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"There is no way to commercialize giving thanks." -- Bernie Ward
"Life in the USA is a whole lot less fun than it used to be..."
Don Hazen - AlterNet
06APR2004
9/11 Could Have Been Stopped
Join the Potomac Tea Party! Send a Tea Bag to George II! 
Ed. note: The Ayatolljahso news first re: Iraq. Bad news. All bad news for the Bush White House
neocon Fascists who dreamed of unlimited supplies of oil, safety and security for Israel, and a nice little
empire to boot. Their first, and apparently last mistake was their venture into Iraq...
There are some local matters that hafta be settled. Afterwards, the Shi'ah (of Iraq ad Iran) will join (as)
Arabs and the Persians like the world has never seen. Syria will be a safer place for future than at the moment.
Condi is to testify on Thursday. The Black Commentator brings us some background in
Condoleezza's Crimes.
Is the September 11 Commission, independent? Bush is denying he had advance warning about 9/11, saying
he "lacked information". So where is the August 6th CIA memo? The sayings of Berger, Hart - Rudman, Clarke, and
the Italians, always the Italians.
ON/OFF SUBJECT: Here we have a Paul Krugman follow up on yesterday's
Hold The Tuna and States Call for Tougher Mercury Standards articles.
The Mercury Scandal
By Paul Krugman
If you want a single example that captures why so many people no longer believe in the good intentions of the Bush administration, look at the case of mercury pollution.
Mercury can damage the nervous system, especially in fetuses and infants which is why the Food and Drug Administration warns pregnant women and nursing mothers against consuming types of fish, like albacore tuna, that often contain high mercury levels. About 8 percent of American women have more mercury in their bloodstreams than the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe.
During the 1990's, government regulation greatly reduced mercury emissions from medical and municipal waste incineration, leaving power plants as the main problem. In 2000, the E.P.A. determined that mercury is a hazardous substance as defined by the Clean Air Act, which requires that such substances be strictly controlled. E.P.A. staff estimated that enforcing this requirement would lead to a 90 percent reduction in power-plant mercury emissions by 2008.
A few months ago, however, the Bush administration reversed this determination and proposed a "cap and trade" system for mercury that it claimed would lead to a 70 percent reduction by 2018. Other estimates suggest that the reduction would be smaller, and take longer.
For some pollutants, setting a cap on total emissions, while letting polluters buy and sell emission rights, is a cost-efficient way to reduce pollution. The cap-and-trade system for sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain, has been a big success. But the science clearly shows that cap-and-trade is inappropriate for mercury.
Sulfur dioxide is light, and travels long distances: power plants in the Midwest can cause acid rain in Maine. So a cap on total national emissions makes sense. Mercury is heavy: much of it precipitates to the ground near the source. As a result, coal-fired power plants in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan create "hot spots" chemical Chernobyls where the risks of mercury poisoning are severe. Under a cap-and-trade system, these plants are likely to purchase pollution rights rather than cut emissions. In other words, the administration proposal would perpetuate mercury pollution where it does the most harm. That probably means thousands of children born with preventable neurological problems.
So how did the original plan get replaced with a plan so obviously wrong on the science?
The answer is that the foxes have been put in charge of the henhouse. The head of the E.P.A.'s Office of Air and Radiation, like most key environmental appointees in the Bush administration, previously made his living representing polluting industries (which, in case you haven't guessed, are huge Republican donors). On mercury, the administration didn't just take industry views into account, it literally let the polluters write the regulations: much of the language of the administration's proposal came directly from lobbyists' memos.
E.P.A. experts normally study regulations before they are issued, but they were bypassed. According to The Los Angeles Times: "E.P.A. staffers say they were told not to undertake the normal scientific and economic studies called for under a standing executive order. E.P.A. veterans say they cannot recall another instance where the agency's technical experts were cut out of developing a major regulatory proposal."
Mercury is just a particularly vivid example of what's going on in environmental protection, and public policy in general. As a devastating article in Sunday's New York Times Magazine documented, the administration's rollback of the Clean Air Act has gone beyond the polluters' wildest dreams.
And the corruption of the policy process - in which political appointees come in with a predetermined agenda, and technical experts who might present information their superiors don't want to hear are muzzled - has infected every area I know anything about, from tax cuts to matters of war and peace.
9/11 Panel Say Attacks Preventable
By Philip Shenon - New York Times
The leaders of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks agreed Sunday that evidence gathered by their panel showed the attacks could probably have been prevented.
Their remarks drew sharp disagreement from one of President Bush's closest political advisers, who insisted that the Bush and Clinton administrations had no opportunity to disrupt the Sept. 11 plot. They also offered a preview of the difficult questions likely to confront Condoleezza Rice when she testifies before the panel at a long-awaited public hearing this week.
In a joint television interview, the commission's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, and its vice chairman, Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic House member from Indiana, indicated that their final report this summer would find that the Sept. 11 attacks were preventable.
They also suggested that Ms. Rice, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, would be questioned aggressively on Thursday about why the administration had not taken more action against Al Qaeda before Sept. 11, and about discrepancies between her public statements and those of Richard A. Clarke, the president's former counterterrorism chief, who has accused the administration of largely ignoring terrorist threats in 2001.
"The whole story might have been different," Mr. Kean said on the NBC News program "Meet the Press," outlining a series of intelligence and law enforcement blunders in the months and years before the attacks.
"There are so many threads and so many things, individual things, that happened," he said. "If we had been able to put those people on the watch list of the airlines, the two who were in the country; again, if we'd stopped some of these people at the borders; if we had acted earlier on Al Qaeda when Al Qaeda was smaller and just getting started."
Mr. Kean also cited the "lack of coordination within the F.B.I." and the bureau's failures to grapple with the implications of the August 2001 arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen who was arrested while in flight school and was later linked to the terrorist cell that carried out the attacks.
Commission officials say current and former officials of the F.B.I., especially the former director Louis J. Freeh, and Attorney General John Ashcroft are expected to be harshly questioned by the 10-member panel at a hearing later this month about the Moussaoui case and other law enforcement failures before Sept. 11.
Mr. Hamilton, a former chairman of the House Intelligence and International Relations committees, said, "There are a lot of ifs; you can string together a whole bunch of ifs, and if things had broken right in all kinds of different ways, as the governor has identified, and frankly if you'd had a little luck, it probably could have been prevented." He said the panel would "make a final judgment on that, I believe, when the commission reports."
