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Old 07-24-2005, 02:06 PM   #1 (permalink)
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Are Ted Olson and Al Zarqawi both "Supermen"?

Are Americans more gullible than the used to be? IMO, much of what we are told about Olson and Zarqawi is just too farfetched to be attributable to just two human beings. Why is there so little discussion or reaction to the sheer body and bulk of "reports" concerning these two "supermen"?

Can there really be such a great number of "coincidents" surrounding them?

The more that I read about these two guys, the less that I know for sure. The common thread between them is that they both seem capable of "being everywhere at once" and of having a hand in everything that happens in their respective realms. In Olson's case, his name turns up in "all things political", for the last dozen years, and in Zarqawi's.....all things related to "war in Iraq", and "war on terrurrrr"! I wrote the following in another thread:
Quote:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...ck=1&cset=true
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ne...nG=Search+News

"What we get from the Iraqi government is: 'We want you to help us. Then we want you to leave,' " the official said.

"And we're OK with that."
**************************

I'm not eff....ing "OK with that"......with any of it. I prefer the BS that they want me to eat, served up pipin' hot on a sesame seed roll....with mustard.

"Zarqawi" is mentioned in this short "article" five times. The insur-gents are either runnin' outta money, or the insur-gents got "hundreds of millions of dollars" at its disposal".

If you are an avid consumer of this Bushco BS, thank god almighty that they got Zarqawi as a posterboy for the legitimacy of the delusion that they constantly dispense about "fightin" em thar....so we don't haveta fight em ovah heah" !! If something were to happen to completely turn vapor man Zarqawi into vaporware...this would just be about fightin' a homegrown insur-gency intent on driving out the occupiers....and there'd be nobody to point to that "might" be fixin' to come on ovah heah...if we wasn't fightin' em over thar.

I'm wearin' out a BS detector every month, readin' all of their BS. Anybody know where I can buy one that will still work after I slam it upside the wall, everytime I see the name "Zarqawi"?

Do we have to keep portraying our troops, our intelligence community, and our Prezdent as total and ineffective incompetents to keep all of this BS pipin' hot and in the bun?

Does anybody really buy into this BS anymore?
Quote:
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FJ15Ak02.html
Zarqawi - Bush's man for all seasons
By Pepe Escobar

"Oh Allah, America came with its horses and knights to challenge Allah and his message. Oh Allah, destroy the kingdom of Bush as you destroyed the kingdom of Caesar."
- Abu Musab al-Zarqawi audio, February 2004

"You know, I hate to predict violence, but I just understand the nature of the killers. This guy, Zarqawi, an al-Qaeda associate - who was in Baghdad, by the way, prior to the removal of Saddam Hussein - is still at large in Iraq. And as you might remember, part of his operational plan was to sow violence and discord amongst the various groups in Iraq by cold- blooded killing. And we need to help find Zarqawi so that the people of Iraq can have a more bright ... future."
- President George W Bush, June 2004

..........Will the real Zarqawi please stand up
Zarqawi, described as "a master of disguise and bogus identification papers", has had a tendency to appear in several places at the same time, always eluding the efforts of the multibillion-dollar US intelligence machine. The Rupert Murdoch-owned The Weekly Standard, very cosy with the neo-cons, trumpeted that Zarqawi "is mounting a challenge to bin Laden's leadership of the global jihad".

But not a single source, anywhere, claims to have actually seen "Zarqawi" since late 2001 in Afghanistan. Ask the Pentagon. Ask the CIA. Ask the Federal Bureau of Investigation. No one, on the record, is able to independently verify that "Zarqawi" actually exists. There are no photos - only that same CIA-owned black and white. The CIA doesn't even know how tall or how fat "Zarqawi" is. All the literature on "Zarqawi" since late 2001 springs from dubious "confessions" by prisoners and "statements" by all sorts of people claiming to be "Zarqawi".

Even more extraordinary is that everybody and his neighbor is after Zarqawi: the Pentagon; the CIA; the Mukhabarat-lite intelligence services of Allawi; the Mehdi Army of Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr; the bombed residents of Fallujah, where he apparently is hiding; not to mention millions of Iraqis who would bless the heavens above for a shot at laying their hands on a $25 million bounty. Just like bin Laden, nobody can find Zarqawi. Why? ..........
Quote:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5280219/site/newsweek/
The World’s Most Dangerous Terrorist
Who is Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi? And why are so many governments scared to death of him?

By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Updated: 6:33 p.m. ET June 23, 2004

.........Even as the threat posed by Zarqawi increases, senior Bush administration officials concede that their understanding of who he is—and how he fits into the broader jihadi network exemplified by bin Laden—is evolving and may be more complex than was publicly presented 18 months ago in the run-up to the war in Iraq.

The first high-level Bush administration references to Zarqawi came in October 2002 when President Bush, in a speech in Cincinnati, laid out the case against Saddam’s regime by emphasizing what he described as “high-level contacts” between the Iraqi government and Al Qaeda. One prominent example cited by the president was the fact that “one very senior Al Qaeda leader [had] ... received medical treatment in Baghdad this year”—a reference to Zarqawi. Then, in his February 2003 speech to the United Nations Security Council, Secretary of State Colin Powell described Zarqawi as “an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda lieutenants.”

But just last week, in little-noticed remarks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld conceded that Zarqawi’s ties to Al Qaeda may have been much more ambiguous—and that he may have been more a rival than a lieutenant to bin Laden. Zarqawi “may very well not have sworn allegiance to [bin Laden]," Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon briefing. “Maybe he disagrees with him on something, maybe because he wants to be ‘The Man’ himself and maybe for a reason that’s not known to me.” Rumsfeld added that, “someone could legitimately say he’s not Al Qaeda.”..........

http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0604/153542.html
Jordanian Fighter on Most Wanted List
UPDATED - Wednesday June 16, 2004 2:29am


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3603949.stm

Excerpt from April 6, 2004 BBC News Article

....Confessions

The shooting of Mr Foley outside his home was the first killing of a Western diplomat in the city.

He was shot several times in the chest and head as he walked towards his car.

Among those sentenced to death by the military court were Libyan Salem Saad bin Suweid and Jordanian Yasser Freihat, who were arrested in December 2002 and accused of carrying out the actual shooting.

They had told the court they were innocent and had been forced to confess to the crime.

The other six were sentenced to death in absentia, including Zarqawi.

Two other defendants, Mohammed Damas and Mohammed Amin, who had also pleaded not guilty, were sentenced to 15 years and six years in jail respectively. .......

