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“We were attacked from Afghanistan in 2001, and we are at war in Afghanistan today, in no small measure because of mistakes this government made--mistakes I among others made in the end game of the anti-Soviet war there some 20 years ago.” That’s an astonishing confession, even if mine was the only jaw that dropped. Gates is the first high official in the Bush administration to acknowledge what war critics have been lambasted for even suggesting. OK, he didn’t use the word “blowback,” but by definition, that’s what he’s talking about. A certain radio commentator once all but called me a traitor for suggesting what Gates openly admits. Many others, including the Rev. Jeremiah Wright most recently, have been denounced all over this country for suggesting 9/11 was caused by failed U.S. policy. Yes, Wright said much else as well. Nevertheless he took a hit for stating the same notion. So why is Big Media silent about Gates? You tell me. Eventually, this story might show up on Page 5 in your local daily, especially if this column gets around, but it will never be top of Page One, where it counts, just as you never saw the following headlines there when they might’ve made a difference: US Looks the Other Way as Pakistan Perfects Nuclear Bombs and Delivery System. Counting Florida Over-votes Would Put Gore in Whitehouse. Saudi Oil Profits Linked to Spread of Wahabism. War Will Cost 100 Times More Than Bush Team Predicts (Oil Will Not Pay For It). Bush Suppresses Evidence of Global Warming. No Weapons of Mass Destruction Found in Iraq. No Aerial Drones. No New Anthrax. No Yellowcake. No New Centrifuges. No Significant Links Found Between Al-Qaeda and Saddam. Case for Invading Iraq Included Ravings from a Tortured Man and Lies from a Criminal with Ties to Iran. Secret Memos Reveal US Told England We’d 'Fix the Evidence' to Support Joint Iraq Attack. Bush Building Permanent Military Bases in Iraq. Bush Hands Control of Iraq to Natural Allies of Iran. Prominent Bush Supporters Believe He’s Preparing Way for the Rapture. www.KnoxVoice.com Don Williams is a prize-winning columnist for "Knoxville Voice," professional blogger at Knoxvoice.com and a contributing editor to Media With Conscience (MWCnews.net). He is a also a short story writer, freelance journalist and the founding editor and publisher of New Millennium Writings (see www.newmillenniumwritings.com), an annual anthology of literary writings. His awards include a National Endowment for the Humanities Michigan Journalism Fellowship, a Golden Presscard Award from Sigma Delta Chi, and the Malcolm Law Journalism Prize. He is finishing a novel set in his native Tennessee and Iraq.
who'd a thunk it. this is so earth shaking blowback is so defeatist a sounding term. it was really pre-empted reverse psychological warfare, that was unfair and most definite fanfare. they invented emotions of mass destruction with a simple meme too horrible to even mention. kaboom! after all the weapons and training we gave them. after our puppet regime in saudi arabia bank rolled those ingrates! where is the irony, where we liberators were turned upon and executed a coup de grace for playing yahweh all these years. we freed the poppy growers to expand their mind expanding drugs by 500%. those crazy taliban were destroying the opium of the masses and the c i a's cash cow. perhaps gates was not on the inside to positively know that 9/11 was a great movie script directed by those madcap producer and director team of bush and cheney. not only was it oscar winning material as a drama, but it was the greatest farce that turned out to be a joke on the populace. Ann Thrax stars in the sequel "liberty unbalanced". with Homer Landsecurity as the hero awaiting Ann's pleas to be whisked off to safety in the rickety old Edsel. Frogs bless amerika, land of the fleeced, stand beside her, and deride her, from the radioactive mountains, to the genetically modified valley corn, the mob has fleeced us all. wolfie tunes in to the static that is a slow attack on our auditory canal's tributaries by
Wolfie (9 articles, 0 quicklinks, 18 diaries, 1078 comments)
on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 11:22:02 AM
i think what Gates was saying is if the doctrine of pre-emptive wars to control geo-politically strategic resources had been started before 9/11, we wouldn't have been attacked. He's frustrated by the unwillingness of the Dems to wholeheartedly endorse the strategy, and start telling the lies that support it, as vigorously as the average Republican "It was my hope 16 months ago that I could help forge a bipartisan path forward in our Iraq policy that would sustain a steadily lower – but still adequate and necessary – level of commitment for the years needed to yield an Iraq that is an ally against extremists and can govern and defend itself. I continue to harbor this hope for a bipartisan path and will continue to work for it. But I do fear that understandable frustration over years of war and dismay over sacrifices already made may result in decisions that are gratifying in the short term but very costly to our country and the American people in the long term." by
Better World Order (4 articles, 408 quicklinks, 26 diaries, 875 comments)
on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 12:35:03 PM
What are you suggesting? Are you suggesting that a government agency that started out using Nazi war criminals as agents could possibly screw anything up? The CIA should never have been formed. For whatever good they may have done has been far out-weighed by the number of colossal screw-ups they've orchestrated. Any agency that is given unaccountable income and secrecy will attract the worse kind of pathological killers - it's a sociopath magnet. When you trace the history of near all these agencies of the last 90 years, see how they morphed into entities of their own, caused tremendous suffering, pain, lose of proprietary and life and near a one of the heads of any of these agencies ever gets held accountable you begin to understand just how big a mess we're in. The closest any one ever came was Iran-Contra and they were pardoned by bush-41. by
Mr M (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 9 diaries, 1256 comments)
on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 2:37:52 PM
Born in 1929 in Sheffield Yorkshire England. Left school at age 14 and worked as a painter & decorator until I was called up for National service in the British Army. Served in the army untill 1973, then worked as an electronics/radio engineer untill 1984 when i retired. Built a boat and sailed around the Med. for 11 years then sold it in Tunisia, returned to the U.K. then to Florida where I've lived ever since.
