Know Your BFEE: Poppy’s CIA Made Saddam Into the Butcher of Baghdad.

[Octafish]

The story’s available: The USA and Western Allies MADE Saddam into their petro-errand boy.

Exclusive

Saddam key in early CIA plot

By Richard Sale
UPI Intelligence Correspondent
Published 4/10/2003 7:30 PM

U.S. forces in Baghdad might now be searching high and low for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but in the past Saddam was seen by U.S. intelligence services as a bulwark of anti-communism and they used him as their instrument for more than 40 years, according to former U.S. intelligence diplomats and intelligence officials.

United Press International has interviewed almost a dozen former U.S. diplomats, British scholars and former U.S. intelligence officials to piece together the following account. The CIA declined to comment on the report.
While many have thought that Saddam first became involved with U.S. intelligence agencies at the start of the September 1980 Iran-Iraq war, his first contacts with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when he was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim.

SNIP...

Little attention was paid to Qasim's bloody and conspiratorial regime until his sudden decision to withdraw from the pact in 1959, an act that "freaked everybody out" according to a former senior U.S. State Department official.
Washington watched in marked dismay as Qasim began to buy arms from the Soviet Union and put his own domestic communists into ministry positions of "real power," according to this official. The domestic instability of the country prompted CIA Director Allan Dulles to say publicly that Iraq was "the most dangerous spot in the world."

In the mid-1980s, Miles Copeland, a veteran CIA operative, told UPI the CIA had enjoyed "close ties" with Qasim's ruling Baath Party, just as it had close connections with the intelligence service of Egyptian leader Gamel Abd Nassar. In a recent public statement, Roger Morris, a former National Security Council staffer in the 1970s, confirmed this claim, saying that the CIA had chosen the authoritarian and anti-communist Baath Party "as its instrument."

CONTINUED…

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030410-070214-6557r

Of course, the allies all got in their fair share, the UK/FRA/GER Emporium Made Saddam a Most Well Armed Nutjob. And as long as he was doing our killing, we were happy.



Now who gave Saddam Hussein the technology to kill? Companies like Matrix Churchill and Industrias Cardoen Limitada. How do I know this? U.S. Rep. Henry Gozalez, Tom Lantos and other members of my government – and even Spiro Agnew’s speechwriter – told me so.

NOTE: Dear DU MODS, I understand this is OK to post in its entirety, as it's from The Congressional Record (still a public document, Smirko.)

HON. TOM LANTOS

in the House of Representatives

TUESDAY, MAY 19, 1992

* Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, just 1 year ago, Americans were flush with the glow of the military victory over Saddam Hussein. Parades were held in the largest of cities and in the smallest of hamlets. New York and Washington were trying to outdo each other in the splendor of their competing celebrations of victory.


* This year, however, we are wallowing in the sordid aftermath of the revelations of the misguided administration policy that brought about that war. We have been treated to details of how the administration bent over backwards in its misguided effort to support the regime of Saddam Hussein on the very eve of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.


* Mr. Speaker, William Safire summarized this squalid tale of policy run amuck in an excellent article that appeared in yesterday's issue of the New York Times. I ask that this article be placed in the Record, and I urge my colleagues to read it carefully.

(How the U.S. Armed Iraq)

(BY WILLIAM SAFIRE)

Washington: Americans now know that the war in the Persian Gulf was brought about by a colossal foreign-policy blunder: George Bush's decision, after the Iran-Iraq war ended, to entrust regional security to Saddam Hussein.

What is not yet widely understood is how that benighted policy led to the Bush Administration's fraudulent use of public funds, its sustained deception of Congress and its obstruction of justice.

As the Saudi Ambassador, Prince Bandar, was urging Mr. Bush and Mr. Baker to buy the friendship of the Iraqi dictator in August 1989, the F.B.I. uncovered a huge scam at the Atlanta branch of the Lavoro Bank to finance the buildup of Iraq's war machine by diverting U.S.-guaranteed grain loans.

Instead of pressing the investigation or curbing the appeasement, the President turned a blind eye to lawbreaking and directed another billion dollars to Iraq. Our State and Agriculture Department's complicity in Iraq's duplicity transformed what could have been dealt with as `Saddam's Lavoro scandal' into George Bush's Iraqgate.

The first element of corruption is the wrongful application of U.S. credit guarantees. Neither the Commodity Credit Corporation nor the Export-Import Bank runs a foreign-aid program; their purpose is to stimulate U.S. exports. High-risk loan guarantees to achieve foreign-policy goals unlawful endanger that purpose.

Yet we now know that George Bush personally leaned on Ex-Im to subvert its charter--not to promote our exports but to promote relations with the dictator. And we have evidence that James Baker overrode worries in Agriculture and O.M.B. that the law was being perverted: Mr. Baker's closest aid, Robert Kimmett, wrote triumphantly, `your call to . . . Yeutter . . . paid off.' Former Agriculture Secretary Clayton Yeutter is now under White House protection.

Second element of corruption is the misleading of Congress. When the charge was made two years ago in this space that State was improperly intervening in this case, Mr. Baker's top Middle East aide denied it to Senate Foreign Relations; meanwhile, Yeutter aides deceived Senator Leahy's Agriculture Committee about the real foreign-policy purpose of the C.C.C. guarantees. To carry out Mr. Bush's infamous National Security Directive 26, lawful oversight was systematically blinded.

Third area of Iraqgate corruption is the obstruction of justice. Atlanta's assistant U.S. Attorney Gail McKenzie, long blamed here for foot-dragging, would not withhold from a grand jury what she has already told friends: that indictment of Lavoro officials was held up for nearly a year by the Bush Criminal Division. The long delay in prosecution enabled James Baker to shake credits for Saddam out of malfeasant Agriculture appointees.

When House Banking Chairman Henry Gonzalez gathered documents marked `secret' showing this pattern of corruption, he put them in the Congressional Record. Two months later, as the media awakened, Mr. Bush gave the familiar `gate' order; stonewall.

`Public disclosure of classified information harms the national security,' Attorney General William Barr instructed the House Banking Committee last week. `. . . in light of your recent disclosures, the executive branch will not provide any more classified information'--unless the wrongdoing is kept secret.

`Your threat to withhold documents,' responded Chairman Gonzalez, `has all the earmarks of a classic effort to obstruct a proper and legitimate investigation . . . none of the documents compromise, in any fashion whatsoever, the national security or intelligence sources and methods.'

Mr. Barr, in personal jeopardy, has flung down the gauntlet. Chairman Gonzalez tells me he plans to present his obstruction case this week to House Judiciary Chairman Jack Brooks, probably flanked by Representatives Charles Schumer and Barney Frank, members of both committees.

`I will recommend that Judiciary consider requiring the appointment of an independent counsel,' says Mr. Gonzalez, who has been given reason to believe that Judiciary--capable of triggering the Ethics in Government Act--will be persuaded to act.

Policy blunders are not crimes. But perverting the purpose of appropriated funds is a crime; lying to Congress compounds that crime; and obstructing justice to cover up the original crime is a criminal conspiracy.



SOURCE:

http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/congress/1992/h920519l.htm

One set of Reagan-Bush traitors was dealing with the Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran, the murderers of more than 240 U.S. service personnel in Beirut, the victim of the third-mass truck bomber in a few months (“Didn’t have any idea they’d use trucks…”). Meanwhile with those treasonous dealings, another set of Reagan-bush traitors was making big money arming Saddam. Then these sick BFEE puppies allowed more than one million people to die in a war that should never have been.

Funding it all was BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce International) and BNL (Banco Nazionale de Lavoro). Oh, yes. Almost forgot who else was funding Saddam: The U.S. Taxpayer through $5 billion in “agricultural credits” Poppy got some bureaucratic buddy to sign off on.

Recovered History: BCCI – BNL - Kissinger – Bush & Iraq

CHRIS FLOYD, COUNTERSPIN

- The opening of a long-delayed civil suit in a . . . involves our old friends, BCCI, the international bank that served as the front for a global crime ring involving top officials and Establishment worthies in dozens of "civilized" nations. BCCI ran guns to Saddam and other heavies, funded Pakistan's illegal nuclear weapons program, laundered drug profits, peddled prostitutes, doled out bribes, served as a conduit for covert CIA operations--and, through its connections to the bin Laden family, gave George W. Bush a sweetheart loan of $25 million to bail out one of his many business failures.

One of the respectable organizations tainted by the ring was the Bank of England, which was the financial regulator for BCCI when the front finally collapsed in 1991--leaving its legitimate creditors some $11 billion in the hole. Not surprisingly, some of these victims filed suit against ye olde B of E, claiming that its oversight of BCCI left something to be desired. But successive British governments--including the plagiaristic poodle-led pack currently in power--have fought for years to quash the lawsuit, the Observer reports.

That's because the trial could open a can of particularly grubby worms concerning the UK government's extensive canoodling with BCCI. A host of worthies are expected to be grilled in the dock, including John Major, former UK prime minister and current business partner of George Bush I in yet another secretive international front that profits from war, weapons, violence, repression and the greasing of highly-placed palms: the Carlyle Group. . .

The Italian bank BNL was one of BCCI's main tentacles. BNL's Atlanta branch was the primary funnel used by the first Bush Administration to send millions of secret dollars to Saddam for arms purchases, including deadly chemicals and other WMD materials supplied by the Chilean arms dealer Cardoen and various politically-connected operators in the United States like, weapons merchant Matrix Churchill. (As always with the Busha Nostra, geopolitics--in this case, helping Saddam wage aggressive war against Iran--and crony profits go hand in hand. Once the war was over and Iran was left a shattered hulk, with millions dead and displaced, the useful idiot Saddam was expendable, swiftly morphing from good buddy into budding Hitler.)

CONTINUED…

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0302/S00119.htm

Funny thing is, Saddam might get away with it were he to get a fair trial.

Published on Saturday, July 3, 2004 by the Inter Press Service

Saddam Could Call CIA in His Defense

by Sanjay Suri

LONDON - Evidence offered by a top CIA man could confirm the testimony given by Saddam Hussein at the opening of his trial in Baghdad Thursday that he knew of the Halabja massacre only from the newspapers.

Thousands were reported killed in the gassing of Iraqi Kurds in Halabja in the north of Iraq in March 1988 towards the end of Iraq's eight-year war with Iran. The gassing of the Kurds has long been held to be the work of Ali Hassan al-Majid, named in the West because of that association as 'Chemical Ali'. Saddam Hussein is widely alleged to have ordered Ali to carry out the chemical attack.

SNIP...

A report prepared by the top CIA official handling the matter says Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the massacre, and indicates that it was the work of Iranians. Further, the Scott inquiry on the role of the British government has gathered evidence that following the massacre the United States in fact armed Saddam Hussein to counter the Iranians chemicals for chemicals.

SNIP…

The CIA officer Stephen C. Pelletiere was the agency's senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. As professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000, he says he was privy to much of the classified material that flowed through Washington having to do with the Persian Gulf.

SNIP…

Soon after the attack, the United States approved the export to Iraq of virus cultures and a billion-dollar contract to design and build a petrochemical plant the Iraqis planned to use to produce mustard gas.

CONTINUED…

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0703-01.htm

The bum Saddam must ask himself of Bush: “Why all the fuss for me? What did I ever do to you?”



Answer: You’ve got oil.

No. It wasn’t Deep Throat.
Or an honest whistleblower ignored.
What makes me sad is
We can’t find an honest judge to prosecute these bastards.



“Don’t resist me. And don’t hurt the oil wells.”

[applegrove]

1. Yes the CIA used Saddam. And Saddam then used them and covered

them in slime like psychopaths do. Saddam is a murderer. The fact that all the neocons were in bed with him is one of the reasons why Cheney was so desperate to go to war: to fix his legacy. The USA made a huge mistake by following Kirkpatrick in saying "middle east is not ready for democracy" in the 1980s. The result? Osama bin Laden.

Hopefully the trial will shed some light on their roles - and I doubt they can stop all the stories that will be told as the trials start and the Iraqis start watching the TV.

[Octafish]

8. Blame America First

...is the intellectual equivalent of the "hippie spitting on the serviceman" stories. Hear it a lot. Never happened.

You make a very important point, applegrove, regarding Jeane K. Not allowing people to make up their own minds about their national destiny is more than a shortcoming. Keeping people enslaved has come around to bite the US in the hindquarters time and again. What may be worse longterm is the hypocrisy of feigning democracy abroad also brings from overseas its application to the nation's own politics. Thus, we got the government some crooks deserve.



In Gulf War I, our ambassador, April Glaspie, gave Saddam Hussein a green light to invade:

Excerpts From Iraqi Document on Meeting with U.S. Envoy

Special to The New York Times

EXCERPT...

HUSSEIN: The price at one stage had dropped to $12 a barrel and a reduction in the modest Iraqi budget of $6 billion to $7 billion is a disaster.

GLASPIE: I think I understand this. I have lived here for years. I admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. I know you need funds. We understand that and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.

I was in the American Embassy in Kuwait during the late 60's. The instruction we had during this period was that we should express no opinion on this issue and that the issue is not associated with America. James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction. We hope you can solve this problem using any suitable methods via Klibi or via President Mubarak. All that we hope is that these issues are solved quickly. With regard to all of this, can I ask you to see how the issue appears to us?

