"There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns;that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns--the ones we don't know we don't know."
                                                                       Donald Rumsfeld

GOOD's new video, "The Hidden Cost of War," is without a doubt the best educational video I have seen since Professor Wesch's video on Web 2.0, "The Machine Is Us/ing Us".

Why you should watch "The Hidden Cost of War":

In just under 3 minutes, it gives a comprehensive overview of how some experts have concluded that U.S. involvement in the war in Iraq will cost 3 trillion dollars, when both current debts and long-term costs are accounted for.

Plus, it has cool pictures.

The figures featured in the video are taken from the 2008 book The Three Trillion Dollar War by American economists Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes.  Stiglitz has won a little-known award called the Nobel Prize, and Bilmes teaches at a small university called Harvard.  So they know a thing or two about economics.  Even if you don't agree with the political implications of or mathematics behind Stiglitz's and Bilmes's estimation, I think everyone can agree that it's something to think about and discuss.

Here's a YouTube version of the video, but I encourage you to watch it on GOOD's website for higher quality:

GOOD is a Los Angeles-based magazine focused on social issues, politics, and sustainable living.  They use videos and other visual mediums to create what they call "media that matters" for "people who give a damn".  100% of their print magazine subscription fees go to a charity of your choosing, from Kiva to Teach for America to Slow Food USA; they've raised over $850,000 so far.  Membership to the website alone is free, and the website itself is worth a browse to see GOOD's other work.

SOURCE

The third trailer for director Oliver Stone's (World Trade Center) presidential biopic W. has popped up and it looks to be a mash-up between the first and the second one. To me this looks like it could be a very entertaining, if incredibly biased, motion picture.

The film stars Josh Brolin (American Gangster) as George W. Bush, Elizabeth Banks (Meet Dave) as his wife Laura, Ellen Burstyn (The Fountain) as his mom Barbara, James Cromwell (Spider-Man 3) as his dad George H.W. and Jason Ritter (CBS' The Class) as his younger brother Jeb.

Other cast members include Rob Corddry (Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay) as press secretary Ari Fleischer, Richard Dreyfuss (Poseidon) as Vice President Dick Cheney, Scott Glenn (Nights In Rodanthe) as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Toby Jones (St. Trinian's) as Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, Thandie Newton (RocknRolla) as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Jeffrey Wright (The Invasion) as Secretary of State Colin Powell, Noah Wyle (NBC's ER) as Secretary of Commerce Don Evans and Ioan Gruffudd (the Fantastic Four films) as British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Written by Stanley Weiser (Stone's Wall Street), W. will premiere in the US on October 17th. Additionally, Oliver Stone has partenered with YouTube for a video-making contest. Go here for more info.

Pepe Escobar / Asia Times

"It would have been quite impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries ..."
- David Rockefeller, Bilderberg club permanent member, 1991

This conversation never happened. Well, it actually did. Date: March 5 to 8, 2005. Location: the isolated, fully-booked Dorint Sofitel Seehotel Ueberfahrt in Rottach-Egern, 60 kilometers east of Munich, Germany. Essential amenities: luxury rooms, a lake, a golf course, no suits - and no wives. Participants: 120-odd Western movers and shakers - politicians, tycoons, bankers, captains of industry, so-called strategic thinkers - invited for the 2005 meeting of the ultra-secretive Bilderberg club. Security: absolutely draconian. Global media coverage: non-existent.

Talk about white man's burden: Bilderberg is strictly "Western" elite, ie American-European. Bilderberg resolutely excludes Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. Bilderberg operates in strictly master of the universe territory: what we say goes. Only when events happen will corporate media report them, even though selected media people would have been aware of what has been decided weeks or even months in advance. The New York Times, the Big Three American networks, the Financial Times have all been represented at many Bilderbergs. But they are constrained by the silence of the lambs (see Asia Times Online's report on Bilderberg 2003 in Versailles The masters of the universe May 22, 2003)

Bilderberg has an address - in Leiden, Holland - and even a phone number - always on female answering-machine mode. No website though. In an annual ritual, Bilderberg meeting places and agendas have to be painstakingly uncovered by a small group of independent sleuths like Briton Tony Gosling or American James Tucker - who has been following Bilderberg for 30 years. Tucker is publishing a book on Bilderberg later this year. Historian Pierre de Villemarest and journalist William Wolf have already published Facts and Chronicles Denied to the Public, volumes 1 and 2, which include a secret history of Bilderberg. Belgian sociologist Geoffrey Geuens from the University of Liege has also included a full chapter on Bilderberg in one of his books. Although Geuens condemns Bilderberg's obsessive secrecy, he does not subscribe to conspiracy theories: he prefers to study how Bilderberg unmasks the way power works and the incestuous relations between politics, economics and the media.

Whenever corporate media approaches Bilderberg it mirrors the silence of the lambs. In 2005, the Financial Times released a classic pre-emptive story downplaying what it qualifies as conspiracy theories. In fact, anyone who questions the most powerful club in the world is derided as a conspiracy theorist. Bilderbergers like British lords or American policy-makers meekly justify it as "just a place to discuss ideas", an innocent "forum" where anyone can "speak frankly", and other assorted cliches.

Bilderberger Etienne Davignon, a former vice president of the European Commission, adamantly stresses "this is not a capitalist plot to run the world". Thierry de Montbrial, director of the French Institute of International Relations and a Bilderberg member for almost 30 years, says this is only "a club". The official Bilderberg 2002 press release, for instance, said that "Bilderberg's only activity is its annual conference. At the meetings, no resolutions are proposed, no votes taken and no policy statements issued." Bilderberg is just "a small flexible, informal and off-the-record international forum in which different viewpoints can be expressed and mutual understanding enhanced". This is, in fact, what the much-lauded "trans-Atlantic relationship" is all about.

Members only
The Bilderberg group - which took its name from a Dutch hotel - was founded in 1954 by Prince Bernhard from the Netherlands. German-born Bernhard was a card-carrying Nazi and member of the SS. As it is well-known, Prescott Bush was an officer of W A Harriman & Co, which financed Adolf Hitler and the Nazis with the help of Averell Harriman and German tycoon Fritz Thyssen. Alden Hatch wrote a biography of Prince Bernhard where he insists that Bilderberg was the cradle of the European Community - later rebranded European Union. He describes Bilderberg's ultimate goal as a one-world government.

Bilderberg's membership is heavily crossed with the Council on Foreign Relations, the Pilgrims Society, the Trilateral Commission and the famous "Round Table" - a British, Oxford-Cambridge elite group crystallized in the homonymous journal of empire founded in 1910. The Round Table - which also denied its existence as a formal group - called for a more efficient form of global empire so that Anglo-American hegemony could be extended throughout the 20th century.

