|
THE LIST OF BOOKS ABOUT
GEORGE W. BUSH
IN MY OWN COLLECTION
Supreme Injustice - How the High Court Hijacked
Election 2000, by Alan Dershowitz - 2001
"In the course of writing
this book, I have spoken to dozens of highly successful lawyers - lawyers
who win because they understand judges. Virtually every one of them,
Democrat or Republican, agrees with me that the majority justices in the
Florida election case fail the 'shoe-on-the-other-foot test. As one
usually cautious lawyer who practices extensively before the high court
told me, "It insults our intelligence to suggest
otherwise." Many agree with the characterization
"cheating." Some disagree, arguing that what the justices
did here is on a continuum with what many judges routinely do in criminal
cases in which they believe the defendant did it but also that the police
violated the defendant's rights. They find ways to reach the result they
favor (conviction of the factually guilty) even though the law demands a
result they disfavor (release of the bad guy). Others believe that nearly
all the judges in this highly politicized case - the Supreme Court
dissenters, the Florida Supreme Court majority, and the lower court judges
- would fail the shoe-on-the-other-foot test, and they contend that it is
wrong to single out the majority justices for criticism. This is one heck
of a commentary on the current status of our judiciary.
On May 9, 2001, President Bush, in introducing
his initial nominees to the United States Courts of Appeal, said
that he hoped these judicial nominees, if confirmed, would comply with the
judicial oath, which reads, in part, as follows:
"I, ______________ do
solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without
respect
to persons ....." (emphasis added)
The irony is that if the
majority justices in Bush v. Gore had not violated that oath by deciding
the case with respect to the persons
and political parties involved, George W. Bush might not have been the
president." (pgs 171-172)
Bushwhacked - Life In George W. Bush's
America, by
Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose - 2003
"Judicial appointments,
faith-based social-welfare program, and restrictions on stem-cell research
all fall into the category that one watchdog of the religious right in
Austin calls "throwing red meat and green dollars to the wolves in
the fundamentalist Christian pack." It keeps them in line, said
Samantha Smot ofo the Texas Freedom Network. "But it's dangerous
because they can never be satisfied."
[Carl] Rove hasn't satisfied the
evangelical Christians, who rightly complain that no substantial
faith-based bill has passed both houses of Congress. Even the father of
compassionate conservatism, University of Texas professor Marvin Olasky,
said the faith-based bill that finally passed in April 2003 is "as
shadow of what was hoped for." But add George Bush's religious
beliefs to Rove's pragmatic courtship of the Christian right, and you whip
up enough religious fervor to keep the evangelicals writing checks and
casting votes through 2004. (pgs 219-220)
Bush found that grace [of God] in a small
Bible-study group for men in Midland, Texas. He began with socials and
services in Laura Bush's Methodist congregation, but he found Jesus at a
Community Bible Study men's group. CBS was started by a group of suburban
Christian woman in Bethesda, Maryland in 1957. the
Bible-study/self-realization groups spread across the country and arrived
in Midland in 1978, several years before Bush and his childhood friend and
now secretary of commerce Don Evans signed on together.
All this would normally be off limits to
journalists, but Bush's private beliefs are gradually becoming our public
policy. Had Bush found salvation through mainstream Protestantism his
religion's relation to our policy would be less important. How to
discreetly say that a Christian religious extremist has seized control of
the White House? We're not alone in this reading. Two years into his
presidency, even the staid and steady team Newseek, assigned to divine
Bush's religious beliefs warned us that Dubya Bush didn't find his faith
in your father's (or his father's) Protestant church. In a men's
Bible-study group in Midland, the guy who dodged the Western
canon at Yale finally read and explicated one of its greatest works -
the Bible.
Since then, Bush has been a sheep in the
flock of some odd pastors. He's still praying with the Reverend James
Robison - the Fort Worth anti-abortion-rights fanatic given to quoting
both sides of the conversations between him and God. According to what
Robison told June Little of the BBC, he and Bush prayed together in the
Oval Office before the Iraq war. "I know that whenever we have
visited him the White House he says before ... let's pray. He says
you never know who's gonna call, bang on that door," Robinson said,
"He kept our president waiting for twenty minutes outside while we
continued to pray together." OK, so it was probably the
president of Camaroon or one of the members of the Coalition of the
Willing who signed the pledge card to support the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Hundreds of preachers have prayed with presidents in the White House.
Billy Graham himself has prayed there hundreds of times.
But James Robison? The guy who lives and
prays on the fringe enough to make you miss Billy Graham holding Dick
Nixon's hand. You always had the sense that Nixon was worldly enough to
know where to draw the line when it came to biblical apocalypse and
foreign policy. (pgs 220-221)
"It's painfully obvious to us - and to the
foreign press and foreign leaders who worry constantly about it - that
President Bush's religious beliefs have shaped his foreign policy. It is a
policy - often defined in the Old Testament language favored by
fundamentalists. Saddam Hussein was not a tyrant by an
"evildoer," like that evildoer in the Fifth Psalm, "Break
thou the arm of the wicked and evildoer," Or those evildoers in
the 125th Psalm, "But those who turn n their crooked ways the Lord
will lead away with evildoers. Peace be in Israel." Odd how one
line from a psalm reads as though i thad been lifted from Douglas Feith
and Richard Perle's blueprint to preemptive wars in the Middle east - on
the literal raod to Damascus. Bush and the administration's resident
war-council seen to be developing the first overtly biblical foreign
policy the country has ever known. (pg 222)
The Lies of George W. Bush - Mastering the Politics of
Deception, by David Corn - 2003
"Iraq is harboring a terrorist network, headed by
a senior al Qaeda terrorist planner."
"..."the secretary
of State appeared at the Security Council and laid out the government's
best case against Iraq. It was the culmination of the administration's
yearlong effort to persuiade the public to support war in Iraq. Finally
the administration was going to supply proof that Saddam Hussein had
terrible weapons and was working with al Queda. Yet while Powell - the
senior Bush official with the most credibility at the United Nations --
offered specific pieces of evidence, he also served up embellished
evidence. And he commingled truth with half-truth.
Powell's presentation was a sophisticated PR
endeavor that came with a slide show. He played audio tapes indicting
Iraqi military personnel had hidden one prohibited (but unspecified
vehicle, had ordered an ammunition site cleaned out before inspectors
arrived, and had instructed a commander to remove the words "nerve
agents" from wireless communications. He claimed intelligence sources
indicated the Iraqi government was hiding documents and moving biological
and chemical weapons to keep them from being discovered by U.N.
inspectors. Indeed, Powell repeatedly asserted that intelligence -
including satellite photography and reports from sources - demonstrated
that Saddam Hussein was not just developing weapons of mass destruction,
he had them.
Powell displayed a satellite photo of a
weapons munitions facility and stated it had been used to store chemical
weapons, he pointed out a decontamination vehicle as telltale evidence. He
showed another shot of chemical complex and maintained part of it had been
bulldozed and graded to conceal the presence of chemical weapons. He
claimed that 'we know from sources' that Iraq had dispersed rocket
launchers and warheads containing biological warfare agents to various
locations in western Iraq and hidden them in large groves of palm trees.
He showed the Security Council a diagram of a mobile biological weapons
lab that he claimed Iraq had developed and that could produce in a month
enough biological agents "to kill thousands upon thousands of
people." It was not a diagram of a ream unit, but a drawing
based on four intelligence sources, including two defectors, one of whom
claimed the units worked only on Fridays because the government believed
U.N. inspectors would not conduct inspections on the Muslim holy day. As
for nuclear weapons, he did not mention the uranium-from-Africa charge,
but he pointed to those aluminum tubes. Powell did not there were
"differences of opinion ... about what these tubes are
for." But he argued the case of believing they were to
believing they were to be part of a nuclear weapons program, even though
the intelligence analysis of his own State Department had concluded it was
"far more likely" that the tubes were intended for another
purpose. (The view of the State Department analysts was included in a
dissent to an intelligence estimate that would not become public until
after the war.) (pgs 230-231)
Dude, Where's My Country - Leave No Billionaire
Behind,
By Michael Moore -2003
"When things were good at
Enron, they were very, very, very good. Lay and other high-ranking honchos
took home huge paychecks and enjoyed generous expense accounts nad lavish
perks. The sweet life at Enron helped them afford to make significant
donations to politicians in both major parties-politicians who were able
to ensure that the regulatory climate stayed very, very sympathetic to
Enron's interests. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Enron
gave nearly $6 million to the Republican and Democratic parties since
1989, with 74 percent going to the Republicans. This meant that when
Congress began investigating Enron at the beginning of 2002, 212 of the
248 members of the House and Senate on the investigating committees had
taken campaign contributions from Enron or its crooked accountant, Arthur
Anderson.