My assessment after 25 years' service in this area is that your objective must have strong backing from your Arab brothers. I now speak of oil But you, Mr. President, have fought through a horrific and painful war. Frankly, we can see only that you have deployed massive troops in the south. Normally that would not be any of our business. But when this happens in the context of what you said on your national day, then when we read the details in the two letters of the Foreign Minister, then when we see the Iraqi point of view that the measures taken by the U.A.E. and Kuwait is, in the final analysis, parallel to military aggression against Iraq, then it would be reasonable for me to be concerned. And for this reason, I received an instruction to ask you, in the spirit of friendship -- not in the spirit of confrontation -- regarding your intentions.

I simply describe the position of my Government. And I do not mean that the situation is a simple situation. But our concern is a simple one.

CONTINUED...

http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/glaspie.html

[applegrove]

14. Yup - their is a big myth out there that US policy never hurt anyone.

For sure communism was bad. But so was US interference in democracies that try to emerge and just happen to be to the left. If the lefties get into power and cannot make life better - they will get voted out in a few years. The important thing is that the democracies emerge. Neocons are the biggest flip-floppers the world has ever seen. The neocons & the Israelis must shudder when they think of that Iranian Prime Minister they replaced with the Shaw in the 1950s. Now there was a chance.

But they still only want the type of economy that favors American corporations..not any democracy or economy will do. And in that - by using scare tactics on people like the venezuelans..they still destabilize them. Communism is dead. Not that that was a good excuse for what happened in many destabilizations. But they can no longer hide their hypocrisy. What is Chavez going to do? Call bin Laden?

I hate to see how they paint the protesters at the G8 as anarchists. Why the G8 protesters in Alberta & Halifax were for releasing debt of African nations (the poorest ones). So how could they be anarchists if a few years later Bush "comes up with the idea"?

All so much smoke and mirrors.

[bribri16]

49. I'm a newbie but this is my point.

The citizens of Iraq ought to take us to court also.
If we admit that we attacked Iraq during Desert Storm and wanted to incite the Iraqis to overthrow Saddam but did not support them, thus leaving thousands to be killed by Saddam, is it Saddam's fault that he killed many of those who rose up against him trying to overthrow his government? What can he be charged with? Defending his own government? He paid for invading Kuwait but Bush has not paid for invading Iraq. What court of law as the moral authority to convict Saddam and not Bush?

[Octafish]

53. Great point, bribri16! Poppy likes it when witnesses die off.

The false hope planted in the minds of the Kurds after Gulf War 1 is one of the great unreported crimes of that era. Please add information and it will shine light on criminality and treason.

No man is above the law, or at least it's supposed to be like that. The Bush Crime Family think they are superior to other beings, the "little brown ones" as Poppy called Jebthro's children.

Remember, the idea was to kill Saddam right off the bat in the Iraq Invasion. Instead, the BFEE killed a bunch of civlians at a restaurant and the around the neighborhood that may've once hosted Saddam. The Bush war machine didn't give his sons a chance to surrender, either.

History repeats. Poppy did the same thing in Operation JUST CAUSE, the Panama Invasion. Manny Noriega, like Saddam, had been on the CIA payroll. Somewhere along the way, Manny got greedy or talkative and he had to go. The only reason HE survived was he begged for sanctuary in the Vatican embassy. The US Army got him to leave by blaring corporate rock 24/7 through giant speakers surrounding the grounds.

To us it is obvious Poppy and his entire male brood like to make money off trading commodities like crude and drugs, as well as war. Thanks for noting they should be accountable for their actions.

Skolnick and his team were the only journalists who attended this court hearing. He claims that he interviewed participants in the case repeatedly, and that they confirmed the Bush-Hussein transactions. Skolnick has maintained for years that he has a complete record of the Bush-Saddam case, including an affidavit of the CIA general counsel, which warned that revealing the details of the documents would violate national security.

Skolnick is the founder/chairman of Citizen's Committee To Clean Up the Courts, a public interest group that investigates judicial bribery and political murders. His investigations have sent numerous judges to jail.

To date, no one has refuted Skolnick's charges, nor the facts of the Harris v. Federal Reserve court record.

Remove Saddam, Erase History

CONTINUED...

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Chin111402/chin111402.html

BTW: A most hearty welcome to DU, bribri16! Say! You don't write like a newbie! You think like someone who knows the story.

[AuntiBush]

2. 'Cause all the Judges are being nominated by him!

Sad stuff. I've read the history a lot since the last stolen election. Many do not know the genealogy family Bush-Tree and the reasons why he is enjoying taking away everything we gained since F.D.R.

Thanks for the reminder. Everyone should know their BFEE.

[Octafish]

10. What a special prosecutor told us -- a Republican Special Prosecutor.

In the days before the Federalist Society and Opus Dei chose judges, there were real men and women who cared for the law and not for the cult of personality revolving around a barely housebroken monkey.

Firewall: Inside the Iran-Contra Cover-up

By Robert Parry

WASHINGTON -- In crucial ways, Watergate, the signature scandal of the 1970s, and Iran-contra, the signature scandal of the 1980s, were opposites. Watergate showed how the constitutional institutions of American democracy -- the Congress, the courts and the press -- could check a gross abuse of power by the Executive. A short dozen years later, the Iran-contra scandal demonstrated how those same institutions had ceased to protect the nation from serious White House wrongdoing.

Watergate had been part of a brief national awakening which exposed Cold War abuses -- presidential crimes, lies about the Vietnam War and assassination plots hatched at the CIA. The Iran-contra cover-up marked the restoration of a Cold War status quo in which crimes, both domestic and international, could be committed by the Executive while the Congress and the press looked the other way.

That Iran-contra reality, however, is still little understood for what it actually was: a victory of weakness and deceit over integrity and courage. On one front, the Washington media wants to perpetuate the myth that it remains the heroic Watergate press corps of All the President's Men. On another, the national Democratic establishment wants to forget how it crumbled in the face of pressures from the Reagan-Bush administrations. And, of course, the Republicans want to protect the legacy of their last two presidents.

Those combined interests likely will lead to very few favorable reviews of a new book by a man who put himself in the way of that cover-up -- Iran-contra independent counsel Lawrence Walsh. In a remarkable new book, Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-up, Walsh details his six-year battle to break through the "firewall" that White House officials built around President Reagan and Vice President Bush after the Iran-contra scandal exploded in November 1986.

For Walsh, a lifelong Republican who shared the foreign policy views of the Reagan administration, the Iran-contra experience was a life-changing one, as his investigation penetrated one wall of lies only to be confronted with another and another -- and not just lies from Oliver North and his cohorts but lies from nearly every senior administration official who spoke with investigators.

CONTINUED...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/story34.html

You're welcome, AuntiBush.

While depressing is the news. At least we're not him:



Smirko, Son of Bush. Still Stasi quasi-housebroken.

[LibertyorDeath]

3. Thanks Octafish your posts are among the best on DU

I always stop & learn something new from them.

Cheers !

[Octafish]

11. Poppy's Zapata Offshore got an exclusive contract with Kuwait.

Cheers to you, LibertyorDeath! Truly appreciate your kind words. And I really like your image of Smirko McCokespoon, the corporate clown. Like father, like son, eh?

Here's something Poppy did after his Texas wildcatting days. George Herbert Walker Bush's oil exploration firm got an exclusive contract to drill offshore in Kuwait, of all places. The transaction serves as a lesson in creating "non-official covers," the type of organization exposed during the Plame outting. It also demonstrates how the BFEE got to be so freaking rich -- and that's not even counting the drug trade.

FOLLOW THE YELLOW
BRICK ROAD:
FROM HARVARD TO ENRON

by Linda Minor © 2002

What was so special about 1974?

EXCERPT...

Review and Overview of the Capital Syndicate

In Part One we pointed out that Pug's employment with Pacific Holding Corporation in Los Angeles came in 1974 (the year Richard Nixon was forced to resign because of the impending impeachment proceedings), and brought him in contact with a corporation which held all the stock of International Mining Co., which was then the majority shareholder of George Bush's former corporation, Zapata. When Bush left his position there in late 1966, the corporation became Zapata Norness, a subsidiary of the original corporation founded in Midland, Texas with the Liedtke brothers. The Liedtkes took over South Penn Oil Co. in Philadelphia--like Magnolia and Atlantic, one of the original Standard Oil subsidiaries--and merged their holdings into Pennzoil, spinning off the Zapata Norness subsidiary, which then reverted to the old name of Zapata Corporation.

Having read Part Two, including the two sub-parts about the investment syndicate and brief history of United Fruit Company, you no doubt have an inkling of why people who work for the CIA have invariably referred to their employer as "The Company," rather than the American taxpayer. You also have a better idea why members of the American Mafia said they were working for "The Syndicate." The truth is these two groups make up two tentacles of the octopus that runs American society today. People disagree about when it began, though we have traced the roots as far back as the reorganization of United Fruit in around 1900. It was at that point that the men who ran Harvard Corporation--primarily the remnants of the Cabot family of chartered company fame and their descendants, like the Lodges, Lowells, Perkinses and Paines--merged with the New York faction incorporated into the Empire Trust and its eventual successor Bank of New York. The two groups also received debt financing from British and Canadian sources, which would eventually acquire a hidden equity position in the syndicate, as defaults in repayment occurred, and entities were reorganized. As competition arose from a New Orleans-based company, composed of European organized crime members from Sicily and Eastern European Jews, the syndicate was enlarged to add that faction as well. Each segment of the syndicate maintained its own distinct responsibilities.

The Boston group became the money launderers making capital which arose from profits available for investment to others in legitimate business. Much of the funds were routed through the university endowment of Harvard and also Yale, which was an offshoot of the Massachusetts families who had made their initial fortune in opium. (2) Much of this was funneled to venture capital and insurance companies based in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

The New York group was based on Wall Street and grew to become elite lawyers and bankers who dealt with issues of stocks, bonds and contracts. The New Orleans group became the distribution and enforcement mechanism for the syndicate's operations. They created a network in every major city with either a port or railroad hub in order to control the transportation and distribution system. The financial model which was developed became a legal framework, or infrastructure, which could be used in other types of investments in which the syndicate members had placed their capital--from railroad industrials to petroleum and mineral production, distribution and refining to other forms of manufactured products.

CONTINUED...

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0204/S00105.htm

[Karenina]

16. That *Poppy's a real card, eh?

[Octafish]

37. Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein

Rummy's a BFEE turd of the first rank.

http://bloodbankers.typepad.com/submerging_markets/images/fig.%208.14.%20Iran-Iraq%20War%20scene,%20early%201980s.jpg

The front, Iran-Iraq War.

Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein:

The U.S. Tilts toward Iraq, 1980-1984

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 82
Edited by Joyce Battle
February 25, 2003

The Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) was one of a series of crises during an era of upheaval in the Middle East: revolution in Iran, occupation of the U.S. embassy in Tehran by militant students, invasion of the Great Mosque in Mecca by anti-royalist Islamicists, the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan, and internecine fighting among Syrians, Israelis, and Palestinians in Lebanon. The war followed months of rising tension between the Iranian Islamic republic and secular nationalist Iraq. In mid-September 1980 Iraq attacked, in the mistaken belief that Iranian political disarray would guarantee a quick victory.

The international community responded with U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire and for all member states to refrain from actions contributing in any way to the conflict's continuation. The Soviets, opposing the war, cut off arms exports to Iran and to Iraq, its ally under a 1972 treaty (arms deliveries resumed in 1982). The U.S. had already ended, when the shah fell, previously massive military sales to Iran. In 1980 the U.S. broke off diplomatic relations with Iran because of the Tehran embassy hostage crisis; Iraq had broken off ties with the U.S. during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

The U.S. was officially neutral regarding the Iran-Iraq war, and claimed that it armed neither side. Iran depended on U.S.-origin weapons, however, and sought them from Israel, Europe, Asia, and South America. Iraq started the war with a large Soviet-supplied arsenal, but needed additional weaponry as the conflict wore on.

Initially, Iraq advanced far into Iranian territory, but was driven back within months. By mid-1982, Iraq was on the defensive against Iranian human-wave attacks. The U.S., having decided that an Iranian victory would not serve its interests, began supporting Iraq: measures already underway to upgrade U.S.-Iraq relations were accelerated, high-level officials exchanged visits, and in February 1982 the State Department removed Iraq from its list of states supporting international terrorism. (It had been included several years earlier because of ties with several Palestinian nationalist groups, not Islamicists sharing the worldview of al-Qaeda. Activism by Iraq's main Shiite Islamicist opposition group, al-Dawa, was a major factor precipitating the war -- stirred by Iran's Islamic revolution, its endeavors included the attempted assassination of Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz.)

Prolonging the war was phenomenally expensive. Iraq received massive external financial support from the Gulf states, and assistance through loan programs from the U.S. The White House and State Department pressured the Export-Import Bank to provide Iraq with financing, to enhance its credit standing and enable it to obtain loans from other international financial institutions. The U.S. Agriculture Department provided taxpayer-guaranteed loans for purchases of American commodities, to the satisfaction of U.S. grain exporters.

CONTINUED GENOCIDE...

http://www.impeach-bush-now.org/Articles/Rumsfeld/shakinghands.htm

I won't call the BFEE "monsters" because that term, in a real way, excuses their actions as human beings. And human beings can be brought to justice. Where they will be brought up on charges.

[Octafish]

38. Your're right!!! Poppy made the Iran-Iraq War a Go-Go!!!

With Casey at CIA and Baker as Chief of Staff, the guy was running the White House -- even without Reagan being shot a couple months in, for Pete's sake. And that was due to Bush family friend, Hinckley. Of course, you knew that, too.