Bilderberg regulars include Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller (of JP Morgan's International Council), Nelson Rockefeller, Prince Philip of Great Britain, Robert McNamara (J F Kennedy's secretary of defense and former president of the World Bank), Margaret Thatcher, former French president (and main redactor of the EU constitution) Valery Giscard D'Estaing, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and the chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan. The Rothschild family has hosted many Bilderbergs. In 1962 and 1973, on the island resort of Saltsjobaden, Sweden, the hosts were the Wallenberg banking family.

Some of these masters control more of the universe than others. They are the members of the steering committee, which includes Josef Ackermann (Deutsche Bank), Jorma Ollila (Nokia), Jeurgen Schrempp (DaimlerChrysler), Peter Sutherland (former North Atlantic Treaty Organization - NATO - general and now with Goldman Sachs), James Wolfensohn (the outgoing World Bank president) and the "Prince of Darkness" Richard Perle. Iraq war conceptualist and incoming World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz is a also a Bilderberg permanent member. George W Bush happened to be in the neighborhood - the Netherlands, for the World War II commemorations - during Bilderberg 2005. He may have dropped in. Bush did meet Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, who must be present at every Bilderberg.

To whose advantage?
Bilderberg certainly is not an executive council. British economist Will Hutton may have gotten closer to the truth when he said that the consensus reached at each Bilderberg meeting "is the backdrop against which policy is made worldwide". What Bilderberg decides can be expected to be later implemented by a G-8 meeting, and International Monetary Fund and World Bank decisions.

No matter what, for innumerable, serious critics in Europe as well as the US, Bilderberg is everything from a Zionist plot to a megalomaniac secret cult. Serbs, not without some reason, blamed Bilderberg for the 1999 Balkan war and the fall of Slobodan Milosevic: after all, the US needed to control vital, Balkan pipeline routes. Bilderberg 2002 - although not without controversy - is thought to have cemented the invasion and conquest of Iraq. In his seminal A Century of War: Anglo-American oil politics and the New World War, F William Engdahl details what happened at Bilderberg 1973 in Sweden. An American outlined a scenario for an imminent 400% hike in the oil prices of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Bilderberg did not prevent the oil shock; instead it planned how to manage with mega-profits - what Kissinger described as "recycling the petrodollar flows". Everyone that mattered was present at this Bilderberg: oil majors and major banks. Engdahl's conclusion:

What the powerful men grouped around Bilderberg had evidently decided that May was to launch a colossal assault against industrial growth in the world, in order to tilt the balance of power back to the advantage of Anglo-American financial interests and the dollar. In order to do this, they determined to use their most prized weapon - control of the world's oil flows. Bilderberg policy was to trigger a global oil embargo, in order to force a dramatic increase in world oil prices. Since 1945, world oil had by international custom been priced in dollars, since American oil companies dominated the post-war market. A sudden sharp increase in the world price of oil, therefore, meant an equally dramatic increase in world demand for US dollars to pay for that necessary oil.

Saudi petrodollars then moved to the "right" banks in London in New York to finance US government deficits. Game, set, match to Bilderberg - where the mandarins of global finance always win.

Plutocracy international
Although not a single word uttered inside the Bilderberg vaults is allowed to reach public opinion, it's possible to take an educated guess as to what they're talking about. Last week, the ubiquitous Kissinger started the proceedings by illuminating the meaning of "freedom" - the Bush version. Natan Sharansky, Bush's democratic guru, was a participant.

Issues that would logically have interested Bilderberg 2005 include the role of NATO and the necessary approval in 2005 of the European constitution by all 25 members of the EU - the consequences of a French "no" in the upcoming May 29 referendum to approve the constitution need to be considered. Widespread job outsourcing in Europe to the Ukraine, China and India may sound the death knell to the constitution: French protesters - who have awakened the German and the Dutch - are insisting that what is good for big corporations may not be necessarily good for Western European workers. Critics say that chapter III of the constitution in fact details the way free trade may effectively kill the European welfare state.

They have their reasons to be concerned. In his book The Great Chessboard, Bilderberger Zbigniew Brzezinski hails "a Western Europe ... staying in a large measure an American protectorate". Brzezinski also insists that "Europe has to solve the problem caused by its social redistribution system", which "prevents European initiative". The father of the European constitution is none other than Bilderberger Valery Giscard d'Estaing, who happens to be very close to Kissinger.

From a geopolitical perspective, the heart of the whole matter is that the constitution legally confirms that Europe cannot have a defense force apart from NATO, ie outside the control of the US. Bilderberg beliefs would point to only one direction: an ever-expanding, US-controlled NATO, an ever-eastward-expanding EU, mass delocalization, mass corporate profits and unchallenged US military supremacy. No wonder this is the focus of a bitter debate inside EU corridors in Brussels, where scores of diplomats and commission officials openly complain of Washington's bullying and accuse their governments of selling out. Gunther Verheugen, the European commissioner in charge of expanding the EU, happens to be a Bilderberger. When members of the European Commission go to a Bilderberg, their travel expenses and their daily allowance is provided by the commission. This certainly disqualifies Bilderberg's self-presentation as a "private club".

Bilderberg 2005 has - coincidentally? - merged with Bush's tour among his Baltic friends and the tense meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The containment of Russia was likely top of the agenda for Bilderberg. Russia is very much worried about its "near abroad" and sees no reason to remove its army from bases in Georgia or its navy from Sebastopol, in Ukrainian Crimea - no matter how many color-coded revolutions happen at its doorstep.

European Commission sources assure that Brzezinski remains an extremely influential figure. The Bilderberg discussion on the control of Eurasia still refers to The Grand Chessboard. Washington is such an avid cheerleader of Turkey's accession to the EU because this means increased American influence near the Caspian and over the eastern Mediterranean. And it also works towards the containment of Iran, Russia and China - which, according to Brzezinski, may not be allowed to emerge as rival powers to the US in Eurasia.

Another contentious issue that must have occupied the minds of those at Bilderberg 2005 is preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon - this is just a detail: the point is how to prevent Iran from becoming a first-rate Eurasian power. Some in Brussels do not discount the possibility of a scenario of massive propaganda buildup to try to convince American and European public opinion of the necessity of a strike against Iran. How to force Beijing to appreciate the yuan must also have been a topic.

Echt der Hammer oder? mehr Infos und den ganzen Artikel gibts auf:

http://www.brudermann.net/blog/blogs/blog1.php/2008/09/21/deutscher-historiker-reicht-strafanzeige

I suggested yesterday that defining election year terms like elitist might be a useful way to spend the next weeks approaching the American presidential election, but what I really want to do is seek true definition of the issues and not just terms. 

Today's issue is not really a timely issue as it's been overshadowed by "the economy, stupid."

