Monday, June 29, 2015

Greece closes all banks for a week; closes stock market, and limits cash withdrawals to 60 EUros...

And this is the effect. Coming to America soon!

As we noted yesterday, in clear rejection of Tsipras' plea for calm, the Greek population stormed (now empty) ATMs, grocery stores and gas stations as they scrambled to obtain, or convert, paper currency into tangible products.
This morning, the NYT picked up on the realization that for Greece ATM runs were last week's story. Now, it's all about the "Supermarket Sweep"... and hoarding. To wit:
Beside the lines at A.T.M.s, people were also lining up at gas stations and in grocery stories. In the small town of Spata, outside Athens, residents had stripped grocery shelves bare by Saturday night. The local Shell station had run out of regular unleaded and had only premium gasoline to sell. “Doom,” the gas attendant responded, when asked to describe the mood.

The frenzy at gas stations across the country prompted Greece’s largest refiner to issue a statement assuring that there would be enough supply...
And this is how Athens is slowly starting to look like Caracas.





Saturday, June 27, 2015

Paul Hansen Update: Sentencing Hearing Delayed, Kent Prevented From Rece...

91 million unemployed = per capita, making 2015 far worse than any time in in US history

Unemployment Statistics during the Great Depression

 

 

Unemployment statistics for the Great Depression show a remarkable collapse in the labor market in just a few years, with recovery that did not take place until the onset of World War II created an industrial demand that brought the economy back to prosperity. In addition to unemployment, workers during the Great Depression found themselves working in an atmosphere of insecurity for lower salaries and wages than before.
Depression Era Unemployment Statistics
Year
Population
Labor
Force
Unemployed
Percentage of
Labor Force
1929
88,010,000
49,440,000
1,550,000
3.14
1930
89,550,000
50,080,000
4,340,000
8.67
1931
90,710,000
50,680,000
8,020,000
15.82
1932
91,810,000
51,250,000
12,060,000
23.53
1933
92,950,000
51,840,000
12,830,000
24.75
1934
94,190,000
52,490,000
11,340,000
21.60
1935
95,460,000
53,140,000
10,610,000
19.97
1936
96,700,000
53,740,000
9,030,000
16.80
1937
97,870,000
54,320,000
7,700,000
14.18
1938
99,120,000
54,950,000
10,390,000
18.91
1939
100,360,000
55,600,000
9,480,000
17.05
1940
101,560,000
56,180,000
8,120,000
14.45
1941
102,700,000
57,530,000
5,560,000
9.66
Despite the evidence of a national catastrophe, support for unemployment relief remained sketchy until FDR introduced the New Deal in 1933.

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Michigan Martial Law Drills Prove 'If It Can Happen Here, It Can Happen Anywhere' - Exclusive New ANP Pictures Of West Virginia Military Movement

rginia Military Movement

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By Stefan Stanford - All News Pipeline - Live Free Or Die 
Please email pictures, videos and news tips to allnewspipeline@inbox.com.
In the newly released video reports below, the 1st one from Jia Ireland via Facebook, we get an up-close-and-personal look at what our videographer herself calls 'martial law' drills in 'police state' Flint, Michigan. Complete with low flying helicopters, the sound of explosions and shooting in the background and an American populace looking on, partly stunned, the commentary given by Jia is quite priceless as she shares with us watching her country turning into something out of a war zone or a 3rd world country. Jia tells us, "if it can happen 'here', it can happen anywhere."
It certainly is happening everywhere as the additional videos and pictures below show, a militarized show of force across America weeks before Jade Helm 15 is officially launched. We have exclusive new pictures above and below sent to ANP by a reader in West Virginia of military vehicles being transported on flat bed trucks as well as the one seen above. Anyone have any idea what that vehicle is? The men seen with these vehicles in West Virginia were NOT wearing camo and were instead wearing black shirts and khaki pants; any significance to that?

The 3rd video below, an interesting one from hyungs, shows his own exclusive visit with a militarized unit in Flint, Michigan in which he gets an exclusive one-on-one interview with one of the Sergeants and takes the time to ask him about Jade Helm 15. Why does it seem like he's dodging the subject with his answers?

