DICK CHENEY TALKS ABOUT HOW HE RAN THE CFR

Draft Incompatible With Free Society

Infowars.com | November 28, 2006

Rep. Ron Paul

Once again the possibility of reinstating a military draft is being discussed in Washington, and while the idea seems remote it is not unthinkable.

Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, soon to be a powerful committee chair, has openly called for reinstating the Selective Service System. Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey claims that our ground forces in both Afghanistan and Iraq are stretched far too thin, and desperately need reinforcements. Meanwhile, other political and military leaders suggest that several hundred thousand additional troops might be needed simply to restore some semblance of order in Iraq. We are nearing the point where a choice will have to be made: either decrease our troop commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan significantly, or produce thousands of new military recruits quickly. So a discussion of military conscription is not purely academic.

Yet the Department of Defense remains steadfastly opposed to a draft. A Pentagon report stated that draft registration could be eliminated "with no effect on military mobilization and no measurable effect on military recruitment." Most military experts believe a draft would actually impair military readiness, despite the increase in raw manpower, because of training and morale problems.

So why is the idea of a draft even considered? One answer is that our military forces are spread far too thin, engaged in conflicts around the globe that are none of our business. With hundreds of thousands of troops stationed in literally hundreds of foreign nations, we simply don't have enough soldiers to invade and occupy every country labeled a threat or deemed ripe for regime change. Given the choice, many in Congress would rather draft more young bodies than rethink our role as world policeman and bring some of our troops home.

Military needs aside, some politicians simply love the thought of mandatory service to the federal government. The political right favors sending young people to fight in aggressive wars like Iraq. The political left longs to send young people into harm's way to save the world in places like Darfur. But both sides share the same belief that citizens should serve the needs of the state-- a belief our founders clearly rejected in the Declaration of Independence.

To many politicians, the American government is America. This is why, on a crude level, the draft appeals to patriotic fervor. Compulsory national service, whether in the form of military conscription or make-work programs like AmeriCorps, still sells on Capitol Hill. Conscription is wrongly associated with patriotism, when really it represents collectivism and involuntary servitude.

I believe wholeheartedly that an all-volunteer military is not only sufficient for national defense, but also preferable. It is time to abolish the Selective Service System and resign military conscription to the dustbin of American history. Five hundred million dollars have been wasted on Selective Service since 1979, money that could have been returned to taxpayers or spent to improve the lives of our nation's veterans.

Ronald Reagan said it best: "The most fundamental objection to draft registration is moral." The notion of involuntary servitude, in whatever form, is simply incompatible with a free society.

Draft Incompatible With Free Society

Infowars.com | November 28, 2006
Rep. Ron Paul
Once again the possibility of reinstating a military draft is being discussed in Washington, and while the idea seems remote it is not unthinkable.

Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, soon to be a powerful committee chair, has openly called for reinstating the Selective Service System. Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey claims that our ground forces in both Afghanistan and Iraq are stretched far too thin, and desperately need reinforcements. Meanwhile, other political and military leaders suggest that several hundred thousand additional troops might be needed simply to restore some semblance of order in Iraq. We are nearing the point where a choice will have to be made: either decrease our troop commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan significantly, or produce thousands of new military recruits quickly. So a discussion of military conscription is not purely academic.

Yet the Department of Defense remains steadfastly opposed to a draft. A Pentagon report stated that draft registration could be eliminated "with no effect on military mobilization and no measurable effect on military recruitment." Most military experts believe a draft would actually impair military readiness, despite the increase in raw manpower, because of training and morale problems.

So why is the idea of a draft even considered? One answer is that our military forces are spread far too thin, engaged in conflicts around the globe that are none of our business. With hundreds of thousands of troops stationed in literally hundreds of foreign nations, we simply don't have enough soldiers to invade and occupy every country labeled a threat or deemed ripe for regime change. Given the choice, many in Congress would rather draft more young bodies than rethink our role as world policeman and bring some of our troops home.

Military needs aside, some politicians simply love the thought of mandatory service to the federal government. The political right favors sending young people to fight in aggressive wars like Iraq. The political left longs to send young people into harm's way to save the world in places like Darfur. But both sides share the same belief that citizens should serve the needs of the state-- a belief our founders clearly rejected in the Declaration of Independence.

To many politicians, the American government is America. This is why, on a crude level, the draft appeals to patriotic fervor. Compulsory national service, whether in the form of military conscription or make-work programs like AmeriCorps, still sells on Capitol Hill. Conscription is wrongly associated with patriotism, when really it represents collectivism and involuntary servitude.

I believe wholeheartedly that an all-volunteer military is not only sufficient for national defense, but also preferable. It is time to abolish the Selective Service System and resign military conscription to the dustbin of American history. Five hundred million dollars have been wasted on Selective Service since 1979, money that could have been returned to taxpayers or spent to improve the lives of our nation's veterans.

Ronald Reagan said it best: "The most fundamental objection to draft registration is moral." The notion of involuntary servitude, in whatever form, is simply incompatible with a free society.

Bush Advisor Says President Has Legal Power to Torture Children

By Philip Watts

01/08/06 "revcom.us" -- -- John Yoo publicly argued there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering the torture of a child of a suspect in custody – including by crushing that child’s testicles.

This came out in response to a question in a December 1st debate in Chicago with Notre Dame professor and international human rights scholar Doug Cassel.

What is particularly chilling and revealing about this is that John Yoo was a key architect post-9/11 Bush Administration legal policy. As a deputy assistant to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, John Yoo authored a number of legal memos arguing for unlimited presidential powers to order torture of captive suspects, and to declare war anytime, any where, and on anyone the President deemed a threat.

It has now come out Yoo also had a hand in providing legal reasoning for the President to conduct unauthorized wiretaps of U.S. citizens. Georgetown Law Professor David Cole wrote, "Few lawyers have had more influence on President Bush’s legal policies in the 'war on terror’ than John Yoo."

This part of the exchange during the debate with Doug Cassel, reveals the logic of Yoo’s theories, adopted by the Administration as bedrock principles, in the real world.

Cassel: If the President deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?
Yoo: No treaty.
Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.
Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.

The audio of this exchange is available online at revcom.us

Yoo argues presidential powers on Constitutional grounds, but where in the Constitution does it say the President can order the torture of children ? As David Cole puts it, "Yoo reasoned that because the Constitution makes the President the 'Commander-in-Chief,’ no law can restrict the actions he may take in pursuit of war. On this reasoning, the President would be entitled by the Constitution to resort to genocide if he wished."

What is the position of the Bush Administration on the torture of children, since one of its most influential legal architects is advocating the President’s right to order the crushing of a child’s testicles?

This fascist logic has nothing to do with "getting information" as Yoo has argued. The legal theory developed by Yoo and a few others and adopted by the Administration has resulted in thousands being abducted from their homes in Afghanistan, Iraq or other parts of the world, mostly at random. People have been raped, electrocuted, nearly drowned and tortured literally to death in U.S.-run torture centers in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantánamo Bay. And there is much still to come out. What about the secret centers in Europe or the many still-suppressed photos from Abu Ghraib? What can explain this sadistic, indiscriminate, barbaric brutality except a need to instill widespread fear among people all over the world?

It is ironic that just prior to arguing the President's legal right to torture children, John Yoo was defensive about the Bush administration policies, based on his legal memo’s, being equated to those during Nazi Germany.

Yoo said, "If you are trying to draw a moral equivalence between the Nazis and what the United States is trying to do in defending themselves against Al Qauueda and the 9/11 attacks, I fully reject that. Second, if you’re trying to equate the Bush Administration to Nazi officials who committed atrocities in the holocaust, I completely reject that too…I think to equate Nazi Germany to the Bush Administration is irresponsible."

If open promotion of unmitigated executive power, including the right to order the torture of innocent children, isn’t sufficient basis for drawing such a "moral equivalence," then I don’t know what is. What would be irresponsible is to sit by and allow the Bush regime to radically remake society in a fascist way, with repercussions for generations to come. We must act now because the future is in the balance. The world cannot wait. While Bush gives his State of the Union on January 31st, I’ll find myself along with many thousands across the country declaring "Bush Step Down And take your program with you."

Philip Watts - pwatts_revolution@yahoo.com

Torture, The Geneva Conventions and the School of the Americas

Torture, the Geneva Conventions and the School of the Americas
By Ann Wright, US Army Reserve Colonel
t r u t h o u t | Columnist

Wednesday 29 November 2006

I spoke for the first time at the School of the Americas Watch protest at Fort Benning, Georgia, on Saturday, November 17, 2006. As a US Army veteran with 29 years of active and reserve duty who retired as a colonel, I felt tremendous emotions while addressing over 20,000 protesters from a stage in front of the gates of a major US military installation. We were there as witnesses to a history of involvement in torture by graduates of the US military's School of the Americas (SOA), now known by its less-notorious name, the Western Hemispheric Institute for Security Cooperation.

Standing with me were seven members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, including two war resisters: Darrell Anderson, who returned from Canada in October 2006 and was discharged from the US Army, and Kyle Snyder, who also returned from Canada and attempted to turn himself in to the US Army.

School of the Americas and Torture

I had served three years in the middle 1980s with the US military's Southern Command in Panama while the School of the Americas was still located there. People in Central and South America were tortured by members of their militaries throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Terrible periods of torture in Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras were conducted by members of militaries from those countries. Some of the known torturers attended the School of the Americas.

When I was in the military, I never heard from other US military personnel that SOA was training students in torture techniques. But there were rumors from non-military organizations of SOA involvement. I thought that if the rumors were true, surely we would hear about it through the informal communications network that operates very effectively in the US military. Techniques for harming others are not hard to figure out and would not need to be taught by the US military. Why would the US military train members of other militaries in torture techniques and thereby expose the US military to charges of international and domestic criminal activity?

