Introduction and Summary:
Dr. Rice and W. Bush ignored the Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) of August 6, 2001 about Osama Bin Laden’s intention to strike the American heartland to the great tragedy of this nation. After 9/11, during the Commission Hearing, Dr. Rice insisted that they ignored the memo because it was an inconsequential “non-actionable” document. This article completely disagrees with Dr. Rice’s position and concludes that her action or inaction, which caused the horrors of 9/11, is indefensible.
Further, the terrible mistake is so important to understanding the probable culpability of the Bush administration for the 9/11 tragedy that Senator Hillary Clinton used it as her only line of defense of her husbands policy some five years later when Dr. Rice blamed former President Bill Clinton for 9/11. When Dr. Rice stated in 2006 that 9/11 might not have occurred, if Bill Clinton had taken out Bin Laden during his term, Senator Hillary Clinton shot back immediately saying that her husband’s administration would have taken action, “ if they had received a warning as clear as the PDB of August 6, 2001, which Dr. Rice and W. Bush got and ignored”
[1].
This paper is an analysis of what Dr. Rice and W. Bush did with that very crucial warning memo from Bin Laden and its very grave consequences for the country. Dr. Rice and W. Bush’s actions forced us to ask some very important worrisome questions of whether mere ignorance or incompetence accounted for such lousy behavior, or whether they were actually part of Bin Laden’s moles, which Colleen Rowley had talked about because their actions were quite bizarre and unbelievable?
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In spite of my reservations about the seriousness of the 9/11 Commission and its ability to pull out any new and/or useful information from Dr. Condoleezza Rice during its public hearing on April 8, 2004, I must confess that I learnt a lot from the hearing. It seemed to me that Chairman Kean was too lackadaisical about the whole process. He was smiling most of the time he was addressing Dr. Rice and did not appear to me that he understood the enormity or seriousness of the Commission’s tasks, which was to investigate the causes of the worst American tragedy on our soil. We lost about three thousand Americans and foreigners in our homeland – the first time such ever happened. So it was not a light matter for the Chairman or Dr. Rice to be smiling most of the time. However, as some commissioners started asking some serious questions, the smiles on Dr. Rice’s face disappeared.
Furthermore, in spite of my skepticism and the judgments of many analysts, I think that the hearing was still quite useful. Dr. Rice came out swinging. She was prepared and very eloquent in the defense of her boss. She did an excellent job of representing her boss – W. Bush. Given what she did, I do not think anyone would have done better. She is clearly the intellectual star of the administration. She is loaded academically and fiercely loyal. She is clearly the equivalent of Dr. Kissinger in the Nixon and Ford administrations of the 1970’s. Moreover, it was interesting to watch an eloquent and academically loaded African-American lady, revel in her power at the highest level of American government. I was proud to watch her because it quite a unique feature that was not far from her mind when she reminded the Commissioners, that our founding fathers had not included her when they proclaimed the famous “all men are created equal” part of America’s Declaration of Independence in 1776.
[2]Even the racist American press could not resist focusing on her blackness as they kept saturating us with television footages of her Alabama roots. I do not recall the media showing us any footage of Dick Clarke’s roots or of any other white official. It was therefore clear that the footages of her black roots, which they bombarded us with, were part of the media blitzkrieg and public relations campaign of the White House to ensure Dr. Rice’s palatability and favorable reception by the American public. For me, the hearing was, therefore both aesthetically entertaining and substantively useful. The hearing was very useful on many fronts. First, it provided an opening to the inner workings of Bush White House bureaucracy at its highest levels. However, unfortunately for her, there were very important gaps and failures, as will be shown in process that, could not be covered by any amount of her eloquence, brilliance and charm. Therefore, she was stuck struggling to defend the indefensible with all the charisma and fluency she could muster.
However, the person who rattled and shattered her defensive base and the premise of her robust presentation was Commissioner Ben-Veniste who first broached the issue of presidential daily brief (PDB) of August 6, 2001. Dr. Rice was very shattered after the confrontation. Her smiles immediately disappeared. She just sat there barren, hollow and naked. Her lies were obvious and transparent by mere looking at her.
The confrontation was masterful by Commissioner Ben-Veniste. He was cool, clear, determined and specific in his questioning so there was no way for Dr. Rice to evade, meander or wiggle off. I remembered Ben-Veniste as the Watergate lawyer in 1974. He was bright, young, incisive and penetrating in his questioning then in 1974. Some thirty years later, he had not lost any of his punch. He was only older, grayed, wiser; and certainly more graceful in questioning Dr. Rice. The way he quietly but firmly got Dr. Rice to say the title of the August 6, PDB herself was a masterstroke. It was clearly the Perry Mason moment of that encounter. It would have been less effective if Ben-Veniste had said the title of the PDB himself instead of getting Dr. Rice to tell the world the title herself. It was downhill for Rice after the Commissioner made her announce herself that the title of August 6, 2001 PDB, which she delivered to W. Bush in Crawford, Texas, was “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.” You could see her face swivel in confusion because she had just been forced to contradict the fundamental premise of her entire presentation and rebuttal of Dick Clarke. However, worse than that -- by that statement she also completely sold out her beloved boss – W. Bush and left him hanging alone, defenseless up in high wires. Her boss and her boy friend, she truly loves dearly, and had been vigorously protecting and defending, was suddenly clobbered, slain into two and thrown to the dogs and the wolves by her. It was tragic to see her face and eyes twitch at the realization that she had just betrayed her boss and boy friend in a big way. I really felt sympathy for her except that I know that she had been lying all the time, and that she was getting what liars deserve.
Dr. Rice’s main task in the public hearing was to refute Dick Clarke, the former counter-terrorism czar for the administration who wrote a book Against All Enemies
[3] where he made very biting and damaging accusations against Bush. In the book, Clarke made four major accusations against Bush, viz.
1. That Bush was not focused on terrorism and Al Qaeda before 9/11;
2. That Saddam was not responsible for 9/11,
3. That Saddam did not have links with Al-Qaeda;
4. That Bush team used 9/11 as the pretext to launch the Iraqi war – a war their group – Project for the New American Century (PNAC) -- had planned long ago.
Hence, Clarke came to the most tragic conclusion about the Iraqi war. According to him:
The tragedy of Iraqi war is that our young men and women went to war in Iraq and some of them are dying thinking that they were avenging 9/11 which is not true because Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11 and was not allied with Al-Qaeda.
[4]Those were very serous charges especially in this presidential election year of 2004 when Bush was running on his war records as the “War President”. Bush therefore organized and led a ferocious counter attack against Dick Clarke aimed at the twin objective of denying what he said and discrediting his person. Thus, Bush’s called up all his top aides for the “must-win-war” against Clarke. Bush himself fired the opening salvo. All his top aids quickly joined the battle to defend their venerated and revered boss and Commander-in-Chief, W. Bush. Dr. Rice was particularly poignant for the fight because she was the national security adviser directly in charge of the fallen and ‘infidel’, Dick Clarke. She was therefore, the “general” leading the administration’s war to discredit and destroy the enemy, Dick Clarke, which was quite a tall order. Precisely, Dr. Rice’s mission and specific battle orders were:
1. To show that 9/11 was a total surprise to the administration was it was to us, the common Americans.
2. To show that Bush was very seriously engaged and focused on terrorism and Al-Qaeda Before 9/11;
3. To show that Bush war on Iraq was not premeditated and planned by the Bush team long before 9/11;
4. To rebuff Clarke’s charge that Bush’s war on Iraq was an unnecessary, irrelevant and costly diversion from the real, necessary and urgent war on terrorism; and
5. To impinge or compromise Dick Clarke’s credibility by showing that he is erasable, abrasive, lying, vengeful, disloyal vindictive, uninformed, political; and has pecuniary interests in attacking the Bush White House.
One could then appreciate the terrible damage Dr. Rice did to Bush when she acknowledged and announced herself that the title of the August 6, 2001 PDB was, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.” By the statement, Dr. Rice, for the first time in public, acknowledged that the administration especially herself, as the National Security Adviser and W. Bush knew about Al-Qaeda operatives within the US. Specifically, we knew that they knew about Bin Laden’s plans to bomb some public buildings in New York City including the possible use of airplanes good thirty-seven days before 9/11- all of which were contrary to what the administration had made us believe earlier. Therefore, while 9/11 was a complete surprise to many of us who never imagined that commercial planes could be turned into deadly missiles, it turned out that there had been series of such warnings and scenarios, which the August 6 PDB (just about one month before 9/11) was a major and far more direct warnings to the government. With such a direct title that Bin Laden was determined to strike inside US, there was no way she could credibly continue their spin of complete innocence, naivety and surprise at 9/11 like the rest of us. The hearing, therefore marked the end of the pretense or claim of their innocence. Neither Bush nor Dr. Rice could thereafter claim complete surprise of the attack like the rest of us.
The only relevant question left therefore, was what they did with the memo. She rumbled through her bag to bring it out and read to show that it was a mere historical rehearsal of some old information, with no specifics; and contained “no silver bullet” but it was not flying. It was at that point that Commissioner Ben-Venice suggested that she should declassify the document so that the public could read it themselves and make their own conclusion. Other members of the commission helped to nudge Dr. Rice forward and elicit a pledge from her that the memo would be declassified and made public.
