FALSE FLAGS: REICHSTAG FIRE AND OTHERS, METAPHORS OF THE PENTAGON PAPERS
Forgotten Terror – The DC Sniper, Another Government False Flag
So Obvious any Moron Would Notice, Special Forces/CIA Hit Team Plays “DC Terrorist”
DC Sniper, “Homeless Man” Who Vacationed Often and Very Expensively
Back during the Bush era, selling terrorism was a big business, that and silencing people.
One of the government operations stumbled over was the famed “DC Sniper,” forgotten by all.
We will begin with the impossible.
Williams was a combat vet, fought in Desert Storm, 16 successful years in the military, real records of special schools, records the army lies about when asked but doesn’t disprove.
This man was intelligent, a success, a perfect soldier, highly fit, top expert in martial arts, record of leadership ability, heading to a fat retirement and then he goes off the map and begins a life of “cover and deception,” a typical spy, a modern day “Michael Weston,” hardly a serial killer.
Movie star good looks, Armani at the homeless shelter, there isn’t a single word of truth thus far heard about him until now.
This is someone with access to top circles in DC, now, we are told, dead in the quickest execution in history, all arranged through his own wife, if you can imagine the coincidence.
Oh, you will love this film and my deep appreciation and respect to the very real journalist who put it all together. To begin, we get the “short and sweet.”
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Here is what Wikipedia tells us, for those who have forgotten:
The Beltway sniper attacks took place during three weeks in October 2002 in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. Ten people were killed and three other victims were critically injured in several locations throughout the Washington Metropolitan Area and along Interstate 95 in Virginia. It was widely speculated that a single sniper was using the Capital Beltway for travel, possibly in a white van or truck.
It was later learned that the rampage was perpetrated by one man, John Allen Muhammad, and one minor, Lee Boyd Malvo, driving a blue 1990 Chevrolet Caprice sedan, and had apparently begun the month before with murders and robbery in Louisiana and Alabama, which had resulted in three of the deaths.[1]
In September 2003, Muhammad was sentenced to death. One month later, Boyd Malvo was sentenced to six consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. On November 10, 2009, Muhammad was executed by lethal injection.
The video above was received from a “source.” It was uploaded from the Netherlands, has a very misleading title and is one of the finest pieces of investigative journalism I have seen. It ties the DC sniper to the CIA and US Special Forces, proves him to be an army trained sniper and more.
It shows he became a “Muslim” only days before becoming a killer, had unlimited funds and his helper, “Boyd Malvo” was walked out of an immigration detention center to be his assistant instead of being deported.
Williams, his real name, had a wife on Attorney General John Ashcroft’s staff, spent money like water, ski trips, in and out of the Caribbean, all trips booked by his travel agent while staying in homeless shelters.
See the entire tape, all 16 minutes. One section shows him being given what I know to be a hypnotic suggestion to surrender, something also so obvious no one but a moron would miss it, and it is here for everyone to see.
What was the fastest execution in American history was the killing of a government “hit man” operating under psychological programming.
I am also certain he was very real US Special Forces trained, not saying that for amusement sake, had been “disappeared” from records as have more than a few of my contracting friends who operate with nuclear facility clearances or ties to “Delta.”
Do remember all the anthrax attacks. Though not publicized, the CIA was attacked also. The anthrax was, as most suspect, made by the US government, weaponized, and no one has been arrested.
Several associates were attacked, people with unusual ties to highly classified operational intelligence but also respected members of the DC community.
Some attacked were clearly otherwise.
I will add two videos for context. The first one is categorical proof that 9/11 was an inside job. Using the old “OJ trial” adage, “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit,” the following video proves 9/11 was an inside job.
We have the police tape of the arrest of two bombers captured on 9/11, all live for you to hear but those involved, the bombers, the dispatcher, the police officers, the forensic evidence, even the forensic team and, no wait, it gets better, the 188 eye witnesses have all “disappeared.”
Imagine the threats.
Dan Rather, on this video quite clearly, says “this isn’t me.” Does Rather have an evil twin somewhere?
There is no record that the news videos, nationally broadcast by CNN and CBS had ever existed but you can see them here. All records were destroyed but loyal Americans at local affiliates were there to help. We thank them.
Do we laugh over so many deaths?
Any more and we would, old as we are, be unable to control ourselves.
“Men in Black” is a joke in comparison to things the US does every day.
One was “anthraxed,” a former Chief of Staff for the Central Intelligence Agency, and anther friend jailed on bizarre charges whose last employment was Chief Legal Council for the Central Intelligence Agency.
Another associate is in hiding, a former member of the National Security Council, assistant to Paul Wolfowitz and Condi Rice and briefer of President Bush (43). Hiding from the US government.
Mysterious deaths, silencings, disappearances, arrests, convictions, and in most cases, these were people with direct access to the President.
Then again, one of these people is in hiding because they were wearing an FBI wire when the Presidents Chief Advisor on Counter-Terrorism turned over national secrets to a foreign spy while being witnessed by, among others, the Secretary of State of the United States.
The AIPAC-Steve Rosen espionage investigation led to very high government officials. Historically, these are then quashed as a threat to the national security, that is, the public knowing that Israeli espionage has, for a long time involved our top people who effectively cannot be prosecuted.
The FBI agents involved tried for months to get this and the Rosen (a complex issue on its own) case prosecuted but those involved in the spying were under the personal protection of someone above the president.
For fun, they look at things and take them apart, seeing what is real and how clever some can be in fooling others.
Think about it, do governments have a major national security interest in being able to determine what is real video and what has been faked? How long would you image we have had this capacity for? How about decades?
CONCLUSION
Who Really Selected Romney to Run? Why are Ron Paul Delegates being Cleansed from the Convention?
One might ask why things are put together. I call something like this a “mosaic of deceit.” It describes, for Americans, our lives.
We all have learned our political system is hopeless. For the last “hold outs” Ron Paul being pushed aside by “joke candidate” Mitt Romney is the lesson.
For the older among us, the Kennedy murders, government hits, pure, simple easy to prove when they happened were the lesson.
Who didn’t watch 9/11 and say, “Aren’t we supposed to have NORAD send fighter planes?”
We all knew, it is just so many can’t take that sick feeling anymore that we are all getting, helplessness.
Prepare for the next designed deceptive event that pushes the ignorant into demanding an even greater stratum of tyranny. Homeland security never had it so good, when it plans the burning of the last semblance of representative constitutional government, as it substitutes an unmitigated totalitarian collectivist dictatorship over our beleaguered nation. "Is the threat from foreign terrorists the undertaking of homeland insecurity? The preoccupation since 911 with a self-serving "War of Terror" has been masked under the appearance of national security. Tracking down targeted Jihad terrorists and waging regional search and destroy missions has become the growth industry of the new millennium. The rationale and justification for such a protracted conflict rests upon a cowardly attack on American soil. If you listen to the official version of events anyone who questions the validity of blaming Islamic Fascists must be unpatriotic." |
On behalf of every one in the 9/11 Truth movement; in memory of the three thousand Americans who perished needlessly on that tragic day; and the million-plus innocents who have been slaughtered (and continue to be massacred) in distant lands on account of this fiendish fraud; it would be fitting, proper, and necessary to conclude with a message to all those who have awoken to The Big Lie, yet choose to do nothing: Silence is complicity. |
Means & Motive contents Reichstag Fire
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9/11: The Clarke/Tenet Deception Gambit"FALL GUY" GEORGE TENET BEING MEASURED FOR THE NOOSE With Wikileaks Dead, New 9/11 Deception Ploy In MotionConspiracy buffs were given a magic revelation regarding 9/11. Richard Clarke pointed the finger at former CIA director, George Tenet, declaring the CIA “allowed” the 9/11 hijackers to operate freely. The rationale? Tenet and the CIA had plans to use “them” in some way, maybe turn them into secret double agents, even triple agents. What’s wrong with this picture? I feel as though I had stepped back into time. It’s 1963 and Lee Oswald, Marine U2 technician, Russian spy, CIA agent, pro-Castro activist, anti-Castro activist just shot President Kennedy, with 6 of 3 rounds fired from 3 different directions killing Kennedy and wounding Texas governor John Connelly, all while Oswald was in a lunch room full of witnesses.
Notwithstanding the broken rifle with the loosened scope or Oswald killing a police officer with a revolver that discarded shell casings of a different caliber as though it were an automatic (Colt .38 “Super” semi-automatic pistol) reselling the “lone gunman” myth continues.
A Tired Looking Oswald - the Famous Patsy Even if someone were to believe thousands of tons of steel vaporized magically with a few gallons of kerosene, the “twin towers” story, 9/11 fell apart years ago when the Commission itself distanced itself from their own findings as a “whitewash” and “fraud.” Then hard, irrevocable facts came in, Building 7 was ordered destroyed, something requiring months of preparation but done with 20 minutes notice. The other weak link, the Pentagon, a missile attack, no aircraft could have done it, long proven, no pilot capable, no plane could have survived it, no wreckage one day and a few “pristine” pieces the next. Past this we learned that the flight 93 drama, the calls, the storming of the cockpit, all made up, no calls were made, all a story. More seriously, the idea of hijackers fell apart also. There was no proof they existed other than a few pieces of obviously planted evidence and wild claims never backed up by hard evidence.
[Editor]: Here is a good recap video. Be sure to select the 360 resolution for much better clarity.
Taking Whose Oath - And for What ?? After ten years of lies, of torture, of trillions of dollars stolen, of America in Afghanistan in the biggest drug cartel ever dreamed of, ten years of fairy stories and now, all of a sudden, Richard Clarke, infamous weakling and “mama’s boy” points the finger at George Tenet. The CIA director was always hated by the Bush White House, someone kept in the dark, pushed aside by Cheney and his “privatization,” the perfect dupe. With the ten year anniversary coming up, increasingly Israel’s hand is seen in 9/11, not just from conspiracy websites or “Jew haters” but from top analysts. The “fall back” story Israel uses is that they had agents all over the US who were “shadowing” the hijackers while others, team after team, were in New York, admittedly informed in advance of the attacks, “documenting.”
Then we have Richard Clarke, years later, talking about hijackers again, the imaginary box cutter story, the phone calls that never happened, the magic pilots, the impossible planes. Ah...The Wicked Web They Weave Why Clarke?Normally, stories like this, stories providing cover, “game theory” stories, come from Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Always the same, a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. Wikileaks? Peddling Israeli plots against Iran and Pakistan using dirt gathered on the United States, no difficult task there, carefully “seeded” as Zbigniew Brzezinski call it back in December 2010, with “pointed” information from an intelligence agency. Wikileaks is Mossad and Wikileaks “friends” are “hasbara,” the helpers who serve Israel’s intelligence services.
Now all that is left to sell the hijacker/box cutter story is weakling Richard Clarke, a minor figure, we are told, in the planning of 9/11, a White House “gofer” pointing his finger at poor George Tenet, the CIA director who never directed the CIA. All of this, of course, is cheap theatre, cover for Israel, cover for Bush, cover for Cheney and Rumsfeld, for Rove and Ashcroft, for Gonzales, for Mike Harari. [Editor note: Notice how wikipedia does not have a photo of him on this page, when they are available and they have them on eveybody else's pages.] Using Clarke, ”Mr. Small Potatoes,” to peddle poor George Tenet as mastermind of the crime of the century, all I can say is “Good luck with that.” ***[Editor's Note] We will close with an example of just one of the many little missing pieces of past events which are hiding in plain sight in terms of the public’s general knowledege. How many of you have even seen or heard of Oswalk’s fake Selective Servid ID? Let us know in the comment section. We need your feed back. Thanks. Fake selective service (draft) card in the name of Alek James Hidell, found on Oswald when arrested. A.Hidell was the name used on both envelope and order slip to buy the alleged murder weapon (see CE 773), and A. J. Hidell was the alternate name on the New Orleans post office box rented June 11, 1963, by Oswald. Both the alleged murder weapon and the pistol in Oswald’s possession at arrest had earlier been shipped (at separate times) to Oswald’s Dallas P.O. Box 2915, as ordered by “A. J. Hidell”. 9/11 PLANNERS CONFESS ON NETWORK TELEVISIONFOR OUR FRIENDS WHO STILL DON’T GET ITBy Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor How can a nation like the United States be duped into two wars and total bankruptcy? It would be one thing if the “truth” about 9/11 was internet conspiracy theory. This isn’t the case. It was all right there in everyone’s living room. They fooled us once and then fooled us again and again. Yes, America has some tail to kick but this time, maybe we should make sure our boot goes up the right rear end for a change. The real hole in the Pentagon, before construction equipment enlarged it was so small a man had to duck his head to enter. For 9 years, this photograph was captioned “Second Floor.” This photograph has a firefighter in the foreground and, unless gravity was suspended on 9/11, he is standing on the Pentagon’s lawn. Listen to CNN describe a crash site with no aircraft parts of any kind, seats, bodies, wings, engines, tail section….none of it. Can it be this simple? The CNN reporter at the Pentagon immediately after the “crash” found no aircraft debris. After closing off the site, the next morning, huge pieces of plane were hauled away, pieces that weren’t in any of the photographs on 9/11. I hate it when media stooges scripted by the real terrorists don’t check the time carefully enough. Watch a BBC reporter talk about a building collapsing that was still standing, actually with very little damage, right behind her. Yes, Americans are that easy to lie to. Watch Larry Silverstein tell network news that WTC 7, the same virtually undamaged building was “pulled” by firefighters. Since making this statement, no single individual, firefighter, 9/11 Commission member or anyone else has backed up this wild claim. Need we mention that setting demolition charges alone would require weeks? Here, Dan Rather on CBS describes the collapse of Building 7 as “like films of controlled demolition we have seen, buildings deliberately destroyed by well placed dynamite….” Some Americans are burning Korans to celebrate 9/11. Some are deeply disturbed about an Islamic community center being built nearby. If I might suggest, perhaps 9/11 might be better served as “hallowed ground” if it were a place of execution. A great nation could transplant it’s mightiest oak to the site. That hallowed oak and a few lengths of hemp used with intelligence and consideration on our enemies at home and abroad would best honor our dead. Just a thought…. There is currently no conclusive forensic evidence that the airliners indicated nor the hijackers accused were ever involved in 9/11 in any way. Perhaps worst of all, Fox News itself, released the following story indicating that 60 Israeli’s were arrested after 9/11, some active duty military who had advance knowledge of 9/11. Later, the number exceeded 200, tied to espionage and suspected terrorism. Yes, the term “terrorism” is used. All investigations were eventually quashed. You can come to your own conclusions as to what is and isn’t being said. Yes, Americans are that dumb. You wonder why our banks are empty?
