Everything happened at once, Part 3

21 years ago today

Yes, I am well aware that this is the 21st anniversary of 9/11. And I know the topic of who dunnit and what happened after that has been done to death. But I think it's worth revisiting as Americans ask themselves which is the right party to entrust with national security in these ever more troubled times.

Recommended reading: The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina, by New York Times columnist Frank Rich, Penguin Press, 2006. As you would expect, considering who Mr Rich worked for, the book is an attack on President George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and the Republican Party. 

But... in revealing how the American people were suckered into supporting an unprovoked war on Iraq (and later Afghanistan), Mr Rich reveals how Deep State, which is non-partisan, co-opted his newspaper and the rest of the lickspittle media. 21 years later, the same mass media are conspiring, at the behest of Deep State and the WTF giants who fund them, to gull you into believing that you should overlook the disastrous failures of the Biden administration and leave them in control of Congress. "Don't worry folks, everything's gonna be OK. Trust us (again)!"

When the Islamic extremists -- the jihadis -- attacked the US of A on 9/11, Americans almost unanimously rallied behind its new, untested president. The papers, notably but not only the NYT and WAPO, and the TV networks, particularly CNN, organized the cheerleading, which went on 24/7 until years after the resolution authorizing the invasion of Iraq had been passed.

That there was no basis whatever for the claims that the Iraqis had, or were about to have weapons of mass destruction (WMD), or that Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with Al-Qaeda, was ignored or suppressed, just as all those stories about the nefarious dealings of Son Hunter are being suppressed today. 

One is reminded of the story of the famous American painter, Frederic Remington, who was sent by William Randolph Hearst, the master of yellow journalism, to cover the incipient Spanish-American war. When he reported from Havana that there was nothing going on, Mr Hearst allegedly replied, "You furnish the pictures. I'll furnish the war."

So it was after 9/11. The priority of the Deep State behind Dubya was not to vanquish Al-Qaeda but to consolidate its own power at any cost. It was a mission that could be accomplished only by a propaganda presidency in which reality was steadily replaced by a scenario of the White House's own invention. Thus it was that America was led for a second time to intervene in the Muslim civil wars, and attack a small and impotent country which had never attacked it.

The Republicans and the lickspittle media intimidated the Democrats into incoherence and impotence, and turned the presidential election of 2004 into an irrelevant referendum on macho imagery and same-sex marriage. Mr Rich's book shows, with a day-by-day timeline, how the institutions that should have exposed these fictions -- the mainstream news media -- were too often left powerless by the administration's relentless attack machine and their own unquestioning political correctness. 

Nothing has changed. If anything, the situation has worsened. The Biden administration controls the media. Deep State controls the administration. Are Americans going to be fooled again?!

One final thought. Among the political leaders who rallied behind the Bush War effor was none other than Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.  During the run-up to the last election campaign, Demented Joe claimed that despite voting to authorize military force against Iraq in 2002, he opposed the Iraq war from "the moment" it began. That's a lie. Read "Biden's Record on Iraq War", FactCheck.org (a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center), 10/9/19. What follows are excerpted from the article.

Biden never outright opposed military action in Iraq in the immediate days after the start of the invasion, as he claimed. He now admits his recent comments went too far. During the second Democratic primary debate on July 31, Biden said his “bad judgment” in voting to authorize President George W. Bush to use military force against Iraq in 2002 was “trusting the president saying he was only doing this to get inspectors in and get the U.N. to agree to put inspectors in.” 

In a speech days before the 2002 vote, Bush did say approving the resolution “does not mean that military action is imminent or unavoidable,” but he also laid out in detail why military action “may” be needed. And on the day the war broke out, Biden acknowledged, “We voted to give him the authority to wage that war. We should step back and be supportive.” 

It wasn’t until Nov. 27, 2005, that Biden acknowledged on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that his 2002 vote authorizing force in Iraq was “a mistake.” “It was a mistake,” Biden said. “It was a mistake to assume the president would use the authority we gave him properly. … We gave the president the authority to unite the world to isolate Saddam. And the fact of the matter is, we went too soon. We went without sufficient force. And we went without a plan.”