In 1996, seven Spanish-language military manuals prepared by SOA surfaced that advocated such tactics as executions of guerrillas, extortion, physical abuse and paying bounties for enemies. These documents came to light because of an investigation into the involvement of the CIA in Guatemala. But I still thought that it wouldn't be the US military teaching such methods, but maybe the Central Intelligence Agency, using a US military installation and dressing in US military uniforms.

Torture in Iraq and Afghanistan: Who Are the Teachers and What Is Taught?

But then the US military went to war in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. Photos of the abusive treatment of prisoners in Bagram Air Base and Kandahar, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib made me question the professionalism of the US military and what was being taught in military schools. Perhaps there was a program of instruction that taught torture techniques to military intelligence, CIA and contractor interrogators. The Bush administration's "torture memos" certainly provided the environment for the military to "take off the gloves," a statement attributed to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's counsel, according to a June 12, 2002, Justice Department document. We now know the sordid history of abuses and torture that occurred from 2001 through 2005 and that are probably still happening.

Questions abound concerning US military and CIA involvement in torture. What manuals are used in training US military interrogators at the US Army Intelligence School at Fort Huachuca, Arizona? What is taught to US Marines at Camp Pendleton, California, and Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and US Army infantry troops at Fort Benning, Georgia, who initially stop and detain Afghan and Iraqi citizens? What is taught to military police at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, about custodial care of prisoners by the US military? What are the guidelines for evaluating the limits of physical and psychological abuse taught to military doctors, nurses, psychiatrists and psychologists at Fort Sam Houston in Texas and Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval Hospitals in Washington, DC? When do doctors call a halt to physical and emotional abuse and torture?

Are military lawyers taught at the US Army Judge Advocate General (JAG) School at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, Virginia, or at the US Navy JAG School at the US Naval base in Newport, Rhode Island, to parse regulations that prohibit torture into guidelines that provide legal cover for torture? Do Special Operations Forces of the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force practice on detainees the interrogation techniques they are subjected to during their Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Fairchild Air Force Base in Washington, and Naval Air Stations in Brunswick, Maine, and North Island, San Diego, California? What are the limits of abusive interrogation techniques taught to CIA and CIA contract interrogators in the various CIA training areas around Washington, DC, and other locations in the US?

What Is the Effect of Torture and Abusive Behavior on the Perpetrators?

With so many US military and CIA personnel involved in some level of abuse toward detainees and prisoners, what is the emotional toll taken on them when they know they are conducting harmful, as well as illegal, actions on those in their custody? Do military, CIA and contract interrogators, military police, medical personnel and military and civilian lawyers who have gone along with the torture policy suffer from post traumatic stress disorder following their tours in Bagram, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and secret prisons? Are their abusive behaviors brought home? The answer to both questions is yes.

Recently made public was the September 2003 suicide of US Army interrogator Alyssa Peterson, who was an Arabic-speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at the Tal-afar airbase in far northwestern Iraq near the Syrian border. According to the report of the Army's investigation into her death, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, Peterson objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners. She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage, and shortly after committed suicide.

In the past five years, thousands of military police, military interrogators, medical and legal staff and hundreds of CIA personnel have been involved with detainees and prisoners. So many persons associated with the prisons in Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan have suffered emotional damage that Eve Ensler wrote a play concerning the experience of one interrogator entitled "The Treatment," which is now playing off-Broadway. The play chronicles the psychological damage done to an Army interrogator who abused a prisoner and the treatment he needed to address the demons released by his actions.

While there has been no specific study of those involved in detaining and imprisoning persons in Afghanistan and Iraq, suicides, family abuse and inability to function because of the trauma of the experiences in those countries are at an all-time high in the US military. In 2002, four Special Forces soldiers murdered their wives upon their return from Afghanistan.

Torture, the Geneva Conventions and the Military Commissions Act

Have military leaders objected to the Bush administration's torture policies? Senior military lawyers (the Judge Advocates General) strongly disagreed with the Bush administration's decision to describe those detained in Afghanistan and other countries as "enemy combatants" and thereby deny them protections accorded to prisoners of war (POWs). Interrogation techniques authorized by former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, presidential legal counselor and now Attorney General Antonio Gonzales and a group of political appointee civilian lawyers, and a few military lawyers, clearly amounted to torture.

Now the US Congress, through the 2006 Military Commissions Act, has undercut the important provisions of the Geneva Conventions forbidding torture by authorizing "alternative" interrogation techniques and preventing bringing to trial any US citizen who committed criminal actions related to torture prior to December 31, 2005.

In the many military schools throughout the United States (the military prides itself on being the nation's largest schoolhouse), military professionals must now teach the "Bush administration version" of the Geneva Conventions to US military personnel.

While at the School of the Americas Watch protest, I visited the SOA School and spoke to the chief of the Human Rights division, a US Army major. I asked him how he now taught the Geneva Conventions to the international classes that come through the school. Did he teach the original Geneva Conventions or the new modified US version of the Conventions? The Major without hesitation said that since the students represent governments that, at least officially, have not changed the language of the Conventions, he would teach the original Geneva Conventions.

Ironically, it is now only in the US military schools that train international students that American students will be exposed to the original Geneva Conventions that prohibit torture in all forms, including the "alternative" methods that the Bush administration and the US Congress now condone but which are still criminal in international law. Military schools with only US students will teach the Bush version of the conventions.

But not all countries want US military training. After much lobbying by families of victims of torture, the Defense ministers of Argentina and Uruguay notified the United States in March 2006 that their countries would no longer send students to the School of the Americas, because of its legacy of torture and social repression. Venezuela had earlier stopped sending students to the school. But the Bush administration is on the offensive to provide military training, even to those countries that courageously stood up to the administration's demand for exemption of US soldiers from prosecution for war crimes. On October 2, 2006, because of its concern over the rise of populist governments in Latin America, the Bush administration without fanfare lifted the 2002 US prohibition of training militaries from 22 countries that refused to exempt US soldiers. Eleven Latin American and Caribbean countries that were previously banned from US military training will now be eligible to attend US military courses, if they wnt it. Many of the students from those 11 countries would go to the School of the Americas.

Normally one would call for the US Congress to closely monitor the content of the instruction in the military's Infantry, Military Intelligence, Military Police, Judge Advocate General, medical and SERE schools to prevent torture techniques from being taught. But now the US Congress has given the military and the CIA a blank check by authorizing "alternative techniques" for interrogation. However, a certain level of Congressional oversight of the CIA and its interrogation techniques is still permitted through the Congressional Intelligence Committees. That oversight must begin quickly with the new Congress.

Demand that Congress Repeal the Military Commissions Act and Close the School of the Americas

The reputation and stature of the United States have been incredibly damaged by the torture and abuses from graduates of the School of the Americas over the past thirty years and by torture perpetrated by the US military and the CIA on behalf of the Bush administration. For the integrity of our country and the moral structure of our military, we, the citizens of the United States, must demand that the new Congress, as one of the first items of business, close the School of the Americas and repeal the torture and criminal free-pass provisions of the Military Commissions Act.

We are complicit in the abuses if we do not get SOA closed and the legalization of torture repealed.

Let's get to work on the new Congress - in December in their home districts and in January in Washington!

--------

Ann Wright is a 29-year US Army/Army Reserve colonel and a 16-year diplomat who resigned in March 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq. Colonel Wright is the president of the Camp Casey Veterans for Peace chapter located in Crawford, Texas. Veterans for Peace is a peace organization that is on the Pentagon's unlawful watch list of anti-war organizations. http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?g=c01d3000-7058-4a38-91de-9466f9552e94&f=00&fg=email.

While Iraq Burns Americans go Shopping

By Bob Herbert
The New York Times

Monday 27 November 2006

Americans are shopping while Iraq burns.

The competing television news images on the morning after Thanksgiving were of the unspeakable carnage in Sadr City - where more than 200 Iraqi civilians were killed by a series of coordinated car bombs - and the long lines of cars filled with holiday shopping zealots that jammed the highway approaches to American malls that had opened for business at midnight.

A Wal-Mart in Union, N.J., was besieged by customers even before it opened its doors at 5 a.m. on Friday. "All I can tell you," said a Wal-Mart employee, "is that they were fired up and ready to spend money."

There is something terribly wrong with this juxtaposition of gleeful Americans with fistfuls of dollars storming the department store barricades and the slaughter by the thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, including old people, children and babies. The war was started by the U.S., but most Americans feel absolutely no sense of personal responsibility for it.

Representative Charles Rangel recently proposed that the draft be reinstated, suggesting that politicians would be more reluctant to take the country to war if they understood that their constituents might be called up to fight. What struck me was not the uniform opposition to the congressman's proposal - it has long been clear that there is zero sentiment in favor of a draft in the U.S. - but the fact that it never provoked even the briefest discussion of the responsibilities and obligations of ordinary Americans in a time of war.

With no obvious personal stake in the war in Iraq, most Americans are indifferent to its consequences. In an interview last week, Alex Racheotes, a 19-year-old history major at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, said: "I definitely don't know anyone who would want to fight in Iraq. But beyond that, I get the feeling that most people at school don't even think about the war. They're more concerned with what grade they got on yesterday's test."

His thoughts were echoed by other students, including John Cafarelli, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of New Hampshire, who was asked if he had any friends who would be willing to join the Army. "No, definitely not," he said. "None of my friends even really care about what's going on in Iraq."

This indifference is widespread. It enables most Americans to go about their daily lives completely unconcerned about the atrocities resulting from a war being waged in their name. While shoppers here are scrambling to put the perfect touch to their holidays with the purchase of a giant flat-screen TV or a PlayStation 3, the news out of Baghdad is of a society in the midst of a meltdown.

According to the United Nations, more than 7,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in September and October. Nearly 5,000 of those killings occurred in Baghdad, a staggering figure.

In a demoralizing reprise of life in Afghanistan under Taliban rule, the U.N. reported that in Iraq: "The situation of women has continued to deteriorate. Increasing numbers of women were recorded to be either victims of religious extremists or 'honor killings.' Some non-Muslim women are forced to wear a headscarf and to be accompanied by spouses or male relatives."

