And You Thought It Was a War on "Terror"

By RICHARD W. BEHAN

The "War on Terror" is a fraud and a façade, a mere label concocted and trumpeted by an Administration known for its signature dishonesty. The label conceals the Bush Administration's international crimes of unprovoked military aggression-the armed invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, two sovereign nations the Administration meant to attack from its first days in office.[1]

With its pathological lying, secrecy, and brilliant propagandizing the Administration has prevented a compliant mainstream press from communicating fully the realities of the war. But now, as the country chooses a new president, the truth must prevail, to foreclose another catastrophic Administration-candidate McCain says "No surrender!"-and to make certain instead the fraudulent war is terminated with dispatch.

The "War on Terror" was launched in retaliation for 9/11, we were told, to apprehend Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. Then, justifying a quantum escalation in the war with 935 deliberate lies, the Bush Administration sought "regime change" in Iraq.[2]

These alleged objectives were elements of the façade. Osama bin Laden could have been brought to justice easily and without armed conflict. Regime change in Iraq could have been achieved with equal facility. George Bush rejected both opportunities.

Saddam Hussein, hoping to forestall warfare, yielded a series of increasingly attractive concessions to the Bush Administration, finally offering to leave his country for exile in Egypt. [3],[4] But the Bush Administration was unalterably committed to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. If "regime change" were to be achieved by Saddam's voluntary departure, there would be no excuse for proceeding with the attack: the Administration kept the offers from public view-and ignored them all.

Also kept secret was a standing offer from the Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden-an offer awaiting George Bush when he took
office in January of 2001.[5],[6],[7] But capturing bin Laden was also a façade: the Administration was fully committed as well to the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Three times before 9/11 and twice afterward the Bush Administration refused the turnover of Osama bin Laden.

The incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq-planned and in motion months before 9/11-were unprovoked wars of conquest and territorial occupation, to control Middle Eastern oil and gas resources. Suspected for years, this can no longer be seriously questioned.

Searching beyond the mainstream media you uncover a story strikingly at odds with the Bush Administration's narrative about a "War on Terror."

You discover the Administration, when it took office, brushing off explicit warnings about al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.[8] You unearth instead the Administration, on behalf of the Unocal Corporation, angrily and unsuccessfully negotiating pipeline rights-of-way with the Taliban through the summer of 2001.[9],[10] Finally, after threatening the Taliban with "a carpet of bombs," the Bush Administration notified Pakistan and India-five weeks before 9/11-that Afghanistan would be attacked "before the end of October." [11],[12] On schedule, it was. A year later a former Unocal consultant is serving as the President of Afghanistan, and another as the United States Ambassador.[13] Then you read in an industry trade journal the Bush Administration is standing ready to finance a trans-Afghanistan pipeline and protect it with a permanent military presence.[14]

You discover repeated written proposals to invade Iraq, spanning the two Bush Administrations and made by four men who served in both: Zalmay Khalilzad, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis "Scooter" Libby-and Richard Cheney.[15] You witness their triumph when the National Security Council formalizes the commitment to invade Iraq, on January 30, 2001-seven months before 9/11.[16] You read how the Security Council was ordered to "meld" its work with Cheney's Energy Task Force, which in March of 2001 was studying maps of the Iraqi oil fields.[17],[18] You come across a leaked top-secret memorandum dated February 3, 2001, discussing the "capture of new and existing oil and gas fields" in Iraq.[19] You discover the State Department designing, at least a year before the invasion, the deconstruction of Iraq's nationalized oil industry.[20] You find the State Department's plan was written into a draft "hydrocarbon law" for Iraq-by Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority, aided by American and British oil companies.[21] You watch President Bush on television in January of 2007, demanding as a mandatory "benchmark" the enactment of the hydrocarbon law. And you come to understand why Exxon/Mobil, Conoco/Phillips, Royal Dutch/Shell, and BP/Amoco are now poised to profit immensely from 81% of Iraq's undeveloped crude.[22]

This is not a "War on Terror." [23] Afghanistan and Iraq today are occupied countries, administered by puppet governments and dotted with permanent military bases securing the energy assets. This is not a by-product of the Bush Administration's warmaking: this was its purpose.

