But WELL WORTH exploring. (Note author of this article wants it distributed in toto.)
DASCHLE PNACKLES "COMMISSION INCREDIBLE"
-- Top Dem Mis-Kerrey's National 9/11 Probe
By W. David Kubiak
December 17th: 9/11 Commission Chairman Kean fires off a news blip
claiming the September 11 attacks were "preventable," some officials had
"simply failed", and "major revelations" are due next month.. Titillating
stuff, without question, but Kean was already backing off the next day,
"clarifying" that "We have no evidence that anybody high in the Clinton or
Bush administrations did anything wrong," i.e., only mid-level heads may
be required to roll.
While the "preventable" crackle fades away on the news ticker, I would
commend your attention to a graver 9/11 story that never made the crawl
bar but directly affects the credibility of this inquiry as a whole.
December 9th, two days after the 52nd anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the
National 9/11 Commission itself was hit without warning by Tom Daschle's
bombshell appointment of Iraq hawk Bob Kerrey to replace Max Cleland.
Kean's bully outbursts notwithstanding, the Independent 9/11 Commission is
in trouble. A majority of members have been tarnished with conflict of
interest allegations for their ties to airlines, oil firms, and the
Bush/Cheney crowd. The commission is also under fire for not requiring
witnesses to testify under oath and for allowing administration "minders"
to chaperone its private deposition interviews. The Administration is not
cooperating, the media is missing in action, and the Commission's clock is
running out. With two-thirds of its mandated life already passed, it is
still awaiting access to critical documents from the FAA, NORAD and the
White House.
To make matters far worse, it's also lost Max Cleland, one of the few
commissioners untainted by conflicts of interest and certainly the most
outspoken with regard to the facts. By June of this year Cleland was
already railing loudly against the Administration for "slow-walking"
cooperation, insisting on "minders", and routing the Commission's
information through a "political coordinator" in Ashcroft's Justice
Department Many victim family groups disappointed by the Commission's
compromises, vacuous hearings, and delays were stating privately that
Cleland was one of the only commissioners they could trust.
Then on July 11th, Tom Daschle suddenly and inexplicably nominated Cleland
for one of the Democrat controlled board seats in the Export-Import Bank.
The nomination required a presidential OK, but if approved would expel
Cleland from the 9/11 Commission since no commissioner could
simultaneously hold a federal post. So Daschle had knowingly put the fate
of the Administration's harshest 9/11 critic into the hands of the Bush
team itself.
Cleland for his part refused to shut up, "As each day goes by we learn
that this government knew a whole lot more about these terrorists before
September 11th than it has ever admitted." (NY Times 10/26/03) He was also
the only member to speak out against the Commission leaders' deal allowing
the White House to severely limit and censure access to requested Bush
briefing documents. As Cleland raged to Wolf Blitzer on CNN (11/13/03),
""This is a scam, it's disgusting. America is being cheated... We
shouldn't be making deals. If somebody wants to deal, we issue subpoenas.
That's the deal."
That may have been Cleland's idea of the deal, but it was also apparently
the last straw. Nine days later Bush confirmed Cleland's Ex-Im Bank
appointment and purged him from the Commission for good.
The ball then returned Daschle's court as he alone had the authority to
appoint Cleland's successor. The Family Steering Committee, which monitors
the Commission's proceedings on behalf of many victim family groups,
lobbied hard for another commissioner they could believe in -- someone who
would be as fearless, focused and candid as Cleland, and help allay their
increasing qualms. Their three recommendations included former Sen. Gary
Hart, who had co-chaired the prophetic Hart-Rudman Commission on national
security and terrorism; Eleanor Hill, a trusted commission staffer and
former Pentagon Inspector General; and 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser, co-
chair of September 11th Advocates. Breitweiser was in fact the family
groups' favorite as she was not only "one of them," she had also been a
driving force behind the 9/11 Commission's creation when Congress's joint
intelligence investigation proved futile and Daschle meekly heeded
Cheney's warning not to launch any inquiries of his own.
Daschle could not be pushed around by just anyone however. He fearlessly
defied all victim group requests and New York editorials recommending a
family member for the post, as well as thousands of faxes and emails
begging him to choose Kristen above all. Daschle not only spurned these
appeals, he flabbergasted everyone by appointing New School University's
controversial president, Bob Kerrey, to the post.
Daschle's press office stressed all the Cleland/Kerrey parallels - both
men were outspoken former senators, red-state Democrats, and decorated
amputee Vietnam vets. What the press releases neglected to note was that,
unlike Cleland, Kerrey was also an ultra-hawk, a strategic ally of Bush's
neocon handlers, and an alleged war criminal to boot.
DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL, JUST RUN
Some who heard the news were disconcerted because of the unresolved war
crime charges against Kerry for his command of a Navy Seals special ops
unit in Vietnam. In the late '90s investigative journalist Gregory Vistica
found Vietnamese and military witnesses who claimed Kerrey ordered the
slaughter of 21 unarmed women and children in a raid on the tiny hamlet of
Thanh Phong in February of 1969. Kerrey went on to lose a leg in a later
skirmish, win the Medal of Honor, and enjoy a meteoric political career.
Pressed by Vistica's revelations, Kerrey finally acknowledged the massacre
in 2001, denying he started it, but admitting he didn't try to stop it
either. Whatever the truth of that night, many more were alarmed by the
fact that he concealed the bloody episode for three decades while
exploiting his "war hero" status to realize his political goals (which
were lofty, including a hard driving Presidential bid in '92).
One mainstream review of Vistica's expose, "The Education of Lieutenant
Kerrey," noted that "Kerrey did his best to control the story and even to
quash it by offering Vistica a job on several occasions. He also changed
his story repeatedly: 'After the many talks I'd had with Kerrey over two-
plus years, I came to see that he regarded the truth as fluid--something
that could be modified, mixed, or diverted to suit his needs at the
moment.'"
Reasonable doubt 1): how can someone who has shown so few misgivings about
cover-ups or fluidic deceit for so long suddenly become a principled
champion of concrete truth and full disclosure overnight?
ANSWERED PRAYERS
After serving one term in Nebraska's governor's mansion and nearly two in
the Senate, Kerrey summed up his national security vision in a famous 1999
speech that urged more of everything martial: more intrusive intelligence,
more sweeping surveillance, more billions (by far) for the Pentagon, and a
more damn-the-costs-tests-&-treaties--full-speed-ahead! approach to Star
Wars.
Reasonable doubt 2): if these were indeed your policy objectives, sir,
what about the post-9/11 world is not to like?
PNAC: THE LITTLE RAD POLICY ENGINE THAT COULD
If Kerrey's gung ho '99 overtures seem to chorus the militant anthems of
the Project for a New American Century, you have a good ear. PNAC, you may
recall, presents itself as an ultra-patriotic think tank and the strategy
Vatican of neo-conservatism. PNAC members and alumni like Cheney,
Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Perle, Abrams, et al. now dominate White House
decision-making and are the guiding force behind our current global
adventurist spree.
For the last five years PNAC members have openly advocated total US
military and economic domination of land, space, and cyberspace to secure
global hegemony and economic supremacy, all of which would speedily
deliver -- drum roll -- "the New American Century!"
PNAC has been the clearest voice promoting US control of the oil rich
Middle East states; the loudest boosting military spending, full spectrum
dominance, and space war tech; and the most wistful (in 2000) publicly
lamenting that all its grand designs would take forever to realize without
"some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor."
It's becoming clear that we the people should pay heed to what these guys
pray for, since they always seem to get their wish. One real concern, as
readers of Robert Stinnett's densely documented "Day of Deceit" (Free
Press, 1999) may recall, is that the "old" Pearl Harbor was not exactly a
grim godsend or even a surprise attack. Stinnett reprints the Navy
intercepts and internal memos that prove FDR knew it was coming and deftly
used the ensuing outrage against Japan to ship troops off to Europe. (At
least until our troops took Baghdad, this ranked as the greatest political
bank shot of our age.) FDR's foreknowledge has in fact long been known to
serious students of the era, and the PNAC fellowship, if nothing else, is
a historically literate crew.
Whatever this administration's foreknowledge of 9/11 (and god knows they
were warned eleven times), the issue with Kerrey is his ex post facto
collusion with the PNAC crowd to pump the 9/11 terror to sell the conquest
of Iraq.
MARKETING MAYHEM
Indeed to many 9/11 victim families in the Peaceful Tomorrows and Not in
Our Name camp, Kerrey's most disturbing employment was his zealous
membership in the PNAC-dominated Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.
Better known in peace & justice circles as the Committee to Bomb Iraq, the
CLI was a White House-anointed "advocacy group" founded in November 2002
to bolster faltering poll support for PNAC's long planned Iraq war. Its
mission according to its own website at the time: "The Committee for the
Liberation of Iraq will engage in educational and advocacy efforts to
mobilize U.S. and international support for policies aimed at ending the
aggression of Saddam Hussein?
poses a clear and present danger to
its neighbors, to the United States, and to free peoples throughout the
world."
Although Saddam's "clear and present danger" remained ominously
unspecified, PNAC board fixture and CLI executive director Randy
Scheunemann saw a more immediate threat arising here at home: "There's
going to be a huge need in the post-<2002> election vacuum to make sure
that what happened in August intervention fell to 27% in the polls] doesn't happen in November and
December... Capitol Hill offices have been getting a lot of calls against
and not many for."
With public support tanking and Iraq war prep well underway, a huge PR
campaign was called for and the CLI delivered. Chorusing White House
canards about WMDs, mushroom clouds, UN futility, and Iraq/Al Qaeda
collusion, CLI members and friends launched a media offensive that deluged
news shows, op-ed pages, and high profile podia for three months. By
March, deception prevailed, angst was restored, a majority believed Saddam
had backed 9/11, and nearly 60% were ready for us to take him on alone.
