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9/11 Truth Ipswich Takes To The Streets

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

Last Saturday morning, Ipswich shoppers were met by a number of Ipswich and East Anglia Truthers parading various 9/11 Truth banners through the Town Centre. The Ipswich Truth Campaign march - organized in association with East Anglia Truth – was a stepping up of the campaign to raise awareness of the many problems with the official version of events of 9/11 as well as an opportunity to promote 9/11 hero William Rodriguez’s UK tour date at the Town Hall on Monday 18th June.

The day’s activity was extremely encouraging with the general public accepting around 250 Terrorstorm and 9/11 Mysteries DVD’s as well as over 500 leaflets.

The march was covered by the local Evening Star newspaper and whilst the article contains the usual “conspiracy theorist” tag and a misrepresentation of William’s views, its coverage is most welcomed. The article here also presents a short video of the march and includes a summary from co-organizer, Mark Elmy. In addition to the arranged march some of the group converged on an A14 flyover on the outskirts of Ipswich, planting more seeds in the minds of hundreds of unsuspecting motorists.

More photos of the day are available in the “pics” section of the East Anglia Truth MySpace profile at www.myspace.com/eastangliatruth. (many are still to be uploaded)

In the face of a mainstream media who continue to ignore evidence that contradict the official story of 9/11, East Anglia Truth will be continuing the stepping up of its awareness campaign by organizing marches with the various 9/11 Truth groups around the region. We also aim to provide a free flow of information on news events for our supporters as well as provide support to groups, whether existing or starting out.

In the foreseeable future, we will be launching our new website at www.eastangliatruth.com. As well as presenting 9/11 related news, event schedules, articles and videos we will also be including a campaigning area, making available various tools and information which can be used to inform others in a variety of formats…leaflets, short downloadable video clips and mp3’s for Bluetooth distribution etc..

Moreover, we see the setting up and support for new groups as being the key to success for 9/11 Truth. In East Anglia, we have been building a solid network of Truth groups with regular communications and cooperation between us, with some great friendships being formed in the process. Subsequently, we have various resources available that will enable a new group to be set up without a need to reinvent the wheel.

We will, therefore, be making various existing resources available on the website for those that are interested in starting a group and, given that we have produced some fantastic banners, we are willing to help organize a march to kick off any new East Anglia groups in style. We have a number of supporters who have confirmed they would be happy to travel around the region for this purpose, so if you wish to discuss this offer please email ianb@eastangliatruth.com.

You can bookmark our sites or send an email to register@eastangliatruth.com if you wish to be kept informed of future East Anglia Truth activity. More photos from the banner day and reports and photos from the William Rodriguez UK tour events in the region will be added shortly…

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9/11 widows demand release of CIA’s Inspector General report

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

Raw Story

A group composed of widows of 9/11 victims are demanding the release of a key CIA report.

“The report, prepared by the CIA’s inspector general, is the only major 9/11 government review that has still not been made publicly available,” Michael Isikoff reported in January. “When it was completed in August 2005, Newsweek and other publications reported that it contained sharp criticisms of former CIA director George Tenet and other top agency officials for failing to address the threat posed by Al Qaeda, as well as other mistakes that might have prevented the attacks.”

In a statement obtained by RAW STORY, September 11th Advocates Patty Casazza, Monica Gabrielle, Mindy Kleinberg, and Lorie Van Auken write, “Almost six years have passed since the attacks of September 11, 2001, yet critical information continues to be withheld from the American public regarding the attacks.

“In 2002, after reviewing the evidence produced by the Joint Inquiry of Congress into the 9/11 Attacks, both Republican and Democratic Congressmen agreed that a CIA Inspector General review into individual responsibility was necessary,” the statement continues. “Faced with the facts, these Congressmen understood that accountability in the Intelligence Community was crucial.”

The 9/11 widows add, “Their intent was that a final declassified CIA/IG report be released to the public and where deemed appropriate by the report, for personnel at all levels to be held accountable for any omission, commission, or failure to meet professional standards in regard to the events of September 11, 2001. To date, despite enormous efforts from the Senate Intelligence Committee, nothing has happened.”

According to 9/11Truth.org, a petition entitled “The Public’s Right to Know - Declassification and Release of Documents” (link) garnered over 15,000 signatures and was “hand delivered…to lawmakers in Washington, DC.”

Further excerpts from September 11th Advocates’ statement:

#

Michael Isikoff wrote in his January 2007 Newsweek article that, “When it [the CIA/IG report] was completed in August 2005, NEWSWEEK and other publications reported that it contained sharp criticisms of former CIA director George Tenet and other top agency officials for failing to address the threat posed by Al Qaeda, as well as other mistakes that might have prevented the attacks.”

Isikoff goes on to say, “What’s really behind the intelligence community’s refusal to release the report, the senators suspect, is a desire to protect the reputations of some of the main figures.”

Since sources and methods are not revealed in a declassified report, national security is protected and thus not an excuse for withholding this document. Since when does embarrassment meet any standard for keeping a government report secret? Isn’t it time for our elected and appointed officials to do the job that they were sent to our Nation’s Capitol for: to protect the public and not reputations?

Americans have the right to know that the problems identified in this report have been addressed and corrected. We have the right to know that competent people are serving us in strategic positions – our safety and security depends on it. Incompetence costs lives.

Legislation, co-sponsored by Senators Ron Wyden D-OR and Kit Bond R-MO, calling for the release of the 9/11 CIA/IG report, already exists, has passed the Senate and has strong bipartisan support. Yet, the White House and the CIA continue to refuse to release the already declassified version of the report.

It is sadly and abundantly clear that, once again, only heightened public pressure on the Administration and the CIA will force accountability. We call on the public and the press to demand the release of the declassified version of the 9/11 CIA’s Inspector General report.

Patty Casazza
Monica Gabrielle
Mindy Kleinberg
Lorie Van Auken

#

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RINF interview with ‘Taking Liberties’ director, Chris Atkins

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

RINF Alternative News

RINF Podcast, Taking Liberties Chris Atkins

[audio:http://rinf.podomatic.com/enclosure/2007-06-19T12_00_47-07_00.mp3|autostart=yes]
Download as MP3

Taken from the forthcoming RINF podcast, this audio contains the raw interview with author and director of the Taking Liberties movie, Chris Atkins.

Taking Liberties is a must see, if you care about our democracy, your rights freedoms and your privacy, go see this movie.

More information:

The interview was conducted by Mick Meaney via telephone, on the 19th of June, 2007.

LANCASTER EVENTS:

The Real Big Borther
Tuesday 26 June, 7:30pm - Friends Meeting House
A cross RINF/NO2ID/Defy-ID event, an evening of film showings and talks.

Taking Liberties
Wednesday 4 July - Dukes Cinema
Times T.B.A

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Big Brother Britain: Wireless CCTV Can Be Hidden Inside Clothing

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

By Mick Meaney
RINF Alternative News

Ongoing negotiations between “802 Global” and an unnamed Premier League football club could see Britain’s soccer terraces become a surveillance playground as live pictures can be beamed to a control room where the images will be scanned.

The miniature cameras can be hidden in lapels and hats and are already in widespread use throughout the UK, mainly to protect VIPs and used by security vans supplying cash to banks.

Tim Close, the director of sales and marketing at 802 Global, the company who make the cameras, says: “It’s adding an extra layer of security to the blanket. We see this as an overlay technology to enhance and build on traditional CCTV surveillance.

“For example, if the camera is in a helmet, it’s going to be trained straight at the face of the suspect during a robbery, which makes identification much easier — it’s more effective than ordinary CCTV” explained Tim Close.

However, this is just the latest step of the growing surveillance society, which now makes up one fifth of all worldwide surveillance and claims

over 4 million CCTV cameras
talking CCTV cameras
the trailing of listening CCTV cameras
CCTV cameras in bathrooms
fingerprinting in schools without guidelines, regulations or parental consent
the DNA database
the introduction of ID cards
the use of remote-controlled spy drones
biometric passports
Passport Offices aka “interrogation centres”

and the list goes on.

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EU states’ complicity confirmed in CIA secret prisons

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

EurActiv.com

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) secretly operated illegal prisons for terrorism suspects in multiple locations in Poland and Romania from 2003 to 2005, according to a report released by the Council of Europe. Background:

An investigation was initiated in November 2005 by the council’s Parliamentary Assembly under the leadership of assembly member and Swiss senator Dick Marty, to provide evidence concerning allegations first made by Human Rights Watch in 2005 that locations in Poland and Romani were among sites used by the CIA for secret detention.

Issues:

Senator Marty’s report concludes that there is “now enough evidence to state that secret detention facilities run by the CIA did exist in Europe from 2003 to 2005, in particular in Poland and Romania”. It also finds that prisoners in these facilities were subjected to “interrogation techniques tantamount to torture.”

The report further suggests that President Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland and former president Ion Iliescu of Romania authorized the secret detentions.

The Council of Europe report castigates the US and several European countries for these abuses. It also deplores what it terms “obstruction” by many of the governments implicated in the abuses, who “have done everything to disguise the true nature and extent of their activities and are persistent in their unco-operative attitude”. In this respect, the report singles out the United States, Poland, Romania, Macedonia, Italy and Germany for criticism.

The report provides new information including from cross-referenced testimonies of more than 30 current and former members of intelligence services in the US and Europe - about how the secret programme operated in Poland and Romania. It contains details from civil aviation records about CIA-operated airplanes used for detainee transfers, showing airplanes in the period 2003 through 2005 landing at remote airstrips in Poland and Romania. It also describes how flights to Poland ¿ including one that may have carried terrorism suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed from Kabul to Szymany on March 7, 2003 - were deliberately disguised using fake flight plans.

CIA detainees were held in Poland until late 2005. They are believed to have been transferred out of the region after the Washington Post reported in November 2005 that the CIA was using detention sites in Eastern Europe and Human Rights Watch released information showing that Poland and Romania were likely among the sites used. ABC News, relying on sources within the CIA, reported in December 2005 that the detainees were flown to Morocco.

In September 2006, US President George W. Bush publicly acknowledged the existence of the secret CIA detention system, and announced that 14 prisoners in secret CIA custody had been transferred to the US military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. In status hearings earlier this year, at least four of these 14 prisoners claimed that they had been tortured while in US custody.

Many detainees who are believed to have been held in CIA custody remain missing. Human Rights Watch has done extensive research on detainees believed to have been held by the CIA, and earlier this week issued an updated list of missing detainees jointly with five other human rights groups. The list named 39 persons whose fate and whereabouts are unknown.

However, the CIA dismissed the Council of Europe report - a CIA spokesman told the BBC that it was biased and distorted, and that the agency had operated lawfully.

Senator Marty’s charge, that secret CIA prisons “did exist in Europe from 2003 to 2005, in particular in Poland and Romania”, was also denied by both Polish and Romanian officials.

Polish former president Aleksander Kwasniewski, who served from 1995 to 2005, said on 8 June: “There were no secret prisons in Poland.”

Romanian senator Norica Nicolai, who headed an investigation into the allegations, also denied his country’s involvement.

“All statements made by Dick Marty are totally groundless,” he said.

Positions:

The European Commission confirmed that it received on Friday 8 June the second report of ‘Secret detentions and illegal transfers of detainees involving Council of Europe member states’ , which was adopted by the Council of Europe’s Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, and will now be discussed by Parliamentary Assembly Council of Europe. However, it declined to comment further, stating its wish “not to interfere” with the Committee and Assembly’s work.

“Today’s report confirms that Poland and Romania helped the CIA operate illegal detention sites on their territory in violation of international law,” said Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism director at Human Rights Watch. “It is now clear that US officials illegally conspired with intelligence officials in several European countries to ‘disappear’, interrogate and illegally transfer terrorism suspects, flouting basic human rights norms.”

UK Liberal Democrat MEP Sarah Ludford, vice-president of the former committee of enquiry on CIA activities in the Parliament said: “The new Marty report confirms what had been found by the Council of Europe and the European Parliament. Any new evidence confirming that CIA prisons existed, as we alleged, in Europe, would be damning and shameful. As MEPs demanded, we must expose the secret agreements between US intelligence services and some European governments. These illegal, undemocratic and unacceptable actions must be accounted for and punished.”

Catalonian MEP Ignasi Guardans, former ALDE coordinator in the CIA committee, declared: “The release of this new report by the Council of Europe rapporteur will help to maintain the spotlight on what happened in the name of the ‘war on terror’. The EP too must maintain its scrutiny of this rendition practice in the coming months and continue to push the Member States to reveal the true facts of the matter.”

“I don’t know which is more shocking: that European governments have been complicit in these activities, violating their legal obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, or that they have used anti-democratic methods to conceal their actions and frustrate parliamentary and judicial investigations,” said Parliamentary Assembly Council of Europe ( PACE ) President René van der Linden.

“Senator Marty’s report provides unprecedented detail of the unlawful activities of certain European governments in connection with CIA rendition flights and secret prisons and their disgraceful efforts to conceal their wrong-doing from scrutiny,” van der Linden added. “His revelations underline the essential role of the Council of Europe in ensuring respect for the international rule of law across the continent.”

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Appeals Court Rules for E-Mail Privacy

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

By Dan Sewell

Federal investigators overstepped constitutional bounds by searching e-mails without a warrant during a fraud investigation related to an herbal supplement company known for its “Smiling Bob” ads, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.

The ruling by a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholds a lower court ruling temporarily blocking investigators from additional e-mail searches in the case against Steven Warshak, owner and president of Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals.

Warshak, whose company markets supplements that include a “natural male enhancement” product called Enzyte, argued that his Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures were violated when the government went after his e-mail records.

“The district court correctly determined that e-mail users maintain a reasonable expectation of privacy in the content of their e-mails,” Judge Boyce Martin said in a case closely watched by civil-liberties advocates in the still-emerging field of Internet privacy.

Warshak has pleaded not guilty to charges that he and his business defrauded customers and banks out of at least $100 million in an alleged scheme that included billing credit cards without authorization.

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General: Bush knew about Abu Ghraib

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

Al Jazeera

Taguba says Bush and top US military brass knew about the abuses in Abu Ghraib prison [EPA]

The White House has denied assertions by a former leading military investigator of the Abu Ghraib scandal that the president and leading military officials knew about the abuse at the prison in Iraq before it became public.

A spokesman said George Bush first learnt about the abuse from media reports.

“The president said over three years ago that he first saw the pictures of the abuse on television,” White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said in Crawford, Texas, where Bush is spending the weekend at his ranch.

Stanzel was responding to questions about a New Yorker magazine report quoting retired Major-General Antonio Taguba, as saying “the president had to be aware” of the abuse of prisoners by US military guards.

Taguba also said Donald Rumsfeld, the former defence secretary who had initially denied knowledge of the lurid photographs of prisoner abuse, was at best, “in denial”.

“The photographs were available to him – if he wanted to see them.”

Referring to Rumsfeld’s May 7, 2004, testimony before congress in which he said he had no idea of the extent of the abuse, Taguba said Rumsfeld was “trying acquit himself, and a lot of people are lying to protect themselves”.

He said Rumsfeld and the military’s top brass who stodd with him as he misrepresented what he knew about Abu Ghraib had failed the nation.

The photographs taken by US jailers humiliating prisoners who were naked or hooded, on leashes or piled in a pyramid, became one of the few things Bush said he regretted about the Iraq war and apologised for on May 6, 2004.

Taguba spoke of other, undisclosed material, including descriptions of the sexual humiliation of a father with his son, who were both detainees and “a video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomising a female detainee” that was never made public or mentioned in any court.

Taguba said that all high-level officials had avoided scrutiny while the jail keepers at Abu Ghraib were tried in courts-martial.

Warnings and consequences

“From what I knew, troops just don’t take it upon themselves to initiate what they did without any form of knowledge of the higher-ups,” Taguba told the New Yorker, adding that his orders were to investigate the military police only, and not their superiors.”

Eleven US soldiers have been convicted for abuses related to detainees at Abu Ghraib.

“These [military police] troops were not that creative,” he said.

“Somebody was giving them guidance, but I was legally prevented from further investigation into higher authority.”

Seymour Hersh, who interviewed Taguba for the New Yorker, told Al Jazeera that Taguba had been warned by General John Abizaid, the then commander of the US Central Command, that he would be investigated along with his report.

“I’d been in the army 32 years by then, and it was the first time that I thought I was in the Mafia,” Taguba said.

Taguba was told to retire by January 2007 and was offered no reason.

He said he was “ostracised for doing what I was asked to do”.

Well aware that his former military colleagues would be angry at his speaking out, the retired general said: “The fact is … we violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values.

“The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.

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New Report Challenges Basic Assumptions About Climate Change

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

RINF Alternative News

A new report has been published which challenges certain basic assumptions about climate change. The report has been written by an independent lay researcher, and is backed by over 20 signatories from diverse backgrounds. The report presents significant ground-based and space-based data which indicates that ongoing illegal and unacknowledged aerosol spraying from aircraft could be affecting our climate. Copies of the report have been sent to Greenpeace, the Civil Aviation Authority, The Royal Air Force and DEFRA, challenging them to investigate the data themselves.

An independent lay researcher, with a background in Software Engineering, from Derbyshire, UK, has published a new report which documents ongoing illegal aerosol spraying activities which could be affecting our climate, our health or both. This activity can be seen in multiple, repeated instances of persistent aircraft trails across our skies.

Andrew Johnson said that, like most other people, he assumed, for many years, that the trails were just ordinary vapour trails (called ‘contrails’).

“In 2004, I began to notice that these trails did not behave like contrails at all. Then, on 10th June 2005, I witnessed a grid of aircraft trails right outside my window, just before sunset,” Andrew has included copies of 2 photographs of this ‘grid’ in the report. “I sent the picture to the local paper and they published it. I also had it published on a popular website in the USA and I received quite a number of e-mail responses to the picture. Most of the responses described my picture as being of a grid of ‘chemtrails’ and quite a few people sent me similar pictures they had taken.” Andrew then decided to write an article about this ‘grid’ picture and what the background to it seemed to be. The article was published, online, in September 2005 on the website of Phenomena Magazine.

“Since then, I have continued to photograph and study the chemtrails. I made some “time-lapse” videos using a webcam and this clearly showed the trails did not behave like ordinary ‘contrails’ or even clouds. I found that several other people have done this, including a former TV weatherman from Idaho, called Scott Stevens. I became more and more convinced that something was wrong - the time lapse footage clearly shows the difference between contrails and chemtrails. On 4th February this year, in a period of two and a half hours, I filmed 42 aircraft leaving long-lasting trails over the centre of Derby. I edited the film clips together (which were all time-stamped) and posted the results on the Internet. I reference this video in my report, and have included a copy on DVD.”

Later, David Griffin, a Virtual Learning Environment Materials author based in Nottingham, contacted Andrew to share a weather satellite photo he had found, taken on the same day, which clearly showed the chemtrails.

David, who is a signatory to the report, said, “For me, the fact many of us around the country notice particularly heavy days of this phenomena and have recently managed to link the activity via satellite imaging systems, is some sort of concrete evidence that something is going on here. This evidence alone should be sufficient to at least initiate an enquiry of some sort.”

Andrew explains, in the report, that the Physics of the formation of aircraft vapour trails are fairly straightforward. “On every cold winter’s day, when we breathe out, we can see our breath. The reason is that our breath is warm and the winter air is cold. Tiny droplets of water vapour condense out of the warm air to form ‘clouds of visible breath’, before the warm air quickly cools and the ‘clouds’ disappear again. This is very similar to the process that is happening about 30,000 feet in the air, when hot exhaust gases from jet engines heat the air. Water droplets condense out of the exhaust fumes and from the cooler surrounding air and form a contrail - an abbreviation of condensation trail. Even in ideal conditions, these trails should become invisible after 1 or 2 minutes. This would therefore make the formation of a persistent grid of trails (like the one shown in my photograph) impossible without additional substances being sprayed or emitted from the aircraft”.

Over the last few months, Andrew said that he has found a number of other people share his concerns and they have therefore agreed to be signatories to the report. For example, David Sherlock of Swanley, Kent said “I have been researching the phenomenon of aircraft releasing chemtrails into our skies. I noticed that these exhaust trails were not dispersing. After much research I discovered some startling facts as to the composition of the trails. I fully encourage more investigation into this matter.”

In the report, Andrew outlines some of the work of former US Department of Defence Research Scientist Clifford Carnicom. Carnicom has tested samples of material which appear to be present in chemtrails and he has discovered Barium compounds. Samples of air from Los Angeles, for example, contained increased levels of Potassium and Calcium.

Brian Dovey, of East Tilbury said, “Over the last couple of months I have taken pictures with an old compact camera of these long trails, disturbingly most do not dissipate as contrails do, these linger and fan out over wide areas of sky usually resulting in a grey ’smogging’ effect, later in the day. I really would like some answers to this phenomenon from someone in government circles.”

