A Pulitzer price winner investigation that will go unreported by the network news

A Pulitzer price winner investigation that will go unreported by the network news

April 21, 2009 “Salon.com” — The New York Times‘ David Barstow won a richly deserved Pulitzer Prize yesterday for two articles that, despite being featured as major news stories on the front page of The Paper of Record, were completely suppressed by virtually every network and cable news show, which to this day have never informed their viewers about what Bartow uncovered. Here is how the Pulitzer Committee described Barstow’s exposés:

Awarded to David Barstow of The New York Times for his tenacious reporting that revealed how some retired generals, working as radio and television analysts, had been co-opted by the Pentagon to make its case for the war in Iraq, and how many of them also had undisclosed ties to companies that benefited from policies they defended.

By whom were these “ties to companies” undisclosed and for whom did these deeply conflicted retired generals pose as ”analysts”? ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN and Fox — the very companies that have simply suppressed the story from their viewers. They kept completely silent about Barstow’s story even though it sparked Congressional inquiries, vehement objections from the then-leading Democratic presidential candidates, and allegations that the Pentagon program violated legal prohibitions on domestic propaganda programs. The Pentagon’s secret collaboration with these ”independent analysts” shaped multiple news stories from each of these outlets on a variety of critical topics. Most amazingly, many of them continue to employ as so-called ”independent analysts” the very retired generals at the heart of Barstow’s story, yet still refuse to inform their viewers about any part of this story.

And even now that Barstow yesterday won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting — one of the most prestigious awards any news story can win — these revelations still may not be uttered on television, tragically dashing the hope expressed yesterday (rhetorically, I presume) by Media Matters’ Jamison Foser that “maybe now that the story has won a Pulitzer for Barstow, they’ll pay attention.” Instead, it was Atrios’ prediction that was decisively confirmed: “I don’t think a Pulitzer will be enough to give the military analyst story more attention.” Here is what Brian Williams said last night on his NBC News broadcast in reporting on the prestigious awards:

The Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and the arts were awarded today. The New York Times led the way with five, including awards for breaking news and international reporting. Las Vegas Sun won for the public service category for its reporting on construction worker deaths in that city. Best commentary went to Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post, who of course was an on-air commentator for us on MSNBC all through the election season and continues to be. And the award for best biography went to John Meacham, the editor of Newsweek magazine, for his book “American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House.”

No mention that among the five NYT prizes was one for investigative reporting. Williams did manage to promote the fact that one of the award winners was an MSNBC contributor, but sadly did not find the time to inform his viewers that NBC News’ war reporting and one of Williams’ still-featured premiere “independent analysts,” Gen. Barry McCaffrey, was and continues to be at the heart of the scandal for which Barstow won the Pulitzer. Williams’ refusal to inform his readers about this now-Pulitzer-winning story is particularly notable given his direct personal involvement in the secret, joint attempts by NBC and McCaffrey to contain P.R. damage to NBC from Barstow’s story, compounded by the fact that NBC was on notice of these multiple conflicts as early as April, 2003, when The Nation first reported on them.

Identically, CNN ran an 898-word story on the various Pulitzer winners — describing virtually every winner — but was simply unable to find any space even to mention David Barstow’s name, let alone inform their readers that he won the Prize for uncovering core corruption at the heart of CNN’s coverage of the Iraq War and other military-related matters. No other television news outlet implicated by Barstow’s story mentioned his award, at least as far as I can tell.

The outright refusal of any of these “news organizations” even to mention what Barstow uncovered about the Pentagon’s propaganda program and the way it infected their coverage is one of the most illuminating events revealing how they operate. So transparently corrupt and journalistically disgraceful is their blackout of this story that even Howard Kurtz and Politico – that’s Howard Kurtz and Politico — lambasted them for this concealment. Meaningful criticisms of media stars from media critic (and CNN star) Howie Kurtz is about as rare as prosecutions for politically powerful lawbreakers in America, yet this is what he said about the television media’s suppression of Barstow’s story: ”their coverage of this important issue has been pathetic.”

Has there ever been another Pulitzer-Prize-winning story for investigative reporting never to be mentioned on major television — let alone one that was twice featured as the lead story on the front page of The New York Times? To pose the question is to answer it.

UPDATE: Media Matters has more on the glaring omissions in Brian Williams’ “reporting” and on the pervasive impact of the Pentagon’s program on television news coverage. Williams’ behavior has long been disgraceful on this issue, almost certainly due to the fact that some of the “analysts” most directly implicated by Barstow’s story are Williams’ favored sources and friends.

On a different note, CQ’s Jeff Stein responds today to some of the objections to his Jane-Harman/AIPAC/Alberto-Gonazles blockbuster story — quite convincingly, in my view — and, as Christy Hardin Smith notes, the New York Times has now independently confirmed much of what Stein reported.

UPDATE II: For some added irony: on his NBS News broadcast last night suppressing any mention of David Barstow’s Pulitzer Prize, Brian Williams’ lead story concerned Obama’s trip to the CIA yesterday. Featured in that story was commentary from Col. Jack Jacobs, identified on-screen this way: ”Retired, NBC News Military Analyst.” Jacobs was one of the retired officers who was an active member of the Pentagon’s “military analyst” program, and indeed, he actively helped plan the Pentagon’s media strategy at the very same time he was posing as an “independent analyst” on NBC (h/t reader gc; via NEXIS). So not only did Williams last night conceal from his viewers any mention of the Pentagon program, he featured — on the very same broadcast — “independent” commentary from one of the central figures involved in that propaganda program.

On a related note, Howard Kurtz was asked in his Washington Post chat yesterday about Mike Allen’s grant of anonymity to a “top Bush official” that I highlighted on Saturday, and Kurtz — while defending much of Allen’s behavior — said: “I don’t believe an ex-official should have been granted anonymity for that kind of harsh attack.”

A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm

A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.....

The following excerpts come from pages 261-269 of Bamford's 'A Pretext
for War' book*:

"Then Bush addressed the sole items on the agenda for his first high
level national security meeting. The topics were not terrorism--a
subject he barely mentioned during the campaign --or nervousness over
China or Russia, but Israel and Iraq. From the very first moment, the
Bush foreign policy would focus on three key objectives: get rid of
Saddam, end American involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian peace
process, and rearrange the dominoes in the Middle East. A key to the
policy shift would be the concept of pre-emption.

The blueprint for the new Bush policy had actually been drawn up five
years earlier by three of his top national security advisors. Soon to
be appointed to senior administration positions, they were Richard
Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser. Ironically the plan was
orginally intended not for Bush but for another world leader, Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

At the time, the three officials were out of government and working
for conservative pro-Israel think tanks. Perle and Feith had
previously served in high level Pentagon positions during the
presidency of Ronald Reagan. In a very unusual move, the former--and
future--senior American officials were acting as a sort of American
privy council to the new Israeli Prime Minister. The Perle task force
to advise Netanyahu was set up by the Jerusalem based Institute for
Advanced Stategic and Political Studies, where Wurmser was working. A
key part of the plan was to get the United States to pull out of peace
negotiations and simply let Israel take care of the Palestinians as it
saw fit. "Israel," said the report, "can manage it's own affairs. Such
self-reliance will grant Israel greater freedom of action and remove a
significant lever of pressure used against it in the past."

But the centerpiece of the recommendations was the removal of Saddam
Hussein as the first step in remaking the Middle East into a region
friendly, instead of hostile, to Israel. Their plan "A Clean Break: A
New Strategy for Securing the Realm," also signaled a radical
departure from the peace-oriented policies of former Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated by a member of an extreme right-
wing Israeli group.

As part of their "grand strategy" they recommended that once Iraq was
conquered and Saddam Hussein overthrown, he should be replaced by a
puppet leader friendly to Israel. Whoever inherits Iraq, they wrote,
dominates the entire Levant strategically. Then they suggested that
Syria would be the next country to be invaded. Israel can shape it's
strategic environment, they said.

