Twitbull psychotically obsessed:
> "Support? We don't need no steeking support!"
Well, you do have the support of Bush and Cheney, and
of course, they would never lie to you about anything,
or kill innocent people, right, twit? <chuckle>
http://www.georgewashington.blogspot.com/2005/11/911-lies-another-basis-for-impeachment.html
9/11 Lies: Another Basis for Impeachment
"Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly
classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence
linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there
was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative
ties with Al Qaeda".
In addition, a Defense Intelligence Terrorism Summary issued in February
2002 by the United States Defense Intelligence Agency cast significant
doubt on the possibility of a Saddam Hussein-al-Qaeda conspiracy.
And yet Bush, Cheney and other top administration officials claimed and
continue to claim that Saddam was behind 9/11. See this analysis.
Indeed, Bush administration officials apparently swore in a lawsuit that
Saddam was behind 9/11.
Indeed, President Bush's March 18, 2003 letter to Congress authorizing
the use of force against Iraq, includes the following paragraph.
(2) acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is
consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take
the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist
organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who
planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that
occurred on September 11, 2001.
Therefore, Bush expressly justified the Iraq war to Congress by
representing that Iraq planned, authorized, committed, or aided the 9/11
attacks.
Grounds for impeachment based on 9-11 lies are just as important as
those based on lies regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Why?
Because the administration's false claims about Saddam and 9/11 helped
convince a large portion of the American public to support the invasion
of Iraq. While the focus now may be on false WMD claims, it is important
to remember that, at the time, the Saddam-911 link was at least as
important in many people's minds as a reason to invade Iraq.
Moreover, the trauma of September 11, 2001 is what galvanized many
Americans to rally around the Bush administration in general, to close
ranks in time of peril, and to give Bush his "mandate" (putting
questions of election fraud to the side). Ever since that terrible day,
the American people have been terrified, and thus irrational, based upon
the trauma of the vicious attacks. Since most Americans believe that the
bad guys are "out there" and are about to get us unless we have a strong
leader to fight them, they will not and CANNOT make any logical
decisions about any other foreign or domestic issues until "we get the
bad guys."
Indeed, the WMD hoax probably would not have worked if it wasn't for the
anti-Arab hysteria after September 11th. And the government policy of
torture would not have been tolerated if we weren't misled into thinking
that Saddam and Al-Qaeda had formed an unholy, all-powerful alliance on
9/11, and had to be stopped at any cost. Thus, I would argue that the
Saddam-911 deception was a necessary precursor to the administration's
WMD lies and torture policies.
And polls show that almost 90% of the troops in Iraq are under the
mistaken belief that the U.S. mission in that country is ?to retaliate
for Saddam?s role in the 9-11 attacks.? In other words, our kids are
fighting and dying because of this lie.
Imagine, if you would, that you were a citizen in Germany right after
the Reichstag fire had occurred. (As you might know, the Reichstag fire
was the burning down of the German parliament building by Hitler's men,
which was then blamed on the communists in order to justify wars against
neighboring countries.) Do you believe you could have stopped the
government from torturing communists after the Reichstag fire, by
convincing people that Germans are a good people who do not torture
others? Do you think that you could have prevented the spread of
disinformation about the hostile intentions and military capabilities of
their countries? I believe not, without first exposing that the
Reichstag fire -- the sole event which allowed the German parliament and
other institutions to hand Hitler total power. The Germans were in
shock, and rallied around their "strong" leader.
Americans are crazed by the fear of Arab terrorists just like Germans
were terrified of communist terrorists. Both peoples have handed over
all of their power to leaders in order to buy an imaginary security.
The Nazis might have been brought to justice well before the Nuremberg
trials if the Reichstag hoax had been exposed at the time.
But Can They Really Be Impeached for 9/11 Lies?
Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark has stated that "Making,
ordering and condoning false statements and propaganda and concealing
information vital to public discussion and informed judgment to create a
climate of fear and hatred and destroy opposition to his war goals" is
grounds for impeachment (see paragraph 10) and see paragraph 7 here
("Making, ordering and condoning false statements and propaganda about
the conduct of foreign governments and individuals and acts by U.S.
government personnel; manipulating the media and foreign governments
with false information . . . .")
Lying about Saddam's connection to 9/11 may thus be an impeachable offense.
Postscript: On December 16, 2005, Bush admitted "There was no evidence
that Saddam Hussein was involved with the attack of 9/11" (and see this
video). However, Bush and Cheney continue to frequently invoke 9/11 as
justification for the Iraq war (and see this).
A bipartisan Senate Report from 2006 found that Bush misled the press on
Iraq link to Al-Qaeda
On April 24, 2007, Congressman Kucinich submitted articles of
impeachment against Vice President Cheney which include Cheney's false
linkage of Iraq and 9/11.