Public Release of August 6, 2001 PDB
Knowing Bush’s penchant for secrecy, (Read, John Dean, Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush)
[5], many people doubted that the White House would actually release the PDB as promised. However, because of the high public interest, the White House was forced to yield to the mounting public pressure and released part of the PDB by the weekend of April 11, 2004. However, it is important to note that it was only “part” of the PDB that was released because George Bush still withheld some parts with his usual “security reasons.” According to the government, “parts of the original document were not made public by the White House for security reasons.” So my analysis here was based not on the entire PDB as Dr. Rice had promised, but on the part that the Bush team felt comfortable and safe enough to make public to us – and my judgment is that even the part they released unequivocally indicts Bush and Dr. Rice as will be presently seen.
The Importance of Titles
Well, the most interesting, damaging and useful aspect of the memo was its title, Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S., which they could not delete because Ben-Veniste had artfully made Dr. Rice read it out loud for all to hear. I imagine that the heading would have been part of what they would have withheld from us “for security reasons,” if Ben-Veniste had not made Dr. Rice announce it herself. As I have often stressed to my students, the title of a memo, a paper, a report, a research or book is usually the most important aspect of the work. Students often find it difficult to generate appropriate titles for their papers, which is why many of them often write papers without titles at all in colleges and universities. In my classes, I spend a lot of time and energy to emphasize and drill my students on the importance of generating and choosing appropriate titles before starting their papers. First, I will not grade papers without titles, and then the titles must be relevant and appropriate. This is because I start reading papers from the titles and make sure that the body of the work justifies or “proves” the title. For decades now, every student in my class knows this and must comply if he or she expects a passing grade.
Titles are often the most difficult aspects of papers to generate but they are also the most important and the most useful. Titles are not only the windows that let others peep into the papers; they provide the guideline for evaluating the objective of the paper. One way to understand titles as setting or stating the objectives of the papers, books, etc. Therefore, titles announce the objective(s) of the paper for all to see. Titles are very helpful to all. They help the authors to be on course. They help the professors or evaluators to know if the objectives have been met. More importantly, titles help the public to know if the need to invest their energy to even read a book, a report, an article, etc. Thus, titles are very crucial and ought to be the first things professors should be emphasizing to their students.
Hence, titles help the authors to be on course and help readers to evaluate if the declared, “missions are accomplished.” Therefore, a good title is supposed to be the most elegant summary and precision of the paper. It is difficult to generate a good title but once generated, the work is considered substantially done.
This is why the most difficult aspect of a doctoral program is the doctoral dissertation and the most difficult aspect of writing the doctoral dissertation is getting title approved by the thesis committee. Hence, doctoral candidates usually throw big parties the day their thesis titles are accepted and approved because it is the penultimate milestone where many doctoral students dropout. One becomes an ABD – all but dissertation – after the title is accepted and approved. Successfully finishing and defending the thesis to become a Ph.D. or doctor of philosophy is really a celebratory anticlimax. The real problem is to become an ABD by getting the thesis approval and this is where many drop outs occur in doctoral programs because it is usually extremely difficult to generate a title that would be accepted and approved by one’s dissertation committee.
I personally remember how I celebrated with friends the day I got my thesis title approval and became an ABD at Purdue University in 1976. I also remember vividly how I celebrated with other lucky friends and colleagues as they passed through that crucial dreaded huddles themselves. I equally remember how we consoled some unlucky friends and colleagues who could not get their thesis approvals even after many years of trials. Some were forced to drop out of the program while others dropped out themselves out of frustrations and resignation. At Purdue University then, getting thesis approval was simply the toughest mountain to climb for doctoral students; and it is the same for all good universities, which why only very few colleges, universities or departments have doctoral programs because of rigors, experience and the level of expertise that are required to even set up doctoral programs.
My reason for giving these fair details is that I am surprised that Dr. Rice, who went through similar ordeals for her doctorate program at the University of Denver, could be so cavalier, dismissive and nonchalant about the title of August 6, PDB. University of Denver is quite as good university as Purdue University. I finally got my PhD in 1978 while Dr. Rice got hers in 1981. This means that we are generation mates in academics even though I am her academic senior because I finished three good years before her.
I am therefore amazed and disappointed that she did not give the title of the Bi Laden August 6 memo the attention it deserves. She kept saying that it was just “a historical document”, which had nothing new. No. It is not a mere historical document. Dr. Rice, please, read it again, read it slowly and carefully and you will see that it was not a mere historical document. I cannot believe that someone with such eminent academic background as – a doctorate from University of Denver in 1981
[6] – could be so cavalier, nonchalant and casual about the title and the body of that very important PDB as she did, unless some other nefarious forces were at work. I just do not believe that Dr. Rice was acting in her maximal academic capacity when she ignored that memo. Again, a title is like a hypothesis. It is predictive. It gives you idea of the major variables the papers is investigating and their predicted relationships – and that title met all these standards.
As an academic, I am simply amazed, dumbfounded and bamboozled not just by Dr. Rice’s inane behavior but by her rigorous but porous efforts to justify it before us. If it was a genuine mistake, which I believe was impossible for anyone of her academic training to make, her first reaction would have been to apologize to us for her inaneness and offer to resign rather than trying to insult us with her slick responses and baseless excuses.
The title of a paper is fundamentally different from the theme of the paper. Hence, the major problem of research and for professors is how to make the difference between, the “themes” and “titles” of papers clear and distinct for students because American undergraduate programs rarely teach such skills to students. Also in America, most colleges and universities would grant masters to students who “hang” around and take courses for about nine more months or less – a process that does not allow for rigorous process in research processes and procedures. Thus, it is only in Ph.D. or doctoral programs that American universities train students in the arts, processes and procedures of rigorous academic scientific research.
Thus, the emphasis on scientific processes and rigors is the major differences between PhDs, doctoral programs and undergraduate or master’s programs in America. Hence, America’s doctoral programs are highly elitist and demanding; and increasingly dominated by immigrants and foreigners who can take the pounding. It is therefore surprising and a shame that Dr. Rice could easily ignore the title of the very important August 6, PDB, which announced that Osama Bin Laden would attack us. Her do nothing reaction to the memo, clearly tantamount to criminal and/or even treasonable negligence because she knew and/or should have known better. She should have known the importance and urgency of the memo from its title alone.
The PDB had a very powerful title. It was very clear, succinct and appropriately reflected the content of the memo. I am proud of the person or the committee that wrote it. I am sure the title did not come easily to them – they must have gone through various ordeals and drafts before they constructed that particular phraseology. I am however, not surprised that W. Bush did not, and perhaps, could not, appreciate the gravity, quality or importance of that title because he is of pedestrian mind who actually enjoys his mediocrity. For example, according to one of his professors in the Daily News:
President Bush’s former Harvard Business School professor … described him as a mediocre student who believed people were poor because they were lazy.
[7] (Emphasis mine)
Furthermore, W. Bush once gave a speech at his alma mater, Yale University, where he barely pulled through as a C student and proudly told the C students there to be proud because of their Cs because “one day they could be president.” It was pathetically unbelievable that “a president” would be encouraging C students to proudly remain at their mediocre C levels instead of encouraging them to try to improve, which is the business of schools – to improve student achievement. That mindless and shameful speech underscored not only the limited intellectual capability of W. Bush, but how comfortable, proud and mentally dim he is. I do not know of any parent, school or university who would be content, satisfied and happy with C performance. In fact, many times my students get C they want to send me to the gallows. For example, one cannot proceed to graduate school with Cs; and if one is already in a master’s program, he will not be allowed to proceed to doctoral program with a C average. C is therefore a very limiting bare-bone passing grade, which many students detest and furiously fight against. W. Bush is therefore, the only person I know who was not only happy and comfortable with his Cs but goes about celebrating the mediocrity. This again, calls into question how W. Bush was able to get into the top universities – Yale and Harvard – which is the subject of another work.
[8]Unfortunately Bush did not tell the students that, if they remained comfortable with their C grades, as he was, and did not struggle to get better grades in college, that they would not be able to get into graduate schools or get much else done in this increasingly competitive world.
More, importantly, he did not tell them that if they take his advice to settle for complacence in academic mediocrity, as he did, that they would need the political, social and economic muscles, shenanigans and roguery of the Bush dynasty
[9] to become the president. It is therefore, shameful and height of irresponsibility and/or mindless national mischief for a president to be encouraging students to settle for academic mediocrity even in contravention to the official no-child-left-behind (NCLB) education policy of his own administration; and the expected and accepted universal desires of university students to get good final grades in their courses. In my over thirty years of teaching, I am yet to encounter a student who does not aspire for grades that are better than C. Most students I know will feel disappointed with a C as their final curse grade. W. Bush is therefore out of sync with majority of American students who consistently strive for better than C grades in American colleges and universities.
