Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Tre anni dopo...(lungo)

25 punti sui quali gli incerti votanti statunitensi dovrebbero riflettere.
Giano
http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/04/08/31_threeyears.html
25 Things We Now Know Three Years After 9/11
August 31, 2004
By Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers
The Republican Party - in a shameless, all-too-obvious attempt to manipulate
the tragedy of 9/11 for partisan ends - chose New York City for its
nominating convention. Must have seemed like a great idea at the time.
Their coming to Manhattan not only infuriates New Yorkers, who were badly
played by Bush&Co. after the attacks, but enables the rest of us in the
country to use Ground Zero as the backdrop for examining the gross failures
and crimes of the Bush Administration since that tragic day in September
2001.
So, here is an update* of things we've learned during the three years since
9/11 - documented mostly from government papers and respected journalistic
accounts - about the Administration that rules in our names. If you find
this compendium useful, you might want to make this list available to your
friends and colleagues, especially to those still uncertain which
presidential candidate they will vote for ten weeks from now.
THE 9/11 ATTACKS/COVERUP
1. Immediately after the destruction of the Twin Towers, Bush's
Environmental Protection Agency tested the air in and around Ground Zero.
Anxious Lower Manhattan residents, worried about possible airborne toxic
particles affecting them and especially their children, were assured by the
EPA on September 18 that the tests indicated it was safe for them to return
to and live normal lives in their homes and apartments and businesses. It
wasn't until two years later that the EPA admitted that they had lied to New
Yorkers: The Bush Administration knew from their own test results that the
toxicity revealed was way over the safe levels. Typical Bush&Co. pattern:
secrecy, lies, denial, coverup.
2. There is no evidence that Bush&Co. ordered Osama bin Laden - who had been
on the CIA payroll in Afghanistan when he and his forces were battling the
Soviet occupiers - to launch terrorist attacks on the U.S. Resurgent radical
Islam is a genuine phenomenon, with its own religious and political roots.
There definitely are Bad Guys out there.
What is well-documented is that the highest circles around Bush were quite
aware in the Summer of 2001 - as a result of fairly detailed intelligence
frantically being passed on to them by other governments in the months and
weeks before 9/11 - that a massive terrorist attack was in the works, which
likely would involve hijacked airplanes aimed at icon American economic and
political targets. (The August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing, entitled
"Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," talked about al-Qaida wanting to
strike the nation's capital, preparations for airline hijackings, casing of
buildings in New York, terrorists in the U.S. with explosives, etc.) Bush
went to ground in Texas, the FBI told Ashcroft to stop flying commercial
jets, etc. The attacks finally came on 9/11.
Bush could have assumed command immediately; instead, 27 minutes went by
while he sat in a schoolroom and then posed for photos. Secretary of Defense
Rumsfeld, somewhere on the Pentagon premises, was strangely missing from
action, uninvolved in defending the country until after the horrific events
had unfolded. Even though the protocols were clear, NORAD could not reach
Rumsfeld and did not scramble jets until long after the horrific mass-murder
attacks were over. When Bush did emerge from the school, he claims he could
not reach Cheney or the White House by phone. (Passengers using cell phones
on the final doomed jet had no problems reaching their loved ones and
emergency centers all around the country.)
In short, the key Administration officials responsible for protecting
America, and coordinating its responses to attacks, were not available,
either out of incompetence and confusion or out of more nefarious motives.
As Nina Moliver, a 9/11 sleuth puts it, "On 9/11, there was a grand stall. A
stall for time. I learned this from a glance at the findings of the 9/11
commission. How could ANYBODY miss it? Bush and Rumsfeld didn't 'fail' on
Sept 11. They succeeded masterfully." A bit far out, to be sure, but if the
Bush circle knew something was coming that morning - and numerous others
did, including the mayor of San Francisco - it's certainly a theory that
can't be ruled out.
3. We know that the future neo-conservative architects of Bush
foreign/military policy, members of The Project for The New American Century
(PNAC), knew that their ideas were too extreme for most Americans to
swallow. They noted that "the process of transformation, even if it brings
revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic
and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor."
Again, there is no proof of coordination by the Bush Administration with the
al-Qaida terrorists who carried out the terrorist attacks, but Bush/Cheney
and their closest aides were aware on 9/11 that they now had the "Pearl
Harbor" that would clear the way for their agenda to be realized.