Mr. Kean has made similar remarks in the past, but commission officials said it appeared to be the first time Mr. Hamilton, the chief Democrat on the panel, had said publicly that he believed the attacks could have been prevented.
Mr. Kean and other members of the commission also agreed in interviews Sunday that the Bush administration's skepticism about the Clinton administration's national security policies might have led the Bush White House to pay too little attention to the threat of Al Qaeda.
Also appearing on "Meet the Press," Karen P. Hughes, one of Mr. Bush's closest political advisers and an important strategist for his re-election campaign, rejected the suggestion that the attacks could have been prevented.
"I just don't think, based on everything I know, and I was there, that there was anything that anyone in government could have done to have put together the pieces before the horror of that day," Ms. Hughes said. "If we could have in either administration, either in the eight years of the Clinton administration or the seven and a half months of the Bush administration, I'm convinced we would have done so."
Since Mr. Clarke made his charges against the Bush administration in a new book and in highly publicized testimony before the Sept. 11 commission, public opinion polls have suggested that while Mr. Bush's overall approval rating is unchanged, public support for his handling of terrorism has slipped.
The commission has said it intends to make its final report public on July 26, which Congress has set as the commission's deadline, although Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton said there could be a struggle with the White House over whether the full document can be declassified. Large portions of the Congressional report on the Sept. 11 attacks remain secret at the insistence of the White House.
Mr. Kean said Andrew H. Card Jr., President Bush's chief of staff, had set up a special declassification team to "look at the report in an expedited manner and try to get it out just as fast as possible nobody has an interest in this thing coming out in September or October in the middle of the election."
Despite allegations from Congressional Republican leaders that Mr. Clarke is not telling the truth, he received new support for his account on Sunday from a prominent Senate Republican, Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
On the ABC News program "This Week," Mr. Lugar said he did not recall any contradictions between Mr. Clarke's testimony to the Sept. 11 commission and information he had previously provided to the joint Congressional investigation of the attacks. Asked if he would join his Republican colleagues in attacking Mr. Clarke's credibility, Senator Lugar replied, "I wouldn't go there."
The commission, known formally as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, is expected to send staff members to the White House on Monday to begin reviewing thousands of classified Clinton-administration foreign policy documents that the White House acknowledged last week it had not turned over.
Responding to criticism from former Clinton aides, the White House explained that it had withheld the files from the commission because they duplicated other material, were not responsive to the commission's requests or contained "highly sensitive" national security information. The White House has agreed to allow the commission's staff to review the documents but has made no promise on giving any of them to the panel.
"We have to ascertain for ourselves that we have had access to what we need," said a commission spokesman, Al Felzenberg.
In Richard Clarke's Orchestra (from FTW), Jamey
Hecht says the maestro (Clarke) plays a simple waltz as the shackled
media manages to dance along. There are inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the reverberating bombshells that
Richard Clarke is dropping on the Bush Administration. For the educated reader, Clarke seems to want to tell us
more than he actually says while saying less than he could. There's plenty here for researchers and activists to
work on. Also in FTW,
Cynthia McKinney announces House re-election bid - Opponent who stole seat using
crossover Republican votes in 2002 abandons the seat; loses it at press conference announcing a US Senate run
when asked if she was running away from McKinney. Supporters trumpet McKinney's right to say "I told you so"
about 9-11...
Worse Than Watergate:
The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush
By John W. Dean
John Dean speaks of a non-Constitutional "co-presidency" in play with Bush and Cheney... Keith Olbermann
interviewed John Dean on April 5th.
OLBERMANN: Good evening. One year ago this month, on this newscast, a republican party operative insisted that George W. Bush was one of the greatest presidents in American history, today even his own campaign committee admits that all polls indicate that Mr. Bush currently has no better than a 50-50 chance of re-election. And six books decrying his administration now populate the various top 25 best seller lists. The newest of these is easily the most strongly worded.
Our fifth story on the COUNTDOWN: "Worse than Watergate." Richard Clarke may have produced a book with anger and Al Franken may have produced a book with humor and Michael Moore may have produced a book with cynicism. But John dean, who was at the center of the greatest political scandal in this nation's history, has produced a book with perspective and that perspective is simply, terrifying. "At bottom line, George Bush has done more damage to have than his old boss Richard Nixon ever dreamed of."
The former White House council to President Nixon, John dean joining us here in the studio.
Welcome.
JOHN DEAN, AUTHOR, "WORSE THAN WATERGATE": Thank you, Keith.
OLBERMANN: Do you have a political agenda in this? Do you have an axe to grind? Is there something a reader should know before he picks up the book.
DEAN: I really don't. I'm a registered independent and I really don't carry partisan water anymore. I must say that if I have one thing I really want to do, thought, and I feel very strongly about, and behind the book, is good government. And secrecy is not good government.
OLBERMANN: If, because of the secrecy that you go into such detail about, this really is worse than Watergate, why has no lid blown off? Where are the tapes? Where are the smoking gun memos? Where is the fingerprint of the secrecy that you allude to?
DEAN: One of the reasons I needed to do it is because no one was talking about and I felt it was an issue that the major media should not be ignoring the way they have. With. the 9/11 Commission investigations, we've had more talk of late of the problem with secrecy than we have in the last some three years. But, it is a serious problem; its a matter of people not knowing what's going on because it's secret often, so I had to get in and start connecting up the dots and looking at the various ramifications and it runs across all policy lines and it's not really just a national security issue, its not a war on terrorism issue, it really is just a policy of this administration.
OLBERMANN: But you analogize, from your own experience, in that White House of 1971, '72, 73 -- the parallel between Richard Nixon's obsession with secrecy that was unleashed, I guess would be the best way to describe it, after Daniel Ellsberg released the "Pentagon Papers" to the "New York Times," and the desire for secrecy that was inspired in the Bush administration after 9/11. Explain why that peril is valid and why people at home are going, "Well, that is 9/11, that has nothing to do with something like the Pentagon Papers."
DEAN: It's the exploitation of secrecy. Nixons secrecy was far in excess of what need be. He, himself, was one of the worst, after he left office, to confess that he had become a basket case, he'd become - he'd gone way over the line and gotten excessively secret. He'd also relied on others around him who suggested that he should become more secret, principally people like Henry Kissinger. It appears to me that George Bush has relied on Dick Cheney who is by nature a very secretive person.
