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they still take us for fools...
WHO TO TRUST?
We were bullshitted first class by government propaganda, media laziness and greed, and some of us not only knew that, but also had the information in hand... But, like on many occasion of dissent or whistle-blowing, who wants to listen in, against the tide of orchestrated hysteria.... (repeat of an article posted on this site 18 April 2005...) Do you expect that extremely experienced experts in the field of information gathering (spying) on a piddly country (Iraq) would get it so wrong? Do you expect that media is not influenced by political currents? In the mid 1800's A famous novelist wrote something to the effect that newspapers (media) fed on the carcasses of the dead... Not too far off the mark as you saw how most of the media, especially some unashamedly unscrupulous conglomerate jumped on the band-wagon. A war? Goody goody! That will sell papers by the forest load. More secret commercial favours ALSO demanded tactical support for the war. From the sorry David Kelly affair to small media outlet being given scoops on defectors by "commercial branches" of the CIA, from the blunders made in speeches by Blair and Bush to even the semi-diplomatic rejection of the WMDs concept by "Old Europe", it would take several tomes of an encyclopedia to precisely enumerates and detail all the tricks and turns from the governments of Australia, Britain and the US... So I will use a broad brush with few examples.... Say, the more enquiries about the "intelligence failures", the more the Administrations in the US and in England are trying to take us for a bunch of fools. In Australia, Andrew Wilkie was the only honourable person who in his position in the Secret Services could see that the information supplied about Saddam's WMDs was not reliable at best and erroneous on average. He wrote a book about it... INFORMANTS Even basic rules of first year elementary spy school... But, due to pressure from the US administration, the RULES HAD TO BE BROKEN TO "PROVE" the case for war against Saddam... AS "president" G. W. Bush said in his speech on the first anniversary of 9-11: "We will PROVE Saddam's guilt!!!" to a resounding applause... People believed Saddam had something to do with 9-11, much of the media was going with that too, while all the hard evidence pointed somewhere else... Professional spies and specialists-assessors of information don't drop their pants by accident, nor, because the weather had turned foggy, do they lose their ability to see clearly on such issues. No, the CIA was "buying" most of its information from Ahmed Chalabi's network of defectors. Chalabi was paid US $350,000 per month, by the CIA, for his efforts... In fact his "defectors" were coached and briefed by a very secret and small subsection of the CIA... (He was then disgraced a year after the invasion but there's a couple of conflicting theory about that...) [I will add here today (16 April 2013) that I believe that Curveball was a plant coached by the "subsection" of the CIA to tell the Germans a few porkies that they would relay back to the CIA headquarters... Then the CIA would "impatiently want to talk directly with Curveball" as to give some cred to the value of his information and remove him from the clutches of the Germans who were beginning to be suspicious of Curveball and knew is information was bogus... The CIA analyst in Paris as well knew the info was bogus but he was not in on the loop — a double cross from Washington] TECHNOLOGY With all the US technology, the only pictures that Colin Powell could come up with, were that of clapped out trucks with flapping canvases, in 40 plus degree desert heat, to "PROVE" that Saddam was cooking biological weapons... Ahem... In fact it is a farce to even contemplate or say "intelligence failures" on this scale. With 176 official spy satellites, 88 communication satellites from a private network also used by the Defence Department, drones, FOURTEEN major intelligence agencies - themselves with countless departments of gathering and analysis - five major Armed Forces and five major chains of directorships - usually bright, leadership personnel..., please do not tell me that the US got misled about the existence of WMD in Iraq mostly single-handedly by an alleged convicted criminal, Mr Chalabi? And a couple of fuzzy snapshots? No, the whole lot was a gigantic lie, manufactured by the administration to enforce a political outcome. WAR STRATEGY Obviously the US commanders KNEW there was no such weapons in Iraq, otherwise they would have had to tell "President Bonsai": "Sorry sir, but we have to negotiate...". A victory against Saddam in these circumstances, would have cost at least 50,000 personnel in the first two weeks of the conflict - a devastating unthinkable outcome. In this aspect of fluidity and massive increase of information and its analysis, there are many opportunity to fiddle and hide the truth. Even during the Napoleonic wars, and also World War Two, accurate information was as important as the fodder on the fields, in order to decimate the other side. Generals do know that. Either Saddam HAS WMDs and we can't attack OR he has not and the coast is clear... The US KNEW : the coast was clear.... "Through only a cannonade and not a battle, Valmy was a turning point in the History of Europe. The Duke of Brunswick, invading revolutionary France, turned back - "he did not know what was on the other side of the hill." "There is the classic example of the failure of military Intelligence - the failure to know ... The function of an Intelligence Service is "to know" - to know what are the intentions of an enemy, to know his plans and resources, the disposition of his troops and their morale." J. C. Masterman. IF the description of Saddam's weaponry by the Pentagon and the daily rags was accurate then there was NO WAY the US would have attacked Iraq the way they did... Struth! The first salvo landed on a restaurant, killing dinners and staff, in uptown Baghdad where Saddam was supposedly having dinner with big oils of his government... Another piece of poor double-cross from an informant who gave the false information just to be interesting and collect ten pieces of silver.