The Congress is at least vaguely aware. The Defense Authorization Act of 2008 included a Section 1222, prohibiting expenditures for the "permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq," or "to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq." [24]

President Bush nullified Section 1222 with a signing statement.[25] And at his sufferance, the arch-terrorist Osama bin Laden remains free.

The "War on Terror" is a certifiable fraud.[26]

Richard W. Behan lives and writes on Lopez Island, off the northwest coast of Washington state. He has published on the Internet over two dozen articles exposing and criticizing the criminal wars of the Bush Administration. He has summarized his research in an electronic book, The Fraudulent War, available for downloading at ColdType - Writing Worth Reading From Around The World . He can be reached at [email protected].

NOTES

[1] Jason Leopold, "The Road to Operation Iraqi Freedom," Atlantic Free Press website, March 22, 2008.

[2] "False Pretenses in Iraq," in Iraq: the War Card: Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War, published by the Center for Public Integrity, Washington, D.C., January 2008. The 935 "false statements" are catalogued and available in a searchable database.

[3] George Monbiot, "Dreamers and Idiots: Britain and the US did everything to avoid a peaceful solution in Iraq and Afghanistan," The UK Guardian, November 11, 2003.

[4] Anon., "Llego el momento de deshacerse de Saddam," El Pais (Spain), September 26, 2007. This is a transcript of a conversation between George Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Anzar in Crawford, Texas, February 22, 2003. The President acknowledges the prospective exile, but vigorously rejects it, declaring, "We will be in Baghdad at the end of March."

[5] Anon., "Bush Rejects Taliban Offer to Hand bin Laden Over," UK Guardian Unlimited, October 14, 2001.

[6] Andrew Buncombe, "Bush Rejects Taliban Offer to Surrender bin Laden, the UK Independent, October 15, 2001

[7] Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, "How Bush Was Offered bin Laden and Blew It," CounterPunch, November 1, 2004.

[8] Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror. New York: the Free Press, 2004.

[9] Wayne Madsen, "Afghanistan, the Taliban, and the Bush Oil Team," Centre for Research on Globalization website, January 23, 2003.

[10] Paul Sperry, Crude Politics: How Bush's Oil Cronies Hijacked the War on Terrorism, Nashville, WND Books, 2003.

[11] Anon., "Afghanistan: A Timeline of Oil and Violence," at RINGNEBULA.COM - Peace & Justice Through Law, Not Through Perpetual Violence

[12] Larry Chin, "Parts I and II: Players on a rigged chessboard: Bridas, Unocal, and the Afghanistan pipeline," Online Journal, March 2002.

[13] Hamid Karzai and Zalmay Khalilzad, respectively. Mr. Khalilzad's predecessor as Ambassador was Mr. John J. Maresca, a Unocal vice president.

[14] Alexander's' Gas and Oil Connections, February 23, 2003.

[15] This statement encapsulates the origin and development of the Project for the New American Century and its tragic fantasy of U.S. global hegemony. For details of the actions of these four men, see the author's electronic book, The Fraudulent War, available for downloading at ColdType - Writing Worth Reading From Around The World .

[16] Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004.

[17] Jane Mayer, "Contract Sport," The New Yorker, February 16, 2004.

[18] The maps can be downloaded from the website of Judicial Watch, Judicial Watch. This organization obtained the maps with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, which the Bush Administration appealed all the way to the Supreme Court.

[19] Mayer, op. cit..

[20] Gregg Mutitt, Crude Designs: the Ripoff of Iraq's Oil Wealth, United Kingdom, The Platform Group.

[21] Gregg Mutitt and Erik Leaver, "Slick Connections: U.S. Influence on Iraqi Oil," Foreign Policy in Focus, July 18, 2007.

[22] Joshua Holland, "Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil," published on the AlterNet website, October 16, 2006.

[23] In fact, the war in Iraq has been counterproductive: it has exacerbated, not diminished the threat of terrorism. See Karen de Young, "Spy agencies Say Iraq War Hurting U.S. Terror Fight," Washington Post, September 24, 2006.

[24] H.R. 4986: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, Title XII, Section 1222.

[25] "President Bush Signs H.R. 4986, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 into Law," The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, January 28, 2008. See at
President Bush Signs H.R. 4986, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 into Law

[26] Elizabeth de la Vega, United States v. George W. Bush et al., New York: Seven Stories Press, 2006. Ms. de la Vega, a former U.S. Attorney, has documented a compelling case against the Bush Administration for conspiracy to commit fraud.

