News stories and opinions kept quiet
by the mainstream press

Editor's Note:  Even during a war, TV news organizations seem to miss [or actively suppress] a lot of material that pops up on the internet.  Perhaps that is one reason for the steady decline in network TV ratings since the internet became popular as a news source for the average American.  Please be sure to visit The Media Bias Page, where there is even more material you're sure to find interesting.

In general, I've noticed that the Fox News Channel tends to report cheerfully about the great improvements in Iraq, post-Saddam:  People have electricity, schools, the right to vote, and a number of things they didn't have before.  CNN, on the other hand, seems to constantly whine about the casualties, the cost, and the sluggishness of the war.  CNN has an infectious pessimism unmatched by any other "news" source, at least when there's a Republican in the White House.

More examples of spiked news stories can be found here.

Information about World Trade Center Building 7 is located here.

Lately there have been a number of terrorist attacks reported as "isolated incidents", and that subject is now covered on this page.



 Commentary:   Occasionally TV news programs feature black and white video clips from a successful operation in Iraq.  You may recall seeing aerial footage of a missile hitting a bridge or a building, right on target.  But the video is always very fuzzy, there's no color, no detail, it's shown in reverse polarity (white = black), and it always looks like night-vision video.  Very obviously the pictures released by the military have been intentionally blurred.  We saw clearer pictures from the Moon in 1969 than we see from Iraq today.  We can see clearer aerial footage of the bombing in World War II than we see from this year's military action.  The first Gulf War, ten years ago, should have been the first war shot in hi-definition TV.  The technology is available, so why does the news media settle for scraps of substandard video when the military could do much better?  Would it jeopardize our ability to win the war if the enemy found out how clearly we can see them?

Watergate(s) on Steroids.  Agents had a friendly conversation with General Michael Flynn and later charged him with felony lying to the FBI.  I don't see how this law passes constitutional muster and the Fifth Amendment.  The FBI then leaned on Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who recused himself from Russiagate, allowing the appointment of an unconstitutional special counsel named Bob Mueller who (dramatic pause) was the FBI director (another dramatic pause) on 9/11.  Apparently the intelligence community has six ways till Sunday to get back at its critics but cannot stop 19 hijackers.  Why Bush kept Mueller and CIA Director George J. Tenet on after the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans is beyond me.  I will note that the first thing the government did in the wake of 9/11 was to create a new bureaucracy.  Never let a serious crisis go to waste.

The Communist Plan That Has Subverted Our Intel Agencies.  [Scroll down]  According to [former CIA agent J. Michael] Waller, two "cultural revolutions" took place in the intel agencies after 9/11.  The first, born of necessity under President George W. Bush, started by watching and listening to the public.  The 9/11 attack was seen as the result of intelligence failure, justifying more aggressive intelligence gathering.  The Patriot Act, the expanded Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and the new Transportation Security Administration (TSA) made this possible.  Financial transactions came under greater scrutiny to detect terrorist funding.  Intel coordination was centralized under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Big Tech was drawn in to help, and the FBI was doubled and armed to paramilitary proportions.  Strangely, while Americans were subject to increasing scrutiny and inconvenience, Bush took pains to choose an anodyne name — Global War on Terror — for the fight against the jihadists and to insist that Islam was "good and peaceful" and that Arabs and Muslims should not be harassed.

New Video Shows Saudi Official Plotting 9-11 Attacks in Washington DC Prior to the Massacre of 3,000 Americans.  Chris Cuomo played video on Friday night that shows a Saudi official plotting the 9-11 attacks that killed 3,000 Americans.  The video aired on News Nation and shows a Saudi official plotting the attack in Washington DC. [...] In the CBS video, Omar al-Bayoui, whom the FBI says was a Saudi operative.  In the video al-Bayoui is seen casing the US Capitol in Washington DC, the likely target of the Flight 93 operation that was thwarted that day by American passengers and heroes.  The video was found by British police during a raid on Bayoumi's UK apartment days after the 9-11 attacks.

For 20 years, FBI has been hiding from the public a video of Saudi official plotting 9-11 attacks in Washington DC.  CBS just got a video that supports an allegation that was made in a lawsuit by the 9/11 families that it wasn't just about Osama bin Laden, not just Al Qaeda.  Omar al-Bayoui is a Saudi official, and that the Saudi government was involved.

The Phony War.  Back in the last century (the 1990s), we "old-timers" in the armed forces wore uniforms of blue, green, khaki, or white slacks, skirts (for women only) and pressed shirts, complete with jackets and ties.  Most of us worked side by side with civilian office workers, especially at the Pentagon. [...] All of that changed after September 11th, 2001. [...] If we weren't sent to fight in Afghanistan or Iraq, we would be prepared to do so from our cubicles.  Massive spending went into protecting federal facilities.  Where I worked, a building full of defense contractors stood next to an identical building full of government employees working on the same projects.  But only the government-occupied building received the protection of high fences, turnstiles, armed guards, and barriers to stop suicide bombers in cars.  Government always protects itself first, despite the fact that terrorists almost always choose to attack vulnerable citizens because it creates the most terror among the population, which is the whole point.

The Benefits of Hardship.  While the Patriot Act broadened the toolkit for tracking down foreign threats, its nefarious use as a domestic surveillance weapon took a sledgehammer to Americans' privacy.  Rhetorical battles against Islamic supremacy morphed into another "politically correct" surrender in which Americans were required to speak of Islam as a "religion of peace."  Fighting the terrorists overseas somehow meant we were also expected to open our doors to millions of new refugees.  What originally felt like a robust offensive strategy for eliminating hostile threats transformed into an endless military occupation on the other side of the world with little in the name of long-term strategy.  Why were Americans fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq?  If you asked a warrior, he was there for 9/11 payback and to end the threat of Islamic terrorism.  However, the official line from the White House evolved into some inscrutable notion that Americans must put themselves in harm's way, so that ancient tribal cultures could magically become stable democracies that valued human rights.  That strange vision didn't make sense to anybody but the politicians in D.C.

Joe Biden's Foreign Policy:  A Series of Failures.  [Scroll down]  The withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan marked the end of the twenty-year "War on Terror," declared by President George W. Bush after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  The Afghan operation aimed at destroying the Taliban terrorist group ended completely at the wrong time — the agreements with official Kabul and the Taliban reached during Trump's presidency were multiplied by zero.  In consequence, the Taliban seized the entire country.  The withdrawal of troops was long overdue.  The twenty-year presence in one of the most problematic regions of the world cost at least $825 billion since 2001 (several experts say that these numbers are seriously underestimated), and the lives of 2,300 soldiers.  Our troops left the country at the time of a Taliban offensive, removing the last shield protecting Afghan civilians, while also leaving the Taliban weapons worth billions of dollars, including helicopters, armored vehicles, artillery systems, rifles, and much more.

Saudis Accused of Masterminding 9/11 in Bombshell Court Filing.  Saudi Arabia's involvement in 9/11 has been public information for decades, with numerous sources documenting how Saudi officials Fahad al-Thumairy and Omar al-Bayoumi allegedly assisted at least two of the hijackers ahead of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.  But were Thumairy and Bayoumi rogue criminal religious zealots, or were they operating under the direction of the Saudi Arabian government?  A bombshell court filing in a long-running 9/11 lawsuit makes the case for the latter argument.  Families of 9/11 victims argued in a 71-page brief filed on May 7 that Thumairy and Bayoumi operated under the directions of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.  [Tweet] [...] The 71-page, partially redacted court filing compiles evidence that has been trickling out over the last several years about Saudi's involvement in 9/11.  That includes a 2017 FBI report that said Bayoumi was operating directly under then Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan Alsaud — a close friend of the Bush family.

How To Waste Two Trillion Dollars.  Brown University's cost of the Afghan war project just concluded that America's longest war cost an estimated $US 2.2 trillion dollars — that's 'trillion dollars."  If we add in George W. Bush's fake `war on terror,' Brown's scholars estimate that the cost rises to US $8 trillion!  Most of this huge amount was financed by loans, not through taxes.  Meaning that every dollar spent must be paid for by borrowing.  That means paying interest (raised by taxes) on the borrowed money — $95 billion dollars of taxpayer money that Biden just gave to Israel, Taiwan and Ukraine in a desperate attempt to buy the November election.  Interestingly, the much-ballyhooed war in Afghanistan has all but vanished from the media.  All the CNN generals who postured on TV about the Afghan War have fallen into silence.  They were dead wrong about the war.  The minute Donald Trump ended the Afghan War by cutting off the billions in US money that kept the corrupt US-backed Kabul regime alive, the war ended and the blizzard of propaganda against Taliban abated.  The $2.2 trillion war abruptly became unimportant.

9/11 Was Orchestrated by the Highest Levels of the US Government.  Ted Gunderson speaking at a 9/11 conference in May of 2004.

5 lies our government wants us to believe.  [#2] "Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."  This whopper led to endless Middle East wars, resulting in huge human and material losses, as well as the rise of ISIS.  According to the Brown and American University research document "The Costs of War," it led to over 940,000 deaths due to direct war violence and an estimated 3.6 [to] 3.8 million people who have died indirectly in post-9/11 war zones, plus 38 million war refugees and displaced persons.  The U.S. federal price tag for the post-9/11 wars is over $8 trillion.

There's New Information About The CIA's Involvement With Two 9/11 Terrorists.  [Scroll down]  The graduate student claimed the encounter happened "randomly," after which he "takes them to his house, spends lots of time with them [and] integrates them into them into the community."  On 9/11, the two young terrorists killed themselves and everyone else on board a commercial jet they hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon. [...] The Saudi man who "randomly" encountered the two young terrorists is al-Bayoumi, and it turns out that he was working with Saudi intelligence.  Nevertheless, neither the FBI nor the 9/11 Commission found anything suspicious about this "random" encounter or the prolonged contact between al-Bayoumi and the two young terrorists.  We learned about this only because, after 20 years, the FBI declassified a tranche of 9/11 files.  The "random" airport encounter happened in January 2000.

Bombshell Military Commission Report: 9-11 Hijackers Were CIA Agents.  An explosive court filing from the Guantanamo Military Commission — a court considering the cases of defendants accused of carrying out the "9/11" terrorist attacks on New York — has seemingly confirmed the unthinkable.  The document was originally published via a Guantanamo Bay court docket, but while public, it was completely redacted.  Independent researchers obtained an unexpurgated copy.  It is an account by the Commission's lead investigator, DEA veteran Don Canestraro, of his personal probe of potential Saudi government involvement in the 9/11 attacks, conducted at the request of the defendants' lawyers.  Two of the hijackers were being closely monitored by the CIA and may, wittingly or not, have been recruited by Langley long before they flew planes into the World Trade Center buildings.  [Video clip]

Crew of United 23 reveal their 767 scheduled to takeoff on fateful day was raided by FBI.  The captain of a United Airlines flight due to take off from New York's JFK airport on the morning of 9/11 has said he believes his plane was intended to be a fifth aircraft in the terrorist plot.  Tom Mannello was sitting on the tarmac in the cockpit of United Flight 23 at 9 am, waiting to take off, when air traffic control ordered all flights back to their gates.  Mannello later learned box cutters were found on a plane parked at the neighboring gate, and believes a ground crew assisting the terrorists got the wrong plane, thwarting any attempted attack.

The EPA Has No Credibility.  In 2016, Christine Todd Whitman, who was the head of the EPA under President George W. Bush at the time of the 9/11 attacks, issued an apology for having falsely asserted the air quality in New York City was "safe" following those attacks.  In the days following the collapse of the Twin Towers — which sent dangerous plumes of debris and toxins into the air over Manhattan — Whitman issued a statement assuring New Yorkers that they had nothing to fear.  "I am glad to reassure the people of New York ... that their air is safe to breathe and their water is safe to drink," the statement read.  Whitman's assurances in 2001, of course, were based on the information that "government scientists" were telling her.  "The good news continues to be that air samples we have taken have all been at levels that cause us no concern," she professed.  Even while Whitman acknowledged that it was known that asbestos, lead, and other toxins had been released from the wreckage in 2001, she maintained that beyond the immediate vicinity the air did "not pose a public health hazard."  Fifteen years later Whitman did a 180.

9/11 and the Twin Towers.  [Scroll down] For example, when the towers collapsed, it was theorized that it was because of the intensity of the fire.  However, there have been many investigations (even today) that suggest that was not the case.  The towers were constructed of a high caliber steel, and to propose that fire could melt and destroy such material is preposterous, as pointed out by physicist Steven Jones.  As a matter of fact, after the buildings fell, there were photos taken of the steel beams.  They had broken, but they were almost cut clean through diagonally.  This kind of break could only be done by a particular bomb that had been placed there.  If that's not enough evidence to change your way of thinking, when the towers were built, there was concern for an airplane attack.  So the people that constructed it made it specifically to withstand such an event.  An airplane crash might have led to a huge fire inside the building, but it would never bring the towers down.

This Footage Aired Once After 9/11 and Never on TV Again.  An reporter at the Pentagon describes the lack of large airplane parts on the scene.  [Video clip]

The Years We Wasted.  The war is lost, at home and abroad.  On the domestic front, we doubled the rate of Muslim immigration to the west and began assimilating ourselves with Islam's strictures on freedom of expression and the like. [...] In the broader society, our rulers quickly determined that it was easier to punish us than our enemies.  The post-9/11 security state surely helped soften up western populations for the Chi-Com-19 lockdowns, in which entire nations have been reduced to TSA-administered airports.  As for the war overseas, it ended with a military that can do everything except win handing the keys to Afghanistan back to the guys who pulled off 9/11 — and apologizing for the two-decade inconvenience by gifting the mullahs with some of the most expensive infrastructure on the planet plus an air force, approximately five assault rifles for every Taliban fighter, and express check-in for the forty-seven per cent of the Afghan population that apparently served as US translators.  The position of the United States is far weaker than it was twenty years ago.  Around the planet, the assumption of friends and enemies alike is that the American moment is over and the future belongs elsewhere.

Biden signs executive order demanding the DOJ declassify FBI's 9/11 investigation documents.  President Joe Biden signed an executive order Friday [9/3/2021] that ordered a review of the classified documents related to the 9/11 terror attacks — with the promise of releasing more information to the public.  Biden had been told by nearly 1,800 Americans impacted by the terror attacks last month — including victims' family members, first responders and survivors — not to come to any of the 20th anniversary events unless he declassified documents that potentially show Saudi government links to the September 11, 2001 hijackers.  The order makes no mention of Saudi Arabia.

The U.S. Government Lied For Two Decades About Afghanistan.  "The Taliban regime is coming to an end," announced President George W. Bush at the National Museum of Women in the Arts on December 12, 2001 — almost twenty years ago today.  Five months later, Bush vowed:  "In the United States of America, the terrorists have chosen a foe unlike they have faced before. ... We will stay until the mission is done."  Four years after that, in August of 2006, Bush announced:  "Al Qaeda and the Taliban lost a coveted base in Afghanistan and they know they will never reclaim it when democracy succeeds. ... The days of the Taliban are over.  The future of Afghanistan belongs to the people of Afghanistan."  For two decades, the message Americans heard from their political and military leaders about the country's longest war was the same.  America is winning.  The Taliban is on the verge of permanent obliteration.  The U.S. is fortifying the Afghan security forces, which are close to being able to stand on their own and defend the government and the country. [...] Similar assurances have been given by the U.S. Government and military leadership to the American people since the start of the war.

Our Afghan War Began as a Revenge Op, Now Ends as Another Defeat.  [Scroll down]  Less than one month after Bush's remarks, following a night of air bombardment and Tomahawk missile attacks, the first commandos — American Green Berets and Delta Force with the British SAS — were on the ground in Afghanistan foraging for Osama bin Laden and Taliban leaders.  To be followed at one point by more than 100,000 American troops and thousands more from NATO allies.  Nearly 800,000 Americans served at least one deployment in that God-forsaken land.  No one knows how many suffered PTSD.  Now — 7,206 days, 3,596 allied deaths, more than 20,000 wounded, and three presidencies later — the withdrawal of the last 1,900 U.S. troops is underway, scheduled for completion by Sept. 11th, the 21st 9/11 since the first and the tenth since Benghazi.  The troops' original goal was to destroy terrorist training camps, oust the Taliban, and capture bin Laden.  The first two came easily and quickly.  Then arrived the temptation to ensure that Afghanistan never became a terrorist haven again by building a new nation in a place that is not a nation.  And what has all that time, ammo, money, lives, blood, materiel, shattered hopes accomplished?

