In what is considered to be a blow to U.S. corn growers, the EPA today sent a letter to the Gen. Wesley Clark chaired trade association “Growth Energy” indicating that the EPA needed more time to complete tests on how an increase by 5% (from 10% ethanol to 15% ethanol) in ethanol content may damage engines and fuel lines.

The good news for Growth Energy, which formally petitioned for the increase, was that the EPA reported that two tests showed that engines in newer cars can handle the higher blend. “The announcement is a strong signal that we are preparing to move to E15,” Growth Energy said in a statement, asserting that the switch would mean 136,000 new jobs.

However, the Renewable Fuels Association saw it as a major blow to the growth of biofuels in the U.S. “The delay threatens to paralyze the continued evolution of America’s ethanol industry,” RFA president Bob Dinneen said. “Moreover, this delay will chill investment in advanced biofuel technologies at a critical time in their development and commercialization.”

As it stands, the U.S. ethanol industry benefits from a tax credit, a tariff on imported ethanol and from the nation’s Renewable Fuel Standard, which will require fuel distributors to blend 15 billion gallons of ethanol with gasoline in coming years. But the industry is fast reaching that point and will exceed 11 billion in 2009.

The E15 blend has been controversial in part because of the damage that ethanol, a corrosive, already has caused in fuel lines and other components of boat engines and some small motors.

The EPA is involved because of air pollution implications and was required under the Clean Air Act to act by today on Growth Energy’s waiver request. The federal agency said that is has been working with the Energy Department to conduct tests “as quickly as possible given the available testing facilities.”

The Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based advocacy organization, praised the EPA’s deliberate process. The group’s Craig Cox said that sound science had trumped “efforts by well-funded and politically well-connected ethanol lobby to short circuit” the testing process.

Alan Khazei, social entrepreneur and wife of Saguaro Seminar participant Vanessa Kirsch, is running a spirited campaign for the US Senate seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy.

Alan has been a longshot in the campaign, without the initial name recognition of Michael Capuano or Martha Coakley, and without the extraordinarily deep pockets of former Bain capitalist, Steve Pagliucca.   Nevertheless, in a campaign where most of the electorate has yet to make up their mind, and where few Mass. voters will go to the polls to vote in the democratic primary on December 8, Alan is spearheading a spirited campaign and making converts right and left.  A Rasmussen poll of last week, among likely voters, showed him at 14%, dramatically up from the low single digits when his campaign began.

Last weekend he picked up the all-important endorsement of the Boston Globe and former presidential aspirant and NATO Commander Wesley Clark.  The Globe noted that Alan is the candidate that best embodies “forward-looking thinking”, and offers the best leadership, with “brimming potential.”

I was a senior policy advisor for Senator Kennedy on national service issues in the early 1990’s and know how much Ted respected Alan Khazei and his creation of City Year (with co-founder Michael Brown).  And Senator Kennedy asked Alan to lead up a campaign to save AmeriCorps, when President Bush threatened to zero out funding.  Alan coalesced a remarkable grassroots coalition and out-organized Karl Rove to initially save AmeriCorps and then work to dramatically expand it under the Kennedy Serve America Act that received birpartisan support.  Alan’s group (Be The Change) worked to ensure that both Obama and McCain endorsed national service during the campaign, in the only joint appearance of the two outside the debates.

Alan is running on a campaign platform of “big citizenship”: that the only way to get special interests out of politics is to not accept PAC money and to help ensure that citizens help drive the change we want to see.  [Alan is the only one of the four candidates to have a truly citizen funded campaign with no PAC money.]

He deserves our vote and I urge that you contact his campaign to find out how you can support him.

Il “caso Abu Omar”, ossia la vicenda del rapimento, a Milano ed in pieno giorno, del predicatore integralista islamico da parte di un commando della CIA, presenta caratteristiche di simmetria e specularità con un caso ancora più clamoroso, conseguenze incluse, che appassionò il mondo ventiquattro anni fa, il sequestro della nave Achille Lauro.
Ricordiamolo per sommi capi.
Il 7 ottobre del 1985, un gruppo di palestinesi armati nascosti a bordo sequestra l’ ammiraglia della flotta turistica italiana, appena salpata da Alessandria d’Egitto, con tutto l’equipaggio e 450 passeggeri a bordo, di varie nazionalità. A quale scopo, ci si chiede subito…? Allo scopo, rispondono i sequestratori, che Israele liberi 52 detenuti palestinesi: viceversa, l’Achille Lauro salterà in aria. Figuriamoci.
Un curioso sistema, da parte di un commando terrorista ritenuto “vicino” al Fronte di Liberazione Popolare, di ottenere lo scopo: attaccando militarmente cioè, nel piroscafo (che ne fa parte integrale ai fini del diritto di navigazione) il territorio di un paese naturalmente amico della causa palestinese; e per di più allora guidato da un governo “Craxi-Andreotti” che ancor oggi il sito “liberali per Israele” designa ingiustamente come “amico dei terroristi”. Che tale non era affatto, naturalmente: ma bensì desideroso di contribuire alla pace in Medio Oriente, risolvendolo alla stregua delle risoluzioni ONU che prevedono la costituzione di uno Stato Palestinese sulle terre occupate da Israele durante l’attacco bellico del giugno 1967, Cisgiordania in primis. E in questa chiave aveva accolto in Italia, con protocollo da Capo di Stato incluso discorso in Parlamento, Yasser Arafat nel 1983.
Agli occhi di qualcuno, una colpa imperdonabile…
Bene, dopo due giorni di sequestro, e di frenetiche trattative triangolari fra Italia, Egitto, OLP di Arafat e Abu Abbas capo del FLP residente in Egitto, al quale gruppo risulta aderente l’autolesionista commando di sequestratori, gli stessi cedono: otterranno un salvacondotto per giungere in Italia ove saranno giudicati dalla giustizia italiana, perché i ponti, le cabine, la tolda di una nave italiana sono territorio nazionale a tutti gli effetti. Garanti della mediazione con il governo italiano sono il Presidente egiziano Hosni Mubarak ed il capo dell’OLP Yasser Arafat, che ne rispondono alle opinioni arabe se qualcuno tradisse il compromesso stesso.
Il 9 ottobre il commando abbandona la nave, non senza aver firmato la provocazione con un delitto gratuito ed odioso, solo apparentemente “inutile”: l’assassinio a sangue freddo, e senza giustificazione di alcun tipo, di un solo passeggero. Leon Klinghoffer, un crocerista paralitico di appartenenza ebraica, con passaporto USA.
La vicenda, fin qui solo “drammatica”, allora assume di colpo un profilo “tragico” ed emozional-mediatico che ribalta completamente quello “solo” giuridico: ai fini del quale invece, non cambia nulla; solo un altro reato, il più grave peraltro (l’omicidio in forma abbietta), si aggiunge alla lista di quelli addebitabili al commando in sede penale. E coinvolge, insieme dalla stessa parte, Stati Uniti e Israele contro l’Italia: perché il governo, ad onta dello scandalo, intende mantener dritta la barra del compromesso stipulato con garanti così autorevoli che rischierebbero grosso in caso opposto. “Bruciare” politicamente Mubarak ed Arafat agli occhi arabi – come responsabili di un accordo tradito dall’ Italia, che dovrebbe, negli intenti israelo-USA, consegnare loro i sequestratori – lo Stato italiano questo non può farlo.
A questo punto entrano in scena i “diversori” per linee interne: in primis Michael Ledeen, un personaggio dei servizi “non solo USA” coinvolto negli affari più sporchi degli ultimi trent’anni, Iran-Contras incluso; con gravi condanne a carico che gli impediscono ancor oggi di accostarsi al nostro Paese, pontificandone sui nostri media stando bene al sicuro nella sua Langley.
Allora introdottissimo presso Palazzo Chigi grazie a Claudio Martelli garante, e Giuliano Ferrara suo sodale. Questi era allora, di grande famiglia comunista-togliattana dopo nonno liberal-massone, un “neo-convertito” al craxismo: perché aveva abbandonato il PCI due anni prima, dopo avere schiaffeggiato, in consiglio comunale torinese, l’assessore-compagno alla Cultura, il filo-sionista Giorgio Balmas, perché aveva rifiutato di dedicare ai bambini massacrati a Sabra e Chatila un concerto di “Settembre Musica”.
A posteriori, un modo di “accreditarsi”: talché a raccoglierne gli umori apparentemente fumantini, furono Alberto Ronchey, “amico di famiglia” fino dai tempi di una comune residenza moscovita che gli fece ottenere “Bretelle Rosse”, rubrica politica fissa sul Corsera; ed Antonio Ghirelli, antico animatore di Radio Napoli nel 1943 per conto del PWB* inglese, che lo volle notista al TG2.
Lui e Martelli, insieme con il leader di Lotta Continua Adriano Sofri ed il capo del servizio d’ordine di quel medesimo gruppo, il sociologo sardo-trentino Luigi Manconi, editavano, coi soldi chiesti a Silvio Berlusconi, il quotidiano “Reporter”, una specie di ante-Foglio, assai pubblicizzato in TV dall’ennesimo Lottacontinuista di questa vicenda: Dagospia, allora solo Roberto d’Agostino, che lo inseriva nel suo angolino, la rubrica del look “fico” e reaganiano, inserendolo nelle tasche dei vari testimonial che si prestavano al gioco, del fortunatissimo “Quelli della notte” di Renzo Arbore, in onda giusto giusto la primavera del 1985, tre mesi prima del “caso Lauro”.
Insomma: gente di cui fidarsi ad occhi chiusi!

E invece no: perché Michael Ledeen ha recentemente rivelato che in quelle notti convulse di passioni, liti e scenate telefoniche ai due capi dell’Oceano, tra Craxi che difendeva i patti stipulati con onore, perfino difendendo coi Carabinieri schierati in pista, a Sigonella, il B737 che traduceva i banditi dall’assalto della Delta Force; e pure a Fiumicino, ove poi giunto inseguito dai caccia USA, ingiunse immediatamente, carabinieri con i mitra spianati, agli aerei stello-strisciati di “sloggiare” dalla pista di decollo… Ebbene ad attizzare i due l’un contro l’altro, perché vieppiù confliggessero – e con essi i due Paesi alleati – fino alla inevitabile soccombenza del più debole, furono le traduzioni telefoniche del Ledeen (che fa nome “Levi” in verità), sbagliate apposta per farli litigare. E pensare che Claudio Martelli lo aveva chiamato d’ urgenza apposta a Palazzo, cornetta in mano, per quella emergenza. Consigliando Bettino, da fedelissimo suo VicePresidente, di non fidarsi degli interpreti ufficiali, date le circostanze eccezionali!
Bene. Ad interfaccia dell’“agente Marte”, come viene definito dagli uffici suoi stessi, interviene Spadolini, intransigentissimo atlantista che ricopriva, abbondantemente, la poltrona di Ministro della Difesa. Un buffo panzone di taglia gigantesca ma con vocina esile e stridula da zitellina del famoso asilo di Dorsoduro a Venezia, che Forattini disegnava sempre nudo, con uno spadolino microscopico sul davanti, come fosse un eunuco… (Ha lasciato ad un erede, e pur si vede, tutte queste sue caratteristiche). Giovanni Spadolini si dimette dalla sua carica-chiave, costringendo alle inevitabili dimissioni anche il premier Bettino. Questi lo fece con un memorabile discorso alla Camera, ove rivendicò virilmente le Responsabilità di Stato, mantenute a dispetto di ogni pressione straniera (la parola data a Capi di Stato amici non si rinnega), ed a costo di dimettersi. Un discorso che commosse perfino l’allora scalfariano Giampaolo Pansa, che, su “La Repubblica”, forse perché era caduto, disse che lo aveva comunque fatto da “Hombre Vertical”.
Ecco, è questo il succo del ”caso Lauro”: le dimissioni, in Italia, di un Capo di Governo “sovranista e nazionale” contro ogni pretesa del Grande Fratello Atlantico in questioni di merito interno, seppure di emozione mondiale.
Non erano ancora i tempi dei Veltroni, che esalta la missione civilizzatrice degli eserciti USA alla conquista del mondo “per esportare la democrazia” (discorso al Circo Massimo, maggio 2007); o dei D’Alema, che nel suo discorso di insediamento a premier per la breve esperienza di Palazzo Chigi dietro ribaltone parlamentare, giurò che mai l’Italia avrebbe partecipato a guerre di aggressione, per poi levare i cacciabombardieri su Belgrado, e mobilitare 18.000 uomini, da mettere agli ordini del comando USA d Wesley Clark, per l’invasione in Kosovo…
Non erano né i tempi né gli uomini, ma quella prima caduta di Bettino Craxi fu decisiva a preparare quella successiva del 1992. Ed a determinare questi tempi e questi uomini che adesso scontiamo.

