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Move On dot Org - a sophisticated means to control dissent?
The Democrats' Trojan Horse for limiting debate
"Uncovered: (not quite) the whole truth about the Iraq war" - a film that doesn't even mention OIL as a motivation for the invasion
The Democratic Party wants Regime Rotation (dump Bush but keep Homeland Security and the War on Terror), not Regime Change
http://www.oilempire.us/moveon.html
Links on this page:
Uncovered: (not quite) the Whole Truth about the Iraq War
CTSG - MoveOn's website programmers
Regime Rotation versus Regime Change
The Center for American Progress (co-sponsor of Uncovered) the "liberal, progressive" support for the war on terror
Move On and Impeachment
Move On's Bush in 30 Seconds campaign - screens out 9/11 issue, apologizes to Republican Party for comparisons of Bush to the Nazis
Move On's Misleader.Org misleads on 9/11, Iraq and Homeland Security
List of interviewees in Move On's UNCOVERED film - A mix of genuine dissent and duplicity
George $oros, the billionaire behind Move On
Late in 2003, the internet organization Move On and the Center for American Progress released the film "Uncovered: the whole truth about the Iraq war" with a simultaneous showing at more than 2,600 locations across the country. This film is a systematic deconstruction of many of the lies that were used to sell the Iraq war, using interviews with Administration whistleblowers, intelligence insiders, politicians and other officials. The film will probably be extremely effective in re-mobilizing the energy of the peace movement that had enormous demonstrations against the war into energy to supporting the Democratic presidential campaign.
Move On, however, is a curious paradox. The group is becoming very influential at mobilizing dissent. Move On is piggybacking on widespread disgust with Bush while seeking to carefully circumscribe the range of acceptable debate. It is also a sophisticated effort to ensure that this dissent does not probe too deep into the current realities of the Homeland Security States of America.
"Uncovered" did a great job in deconstructing some of the false claims by the Bush administration to justify the invasion of Iraq. However, it also disseminated a number of other lies and blatant omissions.
This movie claims to be "the whole truth" about the Iraq war, but does not mention O I L as a motivation for the war. This raises some serious questions about the film's true purpose, especially since has a number of CIA agents who have tactical disagreements with Bush's approach but still support more wars for empire and oil domination. Perhaps "The internecine fight between the Neo-Conservatives and the Neo-Liberals over Bush's management of the War that Will Not End in Our Lifetime" would be a better title for the film. It is not the "the whole truth" about the Iraq war but instead has CIA agents staging "limited hang outs" (fessing up to small crimes to avoid the deeper scandals) that carefully avoids any of the core reasons for the war.
The best disinformation is mostly correct, since that makes the lies more palatable. This "anti-war" film which urges peace activists to support the "war on terror" is a phony opposition to the war.
The ONLY mention of O I L in "Uncovered"
DONALD RUMSFELD So the money's going to come from Iraqi OIL revenue as everyone has said. They think it's going to be something like 2 billion dollars this year, they think it might be something like 15, 12 next year. They think it might be something like 18 to 20 plus the next, 19?
VOICE 19.
RUMSFELD -the next year.
GEORGE W. BUSH I will soon submit to Congress a request for 87 billion dollars.
The only other location in the film's transcript where the letters "o i l" are found together is:
JOE WILSON What you're doing when you expose a CIA officer, of any name, you're basically taking their entire career and flushing it down the tOILet.
Omissions in Uncovered
The most amazing fact about Uncovered is that it did not even hint at OIL as a factor in the war. There was no mention of the economic battle between petro-dollars and petro-euros (Iraq had started selling its oil in Euros, which threatened to undermine the dollar). In the long run, the worst omission is the failure to discuss the fact that we are near, if not at, the peak of global oil production, since that is the reason the US has not designed an "exit strategy" -- the occupation (and eventual replacement by a puppet regime) will continue for the remaining decades of the Petroleum Era.
While a one hour film is inadequate to discuss all of the aspects of a very complex issue, to avoid any mention of OIL as a motivation for the war raises serious questions about Move On and their allies (and their funders' political goals).
