OMNI NEWSLETTER #9 ON US “WAR
ON TERRORISM,” JULY 19, 2013. Compiled
by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace. (#4 Jan. 19, 2012; #5 May 29, 2012; #6 July
19, 2012; #7 Sept. 27, 2012; #8 May 28, 2013).
The multifarious
methods of oppression employed by an oppressor state would fill an
encyclopedia. Here are two.
Leaders often call attention to external enemies as a device to
distract their own subjects from their criticism of their own leaders and to
allow them to blow off steam.
Another powerful method of controlling the populace
is the control of language, of rhetorical devices. A specific figure is euphemism, an effective way of hiding folly and depravity. For example, our government has rebranded US
Another:
torture. Another: assassination. Another: training indigenous police and soldiers.
Urgently needed: Encyclopedia
of US Imperial Complex, of which the War on Terror is a part.
“Politicians and economists are blurring the
whole picture…A small group of historically aggressive nations is still ruling
the world. The economic system which it promotes has nothing to do with
humanism, with solidarity, compassion, willingness to share. We have billions
of people rotting in gutters all over the world; hundreds of millions of people
dying from curable or at least controllable diseases. The rich world is still
plundering the rest of the planet; stealing raw materials, employing people for
a pittance.... If poor nations resist, the rich world stages coups or something
worse.... And it is all legitimized through the United Nations, which was
sidelined, made truly impotent...”
Andre Vitchek,
quoted by Ron Ridenour.
"I refuse to live in a country like this, and I'm not
leaving"
Michael Moore
Michael Moore
Here is the link to all OMNI newsletters:
http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/ Here is the link to the
Index: http://www.omnicenter.org/omni-newsletter-general-index/
Related
Newsletters: Afghanistan, Air War, Allende’s Overthrow (9-11), Bases, Bush, CIA,
Domestic Repression, Drones, Fear, Guantanamo, Homeland Security, Imperialism,
Indefinite Detention, Iraq, Lawlessness (USA),
McCarthyism (domestic and foreign), Militarism, National Security State,
9-11, Obama, Pakistan, Pentagon,
Secrecy, State Terrorism,
Surveillance, Terrorism, Torture
, War Crimes, Wars, and more.
My blog:
War Department/Peace Department
War Department/Peace Department
See: 9/11 Newsletters
“Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the
most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every
other. War is the parent of armies; from
these proceed debts and taxes. . . .”
James Madison, “Political Observations,”
April 20, 1795.
“Number of private U.S.
Or seriously, INSTEAD
OF A WAR ON TERRORISM LET’S DECLARE WAR ON IGNORANCE, WAR ON HATRED, WAR ON
KILLING
Petition for Peace:
I just signed the petition "The US President and US Congress: End wars and the attack on our civil liberties here in theUS
It's important. Will you sign it too? Here's the link:
http://www.change.org/petitions/the-us-president-and-us-congress-end-wars-and-the-attack-on-our-civil-liberties-here-in-the-us?share_id=fGatKXIWJr&utm_campaign=signature_receipt&utm_medium=email&utm_source=share_petition
Thanks! Dick
I just signed the petition "The US President and US Congress: End wars and the attack on our civil liberties here in the
It's important. Will you sign it too? Here's the link:
http://www.change.org/petitions/the-us-president-and-us-congress-end-wars-and-the-attack-on-our-civil-liberties-here-in-the-us?share_id=fGatKXIWJr&utm_campaign=signature_receipt&utm_medium=email&utm_source=share_petition
Thanks! Dick
Contents of #4 and #5 at end.
Contents of #6
Two Terrorists:
Shakir Hamoodi
Tarek Mahanna
Bacevitch, Obama’s
Secret Ops
Fox News Misinformation
Two Books on
Terrorism
Contents of #7
Chomsky, Liberties
Destroyed
Hedges, NDAA Lawsuit
Bolen, NDAA Lawsuit
AFSC Defends Salah
Pal, “Islam” Means Peace
Chomsky,
Bibliography
Contents #8
May 28, 2013
Sirota, “Terrorism” Is Retaliation for US Terrorism
PBS Frontline, Dana Priest and William Arkin’s “Top Secret America ”
Notes by Dick
Dick Bennett, Puritan Roots of US Permanent War, Connecting
Fulbright’s The Arrogance of Power
Greenwald, Scheer,
Ackerman
Honigsberg, Human Consequences of War on Terror: Mass
Killing, Maiming, Exile
Brooks and Manza, Public Opinion Toward War on Terror, Fear
Justifies Mass Slaughter
Film on Canada ’s
“War on ‘Terror’”: “The Secret Trial
5”: US
Infecting Other Nations
Singham, FBI Sets Up “Terrorists’ for Permanent Fear
Greenwald on Andrew Sullivan
Aronson, War on Terror a US Creation
Sibel Edmonds, CIA Whistleblower Gagged
Looking Back
Sirota, Draft Ended 40 Years Ago June 30, 1973. Did it ensure Permanent War for the
Warmongers?
