<nettime> .US nuclear pols

[brian carroll <human@electronetwork.org>]

(check - check, 1 - 2 - 3 -, testing - testing. can you hear
me? check check, testing. are you ready? check check...)

over the years on this list a general premise has been
that electromagnetism is a realm where politics operates
today, and to offer some examples of this, whether by way
of the use of media, focus of topics such as nuclear or I.T.,
or the issues that becomes central during current events.

it has thus been surprising how this electromagnetic context
has provided a single view of the last few years, in that the
issues of energy and oil, war and weapons, media and ideas
have coalesced in such a way as to potentially offer insight
in the cohesiveness of events though they may otherwise be
seen as disconnected by division of topics, viewpoints, etc.

it is a critical time here in the .US, these next few weeks will
change the direction of the world, most certainly, and which
way it is still unknown --- one aspect is the .US investigation
into the leaking of an undercover CIA agent's information in
retaliation for challenging the cause for the war going in Iraq.
the agent was versed in WMD, the case for war was nuclear,
the fabricated evidence from aluminum tubes, satellite images,
and yellowcake uranium, to the Vice President and Condi Rice
referencing a NY Times story by Judith Miller, justified such a
view of nuclear 'mushroom clouds' if the .US does not enter
into a pre-emptive war with Iraq, outside the .UN's own IAEA
(atomic energy agency) which, as with others, raised serious
doubts about the claims being made (and Mr. El Baradei and
the IAEA was just awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last week),
while there is still more to go on the agenda, it would appear...

the big question may be where this ends up, as an investigation
as it could either be contained into a certain segment of inquiry
or it could go far and wide into situations preceding the present.
and this would be a major concern, where it will be stopped and
if it will be obstructed from actually getting to earlier connections.

by this I mean that this situation, from the 2000 election forward,
provides plenty of questions for the issues now at center stage,
and thus it is curious if the connections which were at the time
questioned, such as the Energy Task Force led by VP Cheney,
Enron's Ken Lay, and Halliburton, and held off-record by Judge
Scalia, a VP Cheney friend & confidant during a Supreme Court
challenge to public access to these records, and the subsequent
distancing of Enron and its plans for global domination of the oil
and broadband markets - and the billions in bankruptcy while he
remains living in a Houston penthouse - at the same time a role
of Halliburton being handed contracts for the rebuilding of Iraq,
and hurricane redevelopments, in no-bid contracts, would seem
to indicate a conflict of interest in writing public energy policies--
which have left the .US in strategic and security limbo as a direct
result of these same conflicts of interest realized in other events.

For instance, documents of the Energy Task Force led by VP
Cheney had somehow included maps of the oilfields of Saudi
Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and other places in regards to planning
out .US energy policy - potentially also in relation to the .US
war in Iraq - and it was Dan Bartlett (if memory serves) or it
may have been Andrew Card who could not explain how such
documents were involved in the meeting, or why James Baker,
the Bush family liason, was involved in moving these maps of
oilfields between Cheney (oil executive), Bush (oil executive),
and others (Rice, Baker, Bush Sr., others). such maps of the
oilfields were, at the time, speculated and feared as being of
some larger design for the invasion of several countries to
take over the oil-fields, yet such a strategy would be hard to
imagine, given that there was no reporting going on, nor any
basic oversight into the private energy meetings or the WHIG
(White House Iraq Group) and likely other 'groups'. such as
any involving energy policy and planning related to Iraq and
oil fields and their possible connection to Enron, Halliburton,
and the .US military as a tool of private corporate strategy.

