Wow! Rumsfeld on Tape Says Americans Need "Another 9-11" To Get Them On the "Right" Track

Conspiracy Theorists, rejoice! Harry Reid and Joe Biden, here's vindication! After the Republican Revolution fizzled in 2006, Secy of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is caught on tape saying:

This President's pretty much a victim of success. We haven't had an attack in
five years. The perception of the threat is so low in this society that it's not
surprising that the behavior pattern reflects a low threat assessment. The same
thing's in Europe, there's a low threat perception. The correction for that, I
suppose, is an attack.

Which means, of course, another 9/11... Jason Linkins reports here on Huffpost:

An ongoing exploration of the documents related to the Pentagon's "message
force multipliers" program has unearthed a clip of former Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld suggesting that America, having voted the Democrats back into
Congressional power, could benefit from suffering another terrorist attack, and
doing so in the presence of the very same military analysts who went on to
provide commentary and analysis of the Iraq War.
As documented by Newsvine, it all went down at a valedictory luncheon Rumsfeld
hosted for those analysts on December 12, 2006.

The comments from Newsvine also reveal:

...while the USA is involved in asymmetric warfare, we can't lose
militarily--but we can't win militarily, either.

and this gem, where an analyst says to Rumsfeld:

Iraq needs a Syngman Rhee. Rhee, if you are unaware, was the ruthless authoritarian dictator of South Korea from after World War II through the Korean War to 1960. Yeah, he was a son of @!$%#, but he was our son of a @!$%#, to borrow a phrase Franklin Roosevelt said of Somoza. Well, well, well. So much for "democracy," huh? But the special treat in this little clip--before Rumsfeld wistfully closes by bemoaning the fact that Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki is "no Syngman Rhee"--is the way Rumsfeld utterly trashes Maliki's predecessor Ibrahim al-Jaafari,
calling him a "wind sock."

And it goes on:

The kicker in this clip is at the very end where he insults the American people
for "weakened will" as he praises the Iraqi insurgents for being a "hellava lot
more skillful" at influencing the American public than is the Bush
Administration.

This is the perfect description of the Republican concept of "influence" and "argument": it's all about the military solution.

Now will someone ever proclaim loudly that it takes a helluva lot more taxes and spends a helluva lot more government money and makes a helluva Bigger Government to solve everything by war and by promoting "security" via more guns, less education, less health care, less social investment, less diplomacy??? So who's about lying, taxing, spending ... and killing? It feeds into the conspiracy theory that 9-11 was a plot to get people to follow the Republican line.

That may be absurd, but everything's possible when there's no conscience evident. And where is it? Where's the conscience?

Reese: Aging, "Manure-Spreading" McCain Not Presidential Material

Charley Reese has 2 words for John McCain: 1) too old; and 2) spreads too much manure. I think it's a fair assessment. Reese thought 2000 would have been the right time for McCain instead of Bush. Having missed that train, he's too far over the hill to handle the incredible mind-boggling complexities of the world we are now in, including the crumbling empire, absurd military oversell, and of course, the "Superbadboy-power" who doesn't even have the pocket change to clean toilets in New Orleans, but borrows their way to the X-games of invasion/occupation and beyond. As Reese put it:

Forty years ago, McCain was a hero. It was a noble thing he did when he
refused a Vietnamese offer to be set free and chose to remain with the other
POWs. He's a patriot. He's brave. He also finished near the bottom of his Naval
Academy class. He's never pretended to be a scholar. Now he's nearly 72 years
old, and if he ever did understand the Middle East, he obviously doesn't now.
...
The old warrior no longer knows who the enemy is or where he is located.

As to McCain's ideas on "security", I liked what Reese said so much I'm printing the whole thing:

Sen. John McCain is already spreading the old "strategic interests" fertilizer along the presidential campaign trail while pretending to be an expert.

Let's hope he really can explain what interests require us to maintain troops in Germany and Japan 63 years after the end of the war. What exactly is the purpose of those troops? Are we expecting the Mongols to descend on Japan? Does he expect the Cossacks will ride across the plains to attack Europe? Does he think that two of the greatest economic powers on Earth – Japan and Europe – are too poor to defend themselves? The old boy is living in the past.

When American politicians talk about strategic interests, they are talking about just what I called it, manure. We have no strategic interests in the Middle East whatsoever. We wish to buy oil there. Last time I checked, those countries that produce oil were selling it to any country willing to buy it, whether that country had troops in the area or not. Since oil isn't edible, there's not a heck of a lot you can do with it if you don't sell it.

