47 Comments

Seven Star Hand:

The pivotal import of Yellowcake, False Flags, & “Big Time” Evil

Hello all,

The combination of George Tenet’s book, At the Center of the Storm, Eisner & Royce’s The Italian Letter and the books and research of many others in recent years now provides enough of a foundation for everyone to finally discern that 9:11 was a “false flag” operation against both the American public and the Muslim world. Likewise, the uncanny synchronicity of Al Qaeda’s videos and other activities perfectly timed to reinforce and support the Bush/Cheney administration’s political needs coupled with the actions of the Bush admin actually serving to strengthen Al Qaeda’s position, now makes perfect sense. The apparent mistakes and chaos that have characterized the Iraq war, the easily prevented resurgence of the Taliban, and permitting Bin Laden to escape Tora Bora to a safe haven in Pakistan all fit the same pattern. It’s hard to maintain a state of continuous war if you allow your made-to-order enemies to be defeated too early. It is likewise hard to remain a “war president” if your wars end too soon!

The letterhead used to forge the “Yellowcake letter” that was then used to help “sell” the Iraq war was stolen in Rome on 1/1/2001, more than nine months before 9:11 and before Little W. became president. Consequently, the use of the “Yellow-Cake Lie” was obviously discussed and planned before then! The import of this fact is that the Niger embassy in Rome was burglarized, before Bush became president, to lay the groundwork for the web of deception used to sell the Iraq War, after 9:11. More importantly, it is highly unlikely that the Iraq war could ever have been sold to the American public, without something like 9:11 happening first. Any excuses of other uses for the stolen letterhead are laughable since the letterhead burglary would have been pointless, without 9:11. This evidences foreknowledge of those attacks, a full nine months before they occurred, among other things!

Read more…

May 2, 2007 - 12:37 pm Le Roy James:

As you note in the second to last paragraph of your commentary, we should be developing our own oil reserves, building nuclear power plants, and creating alternative forms of energy. Only than will we be able to wash are hands of the whole Middle East mess.

Unfortunatley though, I believe as long as there is a drop of oil to be sold, the oil giants will continue to encourage our addiction to it, by hook or by crook, ensuring their power and dominance over the world’s economies.

May 2, 2007 - 1:32 pm Eric J. Smith:

Nicely said.

I’ve been advocating the drilling in Anwar and off the coast for quite some time.

I have also thought that the Middle East would become irrelevant once we developed our own sources of oil, including the oil shale that we (USA) currently sit on, which is about 60% of the world’s supply.

Nuclear power should have been up an running, but thanks to the “environmentalists” that is not a reality.

May 2, 2007 - 1:48 pm Pete Siracusa:

Thank you for your continued rational discussion of the situation. We have a son who is a Marine officer and so know the truth of our positive advances in the war.

May 2, 2007 - 2:10 pm BlacquesJacquesShell:

Nice post. Accurate prediction too.

What is the ‘flip’ point? The point at which disgust with the middle east, and economics make acceptable and desirable the ethanol, the nukes? Is it economic? Yes, partially. Is it moral. Yes, partially. Is it political? Yes, partially.

Is it soon. Yes, absolutely.

May 2, 2007 - 7:52 pm Herr Morgenholz:

….or for that matter, Germany that lost historic homelands to postwar Poland….

Yes, indeed, is the Prussian homeland resistance movement rare… My grandfather was born in a village on the Oder… on the East bank. Now where’s that suicide belt?

May 2, 2007 - 8:01 pm red:

The pivotal import of Yellowcake, False Flags, & “Big Time” Evil

Hello all,

The combination of George Tenet’s book, At the Center of the Storm, Eisner & Royce’s The Italian Letter and the books and research of many others in recent years now provides enough of a foundation for everyone to finally discern that 9:11 was

Wooohooo!!! Moonbat city!!!

May 2, 2007 - 8:20 pm REN:

VDH,

Interesting read. Today I was trying to puzzle out the logic and the strangeness of pulling out of Iraq, as the Dems are proposing, as we’re dumping more money into Hamas, to somehow support the Palestinians, and then you wrote this. Thanks!

Also, I wonder, even if we are able to work our way out of middle-eastern oil, won’t China just keep working its way in? Feeding the very trolls we were trying to starve? More food for thought.

Speaking of trolls…

Seven Star Hand,

aka Lawrence W. Page “…the long-prophesied Messiah, Lion of the Tribe of Juda, Teacher of Righteousness, and Melchizedek”

LOL, they say “don’t feed the trolls,” but can we at least point them out? This one’s certifiable!

May 2, 2007 - 8:24 pm Dick Stanley:

Betting we’ll have to withdraw from Iraq in six months may be rational, but there’ll be hell to pay if we do it. Because energy independence, for one thing, doesn’t seem to be in the cards.