2,000 dead .US soldiers & tens of thousands of dead Iraqis
later, and the failure to secure any of the original objectives
of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, save its 'democracy',
and yet talk remains of the original agenda, as it was stated
by another country of .US battle planning, that Syria and Iran
would be next in line after Iraq. and once again the nuclear
context is a pre-text, and the .US is to potentially isolate itself
by continuing the same policy agenda without any insight into
the earlier justifications - with no real understanding of how it
fits together at a time when the .US President was elected-
on election day, no less, the lowest prices for gasoline in the
.US on that day, while the electrical grid was being turned off
by Enron in California, and other such 'conspiring' events.

therefore, it should be of some interest that in a memo now
released in Britain, that President Bush mentioned to Tony
Blair in early 2003 that Saudi Arabia was on his ideological
map in relation to WMD issues (after Iraq). what is interesting
about this is that, previous to this, there were simultaneously
also 'actual maps' that were by all accounts involved in some
way in the Iraq campaign and the energy planning taskforce,
an entirely secretive policy 'group' (sounding like the WHIG),
which could be instructive about a .US global strategy that
may have involved a plan of invasions of oil fields, if such
mention was to indicate it involved seizing Saudi oil fields.
there is no evidence that the leaked maps of oilfields relate
to such a Nazi-like military campaign for geographic control,
and yet there is no evidence these maps were not involved
in such motivations, as all the policy groups have been held
in secret - and by VP Cheney, by Halliburton, and by Enron,
no less. this is why the word 'probable cause' was invented.

of course there are other aspects in the existing scenario
not even being mentioned here, though the potential also
exists for subversion of .US policy by an agenda which was
to put .US policy in service of non-.US policy objectives, and
once again this same issue can be found in the .UN and in
relation to current ongoing fiascos waiting to erupt in regard
to a double-standard for the role of nuclear power in relation
to current events, in which the Vice President has again and
again stated that the .US may preemptively strike at Iran's
(legal) nuclear facilities, and if not the .US, else Israel will
have to take it upon itself to pursue its policy without proxy.

(is any of this going to help address problems of terrorism?)

note: this is not to discount the reality of tensions and actual
issues - only that the corruption and incompetence are broad
and deep and continuing to guide .US policy, and to the brink...
and in whose interest is such decision-making? once again, a
common (.US and world) public that is represented in the best
ways, given the options, or some more private and secret view
of things, being manipulated at the level of global nuclear policy,
international and national and local institutions, the .US military,
the .US congress, .US court systems, .US legal and financial
systems, the .US energy policy, and the .US media - all being
driven by a similar agenda to pursue such a policy that is now
proven by popular vote (the TV poll) to not being in the best
interests of the majority of the .US citizens -- thus how can
such a policy be continued without review and oversight into
the greater motivations driving these odd correspondences,
to the uncanny point of secret codes being written from VP
Chief of Staff, Stewart Libby, to NYT reporter Judy Miller -
about some biological warfare news she will be reporting
soon, when oddly enough she was involved in an anthrax
hoax letter while others got the real stuff in their mailboxes.

if this ongoing investigation by the Special Prosecutor Patrick
Fitzgerald stops with the outing of Valerie Plame, and does
not enter into earlier 'coincidences' including Enron, Energy
Task Force meetings, the VP and Halliburton, it could limit
the ability address the underlying motivations dug into the
existing system which is how and why such a policy is being
pursued, in whose name, and for what effects- and if this is
actually, sanely or insanely, in pursuit of a "war of terrorism"
as a pre-text to pursue another agenda, entirely, as such to
possibly leave the general situation contained with the same
actors free to continue pursuing what amounts to traitorous
activities, and if proven guilty, will justify capital punishment,
including the highest ranking members in .US government...
should they have subverted .US policies for private powers.

this is the context in which .US policy continues to be made,
and until it is thoroughly investigated, it remains a mystery.
kind of like the JFK assassination, 40+ years ago, it makes
one wonder who has gained the most in subsequent years...

(be prepared either way. night of the endless blog entries...)

1) Bush to Blair: First Iraq, then Saudi
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article319993.ece

     ' "If this letter accurately reflects the conversation between  
the President and the Prime Minister it will cause consternation,  
particularly in Saudi Arabia. American policy in the Middle East for  
decades has been based on support for Israel and an alliance with  
Saudi Arabia," [Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrats' foreign  
affairs spokesman] said. "If this was more than loose talk and  
represented a genuine policy intention it constitutes a radical  
change in American foreign policy."'