Right now, the Democrats and their propaganda machine are manufacturing -- just as in 2001 -- "threats to national security", which they are trying to lay at the feet of President Trump. Don't listen to them. Listen to me! The greatest threat to the safety, security and well-being of America and Americans does not come from within Mar-a-Lago, but from within the White House. Keep that in mind when you vote in November.

UPDATED: Iraq at Sweet (?) Sixteen - Why are we still there?

UPDATED ADDED 25/3/19 - This comes under the heading of "Further reading", but I just became aware of it this afternoon. Click here to read a transcript of Dr Ron Paul's speech to Congress opposing the authorization of military force against Iraq. If only they'd have listened!

Today is the 16th anniversary of the American-led invasion of Iraq, which resulted in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and then... chaos. The Paranoid States of America and its "Coalition of the Willing" involved themselves in the endless Muslim civil war -- a four-cornered one featuring Sunni Muslims vs Shia Muslims vs ISIS vs Kurds -- and there we are, still... 16 years later, after the expenditure of trillions of dollars (literally) and the loss of 1000s of lives of American and other Westerns. 16 years...

Is there any sign of the conflict in Iraq ending? NO! POTUS and our top military people tell us ISIS is "just about" defeated, reduced to a few hundred jihadis encircled in a shithole somewhere in Syria. Once they surrender, we can declare victory... again... and go home. Errr, not the part about going home. There will be a drawdown of some of the US personnel, sometime, but there will be a US presence in Iraq for the foreseeable future. Why? Because there is still a power vacuum, with no united and effective national government in place. And because ISIS has not been vanquished, but is merely going to ground. They will resurface at opportune times, whether in Iraq or Syria... or the Netherlands... or the USA!

I said "American-led" in the first sentence to emphasize that the US is not alone! In 2003, America's gallant ally, Canada, decided to take a pass on Iraq. Apparently the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien asked itself what the point of the mission was, and decided discretion was the better part of valour. A couple of years later, to repair relations with their disgruntled neighbours, the Canucks joined in the invasion of Afghanistan. After 160 troops lost their lives, the Canadians pulled out, leaving the US holding the Afghan bag.

But that was OK (they said) because they'd changed their mind and would send a token force to Iraq instead, to help with training and, like, you know... anything that didn't involve more body bags being repatriated. No more motorcades along the "Highway of Heroes", please! And more than a decade later, the Canucks are still there, working with the American forces to bring peace, order and good government to the shithole that is Iraq. Isn't that wonderful?

How appropriate, then, that Canuck Defence Minister Harjit Singh Sajjan (a Sikh person) and Diplomat of the Year (2018 -- look it up) Chrystia Freeland (the one not wearing a turban) picked yesterday to announce that Canadian armed forces, almost 200 strong (!), will stay in Iraq for another two years... like it or not. That should come as a great relief to the US military. What would the "Coalition of the Willing" be without Canadians?! What do Canadian voters think of this exercise in peacekeeping and nation-building, and other initiatives of Just In Trudeau's Gliberal government? We'll see in October.

Further reading: The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq, by George Packer. Farrar Strauss & Giroux, New York, 2005. Mr Packer's thesis is that President Bush II and his advisers (Hello! Messrs Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz) had no idea what they were getting into when they pressed ahead with the invasion of Iraq even though Saddam posed no threat to the USA or even his Gulf neighbours, and no plan whatever for stabilizing and rebuilding the shithole once the invasion was over. And remember, he wrote this book in 2005. Things only got worse after that. Where and when will it all end?!

Never forget 9/11

As we pause tomorrow to mark the 15th anniversary of 9/11, let's not forget who did this.

The criminals who flew the planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were Islamic terrorists. Most of them were citizens of Saudi Arabia -- not Iraq, but Saudi Arabia. They learned to fly -- or aim the planes, at least -- in the USA, unnoticed by American "security" agencies. They owed allegiance to Osama bin Laden, a Saudi.

Saudi diplomats and members of the Saudi royal family were flown out of Washington, by arrangement with the government of Bush II, even before the dust settled. So who did Dubya, egged on by Cheney and Rumsfeld, decide to make war on? Not their good friends the Saudis. Not Osama bin Laden, who was hiding in the north of Afghanistan or Pakistan. The target for retaliation became none other than Saddam Hussein. He was picked because the Americans knew where he was. Besides, Dubya had an Oedipal fixation on finishing the job his father started, thus proving that he was more of a man.