This would be done, they recommended to Netanyahu, by re-establishing
the principle of pre-emption and by rolling back it's Arab neighbors.
From then on, the principle would be to strike first and expand, a
dangerous and provocative change in philosophy. They recommended
launching a major unprovoked regional war in the Middle East,
attacking Lebanon and Syria and ousting Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Then,
to gain the support of the American government and public, a phony
pretext would be used as the reason for the original invasion.

The recommendation of Feith, Perle and Wurmser was for Israel to once
again invade Lebanon with air strikes. But this time to counter
potentially hostile reactions from the American government and public,
they suggested using a pretext. They would claim that the purpose of
the invasion was to halt Syria's drug-money and counterfeiting
infrastructure located there. They were subjects in which Israel had
virtually no interest, but they were ones, they said, with which
America can sympathize.

Another way to win American support for a pre-emptive war against
Syria, they suggested, was by drawing attention to its weapons of mass
destruction program. This claim would be that Israel's war was really
all about protecting Americans from drugs, counterfeit bills, and WMD--
nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.

It was rather extraordinary for a trio of former, and potentially
future, high-ranking American government officials to become advisors
to a foreign government. More unsettling still was a fact that they
were recommending acts of war in which Americans could be killed, and
also ways to masquerade the true purpose of the attacks from the
American public.

Once inside Lebanon, Israel could let loose--to begin engaging
Hizballah, Syria and Iran, as the principle agents of aggression in
Lebanon. Then they would widen the war even further by using proxy
forces--Lebanese militia fighters acting on Israel's behalf (as Ariel
Sharon had done in the 80's)--to invade Syria from Lebanon. Thus, they
noted, they could invade Syria by establishing the precedent that
Syrian territory is not immune to attacks emanating from Lebanon by
Israeli proxy forces.

As soon as that fighting started, they advised, Israel could begin
"striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and should that prove
insufficient, striking at select targets in Syria proper [emphasis in
original]."

The Perle task force even supplied Nentanyahu with some text for a
television address, using the suggested pretext to justify the war.
Years later, it would closely resemble speeches to justify their own
Middle East wars; Iraq would simply replace Syria and the United
States would replace Israel:
Negotiations with repressive regimes like Syria's require cautious
realism. One cannot sensibly assume the other side's good faith. It is
dangerous for Israel to deal naively with a regime murderous of its
own people, openly aggressive towards its neighbors, criminally
involved with international drug traffickers and counterfeiters, and
supportive of the most deadly terrorist organizations.
The task force then suggested that Israel open a second front in its
expanding war, with a focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in
Iraq--an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right--as a
means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions.

For years the killing of Saddam Hussein had been among the highest,
and most secret, priorities of the Israeli government. In one stroke
it would pay Saddam Hussein back for launching Scud missiles against
Israel, killing several people, during the Gulf War. Redrawing the map
of the Middle East would also help isolate Syria, Iraq's ally and
Israel's archenemy along its northern border. Thus, in the early
1990's, after the US-led war in the Gulf, a small elite team of
Israeli commandos was given the order to train in absolute secrecy for
an assassination mission to bring down the Baghdad ruler.

The plan, code-named Bramble Bush, was to first kill a close friend of
the Iraqi leader outside the country, someone from Hussein's hometown
of Tikrit. Then, after learning the date and time of the funeral to be
held in the town, a funeral Hussein was certain to attend, they would
have time to covertly infiltrate a team of commandos into the country
to carry out the assassination. The murder weapons were to be
specially modified "smart" missiles that would be fired at Hussein as
he stood in a crowd at the funeral.

But, the plan was finally abandoned after five members of the team
were accidently killed during a dry run of the operation.
Nevertheless, removing Saddam and converting Iraq from threat to ally
had long been at the top of Israel's wish list.

Now Perle, Feith, and Wurmser were suggesting something far more
daring--not just an assassination but a bloody war that would get rid
of Saddam Hussein and also change the face of Syria and Lebanon. Perle
felt their "Clean Break" recommendations were so important that he
personally hand-carried the report to Netanyahu.

Wisely, Netanyahu rejected the task force' plan. But now, with the
election of a receptive George W. Bush, they dusted off their pre-
emptive war strategy and began getting ready to put it to use.

The new Bush policy was an aggressive agenda for any president, but
especially for someone who had previously shown little interest in
international affairs. We're going to correct the imbalances of the
previous administration on the Mideast conflict, Bush told his freshly
assembled senior national security team in the Situation Room on
January 30, 2001. We're going to tilt it back toward
Israel. . . .Anybody here ever met Ariel Sharon? Only Colin Powell
raised his hand.

Bush was going to reverse the Clinton policy, which was heavily
weighted toward bringing the bloody conflict between Israel and the
Palestinians to a peaceful conclusion. There would be no more US
interference; he would let Sharon resolve the dispute however he saw
fit, with little or no regard for the situation of the Palestinians.
The policy change was exactly as recommended by the Perle task force's
"Clean Break" report.

I'm not going to go by past reputations when it comes to Sharon, Bush
told his newly gathered national security team. I'm going to take him
at face value. We'll work on a relationship based on how things go.
Then he mentioned a trip he had taken with the Republican Jewish
Coalition to Israel. We flew over the Palestinian camps. Looked real
bad down there, he said with a frown. Then he said it was time to end
America's efforts in the region. I don't see much we can do over there
at this point, he said.

Colin Powell, Secretary of State for only a few days, was taken by
surprise. The idea that such a complex problem, in which America had
long been heavily involved, could be simply brushed away with the
sweep of a hand made little sense. Fearing Israeli-led aggression, he
quickly objected.

He stressed that a pullback by the United States would unleash Sharon
and the Israeli army, recalled Paul O'Neill, who had be sworn in as
Secretary of the Treasury by Bush only hours before and seated at the
table. Powell told Bush, the consequences of that could be be dire,
especially for the Palestinians. But Bush just shrugged. Sometimes a
show of strength by one side can really clarify things, he said.
Powell seemed startled, said O'Neill.

Over the following months, to the concern of Powell, the Bush-Sharon
relationship became extremely tight. This is the best administration
for Israel since Harry Truman, said Thomas Neuman, executive director
of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs "JINSA" a pro-
Israel advocacy group. In an article in the Washington Post titled
"Bush and Sharon Nearly Identical on Middle East Policy," Robert G.
Kaiser noted the dramatic shift in policy.

For the First time, wrote Kaiser, a US administration and a Likud
government in Israel are pursuing nearly identical policies. Earlier
US administrations, from Jimmy Carter through Bill Clinton's, held
Likud and Sharon at arm's length, distancing the United States from
Likud's traditionally tough approach to the Palestinians. Using the
Yiddish term for supporters of Sharon's political party to the new
relationship between Bush and Sharon, a senior US government official
told Kaiser, "The Likudniks are really in charge now."

With America's long struggle to bring peace to the region quickly
terminated, George W. Bush could turn his attention to the prime focus
of his first National Security Council meeting; ridding Iraq of Saddam
Hussein. Condoleezza Rice led off the discussion. But rather than
mention anything about threats to the United States or weapons of mass
destruction, she noted only that Iraq might be the key to reshaping
the entire region. The words were practically lifted from the "Clean
Break" report, which had the rather imperial-sounding subtitles: "A
New Strategy for Securing the Realm."

Then Rice turned the meeting over to CIA Director George Tenet, who
offered a grainy overhead picture of a factory that he said "might" be
a plant "that produced either chemical or biological materials for
weapons manufacture." There were no missiles or weapons of any kind,
just some railroad tracks going to a building; truck activity; and a
water tower--things that can be found in virtually any city in the US.
Nor were there any human intelligence or signals intelligence reports.
There was no confirming intelligence, Tenet said.

