Bush had a plan WAY before 9/11 to invade IRAQ

[reeds]

Finish daddies work..it had NOTHING to do with 9/11... Oil perhaps..US World domination perhaps..but not 9-11...


"Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming President




By Neil Mackay



A SECRET blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure 'regime change' even before he took power in January 2001.
The blueprint, uncovered by the Sunday Herald, for the creation of a 'global Pax Americana' was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice- president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), George W Bush's younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, was written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says: 'The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.'

The PNAC document supports a 'blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests'.

This 'American grand strategy' must be advanced for 'as far into the future as possible', the report says. It also calls for the US to 'fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars' as a 'core mission'.

The report describes American armed forces abroad as 'the cavalry on the new American frontier'. The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document written by Wolfowitz and Libby that said the US must 'discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role'.

The PNAC report also:

l refers to key allies such as the UK as 'the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership';

l describes peace-keeping missions as 'demanding American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations';

l reveals worries in the administration that Europe could rival the USA;

l says 'even should Saddam pass from the scene' bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently -- despite domestic opposition in the Gulf regimes to the stationing of US troops -- as 'Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has';

l spotlights China for 'regime change' saying 'it is time to increase the presence of American forces in southeast Asia'. This, it says, may lead to 'American and allied power providing the spur to the process of democratisation in China';

l calls for the creation of 'US Space Forces', to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent 'enemies' using the internet against the US;

l hints that, despite threatening war against Iraq for developing weapons of mass destruction, the US may consider developing biological weapons -- which the nation has banned -- in decades to come. It says: 'New methods of attack -- electronic, 'non-lethal', biological -- will be more widely available ... combat likely will take place in new dimensions, in space, cyberspace, and perhaps the world of microbes ... advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool';

l and pinpoints North Korea, Libya, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes and says their existence justifies the creation of a 'world-wide command-and-control system'.

Tam Dalyell, the Labour MP, father of the House of Commons and one of the leading rebel voices against war with Iraq, said: 'This is garbage from right-wing think-tanks stuffed with chicken-hawks -- men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war. Men like Cheney, who were draft-dodgers in the Vietnam war.

'This is a blueprint for US world domination -- a new world order of their making. These are the thought processes of fantasist Americans who want to control the world. I am appalled that a British Labour Prime Minister should have got into bed with a crew which has this moral standing.'

[reeds]

"Tam Dalyell, the Labour MP, father of the House of Commons and one of the leading rebel voices against war with Iraq, said: 'This is garbage from right-wing think-tanks stuffed with chicken-hawks -- men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war. Men like Cheney, who were draft-dodgers in the Vietnam war."....Classic....

[reeds]

"CBS) A year ago, Paul O'Neill was fired from his job as George Bush's Treasury Secretary for disagreeing too many times with the president's policy on tax cuts.

Now, O'Neill - who is known for speaking his mind - talks for the first time about his two years inside the Bush administration. His story is the centerpiece of a new book being published this week about the way the Bush White House is run.

Entitled "The Price of Loyalty," the book by a former Wall Street Journal reporter draws on interviews with high-level officials who gave the author their personal accounts of meetings with the president, their notes and documents.

But the main source of the book was Paul O'Neill. Correspondent Lesley Stahl reports.
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Paul O'Neill says he is going public because he thinks the Bush Administration has been too secretive about how decisions have been made.

Will this be seen as a “kiss-and-tell" book?

“I've come to believe that people will say damn near anything, so I'm sure somebody will say all of that and more,” says O’Neill, who was George Bush's top economic policy official.

In the book, O’Neill says that the president did not make decisions in a methodical way: there was no free-flow of ideas or open debate.

At cabinet meetings, he says the president was "like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people. There is no discernible connection," forcing top officials to act "on little more than hunches about what the president might think."

This is what O'Neill says happened at his first hour-long, one-on-one meeting with Mr. Bush: “I went in with a long list of things to talk about, and I thought to engage on and as the book says, I was surprised that it turned out me talking, and the president just listening … As I recall, it was mostly a monologue.”

He also says that President Bush was disengaged, at least on domestic issues, and that disturbed him. And he says that wasn't his experience when he worked as a top official under Presidents Nixon and Ford, or the way he ran things when he was chairman of Alcoa.