Woodworth, Reviewing Evidence of 9/11
Looking Ahead
Bob Baskin, Peace Alliance:
President Obama’s Speech to Decrease War on Terror
More to be checked.
Contents #9
OMNI Book Forum July 17
Support Cong. Lee’s Bill to Repeal AUMF/Authorization for
Use of Military Force
Gibson, Repeal the “Patriot Act”
President Obama’s Speech on Counter-Terrorism
Noam Chomsky ,
US
Ellen Ray, 2 books
Aaronson, FBI’s Construction of Terror War
Mayer, The Dark Side, Rev.
Bettie Lu Lancaster
Herman, Taking
Liberties
US War on Terrorism: SOME
WAYS THE EMPIRE RULES
Wednesday, July 17,
OMNI will host a Book Forum 7 p.m. at OMNI on aspects of US Imperialism and
“War on Terrorism,” specifically state torture and assassination and indigenous
police training. OMNI is located off N. College at 3274 Lee Ave.
Training and Using Indigenous Police
Asst. Prof. Jeremy Kuzmarov, Tulsa University
Torture
Bettie Lu Lancaster : Jane Mayer, The Dark Side
Larry Woodall: Film Taxi to the Dark Side
Carl Barnwell:
Moazzam Begg, Enemy Combatant (a
victim’s point of view)
Assassination
John Gray: Medea
Benjamin, Drone Warfare
July 17 is UN International Justice Day, celebrating the
creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
For more information contact Dick Bennett, jbennet@uark.edu, 442-4600.
Book Forum Wednesday, July 17, OMNI, 7 p.m.
Cong. Barbara Lee: Repeal endless war NOW, not
"ultimately"
RootsAction Team
[info@rootsaction.org]To: James R. Bennett
Saturday, May 25, 2013 11:01 AM
Flag for follow
up. Start by Thursday, May 30, 2013. Due by Thursday, May 30, 2013.
To help protect
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Gibson: 'This government is waging war on civil liberties and anyone who speaks out against its overreach.' (photo: unknown)
How
to Win the War on Terror: Repeal the Patriot Act
By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News, 07 June 13
y the Fall of 2014, we all need to agree on
two simple demands: First, that all members of the House and Senate who voted
for the Patriot Act, and all of its subsequent renewals, be voted out of
office. Second, that anyone running for Congress must promise to repeal the Patriot Act before
doing anything else.
The only thing more alarming than the news about the NSA's
all-encompassing citizen spying programPRISM, are members of
Congress defending this blatant violation of 4th
Amendment rights protecting all citizens from unreasonable search and seizure.
PRISM mined data from Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Youtube, and other
sites. They monitored calls from Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint networks. And
they even mined data from credit card companies.
Since the Patriot Act was signed into law shortly after 9/11, warrantless
wiretapping and constant monitoring of our phone and email conversation has
been business as usual. This is the fault of both the Bush and Obama
administrations, as each corporate party is captive to the same
military-industrial complex making big bucks from the intrusive police and
surveillance state in the US
This government is waging war on civil liberties and anyone who
speaks out against its overreach. After the Obama administration's DOJ seized
phone records of AP reporters, they defended their decision,
saying it was important to catch and punish government whistleblowers. The
ongoing Bradley Manning court-martialis just one of
many metaphors for the government clamp-down on anyone trying to shine light on
its unconstitutional and criminal actions. There are ominous posters in the DC Metro implying that
government whistleblowers will be killed. This is even happening at the state
level – the Wisconsin legislature convened under the cover of night to pass a
bill banning the Center for Investigative
Journalism from the University
of Wisconsin
This didn't all just happen overnight. After the passage of the
Patriot Act in 2001, our rights to privacy as citizens were signed away.
Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) was the only senator who voted no to the bill
that gave massive new powers to the DOJ. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-La.) didn't
vote yes or no. The House vote for the 2001 bill was also pretty one-sided: the
Patriot Act passed 357-66. When it came up for reauthorization in 2006, the
Senate passed it 89-10 (there were several who voted yes in 2001 and no in
2006) and the House passed it 280-138. And in 2011, the Patriot Act was
extended through 2015 on an 86-12 vote in the Senate, and a 275-144 vote in the
House. You can see how your members of Congress votedhere, here and here. And it's important to note that
presidents of both parties signed extensions of the Patriot Act into law.
The whole argument behind this assault on our civil liberties is
that the Patriot Act's passage and subsequent extensions were necessary to win
the so-called War on Terror. Today, we've since killed Osama bin Laden and
numerous other presumed Al-Qaeda leaders.