Journalists in Iraq are being "assassinated with utmost impunity," the U.N. report said, with 18 murdered in the last two months.

Iraq burns. We shop. The Americans dying in Iraq are barely mentioned in the press anymore. They warrant maybe one sentence in a long roundup article out of Baghdad, or a passing reference - no longer than a few seconds - in a television news account of the latest political ditherings.

Since the vast majority of Americans do not want anything to do with the military or the war, the burden of fighting has fallen on a small cadre of volunteers who are being sent into the war zone again and again. Nearly 3,000 have been killed, and many thousands more have been maimed.

The war has now lasted as long as the American involvement in World War II. But there is no sense of collective sacrifice in this war, no shared burden of responsibility. The soldiers in Iraq are fighting, suffering and dying in a war in which there are no clear objectives and no end in sight, and which a majority of Americans do not support.

They are dying anonymously and pointlessly, while the rest of us are free to buckle ourselves into the family vehicle and head off to the malls and shop.

Colin Powell Says Iraq in a "Civil War"

CNN News

Wednesday 29 November 2006

• Former secretary of state Colin Powell says "civil war" describes Iraq now.
• Bush, top advisers have avoided the term.
• Powell was top diplomat when US invaded Iraq in 2003 and made case for war.
• UN secretary general said Monday Iraq was "almost" in civil war.

Dubai, United Arab Emirates - Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Wednesday that Iraq's violence meets the standard of civil war and that if he were heading the State Department now, he might recommend that the administration use that term.

Many news organizations and analysts are calling the Sunni-Shiite sectarian warfare that exploded this year, killing thousands and causing widespread displacement, a civil war.

Powell's comments - made in the United Arab Emirates at the Leaders in Dubai Business Forum - are significant because he backed the war and was the top US diplomat when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.

Bush has avoided using the term "civil war" to describe the situation in Iraq.

Tuesday, he called the latest violence in Iraq "part of a pattern" of attacks by al Qaeda in Iraq to divide Shiites and Sunnis and vowed, again, he won't support the removal of US troops "before the mission is complete."

"There's a lot of sectarian violence taking place, fomented in my opinion because of the attacks by al Qaeda, causing people to seek reprisal," he said.

White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley also dismissed the notion that civil war has begun in Iraq.

"The Iraqis don't talk of it as a civil war. The unity government doesn't talk of it as a civil war," Hadley said Monday. "You have not yet had a situation also where you have two clearly defined and opposing groups vying not only for power but for territory."

But he added: "We're clearly in a new phase characterized by an increase in sectarian violence that requires us to adapt to that new phase," according to The Associated Press.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Monday said that he believes Iraq is near civil war. "Unless something is done drastically and urgently to arrest the deteriorating situation, we could be there. In fact we are almost there," he said.

A spokesman for the powerful political bloc of Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said Wednesday the group has suspended its participation in Iraq's government. The group had threatened to take such action if Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki met with President Bush in Jordan this week. Al-Maliki was in Jordan Wednesday with talks scheduled for Thursday.

A classified memo prepared by President's Bush's national security adviser after a recent trip to Iraq questions whether al-Maliki can rise above Iraq's widening and bloody Sunni-Shiite divide.

Powell proposed a two-part solution to the problems in Iraq. First, he said, coalition troops must remain, but their numbers must be reduced. Second, a political solution must emerge among Iraqis themselves and not be imposed on them.

In 2003, Powell set out a lengthy argument at the United Nations that buttressed the eventual invasion, including supposed evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Asked Wednesday whether he regretted those statements, he said he does. He noted he was working with the information that was available to him at the time.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

REAL TERRORIST WANT TO SHUT DOWN THE INTERNET

THE ANGLO UN DOES WANT US ALL DEAD!!!

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42483


CONFIDENTIAL

COBDEN CLUBS

Secretariat for World Order

814-631-9959

September 20, 1991

INITIATIVE FOR ECO-92 EARTH CHARTER

1. THE PRESSING NEED

a. The time is pressing. The Club of Rome was founded in 1968, Limits to Growth was written in 1971, Global 2000 was written in 1979, but insufficient progress has been made in population reduction.

b. Given global instabilities, including those in the former Soviet bloc, the need for firm control of world technology, weaponry, and natural resources, is now absolutely mandatory. The immediate reduction of world population, according to the mid-1970"s recommendation of the Draper Fund, must be immediately affected.

c. The present vast overpopulation, now far beyond the world carrying capacity, cannot be answered by future reductions in the birth rate due to contraception, sterilization and abortion, but must be met in the present by the reduction of numbers presently existing. This must be done by whatever means necessary.

d. The issue is falsely debated between a political and a cultural approach to population and resources, when in fact, faced with stubborn obstruction and day-to-day political expediency which make most of the leaders of the most populous poor countries unreliable, the issue is compulsory cooperation.

e. Compulsory cooperation is not debatable with 166 nations, most of whose leaders are irresolute, conditioned by localist "cultures," and lacking appropriate notions of the New World Order. Debate means delay and forfeiture of our goals and purpose.

CONFIDENTIAL

f. The U.N. action against Iraq proves conclusively that resolute action on our part can sway other leaders to go along with the necessary program. The Iraq action proves that the aura of power can be projected and sustained and that the wave of history is sweeping forward.

2. PERILS TO BE HEEDED

There is a two-fold opposition which must be eliminated by quick action. There are rumblings among some of the "South" regions, notably Brazil and Malaysia, to thwart the aims of the UNCED Earth Charter and to thwart the international gathering in Brazil in June 1992. There is also the unfortunate vacillation in our own ranks, an argument that the

UNCED leaders have made the agenda "too political" and that the way must first be prepared on a less abrasive cultural basis. We present only the most recent evidence:

* Gilberto Melio Mourao, the Brazilian writer, warned in the August 4 Folha de Sao Paulo that in Munich in 1938, "it won"t against the current type of ecological epidemic, unleashed against our country, which threatens the structure of our cultural, spiritual and political values, and against our very national sovereignty .... Messrs. Chamberlain and Daladier, heads of the governments of England and France, calmly offered the Brazilian Amazon to the Fuehrer." Hitler reportedly observed that since the Amazon was in South American, the United States would cite the Monroe Doctrine and reject a German occupation of Brazilian territory. Chamberlain and Daladier responded that the proposal had Washington"s backing.

* The U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) issued its annual report September 16th, declaring, according to BBC, that the liberal free market is not an appropriate model for developing nations. Finance should serve industry, not the other way around, and government has a key role to play in certain sectors of the economy.

3. WHAT THE WORLDWIDE FUND FOR NATURE IS SAYING

* An official of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said September 10th that the Geneva UNCED results were "absolutely a serious setback." There will be no convention on forests by June 1992 for Brazil. The situation has reached a deadlock. This is the first casualty for the UNCED process.

* A senior advisor on ecological affairs to Britain"s Prince Philip said September 15th that Eco-92 organizer Maurice Strong had "over politicized" the issue of environmentalism and had raised "ridiculously messianic expectations."

CONFIDENTIAL

THEREFORE THE FOLLOWING POLICY MUST BE IMPLEMENTED:

A. The Security Council of the U.N. led by the Anglo-Saxon Major Nation Powers, will decree that henceforth, the Security Council will inform all nations that its suffrance on population has ended, that all nations have quotas for population reduction on a yearly basis, which will be enforced by the Security Council by selective or total embargo of credit, items of trade including food and medicine, or by military force, when required.

B. The Security Council of the U.N. will inform all nations that outmoded notions of national sovereignty will be discarded and that the Security Council has complete legal, military and econonomic jurisdiction in any region in the world and that this will be enforced by the Major Nations of the Security Council.

C. The Security Council of the U.N. will take possession of all natural resources, including the watersheds and great forests, to be used and preserved for the good of the Major Nations of the Security Council.

D. The Security Council of the U.N. will explain that not all races and peoples ara equal, nor should they be. Those races proven superior by superior achievements ought to rule the lesser races, caring for them on suffrance that they cooperate with the Security Council. Decision making, including banking, trade, currency rates and economic development plans, will be made in stewardship by the Major Nations.

E. All of the above constitute the New World Order, in which Order, all nations, regions, and races will cooperate with the decisions of the Major Nations of the Security Council.

The purpose of this document is to demonstrate that action delayed could well be fatal. All could be lost if mere opposition by minor races is tolerated and the unfortunate vacillations of our closest comrades is cause for our hesitations. Open declaration of intent followed by decisive force is the final solution. This must be done before any shock hits our financial markets, tarnishing our credibility and perhaps diminishing our force.

END OF DOCUMENT

The above document was passed out at the ECO meeting, and we eventually received a copy after almost two years had transpired. We feel that the above document provides sufficient information as to the design of the NWO relative to world population. The telephone number was attempted and found to be associated with Senator Gephardt.

RIAA wants the Internet shut down

Nick Farrell
The Inquirer
Wednesday, November 29, 2006

ONE OF THE lawyers involved in defending cases bought against people by the RIAA claims that if the music industry wins a crucial case, the Internet will have to be switched off.
Speaking on the DefectiveByDesign anti-DRM campaign site, Ray Beckerman said the case of Electro vs. Barker has become very important for the web's future.

Barker was being defended by Beckerman who made a motion to dismiss the case because the RIAA had forgot to provide any acts or dates or times of copyright infringement as the law normally requires.

The RIAA argued that by merely making files available on the Internet Barker was making a copyright infringement.

Beckerman said that it was a shocking argument because if it were accepted by the court it would probably shut down the entire Internet. If you send any file on the Net the RIAA will be allowed to suspect that you are in breach of copyright.

What was more disturbing is that the RIAA called up its mates in Washington to back it up. Apparently the United States Government has put in motions supporting the RIAA.

Atlanta Shooting Informant Says He Was Asked To Lie

WBSTV | November 27, 2006

ATLANTA -- There is major fallout from the Atlanta Police shootout that left an elderly woman dead – officers are put on leave and the state and the feds are investigating.