However, my problem is not that W. Bush was a mediocre C student but that he reveled in it and encourages others to do the same. Moreover, he does not read much, as he often proudly boasted, because he relies, according to him, on his girl friend, “smart Condi” as he affectionately calls Dr. Condoleezza Rice, to read and explain things to him. It was therefore truly a tragedy and most shameful that Dr. Rice who should have known better than his boss and friend ignored the crucial August 6, 2007 PDB. She kept telling Mr. Ben-Veniste that it was just a historical document, which had no new information. Unfortunately, Dr. Rice was flatly wrong. From a careful, thorough and thoughtful reading and analysis of, even only the part they released to us, it is clear that the PDB did not merely regurgitate historical events but warned seriously about possible pending dooms. Yes, the PDB truly started with some historical excursions or recapitulation of previously known facts as Dr. Rice correctly stated, but only as the foundation and introduction to buttress the real essence of the memo, which was to warn that Bin Laden was determined to strike within the U.S. as the title screamed.
Three sections of the released parts of the memo confirm that the PDB was a screaming warning and alarm by a very careful diligent, worried and concerned official to the Command –in-Chief and his National Security Adviser that the country was on the verge of being seriously attached. There is no other way the officer could have conveyed the urgency and immediacy of his or her fears and worries to two of you without contravening protocol than to have such a blunt title. The only other thing left for him to do was to rush directly into your office or the Oval Office, grab you guys by your necks, shake you up, look you in the eyes and scream into your block heads that Osama was coming. He would not do that; and I would not recommend that for anyone, but it was height of professional profligacy and academic buffoonery for Dr. Rice to claim and insist many times on national television that the August 6, 2001, PDB was a mere historical document with no silver bullet or actionable intelligence. Such declaration is demeaning to her as a doctor of philosophy in political science from University of Denver; and condescending to the intelligence of literate Americans who can read and understand simple English. Either, she was not expecting that the PDB would ever be made public or that she is sure that Americans are too daft and moonstruck to read and understand. Presently, Bush has barred 9/11-Commission from questioning the author of the PDB and from revealing his identity to the public, which is part of Bush’s secretive mode. However, I hope that he will be revealed one day and given a national award, which he truly deserves.
Apart from the title, the last two paragraphs of the partially released PDB are also very indicting of Dr. Rice and W. Bush. They read:
Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.
[10]The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full-field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers Bin Laden-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives.
[11]For Dr. Rice to insist that the above paragraphs do not contain silver bullets and actionable intelligence is obviously wrong, deceitful, stupid and/or mindless because they clearly do. Actionable intelligence – the fancy phrase they introduced to confuse and bamboozle us during the hearing -- simply means leads that can be followed and investigated were many in the above last two paragraphs as will be shown. In everyday sentence, the first paragraph simply says – nevertheless, which means in spite of all we have said above, that the current FBI information shows that Bin Laden was preparing to strike inside the country, which might include hijackings or other attacks on major buildings in New York. How specific did Dr. Rice want the memo to be for it to be actionable for them? The memo contained enough specific information for the President and National Security adviser to do something -- call an emergency meeting, share information and issue immediate directives to all the relevant agencies and departments to tighten up and to report back – and to follow up on their directives and instructions.
The last paragraph was also quite specific. It talked about 70 FBI field officers who were investigating Bin Laden related activities within the country and of a call to our embassy about possible Bin Laden attacks within America. Again, these are specific actionable leads of intelligence information, which Dr. Rice or his boss failed to grasp and act on to the chagrin of the nation. They were leads that were waiting for their directives. They were therefore clearly actionable leads that Bush and Dr. Rice could have acted upon rather than kept making up excuses for their negligence, inaction, complicity and criminal negligence.
Dr. Rice’s Three Excuses
Dr. Rice had three major types of excuses for her operational and professional paralysis, incompetence and criminal negligence after the memo. First, she called it merely regurgitative historical document, which it is not as we have shown. She meant that it was just a repetition of various inconsequential documents that have been historically available. We have shown that it was not because it contained some important new information. Second, she said that the PDB did not contain silver bullets or actionable intelligence, which is not true as has also been shown. She needed to have called heads of relevant agencies, including security agencies, share the information with them and give them some directives. As the National Security Adviser, she could either direct them on what to do or call them to an emergency meeting at the White House to review the situation and map out new strategies to deal with the threat. Therefore, to discard the documents as mere “merely regurgitating historical document” and do nothing is naïve and criminal negligence. Her third and final excuse was that there were walls that prevented intelligence agencies and departments from sharing information.
However, it was Ashcroft, the Attorney General who elevated the “walls” excuse to ridiculous levels by literally trying to make us believe that Jamie Gorelick (one of the 9/11 Commissioners) caused 9/11 by building the walls that prevented intelligence agencies from sharing information when she was Deputy Attorney-General. It was quite pitiful and pathetic to watch grown up Ashcroft blame Ms. Gorelick for stopping him from doing his job, because of a memo, just as children point fingers and make lame excuses after they have goofed. For Dr. Rice to make the excuse that “walls” constrained her and prevented the free flow of information between the intelligence agencies as the cause of 9/11 shows that she did not understand her job. As the National Security Adviser (NSA), she stands or sits above all or any walls that existed or could exist between the intelligence agencies. As the president’s adviser on security, all the security agencies in the country report to her, she can call on any and all of them anytime and ask, demand or give instructions on any national security issue and they must comply immediately because she is officially the closest person to the President.
Therefore, all her statements and/or instructions on security matters are presidential directives. The official job definition of the NSA depicts the occupant as the official gateway to the Oval Office and the President on all national security issues. It is a very powerful position, feared, dreaded and respected by other senior and junior officers at the White House. Dr. Rice is not only a woman but also the first black ever to hold such an exalted position. Besides, it is important to note that Dr. Rice has an even more enhanced status and authority beyond the normal NSA status because of her obvious personal and very close relationship with the Bush family and with W. Bush in particular.
I have earlier stated that Dr. Rice is W. Bush’s girl friend, which has been a sustained tabloid position for sometime now. They even stated that his wife, Laura even retained a lawyer and threatened divorce because of W. and “her Condi’s” love affair. Yet, no mainstream press has touched it and I do not expect them to given how shamelessly, the wimpy American press has rolled over for W. Bush.
[12] What a shameless double standard for the American press. The same press that inundated us with all the juicy and imagined tales of Bill Clinton’s girl friends during his presidency now deem it beneath their professionalism to write or say anything about the possible W. Bush’s shenanigans with Dr. Condoleezza Rice. Furthermore, the favorite American show of journalistic courage and bravado these days is to bash and condemn Senator Hillary Clinton for sticking with her husband, Bill in spite of his previous girl friends.
One of the biggest CNN draws in May 2007 was their interview with Hillary where she was asked about her religion, faith and marriage. They were suggesting that she is a hypocrite and not religious enough because she has not divorced her husband. Even the respects Carl Bernstein, of Watergate fame, entered into the foray with his publication of his less than flattering book on Hillary Clinton, titled, A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Among other things, Bernstein also questioned Hillary’s character, religion and integrity because she did not divorce her husband Bill because of his infidelity.
I am disappointed that Bernstein has nothing better to do than to thrash the marriage of another couple. Yet, none of them has said or dared say anything about the alleged sexual relationship between W. Bush and Dr. Rice or anything about Laura and her rage at the relationship. I have not heard anyone asking her why she is still sticking with her husband, W. Bush. Now that I have written it, I dare them to investigate and set us straight. What is good for the gander is good for the geese. If they could speculate, investigate, thrash and tear up Hillary and Bill, why not do the same to W. Bush and Laura and Condi. I know that the American press will not do that because they are too cowardly and too chicken to touch the Bushes or to do anything that will upset them.
The point, however, is that Dr. Rice cannot claim the walls as the impediment to her job because she is too close professionally, officially and personally to President W. Bush. As the National Security Adviser then and later, the Secretary of State and W. Bush’s girl friend, she is, clearly on a pedestal that transcends the walls and everyone knows it.
Of course, the good news is that Dr. Rice recognized her powers and used them on many occasions when she wantd. For example, she would not let Dick Clarke see the President, and when she did, it was with specific instruction to discuss only cyber-terrorism with the President, which he fully complied with because no one disobeys the NSA without dire consequences especially one that is the President’s very close personal chum and confidant as everyone in the White House knows.
Power in any organization derives both from official and personal access to the boss – and people who have them often wield and exert more power in the organization. There is a vertical relationship between official accesses and personal relationship with the boss; and the degree of power or influence one has or exercises within the organization. The only reason why spouses have enormous powers is because of their proximities and unlimited accesses to the leaders and/or presidents. People assume that spouses must have enormous influences because they live and sleep with the president.