But when we talk about victory in Iraq, what exactly does that mean?  What is victory supposed to look like?  How is victory to be defined?  Is it like pornography and we'll know it when we see it?  Is victory achieved when the pre-war goals are achieved?  Does anyone remember what the pre-war goals were anymore? 

I recognize by asking these questions that I am not defining any issue with clarity as the title suggests here.  And I recognize by asking these questions I am opening myself to criticism by those who believe I am suggesting we "cut and run."   However, I am of the opinion that we fix the mess we made. 

I am of the "Pottery Barn rule."  I know why we are there; I hoped it was for other reasons, and as the build up suggested it was not for the reasons I believed in, I hoped a more solid case would be built.  Alas. 

The reasons for are as moot as the reasons against.  We are there.  But when politicians talk about Iraq in terms of victory and defeat, what does it mean for the United States to be victors?  Is victory only victory if we are not defeated?

That decision has stirred such strong opposition from the Pakistani military and government that it is now being revisited. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived in Pakistan Tuesday for the second time in three weeks, and U.S. officials and sources just told Reuters that any future raids would be approved on a mission-by-mission basis by a top U.S. administration official.

The policy was the result of strong pressure from the U.S. command in Afghanistan and lobbying by the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and the CIA's operations directorate (DO), both of which had direct institutional interests in operations that coincided with their mandate.

State Department and some Pentagon officials had managed to delay the proposed military escalation in Pakistan for a year by arguing that it would be based on nearly nonexistent intelligence and would only increase support for the Islamic extremists in that country.

But officials of SOCOM and the CIA prevailed in the end, apparently because Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney believed they could not afford to be seen as doing nothing about bin Laden and al Qaeda in the administration's final months.

SOCOM had a strong institutional interest in a major new operation in Pakistan.

The Army's Delta Force and Navy SEALS had been allowed by the Pakistani military to accompany its forces on raids in the tribal area in 2002 and 2003 but not to operate on their own. And even that extremely limited role was ended by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in 2003, which frustrated SOCOM officials.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whose antagonism toward the CIA was legendary, had wanted SOCOM to take over the hunt for bin Laden. And in 2006, SOCOM's Joint Special Operations Command branch in Afghanistan pressed Rumsfeld to approve a commando operation in Pakistan aimed at capturing a high-ranking al Qaeda operative.

SOCOM had the support of the U.S. command in Afghanistan, which was arguing that the war in Afghanistan could not be won as long as the Taliban had a safe haven in Pakistan from which to launch attacks. The top U.S. commander, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, worked with SOCOM and DO officers in Afghanistan to assemble the evidence of Pakistan's cooperation with the Taliban. .

Despite concerns that such an operation could cause a massive reaction in Pakistan against the U.S. war on al Qaeda, Rumsfeld gave in to the pressure in early November 2006 and approved the operation, according to an account in the New York Times Jun. 30. But within days, Rumsfeld was out as defence secretary, and the operation was put on hold.

Nevertheless Bush and Cheney, who had been repeating that Musharraf had things under control in the frontier area, soon realised that they would be politically vulnerable to charges that they weren't doing anything about bin Laden.

The July 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was the signal for the CIA's DO to step up its own lobbying for control over a Pakistan operation, based on the Afghan model -- CIA officers training and arming a local militia while identifying targets for strikes from the air.

In a Washington Post column only two weeks after the NIE's conclusions were made public, David Ignatius quoted former CIA official Hank Crumpton, who had run the CIA operation in Afghanistan after the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks, on the proposed DO operation: "We either do it now, or we do it after the next attack."

That either-or logic and the sense of political vulnerability in the White House was the key advantage of the advocates of a new war in Pakistan. Last November, the New York Times reported that the Defence Department had drafted an order based on the SOCOM proposal for training of local tribal forces and for new authority for "covert" commando operations in Pakistan's frontier provinces.

But the previous experience with missile strikes against al Qaeda targets using predator drones and the facts on the ground provided plenty of ammunition to those who opposed the escalation. It showed that the proposed actions would have little or no impact on either the Taliban or al Qaeda in Pakistan, and would bring destabilising political blowback.

In January 2006, the CIA had launched a missile strike on a residential compound in Damadola, near the Afghan border, on the basis of erroneous intelligence that Ayman al-Zawahiri would be there. The destruction killed as many 25 people, according to local residents interviewed by The Telegraph, including 14 members of one family.

Some 8,000 tribesmen in the Damadola area protested the killing, and in Karachi tens of thousands more rallied against the United States, shouting "Death to America!"

Musharraf later claimed that the dead included four high-ranking al Qaeda officials, including al-Zawahiri's son-in-law. The Washington Post's Craig Whitlock reported last week, however, that U.S. and Pakistani officials now admit that only local villagers were killed in the strike.

It was well known within the counter-terrorism community that the U.S. search for al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan was severely limited by the absence of actionable intelligence. For years, the U.S. military had depended almost entirely on Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, despite its well-established ties with the Taliban and even al Qaeda.

One of the counter-terrorism officials without a direct organisational stake in the issue, State Department counterterrorism chief Gen. Dell L. Dailey, bluntly summed up the situation to reporters last January. "We don't have enough information about what's going on there," he said. "Not on al Qaeda, not on foreign fighters, not on the Taliban."

A senior U.S. official quoted by the Post last February was even more scathing on that subject, saying "Even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then."

Meanwhile, the Pakistani military, reacting to the U.S. aim of a more aggressive U.S. military role in the tribal areas, repeatedly rejected the U.S. military proposal for training Frontier Corps units.

The U.S. command in Afghanistan and SOCOM increased the pressure for escalation early last summer by enlisting visiting members of Congress in support of the plan. Texas Republican Congressmen Michael McCaul, who had visited Afghanistan and Pakistan, declared on his return that was "imperative that U.S. forces be allowed to pursue the Taliban and al Qaeda in tribal areas inside Pakistan."

In late July, according to The Times of London, Bush signed a secret national security presidential directive (NSPD) which authorised operations by special operations forces without the permission of Pakistan.

The Bush decision ignored the disconnect between the aims of the new war and the realities on the ground in Pakistan. Commando raids and missile strikes against mid-level or low-level Taliban or al Qaeda operatives, carried out in a sea of angry Pashtuns, will not stem the flow of fighters from Pakistan into Afghanistan or weaken al Qaeda. But they will certainly provoke reactions from the tribal population that can tilt the affected areas even further toward the Islamic radicals.

At least some military leaders without an institutional interest in the outcome understood that the proposed escalation was likely to backfire. One senior military officer told the Los Angeles Times last month that he had been forced by the "fragility of the current government in Islamabad," to ask whether "you do more long-term harm if you act very, very aggressively militarily".

*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.