Atlanta’s Police Chief announced both the FBI and GBI are investigating the shootout. Also, a narcotics team involved is now on paid leave and autopsy results reveal 88-year-old Kathryn Johnston was shot six times.

Chief Richard Pennington wrapped up a surprise press conference around 5:20 p.m. Monday telling us his entire narcotics unit is on administrative leave – that means seven officers and one sergeant are on leave after the police shootout that left Kathryn Johnston dead.

Now, Chief Pennington confirmed there are questions as to whether there was ever a drug buy at Kathryn Johnston’s home – the informant told the Internal Affairs Unit he was told to lie.

“Officers are saying one thing – confidential informant is saying something else,” said Chief Richard Pennington.

Chief Pennington dropped several bomb shells at a press conference Monday evening. He tells us his entire narcotics unit will be placed on administrative leave after last Tuesday’s police shootout that left 88-year-old Kathryn Johnston dead and three officers wounded.

In search warrants obtained by Channel 2, investigators say a confidential informant made an undercover buy at Johnston’s home -- $50 worth of crack cocaine.

Johnston’s family and community leaders were outraged, claiming no such drug deal could have happened because Johnston lived alone in her Northwest Atlanta home.

Now, Chief Pennington confirmed there are questions as to whether that drug buy ever happened.

When Pennington was asked if it was his understanding that the informant was told to lie about a possible drug purchase, Chief Pennington replied, “Yes. According to the informant, after we brought that informant in and interviewed that informant, he told us he had no knowledge of going into that house and purchasing drugs.”

From here, the FBI is taking over the investigation and the GBI will process the crime scene on Neal Street – Johnston’s home. The U.S. Justice Department will also be conducting their own independent investigation. Chief Richard Pennington announcing no stone will be unturned and said they will review their policies on “no-knock” warrants and using confidential and reliable informants.

9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out

David Ray Griffin, Peter Dale Scott, Peter Phillips, Kevin Ryan, Ray McGovern

Editors and contributors to the book, "9/11 and American Empire" assess the Bush administration's responsibility for the attacks on 9/11, arguing that key administration officials either purposefully ignored the threats leading up to the attacks or were complicit in the planning them. The panelists say that the administration has used the attacks to enact long established plans to expand American empire. The participants are: David Ray Griffin (co-editor/contributor), Peter Dale Scott (co-editor/contributor), Peter Phillips (contributor) and Kevin Ryan (contributor). Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern moderates the discussion.

The event was hosted by Berkeley, California-based Pacifica radio station KPFA (www.kpfa.org).

Video Runtime 124 Minutes

Click here to purchase the book 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out

Killing the Children Of Iraq

Paying The Price: Killing
The Children Of Iraq

A documentary film by John
Pilger

Sanctions enforced by the UN on Iraq since the
Gulf War have killed more people than the two atomic bombs
dropped on Japan in 1945, including over half a million children
- many of whom weren't even born when the Gulf War began.

Broadcast 03/06/2000 ITV  Runtime 75 Minutes

Click Play To View

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Effects of ill-advised CIA plot in Iran still haunts U.S.

By John M. Crisp

11/27/06 -- - - (SH) - Now that Iran looms on our horizon, here's a story that every American should know. Journalist Sandra Mackey tells it in "The Iranians," as does Daniel Yergin in "The Prize," his monumental history of oil. But the best extended version of the story that I've read is in "All the Shah's Men" by Stephen Kinzer. Although other historians have told this story as well, I suspect that the average American has never heard of Mohammad Mossadegh and Operation Ajax. To make a long story short:

Kinzer says that democracy dawned in Iran in 1891 when the shah's wives - he had a harem of around 1,600 - gave up smoking in protest of the shah's sale of the tobacco concession to the British. In fact, the shah, Nasir al-Din, sold concessions of all sorts - mineral rights, railroads, banks - to foreigners in order to support his extravagant tastes. But the shah's son committed an even greater treachery on his own country by selling the oil concession to William Knox D'Arcy in 1901, granting exclusive rights to Iranian petroleum to the British for a period of 60 years.

The unfavorable terms of this concession, as well as many other abuses of monarchial power, led to the Iranian Revolution of 1905, the diminishment of the shah's power, the establishment of a parliament and the beginnings of a democratic tradition in Iran. In the meantime, D'Arcy discovered oil, a resource that suddenly became enormously valuable when Britain converted its coal-burning warships to oil just before World War I.

Naturally, the British favored a friendly, compliant monarchy to balance the power of the parliament, which might have other ideas about the extremely unfavorable terms of the petroleum concession. They found their man in Reza Khan and staged a coup in 1921. Reza soon became the shah, a dictatorial leader who suppressed the parliament and fathered Mohammad Reza, who Americans know as the shah of Iran.

The succession of Mohammad Reza, a weak leader with the personality of a playboy, provided an opportunity for the parliament to reassert power in Iran, which it did, under the leadership of Mohammad Mossadegh, a well-educated eccentric who had opposed the shah for many years. By 1951, Mossadegh was the prime minister, and he had emerged as an international spokesman for a global wave of anti-colonial nationalism. He addressed the United Nations and appeared on the cover of "Time" magazine. When Britain refused to renegotiate the exploitative terms of its oil concession, Iran nationalized the petroleum industry, to Britain's great consternation.

The British hinted at an armed invasion and planned a coup, but were unable to acquire the cooperation of President Truman, who had more sympathy for the emerging nationalism of the former colonies than for the old colonial powers. Things changed, however, when Eisenhower became president in 1952. The Dulles brothers, John Foster as secretary of State and Allen as CIA director, both devoted anti-Communists, convinced Eisenhower to support a coup that would depose Mossadegh and restore the power of the shah to stand as a bulwark against the U.S.S.R.
Operation Ajax, planned and financed by the CIA and orchestrated by Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of Teddy Roosevelt, was pulled off in August 1953. Hundreds died. Mossadegh was sent to prison for three years and spent the last 11 years of his life under house arrest. Supported by the U.S., the shah became a dictator who controlled Iran with secret police and terror until he was deposed in 1979, when, some historians believe, the U.S. hostages were taken in order to prevent another restoration of the Shah, like the one that occurred in 1953.

Although most Americans never knew or have forgotten this story, many Iranians have not, and the effects of Operation Ajax persist. But the point of the story isn't to berate ourselves over an unseemly intervention into Iran more than 50 years ago. We should note, however, that the story implies that the current radical regime in Iran isn't inevitable, nor does it enjoy the support of all Iranians. Our diplomacy should be careful not to weaken moderates by overly demonizing the leadership. As bad as its leadership is at present, the country itself isn't inherently evil and it retains echoes of a short-lived democratic tradition in its past.

John M. Crisp teaches in the English Department at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas. Email: jcrisp@delmar.edu.

Copyright Scripps Howard News Service

Man burns himself to Death In Anti War protest

By Associated Press

11/05/06 -- -CHICAGO (AP) -- Malachi Ritscher envisioned his death as one full of purpose. He carefully planned the details, mailed a copy of his apartment key to a friend, created to-do lists for his family. On his Web site, the 52-year-old experimental musician who'd fought with depression even penned his obituary.

At 6:30 a.m. on Nov. 3 -- four days before an election caused a seismic shift in Washington politics -- Ritscher, a frequent anti-war protester, stood by an off-ramp in downtown Chicago near a statue of a giant flame, set up a video camera, doused himself with gasoline and lit himself on fire. "Here is the statement I want to make. ... "If one death can atone for anything, in any small way, to say to the world: I apologize for what we have done to you, I am ashamed for the mayhem and turmoil caused by my country."

"This man killed himself in such a painful way ... to get our attention...," said Jennifer Diaz, a grad student researching Ritscher's life. "I'm not going to sit by, and I can't sit by, and let this go unheard."

ISREAL KILLING THOSE WOMEN TERRORIST, RIGHT?

Rep. Tancredo: Bush Wants To Merge U.S. With Mexico and Canada

Think Progress
Sunday, November 26, 2006

Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), one of the leading voices on immigration for the right, claims President George W. Bush is plotting to merge the U.S. with Mexico and Canada. An excerpt from WorldNetDaily:

Tancredo lashed out at the White House’s lack of action in securing U.S. borders, and said efforts to merge the U.S. with both Mexico and Canada is not a fantasy.

“I know this is dramatic — or maybe somebody would say overly dramatic — but I’m telling you, that everything I see leads me to believe that this whole idea of the North American Union, it’s not something that just is written about by right-wing fringe kooks. It is something in the head of the president of the United States, the president of Mexico, I think the prime minister of Canada buys into it. …

You might think the right would immediately repudiate this kind of conspiracy theory. You’d be wrong. The National Review’s Andy McCarthy came to Tancredo’s defense:

This is not a fringe. It’s a wave. It’s fine to disagree with Rep. Trancredo; it’s wrong to treat him like a lunatic when he is anything but.

More McCarthy:

[I]t’s not unreasonable for people to look at Bush’s immigration policies and worry that he is insufficiently alert to the internationalist pressures (what John Fonte calls “transnational progressivism”) vigorously challenging the traditional understanding of sovereignty on many fronts.

Fox’s Neil Cavuto recently said Tancredo “owns” the issue of immigration predicted that “if he were to run for president, he just might well be president.”

Rumsfeld okayed abuses says former U.S. general

THIS IS CLEARLY AMAZING.....I AND MANY OTHERS BROKE THIS NEWS 1 YEAR AGO, BUT NOW THAT RUMMY IS GONE, NOW THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA WANTS TO TALK ABOUT IT AND BRING IT OUT. IGUESS I DO REPORT BETTER THAN PAID SHEEP AT THE NEWS AGENCIES.



Reuters
Saturday, November 25, 2006

Outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized the mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the prison's former U.S. commander said in an interview on Saturday.

Former U.S. Army Brigadier General Janis Karpinski told Spain's El Pais newspaper she had seen a letter apparently signed by Rumsfeld which allowed civilian contractors to use techniques such as sleep deprivation during interrogation.