Even lower-level Enron employees thought
they had a good deal going: They sast back and watched their retirement
plans, heavily invested in Enron stock grow and grow.
But the company's phenomenal success was
fleeting ... and fraudulent. Much of Enron's profitability was achieved
through the creation of shell partnerships, and was propped up by dubious
(and possibly criminal) accounting practices. It's unclear how much of the
true story will ever be known, as important documents were shredded before
investigators could see them.
By the fall of 2001, the pyramid scheme
that was Enron imploded. And while the rest of the country was in a state
of shock over 9/11, Enron executives were busy bailing out, selling
stocks, and shredding documents.
And a national crisis didn't stop them from
reaching out to their buddies in the Bush administration. Calls were
placed by Enron executives to Commerce Secretary Don Evans and then
Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, seeking help as the company was on the
brink of collapse.
Evans and O'Neill said they did nothing
when Enron told them of the company's shell game and impending failure,
and the administrations proudly used that as evidence that no special
favors were granted to one of the president's biggest supporters.
That's right - they were proud of doing
nothing while millions of Americans were swindled. And the fleecing was
made possible in a large degree by the Bush administration's willingness
to let Enron run amok.
When he finally had to go before the press,
George W. Bush tried to distance himself from his old friend and said,
essentially, "Ken who?" Bush explained that his good buddy
wasn't really a good buddy, but was instead just some businessman from
Texas. " (Kenny Boy) was a supporter of Ann Richards in my run (for
governor) in 1994" Bush told the media, (In fact, Lay contributed
almost four times as much money to Bush's campaign for governor.)
When Enron officially went bankrupt in
December 2001, Wall Street pundits and investors throughout the country
were stunned.
But "bankrupt" has a different
meaning for Enron's top executives than it does for the rest of us. The
company's bankruptcy filing in 2001 shows 144 top executives received a
total of $310 million in compensation and another $435 million stock.
That's an average of over $2 million each in compensation and another $3
million in stock.
And while the big guns counted their
millions, thousands of Enron workers lost their jobs and much of their
savings. Enron had established three savings plans for its employees and
at the time of othe bankruptcy, 20,000 of them were members of these
plans. Sixty percent of the plans were made up of Enron stock. When the
stock evaporated to pennies from an August 2000 high of $90, these
employees were left with next to nothing. Losses in 401(k) plans totaled
more than $1 billion.
But huge losses from the Enron collapse extended far
beyond its employees, to thousands of others wh owned Enron stock in
public retirement funds, which, according to a New York Times article,
lost at least $1.5 billion.
And the Enron collapse sent the entire stock
market into a downturn , with a negative ripple effect that is still being
felt today.
But, as I write this, in the summer of
2003, fewer than two dozen people have been charged with Enron-related
crimes. Five of those have entered in plea agreements and are awaiting
sentencing and fifteen others are awaiting trial. (pgs
153-154)
NOTE:
Gonzales
Recuses Self from Enron Trials
NewsMax.com Wires
Saturday, April 9, 2005
HOUSTON
- 4-8-2005 -- U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has recused himself
from the Enron Corp. criminal prosecutions, his office said Thursday.
Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra would not say why Gonzales made
that decision.
But the attorney general did legal work for Enron when he was practicing
law in Houston. And while he was a Texas judge, he accepted a campaign
contribution from an Enron political committee.
Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft also recused himself
from overseeing the Enron prosecutions because he accepted campaign funds
from the company when he was running for the U.S. Senate.
With the recusal, the Enron Task Force prosecutors will not
report all the way up the chain of command to Gonzales.
Gonzales did legal work for Enron in the early 1990s while at
Vinson & Elkins law firm in Houston. Enron was that law firm's largest
client for several years.
© 2005 The Associated Press
Q. What were the main accusations here?
(Regarding Enron's connection to Blockbuster)
A. There were two sets of charges involving
deception to inflate Enron's bottom line in its Internet division.
Three higher level guys -- Joe Hirko, Scott Yeager and Rex Shelby
-- were accused of making false statements in press releases and at
analyst conferences to pump up the market's perception of the value of
Enron's Internet business. Prosecutors said they did this in part so they
could cash in on rising stock prices by selling their own shares. The trio
sold about $160 million in stock in 2000 and 2001.
These three were accused of fraud, conspiracy, insider trading
and money laundering.
Two midlevel guys -- Kevin Howard and Michael Krautz -- landed
in trouble for their roles in the Blockbuster Video deal that the
government said generated $111 million in false earnings through a series
of maneuvers dubbed Project
Braveheart. Prosecutors said the pair helped make it appear that
Enron sold investors expected future profits of its movies-on-demand
business, but the transactions amounted to nothing more than a
disguised loan because Enron guaranteed its investors wouldn't lose
money on the deal.
Howard and Krautz were accused of fraud and conspiracy.
How long will these Enron trials drag on?
A. Enron
fell in late 2001, and the criminal cases should be over by late
2006.
Still scheduled are at least two more trials - one against Lay
related to his personal banking and the big one against Lay, Skilling and
Causey that's scheduled for next year.
There are also three ex-bankers fighting extradition from England
who could be tried here on Enron - related charges.
Though 14 former Emrpm employees and one former Arthur Andersen
employee have pleaded guilty to criminal charges, only one from Enron has
been found guilty in a trial. That was former Vice President Dan Boyle,
convicted in last year's Nigerian barge trial. The other four
convicted in that trial were former Merrill Lynch executives.
In a 2002 trial, Enron accountant Arthur Andersen was convicted
of obstruction of justice, but the U.S. Supreme Court threw out that
conviction in 2005.
Lies and The Lying Liars Who Tell Them - A
Fair
and Balanced Look at The Right, by Al Franken -2003
"By Far the Vast Majority
of My Tax Cuts Go to Those at the Bottom"
"....in the first debate with [Al] Gore
then candidate Bush said of his tax cuts, "By far the vast majority of
the help goes to those at the bottom end of the economic ladder."
In the South Carolina primary debate with John McCain he said, "By far
the vast majority of my tax cuts go to those at the bottom end of the
spectrum" As you can see, he loved this line. He repeated it
everywhere.
Shall we parse this statement? Let's
start at the end and work backward. "Bottom end of the
spectrum." What's that gotta mean? At least the bottom 50
percent, right? Otherwise she word "bottom" in the context
is meaningless. He couldn't have meant the bottom 99 percent, could he? That
would just be crazy.
How about "majority"? Well, that's
unambiguous. It means more than 50 percent. So, so far, at the very least,
the bottom half of the American people are getting 50 percent, plus a
dollar, of Bush's tax cut.
Now let's add 'vast." "Vast
majority." "Vast" is big. Huge. Like the
"vast" reaches of space. Very, very big. So, what's a "vast
majority?" 90 percent/ 85? It's subjective, I admit. So let's go
with a very conservative 70 percent. At this point in our parsing, the
bottom 50 percent are getting 70 (give or take) percent of Bush's tax
cut.
But wait. "It's not just a "vast
majority." It's by far a vast majority. Okay, let's think
about that. What does "by far" mean? When you say a restaurant is
"by far" the best steak house in town, you're really saying
something. When you tell your spouse that sex with her or him is "by
far' the best sex you've ever had, you may not be telling the truth - much
in the same way that Bush wasn't in this case - but you are definitely
trying to score some points. So I'm going to say that "by far"
the vast majority of tax cuts go to those at the bottom" would mean
that the poorest 50 percent are going somewhere in the neighborhood of 83 to
99 percent of Bush's tax cut.
That's fair, right? That's a fair
parsing.
As I said before, the bottom 60 percent
got 14.7 percent of that tax cut. (pgs 288-289)
Boy Genius - Karl Rove, the Brains Behind the
Remarkable Political Triumph of George W. Bush, by Lou Dubose, Jan
Reid, and Carl M. Cannon - 2004
"At the Republican
convention, the GOP's most skillful speech-writer, Peggy Noonan got the
speech of his life out of Bush (GHWB) Nobody knew what Bush meant by
a thousand points of light, but he seemed to imagine and believe in them,
and he at last emerged from the shadow of Ronald Reagan as his own man.