Dr. Rice is therefore, in the unique position of having maximal official cum personal proximity and access to W. Bush so she is not lacking any powers to do her job. Whether they actually have sexual relationship is not really the issue, the important thing is that those in the channel of command know that they are so bonded together that no one can tear them apart. Even the bullying Dick Cheney knows that he cannot win a direct confrontation with Condi, so he avoids direct policy confrontations with Condi. Condi also stared down the brash and bumptious Rumsfeld and sent the majestic Colin Powell running for cover. It is well known that no body who disagrees with Condi survives the W. White House. My contention is that she is extra powerful because of their personal relations, especially since Dr. Rice has no husband or any known male companion. Therefore, the only known male now in her life that she could be intimately attached to is W. Bush. Hence, the press has a duty to investigate and confirm or refute the rife insinuation of a love relationship between W. Bush and “his Condi,” just as they would have been all over the place if it had been about Bill Clinton. We need the rumors confirmed or denied because we need to know the variables involved in our government decision making since both are high power decision makers. Even foreign officials pay particular attention to Dr. Rice because, in the official parlance, they know that she has the president’s “special ear”, which gives her extra clout as she travels the globe.
In that White House, I guess that Kareen Hughes is among the very few who could affront Dr. Rice without paying a heavy price. The good thing though, is that both women are friends, which is why both are among the most powerful women in W. Bush’s White House.
There is therefore, no acceptable reason for Dr. Rice not to have acted on the August 6, 2001 PDB. Since the three reasons she gave ignominiously collapsed in the face of any rigorous analysis, we can therefore, firmly declare that their inaction and professional paralysis after August 6, 2001, constitute egregious dereliction of duty that caused the lives of about three thousand people. Furthermore, it is important to emphasize that the above is our most charitable conclusion within the official orthodoxy.
We have chosen to adopt the above generous conclusion that the tragic inactions of Dr. Rice and her beloved boss Bush, stemmed from gross ignorance, incompetence or dereliction of their duties because we want to show the orthodox/establishment academicians how to put some teeth into their own analysis instead of the pervading brainless and hollow analysis that now prevail.
However, the more serious and troubling conclusion would be to follow Colleen Rowley’s premonition that some of her bosses might be “moles for Osama Bin Laden” after she sent a sensitive, urgent and warning memo to her bosses which no one acted upon till 9/11 occurred. In fact, Colleen Rowley of FBI, Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom and Sherron Watkins of Enron were jointly named Persons of the Year as Whistleblowers by Time Magazine of December 30, 2002. Ms. Rowley sought federal “Whistleblower Protection” from FBI Director, Robert Mueller; and accused the agency of obstructing information that might have prevented 9/11
[13]. In addition, a recent publication by Matthew Wald in New York Times contends that the Tape of Air Traffic Controllers Made on 9/11 was Destroyed. (See, The New York Times, May 7, 2004). According to the paper:
At least six air traffic controllers who dealt with two of the hijacked airliners on September 11, 2001, made a tape recording a few hours later describing the events, but the tape was destroyed by a supervisor without anyone making a transcript or even listening to it, the Transportation Department said Thursday.
The taping began before noon on Sept. 11 at the New York Air Route Traffic Control Center, in Ronkonkoma, N.Y. where about 16 people met in a basement conference room known as the Bat Cave and passed around a microphone, each recalling his or her version of the events of a few hours earlier. The recording included statements of 5 or 10 minutes each by controllers who had spoken by radio to people on the planes or who had tracked the aircraft on radar, the report said
A quality-assurance manager at the center destroyed the tape several months after it was made, crushing the cassette in his hand, cutting the tape into little pieces and dropping them in different trash cans around the building, according to the report.
[14](Emphasis mine)
Does anyone doubt that we might have learnt a lot from the independent immediate and unmediated recollections of the sixteen involved Traffic controllers who tracked the hijacked planes on radar and spoke to people on the air planes just hours after 9/11 when the events were still fresh in their memories. That a manager could meticulously destroy such vital tapes, smells like mole job by forces that are scared of the information the tapes might reveal. The value of the tapes are inestimable because they contained our last “official” but unsupervised contacts with the hijacked planes. The Traffic Controllers might even have talked directly with the hijackers who might have revealed critical information to them. These are all the things we can no longer know because their manager destroyed the tapes.
To those who insist that they know who caused 9/11, will they now tell us that Osama also ordered the tapes destroyed or that the manager, who meticulously destroyed and disposed the tapes, works for Osama. The truth is that there are still too many unanswered questions about 9/11, and the more I look into it, the more the official story becomes more untenable. I am therefore, not surprised that the Bush administration has continued to obstruct or deny any genuine independent investigation of 9/11. Personally, I will never be satisfied like some millions Americans, about the causes of 9/11 until a genuine and truly independent investigation occurs.
The Kean 9/11 Commission is a sham and whitewash for any serious neutral observer. Hence, Joseph Cirincione called the Bush escapade, “the greatest con of our history” while some have described 9/11 as the “New Pearl Harbor” needed by the project for the new American century (PNAC) to launch their global preemptive war for global conquest and empire building.
[15] Consequently, the Bush forces have continued to destroy and/or hide or obstruct evidence and genuine investigation about who caused 9/11. All that Bush wants us to do is to accept his own version of the events and do not ask any further questions. I find such position ridiculous and totally unacceptable. This nation is entitled to know who caused 911 and why they did it. Why? Do they know something we do not know? Did the Bush forces do it? Did they do it alone? Or were they in cohort with other nefarious forces? If the Bush forces did not do 9/11 and did not in any way assist or collude with the forces that did it, then why all the secrecy about 9/11?
Why must 9/11 suspects be termed “enemy combatants” and be treated in unfathomable shrouds of secrecy. They are sent to Guantanamo Bay to elude our open legal system. They are tortured and treated in all sorts of inhumane and abominable ways like we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why can’t these suspects be tried in open court? Why is Bush so mortified of open courts? What would happen if we saw evidence of the “crimes” they committed against us in open court? I want to know. We want to know? Bush has never bothered to explain all these simple but important and serious questions to us. He just treats Americans as if we are little children who do not know what is good for America, which only he knows. Yet, W. Bush was a legendary mediocre and drunkard until recently. Thus, according to New York Post
Sen. Barack Obama has a new name tag: “Renegade.” That’s what Secret Service agents are calling the Illinois Democrat in the time honored tradition of giving “secret” code names to presidential candidates and other protected dignitaries.…President Bush, a protectee dating back to the days when his father was president (and with a reputation for rowdiness before he became a teetotaler) is “Tumbler.”
[16] (Emphasis mine)
It was noteworthy that New York Post – a very conservative Murdock paper could bring up W. Bush’s drunken past, just a Ron Reagan did, while discussing the new Secret Service name of Senator Barack Obama. However, it confirms that the disorderliness, unruliness, noisiness and loud partying past is well known before he became a teetotaler as we are told. I have no problems with people converting from rowdiness to teetotaler. In fact, it is commendable and praiseworthy to observe such positive Saint Paul’s transformations as we read in the bible. Such positive transformations should generate equally positive attitudes in people but not in W. Bush. It is therefore troubling that his policies have been the most destructive, the most murderous, the most insane, criminal and most insensitive, arrogant, lying regime in modern America, as many have attested.
W. Bush’s regime executed the largest number of people in America when he was the Governor of Texas, and he always attracts criminal and dubious lying people to him like Alberto Gonzales, Dick Cheney, etc. The horrors and crimes of his Iraq policies are legendary, and he remains unmoved by the sheer senselessness of the policy, by its hopelessness or by the horrors, personal and by the national tragedies, it spreads.
I watched a very tragic and troubling story of Tammy Duckworth by Dr. Sanja Gupta of CNN on June 26, 2007. The story was about Tammy Duckworth, a noble American female, patriot and pilot in Iraq who lost her two legs in November 2004 when her helicopter was shot down in Iraq. She is now a double amputee. Tammy ran for Congress in 2006 and narrowly lost. However, her double tragedy is that her best friend and husband, Bryan was deployed to Iraq in June 2007 leaving her at home alone, helpless, shattered and devastated. On Iraq war, Tammy lamented:
The policy makers have failed us. We should have focused our military resources on pursuing the terrorists who attacked our country and on capturing Osama Bin Laden, instead President Bush and his top advisers decided to attack Iraq
[17]Further, on her husband’s deployment to Iraq, Tammy agonized:
I am worried. I am worried, and we are planning for him not making it back home, and we are planning for him being killed. He is going to be doing the most dangerous thing in Iraq, running convoy. That is the worst case analysis, and we pray that he does not get killed, and that he comes back home.
[18]Tammy Duckworth is a pretty and very courageous woman. I completely doff my cap off and salute her courage, intelligence and candor. This very patriotic American fully understood that the war, which took her two legs was unnecessary, and based on the personal machinations of “President Bush and his top advisers,” – something we have been saying from get go – and she was able to say so publicly.
Further, can anyone imagine the agony and candor in telling Dr. Gupta, “that she was planning for her husband and best friend not coming home, being killed.” She wore her heavy heart on her face as she uttered those dreadful words. The heavy weight of Tammy’s hearth weighed gravely on her face because she knew and dreaded that she could be right when she said that they were “planning on his husband and best friend not coming back”. Let Bush walk into Tammy’s legs and to experience what it means to be a double amputee and to watch your best friend, helper and husband marched off to the same senseless war that took her two legs. Tammy’s experiences mirror what millions of Americans and Iraqis go through because of the Bush gang Iraq policy.