We were told that the reason 9/11 happened is that "terrorists hate our
freedoms." But if the main assailant on our constitutional rights today is
the government itself, then that makes anyone in Congress who still supports
the Patriot Act a terrorist attacking our freedom.
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca.) defended these intrusions on
our rights, saying, "it's
called protecting America
Obama ran on a promise of
discontinuing warrantless wiretapping in 2008. He's since become embroiled in
scandals of Nixonian proportion after the seizure of the AP's phone calls and,
most recently, our own. His presidency has marked the rise of the oppressive
surveillance state that was too busy monitoring peaceful protesters to catch the Boston
bombers, even after Russia
warned us twice that bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was in the US Utah
George Orwell's book "1984" was meant to be a novel,
not an instruction manual. If we want to stop the government's tyrannical spree
and blatant disregard for our rights, we have to insist that the Patriot Act be
repealed and that we abolish the Department of Homeland Security in its
entirety. We can no longer call ourselves a free country until we accomplish
both of those objectives.
Carl Gibson, 26, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that
mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and
budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl
and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary "We're Not
Broke," which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently
lives in Madison , Wisconsin
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this
work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to
Reader Supported News.
TWO ON PRESIDENT OBAMA’S RECENT SPEECH AT THE NATIONAL DEFENSE
UNIVERSITY
Reader Supported
News | 24 May 13 PM
William Boardman | War on Terror to
Continue With Fresh Makeup
William Boardman, Reader Supported News
Boardman writes: "Who in a sane state of mind would expect any change of policy when the President gives a speech about counter-terrorism at the National Defense University?"
READ MORE
William Boardman, Reader Supported News
Boardman writes: "Who in a sane state of mind would expect any change of policy when the President gives a speech about counter-terrorism at the National Defense University?"
READ MORE
Juan Cole | President Obama and
Counter-Terrorism: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Cole writes: "The president spent a lot of time asking Congress to do things that that Tea Party-dominated body will not do. So, in the end, the speech changes little."
READ MORE
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Cole writes: "The president spent a lot of time asking Congress to do things that that Tea Party-dominated body will not do. So, in the end, the speech changes little."
READ MORE
Noam Chomsky
Chomsky: Obama,
Bush, Blair must be put on trial at ICC for the War on Terror
By Elias Harb on May
24, 2013 From intifada-palestine.com
Chomsky: Obama, Bush, Blair must be put on trial at ICC
Noam Chomsky slams Washington for its growing use of killer drones
in a number of countries including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia,
describing it as a “massive terror campaign.”
(RT) The US
war on terror is in fact the most massive terror campaign ever, and the
invasion of Iraq
The
‘father of modern linguistics,’ Chomsky reflects on the language of the war on
terror, coming to the conclusion that the freer the society, the more
sophisticated its propaganda.
RT: As someone who was
living in the aftermath of the Boston
Noam
Chomsky: I hate to second guess
police tactics, but my impression was that it was kind of overdone. There
didn’t have to be that degree of militarization of the area. Maybe there did,
maybe not. It is kind of striking that the suspect they were looking for was
found by a civilian after they lifted the curfew. They just noticed some blood
on the street. But I have nothing to say about police tactics. As far as media
was concerned, there was 24 hour coverage on television on all the channels.
RT: Also zeroing in on
one tragedy while ignoring others, across the Muslim world, for example…
NC: Two days after the Boston bombing
there was a drone strike in Yemen, one of many, but this one we happen to know
about because the young man from the village that was hit testified before the
Senate a couple of days later and described it. It was right at the same time.
And what he said is interesting and relevant. He said that they were trying to
kill someone in his village, he said that the man was perfectly well known and
they could have apprehended him if they wanted.
A tribesman walks
near a building damaged last year by a U.S.
drone air strike targeting suspected al Qaeda militants in Azan of the
southeastern Yemeni province
of Shabwa
A drone strike was a terror
weapon, we
don’t talk about it that way. It is, just imagine you are walking down the
street and you don’t know whether in 5 minutes there is going to be an
explosion across the street from some place up in the sky that you can’t see.
Somebody will be killed, and whoever is around will be killed, maybe you’ll be
injured if you’re there. That is a terror weapon. It terrorizes villages,
regions, huge areas. In fact it’s the
most massive terror campaign going on by a longshot.
What
happened in the village according to the Senate testimony, he said that the
jihadists had been trying to turn over the villagers against the Americans and
had not succeeded. He said in one drone strike they’ve turned the entire
village against the Americans. That is a couple of hundred new people who will
be called terrorists if they take revenge. It’s a terrorist operation and a
terrorist generating machine. It goes on and on, it’s not just the drone
strikes, also the Special Forces and so on. It was right at the time of the Boston
It
is more than that. The man who was targeted, for whatever reason they had to
target him, that’s just murder.