The 4th video shares a recent story from Intellihub via ANP friend Citizen of Gotham that shows what we're witnessing is a nationwide phenomenon and, judging by the increasing rates of these convoys and 'exercises' across America, having the US military in American cities, streets and skyways appears to be THE 'Summer of 15 TREND in America' as we prepare to officially kick off the summer of 2015 in less than 2 weeks. The final video is another on the Raider Focus military exercises in Pinon Colorado captured by the Fugazi Report.

In the 3rd video below at the 5 minute 30 second mark we learn that the reason this large group of soldiers has arrived at a park in Flint, Michigan is so they can be licensed to drive these monsterous vehicles in America; apparently a standard drivers license won't do? This however leads to the theory that there soon may be an awful lot of soldiers driving humvees and ACV's in Michigan...a whole lot of soldiers got off of the white bus carrying military together. Does America REALLY need all of these machines of war on American streets? At the 6 minute 45 second mark we get to hear a question and answer about Jade Helm 15. Pictures via hyungs.
fmjh.jpg flmjh.jpg

The next picture below shows more of the Howitzer convoy which ANP reported upon being seen in Mississippi. This appears to be the same convoy and was seen in Indiana a day or so later.

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In this 1st video, Jia Ireland shares with us what it means to her to live under martial law in Michigan. We get to hear the choppers and what sounds like a war going on in the city courtesy of the 'police state'.





Hyungs gives us a taste of militarized Michigan as well and gets a Jade Helm interview with a public servant.





This next video is a follow-up from the Fugazi Report showing Raider Focus in Colorado via dash cam.



The following pictures were sent to us by a reader in West Virginia. These were seen Ghent, West Virginia and according to our reader, the men seen with them had black shirts on with khaki colored pants. 

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IMG_20150607_144042611.jpg

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This monster was recently seen on a Texas highway.

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Another picture from Hyungs and the 'drivers licensing drill' in Flint, Michigan. 


http://allnewspipeline.com/Michigan_Martial_Law_Drills_Happen_Here_Happen_Anywhere.php

flmj.jpg

Have a Nice Summer :

More and more signs in windows of shops and stores "welcoming the military" In towns that never see a single guy in uniform. Ever. The signs are popping up at ALL the network establishments, large and small. The false flag will be in the west this time. Which is why the troops are predeploying there. Keep an eye on Los Angeles, near the water. A nuke, then a viral outbreak, and all hell breaks loose.


In military training, locals are referred to as ZOMBIES, by the troops. Now you get the zombie meme being sold to us in recent years.

Raining in the Sierras in JUNE!!!

17.4 inches of rainfall since February 2015, still believe the drought meme?

The employment/unemployment statistics are obviously BS. 93 million people aren't even counted any more--they're statistical zombies, no longer among the living workforce.

 
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
Wishing it was true doesn't make it true--it makes you a chump who fell for the con.
Once upon a time in America, no adult could survive without possessing a finely tuned BS detector. Herman Melville masterfully captured America's fascination with cons and con artists in his 1857 classic The Confidence-Man, which I discussed in The Con in Confidence (October 4, 2006).
 
An essential component of the American ethos is: don't be a chump. Don't fall for the con. And if you do, it's your own fault. The Wild West wasn't just thieves shooting people in the back (your classic "gunfight" in the real West)--it was a simmering stew of con artists, flim-flammers and grifters exploiting the naive, the trusting and the credulous.
 
We now inhabit a world where virtually everything is a con. That "organic" produce from some other country--did anyone test the soil the produce grew in? It could be loaded with heavy metals and be certified "organic" because no pesticides were used during production. But what about last year? And the year before? What's in the water used to irrigate the crops?
 
The employment/unemployment statistics are obviously BS. 93 million people aren't even counted any more--they're statistical zombies, no longer among the living workforce. If the unemployment rate were calculated on the number of full-time jobs and the true workforce (everyone ages 18 - 70 that isn't institutionalized or in prison), the unemployment rate would not be the absurdly delusional 5.6% claimed by the bureaucratic con artists.
 
The corrupts-everything-it-touches bribe vacuum known as Hillary Clinton is still disgracing the national stage, 24 years after she first displayed her con-artist colors. Hillary's most enduring accomplishment is the Clinton Foundation--a glorification of bribery, chicanery, flim-flam and cons so outrageously perfected that it serves up examples of every con known to humanity in one form or another.
 
And as she learned from hubby Bill--if the smarmy charm-con fails, quickly revert to veiled threats. "You'll never work in this town again!"
 
