'Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism'. - Huey Long

"When facism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American flag." - Huey Long

"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." - Upton Sinclair

"Fascism will come to America in the guise of National Security" - Jim Garrison

Aaron Russo's provocative film America: Freedom To Fascism can be seen here. For another view, however on some of the claims in the film regarding the supposed illegality of the Federal Income Tax laws see quatloos.

Bush let bin Laden escape...

The recent ABC docudrama Path to 911 had a fictional scene where the CIA is looking at Osama bin Laden through binoculars and the Clinton administration inexplicably lets him go. It turns out that the incompetence of the Bush administration is the reason bin Laden is alive and free.

From a CNN interview with Gary Berntsen, who led the CIA's paramilitary unit chasing bin Laden after he fled from Kabul, from the transcript posted at Political Cortex:

AMANPOUR: ... the CIA was sure it knew where he was, thanks in large part to a radio taken off a dead al Qaeda fighter.

BERNTSEN: We listened to bin Laden for several days using that radio, listened to his communications among him and his men. We listened to him apologize to them for having led them into this trap and having led them into a location where they would be having airstrikes called on them just relentlessly.

BERNTSEN: In the first two or three days of December, I would write a message back to Washington, recommending the insertion of U.S. forces on the ground. I was looking for 600 to 800 Rangers, roughly a battalion. They never came.

BERNTSEN: By my calculation, there were more American journalists than American soldiers at the battle of Tora Bora, and that fact kind of speaks for itself.

From Anything They Say (click to enlarge)

Unsubtantiated and (probably) Untrue Gossip:

Much more serious to Bush's reputation is the infamous 1988 "Blow Motel" video, which shows a young male prostitute performing oral sex on a nervous (but ecstatic) George W. Bush.

I hear the stills will soon be made public, courtesy of a book co-written by "Jeff Gannon" and an ex-NSA officer.

So, according to this story in Firedoglake Christians are more likely to support torture than non-Christians. In one sense this is surprising, given what Christians claim to believe, and given that Jesus was tortured. In another sense, I suppose, given the long Christian history of engaging in torture of heretics and witches, it makes complete sense. As for me:

"Radar" of Beneath the Foil posts this fascinating news story from the distant past. Apparently wild WMD stories are nothing new.

Mr. Cool

He does like bald men.

Gary Hart on "The October Surprise"

It should come as no surprise if the Bush Administration undertakes a preemptive war against Iran sometime before the November election.

WorldNetDaily has more on Hamid Mir and the American Hiroshima story.

Mir also explained that his own independent research and knowledge of al-Qaida verifies the authenticity of some of the claims made by Dawood in their meeting in Afghanistan.

Dawood said the impending attack, which could involved nuclear or radiological weapons, is being coordinated by Adnan el-Shukrijumah and suggests it may involve some form of warhead smuggled across the Mexican border.

Following 9/11, el-Shukrijumah was reportedly singled out by bin Laden and al-Zawahiri to spearhead the next great attack on America. One plan was for a nuclear attack that would take place simultaneously in seven U.S. cities, leaving millions dead and the richest and most powerful nation on earth in ashes.

Are you scared yet? I still do not believe that a senior Al Qaeda operative would give away the name of the man heading an operation bigger than 911.



The FBI is looking for him, however.

I didn't think I would be posting again about the Wilfried Huismann documentary Rendezvous with Death (covered on this blog here and here) but Barbara Lautenbach yesterday posted some information from FOCUS magazine at alt.assassination.jfk.

According to Lothar Buchholz, the German Kennedy researcher and author of the book Labyrinth der Wahrheiten - Todesschüsse auf Kennedy (Labyrinth of Truths – The Fatal Shooting of Kennedy,) which, not reading German, I have not seen, most of the "evidence" in this documentary falls apart upon examination.

In front of the camera, the former FBI agent Laurence Keenan describes how he had been sent to Mexico to investigate further, but was called back home after three days. He claims his investigations were hindered. The US government had known about the Cuban connection but kept it under wraps for fear of igniting a third world war.