There are principles going back 800 years to Magna Carta holding that
people cannot be punished by the state without being sentenced by a trial of
peers. That’s only 800 years old. There are various excuses, but I don’t think
they apply.
But
beyond that there are other cases which come to mind right away, where a person
is murdered, who could easily be apprehended, with severe consequences. And the
most famous one is Bin Laden. There
were eight years of special forces highly trained, navy seals, they invaded Pakistan
RT: The apprehension
of bin Laden and the assassination and dumping his body into the ocean, of
course the narrative completely fell apart. You’ve said that in the aftermath
of 9-11 the Taliban said that we will give you Bin Laden if you present us with
evidence, which we didn’t do…
NC: Their proposal was a little vague.
RT: But why are people
so easy to accept conventional wisdom of government narratives, there is
virtually no questioning…
NC: That’s all they hear. They hear a
drumbeat of conventional propaganda, in my view. And it takes a research
project to find other things.
‘Invasion of Iraq
RT: And of course at
the same time of the Boston bombings, Iraq saw almost the deadliest week in 5
years, it was the deadliest month in a long time. Atrocities going on every
day, suicide bombings. At the same time our foreign policy is causing these
effects in Iraq
NC: I did mention the Magna Carta, which
is 800 years old, but there is also something else which is about 70 years.
It’s called the Nurnberg tribunal, which is
part of foundation of modern international law. It defines aggression as the
supreme international crime, differing from other war crimes, and it
encompasses all of the evil it follows. The US
and British invasion of Iraq
Iraqi security
personnel are seen at the site of a bomb attack in Kirkuk ,
250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad
RT: The media’s lack of coverage of
everything that you are speaking about, I know that America
runs on nationalism, but is America America
NC: Every great power that I can think of…
Britain was the same, France Germany Guatemala US US
‘Bush, Blair and Obama got to be
tried by ICC but that’s inconceivable’
RT: Do you think that
we will ever see white war criminals from imperial nations stand trial the way
that Rios Montt did?
NC: It’s almost impossible. Take a look at
the International criminal court (ICC) – black Africans or other people the
West doesn’t like. Bush and Blair ought to be up there. There is no recent
crime worse than the invasion of Iraq
RT: Speaking of the
drone wars I can’t help but think of John Bellinger, the chief architect of the
drone policy, speaking to a think-tank recently saying that Obama has ramped up
the drone killings as something to avoid bad press of Gitmo, capturing the
suspects alive and trying them at Gitmo. When you hear things like this what is
your response to people saying that ‘his hands are tied, he wants to do well’?
NC: That was pointed out some time ago by
a Wall Street journal military correspondent. What he pointed out is that
Bush’s technique was to capture people and torture them, Obama has improved –
you just kill them and anybody else who is around. It’s not that his hands are
tied. It’s bad enough to capture them and torture them. But it’s just murder on
executive whim, and as I say it’s not just murdering the suspects, it’s a
terror weapon, it terrorizes everyone else. It’s not that his hands are tied,
it’s what he wants to do.
Members of the
International Criminal Court in the
Hague , Netherlands
RT: I would rather be
detained then blown up and my family with me… NC: And that terrorizes everyone else.
There are recent polls which show the Arab public opinion. The results are kind
of interesting. Arabs don’t particularly like Iran Egypt and Iraq
and Yemen , the US is a major threat, Yemen
is slightly above the US ,
but basically they regard the US US
RT: The controversial
Obama policy, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which you are
plaintiff on the case, you’ve also said that the humanitarian laws are actually
worse, providing material support for terrorism. Do you think that all these
policies are quantifying what has been in place for decades?
US
NC: The NDAA is pretty much quantifying
practices that have been employed, it went a little bit beyond , and the court
case is narrow, it’s about the part that went beyond - authorization to
imprison American citizens indefinitely without trial. That is a radical
violation of principles that go back as I said 800 years ago. I don’t frankly
see much difference between imprisoning American citizens and imprisoning
anyone else. They are all persons.
But
we make a distinction. And that distinction was extended by the NDAA. The
humanitarian law project broke no ground. There was a concept of material
support for terrorism, already sort of a dubious concept, because of how to
decide what is terrorism?
Well
that’s an executive whim again. There is a terrorist list created by the
executive branch without review, without having any right to test it. And if
you look at that terrorist list it really tells you something.
So
for example Nelson Mandela was on the terrorist list until three or four years
ago. The reason was that in 1988 when the Regan administration was strongly
supporting the apartheid regime in South Africa
We
can take another case: 1982 when Iraq
invaded Iran , the US was supporting Iraq
Saddam Hussein
(Reuters)
RT: Let’s talk about
the linguistics and language of the war on terror. What did Obama’s rebranding
of Bush’s policies to do consciousness?