Tammy’s experience confirms the utter insensitivity and callousness of this Bush administration, even to its own military. It is the logical extension of its Water Reed experiences where wounded soldiers were left uncared for in roaches, rats, insects, diseases and run-down buildings until the press and the American people cried foul. It also confirms the incompetence of the military and the administration. Any humane efficient military must have a personnel policy that would have prevented the deployment of Tammy’s friend and husband to the combat zone in Iraq. Tammy’s family has already suffered enough for this war. She lost her two legs in combat. Why must Tammy be made to suffer more? Why must her husband be deployed to Iraq? This is a war the Bushes and the Cheneys love so much. It is now time for them to send their children and loved ones to the front line. I will love to see Bush’s twin daughters, Dick Cheney’s children and other war hawks or their children go to Iraq to prove their patriotism instead of sending others to go and die. Senator Gordon Smith has said that the surge is criminal to send Americans to go and die in Iraq and I completely agree with him.
The Principle of Good Military Personnel Management:
Bush must therefore, immediately order the military, as their Commander-in-Chief, to immediately send Tammy’s husband back to her where he belongs. Any continued deployment of Bryan to Iraq. Is wrong for the military, wrong in terms of personnel management and a moral killer for the military. The right thing now is for Bryan to come back. I hope Bush does it. It will show those of us who are watching that Bush is engaged. Tammy has given us so much of her life that she deserves this little consideration from us. If we send her husband back to her, it will help the military by showing the other fighting soldiers in Iraq that we will care for them if they were unlucky to be wounded or killed. Dead and wounded soldiers are the enduring adverts for the military because the way we treat them shows the active ones in the combat zones how they will be treated if they were killed or wounded. So treating Tammy humane and well is not just for her own good but for good military personnel management. The entire military will benefit from good humane treatment of Tammy, which will start by sending her husband back to her immediately. Such good treatment would even help boost recruitment because it will show potential recruits how well, considerate and special they would be treated themselves in their worst case scenarios.
The Bush forces are such horrible liars for any serious American to believe them. They are too incompetent to be taken seriously except that precious human lives are involved. They have lied almost about everything. So why should I or anyone believe them now? It simply has no credibility for anyone to trust as Al Gore stated.
Therefore, for the avoidance of doubt, let it be on record that I am among the many professors, academicians and the public who doubt that Osama or Al-Qaeda alone did 9/11. Some of my reasons for seriously doubting the official version of 9/11 are:
1. The mistakes and the bumbling incompetence of the various officials from the White House to the security agencies, the CIA, FBI, and many others -- are just too many to be merely coincidental.
2. We are therefore more inclined to accept Colleen Rowley’s premonitions that some of her bosses might be, “moles for Osama” because of their complete inaction to her very serious warnings.
3. Furthermore, Bush also actively tried to frustrate Ms. Rowley’s efforts to bring her case to American public. Strange enough, Mr. Bush announced the creation of Home Land Security Department the day Congress invited Ms. Rowley to present her case before them. Actually, Mr. Bush made the announcement while Ms. Rowley was testifying before Congress. That was a Congressional testimony, which the whole country and the world were waiting for. Massive American and world press were there because of the huge publicity generated by her very serious accusations, and I was glued to my television like millions others, when the White House suddenly announced that it had established a Home Land Security Department and was giving an immediate press conference on it. The immediate effect was that the entire press deserted the Ms. Rowley and the Congress; and moved over to the White House. Once the press deserted Ms. Rowley and Congress for the White House, the public interest in Ms. Rowley’s story collapsed.
4. I think it was a very brilliant, diabolical, conspiratorial and effective coup by the White House and Mr. Bush to kill Ms. Rowley’s very riveting, captivating and potentially very devastating story for the White House hence they used their “bully pulpit” to kill it. It is also, a shame that the press collaborated with Bush to “kill” Ms. Rowley’s story by literally deserting her and the Congress at her shinning moment. It is no wonder that Eric Boehlert called the American press, Bush, “Lapdogs”.
[19]5. Further, the most serious evidence for Bush’s diabolical conspiracy against Ms. Rowley was that Bush had previously stoutly rejected the many calls by the Democrats for the establishment of Home Land Security Department to fight terrorism. Then, suddenly, because Ms. Rowley’s story had generated enormous publicity for which the Congress invited her to testify, Mr. Bush made sure that no one listened to her.
6. Yet, the American press could not see this sinister move by Mr. Bush – a pattern I have called Bush’s real WMD, weapon of mass distraction, which he has perfected and used many more times since then.
7. My simple question is this, even if Bush had later accepted the Democrats’ demand for Home Land Security Department, which he has every right to do, why must he announce it on the same day and time when Americans and the world were waiting for Ms. Rowley’s highly publicized story of possible Osama’s mole in her agency.
8. Bush could certainly have waited one or two more days to make his own announcement, but he did not. Rather he decided to suck the entire energy off Ms. Rowley’s story. Bush knows that the White House is the “bully pulpit” and he used it masterfully, in a very sinister way to distort and distract American and world attentions from the ineptitude and incompetence; and possible complicity of the White House, which focuses on Rowley, might have revealed.
9. Bush’s actions, therefore calls into question whether he is part of the “mole” that Ms. Rowley was talking about? We simply need to know from Bush why he announced the establishment of Home Land Security Department, which he had furiously opposed, the very day the nation focused on Ms. Rowley. Was it part of his real weapon of mass distraction, WMD?
10. We also want to know from the media why they failed to make the obvious connection between the White House timing of the announcement of the establishment of Home Land Security Department and Ms. Rowley’s Congressional testimony.
11. Alternatively, may be, the press thinks that it was acceptable, irrelevant or inconsequential for Mr. Bush to trash Ms. Rowley’s very important story the way he did. We want to know.
12. Besides, Mr. Bush had resisted efforts for Congressional investigation of 9/11 to ridiculous and unprecedented extent even before Ms. Rowley. For example, the Senate Leader then, Senator Tom Daschle (D-South Dakota) complained in Tim Russet’s “Meet the Press” that Dick Cheney and Bush had refused to set up a commission to investigate 9/11, as was the practice after national disasters. It was very revealing and disappointing to watch the accusation; refusal and denial drama in the NBC Sunday program between Senator Tom Daschle and Vice-President Dick Cheney. The overwhelming conclusion was that the White House did not want the 9/11 investigated which was strange.
13. After years of pressure and protests, the White House agreed to set up “9/11 Commission” which Dr. Rice testified before. That commission is a whitewash with many faults
[20]. It did not ask many important questions as are now obvious.
The above and many others are some of the reasons why many Americans do not believe or trust the official version of 9/11. As a democracy, the government owes us full explanations and answers to the many questions raised here without threat or intimidation of her citizens. Under Bush, this country is sliding dangerously towards dictatorship maintained by rule of fear, and unless we stand up for our rights by asking and demanding answers from our leaders, we might be in for a historic slide into Hitlerite totalitarianism just as Germans did in the 1930s. We must not forget that Germany was a modern and model western democracy, as America, until the Hitler’s onslaught in the 1930s.
[21]People now wonder how could such an intelligent, modern democratic society, the bastion and leader of western civilization like Germany fall under the spell of a lunatic like Hitler who took the society to the abyss of depravity that included mass murder, ethnic cleansing and the gasification of over six million Jews plus other horrible crimes against humanity.
I pray and hope that future generations of Americans will not be ashamed of us. The way we are going, if we do not stop Bush’s insanity and proclivity towards lawlessness, plunder, insanity, rape, mass murder, mass detention, torture, empire building, occupation, destruction and looting of foreign lands, utter callousness, arrogance and viciousness,
[22] future Americans would be ashamed of us just as current Germans are ashamed of Nazi Germany. They would be amazed at how we let an irresponsible prodigal son and drunkard, by his own admission, steal his way into our White House, and then used the enormous resources of our state power to bamboozle, intimidate and terrorize us and the world into acquiescence, submission and compliance. When Bush was nominated, as the Republican presidential candidate in 1999, Ron Reagan, President Reagan’s son, declared that
“He [Bush] was the most unqualified candidate ever nominated by a major political party to run for president” He then continued, “What accomplishments has he?” Nothing. Except that at forty, he had ceased to be a drunk.”
[23]The point is that everyone has been pointing fingers at Bush. People talk and write about how he is a war monger, how he is lawless, reckless, arrogant, destructive of our democracy, how he is our worst president in history, etc., and I have referenced some of them in this paper. My point, however, is that history may not really be about Bush, but about us, the present generation of Americans. We may all feel good, trashing and bashing poor Bush and blaming all our problems on him, but are we really correct? Are we really innocent? How correct is it to heap all our problems on poor George?
How can only one George deceive all of us – the public, the media, senators, House of Representative Members, cabinet officers, etc. It is just not possible for one person to be able to deceive all of us without the cooperation, complicity and duplicity of the powerful ones among us. The point being made, is that we are all effectively implicated in the crimes and atrocities of Bush regime – especially those of us who acquiesce in his atrocities in Iraq. The most ridiculous aspect was when Colin Powell declared on NBC, Meet the Press, that he would not have supported the war if he knew that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction.
