America's Many Wars

America's Entangling Alliances in the Middle East
(U.S. Congressman Ron Paul, Media Monitors Network, April 13, 2002)
The current Middle-East crisis is one that we helped create . . . Political pressure compels us to support Israel, but it is oil that prompts us to guarantee security for the western puppet governments of the oil-rich Arab nations. . . . The information the average American gets from the major media outlets, with their obvious bias, only makes the problem worse. Who would ever guess that the side that loses seven people to every one on the other side is portrayed as the sole aggressor and condemned as terrorists? We should remember that Palestinian deaths are seen by most Arabs as being American-inspired, since our weapons are being used against them, and they're the ones whose land has been continuously taken from them. . . . Yet there are still some in this country who can't understand why many in the Arab/Muslim world hate America. . . . we are in the middle of a war that has no end and serves only to divide us here at home . . . It is amazing that the clamor of support for Israel here at home comes from men of deep religious conviction in the Christian faith, who are convinced they are doing the Lord's work. That, quite frankly, is difficult for me as a Christian to comprehend. We need to remember the young people who will be on the front lines when the big war starts- which is something so many in this body seem intent on provoking. . . . Special interests control our policies, while true national security is ignored. . . . the financial interests of corporations, bankers, and the military-industrial complex gain control- and the American people lose. . . . A world war is a possibility that should not be ignored. Our policy of subsidizing both sides is ludicrous. We support Arabs and Jews, Pakistanis and Indians, Chinese and Russians. We have troops in 140 countries around the world just looking for trouble. Our policies have led us to support Al Qaeda in Kosovo and bomb their Serb adversaries. We have, in the past, allied ourselves with bin Laden, as well as Saddam Hussein, only to find out later the seriousness of our mistake. Will this foolishness ever end?

U.S. Military Spending Clock
The following link will take you to a fast-moving digital "clock" that displays a dollar figure that represents U.S. military spending since the start of Fiscal Year 2001. Every minute the U.S. spends another $589,802.00 on the military, which is 51.3% of the discretionary federal budget.
WARNING: If you have a faint heart you may not want to see how quickly the amount you paid in federal taxes disappeared down the black hole of war expenditures.

The above link will take you to a fast-moving digital "clock" that displays a dollar figure that represents U.S. military spending since the start of Fiscal Year 2001. Every minute the U.S. spends another $589,802.00 on the military, which is 51.3% of the discretionary federal budget.
WARNING: If you have a faint heart you may not want to see how quickly the amount you paid in federal taxes disappeared down the black hole of war expenditures.

Reasonable doubts: The truth about 9/11
53 Minute RealVideo program that shocked Canada (not shown in the U.S.)
VisionTV Insight: Mediafile host Barrie Zwicker raised a number of questions - and eyebrows - in a series of controversial commentaries suggesting the official narrative for the events of Sept. 11 was "frankly implausible." Apparently, he wasn't the only one with serious doubts. . . . Ruppert, a former LAPD narcotics investigator who claims to have discovered the CIA trafficking in drugs in 1977, uses government documents, insider books and reports, congressional records and mainstream press reports to further his hypothesis that the American government was warned about the Sept. 11 attacks.

Uncle Sam's lucky finds
(Anne Karpf, The Guardian, March 19, 2002)
Think back over the past six months and it becomes ineluctable: never in the history of modern warfare has so much been found so opportunely. . . . It started the day after the attacks on the twin towers, with the discovery of a flight manual in Arabic and a copy of the Koran in a car hired by Mohammed Atta and abandoned at Boston airport. . . . In less than a week came another find, two blocks away from the twin towers, in the shape of Atta's passport. We had all seen the blizzard of paper rain down from the towers, but the idea that Atta's passport had escaped from that inferno unsinged would have tested the credulity of the staunchest supporter of the FBI's crackdown on terrorism. . . . Yet we were still in the infancy of coincidence. . . . the belongings of alleged terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui threw up a cropdusting manual, while four days later came Atta's suicide note, the one with the counsel to shine your shoes before you meet your maker - a piece of advice which seemed suspiciously Norman Rockwellesque. . . . Of course you could interpret these discoveries differently. You could detect in them the clear hand of American propaganda.