It was little more than a shell game. Other photo and charts showed US
air activity over the "no fly-zone," but Tenet offered no more
intelligence. Nevertheless, in a matter of minutes the talk switched
from a discussion about very speculative intelligence to which targets
to begin bombing in Iraq.

By the time the meeting was over, Treasury Secretary O'Neill was
convinced that "getting Hussein was now the administration's focus,
that much was already clear," But, O'Neill believed, the real
destabilizing factor in the Middle East was not Saddam Hussein but the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict--the issue Bush had just turned his back
on. Ten years after the Gulf War, said O'Neill, "Hussein seemed caged
and defanged. Clearly, there were many forces destabilizing the
region, which we were now abandoning."

The war summit must also have seemed surreal to Colin Powell, who said
little during the meeting and had long believed that Iraq had not
posed a threat to the United States. As he would tell German Foreign
Minister Joschka Fischer just a few weeks later, "What we and other
allies have been doing in the region, have succeeded in containing
Saddam Hussein and his ambitions. . . .Containment has been a
successful policy."

In addition to the "Clean Break" recommendations, David Wurmser only
weeks before the NSC meeting had further elaborated on the way the
United States might go about launching a pre-emptive war throughout
the Middle East. America's and Israel's responses must be regional not
local, he said. Israel and the United Staes should adopt a coordinated
strategy, to regain the initiative and reverse their region-wide
strategic retreat. They should broaden the conflict to strike fatally,
not merely disarm, the center of radicalism in the region--the regimes
of Damascus, Baghdad, Tehran, Tripoli, and Gaza. That would re-
establish the recognition that fighting with either the US or Israel
is suicidal. Many in the Middle East will then understand the merits
of being an American ally and of making peace with Israel.

In the weeks and months following the NSC meeting, Perle, Feith and
Wurmser began taking their places in the Bush administration. Perle
became chairman of the reinvigorated and powerful Defence Policy
Board, packing it with like-minded neoconservative super-hawks anxious
for battle. Feith was appointed to the highest policy position in the
Pentagon, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. And Wurmser moved into
a top policy position in the State Department before later becoming
Cheney's top Middle East expert.

With the Pentagon now under Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and
his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz--both of whom had also long believed that
Saddam Hussein should have been toppled during the first Gulf War--the
war planners were given free reign. What was needed, however, was a
pretext--perhaps a major crisis. Crisis can be opportunities, wrote
Wurmser im his paper calling for an American-Israeli pre-emptive war
throughout the Middle East.

Seeing little reason, or intelligence justification, for war at the
close of the inaugural National Security Council meeting, Treasury
Secretary Paul O'Neill was perplexed. Who, exactly, was pushing this
foreign policy? He wondered to himself. And "why Saddam, why now, and
why [was] this central to US interests?"

The following excerpts come from pages 318-322 of Bamford's 'A Pretext
for War' book*:

"Hadley and Libby were part of another secret office that had been set
up within the White House. Known as the White House Iraq Group (WHIG),
it was established in August 2002 by Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card,
Jr., at the same time the OSP (Office of Special Plans) was
established in Feith's office. Made up of high-level administration
officials, its job was to sell the war to the general public, largely
through televised addresses and by selectively leaking the
intelligence to the media.

In June 2002, a leaked computer disk containing a presentation by
chief Bush strategist Karl Rove revealed a White House political plan
to use the war as a way to "maintain a positive issue environment."
But the real pro-war media blitz was scheduled for the fall and the
start of the election season "because from a marketing point of view,
you don't introduce new products in August," said Card.

At least once a week they would gather around the blonde conference
table downstairs in the Situation Room, the same place the war was
born on January 30, 2001, ten days into the Bush presidency. Although
real intelligence had improved very little in the intervening nineteen
months, the manufacturing of it had increased tremendously. In
addition to Hadley and Libby, those frequently attending the WHIG
meetings included Karl Rove, Condoleezza Rice, communications gurus
Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin and James R. Wilkinson; and legislative
liaison Nicholas E. Calio.

In addition to ties between Hussein and 9/11, among the most important
products the group was looking to sell as Labor Day 2002 approached
were frightening images of mushroom clouds, mobile biological weapons
labs, and A-bomb plants, all in the hands of a certified "madman." A
key piece of evidence that Hussein was building a nuclear weapon
turned out to be the discredited Italian documents purchased on a
street corner from a con man.

The WHIG began priming its audience in August when Vice President
Cheney, on three occasions, sounded a shrill alarm over Saddam
Hussein's nuclear threat. There "is no doubt," he declared, that
Saddam Hussein "has weapons of mass destruction." Again and again, he
hit the same chord. "What we know now, from various sources, is that
he . . . continues to pursue a nuclear weapon." And again: "We do
know, with absolute certainty, that he is using his procurement system
to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build
a nuclear weapon."

Facing network television cameras, Cheney warned, "We now know that
Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. . . . Among
other sources, we've gotten this from firsthand testimony from
defectors, including Saddam's own son-in-law." The relative was
Hussein Kamel, who defected to Jordan in 1995 with a great deal of
inside information on Iraq's special weapons programs, which he
managed. He was later convinced by Saddam to return to Iraq, but
executed by the ruler soon after his arrival.

But what Kamel told his interrogators was the exact opposite of what
Cheney was claiming he said. After numerous debriefings by officials
from the United States, the UN, and Jordan, he said on August 22,
1995, that Saddam had ended all uranium-enrichment programs at the
beginning of the Gulf War in 1991 and never restarted them. He also
made clear that "all weapons --biological, chemical, missile, nuclear--
were destroyed." Investigators were convinced that Kamel was telling
the truth, since he supplied them with a great deal of stolen raw data
and was later murdered by his father-in-law as a result. But that was
not the story Feith's OSP, Bush's WHIG, or Cheney wanted the American
public to hear.

At the same time that Cheney began his media blitz, Ariel Sharon's
office in Israel, as if perfectly coordinated, began issuing similar
dire warnings concerning Hussein and pressing the Bush administration
to go to war with Iraq. Like those from Cheney, pronouncements from
Sharon's top aide, Ranaan Gissin, included frightening "evidence" ---
equally phony --- of nuclear, as well as biological and chemical,
threats.

"As evidence of Iraq's weapons building activities, " said an
Associated Press report on the briefing, "Israel points to an order
Saddam gave to Iraq's Atomic Energy Commission last week to speed up
its work, said Sharon aide Ranaan Gissin. 'Saddam's going to be able
to reach a point where these weapons will be operational,' he
said. . . . Israeli intelligence officials have gathered evidence that
Iraq is speeding up efforts to produce biological and chemical
weapons, Gissin said."

It was clear, based on the postwar reviews done in Israel, that
Israeli intelligence had no such evidence. Instead, the "evidence" was
likely cooked up in Sharon's own Office of Special Plans unit, which
was coordinating its activities with the Feith/Wurmser/Shulsky Office
of Special Plans. The joint get-Saddam media blitz would also explain
the many highly secret visits by the Israeli generals to Feith's
office during the summer..

"Israel is urging U.S. officials not to delay a military strike
against Iraq's Saddam Hussein, an aide to Prime Minister Ariel
Minister said Friday," the AP report continued. " "Any postponement of
an attack on Iraq at this stage with serve no purpose,' Gissin told
the Associated Press. 'It will only give him [Saddam] more of an
opportunity to accelerate his program of weapons of mass
destruction.'"

As expected. Sharon's callw as widely publicized and increased
pressure on Congress, which often bows to Israel's wishes, to vote in
favor of the Bush war resolution. "Israel To U.S.: Don't Delay Iraq
Attack," said a CBS News headline. "Israel is urging U.S. officials
not to delay a military strike against Iraq's Saddam Hussein, an aide
to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Friday," said the report.