Paul Wolfowitz's Iran Connection.  It is now generally accepted that the Iraq War came about as a result in large part of manipulation of intelligence, which skewed the decision-making process.  Ahmed Chalabi, the multi-millionaire confidence trickster who headed the Iraqi National Congress, fed fabricated information to his neoconservative allies in the Pentagon and White House.  The so-called intelligence was repackaged in Doug Feith's Office of Special Plans (OSP) and stove-piped up to the decision makers, thereby circumventing the normal checks and balances in place at the Central Intelligence Agency for the vetting of raw information.  Alleged "reliable sources" provided detailed descriptions of drones capable of flying across the Atlantic Ocean, links with al-Qaeda, chemical and biological stockpiles, and hidden nuclear weapons programs, all of which became the menu du jour for policymakers.  Garbage in, garbage out developed into the standard operating procedure as the United States government willy-nilly began a war of aggression against an enemy that presented no threat, Washington's complete ignorance of facts on the ground best exemplified by its post-invasion futile search for weapons of mass destruction that did not exist.  Less well known is the role played by private neoconservative organizations in cooking the books to make the case for war.

The New 9/11: A Global Virus Pandemic.  The motivation of those who planned, organized, and implemented the false flag attack of September 11, 2001, was multifarious.  On one hand, around 3000 lives were sacrificed to start a series of neocolonial wars aimed at restoring and maintaining the superpower status of the US, in terms of economics and geopolitics.  On the other hand, this "New Pearl Harbor" was also carried through in order to bring about draconian laws.  These laws severely limited civil rights while concomitantly giving governments unprecedented powers.  For example, one may be imprisoned indefinitely without charge or trial in several countries; Australia has taken to the extremes and it is now punishable by five years in prison to reveal if someone is held in prison without charge or trial (e.g. a spouse).  False flag attacks are invariably constructed around a mass mind control stratagem, known as Problem, Reaction, Solution.  This stratagem is effectively used to increase a government's powers and bring about totalitarianism.

Lawsuit reveals new evidence supporting 9/11 whistleblower who alleged intel failures.  An affidavit filed as part of a lawsuit brought by a 9/11 whistleblower has revealed sworn testimony by a former Department of Defense official claiming that the whistleblower, a former military intelligence officer, was deliberately sabotaged by a Pentagon review process.  Retired U.S. Army Col. Anthony Shaffer is suing his former attorney, Mark Zaid, in Washington, D.C.'s District Court over Zaid's alleged failure to "zealously represent" Shaffer in his fight against the government over what Shaffer claims was whistleblower retaliation.  Shaffer is known for his participation in the U.S. Special Operations Command Operation Able Danger, a program meant to counteract global terrorism.  The retired colonel told the 9/11 Commission in 2004 that Able Danger had, prior to the September 11 attacks, identified two of the three al-Qaeda cells that had planned the attack, including one to which Mohamed Atta, one of the attack's chief architects, belonged.  Shaffer has alleged that the government subsequently destroyed evidence of its having been aware of Atta's identity prior to the attacks.

The Top 40 Reasons to doubt the official story of September 11th, 2001.  [Reason #14]  All the Signs of a Systematic 9/11 Cover-up:  (a.) Airplane black boxes were found at Ground Zero, according to two first responders and an unnamed NTSB official, but they were "disappeared" and their existence is denied in The 9/11 Commission Report.  (b.) US officials consistently suppressed and destroyed evidence (like the tapes recorded by air traffic controllers who handled the New York flights).  (c.) Whistleblowers (like Sibel Edmonds and Anthony Shaffer) were intimidated, gagged and sanctioned, sending a clear signal to others who might be thinking about speaking out.

FBI mistakenly reveals Saudi diplomat suspected of aiding 9/11 terrorists.  FBI lawyers accidentally revealed the identity of a Saudi diplomat who agents have suspected helped deliver crucial support to the al Qaeda terrorists who carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a report.  The disclosure came in court documents filed in April that were unsealed late last week in a lawsuit brought by families of 9/11 victims accusing the Saudi government of aiding the attacks, Yahoo News reported.  The Saudi official, Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah, had his name blocked out in all but one appearance in the document, with the FBI admitting to Yahoo it was a mistake.  Jarrah was a Saudi Foreign Ministry official assigned to the Saudi Embassy in Washington, DC, in 1999 and 2000.

Robert Mueller helped Saudi Arabia cover up its role in 9/11 attacks: suit.  After a lengthy investigation, special counsel Robert Mueller charged Russia made "multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election" and said the incursion "deserves the attention of every American."  But former FBI investigators say their old boss didn't feel the same concern when they uncovered multiple, systemic efforts by the Saudi government to assist the hijackers in the lead-up to the 9/11 attacks — a far more consequential, to say nothing of deadly, foreign influence operation on America.  As the head of the FBI at the time, they say Mueller was not nearly as interested in investigating that espionage conspiracy, which also involved foreign intelligence officers.  Far from it, the record shows he covered up evidence pointing back to the Saudi Embassy and Riyadh — and may have even misled Congress about what he knew.

As Long as Enemies of the State Keep Dying Before Trial, No One Should Trust the State.  There is no other way to say it:  It was a political assassination.  Osama bin Laden was unarmed.  SEALs captured him alive.  Following brazenly illegal orders from Washington, they executed him.  "The (Obama) administration had made clear to the military's clandestine Joint Special Operations Command that it wanted bin Laden dead," The Atlantic reported on May 4, 2011. [...] As much as the families of 9/11 victims craved justice, it was infinitely more important to the U.S. political establishment to deny bin Laden an opportunity to publicly expound on his ties to the CIA and the CIA-funded Pakistani intelligence agency ISI, who were training and funding the "Afghan Arabs" who fought Soviet occupation forces in Afghanistan during the 1980s.  Letting people learn that 9/11 would likely never have happened if not for the CIA would have been... awkward.

9/11 Victims compensation fund and what you don't know about it.  Inclusions in the Victims compensation fund bill you should hear about.  First, this bill compensates victims until 2092.  It is not limited to First Responders and crash site workers, "Passersby" now qualify.  I am not a wizard at math but 9/11 occurred in 2001.  We are talking 90 years.  In an unheard of action, there are simply no limitations placed on any amount of money to be paid.  This boondoggle is not limited to First responders and those who worked the clean up sites even now.

The Editor says...
Why is the government using taxpayer money to compensate victims of terrorist attacks?  What part of the Constitution authorizes payments of this sort?  (I know — what difference at this point does it make?)  Such compensation could only be justified if the government caused the 9/11 attacks, and was proven to be at fault.  But the official story is that hijackers acting on behalf of the Religion of Peace crashed into the Twin Towers, both of which collapsed (each one falling straight down onto its own footprint as if professionally imploded) within two hours of being struck by the airplanes.  This happened even though no concrete-and-steel building had ever collapsed before as the result of a fire.  Oh, and World Trade Center Building 7 collapsed, too, the same day, even though no plane had hit it, and there were only minor fires in progress at the time.  But you're not supposed to remember that — and how could you remember anyway, since that even was barely mentioned in the news media — and if you speak in public about the collapse of WTC-7, you'll be ostracized as a "9/11 Truther."  In the very long term, it doesn't matter who was the mastermind behind the 9/11/2001 events.  Those responsible will pay for their sins in a lake of fire — forever.

NYC: Saudi sculpture to be removed from Ground Zero... but placed at JFK Airport.  Somebody thought it would be a good idea to install a 9-foot-tall statue — paying tribute to Saudi Arabia and displaying its flag — near the 9/11 Memorial earlier this month, and New Yorkers are not happy.  As a result, Port Authority officials have decided to remove the art exhibit and place it somewhere else after receiving countless complaints from social media users and local victims groups — who are outraged since 15 of the 19 attackers on September 11 were Saudi citizens.

Saudi Arabian Flag Candy Statue Removed From Ground Zero Following Backlash.  A nine-foot sculpture depicting the Saudi Arabian flag in the shape of a piece of candy is reportedly being removed from its grounds near the 9/11 memorial in New York City after facing backlash.  The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said they'd relocate the installation, which features the words "There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is the prophet" in Arabic, after many felt its proximity to Ground Zero and the 9/11 Memorial was insulting and insensitive.  Fifteen of the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11 attack on the United States were Saudi nationalists, although the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has long denied any involvement.

A Sculpture Celebrating Saudi Arabia Has Been Erected on Ground Zero.  A sculpture celebrating Saudi Arabia's place in the G20 Summit was erected on the World Trade Center grounds last week, a stone's throw away from the 9/11 memorial.  Shaped to resemble a piece of candy, the nine-foot-tall statue bears the Kingdom's emerald flag emblazoned with the Arabic inscription, "There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is the prophet."  It was created by French sculptor Laurence Jenkell in 2011 as part of the larger installation "Candy Nations" which depicts G20 countries as sugary delights, and has since been featured in over 25 countries.  All 20 sculptures are currently on display outside the Oculus shopping center.

Hacker Group Releases '9/11 Papers', Claims Leaks Will 'Burn Down' the US Deep State.  The Dark Overlord hacker group has released decryption keys for 650 documents it says are related to 9/11.  Unless a ransom is paid, it threatened with more leaks that will have devastating consequences for the US 'deep state'.

Robert Mueller's Troubling Ties To September 11th, 2001.  Yes, there are layers upon layers of conspiracy theories still floating out there regarding what did or didn't happen on September 11th, 2001. [...] Since 2001 the United States has wasted TRILLIONS on global conflicts which in turn initiated a mass migration of Muslim bodies across the European continent and then into other countries like Australia, Canada, and the U.S.  (With a correspondent spike in Islamic militant terror attacks the clear result[.])  Whether such migration is good or bad will likely remain the subject of debate for decades to come, but in the meantime it is undeniable that the safety and security of America and the world was made less so following the horrors of 9-11 and the response that followed.  And then there is the part played by Robert Mueller...

Nolte: Watch the Oh-So 'Sacred' Intelligence Community Lie, Lie, Lie.  In 2002, in the lead up to the disastrous Iraq War, we were told to salute and buy 100 percent into the Intelligence Community's (IC) assessment that of course Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction, and of course those weapons would end up in the hands of terrorists.  Therefore, we had no choice but to launch a pre-emptive war, and anyone who disagreed, or who even expressed skepticism, was deemed a traitor, suspect, and un-American.  And to my everlasting shame I was one of those shaming others.  But at least I learned.

28 Pages Tie 'Moderate' Muslim Brotherhood To 9/11.  Washington has assumed the Muslim Brotherhood is, as President Obama's intelligence czar put it, a nonviolent group "largely secular" in nature.  It has even invited Brotherhood figures into Muslim outreach powwows at both ends of Pennsylvania.  But the newly declassified 28 pages detailing Saudi involvement in the 9/11 attacks casts serious doubt on the assumption that the Brotherhood is a benign organization.  In fact, the now-largely uncensored section of the congressional Joint Inquiry on 9/11 reveals that U.S.-stationed Saudi intelligence officers who aided the hijackers in the run-up to the 9/11 attacks were in contact with senior members of the Muslim Brotherhood in America, suggesting the Saudi-funded Brotherhood was part of the support network for the hijackers and involved in the 9/11 conspiracy.

Guantanamo prisoner says Saudi 'royal' involved in terror plots.  An accused Al Qaeda bomb-maker who went to college in Arizona told military officials at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that he believed an unnamed member of the Saudi royal family was part of an effort to recruit him for violent extremist acts before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a newly released transcript.

Clinton, Bush Implicated in Covering Up Saudi Terror in U.S..  The 28 pages of the recently-declassified report on the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack not only implicated the Saudi government and its network on U.S. soil, it implicates the Clinton and Bush Administrations in covering up that network and stopping the FBI from protecting America from it.  Page 11 states:  "Prior to September 11th, the FBI apparently did not focus investigative [censored] ...Saudi nationals in the United States due to Saudi Arabia's status as an American 'ally.'...  A representative of the FBI's [censored] testified in closed hearings that, prior to September 11th, the FBI received 'no reporting from any member of the Intelligence Community' that there is a [censored] presence in the United States."  The censoring of the documents leaves us to wonder what specific terror-related presence the documents are referring to, but it is very clear that it is a network linked to the Saudi government and insufficient investigative resources were allotted for it because of those linkages.

The 28 Pages that [Reflect Badly on] Saudi Arabia.  After keeping them secret for 14 years, the White House has finally released the 28 pages that were removed from the 2002 Congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks and withheld from the final 9/11 Commission Report.  More puzzling than the elusive pages is why Obama released them, and specifically, why now.  The administration claims that the 28 pages clear the Saudis because they provide no conclusive evidence of their involvement in 9/11.  The media echo chamber followed the administration's lead:  Time, Al Arabiya, NBC, the Associated Press and many others reported that the pages contained "no smoking guns."  But there are smoking guns.  Those smoking guns expose the Saudi government as a sponsor of terrorism, and, by proxy, improve Iran's standing in the Middle East.  Author Paul Sperry writes that the 28 pages "show the hijackers got help from Saudi diplomats and spies."

29 Pages Revealed:  Corruption, Crime and Cover-up Of 9/11.  First and foremost, here is what you need to know when you listen to any member of our government state that the newly released 29 pages are no smoking gun — THEY ARE LYING.  Our government's relationship to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is no different than an addict's relationship to heroin. [...] When CIA Director John Brennan states that he believes the 29 pages prove that the government of Saudi Arabia had no involvement in the 9/11 attacks, recognize that John Brennan is not a man living in reality — he is delusional by design, feeding and protecting his Saudi vice.

The Editor says...
The article above comes from the Huffington Post, a web site I've never intentionally visited, and a site with which I rarely agree; nevertheless, they may have a point here.

House Intel committee releases classified '28 pages' from 9/11 report.  The formerly classified section of the congressional 9/11 report that was declassified on Friday criticized the U.S. intelligence community for not having any intelligence on Saudi Arabia at all, which made it difficult to follow up on leads that some of the 9/11 hijackers might have had help from Saudi Arabia.  The first page of the document said some of the hijackers may have received support from people who "may be connected to the Saudi Government."  It said FBI sources and others said at least two of the people who may have provided help were "alleged by some to be Saudi intelligence officers."

28-Page Bombshell:  Saudi With Terror Ties Worked Security At US Border In 1999.  A Saudi national who was under investigation by the FBI checked a security checkpoint on the southwest U.S. border prior to the 9/11 attacks, according to 28 pages from a 2002 joint inquiry released by the House Intelligence Community on Friday [7/15/2016].

Congress releases secret '28 pages' on alleged Saudi 9/11 ties.  A long-classified U.S. report released Friday found that some of the 9/11 hijackers were in contact with and received support from individuals likely connected to the Saudi government.  Known as the "28 pages," the secret document was part of a 2002 Congressional Joint Inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks and has been classified since the report's completion, despite repeated calls for its release.  The document, which the administration finally delivered to Congress earlier Friday [7/15/2016], actually contains 29 pages of material, plus a letter from then-CIA Director George Tenet.  "While in the United States, some of the September 11 hijackers were in contact with, and received support or assistance from, individuals who may be connected to the Saudi Government," the document says.

FEMA Investigator's Shock 9/11 Claim: 'Vault Contents Emptied Before Attack... They Knew It Was Going To Happen'.  The attacks of September 11th, 2001 will forever be mired in doubt and suspicion by millions of people who saw the events live on their televisions.  Almost immediately following the attacks theories began to emerge.  Were the hijackers operatives for a Western intelligence service?  How did a passport from one of the terrorists survive completely unscathed, only to be found later amidst the rubble of the Trade Centers?  How did WTC Building 7 collapse even though it was never struck by an airplane?  Why was President George H.W. Bush meeting with members of the Bin Laden family at the very moment of the attacks?  Were the planes that hit the buildings actually commercial airliners or were they remotely operated drones?  Why was the entirety of Ground Zero quickly sanitized and shipped to China for recycling before any investigation ever took place?  And, what are the odds that on the very day terrorists used planes to attack the Pentagon and World Trade Centers, the U.S. military was holding exercises simulating hijackers crashing planes into buildings, a circumstance that led to total confusion across the United States and a complete failure of national defense?