Before there was a Gulf War 1, there was a most horrible Iran-Iraq War. Remember, it was Poppy who was Pruneface's veep. Here's a good resource for those interested in the history and how the West made a buck off of megadeath:

Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988)

- Gradual Superpower Involvement
- Special Weapons
- War Termination

Gradual Superpower Involvement

Iranian military gains inside Iraq after 1984 were a major reason for increased superpower involvement in the war. In February 1986, Iranian units captured the port of Al Faw, which had oil facilities and was one of Iraq's major oil-exporting ports before the war. 

In early 1987, both superpowers indicated their interest in the security of the region. Soviet deputy foreign minister Vladimir Petrovsky made a Middle East tour expressing his country's concern over the effects of the Iran-Iraq War. In May 1987, United States assistant secretary of state Richard Murphy also toured the Gulf emphasizing to friendly Arab states the United States commitment in the region, a commitment which had become suspect as a result of Washington's transfer of arms to the Iranians, officially as an incentive for them to assist in freeing American hostages held in Lebanon. In another diplomatic effort, both superpowers supported the UN Security Council resolutions seeking an end to the war. 

The war appeared to be entering a new phase in which the superpowers were becoming more involved. For instance, the Soviet Union, which had ended military supplies to both Iran and Iraq in 1980, resumed large-scale arms shipments to Iraq in 1982 after Iran banned the Tudeh and tried and executed most of its leaders. Subsequently, despite its professed neutrality, the Soviet Union became the major supplier of sophisticated arms to Iraq. In 1985 the United States began clandestine direct and indirect negotiations with Iranian officials that resulted in several arms shipments to Iran. 

By late spring of 1987, the superpowers became more directly involved because they feared that the fall of Basra might lead to a pro-Iranian Islamic republic in largely Shia-populated southern Iraq. They were also concerned about the intensified tanker war. 


Special Weapons

To avoid defeat, Iraq sought out every possible weapon. This included developing a self-sustaining capability to produce militarily significant quantities of chemical warfare agents. In the defense, integrating chemical weapons offered a solution to the masses of lightly armed Basif and Posdoran. Chemical weapons were singularly effective when used on troop assembly areas and supporting artillery. When conducting offensive operations, Iraq routinely supported the attacks with deep fires and integrated chemical fires on forward defenses, command posts, artillery positions, and logistical facilities. 

During the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq developed the ability to produce, store, and use chemical weapons. These chemical weapons included H-series blister and G-series nerve agents. Iraq built these agents into various offensive munitions including rockets, artillery shells, aerial bombs, and warheads on the Al Hussein Scud missile variant. During the Iran-Iraq war, Iraqi fighter-attack aircraft dropped mustard-filled and tabun-filled 250 kilogram bombs and mustard-filled 500 kilogram bombs on Iranian targets. Other reports indicate that Iraq may have also installed spray tanks on an unknown number of helicopters or dropped 55-gallon drums filled with unknown agents (probably mustard) from low altitudes. 

CONTINUED GENOCIDE...

http://www.iranian.ws/iran-online/iran-iraq_war/end.htm

SOURCE:

Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988)

Wherver there's a buck to be made of suffering or death, there's a Bush.

[Octafish]

39. Poppy helped Iran-Iraq war waste 1-2 million people.

Don't worry, bleeding hearts, it was for a good cause:

[Karenina]

40. 1,000 words...

[Octafish]

43. Peter Turnley’s lens caught Gulf War I

Here's one shot from his excellent online chronicle, the "Highway of Death" upon which thousands of fleeing Iraqi conscripts were massacred by the real Butcher of Baghdad: George Herbert Walker Bush.



http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0212/pt22.html

[Octafish]

45. Gulf War I's "Highway of Death" was a War Crime.

And to think some DUers make light of BFEE "conspiracy theories."

I'd laugh, but there's nothing funny about mass murder.

The Massacre of Withdrawing Soldiers on "The Highway of Death"

by Joyce Chediac

I want to give testimony on what are called the "highways of death." These are the two Kuwaiti roadways, littered with remains of 2,000 mangled Iraqi military vehicles, and the charred and dismembered bodies of tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers, who were withdrawing from Kuwait on February 26th and 27th 1991 in compliance with UN resolutions.

U.S. planes trapped the long convoys by disabling vehicles in the front, and at the rear, and then pounded the resulting traffic jams for hours. "It was like shooting fish in a barrel," said one U.S. pilot. The horror is still there to see.

On the inland highway to Basra is mile after mile of burned, smashed, shattered vehicles of every description - tanks, armored cars, trucks, autos, fire trucks, according to the March 18, 1991, Time magazine. On the sixty miles of coastal highway, Iraqi military units sit in gruesome repose, scorched skeletons of vehicles and men alike, black and awful under the sun, says the Los Angeles Times of March 11, 1991. While 450 people survived the inland road bombing to surrender, this was not the case with the 60 miles of the coastal road. There for 60 miles every vehicle was strafed or bombed, every windshield is shattered, every tank is burned, every truck is riddled with shell fragments. No survivors are known or likely. The cabs of trucks were bombed so much that they were pushed into the ground, and it's impossible to see if they contain drivers or not. Windshields were melted away, and huge tanks were reduced to shrapnel.

"Even in Vietnam I didn't see anything like this. It's pathetic," said Major Bob Nugent, an Army intelligence officer. This one-sided carnage, this racist mass murder of Arab people, occurred while White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater promised that the U.S. and its coalition partners would not attack Iraqi forces leaving Kuwait. This is surely one of the most heinous war crimes in contemporary history.

The Iraqi troops were not being driven out of Kuwait by U.S. troops as the Bush administration maintains. They were not retreating in order to regroup and fight again. In fact, they were withdrawing, they were going home, responding to orders issued by Baghdad, announcing that it was complying with Resolution 660 and leaving Kuwait. At 5:35 p.m. (Eastern standard Time) Baghdad radio announced that Iraq's Foreign Minister had accepted the Soviet cease-fire proposal and had issued the order for all Iraqi troops to withdraw to postions held before August 2, 1990 in compliance with UN Resolution 660. President Bush responded immediately from the White House saying (through spokesman Marlin Fitzwater) that "there was no evidence to suggest the Iraqi army is withdrawing. In fact, Iraqi units are continuing to fight. . . We continue to prosecute the war." On the next day, February 26, 1991, Saddam Hussein announced on Baghdad radio that Iraqi troops had, indeed, begun to withdraw from Kuwait and that the withdrawal would be complete that day. Again, Bush reacted, calling Hussein's announcement "an outrage" and "a cruel hoax."

CONTINUED...

http://radioislam.org/historia/zionism/hwy_death.html

From what I understand, things have only gotten worse for the globe's oldest civilization.

Got Oil?

[Octafish]

46. Highway of Death may be what BFEE has in store for humanity.

I met a woman who’s son told her about taking part in this. He couldn’t believe it wasn’t in the papers.

The Highway of Death

http://archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-71-593-3127/conflict_war/gulf_war/clip14

Great resource, plus there's a video archive for those who can stomach the truth and for those interested in seeing what their government has done in the pursuit of power and profit. It isn't democracy the Bushes are pushing.

[Octafish]

50. Ayatollah Khomeini gave children plastic keys "to Paradise."

The little keys once were common teething toys for infants. Khomeini's henchmen had ORDERED armies of children as young as 9 to die clearing minefields in no-man's land. The tanks were more scarce than children, mostly girls, I understand.

Bob Don't Know Diddy

November 4, 2004
Post-Election Reflections on Polls and Other Stuff
By Robert X. Cringely

EXCERPT...

Back in 1986 I talked Penthouse magazine into giving me an assignment to write the story: "How to Get a Date in Revolutionary Iran." The premise was that hormones are hormones, and those wacky kids in Tehran, most of whom could still remember the Shah, had to be finding some way to meet members of the opposite sex. So I headed off to Iran to find out the truth. If you are interested in such stuff, the only time a single man and woman not from the same family could be together in private back then was in a taxi (he being the driver), so all the teenage boys who had or could borrow cars turned them into taxis. This, of course, put all the power in the hands of the woman since she could see him but he had to take pot luck.

I eventually finished the piece and decided to go see the war since I had been in Beirut and Angola, but had never seen trench warfare, which is what I was told they had going in Iran. So I took a taxi to the front, introduced myself to the local commander, who had gone, as I recall, to Iowa State, and spent a couple days waiting for the impending human wave attack. That attack was to be conducted primarily with 11-and 12-year-old boys as troops, nearly all of them unarmed. There were several thousand kids and their job was to rise out of the trench, praising Allah, run across No Man's Land, be killed by the Iraqi machine gunners, then go directly to Paradise, do not pass GO, do not collect 200 dinars. And that's exactly what happened in a battle lasting less than 10 minutes. None of the kids fired a shot or made it all the way to the other side. And when I asked the purpose of this exercise, I was told it was to demoralize the cowardly Iraqi soldiers.

It was the most horrific event I have ever seen, and I once covered a cholera epidemic in Bangladesh that killed 40,000 people.

Waiting those two nights for the attack was surreal. Some kids acted as though nothing was wrong while others cried and puked. But when the time came to praise Allah and enter Paradise, not a single boy tried to stay behind.

CONTINUED...

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20041104.html

I looked for a picture of one of these kids holding a key. I remember it in the papers then, but couldn't locate online. Sorry.

[Octafish]

55. Remember when James Baker sent this love letter to Tariq Aziz?

Secret Message From James Baker to Tariq Aziz

This October 21, 1989 cable carries the text of a secret message from Secretary of State James Baker to Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz. Baker informs Aziz, whose government 13 months previously had gassed Kurdish villages, that "the United States seeks a broadened and deepened relationship with Iraq." President Bush's policy, writes Baker, "is to work to strengthen the relationship between the United States and Iraq whenever possible."

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2265.htm

The deep politics of regime removal in Iraq: Overt conquest, covert operations

Part Four: The unfinished business between Saddam Hussein and George H.W. Bush

By Larry Chin
Online Journal Contributing Editor

November 14, 2002—In a much-publicized CNN interview on September 18, 2002, former President and CIA Director George H.W. Bush declared that he "hates" Saddam Hussein. This canard-filled propaganda display was designed to cloak the historical fact that the elder Bush "loved" Saddam Hussein—as a key Middle East ally, a CIA asset, and partner in numerous illegal business partnerships. Indeed, the recalcitrant Saddam Hussein poses a grave threat, i.e., to the secrecy that cloaks the Bush family's involvement in some of the most unsavory episodes in American history.

"Read My Lips, I'm Lying"

 "I hate Saddam Hussein," the trembling former president told interviewer Paula Zahn. "I don't hate a lot of people. I don't hate easily, but I think he's, as I say, his word is no good and he's a brute. I have nothing but hatred in my heart for him." Bush added, threateningly, "He's got a lot of problems, but immortality isn't one of them."

Not satisfied with simply offering deceptive opinion, the elder Bush began reeling off historical falsehoods, starting with the now-classic Saddam Hussein "gassing" legend. "He's used poison gas on his own people!" Bush declared, not mentioning, of course, that he and other members of the Reagan-Bush administrations armed the Iraqi regime with this poison gas, and encouraged its use.

As documented by US Congressional records, the Reagan administration—with VP George H.W. Bush spearheading top-level policy—furnished Iraq with the biological and chemical materials, throughout the 1980s. This continued through Bush I's administration, right up to the start of the Gulf War.

Poison gas used in the Iran-Iraq War was manufactured using ingredients reportedly supplied by LaFarge Corporation, of which Bush was a substantial owner, and Hillary Rodham Clinton was a director.

CONTINUED...

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Chin111402/chin111402.html

Money. Money. Money.

Depopulate. Depopulate. Depopulate.

Fascism. Fascim. Fascism.

[Octafish]

56. Page 2: "WILL CONTINUE TO GIVE THIS MATTER MY PERSONAL ATTENTION"

[Octafish]

58. Poppy LIED America into GULF WAR 1

The Bushes are so crooked, they can't even pee straight.

Remember the faked satellite photos "showing" Iraq's army on the Saudi border?

Sure.



And THAT was all the "proof" Congress and the Press Corpse needed.

How Both Bushes Attacked Iraq

By Michelle Mairesse

EXCERPT...

Bush proposed "a new world order--free from the threat of terror." The United States would lead a coalition against the aggressor.

Arab leaders suggested a compromise: allow Iraq to annex a small segment of Kuwait after withdrawal. The administration refused that offer and all others, not because the plans were unreasonable, but because the Bush administration had decided on a war designed to enhance American power in the oil-rich Mideast.

Fake Satellite Photos

In early January, Hussein’s troops began to withdraw from Kuwait, but the Pentagon claimed to have satellite photographs showing an enormous buildup of Iraqi forces and weapons, 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1500 tanks massing in the desert for their impending attack on Saudi Arabia. This announcement stunned the anti-war protesters, and world opinion gradually shifted, although no one saw the alleged photos, which were, of course, classified.

Jean Heller, an ace journalist from the St. Petersburg Times in Florida, persuaded her editors to buy two photos from the Russian commercial satellite, the Soyuz Karta, taken September 11 and September 13. The photos proved that the entire Iraqi airforce was parked in Riyadh and that Iraqi troops were nowhere to be found massing in the desert. The editors asked two former Defense Intelligence Agency analysts to examine the photos. They, too, were surprised that the pictures showed American jets arrayed on the Saudi Arabian border but no troops at all on the Kuwaiti border.

