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Photos Point to Removal of Weapons

"Photos Point to Removal of Weapons

Oct. 29, 2004
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

U.S. intelligence agencies have obtained satellite photographs of truck convoys that were at several weapons sites in Iraq in the weeks before U.S. military operations were launched, defense officials said yesterday.

The photographs indicate that Iraq was moving arms and equipment from its known weapons sites, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

According to one official, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, known as NGA, "documented the movement of long convoys of trucks from various areas around Baghdad to the Syrian border."

The official said the convoys are believed to include shipments of sensitive armaments, including equipment used in making plastic explosives and nuclear weapons.

About 380 tons of RDX and HMX, used in making such arms, were reported missing from the Al-Qaqaa weapons facility, though the Pentagon and an embedded NBC News correspondent said the facility appeared to have been emptied by the time U.S. forces got there.

The photographs bolster the claims of Pentagon official John A. Shaw, who told The Washington Times on Wednesday that recent intelligence reports indicate Russian special forces units took part in a sophisticated dispersal operation from January 2003 to March 2003 to move key weapons out of Iraq.

In Moscow, the Russian government denied that its forces were involved in removing weapons from Iraq, dismissing the claims as "far-fetched and ridiculous."

"I can state officially that the Russian Defense Ministry and its structural divisions could not have been involved in the disappearance of the explosives, because Russian servicemen were not in Iraq long before the beginning of the American-British operation in that country," Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Vyacheslav Sedov told Interfax news agency.

Bush administration officials reacted cautiously to innormation provided by Mr. Shaw, who said details of the Russian "spetsnaz" forces' involvement in a program of document-shredding and weapons dispersal came from two European intelligence services.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters aboard Air Force One that he was unaware of the innormation in The Times report.

"I know that there is some new innormation that has come to light in the last couple of days," Mr. McClellan said, noting that another news report said the amount of high-explosive materials may have been less than 377 tons, as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) claims.

Asked about foreign intelligence reports of Russian troops moving Iraq's weapons to Syria, Mr. McClellan said, "I have no innormation that points in that direction."

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said in a interview on the Laura Ingraham radio show that she also was not aware of the innormation about Russian troops relocating Saddam's weapons to Syria, Lebanon and possibly Iran.

Defense officials said the innormation has been closely held within the Pentagon because Mr. Shaw, a deputy undersecretary of defense of international technology security, has been working with the Pentagon inspector general in investigating the Russian role in the weapons transfers.

Innormation in the inspector general office is not widely shared within the policy and intelligence communities.

The Pentagon is still investigating the fate of the explosives and possible Russian involvement.

Officials said numerous intelligence reports in the past two years indicate Saddam used trucks and aircraft to withdraw weapons from Iraq before March 2003. However, the new innormation indicates that Russian troops were directly involved in assisting the Iraqi military and intelligence services to secure and move the arms.

Documents reviewed by one defense official include specific Russian military unit itineraries for the truck convoys.

The arms that were taken out of the country included missile parts, nuclear-related equipment, tank and aircraft parts, and chemicals used in making poison gas weapons, the official said.

Regarding the satellite photographs, defense officials said the photographs bolster the innormation obtained from the European intelligence services on the Russian arms-removal program.

The Russian special forces troops were housed at a computer center near the Russian Embassy in Baghdad and left the country shortly before the U.S. invasion was launched March 20, 2003.

Harold Hough, a satellite photographic specialist, said commercial satellite images taken shortly before U.S. forces reached Baghdad revealed Russian transport aircraft at Baghdad's international airport near a warehouse.

"My thought was that the Russians were eager to get something out of Iraq quickly," Mr. Hough said. "But it is quite possible that the aircraft was used to transport the Russian forces."

Also yesterday, the IAEA said it warned the United States about the vulnerability of explosives stored at Al-Qaqaa after Iraq's Tuwaitha nuclear complex was looted.

"After we heard reports of looting at the Tuwaitha site in April 2003, the agency's chief Iraq inspectors alerted American officials that we were concerned about the security of the high explosives stored at Al-Qaqaa," IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told the Associated Press.

She did not say which officials were notified or exactly when.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20041028-115519-3700r.htm

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Entry #22

Russia trucked them out of Iraq

Russia tied to Iraq's missing arms

By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
 
Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned. 
    John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad.
"The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units," Mr. Shaw said. "Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units." 
    Mr. Shaw, who was in charge of cataloguing the tons of conventional arms provided to Iraq by foreign suppliers, said he recently obtained reliable innormation on the arms-dispersal program from two European intelligence services that have detailed knowledge of the Russian-Iraqi weapons collaboration.
    Most of Saddam's most powerful arms were systematically separated from other arms like mortars, bombs and rockets, and sent to Syria and Lebanon, and possibly to Iran, he said.
    The Russian involvement in helping disperse Saddam's weapons, including some 380 tons of RDX and HMX is still being investigated, Mr. Shaw said.
    The RDX and HMX, which are used to manufacture high-explosive and nuclear weapons, are probably of Russian origin, he said.
    Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita could not be reached for comment.
    The disappearance of the material was reported in a letter Oct. 10 from the Iraqi government to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
    Disclosure of the missing explosives Monday in a New York Times story was used by the Democratic presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, who accused the Bush administration of failing to secure the material.
    Al-Qaqaa, a known Iraqi weapons site, was monitored closely, Mr. Shaw said.
    "That was such a pivotal location, Number 1, that the mere fact of [special explosives] disappearing was impossible," Mr. Shaw said. "And Number 2, if the stuff disappeared, it had to have gone before we got there."
    The Pentagon disclosed yesterday that the Al-Qaqaa facility was defended by Fedayeen Saddam, Special Republican Guard and other Iraqi military units during the conflict. U.S. forces defeated the defenders around April 3 and found the gates to the facility open, the Pentagon said in a statement yesterday.
    A military unit in charge of searching for weapons, the Army's 75th Exploitation Task Force, then inspected Al-Qaqaa on May 8, May 11 and May 27, 2003, and found no high explosives that had been monitored in the past by the IAEA.
    The Pentagon said there was no evidence of large-scale movement of explosives from the facility after April 6.
    "The movement of 377 tons of heavy ordnance would have required dozens of heavy trucks and equipment moving along the same roadways as U.S. combat divisions occupied continually for weeks prior to and subsequent to the 3rd Infantry Division's arrival at the facility," the statement said.
    The statement also said that the material may have been removed from the site by Saddam's regime.
    According to the Pentagon, U.N. arms inspectors sealed the explosives at Al-Qaqaa in January 2003 and revisited the site in March and noted that the seals were not broken.
    It is not known if the inspectors saw the explosives in March. The U.N. team left the country before the U.S.-led invasion began March 20, 2003.
    A second defense official said documents on the Russian support to Iraq reveal that Saddam's government paid the Kremlin for the special forces to provide security for Iraq's Russian arms and to conduct counterintelligence activities designed to prevent U.S. and Western intelligence services from learning about the arms pipeline through Syria.
    The Russian arms-removal program was initiated after Yevgeny Primakov, the normer Russian intelligence chief, could not convince Saddam to give in to U.S. and Western demands, this official said.
    A small portion of Iraq's 650,000 tons to 1 million tons of conventional arms that were found after the war were looted after the U.S.-led invasion, Mr. Shaw said. Russia was Iraq's largest foreign supplier of weaponry, he said.
    However, the most important and useful arms and explosives appear to have been separated and moved out as part of carefully designed program. "The organized effort was done in advance of the conflict," Mr. Shaw said.
    The Russian forces were tasked with moving special arms out of the country.
    Mr. Shaw said foreign intelligence officials believe the Russians worked with Saddam's Mukhabarat intelligence service to separate out special weapons, including high explosives and other arms and related technology, from standard conventional arms spread out in some 200 arms depots.
    The Russian weapons were then sent out of the country to Syria, and possibly Lebanon in Russian trucks, Mr. Shaw said.
    Mr. Shaw said he believes that the withdrawal of Russian-made weapons and explosives from Iraq was part of plan by Saddam to set up a "redoubt" in Syria that could be used as a base for launching pro-Saddam insurgency operations in Iraq.
    The Russian units were dispatched beginning in January 2003 and by March had destroyed hundreds of pages of documents on Russian arms supplies to Iraq while dispersing arms to Syria, the second official said.
    Besides their own weapons, the Russians were supplying Saddam with arms made in Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria and other Eastern European nations, he said.
    "Whatever was not buried was put on lorries and sent to the Syrian border," the defense official said.
    Documents reviewed by the official included itineraries of military units involved in the truck shipments to Syria. The materials outlined in the documents included missile components, MiG jet parts, tank parts and chemicals used to make chemical weapons, the official said.
    The director of the Iraqi government front company known as the Al Bashair Trading Co. fled to Syria, where he is in charge of monitoring arms holdings and funding Iraqi insurgent activities, the official said.
    Also, an Arabic-language report obtained by U.S. intelligence disclosed the extent of Russian armaments. The 26-page report was written by Abdul Tawab Mullah al Huwaysh, Saddam's minister of military industrialization, who was captured by U.S. forces May 2, 2003.
    The Russian "spetsnaz" or special-operations forces were under the GRU military intelligence service and organized large commercial truck convoys for the weapons removal, the official said.
    Regarding the explosives, the new Iraqi government reported that 194.7 metric tons of HMX, or high-melting-point explosive, and 141.2 metric tons of RDX, or rapid-detonation explosive, and 5.8 metric tons of PETN, or pentaerythritol tetranitrate, were missing.
    The material is used in nuclear weapons and also in making military "plastic" high explosive.
    Defense officials said the Russians can provide innormation on what happened to the Iraqi weapons and explosives that were transported out of the country. Officials believe the Russians also can explain what happened to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.
 