Dukkakis' seventeen point lead in the polls evaporated, and the rout was
on. (pg 50)
Rove knew he could intimidate reporters on
occasion. If Rove thought a reporter had gotten a story wrong or was
unfair to Bush, he would call with a loud angry rebuttal. He wasn't always
looking for a retraction, but he knew the reporter would write other
stories in the future and he wanted to get his message across. (Later, as
the presidential campaign got in gear, editors would sometimes hear from
the campaign press office about a story Rove considered editorial in
tone.) (pg 71)
George W. Bush could be arrogant, defensive, and full
of himself, but those facets seldom caught the public eye. He had enormous
magnetism and charm, he was a good ol' boy without being smarmy in the way
of other notable GOP Southerners like Trent Loft or Haley Barbour. Bush
was a relative stranger in Austin, but he was immediately appreciated. He
was personable and sophisticated, he and Laura were soon not and admired
for their taste in chefs and restaurants. And in Texas the new governor
was buoyed always by a deep reservoir of affection for his dad and mom.
Now living in Houston, the elder Bush was immersed in writing his memoirs
and building his presidential library in College Station, on the campus of
Texas A&M. (pg 81)
Karl Rove's fight with Tom Pauken began in 1994.
It involved the one faction in the party Rove had underestimated; that
evangelical Christians who had come into the Republican fold with Pat
Robertson's 1988 presidential campaign. Nowhere had their strength been
more evident than at the 1994 Republican state convention in Fort Worth.
Christian Right delegates filled the convention center two blocks from the
hotel where John Kennedy spent the night of November 21, 1963. Prayer
breakfasts drew bigger crowds than hospitality suites. The virtuous
William Bennett came in first in the presidential straw vote. Texas
Senator Phil Gramm won only 8 percent of the pool because he was soft on
defense of the unborn. Every winning candidate (and most losing
candidates) for party office praised God and excoriated abortion. And U.S.
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison was booed when she stood up to address the
convention. Not because of anything she said in her speech, but because
the openly supported women's reproductive rights.
Rove could count. (pgs 89-90)
Worse Than Watergate -The Secret Presidency of George
W. Bush, by John W. Dean - 2004
"Because of Watergate, no
president has been so foolhardy as to openly initiate a program like
Nixon's to screw those with whom he or his top aides are unhappy and to
blatantly help friends - that is, until the Bush II administration.
Although I was not looking for this type of Watergate behavior with Bush
and Cheney, it jumped ou tat me when surveying their secrecy - and soon
jumped out at everyone else when they attacked Ambassador Joe Wilson's
wife, a cover CIA agent, blowing her cover in an effort to seek revenge
against him - every bit as stupid an action as the Watergate break-in that
was the beginning of the end of a presidency, except the Bush-Cheney
attack was worse because it was immediately life-threatening and damaging
to national security and thus a far more serious crime than foolishly
planting a bug in an opponent's office. Before examining the Wilson case,
a passing glance at the Bush and Cheney "responsiveness" program
is fitting.
Cheney's energy group, and its recommendations,
was about as "responsive" as a White house can be to big
contributors without using the words 'quid pro quo' - which is the essence
of bribery. Actually, those words may, in fact, be applicable, but the
Cheney group's work has been kept so hidden by the vice president that no
one truly knows whether there was misconduct, or improper influence by
contributors on the nation's energy policy. Nor is the energy task force
an isolated example of this hidden "responsiveness". Throughout
this administration's tenure other such activities have taken place
whereby federal programs have been adjusted for the benefit of Bush-Cheney
political friends and contributors. In December 2003, U.S. New & World
Report completed a five-month study by two reporters who interviewed more
than one hundred people about the Bush and Cheney secrecy. This was the
first mainstream new organization - other than Bill Moyers at PBS (who has
run two specials on Bush and Cheney secrecy) and Dana Milbank (who keeps a
close eye on excessive secrecy for the Washington Post) - to explore the
Bsh-Cheney shadowlands. Highlights from the U.S. New special report:
" The Bush-Cheney actions are
"a reversal of a decades-long trend of openness i government,"
and the administration is "making increasing amounts of information
unavailable to taxpayers who pay for its collection."
The Bush-Cheny administration's "efforts to
shield the actions of, and the information obtained by, the executive
branch are far more extensive than has been previously documented,"
and its actions have effectively "placed large amounts of information
out of the reach of ordinary citizens."
Among the areas of Bush and Cheney's
secrecy are "important business and consumer information" and
"critical health and safety information potentially affecting
millions of Americans."
New administration policies have thwarted
the ability of Congress to exercise its constitutional authority to
monitor the executive branch, and, in some cases, even to obtain basic in
formation about its actions."
(pg 186-188)
The Family, The Real Story of The Bush
Dynasty, by
Kitty Kelley - 2004
"Laura Bush spoke to her
husband like a schoolteacher scolding a wayward child for not performing
up to his potential. "You let him do this to you," she said.
"You let John McCain talk down to you. You've got to fight
back."
Laura knew her man. Once he saw the loss as
an assault on his manhood, he would jump on his horse and charge. The next
day, he flew into South Carolina with his youngest brother. As George
swept aside the curtain on the plane separating his cabin from the press
corps, Marvin said, "The next sound you hear will be media removing
their lips from John McCain's blank, blank, blank." The family
felt the media, including reporters covering Bush, had been seduced by
McCain.
George made it clear that for the next
eighteen days he planned to come from the right on every issue.
Within hours he proved, as the New Hampshire attorney Tom Rath had
observed, that the acorn really does not fall far from the tree. He
emulated his father's slashing Willie Horton strategy and transformed the
South Carolina primary into one of the most viscous campaigns in political
history.
George began with a speech at Bob Jones
University in Greenville. BJU was an institution that, over the
years, had opposed integration, banned interracial dating, and condemned
homosexuality and whose founders were vociferously anti-Catholic. In
2000 the university president Bob Jones III, still referred to Mormonism
and Catholicism as "cults which call themselves
Christian." The school threatened to arrest any
out-of-the-closet gay alumni who dared to return to the school. One
political placard on campus read: 'Vote Bush Because Gay People Have Too
Many Rights." Student-body attendance was compulsory for the
governor's speech, and the six thousand Christian-right students turned
out to cheer loudly every time George said the word
"conservative." Newsweek counted twelve cheers in two
minutes. George, who had kept a Confederate flag on his wall during
his years at Andover, aligned himself with neo-Confederates and questioned
McCain's commitment to states' rights - coded rhetoric for the right to be
racist.
Not all conservatives applauded George for
lending his presence to a citadel of prejudice. "It's one thing to
lurch to the right," said Bill Kristol, editor and publisher of 'The
Weekly Standard'. "It's another thing to lurch back 60 years. You
could make the case that 'compassionate conservatism' died February 2 when
Bush appeared at Bob Jones U."
The next day George piled on McCain by sponsoring
an event with J. Thomas Burch, Jr., the head of a little-known veteran's
group, who charged that after he came home from Vietnam, McCain 'forgot
me'. After Burch spoke, Bush embraced him.
McCain, who still limped and could not raise his
arms as a result of his imprisonment by the North Vietnamese, was livid.
He ran an ad comparing George Bush to Bill Clinton, and asked, "Isn't
it time we had a president who told the truth?"
Being equated with the man he regarded as
reptilian was more than Bush could bear. He retaliated as if McCain had
impugned his mother. "Politics is tough, but when McCain compared me
to Bill Clinton and said I was untrustworthy, that's over the line.
Disagree with me, fine, but do not challenge my integrity."
"That commercial... was the Godzilla judo
flip for us," recalled Trey Walker, McCain's national field director.
"McCain's momentum had already started to evaporate, and that just
stopped him dead."
The two candidates heaped charges upon
countercharges as they clawed their bloody way to the conservative high
ground on outlawing abortion, gambling, pornography, and homosexuality
while supporting guns and God and the Confederate flag. (pgs 594-595)
Bush On The Couch - Inside The Mind of the
President,
by Justin A Frank - 2004
"Bush has continued to
cite divine instruction to explain his actions since assuming office. As
reported in Israel's Haarets News, Bush said, "God told me to strike
at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at
Saddam, which I did." Though his administration insists that the war
on Iraq is not a religious war, at least one high-ranking official say
otherwise. Lieutenant General William Boykin, the deputy undersecretary of
defense, who share the president's views on Bush's divine destiny,
"He's in the White House because God put him there," Boykin said
after claiming that our "spiritual enemy will only be defeated if we
come against them in the name of Jesus." Boykin is also reported to
have described the war as a struggle between Christianity and Satan."