Twin Towers cameraman claims he's got proof the George W Bush administration was behind terror attacks.  Kurt Sonnenfeld was working for the US Federal Emergency Management Agency, an organisation tied to the US Department of Homeland Security, when the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center took place.  After the planes crashed into the building, Kurt was given unrestricted access to ground zero — the site where the buildings once stood.  Armed with camera gear, the 39-year-old was asked to film everything he saw.  His documented evidence was supposed to form part of a report about what happened — but he never handed back the footage.

A Saudi Imam, 2 Hijackers and Lingering 9/11 Mystery.  Inside an opulent palace in Riyadh late one evening in February 2004, two American investigators interrogated a man they believed might hold answers to one of the lingering mysteries of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks:  What role, if any, did officials in Saudi Arabia's government play in the plot?  The man under questioning, Fahad al-Thumairy, had been a Saudi consular official based in Los Angeles and the imam of a mosque visited by two of the hijackers.  The investigators, staff members of the national 9/11 commission who had waited all day at the United States Embassy before being summoned to the late-night interview, believed that tying him to the plot could be a step toward proving Saudi government complicity in the attacks.

CIA chief believes release of 9/11 documents will clear Saudi Arabia.  CIA Director John Brennan said in an interview with a Saudi Arabian television station Sunday [6/12/2016] that he expects the 28 classified pages of a U.S. congressional report into the Sept. 11 attacks to absolve Saudi Arabia of responsibility.  "I think the 28 pages will be published and I support their publication and everyone will see the evidence that the Saudi government had nothing to do with it," Brennan said in an interview with Arabiya TV, according to Reuters.  The classified section of the 2002 report is a key part to a dispute over whether Americans should be able to sue Saudi Arabia for damages.

Saudi Arabia set to be absolved of responsibility in 9/11 in secret report, CIA chief says.  CIA chief John Brennan said he expects 28 classified pages of a U.S. congressional report into the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States to be published, absolving Saudi Arabia of any responsibility.  'I think the 28 pages will be published and I support their publication and everyone will see the evidence that the Saudi government had nothing to do with it,' Brennan said in an interview with Saudi-owned Arabiya TV.  His comments were dubbed into Arabic.  The withheld section of the 2002 report is central to a dispute over whether Americans should be able to sue the Saudi government, a key U.S. ally, for damages.

Suing the Saudis.  On May 17, the Senate passed legislation that would enable private citizens to sue the government of Saudi Arabia and other Saudis possibly connected to al-Qaeda for damages incurred in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that took nearly three thousand lives.  Predictably, the Saudis took an apocalyptic view of the bill.  Before it passed the Senate, the Saudi foreign minister reportedly threatened to pull hundreds of billions of dollars of investments from the United States.  One Saudi newspaper headlined it as a "satanic bill" that would "open the gates of hell."  In truth, the bill would open a window on the Saudis' involvement in the 9/11 attacks that they, and our government, have made extraordinary efforts to conceal.  President Obama has threatened to veto the measure.

Saudi Press Just Accused US Govt Of Blowing Up World Trade Centers As Pretext To Perpetual War.  In response to the U.S. Senate's unanimous vote to allow 9/11 victims' families to sue Saudi Arabia in federal court, a report published in the London-based Al-Hayat daily, by Saudi legal expert Katib al-Shammari, claims that the U.S. masterminded the terror attacks as a means of creating a nebulous "enemy" in order garner public support for a global war on terror.

Senate to Obama:  Stop hiding the truth on 9/11.  It's not often that Democratic lawmakers set out to directly confront President Barack Obama.  So by passing bipartisan legislation Tuesday that would allow families of Sept. 11 victims to sue the government of Saudi Arabia, Congress has set itself on a collision course with the Obama administration.  And it's got the Saudis so mad, they're threatening Obama.  The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, approved by voice vote, had triggered a threat from Saudi Arabia to pull billions of dollars from the U.S. economy if the bill is enacted.

The FBI Has 80,000 Documents on Saudi Ties to 9/11 It Tried to Suppress.  The classified 28-pages of the 9/11 report have made global headlines lately as a handful of lawmakers battle to release them to the public.  Those pages are believed by activists and members of Congress — who have seen them — to expose the role of Saudi Arabia, including government officials, in the terrorist attacks.  But according to a new report based on years of investigative journalism, it turns out there are far more than 28 classified pages on Saudi Arabia and 9/11 — there are 80,000 kept secret by the FBI. And though not all 80,000 are expected to concern the Saudi family — and the FBI insists their investigation of the documents came up empty-handed — journalists, at least one lawmaker, and heavily-redacted documents suggest otherwise.

U.S. Discloses Saudi Holdings of Treasuries for First Time.  The Treasury Department released a breakdown of Saudi Arabia's holdings of U.S. debt, after keeping the figures secret for more than four decades.  The stockpile of the world's biggest oil exporter stood at $116.8 billion as of March, down almost 6 percent from a record in January, according to data the Treasury disclosed Monday in response to a Freedom-of-Information Act request submitted by Bloomberg News.  The tally ranks Saudi Arabia among the top dozen foreign nations in terms of holdings of U.S. debt, and compares with China's $1.3 trillion trove, and $1.1 trillion for Japan.  "The politics has always been secretive, so have their finances," said David Ottaway, a Middle East Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, a research institute in Washington.  "It does answer the question of how much they own, which is surprisingly not that much."

US government hid evidence that Saudi officials supported Al-Qaida in WTC attacks and didn't investigate them fully, 9/11 Commission member says.  The US failed to properly investigate Saudi Arabian involvement in the 9/11 attacks and removed evidence that Saudi officials aided the terrorists from the public version of the 9/11 Commission Report, a commission member has said.  John Lehman, who was secretary of the Navy during the Reagan administration, said the 28 classified pages contain evidence that as many as six officials aided the Al-Qaida terrorists that attacked the US on September 11, 2001.

The FBI Is Keeping 80,000 Secret Files on the Saudis and 9/11.  The Obama administration may soon release 28 classified pages from a congressional investigation that allegedly links Saudis in the United States to the 9/11 attackers.  A former Republican member of the 9/11 Commission alleged Thursday that there was "clear evidence" of support for the hijackers from Saudi officials.  But in Florida, a federal judge is weighing whether to declassify portions of some 80,000 classified pages that could reveal far more about the hijackers' Saudis connections and their activities in the weeks preceding the worst attack on U.S. soil.

CIA director says secret 9/11 report pages full of hearsay, inaccurate info.  CIA Director John Brennan said Sunday that 28 classified pages of a bipartisan commission's report on the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks contains "uncorroborated, unvetted information" that some could seize upon to claim Saudi Arabian involvement in the attacks.  Brennan, speaking on NBC's "Meet The Press," said such claims would be "very, very inaccurate."  The Obama administration may soon release at least part of the secret chapter, which some believe shows a Saudi connection to the Al Qaeda attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pa.

The Editor says...
If the information is inaccurate or demonstrably false, why was it included in the report, and why was it ever classified?

The establishment is lying about the 9/11 report.  As the push to declassify the 28 pages implicating the Saudis in 9/11 intensifies, the Washington establishment is circling the wagons around our Saudi "friends."  On Sunday [5/1/2016], CIA Director John Brennan pooh-poohed the credibility of the chapter of the 2002 congressional 9/11 inquiry dealing with foreign sponsorship of the attacks that his boss still, despite repeated promises to 9/11 families, refuses to make public.  Brennan told "Meet the Press" he's "quite puzzled" by the mounting bipartisan campaign to release the censored pages, which are said to tie Saudi government officials to some of the hijackers through financial and phone records, among other evidence.  He dismissed them as a grab-bag of "uncorroborated, unvetted information" and "just a collation of information that came out of FBI files."  In fact, much of the information sprang from Brennan's own files at Langley.

9/11 Commission Didn't Clear the Saudis.  The time has come to clarify some inaccuracies and misleading statements being made in the media regarding the 28 pages, the 9/11 attacks, the investigation of the 9/11 attacks, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA).  In doing so, perhaps the American public will come to understand the importance of passing JASTA (Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act) and releasing the 28 pages in their entirety.  The 9/11 Commission's mandate was to not replicate, but rather to expand upon the investigation of the JICI.  The JICI was the Joint Intelligence Committee's Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks, headed by Sen.  Bob Graham and Rep. Porter Goss.  The JICI is where the 28 pages originated.  Furthermore, the JICI made a finding of fact and final recommendation that further investigation into the role of KSA and the 9/11 attacks needed to be done, immediately.

Massive Amounts of WMDs Were Found in Iraq.  One of the biggest knocks against George W Bush is that he lied about WMDs in Iraq.  Even today, liberals still spew those lies.  Before the Iraq War started under Bush, trailer load after trailer load of what is suspected to have been WMDs were moved from Iraq to Syria.  But even with all that movement, large amounts of weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq.  The CIA was even able to buy 400 Borak rockets filled with pure Sarin gas.  And on top of that, our troops found 5,000 WMDs that the Pentagon kept secret until last year.

The whole 9/11 truth: Release the 28 classified pages, whatever they may say about Saudi Arabia.  Multiple official inquiries have examined the record of the killing of 2,977 people on that darkest of days, mostly at the World Trade Center.  A bipartisan, bicameral Senate and House intelligence committee investigation released an 838-page report in December 2002.  But the Bush administration classified 28 pages of the document, focusing on potential Saudi involvement in facilitating the hijackers, 15 of 19 of whom were Saudis.  Conspiracy theories abound about why, for instance, three planeloads of Saudi nationals were evacuated from the U.S. in the days after the 9/11 despite a total flight ban.  Truth was sacrificed for the sake of the supposedly higher good of diplomatic relations with a long-time ally and oil producer.  Struggle to justify secrecy, as you might try to do in retrospect, today there are no grounds for squelching facts for diplo-convenience.

9/11 Commission:  No Saudi smoking gun.  The men who led the official investigation into the September 11 attacks are fighting back against charges their commission did not delve deep enough into Saudi Arabia's involvement.  More than a decade after the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States filed its report, a new push has erupted in Washington to force the administration to released the so-called "28 pages.  These pages on purported Saudi involvement were withheld by the George W. Bush administration from a report by a special joint congressional committee that pre-dated the commission.

Saudi Influence in Washington Must End.  The 28 pages of a Congressional report detailing where the 9/11 hijackers got their financing have been classified for years, but what they contain is an open secret.  Former Senator Bob Graham explained:  "The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11, and they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier.  So why keep this information secret?  Because the Saudis wield undue influence in Washington, among both parties — an influence that has deformed our response to the global jihad threat, and continues to do so.  Responding to a bill that would allow 9/11 victims' families to sue governments linked to terror attacks inside the U.S., the Saudis have acted like neither an ally nor an innocent party:  they've threatened to sell $750 billion in U.S. asserts, vividly demonstrating why their influence in Washington is so detrimental.

America deserves the truth about the Saudis and 9/11.  It's time for President Obama to declassify the 28 sealed pages of the 9/11 Commission Report — the section that details the Saudi role in the attacks.  The main noise in Washington now is over a bill to let 9/11 families sue Saudi Arabia over its alleged complicity.  Obama's threatening a veto, and there are reasons to keep private lawsuits out of foreign policy.  But there's no good reason to continue keeping the American people in the dark about the report, which dates to 2002.  The 9/11 Commission's chairman, Tom Kean, says the pages should be made public.  Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton says he's "embarrassed" it hasn't happened already.  Both Obama and his predecessor, George W. Bush, refused to declassify them.  Yet word of the contents has leaked out.

Fears of Saudi royal retaliation should not deter the truth about 9/11 attacks.  The New York Times reports that Saudi Arabia, playing the role of Mafia extortionist, has threatened to "...sell off hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of American assets held by the kingdom if Congress passes a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible in American courts for any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.  The Saudis are estimated to hold about $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets in the U.S. and the concern is that they might sell them before American courts could impose a freeze.  The Obama administration opposes the bill, saying it could potentially open the kingdom to lawsuits from relatives of the dead and injured.  So?

Fresh evidence links Saudi government to 9/11: Flight certificate of would-be bomber found in embassy envelope buried underground.  Fresh information allegedly connecting the government of Saudi Arabia and the 9/11 terror attacks has been released.  Officials have revealed that the flight certificate of Al-Qaeda bomb maker Ghassan Al-Sharbi was discovered hidden in an envelope from the Saudi embassy in Washington when they arrested him in 2002.  Al-Sharbi is believed to have learned how to fly with the hijackers but did not take part in the attacks.  Shortly before his arrest, he buried a bundle of documents, which is believed to have included the certificate.  The cache was discovered by US authorities and details, written in a memo known as Document 17 in 2003, were released without fanfare by investigators last year.  They were only brought to the public's attention when an activist discovered them and wrote about them on his website earlier this week.

Uncovering the Hidden Truths of 9/11.  [Scroll down]  At a minimum, the FBI seems to have stonewalled efforts to look into what some of those Saudis were up to in the months before the attacks.  Yet nobody should expect Washington, DC, to come clean about this anytime soon.  Almost 15 years later, admitting that two administrations have kept important facts about 9/11 from the public would cause political trauma.  Not least because bipartisan refusal to admit the full truth about major terrorist attacks is something of a tradition in our nation's capital.  Additionally, Riyadh has reacted hysterically to recent public comments on the 28 Pages, threatening dire economic pain if Americans start asking pointed questions about any Saudi angle to the Planes Operation.  That they have something to hide is painfully obvious.

Bombshell: Here's who may have been behind the 9/11 attacks all along.  There's a pretty hot topic going about in the country and I wanted to share my perspective — and by the way, both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders weren't very clear about the issue.  I'm speaking about the declassification of the 28 pages of the Congressional 9-11 report that potentially includes reference to Saudi Arabia.  In fact, as Andrew McCarthy writes for the National Review in a detailed exposé of Saudi connections to the attacks, It is long, long past time... for the United States government to come clean with the American people, and with the families of Americans slaughtered on 9/11 by 19 jihadists, 15 of them Saudis.  The government must disclose the 28 pages of the 2002 congressional report on the 9/11 attacks that it has shamefully withheld from the public for 14 years.  Those pages outline Saudi complicity in the jihad.

Saudis On The Ropes.  The role of Saudis in the 9/11 attack on the U.S. has hardly been completely hidden: 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, trained in Wahhabi schools.  More than that, there is evidence that Saudi officials in the U.S. aided and abetted them once they were here — people like Omar al-Bayoumi, who met with some of the hijackers on the very same day he met with someone (as yet not publicly identified) in the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles.  Families of those murdered on 9/11 have been trying to get redress through litigation from the Saudi royal family, Saudi banks, and Saudi charities, but have been stymied in part because of 1976 law that grants immunity to foreign nations in U.S. courts.  There's an effort in Congress to change that, to deny such immunity to nations that have been culpable for terrorist attacks, which kill Americans on American soil.

Willful Blindness and Our Saudi 'Friends'.  [Scroll down]  Since 1993, the bipartisan American ruling class, throughout administrations of both parties, has refused to acknowledge, much less grapple with, this central truth of the threat we face.  It has insisted, against fact and reason, that Islam is a monolithic "religion of peace," and therefore that there can be no causal connection between Islamic doctrine and terrorism committed by Muslims.  It has fraudulently maintained that jihadist violence is not jihadist at all — after all, we are to understand jihad (notwithstanding its roots as a belligerent concept, as holy war to establish sharia) to be a noble internal struggle to become a better person, to vanquish corruption, and the like.  Terrorist attacks must be airbrushed into "violent extremism," shorn of any ideological component — as if the killing were wanton, not purposeful.  The fact that the attacks are so ubiquitously committed by Muslims (who explicitly cite scriptural chapter and verse to justify themselves), is to be ignored — as if all religions and ideologies were equally prone to inspire mass-murder attacks if believed too fervently.

Saudi Arabia is fracturing.  Depending who you ask, this may or may not be a bad thing.  Only days before President Obama heads to Saudi Arabia, relations with that nation seem to be on the verge of breaking down substantially.  There are a few different items which have reached the boiling point just this year, and the first one is a bill currently making the rounds in Congress which would allow family members of 9/11 victims to sue the Arab nation for their (I suppose we should say "alleged") involvement in the attacks.  As you might imagine, this isn't making the Saudi royal family feel particularly warm and fuzzy, and they are now threatening to dump vast American holdings onto the market.