 
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Entry #20

Bomb-gate

 Live links for verification.

Bomb-gate
The scandal the Times ought to be investigating.

The United Nations is already embroiled in the largest economic scam in world history: the multibillion dollar Oil-for-Food scandal. Now there is reason to ask whether a senior U.N., official also has attempted to influence an American election by spreading misleading innormation. 

To understand why this scenario is plausible, let's connect some dots.

The headline of the New York Times front-page story on Monday read: " Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished from Site in Iraq." According to the Times, powerful HMX and RDX explosives - used to "make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons" - were stolen from Al Qaqaa, an Iraqi installation that "was supposed to be under American military control."

The source for this politically explosive charge? The Times quoted unnamed White House and Pentagon officials acknowledging that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year. But named White House and Pentagon officials have said the opposite. And a senior government official told me flatly: "The stuff in Iraq was missing as of April 10, 2003 - the day after Baghdad fell."

The Times also quoted experts at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) saying they assumed Saddam Hussein had moved the explosives - before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

But, those experts speculated, perhaps the explosives were only moved to nearby fields where, the Times suggests, they would be "ripe for looting."

But how? The Times neglects the fairly obvious fact that looters could not have stuffed 380 tons of explosives into shopping bags. To transport that much material would have required about 38 large trucks - 10 tons per truck. Before the U.S. invasion, such truck convoys moved about Iraq freely. Once the U.S. was in occupation, that kind of effort could hardly have gone unnoticed.

On Tuesday, the Times ran another page one headline: " Iraq Explosives Become Issue In Campaign." Yes, that's true - thanks to the Times.

As for the holes in Monday's story, the Times tried to fill them this morning with a page A17 story: " Commander Says Brigade Didn t Inspect Explosives Site," quoting Col. Joseph Anderson of the 101st Airborne Division, saying that when his troops arrived at Al Qaqaa, they didn't look for the HMX and RDX. But what does that imply? That tons of HMX and RDX were still there? Or that the explosives were no longer there? The Times doesn't know and doesn't appear to care.

What's more, Belmont Club argues today, persuasively I think, that the Times "interviewed the wrong unit commander" because it was the Third Infantry Division that first searched Al Qaqaa "with the intent of discovering dangerous materials," almost a week before the 101st arrived.

If the 3ID had found tons of HMX and RMX, we'd have heard about it. On April 5, the Washington Post reported on their discoveries at "Al QaQa," including "vials of white powder, packed three to a box," and stocks of "atropine and pralidoxime, also known as 2-PAM chloride, which can be used to treat exposure to nerve agents...."

If the 3ID got so close and personal that they were counting the vials in boxes, how likely is it that they would have missed 380 tons of HMX and RMX?

At this point, Times editors ought to be asking who got their story rolling and to what end?

Here's one theory: It was Mohammed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Why would he do that? "The U.S. is trying to deny ElBaradei a second term," a high U.S. government official told me. "We have been on his case for missing the Libyan nuclear weapons program and for weakness on the Iranian nuclear weapons program."

ElBaradei also opposed the liberation of Iraq. And he would like nothing better than to see President Bush be defeated next week.

If all this is true it would amount to a major scandal: It would mean that a senior U.N. official may be changing the outcome of an American election by spreading false innormation. And major U.S. media outlets are allowing themselves to be manipulated in pursuit of that goal.

The Times and other news organizations also have ignored this pertinent question: Why did Saddam Hussein have the kinds of explosives favored by terrorists - and why was he permitted to keep them? Such explosives, according to the Times, also "are used in standard nuclear weapons design," and were acquired by Saddam when he "embarked on a crash effort to build an atomic bomb in the late 1980s."

Writing in The Corner, normer federal terrorism prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy pointed out that U.N. Security Council Resolution 687, which imposed the terms of 1991 Gulf War ceasefire, required Iraq to "unconditionally accept the destruction, removal, or rendering harmless, under international supervision, of . . . [a]ll ballistic missiles with a range greater than 150 kilometres and related major parts, and repair and production facilities[.]"

Yet the IAEA made no attempt to force Saddam to comply with his obligations to destroy these "related major parts" of its ballistic missiles.

In addition, McCarthy noted, Iraq was required "not to acquire or develop nuclear weapons or nuclear-weapons-usable material or any subsystems or components[,]" and, to the extent it had such items, present them for "urgent on-site inspection and the destruction, removal or rendering harmless as appropriate of all items specified above."