(END/2008)

On Saturday morning in Andover, Massachusetts, as about 120 activists, adademics, constitutional scholars, public officials and legal experts gathered in the Wyndham hotel, the building suddenly went dark.

Electricity had been cut off just prior to the start of a landmark war crimes conference, the goal of which was to plan the prosecution of Bush Administration officials. The first of its kind conference, already featuring a laundry-list of notable speakers, was suddenly in flux … If only for a few moments.

“We were already so effective, the government tried to shut us down,” said conference organizer Lawrence Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover, in an interview with RAW STORY.

“Of course, when I said that at the conference opener, the power had been restored. I was only joking,” said Velvel with a slightly nervous laugh. “A fuse box fried, but the local electric company fixed it before we even began.”

The ‘Bush war crimes conference,’ according to its organizers, is a “throwback to the framers of the constitution,” which aims to establish “necessary organizational structures” to pursue those guilty of war crimes “to the ends of the Earth.”

“The framers didn’t trust the federal government either,” said Velvel. “And oddly enough, over the years and decades, a strong distrust of government was once a Republican position. It was, at least, in theory. And then Bush came along and there’s this, well, my country, love it or leave it in the GOP … But now, you have people on the other side of the spectrum taking that very position.

“This is a conservative idea, to hold conferences and then take action to take power. Liberalism has been made fun of as mere self expression. I was very impressed by the desire in this group to take action.”

“This is not a campaign event,” said Professor Christopher Pyle of Mt. Holyoke College, during his speech to the conference. “It is a conference about how to restore governmental accountability in the wake of a criminal administration. It addresses the most serious crisis in our nation’s history — the claim that the president and his secret agents can get away with torture, kidnapping, and even manslaughter.”

The two day affair was divided in half: Speakers on Saturday, and planning on Sunday.

Chief among the academics, legal experts and whistle-blowers speaking in Andover was Vincent Bugliosi, best known for successfully prosecuting Charles Manson and penning the subsequent novel, Helter Skelter. His new book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, is currently available at retail.

Watch Bugliosi’s opening statement to a July, 2008 House Judiciary Committee hearing on the limits of executive authority:

Other speakers included:

# Phillippe Sands, Professor of Law and Director of the Centre of International Courts and Tribunals at University College, London. He is the author of “Torture Team: Rumsfeld’s Memo and the Betrayal of American Values” (Penguin/Palgrave Macmillan), among other works.

# Jordan Paust, Professor of Law at the University of Houston and author of “Beyond The Law.”

# Ann Wright, a former U.S. Army colonel and U.S. Foreign Service official who holds a State Department Award for Heroism and who taught the Geneva Conventions and the Law of Land Warfare at the Special Warfare Center at Ft. Bragg, N.C. She is the coauthor of “Dissent: Voices of Conscience.”

# Peter Weiss, Vice President of the Center For Constitutional Rights, which was recently involved with war crimes complaints filed in Germany and France against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others.

# Benjamin Davis, Associate Professor at the University of Toledo College of Law and former American Legal Counsel for the Secretariat of the International Court of Arbitration.

# David Lindorff, journalist and co-author with Barbara Olshansky of “The Case for Impeachment: Legal Arguments for Removing President George W. Bush from Office”(St. Martin’s Press).

# Colleen Costello of Human Rights USA.

# Christopher Pyle, a professor at Mt. Holyoke and author of several books on international matters

“We need to revers[e] a fifty-year trend towards unaccountable secret government, which can commit crimes with impunity,” said Pyle in a release. “‘Sending a clear signal to future Cabinet-level officials that ours is still a government under law, and that they had better obey the criminal law, no matter what their president and his legal lackeys say,’ is a matter of overwhelming importance.”

While video of the conference was broadcast live via UStream.tv, the footage is currently unavailable on the Internet.

Conference organizers told RAW STORY that a series of DVD’s will be offered for sale at cost to interested parties. Online footage of the conference will also be made available Friday, Sept. 19, at a Web site address yet to be announced.

“Later this week we will establish a central committee which will decide which of the many ideas we came up with are practical, and we will begin asking people to undertake particular actions,” said Velvel. “Once those first steps are carried out, as I hope it will be, that will be the first major accomplishment of this conference.”

The plans, which will be released in a media advisory later this week, considered:

# What international and domestic crimes were committed, which facts show crimes under which laws, and what punishments are possible.

# Which high level Executive officials — and Federal judges and legislators as well, if any — are chargeable with crimes.

# Which international tribunals, foreign tribunals and domestic tribunals (if any) can be used and how to begin cases and/or obtain prosecutions before them.

# The possibility of establishing a Chief Prosecutor’s Office such as the one at Nuremburg.

# An examination of cases already brought and their outcomes.

# Creating an umbrella Coordinating Committee with representatives from the increasing number of organizations involved in war crimes cases.

# Creating a Center to keep track of and organize compilations of relevant briefs, articles, books, opinions, and facts, etc., on war crimes and prosecutions of war criminals.

Velvel told RAW STORY that several groups have been established to force some universities to hold hearings on whether faculty members should have their jobs terminated for participating in Bush Administration crimes.

“John Yoo, the author of the infamous ‘torture memo’ who now works at Berkeley, comes quickly to mind,” he added.

“The consensus of attendees is President Bush’s attack on Iraq is a violation of the Charter of the United Nations and that he is culpable for this as well as for torture and abuse of war prisoners held by the U.S. military and the CIA,” stated a media advisory.

Other conference cell groups plan to raise up groundswells of support for district attorney candidates who would be willing to investigate or prosecute Bush Administration crimes. Conference attendees also plan to begin seeking disbarment proceedings against lawyers who assisted the administration in war crimes.

Additional measures, details of which were not immediately forthcoming, include utilizing foreign and International courts, and focused actions on state and local levels.

“The idea of using foreign and International courts is not so dissimilar to the time [Donald] Rumsfeld had to flee France to avoid arrest on war crimes charges,” said Velvel. “Of course, that was a foreign court, and he just went into Germany and was fine. We were talking more about going to a true International court.”

The Bush war crimes conference is in the tradition of Justice Robert H. Jackson, who prosecuted war criminals after World War II, writes Sherwood Ross.

“The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by little people,” said Justice Jackson. “It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power and make deliberate and concerted use of it to set in motion evils which leave no home in the world untouched.”

“Obviously, we want to go beyond self expression,” concluded Velvel.

Pentagon chief lands in Baghdad

Mr Gates is on his eighth trip to Iraq since succeeding Donald Rumsfeld

US defense secretary Robert Gates is in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, on a previously unannounced visit.

He is expected to oversee a ceremony at which Lt-Gen Ray Odierno will take over command of US troops in Iraq.

Gen Odierno will replace Gen David Petraeus, who is moving to a new job in charge of US forces in the Middle East and Horn of Africa.