On 11 September 2003, Maureen Dowd wrote in the New York Times:

Our leaders have used goofball logic and lousy assumptions to trap the country in a cockeyed replay of the Crusades that could drain our treasury and strain our military for generations, without making us any safer from terrorists and maybe putting us more at risk....

Iraq never threatened US security. Bush officials cynically attacked a villainous country because they knew it was easier than finding the real 9/11 villain, who had no country.... By pretending Iraq was crawling with Al-Qaeda, they've created an Iraq crawling with Al-Qaeda.

The first paragraph turned out to be a considerable understatement. The last sentence was bang on except that the Islamic extremists changed their name from Al-Qaeda to the grander-sounding "Islamic State in Iraq and Syria", the so-called "Caliphate". But make no mistake. They are the same Islamic extremists, the same jihadis, bent on exterminating us "Crusaders", wherever they may find us, including in our homelands. The Bush War (continued half-heartedly by Obama) changed nothing, except to make things worse.

Further reading: "Why the '9/11 Truth' movement endures 15 years later", by Matt Kwong, CBC News, 10/9/16.

UPDATED: Remember Libya and Afghanistan? Forget Iraq and Syria!

Those who think that the government-controlled [and financed! Poor Len] Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is simply a mouthpiece for the hawkish Harper should pay attention. The CBC gives a lot of time and space to commentators -- including some of its own staffers -- who are anti-war and (at least mildly) anti-Harper.

One such is Brian Stewart, one of Canada's most experienced journalists and foreign correspondents. Currently he is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Munk School for Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. He also sits on the advisory board of Human Rights Watch Canada. In almost four decades of reporting, he has covered many of the world's conflicts and reported from 10 war zones, from El Salvador to Beirut and Afghanistan.

The CBC News website today features a thoughtful piece by Mr. Stewart entitled "Before Canada goes too far into Iraq, remember Libya, Afghanistan". This is a must read for Canadians and Americans too!

Western interventions in Afghanistan and Libya are too recent to have made it into the history books. Mr. Stewart reminds those who weren't paying attention that those "military operations have been followed by the violent rise of the black flag of ISIS jihadism in these same conflict zones.... Not an encouraging record." Indeed.

Mr. Stewart goes on to say that "Canada rarely seems to anticipate the depths of chaos that it's wading into when it unleashes our CF-18s and other combat units on far-flung wars and insurgencies we know very little about." Indeed, (again).

He goes on to say, "We plunge in, it seems, even when our own military warns of dire consequences." He gives the example of Libya. Canada's military intelligence [an oxymoron, surely! Ed.] warned the Harper government in March 2011 that Libya would descend into a lengthy civil war if our planes and other Western bombers helped crush the Qadaffi regime. So that's what they did. Of course.

The result? The NATO coalition "helped unleash a nightmarish civil war and murderous anarchy on a nation that still lacks a stable government four years later." You'd think today's Western leaders -- especially Hellery Clinton-- would realize their mistake. But noooo...

Mr. Stewart goes on to detail the rise of ISIS in Libya and now Afghanistan, and then asks the telling question: "Who anymore can confidently predict the outcome?"

Who? Walt! That's who! My prediction: it will all end in tears and recrimination. Lifetime pct .991.

Further reading on WWW:
"First Canadian soldier killed in mission vs ISIS" - Walt told you so!
"Mark Twain reflects on the folly of trying to civilize barbarians" - So did Mr. Clemens, 117 years ago!

UPDATE (March 13th) -- Click here to read and hear Ron Paul explain why "The World Would Be a Better Place with Saddam Hussein Still in Power". Great minds think alike!

Mission accomplished... NOT! Iraq explodes again

Looks like the cradle of civilization is becoming even less civilized -- or more uncivilized -- this week, as the world lurches ever close to the Armageddon.

Walt refers to the looming disaster in Iraq, and suggests you have a look at the map of the "cradle" in "The Coffin of Civilization", posted here back in September of 2012. See the part of the "Fertile Crescent" labelled "Assyria"? That's modern-day Syria. "Akkad" roughly corresponds to Iraq. Here's a modern map, showing today's porous borders. Consult your programme while Walt explains who's killing whom.