OLBERMANN: Who you describe as the co-president of the United States?
DEAN: No question, he is the co-president of the United States.
OLBERMANN: How do you have that situation? I thought the guy - I can't speak the constitution from my photographic memory, but I believe it says there's one president and one vice president.
DEAN: Well, we have a vice president. We have a situation where the president himself is not particularly interested in a lot of domestic and some of the areas of foreign policy. George Bush is wonderful at campaigning, he's good at working the lines, he's good at going out and fundraising and he is good at head of state. So, he has become a very effective head of state. Dick Cheney, who doesn't like to kiss babies and work the rope lines, and - but is fascinated by policy and has very strong beliefs about policy from his long tenure in government, has really become the chief of government, he has his own shadow national security council. Not my name for an operation, but the White House's own name for a parallel operation.
OLBERMANN: When we talked about this previously, I said that the feeling that I have been left after reading "Worse than Watergate" was that this could have been the historical, essentially, prequel to George Orwell's novel "1984," that if you wanted to see what the very first step, out of maybe 50 steps, towards this totalitarian state, that Orwell wrote about in his novel, this would be the kind of thing you would see, and I know that a lot of people have concerns about civil rights and how the edges of democracy seem to have been worn down since 9/11. But you quote many of them; you quote Dick Armey of all people in the middle of the book. But, do you really feel the Bush administration has gone past that and is actually putting not just an element or two of democracy at risk, but democracy at risk?
DEAN: What I see, Keith, is the most extreme secrecy that I've ever seen in any president, one, that I have in my lifetime experienced. Two, in any I've studied and I've studied all 42 prior, if you will, and theres just never been an operation where we've had a government by gag order at a time it is not necessary. Yes, there's no question there are area of national security where do you need secrecy. No question, I wouldn't debate that, in fact, I don't even deal with the covert side which has been one of the most active sides of the Bush administration, more so than Clinton, more so than even Reagan. It's a whole other area. I deal with policy that shouldn't be secret and tried to marshal and show and lay out the case. Really, making a, if I might, a prima facie case, I don't try to write an encyclopedia on this, I partic - I take really strong examples in each area and collect them and say, all right, reader, now how can you refute that we have one of the most secret presidencies and we have situations here, that are all inherently dangerous. They are many in co-eight (PH) scandals that are just below the surface. And when you add it all up, you have a situation that, no question to me, is worse than Watergate.
OLBERMANN: You describe the administration, particularly the president, as misleading the country into war and in particular, you're devoting a lot of time in this book to the president's response to the congressional authorization for war in Iraq, as opposed to weapons of mass destruction, the Niger stories, all of that, this - just the legal paperwork between congress and the president, which you compare to LBJ, hoodwinking the country in the Gulf of Tonkin, Nixon's rationale for bombing Cambodia, and your account of what Bush did to respond to congress's authorization. It reads like the old story about two men who want to climb a 20-foot wall, and the first one says, "I'll get up on your shoulders, and then we'll be up 12 feet, then you get up on my shoulders, we'll be up 18 feet. And then finally I'll get back on your shoulders and we'll be on top of the wall." What was wrong with how to president responded even after he had gotten the authorization from congress?
DEAN: The president went for his authorization in October of 19 -- excuse me, of 2002 to go into Iraq. He didn't want to have to go back when he actually sent the troops in. There was a lot of doubt about whether there were weapons of mass destruction, whether there was a need of more diplomacy, all those issues were still up on the table. He cracked a deal on the House where if they were going to grant him this very unusual and unprecedented authority, they wanted certain conditions and they attached conditions to the grant of authority. The conditions were that he make a formal determination that, one, that there was no need for any further or any potential for working anything out through diplomatic relations to resolve the weapons of mass destruction issue. The second thing is that it was consistent with the war on terrorism and the whole al-Qaeda problem. In other words, the two premises in which he had really been selling the congress and the nation on war, he was to make a formal determination. Everyone thought, fine. And then no one ever looked back after he went to war. And 48 hours after he does invade Iraq, he does make the determination, and it is a sick joke. It is the most fraudulent document I've ever seen a president file. I lay it out on the book, I put theall the details in, it's so - I make what, hopefully, is a technical legal argument into a very plain, simple argument because what he's done is he's taken his own information, some whereas clauses that he gave the congress to - typical stuff, window dressing that goes into any resolution. He says, those are findings of congress.
OLBERMANN: Because he had submitted them to congress.
DEAN: He'd already submitted them to congress, then he declares them to be findings of congress, and he bases his determination on his own whereases.
OLBERMANN: Let me move to the topical. This week Dr. Rice is going to testify on Thursday before the 9/11 Commission, this something the White House fought and ultimately lost? Maybe it's because of the 9/11 speech that she didn't give in which basically, it dismissed terrorism was the major issue. Maybe it was about the daily security briefs. Whatever it was, join the commission for me for a moment, John. You get the first question to Dr. Rice. What do you ask her on Thursday?
DEAN: One of the first questions would obviously be about her speech on September 11, what she had planned, her state of mind. The "New York Times" op ed page, on the weekend, did an excellent thing offering questions to some people who were experts. And Scott Armstrong, who is a good expert on national security and terrorism, had some very penetrating questions, and principally, heone of the things he really wanted to know is why was Iraq still even in play at this point and why was it coming up, and what was its connection? And there is, obviously, no connection and I think she's going to be pressed hard on that.
OLBERMANN: Last point. The terrifying part, at some point you see a political dispute, you see a secrecy in a presidency throughout your book, but the terror come at the end. You describe what the people of this country have not been told regarding emergency preparations for situations that would make 9/11 look like just a bad day. What this president, or indeed any president could do, you've seen similar documents and instructions as to what would happen?
DEAN: Yes, I have.
OLBERMANN: What don't we know?
DEAN: I talk about, for example, I used - I put in a footnote, in fact one of my readers called me right away and said "you are one of those people that actually flew out of Washington and went down into the cave and operated?"
