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Why is this great country in such a mess?
CHICKEN LITTLE AND
THE COST OF "OPERATION HUNKER DOWN"
by Edward Miller, San Rafael, California
[Editor's note: Actually
Bush
wants $87 billion.]
"Whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a parliament or a
communist dictatorship.....the people can always be brought to the bidding
of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them that
they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism
and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in every
country."
Hermann Goering ( from Gustave M. Gilbert's NUREMBERG DIARY )
Just as in 1967
Israeli
Prime Minister Begin, along with Yitzak Shamir
(later Prime Minister) purposely mislead their people into believing that
they were threatened by Nasser's military forces in the Sinai, in order
to justify Israel's already planned war of aggression against the
neighboring Arab States, so President Bush, Jr. along with Cheney and
Powell, lied and are still lying to the American people regarding threats
that Saddam, some 6000 miles away, posed and still might pose to this
Country.
As was the case with Israel, the Bush's lies worked, and a reckless and
somewhat incoherent Congress passed the "War Powers Act" with little or
no serious debate and we were again on our way into
Iraq.
By adding the lie that Saddam and his regieme were linked to the
Twin Towers and Pentagon bombing, the sell was made easier.
In order to justify this country's horrendous Homeland Security budget,
which is stealing money from our schools, our medical services, our
senior citizens and other Americans who badly need these social services,
Washington, like "Chicken Little" in our childrens' fairy tale book,
must scream almost daily that "the sky is falling". No matter what the
color the alert is, red, yellow, or orange these "Homeland Insecurity
Messages" carry the same intent: To keep Americans frightened, since
a scared people will submit to all sorts of so-called "Security Measures."
In addition to the Billions in the Home Security budget, the Bush
administration now plans to ask for a ten percent increase in spending
this next year, just for the Information Technology Division (ITD).
This will add $ 5 Billion to the more than $ 52.6 Billion for this
fiscal year ( see
federaltimes.com/index ).
On top of all this, as airport security costs are skyrocketing ,
the upgrades suggested in 2002 were triple the amount already budgeted,
reaching more than $ 6.0 Billion. The Congress-funded Transportation
Security Administration (TSA) has now become larger than the FBI,
the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Border Patrol combined, and
according to Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta, TSA will be
hiring more than 50,000 employees.
( govsecurity.securitysolutions.com/microsites )
In addition to the federal budgets for Homeland Security, grants to
individual states are getting out of hand. In an article in the
KANSAS CITY STAR
( 9 August ) reporter John A. Dvorak notes that : " As public spending
faces cut after cut, one exception stands out: a burst of money for
homeland security. The newest grants from Washington were $ 1.5 Billion
with "almost $ 20 million for Missouri, and another $ 20 million for
Kansas." Dvorak said: "officials charged with preparing for catastrophe
had been acting like Saturday shoppers at Wal-Mart. On the shopping
lists are suits, masks and gloves..and devices that warn of
killer-agents such as nerve gas. Johnson County even bought 250
body-bags at $ 26.01 apiece while Overland Park and Independence are
eyeing robots - which can cost $100,000 or more- for bomb squads and
other investigations....understanding how much money is available,
to whom it goes, and for what, poses a challenge."
Just how did the wealthiest, the militarily most-powerful, and the
strongest democracy on this planet get into this mess and why has this
OPERATION HUNKER-DOWN seized hold of so much of both our energy and
other resources? Why have we Americans who never tire of preaching
to the world of our " free democratic society " allowed our
representatives in Washington to both shackle and threaten us with such
legislation as the "Patriot Act", a piece of contrived villany which
was not even read by most of the Congress that voted to pass it?
The answer lies in political money, and in the lobbying efforts by two
influential groups in Washington: the oil interests lead by Dick Cheney
and his Halliburton associates, who have long been determined to get
their hands on Iraqi oil, and the
Zionist
lobby whose object, planned some thirty years ago, was the destruction
of Saddam's Country ( See THE THIRTY-YEAR ITCH by Robert Dreyfuss in
Mother Jones
magazine March/April 2003 )
The first warning of these secret cabals should have come in the complete
indifference shown by Washington as the new State of Israel in 1948
savagely drove some 750,000 Palestinians from their ancestral homes in
Palestine.
