Mantis Claw
12-04-2002, 03:57 PM
Guerrillas of the Week
Editor's Pick, December 2, 2002
"Winona Ryder in charge of security at Bloomingdales or Dracula in charge of the blood bank." - Commentator Mark Shields on the appointment of Henry Kissinger as head of the 9/11 "Independent" Commission, Nov. 29th PBS NewsHour (thanks to Unanswered Questions' Kyle Hence)
If you've been living in a cave for the last week, or just trying to ignore depressing developments in the so-called War on Terror, here's the latest news flash from the White House Office of Obfuscation: Henry Kissinger, our modern Machiavelli in a $3,000 suit, is the man President Bush has anointed to get to the bottom of what really happened on 9-11.
Could it get more surreal? Consider this:
The man in charge of finding out how 3,000 Americans were murdered on Sept. 11, 2001 was himself charged with homicide on Sept. 10. A civil suit filed in U.S. federal court by the survivors of Gen. Rene Schneider of Chile the day before the planes hit, claims Kissinger, while Nixon's national security advisor, ordered the 1973 murder of their father, a liberal general loyal to the democratically-elected president Salvador Allende. The murder triggered Allende's overthrow, and ushered in the brutal dictatorship of Auguso Pinochet.
As Christopher Hitchens writes, "Every single document in the prosecution case is a U.S.-government declassified paper. And the target of this devastating lawsuit is being invited to review the shortcomings of the 'intelligence community?'"
Of course, Kissinger's role in and subsequent cover-up of the Allende coup is just one chapter in his blood-soaked record of un-elected "public service." His appointment to head the 9-11 commission is being heralded as the cap on the crown of his "distinguished" career that includes a Nobel Peace Prize and a hand in scores of major decisions in post-war American foreign policy, from the illegal bombing of Cambodia to urging support for murderous regimes in Indonesia and El Salvador.
Even the most mainstream of media outlets were having a hard time holding their tongues at this latest boldfaced affront to decency. As Chris Hitchens, author of "The Trial of Henry Kissinger," writes in Slate, "the cynicism of the decision and the gross insult to democracy and to the families of the victims that it represents has to be analyzed to be believed." As the week went by, the chorus of outrage rose, from Hitchens' himself, to The Nation's David Corn, and Newsday's Les Payne.
But, by far, the best responses were penned by this week's Guerrillas, two women whose work we admire, financial expert Catherine Austin Fitts and The New York Times' Maureen Dowd:
He's Ba-a-ack!
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON - It's an inspired choice. Bold, counterintuitive, edgy, outside the box. Who better to investigate an unwarranted attack on America than the man who used to instigate America's unwarranted attacks?
Who better to ferret out government duplicity and manipulation than the man who engineered secret wars, secret bombings, secret wiretaps and secret coups, and still ended up as a Pillar of the Establishment and Nobel Peace Prize winner?
It was Dick Cheney's brainstorm, naturally. Only someone as pathologically opaque as the vice president could appreciate the sublime translucency of Henry Kissinger. And only someone intent on recreating the glory days of the Ford and Nixon White Houses could have hungered to add the 79-year-old Dr. Strange - I mean, Dr. Kissinger to the Bush team. There will be naysayers who quibble that the president's choice to lead the 9/11 commission is not so much a realist as an opportunist, not so much Metternich as Machiavelli.
They will look askance at Mr. Kissinger's résumé: keeping the Vietnam War going for years after he realized it might be unwinnable; encouraging the illegal bombing of Cambodia; backing Chile's murderous Pinochet; playing Iago to President Richard Nixon, telling him he'd be "a weakling" if he did not prosecute newspapers running the Pentagon Papers; wiretapping journalists and his own colleagues to track down leaks on the Cambodia bombing. If you look for the words "Kissinger" and "secret" in the same sentence in Nexis, the search cannot be completed; there are too many results. When he was dating Jill St. John and Liv Ullmann and preaching that power is an aphrodisiac, he even coyly called himself "a secret swinger."
