BUT THIS STILL SHOW THE BLAME LIES WITH THE MUSLIM FACTION WHO ATTACKED ON
9/11 REGARDLESS OF WHAT YOU "SPIN" FROM THE TABLOIDS. THEY ATTACKED
INNOCENTS FIRST WITH TERRORISM, AND REGARDLESS OF WEATHER THE CIA FBI OR THE
WHITE HOUSE PRE-SUPPOSED THESE ACTS AND WHERE PREPARING FOR THEM EVEN ON THE
SAD DAY IT WAS STILL DONE BY THESE BASTARDS YOU SEEM TO BE STANDING UP FOR.
THESE SHITHEADS HAVE GOT IT COME AND HAVE HAD IT COMING FOR YEARS. IS IT OK
FOR THEM TO DO SHITTY THINGS TO US AND WERE SUPPOSED TO LIE DOWN? I DON'T
THINK SO. SO WHAT IF OUR GOVERNMENTS ARE BETTER AT BEING CORRUPT THAN
THEIRS, AND AS FOR THE OIL I CALL IT RECOMPENSE. IF YOU FEEL SO BAD MAYBE
YOU SHOULD EMIGRATE AWAY FROM THE USA TALKING ABOUT WHAT'S NOT YOURS AND
WHAT HAS BEEN STOLEN HOW ABOUT YOU GIVE UP YOUR HOME THEN TO HUMANITIES
WORSE TREATED BY YOUR ANCESTORS. YES THE NATIVE AMERICAN INDIANS. SHIT
HAPPENS AND YOU DIE. DO THE SHIT, BE THE KILLER, NOT THE DEAD ONE, NO WAR IS
WON DYING FOR YOUR COUNTRY, THEY ARE WON BY KILLING AS MANY OF THE OTHER
BASTARDS AS POSSIBLE.
"Sir Arthur" <nospam@newsranger.com> wrote in message
news:fwjXa.14198$cJ5.1066@www.newsranger.com...
In article <PrhXa.987$Ld1.645795@newsfep1-win.server.ntli.net>, Gordon
Tomlinson
says...
subjects. if the west is to survive future more terrifying events like
9/11
The 9/11 WTC/Pentagon attacks was an American covert-action.
So by your reasoning, America needs to shut down the
CIA/DIA/NSA and the Pentagon, and by default,
Northrop, Lockheed, Boeing, Bechtel, Halliburton,
THE CARLYLE GROUP and the other
war profiteers. You know, you are right on
if you mean that!!!
Debunking conspiracy theorists
Debunking conspiracy theorists' paranoid fantasies about Sept. 11 One of
the
wilder stories circulating about Sept 11, andone that has attracted
something of
a cult following amongst buffs is that it was carried out by 19 fanatical
Arab
hijackers, masterminded by an evil genius named Osama bin Laden, with no
apparent motivation other than that they "hate our freedoms." Never a
group of
people to be bothered by facts, the perpetrators of this cartoon fantasy
have
constructed an elaborately woven web of delusions and unsubstantiated
hearsay in
order to promote this garbage across the internet and the media to the
extent
that a number of otherwise rational people have actually fallen under its
spell.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --
THE GREAT 9/11 COINCIDENCE Jon Rappoport
On August 22, 2002, the Associated Press ran a story about 9/11. "Agency
planned
drill for plane crash last Sept. 11."
"...one US intelligence agency [NRO, National Reconnaissance Office] was
planning an exercise last Sept. 11 [2001] in which an errant aircraft
crashed
into one of its buildings."
The same morning. As. The 9/11 attacks.
Accrding to the NRO, their exercise was canceled when the real thing
began.
Barbara Honegger, who worked in the White House under Reagan, points out
another
coincidence. Rsearching press reports, she found a 9/16/01 Washington Post
story
about the pilot of AA flight 77 that, on the morning of 9/11, was said to
have
crashed into the Pentagon.
The pilot, Charles Burlingame, an ex- F4 Navy flyer, had, as his last Navy
mission, helped craft Pentagon response plans in the event of a commercial
airliner hitting the Pentagon.
Pilot drafts plan for response to Pentagon hit. Pilot winds up on plane
that
hits Pentagon.