It has also just been revealed that 5 hours after the 9/11 attacks,
Rumsfeld said "my interest is to hit Saddam". This confirms previous
reports that hours after the 9/11 attacks, Rumsfeld said "Go massive . .
. Sweep it all up. Things related and not." And at 2:40 p.m. on
September 11th, in a memorandum of discussions between top
administration officials, several lines below the statement "judge
whether good enough [to] hit S.H. [that is, Saddam Hussein] at same
time", is the statement "Hard to get a good case." In other words, top
officials knew that there wasn't a good case that Hussein was behind
9/11, but they wanted to use the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to justify
war with Iraq anyway.
This article does not discuss the evidence that elements of the U.S.
government actually carried out or aided and abetted the 9/11 attacks
themselves. However, if articles of impeachment were filed concerning
the administration's lies about 9/11, then the truth of who actually
carried out the 9/11 attacks would be relevant, and a door opened to
examine such evidence.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/apr2004/pdb-a12.shtml
CIA briefing memo exposes Bush lies on 9/11
By Barry Grey
12 April 2004
The declassification and release of the president?s daily brief (PDB)
for August 6, 2001, coming on the heels of National Security Adviser
Condoleezza Rice?s appearance before the commission appointed to
investigate the events of September 11, has thoroughly exposed the
official version of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington as
a tissue of lies.
Whatever shred of credibility remained for the Bush administration?s
claims that it had no prior warnings of an attack by Osama bin Laden?s
Al Qaeda network on the US mainland has been shattered by the
publication of the CIA memo, entitled ?Bin Laden Determined to Strike in
US.?
The administration?s decision to release the memo, like every other
concession it has made to demands for a public investigation of the 9/11
attacks, was taken in a grudging attempt to quell growing skepticism
over the official line, and the vocal protests of family members of 9/11
victims, many of whom are outraged over White House stonewalling and
sabotage of efforts to uncover the facts surrounding the worst single
attack on US civilians in American history.
When the existence of the August 2001 PDB was first revealed in May of
2002, White House officials, first and foremost, Condoleezza Rice,
dismissed it as irrelevant. Rice declared at the time that the memo
dealt entirely with possible terrorist attacks outside the US. She was,
as is now proven, lying then, and, as even a cursory examination of her
sworn testimony last week before the 9/11 panel shows, she is lying still.
For nearly two years the White House refused to release the document,
given to President Bush more than a month before the hijack-bombings of
the World Trade Center and Pentagon. It only agreed to do so in the wake
of the controversy sparked by the testimony last month of Bush?s former
counter-terrorism chief, Richard Clarke, who told the 9/11 panel that
the Bush administration took no serious action in response to multiple
warnings of an impending, massive attack within the US by Al Qaeda, and
then exploited the death of nearly 3,000 people on September 11, 2001 to
implement an agenda for invading and occupying Iraq that had preoccupied
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and company from the outset of the Bush
administration.
The content of the August 6, 2001 PDB makes clear why the administration
was so reluctant to release the document. It is a clear and stark
warning that Al Qaeda is actively preparing an attack within the US,
that its previous attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania show
that it has the capability to do so, and that a likely method of attack
involves the hijacking of one or more US commercial aircraft.
In her April 8 testimony before the 9/11 panel, Rice, under prodding
from one of the commissioners, former Watergate prosecutor Richard
Ben-Veniste, gave out the title of the August 6 presidential brief. The
official heading of the suppressed document produced an audible gasp
from the audience in the hearing room, which included dozens of family
members of 9/11 victims.
Yet Rice continued to lie about the contents and implications of the
PDB. Her dissembling had three essential components.
* Lie number one: Rice declared numerous times that the PDB was not a
?threat warning.? It was merely a ?historical? review of past events and
old intelligence, and contained no warnings of current threats. Nor did
it, she claimed, give any indication as to specific cities or buildings
to be targeted.
* Lie number two: Notwithstanding the title of the document, Rice
continued to maintain that it contained no warnings of attacks within
the US.
* Lie number three: Rice reiterated her previous assertions that the PDB
in no way pointed to the possibility of hijacked airplanes being used as
missiles.
Unfortunately for Rice and the rest of the Bush administration, the
plain language of the document, and the actual context in which it
appeared, flatly contradict all three contentions.
The claim that the memo was purely of a ?historical? character and
contained no warnings of current or specific threats is belied by the
following information in the document:
Al Qaeda, it said, had active cells in the US that were planning
attacks. It mentioned the existence of such cells in California and New
York. It said the FBI had collected information since 1998 indicating
?patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with
preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent
surveillance of federal buildings in New York.? (Our emphasis).