Last week, Mr Gates said the Iraq war had reached its end-game, but the US should be wary about troop withdrawals.

He is expected to hold talks with Iraqi officials, in what is his second trip in eight months and his eighth since becoming Pentagon chief in December 2006.

Washington and Baghdad are negotiating a controversial security pact that will govern the US troop presence in Iraq when a UN mandate expires at the end of 2008.

Maintaining pressure

"The challenge, I think, for Gen Odierno is: How do we work with the Iraqis to preserve the gains that have already been achieved, expand upon them, even as the numbers of US forces are shrinking," Mr Gates told reporters on his flight to Baghdad.

He added that Iraqis must move forward with reconciliation between Shia Muslims, Sunni Arabs and Kurds

"There's still people who would like to see this fail and the important thing will be to keep the pressure on all of them," he said.

Violence has decreased in Iraq under Gen Petraeus's strategies, which included a surge of US troop numbers to implement crackdowns on insurgents.

Mr Gates praised Gen Petraeus as "the hero of the hour" but said those working for him who put his plans into action were also "heroes".

Correspondents say he was aided by factors such as the decision of former Sunni insurgents to turn against al-Qaeda and a ceasefire by the Mehdi Army militia.

Andover law school convenes Bush War Crimes Conference - WATCH LIVE

Raw Story- Stephen C. Webster
Published: Saturday September 13, 2008

PROGRAM STARTS AT 9 A.M. EST. -- SEE EMBEDDED VIDEO BELOW.

Saturday morning, the dean of Massachusetts School of Law at Andover will convene a two day planning session with a single focus: To arrest, put to trial and carry out sentence on criminals in the Bush Administration.

The conference, arranged by Lawrence Vevel, cofounder of the Andover school, will focus on which of Bush's officials and members of Congress could be charged with war crimes. The plan also calls for "necessary organizational structures" to be established, with the purpose of pursuing the guilty "to the ends of the Earth."

"For Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Yoo to spend years in jail or go to the gallows for their crimes would be a powerful lesson to future American leaders," Velvel said in a media advisory.

In a published document entitled "The Long Term View" (PDF link), Vevel argues, at the very least, "there is no question" George W. Bush is guilty of conspiracy to commit torture, a war crime.

"He is a former drunk, was a serial failure in business who had to repeatedly be bailed out by daddy's friends and wanna-be-friends, was unable to speak articulately despite the finest education(s) that money and influence can buy, has a dislike of reading, so that 100-page memos have to be boiled down to one page for him, is heedless of facts and evidence, and appears not even to know the meaning of truth," said Vevel.

The conference will focus on:

# What international and domestic crimes were committed, which facts show crimes under which laws, and what punishments are possible.

# Which high level Executive officials -- and Federal judges and legislators as well, if any -- are chargeable with crimes.

# Which international tribunals, foreign tribunals and domestic tribunals (if any) can be used and how to begin cases and/or obtain prosecutions before them.

# The possibility of establishing a Chief Prosecutor’s Office such as the one at Nuremburg.

# An examination of cases already brought and their outcomes.

# Creating an umbrella Coordinating Committee with representatives from the increasing number of organizations involved in war crimes cases.

# Creating a Center to keep track of and organize compilations of relevant briefs, articles, books, opinions, and facts, etc., on war crimes and prosecutions of war criminals.

And, addressing the conference will be:

# Famed former Los Angeles prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, author of the best-selling “The Prosecution of George W. Bush For Murder”(Vanguard).

# Phillippe Sands, Professor of Law and Director of the Centre of International Courts and Tribunals at University College , London . He is the author of “Torture Team: Rumsfeld’s Memo and the Betrayal of American Values” (Penguin/Palgrave Macmillan), among other works.

# Jordan Paust, Professor of Law at the University of Houston and author of “Beyond The Law.”

# Ann Wright, a former U.S. Army colonel and U.S. Foreign Service official who holds a State Department Award for Heroism and who taught the Geneva Conventions and the Law of Land Warfare at the Special Warfare Center at Ft. Bragg, N.C. She is the coauthor of “Dissent: Voices of Conscience.”

# Peter Weiss, Vice President of the Center For Constitutional Rights, which was recently involved with war crimes complaints filed in Germany and France against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and others.

# Benjamin Davis, Associate Professor at the University of Toledo College of Law and former American Legal Counsel for the Secretariat of the International Court of Arbitration.

# David Lindorff, journalist and co-author with Barbara Olshansky of “The Case for Impeachment: Legal Arguments for Removing President George W. Bush from Office”( St. Martin ’s Press).

# Colleen Costello of Human Rights USA .

# Christopher Pyle, a professor at Mt. Holyoke and author of several book on international matters.

# Lawrence Velvel, a leader in the field of law school education reform, who has written numerous internet articles on issues relevant to the conference.

Watch the Bush War Crimes Conference starting Saturday, 9 a.m. EST - 5:15 p.m., and Sunday 9 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. EST. in the embedded video below. This story will be updated as noteworthy.

WATCH LIVE

by Scott Simon

Audio for this story will be available at approx. 12:00 p.m. ET

The War Within is Bob Woodward's fourth book about the Bush administration.

Read an excerpt.

Weekend Edition Saturday, September 13, 2008 · The war in Iraq has been President Bush's war, but Bob Woodward's new book, The War Within, charges that the commander in chief has maintained "an odd detachment from its management."

Woodward says that Bush delegated key strategy decisions — including the number of brigades to send in the surge — to Stephen Hadley, his assistant for national security affairs. He add that while the troop surge has helped to stabilize the situation in Iraq, it isn't solely responsible for the reduction in violence.

"Top secret operations [were] going on that really had a tremendous impact in the drop in violence," says Woodward...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94566638

Political Research Associates  -  www.publiceye.org

RIGHT WEB

exposing the architecture of power that's changing our world

Stephen Hadley:

Stephen Hadley, a foreign policy hawk closely associated with Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, was named President George W. Bush's national security adviser in November 2004, replacing Condoleezza Rice. Hadley, whose first post in the Bush administration was as Rice's deputy, was part of a loosely constituted group of foreign policy advisers known as the Vulcans who advised candidate Bush in 2000 and were at the core of his presidential transition team after taking office. Among the other Vulcans who later moved into the first Bush administration were Rice, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Colin Powell, Richard Perle, and Donald Rumsfeld (for an exhaustive account of the Vulcans, see James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, Viking, 2004)...

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1213.html

Video 2 - "I misspoke" - The statement he wished he could take back

Video 3 - His Plan for IRAQ

Video 4 - Critism of Runsfeld / Bush - Why I supported the Troop Surge - Iraq Plan 

http://60minutes.yahoo.com/segment/56/john_mccain

Essay topic: language is often used to conceal the truth.