Questa premessa assolutamente indispensabile per capire quale anche è il succo del caso Abu Omar. La caduta di un Capo dei Servizi di palese appartenenza nazionale, pur nella doverosa fedeltà ai supernazionali Patti che lo costrinsero, bongré malgré, a “dare una mano” al nutrito gruppo di agenti CIA delegati al sequestro dell’“estremista islamico”. Il quale rapimento di Abu Omar fu effettuato in pieno centro ed in pieno giorno, facendo il maggiore baccano possibile, davanti a quanti più testimoni stupefatti perché ben si imprimessero in testa tutte le circostanze, a futura memoria: che inguaierà poi il solo Pollari. Costretto anch’egli a lasciare una carica, quella di Capo dei Servizi, che nelle circostanze attuali vale più di cento “premier”, che sono affatto privi di qualunque potere effettivo. Visto che l’affollatissimo gruppo di “condannati” della CIA, a partire dal caposcalo Robert Seldon “Lady” (però: chissà…), son tutti uccel di bosco, e mai sconteranno neppure un minuto, benché la sentenza, peraltro doverosa ed onorevole, che fa davvero onore al giudice Oscar Magi che l’ha emessa dopo tanto tormento, inasprirà ulteriormente i rapporti già non buoni tra Italia e USA. Che gli USA, ed altri, vogliono ad ogni costo impedire la nostra sovranità energetica quale discende dai contratti stipulati dall’ENI con Gazprom-Russia, con Nyoc-Libia, con Sonatrach-Algeria; per ovviare nei decenni a venire le necessità di energia pulita, cioè il metano di quei sottosuoli.
Pollari, dunque, è stato il solo a pagare. Se poi si vede chi è il suo successore, da dove venne nel lontano 1984 con al guinzaglio la “mina a tempo” Masino Buscetta, e per fare che cosa, forse ben si capisce tutto il senso di questa operazione, Abu Omar incluso.
Già, Abu Omar, chi era costui? Forse in “essenza” non lo sapremo mai.
Ma è interessante, come si fa con le particelle nella fisica nucleare, “tracciarne” il percorso più interamente che in quell’attimo “puntuale” del ratto, il 17 febbraio 2003, in ora di punta.
Egli giunse per la prima volta in Italia nel 1999, con intenzione di stabilirvisi nel cuore della sua comunità, libero come un fringuello, da Kosovo e da Bosnia, ove era militante dei gruppi più fanatici anti-serbi, finanziati e nutriti da chissà chi. Kosovo e Bosnia “liberate” dalla Jugoslavia e date in pasto a quell’“integralismo islamico” che proprio in quei tempi, inventato da Brzezinski nei lontani Settanta per attaccare le frontiere di Russia, saliva al potere finalmente a Kabul, nel cuore geopolitico d’EurAsia: i talebani del 1997, insediati colà dalle ISI pakistane guidate dalla CIA e dal FBI… E finanziati a pié di lista (“per estirpare il papavero”) dall’ex-deputato dalemiano (adesso dipietrista) Pino Arlacchi (il noto mafiologo de “La Repubblica”, che oggi dirige “Intelligence”), quando la Albright lo fece nominare Capo del Dipartimento ONU per la lotta alla droga. Coi risultati che si videro, già dall’inizio, era il 1997… Come si vede, poi giungendo, l’integralismo islamico da combattere con sempre più truppe, via Kosovo reso indipendente dagli “Alleati” Wesley Clark&D’Alema, fino a Montenapoleone, oltre Belgrado: al quale assedio compiuto dai turchi all’epoca di Giuseppe II Imperatore d’Asburgo, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart dedicò il suo sarcastico “rondò” (Marcia alla Turca) che incomparabilmente chiude la Sonata per piano solo K331, reso famoso dalla pubblicità televisiva…
Anche qui c’è da ridere, infatti. Perché questo Abu Omar, naturalmente uno pseudonimo di chissà chi, dopo una strana detenzione ad Aviano, viene più volte spedito e rispedito, riarrestato e rilasciato, via Cairo, avanti-indietro, fino a liberazione definitiva con tante scuse e danni da risarcire da parte del governo italiano: un milione di euro, al Cairo sei nababbo. Nel frattempo dice di aver subito orribili torture, di cui non porta alcuna traccia. Insomma, un fortunato. Anzi, un predestinato, come ci spiega Pirandello nel memorabile breviario de “Il Gioco delle Parti”, tra opposti coordinati.
A Napoli si recita così: due compari, ad un angolo di strada, iniziano furiosamente a litigare, trascinando in mezzo alla lite un passante qualunque. Con la scusa di menarsi, gliele suonano di santa ragione a lui che è imprigionato tra di loro, gli fregano l’orologio ed il portafogli, e lo lasciano pesto in terra e sanguinante, fuggendo via col bottino, in un posto sicuro per spartirselo.
E meno male che sia il governo Prodi, come quello Berlusconi, hanno opposto “Segreto di Stato” per salvaguardare il nostro Pollari dalle liti “loro”, naturalmente suscitando lo sdegno de “La Repubblica” che invece lo voleva bruciato per sempre…
Ecco, sia Pirandello col raffinato “Gioco delle Parti”, sia Napoli con quello più ruspante dei “Compari”, ci ricordano tanto sia il “caso Abu Omar” che quello “Achille Lauro”.
E soprattutto la Guerra al Terrorismo, proprio quello, portato ieri “al comando”, da quegli stessi che oggi gliela proclamano contro, soprattutto combattendola attraverso “soggetti terzi <messi in mezzo>  dai primi due”.
Come da manuale. Anche quello di Samuel Huntington, reso famoso grazie all’11 settembre, “Lo Scontro delle Civiltà”, cristiani contro islamici, come dice il proverbio. Che a ben vedere questo strombazzatissimo “The Clash” è proprio un manuale pratico, di istruzioni anche un po’ elementari.
Perché fra due litiganti c’è sempre un terzo che ogni volta ne gode. Lo dice proprio piatto e rotondo il grande tragico inglese che ben se intendeva, Christopher Marlowe**, in un suo capolavoro che analizza con preveggente acume le guerre cristiano-islamiche nel Mediterraneo di quell’epoca, ed intestato ad un signore “…di Malta”, che si chiamava Barabba, sembra un “nom de plume”.
Chissà, forse era già “Abu Omar”.
Gianni Caroli

* Psychological Warfare Branch, ufficio di alto spionaggio e propaganda delle Forze di occupazione angloamericane in Italia, in funzione ininterrottamente fino dal 9 luglio 1943 (sbarco in Sicilia, poi Salerno), con prima sede stabile in Piazza delle Borsa a Napoli

** Christopher Marlowe, Tutto il Teatro, Adelphi

If you live in the midwest, especially Iowa, you know we have thousands of acres of corn.  Our farmers currently harvest these fields primarily for  grain and in some cases the stover for livestock feed and bedding in the form of round or square bales.  But now innovative thinkers are looking at these fields of opportunity to produce ethanol from stover NOT corn.  POET Biomass, headquartered in South Dakota along with manufacturers, researchers, the United States Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Energy are intensively researching and producing commercial cellulosic ethanol at the Poet production facility in Emmetsburg, Iowa.

I attended the Emmetsburg Project Liberty Field Day on Tuesday November 3, 2009.  I walked away from the event very intrigued, energized and hoping this puzzle comes together.  The billions of tons of cellulosic material readily available in Americas heartland will blow you away.  Not to mention the woody by-products of many existing production processes that can also be used to create ethanol, but POET is focusing on corn stover. Vermeer, Case, Demco and more are all working on ways to efficiently harvest corncobs from the field.   A number of heavy-hitter speakers addressed the crowd of farmers, media and equipment manufacturers.    Lt. Governor Patty Judge, Jeff Broin CEO POET, Scott Weishaar VP Commercial Development Poet, Jonathan Coppes USDA Administrator and former 4-star General Wesley Clark, currently Co-Chairman of Growth Energy.

“Ethanol is America’s best renewable fuel because it can help create green-collar jobs, boost our domestic economy, and improve our environment right now,” stated Clark.  He shared additional facts to the crowd “we have the opportunity to save one million barrels of oil imported into the US per day and stop one of the greatest transfers of wealth by producing our own energy.  American grown and produced ethanol creates 60% less green house gases than gasoline.”  Consider the benefits of NOT depending on imported oil from the Middle East.

The U.S. government is throwing millions of dollars at this project.  And I say “THANK YOU!”  Anyway we can create cleaner energy and not depend on importation of oil from the Middle East is thumbs up in my book!  Through the Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP) farmers are eligible to receive payments at the rate of $1 for each $1/dry T. up to $45/dry T. to a 2-year payment duration for the delivery of corncobs.  Poet is offering opportunities to local farmers to incentivize the delivery of corncobs to their Emmetsburg facility.  You can learn more about this exciting project at Poet’s YouTube channel http://www.youtube.com/poettv, their Flickr stream http://www.flickr.com/photos/poetpics/ or their website http://www.poet.com/news/index.asp.

Author: Bellana Putz
www.lessingflynn.com
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Wat doen gevestigde kranten hun werk vaak toch ongelofelijk slecht – voorzover nieuws brengen en uitleggen tenminste wel hun werk is. Hebben ze er geen journalisten in dienst? Hebben die journalisten geen tijd om echt hun werk te doen? Of wordt het resultaat van serieus journalistiek werk door domme redacteuren geschrapt? Dat soort gedachten bekroop me weer eens bij lezing van een kort Volkskrantbericht.

Het ging over het arresteren van vier van oorlogsmisdaden verdachte Serviërs in Kosovo. De aanhoudingen werden gedaan door “politieagenten van de Europese Unie”,  en ook “vredestroepen van de NAVO en de Kosovaarese politie” hielp een handje. Huh?! Wat doen die NAVO-troepen daar, en hoezo zitten er politiemensen van de EU in Kosovo? Is het een door de EU en de NAVO bezet land of zo? Is het niet gewoon een taak voor de politie van Kosovo zelf? Dat land is toch sinds 2008 onafhankelijk?

Wacht, verderop krijgen we iets meer informatie. De oorlogsmisdaden  waarvan het gearresteerde viertal wordt verdacht zijn begaan in, je raadt het al, een oorlog. Dat zat, aldus de Volkskrant, als volgt. “De oorlog brak uit toen Albanese separatisten zich wilden afscheiden  van Servië. Het Servische leger trad op bloedige wije op tegen de separatisten. In totaal vonden zo’n tienduizend mensen de dood.”

Verhelderend, nietwaar? Maar vooral vertekenend. Albanese separatisten drongen al veel langer aan op afscheiding van Servië, waarbinnen Kosovo een autonome provincie vormde, zo vertelt Stephen Zunes in een leerzaam stuk over het Kosovo-conflict.  Al in 1990 leidde dit tot een breed gedragen onafhankelijkheidsverklaring van Kosovo. En al in 1981 was er een opstand waarin Albanezen eisten dat Kosovo een gelijkwaardige deelrepubliek binnen Joegoslavië werd, náást Servië en niet meer als deel ervan. Die eis leidde vanaf 1987 opnieuw tot grote protesten, toen Servië steeds meer druk uitoefende om de autonomie van de provincie uit te hollen en uiteindelijk af te schaffen. Gangmaker van die druk was de Servische partijbaas Milosevic, die carrière maakte door te hameren op de Albanese ‘dreiging’. Een aanhoudende campagne van burgerlijke ongehoorzaamheid van de Kosovaarse Albanezen tegen de Servische onderdrukking volgde.