4. We know that Bush and Cheney, early on, approached the leaders of the
House and Senate and urged them not to investigate the pre-9/11 activities
of the Administration, because of "national security." The coverup was
beginning.
5. The 9/11 Commission examined how the intelligence community screwed up
the pre-9/11 intelligence - thus effectively laying the blame on lower-level
agents and officials - but says it won't issue its report on how the Bush
Administration used or misused that information until after the election.
The coverup continues. Many victims' families are furious.
6. We know that the Bush Administration has been able to obtain whatever
legislation it needs in its self-proclaimed "war on terror" by utilizing,
and hyping, the understandable fright of the American people. The USA
PATRIOT Act - composed of many honorable initiatives, and many clearly
unconstitutional provisions, cobbled together from those submitted over the
years by GOP hardliners and rejected as too extreme by Congress - was
presented almost immediately to a House and Senate frightened by the 9/11
attacks and by the anthrax introduced into their chambers by someone still
not discovered. Ridge and Ashcroft emerge periodically to manipulate the
public's fright by announcing another "terror" threat, based on "credible"
but unverified evidence; these announcements can be correlated almost
exactly to when Bush seems to need a headline to distract the public from
yet another scandal or significant drop in the polls.
THE ATTACK ON IRAQ
7. We know that a cabal of ideologically-motivated Bush officials, on the
rightwing fringe of the Republican Party, were calling for a military
takeover of Iraq as early as 1991. This elite group included Cheney,
Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Woolsey, Bolton, Khalizad and others, all of
whom are now located in positions of power in the Pentagon and White House,
and, to a lesser extent, State Department.
They were among the key founders of the Project for The New American Century
(PNAC) in 1997; among their recommendations: "pre-emptively" attacking other
countries devoid of imminent danger to the U.S., abrogating agreed-upon
treaties when they conflict with U.S. goals, making sure no other country
(or organization, such as the United Nations) can ever achieve parity with
the U.S., installing U.S.-friendly governments to do America's will, using
tactical nuclear weapons, and so on. In short, as they put it, the goal is
"benevolent global hegemony" - or, in layman's English, a kind of
neo-imperalism.
All of these extreme suggestions, once regarded as lunatic, are now
enshrined as official U.S. policy in the National Security Strategy of the
United States of America, published by the Bush Administration in late-2002.
8. We know that the Bush Administration was planning to attack Iraq long
before 9/11, and that, even though Rumsfeld was told by his intelligence
analysts that 9/11 was an al-Qaida operation, he began dragging an attack on
Iraq - which had no significant contacts with bin Laden's network - into the
war planning. When the traditional intelligence agencies couldn't, or
wouldn't, furnish the White House with made-up "facts" to back up an attack
on Iraq, Rumsfeld set up his own "intelligence" unit inside his office, the
Office of Special Plans, staffed it with political PNAC appointees, and, lo
and behold, got the justifications he wanted - which cooked-"intelligence"
turned out to be the lies and deceptions that took the U.S. into Iraq.
Note: Rumsfeld's secretive Office of Special Plans, with direct access to
the Secretary of Defense and thus to shaping policy toward Iraq and Iran, is
implicated in the current, serious scandal involving possible treason
(passing classified material to foreign countries, in this case maybe Israel
and Iran), with potential links to the slimy double-agent Ahmad Chalabi and
others.
9. We know that the Bush Administration felt that it could not get
Congressional and public support for its plan to attack Iraq if the true
reasons were revealed - to control the massive Iraqi oil reserves, to obtain
a military staging base in the region, and to use a U.S.-friendly
"democratic" government as a lever to alter the geopolitical situation in
the Middle East and beyond. So, according to Wolfowitz, it settled on the
one justification they thought would work: accusing Saddam Hussein of
preparing to attack his neighbors and the United States with supposed
massive stockpiles of "weapons of mass destruction." Senators were lied to
by Administration briefers, who told them Iraqi drone planes could drop
biochemical agents over American cities; Condoleezza Rice warned about
"mushroom clouds" over New York and Washington.