Damage Control It's called damage control, almost all the world now knows the Bush administration carried out the 9/11 attack, some may deceive themselves for a while longer but they'll have to admit it eventually. In the days of that other fascist government under Hitler he knew he could get way with burning the Reich stag because he had complete control of information. Now we have the Internet where the truth will out simply because people can exchange ideas over a vast network so propaganda under Himmler is impossible today. The crashing of 4 aircraft and no investigation, that's a first. When an Egyptian Airliner went down off the eastern coast of the US every single piece was brought to the surface and examined for months. Of course what we will get now is slight modifications to the story to make it seem more plausible. by
douglas kay (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 83 comments)
on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 4:17:09 PM
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A 47-story tall reason to mistrust any admission of blowback A supposed admission that we are having difficulties due to really misguided policies toward Afghanistan and the entire developing world, serves to hide the fact that World Trade Center Building 7 was brought down by controlled demolition explosives that were placed at least a week in advance of 9/11. There is no way an attack originating in Afghanistan could have secured access to a building like WTC Building 7, which had floors occupied by the US Secret Service, SEC, CIA, and the New York Mayor's Office of Emergency Management. There is no way any members of Al Qaeda from Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia (the actual nationality of >90% of the reputed hijackers) were going to gain unfettered access to all load bearing columns of WTC Bldg 7 to set synchronized demolition charges that were manually triggered by unknown officials and announced 30 minutes prior to actual demolition by CNN and BBC on live newscasts the afternoon of September 11, 2001. When is Robert Gates going to admit to seriously failed policies and a constant erosion of democratic safeguards that allowed domestic enemies of the United States Constitution and the American people to gain access to the White House and positions of power within our government? When are our representatives and the media going to admit and publicize that true power in Washington emanates from multi-billion dollar misappropriations to "Defense", "Intelligence", and PR agencies bent on perpetuating a constant state of fear and war waged on Americans to justify obscene budgets that suck our national wealth down a very inefficient and deep hole? Robert Gates doesn't have the real honesty and integrity needed to be that kind of hero. I hope he is good enough to try and protect us from another traitorous attack launched at America from the insiders working to further corrupt our nation. by
Tim Riley (7 articles, 4 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 126 comments)
on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 5:03:49 PM
hey there you with the stars in your eyes the salomon building was definitely over a natural fault line. the san silversteineas fault definitely caused the destruction. in addition we forget now that hurricane rumorsfeld was blowing up a storm. scientist of the governmental agencies have corroborated that the forces of the significant bushism magnetic force field was very strong in the lower manhattan area. don't be fooled by those conspiracy mongerers, listen to this mongrel wolfie by
Wolfie (9 articles, 0 quicklinks, 18 diaries, 1078 comments)
on Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 2:32:53 AM
read between the lions the real truth is a permutation of the words, letters, photos, and symbols found in the NYT and the WSJ and in found copies of the MUTT & JEFF comics we all thought were so asinine. the MSM is mainly shite musings of the AP and reuters , all owned by the ill-humidati headed by the Rothschild's and Lindsay Lohan! now that it is all open to the light of day, I feel so much cleaner. wolfie is on the scent of something bigger than a breadbox by
Wolfie (9 articles, 0 quicklinks, 18 diaries, 1078 comments)
on Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 10:36:53 AM
This is what Ron Paul said If gates admits Ron Paul was right...what would that do for McCain? It's not headlines because Ron Paul rEVOLution has conceeded to MSM. YouTube Ron Paul Iran 1953..see why we are having Blow back and why there is only one candidate who gets it. by
Jeanette Doney (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 304 comments)
on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 6:17:37 PM
Mark A. Goldman is an activist, author, and now a Candidate for a Congress (7th District WA State) for 2008. Only the two candidates who receive the most votes in the primary election in August will be on the November ballot.