The document also referred to the World Trade Center bombing of 1993 in
connection with a statement by bin Laden that he wanted to follow the
example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and ?bring the
fighting to America.? It further said that the foiled Al Qaeda plot to
bomb the airport in Los Angeles during the millennium celebrations of
December-January 2000 ?may have been part of bin Laden?s first serious
attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the US.? It cited statements
from convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam to the FBI that bin Laden was aware
of the plot and that a top bin Laden lieutenant helped facilitate it.
(This history, it should be noted, was anything but remote, since the
aborted attack on Los Angeles occurred only twenty months prior to the
August 6, 2001 briefing).
The document went on to say that the FBI was conducting 70 full-field
investigations throughout the US into bin Laden threats, and that the
FBI and CIA were investigating a tip that bin Laden supporters in the US
were planning attacks with explosives. (Why would the FBI and CIA be
conducting such probes if there were no current threats? Rice did not
explain this conundrum).
Finally?and in a sense most damaging to Rice?s characterization of the
memo as merely of ?historical? interest?the CIA briefers wrote that bin
Laden was ?patient,? that he began planning for attacks years in
advance, and was not deterred by setbacks. This comment could have only
one meaning: it was a specific caution against any tendency to belittle
the looming threat on the grounds that most of the hard information at
hand dealt with past events and previously gathered intelligence.
Rice?s second lie?that the PDB did not contain threat warnings of
attacks within the US?is contradicted by virtually everything in the
document, beginning with the title. Among the specific potential targets
named in the memo are: California, New York and Washington DC. The memo,
moreover, suggests that federal buildings in New York and the World
Trade Center are prime objectives.
Rice?s third lie?that no one could reasonably be expected to infer from
the PDB that bin Laden might seek to use hijacked planes as bombs?is
perhaps the most cynical of all. The August 6 PDB occurred in the midst
of growing alarms from local FBI offices over a suspicious pattern of
Arab and Muslim immigrants taking training courses in the piloting of
commercial jets at US flight schools. On July 10, less than a month
before Bush received the CIA briefing while vacationing at his Texas
ranch, an FBI agent in the Phoenix, Arizona office sent a memo to FBI
headquarters in Washington urging that it undertake a national survey of
American flight schools to see if there was evidence of an Islamist
terrorist plot to hijack commercial aircraft.
Ten days later, Italian authorities, in collaboration with the US, shut
down air space around Genoa, the site of the Group of 8 summit, and
declared the area a no-fly zone. War ships were stationed in the area as
well. These precautions were taken specifically out of concern that Al
Qaeda terrorists might hijack airplanes and use them to bomb the summit,
which was attended by the leaders of the major powers, including George
W. Bush.
In his testimony before the 9/11 commission, Richard Clarke said he
briefed Rice, to whom he reported, on the warnings that terrorists might
use aircraft to attack the G-8 summit. Rice herself testified that she
knew at the time that Italian and American authorities were acting to
guard the summit from air attacks.
Finally, one week after Bush received the August 6 PDB, immigration
authorities in Minneapolis, Minnesota arrested Zaccarias Moussaoui, an
Islamic fundamentalist extremist who had sought training in flying a
Boeing 747 at a Minneapolis-area flight school. The US government has
since charged Moussaoui with being a co-conspirator in the September 11
attacks.
At the time of Moussaoui?s detention, FBI officials in Minneapolis sent
a series of urgent requests to FBI headquarters in Washington for
authorization to pursue an investigation into the man?s suspected links
to Al Qaeda. The agents explicitly cited fears that Moussaoui was
training to fly commercial jets in order to pilot one into a skyscraper,
and named the World Trade Center as a likely target. Top FBI officials
denied their requests and refused to authorize a search of Moussaoui?s
computer hard drive.
Neither the Bush administration, nor congressional investigators, nor
any other official body has ever explained this extraordinary decision
on the part of FBI headquarters. One thing can be said for certain,
however: had the Bush White House been seriously interested in pursuing
the warnings contained in the PDB it received one week prior to
Moussaoui?s detention and two weeks after the Genoa summit, the alarms
raised by the Minneapolis FBI would not have gone unheeded and steps
would have been taken that would have likely unraveled the plot that
was, within a few weeks, to destroy the World Trade Center and the lives
of some 3,000 civilians.
Instead, Bush remained on vacation at his Crawford, Texas ranch for
another three weeks, fishing and clearing brush. And, as Rice has
acknowledged, the first and only cabinet meeting prior to 9/11 dedicated
to a discussion of the threat of Al Qaeda terrorist attacks occurred on
September 4, 2001?one week before the hijack-bombings.
Even as Rice insisted to the 9/11 commission that the August 6, 2001 PDB
did not contain warnings of an imminent attack in the US, she maintained
that the Bush administration vigorously acted to protect the American
people, issuing orders, alerts and instructions to all relevant
intelligence and police agencies, as well as to the air transport
industry. She repeatedly spoke of ?tasking? the FBI to conduct intensive
?full-field? investigations into reports of Al Qaeda activity in the US.