[24] Powel was therefore among those who were deceived by Bush. This means that he was a baby who knew nothing until Bush came along and deceived him. Is it not ridiculous? It is haunting to analyze such a state and feeling of helplessness that forced Powell to make such pathetic excuse. According to Michael Parenti, it is “a psychological defense against a discouraging powerlessness,”
[25] that could generate such lame defense.
In this great democracy given to us by our founding fathers, with all its serious imperfections, still have the theoretical and enough structural frameworks that should allow us to move forward and to stop the emergence of incompetent and criminal rascals like the Bush gang in our White House. The point is that it is not the fault of the founding fathers nor of Bush, if we fail to operate the system in the way that maximizes our potentials. If this generation let Bush steal our election, it is our fault because there are structures for us to stop him. This system is great, not because it is the best as some assert – far from that. It is great because it has the theoretical foundation and structural embodiments that allow for forward progressive movement if the stakeholders remain bold, vigilant and resourceful as the founding fathers.
The Greatest Heist in History by the Bush Gang:
If we succumb to avarice, to greed, selfishness and unbridled materialism, then we have lost it because it is only under such base principles that rogues and no-good rascals like the Bush gang can emerge and steal the White House. A society that is based on the sound principles of equity like, all men are created equal, freedom of speech, checks and balances, etc like the one bequeathed to us by the founding fathers should have had the courage, the will and the audacity to stop the Bush presidential election heist of 2000, which is actually the greatest heist in history. Bush’s robbery of the presidency in 2000 was clearly the greatest heist in history because no bank loots or train robberies could begin to compare the resources and power of what accrued to Bush by his successful robbery of our presidency in 2000.
For example, Bush invaded, plundered and looted Iraq. He disorganized the entire political economy of Iraq, and is now putting them together or restructuring them in ways that will maximize the economic returns and potentials of himself, his gang, friends and cronies. He tells us that the insurgents are killing American troops but he does not tell us that the people he calls “insurgents” are really “freedom fighter” who are fighting to end foreign occupation of their country. They are fighting and willing to die for their country just as Americans will fight and die to expel any foreign occupation of America. It is idiocy, stupidity, shallow mindedness and unbridled arrogance not to know and/or accept that others have legitimate patriotic attachments to their countries in spite of the imperfections and limitations of their own countries.
I have earlier stated that America is a great country – in spite of its imperfections. The truth is that if an alien power suddenly descends and occupies this country, I bet you that many of us will rise and take up arms to expel the intruding occupier. We will forget the imperfections and try to deal with the foreign occupier first. We would even invite and gladly accept other foreigners who are willing to fight on our side. This is the simple logic of humanity. Many countries will behave that way. We did the same thing during our Revolutionary War when we fought to throw off the British. Besides, we also invited and gladly accepted foreign friendly forces to help us. Lafayette is still very popular in America because the French general helped us fight the British.
Iraqi Fighters are Freedom Fighters and not Insurgents
Therefore, the first thing we must do is to understand our own history and then concede the same human impulses to others. This means that we must be able to empathize the feelings and conditions of others in other to do justice to ourselves as human beings. We must accept that Iraqis are fighting for their country. We took up arms and fought to expel the British in 1776. Remember the famous Patrick Henry’s speech, “Give me Liberty or Give me Death.” That speech given at St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia on March 23, 1775 to the Virginia House of Burgesses aroused the American colonies to take up arms against the mighty British Empire. After the rousing speech, members started shouting, “To Arms! To Arms!”, and thus signaled the start of military resistance to British rule.
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were in the audience that heard Patrick Henry’s fiery speech. George Washington was to lead the anti-British resistance force that successfully expelled Britain from the colonies and terminated British rule. While Britain would call George Washington an insurgent, I called him a freedom fighter and a hero who led his people to expel foreign occupation and rule. This brief history is very important because it will help us to place our current struggles and problems in Iraq into proper perspectives. Again, Iraqi fighters are not insurgents, they are freedom fighters trying to expel the foreign invaders and occupiers from their country. Just because Bush calls them insurgents does not make them so. Bush is simply wrong as he has been on many issues.
No other person can be as wrong as Bush has been and is still taken seriously by sane people, and no other person could have messed up his/her job as Bush has done without being fired and/or impeached, yet most people are so scared of even mentioning the “i” word for Bush. Nixon did not even do one-tenth of the havoc Bush has wrought on us before we ran him out of the White House, rather people are now scared of Bush instead of standing up to our national duties and rights.
I have stated many times the Bush stole the election – that his presidency is day-light robbery and the greatest heist in human history. Besides, he used naked lies and “towers of deception” to plunge us into this Iraqi debacle
[26], yet, I will rise and take up arms, even with my tired bones, body and alms, to defend this country, if an alien force swoops in today, sweeps Bush off and occupies us under the disguise to correct the imperfections of our society. I am also sure that many Americans will furiously fight to expel the foreign invaders and occupiers without regard to the many crimes and atrocities that Bush has been committing against us. This means that we should not be surprised that Iraqis are fighting for their country and that they have invited Al-Qaeda and others to help them. If we refuse to recognize the facts then we are delusional, pathetically arrogant and incorrigibly, irredeemably stupid. We must therefore, stop demonizing Iraqis, stop calling them insurgents, because they are not insurgents. They are freedom fighters fighting for the liberation of their country.
Vietnamese President Visits the White House: Some Important Lessons
The visit of Vietnamese President to Bush at the White House on June 22, 2007 is an interesting affirmation and negation of the lies American governments from Lyndon Johnson to Richard Nixon and George W. Bush have told us. One of the reasons that helped Johnson and Nixon continue the Vietnam war was their “domino theory”, which basically said that if Vietnam fell, other neighboring countries, Cambodia, Laos, etc would also fall to communism. Rather, the opposite happened. When Vietnam ejected America, they did not pursue us to our homeland and neighboring countries did not fall to communism as our leaders had told us. This was because their energies and resources were consumed by the enormous reconstruction and repairs needs of their country. They were just too glad to get rid of us and did not have the time, energy, capability or desire to embark on empire building themselves.
The above means that Bush is lying when he uses the old Johnson-Nixon domino theory to scare us about withdrawing from Iraq. Bush tells us that he is fighting in Iraq so that we do not fight in America’s homeland – that they will pursue us home if we withdraw. The logic is baseless as the Vietnam experience aptly shows. In fact, the fact that Vietnamese president visited US to ask for our investment (in response to Bush’s earlier visit) confirms that domino theory of Johnson and Nixon was baseless. The same thing will happen today. If we withdraw from Iraq, Iraqis will be very busy with reconstruction and sorting out their lives; and they will not have the energy, resources or desire to attack us. Therefore Bush’s logic that they will pursue us if we withdraw is baseless fabrication. I wish the American media will follow and explore analysis.
American Troops are the Invaders and Occupiers In Iraq
It must therefore, be clear that American troops are the invaders and occupiers. They have illegally invaded and are occupying a country that did us nothing and posed no threat to us purely for the political and economic gains of the Bush mafia. America, as a country gains nothing from this Iraqi war. The only people that gains from this war are the Bush mafia. I therefore challenge any common American to tell us what he/she has gained so far from this war. Personally, I cannot think of any things I have gained from this war. May be some common Americans have gained something and may want to share it with us. Otherwise, I do not know what I have personally gained because my super powerful country has gone and smashed an innocent oil-rich country. I like someone to tell me what a common American or common Americans have gained from this war. I know that common Americans have paid heavy prices for Bush’s criminal invasion of Iraq without receiving any benefits for our sacrifices while Bush and his gang reap all the benefits without making any sacrifice. We pay the price with our body, blood and money while Bush, Cheney and their criminal profiteers and gangster cohorts rake heavy economic benefits.
[27]Bush Invaded Iraq for Oil for Himself and His Gang and Not for Americans –The Proof is Simple!
Some people say, it is for oil – that Bush invaded Iraq for oil – insinuating that the oil is been sought for Americans. Yes, it is true that Iraqi oil is one major reason for Bush’s attack, but the oil is not for us. Bush was not looking for oil to benefit Americans. He went for Iraqi oil for his gang. This is true and my proof that the oil Bush was looking for is not to benefit Americans is simple. The proof is that we are all paying far higher prices now than before the invasion. I may be wrong, but my understanding is that, our gas should now be far cheaper since successfully seized the oil for us.
Specifically, in 2002, before Bush invaded Iraq, the price of gas was from $1.25 - $1.50 per gallon in New York, and sometimes, I had had the temptation to cross over to New Jersey where gas was even much cheaper – at $.95 per gallon. In June 2007, about four good years after Bush attacked and seized Iraqi oil, gas has shot up to between $3.39 and $3.80 per gallon, and the cheapest gas I could now find in New Jersey is $2.98. Whereas, I filled my tank with between $25.00 and $35.00 in pre-Iraq invasion New York, it now costs me between $50.00 and $60.00 to fill my tank.
