speaking out. The British government has a legal gag preventing him from speaking about his work during his MI5 tenure. Since what Shayler discussed was already on the public record (a consequence of which was his imprisonment on two separate occasions), he now feels safer in stepping back out into the limelight.

Shayler delved into his past investigations and the evidence that led some within MI5 to conclude that the Israelis bombed their own London embassy in July 1994. Shayler said that the Israelis framed two Palestinians who remain in jail to this day.

"The same thing has happened with two Palestinians who were convicted of conspiracy to cause the attack on the Israeli Embassy in Britain in 1994 but MI5 didn't disclose two documents which indicated their innocence. One document indicated another group had carried out the attack and the other document was the belief of an MI5 officer that the Israelis had actually bombed their own embassy and allowed a controlled explosion to try and get better security and these documents were never shown to the trial judge let alone the defense."

Shayler said that his suspicions were first aroused about 9/11 when the usual route of crime scene investigation was impeded when the debris was immediately seized and shipped off to China.

"It is in fact a criminal offence to interfere with a crime scene and yet in the case of 9/11 all the metal from the buildings is shipped out to China, there are no forensications done on that metal. Now that to me suggests they never wanted anybody to look at that metal because it was not going to provide the evidence they wanted to show people that it was Al-Qaeda."

Shayler then went on to dismiss the incompetence theory.

"The more I look at it, you realize that it's not incompetence. There were FBI officers all over the country, Colleen Rowley is obviously the one who managed to get a congressional hearing, but there was plenty of evidence certainly."

"There are so many questions that need to be answered, protocols being overridden within national defense, people actively being stopped from carrying out investigations. This wasn't an accident, they were aware there was intelligence indicating those kind of attacks, there were FBI intercepts saying it in the days before the attacks. When you look at it all, that is a big big intelligence picture and yet these people were crucially stopped from doing their jobs, stopped from trying to protect the American people."

Shayler elaborated by saying the evidence suggests the attack was originally meant to be much wider in scope and was an attempt at a violent coup intended to decapitate the entire government as a pretext for martial law.

"So you're looking at a situation in which you almost have a coup de'tat because you've got to bear in mind that there were weapons discovered on planes that didn't take off on 9/11. Now people have obviously postulated that they were going perhaps to attack the White House, Capitol Hill. That looks to me like an attempt to destroy American government and declare a state of emergency, in fact a coup de'tat, a violent coup de'tat."

"There are so very many questions about this and you realize again that none of the enquiries ever get to the bottom of any of these things, they don't take all the evidence, they don't often take any evidence under oath when they should be taking it under oath."

Shayler was forthright in his assertion that the attack was planned and executed within the jurisdiction of the military-industrial complex.

"They let it happen, they made it happen to create a trigger to be able to allow the invasion of Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq and of course what they're trying to do now is the same thing with the invasion of Iran and Syria."

Shayler ended by questioning the highly suspicious nature of the collapse of the twin towers and Building 7, the first buildings in history, all in the same day, to collapse from so-called fire damage alone.

"I've seen the results of terroristic explosions and so on and no terrorist explosion has ever brought down a building. When the IRA put something like a thousands tonnes of home-made explosives in front of the Baltic Exchange building in Bishopsgate and let off the bomb, all the glass came out, the building shook a bit but there was no question about the building falling down and it doesn't obey the laws of physics for buildings to fall down in the way the World Trade Center came down. So you have the comparison of the two, Building 7 compared with the north and south towers coming down and those two things are exactly the same, they were demolished."

David Shayler joins a spate of recent credible whistleblowers who share the same sentiments about the real story behind 9/11. Former Chief Economist for the Department of Labor during President George W. Bush's first term Morgan Reynolds publicly questioned the unexplained collapse of WTC Building 7 earlier this month. In addition, a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Reagan, Paul Craig Roberts, shared his concerns last week when he said the Bush Administration were making the same mistakes as the Nazis when they invaded Russia in the dead of Winter. Roberts seriously doubts the official explanation behind 9/11.

Click here for a clip in which Shayler discusses 9/11. Prison Planet.tv subscribers can listen to the whole hour long interview by clicking here. Shayler also discusses his investigations of Irish Republican terrorism which led back to the British government and the murder of Princess Diana.

If you are not yet a member, click here to subscribe for as little as 15 cents a day and get a library of books, videos and audios to read, watch, listen to and download.