May 2, 2007 - 9:04 pm peter jackson:

Sir:

I think we may have more than six months. On the outside, I think we probably have until October of 2008.

yours/
peter.

May 2, 2007 - 9:14 pm Steve:

Your commentary deserves better than the replies so far and I write this with all due respect regarding the reasoned comments of the posters above.

This was powerful rhetoric and I hope in the days ahead the blogosphere along with mass media become aware of your words.

May 2, 2007 - 9:23 pm Dr.charlemagne:

Mr.Hanson,

Your brilliant writing is a pleasure to read. I share the aggrivation which inspired this epistle. I share your analysis of the farsical world scene. Allow me to disagree with your conclusions.

I too often wonder if we can take oil out of the equation, if without oil economics the Islamic threat would vanish. I do not think so. While in the present era oil has played a crucial role in entangling the West with the near East, that was not the case until recently. A thousand years of war with these folks preceded oil.

Unfortunately, as you well know, these near eastern places are the source of both ours and their culture. We are fighting in the oldest continuously inhabited places in the world. Places which have been continous battlefields for thousands of years, places which are the crossroads of three great continents, three great religeons, and half or more of the worlds peoples.

Much more is at stake here than oil. Oil is simply the most recent apparent cause of conflict, the apparent cause of our concern.

The peoples of the Near East now live amongst us and we amongst they. The ideological conceptual framework of our “civilizations” misc like oil and water. Entire generations of Islamist have been taught to hate us, to kill us.

We are past the point where we can forget about oil and ignore the near East. They will come to us; they will not come bearing gifts. Heroic single minded efforts to diversify our energy sources will not collapse the price of oil. All such efforts will be trivialized by the rapid industrialization of 2.5 billion in the far East. Oil is the rsource basis for the entire chemical industry which gives us plastics, paints, pharmaceuticals, on and on and on.

Major total conflict is now inevitable unless, through a terrifying display of strength NOW, we can alter their culture, government, and attitudes about tolerance. Once the near East Nuclearizes, the final chance to avoid total war of billion against billion is lost. This is why I am a Hawk.

May 2, 2007 - 9:55 pm Scott Papenfuss:

Thank you.

As always, very well thought out and articulated. Which is probably why your ideas will never be adopted.

Sigh.

May 2, 2007 - 10:20 pm Don Smythe:

This is as fine an analysis as you will ever read. I “root” for Israel not because it’s Jewish, but because it’s a democracy and a country hewn from the desert by people who’ve made something from nothing and who, as John Kennedy said, ask what they can do for their country. Would that more of us felt the same. Giving funding to any country diametrically opposed to our values is madness.

GWB will go down in infamy as having missed the greatest opportunity ever to get us off oil. Not now — after 9/11, when he could have sold the American public on the need to use other means of energy (and boost fuel standards, etc.) as a means of getting back at militant Islam, Taliban, etc. He did not. Instead, we’re forking over billions more to countries that wish us harm (or death). This may be the largest single abdication of the presidential oath (to protect and defend, right?) of any president in history. To me, it makes all the blunders he’s made in Iraq pale in comparison.

The world’s finest military won the Iraq war years ago. What we haven’t won is the peace - largely because Bush and his crew seemed to have little idea of what to do after pummeling the remnants of Saddam’s army (something that didn’t figure to be very hard; we had, after all, rolled over a stronger group 12 years earlier). Poor intelligence, inept planning and incompetent execution have resulted in thousands of American casualties.

And if you think this is bad, see what happens if the Dems win in 2008. We do not have leaders. We have quislings. We have politicians who are Democrats and Republicans before they are Americans. And unless something changes soon, my children will not recognize the United States of America that we know now — we’ll have gone far left or far right, and neither is a good alternative.

May 2, 2007 - 10:47 pm rabbi zvi hollnder:

great. period.

May 2, 2007 - 11:05 pm Wade:

Agreed on all but one point. I have a gut instinct that if we shifted our energy economies and demand for oil went down, Islamic states would find more reason to go nuclear. For peaceful purposes, of course. Also, I fear that without the West’s purchase of oil, Islamic nations’ economies would likely fail. Because most Islamic nations tend to blame the west for all of their problems, it seems to me that in such a situation muslims would delude themselves into further justification for violence against non-muslims. So, we might be damned whether we are energy independent or not.