I said "Yes, and even in my day, they had all those plans were in place and they're really quite frightening plans." What I was not quite sure how the handle this in the book because I didn't want to be an alarmist. About the time I was working on this section, General Tommy Franks came out with a statement and gave an interview, and he said, that if terrorists get a hold of weapons of mass destruction, and the United States knows it, he said, "this constitution in this country in this democracy we love, is in deep trouble." I didnt really need to say much more after Tommy Franks said it, because that is the danger. We have a presidency that has found that governing by fear is a lot easier. They have managed to keep the terror in terrorism. They've done nothing to educate the American people about these issue, they've made them worse rather than better, they've exploited the travesty and a tragedy, and to me, that - the reason that's at the end of the book because this is, -- this is - these are the secrets that are going to really potentially threaten democracy and take the air out of democracy, if you will.
OLBERMANN: We've seen that once before in your lifetime, I dont want to see it again, not in mine, certainly.
John Dean, the book is called "Worse than Watergate," it is out officially tomorrow. I don't know if you will like it or if you will try to throw it through a window, all I know is that the basic text is 198 pages long and in my copy, I have the corners of 27 of them turned over and about 60 of the passages underlined.
John, many thanks for coming out.
DEAN: Thank you, pleasure.
Also see: The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill by Ron Suskind,
American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush by Kevin Phillips,
The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception by David Corn,
Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth by Joe Conason, and
Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America by Lou Dubose and Molly Ivins.
Iraq WMD Lies Debuted in 2000 GOP Platform
By Kelly Ann Kelly - BuzzFlash
If any more proof of BushCo's pre-9/11 obsession with Iraq is required, you need look no further than the RNC's
own website. Long before the terrorist attacks on the WTC and Pentagon, even before the 2000 election, the
Republicans were claiming that Iraq had renewed its weapons programs. Here is an excerpt from the 2000 Republican
Party Platform, under the section titled "Principled American Leadership":
"A new Republican president will renew America's faltering fight against the contagious spread of nuclear,
biological, and chemical weapons, as well as their means of delivery. The weak leadership and neglect of the
administration have allowed America's intelligence capabilities, including space based systems, to atrophy,
resulting in repeated proliferation surprises such as Iraqıs renewed chemical and biological weapons programs,
India's nuclear weapon test, and North Korea's test of a three-stage ballistic missile. Again in a partnership
with the Congress, a new Republican administration will give the intelligence community the leadership,
resources, and operational latitude it requires."
(Link: www.gop.com)
Answering Bush
Kerry and Kennedy
Kerry and Kennedy Issue Attacks on Bush: Putative Democratic nominee John Kerry and another man from Massachusetts who once wanted to be president, Sen. Edward Kennedy, are taking aim at President Bush in two different ways. As the New York Times reports, Kerry is seeking to portray Bush as a "borrow-and-spend leader" and will accuse the Bush administration "of fueling the deficit and crippling state budgets by approving or proposing programs worth more than $6 trillion without paying for them." On Sunday, Kerry released a report containing those charges with the thinly veiled contrast that Kerry is a fiscally responsible deficit hawk.
As Kerry focused on one issue, his attack dog buddy Kennedy delivered a wide-ranging "critique of administration policy on health care, education and the economy" on MOoday. Kennedy told his audience at the Washington-based left-leaning think tank the Brookings Institution that the Bush team had created "the largest credibility gap since Richard Nixon. He has broken the basic bond of trust with the American people," according to a copy of the speech obtained by CBS News. Kennedy went on to detail that credibility gap as it relates to the war in Iraq, saying the result is "a massive and very dangerous crisis in our foreign policy." Kennedy then turned towards domestic issues, talking about what he sees as the Administration's support for outsourcing, an inadequate Medicare prescription-drug bill, poorly thought-out education reform and more.
In a conclusion that could easily have been written by Kerry's message-maestros at Shrum, Devine and Donilon, Kennedy finished his remarks saying, "This is the pattern and the record of the Bush Administration. Iraq. Jobs. Medicare. Schools. Issue after issue. Mislead. Deceive. Make up the needed facts. Smear the character of any critic. Again and again and again, we see this cynical and despicable strategy playing out. Itıs undermining our national security, undermining our economy, undermining our health care, undermining our schools, undermining public trust in government, undermining our very democracy. We need a change. November can't come too soon."
Haiti... Remember Haiti?
From The Nation
The American occupation of Haiti has begun again, now that Jean-Bertrand
Aristide has been neatly pushed out. Again, there are 3,000 foreign troops
on Haitian soil. Again, the Haitian premier has been handpicked by
outsiders. And again, the Haitian people have been excluded from their own
governance.
As
Tina Susman wrote recently in New York Newsday, "Ask many Haitians who
runs their country and you'll hear the same thing: God and the United
States, not necessarily in that order."
See Amy Wilentz's new
Nation editorial, and her last two Nation articles -
Coup in Haiti, and
Haiti's Collapse - for background on the coup in Haiti and what may happen next.
Also from the August 28, 1920 issue of The Nation, an article by James Weldon Johnson
Self-Determining Haiti: The American Occupation, which
calls out the National City Bank of New York for its role in instigating
US intervention in Haiti in 1920. Some things never change.
U.S. intervenes - again
By Tina Susman - Newsday
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Ask many Haitians who runs their country and you'll hear the same thing: God and the United States, not necessarily in that order.
Ask them whom they'd like to run their country, and you'll also hear similar answers, like the one given by Mirlande Lormil, 35, as she jostled in a line of hundreds to enter a bank that was opening earlier this month for the first time since President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's flight into exile Feb. 29.
"I don't believe in any politicians, because once they get into power they don't care for nobody - all they think about is their own pockets," said Lormil as bank officers, fearful of looters, cracked the iron gates open to squeeze in three customers at a time, then slammed them shut again. "If the new president is Haitian, I won't believe in him."
Brinot Dreur, 30 and unemployed, agreed. "I don't believe in politicians. Only Jesus," he said, peering between the iron bars of the fence around the National Palace, where a couple of dozen U.S. Marines stood guard.
It is into this cauldron of cynicism that Marines began arriving March 1 to head an international peacekeeping force, one that quickly has been forced into a policing role by a country that seems caught in an endless cycle of looking to the United States for answers.
Repeated U.S. help
That shouldn't be surprising. While Haiti's colonial ruler was France, it is the United States that has intervened repeatedly to quell turmoil. The first military occupation, from 1915-34, set the stage for Haiti's look-to-the-north mentality, many historians say.