O'Neill readily agreed to tell his story to the book's author Ron Suskind – and he adds that he's taking no money for his part in the book.

Suskind says he interviewed hundreds of people for the book – including several cabinet members.

O'Neill is the only one who spoke on the record, but Suskind says that someone high up in the administration – Donald Rumsfeld - warned O’Neill not to do this book.

Was it a warning, or a threat?

“I don't think so. I think it was the White House concerned,” says Suskind. “Understandably, because O'Neill has spent extraordinary amounts of time with the president. They said, ‘This could really be the one moment where things are revealed.’"
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Not only did O'Neill give Suskind his time, he gave him 19,000 internal documents.

“Everything's there: Memoranda to the President, handwritten "thank you" notes, 100-page documents. Stuff that's sensitive,” says Suskind, adding that in some cases, it included transcripts of private, high-level National Security Council meetings. “You don’t get higher than that.”

And what happened at President Bush's very first National Security Council meeting is one of O'Neill's most startling revelations.

“From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” says O’Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was topic "A" 10 days after the inauguration - eight months before Sept. 11.

“From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime,” says Suskind. “Day one, these things were laid and sealed.”

As treasury secretary, O'Neill was a permanent member of the National Security Council. He says in the book he was surprised at the meeting that questions such as "Why Saddam?" and "Why now?" were never asked.

"It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this,’" says O’Neill. “For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap.”

And that came up at this first meeting, says O’Neill, who adds that the discussion of Iraq continued at the next National Security Council meeting two days later.

He got briefing materials under this cover sheet. “There are memos. One of them marked, secret, says, ‘Plan for post-Saddam Iraq,’" adds Suskind, who says that they discussed an occupation of Iraq in January and February of 2001.
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Based on his interviews with O'Neill and several other officials at the meetings, Suskind writes that the planning envisioned peacekeeping troops, war crimes tribunals, and even divvying up Iraq's oil wealth.

He obtained one Pentagon document, dated March 5, 2001, and entitled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield contracts," which includes a map of potential areas for exploration.

“It talks about contractors around the world from, you know, 30-40 countries. And which ones have what intentions,” says Suskind. “On oil in Iraq.”

During the campaign, candidate Bush had criticized the Clinton-Gore Administration for being too interventionist: "If we don't stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road. And I'm going to prevent that."

“The thing that's most surprising, I think, is how emphatically, from the very first, the administration had said ‘X’ during the campaign, but from the first day was often doing ‘Y,’” says Suskind. “Not just saying ‘Y,’ but actively moving toward the opposite of what they had said during the election.”

The president had promised to cut taxes, and he did. Within six months of taking office, he pushed a trillion dollars worth of tax cuts through Congress.
But O'Neill thought it should have been the end. After 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan, the budget deficit was growing. So at a meeting with the vice president after the mid-term elections in 2002, Suskind writes that O'Neill argued against a second round of tax cuts.

“Cheney, at this moment, shows his hand,” says Suskind. “He says, ‘You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter. We won the mid-term elections, this is our due.’ … O'Neill is speechless.”

”It was not just about not wanting the tax cut. It was about how to use the nation's resources to improve the condition of our society,” says O’Neill. “And I thought the weight of working on Social Security and fundamental tax reform was a lot more important than a tax reduction.”

Did he think it was irresponsible? “Well, it's for sure not what I would have done,” says O’Neill.

The former treasury secretary accuses Vice President Dick Cheney of not being an honest broker, but, with a handful of others, part of "a praetorian guard that encircled the president" to block out contrary views. "This is the way Dick likes it," says O’Neill.
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Meanwhile, the White House was losing patience with O'Neill. He was becoming known for a series of off-the-cuff remarks his critics called gaffes. One of them sent the dollar into a nosedive and required major damage control.

Twice during stock market meltdowns, O'Neill was not available to the president: He was out of the country - one time on a trip to Africa with the Irish rock star Bono.

“Africa made an enormous splash. It was like a road show,” says Suskind. “He comes back and the president says to him at a meeting, ‘You know, you're getting quite a cult following.’ And it clearly was not a joke. And it was not said in jest.”

Suskind writes that the relationship grew tenser and that the president even took a jab at O'Neill in public, at an economic forum in Texas.

