AMERICANS ARE RUNNING OUT OF
PATIENCE
Sat Nov 19, 2005 16:59
64.140.158.30
AMERICANS ARE RUNNING OUT OF PATIENCE WITH THEIR 'WAR PRESIDENT'
Gen Brent Scowcroft, national security advisor to Bush's father, accused
Bush Jr of being 'wrapped around the little finger' of Israel's PM Ariel
Sharon.
By Eric Margolis
[Award winning author, columnist, and broadcaster Eric S. Margolis has
covered 14 wars.]
WASHINGTON - Who ever advised President George Bush to escape the storm
of criticism he faces over Hurricane Katrina, Iraq, and the Libby CIA
case by flying to Argentina for a free trade summit should be sent in
chains to Guantanamo.
Bush's venture was an embarrassing diplomatic failure and the most
humiliating fiasco faced by a US leader in Latin America since Vice
President Richard Nixon got mobbed in 1958. Bush was left looking
isolated and confused, while his nemesis, Venezuela's boisterous
merengue-marxist leader, Hugo Chavez, rallied Latinos to his side and
gleefully mocked the US president.
Now, Bush has returned to Washington rent by factional warfare, growing
outrage over Bush-Cheney's defense of torture, and new polls showing a
majority of Americans believe the president deceived the US into war.
The long simmering conflict between America's national security
establishment and neoconservative extremists burst into public with the
criminal indictment of VP Dick Cheney's powerful neocon chief of staff,
Lewis Libby, for perjury and obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame
CIA case.
The FBI's Libby investigation could produce a blizzard of embarrassing
evidence of how the White House's necon Praetorian Guard engineered the
US into war. So bad is the mood in Washington, a member of CIA's
founding families calls the neocons 'fifth columnists.'
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief
of staff for 16 years, publicly charged a 'cabal' of neocons had
'hijacked' US foreign policy and had driven the nation into a trumped up
war - what this column has said since 2001. Wilkerson branded the Bush
Administration dangerously incompetent,
The 'cabal,' claimed Wilkerson, included Cheney, Defense Secretary Don
Rumsfeld, and former Pentagon desk warrior neocons Paul Wolfowitz,
Douglas Feith and Richard Perle. These figures are the front men for a
web of neocon lobbyists, think tanks, institutes and media outlets in
Washington.
Gen. William Odom, former chief of the ultra secret National Security
Agency, and a leading military thinker, called Bush's Iraq adventure
'the biggest disaster in the history of the US.'
Even more shockingly, Republican elder statesman, Gen Brent Scowcroft,
national security advisor to Bush's father, accused Bush Jr of being
'wrapped around the little finger' of Israel's PM Ariel Sharon.
Scowcroft has finally said aloud what no one in official Washington or
the media dared to utter. His accusation helps explain much about the
Bush Administration's foreign policies and why they seem so often to
damage rather than promote US interests.
While I was recently in London, leaked cabinet documents shockingly
revealed that shortly before Bush invaded Iraq, he actually told PM Tony
Blair he 'wanted to go beyond Iraq' by occupying Saudi Arabia and
Pakistan. This is the first time we have concrete evidence that two key
US allies were in the White House's crosshairs.
Meanwhile, the FBI, intensifying its war against the neocons, is
investigating two senior officials of the Israel lobby, one of
Washington's most sacred cows, and a necon Pentagon analyst for passing
national security secrets to Israel. Washington neocons are making
frantic efforts to suppress these investigations and depict them as
minor mischance rather than the beginning of a major spy scandal.
CIA is deeply split between professional officers furious national
intelligence was corrupted by Cheney and his neocons to sell the Iraq
war, and a minority eager to tell the White House whatever it desires.
This column has reported for a decade how patriotic CIA officers were
being demoted or fired for daring to oppose the lies being sold by
pro-war neocons.
Moreover, Bush and Cheney now face a Republican and Pentagon revolt over
their disgraceful defense of torture, and possible trouble from the
Supreme Court.
'We do not torture,' Bush insisted from Panama, which his father invaded
in 1989. Of course not, Mr President. You call it 'forceful
interrogation.'
Meaning: being kidnapped, drugged, stripped naked, thrown into a
refrigerated, lightless underground cell, starved, deprived of sleep (a
favorite KGB technique) and sensory contact, covered with urine and
excrement, severely beaten , anally raped, subjected to mock executions,
given hideously painful electrical shocks, and strapped onto a special
board and immersed in water until confessing or drowning.
This is what suspects are enduring in America's secret, outsourced
prisons around the world. Abu Ghraib's horrors were only a foretaste.
Adding to the sense of moral disgrace that hangs over Bible-Belt
Republicans, they are now trying to launch their own criminal
investigation of who leaked reports of secret US prisons in Eastern
Europe most likely Romania, Poland and Bulgaria - instead of demanding
they be shut down at once.
Sen. John McCain, an American war hero, is leading efforts in Congress
to ban torture and compel observance of the Geneva Conventions which
form part of existing American law.
When I was a US GI, we were taught the Conventions were sacred. They
protected all at war, as CIA's renowned former chief in Afghanistan,
Milt Bearden, so brilliantly observed in a recent article.
But those little Torquemadas of the modern Inquisition, Bush and Cheney,
who both dodged regular military service in wartime, claim the Geneva
Conventions are bunk.
Bush actually threatened to veto McCain's bill. Cheney keeps advocating
torture. Even KGB would have been embarrassed. Americans will one day
look back on this period with the same revulsion and shame as they do on
McCarthy's era.
---
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest
in receiving the included information for research and educational
purposes.