Hillary would fit right into Melville's river boat teeming with con-artists. The accent she uses on the marks--oops, I mean audience--changes as readily as the camouflage on a chameleon. Upper Midwest, Noo Yawk, Fake-Southern--what you hear depends on the credulity of her marks.
 
The entire American political system is a con, a sleazy mix of legalized bribes, auctioning off of favors, revolving doors between government agencies and the corporations they enrich and the blatant hypocrisy of snake-oil salespeople who know the marks (voters) face a false choice between two parties that are the same poison sold under different labels.
 
Which brings us to China, one of the greatest credit bubble and financial cons ever. Please examine this chart of the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSEC). Clearly, there is no upper limit to the Chinese stock market: 5,000 today, 10,000 next week, 50,000 the following month and 100,000 shortly thereafter. The sky's the limit, Baby!
 
That China's credit machine is now dependent on a stock market bubble for its very survival speaks volumes about the true health of China's economy. This dependence was recently explained in Why China Is So Desperate To Blow The Most Epic Stock Bubble.
 
Everybody who thinks China's economy is healthy because its stock market is soaring has been suckered. Every good con-man/ con-woman knows that the con only works if the chump/mark wants to believe the impossible is true--that the snake-oil remedy will actually cure their ailments, that the "hope" candidate will actually change the corrupt system from the inside (ha-ha, they fell for it), and that China's economy is on its way to becoming the world leader in everything.
 
Many people want to believe this fantasy because it suits their agenda: For American pundits, China isn’t a country. It’s a fantasyland.
 
But wishing it was true doesn't make it true--it makes you a chump who fell for the con. We want to believe our political system isn't an unreformable cesspool, that our economy is a vibrant creator of new middle class jobs and that China will manage the greatest credit bubble in history without a hitch. But these are all cons put over to protect the wealth and power of those benefiting from the con.
 
If your BS detector isn't shrieking, it's broken. You've been conned. Wake up.

Raining again in Ojai, you know, like it has been doing every TEN DAYS or so since October 2014

oh yeah, the "drought"...i guess I'm supposed to pretend it's not raining.
1/4 inch of rain since sunrise and still raining...according to TWO rain gauges

Monday, June 8, 2015

Random Thoughts: There is a difference between Money and Credit.

Random Thoughts: There is a difference between Money and Credit.: Money as defined by law.  Section 31 U.S.C. 5103, defines legal tender as "United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve ...

How big corporations make HUGE profits: slave wages for no benefit, no pension, slave workers.

Having a college degree changes nothing. Only vetted network assets make enough in wages to have a life in Amerika
saddled with a debt slavery no job will every deliver one from, unless of course, the  network arranges a sweet deal for your satanic allegiance

I’ll be up front with you and say that this video is disturbing. NEVER call the police for ANYTHING, because they destroy innocent lives just for the hell of it Had it been a parent trying to grind his kid’s face into the pavement, Child Protective Services would have immediately removed the girl from the home and the father would be rotting in jail this very moment. But when a police officer does it, he goes on ‘leave’. And only when he’s unlucky enough to be caught on camera.



Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,


I’ll be up front with you and say that this video is disturbing.


It’s like a bucket of ice-cold water thrown in the face of the dream world that most people are walking through.


Watching riots on TV in places like Baltimore and Ferguson,
it’s easy to think, “That couldn’t happen here. All that police violence
only happens in poor communities.”



Guess again.


This weekend it was the safe, quiet suburb of McKinney, Texas, about 30 minutes outside of Dallas.


McKinney is no gang-infested slum; it’s an affluent bedroom
community with an average household income over $96,000 according to
Colliers International.



(Having grown up just a few miles away, I would add that it’s
pretty sterile too, full of big-box retailers, megaplex cinemas, and
chain restaurants.)



Over the weekend some local kids were having a summer pool party to celebrate a friend’s birthday.


With that many adolescents crammed together in one place, there was
undoubtedly some silly teenage drama going on. And police were called to
the scene.


One of them starts off almost immediately screaming profanity-laden tirades at the kids, many as young as 14.


This courageous officer’s advice to young people included
such gems as “Sit your asses down,” and “Don’t make me fuckin’ run
around with 30 pounds of goddamn gear on. . .”



At one point throws a girl to the ground who had apparently failed to ‘get her ass out of here’ with appropriate alacrity.


You can see him grab her neck and attempt to shove her face into the pavement.


