-Caveat Lector- December 17, 2000
Behind Colin Powell's Legend: Part One Editors Note: On Dec. 12, a 5-4 vote by the conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court awarded George W. Bush the presidency. To do so, the conservatives applied "equal-protection" safeguards that historically had protected blacks and other minorities from discrimination. In this case, however, "equal protection" was used to stop the counting of votes -- many from African- American precincts -- that likely would have given Al Gore the victory in Florida and thus the presidency. As Bush's strategy was underway, retired Gen. Colin Powell -- one of the nation's most prominent African-Americans -- met with Bush at his ranch in Texas. Based on the available record, Powell did nothing to dissuade Bush from his course of action, which effectively disenfranchised the 90 percent of the African-American voters who cast their ballots for Gore. On Dec. 16, four days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Bush appointed Powell to be secretary of state, the first African-American who would hold that post. As he has at other times in his military-political life, Colin Powell advanced his career by staying silent in the face of what many other African-Americans considered a gross injustice. In view of these new developments and the questions they raise about Colin Powell's character, we are presenting an updated version of a series � "Behind Colin Powell's Legend" � that originally appeared at this Web site several years ago. Behind Colin Powell's Legend � Part One By Robert Parry & Norman Solomon On a sunny autumn afternoon, Sept. 25, 1995, hundreds lined up on a sidewalk in San Francisco to grab a glimpse of a national icon. Indoors, dozens of reporters and photographers packed into a room baking under the hot lights of television cameras. An electricity filled the air, as if the crowd were waiting for a TV actor or a rock star, some super- hot celebrity. In a sense, they were. That day, on a mega-successful book tour, retired General Colin L. Powell was scheduled to answer a few questions and sign a few hundred books. Preparations for the news conference were going smoothly, too, until two minutes before Powell was to appear. Then, the bookstore managers fell into in a small panic over an intruder who was holding forth at the back of the room. "How did he get here?" one manager asked the other. "I don't know," the other answered. "I don't know how he got in here." "He slipped in," said the first. Their fretting focused on a middle-aged man in a wheelchair who was speaking to a cluster of reporters. He was hunched inside his silvery metal contraption. His jeans-clad legs dangled as if inert. His clothes were tidy but informal. His thinning hair was slightly unkempt. The man spoke quietly, at a deliberate pace. He paused occasionally to search for and capture an elusive word. The reporters, most younger than he was, leaned over him with microphones and note pads. They seemed intrigued, but uncertain of his news value. The bookstore managers did not have a quick solution to the intrusion, so they drifted back to their anticipation of Powell's arrival. "I have so much respect for this man," bubbled the store's director of sales. The Hero Arrives Moments later, San Francisco's mayor swept into the room. A wave of excitement followed as Colin Powell arrived and strode to the rostrum. He was the picture of confident authority, in his wire-rim executive-style glasses, a well-tailored pinstripe black business suit, a crisp pastel-blue shirt, a tasteful burgundy tie. The mayor pumped Powell's hand and proclaimed a formal welcome for the first African-American to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Reporters competed to toss some softball questions that the general smoothly swatted over the fence. Powell offered only a well- rehearsed glimpse into his private side. "Writing the book," the retired general explained about My American Journey, "you learn a lot about yourself, you learn a lot about your family, you learn a lot about people who helped you along the way that you have forgotten about. So, it was very introspective for me, and I came away with a deeper appreciation of my own family roots, but an even greater appreciation of the nation we live in, the society we are a part of, and a faith in this society that I hope, as a result of this book and whatever I might do in the future, faith that I hope we can continue to pass on to new generations." The second query was a self-help question about race: "What do you say to all the kids from all the Bronxes around this country who say, 'race is a stumbling block, poverty is a stumbling block?'" "Race is a problem," Powell responded firmly. "Let it be someone else's problem. What you have to do is do your very best, study, work hard, believe in yourself, believe in your country." As the news conference rolled on, Powell showed off the qualities that had set so many political hearts aflutter in fall 1995. But Powell encountered some friction when he started explaining why Americans were dazzled by the military