The two men were never close. And O'Neill was not amused when Mr. Bush began calling him "The Big O." He thought the president's habit of giving people nicknames was a form of bullying. Everything came to a head for O'Neill at a November 2002 meeting at the White House of the economic team.

“It's a huge meeting. You got Dick Cheney from the, you know, secure location on the video. The President is there,” says Suskind, who was given a nearly verbatim transcript by someone who attended the meeting.

He says everyone expected Mr. Bush to rubber stamp the plan under discussion: a big new tax cut. But, according to Suskind, the president was perhaps having second thoughts about cutting taxes again, and was uncharacteristically engaged.

“He asks, ‘Haven't we already given money to rich people? This second tax cut's gonna do it again,’” says Suskind.

“He says, ‘Didn’t we already, why are we doing it again?’ Now, his advisers, they say, ‘Well Mr. President, the upper class, they're the entrepreneurs. That's the standard response.’ And the president kind of goes, ‘OK.’ That's their response. And then, he comes back to it again. ‘Well, shouldn't we be giving money to the middle, won't people be able to say, ‘You did it once, and then you did it twice, and what was it good for?’"

But according to the transcript, White House political advisor Karl Rove jumped in.

“Karl Rove is saying to the president, a kind of mantra. ‘Stick to principle. Stick to principle.’ He says it over and over again,” says Suskind. “Don’t waver.”

In the end, the president didn't. And nine days after that meeting in which O'Neill made it clear he could not publicly support another tax cut, the vice president called and asked him to resign.

With the deficit now climbing towards $400 billion, O'Neill maintains he was in the right.

But look at the economy today.

“Yes, well, in the last quarter the growth rate was 8.2 percent. It was terrific,” says O’Neill. “I think the tax cut made a difference. But without the tax cut, we would have had 6 percent real growth, and the prospect of dealing with transformation of Social Security and fundamentally fixing the tax system. And to me, those were compelling competitors for, against more tax cuts.”
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While in the book O'Neill comes off as constantly appalled at Mr. Bush, he was surprised when Stahl told him she found his portrait of the president unflattering.

“Hmmm, you really think so,” asks O’Neill, who says he isn’t joking. “Well, I’ll be darned.”

“You're giving me the impression that you're just going to be stunned if they attack you for this book,” says Stahl to O’Neill. “And they're going to say, I predict, you know, it's sour grapes. He's getting back because he was fired.”
“I will be really disappointed if they react that way because I think they'll be hard put to,” says O’Neill.

Is he prepared for it?

“Well, I don't think I need to be because I can't imagine that I'm going to be attacked for telling the truth,” says O’Neill. “Why would I be attacked for telling the truth?”

White House spokesman Scott McClellan was asked about the book on Friday and said "The president is someone that leads and acts decisively on our biggest priorities and that is exactly what he'll continue to do."

[reeds]

"During the campaign, candidate Bush had criticized the Clinton-Gore Administration for being too interventionist: "If we don't stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road. And I'm going to prevent that."

“The thing that's most surprising, I think, is how emphatically, from the very first, the administration had said ‘X’ during the campaign, but from the first day was often doing ‘Y,’” says Suskind. “Not just saying ‘Y,’ but actively moving toward the opposite of what they had said during the election.”

Bush had the guts to say that Clinton-Gore were too "interventionists"??? We were extending our troops all over the world???And then they do this????? What a joke BUSH is...and a hypocrite to boot...

[u2sarajevo]

That's good to hear. We had a good plan, well thought out obviously. And we kicked Saddam's butt.

Case closed.

[Dooby]

I am going to let you in on something. The USA has a treaty with Saudi Arabia. Under that treaty, we were obligated to maintain a military presence inside Saudi Arabia as long as Hussein was in power. Maintaining that military presence was extraordinarily expensive for the United States and impractical. It also went against everything that was taught at West Point and was believed at the Pentagon. If you look at the briefing papers of every military think tank in this country, you will find that every single one of them said the same thing. 1) Establish a permanent, developed military presence; 2) to accomplish no. 1, you had to withdraw from the bases in Saudi Arabia in favor of new bases in more moderate and centrally located nations such as Quatar and Bahrain; 3) to accomplish no. 2, Saddam Hussein had to be no longer in power.

The left wing and the right wing think tanks all said the same thing. And they've been saying it for years.