The kids all start screaming. Two of them rush over
to try and help their classmate, at which point Captain America pulls
his gun out and advances menacingly towards them.


They bolt. So he turns his attention back to the girl, grabs her head
once again, and screams “ON YOUR FACE!!!” as he pins her down on the
ground and puts her in handcuffs.

Had it been a parent trying to grind his kid’s face into the pavement, Child Protective Services would have immediately removed the girl from the home and the father would be rotting in jail this very moment.
But when a police officer does it, he goes on ‘leave’. And only when he’s unlucky enough to be caught on camera.
If some random stranger grabbed your child and started attacking her, you’d instantly turn into Bruce Lee and put the guy in a Kung-Fu death grip.
But when a police officer attacks your child, the government expects you to just stand around and watch.
That’s one of the most disturbing things from the video.
You’ll see there are a bunch of adults in the video milling around with their hands in their pockets while the kids get abused.
I appreciate they’re doing whatever they feel like they can do to make the best of a bad situation.
But they’ve been indoctrinated for so long that their reaction is to be obedient and submissive. They don’t interfere with ‘the law’. They know their place and they act like it.
The kids, on the other hand, are all still young enough that they haven’t totally subordinated themselves to the state. There’s still a part of them that’s free.
So when the cops get totally out of control, their instinct is to fight back.
That is, after all, our natural instinct– to be free.
We have to -learn- to be intimidated and subservient to the state. We have to learn to stand around with our hands in our pockets while our children are abused. And that learning takes place in none other than the public school system.
I checked the McKinney Independent School District’s website and found that these kids all recite the Pledge of Allegiance in the morning, including that part about “liberty and justice for all.”
They sing songs gushing about freedom in America. But they just got a taste of how free they really are.
Hopefully that lesson stays with them. It’s certainly more powerful that an entire semester of the mandatory civics class they have to take.
After watching the video I actually downloaded a copy of the staple civics textbook Magruder’s American Government, and found a rather prescient passage in the first chapter:
“This nation was founded by those who loved liberty and prized it above all earthly possessions.”
True statement. But that instinctive flame to be free has gone out for so many people, not only in America but across the world.
And no nation can rise again until that flame is rekindled.

Friday, June 5, 2015

BREAKING......The IRS Seizes The Ministry Funds Of Pastor Wiley Drake's ...

Woman Gang Beaten by a group of sheriffs for asking for a Tampon= no charges filed against pigs

Cop-Exonerated-After-Brutally-Beating-A-Tourist-on-Video-Who-Asked-For-A-Tampon
Broward County, FL — A deputy was recently exonerated for brutally beating a woman who was jailed for being drunk in public. However, a video has surfaced casting serious doubt on the judge’s decision.
As we previously reported, Audra West is a hairdresser from Texas who was on vacation in Fort Lauderdale, Florida when she was arrested and assaulted by police. West had a few too many drinks and was arrested for disorderly conduct. During her stay in the Broward Sheriff’s Jail in Pompano Beach, she was brutally beaten.
West was held in jail for over ten hours before the assault, and during her incarceration, she asked one of the deputies on staff if she could have a tampon. Deputy Kristin Connelly laughed at her and told her no. Frustrated, West cursed under her breath at Connelly, so Connelly stood up, grabbed a pair of rubber gloves and began walking toward her future victim.
As she walked over to assault West, Connelly’s coworker attempts to calm her down, but Connelly was apparently out for blood and went around him.
She grabbed West by her hair, entirely unprovoked and began hitting her, and throwing her to the ground. West was then pulled into another room, off camera, and assaulted by multiple guards who joined in on the attack.
Connelly did not speak of the incident until West filed a formal complaint, at which point Connelly claimed that she was attacked by West. However, since it was obvious from the video footage that West did not physically provoke her in any way, the state refused to press charges against West for the alleged assault on a police officer.
“I was on the floor on my stomach and (Connelly) punched me on this side of the face. And I was being kicked and stepped on from behind, and she was punching me in the face. She punched me in the eye several times,West said.
I went into jail with no bruises and I came out covered in bruises, I’ve got bruises all over my body. My face was swollen. My eye was basically swollen shut. I had bruises and cuts all over me,” West said.
Sadly,  Connelly and the other attackers were exonerated after an internal investigation.
“The Professional Standards Committee (PSC), which is made up of a mix of BSO employees and private citizens, reviewed the video and entire IA file and recommended no discipline for all three employees. The PSC determined the actions taken were within the policy,” Sheriff Scott Israel said in a statement.