An obvious lie from the Bush regime that should have been included was the May 2003 claim that the war was over. Bush was flown to an aircraft carrier off the coast of San Diego to be photographed in front of a banner stating "Mission Accomplished." This is probably the most ridiculous visual from the regime that could be pilloried as blatant propaganda.
Uncovered did not include any discussion of US war crimes against civilians and the military murder of journalists, nor did it discuss the Pentagon's use of uranium tipped weapons (euphemistically called "depleted uranium"), which will cause disease and death for generations to come. Dropping uranium weapons is a form of genocide (the Genocide convention prohibits "Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group," and uranium weapons used in the 1991 Gulf War have already caused substantial numbers of severe birth defects among Iraqi children). US strategies against civilians resemble Israeli "collective punishment" waged against the Palestinian population - and it is well documented that the American and Israeli militaries are strategizing together to perfect the new occupation.
Lies in Uncovered
The most blatant lie perpetuated in Uncovered is that peace activists should support the war on terror (as opposed to the supposedly separate invasion of Iraq). This is a very curious position for a "peace" organization to advocate, because (1) the "war on terror" is based on the false claim that 9/11 was a surprise attack and (2) the "terror" war and the invasion of Iraq are part of the same global domination strategy. See http://www.oilempire.us/911why.html#puzzle for more on this connection.
Canadian journalist and media commentator Barrie Zwicker, whose film The Great Deception is the single best documentary on 9/11, made these comments on April 21, 2003 at premier showing of "Aftermath: Unanswered Questions from 9/11," San Francisco, CA - http://www.oilempire.us/movies.html
My offering is that 9/11 was what the anarchist Bakunin called "the propaganda of the act." That it was "Reichstag Fire 2001." That it was the greatest deception of its kind ever foisted. And that's saying something, in light of the long and totally-neglected history of this kind of war-triggering deception perpetrated by powerful special interests to sway public opinion in favour of deadly agendas that almost always result in serious grief for just about everyone.
My offering is that 9/11 was arranged to jump start the so-called war on terrorism, which in turn is the cover and heat exchanger for hot wars, these being the toxic tip of the machinery for world domination. At the levers is a clique of neocons that has hijacked this country's foreign policy at the behest largely and to the benefit mainly of Big Arms and Big Oil, with the rest of the worst at the top, giving the thumbs-up and boarding the gravy train.
Obviously, Move On wants the peace movement to "Move On" from allegations that Bush let 9/11 happen, or worse, was complicit in the attacks.
Move On claims that the Bush administration decision to invade Iraq was made after 9/11. In reality, the Bush administration made up its mind to seize Iraq before they stole the White House. "Rebuilding Ameirca's Defenses," a September 2000 report from the Project for a New American Century -- essentially the blueprint for the current wars -- stated that the US should attack Iraq and occupy the Middle East, even if Saddam Hussein was deposed. http://www.oilempire.us/pnac.html
Iraq is a critical part of the PNAC plan for world conquest, and the main question now is which country will be the next target. Will it be Iran or North Korea (the other member of the so-called "Axis of Evil"), Syria (perhaps the preferred target of Israel), or Saudi Arabia (the only country that still has spare capacity to increase daily oil extraction rates, which have become more critical as a resource now that the world has arrived at peak oil, Iraqi oil production is a shambles and the hoped for Saudi-sized oil riches of Central Asia now seem to have been exaggerated by about 80%).
While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein. ...
In the post-Cold War era, America and its allies, rather than the Soviet Union, have become the primary objects of deterrence and it is states like Iraq, Iran and North Korea who most wish to develop deterrent capabilities. Projecting conventional military forces or simply asserting political influence abroad, particularly in times of crisis, will be far more complex and constrained when the American homeland or the territory of our allies is subject to attack by otherwise weak rogue regimes capable of cobbling together a miniscule ballistic missile force. Building an effective, robust, layered, global system of missile defenses is a prerequisite for maintaining American preeminence.
- Project for a New American Century
The PNAC report, which was signed by many of the top officials of the Bush regime, also made this bold prediction exactly a year before 9/11:
"The process of [military] transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor."
Zbigniew Brzezinski, who serves in the Carter, Reagan and Bush (the First) administrations, wrote a book in 1997 titled "The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives"that stated that the US should control the world, and to do that would require controlling Eurasia. This goal would give the US control over most of the world's energy reserves, and it predicted that the US would be engaged in war precisely where we have embarked on World War. However, he knew that this task would not be universally popular, as shown by this conclusion:
"Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multicultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat."