May 2, 2007 - 11:59 pm David Nicholas:

I agree with pretty much everything you say, right up until you argue that energy independence would make our relations with the Middle East somehow better. Unfortunately, this is one of those common truths that turns out not to be true, once you think about it a bit. We have as much trouble with extremists from places like Egypt, Afghanistan, and Pakistan (in which there isn’t any oil) as we do with extremists from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran (which of course have a lot of oil). Oil is a factor, certainly. It makes our government pay more attention to those parts of the region where it resides. And yes, our economy is vulnerable as a result of our dependence on it. But the doctrines of the extremist Muslims are such they must conquer the world, and kill everyone who doesn’t acknowledge the supremacy of their deity. It doesn’t matter if they’re rich, poor, numerous, few, well-equipped, ill-equipped, or anything else. The will prevail because Allah is with them, and with his help they *cannot* fail.

The problem is that they can’t succeed, either. They will keep up their campaign of hatred, terror, and savagery, and eventually something will cause the people of the West to explode, or the war in Iraq will wind down. If, for instance, Iraqi terrorists kidnap Prince Harry, as they have threatened to do, and then send him back to his grandmother in pieces, that could be the catalyst. Not that I would wish that on anyone: I’d much rather see a peaceful resolution to the situation, where everyone gets a say in the shape of the government and the losers just bide their time and wait for the next election (or sue, as they do here when they lose). Thing is, I don’t think the Iraqi extremists have much patience, and I also don’t think they’ve taken sensitivity training: they only see their actions in terms of how terrified we all are of them, and their actions.

The result of the above thinking? We’re not, in the current debate in Congress, arguing about whether we should be fighting the War on Terror or not. If we “redeploy” from Iraq (I love the pretense that if we don’t call it a retreat no one else will notice that that is what it is) then we’ll merely have to fight them someplace else, at some other point. They’re not going to stop until the whole world has been conquered, and I don’t think anyone here can imagine them doing that, can they? Regardless of how questionable her diplomatic skills are, I don’t think Nancy Pelosi is going to be wearing a burqa and staying home caring for grandchildren while the men in America take control of everything again. So we’re not fighting about whether we should fight the war on Terror: we’re arguing about where we should fight it, and for how long. The Democrats seem to have few, if any, ideas on that, beyond that we shouldn’t be fighting it in Iraq, and if we stop fighting it at all, the other side might decide to show mercy on us, for a while anyway. Sound realistic to anyone else?

May 3, 2007 - 2:06 am kad:

One of my hobby horses in this whole thing has been the performance of the State Department.

Three US soldiers were indicted in Spain for war crimes and murder and our other fine ally, Italy, is hosting a show trial for another soldier.

Clearly, the State Dept has been ineffective trying to halt this nonsense.

How about a change of course. Groveling to the Justice Ministries and Government officials is clearly not working.

Imagine being one of these soldiers and depending of the courage of Condi Rice or Albert Gonzales for your future.

First step. How about reminding these countries that the soldiers will be protected under the “American Servicemembers Protection Act”

May 3, 2007 - 3:00 am Tom Grey:

Yes Yes Yes on US development of nukes and other expensive oil substitutes — but never think that oil costing $2 barrel to extract (not produce) won’t always be important, and be hugely profitable even if world market price drops under $40.

The US should be directing much of its aid to Egypt at developing Solar Power, in Egypt, with American and Israeli technology. Similarly, aid in Israel should be directed at Solar Power, to push tech development and provide a larger market. Even if the capital cost / kilowatt hour is less than oil based power production, the difference should be considered “aid”.

May 3, 2007 - 3:15 am James:

The greatest irony of all, and it’s really only a matter of fact, is that a reduction and eventual elimination of reliance on oil will only come with a sudden (and sustained) increase in prices.

I remember driving my honda in the early 80’s and filling up once every few weeks (45+ mpg). What happened? The late 70’s happened. Automakers were forced to develop vehicles with better gas milage. The early 80’s was also the golden age of real technological advances in solar, wind and other forms of energy. Ask anyone in 1982 where we’d be getting our energy from in 2 or 3 decades hence, and most would have said solar and wind would be 50% or more of our energy supply. That was the plan, and it made sense. In 2007, we’re back to square one.

Those who wish for higher and higher oil prices (Russia, Nigeria, Ven, etc) would be well served to listen to the Saudis, who have repeatedly warned thier oil-producing friends that thier respective futures depend not on ever-increasing prices, but slow and steady increases, and even a ceiling. After all, you don’t want to bankrupt your customers, and you certainly don’t want them to look for alternative means of energy.

So, bring on the oil spikes, close the straight of Hormuz. Hitting western economies is the only way to reduce dependancy on oil.

May 3, 2007 - 3:50 am ajacksonian:

Whatever did happen to those in the ’70s and ’80s that decried that America supported thugs and tyrants and should be bringing them down? The folks who pointed to *that* as the main cause of problems and where America should direct her ire? The people who invited Iraqis to write plays and give speeches about how awful their dictator was, and to plea for help? Apparently that was just a convenient way to bash the west and America, as they switched sides to being pro-tyrant, pro-thug and anti-just about everything else.

