Letter Never Sent

According to Newsweek, the CIA tracked hijackers around the world and into the US before September 11 suggesting that the CIA should have done something to stop the hijackers. I agree with this, but is the point to criticize the police state in order to give it greater power and authority? I hope not.

As expected the Pearl video was taken off Yahoo Geocities..I’ll be putting it here or up at another Geocities site or somewhere else entirely. As a free people we must oppose all government intimidation and censorship. The Freedom of Speech is always tested by situations like this. This will have to wait until I get home tonight. I didn’t actually have a copy at home, so I had to email to my home address. There will be a link here.

Download the Pearl Execution Video Here.

From the LA Times on FBI/CIA incompetence. Funny how John Ashcroft stopped flying commercial airlines when these memos were floating around. He had warning, but didn’t think the American public should enjoy the same privilege:

Agent Kenneth Williams suspected that a group of about eight Middle Eastern men in the Phoenix area were not merely studying at flight schools but also had shown a keen interest in airplane engineering and airport construction and security, according to sources familiar with the closed-door briefings Williams gave members of Congress this week.

• Bush Opposes Independent September 11 Probe
• Senate Adds ‘War on Terrorism’ to Trade Bill
  This amendment, introduced by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), has added a provision to the bill which will require that any country within this U.S./South American trade agreement, which does not support the U.S. ‘War on Terrorism’, will not receive the special trade status with the U.S. granted in the bill.

  This amounts to nothing more than economically bribing and strong arming South American countries into helping the U.S. war machine attack and dominate the planet.

  It is now DOUBLY important that the Senate version of the Andean Trade Act (H.R. 3009), must be struck down in BOTH its Republican and Democrat forms.
  

• FBI Agents Charged With Extortion, Manipulating Stocks
• US Looks to Africa for Oil, Troops to Get It No wonder people all over the world hate our country. People over there dying of aids and starvation and we’re stopping by to take some oil.

The NY Times had a story today about how the Pentagon recently released documents detailing their spraying of nerve agents and biological agents on US servicemen. Classy. You join up for a shitty job in the military thinking you’re doing your patriotic duty and then your own government purposely acts with disregard for your life by using you as a human guinea pig.

Of the six tests, three used sarin, a nerve agent, or VX, a nerve gas; one used staphylococcal enterotoxin B, known as SEB, a biological toxin; one used a simulant believed to be harmless but subsequently found to be dangerous; and one used a nonpoisonous simulant.

Rall makes a good case for trying Bush as an attempted murderer for the CIA’s assassination attempt of an alleged rival of Hamid Karzai. You really should read the whole thing yourself. It’s priceless. Here’s a good piece of it:

We had information,” an anonymous Pentagon (news – web sites) official told The New York Times’ Thomas Shanker, “that he was planning attacks on American and coalition forces, on the interim government and on [interim president Hamid] Karzai himself.”

You and I, faced with such information, might have had Hekmatyar picked up for questioning. We might put him and his pals on trial for conspiracy and, if he were found guilty, thrown in prison. But the guys in the White House aren’t like us. They’re gangsters. Gangsters are above the law. Gangsters don’t bother with judges and juries. They pay off judges; they have their enemies whacked.

And so your illegitimate gangster government, less than a month after it attempted to overthrow the democratically-elected government of Venezuela, sent up one of those unmanned Predator drone planes. Some dude punched a button on an iMac at an undisclosed location in the Virginia suburbs and fired a Hellfire missile at Hekmatyar’s car convoy on a road just outside Kabul. “I believe some others were killed in the strike, but the target escaped,” an unnamed U.S. official told Reuters. Hekmatyar’s spokesman and son-in-law Ghairat Baheer in Islamabad said: “He is in Afghanistan…but there was no attack.”

Experts speculate that the missile hit a group of cars that had nothing to do with Hekmatyar.

Have you ever noticed how government sources are all anonymous these days? I think it is a calculated decision so that people cannot follow up with further questions to said sources. I don’t think Rall goes far enough. I think there is enough evidence from many things that Bush has done (ie. executing people, killing innocents, graft, corruption, election fraud, assassination) to have him tried for murder or worse.

I really enjoyed reading this article in the Washington Post on the frustrations that American soldiers are experiencing trying to fight Afghan guerrillas. These well-fed, kevlar-wearing American soldiers sound like a bunch of spoiled crybabies. It really tickled the funny bone to hear them cuss and complain about ‘adversaries’ who don’t wear uniforms and pesky ‘rules of engagement’ that prevent them from shooting whoever they like.

Sitting under a tree a little later, eating a Meal Ready to Eat (MRE), the unit’s chief NCO, Sgt. Maj. Jim Smith, spotted a group of shepherds in the distance. “There was a bunch of Habibs over there a few minutes ago,” he said, using the soldiers’ name for Afghans. “I bet I could take down four with my M-4 and two more with my 9 millimeter before they could chamber a round. What do you think?”

The soldiers demonstrated the casual racism and hatred common to the US military by reducing the Afghan people to ‘Habibs’ as they quaintly call them. This is the ‘gook’ or ‘jap’ of the new conflict.

I enjoyed hearing how stupid most of our hired killers are. It confirms personal experience. I know that with people like this there is hope for a future without American military oppression because despite the overwhelming technological and financial advantages of the US in the end decisions will be made by macho morons like these.

“Ah, this sucks,” Smith sighed. “Didn’t get to kill nobody and they still got to fire their rocket.”

Then he posed the ultimate question to the group. “When have we completed our mission in Afghanistan?”

No one had an answer.

I can’t believe I waste my taxes on crap like this. We need to have the military building roads or doing something useful.

Does the creation of a military command with civil authority mark a step towards martial law? Rumsfeld says “Trust me.”

The creation of Northern Command will not conflict with a 19th century law, called the Posse Comitatus Act, that was meant to prohibit the military from acting as a domestic police force, Rumsfeld said in announcing the changes.

“Some in the past have worried that creation of a command that covered the United States of America could be inward-looking; nothing could be further from the truth,” Rumsfeld told a Pentagon (news – web sites) news conference.

“The creation of NorthCom means that we now have the command assigned to defend the American people where they live and work and it will be functioning in a supporting role to civil authorities as occasions arise,” he said.

• DoD’s New Unified Command Plan (Map, PDF)
  

More behind the scenes business with the US trying to plan an invasion of Iraq. This would be junior’s Gulf War 2.

1. US Official Trying to Sabotage UN-Iraq Arms Talks As much as Bush squawks about weapons of mass destruction. The real goal is not to limit the weapons, but to overthrow the government of Iraq in the person of Saddam Hussein, former CIA asset.
2. James Baker In India, Wants Support For Iraq Attack: Wants Indian to stop doing trade with Iraq. It’s all about the benjamins.

The Isrealis have been busy hiding the bodies of the 400-500 people they killed in their recent attempts at mass murder. Many bodies buried in mass graves and carried off in trucks. You didn’t see nothing.

1. In the La Times: “We don’t know where our husbands are”
2. Mass graves: “I saw them burying the bodies. They started work on the grave a few days ago. I recognised some of the bodies in it. I can give you the names.”
3. Israel hides massacre by blocking media and shooting at journalists.