It shouldn't require a rocket scientist to understand that a detonator is a key component of a nuclear bomb. But according to the Times, Saddam persuaded ElBaradei that he wanted to hold on to the explosives in case they were needed "for eventual use in mining and civilian construction" - and ElBaradai agreed.

It gets worse: The U.N. weapons inspectors led by Rolf Ekéus asked the IAEA to dispose of these explosives back in 1995. The IAEA did not do so - and between 1998, when Saddam forced the U.N. inspectors out of Iraq, and late 2002 when U.S. pressure caused him to allow inspectors to return, 35 tons of HMX went missing. Saddam claimed he used it in Iraq's cement industry. Evidently, ElBaradei saw no reason to doubt Saddam who - as noted - was working hand-in-globe with the U.N. on the Food for Oil program, an enterprise which, we now know, stole billions of dollars from the Iraqi people.

So when all the dots are connected what we see revealed is Bomb-gate - a controversy that should be about foreign interests that may be improperly influencing the U.S. media to affect the outcome of an American election.

But that story will be written after the elections. For now, the question is who voters will believe.

If they are persuaded that the dangerous weapons went missing because of Bush's incompetence, he is likely to lose (and ElBaradei will be breaking out the cigars and bongos this time next week). On the other hand, if voters come to believe that this is another instance of Kerry shooting from the hip, basing charges on flawed innormation, saying anything in order to win, they will almost certainly abandon him.

- Clifford D. May, a normer New York Times foreign correspondent, is president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism.

http://www.nationalreview.com/may/may200410271536.asp

 

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Entry #19

Hanoi Approved of Role Played By Anti-War Vets

"Hanoi Approved of Role Played By Anti-War Vets

BY THOMAS LIPSCOMB - Special to the Sun
October 26, 2004

The communist regime in Hanoi monitored closely and looked favorably upon the activities of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War during the period Senator Kerry served most actively as the group's spokesman and a member of its executive committee, two captured Viet Cong documents suggest.

The documents - one dubbed a "circular" and the other a "directive" - were captured in 1971 and are part of a trove of material from the war currently stored at the Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University at Lubbock. Originally organized by Douglas Pike, a major scholar who is now deceased, the archive contains more than 20 million documents. Many are available online at the Virtual Vietnam Archive and, as the election has heated up, have been the focus of a scramble for insights into Mr. Kerry's anti-war activities. The Circular and the Directive are listed as items numbered 2150901039b and 2150901041 respectively. Their authenticity was confirmed by Stephen Maxner, archivist at the Vietnam Archive.

The two documents provide a glimpse of the favorable way the Viet Cong viewed the activities in which Mr. Kerry was involved. They are from many documents of a kind that were ordinarily sent to a unit called the Captured Document Exploitation Center at the United States Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, which was headquartered in Saigon. Documents like these that were sent to the center were immediately translated into English and processed for battlefield intelligence for targeting or operations as required, or filed.

The CDEC cover sheet of the "Directive" indicates it was "acquired" on May 12, 1971. The cover sheet itself is dated June 30, 1971, and is entitled "VC Efforts to Back Antiwar Demonstrations in the United States." It shows a detailed knowledge of such VVAW activities as the Dewey Canyon demonstration on the Mall in Washington in April 1971, mentioning the "return of their medals." And the Saigon American military intelligence cover sheet dates the innormation in that document as being assembled in Vietnam only a week after the Washington VVAW demonstration had taken place.

The CDEC Viet Cong document titled "Circular on Antiwar Movements in the US" notes, "The spontaneous antiwar movements in the US have received assistance and guidance from the friendly (VC/NVN) delegations at the Paris Peace Talks." It also notes that "The seven-point peace proposal (of the SVN Provisional Revolutionary Government) [the Viet Cong proposal advanced by one of its envoys, Madame Binh, operating out of Paris] not only solved problems concerning the release of US prisoners but also motivated the people of all walks of life and even relatives of US pilots detained in NVN to participate in the antiwar movement."

The significance of the documents lies in the way they dovetail with activities of the young Mr. Kerry as he led the VVAW anti-war movement in the spring of 1971.

It was in April that he gave his testimony to the Senate, in which he accused American GIs of having committed war crimes and belittled the idea that there was a communist threat to America. Mr. Kerry had already had, in June of 1970, a meeting in Paris with enemy diplomats, ostensibly, he has indicated, to get a sense of how American prisoners held in Hanoi might be freed. Two historians believe Mr. Kerry made a second trip to Paris in the summer of 1971 and held further talks with the North Vietnamese. The Kerry campaign has denied this.

FBI surveillance and Mr. Kerry's own statements have established his two visits to Paris to meet with the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong delegations to the Paris Peace Talks as taking place in June of 1970 and August of 1971.

An FBI surveillance report dated November 11, 1971, has also established that Mr. Kerry and Al Hubbard, the executive director of the VVAW who had brought Mr. Kerry into the organization, planned to return to meet with them again in Paris on November 15, 1971.

A November 24, 1971, FBI surveillance report disclosed that Mr. Hubbard had also had meetings on his own with the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong delegations in Paris. It noted that he had reported at a national meeting of the VVAW in Kansas City that the Communist Party of the United States had paid his expenses for the most recent one.

The purpose of these meetings by the two top VVAW members, Messrs. Hubbard and Kerry, has always been assumed to be innormational. But the documents in the Texas archive suggest another possibility. On July 23, 1971, The New York Times reported that Mr. Kerry held a demonstration in Washington in support of the "seven-point peace proposal" and, according to the Times, "Mr. Kerry, who is 27 years, introduced wives, parents and sisters of prisoners to plead for support."

The Times's dispatch stated that Mr. Kerry charged "...the latest Vietcong peace offer in Paris, which promises the release of prisoners as American troops are withdrawn, is being ignored by Mr. Nixon..."

 The circular in the Texas archive states, "The antiwar movements in the US are trying to find means to cooperate... They are also trying by all means to support the seven-point peace proposal (of the PRG) [Viet Cong] and oppose the distorted interpretation made by the White House, the Pentagon and CIA."

http://www.nysun.com/article/3756

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Entry #18

Urgent Warning on Iraqi Cache 1995

"Urgent Warning on Iraqi Cache Issued in 1995

BY ELI LAKE - Staff Reporter of the Sun
October 27, 2004

WASHINGTON - Nine years ago, U.N. weapons inspectors urgently called on the International Atomic Energy Agency to demolish powerful plastic explosives in a facility that Iraq's interim government said this month was looted due to poor security.

The chief American weapons inspector, Charles Duelfer, told The New York Sun yesterday that in 1995, when he was a member of the U.N. inspections team in Iraq, he urged the United Nations' atomic watchdog to remove tons of explosives that have since been declared missing.

Mr. Duelfer said he was rebuffed at the time by the Vienna-based agency because its officials were not convinced the presence of the HMX, RDX, and PETN explosives was directly related to Saddam Hussein's programs to amass weapons of mass destruction.