"Haiti has no viable institutions, and we were the ones who in the 1920s and '30s occupation helped destroy those institutions," said Ivan Eland, director of the Center on Peace and Liberty at the Independent Institute, a California think- tank. "We dissolved the legislature, we declared martial law, and we created the Haitian army, which over the years became a thug-infested plague. We don't have a history of bringing democracy to this country, but we can't be seen to deny Haitians" for both political and moral reasons, Eland said.
Hence, the repeated deployment of U.S. troops, and Haitians' expectations that the United States will take care of things, Eland says.
While the current peacekeeping force includes French, Canadian and Chilean soldiers, the U.S. troop presence is largest, at about 1,800 members, and they are the ones getting pressure from all sides.
Armed pro-Aristide rebels resent them because the United States pressed Aristide to resign; armed anti-Aristide rebels resent them because the White House demanded they turn in their guns; civilians who expect them to secure the streets, create jobs, and draft a political solution are getting impatient.
After an anti-Aristide rally on March 7 erupted in gunfire that killed seven people, including a gunman shot by Marines, allegations flew that the Marines hadn't done enough to prevent violence. "People are dying every day in this country! You have to do something!" one man shouted at U.S. troops after the shootings.
A month into their mission, Marines have suffered one injury and killed at least six Haitians in incidents that underscore the hostility toward them from some quarters. In addition to the gunman at the rally, Haitians killed by Marines include a man who drove toward a checkpoint "with hostile intent" and two who fired at Marines guarding the prime minister's residence.
Facing resistance
If the scenario of an American military presence souring sounds familiar, like those of Somalia and Iraq, Eland and others say it is to be expected. Any peacekeeping mission faces nearly insurmountable odds given Haitians' high expectations, the few foreign troops, the many guns in Haitian hands and the country's overwhelming poverty, said Julia Sweig of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Sweig said at least 20,000 foreign soldiers are needed in Haiti to enforce disarmament and create a visible, overwhelming presence on the streets. Failing that, she said the United States should issue arrest warrants for rebel fighters, former Aristide cronies and others accused of human rights atrocities, corruption and drug-trafficking to calm the situation enough to find a political solution.
Either way, Sweig says the United States waited too long to send troops and as a result faces an uphill battle keeping a cork on the chaos. "The administration should have had a few hundred troops on the ground before [rebel leader] Guy Philippe was anywhere near Port-au- Prince," she said.
Hard lessons
Instead, Aristide fled, the capital erupted in violence and Philippe quickly led his troops into the city. Now, he is loath to relinquish his role as self-proclaimed military chief despite U.S. demands he disarm.
"The opportunity to learn lessons in Iraq - to plan for the day after - has obviously not hit yet," said Sweig. "We were fixated on seeing Aristide leave with as little blood on our hands as possible. That's why we waited so long to send in troops."
Now the question is how long Marines will stay and how expansive their mission will be. Already they have widened it drastically, from protecting only the airport, embassies and key buildings to patrolling streets, enforcing a nighttime curfew and helping Haitian police disarm paramilitary forces.
In the meantime, Haitian political leaders are creating an interim government until elections can be held. That culminated in the swearing-in March 12 of a new prime minister, Gerard Latortue, an economist and Aristide critic who once served briefly as foreign minister. He was chosen by a U.S.-backed council of Haitian officials.
The fact that the choice has not sparked major opposition is promising, said Clotilde Charlot, a co-founder of the Haiti Democracy Project in Washington.
Still, she said peacekeepers should stay several years while the next government earns the trust of people like Lormil, the woman in the bank line.
"They need to help rebuild institutions. They can't afford to leave while Haitians try to sort out their issues," she said.
For Lormil, it is already too late. She planned to move to Florida once she got her money from the bank. "This is my country, but I hate it," she said. "I see us as slaves. No good government, just greedy people who lie. We need foreign nations to teach Haitians how to live."
Craig Unger, Author of "House of Bush, House of Saud"
BuzzFlash Interview
Bush's kid glove treatment of Saudi Arabia, the chief financiers of Al-Qaeda terrorism, proves that
Bush Family business relationships trump national security: A BuzzFlash interview with Craig Unger.
The con artist who suckers people into a shell game counts on his ability to divert the eye of the bettor in order to win.
So it is that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have launched a sham war on terror without targeting the chief financier and backer of terrorism, Saudi Arabia.
In his book, "House of Bush, House of Saud," journalist Craig Unger lays out a compelling case that the Bush family is so inextricably bound up with the Saudi royal family that it could not hold them responsible for the role that many Saudi Arabians played in the 9/11 day of terror.
The shell game Bush played meant diverting the American public's attention to Iraq, which had no apparent role in 9/11. Although 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi, bin Laden is a member of one of the wealthiest families in Saudi Arabia, and the Saudis financed bin Laden, Bush managed to convince most Americans that the majority of 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi and that Saddam Hussein played a key role in the attack. That's how a political shell game works. Only in this case, thousands of lives were lost in a con job in which the American people were played for suckers by their own leadership.
Unger begins his book with an incident that Greg Palast first uncovered in late 2001. Why did the Bush Cartel allow 140 Saudi citizens, including members of the bin Laden family, to be flown out of the United States, without questioning, at a time when U.S. airspace was closed and when they might have had information useful in unraveling the crime of 9/11?
It's a good question, and the answers are shocking.
In essence, the Bush Cartel has sold Americans a bill of goods. They have diverted our attention from the major nation state supporting Al-Qaeda because they don't want to attack their own business partners, including the Saudi who bailed Harken Oil out. He's the same guy that was deeply involved with BCCI, the corrupt bank that Poppy Bush and many of his cohorts were associated with. There are plenty more like him. Just read Unger's book.
It is hard to put your arms around the gravity of Bush's betrayal of our nation. Americans just don't want to believe that anyone sitting in the Oval Office, even if unelected, could be a traitor to the interests of his own country.
But, when it comes to Saudi Arabia, the Bush family's business interests and personal relationships take precedence over our interests as a nation.
Remember, the Bush Cartel censored 28 pages in Congress's 9/11 reports. The subject of those 28 pages was reportedly the Saudi financing of terrorist front organizations and "charities."
Unger, a respected journalist, concludes that Bush must believe that "the billionaire Saudi royals are somehow more worthy of the government's concern than are the victims of 9/11."