Karpinski, who ran the prison until early 2004, said she saw a memorandum signed by Rumsfeld detailing the use of harsh interrogation methods.

"The handwritten signature was above his printed name and in the same handwriting in the margin was written: "Make sure this is accomplished"," she told Saturday's El Pais.

"The methods consisted of making prisoners stand for long periods, sleep deprivation ... playing music at full volume, having to sit in uncomfortably ... Rumsfeld authorized these specific techniques."

The Geneva Convention says prisoners of war should suffer "no physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion" to secure information.

"Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind," the document states.

A spokesman for the Pentagon declined to comment on Karpinski's accusations, while U.S. army in Iraq could not immediately be reached for comment.

Karpinski was withdrawn from Iraq in early 2004, shortly after photographs showing American troops abusing detainees at the prison were flashed around the world. She was subsequently removed from active duty and then demoted to the rank of colonel on unrelated charges.

Karpinski insists she knew nothing about the abuse of prisoners until she saw the photos, as interrogation was carried out in a prison wing run by U.S. military intelligence.

Rumsfeld also authorized the army to break the Geneva Conventions by not registering all prisoners, Karpinski said, explaining how she raised the case of one unregistered inmate with an aide to former U.S. commander Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.

"We received a message from the Pentagon, from the Defense Secretary, ordering us to hold the prisoner without registering him. I now know this happened on various occasions."

Karpinski said last week she was ready to testify against Rumsfeld, if a suit filed by civil rights groups in Germany over Abu Ghraib led to a full investigation.

President Bush announced Rumsfeld's resignation after Democrats wrested power from the Republicans in midterm elections earlier this month, partly due to public criticism over the Iraq war.

US Plan to Eliminate Survey of Needy Families Draws Fire

By Abid Aslam
OneWorld US

Thursday 02 March 2006

Washington DC - Researchers and legislators are rallying to block a Bush administration plan to scupper a U.S. survey widely used to improve federal and state programs for millions of low-income and retired Americans.

President George W. Bush's proposed budget for fiscal 2007, which begins this October, includes a Commerce Department plan to eliminate the Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP).

The proposal marks at least the third White House attempt in as many years to do away with federal data collection on politically prickly economic issues ranging from mass layoffs to employment discrimination.

Social scientists, public policy makers, and legislators helped thwart the previous administration plans, which had targeted the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Opponents of the plan to axe SIPP said they hoped for a similar success.

By mid-day Wednesday, some 415 liberal and conservative economists and social scientists had signed a letter to be sent to Congress Thursday urging that the survey be fully funded because it "is the only large-scale survey explicitly designed to analyze the impact of a wide variety of government programs on the well being of American families."

A group of Republicans and Democrats in the House of Representatives reportedly are leading a drive to get lawmakers to sign a similar letter defending the survey to be sent to the White House.

Founded in 1984 after six years of development, the Census Bureau survey follows American families for a number of years and monitors their use of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Social Security, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, child care, and other health, social service, and education programs.

"We need to know what the effects of these programs are on American families," said Heather Boushey, an economist at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, which is spearheading the counter-offensive.

"SIPP is designed to do just that," Boushey told OneWorld, adding that the survey had proved invaluable in tracking the effects of changes in government programs. So much so that the 1996 welfare reform law specifically mentioned the survey as the best means to evaluate the law's effectiveness, she said.

Supporters of elimination say the program costs too much at $40 million per year. Rather, they would kill it in September and eventually replace it with a scaled-down version that would run to $9.2 million in development costs during the coming fiscal year. Actual data collection would begin in 2009.

Defenders of the survey countered in their letter that the cost was justified as SIPP "provides a constant stream of in-depth data that enables government, academic, and independent researchers to evaluate the effectiveness and improve the efficiency of several hundred billion dollars in spending on social programs."

For example, Boushey said, the survey revealed that school lunch programs were missing many children whose parents were unemployed for a couple of months or longer, pointing the way to improvements in those programs.

The fight over SIPP evokes at least two similar campaigns of recent years.

In 2004 and 2005, the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Women's Policy Research led a successful campaign to reverse a Bush administration plan to drop questions on the hiring and firing of women from employment data collected by the BLS. Pressure from researchers, policy designers, and lawmakers proved essential to that success, the group said.

In 2003, similar advocacy prompted a budget shuffle and saved the monthly BLS Mass Layoff Statistics report.

The Labor Department, citing a shortage of funding, had said it would do away with the research, which detailed where workplaces with more than 50 employees closed and what kinds of workers were affected. Federal and state social service agencies used the data widely.

The cost of the monthly reports--about $6.6 million per year--had come from a $30 million discretionary budget used by the Labor Department's Employment and Training Administration to finance pilot projects designed to demonstrate ways to help displaced workers find new jobs.

Demand from the research and public policy communities eventually forced the government to fund the research and reporting through the regular BLS budget, an official at the federal government's principal labor fact-finding agency told OneWorld.

Rober Gates and the Iran Arms Sales

By Robert Parry
Consortium News

Thursday 23 November 2006

In November 1987, as the Reagan administration was still scrambling to contain the Iran-Contra scandal, then-deputy CIA director Robert M. Gates denied that the spy agency had soft-pedaled intelligence about Iran's support for terrorism to clear the way for secret U.S. arms shipments to the Islamic regime.

"Only one or two analysts believed Iranian support for terrorism was waning," Gates wrote in articles that appeared in the Washington Post and Foreign Affairs magazine. "And no CIA publication asserted these things."

However, a month earlier, an internal CIA review had found three reports from Nov. 22, 1985, to May 15, 1986, claiming that Iranian-sponsored terrorism had declined, according to a sworn statement from veteran CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who prepared the review for senior officials in the Directorate of Intelligence [DI].

"My findings uncovered an unexplained discontinuity," McGovern's affidavit said. "To wit on 22 November 1985, in an abrupt departure from the longstanding analytical line on Iranian support for terrorism, DI publications began to assert that Iranian-sponsored terrorism had 'dropped off substantially' in 1985. I recall being particularly struck by the fact that no evidence was adduced to support that important judgment.

"This new line was repeated in at least two additional DI publications, the last of which appeared on 15 May 1986. Again, no supporting evidence was cited. After May 1986, the analytical line changed, just as abruptly, back to the line that had characterized DI reporting on this subject up to November 1985 (with no mention of any substantial drop or other reduction in Iranian support for terrorist activity)."

The timing of CIA's dubious reporting in 1985 about a decline in Iranian-backed terrorism is significant because the Reagan administration was then in the midst of secret Israeli-brokered arms shipments of U.S. weapons to Iran.

The shipments not only were politically sensitive, but also violated federal export laws  in part because Iran was officially designated a terrorist state. So, playing down Iran's hand in terrorism worked for the White House whether supported by the facts or not.

At that time, Gates was deputy director in charge of the DI, putting him in a key bureaucratic position as the CIA worked to justify geopolitical openings to Iran. Even earlier, in spring 1985, Gates had overseen the production of a controversial National Intelligence Estimate that had warned of Soviet inroads in Iran and conjured up supposed moderates in the Iranian government.

That Gates, two years later, would make exculpatory claims about the CIA's reporting  assertions contradicted by an internal DI report  suggests that he remained more interested in protecting the Reagan administration's flanks than being straight with the American public.

In his affidavit, McGovern wrote that after Gates's exculpatory articles in November 1987, "efforts to correct the record remained unsuccessful."

[McGovern's report to senior DI management about the Iran-terrorism issue was dated Oct. 30, 1987; his affidavit was signed Oct. 5, 1991, during Gates's confirmation to be CIA director, but the sworn statement was not made public at that time.]

Iran Initiative

The dispute about Gates's role in the Iran-Contra scandal and his contradicted denial about the CIA reporting on Iranian terrorism are relevant again today as the Senate considers Gates's nomination to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary.

Gates's honesty has long raised concerns among CIA colleagues, members of Congress and federal investigators who looked into the Iran-Contra scandal.

Although independent counsel Lawrence Walsh chose not to indict Gates over Iran-Contra, Walsh's final report didn't endorse Gates's credibility either. After recounting discrepancies between Gates's Iran-Contra recollections and those of other CIA officials, Walsh wrote:

"The statements of Gates often seemed scripted and less than candid. Nevertheless, given the complex nature of the activities and Gates's apparent lack of direct participation, a jury could find the evidence left a reasonable doubt that Gates either obstructed official inquiries or that his two demonstrably incorrect statements were deliberate lies."

For his part, Gates denied any wrongdoing in the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostage deal and expressed only one significant regret  that he acquiesced to the decision to withhold from Congress the Jan. 17, 1986, presidential intelligence "finding" that gave some legal cover to the Iran arms shipments.

Beyond that one admission Gates submitted what reads like carefully tailored denials of his involvement in the scandal. In 1991, when he was facing confirmation hearings to be CIA director under President George H.W. Bush, Gates said:

"As Deputy Director for Intelligence, I was not informed of the full scope of the Iran initiative until late January/early February 1986; I had no role in the November 1985 shipment of arms; I played no part in preparing any of the Findings; I had little knowledge of CIA's operational role."

Narrow Denial

Left out of that denial, however, was what exactly did Gates know about the Iran initiative prior to January 1986, particularly about several 1985 shipments that violated the Arms Export Control Act. Nor did he make clear whether he exerted any influence over the production of Iran-related intelligence reports, including the ones that downplayed Iran's support for terrorism. In 1985, Israel and some of its allies within the Reagan administration were pushing for permission to sell arms to Iran, which was then fighting a bloody border war with Iraq. Israel was seeking to expand its strategic influence in Iran, while suggesting to the White House that Iran might help gain the freedom of American hostages then held by Islamic extremists in Lebanon.

Gates's DI set the stage for the Iran initiative by producing a special National Intelligence Estimate in May 1985 that laid out justifications for U.S. openings toward Iran, including fears of Soviet inroads in Iran if the United States did nothing.