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/n...l=chi-news-hed
Prisoner casts doubt on Iraq tie to Al Qaeda
Story at odds with Powell's UN case

By Cam Simpson and Stevenson Swanson
Tribune correspondents
Published February 11, 2003


http://www.occupationwatch.org/headl...rqawi_phe.html
July 07, 2005
The Zarqawi Phenomenon

Dahr Jamail
TomDispatch
July 6, 2005

A remarkable proportion of the violence taking place in Iraq is regularly credited to the Jordanian Ahmad al-Khalayleh, better known as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and his organization Al Qaeda in Iraq. Sometimes it seems no car bomb goes off, no ambush occurs that isn't claimed in his name or attributed to him by the Bush administration. Bush and his top officials have, in fact, made good use of him, lifting his reputed feats of terrorism to epic, even mythic, proportions (much aided by various mainstream media outlets). Given that the invasion and occupation of Iraq has now been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be based upon administration lies and manipulations, I had begun to wonder if the vaunted Zarqawi even existed.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4466324/
By Rod Nordland
Newsweek
Updated: 3:01 a.m. ET March 7, 2004

March 6 - The stark fact is that we don’t even know for sure how many legs Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi has, let alone whether the Jordanian terrorist, purportedly tied to al Qaeda, is really behind the latest outrages in Iraq.

Is Zarqawi Really the Culprit?
Evidence tying an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist to the latest Iraqi bombings is murkier than U.S. officials are letting on

http://www.williambowles.info/ini/ini-0253.html
.....So at the beginning of the story, al-Zarqawi's organisation is called “Unity and Jihad”. Later on it's called the “Islamic Movement” then later still it's the “Army of Ansar al-Sunna”, all purportedly part of al-Zarqawi's “very, very sophisticated…information campaign”, at least according to Time Magazine's Michael Ware, who is by the way, the only identified source for the information in the story. Ware bases his allegations on a series of interviews with a “number of insurgents over the past year”.

The piece goes on to tell us that the video, a “chillingly professional…sophisticated tape” that is the basis for the front page story and allegedly the work of al-Zarqawi, contains only an audio message from Zarqawi, though there is no substantiation for the claim. In fact the piece tells that,

“…it [the audio allegedly of Zarqawi] seems to have been taken from an audio tape he released last month threatening the new Iraqi government [sic].”

All we have to substantiate the claim is that the tape says it's him. The only thing real about this story is a video tape that could have originated anywhere and been made almost anybody with access to the source material.

What is important about the article is the theme, namely, that the 'insurgency' is 'foreign-led', in other words, if it wasn't for those damn 'furriners', all would be well in Iraq................
And now....about Theodore (Ted) Olson:

It was reported in June and in July that Time Inc. had changed it's legal team to the lawfirm whose partners Theodore Olson and Miguel Estrada took the lead in the unsuccessful attempt to appeal the subpoena from special prosecutor Fitzgerald for reporter Matt Cooper's records and sources in the Plame "outing". Olson provided the legal advice to Time chief editor Norman Pearlstine, who ultimately decided to turn over Cooper's records to Fitzgerald.

Olson seems to be "everywhere"....for a long, long, time now. In 2002, arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court in his capacity as Solicitor General of the U.S., Olson had this to say:
Quote:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/internatio...671089,00.html
Widow blames US officials for Guatemala dirty war death

Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
Thursday March 21, 2002
The Guardian

.........The US knew at the time of her husband's kidnapping who had carried it out but, Ms Harbury says, it chose to tell her that it had no information.

The government's lawyers argue that the case should not proceed, on the grounds that government officials are entitled to give misleading information.

"There are lots of different situations when the government has legitimate reasons to give out false information," the solicitor general, Theodore Olson, told the supreme court this week. .............
I find Olson's history to be, at the least, a fascinating and ever growing collection of coincidences.....he is always involved in the biggest national political stories.

Did you know that just 12 hours after the 9/11 attacks, his "account" of phone calls received by him from his wife, Barbara Olson, reportedly a passenger on the doomed Flight 77, reported to have crashed into the Pentagon, are the sole source of the widely reported (and believed) scenario of "hijackers armed with box cutters"? Olson was did not testify to the 9/11 commission; rather, FBI records of a 9-11-01 "interview" with him, were entered into the 9/11 commission report, as part of the report "findings" The 9/11 commission claimed that it was not able to retrieve billing records of the calls that Barbara Olson made to her husband at the Justice Dept. Olson is reported to have said that his wife "called collect" from a seatback phone on the airliner, and he is also reported, months later to have said that she made several calls to him before Flt 77 crashed, "from her cellphone".

Olson argued successfully before the Supreme Court in Dec., 2001, in "Bush v. Gore", that allowing the Florida vote recount would do "irreparable harm" to his client, candidate GW Bush....

Olson has represented Reagan in Iran Contra, is good friends with Ken Starr, was best man in 1998 of R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., the Spectator's combative editor, the man at the center of the "Arkansas Project", which was the primary catalyst behind the "Whitewater" investigation of the Clintons, and the legal suit on behalf of Paula Jones.
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...&notFound=true
The Two Theodore Olsons
Although Conservatives Love Him, Some Doubt Solicitor General Nominee's Candor

By Robert G. Kaiser and Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, May 17, 2001; Page A01

...........Olson has done legal work for Ronald Reagan, Monica Lewinsky and Jonathan Pollard, an American who spied for Israel. He has argued 15 cases before the Supreme Court, and won several historic ones, most notably last year's Bush v. Gore..............

...............He has been not only an architect of the conservative legal movement but a significant political player as well, advising Paula Jones's legal team when she sued President Bill Clinton for sexual harassment, and defending his friend Kenneth W. Starr during the Whitewater investigation...............

...............Olson's nomination was held up at the Judiciary Committee last week, after Democrats expressed concern that the nominee was less than candid in testimony about his role with the American Spectator magazine and its "Arkansas Project," a $2.3 million effort to report on Bill and Hillary Clinton that was funded by Richard Mellon Scaife, a conservative philanthropist..................

................Fifteen years ago, Justice Department lawyers found "significant evidence" that Olson had given carefully worded testimony to Congress that "was knowingly false." An independent counsel cleared him of criminal wrongdoing in that episode...............

................ Olson and his wife, Barbara, have made no secret of their political predilections. Barbara Olson worked for House Republicans investigating Clinton, became a prominent anti-Clinton television commentator and wrote a gleefully hostile bestseller about Hillary Clinton, "Hell to Pay."