Buchholz, however, had no difficulty locating Keenan’s six-page memorandum in the US national archive, dated December 3, 1963. There is nothing in the report to back up Keenan’s claims in the film (According to Keenan: “It’s all in my report”). Just the opposite – testifying before the Church Commission in 1976, which had also reviewed his memorandum, Keenan insisted that his investigations were in no way manipulated by political influence.

Another sensational document turned out to be a hoax following Buchholz’s investigation. According to the film, a small aircraft took off from Redbird Airport in Dallas destined for Mexico City several hours following Kennedy’s murder. On board was Fabian Escalante, a high-ranking official of the Cuban secret service G-2. From Mexico, he slipped away to Havanna on a commercial airliner. Huismann claims: “If Escalante [...] was at the scene of the crime in Dallas [...], this would point to an absolutely new and politically-charged link.”

Yes, if! The evidence Huismann presents is a “top-secret dossier, for Johnson’s eyes only. Never before published.“ The document was allegedly written for Lyndon B. Johnson by Kennedy’s advance man Martin Underwood. On official White House stationery.

The only problem is that it could never have been meant for the President’s eyes. Johnson had already been dead for over 20 years when Underwood wrote the “dossier”. In fact, it was something he had sketched as an idea for a book author in the 1990s, which Underwood openly admitted before the Assassination Records Review Board in 1997. He had acquired the White House stationery years ago. The book author was Gus Russo – who also happens to be Huismann’s co-writer.

Gus Russo's credibility has been challenged in the past by researcher Jim DiEugenio in his Probe article "Who is Gus Russo?" This all reinforces my view that Rendezvous with Death is not only wrong but fraudulent.

Barry Goldwater, 1964:

You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream - the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path.

A good article on Harold Weisberg (and if you don't know who he is then you need to read the article.) With thanks to Don Roberdeau for posting this at alt.assassination.jfk

ONE MAN VS. ONE GOVERNMENT

From Part 2:

Among Harold Weisberg's voluminous files, the late, self-made historian had written a small note, possibly meant only for his eyes.

It is a poem, a brief rumination on the power of confusion. It contains a reference to an excerpt in the Bible, Isaiah 59:9. "So justice is far from us, and righteousness does not reach us," the
Bible passage reads. "We look for light, but all is darkness; for brightness, but we walk in deep shadows."

A new documentary about former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds has been released, called Kill The Messenger, hopefully giving us a better idea just what Sibel knows; knowledge that led the Bush administration to muzzle her under the State Secrets privilege. From the brochure:

What she discovers is mind-boggling. The targets of FBI wiretaps are not only foreign individuals supected of espionage and terrorism in the U.S. but also their accomplices, that is… top officials at the State Department and at the Pentagon. These people are clearly engaged in criminal activities such as technological espionage, nuclear black market, heroin trafficking, money laundering, corruption of high-ranking officials, particularly in the U.S. Congress.

The road to Sibel Edmonds’ secret was a rocky one. But we experienced unexpected support from many U.S. intelligence officers. Regardless of any political divide, impervious to pressures, these “patriots”, as they brand themselves, side with Sibel.

What some of them know about the “Edmonds’ case” is huge… and can only be matched by their amazement at the current state of affairs in Washington. All of them praised Sibel for her courage. Sibel Edmonds is the only U.S. individual who has dared to challenge the Bush administration on its favorite topic: National Security.

Thanks to Lukery at Wot is it Good 4 who has a great deal of information about Sibel Edmonds on his site.

According to the Canada Free Press the next major al Qaeda attack--and a nuclear attack at that-- is imminent and Muslims are advised to leave the United States.

Urgent news from Abu Dawood, one of the newly appointed commanders of the al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan:

Final preparations have been made for the American Hiroshima, a major attack on the U. S.
Muslims living in the United States should leave the country without further warning.