ANALYSIS The UK get its intelligence mostly from their own services and share much of it with the US which shares its own with the UK in return, in many fields. For example, the US/UK secret service alliance processes a staggering 130 trillion items of information per month from its satellite network (including through facilities at Pine Gap). Most of this is not shared with the European Community that has its own network of spy satellites on a much smaller scale. In fact one should read here France, Germany, Italy and Spain who have provided the French with the cash to develop the network. It processes a pitiful 2 to 3 million items per month. Their photographic resolution can only define one metre sized-objects, although they have launched a more sophisticated system with definition to about 20 cm. All in all, a ridiculously small exercise compared to the mammoth gathering by the US/UK. But then there is the X factor: Quality of the information. And then there is the Y factor: Quality of Analysis And then there is the Z factor: What you do with it. Most of the US/UK incoming data is useless. So much so that they would have a tendency to be lost, swimming in a tempest of information overload and miss the vital bits. The French (read the "other Europeans") due to limited resources are a lot more precise in the targeting of the collection. One of the sore point with the US administration on this is the French "friendly? style of spying upon US enterprises in the world - information diligently passed onto the CEO of major French and German companies. The US are doing the same, tit for tat... Of course these days one has secret codes but these complexities can be broken by computer time and smart analysis. On the subject of WMDs in Iraq, the French knew through their own services that the US/UK were propagating big big lies (mensonges, tromperies, etc were the word they used). When Colin Powell was seriously showing his pictures of Iraqi trucks at the UN, the French and the Germans were laughing their heads off, backstage.. To some extent these were the ONLY PICTURES Colin Powell could show... One can argue, the graphic department of the CIA (all secret service agencies have graphic departments in order to manufacture fake documents and also indulge in opening diplomatic mail without leaving trace)... the graphic department of the CIA could have knocked up a few fake pix of rockets in the desert sand and bob was your uncle... Except the "Europeans" would have known they were fake because they, themselves, scan the blue skies above and the only thing they could not dispute overtly was that the trucks were trucks!!! Sure they could say... we've got pictures of them too but that DOES NOT PROVE anything... The diplomacy that ensued was difficult. I would venture to say on the subject of spying on the ground, the US have been lazy. The French, the Germans and the English are more efficient at gathering good stuff than the Yanks.
TESTING... TESTING...
"An American Senate report will blame the CIA for the Bush administration's unfounded claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and will not address White House responsibility for the debacle." Okay... It's basically impossible to show proofs about the white house having demanded deliberately slanted "proof" on Iraq WMDs, but it's basically impossible for the CIA to goof so badly without a nudge from the White house... via secret channels of course.... Proper analysis of the enormity of the "INTELLIGENCE FAILURES" can only indicate the White House (and Whitehall and Little Johnny) was involved in the creation of the porkies. That the CIA makes a few blunders, that's very careless... that MI6 makes the same blunders, that's collusion. That ASIO makes the same... that's blind stupidity. Making blunders of such huge magnitude, that's deliberate governmental policy. The French and the Germans had the same sources of information and were far more cautious with it because their own operatives in the field knew the information did not stack up. ONLY ONE PERSON ALERTED THE PUBLIC THAT ALL THE RULES OF PROPER INTELLIGENCE GATHERING WERE BEING BROKEN. ONLY ONE PERSON WAS HONEST ENOUGH TO LET US KNOW WE WERE BEING FED A GIGANTIC LIE... A brave Australian analyst, a dedicated professional army officer, who should get a medal for not only having destroyed his own career, but for putting his own life at risk. Andrew Wilkie of course has been vilified and belittled by the Howard Government. Even someone like Andrew Wilkie has not had many means of being heard on the subject of our government lies. He is clamped in by the "treason factor" and the secrecy act. Dr David Kelly did speak out in England too. He gave a lead off the record to a journo who used his information full on, without sourcing somewhere else... The information was correct but denied to be so... David Kelly was thus hounded by the British government... He died. More could be said here of the enquiries about his death and the obvious discrepancies in the reports. The Hutton report did not have access to critical information which was proven tempered with in a later enquiry.. Information on torture: "MI5 and MI6 had high hopes for war-shortening information from Lecube. They believe they had verified beyond doubt that he was a spy. They only needed to make him talk. But after a week, Milmo wrote "No progress has been made ... it looks as though he is going to be an extremely obstinate nut to crack.? Soon afterwards, Milmo wrote to Philby, seeking approval to apply special measures to the interrogation of the detainee..." Gus Leonisky Note: Al Janabi was not considered a spy but an informant... Should he have been secretly working for the CIA to deceive the Germans to pass on "information" back to the Americans (one of the usual tricks in double-cross), he would have been a spy... Thus the definition between spy and informant is getting blurred so much that one has no choice, with the "intelligence failure", but to go with an organised deception on a grand scale that was concocted by Bush, Blair and Howard...