What are all those Navy ships in the Persian Gulf doing? Do McCain and George Bush seriously believe that Iran would launch an invasion of Saudi Arabia? That's ridiculous. There might be some aspects of Iran's government we don't care for, and that's OK, because it is not our government and we don't have to live under it. Nobody in his right mind, however, has ever accused Iran of being an expansionist nation. All McCain has to do is read up on his history and ask the CIA to explain to him Iran's order of battle. Their forces are not equipped for invasions.

As for the nuclear nonsense, both Iran and our own intelligence agencies say that the Iranians are not interested in developing nuclear weapons. But suppose they were. Who cares? I'm much more concerned about the nuclear weapons in Russia, China, India, Pakistan, France, Great Britain, the U.S. and Israel.

Iran is one of the oldest civilizations on Earth, and its people are smart. They are not crazy. They know that one day their oil will run out, and they want to develop nuclear power. They signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. They have called repeatedly for a nuclear-free Middle East. To compete with the nuclear powers, they'd have to produce so many nuclear weapons and delivery systems, it would bankrupt them. They've decided that option would be foolish. Now if they can only convince our foolish politicians.

I sometimes think our older politicians fell in love with the British Empire. I think many of them secretly long to sit on a veranda somewhere and be served drinks by humble servants. They love the idea of empire. The admirals and generals like to fly around to our 702 overseas bases, play a little golf, have a few drinks and fly home again.

The reality is that we can no longer afford our overseas empire, no matter what strategic interests McCain and Bush like to fantasize about. We're about to go busted. It's pretty hard to maintain an empire on credit when you have borrowed money from the people you claim to be lording it over. The Philippines kicked us out of our bases there. I predict the Japanese will eventually do the same. Get a stable government in North Korea and the South Koreans will be showing us the door. We should leave on our own and devote those billions of dollars to domestic priorities.
Bush is mad to push the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It should be disbanded, not expanded. It has no enemy. By expanding it, however, Bush seems to be trying to convince Russia that NATO is its enemy. That's not a smart thing to do. It's dumb. Talk about something that is not in our strategic interests, it's restarting the Cold War with Russia.

So You Thought The Stazi of E. Germany Were Bad: Our Secret Police Will Have Your Genome

Welcome to Big Brotherland, land of Federal Brotherly Intelligence: Where Intelligence Is Love.

The Washington Post reports "FBI Prepares Vast Database Of Biometrics
$1 Billion Project to Include Images of Irises and Faces" ... Not just those backward old scent jars where the old East German secret police would tap into the unique smell of each of hundreds, maybe thousands of people-deemed-suspicious. Not those tell-tale vinyl KGB jackets. The Central Iris-etcetera Amassing group is gonna get your genome. And there's not a damn thing you can do about it.

For starters,

For the past two years, the Defense Department has been storing in a
database images of fingerprints, irises and faces of more than 1.5 million Iraqi
and Afghan detainees, Iraqi citizens and foreigners who need access to U.S.
military bases. The Pentagon also collects DNA samples from some Iraqi
detainees, which are stored separately.

As for U.S. citizens, they are also part of this Grand Scheme of Identification:

The department is also looking to apply iris- and face-recognition
techniques to other programs. The DHS already has a database of millions of sets
of fingerprints, which includes records collected from U.S. and foreign
travelers stopped at borders for criminal violations, from U.S. citizens
adopting children overseas, and from visa applicants abroad.

And if that doesn't make you feel secure enough, the future holds a huge boost for your security-thirsty soul:

Soon, the server at CJIS headquarters will also compare palm prints and,
eventually, iris images and face-shape data such as the shape of an earlobe. If
all goes as planned, a police officer making a traffic stop or a border agent at
an airport could run a 10-fingerprint check on a suspect and within seconds know
if the person is on a database of the most wanted criminals and terrorists. An
analyst could take palm prints lifted from a crime scene and run them against
the expanded database. Intelligence agents could exchange biometric information
worldwide.

Aren't you glad you're safe? Doesn't it just warm the heart to know that your earlobe could prevent you from being confused with some phone phreaker in Milwaukee? or some alleged terrorist in Rawalpindi? or a Dutch marijuana salesman? We can all now sigh a gigantic sigh of relief knowing that the entire planet can know exactly where we are, what we are doing, and most importantly, why.

The FBI intends to make both criminal and civilian data available to
authorized users, officials said.

