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Why is this great country in such a mess?

CHICKEN LITTLE AND
THE COST OF "OPERATION HUNKER DOWN"
by Edward Miller, San Rafael, California

[Editor's note: Actually Bush wants $87 billion.]

"Whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a parliament or a communist dictatorship.....the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them that they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in every country."
Hermann Goering ( from Gustave M. Gilbert's NUREMBERG DIARY )

Just as in 1967 Israeli Prime Minister Begin, along with Yitzak Shamir (later Prime Minister) purposely mislead their people into believing that they were threatened by Nasser's military forces in the Sinai, in order to justify Israel's already planned war of aggression against the neighboring Arab States, so President Bush, Jr. along with Cheney and Powell, lied and are still lying to the American people regarding threats that Saddam, some 6000 miles away, posed and still might pose to this Country.

As was the case with Israel, the Bush's lies worked, and a reckless and somewhat incoherent Congress passed the "War Powers Act" with little or no serious debate and we were again on our way into Iraq. By adding the lie that Saddam and his regieme were linked to the Twin Towers and Pentagon bombing, the sell was made easier.

In order to justify this country's horrendous Homeland Security budget, which is stealing money from our schools, our medical services, our senior citizens and other Americans who badly need these social services, Washington, like "Chicken Little" in our childrens' fairy tale book, must scream almost daily that "the sky is falling". No matter what the color the alert is, red, yellow, or orange these "Homeland Insecurity Messages" carry the same intent: To keep Americans frightened, since a scared people will submit to all sorts of so-called "Security Measures."

In addition to the Billions in the Home Security budget, the Bush administration now plans to ask for a ten percent increase in spending this next year, just for the Information Technology Division (ITD). This will add $ 5 Billion to the more than $ 52.6 Billion for this fiscal year ( see federaltimes.com/index ). On top of all this, as airport security costs are skyrocketing , the upgrades suggested in 2002 were triple the amount already budgeted, reaching more than $ 6.0 Billion. The Congress-funded Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has now become larger than the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Border Patrol combined, and according to Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta, TSA will be hiring more than 50,000 employees.
( govsecurity.securitysolutions.com/microsites )

In addition to the federal budgets for Homeland Security, grants to individual states are getting out of hand. In an article in the KANSAS CITY STAR ( 9 August ) reporter John A. Dvorak notes that : " As public spending faces cut after cut, one exception stands out: a burst of money for homeland security. The newest grants from Washington were $ 1.5 Billion with "almost $ 20 million for Missouri, and another $ 20 million for Kansas." Dvorak said: "officials charged with preparing for catastrophe had been acting like Saturday shoppers at Wal-Mart. On the shopping lists are suits, masks and gloves..and devices that warn of killer-agents such as nerve gas. Johnson County even bought 250 body-bags at $ 26.01 apiece while Overland Park and Independence are eyeing robots - which can cost $100,000 or more- for bomb squads and other investigations....understanding how much money is available, to whom it goes, and for what, poses a challenge."

Just how did the wealthiest, the militarily most-powerful, and the strongest democracy on this planet get into this mess and why has this OPERATION HUNKER-DOWN seized hold of so much of both our energy and other resources? Why have we Americans who never tire of preaching to the world of our " free democratic society " allowed our representatives in Washington to both shackle and threaten us with such legislation as the "Patriot Act", a piece of contrived villany which was not even read by most of the Congress that voted to pass it?

The answer lies in political money, and in the lobbying efforts by two influential groups in Washington: the oil interests lead by Dick Cheney and his Halliburton associates, who have long been determined to get their hands on Iraqi oil, and the Zionist lobby whose object, planned some thirty years ago, was the destruction of Saddam's Country ( See THE THIRTY-YEAR ITCH by Robert Dreyfuss in Mother Jones magazine March/April 2003 )

The first warning of these secret cabals should have come in the complete indifference shown by Washington as the new State of Israel in 1948 savagely drove some 750,000 Palestinians from their ancestral homes in Palestine. Then in 1982, President Reagan, whose California governorship had been paid for by Hollywood Jews, actively supported General Sharon's brutal invasion and butchery in Lebanon. Reagan's Battleship the USS New Jersey shelled Lebanon's capital Beirut, stampeding 600,000 who had survived Sharon's killing, east into the mountains. The Muslims did not forget, and weeks later 413 US Marines plus sailors from the USS New Jersey along with a contingent of French Marines in Beirut were killed by bombs.

Washington ignored this warning, and Bush Sr., after the Gulf War broke his promise to Saudi Arabia's King Faruk to remove American "infidel" troops from sacred Saudi soil. Again Americans paid with their lives as bombs wiped out the USS Marine barracks in Riyadh. The Muslim world also watched with horror the completely unnecessary killing of both Iraqi military and civilians during the Gulf War, as well as the uncalled-for destruction of Iraq's infrastructure, followed by a planned bacterial genocide as Iraqis were forced to drink sewage-contaminated water. The post-war embargo, engineered by the US and Britain, and structured through the UN Security Council's committees, guaranteed that Iraqis would continue to die of water-born diseases, as the some 800 embargoed items included every possible piece of equipment , as well as those chemicals that Sadaam and his engineers would need to clean up their water and refurbish their destroyed electrical systems.