again, a quarter century after the disastrous Vietnam War. "Why that comes about," Powell said, "because of the superb performance of the armed forces of the United States in recent conflicts, beginning with the, I think, Panama invasion, and then through Desert Shield and Storm. And Americans saw that these young men and women were competent, proud, clean, patriotic, and they kind of fell in love with them again. And so it's not so much I think what--" The voice from the back of the room suddenly broke in, an accusatory voice belonging to the man in the wheelchair. "You didn't tell the truth about the war in the Gulf, general," the man shouted. Powell first tried to ignore the interruption, but the man persisted, hectoring Powell about the tens of thousands of civilian dead in the wars in Panama and Iraq, conflicts that brought Powell his national fame. Finally, Powell responded with a patronizing tone, but he called the dissenter by name. "Hi, Ron, how are you? Excuse me, let me answer one question if I may." "But why don't you tell them, why don't you tell them why--" "The fact of the matter is--" "My Lai--" "I think the American people are reflecting on me the glory that really belongs to those troops," Powell continued, brushing aside the interruption. Then, Ron Kovic's voice could be heard only in snippets beneath Powell's amplified voice. "General, let me speak--" "I think what you're seeing is a reflection on me of what those young men and women have done in Panama, in Desert Storm, in a number of other places--" "A hundred-and-fifty-thousand people, the bombing--" "So it's very, it's very rewarding to see this change in attitude toward the military. It's not just Colin Powell, rock star. It's all of those wonderful men and women who do such a great job." Born on the Fourth Ron Kovic, a veteran of the Vietnam War, a soldier paralyzed in combat, was one of the few dissident voices at the bookstore that day. Kovic, author of the autobiography, Born on the Fourth of July, which was later made into a movie, tried to warn reporters not to swallow Powell-mania. As Powell moved off to sign copies of his own book and the reporters began to depart, too, Kovic pleaded, "Colin Powell is not the answer. He sets a very dangerous precedent for this country." >From his wheelchair, Kovic had struggled to make that case. "I want the American people to know what the general hid from the American public during the Gulf War," Kovic said. "They hid the casualties. They hid the horror. They hid the violence. We don't need any more violence in our country. We need leaders who represent cooperation. We need leadership that represents peace. We need leaders that understand the tragedy of using violence in solving our problems. We have enough violence in this country." To Kovic, Powell lacked a truly critical eye toward war. "Did Colin Powell really learn the lessons of the Vietnam War? Did he learn that the war was immoral? I think that he learned another lesson. He learned to be more violent, to be more ruthless. And I've come as a counterbalance to that today. I've come as an alternative voice. And I think I speak for many, many people in this country when I say that General Colin Powell is a detriment to democracy; he's a danger to our Constitution; he's a danger to our democracy." Kovic tried to persuade the journalists that the United States should confront its Cold War past, the way other nations, both right-wing and left- wing, have begun to do. "America has got to go through its own perestroika, its own glasnost," Kovic continued. "I came down today because I just can't allow this to continue -- this honeymoon, this love affair with someone who was part of a policy which hurt so many human beings." But few Americans listened to the advice of Ron Kovic that day or since. Hundreds of thousands bought Powell's 1995 memoirs, My American Journey, and the national press corps accorded the retired general near- unanimous acclaim. Besides being a hero for his accomplishments as the first black American to lead the nation into war, Powell became the most celebrated U.S. military officer since Dwight Eisenhower. In the early days of the 1996 presidential campaign, journalists pined openly for Powell's candidacy. Liberals and centrists saw Powell as a role model for young blacks. Many conservatives admired Powell's success despite his humble origins. What slight criticism there was came mostly from the far right because of Powell's avowal that he was a "Rockefeller Republican" who supported abortion rights and affirmative action. Questions Still, what about Kovic's questions? What is Colin Powell's unvarnished record? What did Powell do in Vietnam? What was his role in the Iran-contra scandal? How did he rise so smoothly as a black man in a white-dominated Republican national security establishment? Were Powell's victories in Panama and Iraq excessively violent and insufficiently concerned with civilian dead? These are questions perhaps even more relevant today as Colin Powell stands as President-elect George W. Bush's first Cabinet choice, the man who would be the nation's first