Brzezinski still has considerable influence in both imperial political parties, and his book is one of many pieces of evidence that the establishment has planned the takeover of the Middle East oil fields for a long time. 9/11 merely provided the political pretext and the psychological shock to permit these invasions to take place.
Uncovered echoed the tired, false official claims that 9/11 was a surprise attack. While Move On's "misleader.org" division has published a report that shows that the Bush administration did have some prior knowledge of the "attack," that report still doesn't go beyond the "incompetence" theory of 9/11. After more than two years of leaks, connecting the dots, and numerous serious independent investigations it is clear that the only possible accurate debate would be whether the Bush regime merely let 9/11 happen for political benefits or actually engineered the attacks. Discussion of whether Bush's assistants were lying when they claimed that they couldn't have envisioned a plane-into-building scenario are a distraction from deeper, more compelling evidence of complicity, especially since the CIA and National Reconnaissance Office were practicing a plane-into-building emergency exercise in Virginia on the morning of 9/11. http://www.oilempire.us/911.html
A much better film about US / Iraq relations
Hidden Wars of Desert Storm
http://hiddenwars.com -- official site for the film
Acclaimed by the NY Times as an "uncommonly sober, well-researched film", "Hidden Wars of Desert Storm" investigates the origins of the Gulf War, explains the US Gov.'s specific motives in going at war in 1991 and exposes the mechanisms of war-profiteering that seem destined to shape US foreign policies time after time. The doc also covers the Pentagon's use of radioactive ammunitions in the Gulf and their impact on both the local populations and allied forces.
Find out today why this incredible, award-winning documentary has been shown and acclaimed in well over 30 countries including all of Europe but has been forcefully shuned by all the US mainstream media. Featuring exclusive interviews of Norman Schwarzkopf, Ramsey Clark, Denis Haliday and Scott Ritter as well as unseen before war footage and documents. Narrated by John Hurt. (60 minutes) $19.95 + s&h http://www.fromthewilderness.com/store/videos.html
Regime Rotation
MoveOn is a core part of the Democratic party wing of the establishment to co-opt and muzzle dissent, an effort to support the CIA's fight with the Bush administration to ensure that dissent stays limited enough to ensure "regime rotation" instead of "regime change" in November.
Regime Rotation consists of unseating Bush but replacing him with another President who will continue the empire's global domination efforts, although with more tact, better speeches and a few token distractions for domestic and international opinion increasingly opposed to the Bush regime's outrages.
Regime Rotation exposes the war on Iraq as a deception, but not the September 11 "Reichstag Fire." Regime rotation recommends that 9/11 be seen as a result of incompetence and / or lack of coordination by the intelligence agencies (which only need more billions and less restrictions to ensure it won't happen again), even though there is an enormous amount of evidence that 9/11 was an "inside job."
Regime Rotation wants to keep the occupation of Iraq going. The three main opposition candidates - Clark, Dean and Kerry - all support keeping troops in the oil fields, although they state that the invasion was a mistake. A Democratic victory in November would allow Bush and the Project for a New American Century "neo-conservatives" to have done the dirty work getting the oil wars going (and "homeland security" to be installed for addressing domestic dissent as the economy continues to unravel), and allow the "Good Cop" of a Democrat to continue the war with less domestic opposition, UN blessing and European money and soldiers. These oil wars are the United States's response to peak oil, and will continue as long as the oil lasts (Cheney calls it the war that will not end in our lifetime) or until the US is willing to undertake a massive reduction of energy consumption and investment of resources into a more locally based, renewable energy society.
"we are witnessing a sequential war to control the largest reserves on a planet that is running out of oil."