In a Nov. 21, 2006, article for the Los Angeles Times, former CIA analyst Jennifer Glaudemans charged that the special NIE flipped the judgments of CIA Soviet specialists who saw little chance of Moscow making progress with Tehran.

"When we received the draft NIE, we were shocked to find that our contribution on Soviet relations with Iran had been completely reversed," Glaudemans wrote. "Rather than stating that the prospects for improved Soviet-Iranian relations were negligible, the document indicated that Moscow assessed those prospects as quite good.

"What's more, the national intelligence officer responsible for coordinating the estimate had already sent a personal memo to the White House stating that the race between the U.S. and USSR 'for Tehran is on, and whoever gets there first wins all.'

"No one in my office believed this Cold War hyperbole. There was simply no evidence to support the notion that Moscow was optimistic about its prospects for improved relations with Iran. …

"We protested the conclusions of the NIE, citing evidence such as the Iranian government's repression of the communist Tudeh Party, the expulsion of all Soviet economic advisors … and a continuing public rhetoric that chastised the 'godless' communist regime as the 'Second Satan' after the United States.

"Despite overwhelming evidence, our analysis was suppressed. At a coordinating meeting, we were told that Gates wanted the language to stay in as it was, presumably to help justify 'improving' our strained relations with Tehran through the Iran-Contra weapons sales." [LAT, Nov. 21, 2006]

Bolstered by the NIE, Ronald Reagan's national security adviser Robert McFarlane began circulating a draft presidential order in June 1985 proposing an overture to Iran.

After reading the draft, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger scribbled in the margins, "this is almost too absurd to comment on." The plan also contradicted President Reagan's public policy to "never make concessions to terrorists."

Still, in July 1985, Weinberger, McFarlane and Weinberger's military assistant, Gen. Colin Powell, met to discuss details for doing just that. Iran wanted 100 anti-tank TOW missiles that would be delivered through Israel, according to Weinberger's notes.

Reagan gave his approval, but the White House wanted to keep the operation a closely held secret. The shipments were to be handled with "maximum compartmentalization," the notes said. On Aug. 20, 1985, the Israelis delivered the first 96 missiles to Iran.

Pivotal Moment

It was a pivotal moment. With that missile shipment, the Reagan administration stepped over a legal line. The transfer violated the Arms Export Control Act's requirement for congressional notification when U.S. weapons are trans-shipped and a prohibition on shipping arms to nations, like Iran, that had been designated a terrorist state.

On Sept. 14, 1985, Israel delivered a second shipment, 408 more missiles to Iran. The next day, one hostage, the Rev. Benjamin Weir, was released in Beirut. But other Americans were snatched in Lebanon, undermining a key rationale for the arms deals.

Word of the Iranian arms shipments also was spreading through the U.S. intelligence community. Top-secret intelligence intercepts in September and October 1985 revealed Iranians discussing the U.S. arms delivery.

The risk of exposure grew worse in November 1985 when a shipment of 80 HAWK anti-aircraft missiles ran into trouble while trying to transit through Portugal en route from Tel Aviv to Tehran. In a panic, White House aide Oliver North pulled in senior CIA officials and a CIA-owned airline to fly the missiles to Tehran on Nov. 24, 1985.

But one consequence of drawing the CIA directly into the operation was a demand from the CIA's legal advisers that a presidential "finding' be signed and congressional oversight committees be notified.

With the White House desperately looking for ways out of its worsening dilemma, the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence  with Robert Gates at the helm  reported a substantial decline in Iran's support for terrorism, according to McGovern's affidavit.

By citing this alleged Iranian moderation, the CIA created some policy space for Reagan finally to formalize the arms shipments with an intelligence "finding," signed on Jan. 17, 1986. But the authorization  and the Iran arms deals  were still kept hidden from Congress and even Pentagon officials.

A day after Reagan's finding, Gen. Colin Powell instructed Gen. Max Thurman, then acting Army chief of staff, to prepare for a transfer of 4,000 TOW anti-tank missiles, but Powell made no mention that they were headed to Iran. "I gave him absolutely no indication of the destination of the missiles," Powell testified later.

Though kept in the dark, Thurman began the process of transferring the TOWs to the CIA, the first step of the journey. Powell's orders "bypassed the formal [covert procedures] on the ingress line," Thurman acknowledged in later Iran-Contra testimony.

As Powell's strange orders rippled through the top echelon of the Pentagon, Lt. Gen. Vincent M. Russo, the assistant deputy chief of staff for logistics, called Powell to ask about the operation. Powell immediately circumvented Russo's inquiry. In effect, Powell pulled rank by arranging for "executive instructions" commanding Russo to deliver the first 1,000 TOWs, no questions asked.

"It was a little unusual," commented then Army chief of staff, Gen. John A. Wickham Jr. "All personal visit or secure phone call, nothing in writing  because normally through the [covert logistics office] a procedure is established so that records are kept in a much more formal process."

Finally, Wickham demanded that a memo about the need for congressional notification be sent to Powell. "The chief wanted it in writing," stated Army Lt. Gen. Arthur E. Brown, who delivered the memo to Powell on March 7, 1986.

Poindexter's Safe

Five days later, Powell handed that memo to President Reagan's national security adviser John Poindexter with the advice: "Handle it ... however you plan to do it," Powell later testified.

Poindexter's plan for "timely notification" was to tell Congress on the last day of the Reagan presidency, Jan. 20, 1989. Poindexter stuck the Pentagon memo into a White House safe, along with the secret "finding" on the Iran missile shipments.

When the Iran-Contra scandal finally broke into the open in November 1986, most participants in the operation tried to duck the consequences, especially for the 1985 shipments that violated the Arms Export Control Act, what Secretary Weinberger once warned President Reagan might constitute an impeachable offense.

For second-tier officials, such as Gates and Powell, admitting knowledge of or involvement in the 1985 shipments would amount to career suicide. So, Gates, Powell and most other administration operatives insisted they knew or recalled nothing.

Undercutting Gates's claims of ignorance and innocence, however, is that his subordinates in the DI were pushing unsupported notions about why shipping arms to Iran made sense, according to Glaudemans and McGovern.

With Congress hoping for a new Defense Secretary who has both the guts and the clout to stand up to White House pressure, the senators who will evaluate Gates's fitness for the job may want to look back at this troubling Iran-Contra episode.

Iraqi Guerilla

By Mike Whitney

“We must bear in mind that imperialism is a world system, the last stage of capitalism—and it must be defeated in a world confrontation. The strategic end of this struggle should be the destruction of imperialism. Our share, the responsibility of the exploited and underdeveloped of the world, is to eliminate the foundations of imperialism: our oppressed nations, from where they extract capital, raw materials, technicians, and cheap labor, and to which they export new capital-instruments of domination-arms and all kinds of articles, thus submerging us in absolute dependence.” Ernesto Che Guevara

11/23/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- While critics of the Iraq war are quick to point out that US occupation is failing, they hesitate to draw the obvious conclusion; that the Iraqi resistance is winning. Observations like that are tantamount to treason and thus banned in the establishment-media. The idea of American invincibility is such a carefully-nurtured myth that is defended in all quarters and at all times. Even if U.S. troops were caught red-handed pushing their helicopters into the Euphrates while hastily fleeing Baghdad, the “embedded” media would twist it around so it looked like a “strategic redeployment”.

There’s nothing new about media bias, but its effect on the ongoing war has been negligible. The media’s “spin” cannot alter the reality on the ground, and the fact is the US is getting beaten quite badly. They’ve locked-horns with a crafty enemy that has neutralized their advantages in terms of firepower and technology and limited their range of movement. It’s shocking to think that after 4 years of bloody conflict, occupation forces still control “no ground” beyond the looming parapets of the Green Zone. This is a stunning admission of defeat.

By every objective standard, the US is losing the war in Iraq. Still, America’s misfortunes are simply the result of administrative miscues or a bungled strategy, but the unavoidable effect of a shrewd and ferocious adversary that strikes unexpectedly and then hides among the population. As Mao Tse-tung said, “The guerilla must move among the people as a fish swims in the sea.” The Iraqi resistance has managed this feat with greater dexterity than anyone expected.

The benchmarks for winning a guerilla-type war are fairly well known. The occupying army must quickly establish security in order to elicit the support of the general population. That’s why winning “hearts and minds” is such a critical task. If the occupation is widely unpopular, then reconstruction and security become impossible, and the armed-struggle flourishes. Now that 80% of the Iraqi people say that they want to see a rapid draw-down of American troops, we can be certain that victory, in any conventional sense of the word, is out of the question.

Guerilla warfare has reached a new level of complexity in Iraq. After 4 years, we know little more about the resistance and their methods of operating as we did at the time of the invasion. Is there a central-command or just small independent cells? How do they communicate among themselves? Do they have a reliable source of weaponry and explosives? What are their funding sources? How many men are in the resistance? How many women? Do they move around the country or stay in one location? Are there foreign donors or are they self-sustaining? How deeply is the public engaged in supporting resistance activities?

Without knowing the answers to these questions, the United States, with all its high-tech surveillance gadgetry, is just a lumbering giant stumbling around aimlessly. The dependence on rounding up and torturing “military aged men” (MAMs) to gather intelligence about resistance activities and networks has backfired entirely; galvanizing the public against the occupation and eroding America’s claim of moral superiority.

Guerilla warfare is a war of attrition; the steady, inexorable wearing away of the enemy’s forces and morale. The object is to invoke various asymmetrical strategies to keep the invading army constantly off-balance and on the defensive. The guerilla must keep probing for vulnerabilities; picking away at potential soft-spots while executing a program of sabotage and deception. As Mao advised, “Withdraw when the enemy advances; harass him when he stops; strike him when he is weary; pursue him when he withdraws.”

