posted 02-12-2004 12:49 PM            

CNN would rather interview someone who will be a good little robot...like Barry McCaffrey or Ollie North.

posted 02-12-2004 07:59 PM            

I followed him from day one! He and William Rivers Pitt (truthout.com) wrote a book together on Iraq and Ritter's writings were often posted there.

Yes, let's remember that Ritter was right all along like most of us against the war knew in our hearts!

Thanks, Mechie!

posted 02-16-2004 08:43 AM            

WMD: A primer
http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_feb15.html

Let's be clear on what is - and isn't - a weapon of mass destruction
By ERIC MARGOLIS -- Contributing Foreign Editor

NEW YORK -- "Weapons of mass destruction." No term has been more abused, or less understood. George Bush has made it his personal mantra, and the slogan of his presidency.

An administration that may have concocted fake evidence to launch war on Iraq may yet conveniently "discover" unconventional weapons there - before November's U.S. elections. So let's define what such weapons are - and are not.

Three types of unconventional arms are called WMD: nuclear, chemical and biological.

Of those, the only true weapons of mass destruction are nuclear. The U.S., Russia, China, France, Britain, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea, alone possess them. Japan could make nuclear weapons within 90 days.

Without specialized medium and long-range delivery systems (aircraft or missiles), nuclear weapons are useless, even suicidal.

Last week, Bush warned of nuclear proliferation and called for a worldwide ban on the trade of nuclear material. This when U.S. ally Pakistan has been exposed as a major proliferator, Israel is covertly helping build India's nuclear capabilities and the U.S. plans to deploy a new generation of nuclear weapons designed to attack Third World targets.

Chemical weapons, which are not WMD, are blistering, choking, or toxic agents. Mustard gas possessed by Iraq, Libya, Syria, Egypt and other nations is World War I technology. Horrible as they are, these are strictly battlefield weapons, requiring large, clumsy holding tanks, and depend on favourable winds. Winston Churchill authorized using poison gas against "primitive tribesmen" - Kurds in Iraq and Afghans - when he was British home secretary. Benito Mussolini's Italy used mustard gas in Ethiopia and Libya.

Choking gas, like chlorine, is also a tactical battlefield agent. French troops without gas masks defending a 4-km front at Verdun in 1916 were hit by 60,000 chlorine gas shells, yet held their lines. So did Canadian troops in Flanders, also without masks, who heroically fought off superior German forces.

World War II vintage

Nerve gases, like Sarin and VX, are World War II vintage. Though deadly, they, too, are tactical agents designed for area denial and neutralizing high value targets. Using nerve gas requires specialized vehicles or aircraft with highly complex dispensing systems. Gas is dependent on temperature, humidity and wind. The Soviets tried various nerve agents in Afghanistan, but found them ineffective and dangerous to their own troops.

Nerve agents would be extremely lethal if released by terrorists in a large building, mall or airport but, again, they are weapons of localized destruction, not mass destruction. In 1995, a Japanese cult released nerve gas in Tokyo's subway, killing 12 people.

Nerve gas was not used during WW II because of its unreliability and lack of wide area lethality. Many gases are unstable and have limited shelf lives. Iraq and Iran used poison gas during the 1980-88 Gulf War - killing or maiming many soldiers but achieving no strategic breakthroughs.

Biological agents, like anthrax, botulism, Q-fever, tularemia and plague, are the most feared, yet least understood weapons. They are difficult to produce, store, transport and deliver. Germ weapons have never been successfully used in warfare. The USSR was secretly working on mutated, drug-resistant forms of anthrax and plague when it collapsed.

In the 1930s and '40s, Japan used anthrax in bombs, and also released plague-infected rats against Chinese civilian and military targets. These attempts produced some localized casualties. The Japanese military ruled their biological warfare campaign a failure.

Biowarfare agents are weapons of uncertain, limited destructiveness.

Conventional weapons can be as destructive as nuclear weapons. The two atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on Japan in 1945 killed 103,000 people. In one night alone, U.S. firebombs incinerated 100,000 civilians in Tokyo.

Japanese sources say one million civilians were killed by U.S. bombing raids. More than 100,000 German civilians were burned to death by the Allied fire-bombings of Dresden and Hamburg.

Fuel-air explosives, or thermobaric weapons, used by Russia in Chechnya and by the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq, can be as destructive as small, tactical nuclear weapons. So can America's recently deployed 21,500-lb. MOAB bomb. Larger versions are planned.

Given these facts, it's important to dissipate the hysteria and confusion over WMD. Even if Iraq had chemical or biological weapons in 1993 - which it did not - they were not true WMD. Iraq had no means of delivering them to the U.S., and they could never have posed the threat Bush claimed.