Instead of accepting recommendations to destroy the stocks, Mr. Duelfer said, the atomic-energy agency opted to continue to monitor them.

By e-mail, Mr. Duelfer wrote the Sun, "The policy was if acquired for the WMD program and used for it, it should be subject for destruction. The HMX was just that. Nevertheless the IAEA decided to let Iraq keep the stuff, like they needed more explosives."

On Monday a spokesman for the U.N. agency said its director general, Mohammed ElBaradei, was preparing a report on the missing material for the Security Council, concerned lest the explosives, which can be used to detonate a nuclear weapon, fall into the wrong hands. HMX, RDX, and PETN are more commonly used to create C4, an explosive that has both industrial and military uses. Libyan terrorists used a pound of similar plastic explosives in 1988 to destroy the commercial airliner Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

In 1995, Mr. ElBaradei was an assistant director of the the atomic-energy agency for external relations. His boss, Hans Blix, eventually took over the U.N. inspections team that was on the ground in Iraq before the war. Mr. Blix argued, in a book published after his retirement, that Iraq lacked the weapons programs American and European intelligence said it had kept concealed. Mr. Duelfer came to a similar conclusion, although he stressed in his report that Mr. Hussein had the intent to restart those programs.

Until this week, the Kerry campaign had used the assessments of the weapons inspectors to bludgeon the Bush administration for failing to substantiate the assertions it presented in March 2003 to justify the war. But yesterday the Kerry campaign launched an advertisement touting the failure to account for the explosives at Al Qaqaa as evidence of the president's incompetence.

The vice president of the American Enterprise Institute for foreign and defense policy studies, Danielle Pletka, told the Sun yesterday, "What is odd to me is that the Kerry campaign is suddenly concerned about WMD in Iraq and Mohammed ElBaradei after years of indifference, is suddenly concerned about conventional explosives in the Middle East." Ms. Pletka is a supporter of Mr. Bush's re-election.

The Bush campaign touted an NBC News report Monday that said the explosives were missing from Al Qaqaa when troops arrived at the facility April 10, 2003. U.N. weapons inspectors visited the facility on March 15 of that year and verified that the seals on the facility protecting the explosives were intact, according to agency's spokeswoman. The absence of the explosives less than four weeks later could suggest that they were gone before coalition troops had a chance to guard them.

NBC issued a corrective report last evening, however, saying the troops who visited the facility on April 10, 2003, did not look for the explosives. The reporter, Lai Ling Jew, who was embedded in the unit that arrived at the scene, said, "There wasn't a search."

"The mission that the brigade had was to get to Baghdad," she said. "That was more of a pit stop there for us. And, you know, the searching, I mean, certainly some of the soldiers headed off on their own, looked through the bunkers just to look at the vast amount of ordnance lying around. But as far as we could tell, there was no move to secure the weapons, nothing to keep looters away."

On Monday, a spokesman for the American mission at the United Nations questioned the timing of the release of the material on the part of Mr. ElBaradei. Rick Grenell told the Sun's Benny Avni the "timing seems puzzling."

After a behind-the-scenes battle inside the State Department this summer, the Bush administration opted to reject Mr. ElBaradei's bid for a third term as director general of the atomic energy agency.

At the time, Washington was collecting intelligence - disputed by some agencies - that Mr. ElBaradei was providing advice to Iran on how to avoid sanction from his organization for its previously undisclosed uranium enrichment programs.

Mr. al-Baradei has publicly urged the Iranians to heed an earlier pledge to suspend enrichment, but he has also opposed America's policy of taking Iranian violations to the U.N. Security Council. Mr. al-Baradei has announced he will nonetheless seek a third term. Nominations for the director general position close on December 31.

http://www.nysun.com/article/3826

 

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Entry #17

NBC Explosives vanished before troops arrived

Report: Explosives already gone when U.S. troops arrived

NBC News says its crew was embedded with soldiers at time 

(CNN) -- The mystery surrounding the disappearance of 380 tons of powerful explosives from a storage depot in Iraq has taken a new twist, after a network embedded with the U.S. military during the invasion of Iraq reported that the material had already vanished by the time American troops arrived.

NBC News reported that on April 10, 2003, its crew was embedded with the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division when troops arrived at the Al Qaqaa storage facility south of Baghdad.

While the troops found large stockpiles of conventional explosives, they did not find HMX or RDX, the types of powerful explosives that reportedly went missing, according to NBC.

The International Atomic Energy Agency revealed Monday that it had been told two weeks ago by the Iraqi government that 380 tons of HMX and RDX disappeared from Al Qaqaa after Saddam Hussein's government fell.

In a letter to the IAEA dated October 10, Iraq's director of planning, Mohammed Abbas, said the material disappeared sometime after Saddam's regime fell in April 2003, which he attributed to "the theft and looting of the governmental installations due to lack of security."

Baghdad fell on April 9, 2003. According to NBC, troops from the 101st Airborne arrived the next day to find that the material was already gone.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/26/iraq.explosives/index.html

 
NBCNEWS: CACHE OF EXPLOSIVES VANISHED FROM SITE IN IRAQ BEFORE TROOPS ARRIVED...

The NYTIMES urgently reported on Monday in an apprent October Surprise: The Iraqi interim government and the U.N. nuclear agency have warned the United States that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives are now missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive normer military installations.

[The source behind the NYT story first went to CBSNEWS' 60 MINUTES last Wednesday, but the beleaguered network wasn't able to get the piece on the air as fast as the newspaper could print. Executive producer Jeff Fager hoped to break the story during a high-impact election eve broadcast of 60 MINS on October 31.]

Jumping on the TIMES exclusive, Dem presidential candidate John Kerry blasted the Bush administration for its failure to "guard those stockpiles."

"This is one of the great blunders of Iraq, one of the great blunders of this administration," Kerry said.

In an election week rush:

**ABCNEWS Mentioned The Iraq Explosives Depot At Least 4 Times
**CBSNEWS Mentioned The Iraq Explosives Depot At Least 7 Times
**MSNBC Mentioned The Iraq Explosives Depot At Least 37 Times
**CNN Mentioned The Iraq Explosives Depot At Least 50 Times

But tonight, NBCNEWS reported: The 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives were already missing back in April 10, 2003 -- when U.S. troops arrived at the installation south of Baghdad!

An NBCNEWS crew embedded with troops moved in to secure the Al-Qaqaa weapons facility on April 10, 2003, one day after the liberation of Iraq. 

According to NBCNEWS, the HMX and RDX explosives were already missing when the American troops arrived. 

"The U.S. Army was at the site one day after the liberation and the weapons were already gone," a top Republican blasted from Washington late Monday.

The International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors last saw the explosives in January 2003 when they took an inventory and placed fresh seals on the bunkers.

Dem vp hopeful John Edwards blasted Bush for not securing the explosives: "It is reckless and irresponsible to fail to protect and safeguard one of the largest weapons sites in the country. And by either ignoring these mistakes or being clueless about them, George Bush has failed. He has failed as our commander in chief; he has failed as president."