Toen de één na de andere Joegoslavische deelrepubliek met krachtige en vaak bloedige Westerse assistentie losgemaakt was van Servië, veranderde Joegoslavië steeds meer in Servië plus wat aanhangsels. In 1998 begon een groep Albanese separatisten, het UCK,  inderdaad de wapens op te nemen, en inderdaad reageerde het Joegoslavische leger met grof geweld. Zo gaat dat bij guerrillabestrijding.

Ga maar kijken in Afghanistan, waar de NAVO de rol speelt van het Joegoslavische leger, tegen de Taliban die een positie inneemt die vergelijkbaar is met het UCK in Kosovo. Verschil is dat het Joegoslavische leger haar moordpartijen als het ware ambachtelijk, met de hand, uitvoerde. De NAVO heeft voor zoiets straaljagers en onbemande satelietten die hun werk van 10 kilometer hoogte doen. Veel beschaafder, veel dapperder ook.

De oorlog begon dus niet toen separatisten strijd begonnen te voeren voor afscheiding. De oorlog begon toen een deel van die separatisten daravoor daadwerkelijk de wapens opnam, in een strijd die zich niet alleen richtte tegen het Joegoslavische gezag, maar ook tegen Servische burgers (iets dat in de verontwaardiging over Servisch geweld tegen Albanese Kosovaren nogal eens werd genegeerd). Al snel was duidelijk dat het UCK daarmee een situatie wilden creeëren waarin de Joegoslavisch/ Servische autoriteiten met hun brute optreden in de problemen zouden raken.

Dat brute optreden kwam, de wereld werd getracteerd op vreselijke beelden van vluchtende Kosovaren, hetgeen een voorspelbare roep om ingrijpen in Westerse hoofdsteden op gang bracht. We kregen demagogische vergelijkingen tussen treinen met Albanese vluchtelingen en treinen met Joodse gedeporteerden. Dat in het eerste geval de eindbestemming een vluchtelingenkamp met kans op hulp was, en in het tweede geval een gaskamer en de dood, was een verschil dat om één of andere reden aan de aandacht ontsnapte.

De repressie – waarop het UCK met haar tactiek had aangestuurd – leidde vervolgens tot een NAVO-ultimatum aan Joegoslavië, dat het ultimatum verwierp. Logisch ook: het akkoord van Rambouillet, zoals het ultimatum bekend stond, eiste niet alleen een staakt-het-vuren, niet alleen het toelaten van Westerse troepen in Kosovo, maar het recht van NAVO-troepen om zich vrij te bewegen in héél Joegoslavië (of wat daar van over was). Het was een deal die bedoeld was om verworpen te worden, zodat de NAVO  een voorwendsel had om oorlog tegen Joegoslavië te voeren.

Bijna drie maanden lang gooiden NAVO-vliegtuigen bommen op Kosovo en Servië (de dominante deelrepubliek van Joegoslavië). Militaire doelwitten, maar ook ‘militaire’ doelwitten zoals vluchtelingenkonvooien, bruggen, een autofabriek en een omroepgebouw werden gebombardeerd. Van de 10.000 doden waar het Volkskrant-stukje over spreekt, zijn er 2000 het gevolg van NAVO-bommen, aldus het Global Balkans Netwerk in een artikel naar aanleiding van de tienjarige verjaardag van deze oorlog. Ook daarover geen woord in hier de Volkskrant.

Intussen voerden Servische militairen en militieleden de onderdrukking en etnische zuivering van Albanezen verder op: het geweld tegen Albanezen bereikte ná het begin van de NAVO-luchtaanvallen een hoogtepunt. Het was op die NAVO-aanvallen voor een flink deel een reactie, een wraakoefening ook op een bevolkingsgroep die door Servische nationalisten  verantwoordelijk werd gehouden voor die luchtaanvallen. Noam Chomsky heeft er  op gewezen dat het opvoeren van Servisch geweld na het begin van de NAVO-luchtaanvallen volgens toenmalig NAVO-bevelhebber Wesley Clark “helemaal voorspelbaar” was. De NAVO wíst dus dat haar acties de ramp voor de de burgerbeviolking van Kosovo wel eens zouden kunnen verergeren. De NAVO-aanval betekende daarom een catastrofe, niet alleen voor Serviërs maar ook voor heel veel Kosovaarse Albanezen, zogenaamd degenen die met die oorlog gered moesten worden. Wederom geeft Stephen Zunes nuttige inzichten, in een artikel dat tien jaar na de oorlog terugblikt.

Uiteindelijk kwam er een wapenstilstand, zónder dat de NAVO het recht kreeg in heel Joegoslavië haar troepen te bewegen, dus zonder die eis van Rambouillet ingewilligd werd die Joegoslavië tot weigering van het ultimatum dreef, waarmee de oorlog zogenaamd onontkoombaar werd. Wel kwamen er nu NAVO-troepen en EU-functionarissen naar Kosovo. Dáár ligt dus de reden van hun aanwezigheid, een reden die het Volkskrant-stuk wel even had mogen aanstippen.  

Joegoslavië was feitelijk de macht over die provincie kwijt, het werd een soort Westerse kolonie. Na lang touwtrekken werd die kolonie vorig jaar formeel een onafhankelijke staat. Maar NAVO-troepen en EU-politiemensen zijn, zo blijkt uit het Volkskrantbericht, gewoon gebleven en doen hun ding. De onafhankelijkheid van nu is bijna net zo’n wassen neus als de autonomie van de provincie Kosovo in het oude Joegoslavië.

Terug naar het Volkskrantstukje dat voor dit verhaal de aanleiding was. Nee, ik verwacht niet dat in een kort nieuwsbericht een lange verhandeling over deze oorlog staat. Maar het is wel heel, heel kwalijk om die oorlog in enkele zinnen ‘uit te leggen’, en daarbij geheel en al te verzwijgen dat de NAVO, ook NAVO-lid Nederland trouwens, in die oorlog een nogal enthousiaste en nogal criminele partij was. Ik vind het Volkskrant-berichtje journalistiek een aanfluiting en politiek een schande.

(bijgeschaafd 23-09, 22.39)

Twenty Minutes With The President

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with our 44th President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama, while he was out promoting his health care reform initiative. I requested 30 minutes given the scope and detail of my inquiry; they said I could have 20. Twenty minutes, 1200 seconds, not a lot of time to question the President about one of the most important events in our nation’s history.

The following is a transcript of our remarkable discussion.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/twenty-minutes-with-the-president.html

Charlie Sheen Requests Meeting With Obama Over 9/11 Cover-Up

Actor demands investigation be reopened after majority of 9/11 Commission members say government lied about official story

UPDATE: Charlie Sheen makes video to request a meeting with Obama to open a new 9/11 investigation:

Paul Joseph Watson
PrisonPlanet.com
Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Actor and television star Charlie Sheen has publicly requested a meeting with President Barack Obama to urge him to reopen the official investigation into 9/11 in light of the fact that the majority of the 9/11 Commission members have now publicly gone on record to express their conviction that the government agreed to lie about the official story.

Sheen’s request takes the form of a letter to the President in the context of a fictional meeting between the two entitled “20 Minutes With The President,” published exclusively on radio talk show host Alex Jones’ Infowars.com and PrisonPlanet.com websites.

The letter cites evidence, backed up by a substantial online bibliography [also posted below], that proves the official story behind 9/11 is a fraud and that this conclusion was also reached by the majority of the 9/11 Commission members, a fact that mandates President Obama to reopen the investigation into the terrorist attacks.

Sheen expresses his hope that President Obama will follow through on his promises of change, accountability and government transparency by using his executive powers to re-examine 9/11, adding that he voted for Obama with the understanding that he would follow a different course to the Bush administration.

However, as Sheen highlights in his letter,the course of Obama’s first year in office clearly indicates that he will do nothing to reverse policies crafted by the Bush regime, and in fact has sought to exceed outrages of the previous administration in areas such as warrantless wiretapping, rendition, detention without trial, and wars in the Middle East – all of which arrived as a consequence of 9/11.

Sheen’s letter is a public declaration demanding the truth behind 9/11 as America approaches its eighth anniversary since the tragic events of that day. His questions are shared by a majority of victims’ family members, according to Bill Doyle, the representative of the largest 9/11 families group.

The letter focuses around the fact that no less than 60 per cent of the 9/11 commissioners have now publicly stated that the government agreed not to tell the truth about 9/11 and that the Pentagon was engaged in deliberate deception about their response to the attack.

Sheen also presents a plethora of other evidence to illustrate how the official story is a fraud, including the revelations of whistle blowers like FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, who recently broke a Federal gag order to expose how Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were working for the U.S. government right up until the day of 9/11.

(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)

The issues highlighted by Sheen do not represent idle speculation or conspiracy fodder, they are documented facts that have been deliberately ignored by strawman 9/11 truth hit pieces that are now doing the rounds again as the anniversary approaches, particularly last months’ 9/11: Science and Conspiracy which was aired by the National Geographic Channel and wasted little time in portraying people who have doubts about the official 9/11 story as extremist cranks, while failing to acknowledge that the majority of the members of the 9/11 Commission have publicly expressed similar concerns.

Charlie Sheen is once again using his prominent public platform in an attempt to expand a national debate about the disturbing unanswered questions behind 9/11, having first spoken out on the issue in March 2006. After he first went public, Sheen was asked to do more and now he is doing more as he feels there is a chance to get more traction behind a new investigation with a new President in the White House.

Sheen is directly appealing to Barack Obama to read his letter and to look into the lies surrounding 9/11 for himself.

Regardless of whether or not President Obama agrees to meet with him, Sheen is confident that his letter will serve as a catalyst from which questions surrounding 9/11 and other false flag events will be brought to national attention.

This is a call to action and a declaration of war on the lies of 9/11 that have formed the foundation of the endless wars abroad and the police state at home as the Republic falls. Sheen is demanding that truth activists and those who simply care about the future of the country stand up beside him and speak truth to power.

Sheen is now urging grass roots political organizations and individuals across the country, such as the town hall protesters and We Are Change groups, to go to press conferences and other public events and demand answers about the truth behind 9/11. As much awareness as possible around the issue of false flag terrorism needs to be generated in order to prevent tragedies like 9/11 from happening again. Sheen emphasizes in his letter that we cannot let 9/11 become ancient history, try and forget about it or just move on, because if a nation forgets its history then it is doomed to repeat it.

We cannot allow governments to continue to advance their political agendas by exploiting forged pretexts, argues Sheen, and the fact that big budget hit pieces against 9/11 truth are still being rolled out proves that the establishment is upset that the population is waking up to false flag terror.

Sheen will appear live on The Alex Jones Show on Wednesday and Friday to discuss the content of his “20 Minutes With The President” piece and how he plans to move forward with this exciting new initiative. You can listen free here or subscribe to prisonplanet.tv to watch live streaming video.

No matter what your views are on 9/11, Sheen is begging the thinking public to look at how many members of the 9/11 Commission itself have questioned the official story, along with the scores of other highly credible former and current government officials, intelligence professionals, military officials, scientists, structural engineers and architects, and legal scholars who have all publicly denounced the fraud that continues to masquerade as the official 9/11 story.

For media requests on this subject email sheen@infowars.com

PrisonPlanet.tv Members Will Be The FIRST To See Fall Of The Republic On October 21st – Don’t Miss Out! Get Your Subscription Today!

CANCER CONSPIRACY? Are “they”suppressing the cure? Will YOU be the next victim? Learn the Secret Truth! – READ FULL STORY

* * * * * * * *

ONLINE BIBLIOGRAPHY for “Twenty Minutes With The President” PROVING THE OFFICIAL STORY BEHIND 9/11 IS A FRAUD AND THAT THIS CONCLUSION WAS ALSO REACHED BY THE MAJORITY OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBERS:

In June 2006, Muckraker Report investigative reporter Ed Haas contacted the FBI to ask why 9/11 was not specifically mentioned on Bin Laden’s wanted page on the FBI website.

“The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Laden’s most wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11,” he was told by FBI agent Rex Tomb.

http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/fugitives/laden.htm

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/august2006/280806binladen.htm

Sibel Edmonds was dismissed after she revealed that the government had foreknowledge of plans to attack American cities using planes as bombs as early as April 2001.