Its a war of terror my friend. And nobody gives a shit, its basically fact but still... noone fucking cares. even when you show the proof they dont try to at least think about it, all they want to do is deny, deny, and fucking deny, because they are scarred. because it contradicts there own cozy reality. the truth is that the puppeteers are gunning for new world order, and to do that what do they need.... Conflict.

It's such a funny use of words, it's not a war of terrorism, or terrorist, but terror.

Terror is defined as

1. intense, sharp, overmastering fear: to be frantic with terror.
2. an instance or cause of intense fear or anxiety; quality of causing terror: to be a terror to evildoers.
3. any period of frightful violence or bloodshed likened to the Reign of Terror in France.
4. violence or threats of violence used for intimidation or coercion; terrorism.
5. Informal. a person or thing that is especially annoying or unpleasant.

The U.S and U.K and others are causing just this by starting wars.

We can stretch the word Terror to Terra, which is Aton for Earth.
To quote Michael Tsarion,
"The WAR ON TERRA is merely the latest move in the great game played out by the Atonist Establishment, the Royals, and Vatican Jesuit-Masonic elites who expertly employ the Dialectic ("Ordo Ab Chao") to further their very personal aspirations which date back to an old world order that you are supposed to know nothing about."

The War on Terror is actually a war on Terra/Earth.

This is what you get when you don't live in a free and open society. You just get fed with so many lies you don't know if anyone tells the truth anymore.

Intresting read,anymore?

and yet here we are just bitching about it. how is bitching about it and doing nothing any different than denying it out right???

how about we try to figure out something we can DO about this kind of shit huh?


Organize a mass international war strike FFS!

I'm not surprised in the least bit.

SSW - Bitching about it IS doing something about it. As long as you are talking about it with others you are fighting the propaganda and lies with truth and that IMHO is fighting. I'm sorry you don't feel like it is enough and perhaps for you it is not. If it isn't then you should decide what more you can do and do it. But to say that just bitching about it is the same as denying it is just plain wrong. Denial removes power of action because you can't fix something you won't acknowledge needs to be fixed and attack others for trying to fix it. By bitching about it you are trying to get others out of their denial so that together we can all work to change things because otherwise all you'll do is fight others who deny anything needs fixing.

I hope this makes sense and of course it's all just my opinion. But as they say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. This is just as true in other areas of life not just substance abuse. I understand you frustration my friend and I hope you find something to empower yourself with in this fight. It will re-energize you to feel like you are making a difference and keep you from feeling powerless and defeated. Sending you love and blessings.

Blessed be~

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GoddessHerb

SSW - Bitching about it IS doing something about it. As long as you are talking about it with others you are fighting the propaganda and lies with truth and that IMHO is fighting. I'm sorry you don't feel like it is enough and perhaps for you it is not. If it isn't then you should decide what more you can do and do it. But to say that just bitching about it is the same as denying it is just plain wrong. Denial removes power of action because you can't fix something you won't acknowledge needs to be fixed and attack others for trying to fix it. By bitching about it you are trying to get others out of their denial so that together we can all work to change things because otherwise all you'll do is fight others who deny anything needs fixing.

I hope this makes sense and of course it's all just my opinion. But as they say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. This is just as true in other areas of life not just substance abuse. I understand you frustration my friend and I hope you find something to empower yourself with in this fight. It will re-energize you to feel like you are making a difference and keep you from feeling powerless and defeated. Sending you love and blessings.

Blessed be~

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You're the third person to tell me today (chronologically the second, yet somehow i still feel you're definitely the third :wtf:)


and i do actually agree, it's just that i feel like this whole thing is much bigger than anything else, and yet it is the last thing anyone deals with!

People are so consumed by tiny mindless tasks (which do build up, but only over a long period of long and repetitive redundancy) that they either fail to see, or out right ignore the real issues!


All i can do is bitch and complain, and i have no freaking clue how much i am helpping at all, if at all. it's very discouraging... not to ever imply im going to stop bitching, it's all i've got to try to make a difference :D

but i need more accomplished!


Thanks for your words :thumbsup: