United States News Digest
One Neo-Con Head Rolls! Poindexter Resigns Over Terrorism Futures
Admiral John M. Poindexter, the Cheneyite flack most recently associated with a plan to sell futures on terrorist acts, resigned in scandal July 31, after the plan was exposed July 28 by Democratic Senators Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Ron Wyden of Oregon.
According to highly informed sources in the Washington intelligence community, the plan was instantly killed by Republicans after it became public, because the full details would reveal a massive "Big Brother" police-state database on Americans being put together under the cover of this program. After Dorgan and Wyden called the plan to public attention, Senate Republicans Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (Va.), Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (Kans.), and Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (Ak.), conferred and said that they all agreed "that this should be immediately disestablished." Warner said he then spoke to DARPA head Tony Tether, "and we mutually agreed that this thing should be stopped."
Intelligence sources says that Warner's statement that DARPA "didn't think through the full ramifications of the program...." was a thin cover story. What is true is that the head of DARPA moved instantly to "stop all engines on this matter."
The plan was nothing less than the Pentagon setting up an "assassination and coup" derivatives market. The design was for an electronic futures exchange, called the Policy Analysis Market, to allow traders to place bets that events such as assassinations and coups would occur in the Middle East. The market would be funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and directed through Adm. John Poindexter's Information Awareness Office, run by a California Institute of Technology offshoot and use data from the Economist's Intelligence Unit. The "market" was loosely based on the Iowa Electronic Markets, which uses a similar method to predict U.S. election results and Federal Reserve decisions.
According to the Wall Street Journal: "Here's how it would work. Traders could purchase one-year futures contracts that would assess possible economic, civil, and military events in Egypt, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey. As benchmarks of how well or poorly a country is faring, traders can nominate specific events, such as the overthrow of the King of Jordan or the assassination of Yasser Arafat. The contracts would set a specific date by which the event must occur, and traders would buy and sell based on what they think will happen. One example cited on the project's website: The U.S. will recognize Palestine in the first quarter of 2005."
Circles in Washington believe that this can now be the occasion to clean out the vipers' nest of Iran-Contra convicted criminalsincluding Elliott Abrams, the head of the NSC's Middle East deskfrom the Bush Administration. The Iran/Contra operatives are sneaking into top levels of government, through the sponsorship of Dick Cheney's neo-cons, but being given jobs that do not require Senate approval. Poindexter was convicted of lying to Congress in the Iran/Contra affair nearly 20 years ago, but was later let off on grounds that the incriminating testimony had been given under immunity from prosecution. More recently at DARPA, Poindexter oversaw the Total Information Awareness, or Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA) program for spying electronically on Americans under cover of finding terrorists.
Good riddance to Poindexter, and let Lynne Cheney's Dick be next to fall.
EIR Exposes White House to Unrest Awaiting Bush in Crawford
White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan walked into the Cheney question in an exchange with EIR at the July 31 White House briefing:
EIR: Scott, generally when the President is preparing to go down to Crawford for his vacation, it's a way of getting away from some of the controversies that are swirling here in the Beltway, at least to some extent
McCLELLAN: I think he looks at it as a way to get out into the country and get out into the heartland and talk to the American people directly, and get away from Washington, D.C. (groans and laughter)
Q: $2,000 a plate (one person commented).
EIR: If that's the case, Scott, two days ago the Waco Tribune-Herald had an editorial calling for the resignation of Vice President Cheney over this Niger hoax. It seems like folks down there are a bit riled. He might be getting a different kind of reception.
McCLELLAN: Oh, I don't think so. I think the people in Texas and across this country strongly support the action that we have taken to confront the new and dangerous threats that we face, and to eliminate those threats.
Commentators Denounce Preemptive/Preventive War
American soldiers' deaths in Iraq are a "tragic waste" due to a "Grand Imperial Adventure" for the "Bushes and Rumsfelds" of this world, wrote New York Times columnist Bob Herbert in a scathing column July 31. While not naming the chief culprit, Vice President Dick Cheney, the author of the imperial preemptive war doctrine as long ago as 1991, Herbert says the current Iraq war is a Vietnam-like "fool's errand" of a war. Herbert hits on the cynical, greedy indifference of those, such as "a Rumsfeld or a Bechtel or a Halliburton," who are perpetuating this "tragic waste" of young Americans in Iraq.