During a court case that arose out of her dismissal and the evidence surrounding 9/11, reporters were barred from recording any details of the case, and Edmonds herself was barred from even entering the court room. When Edmonds’ case was dismissed in May 2005, no reason was provided, and no opinion cited.

http://www.justacitizen.com/articles_documents/May14-05-Gagged%20but%20not%20Dead.htm

During an interview on the Mike Malloy Show In July 2009, Edmonds stated, “To say that since the fall of the Soviet Union we ceased all of our intimate relationship with Bin Laden and the Taliban – those things can be proven as lies, very easily, based on the information they classified in my case, because we did carry very intimate relationship with these people, and it involves Central Asia, all the way up to September 11.”

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7332

http://www.prisonplanet.com/bombshell-bin-laden-worked-for-us-until-911.html

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/07/31/whistleblower-bin-laden-was-us-proxy-until-911/

The following is a quote from Mayor Giuliani during an interview on 9/11 with Peter Jennings for ABC News. “I went down to the scene and we set up headquarters at 75 Barkley Street, which was right there with the Police Commissioner, the Fire Commissioner, the Head of Emergency Management, and we were operating out of there when we were told that the World Trade Center was going to collapse. And it did collapse before we could actually get out of the building, so we were trapped in the building for 10, 15 minutes, and finally found an exit and got out, walked north, and took a lot of people with us.”

WHO TOLD HIM THIS??? To this day, the answer to this question remains unanswered, completely ignored and emphatically DENIED by Mayor Giuliani on several public occasions.

Watch the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vCg8Fp8aw8

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/wtc_giuliani.html

In April 2004, USA Today reported, “In the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties.” One of the targets was the World Trade Center.

In addition, the Chantilly, Va.-based National Reconnaissance Office had scheduled an exercise for the morning of 9/11 that was based around a corporate jet crashing into the agency’s headquarters.

http://www.boston.com/news/packages/sept11/anniversary/wire_stories/0903_plane_exercise.htm

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-04-18-norad_x.htm

On September 12th 2007, CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 reported that the mysterious “white plane” spotted flying in restricted airspace over the White House shortly before 10am on the morning of 9/11 was in fact the Air Force’s E-4B, a specially modified Boeing 747 with a communications pod behind the cockpit.

Though fully aware of the event, the 9/11 Commission did not deem the appearance of the military plane to be of any interest and did not include it in the final 9/11 Commission report.

“CNN acknowledges that, despite its identification, the absence of the aircraft from official investigations, together with the Pentagon’s denial that it was a military plane and the insistence by the Pentagon, Secret Service, and FAA that they have no explanation for the incident, may continue to raise suspicions,” reported Raw Story.

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/CNN_investigates_secret_911_doomsday_plane_0913.html

Three F-16s assigned to Andrews Air Force Base, ten miles from Washington, DC, are conducting training exercises in North Carolina 207 miles away as the first plane crashes into the WTC. Even if these planes had traveled at significantly less than their top speed of 1500 mph, they could still have been defending the skies over Washington well before 9am, more than 37 minutes before Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon, however, they did not return until after 9:55am.

Andrews AFB had no armed fighters on alert and ready to take off on the morning of 9/11.

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a846carolinafighters#a846carolinafighters

Compilation of videos showing collapse of WTC 7.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Atbrn4k55lA

Flight 93 is fourth plane to crash on 9/11 at 10:03am. Cheney only gives shoot down order at 10:10-10:20am and this is not communicated to NORAD until 28 minutes after Flight 93 has crashed.

“A shootdown authorization was not communicated to the NORAD air defense sector until 28 minutes after United 93 had crashed in Pennsylvania. Planes were scrambled, but ineffectively, as they did not know where to go or what targets they were to intercept. And once the shootdown order was given, it was not communicated to the pilots. In short, while leaders in Washington believed that the fighters circling above them had been instructed to “take out” hostile aircraft, the only orders actually conveyed to the pilots were to “ID type and tail.”

http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Exec.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50745-2004Jun17.html

(Mid 2004) The team of investigators on the 9/11 Commission that is investigating the events of the morning of September 11 comes to believe that a key part of Vice President Dick Cheney’s account is false. The team, led by John Farmer, is convinced that the decision to authorize the military to shoot down threatening aircraft on 9/11 was made by Cheney alone, not by President Bush. According to journalist and author Philip Shenon: “If Farmer’s team was right, the shootdown order was almost certainly unconstitutional, a violation of the military chain of command, which has no role for the vice president. In the absence of the president, military orders should have been issued by Defense Secretary [Donald] Rumsfeld, bypassing the vice president entirely.”

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a04doubtscheney#a04doubtscheney

Scores of mainstream news outlets reported that the F.B.I. conducted an investigation of at least FIVE of the 9/11 hijackers being trained at U.S. military flight schools. Those investigations are now sealed and need to be declassified.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/75797

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/18/us/traces-of-terrorism-the-warnings-fbi-knew-for-years-about-terror-pilot-training.html

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=008z7U

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2121480.stm

In 2004, New York firefighters Mike Bellone and Nicholas DeMasi went public to say they had found the black boxes at the World Trade Center, but were told to keep their mouths shut by FBI agents. Nicholas DeMasi said that he escorted federal agents on an all-terrain vehicle in October 2001 and helped them locate the devices, a story backed up by rescue volunteer Mike Bellone.

As the Philadelphia Daily News reported at the time, “Their story raises the question of whether there was a some type of cover-up at Ground Zero.”

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/october2004/281004blackbox.htm

http://www.prisonplanet.com/911-cover-up-connection-black-boxes-found-15-hours-after-buffalo-crash.html

Hundreds of eye witnesses including first responders, fire captains, news reporters, and police, all described multiple explosions in both towers before and during the collapse.

Eyewitness accounts of bombs and explosions can be found at the following links.

http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/eyewitnesses.html

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/people.html

An astounding video uncovered from the archives shows BBC News correspondent Jane Standley reporting on the collapse of WTC Building 7 over twenty minutes before it fell at 5:20pm on the afternoon of 9/11. Tapes from earlier BBC broadcasts show news anchors discussing the collapse of WTC 7 a full 26 minutes in advance. The BBC at first claimed that their tapes from 9/11 had been “lost” before admitting that they made the “error” of reporting the collapse of WTC 7 before it happened without adequately explaining how they could have obtained advance knowledge of the event.

In addition, over an hour before the collapse of WTC 7, at 4:10pm, CNN’s Aaron Brown reported that the building “has either collapsed, or is collapsing.”

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2007/260207building7.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNK1V6S2cbo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1LetB0z8_o

Solicitor General Ted Olson’s claim that his wife Barbara Olsen called him twice from Flight 77, describing hijackers with box cutters, was a central plank of the official 9/11 story.

However, the credibility of the story was completely undermined after Olsen kept changing his story about whether his wife used her cellphone or the airplane phone. The technology to enable cell phone calls from high-altitude airline flights was not created until 2004. American Airlines confirmed that Flight 77 was a Boeing 757 and that this plane did not have airplane phones on board.

According to the FBI, Barbara Olsen attempted to call her husband only once and the call failed to connect, therefore Olsen must have been lying when he claimed he had spoken to his wife from Flight 77.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8514

The size of a Boeing 757 is approximately 125ft in width and yet images of the impact zone at the Pentagon supposedly caused by the crash merely show a hole no more than 16ft in diameter. The engines of the 757 would have punctured a hole bigger than this, never mind the whole plane. Images before the partial collapse of the impact zone show little real impact damage and a sparse debris field completely inconsistent with the crash of a large jetliner, especially when contrasted with other images showing airplane crashes into buildings.

http://www.thepentacon.com/Topic10.htm

http://www.thepentacon.com/Topic1.htm

What is the meaning behind the following quote attributed to Dick Cheney which came to light during the 9/11 Commission hearings? The passage is taken from testimony given by Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta.

During the time that the airplane was coming in to the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President, “The plane is 50 miles out.” “The plane is 30 miles out.” And when it got down to “the plane is 10 miles out,” the young man also said to the Vice President, “Do the orders still stand?” And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck around and said, “Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?”

As the plane was not shot down, in addition to the fact that armed fighter jets were nowhere near the plane and the Pentagon defensive system was not activated., are we to take it that the orders were to let the plane find its target?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDfdOwt2v3Y

In May 2003, the Miami Herald reported how the Bush administration was refusing to release a 900-page congressional report on 9/11 because it wanted to “avoid enshrining embarrassing details in the report,” particularly regarding pre-9/11 warnings as well as the fact that the hijackers were trained at U.S. flight schools.

http://www.truthout.org/article/white-house-refuses-release-sept-11-info

Newsweek twice reported that top Pentagon officials had got a warning of the impending attack on September 10th, and cancelled their flights for the next day. This confirms that these officials knew both the general locations of the attack and the method of using jetliners as bombs.

“On Sept. 10, NEWSWEEK has learned, a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns.”

http://www.newsweek.com/id/76065/output/print

“Could the bombers have been stopped? NEWSWEEK has learned that while U.S. intelligence received no specific warning, the state of alert had been high during the past two weeks, and a particularly urgent warning may have been received the night before the attacks, causing some top Pentagon brass to cancel a trip. Why that same information was not available to the 266 people who died aboard the four hijacked commercial aircraft may become a hot topic on the Hill.”

http://www.newsweek.com/id/75993/page/2

Mayor of San Francisco Willie Brown was set to fly into New York on the morning of September 11. However, he got a call from what he described as his “airport security” late September 10th advising against flying due to a security threat. Pacifica Radio later reported that the source of the warning was Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/09/12/MN229389.DTL

The technology to enable cell phone calls from high-altitude airline flights was not created until 2004, and even by that point it was only in the trial phase. Calls from cellphones which formed an integral part of the official government version of events were technologically impossible at the time.

Aviation Week (07/20/04) described this new technology in an authoritative report published in July 2004:

“Qualcomm and American Airlines are exploring [July 2004] ways for passengers to use commercial cell phones inflight for air-to-ground communication. In a recent 2-hr. proof-of-concept flight, representatives from government and the media used commercial Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) third-generation cell phones to place and receive calls and text messages from friends on the ground.”

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO408B.html

On April 29, 2004, President Bush and V.P. Cheney would only meet with the commission under specific clandestine conditions. They insisted on testifying together and not under oath. They also demanded that their testimony be treated as a matter of “state secret.” To date, nothing they spoke of that day exists in the public domain.

“President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have placed strict limits on the private interviews they will grant to the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, saying that they will meet only with the panel’s top two officials and that Mr. Bush will submit to only a single hour of questioning, commission members said Wednesday.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/26/us/bush-to-limit-testimony-before-9-11-panel.html

A few days after the attack, several newspapers reported that a paper passport had been found in the ruins of the WTC.

In August 2004, CNN reported that 9/11 hijacker Ziad Jarrah’s visa was found in the remains of Flight 93 which went down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

At least a third of the WTC victim’s bodies were vaporized and many of the victims of the Pentagon incident were burned beyond recognition. And yet visas and paper passports which identify the perpetrators and back up the official version of events miraculously survive explosions and fires that we are told melted steel buildings.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/august2004/230804visafound.htm

http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2001/Sep-16-Sun-2001/news/17011253.html

————————————————————————————————-

Highly Credible People Question 9/11

The following people question the government’s version of 9/11, or the government’s openness in providing information about the September 11 attacks.

9/11 COMMISSIONERS

The co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission (Thomas Keane and Lee Hamilton) said that the CIA (and likely the White House) “obstructed our investigation”.

The co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission also said that the 9/11 Commissioners knew that military officials misrepresented the facts to the Commission, and the Commission considered recommending criminal charges for such false statements, yet didn’t bother to tell the American people (free subscription required).

Indeed, the co-chairs of the Commission now admit that the Commission largely operated based upon political considerations.

9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton says “I don’t believe for a minute we got everything right”, that the Commission was set up to fail, that people should keep asking questions about 9/11, that the 9/11 debate should continue, and that the 9/11 Commission report was only “the first draft” of history.

9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey said that “There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version . . . We didn’t have access . . . .”

9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer said “We were extremely frustrated with the false statements we were getting”

Former 9/11 Commissioner Max Cleland resigned from the Commission, stating: “It is a national scandal”; “This investigation is now compromised”; and “One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9-11 issue is so important to America. But this White House wants to cover it up”.

9/11 Commissioner John Lehman said that “We purposely put together a staff that had – in a way – conflicts of interest“.

The Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (John Farmer) who led the 9/11 staff’s inquiry, said “I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described …. The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years…. This is not spin. This is not true.”

CONGRESS

According to the Co-Chair of the Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 and former Head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham, a U.S. government informant was the landlord to two of the hijackers for over a year (but the White House refused to let the 9/11 inquiry interview him).

Current U.S. Senator (Patrick Leahy) states “The two questions that the congress will not ask . . . is why did 9/11 happen on George Bush’s watch when he had clear warnings that it was going to happen? Why did they allow it to happen?”

Current Republican Congressman (Ron Paul) calls for a new 9/11 investigation and states that “we see the [9/11] investigations that have been done so far as more or less cover-up and no real explanation of what went on”

Current Democratic Congressman (Dennis Kucinich) hints that we aren’t being told the truth about 9/11

Former Democratic Senator (Mike Gravel) states that he supports a new 9/11 investigation and that we don’t know the truth about 9/11

Former Republican Senator (Lincoln Chaffee) endorses a new 9/11 investigation

Former U.S. Democratic Congressman (Dan Hamburg) says that the U.S. government “assisted” in the 9/11 attacks, stating that “I think there was a lot of help from the inside”

Former U.S. Republican Congressman and senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, and who served six years as the Chairman of the Military Research and Development Subcommittee (Curt Weldon) has shown that the U.S. tracked hijackers before 9/11, is open to hearing information about explosives in the Twin Towers, and is open to the possibility that 9/11 was an inside job

MILITARY LEADERS

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan (Col. Ronald D. Ray) said that the official story of 9/11 is “the dog that doesn’t hunt” (bio)

Director of the U.S. “Star Wars” space defense program in both Republican and Democratic administrations, who was a senior air force colonel who flew 101 combat missions (Col. Robert Bowman) stated that9/11 was an inside job. He also said:

“If our government had merely [done] nothing, and I say that as an old interceptor pilot-I know the drill, I know what it takes, I know how long it takes, I know what the procedures are, I know what they were, and I know what they’ve changed them to-if our government had merely done nothing, and allowed normal procedures to happen on that morning of 9/11, the Twin Towers would still be standing and thousands of dead Americans would still be alive. [T]hat is treason!“

U.S. Army Air Defense Officer and NORAD Tac Director, decorated with the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star and the Soldiers Medal (Capt. Daniel Davis) stated:

“there is no way that an aircraft . . . would not be intercepted when they deviate from their flight plan, turn off their transponders, or stop communication with Air Traffic Control … Attempts to obscure facts by calling them a ‘conspiracy Theory’ does not change the truth. It seems, ‘Something is rotten in the State.’ “

President of the U.S. Air Force Accident Investigation Board, who also served as Pentagon Weapons Requirement Officer and as a member of the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review, and who was awarded Distinguished Flying Crosses for Heroism, four Air Medals, four Meritorious Service Medals, and nine Aerial Achievement Medals (Lt. Col. Jeff Latas) is a member of a group which doubts the government’s version of 9/11

U.S. General, Commanding General of U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, decorated with the Bronze Star, Silver Star, and Purple Heart (General Wesley Clark) said “We’ve never finished the investigation of 9/11 and whether the administration actually misused the intelligence information it had. The evidence seems pretty clear to me. I’ve seen that for a long time.”

Air Force Colonel and key Pentagon official (Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski) finds various aspects of 9/11 suspicious

Lieutenant colonel, 24-year Air Force career, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs at the Defense Language Institute (Lt. Colonel Steve Butler) said “Of course Bush knew about the impending attacks on America. He did nothing to warn the American people because he needed this war on terrorism.”

Two-Star general (Major General Albert Stubbelbine) questions the attack on the Pentagon

U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, former instructor at the USAF Fighter Weapons School and NATO’s Tactical Leadership Program, with a 20-year Air Force career (Lt. Colonel Guy S. Razer) said the following:

“I am 100% convinced that the attacks of September 11, 2001 were planned, organized, and committed by treasonous perpetrators that have infiltrated the highest levels of our government ….

Those of us in the military took an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic”. Just because we have retired does not make that oath invalid, so it is not just our responsibility, it is our duty to expose the real perpetrators of 9/11 and bring them to justice, no matter how hard it is, how long it takes, or how much we have to suffer to do it.

We owe it to those who have gone before us who executed that same oath, and who are doing the same thing in Iraq and Afghanistan right now. Those of us who joined the military and faithfully executed orders that were given us had to trust our leaders. The violation and abuse of that trust is not only heinous, but ultimately the most accurate definition of treason!”

U.S. Marine Corps lieutenant colonel, a fighter pilot with over 300 combat missions flown and a 21-year Marine Corps career (Lt. Colonel Shelton F. Lankford) believes that 9/11 was an inside job, and said:

“This isn’t about party, it isn’t about Bush Bashing. It’s about our country, our constitution, and our future. …

Your countrymen have been murdered and the more you delve into it the more it looks as though they were murdered by our government, who used it as an excuse to murder other people thousands of miles away.

If you ridicule others who have sincere doubts and who know factual information that directly contradicts the official report and who want explanations from those who hold the keys to our government, and have motive, means, and opportunity to pull off a 9/11, but you are too lazy or fearful, or … to check into the facts yourself, what does that make you? ….

Are you afraid that you will learn the truth and you can’t handle it? …”

U.S. Navy ‘Top Gun’ pilot (Commander Ralph Kolstad) who questions the official account of 9/11 and is calling for a new investigation, says “When one starts using his own mind, and not what one was told, there is very little to believe in the official story”.

The Group Director on matters of national security in the U.S. Government Accountability Office said that President Bush did not respond to unprecedented warnings of the 9/11 disaster and conducted a massive cover-up instead of accepting responsibility

Additionally, numerous military leaders from allied governments have questioned 9/11, such as:

Canadian Minister of Defense, the top military leader of Canada (Paul Hellyer)

Assistant German Defense Minister (Andreas Von Bulow)

Commander-in-chief of the Russian Navy (Anatoli Kornukov)

Chief of staff of the Russian armed forces (General Leonid Ivashov)

INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALS

Former military analyst and famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg recently said that the case of a certain 9/11 whistleblower is “far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers“. He also said that the government is ordering the media to cover up her allegations about 9/11. And he said that some of the claims concerning government involvement in 9/11 are credible, that “very serious questions have been raised about what they [U.S. government officials] knew beforehand and how much involvement there might have been”, that engineering 9/11 would not be humanly or psychologically beyond the scope of the current administration, and that there’s enough evidence to justify a new, “hard-hitting” investigation into 9/11 with subpoenas and testimony taken under oath.

A 27-year CIA veteran, who chaired National Intelligence Estimates and personally delivered intelligence briefings to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, their Vice Presidents, Secretaries of State, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and many other senior government officials (Raymond McGovern) said “I think at simplest terms, there’s a cover-up. The 9/11 Report is a joke”, and is open to the possibility that 9/11 was an inside job.

A 29-year CIA veteran, former National Intelligence Officer (NIO) and former Director of the CIA’s Office of Regional and Political Analysis (William Bill Christison) said “I now think there is persuasive evidence that the events of September did not unfold as the Bush administration and the 9/11 Commission would have us believe. … All three [buildings that were destroyed in the World Trade Center] were most probably destroyed by controlled demolition charges placed in the buildings before 9/11.” (and see this).

20-year Marine Corps infantry and intelligence officer, the second-ranking civilian in U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence, and former CIA clandestine services case officer (David Steele) stated that “9/11 was at a minimum allowed to happen as a pretext for war”, and it was probably an inside job (see Customer Review dated October 7, 2006).

A decorated 20-year CIA veteran, who Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh called “perhaps the best on-the-ground field officer in the Middle East”, and whose astounding career formed the script for the Academy Award winning motion picture Syriana (Robert Baer) said that “the evidence points at” 9/11 having had aspects of being an inside job .

The Division Chief of the CIA’s Office of Soviet Affairs, who served as Senior Analyst from 1966 – 1990. He also served as Professor of International Security at the National War College from 1986 – 2004 (Melvin Goodman) said “The final [9/11 Commission] report is ultimately a coverup.”

Professor of History and International Relations, University of Maryland. former Executive Assistant to the Director of the National Security Agency, former military attache in China, with a 21-year career in U.S. Army Intelligence (Major John M. Newman, PhD, U.S. Army) questions the government’s version of the events of 9/11.

The head of all U.S. intelligence, the Director of National Intelligence (Mike McConnel) said “9/11 should have and could have been prevented”

A number of intelligence officials, including a CIA Operations Officer who co-chaired a CIA multi-agency task force coordinating intelligence efforts among many intelligence and law enforcement agencies (Lynne Larkin) sent a joint letter to Congress expressing their concerns about “serious shortcomings,” “omissions,” and “major flaws” in the 9/11 Commission Report and offering their services for a new investigation(they were ignored).

SCIENTISTS

A prominent physicist with 33 years of service for the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC (Dr. David L. Griscom) said that the official theory for why the Twin Towers and world trade center building 7 collapsed “does not match the available facts” and supports the theory that the buildings were brought down by controlled demolition

A world-renowned scientist, recipient of the National Medal of Science, America’s highest honor for scientific achievement (Dr. Lynn Margulis) said:

“I suggest that those of us aware and concerned demand that the glaringly erroneous official account of 9/11 be dismissed as a fraud and a new, thorough, and impartial investigation be undertaken.“

The former head of the Fire Science Division of the government agency which claims that the World Trade Centers collapsed due to fire (the National Institute of Standards and Technology), who is one of the world’s leading fire science researchers and safety engineers, a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering (Dr. James Quintiere), called for an independent review of the World Trade Center Twin Tower collapse investigation. “I wish that there would be a peer review of this,” he said, referring to the NIST investigation. “I think all the records that NIST has assembled should be archived. I would really like to see someone else take a look at what they’ve done; both structurally and from a fire point of view. … I think the official conclusion that NIST arrived at is questionable.”

The principal electrical engineer for the entire World Trade Center complex, who was “very familiar with the structures and [the Twin Towers'] conceptual design parameters” (Richard F. Humenn), stated that “the mass and strength of the structure should have survived the localized damage caused by the planes and burning jet fuel . . . . the fuel and planes alone did not bring the Towers down.”

Former Director for Research, Director for Aeronautical Projects, and Flight Research Program Manager for NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center, who holds masters degrees in both physics and engineering (Dwain A. Deets) says:

“The many visual images (massive structural members being hurled horizontally, huge pyroclastic clouds, etc.) leave no doubt in my mind explosives were involved [in the destruction of the World Trade Centers on 9/11].”

A prominent physicist, former U.S. professor of physics from a top university, and a former principal investigator for the U.S. Department of Energy, Division of Advanced Energy Projects (Dr. Steven E. Jones) stated that the world trade centers were brought down by controlled demolition

A U.S. physics professor who teaches at several universities (Dr. Crockett Grabbe) believes that the World Trade Centers were brought down by controlled demolition

An expert on demolition (Bent Lund) said that the trade centers were brought down with explosives (in Danish)

A Dutch demolition expert (Danny Jowenko) stated that WTC 7 was imploded

A safety engineer and accident analyst for the Finnish National Safety Technology Authority (Dr. Heikki Kurttila) stated regarding WTC 7 that “The great speed of the collapse and the low value of the resistance factor strongly suggest controlled demolition.”

A 13-year professor of metallurgical engineering at a U.S. university, with a PhD in materials engineering, a former Congressional Office of Technology Assessment Senior Staff Member (Dr. Joel S. Hirschhorn), is calling for a new investigation of 9/11

A Danish professor of chemistry (Dr. Niels Harrit) said, in a mainstream Danish newspaper, “WTC7 collapsed exactly like a house of cards. If the fires or damage in one corner had played a decisive role, the building would have fallen in that direction. You don’t have to be a woodcutter to grasp this” (translated)

A former guidance systems engineer for Polaris and Trident missiles and professor emeritus, mathematics and computer science at a university concluded (Dr. Bruce R. Henry) that the Twin Towers “were brought down by planted explosives.”