Does "civilian data" mean shopping patterns? Does it mean unlawful detainers? Does it mean trips to the veterinarian? Does it mean expired license plates? And what if some more-intelligent Chinese, or Mafia-friendly, "unauthorized user" just figured out how to tap into this gold mind of info? Or what if one's spurned lover happened to also be a great hacker? What havoc could this bring to life?

But fear not:

"We have very stringent laws that control who can go in there and to secure
the data," Bush said.

With the solid integrity of our President, who could feel anything but extremely safe? We can all relax now that we have it on his word this system will be nothing less than a savior for all mankind. Just like the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Would those grand adventures ever have been undertaken without our superior intelligence? Think about how we could have wasted the money on education, health care, and boring infrastructure. Then relax, and feel the love.

9-11 Revisited & Re-revisited

Bridgethought of the Day: Was 9-11 the result of insufficient draconian security measures, or inept foreign policy, or ... the consequences of ignoring intelligence information we had? Or shall we simply blame others, and solve all our problems by revenge?

Republican solution to all problems: Find your avenging angel, or avenging angelic host, as the case may be. Problem is, sometimes that "angel" turns devil on you. Revenge is never a cut-&-dried business, but always gets very messy.

Recent polls indicate that a significant number of Muslims in this country feel that 9-11 was somehow part of a conspiracy by the U.S. government. Being as the brunt of 9-11 vengeance hit the Muslim world and Muslims in particular over any other group by far, it should surprise no one that Muslims feel this is part of an American government conspiracy. Why suddenly are they targeted for wrath, when this was the work of a small group of extremists that many Muslims would argue are acting on anything but Islam, whose actions are actually prohibited by Islam? To them, it seems reasonable that a country like the U.S. could not be so incompetent as to allow a band of outlaws like this to cause such a major catastrophe, and a group of Muslims would not do such an obviously prohibited (haram) act.

However, they fail to take into account this Administration's penchant for incompetence, favoritism, and fantasy-led policies that often lead to totally incomprehensible conclusions. They also may fail to take into account that not all - in fact, many - Muslims are ignorant of their own religion, and use its name to justify agendas that have little nothing to do with religion to begin with.

With that, here are some excerpts from DC Downsizer's take on 9-11, which offers a reasonable assessment of U.S. culpability in this horrific event without jumping onto the conspiracy train:

"Given the subject of our latest campaign it seems incumbent upon us to
state where we stand on the subject of 9-11 Truth.

• We feel there is sufficient evidence to assert that the federal government
  had all the powers and resources it needed to prevent the 9-11 attacks. *
• It knew that Osama bin Laden was planning to attack the United States.*
• It knew that Al Queda agents were operating in the country.* It knew that
  suicide attacks with airplanes were a real possibility.*
• It knew that suspicious person were learning how to fly airplanes, with, in
  at least one case, an alarming disinterest in learning how to land them.
• The federal government had the power, without the PATRIOT Act, or torture,
  or REAL ID, or illegal wiretaps, to learn everything it needed to know to stop
  the 9-11 attacks. If the federal government had simply used the powers and
  resources it already had the 9-11 attacks would have failed, and many thousands
  of people who are now dead would still be alive and in the arms of their
  families.9-11 is a textbook case of the government's congenital institutional
  inability to focus and perform competently.

If the federal government had simply done its job, using what it already had,
then there would have been no . . . *

• Disastrous war in Iraq, *
• Bloated Department of Homeland Security, *
• Overbearing TSA, *
• Invasive PATRIOT Act, *
• Dangerous REAL ID Act, *
• Unconscionable Torture-Tribunal law, *
• Illegal spying on American citizens, *
• Or a whole host of other government transgressions.

Here is the truth, with a little "t," about 9-11: It was a day of massive
government failure.

Here is another truth about 9-11: No one in government, and no institution of
the government, was held accountable, or paid any price, for this failure.

Here is another truth about 9-11: The federal government, and the people who
run it, were actually rewarded for their failure on 9-11, instead of being held
accountable. The federal government failed on 9-11, but the President and the
Congress did NOT hold themselves accountable for this failure. Instead, they
exploited their own incompetence to grant themselves massive new powers and
recources, at your expense. Worse still, Congress and the President have used
these massive new powers and resources to commit even larger failures, such as
the war in Iraq.

These new failures have made YOU LESS SECURE, rather than more secure.

Government fails consistently, because the institution of government, and the
people in government, NEVER PAY ANY PRICE for failure. Government fails
consistently, because the people in government are CONSISTENTLY REWARDED FOR FAILURE by gaining greater power and greater access to your wallet. The incentives by which our government operates are completely backward: Government is always rewarded for its failures, so its incentive is to constantly fail. This is the fundamental truth about 9-11.