Herbert does name Cheney's "piggy-bank" Halliburton, which pays the Veep about $1 million a year, as profiteering off the human tragedy for both Americans and Iraqis, and says, "The credibility of the Bush Administration is approaching meltdown." The "phantom" WMD, Herbert insists, were "merely a pretext" for the U.S. to get a military foothold in the Middle East and to capture control of Iraqi oil. Now, there is "no viable plan for securing the peace" in Iraq, or an exit strategy, and never was one.
Also on July 31, in the Washington Post, it was proclaimed that "Empire is no Rose Garden," by Morton Abramowitz, former U.S. Ambassador to Thailand (under Republican President Ronald Reagan), who is now a senior fellow at the Century Foundation. Abramowitz said under his breath that U.S. unilateralism has reached a dead end. He said that it is hard to believe that the American people (or military) would support yet another military engagement against a "rogue" state such as Iran. He criticized the intelligence debacle and cited recent overtures by President Bush toward UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan as evidence that the United States, having defied the UN in attacking Iraq, has now found out the hard way the difficulties of standing all alone in murderous Iraq.
Abramowitz says the U.S. is going "hat in hand" to the UN and other countries for financial and military help, and is being turned down. It is important to note that Abramowitz, who was known as a meddlesome Ambassador (President Suharto rejected him when he was named the U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia) attacks George W. Bush, but not Cheney. He himself is apparently not against "regime change" formulations forwarded by Cheney's neo-cons, but does recognize the arrogance of unilateralism has become a tar baby.
Sen. Hagel Highly Critical of Bush Administration
Speaking at the Asia Society in Washington, D.C. on July 24, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) warned that the "goodwill" towards the United States which Americans had become accustomed to expect in Asia is seriously dissipating, especially among the younger generation, due to the policies of U.S. unilateralism that derides old allies, and alliances.
While Hagel stopped short of criticizing the Bush Administration directly, he went after the policies. In particular, Hagel described a recent Asian Security Conference he attended (also attended by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz), which gathered Defense Ministry officials from many countries, including China. Although they were to discuss security matters, terrorism, and North Korea, he said there was a clear recognition by all the countries that they face a major challenge because of the despair, hopelessness, and poverty engulfing large parts of the world. In discussions with the Indonesians at the conference, and, with President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, whom he stopped to visit with in the Philippines on his way home, Hagel said it was clear that these were pressing issues which had to be dealt with. "Extremists prey on this kind of misery and despair."
U.S. friendship with other nations is eroding, warned Hagel, saying, "The World War II generation is dying out, and a new generation is coming in. We cannot afford to lose the next generation." He compared the situation today to the aftermath of World War II, in which the United States "is the only great power on the Earth, [but] Truman, Marshall and others understood the need to foster a coalition of nations around common interests." Attacking the notion of "unilateralism," Hagel warned, "We must not discard that which works," arguing that the Administration must go back to our friends, Germany and France, and "discuss those issues which divided us." Pointing to the treatment meted out to Turkey, Hagel warned that "in a democracy, you can't simply discount other people's opinions. We have to be benevolent." Hagel continued, "The Vietnam War was the only time we got into trouble and that was pretty much a unilateral operation. When you go it alone, you won't have the outcome you think you will have."
Hagel responded to a question from EIR, elaborating his views on North Korea. Hagel praised a recent op-ed by Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), who has been calling on the Bush Administration to be willing to negotiate with North Korea. "We have to keep moving in the direction of dialogue and negotiation in order to get on the wavelength of the North Korean leadership. It is not effective or responsible to simply say your position is not giving into blackmail. We have to find a way to deal with this and deal with it soon," he warned. In a clear swipe at some infantile behavior coming from the White House, Hagel warned, "We can't let this degenerate into a schoolyard brawl."