A mechanical engineer with 20 years experience as a Fire Protection Engineer for the U.S. Departments of Energy, Defense, and Veterans Affairs, who is a contributing Subject Matter Expert to the U.S. Department of Energy Fire Protection Engineering Functional Area Qualification Standard for Nuclear Facilities, a board member of the Northern California – Nevada Chapter of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers, currently serving as Fire Protection Engineer for the city of San Jose, California, the 10th largest city in the United States (Edward S. Munyak) believes that the World Trade Center was destroyed by controlled demolition.

The former Chief of the Strategic and Emergency Planning Branch, U.S. Department of Energy, and former Director of the Office of Engineering at the Public Service Commission in Washington, D.C., who is a mechanical engineer (Enver Masud) , does not believe the official story, and believes that there is a prima facie case for controlled demolition of the World Trade Center.

A professor of mathematics (Gary Welz) said “The official explanation that I’ve heard doesn’t make sense because it doesn’t explain why I heard and felt an explosion before the South Tower fell and why the concrete was pulverized”

STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS AND ARCHITECTS

A prominent engineer with 55 years experience, in charge of the design of hundreds of major building projects including high rise offices, former member of the California Seismic Safety Commission and former member of the National Institute of Sciences Building Safety Council (Marx Ayres) believes that the World Trade Centers were brought down by controlled demolition (see also this)

Two professors of structural engineering at a prestigious Swiss university (Dr. Joerg Schneider and Dr. Hugo Bachmann) said that, on 9/11, World Trade Center 7 was brought down by controlled demolition(translation here)

Kamal S. Obeid, structural engineer, with a masters degree in Engineering from UC Berkeley, of Fremont, California

Ronald H. Brookman, structural engineer, with a masters degree in Engineering from UC Davis, of Novato California

Graham John Inman, structural engineer, of London, England

Paul W. Mason, structural engineer, of Melbourne, Australia

Mills M. Kay Mackey, structural engineer, of Denver, Colorado

David Scott, Structural Engineer, of Scotland

Nathan Lomba, Structural Engineer, of Eureka, California

Edward E. Knesl, civil and structural engineer, of Phoenix, Arizona

David Topete, civil and structural engineer, San Francisco, California

Charles Pegelow, structural engineer, of Houston, Texas (and see this)

Dennis Kollar, structural engineer, of West Bend, Wisconsin

Doyle Winterton, structural engineer (retired)

Michael T. Donly, P.E., structural engineer

William Rice, P.E., structural engineer, former professor of Vermont Technical College

An architect, member of the American Institute of Architects, who has been a practicing architect for 20 years and has been responsible for the production of construction documents for numerous steel-framed and fire-protected buildings for uses in many different areas, including education, civic, rapid transit and industrial use (Richard Gage) disputes the claim that fire and airplane damage brought down the World Trade Centers and believes there is strong evidence of controlled demolition (many other architects who question 9/11 are listed here)

LEGAL SCHOLARS

Former Federal Prosecutor, Office of Special Investigations, U.S. Department of Justice under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan; former U.S. Army Intelligence officer, and currently a widely-sought media commentator on terrorism and intelligence services (John Loftus) questions the government’s version of 9/11.

Former Inspector General, U.S. Department of Transportation; former Professor of Aviation, Dept. of Aerospace Engineering and Aviation and Professor of Public Policy, Ohio State University (Mary Schiavo) questions the government’s version of 9/11.

Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois, Champaign; a leading practitioner and advocate of international law; responsible for drafting the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, the American implementing legislation for the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention; served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International (1988-1992), and represented Bosnia- Herzegovina at the World Court, with a Doctor of Law Magna Cum Laude as well as a Ph.D. in Political Science, both from Harvard University (Dr. Francis Boyle) questions the government’s version of 9/11.

Former prosecutor in the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section of the U.S. Justice Department and a key member of Attorney General Bobby Kennedy’s anti-corruption task force; former assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois (J. Terrence “Terry” Brunner) questions the government’s version of 9/11.

Professor Emeritus, International Law, Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University; in 2001 served on the three-person UN Commission on Human Rights for the Palestine Territories, and previously, on the Independent International Commission on Kosovo (Richard Falk) questions the government’s version of 9/11., and asks whether the Neocons were behind 9/11.

Bessie Dutton Murray Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Director, Center for Human Rights, University of Iowa; Fellow, World Academy of Art and Science. Honorary Editor, Board of Editors, American Journal of International Law (Burns H. Weston) questions the government’s version of 9/11.

Former president of the National Lawyers Guild (C. Peter Erlinder), who signed a petition calling for a real investigation into 9/11. And see petition.

Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Troy University; associate General Counsel, National Association of Federal Agents; Retired Agent in Charge, Internal Affairs, U.S. Customs, responsible for the internal integrity and security for areas encompassing nine states and two foreign locations; former Federal Sky Marshall; 27-year U.S. Customs career (Mark Conrad) questions the government’s version of 9/11.

Professor of Law, University of Freiburg; former Minister of Justice of West Germany (Horst Ehmke) questions the government’s version of 9/11.

Director of Academic Programs, Institute for Policy and Economic Development, University of Texas, El Paso, specializing in executive branch secrecy policy, governmental abuse, and law and bureaucracy; former U.S. Army Signals Intelligence officer; author of several books on law and political theory (Dr. William G. Weaver) questions the government’s version of 9/11.

Famed trial attorney (Gerry Spence) questions the government’s version of 9/11.

Former Instructor of Criminal Trial Practice, Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California at Berkeley 11-year teaching career. Retired Chief Assistant Public Defender, Contra Costa County, California 31-year career (William Veale) said:

“When you grow up in the United States, there are some bedrock principles that require concerted effort to discard. One is the simplest: that our leaders are good and decent people whose efforts may occasionally warrant criticism but never because of malice or venality… But one grows up. … And with the lawyer’s training comes the reliance on evidence and the facts that persuade… After a lot of reading, thought, study, and commiseration, I have come to the conclusion that the attacks of 9/11 were, in their essence, an inside job perpetrated at the highest levels of the U S government.”

FAMILY MEMBERS AND HEROIC FIRST RESPONDERS

A common criticism of those who question 9/11 is that they are being “disrespectful to the victims and their families”.

However, half of the victim’s families believe that 9/11 was an inside job (according to the head of the largest 9/11 family group, Bill Doyle) (and listen to this interview). Many family and friends of victims not only support the search for 9/11 truth, but they demand it (please ignore the partisan tone). See also this interview.

Indeed, it has now become so clear that the 9/11 Commission was a whitewash that the same 9/11 widows who called for the creation of the 9/11 Commission are now demanding a NEW investigation (see also this video).

And dying heroes, soon-to-be victims themselves, the first responders who worked tirelessly to save lives on and after 9/11, say that controlled demolition brought down the Twin Towers and that a realinvestigation is necessary.

PSYCHIATRISTS AND PSYCHOLOGISTS

Finally, those who attack people who question the government’s version of 9/11 as “crazy” may wish to review the list of mental health professionals who have concluded that the official version of 9/11 is false:

Psychiatrist Carol S. Wolman, MD

Psychiatrist E. Martin Schotz

Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke University Medical Center, as well as Radiology, at Duke University Medical Center D. Lawrence Burk, Jr., MD

Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor of Psychology and Associate Dean of the Graduate School at Ruters University Barry R. Komisaruk

Professor of Psychology at University of New Hampshire William Woodward

Professor of Psychology at University of Essex Philip Cozzolino

Professor of Psychology at Goddard College Catherine Lowther

Professor Emeritus of Psychology at California Institute of Integral Studies Ralph Metzner

Professor of Psychology at Rhodes University Mike Earl-Taylor

Retired Professor of Psychology at Oxford University Graham Harris

Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Nebraska and licensed Psychologist Ronald Feintech

Ph.D. Clinical Neuropsychologist Richard Welser

THOUSANDS OF OTHERS

The roster above is only a sample. There are too many Ph.D. scientists and engineers, architects, military and intelligence officials, politicians, legal scholars and other highly-credible people who question 9/11 — literally thousands — to list in one place. Here are a few additional people to consider:

The former director of the FBI (Louis Freeh) says there was a cover up by the 9/11 Commission

Former air traffic controller, who knows the flight corridor which the two planes which hit the Twin Towers flew “like the back of my hand” and who handled two actual hijackings (Robin Hordon) says that 9/11 could not have occurred as the government says, and that planes can be tracked on radar even when their transponders are turned off (also, listen to this interview)

Perhaps “the premiere collapse expert in the country”, who 9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer referred to as a “very, very respected expert on building collapse”, the head of the New York Fire Department’s Special Operations Command and the most highly decorated firefighter in its NYFD history, who had previously “commanded rescue operations at many difficult and complex disasters, including the Oklahoma City Bombing, the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing, and many natural disasters worldwide” thought that the collapse of the South Tower was caused by bombs, because the collapse of the building was too even to have been caused by anything else (pages 5-6).

Former Deputy Secretary for Intelligence and Warning under Nixon, Ford, and Carter (Morton Goulder), former Deputy Director to the White House Task Force on Terrorism (Edward L. Peck), and former US Department of State Foreign Service Officer (J. Michael Springmann), as well as a who’s who of liberals and independents) jointly call for a new investigation into 9/11

Former FBI agent (Robert Wright) says “The FBI, rather than trying to prevent a terrorist attack, was merely gathering intelligence so they would know who to arrest when a terrorist attack occurred.”

Former Minnesota Governor (Jesse Ventura) questions the government’s account of 9/11 and asks whether the World Trade Center was demolished

Former FBI translator, who the Department of Justice’s Inspector General and several senators have called extremely credible (free subscription required) (Sibel Edmonds), said “If they were to do real investigations we would see several significant high level criminal prosecutions in this country. And that is something that they are not going to let out. And, believe me; they will do everything to cover this up”. She also is leaning towards the conclusion that 9/11 was an inside job. Some of her allegations have been confirmed in the British press.

SOURCE: http://www.911summary.com/

Growth Energy, an U.S. ethanol industry group, is pushing lawmakers to craft legislation requiring gasoline filling stations to inform customers what country their fuel came from in hopes of increasing awareness about money spent on oil imported from overseas.”Most Americans don’t want their paychecks going to Venezuela and other regimes that don’t agree with and support the U.S,” said retired U.S. Army General Wesley Clark, who co-chairs Growth Energy, the industry group behind the push, which is said to focus on farm-state legislators like Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN), Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, and includes a website labelmyfuel.com which details its calculations on the cost of American dependence on foreign oil.

Phil Flynn, an oil analyst at PFGBest Research in Chicago, said Growth’s strategy was a sign the ethanol industry, which has gone through several bankruptcies this year and last, was experiencing troubles during the recession. “The industry is hurting right now and they want to get a boost by trying to get a little nationalism around a barrel of oil and push alternative fuels,” he said. But even if Growth persuaded lawmakers to craft a bill and it got passed, such a plan could be hard to implement because of the rivers of fuel that flow from refineries which can get mixed by the time they reach filling stations. It would be even harder to make any dent in sales from foreign oil producers, Flynn said. “At the end of the day if we end up not buying that oil, it’s just going to be bought by someone else.”

With not a whole lot in the blogging hopper, here’s a track from the FBdN archives: “Run Wes Run.”

The “Wes” referred to in the song title is Wesley Clark, who was running for president in November 2003.

At Senator Harry Reid’s Las Vegas Clean Energy Summit on Monday, the two ends of the ethanol spectrum — first generation corn ethanol and next-generation cellulosic ethanol — were in full representation, but the stark contrast between the group’s diverging goals was clear. While the corn ethanol crew, rocked by shuttered plants and bankruptcies, is scrambling for small policy gains on issues that can help it survive, the cellulosic firms are struggling to scale to commercial production over the next five years and looking for help from government funding. Both sides have their hands out to the federal government (like most cleantech firms) but with very different requests.

First the corn ethanol side. Led by the very vocal chairman of ethanol trade group Growth Energy, General Wesley Clark, the corn ethanol sector is demanding small-step policy measures, like asking the Environmental Protection Agency to lift the amount of ethanol that can be blended with fuel from 10 percent to 15 percent. At the Vegas summit Clark named this as his number one of a five step program for boosting biofuel use in the U.S. and Clark has been reiterating this issue since March.