Whether because of media, globalisation, an increasing publication of world atrocities or a fulfilment of George Orwell’s ominous prophecy, the use of language to distort and conceal the truth has made its way into almost every aspect of society. Politicians, advertisements, businesses and even the Education Department of Victoria use euphemisms and “weaselly” language for a variety of reasons, but primarily to befuddle their audience and critics, cast a positive light on themselves and their actions, and to generally stay in power and away from that dreaded democratic value of accountability.

Even on a low level, we encounter nice and sometimes unrelated lexemes to describe unpalatable topics every day of our lives. Toilets become “comfort stations”, “water closets” and somewhere where women go to powder their noses. Instead of saying Aunt Rina drank too much brandy and died last week” we’ll say “she’s passed on” or “she’s in heaven now”. Even practical and ubiquitous objects like condoms have been referred to as “virtual skin wear”. In restaurants we’re loathe to order calf’s testicles when we could say the much more edifying “prairie oysters”, and why settle for canned spam when we can have “luncheon meat” in our sandwiches? In time, though, even these pleasant alternatives will succumb to Gresham’s law, the euphemism-dysphemism treadmill, and new words will come to replace the old when too much of the actual subject rubs off on them. Some terms are unlikely to change very quickly, however. For decades teachers have been writing niceities like “prefers to work alone” into their comments banks, when they really mean “your child is antisocial and a loner”. The kind of language used to dodge irate parents extends to the mothership as well: at a meeting of the Education Department a few years ago, an official responded to a question about the progress of a certain program with, “[the project] is still very draft, but it has an aggressive timeline on it”. This, of course, was said to conceal a truth something closer to “I haven’t started it and it’s due tomorrow”.

Another rich mine of weasel words is in the land of business and advertising. Characteristics of the type of language used here include the addition of adjectives one would normally not associate with what is being advertised, and general hyperbole. For example, the label of a QANTAS toiletry bag reads: “contains specially selected products chosen for their ability to enhance your wellbeing”. If you had never considered the healing properties of napkins before, the good people at QANTAS clearly want you to see their product anew. A more earth-bound example of advertisements putting a positive spin on things is one Australian winery’s descriptions of the wine-making process, encouraging you to join in their “vintage operations”, also known as crushing grapes in a giant barrel with your feet.

Closely elated to the exaggeration and euphemistic language used in the world of advertising, of course, are the incomprehensible terms found in annual business reports and jobs ads. Employing chic and modern words like “time horizons” (deadlines) and “strategic foresight analysts” (goodness knows), businesses are obsessed with trying to make their operations seem cutting edge and exciting, which is what QSA Strategic Plan Consultancy wanted to show when they promised to “achieve synergies intended by the amalgamation” for their clients. While some people would doubtlessly be enthused by such language, often it is more confusing than it is revelatory. In October 2003 the Centre for Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University published a report stating “our results provide a growth-oriented view of intra-household distributions it related to inter-generation disparity”. Egregious use of hyphenation aside, impressive statements like this are aimed at presenting companies in the best possible light at the expense of clarity and plain old fashioned sense. Despite these examples of exemplary fiction, however, companies do not always prosper, at which point they must become “competitive” and “streamlined”, and their workers become “jobseekers” at “involuntary career events” with their “voluntary departure packages” in tow. Although the truth may be bleedingly obvious, no effort is spared when it comes to concealing the facts for the greater good of the business community.

Unfortunately, another rich vein of doublespeak and weasel words are put to use in order to manipulate and shift the meaning of more dire situations. Often originating in the US army and then spreading to the “can do” lingo of its allies, politicians at home and soldiers in the war zone have created their own language to cover miserable realities, put civilians’ minds at rest and keep their popularity out of the red. In times of “peace keeping” “unmanned aerial weapons” ensure the need for frequent “surgical strikes” that seem to imply minimal “collateral damage”, and never “wet work” (assassination). Unfortunately, some of our “brave men and women” “the ultimate sacrifice” in “defence of freedom and democracy”, winding up in “mortuary evacuation points” (morgues) and shipped home in “transfer tube” (caskets packed with ice). In this way the tragedies of war and the blame for committing them can be pushed as far away from government as possible, all of these words shifting meaning away from reality and into a kind of neutral realm where people don’t raise argument because they can’t understand.

The pioneers of many of these wartime euphemisms, needless to say, are the people we have elected to power. In August 1995, Prime Minister Howard said, he wanted to “assert the very simple principle that truth is absolute, truth is supreme, truth is never disposable in national political life”. Which was, of course, completely unrelated to his “non-core promises” and the “I don’t recall” AWB saga of 2006. Even choirboys like Kevin Rudd are prone to weaselly slips of the tongue. In April this year, when asked a question about Asia security at a London press conference, our incumbent PM responded with, “I’ll reverse engineer and start at the third and move back to the first. I think its quite clear…that you see an absence of multilateral security mechanisms…and the evolution of a series of confidence and security-building measures coming off the back of CSCE, OSCE and the Helsinki accords”. One can hardly find the deeply flummoxed expression of the questioning journalist unexpected. Common characteristics of political weasel speak are the use of overly long, disconnected, fragmentary and sometimes contradictory sentences. Rudd’s use of acronyms, which required the audience’s familiarity with their expanded forms for his answer o be comprehensible, is another way politicians can confound their electorate and critics into acceptance of everything they say. Shortly after that dissertation of the PM’s, he followed with “the things is not in the bag by any stretch of the imagination”. That cliché double whammy employs common and familiar terms to lull people into a sense of ease. As far as reported Tony Wright, who covered the story, was concerned, a simple “buggered if I know, mate” from the PM would have been satisfactory.

Although the contexts and implications of euphemism, weasel words and basic lying differ, they are omnipresent and are increasingly used as the truth becomes less and less pleasant. As Donald Rumsfeld, that bastion of clarity, once explained, “as we know, there are no known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the one we don’t know we know”.

For more information about weasel words check out this website and Watson's Dictionary of Weasel Words, Contemporary Cliches, Cant & Management Jargon.

US marks seventh 9/11 anniversary

New York has paused to remember the times two planes struck the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001 - an attack that killed nearly 3,000 people.

Four moments of silence are being held to mark the times when four hijacked passenger planes hit the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.

Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain are attending a ceremony at Ground Zero in New York.

President Bush dedicated a new memorial at the Pentagon, where 184 died.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg opened Thursday's memorial event at Ground Zero, where families of the victims read out a roll call of those who died.

The attacks, which triggered the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and the Bush administration's war on terror, are regarded as the defining moment of President George W Bush's time in office.

At the Pentagon, he paid tribute to the acts of courage shown by Americans seven years ago, saying: "The worst day in America's history saw some of the bravest acts in America's history."