Olson himself wrote a long article for American Spectator denouncing Janet Reno's Justice Department as politically corrupt, and co-authored an article for the magazine enumerating, with sarcasm, the federal and Arkansas laws the Clintons might have violated. When R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., the Spectator's combative editor, got married in 1998, Olson was his best man. ...............

................. Olson entered the public arena in the early months of Reagan's presidency, when he provided the legal reasoning for Reagan's decision to fire the nation's air traffic controllers, an unexpected, forceful display of leadership that set the tone of the new administration. At the time Olson was assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel, the branch of the Justice Department sometimes described as the president's law firm.

Olson came to that position as a 40-year-old protégé of William French Smith, with whom he had worked in the Los Angeles law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Smith, Reagan's first attorney general, brought two bright young lawyers to Washington in 1981: Olson and Starr, who served as counselor to the attorney general.

Twenty years later, Olson was at the center of one of the great political dramas of American history, arguing twice before the Supreme Court late last year on behalf of the Bush campaign. His success before the court impressed legal colleagues -- "If you were giving out . . . prizes, Olson would win one," said Lloyd Cutler, the prominent Washington lawyer and former counsel to presidents Jimmy Carter and Clinton. His victory in Bush v. Gore made Olson a hero among Republicans, and a natural candidate to be President Bush's solicitor general.................

......................... Lincoln Caplan of Yale Law School, a liberal and author of a book on solicitors general, "The Tenth Justice," said he was surprised that senators have not questioned Olson about the conclusion of the independent counsel who investigated him in the 1980s that he had given "disingenuous and misleading" testimony to Congress in a contentious hearing involving the Environmental Protection Agency. The independent counsel, Alexia Morrison, decided not to prosecute Olson, saying his "less than forthcoming" testimony was "literally true," and not provably a violation of law.

Caplan described this conclusion as "significant for a solicitor general candidate" because "integrity is essential to the office," and Morrison's conclusions were "not an exoneration [but] quite a damning conclusion."

Olson was criticized by others in that same episode. Lawyers in the Justice Department's public integrity section who investigated his testimony used strong language to characterize their conclusions: "The available evidence strongly suggests that Olson's testimony is false"; "We think it is probable that Olson's testimony, literally and in context, was false"; "Olson tailored a narrow response calculated to be literally true yet still evade the committee's purpose"; "there is significant evidence that Olson's testimony in this area was knowingly false." ....................

................... Describing herself as a strong supporter of Bush, Burford said she nevertheless had strong negative feelings about Olson. "He out-and-out lied to me," she said.

Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee joined in the criticism of Olson in that episode, concluding that "regrettably, the president was ill-advised by Assistant Attorney General Olson" on the law of executive privilege.

The core of the Democrats' claim that Olson was misleading in his confirmation testimony centers on his involvement with the Spectator, which hired him as a lawyer in 1994 and put him on the board two years later.

When asked about his involvement in the Arkansas Project on April 5, Olson replied: "It has been alleged that I was somehow involved in that so-called project. I was not involved in the project in its origin or its management."

Later, in what Democrats consider to be a more problematic assertion, Olson wrote to the committee that his legal work for the Spectator "was not for the purpose of conducting or assisting in the conduct of investigations of the Clintons."

Olson's partner, Cox, has said that Olson's legal work included the assessment of the Clintons' potential legal exposure. An article that Olson acknowledged he has co-authored on that subject ran in the American Spectator's February 1994 issue.

Olson has repeatedly denied that he knew anything about Scaife's funding of the project until 1997, when a controversy arose inside the Spectator over whether the project's money was being spent appropriately. Arkansas Project accounting records show payments to Olson's law firm totaling $14,341.45 during 1994 alone, but Olson and Tyrrell, the Spectator's editor-in-chief, have both said there was no way Olson's law firm could have known what account the Spectator was drawing on to pay the firm.

David Brock, a former investigative reporter for the Spectator, has described Olson participating directly in discussions of Arkansas Project stories. Tyrrell countered that Brock was not a part of the project and "the record on that is indisputable." Yesterday, Brock produced Arkansas Project expense records showing at least 19 payments to him for travel costs, books and periodicals and phone calls.

One potential source of information that might clarify Olson's relationship with the Arkansas Project is the report written by Michael Shaheen in 1999, based on his investigation into whether lawyers working for Starr gave improper assistance to anti-Clinton witness David Hale, perhaps using money from the Arkansas Project. Shaheen, a former Justice Department official, concluded that there was no wrongdoing by Starr's staff. In the course of his inquiry, he interviewed many Arkansas Project participants, mostly before a special grand jury. More than one of them refused to testify, invoking the constitutional right not to incriminate oneself.

Because the Shaheen report is based on grand jury testimony, it is covered by federal rules requiring that it be kept secret. Democrats on the Senate committee have expressed interest in seeing it in hopes it contains information about Olson. A Democratic aide was shown a heavily redacted portion of the report, sources said.

According to knowledgeable sources, Cox, on Olson's behalf, has asked Robert W. Ray, Starr's successor as independent counsel, whether he could certify that the Shaheen report contains no information linking Olson to the Arkansas Project beyond Olson's own testimony that he learned about the project -- but not who funded it before 1997 -- from his service on the American Spectator foundation's board. Ray decided that it would not be proper to respond to Cox's request, the sources said.
Quote:
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1119344732543
Reporters Plead Their Case to Supreme Court
Scribes from The New York Times, Time magazine hope justices take up their cause

Bethany Broida
Legal Times
06-22-2005

........Miller is represented by First Amendment expert Floyd Abrams while Cooper and Time turned to former Solicitor General Theodore Olson and his Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher partner Miguel Estrada. In addition, attorneys general from 34 states and the District submitted an amicus brief asking the Court to clarify the law. .........
Quote:
http://www.americanpolitics.com/20010523TedOlson.html
In 1988, when President Reagan left office, Theodore Olson became his personal attorney and represented him in matters relating to the Iran Contra scandal. Olson monitored Reagan's testimony throughout the investigations and hearings, a central and indispensable figure during the examination of the extra-Constitutional power grab effected by conservative Republicans.

Shortly after President Clinton took office in 1993, a loose cabal of conservative Republicans plotted to drive him from office. The same Theodore Olson, and his wife Barbara, were at the core of the effort, which nearly succeeded in deposing a popular, duly elected president against the expressed will of the American people.

In 2000, Theodore Olson represented George W. Bush as conservative Republicans seized the presidency by forcing Florida to cease the counting of lawful votes through the machinations of the conservative Republican majority of the U.S. Supreme Court. Olson, again, was central to the effort -- a successful coup d'état.
Quote:
http://slate.msn.com/id/1007659/
chatterbox Gossip, speculation, and scuttlebutt about politics.