The story also made the news in London, where the Guardian newspaper
ran the headline: "Israel Puts Pressure on US to Strike Iraq." It went
on, "With foreign policy experts in Washington becoming increasingly
critical of the wisdom of a military strike, and European governments
showing no willingness to support an attack, the Israeli prime
minister, Ariel Sharon, wants to make it clear that he is the US
president's most reliable ally."

It was as if the Feith-Wurmser-Perle "Clean Break" plan come full
circle. Their plan for Israel to overthrow Saddam Hussein and put a
pro-Israel regime in his place had been rejected by former Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Now Bush, with Sharon's support,
was about to put it into effect.

Across the Atlantic, British Prime Minister Tony Blair also
contributed to the war fever by releasing a much-hyped report that
reinforced the White House theme that Iraq was an imminent threat not
only to the United States but also to Britain. In addition to
including a reference to the bogus Iraq-Niger uranium deal, the report
-- later dubbed the "doggie dossier"--made another frightening claim.
It warned that Iraq could launch a deadly biological or chemical
attack with long-range ballistic missiles on British tourists and
servicemen in Cyprus with just forty-five minute's notice.

Only after the war would it be publicly revealed that the reference
was not to a strategic weapon that could reach Cyprus, but simply to a
short-range battlefield weapon that could not come anywhere close to
Cyprus. And because all the missiles were disassembled, even to fire
on them on the battlefield would take not forty-five minutes but days
of assembly and preparation. At least three times prior to the war,
Blair was warned by intelligence officials that the report was
inaccurate, but he made no public mention of it.. "
* The paperback edition of A Pretext for War includes new Afterword

"Some Professors Push Back" -- Jury awards professor fired for 9/11-Nazi essay

"Some Professors Push Back" -- Jury awards professor fired for 9/11-Nazi essay

"Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of
the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six
hundred threescore and six."
--REVELATION 13:18
*****************************************
That's six-six-six to you, ....

http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/sixpointedstar.html
http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/sixpointedstar.html
http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/sixpointedstar.html
http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/sixpointedstar.html
http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/sixpointedstar.html
http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/sixpointedstar.html

Zionist censorship costs one dollar -- Freedom of Speech is priceless.

Jury awards $1 to professor fired for 9/11-Nazi essay
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/04/02/colorado.professor.jury/index.html

DENVER, Colorado (CNN) -- A jury Thursday found that former college
professor Ward Churchill, who referred to victims of the September 11,
2001, attacks as "little Eichmanns" in an essay, was wrongfully
terminated by the University of Colorado, according to a court
official.

Ward Churchill was dismissed as a professor at the University of
Colorado at Boulder in 2007.

But the jury, which deliberated for a day and a half after a trial
that began March 9, awarded Churchill only $1, the minimum they could
award while still finding in Churchill's favor, according to Robert
McCallum, public information officer for Colorado's 2nd Judicial
District Court.

While an ethnic studies professor at the University of Colorado at
Boulder, Churchill came under national scrutiny for a 2002 essay
entitled, "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting
Chickens," which criticized U.S. foreign policy.

In a reference to Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann, the Gestapo officer who
was one of the chief architects of the Holocaust, Churchill referred
to victims of the World Trade Center attacks "little Eichmanns."
Churchill argued the victims were "a technocratic corps at the very
heart of America's global financial empire."

Churchill's essay drew little notice until an 1,800-student college in
upstate New York invited him to take part in a 2005 forum on prisons
and Native American rights.

The invitation was rescinded after criticism from then-New York Gov.
George Pataki, then-Colorado Gov. Bill Owens and hundreds of relatives
of those killed in the attacks created a media firestorm. Churchill
was fired in 2007.

Churchill argued during the trial that he was fired from his tenured
position for expressing politically unpopular, but constitutionally
protected, views.

The university argued in the trial that he was not fired for his
political views but rather for sloppy academic work. During the trial,
the university presented several examples of what university officials
claimed were cases of plagiarism in his research.

District Court Chief Judge Larry J. Naves has given both sides 30 days
to present motions before he rules on whether Churchill will get his
job back or will receive back pay.

University of Colorado at Boulder Interim Chancellor Philip P.
DiStefano released this statement on the university's Web site,
saying: "While I am disappointed by the jury's decision, I am still
confident that the process we used to review allegations of research
misconduct was appropriately applied in this case. The university
attorneys will evaluate the next steps in the legal process. It is too
early to comment on how the judge's final decision might impact the
campus, as that decision has not yet been rendered."

Calls to the office and cell phone of Churchill's attorney were not
immediately returned.

=========================================

"Some People Push Back"
On the Justice of Roosting Chickens

By Ward Churchill

When queried by reporters concerning his views on the assassination of
John F. Kennedy in November 1963, Malcolm X famously - and quite
charitably, all things considered - replied that it was merely a case
of "chickens coming home to roost."

On the morning of September 11, 2001, a few more chickens - along
with some half-million dead Iraqi children - came home to roost in a
very big way at the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center.
Well, actually, a few of them seem to have nestled in at the Pentagon
as well.

The Iraqi youngsters, all of them under 12, died as a predictable - in
fact, widely predicted - result of the 1991 US "surgical" bombing of
their country's water purification and sewage facilities, as well as
other "infrastructural" targets upon which Iraq's civilian population
depends for its very survival.

If the nature of the bombing were not already bad enough - and it
should be noted that this sort of "aerial warfare" constitutes a Class
I Crime Against humanity, entailing myriad gross violations of
international law, as well as every conceivable standard of
"civilized" behavior - the death toll has been steadily ratcheted up
by US-imposed sanctions for a full decade now. Enforced all the while
by a massive military presence and periodic bombing raids, the embargo
has greatly impaired the victims' ability to import the nutrients,
medicines and other materials necessary to saving the lives of even
their toddlers.

All told, Iraq has a population of about 18 million. The 500,000 kids
lost to date thus represent something on the order of 25 percent of
their age group. Indisputably, the rest have suffered - are still
suffering - a combination of physical debilitation and psychological
trauma severe enough to prevent their ever fully recovering. In
effect, an entire generation has been obliterated.

The reason for this holocaust was/is rather simple, and stated quite
straightforwardly by President George Bush, the 41st "freedom-loving"
father of the freedom-lover currently filling the Oval Office, George
the 43rd: "The world must learn that what we say, goes," intoned
George the Elder to the enthusiastic applause of freedom-loving
Americans everywhere. How Old George conveyed his message was
certainly no mystery to the US public. One need only recall the
24-hour-per-day dissemination of bombardment videos on every available
TV channel, and the exceedingly high ratings of these telecasts, to
gain a sense of how much they knew.

In trying to affix a meaning to such things, we would do well to
remember the wave of elation that swept America at reports of what was
happening along the so-called Highway of Death: perhaps 100,000
"towel-heads" and "camel jockeys" - or was it "sand niggers" that
week? - in full retreat, routed and effectively defenseless, many of
them conscripted civilian laborers, slaughtered in a single day by
jets firing the most hyper-lethal types of ordnance. It was a
performance worthy of the nazis during the early months of their drive
into Russia. And it should be borne in mind that Good Germans
gleefully cheered that butchery, too. Indeed, support for Hitler
suffered no serious erosion among Germany's "innocent civilians" until
the defeat at Stalingrad.

There may be a real utility to reflecting further, this time upon
the fact that it was pious Americans who led the way in assigning the
onus of collective guilt to the German people as a whole, not for
things they as individuals had done, but for what they had allowed -
nay, empowered - their leaders and their soldiers to do in their name.

If the principle was valid then, it remains so now, as applicable to
Good Americans as it was the Good Germans. And the price exacted from
the Germans for the faultiness of their moral fiber was truly ghastly.
Returning now to the children, and to the effects of the post-Gulf War
embargo - continued bull force by Bush the Elder's successors in the
Clinton administration as a gesture of its "resolve" to finalize what
George himself had dubbed the "New World Order" of American
military/economic domination - it should be noted that not one but two
high United Nations officials attempting to coordinate delivery of
humanitarian aid to Iraq resigned in succession as protests against US
policy.