African-American secretary of state. Given Bush's inexperience in foreign affairs, the former general likely will wield broad power over U.S. foreign policy. Many Americans see Colin Powell as a reassuring figure on the national stage. Yet, the accolades have prevented any balanced analysis of his positives and his negatives. Indeed, Powell's legend has created its own mystery. Drawing from the available public record, including Powell's own memoirs, this series will address that mystery. Who is Colin Powell? Page 2: Vietnam Lessons December 17, 2000 Behind Colin Powell's Legend Page 1, 2, 3 Vietnam Lessons On Jan. 17, 1963, in South Vietnam's monsoon season, U.S. Army Capt. Colin Powell jumped from a military helicopter into a densely forested combat zone of the A Shau Valley, not far from the Laotian border. Carrying an M-2 carbine, Capt. Powell was starting his first -- and only -- combat assignment. He was the new adviser to a 400- man unit of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). Across jungle terrain, these South Vietnamese government troops were arrayed against a combined force of North Vietnamese regulars and local anti-government guerrillas known as the Viet Cong. The 25-year-old Powell was arriving at a pivotal moment in the Vietnam War. To forestall a communist victory, President John F. Kennedy had dispatched teams of Green Beret advisers to assist the ARVN, a force suffering from poor discipline, ineffective tactics and bad morale. Already, many U.S. advisers, most notably the legendary Col. John Paul Vann, were voicing concerns about the ARVN's brutality toward civilians. Vann feared that the dominant counterinsurgency strategy of destroying rural villages and forcibly relocating inhabitants while hunting down enemy forces was driving the people into the arms of the Viet Cong. But as Colin Powell arrived, he was untainted by these worries. He was a gung-ho young Army officer with visions of glory. He brimmed with trust in the wisdom of his superiors. Capt. Powell also felt the deepest sympathy for the ARVN troops under his command, but only a cold contempt for the enemy. Soon after his arrival, Powell and his ARVN unit left for a protracted patrol that fought leeches as well as Viet Cong ambushes. From the soggy jungle brush, the Viet Cong would strike suddenly against the advancing government soldiers. Often invisible to Powell and his men, the VC would inflict a few casualties and slip back into the jungles. In My American Journey, Powell recounted his reaction when he spotted his first dead Viet Cong. "He lay on his back, gazing up at us with sightless eyes," Powell wrote. "I felt nothing, certainly not sympathy. I had seen too much death and suffering on our side to care anything about what happened on theirs." While success against the armed enemy was rare, Powell's ARVN unit punished the civilian population systematically. As the soldiers marched through mountainous jungle, they destroyed the food and the homes of the region's Montagnards, who were suspected of sympathizing with the Viet Cong. Old women would cry hysterically as their ancestral homes and worldly possessions were consumed by fire. "We burned down the thatched huts, starting the blaze with Ronson and Zippo lighters," Powell recalled. "Why were we torching houses and destroying crops? Ho Chi Minh had said the people were like the sea in which his guerrillas swam. ... We tried to solve the problem by making the whole sea uninhabitable. In the hard logic of war, what difference did it make if you shot your enemy or starved him to death?" For nearly six months, Powell and his ARVN unit slogged through the jungles, searching for Viet Cong and destroying villages. Then while on one patrol, Powell fell victim to a Viet Cong booby trap. He stepped on a punji stake, a dung-poisoned bamboo spear that had been buried in the ground. The stake pierced Powell's boot and quickly infected the young soldier's right foot. The foot swelled, turned purple and forced his evacuation by helicopter to Hue for treatment. Although Powell's recovery from the foot infection was swift, his combat days were over. He stayed in Hue, reassigned to the operations staff of ARVN division headquarters. As part of his work, he handled intelligence data and oversaw a local airfield. By late autumn 1963, Powell's first Vietnam tour ended. On his return to the United States, Powell did not join Vann and other early American advisers in warning the nation about the self-defeating counterinsurgency strategies. In 1963, Vann carried his prescient concerns back to a Pentagon that was not ready to listen to doubters. Then, when his objections fell on deaf ears, Vann resigned his commission and sacrificed a promising military career. In contrast, Powell recognized that his early service in Vietnam put him on a fast track for military success. He signed up for a nine-month Infantry Officer Advanced Course that trained company commanders. In May 1965, Powell finished third in a class of 200 and was the top- ranked infantryman. A year later, he became an instructor. In 1966, as the numbers of U.S. servicemen