(pg 72)
"The more closely we look
at George W. Bush, the more clearly we see a man who cannot live within
the constraints of his own ascending power. Here is a businessman who
missed four consecutive SEC filing deadlines for reporting his Harken
stock trades. Here is a candidate who alleges that his opponent "will
say anything to get elected," and then proceeds to do the same
himself. Here is a confessed witness of the Florida popular vote who says,
"We have a responsibility to respect the law and not seek to
undermine it when we do not like the outcome" and then complains that
"the court cloaked its ruling in legalistic language." Here is a
president who proclaims, "We must uncover every detail and learn
every lesson of September 11th" and then fights the commission formed
to do just that. Here is a man who declares, "I take personal
responsibility for everything I say," and then evades and dissembles
when the media try to hold him to his promise. (pg 82)
Bushworld - Enter At Your Own
Risk, by Maureen Dowd -
2004
"Former president Bush
swats away talk about what he dismissively calls "this dynasty
stuff" or "this legacy crud."
But the Texas meeting of the two royal families,
the House of Saud and the House of Bush, as Newsweek called it, showed the
cat's cradle entwining 41 and 43, two presidents perplexed and bedeviled
by the same tumultuous region.
The second President Bush neglected the Middle
East for fifteen months. Then the Middle East visited him in September,
and he became firm in his antiterrorist resolve. Then he started
vacillating - a muddled, nerve-racking period during which he still seemed
to be struggling to occupy the full space of his presidency. Finally,
Poppy of Arabia swept across the Texas prairie to help out.
Until the Crawford summit, W. had been pulled by
Karl Rove and the conservative right into the Israei orbit, scolding Ariel
Sharon even as he ludicrously lauded him as "a man of peace",
letting him get on with his brutal campaign.
Mr. Rove focused on keeping the conservative base
tht W.'s dad lost and making inroads into the Jewish vote that W.'s dad
never had, even dispatched hawkish Paul Wolfowicz to address a pro-Israel
rally.
But just when W. Seemed to have cast his lot
firmly with Mr. Sharon, undercutting his own disgruntled secretary of
state, he was reminded by Dad that there is nothing thicker than blood and
oil. (pgs 199-200)
House of Bush-House of Saud, The Secret
Relationship between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties, by Craig Unger
-2004
"...Dubya had one political
advantage over his father. The elder Bush so embodied the image of a spoiled
and privileged son of the Eastern aristocracy that in 1988 when Ann
Richards, who was soon to become governor of Texas, delivered her famous
sound bite about the elder Bush at the Democratic National Convention, the
words resonated throughout the United States and made Richards a national
figure. "Poor George," she had drawled, "he can't help it. He
was born with a silver foot in his mouth."
By contrast, Dubya cast a figure that could be
powerfully evocative of the cowboys who once strode Texas's wide-open
spaces. At a time when most Texans lived in air-conditioned suburbs, but
still longed for its rich and powerful mythic imagery of wide-open spaces
and the Old West, he understood and appealed to rural Texas archetypes that
were an amalgam of male-bonding rituals forged on the ranch, in the oil
fields, and in the locker room. Those were ideals that celebrated the larded
with Marlboro Country-type cowboy imagery. At their best, those values were
democratic in the true sense of the word, recognizing no social barriers
separating ht ranch hand from the millionaires. This was in large part a
source of Dubya's appeal that enabled him to win support that cross class
barriers.
But the reality was wildly at odds with the
imagery. Dubya was still very much a child of privilege himself. He accepted
his high station in life so unquestioningly that detractors often said he
had been born on third base and though he had hit a triple. After graduating
from Yale, Bush returned to Houston to join the Taxas Air National Guard in
1968. In addition to aircraft broker James Bath, Bush's unit consisted of
several members of the River Oaks and Houston country clubs, and Lloyd
Bentsen III, a son of the Texas senator. According to the Washington Post,
Bush's political connections helped him get into the unit, a highly
sought-after refuge for young men seeking to avoid service in Vietnam. Dubya
gained admission to the guard only after Ben Barnes, the powerful Speaker of
the Houston Texas, intervened to get him a pilot's slot.
Even after he got into the guard, Bush's stint was
marked by controversy. In 1972, orders had required Bush to report to a
lieutenant colonel with a Dickensian name, William Turnipseed, in Montgomery
Alabama. But, according to Turnipseed, Bush 'never showed up'.
In the end, Bush's National Guard record was
something less than distinguished - and it created issues that would haunt
his electoral future. In 1972 Bush was suspended from flying for 'failure to
accomplish annual medical examination." As it happened, that was
the year drug testing became part of military medical exams, and political
opponents later accused Bush of avoiding the exam so as to escape detection
of cocaine use. (pgs 114-115)

According to the book,
"House of Bush, House of Saud' by Craig Unger, on page 3 we read,
"For decades the House of Saud had somehow maintained control of Saudi
Arabia and the world's richest oil reserves by performing a seemingly
untenable balancing act with two parties who had vowed to destroy each
other.
On the one hand, the House of Saud was an Islamic
theocracy whose power grew out of the royal family's alliance with Wahhabi
fundamentalism, a strident and puritanical Islamic sect that provided a
fertile breeding ground for a global network of terrorist urging a violent
jihad against the United States.
On page 83, he states: "Since many Wahhabis
saw the United States as the Great Satan, that means the Saudis had vital
relationship essential to their survival - a double marriage of sorts - with
partners who were mortal enemies.
On page 88, he states: "Islam allows
the use of force to fulfill the duties of jihad so long as there is no
workable alternative. The more radical neo-Wahhabis, however, especially
those under the sway of the militant Muslim Brotherhood strongly emphasized
a much more extreme interpretation of jihad. For the Muslim Brotherhood
advocated waging a holy war against the enemies of Islam.
"According to F. Gregory Gause III, A
University of Vermont professor and a member of the Council on Foreign
Relations, "It is undoubtedly true that the extremely strict,
intolerant version of Islam that is taught and practiced in Saudi Arabia
created the milieu from which Osama bin Laden and his recruits
emerged."
On page 89: [Prince] Bandar whose
father Prince Sultan was one of the Sudairi Seven,* was a case in point. He
smoked cigars and sniffed brandy, had palatial estates in Aspen, in Virginia
near the CIA, and in the English countryside. No one enjoyed the fruits of
Western civilization more than he. But in the end. Bandar knew as well as
anyone that the House of Saud was a theocracy and must heed the call of
Islam.
* King Abdul Aziz, the found of modern Saudi
Arabia had forty-three sons, and the Sudairi Seven refers to the seven sons
by his favored wife. They include King Fahd, Defense Minister Prince Sultan,
Riyadh governor Prince Salman, Interior Minister Prince Nayef, business
leader Prince Abdularham, Prince Ahmed, and Prince Turki bin Abdul Aziz.
Sultan's son Prince Bandar had, of course, been the most prominent Saudi in
the United States for decades.
On page 90: Mohammad bin Laden, Osama's father,
kept all of his children in one residence so he could preside over their
discipline and religious upbringing. He took pride in having fathered
twenty-five sons for the jihad.
The bin Ladens had close ties to the Royal
family. Osama was educated at the Aziz University .
Wahhabi scholar Sheikh Abdullah Azzam and Ayman
al-Zawawhiri, an Egyptian surgeon who later became notorious as the man
behind Osama bin Laden. Azzam became particular effective in persuading
masses of Muslims all over the world to wage an international jihad.
On page 100: Mohammad bin Laden was so close to the
royal family that in the sixties, he played a vital role in persuading King
Saud to abdicate in favor of his broth Faisal.
Bin Laden's action carried extraordinary weight in
large part because of his family's unique place in Saudi society. Their ties
to the royal family were so crucial that both sides made certain the
relationships transcended generations. Many of the twenty-five bin Laden
boys attended school with the songs of King Abdul Aziz and his successor,
Faisal, at Victoria College in Alexandria, where they had classmates such as
King Hussein of Jordan, the Khashoggi brothers (of whom Adnan was the
preeminent Saudi arms dealer of the Iran-contra era), and Kamal Adham, the
billionaire who ran Saudi intelligence before Prince Truki. The boys earned
reputations as discreet chaperones for the young royals.