The Children of Iraq The Children of Iraq http://www.gpln.com/childrenofiraq.htm . by
Mark A. Goldman (80 articles, 2 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 242 comments)
on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 6:33:57 PM
Earth shaking? That’s an astonishing confession, The only way anyone can possibly find the above to be a startling revelation is if he/she has been buried under a ROCK for the past 30 years.... I go back 30 years to when the original presidential directive, signed by PRESIDENT CARTER sent then head of the CIA over to Iraq to broker weapons to SADDAM so that he could fight the Iranian "freedom fighters" after Carter Administration actions managed to get the Shah (thug) deposed. (turns out we did not like the solution to the Shah one little bit!) From there, OUR NATION's actions started the 12 year war.... MEANWHILE, we were funding AlQaida in Afghanistan in their battle against the former Soviet Union, because we did not care much for the former Soviet Union.... by
steve scheetz (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 510 comments)
on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 8:42:37 PM
OH, BTW A Suni Muslim Saddam Hussein who hated the US could not possibly have been working with a Suni Muslim Osama Bin Laden who hated the US, RIGHT??? We are ALL born ignorant, but one must work HARD to remain stupid. - -Ben Franklin by
steve scheetz (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 510 comments)
on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 8:46:30 PM
Both were born Suni but moved on from there Hussein moved sharply to a secular view while Bin Laden was moved as a teen by followers of The Muslim Brotherhood to an extreme religion dominated view. They both had an influence in common that would explain their ultimate view of the U.S. Separately, each was financed, housed, trained, and supplied by the CIA in their young adult life, Hussein in Syria and Egypt, and Bin Laden in Afghanistan. However, the fact that 2 people share a common background or experience does not automatically mean that they would ever cooperate with each other. As Charles Shultz once observed in his Peanuts comic strip: "See the Ambersand and the Treble Cleff? They look quite alike don't they? Actually, they hate each other." For references, search: Saddam Hussein religious belief Osama Bin Laden religious belief by
csnet (0 articles, 2 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 74 comments)
on Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 12:25:53 AM
The Chicken comes home to roost--Naturally Just as Malcolm X stated after JFK got shot (referring to enemies he'd likely made possibly through bad decisions, possibly through appropriate decisions, "The Chickens come home to roost." Anyone who hasn't followed basic politics in the USA foreign policy and economic & development practices fo the last 5 decads might be excused for not knowing that prior to 2001 certain destructive policies had led to disgruntlement with ideas, ways of life, and strategic or military plans of the U.S. status quo. ANYONE MORE INFORMED has not excuse for denying that a 9-11 or something like it was likely at some point or some time. Gates, who used to be in the Bush School at Texas A&M, knew very well that some things the USA had done in the past--including support Iran in Iran-Contra deals to supporting anti-Soviet forces in the 1980s in Afghanistan--could lead to blow back. Moreover, as CIA chief under Papa Bush, Gates couldn't help but to be saddened that the USA had backed Saddam Hussein so much in the 1980s. The invasion of Kuwait was more than embarrassing--it was a signal that the politics of the Reagan-Bush era were bankrupt. That is why Junior W. Bush had to come up with new plans. Two or more losers don't make a good government. by
ALONE (121 articles, 1 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 270 comments)
on Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 10:39:33 AM
Live in Australia, work for public service, interested in social justice issues and hate the lies and fraud that are powering the current crises.
