WMD & Medias of mass deception

In these times of medias of mass deception, it is time to revisit the times just before and during the Iraq War (March 20, 2003). Bush & Co. claimed that they believed there were weapons of mass destruction, and with persistant lying and deception convinced congress to vote for the war.

Now Bush & Co. claims that everybody including the people of America are responsible for this horrible mistake. Afterall...it was voted in by congress.

Millions of people demonstrated all over the planet, to prevent this war from occuring, and now we are supposed to be eating humble pie and enjoying the koolaide? I don't think so... I believe that we must now demonstrate in larger and louder numbers, or see these evil ideologs pursue their pre-emptive goals to gain control of the entire Middle East.


key word: PNAC

View Point From Germany

March 4, 2003


This War Came from a Think Tank

By Jochen Boelsche*
Der Spiegel

It was in no way a conspiracy. As far back as 1998, ultra right US think tanks had developed and published plans for an era of US world domination, sidelining the UN and attacking Iraq. These people were not taken seriously. But now they are calling the tune.

German commentators and correspondents have been confused. Washington has tossed around so many types of reasons for war on Baghdad "that it could make the rest of the world dizzy", said the South German Times.

And the Nuremburg News reported on public statements last week by Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer to an inner circle in the US that war can only be avoided if Saddam not only disarms, but also leaves office. Regime change is a condition that is in none of the barely remembered 18 UN resolutions. The Nuremburg News asked in astonishment whether Fleischer had made the biggest Freudian slip of his career or whether he spoke with the President's authority.

It's not about Saddam's weapons

So it goes. Across the world critics of President Bush are convinced that a second Gulf War is actually about replacing Saddam, whether the dictator is involved with WMD or not. "It's not about his WMD," writes the German born Israeli peace campaigner, Uri Avnery, "its purely a war about world domination, in business, politics, defence and culture".

There are real models for this. They were already under development by far right think tanks in the 1990s, organisations in which cold-war warriors from the inner circle of the secret services, from evangelical churches, from weapons corporations and oil companies forged shocking plans for a new world order. In the plans of these hawks a doctrine of "might is right" would operate, and the mightiest of course would be the last superpower, America.

Visions of world power on the Web

To this end the USA would need to use all means - diplomatic, economic and military, even wars of aggression - to have long term control of the resources of the planet and the ability to keep any possible rival weak. These 1990's schemes of the think tanks - from sidelining the UN to a series of wars to establish dominance - were in no way secret. Nearly all these scenarios have been published; some are accessible on the Web.

For a long time these schemes were shrugged off as fantasy produced by intellectual mavericks - arch-conservative relics of the Reagan era, the coldest of cold-war warriors, hibernating in backwaters of academia and lobby groups. At the White House an internationalist spirit was in the air. There was talk of partnerships for universal human rights, of multi-lateralism in relations with allies. Treaties on climate-change, weapons control, on landmines and international justice were on the agenda.

Saddam's fall was planned in 1998

In this liberal climate there came, nearly unnoticed, a 1997 proposal of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) that forcefully mapped out "America's global leadership". On 28 Jan 1998 the PNAC project team wrote to President Clinton demanding a radical change in dealings with the UN and the end of Saddam. While it was not clear whether Saddam was developing WMD, he was, they said, a threat to the US, Israel, the Arab States and "a meaningful part of the world's oil reserves". They put their case as follows:

"In the short term this means being ready to lead military action, without regard for diplomacy. In the long term it means disarming Saddam and his regime. We believe that the US has the right under existing Security Council resolutions to take the necessary steps, including war, to secure our vital interests in the Gulf. In no circumstances should America's politics be crippled by the misguided insistence of the Security Council on unanimity."

Blueprint for an offensive

This letter might have remained yellowing in the White House archives if it did not read like a blue-print for a long-desired war, and still might have been forgotten if ten PNAC members had not signed it. These signatories are today all part of the Bush Administration. They are Dick Cheney - Vice President, Lewis Libby - Cheney's Chief of Staff, Donald Rumsfeld - Defence Minister, Paul Wolfowitz - Rumsfeld's deputy, Peter Rodman - in charge of 'Matters of Global Security', John Bolton - State Secretary for Arms Control, Richard Armitage - Deputy Foreign Minister, Richard Perle - former Deputy Defence Minister under Reagan, now head of the Defense Policy Board, William Kristol - head of the PNAC and adviser to Bush, known as the brains of the President, Zalmay Khalilzad - fresh from being special ambassador and kingmaker in Afghanistan, now Bush's special ambassador to the Iraqi opposition.

