al Qaida Posts

Reports are in that link up the US torture program and the hunt for the non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Jonathan S Landay in McClatchy News quotes a "former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue":

"The main [reason for the torture] is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."

"There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder," he continued.

All this is not really a surprise; I covered it in real time over on Nonviolence.org. There were numerous reports that the Vice President and Secretary of Defense were pushing the intelligence agencies to come up with evidence that would back their flawed theories.

The United States is supposed to be the champion of freedom but we resorted to the most brutal of communist-era torture techniques because our highest officials were more interested in their cartoon view of the world than the complex reality (and not so complex: anyone who's taken an "Intro to Islam" class would know that an alliance between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden would be have been very unlikely). When facts and ideological theories don't match up, it's time to dig for more facts and revisit the ideologies. 

We now know that while Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein didn't conspire together, they did have one thing in common: their power was funded by our dependence on their oil. But even as Saddam's show trial begins, televisions are watching America's new national security enemies: Katrina and Wilma. Al Qaida's 9/11 attacks and the Saddam Hussein's dictatorship were "powered by" oil industry fortunes and short-sighted global energy policies, the same policies now bringing us global warming and monster storms.

Before making landfall in Mexico's Yucatan and pounding Florida, Hurricane Wilma was declared the most powerful Atlantic hurricane in history. That we got to a W-name itself is cause for concern: the first tropical storm of the year gets a name starting with "A" and so forth through the alphabet. This summer has been the most active hurricane season since record-keeping started 150 years ago. We've seen so many storms that weather officials have now run through the alphabet: meteorologists are now having to track Tropical Storm (now Depression) Alpha 350 miles north of the Bahamas. In 2004, five devastating hurricanes ripped across Florida, each one coming so fast on the heels of the last that few of us could even name them a year later. As I write, Wilma is pounding Western Florida, one of the fast-growing regions in the country. And of course Katrina devasted New Orleans and the Gulf Coast just two months ago.

Global climate change is here. After decades of political hemming and hawing, only the most slimy of oil industry apologists (and Presidents) could argue that global warming hasn't arrived. We've built a national culture built on inefficient burning of fossil fuels. Developers put more and more people on unprotected sandbars built, maintained and insured by tax dollars. Someday is here and our weather is only going to be getting worse. We could be preparing for the inevitable adjustments. We could be investing in conservation, in renewable energies. We could change our tax codes to encourage sustainable housing: not just getting new development off beaches but also building urban and semi-urban communities that reduce automobile dependence.

Instead we spend billions of dollars on our oil addictions. We're now waiting for the announcement of the 2,000th U.S. military casualty in iraq. Administration officials used Katrina to rollback environmental protection regulations in Louisiana. The arctic ice cap is rapidly melting away (the North Pole is now ice-free for part of the year) but oil industry officials point to the good news that we will soon be able to put year-round oil rigs in the ice-free seas there.

How many Katrina bin Laden's and Saddam Wilma's does it take before we get the news.

everyone's abuzz at President Bush's explicit statement that there is no evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. This was in response to a statement over the weekend by Vice President Dick Cheney, where _he_ said: bq. we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11. It's a rather pathetic admission by the President, since anyone who follows the news carefully already knew there was no connection. (Unfortunately the Washington Post found last month that nearly "70% of Americans don't read carefully enough":http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000138.php to figure this out) But don't worry that the President might finally be getting a conscience and undergoing a bout of uncharacteristic integrity. He followed the statement by saying that "there's no question that Saddam Hussein had Al-Qaida ties." Yes, Mister President, there is a question. It's an important one, one you used to rev up the country to war. You have never provided evidence and now even while you admit to having no evidence you continue to dupe the public. What do you mean by there being "ties"? Al-Qaida has well-documented "ties" to both the United States and Saudi Arabia. Stop playing fey little word games, stop being an asanine preppy who can't come clean. If there is no evidence of active support, then stop the misleading lies. Arab News has an interesting take. They note all the confusion and askWhy now, two years on — after the invasion of Iraq that so benefited from the US public believing that Saddam Hussein was involved — has Bush come clean?

From the Al-Qaida/Iraq forgery to the Niger/Iraq forgery, from the "rescue" of Private Jessica Lynch to the joke that Iraqis will get the money from their own oil, the UK Independent tallies up the modern hypocrisies of war.