America, traditionally, has spent long years and often a decade or more securing things where her forces have fought to overthrow tyranny. A seven years and some in Japan and even then left bases which are only now reaching final discussion for the US to leave. Haiti has been so botched for so long because no one wants to deal with the endemic problems there and continually changes what is thought *should be done* to the point where nothing is achieved. Nearly a decade after invading the Philippines were the last of the Moros put out of action by the US Army and local constabulary forces, and brutal fighting that was. And why are we still *in* Germany? No Soviet Bear around to see… perhaps, now, Germany can finally catch up to Japan?

And then there is the place we did not go to war. The place where *trade* was put in front of *fighting for freedom*. A place with ongoing genocide that could be countered and many in Congress said so. A place that was seen as corrupt and tyrannical and not very free at all, that America was being urged to fight by her Allies. And a place that no grand international institutions have ever solved the problems there and, often, made them worse.

These modern ills are at the root of America indecisiveness and Isolationism seeking to step away from the rest of the world and not be bothered by it. Those lovely ideas of international institutions solving the problem of war have failed repeatedly, and protected very few while allowing abuse, rape, pedophilia and slavery by the very people they send to *protect others*. That strange idea of ‘free trade freeing people’ has demonstrably failed, and America, herself, did not have that as a basis for freedom. Paper over the underlying world with these grand and lovely memes and one decries their results and does not address them as the problems in, and of, themselves.

Where was it that America failed to stand up for freedom and liberty and used trade as an excuse to rise to righteous inaction? It took place in an era when America was radically altering her internal views on liberty to make government ‘easier’ and yet less accountable. An era when the Public Good over-rode merely private decisions on how an individual should treat themselves. An era that would give rise to more government intervention in the lives of free people, and yet have problems actually saying what freedom and liberty are. What was this time in American history where America turned from ‘the good fight’ to establish good homelands abroad for those under an Enemy’s grasp? An era that would make all that lovely government *central* to the Nation, and not the sleepy town in the south that Washington was until that time?

That decade that changed America held the worst year of the worst war mankind had yet experienced. The year was 1917 and the place where the US practiced trade to make liberty was the Ottoman Empire. Worked out well, didn’t it? This ‘not fighting’ business? Freest place on the planet is the Middle East, right? We have been practicing these two toxic ideas there for 9 decades so we should now see the lovely effects of those ideas practiced upon it.

Religious freedom for all throughout the region, yes?

Civil societies bursting with discourse on how to build a better world upon the rights of man going on amongst democracies across the region, yes?

A community of humanity reaching out to expand the rights of man to far off places using their natural resources to build industrialized economies and have the sciences and humanities flourish, yes?

Because that is the exact same promise of the Left and the Right on this: international institutions for oversight and free trade freeing people. Worked out so grandly in the Middle East, didn’t it?

No?

Then perhaps America should do something *other* than running and start holding *trade* accountable so that it does not cheaply supply our Enemies with more and worse weapons and at lower and lower prices. And just perhaps building upon a land that only knew tyranny and despotism takes awhile to finally quench the embers of hatred in the blood of Americans and innocents as those practicing tyranny will target the weak and their protectors. If you stand up *for* personal freedom and liberty you will become the target of all of those wishing to end it.

And these international institutions should practice *charity* to make lives better and give people a hand up from poverty so that they may lead better lives and help to change their outlook and that of others to make the world a better place. Instead of putting forth dependency and teaching people to blame others for their own plight in this world. That *empowers* nothing but hatred. Which means that only charities that do not endanger Nations are seen as actually *helping* and these ‘other organizations’ are seen as a problem, not a solution, as they have not worked out well for long decades.

The faultlines of the Middle East are simple and lead to complex results: addressing that complexity without addressing the underlying movers of it helps no one and may, in actuality, make matters worse. Any path to Peace in the Middle East must not only recognize the problems, but then have an end-place where Nation States are held accountable to their actions and agreements. That requires doing something *different* than we are doing now in both an attitude and institutional way.

Because international lawlessness begins, at home, with you.

May 3, 2007 - 5:14 am Jason Street:

The Crazy Middle East
All Eyes on Baghdad

All the pros and cons on the war have been aired. We’ve read all the tell-all books by Woodward, Ricks, Gordon, Trainor and the rest that now contradict the arguments and theses of what they wrote about the 1991 war—that then we should have done what we are doing now, which in turn should now be what we had done then.

[what a canard–apparently, when Woodward was writing what the Administration liked, his journalism was “accurate.” Now, when the wheels come off, Woodward is denigrated as a mere tell-all writer.]