* * *
BuzzFlash: In "House of Bush, House of Saud," you write about the special relationship between the Bush family and the Saudi Royal Family -- one that has protected the Saudis from any blame for involvement in terrorism -- which was also the subject of an article you did in Vanity Fair. It is a topic that floats around out there, and itıs sort of like the elephant in the room that the mainstream press doesnıt want to look at. The Bush administration has been able to keep it from coming to the forefront, in large part by distracting attention on the Iraq War.
Craig Unger: Right.
BuzzFlash: Or by focusing in on individuals -- such as Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein -- as the source of terrorism, rather than a complex set of factors. Certainly in your book one of the complex set of factors is the Saudi government, and perhaps actually one of the causes of terrorism may be the Saudi government and their relationship with the Bush family. Is that accurate to say?
Craig Unger: Yes. This is a relationship that goes back 30 years, and never before in history has a President of the United States had such a close relationship with another foreign power. In this case, itıs not just another Western democracy. Itıs an Islamic theocracy thatıs been the biggest force in breeding terrorism of any country in the world. So I try to put together the corroborating details.
I think there are very elemental, logical questions here that America has to confront. One is: What was the Saudi role and I think itıs a very large one in 9/11? Without the Saudis, you really have no 9/11. Itıs not just that 15 of the hijackers were Saudis. The Saudis have played a huge role in funding terrorism over the last 20 years. Two: Isnıt it amazing that the Bush family has had a close relationship with them for nearly 30 years? And you donıt know the exact number, but we know that itıs at least $1.4 billion that has gone from the House of Saud to companies in which the Bushes and their allies have prominent positions. Thatıs more than 20,000 times as much money as was involved in the Whitewater scandal, by the way.
I think this has been sometimes dismissed as a conspiracy theory and confined to the margins, and you see a lot of it in the Internet, due to the nature of the Internet. But the fact of the matter is this is not conspiracy, itıs business. This is the oil business, and the defense business. And one of the cardinal rules of business is you donıt bite the hand that feeds you, and we know the extent now to which the Bushes have been fed by the Saudis.
BuzzFlash: Your book begins with an incident that Greg Palast first reported on shortly after it happened. And again, the mainstream press, for the most part, has still completely ignored this, although there have been a couple articles that have come up here and there.
In the wake of September 11th, when basically America was a no-fly zone, the Bush administration allowed Saudi planes to come and extract from the United States members of the bin Laden family and extended members of the bin Laden family. This just seems phenomenal, and itıs never really been explained by the Bush administration. Itıs basically accepted, I think, as fact now that this occurred. There were many eyewitnesses. There was a story in a Florida paper, a little news feature about a retired police officer who accompanied a bin Laden family young man who was a student at a Florida university. He was flown by private jet to Kentucky, where many of the family members were then assembled and picked up by a Saudi airline jet and flown to Saudi Arabia. This, in and of itself, seems a remarkable incident when you figure that it would be the priority of the United States of America, however innocent many of the bin Laden extended family members may or may not be, to at least question them before they left the country. But apparently that wasnıt the case. What was this all about?
Craig Unger: As you say, air space was completely restricted up through 9/13. And on that day, the first flight took off from Tampa, Fl., to Lexington. I found at least eight airplanes that stopped in 12 American cities. This was a massive operation. They picked up roughly 140 Saudis, roughly two dozen members of the bin Laden family, and they simply were not interrogated or interviewed seriously. One of the basic rules in any criminal investigation is that even in the most commonplace murder, you interview the friends and relatives of the perpetrator. That doesnıt mean theyıre guilty, of course. Itıs just to acquire information. In this case, flying required White House approval. And we know they got White House approval because nothing could fly then. In addition, Richard Clarke told me so. He was the counter-terrorism czar in the situation room at the White House, and he said that he was party to these conversations. He said that it was OK so long as they were vetted by the FBI.
The problem is that they were not vetted by the FBI. There was no serious investigation. I was able to obtain the passenger list for four of the planes. We have to presume innocence on the part of most people on the planes, but we do know that one person in particular is highly suspicious, and that is Prince Ahmed bin Salman, who was a very high-ranking member of the royal family and was said to have been a link between the royal family and al-Qaeda who may have had foreknowledge of 9/11.
BuzzFlash: From my perspective, when you talk about criminal procedure, we would argue that what youıve just described is the Bush administration, in as far as solving the crime of 9/11, committed a dereliction of duty. They did not follow normal criminal procedure, whether there are any guilty parties on those Saudi planes or not, in trying to get the most information they could from people who possibly had information about 9/11.
Craig Unger: Right. Well, itıs not just dereliction of duty. Within five hours of 9/11, they were going after Saddam Hussein, who, of course, had nothing to do with 9/11. At the same time, on September 13th, President Bush was meeting with Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador. And we donıt know exactly what was discussed, but this great escape was already underway.
BuzzFlash: Let me go back to this figure which weıve brought up many times on BuzzFlash, and which you just mentioned: 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi. Yet, in the buildup to the Iraq War, more than 70 percent of Americans thought that Saddam Hussein was directly related to 9/11. And more than a majority of Americans, because of mirroring language that the Bush administration used in speeches, thought that most of the hijackers were from Iraq. If we accept that Osama bin Laden masterminded this, the mastermind was Saudi. The money that financed Osama bin Laden was largely Saudi. As an American whoıs concerned about my family, my friends, and the life and safety of Americans, this amounts to close to treachery and betrayal. Donıt we want to really get the people responsible? Or is this just a show?
Craig Unger: Weıve had this extraordinarily complicated relationship with Saudi Arabia, but itıs full of astounding contradictions. On the one hand, weıre the guardian of Israel. On the other hand, weıve been the guarantor of security to Wahhabi Islam. This has gone on for more than 30 years. Itıs particularly interesting when you look at the Bush role in all this. There are always two factors when you look at American policy in the Middle East, and particularly the Saudis. Those factors are oil and Israel. And we had this relationship that was so full of contradictions for so many years. In some ways, it was spectacularly successful; that is, if you look at it in terms of getting cheap oil to fill the tanks of American cars. But at a certain point, that relationship becomes quite questionable.
One of its tenets was that we would turn a blind eye to what was really going on in Saudi Arabia. And that may have been fine up to a point, but that point changed when the Saudis started killing Americans. And what is particularly distressing is that the Bushes appear to have turned a blind eye again and again to this. It dates back before the time when Bush got into office. In the 90s, George Bush, Sr., James Baker -- people that I see as part of the House of Bush -- Dick Cheney and Halliburton, the Carlyle Group, were investing and making very, very lucrative deals with Saudis. So they had very close business relationships. You have to wonder, given those relationships, did they dare ask the tough questions of the Saudis about their role in financing terrorism?