- Michael Ruppert, Crossing The Rubicon: America's Descent into Fascism at the End of the Age of Oil
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/022803_chap_23.html
2004 -- The Year of the Law and of Living Dangerously
Seemingly Unsolvable Legal Traps Face an Administration Running Out of Wiggle Room
Something "Big" Will Prevent Saddam from Coming to Trial
by Michael C. Ruppert
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/123103_danger.html
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/070103_beyond_bush_1.html
BEYOND BUSH
July 1, 2003 1600 PDT (FTW) -- Let's just suppose for a moment that George W. Bush was removed from the White House. Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Wolfowitz and Rove too. What would that leave us with? It would leave us stuck in hugely expensive, Vietnam-like guerrilla wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It would leave us with the Patriot Act, Homeland Security and Total Information Awareness snooping into every detail of our lives. It would leave us with a government in violation of the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th Amendments to the Constitution. It would leave us with a massive cover-up of US complicity in the attacks of 9/11 that, if fully admitted, would show not intelligence "failures" but intelligence crimes, approved and ordered by the most powerful people in the country. It would leave us with a government that now has the power to compel mass vaccinations on pain of imprisonment or fine, and with no legal ability to sue the vaccine makers who killed our friends or our children. It would leave us with two and half million unemployed; the largest budget deficits in history; more than $3.3 trillion missing from the Department of Defense; and state and local governments broke to the point of having to cut back essential services like sewers, police, and fire. It would leave us with a federal government that had hit the debt ceiling and was unable to borrow any more money. And we would still be facing a looming natural gas crisis of unimagined proportions, and living on a planet that is slowly realizing that it is running out of oil with no "Plan B". Our airports however, would be very safe, and shares of Halliburton, Lockheed and DynCorp would be paying excellent dividends.
This is not good management.
Leaving all of these issues unaddressed is not good management either.
And this is why, as I will demonstrate in this article, the decision has already been made by corporate and financial powers to remove George W. Bush, whether he wants to leave or not, and whether he steals the next election or not. Before you start cheering, ask yourself three questions: "If there is someone or something that can decide that Bush will not return, nor remain for long, what is it? And if that thing is powerful enough to remove Bush, was it not also powerful enough to have put him there in the first place? And if that is the case, then isn't that what's really responsible for the state of things? George W. Bush is just a hired CEO who is about to be removed by the "Board of Directors". Who are they? Are they going to choose his replacement? Are you going to help them?
What can change this Board of Directors and the way the "Corporation" protects its interests? These are the only issues that matter.
So now the honest question about the 2004 Presidential campaign is, "What do you really want out of it?" Do you want the illusion that everything is a little better while it really gets worse? Or are you ready yet to roll up your sleeves and make some very unpleasant but necessary fixes?
The greatest test of the 2004 presidential election campaign is not with the candidates. It is with the people. There are strong signs that presidential election issues on the Democratic side are already being manipulated by corporate and financial interests. And some na�ve and well-intentioned (and some not-so-na�ve and not-so-well intentioned) activists are already playing right into the Board's hands. There are many disturbing signs that the only choice offered to the American people will be no choice at all. Under the psychological rationale, "This is the way it has to be done", campaign debates will likely address only half-truths and fail to come to grips with - or even acknowledge - the most important issues that I just described. In fact, only the least important issues will likely be addressed in campaign 2004 at the usual expense of future generations who are rapidly realizing that they are about to become the victims of the biggest Holocaust in mankind's history. The final platforms for Election 2004 will likely be manifestos of madness unless we dictate differently.
Some on the Democratic side are already positioning themselves to co-opt and control what happened on 9/11 into a softer, less disturbing "Better this than nothing" strategy. This attitude, that the only thing that matters is finding an electable Democrat, is nothing more than a rearrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic. Has everyone suddenly forgotten that the 2000 election was stolen: first by using software and political machinery to disenfranchise tens of thousands of eligible voters, then by open interference at polling places, and finally by an absolutely illegal Supreme Court decision? Do these people believe that such a crime, absolutely successful the first time, will never be attempted again?
And has everyone also forgotten that in the 2002 midterm elections the proprietary voting software, in many cases owned by those affiliated with the Republican Party or - as in the case of Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska - the candidates themselves, has been ruled by the Supreme Court to be immune from public inspection. (Hagel won by a lopsided 83% majority). Throughout the United States in 2002 there was abundant evidence that the so-called "solution" to hanging chads did nothing more than enshrine the ability to steal elections with immunity and also much less fuss afterwards? Who in their right mind would trust such a system? Why have none of the candidates mentioned it?