NC: The policy of murdering people instead
of capturing them and torturing them can be presented to the public in a way
that makes it look clean. It is presented and I think many people see it like
that as a kind of surgical strike which goes after the people who are planning to
do us harm. And this is a very frightened country, terrified country, has been
for a long time. So if anybody is going to do us harm it is fine for us to kill
them.
How
this is interpreted is quite interesting.
For
example there was a case a year or two ago, when a drone attack in Yemen
The
logic is mind-boggling. But if we have to kill people elsewhere who might
conceivably have aimed to harm us and it happens that a couple little girls get
killed too, that’s fine. We are entitled to do that. Well, suppose that any
country was doing it to us or to anyone we regard as human. It’s incredible!
This is very common.
I
remember once right after the invasion of Iraq ,
Thomas Friedman, the New York Times, Middle East
specialist, columnist, was interviewed on the Charlie Rose show, a sort of
intellectuals show. Rose asked him ‘what we ought to be doing in Iraq Iraq
So
those terrorized women and children in Baghdad
RT: Famous atheists
like Richard Dawkins saying that Islam is one of the greatest threats facing
humanity, that is a whole another form of propaganda…
NC: Christianity right now is in much
greater threat.
‘Propaganda most developed and
sophisticated in the more free societies’
RT: The media is
obviously instrumental in manufacturing consent for these policies. Your book
‘Media control’ was written a decade before 9-11 and it outlines exactly how
sophisticated the media propaganda model is. When you wrote that book did you
see how far it would come and where do you see it in 10 years?
NC: I’m afraid that it didn’t take any foresight because it has been going along a long time. Take theUS invasion of South Vietnam
NC: I’m afraid that it didn’t take any foresight because it has been going along a long time. Take the
But
it’s now over 50 years. I doubt that the phrase ‘invasion of South Vietnam
RT: It’s become so
sophisticated, but I don’t know maybe beсause I am younger and I’ve seen it
only in the last 10 years in the post 9-11 world. With the internet do you see
the reversal of this trend when people are going to be making this form of
media propaganda irrelevant? Or do you see a worsening?
NC: The internet gives options, which is
good, but the print media gave plenty of options, you could read illicit
journals if you wanted to. The internet gives you the opportunity to read them
faster, that’s good. But if you think back over the shift from say of the
invention of the printing press there was a much greater step then the
invention of the internet.
That
was a huge change, the internet is another change, a smaller one. It has
multiple characteristics. So on the one hand it does give access to a broader
range of commentary, information if you know what to look for. You have to know
what to look for, however. On the other hand it provides a lot of material,
well let’s put it politely, off the wall. And how a person without background,
framework, understanding, isolated, alone supposed to decide?
RT: Another form of
propaganda is education. You’ve said that the more educated you are the more
indoctrinated you are and that propaganda is largely directed towards the
educated. How dangerous is it to have an elite ruling class with the illusion
of knowledge advancing their own world view on humanity?
NC: It’s old as the hills. Every form of
society had some kind of privileged elite, who claimed to be the repositories
of the understanding and knowledge and wanted control of what they called the
rebel. To make sure that the people don’t have thoughts like ‘we want to be
ruled by countrymen like ourselves, not by knights and gentlemen’.
So
therefore there are major propaganda systems. It is quite striking that
propaganda is most developed and sophisticated in the more free societies. The
public relations industry, which is the advertising industry is mostly
propaganda, a lot of it is commercial propaganda but also thought control.
That
developed in Britain and the
US
Therefore
you have to control beliefs and attitudes, it’s the next best thing. It has
always been done, but it took a leap forward about a century ago with the
development of these huge industries devoted to, as their leaders put it, to
the engineering of content. If you read the founding documents of the PR
industry, they say: ‘We have to make sure that the general public are
incompetent, they are like children, if you let them run their own affairs they
will get into all kind of trouble.
The
world has to be run by the intelligent minority, and that’s us, therefore we
have to regiment their minds, the way the army regiments its soldiers, for
their own good. Because you don’t let a three-year-old run into the street, you
can’t let people run their own affairs.’ And that’s a standard idea, it has
taken one or another form over the centuries. And in the US
Ellen Ray
Ellen Ray is
President of the Institute for Media Analysis and the author and editor of
numerous books and magazines on U.S.
Bioterror: Manufacturing wars the American way
Ellen
Ray & William H. Schaap eds.
Published by Ocean Press, 2003.
2003, 90pp,
Published by Ocean Press, 2003.
2003, 90pp,
"Bioterror
is a valuable antidote to the view that the United States U.S.
ELLEN
RAY AND WILLIAM SCHAAP, EDS. COVERT ACTION: THE ROOT OF TERRORISM. 2003.