Honegger states that Dick Cheney was ultimately in charge of the NRO
exercise on
the morning of 9/11. He was in the White House Situation Room for that
purpose.
How do you like all these apples?
The limited hangout on this would be: "The hijackers had found out about
the
upcoming 9/11 mock exercise. They ran their op on top of that, hoping the
confusion between Real and Mock would keep the US government from
responding to
the actual attacks."
Or, one could take this another step: NRO uses many CIA employees. Some
element
of the CIA was involved in the tactics of the actual 9/11 attacks.
All the above coincidences certainly defy the laws of probability.
Since AP eventually ran a story right out in the open about the mock
exercise,
one would think the Hill would have exploded in outrage. A hearing would
have
been held pronto. The "bizarre coincidence" would have become front-page
news
for a week or so.
Didn't happen.
The uncanny ability of the press to suppress---by sheer accident---a story
that
could have taken the lid off Washington---THAT should have become a story
in
itself as well.
Didn't happen.
Where did AP get its story from? It got it from a classic limited hangout,
revealed in an announcement, in 2002, about an upcoming Homeland Security
conference to be held in Chicago. One of the key speakers at the
conference
would be John Fulton, a CIA officer who worked for NRO. The announcement
reads:
"On the morning of September 11, 2001, Mr Fulton and his team...were
running a
pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would
be
created if a plane were to strike a building. Little did they know that
the
scenario would come true in a dramatic way that day."
Sure.
NRO/CIA/Cheney/the White House were nervous about this story coming to
light. So
a limited hangout was arranged. The conference brochure would admit to
part of
the truth. Mayor Rudy of NYC was the main speaker at the conference.
Perfect.
As in, "See, we're giving you a fascinating tidbit about 9/11. Why in the
world
would we do this if there were more to the whole thing? We've got Rudy
himself
on the podium. Don't you think he would go nuts if there were more to
this, if
his city had been devastated as part of some plan in which the federal
govenrment were actually INVOLVED?"
Worked like a charm.
It should be noted that, right after 9/11, the White House denied that the
intelligence community had any clue that a-plane-into-a-building was a
possible
terrorist scenario. When, in fact, a mock exercise for exactly that
eventuality
was in progress on the morning of 9/11.
There is one other possibility here we need to consider. On the morning of
9/11,
THERE WAS NO MOCK EXERCISE UNDERWAY. The whole idea of such an exercise
was
fabricated to explain otherwise mind-boggling communications traffic among
intelligence and military and civilian agencies of the US
government----traffic
that would have exposed the complete and casual disregard for the very
real
events that were underway in the air.
"Oh, all THOSE messages? They were just part of the mock exercise. They
had
nothing to do with the real thing. We were slow to catch on that the
actual
attacks were happening, because we had this practice deal running. What a
coincidence."
When events like 9/11 occur, if you underestimate the devious quality of
the
cover stories, you can miss the true thread.
JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com
Halliburton unit expands war-repair role By Stephen J. Glain and Robert
Schlesinger, Globe Staff, 7/10/2003
BAGHDAD�They travel like foreign dignitaries, their SUVs escorted by two
US Army
Humvees and a security detail led by a master sergeant. No Iraqi official
is too
busy to meet them and when it comes to Iraq�s most precious resource, oil,
they
are granted total and instant access. Officials from Kellogg, Brown &
Root
Services, a subsidiary of oil-services giant Halliburton Co., are using a
broadly worded contract to evaluate and repair Iraq�s petroleum
infrastructure,
"as directed" by the US government, to gain a huge head start over
potential
competitors in redeveloping the country�s vast, outdated oil industry.
With much
of Iraqi reconstruction bogged down by sabotage, chronic looting, and
bureaucratic mire, KBR�which also is supposed to repair war-damaged oil
wells
and provide general logistical support to the US Army�has expanded its
role to
include everything from gasoline imports to laundry services. Some Iraqi
oil
officials say KBR is using what appears to be an open-ended mandate to
effectively corner a market coveted by its rivals and to win business
Iraqis can
do themselves.
"We don�t need KBR," says Dathar Al Khashab, general manager of Baghdad�s
Daura
Refinery Co., which like Iraq�s other refineries badly needs new equipment
after
a generation of sanctions. "I can work with any other company to do this
job."