In 1968, when Mohammed bin Laden was killed in a
plane crash, King Faisal said his "right arm" had been
broken" and rushed to the support of the bin Ladens, who, at the time,
did not have anyone old enough to take the helm of the family business.
Faisal appointed the highly regarded head of his own construction company to
make sure the Saudi Binladin group was in good hands until Salem, Osama's
older half brother, was old enough to take over." Later, when King
Faisal took the throne in 1982, Salem became one of his two best
friends."
Closely tied as they were to both the royal family
and the United States, at this point the bin Ladens had only indirect
connections to the Bush family and its allies. James Bath,* the American
business representative of Salem bin laden, new both George W. Bush and
George H. W. Bush. Khalid bin Mahfous, who was close to both the bin Ladens
and the royal family, had helped finance the Houston skyscraper for the
Texas Commerce Bank, in which James Baker had a significant stake. He also
had ties to Bath.
Keeping the photograph above in
mind read further:
But those Bush-bin Laden
relationships were indirect - two degrees of separation, perhaps - and as
times have been overstated. Critics have asserted that money may have gone
from Khalid bin Mahfouz and Salem bin Laden through James Bath into Arbusto
Energy, the oil company started by George W. Bush, but no hard evidence has
ever been found to back up that charge.
* Bath had fronted for Saudi billionaires Salem
bin Laden and Khahd bin Malfous on other deals, but in this case he says,
"One hundred percent of those funds were mine. It was a purely personal
investment." Bin Laden and bin Mahfous, he insists ha nothing to do
with either the elder George Bush or his son. "They never met
Bush," Bath says. "Ever. And there was no reason to. At that point
Bush was a young guy just out of Yale, a struggling young entrepreneur
trying to get a drilling fund."
Note: and that was just the beginning.
American
Dynasty, Aristocracy Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of
Bush, by Kevin Phillips - 2004
Armageddon, Prophecy, and
Politics
The historiography of American
presidential reference to Armageddon is limited but instructive. Theodore
Roosevelt's famous 1912 comment about standing with the Lord at Armageddon
was merely dramatics. The possible events i the Holy Land were not a
discussion point. Britain had yet to capture Palestine and Foreign
Secretary Arthur Ballour had yet to promise it to Zionists as a Jewish
homeland. The purported ultimate battlefield itself - at the ancient ruins
of Megiddo, north of Jerusalem - was still ahalf century removed from
parking lots crowded with tourist buses.
Even Jimmy Carter whose election in 1976 attuned
Americans to born-again Christians left Armageddon alone. He never
provoked the kind of debate that ballooned to the early 1980s over Ronald
Reagan's view that war i the Middle East might bring n the Soviets,
trigger nuclear holocaust and fulfill the biblical prophecies. In the
second presidential debate of 1984 between Reagan and Democrat Walter
Mondale journalists asked the President what he meant. He replied,
"No one knows whether those prophecies mean that Armageddon is a
thousand years away or the day after tomorrow. So I have never seriously
said we must plan according to Armageddon."
Reagan's preoccupation was with the Soviet Union
- the "Evil Empire" he called it - and how Russia appeared to
fit the biblical reference to the invasion of Israel by "Gog" a
power to the north. His support for the "Star Wars" missile
defense system, some critics thought, was tied to fear of a nuclear
Armageddon, a Klaxon already being sounded by preachers like Jerry Falwell.
The end of the cold war and the breakup of the Soviet Union cooled the
great power-confrontation aspect, and George H. W. Bush as president said
nothing about Armageddon. Nor did Clinton, the next born-again Baptist in
the White House. Like Carter, he avoided dire biblical prophecies. His
only reference was to an Armageddon 'avoided' - the nuclear confrontation
narrowly averted between Pakistan and India in 1999.
Publicly, George W. Bush also chose to shun
discussion of Armageddon, though the Dominionist preachers he openly
admired had produce a small shelf of volumes, pamphlets, and videotapes on
the turmoil to come. The events of 9/11 drew further attention to
Armageddon theology and several religious publications called on the
president to set out his views: In March 2003, the editors of
Christian Century insisted that "the American people have a right to
know how the president's faith in informing his pubic policies not least
his design on Iraq.
More than Bush's earlier religious phraseology,
his Scripture-flavored preparation for war against Iraq - the latter-day
Babylon of biblical notoriety - stirred scrutiny. Those who followed
Bush's religiosity had seen a change in one pundit's words, "from
talking about a Wesleyan theology of personal transformation ' to
describing a Calvinist 'divine plan' laid out by a sovereign God for the
country and himself. At the National Prayer Breakfast Feb. 6, for
instance, Bush said, "We can be confident in the ways of Providence
... Behind all of life and all of history, there's a dedication and
purpose set by the hand of a just and faithful God." (pgs 238-239)
ABOUT 9/11
| Date |
Origin
Time (UTC) |
Magnitude
(Richter scale) |
Time
(EDT) |
Dominant
Period |
Signal
Duration |
Remark |
| 09/11/2001 |
12:46:26±1 |
0.9 |
08:46:26 |
0.8 sec |
12 seconds |
first impact |
| 09/11/2001 |
13:02:54±2 |
0.7 |
09:02:54 |
0.6 sec |
6 seconds |
second impact |
| 09/11/2001 |
13:59:04±1 |
2.1 |
09:59:04 |
0.8 sec |
10 seconds |
first collapse |
| 09/11/2001 |
14:28:31±1 |
2.3 |
10:28:31 |
0.9 sec |
8 seconds |
second collapse |
| 09/11/2001 |
21:20:33±2 |
0.6 |
17:20:33 |
0.7 sec |
18 seconds |
Building 7 collapse |
Location of the World Trade Center is 40.71°N and 74.01°W.

MORE FORENSIC LINKS
Giuliani comment broadcast on 9/11:
“I went down to the scene and we set up headquarters at
75 Barkley Street, which was right there with the police commissioner, the
fire commissioner, the head of emergency management, and we were operating
out of there when we were told that the World Trade Center was going to
collapse. And it did collapse before we could actually get out of the
building, so we were trapped in the building for 10, 15 minutes, and finally
found an exit and got out, walked north, and took a lot of people with
us.”
9/11
- Synthetic Terror - Made in the USA - by Webster Griffin Tarpley -
2005
"So far we have heard
little of Hani Hanjour who is accused by the FBI of piloting American
Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon. According to press reports, Hanjour
had visited Bowie's Maryland Freeway Airport just north of Washington,
D.C. three times since mid-August 2001 as he attempted to get
permission to use one of the airport's planes. But Hani Hanjour was simply
too clumsy, too inept. The question is crucial, because the plane that hit
the Pentagon performed a stunning maneuver of which many a seasoned pilot
would have been rpoud. Instead Hani Hanjour turns out to have been a
pathetic misfit. (pg 182)
"Alleged Flight 77 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazri,
Khalid Al-Midhar and Hani Hanjour all spent time in San Diego, where
they sough flight training. According to published accounts, "Two of
the men, Alhazri and Al-Midhar, also briefly attention a local flight
school, bt they were dropped because of their limited English and
incompetence at the controls ... (In the sping of 2001), two of the men
visited Montgomery Field, a community airport ... and sought flying
lessons. They spoke to instructors in Sorbi's flying Clu, which allowed
them to take only two lessons before advising them to quit. Their English
was horrible, and thier mechanical skills were even worse," said an
instructor, who asked not to be named. "It was like they had hardly
even ever driven a car - They seem like nice guys," the instructor
said," but in the plane, they were dumb and dumber." (p 183)
"These two would-be pilots although they
were allegedly the most experienced and hardened terrorist in the entire
group of 19, were subject to panic attacks in the cockpit, in which time
they would begin praying out loud. The official version does not assert
that they acted as pilots, but the basis of this par of the official story
is wrapped in mystery, like the rest of it. (pg 184)
9/11 - The Big Lie - challenges the entire official
version of the Sept. 11 attacks. by Thierry Meyssan
"The plane was stopped
dead, without its wings having struck the facade. There is no visible
trace of any impact except that from the Boeing's nose.
We should thus be able to see the wings and
the fuselage outside, on the lawn in fact.