The CEO of the country’s largest ethanol maker Poet, Jeff Broin, has been repeating this same request to the press this week, claiming that the “Development of biofuels not made from corn will halt,” if the EPA doesn’t mandate increased ethanol blending. Groups like the American Coalition for Ethanol have also created petitions on the topic.

There are a couple issues with raising the blend wall, as Kate Galbraith of the New York Times pointed out earlier this year: fuel blends with more ethanol can result in a slight reduction in miles per gallon, they can damage engines and equipment that are not flex-fuel compatible, and land use changes and fertilizer requirements for growing corn mean indirect greenhouse gas emissions from ethanol production.

Of course the corn ethanol industry is fighting tooth and nail for incremental changes in the face of a disastrous year, with plants closed down and bankruptcies. As Broin put it to Bloomberg this week: “The industry needs to expand sources of supply to ensure financing for new projects.” With the current weak market, it needs the government to help it do that.

The cellulosic ethanol folks have an equally hard but very different task and set of demands for the feds. They’re praying that the economics of their technology works at a large commercial scale over the next several years, and — given the past six months of difficult financing — that they can get funds from the government to reach that scale. At the Vegas summit, Energy Secretary Steven Chu put it eloquently, with the empathy of a true scientist: I would personally be very disappointed if cellulosic ethanol from agricultural waste and energy crops hasn’t reach scale in five years.

A cellulosic ethanol maker like Verenium is betting on a loan guarantee from the DOE to help it scale to commercial production. In the company’s earnings call this week CEO Carlos Riva said that at the end of June Verenium was told by the DOE that it had moved into the due diligence phase (the final stage before receiving the award). Verenium is putting on a confident face that it will receive the loan, saying it’s not a matter of if but when it will receive the loan guarantee.

Unlike the mature corn biofuel sector that is now trying to patch up a sinking ship, the cellulosic ethanol firms are in the early days, where the risk is high but it’s still too early to expect any major failures. I would estimate that in about 2-3 years, we’ll start seeing a massive ramp up of some of the cellulosic ethanol firms, and in about five years the cellulosic industry will start to look a lot more like the current corn industry: busy with public campaigns and lobbying efforts to fight for every subsidy they can get to keep afloat.

Last Fall, a big split occurred in the corn ethanol lobby. This story, in the current edition of Fortune Magazine, tells the story of how the mutiny inside the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) is shaping the debate over the future of ethanol policy.

Reporting for duty in ethanol’s counterattack: Wesley Clark, the retired four-star general and former NATO commander, who signed on in February as co-chairman of an upstart ethanol trade group called Growth Energy. Clark, 64, has fully embraced the private sector since ending his run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. In addition to co-chairing Growth Energy, Clark is on the board of Dutch wind-turbine maker Juhl Wind and serves as chairman of the New York investment bank Rodman & Renshaw (RODM). At Growth Energy, Clark has lobbied against efforts in California to hold ethanol accountable for deforestation in Brazil, he’s pushed back against claims that diverting corn to ethanol drives up food prices, and he’s spoken out in favor of a Growth Energy proposal to increase the maximum allowable ethanol blend in conventional gasoline to 15% from 10%.

Without support for corn ethanol now, Clark says, the industry won’t be able to fund advances in second-generation cellulosic ethanol made from nonfood inputs such as switchgrass. He also contends that the extra 7 billion gallons a year that would be produced with a move to so-called E15 gasoline equates to $10.5 billion that American consumers would no longer be spending on foreign oil. “Some people would rather pay that money out to other countries, because they take a slice of it,” Clark says, jabbing at the oil industry. “But I would ask you, What is better for the country?”

The thing is, there are two wars being fought here. There’s the public war against ethanol’s critics, but there’s also a civil war within the ethanol industry itself. And Clark’s hiring is the clearest sign yet of how the owners and operators of many of the ethanol plants built since 2005 are pushing back against the industry’s old-line leadership.

Just consider which food company Clark chose to mention by name when he accused the food industry of using ethanol as an excuse to hike prices. “The smart people in that market, the food market — the Archer Daniels and the other companies in that market all the time — they know how it works,” Clark said at the Alternative Fuels and Vehicles conference in Orlando last April. Even though grain prices fell last year and “speculators lost their shirts, … the price of food has not fallen.”

Why would the spokesman for an organization promoting ethanol single out Archer Daniels Midland (ADM, Fortune 500)? Yes, the company is a giant food processor, but ADM almost single-handedly created the American ethanol industry. Clark says he didn’t intend his comments to be critical of ADM but rather of “other companies” that have scapegoated ethanol. But it’s hard to believe ADM’s inclusion was unintentional.

Growth Energy is positioning itself as a challenger to the Renewable Fuels Association, which until now has been the leading voice of the ethanol industry. Fairly or not, the RFA has long been perceived by some as a lobbying arm of Archer Daniels. That perception is now problematic, as small ethanol producers and their beleaguered investors question whether their interests are still aligned with those of ADM. “You’ve seen a lot of small ethanol plants go out of business,” says one South Dakota farmer and ethanol plant investor, who didn’t want to be identified for fear of antagonizing ADM. “The concern is that ADM might not mind seeing that happen to a bunch more.”

Ethanol plants are most profitable when the cost of their primary input (corn) is low and the cost of oil (which drives the price of ethanol) is high. Ethanol nirvana was achieved in 2006 when corn cost $2 a bushel and oil was pushing $70 a barrel. Since mid-2006, however, the price of corn has more than doubled, to $4 a bushel (it hit $7 last spring), while the price of oil is back to $70 after some wild gyrations. Even worse, all the new ethanol plants that have come on line have created a glut. Consequently, even though the price of oil has soared 107% since February, ethanol has barely budged, rising only from $1.95 to $2.07 a gallon. “Many ethanol projects find themselves unable to support the debt load taken on at flusher times, making restructurings or bankruptcies inevitable,” says Paul Ho, managing director at Hudson Clean Energy Partners. Ethanol producers Verasun and Aventine have already filed for Chapter 11.

ADM, however, can weather the margin squeeze. Not only does it have its profitable food businesses, but its large ethanol plants have lower cost structures than the small operators with which it competes. Moreover, when Fortune profiled ADM CEO Patricia Woertz back in 2006, she anticipated an environment like today’s. “I come from an industry that understands margins can be the jaws of life or the jaws of death,” said Woertz, who ran Chevron’s oil-refining operation before joining ADM. “Any industry building capacity as rapidly as the ethanol industry has to ask itself whether margins are going to fluctuate.”

ADM recently tried (unsuccessfully) to acquire Verasun’s plants out of bankruptcy, and regardless of whether it makes acquisitions, it is likely to emerge from the recession with a greater share of the ethanol market. ADM also stands to benefit if a drop in ethanol production translates to lower corn prices and thus wider food-processing margins. “It’s to ADM’s advantage to have some of the capacity shut down and tighten up the supply side of the equation,” says Ian Horowitz, a biofuels analyst at Soleil Securities.

Into this fray has stepped Growth Energy. While Clark is the group’s public face, the power behind it is his co-chairman, Jeff Broin, the 43-year-old CEO and founder of privately held Poet Energy. Poet surpassed ADM in annual ethanol production in 2007 and is now the largest ethanol producer in the U.S., producing more than 1.5 billion barrels a year, the equivalent of about 1% of U.S. gasoline sales. Yet because ethanol is Poet’s sole business, and because Poet typically owns only minority stakes in the ethanol plants it builds and operates, Broin’s financial interests are more closely aligned with the small plants’ than with ADM’s. If ethanol prices don’t rebound, says one RFA board member, “nobody has more to lose than Jeff Broin.”

In an interview, Broin dodged any questions related to his differences with the RFA, although he certainly implied that the RFA hadn’t been promoting ethanol aggressively enough. “We just felt it was time for a new, more aggressive voice,” says Broin, a former RFA board member. “There are topics that Growth Energy wants to move forward that just weren’t moving forward in the past.” The RFA’s response? “The notion that any group could be more aggressive than the RFA is laughable,” says RFA spokesman Matt Hartwig.

Even before oil and ethanol prices collapsed, Broin was steamed at the RFA for what he perceived as the organization’s slow response to last year’s anti-ethanol PR campaign by the Grocery Manufacturers Association, sources say. The GMA laid blame for higher food prices on the greater share of the U.S. corn crop being used for ethanol. It certainly didn’t help that ADM is a GMA member. ADM spokesman David Weintraub says that while the company “agrees more often than not” with the GMA, “we’ve made clear that we fundamentally disagree with their stance and oppose their advocacy on this issue.”

Broin’s concerns about the GMA campaign proved well founded. The RFA’s internal polling shows a five- to 10-percentage-point drop in public support for ethanol since the GMA campaign began, says the RFA board member, adding, “We were caught with our pants down.” Support for ethanol in Congress has taken a hit too, says Mark McMinimy, a political analyst at Concept Capital.

It was against this backdrop that Broin shocked the RFA last September by pulling out Poet and the Poet-run plants to form Growth Energy and then hiring Clark to front the new group. “I think he’s had a definite impact,” Broin says of Clark. “We’re obviously dealing with a smear campaign against ethanol, and his credibility is exceptionally high.” Broin describes Growth Energy as “bipartisan,” but his key hires clearly reflect the fact that Democrats control all the levers of power in Washington these days. In addition to making Clark his co-chairman, Broin hired Tom Buis as Growth Energy’s CEO. Buis may not be a household name to most Fortune readers, but in the farming world he’s a superstar. Before joining Growth Energy, Buis was president of the powerful National Farmers Union. And before that, he was the top agriculture staffer for former U.S. Senate majority leader Tom Daschle. Were it not for President Obama’s self-imposed ban on hiring ex-lobbyists, Buis would have surely made the short list for Secretary of Agriculture.

To get a sense of how high the stakes are for Growth Energy and the rest of the ethanol industry, take a look at the SEC filings of Northern Growers, the holding company for Poet’s 75-million-gallon-a-year ethanol plant in Big Stone City, S.D. In 2006 the plant made $52.8 million in profit on only $123 million in revenue. By 2008, however, Northern had swung to a $5.3 million loss on $171 million in revenue, and its future seems in jeopardy. The company’s 2008 annual report warns that Northern is in violation of a loan covenant with U.S. Bank, and that U.S. Bank could “accelerate the payment of all outstanding principal or foreclose on the [$44 million] loan.”

For Poet, which owns a 22% stake in Northern, Big Stone City’s woes have already meant the loss of $5.7 million in dividends. But no less important than the dividends are the myriad fees and expenses Poet collects. In 2008 Northern paid Poet $587,089 in management fees, $1.4 million in marketing fees for selling Northern’s ethanol, $532,832 in licensing fees for Poet’s ethanol-making technology, and $4.6 million in “denaturant” expenses. This last one covers the cost of adding chemicals to ethanol in order to make the grain alcohol undrinkable, though Poet says it’s merely a pass-through expense covering the price of the chemicals. (Why the federal government thinks it’s a good idea to force ethanol companies to add costly toxins to their product is another story.) All in all, Poet collected $7.1 million in expenses from Northern last year.

Without a rebound in ethanol prices, companies like Northern face an uncertain future and Poet a diminished one. Seeking to stimulate demand, Growth Energy has petitioned the EPA for a waiver that would allow oil refiners to increase the maximum amount of ethanol in gasoline to a 15% blend from the current 10%. (Given tax credits and the low price of ethanol right now, most refiners would probably move quickly to a 15% blend.) “You’re dealing with an industry in which demand has contracted, and what you need to get it back on course is a market opportunity,” says Clark. “That’s one reason we’re going for E15.” Clark also makes an economic case for E15: “Ethanol is a $66-billion-a-year industry with almost 500,000 jobs. If we go to E15, median estimates say you’ll create another 130,000.”

The RFA signed on to Growth Energy’s E15 petition, but it’s not expecting quick approval. Thus, the RFA is also urging the EPA to consider a less dramatic interim move to E12, which the RFA believes the EPA could approve now without going through a lengthy application process.

If the EPA sides with Growth Energy, it will be over the objections of an odd coalition of automakers, boating groups, environmentalists, and food companies that contend that not enough testing has been done on E15. Mat Dunn, legislative director for the National Marine Manufacturers Association, says there’s evidence ethanol causes corrosion, overheating, and other problems in many boat engines. Dunn says that a move to E15 could void warranties of millions of recreational motorboats currently on the water. “I sympathize that these guys are struggling, but so is everybody else,” says Dunn. “Our position is to ask the EPA to look at the science and not force this new fuel on the marketplace before determining the real effects.”