One of them, former U.N. Assistant Secretary General Denis Halladay,
repeatedly denounced what was happening as "a systematic program . . .
of deliberate genocide." His statements appeared in the New York Times
and other papers during the fall of 1998, so it can hardly be
contended that the American public was "unaware" of them. Shortly
thereafter, Secretary of State Madeline Albright openly confirmed
Halladay's assessment. Asked during the widely-viewed TV program Meet
the Press to respond to his "allegations," she calmly announced that
she'd decided it was "worth the price" to see that U.S. objectives
were achieved.

The Politics of a Perpetrator Population
 As a whole, the American public greeted these revelations with
yawns.. There were, after all, far more pressing things than the
unrelenting misery/death of a few hundred thousand Iraqi tikes to be
concerned with. Getting "Jeremy" and "Ellington" to their weekly
soccer game, for instance, or seeing to it that little "Tiffany" and
"Ashley" had just the right roll-neck sweaters to go with their new
cords. And, to be sure, there was the yuppie holy war against ashtrays
- for "our kids," no less - as an all-absorbing point of political
focus.

In fairness, it must be admitted that there was an infinitesimally
small segment of the body politic who expressed opposition to what
was/is being done to the children of Iraq. It must also be conceded,
however, that those involved by-and-large contented themselves with
signing petitions and conducting candle-lit prayer vigils, bearing
"moral witness" as vast legions of brown-skinned five-year-olds sat
shivering in the dark, wide-eyed in horror, whimpering as they expired
in the most agonizing ways imaginable.

Be it said as well, and this is really the crux of it, that the
"resistance" expended the bulk of its time and energy harnessed to the
systemically-useful task of trying to ensure, as "a principle of moral
virtue" that nobody went further than waving signs as a means of
"challenging" the patently exterminatory pursuit of Pax Americana. So
pure of principle were these "dissidents," in fact, that they began
literally to supplant the police in protecting corporations profiting
by the carnage against suffering such retaliatory "violence" as having
their windows broken by persons less "enlightened" - or perhaps more
outraged - than the self-anointed "peacekeepers."

Property before people, it seems - or at least the equation of
property to people - is a value by no means restricted to America's
boardrooms. And the sanctimony with which such putrid sentiments are
enunciated turns out to be nauseatingly similar, whether mouthed by
the CEO of Standard Oil or any of the swarm of comfort zone
"pacifists" queuing up to condemn the black block after it ever so
slightly disturbed the functioning of business-as-usual in Seattle.

Small wonder, all-in-all, that people elsewhere in the world - the
Mideast, for instance - began to wonder where, exactly, aside from the
streets of the US itself, one was to find the peace America's
purportedly oppositional peacekeepers claimed they were keeping.

The answer, surely, was plain enough to anyone unblinded by the kind
of delusions engendered by sheer vanity and self-absorption. So, too,
were the implications in terms of anything changing, out there, in
America's free-fire zones.

Tellingly, it was at precisely this point - with the genocide in Iraq
officially admitted and a public response demonstrating beyond a
shadow of a doubt that there were virtually no Americans, including
most of those professing otherwise, doing anything tangible to stop it
- that the combat teams which eventually commandeered the aircraft
used on September 11 began to infiltrate the United States.
Â
Meet the "Terrorists"
 Of the men who came, there are a few things demanding to be said in
the face of the unending torrent of disinformational drivel unleashed
by George Junior and the corporate "news" media immediately following
their successful operation on September 11.

They did not, for starters, "initiate" a war with the US, much less
commit "the first acts of war of the new millennium."

A good case could be made that the war in which they were combatants
has been waged more-or-less continuously by the "Christian West" - now
proudly emblematized by the United States - against the "Islamic East"
since the time of the First Crusade, about 1,000 years ago. More
recently, one could argue that the war began when Lyndon Johnson first
lent significant support to Israel's dispossession/displacement of
Palestinians during the 1960s, or when George the Elder ordered
"Desert Shield" in 1990, or at any of several points in between. Any
way you slice it, however, if what the combat teams did to the WTC and
the Pentagon can be understood as acts of war - and they can - then
the same is true of every US "overflight' of Iraqi territory since day
one. The first acts of war during the current millennium thus occurred
on its very first day, and were carried out by U.S. aviators acting
under orders from their then-commander-in-chief, Bill Clinton. The
most that can honestly be said of those involved on September 11 is
that they finally responded in kind to some of what this country has
dispensed to their people as a matter of course.

That they waited so long to do so is, notwithstanding the 1993 action
at the WTC, more than anything a testament to their patience and
restraint.

They did not license themselves to "target innocent civilians."

There is simply no argument to be made that the Pentagon personnel
killed on September 11 fill that bill. The building and those inside
comprised military targets, pure and simple. As to those in the World
Trade Center . . .

Well, really. Let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were
civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a
technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial
empire - the "mighty engine of profit" to which the military dimension
of U.S. policy has always been enslaved - and they did so both
willingly and knowingly. Recourse to "ignorance" - a derivative, after
all, of the word "ignore" - counts as less than an excuse among this
relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them were
unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were
involved in - and in many cases excelling at - it was because of their
absolute refusal to see. More likely, it was because they were too
busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell
phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which
translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance,
into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better,
more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty
befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the
sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in
hearing about it.

The men who flew the missions against the WTC and Pentagon were not
"cowards." That distinction properly belongs to the "firm-jawed lads"
who delighted in flying stealth aircraft through the undefended
airspace of Baghdad, dropping payload after payload of bombs on anyone
unfortunate enough to be below - including tens of thousands of
genuinely innocent civilians - while themselves incurring all the risk
one might expect during a visit to the local video arcade. Still more,
the word describes all those "fighting men and women" who sat at
computer consoles aboard ships in the Persian Gulf, enjoying
air-conditioned comfort while launching cruise missiles into
neighborhoods filled with random human beings. Whatever else can be
said of them, the men who struck on September 11 manifested the
courage of their convictions, willingly expending their own lives in
attaining their objectives.

Nor were they "fanatics" devoted to "Islamic fundamentalism."

One might rightly describe their actions as "desperate." Feelings of
desperation, however, are a perfectly reasonable - one is tempted to
say "normal" - emotional response among persons confronted by the mass
murder of their children, particularly when it appears that nobody
else really gives a damn (ask a Jewish survivor about this one, or,
even more poignantly, for all the attention paid them, a Gypsy).

That desperate circumstances generate desperate responses is no
mysterious or irrational principle, of the sort motivating fanatics.
Less is it one peculiar to Islam. Indeed, even the FBI's investigative
reports on the combat teams' activities during the months leading up
to September 11 make it clear that the members were not fundamentalist
Muslims. Rather, it's pretty obvious at this point that they were
secular activists - soldiers, really - who, while undoubtedly enjoying
cordial relations with the clerics of their countries, were motivated
far more by the grisly realities of the U.S. war against them than by
a set of religious beliefs.

And still less were they/their acts "insane."

Insanity is a condition readily associable with the very American
idea that one - or one's country - holds what amounts to a "divine
right" to commit genocide, and thus to forever do so with impunity.
The term might also be reasonably applied to anyone suffering genocide
without attempting in some material way to bring the process to a
halt. Sanity itself, in this frame of reference, might be defined by a
willingness to try and destroy the perpetrators and/or the sources of
their ability to commit their crimes. (Shall we now discuss the US
"strategic bombing campaign" against Germany during World War II, and
the mental health of those involved in it?)

Which takes us to official characterizations of the combat teams as
an embodiment of "evil."