John Vibes is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture and the drug war. In addition to his writing and activist work he organizes a number of large events including the Free Your Mind Conference, which features top caliber speakers and whistle-blowers from all over the world. You can contact him and stay connected to his work at his Facebook page. You can find his 65 chapter Book entitled “Alchemy of the Timeless Renaissance” at bookpatch.com.

How You Can Track The FBI’s Spy Planes

(Kashmir Hill)  This week, the Associated Press reported that the FBI is regularly flying “spy planes” over American cities. It’s the latest in a series of media reports about government-operated planes outfitted with technology that mimics a phone tower to pick up information from the phones of people below, allowing agencies to locate fugitives on the run, for example. But when the planes fly overhead, they pick up on phone information from lots of innocent people as well (and, annoyingly, can disrupt phone service).
The report, which revealed the front companies the FBI uses to fly the planes, wasn’t a surprise to John Wiseman, a technologist in Los Angeles. Based on public records, he had already figured out some of the planes the FBI was flying and, using a device he programmed to intercept airplane transmissions, had identified over the last month the ones flying overhead in L.A. in real time.
The thing is, when you fly planes in the U.S., you have to fill out lots of official forms that become part of the public record. Because the FBI didn’t want to publicly acknowledge it was sending “spy planes” out to circle American cities (and potentially alert its targets), it created front companies for them. It seems the FBI is uncreative when it comes to spy craft; the fake companies tracked down by the AP and by Wiseman mainly had three-letter names, including FVX Research, KQM Aviation, NBR Aviation and PXW Services. Because flight records in the U.S. are public, and planes are trackable on radar, the AP was able to track down where these planes flew.
You can also track them fairly easily if you’re so inclined. Wiseman used public records to get flight routes, and real-time local information using a customized radio receiverthat picks up on transmissions sent by aircraft overhead in his hometown of Los Angeles. Wiseman wrote in a Hacker News comment in May about his findings, revealinga month ago what the AP reported today. He also summed up his findings in a blog postTuesday.
John Wiseman's plane tracker
After a Washington Post report revealed the tail number of an FBI spy plane that flew over Baltimore, Wiseman tracked it down to the company it was registered to in the FAA database and saw shared addresses with a bunch of other fake-looking companies with two- and three-letter names. Through data analysis and airplane forum scouring, he realized the spy planes associated with these companies were using a distinct transmission code or “squawk” as well as a unique call sign, leading him to believe the planes he was seeing overhead with some frequency were probably operated by the feds.
“I decided to check my database for planes that have squawked 4414/4415 or used one of the suspicious callsigns: I found 8 aircraft in the past 2 months, several of which exhibit suspicious behavior,” he wrote on Hacker News last month, naming several of the suspicious companies cited in today’s AP report. “Flying for hours at a time without going anywhere in particular (I don’t have position information for them, but I know they’re in the air and not leaving the LA area), flying almost every day for months at a time.”
Screen Shot 2015-06-02 at 3.50.31 PM
How times have changed: Before you could assume an Internet commenter writing about government spy planes flying over his house was crazy, but now it’s possible he’s actually a bad-ass citizen journalist. And Wiseman was not the only civilian to piece this together. A Redditor has photos of a FBI spy plane a coworker tracked down to a local airport after seeing it flying over head repeatedly in Phoenix.
If you too want to track planes, Brian Abelson, an engineer at public data analysis tool Enigma, has created an easy way to access relevant public records. Using the information about the FBI’s front companies revealed by the AP, he created a database of what he thinks are 84 spy planes currently in use by the agency, by looking up the registration numbers associated with planes owned by the companies.
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Abelson’s list includes links to the planes’ public flight radar information, so you can see their past trips. You could also look up the paths by searching for the planes’ registration numbers on sites that track these things, like FlightRadar24 and FlightAware, so you can see, for example, the flight path this suspected spy plane took from North Carolina to Florida in July of last year…
… Or this suspected spy plane’s flights around the Bay Area in California just yesterday:
If you’re willing to mine public records, it can cut down significantly on government secrecy. Ironically, it’s the same kind of mining that civil liberties advocates worry spy agencies will do to us if they have access to metadata and location information from our smartphones — a subject of heated debate over the last week in the context of the Patriot Act.
“I call what I’m doing ‘persistent sousveillance': using historical sensor data to retroactively identify and track new subjects, it’s just that my subjects are the government,” wrote Wiseman. “One of the surprising things I’ve found is that all you need to do is look: the weird stuff jumps out right away, e.g. Cessnas registered to fake-sounding companies that loiter overhead for hours every day.”
It’s unclear if warrants are obtained for each of these flights. According to the AP’s report, the FBI “said that under a new policy it has recently begun obtaining court orders to use cell-site simulators,” which is the kind of technology that is strapped to these planes.
The FBI asked the AP not to publish the names of the front companies to spare taxpayers the expense of changing them. Of course, as evidenced by Wiseman’s digging, it was already possible to figure this out based on public records. An FBI spokesperson also toldthe AP that, while details of how it worked were confidential, “the FBI’s aviation program is not secret.” It definitely isn’t now.