In Walter Isaacson's biography, "Kissinger," the same words cascade: "deceitful," "disingenuous," "paranoid," "insecure," "temper tantrum," "flatterer," "two-faced" and "secretive." The über-diplomat has even been criticized for dissembling in his own memoirs. But secretiveness is not a disqualification for jobs in this White House. Quite the contrary: only the clandestine and the conspiratorial need apply.
Mr. Bush, after all, worked very hard to suppress any investigation of 9/11. He had to cave to the victims' families, who were hellbent to hear what the president learned in his August 2001 briefing about Al Qaeda plans, and what wires were crossed at the C.I.A., F.B.I. and I.N.S. Now Mr. Bush can let the commission proceed, secure in the knowledge that Mr. Kissinger has never shed light on a single dark corner, or failed to flatter a boss, in his entire celebrated career. (He was one of Mr. Bush's patient tutors in foreign policy during the campaign.)
If you want to get to the bottom of something, you don't appoint Henry Kissinger. If you want to keep others from getting to the bottom of something, you appoint Henry Kissinger. Mr. Bush learned about the diplomat's black belt in the black arts long ago, when he made a patsy of Bush père. As the ambassador to the U.N. in 1971, Bush 41 was accused of aggressively making the case for Taiwan and against Beijing, even as Mr. Kissinger, the national security adviser, was secretly traveling to Beijing and undercutting Taiwan. Afterward, Mr. Kissinger told George H. W. Bush he was "disappointed" that Beijing had gotten Taiwan's seat in the U.N. "Given the fact that we were saying one thing in New York and doing another in Washington," Mr. Bush drily observed, "that outcome was inevitable." Fortunately, Bush Jr. was not held back by the revulsion that many in his generation have for Mr. Kissinger's power-drunk promotion of bloody American adventures abroad. As the former fraternity president told GQ magazine, he stayed a retro 50's guy through the roiling 60's: "I don't remember any kind of heaviness ruining my time at Yale."
Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney are in tune with Mr. Kissinger's principles: that the greatest enemy of U.S. policy is the U.S. media, that American diplomacy may be happily indifferent to American public opinion, that the great unwashed masses of our democracy are just a big old drag on the elites who know what's best, and that corporate pals are a help, not a hindrance, in government work.
For this administration, outside the box is inside the box
"THOSE WHO WIN IN A RIGGED GAME, GET STUPID": The Kissinger Bombshell An Open Letter to 9/11 Skeptics and Doubters
BY Catherine Austin Fitts
(Written in astonishment.)
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Our lord and emperor George W. Bush has just tied together the entire ball of 9/11 lies and related wax, stuck a wick in it, and handed us the match. He has done so by appointing Henry Kissinger chairman of the long-awaited "independent" commission to investigate the Sept. 11 attacks.
To all those who want the unvarnished truth about the "Attack on America," starting with the families of the victims, this would have been a slap in the face - were it not so laughable. Sequel to the Warren Commission.
The resident of the White House was explicit in stating that the commission is not supposed to actually investigate anything about 9/11. Wrote the Associated Press, "Bush did not set as a primary goal for Kissinger to uncover mistakes or lapses of the government that could have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks."
So what is Henry supposed to actually do? "Instead, [Bush] said the panel should try to help the administration learn the tactics and motives of the enemy."
Aha. In other words, the panel is supposed to produce more scary stories about what the freedom-hating evildoers are planning to do to us next. Sounds like overkill: Isn't that what every department of the administration is already doing?
The Kissinger commission is being called to life nearly 15 months after the attacks. The White House refused to sign off on the investigative body, until Congress agreed to its conditions. The panel can issue subpoenas only if the Republican members agree. In the polite words of Stephen Push, a leader of the 9/11 families ("Families of September 11"), the commission concept is simply "too weak." So far, no surprise. For fifteen months, Bush and Cheney have repeatedly acted to delay the calling of an independent 9/11 investigation. They have tried to stop the release of any information about the attacks - let alone about their level of prior knowledge! And they have otherwise established the most secretive administration in modern American history. But Henry Kissinger? Now that is a surprise!