So to find a paper that said as much doesn't take a lot of work. You could probably find a paper from the CRS from around 1998 that says the same thing.

BTW, I don't know if you've noticed, but our military presence in Saudi Arabia has dropped to a fraction of what it once was. And will be about nil inside 5 years. And even if Kerry is elected, his SecDef, Nat'l Sec. Advisor and Joint Chiefs will secretly be thanking Bush for it.

[FishForLunch]

Bush must have had some great planners. Atleast he has a long term vision and not putting his finger in the air like Kerry.

[Drbio]

Excellent post dooby.

[Maringa]

You know,,,,I would be completely shocked if our military, the security council, our administration etc. doesn't already have plans to invade Iran, Korea, Yemen, African Congo, Brazil, Tahiti, etc. I would be extremely disappointed if they didn't...It's their job. The military has to have contingency plans for every and any situation that can affect our country's defense and ability to function. Does it mean our country will act on those plans? No...If Kerry wins the presidency, I certainly hope he pulls his head out of the sand and continues these "think- tank" scenarios, otherwise it would be a complete relegation of his duties. Apparently the planning ahead made the Iraq war less bloody than would have been had it been a slapped together, out of necessity/survival, scenario...

[Dooby]

Originally posted by: Maringa
You know,,,,I would be completely shocked if our military, the security council, our administration etc. doesn't already have plans to invade Iran, Korea, Yemen, African Congo, Brazil, Tahiti, etc. I would be extremely disappointed if they didn't...It's their job. The military has to have contingency plans for every and any situation that can affect our country's defense and ability to function. Does it mean our country will act on those plans? No...If Kerry wins the presidency, I certainly hope he pulls his head out of the sand and continues these "think- tank" scenarios, otherwise it would be a complete relegation of his duties. Apparently the planning ahead made the Iraq war less bloody than would have been had it been a slapped together, out of necessity/survival, scenario...

Well, this isn't exactly what Reeds is talking about, but, yes, the Pentagon has plans for invading and defending just about every spot on the globe.

[LRB]

What's your point Reeds besides wasting bandwidth with meaningless propaganda? Can you make a consise and sumerized point backed by relative evidence? Of course that is totally out of sync with the inane spin doctoring that the brain washed extremists from both sides like to spew. Maybe you're not a brain washed extremist, but you posts sure look and sound like it. I'd love to be proven wrong though.

[reeds]

"What's your point Reeds besides wasting bandwidth with meaningless propaganda?"
LRB- how can you call this meaninless??? Thousands of lives lost, billions spent...its meaninless? There are many points to the thread..some are just too damn blind to see them i guess....

[reeds]

I guess this line here says it best about what my freakin point is..."'This is a blueprint for US world domination -- a new world order of their making. These are the thought processes of fantasist Americans who want to control the world."

So my point? It had nothing to do with 9-11, nothing to do with protecting our precious country- they were no threat anyway..nothing to do with getting rid of a dictator...its about the US flexing their muscle..for what? Oh yes, this world sure is a much better place to live now- just ask Spain..and there will be more Spains coming- our War with IRAQ did nothing to the evil people- except piss them off more...wait and watch..

Why is it that whenever we bring up Bush, the right brags about national security and what a job bush has done? Is that all there is to being president? What about JOBS? What about Social Security? What about Health Care? What about the Poor? Piss on all of that...lets go take over another defenseless country..that will help us US citizens greatly!!!

[Dooby]

Originally posted by: reeds
I guess this line here says it best about what my freakin point is..."'This is a blueprint for US world domination -- a new world order of their making. These are the thought processes of fantasist Americans who want to control the world."

So my point? It had nothing to do with 9-11, nothing to do with protecting our precious country- they were no threat anyway..nothing to do with getting rid of a dictator...its about the US flexing their muscle..for what? Oh yes, this world sure is a much better place to live now- just ask Spain..and there will be more Spains coming- our War with IRAQ did nothing to the evil people- except piss them off more...wait and watch..

Why is it that whenever we bring up Bush, the right brags about national security and what a job bush has done? Is that all there is to being president? What about JOBS? What about Social Security? What about Health Care? What about the Poor? Piss on all of that...lets go take over another defenseless country..that will help us US citizens greatly!!!

Holy crap.