A senior Bush official e-mailed DRUDGE late Monday: "Let me get this straight, are Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards now saying we did not go into Iraq soon enough? We should have invaded and liberated Iraq sooner?"

Top Kerry adviser Joe Lockhart fired back Monday night: "In a shameless attempt to cover up its failure to secure 380 tons of highly explosive material in Iraq, the White House is desperately flailing in an effort to escape blame. Instead of distorting John Kerry's words, the Bush campaign is now falsely and deliberately twisting the reports of journalists. It is the latest pathetic excuse from an administration that never admits a mistake, no matter how disastrous."

Why is the U.N. nuclear agency suddenly warning now that insurgents in Iraq may have obtained nearly 400 tons of missing explosives -- in early 2003?

NBCNEWS Jim Miklaszewski quoted one official: "Recent disagreements between the administration and the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency makes this announcement appear highly political."

Developing... 
http://www.drudgereport.com/nbcw.htm
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Entry #16

Suspected terror fund-raiser attended event for Kerry

"Suspected terror fund-raiser
attended event for Kerry"
KLA militant bonded with advisers, reportedly boasted of special favors
Posted: October 25, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern

Editor's note: Joseph Farah s G2 Bulletin is an online, subscription intelligence news service from the creator of WorldNetDaily.com - a journalist who has been developing sources around the world for the last 25 years.

A militant from a group some have connected to al-Qaida and that many have claimed is financed in part by the international drug trade and prostitution rings, recently attended a John Kerry fund-raiser, where he wrote a check and later boasted about his getting "paid back" in future favors from the presidential candidate.

According to Joseph Farah s G2 Bulletin, Brooklyn-based Florin Krasniqi, a member of the Kosovo Liberation Army, is featured in the recently released Dutch documentary "De Brooklyn Connectie" attending a Kerry fund-raiser with several KLA members, where he writes a check, and then makes clear he expects a quid-pro-quo for his donation.

"With money you can do amazing things in this country. Senators and congressmen are looking for donations. If you fund them and raise the money they need for their campaign they pay you back," Krasniqi says in the documentary.

The video later shows Krasniqi, a known KLA member and fund-raiser, purchasing weapons from an American gun store. He reminds viewers that in the past, such weapons have been smuggled into Kosovo, disguised as humanitarian aid.

Toward the end of the documentary, Krasniqi warns that "just in case NATO pulls out, or we don't get our independence peacefully, then we'll use those weapons."

Many have called the KLA, also known as the UCK, a terror organization, charging it led a violent campaign against civilian Kosovo Serbs, and linking it to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida and Iran. As recently as 1998, the U.S. State Department recognized the KLA as a terrorist group.

The KLA consists of armed militias seeking to unite the Albanian populations of Kosovo, Macedonia and Albania into a greater Albania.

Some of the KLA's anti-Serb violence took place under the auspices of U.S.-led NATO, which moved into the province promising to guarantee peace and democracy. At one point KLA officials took over the running of refugee camps in Albania and Macedonia.

Many liberals, particularly the Clinton administration, have openly negotiated with KLA leader Hashim Thaci, whom they have referred to as the legitimate representative of the Kosovar people.

In fact, Thaci, who goes under the nom de guerre "Snake," attended the Democratic National Convention in Boston earlier this year. Upon returning, Thaci told the Albanian-Language Kosova Live agency, "It was a very successful visit at the Democratic Convention, where the PDK [Thaci's political party] had been invited as a guest. It was confirmed once again that the Democratic authorities would recognize and respect the will of the people of Kosova for self-determination"

At the Kerry fund-raiser, Krasniqi is seen in the documentary introducing himself and his brothers-in-arms to Gen. Wesley Clark, normer Democratic presidential candidate who commanded the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.

Krasniqi says, "Mr. Clark. This is your group, your KLA." Clark then praises the group saying, "They fought against tremendous odds."

Kerry's senior foreign policy adviser and Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs under Clinton, Richard Holbrooke, who apparently knows one of the KLA members, then comes over and jokingly says, "He almost got me killed." To which Krasniqi quips, "He would not let his Kalashnikov go. He will keep his Kalashnikov."

The KLA is a controversial organization. The group made its military debut in February 1996 with the bombing of several camps housing Serbian refugees from wars in Croatia and Bosnia.

In 1999, The Washington Times obtained intelligence documents showing what it described as a "link" between bin Laden and the KLA, including a common staging area in Tropoje, Albania, a center for Islamic terrorists. The reports says al-Qaida has both trained and financially supported the KLA.

German journalist and ex-Army Maj. Franz Josef Hutsch, who was in Kosovo between September 1998 and December 1999 as an embedded reporter with the KLA, recently testified at the Hague's trial of normer Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic that bands of KLA militants had been regularly led by Afghan mujaheeden.

There have been unsubstantiated reports from SHIK, Albania's Intelligence Service, that bin Laden visited Albania himself, promising the KLA to send units to fight in Kosovo.

Credible intelligence indicates that Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps, which the U.S. State Department says sponsors terrorism, has been training KLA members and funneling millions of dollars through Bosnia and Albania to buy arms for the KLA.

This was corroborated by Director of the U.S. House Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare Yossef Bodansky in a report for Defense and Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy:

"In the Fall of 1997, the uppermost leadership in Tehran ordered the IRGC [Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps] High Command to launch a major program for shipping large quantities of weapons and other military supplies to the Albanian clandestine organizations in Kosovo. [Ayatollah] Khamene'i's instructions specifically stipulated that the comprehensive military assistance was aimed to enable the Muslims 'to achieve the independence' of the province of Kosovo," says the report.

In 1997 "the Iranians began sending promising Albanian and UCK commanders for advanced military training in al-Quds [special] forces and IRGC camps in Iran," writes Bodansky.

It has also been established the KLA relies on funds raised by the powerful Albanian mafia, which deals in narcotics and prostitution.

Interpol has in the past estimated Kosovo Albanians have controlled 40 percent of the European heroin trade, and in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic, they may have controlled as much as 70 percent of the market, with much of the money going to fund the KLA.

The London Times reported the KLA was "an outgrowth of the Kosovo Albanian mafia ... these Kosovan criminals operate the most powerful drug-running network in Europe."

Many KLA-linked Albanian gangs have also run prostitution and sex-trafficking rackets across Western Europe.

According to a recent internal British-government briefing, Albanians or Kosovars now control more than two-thirds of the "massage parlors" in London. That estimate fit with another study completed last year by Britain's National Criminal Intelligence Service.

But the U.S. policy toward the KLA has been mixed. Some have warned against relations with the KLA, while the Clinton administration maintained close ties with the group.

At the 1999 signing of the Rambouillet Accords, a 3-year interim agreement to "provide democratic self-government, peace, and security for everyone living in Kosovo," the U.S. seated the KLA at the head of the Kosovo delegation.

Clinton went out of his way on more than one occasion to praise the KLA for having chosen "the road of peace" at the initial Rambouillet talks.

When confronted in 1999 with Thaci's record of violence within his own organization, State Department spokesman James Rubin said, "We simply don't have innormation to substantiate allegations that there was a KLA leadership-directed program of assassinations or executions."