Whopper of the Week: Ted Olson
Timothy Noah
Posted Friday, May 11, 2001, at 12:15 PM PT

"Only as a member of the board of directors of the American Spectator. It has been alleged that I was somehow involved in that so-called project; I was not involved in the project, in its origin or its management."

--Solicitor-general nominee Theodore Olson, testifying before the Senate Judiciary committee, in response to the question, "Were you involved with the so-called Arkansas Project at any time?" The Arkansas Project was the American Spectator's $2 million scandal investigation of Bill and Hillary Clinton funded by conservative philanthropist Richard Mellon Scaife. Olson's remarks were quoted on May 3 by Jake Tapper in Salon, and on May 10 by Thomas B. Edsall in the Washington Post. Tapper was following up on earlier Salon stories by Joe Conason and Alicia Montgomery.

Continue Article

"[David] Brock, who was one of the Spectator's leading investigative reporters in the Arkansas Project but who left the magazine after a series of disagreements, said Olson attended a number of dinner meetings at the home of R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., president and chairman of the Spectator, which were explicitly 'brainstorming' sessions about the Arkansas Project.

"'There were several dinners at Bob Tyrrell's house, editorial planning sessions, on articles on the Clintons in Arkansas,' Brock said. 'Ted [Olson] was sometimes there, occasionally Barbara Olson [Ted Olson's wife] as well.'

"Olson, according to Brock, was an active participant in discussions of possible stories, of methods to investigate scandal allegations and of ways to cultivate sources who would be familiar with the Clintons' political and financial dealings."

--Edsall's May 10...........
Quote:
http://www.democraticunderground.com...3/5415.html#18

Ashcroft stops flying commercial and is on a plane owned by the FAA on that particular day.
It is Ted's birthday so his wife celebrates it with him the night before and has a birthday breakfast with him before leaving him alone on his birthday to go do something that is more important to her. She is not planning to be back that night.
She gets on a plane on the same day on which several Pentagon generals have abruptly cancelled flights.
Ted and Barbara are supposedly popular in conservative circles and they knew NOTHING!!??!!
She often calls him during the day on the "batphone" but today, on the hijacked plane, she apparently does not use that number, preferring to involve as many people as possible.
CNN and Fox news are alerted almost immediately about unusual choice of weapons carried by the hijackers.
He comes home that night and and finds a love note she left on his pillow.
No evacuation to a safe house for Ted, or his guests that night who included Clarence Thomas. Terrorists apparently do not attack at night.
Quote:
http://www.nypress.com/17/30/news&columns/AlanCabal.cfm
NEWS & COLUMNS
Miracles and Wonders

By Alan Cabal

MIRACLES AND WONDERS Last week, USA Today reported a joint effort between Qualcomm and American Airlines' to allow passengers to make cellphone calls from aircraft in flight. According to the story, the satellite-based system employs a "Pico cell" to act as a small cellular tower.

"It worked great," gushed Monte Ford, American Airline's chief information officer. "I called the office. I called my wife. I called a friend in Paris. They all heard me great, and I could hear them loud and clear."

Before this new "Pico cell," it was nigh on impossible to make a call from a passenger aircraft in flight. Connection is impossible at altitudes over 8000 feet or speeds in excess of 230 mph.

Yet despite this, passengers Todd Beamer, Mark Bingham, Jeremy Glick and Edward Felt all managed to place calls from Flight 93 on the morning of September 11. Peter Hanson, en route to Disneyland with his wife and daughter, phoned his dad from Flight 175. Madeline Amy Sweeney, a flight attendant, made a very dramatic call from Flight 11 as it sped to the North Tower. Barbara Olson made two calls, collect, to her husband at his government office from Flight 77 as it made its way to the Pentagon.............
Quote:
Her husband said she called him twice on a cell phone from American Airlines Flight 77, which was en route from Washington Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles.
Ted Olson told CNN that his wife said all passengers and flight personnel, including the pilots, were herded to the back of the plane by armed hijackers. The only weapons she mentioned were knives and cardboard cutters. <a href="http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/pentagon.olson/index.html">http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/pentagon.olson/index.html</a>
Quote:
The little white lie was about Barbara Olson, a conservative commentator for CNN and wife of US Solicitor General Ted Olson. Now deceased, Mrs Olson is alleged to have twice called her husband from an American Airlines Flight 77 seat-telephone, before the aircraft slammed into the Pentagon. This unsubstantiated claim, reported by CNN remarkably quickly at 2.06 am EDT [0606 GMT] on September 12, was the solitary foundation on which the spurious “Hijacker” story was built.
Without the “eminent” Barbara Olson and her alleged emotional telephone calls, there would never be any proof that humans played a role in the hijack and destruction of the four aircraft that day. Lookalike claims surfaced several days later on September 16 about passenger Todd Beamer and others, but it is critically important to remember here that the Barbara Olson story was the only one on September 11 and. 12. It was beyond question the artificial “seed” that started the media snowball rolling down the hill. <a href="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/steveseymour/lies911/lies.htm">http://homepage.ntlworld.com/steveseymour/lies911/lies.htm</a>
Quote:
http://globalecho.org/view_article.php?aid=2434
Barbara Olson's call from Flight 77 never happened
The contortions of all involved not to leave a paper trail in the form of phone bills proves it.
by: rowland morgan on: 2nd Dec, 04

........The Olson phone call story is a central load-bearing beam in the whole 9/11 official construction. It was crucial in establishing the existence of marauders on a civilian flight and their possession of dangerous weapons. Later, the identity of the plane that hit the Pentagon hinged on it, too. This vital, founding element of the narrative originated in the Department of Justice and was carried by CNN, part of $38 billion-a-year AOL-Time-Warner (as it was then). It was issued on 12th September at 2:06 AM Eastern Daylight Time---just 16 hours after Olson�s bereavement. It went as follows:



Barbara Olson, a conservative commentator and attorney, alerted her husband, Solicitor General Ted Olson, that the plane she was on was being hijacked Tuesday morning, Ted Olson told CNN. Shortly afterwards Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon (sic)� Ted Olson told CNN that his wife said all passengers and flight personnel, including the pilots, were herded to the back of the plane by armed hijackers. The only weapons she mentioned were knives and cardboard cutters. She felt nobody was in charge and asked her husband to tell the pilot what to do.