The yellow stain of violent Islamic extremism starts in north-eastern Syria where jihadist rebels are fighting the forces of "Basher" Assad's government, then spreads east into northern Iraq, where the majority Kurds -- also Muslims -- have been agitating for ages to establish an independent state. In fact they already have a government of sorts in the three Iraqi states shown in olive grey.

The insurgents coming in from Syria represent a new "organization", even worse than al-Qaeda, which they call "the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant". The abbreviation would seem to be "ISIL", but they have taken to using "ISIS", maybe because... well, who knows... Islam is not the monolithic religion many westerners think it is. Muslims like fighting with each other even better than waging war on infidels. [Maybe it's because we infidels are better fighters? Ed.] The ISIS jihadists are Sunni Muslims, and regard the Shia Muslims (the majority in Iraq) as, errr, also infidels.

The Kurds, as you can imagine, are encouraging the Sunni thugs to make their whey [Geddit? Kurds and whey? Ed.] quickly south to Tikrit and Baghdad, where the Shites [Ed., please check spelling] are, and leave "Kurdistan" to the Kurds. As of today, ISIS are in control of Mosul and Tikrit and are moving closer to Baghdad. Iraqi government troops are stripping off their uniforms and laying down their arms as fast as Egyptians fleeing from advancing Israelis.

Cue the inevitable "Something must be done!" from Western leaders, the Disunited Nations, etc etc. But what?! How about sending US troops in to restore order. Considering what a great job the American-led "coalition" did last time, maybe not! Even President Hussein Obama has learned (Walt thinks) that going in is one thing, getting out quite another. Won't be doing that again!

But cheer up. Iran is ready to step into the breach! President Hassan Rouhani has denied reports that three units of Iran's crack Presidential Guards have already been sent to Baghdad to bolster Iraqi government forces' defences. But, he said, Iran stands ready to intervene if things get worse. And they are sending a dozen tanks fitted with special transmissions -- four speeds in reverse and one forward... in case the Sunnis attack from the rear.

Iran has close ties with the Shia-dominated Iraqi leadership which came to power after the Americans toppled of President Saddam Hussein, whose power base was the country's Sunni minority. That little exercise cost over $1,000,000,000,000 -- that's a trillion -- and over 4000 American lives. But it was worth it, right? Errr, maybe not.

Note from Ed.: I'm reminded of the old Iraqi lovesong: I Want a Gal Just Like the Old Bag Dad Had.

"We are a ruined church": Patriarch Sako talks about Christianity in Iraq

Migration of Christians: Percussion of the Alarm Bells is a very sad commentary by Louis Raphaël I Sako, Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church, on the situation of Christians in Iraq.

Patriarch Sako blames the American invasion of Iraq for the demise of the Church in his country. "We are a ruined church", he said. "1400 years of Islam could not uproot us from our land and our churches, while the policies of the West [have] scattered us and distributed us all around the world."

The Chaldean Catholic Church is an Eastern Syriac particular church of the Catholic Church, maintaining full communion with the Bishop of Rome and the rest of the Catholic Church. Founded in the earliest days of Christianity (1st to 3rd centuries A.D.), it was originally a part of The Assyrian Church of the East, until in the 16th century Shimun VIII Yohannan Sulaqa entered communion with the Roman Catholic Church. It was renamed as the Chaldean Catholic Church by Rome in 1683.

The Chaldean Catholic Church presently comprises an estimated 500,000 believers, mostly ethnic Assyrians indigenous to northern Iraq, and areas bordering it in southeast Turkey, northeast Syria and northwest Iran. This is a troubled area, coinciding geographically with large parts of what is called "Kurdistan", where the Muslim majority are struggling to carve their own state out of parts of Iraq, Turkey and Syria. In central and south Iraq, fighting between Sunni and Shia Muslims goes on as usual, in spite of -- or because of -- the failure of the American "intervention".

According to Patriarch Sako, the West would have been better off leaving the local peoples to sort out their differences on their own. "Democracy and change come through upbringing and education rather than through conflict," he said. "Intervention by the West in the region did not solve the problems...but on the contrary, produced more chaos and conflict."