9/11 families furious at Obama administration for 'siding with Saudi Arabia'.  The families of 9/11 victims in the US are reportedly infuriated at the administration of President Barack Obama for 'siding with Saudi Arabia' over a congressional bill that could incriminate Saudi officials for the deadly attacks on September 11, 2001 in America.  The families of victims are making a renewed push to declassify 28 pages of a 838-page congressional report on the worst terror attack on American soil, which points the blame towards Saudi Arabia.  Until now,the Obama administration has so far refused to reveal the contents of the missing pages and looks to be leaving the decision to a Congressional vote.

How US covered up Saudi role in 9/11.  In its report on the still-censored "28 pages" implicating the Saudi government in 9/11, "60 Minutes" last weekend said the Saudi role in the attacks has been "soft-pedaled" to protect America's delicate alliance with the oil-rich kingdom.  That's quite an understatement.  Actually, the kingdom's involvement was deliberately covered up at the highest levels of our government.  And the coverup goes beyond locking up 28 pages of the Saudi report in a vault in the US Capitol basement.  Investigations were throttled.  Co-conspirators were let off the hook.

Secret 28 Pages of 9/11 Report Under New Scrutiny.  When the president leaves for a trip to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday [4/19/2016] an unresolved issue will go with him: did the Saudis play some role in supporting the hijackers responsible for the attacks on September 11th?  The question is being raised in the wake of a renewed push to declassify 28 pages of a 838-page congressional report on the worst terror attack on American soil.  The so-called "28 pages" are locked away in a secure basement room at the Capitol and although they can be read by members of Congress, the pages remain classified.

Report: Saudis vow to sell US assets if Congress decides gov was involved in 9/11.  Saudi Arabia has reportedly told the Obama administration and congressional leaders that it will sell billions of dollars in U.S. financial assets if Congress passes a bill to make the Saudi government legally responsible for any role in the 9/11 attacks.  The administration has tried to stop Congress from passing the legislation, a bipartisan Senate bill, since Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir last month told Washington lawmakers his country's position, according to The New York Times.  Al-Juberi purportedly informed the lawmakers during a trip to Washington that Saudi Arabia would be forced to sell as much as $750 billion in Treasury securities and other American financial assets on the world market, fearing the legislation could become law and U.S. courts would then freeze the assets.

Pressure builds on Obama administration to declassify 9/11 report.  Pressure is building on the Obama administration to release information about the 9/11 attacks that has been kept from the public for well over a decade. [...] New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has read the 28 pages that have been locked in a vault under the Capitol for 13 years.  "I don't know how the Saudi government will react to it, but I think it's just information," said Gillibrand.  She said the 9/11 families she represents deserve to read them too — before the president travels to the Middle East next week.

28 Pages: A Full Measure special report about the 9/11 attacks.  In October of 2013, [Congressman Stephen] Lynch went to the secret room in the basement of the Capitol and began reading.  The censored material begins on page 395 under the heading, "Certain Sensitive National Security Matters."  Lynch says, "It gave names of individuals and entities that i [sic] believe were complicit in the attacks on september [sic] eleventh.  They were facilitators of those attacks and they are clearly identified.  How people were financed, where they were housed, where the money was coming from, you know the conduits that were used and the connections between some of these individuals."  Individuals, he says, who were never brought to justice.  But who are they?  And why would the U.S. government want to keep the information secret?

Iran's involvement with 9/11.  The most remarkable aspect of this US surrender to Iran is that the Iranian regime is not some hypothetical threat.  It has been perpetrating acts of war against Western interests for more than three decades — including playing a key role in the 9/11 attacks on America.  That's not just my opinion.  It's the view of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.  In a judgment that has received virtually no attention, federal Judge George B. Daniels found in December 2011 that Iran, with the participation of its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was directly and heavily involved in the 9/11 atrocities.

'28 pages': Sharyl Attkisson dives into still-classified 9/11 intelligence documents.  In a preview of her new Sunday morning news broadcast, five-time Emmy winner and former CBS anchor Sharyl Attkisson will delve into the top-secret pages of Congress' intelligence report on the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which are still kept under wraps 14 years later.  In the report, Ms. Attkisson speaks with current and former lawmakers and family members of victims of the 9/11 attacks to uncover why the documents, known as the "28 pages" are still undisclosed.

Moussaoui Calls Saudi Princes Patrons of Al Qaeda.  In highly unusual testimony inside the federal supermax prison, a former operative for Al Qaeda has described prominent members of Saudi Arabia's royal family as major donors to the terrorist network in the late 1990s and claimed that he discussed a plan to shoot down Air Force One with a Stinger missile with a staff member at the Saudi Embassy in Washington.  The Qaeda member, Zacarias Moussaoui, wrote last year to Judge George B. Daniels of United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, who is presiding over a lawsuit filed against Saudi Arabia by relatives of those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

CIA Declassifies Report On 9/11, Blanks Out Saudi Section.  When the 435-page report — which was finished in 2005 — was dropped on Friday evening [6/12/2015], the section titled "Issues Relating to Saudi Arabia" was mostly redacted.  Just a few sentences remain, including:  "[T]he team encountered no evidence that the Saudi Government knowingly and willingly supported al-Qa'ida terrorists."

Rand Paul Battles the GOP Over 9/11 Secrets.  Back in 2003, 46 senators signed a letter urging President George W. Bush to declassify the redacted pages in the joint congressional inquiry into 9/11.  Former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, the one-time chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and an original author of the report, has said the pages "point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier" of the 9/11 attacks.  But today, more than a decade later, only a handful of Senate lawmakers are interested in pressing the issue.  Of the original 46 senators, 12 remain in the Senate.  Just two of those are publicly supportive of declassifying the 28 pages now.

What Is the Bush Family Hiding About the Saudis and 9/11?  Hard to escape the conclusion that we attacked the wrong country after 9/11, that a lot of our servicemen needlessly died, and the real enemy of America is still out there, voiding its Wahhabist poison into the moral water supply of the entire world.

Rand Paul's New Crusade: The Secret 9/11 Docs.  Senator Rand Paul, the man of the hour when it comes to pushing back against government secrecy, is throwing his weight behind a fresh push to declassify 28 pages from a 2002 Senate inquiry into the causes of 9/11.  The Kentucky Republican is sponsoring legislation called the "Transparency for the Families of 9/11 Act," which would force the release of the disputed pages. With his support, an important issue that has languished far too long may be finally gaining traction.  Paul is a big catch for the 28 pages movement, as advocates describe their effort.  Former Florida senator Bob Graham, who has been banging the drum on the classified pages for years, will appear alongside Paul at a press conference at the Capitol on Tuesday morning [6/2/2015] to lend his gravitas to the occasion.

How the FBI is whitewashing the Saudi connection to 9/11.  Just 15 days before the 9/11 attacks, a well-connected Saudi family suddenly abandoned their luxury home in Sarasota, Fla., leaving behind jewelry, clothes, opulent furniture, a driveway full of cars — including a brand new Chrysler PT Cruiser — and even a refrigerator full of food.  About the only thing not left behind was a forwarding address.  The occupants simply vanished without notifying their neighbors, realtor or even mail carrier.  The 3,300-square-foot home on Escondito Circle belonged to Esam Ghazzawi, a Saudi adviser to the nephew of then-King Fahd.  But at the time, it was occupied by his daughter and son-in-law, who beat a hasty retreat back to Saudi Arabia just two weeks before the attacks after nearly a six-year stay here.

Hillary's Path to 9/11.  We will probably never know specifically what was on Hillary's email server (unless, as suggested by the Wall Street Journal, we subpoena China's military intelligence).  But if the spell is finally and definitively broken, as the willingness of less-than-right-wing pundits at the New York Times, Time magazine and others to criticize Hillary without restraint suggests it might be, then we may yet learn many things about the world in which we live that we had no idea were being suppressed out of rapturous worship, or mortal terror, of the Clintons.  We may emerge into a world of freedom and democracy that we had almost forgotten existed.

9/11 Link To Saudi Arabia Is Topic Of 28 Redacted Pages In Government Report.  Since terrorists attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, victims' loved ones, injured survivors, and members of the media have all tried without much success to discover the true nature of the relationship between the 19 hijackers — 15 of them Saudi nationals — and the Saudi Arabian government.  Many news organizations reported that some of the terrorists were linked to the Saudi royals and that they even may have received financial support from them as well as from several mysterious, moneyed Saudi men living in San Diego.  Saudi Arabia has repeatedly denied any connection, and neither President George W. Bush nor President Obama has been forthcoming on this issue.

Claims Against Saudis Cast New Light on Secret Pages of 9/11 Report.  A still-classified section of the investigation by congressional intelligence committees into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has taken on an almost mythic quality over the past 13 years — 28 pages that examine crucial support given the hijackers and that by all accounts implicate prominent Saudis in financing terrorism.

Massaoui Statement Renews Suspicions of Saudi Involvement in 9/11 Attacks.  The man known as the missing "20th hijacker" in the 9/11 attacks has claimed that members of the Saudi royal family were financially supporting al-Qaeda, CNN reported.  Zacarias Moussaoui, who pleaded guilty in 2005 to six terror-related charges, made the statement under oath in October at the supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, where he is serving a life sentence without parole.  It was contained in a brief filed Tuesday in a civil suit against Saudi Arabia by families of the 9/11 victims.  The brief was in opposition to a motion to dismiss the case.  Moussaoui claimed that in the late 1990s Osama bin Laden put him in charge of creating a database cataloging al-Qaeda's donors and the amount they contributed, a task he said he carried out daily for two or three months.  High-profile donors included several members of Saudi Royal family, Moussaoui said, including Prince Turki al-Faisal Al Saud, former director-general of Saudi Arabia's Foreign Intelligence Service and ambassador to the United States.

Lawyers: Evidence shows Saudi Arabia aided 9/11 hijackers.  Lawyers for victims of the Sept. 11 attacks say they have new evidence that agents of Saudi Arabia "directly and knowingly" helped the hijackers, including sworn testimony from the so-called 20th hijacker and from three principals of the U.S. government's two primary probes of the attacks.  The Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington said in a statement Wednesday that Zacarias Moussaoui's claims come from a "deranged criminal" and that there is no evidence to support them.  It said Saudi Arabia had nothing to do with the deadly 2001 attacks.

Saudi Arabia: America's Frenemy.  [Scroll down]  Imagine, though, that Moussaoui is telling the truth, and that members of the Saudi "royal family" took an active role in the planning of 9/11 — something that, given the sheer size of the House of Saud, smart money would bet on.  What would we do about it? [...] Obama, of course, would do absolutely nothing (and one wonders if this was a topic of conversation during his recent visit to the sheikdom).  But the next president would have to.  Wouldn't he?

There's only one problem with this idea:  What is the value of a "pledge" from someone like Barack H. Obama?
Every Presidential Candidate Should Pledge Release of Missing 9/11 Pages.  More than 13 years have passed since al-Qaeda terrorists killed almost 3,000 Americans in al-Qaeda's single-most devastating attack. [...] And yet, so much remains inexplicably unknown about that day.  President George W. Bush redacted 28 pages of the 9/11 Commission report.  A number of congressmen have read the redacted pages.  Thomas Massie, a Republican representing Kentucky's 4th Congressional district, said, "I had to stop every two or three pages and rearrange my perception of history."  He added, however, "There is nothing in there that would affect our national security," and suggested it was a desire not to embarrass some states that led the Bush administration to withhold the Commission's findings.

Twenty Eight Pages of Oil.  Petroleum serves as a hydraulic fluid that transmits pressure through the whole global economic system.  Without it the landing gear won't deploy and the control surfaces droop.  It's importance is underscored by the "28 missing pages" of the September 11 report which reportedly implicate Saudi Arabia in the attack. [...] The 28 pages may tell us whether Bush let the Saudis walk, and explain to what extent and why?  It may indicate why there's bipartisan support for keeping whatever's in those 28 pages under wraps.  Even whether the need to keep oil onside was responsible for America's retreat from the Middle East or Obama's bow to the Saudi King.

The Missing Pages of the 9/11 Report.  A story that might otherwise have slipped away in a morass of conspiracy theories gained new life Wednesday when former Sen. Bob Graham headlined a press conference on Capitol Hill to press for the release of 28 pages redacted from a Senate report on the 9/11 attacks.  And according to Graham, the lead author of the report, the pages "point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as the principal financier" of the 9/11 hijackers.  "This may seem stale to some but it's as current as the headlines we see today," Graham said, referring to the terrorist attack on a satirical newspaper in Paris.

Still Secret: 28 Pages That Could Change Our Understanding of 9/11.  A bipartisan group of congressmen joined with 9/11 family members today to renew efforts to declassify 28 pages of a joint congressional inquiry into the worst terrorist attack against the United States.  The information, redacted by President George W. Bush, is believed to point to allegations that Saudi Arabia may have assisted in financing the 9/11 terrorists.

Carrying His Cross to Elam.  [Scroll down]  Disgust with the thuggishness of the regime, as well as internal power struggles, have prompted a number of Iranian intelligence officers to break with their former bosses.  I have spent man-years debriefing a wide variety of such defectors, and have never ceased to be amazed at how often the U.S. intelligence community rejects their information, at times with deadly results.  So it was in July 2001 when a counter-intelligence officer known as Hamid Reza Zakeri walked into the U.S. embassy in Baku and warned the CIA of impending attacks on America that were going to be carried out using civilian airliners and Arab pilots.  Zakeri identified the targets of the attacks — the World Trade Center towers in New York, Camp David, the Pentagon and the White House in Washington, DC — and the date they were to take place.

'Saudi prince paid for 9/11 pilots to learn to fly'.  A jihadist serving life in prison on terror charges brought in the wake of 9/11 has claimed the Saudi Arabian royal family helped finance the plot.  Zacarias Moussaoui, 46, says an unnamed Saudi Prince paid for flying lessons for him and the 19 terrorists who hijacked planes in the September 11 attacks in the run-up to the atrocities.  The incredible claims were made in documents filed to a federal court in Oklahoma, in which Moussaoui says a prince 'was assisting me in my Islamic terrorist activities... and was doing so knowingly for Osama bin Laden'.

Disclosures Pried From Government Strongly Suggest Terrorist Awlaki Was an Informant.  New evidence pried from the government under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) proves the point I have posited here at Ordered Liberty:  The federal government willfully intervened on behalf of al Qaeda terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki on October 10, 2002, undoing his arrest on felony fraud charges when he was detained at JFK International Airport in New York, and allowing him to walk away with a Saudi handler.  As I argued over two years ago, the government's story to the contrary — viz., that it was moved by sheer coincidence on the eve of Awlaki's arrival to pull the plug on a weak case — does not pass the laugh test.

Inside the president's 'doomsday' planes.  [Scroll down]  US authorities rarely discuss the doomsday plane. In particular, they don't mention the fact that its distinctive form was spotted by reliable witnesses above the heavily restricted air space above the White House on the morning of September 11, 2001, around the time the twin towers were struck by hijacked planes, but before the Pentagon was hit.  Conspiracists have long seen this as evidence that the doomsday plane was in effect a command center for the 9/11 attacks, which they consider an inside job.

The Twenty-Eight Pages.  On the bottom floor of the United States Capitol's new underground visitors' center, there is a secure room where the House Intelligence Committee maintains highly classified files.  One of those files is titled "Finding, Discussion and Narrative Regarding Certain Sensitive National Security Matters."  It is twenty-eight pages long. [...] "There's nothing in it about national security," Walter Jones, a Republican congressman from North Carolina who has read the missing pages, contends.  "It's about the Bush Administration and its relationship with the Saudis."

Ron Paul Believes Bush Admin. Had Advance Knowledge of 9/11 Attacks.  What was on the 18-and-a-half minutes of tape erased by the Nixon White House?  We'll likely never know.  While theories and speculation about the content of that lost material still resonate, particularly in alcoves of the Internet, there is one contemporary puzzle that is beginning to attract the attention of lawmakers and citizens.  From the day of its release in 2002, 28 pages of the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 2001 — commonly referred to as the 9/11 Commission report — have remained classified.

28 Pages Later: Shrouding an Act of War.  American blood spilled in wars that do not attack those who attacked us on 9-11.  To put this in perspective, fewer died in Pearl Harbor and we nuked the Japanese.  We were told after 9-11, that it was al Qaeda, with no other state sponsors.  If the allegations prove accurate, 9-11 was nothing less than an act of war by Saudi Arabia.