The overall effect of this strategy is already apparent. The mission’s goals have become vague and muddled, the troops are increasingly demoralized, and there are no clear benchmarks for success. Under these circumstances, increasing troop strength is an act of pure desperation. “Victory” is not possible when no one has a clear idea of what victory means. That’s the problem with waging a war simply to extract the wealth and resources from another country. Eventually the mask of ideology slips and everyone can see the true nature of the fraud.

There is a tendency in the West to minimize the accomplishments of the Iraqi resistance, but no one can dispute the results. With limited arms and resources, they have out-flanked, out-maneuvered and thoroughly-confounded the best-trained, best-equipped, high-tech military war-machine the world has ever seen. That’s no mean achievement. I expect that many high-ranking American officers secretly admire their enemy’s effectiveness. They’ve waged an impressive battle under very thorny circumstances and they've persevered despite clear disadvantages in communications, logistics, firepower, propaganda, mobility and supplies. With the most primitive of weaponry and bomb-making equipment, they’ve gone nose-to-nose with the world’s only superpower and forced a stalemate.

In truth, the Iraqi resistance has succeeded where the Congress, the United Nations, and the millions of peace-loving antiwar citizens across the globe failed; they stopped the Bush juggernaut dead in its tracks.

Last week, Lt General Michael Maples admitted that resistance attacks have increased “in scope, lethality, and intensity.” Attacks on US forces are now up to a whopping 180 per day, nearly double the number just a year ago. The armed-struggle is clearly growing stronger by the day.

At the same time, Bush’s problems continue to mount. His army is stretched to the breaking-point, sectarian fighting is on the rise, and the Al-Maliki government has failed to disband the militias or devise a strategy for establishing security beyond the Green Zone.

No part of the occupation has succeeded.

Bush’s plan for Iraq is doomed to fail, because it is based on flawed logic. Overwhelming force and extreme violence do not produce political solutions; just more bloodshed. Iraq is not the Gaza Strip.

The only way forward now is for the United States to declare an immediate ceasefire, call for negotiations with the leaders of the Iraqi National Resistance, convene a meeting between the main groups, (Sunni, Shiite and Kurd) and agree in principle to the complete withdrawal all American troops.

Even at this late date, there is reluctance among conservative and liberal pundits alike, to acknowledge that the Sunni-backed, Ba’athist-led resistance must be dealt with and brought to the bargaining table.

Negotiations with the Iraqi Resistance is the “first step” on the path to a political solution.

“Staying the course”, “phased withdrawal” or even meeting with other regional powers, (such as Syria and Iran) are merely superficial remedies that do not address the central issue. The United States needs to make a deal with the men who “carry the guns and pack the explosives”; they are the ones who are fighting this war and they are the ones who will decide the terms of a political settlement.

Whether negotiations take place now or 5 years from now depends entirely on George Bush, but the outcome of the war is already certain. Bush’s imperial ambitions have been smashed by a small cadre of committed Iraqi nationalists. They’ve blocked the path to Tehran and Damascus and paved the way for their country’s liberation.

It's Time to Re-Open the Investigation of RFK and JFK Assassinations

MICHAEL CARMICHAEL
Baltimore Chronicle
Thursday, November 23, 2006

Planning to write a film script about the case, Shane O’Sullivan, an independent researcher, investigated the assassination of RFK. But, O’Sullivan found much more than he had hoped.
On Monday night, the BBC broadcast O’Sullivan’s report on their high-profile programme, "Newsnight." O’Sullivan’s findings shocked many people. Working through an exhaustive analysis of videotapes made at the Ambassador Hotel on the night of RFK’s assassination, O’Sullivan identified three figures as former agents of the CIA. Two of the agents O’Sullivan identified could be seen moving away from the hotel pantry shortly after the shooting of RFK.

Following his preliminary identifications, O’Sullivan presented the video images to more authoritative sources, men who knew the three agents personally. While there was a slender degree of uncertainty (circa 5-10%) the men in the videos were positively identified as the former CIA agents:

David Sanchez Morales;
Gordon Campbell and
George Joannides
Morales was known to be involved in coups d’états throughout Latin America and he had a reputation of a dangerous man with an explosive temper who was capable of violence. To entertain his friends, Morales would tell stories about his involvement in the killing and capture of Che Guevara, coups in Latin America and other nefarious covert activities.
Two of the CIA agents in the Ambassador Hotel: Morales and Joannides are now dead, while the whereabouts of the third, Campbell, are presently unknown.

O’Sullivan interviewed Bradley Ayers, U.S. Army Captain retired, who had been stationed at JM-Wave, the Miami base for the CIA. In 1963, David Morales was the Chief of Operations at JM-Wave. Ayers and Morales trained Cuban exiles in the arts of sabotage to be deployed in covert action against the regime of Fidel Castro. On camera, Ayers identified Morales and Campbell with what he described as 95% accuracy. Following that positive identification, Ayers introduced O’Sullivan to David Rabern, a freelance mercenary who had been contracted by the CIA to participate in the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. Rabern had been in the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel on the fateful night in 1968.

While Rabern did not know Morales and Campbell by name, he had noticed them talking to each other in the hotel lobby prior to the assassination. Earlier in the same year, Rabern had noticed Campbell in and around several police stations. If true, this report is rather odd, considering that the CIA has no jurisdiction on U.S. soil. Another bizarre fact: Morales was officially stationed in Laos in 1968.

O’Sullivan found video images of Campbell with another figure who has now been identified as George Joannides, a pivotal figure in the CIA and the re-investigation of the assassination of JFK.

Joannides had been the Chief of Psychological Warfare Operations at JM-Wave. He had retired from his CIA post, but in 1978 he returned to active duty, as it were, as the liaison between the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) during its re-investigation of the assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King.

Puzzling, perplexing and problematic, Joannides failed to inform his colleagues at the HSCA that he had ever worked at JM-Wave. This is a troubling enigma, for it suggests that he intended to maintain his covert identity—a fact that would compromise his involvement in the HSCA and jeopardize the entire congressional investigation.

A former researcher with the HSCA, Ed Lopez, identified Joannides as the person in the Ambassador Hotel video with what he described on camera as 99% accuracy. More: Lopez recalled Joannides' obstructive practice of denying the HSCA access to crucial documents in the re-investigation of the assassination of JFK.

O’Sullivan did not stop there. Moving to Washington, he met Wayne Smith, a veteran State Department official who worked with Morales at the US embassy in Havana in the final year of the Batista regime through the Cuban Revolution in 1959 and 1960. When O’Sullivan asked him to respond to the Ambassador Hotel video, Smith immediately stated, “That’s him, that’s Morales.” From a conversation in 1975, Smith recalled that Morales stated that JFK deserved to be assassinated. From Smith’s testimony, O’Sullivan learned that Morales “hated the Kennedys”—because of their cancelling the air support for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961.

In a hotel near the CIA headquarters (now named the George H. W. Bush Center for Central Intelligence) in Langley, Virginia, O’Sullivan met with a former agent, Tom Clines who said that all of the men in the Ambassador Hotel videos had been misidentified as former CIA agents. When O’Sullivan informed him that Ayers and Smith had positively identified the men as Morales, Campbell and Joannides, Clines became “disturbed,” and he refused to go on camera for the interview.

Following his interview of Clines, senior journalists in Washington advised O’Sullivan to take his testimony with a grain of salt as he was known to “blow smoke” deliberately as a routine function to dissemble facts for the press and public.

Gaeton Fonzi was the lead investigator of the HSCA investigation of the assassination of JFK. In his book, The Last Investigation, Fonzi reported the testimony of Bob Walton, a man who met Morales and discussed JFK with him. According to Fonzi’s account, Morales asserted his direct involvement in the assassination of JFK as revenge for the Bay of Pigs.

On the Watergate tapes, Richard Nixon always referred to the assassination of JFK as “the Bay of Pigs thing.” During Eisenhower’s presidency, Nixon served as the White House liason with the CIA. As Vice-President, Nixon worked directly with Allen Dulles and other senior staff at the CIA on the planning of the Bay of Pigs operation. It should be noted that George H. W. Bush has been known to have been integral to the Bay of Pigs operation since the publication of the enormously popular bestselling book of 1991, Plausible Denial, by Mark Lane.

During his campaign for the presidency in 1960, Nixon was shocked that JFK made public the contents of his top-secret intelligence briefings—and had moved to Nixon’s right to advocate overt military intervention against Cuba. The CIA planned to overthrow Castro in an invasion manned with exiled Cubans trained by the staff at JM-Wave. From our perspective today, it is perfectly understandable why JFK would have been compelled to make this policy position public in his presidential campaign. Had he not done so, JFK could have been tarnished with a charge of being “weak on communism,” by Nixon, who had been one of the leading witch-hunters of the disgraceful McCarthy Era.

Upon his inauguration as president, JFK continued to support the plans to attack Cuba with the force of exiled Cubans—a project that Nixon had nurtured, supported and managed for the Eisenhower White House. However, JFK decided to withhold U.S. air support in order to maintain an arm’s length separation from the Cuban invasion.

The Bay of Pigs became a fiasco. JFK accepted the blame, and he immediately ordered a thorough-going reorganization of the CIA. A few months later, Allen Dulles, who had been a free-wheeling manufacturer of coups d’états while serving as Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), ‘retired’ after a formal conversation with JFK. JFK promptly named a new director, and John McCone, who had been the director of the Atomic Energy Commission, soon took Dulles’s place as DCI.

JFK’s reorientation of the CIA did not stop there. Recognizing that the agency’s mission to wage a covert Cold War was dangerously counterproductive, JFK ordered the CIA to make nuclear non-proliferation its top priority. Eventually, JFK would successfully negotiate the Test Ban Treaty with Nikita Khruschev in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis—by far the most significant strategic confrontation of the entire Cold War.