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Everyone knows that “truth is the first casualty of war“. And one of the most highly decorated American soldiers of all time said that “war is a racket”. FBI agents and CIA intelligence officials, constitutional law expert professor Jonathan Turley, Time Magazine, Keith Olbermann and the Washington Post have all said that U.S. government officials “were trying to create an atmosphere of fear in which the American people would give them more power”. Indeed, the former Secretary of Homeland Security – Tom Ridge – admits that he was pressured to raise terror alerts to help Bush win reelection. A former National Security Adviser told the Senate that the war on terror is “a mythical historical narrative”. In terms of a possible “why”, remember that psychologists and sociologists have demonstrated that fear of terrorism makes people stupid and easy to manipulate and control.
Indeed, in a newly-released documentary, U.S. soldiers admit that if they accidentally kill innocent Iraqis and Afghanis, they then “drop” automatic weapons near their body so they can pretend they were militants:
Indeed, the former director of the National Security Agency said:
(audio here).Former FBI station chief Ted Gundersen also says most terror attacks are committed by our CIA and FBI: Specific Historical Examples The CIA admits that it hired Iranians in the 1950′s to pose as Communists and stage bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its democratically-elected prime minister. The former Italian Prime Minister, an Italian judge, and the former head of Italian counterintelligence admit that NATO, with the help of the Pentagon and CIA, carried out terror bombings in Italy and other European countries in the 1950s and blamed the communists, in order to rally people’s support for their governments in Europe in their fight against communism. As one participant in this formerly-secret program stated: “You had to attack civilians, people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security” (and see this)(Italy and other European countries subject to the terror campaign had joined NATO before the bombings occurred). As admitted by the U.S. government, recently declassified documents show that in the 1960′s, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan to blow up AMERICAN airplanes (using an elaborate plan involving the switching of airplanes), and also to commit terrorist acts on American soil, and then to blame it on the Cubans in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. See the following ABC news report; the official documents; and watch this interview with the former Washington Investigative Producer for ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. Nine months earlier, a false flag attack was discussed in order to justify an invasion of the Dominican Republic. Specifically, according to official State Department records, Under Secretary of State Chester Bowles wrote on June 3, 1961:
When Congress was originally asked to pass the Patriot Act in late 2001, the anthrax attacks which occurred only weeks earlier were falsely blamed on spooky Arabs as a way to scare Congress members into approving the bill. Specifically:
Indeed, many people have questioned whether or not the anthrax was intentionally sent to scare people. For example:
Department of Justice lawyer John Yoo suggested in 2005 that the US should go on the offensive against al-Qaeda, having “our intelligence agencies create a false terrorist organization. It could have its own websites, recruitment centers, training camps, and fundraising operations. It could launch fake terrorist operations and claim credit for real terrorist strikes, helping to sow confusion within al-Qaeda’s ranks, causing operatives to doubt others’ identities and to question the validity of communications.” As Chris Floyd and many others have noted, this plan has gone live. United Press International reported in June 2005:
There is substantial additional evidence of hanky panky in Iraq. We’re not alone. Countries around the world have played this terrible game for thousands of years. If We Don’t Learn Our History, We’re Doomed to Repeat It Indeed, many former high-level officials are warning that it could happen again:
Postscript: Most serving in our military are good and honorable people who want to protect America and her people. It is only rogue elements within civilian and military circles who carry out false flag attacks. It’s not that the average American isn’t aware that we still have tens of thousands or troops in Iraq, or that nearly 4,400 U.S. military personnel have died there since the war began. Scattered demonstrations were scheduled around the country to call for the troops’ swift return.
July 25, 1990: US Ambassador Gives Seeming ‘Green Light’ for Iraq’s Invasion of KuwaitApril Glaspie and Saddam Hussein. [Source: Wilson's Almanac]The US Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, goes to the Iraqi Foreign Ministry to meet with Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, to deliver a statement made earlier in the week by State Department spokesperson Margaret Tutwiler. The statement is equivocal about Iraq’s belligerent pose towards Kuwait (see July 22, 1990), noting that although the US has no mutual defense pact with Kuwait, “Iraq and others know there is no place for coercion and intimidation in the civilized world.” Deputy Chief of Mission Joseph Wilson will later describe Glaspie as having “a keen mind and a profound understanding of the issues.” [Wilson, 2004, pp. 98] Entity Tags: Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussein, April Glaspie, Joseph C. Wilson, James A. Baker, Margaret Tutwiler Timeline Tags: US-Iraq 1980s Category Tags: Iraq Invasion of Kuwait, US-Iraq Collaboration
July 25, 1990: Hussein Pretends to Bluff over Intent to Invade KuwaitDuring a meeting with US Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie (see July 25, 1990), Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein interrupts the meeting to take a phone call from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak has worked tirelessly to mediate the burgeoning dispute between Iraq and Kuwait. After the phone call, Hussein tells Glaspie that he has just told Mubarak the same thing he told her—that he will not invade Kuwait so long as there is an active negotiating process taking place. The US later learns that Hussein asked Mubarak not to share that piece of information with Kuwait in order to keep his “bluff” alive. Mubarak apparently honors the request, because Iraq’s subsequent invasion (see August 2, 1990) is a complete surprise to Kuwait. Mubarak is reportedly infuriated at Hussein’s apparent betrayal of his trust. [Wilson, 2004, pp. 98] In 2003, Glaspie’s then-deputy, Joseph Wilson, will tell an interviewer that Hussein “lied to [Glaspie]. He lied to President Mubarak that he was going to allow the negotiating process to go forward.” [PBS, 2/28/2003] In 2004, Wilson will write: “I believe that he met with Glaspie for the express purpose of deceiving us about his intentions, as he did with… Mubarak at the same time. In this way, he maintained the element of surprise. [Wilson, 2004, pp. 123] Entity Tags: Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak, April Glaspie Category Tags: Iraq Invasion of Kuwait July 25, 1990 and After: US Ambassador Scapegoated for Giving Iraq Permission to Invade?The deputy for US Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie, Joseph Wilson, later writes of the fateful meeting between Glaspie and Saddam Hussein (see July 25, 1990). In his view, Glaspie will become a scapegoat, receiving unfair blame for giving Hussein tacit permission to invade Kuwait. Wilson later writes, “The one-on-one meeting with Saddam was fateful for Ambassador Glaspie. Out of it emerged the charge that she had not been tough enough with him and had somehow given him a green light to invade Kuwait. Nothing could be further from the truth. Glaspie has been made a convenient scapegoat for a more complicated and complex failure of foreign policy.… Her explanation of American policy towards Arab disputes did not waver from our standing instructions. The United States did not take positions on the merits of such quarrels between Arab nations, although the policy was to, in the strongest terms, urge that the parties to a dispute resolve it diplomatically or through international mediation, and not via military threats or action.” During the meeting, Hussein made clear to Ambassador Glaspie that Iraq had no intention of taking any military action against Kuwait so long as there was an ongoing negotiating process. He tells Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak the same thing (see July 25, 1990). In later years, Iraqi officials such as Aziz and then-Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs Nizar Hamdun will acknowledge that Glaspie did nothing more than reiterate the main points of US policy towards Iraq to Hussein. Wilson, a friend of Hamdun’s, will recall his last conversation with Hamdun before his death in July 2003, where the ailing Hamdun confirmed that, in Wilson’s words, “The Iraqi leadership had not come away thinking she had tacitly indicated that the US condoned the use of force. On the contrary, [Hussein] knew exactly what the American position was—opposition to Iraqi military action, under any and all circumstances.” [Wilson, 2004, pp. 99-101] Entity Tags: Saddam Hussein, Joseph C. Wilson, Nizar Hamdun, April Glaspie, Hosni Mubarak Events Leading Up to the 2003 Invasion of IraqPre-9/11 Plans for WarProject: Events Leading Up to the 2003 Invasion of Iraq May 1991: President Bush Authorizes CIA to Create Conditions for Removal of Saddam Hussein; CIA Hires PR FirmPresident George H. W. Bush signs a covert “lethal finding” authorizing the CIA to spend a hundred million dollars to “create the conditions for removal of Saddam Hussein from power.” [New Yorker, 6/7/2004] The CIA forms the Iraqi Opposition Group within its Directorate of Operations to implement this policy. [Ritter, 2005, pp. 128] Awash in cash, the agency hires the Rendon Group to influence global political opinion on matters related to Iraq. According to Francis Brooke, an employee of the company who’s paid $22,000 per month, the Rendon Group’s contract with the CIA provides it with a ten percent “management fee” on top of whatever money it spends. “We tried to burn through $40 million a year,” Brooke will tell the New Yorker. “It was a very nice job.” The work involves planting false stories in the foreign press. The company begins supplying British journalists with misinformation which then shows up in the London press. In some cases, these stories are later picked up by the American press, in violation of laws prohibiting domestic propaganda. “It was amazing how well it worked. It was like magic,” Brooke later recalls. Another one of the company’s tasks is to help the CIA create a viable and unified opposition movement against Saddam Hussein (see June 1992). This brings the Rendon Group and Francis Brooke into contact with Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi (see After May 1991). The CIA will soon help Chalabi and Rendon create the Iraqi National Congress (INC) to further the goal of toppling Hussein. [New Yorker, 6/7/2004] Author and intelligence expert James Bamford will later say, “Chalabi was a creature of American propaganda to a large degree. It was an American company, the Rendon Group, that—working secretly with the CIA—basically created his organization, the Iraqi National Congress. And put Chalabi in charge basically.… From the very beginning Chalabi was paid a lot of money from the US taxpayers. The CIA paid him originally about 350,000 dollars a month, to Chalabi and his organization.” [PBS, 4/25/2007] Entity Tags: Saddam Hussein, Rendon Group, Iraqi Opposition Group, James Bamford, George Herbert Walker Bush, Francis Brooke, Central Intelligence Agency, Ahmed Chalabi, Iraqi National Congress Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Chalabi and the INC March 8, 1992: Raw US World Dominance Plan Is Leaked to the MediaThe New York Times headline on March 8, 1992. [Source: Public domain]The Defense Planning Guidance, “a blueprint for the department’s spending priorities in the aftermath of the first Gulf War and the collapse of the Soviet Union,” is leaked to the New York Times. [New York Times, 3/8/1992; Newsday, 3/16/2003] The document causes controversy, because it hadn’t yet been “scrubbed” to replace candid language with euphemisms. [New York Times, 3/10/1992; New York Times, 3/11/1992; Observer, 4/7/2002] The document argues that the US dominates the world as sole superpower, and to maintain that role, it “must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” [New York Times, 3/8/1992; New York Times, 3/8/1992] As the Observer summarizes it, “America’s friends are potential enemies. They must be in a state of dependence and seek solutions to their problems in Washington.” [Observer, 4/7/2002] The document is mainly written by Paul Wolfowitz and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who hold relatively low posts at the time, but become deputy defense secretary and Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, respectively, under George W. Bush. [Newsday, 3/16/2003] The authors conspicuously avoid mention of collective security arrangements through the United Nations, instead suggesting the US “should expect future coalitions to be ad hoc assemblies, often not lasting beyond the crisis being confronted.” [New York Times, 3/8/1992] They call for “punishing” or “threatening punishment” against regional aggressors before they act. [Harper's, 10/2002] Interests to be defended preemptively include “access to vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles, [and] threats to US citizens from terrorism.” The section describing US interests in the Middle East states that the “overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve US and Western access to the region’s oil…, deter further aggression in the region, foster regional stability, protect US nationals and property, and safeguard… access to international air and seaways.” [New York Times, 3/8/1992] Senator Lincoln Chafee (R) later says, “It is my opinion that [George W. Bush’s] plan for preemptive strikes was formed back at the end of the first Bush administration with that 1992 report.” [Newsday, 3/16/2003] In response to the controversy, US releases an updated version of the document in May 1992, which stresses that the US will work with the United Nations and its allies. [Washington Post, 5/24/1992; Harper's, 10/2002] Entity Tags: Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, Lincoln Chafee, Soviet Union, United States Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, US International Relations, Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Motives June 1992: Iraqi National Congress FormedThe Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), headed by Masud Barzani, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), headed by Jalal Talabani, meet in Vienna along with nearly 200 delegates from dozens of Iraqi opposition groups to form an umbrella organization for Iraqi dissident groups. [Federation of American Scientists, 8/8/1998; New Yorker, 6/7/2004] The event is organized by the Rendon Group, which has been contracted by the CIA to organize the wide spectrum of Iraqi dissidents into a unified movement against Saddam Hussein. Rendon names the group the “Iraqi National Congress” (INC). The CIA pays the Rendon Group $326,000 per month for the work, funneled to the company and the INC through various front organizations. [ABC, 2/7/1998; CounterPunch, 5/20/2004; Rolling Stone, 11/17/2005 Sources: Unnamed former CIA operative] Thomas Twetten, the CIA’s deputy directorate of operations, will later recall: “The INC was clueless. They needed a lot of help and didn’t know where to start.” [New Republic, 5/20/2002; Bamford, 2004, pp. 296-297] Rendon hires freelance journalist Paul Moran and Zaab Sethna as contract employees to do public relations and “anti-Saddam propaganda” for the new organization. [SBS Dateline, 7/23/2003] Entity Tags: Paul Moran, Zaab Sethna, Iraqi National Congress, Rendon Group, Jalal Talabani, Masud Barzani, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Kurdistan Democratic Party, Central Intelligence Agency, Thomas Twetten Category Tags: Chalabi and the INC, Pre-9/11 Plans for War November 1993: Iraqi Exile Plans to Overthrow Hussein, with Approval of Clinton AdministrationIraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi (see 1992-1996) approaches the Clinton administration with a plan to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Defense Intelligence Agency agent Patrick Lang will later recall that the plan, dubbed “End Game,” starts with a revolt by Iraq’s Kurdish and Shi’a insurgents that will, theoretically, trigger an insurrection by Iraqi military commanders. The military will replace Hussein with a regime friendly to both Israel and the US. Clinton officials give the plan tentative approval, though as Lang will later write: “The plan was based on a belief that Iraq was ripe for revolt and that there were no units in the armed forces that would fight to preserve Saddam’s government. Since the same units had fought to keep Saddam in power during the Kurdish and Shi’a revolts of a few years before, it is difficult to see why the sponsors of End Game would have thought that.” Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein learns of the plan and prepares his own response. When Chalabi puts the plan into action, the Iraqi military, instead of revolting against Hussein, kills over 100 INC-backed insurgents (see March 1995). After the debacle, neither the CIA nor the White House will have anything more than superficial contact with Chalabi until 2001. [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004; Unger, 2007, pp. 126] Entity Tags: Saddam Hussein, Central Intelligence Agency, Clinton administration, Patrick Lang, Ahmed Chalabi Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War March 1995: Chalabi Military Operation against Saddam Hussein FailsAhmed Chalabi creates a militia army of about 1,000 fighters in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq and bribes tribal leaders in the city of Mosul to support a planned rebellion against Saddam Hussein (see November 1993). He is also hosting members of Iranian intelligence who promise that when the operation is launched, Iran will simultaneously hit Iraq from the south. But the CIA learns that Baathist officials have caught wind of the plot and the CIA instructs agent Robert Baer to tell Chalabi that “any decision to proceed will be on your own.” Chalabi, who has no military experience, decides to go through with the plot anyway. But the operation quickly flounders when over 100 INC fighters are killed by Iraqi forces, many more of Chalabi’s fighters desert, the bribed Iraqi tribal leaders stay home, and the Iranians do nothing. The CIA is furious that it funded the operation, which becomes known within the agency as the “Bay of Goats.” [CounterPunch, 5/20/2004; New Yorker, 6/7/2004; Unger, 2007, pp. 126] CENTCOM commander General Anthony Zinni has similar feelings. “It got me pretty angry,” he recalls. “They were saying if you put a thousand troops on the ground, Saddam’s regime will collapse, they won’t fight. I said, ‘I fly over them every day, and they shoot at us. We hit them, and they shoot at us again. No way a thousand forces would end it.’ The exile group was giving them inaccurate information. Their scheme was ridiculous.” Zinni had warned Congress that Chalabi’s invasion plan was “pie in the sky, a fairy tale,” but was ignored. [Unger, 2007, pp. 160-161] Entity Tags: Saddam Hussein, Robert Baer, Iraqi National Congress, Central Intelligence Agency, Anthony Zinni, Ahmed Chalabi, Rendon Group, Francis Brooke Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Chalabi and the INC July 8, 1996: Neoconservative Think Tank Advocates Aggressive Israeli Foreign PolicyRichard Perle. [Source: Public domain]The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, an Israeli think tank, publishes a paper titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” [Washington Times, 10/7/2002; Chicago Sun-Times, 3/6/2003] The paper, whose lead author is neoconservative Richard Perle, is meant to advise the new, right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Other authors include: Entity Tags: Richard Perle, Robert Loewenberg, Meyrav Wurmser, Jonathan Torop, Richard V. Allen, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Benjamin Netanyahu, David Wurmser, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, Jeffrey T. Bergner, Douglas Feith Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, US International Relations, Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Motives, Pre-9/11 Plans for War November 12, 1997: Neoconservative Advocates Backing INC in Overthrowing HusseinDavid Wurmser, director of the Middle East program at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, writes an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal arguing that the US government should support Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress [INC] and work to foment “an Iraqi insurgency to depose the butcher of Baghdad.” Wurmser writes: “Washington has no choice now but to abandon the coup option and resurrect the INC. An insurgency may be able to defeat Saddam’s weak and demoralized conventional army. But one thing is clear: There is no cost-free way to depose Saddam. He is more resolute, wily and brutal than we. His strength lies in his weapons of terror; that is why he is so attached to them…. Organizing an insurgency to liberate Iraq under the INC may provoke Saddam to use these weapons on the way down. Better that, though, than current policy, which will lead him to use them on his way back up.” [Wall Street Journal, 11/12/1997] Entity Tags: David Wurmser, Saddam Hussein, Ahmed Chalabi Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Propaganda, Chalabi and the INC January 26, 1998: Neoconservative Think Tank Urges US to Attack IraqPNAC logo. [Source: Project for the New American Century]The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), an influential neoconservative think tank, publishes a letter to President Clinton urging war against Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein because he is a “hazard” to “a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil.” In a foretaste of what eventually happens, the letter calls for the US to go to war alone, attacks the United Nations, and says the US should not be “crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.” The letter is signed by many who will later lead the 2003 Iraq war. 10 of the 18 signatories later join the Bush Administration, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Assistant Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretaries of State Richard Armitage and Robert Zoellick, Undersecretaries of State John Bolton and Paula Dobriansky, presidential adviser for the Middle East Elliott Abrams, Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle, and George W. Bush’s special Iraq envoy Zalmay Khalilzad. Other signatories include William Bennett, Jeffrey Bergner, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan, William Kristol, Peter Rodman, William Schneider, Vin Weber, and James Woolsey. [Project for the New American Century, 1/26/1998; Sunday Herald (Glasgow), 3/16/2003; Unger, 2007, pp. 158] Clinton does heavily bomb Iraq in late 1998, but the bombing doesn’t last long and its long term effect is the break off of United Nations weapons inspections. [New York Times, 3/23/2003] The PNAC neoconservatives do not seriously expect Clinton to attack Iraq in any meaningful sense, author Craig Unger will observe in 2007. Instead, they are positioning themselves for the future. “This was a key moment,” one State Department official will recall. “The neocons were maneuvering to put this issue in play and box Clinton in. Now, they could draw a dichotomy. They could argue to their next candidate, ‘Clinton was weak. You must be strong.’” [Unger, 2007, pp. 158] Entity Tags: Robert B. Zoellick, Vin Weber, William Kristol, William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, William Schneider Jr., Richard Perle, William J. Bennett, Richard Armitage, Robert Kagan, Paula J. Dobriansky, Donald Rumsfeld, Craig Unger, Peter Rodman, Elliott Abrams, John R. Bolton, James Woolsey, Francis Fukuyama, Jeffrey T. Bergner, Paul Wolfowitz Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Key Events Related to DSM, Motives, Pre-9/11 Plans for War February 19, 1998: Neoconservative Group Calls on US to Help Overthrow HusseinThe Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf (CPSG), a bipartisan group made up largely of foreign policy specialists, sends an “Open Letter to the President” calling for President Clinton to use the US military to help Iraqi opposition groups overthrow Saddam Hussein and replace him with a US-friendly government. US law forbids such an operation. The group is led by, among others, former Representative Stephen Solarz (D-NY) and prominent Bush adviser Richard Perle, a former assistant secretary of defense. Entity Tags: Richard Burt, Richard Armitage, Richard Perle, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Paula J. Dobriansky, Peter Rosenblatt, Project for the New American Century, Richard V. Allen, Peter Rodman, Robert A. Pastor, Saddam Hussein, Robert Kagan, William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton, William Kristol, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, William B. Clark, Sven F. Kraemer, Stephen Solarz, Roger Robinson, Paul Wolfowitz, Stephen Bryen, Robert C. McFarlane, Michael Ledeen, Patrick Lang, Fred C. Ikle, Dov S. Zakheim, Elliott Abrams, Frank Carlucci, Douglas Feith, Frank Gaffney, Donald Rumsfeld, Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf, American Enterprise Institute, Ahmed Chalabi, Max Singer, David Wurmser, Bernard Lewis, Caspar Weinberger, Gary Schmitt, Kurt Nimmo, Leon Wienseltier, Martin Peretz, Joshua Muravchik, Frederick L. Lewis, John R. Bolton, Jeffrey T. Bergner, Helmut Sonnenfeldt, Jarvis Lynch, Jeffrey Gedmin, Jim Lobe, Iraqi National Congress Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Alleged WMDs, Politicization of Intelligence, Pre-9/11 Plans for War May 29, 1998: PNAC Calls on Republican Congressional Leaders to Assert US Interests in Persian GulfThe Project for a New American Century (PNAC) publishes a letter addressed to Congressman Newt Gingrich and Senator Trent Lott. The letter argues that the Clinton administration has capitulated to Saddam Hussein and calls on the two legislators to lead Congress to “establish and maintain a strong US military presence in the region, and be prepared to use that force to protect [US] vital interests in the Gulf—and, if necessary, to help removed Saddam from power.” [Century, 5/29/1998] Entity Tags: Saddam Hussein, Newt Gingrich, US Congress, Project for the New American Century, Trent Lott, Clinton administration Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War July 1998: Prominent Neoconservative Says INC Control of Northern Iraq Would Increase Israeli SecurityDavid Wurmser says that having a region in northern Iraq controlled by the Iraqi National Congress would provide the missing piece to complete an anti-Syria, anti-Iran block. “If Ahmed [Chalabi] extends a no-fly, no-drive in northern Iraq, it puts scuds out of the range of Israel and provides the geographic beachhead between Turkey, Jordan and Israel,” Wurmser says. “This should anchor the Middle East pro-Western coalition.” [Forward, 7/31/2003] Entity Tags: David Wurmser, Iraqi National Congress, Ahmed Chalabi Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Chalabi and the INC October 31, 1998: Clinton Signs Law Making It US Policy to Remove Hussein in IraqPresident Clinton signs the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (ILA) into law. The act, which passed with overwhelming support from Democrats and Republicans in both the House and Senate, was written by Trent Lott (R-MS) and other Republicans with significant input from Ahmed Chalabi and his aide, Francis Brooke. [US Congress, 10/31/1998 ; Washington Post, 1/25/2002; New Yorker, 6/7/2004] (Former Defense Intelligence Agency official Patrick Lang will later write that one of the driving goals behind the ILA is to revive the failed 1995 coup plans against Saddam Hussein, called “End Game”—see November 1993.) [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004] The act makes it “the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime.” To that end, the act requires that the president designate one or more Iraqi opposition groups to receive up to $97 million in US military equipment and nonlethal training. The act authorizes another $43 million for humanitarian, broadcasting, and information-collection activities. To be eligible for US assistance, an organization must be “committed to democratic values, to respect for human rights, to peaceful relations with Iraq’s neighbors, to maintaining Iraq’s territorial integrity, and to fostering cooperation among democratic opponents of the Saddam Hussein regime.” [US Congress, 10/31/1998 ; Washington Post, 1/25/2002; New Yorker, 6/7/2004] Entity Tags: Patrick Lang, Francis Brooke, Iraqi National Congress, Clinton administration, US Department of State, Trent Lott, Ahmed Chalabi, US Department of Defense, William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Chalabi and the INC Late 1998: ’Downing Plan’ to Overthrow Hussein Government Rejected by General ZinniA number of neoconservatives, led by retired General Wayne Downing (see 1990-1991) and retired CIA officer Duane “Dewey” Clarridge (see December 25, 1992), use the recently passed Iraqi Liberation Act (ILA—see October 31, 1998) to revive the failed “End Game” coup plans against Saddam Hussein (see November 1993 and March 1995). Both Downing and Clarridge are “military consultants” to Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress, who attempted to carry out the coup in 1995 with dismal results. Downing and Clarridge produce an updated version of the INC’s “End Game” scenario, calling it “The Downing Plan.” The Downing scenario varies very little from the original plan. Their plan stipulates that a “crack force” of 5,000 INC fighters, backed up by a detachment of US Special Forces soldiers, could bring down the Iraqi Army. Clarridge later tells reporters: “The idea from the beginning was to encourage defections of Iraqi units. You need to create a nucleus, something for people to defect to. If they could take Basra, it would be all over.” Former Defense Intelligence Agency official Patrick Lang will later write, “It is difficult to understand how a retired four-star Army general [Downing] could believe this to be true.” General Anthony Zinni, commander of CENTCOM, which has operational control of US combat forces in the Middle East, is provided with a copy of Chalabi’s military plan to overthrow Saddam Hussein. “It got me pretty angry,” he later recalls. He warns Congress that Chalabi’s plan is a “pie in the sky, a fairy tale,” and predicts that executing such a poorly envisioned assault would result in a “Bay of Goats.” Chalabi’s INC is nothing more than “some silk-suited, Rolex-wearing guys in London;” neither the INC nor any of the other 91 or so Iraqi opposition groups have anywhere near “the viability to overthrow Saddam.” He tells the New Yorker: “They were saying if you put a thousand troops on the ground Saddam’s regime will collapse, they won’t fight. I said, ‘I fly over them every day, and they shoot at us. We hit them, and they shoot at us again. No way a thousand forces would end it.’ The exile group was giving them inaccurate intelligence. Their scheme was ridiculous.” Zinni earns the enmity of the neoconservative developers of the plan for his stance. [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004; New Yorker, 6/7/2004] Entity Tags: Wayne Downing, Patrick Lang, Saddam Hussein, Ahmed Chalabi, Anthony Zinni, US Congress, Duane Clarridge, Iraqi National Congress Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade, Chalabi and the INC 1999: George W. Bush Hints at Invading Iraq in Future PresidencyMickey Herskowitz. [Source: Public domain]Presidential candidate George W. Bush tells prominent Texas author and Bush family friend Mickey Herskowitz, who is helping Bush write an autobiography, that as president he would invade Iraq if given the opportunity. “One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief,” Herskowitz remembers Bush saying. “My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of [Kuwait] and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade Iraq, if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.” Herskowitz later says he believes Bush’s comments were intended to distinguish himself from his father, rather than express a desire to invade Iraq. [Houston Chronicle, 10/31/2004] Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Mickey Herskowitz Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade, Key Events Related to DSM February 1999: David Wurmser Urges US to Support Insurgency in IraqIn his book, Tyranny’s Ally: America’s Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein, David Wurmser of the American Enterprise Institute urges the US to support an insurgency aimed at toppling the Bath’ist government of Saddam Hussein as part of a broader policy to defeat pan-Arabism in Iraq. In its place, the US should encourage the creation of a “loosely unified Iraqi confederal government, shaped around strong sectarian and provincial entities,” Wurmser argues. [Wurmser, 1999, pp. 136-137] What happens in Iraq is vitally important, Wurmser notes, because the country is of extreme strategic importance. “It is a key transportation route, and it is rich in both geographic endowments and human talent,” he explains. “Its location on pathways between Asia and Europe, Africa and Asia, and Europe and Africa makes it an ideal route for armies, pipelines, and trade from both the eastern Mediterranean and Asia Minor to the Persian Gulf. Iraq also has large, proven oil reserves, water, and other important resources. Its geographic centrality and abundance of natural advantages alone make the country a regionally important center.” [Wurmser, 1999, pp. 116-117] Entity Tags: David Wurmser Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Motives February 4, 1999: President Clinton Designates 7 Iraqi Opposition Groups as Eligible for US FundingPresident Clinton signs Presidential Decision Directive (PDD) 99-13 designating seven Iraqi opposition groups as being eligible to receive US federal funds under the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act (see October 31, 1998). The act stated that the policy of the US should be to support regime change in Iraq. The seven groups include the Iraqi National Accord, the Iraqi National Congress, the Islamic Movement of Iraqi Kurdistan, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the Movement for Constitutional Monarchy, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. [White House, 2/4/1999] Entity Tags: Kurdistan Democratic Party, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Movement for Constitutional Monarchy, William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton, Iraqi National Congress, Islamic Movement of Iraqi Kurdistan, Iraqi National Accord Category Tags: Chalabi and the INC, Pre-9/11 Plans for War April-July 1999: ’Desert Crossing’ War Game Predicts Instability, Potential Chaos if Saddam Hussein Ousted by USPhoto of the cover of the Desert Crossing after-action briefing. [Source: National Security Archives]The US Central Command, or CENTCOM (see October 1, 1986), conducts a series of war games called “Desert Crossing” centered on the scenario of Saddam Hussein being ousted as Iraq’s dictator. CENTCOM commander General Anthony Zinni will later say of the scenario, “I thought we ought to look at political reconstruction, economic reconstruction, security reconstruction, humanitarian need, services, and infrastructure development.” The game concludes that unless measures are taken, “fragmentation and chaos” will ensue after his overthrow. The after-action report finds that regime change may cause instability throughout the Middle East by giving impetus to “rival forces bidding for power” which, in turn, could cause societal “fragmentation along religious and/or ethnic lines” and antagonize “aggressive neighbors.” Securing borders and civil order may not be enough to restabilize Iraq, the report speculates, if the new government is perceived as either weak, subservient to outside governments, or out of touch with other Middle Eastern governments. The report finds that an exit strategy would be complicated by differing ideas for how a post-Saddam Iraq should be. Any US-supported transitional government will find it difficult to restrain various factions from pursuing their own tribal and sectarian vendettas against one another, the report finds. The game is quickly forgotten; years later, when the Bush administration will begin planning for its invasion of Iraq, the retired Zinni will recommend that his successors “dust off Desert Crossing,” and they will respond: “What’s that? Never heard of it.” [John Prados, 11/4/2006; Roberts, 2008, pp. 125, 233] Entity Tags: Anthony Zinni, Saddam Hussein, US Central Command, Bush administration Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Pre-war Planning, Predictions, The Decision to Invade November 19, 1999: Congress Allocates $10 Million for Iraq Opposition GroupsCongress allocates $10 million “to support efforts to bring about political transition in Iraq, of which not less than $8 million shall be made available only to Iraqi opposition groups designated under the ILA [Iraq Liberation Act of 1998] for political, economic humanitarian, and other activities of such groups, and not more than $2 million may be made available for groups and activities seeking the prosecution of Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi Government officials for war crimes.” President Clinton signs the appropriation bill into law on November 29. [US Congress, 11/29/1999 ] This $10 million dollars is the first allocation of funds to Iraqi opposition groups out of the total $97 million that was authorized by the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act (see October 31, 1998). Entity Tags: William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton, Iraqi National Congress Category Tags: Chalabi and the INC, Pre-9/11 Plans for War 2000: US Political Parties Advocate Regime Change in IraqDuring the 2000 presidential campaign, the Republican Party calls for “a comprehensive plan for the removal of Saddam Hussein.” Similarly, the Democratic Party’s platform supports using “America’s military might against Iraq when and where it is necessary.” [Republican National Committee, 2000; Democratic National Committee, 2000, pp. 46] Entity Tags: Democratic National Committee, Republican National Committee Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade 2000: Former CIA Director Woolsey Works With Chalabi’s INCFormer CIA director James Woolsey serves as a corporate officer for the Iraqi National Congress Support Foundation which manages the Iraqi National Congress’ US funding. Also during this time, Woolsey and his former law firm, Shea and Gardner, provide the INC and Iraqi exiles with pro bono work. [Knight Ridder, 7/16/2004] Entity Tags: Shea and Gardner, Iraqi National Congress, James Woolsey Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Chalabi and the INC Spring 2000: Future Bush Adviser: ‘Number One’ Agenda to Overthrow HusseinStephen Hadley, a neoconservative foreign affairs analyst who will become the future President Bush’s national security adviser (see November 2, 2004), briefs a group of prominent Republicans on the national security and foreign policy agenda of Bush. Hadley tells the assembled policymakers that Bush’s “number-one foreign policy agenda” will be removing Iraq’s Saddam Hussein from power. Hadley also says Bush will spend little or no time trying to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. According to Virginia Military Institute professor Clifford Kiracofe, who speaks to many of the policymakers after the meeting, many of them are shocked at the briefing. [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004; Unger, 2007, pp. 175] Entity Tags: Clifford Kiracofe, George W. Bush, Stephen J. Hadley Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade, Decision to Invade Quotes May 17, 2000: Bush Allegedly Says He Will Take Saddam Hussein OutOsama Siblani. [Source: Publicity photo]Presidential candidate George W. Bush allegedly tells Osama Siblani, publisher of an Arab American newspaper, that if he becomes president he will remove Saddam Hussein from power. “He told me that he was going to take him out,” Siblani says in a radio interview on Democracy Now! almost five years later. Siblani will also recall that Bush “wanted to go to Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction, and he considered the regime an imminent and gathering threat against the United States.” As Siblani will later note, as a presidential candidate Bush has no access to classified intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs. [Democracy Now!, 3/11/2005] Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Osama Siblani Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline Category Tags: Key Events Related to DSM, Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade September 2000: Neoconservative Think Tank Writes ‘Blueprint’ for ‘Global Pax Americana’People involved in the 2000 PNAC report (from top left): Vice President Cheney, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Cheney Chief of Staff I. Lewis Libby, Undersecretary of State John Bolton, Undersecretary of Defense Dov Zakheim, and author Eliot Cohen. [Source: Public domain]The neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century writes a “blueprint” for the “creation of a ‘global Pax Americana’” (see June 3, 1997). The document, titled Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century, was written for the George W. Bush team even before the 2000 presidential election. It was written for future Vice President Cheney, future Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, future Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Florida Governor and Bush’s brother Jeb Bush, and Cheney’s future chief of staff Lewis Libby. [Project for the New American Century, 9/2000, pp. iv and 51 ] Entity Tags: Robert Kagan, Robert Martinage, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Robert Killebrew, Peter Rodman, Project for the New American Century, Roger Barnett, Paula J. Dobriansky, Saddam Hussein, William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton, Steve Forbes, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, William J. Bennett, William Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Vin Weber, Stephen A. Cambone, Steve Rosen, Thomas Donnelly, Norman Podhoretz, Phil Meilinger, Midge Decter, Donald Kagan, Donald Rumsfeld, Dov S. Zakheim, Devon Gaffney Cross, Aaron Friedberg, Abram Shulsky, Michael Vickers, Dan Quayle, Eliot A. Cohen, Dan Goure, Alvin Bernstein, Barry Watts, David Epstein, Elliott Abrams, Frank Gaffney, John Ellis (“Jeb”) Bush, James Lasswell, Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Mark P. Lagon, Mackubin Owens, Francis Fukuyama, Henry S. Rowen, Gary Schmitt, Fred C. Ikle, Fred Kagan, David Fautua, Hasam Amin, George Weigel Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Key Events Related to DSM, Motives, Pre-9/11 Plans for War October 5, 2000: Vice Presidential Candidates Advocate Tough Stance Toward Iraq; Cheney Says the Use of Force against Iraq May Be NecessaryDuring the vice presidential debates, both Joseph Lieberman and Dick Cheney advocate a tough stance toward Saddam Hussein. Lieberman says he and Gore would continue to support Iraqi opposition groups “until the Iraqi people rise up and do what the people of Serbia have done in the last few days: get rid of a despot.” Cheney says it might be necessary “to take military action to forcibly remove Saddam from power.” [CATO Daily Dispatch, 10/6/2000] Entity Tags: Joseph Lieberman, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, George W. Bush Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline Category Tags: The Decision to Invade, Pre-9/11 Plans for War October 25, 2000: Congress Allocates $25 Million for Iraq Opposition GroupsCongress substantially increases its support for Iraqi opposition organizations, more than doubling the groups’ funding to $25 million for 2001. Of this amount, $18 million is specifically designated for the Iraqi National Congress: $12 million for “food, medicine, and other humanitarian assistance,” and $6 million for the “production and broadcasting inside Iraq of radio and satellite television programming.” In addition, $2 million is allocated for groups and activities seeking the prosecution of Saddam Hussein, while the remaining $5 million is “to support efforts to bring about political transition in Iraq.” [US Congress, 11/6/2000 ; US Congress, 11/6/2000 ] Entity Tags: Iraqi National Congress, William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton Category Tags: Chalabi and the INC, Pre-9/11 Plans for War November 1, 2000: David Wurmser Urges US and Israel To ‘Strike Fatally’ Against Arab RadicalismIn an op-ed piece published by the Washington Times, David Wurmser of the American Enterprise Institute calls on the US and Israel to “broaden” the conflict in the Middle East. The US, he says, needs “to strike fatally, not merely disarm, the centers of radicalism in the region—the regimes of Damascus, Baghdad, Tripoli, Tehran, and Gaza” —in order to “reestablish the recognition that fighting with either the United States or Israel is suicidal.” This is necessary, according to Wurmser, because the policies of the US and Israel during the last decade have strengthened Arab radicalism in the Middle East. Wurmser complains that the two countries have mistakenly identified the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and their own behavior as the primary causes of anti-Israeli and anti-American violence instead of focusing on what he claims are the real sources of resentment among Arab leaders—Israeli and American values. “Few anti-American outbursts or Arab-Israeli confrontations initially have much to do with Israel’s or America’s behavior; they have more to do with what these two countries are: free societies,” Wurmser writes. “These upheavals originate in the conditions of Arab politics, specifically in the requirements of tyrannies to seek external conflict to sustain internal repression.… A regime built on opposition to freedom will view free nations, such as the United States and Israel, as mortal threats.” The US and Israeli failure to grasp this reality, along with the Clinton administration’s reluctance to remove Saddam from power, according to Wurmser, has only empowered Arab radicalism. The answer, he argues, is to forcefully reassert US and Israeli power. [Washington Times, 11/1/2000] Entity Tags: David Wurmser Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War December 19, 2000: Clinton Tells Bush His Top Priority Should Be Bin Laden; Bush Says It’s Saddam Hussein InsteadClinton and Bush meeting in the White House on December 19, 2000. [Source: NBC]President Clinton and President-Elect Bush meet for their "exit interview," in a two-hour meeting. [CNN, 12/19/2000] Clinton gives Bush his list of his top five priorities. At the top of the list is dealing with Osama bin Laden. Clinton also discusses the tensions between Pakistan and India, who are threatening each other with nuclear strikes; the crisis in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine; he discusses North Korea; and he discusses Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Bush shakes Clinton’s hand after Clinton wraps up his presentation, and says, "Thanks for your advice, Mr. President, but I think you’ve got your priorities wrong. I’m putting Saddam at the top of the list." [Moore, 3/15/2004, pp. 16-17] Just one day before, CIA Director George Tenet had warned Clinton that al-Qaeda could attack US interests in the next several weeks (see December 18, 2000). In 2003, Clinton will speak about the interview, saying that he recognized Bush felt the biggest security issues facing the US was Iraq and a national missile defense: "I told him that in my opinion, the biggest security problem was Osama bin Laden." [Reuters, 10/16/2003] Entity Tags: Saddam Hussein, George W. Bush, Osama bin Laden, William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade Before January 20, 2001: Pre-Inaugural Discussions about Removing Saddam HusseinThere are discussions among future members of the Bush administration, including Bush himself, about making the removal of Saddam Hussein a top priority once they are in office. After the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke will say that the Bush team had been planning regime change in Iraq since before coming to office, with newly named Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (see December 28, 2000) and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz (see January 11, 2001) taking the lead. “Since the beginning of the administration, indeed well before, they had been pressing for a war with Iraq,” he will write in his book Against All Enemies. “My friends in the Pentagon had been telling me that the word was we would be invading Iraq sometime in 2002.” [Clarke, 2004, pp. 7-9; Unger, 2007, pp. 192] During an appearance on Good Morning America on March 22, 2004, he will say, “[T]hey had been planning to do something about Iraq from before the time they came into office.” [Good Morning America, 3/22/2004] Evidence of pre-inaugural discussions on regime change in Iraq comes from other sources as well. Imam Sayed Hassan al-Qazwini, who heads the Islamic Center of America in Detroit, will tell the New York Times in early 2004 that he spoke with Bush about removing Saddam Hussein six or seven times, both before and after the 2000 elections. [New York Times, 1/12/2004] In 2007, author Craig Unger will write: “In certain respects, their actions were a replay of the 1976 Team B experiment (see Early 1976 and November 1976), with one very important difference. This time it wasn’t just a bunch of feverish ideologues presenting a theoretical challenge to the CIA. This time Team B controlled the entire executive branch of the United States.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 192] Entity Tags: Richard A. Clarke, Imam Sayed Hassan al-Qazwini, Craig Unger, Saddam Hussein, ’Team B’, George W. Bush, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline Category Tags: Key Events Related to DSM, Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade After January 20, 2001: Cheney to Push for Invasion of Iraq for Political Reasons, Personal VendettasVice President Cheney takes office with every intention to push President Bush into invading Iraq. According to an unnamed former subordinate of Cheney’s while Cheney was secretary of defense (see March 20, 1989 and After), Cheney wants to “do Iraq” because he thinks it can be done quickly and easily, and because “the US could do it essentially alone… and that an uncomplicated, total victory would set the stage for a landslide re-election in 2004 and decades of Republican Party domination.” Cheney believes that overthrowing Saddam Hussein “would ‘finish’ the undone work of the first Gulf War and settle scores once and for all with a cast of characters deeply resented by the vice president: George H. W. Bush, Colin Powell, Brent Scowcroft, and Jim Baker.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 182] Entity Tags: George Herbert Walker Bush, Brent Scowcroft, Colin Powell, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, George W. Bush, James Baker, Saddam Hussein Category Tags: Motives, Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade Shortly after January 20, 2001: Pentagon Analysts Replaced With Neoconservative IdeologuesShortly after George W. Bush is inaugurated, “[k]ey personnel, long-time civilian professionals” at the Pentagon’s Near East South Asia (NESA) desk are moved or replaced with people from neoconservative think tanks. [American Conservative, 12/1/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004] Joe McMillan, the Office Director, is moved to a new location outside of the Pentagon, which according to Karen Kwiatkowski, who works at the NESA desk, is odd because “the whole reason for the Office Director being a permanent civilian (occasionally military) professional is to help bring the new appointee up to speed, ensure office continuity, and act as a resource relating to regional histories and policies.” [American Conservative, 12/1/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004; Salon, 3/10/2004] Larry Hanauer, who has long been at the Israel-Syria-Lebanon desk and who is known to be “even-handed with Israel,” is replaced by David Schenker of the Washington Institute. [American Conservative, 12/1/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004] Other veteran NESA employees who are banished include James Russell, who has served as the country director for Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, and Marybeth McDevitt, the country director for Egypt. [Mother Jones, 1/2004] Entity Tags: Marybeth McDevitt, David Schenker, Larry Hanauer, James Russell, Karen Kwiatkowski, Joe McMillan Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Politicization of Intelligence, Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Office of Special Plans January 22, 2001 and After: Neoconservatives Begin Push for Invasion of IraqAn orchestrated push in the media begins to make the case for the need to invade Iraq. The San Diego Union-Tribune reprints a Weekly Standard article by William Kristol and Robert Kagan that tells readers (after comparing President Bush favorably to Ronald Reagan, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Harry Truman, and lauding Bush’s “steely determination”) that US military action “could well be necessary to bring Saddam down.” They write: “At some point, Bush could well find himself confronted by an Iraq armed with weapons of mass destruction. During these past few years, it was relatively easy for congressional Republicans to call for arming and funding the Iraqi opposition. That remains a good idea. But the more sober of Bush’s advisers, like Robert Zoellick and Paul Wolfowitz (see February 18, 1992 and February 27, 2001), have recognized that this alone will not do the trick. Some use of American military force, both from the air and on the ground, could well be necessary to bring Saddam down, no matter how wonderfully the Iraqi opposition performs. Whether he chooses it or not, Bush may quickly be faced with the same decision his father had to make in 1990. He has in his cabinet at least one person who counseled inaction the last time [referring to Secretary of State Colin Powell]. If the crisis comes, Bush, like his father, will not be able to rely only on the judgment of the men and women around him: He will have to act from his own instincts and his own courage.” [Weekly Standard, 1/22/2001; Unger, 2007, pp. 206] In the coming weeks, an onslaught of print and television op-eds and commentaries, some from Bush administration officials, will advocate the overthrow of Hussein (see February 27, 2001, February 16, 2001, April 9, 2001, and July 30, 2001). Entity Tags: Robert Kagan, William Kristol Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Media Coverage, Motives, Politicization of Intelligence, Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Public Opinion on Iraqi Threat January 29, 2001: Bush Tells Muslim Leader Hussein Must GoImam Sayed Hassan al-Qazwini, who heads the Islamic Center of America in Detroit, one of the nation’s largest mosques, meets with President Bush in the White House about the administration’s policy towards Iraq. The president says he supports a policy aimed at removing Saddam Hussein from power, though he does not discuss by what means. “No method was discussed at all,” al-Qazwini will tell the New York Times two years later. “It was a general desire for regime change.” He will also tell the newspaper that he had spoken with Bush about removing Saddam Hussein a total of six or seven times, both before and after the 2000 elections. [New York Times, 1/12/2004] Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Imam Sayed Hassan al-Qazwini Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade January 30, 2001: First National Security Council Meeting Focuses on Iraq and Israel, Not TerrorismThe Bush White House holds its first National Security Council meeting. The focus is on Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [Bamford, 2004, pp. 261] This meeting sets the tone for how President Bush intends to handle foreign affairs. Counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke wants to focus on the threat from al-Qaeda and Islamist terrorism, especially in light of the recent attack on the USS Cole (see October 12, 2000). But Bush isn’t interested in terrorism. [Unger, 2007, pp. 201] Entity Tags: Richard B. Myers, Hugh Shelton, Paul O’Neill, George W. Bush, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, George J. Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, Craig Unger, Iraqi National Congress Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline Category Tags: Key Events Related to DSM, Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade February 2001: Bush: If US Determines that Iraq Is Developing WMD, ‘We Will Take the Appropriate Action’President Bush hosts British Prime Minister Tony Blair at Camp David. Iraq is on the agenda. Bush and Blair tell reporters that they want to restructure the sanctions on Iraq through the United Nations, using what the White House calls “smart sanctions”—sanctions that are designed to constrain the Iraqi government without harming the Iraqi citizenry. The new sanctions are primarily aimed at tightening controls on “dual-use” goods, items that can be used for both civilian and military purposes, and to keep the regime from getting illicit funds from oil smuggling. Bush says: “A change in sanctions should not in any way, shape, or form, embolden Saddam Hussein. He has got to understand that we are going to watch him carefully and, if we catch him developing weapons of mass destruction, we’ll take the appropriate action. And if we catch him threatening his neighbors we will take the appropriate action.” In 2008, former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan will write: “Saddam was viewed more as a ‘problem’ to deal with than a ‘grave and gathering danger’ in the early days. Talk centered on if he was developing WMD, not that he was developing them.” [McClellan, 2008, pp. 93-94] Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Scott McClellan, United Nations, Tony Blair Category Tags: Alleged WMDs, Pre-9/11 Plans for War February 2001 and After: Bush Administration Begins Planning for Regime Change in Iraq“Within weeks” of taking office, the Bush administration begins planning for a post-Saddam Iraqi government. The State Department convenes a series of secret discussions attended by prominent Iraqi expatriates, many with ties to US industries, to plan for a post-Saddam Iraq. The meetings are held in the home of Falah Aljibury, an adviser to OPEC, Goldman Sachs, and Amerada Hess’s oil trading arm. He also served as Ronald Reagan’s backchannel to Saddam Hussein during the 1980s. According to Aljibury, the discussion group, led by Pamela Quanrud, an NSC economics expert, quickly evolves into an “oil group.” The plan they develop is said to represent the views of the oil industry and the State Department. According to the plan, Saddam Hussein would be replaced by some former Baathist general, while the rest of the government would continue to function as before. One of the candidates that is considered to head post-Saddam Iraq is Gen. Nizar Khazrahi (see Between February 2001 and February 2003), who is under house arrest in Denmark awaiting trial for war crimes. “The petroleum industry, the chemical industry, the banking industry—they’d hoped that Iraq would go for a revolution like in the past and government was shut down for two or three days,” Aljibury will later tell reporter Greg Palast. “You have martial law… and say Iraq is being liberated and everybody stay where they are… Everything as is.” [BBC Newsnight, 3/17/2005; Democracy Now!, 3/21/2005; Harper's, 4/2005, pp. 74-76] Entity Tags: Falah Aljibury, Pamela Quanrud, Bush administration, Nizar Khazrahi Category Tags: Motives, Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Pre-war Planning February 1, 2001: Rumsfeld Wants to Get Rid of Hussein in Iraq; Envisions Iraq After Hussein Is GoneThe Bush White House holds its second National Security Council meeting. Like the first meeting (see January 30, 2001), the issue of regime change in Iraq is a central topic. [CBS News, 1/10/2004; New York Times, 1/12/2004] Officials discuss a memo titled “Plan for post-Saddam Iraq,” which talks about troop requirements, establishing war crimes tribunals, and divvying up Iraq’s oil wealth. [ [Sources: Paul O’Neill] Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld interrupts Colin Powell’s discussion of UN-based sanctions against Iraq, saying, “Sanctions are fine. But what we really want to discuss is going after Saddam.” He continues, “Imagine what the region would look like without Saddam and with a regime that’s aligned with US interests. It would change everything in the region and beyond it. It would demonstrate what US policy is all about.” [Suskind, 2004, pp. 85-86 Sources: Paul O’Neill] According to Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, Rumsfeld talks at the meeting “in general terms about post-Saddam Iraq, dealing with the Kurds in the north, the oil fields, the reconstruction of the country’s economy, and the ‘freeing of the Iraqi people.’” [New York Times, 1/12/2004 Sources: Paul O’Neill] Other people, in addition to O’Neill, Bush, and Rumsfeld, who are likely in attendance include Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard B. Myers. [US President, 2/13/2001] Entity Tags: Paul O’Neill, George W. Bush, George J. Tenet, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard B. Myers Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Pre-war Planning, The Decision to Invade, Key Events Related to DSM February 21, 2001: US and British Forces Bomb Iraqi Military Facilities, Leading to Conflict within US Military LeadershipA joint US-British air force strike team bombs 20 radar and command centers inside Iraq, enforcing the UN no-fly zones in the largest air strikes within Iraq in two years. While the White House is informed of the strikes by a general from the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is livid because he feels he hasn’t been given enough information about the strikes quickly enough. Rumsfeld’s information comes to him, by established law and protocol, through the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Henry Shelton; thus it could be hours before Rumsfeld learns of such events. Saying, “I’m the secretary of defense. I’m in the chain of command,” Rumsfeld decides to upend the entire system and ensure that he, not Shelton, will be informed first about any such operations. Rumsfeld presses Shelton for information about the reporting of the air strikes: who had selected those targets and why, who had briefed, who had been briefed, and most importantly, why wasn’t Rumsfeld consulted? CNN had reported air strikes in Baghdad, though the actual bases struck were not in the city itself; it looked for a moment if the US had just declared unilateral war on Iraq. Rumsfeld feels misled and ignored. He is the one in the chain of command, he insists, he is the one reporting to the president, so he should be informed first. Shelton replies that he has to know what’s going on, to know what details to press for and what questions to ask, in order to properly inform the Secretary of Defense, who can then properly inform the president. Rumsfeld insists on being informed before Shelton, and demands a top-to-bottom review of the procedures involving the National Military Command Center (NMCC) and detailed timelines of each incident where Shelton was informed before Rumsfeld. [Woodward, 2006, pp. 22-25] Entity Tags: Joint Chiefs of Staff, Donald Rumsfeld, Henry Hugh Shelton, US Department of Defense, National Military Command Center Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Pre-war Attacks against Iraq Spring 2001: White House Pressures CIA to Drop Objection to ChalabiDuring a White House meeting, Bush administration officials discuss new proposals on how to undermine Saddam Hussein. At one point during the meeting, Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley tells Deputy CIA Director John McLaughlin that the CIA needs to stop bad-mouthing Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi so the Bush administration can work with Chalabi to overthrow the Iraqi government. McLaughlin reportedly makes it clear to Hadley that the agency will not undermine White House efforts to work with Chalabi. Hadley’s pressure on the CIA produces the intended results. Though the CIA will never work directly with Chalabi, the CIA will nonetheless allow the Pentagon to disseminate intelligence reports to other US intelligence agencies based on information from Iraqi defectors supplied by Chalabi’s organization, the Iraqi National Congress. One CIA official later tells author James Risen that the White House message to drop its objections to Chalabi was sent to the CIA “a thousand times, in a thousand different ways.” [Risen, 2006, pp. 183-184] Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, John E. McLaughlin, Ahmed Chalabi, Stephen J. Hadley Category Tags: Politicization of Intelligence, Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade Between March 2001 and May 2001: Richard Clarke: Bush Officials Discuss Creating Casus Belli for War with IraqCounterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke later says that sometime between March and May, Bush administration officials discussed creating a casus belli for war with Iraq. In a 2007 interview with radio show host Jon Elliot, Clarke says: “Prior to 9/11 a number of people in the White House were saying to me you know this—this administration, particularly Cheney, but also Bush [and] people like Wolfowitz in the Pentagon, are really intent on going to war with Iraq. And this was the whispered conversations in the National Security Council staff.… Early, early on in the administration people I knew and trusted in the administration were saying to me, ‘You know. They’re really going to do it. They are going to go to war with Iraq.’ And I was flabbergasted. Why would you want to do that of all the things in the world that one could choose to do?… And how are we going to do it? How are we going to cause that provocation? And there was some discussion of ‘Well maybe [we’ll] keep flying aircraft over Iraq and maybe one day one of them will be shot down.’… And some of the talk I was hearing—in the March, April, May timeframe—‘Maybe we’ll do something that is so provocative and do it in such a way that our aircraft will be shot down.’ And then we’ll have an excuse to go to war with Iraq.” [Jon Elliot Show, 1/11/2007 Sources: Richard A. Clarke] Entity Tags: Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, George W. Bush, Richard A. Clarke Timeline Tags: Alleged Use of False Flag Attacks, Complete 911 Timeline Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade March 2001: US Begins Giving Weapons Training to Members of INCRetired US soldiers give weapons training to members of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), the Iraqi opposition group led by Ahmed Chalabi. The five-day training session takes place in College Station, Texas, and is said to only be the first round of training. The INC has a contract with the Guidry Group, a consulting firm comprised of ex-secret service agents, to learn diplomatic security. Previously, the US backed training for the INC, but limited it only to “non-lethal” activities such as public relations, emergency medical care, and war crimes investigations. But with the Bush administration newly in power, approval has been given to let the INC learn how to use 12-gauge shotguns, pistols, Kalishnikov rifles, and other fire-arms. Retired Gen. Wayne Downing says, “This is significant because this is the first lethal training. It is designed to protect, so the significance is that this is the first time they are being trained to do anything on this level.” Downing, who has been advising the INC for three years, calls the training “a drop in the bucket.” He adds, “This is not the training they will need to put together a liberation army. There you would need individual training, basic training, weapons training, involving anti tank weapons, machine guns, rockets and that sort of thing.” The Washington Post will later call Downing the INC’s “mentor and biggest cheerleader.” [United Press International, 2/12/2001; Washington Post, 11/20/2001] Entity Tags: Ahmed Chalabi, Wayne Downing, Guidry Group, Iraqi National Congress Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade March 2001: Cheney’s Energy Task Force Eyes Iraq’s Oil ReservesCheney’s Energy Task Force authors a variety of documents relating to the oil industries of Iraq, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. [Judicial Watch, 7/17/2003; CBS News, 1/10/2004; New York Times, 1/12/2004] Entity Tags: Richard (“Dick”) Cheney Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline Category Tags: The Decision to Invade, Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Motives March, 2001: Perle Says Hussein Has Weapons of Mass DestructionDefense Policy Board chairman and prominent neoconservative Richard Perle tells the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “Does Saddam [Hussein] now have weapons of mass destruction? Sure he does. We know he has chemical weapons. We know he has biological weapons.…How far he’s gone on the nuclear-weapons side I don’t think we really know. My guess is it’s further than we think. It’s always further than we think, because we limit ourselves, as we think about this, to what we’re able to prove and demonstrate…. And, unless you believe that we’ve uncovered everything, you have to assume there is more than we’re able to report.” Perle fails to offer any evidence of his claims to the senators, and fails to provide evidence from UN inspectors that shows virtually all of Iraq’s WMD stockpiles and programs have long since been destroyed. [Hersh, 2004, pp. 209-210] Entity Tags: Richard Perle, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Saddam Hussein Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Pre-war Attacks against Iraq April 12, 2001: Report on Energy Security Argues US Needs to Review Policy on IraqA report commissioned by former US Secretary of State James Baker and the Council on Foreign Relations, titled “Strategic Energy Policy Challenges For The 21st Century,” is completed and submitted to Vice President Dick Cheney. The report was drafted by the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. Edward L. Morse, an energy industry analyst, chaired the project, and Amy Myers Jaffe was the project’s director. The paper urges the US to formulate a comprehensive, integrated strategic energy policy to address the current energy crisis, which it attributes to infrastructural restraints, rapid global economic expansion, and the presence of obstacles to foreign investment in the oil-rich Middle East. The report says the world’s supply of oil is not a factor in the crisis. “The reasons for the energy challenge have nothing to do with the global hydrocarbon resource base…. The world will not run short of hydrocarbons in the foreseeable future,” the paper says. One of the report’s recommendations is to “[r]eview policies toward Iraq” with the ultimate goal of stemming the tide of anti-Americanism in the Middle-East and “eas[ing] Iraqi oil-field investment restrictions.” Iraq, under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, remains a “destabilizing influence… to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East.” It also notes, “Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export program to manipulate oil markets.” Therefore, the report says, the “United States should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq, including military, energy, economic, and political/diplomatic assessments” and work with key allies to develop a new integrated strategy toward Iraq. Key elements of the new policy should include narrowing the focus of sanctions and using diplomatic means to enforce existing UN resolutions. [University, 4/2/2001 ; Sunday Herald (Glasgow), 10/5/2002; Sydney Morning Herald, 12/26/2002] Entity Tags: Council on Foreign Relations, James A. Baker, Edward L. Morse, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Amy Myers Jaffe, James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy of Rice University Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline Category Tags: Motives, Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade, Key Events Related to DSM Excerpts
May 2001: Feith, Perle, and Wolfowitz Discuss Iraq Invasion; Scowcroft Initially FavorableAccording to FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, “Four months before 9/11”, FBI monitoring overhears Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, Pentagon adviser Richard Perle, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz “discussing with the Turkish ambassador in Washington an arrangement whereby the US would invade Iraq and divide the country.… They were negotiating what Turkey required in exchange for allowing an attack from Turkish soil.” National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, later a critic of the Iraq War, is initially in favor of the plan, but will later drop his support when it becomes clear Turkish demands for control of the Kurdish region in northern Iraq will not be granted. [The American Conservative, 11/1/2009] Entity Tags: Sibel Edmonds, Brent Scowcroft, Douglas Feith, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Paul Wolfowitz Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War Late July or Early August 2001: US Authorities Look into Theory that Iraq Had Role in 1993 WTC BombingLaurie Mylroie. [Source: Publicity photo]US authorities re-open the files on Ramzi Yousef, the convicted mastermind of the WTC bombing in 1993, and begin looking into the theory that Yousef may have actually been an Iraqi agent. Presumably this is in response to requests by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz the month before to look into the matter (see June 2001). Yousef was convicted in 1996 (see September 5, 1996) and has been in custody since 1995 (see February 7, 1995). According to the official version of events, Yousef’s real name is Abdul Basit, a 27-year-old Pakistani who until 1989 was a computer student studying in South Wales. In late 2000, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) published Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein’s Unfinished War Against America arguing in support of the theory that Yousef was actually an Iraqi agent (see October 2000). The book, written by AEI scholar Laurie Mylroie, says that Basit was living with his parents in Kuwait in 1990 when Iraq invaded the country (see November 8, 1990). During the occupation, Iraqis presumably murdered him and his family and then altered police files so Iraqi intelligence could use his identity. [New Republic, 9/13/2001; London Times, 9/22/2001] In February 2001, former CIA Director James Woolsey traveled to Britain in an attempt to find evidence to support this theory (see February 2001). But Mylroie’s theory is debunked by authorities who match the fingerprints of Yousef to those of Basit. [Washington Monthly, 12/2003; Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 81] Entity Tags: Ramzi Yousef, American Enterprise Institute, Abdul Basit, Laurie Mylroie, Paul Wolfowitz Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Neoconservative Influence Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War Summer 2001: IAEA Scientist: US ‘Wants to Attack’ IraqAfter CIA analyst Joe Turner’s presentation to UN atomic energy scientists (see Late July 2001), one of the scientists calls David Albright, a nuclear physicist who runs the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, and warns him that the “people across the river [i.e., the CIA] are trying to start a war. They are really beating the drum. They want to attack.” [Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 37] Entity Tags: David Albright, Institute for Science and International Security, Central Intelligence Agency Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade, Aluminum Tubes Allegation August 6, 2001: Perle’s Concern About Iraq, North Korea, and Iran Before 9/11 Becomes Axis of Evil AfterwardRichard Perle, head of the Defense Policy Board and foreign policy adviser to Bush, is asked about new challenges now that the Cold War is over. He cites three: “We’re concerned about Saddam Hussein, We’re concerned about the North Koreans, about some future Iranian government that may have the weapon they’re now trying so hard to acquire…” [Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 8/6/2001] Note that these three nations are the same three named in Bush’s famous January 2002 “axis of evil” speech (see January 29, 2002). [US President, 2/4/2002] Entity Tags: Richard Perle, North Korea, Iran, Saddam Hussein Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War September 2, 2001: Bush Administration Enthusiastic to ‘Take Down Saddam Once and For All’Time magazine reports, “Enthusiasm is building inside the Administration to take down Saddam once and for all. Powell too would love to see Saddam [Hussein] unhorsed, says an official at State. ‘But you need a serious plan that’s doable. The question is how many lives and resources you have to risk.’” Powell is said to have doubts about how to remove Hussein, and calls such an idea still “hypothetical.” But Time notes that “plenty of others on the Bush team are gung-ho.” [Time, 9/2/2001] Entity Tags: Colin Powell, Saddam Hussein, Bush administration Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade Mid-September, 2001: Cheney and Rumsfeld Create ‘Cabal’ to Influence Foreign PolicyShortly after the 9/11 attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz create a secretive, ad hoc intelligence bureau within the Pentagon that they mockingly dub “The Cabal.” This small but influential group of neoconservatives is tasked with driving US foreign policy and intelligence reporting towards the goal of promoting the invasion of Iraq. To this end, the group—which later is folded into the slightly more official Office of Special Plans (OSP) (see 2002-2003)—gathers and interprets raw intelligence data for itself, refusing the participation of the experts in the CIA and DIA, and reporting, massaging, manipulating, and sometimes falsifying that information to suit their ends. [New Yorker, 5/12/2003] In October 2005, Larry Wilkerson, Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff, will say of the Cabal and the OSP (see October 2005), “What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made. Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.” [Financial Times, 10/20/2005] Entity Tags: Thomas Franks, Paul Wolfowitz, Office of Special Plans, “The Cabal”, Central Intelligence Agency, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Colin Powell, Douglas Feith, Lawrence Wilkerson, Defense Intelligence Agency, Donald Rumsfeld Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran, Domestic Propaganda Category Tags: Alleged WMDs, Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties, Media Coverage, Politicization of Intelligence, Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Pre-war Planning, Propaganda, The Decision to Invade, Aluminum Tubes Allegation, Poisons and Gases, Office of Special Plans, Alleged WMDs, Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties, Media Coverage, Politicization of Intelligence, Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Pre-war Planning, Propaganda, The Decision to Invade, Aluminum Tubes Allegation, Poisons and Gases, Office of Special Plans September 17, 2001: Republican Senator: US Needs to Foment Regime Change in Middle Eastern CountriesSenator George Allen (R-VA) says on CNN that the US needs to consider fomenting regime change in Iraq, Iran, and Syria. [Unger, 2007, pp. 217] Entity Tags: George F. Allen Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, The Decision to Invade, Democracy Rhetoric Autumn 2002: Anthrax Attacks Suspect Hatfill Helps Train US Special Forces while FBI Investigates HimIn autumn 2002, US Delta Force units train on a mobile biological weapons factory to prepare them for dealing with mobile biological weapons factories in Iraq. The factory is just like the factories the US accuses the Iraqi government of having but which it does not have. The chief designer of the factory is Steven Hatfill, who is also the FBI’s main suspect at the time for the 2001 anthrax attacks (see October 5-November 21, 2001). Hatfill began designing the factory while working for Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a contractor for the US military and the CIA. He begins gathering parts to build it in 2000, and construction began in September 2001, at a metalworking plant near Fort Detrick, Maryland. SAIC fired him in March 2002, after he failed to get a high-level security clearance and he came under suspicion for the October 2001 anthrax attacks. But Hatfill continues to work on the half-built factory on his own, for no pay, until it is finished later that year. Once it is done, Hatfill continues to advise the US military about it, and sometimes supervises Delta Force training exercises on it at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. However, at the same time, the Justice Department and the FBI is heavily investigating Hatfill for the anthrax attacks, and there is a conflict between agencies over Hatfill’s continued role with the factory. The FBI wants to confiscate the factory, but the military will not give it up. Its equipment includes a fermenter, a centrifuge, and “a mill for grinding clumps of anthrax into the best size for penetrating human lungs,” according to experts familiar with it. However, its components are not connected and it is never used to make lethal germs. The FBI examines the unit but finds no anthrax spores or any other evidence linking it to the anthrax attacks. [New York Times, 7/2/2003] Hatfill will be cleared of any connection to the anthrax attacks in 2008 (see June 27, 2008). Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), Steven Hatfill, Delta Force Timeline Tags: 2001 Anthrax Attacks Category Tags: Pre-9/11 Plans for War, Alleged WMDs, 2001 Anthrax Attacks September 2002: ’Office of Special Plans’ Created; ‘Stovepipes’ Questionable Intelligence Reports to Office of Vice PresidentWilliam Luti. [Source: Helene C. Stikkel / Defense Department]Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, both staunch neoconservatives, rename the Northern Gulf Affairs Office on the Pentagon’s fourth floor (in the seventh corridor of D Ring) the “Office of Special Plans” (OSP) and increase its four-person staff to sixteen. [Knight Ridder, 8/16/2002; Los Angeles Times, 11/24/2002; New Yorker, 5/12/2003; Inter Press Service, 8/7/2003; Tom Paine (.com), 8/27/2003; American Conservative, 12/1/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004] William Luti, a former navy officer and ex-aide to Vice President Cheney, is put in charge of the day-to-day operations [Guardian, 7/17/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004] , apparently at the behest of Cheney. Luti was, according to former Defense Intelligence Agency official Patrick Lang, a member of Cheney’s “shadow National Security Council.” [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004] Wikeleaks Exposed Bush 1 approved Saddam ‘s invasion of Iraq, then turned tables and made Saddam a neo Hitler. Ron Paul addressed congress about this crime and the start of the 20 years war. More than one million Iraqi deaths since US invasion As part of its campaign to justify a long-term US occupation of Iraq, the Bush administration has increasingly resorted to warning of chaos and even genocide in the wake of a withdrawal of American troops. But a new report suggests that something akin to genocide is already taking place, under American auspices. The British polling agency ORB reported Thursday that the death tool in Iraq since the 2003 US invasion has passed the one million mark.
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William Rodriguez, 9/11 Hero and the last man out of the Towers, with President George W. Bush at White House award ceremony; with Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad at a private 9/11 presentation. “There was a huge explosion in the basement—several seconds BEFORE the plane hit the tower!”Richard RoepkeWilliam “Willy” Rodriguez is the 9/11 hero who helped save hundreds of lives, and the last person to escape alive from the World Trade Center (WTC) Towers. Although the thrust of this narrative is meant to be about the selflessness and nobleness of heroism, be forewarned. In its effort to reveal the essential goodness that resides in the hearts of most human beings, it also inexorably exposes the vilest evil that festers in the minds of a few. Once past the heroism, this story begins to slice through the slimy underbelly of a vile, pathological beast that controls our lives, and gives us glimpses of the innards of this creature that grins gleefully at our gullibility and simple innocence while trampling on our most basic human rights. This story is a wake-up call to all citizens of planet Earth. Decorated Hero Employed at the WTC for 19 years as a maintenance worker, Rodriguez was responsible for the upkeep and safety of the stairwells within the 110-storey North Tower. On the morning of 9/11, Rodriguez was the only person at the WTC site with the master key to the North Tower stairwell doors. [For fire containment purposes, only doors on every fourth level were normally left unlocked.] In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, Rodriguez personally rescued fifteen injured persons from the WTC by leading—often carrying—them to safety. Having evacuated the injured from the basement levels, he rushed back into the tower and led firefighters up the stairwells. Unlocking doors to various floors as they ascended, he aided in the successful evacuation of unknown hundreds of survivors. At great risk to his own life, Rodriguez re-entered the structure three times, and even rescued people trapped between floors in elevator cars by lowering ladders down into shafts. Having helped lead everyone he could find to safety, he finally decided to exit the building. Rodriguez is believed to be the last person to leave the collapsing North Tower alive. He survived the building’s collapse by diving beneath a fire truck, where he lay trapped, completely buried in a mountain of dust and rubble for over two hours. Barely able to breathe, he thought he would “die for sure” under that truck where he was literally entombed. An agnostic, he prayed for the first time in his adult life. As he now unshakably believes, God does listen to heartfelt prayers, and miracles do happen. A policeman who had been standing across the street had caught a fleeting glimpse of Rodriguez as he leapt under the truck a split second before the tower collapsed in an avalanche of debris. It was this officer who later returned with help believing that the man under that truck might still be alive. Rodriguez has been spiritually transformed by this experience and has embraced his faith again with deep reverence. For his outstanding heroism during America’s desperate hour, William Rodriguez received a special commendation for valor from President George W. Bush at a special White House ceremony. And that is the extent of the official story as it pertains to William Rodriguez’s involvement relating to rescue efforts following the 9/11 attacks. But, as you shall see, his incredible heroism was but the tip of the 9/11 iceberg. “Bombs! Bombs!” Heroism and accolades aside, what is truly incredible about Rodriguez’s story is a shocking fact that has been concealed from public knowledge, and remains largely unknown to this day. Rodriguez and a handful of co-workers who were down in the basement at the time of the attack, actually heard and felt huge explosions beneath their feet in the lower basement levels. While this anomaly in itself should have been cause for serious investigation, it is the timing of these explosions that is extremely troubling: They occurred several seconds BEFORE the first airplane impacted the tower. The first of these explosions, which occurred about 7-8 seconds before the plane struck the tower was so powerful it literally threw Rodriguez upwards, clean off the floor, as parts of the false ceiling collapsed onto and around him. Rodriguez heard and felt at least three explosions going off down in the basement levels within seconds of each other. Absolute pandemonium broke out, with screams of “Bombs! Bombs!” rising above the din as terrified workers scattered in all directions, frantically seeking ways to escape. [NB: There were a total of six basement levels. Level-2, immediately below Rodriguez’s position and the apparent location of the first explosion, was a “Mechanical Floor”—a restricted access area.] But the “bombs” were by no means confined to the basement levels. During his subsequent rescue efforts on the upper floors, Rodriguez claims he heard explosions going off “all over the building.” Felipe David, a colleague, who was working at the far end of basement Level-1 across from Rodriguez, fell victim to the second explosion. David was walking towards a supply room when the entire wall suddenly exploded in front of him. Burned beyond recognition, David managed to stagger towards Rodriguez. Willy took one look at the man and froze. The skin on his face had almost completely peeled away exposing raw, pink flesh, and the burnt skin of his outstretched arms was hanging horrifically, “like sheets of loose cloth.” David was the first casualty whose life Rodriguez saved by carrying him up to paramedics at street level, after which he returned to the basement in spite of police orders. The 9/11 Commission Hearing At the closed-door 9/11 Commission hearing, Rodriguez testified under oath that explosions were going off in the basement of the North Tower before the first plane impacted the building. He explained in great detail to the Commissioners the numerous cases of serious injuries he had personally witnessed that were caused by these explosions. He even provided the panel with a list of firsthand witnesses to the explosions, people who were ready to testify under oath. One of the individuals Rodriguez recommended the panel summon was his friend and fellow employee, John Mongello. Mongello was in the lobby of the neighboring South Tower when the first aircraft plowed into the North Tower where Rodriguez was located. It would be another sixteen minutes before the second aircraft would rip into the one Mongello was in. Yet, within a minute of the first plane hitting the North Tower, an elevator in the SOUTH Tower exploded to smithereens right before his eyes! Mongello and others were literally blown backwards by the blast, as people—many, horribly burned—began to run willy-nilly shrieking in pain, shock, and sheer terror. Thick, black smoke could be seen billowing out of the now exposed elevator shaft, and the pungent smell of “gunpowder” was very evident. Again, just as with the North Tower, this explosion occurred inside a building that had NOT YET BEEN STRUCK BY A PLANE! How could a plane crashing into the North Tower possibly have caused elevators in the SOUTH Tower to explode? The esteemed 9/11 Commission never bothered to find out. Worse, and to his utter disbelief, Rodriguez later discovered that his statements were completely omitted from the official record. As a result, not one word of this decorated hero’s startling testimony appeared in the much-ballyhooed 9/11 Commission Report, a document that continues to be touted as “the most detailed, definitive study of the events of 9/11.” Furthermore, Rodriguez was told, quite emphatically, not to speak about the explosions to others until “further investigations” had been carried out. As the world knows, this has yet to happen. As a result of much public pressure, the Commission’s investigation records were finally made public—seven years later, in January 2009. Rodriguez was stunned to find that his testimony was among those marked “restricted,” and thus inaccessible to the public. His crucial evidence remains restricted to this day. Waking Up Naturally, Rodriguez was flabbergasted by the Commission’s clearly suspect actions, but anger at the subterfuge was soon eclipsed by his far deeper anxiety. The bombs. He was convinced beyond a doubt there were explosives planted within the Towers. The official explanation—jet fuel, which is simply kerosene—made no sense at all. Besides, he had overheard many exchanges on firemen’s two-way radios that day that confirmed virtually all the jet fuel had burned off, and the few remaining scattered fires looked like they could easily be knocked out. He was convinced the explosions he had seen, felt, and heard that day were not caused by kerosene. He believed they were caused by deliberately positioned explosives. What cemented his belief and reinforced it even further was something he saw on television the next day: WTC building 7 collapsing into its footprint like a house of cards. In a matter of seconds. [1] He had walked by that building numerous times. WTC7 was a 47-storey steel-framed skyscraper that was located a few hundred feet away from the Towers, and a plane had not even struck it. But, just as with the Twin Towers, it, too, it suddenly collapsed into its own footprint later that very afternoon. The first thought that struck him was, “That building was a fortress. How could it just have fallen like that?” Having experienced the explosions in the North Tower firsthand, and then having seen footage of Building 7 collapse in freefall, there were no doubts whatsoever left in his mind: All three buildings were purposely demolished with explosives. [NB: In regard to WTC7, the 9/11 Commission Report, again, mentioned absolutely nothing about this 47-storey skyscraper’s sudden and unbelievable collapse. Nor did it mention a word about the numerous eyewitness accounts of multiple explosions within that building. Not one word. As with the explosions reported in the North and South towers, the 9/11 Commission Report completely ignored this shocking event as well.] As to who might have planted the explosives, he was at a loss. He couldn’t conceive how the alleged terrorists could have pulled it off; they couldn’t possibly have gained access to these buildings. He was convinced there had to have been other players involved—insiders. He found such a prospect not only ominous in the extreme, but also disorienting and confusing on many levels. Suddenly, nothing seemed to make sense. Only one thought consumed him. Who were the killers? Strange Recollections Having worked at the WTC for close upon two decades, Rodriguez obviously was very familiar with its general layout. The North Tower, in particular, was nigh a second home to him. An extremely affable fellow, Rodriguez had many friends in the WTC community. His days almost invariably began with breakfast with co-workers at the employees’ cafeteria at Windows On The World, the elegant restaurant on the 107th floor. Especially following the 1993 bombing, security in the towers was extremely tight. That was glaringly obvious wherever he went. So how did the culprits manage to gain access? He started to look into the security company in charge of the WTC complex, Securacom, and was more than a little surprised by the identities of two of its top executives. President George W. Bush’s brother Marvin Bush and his cousin, Wirt Walker III, were both principals of the company. Further, he found this very same company was in charge of security at Dulles airport and United Airlines—both central to the attacks. Brushing this curious connection aside as coincidence, he began to wonder about the practical difficulties the perpetrators would have encountered in gaining access to the buildings. He tried to recall having seen any suspicious people, or strange occurrences. Pieces began to slowly come together. He recalled seeing small teams of men in white “HazMat” coveralls busily moving about the building in the weeks preceding the attacks. Their presence didn’t strike him as particularly odd at the time, except for the fact that they used the stairwells almost exclusively and avoided using the service elevators. But he now began to wonder about these men’s real identities and true purpose. One particularly bizarre incident snapped into focus, one that was so frightening he recalls it made his “hair stand up.” A few weeks prior to the attacks, he was working in a stairwell on the 34th floor, which he knew to be completely vacant. Suddenly, he heard the strangest sound—one he’d never heard inside the tower in his nearly twenty years there. It was a powerful, ominous, “rumbling” sound of something extremely heavy being rolled about. It sounded like a “huge metal dumpster on steel wheels, containing something extremely heavy—tons—being rolled around” a floor that he knew to have been totally empty—devoid even of furniture. Yet, Rodriguez categorically maintains there was “someone” on that floor moving some monstrous contraption about. Oddly, he admits to having been gripped by intense fear at the time, but he was having difficulty verbalizing to me the exact nature of his apprehension. While this didn’t strike me as having been a particularly inauspicious occurrence, it was clear he had been deeply affected by it. He immediately reported the incident to the main office, but was reassured it was a vacant floor. Rodriguez was emphatic that he felt so frightened by this incident he didn’t dare open the door to look inside because he literally feared for his life. He intuitively sensed grave danger behind that door, and did his best to avoid the 34th floor thereafter. [NB: It is worth considering that long-term occupancy (and thus control) of a whole floor would have granted occupants virtually unlimited and unobstructed access from all sides to the entire 47-column central core of the tower via the elevator shafts. By sequentially disabling individual elevators for ‘servicing,’ the occupants would have had clear access to the entire 1,350-ft central load-bearing core columns—from the penthouse right down the 6th level basement sitting on bedrock.] Willy does not strike me as a man who can be frightened very easily, and this one anecdote has always intrigued me. The emotions I saw in his eyes, and his body language as he was describing the event were real. I was left with no doubt that what he experienced that day was extremely frightening and deeply impressionable. Man on a Mission I first met Willy in 2004 when he was touring the country with millionaire philanthropist Jimmy Walter. Walter had recently awoken to 9/11 truth, and was an indomitable firebrand. Frenziedly mass-producing DVDs, organizing public events and seminars, and doing everything he possibly could to get the message out to the world, Jimmy was a one-man tour de force on his own mission of truth. Such was his fervor, he once even stood in lone protest outside the White House bearing a placard that read, “9/11 was an inside job.” I recall being greatly impressed by the spectacle of such a wealthy, successful man willingly facing scorn and ridicule by going that far out on a limb in the service of a cause as incendiary as 9/11. Quite a guy, Jimmy. Walter, seeing in Rodriguez the clear mark of authenticity, drive, and commitment, soon took Willy under his wing. Once the two teamed up, Rodriguez was telling his extraordinary story at various public gatherings that Walter was helping to organize. Willy had been “advised” by officials to keep to himself his “different” views on the events of that day, but that wasn’t about to stop him. His deeply traumatic experience and the shocking anomalies he had witnessed simply would not allow him to keep from asking the kind of questions most found exceedingly “uncomfortable”—even outrageously ‘unpatriotic.’ The Dalliance with Politics The White House ceremony had all but guaranteed his meteoric rise to stardom as a national hero. However, his newfound celebrity status would soon have its concomitant obligations. More than a few high-ranking officials had advised him of the “sensitivity” of the times, and told him in no uncertain terms that it would be unwise for him to pursue his disquieting inquiries into “unfounded theories.”. It was proving to be “very embarrassing.” Ironically, at the same time, there was also tremendous support and encouragement being lavished by these very same officials, soliciting his participation on an altogether different agenda: To promote “patriotic unity” and emphasize to the nation the dire need for America to strike back hard at the ‘enemy.’ And things actually got rather intoxicating for a while. Rodriguez the hero was soon inveigled with promises of political office in the Hispanic community, and carrots of all kinds were dangled before him. He found the attempts to win him over by various Republican power-players to be almost overwhelming. The heady publicity had suddenly thrust him onto the national stage, and he was deemed by Party strategists to be the ideal Republican candidate to woo the more than 30 million Hispanic voters in the country. Charismatic, articulate, good-looking, fluently bi-lingual and a national hero to boot, he was a natural—the perfect political candidate. Before joining the WTC staff, Rodriguez had worked for ten years as an aide to New York Governor Mario Cuomo, helping organize press conferences for high-level policy-making events, so he even had the basic political training already under his belt. [He also possessed stage panache to boot. An avid amateur magician, he had worked in his younger days as an assistant to The Amazing Randi.] The Republican Party even made arrangements to send him to train for political office, and offered Rodriguez millions of dollars in campaign financing to run on the national Hispanic platform. For a brief while he was a rising star with stellar prospects. But this titillating new potential career also carried with it a huge price—one, he soon discovered, that was in tension with his probity, and sense of righteousness and duty. It didn’t take him long to decide. He refused to be seduced into concealing a truth he believed the world absolutely needed to know. There was no doubt in Rodriguez’s mind that the official narrative re 9/11 was far from true. He believed it was his patriotic duty to alert his fellow Americans to what actually happened that terrible day. “I had to choose whether to tell the truth, or play their game,” he told me. “I couldn’t get myself to play their game.” Tempting as the alternatives were, the forces of truth had prevailed. Celebrity No More That pivotal decision caused all Republican encouragement and offers of political support to evaporate. The decorated 9/11 hero was now quite suddenly not only a Party pariah, but also persona non grata in the halls of high power. By taking his courageous stand, Rodriguez had unwittingly assumed a very dangerous role, one that would pose a direct threat to powers that lay behind the veneer of party politics. He had just signed his own political death warrant. Naturally, the muzzled media didn’t appear willing to report any of what Rodriguez had to say. As always, they felt obliged to promote whatever the propaganda ministry wanted the masses to believe. It takes enormous courage to go against such opposition, but that’s the kind of man Willy is. He says he owes it to his many friends—more than two hundred of them—who were butchered that day by an evil shadowy group in pursuit of some diabolical geopolitical agenda. Shocked, inconsolable and deeply disturbed to this day, he continues his campaign with extraordinary energy and an admirable sense of purpose. When I suggested it might be time for him to throttle back a notch, he responded, “I can’t. I am driven because I have a need to find out who the real killers are. The alleged Arab hijackers couldn’t possibly have rigged all those explosives. No way.” The Mission Goes Global Jimmy Walter wasted no time financing a “9/11 Truth World Tour” to raise awareness about the 9/11 fraud by first taking the message across America and later, around the world. And money was no object. Not one to approach such a grand and noble undertaking with anything less that total commitment, Walter famously offered a $1 million cash reward to any engineer or scientist in the world who could prove, in an academic technical paper, that the three towers could have collapsed the way they did without explosives. Despite massive national publicity—the million-dollar challenge was even sent to the engineering faculties of over 100 universities, as well as a host of major architectural and structural engineering firms—there were no takers. None. Zero. The prize remains unclaimed to this day. [But is this surprising? How does one prove water isn’t wet?] Walter’s group was comprised of a team of world-class experts: architects, engineers, pilots, firefighters, metallurgists, chemists, and psychologists, among others [2]. The group made a slew of public presentations in major cities across the US before moving on to Europe, and later, Venezuela, Singapore, Japan and elsewhere speaking to packed audiences everywhere they traveled. Walter and Rodriguez even made private presentations to former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. They were surprised to find both these leaders were more than a little knowledgeable about the cover-up. Willy told me that the home of Nicolas Maduro, president of the Venezuelan Assembly, was brimming with books, videos and documents about the 9/11 cover-up. Maduro, Venezuela’s top legislator, intoned that he was ready to create an international investigative committee to look into the “international crime scene” that is 9/11, and that this would be structured via Chavez’s government. Walter and Rodriguez also appeared on every major Venezuelan television and radio station, both private and state-owned, and gave presentations to several universities. They were also scheduled to appear on Chavez’s weekly broadcast ‘Alo Presidente’, but this was canceled at the last minute for unspecified reasons. And things evidently got quite dicey during their trip. Rodriguez discovered that undercover FBI agents on the ground in Venezuela had asked the hotel where he and Walter were staying to turn over a list of names of residents. On hearing this, the Venezuelan National Assembly provided both men armed military protection for the entirety of their trip. A Serious Setback All of these valiant efforts by these two incredibly courageous men eventually amounted to naught. Quite unexpectedly, and inexplicably, all the energy, enthusiasm and momentum they had amassed suddenly appeared to have hit a brick wall. They were informed, rather sheepishly by cohorts of the two leaders, that 9/11 was simply too big an issue to “rush into,” and that it would be advisable to postpone further action to allow time for “more research.” Such is the awesome fear-inspiring power and global reach of the amorphous perpetrators of this monstrous crime. Eventually, in utter frustration at his inability to make any real headway after over three years of tireless effort and colossal expense, and hampered by poor health, Jimmy Walter finally decided to call it a day. That little adventure had cost Walter over $6 million of his personal money. Jimmy’s parting words to me, in 2007, embodied a truth that continues to resonate and gain currency as the years roll by: “Trying to outdo the mainstream media by throwing a few million bucks around is like trying to outshine the sun with a flashlight.” It’s hardly surprising you’ve heard nothing about these men’s heroic initiatives on the local evening “news”—little more than bread and circuses, artfully packaged and insidiously seeded for consumption by the gullible, clueless masses. Witnesses Begin to Drop Dead It wasn’t long afterwards that Rodriguez got his next wake-up call. Kenny Johanneman, another of Willy’s close friends and former WTC colleague, had also been in the basement with him when the bombs were going off. Willy, now working on behalf of the community of Hispanic victims, survivors and their families, had decided to contact everyone he knew who had been present at the WTC that day so he could record their personal experiences on video. During a lengthy interview, Johanneman recounted his experience in great detail, holding back nothing. Johanneman, who had made it his personal mission to tell everyone he knew—and anyone else who’d listen—that he had seen “floors blow up in the basement before the plane hit,” appeared extremely eager (almost nervously so, Willy now recalls) to get his story on tape. Three days after the interview, Rodriguez received the bad news. Kenny Johanneman had suddenly “committed suicide.” Gunshot to the head. This is frighteningly reminiscent of Barry Jennings, the former New York Housing Authority Emergency Coordinator and key 9/11 witness who suddenly died of unknown causes days before the release of NIST’s “amended” report on the collapse of WTC7. Jennings is on record [3] stating, unequivocally and emphatically regarding Building 7, that “explosions were going off all over the place”—while the Twin Towers were still standing! Jennings also stated during an interview that he was “stepping over bodies” in the main lobby of WTC7 as he was being led out by firemen. The lobby, he testified on video, “looked like a bomb had gone off inside it.” [NB: This is virtually identical to John Mongello’s testimony about elevators exploding in the South Tower before a plane even hit that building.] Mr. Jennings, who was known to be in excellent health, also suffered a sudden and mysterious death at age 53. Dylan Avery, a documentary producer, commissioned a private detective to investigate Jennings’ suspicious death (and the subsequent disappearance of his wife and two children). Within days the man returned Avery’s’s check to him and, giving no reason, refused to continue with the case. The latest casualty in the long line of 9/11 expert witnesses to die under suspicious circumstances was Dutch demolition expert Danny Jawenko, president of Exposieve Demolitie BV, a leading Dutch controlled demolition company. Having watched a video of WTC Building 7 suddenly fall at freefall speed, Mr. Jawenko had the courage to stand up and authoritatively assert [4] that he was “absolutely positive” WTC7 was brought down by controlled demolition. On July 18, 2011, while driving home alone in his own car, Mr. Jawenko’s vehicle suddenly accelerated, swerved off the road and crashed into a tree at high speed. Danny Jawenko was killed instantly. The brave individuals mentioned above are just a few of a long list [5] of individuals who have made the ultimate sacrifice. The Mission Ratchets Up During Rodriguez’s long crusade, he also contacted the FBI, but they never followed up on his reports. [It’s almost certain they did, but were probably allowed to take it only so far.] The same holds true with the mainstream media. CNN spent a day interviewing Rodriguez at his home, but when it was broadcast the following day it had been thoroughly edited: they glamorized the heroic rescues and the White House tamasha, of course, but wholly excised anything pertaining to the explosions. It was a total whitewash. Some reporters have subtly warned Rodriguez to keep quiet, as his outspokenness could jeopardize his life. “You don’t know whom you’re dealing with,” one major-network insider told him. But Willy had already defiantly looked death in the face and will probably continue to tell his story, damn the torpedoes. He says he is speaking for his friends who were forever rendered speechless, and adds, “I am living on borrowed time; I probably should be dead anyway.” It’s probably this do-or-die attitude that has imbued Rodriguez with the guts to take his dauntless campaign as far as he has. How gutsy is he, and how far is he willing to go? In 2004 Rodriguez was the lead plaintiff in a RICO lawsuit filed against President George W. Bush and 155 of his henchmen, accusing them of complicity in the 9/11 attacks, conspiracy to commit murder and other crimes. This is hardly the behavior of a man afraid of getting whacked. But don’t hold your breath waiting for a sensational courthouse drama with Dubya sweating it out in the hot seat. The court dismissed Rodriguez’s claims against the USA, DHS, and FEMA, and gave Rodriguez until July 7, 2006 to show cause why his lawsuit should not be dismissed with respect to the other 153 defendants. Due to a falling out with his attorney, Rodriguez failed to do so, and the court dismissed the case. But he’d be the first to tell you this was never about winning. It was about getting the public to wake up to the facts about 9/11—the single most heinous crime and unconscionable fraud ever foisted on the inhabitants of this planet. Preparing For The 10th Anniversary The 9/11 Truth movement is growing almost exponentially, with literally hundreds of groups active worldwide, and more blossoming by the day. But it was a long, arduous process to get to this point. So utterly overwhelming was the initial mainstream propaganda barrage, and so raw were people’s emotions and sensitivities in the aftermath of the attacks, those who were quick to see through the fraud couldn’t even think of organizing a handful of local activists, let alone a worldwide network. Gradually—and thanks almost entirely to the Internet—lines of communication began to open across the country and around the world, helping activists to organize, communicate, build cohesion, and spread the word to the millions still asleep. It was only a matter of time before people would slowly become aware of the mountains of shockingly obvious evidence freely available online—such as videos of WTC7 in freefall [1]. That would be their Eureka moment. Common sense then usually kicks in, and osmosis takes over. After all, there is a limit to denial. [Then again, perhaps not. There will always be those who, even if the perpetrators were to confess to the crime, be tried in court and hanged in the town square, would continue to insist the Muslims did it.] As a result of the steadfast efforts of thousand of dedicated activists, what began as a trickle is now fast reaching torrential proportions. Reaching critical mass is no longer a distant hope. Especially given the millions waking up around the world to 9/11’s odious offspring—the bogus ‘war on terror’, DHS, the militarized police state, the monumental Bankster fraud—critical mass re 9/11 is now imminent, and an absolute certainty. Thousands of activists around the world are helping spread the 9/11 message via public presentations, free DVDs, even huge highway billboards. All too aware of the astonishing rise in public awareness, desperate operations are currently afoot by the ‘powers that be’ to counter this worrisome trend. Major Hollywood stars—including Robert DeNiro—have been signed up to read the fairytale script pushing the ‘Official Conspiracy Theory.’ I.e., how nineteen clueless Arabs who, without tickets or boarding passes, climbed aboard four airliners, hijacked the craft using little box-cutters, and then brilliantly outwitted the most formidable military force on the planet and its entire multi-trillion-dollar defense apparatus for almost two hours—all without a single fighter interceptor in the fearsome American arsenal so much as turning a wheel for the entire duration. This upcoming mass-media pageant, of course, will be further bolstered by the government’s openly proclaimed—and ongoing—assault on 9/11 “conspiracy” groups. Obama’s regulatory Czar, Cass Sunstein, has officially initiated a nakedly aggressive program of “cognitive infiltration,’ an insidious initiative where government agent provocateurs have been ordered to covertly penetrate 9/11 truth groups and attempt to structurally disable these organizations from within by sowing disinformation. One can only wonder why this kind of deep sabotage would be necessary—unless these “conspiracy nuts” now pose a real and present danger to the ‘powers that be.’ But, take heart, dear reader: although truth lives a wretched life, it outlives a lie every time. Every time. Besides, it would take a lot more than a covert program of “cognitive infiltration”’ to dismantle 9/11 truth—that would first require rewriting the laws of physics. On the side of Truth, we have literally thousands of professional architects, engineers, firefighters, pilots, scientists, and other similar groups comprised of professionals with impeccable credentials who are planning their own public relations initiatives [2]. But, in a country where 78% of its citizens get 92% of their news from television, these groups have their work cut out for them. Despite the challenges that lie ahead, I cannot bring myself to agree with Jimmy Walter’s assessment that this would be an undertaking tantamount to “trying to outshine the sun with a flashlight.” Rather, I would prefer to invoke the wisdom of Victor Hugo: “No army can stop an idea whose time has come.” The Power Of One Meanwhile, there is one brave man packing a gargantuan flashlight who’s working wonders on his own. And he dismisses defeat as an impossibility. I was elated to discover that Willy Rodriguez’s relentless efforts are in full swing and about to reap rich rewards. The man is on fire. He’s been reeling off interviews with major media outlets around the world at a ferocious rate, gearing up for a full-blown one-man 10th anniversary assault on the Dark Force. Rodriguez recently mentioned some of the interviews he already has in the bag: Yomiuri Shinbun (Japan), Arbitron (worldwide), Shanghai Morning Post (China), Express News (Pakistan), Global National News (Canada), Telemondo (Latin America), Le Point (France), RT (Russia), Radio Televicion Espanola (Spain), Reuters, and CNN (again). There are many more in the works that will be ready by 9/11/12. [NB: Willy was quick to mention he’d learnt a bitter lesson from his last encounter with CNN—now, he rattles off his responses as seamlessly as possible to deny cutting-room craftsmen their “edit points!”] Rodriguez is also polishing up a brilliant new documentary all his own, “From The Rubble,” which will also be released in time for the 10th anniversary. I recently watched the raw version in its entirety. It’s a brilliant bit of work—profoundly emotive, incredibly detailed, fact-filled and chockablock with riveting interviews with WTC employees, firemen, police officers, paramedics and other first-responders. These are all rescuers who were there, hands-on, in the thick of it, and witnessed the entire tragedy firsthand. Even in its current rough state, I can unreservedly state it’s the most compelling 9/11 documentary I’ve seen to date. Time To Give It Our All Given the appalling trail of deaths of 9/11 witnesses over the past ten years [5], it would make sense that the best way to ensure the safety of surviving key witnesses like Rodriguez and others would, ironically, be for these individuals to continue to stay planted in the public spotlight. Considering the serious threat these brave souls pose to the criminals at large, this might be the only strategy that could offer them a modicum of safety. The more people who know about this brave man, and the many other men and women like him, the greater the chances of thwarting their ‘suicides’ or ‘heart attacks.’ On behalf of every one in the 9/11 Truth movement; in memory of the three thousand Americans who perished needlessly on that tragic day; and the million-plus innocents who have been slaughtered (and continue to be massacred) in distant lands on account of this fiendish fraud; it would be fitting, proper, and necessary to conclude with a message to all those who have awoken to The Big Lie, yet choose to do nothing: Silence is complicity. 1 Army Sgt. Nick Wysong keeps watch as the Army's 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, the last formal U.S. military combat detachment to leave Iraq, stops for fuel south of Baghdad, Iraq, on August 17, 2010. (Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times/MCT) 2 At sunrise, members of the Army's 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, the last formal U.S. military combat detachment to leave Iraq, crossed the Iraq desert a few miles from the Kuwait border in a tactical road march on August 17, 2010. (Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times/MCT) 3 Young Iraqi shepherds wave to members of the Army?s 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry, the last formal U.S. military combat detachment to leave Iraq. (Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times/MCT) 4 Lt. Col. Richard D. Heyward, left, and Sgt. Nick Wysong, right, keep watch as the Army's 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, the last formal U.S. military combat detachment to leave Iraq, crosses the southern desert lands of Iraq on August 17, 2010. (Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times/MCT) 5 After two twelve-hour troop movements, Army Specialist John Ray rests inside a Stryker vehicle as the Army's 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry, the last formal U.S. military combat detachment to leave Iraq, make their way towards the Kuwait border. (Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times/MCT) 6 Army Specialist Tyson Kuwaye lifts Specialist Matt Cullum after they completed a two-day road march with their division, 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry, the last formal U.S. military combat detachment to leave Iraq, to the Iraq-Kuwait border on August 18, 2010. (Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times/MCT) 7 In this Aug. 16, 2010 photo, U.S. Army soldiers from 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment pose with an American flag for a photograph after crossing the border from Iraq into Kuwait. The soldiers from 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, are the last combat brigade to leave Iraq as part of the drawdown of U.S. forces. (AP Photo/ Maya Alleruzzo) 8 At Taji Base outside of Baghdad, Iraq, members of the Army?s 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry, the last formal U.S. military combat detachment to leave Iraq, prepares to leave on August 17, 2010, for the Kuwait border. (Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times/MCT) Osama bin Laden's "Mountain Fortress", shown to the US public by the corporate media, and like Saddam's nuclear weapons, never actually existed. Below a song to the veterans and love ones an old melody but still current to the times. 121 9 A soldier with the Army's 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, the last formal U.S. military combat detachment to leave Iraq, puts down his weapon at Camp Taji, Iraq, on August 15, 2010. (Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times/MCT) 10 A U.S. Army soldier from 2nd Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division waves from his Stryker armored vehicle after crossing the border from Iraq into Kuwait Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2010. The soldiers are part of the last combat brigade to leave Iraq as part of the drawdown of U.S. forces. (AP Photo/ Maya Alleruzzo) 11 Marine Lance Cpl. James Blake Miller, 20, of Kentucky, a member of Charlie Company of the U.S. Marines First Division, Eighth regiment, smokes a cigarette. Miller came to be known as the "Marlboro Man" for this iconic photograph from the Iraq War. (Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times)
13 Tens of thousands of antiwar protesters gather on the National Mall in Washington to protest the war on Iraq Saturday, Jan. 18, 2003. (AP {Photo/Rick Bowmer) 14 Haylee Schimmelpfenneg embraces her father, Sergeant First Class Robert Schimmelpfenneg, after a deployment ceremony for the 3rd Brigade Combat Team in Fort Carson. The soldier deployment from Fort Carson for impending war in Iraq is the greatest since the Vietnam War. (Glenn Asakawa/The Denver Post) 15 Soldiers salute during the National Anthem at the beginning of a deployment ceremony for the 3rd Brigade Combat Team in Fort Carson. The soldier deployment from Fort Carson for impending war in Iraq is the greatest since the Vietnam War. (Glenn Asakawa/The Denver Post) 16 Smoke covers the presidential palace compound in Baghdad 21 March 2003 during a massive US-led air raid on the Iraqi capital. Smoke billowed from a number of targeted sites, including one of President Saddam Hussein's palaces, an AFP correspondent said. AFP PHOTO/Ramzi HAIDAR
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