Act of War: CIA Leak Gives "Incontrovertible Evidence" That 9/11 Was State Sponsored.  If you have ever questioned the official narrative for the September 11th attacks then you have, without a doubt, been dubbed a conspiracy nut by the establishment media and those who hang on their every word.  Like the Warren Commission report on the JFK assassination, the 9/11 Report assembled by a Congressional investigation is unraveling and being revealed for what it really is — nothing more than a cover story.  This is no longer a conspiracy theory... it's conspiracy fact.

Inside the Saudi 9/11 coverup.  After the 9/11 attacks, the public was told al Qaeda acted alone, with no state sponsors.  But the White House never let it see an entire section of Congress' investigative report on 9/11 dealing with "specific sources of foreign support" for the 19 hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi nationals.  It was kept secret and remains so today.  President Bush inexplicably censored 28 full pages of the 800-page report.  Text isn't just blacked-out here and there in this critical-yet-missing middle section.  The pages are completely blank, except for dotted lines where an estimated 7,200 words once stood.

Mainstream Media Censorship Exposed.  Flagship news publications in the United States mainstream media have been forced to admit that over the years they quietly forged partnerships with the federal government in order to withhold from American taxpayers vital information on such topics as the government's drone-assassination program, torture, secret prisons and warrantless snooping.  Some of the worst cases of collusion and suppression go back 10 years to the early days of the modern "war on terror."

CIA Veterans Challenge 9/11 Commission Report.  Seven CIA veterans have severely criticized the official account of 9/11 and have called for a new investigation.  "I think at simplest terms, there's a cover-up.  The 9/11 Report is a joke," said Raymond McGovern, 27-year veteran of the CIA, who chaired National Intelligence Estimates during the seventies.  "There are a whole bunch of unanswered questions.  And the reason they're unanswered is because this administration will not answer the questions," he said.

Alleged Hijackers Still Alive After September 11, 2001.  Robert Fisk reported that Abdulrahman al-Omari, a pilot with Saudi Airlines, went to the U.S. consulate in Jeddah to demand an apology for being listed as one of the 19 hijackers.  Al-Omari received an official apology from the United States but coverage of this acknowledgement was not made known by major media outlets in the U.S.

Aerial Photo Shows Towers Were Exploded Outward, Did Not "Collapse".  One of the first things Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who coordinated the destruction of the steel evidence at Ground Zero, did after the attack was prohibit almost all photography at the site.  Police and FBI agents were ordered to confiscate cameras on the spot, although inevitably, as can be expected at such a massive crime scene, there were simply too many people swarming what was now viewed as history for such a stricture to be successfully enforced.

Venturing a Plausible Theory of the Crime.  The very fact that an essay such as this, as well as the sheer volume of 911 research, can be published is evidence that freedom is still ours to lose, since in any truly dictatorial regime such writings would be summarily banned and its authors jailed.  We do not know beyond reasonable doubt what happened on 911.

'A weapon of mass destruction was found in the U.S.'.  A port official has admitted that a 'weapon of mass effect' has been found by 'partner agencies' in the U.S., raising major questions over a possible government cover-up.

Dirty Bomb:  Here And Now?  An assistant port director says "weapons of mass effect" have been found on American soil, possibly smuggled in across our porous border.  The drug war in Mexico may be the least of our worries.

Border officials retract "weapons of mass destruction" comments.  The interview played Monday [2/7/2011] on numerous major television news outlets and on dozens of web sites.  But the agency is now stepping back from that comment.  "During a local interview on port security that aired last week, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) assistant port director in San Diego made statements that were simply inaccurate,"Kelly Ivanhnenko, Southwest Border Field Branch Chief, said in an email to The [Washington] Examiner.

Military burns unsolicited Bibles sent to Afghanistan.  Military personnel threw away, and ultimately burned, confiscated Bibles that were printed in the two most common Afghan languages amid concern they would be used to try to convert Afghans, a Defense Department spokesman said Tuesday [5/19/2009].

Satellite Photos Support Testimony That Iraqi WMD Went to SyriaHa'aretz has revived the mystery surrounding the inability to find weapons of mass destruction stockpiles in Iraq, the most commonly cited justification for Operation Iraqi Freedom and one of the most embarrassing episodes for the United States.  Satellite photos of a suspicious site in Syria are providing new support for the reporting of a Syrian journalist who briefly rocked the world with his reporting that Iraq's WMD had been sent to three sites in Syria just before the invasion commenced.

An American Victory.  The news is not that American combat troops withdrew from Iraqi cities.  The news is that American combat troops withdrew from Iraqi cities in victory — rather than in defeat.  Two years ago at this time, few in the foreign-policy establishment considered that outcome possible.

Bin Laden:  A hoax like the warming he champions.  [Scroll down]  In fact, no reputable person has seen bin Laden alive since October 2001 when the photo in question was taken, that on the occasion of an interview by Al Jazeera.  The audio and videotapes that he has allegedly made in the years since have convinced few outside the CIA.  National security guru Angelo Codevilla has argued persuasively that Osama died of pulmonary infection before the year 2001 was out.  It was not until after his likely death that the so-called "confessional video," the first one in which he actually took credit for September 11, surfaced.

Shoe bomber and friends getting soft treatment in federal prisons.  Regular old U.S. criminals should be so lucky as to enjoy the devoted legal representation that has rallied to the sides of Islamist terrorists convicted of plotting the mass murder of Americans.  Self-styled human rights champions who made the Guantanamo Bay detention center a false symbol of barbarism have turned to easing the ultra-secure domestic imprisonments of fanatic jihadists.

Thoughts on the Hysteria About Afghanistan.  Afghanistan is a messy war, but so far it has been conducted with a minimum loss of American life while achieving some important goals. ... After the initial invasion, the Afghan front was largely inactive for years.  U.S. annual fatalities from 2001 through 2007 (12, 49, 48, 52, 99, 98, 117) averaged about 68.  In comparison, the murder total in Chicago for 2007 was 509.

Guantanamo and the question of terrorist recruitment.  In the next few days, you're going to see an increasingly intense debate on the question of whether the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay is a major factor in terrorist recruitment.  In that debate, you're going to hear a name you might not have heard, Matthew Alexander.  And you're going to learn that what you've been told about Guantanamo and terrorist recruitment is not the whole story.

It was not torture, but it saved lives.  CIA agents once played rough with possibly 30 terrorists, and maybe they shouldn't have, but they saved American lives that way.  And if you say no, no, a thousand times no to playing rough in the future, you may be saying yes to thousands of deaths.

CIA Waterboarding Produced Intel That Stopped Attack on Los Angeles.  "Soon, you will know."  That is the ominous statement an uncooperative Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, told his Central Intelligence Agency interrogators when they initially asked him, after he had been captured, about additional planned al-Qaida attacks on the United States.  In March 2003, KSM became the third and final terrorist ever waterboarded by the CIA.  The other two were Abu Zubaydah and Rahim Al-Nashiri.  So few were waterboarded because the CIA was so strict in the criteria for deciding when the technique could be used.

Reality Knocks.  Saying unsupported piffle is the stuff of campaigns, but the current occupants of the White House seem unaware of their higher obligation to provide complete and unspun information to the American people.  While they may be determined to throw out whatever hits them as an available political counterattack, neither their own intelligence officials or the previous ones support the view that a single American was harmed because of interrogation tactics.  The available information suggests the contrary is true.

Bush's 'folly' is ending in victory.  'Markets without bombs.  Hummers without guns.  Ice cream after dark.  Busy streets without fear."  So began Terry McCarthy's report from Iraq for ABC's World News Sunday on March 15, one of a series the network aired last week as the war in Iraq reached its sixth anniversary.  A nationwide poll of Iraqis reveals that "60 percent expect things to get better next year — almost three times as many as a year and a half ago," McCarthy continued.

Iraq:  Good News Is No News.  Preoccupied as it was poring over Tom Daschle's tax returns, Washington hardly noticed a near-miracle abroad.  Iraq held provincial elections.  There was no Election Day violence.  Security was handled by Iraqi forces with little U.S. involvement.  A fabulous bazaar of 14,400 candidates representing 400 parties participated, yielding results highly favorable to both Iraq and the United States. ... All this barely pierced the consciousness of official Washington.  After all, it fundamentally contradicts the general establishment/media narrative of Iraq as "fiasco."

The Right Standard for Judging George W. Bush:  Media accounts greatly exaggerate the human cost of the war through the failure to provide an appropriate context in recent history.  While every military death constitutes a profound tragedy for the families of the fallen and the nation at large, the level of sacrifice in Iraq and Afghanistan has remained remarkably (and blessedly) low when compared to tragic losses under recent "peace-time" presidents.  In fact, measuring the number of annual military deaths (most of them through accidents and illness, rather than combat) since 1980, the toll for the Bush administration remains sharply below the 28 year average.

Iraq death toll plummets.  The number of British and US forces who died in Iraq in 2008 looks likely to be the lowest annual toll since the invasion nearly six years ago, while bombs and gunfire killed far fewer Iraqi civilians than in 2007.

Winning Isn't News.  What would happen if the U.S. won a war but the media didn't tell the American public?  Apparently, we have to rely on a British newspaper for the news that we've defeated the last remnants of al-Qaida in Iraq.

Violence in Iraq down sharply.  The level of violence has dropped dramatically in Iraq in recent days from year-ago levels, a U.S. military official in the war-torn country says.  Army Brig. Gen. David G. Perkins, a spokesman for the multinational force in Iraq, told reporters in Baghdad Sunday that over the past week there had been an average of 10 attacks each day.  That, he said, was a 95 percent drop from the 180 attacks per day being experienced last year, American Forces Press Service reported Monday.

Reopen the Statue of Liberty.  The disgraceful and cowardly shuttering of the Statue of Liberty may soon be over.  Lady Liberty may shortly be freed to welcome visitors from New York and around the world to her crown. ... The National Park Service, a unit of the Interior Department, closed the glory in the harbor for security reasons after 9/11.  Today, it stands as America's only national monument that has not been fully restored to the public.

US records lowest monthly death toll in Iraq.  Eleven US soldiers were killed in Iraq in July, the lowest monthly toll since the US-led invasion of 2003, according to figures provided by the Pentagon.

U.S. Combat Casualties Back to All-Time Low in November, Analysis Shows.  U.S. combat casualties in Iraq fell to their lowest level last month, with most of the fatalities concentrated outside of Baghdad in the Ninawa Province along the Syrian border, according to a CNSNews.com analysis of U.S. Defense Department data.

The Most Overlooked News Story of 2008.  Have you noticed lately that mainstream media are giving less attention to the war in Iraq, especially concerning our troops' progress?  Who doesn't recognize by now that we live in a time in which there's little, if any, publishing space for positive military stories about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Cyber Attack Shuts Down Website.  It was [Jill] Metzger's claim, not backed up by any evidence, that she had been abducted and then heroically escaped her captors.  Many media organizations in the U.S. trumpeted this claim. ... If that tale turns out to be false, and there is a lot of reason to doubt it, the military top brass who have been protecting her — and the mainstream media which have refused to investigate the matter — will end up looking like fools or worse.

Obama Can't Be Trusted on National Defense.  [Scroll down slowly]  The desperation that may have led Obama to engage in this gross misconduct stems from his belated recognition of the new reality in Iraq:  The war there is over.  America has won.  It is too late for Obama to surrender, on behalf of his uninformed, misguided, anti-American netroots.  Victory for America in Iraq has meant a disastrous rout for Al Qaeda's terrorists. ... With this smashing victory in hand, American troops are already coming home.  The surge troops have been withdrawn.

Al-Qa'eda's American-born propaganda chief may have died in predator attack.  Months of attacks by unmanned US predator aircraft have caused carnage among the middle ranks of terrorist leaders in the lawless lands along the border with Afghanistan, where al-Qa'eda remains dangerous despite suffering a serious defeat in Iraq.  Their victims have included experienced Arab leaders and, it is now thought, Adam Gadahn, a former heavy-metal fan and so-called "killer computer nerd" originally from California.  Nothing has been heard from him for months, leading intelligence experts to conclude that he may be dead.

How General Petraeus Saved the U.S. Economy:  With oil prices continuing to plunge — and they may have a lot further to go — I've started wondering about this "what if" scenario:  Where would oil prices be today had we abandoned Iraq to civil war and al Qaeda?  What if President Bush had announced on Jan. 10, 2007, that instead of surging U.S. troops under the command of General Patraeus, he was ordering their withdrawal?

General Petraeus Has Not Betrayed U.S..  Here's to General David Petraeus.  He never betrayed us.  Indeed, he saved America's war in Iraq.  Maybe not single-handily, but there is no doubt whatsoever that without General Petraeus' bold move to push for more troops to turn the tide against the insurgents, which has paid off handsomely, America would have been severely weakened both at home and around the world.

Exit Petraeus, Without Fanfare.  General David Petraeus's tenure in Iraq draws to a close at the end of the month, and it's a measure of his success that he is departing to far less political fanfare than when his tour began.  In September 2007, MoveOn.org called him General "Betray-Us," and Hillary Clinton said his claims of progress weren't credible.  Now those critics are silent.

Federal jury acquits ex-Marine in Iraqis' deaths.  Verdict is the first time a civilian jury has weighed in on the law of war.

You heard it here first:  We won the war.  Somebody has to write this.  The United States has won the war in Iraq.  I'm compelled to proclaim victory because, these days, winning wars has become politically incorrect in Western societies.  So much so that some political leaders opposed to the war refuse to recognize the definition of victory or to utter the word.

Show Us The Bodies.  Over and over again, terrorists and their sympathizers claim that every successful American air-strike or raid massacred a wedding party or a family gathering where innocent infants were quietly fondling their Kalashnikovs.  But we never see the bodies.  How do they all disappear?

ABC, CBS, NBC Skip Report of Benchmarks Met in Iraq.  For most of the Iraq war, the national media has suggested to the public that there are two sides of the story on Iraq:  the version painted by President Bush and his spokesmen, and the "reality" that Americans see in the media.  But when things go well in Iraq, do the networks take any steps to acknowledge reality?  Or do they keep a lid on the good news?

Obama, Justice Thomas and Col. West: On Morality.  [Allen] West represents the ideals and the actions of the great majority of our military.  But as usual, the media mob tells us a lot more about their own blinders, than about the reality of war, when they select the headlines.  Lt. Col. West was faced with a supremely difficult moral choice, and unhesitatingly chose the right and painful course.

A Look Back:  What Democrats Were Saying About The Surge.  The enormous improvement in Iraq's security situation caused by the surge has been so undeniable that even the mainstream press has started alternating between ignoring Iraq completely and acknowledging, albeit reluctantly, that the surge has put victory within reach in Iraq.  So with that in mind, it's worth taking the time to look back at what the créme de la créme of the Democratic Party has had to say about the war and the surge over the last few years.

Surge Successful By Any Measure, Pentagon Official Says.  The surge in Iraq has been a success by any measure, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said during a news conference July 23. … The surge has allowed Iraq to make improvements from security, political and economic standpoints, Morrell said.  The last of the five surge brigade combat teams recently left Iraq.

So Much for the 'Looted Sites'.  A recent mission to Iraq headed by top archaeologists from the U.S. and U.K. who specialize in Mesopotamia found that, contrary to received wisdom, southern Iraq's most important historic sites — eight of them — had neither been seriously damaged nor looted after the American invasion.

The New Reality in Iraq.  All of the most important objectives of the surge have been accomplished in Iraq.  The sectarian civil war is ended; al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) has been dealt a devastating blow; and the Sadrist militia and other Iranian-backed militant groups have been disrupted.  Meanwhile, the Iraqi government has accomplished almost all of the legislative benchmarks set by the U.S. Congress and the Bush administration.  More important, it is gaining wider legitimacy among the population.

Is the War Over?  Security incidents, or attacks, are at their lowest level in four years.  Civilian deaths are down by almost 90 percent since General Petraeus' counterinsurgency "surge" strategy went into effect.  High profile attacks, or explosions, are down by 80 percent in the same time period.  American and Iraqi soldiers suffer far fewer casualties than they have for years.

Iraqis lead final purge of Al-Qaeda.  American and Iraqi forces are driving Al-Qaeda in Iraq out of its last redoubt in the north of the country in the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror.  After being forced from its strongholds in the west and centre of Iraq in the past two years, Al-Qaeda's dwindling band of fighters has made a defiant "last stand" in the northern city of Mosul.  A huge operation to crush the 1,200 fighters who remained from a terrorist force once estimated at more than 12,000 began on May 10.