On Nov. 15, the Hague will start the trial of three normer KLA members who stand accused of crimes against Serb and ethnic Albanian civilians in a prison camp in eastern Kosovo in 1998. All three of the accused have pleaded not guilty to the charges, which include torture and murder.

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41072

 

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Entry #15

Security Council members deny meeting Kerry

"Security Council members deny meeting Kerry"


By Joel Mowbray
SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES

U.N. ambassadors from several nations are disputing assertions by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry that he met for hours with all members of the U.N. Security Council just a week before voting in October 2002 to authorize the use of force in Iraq.    

An investigation by The Washington Times reveals that while the candidate did talk for an unspecified period to at least a few members of the panel, no such meeting, as described by Mr. Kerry on a number of occasions over the past year, ever occurred.

  At the second presidential debate earlier this month, Mr. Kerry said he was more attuned to international concerns on Iraq than President Bush, citing his meeting with the entire Security Council.
    "This president hasn't listened. I went to meet with the members of the Security Council in the week before we voted. I went to New York. I talked to all of them, to find out how serious they were about really holding Saddam Hussein accountable," Mr. Kerry said of the Iraqi dictator. 
    Speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York in December 2003, Mr. Kerry explained that he understood the "real readiness" of the United Nations to "take this seriously" because he met "with the entire Security Council, and we spent a couple of hours talking about what they saw as the path to a united front in order to be able to deal with Saddam Hussein."
    But of the five ambassadors on the Security Council in 2002 who were reached directly for comment, four said they had never met Mr. Kerry. The four also said that no one who worked for their countries' U.N. missions had met with Mr. Kerry either.
    The normer ambassadors who said on the record they had never met Mr. Kerry included the representatives of Mexico, Colombia and Bulgaria. The ambassador of a fourth country gave a similar account on the condition that his country not be identified.
    Ambassador Andres Franco, the permanent deputy representative from Colombia during its Security Council membership from 2001 to 2002, said, "I never heard of anything."
    Although Mr. Franco was quick to note that Mr. Kerry could have met some members of the panel, he also said that "everything can be heard in the corridors."
    Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, Mexico's then-ambassador to the United Nations, said: "There was no meeting with John Kerry before Resolution 1441, or at least not in my memory."
    All had vivid recollections of the time frame when Mr. Kerry traveled to New York, as it was shortly before the Nov. 7, 2002, enactment of Resolution 1441, which said Iraq was in "material breach" of earlier disarmament resolutions and warned Baghdad of "serious consequences as a result of its continued violations."
    Stefan Tafrov, Bulgaria's ambassador at the time, said he remembers the period well because it "was a very contentious time."
    After conversations with ambassadors from five members of the Security Council in 2002 and calls to all the missions of the countries then on the panel, The Times was only able to confirm directly that Mr. Kerry had met with representatives of France, Singapore and Cameroon.
    In addition, second-hand accounts have Mr. Kerry meeting with representatives of Britain.
    When reached for comment last week, an official with the Kerry campaign stood by the candidate's previous claims that he had met with the entire Security Council.
    But after being told late yesterday of the results of The Times investigation, the Kerry campaign issued a statement that read in part, "It was a closed meeting and a private discussion."
    A Kerry aide refused to identify who participated in the meeting.
    The statement did not repeat Mr. Kerry's claims of a lengthy meeting with the entire 15-member Security Council, instead saying the candidate "met with a group of representatives of countries sitting on the Security Council."
    Asked whether the international body had any records of Mr. Kerry sitting down with the whole council, a U.N. spokesman said that "our office does not have any record of this meeting."
    A U.S. official with intimate knowledge of the Security Council's actions in fall of 2002 said that he was not aware of any meeting Mr. Kerry had with members of the panel.
    An official at the U.S. mission to the United Nations remarked: "We were as surprised as anyone when Kerry started talking about a meeting with the Security Council."
    Jean-David Levitte, then France's chief U.N. representative and now his country's ambassador to the United States, said through a spokeswoman that Mr. Kerry did not have a single group meeting as the senator has described, but rather several one-on-one or small-group encounters.
    He added that Mr. Kerry did not meet with every member of the Security Council, only "some" of them. Mr. Levitte could only name himself and Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock of Britain as the Security Council members with whom Mr. Kerry had met.
    One diplomat who met with Mr. Kerry in 2002 said on the condition of anonymity that the candidate talked to "a few" ambassadors on the Security Council.
    The revelation that Mr. Kerry never met with the entire U.N. Security Council could be problematic for the Massachusetts senator, as it clashes with one of his central foreign-policy campaign themes - honesty.
    At a New Mexico rally last month, Mr. Kerry said Mr. Bush will "do anything he can to cover up the truth." At what campaign aides billed as a major foreign-policy address, Mr. Kerry said at New York University last month that "the first and most fundamental mistake was the president's failure to tell the truth to the American people."
    In recent months, Mr. Kerry has faced numerous charges of dishonesty from Vietnam veterans over his war record, and his campaign has backtracked before from previous statements about Mr. Kerry's foreign diplomacy.
    For example, in March, Mr. Kerry told reporters in Florida that he'd met with foreign leaders who privately endorsed him.
    "I've met with foreign leaders who can't go out and say this publicly," he said. "But, boy, they look at you and say: 'You've got to win this. You've got to beat this guy. We need a new policy.' "
    But the senator refused to document his claim and a review by The Times showed that Mr. Kerry had made no official foreign trips since the start of 2002, according to Senate records and his own published schedules. An extensive review of Mr. Kerry's domestic travel schedule revealed only one opportunity for him to have met foreign leaders here.
    After a week of bad press, Kerry foreign-policy adviser Rand Beers said the candidate "does not seek, and will not accept, any such endorsements."
    The Democrat has also made his own veracity a centerpiece of his campaign, calling truthfulness "the fundamental test of leadership."
    Mr. Kerry closed the final debate by recounting what his mother told him from her hospital bed, "Remember: integrity, integrity, integrity."
    In an interview published in the new issue of Rolling Stone magazine, Mr. Kerry was asked what he would want people to remember about his presidency. He responded, "That it always told the truth to the American people."

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041024-110609-9428r.htm

 

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Entry #14

Preacher Ted? Really. No kidding

Preacher Ted? REally. No kidding.

This morning Ted Kennedy, of all people, preached a sermon at the Airy Church of God in Christ in Philadelphia in which, according to the Associated Press, he "urged the congregation to vote for Kerry." Here is an AP photo of the congregation:

capt.ksd10210242056.battleground_pennsylvania_ksd102.jpg

Is it legal to hold political rallies in churches? Not if the church wants to maintain its tax-exempt status. But somehow the rules don't apply when the preacher is a Democrat. All those worries about how dangerous it is to mingle religion and politics don't apply, either.

Posted by Hindrocket at 04:59 PM |  Permalink | TrackBack 0 "
 
http://powerlineblog.com/
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Entry #13

Will the Election Be Stolen?