This was the first eye-witness account of hijackers to reach the public. A TV celebrity had seen them, and filed the story with CNN by means of her second husband making an unsubstantiated verbal report. They were men brandishing knives and cardboard cutters who herded passengers to the rear of the plane. No hint of their appearance or origin, but living, breathing hijackers. The story at no point quotes Ted Olson directly and nor does it say by what method his lawyer wife telephoned. All subsequent mass-media reports of the Olson call were derived from this original, freely citing it as a mobile phone call.



It is the only ostensible passenger story coming from all the rogue aircraft that establishes the use of �cardboard cutters� or box-cutters, the permitted weapons that would get American Airlines off the hook and not implicate the FAA---and it emanates from the Department of Justice (seat of the FBI), issuing at 2:00 AM next morning. It makes that inscrutable reference to Mrs Olson feeling that �nobody was in charge�. And she is supposed to have asked her husband �to tell the pilot what to do�, as if Capt. Burlingame were not lying on the cockpit floor with his throat cut, but had allowed himself to be �herded� to the back of the plane with everyone else and could still make a move. Perhaps the man at the controls had thrown up his hands, bewildered that the controls no longer worked. Burlingame was a decorated war veteran and long-time Pentagon liaison officer. What advice could Ted Olson possibly offer him? What did his wife think Ted Olson might know about a hijacking? That is, if she ever called at all.



The Kean Commission, perhaps aware of the swell of scepticism around it, addresses the question of this notorious call, introducing a new evasion. Apparently all calls from Flight 11 were all made to an unknown number! Their footnote states:



The records available for the phone calls from American 77 do not allow for a determination of which of four �connected calls to unknown number� represent the two between Barbara and Ted Olson, although the FBI and DOJ (dept. of justice) believe that all four represent communications between Barbara Olson and her husband�s office (all family members of the Flight 77 passengers and crew were canvassed to see if they had received any phone calls from the hijacked flight, and only [flight attendant] Renee May�s parents and Ted Olson indicated that they had received such calls). The four calls were at 9:15:34 for 1 minute, 42 seconds; 9:20:15 for 4 minutes, 34 seconds; 9:25:48 for 2 minutes, 34 seconds, and 9:30:34 for 4 minutes, 20 seconds. FBI report, �American Airlines Telephone Usage,� Sept. 20, 2001; FBI report of investigation, interview of Theodore Olson, Sept. 11, 2001; FBI report of investigation, interview of Helen Voss, Sept. 14, 2001; AAL response to the Commission�s supplemental document request, Jan. 20, 2004.

(Kean Commission report Note 57.)



So, we are left with a situation that is hazy, perplexing and confusing.



1 Hazy, because the Commission does not come out and say the calls were made on Flight 77�s fitted airphones, and if they were there is a selection of calls, all of them �to unknown number�---so that there can be no billing record. Nor are the providers of the in-flight phone service cited, only the airline.

2 Perplexing, because the Commission says that flight attendant Renee May called her parents on a mobile phone at about 9:15, when Flight 77 was lost. But we are not convinced that successful mobile phone connections can be made from an airliner at cruising altitude. Professor Dewdney�s experiments in Canada persuasively showed that mobile handsets� efficacy diminished with altitude until at over 8,000 feet they were extremely unreliable. Why would American Airlines pay for an experimental system to try enabling them in 2004, if they already worked? Also, Flight 77 at 9:15 was supposed to be over the Alleghenies, an under-populated area only sparsely served by mobile networks. The only evidence the Commission seems to have for this call is an FBI file. Renee May�s authenticated Verizon bill would be more convincing, and easily enough obtained and reproduced in the report.

3 Confusing, because the Commission seems to be relying for the Olson call on an FBI investigation of, and interview with, Ted Olson that was conducted on the day of the call, when America was believed to be under attack.



The FBI interviewed Helen Voss, who was Ted Olson�s P.A., on September 14th, three days before Tony Mauro of American Lawyer Media, published an account of the call that supposedly arrived in the middle of total chaos at the Department of Justice:



It was just as the World Trade Center attacks were unfolding that someone in the solicitor general's office took a phone call from Barbara Olson. Ted Olson's longtime assistant, Helen Voss, raced into the SG's (solicitor-general�s) office to tell him that Barbara was on the line, sounding panicked. He picked up the phone and exclaimed, �What, you've been hijacked?� She was calling on her cell phone from aboard the jet, which had just left Dulles Airport. Voss says, �My heart sank.� The call ended abruptly, but then Barbara called again, reportedly asking her husband, �What should I tell the pilot?� It was a comment that friends have taken as a sign that she was characteristically trying to find a solution to the crisis. The pilot, along with passengers, had apparently been herded into the back of the plane.

Olson reported the conversation to the Justice Department's command center. After the second call ended, Olson and Voss turned on a television set in his office, unsure what else could be done.

(Emphasis added)



This contemporary story, probably gathered from the DOJ press office and a phone-call to Voss, fails to name the person who took the original call and does not imply that Helen Voss handled the call, except to say that Olson�s third wife �sounded panicked�, which the �someone� who took the call might plausibly have told her, to make her hurry. So Helen Voss is in the clear, and an unidentified person took the call (although we learn later that Olson�s office is �tight-knit�). No witness there, anyway. The account also differs on key points from the official story. Mrs Olson �called on her cell phone from aboard the jet�. So, what of American�s phone records? And what of Olson�s garbled account six months later, when he told the Daily Telegraph that Mrs Olson had wasted a lot of time trying to call collect because she had no credit card to use on the Airfone? The only obvious explanation for this confusion would be if Mr Olson were striving to evade the telephone records that might exist for a normal call, either cellphone or Airfone. But since he is the USA�s chief law officer in the Supreme Court, this is obviously unthinkable. Instead, we hear three years later, all calls from Flight 77 (that were not mobile calls) went to �unknown number�.



The American Lawyer Media story says the third Mrs Olson called back, whereas according to Olson�s later account, she struggled to get through the first time. Nor does this story refer to any lengthy call lasting until just microseconds before the crash, as the American Airlines data implies. It seems Olson had time to report the call to the Dept. of Justice command centre. (But that would leave a call record, so there is another divergence, since the Kean report said he tried to call his boss, John Ashcroft, but was �unsuccessful�. So, no call record there, either.) Olson then switched on his TV and started watching the crisis coverage as the department was hurriedly evacuated. Who, then, was making a call from Flight 77 until microseconds before it crashed into the Pentagon? American Airlines� records make no sense, and anyway, why don�t they come from the telecoms company that supplied the airphones?