Then in 1982, President Reagan, whose California governorship had been
paid for by Hollywood Jews, actively supported General Sharon's brutal
invasion and butchery in
Lebanon.
Reagan's Battleship the USS New Jersey shelled Lebanon's capital Beirut,
stampeding 600,000 who had survived Sharon's killing, east into the
mountains. The Muslims did not forget, and weeks later 413 US Marines
plus sailors from the USS New Jersey along with a contingent of
French Marines in Beirut were killed by bombs.
Washington ignored this warning, and Bush Sr., after the Gulf War
broke his promise to Saudi
Arabia's
King Faruk to remove American "infidel" troops from sacred Saudi soil.
Again Americans paid with their lives as bombs wiped out the USS Marine
barracks in Riyadh. The Muslim world also watched with horror the
completely unnecessary killing of both Iraqi military and civilians
during the Gulf War, as well as the uncalled-for destruction of Iraq's
infrastructure, followed by a planned bacterial genocide as Iraqis were
forced to drink sewage-contaminated water. The post-war embargo,
engineered by the US and Britain, and structured through the UN Security
Council's committees, guaranteed that Iraqis would continue to die of
water-born diseases, as the some 800 embargoed items included every
possible piece of equipment , as well as those chemicals that Sadaam and
his engineers would need to clean up their water and refurbish their
destroyed electrical systems.
Throughout the 1990's as the US and Brits illegally assailed Iraqi
airspace ( The so-called "Overflights were never authorized by the
UN)..Washington continually disrupted Saddam's attempts to rebuild his
infrastructure, while the US-inspired " United Nations Oil for Food"
program was carefully calculated to keep Iraqis just above the starvation
level. These planned results were so deadly that both UN administrators
of the Program first Asst. Secretary Denise Halliday and then Von Trombek,
quit in disgust. During these twelve years between the two Gulf Wars,
more than 2,000,000 Iraqis, mostly the young and the elderly, have died
from a combination of water-born disease (cholera, dysentery,
the Plague, ) from starvation, as many families were forced to sell their
meager food allowances for clothing, oil for cooking and heat, and
medical care. The residual radiation from some 340 tons of
depleted-uranium missiles, plus the tens of thousands of
"cluster bomblets" have added to the carnage. Iraqi kids are still being
killed by bomblets they pick up.
OSAMA'S WARNING
While this planned US-British carnage continued, supported by the
United Nations and ignored by our media and much of the world, and as
Israel's savage onslaught against the Palestinians intensified under the
butcher, Sharon, Muslim anger and anguish finally reached the
boiling point, and in 1998, in an interview in
Afghanistan
by
Assoc.Press
columnist John Miller, Osama Ben Laden, rising as a champion of his
Muslim brothers, threw down the gauntlet to the United States, saying
clearly, that unless Washington ceased its genocide against his fellow
Muslims in Iraq, and cut off its support of Sharon's savage thievery in
the Occupied Territories, his 1.2 Billion Muslim brothers would respond
with calculated violence.
These warnings were either ignored or ascribed to " Muslim fanatics",
and Washington's criminal assaults on the Muslim people in Iraq and the
Palestinian communities continued. Osama's next warning arrived in
Africa
when the US embassies in both Tanzania and then Kenya were destroyed by
bombs with the loss of over 200 lives, both staff and civilians. Next
a large hole was blown in the port side of our USS Cole as she lay
anchored off Yemen. Eighteen sailors were killed and many more injured.
Clinton fired 18 missiles nto Afghanistan, killing 13 students in a
madrassa. Ben Laden repeated his warnings both by taped interviews and
over Muslim networks. Washington paid little heed and so three thousand
Americans died as the Twin Towers collapsed and burned and the Pentagon
suffered a direct hit.