Albert Shine, a former Aircraft Technician from Morecambe, Lancashire, said “My background is in aviation, thus I am very familiar with many current helicopters, civil airliners and some military types. As regards this phenomenon, which I have dubbed designer pollution, I was at first sceptical, until I began to observe chemtrails over Morecambe.” He added “Many more people now suffer a wide spectrum of breathing related complaints (asthma is now quite common), frequent flu-like symptoms and lingering colds etc and this ‘designer pollution’ may be a contributory cause. It is vital that this matter is brought to as wide a section of the public as possible and it should merit headlines in the media”.

As regards the report which Andrew has produced, Shine said, “The challenge to the authorities ought to be a thunderous roar demanding exposure of just what is going on. What Andrew Johnson is seeking to do, and the calm and meticulous submission that he has prepared is an excellent start.”

Gil Williamson of Masham, North Yorkshire, a former member of the Armed Forces said “If the information from the US is correct, this spraying is very harmful to our health and should be stopped immediately. I certainly have not given my permission to be sprayed on, and judging by previous secret experiments unearthed by the Guardian Newspaper, this is a total breach of our democratic rights and should be stopped immediately.”

Andrew points out that “Gil is quite correct in that declassified documents show that we have been sprayed before - in the 1950’s and 1960’s - with biological agents and I mention this matter in the report.”

Nick Buchanan, a Lecturer in North West England, stated “I would like to know if the phenomena of chemtrails is what has led to the otherwise inexplicable rise in asthma of the last two decades. Proportions are now epidemic.”

Another signatory to the report, Belinda McKenzie - a London-based language specialist - said “In the 1960’s and 1970’s, I was an avid sun-bather and, in warm weather, was almost always outside whenever the sun was. I never noticed anything like these trails then and I am therefore convinced the ones we are seeing now, so regularly, have some other cause than ordinary air traffic.”

Andrew responds, “Many people are concerned about this issue, but are faced with a wall of denial by all Official Bodies - including non-partisan environmental organizations. People will undoubtedly criticize the report I have published because it has no ‘Official Backing’, but the report contains some very basic, easily verifiable data which proves things are not as the should be. I would argue that the report is truly independent - as it has been produced without any funding and it has been reviewed and agreed on by a ‘lay jury’ of over 20 people. We hear a great deal in the news about ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’, yet all official bodies who discuss these issues ignore the sort of data presented in this report. This leads me to believe that these bodies must have drawn incorrect conclusions, which should now be subject to immediate and urgent review. Legislation has now been passed which assumes certain causes for climate change and we are increasingly subject to ’scare stories’ about this. The data in the report adds a new dimension to this equation and is therefore very important in that regard alone. I encourage anyone and everyone to review the report for themselves and collect their own data too. Unless the illegal spraying suddenly stops, people will easily be able to verify the reality of this activity for themselves.”

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Blair feared US would ‘nuke’ Afghanistan

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

News.com.au BRITAIN joined the US in ousting the Taliban in 2001 because it feared America would “nuke the sh-t” out of Afghanistan, the former British ambassador to Washington has reportedly said on a TV documentary.

In comments published in advance in the Daily Mirror tabloid today, Christopher Meyer said fear explained why Prime Minister Tony Blair chose to stand with US President George W. Bush in his decision to invade Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks - to temper his aggressive battle plans.

“Blair’s real concern was that there would be quote unquote ‘a knee-jerk reaction’ by the Americans … they would go thundering off and nuke the shit out of the place without thinking straight,” Mr Meyer reportedly told the documentary, according to the Mirror.

In other excerpts of the documentary, printed in The Observer newspaper yesterday, members of Mr Blair’s inner circle said the Prime Minister agreed to commit troops to the March 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq despite believing that the US had failed to prepare adequately for post-war reconstruction.

Britain’s Channel 4 will air the first part of The Rise and Fall of Tony Blair on Saturday.

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U.S., Russia: Iraq had no WMDs

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

By BILL VARNER
Bloomberg News

The U.S. and Russia have agreed to dismantle the U.N. agency that searched Iraq for weapons of mass destruction and affirm that Saddam Hussein’s government had no such arms at the time of the American invasion in March 2003.

The Security Council will adopt a resolution the last week in June to close the U.N. Monitoring, Inspection and Verification Commission, created in 1999 to search Iraq for biological and chemical weapons, Belgian and British diplomats said. The measure will also end the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency’s mandate to look for nuclear arms in Iraq.

U.N. inspectors found no banned weapons before or since the invasion.