The attack will be commandeered by Adnan el Shukrijumah ("Jaffer Tayyer" or "Jafer the Pilot"), a naturalized American citizen, who was raised in Brooklyn and educated in southern Florida.

The al Qaeda operatives who will launch this attack are awaiting final orders. They remain in place in cities throughout the country. Many are masquerading as Christians and have adopted Christian names.

The story is based on an interview of Abu Dawood by Hamid Mir, the only journalist to allegedly interview Osama bin Laden after September 11. In my opinion, this story is total bullshit. I cannot believe that a senior al Qaeda leader would give out the name of the operative leading a planned attack of this nature. Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir has previously stated that al Qaeda has suitcase nuclear weapons, obtained from the former Soviet Union.

RM: Where did Al-Qaeda get the training to handle and detonate nuclear weapons? Some experts believe that Soviet-era nukes have sufficient security measures to stop their unauthorized use.

HM: They trained dozens of boys who can make dirty bombs by purchasing material from some medical stores and then they will detonate these materials with some uranium and X-Ray machines. They are not just dependant on Soviet nukes.

Notice how he changes the subject when his claims about suitcase nukes are questioned. Although Mir is apparently a legitimate journalist who has interviewed Condoleezza Rice, I am deeply skeptical of this story.

WingNutDaily, I mean WorldNetDaily, ran a series of articles back in 2005 on the alleged American Hiroshima operation, involving as many as 40 nukes.

According to captured al-Qaida leaders and documents, the plan is called the "American Hiroshima" and involves the multiple detonation of nuclear weapons already smuggled into the U.S. over the Mexican border with the help of the MS-13 street gang and other organized crime groups.

This was all supposed to happen during Ramadan 2005. Obviously, it did not, but WorldNetDaily is dusting off American Hiroshima for 2006 , based on Hamid Mir.

Mir believes that an "American Hiroshima" will occur as soon as the U.S. launches an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.

Meanwhile US Navy Told to Prepare to Blockade Iran

On its face, of course, the notion of a war with Iran seems absurd. By any rational measure, the last thing the U.S. can afford is another war. Two unfinished wars--one on Iran's eastern border, the other on its western flank--are daily depleting America's treasury and overworked armed forces.

And yet . . .

"At the moment," says Ali Ansari, a top Iran authority at London's Chatham House, a foreign-policy think tank, "we are headed for conflict."

George W. Bush:

"I wish I could tell the American people, 'don't worry about it.' They're not coming again. But they are coming again. Time is running out."

Bush on Iran:

"It's very important for the American people to see the president try to solve problems diplomatically before resorting to military force."

It looks like the Moron in Chief is actually going to do it. Charles Krauthammer, of course, is all for it, so we know that it is a really bad idea.

Some people have asked me whether America is a Christian country. The answer must be no, for to call this a Christian country is to say that non-Christians are of some lesser order, not full fledged citizens of one nation."

So says former Senator John Danforth, conservative Christian Republican.

"What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs," the head of an IDF rocket unit in Lebanon said regarding the use of cluster bombs and phosphorous shells during the war. Quoting his battalion commander, the rocket unit head stated that the IDF fired around 1,800 cluster bombs, containing over 1.2 million cluster bomblets.

In addition, soldiers in IDF artillery units testified that the army used phosphorous shells during the war, widely forbidden by international law. According to their claims, the vast majority of said explosive ordinance was fired in the final 10 days of the war.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert: "The claim that we lost is unfounded. Half of Lebanon is destroyed; is that a loss?"

Four American Soldiers Killed in Iraq Today

14-Sep-2006
4
US: 4 UK: 0 Other: 0

US
NAME NOT RELEASED YET
Baghdad
Hostile - hostile fire - suicide car bomb

US
NAME NOT RELEASED YET
Baghdad
Hostile - hostile fire - suicide car bomb

US
NAME NOT RELEASED YET
Baghdad (southeast of)
Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire

US
NAME NOT RELEASED YET
Baghdad (south of)
Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack

An A+ source claims that Senator John McCain (R-Heaven Itself) and one of America's most avid anti-gambling politicians has a large credit line at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas and can be found at the dice table most weekends. His saintliness has, according to sources, lost a whole bunch.

Bush Tells Reporter Getting bin Laden "not a priority"

From Think Progress (with video of Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard)

HOST: Alright Fred, you and a few other journalists were in the Oval Office with the President, right? And he says catching Osama bin Laden is not job number one?

BARNES: Well, he said, look, you can send 100,000 special forces, that’s the figure he used, to the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan and hunt him down, but he just said that’s not a top priority use of American resources. His vision of a war on terror is one that involves intelligence to find out from people, to get tips, to follow them up and break up plots to kill Americans before they occur. That’s what happened recently in that case of the planes that were to be blown up by terrorists, we think coming from England, and that’s the top priority. He says, you know, getting Osama bin Laden is a low priority compared to that.

Researchers Find Severe Flaws in Diebold Voting Machines

A group of Princeton computer scientists has published a study that examines flaws and vulnerabilities in Diebold's AccuVote-TS voting machines. Complete with a video that demonstrates the ease with which the electronic voting machine can be compromised, the study provides chilling insight into the serious risk of election tampering and fraud created by modern voting technology. The vote-stealing demonstration software developed by the computer scientists "can modify all of the records, audit logs, and counters kept by the voting machine, so that even careful forensic examination of these records will find nothing amiss."

The study reveals that "[m]alicious software running on a single voting machine can steal votes with little if any risk of detection," and that the software can be installed on a voting machine in only a minute by anyone that has physical access.

Full Research Paper:

Analysis of the machine, in light of real election procedures, shows that it is vulnerable to extremely serious attacks. For example, an attacker who gets physical access to a machine or its removable memory card foras little as one minute could install malicious code; malicious code on a machine could steal votes undetectably, modifying all records, logs, and counters to be consistent with the fraudulent vote count it creates. An attacker could also create malicious code that spreads automatically and silently from machine to machine during normal election activities—a voting-machine virus. We have constructed working demonstrations of these attacks in our lab. Mitigating these threats will require changes to the voting machine’s hardware and software and the adoption of more rigorous election procedures.

Brad Friedman on Election Fraud

"Aware of the suffering created by fanaticism and intolerance, we are determined not to be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory or ideology, even Buddhist ones. Buddhist teachings are guiding means to help us learn to look deeply and to develop our understanding and compassion. They are not doctrines to fight, kill or die for." - Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist monk

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before being used on the battlefield, the Air Force secretary said Tuesday.

May I suggest testing them at the GOP National Convention.

Bush and his entourage are the last people who should be invoking history. Instead, for generations to come, history will invoke them. It will not be Chamberlain who the politicians of 2070 use to deride their opponents. It will be George W. Bush.

Republicans to Fight Dirty

(I know this falls in the Water Still Wet category)

Republicans are planning to spend the vast majority of their sizable financial war chest over the final 60 days of the campaign attacking Democratic House and Senate candidates over personal issues and local controversies, GOP officials said.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, which this year dispatched a half-dozen operatives to comb through tax, court and other records looking for damaging information on Democratic candidates, plans to spend more than 90 percent of its $50 million-plus advertising budget on what officials described as negative ads.

"We will give our full assistance to the Iraqi government to establish security in (Iraq). Strengthening security in Iraq means strengthening security and stability in the region."

--Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

From Secrecy News

Two partially declassified reports issued by the Senate Intelligence Committee last week that were critical of pre-war intelligence on Iraq remain significantly overclassified, according to Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), who said he would seek further disclosure.

Furthermore, portions of the two Intelligence Committee reports that were withheld conceal "certain highly offensive activities" and "deeply disturbing information," said Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.).