Millions of citizens across the globe, and world leaders among our own
allies, warned the Bush Administration that an attack on Iraq - a weak
country, with no military power to speak of - was wrong, would backfire on
the U.S. and world peace, would enrage the Islamic world and produce more
terrorist recruits, and would lose America its reputation and its post-9/11
sympathy across the globe. But the Bush Administration had made the
essential decision to go to war a year before the invasion ("Fuck Saddam,"
Bush told three U.S. Senators in March of 2002. "We're taking him out.")
And, even though Saddam authorized the United Nations inspectors to return
to Iraq to complete their weapons survey, Bush was determined to go to war.
Secretary of State Powell was dispatched to the United Nations to outline
the U.S. case and obtain authorization; his case was filled with laughably
thin and phony intelligence, and the U.N. demurred. Bush launched his
attack.
10. We know that no WMDs were discovered. No nuclear program. No missiles
aimed at U.S. or British interests. No drone planes. No biochemical
weaponry. Bush and his spokesmen then attempted to change the rationale for
the war away from those scary WMDs to an implication that Saddam was part of
the terrorist network that carried out the 9/11 attacks. There was no
convincing proof offered, merely the constant repetition of the non-existent
al-Qaida tie - so much so that the Big Lie technique worked early on as 70%
of Americans thought there must have been some tie-in to 9/11. The 9/11
Commission verified that there was no such operative connection to al-Qaida.
Bush publicly agreed, but Cheney and others even today continue to suggest
otherwise. When the American public stopped believing in the al-Qaida/Iraq
lie, the rationale for the war was switched again. Now the reason for the
war was that Saddam Hussein was a terrible tyrant - an assertion everybody
could agree on - though why we toppled this guy and not a half dozen other
equally as bad dictators (some of them our close allies) was left
unanswered.
We also know that the predictions of our key allies, and those millions in
the streets who protested, have come true. The U.S., having had no
"post-war" plan, is bogged down in Iraq, facing a nationalist insurgency, an
d a rebellious religious faction of fighters, with no end in sight; it has
lost the countryside and is losing the cities as well. The U.S. has
engineered an American-friendly interim government that is locked into the
reconstruction contracts that permit huge American corporations such as
Bechtel and Halliburton - who, quite by coincidence, of course, are huge
financial backers of the Bush Administration - to make out like bandits in
that country, often with no-bid contracts. The U.S. has at least 14 military
bases in Iraq, which it intends to continue using as a military/political
lever in reshaping the geopolitics of the Middle East - regardless of the
costs in lives and treasure, and not caring that its policies with regard to
the Palestinian/Israeli problem fan the flames of terrorism in that area of
the world, and beyond.
AUTHORITARIAN MANEUVERINGS
11. We know that CIA Director George Tenet fell on his sword, taking the
thrust of the bad-intel blame away from Bush. Other elements inside the
agency, outraged by Bush&Co. using them as whipping-boys, then began leaking
all sorts of damaging information about White House skulduggery. Elements in
the State Department, appalled at the neo-cons in control of U.S. military
policy at the Pentagon, likewise leaked information damaging to the
extremists.
12. We know that once Bush assumed power, he moved to obtain immunity for
U.S. officials and troops from international war-crimes prosecutions,
pulling America out of the relevant treaties. We didn't know why at the
time, but later, after our covert and overt behavior in Afghanistan and Iraq
and the tortures scandal erupted, we figured it out.
13. We know that Bush lawyers in the White House and Pentagon (State
Department attorneys did not agree) issued memorada that outlined how Bush
and other key officials could avoid criminal prospecution for their wartime
policies and for advocating use of "harsh interrogation methods" (read:
torture) of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo, and in Afghanistan, Iraq and
other U.S. facilities around the world. Ignoring the Founders' wise
"separation of powers" - designed to keep any leader or branch of government
from assuming total control of the levers of powers - the lawyers claimed
that whenever Bush acts as "commander in chief" during "wartime," he is
above the law. In common parlance, these are rationalizations for
authoritarian rule, by dictatorial decrees.
14. We know that the Pentagon was well aware of the tortures at Abu Ghraib
and elsewhere - key military reports had been submitted - but the issue was
ignored until grisly photographs and videotapes surfaced in public media
documenting the "harsh interrogation methods"; some of those methods
resulted in a goodly number of deaths to prisoners under U.S. control.