They were making business deals with people who have at least indirectly been involved in terrorism. For example, if you look at Prince Bandar, itıs astonishing that he and his wife helped finance indirectly two of the hijackers who were in San Diego. But there was no investigation into that. And he dropped by the White House afterwards and had dinner with President Bush. Why was there no outcry? Instead, former President Bush called the Bandar family and expressed his condolences.
BuzzFlash: Condolences about what?
Craig Unger: That he was being investigated for this by Newsweek.
BuzzFlash: My recollection was Newsweek investigated, but either the State Department or an unidentified White House spokesperson said: This is not really significant. She was just helping out a poor student. She had no idea.
Craig Unger: Right. That has been the excuse youıve heard from the Saudis for years. But the fact is, if you go back through the 90s when the Saudi terrorism started, the Clinton Administration began looking into it. And itıs important to understand, I think, that Saudi Arabia is an Islamic fundamentalist state where the state religion is Wahhabism. In its most puritanical and militant form, you end up with Osama bin Laden. So even though the Saudis have stated that they are the victims of terrorists themselves, that they are at war with the militants, in fact, the militant clergy is part of the government. There is no separation between church and state. They have not been able to afford politically to crack down on militant Wahhabism because itıs part of the state. Through it, you have a religious police, and the whole educational system -- the madrassas fosters this kind of terrorism. So they have not really cracked down.
There were attempts to do that during the Clinton administration, with mixed success. And you saw the Clinton administration, for example, crack down on the National Commercial Bank, and got the Saudis to investigate it, because Clintonıs counter-terrorism analysts saw the bank as potentially having funded terrorist activities.
BuzzFlash: Isnıt James Baker, or his law firm, defending the Saudi government in a lawsuit that some of the relatives of 9/11 victims have filed?
Craig Unger: Baker-Botts represents the Carlyle Group and has represented some of the Saudis in the suit by the relatives of the 9/11 victims. It represents many of the major oil companies who have deals with Saudi Arabia. So the Saudi oil family and its allies, the wealthy merchant elite, are very, very close to the House of Bushes, as I call it, which means James Baker, the firm of Baker-Botts, the Carlyle Group, former President Bush, and other people who were in the Carlyle Group.
BuzzFlash: To me this seems, in its starkest sense, a betrayal of American people. We know our government knows -- meaning the Bush administration -- that the Saudi government is probably the chief financier, at least, of Wahhabi-connected terrorism through the Osama bin Laden branch.
BuzzFlash doesnıt think that terrorism begins and ends with Osama bin Laden, but the Bush administration has made that out to be the case. And letıs just talk about that line of terrorism. In fact in the bombing, when some Americans and British were killed a few months back, there were initial reports that some senior officials in Saudi Arabia had to be involved, I think, in the security forces. And then that was sort of dropped from the press, and the American government said no one in the Saudi Arabian government is involved. It just sort of evaporated because no journalist could prove one thing one way or another. We know how deeply the Saudis are involved, and yet the Bush administration keeps focusing elsewhere.
Craig Unger: Itıs an incredibly delicate relationship. The best argument for being soft on the Saudis is that if the House of Saud were to fall, virtually anyone who replaced them would likely be far more anti-American. And I think thatıs absolutely true, by the way. We keep saying we want democracy in the Middle East, well, if there were an election there, you would have very, very militant Wahhabi people in charge, much closer to bin Laden himself. So the best argument for being soft on the Saudis is that this is the best weıre going to get, and we need oil, and we need a strategic ally in that part of the world. At the same time, thereıs got to be a line at which you say: If theyıre killing Americans, what kind of allies are they? Thatıs unacceptable. And this atrocious act of terrorism, killing 3,000 people on 9/11 -- weıve been directing all our energy elsewhere against Saddam Hussein. The Bush administration has not really focused on the root cause of it at all.
BuzzFlash: Paul Wolfowitz admitted that one of the reasons to invade Iraq was to -- he didnıt quite say it this way -- but, in essence, to satisfy Osama bin Ladenıs demand we remove our bases from Saudi Arabia. And that would take away one of his basic demands, which was removing the U.S. military presence from Saudi Arabia.
Craig Unger: Well, inadvertently it may have satisfied still another of Osama bin Ladenıs objectives. If you go back more than 20 years to the war in Afghanistan where we supported Osama bin Laden against the Soviets, that was considered one of the great successes in American policy because we lured the Soviets into Afghanistan, and it helped lead to the end of the Soviet Union. Now, I fear, the United States may have fallen into exactly the same trap by going into Iraq itself. Now that we have 130,000 troops in the Middle East, that may be a huge strategic blunder.
BuzzFlash: There is a book by a British author, Jason Burke, called "al-Qaeda." He shows that itıs foolhardy for the Bush administration to try to portray al-Qaeda as something where, if we lop off the head of bin Laden, then we end terrorism, or at least dramatically reduce it. And his point is al-Qaeda, and terrorism, such as it exists, is actually much more decentralized than it might appear. Therefore, you need a very different strategy to deal with it than the Bush administrationıs obsessiveness with Osama bin Laden. Even if Osama bin Laden is captured or killed, in other words, thatıs not going to end Islamic terrorism. What are your thoughts about that?
Craig Unger: I think the administration may have squandered an awful lot of resources going after Iraq, which has nothing to do with 9/11 whatsoever. The Bush administration has made a number of blunders. I think these are real questions that the 9/11 commission has to address. If you go back to the end of the Clinton era, the last election took place just after Osama bin Laden bombed the U.S.S. Cole, killing 17 Americans, I believe it was. It was definitively pinned on bin Laden just as the Bush administration began taking office.
Richard Clarke had drawn up a very aggressive attack plan to go after them. Yet it stayed on Bushıs desk for month after month after month. Why did he not act then? On August 6, 2001, there was a Presidential daily briefing, at which President Bush was advised that bin Laden and al-Qaeda might well attack the United States very, very soon. What exactly was said during that briefing? Why didnıt he act then? I think youıve got an awful lot of questions about how Bush addressed the question of terrorism, and why he didnıt act more aggressively. And itıs especially ironic from an administration that prides itself on being so tough on terrorism.