Evil - for those inclined to embrace the banality of such a concept -
was perfectly incarnated in that malignant toad known as Madeline
Albright, squatting in her studio chair like Jaba the Hutt, blandly
spewing the news that she'd imposed a collective death sentence upon
the unoffending youth of Iraq. Evil was to be heard in that great
American hero "Stormin' Norman" Schwartzkopf's utterly dehumanizing
dismissal of their systematic torture and annihilation as mere
"collateral damage." Evil, moreover, is a term appropriate to
describing the mentality of a public that finds such perspectives and
the policies attending them acceptable, or even momentarily tolerable.

Had it not been for these evils, the counterattacks of September 11
would never have occurred. And unless "the world is rid of such evil,"
to lift a line from George Junior, September 11 may well end up
looking like a lark.

There is no reason, after all, to believe that the teams deployed in
the assaults on the WTC and the Pentagon were the only such, that the
others are composed of "Arabic-looking individuals" - America's
indiscriminately lethal arrogance and psychotic sense of
self-entitlement have long since given the great majority of the
world's peoples ample cause to be at war with it - or that they are in
any way dependent upon the seizure of civilian airliners to complete
their missions.

To the contrary, there is every reason to expect that there are many
other teams in place, tasked to employ altogether different tactics in
executing operational plans at least as well-crafted as those evident
on September 11, and very well equipped for their jobs. This is to say
that, since the assaults on the WTC and Pentagon were act of war - not
"terrorist incidents" - they must be understood as components in a
much broader strategy designed to achieve specific results. From this,
it can only be adduced that there are plenty of other components ready
to go, and that they will be used, should this become necessary in the
eyes of the strategists. It also seems a safe bet that each component
is calibrated to inflict damage at a level incrementally higher than
the one before (during the 1960s, the Johnson administration employed
a similar policy against Vietnam, referred to as "escalation").

Since implementation of the overall plan began with the WTC/Pentagon
assaults, it takes no rocket scientist to decipher what is likely to
happen next, should the U.S. attempt a response of the inexcusable
variety to which it has long entitled itself.

Â
About Those Boys (and Girls) in the Bureau
 There's another matter begging for comment at this point. The idea
that the FBI's "counterterrorism task forces" can do a thing to
prevent what will happen is yet another dimension of America's
delusional pathology.. The fact is that, for all its publicly-financed
"image-building" exercises, the Bureau has never shown the least
aptitude for anything of the sort.

Oh, yeah, FBI counterintelligence personnel have proven quite adept
at framing anarchists, communists and Black Panthers, sometimes
murdering them in their beds or the electric chair. The Bureau's SWAT
units have displayed their ability to combat child abuse in Waco by
burning babies alive, and its vaunted Crime Lab has been shown to pad
its "crime-fighting' statistics by fabricating evidence against many
an alleged car thief. But actual "heavy-duty bad guys" of the sort at
issue now? This isn't a Bruce Willis/Chuck Norris/Sly Stallone movie,
after all.. And J. Edgar Hoover doesn't get to approve either the
script or the casting.

The number of spies, saboteurs and bona fide terrorists apprehended,
or even detected by the FBI in the course of its long and slimy
history could be counted on one's fingers and toes. On occasion, its
agents have even turned out to be the spies, and, in many instances,
the terrorists as well.

To be fair once again, if the Bureau functions as at best a carnival
of clowns where its "domestic security responsibilities" are
concerned, this is because - regardless of official hype - it has
none. It is now, as it's always been, the national political police
force, an instrument created and perfected to ensure that all
Americans, not just the consenting mass, are "free" to do exactly as
they're told.

The FBI and "cooperating agencies" can be thus relied upon to set
about "protecting freedom" by destroying whatever rights and liberties
were left to U.S. citizens before September 11 (in fact, they've
already received authorization to begin). Sheeplike, the great
majority of Americans can also be counted upon to bleat their
approval, at least in the short run, believing as they always do that
the nasty implications of what they're doing will pertain only to
others.

Oh Yeah, and "The Company," Too

A possibly even sicker joke is the notion, suddenly in vogue, that
the CIA will be able to pinpoint "terrorist threats," "rooting out
their infrastructure" where it exists and/or "terminating" it before
it can materialize, if only it's allowed to beef up its "human
intelligence gathering capacity" in an unrestrained manner (including
full-bore operations inside the US, of course).

Yeah. Right.

Since America has a collective attention-span of about 15 minutes, a
little refresher seems in order: "The Company" had something like a
quarter-million people serving as "intelligence assets" by feeding it
information in Vietnam in 1968, and it couldn't even predict the Tet
Offensive. God knows how many spies it was fielding against the USSR
at the height of Ronald Reagan's version of the Cold War, and it was
still caught flatfooted by the collapse of the Soviet Union. As to
destroying "terrorist infrastructures," one would do well to remember
Operation Phoenix, another product of its open season in Vietnam. In
that one, the CIA enlisted elite US units like the Navy Seals and Army
Special Forces, as well as those of friendly countries - the south
Vietnamese Rangers, for example, and Australian SAS - to run around
"neutralizing" folks targeted by The Company's legion of snitches as
"guerrillas" (as those now known as "terrorists" were then called).

Sound familiar?

Upwards of 40,000 people - mostly bystanders, as it turns out - were
murdered by Phoenix hit teams before the guerrillas, stronger than
ever, ran the US and its collaborators out of their country
altogether. And these are the guys who are gonna save the day, if
unleashed to do their thing in North America?

The net impact of all this "counterterrorism" activity upon the
combat teams' ability to do what they came to do, of course, will be
nil.

Instead, it's likely to make it easier for them to operate (it's
worked that way in places like Northern Ireland). And, since denying
Americans the luxury of reaping the benefits of genocide in comfort
was self-evidently a key objective of the WTC/Pentagon assaults, it
can be stated unequivocally that a more overt display of the police
state mentality already pervading this country simply confirms the
magnitude of their victory.
Â
On Matters of Proportion and Intent
 As things stand, including the 1993 detonation at the WTC, "Arab
terrorists" have responded to the massive and sustained American
terror bombing of Iraq with a total of four assaults by explosives
inside the US. That's about 1% of the 50,000 bombs the Pentagon
announced were rained on Baghdad alone during the Gulf War (add in
Oklahoma City and you'll get something nearer an actual 1%).

They've managed in the process to kill about 5,000 Americans, or
roughly 1% of the dead Iraqi children (the percentage is far smaller
if you factor in the killing of adult Iraqi civilians, not to mention
troops butchered as/after they'd surrendered and/or after the
"war-ending" ceasefire had been announced).

In terms undoubtedly more meaningful to the property/profit-minded
American mainstream, they've knocked down a half-dozen buildings -
albeit some very well-chosen ones - as opposed to the "strategic
devastation" visited upon the whole of Iraq, and punched a $100
billion hole in the earnings outlook of major corporate shareholders,
as opposed to the U.S. obliteration of Iraq's entire economy.

With that, they've given Americans a tiny dose of their own
medicine.. This might be seen as merely a matter of "vengeance" or
"retribution," and, unquestionably, America has earned it, even if it
were to add up only to something so ultimately petty.

The problem is that vengeance is usually framed in terms of "getting
even," a concept which is plainly inapplicable in this instance. As
the above data indicate, it would require another 49,996 detonations
killing 495,000 more Americans, for the "terrorists" to "break even"
for the bombing of Baghdad/extermination of Iraqi children alone. And
that's to achieve "real number" parity. To attain an actual
proportional parity of damage - the US is about 15 times as large as
Iraq in terms of population, even more in terms of territory - they
would, at a minimum, have to blow up about 300,000 more buildings and
kill something on the order of 7.5 million people.