KBR�s work in Iraq comes under two different contracts. In 2001 the
company was
awarded a 10-year contract under the Army Logistics Civil Augmentation
Program,
known as Logcap, that calls for the company to provide a wide range of
logistical services to the US Army. By the end of May, KBR had received
$425
million under that contract, according to correspondence between
Representative
Henry A. Waxman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House
Government
Reform Committee, and the Department of the Army. Through that contract,
KBR
had prepositioned personnel and equipment in the Iraq region�deployments
that in
the Army�s eyes made the company the logical choice for an oil
infrastructure
contract that was awarded soon after the war in Iraq began.
That KBR contract�according to Waxman, who is investigating the deal� has
"no
set time limit and no dollar limit and is apparently structured in such a
way as
to encourage the contract to increase its costs and, consequently, the
costs to
the taxpayer."
It took Waxman�s investigation to uncover key details of the KBR contract,
which
was awarded by the Army Corps of Engineers as part of a secret process by
US
government agencies charged with rebuilding postwar Iraq. Several of the
companies involved in the closed-door bidding, allowed in times of a
national
crisis under federal procurement laws, have close ties to the White House
or
were major contributors to the Bush presidential campaign. In addition to
KBR,
the winning bidders included San Francisco-based Bechtel/Parsons
Brinckerhoff,
which was awarded a $780 million contract to supervise Iraqi
reconstruction.
Bechtel, together with Halliburton, donated more than $2 million in
campaign
contributions, primarily to Republican candidates, according to the Center
for
Responsive Politics. From 1995 to 2000, Halliburton was headed by now-Vice
President Dick Cheney. KBR, according to an Army Corp of Engineers
official
responding in early April to Waxman�s written queries, was awarded a
two-year,
$7 billion contract to put out oil well fires and evaluate the state of
petroleum fields in postwar Iraq.
By early July, five "task orders" had been issued under the infrastructure
contract worth more than $282 million, according to a website set up by
the Army
Corps of Engineers. The orders included training and advice for safely
shutting
down equipment and assessing damage, repairing facilities, building base
camp
facilities, and bringing oil into Iraq while indigenous distribution
systems are
still being repaired.
The contract was designed to cover a "worst-case estimate" of possible
damage,
wrote Lieutenant General Robert Flowers, and "those services necessary to
support the mission in the near term." Flowers gave Waxman his written
assurance
that "no other contractor could satisfy the mission requirements."
That�s not how many Iraqis see it. They say KBR�s preponderant role in
postwar
reconstruction reinforces local suspicion that the invasion of Iraq was
more
about promoting American corporate interests than removing Saddam Hussein.
At a
time when US officials in Iraq have been criticized for employing American
companies to do what Iraqis are capable of doing on their own, KBR manages
laundry services and a hair salon at US occupation headquarters.
"KBR is performing tasks as directed by our clients to provide for the
continuity of operations of the Iraqi oil infrastructure, as well as the
logistical support services required as part of the Logcap contract,"
Cathy
Gist, a KBR manager of public and community relations, wrote in response
to
e-mailed queries.
Iraqi and US officials offer different interpretations of KBR�s core
business in
Iraq. Philip Carroll, US adviser to the Iraqi oil ministry, says the terms
of
KBR�s contract limits the company to a survey of war-related damage and
recommendations on how to fix it. The survey should not cover equipment
damaged
or worn out during the 13-year-old UN embargo imposed on Iraq after
Baghdad�s
1990 invasion of Kuwait, he said. By year�s end, according to Carroll,
KBR will
submit its report for evaluation by the oil ministry, which will use it as
a
blueprint for the repair of Iraq�s oil infrastructure. "When they come up
with a
plan they will submit it to the ministry, and we will review it and
compare it
with the terms of their contract," he said.
To hear Iraqi oil officials tell it, the rebuilding process has already
begun,
with KBR as both consultant and supplier. Khashab of the Daura refinery
said
there is little war damage to evaluate, because the facility survived the
war
unscathed. "We can go straight" into rebuilding, he said. "The refinery is
very
old, and KBR is happy to help us. We�re sitting down with them, and they�
re
working to get what we need." Khashab says he and KBR are discussing ways
to
upgrade Daura�s capacity to develop light-oil products, such as
lubricating oil.