While the plane's nose is made of
carbon and the wings, containing the fuel, can burn, the Boeing's fuselage
is aluminum and the jet engines are built out of steel. At the end of the
fire, it would necessarily have left a burnt-out wreck. If you refer to
the Associate Press photo (on the front cover of this book) you will
clearly observe that there is no plane. The shot was nevertheless taken in
the very first minutes: the fire trucks had arrived, but the firemen had
not yet deployed. (pg 22)
To recap the official version: a hijacked
Boeing eluded the F-16 fighters went in its pursuit and foiled the
anti-aircraft defense system in Washington. It landed vertically on the
Pentagon parking lot while remaining in a horizontal position. It stuck
the facade at ground level. Its nose and fuselage are supposed to have
penetrated into the building. One of its wings, perhaps both of them,
burned outdoors, while the fuselage disintegrated inside. The fuel, stored
in the wings, burned just long enough to start a fire in the building, and
then was transformed into a puddle which moved itself to the spot to where
the plane's nose supposedly came to a halt.
Not withstanding the respect owed to the
high rank of the "eye witnesses" - including military officers
and members of Congress - it is impossible to swallow such nonsense.
Far from lending credit to their depositions, their rank only underlines
the importance of the means deployed by the United States army to distort
the truth. (pg 24)
The official version is only propaganda. But the
facts remain that 125 persons died at the Pentagon and that an airplane
carrying 64 passengers disappeared. What caused the explosion that damaged
the Pentagon? What became of American Airlines flight 77? Are the
passengers dead? if so, who killed them and why? If not, where
are they? The U.S. Administration ashould address all these questions. (pg
25)
9-11 - by Noam Chomsky - 2001
The New Pearl Harbor - Disturbing Questions About The
Bush Administration and 9/11, by David Ray Griffin -2004
Problems for a coincidence
theory:
1. Several FAA flight controllers exhibited
extreme incompetence on 9/11, and evidently on that day only.
2. The officials in charge at both NMCC and
NORAD also acted incompetently on 9/11 and evidently on that day only.
3. In particular when NMCC-NORAD officials
did finally order jet fights to be scrambled to protect New York and
Washington, they ordered them in each case from more distant bases, rather
than from McGuire and Andrews, respectively.
4. After public statements saying that Andrews Air
Force Base had no jet fighters on alert to protect Washington, its website,
which had previous said that many jets were always on alert, was
altered.
5. Several pilots who normally are airborne and
going full speed in under three minutes all took much longer to get up on
9/11.
6. These same pilots, flying planes capable of
going 1,500 to 1,850 miles per hour, on that day were all evidently able to
get their planes to fly only 300 to 700 miles per hour.
7. The collapse of the buildings of the World Trade
Center, besides occurring at almost free-fall speed, exhibited other signs
of being controlled demolitions: molten steel, seismic shocks, and fine dust
were all produced.
8. The video and physical evidence suggesting that
controlled demolition was the cause of othe collapse of the Twin Towers
co-exists with testimony from people in these buildings that they heard,
felt, and saw the effects of explosions.
9. The collapse of WTC-1 and WTC-2 had some of the same
features as the collapse of WTC-7 even though the latter collapse could not
be attributed to the impact and jet fuel of an airplane.
10. Both the North Tower and the South Tower collapsed
just as their respective fires were dying down, even though this means that
the South Tower, which had been hit second, collapsed first.
11. Government agencies had the debris, including the
steel, from the collapsed WTC buildings removed without investigations,
which is what would be expected ifi the government wanted to prevent
evidence of explosives from being discovered.
12. Physical evidence suggesting that what hit the
Pentagon could not have been a Boeing 757 co-exist with testimony of several
witnesses that the aircraft that did hit the Pentagon was far smaller than a
757.
13. This evidence about the aircraft that hit the
Pentagon co-exists with reports that Flight 77 crashed in Kentucky or Ohio.
14. This evidence co-exists with the fact that the only
evidence that Flight 77 did 'not' crash was upplied by an attorney closely
associated with the Bush Administration.
15. Evidence that Flight 77 did not return to
Washington to his the Pentagon co-exists with the fact that when the flight
control transcript was released, the final 20 minutes were missing.
16. The fact that the aircraft that hit the Pentagon did
so only after executing a very difficult maneuver co-exists with the fact
that it struck a section of the Pentagon that, besides containing none of
its leaders, was the section in which the strike would cause the least death
and destructions.
17. On the same day in which jet fighters were unable to
protect the Pentagon from an attack by a single airplane, the missiles that
normally protect the Pentagon also failed to do so.
18. Sounds from cell phones inside Flight 93 suggesting
that the plane had been hit by a missile were matched by many reports to
this effect from witnesses on the ground.
19. This evidence the flight 93 was shot down co-exists
with reports from both civilian and military leaders that there was intent
to shoot this flight down.
20. The only plane that was evidently shot down, Flight
93, was the only one in which it appeared that passengers were going to gain
control.
21. The evidence that Flight 93 was shot down after the
passengers were about to gain control co-exists with the fact that the
flight control transcript for this flight was not released.
22. That coincidence co-exists with the fact that when
the cockpit recording of Flight 93 was released, the final three minutes
were missing.
23. Evidence showing that the US government had far more
specific evidence of what was to occur on 9/11 than it has admitted
co-exists with evidence that it actively blocked investigations that might
have prevented the attacks.
24. Reports of obstructions from FBI agents in
Minneapolis co-exist with similar reports from Chicago and New
York. (pgs 141 - 143)
(You will find more of these in the book)
9/11 Commission - Cover Up - What the Government is
Still Hiding About the War on Terror - by Peter Lance - 2004
" Fire Marshal Ronnie
Bucca, who perished on the 78th floor of the South Tower on Sept. 11, was
working as a terrorism liaison to the FDNY at Metrotech, the fire
department's headquarters, in 1998 when he uncovered evidence that Ahmed
Amin Refai, an Egyptian a naturalized citizen working as an accountant for
the FDNY, had obtained the blueprints of the World Trade center from the
FDNY prior to the 1993 bombing. Further, Fire Marshal Bucca discovered that
Mr. Refair was an intimate of blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and had been
photographed on the Sheikh's arm acting as his bodyguard in the months prior
to the WTC bombing.
Further, Fire Marshall Bucca learned that Mr. Refai
had been questioned twice by Federal agents in 1994, who had apparently
failed to follow up on his activities. Then in `1998 Fire marshal Bucca
learned that Mr. Fefai had told multiple lies to obtain a second I.D. card
allowing entrance to Metrotech the FDNY's SECURE headquarters which
contained blueprints of most of the city's major building including the
updated plans of the WTC complex. Mr. Bucca presented his findings to the
FBI's JTTF and they were ignored.
Following his death o Sept.11, Fire Marshal
Bucca's widow, Eve, contacted the FDNY, who sent the Refai file to the FBI a
second time and a second time it was ignored. (pgs 289-290)
"9:24 a.m. The
FAA notifies NORAD that AA Flight 77 appears to be headed toward Washing
D.C.
9:27 a.m. NORAD
orders three F-16 fighters scrambled from Langley Air Force Base in
Virginia. Langley is 129 miles from Washington. Ready aircraft at
Andrews Air Force Base, ten miles away are not scrambled. The fact that both
AA 11 and AA 77 are tracked by FAA even when their transponders are shut
off, proves that the government has the ability to follow each of the four
hijacked aircraft on 9/11. In fact, Vice President Dick Cheney gets regular
updates from the FAA as AA 77 bears down on Washington. He's first
alerted when the hijacked plane is fifty miles away from the capital.
The Wall Street Journal has one explanation
for the slow fighter response. In a story on March 22, 2004, they report
that "Once they got in the air, the Langley fighters observed peacetime
noise restrictions requiring that they fly more slowly than supersonic speed
and take off over water pointed away from Washington. (pg 236)
Inside Job - Unmasking the 9/11
Conspiracies, by Jim Marrs - 2004
"Many have wondered about
the witnesses who claim to have heard multiple explosions within the
buildings. One such witness was the head of WTC security, John O'Neill,
who states shortly before he himself became a victim that he had helped
dig out survivors on the 27th floor before the building collapsed. Since
the aircraft crashed into the 80th floor, what heavily damaged the 27th
floor? (pg 33)
"Survivor Teresa Velis,
manager for a software development company was on the 47th floor of the
North Tower when it was struck. "I got off the elevator, turned the
corner and opened the door to the ladies' room. I said good morning to a
lady who was sitting at a mirror when the whole building shook. I thought
it was an earthquake. Then I heard those banging noises on the other side
of the wall. It sounded like someone had cut the elevator cables. It just
fell and fell and fell."
