9/11: Army Intelligence Analyst speaks out
Richard Moore
By Stephen C. Webster, Austin Bureau Chief
AUSTIN, Texas — On Aug. 2, 2006, Sergeant First Class Donald Buswell had his life forever changed by an e-mail.
During his 21 years in the Army, SFC Buswell served in both Iraq conflicts, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Korea. In 2004, Buswell sustained numerous shrapnel injuries from a rocket attack, after attempting to save two Iraqis who were left burning from explosions on a dirt road adjacent Saddam’s palace.
SFC Buswell, a decorated soldier, is by numerous measures a patriot who willingly and regularly risked his life in service to the United States. Unfortunately, the United States Army did not see it that way.
On that August day in 2006, Buswell received an e-mail which claimed to refute the "liberal" idea that a jet aircraft cannot vaporize. The e-mail’s author intended to support the 9/11 Commission’s claim that the plane which hit the Pentagon on 9/11/2001 literally atomized. It was sent to 34 people in the compartmentalized information facility at Ft. Sam Houston. Its allegation was not one Buswell could let pass unanswered.
His response, found in The Iconoclast’s first story about SFC Buswell – published Aug. 21, 2006 – refuted the allegation that airplanes can vaporize, and urged his fellow soldiers to support a new investigation into the attacks; to question the official story and "demand answers."
The next day, he was denied entry into his place of work. Soon thereafter, the Army informed him that he was under investigation. In the following days, he was fired from his job, demoted, ordered to undergo a mental health examination, and accused by Col. Luke S. Green, chief of staff at US Army North (Fifth Army), of "making statements disloyal to the United States."
Though under direct orders to avoid speaking to the media, Buswell’s story got out via his friends, family, and associates. The Iconoclast has since published three installations of his tale, and this reporter was contracted to retell the tale for Fort Worth Weekly, an alternative paper in North Texas, in May 2007. None of these articles quoted Buswell, as he was still in the military and still under orders of silence.
In April 2008, SFC Buswell became a civilian. It is now his intent, he said during a lengthy interview, to become an advocate for the 9/11 Truth Movement. That discussion follows.
* * *
ICONOCLAST: "Thank you for agreeing to your first on-record interview. I’d like to start on the day, Sept. 11, 2001. Tell us the story of how you came to understand what had happened."
BUSWELL: "First, let me say that I’m just a regular guy. I’m not seeking fame or anything like this. But there comes a time when you have to do things – your duty, what is morally correct and right – to say something, or maybe do something, and push the envelope. That’s where I see myself. I’m not a radical, one way or another.
"On Sept. 11, 2001, I was in Korea. At around 4:30 in the afternoon Korea time, I noticed there was a slight commotion at the main gates. They had barricades in the corners of the parking lots. Looked like they were getting ready for an exercise. I didn’t think much of it. I was just, ‘Oh, okay, moving barricades in, they’ll check IDs a bit more vigorously, whatever.’
"Well, we all know what happened that night. About 10:30 p.m. Korea time, I turn on the TV and boom ... A friend of mine, a German girl, came down and we were watching TV. We just couldn’t believe what we were seeing. It was the business channel, and they had video of New York, with one of the towers burning. We were like, ‘What are we looking at? Is this a movie?’
"We watched it and slowly began to realize that it was genuine. And when we saw the other plane hit, I said that it was deliberate. Completely intentional. She was shocked, and I immediately called up work and asked, ‘Do I need to come in?’ But I was told no, just come in in the morning.
"When I came back, on the morning of the 12th, the barricades were in place to secure traffic. The roads were backed up for miles and miles. I walked there, so it was no problem. But that’s when it started ... Months and months – years and years – of just thinking about it, studying it. I kept asking myself, who benefited? Who benefited immediately? Who benefited long term?
"When the stuff about [WTC complex owner] Larry Silverstein came up, when he said on TV to ‘pull’ WTC 7, then seeing building seven falling in on itself with no apparent motivation to fall down ... You know, I used to be an EOD [Explosive Ordinance Disposal] in the Army, so I know a bit about how explosives blow up – you know, fast burn explosives, slow burn explosives, I know what the yields are, went through the Army’s training on it – and that building was demolished. It was intentional, the middle caved in first, then the whole thing fell in on itself.