All the once insider geniuses like Clark, Scheuer, O’Neil and Tenet have sold their tell-all accounts in which they were brilliant and all else obtuse. Feith has been called a dumb _____ by almost everyone in DC. Libby is facing jail for something or other, but most certainly not what the Special Prosecutor was supposed to be looking for; Wolfowitz faces an ouster: so much for bringing up to your board that you might have a conflict of interest down the road.

[lumping Richard Clarke–who was demonstrably correct–with Scheuer–who had great criticisms of the Clinton administration in with Paul O’Neil, who handled primarily economic issues and with Tenet–who has written a self-serving memoir–is patently ridiculous.]

We’ve suffered through the distortions of Michael Moore and know that Cindy Sheehan once thanked President Bush for meeting with her. We’ve heard that the US military is akin to Saddam, Nazis, Pol Pot, or Stalin from the likes of Sens. Durbin and Kennedy, that America is a pariah from Sen. Kerry, that the war is lost from Sen. Reid and Howard Dean, and about everything imaginable from poor Sen. Biden.

[Right–but what Juan Cole? Why isn’t he mentioned at all in this article? What about Paul Rieckoff? What about the thousands of actual Veterans who have spoken up? What about LTG Odom? General Zinni? You know, actual critics with standing and experience. Rolling Michael Moore and Sheehan out for the cameras is a classic right wing method of distraction. Look at the clowns and don’t pay attention to the serious critics.]

We know that the Clintons once tried to restore their fides on national security by railing about Saddam’s WMD program, both before and after September 11. There has been a revolt of the generals and CIA operatives, that in addition to demonstrating opposition to the war, showed just how angry top brass are at our restructuring the military and /or intelligence agencies.

[I think President Clinton (and not so much his wife, who was the First Lady) spoke about WMDs and Saddam in the context of containing Saddam, using international diplomacy and a weapons inspection program, not invading Iraq and gettings us bogged down in a land war in Asia for over four years. And the top brass aren’t angry at the restructuring of the military. They’re angry at the wholesale dismantling and destruction of our military through willful institutional neglect.]

The Celebs have weighed in, and now we know that the Dixie Chicks, Sean Penn, Barbra Streisand, Rosie, the Donald, and Alec Baldwin are as ignorant as they are vehement and vicious in their pronouncements.

[Don’t forget the celebrities who are for the war. I’d list them if I could think of any. Is Toby Keith still speaking up? Anyone? And why is the United States Army terrified of an old woman with a guitar? Why are they afraid of Joan Baez? Why did they refuse to allow her to play at Walter Reed? Baez has stated publicly that she takes responsibility for NOT properly welcoming home the soldiers from the Vietnam War. This is an extraordinary pronouncement from a major figure of that time.]

We’ve seen all the supposed landmark stories come and go: Dick Cheney’s shotgun, the supposed flushed Koran, the forged memos about Bush’s National Guard service, the doctored photos from Beirut, the slips from CNN brass about bias, the implosion of Dan Rather, the blood lust for Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Gonzalez, et. al. None of them did anything illegal; all of them were hounded by the press to resign—all of whom Republicans thought if these just go, the Left will stop, when in fact its appetite was only fed.

[Dick Cheney actually did shoot someone in the face. What does that have to do with anything? Would any sane person actually go hunting with someone who demonstrates clear and willful ignorance of the proper handling of a firearm? Why bring up something ridiculous like the Koran incident? Dan Rather resigned. The CNN official who stated that bias is gone. The doctored photos were answered for–I believe that the photographer in question was fired from the AP. Wolfowitz still has a job, Rumsfeld is effectively retired with a pension and Gonzales is twisting in the wind and appears to have delegate the firing authority of the US Department of Justice to flunkies who have either resigned or tried to pleade the Fifth. I don’t recall any “bloodlust” for Attorney General John Ashcroft. I believe he resigned because of health problems. And I also recall him refusing to go along with some of the more illegal and unconstitutional aspects of the Bush administration policies. As a matter of fact, Ashcroft will go down as a significantly better Attorney General than Gonzales and will, in fact, be remembered as someone who actually read the Constitution.]

All that has come and gone, and we are left in the end with the verdict of the battlefield. The war will be won or lost, like it or not, fairly or unjustly, in the next six months in Baghdad. Either Gen. Petraeus quells the violence to a level that even the media cannot exaggerate, or the enterprise fails, and we withdraw. For all the acrimony and hysteria at home, that in the end is what we face—the verdict of all wars that ultimately are decided by the soldiers, and then either supported or opposed by the majority at home with no views or ideology other than its desire to conform to the narrative from the front: support our winners, oppose our losers. In the end, that is what this entire hysterical four years are about.

