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Explosive BBC Documentary Exposes Decades-Old Neocon Deceits
(Thom Hartmann, 12-28-04)
What if there really was no need for much - or even most - of the Cold War? . . . What if, in fact, the Cold War had been kept alive for two decades based on phony WMD threats? . . . What if, similarly, the War On Terror was largely a scam, and the administration was hyping it to seem larger-than-life? . . . What if our "enemy" represented a real but relatively small threat posed by rogue and criminal groups well outside the mainstream of Islam? . . . What if that hype was done largely to enhance the power, electability, and stature of George W. Bush and Tony Blair? . . .
And what if the world was to discover the most shocking dimensions of these twin deceits - that the same men promulgated them in the 1970s and today? . . . It happened. . . . The myth-shattering event took place in England the first three weeks of October, when the BBC aired a three-hour documentary written and produced by Adam Curtis, titled "The Power of Nightmares http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/3755686.stm . . . According to this carefully researched and well-vetted BBC documentary, Richard Nixon, following in the steps of his mentor and former boss Dwight D. Eisenhower, believed it was possible to end the Cold War and eliminate fear from the national psyche. The nation need no longer be afraid of communism or the Soviet Union. . . . On June 1, 1972, Nixon gave a speech in which he said, "We have begun to reduce the level of fear, by reducing the causes of fear-for our two peoples, and for all peoples in the world." . . . Without fear, how could Americans be manipulated? Rumsfeld and Cheney began a concerted effort - first secretly and then openly - to undermine Nixon's treaty for peace and to rebuild the state of fear and, thus, reinstate the Cold War. And these two men - 1974 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Ford Chief of Staff Dick Cheney - did this by claiming that the Soviets had secret weapons of mass destruction that the president didn't know about, that the CIA didn't know about, that nobody but them knew about. And, they said, because of those weapons, the US must redirect billions of dollars away from domestic programs and instead give the money to defense contractors for whom these two men would one day work. . . . The CIA strongly disagreed, calling Rumsfeld's position a "complete fiction" and pointing out that the Soviet Union was disintegrating from within, could barely afford to feed their own people, and would collapse within a decade or two if simply left alone. But Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted Americans to believe there was something nefarious going on, something we should be very afraid of. To this end, they convinced President Ford to appoint a commission including their old friend Paul Wolfowitz to prove that the Soviets were up to no good. . . . According to Curtis' BBC documentary, Wolfowitz's group, known as "Team B," came to the conclusion that the Soviets had developed several terrifying new weapons of mass destruction, featuring a nuclear-armed submarine fleet that used a sonar system that didn't depend on sound and was, thus, undetectable with our current technology. . . . "What Team B accused the CIA of missing was a hidden and sinister reality in the Soviet Union. Not only were there many secret weapons the CIA hadn't found, but they were wrong about many of those they could observe, such as the Soviet air defenses. The CIA were convinced that these were in a state of collapse, reflecting the growing economic chaos in the Soviet Union. Team B said that this was actually a cunning deception by the Soviet régime. The air-defense system worked perfectly. But the only evidence they produced to prove this was the official Soviet training manual, which proudly asserted that their air-defense system was fully integrated and functioned flawlessly. The CIA accused Team B of moving into a fantasy world." . . . Although Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld's assertions of powerful new Soviet WMDs were unproven - they said the lack of proof proved that undetectable weapons existed - they nonetheless used their charges to push for dramatic escalations in military spending to selected defense contractors, a process that continued through the Reagan administration. . . . But, trillions of dollars and years later, it was proven that they had been wrong all along, and the CIA had been right. Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz lied to America in the 1970s about Soviet WMDs. . . . As arms-control expert Cahn noted in the documentary of those 1970s claims by Wolfowitz, Cheney, and Rumsfeld: "I would say that all of it was fantasy. I mean, they looked at radars out in Krasnoyarsk and said, 'This is a laser beam weapon,' when in fact it was nothing of the sort. ... And if you go through most of Team B's specific allegations about weapons systems, and you just examine them one by one, they were all wrong." . . . "INTERVIEWER: All of them? . . . "CAHN: All of them. . . . "INTERVIEWER: Nothing true? . . . "CAHN: I don't believe anything in [Wolfowitz's 1977] Team B was really true." . . . But the neocons said it was true, and organized a group - The Committee on the Present Danger http://www.fightingterror.org - to promote their worldview. The Committee produced documentaries, publications, and provided guests for national talk shows and news reports. They worked hard to whip up fear and encourage increases in defense spending, particularly for sophisticated weapons systems offered by the defense contractors for whom neocons would later become lobbyists. . . . And they succeeded in recreating an atmosphere of fear in the United States, and making themselves and their defense contractor friends richer than most of the kingdoms of the world. . . . The Cold War was good for business, and good for the political power of its advocates, from Rumsfeld to Reagan. . . . Similarly, according to this documentary, the War On Terror is the same sort of scam, run for many of the same reasons, by the same people. And by hyping it - and then invading Iraq - we may well be bringing into reality terrors and forces that previously existed only on the margins and with very little power to harm us. . . . Curtis' documentary suggests that the War On Terror is just as much a fiction as were the super-WMDs this same group of neocons said the Soviets had in the 70s. He suggests we've done more to create terror than to fight it. That the risk was really quite minimal (at least until we invaded Iraq), and the terrorists are - like most terrorist groups - simply people on the fringes, rather easily dispatched by their own people. He even points out that Al Qaeda itself was a brand we invented, later adopted by bin Laden because we'd put so many millions into creating worldwide name recognition for it. . . . It's the story of idealism gone wrong, of ideologies promoted in the US by Leo Strauss and his followers (principally Wolfowitz, Feith, and Pearle), and in the Muslim world by bin Laden's mentor, Ayman Zawahiri. Both sought to create a utopian world through world domination; both believe that the ends justify the means; both are convinced that "the people" must be frightened into embracing religion and nationalism for the greater good of morality and a stable state. Each needs the other in order to hold power. . . . For those who prefer to read things online, an unofficial but complete transcript is on this Belgian site http://www.acutor.be/silt/index.php?id=573 . . . But be forewarned: You'll never see political reality - and certainly never hear the words of the Bush or Blair administrations - the same again.

Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk show. http://www.thomhartmann.com

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posted by LoZo 1:00 PM

 

Women 'bearing the brunt of war'
(BBC NEWS, 8 December 2004)
Amnesty International says women and girls are being targeted in conflicts around the world while the authorities do little or nothing to prevent it. . . . In a report called Lives Blown Apart, the organisation says these crimes persist because those who commit them know prosecutions are rare. . . . Despite promises, treaties and legal mechanisms, governments have failed to protect women and girls, Amnesty says. . . . It cites conflicts in Colombia, Iraq, Sudan, Chechnya, Nepal and Afghanistan. . . . The human rights group says its investigations have found that violence against women is not just a by-product of war, but often a deliberate military strategy, with women particularly targeted in ethnic cleansing campaigns. . . . "Women and girls are not just killed, they are raped, sexually attacked, mutilated and humiliated," said Irene Khan, secretary general of Amnesty International. . . . "By attacking the women you are attacking the honour of your enemy, you demoralise the men, you scare people into running away," she said. . . . In addition to women being deliberately targeted, they are also the main victims of so-called "collateral damage" [which Colin Powell doesn't think is even worth noting], by "precision" bombing or landmines, says the report. . . . It says social restrictions on their mobility or domestic responsibilities may mean women are less able to flee when the civilian population comes under fire. . . . The study lists 36 current conflicts in which women are being targeted by male combatants. . . . In Colombia, the report says women have been horrifically attacked by both sides in the civil conflict. . . . In the Indian state of Gujarat, in clashes between Hindus and Muslims, pregnant women had the babies cut out of their wombs. . . . And in the conflict in Liberia, between 60% and 70% of women suffered some sort of sexual assault. . . . Ms Khan is calling on world leaders to "do more than just make pious statements condemning rape and sexual violence". . . . "We have to mobilise global outrage - to challenge the violence, support those women who suffer and put pressure on those who can bring about change."

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posted by LoZo 11:14 AM