Velis reached ground level with a coworker
when the South Tower collapsed, knocking them down. In near total
darkness, she and the coworker followed someone with a flashlight.
"The flashlight led us into Borders bookstore, up an escalator and
out to Church Street. There were explosions going off everywhere. I was
convinced that there were bombs planted all over the place and someone was
sitting at a control panel pushing detonator buttons. I was afraid to go
down Church Street toward Broadway, but I had to do it. I ended up on
Vesey Street. There was another explosion. And another. I didn't know
which way to run."
Ross Milanytch watched the horror at the
WTC from his office window on the 22nd floor of oa building a couple of
blocks away. "[I saw] small explosions on each floor. And after it
all cleared, all that was left of the buildings, you could see the steel
girders in like a triangular sail shape. The structure was just completely
gone," he said. (pg 34)
Plan of
Attack, by Bob Woodward - 2004
"On Friday, January 31,
Bush was scheduled to meet again with Tony Blair at Camp David, but a mix
of rain and ice kept them at the White House.
Blair told Bush that he needed to get a second
U.N. resolution. He had promised that to his political party at home, and
he was confident that together he and Bush could rally the U.N. and the
international community.
Bush was set against a second resolution. This
was a rare case in which Cheney and Powell agreed. Both were opposed. The
first resolution had taken seven weeks, and this one would be much
harder.
Powell didn't think it was necessary. He thought
a judge would rule that 1441 was enough to move without a second
resolution." (pg 296-297)
"But Blair had the winning argument. It was
necessary for him politically. It was no more complicated than that, an
absolute political necessity. Blair said he needed the favor. Please.
" (pg 297)
"Cheney and Libby were not giving up on the
alleged Iraq connection with al Qaeda, and perhaps the 9/11 plots. Powell
just did not see it. That matter finally would have to go to the
president.
We don't need to stretch the terrorism case.
Tenet said, recalling the presidents instructions. They had pretty good
evidence that a Palestinian named Abe Musab al-Zarqawi, who had strong al
Qaeda ties, was involved with the alleged poison center in northern Iraq
where Tim's CIA paramilitary team was operating.
Zaraqwi had gone to Baghdad in the spring of 2002
ofr medical treatment and they thought he had established a base of
operations there. The captured assassin of Laurence Foley, a State
Department official killed in Jordan in the fall, had said his cell
received money official killed in Jordan in the fall, had said his cell
received money and weapons from Zarqawi for the murder. The Zarqawi
network was big and dangerous.
There was, however, a big problem. "I can't
take you to authority, direction and control" Tenet said, referring
to his standard for making a hard case. It means there was no proof that
Saddam or Iraqi intelligence was running things. Libby had argued that
operational control was not the only test. The Taliban in Afghanistan did
not direct bin laden. The president's test was if someone harbored
terrorists. The CIA could make a case that Saddam had harbored Zarqawi
giving him some kind of sanctuary. Zarqawi was operating in places and
ways that Saddam's regime would not have permitted unless it wanted it. So
they were technically harboring terrorists. He suggested sticking with the
one kernel that was solid.
Tenet understood that Cheney was seized with al
Qaeda.
Bush finally backed Tenet 100 percent on this
issue in the face of Cheney's pressure.
Powell decided he would lay out the Zarqawi
connections in his presentation and he arrived at compromise language.
After the WMD case, which would take about 75 percent of his time, he
would say there was a "potentially much more sinister"
connection between Iraq and al Qaeda. He would present all the Zarqawi
links to more than 100 operatives who had been arrested in Europe,
including in France, britain, Spain, and Italy. (pgs 300-301)
102
Minutes - The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers
- by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn - 2005
[Tom McGinnis called his wife on
the phone]
It was 10:25 - The 92nd floor seemed to be safely
below the plane crash. In the ninety-nine minutes since Flight 11 had
struck, the 92nd floor had not been afflicted with unbearable smoke or flame
- the worst of that had been six or seven floors above them for much of the
time. The sprinkler system had gone off or the pipes had burst water had
risen to the ankles. The big problem was getting out seventy people were on
92, sixty-nine of them with Carr, and none of them could open the doors.
McGinnis and his group were stuck in a conference room where the door had
jammed. Over time, the flames had spread along the 93rd and 94th floors even
down to the 92nd floor, and were now bearing down on the pockets of refuge.
The people who had survived for the terrible hour and a half, unable t ofind
an escape route, found themselves forced to the windows for air. More and
more people began to fall. As the fire raged along the west side of the 92nd
floor, forty-one year-old Tom McGinnis, who had met Illiana when they were
kids in Washington Heights, again told her he loved her and Caitlin (their
daughter)
"Don't hang up," she pleaded.
"I gotta get down on the floor," he said.
"With the, the phone connection faded out.
It was 10:26, 100 minutes from the time
the plane hit. (pg 238)
"..... the
moment of death, particularly for those at the top of the north tower, the
1,000 or so people who survived the crash of Flight 11 at 8:;36 but have not
been able to find an open staircase. Their fate was sealed nearly four
decades earlier, when the stairways were clustered in the core of the
building, and fire stairs were eliminated as a wasteful use of valuable
space. The top floors of the north tower, weakened by the unabated,
uncontained fire now crater in a tremendous rush.
As the floors fall, they pick up speed,
ten stories in a single second, they sweep through a tower that seems empty,
because 99 percent of the people who worked below the fire floors are now
out of the tower. But this building is not empty. Still inside are Pablo
Ortiz and Frank De Martini, who freed scores from the upper floors. Perhaps
a dozen or so firefighters have climbed into the 40th, some a bit higher;
other officers are wandering the halls and stairs to round up members of
their companies who got separated during the ascent.
Lower in the building, probably still on the
27th floor; is Capt. William Burke, who saw the collapse of the south tower,
ordered his company out, but stayed with Ed Beyea in his wheelchair. No
doubt, so is Abe Zelmanowitz, who stood by Beyea through the long morning,
as thousands of people marched down the stairs, as rescuers came and went
from the 27th floor, until only Captain Burke remained with them.
Of uncertain status are the firefighters -
perhaps as many as 100 - last seen resting on the 19th floor by the three
court officers, apparently unaware of the dire situation. Few could have
made such progress to safety.
Mike Warchola, the lieutenant from Ladder 5, on his
last day of work, is on the 12th floor, helping a woman who cannot breathe.
Possibly it is Judith Reese, who was resting in that area when Jeff Gettler
turned her over to a group of firefighters and Port Authority police
officers. She remains under their care. They are trying to get her the last
few steps to safety, but the building is coming at them faster than she can
move. (p243)
"In stairway B, among the
firefighters who have taken on the cause of Josephine Harris and her fallen
arches, there is a prayer or two for a swift end. The impossible collisions
of floor, steel, glass are belting towards them. Even stronger than the
noise is the wind. Sal D'Agostino tries to open a door to leave the
stairwell, but it flies out, and throws him against the wall. The wind lifts
the engine's chauffeur, Mike Meldrum off his feet and heaves him one floor
down; it carries Matt Komorowski down three floors.
As the floors drop, the air has nowhere to
go. So much of a sky-scraper is nothing but air, empty spaces filled by
people in buildings like 1 and 2 World Trade Center, putting little pieces
of their daily lives onto these platforms.
Here is a desk drawer where Dianne DeFontes keeps
her sensible shoes. The rack where Raffaele Cava first hung his hat,
thirty years earlier. The couch in Frank DeMartini's office where his
aides' children nap on their afternoon at Daddy's job. The big table up in
Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, where the wealthy young men and women dine out
of paper bags on Junk Food Fridays. The flower vases in Windows on the World
that Christine Olender checks, so that the well-set tables of crystal and
linen are as pleasing to the eye as the forty-mile vista of city and harbor;
river and road.