[dude1394]

Originally posted by: reeds
"During the campaign, candidate Bush had criticized the Clinton-Gore Administration for being too interventionist: "If we don't stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road. And I'm going to prevent that."

“The thing that's most surprising, I think, is how emphatically, from the very first, the administration had said ‘X’ during the campaign, but from the first day was often doing ‘Y,’” says Suskind. “Not just saying ‘Y,’ but actively moving toward the opposite of what they had said during the election.”

Bush had the guts to say that Clinton-Gore were too "interventionists"??? We were extending our troops all over the world???And then they do this????? What a joke BUSH is...and a hypocrite to boot...

Have you been asleep? Only clintoon-gore would have woken up on Sept 12 and decide the best thing to do was the issue subpoenas to bin laden. Do you not think that our defensive posture and strategy of (REGIME CHANGE IN IRAQ) might need to be looked at again after our homeland was attacked.

Are you an inmate in a lunatic asylym who they give internet access to?

[Drbio]

Originally posted by: Dooby

Holy crap.

Wrong Dooby....it was just a load of stinking crap. You know...the kind that reeds consistently spews here. Brown, stinking, fly-laden crap. He can't get the taste out of his mouth.

[Chiwas]

I have a question.

If Bush planned to invade Iraq before 9/11, and if the invasion of the US to Iraq was for the oil and other US' interests...

...what is wrong with that?

I mean, what is the difference if it was one or the other reason?

If the purpose was to fight terrorism, the dictatorship and/or eliminate WMD's, and in the way the US found some oil, or if the purpose was to have the oil and in the way the terrorism was fought, the dictatorship ended, and -maybe- the WMD's destroyed, what makes the difference?

I think is just a matter of semantics. Or morality, whose scope can be easily manipulated by semantics.




Edit. I changed the last phrase.
Edit #2. I changed it again. It's not easy.

[dude1394]

Originally posted by: reeds
Finish daddies work..it had NOTHING to do with 9/11... Oil perhaps..US World domination perhaps..but not 9-11...


"Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming President




By Neil Mackay



A SECRET blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure 'regime change' even before he took power in January 2001.

Where is the link to the super secret blueprint for GLOBAL DOMINATION? Why isn't it in the article?



Oh here's another goody by the same author.

The JEWS DID IT!!

There was ruin and terror in Manhattan, but, over the Hudson River in New Jersey, a handful of men were dancing. As the World Trade Centre burned and crumpled, the five men celebrated and filmed the worst atrocity ever committed on American soil as it played out before their eyes.

Who do you think they were? Palestinians? Saudis? Iraqis, even? Al-Qaeda, surely? Wrong on all counts. They were Israelis – and at least two of them were Israeli intelligence agents, working for Mossad, the equivalent of MI6 or the CIA.

Their discovery and arrest that morning is a matter of indisputable fact. To those who have investigated just what the Israelis were up to that day, the case raises one dreadful possibility: that Israeli intelligence had been shadowing the al-Qaeda hijackers as they moved from the Middle East through Europe and into America where they trained as pilots and prepared to suicide-bomb the symbolic heart of the United States. And the motive? To bind America in blood and mutual suffering to the Israeli cause.

After the attacks on New York and Washington, the former Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was asked what the terrorist strikes would mean for US-Israeli relations. He said: “It’s very good.” Then he corrected himself, adding: “Well, it’s not good, but it will generate immediate sympathy [for Israel from Americans].” ...

His name was Sivan Kurzberg. The other four passengers were Kurzberg’s brother Paul, Yaron Shmuel, Oded Ellner and Omer Marmari. The men were dragged off to prison and transferred out of the custody of the FBI’s Criminal Division and into the hands of their Foreign Counterintelligence Section – the bureau’s anti-espionage squad. ...

Vince Cannistraro, former chief of operations for counter-terrorism with the CIA, says the red flag went up among investigators when it was discovered that some of the Israelis’ names were found in a search of the national intelligence database. Cannistraro says many in the US intelligence community believed that some of the Israelis were working for Mossad and there was speculation over whether Urban Moving had been “set up or exploited for the purpose of launching an intelligence operation against radical Islamists”.

This makes it clear that there was no suggestion whatsoever from within American intelligence that the Israelis were colluding with the 9/11 hijackers – simply that the possibility remains that they knew the attacks were going to happen, but effectively did nothing to help stop them.