Dear MiCASSA Supporter,

Dear MiCASSA Supporter,

Below are the members of the Committee on Energy and Commerce by state,
Arizona-Wisconsin, http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/members/members.htm
.  The Subcommittee on Health,
http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/subcommittees/Health.htm , hears all
Medicaid related bills before they go to the full Committee on Energy and
Commerce.  PLEASE contact your member(s) and ask them to cosponsor MiCASSA
H. 910.

Your continuous advocacy for the passage of MiCASSA is making a difference.
We now have Real Choice System Change grants, Money Follows the Person laws
in several states and a federal MFP bill, S 528, has been introduced.
Funding support for institutions is eroding (long term care funding in
2004, institution vs community, 64.5% vs 35.5%.)., although there is still
a bias and waiting list for home and community based sevices still exist so
PLEASE continue your advocacy.  Major Medicaid reform could occur by the
end of the year.

If you have questions,contact us at 512-442-0252 or adapt@adapt.org .

For an Institution Free America,

The ADAPT Community

HOUSE ENERGY AND COMMERCE COMMITTEE MEMBERS

***  Members of the Health Subcommittee

ARIZONA

-John B. Shadegg ( R )  ***

ARKANSAS

-Mike Ross ( D )

CALIFORNIA

-George P. Radanovich ( R )
-Mary Bono ( R )  ***
-Henry A. Waxman ( D )  ***
-Anna Eshoo( D )            ***
-Lois Capps ( D )          ***
-Hilda L. Solis ( D )

COLORADO

-Diana L. DeGette ( D )  ***

FLORIDA

-Michael Bilirakis ( R )  ***
-Cliff Stearns ( R )
-Jim Davis ( D )  ***

GEORGIA

-Nathan Deal ( R )   ***   Chairperson, Health SubCommittee
-Charles Norwood ( R )   ***

IDAHO

-C.L. Otter ( R )

ILLINOIS

-John M. Shimkus ( R )  ***
-Bobby Rush ( D )    ***
-Janice D. Schakowsky ( D )

INDIANA

-Steve Buyer ( R )  ***

KENTUCKY

-Edward Whitfield ( R )

MAINE

-Thomas H. Allen ( D )   ***

MARYLAND

-Albert Wynn ( D )

MASSECHUSETTS

-Edward J. Markey ( D )

MICHIGAN

-Fred Upton ( R )  ***
-Michael J. Rogers ( R )  ***
-John D. Dingell ( D )    Ranking Member, Energy and Commerce Committee
-Bart Stupak ( D )

MISSISSIPPI

-Charles Pickering,Jr. ( R )  ***

MISSOURI

-Roy Blunt ( R )

NEBRASKA

-Lee Terry ( R )

NEW HAMPSHIRE

-Charles Bass ( R )

NEW JERSEY

-Michael A.Ferguson ( R )  ***
-Frank Pallone, Jr. ( D )    ***

NEW MEXICO

-Heather A. Wilson ( R )

NEW YORK

-Vito Fossella ( R )
-Edolphus Towns ( D )  ***
-Eliot Engel ( D )

NORTH CAROLINA

-Sue Myrick ( R )  ***

OHIO

-Paul E. Gilmor ( R )   ***
-Sherrod Brown ( D )  *** Ranking Member,  Health SubCommittee
-Ted Strickland ( D )   ***

OKLAHOMA

-John Sullivan ( R )

OREGON

-Greg Walden ( R )

PENNSYLVANIA

-Joseph R. Pitts (  R )  ***
-Timothy F. Murphy ( R )
-Mike Doyle ( D )

TENNESSEE

-Marsha Blackburn ( R )
-Bart Gordon ( D )  ***

TEXAS

-Joe Barton ( R ) Chairperson, Energy and Commerce Committee
-Ralph M. Hall ( R )  ***
-Michael C. Burgess ( R ) ***
-Gene Green ( D )  ***
-Charles A. Gonzalez ( D )

VIRGINIA

-Rick Boucher ( D )

WASHINGTON

-Jay Inslee ( D )

WISCONSIN

-Tammy Baldwin ( D )  ***

WYOMING

-Barbara Cubin ( R )  ***


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Eye Witness Testimony Is Conclusive That North Tower Collapsed From C

WTC Basement Blast And Injured Burn Victim Blows 'Official 9/11 Story' Sky High; Eye Witness Testimony Is Conclusive That North Tower Collapsed From Controlled Demolition

WTC janitor pulls burn victim to safety after basement explosion rocks north tower seconds before jetliner hit top floors. Also, two other men trapped and drowning in a basement elevator shaft, were also pulled to safety from underground explosion..