Peter Zimmerman, a satellite expert at George Washington University, said,

"We could see clearly the main road leading right through Kuwait, south to Saudi Arabia, but it was covered with sand banks from the wind and it was clear that no army had moved over it. We could see empty barracks where you would have expected these thousands of troops to be billeted, but they were deserted as well." \

CONTINUED...

http://www.hermes-press.com/like_son.htm

Gee. That sounds serious.

Too bad so few remember their history, or their Constitution, in Congress. Too bad they didn't look out in the street, where they'd've seen about a million people or so marching against the illegal Iraq Invasion.

Oct 7 2002

How You and I Got Snookered, Jeanne Kirkpatrick

Memo To: Jeanne Kirkpatrick, former U.N. Ambassador
From: Jude Wanniski
Re: Why We Supported the Gulf War

Holy smokes, Jeanne, I saw you on LateEdition with Wolf Blitzer yesterday, talking about what a bad guy Saddam Hussein was for invading Kuwait in 1990. But then you said he was about to invade Saudi Arabia too. I’m amazed that after all these years you still think Saddam was going to gobble up Saudi Arabia after he digested Kuwait. Do you remember how skeptical both of us were about why we should get excited about why Iraq went into Kuwait, when nobody in the neighborhood seemed to be bothered? You had written an op-ed, I recall, which is probably why you got invited to the Saudi Embassy for a briefing by Saudi’s Ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar, who is still there. I’d also written about why the United States should war with Baghdad when everyone knew the Kuwaiti Emir was stealing oil from Iraq and had driven the price of oil down to $11 a barrel by cheating the other oil producing countries on its promises to limit production. That’s how I got invited. I think we even shared a taxi from Empower America and went over together. I know for sure we sat next to each other in that little briefing room, where Prince Bandar told us why King Fahd had suddenly decided that Saddam was a threat to Saudi Arabia and to the peace of the region.

SNIP...

Satellite photographs taken by the Soviet Union on the precise day Bush addressed Congress failed to show any evidence of Iraqi troops in Kuwait or massing along the Kuwait-Saudi Arabian border. While the Pentagon was claiming as many as 250,000 Iraqi troops in Kuwait, it refused to provide evidence that would contradict the Soviet satellite photos. U.S. forces, encampments, aircraft, camouflaged equipment dumps, staging areas and tracks across the desert can easily be seen. But as Peter Zimmerman, formerly of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in the Reagan Administration, and a former image specialist for the Defense Intelligence Agency, who analyzed the photographs said: “We didn't find anything of that sort anywhere in Kuwait. We don't see any tent cities, we don't see congregations of tanks, we can't see troop concentrations, and the main Kuwaiti air base appears deserted. It's five weeks after the invasion, and from what we can see, the Iraqi air force hasn't flown a single fighter to the most strategic air base in Kuwait. There is no infrastructure to support large numbers of people. They have to use toilets, or the functional equivalent. They have to have food.... But where is it?”

On September 18, 1990, only a week after the Soviet photos were taken, the Pentagon was telling the American public that Iraqi forces in Kuwait had grown to 360,000 men and 2,800 tanks. But the photos of Kuwait do not show any tank tracks in southern Kuwait. They clearly do show tracks left by vehicles which serviced a large oil field, but no tank tracks. Heller concludes that as of January 6, 1991, the Pentagon had not provided the press or Congress with any proof at all for an early buildup of Iraqi troops in southern Kuwait that would suggest an imminent invasion of Saudi Arabia. The usual Pentagon evidence was little more than "trust me." But photos from Soviet commercial satellites tell quite a convincing story. Photos taken on August 8, 1990, of southern Kuwait - six days after the initial invasion and right at the moment Bush was telling the world of an impending invasion of Saudi Arabia - show light sand drifts over patches of roads leading from Kuwait City to the Saudi border. The photos taken on September 11, 1990, show exactly the same sand drifts but now larger and deeper, suggesting that they had built up naturally without the disturbance of traffic for a month. Roads in northern Saudi Arabia during this same period, in contrast, show no sand drifts at all, having been swept clean by heavy traffic of supply convoys.

The former DIA analyst puts it this way: "In many places the sand goes on for 30 meters and more." Zimmerman's analysis is that "The could be passable by tank but not by personnel or supply vehicles. Yet there is no sign that tanks have used those roads. And there's no evidence of new roads being cut. By contrast, none of the roads in Saudi Arabia has any sand cover at all. They've all been swept clear.”

CONTINUED...

http://polyconomics.com/PrintPage.asp?TextID=2240

America!
Where are you now?
Don't you care about your sons and daughters?
America?
Where are you now?
We can't fight alone against the monster?

[LibertyorDeath]

24. Great link ! Thanks !

I've got a lot of reading to do.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0204/S00105.htm

[Eloriel]

4. I hope you're collecting these threads of yours together for a book

I really do.

[Octafish]

12. Now that would be "Fun with the BFEE."

You know as much about this stuff as anyone. Please pile on. It makes the journey pass by so much more quickly.



Most of all: Thanks, Eloriel. Your kind thoughts mean the world to me.

[Coexist]

20. Great title!

Can't wait to read the complilation.

[Eloriel]

35. Thanks, Octafish

And I'm delighted about the new blog --

Know Your BFEE BLOG
http://knowyourbfee.blogspot.com/

[FreedomAngel82]

5. Yep

You got it. You should watch the doc "The Illumaniti." You can find it at http://www.mininova.org

[Octafish]

19. Those secret societies are really something.

Thanks, loads, FreedomAngle82! Once, at a school board meeting, one of the board members gave me the secret handshake -- I kid you not. Instead of putting his whole hand against mine, he pulled back two fingers for the grip. He said, "Oh. I thought you were one of us." I laughed and said, "No. Sorry."

I believe he reported me to the proper authorities. Some days I get the feeling I've been, uh, uh... Where's my hat?



This is the guy they were looking for:

Robert Anton Wilson

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Anton_Wilson

A good man. He helped teach me to give a damn.

[Turn CO Blue]

6. I'm bookmarking this one too...

Octafish,
If you'd be so kind, respond with some links to some other "Know your BFEE" threads you've done, PLEASE?!!!!

[soup]

15. Insomnia

Oh, for the ability to sleep through the night... November 6th, 2000 is a distant, sweet memory.

Know your BFEE: Pat Robertson Incoporated a Gold Mine with a Terrorist
Topic started by Octafish on Sep-13-04 03:59 PM (12 replies)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2397004

Know your BFEE: Oliver North, Drug Dealer
Topic started by Octafish on Sep-13-04 10:47 PM (27 replies)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2396787

Know your BFEE: George W Bush Knew 9-11 Was Coming and Did NOTHING!
Topic started by Octafish on Sep-23-04 12:02 PM (13 replies)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2404049

Know your BFEE: Vote Suppressor Supreme, the Turd Bill Rehnquist
Topic started by Octafish on Sep-26-04 01:06 AM (8 replies)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2414083

Know Your BFEE: The Barreling Bushes
Topic started by Octafish on Oct-10-04 12:52 AM (11 replies)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2472759

Know your BFEE: Eugenics and the NAZIs - The California Connection
Topic started by Octafish on Oct-19-04 11:28 AM (64 replies)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2511192

Know Your BFEE: How Smirko Got Rich
Topic started by Octafish on Oct-23-04 09:48 AM (12 replies)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2529964

Know your BFEE: A Crime Line of Treason
Topic started by Octafish on Nov-24-04 05:06 PM (130 replies)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2748315

Know your BFEE: Homeland Czar & Petro-Turd Bernie Kerik
Topic started by Octafish on Dec-04-04 10:42 PM (48 replies)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2788428

Know your BFEE: George W Bush did "community service" at Project P.U.L.L.
Topic started by Octafish on Jan-15-05 03:43 PM (12 replies)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2956067

Know Your BFEE: American Children Used in Radiation Experiments
Topic started by Octafish on Mar-21-05 09:44 AM (61 replies)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3312956

Know your BFEE: Rev. Sun Myung Moon OWNS Poppy Bush.
Topic started by Octafish on Mar-25-05 11:23 PM (79 replies)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3355939

Know your BFEE: Dead Men Tell No Tales
Topic started by Octafish on Mar-30-05 08:24 PM (103 replies)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3389867

Know your BFEE: War Profiteers
Topic started by Octafish on Apr-17-05 10:56 AM (51 replies)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3493251

Know your BFEE: James R Bath - Bush - bin Laden Link
Topic started by Octafish on Apr-29-05 08:30 PM (44 replies)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3571293

Know your BFEE: Bush Lied America into War
Topic started by Octafish on May-05-05 10:52 AM (81 replies)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3601654

Know your BFEE: Sneering Dick Cheney, Superturd-Superrich-Supercrook
Topic started by Octafish on May-09-05 10:58 PM (81 replies)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3627538

Know your BFEE: R. James Woolsey, Turd of War
Topic started by Octafish on May-21-05 12:30 AM (41 replies)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3699042

Know your BFEE: Merchants of Death
Topic started by Octafish on May-28-05 12:44 AM (95 replies)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3743890

Know your BFEE: Dope Dealers & Money Launderers
Topic started by Octafish on Jun-04-05 01:05 AM (80 replies)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3783153

Know your BFEE: Hitler’s Bankers Shaped Vietnam War
Topic started by Octafish on Jun-10-05 10:50 PM (77 replies)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3832033

--

Thank you, Octafish - and to all who responded and helped build these threads.

[Octafish]

22. Wow! Thanks, Insomnia!

Really appreciate you giving a damn. Thank you for compiling the listing. Thanks also for giving credit to where it's DU.

BTW: I've got a possible cure*:



Catch a bocce ball tourney replay of a match you've already seen.

http://www.svcn.com/archives/lgwt/06.21.00/bocce-0025.html

http://www.detnews.com/2005/moresports/0506/08/D02-206048.htm

* This won't work for live events. You need to know the outcome.

The one sure cure is to read my posts.

Thanks, DU Friend!

[soup]

25. Bocce therapy.

Who knew? :shrug:
.
.
.
.
:rofl:

and thank you for your continued efforts. They really are good threads and you deserve some recognition - even though the contents are a major contributing factor to my zzzlessness.

apologies if I missed any.

[Just Me]

23. Oh! I am so glad you posted those because I've missed many.

Thank you thank you thank you!!! :bounce?

[Octafish]

21. Wow! Thanks, Turn CO Blue!

And thanks for your patience. My eyeballs couldn't take it any more last night...

DUer DrDebug compiled the series for the Demopedia:

http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/index.php/Know_your_BFEE

Unfortunately, my check to DrDebug bounced, for obvious reasons, and a couple may've been left out.

Know your BFEE: Hitler’s Bankers Shaped Vietnam War

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3832033


Know your BFEE: Dope Dealers & Money Launderers

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3783153

Very sorry, DrDebug! Check's in the mail.

[Psst_Im_Not_Here]

7. I use this point all the time

Especially when they throw out the Saddam bad guy reference. I tell them that we knew what he's been doing to his own people since the Iran/Iraq war. We never did anything about it for 25 years, until an excuse was needed. Not to mention that we supplied weapons to him the whole time, knowing what he was going to do with them.

It makes one wonder why Saddam will still be alive to testify against Poppy, et al. Or if he will suddenly keal over from a "heart attack" before testifying.

[Octafish]

26. Isn't the lack of basic knowledge about US foreign policy amazing?

What's worse is that some citizens say: "I don't want to know."

Iraqgate: Saddam Hussein, U.S. Policy and the Prelude to the Persian Gulf War, 1980-1994

Friends in Deed: The United States and Iraq Before the Persian Gulf War

The scandal that came to be called "Iraqgate" first attracted widespread public attention in 1990, in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and the ensuing Persian Gulf war. The invasion followed a decade in which two successive U.S. administrations had viewed improvement of U.S.-Iraq relations as an important tenet of U.S. foreign policy, and had engaged in extensive trade with that country in pursuit of that goal. The policy had been adopted at least in part as a way to increase influence with Iraq. The fact that it failed to deter the invasion of Kuwait led to congressional and media criticism, including allegations that the U.S. had contributed, chemical, biological, nuclear and missile programs. These were not accusations that the Bush administration was pleased to confront as U.S. and allied troops faced Iraqi forces in the Persian Gulf region, nor after the war, when the White House would have preferred to savor a military victory which, it hoped, would be perceived as a great foreign policy success.

The full range of Iraqgate allegations involves a complex cast of characters and an intricate and intertwining succession of events. The personages involved include an international array of arms dealers, bankers, merchants, lawyers, military officers, foreign agents, and government officials. It is impossible to describe the affair in brief: therefore, only a few key elements of the story will be discussed here.

Economic Assistance Programs and Exports to Iraq

In 1982, the Reagan administration removed Iraq from the State Department’s list of countries regarded as supporters of international terrorism (despite doubts that Iraq had created its relationships with terrorist groups). This action eliminated legal restrictions that would otherwise have prevented Iraq from receiving credit guarantees from the Export-Import Bank (Eximbank), enabling it to obtain credit for the purchase of U.S. products and technology. Eximbank began to provide short-term cover to Iraq in 1985. In December 1982, the Agriculture Department (USDA) authorized Iraq’s participation in Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) export credit guarantee programs. (These programs were set up to help expand the U.S. agriculture market, by offering credit to countries otherwise lacking in sufficient resources to import U.S. commodities.) The authorization enabled Iraq to obtain financing to import U.S. food products, a significant benefit for a country that experienced growing financial difficulties throughout the 1980s, and encountered increasing problems in obtaining credit from private banks.