[Nice use of a Friedman. Look, just for pity’s sake, it is quite clear that, six months from now, nothing will have changed and you’ll find an intellectually dishonest way to locate another “six month period” through which everyone is supposed to wait silently. We are not actually in a war right now. We are engaged in maintaining the legitimacy of a Shiite-dominated government which will not share power with a Sunni minority. We are being attacked on all sides by rival factions that have instability as their goal. The more instability, the less legitimate the al-Maliki government appears. Millions of military-aged Iraqi males refuse to engage in the struggle for the future of their own country. You cannot examine the situation in Iraq without first noting that millions of Iraqis are doing nothing to make their own country safe, stable or secure. Twenty-five thousand insurgents are battling over 300,000 Iraqi “police.” That leaves 3.5 million Iraqi males who could fight on the sideline, while Americans are dying. The US military is engaged in a nation-building exercise in a violently turbulent region, not in anything resembling a war. The Second Iraq War was won in three weeks when Iraqi resistance as a military force collapsed.]

Win Iraq in the sense of a government stabilizing analogous to Kurdistan or Turkey, and even at this late hour, pundits and politicians will scramble around to dig up their 2002-3 quotes supporting the war, while Hollywood goes quiet and turns to more sermons on Darfur.

Sad, but true.

[There is no analogy to any other situation. The United States of America is being bled dry by the stubborn fear of one man, who refuses to admit his mistake for starting the war. Were Dick Cheney to stand up and say that he was wrong for forcing this country into the Iraq War, and were he to take the blame for it, the Republican Party would be able to quickly rebound and focus on domestic and economic issues. Because one man cannot admit his mistakes, the country is locked in a quagmire.

May 3, 2007 - 5:39 am kevin:

Great article as usual for VDH. One issue though:

VDH says here: “Refugees? Are we talking of the 600,000 plus Jews that were expelled from the major Arab capitals following the 1967 war?”

The great majority of the Jews in question were not expelled in the
wake of the 1967 war, but in the wake of the 1948 war. This is important because it illustrates how the Arabs’ problem with Israel (and Jews) does not stem from 1967 and “occupation” but from 1948 and _existence_.

May 3, 2007 - 6:24 am Fen:

to lay the groundwork for the web of deception used to sell the Iraq War

British intelligence stands by their info - Saddam did indeed attempt to purchase yellowcake from Niger. And their [multiple] source information is seperate from the forgery you speak of

May 3, 2007 - 6:34 am William Casey:

Le Roy James doesn’t seem to realize that oil has a lot more uses that powering automobiles. Also, drilling for oil begets natural gas. No one alive today will see the end of the oil industry but by denying money to the radicals, we may see relief from terrorism.

Ditto Pete Siracusa

May 3, 2007 - 6:52 am tuan:

Excellent all-inclusive summation of the Arab-Muslim-Wahabi confrontation with the West. Your analysis that their jealousy toward more successful cultures, even as theirs causes them to sink back into the tarpit we all came from, needs amplification everywhere.
I would like to see you apply the same analysis to the Latin American hate for North Americans. In my opinion it is based on the cultural imprint received by the 800 years of subjugation by the Moorish Caliphate. If that’s so, the North needs to stop baring its neck to the South in the same way the West must kick off Islam’s grasp around our ankles — or we’ll all end up back in the slime of pre-history.

May 3, 2007 - 7:43 am courtneyme109:

Dr Hanson, there is an interesting school of thought among young Americans perhaps best called ‘Palestinian Sympathy Fatigue’. PSF notes many of the points you’ve made but also brings out “…after giving Comrade Papa Arafat a billion dollars, watching them cheer, dance in the streets passing out Laffy Taffy on 911 - the heck with them people.” There is zero interest with young people like me (16 and 3/4 years old) in establishing or supporting a state that defines honor and shame between the legs of their sisters and daughters and goes to such intolerant deadly degrees to uphold it.

Palestine? Leave them to the tender mercies of their Arab neighbors.

May 3, 2007 - 8:35 am John McDermott:

Great article. Wish it could be required reading for all Americans. Unfortunately, the “mainstream media” will not provide the widespread distribution it deserves, but my mailing list certainly will get the oportunity.

May 3, 2007 - 8:51 am Ritchie Emmons:

Steven Star Hand - is that a real name or is it a pseudonym for Oliver Stone? Or have you forgotten to pick up your prescription?

May 3, 2007 - 9:43 am Max:

All that has come and gone, and we are left in the end with the verdict of the battlefield. The war will be won or lost, like it or not, fairly or unjustly, in the next six months in Baghdad. Either Gen. Petraeus quells the violence to a level that even the media cannot exaggerate, or the enterprise fails, and we withdraw.