June 24, 2005

By Greg Szymanski

What happened to William Rodriguez the morning of 9/11 is a miracle. What happened to his story after-the-fact is a tragedy.

But with miracles and tragedies comes truth. And truth is exactly what Rodriguez brings to the whole mystery surrounding 9/11.

Declared a hero for saving numerous lives at Ground Zero, he was the janitor on duty the morning of 9/11 who heard and felt explosions rock the basement sub-levels of the north tower just seconds before the jetliner struck the top floors.

He not only claims he felt explosions coming from below the first sub-level while working in the basement, he says the walls were cracking around him and he pulled a man to safety by the name of Felipe David, who was severely burned from the basement explosions.

All these events occurred only seconds before and during the jetliner strike above. And through it all, he now asks a simple question everybody should be asking? How could a jetliner hit 90 floors above and burn a man’s arms and face to a crisp in the basement below within seconds of impact?

Rodriguez claims this was impossible and clearly demonstrates a controlled demolition brought down the WTC, saying "Let’s see them (the government) try to wiggle out of this one."

Well, they haven’t wiggled out of it because the government continues to act like Rodriguez doesn’t exist, basically ignoring his statements and the fact he rescued a man burnt and bleeding from the basement explosions.

His eye witness account, ignored by the media and the government, points the finger squarely on an official cover-up at the highest levels since the government contends the WTC fell only from burning jet fuel. And after listening to Rodriguez, it’s easy to see why the Bush administration wants him kept quiet.

Bush wants him quiet because Rodriguez’s account is ‘proof positive’ the WTC was brought down by a controlled demolition, not burning jet fuel. And Bush knows if he’s caught lying about this or caught in a cover-up, it’s just a matter of time before the whole house of cards comes tumbling down.

In fact, Rodriguez’s story is so damaging – so damning – it literally blows the lid off the government story, literally exposing the whole 9/11 investigation as a sham and a cover-up of the worst kind.

And it appears the cover-up also extends to the media.

NBC news knew about his story several years ago, even spending a full day at his house taping his comments. But when push came to shove, his story was never aired. Why?

His eyewitness account, backed up by at least 14 people at the scene with him, isn’t speculation or conjecture. It isn’t a story that takes a network out on a journalistic limb. It’s a story that can be backed up, a story that can be verified with hospital records and testimony from many others.

It’s a story about 14 people who felt and heard the same explosion and even saw Rodriguez, moments after the airplane hit, take David to safety, after he was burnt so bad from the basement explosion flesh was hanging from his face and both arms

So why didn’t NBC or any other major news outlets cover the story? They didn’t run it because it shot the government story to hell and back. They didn’t run it because "the powers that be" wouldn’t allow it.

Since 9/11, Rodriguez has stuck to his guns, never wavering from what he said from day one. Left homeless at times, warned to keep quiet and subtly harassed, he nevertheless has continued trying to tell get his message out in the face of a country not willing to listen.

Here is his story:

The Miracle

It’s a miracle Rodriguez, 44, who worked at the WTC for 20 years, is even alive. Usually arriving to work at 8:30am, the morning of 9/11 he reported 30 minutes late. If he’d arrived on time, it would have put him at the top floors just about the same time the jetliner hit the north tower.

"It was a miracle. If I arrived on time, like always, I’d probably be dead. I would have been up at the top floors like every morning," said Rodriguez about the quirk of fate that saved his life.

But since he was late, Rodriguez found himself checking into work in an office on sub-level 1 when the north tower was hit, seemingly out of harms way. However, the sound and concussion of a massive explosion in the sub-levels right below his feet changed that.

"When I heard the sound of the explosion, the floor beneath my feet vibrated, the walls started cracking and it everything started shaking," said Rodriguez, who was huddled together with at least 14 other people in the office.

Rodriguez said Anthony Saltamachia, supervisor for the American Maintenance Co., was one of the people in the room who stands ready to verify his story.

"Seconds after the first massive explosion below in the basement still rattled the floor, I hear another explosion from way above," said Rodriguez. "Although I was unaware at the time, this was the airplane hitting the tower, it occurred moments after the first explosion."