American Lawyer Media says that among those who gathered at Olson�s house later to commiserate with the widower were CNN correspondent Tim O'Brien and his wife, Petie, who were longtime friends. �There was no choice. You just go, even though there is nothing you can really say. Your presence is what counts,� said O'Brien. Did O�Brien plant the phone-call story with CNN?



The report was real enough, and its effect was enormous, but the contortions officialdom went through to avoid a phone-call record seem to prove that the Olson telephone call never happened. In his Daily Telegraph interview six months later, (apparently unpublished in the USA), Olson claimed his wife reversed the charges on a call to his office at the department of Justice, using an in-flight satellite phone located on the back of a seat at the rear of the jetliner. Her mobile was in her handbag stowed away, and she did not have her credit card available, Olson said. So his wife, (who was �panicky�, remember) reversed the charges, which understandably caused a big hold-up at Justice�s switchboard. However, a credit card was at the time required for any outgoing call on such a phone, so we presume she is supposed to have borrowed one and reversed the charges to save the cardholder the $10 per minute call charges. Under the circumstances, such a concern seems absurd, and with the big delay, why was no one else demanding to make a call on her phone? Or even using another in-flight phone to make a call to a loved one? Yet all other passengers are silent. The Kean Report says that Olson�s phone-call to Ashcroft was �unsuccessful�. Ashcroft, like his President, was visiting a primary school at the time, apparently beyond the limits for an urgent call from his number two back at the Department. So that�s another untraceable call, leaving no records.



Ted Olson could give his adherents closure, and shut his critics up, by simply producing the Department of Justice�s telephone accounts, showing a couple of hefty reverse-charges entries charged from Flight 77�s Airfone number at around about 9:20 AM on 11th September, 2001. It is probably impossible, because American Airlines Boeing 757s do not appear to be equipped with in-flight satellite phones at all. Perhaps in error, perhaps not, American�s official website currently states:



Inflight Satellite Phones

Turn flight time into quality time by arranging meetings, calling your broker or calling home. Worldwide satellite communications are available on American Airlines' Boeing 777 and Boeing 767 aircraft almost anytime while flying over North America and worldwide.



Link: https://www.aa.com/content/travelInf...chnology.jhtml



Furthermore, if there were in-flight phones on board this particular 757, why would half-crazed �box-cutter wielding� hijackers on a suicide mission possibly allow them to be used---particularly by only one of the 56 passengers and six crew?



If Mrs Olson instead used her mobile phone to call her husband, as numerous mass media reports assumed from the single, very brief, very early, very unsubstantiated CNN report, possibly to call twice, then why did no passenger on the aircraft call---just the once?



Everything in the 9/11 narrative traces back to this one report from Ted Olson, and his investigation, interview by the FBI on the very same day, a day when America thought it was being invaded and at least 13,500 were believed to have perished. In the small hours of the night after the attacks, CNN launched the legend of the terrorist hijackers threatening innocent Americans with blades and driving them out of their paid-for seats to cower in the back of the plane. The corporate networks megaphoned it world-wide. Barbara Olson�s tragic glamour and TV cred gave it extra pep. Even if he did throw his grief aside that night, he had to evade or expedite the restrictive provisions of the National Security Agency. If he did leak the call to CNN�s Tim O�Brien in the midst of his grief that day, Ted Olson�s word is already compromised out of his own mouth. Addressing the Supreme Court of the United States of America while defending the government in a widow�s suit to sue CIA death-squad leaders, the US Solicitor General said: �It is easy to imagine an infinite number of situations . . . where government officials might quite legitimately have reasons to give false information out. It's an unfortunate reality that the issuance of incomplete information and even misinformation by government may sometimes be perceived as necessary to protect vital interests.�........
To wrap this up.....when you try to process more than the "McNews" versions of the Zarqawi "story" and the Wilson/Plame story, and the 9/11 attack story,
the actual depths of the details center on individuals who, with a closer look, take on personas that are "larger than life".

I do not know if Zarqawi exists, but there is much reported about him that sets of my BS detector.
Ted Olson is a "piece of work". I do not believe his "story" about phone calls from his wife from Flight 77 on 9/11. I believe that he was handpicked to read his part of the script to the media. I suspect now that he and former Bush attorney Miguel Estrada are handpicked to be involved in the Time Inc, portion of "Plamegate", and it ain't to uphold "freedom of the press" or to act solely in the best interests of client Time Inc. and it's editor Pearlstine.

Ladies and Gentlemen, what we are witnessing here is just another act in a multi-act play that began at least as far back as the Reagan years. I present all of this to remind you, over and over, that you don't know what you think that you know. I want you to think, and not to post what you think that you know, but actually....have given very little thought of your own to.

The only things that I know are the record of who has been winning and who has been losing. The folks who back Zarqawi and Olson, seem to be winning...hands down !
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Old 07-24-2005, 03:13 PM   #2 (permalink)
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I became very skeptical of the Zarqawi phenomenon when I heard on the news that he narrowly escaped capture by jumping out of a moving car and rolling down an overpass near a US checkpoint. Not to mention the dozens of reports of him being captured then released, injured, and killed. He's another all too convenient boogy man for the war on terror. I honestly don't know what to believe anymore. Maybe he's a real guy, maybe not, but I don't think it can be denied that his threat has been greatly inflated by the pentagon and media. The propaganda is just getting to be too much.
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Old 07-24-2005, 05:29 PM   #3 (permalink)
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Sounds to me like Zarqawi watches too many Bruce Willis action flicks for our own good. We need to get the CIA on the case to increase his consumption on Mr. Bean.
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Old 07-24-2005, 05:40 PM   #4 (permalink)
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I'd say that the "superness" of the Zarqawi phenomenon is partly a construct of the terrorists: he's a sort of folk hero to the insurgency, I would imagine. Perhaps he could be compared to the literary construct of someone like President Lincoln: he won the civil war, freed the slaves, etc - based in part on truth, but embelished to the point of impossibility...
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Old 07-25-2005, 02:03 AM   #5 (permalink)
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stuff

yarr...

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Old 07-25-2005, 07:03 AM   #6 (permalink)
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I worry that Zarquawi and Bin Laden are th Emmanual Goldsteins of our time. As long as we don't catch either of them, their presence can be used to justify any action.
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Old 07-25-2005, 12:06 PM   #7 (permalink)
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He's baaaack...

Roberts Listed in Federalist Society '97-98 Directory
By Charles Lane
The Washington Post

Monday 25 July 2005

Court nominee said he has no memory of membership.
Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. has repeatedly said that he has no memory of belonging to the Federalist Society, but his name appears in the influential, conservative legal organization's 1997-1998 leadership directory.