"And with the twin towers, well, when I first saw it on TV, live of course, and again and again on video over the years, I at first resisted my instinct that there were bombs in the buildings. I was like, ‘That’s too much for me to handle. I don’t want to believe that, because it would mean that possibly people in my government did that, or high up corporations, or organized criminals, or ... Someone on the inside.’
"And if they did put the bombs in the buildings and they were razed from inside, then what about the passenger manifests from those four planes? And what about the video tapes? And what about the perfect passport of Mohammed Atta flying out of the burning building and landing in the rubble? That’s just unbelievable ... Doesn’t make sense. But this information is coming from my government, so it has to have been spun.
"Professionally, at work, I remember bringing this up four or five times to different Army units. In Korea, I worked in the Information Operations (IO) cell at 8th US Army in Seoul. I brought it up to my boss, said it was kinda fishy, and he gave me the north-south nod, kinda like, ‘Yeah, it is crazy, but be careful what you say.’
"When I was at Ft. Hood, I told my boss there, ‘This just doesn’t add up.’ He goes, ‘Yeah, well, you have some good points, but you’re buying into conspiracy theories, and I just don’t believe it.’ And I’ve found that a lot of people in the military intelligence community have ignored their thoughts; they’re putting aside their own ability to think rationally, and they’re doing what they are told. Their bosses, and their bosses’ bosses, are not thinking on their own, and following a very narrow road with no deviating. They are telling them what to look for in the professional actions we Intelligence Analysts use, the tools we use; Priority Intelligence Requirements (PIR) are sets of priorities. Local commands determine where and what tools to use to solve these questions.
"Me...I was all over the place all the time. I was always bumping into the walls, asking ‘Why can’t we explore over here? Why can’t we follow this lead?’ Eventually I started saying to people, ‘Look, 9/11 is the main thing. We’re going to war over this stuff, and it needs to be reexamined."
ICONOCLAST: "So when you received the e-mail with the F4 slamming into a concrete wall, with the author claiming that the jet was atomized, just like the alleged jet that hit the Pentagon, that was just something you couldn’t let slip past without a response?"
BUSWELL: "That e-mail was unsolicited, so I replied back to everybody. I said, ‘Look, this is the problem, it doesn’t make sense, the answers given to us by the government don’t make sense, and we’re all being lied to. We need a new investigation. We must demand it, period.’ And that was it. Now, here we are.
"Almost eight years after that all happened, the same people are still in power, the same questions are still unanswered, and our problems are getting worse. Gas prices are going through the roof, and the war is unending. People are very distracted from what is actually causing their problems. I think we need to back up and look at that event. The world has been divided into pre-9/11 and post-9/11."
"When all that happened, I was honestly scared. I didn’t know what would happen to me or my career. But, thank God for the Iconoclast. After the first story hit, they backed off. By the time that Fort Worth paper picked up on it, I was totally exonerated."
ICONOCLAST: "You served in the military for 21 years. Why did you join? Where were you in life at that point?"
BUSWELL: "I was born and raised in New Hampshire. I went to Gilford High School, graduated in 1983. Kind of an average student – I was on the ski team, did some weightlifting, track and field, shot-put, discus, javelin, stuff like that. It is a rural community, lots of pretty trees, really cold winters, but beautiful summers.
"I always wanted to go into the Army. I looked at it as a ticket out, as a way to go different places, see a thing or two in my life. But before I did that, I was very mindful of punching tickets on the way up. I was obligated by a sense of duty to fulfill the two-year Mormon mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
"So, I did. My mission was to the West Indies. I have lived in Barbados, Saint Martin N.A., Antigua, and St. Vincent. It wasn’t too long after the invasion of Grenada; when President Reagan sent U.S. soldiers in there - in the very black and white rationalization I made at that time, it was, ‘Well, gee, you know, we couldn’t be here doing this kind of work if the soldiers didn’t come in a year or two before to clean up the radical communist elements to allow us to walk around in the streets eating mangos and looking very out of place doing, or pretending to be doing, missionary work.
"So, I was with one of the first groups of missionaries to go down there in the mid-80s to open up those islands, and I really learned a lot. It was a lot of hard work, but it was a very good experience. Set me up to be a more mature person in life, or at least I like to think so. Seeing that we could do our work because of the military, I decided I would get involved with it.