And, if all else fails, we can have more Wellstone plane crashes. It has worked with three Democratic Senate candidates in key races over the last thirty years. Maybe that's why no one in Congress is talking about the election process. Plane crashes are part of that process too.
Unless people find the will to address scandals, lies, and betrayals of trust that, by their very existence, reveal that the system itself is corrupt and that the people controlling it - both in government, and in America's corporations and financial institutions -- are criminals, there is no chance to make anything better, only an absolute certainty that things will get worse. ....
Unless people find the will to address scandals, lies, and betrayals of trust that, by their very existence, reveal that the system itself is corrupt and that the people controlling it - both in government, and in America's corporations and financial institutions -- are criminals, there is no chance to make anything better, only an absolute certainty that things will get worse. ....
There is only one difference between the evidence showing the Bush administration's criminal culpability in and foreknowledge of the attacks of 9/11, and the evidence showing that the administration deceived the American public about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Both sets of evidence are thoroughly documented. They are irrefutable and based upon government records and official statements and actions shown to be false, misleading or dishonest. And both sets of evidence are unimpeachable. The difference is that the evidence showing the Iraqi deception is being seriously and widely investigated by the mainstream press, and actively by an ever-increasing number of elected representatives. That's it.
The Center for American Progress
This group, which co-sponsored the "Uncovered" film, is a Democratic party think tank in Washington, DC. Its website - americanprogress.org - shows carefully nuanced support for the "War on Terror," the Homeland Security" scare system, and other pillars of the new world war.
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=3459
"In a world of unprecedented threats, the Center for American Progress encourages policies that protect the American people and further our national interests. We promote the need for a strong, smart military and believe that America must safeguard its homeland, fight terrorism and take on threats that know no borders. And we believe that America's interests are advanced when we strengthen alliances and work with multilateral institutions that support the rule of law."
In other words, we want to continue the "War on Terror" but we would prefer it if we could get Europe to help shoulder the burden for troops and the cost of occupying the Mideast oil fields.
CAP "senior fellow" P.J. Crowley, a Clinton administration military official, wrote a January 6, 2004 article titled "Code Orange" that accepted most of the core paradigms used by the Bush administration's psychological terror campaign against the American public. It does have some limited criticisms of Bush's "Homeland Security" program, claiming that we're not spending enough on it, that we are not yet screening every visitor to the country, and does not even hint at any possibilities that even some of the "Terror" alerts could be an effort to dominate the public consciousness, especially in an election year.
Comparing this column at http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=18264 and Orange Code Terror Alert based on Fabricated Intelligence by Michel Chossudovsky at http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO401A.html is like reading about parallel universes. Considering the long history of deception and staged terror to panic populations into supporting war, any legitimate investigation would include the volume of evidence that suggests that these tactics are at the core of the 9/11 story.
CAP's December 16, 2003 page about the "Status of al-Qaeda" completely supports the official Bush administration viewhttp://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=15100 There is not any mention of how al-Qaeda's predecessor was established by the CIA and Pakistani intelligence, and that the US has worked with al-Qaeda for many years, including in Kosovo during the war in former Yugoslavia. See http://www.oilempire.us/qaeda.html for more on that. Michel Chossudovsky states that al-Qaeda is essentially an "intelligence asset," an organization that performs certain useful tasks despite not being pro-American.
CAP endorses the Homeland Security surveillance system that is photographing and fingerprinting foreign arrivals at US airports, and their complaints about the program focus on the incompleteness of the effort. While they have some civil liberties concerns about this, they don't make the most obvious comment that this policy is a step toward a totalitarian surveillance society where "biometric" screening will be needed for travel.
"Only the first phase of US VISIT has been implemented, leaving substantial vulnerabilities at our borders"
Introduction of US VISIT Program
January 7, 2004 http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=18894
CAP's views on civil liberties are schizophrenic - the "war on terror" is the root cause of the decimation of domestic liberties underway since 9/11 (and before that excuse was perpetrated). Undoing this assault is unlikely to happen without a full exposure of the deepest, ugliest truths of 9/11 complicity.
"The Bush administration has done an impressive job of showing the world what we're against, but has been far less adept at showing the world what we're for. Protecting and defending America's security cannot be just about fighting evil or killing our enemies. It must also be about protecting and defending fundamental rights."