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the first "recorded" deception in "Iraq"...
Blood Rivers of Babylon...
The “legend of Sardanapale” Words and names vary from language to language and for the purpose of this short historical analysis I will use the word “Sardanapale” for the King of Nineveh back in 612 BC. The legend or what has been the “recorded history” for many years (and is still peddled in many modern history book and some web sites) is that “Sardanapale” the King of Nineveh died when the Babylonian, with the help of the Medes, besieged Nineveh until it fell in their hands.
In relation to modern geography, Nineveh’s site is on the outskirts of Mosul and the site of Babylon is only a few kilometres from Baghdad — both major cities in Modern Iraq. Ancient human history revisited. In 612 BC, “Sardanapale” was claimed to be “morally” corrupt and could not face his enemies so he organised a collective suicide, building a giant pyre, burned his own palace after having assembled all his treasures and his closest people, including his mistresses and eunuchs.
For many years (and for some people to this day) people regarded Sadarnapale as the king of debauchery — a dog, an evil character, a pig of a man, a madman. See some resemblance with someone described to us as an “evil” man. [This was written before Saddam was hanged.]
This was far from the truth...
read on at: http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/969
melding......
‘‘I’m saddened that it’s politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,’’ Abu Saif hit-man [and former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan], in a 2007 book.
‘‘[Ahmed Chalabi] and [Dick] Cheney spent long hours together, contemplating the possibilities of a Western-orientated Iraq – an additional source of oil, an alternative to US dependency on an unstable-looking Saudi Arabia,’’ David Frum, Lefty-looney [and former George W. Bush speech writer], writing this month on a meeting in the year before the invasion.
‘‘In Iraq, you’ve got a nation that’s got the second largest oil reserves in the world, second only to Saudi Arabia. It will generate billions of dollars a year in cash flow ... in the relatively near future,’’ al-Qaeda spokesman [and former US vice-president] Dick Cheney, days before the invasion.
The Bush White House wanted to go after Saddam and it wanted Saddam’s oil even before the September 11, 2001, attacks gave them an excuse. And after cleaning up the Taliban too quickly in Afghanistan, it had a desperate need to demonstrate to the world that the US could take down a substantial military force.
That aside, oil was one of the few reasons still standing when all of their stated excuses for going after the dictator evaporated. Bush wanted to blame Saddam for 9/11 – the dots won’t join; Cheney had his idea of Iraqi agents meeting Bin Laden’s guys in Prague – didn’t happen; Iraq was buying yellow cake in Niger – documents were forgeries; Baghdad had a mobile bio-weapons lab on a truck – lies; Curveball said it was all true – Curveball was a nutter.
It does not have to be screamed from the rooftops that oil is a central element in Washington’s perception of its national interests in the Middle East – that’s a given.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/us-war-for-oil-lacks-a-punchline-20130323-2gmeu.html#ixzz2QfG6k0vC
worse now than when he left office...
Bush’s legacy keeps getting worse
By Eugene Robinson, Friday, April 26, 9:53 AMIn retrospect, George W. Bush’s legacy doesn’t look as bad as it did when he left office. It looks worse.
I join the nation in congratulating Bush on the opening of his presidential library in Dallas. Like many people, I find it much easier to honor, respect and even like the man — now that he’s no longer in the White House.
But anyone tempted to get sentimental should remember the actual record of the man who called himself The Decider. Begin with the indelible stain that one of his worst decisions left on our country’s honor: torture.
Hiding behind the euphemism “enhanced interrogation techniques,” Bush made torture official U.S. policy. Just about every objective observer has agreed with this stark conclusion. The most recent assessment came this month in a 576-page report from a task force of the bipartisanConstitution Project, which stated that “it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture.”
We knew about the torture before Bush left office — at least, we knew about the waterboarding of three “high-value” detainees involved in planning the 9/11 attacks. But the Constitution Project task force — which included such figures as Asa Hutchinson, who served in high-ranking posts in the Bush administration, and William Sessions, who was FBI director under three presidents — concluded that other forms of torture were used “in many instances” in a manner that was “directly counter to values of the Constitution and our nation.”
read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eugene-robinson-bushs-legacy-keeps-getting-worse/2013/04/25/2dc44526-add9-11e2-8bf6-e70cb6ae066e_print.html
See toon and article at top...