"My first job was with EOD [explosive ordinance disposal], and after I got out of that I went into metalworking. I like working with my hands, and I did that for three years. When it was time to reenlist, they gave me a bonus and a military intelligence analyst job. This was 1990. Right before I was supposed to ship out to Germany, Saddam invaded Kuwait, so we got all geared up to deploy.
"When I came back from Desert Storm in 1991, they announced the first of the big draw down plans. I wanted to stay in, so I moved around to a couple places in Germany, and eventually got transferred to Ft. Hood. I must have been there 12 years before getting a transfer to Ft. Sam Houston’s intelligence facility.
"Finally, after I’d gotten married and bought a house, I decided that I really didn’t want to move around much anymore. And all this ... All this crap with me getting in trouble with Fifth Army for that e-mail — I wanted to stay in the military for probably another five years, even with all of what is going on. But what they did was too much, and I decided it was time to retire from the Army."
ICONOCLAST: "You’d been questioning the official story on the 9/11 attacks almost since the day it happened, but you kept it quiet for some time. When did you first start speaking out on your doubts?"
BUSWELL: "When I was with Fifth Army, I told our Intelligence Chief, CW3 Mario Torres, that I never wanted to be assigned to anything that has to do with 9/11. I told him, ‘If you put me on 9/11 stuff, you’re going to have a huge conflict, ’cause I’m not going to tow the line.’
"He said, ‘Okay, thanks for telling me. I don’t agree with that, but it’s fine for you to have those views. You like beer and I like wine.’ That’s what he said, so I was like, ‘Okay, so long as we understand each other.’ I didn’t want to do that everywhere else I went in the military. I didn’t want to tell all my commanding officers every time I had a new assignment."
ICONOCLAST: "So, it didn’t surface as an issue, at least initially, and you let it slide. But the day you received that e-mail, what was different?"
BUSWELL: "I had received many unsolicited e-mail forwards from this person before. I didn’t know him, because I was part of the intel network on Ft. Sam Houston. They showed me a courtesy by including me in the sharing of their unclassified e-mails. I might have read 10 or 15 percent of them, ’cause I always had more important things to do.
"This one, though, caught my attention because it had to do with 9/11. It was a photograph of an F4 Phantom, attached to a sled on the ground, accelerated to nearly 600 miles per hour, smashing into a hardened concrete barrier. The author said that all these conspiracy kooks – which I took to mean everyone outside of this e-mail network – are totally wrong, and we’re the ones that are holding the line of truth. He included me into that, and I said no, I’m not part of the group of people who believe this.
"He was saying that anybody that says a plane did not hit the Pentagon just needs to look at this photograph and see that they’re full of shit. And I can understand that someone could believe him, following this weak logic, if they look at the world as black and white. So I deleted the e-mail.
"When I came back from lunch, about an hour and a half later, it really started to bug me. I said, you know, ‘I’ve seen this stuff happen a lot, and I’ve turned away from it, and not spoken out about it.’ So, I undeleted the message, hit reply all, and said what I said. I do not regret it one bit. Not one bit at all.
"My logic and reasoning on this matter is sound. I’ve been looking at this thing for years, and there’s just no possible way the official story is accurate. The Pentagon is not a hardened structure; it was built during World War II. It is a weak structure. So linking the alleged plane at the Pentagon with this F4 jet angered me. It was insulting to me.
"I didn’t tailor the response in an offensive way. I simply said, ‘If the Pentagon were hit by a plane, there would be a 190-foot wingspan impact on the building, which there was not. There would be two large engine holes in the building, which there was not. There’d be tail wreckage, bodies and debris everywhere, but there wasn’t.
"Compare the impact hole at either World Trade Center tower to the impact hole at the Pentagon. At the WTC, it looked like a silhouette of a plane, right through steel. If a plane hit the Pentagon, there would be a similar silhouette, a plane punching through concrete. But there wasn’t. It was just a 16-foot hole. That just doesn’t add up.
"When you study this subject like I have, you uncover things from time to time that make you say, ‘wow.’ You find things that just add fuel to the fire. When I wrote that e-mail, I didn’t know this at the time, but on Sept. 10, 2001, SECDEF Rumsfeld said in a press conference, ‘Hey, we’ve lost $2.3 trillion dollars.’
"Two point three trillion dollars?!? Most of us can’t even imagine that sort of money. So then I started thinking, ‘What part of the Pentagon was hit?’ Turns out, it was the comptroller, the accounting department. That part of the Pentagon. I mean, I’m not making this up! This is genuine. We keep finding new things about 9/11 that weakens the government’s story. And each time it gets weakened, every three or four months or so, I’m just stunned that we, as a Republic, aren’t doing something about this. Where is the outrage? At the gas pump?"