in Vietnam swelled, Powell received a promotion to major, making him a field-grade officer before his 30th birthday. In 1968, Powell continued to impress his superiors by graduating second in his class at Fort Leavenworth's Command and General Staff College, a prestigious school regarded as an essential way station for future Army generals. Recognizing Powell as an emerging "water- walker" who needed more seasoning in the field, the Army dispatched Powell to a command position back in Vietnam. But on his second tour, Powell would not be slogging through remote jungles. On July 27, 1968, he arrived at an outpost at Duc Pho to serve as an executive officer. Then, to the north, at the Americal headquarters in Chu Lai, division commander Maj. Gen. Charles Gettys saw a favorable mention of Powell in the Army Times. Gettys plucked Powell from Duc Pho and installed him on the general's own staff at Chu Lai. Gettys jumped the young major ahead of more senior officers and made him the G-3 officer in charge of operations and planning. The appointment made "me the only major filling that role in Vietnam," Powell wrote in his memoirs. But history again was awaiting Colin Powell. The Americal Division was already deep into some of the cruelest fighting of the Vietnam War. The "drain-the-sea" strategy that Powell had witnessed near the Laotian border continued to lead American forces into harsh treatment of Vietnamese civilians. Though it was still a secret when Powell arrived at Chu Lai, Americal troops had committed an act that would stain forever the reputation of the U.S. Army. As Major Powell settled into his new assignment, a scandal was waiting to unfold. My Lai On May 16, 1968, a bloodied unit of the Americal division stormed into a hamlet known as My Lai 4. With military helicopters circling overhead, revenge-seeking American soldiers rousted Vietnamese civilians -- mostly old men, women and children -- from their thatched huts and herded them into the village's irrigation ditches. As the round-up continued, some Americans raped the girls. Then, under orders from junior officers on the ground, soldiers began emptying their M-16s into the terrified peasants. Some parents used their bodies futilely to shield their children from the bullets. Soldiers stepped among the corpses to finish off the wounded. The slaughter raged for four hours. A total of 347 Vietnamese, including babies, died in the carnage. But there also were American heroes that day in My Lai. Some soldiers refused to obey the direct orders to kill and some risked their lives to save civilians from the murderous fire. A pilot named Hugh Clowers Thompson Jr. from Stone Mountain, Ga., was furious at the killings he saw happening on the ground. He landed his helicopter between one group of fleeing civilians and American soldiers in pursuit. Thompson ordered his helicopter door gunner to shoot the Americans if they tried to harm the Vietnamese. After a tense confrontation, the soldiers backed off. Later, two of Thompson's men climbed into one ditch filled with corpses and pulled out a three-year-old boy whom they flew to safety. Several months later, the Americal's brutality would become a moral test for Major Powell, too. A letter had been written by a young specialist fourth class named Tom Glen, who had served in an Americal mortar platoon and was nearing the end of his Army tour. In the letter to Gen. Creighton Abrams, the commander of all U.S. forces in Vietnam, Glen accused the Americal division of routine brutality against civilians. Glen's letter was forwarded to the Americal headquarters at Chu Lai where it landed on Major Powell's desk. "The average GI's attitude toward and treatment of the Vietnamese people all too often is a complete denial of all our country is attempting to accomplish in the realm of human relations," Glen wrote. "Far beyond merely dismissing the Vietnamese as 'slopes' or 'gooks,' in both deed and thought, too many American soldiers seem to discount their very humanity; and with this attitude inflict upon the Vietnamese citizenry humiliations, both psychological and physical, that can have only a debilitating effect upon efforts to unify the people in loyalty to the Saigon government, particularly when such acts are carried out at unit levels and thereby acquire the aspect of sanctioned policy." Glen's letter contended that many Vietnamese were fleeing from Americans who �for mere pleasure, fire indiscriminately into Vietnamese homes and without provocation or justification shoot at the people themselves.