Contents
Introduction
1
I. War Without End
The
Corruption of Covert Actions
Ramsey
Clark 7
Tracking
Covert Actions into the Future
Philip
Agee 9
NATO
and Beyond
Ellen
Ray and William H. Schaap 15
Evangelicals
for Nuclear War
Larry
Jones 21
II. From Cuba to Afghanistan
Instructive
Examples
Introduction
Ellen
Ray and William H. Schaap 29
Jihad
International, Inc.
Eqbal
Ahmad 34
Power
and the Semantics of Terrorism
Edward
S. Herman 40
Why
Do They Hate Us?
Edward
S. Herman 47
The
New Red Scare
Introduction
Ellen
Ray and William H. Schaap 49
Cuban
Exile Terrorists on Rampage
Editorial
53
New
Spate of Terrorism: Key Leaders Unleashed
William
H. Schaap 57
Editorial
on NSDD 138
Editorial
64Pentagon Moves on Terrorism
Ellen
Ray and William H. Schaap 67
The
Uses of “Counterterrorism”
Christopher
Simpson 75
Noam
Chomsky 84
Setting
the Stage: Afghanistan
Introduction
Ellen
Ray and William H. Schaap 101
Destabilizing
Afghanistan
Steve
Galster 103
The
Afghan Pipeline
Steve
Galster 109
III. Terrorist Wars in the Middle East
Israeli-U.S.
Terror
Introduction
Ellen
Ray and William H. Schaap 121
Naseer
Aruri 126
Ellen
Ray 133
Louis
Wolf 140
Clarence
Lusane 145
Israeli-South
African Collaboration
Jack
Colhoun 151
Iran-Contra and the Israel
Introduction
Ellen
Ray and William H. Schaap 157
Disinformationgate
Fred
Landis 162
Deltagate?
Ellen
Ray and William H. Schaap 169
Out
of the Loop : The VP’s Office — Cover for
Iran-Contra
Jane
Hunter 172
What
Vice-President Bush Knew and Why He Knew It
Anthony
L. Kimery 179
Vice-President
Bush: Inside Track to Power
Karen
Branan 186
The
Bush Family: Oiligarchy and the Emirs
Introduction
Ellen
Ray and William H. Schaap 188
The
Family That Preys Together
Jack
Colhoun 192
Introduction
Ellen
Ray and William H. Schaap 206
Trading
With The Enemy
Jack
Colhoun 212
The
Middle East in “Crisis”
Jane
Hunter 220
Ellen
Ray and William H. Schaap 225
IV. End Game: The
Fundamentalists Ascend
The
Nuclear Terror Card
Introduction
Ellen
Ray and William H. Schaap 235
William
Blum 240
Nuclear
Threats and the New World
Michio
Kaku 245
Endnotes
266
Index
292
Contributors
309
The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terror shows how the FBI has, under the guise of engaging in
counterterrorism since 9/11, built a network of more than 15,000 informants
whose primary purpose is to infiltrate Muslim communities to create and
facilitate phony terrorist plots so that the bureau can then claim victory in
the war on terror.
An
outgrowth of Trevor
Aaronson’s
work as an investigative reporting fellow at the University of California,
Berkeley, which culminated in an award-winning cover story in Mother
Jones magazine, The Terror Factory reveals
shocking information about the criminals, conmen and liars the FBI uses as paid
informants, as well as documents the extreme methods the FBI uses to ensnare
Muslims in phony terrorist plots—which are in reality conceived and financed by
the FBI.
The book offers unprecedented detail into how the FBI has transformed from a reactive
law enforcement agency to a proactive counterterrorism organization–including
the full story of an accused murderer who became one of the FBI’s most prolific
terrorism informants–and how the FBI has used phony terrorist plots to justify
spending $3 billion every year on counterterrorism.
Reviews
“Compelling,
shocking, and gritty with intrigue.”
–Publishers Weekly
–Publishers Weekly
“A
real eye-opener that questions how well the country’s security is being
protected.”
–Kirkus Book Reviews
–Kirkus Book Reviews
“The Terror Factory is
a well-researched and fast-paced exposé of the dubious tactics the FBI has used
in targeting Muslim Americans with sting operations since 2001.”
–Reason magazine
–Reason magazine
“This is investigative reporting at its best.
This is a story that the major media has been afraid to look at, much less
commit the resources to report it out. Now Trevor Aaronson has done it. For the
first time a documented investigation into the domestic terrorism program is
available to the general public. And the story this dogged reporter tells has
been garnering growing attention. Is it possible that we have in fact created
the very threat we fear? Are we in danger of destroying the fabric of our
freedom in our panic to preserve it? Read Aaronson’s groundbreaking report and
make up your own mind.”