It is a procurement job Khashab says he is perfectly capable of doing
without
KBR�s help. "But since KBR is here," he said, "why not work with them?"
KBR�s
Gist said that the company is conducting "emergency repairs" of the
infrastructure.
"KBR personnel continue to assess the situations and inspect the oil
infrastructure, performing repairs as directed by the Corps of Engineers,"
she
wrote. "However these assessments and reviews are not complete, and it is
too
early to speculate on an overall condition or course of action." Waxman,
when
informed of the scope of the company�s activities in Iraq, expressed
reservations about KBR�s expanding role. "It�s important that we provide
essential services to our servicemen and women, but some of the services
Halliburton is providing go beyond that and certainly give the appearance
of a
�Full Halliburton Employment Act,� " Waxman said. "There may be good
reasons why
taxpayers are paying a multinational corporation like Halliburton to cut
hair
and wash shirts, but it would be helpful to know why."
KBR has also been tasked to arrange overland shipments of gasoline to ease
fuel
shortages following waves of postwar looting that crippled Iraqi oil
production.
Thousands of tanker trucks are entering Iraq each week from Syria, Saudi
Arabia,
Turkey, and Jordan, nearly all of which are fixed by KBR agents. It is a
business with which the Iraqis have years of experience; since the 1991
Gulf
War, Iraq provided Jordan with discounted oil in return for Amman�s
support of
Baghdad�s invasion of Kuwait. Those shipments ended with the coalition
assault
in March, and Iraqi truckers have been out of work since then. KBR agents
have
hired foreign truckers, not Iraqi ones, say Iraqi transport companies.
"We have enough trucks to do this ourselves," says Shahab Ahmed Hamid, a
member
of a local truckers� union. "We were promised subcontracts from the
Americans,
but no Iraqi trucks have been employed."
This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 7/10/2003.
) Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
Boston Globe Online: Print it!
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/191/nation/Halliburton_unit_expands_war_re
pair_role+.shtml
- - - - -
THE IRON TRIANGLE: INSIDE THE SECRET WORLD OF THE CARLYLE GROUP By Dan
Briody
ECONOMIST - On the day Osama bin Laden's men attacked America, Shafiq
bin Laden, described as an estranged brother of the terrorist, was at an
investment conference in Washington, DC, along with two people who are
close to President George Bush: his father, the first President Bush,
and James Baker, the former secretary of state who masterminded the
legal campaign that secured Dubya's move to the White House. The
conference was hosted by the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm that
manages billions of dollars, including, at the time, some bin Laden
family wealth. It also employs Messrs Bush and Baker. In the immediate
aftermath of the attacks, when no one was being allowed in or out of the
United States, many members of the bin Laden family in America were
spirited home to Saudi Arabia. The revival of defense spending that
followed greatly increased the value of the Carlyle Group's investments
in defense companies. . .
Carlyle arguably takes to a new level the military-industrial complex
that President Eisenhower feared might "endanger our liberties or
democratic process." What red-blooded capitalist can truly admire a firm
built, to a significant degree, on cronyism; surely, this sort of access
capitalism is for ghastly places like Russia, China or Africa, not the
land of the free market?. . .
Perhaps there would be less reason to worry about Carlyle if there were
rival clubs of ex-political heavyweights competing within the iron
triangle. Alas, this firm seems to be an aspiring monopolist, hoovering
up former public officials from across the political divide and,
increasingly, from across the world. It is becoming more ambitious in
Europe, and keenly eyeing China. Perhaps there would be less reason to
worry if Carlyle's activities were more open-but as a private equity
firm, it has largely escaped America's recent efforts to improve the
governance and transparency of companies, which is unfortunate. At a
time when America is aggressively promoting democracy and capitalism
abroad, including by military means, it would be helpful if its
politicians and businesses were regarded as cleaner than clean. Shrouded
in secrecy, Carlyle calls capitalism into question.