But before Rodriguez had time to think, co-worker Felipe David stormed into the basement office with severe burns on his face and arms, screaming for help and yelling "explosion! explosion! explosion!"

David had been in front of a nearby freight elevator on sub-level 1 about 400 feet from the office when fire burst out of the elevator shaft, causing his injuries.

"He was burned terribly," said Rodriguez. "The skin was hanging off his hands and arms. His injuries couldn’t have come from the airplane above, but only from a massive explosion below. I don’t care what the government says, what scientists say. I saw a man burned terribly from a fire that was caused from an explosion below.

"I know there were explosives placed below the trade center. I helped a man to safety who is living proof, living proof the government story is a lie and a cover-up.

"I have tried to tell my story to everybody, but nobody wants to listen. It is very strange what is going on here in supposedly the most democratic country in the world. In my home country of Puerto Rico and all the other Latin American countries, I have been allowed to tell my story uncensored. But here, I can’t even say a word."

After Rodriguez escorted David to safety outside the WTC, he returned to lead the others in the basement to safety as well. While there, he also helped two other men trapped and drowning in the basement elevator shaft, another result he says of the explosives placed below the tower.

In fact, after leading these men to safety, he even made another trip back into the north tower, against police orders, in order to rescue people from the top floors.

"I never could make it to the top, but I got up to the 33^rd floor after getting some of my equipment and a face mask out of the janitor’s closet," said Rodriguez, adding he heard a series of small explosions going off between the 20^th and 30^th floors, unrelated to the airplane strike, while making his way through the stairwell to the top floors.

"Also, when I was on the 33^rd floor, I heard strange sounds coming form the 34^th floor, loud noises like someone moving and thumping heavy equipment and furniture. I knew this floor was empty and stripped due to construction work so I avoided it and continued to make my way up the stairs."

Rodriguez said he finally reached the 39^th floor before being turned back by fire fighters and then, reluctantly, started his descent back down and his own flight to safety while, at the same time, hearing explosions coming from the South Tower.

The Tragedy

The concerted effort by the media and the government to silence Rodriguez is the tragedy behind this American hero’s story. And there is no question, Rodriguez is a "silent hero" for saving so many lives and for having the courage to continue telling his story against tremendous odds.

In an effort to open a fair and honest investigation as to why the WTC collapsed, Rodriguez has been ignored by government officials, the 9/11 Commission and the National Institute of Safety and Technology (NIST).

NIST, an independent investigative group funded by the government, put the finishing touches this week on its 2 year $35 million 9/11 investigation. This week Rodriguez made his final plea to have his story heard while testifying at the final public hearing held in New York.

" I disagree 100%with the government story," said Rodriguez. "I met with the 9/11 Commission behind closed doors and they essentially discounted everything I said regarding the use of explosives to bring down the north tower.

"And I contacted NIST previously four times without a response. Finally, this week I asked them before they came up with their conclusion that jet fuel brought down the towers, if they ever considered my statements or the statements of any of the other survivors who heard the explosions. They just stared at me with blank faces and didn’t have any answers.

"Also, The FBI never followed up on my claims or on the other part of my story when I told them before 9/11, I encountered one of the hijackers casing the north tower."

Besides the explosions, Rodriguez also has provided testimony to the 9/11 Commission that he stumbled across one of the supposed 19 Arab hijackers inside the WTC several months before 9/11

"I had just finished cleaning the bathroom and this guy asks me, 'Excuse me, how many public bathrooms are in this area?'" Rodriguez told the 9/11 Commission. "Coming from the school of the 1993 [Trade Center] bombing, I found it very strange. I didn't forget about it"

Rodriguez, claims he saw United Airlines Flight 175 hijacker Mohand Alshehri in June 2001, telling an FBI agent about the incident a month after the attacks. Never hearing back from the bureau, he later learned agents never followed up on the story.

"I'm very certain, I'll give it 90%" that Alshehri was casing the towers before the attacks," said Rodriguez.

Regarding the media’s apathetic approach to his story, Rodriguez said immediately after 9/11 some newspapers picked it up but his words were never taken seriously and quickly forgotten.

"During the 9/11 hearings, NBC brought a crew out to my house and spent a day taping my story but they never did air a word of it," said Rodriguez. "Since then, some reporters and commentators have subtly warned me to keep quiet, told me my life could be in jeopardy and warned me that I really didn’t understand who I was dealing with.