–Lowell Bergman, Pulitzer Prize-winning Professor of Investigative Reporting
–Lowell Bergman, Pulitzer Prize-winning Professor of Investigative Reporting
“Aaronson explains just how misguided and
often deceptive FBI terrorism sting operations have become. In case after case,
he demonstrates how the money being spent is more about producing theater than
about federal agents arresting suspected terrorists.”
–James J. Wedick, former FBI Supervisory Agent
–James J. Wedick, former FBI Supervisory Agent
“This
is the kind of journalism that should prompt Congressional hearings. The
Terror Factory offers
a rare combination of meticulous data-driven reporting with personal narratives
about the lives ruined – and careers made – by the FBI’s rampant use of
informants. Aaronson is an expert guide through a hidden counter-terrorism
network of con men, and through the changes in technology and the FBI itself
that paved the way for this new era of law enforcement. The
Terror Factory is a
damning exposé of how the government’s front line against terrorism has become
a network of snitches at the end of their ropes, and FBI agents desperate to
thwart a terrorist plot even if it means creating one.”
–Will Potter, Green is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege
–Will Potter, Green is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege
“A
disturbing window into America
–Alexandra Natapoff, author of Snitching: Criminal Inform
–Alexandra Natapoff, author of Snitching: Criminal Inform
Jane Mayer, The Dark
Side: The Inside Story of How the War on
Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals.
2008. Rev. Bettie Lu Lancaster
Of the books on
Dick’s list, I chose one by Jane Mayer. She is on the staff of The New Yorker, so I knew it would be
well written. Also, because, of the
magazines and newspapers I read, The New Yorker has the best political
commentary. So the book I chose to review is The Dark Side: The Inside Story
of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals.
Jane Mayer began
with a series of 13 articles in The New Yorker magazine. She then developed them into a full-length
book. Although the chapters build on
each other, almost any single chapter could stand alone as a complete essay.
Critics have described The Dark Side as “a powerful, brilliantly researched and
deeply unsettling book.” Published in
2008, it was on several lists of Ten Best Books of the Year.
It is not easy to
read about torture. But it is important
for citizens to know what their government is doing. If you have the stomach for it, I recommend
Jane Mayer’s book. She not only
describes the methods used, but what interested me particularly were her
descriptions of how a small group of highly placed government officials, this
“cabal of ideological extremists,” got by with nullifying the Geneva
Conventions, suspending habeas corpus, undermining the 1984 International
Convention Against Torture and ignoring the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
There were people
who were worried when, after 9/11, President Bush used the term “war.” They were right to be worried for several
reasons, one of which is the extraordinary powers usurped by the executive
branch in the name of war.
When
the pictures of Abu Ghraib were published, we were told these morally repulsive
actions were unusual, were merely mistakes made by poorly trained, poorly
supervised underlings who would be chastised.
Not so. Jane Mayer documents that
the staff at Abu Ghraib was carrying out policies and procedures authorized by
the President and dictated at the highest level by the Vice President of the United States .
Jane
Mayer begins the story before 9/11, telling how the government had information
revealing that the attack was imminent.
This information was learned through old-fashioned detective work,
something as simple as an experienced interrogator giving an informer a meal.
The clues were all there, but the case went cold through bureaucratic blunders,
common incompetence, misfiled paperwork, misunderstandings and miss
communication. But after 9/11 Vice
President Cheney saw the problem differently.
He saw the problem as:
too
much international law
too
many civil liberties
too
many rights for defendants
too
many rules against covert activities
too
much openness, but most of all,
too
many constraints on the war powers of the President.
He believed a new system of law was
needed for this new kind of enemy. He
ordered legal justification for this War on Terror. This would involve torture, in all but name,
secret capture, indefinite detention without charges, suspension of habeas
corpus and violation of the Geneva Convention.
“We’ll have to work on the dark side, if you will” said Cheney.
He
obtained the justification he needed in a series of legal memos he ordered from
his lawyer, David Addington, and from John Yoo, and others at the Office of
Legal Counsel. It was said of
Addington: “He doesn’t believe in the
Constitution. “ In November, just two
months after 9/11, the President signed an Order proclaiming a state of
“extraordinary emergency.” Any foreigner
deemed to be “engaged in” or having “abetted terrorism” or “conspired to
commit” terrorism could be sentenced to death.
There would be no jury, no presumption of innocence, no right to
counsel, no Constitutional rights of the accused. Evidence could be obtained through physical
coercion and guilt did not need to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. It enhanced the powers of the President
without review by Congress or the Courts.
Military lawyers were seen as illegitimate. Addington said “Don’t bring the TJAG’s into
the process. They are unreliable.”
A
new legal doctrine was established. Bush
gave Vice President Cheney the national security portfolio. Cheney became the most powerful Vice
President in American History. He
controlled the paper flow and access to Bush.