Halliburton Makes a Killing on Iraq War By Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch
March 23, 2003
As the first bombs rain down on Baghdad, thousands of
employees of Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's
former company, are working alongside US troops in
Kuwait and Turkey under a package deal worth close to a
billion dollars. According to US Army sources, they are
building tent cities and providing logistical support for the
war in Iraq in addition to other hot spots in the "war on
terrorism."
While recent news coverage has speculated on the post-war
reconstruction gravy train that corporations like Halliburton
stand to gain from, this latest information indicates that
Halliburton is already profiting from war time contracts
worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Cheney served as chief executive of Halliburton until he
stepped down to become George W. Bush's running mate
in the 2000 presidential race. Today he still draws
compensation of up to a million dollars a year from the
company, although his spokesperson denies that the White
House helped the company win the contract.
In December 2001, Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary
of Halliburton, secured a 10-year deal known as the
Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP), from
the Pentagon. The contract is a "cost-plus-award-fee,
indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity service" which
basically means that the federal government has an
open-ended mandate and budget to send Brown and Root
anywhere in the world to run military operations for a
profit.
Linda Theis, a public affairs officer for the U.S. Army
Field Support Command in Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois,
confirmed that Brown and Root is also supporting
operations in Afghanistan, Djibouti, Georgia, Jordan and
Uzbekistan.
"Specific locations along with military units, number of
personnel assigned, and dates of duration are considered
classified," she said. "The overall anticipated cost of task
orders awarded since contract award in December 2001 is
approximately $830 million."
Local Labor in Kuwait
The current contract in Kuwait began in September 2002
when Joyce Taylor of the U.S. Army Materiel Command's
Program Management Office, arrived to supervise
approximately 1,800 Brown and Root employees to set up
tent cities that would provide accommodation for tens of
thousands of soldiers and officials. Army officials working
with Brown and Root say the collaboration is helping cut
costs by hiring local labor at a fraction of regular Army
salaries.
"We can quickly purchase building materials and hire
third-country nationals to perform the work. This means a
small number of combat-service-support soldiers are
needed to support this logistic aspect of building up an
area," says Lt. Col. Rod Cutright, the senior LOGCAP
planner for all of Southwest Asia.
During the past few weeks, these Brown and Root
employees have helped transform Kuwait into an armed
camp, to support some 80,000 foreign troops, roughly the
equivalent of 10 percent of Kuwait's native-born
population.
Most of these troops are now living in the tent cities in the
rugged desert north of Kuwait City, poised to invade Iraq.
Some of the encampments are named after the states
associated with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 � Camp New
York, Camp Virginia and Camp Pennsylvania.
The headquarters for this effort is Camp Arifjan, where
civilian and military employees have built a gravel terrace
with plastic picnic tables and chairs, surrounded by a
gymnasium in a tent, a PX and newly arrived fast food
outlets such as Burger King, Subway and Baskin-Robbins,
set up in trailers or shipping containers. Basketball hoops
and volleyball nets are set up outside the mess hall.
Meanwhile, In Turkey ...
North of Iraq approximately 1,500 civilians are working
for Brown and Root and the United States military near the
city of Adana, about an hour's drive inland from the
Mediterranean coast of central Turkey, where they support
approximately 1,400 US soldiers staffing Operation
Northern Watch's Air Force F-15 Strike Eagles and F-16
Fighting Falcons monitoring the no-fly zone above the 36th
parallel in Iraq.
The jet pilots are catered and housed at the Incirlik military
base seven miles outside the city by a company named
Vinnell, Brown and Root (VBR), a joint venture between
Brown and Root and Vinnell corporation of Fairfax,
Virginia, under a contract that was signed on Oct. 1, 1988,
which also includes two more minor military sites in
Turkey: Ankara and Izmir.
The joint venture's latest contract, which started July 1,
1999 and will expire in September 2003, was initially
valued at $118 million. US Army officials confirm that
Brown and Root has been awarded new and additional
contracts in Turkey in the last year to support the "war on
terrorism" although they refused to give any details.
"We provide support services for the United States Air
Force in areas of civil engineering, motor vehicles
transportation, in the services arena here � that includes
food service operations, lodging, and maintenance of a golf
course. We also do US customs inspection," explained
VBR site manager Alex Daniels, who has worked at
Incirlik for almost 15 years.