BuzzFlash: They also had the Hart/Rudman report, which they ignored. We consistently bring up the fact that just before Bush went for a monthıs vacation at his Crawford ranch in 2001, he was warned of potential al-Qaeda attacks, along with Condoleezza Rice. And Condoleezza Riceıs response to the fact that they were warned of hijackings was: Well, we werenıt warned that they would fly the planes into buildings. BuzzFlash has noted on several occasions that the way you prevent a hijacking of a plane thatıs flown into a building is the same way you prevent a hijacking. So Bush failed to prevent the hijackings that led to planes being flown into buildings, because they didnıt do anything to try to prevent hijackings, even though they were warned of them.
On top of that, the Bush administration knew of efforts to fly planes into buildings because there had been plans like that that had come to attention of administrations prior to them. Also, when he had gone to the G8 Summit in Italy, he was put in a room on a boat for the very reason that they wanted some maneuvering room because they were warned of possible air attacks into buildings. But in any case, I guess sometimes when the truth is out there and staring you in the face for the mainstream press, they just canıt pick up on it.
I wanted to ask you a question about something we find confusing, and it takes a specialist of Saudi Arabia to explain. We know there are many Saudi members of the royal family who donıt give money to extremist fundamentalist learning centers, mosques, or to the terrorist organizations. Is some of the money given because there are people in the Saudi royal family, in the security apparatus, who actually secretly support the anti-U.S. terrorist efforts and are anti-American because of their fundamentalist beliefs? Is there also a group that is just more cynical about this? Theyıre basically Westerners but they consider this hush money?
Craig Unger: Thereıs a spectrum of complicity. At one end of the spectrum, you have people who are completely innocent, who may give to charity because itıs one of the fundamental pillars of Islam. Itıs called zakat. Charity is a part of the religion, and thatıs part of your daily life. They donıt know exactly where the money ends up because it ends up being decentralized. At another stage, you have people who may be doing it with a bit of a wink, thinking theyıre buying favoritism from terrorists. The Saudis have had relationships with both Hamas and Hezbollah in which they fairly openly fund Hamas and Hezbollah, and documents have surfaced again and again. The deal seems to be that they say: Weıll help finance you, just donıt do your terrorism on Saudi soil.
At the other end of the spectrum, you have people who actually favor it, and you have members of the royal family, like Prince Nayef, who is the Minister of the Interior, and whose power base is allied with the militant clergy in Saudi Arabia. And he has blamed 9/11 on Zionist Jews, and basically said that this was something Zionists are responsible for. Itıs important to remember that heıs still a real powerful figure in Saudi Arabia, and he has a real base. And even if there are sort of good Saudis who are very much against him, they have to recognize that that is a powerful base there, and theyıre limited in the degree to which they can crack down without it totally alienating part of their power base. Thereıs sort of a low-level civil war going on in Saudi Arabia.
BuzzFlash: Hereıs the million-dollar question. I think you would agree -- and correct me if Iım wrong -- that this administration has failed publicly to hold Saudi Arabia accountable, let alone all the other factual details that you bring up in your book about what theyıve not pressed Saudi Arabia about. But playing the devilıs advocate with ourselves and with you, you said that one of the challenges here is if you press too hard and it leads to the collapse of the monarchy there, youıre going to end up with a radical regime. Itıs the kind of basic problem that the Bush administration canıt seem to answer anywhere in some of the extremist Islamic countries, which is to say if you have a truly open election in Iraq, youıre going to end up with a fundamentalist majority, and perhaps a radical one. The Palestinians had an election -- they elected Arafat. In other words, beware of what you wish for sometimes. Given that with Saudi Arabia, what can you do?
Craig Unger: Iım not a policymaker, but I think if theyıre true allies, you donıt kill Americans. Thatıs rule number one in any political alliance. And itıs up to the Saudis to enforce that. The relationship has been founded on contradictions that in the end may not hold. It may be untenable. But right now, it seems to me we have the worst of both worlds; that is, weıre not getting justice through to the Saudis with regard to 9/11, and now weıve started to alienate them in terms of getting their oil. They just made all these natural gas deals with Russia, with China, and so on. So you need to have a policy where, it shouldnıt be too much to ask, to tell them not to kill Americans.
BuzzFlash: Youıre not claiming that the Saudi government kills Americans, but there are Saudi nationals that are funded with Saudi support that kill Americans.
Craig Unger: Yes, but some of that support comes from the House of Saud. Some of it comes from the merchant elite. The Saudis have been uncooperative when Americans have been killed there. Theyıve beheaded people before letting the FBI interview them. They have blocked inquires into Saudi role in funding terrorism. I think, by the way, that things may have started to change with the May of 2003 bombing in Saudi Arabia in which, for the first time, it looks like the House of Saud is really being attacked itself. Before that point, one could argue that most of the bombings by al-Qaeda were really directed against Westerners. Now the Saudis have clearly started to feel the pressure themselves from al-Qaeda.
BuzzFlash: Despite your book, despite, again, other journalists who have brought this issue up, there is still the 800-pound elephant in the room that the Bush administration just doesnıt want to talk about. You never hear them voluntarily bring up Saudi Arabia. Is that likely to change in an election year? Are the Democrats likely to make it an issue? Or are we just going to go through this election with Saudi Arabia again being like the relative you donıt want to talk about?
Craig Unger: It absolutely should be an issue. And you have the 9/11 Commission which I think has to address many of these questions. You have the Kerry campaign, which I believe should raise some of these questions. Itıs an elemental question in American foreign policy - how do you deal with this? If weıre going to have a serious war on terror, President Bush - and this may be one place where I really agree with him - has said how he responded to 9/11 should be an issue in the campaign. I agree with him absolutely on that. We might disagree on how well heıs done, but the Saudi role in all this is very, very important.
I would like to redirect attention back to, if I may, to what I call the great escape -- the evacuation of Saudis. The Bush administration clearly played a role. They clearly authorized that. Why did they do that? How could they possibly have done it? They were already arresting people in Guantanamo and detaining them for months and months and months. But Saudis who may have had knowledge of this were whisked out of the country in the dead of night.
Condoleezza's Crimes
The Black Commentator
Although the 9/11 Commission will not lay a glove on her, Condoleezza Rice is finished as a Black
political asset of the White Man's (War) |