Bush Succumbing to Rightwing GOP Blackmail?
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) was dispatched to Israel just ahead of Ariel Sharon's visit to Washington, in order to coordinate political operations against President Bush to stop any progress toward the Road Map. After meeting DeLay, Sharon brazenly told U.S. reporters that Israel will never "return to 1967 borders," will not stop building the racist apartheid wall that is stealing Palestinian land, and has no intention of closing Jewish settlements.
DeLay wants to "remind the Bush Administration to pay heed to its right flank," meaning the fundamentalist vote. The July 24 New York Times quoted him saying, "I'm sure there are some in the Administration who are smarter than me, but I can't imagine in the very near future that a Palestinian state could ever happen. I can't imagine this President supporting a sovereign state of terrorists." DeLay is trying to block U.S. aid going directly to Palestinian leaders and entities, and calls Bush's "a Road Map to destruction."
Speaking to a gathering of ultra-right wing Members of the Knesset, on July 31, DeLay opposed any form of Palestinian state as a violation of Biblical prophecy. The fanatics of the National Union, who advocate the assassination of Yassir Arafat, applauded his ravings.
In August, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) will lead a delegation of 29 House members to Israel, where Hoyer hopes to carry a "more optimistic" message about the Road Map, but this will require the House to directly smash DeLay's campaign.
Straussian Daniel Pipes' Nomination Sidelined
The nomination of neo-conservative Islam-basher Daniel Pipes to the U.S. Institute for Peace may be cancelled; it caused a firestorm among liberal and pro-Arab circles because of his ultra-right-wing, racist views on Muslims and Arabs. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee, at the initiative of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and other Committee Democrats and some Republicans, postponed discussion of the nomination indefinitely on July 27. EIW has profiled Pipes as one of the zealots working with the Christian Zionists to stop the Road Map.
Rumsfeld Threatens Defense Bill Veto
On May 10, Lyndon LaRouche launched a major mobilization with a Presidential campaign leaflet called, "LaRouche on Rumsfeld's 'Notverordnung,'" denouncing the Defense Transformation Act as a "grave material breach of the Constitution," leading to dictatorial powers. The mobilization bolstered popular support for serious opposition in Congress.
This past week, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sent a letter to House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) warning that if the Pentagon doesn't get exactly what it wants in the defense authorization bill, and if certain provisions currently in the bill aren't removed, he will recommend that President Bush veto it.
Among the items he wants included are the so-called National Security Personnel System, which dismantles the present Federal Civil Service system, and direct authority to assist other nations in training and equipment, authority which presently rests with the State Department. This authority, Rumsfeld says, "would allow the Department to be developing training relationships" in countries supporting U.S. military activity "related to the global war on terrorism."
Thomas Apologizes for Calling Police on Dems
House Ways and Means Committee chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) took to the floor of the House July 23, in what one reporter called "an extraordinary display," to offer his apology for calling the Capitol Police on the Democratic members of his committee during a markup session on July 18. He told the House that because of "decisions made by members of the committee, and by me ... there was a breakdown of order and decorum." He said he agreed with one reporter's comment that this was "just plain stupid." He told the House that he had learned a "painful lesson."
Democrats are still far from satisfied and are expected to exploit the blunder wherever they can, to circumvent the dictatorial measures used by the GOP leaders, such as the notorious Texas fascist, Rep. Tom DeLay, the GOP majority leader.
Democrat Charles Rangel (N.Y.), the ranking minority member on the Ways and Means Committee, told the House that "the minority has the right to be respected, to be heard, and to know, in a timely fashion, when that legislation is coming up, to know what is in the bill, to have time, and to be able to use ... the rules of civility that allowed this body to exist for over 200 years."
Despite the apparent contrition, Thomas's behavior is completely in line with DeLay's dictatorial approach. Recall how DeLay maneuvered with the Texas GOP to have the Department of Homeland Security hunt down Texas Democratic Legislators who left the state of Texas in order to break the quorum that the Republicans needed to ram through Congressional redistricting.
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