Throughout the 1990's as the US and Brits illegally assailed Iraqi airspace ( The so-called "Overflights were never authorized by the UN)..Washington continually disrupted Saddam's attempts to rebuild his infrastructure, while the US-inspired " United Nations Oil for Food" program was carefully calculated to keep Iraqis just above the starvation level. These planned results were so deadly that both UN administrators of the Program first Asst. Secretary Denise Halliday and then Von Trombek, quit in disgust. During these twelve years between the two Gulf Wars, more than 2,000,000 Iraqis, mostly the young and the elderly, have died from a combination of water-born disease (cholera, dysentery, the Plague, ) from starvation, as many families were forced to sell their meager food allowances for clothing, oil for cooking and heat, and medical care. The residual radiation from some 340 tons of depleted-uranium missiles, plus the tens of thousands of "cluster bomblets" have added to the carnage. Iraqi kids are still being killed by bomblets they pick up.

OSAMA'S WARNING
While this planned US-British carnage continued, supported by the United Nations and ignored by our media and much of the world, and as Israel's savage onslaught against the Palestinians intensified under the butcher, Sharon, Muslim anger and anguish finally reached the boiling point, and in 1998, in an interview in Afghanistan by Assoc.Press columnist John Miller, Osama Ben Laden, rising as a champion of his Muslim brothers, threw down the gauntlet to the United States, saying clearly, that unless Washington ceased its genocide against his fellow Muslims in Iraq, and cut off its support of Sharon's savage thievery in the Occupied Territories, his 1.2 Billion Muslim brothers would respond with calculated violence.

These warnings were either ignored or ascribed to " Muslim fanatics", and Washington's criminal assaults on the Muslim people in Iraq and the Palestinian communities continued. Osama's next warning arrived in Africa when the US embassies in both Tanzania and then Kenya were destroyed by bombs with the loss of over 200 lives, both staff and civilians. Next a large hole was blown in the port side of our USS Cole as she lay anchored off Yemen. Eighteen sailors were killed and many more injured. Clinton fired 18 missiles nto Afghanistan, killing 13 students in a madrassa. Ben Laden repeated his warnings both by taped interviews and over Muslim networks. Washington paid little heed and so three thousand Americans died as the Twin Towers collapsed and burned and the Pentagon suffered a direct hit.

Washington still had choices: Get out of Iraq, stop the illegal overflights, call off the killing UN embargo, and cease funding Sharon's onslaught in the Occupied Territories. Instead, Bush Jr., still under the control of Cheney and his friends, the Christian Right and the Zionist cabal, which included such close advisors as Richard Perle, Wolfowitz, Leith, Abromowitz and other, chose to shout " TERRORISM' and to continue to risk the lives of his fellow Americans.

BOMBING THE DEFENSELESS
The debacle in Afghanistan followed. An ultra-religious Taliban was conveniently demonized and the already-ravished Afghans subject to mercillous shelling and high-level bombing which further destroyed heir impoverished country. Unknown to Americans, the US-Brit "Oveflights" in Iraq had intensified their destruction of Saddam's pitiful attempts at reconstruction, and the carefully-guided bombing of Iraq's technical manufacture and fiber-optic communications networks in preparation for a future invasion was secretly under way. Bush's assistant defense minister, Zionist Paul Wolfowitz was sent abroad to gather international support for an attack on Iraq, while Washington's subservient media obediently turned up the volume of anti-Saddam rhetoric.

Today, with the Afghan War long past and Gulf War II not quite behind us, where are we? Afghanistan is a shambles with Karsai, protected by our CIA and a US Marine guard threatened in his own capital..His brother's home in Kabul was bombed this week. The Afghans survive in anarchy with tribal militia leaders still under CIA bribes to reduce intertribal killing. Those "International Funds" promised Karsai in the Tokyo Summit have yet to arrive, and Washington is focussed on Iraq. The projected NATO troops, if they arrive will probably be no more useful than they are in both Bosnia and Kosovo where their soldiers stand by as militias kill in the streets.

As for Iraq, with US forces fighting a guerilla war and the Washington-picked Ruling Council at odds with much of the Iraqi populace, anything can happen. The Occupation is costing Washington over $ 1 Billion a week, and since Germany, France, India, and now the Indonesian Government have refused to send in troops, Bush Jr, searches the world for support as one Iraqi pipeline after another bursts into flame and American troops are daily sacrificed for oil and Israel.

Bush's job-list for "Homeland Security" better called "OPERATION HUNKER DOWN " while adding tens of thousands to both federal and state payrolls , not only shoves us further into debt, but adds not one iota to either our safety or our national wealth. Checking baggage and shoes in endless lines in airports across the Country is an exercise in both frustration and futility, since tens of thousands of tons of miscellaneous freight with which every passenger jet is loaded, and which represent at least 20% of the total cargo, are being dumped aboard without being either checked or x-rayed.

Add to this the millions of containers unloaded every day at airports and harbors across this country, with bills or lading scribbled by some unsupervised foreign employee. A single such container could hold dozens of bombs of every description, so those thousands of federal security employees are looking at haystacks for needles. Meanwhile while the FBI searches millions of internet messages, without the language skills required to understand the thousands of dialects which cross their screens, nor do they have an inkling of the contents of the books whose titles they scan on your library card or mine.

As this Country's economy grinds down, as Americans are shot in Iraq, and our national debt increases exponentially, Bush Jr. has choices. Our President can cease this HUNKER DOWN fiasco, get our troops out of both Afghanistan and Iraq, take the parasite, Israel off American taxpayer's life-support line and make peace with the Muslim world of 1.2 Billion peoples, while turning his attention to the needs of Americans.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, president during a much more severe depression responded with programs such as the WPA and which not only put Americans to work, but added to the wealth of this Country as roads were repaired, bridges constructed, schools built, post-offices and other public buildings constructed. Roosevelt's TVA, which energized the manufacturing life of five states is still providing cheap power today. There is not a single public job being funded today under the Homeland Security Act which ten years from now will be recognized as having added to the wealth of this Nation.
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2003-09-14 Sun 12:17ct