By any PR standard the campaign was audacious and a great success. Poli-
sci and propaganda buffs will no doubt study its techniques for many
years. But beyond its skillful mendacity, the nature of CLI's membership
teaches important lessons as well.
GAMES OF MONOPOLY, WAR AND PNACKLE
Remember Mussolini's maxim that fascism should rightly be called
corporatism because it merges corporate interests with state power? Well,
the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq is sort of an American microcosm
of Benito's corporate-martial dream, a corporatist hologram of our
military-industrial complex writ small. Consider the strategic fusion.
You want military? Check recent CV entries for CLI Prez Scheunemann
(Rumsfeld's Iraq policy consultant), or Richard Perle (Assistant Secretary
of Defense & Chairman, Defense Policy Board), or Frank Gaffney (Deputy
Assistant Secretary of Defense) or James Woolsey (CIA chief) or arch-hawks
like General Wayne Downing (Deputy National Security advisor & Iraq
National Congress lobbyist) and General Buster Glosson (Chief of Gulf War
I bombing campaign)
You want industrial? CLI chairman Bruce P. Jackson was a top seed in
defense industry games throughout the Nineties and weapons giant Lockheed
Martin's VP for Strategy and Planning right up to 2002 when he took the
CLI post. Chairman of the CLI Board was George Schultz, a patriarch of
Bechtel, which would go on to "win" more than $600 million in uncontested
Iraqi infrastructure contracts. And let's not forget the indefatigable
General Barry McCaffrey, notorious Gulf War I field commander, who now
represents Raytheon Aerospace, Integrated Defense Technologies, and
Veritas Capital, a growing Carlyle Group wannabe.
You want a complex? Consider the swarming CLI / PNAC nexus: not just CLI
insiders like PNAC co-founder Robert Kagain, PNAC chairman William
Kristol, PNAC's executive director Gary Schmitt, PNAC director
Scheunemann, and PNAC's "Prince of Darkness" Richard Perle, but also the
Committee's compulsory conclaves with PNAC progenitors Cheney, Rumsfeld
and Wolfowitz. Just how much more PNACkled can one little group get?
These linkages are critical because they tie Kerrey directly into the
heart of a crowd now being charged in various quarters with 9/11
foreknowledge, passive abetment and thus treason and murder. Indeed
respected former cabinet ministers in both Britain and Germany have argued
in print this year that 9/11 was "allowed to happen" as a great enabler
for PNAC's imperial campaigns. In the US, Ellen Mariani, an elderly 9/11
widow, recently filed a civil RICO (Racketeering, Influence, and Corrupt
Organization) Act complaint against Bush and such key PNAC puppeteers as
Cheney and Rumsfeld, presenting forty pages of evidence that they
"knowingly let 9/11 happen for their personal and political gain." The
gains enumerated include not only fear-induced poll bloat and 2002
congressional victories, but also the huge windfall profits realized by
defendant-related firms in the destruction/reconstruction of Afghanistan
and Iraq. (For example, Cheney's 433,000 Halliburton stock options alone
have now appreciated to $26 million plus.)
Until these accusations are fully explored and adjudicated, Kerrey's close
strategic cooperation with these defendants in hyping their agenda makes
him a prime "person of interest" in both the evidential and auxiliary
sense.
WHO YA GONNA CALL? A TRUST-BUSTER?
So to sum up our reasonable doubts: Is a man who has: a) shown no personal
aversion to grave cover-ups and duplicity; b) noisily promoted the
militarist policies that 9/11 delivered; and c) collaborated with alleged
accomplices in, and obvious beneficiaries of, the 9/11 attacks, really the
best candidate we can find for a 9/11 sleuth?
Who knows what Daschle was thinking when he sacrificed Cleland, ignored
victim family pleas, and conjured up Kerrey (or for that matter what
possessed him earlier to spike his own 9/11 probe, back the Iraq war, and
cheerfully sign off on the Patriotic Act)?
What we do know is Kerrey's own view of his job, which was published the
same day as Kean's "preventable" claim. "The commission should not be a
vehicle to bash President Bush, in Kerrey's view. The commission will have
to do its work 'respectfully - but forcefully,' he said, so as 'not to
embarrass the president.'" (NY Villager, 12/17/03)
We also know that whomever the commission might eventually finger for
"failure" or "incompetence", the crucial question of winking foreknowledge
has yet to be raised, and without Cleland's brave holler the victims'
answer-hungry kin will have a much lonelier row to hoe.
-- End --
W. David Kubiak is director of Big Medicine, a research and education
institute studying the corporate takeover of our country, culture and
consciousness. His email is bigmed(at)nancho.net.
=====================================
PIRACY POLICY
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