Full Length Wolfgang Halbig v. Sandy Hook FOI Commission Hearing in Hart...

***Wolfgang Halbig FOIA hearing ~ 'Everyone Must Check In' sign***

Thursday, June 4, 2015

former high-level US and UK intelligence officials and whistleblowers confirm that the document implicates the West in the birth of ISIS: CIA operations at large

WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH EAST ASIA, WINSTON

 

West Busted Supporting ISIS ... Tries Instead to Point Finger At Syrian Government

America's closest allies have been busted supporting ISIS in order to topple Syria's government.  Mainstream U.S. writers are calling for open support of ISIS and Al Qaeda to enact regime change in Syria.
And a newly-declassified government document hints that the West supported the creation of ISIS.
This may sound far-fectched and wild-eyed  ... But the following former high-level US and UK intelligence officials and whistleblowers confirm that the document implicates the West in the birth of ISIS:
  • Military analyst - and famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower - Daniel Ellsberg
  • High-level NSA official Thomas Drake
  • Well-known FBI whistleblower Colleen Rowley
  • Senior MI6 officer Alastair Crooke
  • MI5 counter-terrorism officer Annie Machon
  • British counter-terrorism officer Charles Shoebridge
In any event, whether or not you believe the West created ISIS, the U.S. is now trying to blame the single most unlikely entity imaginable for ISIS ... the Syrian government.
Specifically,  the U.S. Embassy in Syria just accused the Syrian government of supporting ISIS:
 
This is all kinds of silly ... and is Iraq War propaganda redux.
Specifically, the Syrian government and ISIS are mortal enemies.
The Syrian government - which is allied with Shia Muslims - has been battling Sunni jihadis for many years. ISIS are Sunnis ... the arch-enemy of Shias and the Syrian government.  The Syrian government is ruled by a sect of Shias called Alawites.
In other words, ISIS and the Syrian government are on opposite sides of the war, and have been ever since ISIS was formed.
Similarly, in the run up to the Iraq War, Bush and the gang said that Saddam was in bed with Al Qaeda.   Only one little problem: Saddam and Al Qaeda hated each other's guts.

Flashback:  A Bogus Iraq-Qaeda "Connection"