Killing For The Flag - "The U.S. is the most prolific terrorist force in the world"
Tom Wheeler, Jason McQuinn, and Chuck Munson, Alternative Press Review, March 17, 2002)
The U.S. is the only nation-state to have been condemned by the World Court for international terrorism. . . . The U.S. government is the primary financier and arms supplier for the decades-long Israeli war against the entire Palestinian people. The U.S. armed forces and U.S. organized and/or financed ally or proxy forces have killed millions upon millions of civilians since the end of World War II. This is the not-so-hidden meaning of the Stars and Stripes as the vast majority of people around the world understand it. . . . in the late Twentieth Century and the beginning of the Twenty-first Century it is the United States of America that, by its own definition, is the most prolific terrorist force in the world. . . . This is, of course, a recipe for perpetual war, which is as well understood by President Bush and the other architects of the "New World Order," as it was by the architects of a similar project of world empire that was proudly proclaimed the Third Reich, under a flag with a similarly not-so-hidden meaning. . . . It is under conditions of war that the campaign to defeat the anti-globalization movement can be fought with increasingly militant and dirty tactics. It is under wartime conditions that all opponents of U.S. policies anywhere in the world, including within the U.S. itself, can be most easily labeled "terrorist," at the same time that the mass media can be most easily mobilized as a total propaganda machine. . . . Even with the full complicity of the mainstream U.S. media in its efforts to promote perpetual war, dissatisfaction and dissension will once again arise, until even the biggest, most impressive American flags fail to cover up all the crimes against innocent men, women and children throughout the world required to keep the empire of American capitalism growing.

WTC Targeted On 1999 FEMA 'Terror' Book Cover
From Harry Hagedorn 3-15-2002
I thought you might find these two book covers interesting. We get all kinds of manuals here at my agency, this one came from FEMA. Notice the date on Emergency Response to Terror - June 1999. After 9-11, we got a notice from FEMA to tear the covers off of all of these.

U.S. Works Up Plan for Using Nuclear Arms
(Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times, March 9, 2002)
The secret report, which was provided to Congress on Jan. 8, says the Pentagon needs to be prepared to use nuclear weapons against China, Russia, Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya and Syria. It says the weapons could be used in three types of situations: against targets able to withstand nonnuclear attack; in retaliation for attack with nuclear, biological or chemical weapons; or "in the event of surprising military developments." . . . "They're trying desperately to find new uses for nuclear weapons, when their uses should be limited to deterrence," said John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World. "This is very, very dangerous talk . . . Dr. Strangelove is clearly still alive in the Pentagon." . . . The report says the Pentagon should be prepared to use nuclear weapons in an Arab-Israeli conflict, in a war between China and Taiwan, or in an attack from North Korea on the south. They might also become necessary in an attack by Iraq on Israel or another neighbor, it said.

The aftermath of war
(Paul Rogers, OpenDemocracy.net, 27 February 2002)
The situation in Afghanistan is becoming steadily more problematic. Regional warlords compete for power and influence, and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is very much limited to Kabul. . . . There is continuing violence, especially in the south and east of the country, and there have been further movements of refugees across the border into Pakistan. The aid agencies had been hoping the opposite - that existing refugees would feel sufficiently secure to return to their homes. . . . it is even being recognised in Washington that a deeply unstable and fragmented country will provide precisely the right environment for the Taliban to reappear and even allow some al-Qaida presence as well. . . . the war in Afghanistan has taken a heavy, if largely unreported, toll on military equipment. A range of aircraft is being used at far above their expected utilisation rates. . . . The sheer pressure of activities has resulted in a doubling of the accident rates compared with a year ago, with the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps all facing significant problems. . . . there are plenty of indications that the forces are starting to be built up for a confrontation with Iraq, with armaments companies reaping the benefits of substantial new contracts. Boeing, for example, is currently getting $30 million a month for producing the Joint Direct Attack Munition, a kit that converts so-called "dumb" bombs into satellite-guided munitions. . . . Recent events in five other countries relate to wider aspects of the developing conflict. In the Philippines, the United States lost a helicopter and ten soldiers to unknown causes as it started its programme of putting in 600 special forces and support personnel to aid the Philippine government . . . The United States has recently commenced intelligence-gathering flights over the southern Philippines, operating out of bases such as Okinawa. US Navy planes have also commenced similar flights over Somalia, where P-3 Orion aircraft have been flying missions from a base in Oman. . . . He [Columbia's President] has recently requested that US military aid provided to control drug production be diverted to counter-insurgency operations, and the new US defence budget includes substantial assistance in ensuring the security of a key oil pipeline. There are currently about 400 US personnel assisting the government in Colombia. The majority of them are military, but they include 100 "civilian military contractors". . . . Although links are claimed between al-Qaida and the Philippine rebels, there are no connections with FARC in Colombia or the Maoist insurgents in Nepal. Much more directly related to Afghanistan and the 11 September attacks is the movement of US forces into the unstable Caucasian state of Georgia. Last Wednesday, two US military aircraft arrived in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, carrying around 40 US military personnel including special forces troops and logistic specialists. . . . None of this will be readily accepted by Moscow . . . Following the closure of many nuclear weapon production facilities in the 1990s, partly on grounds of safety, the Bush Administration's Nuclear Posture Review now recommends accelerating development of a new plant to manufacture the plutonium cores of nuclear weapons. An additional $15 million has been allocated to enable the Nevada Nuclear Test Site to be readied for further tests. . . . Furthermore, the Posture Review calls for initial work on a new Intercontinental Ballistic Missile and a new Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile. Any idea that the nuclear age is a receding memory is evidently fanciful.