Several commissions reported that the rot came from the top at the Pentagon,
including Rumsfeld, but, by and large, only lower-level troops and officers
have been disciplined or charged. In the meantime, the humiliating and
brutal treatment of Muslim men, women and children in U.S. custody has
reverberated throughout the Islamic world, helping create more and more
converts to terrorist organizations.
SCANDALS AT HOME
15. In two instances, the Bush Administration, for its own political
reasons, compromised American national security by naming key intelligence
operatives - one a CIA agent, Valerie Plame, with important contacts in the
shadowy world of weapons of mass destruction (outed by two "senior
Administration officials," apparently in retaliation for her husband's
political comments); revealing the name of a CIA agent is a felony. The
other, more recently (apparently to show off how successful they were in
their anti-terrorism hunt), was a high-ranking mole close to bin Laden's
inner circle, who could have kept the U.S. informed as ongoing and future
plans of al-Qaida. That's our anti-terrorism government at work.
16. We know that Karl Rove - Bush's senior political advisor, who along with
Dick Cheney, manipulates Bush's strings - has been instrumental in helping
get the so-called "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" off the ground. Longtime
GOP operatives and major Bush donors supplied the money and organizing
skill, and then let them loose with their lies - with precious little
skepticism displayed by the corporate-owned mass-media. Apparently, at least
initially, the Big Lie technique worked once again - though now polls show
the smears being doubted - forcing Kerry to stop his attacks on Bush
domestic policies and concentrate on damage control. The Kerry campaign took
a while to rev up its counter-campaign, bringing in all sorts of
eyewitnesses that documented the truth of his heroism in winning his Vietnam
medals. Even slimier charges are expected at any moment about Kerry's
post-discharge opposition to that war.
PROTECTING THE VOTE
17. We know that even though several large states - among them, California
and Ohio - have prohibited computer-voting machines from beng used in the
November election, unless there is a voter-verified paper trail, most of the
toss-up states will be using the touch-screen, unverified system. This would
be suspicious if Democrats or Republicans were in charge of those machines,
but in this election it's virtually all Republicans. The three largest
makers of the machines are owned by far-right Republicans; those same
companies tabulate the results. Republican-leaning companies also control
the testing of those machines. In short, it smells rank - especially
inasmuch as it's been demonstrated how easily the software can be
manipulated, without anybody knowing - and definitely looks as if the fix is
in. The CEO of one of the companies, a major "Pioneer" donor to the Bush
campaign, promised Bush he would "deliver" his state to the GOP candidate,
and Gov. Jeb Bush in Florida has quashed all attempts to stop or alter
computer-voting in his state. (Note: The GOP has urged all its members in
Florida to vote by absentee ballot, because the machines are "unreliable."
Get the picture?)
18. We know that the GOP is trying, by hook or by crook, to lower the number
of potential Democrat voters. Attempts have been made to remove thousands of
African-American citizens from the rolls (reminiscent of Florida in 2000,
where anywhere from 47,000 to 90,000 black voters where disenfranchised),
police agents have visited numerous elderly black voters in their rural
homes and warned them about possible violence at the polls, a GOP official
in Michigan talked about the need to "discourage" the vote in largely-black
Detroit, GOP "observers" will stand outside voting places in rural areas as
possible intimidators of older black voters, GOP operatives registering new
American citizens filled out the paperwork for them and signed them up as
Republicans, and so on.
19. We know that Administration lawyers have issued memoranda making it
possible for Bush to "postpone" the November election for "anti-terrorist"
reasons - say, a major attack or "credible" threat of a major attack. (Note:
There has never been a national election postponed, not even during the
Civil War.)
20. We know that Administration attorneys have issued memoranda that would
make it possible for Bush to be elected by partial voting. That is, he could
be elected by voters supporting him, even if citizens in pro-Kerry states
were prohibited from voting or having their votes counted. Again, the
fig-leaf is "terrorism." If a "red alert" were to be issued for certain
areas on November 2 - say, the West Coast and New England states - Bush
could, under state-of-emergency declarations, "limit the movement" of
citizens in those areas, while the election proceeded as normal elsewhere. A
truncated election would be permitted, and, under this scheme, whoever had
the most ballots would win.
STARVING THE GOVERNMENT
21. We know that the Bush Administration paid off its backers (and itself)
by giving humongous tax breaks, for 10 years out, to the already wealthy and
to large corporations. This was done at a time when the U.S. economy was in
recessionary doldrums and when the treasury deficit from those tax-breaks
was growing even larger from Iraq war costs. So far as we know, the Bush
Administration has no plans for how to retire that debt and no real plan
(other than the discredited "trickle-down" theory) for restarting the
economy and creating jobs. In 2004, it's clear that whatever positive
"trickle-down" effect the tax refunds may have provided, that impact is no
more, and the (jobless) "recovery" is slowing and starting to look
recessional again. People need good-paying employment.
22. We know that the hard-right conservatives who control Bush policy don't
really care what kind of debt and deficits his policies cause; in some ways,
the more the better. They want to decimate and eviscerate popular social
programs from the New Deal/Great Society eras, including, most visibly, Head
Start, Social Security, Medicare (and real drug coverage for seniors),
aspects of public education. Since these programs are so well-approved by
the public, the destruction will be carried out stealthily with the magic
words of "privatization," "deregulation," "choice" and so on, and by going
to the public and saying that they'd love to keep the programs intact but
they have no alternative but to cut them, given the deficit, weak economy
and "anti-terrorist" wars abroad.
23. We know that Bush environmental policy - dealing with air and water
pollution, national park systems, and so on - is an unmitigated disaster,
more or less giving free rein to corporations whose bottom line does better
when they don't have to pay attention to the public interest.
24. We know from "insider" memoirs and reports by former Bush Administration
officials - Joseph DeIulio, Paul O'Neill, Richard Clarke, et al. - that the
public interest plays little role in the formulation of policy inside the
Bush Administration. The motivating factors are greed and control and
remaining in political power. Further, they say, there is little or no
curiosity to think outside the political box, or even to hear other
opinions - in other words, don't bother me with facts, my mind's made up.
Some of this non-curiosity may be based in fundamentalist religious, even
Apocalyptic, beliefs.
25. Finally (although we could continue forever detailing the crimes and
misdemeanors of this corrupt, incompetent Administration), we know that more
and more, the permanent-war policy abroad and police-state tactics at home -
with the shredding of Constitutional rights designed to protect citizens
from a potential repressive government - are taking us into a kind of
American fascism at home and an imperial foreign policy overseas.
As a result, we are beginning to see more alliances between liberal/left
forces and libertarians traditional conservatives horrified that their party
has been hijacked by extremei deologues. If Bush loses his bid for a second
term, it will come less from what we progressives do and more from those
moderate-to-conservative Republicans and Libertarians, who cannot abide what
Bush&Co. have done to their party, their movement, and to this country.

 Giano
Io ho molta fiducia nella gente e anche nel dio della guerra e della pace:
fai un riassuntino breve in italiano chiaro, anche secondo la tua
opinione, ma non costringermi a mezz'ora di lettura in inglese! TKS
-- 
gus
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Ho avvertito che era lungo; lungo quanto tre anni (senza considerare il
precedente) di bugie, di strane coincidenze, di condotta non consueta di un
Presidente non all'altezza del suo compito e di una amministrazione che
singhiozza e inciampica qua e la', forse ad arte perche`i coinquilini del
PNAC al potere hanno idee chiarissime quanto ciniche delinquenziali.
E` difficile fare il riassunto di un riassunto (in 25 punti) senza lasciare
qualcosa di non superfluo da parte; con un po' di pazienza e buona
volonta`potresti leggerlo da solo , senza costringermi ad una lunga
traduzione.
E` un compendio di fatti con la relativa critica fatta da parte Democratica
che va dalla bugia  del punto 1, fatta per proteggere piu` il capitale che
il cittadino newyorkese alla costatazione che la piu` grande democrazia del
mondo si va avviando su questo passo verso uno Stato che, contrariamente
alla conclamata protezione del cittadino, cancella tutti i diritti dati
dalla Costituzione agli statunitensi per diventare uno stato autoritario
nella politica domestica e uno Stato Imperiale nella politica estera.
Se vuoi possiamo discutere uno ad uno i 25 punti che costituiscono
quest'articolo che copre la politica interna ed estera USA in questo
triennio.
Coraggio! Son cose gia`conosciute, qualcuna e`arricchita da qualche
particolare non noto.
Ciao.
Giano

 Giano
Vabbè, comunque grazie, me lo leggo, ma mi hai dato almeno un'idea.
ciao