Uh, can we get that in writing please? It’s getting hard to keep track of exactly in which six-month period we’re going to start succeeding.

May 3, 2007 - 9:50 am Solomon2:

Fear of international terrorism probably goes back further than the 70s to the assassinaton of RFK in 1968 by a gunman who objected to Robert Kennedy’s pro-Israel policy.

May 3, 2007 - 12:42 pm Daniel Clark:

“Are we talking of the 600,000 plus Jews that were expelled from the major Arab capitals following the 1967 war?”
I think you meant the 1948 war.

May 3, 2007 - 1:10 pm syn:

What an enlightening opportunity it is to examine both sides of the argument. The one side convincingly presents fact and substance while the other nervously presents stream of collective paranoia that Bush is out to get us.

Thanks Dr. Hanson for your reasoned commentary.

May 3, 2007 - 2:28 pm Nancy Reyes:

You forgot to mention the saudi money funding Madrasses teaching hatred of others and jihad, and their charities funding terror. And, of course, you forgot to mention that in India, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines, the Islamicists will go on stronger if Iraq falls.
Finally, you forgot the “polls” of Arab countries are people spouting what they hear on the government controlled media…and the few who see thru the propaganda could be arrested if they told the truth.

May 3, 2007 - 5:12 pm Fred Beloit:

Just so. Thank you for your tireless efforts. The first comment above clearly demonstrates what reason and logic are up against today. And the funny thing is that a large portion of the media, which is supposed to provide us with the truth, as well as make a profit, goes along happily with this corruption of minds. Other than getting the date right, this commenter gets everything wrong.

May 4, 2007 - 6:47 am Hans Rupprecht:

Given that one is attempting to move a pastoral/nomadic culture to the 21st century; a quantum leap in paradigm in Arab thinking has to take place.

If the Arab culture can produce notions such as Algebra the foundations of modern science and technology, then one has to admit that there is a window of hope.

While Christ once warned his followers of ‘wolves in sheep’s clothing’ I suspect that there are not a few “sheep donning wolves clothing” for political purposes in Iraq and neighboring countries.

Not a few voices are clamoring for peace among the Arab nations perhaps it is time for them to remove the wolves clothing.

And if you know anything about wolves, they are quite friendly and gregarious when well fed. This has been my experience with a wolf named “Damian”.

Being of Dutch extraction Gen. Petraeus will simply become his namesake the ROCK that does not ROLL, but rather plugs the DIKE.

Thus we have “The Dike Plugger Dances with Wolves”.

As for myself I have found it useful to “Dance with Big Cats” whilst being a “Sheep in Wolves Clothing”.

Cheers

Hans-Christian Georg Rupprecht BGS, PDP, CFP

Commander in Chief

Frankenstein Battalion

Knecht Rupprecht Division

Hans Corps

1st Saint Nicolaas Army

Army Group “True North”

May 4, 2007 - 7:47 am Dave Begley - Omaha:

The upside to the Tenet account is that now Secr. Rumsfeld will probably write his own book. And one can be certain he’ll get the dates and names correct; unlike Tenet in his opening chapter.

I just read in “The Weekly Standard” Max Boot’s story about Gen. Petraeus and the surge. It is going better than reported, but what interested me was some background on our commander.

I knew he had earned a doctorate from Princeton, but I didn’t know he survived an M-16 shot to the chest AND a broken pelvis nine years after the gunshot wound. (Sen. Frist saved his life.)

What an impressive man! A man’s man. I’m glad he’s on OUR SIDE.

May 4, 2007 - 8:36 am BL@KBIRD:

A succinct description elegantly written.! Thank you.

Mr.Seven Star Hand apparently feels the need to juxtapose “his ridiculousness” against “your sublimeness” in the first comment.

I wonder though that even with independence from islamic oil, that our jihadi friends will not halt or hesitate from continued assault on all things non muslim.

It won’t be enough to be energy independent of them. They will never stop until we stop them universally and finally. But that task is too enormous to entertain at this juncture.

So as a stop gap we should at least consider expulsion of Islam from our midst and patrolled quarantine of the Ummmah.

I’m sure even this proposal seems impossible at this moment but the slaves of Allah will provide the reason for such a measure on their own. We just have to be patient and they will deliver.

The most likely scenario will be the present policy of “Whack a Mole”.

We will knock the poisoned fruit from the tree without acknowledging that the tree and root are responsible for the poison.

Islam is not to be understood or accommodated in useless hope of reform. It has not been “hijacked”, it has been revitalized to its original spirit. It’s not a matter of putting the Djinn back in the bottle, it’s a matter of smashing the bottle.

May 4, 2007 - 8:57 am Sharpshooter:

Mr. James,

Perhaps YOU are so easily led; most people are governed by more rational indicies, such as prices.