Now the lights have gone out. The giant platters of
air plunge past the people in the north tower and hit bottom. The wind seems
to be bouncing back up stairway B, whipping tons of crushed building
particles along the shaft. The people stretched up and down the lower floors
of that stairway - the ones with Josephine Harris, a couple of the
stragglers who had stayed in Pat Hoey's office on the 64th floor that
morning - can see nothing. They pry open a door; but it goes nowhere: they
huddle alive, in the last intact stub of the World Trade Center: Above
them is only sky. (pgs 244-245)
Against All Enemies - Inside America's War on
Terror,
by Richard A Clarke - 2004
"Iran, the fourth ofo
the Priority Countries, is as important as the others in the war on
terrorism. When the Bush administration talked about Iraq is a nation that
supported terrorism, including al Qaeda, and was developing weapons of mass
destruction, those comments perfectly suited Iran, not Iraq. It was Tehran
that had funded and directed Hezbollah since its inception. It was Hezbollah
that had killed hundreds of Americans in Lebanon the Marine barracks and
Saudi Arabia, (Khobar Towers). Hezbollah, with Iranian support has also
killed hundreds of Israelis. While the "ties" and
"links" between Saddam and al Qaeda were minimal, al Qaeda
regularly used Iranian territory for transit and sanctuary prior to
September 11. Al Qaeda's Egyptian branch, Egyptian Islamic Jihad operated
openly in Tehran. It is no coincidence that many of the al Qaeda management
team, or Shura Council, moved across the border into Iran after U.S. forces
finally invaded Afghanistan.
While Iraq's weapons of mass destruction proved
elusive to U.N. inspectors and later to U.S. troops, the U.N.'s
International atomic Energy Agency found evidence that Iran was secretly
engaged in a nuclear weapons program. Iran was much more actively engaged
with terrorism and weapons of mass destruction than Iraq. Any objective
observer looking at the evidence in 2002 and 2003 would have said that the
U.s. should spend more time and attention dealing with the security
threats from Tehran than those from Baghdad. That is not meant as an
argument for invading Iran. Having once looked at that option in detail in
1996, I have no desire to revisit it. It is, however, an argument for paying
attention to real threats. Many of those threats like Iran require
thoughtful imaginative and careful responses. There are strong active
democratic forces in Iran. Without destroying their credibility by making
them agents of the CIA, the United States, working with other nations,
should be able to strengthen these democratic forces in Iran to the point
where they can take control of the national security apparatus from the
ideologues. It will not be an easy task and it will require persistent
devotion of high-level U.S. attention, not unlike what is being devoted to
Iraq.
Constitutional Chaos - What Happens When the Government
Breaks Its Own Laws, by Judge Andrew P. Napolitano - 2004
"The Constitution
provides for a strong chief executive - not a king - but an executive who is
not subject to either of the two branches. What do I mean by this? In
the modern European system, the head of the government is the prime
ministers. The prime minister is also the head of the political party that
dominates the legislative branch. The prime minister of most modern European
countries is not elected in a popular vote. His parties' representatives are
elected to parliament and, if they have a majority in parliament, they
choose him as the leader of their party to become the leader of the
government. The prime minister's name does not appear on a national ballot
as a candidate for that office.
Here in the U.S. of course, the president,
though voted for popularly, actually is chosen by electors from the states
where the voters chose him. The people vote in each state directly for
electors, and the electors promise they will cast their state's electoral
votes for the winner of that state's popular vote. Usually the person who
wins the national popular vote becomes president, but in the 2000 election
exemplified, that is not always the case. (pg 192)
[Editor's note: the
2004 election is still hotly debated as well]
"Nevertheless,
the Constitution gives us a strong chief executive, not one whose powers
derive from the legislature, but one whose powers derive from the
Constitution. If a British prime minister loses a vote of confidence, that
is, if Parliament rejects one of his proposals, he can be swept from office
and forced to stand for re-election, not so with the American president. Not
only may he lose a vote in the Congress and still keep his job, but he
doesn't even have to be in the same party as that which dominates Congress,
and frequently that has been the case. (pgs 192-193)
Also see:
THE
ELECTION - 2000 - DREAMS AND VISIONS
The Presidential Election on
November 7, 2000, was thrown to the ... The dreams and
visions below came both before and after the election ...
www.greatdreams.com/elec2000.htm |
THE
ULTIMATE DREAM - THE ELECTION AND MIND CONTROL
There was an election going on in
which the outcome was to be a certain way and when it was over there
was another box inside everyone's home that was going ...
www.greatdreams.com/mind.htm |
America Alone - The Neo-Conservatives and The Global Order- , by
Stefan
Halper & Jonathan Clarke - 2004
"Rising
Anti-Americanism
We have pointed out that
the administration's military-based diplomacy has brought a striking rise in
world-wide anti-American feeling. When the president travels, he must
do so in a locked-down security bubble: eight hours here, sixteen hours
there, never more than thirty minutes from an airport, no press conferences,
no meeting the people, no seeing of the sights. American representatives
overseas tell us that in many small ways theier jobs have become more
difficult over the past three years. The open doors we experienced in our
careers are closing. Poll figures for Europe are particularly striking. Some
64 percent of Europeans condemned the war in Iraq as "not worth the
loss of life and other associated costs," while those who believe
"it is desirable for the U.S. to exert strong leadership in world
affairs" slipped from 64 to 45 percent from 2002 to 2003. In a
related development, there are indications of a global move away from
American brands. American market share is under pressure in virtually all
regions of the world. Further, as seen in its attempt to garner U.N. support
for the reconstruction of Iraq in the U.N. support for American diplomatic
initiatives has been elusive.
Thus far unmentioned in these concluding
observations is the damage done to American credibility abroad and the
increased difficulty American leaders will have to garnering the support at
home needed to address future crises. The irony that neo-conservatives
rose to prominence in the last 1960s and 1970s asserting the legitimacy of
American force projection in Vietnam is inescapable. After the
disillusionment of that war, Americans drew away from military intervention
in the wars of liberation, concluding that while nationalist forces could be
defeated in set battles, nationalism remained, and the notion of winning
opponents "hearts and minds" was just that - a notion. There were
virtually no examples of success in such endeavors, leading both
conservatives and liberals to believe that such initiatives, in the
neo-conservative agenda demonstrates, remain risky, expensive, dispiriting
and prone to failure.
It was not until the neo-conservatives
reformulated the argument in such a way as to link the war on terrorism to
regime change in Iraq that the crisp realism that had infused much of the
established politico-military discourse in the Nixon-Ford and Reagan was
collapsed. It seems certain that one result of the current policy beyond the
upheaval now threatening in Iraq and likely Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi
Arabia, will be an era characterized by a fractured public trust centering
on the government's national security policies and a particular aversion to
intervention. (pgs 311-312)
The Neocon
Reader, edited by Irwin Stelzer - includes
multiple writers, including Tony Blair - 2005
Trouble
Ahead
"Beyond the
axis of evil, there are other rogue states intent on acquiring weapons of
mass destruction - particularly biological weapons. Given our vulnerability
to attack from biological agent, as evidenced recently in the anthrax
releases, it is important to carefully assess and respond to potential
proliferators. Today, I want to discuss three other state sponsors of
terrorism that are pursuing or that have the potential to pursue weapons of
mass destruction or have the capability to do so in violation of their
treaty obligations. While we will continue to use diplomatic efforts and
multilateral regimes with these countries, it is important to review the
challenges we face and to underline the issues that these states must
address. As the President has said, "America will do what is necessary
to ensure our nation's security. We'll be deliberate. Yet time is not on our
side. I will not wait on events while dangers gather. I will not stand by as
peril draws closer and closer.' First Libya.
The United States also knows that Syria
has long had a chemical warfare program. It has a stockpile of the nerve
agent Sarin and is engaged in research and development of the more toxic and
persistent nerve agent VX. Although Damascus currently is dependent on
foreign sources for key elements of its chemical warefare program, including
precursor chemicals and key production equipment, we are concerned about
Syrian advances in its indigenous CW infrastructure which would
significantly increase the independence of its CW program. We think that
Syria has a variety of aerial bombs and Scud warheads which are potential
means of delivery of deadly agents capable of striking neighboring
countries.
Syria has a combined total of several hundred
Scud B, Scud C, and Scud SRBMS. It is pursuing both solid - and liquid -
propellant missile programs and Russian entities have been involved in
aiding Syria's ballistic missile development. All of Syria's missiles are
mobile and can reach much of Israel, Jordan, and Turkey from launch sites
well within the country. (pgs 123-124) by John R. Bolton (new
Ambassador to the U.N. 8-5-05)
|