  2)   It's Bush-Cheney, Not Rove-Libby
     By Frank Rich
     The New York Times

     Sunday 16 October 2005
     http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/101605Z.shtml

         "Very little has been written about the White House Iraq  
Group, or WHIG. Its inception in August 2002, seven months before the  
invasion of Iraq, was never announced. Only much later would a  
newspaper article or two mention it in passing, reporting that it had  
been set up by Andrew Card, the White House chief of staff. Its eight  
members included Mr. Rove, Mr. Libby, Condoleezza Rice and the  
spinmeisters Karen Hughes and Mary Matalin. Its mission: to market a  
war in Iraq.

     Of course, the official Bush history would have us believe that  
in August 2002 no decision had yet been made on that war. Dates  
bracketing the formation of WHIG tell us otherwise. On July 23, 2002  
- a week or two before WHIG first convened in earnest - a British  
official told his peers, as recorded in the now famous Downing Street  
memo, that the Bush administration was ensuring that "the  
intelligence and facts" about Iraq's W.M.D.'s "were being fixed  
around the policy" of going to war. And on Sept. 6, 2002 - just a few  
weeks after WHIG first convened - Mr. Card alluded to his group's  
existence by telling Elisabeth Bumiller of The New York Times that  
there was a plan afoot to sell a war against Saddam Hussein: "From a  
marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August."

     The official introduction of that product began just two days  
later. On the Sunday talk shows of Sept. 8, Ms. Rice warned that "we  
don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," and Mr. Cheney,  
who had already started the nuclear doomsday drumbeat in three August  
speeches, described Saddam as "actively and aggressively seeking to  
acquire nuclear weapons." The vice president cited as evidence a  
front-page article, later debunked, about supposedly nefarious  
aluminum tubes co-written by Judy Miller in that morning's Times. The  
national security journalist James Bamford, in "A Pretext for War,"  
writes that the article was all too perfectly timed to facilitate  
"exactly the sort of propaganda coup that the White House Iraq Group  
had been set up to stage-manage."

     The administration's doomsday imagery was ratcheted up from that  
day on. As Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus of The Washington Post  
would determine in the first account of WHIG a full year later, the  
administration's "escalation of nuclear rhetoric" could be traced to  
the group's formation. Along with mushroom clouds, uranium was  
another favored image, the Post report noted, "because anyone could  
see its connection to an atomic bomb." It appeared in a Bush radio  
address the weekend after the Rice-Cheney Sunday show blitz and would  
reach its apotheosis with the infamously fictional 16 words about  
"uranium from Africa" in Mr. Bush's January 2003 State of the Union  
address on the eve of war.

     Throughout those crucial seven months between the creation of  
WHIG and the start of the American invasion of Iraq, there were  
indications that evidence of a Saddam nuclear program was fraudulent  
or nonexistent. Joseph Wilson's C.I.A. mission to Niger, in which he  
failed to find any evidence to back up uranium claims, took place  
nearly a year before the president's 16 words. But the truth never  
mattered. The Bush-Cheney product rolled out by Card, Rove, Libby &  
Company had been bought by Congress, the press and the public. The  
intelligence and facts had been successfully fixed to sell the war,  
and any memory of Mr. Bush's errant 16 words melted away in Shock and  
Awe. When, months later, a national security official, Stephen  
Hadley, took "responsibility" for allowing the president to address  
the nation about mythical uranium, no one knew that Mr. Hadley, too,  
had been a member of WHIG.

     It was not until the war was supposedly over - with "Mission  
Accomplished," in May 2003 - that Mr. Wilson started to add his voice  
to those who were disputing the administration's uranium hype.  
Members of WHIG had a compelling motive to shut him down. In contrast  
to other skeptics, like Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic  
Energy Agency (this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner), Mr. Wilson was  
an American diplomat; he had reported his findings in Niger to our  
own government. He was a dagger aimed at the heart of WHIG and its  
disinformation campaign. Exactly who tried to silence him and how is  
what Mr. Fitzgerald presumably will tell us."


  brian thomas carroll: research-design-development
  architecture, education, electromagnetism
  http://www.mnartists.org/brian_carroll
  http://www.electronetwork.org/bc/




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