From Powerlineblog.com which was among the first to question authenticity of Dan Rather's sources for President Bush's national guard records.

"Will the Election Be Stolen?

The dominant story of this year's Presidential election is fraud. Even more than the growing crescendo of intimidation and violence, the vital fact that looms ominously over the most important election in a generation is that American elections can be stolen. Easily. George Will writes:

the National Voter Registration Act -- a.k.a. "Motor Voter"... imposed "fraud-friendly" rules on the states, requiring them, for example, to register to vote anyone receiving a driver's license, and to offer mail-in registration with no identification required.

Given such measures, perhaps we should not be surprised that...since 1995, Philadelphia's population has declined 13 percent but registered voters have increased 24 percent....

The unexamined belief that an ever-higher rate of voter registration is a Good Thing has met its limit in the center of the state that this year is the center of the political universe -- Ohio. The U.S. Census Bureau's 2003 estimate is that in Franklin County -- Columbus -- there are approximately 815,000 people 18 or over. But 845,720 are now registered.

One reason for such unacceptable numbers in various jurisdictions across the nation is that voter rolls are not frequently enough purged of voters whose status has changed.

Unfortunately, there is reluctance, especially among Republicans, to support measures that might appear to have a "disparate impact" on minorities and therefore be denounced as racist.

In Ohio, likely to be the decisive state this year, Republicans have filed challenges to more than 35,000 newly-registered "voters." These are individuials to whom letters were mailed, but returned as undeliverable, suggesting that the newly-registered voter either is dead, does not exist, or does not live in the precince where he or she is newly registered. The Republicans' challenges were, of course, denounced as undemocratic.

The reality is that no serious effort is made to prevent voter fraud. Here in Minnesota, as in many states, anyone can go from precinct to precinct, voting in each. A prospective voter cannot be required to produce identification or evidence that he or she lives in the precinct if a registered voter "vouches" for that person. And there is no limit on how many people a single registered voter can vouch for. So as a practical matter, the only limit on fraud in Minnesota is the willingness of an individual to take the time to go from precinct to precinct, or to come to Minnesota to vote after already voting in another state--say, Wisconsin or Iowa. The same is true in many other states.

The bottom line is that if this election is close enough, it will be stolen. If it is too close to steal but still close, the result will be months or years of litigation, designed either to give John Kerry the Presidency, or to deny President Bush legitimacy in his second term. Under current law, there is no solution to the problem of voter fraud other than a one-sided election. And this year, that doesn't look likely.

Posted by Hindrocket at 08:58 AM | Permalink | TrackBack 0"
 
http://powerlineblog.com/

 

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Entry #12

I didn't think of this!


I didn't think of this! Most of us haven't thought about this no matter how much we like or dislike John Kerry. WOW! Those figures have to be staggering.

Subject: You will pay upkeep/Secret Service for 5 Kerry mansions.

It is good to be John F. Kerry....... The F stands for Forbes in case you ever wondered. (I didn't know that either)

He is one of the richest Senators in Government. When someone is elected president, it means the Secret Service has to protect the President and his family as well as his property.

The Kerry's have five US properties not counting the several foreign properties they own too. The cost to run these homes are more than what the average American could afford, even if the rent was free, and all you had to pay the water, gas &electric. Including ground keepers, maintenance, pool, and house keepers. To be President would require the taxpayers to pay for all that now if elected. Including a complete staffed Secret Service security 24 hours a day. In addition to that we will have to pay for each of their homes for security improvements even if they never go to them all, that is, that just in case. Who do you think will pay for all this? We Pay! This takes all the expense off Kerry and puts it on us.

Nevertheless, factor another major cost to Americans that Kerry does not want you to know about.

Becoming president would automatically include taking care of all their properties with Secret Service Agents that includes 5 agents per 6 hour shift 4 times a day 365 days of the year for the rest of their lives so long as they own those properties. It comes with being President, once you are elected. It requires us the taxpayers, to pay for this as well as his annual salary, as well as his retirements including the cost of living adjustments to boot, plus salaries and protection for all their real estate property, plus Secret Service Agents, and pay the bills for the rest of his life. In addition, feed the Secret Service Agents and rotate new ones every 6 hours for the rest of his life.

Do the math. Five properties need to be protected. This requires five Secret Service Agents per shift, daily every six hours, per property! That is 20 Secret Service Agents per day per property everyday including Holidays. Wow, what does that cost?

Lets say an average of 20 agents per property, each earning a about $60K per agent to survey the perimeters and protect. Now times that by five properties so far. That is if the Kerry's do not buy any more properties afterwards. This also includes the Agents vehicles and repairs, gas, meals, days off, paid vacation, and medical plan visits etc per agent.

Who pays? YOU pay, the whole time they are alive after becoming President! Is this the best use of our tax money electing Kerry to take care of all their properties, both foreign and domestic? On the other hand, shouldn't he pay for his own? Yet, the Presidential salary could not afford it.

The more I think about paying for Kerry's properties everyday, just makes me happy keeping President Bush all the more merrier. Without raising taxes to boot.

How on earth would Kerry pay for everyone to have Healthcare, increase our military, and have us pay to protect his investments, all without raising our taxes? Tax and spend Kerry is his party motto.

Which really has to make you wonder why anyone with his wealth, would take a salary of that of a U.S. Senator, never mind wanna be President? Do you believe now why he needs to be the Prez? To serve the people? On the other hand, the people serve Him and his wife!

Please pass the Mustard and do America a favor and pass this to your
friends.
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Entry #11

'Tax cuts for the rich!'

'Tax cuts for the rich!'
Thomas Sowell
 
"With the election season coming into the home stretch, the cry of "Tax cuts for the rich!" is ringing out across the land from Democrats desperate to regain power in Washington. Like many other political slogans, its popularity depends on slippery words and sloppy thinking.
 
First of all, just what does "rich" mean? And does it have any relevance to the kinds of tax cuts at issue?

 The recent release of some of Teresa Heinz Kerry's tax records reveals as much about the confusion over this issue as it does about her financial situation. The Kerrys are clearly rich, with several homes, a private jet, and millions of dollars in annual income. Yet they paid just 13 percent of their income in taxes.

 That's less than most American pay -- and it is not due to "tax cuts for the rich." It is due to putting much of their wealth into tax-free municipal bonds or other tax-exempt securities. So whether income tax rates are high or low, on rich or poor, makes little difference to them.

 One of the major purposes of tax cuts is to get people to take their money out of tax-free securities and invest that money in something that will increase economic activity and create jobs. Since our income tax system is steeply graduated, any across-the-board tax cut will immediately benefit most those who pay most of the taxes -- which is to say, people with higher incomes.

 After Ronald Reagan's tax rate cuts in the 1980s first brought out anguished cries of "tax cuts for the rich," it turned out that the federal government collected more tax revenue than ever and that people in upper income brackets not only paid a larger amount of taxes than before, but even paid a higher share of all taxes than before.

 How could this be?

 This takes us back to slippery words and sloppy thinking. What was cut were tax rates. What went up were tax revenues. At lower tax rates, it paid to take money out of tax shelters and put it somewhere where it was more productive, both for the individual investor and for the economy as a whole.