Cheap labor is also the primary reason for outsourcing
services, says Major Toni Kemper, head of public affairs at
the base. "The reason that the military goes to contracting
is largely because it's more cost effective in certain areas. I
mean there was a lot of studies years ago as to what
services can be provided via contractor versus military
personnel. Because when we go contract, we don't have to
pay health care and all the another things for the
employees, that's up to the employer."
Soon after the contract was signed, Incirlik provided a
major staging post for thousands of sorties flown against
Iraq and occupied Kuwait during the Gulf war in January
1991 dropping over 3,000 tons of bombs on military and
civilian targets.
Still ongoing is the first LOGCAP contract in the "war on
terrorism," which began in June 2002, when Brown and
Root was awarded a $22 million deal to run support
services at Camp Stronghold Freedom, located at the
Khanabad air base in central Uzbekistan. Khanabade is one
of the main US bases in the Afghanistan war that houses
some 1,000 US soldiers from the Green Berets and the
10th Mountain Division.
In November 2002 Brown and Root began a one-year
contract, estimated at $42.5 million, to cover services for
troops at bases in both Bagram and Khandahar. Brown and
Root employees were first set to work running laundry
services, showers, mess halls and installing heaters in
soldiers' tents.
Future Contracts in Iraq
Halliburton is also one of five large US corporations
invited to bid for contracts in what may turn out to be the
biggest reconstruction project since the Second World War.
The others are the Bechtel Group, Fluor Corp, Parsons
Corp and the Louis Berger Group.
The Iraq reconstruction plan will require contractors to
fulfill various tasks, including reopening at least half of the
"economically important roads and bridges" � about 1,500
miles of roadway within 18 months, according to the Wall
Street Journal.
The contractors will also be asked to repair 15 percent of
high-voltage electricity grid, renovate several thousand
schools and deliver 550 emergency generators within two
months. The contract is estimated to be worth up to $900
million for the preliminary work alone.
The Pentagon has also awarded a contract to Brown and
Root to control oil fires if Saddam Hussein sets the well
heads ablaze. Iraq has oil reserves second only to those of
Saudi Arabia. This makes Brown and Root a leading
candidate to win the role of top contractor in any petroleum
field rehabilitation effort in Iraq that industry analysts say
could be as much as $1.5 billion in contracts to jump start
Iraq's petroleum sector following a war.
Wartime Profiteering
Meanwhile Dick Cheney's 2001 financial disclosure
statement, states that Halliburton is paying him a "deferred
compensation" of up to $1million a year following his
resignation as chief executive in 2000. At the time Cheney
opted not to receive his severance package in a lump sum,
but instead to have it paid to him over five years, possibly
for tax reasons.
The company would not say how much the payments are.
The obligatory disclosure statement filed by all top
government officials says only that they are in the range of
$100,000 and $1 million. Nor is it clear how they are
calculated.
Critics say that the apparent conflict of interest is
deplorable.
"The Bush-Cheney team have turned the United States into
a family business," says Harvey Wasserman, author of
"The Last Energy War" (Seven Stories Press, 2000).
"That's why we haven't seen Cheney � he's cutting deals
with his old buddies who gave him a multimillion-dollar
golden handshake. Have they no grace, no shame, no
common sense? Why don't they just have Enron run
America? Or have Zapata Petroleum (George W. Bush's
failed oil-exploration venture) build a pipeline across
Afghanistan?"
Army officials disagree. Major Bill Bigelow, public
relations officer for the US Army in Western Europe, says:
"If you're going to ask a specific question � like, do you
think it's right that contractors profit in wartime � I would
think that they might be better [asked] at a higher level, to
people who set the policy. We don't set the policy, we
work within the framework that's been established.
"Those questions have been asked forever, because they go
back to World War Two when Chrysler and Ford and
Chevy stopped making cars and started making guns and
tanks," he added. "Obviously it's a question that's been
around for quite some time. But it's true that nowadays
there are very few defense contractors, but go back 60
years to the World War Two era, almost everybody was
manufacturing something that either directly or indirectly
had something to do with defense."
Sasha Lilley and Aaron Glantz helped conduct interviews
for this article.