Nonetheless, as a retired traffic systems engineer, I might point out one of the biggest impediments to reducing our fuel usage: that is our present traffic systems.

When I was in college in the mid 1970’s , studies were showing that we could reduce our gasoline usage by 15% or more just by optimizing our traffic signals. Push vehicles towards the “highway milage” side of the MPG stickers, rather than towards “city” MPG.

Alas, the advent of traffic cams has provided a great stimulus for cities and localities to tweak the flow of traffic more for revenue (ie, stop & go, stale green lights, etc.), than for safety and efficiency.

At present usage, that would save about, what ?, 10 BILLION barrels a year?

Of course, the cities, towns and villages would have to forgo $10 BILLION in traffic fines.

BTW, a 1982 study by (IIRC) the Univesity of Texas at (Houston?) determined such traffic controls were responsible for about one-fourth of traffic deaths.

In sum, congestion is certainly a facotr, but if you think about it, how much is congestion exacerbated by governments quest for revenue?

Sharpshooter

May 4, 2007 - 9:53 am Junius:

Since Biblical times the history of the land between the Nile and the Tigris discloses that political stability is imposed by an outside power. Political change in that region has only arisen out of chaos. From 1919 to 1956 Britain and France kept the lid on the pot. The Suez Crisis marked the end of that regime and revolutions in Iraq and Syria followed. In the Lebanon Crisis of 1958 the US landed Marines in Beirut and disclosed its policy to take up the former Anglo-French role. 49 years later the test in Iraq is whether or not our lid is stronger than the boiling pot. The temptation is to retreat into an enclave theory (once espoused in Vietnam by Gen. Gavin) and indicate that as long as Israel is safe we will let chaos engulf the rest of the Middle East. In the short run this might appear to work because the our opponents are not interested in Palestine so much as they are interested in gaining political power. In the long run however, who will stabilze the region? China?

May 4, 2007 - 10:34 am GGA - Dublin, Ohio:

Bravo, Dr. Hanson! Keep up your great work.

Best Regards,
GGA - Dublin, Ohio

May 4, 2007 - 1:40 pm robohobo:

Seven Star Hand, the author of comment #1 above bills himself as “…the long-prophesied Messiah, Lion of the Tribe of Juda, Teacher of Righteousness, and Melchizedek”

Glad to see scholarly work still draws out the believers in magic and the odd delusional psychopath!

Nice article, VDH. Astute as always.

May 4, 2007 - 9:32 pm william jonas:

Very well said and a fair summary of the current global/US situation.
However VDH does not say what can be done to defeat our enemies: the Democratic Party and main stream media.
The solutions to each of the listed problem have been thwarted, opposed ,demonized and discredited by the cabal of liberal journalists and committed socialist/ Democrats.
In my opinion this is our real enemy. And they labor consciously to defeat American efforts every waking moment. Add to the mix the continuous support of global leftism and you begin to understand how flimsy and precarious our Free Republic really is.

May 5, 2007 - 7:02 am Jim McCulloch:

Since your bogus quote from General Giap occurs in a previous column that no longer allows comments, I thought I’d ask here if you have retracted it yet, or perhaps even apologized for it.

cheers,

Jim McCulloch

May 5, 2007 - 8:25 am abu yussif:

But if the West becomes oil and energy independent, what about Israel? It seems that if the West creates an economic distance from the Middle East, the Israel problem will still not disappear.

Is the West willing to pursue an isolationist position that will leave democratic Israel to fend for herself? Will oil and energy independence mean that the West will no longer give strong support to Israel (in light of Islam’s hatred of America because of it’s support for Israel)? If so, will Israel then be an expendable “sacrificial lamb” thrown to the wolves to placate their anger?

This article is going in the right direction, but ends up in the wrong place. Unless Islam is defeated on the battlefield (regardless of winning their “hearts and minds”), the West better be prepared to make deep personal and ideological sacrifices for a dhimmi peace.

May 6, 2007 - 4:13 am GCA:

A lot of people seem to miss the significance of oil to Islamic totalitarianism. Of course reduction in oil demand will not of itself end the Muslim Jihad. The jihad mentality has dominated Islam since its inception. But reduction in oil demand will greatly reduce jihad funding and destabilize numerous regimes who wish us ill. The money for guns and bombs will become scarcer in “Palestine” due their Saudi and Iranian patrons having less of it, to name just one example. A weaker enemy is easier to vanquish, and the conflict between Islam and the West will not end until there is a clear winner. We need to start fighting this thing with a merciless will to win.

May 6, 2007 - 4:47 pm john mcdonald:

clarity - what a welcome change to all the smokescreens of Political Correctness - Political analysis et al !

May 7, 2007 - 6:29 am

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