"I have been receiving this type of subtle harassment for years, but I keep telling everybody I can’t be intimidated because I am on a mission. Whenever someone asks why I keep talking or warns me that I could be killed, I just tell them I have nothing to lose.

"I tell them I lost 200 friends and I am their voice now. I tell them I will do everything in my power to find out the truth since I am living on borrowed time since I probably should be dead anyway."

Besides trying to tell his explosive story, Rodriguez has been active raising money for 9/11victims, being involved with charity groups that have raised more than $122 million. He says he has used over $60,000 of his own money, originally earmarked to buy a new house, in order to get at the truth behind 9/11.

Also seeking justice at the highest level, Rodriguez is the lead plaintiff in a federal RICO lawsuit filed against President Bush and others, alleging conspiracy to commit murder and other crimes in the deaths of more than 3,000 at the WTC.

The case, filed last November in a Philadelphia federal district court, recently was moved to New York in a change of venue after a government’s motion to dismiss was overruled, allowing legal discovery to continue.

"Even if the case goes no farther, I feel we have scored a victory by winning this first battle," said Rodriguez. "At least the judge seems willing to listen which is a victory of sorts. However, I sincerely hope we can eventually take the case all the way to trial and reveal the truth to the American people about 9/11."

For more informative articles, go to www.arcticbeacon.com where kind donations are also accepted to keep the truth flowing in the wake of media apathy.

Greg Szymanski

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PETITION

If you havent heard the recent Kelos V Conn decision you are in the dark! Corporations may now take your property to put in malls and condos. The justices 5/9 said if they can pay more taxes then you they can have your property!

IMPEACH those who violate the constitution and the basic tenet of rights in this country!

http://www.petitiononline.com/lp001/petition.html

The Smoking Bullet in the Smoking Gun

The Smoking Bullet in the Smoking Gun

by JEREMY SCAHILL

It was a huge air assault: Approximately 100 US and British planes flew from Kuwait into Iraqi airspace. At least seven types of aircraft were part of this massive operation, including US F-15 Strike Eagles and Royal Air Force Tornado ground-attack planes. They dropped precision-guided munitions on Saddam Hussein's major western air-defense facility, clearing the path for Special Forces helicopters that lay in wait in Jordan. Earlier attacks had been carried out against Iraqi command and control centers, radar detection systems, Revolutionary Guard units, communication centers and mobile air-defense systems. The Pentagon's goal was clear: Destroy Iraq's ability to resist. This was war.

But there was a catch: The war hadn't started yet, at least not officially. This was September 2002--a month before Congress had voted to give President Bush the authority he used to invade Iraq, two months before the United Nations brought the matter to a vote and more than six months before "shock and awe" officially began.

At the time, the Bush Administration publicly played down the extent of the air strikes, claiming the United States was just defending the so-called no-fly zones. But new information that has come out in response to the Downing Street memo reveals that, by this time, the war was already a foregone conclusion and attacks were no less than the undeclared beginning of the invasion of Iraq.

The Sunday Times of London recently reported on new evidence showing that "The RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war." The paper cites newly released statistics from the British Defense Ministry showing that "the Allies dropped twice as many bombs on Iraq in the second half of 2002 as they did during the whole of 2001" and that "a full air offensive" was under way months before the invasion had officially begun.

The implications of this information for US lawmakers are profound. It was already well known in Washington and international diplomatic circles that the real aim of the US attacks in the no-fly zones was not to protect Shiites and Kurds. But the new disclosures prove that while Congress debated whether to grant Bush the authority to go to war, while Hans Blix had his UN weapons-inspection teams scrutinizing Iraq and while international diplomats scurried to broker an eleventh-hour peace deal, the Bush Administration was already in full combat mode--not just building the dossier of manipulated intelligence, as the Downing Street memo demonstrated, but acting on it by beginning the war itself. And according to the Sunday Times article, the Administration even hoped the attacks would push Saddam into a response that could be used to justify a war the Administration was struggling to sell.

On the eve of the official invasion, on March 8, 2003, Bush said in his national radio address: "We are doing everything we can to avoid war in Iraq. But if Saddam Hussein does not disarm peacefully, he will be disarmed by force." Bush said this after nearly a year of systematic, aggressive bombings of Iraq, during which Iraq was already being disarmed by force, in preparation for the invasion to come. By the Pentagon's own admission, it carried out seventy-eight individual, offensive airstrikes against Iraq in 2002 alone.