Feisal al-Istrabadi, Iraq’s deputy ambassador to the U.N., said his country is “still dealing with the residue of having been a pariah state” and called the resolution a “huge symbolic step that will show we are taking steps forward to be reintegrated in the community of nations.”

He said adopting the U.S.-drafted resolution would be a prelude to lifting all U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq during Saddam’s reign.

The Bush administration’s justification for invading Iraq and toppling its government was the alleged threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

Iraq has complained about paying $50 million since the invasion to maintain the agency, known as UNMOVIC. The agency, which withdrew the inspectors before the war, employs 34 people and prepares quarterly reports to the Security Council.

An annex to the proposed resolution will include a letter from Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar al-Zebari pledging that his government won’t develop WMDs.

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New Report Shows Bush’s Presidential Signing Statements Have Been Used to Nullify Laws

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

Brian Beutler

A Government Accountability Office report confirms that Bush’s use of presidential signing statements have the effect of nullifying the law in question in about 30 percent of cases.

Well, it’s official: President Bush doesn’t much respect the laws Congress passes. A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report — commissioned by Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and released today — confirms that Bush’s use of presidential signing statements are, in fact, utterly without precedent.

Though they’ve been used by American presidents for about 200 years, signing statements — edicts issued by the president to declare his intent to construe a provision within a law differently than Congress does — are Constitutionally questionable. But George W. Bush’s use of them far exceeds his predecessors’, both in number and in severity, and he has consistently used them to flout the will of the legislative branch.

Though the GAO report makes no claims about the legitimacy of Bush’s statements or of the use of statements in general, it indicates that, in practice, the statements have the effect of nullifying the law in question in about 30 percent of cases. The issues are important: They include accounting for Iraq war funding and security measures for the border patrol.

And that’s just from the GAO’s inquiry into the 11 signing statements Bush issued against appropriations acts in 2006, which constituted objections to 160 different provisions. Bush has released more than 100 signing statements in his presidency, taking exception to hundreds of provisions of the law.

The report was conducted fairly simply. GAO officials surveyed 19 of last year’s 160 objections to determine how the statements had impacted the implementation of laws. According to the report: “We contacted the relevant agencies and asked them how they were executing the provisions. After evaluating the responses we received, we determined that agencies failed to execute six provisions as enacted.”

Alongside the failures of law, the reports also list the rationales that the president used to strike down the provisions. For instance, GAO found that, by citing the Unitary Executive Theory, Bush allowed the Department of Defense to exclude “costs for any other contingency operations, such as those in Iraq” as Congress had mandated.

Indeed, it’s the Unitary Executive Theory — another Constitutionally dubious concept — that has made Bush’s use of signing statements especially damaging. Last year, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) inserted a provision into the Department of Defense emergency supplemental bill that would have criminalized the use of torture by U.S. military interrogators. In order to protect the measure’s effectiveness, McCain included a provision that aimed to stop all interference by the President, save for a veto of the entire package. “The provisions of this section,” it read, “shall not be superseded, except by a provision of law enacted after the date of the enactment of this Act which specifically repeals, modifies, or supersedes the provisions of this section.”

But upon signing the law, President Bush declared his intent to interpret the law “in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power.”

Supplying much of the jurisprudential weight to the president’s practice has been Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who has written widely in support of the statements. In particular — as The Boston Globe’s Charlie Savage has reported — in his dissent against the court’s decision in the case of Hamdan vs. Donald Rumsfeld to block Guantanamo Bay military tribunals, Scalia wrote that “in its discussion of legislative history the court wholly ignores the president’s signing statement, which explicitly set forth his understanding that the [Detainee Treatment Act] ousted jurisdiction over pending cases.”

Scalia appears to have laid out his philosophy on signing statements in a 1986 memo, wherein he wrote, “Since the president’s approval is just as important as that of the House or Senate, it seems to follow that the president’s understanding of the bill should be just as important as that of Congress.”

In 2006, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) introduced legislation that would have forbidden federal courts from legitimating presidential signing statements and allowed Congress to bring up the question of their constitutionality before the Supreme Court. But the bill never made it to the Senate floor and expired at the end of the 109th Congress.

Have Your Say: New Report Shows Bush’s Presidential Signing Statements Have Been Used to Nullify Laws
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 19th, 2007 at 10:45 pm and is filed under 9/11 Truth, Contributions & Guests . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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