New evidence suggests Ron Suskind is right/9-4-01 U.S. Germ Warfare
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What was an Iraqi politician doing at CIA headquarters just days
before he distributed a fake memo incriminating Saddam Hussein in
9/11?
By Joe Conason
Aug. 8, 2008 | If Ron Suskind's sensational charge that the White
House and CIA colluded in forging evidence to justify the Iraq
invasion isn't proved conclusively in his new book, "The Way of the
World," then the sorry record of the Bush administration offers no
basis to dismiss his allegation. Setting aside the relative
credibility of the author and the government, the relevant question is
whether the available facts demand a full investigation by a
congressional committee, with testimony under oath.
When we look back at the events surrounding the emergence of the faked
letter that is at the center of this controversy, a strong
circumstantial case certainly can be made in support of Suskind's
story.
That story begins during the final weeks of 2003, when everyone in the
White House was suffering severe embarrassment over both the origins
and the consequences of the invasion of Iraq. No weapons of mass
destruction had been found in Iraq. No evidence of significant
connections between Saddam Hussein's regime and the al-Qaida terrorist
organization had been discovered there either. Nothing in this costly
misadventure was turning out as advertised by the Bush
administration.
According to Suskind, the administration's highest officials --
presumably meaning President Bush and Vice President Cheney -- solved
this problem by ordering the CIA to manufacture a document "proving"
that..,,
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2008/08/08/suskind/
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Embedded reporters or Republican activists?
Members of Vets for Freedom have campaigned for John McCain and made
anti-Obama ads, but while they're in Iraq, you're paying for their
gas, food and lodging.
Aug. 8, 2008 | On its face, it seems like an idea any enterprising
editor could have come up with: Gather a group of veterans of the Iraq
war who also have journalism experience, including some highly
decorated soldiers. Then send them back to the areas of Iraq in which
they served, this time as reporters embedded with the troops still
fighting there, and get their assessment of the security situation and
whether the surge is working.
Someone has organized just such an expedition, and this Monday eight
veterans left for Iraq. But the "Back to Iraq" trip wasn't put
together by the Washington Post or the New York Times; it's the
brainchild of Vets for Freedom (VFF), a pro-war group. VFF is
nominally nonpartisan, but it has a remarkable number of ties -- some
previously unreported -- to Republicans generally and John McCain's
campaign specifically. And it has run attack ads against Barack
Obama.
It's unremarkable to send reporters with thin journalistic credentials
to Iraq, or to promise that journalists with a known political bias
will report "objectively." Conservative and liberal publications send
their preferred reporters to Iraq all the time, and their
representatives come home, unsurprisingly, with differing conclusions.
But what about sending political activists and GOP operatives to Iraq
in the guise of journalists, with the cooperation of the U.S. military
and on the taxpayers' dime, so that the activists can come home and
proselytize for the Republican presidential candidate's position on
the war?
For journalists, getting to Iraq isn't cheap. At a minimum, there's
the airfare to Kuwait, plus the cost of body armor, helmet, protective
eyewear and insurance. But once they're in Iraq, embedded reporters
don't have to spring for much else. The military flies the journalist
from Kuwait to Baghdad and supplies food, lodging and transportation
within Iraq. The military provides translation and personal bodyguard
services, acting as a sort of super-fixer. Without embed status, the
on-the-ground costs for any reporter or private citizen traveling in
Iraq are dramatically higher. The cost of security alone, which often
means an armored car and a driver as well, drives the price of any
Iraq trip sky-high. In an e-mail, a reporter for a major American
daily who has been to Iraq as an un-embedded reporter said that paying
for non-embedded reporters involves "an infrastructure cost that can
be very pricey, in the millions of dollars each year."
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/08/08/embeds/
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U.S. Germ Warfare Research Pushes Treaty Limits
THIS ARTICLE WAS REPORTED AND WRITTEN BY JUDITH MILLER, STEPHEN
ENGELBERG AND WILLIAM J. BROAD.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E02E1D71639F937A3575AC0A9679C8B63&sec=health&spon=&pagewanted=all
September 4, 2001
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The Anthrax Attacks: Sunlight Is the Best Disinfectant
http://www.truthout.org/article/the-anthrax-attacks-sunlight-is-best-disinfectant
Monday 04 August 2008
If we've learned anything in the United States during the Bush era,
it's that we have to resist rushing to judgment in the face of
catastrophic events. The exercise of careful, independent judgment is
the best tool available - we should use it. US Supreme Court Justice
Louis Brandeis, who often wrote on the benefits of both privacy and
transparency, offered the reminder "sunlight is the best
disinfectant."
The impact of the anthrax attacks was at least as damaging to the
US as 9/11. The weeks after 9/11 brought the Homeland Security Act and
the war in Afghanistan, ostensibly to stop "the bad guys." As shown
below, the result of the anthrax attacks was a greatly-toughened
Patriot Act and a war in Iraq that destroyed the fabric of life in
America as we know it. If 9/11 resulted in Americans suffering from
psychic dislocation, the aftermath of the anthrax attacks was the
deeply-felt sensation that there was literally no place left to hide
anywhere in the United States.