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zBlog --- What's up at zFacts |
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This is an experiment, started on Sept. 12, 2005. ZFacts is to news as home cooking is to fast food. But its big and hard to find what's new and what connects to today's news. zBlog may help. Here goes.
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10/27/2005. After adding a the Nine Neocon Blunders with all its sources, I see that the new The Assassins' Gate ( Review) covers much of this territory though ignoring the pre-9/11 neocon push for war. It adds one interesting explanation. Rumsfeld/Cheney planned to withdraw troops as quickly as possible and to use far fewer than recommended by all parties with experience because they opposed nation building.
Since they opposed it bought their own over-optimistic rhetoric without understanding that true neocons think its just fine provided it serves one of their major objectives, like protecting Israel. Ironically wishing and believing it was unnecessary has just made it far longer and more painful than necessary.
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10/12/2005. Ahmed Chalabi is amazing. More than anyone else, he sold us the war. The Report to the President on WMD credits him with fake bio-weapons stories [Winnebagoes of Death] used to sell the war to congress and by Powel at the U.N. In return we helped him into the Iraq goverment where he sold the Iranians top secrets.
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10/10/2005. Irving Kristol, the neocon's "godfather" provides the key to neocon thought and strategy. It's not the whole story, but without this key you may understand little of what they think. Kristol is a "Straussian," a disciple of Leo Strauss who "sat at his feet." Strauss believe his only equals were the ancient philosopher and that they hid their meaning and only he (and a very few others) could decipher their "truth." Moreover he believed it was necessary to hide the "truth" from the "common man." And that is just what the neocons have been doing. The "truth" is we went to war for Israel and oil, but neocons tell the "common man" via Fox News that is was because of WMD and 9/11.
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Why? Neoconservatives! (10/4/2005) The 9 neocons in the Bush administration who designed and sold the war are had been working together for years and there are many connections. These are described on dozens (hundreds?) of web sites, but nowhere are they presented in a capsule form that can be grasped quickly. I have improved both the diagram and the notes that let a view traverse the links while viewing only one persons summary at a time in a single popup window. Added to this is a small time-line showing how the war’s rationale and strategy were developed before 9/11. This will become the most important page on zFacts if I can draw enough attention to it.
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Deception continues on 9/11 -- Iraq Link (9/30/05) Bush and Cheney have admitted the there is no proof of Iraqi involvement, but emphasize there is no proof they were not involved. The day the war started most Americans thought Iraq was involved and 44% thought some of the hijackers were Iraqis. None were.
We have no proof, Saudi Arabia was not involved, or Syria, or Iran, or Pakistan. Lack of proof is no reason for war. But by emphasizing “no proof of no connection” they imply they have some evidence for a connection, and there is one shred of evidence. A suggestion by an Arab student to Czech authorities of a meeting between Atta and an Iraqi intelligence official in Czechoslovakia, in April 2001.
But the 9/11 commission does not believe it happened. The CIA questions it. The FBI thinks Atta was in Florida at the supposed time. Czechoslovakia found no evidence. The U.S. managed to arrest the Iraqi, and there has been no word of confirmation.
Yet, this tiny shred of discredited evidence is an important part of the case for war. Apparently, the case contains little substance. Zfacts is collecting the details and will pay special attention to how 100 million Americans were mislead.
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Neocons are not Neo-Reaganites (9/29/05) My day job got in the way again, but more progress reading and summarizing America Alone. Although straight analysis would be preferable to their conservative slant, they have done a brilliant and thorough job. In character, neocons are opposite to Reagan who was an optimist and had faith in the power of the American example. Neocons are pessimists and fanatics, lacking Reagan’s flexibility. Their section on Murdoch, Fox, and Clear Channel is absolutely frightening. Read this book.
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The Best Book on Neocons (9/28/05) There's one thing left, right and middle agree on—neoconservatives are not conservatives. Even neocons admit that when they are honest. Halper and Clarke, two impecable conservatives make this brilliantly clear in their new book America Alone.
Bush bristled at the thought of converting the U.S. military into a "nation-building corps," and swore his administration would "absolutely not" let this happen (p. 135). But, it did because the neocons had been planning such an experiment on Iraq for years and 9/11 gave them the chance to “hijack” the Bush administration. Cheney was their inside man on this job.
But don’t believe me. Read the book, or a summary of it that zFacts is working on from the Authors' own words.
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Friday, Sept. 23. Cutting-Edge Global Warming Analysis. zFacts had a good week. Dr. Emanuel of MIT, one of the leading scientists studying hurricanes and global warming generously provided his annual N. Atlantic hurricane data, which allowed us to perform a statistical analysis that goes beyond those recently published in Nature and Science.
ZFacts estimated the relationship between sea temperature an annual hurricane energy (the best indicator of destructiveness). This shows the estimate impact of global warming to be very significant and the result withstand stringent statistical test. See the graph and the estimated impacts for 2003.
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Friday, Sept. 16. Hurricanes and Global Warming. Two weeks ago zFacts warned that "we just don't know" if there's a connection. We still don't, but the new article in Science makes it look pretty likely that there is. Previously, the nay-sayers claimed that the increase in North-Atlantic hurricane intensity was due to a slow ocean cycle in the Atlantic. This did not explain why there were more hurricanes in the Pacific, but that might have been coincidence.
The new article tracks 35 years of hurricanes in six different ocean basins and finds similar patterns in each. The North-Atlantic Oscillation cannot explain the changes in the Indian Ocean or the Pacific. ZFacts ran a basic statistical test on Table 1 of the new article, one that the authors overlooked. The chance of this global six-way coincidence is only 1 in 1000—unless it was caused by global warming.
Of course the nay-sayers will now concoct some new explanation for this coincidence, and they might be right. But feeling sure there's no connection is just faith-based science.
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Tuesday, Sept. 13. Nuclear Policy. Here's the full text of the "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations", March 15, 2005, referred to yesterday. It contains red-lining and is not final. For example: There are ... about thirty nations with WMD programs, including many rogue regional states.
The document contains a much longer and more ambiguous list of reasons for preemptive nuclear strikes than has been reported in the press. These include
(a) "adversary intending to use WMD,"
[Would that have been Saddam?]
(e) "For rapid and favorable war termination on US terms."
[Whenever we feel like it?]
(f) "To ensure success of US and multinational operations."
[Like right now in Iraq?]
(g) "To demonstrate US intent and capability to use nuclear weapons to deter adversary use of WMD."
[Bomb them for something else to prove we would bomb them for WMD?]
This list is a blank check dressed up as a minimal down payment. In fact, reason (e) says it all--A proper reason to use a nuclear first strike is so we can win more quickly.
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Monday Sept. 12. Two recent articles in the Wall St. Journal seem particularly important: "A New Definition of Torture" (Sept. 12) and "Nuclear Doctrine to Allow for Pre-emptive Strike" (Sept. 10). In both cases U.S. foreign policy is becoming more similar to the policies of the terrorists. Nothing is more terrifying than torture and nuclear weapons—which are the classic weapons of mass destruction.
These policies are being pushed by neoconservatives. ZFacts is beginning a section on these broader neocon policies and it now includes a summary of torture/assassination article from the WSJ as well as a short discussion of the preemptive nuclear strike policy. Our extensive background section on the neoconservatives and summary page of the steps by which the neocons lead us to the Iraq war are also relevant.
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http://zfacts.com/p/99.html | 01/18/12 07:17 GMT
Modified: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 17:51:23 GMT
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