Iraq’s economic difficulties resulted in part from its commitment to intensive and expensive civilian and military industrialization programs, a commitment which was maintained throughout and after the war with Iran (1980-1988). To support these programs, it was most interested in obtaining western technology, and was therefore eager to expand trade with the U.S. The U.S. government, fully aware that Iraq had active programs in the areas of chemical and biological warfare and missile development, was concerned about providing it with U.S. technology. (Available documents seem to reflect some disagreement regarding the aggressiveness of Iraq’s nuclear weapons programs, and the level of sophistication of these efforts.) The U.S. had a system of export controls and an export review policy intended to prevent countries like Iraq from obtaining technology useful for nonconventional weapons programs. In addition, the official U.S. policy of neutrality disallowed the export of weapons to either protagonist in the Iran-Iraq war (a policy not always followed, as the Reagan administration’s attempts to exchange weapons with Iran in return for American hostages in Lebanon demonstrated).

Nevertheless, a great deal of dual-use equipment and technology made its way to Iraq from the U.S. throughout the 1980s. Commerce Departments records, disclosed as a result of Iraqgate investigations, confirmed this. The investigations revealed that exports had been approved for military recipients and others involved in military research and development, including the Iraqi Air Force, Iraq’s Ministry of Defense, the Saad General Establishment (missile research), the State Organization for Technical Industries (military production), and al-Qaqaa Stater Establishment (explosives and propellants research and production). 1 Further evidence of this became available after the Persian Gulf war, when U.N. teams inspecting Iraqi sites found U.S. dual-use technology, along with that of other western countries, at facilities involved in Iraq’s nuclear weapons programs.2

CONTINUED BIG TIME...

http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/igessayx.htm

Someone who doesn't know his shinola from deja vu.

[Cleita]

9. Another great and informative post by the Octafish.

:applause:

[Octafish]

27. Saddam Hussein: Made in the USA

Here's something from the good folk at ThirdWorldTraverl.com:

Saddam Hussein: Made in the USA

by Mike Burke
[e-mail], February 14, 2003

"The Bush administration sent U.S. technology to the Iraqi military and to many Iraqi military factories, despite over-whelming evidence showing that Iraq intended to use the technology in its clandestine nuclear, chemical, biological, and long-range missile programs."

No this quotation is not pulled from a conspiracy-minded website, but from the Congressional Record from July 27, 1992. They are the words of the late Congressman Henry Gonzalez of Texas.
For months in the early 1990s Gonzalez released hundreds of documents that outlined how the highest levels of the U.S. government - including Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and current Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - had secretly and illegally helped arm Saddam Hussein. The scandal was known as Iraqgate.

In 1991, Charles Schumer, then a New York Congressman, now the New York Senator, said Hussein was Bush's Frankenstein: "He had been created in the White House laboratory with a collection of government programs, banks, and private companies." At the time, future Vice President Al Gore said, "Bush is presiding over a cover up significantly worse than Watergate."

But Iraqgate is now all but forgotten in the wake of the Clinton-era scandals of Whitewater and Monica. The definitive account of Iraqgate, Alan Friedman's Spider's Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq, is long out of print.

SNIP...

In December, the White House boldly seized Iraq's 12,000-page weapons document in order to censor parts for the non-permanent Security Council states.

Among the information deleted was a list of U.S. corporations, government agencies and laboratories that aided Iraq. The companies included Honeywell, Kodak, Bechtel, Dupont and Hewlett-Packard. Among the government agencies were the Departments of Defense, Energy, Commerce and Agriculture. And then there were government nuclear weapons laboratories Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia, which all offered training to Iraqi scientists. This information emerged only after a German news reporter obtained unedited portions of the Iraq documents.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Iraq/Saddam_MadeInUSA.html

PS: Hoping you all the best, Cleita!

[bobbieinok]

13. check out video 'thanks for the memory' ....saddam: he was always ours

http://www.bushflash.com/thanks.html

[Octafish]

28. Kissinger Associates, BNL and Iraq

Thanks, bobbieinok! Pile on the BFEE!

And what hurts them the most is the TRUTH!

That's why the unctuous turd on the right keeps popping up.



Call Henry the K. He fixes things for the BFEE.

KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, BNL AND IRAQ

(LINKS to)

More on Kissinger and BNL
BNL actually a client of Kissinger Associates
Letter to President Bush
Scowcroft stock ownership
Many large defence contractors
Background on National Security Council
NSC influence over export licensing for Iraq
Scowcroft and EXIMBANK military sales
Conclusion
Financial Times, 26 Apr 1991
Stock Holdings of Brent Scowcroft

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Texas is recognized for 60 minutes. Mr. GONZALEZ. Mr. Speaker, during a special order last week, I revealed that Henry Kissinger was a paid member of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Consulting Board for International Policy. Mr. Kissinger held this position during the height of the biggest banking scandal in United States history-$4 billion in unreported loans to Iraq by the Atlanta branch of BNL. This week I will reveal some new information regarding Mr. Kissinger and his relationship with BNL. I will also include in the RECORD a detailed list of Mr. Brent Scowcroft's stock holdings.


MORE ON KISSINGER AND BNL

In order to learn more about Mr. Kissinger's role at BNL, committee investigators contacted an attorney representing BNL in the United States and asked him to contact BNL in Rome. The BNL employee in Rome told BNL's attorney the following:

Mr. Kissinger has been a member of the BNL International Advisory Board since 1985. Mr. Kissinger is paid $10,000 for appearing at an Advisory Board meeting and he is paid extra for speaking at BNL functions. It is important to bring these facts out because BNL is owned by the Italian government. In effect, Mr. Kissinger's fees are indirectly paid for with Italian taxpayer money.

Banking Committee investigators were also told that Mr. Kissinger may still be a member of BNL Advisory Board. His term does not expire until next month. This information conflicts with what Mr. Kissinger was quoted as stating in a Financial Times article on April 26. In that article Mr. Kissinger stated that he resigned from BNL's advisory board on February 22, 1991. I will write BNL and Mr. Kissinger in order to clear up this discrepancy.


Mr. Kissinger went on to state in the same Financial Times article:

I resigned earlier this year because I don't want to be connected, I don't want to be asked about this sort of thing.

But it should be noted that Mr. Kissinger supposedly did not resign his BNL post until over 18 months after the BNL scandal became public in August 1989.

Another interesting point to note is the timing of Mr. Kissinger's supposed resignation from BNL on February 22, 1991. That date is just days before the Justice Department announced a 347 count indictment against the former employees of BNL after an exhaustive 18-month investigation. This is quite a coincidence.

http://www.pinknoiz.com/covert/iraqgate04.html

Such a nice boy.

[slor]

17. Great info! n/t

[Octafish]

30. Iraqgate, Saddam, Kuwait and George H.W. Bush

You're welcome, slor! Hey! Didja hear the war about...

Iraqgate, Saddam, Kuwait and George H.W. Bush

Iraqgate, Saddam, Kuwait and George H.W. Bush George H.W. Bush, as vice president and later as president, actively engaged in the supply of funds and intelligence to Saddam Hussein. This dictator started his war with Iran in 1980. The Reagan/Bush support for him may have been designed to provide a counterbalance to Iran, as well as preserving access to Iraqi oil. As reported in U.S. News and World Report, this support for Iraq began February 1982, with the removal of “Iraq from State Department list of countries supporting terrorism.” Further, in November 1984, “after of 17 years, Washington and Baghdad resumed full diplomatic relations. Within a month, the Administration began sharing intelligence with Iraq”1to help in the war with Iran.

When George H.W. Bush became president, he increased American support for the Iraqi dictator. As described by the U.S. News and World Report Article (referenced above):

“Despite Saddam Hussein's gassing of Iraqi Kurds, his destabilization of Lebanon with extensive weapons shipments, his generous support for some of the world's most dangerous terrorists and his obsessive quest for weapons of massdestruction, the Administration of George Bush defined as its policy ‘improved relations’ with the Iraqi leader.”

Based on “hundreds of declassified documents,” this article details the provision of at least a billion dollars in loan guarantees by the Administration, the skimming of profits from the loans, and the use of those profits for weapons purchases and research.

Again, according to U.S. News and World Report, in October 1989, Bush signed “National Security Decision Directive 26 ordering expanded U.S. economic ties to Iraq, despite concerns voiced by investigators that Iraq may have bartered commodities bought with U.S. aid for weapons.” In January 1990, Bush reaffirmed his policy “of preferential treatment for Iraq, signing a presidential order declaring that expanded trade and other exchanges are in the United States’ interest

CONTINUED in HTML:

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:UMkZHim1agwJ:trkonnel.com/excerpts/Iraqgate.pdf+iraqgate+%2B+henry-gonzalez&hl=en

Fun PDF download:

http://trkonnel.com/excerpts/Iraqgate.pdf

[Just Me]

18. He cut off US profiteering, the US profiteers wage war.

That's how these people have been operating for quite some time.

It's all about the money and power. Everything else is just false rhetoric and propaganda. Global fascism.

[Octafish]

32. Iraq's shop-till-you-drop nuclear program

Iraq's shop-till-you-drop nuclear program

IAEA inspectors found German fingerprints on much of Iraq's nuclear weapons technology.

By David Albright and Mark Hibbs
April 1992 pp. 26-37 (vol. 48, no. 03) © 1992 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

In a series of articles that began in March 1991, we have tried to separate fact from fiction about Iraq's ability to build nuclear weapons and to produce material to fuel them. After exposing Iraq's efforts to enrich uranium and design an atomic bomb, U.N. and IAEA experts zeroed in on how Iraq put its program together. The basic answer is that along with determination and persistence, Iraq had a great deal of foreign help.

Iraq's "Petrochemical Three," the secret nuclear program conducted under the authority of its Atomic Energy Commission with links to the Defense Ministry and the Ministry of Industry and Military Industrialization, received massive infusions of money and resources. Like the Manhattan Project that built the first atomic bombs in the United States, Iraq's program simultaneously pursued a number of different technical avenues to the bomb. Not knowing which efforts would succeed, Iraq poured billions of dollars into its multifaceted quest.

Providing for these programs required the establishment of elaborate procurement networks in Europe, North America, and Asia. Like the technical quest, the procurement effort was carried out on many fronts at once. Diplomacy and secrecy were required, because few companies would knowingly supply a nuclear weapons program, or even a secret nuclear program that was ostensibly for civil purposes. Iraq showed great ingenuity in hiding its purchases behind such innocuous pursuits as automobile manufacturing, dairy production, and oil refining.

Some of the basic infrastructure Iraq needed for the program--factories, electrical supply, and power equipment--was easy to obtain from abroad. But the more specific the equipment Iraq sought, the more other countries' export controls began to bite. Crucial transfers of components were blocked.

To evade export controls, Iraqi officials divided equipment orders into innocuous subcomponents. They also tried to buy machines to make sensitive components in Iraq. They used middlemen to disguise the destination of equipment and materials they were importing and to assure Western suppliers that the products the suppliers were exporting would be used for peaceful purposes. And the Iraqis seized opportunities to obtain any uncontrolled equipment and material that was available, often in enormous quantities, regardless of whether they were ready to use it. That practice generated the impression that Baghdad was closer to having a nuclear bomb than it in fact was .

CONTINUED TREASON...

http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=apr92albright

You're absolutely correct, RBHam! It's power and profit they want.

How these traitors sleep at night was beyond me until I realized they are morons, psychos and nutjobs.

[RBHam]

29. Oh Christ! More facts!

I HATE it when that happens - none of the establishment apologists ever venture a post on these threads.

Damn facts.

[nolabels]

31. Facts are only as good as the spin you can put on them

Did find this when I was looking for some more fact though

Poltical Emoticons for MSN Messenger

Bush got a coded message from Saddam. It read:

370HSSV-0773H

Bush was stumped and sent for the CIA. The CIA was stumped too, so it went to the NSA. The NSA couldn't solve it either, so they asked Bill Clinton. He suggested turning the message upside down... Anyway, here's an emoticon for Bush, Chirac, Saddam & Osama

(snip)
http://www.coolemoticons.com/politics-emoticons.htm

[Octafish]

33. Children were affected by Iraqgate -- thousands died.

Many from lack of food, milk, water, medicine... and as "collateral damage."

CHILDREN AFFECTED

IRAQGATE

EXCERPT...

Vast Global Toll Forecast From the Sept. 11 Attacks

Shock Reverberates in Developing World
By Alan Friedman (International Herald Tribune)
Monday, October 1, 2001

ROME: As many as 40,000 children under the age of 5 will die and some 10 million more people will be condemned to poverty because of the terrorist attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, the president of the World Bank said Sunday.

"We have seen the human toll from the recent attacks, with citizens from some 80 nations perishing in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania," James Wolfensohn said by telephone from Washington. "But there is another human toll that is largely unseen and one that will be felt in all parts of the developing world, especially Africa. We estimate that between 20,000 and 40,000 more children will die worldwide and some 10 million people will be condemned to live below the poverty line of $1 a day because of the terrorist attacks."

