Ray McGovern (TomPaine): Code Red (States)

[Jack Rabbit]

From TomPaine.com
Dated Tuesday June 1

Code Red (States)
The Department of Homeland Security's Tom Ridge wasn't aware of the terrorist threat until he saw his colleague John Ashcroft announce it on national television. CIA veteran McGovern outlines the evidence suggesting Ashcroft's pronouncement was more motivated by politics than intelligence.
By Ray McGovern

Last Wednesday, it was Attorney General John Ashcroft—joined Friday by me-too Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge—claiming that “credible intelligence from multiple sources indicates that Al Qaeda plans to attempt an attack on the United States” between now and the November election.
If “credible intelligence” sounds to you like protesting too much, there is ample reason to be skeptical. Overshadowing Ashcroft’s dramatic warning that Al Qaeda planned to “hit the United States hard” was the headline-grabbing, specific claim that “an Al Qaeda spokesman announced that 90 percent of the arrangements for an attack on the United States were complete.”
Had Ashcroft thought to check this out with the CIA—or even NBC—he would have learned that the “Al Qaeda spokesman” was actually “Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades”— a fact later conceded with some embarrassment by the FBI. According to a senior U.S. intelligence official, this “group” may consist of no more than one person with a fax machine. The “Brigades” have nonetheless claimed responsibility for the power blackout in the Northeast last year, a power outage in London, and the March 11 train bombings in Madrid. NBC news analyst Roger Cressey, a former deputy to counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, notes, “The only thing they haven’t claimed credit for recently is the cicada invasion of Washington.”
Intelligence” is being conjured up once again to serve the political purposes of the Bush administration. Merely recall the litany of spurious claims against Iraq, all said to have been based on the “solid sources” that Secretary of State Colin Powell dwelled upon in his UN speech in February 2003.

Read more.

Ray McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years—from the John F. Kennedy administration to that of George H. W. Bush.

[bpilgrim]

1. excellent read

thanks jr :toast:

i really appreciated his last two remarks on Fallujah and the upcoming elections.

Rockville, Md.: I think a clarification should be made regarding your response to Fairfax, Va. Fallujah was where four American contractors were violently killed and mutilated and hung in the streets. The Iraqi Governing Council was not doing anything to try to catch those responsible and that is why the American military was brought in, to try to find those responsible and bring them to justice. I do not believe the military was brought in to influence politics as you said.

Juan Cole:
Only three of the four private security guards that were killed at Fallujah were Americans. One was South African. The guerrillas who killed them then left the city. President Bush appears to have personally ordered that "heads must roll." Besieging an entire city, bombing it, and killing 600 persons, some proportion of them women and children, is clearly a disproportionate response, and was political in nature. All Iraqis understood this, and it turned them against the US presence, decisively. It was probably a contravention of the 4th Geneva Convention, which forbids Occupying Powers to engage in collective punishment. Even Adnan Pachachi said this.

_______________________

McLean, Va.: This all reminds me of the whole Mahmoud fiasco in Isreal/Palestine. How long will it be until this new guy in Iraq realizes that he too is supposed to just be a puppet?

Juan Cole: The US in Iraq is far weaker than the Israelis in the Occupied Territories. The US will not find it easy to simply ignore Mr. Allawi or the caretaker government (this is already clear from the appointment process!) The danger seems to me not that the caretaker government will act as a mere puppet. These individuals seem to me hungry for their own role. The danger is that they will not move to early elections, and may inadvertently provoke a revolution against themselves and their American backers. If 300,000 Iraqis start coming out into the street regularly, the US would just have to leave.

i wonder how pissed * and gang were when our boots on the ground COUNTERMANDED their ILLEGAL ORDERS and sent a uniformed Iraqi general rolling down the street waving an Iraqi flag from the evil saddam era :evilgrin:

do you suppose they are getting the msg that they don't completely run the 'show' :shrug:

whoever took credit for that 'flip-flop' ;->

:hi:

peace

[struggle4progress]

2. “credible intelligence from multiple sources indicates that ...

the Bushistas could supply the world with a year's worth of cow-puckies at a moments notice.":

[Martin Eden]

3. Jack, what do you think?

Ray McGovern is raising a serious alarm in his analysis. He suggests that if there is another terrorist attack in America, the Bush administration will be able to -- as Tommy Franks put it last November -- "discard ... the Constitution ... in favor of a military form of government."

I concur with McGovern that there is no moral line this administration won't cross, and that they will do everything in their power to hold on to power.

But even in the event of another 9/11 or worse, could they succeed in declaring martial law and cancelling the election? Such a move could be very difficult to pull off; a terrorist attack is the work of a small group -- not an invading force against which our military could act. The afflicted area may need martial law, but imposing it nationwide and discarding the constitution is a step that even a considerable number of Republicans may be hesitant to take.

I understand the climate of fear and hysteria which could follow a devastating attack -- and given what has happened here in the wake of 9/11, I must certainly accept the possibility of what McGovern suggests.

I agree with him that Bush and/or some high ranking officials in his administration violated the War Crimes Act of 1996, but what is the likelihood they will be indicted if they lose the election? If a poll was taken asking whether Bush should be indicted for war crimes, how many Americans would respond in the affirmative? Of course, this doesn't mean that charges couldn't be brought; but what is the likelihood?

I don't know. These are important questions. The answers could spell the fate of our nation.

What do you think?

[Jack Rabbit]

4. That calls for a long answer

Plato's definition of a tyrant, given in The Republic, is one who is ruled by his passions rather than his reason; whether he lusts for wealth, sex or power, there is no trust or bond so sacred that it cannot be broken in order to satisfy his desires. That is Bush to a tee.