The Editor says...
That's great news.  Too bad we have to read about this in the British newspapers.

Victory in Anbar?  What victory?  In order to find even minimal coverage of the significant victory our forces in Anbar have wrought this day, Saturday, July 5, you'll have to be quite a lot more specific in your search, which is indeed a travesty for which our mainstream media elites ought to, in my opinion, feel deep shame.

Success in Iraq:  A Media Blackout.  Do we still have troops in Iraq?  Is there still a conflict over there?  If you rely on the so-called mainstream media, you may have difficulty answering those questions these days.  As Iraqi and Coalition forces pile up one success after another, Iraq has magically vanished from the headlines.

Don't mention the war.  How do you know when things are going well for the US and its coalition allies in Iraq?  When you see virtually nothing about it on your television screen or in the papers.

The 550 Tons of Yellowcake:  The recent AP story was not news with respect to the existence of this stockpile in Iraq to those who follow such things closely.  But I'm sure many readers had never been aware of this large stockpile of yellowcake in Iraq at all.  This new AP story, and perhaps my article, helped get that information out.  As Investor's Business Daily more recently put it , "Seems to us this should be big news," but "the mainstream media find it inconveniently contradicts the story they have been telling you for years."

Saddam's Nukes:  It's a little known fact that, after invading Iraq in 2003, the U.S. found massive amounts of uranium yellowcake, the stuff that can be refined into nuclear weapons or nuclear fuel, at a facility in Tuwaitha outside of Baghdad.  In recent weeks, the U.S. secretly has helped the Iraqi government ship it all to Canada, where it was bought by a Canadian company for further processing into nuclear fuel — thus keeping it from potential use by terrorists or unsavory regimes in the region.

President Bush was Right.  If anyone doubts the need to have ousted Saddam, a news release in the past few days should put such doubts to rest.  The report is that the US has sold 550 tons of yellowcake uranium that had been found in Iraq to Cameco, a Canadian company.  The uranium will now be used as fuel and poses no severe risk if properly stored and sealed.

Yellowcake journalism.  [Saddam] Hussein got the yellowcake from somewhere.  He almost certainly got it from Niger, Gabon, South Africa or Namibia, the four African countries with yellowcake mines.  And [Joe] Wilson, who served with the State Department in Baghdad and Gabon, didn't know (or didn't report in his [New York] Times op-ed) that Hussein possessed 550 tons of yellowcake at the time of Mr. Wilson's African junket.

Guest Column:  The silence of 'The Times'.  The power of The New York Times is undeniable — even in an era of declining mainstream media influence.  What its editors choose to report still influences policymaking, as coverage of, or silence about, two recent Gaza-related events underscores.

Iraq could have largest oil reserves in the world.  Iraq dramatically increased the official size of its oil reserves yesterday [5/19/2008] after new data suggested that they could exceed Saudi Arabia's and be the largest in the world.  The Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister told The Times that new exploration showed that his country has the world's largest proven oil reserves, with as much as 350 billion barrels.  The figure is triple the country's present proven reserves and exceeds that of Saudi Arabia's estimated 264 billion barrels of oil.

Why Did These Liberals Lie About Weapons of Mass Destruction?  The left has never adequately answered the following question.  If Bush knew there was no WMD, why would he send 150,000 troops into Iraq since his "lie" would be immediately exposed by invading coalition forces and reported by a large contingent of media embedded within those forces?  Liberals also choose to ignore United Nations Resolution 1441, which clearly established that Iraq had WMD.  That resolution was approved unanimously by the UN member nations.

Marine Corps meets 142 percent of recruiting goal.  The Marine Corps far surpassed its recruiting goal last month and could eventually be more than a year ahead of schedule in its plan to grow the force to 202,000 members.  All military services met or exceeded their monthly recruiting goals in April, with the Marine Corps signing 142 percent of the number it was looking for, the Pentagon said.

Air Combat by Remote Control:  The sniper never knew what hit him. … As the unmanned plane closed in, the infrared camera underneath its nose picked up the muzzle flashes from the window.  The sniper was still firing when the Predator's 100-pound Hellfire missile came through the window and eliminated the threat.  The airman who fired that missile was 8,000 miles away, here at Creech Air Force Base, home of the 432nd air wing.

War on Terror Update:  The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 47% of likely voters believe the U.S. and its allies are winning the War on Terror.  Twenty percent (20%) say the terrorists are winning, while 27% say neither.

Progress, Actually.  The word "benchmarks" was scarcely heard last week when [General David] Petraeus and [Ambassador Ryan] Crocker reappeared before Congress.  Crocker testified that the Iraqis have actually met about two-thirds of the benchmarks, including four or five of the six key legislative benchmarks and all of the benchmarks measuring their contribution to their own security.  In reply, the congressmen who insisted on legislating these benchmarks now say benchmarks are a poor way to measure progress in Iraq.

Haditha:  The Collapse of a Liberal Fiction.  You'd hardly know it if you relied on the mainstream media, but the government's case against the Haditha Marines took another body blow last Friday [3/28/2008] that may be the beginning of the end for this whole sorry attempt to severely punish eight heroic United States Marines for doing what they are trained to do.  In a surprise development on the day Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum's court martial was scheduled to begin, all charges against him were dropped without explanation.

Our Enemy's Attrition:  The majority opinion is that the occupation in Iraq has been so bungled that the blowback has ruined American efforts at promoting positive change throughout the Middle East.  Perhaps.  But for all the justifiable criticism of the Iraqi reconstruction, two truths still remain — the United States is taking an enormous toll on jihadists, and despite the terrible cost in blood and treasure, has not given up on a constitutional government in Iraq.

Two ideas to consider about Bush's war and education.  During Bush's presidency, there has been an average of 1,465 deaths in the military per year (through 2006).  Clinton had an average of 954 military deaths per year.  Since Bush has been president, 160 military members have committed suicide per year.  During Clinton's administration, the suicide rate was 190 per year.  During Bush's time, an average of nine service people a year died in non-war related terrorist attacks (attacks on embassies, ships in a non-war zone, etc.).  The average under Clinton was 16 deaths per year.

Cents of perspective:  Every single combat death and injury sustained by our fighting forces is a deep loss.  But those who decry the 4000 military deaths related to the liberation of Iraq as somehow a disproportionate historic disaster do not have much perspective.

Death Blow to Defeatists:  Violence continues to plummet, with attacks throughout Iraq down 60 percent since June and civilian deaths down 75 percent from a year ago.  Iraqis are returning home by the tens of thousands.  The incoming flow of foreign fighters have [sic] been cut in half.  And despite a "surge" of troops, American combat deaths are near all-time monthly lows in Iraq.  This is all wonderful news.

The Surge Worked.  After years of mismanagement of the war, many people had grave doubts about whether success in Iraq was possible.  In Congress, opposition to the surge from antiwar members was swift and severe.  They insisted that Iraq was already "lost," and that there was nothing left to do but accept our defeat and retreat.  In fact, they could not have been more wrong.

Iraq Combat Deaths Down 50 Percent in November.  There have been 24 combat-related deaths in Iraq reported in the current month thus far in comparison with the 48 combat-related deaths reported in the first 28 days of November last year.

Targeted Killing Is Working — So why is the press not reporting it?  Sometimes what the international press does not cover reveals as much about its biases as what it does cover.

Iraq:  al-Qaida 75 Percent Gone.  Iraq's interior ministry spokesman said Saturday that 75 percent of al-Qaida in Iraq's terrorist network had been destroyed this year, but the top American commander in the country said the terror group remained his chief concern.

Top Story Of 2007:  The Surge, The Military, And The Media.  There should be no question what the top story of the year was:  America's counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq, the Democrats' hapless efforts to sabotage it, and the Western mainstream media's stubborn refusal to own up to military progress.

Turnaround in US Combat Casualties Began in June, Analysis Shows.  As has been widely reported, U.S. combat-related casualties in Iraq in 2007 were greater than in 2006, but they peaked in May 2007, just before the troop surge was completed and began a decline in June that continued through the end of the year.

Iraq Casualties in December Down 80 Percent From Year Ago.  Combat-related U.S. casualties in Iraq were 82.9 percent less in December 2007 than they were in December 2006, according to an exclusive Cybercast News Service analysis of Defense Department data.  In December 2006, according to an analysis based on casualty reports released by the Defense Department, 82 U.S. military personnel were killed in Iraq as a result of enemy action.  In December 2007, 14 U.S. military personnel were killed in Iraq as a result of enemy action.

More than 4500 Taliban members defect.  More than 4500 Taliban insurgents have defected since 2005 and up to 4000 others have been killed in action against British and Canadian forces in southern Afghanistan, according to military intelligence sources.

Soldier deaths down in Iraq.  The U.S. military said Friday [12/14/2007] that two American soldiers had died in separate incidents, but despite the latest deaths, December was shaping up to be the safest month for U.S. forces in Iraq since 2004.

U.S. Monthly Death Toll in Iraq Could Be the Lowest in 2 Years.  The monthly toll of U.S. service members who have died in Iraq is on track to being the lowest in nearly two years, with at least 34 troop deaths recorded as of Tuesday [10/30/2007], but the military cautioned it's too early to declare a long-term trend.

Military Deaths Lower Now Than in 1980s.  American soldiers died in higher numbers during some of the peace-time years in the 1980s than in recent years when the military has fought conflicts in both Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a government report on casualty rates.  Further, the number of annual U.S. military deaths for the last three years is just slightly above the average annual death toll in the 1990s.

Iraqi oil exceeds pre-war output.  Iraqi oil production is above the levels seen before the US-led invasion of the country in 2003, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). The IEA said Iraqi crude production is now running at 2.3 million barrels per day, compared with 1.9 million barrels at the start of this year.

Iraq's revival boosted as oil production rises to 2.4m barrels a day.  Oil production in Iraq is at its highest level since the US-led invasion of 2003, reaching 2.4 million barrels a day, thanks largely to improved security measures in the north.  The country's Oil Ministry will shortly invite international oil companies to bid for contracts to help Iraq to boost output at its investment-starved "super-giant" oilfields. Production is expected to pass the prewar level of 2.6 million barrels by the end of the year, and Hussain al-Shahristani, the Iraqi Oil Minister, told The Times that he expected production to reach six million barrels a day within four years.

Let's hear it for good news from Iraq.  The news from Iraq has been so encouraging in recent months that last week even the mainstream media finally sat up and took notice.  Can the Democratic Party be far behind?

How They Did It:  Executing the winning strategy in Iraq.  The surge of operations that American and Iraqi forces began on June 15 has dramatically improved security in Baghdad and throughout Iraq.  U.S. commanders and soldiers have reversed the negative trends of 2006, some of which date back to 2005.  The total number of enemy attacks has fallen for four consecutive months, and has now reached levels last seen before the February 2006 Samarra mosque bombing.

None Dare Call It 'Victory'.  In a "normal" war, this would be cause for national celebration, but this is not a normal war.  Leaders of the Democratic Party are unwilling to celebrate because they have invested all their political capital in the notion that America isn't winning, can't win and must not win. … Broadcast television has mostly ignored the Iraq story in recent weeks.

You Just Can't Win.  No matter how much good news the surge brings or what miracles our troops pull off, congressional Democrats insist we not accept anything short of defeat.  What an insult to those in uniform.

Be Intelligent.  The authors of the NIE assess "with high confidence" that Iran "halted its nuclear weapons program" in 2003 — and that's about all you're likely to hear from administration critics and the mainstream media.  But it is a very small part of a very big picture — and when you look at that picture, the threat is as great as ever.

French and German foreign ministers sing along with an Islamofascist.  If it weren't so dangerous, the naïvité demonstrated by the foreign ministers of France and Germany would be almost touching.  The two grandees have in effect endorsed a violent Islamist.  You haven't read about it in our mainstream media, of course.

Uncommon Criminals:  Under our system of law, "criminal" is the most advantageous designation a terrorist can get.  It comes with all sorts of rights and rules terrorists can exploit:  Miranda, speedy trials, the right to see classified evidence, the benefit of a reasonable doubt, the right to remain silent, etc.  We did not designate al Qaeda "enemy combatants" to elevate their status but to lower it.

When Peaceniks Attack, Journalists Snooze.  Have you heard about the plight of 22-year-old McGuire Air Force Base loadmaster Jonathan Schrieken?  Probably not.  The shooting got no mention in The New York Times — not even a squib in a back section.

Military Deaths Lower Now Than in 1980s.  American soldiers died in higher numbers during some of the peace-time years in the 1980s than in recent years when the military has fought conflicts in both Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a government report on casualty rates. Further, the number of annual U.S. military deaths for the last three years is just slightly above the average annual death toll in the 1990s.

Why Aren't the Top Media Reporting the New Facts about Iraq's WMD?  "The media have a major responsibility now to report the facts about WMD in Iraq," said MRC President Brent Bozell.  "Those facts now refute the 'no WMD' claim, endlessly reported by the media and exploited by political left-wingers anxious to ascribe evil motives to the United States. … The top media have a duty to report on this and not ignore it because it doesn't fit their political agenda."

Serious use for Silly String.  American troops use the stuff to detect trip wires around bombs, as Marcelle Shriver learned from her son, a soldier in Iraq.  Before entering a building, troops squirt the plastic goo, which can shoot strands about 10 to 12 feet, across the room.  If it falls to the ground, no trip wires.  If it hangs in the air, they know they have a problem.  The wires are otherwise nearly invisible.

Silly String Shipments Stuck in States.  It may sound silly, but it's saving the life of soldiers.  The mother of a South Jersey soldier has been working for months to send silly string to Iraq, but is now having trouble getting it overseas.

Update:
Soldier's mom finds Silly String shipper.  After months of frustration, a mother of a soldier in Iraq has found someone to ship about 80,000 cans of Silly String to the troops, who use the foamy substance to detect trip wires on bombs.  "I'm just thrilled," said the woman, Marcelle Shriver.  "I couldn't sleep too well this whole weekend thinking about it."

Surprise:  Old media downplay Zarqawi's death.  Before you assume liberals are acting in good faith in casually dismissing the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as "symbolic," don't forget their endless carping about our failure to capture Osama bin Laden.

More about Zarqawi coverage:
Good news is no news.  It can seem the news is always bad.  If a river isn't flooding you'll never see a journalist reporting live saying, "Things are fine here."  But let that river creep over its banks and you'll suddenly have journalists with full rain gear to update viewers inch-by-inch.  But good news deserves to be news, too.

Gun-toting jihadi was not an angel.  In June 1942, German saboteurs landed on a deserted beach on Long Island, New York, intent on terrorising the US's home front.  They were arrested and tried by a military commission.  The US Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of that military commission and the penalties (in that case, executions) it ordered.  Last year the US Supreme Court once again upheld military commissions as an appropriate means for trying those captured and charged with breaking the laws of war, specifically in relation to the war on terror.  The court demanded congressional approval.  That has been given.  So that's the law.

Al-Qaeda is 'facing destruction'.  Hundreds of insurgents have been captured or killed as a result of information gleaned from the hunting down of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, it was claimed yesterday [6/15/2006].

McCain literally wants comfort for the enemy.  [U.S. Sen. John] McCain — who obviously loves to see his name in print — cannot seem to stand prosperity within his own political Party. … McCain has opposed coercive interrogation techniques, including sleep deprivation and other non-lethal methods of questioning … [which] is ridiculous because, in the case of the war against Islamic terrorists, these combatants observe no rules.

Libs in Congress, media defeated.  With the extermination of al-Qaeda's number one terrorist in Iraq, there is reason for great celebration, although one would never know it listening to liberals in Congress, the mainstream media and the kook fringe of the left-wing blogosphere.

Vietnam and Iraq:  Myth vs. Reality.  Having now spent nearly as much time in Iraq as I did on my first "tour" of Vietnam in 1968-69, it's readily apparent that the parallels between the two wars are practically non-existent on the battlefield.  In the press and politics — it's a different matter.  The barons of bombast have decided that Iraq equals Vietnam.  Those who make this argument are ignoring some very inconvenient facts.

The American press should count its blessings.  In between breathless condemnations of the Bush administration for stifling its free speech, endless court filings demanding classified and sensitive information from the military and intelligence agencies, and self-pitying media industry confabs bemoaning their hemorrhaging circulations (with the exception of the New York Post), my colleagues in the American media don't have much time to give thanks.