A Unified Theory of CIA Covert Operations: 1960-1990

In 1995 Gene Wheaton approached the Assassination Records Review Board with information on the death of John F. Kennedy. Anne Buttimer, Chief Investigator of the ARRB, recorded that: "Wheaton told me that from 1984 to 1987 he spent a lot of time in the Washington DC area and that starting in 1985 he was "recruited into Ollie North's network" by the CIA officer he has information about. He got to know this man and his wife, a "'super grade high level CIA officer" and kept a bedroom in their Virginia home. His friend was a Marine Corps liaison in New Orleans and was the CIA contact with Carlos Marcello. He had been responsible for "running people into Cuba before the Bay of Pigs." His friend is now 68 or 69 years of age... Over the course of a year or a year and one-half his friend told him about his activities with training Cuban insurgency groups. Wheaton said he also got to know many of the Cubans who had been his friend's soldiers/operatives when the Cubans visited in Virginia from their homes in Miami. His friend and the Cubans confirmed to Wheaton they assassinated JFK. Wheaton's friend said he trained the Cubans who pulled the triggers. Wheaton said the street level Cubans felt JFK was a traitor after the Bay of Pigs and wanted to kill him. People "above the Cubans" wanted JFK killed for other reasons." It was later revealed that Wheaton's friend was Carl E. Jenkins. Wheaton also named Irving Davidson as being involved in the assassination.

In an interview with William Law and Mark Sobel in the summer of 2005, Gene Wheaton claimed that Carl E. Jenkins and Rafael Quintero were both involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The operation was organized out of JM/WAVE, the CIA station in Miami. In 1963, Ted Shackley was chief of JM/WAVE station. Shackley was also a close associate of George Bush.

Read the whole article--I can't do justice to it here. More on Gene Wheaton and Carl Jenkins.

From Dependable Renegade

Deficits not a problem in short run, White House says
And in the long run we're all dead, right?

Chris Floyd alerts us to this perfectly appropriate event to be held on September 11.

Connally's mood darkened as he talked about Dallas. When the bullet hit him, he said he felt like he had been kicked in the ribs and couldn't breathe. He spoke kindly of Jackie Kennedy and said he admired both her bravery and composure.

I had to ask. Did he think Lee Harvey Oswald fired the gun that killed Kennedy?

"Absolutely not," Connally said. "I do not, for one second, believe the conclusions of the Warren Commission."

So why not speak out?

"Because I love this country and we needed closure at the time. I will never speak out publicly about what I believe."

And he never did.

The summer after the assassination, Hoover was relaxing at the Del Charro resort in California, which was owned by his friend, right-wing Texas oil tycoon Clint Murchison. Another Texas oil crony of Hoover's, Billy Byars Sr. -- the only man Hoover had called on the afternoon of Nov. 22, 1963, besides Robert Kennedy and the head of the Secret Service -- also was there. At one point, according to Anthony Summers, the invaluable prober of the dark side of American power, Byars' teenage son, Billy Jr., got up his nerve to ask Hoover the question, "Do you think Lee Harvey Oswald did it?" According to Byars, Hoover "stopped and looked at me for quite a long time. Then he said, 'If I told you what I really know, it would be very dangerous to this country. Our whole political system could be disrupted.'"

Update: the Steve Irwin Sting Ray Video

Ambassador Joseph Wilson:

"We Americans all too often take for granted the luxury of living and benefiting from the rights and freedoms guaranteed by our constitution. Several actions undertaken by this administration serve as a reminder that the social contract that binds us is fragile and requires our vigorous protection if we ever hope to preserve it. We have known this since the time of the drafting of the constitution over two hundred years ago when Benjamin Franklin remarked that the founding fathers had bequeathed to the nation 'a republic, if you can keep it'."

So everyone thought that Saddam Hussein had WMDs? Admiral Thomas Wilson, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, as quoted in the new book by Newsweek investigative reporter Michael Isikoff and the Nation Washington editor David Corn:

"I didn't really think [Iraq] had a nuclear program. I didn't think [Saddam and Iraq] were an immediate threat on WMD."

