Bush and Cheney: All Dressed up and no Place to Go

[Octafish]

Smirk and Sneer are in really big trouble.



Like DU and much of the world has known for soon seven years, the majority of Americans now realize they are war criminals.

Gee. These guys warmongers knew Iran was no nuclear threat in August and continued to make a case for war.
That is an open-and-shut case for treason.
They wanted to use the armed forces of the United States in another attack on a country that was no immediate or otherwise threat.

Perhaps Bush and Cheney needed a war with Iran to keep the world from noticing they both are guilty of war crimes,
including attacking and destroying a country that was no threat and killing a million of its civilians.
These are acts of genocide.

Bush and Cheney: All Dressed up and no Place to Go

by Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay
Global Research, December 16, 2007

"The leader whose thinking process most resembles (Adolf) Hitler's is our own president. —Like Hitler, (George W.) Bush's ideological beliefs have blinded him to reality, and like Hitler, he seems impervious to advice that conflicts with his beliefs." -- Charley Reese

 "When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader. " -- Plato, (428/427-348/347 B.C.), ancient Greek philosopher

 "If the war is enlarged in the next 20 months to include Iran— if that happens—for the next 20 years the United States is going to be bogged down in a war which spans Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and then you can forget about American global leadership." -- Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter

For many months, the Bush-Cheney administration and its Neocon allies in Congress and in the media have been inching toward a fresh new war against Iran, possibly using nuclear weapons, under the same flimsy pretext that it had used, in 2003, to launch an illegal war of aggression against Iraq. The military gear had been positioned, with three full armadas in or around the Gulf of Hormuz, and the propaganda machine was running full time to persuade the American people that a state of perpetual war was in their interests.

But something happened on the road to war. On December 3, Michael McConnell, Director of the National Intelligence Council, dropped a political bomb. His office—in close collaboration with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the fifteen other U.S. Intelligence agencies, regrouped under the umbrella of the United States Intelligence Community (IC)—issued a devastating report about the veracity of the claims made for months by the Administration that Iran was actively engaged in developing a nuclear arms program. The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report said, "We judge that in the fall of 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program....We assess with moderate confidence Tehran has not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007." The Director of the US National Council issued also a most unusual statement, saying that "the decision to release an unclassified version of the key judgments of this NIE was made when it was determined that doing so was in the interest of our nation’s security. The Intelligence Community is on the record publicly with numerous statements based on our 2005 assessment on Iran. Since our understanding of Iran’s capabilities has changed, we felt it was important to release this information to ensure that an accurate presentation is available." In other words, even if the Intelligence Community felt that the disclosure would undermine a key Bush-Cheney policy, they were ready to go public with the damaging report for the sake of national interest.

The very claim of a nuclear Iran has been used by President George W. Bush to push to the limit, at the United Nations and in Congress, to obtain some cover for a bombing campaign against Iran. In fact, as recently as October 17, the American president had used the apocalyptic term of a possible "World War III," even raising the specter of a nuclear holocaust, to draw the darkest picture possible if Iran was not prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons, thus ending Israel's nuclear monopoly in the Middle East. Vice President Dick Cheney has also claimed that Iran had a "fairly robust new nuclear program," and that had to be stopped by all means. Indeed, for months, the person in the Bush administration who most wanted a hot conflict with Iran has been Vice President Dick Cheney.

Well, it turns out that both Bush and Cheney knew, at least since last August, that the Director of National Intelligence had concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear arms program as far back as 2003, four years earlier. The report had the effect of pulling the rug out from under any plan for a preemptive attack against Iran that the Bush-Cheney administration intended to implement in the near term. This was good economic news. Immediately, the price of oil receded from its lofty level around $100 a barrel, an indication that the market had factored in some probability of supply disruptions early in 2008.

CONTINUED...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=TRE20071216&articleId=7615

America and the world are on to their gangster asses.



Wait till America finds out they also are traitors.