� Gratuitous cruelty was also being inflicted on Viet Cong suspects, Glen reported. �Fired with an emotionalism that belies unconscionable hatred, and armed with a vocabulary consisting of 'You VC,' soldiers commonly 'interrogate' by means of torture that has been presented as the particular habit of the enemy. Severe beatings and torture at knife point are usual means of questioning captives or of convincing a suspect that he is, indeed, a Viet Cong. ... �It would indeed be terrible to find it necessary to believe that an American soldier that harbors such racial intolerance and disregard for justice and human feeling is a prototype of all American national character; yet the frequency of such soldiers lends credulity to such beliefs. ... �What has been outlined here I have seen not only in my own unit, but also in others we have worked with, and I fear it is universal. If this is indeed the case, it is a problem which cannot be overlooked, but can through a more firm implementation of the codes of MACV (Military Assistance Command Vietnam) and the Geneva Conventions, perhaps be eradicated." In 1995, when we questioned Glen about his letter, he said he had heard second-hand about the My Lai massacre, though he did not mention it specifically. The massacre was just one part of the abusive pattern that had become routine in the division, he said. Powell's Response The letter's troubling allegations were not well received at Americal headquarters. Major Powell undertook the assignment to review Glen's letter, but did so without questioning Glen or assigning anyone else to talk with him. Powell simply accepted a claim from Glen's superior officer that Glen was not close enough to the front lines to know what he was writing about, an assertion Glen denies. After that cursory investigation, Powell drafted a response on Dec. 13, 1968. He admitted to no pattern of wrongdoing. Powell claimed that U.S. soldiers in Vietnam were taught to treat Vietnamese courteously and respectfully. The Americal troops also had gone through an hour- long course on how to treat prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions, Powell noted. "There may be isolated cases of mistreatment of civilians and POWs," Powell wrote in 1968. But "this by no means reflects the general attitude throughout the Division." Indeed, Powell's memo faulted Glen for not complaining earlier and for failing to be more specific in his letter. "In direct refutation of this [Glen's] portrayal," Powell concluded, "is the fact that relations between Americal soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent." Powell's findings, of course, were false, though they were exactly what his superiors wanted to hear. It would take another Americal hero, an infantryman named Ron Ridenhour, to piece together the truth about the atrocity at My Lai. After returning to the United States, Ridenhour interviewed Americal comrades who had participated in the massacre. On his own, Ridenhour compiled this shocking information into a report and forwarded it to the Army inspector general. The IG's office conducted an aggressive official investigation, in marked contrast to Powell's review. Confirming Ridenhour's report, the Army finally faced the horrible truth. Courts martial were held against officers and enlisted men who were implicated in the murder of the My Lai civilians. But Powell's peripheral role in the My Lai cover- up did not slow his climb up the Army's ladder. After the scandal broke, Powell pleaded ignorance about the actual My Lai massacre. Luckily for Powell, Glen's letter also disappeared into the National Archives -- to be unearthed only years later by British journalists Michael Bilton and Kevin Sims for their book, Four Hours in My Lai. Page 3: Powell's Admissions December 17, 2000 Behind Colin Powell's Legend Page 1, 2, 3 Powell's Admissions In his best-selling memoirs, Powell did not mention his brush-off of Tom Glen's complaint. Powell did include, however, another troubling recollection that belied his 1968 official denial of Glen's allegation that American soldiers "without provocation or justification shoot at the people themselves." After a brief mention of the My Lai massacre in My American Journey, Powell penned a partial justification of the Americal's brutality. In a chilling passage, Powell explained the routine practice of murdering unarmed male Vietnamese. "I recall a phrase we used in the field, MAM, for military-age male," Powell wrote. "If a helo spotted a peasant in black pajamas who looked remotely suspicious, a possible MAM, the pilot would circle and fire in front of him. If he moved, his movement was judged evidence of hostile intent, and the next burst was not in front, but at him. "Brutal? Maybe so. But an able battalion commander with whom I had served at Gelnhausen [West Germany], Lt. Col. Walter Pritchard, was killed by enemy sniper fire while observing MAMs from a helicopter. And Pritchard was only one of many. The kill-or-be-killed nature of combat tends to dull fine perceptions of right and wrong." While it's certainly true that combat is brutal and judgments can be clouded by fear, the mowing down of unarmed civilians in cold blood does not constitute combat. It is murder and, indeed, a war crime. Neither can the combat death of a fellow soldier be cited as an excuse to murder civilians. Disturbingly, that was precisely the rationalization that the My Lai killers cited in their own defense. But returning home from Vietnam a second time in 1969, Powell already had begun to prove himself the consummate team player. Those skills were tested again when Powell was drawn into another Vietnam controversy involving the killing of