A Case for Guantanamo:  Largely unreported are the increasing cases of Islamic terrorists convicted of crimes in the U.S. under the criminal justice system.  We are all aware of high profile cases such as John Walker Lindh, the so-called "American Taliban"; John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, the "Beltway Snipers"; and Zacarias Moussaoui, the "Twentieth Hijacker"; but we are less familiar with many, many others that the media chooses to overlook or pay scant attention.

Gitmo-Obsessed Left Shrugs At Mosque Bombings.  Leftists shriek when a GI forgets to don gloves before touching a Koran, but snore when Taliban, al-Qaeda, and other terrorists blast mosques to bits.

Iraq is Less Violent than Washington, D.C..  Despite media coverage purporting to show that escalating violence in Iraq has the country spiraling out of control, civilian death statistics complied by Rep. Steve King, R-IA, indicate that Iraq actually has a lower civilian violent death rate than Washington, D.C., Detroit, Baltimore, Atlanta, St. Louis, and pre-Katrina New Orleans.

The Editor says...
Ask yourself this question:  What do those six cities have that other cities don't?

Questions linger as cans bite dust.  The disappearance of 600 relatively new and "bombproof" trash cans from downtown streets has left some New Orleanians with a few questions.  The most common question is:  What happened to the old cans, which cost the city $450,000, and can the city put them in my neighborhood?  But there's another interesting query:  How much shorter were the old cans than the ones the city is replacing them with?

Iraq Announces Info From Al-Zarqawi Raid.  Iraq's national security adviser said Thursday [6/15/2006] a "huge treasure" of documents and computer records was seized after the raid on terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's hideout, giving the Iraqi government the upper hand in its fight against al-Qaida in Iraq.

Media mum on new evidence of Saddam's terror ties.  The White House doesn't believe in re-fighting the decision to go to war, which is painfully logical.  But politics isn't logical.  Neither are Bush's political enemies.  If the President wants people to trust that he made the right call by toppling Saddam, he needs to reiterate everyday what we know:  Saddam was a threat who could no longer be tolerated.  "Blessed July" and Saddam's terror training camps would be as good a place as any to start.

The Real Story Behind Jill Carroll's Release.  The real story that is being avoided is that Jill Carroll read a script at the terrorists' gun point that could just as easily been written by Sen. Harry Reid, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Ted Kennedy, DNC Chairman Howard Dean, George Soros, Sen. Russ Feingold, or Michael Moore.

'Jihad Jack' walks free.  The [Australian] Government's "war on terrorism" has suffered an embarrassing setback after Joseph Thomas, dubbed Jihad Jack, walked free after an appeal court quashed his conviction.

The Sixteen Words Were True — Iraq did seek uranium in Niger.  In February 1999, Wissam al-Zahawie left his Vatican office for a few days and paid an official visit to Niger, a country known for absolutely nothing except its vast deposits of uranium ore.

It turns out Bush was right about Iraq's quest for uranium.  As columnist Robert Novak once argued, the burgeoning "Bush lied" mantra was heavily dependent on the uranium claim.  So the liar label was most firmly attached on an issue Bush was right about.  Go figure.

American death toll in Iraq hits a two year low.  U.S. casualties fell to their lowest totals in two years this month as Iraqis increasingly aimed attacks at each other rather than coalition forces, the U.S. military said yesterday [3/30/2006].

Dispelling myths about American soldiers.  Myths abound when it comes to military personnel in the modern American armed forces.  Most are in some way related to recruiting new soldiers, who's fighting, and who's dying.

Feeling the Pain of the Falling Man of 9/11.  The mainstream media in the United States has taken the images of September 11th, 2001 off the television and out of the newspapers.  They say that the images are too disturbing, that they incite a want for revenge rather than allow closure.  But they are wrong to do this. … The people of the United States need to rekindle the flame of emotional anguish about the attacks of September 11th, 2001.  We need to seethe. … Then we need to take definitive action.

Cries for help edited out of 9/11 tapes.  In releasing the 130 calls, city officials edited out the voices of those who sought help.  But the police and fire dispatchers often repeated the callers' words, reflecting the fear and chaos of the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

Subordinating the truth:  As I was watching President Bush's latest news conference, I was again struck by the thought of how different the news climate and public mood would be if the mainstream media (MSM) were truly as unbiased as they pretend to be.

Steak and ale soothe ailing soldiers.  What [Americans] don't hear much about are the quiet events and private meetings that often take place in the Oval Office between President George W. Bush and military families.  Or the Friday-night steak dinners local restaurateurs throw for wounded vets from Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.

Iraq's not-so-good neighbor:  The wild pronouncements of the new Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have gotten sporadic press ever since he called for Israel to be wiped off the map.

Libs take credit for Bush's approval climb.  It is amusing to watch liberals try to explain away the recent upswing in President Bush's approval rating, from around 39 percent to 47 percent.  Sure enough, they've figured a way to attribute the turnaround to a validation of their positions rather than his policies.

Report says the Russian government had sources inside U.S. Central Command.  Russia had a military intelligence unit operating in Iraq up through the 2003 U.S. invasion and fall of Baghdad, a Russian analyst said today.  A Pentagon report said Russia provided Saddam Hussein with intelligence on U.S. military movements and plans.

What the captured documents show.  President Bush has made errors, as all humans do, but one thing he has not been guilty of is bad faith.  The same cannot be said of his critics.

More Damning Documents On Saddam.  The Pentagon has obviously been sitting on a treasure trove of paper incriminations against Saddam's regime.  So far, just a minuscule amount of the more than 3,000 hours of tape recordings of Saddam and 48,000 boxes of intelligence documents has been translated and deciphered.  What has come out so far has confirmed Americans' worst fears about Saddam's evil regime.

Saddam's Philippines Terror Connection.  Saddam Hussein's regime provided financial support to Abu Sayyaf, the al Qaeda-linked jihadist group founded by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law in the Philippines in the late 1990s, according to documents captured in postwar Iraq.

Who's Lying Now?  Those Saddam documents are coming out, and there are strong suggestions — not surprisingly to some of us — that the notion that he had nothing to do with al Qaeda is a myth.

Saddam, Al Qaeda Did Collaborate, Documents Show:  A former Democratic senator and 9/11 commissioner says a recently declassified Iraqi account of a 1995 meeting between Osama bin Laden and a senior Iraqi envoy presents a "significant set of facts," and shows a more detailed collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

Electro-Magnetic Pulse:  The Biggest Threat No One Talks About.  Scientists and military officials have long known about the dangers of EMP.  In a 1962 test called "Starfish," the U.S. military detonated a nuclear device some 250 miles over Johnston Island in the Pacific.  The EMP wave stretched 700 miles to Hawaii, knocking out street lights.

The EMP Threat:  ElectroMagnetic Pulse Warfare.  Concerns are rising about the threat of an Electro Magnetic Pulse attack, aimed at destroying our electronic guts.  What if our computers and other electronics didn't work?  What if electronic records of your bank account were immobilized?  What would happen to our technology-dependent transportation, financial, and production systems?

Little Congressional Interest in EMP Threat.  Once again, a congressional commission is warning that an electromagnetic pulse attack against the United States could wipe out the nation's electronics-dependent civilization.  And again, hardly anyone is listening.

The EMP Threat:  Imagine you're a terrorist with a single nuclear weapon.  You could wipe out the U.S. city of your choice, or you could decide to destroy the infrastructure of the entire U.S. economy and leave millions of Americans to die of starvation or want of medical care.  The latter scenario is the one envisioned by a long-running commission to assess the threat from electromagnetic pulse, or EMP.

America is Vulnerable to An Electromagnetic Pulse Attack.  Our enemies are well aware of what an EMP attack is, and just what precisely it would do.  The incentive to attack America through EMP is high because the cost to America would be catastrophic.

The Electromagnetic Threat.  EMP comes from the words "Electromagnetic Pulse," which occurs when a high-altitude nuclear detonation produces an immediate flux of gamma rays from the nuclear reactions within the device.  These photons, in turn, produce high-energy free electrons by "compton scattering" at altitudes between (roughly) 20 and 40 km.  These electrons are then trapped in the Earth's magnetic field, giving rise to an oscillating electric current.  This current is asymmetric in general and gives rise to a rapidly rising radiated electromagnetic field called an electromagnetic pulse (EMP).  Because the electrons are trapped essentially simultaneously, a very large electromagnetic source radiates coherently.

Electromagnetic attack:  Thinking the unthinkable.  [Scroll down]  A deliberate EMP attack, however, would be different.  If, for example, an enemy detonated a nuclear weapon carried on a ballistic missile 200 miles or so above Earth, people on the ground might never know an attack occurred.  But if the explosion happened high enough over North America, the blossom of EMP might cover the entire United States.

The Editor says...
The more I hear about EMP attacks and the perdictions of certain destruction of every electronic device in the country, the more skeptical I become.

U.S. Muslim Gets 30 Years for Plot to Assassinate President Bush.  An American Muslim was sentenced Wednesday [3/29/2006] to 30 years in prison for joining Al Qaeda and plotting to assassinate President Bush.

Plot to kill Bush gets a man 30 years.  An American Muslim was sentenced yesterday [3/29/2006] to 30 years in prison for joining al-Qaida and plotting to assassinate President George W. Bush.

The war you can't ignore:  An EMP attack achieved by launching a nuclear-tipped missile from an approaching freighter could potentially kill millions through starvation, disease, and society's collapsing into utter lawlessness.  According to the book, an EMP attack "could kill — indirectly — far more Americans than a nuclear weapon detonated in our most populous city."  An unsettling reality indeed.

The Iraq Story You Haven't Heard.  While Senator Joe Lieberman's (D-CT) statements have been grossly — and deliberately — underreported, they are vital for the future of Iraq.

Not All Negative.  The mainstream media is failing in its reporting on Iraq.  The American people are being fed a steady stream of negative stories about Iraq that in no way represent reality, and even if a positive story is reported it can be hard to spot.

All the news that's fit to ignore:  It's not that Murtha doesn't deserve airtime to voice a point of view many Americans share.  It's that Lieberman surely deserves at least equal time for a point of view that other Americans, as well as most Iraqis, share.

AWOL in the War of Ideas.  "If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other.  Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one.  In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me.'"  It wasn't George Bush who said that.  It was George Orwell.

New York Times Smears Patriots.  A wall of silence by most of the national mainstream media has obscured a Cultural War victory over the forces of "political correctness."  The winners in this David vs. Goliath story are families of 9/11 victims and the heroes and survivors of the police and firefighters who responded to the call after the terrorist planes struck the World Trade Center Towers.

Stumbling ….  Two pivotal, but underreported, developments are overlooked in the escalating political battle over the war in Iraq.  First, no matter how disenchanted Americans have become about the war to establish a strong, stable pro-Western democracy in the heart of the Middle East's terrorist breeding ground, a majority still opposes our pulling out before we have achieved that mission.

Yellow Press Promotes Red Rally.  Ms. Petula Dvorak's Washington Post story about the September 24 "anti-war" rally used a strategy that has been employed in the past by reporters anxious to avoid any mention of how communists run these events.

The Democrats' 9/11 slush fund.  For the past four years, Democrats have ceaselessly attacked Republicans for "exploiting" the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. … But when an investigative reporter exposes Democrats raiding federal homeland security grants and turning 9/11 money into a party slush fund, where, oh where, are all the indignant liberal watchdogs to protest such clear and unconscionable political exploitation?

The news from Iraq that's not fit to print:  What was the most important news out of Iraq last week?  That depends on what you consider "important."

All the news that's fit to omit:  When you read The New York Times (if you still bother to read it), always ask:  What is the Times NOT telling me?  The answers are invariably more compelling — and newsworthy — than what the paper actually deems "fit to print."

The Bomb-blowing Heroes of Iraq:  In a war in which most coalition casualties are caused by improvised explosive devices (IEDs), no unit is more important than Explosive Ordnance Disposal.  Perhaps that's why Steven Bochco felt obligated to smear them as unreliable in his anti-war, anti-reality TV series "Over There."

Get it over with:  Saddam must die.  After 22 months in captivity, Saddam Hussein went on trial yesterday [10/19/2005] — only to have it postponed to Nov. 28 at the behest of his so-called defence counsel.  A huge error and let's hope it doesn't happen again.

With a Whimper.  The Western media was relatively quiet about the quite amazing news from the recent trifecta in Iraq:  very little violence on election day, Sunni participation, and approval of the constitution.  Those who forecasted that either the Sunnis would boycott, or that the constitution would be — and should be — rejected, stayed mum.

Media Are Blind to Islamic Threat.  The controversy over the handling of the Koran at the U.S. Delta Camp at Guantanamo, which detains Muslim terrorists, reveals an intellectual deficit among some of our academic, media, political and religious elites.  They are missing the most important story at Guantanamo.

Trashing our history:  troops in Iraq.  Back in June, this column pointed out that it is impossible to fight a war without heroism — but that you would never know that from the mainstream media.

Fatality flaw:  The U.S. death rate in Iraq is indeed rising, but some comparisons are still in order.

Chart courtesy of World Magazine, used with permission.
Chart courtesy of World Magazine.  Used with permission.


The Troops in Iraq, By the Numbers.  [Victor] Hanson compares the approximately 1,700 deaths of Americans in Iraq, of which approximately 1,300 were combat deaths, to other wars in American history.  In the battle at Antietam in 1862 in the Civil War, between five and six thousand Americans were killed in one day.  On D-Day, 3,000 Allied troops died, and another 6,000 were wounded.  And in the Battle of the Bulge, approximately 19,000 Americans died and 60,000 more were missing, captured or wounded.  The 1,700 killed in Iraq equals about 60 percent of those who died on September 11, 2001.  These people aren't just numbers, and can't be reduced to that.  But the price we are paying as a country needs to be kept in perspective and reported accurately.

Are They in the Army Now?  The Marines have suffered disproportionate fatalities in the war in Iraq.  They are about 30 percent of all combat deaths, yet make up only 11 percent of current American forces.  But in May the Marines slightly exceeded their recruitment goal.  The Air Force and Navy likewise met 100 percent of their requirements.

The Mother of All Connections.  We know from these IIS documents that beginning in 1992 the former Iraqi regime regarded bin Laden as an Iraqi Intelligence asset.  We know from IIS documents that the former Iraqi regime provided safe haven and financial support to an Iraqi who has admitted to mixing the chemicals for the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center.  We know from IIS documents that Saddam Hussein agreed to Osama bin Laden's request to broadcast anti-Saudi propaganda on Iraqi state-run television.  We know from IIS documents that a "trusted confidante" of bin Laden stayed for more than two weeks at a posh Baghdad hotel as the guest of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

Despite Media Blackout, Fallujah Rebuilds.  Fallujah doesn't rival Jamaica as a vacation resort.  But last year at this time it was the epicenter of Iraq terrorism, filled with decapitators and bomb-makers.  If progress can be made there, it can be made anywhere in Iraq.  Don't listen to the "quagmire" crowd.  This war is being won.

Debunking Three Years of Media Lies:  You don't win wars by coddling the enemy.  Let's stop worrying about Cindy Sheehan or mishandled Korans and win the war.  Strength and power is what our enemies understand, so let's show it to them.  And the sooner the better.

Looking the other way.  On August 6, as her 15 minutes of fame was just beginning, Cindy Sheehan used an odd term in a TV interview with Mark Knoller of CBS.  She referred to the foreign insurgents and terrorists in Iraq as "freedom fighters."  Knoller cut those words out of his report, he told me, because he "really wasn't interested."  He should have left them in.  In fact, alarm bells should have rung in his brain.

More about Cindy Sheehan can be found here.

Beware of Strange Men With Rocket Launchers.  Many readers have e-mailed me about a recent report floating on the Internet that reveals military concerns about a suspicious trio of Middle Eastern men who apparently pointed a rocket launcher at low-flying aircraft near Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma earlier this month.  It's authentic.

What's in a Name?  "War on Terror" is Out, "Struggle Against Extremism" is In.  Recently, top officials of the Bush Administration have changed the way that they are talking about terrorism.  They have stopped talking about a "war on terrorism."  Thinking it too narrowly defined, Administration officials now speak of a "struggle against global extremism."  Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld describes America's policies as a "global struggle against the enemies of freedom, the enemies of civilization."