Having served only two years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit after a long career as a government and private-sector lawyer, Roberts has not amassed much of a public paper record that would show his judicial philosophy. Working with the Federalist Society would provide some clue of his sympathies. The organization keeps its membership rolls secret, but many key policymakers in the Bush administration are acknowledged current or former members.

Roberts has burnished his legal image carefully. When news organizations have reported his membership in the society, he or others speaking on his behalf have sought corrections. Last week, the White House told news organizations that had reported his membership in the group that he had no memory of belonging. The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today and the Associated Press printed corrections.

Over the weekend, The Post obtained a copy of the Federalist Society Lawyers' Division Leadership Directory, 1997-1998. It lists Roberts, then a partner at the law firm Hogan & Hartson, as a member of the steering committee of the organization's Washington chapter and includes his firm's address and telephone number.

Yesterday, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Roberts "has no recollection of being a member of the Federalist Society, or its steering committee." Roberts has acknowledged taking part in some Federalist Society activities, Perino said.

The Federalist Society was founded in 1982 by conservatives who disagreed with what they saw as a leftist tilt in the nation's law schools. The group sponsors legal symposia and similar activities and serves as a network for rising conservative lawyers.

In conservative circles, membership in or association with the society has become a badge of ideological and political reliability. Roberts's membership was routinely reported by news organizations in the context of his work in two GOP administrations and legal assistance to the party during the contested 2000 presidential election in Florida.

But the society's alignment with conservative GOP politics and public policy makes Roberts's relationship with the organization a potentially sensitive point for his confirmation process because many Democrats regard the organization with suspicion.

Yesterday, a liberal organization that has been skeptical of Roberts's nomination said that the White House's description of his relationship with the society showed the need to take a close look at his background.

"As this episode makes clear, the Senate needs to go behind the glowing accounts of Roberts's record to figure out what he really thinks and what he really did," said Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice, a liberal organization that has been critical of the Roberts nomination.

"What matters is whether he hung out with them and not whether he signed the form or wrote the dues check," said David Garrow, a law professor at Emory University. "What's important is the intellectual immersion."

The questions about Roberts's involvement with the society may come down to the meaning of the word "membership."

Roberts is one of 19 steering committee members listed in the directory, which was provided to The Post by Alfred F. Ross, president of the Institute for Democracy Studies in New York, a liberal group that has published reports critical of the society.

Among the others on the list are such prominent conservatives as William Bradford Reynolds, a Justice Department civil rights chief in the Reagan administration; Ethics and Public Policy Center President M. Edward Whelan III; and the late Barbara Olson, who was a Capitol Hill staff member at the time. Her husband, former U.S. solicitor general Theodore B. Olson, is listed as president of the chapter.

Federalist Society Executive Vice President Leonard A. Leo said that either he or another official of the organization recruited Roberts for the committee. Roberts's task was to serve "as a point of contact within the firm to let people know what is going on" with the organization. "It doesn't meet, it doesn't do a whole lot. The only thing we expect of them is to make sure people in the firm know about us," Leo said.

Membership in the sense of paying dues was not required as a condition of inclusion in a listing of the society's leadership, Leo said. He declined to say whether Roberts had ever paid dues, citing a policy of keeping membership information confidential.

Whelan, who has been a member of the Federalist Society but said he had no recollection of his own membership on the steering committee, said the society is tolerant of those who come to its meetings or serve on committees without paying dues.

"John Roberts probably realized pretty quickly he could take part in activities he wanted to" without being current on his dues, Whelan said.

These may seem like fine distinctions, but Roberts has insisted on them. In 2001, after he was nominated by President Bush for the seat he currently holds on the court of appeals, Roberts spoke to Post reporter James V. Grimaldi and asked him to correct an item Grimaldi had written that described Roberts as a member of the Federalist Society. In a subsequent column, Grimaldi wrote that Roberts "is not and never has been a member of the Federalist Society, as previous reported in this column."

Last Wednesday, the day after Bush announced Roberts's nomination, the officials working on the nomination asked the White House press office to call each news organization that had reported Roberts's membership to tell them that he did not recall being a member. Asked yesterday if the White House would have done so knowing about the leadership directory, Perino said "Yes."
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Old 04-10-2006, 01:15 AM   #8 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by politicophile
I'd say that the "superness" of the Zarqawi phenomenon is partly a construct of the terrorists: he's a sort of folk hero to the insurgency, I would imagine. Perhaps he could be compared to the literary construct of someone like President Lincoln: he won the civil war, freed the slaves, etc - based in part on truth, but embelished to the point of impossibility...
I am getting a "gut" feeling that some of us who have worked to convince everyone to QUESTION AUTHORITY, are going to experience an increase in reputation that may seem, LARGER THAN LIFE. Kinda similar.....to.....oh....I don't know.....maybe that of Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi?

Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...900890_pf.html
Military Plays Up Role of Zarqawi
Jordanian Painted As Foreign Threat To Iraq's Stability

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 10, 2006; A01

The U.S. military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to internal military documents and officers familiar with the program. The effort has raised his profile in a way that some military intelligence officials believe may have overstated his importance and helped the Bush administration tie the war to the organization responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The documents state that the U.S. campaign aims to turn Iraqis against Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, by playing on their perceived dislike of foreigners. U.S. authorities claim some success with that effort, noting that some tribal Iraqi insurgents have attacked Zarqawi loyalists.

<h3>For the past two years, U.S. military leaders have been using Iraqi media and other outlets in Baghdad to publicize Zarqawi's role in the insurgency. The documents explicitly list the "U.S. Home Audience" as one of the targets of a broader propaganda campaign.</h3>

Some senior intelligence officers believe Zarqawi's role may have been overemphasized by the propaganda campaign, which has included leaflets, radio and television broadcasts, Internet postings and at least one leak to an American journalist. Although Zarqawi and other foreign insurgents in Iraq have conducted deadly bombing attacks, they remain "a very small part of the actual numbers," Col. Derek Harvey, who served as a military intelligence officer in Iraq and then was one of the top officers handling Iraq intelligence issues on the staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told an Army meeting at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., last summer.

In a transcript of the meeting, Harvey said, "Our own focus on Zarqawi has enlarged his caricature, if you will -- made him more important than he really is, in some ways."

"The long-term threat is not Zarqawi or religious extremists, but these former regime types and their friends," said Harvey, who did not return phone calls seeking comment on his remarks.