Were this the intent of those who've entered the US to wage war
against it, it would remain no less true that America and Americans
were only receiving the bill for what they'd already done. Payback, as
they say, can be a real motherfucker (ask the Germans). There is,
however, no reason to believe that retributive parity is necessarily
an item on the agenda of those who planned the WTC/Pentagon operation.
If it were, given the virtual certainty that they possessed the
capacity to have inflicted far more damage than they did, there would
be a lot more American bodies lying about right now.

Hence, it can be concluded that ravings carried by the "news" media
since September 11 have contained at least one grain of truth: The
peoples of the Mideast "aren't like" Americans, not least because they
don't "value life' in the same way. By this, it should be understood
that Middle-Easterners, unlike Americans, have no history of
exterminating others purely for profit, or on the basis of racial
animus. Thus, we can appreciate the fact that they value life - all
lives, not just their own - far more highly than do their U.S.
counterparts.
Â
The Makings of a Humanitarian Strategy
 In sum one can discern a certain optimism - it might even be call
humanitarianism - imbedded in the thinking of those who presided over
the very limited actions conducted on September 11.

Their logic seems to have devolved upon the notion that the American
people have condoned what has been/is being done in their name -
indeed, are to a significant extent actively complicit in it - mainly
because they have no idea what it feels like to be on the receiving
end.

Now they do.

That was the "medicinal" aspect of the attacks.

To all appearances, the idea is now to give the tonic a little time
to take effect, jolting Americans into the realization that the sort
of pain they're now experiencing first-hand is no different from - or
the least bit more excruciating than - that which they've been so
cavalier in causing others, and thus to respond appropriately.

More bluntly, the hope was - and maybe still is - that Americans,
stripped of their presumed immunity from incurring any real
consequences for their behavior, would comprehend and act upon a
formulation as uncomplicated as "stop killing our kids, if you want
your own to be safe."

Either way, it's a kind of "reality therapy" approach, designed to
afford the American people a chance to finally "do the right thing" on
their own, without further coaxing.

Were the opportunity acted upon in some reasonably good faith fashion
- a sufficiently large number of Americans rising up and doing
whatever is necessary to force an immediate lifting of the sanctions
on Iraq, for instance, or maybe hanging a few of America's abundant
supply of major war criminals (Henry Kissinger comes quickly to mind,
as do Madeline Albright, Colin Powell, Bill Clinton and George the
Elder) - there is every reason to expect that military operations
against the US on its domestic front would be immediately suspended.

Whether they would remain so would of course be contingent upon
follow-up. By that, it may be assumed that American acceptance of
onsite inspections by international observers to verify destruction of
its weapons of mass destruction (as well as dismantlement of all
facilities in which more might be manufactured), Nuremberg-style
trials in which a few thousand US military/corporate personnel could
be properly adjudicated and punished for their Crimes Against
humanity, and payment of reparations to the array of nations/peoples
whose assets the US has plundered over the years, would suffice.

Since they've shown no sign of being unreasonable or vindictive, it
may even be anticipated that, after a suitable period of adjustment
and reeducation (mainly to allow them to acquire the skills necessary
to living within their means), those restored to control over their
own destinies by the gallant sacrifices of the combat teams the WTC
and Pentagon will eventually (re)admit Americans to the global circle
of civilized societies. Stranger things have happened.
Â
In the Alternative
 Unfortunately, noble as they may have been, such humanitarian
aspirations were always doomed to remain unfulfilled. For it to have
been otherwise, a far higher quality of character and intellect would
have to prevail among average Americans than is actually the case.
Perhaps the strategists underestimated the impact a couple of
generations-worth of media indoctrination can produce in terms of
demolishing the capacity of human beings to form coherent thoughts.
Maybe they forgot to factor in the mind-numbing effects of the
indoctrination passed off as education in the US. Then, again, it's
entirely possible they were aware that a decisive majority of American
adults have been reduced by this point to a level much closer to the
kind of immediate self-gratification entailed in Pavlovian
stimulus/response patterns than anything accessible by appeals to
higher logic, and still felt morally obliged to offer the dolts an
option to quit while they were ahead.

What the hell? It was worth a try.

But it's becoming increasingly apparent that the dosage of medicine
administered was entirely insufficient to accomplish its purpose.

Although there are undoubtedly exceptions, Americans for the most
part still don't get it.

Already, they've desecrated the temporary tomb of those killed in the
WTC, staging a veritable pep rally atop the mangled remains of those
they profess to honor, treating the whole affair as if it were some
bizarre breed of contact sport. And, of course, there are the
inevitable pom-poms shaped like American flags, the school colors worn
as little red-white-and-blue ribbons affixed to labels, sportscasters
in the form of "counterterrorism experts" drooling mindless color
commentary during the pregame warm-up.

Refusing the realization that the world has suddenly shifted its
axis, and that they are therefore no longer "in charge," they have
by-and-large reverted instantly to type, working themselves into their
usual bloodlust on the now obsolete premise that the bloodletting will
"naturally" occur elsewhere and to someone else.

"Patriotism," a wise man once observed, "is the last refuge of
scoundrels."

And the braided, he might of added.

Braided Scoundrel-in-Chief, George Junior, lacking even the sense to
be careful what he wished for, has teamed up with a gaggle of
fundamentalist Christian clerics like Billy Graham to proclaim a "New
Crusade" called "Infinite Justice" aimed at "ridding the world of
evil."

One could easily make light of such rhetoric, remarking upon how
unseemly it is for a son to threaten his father in such fashion - or a
president to so publicly contemplate the murder/suicide of himself and
his cabinet - but the matter is deadly serious.

They are preparing once again to sally forth for the purpose of
roasting brown-skinned children by the scores of thousands. Already,
the B-1 bombers and the aircraft carriers and the missile frigates are
en route, the airborne divisions are gearing up to go.

To where? Afghanistan?

The Sudan?

The Lebanon... repeatedly for decades.

Iraq, again (or still)?

How about Grenada (that was fun)?

Any of them or all. It doesn't matter.

The desire to pummel the helpless runs rabid as ever.

Only, this time it's different.

The time the helpless aren't, or at least are not so helpless as they
were.

This time, somewhere, perhaps in an Afghani mountain cave, possibly
in a Brooklyn basement, maybe another local altogether - but
somewhere, all the same - there's a grim-visaged (wo)man wearing a
Clint Eastwood smile.

"Go ahead, punks," s/he's saying, "Make my day."

And when they do, when they launch these airstrikes abroad - or may a
little later; it will be at a time conforming to the "terrorists"' own
schedule, and at a place of their choosing - the next more intensive
dose of medicine administered here "at home."

Of what will it consist this time? Anthrax? Mustard gas? Sarin? A
tactical nuclear device?

That, too, is their choice to make.

Looking back, it will seem to future generations inexplicable why
Americans were unable on their own, and in time to save themselves, to
accept a rule of nature so basic that it could be mouthed by an actor,
Lawrence Fishburn, in a movie, The Cotton Club.

"You've got to learn, " the line went, "that when you push people
around, some people push back."

As they should.

As they must.

And as they undoubtedly will.

There is justice in such symmetry.

Â
ADDENDUM
 The preceding was a "first take" reading, more a
stream-of-consciousness interpretive reaction to the September 11
counterattack than a finished piece on the topic. Hence, I'll readily
admit that I've been far less than thorough, and quite likely wrong
about a number of things.

For instance, it may not have been (only) the ghosts of Iraqi
children who made their appearance that day. It could as easily have
been some or all of their butchered Palestinian cousins.

Or maybe it was some or all of the at least 3.2 million Indochinese
who perished as a result of America's sustained and genocidal assault
on Southeast Asia (1959-1975), not to mention the millions more who've
died because of the sanctions imposed thereafter.

Perhaps there were a few of the Korean civilians massacred by US
troops at places like No Gun Ri during the early '50s, or the hundreds
of thousands of Japanese civilians ruthlessly incinerated in the
ghastly fire raids of World War II (only at Dresden did America bomb
Germany in a similar manner).