[Richard Steele]

1. K&R

[Octafish]

2. Jim Webb served the monkey house notice...

From the OP source:

And the U.S. Congress, especially the non-neocon Democrats, will be increasingly reluctant to give the Bush-Cheney administration a blank check to launch a war against Iran. Last September, the U.S. Senate came very close to handing the Bush-Cheney administration a blank check for military strikes against Iran, when 75 Senators voted in favor of the so-called Kyle-Lieberman non-binding resolution. Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), along with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), voted in favor of the resolution. This was counteracted last November 1, by 30 U.S. Senators, none of them Republican, led by Senator Jim Webb, from Virginia, who sent a letter to President George W. Bush stressing that the Administration did not have the legal authority to attack Iran without congressional approval.

That may've been what the Intelligence Community needed to hear.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

13. I wonder how close we have come, and how

many incidences were planned to take us into their bullshit war. Thank you for the OP sir.

K & R

[libnnc]

3. kickeepoo

:kick:

[Octafish]

8. The Great Iraq Swindle: How Bush Allowed an Army of For-Profit Contractors to Invade the US Treasury

It is odd that it took so long for everybody to catch on.
Monkey and Crashcart had already lied American into one illegal war.
What could be their reason for warmongering?

The Great Iraq Swindle

How Bush Allowed an Army of For-Profit Contractors to Invade the U.S. Treasury

--From Rolling Stone Issue 1034
Posted Aug 23, 2007 8:51 AM

EXCERPT...

Custer Battles had lucked into a sort of Willy Wonka's paradise for contractors, where a small pool of Republican-friendly businessmen would basically hang around the Green Zone waiting for a contracting agency to come up with a work order. In the early days of the war, the idea of "competition" was a farce, with deals handed out so quickly that there was no possibility of making rational or fairly priced estimates. According to those familiar with the process, contracting agencies would request phony "bids" from several contractors, even though the winner had been picked in advance. "The losers would play ball because they knew that eventually it would be their turn to be the winner," says Grayson.

To make such deals legal, someone in the military would simply sign a piece of paper invoking an exception. "I know one guy whose business was buying ­weapons on the black market for contractors," says Pratap Chatterjee, a writer who has spent months in the Mideast researching a forthcoming book on Iraq contracts. "It's illegal -- but he got military people to sign papers allowing him to do it."

The system not only had the advantage of eliminating red tape in a war zone, it also encouraged the "entrepreneurship" of patriots like Custer and Battles, who went from bumming cab fare to doing $100 million in government contracts practically overnight. And what business they did! The bid that Custer claimed to have spent "three sleepless nights" putting together was later described by Col. Richard Ballard, then the inspector general of the Army, as looking "like something that you and I would write over a bottle of vodka, complete with all the spelling and syntax errors and annexes to be filled in later." The two simply "presented it the next day and then got awarded about a $15 million contract."

The deal charged Custer Battles with the responsibility to perform airport ­security for civilian flights. But there were never any civilian flights into Baghdad's airport during the life of their contract, so the CPA gave them a job managing an airport checkpoint, which they failed miserably. They were also given scads of money to buy expensive X-ray equipment and set up an advanced canine bomb-sniffing system, but they never bought the equipment. As for the dog, Ballard reported, "I eventually saw one dog. The dog did not appear to be a certified, trained dog." When the dog was brought to the checkpoint, he added, it would lie down and "refuse to sniff the vehicles" -- as outstanding a metaphor for U.S. contractor performance in Iraq as has yet been produced.

Like most contractors, Custer Battles was on a cost-plus arrangement, which means its profits were guaranteed to rise with its spending. But according to testimony by officials and former employees, the partners also charged the government millions by making out phony invoices to shell companies they controlled. In another stroke of genius, they found a bunch of abandoned Iraqi Airways forklifts on airport property, repainted them to disguise the company markings and billed them to U.S. tax­payers as new equipment. Every time they scratched their asses, they earned; there was so much money around for contractors, officials literally used $100,000 wads of cash as toys. "Yes -- $100 bills in plastic wrap," Frank Willis, a former CPA official, acknowledged in Senate testimony about Custer Battles. "We played football with the plastic-wrapped bricks for a little while."

The Custer Battles show only ended when the pair left a spreadsheet behind after a meeting with CPA officials -- a spreadsheet that scrupulously detailed the pair's phony invoicing. "It was the worst case of fraud I've ever seen, hands down," says Grayson. "But it's also got to be the first instance in history of a defendant leaving behind a spreadsheet full of evidence of the crime."