Just the facts please.  Question:  What's the best thing that has happened recently in the so-called war on terror?  Hint No. 1:  It wasn't the White House's decision to re-brand the "war on terror" as the "struggle against violent extremism."  "War" makes "you think of people in uniform as being the solution," said the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who, as the head man in uniform, has just opted himself into obsolescence.

The War on Terror:  Year Five.  Like the Madrid bombings of March 11, 2004, which ejected Spain from Iraq, the London terror bombs aim to get Britain out of Iraq and out of its strategic alliance with the United States.  Thus the two chief protagonists in the war, the United States and al Qaeda, are in complete agreement that Iraq is the central front of the global war, and that getting the United States' chief ally out of Iraq would thus be an enormous coup for our enemies.

Jihad Watch Offers Questions for Candidates.  Forty percent of the foreign jihadists fighting against American troops in Iraq come from a putative ally of the United States, Saudi Arabia.  The Kingdom is also one of the world's leading bankrollers of terror.  A Treasury Department official who tracks terror financing, Stuart Levey, recently remarked:  "If I could somehow snap my fingers and cut off the funding from one country, it would be Saudi Arabia."

Axis of Irritation.  Sensible Americans understand that, whatever their opinions about the war's origins and execution, leaving Iraq as a failed state would be disastrous.  They also understand that overreaching now would not be a rational response to having underachieved so far.

Why war in Iraq is right for America.  Americans are impatient isolationists at heart.  We don't want to be the world's policemen.  Gaining Iraqis their freedom, as good as it sounds, isn't enough of a justification for war.  China is a dictatorship.  North Korea is a dictatorship.  Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria, Pakistan and Egypt are all dictatorships.  We can't overthrow all of those regimes simply to free their citizens.  We have to focus on those regimes that endanger American security.

On the other hand...
U.S. Blood Is Not Buying a Free Iraq.  Members of the Bush administration have repeatedly told Americans that Iraq is becoming a free and democratic society, but that claim is proving to be false. … In exchange [for American casualties] we see that Iraq, rather than becoming a free, pro-Western society, is falling into the hands of a radical Muslim government aligned with Iran, a terrorist state hostile to the United States.

Islamists are serious; are we?  What are the war aims of the United States in the global conflict that began on Sept. 11, 2001?  No one really knows.  All Americans, including the president and Congress, have simply gone about the job of striking back at those who struck at us, without ever formally debating and deciding who the enemy is and what will constitute victory.

Mainstream media suppress Iraq optimism.  Media coverage on the war is terribly slanted — such that it may threaten our ability to win.

[Anti] military operations:  Buried in all the mainstream media coverage this week … was a little-noted item about reenlistments in the U.S. armed forces exceeding expectations.  USA Today offered some prominence to the story, but it was widely ignored by most of the Fourth Estate.  Perhaps that's because it's a "good news story."

Why I went from undecided to 100% pro-war.  Numerous links to news articles about Saddam's atrocities in Iraq.  (The editor's comments are rated PG; parental discretion advised.)

Lost in translation.  The federal Bureau of Prisons is holding 119 persons with "specific ties" to international Islamist terrorist groups, yet has no full-time Arabic translators or a system to monitor their communications, according to Congressional sources and a whistleblower who now fears retaliation from inmates.

The curse of the language corrupters:  Nearly four years after the September 11 attacks, the White House and the press still use the empty phrase "War on Terror" to describe the global battle against radical Islamist throat-slitters, suicide bombers and hijackers who incinerate children on their way to Disneyland. … How many times have you heard some cable TV talking head or political hack urging us to be on "heightened alert" — without having the courage to spell out exactly what that means?



Guantanamo Bay:

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Death wish:  The real outrage isn't the affront to the "dignity" of suicide terrorists being interrogated and kept alive against their will by our military at Guantanamo; the greater offense is our mainstream media's lack of context for what transpires there — and the apparent disregard for the consequences of such revelations during a time of war.

No more heroes?  Yes, Virginia, there are still heroes in America, and Sgt. Rafael Peralta was one of them. It's just too bad the media can't recognize them.

The Self-Sacrifice of Sgt. Rafael Peralta:  I saw four Marines firing from the adjoining room when a yellow, foreign-made, oval-shaped grenade bounced into the room, rolling to a stop close to Sgt. Rafael Peralta's nearly lifeless body.  In an act living up to the heroes of the Marine Corps' past, Peralta, in his last fleeting moments of consciousness, reached out and pulled the grenade into his body.  LaBelle fought on Iwo Jima and Anderson in Vietnam, both died saving their fellow Marines by smothering the blast of enemy grenades.

Sgt. Rafael Peralta, American Hero.  You probably don't know Rafael Peralta's name.  If we lived in a country that more fully celebrated the heroics of its men in uniform, you would.  He was a sergeant in Company A, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment for Operation Dawn, the November offensive to retake the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which had become a haven for terrorists.  What he did on the day of Nov. 15 [2004] was an awe-inspiring act of selfless sacrifice and faithfulness to his fellow Marines.

How Arafat's gunmen suppress the news:  On Sept. 11, 2001, Americans were shocked by footage of Palestinians dancing in the streets to celebrate the terrorist attacks on the United States.  But those scenes disappeared from the airwaves soon after — not because they weren't newsworthy, but because the Palestinian Authority gave orders to suppress them.

The Editor says...
You have to wonder... what else is not being reported?  Wait -- I'll answer that.  How about the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7?  No airplane hit that building, yet it collapsed suddenly on the afternoon of September 11, 2001.  We are apparently supposed to forget that it happened, because it hardly made a blip on the news media radar.  More information here.

Duelfer:  "A lot of material left Iraq and went to Syria".  Iraq Survey Group head does not rule out Saddam's transfer of WMD.

Report shows 3,400 Air Violations Since 9/11:  Pilots flew into restricted airspace 3,400 times across the country in the three years following the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a congressional report that says the government needs to better coordinate its response to such violations.

Iraq is Looking Up.  You wouldn't know it from most of the pundits or the evening news broadcasts, but things are looking up in Iraq.  The high-stakes decision to go on the offensive militarily — and politically — over the last couple of weeks has made a big difference.

On Iraq, It's Important To Ask The Right Questions.  If we had not invaded Iraq, Saddam Hussein would still be in power; Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would be in command of an Al-Qaeda army in northern Iraq; the U.N.'s, 17th resolution ordering Saddam to comply or else would have been successfully defied, the largest chemical weapons factory in the Third World, in Libya, would still be humming along with an advanced nuclear weapons plant (both now shut down).

Statements by Iraqi PM at odds with negative media coverage.  While addressing a joint session of Congress Sept. 23, Iraqi interim prime minister Ayad Allawi said simply, "Thank you, America."  "We Iraqis know that Americans have made and continue to make enormous sacrifices to liberate Iraq, to assure Iraq's freedom," Allawi said.  "I have come here to thank you and to promise you that your sacrifices are not in vain."

Pregnant troops leave the war; Central Command not counting.  U.S. Central Command is not tracking the number of troops who must leave the Iraq war theater due to pregnancy, prompting military advocates to charge the Pentagon wants to keep secret what could be an embarrassing statistic.

Columnists' errors, CNN's treason.  A journalistic scandal involving payment of thousands of dollars has received massive attention in the mainstream media.  One concerning the exchange of 30 pieces of silver has not, so far.

Christians Flee "Liberated" Iraq.  Understandably concerned over the fact that the new Iraqi constitution designates Islam the "official religion of the state," Iraqi Christians are "voting with their feet" by preparing the leave their native country.

Oil for Hussein.  As front pages report every bit of bad news on the Iraqi war front in bold type, newspapers are giving precious little ink to what could be the biggest kickback scheme in world history.  Call it:  How Saddam Hussein siphoned $10.1 billion for his regime — thanks to the United Nations.

Media Yawn as Saddam's Torture Victims Thank Bush:  American journalists fascinated with U.S. mistreatment of Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison gave a collective yawn yesterday [5/25/2004] when President Bush played host to seven victims of genuine torture perpetrated by Saddam's Fedahyeen at Abu Ghraib.

What's going on in Iraq:  To hear the media tell it, virtually nothing in Iraq is going right.  Suicide terrorism, Abu Ghraib, sabotaged pipelines, swelling anti-American sentiment — the coverage has been focused on almost all bad news, almost all the time.  Which hardly comes as a surprise.  As an old journalistic rule of thumb puts it, "If it doesn't bleed, it doesn't lead."  In most newsrooms, good news is usually no news.

The awful news CNN had to keep to itself:  Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to keep government permission for CNN's Baghdad bureau and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders.  Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard - awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff.

A Justifable, Necessary and Winnable War.  Before the war, the news media failed to reveal the extent of Saddam Hussein's brutality.  Too many journalists cut a shameful deal with the dictator:  To keep their Baghdad bureaus open and unmolested, they refrained from serious attempts to report Saddam's crimes.

This is History calling — quick, get me Rewrite!  The invasion of Iraq has gone fabulously well, exceeding everyone's expectations — certainly exceeding the doomsday scenarios of liberals.  The Bush-haters' pre-war predictions — hundreds of thousands dead, chemical attacks on our troops, retaliatory terrorist attacks in the United States, an invasion by Turkey, oil facilities in flames and apocalyptic environmental consequences — have proven to be about as accurate as Bill Clinton's "legally accurate" statements about Monica Lewinsky.

Media's Selective Outrage, by the Numbers:  To the casual observer, the situation in Iraq is bleak, the Iraqi people don't really want democracy, and the only worthwhile story is the brutality and intimidation of Iraqi prisoners.  To the "casual observer" of the mainstream media, that is.

Bagram GI says Troops Waited While Hillary Chowed Down.  U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton forced U.S. troops stationed at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan to wait for their Thanksgiving dinner last Thursday while she and her entourage arrived late, then cut in line and were served first.

US plans death camp:  The US has floated plans to turn Guantanamo Bay into a death camp, with its own death row and execution chamber.

CNN — the Most Untrusted Name in News

Jessica Lynch:  Modern Myth.  Is this really the way we want to fight our wars, with young mothers coming home in wheelchairs?  (By the way, has anyone noticed how many of our women warriors seem to be single mothers?)

Setting the Record Straight:  The [Jessica Lynch] legend quickly unraveled … after Lynch returned to the States, recuperated from her substantial injuries … and began to speak out about what had really happened.

CNN Charged with "Disinformation Campaign" from Iraq.  A media watchdog group is calling CNN to task for withholding information about the brutal nature of the Saddam Hussein regime in order to keep a bureau open in Baghdad.

Don't be fooled, America is having success against terror.  The moral reality finally burst through the yellowcake fog with the death of the Hussein Brothers, psychopathic torturers who would today be running Iraq if not for the policy enunciated by President Bush in [the] State of the Union address.

Not quite so bad after all.  Remember the dire warnings that went well beyond the gloom to come on the battlefield?  We were undermining the United Nations.  The European community was mobilizing against us.  The Arab Street would ignite.  Et cetera.

Media Won't Report About Pro-U.S. Iraqis:  The media establishment is playing down or ignoring the friendly dealings between U.S. forces and the people of Baghdad.

Terrorists lifting military base IDs?  A noted military analysis and research organization says a rash of Department of Defense vehicle window decals have gone missing from vehicles at bases all over the country, raising concerns that at least some may have been stolen by terrorists.

Major Media Ignores Polls, Rallies Showing Support for War Effort.  Patriotic citizens in the tens of thousands have already attended rallies to support the troops, but the liberal media has demonstrated a preference for ignoring them and instead portraying sparsely attended anti-war rallies as the sentiment of most Americans.

Another Coincidence?  The Bush administration has told us for over a year that there is no known connection between Saddam and Osama.  On the 9/11 attacks, Team Bush has adamantly denied any Iraqi connection — even though there is evidence linking the hijackers to Iraqi agents.  The Bush administration went out of its way a year ago to discredit reports of a link.  Why?  We do not know.

Yes, This Is About Islam:  "This isn't about Islam."  The world's leaders have been repeating this mantra for weeks, partly in the virtuous hope of deterring reprisal attacks on innocent Muslims living in the West, partly because if the United States is to maintain its coalition against terror it can't afford to suggest that Islam and terrorism are in any way related.

Iraq Flashback:  Dems Backed Clinton's Impeachment War.  As Congressional Democrats escalate their attacks on President Bush based on the dubious proposition that he's willing to attack Iraq purely for political advantage in this November's election, it's easy to forget just how supportive they were when President Clinton actually did try to start a war with Saddam Hussein in hopes of quashing his own impeachment.

INS to deport Arab aliens on airliners:  No handcuffs, no police escorts for 6,000 Middle-Easterners living in the U.S. illegally.

FAA memo says hijacker shot passenger on Flight 11:  "One bullet fired," killing 9B occupant, but the agency claims this report was in error.

Friends think Flight 11 Israeli was "executed":  Daniel Lewin, named in FAA shooting memo, was an officer in an elite unit of the Jewish state's military.

Shadow Government Is at Work in Secret:  After the 9/11 attacks, President Bush ordered 100 officials to bunkers away from the Capitol to ensure federal survival.

WTC collapse due to environmentalism?:  Fire, heat weakened asbestos-free steel columns of WTC towers.

Update:
Asbestos Fireproofing Might Have Prevented World Trade Center Collapse.  In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, I suggested in this column on Sept. 14, 2001 that many lives could have been saved if asbestos fireproofing been used in the World Trade Center.  Though controversial at the time, my view has gained in validity since then, according to "Eco-Freaks", a new book by John Berlau.

Bio Threat:  Worse Than You're Told.  I am baffled that in the wake of Sept. 11 the major media, and some government officials, continue to downplay the significance of ongoing events.  The media have given great coverage to such non-issues as racial profiling, Jerry Falwell's comments, how misunderstood Islam is, and other matters that don't deal head-on with the present crisis.  The American people are very reasonable, as long as they have the facts.  But that's not what they are getting from CNN and the rest of the media pack.

Satellites Tell the Truth:  Apparently the satellite imagery is not being released because it does for TWA Flight 800 what it did for the Russian airliner.  It tells the truth that governments want to hide.

Oklahoma City Bombing - Mideast Connection:  Since the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, The New American has published a series of articles detailing the extensive evidence that Middle Eastern terrorist cells were involved with Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols in that attack.

Americans kept in dark about WMD:  Americans are uninformed and ill-prepared for an attack with weapons of mass destruction, largely because the government is afraid of causing a panic by issuing more high-profile, publicly available information on the subject, say experts.

So Where Were The Black Leaders?:  Within days of the attack Minister Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam vigorously condemned it but I didn't hear anything from Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton.  Both men are ordained ministers and Al Sharpton lives in New York.  I would've expected some public words of comfort to the families of the victims from both of them.  Instead in the first days after the attack there was silence.

Tennessee bus crash 'very suspicious':  Calling it "very suspicious," Rep. Bob Clement, D-Tenn., suggested the hijacking and crash of a Greyhound bus in southern middle Tennessee would require more investigation before any connection to the Sept. 11 Islamic terrorist attacks could be ruled out.

Attacks Against America Are Not Over:  The media are now openly criticizing the President for remaining in Air Force One and not returning immediately to New York or Washington.  The President acted very correctly and very smartly.  As I recall, America has a Constitution.  The President's sole real responsibility is to preserve your Constitutional government — not to hold press conferences.  Obviously, the President and his advisors understood that there was a real possibility of a larger threat — perhaps nuclear — and one the media doesn't want you to know about.

God Bless Our Assassins, Commandos and Bombs.  An Answer to the Hollywood and other leftist types condeming our war on terrorism.

Bin Laden Planning to Attack White House, Indian Military Says:  The Indian military intelligence have claimed to have intercepted a message that Saudi fugitive and international terrorist Osama bin Laden was putting in place a plan to attack the White House some time in the future.  Highly placed sources in the Indian Army said on condition of anonymity that the intercept of a conversation between two supporters of bin Laden indicated that his attack on the United States may not be over yet.

Expert:  Russia Knew in Advance, Encouraged Citizens to Cash Out Dollars:  Russian press accounts and other activities by the Russian government this summer indicate that the Russian knew in advance that something would happen to America, including a "financial attack" against the U.S.  During the past three months, Russian media and officials have encouraged citizens to cash out of U.S. dollars pending an economic collapse there after an "attack."

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Updated August 9, 2024.

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