Mr. Wolfensohn said the economic fallout from the attacks would cause several poor countries to stall or fall into recession because of a sharp decline in exports, the collapse of tourism and steep drops in commodity prices and investment.

"There is an absolutely clear link between the drop in economic activity and infant mortality and poverty," Mr. Wolfensohn said.

CONTINUED GENOCIDE...

http://www.apfn.org/apfn/iraqgate.htm

Thanks, Just Me.
They used to respond,
then I'd use what they hate most: The Truth.
It's like they're allergic to it.

[Karenina]

34. SIGH...

:cry:

[Octafish]

36. Back as a young man...

...I worked at a newspaper that covered Gulf War I. Some knew that war was a bullshit set-up job. Most went on about their business.

One thing I knew: The war on Iraq was making a buttload of money for the BFEE. And that's exactly what it was then, only we didn't have that name. We -- my few friends who understood this shit -- instead called it something like the Busha Nostra or whatever.

Hey, Lone Nutters! That's not the only money the Bush Crime Family was making then. Look up what happened to all the money in the nation's Savings and Loans institutions. By the time Neil Bush and his accomplices were done, there was nothing in the vault. And the U.S. taxpayer was left holding a bill for $1.4 trillion. Not a bad haul.

Anyway, in the course of my duties on my route delivering papers, one of the many interesting people I met was in a group called "Victims of War." This person's family was Chaldean, Catholics from Iraq.

She really cared about all the people -- especially civilians -- dying. After the war, her group helped document how the economic sanctions impacted childhood mortality. There just wasn't enough milk, clean water or medicine to go around.

This woman and her group kept working on helping raise awareness of their homeland's situation and its people's plight. And they'd organize humanitarian assistance, sending what food and medicine and expertise and what they could.

Karenina, not in vain. Not in vain.

[seemslikeadream]

41. Proof of Trillions in Bu$h Family Business With Saddam

Proof of Trillions in Bu$h Family Business With Saddam 1989-1991
author: Gordon Thomas
The Bush family were doing business with Saddam Hussein from 1989 up to months before the outbreak of the first Gulf War.

In a document obtained by the respected London-based International Currency Review, it was claimed that after a year long investigation, it had uncovered evidence “of the mobilisation of trillions of dollars in 1989-91”. The document names a number of banks it alleges were “supervised by the Bush Sr White House” in the transactions


Business links – involving “the mobilisation of trillions of dollars” – by President Bush’s father and his brother Neil, were under investigation by America’s top spy catcher, Paul Redmond, when he resigned.

A well-placed Washington intelligence source said that Redmond quit after a White House meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

They are known as “The Enforcers” – ensuring there is no taint on the reputation of the increasingly embattled President with the failure to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Already, said the Washington source, the two men have ensured Bush distances himself from Tony Blair’s claims that the weapons will be found.

But equally Downing Street will want to stay clear of the allegation that the President’s family were doing business with Saddam from 1989 up to months before the outbreak of the first Gulf War.

In a document obtained by the respected London-based International Currency Review, it was claimed that after a year long investigation, it had uncovered evidence “of the mobilisation of trillions of dollars in 1989-91”.

The document names a number of banks it alleges were “supervised by the Bush Sr White House” in the alleged transactions.

The banks identified in the document include the British Royal Family bankers, Coutts; Morgan Guaranty Trust and Chase Manhattan, New York; Banco Exterior de Espana, Spain; First International Bank of Denver in the United States.

“What will cause astonishment is the provenance of some of these compromising documents. For many months we considered carefully whether they could be forgeries, and whether it could be credible that an intelligence organisation or a private gang of blackmailers and counterfeiters could replicate the precise behaviour of an obsolescent IBM computer to produce output identical to those images shown with this analysis. We checked these possibilities repeatedly with experts and also consulted banking sources to see whether these documents could possibly be fraudulent. The outcome of these investigations was unequivocally that the documentation is genuine.”

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/07/268817.shtml

Spies, Lies & Sneaky Guys: Espionage and Intelligence"

Paul Redmond is an internationally recognized authority on security, counterespionage, and counterintelligence, with hands-on experience throughout Western and Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia and the Former Soviet Union.

Mr. Redmond is a member of the Technical Advisory Group to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and a Consultant to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He serves on the Steering Committee of the Crime and Loss Prevention Institute, Northeastern University College of Criminal Justice.

During his thirty-year tenure at the Central Intelligence Agency, Mr. Redmond managed the CIA’s extensive counterintelligence organization, and counseled three succeeding Directors of Central Intelligence on highly sensitive counterintelligence matters, including technical and personnel security concerns. He established and built productive working relationships with NATO and with foreign intelligence and security chiefs worldwide. Redmond oversaw the counterintelligence aspects of personnel, computer systems and physical plants in the U.S. and abroad, and supervised the support provided by the CIA to the private sector relating to commercial counterespionage. He was instrumental in the apprehension of Aldrich Ames.
http://www.sabatiergroup.com/redmond.html



Paul Redmond, who headed counterintelligence for the CIA, was appointed to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security after meeting UD students in the Global Agenda series.

http://www.udel.edu/global/agenda/2003/gallery.html







The CIA and Its Secret Experiments

with MKULTRA & Germ Warfare.

America’s Great State Secret

by

Gordon Thomas

(Author of Seeds of Fire: China And The Story Behind The Attack On America)

MINDFIELD

· Sensational never-seen-before documents from inside the White House, CIA and other agencies.

· Reveals the documentary evidence that links US Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to the cover-up of the death of top CIA scientist, Frank Olson.



· Explains how the CIA financed a ruthless and systematic assault of the human psyche – using a British-born psychiatrist to spearhead the assault.

· Names other world renowned physicians who were involved in the most sinister research programme ever created by any United States government – and its secret partner – the British government.

· Reveals how a woman was programmed to become a CIA assassin.

· Describes how a CIA chemist was murdered by his own colleagues after he had turned to the one man he thought he could trust – a London psychiatrist engaged in similar work.

· Reveals how “expendables” – the CIA generic name for those selected for killing – were secretly murdered after they had been experimented on in Europe.

· Describes how the CIA used prostitutes and mental patients in other experiments.

· Explains how the CIA deliberately pioneered the drug culture whose effects are still with us.

· Reveals how the CIA agent selected to monitor the experiments eventually died at the hands of a physician steeped in the methods perfected by the CIA.

· Identifies how the CIA experiments are still carried on in secret establishments in Israel and China.

· Uncovers CIA terminal experiments on Vietcong prisoners in Vietnam.

· Publishes the CIA Manual of Assassination – a shocking document describing how to commit state-approved murder.

“Meticulously researched, Mindfield is a deeply disturbing story of hideous government experiments using drugs and behavioural modification. Teaching hospitals on both sides of the Atlantic were used. Many of the doctors who performed those experiments remain in high office today and still conduct those experiments with impunity. Mindfield is a terrifying warning how easy it is for elected governments to sanction secret experiments to control human behaviour. Gordon Thomas has meticulously taken us from incredulity to awareness of the Machiavellian lengths our governments go to in our unsuspecting name. This remarkable book is essential reading for all those in a trusted role to care for people. In every sense it is an outstanding text that reveals the darker side of medicine.”

Professor Anne White
M.C.S.P. Bsc M.D. F.R.C.P.A.
Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine
Department of Psychiatry
McMaster University, Canada

http://www.gordonthomas.ie/mindfield.htm

[Octafish]

42. Wanna Piss Poppy Off? Mention "Sarkis Soghanalian."

Wow, Dreamy! Some banks, there. Thank you very. Much.



Speaking of Poppy getting rich off of Saddam, one name jumps out...

Bush's Courting of Saddam

An '80s business overture that fits a lifetime 'W' pattern of CIA dealings

by Wayne Barrett With Special Reporting by Nathan Deuel
October 26th, 2004 10:20 AM alert me by e-mail

Sarkis Soghanalian, the international arms dealer who bought billions in weapons for Saddam Hussein, says he was approached at a Newark airport luncheon meeting in the early '80s by a representative of then Texas oil entrepreneur George W. Bush, who was seeking to do business in Iraq.

Featured in lengthy interviews on 60 Minutes, 20/20, and PBS's Frontline over the years, the twice-convicted Soghanalian was dubbed the "Merchant of Death." He was released from prison at the request of federal prosecutors who, as recently as 2001, cited his "substantial assistance to law enforcement." Justice Department officials questioned him in Washington this year about an ongoing case in Peru involving the sale of 10,000 assault rifles to Colombian guerrillas, but they did not extradite him though he is facing a possible 15-year jail sentence there for brokering the deal.

Soghanalian recalled in half a dozen phone interviews with the Voice that he met with a business associate of W's whose full name he cannot recall but who, like Soghanalian, was Armenian. The meeting was arranged, he says, by a friend who was a leader in Armenian charity circles. Soghanalian recalls that the business associate told him: "George W. Bush wants to do business in Iraq."

"Unfortunately, I was pretty high-profile at the time," says Soghanalian, "and everyone was trying to get close to me. Why would I want their business? I knew his father. What did I need him for?" Soghanalian, who had a stopover in Newark on his way to Baghdad, says he can't remember any specifics about the suggested business. The businessman, he said, "was sent on behalf of Bush" and "said to me, 'This is an important man.' " Soghanalian claims that the man told him that W had "a lot of contacts overseas" and that Soghanalian replied: "I have contacts too. I don't need more contacts." Soghanalian says he has known the senior Bush since at least 1976, when Bush was CIA director. Soghanalian has had such a long-standing CIA relationship that David Armstrong of the National Security News Service calls him the agency's "arms dealer of choice."

Soghanalian says Bush's representative continued to "chase me around" after the airport meeting. Living in an overseas location he did not want disclosed, the 300-pound, 75-year-old legendary dealer said: "I am not where I am and have never been where I was." Though he volunteered the story of the Newark solicitation, he expressed concerns about "angering" the Bushes and repeatedly cut off later interviews, citing health concerns.

CONTINUED...

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0443,barrett,57857,1.html

[seemslikeadream]

44. SARKIS SOGHANALIAN FACT SHEET

SARKIS SOGHANALIAN
FACT SHEET
BORN:
1929 or 1930 in Syria, in a region that is now part of Turkey; raised in Lebanon.

PROFILE:
An ethnic Armenian, Lebanese citizen, has lived for more than 20 years in the United States as a permanent resident; last reported in Los Angeles. Has or has had offices in Paris, Athens, Amman (Jordan) and Miami. Weighs about 300 pounds. Walks with a limp and suffers from heart disease.

CLIENTS:
Has armed Saddam Hussein of Iraq (about $1.6 billion), Gen. Anastasio Somoza and the Contras in Nicaragua, Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri (Argentine junta leader), Mobutu Sese Seko (former dictator of Zaire, now Congo), Christian Fallange Militias in Lebanon, and many others. As owner of the air transport company Pan Aviation, he leased a plane to Ferdinand Marcos for his planned return to the Philippines during the unsuccessful 1987 military coup; sold an American C-130 cargo plane to Libyan leader Col. Muammar Qaddafi; and rented planes to the CIA, allegedly for Contra operations involving drug trafficking. In the 1980s, he sold the Iraqi army $280 million worth of uniforms, in partnership with former U.S. Vice President Spiro Agnew, former Attorney General John Mitchell and Nixon's former chief of staff, Jack Brennan. When the U.S. manufacturer was found to be too expensive, Mitchell had former President Nixon write a letter, successfully urging Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu to manufacture the uniforms.

HAS COLLABORATED WITH:
The CIA, the FBI, the State Department and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Helped break a counterfeit $100-bill printing operation in Lebanon and tried, unsuccessfully, to negotiate the release of U.S. hostage Terry Anderson in Lebanon.

MOST RECENTLY:
In 1999, air-dropped 10,000 Kalashnikov rifles to Colombia's FARC (Fuerzos Armandas Revolucionarias de Colombia) guerillas -- leftist insurgents aligned with cocaine traffickers. (The United States recently sent $1 billion in aid to help the Colombian government defeat them.) Soghanalian says the deal was meant for Peru. It later emerged that the CIA had approved the deal and that it was organized by the disgraced former Peruvian intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos, who was on the CIA payroll for years and is now in jail on arms and drug-trafficking charges.

CRIMINAL RECORD:
1977: Bilked $1.1 million from British competitor Boca Investments by reneging on a transfer of machine guns to Mauritania.: Was convicted in 1982 of wire fraud in connection with the case; sentenced to five years' probation and forced to pay restitution.
1986: Arrested for possession of five unregistered machine guns and two unregistered rocket launchers in 1984 at Miami International Airport. Also charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. A federal judge dismissed all charges in 1988.
1991: Convicted on six counts of conspiring to export arms to Iraq without the required federal licenses, a violation of the U.S. Arms Control Export Act. The case, which included two former officials of Hughes Helicopter Corp., involved the sale of 103 combat helicopters and two rocket launchers in 1983 during the Iran-Iraq War. In 1992 he was sentenced to six years in prison and a $20,000 fine. The U.S. attorney had asked for maximum of 24 years and a $240,000 fine.
1993: A federal judge reduced the conviction for sales to Iraq from six and a half years to two years; prosecutor would not explain. Soghanalian's attorney later said it concerned intelligence Soghanalian gave to U.S. law-enforcement officials to break up a $100-bill counterfeiting operation in the Bekaa valley in Lebanon.
2001: Sentenced to time served (10 months) of a possible five-year sentence for wire fraud involving stolen cashier's checks. Released on recommendation from U.S. attorney's office in exchange for "substantial assistance to law enforcement" in an unspecified investigation.
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/sierraleone/soghanalian.html

[Octafish]

51. Now THAT's a CV.

Dear Mods: This should be OK to print, as it's a Congressional Record (Still a public document Smirko!).