Standing Up for Human Rights
December 10, 2003
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/apps/s/content.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=3746&content_id={DE1B5E75-99A9-45F0-B234-36643D7A1066}
Their manifesto Progressivism in 2004: Transcending the Liberal-Conservative Divide by John Halpin, January 5, 2004 gives "progressive" a bad name. They suggest that "progressives" support the "war on terror" -- and therefore, support the Bush administration view that 9/11 was actually a surprise attack, even though there is not any credible evidence to justify that theory.
"Progressives do not cede ground on patriotism or protecting the American people. In this sense, we view the fight against terrorism much as we did those against Nazism, fascism and totalitarianism - American battles that are not the monopoly of any particular ideology or political party. Progressive leaders such as Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy fought to make the world safe for democracy, and progressives are there today to defend America against on-going terrorist threats." http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=18188
It's probably too much to ask CAP to discuss how President Kennedy tried to stop the war machine during his final year in office (after the Cuban Missile Crisis nearly erupted into full scale nuclear war) and was murdered by the military and CIA. The Democratic Party has been a shadow organization ever since, and now seems destined for permanent minority status.
Move On and Impeachment
Move On was founded by wealthy Silicon Valley Democrats as a Clinton support group during his impeachment in 1998. Move On meant "Censure and Move On," urging an end to the Republican's impeachment campaign for the President's lying about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Clinton was eventually impeached by the House, but not convicted by the Senate, so he was allowed to serve out his second term.
This approach -- to impeach on the less serious charges and ignore the more serious crimes -- was used in both Clinton's impeachment and the threatened impeachment of Richard Nixon in 1974. Clinton's crimes included much deeper issues than Monica - his involvement as Governor in the Iran-Contra scandal (helping to coverup the CIA's use of the Mena, Arkansas airport to smuggle cocaine to fund the contra war) would have been a much more important prosecution. And Nixon was slated to be impeached for lying, burglary and obstruction in the Watergate scandal, but an Impeachment resolution for his illegal bombing of Cambodia was not voted on favorably by the House Judiciary Committee. In other words, Nixon, if he hadn't resigned to avoid impeachment, would have been impeached for Watergate but not for mass murder.
In scandal after scandal, this is how the American empire has managed the crises -- the "limited hang out" (fessing up to a small crime to avoid looking at the deeper crimes). See http://www.oilempire.us/limited.html for several articles that address "Limited Hang Outs" in the context of 9/11.
A side note: Move On seems to be uninterested in efforts to support the impeachment of the Bush administration, even though their two million email contacts could be very effective at elevated the concept of (and reasons for) impeachment if they dared to discuss it. This hesitation parallels the reluctance of the Democratic party to support efforts to impeach Reagan (in 1987 for Iran-Contra) and Bush the First (in 1991 for preparing the Iraq war without Congressional approval). In those cases, the late Representative Henry Gonzalez (D-TX) filed impeachment resolutions but could not find a single co-sponsor. Why are the Democrats so allergic to impeachment? Is it because they fear the covert power of the military / intelligence complex?
http://www.counterpunch.org/christison12132003.html
December 13 / 14, 2003
Chickenhearts at Notre Dame
The Pervasive Fear of Talking About the Israeli Connection
By BILL and KATHLEEN CHRISTISON
It is wide open now. Israelis are training Americans at Fort Bragg on their well tested techniques for carrying out targeted--and of course extrajudicial--assassinations. Americans in Iraq are copying this and all the other wretchedly cruel, unjust (and failed) Israeli occupation tactics in the West Bank and Gaza, tactics that the U.S. through its massive aid enables and encourages Israel to pursue. It is impossible to exaggerate the stupidity and just plain evil of the Bush administration in transferring such copycat policies to Iraq, at a time when hatred of U.S. policies is already rising daily around the world. The training of assassination teams is only one of many manifestations of the United States' "Israeli connection."