No terrorist group is likely to sneak enough chemical or biological material into the U.S. to cause more than localized damage. Attacks like those on the World Trade Center may be horrible, but they are not mass destruction. Even a small nuclear device would cause only limited destruction.

posted 02-16-2004 04:11 PM            

Have the neocons killed a presidency?

Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted: February 16, 2004: (WorldNetDaily.com) George W. Bush "betrayed us," howled Al Gore.

"He played on our fear. He took America on an ill-conceived foreign adventure, dangerous to our troops, an adventure that was preordained and planned before 9-11 ever happened."

Hearing it, Gore's rant seemed slanderous and demagogic. For though U.S. policy since Clinton had called for regime change in Iraq, there is no evidence, none, that Bush planned to invade prior to 9-11.

Yet, the president has a grave problem, and it is this: Burrowed inside his foreign-policy team are men guilty of exactly what Gore accuses Bush of, men who did exploit our fears to stampede us into a war they had plotted for years. Consider:

In 1996, in a strategy paper crafted for Israel's Bibi Netanyahu, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser urged him to "focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power" as an "Israeli strategic objective." Perle, Feith, Wurmser were all on Bush's foreign policy team on 9-11.

In 1998, eight members of Bush's future team, including Perle, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, wrote Clinton urging upon him a strategy that "should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein."

On Jan. 1, 2001, nine months before 9-11, Wurmser called for U.S.-Israeli attacks "to broaden the [Middle East] conflict to strike fatally ... the regimes of Damascus, Baghdad, Tripoli, Teheran and Gaza ... to establish the recognition that fighting with either the United States or Israel is suicidal."

"Crises can be opportunities," added Wurmser.

On Sept. 11, opportunity struck.

On Sept. 15, according to author Bob Woodward, Paul Wolfowitz spoke up in the War Cabinet to urge that Afghanistan be put on a back burner and an attack be mounted at once on Iraq, though Iraq had had nothing to do with 9-11. Why Iraq? Said Wolfowitz, because it is "doable."

On Sept. 20, 40 neoconservatives in an open letter demanded that Bush remove Saddam from power, "even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the [9-11] attack." Failure to do so, they warned the president, "would constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism."

While Bush had taken office as a traditional conservative skeptical of "nation-building" and calling for a more "humble" foreign policy, after 9-11, he was captured by the neocons and converted to an agenda they had worked up years before. Suddenly, he sounded just like them, threatening wars on "axis-of-evil" nations that had nothing to do with 9-11.

And here is where Bush's present crisis was created.

Though he had internalized the neoconservative agenda for war, he had no rationale, no justification, no casus belli. Iraq had not threatened or attacked us.

Enter the WMD. Neoconservatives pressed on Bush the idea that Iraq must still have weapons of mass destruction and must be working on nuclear weapons. And as Saddam was a figure of such irrationality – i.e., a madman – he would readily give an atom bomb to al-Qaida. An American city could be incinerated.

Therefore, Saddam had to be destroyed. Bush bought it.

The problem, however, was this: While there is much evidence Saddam is evil, there is no evidence he was insane. He had not used his WMD in 1991, when he had them. For he was not a fool. He knew that would mean his end. Why would he then build a horror weapon now, give it to a terrorist and risk the annihilation of his regime, family, legacy and himself, a fate he had narrowly escaped in 1991?

Made no sense – and there was no hard evidence on the WMD.

Thus, when the CIA was unable to come up with hard evidence that Saddam still had WMD, or was building nuclear weapons, neocon insiders sifted the intelligence, cherry-picked it, presented tidbits to the media as unvarnished truth, and persuaded Powell and the president to rely on it to make the case to Congress, the country and the world. Powell and the president did.

Now the WMD case has fallen apart. Powell has egg on his face. And the president must persuade Tim Russert and the nation that Iraq was a "war of necessity" because we "had no choice when we looked at the intelligence I looked at."

But, sir, the intelligence you "looked at" was flawed. Who gave it to you?

To its neocon architects, Iraq was always about empire, hegemony, Pax Americana, global democracy – about getting hold of America's power to make the Middle East safe for Sharon and themselves glorious and famous.

But now they have led a president who came to office with good intentions and a good heart to the precipice of ruin. One wonders if Bush knows how badly he has been had. And if he does, why he has not summarily dealt with those who misled him?

© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com, Inc. http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37139

------------

But notice, there's no mention of oil? The quest for oil resources as the world has hit "peak oil" is the underlying reason for hegemony and so-called democratization! Our Western way of life, based on petroleum products should have accomodated and transitioned to alternative viable energy resources and substitutes for petroleum based products in plastics, fertilizers, and pesticides a LOOOOOOOONG time ago -- 30 years. Maybe then there could be a hope -- but now, it's downhill from here and the wars over oil will continue until either natural disasters or destructive weaponry destroys the insfrastructure we do have. We're going down -- and very few of us know it. It is too late according to many scientists.

______________________________

Life After The Oil Crash
By Matthew David Savinar
2-11-4

Civilization as we know it is coming to an end soon. This is not the
wacky conclusion of a religious cult, but rather the result of
diligent analysis sourced by hard data and the scientists who study
global "Peak Oil" and related geo-political events.

So who are these nay-sayers who claim the sky is falling? Conspiracy
fanatics? Apocalypse Bible prophesy readers? To the contrary, they
are some of the most respected, highest paid geologists and experts in
the world. And this is what's so scary.

The situation is so dire that even George W. Bush's Energy Adviser,
Matthew Simmons, has acknowledged that "The situation is desperate.
This is the world's biggest serious question."

According to Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham, "America faces a
major energy supply crisis over the next two decades. The failure to
meet this challenge will threaten our nation's economic prosperity,
compromise our national security, and literally alter the way we lead
our lives."

If you are like 99% of the people reading this letter, you have never
heard of the term "Peak Oil". I had not heard the term until a few
months ago. Since learning about Peak Oil, I have had my world view,
and basic assumptions about my own individual future turned completely
upside down.

A little about myself: A few months ago, I was a 25 year old law
school graduate who found out he had just passed the California Bar
Exam. I was excited about a potentially long and prosperous career
in the legal profession, getting married, having kids, contributing to
my community, and living the "American Dream."

Peak Oil has caused me to seriously question how realistic this vision
of my life is.

Whether you're 25 or 75, an attorney or an auto mechanic, what you are
about to read will shake the foundations of your life.

Below you find a brief explanation of Peak Oil, the ramifications, and
what we can do about it. For the sake of simplicity, I have designed
the following explanation for somebody unfamiliar with Peak Oil. If
you would like more in depth explanations with graphs, charts, and the
like, please consult the extensive interviews, articles and sites I
have linked to throughout this site.

What is "Peak Oil"?

All oil production follows a bell curve, whether in an individual
field or on the planet as a whole. On the upslope of the curve
production costs are significantly lower than on the downslope when
extra effort (expense) is required to extract oil from reservoirs that
are emptying out.

Put simply: oil is abundant and cheap on the upslope, scarce and
expensive on the downslope.

For the past 150 years, we have been moving up the upslope of the
global oil production curve. "Peak Oil" is the industry term for the
top of the curve. It's often referred to as "Hubbert's Peak" a
reference to King Hubbert, the geologist who discovered that oil
production follows a bell curve.

Once we pass the peak, we will go down the very steep downslope. The
further we go down the slope, the more it costs to produce oil, and
its cousin, natural gas.

In practical terms, this means that if 2000 was the year of Peak Oil,
worldwide oil production in the year 2020 will be the same as it was
in 1980. However, the world's population in 2020 will be both much
larger (appoximately twice as big) and much more industrialized than
it was in 1980. Consequently, worldwide demand for oil will outpace
the worldwide production of oil by a significant margin.

The more demand for oil exceeds production of oil, the higher the
price goes.

Ultimately, the question is not "When will we run out of oil?" but
rather, "When will we run out of cheap oil?"

Read the entire story here: http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Index.html

-----------------------

Just a matter of time.

WMD is just a cover story for our dependence on oil.

bc

posted 03-03-2004 02:04 PM            

By Bill Nichols, USA TODAY
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5800.htm

02/02/04 - UNITED NATIONS — A report from U.N. weapons inspectors to be released today says they now believe there were no weapons of mass destruction of any significance in Iraq after 1994, according to two U.N. diplomats who have seen the document.

The historical review of inspections in Iraq is the first outside study to confirm the recent conclusion by David Kay, the former U.S. chief inspector, that Iraq had no banned weapons before last year's U.S-led invasion. It also goes further than prewar U.N. reports, which said no weapons had been found but noted that Iraq had not fully accounted for weapons it was known to have had at the end of the Gulf War in 1991.

The report, to be outlined to the U.N. Security Council as early as Friday, is based on information gathered over more than seven years of U.N. inspections in Iraq before the 2003 war, plus postwar findings discussed publicly by Kay.

Kay reported in October that his team found "dozens of WMD-related program activities" that Iraq was required to reveal to U.N. inspectors but did not. However, he said he found no actual WMDs.

The study, a quarterly report on Iraq from U.N. inspectors, notes that the U.S. teams' inability to find any weapons after the war mirrors the experience of U.N. inspectors who searched there from November 2002 until March 2003.

Many Bush administration officials were harshly critical of the U.N. inspection efforts in the months before the war. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in August 2002 that inspections "will be a sham."

The Bush administration also pointedly declined U.N. offers to help in the postwar weapons hunt, preferring instead to use U.S. inspectors and specialists from other coalition countries such as Britain and Australia.

But U.N. reports submitted to the Security Council before the war by Hans Blix, former chief U.N. arms inspector, and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency, have been largely validated by U.S. weapons teams. The common findings:

Iraq's nuclear weapons program was dormant.

No evidence was found to suggest Iraq possessed chemical or biological weapons. U.N. officials believe the weapons were destroyed by U.N. inspectors or Iraqi officials in the years after the 1991 Gulf War.

Iraq was attempting to develop missiles capable of exceeding a U.N.-mandated limit of 93 miles.

Demetrius Perricos, the acting executive chairman of the U.N. inspection teams, said in an interview that the failure to find banned weapons in Iraq since the war undercuts administration criticism of the U.N.'s search before the war.

"You cannot say that only the Americans or the British or the Australians currently inspecting in Iraq are the clever inspectors — and the Americans and the British and the Australians that we had were not," he said.

posted 03-16-2004 11:18 AM            

Daily Times Monitor
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/?page=story_12-8-2003_pg1_9

According to a stunning report posted by a retired Navy Lt Commander and 28-year veteran of the Defense Department (DoD), the Bush administration’s assurance about finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was based on a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) plan to “plant” WMDs inside the country. Nelda Rogers, the Pentagon whistleblower, claims the plan failed when the secret mission was mistakenly taken out by “friendly fire”, the Environmentalists Against War report.

Nelda Rogers is a 28-year veteran debriefer for the DoD. She has become so concerned for her safety that she decided to tell the story about this latest CIA-military fiasco in Iraq. According to Al Martin Raw.com, “Ms Rogers is number two in the chain of command within this DoD special intelligence office. This is a ten-person debriefing unit within the central debriefing office for the Department of Defense.”

The information that is being leaked out is information “obtained while she was in Germany heading up the debriefing of returning service personnel, involved in intelligence work in Iraq for the DoD and/or the CIA. “According to Ms Rogers, there was a covert military operation that took place both preceding and during the hostilities in Iraq,” reports Al Martin Raw.com, an online subscriber-based news/analysis service which provides “Political, Economic and Financial Intelligence”.

Al Martin is a retired Lt Commander (US Navy), the author of a memoir called “The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider,” and is considered one of America’s foremost experts on corporate and government fraud. Ms Rogers reports that this particular covert operation team was manned by former military personnel and “the unit was paid through the Department of Agriculture in order to hide it, which is also very commonplace”.

According to Al Martin Raw.com, “the Agriculture Department has often been used as a paymaster on behalf of the CIA, DIA, NSA and others”. According to the Al Martin Raw.com story, another aspect of Ms Rogers’ report concerns a covert operation which was to locate the assets of Saddam Hussein and his family, including cash, gold bullion, jewelry and assorted valuable antiquities. The problem became evident when “the operation in Iraq involved 100 people, all of whom apparently are now dead, having succumbed to so-called ‘friendly fire’. The scope of this operation included the penetration of the Central Bank of Iraq, other large commercial banks in Baghdad, the Iraqi National Museum and certain presidential palaces where monies and bullion were secreted.”

“They identified about $2 billion in cash, another $150 million in Euros, in physical banknotes, and about another $100 million in sundry foreign currencies ranging from Yen to British Pounds,” reports Al Martin.

“These people died, mostly in the same place in Baghdad, supposedly from a stray cruise missile or a combination of missiles and bombs that went astray,” Martin continues. “There were supposedly 76 who died there and the other 24 died through a variety of ‘friendly fire’, ‘mistaken identity’ and some of them—their whereabouts are simply unknown.” Ms Rogers’ story sounds like an updated 21st-century version of Treasure Island meets Ali Baba and the Bush Cabal Thieves, writes Martin.

“This was a contingent of CIA/ DoD operatives, but it was really the CIA that bungled it,” Ms Rogers said. “They were relying on the CIA’s ability to organise an effort to seize these assets and to be able to extract these assets because the CIA claimed it had resources on the ground within the Iraqi army and the Iraqi government who had been paid. That turned out to be completely bogus. As usual.”