UNITED STATES ARMS SALES TO IRAQ:
EXCERPTS OF RECENT CBS `60 MINUTES' BROADCAST

(House of Representatives - January 31, 1991)


The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Owens of Utah). Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Wisconsin is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. MOODY. Mr. Speaker, on Sunday, January 20, the CBS television network program `60 Minutes' broadcast an extraordinary interview with an international arms dealer, Sarkis Soghanalian, who lives in Miami. I am placing in the Record a transcript of key excerpts from that interview.

The revelations and allegations made by Mr. Soghanalian are, and must be, extremely disturbing to every American. They are disturbing to Mr. Soghanalian. He gives a first-hand description of official and unofficial American involvement in the enormous buildup of arms to Saddam Hussein. Much of this buildup occurred after the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988. He gives chilling accounts of the cozy relationship among high past and present U.S. Government officials who permitted, and in some cases, actually assisted his sales of many of the lethal weapons Saddam Hussein is now using to bring death to American military personnel and civilians throughout the Middle East region.

I congratulate the staff of `60 Minutes' for bringing this explosive matter to the attention of the American public. Executive producer Don Hewitt, producer Lowell Bergman, and on-air reporter Steve Kroft have raised profound questions in this piece that demand further investigation.

Mr. Speaker, last week, after his interview on `60 Minutes' I traveled to Miami to spend a day with Mr. Soghanalian exploring in greater detail many of the issues he touched on in the TV broadcast. At a later time I will share some of these items with the Congress. At this time, I can only say to my colleagues that the outline contained in the following excerpts from the `60 Minutes' broadcast only scratches the surface of where and how the dictator Saddam Hussein acquired the deadly weapons he is now using against American and allied soldiers in the gulf war.

If our fears of a protracted ground war in Iraq are borne out--and I hope they won't be--hundreds and perhaps thousands of American soldiers will be wounded or killed by weapons our own Government helped Saddam Hussein acquire. Toward the end of this excerpted interview Mr. Soghanalian discusses the weaponry he has sold Iraq with the direct involvement and cooperation of various U.S. Government agencies.

Mr. Speaker, this matter calls out for further investigation.

Mr. Soghanalian is to be commended for his openness and his willingness to bring out into the open this most disturbing issue of the U.S. Government's role in arming Saddam Hussein.

Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the transcript of the `60 Minutes' interview.





The Man Who Armed Iraq

Kroft. Sarkis Soghanalian is the arms dealer who armed Iraq. During the war between Iraq and Iran, despite a worldwide embargo, Sarkis sold billions in arms to Saddam Hussein.

This Lebanese Armenian has made a career out of breaking international embargoes--supplying arms to countries and groups with whom the United States in particular--did not want to be seen with in public.

Filling that niche made him rich. And supplying Iraq made him during the 1980s the largest private arms dealer in the world.

As you would imagine, Sarkis's intimate relationship with Iraq's military gives him unique insight into their strategy. For a couple of days earlier this week, he talked with us about the arms he sold to Saddam Hussein and gave us what his assessment of what might be in store for our own troops.

Sarkis. Iraqi troops will never surrender to foreign troops. If they use Egyptians on a front line, you know, for psychological reason, maybe Iraqi soldier will say, I am surrendering to another brother, but to surrender to a foreign troop like Germans or French or American, they don't . . . they will fight to their last bullet.

Kroft. Sarkis Soghanalian not only provided weapons to Iraq, he inspected the front lines regularly during the war with Iran, checked out captured equipment, even helped develop Iraq's military strategy. The day before the war began, Sarkis told us in his Miami office that Iraq would, in fact, put up little or no resistance to U.S. air power. But his predictions about a ground war that is almost sure to follow are not so rosy.

Sarkis. The United States is facing hard core, tough battlefield trained ground forces.

Kroft. It's not going to be like Grenada?

Sarkis. No. Grenada was a vacation. Panama was the same way. This is not Panama, this is not Grenada. And you're fighting a different kind of people.

Kroft. What do you mean . . . ?

Sarkis. Well, Iraqi soldiers can go into the desert, into sand, and sit for two, three days. They don't need no heavy arms. They don't need no distilled water, no bottled water, you know. They can get milk out of a camel and survive, but they will dig in and wait for us to come in.

Kroft. Sarkis thinks the real battle will come when allied troops try to push the Iraqis out of populated areas like Kuwait City.

Sarkis. How we gonna kick those guys out of the houses? It's
gonna be like Berlin, wall to wall, and room to room . . . they will try to cause as much personal casualties as they can in order to embarrass our leaders here. That's their tactic. This is what's gonna be concentrated on. And Air Force superiority electronics-wise, maybe they jam all their equipment, that's . . . they don't care about that. But the major aim is how much casualty they can cause. . . . The equipment is advanced equipment, but it is not for this war. You are not fighting in a climate like European climate, your fighting heat, rain, dust. It won't work.

Kroft. Sarkis says the equipment he sold to Iraq has been customized to withstand the heat and sand and dust of the Middle East. He says Iraq's military hardware may be more reliable.

Sarkis. Because it's not electronic . . . it's conventional weapons. Just like their tanks. They don't have air conditioning, no stabilizer, no nothing. They just, you know, the old-fashioned conventional thing. They dig a hole, they circle a couple of times, they make a hole. They sit there like a sniper and wait for the enemy to come in. And they have artillery superiority.

Kroft. You sold the Iraqis quite a bit of artillery, French artillery . . . the 155 Howitzer . . self propelled?

Sarkis. Yes.

Kroft. Why is it superior to anything the United States has?

Sarkis. We do not have the same range as this vehicle . . . this gun has. It's modified to 42 kilometers <25 miles>. What do we have in the field to match this gun?

Kroft. The Iraqis have a 20 kilometer <12 mile> advantage in terms of artillery range.

Sarkis. Yeah. They can fight from a distance.

Kroft. And Sarkis says that the French artillery pieces he sold to Iraq, over one hundred of them, are backed by thousands of specially modified Soviet long-range cannons, as well as advanced artillery purchased from South Africa by way of Austria. Sarkis used Austria as a middle man to get around U.N. sanctions against South Africa. A lot of different people had their hands in this, one way or another.

Sarkis. Oh, yeah the . . . the . . . war game.

Kroft. What do you mean the war game?

Sarkis. Well, some people lose blood, some people make money. That's why I don't want to get involved in this war. I don't want to make money on . . .

Kroft. You're already involved in this war, aren't you?

Sarkis. Well, I don't look at it that way.

Kroft. A lot of that equipment that's facing the United States right now was sold to the Iraqis by you, Sarkis.

Sarkis. Yeah, but I didn't sell it eight years ago to fight ourselves today. That was sold to fight Khomeini. And we were against Khomeini. U.S. had hostages there, and I said, I'll go ahead and take my share in it.

Kroft. So you sold the weapons to the Iraqis to fight the. . .

Sarkis. Khomeinis . . . not to fight the, you know, Americans.

Kroft. Right. Because that would be best for America . . . and best maybe for Sarkis.

Sarkis. Well, you get compensated sometimes. There's nothing wrong with that. And if Sarkis wouldn't do it, somebody else would do it.

Kroft. And other arms dealers and countries did. Brazil provided thousands of armored vehicles. China and the Soviet Union sent tanks, missiles and munitions. German companies sold Saddam poison gas technology, and France, not only approved the sale of artillery to Iraq, but armed helicopters and antiaircraft missile systems.

This Chilean arms manufacturer sold Saddam deadly cluster bombs--reportedly with technical assistance from U.S. companies, and the United States allowed American computer technology to go to Iraq as well. It allowed Sarkis to sell Hughes and Bell helicopters. The U.S. government approved the sale after Iraq promised that they would only be used for civilian purposes. Sarkis told us that the helicopters were used as transportation during Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

Sarkis. I did it with the knowledge of U.S. authorities, policy makers--and also they have delivered weapons that are equally weapons as I did. I do not have anything on my conscience. I did not sell the weapons to kill the American boys.

Kroft. Which agencies of the U.S. government knew about Sarkis and his deals with Iraq? Well, according to Sarkis, almost all of them. And federal court documents show that Sarkis Soghanalian had a relationship with U.S. intelligence agencies for decades, and has performed work on their behalf.

Not all of Sarkis's deals with Iraq involve weapons. He arranged the sale of $280 million in uniforms to the Iraqi army. And Sarkis's partners in the deal included former Vice President Spiro Agnew, a former Attorney General, Colonel Jack Brennan.

The partners used their influence to get ex-President Nixon to provide them with these letters of introduction to heads of state around the world.

Do you think there was anything unusual about a former Vice President and a former Attorney General and a former Chief of Staff for the President of the United Stateas to want to be selling military uniforms to the Iraqis?

Sarkis. They were not only in the uniform business. They would sell their mothers if they could, just to make the money.

Kroft. Some of his partners in that deal aren't talking to him
at all today. They're in court suing Sarkis over the multimillion dollar commissions they say he hasn't paid them

... Are you a Merchant of Death? You are an arms salesman.

Sarkis. No. I am a coordinator of industries that produce arms. But I am not a salesman. I don't carry no bag. I don't carry no catalogue in my pocket to sell arms to anybody.

Kroft. Why did this international arms dealer --who is currently under federal indictment in Miami--decide to talk with us? Well, Sarkis says this is one war he doesn't want any part of.

Sarkis. No, this war stinks. It's not to anybody's advantage. I don't know who's advising who. This is a dirty war for us. What are we gonna do with Kuwait? We lose so many men, and next spring the Emir of Kuwait is sitting in Monaco, in Monte Carlo, happy with European girls. I'd fight for anybody that I have faith in. ... The man has 80 wives. Which one can he love, you know, if he's raising a family or a country? What do you owe the Emir of Kuwait? Why? For all this much sacrifice, or for prestige?

Kroft. Which do you think?

Sarkis. I think it's for ego, somebody's ego. ...

Kroft. You don't think it's worth committing a half a million American troops to ...

Sarkis. Hell no. ... go to die for this garbage war, no way, not me. I obey my country. I obey my President. He's a lovely man. He's a good man. He's, ah, intelligent person, but how he's making this decision, I don't know.

Kroft. And Sarkis Soghanalian made a decision too. He says Iraq has approached him about breaking the current embargo and selling them more arms. He says he's not running their phone calls.

Sarkis. It against my principle ... to go against U.S. policy. I'm staying away 100 percent now because I don't want to supply them with nothing. No spare parts or nothing. No vehicles, no shoes, no clothes, no nothing because they will support the enemy of today. A friend of yesterday is an enemy of today.




... Kroft. And tomorrow?

Sarkis. Who knows? Maybe a friend again.

Kroft . For the last three years Sarkis Soghanalian has been under a federal indictment for--among other things--conspiring to sell 300 American-built Hughes combat helicopters to Iraq.

The case has been stalled largely because U.S. intelligence agencies have been reluctant to turn over classified files that Sarkis says he needs to conduct his defense.

END

SOURCE:

http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1991/C231.html

Here's a more contemporary interview, for those who think history is way in the past.

Trento: 1. How do we determine if the US intelligence community is successful? They have not located bin Laden.

Soghanalian: Laughter. It depends. In the 1980’s the old Bush loved Saddam. I brought his friends to Iraq on my planes. He defeated Iran on behalf of the United States and Saudi Arabia. The cost was extremely high in the number of dead for Iraq and Iran. So I guess that was a success for the CIA. Then he asked the US to help him with a dispute with Kuwait. The Americans refused and he decided we had betrayed him. Because the CIA not read him correctly that was a failure.

Trento: Has this undermined the public and President’s confidence?

Soghanalian: What confidence? Bush believes anything the CIA tells him. The public – the Americans – don’t really know. When Osama bin Laden attacked the World Trade Center a second time and the CIA missed it, that should have undermined the public and President’s confidence. Americans forgive big mistakes.

Trento: 2. President Bush stated flatly that Saddam has connections to Al Qaeda and weapons of mass destruction. The intelligence community has failed to back him up on either assertion. Did the President overreach or are the intelligence organs being too cautious?

Soghanalian: Al Qaeda hates someone like Saddam. Saddam has no serious religious interests. Saudi Arabia, Quatar, all America’s so-called friends have more ties to Al Qaeda then Saddam. AlQaeda scares people, so if you say Saddam is Al Qaeda it will scare people. That’s why Bush is doing it.

Trento: 3. Numerous articles have said that Saudi Arabia is responsible for funding Al Qaeda through various Islamic charities and front groups. Should the intelligence community have known this before 9/11 and should the administration have acted upon it?

Soghanalian: The Saudi’s and the CIA turned the Islamic fundamentalists into a major force. So the CIA knew. They moved the money through Saudi banks and through BCCI and Pakistan. The US went along because it helped get weapons to the anti Soviet forces. They were never going to stop there friends because it would expose those in the CIA who played a role, including Bush’s father.

CONTINUED...

seemslikeadream, you never cease to amaze me.

[seemslikeadream]

57. Those were the days my friend

Remember that record we made together





Then you joined up and went off to war, or so you said

[Octafish]

59. Yo. I can respec' that.

So, why do I get no respec?



