Mark Robinowitz
Move On dot Org - a sophisticated means to control dissent?
Fri Jan 9 21:41:56 2004
64.140.158.7

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: review of "Uncovered: the whole truth about the Iraq war" - a film that does not mention OIL as a reason for the invasion
Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 15:36:07 -0800
From: Mark Robinowitz mark@oilempire.us

Move On dot Org - a sophisticated means to control dissent?

The Democrats' Trojan Horse for limiting debate
"Uncovered: (not quite) the whole truth about the
Iraq war" - a film that doesn't even mention OIL
as a motivation for the invasion
The Democratic Party wants Regime Rotation (dump
Bush but keep Homeland Security and the War on
Terror), not Regime Change

http://www.oilempire.us/moveon.html
Links on this page:
Uncovered: (not quite) the Whole Truth about the Iraq War
CTSG - MoveOn's website programmers
Regime Rotation versus Regime Change
The Center for American Progress (co-sponsor of
Uncovered) the "liberal, progressive" support for
the war on terror Move On and Impeachment
Move On's Bush in 30 Seconds campaign - screens
out 9/11 issue, apologizes to Republican Party
for comparisons of Bush to the Nazis
Move On's Misleader.Org misleads on 9/11,
Iraq and Homeland Security.

List of interviewees in Move On's UNCOVERED film
- A mix of genuine dissent and duplicity
George $oros, the billionaire behind Move On

Late in 2003, the internet organization Move On
and the Center for American Progress released the
film "Uncovered: the whole truth about the Iraq
war" with a simultaneous showing at more than
2,600 locations across the country. This film is
a systematic deconstruction of many of the lies
that were used to sell the Iraq war, using
interviews with Administration whistleblowers,
intelligence insiders, politicians and other
officials. The film will probably be extremely
effective in re-mobilizing the energy of the
peace movement that had enormous demonstrations
against the war into energy to supporting the
Democratic presidential campaign.

Move On, however, is a curious paradox. The group
is becoming very influential at mobilizing
dissent. Move On is piggybacking on widespread
disgust with Bush while seeking to carefully
circumscribe the range of acceptable debate. It
is also a sophisticated effort to ensure that
this dissent does not probe too deep into the
current realities of the Homeland Security States
of America.

"Uncovered" did a great job in deconstructing
some of the false claims by the Bush
administration to justify the invasion of Iraq.
However, it also disseminated a number of other
lies and blatant omissions.

This movie claims to be "the whole truth" about
the Iraq war, but does not mention O I L as a
motivation for the war. This raises some serious
questions about the film's true purpose,
especially since has a number of CIA agents who
have tactical disagreements with Bush's approach
but still support more wars for empire and oil
domination. Perhaps "The internecine fight
between the Neo-Conservatives and the
Neo-Liberals over Bush's management of the War
that Will Not End in Our Lifetime" would be a
better title for the film. It is not the "the
whole truth" about the Iraq war but instead has
CIA agents staging "limited hang outs" (fessing
up to small crimes to avoid the deeper scandals)
that carefully avoids any of the core reasons for
the war.

The best disinformation is mostly correct, since
that makes the lies more palatable. This
"anti-war" film which urges peace activists to
support the "war on terror" is a phony opposition
to the war.

The ONLY mention of O I L in "Uncovered"

DONALD RUMSFELD So the money's going to come from
Iraqi OIL revenue as everyone has said. They
think it's going to be something like 2 billion
dollars this year, they think it might be
something like 15, 12 next year. They think it
might be something like 18 to 20 plus the next,
19?
VOICE 19.
RUMSFELD -the next year.
GEORGE W. BUSH I will soon submit to Congress a request for 87 billion dollars.

The only other location in the film's transcript
where the letters "o i l" are found together is:

JOE WILSON What you're doing when you expose a
CIA officer, of any name, you're basically taking
their entire career and flushing it down the tOILet.

Omissions in Uncovered

The most amazing fact about Uncovered is that it
did not even hint at OIL as a factor in the war.
There was no mention of the economic battle
between petro-dollars and petro-euros (Iraq had
started selling its oil in Euros, which
threatened to undermine the dollar). In the long
run, the worst omission is the failure to discuss
the fact that we are near, if not at, the peak of
global oil production, since that is the reason
the US has not designed an "exit strategy" -- the
occupation (and eventual replacement by a puppet
regime) will continue for the remaining decades
of the Petroleum Era.