"It reminded me of a boxing match in which one of the boxers is told not to move while the other is allowed to punch and only stop when he is convinced that he has weakened his opponent to the point where he is defeated before the fight begins," says former UN Assistant Secretary General Hans Von Sponeck, a thirty-year career diplomat who was the top UN official in Iraq from 1998 to 2000. During both the Clinton and Bush administrations, Washington has consistently and falsely claimed these attacks were mandated by UN Resolution 688, passed after the Gulf War, which called for an end to the Iraqi government's repression in the Kurdish north and the Shiite south. Von Sponeck dismissed this justification as a "total misnomer." In an interview with The Nation, Von Sponeck said that the new information "belatedly confirms" what he has long argued: "The no-fly zones had little to do with protecting ethnic and religious groups from Saddam Hussein's brutality" but were in fact an "illegal establishment...for bilateral interests of the US and the UK."

These attacks were barely covered in the press and Von Sponeck says that as far back as 1999, the United States and Britain pressured the UN not to call attention to them. During his time in Iraq, Von Sponeck began documenting each of the airstrikes, showing "regular attacks on civilian installations including food warehouses, residences, mosques, roads and people." These reports, he said, were "welcomed" by Secretary General Kofi Annan, but "the US and UK governments strongly objected to this reporting." Von Sponeck says that he was pressured to end the practice, with a senior British diplomat telling him, "All you are doing is putting a UN stamp of approval on Iraqi propaganda." But Von Sponeck continued documenting the damage and visited many attack sites. In 1999 alone, he confirmed the death of 144 civilians and more than 400 wounded by the US/UK bombings.

After September 11, there was a major change in attitude within the Bush Administration toward the attacks. Gone was any pretext that they were about protecting Shiites and Kurds--this was a plan to systematically degrade Iraq's ability to defend itself from a foreign attack: bombing Iraq's air defenses, striking command facilities, destroying communication and radar infrastructure. As an Associated Press report noted in November 2002, "Those costly, hard-to-repair facilities are essential to Iraq's air defense."

Rear Admiral David Gove, former deputy director of global operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on November 20, 2002, that US and British pilots were "essentially flying combat missions." On October 3, 2002, the New York Times reported that US pilots were using southern Iraq for "practice runs, mock strikes and real attacks" against a variety of targets. But the full significance of this dramatic change in policy toward Iraq only became clear last month, with the release of the Downing Street memo. In it, British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon is reported to have said in 2002, after meeting with US officials, that "the US had already begun 'spikes of activity' to put pressure on the regime," a reference to the stepped-up airstrikes. Now the Sunday Times of London has revealed that these spikes "had become a full air offensive"--in other words, a war.

Michigan Democratic Representative John Conyers has called the latest revelations about these attacks "the smoking bullet in the smoking gun," irrefutable proof that President Bush misled Congress before the vote on Iraq. When Bush asked Congress to authorize the use of force in Iraq, he also said he would use it only as a last resort, after all other avenues had been exhausted. But the Downing Street memo reveals that the Administration had already decided to topple Saddam by force and was manipulating intelligence to justify the decision. That information puts the increase in unprovoked air attacks in the year prior to the war in an entirely new light: The Bush Administration was not only determined to wage war on Iraq, regardless of the evidence; it had already started that war months before it was put to a vote in Congress.

It only takes one member of Congress to begin an impeachment process, and Conyers is said to be considering the option. The process would certainly be revealing. Congress could subpoena Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Gen. Richard Myers, Gen.Tommy Franks and all of the military commanders and pilots involved with the no-fly zone bombings going back into the late 1990s. What were their orders, both given and received? In those answers might lie a case for impeachment.

But another question looms, particularly for Democrats who voted for the war and now say they were misled: Why weren't these unprovoked and unauthorized attacks investigated when they were happening, when it might have had a real impact on the Administration's drive to war? Perhaps that's why the growing grassroots campaign to use the Downing Street memo to impeach Bush can't get a hearing on Capitol Hill. A real probing of this "smoking gun" would not be uncomfortable only for Republicans. The truth is that Bush, like President Bill Clinton before him, oversaw the longest sustained bombing campaign since Vietnam against a sovereign country with no international or US mandate. That gun is probably too hot for either party to touch.