And, of course, it could have been those vaporized in the militarily
pointless nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

There are others, as well, a vast and silent queue of faceless
victims, stretching from the million-odd Filipinos slaughtered during
America's "Indian War" in their islands at the beginning of the
twentieth century, through the real Indians, America's own, massacred
wholesale at places like Horseshoe Bend and the Bad Axe, Sand Creek
and Wounded Knee, the Washita, Bear River, and the Marias.

Was it those who expired along the Cherokee Trial of Tears of the
Long Walk of the Navajo?

Those murdered by smallpox at Fort Clark in 1836?

Starved to death in the concentration camp at Bosque Redondo during
the 1860s?

Maybe those native people claimed for scalp bounty in all 48 of the
continental US states? Or the Raritans whose severed heads were kicked
for sport along the streets of what was then called New Amsterdam, at
the very site where the WTC once stood?

One hears, too, the whispers of those lost on the Middle Passage, and
of those whose very flesh was sold in the slave market outside the
human kennel from whence Wall Street takes its name. And of coolie
laborers, imported by the gross-dozen to lay the tracks of empire
across scorching desert sands, none of them allotted "a Chinaman's
chance" of surviving.

The list is too long, too awful to go on.

No matter what its eventual fate, America will have gotten off very,
very cheap.

The full measure of its guilt can never be fully balanced or atoned
for.

 Ward Churchill (Keetoowah Band Cherokee) is one of the most
outspoken of Native American activists. In his lectures and numerous
published works, he explores the themes of genocide in the Americas,
historical and legal (re)interpretation of conquest and colonization,
literary and cinematic criticism, and indigenist alternatives to the
status quo. Churchill is a Professor of Ethnic Studies and Coordinator
of American Indian Studies. He is also a past national spokesperson
for the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee. His books include Agents of
Repression, Fantasies of the Master Race, From a Native Son and A
Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust

In March 2009 Ward Churchill has been in court, suing the University
of Colorado for firing him, a move the university made in 200_ as
retaliation for this essay. Reports from the trial here are courtesy
of the Ward Churchill Trial Blog maintained by the Ward Churchill
Solidarity Network:

Still not getting too optimistic
Max and me
Sour grapes
Courthouse closing at noon
It gets better



More Documents of Interest from early 2005

* Review of "On the Justice of Roosting Chickens" , by Faith
Attaguile (LiP Magazine Summer 2004)
* Review of "On the Justice of Roosting Chickens" , by Jeb Brandt
(The Indypendent Jan. 9 2005)
* Johnson: Churchill Not Alone in Pointing Finger , from Rocky
Mountain News (Feb. 2 2005)
* U. of Colorado Faculty Rallies Around Professor , from Associate
Press (Feb. 2 2005)
* Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center Statement in Support of
Ward Churchill (Feb. 2 2005)
* American Association of University Professors on Professor Ward
Churchill Controversy (Feb. 3 2005)
* Beat the Devil: Ward Churchill and the Mad Dogs of the Right ,
by Alexander Cockburn (The Nation, Feb. 3 2005)
* Colorado Regents Will Investigate Professor Who Compared
September 11 Victims to Nazis , by Scott Smallwood (Chronicle of
Higher Education, Friday, February 4, 2005)
* Students, Faculty at Hamilton College Back Controversial
Discussion , by Marshand-Boone (Utica Observer Dispatch, February 4,
2005)
* The Distortions of Acumen: Liberals Trash Ward Churchill , by
Joshua Frank (Press Action, February 4 2005)
* Churchill Rant Has Some Truth , by Reggie Rivers (Denver Post,
February 4th 2005)
* Professor Under Fire for 9/11 Comments , by T..R. Reid
(Washington Post, February 5, 2005)
* Raise Your Voice But Keep Your Head Down by Michael Albert (ZNet
February 5th 2005)
* The Distortions of Acumen Continued , by Joshua Frank (Press
Action, February 7th 2005)
* Thousands Attend Churchill Speech , by Erin Gartner (Associated
Press, February 8th 2005)
* The Anti-AIM Tide Is Rising (Leonard Peltier Defense Committee,
February 9th 2005)
* Churchill: "I Do Not Work For Bill Owens" (News4Colorado,
February 9th 2005)
* Prof: Never Back Down by Howard Pankratz and George Merritt
(Denver Post, February 9th 2005)
* What Ward Churchill didn't say; It's the singer, not the song...
by Mickey Z. (Februaryt 9th 2005)
* Killing the Messenger: Ward Churchill's Sins Against the Empire
by Steven Best (Press Action, February 10th 2005)
* N.Y. Professor Loses Post Over Churchill Controversy (Associated
Press, February 11th 2005)
* Ward Churchill is Neocon Test Case for Academic Purges by Emma
Perez, Ethnic Studies Chair at UC (February 15th 2005)
* An Open Letter to Ward Churchill: My Brother, the "Eichmann" by
Michael Faughnan (Boulder Daily Camera, Feb. 16th 2005)
* The Termination and Removal of Ward Churchill by Scott Lyons
(Indian Country, February 17th 2005)
* Churchill Gets Support at Forum by Brittany Anas (Boulder Daily
Camera February 18th 2005)
* The Witch Hunt Against Ward Churchill (Revolutionary Worker,
February 20th 2005)
* Churchill Clarifies 9/11 Stand in Hawaii (Associated Press,
February 23rd 2005)
* Ward Churchill and 911 by Robert Jensen (The Progressive Trail,
February 23rd 2005)
* So how come? by Dani Newsum (February 26th 2005)
* CU weighs buyout for firebrand prof by Dave Kurtin and Arthur
Kane (Denver Post, Februrary 26th 2005)



Also check out Letters of Support for Ward Churchill from the UCB
Academic Community .

Some institutions of "higher" learning are now enforcing a Colorado
law that says that full time professors have to signa loyalty oath:
click here for more details


Also on the aforementioned site is an indepth article that was written
years before the current controversy that refutes many of the
allegations and attacks on Churchill that have just recently been
"revealed" by the mainstream media:
http://www.coloradoaim.org/why.html

Almost one hundred different articles by Ward Churchill are available
on ZNet, click here for a list:
http://www.zmag.org/search/search_results.cfm?keyWords=Ward+Churchill&collection=allZnet&searchType=simple

You can purchase books and spoken word CDs by Ward Churchill at
leftwingbooks.NET

While many people have contacted me upset at my posting this essay to
my site, the following is certainly the best email i have received on
this subject so far:


Thank you for posting the illuminating essay by Professor
Churchill. Although the essay is 99% accurate, there is a fatal flaw
in this line...

Evil - for those inclined to embrace the banality of such a
concept - was perfectly incarnated in that malignant toad known as
Madeline Albright, squatting in her studio chair like Jaba the Hutt,
blandly spewing the news that she'd imposed a collective death
sentence upon the unoffending youth of Iraq.

...Having received the Star Wars trilogy on DVD for Christmas, I would
like to point out that Jabba the Hut (two b's, one t) did not squat in
a studio chair, he reclined on a raised dais overlooking the floor
where he received important guests. By comparing Jabba's seating style
to that of Albright, Dr. Churchill demeans not only Jabba, but legions
of loyal Star Wars fans the world over. If, like me, you are offended
by Professor Churchill's misrepresentation of one of George Lucas'
most compelling and memorable characters, please join me in
petitioning the CU Board of Regents in favor of Dr. Churchill's
dismissal. Please forward this to any other Star Wars fans you know,
unless they are fans of Jar Jar Binks, a latter-day Joseph Goebbels
who willingly served as a propagandist for the genocidal, imperialist
monarchy of Queen Amidala, and later served in the Galactic Senate as
an apologist for the Gungan use of biological weapaons in the dispute
with the Trade Federation...