 As the economy expanded and incomes and employment rose, tax revenues rose, despite lower rates being charged for a given income. The incomes of people in the higher brackets went up especially sharply, so the total taxes they paid also went up especially sharply -- again, despite lower tax rates.

 Much sloppy thinking about economic issues is based on reasoning as if there is a fixed amount of income, so that someone has to lose whenever someone else gains. The real test of an economic policy is whether it can produce a rising tide that lifts all boats.

 Ronald Reagan's policies did that, even while he was being denounced for "tax cuts for the rich."

 There is also a lot of sloppy thinking about what "rich" means. Income is not wealth and income taxes do not apply to wealth.

 People who have high incomes without much wealth are not rich. If they lose their jobs tomorrow, they are up the creek if they cannot find another job that pays as well. But these are the people who get hit with high income tax rates, often paying far higher rates than genuinely rich people.

 High-tax liberals like John Kerry seldom define what they mean by "rich." When they do, it is almost always expressed in terms of income, not wealth.

 The income of most Americans varies greatly over the course of their lives. Most of the people who are in the bottom 20 percent at one point are in the top 20 percent in later years.

 A family income of $100,000 a year does not make you rich. A couple earning $50,000 each probably did not start out making $50,000 each. People usually work up to their peak income after many years of effort and struggle -- and they may not be that far from retirement time, when they will have to give up that income and live on their savings and pensions.

 Most Americans are likely to become "rich" -- as defined by high-tax liberals -- at some point in their lives. So when liberal demagogues start talking about taxing "the rich," send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20041022.shtml

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Entry #10

Did They Do It For Allah or The Monkey?

"Did They Do It For Allah or The Monkey?

by Randy Taylor

"Recent reports from Russia indicate that at least thirty one of the dead terrorists that recently took the school and the people in Beslan, Russia hostage, showed incredible levels of heroin and morphine in their bloodstreams. The tests "indicate that they were long-term drug addicts and had been using drugs permanently while preparing for the terrorist attack," Nikolai Shepel, deputy prosecutor general of Russia's southern federal district, was quoted as saying by Interfax.

"Some of the terrorists had levels exceeding a deadly dose, which indicates they had gotten used to the substance, and were using it regularly while preparing for the attack," the Interfax news agency quoted him (Nikolai Shepel) as saying. They also have indicated that there were additional (unidentified as of yet) presence of drugs that weren't consistent with the behaviors of people that are heavily drugged with an opiate, and whatever the other drugs were, gave the terrorists the ability to continue fighting despite being badly wounded.

I am leaning towards the theory that the other drug may have been similar to PCP also known as phencyclidine, which when ingested makes people completely irrational and insensitive to pain.

So in essence, the real "cause" of the terrorists in Beslan wasn't because they necessarily believed in what they were doing, it wasn't for freedom from oppression and it wasn't for Allah. It may have been simply for the monkey on their back. These terrorist were quite possibly recruited with drugs, trained while strung out on drugs and ultimately led to their death on drugs. Since the method of attack was designed by Al Qaeda, there is no disputing the Al Qaeda connection and involvement either directly or indirectly in these attacks. There have been several reports in the past that Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations have used narcotics to entice and coerce suicide bombers to do their bidding. That innormation comes as no surprise since the Taliban, Al Qaeda and some Afghanistan warlords are possibly the largest consortium of opium producers and distributors in the world.

So one has to wonder if Al Qaeda's financing network is in a financial bind since the US Treasury, law enforcement agencies and governments have clamped down on the terrorists "Charities" and frozen their bank accounts all over the world. So maybe their "paycheck" isn't always hard currency anymore, but instead drugs. This should do wonders for the already dwindling skill level within the Al Qaeda ranks. They have to commit suicide now when they attack as they aren't intelligent enough to normulate an escape.".....

 http://www.homelandsecurityus.com/

 

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Entry #9

Taxes, Deficits and War: the History Lessons

"Taxes, Deficits and War: the History Lessons"
 
"John Kerry has repeatedly accused George W. Bush of being the first president in American history to cut taxes during a time of war.

First, let's deal with Senator Kerry's factual error before we get on to his philosophical ones. George W. Bush is not the first president in American history to cut taxes near or at the beginning of a war. Just looking at wars in the past 70 years of American history, we find the following: FDR cut capital gains rates (in those days a tax overwhelmingly levied on the rich) at the beginning of WWII; John Kennedy cut taxes near the beginning of the Vietnam War; and that's not counting various minor military actions, such as Grenada and Kosovo, that occurred near significant tax cuts. 

The deeper problem here, however, is philosophical. The anti-war left, seeking to wrap its position in conservative-sounding rhetoric about deficit reduction, has tried to reframe the war issue in economic terms. When they do this, they hold the president to a standard to which they are unwilling to hold previous war-time presidents. America finances wars through borrowing. So does virtually every other modern nation. In fact, our modern financial markets were born in the various open-air auctions at which the debt instruments of warring nations were traded. Nations that were expected to lose wars had their bonds discounted by the marketplace and vice versa. Powerful banking interests such as the Rothschilds (My note: understand that the Illuminati origninate from the Rothschilds financing in the distant past)  became very adept at quickly ascertaining real-time war news and using it to receive an edge in the marketplace. Debt in times of war is not an unusual aberration; it is universal.

(Graph on site   http://www.techcentralstation.com/102204E.html )

The United States is no exception in this regard. Our independence was won with borrowed money, and incidentally Alexander Hamilton argued for the nationalization of that debt, partially for the purpose of creating America's first credit markets. The Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and WWI involved extensive borrowing. As the chart above shows, WWII involved far higher borrowing levels than our current conflict and for extended periods of time. As you see also above, the Korean War involved substantial borrowing and the height of the Vietnam War involved higher levels of borrowing than now. Ronald Reagan finished off the Soviets with high levels of borrowing amidst incessant Democratic carping. As during the era of the Rothschilds, the danger signal is not that borrowing occurs, but that the marketplace begins to worry whether economic weakness or military defeat will harm the borrower's ability to repay. This can occur either in the norm of outright default for the vanquished party or in the norm of repayment in a debauched currency for the overstretched. What is the international marketplace saying about our borrowing? High degrees of confidence have caused them to lend to us at roughly 4%, the lowest rates in four decades.

Should we mind that some of this war will be paid for by our children? Not at all. Ronald Reagan ended a multi-generational threat through his military build-up in the 1980s. Soviet missiles are not pointed at us any longer. The collapse of the Soviets freed up enormous resources (remember the peace dividend?) which helped lay the foundation for the growth of the '90s. The generation following WWII reaped enormous benefits from the defeat of the Nazis. The generation following the demise of the Cold War reaped similar benefits from the demise of the Soviets. The generation following our own will reap enormous benefits from the defeat of the Jihadists and it is perfectly appropriate that they cheerfully pay their share of the debt that was incurred on their behalf like every other post-war generation in American history.

http://www.techcentralstation.com/102204E.html

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Entry #8
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