Who could have imagined that the Bush regime would so obviously expose themselves to ridicule by appointing one of the world's best-known war criminals, terrorist masterminds, and professional liars as the head of a New Warren Commission? Highlights of Dr. Kissinger's Career
Kissinger's name seems to be magically entwined with the date of Sept. 11th. As national security adviser and secretary of state in the Nixon administration, he helped engineer the CIA coup that overthrew the elected government of Chile, on Sept. 11, 1973. For a detailed account of that atrocity - the original Sept. 11th attack go here.
In a famous comment on Chile at a 1970 White House meeting, Kissinger made no secret of his utter contempt for democratic government: "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people," he said. Now everyone remembers where they were on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, though we know precious little about how and why the horrible crimes of that day were allowed to happen. But who knows that on the same morning, a federal suit was being filed against Dr. Kissinger by relatives of one of his countless victims?
"Family of Slain Chilean Sues Kissinger, Helms - Military Leader Was Killed in Kidnap Attempt Linked to Nixon Administration" BY Bill Miller, Washington Post, September 11, 2001
As a direct result of the Pinochet coup, at least 3,000 Chilean civilians were "disappeared" and assassinated. As horrible as that was, Kissinger has been involved in even worse crimes. As Nixon's national security adviser, Kissinger helped plan the "secret" bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed in this unprovoked action against a neutral state. The bombing destabilized the U.S.-backed Cambodian government, paving the way for the later takeover of that country by the Khmer Rouge. But hey, let's not let mass murder detract from the man's achievements. In 1973, Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize for reaching a deal to end the U.S. invasion of Vietnam. The Nixon government had at first refused the Paris peace deal with North Vietnam. Instead, it chose to level Hanoi in a massive Christmas 1972 bombing, leaving nothing there but dust. A few months later, Nixon and Kissinger accepted the same deal, with minor changes. Now that's how you win a peace prize!
Kissinger was the only major cabinet member who miraculously survived the subsequent fall of the Nixon regime. He remained Secretary of State under the appointed Unpresident, Gerald Ford. (Ford was the first "president" to not have even run in a presidential election, so there was no need to actually steal it.)
Okay, class. Anyone remember who the other key players in the 2-1/2 year Ford administration were?
Vice President: Nelson Rockefeller, brother of David.Chief of Staff: Dick Cheney.Secretary of Defense: Donald Rumsfeld.Director of Central Intelligence: George Herbert Walker Bush. Hmmm...
Papa Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Kissinger. Sound familiar? Today, the same four men run the regime of the Idiot Prince.
Now *there* is a story for the historians of the future! Papa Bush apparently cut some nice deals with his CIA boys at the time, and in gratitude the agency later named its new headquarters the "George Herbert Walker Bush Building." We'll leave the rest of the Papa Bush story aside for today, though it may surpass even Kissinger's for sheer criminality. Today is Henry's day.
In 1973, while still with the Nixon administration, Kissinger became one of the founding fathers of the Trilateral Commission, together with Zbigniew Brzezinski and David Rockefeller, brother of Nelson. This association of billionaires, business leaders, academics and politicians was brought together by the three men in an effort to arm the global elites of the U.S., Europe and Japan against what at the time seemed like an unprecedented social and economic crisis. The Trilateral Commission has continued to meet annually ever since.
In 1975, Kissinger traveled with Ford to Indonesia, where they met with the U.S.-backed and U.S.-armed dictator Suharto, who oversaw the killing of millions during his 35-year reign. The day after Ford and Henry left, Indonesian forces invaded the independent territory of East Timor. One-third of the territory's population was exterminated during the subsequent 20-year occupation, but this had little impact on continuing American and Western arms shipments to the regime in Jakarta. Recently released documents establish that Suharto received a green light for the invasion from the president and secretary of state.
The 9/11 panel will not be the first "Kissinger Commission." In the early 1980s, under the Reagan-Bush administration, Henry was called to lead an investigation of U.S. policy in Central America. They provided the whitewash for the death squads that U.S. forces had armed and trained in El Salvador and Honduras, and for the "Contra" army that was organized by the CIA to invade Nicaragua.
Since then, the doctor has lived more quietly as the head of Kissinger Associates, which provides "consultancy" (door-opening) for oil and arms deals and much else besides, and which counts among its clients the U.S. government, NATO, many corporations, and foreign countries like China and Central Asia.
French prosecutors paid a surprise visit to Kissinger's Paris hotel suite in 2001, questioning him with regard to the war crimes charges that they would have been required to level under French law. They let him go his way, but henceforth, Henry will have to be a touch more discreet when strolling along the banks of the Seine.
2001 saw the publication of Christopher Hitchens's book, "The Trial of Henry Kissinger." Released in 2002, an eponymous documentary details the man's horrific and astonishing crimes. Couldn't Bush have found anyone less conspicuous, or less farcical, to wash his dirty laundry? One can only conclude that this was the only man the White House knew they could trust. If you want to cover something up, better pick someone with tons of his own dirt to hide.
Kissinger's appointment is an act of tremendous hubris - or else of absolute desperation. Is the official story of the 9/11 attacks really so wobbly that the regime must resort to hiring him?
He brought death squads to Chile in 1973. He covered up death squads in Central America in the 1980s. And now should we expect him to tell us the full story of how the CIA helped create Osama Binladin's death squads? Is this guy who is going to explore why the Air Force was stood down, or why and how so many FBI agents were blocked from investigating reports that terror pilots had infiltrated the United States? Or is Kissinger going to tell us why George W. Bush killed the FBI investigations into the Binladin family's connections to terrorism in early 2001?
Seriously. We can really have a field day with this.
But dangers lurk. Kissinger's appointment is the latest signal of an absolute and open intent to play HARDBALL. Let us all beware what sudden "surprises" are in store during the next days and months.
Kissinger features prominently within the "Defense Policy Board" run by Paul Wolfowitz at the Pentagon, which also includes veteran warheads Richard Perle and Newt Gingrich. These men, termed the "Wolfowitz Cabal" by no less a personage than Colin Powell, are the Supreme Chickenhawks of the War Party. For years they have individually and collectively called for the (further) destruction of Iraq and, depending on their mood, preemptive war with Iran, Syria, North Korea - you name it. At a meeting earlier this year, they declared Saudi Arabia the real enemy, and considered the option of taking out the Saudis right after the planned war in Iraq. The powerpoint presentation viewed by the group on that day concluded with the following grand strategy for the upcoming war: "Iraq is the tactical pivot, Saudi Arabia the strategic pivot, Egypt the prize."
On Sept. 11, 2001, as though that day was not bad enough for all of us, Kissinger, who was in Berlin, called in to CNN during the attacks. He basically argued that the attacks fully justified any American response whatsoever. The next day, he wrote that the U.S. had every right to destroy states that "harbor people who have the capability to do something like this," emphasizing that it made no difference whether these states actually had anything to do with the Sept. 11 attacks or not.
So watch out for sudden revelations about the alleged 9/11 hijackers that "prove" both Saudi Arabia and Iraq (or any other country) must immediately be crushed. The groundwork for such an attack, should the regime decide to go with it, has been prepared during the last weeks with the sudden "discovery" of Saudi financing of terrorism - something that never bothered the Bushes before 9/11, of course.
May fortune and God only give us enough time to work on this, and we the people will peacefully bring down this regime. Appointing Kissinger could turn out to be their greatest blunder. Perhaps it will finally awaken the antiwar movement to the continuing importance of learning the full truth of 9/11. No doubt many of the antiwar organizers can well remember the early 1970s, when their protests against the Vietnam War were directed at none other than: Henry Kissinger. Why has he of all people been given the 9/11 job?
We need to gather everything known about this man and throw it hard and wide, until the whole sham of the investigation is exposed. If we are given enough time, and still fail to bring this house of lies crashing down, it will have been our own fault.
Editor's Pick, December 2, 2002
"Winona Ryder in charge of security at Bloomingdales or Dracula in charge of the blood bank." - Commentator Mark Shields on the appointment of Henry Kissinger as head of the 9/11 "Independent" Commission, Nov. 29th PBS NewsHour (thanks to Unanswered Questions' Kyle Hence)
If you've been living in a cave for the last week, or just trying to ignore depressing developments in the so-called War on Terror, here's the latest news flash from the White House Office of Obfuscation: Henry Kissinger, our modern Machiavelli in a $3,000 suit, is the man President Bush has anointed to get to the bottom of what really happened on 9-11.
Could it get more surreal? Consider this:
The man in charge of finding out how 3,000 Americans were murdered on Sept. 11, 2001 was himself charged with homicide on Sept. 10. A civil suit filed in U.S. federal court by the survivors of Gen. Rene Schneider of Chile the day before the planes hit, claims Kissinger, while Nixon's national security advisor, ordered the 1973 murder of their father, a liberal general loyal to the democratically-elected president Salvador Allende. The murder triggered Allende's overthrow, and ushered in the brutal dictatorship of Auguso Pinochet.
As Christopher Hitchens writes, "Every single document in the prosecution case is a U.S.-government declassified paper. And the target of this devastating lawsuit is being invited to review the shortcomings of the 'intelligence community?'"
Of course, Kissinger's role in and subsequent cover-up of the Allende coup is just one chapter in his blood-soaked record of un-elected "public service." His appointment to head the 9-11 commission is being heralded as the cap on the crown of his "distinguished" career that includes a Nobel Peace Prize and a hand in scores of major decisions in post-war American foreign policy, from the illegal bombing of Cambodia to urging support for murderous regimes in Indonesia and El Salvador.
Even the most mainstream of media outlets were having a hard time holding their tongues at this latest boldfaced affront to decency. As Chris Hitchens, author of "The Trial of Henry Kissinger," writes in Slate, "the cynicism of the decision and the gross insult to democracy and to the families of the victims that it represents has to be analyzed to be believed." As the week went by, the chorus of outrage rose, from Hitchens' himself, to The Nation's David Corn, and Newsday's Les Payne.
But, by far, the best responses were penned by this week's Guerrillas, two women whose work we admire, financial expert Catherine Austin Fitts and The New York Times' Maureen Dowd:
He's Ba-a-ack!
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON - It's an inspired choice. Bold, counterintuitive, edgy, outside the box. Who better to investigate an unwarranted attack on America than the man who used to instigate America's unwarranted attacks?
Who better to ferret out government duplicity and manipulation than the man who engineered secret wars, secret bombings, secret wiretaps and secret coups, and still ended up as a Pillar of the Establishment and Nobel Peace Prize winner?
It was Dick Cheney's brainstorm, naturally. Only someone as pathologically opaque as the vice president could appreciate the sublime translucency of Henry Kissinger. And only someone intent on recreating the glory days of the Ford and Nixon White Houses could have hungered to add the 79-year-old Dr. Strange - I mean, Dr. Kissinger to the Bush team. There will be naysayers who quibble that the president's choice to lead the 9/11 commission is not so much a realist as an opportunist, not so much Metternich as Machiavelli.
They will look askance at Mr. Kissinger's résumé: keeping the Vietnam War going for years after he realized it might be unwinnable; encouraging the illegal bombing of Cambodia; backing Chile's murderous Pinochet; playing Iago to President Richard Nixon, telling him he'd be "a weakling" if he did not prosecute newspapers running the Pentagon Papers; wiretapping journalists and his own colleagues to track down leaks on the Cambodia bombing. If you look for the words "Kissinger" and "secret" in the same sentence in Nexis, the search cannot be completed; there are too many results. When he was dating Jill St. John and Liv Ullmann and preaching that power is an aphrodisiac, he even coyly called himself "a secret swinger."