Are there others truths that also matter and that have been neglected?
Perhaps. But the idea that the Bush administration somehow conspired with Al
Queda to bring about the attacks, is almost certainly not among them.It
makes zero sense that the Bush administration would have been capable of such a massive crime, but incapable, a few months later, of planting WMD's in Iraq. On this basis alone, most of the 9-11 conspiracy theories are non-starters. This does not mean that the Bush administration did not exploit 9-11 to do things it wanted to do anyway. Of course it did.
Neither does it rule out that some members of the administration may have been
intentionally incompetent in order to permit the inciting "Pearl Harbor
incident" they were on record as hoping for in advance. But both of these things
are a far cry from most of the conspiracy theories that parade under the banner
of "9-11 Truth."

Sadly, the focus on wild theories has tarnished the words "9-11 Truth," and
made it harder to actually get at the truth. We have been inundated with
films and books and articles about 9-11. We have heard all the claims and
studied all the supposed evidence.Big claims require big evidence and many "9-11
Truth" claims fail this test.

This is why we recommend a documentary film called "9/11 Press for
Truth.""9/11 Press for Truth" is different. It makes few claims, but presents a
lot of big evidence. Seeing this movie has prompted us to take action to compel
the federal government to re-investigate its own performance on 9-11, and to
assume a responsibility equal to its great powers. The proper federal response
to 9-11 should have been to downsize, streamline, and focus. Instead, it
used its own failures to upsize, complicate, and thrash about in all directions. We want Congress to take another look at 9-11, and this time attribute
blame, impose penalties, and adopt policies that will enable government to
better overcome its innate incompetence."

After hearing so many lies, one is naturally skeptical about anyone who comes along, claiming to have "The Truth." I myself wouldn't have used this expression. And in trying to "downsize" and "streamline" government, there's always the tricky situation of having to make more government laws and requiring more government enforcement in order to have less government intrusion. But I'm sure there are many intelligent enough to pull it off. If only there were more intelligent enough not to believe everything they hear.

Taxin' & Spendin'... the Neocon Way

Ooooooh… the Evil Church of Liberalism…. Ooooooh….Dear Kaitlyn, Please check under your bed or an Evil Liberal may try to tax your Kool-Aid stand and put you out of business. And then spend all your hard-earned money on free-loaders who probably live in vermin-infested FEMA trailers on the Gulf Coast. The nerve! Oooooooh…!

Lions and tigers and liberal bears, oh my! Coulter 45, where are you?? The stock market will crash because big government spending will sit on it like a giant greenhouse gas bear, and investors will lose their matching funds for investing in the future of a Yellowstone Caldera Theme Park, “The Ultimate Extreme Disaster Thrill.”

Instead, we should all be thankful that we no longer have Liberals taxing and spending on Social Programs that Don’t Benefit Taxpayers unless they are so Out of the Loop that they engage in ancient Tribal Practices like having children, or not-yet-dead elderly parents who, unlike Model Grandpa G.H.W. Bush aka Senior, do not spend their time sky-diving or bungee jumping or other Cool Retirement Self-Sufficient Activities.

We don’t like the idea of government as a Big Brother who bails you out when you’re in trouble or helps children or the poor and vulnerable or provides programs to prevent crime in poor and inner-city areas. What a waste! Freeloaders! When we could be spending all that hard-earned money on surveillance, propaganda, wars, weapons, weapons delivery systems, search and arrest of civilians, interrogations, more surveillance, intimidation, propaganda, torture by proxy, more wars, fake “diplomatic” junkets to make it look like we “exhausted every avenue” so we can FIGHT MORE COOL WARS AND GET THOSE DAMN RATINGS UP.

We like a Big Bro who watches your every move, who suspects your trips to the library, who treats everyone with an Arab or foreign-sounding name (Jews exempted) as Potential Covert Operatives of a Terrorist Cell. Think of it as big Brother Protecting You. Keeping you informed. Terror level: Orange.

Now instead of educating the poor and so-called underprivileged whom we rightly and sanctimoniously call the Lazy No-Gooders, the freeloaders, we are putting them where they belong, in prisons, where instead of doing productive work and paying taxes and contributing to society, they are being fed, clothed, and locked up in tight expensive security and under surveillance - this is the keyword here, “under surveillance” - and thus NO LONGER POSE A THREAT.