While rogue elements in the U.S. intelligence community have long been suspected of meddling in his assassination and those of his brother and Martin Luther King, Jr., Shane O’Sullivan’s identification of three CIA agents in the Ambassador Hotel on the night of the assassination of RFK suggests strongly that the case should be reopened. The third agent in the Ambassador Hotel, George Joannides, now appears to have been engaged in a sabotage mission during the HSCA investigation of JFK’s assassination.
The assassination of JFK would seem to be an eternal mystery that has long since passed into the realm of myth; however, that is not the case for today; technology has provided a wealth of new tools with which to examine evidence in criminal cases—even cold cases over forty years old.

While O’Sullivan is calling for a re-opening of the case of RFK, it is only reasonable to re-open JFK’s case, as well.

In 1968, I was in my final year at the University of North Carolina. From my meeting with a close associate of RFK, I worked as a college and university organizer in his presidential campaign. At the time of his assassination, RFK was the leading candidate for the presidency—far ahead of his nearest rival in the polls and definitely on track to win the November election.

Seeing the BBC broadcast of videotape evidence of three unassigned CIA agents in the Ambassador Hotel Ballroom at the time of RFK’s assassination shocked me. The federal government, Congress and the criminal justice system of the United States failed to protect the president of the United States and its leading presidential candidates. Worse. They have failed to tell the truth to the American people.

Today, on the anniversary of one of the most tragic dates in American history—I propose that the cases of RFK and JFK should be re-opened in either the 110th or the 111th Congress.

We must follow the evidence exhaustively and relentlessly, leaving no stone unturned and no document unexamined regardless of its current status: Sensitive; Secret, Top Secret or Above Top Secret. To do any less would be to become complicit in the lies and cover-ups that have denied the American people of the truth.

Remember: Germany Intercepts Israeli Arms bound for Iran

Remember how Israel was selling arms to Iran


August 29, 2002
Germany intercepts Israeli arms bound for Iran
by AP in Berlin

German authorities today returned to Israel a consigment of Israeli-manufactured military equipment that they insist was bound for Iran.

The cargo of tank tracks and treads were found on board an Israeli vessel earlier this month by German customs officers after they discovered the equipment was being secretly shipped to Iran.

The Israeli goverment had authorised a private Israeli company to ship the equipment to Thailand and not Iran. Both Germany and Israel prohbits the sale of arms to Iran.

The Hamburg authorities today announced that it was returning the cargo to Israel where a police investigation will be launched into the circumstances surrounding the shipment.

The Israeli Defence Ministry has confirmed that the shipment by a private Israeli company - named on Israel TV as Piad and headed by Aviel Weinstein - was being held in Germany.

In a statement it confirmed that the treads were Israeli-made and that the firm received permission from the Israeli authoirities on the basis that the cargo's final destination was Thailand - not Iran.

The statement said: "The Defence Ministry forbids sale of military equipment, spare parts and weapons of any kind to Iran," adding that it was turning the matter over to Israeli police.

In the past, Israeli arms merchants have been sentenced to prison terms for selling military equipment to Iran, but in the 1980s, the Israeli government was involved in a complicated deal involving the United States, Nicaragua and Iran that eventually became known as "Irangate."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1-398110,00.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1-398110,00.html

Flaws Cited in Effort to Train Iraqi Forces

By Thomas E. Ricks
The Washington Post

Tuesday 21 November 2006

US officers roundly criticize program.

The US military's effort to train Iraqi forces has been rife with problems, from officers being sent in with poor preparation to a lack of basic necessities such as interpreters and office materials, according to internal Army documents.

The shortcomings have plagued a program that is central to the US strategy in Iraq and is growing in importance. A Pentagon effort to rethink policies in Iraq is likely to suggest placing less emphasis on combat and more on training and advising, sources say.

In dozens of official interviews compiled by the Army for its oral history archives, officers who had been involved in training and advising Iraqis bluntly criticized almost every aspect of the effort. Some officers thought that team members were often selected poorly. Others fretted that the soldiers who prepared them had never served in Iraq and lacked understanding of the tasks of training and advising. Many said they felt insufficiently supported by the Army while in Iraq, with intermittent shipments of supplies and interpreters who often did not seem to understand English.

The Iraqi officers interviewed by an Army team also had complaints; the top one was that they were being advised by officers far junior to them who had never seen combat.

Some of the American officers even faulted their own lack of understanding of the task. "If I had to do it again, I know I'd do it completely different," reported Maj. Mike Sullivan, who advised an Iraqi army battalion in 2004. "I went there with the wrong attitude and I thought I understood Iraq and the history because I had seen PowerPoint slides, but I really didn't."

Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top US military commander for the Middle East, told Congress last week that he plans to shift increasing numbers of troops from combat roles to training and advisory duties. Insiders familiar with the bipartisan Iraq Study Group say that next month the panel will probably recommend further boosts to the training effort. Pentagon officials are considering whether the number of Iraqi security forces needs to be far larger than the current target of about 325,000, which would require thousands more US trainers.

Most recently, a closely guarded military review being done for the Joint Chiefs of Staff laid out three options for Iraq. It appears to be favoring a version of one option called "Go Long" that would temporarily boost the US troop level - currently about 140,000 - but over time would cut combat presence in favor of training and advising. The training effort could take five to 10 years.

Despite its central role in Iraq, the training and advisory program is not well understood outside narrow military circles. Congress has hardly examined it, and training efforts lie outside the purview of the special inspector general on Iraq reconstruction. The Army has done some studies but has not released them. Even basic information, such as how many of the 5,000 US military personnel involved are from the National Guard and Reserves, is unusually difficult to obtain.

But the previously unreported transcripts of interviews conducted by the Army's Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., offer a view into the program, covering a time from shortly after the 2003 invasion until earlier this year.

One of the most common complaints of the Army officers interviewed was that the military did a poor job of preparing them. "You're supposed to be able to shoot, move and communicate," said Lt. Col. Paul Ciesinski, who was an adviser in northern Iraq last year and this year. "Well, when we got to Iraq we could hardly shoot, we could hardly move and we could hardly communicate, because we hadn't been trained on how to do these things." The training was outdated and lackadaisical, he said, adding sarcastically: "They packed 30 days' training into 84 days."

Sullivan, who advised three infantry companies in the Iraqi army, called the US Army's instruction for the mission "very disappointing."

Nor were the officers impressed by some of their peers. Maj. Jeffrey Allen, an active-duty soldier, noted that all other members of his team were from the National Guard, and that his team was supposed to have 10 members but was given only five. He described his team as "weak ... in particular the brigade team chief."

A separate internal review this year by the military's Center for Army Lessons Learned, based on 152 interviews with soldiers involved in the training and advisory program, found that there was "no standardized guideline" for preparing advisers and that such instruction was needed because "a majority of advisors have little to no previous experience or training."

Lt. Col. Michael Negard, a spokesman for the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq, the headquarters for training, said he has not seen the Lessons Learned report and so does not know whether the training has been improved or standardized since that report was issued.

After arriving in Iraq, advisers said, they often were shocked to find that the interpreters assigned to them were of little use. Ciesinski reported that at his base in western Nineveh province, "They couldn't speak English and we would have to fire them."

Nor were there enough interpreters to go around, said Sullivan. "It was a real juggling act" with interpreters, he said, noting that he would run from the headquarters to a company "to borrow an interpreter, run him over to say something, and then send him back."

But he was better off than Maj. Robert Dixon, who reported that during his tour in 2004, "We had no interpreters at the time."

The Center for Army Lessons Learned study, whose contents were first reported by the Wall Street Journal, found one unit that learned after 10 frustrating months that its interpreters were "substandard" and had been translating the advisers' instructions so poorly that their Iraqi pupils had difficulty understanding the concepts being taught.

Trainers and advisers also reported major problems with the Army supply chain. "As an adviser, I got the impression that there was an 'us' and 'them' " divide between the advisers and regular US forces, said Maj. Pete Fedak, an adviser near Fallujah in 2004. "In other words, there was an American camp and then, outside, there was a bermed area for the Iraqis, of which we were part."

Replacing basic office materials was one of the toughest problems advisers reported. "Guys would come under fire so they could get computer supplies, paper and things like that," Sullivan said. "It was a surreal experience."

Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, a staff officer with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Iraq in 2005 and 2006 who worked with Iraqi units, came away thinking that the Army fundamentally is not geared to the task of helping the advisory effort.

"The thing the Army institutionally is still struggling to learn is that the most important thing we do in counterinsurgency is building host-nation institutions," he told the interviewers, "yet all our organizations are designed around the least important line of operations: combat operations."

Advisers found that the capabilities of Iraqi forces "ran the gamut from atrocious to excellent," as it was put by Lt. Col. Kevin Farrell, who commanded an armored unit in east Baghdad last year and this year.

Many worried that the Iraqi units being advised contained insurgents. An Iraqi National Guard battalion "was infiltrated by the enemy," said Maj. Michael Monti, a Marine who was an adviser in the Upper Euphrates Valley in 2004 and 2005.

Some advisers reported being personally targeted by infiltrators. "We had insurgents that we detected and arrested in the battalion that were planning an operation against me and my team," Allen said.

But Iraqi officers may have had even more to fear, because their families were also vulnerable. "I went through seven battalion commanders in eight weeks," Allen noted. Dixon reported that in Samarra both his battalion commander and intelligence officer deserted just before a major operation.

Iraqis also had some complaints about their US advisers, most notably that junior US officers who had never seen combat were counseling senior Iraqi officers who had fought in several wars. "Numerous teams have lieutenants ... to fill the role of advisor to an Iraqi colonel counterpart," the Lessons Learned report stated.

Farrell, the officer in east Baghdad, said some advisers were literally "phoning in" their work. Some would not leave the forward operating base "more than one or two days out of the week - instead they would just call the Iraqis on cellphones," he said.

Dixon was grim about the experience. "Would I want to go back and do it again?" he asked. His unambiguous answer: "No."

Yingling came to a broader conclusion. He recommended an entirely different orientation in Iraq, both for trainers and for regular US units. "Don't train on finding the enemy," he said. "Train on finding your friends, and they will help you find your enemy.... Once you find your friends, finding the enemy is easy."

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.