While a one hour film is inadequate to discuss
all of the aspects of a very complex issue, to
avoid any mention of OIL as a motivation for the
war raises serious questions about Move On and
their allies (and their funders' political goals).

An obvious lie from the Bush regime that should
have been included was the May 2003 claim that
the war was over. Bush was flown to an aircraft
carrier off the coast of San Diego to be
photographed in front of a banner stating
"Mission Accomplished." This is probably the most
ridiculous visual from the regime that could be
pilloried as blatant propaganda.

Uncovered did not include any discussion of US
war crimes against civilians and the military
murder of journalists, nor did it discuss the
Pentagon's use of uranium tipped weapons
(euphemistically called "depleted uranium"),
which will cause disease and death for
generations to come. Dropping uranium weapons is
a form of genocide (the Genocide convention
prohibits "Imposing measures intended to prevent
births within the group," and uranium weapons
used in the 1991 Gulf War have already caused
substantial numbers of severe birth defects among
Iraqi children). US strategies against civilians
resemble Israeli "collective punishment" waged
against the Palestinian population - and it is
well documented that the American and Israeli
militaries are strategizing together to perfect
the new occupation.

Lies in Uncovered

The most blatant lie perpetuated in Uncovered is
that peace activists should support the war on
terror (as opposed to the supposedly separate
invasion of Iraq). This is a very curious
position for a "peace" organization to advocate,
because (1) the "war on terror" is based on the
false claim that 9/11 was a surprise attack and
(2) the "terror" war and the invasion of Iraq are
part of the same global domination strategy. See
http://www.oilempire.us/911why.html#puzzle for
more on this connection.

Canadian journalist and media commentator Barrie
Zwicker, whose film The Great Deception is the
single best documentary on 9/11, made these
comments on April 21, 2003 at premier showing of
"Aftermath: Unanswered Questions from 9/11,"
San Francisco, CA -
http://www.oilempire.us/movies.html

My offering is that 9/11 was what the
anarchist Bakunin called "the propaganda of the
act." That it was "Reichstag Fire 2001." That it
was the greatest deception of its kind ever
foisted. And that's saying something, in light of
the long and totally-neglected history of this
kind of war-triggering deception perpetrated by
powerful special interests to sway public opinion
in favour of deadly agendas that almost always
result in serious grief for just about everyone.
My offering is that 9/11 was arranged to
jump start the so-called war on terrorism, which
in turn is the cover and heat exchanger for hot
wars, these being the toxic tip of the machinery
for world domination. At the levers is a clique
of neocons that has hijacked this country's
foreign policy at the behest largely and to the
benefit mainly of Big Arms and Big Oil, with the
rest of the worst at the top, giving the
thumbs-up and boarding the gravy train.

Obviously, Move On wants the peace movement to
"Move On" from allegations that Bush let 9/11
happen, or worse, was complicit in the attacks.

Move On claims that the Bush administration
decision to invade Iraq was made after 9/11. In
reality, the Bush administration made up its mind
to seize Iraq before they stole the White House.
"Rebuilding Ameirca's Defenses," a September 2000
report from the Project for a New American
Century -- essentially the blueprint for the
current wars -- stated that the US should attack
Iraq and occupy the Middle East, even if Saddam
Hussein was deposed.
http://www.oilempire.us/pnac.html

Iraq is a critical part of the PNAC plan for
world conquest, and the main question now is
which country will be the next target. Will it be
Iran or North Korea (the other member of the
so-called "Axis of Evil"), Syria (perhaps the
preferred target of Israel), or Saudi Arabia (the
only country that still has spare capacity to
increase daily oil extraction rates, which have
become more critical as a resource now that the
world has arrived at peak oil, Iraqi oil
production is a shambles and the hoped for
Saudi-sized oil riches of Central Asia now seem
to have been exaggerated by about 80%).

While the unresolved conflict with Iraq
provides the immediate justification, the need
for a substantial American force presence in the
Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam
Hussein. ...
In the post-Cold War era, America and its allies,
rather than the Soviet Union, have become the
primary objects of deterrence and it is states
like Iraq, Iran and North Korea who most wish to
develop deterrent capabilities. Projecting
conventional military forces or simply asserting
political influence abroad, particularly in times
of crisis, will be far more complex and
constrained when the American homeland or the
territory of our allies is subject to attack by
otherwise weak rogue regimes capable of cobbling
together a miniscule ballistic missile force.
Building an effective, robust, layered, global
system of missile defenses is a prerequisite for
maintaining American preeminence.