     Although the U.S. Congress has not voted to go to war since 1941, the Executive Branch of our government sees this as no impediment to assuming full war powers. Since the events of September 11th, few voices have been raised in the halls of government denouncing the way in which the current occupant of the White House has usurped wide-ranging war powers without the benefit of a Congressional declaration of war, as is required by the U.S. Constitution. In this section of our website we will continue to document the ways in which current administration has unnecessarily placed our entire nation at risk by pursuing a policy of maintaining a permanent state of war.

One brave Congressman speaks out

[NOTE: Representative Kucinich is the first member of the United States Congress to openly repudiate President Bush's war rationale and ironically titled “The USA PATRIOT Act.]

Resisting Bush's War
Rep. Dennis Kucinich

(Selections from Rep. Kucinich's remarks follow. The link above will take you directly to the full text of this speech at Alternet.org.)

     Let us pray that our nation will remember that the unfolding of the promise of democracy in our nation paralleled the striving for civil rights. That is why we must challenge the rationale of the Patriot Act. We must ask, why should America put aside guarantees of constitutional justice?

• How can we justify in effect canceling the Fourth Amendment, probable cause, the prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure?
• How can we justify in effect canceling the Fifth Amendment, nullifying due process, and allowing for indefinite incarceration without a trial?
• How can we justify in effect canceling the Sixth Amendment, the right to prompt and public trial?
• How can we justify in effect canceling the Eighth Amendment which protects against cruel and unusual punishment?

     Let us pray that our nation's leaders will not be overcome with fear. Because today there is great fear in our great Capitol. And this must be understood before we can ask about the shortcomings of Congress in the current environment.

     But we the people and our elected representatives must reserve the right to measure the response, to proportion the response, to challenge the response, and to correct the response.

• Because we did not authorize the invasion of Iraq.
• We did not authorize the invasion of Iran.
• We did not authorize the invasion of North Korea.
• We did not authorize the bombing of civilians in Afghanistan.
• We did not authorize permanent detainees in Guantanamo Bay.
• We did not authorize the withdrawal from the Geneva Convention.
• We did not authorize military tribunals suspending due process and habeas corpus.
• We did not authorize assassination squads.
• We did not authorize the resurrection of COINTELPRO.
• We did not authorize the repeal of the Bill of Rights.
• We did not authorize the revocation of the Constitution.
• We did not authorize national identity cards.
• We did not authorize the eye of Big Brother to peer from cameras throughout our cities.
• We did not authorize an eye for an eye. Nor did we ask that the blood of innocent people, who perished on September 11, be avenged with the blood of innocent villagers in Afghanistan.
• We did not authorize the administration to wage war anytime, anywhere, anyhow it pleases.
• We did not authorize war without end.
• We did not authorize a permanent war economy.

     Let us pray for our children. Our children deserve a world without end. Not a war without end.