CONTINUED...

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16076312/the_great_iraq_swindle

Wonder what took Congress so long?
Republican majorities had a lot to do with it.

[annabanana]

4. dugg & kicked

[Octafish]

9. The Secret Scheme to Split Iraq: Oil Grab Law to Loot Iraqi Oil

Pumping another country's oil is a lot like printing money.

The Secret Scheme to Split Iraq

Oil Grab Law to Loot Iraqi Oil

By ANTONIA JUHASZ and RAED JARRAR
February 27, 2007

While debate rages in the United States about the military in Iraq, an equally important decision is being made inside of Iraq--the future of Iraq's oil. A new Iraqi law proposes to open the country's currently nationalized oil system to foreign corporate control. But emblematic of the flawed promotion of "democracy" by the Bush administration, this new law is news to most Iraqi politicians.

A leaked copy of the proposed hydrocarbon law appeared on the Internet last week at the same time that it was introduced to the Iraqi Council of Ministers. The law is expected to go to the Iraqi Council of Representatives within weeks. Yet the Internet version was the first look that most members of Iraq's parliament had of the new law.

Many Iraqi oil experts, like Fouad Al-Ameer who was responsible for the leak, think that this law is not an urgent item on the country's agenda. Other observers and analysis share Al-Ameer's views and believe the Bush administration, foreign oil companies, and the International Monetary Fund are rushing the Iraqi government to pass the law.

Not every aspect of the law is harmful to Iraq. However, the current language favors the interests of foreign oil corporations over the economic security and development of Iraq. The law's key negative components harm Iraq's national sovereignty, financial security, territorial integrity, and democracy.


National Sovereignty and Financial Security

The new oil law gives foreign corporations access to almost every sector of Iraq's oil and natural gas industry. This includes service contracts on existing fields that are already being developed and that are managed and operated by the Iraqi National Oil Company (INOC). For fields that have already been discovered, but not yet developed, the proposed law stipulates that INOC will have to be a partner on these contracts. But for as-yet-undiscovered fields, neither INOC nor private Iraqi companies receive preference in new exploration and development. Foreign companies have full access to these contracts.

The exploration and production contracts give firms exclusive control of fields for up to 35 years including contracts that guarantee profits for 25-years. A foreign company, if hired, is not required to partner with an Iraqi company or reinvest any of its money in the Iraqi economy. It's not obligated to hire Iraqi workers train Iraqi workers, or transfer technology.

The current law remains silent on the type of contracts that the Iraqi government can use. The law establishes a new Iraqi Federal Oil and Gas Council with ultimate decision-making authority over the types of contracts that will be employed. This Council will include, among others, "executive managers of from important related petroleum companies." Thus, it is possible that foreign oil company executives could sit on the Council. It would be unprecedented for a sovereign country to have, for instance, an executive of ExxonMobil on the board of its key oil and gas decision-making body.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/juhasz02272007.html

These are dangerous times. Gangsters who've not only looted the U.S. Treasury, they've tapped all those petrodollars from the House of Saud. Now they've got access to the TRILLIONS in oil under Iraq. It's no wonder Dick has done all he could to keep his 2001 energy task force meetings top secret.

[mod mom]

5. Rumor has it Santa is bringing me a Mark Lombardi book for Christmas.

It's getting more and more difficult to keep these criminals and connections straight.

Thanks Octafish, for helping us make connections. rec'd.

[Octafish]

16. Now that sounds like a gift to be shared...

The great artist pegged the BFEE for what they are with his art.

Now such works are called "social network diagrams."



Artist Mark Lombardi Mapped Out Corruption and Treason

Mark Lombardi
Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, Reagan, Bush, Thatcher and the Arming of Iraq.

Uncovering and depicting political economic power systems became one of the main themes of the artist Mark Lombardi, who died in New York in 2000.

His complex organigrams, which sometimes contain up to 300 names of corporations, CEOs and political representatives, are often based on years of research. Although he did not officially join the worldwide anti-globalization movement, Mark Lombardi was always concerned with depicting as simply as possible the existing global networks of arms smugglers and money launderers and the organization of their mafia-like structures that reach into the highest levels of politics.