At the same time, almost all influential individuals and groups in the U.S. political landscape still shy away from discussing the degree to which this Israeli connection has been a major factor in determining the entire complex of U.S. policies on Iraq and the Middle East since September 11. In the eyes of most Americans, the correctness of the ever stronger ties between the right-wing governments of the United States and Israel is simply not to be questioned. (If you do question these ties, you must be prepared to deal either with suspicions of anti-Semitism that may be directed at you, or, more likely, with suggestions that you are simply "too far out" of the mainstream and therefore deserve no further consideration. In the latter case, an unspoken motive of your interlocutors is often that they fear being charged with anti-Semitism, or with being "self-hating Jews," if they seem to agree with you.)
(The tribulations of the peace movement over the Israeli connection and how to deal with it are treated in considerable detail in several chapters of the new book, The Politics of Anti-Semitism, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair.) In this case, the two of us were asked to participate as interviewees in the film and video Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War, recently released by Moveon.org and The Center for American Progress in association with Artists United. We agreed to do so and were interviewed for over an hour. But only one of us actually appears in the final video, and only for a few seconds. We assume that most of the footage of us ended up on the cutting room floor because we had discussed at length the Israeli connection in the U.S. war against Iraq.
Through interviews with several dozen people interspersed with film clips of senior officials doing their dirty work, the video gives a fascinating account--guaranteed to hold your attention--of the lies and distortions used by the Bush administration to mislead the nation into the war. It does a superb job in demonstrating how administration leaders from Bush to Cheney to Powell to Rumsfeld to Rice used the issue of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) as the main pretext to generate popular support in the U.S. for the war. The film is a high-quality production that everyone should see.
But--this piece of art is subtitled The Whole Truth About the Iraq War, and it by no means lives up to that billing. The reason is that the Israeli connection is nowhere mentioned. Once again, the subject is taboo.
Although the war was sold to Congress and the public on the basis of the WMD issue, many of us believed for months before the war that the actual reasons the Bush administration invaded Iraq were the U.S. drive for global domination, oil--and Israel. Cheney, Rumsfeld, and neocons in the administration, some of whom quite clearly have displayed loyalties toward Likud governments in Israel, have strongly supported war with Iraq at least since the mid-1990s, and their reasons for doing so have included the strengthening of Israel's hegemony in the Middle East. A video that claims to present the entire truth about the Iraq war should at least include some discussion of the relationship of Israel to that war. Even if one disagrees with the judgment that key U.S. supporters of Israel's Likud government played a significant role in getting the U.S. into this war, the evidence is massive that most people in most Arab nations believe Israel to be one of the reasons the U.S. initiated the war. That alone should be reason enough to have included some discussion of the issue in this video.
Some might argue that constraints of length (the video is 56 minutes long) required that the producers deal only with the most important issues, and that anything related to Israel was of less importance. This is merely a convenient rationalization. As on many other occasions, it is too easy to sweep the Israeli-Palestinian conflict under the carpet in order to achieve greater apparent unity in the peace movement. Both right-wing Americans and right-wing Israelis may believe that the fate of the Palestinians is not the most important issue facing their governments' policies in the Middle East today. But in fact it is. Palestinians will not go the way of Native Americans. Nor will they ever disappear into other Arab lands. They are simply too numerous, and their numbers are growing. Their cause is too important to other Arabs and Muslims, most of whom care deeply about Palestinian oppression at Israel's hands.
Contrary to the hopes of the Bush and Sharon administrations, it will not be possible for them to so "transform" the politics and societies of the Middle East that hatred of U.S. and Israeli policies, and terrorism against these two states and their few remaining allies, will simply fade away. It is the policies of the U.S. and Israel themselves that will have to change, if the world is to have any chance of peace and stability in the next few decades.
To repeat, these points, or at least discussion of them, should be part of every study or video or any other serious analysis of what is going on in the Middle East today. It is vital that we break through the taboos, which have, if anything, grown stronger in recent months.
Bill Christison joined the CIA in 1950, and served on the analysis side of the Agency for 28 years. From the early 1970s he served as National Intelligence Officer (principal adviser to the Director of Central Intelligence on certain areas) for, at various times, Southeast Asia, South Asia and Africa. Before he retired in 1979 he was Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis, a 250-person unit.
Kathleen Christison also worked in the CIA, retiring in 1979. Since then she has been mainly preoccupied by the issue of Palestine. She is the author of Perceptions of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession.
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