Faced with being force out of office, Bush should not be trusted to play by the rules. He has not played by them yet. One is not playing by any rules when voters are disenfranchised and cast ballots are not counted; one is not playing by any rules when one leads the nation into war based on a pack of lies.

Foul play is something for which we should be on guard. No one can assume that Bush won't try something outrageous if he has his back to the wall.

The best strategy is pre-emption. That doesn't mean stage a military coup now before he can declare martial law; that means examine the possible pretexts he might use to declare martial law and, before his opportunity arises, make sure they are perceived by the public as invalid. It also means to make clear to Bush and those who would stand by him that we will not accept the canceling of the election, either before or after the fact.

The obvious point we need to make now is that Bush's war on terrorism is an abject failure. Osama bin Laden, through the al Qaida network, perpetrated the September 11 attacks. Osama and his lieutenants must be brought to justice and al Qaida must be destroyed. However, with the exception of the days and weeks following the attacks, Osama and al Qaida have not been the focus of the war on terror. Rather, Mr. Bush and his neoconservative aides have used the September 11 attacks to launch an invasion of a sovereign state with vast reserves of natural resources that had nothing to do with the attacks and posed no immediate threat. The invasion of Iraq was an irrelevant misadventure in the war on terror. The invasion of Iraq could not have alleviated any threat to the US or any other nation because Saddam, with his a markedly reduced military capability from the one he possessed twelve years earlier, was at worst a contained threat; the invasion of Iraq could not have possibly made America safer from Osama and al Qaida because Saddam's regime was unassociated with Osama and al Qaida.

The neoconservative propaganda leading up to the invasion was effective. Polls show that many Americans -- as many as three out of five -- still believe that Saddam possessed a biochemical arsenal that posed a threat to regional stability or that he aided al Qaida or even that he was a key figure in the September 11 attacks.

All of those propositions are false. All that needs to be done to convince people that Iraq was a gross blunder for which the September 11 attacks were a false pretext is simply tell the truth. That doesn't seem like a very difficult thing to do. In addition, there is much evidence for making a case that the misconceptions about Saddam's arsenal and his ties to terrorists were not simple misjudgments but deliberate lies aimed at manipulating public opinion toward supporting a war that had been desired by its planners since long before September 11, 2001.

Mr. Bush led us to a war against a country that posed no threat while he ignored real threats. This isn't about ignoring al Qaida threats prior to September 11; even if the Bush administration had given al Qaida the attention it deserved, the notion that the attacks could have been prevented is problematic at best. This is about ignoring the threats after September 11. Instead of going after Osama and al Qaida, who threaten us, Mr. Bush ignored them and went after Saddam, who didn't.

In the meantime, al Qaida has recovered from any damage inflicted during the invasion of Afghanistan and has staged a number of strikes since Mr. Bush declared major hostilities in this falsely claimed "central front in the war on terror" to have ended. Now we are being told that there is the real possibility of terrorist strikes this summer. This does not suggest that any real progress has been made against terrorists. Any further terrorist strikes against America or anywhere else, indeed, even the admission that such strikes are a real possibility, are not reasons to rally behind Mr. Bush's leadership but reasons to reject it.

And reject it we should.

A second front in any pre-emptive strategy against Bush would concern any attempt to impose martial law or cancel the 2004 elections. Any terrorist strike might justify a temporary imposition of martial law in the immediate area in which it occurs. It should be noted that ab election was scheduled in New York City on September 11, 2001; the vote was postponed, but not permanently canceled. Any attempt to impose extraordinary measures beyond that must be seen as tyranny and illegitimate; we must make clear that we will not stand for it. Should the tyrant attempt to remain in power by force after January 20, 2005, either against the will of the voters or after preventing the voters from speaking, we must be prepared to engage in massive civil disobedience aimed at removing Bush from power.

However, it probably won't go that far. To pull a stunt like that, a tyrant would need the active support of the military. Bush shouldn't count on having it. Nevertheless, by bringing it up now, we might make it more likely that he won't have it.

As for war crimes, I believe that Bush and his aides, as well as British Prime Minster Blair, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and Defense Minister Geoff Hoon should be made to answer for their actions in Iraq. In addition, Mr. Bush and his aides should be made to answer for their efforts to circumvent the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions concerning the treatment of prisoners of war and other protected persons detained in combat zones. Right now, I doubt there would be much support for that. Nevertheless, it is a possibility that should be discussed. This would preferably be done in US and British courts, but if the home country of war crimes suspects prove unable or unwilling to prosecute, then an international tribunal should be convened. In spite of US rejection of the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court, there are ways under the Statute that Bush and his aides could be brought before the ICC. As a supporter of the Rome Statute, I will admit that the schadenfreude I would experience over the sight of Bush and other neoconservative thugs standing before the ICC in The Hague will be particularly sweet.

However, first things first. The first thing we must do is rid ourselves of the tyrant and his aides. We need to make sure the election is held and that the election is free and fair; we need to win the election; and we need to make certain that the results of the election are respected.

[Martin Eden]

6. The ELECTION is the thing

No matter what happens I believe there will be an election, and that the Bushistas will try to steal it again.

We can't take it for granted that our votes will be fairly counted. Wherever electronic voting is being installed, we must insist on a paper trail. We have to register voters and urge them to the polls. In the key states we may need a majority large enough to make transparent any attempted theft.

The White House cabal claims their mission is to spread democracy, but these war criminals will try to circumvent democracy any way they can.

Yes, it would be sweet to see them brought before the ICC in The Hague!

But we'll have to get them out of office first.

[Demeter]

5. If We Still Had Elections After Pearl Harbor

then nothing would justify a military coup. Besides, where are they going to find any free military resources to enforce it? Mercenaries from Halliburton?