Our captives were not to be categorized as criminals, entitled to American
law, nor were they to be considered prisoners of war, with rights spelled out
by the Geneva Convention. A new
vocabulary was invented: Prisoners were
labeled “illegal enemy combatants,” subject to “extraordinary rendition” (being
carried off by hooded agents in unmarked air planes to countries where they
could be tortured,) or they could be held indefinitely in secret “black site”
prisons in other countries or in Guantanamo . Guantanamo
was chosen because it could be claimed to be outside the reach of American law.
There prisoners could be questioned without legal interference. They could be subjected to “enhanced
interrogation techniques,” conducted under the leadership of CIA head, George
Tenet.
Much
earlier a program had been developed by the military to train soldiers to
resist torture. It was called SERE for
Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape.
Under a former military psychologist, James Mitchell, the methods the
soldiers were being taught to resist were now used against prisoners.
When
the practice of suffocation by water, or “water boarding” became known by the
public, it caused a lot of controversy.
But experts say the real brutality lay in the sheer number and duration
of 10 or more different strategies, all used together – what Bush referred to
as “an alternative set of procedures.”
These strategies
included a program psychologists had used with successfully with dogs, called
“Learned Helplessness.” Under this program there was random maltreatment –
taking away any predictable schedule from detainees, so that they have no idea
what time it is, no sense of when meals are delivered, no idea if it is day or
night, no light, sound or odors, sleep depredation, and isolation, all of
which are meant to cause psychic stress that would erode a prisoner’s
resistance to being interrogated and foster total dependence upon an
interrogator. They were treated like
dogs, even by using dog cages and a collars and leash. They were stripped naked.
They knew that
shame and humiliation were the biggest weakness of Arabs.
Therefore they did everything they could to dehumanize them.
Were there any
“good guys,” was there any opposition? Yes, there was strong opposition from
the beginning from Journalists at the New York Times, the Washington Post and
The New Yorker. Officials in the State
Department and the FBI protested. (Cheney said “keep those FBI people out,
they’re dangerous.”) Career military
officers, including former Chiefs of Staff objected. And there were complaints from members of
Congress of both parties, including Senators Richard Durbin and Jay
Rockefeller, and even people within the CIA.
But Cheney prevailed.
Jane Mayer cites
Alberto Mora, the Navy General Counsel, who mounted a futile challenge to the
interrogation policy. He feared it might result in war crimes charges. Mora reportedly warned Donald Rumsfeld’s
chief counsel, William Haynes, to “protect your client!” Haynes did, by getting another secret opinion
from Yoo, superseding Mora’s. (Mora finally gave up trying to work within the
system, and resigned to work for Wal-Mart.)
Jack Goldsmith,
head of the Office of Legal Counsel, sought to revoke the Yoo memo, without
success. Matthew Wexmore, a Defense
Department lawyer, organized a group of high ranking military officers and
Defense Department officials, including the Secretaries of Army, Navy and Air Force,
who met in secret to plan to shut down the “black sites” and restore the Geneva
Convention.
All soon left the
government, having been deceived, bullied, thwarted and marginalized by Cheney.
But, bad as it
was, did torture work. Were there
benefits?
There is great evidence that
torture is one of the least effective methods of gathering information, and a
likely source of false confessions. Both
the FBI and the military say it produces unreliable and often unusable
information. Jane Mayer argues that in fact, it resulted in a flood of false
and even dangerously misleading intelligence, including some false information
that was used to justify going to war against Iraq .
The
long term affects? Grantanamo is still
with us. This morning’s news is all about
forced feedings of Guantanamo
detainees on a hunger strike. (The Muslims, celebrating Ramadan, are only force
fed after sundown.) Lawyers are now allowed in, but last spring a group of
investigators from Seton
Hall University
Law School
Maybe someone
should have paid attention to former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis who said:
“the greatest
dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning
but without understanding.”
Or as Alberto Mora
said: “If cruelty is no longer declared
unlawful, but instead is applied s a matter of policy, it alters the
fundamental relationship of man to government.
It destroys the whole notion of individual rights. The Constitution recognizes that man has an
inherent right, not bestowed by the state or laws, to personal dignity,
including the right to be free of cruelty.
It applies to all human beings, not just in America —even those designated as
“unlawful enemy combatants.’ If you make this exception, the whole Constitution
crumbles. It’s a transformative issue.”
Taking Liberties: The War on Terror and the Erosion of
American Democracy by Susan N. Herman
·
Powerful account
of how civil liberties have rapidly eroded in post-9/11 America
·
Authored by the
President of the ACLU, the book features numerous stories of ordinary people
caught in the government's surveillance dragnet
·
Explains that the
state of emergency has continued into the Obama administration, and shows why
we must remain vigilant if we are to hold on to our age-old freedoms
END WAR ON TERRORISM
NEWSLETTER #9
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