But the remarks of two commissioners, which went uncontested, utterly
exposed these claims as fraudulent. Jamie Gorelick, deputy attorney
general in the Clinton administration, said:
?Secretary [Norman] Mineta, the secretary of transportation, had no idea
of a threat. The administration of the FAA [Federal Aviation
Administration], responsible for security on our airlines, had no idea.
Yes, the attorney general was briefed, but there was no evidence of any
activity by him about this.
?You indicate in your statement that the FBI tasked its field offices to
find out what was going on out there. We have no record of that. The
Washington field office international terrorism people say they never
heard about the warnings, they were not asked to come to the table and
shake those trees. SACs, special agents in charge, around the
country?Miami in particular?had no knowledge of this.?
Another commissioner, former Democratic congressman Timothy Roemer, said:
?We have done thousands of interviews here at the 9/11 commission. We?ve
gone through literally millions of pieces of paper. To date, we have
found nobody?nobody at the FBI who knows anything about a tasking of
field offices.
?We have talked to the director at the time of the FBI during this
threat period, Mr. Pickard. He said he did not tell the field offices to
do this. And we have talked to the special agents in charge. They don?t
have any recollections of receiving a notice of threat.?
Finally, there was the following exchange between commissioner
Ben-Veniste and Rice:
Ben-Veniste: ?Did the president meet with the director of the FBI
between August 6 and September 11??
Rice: ?I will have to get back to you on that. I am not certain.?
The facts cited here constitute only a small part of a veritable
mountain of evidence demonstrating that the Bush administration, the CIA
and the FBI played a crucial role in one of the greatest crimes in US
history. In its aftermath, every branch of government, both political
parties, and the media have been engaged in a non-stop effort to conceal
this role from the American people. The 9/11 commission itself is part
and parcel of the official coverup. It proceeds entirely from the
premise that the ability of 19 foreign terrorists, a number of whom were
known to US authorities, to commandeer four commercial jets and fly
three of them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, without the
slightest interference from the government or air industry officials,
was simply a ?failure of intelligence.?
But this ?failure? does not admit of any innocent explanation. Suffice
it to note that even the most elementary and obvious measures taken in
response to a welter of threat warnings in the summer of 2001 would
have, at the very least, saved hundreds of lives. Had airport and
airline officials been properly alerted, and the identities of known Al
Qaeda operatives living in the US been revealed to them, it is highly
unlikely that all, or even any, of the hijackers would have been able to
board the targeted planes.
Had the World Trade Center, a likely target of attack, been alerted of
the threats, and New York City officials been ?tasked? with drawing up
emergency response plans, orders would have gone out to vacate all
buildings in the vicinity within seconds of the actual terrorist strike.
Many lives would have been spared, even had the hijackers succeeded in
hitting the first of the twin towers at the World Trade Center.
No such measures were taken. There are only two plausible explanations
for this. One is a level of incompetence and indifference to the
public?s safety on the part of the Bush administration and the
responsible federal authorities?beginning with the president himself and
the power behind the throne, Vice President Dick Cheney?that rises to
the level of criminal negligence. Here the emphasis must be placed on
?criminal,? especially in light of the cynical manner in which the
tragedy of 9/11 was used to implement the most sweeping and reactionary
foreign and domestic policies, including the barbaric invasion and
occupation of Iraq and an unprecedented assault on democratic rights
within the US.
The alternate explanation is a deliberate and calculated decision to
?stand down? the intelligence and security apparatus, in order to allow
a terrorist attack within the US to occur. Certainly the role of top FBI
officials in running interference for Al Qaeda operatives and blocking
an investigation of their flight training activities points in this
direction.
It is not necessary to assume that those involved in such a conspiracy
would have known of or anticipated the enormous scale of the attacks.
They may have expected a ?traditional? hijacking, for example. But it
would not be the first time that a regime in crisis resorted to such
methods to extricate itself from intractable problems and create
conditions for stampeding the country behind policies that otherwise
would be politically impossible to implement.
It is no secret that the ?war on terror? that Bush announced within
hours of the 9/11 attacks corresponds to the program of military
aggression, domestic repression and global hegemony that was drawn up
prior to the theft of the 2000 election by those who were to become
leading figures in the present administration.
As Rice told the 9/11 commission, referring to the ?opportunity?
provided by the September 11 disaster:
?Bold and comprehensive changes are sometimes only possible in the wake
of catastrophic events?events which create a new consensus that allows
us to transcend old ways of thinking and acting.?
--
"Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance." --
Albert Einstein.
http://911research.wtc7.net
http://www.journalof911studies.com/
http://www.ae911truth.org