In Walter Isaacson's biography, "Kissinger," the same words cascade: "deceitful," "disingenuous," "paranoid," "insecure," "temper tantrum," "flatterer," "two-faced" and "secretive." The über-diplomat has even been criticized for dissembling in his own memoirs. But secretiveness is not a disqualification for jobs in this White House. Quite the contrary: only the clandestine and the conspiratorial need apply.
Mr. Bush, after all, worked very hard to suppress any investigation of 9/11. He had to cave to the victims' families, who were hellbent to hear what the president learned in his August 2001 briefing about Al Qaeda plans, and what wires were crossed at the C.I.A., F.B.I. and I.N.S. Now Mr. Bush can let the commission proceed, secure in the knowledge that Mr. Kissinger has never shed light on a single dark corner, or failed to flatter a boss, in his entire celebrated career. (He was one of Mr. Bush's patient tutors in foreign policy during the campaign.)
If you want to get to the bottom of something, you don't appoint Henry Kissinger. If you want to keep others from getting to the bottom of something, you appoint Henry Kissinger. Mr. Bush learned about the diplomat's black belt in the black arts long ago, when he made a patsy of Bush père. As the ambassador to the U.N. in 1971, Bush 41 was accused of aggressively making the case for Taiwan and against Beijing, even as Mr. Kissinger, the national security adviser, was secretly traveling to Beijing and undercutting Taiwan. Afterward, Mr. Kissinger told George H. W. Bush he was "disappointed" that Beijing had gotten Taiwan's seat in the U.N. "Given the fact that we were saying one thing in New York and doing another in Washington," Mr. Bush drily observed, "that outcome was inevitable." Fortunately, Bush Jr. was not held back by the revulsion that many in his generation have for Mr. Kissinger's power-drunk promotion of bloody American adventures abroad. As the former fraternity president told GQ magazine, he stayed a retro 50's guy through the roiling 60's: "I don't remember any kind of heaviness ruining my time at Yale."
Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney are in tune with Mr. Kissinger's principles: that the greatest enemy of U.S. policy is the U.S. media, that American diplomacy may be happily indifferent to American public opinion, that the great unwashed masses of our democracy are just a big old drag on the elites who know what's best, and that corporate pals are a help, not a hindrance, in government work.
For this administration, outside the box is inside the box
"THOSE WHO WIN IN A RIGGED GAME, GET STUPID": The Kissinger Bombshell An Open Letter to 9/11 Skeptics and Doubters
BY Catherine Austin Fitts
(Written in astonishment.)
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Our lord and emperor George W. Bush has just tied together the entire ball of 9/11 lies and related wax, stuck a wick in it, and handed us the match. He has done so by appointing Henry Kissinger chairman of the long-awaited "independent" commission to investigate the Sept. 11 attacks.
To all those who want the unvarnished truth about the "Attack on America," starting with the families of the victims, this would have been a slap in the face - were it not so laughable. Sequel to the Warren Commission.
The resident of the White House was explicit in stating that the commission is not supposed to actually investigate anything about 9/11. Wrote the Associated Press, "Bush did not set as a primary goal for Kissinger to uncover mistakes or lapses of the government that could have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks."
So what is Henry supposed to actually do? "Instead, [Bush] said the panel should try to help the administration learn the tactics and motives of the enemy."
Aha. In other words, the panel is supposed to produce more scary stories about what the freedom-hating evildoers are planning to do to us next. Sounds like overkill: Isn't that what every department of the administration is already doing?
The Kissinger commission is being called to life nearly 15 months after the attacks. The White House refused to sign off on the investigative body, until Congress agreed to its conditions. The panel can issue subpoenas only if the Republican members agree. In the polite words of Stephen Push, a leader of the 9/11 families ("Families of September 11"), the commission concept is simply "too weak." So far, no surprise. For fifteen months, Bush and Cheney have repeatedly acted to delay the calling of an independent 9/11 investigation. They have tried to stop the release of any information about the attacks - let alone about their level of prior knowledge! And they have otherwise established the most secretive administration in modern American history. But Henry Kissinger? Now that is a surprise!