Because ultimately, free people pose a threat to our security. Taxpayers could be terrorists, paying taxes to cover for their evil schemes. Today he contributes to society - tomorrow he wants a free lunch. The only ones you can trust these days are Established Names, names with Something Behind Them. Names like Exxon, Shell Oil, Lockheed Martin, Proctor & Gamble, Dow Chemical, Wal-Mart, Enron, Wait! - scratch that last one, I mean, Verizon, or was it Disney-Warner Brothers-NBC-Microsoft-Pixar-General Electric? Forgive me, it’s hard to keep up with the Monster Lovefest and Corporate Bonding. But in any case, THEY are our Real American Heroes. They are our titans, our benefactors, providers, our safety net, our icons. Big Business. It’s the American Way. They don’t blow up buildings. They build buildings. They don’t hold up convenience stores. They make the videos and franchise the stores to catch the thieves whom they pay taxes to build prisons and pay prison staff for at 100X the cost of whatever the criminals stole. Big Business is the solution, and they will take care of all our problems and the benefits will trickle down, and see?

See how big and healthy they all are? We want all Americans to get on the bandwagon of the American Dream, which means to make a killing, or at least a quick buck, and to hell with the environment and the so-called children of the “future”. “Future” - now there’s an evil concept from the Evil Church of Liberalism who wants to tax your Kool-Aid stand so they can give money to criminals to keep them from coming back to prison after they get out because of some fake vegetarian weenie tax-n-spend unpatriotic flag-burning thing they call “future.”

We want NOW. ONLY. PERIOD. Kill the terrorists - NOW! Define “terrorism” later. Arrest suspects - NOW! Come up with reasons later. Go to war to make democracy in all the world NOW! Figure out what the hell that means or what the hell to do LATER. Tap all phones and emails of everyone in the U.S. NOW! Stop all suspicious activity NOW! Decide what to do with the logjam of keywords and rounded up civilians LATER. Send Israel nukes and missiles and stand back while they decimate their neighbors NOW! Explain to the world LATER. Kill NOW! Talk to make lame excuses and argue like angry flies LATER. Annihilate all Muslims and Arabs NOW! Explain why LATER. Lock up the liberals NOW! Attack them NOW! Claim that you wanted a free discussion LATER. ACT NOW! But think? --- THINK… in your liberal keyword so-called FUTURE.

But we will NEVER think. Because we don’t believe in a “future”. We believe in a “vision.” A “vision” where Republicans win and Big Business controls everything and all taxes are spent only on war and surveillance and barbed wire and walls and Big Bro watches everyone and we control elections so candidates we want will win and if the so-called people elect someone we don’t want in ANY OTHER COUNTRY, we, the Superpower, will send some thugs to track down the elected leaders and kidnap them and thus get rid of them.

Remember the keyword: security: they no longer pose a threat. Just like the cool macho Israelis did with the Palestinians.
Our vision is We’re Number One! Our vision is Victory at any spin. Our vision is war. Without war, how can you have Victory? Right, victory! The bigger, the better. Let’s go for Biggest! Apocalypse NOW! Our vision is Armageddon.

Our battle cry: Remember 911! Because of 911, we must start invading other countries NOW! Revenge, NOW! Deal with the real issues LATER… Why wait for a near earth object? Let the companies pollute the air and water so they can make money NOW. Think of ourselves as incendiary devices. The whole world is a THREAT. So let’s invade it - NOW. Compromise is vegan, hippie, Hilary, liberal, evil, and poses a threat. If you compromise, someone will get a free lunch. We’ll spend our hard-earned tax money on someone else’s infrastructure, so they can live a better life at our expense.

Spend that money for us on our guns and weapons systems, so we can show them who’s boss, who runs the show. We run the show and we don’t want some weenie environmentalist extremist animal-rights freaks telling us how to run foreign policy and threaten corporate profits.


We run the show, we pave the way, we support the fascists and kings and dictators as long as they do our bidding, but in the name of the red, white and blue. Unlike the evil liberals from the evil church of liberalism who do not wear flag tie tacks or patriotic bumper stickers and tax and spend on so-called “social programs” which are just socialism plain and simple.

We tax & spend trillions on weapons and war toys and trillions more on the oil to run them, so we can kill more people, pollute more skies & water, and destroy more infrastructure and resources than any nation in the history of the planet.

We are the true patriots, the party of everything big, bad and destructive, the great Goliath, the true Superpowers, the party of the bully, the party of the Elephant! Stop us if you can … weenies!