FBI says Bin Laden not involved...but the isrealis were ' On June 5, 2006, the Muckraker Report contacted the FBI Headquarters, (202) 324-3000, to learn why Bin Laden’s Most Wanted poster did not indicate that Usama was also wanted in connection with 9/11. The Muckraker Report spoke with Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI. When asked why there is no mention of 9/11 on Bin Laden’s Most Wanted web page, Tomb said, “The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.” Surprised by the ease in which this FBI spokesman made such an astonishing statement, I asked, “How this was possible?” Tomb continued, “Bin Laden has not been formally charged in connection to 9/11.” I asked, “How does that work?” Tomb continued, “The FBI gathers evidence. Once evidence is gathered, it is turned over to the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice than decides whether it has enough evidence to present to a federal grand jury. In the case of the 1998 United States Embassies being bombed, Bin Laden has been formally indicted and charged by a grand jury. He has not been formally indicted and charged in connection with 9/11 because the FBI has no hard evidence connected Bin Laden to 9/11.”' http://www.muckrakerreport.com/id267.html Police received several calls from angry New Jersey residents claiming "middle-eastern" men with a white van were videotaping the disaster with shouts of joy and mockery. (2) "They were like happy, you know … They didn't look shocked to me" said a witness. (3) Witnesses saw them jumping for joy in Liberty State Park after the initial impact (5). Later on, other witnesses saw them celebrating on a roof in Weehawken, and still more witnesses later saw them celebrating with high fives in a Jersey City parking lot. (6) One anonymous phone call to the authorities actually led them to close down all of New York's bridges and tunnels. The mystery caller told the 9-1-1 dispatcher that a group of Palestinians were mixing a bomb inside of a white van headed for the Holland Tunnel. Here's the transcript from NBC News: (*Writer's note: Why would this mystery caller specifically say that these "Arabs" were Palestinians? How would he know that? Palestinians usually dress in western style clothes, not "sheikh uniforms") Based on that phone call, police then issued a "Be-on-the-Lookout" alert for a white mini-van heading for the city's bridges and tunnels from New Jersey. According to ABC’s 20/20, when the van belonging to the cheering Israelis was stopped by the police, the driver of the van, Sivan Kurzberg, told the officers: Why did he feel that Palestinians were a problem for the NYPD? The police and FBI field agents became very suspicious when they found maps of the city with certain places highlighted, box cutters (the same items that the hijackers supposedly used), $4700 cash stuffed in a sock, and foreign passports. Police also told the Bergen Record that bomb sniffing dogs were brought to the van and that they reacted as if they had smelled explosives. (11) by
brian (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 98 comments)
on Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 5:00:03 PM
Just an ordinary nobody who's glad he took typing in 9th grade.
Don's not a truther It certainly doesn't appear that Don Williams believes in these 9/11 fantasies. And I think for good reason: He appears to be a legitimate journalist. He has his agenda, his bias, but he's smart enough to understand that there's no real evidence to support them, so he doesn't use them. Take a clue from Don, folks. Cite some real world facts and observations to support your anti-government, anti-war, anti-Bush agenda, instead of taking the easy way out by relying on fallacious fantasies. by
Alan Williams (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 585 comments)
on Friday, April 18, 2008 at 4:47:57 AM
dream a little dream of me you are so right that it makes every thing said, thought, dreamt of, written, meditated, seanced, or hypothesized seem to just vanish into the vapors of the misty, nebulous, make believe world of you. now for something completely different. you are not the center of the universe. if some one disagrees with your acute mind, perhaps they are entitled to their opinions. if you know about schroedinger's cat, you know that until we observe that tom, he is neither alive nor dead. he only becomes one or the other upon the mind creating the reality of the material world. see michio kaku, world reknowned physicist. now you can better comprehend that your worldview is but one of many. if we used your deductionary reasoning we would still be earth bound and behind the toucas of a pair of oxen. wolfie has travelled far within his pooch's bean, but wishes to see the promised dog run. by
Wolfie (9 articles, 0 quicklinks, 18 diaries, 1078 comments)
on Friday, April 18, 2008 at 6:27:04 PM
Two Quick Points Thanks for the lively debate. First, I'm NOT astounded that someone would suggest 9/11 was blowback. Many often have, including me. I AM astounded that Dubya's Defense Chief confessed to helping cause the blowback and that I'm the only one who noticed. Second, although I'm not a 9/1I Truthist, I am open to the 9/11 Truth movment evidence that 9/11 was an inside job in some way or was allowed to happen. Not saying it's true, but I'm open to hearing more. I'm not yet convinced enough to destroy my own career as a writer by embracing it. I suspect lots of good writers hold off embracing such issues because they rightly worry their credibility will be destroyed, if unfairly, and their voices will no longer be heard on issues they might influence otherwise. I am convinced 9/11 is worth debating, however. After all, what could be more implausible than the impression the Bushites, Fox and others tried to make--and some still do--that Saddam did it in cahoots with bin Laden. Whatever you say about 9/11 Truth, its every bit as plausible as THAT, and the consequences of THAT have been incredibly disastrous. by
Don Williams (105 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 19 comments)
on Saturday, April 19, 2008 at 8:40:47 AM
Well, to Brian... Please read this... http://www.snopes.com/rumors/israel.asp The idea that anyone could take what he posted seriously is truly sad, PARTICULARLY since that was so completely debunked nearly as soon as it was created.... Please think before you post... Ciao, CZ by
steve scheetz (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 510 comments)
on Saturday, April 19, 2008 at 12:24:26 PM
I am an educated person who has been into politics - in Europe- since I was 18.
9/11 conspiracy First, I agree with the comment that Gates may actually have referred to the mistake of not using preemptive wars/direct military interventions - as opposed to arming terrorists as we still do - . This is an equally plausible explanation. On 9/11, I am 1 of those who's been following Alex Jones's coverage since 2002 (Inforwars.com); so I am 100% convinced of the orchestration and direc | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