Who could have imagined that the Bush regime would so obviously expose themselves to ridicule by appointing one of the world's best-known war criminals, terrorist masterminds, and professional liars as the head of a New Warren Commission? Highlights of Dr. Kissinger's Career
Kissinger's name seems to be magically entwined with the date of Sept. 11th. As national security adviser and secretary of state in the Nixon administration, he helped engineer the CIA coup that overthrew the elected government of Chile, on Sept. 11, 1973. For a detailed account of that atrocity - the original Sept. 11th attack go here.
In a famous comment on Chile at a 1970 White House meeting, Kissinger made no secret of his utter contempt for democratic government: "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people," he said. Now everyone remembers where they were on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, though we know precious little about how and why the horrible crimes of that day were allowed to happen. But who knows that on the same morning, a federal suit was being filed against Dr. Kissinger by relatives of one of his countless victims?
"Family of Slain Chilean Sues Kissinger, Helms - Military Leader Was Killed in Kidnap Attempt Linked to Nixon Administration" BY Bill Miller, Washington Post, September 11, 2001
As a direct result of the Pinochet coup, at least 3,000 Chilean civilians were "disappeared" and assassinated. As horrible as that was, Kissinger has been involved in even worse crimes. As Nixon's national security adviser, Kissinger helped plan the "secret" bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed in this unprovoked action against a neutral state. The bombing destabilized the U.S.-backed Cambodian government, paving the way for the later takeover of that country by the Khmer Rouge. But hey, let's not let mass murder detract from the man's achievements. In 1973, Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize for reaching a deal to end the U.S. invasion of Vietnam. The Nixon government had at first refused the Paris peace deal with North Vietnam. Instead, it chose to level Hanoi in a massive Christmas 1972 bombing, leaving nothing there but dust. A few months later, Nixon and Kissinger accepted the same deal, with minor changes. Now that's how you win a peace prize!
Kissinger was the only major cabinet member who miraculously survived the subsequent fall of the Nixon regime. He remained Secretary of State under the appointed Unpresident, Gerald Ford. (Ford was the first "president" to not have even run in a presidential election, so there was no need to actually steal it.)
Okay, class. Anyone remember who the other key players in the 2-1/2 year Ford administration were?
Vice President: Nelson Rockefeller, brother of David.Chief of Staff: Dick Cheney.Secretary of Defense: Donald Rumsfeld.Director of Central Intelligence: George Herbert Walker Bush. Hmmm...
Papa Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Kissinger. Sound familiar? Today, the same four men run the regime of the Idiot Prince.
Now *there* is a story for the historians of the future! Papa Bush apparently cut some nice deals with his CIA boys at the time, and in gratitude the agency later named its new headquarters the "George Herbert Walker Bush Building." We'll leave the rest of the Papa Bush story aside for today, though it may surpass even Kissinger's for sheer criminality. Today is Henry's day.
In 1973, while still with the Nixon administration, Kissinger became one of the founding fathers of the Trilateral Commission, together with Zbigniew Brzezinski and David Rockefeller, brother of Nelson. This association of billionaires, business leaders, academics and politicians was brought together by the three men in an effort to arm the global elites of the U.S., Europe and Japan against what at the time seemed like an unprecedented social and economic crisis. The Trilateral Commission has continued to meet annually ever since.
In 1975, Kissinger traveled with Ford to Indonesia, where they met with the U.S.-backed and U.S.-armed dictator Suharto, who oversaw the killing of millions during his 35-year reign. The day after Ford and Henry left, Indonesian forces invaded the independent territory of East Timor. One-third of the territory's population was exterminated during the subsequent 20-year occupation, but this had little impact on continuing American and Western arms shipments to the regime in Jakarta. Recently released documents establish that Suharto received a green light for the invasion from the president and secretary of state.