He became aware of the apparent omnipresence of these and similar scandals in the course of studying art history at the Syracuse University. For an exhibition about the Watergate scandal, he began searching through files in the seventies and soon started looking specifically for political literature.

In addition to theoretical texts, such as Herbert Marcuse who was important for the intellectual segment of the 1968 generation, Lombardi also read specialized literature, for example about international arms dealing, the internal organization of the CIA or George W. Bush sen. From this accumulated knowledge, he prepared an extensive system of index cards, which soon contained several thousand individual biographies and detailed diagrams.

Without the support of computer programs, Lombardi developed a new form of depicting history on the basis of this fundamental research. Using pencil drawings, Mark Lombardi sought to make highly complex connections comprehensible as power-political concatenations by means of arrows and connecting lines attached to countless names. To protect himself from prosecution - as he said - and as a safeguard against his critics, he used almost exclusively publicly accessible and secured source material.

The drawing works by the artist, born in 1951 in Syracuse, New York, are comparable with the political work of contemporary artists such as Hans Haacke or Öyvind Fahlström. Following a serious personal crisis, the artist was found hanged in his studio in April 2000.

http://www.ok-centrum.at/english/ausstellungen/open_house/lombardi.html

Perhaps God only knows the nature of the “personal crisis” as Lombardi reported to friends he was being followed. That’s the same thing Gary Webb said…

Learn more:

http://www.pierogi2000.com/flatfile/lombardi.html

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1487185


http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/project.cfm?id=23

http://www.drawingcenter.org/exh_past.cfm?exh=121

http://www.drawingcenter.org/exh_past.cfm?exh=121&do=vexh

Thanks for caring, mod mom. I truly appreciate all you've done to spread the word.

[mod mom]

19. I remember reading somewhere (probably here) that a mysterious flood of the

sprinkler system in his building, which ruined his artwork lead to his "suicide".

[Kali]

6. Smirk and Sneer...

:thumbsup:

[jaysunb]

7. There's always jail....

:evilgrin:

[bleever]

10. Thank you

for speaking the most difficult truths.

[dailykoff]

11. When the spooks turn against the spymasters

they got no friends left at all. :thumbsup:

[MagickMuffin]

12. I think one of the biggest reasons that the Intelligence Community spoke out about Iran

is they did not want to be blamed yet again for "faulty intelligence" like they were for Iraq. Then you have the CIA maybe being just a little pissed off that they outed an agent who's job it was tracking WMD.
Which I believe might have something to do with her tracking WMD. I know that the appearance of taking her out by retaliating against her husband is a smoke screen, IMHO. It's more like a one two punch. Out the agent responsible for tracking WMD, make her appear to be "only" a pencil jockey, while blaming the CIA as incompetent as a whole.
George Tenet got what they probably agreed to "his medal of freedom", while the rest of the agents were left with a queasy feeling of could I be next to be outed by these thugs/gangtas.

I guess I'm just glad that the Intelligence Community saw through the BS and decided to speak out.

(hope my post makes sense)

Octafish thanks for ALL the post you do here @ DU. We all know so much more because of your efforts in shining a light into the dark Bushes. Of course I have been well aware of the Bushes misdeeds and dirty dealings for a very long time, but not everybody has the same tolerance for the way the Bushes do "Bidness" and you really help to expose the darkness. :applause:

[Mnemosyne]

14. They can go to the Hague. n/t

[lonestarnot]

15. Now they are alleging that Iran is being supplied nuclear material by the Russians.

[donkeyotay]

17. It's an amazing fact. Let's point it out or it'll get lost in the ongoing charade

of Will-our-congress-ever-do-anything-to-stop-the-junta? The NIE gives evidence that the same gang that brought us Iraq, was STILL planning to do the same thing to bring us Iran.

"These guys warmongers knew Iran was no nuclear threat in August and continued to make a case for war."

If you keep letting the crime family get away with crime, they'll keep committing more crime. Do date, no one has stopped them. Their style might be getting cramped, but they're still standing.

[Richard Steele]

18. Kick

[Karenina]

20. What's NOT to get?

They are genocidal maniacs who need to be removed from office IMMEDIATELY.