No. It wasn't the airplane. It was beauty who killed the beast.



You saw through me and, so, I returned to my daylight job, collecting parachute silk to trade for Egyptian cotton.





You always knew I'd come back.





I'm the luckiest fellah in the world.

[DemonFighterLives]

47. Thanks Octafish

Very impressive list of "Know Your Bushies" you have here.
:kick:

I always like the refresher, because as time goes by a person starts to think that they imagined it all.

I can't see Saddam being left to say much about it all. Probably take his pill like Casey did.

[Octafish]

48. There's so many crimes, so little time to list them all. That's a PROMIS.

You're welcome, DemonFighterLives! One almost needs specialized software to prosecute the BFEE, they've done so much criminality.

Once I designed an Iran-Contra set of cards, you know, with Ollie North on the front:



On the back would go his "stats."

Treason.
Murder.
Perjury.
Drug Dealing.
Grand Theft.

That's just for starters. Anyway, I imagined a deck of cards filled with these jokers would make it easier for the average American to keep track of the BFEE traitors.

That probably wasn't he inspiration behind Inslaw's PROMIS -- Prosecutor's Management System -- the program Ed Meese and his turdy friends stole from the Hamilton's company. Meese and certain members of the Reagan-Bush badministration sold it to many nations around the world. They installed a Trojan horse or a backdoor or some such thing that enabled the BFEE to spy on who and why almost every nation around the world had under arrest. A mahhhhvelous achievement of theivery and subterfuge i the name of profit -- er, national security!

America’s Spy Software Scandal,
Courtesy of the U.S. DOJ

By Michelle Malkin
http://educate-yourself.org/tg/TCUpromisscandal16jul03.shtml
July 16, 2003
The Observer
Montgomery County, PA Vol. XXIV, NO. 9

Summary: Inslaw deserves to be compensated. More importantly, the American people deserve to know the truth: Did government greed and bureaucratic hubris lead to a wholesale sellout of our national security? Did Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden have access to a U.S. computer tracking program that enabled them to monitor our intelligence-gathering efforts and financial transactions? If so, who is responsible for allowing the program to fall into their hands? And who else among America’s enemies might have access to the tracking system?

It’s an explosive spy software scandal that no one in official Washington wants to investigate.

This complex, tangled story began two decades ago, when a tiny private company called Inslaw Inc. developed a software package to help U.S. attorneys’ offices in large urban districts keep tabs on their criminal prosecutors’ caseloads. The program, dubbed the Prosecutor’s Management Information System (PROMIS), was effective and popular. It allowed a prosecutor to locate defendants and witnesses, track motions and monitor ongoing investigations. In 1982, Inslaw won a large Justice Department contract to implement the system nationwide.

In the meantime, Inslaw also developed privately owned enhancements to PROMIS. Despite contractural guarantees of Inslaw’s proprietary rights to the enhanced version of PROMIS, the Justice Department essentially commandeered the improved program for its own uses without paying for it. Inslaw was forced into bankruptcy and began an endless fight with the Justice Department to recoup its losses.

In the course of their court battles, Inslaw founder Bill Hamilton and his wife innocently stumbled upon shocking national security revelations. Former Attorney General Ed Meese, the Hamiltons concluded, had conspired to force Inslaw into bankruptcy so that an old Meese crony, California businessman Earl Brian, could take over the company’s assets. The Hamilton’s obtained information through sworn affidavits of several individuals that suggested Meese, Brian, high-ranking Justice Department official Peter Videnieke and others wanted to modify and distribute the enhanced PROMIS software with ‘back-door’ capabilities for covert intelligence operations.

CONTINUED...

http://educate-yourself.org/tg/TCUpromisscandal16jul03.shtml

That was written by Mann Coulter's archrival for adoration by the ignoramii, Michelle Malkin. Great summary. Love ya, Babe!

[DrDebug]

52. Kick

:kick:

[Octafish]

54. La Gran Enchilada

Thanks, DrDebug!



More light on the Bush Money Making War Machine, not to mention the Press Corpse that covers-up for them:

IRAQGATE

The Big One That (Almost) Got Away
Who Chased it -- and Who Didn't

by Russ W. Baker

ABC News Nightline opened last June 9 with words to make the heart stop. "It is becoming increasingly clear," said a grave Ted Koppel, "that George Bush, operating largely behind the scenes throughout the 1980s, initiated and supported much of the financing, intelligence, and military help that built Saddam's Iraq into the aggressive power that the United States ultimately had to destroy."

SNIP...

Complex, challenging, mind-boggling stories (from Iran-contra to the S&L crisis to BCCI) increasingly define our times: yet we don't appear to be getting any better telling them. In the interest of learning from our mistakes, this reporter examined several hundred articles and television transcripts on Iraqgate and spoke to dozens of reporters, experts, and generally well-informed news consumers.

SNIP...

And we've learned that the obscure Atlanta branch of Italy's largest bank, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, relying partially on U.S. taxpayer-guaranteed loans, funneled $ 5 billion to Iraq from 1985 to 1989. Some government-backed loans were supposed to be for agricultural purposes, but were used to facilitate the purchase of stronger stuff than wheat. Federal Reserve and Agriculture department memos warned of suspected abuses by Iraq, which apparently took advantage of the loans to free up funds for munitions. U.S. taxpayers have been left holding the bag for what looks like $ 2 billion in defaulted loans to Iraq.

SNIP...

THE FOOL ON THE HILL

The Times largely ignored Representative Gonzalez, meanwhile, as he made his allegations and entered supporting documents into the Congressional Record. Sciolino got around to a close look at the man making the charges on July 3. Her piece, headed ECCENTRIC STILL BUT OBSCURE NO MORE, cast Gonzalez as something of a buffoon, and included charges that his disclosure of sensitive information was a threat to national security -- without explaining why it would be. The piece could almost be read as a justification for the Times's failure to follow Gonzalez's earlier charges.

The Journal, which regularly reported Gonzalez's steady flow of documents and pronouncements, was far more charitable in Fialka's July 31 profile of the congressman. Headed LONER GONZALEZ TOILS TO EXPOSE WHITE HOUSE ROLE IN AIDING IRAQ IN YEARS LEADING UP TO GULF WAR, it presented a tough, uncorruptible maverick.

WHAT THEY MISSED

CONTINUED...

http://archives.cjr.org/year/93/2/iraqgate.asp

[Frank Rose]

60. Hello, Octafish!

I added your blog to my favorites list. I'm leaving on vacation tomorrow morning, and I've had too much wine to read tonight, but I will surely check it out in-depth when I return home. Thank you for all your research and analysis.

[seemslikeadream]

61. KNOW YOUR BFEE

http://knowyourbfee.blogspot.com/

[Octafish]

63. Demopedia.com has it, too.

http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/index.php/Know_your_BFEE

Thanks to DrDebug and DU!



It's a team thing.

Oh yea.



Elizabeth "Bessie" Coleman

Of course, there are some star players.



Thank goodness we have so many role models, too.



Of course, some people don't take advantage of the opportunities they're handed (full disclosure: I am one):

The real goal is the seizure of Saudi oil

Iraq is no threat. Bush wants war to keep US control of the region

September 5, 2002
by Mo Mowlam
The Guardian

What is most chilling is that the hawks in the Bush administration must know the risks involved. They must be aware of the anti-American feeling throughout the Middle East. They must be aware of the fear in Egypt and Saudi Arabia that a war against Iraq could unleash revolutions, disposing of pro-western governments, and replacing them with populist anti-American Islamist fundamentalist regimes. We should all remember the Islamist revolution in Iran. The Shah was backed by the Americans, but he couldn't stand against the will of the people. And it is because I am sure that they fully understand the consequences of their actions, that I am most afraid. I am drawn to the conclusion that they must want to create such mayhem.

Why is he so determined to take the risk? The key country in the Middle East, as far as the Americans are concerned, is Saudi Arabia: the country with the largest oil reserves in the world, the country that has been prepared to calm the oil markets, producing more when prices are too high and less when there is a glut. The Saudi royal family has been rewarded with best friend status by the west for its cooperation. There has been little concern that the government is undemocratic and breaches human rights, nor that it is in the grip of an extreme form of Islam. With American support it has been believed that the regime can be protected and will do what is necessary to secure a supply of oil to the west at reasonably stable prices.

Since September 11, however, it has become increasingly apparent to the US administration that the Saudi regime is vulnerable. Both on the streets and in the leading families, including the royal family, there are increasingly anti-western voices. Osama bin Laden is just one prominent example. The love affair with America is ending. Reports of the removal of billions of dollars of Saudi investment from the United States may be difficult to quantify, but they are true. The possibility of the world's largest oil reserves falling into the hands of an anti-American, militant Islamist government is becoming ever more likely - and this is unacceptable.

SNIP...

- Mo Mowlam was a member of Tony Blair's cabinet from 1997-2001

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,786332,00.html

brief history of Saudi Arabia (politically) and their oil reserves

http://www.asponews.org/ASPO.newsletter.021.php

Chimpageddon is what they want.
Gets rid of the excess population, all at once.

[DrDebug]

66. I am a hunter-gatherer as well

That's how it works. We hunt for some stories, gather stories from others and then tie it altogether. And it's the result of 1000s of people, reporters and each throws in their stone and we are all hoping that the wall of stones becomes large enough to stop the Political Military Industrial Complex called BFEE.

This week I've added another BFEE Scandal. Beautiful Panama. The country created by the US and when it went its own way: invaded by the US. I loved the parallels. Lies, lies, lies, illegal war, narco colonism, military industrial complex, silent mass media etc. It was like Iraq on a small scale.


http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/index.php/Panama

And all for this:


Maybe it's a story for another BFEE session. I'm sure there's more to hunt and gather...

[Octafish]

62. Heyo! Frank Rose!

Good to read you! Hope all is well with you and yours. A little wine heightens the senses. So feel free to remember any and all criminality on the part of these fascistic turdballs occupying the Oval Office and most of the government. First we need to name them and identify their perfidy. Then we can indict 'em. Wouldn't it be nice to get them all?

BTW: You're most welcome. You and your encouragement are two of the big reasons I do this. Guilt is another one, but that's another story between you and me...



Hey! Not to change the subject, but did you read that it wasn't about oil?

It was about a whole LOT of oil.

The last Gulf War 

By Jennifer Thompson 

On January 16, 1991, the US, in coalition with the richest and most powerful industrialised nations, including Australia, launched a massive war against Iraq. It resulted in the deaths of at least 150,000 Iraqis, the almost complete devastation of its industry and economy, and the radioactive poisoning of the country with depleted uranium. The effect of economic sanctions since 1990 have been worse, killing up to 1.5 million people -- 5% of the pre-war population -- through starvation, disease and lack of medicines. 

The imperialists' excuse was Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, and other Arab governments and petromonarchies were bribed and pressured to support the war. The invasion of Kuwait should not be justified, but the far greater crime began with the bombing of Iraq and Kuwait by US-led forces. 

US interests in the Middle East 

The US wanted to smash Iraq's military and industrial power, to eliminate any threat to the most powerful state in the Middle East and the US' chief ally, Israel. This paved the way for a US-imposed ``solution'' to the Arab-Israeli conflict. It was also intended to intimidate any other Third World countries from challenging western economic and political dominance, and reverse the strong public anti-war sentiment in western countries -- the ``Vietnam Syndrome''. 

The seeds of the conflict lay in the colonial powers' long-time dominance in the region. Their main interest was its oil reserves. After World War II, seven giant US and European oil companies gained exclusive control of Middle East oil through interlocking concessions. 

US military power grew to support their exploitation of the region. When Middle East countries acquired direct ownership of the region's oil fields, western oil companies still retained control and a lion's share of the profits by controlling two-thirds of the world's oil refining capacity and international marketing. 

CONTINUED...

http://www.dsp.org.au/dsp/resist/r9last.html

[yowzayowzayowza]

64. Octafish, for all the times I...

read yer stuff w/o comment, let me add

:yourock:

I jus have one question:

As this phenomenon is MUCH bigger then a hand full of people, doesn't referring to it as the BFEE really diminish and subvert an understanding of the scope of the problem?

[Octafish]

65. Thanks for bringing that up. The "label" BFEE...

... is just the call-sign, a mnemonic device. It is meant to act as the peg upon which all the many memories, acts of cruelty and criminality that have been caused by these traitors over the past 42 years can be called to mind.

Think about the one thing: the name, and the attributes and characteristics of the noun follow and are called to mind. One of those is the extent of the problem.

I try never to gloss over the criminality, the treason and the genocide perpetrated by what I label the "Bush Family Evil Empire." That moniker, BTW, I discovered at Bartcop. I wish I had it 42 years ago.

The Bush men --, and their Republican and Democratic counterparts in America and their associates around the world -- are but mere stooges and sub-stooges for ther masters, what can only be imagined as ruling global economic elite, capable of buying governments and nations.

So, yes, yowzayowazyowza: The criminality, the treason, the genocide perpetrated by this class of criminal can not be diminished. It must be recognized, however. Giving it a name makes it possible to remember later. For the indictments.

Were we to go after the BFEE for real with a full-court prosecutorial press, it's doubtful the current prison system would have the capacity for all the creeps they'd have to lock up. The Congress alone has several hundred, and the courts and the Pentagon and the rest of the madministration. There are a LOT of crooks. Their number is no excuse not to go after them.