Now, please, tell me where I and other common Americans have gained in gas because Bush invaded the oil-rich Iraq. We have gained absolutely nothing except that they are picking, shafting or robbing our pockets dry. To make matters worse, Bush insults our intelligence by telling us that the price of oil would even go up higher – that, as summer and national vacation and travel period approach, we must brace up to paying between $4.00 and $5.00 per gallon. In addition, he says it with such arrogance and smirk in his face as if he is mocking us for not knowing that he caused the hike in oil price with his invasion of Iraq.
The most pathetic thing why Americans are jerks, which is why Bush is having a jolly ride on our beat-up back, is that the television pundits, the “experts”, the mainstream media or even the Congress never tell him that he is the cause of the astronomical hike in oil price. It appears that they are all scared to tell Bush the truth. The genius of Bush is that he has created and perfected a war and fear mongering environment that makes it “politically incorrect and unpatriotic” to ever say or suggest as I have done here that Bush caused the hike in oil price. Even while the hike is literally killing most Americans and threatening to force a change in our life-style, the mainstream media still meticulously avoid any direct connection of Bush to the oil hike.
It is therefore, funny and interesting to me to watch our many experts, economists, pundits, etc, in the mainstream media, discuss the causes of the oil-price hike as they struggle to avoid blaming Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq as the major cause of the oil-price hike, and the starting point of analysis. They certainly look shallow, stupid, fake, ignorant, dishonest and disingenuous in any analysis of the oil-price hike since 2003 that avoids the 2003 invasion of Iraq by Bush as the center of such analysis.
Oil and the Law of Supply and Demand
An analysis of the astronomical rise in oil price in the United States from 2003 that does not start with Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, may be politically correct because of the fear of the Bush forces, but it defies common sense and rational economic logic. It is like ignoring the elephant in the room. Such infantile and philistine analysis ignores the first economic law of “supply and demand” that we learnt in Economics 101. The law specifically says that there is an inverse relationship between the supply and demand of a commodity, ceteris paribus. This simply means that the price of a commodity will increase if the supply decreases or vice versa. In this particular case, the price of oil increased because the invasion of Iraq decreased the supply of oil. It is as simple as that, yet most economists, pundits, etc in the mainstream media miss and/or ignore that. And much more than the decrease in oil supply, the invasion itself and the general Bush preemptive fear mongering and warmongering policies, engendered and sustained a global and national air of uncertainty about oil supply at the time when the demand for oil is surging, hence the hike in oil prices.
In other words, Bush policies created and sustained an environment of instability in oil market that not only made the gas price increases rational economic policy, but also made the disingenuous price hikes by the profiteers possible. We are therefore, suffering from the dual assaults of Bush’s criminal warfare and the price gauging by oil profiteers -- both caused and made possible by Bush’s senseless and preemptive invasion of Iraq. While the astronomical oil price hikes crush most Americans, Bush, Cheney and their cohorts in oil and energy businesses are raking unprecedented profits and laughing all the way to their banks. The exorbitant and enormous profits the oil and energy industries are making while the equally exorbitant gas prices crush other Americans at the pumps confirm that Bush and Cheney designed the invasion to benefit only themselves, their friends, cohorts, etc. It also confirms that the invasion was never designed to benefit all Americans. These were all part of what Dick Cheney discussed in his “top secret” energy meeting – details of which he got his friends at the Supreme Court to help him protect.
Thus, the current German government and citizens are today ashamed of their Nazi past. Hence, writing about Hitler’s autobiography, Mein Kampf, William Shirer stated:
For whatever other accusations that can be made against Adolf Hitler, no one can accuse him of not putting down in writing exactly the kind of Germany he intended to make if he ever came to power and the kind of world he meant to create by armed German conquest. The blueprint of the Third Reich and, what is more, of the barbaric New Order which Hitler inflicted on conquered Europe in the triumphant years between 1939 and 1945 is set down in all its appalling crudity at great length and in detail between the covers of this revealing book.
[28]The point is that Germans had ample warnings and signs of what was coming to them, but most paid no attention, did not bother, were overwhelmed and/or did not care. The fundamental requirement for democracy is eternal vigilance by the citizens. We must guard democracy as we guard our precious jewels. We must never take democracy for granted for granted or leave it in the hands of any one individual or clique because it is easy to drag any society down to depravity if the people are not vigorously watchful.
This is why I believe in the concept and practice of what I call, “participatory vigorous democracy” (PVD), which has the following core requirements:
(a) universal suffrage;
(b) maximum voting rates;
(c) continuous participation and inputs by the voters – not just during elections;
(d) eternal citizens’ vigilance to guard their precious democratic freedom.
It is important to stress that democracy does not mean just the rituals of voting on election days. Casting free and secrete votes on election days is an important and indispensable requirement for democracy but not the only requirement. Citizens must also engage the system all the time and not just during elections, which is what I call “participatory vigorous democracy” (PVD). The aim of PVD is to develop informed citizenry who will guard and further their freedom. My point is that, in order to enjoy “the benefits of freedom in democracy” as Bush would often say, citizens must engage in participatory vigorous democracy, (PVD). I will further assert that citizens would soon lose even their rights to vote without PVD. So eternal vigilance through PVD is the price for all the liberties of democratic freedom. To maintain the liberties of freedom is a tough job. It is very difficult. It can be messy and/or even risky to try exercise the liberties of democratic freedom because leaders often want to resist or limit the freedom and liberties, but it is a job that must be done if citizens are to retain their democratic freedom and liberties.
This is why one of my important objectives in classes is to impact the need and virtues of informed and engaged citizenry.
The greatest danger to democracy is alienated and disengaged population. Alienation plus disengagement will produce uninformed and ignorant citizenry, which is the right condition for the destruction of democratic freedom and the enthronement of totalitarianism by the political bosses. Therefore, the primary struggle for the “liberties of freedom” according to Bush, must start at home with the citizens’ fundamental skepticism of their political bosses.
University students, are the elites and future leaders of societies. The democratic health of America as in other democratic societies, therefore depends on them. Hence, a critical objective of university courses must be the training of students in the arts of responsible democratic citizenry especially in social science, arts and humanity courses.
I am critical of the current American society because we do not appear to exercise vigilance and/or oversight over our government in accordance with our democratic ideals. Ideals and rights are worthless if not used, they are just empty phrases if society does not care or use them. We cannot go about shouting that we are a democracy, the greatest democracy, the leader of the free world and all those triumphant, self-praising, self-exalting and self-congratulatory words and phrases that we attribute to ourselves and/or love to describe ourselves with. We have thus, become a feel-good state that revels in self-praise.
There, some simple questions we must answer to legitimize our oft-claimed democratic title are:
· How can we be the greatest democracy in the world when our voting rate is among the lowest of all industrial democracies?
· The American labor is very powerless and the most exploited labor in all industrial democracies. Why?
· How can we talk of free speech when criticisms of the government are not encouraged or when government critiques are jailed, demonized or shunned?
· How can we boast of freedom of the press when our media operates like the propaganda arm of the executive or Department of Information of the government?
· How can we boldly talk of or teach about our “checks and balances” as the cardinal structure of our government when the Congress refused or is too scared to exercise its “oversight functions”?
· How can we talk of democracy when W. and his brother Jeb Bush scrubbed off thousands of names (mostly blacks) from Florida’s voter list in 2000 election, and yet selected Bush as the president?
· How can we claim that we are a democracy when 434 out of 435 members of the House of Representatives and the entire 100 Senators voted to authorize Bush to invade Iraq. The lone member was Barbara Lee of California. She is a remarkable woman who deserves special national honor and encomium for her extraordinary courage to stand up for truth and for her conviction in the face of unprecedented poundings and railroading by the Bush neo-conservative media and anti-democratic forces.
· How can we claim to be a democracy when only one member of our House had the courage to vote her conscience on such crucial issue of peace and war?
These and others are some of the serious questions we must answer to claim the democratic titles we love so much. Otherwise, we come off as hypocrites and liars. The world is watching and it is such obvious monstrous inconsistencies, that destroy our credibility before them. Hence, reacting to America’s ready and uncritical acceptance of the Bush’s official version of 9/11, Richard Falk, the noted Princeton emeritus professor, wrote:
There is no excuse at this stage of American development for a posture of political innocence, including an unquestioning acceptance of the good faith of our government. After all, there has been a long history of manipulated public beliefs, especially in matters of war and peace. Historians are in increasing agreement that the facts were manipulated (1) in the explosion of USS Maine to justify the state of the Spanish-American War (1898), (2) With respect to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to justify the previously unpopular entry World War 11, (3) in the Gulf of Tonkin incident of 1964, used by the White House to justify the dramatic extension of the Vietnam War to North Vietnam, and most recently (4) to portray Iraq as harboring a menacing arsenal of weaponry of mass destruction, in order to justify recourse to war in defiance of international law and the United Nations.
[29]Richard Falk continued:
The official explanation of such historic events as the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the assassination of President Kennedy have also not stood up to scrutiny by objective scholars. In these respects, the breaking of trust between government and citizenry in the United States has deep historical roots, and is not at all merely a partisan indictment of the current leadership associated with the right wing of the Republican Party. But it does pose for all of us a fundamental, haunting question. Why should the official account of 9/11 be treated as sacrosanct and accepted at face value, especially as it is the rationale for some of the most dangerous undertakings in the whole history of the world?