Because the accusations that the Syrian government is supporting ISIS mirror so closely what happened in the run up to the Iraq war, let's recap ...
5 hours after the 9/11 attacks, Donald Rumsfeld said “my interest is to hit Saddam”. He also said “Go massive . . . Sweep it all up. Things related and not.”
And at 2:40 p.m. on September 11th, in a memorandum of discussions between top administration officials, several lines below the statement “judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H. [that is, Saddam Hussein] at same time”, is the statement “Hard to get a good case.” In other words, top officials knew that there wasn’t a good case that Hussein was behind 9/11, but they wanted to use the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to justify war with Iraq anyway.
Moreover, “Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the [9/11] attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda”.
And a Defense Intelligence Terrorism Summary issued in February 2002 by the United States Defense Intelligence Agency cast significant doubt on the possibility of a Saddam Hussein-al-Qaeda conspiracy.
And yet Bush, Cheney and other top administration officials claimed repeatedly for years that Saddam was behind 9/11. See this analysis. Indeed, Bush administration officials apparently swore in a lawsuit that Saddam was behind 9/11.
Moreover, President Bush’s March 18, 2003 letter to Congress authorizing the use of force against Iraq, includes the following paragraph:
(2) acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.
Therefore, the Bush administration expressly justified the Iraq war to Congress by representing that Iraq planned, authorized, committed, or aided the 9/11 attacks.
Indeed, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind reports that the White House ordered the CIA to forge and backdate a document falsely linking Iraq with Muslim terrorists and 9/11 … and that the CIA complied with those instructions and in fact created the forgery, which was then used to justify war against Iraq. And see this.
Suskind also revealed that “Bush administration had information from a top Iraqi intelligence official ‘that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.’ ”
Cheney made the false linkage between Iraq and 9/11 on many occasions.
For example, according to Raw Story, Cheney was still alleging a connection between Iraq and the alleged lead 9/11 hijacker in September 2003 – a year after it had been widely debunked. When NBC’s Tim Russert asked him about a poll showing that 69% of Americans believed Saddam Hussein had been involved in 9/11, Cheney replied:
It’s not surprising that people make that connection.
And even after the 9/11 Commission debunked any connection, Cheney said that the evidence is “overwhelming” that al Qaeda had a relationship with Saddam Hussein’s regime , that Cheney “probably” had information unavailable to the Commission, and that the media was not ‘doing their homework’ in reporting such ties.
Again, the Bush administration expressly justified the Iraq war by representing that Iraq planned, authorized, committed, or aided the 9/11 attacks. See this, this, this.
On December 16, 2005, Bush admitted “There was no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the attack of 9/11″ (and see this video).  However, Bush and Cheney continued to frequently invoke 9/11 as justification for the Iraq war.  And see this. (Cheney finally admitted in 2009 that there was no link.)
A bipartisan Senate Report from 2006 found that Bush misled the press on Iraq link to Al-Qaeda.
The administration’s false claims about Saddam and 9/11 helped convince a large portion of the American public to support the invasion of Iraq. While the focus now may be on false WMD claims, it is important to remember that, at the time, the alleged link between Iraq and 9/11 was at least as important in many people’s mind as a reason to invade Iraq.
Top Bush administration officials not only knowingly lied about a non-existent connection between Al Qaida and Iraq, but they pushed and insisted that interrogators use special torture methods aimed at extracting false confessions in an attempt to create such a false linkage.
McClatchy reported in 2009:
Former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration

For most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there.”

***

When people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people to push harder,” he continued.”Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn’t any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam . . .

A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under “pressure” to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.

“While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq,” Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. “The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results.”

“I think it’s obvious that the administration was scrambling then to try to find a connection, a link (between al Qaida and Iraq),” [Senator] Levin said in a conference call with reporters. “They made out links where they didn’t exist.”

Levin recalled Cheney’s assertions that a senior Iraqi intelligence officer had met Mohammad Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers, in the Czech Republic capital of Prague just months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The FBI and CIA found that no such meeting occurred.
In other words, top Bush administration officials not only knowingly lied about a non-existent connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq, but they pushed and insisted that interrogators use special torture methods aimed at extracting false confessions to attempt to create such a false linkage.
The Washington Post reported the same year:
Despite what you’ve seen on TV, torture is really only good at one thing: eliciting false confessions. Indeed, Bush-era torture techniques, we now know, were cold-bloodedly modeled after methods used by Chinese Communists to extract confessions from captured U.S. servicemen that they could then use for propaganda during the Korean War.

So as shocking as the latest revelation in a new Senate Armed Services Committee report may be, it actually makes sense — in a nauseating way. The White House started pushing the use of torture not when faced with a “ticking time bomb” scenario from terrorists, but when officials in 2002 were desperately casting about for ways to tie Iraq to the 9/11 attacks — in order to strengthen their public case for invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 at all.

***

Gordon Trowbridge writes for the Detroit News: “Senior Bush administration officials pushed for the use of abusive interrogations of terrorism detainees in part to seek evidence to justify the invasion of Iraq, according to newly declassified information discovered in a congressional probe.
Colin Powell’s former chief of staff (Colonel Larry Wilkerson) also wrote in 2009 that the Bush administration’s “principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qaeda.”

Here We Go Again ...

Of course, truth is the first casualty of war, and so the fact that the Syrian government and ISIS are mortal enemies or that Saddam and Al Qaeda hated each other makes no difference in the middle of a tidal wave of propaganda.
The U.S. has decided on regime change (again!) in Syria, just like it committed to regime change (again!) in Iraq.
And America will say and do anything to get its war on.