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~The Iraq War (March 20, 2003~

The Masters of the World:

The World Order of the Superpower

DER SPIEGEL (Germany) 19apr03

Following the overthrow of the despot, Saddam Hussein, the Americans are claiming the right to reorder the world according to their beliefs. In the future, dictators will be challenged and rivals will be prevented from coming to power in the first place.


It was intended as a celebration of Europe. Last week on the Agora in Athens, the marketplace of the ancient world, at the base of the magnificent marble staircase leading up to the Acropolis, 25 heads of state signed a treaty to expand the European Union. Ten states, most of them former communist countries between the Baltic Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, were entering into an alliance with their Western European partners. Most of these states had been separated from one another for decades by the Cold War. In Athens, however, there was little evidence of the giddiness of reunification so evident after the fall of the Berlin Wall. And the only sign of godly participation was a pompous fireworks display in the sky above the Parthenon.

The speakers, in their 25 brief addresses, certainly highlighted the fact that they were creating a colossus: 450 million Europeans with a combined gross domestic product of 11.1 billion Euros, the world's second-largest domestic market after the United States, a community without precedent in the history of mankind.

Even more significantly, all of this was taking place on a continent whose states had spent the bulk of the past few centuries at war with one another. Now they had bonded together by treaty, and had sealed their alliance on the anniversary of a revolutionary national constitution called democracy. Even those at the US Pentagon who view themselves as the world's saviors could only dream of achieving such a domino effect of infectious liberalism: "We are no longer prepared to accept," mumbled German foreign minister Joschka Fischer, "that policy is made over our heads." On the high road to Washington? Moscow? Delhi? Beijing?

In fact, his apologists see the reunified, peaceful European empire as a model. "We have been able to overcome wars and rivalries," said German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, adding that it is Europe's obligation "to use precisely this experience to develop a long-term outlook for a world characterized by security and cooperation."

The fact that the prevailing mood on this brilliant spring day in Athens was celebratory but not exactly jubilant was due to someone who was not even present: American President George W. Bush.

That's because this is the man, the leader of a superpower that is preparing to restructure the world according to its own taste, who had just demonstrated to the Europeans how painfully incomplete and lacking in influence their highly-acclaimed political alliance still is. The dispute over America's war in Iraq had split Europe's governments into two camps that, notwithstanding their newfound proclamations of harmony, had until recently viewed each other with some mistrust.

Great Britain's Tony Blair and Spain's José María Aznar, leaders of the more bellicose European contingent, which, incidentally, also includes most of the Eastern European countries now entering the European Union, were cursed by angry demonstrators in Athens. France' Jacques Chirac and Germany's Gerhard Schröder who, together with Russia's Vladimir Putin, are disdainfully referred to in Washington as the "Axis of the Defeated," must have realized that their grand objective of a common European foreign and security policy remains an elusive goal. Fischer predicted that without radical reform within the EU and closer collaboration in matters of foreign policy, the Europeans will be forced, in future, to accept what others dictate, "just as Switzerland is now forced to accept the decisions we make within the EU."

The contrast could not be more striking. On one side, there is Europe. Although it views itself as a model, the image it projects to the remainder of the world is unconvincing. On the other side, there is the superpower USA, which, its ego once again boosted by a triumph of its weapons, wishes to impose a new order on the world.

In their armed conflict against Saddam Hussein, America's optimists, who had demanded this war ever since the collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, have seen their initial predictions confirmed, at least for now: Baghdad was captured quickly and the enemy's forces simply evaporated under a hail of American artillery.

The popularity of the American president, who had placed his prestige and authority on the line, has risen to new heights on the home front. And America does not seem to be tired of war just yet. A sense of rage and a tremendous thirst for revenge gripped the country on September 11, 2001, and these feelings do not appear to have abated.

So who's next? Would the United States, emboldened by its speedy victory in Iraq, march on to Damascus, if only to prevent America's conservatives from accusing Bush Junior of making the same mistake his father once made, of having stopped a Gulf war too soon? The country the Assads have claimed as their family property fulfills the two key criteria that, according to the Bush doctrine, can lead to regime change through war: Syria is a sponsor of terrorist organizations and - presumably - has weapons of mass destruction.

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