ICONOCLAST: "So, on that day in August, 2006, you decided it was your time to act, and you send this e-mail to some 34 people on a government network. You didn’t think it would cause trouble?"
BUSWELL: "Well, actually avoiding trouble was not on my radar screen, I had to act, out of my sense of duty; responding was the right thing, the correct thing to do.
"I sent the e-mail after lunch, and around 3:30 p.m. I sensed something was wrong. The next morning, I came in to work about five minutes early. The G2, Mr. Douglas Raymond, Fifth Army, was talking to CW3 Mario Torres, right there in the door that leads into SCIF. They saw me coming and both immediately went outside and told me to not go in.
"Then the security manager came in with a folder in his hand with my name on it. We went in the back and he asked me, ‘What did you do?’ I’m looking at him like, ‘What do you mean?’ He tells me, ‘That e-mail you sent got a lot of attention. The chief of staff is pissed off.’
"He said, ‘My role in all of this is that your security clearance has been suspended locally, so you can’t work here anymore.’ And I understood that. I know security clearance procedure. I asked, ‘What do I do now?’ and he told me to report to the supply room, basically a non-entity, to hang out with some of the other soldiers who were in trouble. Nobody told me anything for a while after that.
"The whole next week was just full of rumors. I spent a lot of time talking to my father about this case. Then, on Wednesday, they put a clamp on me, told me that I was not to talk about this anymore, gave me 15-6 papers, and formally launched the investigation.
[A 15-6 is a formal investigation the US Army uses when it investigates itself or one of its members. It is the same classification of investigation employed during the Abu Ghraib torture scandal.]
"I asked them what the charges were, and they said there were none, ‘But what we’re looking for is that you made statements disloyal to the United States in that e-mail.’ I’m like, ‘Okay, whatever, colonel. I acknowledge what you’re saying, so let me get out of here.’
"I took my 15-6 papers, took the e-mails, and said to myself, ‘I’m not going to let them Jessica Lynch me. I’m not going to let them tell the first story, because the first story is not going to be correct. I am going to tell my story first, and it will be 100 percent correct, which it is. My story, the correct story, the True story, is the only one that you’ll read.
ICONOCLAST: "And how did you go about reaching out to The Iconoclast when you were under orders to avoid speaking with the press?"
BUSWELL: "Captain Eric May directed me to The Iconoclast, but more on that later. I knew that with Jessica Lynch, with that BS story they told about her, how she single-handedly shot all these Iraqi’s and saved her convoy ... Then she goes on TV and says, ‘I never fired my rifle.’ So, who do you believe? The spinsters, or the actual soldier? I refused to let the military turn this to make me look bad as they invariably would try.
"Captain Eric May told me that I needed to do that. He suggested that a good defense is a strong offense, and that it could give me protection, and I believed him. I knew I wasn’t disloyal, I knew I wasn’t unpatriotic, and I knew that they were full of shit when they were doing this. I was thinking, ‘How dare they do this to me! How dare they! Because 9/11 was mentioned, they have to do this to me? Who wrote this script? What manual are they operating out of to get instructions on how to deal with this situation? And make no mistake, this sort of situation, with 9/11 questioners in the military, is coming up a lot recently.
ICONOCLAST: "Captain Eric May is a writer with The Iconoclast and a known figure in the 9/11 Truth Movement. He and his on-line group, Ghost Troop, have the stated intent of preventing another potential 9/11-like attack in the United States, from the vantage point of people who believe the first series of attacks were orchestrated by the U.S. Government. When did you first encounter him?"
BUSWELL: "The Fall of 2005, I was in 3rd Signal Brigade at Ft. Hood. I was running the INTEL shop for the entire brigade. I was looking on InfoWars.com, and I read this article Alex Jones had published about this guy in Houston named Eric May, a former Army officer. There were pictures of Captain May in his uniform ...
"What he was saying was that there was a nuclear response team in Houston doing a terror drill, and he believed it had a possibility of going live, like the terror drills on 9/11 that were simulating the things that actually happened that day. I hadn’t been exposed to this, and I had no idea what he were talking about. Personally, I wanted to see if this guy was for real, so I sent him an e-mail.
"Within a day he wrote back with a detailed history of his military experience. I did some more research and found out that he’s a very intelligent guy who writes very well. I kept an eye on this guy, reading his stories, just observing the e-mails passed through Ghost Troop, which is just a Yahoo Group. When I got to Ft. Sam Houston in April of 2006, I joined the e-mail group. I clicked on a link that allowed me to read bulletin board messages.
"I had a lot of free time on my hands then. My family had not moved down to Ft. Sam just yet, so I figured I’d read what this group was talking about, maybe I’ll post some questions to see what comes up. I may have posted 20 or 30 messages in total, but didn’t dwell on it because I had other things to do. Then, this e-mail thing came up.
ICONOCLAST: "Was there any discussion within Fifth Army as to your association with Ghost Troop?"
BUSWELL: "When they put me in a classified environment at Fifth Army, I sought legal advice with the G2 Legal advisor, Mr. Kevin Kapitan about my views concerning 9/11, and my involvement with a cyber intelligence group that was interested in preventing another 9/11-style event in the United States.
"He and I had been talking for perhaps six weeks, in great detail about 9/11. He shared with me how he thought the official story was a bunch of BS, and he told me about how former SECDEF Rumsfeld told him and his associates in a meeting shortly after 9-11, ‘You guys will do what we tell you to do.’ Mr. Kapitan said he was never comfortable with that, and he made me feel like I could speak openly with him and bounce my opinions off him.
"So I said to him, ‘I might be involved in a conflict of interest, and I need your professional opinion. I’m involved with a group on-line, 300 or so people from all over the world, that sends messages back and forward with really no coordination. But the bottom line is, this group wants to prevent another 9/11-style event here in the United States.’
"When I told him that, his jaw dropped. I don’t know if it was shock in what I was telling him, or shock in that I had the balls to tell him all of this. But, he told me what I knew he would say – ‘It’s a good idea to disassociate with that group. It could be construed that you are actually working for this group, and you are in an environment where you could be exposed to top secret material.’
"I’m thinking, ‘Okay, Ghost Troop doesn’t pay my bills, the Army does.’ My loyalties are with the military, so I promptly quit. Resigned. Captain May did not like that one bit. He saw me as his INTEL guy on the inside.
"Captain May told me, at first, he thought I was a disinformation agent, and that he thought I was investigating him, especially when I asked him for his social security number. I just wanted to check on his former clearances. And when I checked it, I found the record to be archived. I usually have access to pull that stuff up, but there was no further information available aside from the archive.
"I realized that I was in a position where I could not just click the un-subscribe link to this Yahoo Group and be done with it. So, I wrote a little paragraph explaining my resignation thinking that’s the end of it.* Captain May thought it was contrived, thought I had my arm twisted. And it was after that when the whole e-mail thing blew up."
[*SFC Buswell’s further dealings with Ghost Troop will be detailed in a future edition of The Lone Star Iconoclast.]
BUSWELL: "Between those two things happening, I had a pulmonary embolism. That did happen. A blood clot came out of my left leg, lodged in my lung and got caught. They put me immediately in a CAT scan and found the scar on my lung. Laying in the scan, the pain was so bad, later, in researching this Pulmonary Embolism situation, I found out that I almost died. Seventy-five percent of people who go to the ER for a pulmonary embolism die. They’re dead. I was lucky, and only stayed in the hospital for three days.
"Soon afterward, what Captain May had done was, well, he published an article claiming my embolism was a botched assassination attempt against me. I’ll tell you, right up front, that bothered me greatly. It bothered me that I would be manipulated, or my position could be manipulated that way, and I didn’t want that to happen, or that my story would be told with no permission from me, or authorization from me. I do admit that it is very convenient to have this embolism at this time, and what a good cover it could have been for an assassination attempt – but I don’t know, so I will leave it at that.
"Things were written after that which I am not proud of or happy with, but that’s how it is. I don’t think my involvement with Ghost Troop was illegal or immoral in any way. Things happen and you move on. But, Captain May is determined to fight the information war, and I’m supportive of his efforts.
"There is a rat’s nest of people out there trying to drag our country into another war, more war, more chaos. I’m not pretending to know who those people are or how they operate. But if there’s something I can do to stop them, then I want to know about it. Whether Captain May is right or wrong doesn’t matter. He is fulfilling what he believes to be the remainder of his military oath, to protect and defend the constitution against enemies foreign and domestic. Believe him or not, he’s sincere, and there’s no harm in it if he’s wrong."
ICONOCLAST: "But Ghost Troop didn’t end up playing a role in the untimely end of your military career?"
BUSWELL: "No, it did not. It was never mentioned in any documentation by the US Army as charging me that being part of this group was part of, or the reason for, this 15-6. But, it was all too convenient to have me involved with Ghost Troop as something for the investigating officer to chew on, though when US Army North found out I had already discussed and disclosed this to the Legal office, it really took the wind out of their sails.
ICONOCLAST: "So, you’re under investigation, you’ve been fired, had your security clearance revoked, accused of disloyalty to your country ... What does the Army do with you?"
BUSWELL: I requested from Sergeant Major Nieves, the CSM for US Army North that since the 15-6 went nowhere, and nothing was to be done, either put me back to work in the INTEL shop or let me find a good, meaningful job to complete my time in the Army. So, I went to the medical holding company on base. They need a lot of help, and I became a medical hold platoon sergeant. I did that for my last year in the military, and I loved it: best job I’ve ever had, helping guys who are seriously wounded.
"I remember my first day. I had a list of names and no idea where they all were. One of my soldiers was in intensive care. I will call him ‘Sergeant Nick’ to protect his identity. I went into his room and this guy, he’s all banged up, missing his legs and bandages all over his hands. I was deeply moved, so much that I almost had to turn away for fear of me tearing up, especially since I had been in Iraq.
"So, I say, ‘Hey, Sergeant Nick, I’m your new platoon sergeant. Just call me Sergeant First Class Buswell.’
"Sergeant Nick looked at me, smiled, and said, ‘Oh, hey Sergeant Buswell, hopefully I’ll be back to work soon.’
"But ... I don’t think he fully realized that both of his legs were gone below his knees, or the reality had set-in yet. He was shrinking away at about 105 lbs. — a guy in his mid-20s. There were pictures of him on the wall, before he got blown up by an IED in Iraq. Those were good for him to see, to help him remember what he was like before.
"One day I asked if I could get anything for him. He didn’t want anything to drink, and instead asked for ice cream. So, I got him some ice cream, but his hands were all bandaged and burned up, and he was, basically, helpless. I spoon fed him this ice cream, and I was nearly in tears because I was in Iraq, I saw my friends get killed. I was wounded, too, and I saw it happen all the time. I could empathize. And here I am, feeding this young hero ice cream.
"I was so humbled by the assignment, helping these guys. I went and told my wife about it, and she told her mother. They went and made 40 of these wonderful Easter baskets for my guys at the medical facility. ... To me, that was the best job ever, being able to serve these people, all of them scarred physically, emotionally ... But, the whole time I was worried that the Army would try to screw ’em.
"And that happens, you know. They’ll come to a wounded soldier and say, ‘Okay, you can take $100,000 right now. Sign this paper and you’ll forgo any further claims.’ The soldiers just want to get well, be treated normally, and go back to their lives, so they go for it, sometimes. Years down the road, it’s a tragedy. It’s the government forgoing its moral obligation to them, and that’s inexcusable.
"I still get calls to this day, from guys who are over there, like, ‘Hey Sergeant Buswell, I wish you were back here, man. Things were so much better when you were here because I could just come talk to you about stuff.’
"I miss that. I mean, I really miss that kind of work. But, all things come to pass. I’d do it again if I could. Sergeant Nick is still at Brook Army Medical Center, but I haven’t talked to him in a few months. Hopefully, he’s getting his prosthetic legs about now."
ICONOCLAST: "And seeing the situation these guys are in, being there in the Army hospital just compounded your determination to push for the end of the war? 9/11 Truth? How did this affect your continuing mission?"
BUSWELL: "It’s very clear: go right at the source of all this. I’ve seen pictures of Saddam Hussein shaking hands with Rumsfeld. Saddam was our friend. He attacked Iran when we told him to. He gassed the Kurds with our weapons. He invaded Kuwait when Ambassador April Gillespie, who Saddam asked about what the United States’ position is on Kuwait stealing Iraq’s territorial oil, gave him the wink and nod.
"Saddam Hussein said in ... I think it was 2000, ‘Let me stay in power and I’ll sell you all the oil you want, cheaply.’
"Well, they didn’t do that, so he started selling Iraq’s oil in Euros. He was the first one to do that, before the Euro was even a tangible currency, when the Euro was just a symbol yet to be printed on keyboards. He was selling his oil in Euros to piss us off, very effectively.
"And look what is happening now: many countries are trading in Euros, the dollar is being devalued, and Saddam started all of it. So, I don’t know ... Saddam was a bad guy, he was a gangster, but we did business with him. What does that make us? The weapons of mass destruction thing, that was a farce. If we want truth, we’ve got to go to the genesis of today’s problems: 9/11.
ICONOCLAST: "What do you want to see happen?"
BUSWELL: "I’d like to see a real investigation into 9/11. Every possibility looked at, nothing overlooked. Everything examined. I don’t know if it can be done internally, such as the last one. We have laws on our books to support that type of investigation, but I think it can be ultimately corrupted like the first one was. I think the US military is going to have to do it.
"The United States military is the only group that can effectively and objectively get to the bottom of 9/11. Military trained interrogators are the ones who will have to put these gangsters in a room and get the information out of them; not through torture.
"I don’t believe you get right answers through that – no Rumsfeld, Jack Bauer tactics. ‘24’ is just some crazy [television] show, not reality. I’m not talking about operations like we have at Guantanamo Bay now with US military interrogations of farmers and hapless inductees into the Taliban Army. I’m talking about who is benefiting and has benefited from 9/11. That’s where we start.
"My whole point is to get a message to members of the military: ‘Obey your oath, do what you feel is right.’ I’ve made decisions that I felt were right and caught heat for it. I call on all the military: ‘If you see something wrong, question it. If you see something that’s not right, illegal, question it. Get out of that box you’re in. If you follow that path, if you take the road of least resistance, people will die. People have died. I want you think for yourself. I want the military to think independently.’
"Sadly, we recently saw Admiral Fallon, an independent thinker who was standing against the administration’s plans to attack Iran, routed from command. I have effectively been routed from command as well. It is going to take hundreds more to be routed before this takes hold.
"Right now, in the INTEL sections of the Army, the Navy, Air Force, Marines ... everywhere, in Homeland Security, the defense department, state department, they are beginning to question. It will take more people going through what I experienced to really shake things up, however.
"My message to the military is this: ‘Question everything. Be a student of history. Stay on top of current events. Remember your oath. And defend the constitution at all costs. It is the ultimate requirement of your service, all else fail.’
"Solving 9/11 is going to require our military. I don’t think we need an investigation with European influence, or Japanese influence. I think they all have noble intentions, but we’ve got laws on our books for terrorism, treason, and murder. All, it appears likely, were committed on 9/11. We have rules on our books to solve this.
"If it ultimately comes down to it, we may have to round up these thugs and have them all shot in the internal courtyard section of the Pentagon. After a trial, of course — punishment carried out right where it all began.
"Now, I’m not saying who should be shot. I don’t know. But the military needs to uncover this, but they won’t. Not yet, anyway, because they have to obey the civilian leaders. Thank God we all swear to uphold the constitution. That, right there, is the basic gospel of the soldier and serviceman. If they don’t know what to do, they should read the constitution.
"Yes, the oath does say, ‘I will obey the orders of the president of the United States.’ But the constitution is supreme. Presidents come and go, constitution remains. It is not a living document; it is not open to interpretation. We can all discuss it, but it’s plain and simple. We as soldiers need to obey it. And when we as a Republic get around to enforcing the supreme law, it must be a concerted effort, a coordinated effort, and it must be handled internally.
"My mission is to speak with the military and encourage them to do the right thing. When you see something not right, like what I saw, and you bring it up to command but they leave you with no options, you have to reach out there and send that mortar over the wall. I want an investigation. 9/11 must be solved. Put the mess behind us and move on.
"I mean, Iraq. Almost six years now. What for? The goal posts keep changing, the objectives keep changing. Even the definition of victory is unclear. Sadly, the American people have such a short attention span because of our media, with its drive-by information tactics, that we just don’t remember, or it doesn’t sink in.
"If anything I’ve said sinks in with anyone, I hope it is this: ‘We must go back to the source. We must solve this 9/11 crime, or we risk losing our country and our freedom.’"
ICONOCLAST: "Thank you for speaking with us."
BUSWELL: "Oh no, thank you. I’m not sure where I’d be today without The Iconoclast.
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