VISIT The 911 Special Interest Group blog at
http://911sig.blogspot.com/
----------
FRONT PAGE NEWSMAX
Gen Brent Scowcroft, national security advisor to Bush's father, accused
Bush Jr of being 'wrapped around the little finger' of Israel's PM Ariel
Sharon.
By Eric Margolis
[Award winning author, columnist, and broadcaster Eric S. Margolis has
covered 14 wars.]
WASHINGTON - Who ever advised President George Bush to escape the storm
of criticism he faces over Hurricane Katrina, Iraq, and the Libby CIA
case by flying to Argentina for a free trade summit should be sent in
chains to Guantanamo.
Bush's venture was an embarrassing diplomatic failure and the most
humiliating fiasco faced by a US leader in Latin America since Vice
President Richard Nixon got mobbed in 1958. Bush was left looking
isolated and confused, while his nemesis, Venezuela's boisterous
merengue-marxist leader, Hugo Chavez, rallied Latinos to his side and
gleefully mocked the US president.
Now, Bush has returned to Washington rent by factional warfare, growing
outrage over Bush-Cheney's defense of torture, and new polls showing a
majority of Americans believe the president deceived the US into war.
The long simmering conflict between America's national security
establishment and neoconservative extremists burst into public with the
criminal indictment of VP Dick Cheney's powerful neocon chief of staff,
Lewis Libby, for perjury and obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame
CIA case.
The FBI's Libby investigation could produce a blizzard of embarrassing
evidence of how the White House's necon Praetorian Guard engineered the
US into war. So bad is the mood in Washington, a member of CIA's
founding families calls the neocons 'fifth columnists.'
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief
of staff for 16 years, publicly charged a 'cabal' of neocons had
'hijacked' US foreign policy and had driven the nation into a trumped up
war - what this column has said since 2001. Wilkerson branded the Bush
Administration dangerously incompetent,
The 'cabal,' claimed Wilkerson, included Cheney, Defense Secretary Don
Rumsfeld, and former Pentagon desk warrior neocons Paul Wolfowitz,
Douglas Feith and Richard Perle. These figures are the front men for a
web of neocon lobbyists, think tanks, institutes and media outlets in
Washington.
Gen. William Odom, former chief of the ultra secret National Security
Agency, and a leading military thinker, called Bush's Iraq adventure
'the biggest disaster in the history of the US.'
Even more shockingly, Republican elder statesman, Gen Brent Scowcroft,
national security advisor to Bush's father, accused Bush Jr of being
'wrapped around the little finger' of Israel's PM Ariel Sharon.
Scowcroft has finally said aloud what no one in official Washington or
the media dared to utter. His accusation helps explain much about the
Bush Administration's foreign policies and why they seem so often to
damage rather than promote US interests.
While I was recently in London, leaked cabinet documents shockingly
revealed that shortly before Bush invaded Iraq, he actually told PM Tony
Blair he 'wanted to go beyond Iraq' by occupying Saudi Arabia and
Pakistan. This is the first time we have concrete evidence that two key
US allies were in the White House's crosshairs.
Meanwhile, the FBI, intensifying its war against the neocons, is
investigating two senior officials of the Israel lobby, one of
Washington's most sacred cows, and a necon Pentagon analyst for passing
national security secrets to Israel. Washington neocons are making
frantic efforts to suppress these investigations and depict them as
minor mischance rather than the beginning of a major spy scandal.
CIA is deeply split between professional officers furious national
intelligence was corrupted by Cheney and his neocons to sell the Iraq
war, and a minority eager to tell the White House whatever it desires.
This column has reported for a decade how patriotic CIA officers were
being demoted or fired for daring to oppose the lies being sold by
pro-war neocons.
Moreover, Bush and Cheney now face a Republican and Pentagon revolt over
their disgraceful defense of torture, and possible trouble from the
Supreme Court.
'We do not torture,' Bush insisted from Panama, which his father invaded
in 1989. Of course not, Mr President. You call it 'forceful
interrogation.'
Meaning: being kidnapped, drugged, stripped naked, thrown into a
refrigerated, lightless underground cell, starved, deprived of sleep (a
favorite KGB technique) and sensory contact, covered with urine and
excrement, severely beaten , anally raped, subjected to mock executions,
given hideously painful electrical shocks, and strapped onto a special
board and immersed in water until confessing or drowning.
This is what suspects are enduring in America's secret, outsourced
prisons around the world. Abu Ghraib's horrors were only a foretaste.
Adding to the sense of moral disgrace that hangs over Bible-Belt
Republicans, they are now trying to launch their own criminal
investigation of who leaked reports of secret US prisons in Eastern
Europe most likely Romania, Poland and Bulgaria - instead of demanding
they be shut down at once.
Sen. John McCain, an American war hero, is leading efforts in Congress
to ban torture and compel observance of the Geneva Conventions which
form part of existing American law.
When I was a US GI, we were taught the Conventions were sacred. They
protected all at war, as CIA's renowned former chief in Afghanistan,
Milt Bearden, so brilliantly observed in a recent article.
But those little Torquemadas of the modern Inquisition, Bush and Cheney,
who both dodged regular military service in wartime, claim the Geneva
Conventions are bunk.
Bush actually threatened to veto McCain's bill. Cheney keeps advocating
torture. Even KGB would have been embarrassed. Americans will one day
look back on this period with the same revulsion and shame as they do on
McCarthy's era.
---
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest
in receiving the included information for research and educational
purposes.
VISIT The 911 Special Interest Group blog at
http://911sig.blogspot.com/
----------
FRONT PAGE NEWSMAX