civilians. In a court martial proceeding, Powell sided with an Americal Division general who was accused by the Army of murdering unarmed civilians while flying over Quang Ngai province. Helicopter pilots who flew Brig. Gen. John W. Donaldson had alleged that the general gunned down civilian Vietnamese almost for sport. In an interview, a senior investigator from the Donaldson case told us that two of the Vietnamese victims were an old man and an old woman who were shot to death while bathing. Though long retired -- and quite elderly himself -- the Army investigator still spoke with a raw disgust about the events of a quarter century earlier. He requested anonymity before talking about the behavior of senior Americal officers. "They used to bet in the morning how many people they could kill -- old people, civilians, it didn't matter," the investigator said. "Some of the stuff would curl your hair." For eight months in Chu Lai during 1968-69, Powell had worked with Donaldson and apparently developed a great respect for this superior officer. When the Army charged Donaldson with murder on June 2, 1971, Powell rose in the general's defense. Powell submitted an affidavit dated Aug. 10, 1971, which lauded Donaldson as "an aggressive and courageous brigade commander." Powell did not specifically refer to the murder allegations, but added that helicopter forays in Vietnam had been an "effective means of separating hostiles from the general population." Mysterious Interview Powell apparently was questioned by Army authorities about his knowledge of Donaldson's alleged atrocities. But his answers may be lost to history. In his memoirs, Powell provides a brief -- and incorrect -- description of the 1971 interview in the context of the My Lai massacre. "I was serving in the Washington area, and was called to appear before a board of inquiry conducted by Lt. Gen. William Ray Peers at Fort Belvoir, Virginia," Powell wrote. "The board wanted me to give a picture of fighting conditions in the Batangan Peninsula in 1968 [where the My Lai massacre had occurred]. I knew it had been a hellhole, a rough piece of territory inhabited by VC sympathizers." Powell's account of the interview is itself a bit of a mystery. While it's true that in 1971, a commission headed by Gen. Peers was investigating the My Lai cover-up, all the Peers interviews were conducted at the Pentagon, not at Fort Belvoir. Also, by 1971, the Army knew a great deal about the "fighting conditions in the Batangan Peninsula" and would not need the opinion of an officer who arrived months after the My Lai massacre. Further, when we examined the Peers Commission records at the National Archives branch at Suitland, Md., we found no indication that Colin Powell ever had been interviewed by the board. There was, however, an investigation at Fort Belvoir conducted in the same time frame by the Army's criminal investigation unit. It was examining the murder allegations against Powell's friend, Gen. Donaldson. The retired Army investigator told us that Powell was questioned in that case. But the investigator said Powell volunteered little knowledge about the atrocities. The investigator doubted that any record was made of the interview. Nevertheless, the investigator claimed that "we had him [Donaldson] dead to rights," with the testimony of two helicopter pilots who had flown Donaldson on his shooting expeditions. Still, the investigation collapsed after the two pilot- witnesses were transferred to another Army base and apparently came under pressure from military superiors. The two pilots withdrew their testimony, and the Army dropped all charges against Donaldson. "John Donaldson was a cover-up specialist," the old investigator growled. While thousands of other Vietnam veterans joined the anti-war movement and denounced the brutality of the war, Powell held his tongue. To this day, Powell has avoided criticizing the Vietnam War other than to complain that the politicians should not have restrained the military high command. With the My Lai cloud dissipated, Major Powell's career advanced smartly. Powell often says he learned many lessons from Vietnam. One lesson he doesn't mention is that a military bureaucrat succeeds best by sidestepping controversy and keeping quiet when superiors screw up. As the years unfolded, that proved to be a very valuable lesson indeed. Forwarded for your information. The text and intent of the article have to stand on their own merits. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe simply because it has been handed down for many genera- tions. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumoured by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is written in Holy Scriptures. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of teachers, elders or wise men. Believe only after careful observation and analysis, when you find that it agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all. Then accept it and live up to it." The Buddha on Belief, from the Kalama Sut <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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