[30] (Emphasis mine).
Professor Falk was therefore saying that since our governments have historically lied to us in maters of war and peace, why do some then feel that it is heresy and sacrilegious to question the official orthodoxy of 9/11? In addition, writing a critical book about America’s democracy, Professor Michael Parenti said:
If the picture that emerges in the pages ahead is not pretty, this should not be taken as an attack on the United States, for this country and its people are greater than the abuses perpetrated upon them by those who live for power and profit. To expose these abuses is not to denigrate the nation that is a victim of them. The greatness of a country is to be measured by something more than its rulers, its military budget, its instruments of dominance and destruction and its profiteering giant corporations. A nation’s greatness can be measured by the democratic nature of its institutions, by its ability to create a society free of poverty, racism, sexism, imperialism and environmental devastation.
[31] (Author’s emphasis).
For example, if we continue to let Bush run rough shod over us as if he is Emperor Bush, then we do not have any claims to democracy. If the Congress, which we elected refused to, or is too scared to do its oversight job, then they are useless -- we might as well fold up like surrender monkeys and let Emperor George W. Bush do whatever he wishes with us. In other words, as long as we remain in this stage of senility, cowardice and timidity – when one unelected, illegal and rogue president holds the country at bay and refuses to bring home our troops from an illegal and criminal occupation of foreign land, our claim to democracy is tenuous, fragile and questionable at best.
When over eighty percent of Americans want, our troop’s home immediately and the Congress we specifically elected to bring them home are confused, intimidated and terrorized into operational quagmire, inactivity and paralysis by the unelected and rouge president, we are in serious trouble.
A fundamental principle of democracy is the election of leaders through democratic process. Bush did not win the 2000 presidential election. There is abundant evidence to show that he did not win the election. I do not know how one can “win” a democratic election when thousands of voters were denied votes. Their names were either scrubbed off voters list which is a clear criminal act, or they were intimidated/terrorized into not voting or their votes were not counted – either way, Bush cannot claim to have won a “democratic” election in 2000. His claim to the presidency is therefore sham and hollow. At best, he is a pretender and impostor to the throne. He is therefore a rogue and illegal president.
[32] I will not waste my time arguing whether Bush “won” the 2004 election or not because it is a mute question. Since he did not win the 2000 election, he had no business contesting for “re-election” in 2004. The English word, “re-election” presupposes that one had won an election before to qualify for re-election. Bush did not win election in 2000. Therefore, he was not qualified and could not have been “re-elected. If Bush thinks that his manipulation of the 2004 election would provide cover and legitimacy for his 2000 day-light robbery of American presidency, he is wrong.
Even though Bush’s 2000 grand robbery of America’s presidency cannot be rectified or redressed, it has become a historical fact and its historical reality cannot be erased. When President Hayes stole the 1876 election, he became known throughout his tenure as, “His Fraudulency.” While this present generation of Americans is too comatose, too timid or too coward to call Bush by his real name as the Hayes’ generation did, history will not hesitate to give Bush his well deserved title as “His Most Incompetent Fraudulency”. Former President, Jimmy Carter has called Bush, “the worst president in history,” which is a good beginning.
In conclusion, Al Gore, the elected president in 2000, who was scared away by Bush from taking office, wrote a book titled, The Assault on Reason. According to him:
Not long before our nation launched the invasion of Iraq, our longest serving senator, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, stood on the senate floor and said, “This Chamber is, for most part, silent – ominously silent. There is no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing. We stand passively mute in the United States Senate.” Why was the Senate silent? In describing the empty chamber the way he did, Byrd invited a specific version of the same general question millions of us have been asking: “Why do reason, logic and truth seem to play sharply diminished role in the way America now makes important decisions?”
He continued:
The persistent and sustained reliance on falsehoods as the basis of policy, even in the face of massive and well-understood evidence to the contrary, seems to many Americans to have reached levels that were previously unimaginable. A large and growing number of Americans are asking out loud: What has happened to our country? More and more people are trying to figure out what has gone wrong with our democracy, and how we can fix it. To take another example, for the first time in American history, the executive branch of our government has not only condoned but actively promoted the treatment of captives in wartime that clearly involve torture, thus overturning a prohibition established by General George Washington during the Revolutionary War.
[33] (Emphasis mine)
Al Gore continued, and this part concerns my concept of “vigorous democracy”:
It is too easy – and too partisan – to simply place the blame on the policies of President George W. Bush. We are all responsible for the decisions our country makes. We have a Congress. We have an independent judiciary. We have checks and balances. We are a nation of laws. We have a free press. Have they all failed us?
[34] (Emphasis mine)
[1] For more details, read New York Times and New York Post of 2006.
[2] Read, The Dred Scott Decision of the Supreme Court in 1857. This pivotal decision in the history of the United States, decided by the
United States Supreme Court in 1857 that ruled that people of African descent, whether or not they were
slaves, could never be
citizens of the
United States, and that
Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery in federal
territories. The
decision for the court was written by
Chief Justice Roger Taney.
[3] Dick Clarke, Against All Enemies (New York: Harper Books) 2004), passim
[4] Ibid.
[5] Read, John Dean, Worse than Watergate: The Secrete Presidency of George W. Bush New York: Harper Collins, 2004), passm.
[6] Dr. Condoleezza Rice got her BA in political science from University of Denver in 1974; MA in political science from University of Notre Dame in 1975; and PhD. in international studies in 1981 from University of Denver.
[7] Read, Yoshi Tsurumi, “W. For War But Eager to Avoid it, Prof. Recalls,” Daily News, Friday, September 10, 2004
[8] For a story of the Bush family and the Ivy Leagues, read, “The Yale Family Tree: Bush/Walker/Pierce” in Kitty Kelly, The Family, The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty (New York: Doubleday Books, 2004), pp. 15-18, passim
[9] Kitty Kelly, The Family, The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty (2004), passim; Jerome Karabel, The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale and Princeton (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005), passim
[10] From the PDB released by the White House on August 11, 2004
[11] Ibid.
[12] Eric Boehlert, Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush, (New York: Free Press, 2006)
[13] Read, “Persons of the Year: Whistleblower Protections.” Time Magazine December 30, 2002.
[14] Read, Matthew Wald, “Tape of Air Traffic Controllers,” New York Times (May 7, 2004).
[15] Read, Joseph Cirincione, “The Greatest Con of Our History,” in Neo-Conned Again: Hypocrisy, Lawlessness and the Rape of Iraq –The Illegality and Injustice of the Second Gulf War, (Norfolk, VA: Light in the Darkness Publications, 2007), pp. v –viii and passim.
[16] Read, “Barack’s moniker: ‘Renegade’ New York Post ( Monday, June 18, 2007), p.6.
[17] Dr. Sanja Gupta, CNN June 26, 2007
[18] Ibid.
[19] Read, Eric Boehlert, Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush (New York: Free Press, 2006), passim.
[20] D. L. O’Huallachain and J. Forest Sharpe, eds., Neo-Conned! Just War Principles: A Condemnation of War In Iraq (Norfolk, VA: Light In The Darkness Publication, 2007), passim; D. L. O’Huallachain and J. Forest Sharpe, eds., Neo-Conned Again: Hypocrisy, Lawlessness And The Rape Of Iraq (Norfolk, VA: Light In The Darkness Publication, 2007)
[21] William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1950), passim.
[22] Robert f. Kennedy, Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking our Democracy (New York: Harper Collins, 2004); Robert C. Byrd, Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency (New York: Norton Books, 2004)
[23] Read, Kitty Kelly, The Family, The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty (New York: Doubleday Books, 2004); Ron Reagan’s interview in Newsweek (1999).
[24] Tim Russet, NBC, Meet the Press, Sunday, June 10, 2007.
[25] Michael Parenti, Democracy for the Few, (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002), p. 212, and passim.
[26] Barrie Zwicker, Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-Up of 9/11 (Gabriola Island, BC, Canada: New Society Publishers, 2006); Webster Griffin Tarpley, 9/11 Synthetic Terror; Made in USA (Joshua Tree, CA: Progressive Press, 2007)
[27] T. Christian Miller, Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives and Corporate Greed in Iraq (New York; Back Bay Books, 2006); Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army (New York: Nation Books, 2007); Colonel Gerald Schumacher, A Bloody Business: America’s War Zone Contractors and the Occupation of Iraq, (St. Paul, MN: Zenith Press, 2006); Robert Young Pelton, Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror (New York: Crown Publishers, 2006)
[28] William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (New York: Ballantine Books, 1960), p.122.
[29] Read, David Ray Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11(Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2004), pp. ix-x, passim.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Michael Parenti, Democracy for the Few, (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002), p. 5.
[32] For more details on how Bush stole the 2000 election read, Greg Palast, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (London: Pluto Press, 2002); Vincent Bugliosi, The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined Our Constitution and Chose Our president), (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2001); Alan M. Dershowitz, Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)
[33] Al Gore, Assault on Reason ( New York: The Penguin Press, 2007) , pp. 1-2; passim
[34] Ibid.