Referring to the régime of Saddam Hussein, the patriarch said that "in the Church of the Ascension, Al-Mashtal, for example, there were about 5000 families and over 240 students preparing for their First Holy Communion before the régime’s fall.... On 25 April 2014, I celebrated in this church the Holy Mass for First Holy Communion of 13 students only."

"[Iraqi] government authorities bear part of the responsibility of this migration for failing to restore security and stability," Patriarch Sako continued. He called upon Muslim clerics to issue "a joint statement denying all forms of violence, mistrust and considering others as 'infidels'" and calling "for peace and brotherhood among the people."

For all the goodwill exhibited by Patriarch Sako, Walt thinks the likelihood of any such statement coming out of Iraq is about the same as that of Pope Francis admitting that "we are a ruined church" applies in the larger sense to the Roman Catholic Church as a whole.

"I told you so" - Former British PM says Islamic extremists are dangerous

British readers may remember the Rt. Hon. Tony Blair, the UK's first "New Labour" prime minister. Other things "new" about Mr. Blair were "new age" and -- believe it or not -- "new bullshit". For it was he, aided and abetted by Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell, who led Notsogreat Britain into the Iraq debacle.

How did they persuade the British people and parliament to support the American invasion of Saddam Hussein's sandpit? Why, by declaring Saddam a dangerous Islamic extremist -- EXTRA-dangerous, in fact, because he possessed "weapons of mass destruction" (WMDs) which could hit Britain 45 seconds, turning it from a stinking pile of rubbish into a flaming pile of rubbish.

"45 seconds"... turned out to be a wee bit of an exaggeration. In fact Saddam was as bereft of WMDs as the Americans were of any strategy to exit the Iraq quagmire, and you know the rest of the story. People started calling the British PM "Tony Bliar", and he had the smarts to hand over to poor old Gordon Brown, who was in due course turfed out.

No matter. The terrible trio -- Blair, Mandelson and Campbell -- have all gone on to bigger and better (?) things. Yesterday, Britain. Today, Europe. Tomorrow, the world ??? See "Are Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson edging towards world domination?" in the online edition of today's Grauniad.

As part of Mr. Bliar's grand strategy of self-promotion -- that's where Campbell comes in, as the PR advisor -- Tony got himself appointed "special ambassador" to the Middle East. His self-proclaimed goal was to Draw All Faiths Together (DAFT), getting Jews, Christians and Muslims to bury the hatchet... in the ground rather than others' heads. So far he has accomplished, errr, nothing.

Why is it that? Well, in a speech given in London yesterday, Mr. Bliar said the problem is "the threat of Islamic extremism". He didn't say anything about WMDs or "45 seconds", but warned Western leaders they must "take sides" in places like Syria and back "open-minded" groups. Hmmm. Open-minded Muslims. Open-minded Jews. Perhaps Tony can tell us where to find such people? "Moderate Islamists" and "moderate Zionists" are oxymorons!

A further problem is that before you can have a "conversation" with the "moderates", you have to deal with the extremists. How to do that? You won't be surprised to learn that the prime minister who led Britain into Iraq is recommending military intervention in Syria!According to Mr. Bliar, the West will pay a "very heavy price" for not doing so.

The former PM told the BBC that the opportunity to create "an optimistic solution" is being missed. He argued the West had a "responsibility but also an interest" in making sure the "huge struggle" was "resolved in the right way.... Above all, we have to commit. We have to engage." [Sounds like making wedding plans, doesn't it? Ed.]

Mr. Bliar said he understood the UK's reluctance not to take military action, but would have pushed for the imposition of no-fly zones had he still been in office two years ago. "I know what the difficult consequences are of intervention, but if you look at Syria you see the consequences of non-intervention, and non-intervention there is something for which we will pay a very heavy price."

Walt has obtained a copy of Mr. Bliar's speaking notes, which appeared to be a photocopy of a speech he gave in March of 2003, with "Iraq" and "Saddam Hussein" crossed out and "Syria" and "Basher [sic] Assad" substituted.

Perhaps the agent who sent us the material was just pulling Walt's leg. What is certain is that we've seen this movie before. And we know how it ends. Lifetime pct .983.