A flag was raised over the Washington memorial, which was built at a cost of $22m (£12.6m) on a 1.9-acre (0.77-hectare) parcel of land within view of the crash site.

The president was joined in the US capital by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld.

Mr Bush had stood earlier for a moment of silence with First Lady Laura Bush on the White House lawn at the time the first plane hit the World Trade Center.

It is the last time Mr Bush marks the anniversary as president.

"The president thinks about 9/11 every single day when he wakes up and before he goes to bed," White House press secretary Dana Perino said on the eve of the anniversary.

'Put aside politics'

Senators Obama and McCain, the Democratic and Republican nominees in November's election, will appear together at Ground Zero in the afternoon to lay wreathes in honour of the victims.

11 September 2001 is a day many around the world will never forget

In a joint statement from the campaigns announcing their decision to visit Ground Zero together, the two men vowed to come together "as Americans" and suspend their political campaigns for 24 hours.

"We will put aside politics and come together to renew that unity, to honour the memory of each and every American who died, and to grieve with the families and friends who lost loved ones," the statement said.

Their appearance is to be followed by another in the evening at a Columbia University forum to discuss their views on public service.

The ceremony in downtown Manhattan is marking the times when the planes hit the Twin Towers, and when each tower fell - pausing for silence at 0846, 0903, 0959 and 1029.

Family members and students representing the 90 countries that lost people in the attacks also read out the names of all the 2,973 dead.

Seven years after the attacks which shocked the world, Ground Zero is a construction site.

9/11 MEMORAIL TIMETABLE 1340BST: New York World Trade Center ceremony begins 1346: Moment of silence (time first plane hit North Tower) 1346: President Bush has moment of silence at White House 1403: Moment of silence (time second plane struck South Tower) 1430: Mr Bush in Washington for 9/11 Pentagon Memorial dedication 1459: Moment of silence (time South Tower fell) 1529: Moment of silence (time North Tower fell) 1545: Members of Congress gather on the West Steps to honor those killed and injured on 9/11

After years of delays and disagreements over how to commemorate the dead, work has finally begun on a memorial and a new skyscraper - the Freedom Tower - which is due to be completed by 2012.

On Wednesday, Mr Bloomberg called for the abolition of the WTC planning agency, saying the reconstruction was "frustratingly slow".

"Most important, the memorial must be completed by the 10th anniversary. No more excuses, no more delays," he added.

On the eve of the anniversary, a top US military commander warned new tactics were needed to win the conflict in Afghanistan, which the US and its allies invaded three months after 9/11.

They aimed to topple the Taleban and hunt down Osama Bin Laden, who the US believes masterminded the attacks.

Admiral Mike Mullen believes insurgents are launching attacks from neighboring Pakistan, and US-led forces must target their "safe havens" in that country.

I remember watching the television all day. I don't believe that we rented a single car that day. When the towers fell, many in the Paradise Chevrolet waiting room cried. It was unbelievable.  We knew at that time that thousands, if not tens of thousands, had to still be in the buildings when they crumbled. The unity that I saw that night on the streets of Northridge, California, though, was something that I had never seen, and not seen since. Hundreds holding candles, praying for the victims. There was a unity which we need in our country today, which has disappeared since the days and weeks following 9/11. If we could bring this back, we would be a far stronger country. Let us never forget the victims of September 11, 2001.

From the New York Times:

Weeks later, when the smoke had cleared and the dust settled, there, out the living room window, was the View, that most coveted of New York City apartment amenities, shattered forever.

All across the city, for days, months, maybe years after 9/11, it hurt to look out the window.

In Sunset Park, Brooklyn, Marissa Gonzalez, a corporate recruiter and writer, could not adjust. She had designed her whole fourth-floor apartment on 40th Street around the postcard-worthy outline of the Lower Manhattan skyline rising above the slope of Green-Wood Cemetery and the flats of northwest Brooklyn beyond.

“Looking out those windows was a ritual for me,” she said. “They were part of my sanctuary, my place of inspiration. It was impossible for me to go there and not tie into the day and the days after and the pain and the grief.”

A few months after 9/11, she moved out.

The question of how New Yorkers view their view may seem abstract, trivial, remote, compared with the pain of thousands upon thousands who lost loved ones, friends or colleagues when the World Trade Center towers fell. But for a broad swath of New Yorkers for whom the two towers were primarily the crowning jewel of a cherished vista, the amputated skyline was a daily reminder of loss. The way they have reached accommodation, or not, with the transformed view provides yet another window into the city’s infinitely long process of recovery.

Conversations with dozens of New Yorkers this week, when the end-of-summer light is just so and passing planes induce a wince, found them poised somewhere between Never Forget and Enough Already. Some confessed to occasional pangs of survivor guilt when they catch themselves enjoying the cityscape, diminished but still quite impressive, that gleams in their windows and draws them to park benches.

From the Associated Press:

Relatives of victims killed at the World Trade Center are observing a moment of silence to mark the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The silence marks the exact time — 8:46 — when the first hijacked plane struck the trade center. Other moments of silence were planned for the times when the second plane hit and when the towers fell.

Other ceremonies are being held throughout the day, including one at the Pentagon, where a new memorial will be dedicated. Services will also be held in Shanksville, Pa., where one of the hijacked planes crashed.

Later Thursday, Barack Obama and John McCain are due at ground zero to pay silent respects.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Today marks year seven in a "war on terror" not of our making, and possibly not in our power to end. In scale and deadliness, the attacks of 9/11 were comparable to Pearl Harbor, so it's little wonder that they were interpreted as an act of war. But by taking on a movement rather than a government, the United States has confronted unprecedented legal and procedural challenges that continue to haunt it -- and will do so long after a new president takes power, particularly if the current occupant of the Oval Office has his way.

In recent months, the Bush administration has been reaffirming its wartime powers by inserting language in legislation, rewriting intelligence procedures and changing regulations. For example, the New York Times reports that the administration added a provision to a proposal for hearing legal appeals from detainees at Guantanamo Bay that asks Congress to "acknowledge again and explicitly" that the U.S. is at war with Al Qaeda, the Taliban and related movements.

[caption id="attachment_1081" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Credit: Associated Press"][/caption]

Bush doesn't need such declarations in order to continue the war in Afghanistan; that was authorized by Congress on Sept. 14, 2001. Rather, he seems to be trying to solidify the legal justification for some of his administration's most questionable policies, such as holding detainees indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay or carrying out wiretapping operations on Americans without a court order. The goal, apparently, is to make such policies permanent, or at least give his successor the option of continuing them.

From CNN International:

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld returned to the Pentagon on Thursday to help dedicate a memorial to victims of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks there and elsewhere.

"Today we renew our vows to never forget how this long struggle began and to never forget those who fell first," said Rumsfeld, who despite his high office helped carry the wounded from the burning building seven years ago.