Washington still had choices: Get out of Iraq, stop the illegal
overflights, call off the killing UN embargo, and cease funding Sharon's
onslaught in the Occupied Territories. Instead, Bush Jr., still under
the control of Cheney and his friends, the Christian Right and the
Zionist cabal, which included such close advisors as Richard Perle,
Wolfowitz, Leith, Abromowitz and other, chose to shout " TERRORISM'
and to continue to risk the lives of his fellow Americans.
BOMBING THE DEFENSELESS
The debacle in Afghanistan followed. An ultra-religious Taliban was
conveniently demonized and the already-ravished Afghans subject to
mercillous shelling and high-level bombing which further destroyed heir
impoverished country. Unknown to Americans, the US-Brit "Oveflights" in
Iraq had intensified their destruction of Saddam's pitiful attempts at
reconstruction, and the carefully-guided bombing of Iraq's technical
manufacture and fiber-optic communications networks in preparation for
a future invasion was secretly under way. Bush's assistant defense
minister, Zionist Paul Wolfowitz was sent abroad to gather international
support for an attack on Iraq, while Washington's subservient
media
obediently turned up the volume of anti-Saddam rhetoric.
Today, with the Afghan War long past and Gulf War II not quite behind us,
where are we? Afghanistan is a shambles with Karsai, protected by our
CIA
and a US Marine guard threatened in his own capital..His brother's home
in Kabul was bombed this week. The Afghans survive in anarchy with
tribal militia leaders still under CIA bribes to reduce intertribal
killing. Those "International Funds" promised Karsai in the Tokyo Summit
have yet to arrive, and Washington is focussed on Iraq. The projected
NATO troops, if they arrive will probably be no more useful than they
are in both Bosnia and Kosovo where their soldiers stand by as militias
kill in the streets.
As for Iraq, with US forces fighting a guerilla war and the
Washington-picked Ruling Council at odds with much of the Iraqi populace,
anything can happen. The Occupation is costing Washington over
$ 1 Billion a week, and since Germany, France,
India,
and now the
Indonesian
Government have refused to send in troops, Bush Jr, searches the world
for support as one Iraqi pipeline after another bursts into flame and
American troops are daily sacrificed for oil and Israel.
Bush's job-list for "Homeland Security" better called
"OPERATION HUNKER DOWN " while adding tens of thousands to both
federal and state payrolls , not only shoves us further into debt, but
adds not one iota to either our safety or our national wealth.
Checking baggage and shoes in endless lines in airports across the
Country is an exercise in both frustration and futility, since tens of
thousands of tons of miscellaneous freight with which every passenger jet
is loaded, and which represent at least 20% of the total cargo, are
being dumped aboard without being either checked or x-rayed.
Add to this the millions of containers unloaded every day at airports
and harbors across this country, with bills or lading scribbled by
some unsupervised foreign employee. A single such container could
hold dozens of bombs of every description, so those thousands of
federal security employees are looking at haystacks for needles.
Meanwhile while the FBI searches millions of internet messages,
without the language skills required to understand the thousands of
dialects which cross their screens, nor do they have an inkling of
the contents of the books whose titles they scan on your library card
or mine.
As this Country's economy grinds down, as Americans are shot in Iraq,
and our national debt increases exponentially, Bush Jr. has choices.
Our President can cease this HUNKER DOWN fiasco, get our troops out of
both Afghanistan and Iraq, take the parasite, Israel off American
taxpayer's life-support line and make peace with the Muslim world of
1.2 Billion peoples, while turning his attention to the needs of
Americans.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, president during a much more severe depression
responded with programs such as the WPA and which not only put Americans
to work, but added to the wealth of this Country as roads were repaired,
bridges constructed, schools built, post-offices and other public
buildings constructed. Roosevelt's TVA, which energized the
manufacturing life of five states is still providing cheap power today.
There is not a single public job being funded today under the
Homeland Security Act which ten years from now will be recognized as
having added to the wealth of this Nation.
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2003-09-14 Sun 12:17ct