- Project for a New American Century

The PNAC report, which was signed by many of the
top officials of the Bush regime, also made this
bold prediction exactly a year before 9/11:

"The process of [military] transformation,
even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely
to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and
catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor."

Zbigniew Brzezinski, who serves in the Carter,
Reagan and Bush (the First) administrations,
wrote a book in 1997 titled "The Grand
Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic
Imperatives"that stated that the US should
control the world, and to do that would require
controlling Eurasia. This goal would give the US
control over most of the world's energy reserves,
and it predicted that the US would be engaged in
war precisely where we have embarked on World
War. However, he knew that this task would not be
universally popular, as shown by this conclusion:

"Moreover, as America becomes an
increasingly multicultural society, it may find
it more difficult to fashion a consensus on
foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance
of a truly massive and widely perceived direct
external threat."

Brzezinski still has considerable influence in
both imperial political parties, and his book is
one of many pieces of evidence that the
establishment has planned the takeover of the
Middle East oil fields for a long time. 9/11
merely provided the political pretext and the
psychological shock to permit these invasions to
take place.


Uncovered echoed the tired, false official claims
that 9/11 was a surprise attack. While Move On's
"misleader.org" division has published a report
that shows that the Bush administration did have
some prior knowledge of the "attack," that report
still doesn't go beyond the "incompetence" theory
of 9/11. After more than two years of leaks,
connecting the dots, and numerous serious
independent investigations it is clear that the
only possible accurate debate would be whether
the Bush regime merely let 9/11 happen for
political benefits or actually engineered the
attacks. Discussion of whether Bush's assistants
were lying when they claimed that they couldn't
have envisioned a plane-into-building scenario
are a distraction from deeper, more compelling
evidence of complicity, especially since the CIA
and National Reconnaissance Office were
practicing a plane-into-building emergency
exercise in Virginia on the morning of 9/11.
http://www.oilempire.us/911.html

A much better film about US / Iraq relations

Hidden Wars of Desert Storm
http://hiddenwars.com -- official site for the film

Acclaimed by the NY Times as an "uncommonly
sober, well-researched film", "Hidden Wars of
Desert Storm" investigates the origins of the
Gulf War, explains the US Gov.'s specific motives
in going at war in 1991 and exposes the
mechanisms of war-profiteering that seem destined
to shape US foreign policies time after time. The
doc also covers the Pentagon's use of radioactive
ammunitions in the Gulf and their impact on both
the local populations and allied forces.
Find out today why this incredible, award-winning
documentary has been shown and acclaimed in well
over 30 countries including all of Europe but has
been forcefully shuned by all the US mainstream
media. Featuring exclusive interviews of Norman
Schwarzkopf, Ramsey Clark, Denis Haliday and
Scott Ritter as well as unseen before war footage
and documents. Narrated by John Hurt. (60
minutes) $19.95 + s&h
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/store/videos.html

Regime Rotation

MoveOn is a core part of the Democratic party
wing of the establishment to co-opt and muzzle
dissent, an effort to support the CIA's fight
with the Bush administration to ensure that
dissent stays limited enough to ensure "regime
rotation" instead of "regime change" in November.

Regime Rotation consists of unseating Bush but
replacing him with another President who will
continue the empire's global domination efforts,
although with more tact, better speeches and a
few token distractions for domestic and
international opinion increasingly opposed to the
Bush regime's outrages.

Regime Rotation exposes the war on Iraq as a
deception, but not the September 11 "Reichstag
Fire." Regime rotation recommends that 9/11 be
seen as a result of incompetence and / or lack of
coordination by the intelligence agencies (which
only need more billions and less restrictions to
ensure it won't happen again), even though there
is an enormous amount of evidence that 9/11 was
an "inside job."

Regime Rotation wants to keep the occupation of
Iraq going. The three main opposition candidates
- Clark, Dean and Kerry - all support keeping
troops in the oil fields, although they state
that the invasion was a mistake. A Democratic
victory in November would allow Bush and the
Project for a New American Century
"neo-conservatives" to have done the dirty work
getting the oil wars going (and "homeland
security" to be installed for addressing domestic
dissent as the economy continues to unravel), and
allow the "Good Cop" of a Democrat to continue
the war with less domestic opposition, UN
blessing and European money and soldiers. These
oil wars are the United States's response to peak
oil, and will continue as long as the oil lasts
(Cheney calls it the war that will not end in our
lifetime) or until the US is willing to undertake
a massive reduction of energy consumption and
investment of resources into a more locally
based, renewable energy society.

http://www.counterpunch.org/