"We will never forget the way this huge building shook. We will not forget our colleagues and friends who were taken from us and their families. And we will not forget what that deadly attack has meant for our nation."

President Bush followed Rumsfeld at the lectern.

"On a day when buildings fell, heroes rose," Bush said. "... One of the worst days in America's history saw some of the bravest acts in America's history."

From CNN:

Seven years after devastating terrorist attacks brought death to New York's World Trade Centers, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, the first permanent, on-site memorial is being dedicated Thursday at the Pentagon.

Official memorials at the other two sites are still years away.

In New York, construction has begun on a complex that will include a memorial with a tree-shaded plaza and reflecting pools, and an underground museum with an entry pavilion.

It's part of a bigger project, including new office towers and a transportation hub, whose target date has been repeatedly delayed.

The goal is to open the memorial to the public by the 10th anniversary of the attacks, in 2011, and the museum by the year after.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg stressed the importance of those dates and called progress "frustratingly slow" in an opinion piece published Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal.

"The memorial must be completed by the 10th anniversary," Bloomberg wrote. "No more excuses, no more delays."

From TomDispatch

The events of the past seven years have yielded a definitive judgment on the strategy that the Bush administration conceived in the wake of 9/11 to wage its so-called Global War on Terror. That strategy has failed, massively and irrevocably. To acknowledge that failure is to confront an urgent national priority: to scrap the Bush approach in favor of a new national security strategy that is realistic and sustainable -- a task that, alas, neither of the presidential candidates seems able to recognize or willing to take up.

On September 30, 2001, President Bush received from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld a memorandum outlining U.S. objectives in the War on Terror. Drafted by Rumsfeld's chief strategist Douglas Feith, the memo declared expansively: "If the war does not significantly change the world's political map, the U.S. will not achieve its aim." That aim, as Feith explained in a subsequent missive to his boss, was to "transform the Middle East and the broader world of Islam generally."

Rumsfeld and Feith were co-religionists: Along with other senior Bush administration officials, they worshipped in the Church of the Indispensable Nation, a small but intensely devout Washington-based sect formed in the immediate wake of the Cold War. Members of this church shared an exalted appreciation for the efficacy of American power, especially hard power. The strategy of transformation emerged as a direct expression of their faith.

The members of this church were also united by an equally exalted estimation of their own abilities. Lucky the nation to be blessed with such savvy and sophisticated public servants in its hour of need!

The goal of transforming the Islamic world was nothing if not bold. It implied far-reaching political, economic, social, and even cultural adjustments. At a press conference on September 18, 2001, Rumsfeld spoke bluntly of the need to "change the way that they live." Rumsfeld didn't specify who "they" were. He didn't have to. His listeners understood without being told: "They" were Muslims inhabiting a vast arc of territory that stretched from Morocco in the west all the way to the Moro territories of the Southern Philippines in the east.

Yet boldly conceived action, if successfully executed, offered the prospect of solving a host of problems. Once pacified (or "liberated"), the Middle East would cease to breed or harbor anti-American terrorists. Post-9/11 fears about weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of evil-doers could abate. Local regimes, notorious for being venal, oppressive, and inept, might finally get serious about cleaning up their acts. Liberal values, including rights for women, would flourish. A part of the world perpetually dogged by violence would enjoy a measure of stability, with stability promising not so incidentally to facilitate exploitation of the region's oil reserves. There was even the possibility of enhancing the security of Israel. Like a powerful antibiotic, the Bush administration's strategy of transformation promised to clean out not simply a single infection but several; or to switch metaphors, a strategy of transformation meant running the table.

When it came to implementation, the imperative of the moment was to think big. Just days after 9/11, Rumsfeld was charging his subordinates to devise a plan of action that had "three, four, five moves behind it." By December 2001, the Pentagon had persuaded itself that the first move -- into Afghanistan -- had met success. The Bush administration wasted little time in pocketing its ostensible victory. Attention quickly shifted to the second move, seen by insiders as holding the key to ultimate success: Iraq.

Fix Iraq and moves three, four, and five promised to come easily. Writing in the Weekly Standard, William Kristol and Robert Kagan got it exactly right: "The president's vision will, in the coming months, either be launched successfully in Iraq, or it will die in Iraq."

The point cannot be emphasized too strongly: Saddam Hussein's (nonexistent) weapons of mass destruction and his (imaginary) ties to Al Qaeda never constituted the real reason for invading Iraq -- any more than the imperative of defending Russian "peacekeepers" in South Ossetia explains the Kremlin's decision to invade Georgia.

Iraq merely offered a convenient place from which to launch a much larger and infinitely more ambitious project. "After Hussein is removed," enthused Hudson Institute analyst Max Singer, "there will be an earthquake through the region." Success in Iraq promised to endow the United States with hitherto unprecedented leverage. Once the United States had made an example of Saddam Hussein, as the influential neoconservative Richard Perle put it, dealing with other ne'er-do-wells would become simple: "We could deliver a short message, a two-word message: 'You're next.'" Faced with the prospect of sharing Saddam's fate, Syrians, Iranians, Sudanese, and other recalcitrant regimes would see submission as the wiser course -- so Perle and others believed.

Members of the administration tried to imbue this strategic vision with a softer ideological gloss. "For 60 years," Condoleezza Rice explained to a group of students in Cairo, "my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East -- and we achieved neither." No more. "Now, we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people." The world's Muslims needed to know that the motives behind the U.S. incursion into Iraq and its actions elsewhere in the region were (or had, at least, suddenly become) entirely benign. Who knows? Rice may even have believed the words she spoke.

In either case -- whether the strategy of transformation aimed at dominion or democratization -- today, seven years after it was conceived, we can assess exactly what it has produced. The answer is clear: next to nothing, apart from squandering vast resources and exacerbating the slide toward debt and dependency that poses a greater strategic threat to the United States than Osama bin Laden ever did.

In point of fact, hardly had the Pentagon commenced its second move, its invasion of Iraq, when the entire strategy began to unravel. In Iraq, President Bush's vision of regional transformation did die, much as Kagan and Kristol had feared. No amount of CPR credited to the so-called surge will revive it. Even if tomorrow Iraq were to achieve stability and become a responsible member of the international community, no sensible person could suggest that Operation Iraqi Freedom provides a model to apply elsewhere. Senator John McCain says that he'll keep U.S. combat troops in Iraq for as long as it takes. Yet even he does not propose "solving" any problems posed by Syria or Iran (much less Pakistan) by employing the methods that the Bush administration used to "solve" the problem posed by Iraq. The Bush Doctrine of preventive war may remain nominally on the books. But, as a practical matter, it is defunct.

To read the rest of the article use the link below:

TomDispatch

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