The 9/11 panel will not be the first "Kissinger Commission." In the early 1980s, under the Reagan-Bush administration, Henry was called to lead an investigation of U.S. policy in Central America. They provided the whitewash for the death squads that U.S. forces had armed and trained in El Salvador and Honduras, and for the "Contra" army that was organized by the CIA to invade Nicaragua.
Since then, the doctor has lived more quietly as the head of Kissinger Associates, which provides "consultancy" (door-opening) for oil and arms deals and much else besides, and which counts among its clients the U.S. government, NATO, many corporations, and foreign countries like China and Central Asia.
French prosecutors paid a surprise visit to Kissinger's Paris hotel suite in 2001, questioning him with regard to the war crimes charges that they would have been required to level under French law. They let him go his way, but henceforth, Henry will have to be a touch more discreet when strolling along the banks of the Seine.
2001 saw the publication of Christopher Hitchens's book, "The Trial of Henry Kissinger." Released in 2002, an eponymous documentary details the man's horrific and astonishing crimes. Couldn't Bush have found anyone less conspicuous, or less farcical, to wash his dirty laundry? One can only conclude that this was the only man the White House knew they could trust. If you want to cover something up, better pick someone with tons of his own dirt to hide.
Kissinger's appointment is an act of tremendous hubris - or else of absolute desperation. Is the official story of the 9/11 attacks really so wobbly that the regime must resort to hiring him?
He brought death squads to Chile in 1973. He covered up death squads in Central America in the 1980s. And now should we expect him to tell us the full story of how the CIA helped create Osama Binladin's death squads? Is this guy who is going to explore why the Air Force was stood down, or why and how so many FBI agents were blocked from investigating reports that terror pilots had infiltrated the United States? Or is Kissinger going to tell us why George W. Bush killed the FBI investigations into the Binladin family's connections to terrorism in early 2001?
Seriously. We can really have a field day with this.
But dangers lurk. Kissinger's appointment is the latest signal of an absolute and open intent to play HARDBALL. Let us all beware what sudden "surprises" are in store during the next days and months.
Kissinger features prominently within the "Defense Policy Board" run by Paul Wolfowitz at the Pentagon, which also includes veteran warheads Richard Perle and Newt Gingrich. These men, termed the "Wolfowitz Cabal" by no less a personage than Colin Powell, are the Supreme Chickenhawks of the War Party. For years they have individually and collectively called for the (further) destruction of Iraq and, depending on their mood, preemptive war with Iran, Syria, North Korea - you name it. At a meeting earlier this year, they declared Saudi Arabia the real enemy, and considered the option of taking out the Saudis right after the planned war in Iraq. The powerpoint presentation viewed by the group on that day concluded with the following grand strategy for the upcoming war: "Iraq is the tactical pivot, Saudi Arabia the strategic pivot, Egypt the prize."
On Sept. 11, 2001, as though that day was not bad enough for all of us, Kissinger, who was in Berlin, called in to CNN during the attacks. He basically argued that the attacks fully justified any American response whatsoever. The next day, he wrote that the U.S. had every right to destroy states that "harbor people who have the capability to do something like this," emphasizing that it made no difference whether these states actually had anything to do with the Sept. 11 attacks or not.
So watch out for sudden revelations about the alleged 9/11 hijackers that "prove" both Saudi Arabia and Iraq (or any other country) must immediately be crushed. The groundwork for such an attack, should the regime decide to go with it, has been prepared during the last weeks with the sudden "discovery" of Saudi financing of terrorism - something that never bothered the Bushes before 9/11, of course.
May fortune and God only give us enough time to work on this, and we the people will peacefully bring down this regime. Appointing Kissinger could turn out to be their greatest blunder. Perhaps it will finally awaken the antiwar movement to the continuing importance of learning the full truth of 9/11. No doubt many of the antiwar organizers can well remember the early 1970s, when their protests against the Vietnam War were directed at none other than: Henry Kissinger. Why has he of all people been given the 9/11 job?
We need to gather everything known about this man and throw it hard and wide, until the whole sham of the investigation is exposed. If we are given enough time, and still fail to bring this house of lies crashing down, it will have been our own fault.