Another shocking revelation:

The CIA came close to recruiting Saddam Hussein's foreign minister, Naji Sabri, to be an American spy. Through a Lebanese journalist, Sabri passed word to the CIA's station chief in Paris that Iraq had no active nuclear or WMD programs. But senior CIA and White House officials dismissed the intelligence and opposed the effort to recruit Sabri, fearing it would undercut the case for an invasion. The chief of the CIA's Iraq Operations Group told the Paris station chief, "One of these days you're going to get it. This is not about intelligence. This is about regime change." (pp. 45-46, 62-64)

Emphasis added.

Though Cheney was already looking toward war, the officers of the agency's Joint Task Force on Iraq--part of the Counterproliferation Division of the agency's clandestine Directorate of Operations--were frantically toiling away in the basement, mounting espionage operations to gather information on the WMD programs Iraq might have. The JTFI was trying to find evidence that would back up the White House's assertion that Iraq was a WMD danger. Its chief of operations was a career undercover officer named Valerie Wilson.

A Second Chance for Osama bin Laden?

Major General Shaukat Sultan Khan, press secretary to the president of Pakistan, tells ABC News that -- if found -- Osama bin Laden won't be arrested, as long as he promises to behave like a "peaceful citizen."

"If he is in Pakistan, bin Laden 'would not be taken into custody,' Major General Shaukat Sultan Khan told ABC News in a telephone interview, 'as long as one is being like a peaceful citizen," report Brian Ross and Gretchen Peters at ABC's blog, The Blotter.

"You know what I'm gonna tell those Jews when I get to Israel, don't you Herman?" a then Governor George W. Bush allegedly asked a reporter for the Austin American-Statesman.

When the journalist, Ken Herman, replied that he did not know, Bush reportedly delivered the punch line: "I'm telling 'em they're all going to hell."

George W. Bush is a funny guy.

The Plame Affair: A Prognostication

So, the Plame affair was much ado about nothing. Richard Armitage was the "primary" leaker, Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald knew it all along, and abused his 'prosecutorial discretion' by continuing his investigation for nearly two more years.

Sorry, I'm not buying.

1) This is the latest attempt to bury the Plame matter, although the Plame investigation really has not been in the news much of late.

2) It is also an attempt to discredit Fitzgerald, who has previously been mostly praised even by the President.

3) Conclusion: something is coming that the Bush administration will not like, which can really only mean another indictment. Cheney?

Anonymous left this comment a while back and I think it deserves a wider audience:

The Iran attacks Romanian Oil Rig story is an interesting one. Check Google News etc. & you willl find that the story has sunk without trace. Now considering that the US et al are 'bigging up' the terrorist threat of Iran, isn't it strange that there has been no hullabaloo over the Iranian Navy Supply Ships firing at & storming onto another soverign country's oil rig?

Well.... if you look a little deeper into the story you'll find the following:

From here: Grup Servicii Petroliere s.a (GSP), a Romanian drilling and oilfield services company today accused Petro Iran Development Co (PEDCO), a subsidiary of state-owned National Iranian Oil Co. (NIOC) of violating international norms by holding hostage one of its rigs and crew in Iranian waters despite court orders to the contrary.

The rigs were hired by Dubai-based Oriental Oil Co. and without the consent of GSP further rented to PEDCO.GSP later discovered that the Dubai-based company had never existed and it was never registered with the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DCCI).

The Dubai-based company 'Oriental Oil Company' (that never existed!) appears to be the same as the Oriental Oil Kish company that has been linked to Halliburton.

See here for details.

Also, look at the GSP representative that pops up to explain everything away...(from here:...

According to GSP's U.S.-based spokesman Stefan Minovici, ... Now who is Stefan Minovici? Well from here, he is a US/Romanian dealmaker who works closely with Raytheon Eastern Europe.Oh & one last thing, the location where all this was happening?? Kish Island in the Persian Gulf, the stated location of the soon to be established Iranian Oil Bourse.

Hmmmm.........I don't think we are being told everything........