There has been a running argument among specialists in Iraq about how much significance to assign to Zarqawi, who spent seven years in prison in Jordan for attempting to overthrow the government there. After his release he spent time in Pakistan and Afghanistan before moving his base of operations to Iraq. He has been sentenced to death in absentia for planning the 2002 assassination of U.S. diplomat Lawrence Foley in Jordan. U.S. authorities have said he is responsible for dozens of deaths in Iraq and have placed a $25 million bounty on his head.

Recently there have been unconfirmed reports of a possible rift between Zarqawi and the parent al-Qaeda organization that may have resulted in his being demoted or cut loose. Last week, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said that it was unclear what was happening between Zarqawi and al-Qaeda. "It may be that he's not being fired at all, but that he is being focused on the military side of the al-Qaeda effort and he's being asked to leave more of a political side possibly to others, because of some disagreements within al-Qaeda," he said.

The military's propaganda program largely has been aimed at Iraqis, but seems to have spilled over into the U.S. media. <b>One briefing slide about U.S. "strategic communications" in Iraq, prepared for Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. commander in Iraq, describes the "home audience" as one of six major targets of the American side of the war.</b>

That slide, created by Casey's subordinates, does not specifically state that U.S. citizens were being targeted by the effort, but other sections of the briefings indicate that there were direct military efforts to use the U.S. media to affect views of the war. One slide in the same briefing, for example, noted that a "selective leak" about Zarqawi was made to Dexter Filkins, a New York Times reporter based in Baghdad. Filkins's resulting article, about a letter supposedly written by Zarqawi and boasting of suicide attacks in Iraq, ran on the Times front page on Feb. 9, 2004.

Leaks to reporters from U.S. officials in Iraq are common, but official evidence of a propaganda operation using an American reporter is rare.

Filkins, reached by e-mail, said that he was not told at the time that there was a psychological operations campaign aimed at Zarqawi, but said he assumed that the military was releasing the letter "because it had decided it was in its best interest to have it publicized." No special conditions were placed upon him in being briefed on its contents, he said. He said he was skeptical about the document's authenticity then, and remains so now, and so at the time tried to confirm its authenticity with officials outside the U.S. military.

"There was no attempt to manipulate the press," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the U.S. military's chief spokesman when the propaganda campaign began in 2004, said in an interview Friday. "We trusted Dexter to write an accurate story, and we gave him a good scoop."

Another briefing slide states that after U.S. commanders ordered that the atrocities of Saddam Hussein's government be publicized, U.S. psychological operations soldiers produced a video disc that not only was widely disseminated inside Iraq, but also was "seen on Fox News."

U.S. military policy is not to aim psychological operations at Americans, said Army Col. James A. Treadwell, who commanded the U.S. military psyops unit in Iraq in 2003. "It is ingrained in U.S.: You don't psyop Americans. We just don't do it," said Treadwell. He said he left Iraq before the Zarqawi program began but was later told about it.

"When we provided stuff, it was all in Arabic," and aimed at the Iraqi and Arab media, said another military officer familiar with the program, who spoke on background because he is not supposed to speak to reporters.

But this officer said that the Zarqawi campaign "probably raised his profile in the American press's view.".....
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Old 04-10-2006, 01:44 AM   #9 (permalink)
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I suspect that new efforts are being "ramped up" to "catapult the propaganda", and give us, "all the news that fits".
The good news, "under reported" by the liberal media. We taxpayers are paying for this, folks!! A phony war of choice, with tightly manipulated and controlled "news" of the consequences...the blowback, authored by the same untrustworthy f**ks who got us mired in this disaster, in the first place.....

Last week, an email containing the following was sent to DOE employees:
Quote:
In response to the President's directive to provide support for the reconstruction and stabilization efforts in Iraq, the Secretary of State has requested that DOE assist in finding a qualified Petroleum Industry Expert and Public Affairs Specialists willing to work at the U.S. embassy in Iraq. The job descriptions are below.....

.....<b>These positions supervise all media aspects of news conferences, press events, media day trips, and media interaction with all high level US visitors; work with Iraqi Government officials at the local level to develop, plan, and implement media events showcasing progress in various regions in Iraq; and develop relationships with the American press corps, International press, Regional Arabic press, US and Coalition Military Forces, and Iraqi press to help facilitate media coverage of events throughout Iraq.</b>

The positions are duty stationed in Baghdad, Iraq. Both offices and living quarters are in the International (Green) Zone, secured by U.S. military personnel and Department of State Diplomatic Security, although there is apt to be travel outside the International Zone under the protection of security forces.
Last week, an email containing the following was sent to Dept. of Commerce employees:
Quote:
Public Affairs - Global Outreach (GO) Team

Commerce Employee detailed to Department of State's Iraq Reconstruction Management Office

Report to U.S. Embassy Public Affairs Officer

Open to Commerce Permanent Career and Political Public Affairs Professionals

Multiple positions available - 3 to 12 month assignments

Language: not required

Position Description: GO Team members generally will serve in Iraq on a three-month rotational basis; some members may be detailed or assigned to Baghdad for a full year. <b>Supervises all media aspects of news conferences, press events, media day trips and media interaction with all high level U.S. visitors including Congressional Delegations. Coordinates media day trips highlighting reconstruction projects and progress in governance at the provincial level.</b> Works with Iraqi Government officials at the local level to develop, plan and implement media events showcasing progress in various regions of Iraq. Develops relationships with American press corps, International press, Regional Arabic press, US and Coalition Military Forces, and the Iraqi press to help facilitate media coverage of events throughout Iraq.

<b>GO Teams will consist of 8-12 persons whose focus is building a sustained capability to facilitate media coverage throughout Iraq,</b> building upon the success of three previous iterations of Public Diplomacy "Surge Teams." Go Teams will supplement US Embassy Baghdad's Public Affairs Office, work in conjunction with MNF-I public affairs officers, and support public affairs outreach activities of Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) and Regional Embassy Offices (REOs) located outside of Baghdad.
Can anyone defend this as "normal" or a justified expense. Do congressmen who allow themselves to be "steered around" Iraq by these DOE or DOC "minders", have any credibility when they speak to the press about their "trips to Iraq", after these "tours".

Didn't Saddam assign "minders" to steer and to observe all visitors, including the weapons inspectors? Is this a demonstration of "democracy" or of "free", unfettered press coverage?

I guess that the May 2003 aircraft carrier, "flight suit" publicity stunt worked too well to abandon style in pursuit of substance.

Last edited by host; 04-10-2006 at 01:46 AM..
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Old 04-10-2006, 08:13 AM   #10 (permalink)
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Assuming your theory is correct, what is the motivation?
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