Even if the EPA does approve E15, corn ethanol won’t have much of a future unless the ethanol lobby beats back environmental restrictions on ethanol related to something called “indirect land use.” Says Buis: “If you adopt this, you not only destroy ethanol and biodiesel in America, you’ll destroy American agriculture.”

The indirect land use argument was first made in a February 2008 study published by Princeton professor Tim Searchinger and several co-authors. Searchinger’s basic premise is that when U.S. corn is taken out of the food supply for ethanol, one indirect result is deforestation elsewhere in the world, particularly in Brazil. Third World farmers are forced to plow new fields in order to compensate for the decrease in food supply. Factor in deforestation, and corn ethanol is actually less carbon-friendly than oil, according to Searchinger: “We found that corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20% savings, nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years.”

In April the California Air Resources Board accepted indirect land use when it issued new carbon standards designed to cut carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. If the standards go into effect as planned in 2011, it would lead to sharp curbs in ethanol sales in California. Moreover, the governors of 11 Northeastern states have endorsed similar proposals, and now the EPA is considering its own indirect land use standard.

JinMing Liu, a biofuels industry analyst with Ardour Capital, says the ethanol industry must find a way to counter the indirect land use argument. “If not,” says Liu, “it’s a fatal blow.” A former Columbia University research scientist, Liu is dubious of Searchinger’s claims and says that the ethanol industry “just didn’t work hard enough” to combat them. Buis agrees.

Both Clark and Buis contend that the facts don’t support Searchinger’s thesis. “Rainforest deforestation in Brazil fell by half at the same time that we doubled ethanol production,” Clark says. He adds that he has no problem incorporating indirect impacts when evaluating the pluses and minuses of various fuels. He just wants to make sure oil gets similar treatment. “In the whole 20th century, what you’ve seen is that the struggle for access to petroleum is a struggle of armies and navies that results in war,” he says. “I participated in this in my 34 years of military service, and I can tell you that none of those indirect impacts apply to corn-based ethanol. Nobody goes to war about growing corn.”

At least not literally.

Source: Jon Birger, senior writer, Fortune Magazine

The Fuel Ethanol Workshop & Expo is running through tomorrow (Thursday) at the Colorado Convention Center. Around 1,700 attendees from the ethanol industry are getting together this week to learn about new technologies and to get some financial advice on weathering the recession.

Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, now co-chairman of Growth America (an organization backed by the ethanol industry), said in a keynote address yesterday that the criticisms of ethanol – including that it drives up food prices and offers an economic incentive for deforestation (and hence global warming) – are “outrageous” and “misinformed,” and in part driven by the petroleum industry’s lobbying efforts.

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1st President:   George Washington

3rd President:  Thomas Jefferson

16th President:  Abraham Lincoln

40th President:  Ronald W. Regan

43rd President:  George W. Bush

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Biggest Cowards in U.S. History

Benedict Arnold

Joseph McCarthy

Aldrich Ames

Robert Hanssen

Jon Stewart from the Daily Show

The Editorial Board of the New York Times

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If The Bush Administration Lied About WMD, So Did These People — Version 3.0

by John Hawkins

http://www.rightwingnews.com/quotes/demsonwmds.php

Since we haven’t found WMD in Iraq, a lot of the anti-war/anti-Bush crowd is saying that the Bush administration lied about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Well, if they’re going to claim that the Bush administration lied, then there sure are a lot of other people, including quite a few prominent Democrats, who have told the same “lies” since the inspectors pulled out of Iraq in 1998. Here are just a few examples that prove that the Bush administration didn’t lie about weapons of mass destruction…

“[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.” — From a letter signed by Joe Lieberman, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara A. Milulski, Tom Daschle, & John Kerry among others on October 9, 1998

“This December will mark three years since United Nations inspectors last visited Iraq. There is no doubt that since that time, Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to refine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer- range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies.” — From a December 6, 2001 letter signed by Bob Graham, Joe Lieberman, Harold Ford, & Tom Lantos among others

“Whereas Iraq has consistently breached its cease-fire agreement between Iraq and the United States, entered into on March 3, 1991, by failing to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction program, and refusing to permit monitoring and verification by United Nations inspections; Whereas Iraq has developed weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological capabilities, and has made positive progress toward developing nuclear weapons capabilities” — From a joint resolution submitted by Tom Harkin and Arlen Specter on July 18, 2002

“Saddam’s goal … is to achieve the lifting of U.N. sanctions while retaining and enhancing Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs. We cannot, we must not and we will not let him succeed.” — Madeline Albright, 1998

“(Saddam) will rebuild his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and some day, some way, I am certain he will use that arsenal again, as he has 10 times since 1983″ — National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Feb 18, 1998

“Iraq made commitments after the Gulf War to completely dismantle all weapons of mass destruction, and unfortunately, Iraq has not lived up to its agreement.” — Barbara Boxer, November 8, 2002

“The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retained some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capability. Intelligence reports also indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons, but has not yet achieved nuclear capability.” — Robert Byrd, October 2002

“There’s no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat… Yes, he has chemical and biological weapons. He’s had those for a long time. But the United States right now is on a very much different defensive posture than we were before September 11th of 2001… He is, as far as we know, actively pursuing nuclear capabilities, though he doesn’t have nuclear warheads yet. If he were to acquire nuclear weapons, I think our friends in the region would face greatly increased risks as would we.” — Wesley Clark on September 26, 2002

“What is at stake is how to answer the potential threat Iraq represents with the risk of proliferation of WMD. Baghdad’s regime did use such weapons in the past. Today, a number of evidences may lead to think that, over the past four years, in the absence of international inspectors, this country has continued armament programs.” — Jacques Chirac, October 16, 2002

“The community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now: a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow.” — Bill Clinton in 1998

“In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security.” — Hillary Clinton, October 10, 2002

“I am absolutely convinced that there are weapons…I saw evidence back in 1998 when we would see the inspectors being barred from gaining entry into a warehouse for three hours with trucks rolling up and then moving those trucks out.” — Clinton’s Secretary of Defense William Cohen in April of 2003

“Iraq is not the only nation in the world to possess weapons of mass destruction, but it is the only nation with a leader who has used them against his own people.” — Tom Daschle in 1998

“Saddam Hussein’s regime represents a grave threat to America and our allies, including our vital ally, Israel. For more than two decades, Saddam Hussein has sought weapons of mass destruction through every available means. We know that he has chemical and biological weapons. He has already used them against his neighbors and his own people, and is trying to build more. We know that he is doing everything he can to build nuclear weapons, and we know that each day he gets closer to achieving that goal.” — John Edwards, Oct 10, 2002

“The debate over Iraq is not about politics. It is about national security. It should be clear that our national security requires Congress to send a clear message to Iraq and the world: America is united in its determination to eliminate forever the threat of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.” — John Edwards, Oct 10, 2002

“I share the administration’s goals in dealing with Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction.” — Dick Gephardt in September of 2002

“Iraq does pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf and we should organize an international coalition to eliminate his access to weapons of mass destruction. Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to completely deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.” — Al Gore, 2002

“We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction.” — Bob Graham, December 2002

“Saddam Hussein is not the only deranged dictator who is willing to deprive his people in order to acquire weapons of mass destruction.” — Jim Jeffords, October 8, 2002

“We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.” — Ted Kennedy, September 27, 2002

“There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein’s regime is a serious danger, that he is a tyrant, and that his pursuit of lethal weapons of mass destruction cannot be tolerated. He must be disarmed.” — Ted Kennedy, Sept 27, 2002

“I will be voting to give the president of the United States the authority to use force – if necessary – to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.” — John F. Kerry, Oct 2002

“The threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but as I said, it is not new. It has been with us since the end of that war, and particularly in the last 4 years we know after Operation Desert Fox failed to force him to reaccept them, that he has continued to build those weapons. He has had a free hand for 4 years to reconstitute these weapons, allowing the world, during the interval, to lose the focus we had on weapons of mass destruction and the issue of proliferation.” — John Kerry, October 9, 2002

“(W)e need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime. We all know the litany of his offenses. He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. …And now he is miscalculating America’s response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction. That is why the world, through the United Nations Security Council, has spoken with one voice, demanding that Iraq disclose its weapons programs and disarm. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but it is not new. It has been with us since the end of the Persian Gulf War.” — John Kerry, Jan 23, 2003

“We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandates of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them.” — Carl Levin, Sept 19, 2002

“Every day Saddam remains in power with chemical weapons, biological weapons, and the development of nuclear weapons is a day of danger for the United States.” — Joe Lieberman, August, 2002

“Over the years, Iraq has worked to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. During 1991 – 1994, despite Iraq’s denials, U.N. inspectors discovered and dismantled a large network of nuclear facilities that Iraq was using to develop nuclear weapons. Various reports indicate that Iraq is still actively pursuing nuclear weapons capability. There is no reason to think otherwise. Beyond nuclear weapons, Iraq has actively pursued biological and chemical weapons.U.N. inspectors have said that Iraq’s claims about biological weapons is neither credible nor verifiable. In 1986, Iraq used chemical weapons against Iran, and later, against its own Kurdish population. While weapons inspections have been successful in the past, there have been no inspections since the end of 1998. There can be no doubt that Iraq has continued to pursue its goal of obtaining weapons of mass destruction.” — Patty Murray, October 9, 2002

“As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am keenly aware that the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons is an issue of grave importance to all nations. Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.” — Nancy Pelosi, December 16, 1998

“Even today, Iraq is not nearly disarmed. Based on highly credible intelligence, UNSCOM [the U.N. weapons inspectors] suspects that Iraq still has biological agents like anthrax, botulinum toxin, and clostridium perfringens in sufficient quantity to fill several dozen bombs and ballistic missile warheads, as well as the means to continue manufacturing these deadly agents. Iraq probably retains several tons of the highly toxic VX substance, as well as sarin nerve gas and mustard gas. This agent is stored in artillery shells, bombs, and ballistic missile warheads. And Iraq retains significant dual-use industrial infrastructure that can be used to rapidly reconstitute large-scale chemical weapons production.” — Ex-Un Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter in 1998

“There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. And that may happen sooner if he can obtain access to enriched uranium from foreign sources — something that is not that difficult in the current world. We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction.” — John Rockefeller, Oct 10, 2002

“Saddam’s existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose a very real threat to America, now. Saddam has used chemical weapons before, both against Iraq’s enemies and against his own people. He is working to develop delivery systems like missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles that could bring these deadly weapons against U.S. forces and U.S. facilities in the Middle East.” — John Rockefeller, Oct 10, 2002

“Whether one agrees or disagrees with the Administration’s policy towards Iraq, I don’t think there can be any question about Saddam’s conduct. He has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do. He lies and cheats; he snubs the mandate and authority of international weapons inspectors; and he games the system to keep buying time against enforcement of the just and legitimate demands of the United Nations, the Security Council, the United States and our allies. Those are simply the facts.” — Henry Waxman, Oct 10, 2002

Commonly Ignored Observations on the Iraq war

(Wikipedia) In 2001 Saddam stated that “we are not at all seeking to build up weapons or look for the most harmful weapons . . . however, we will never hesitate to possess the weapons to defend Iraq and the Arab nation”

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(Wikipedia) Iraqi co-operation with UN weapons inspection teams was intermittent throughout the 1990s. It now appears more likely that Iraq was playing a game of bluff, hoping to convince the Western powers and the other Arab states that Iraq was still a power to be reckoned with, than that Iraq was hiding significant stockpiles of prohibited materials.[citation needed]

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(CBS)  Feb. 24, 2003 Dan Rather Interview:

“In his first interview with an American journalist in a decade, Hussein talked for more than three hours about the looming war and his efforts to head it off. Saddam indicated he will not destroy — as ordered by the U.N. — his arsenal of controversial al Samoud missiles.”

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(Foreign Affairs) May/June 2006

Saddam’s Delusions: The View From the Inside

Kevin Woods, James Lacey, and Williamson Murray

Summary –

A special, double-length article from the upcoming May/June 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs, presenting key excerpts from the recently declassified book-length report of the USJFCOM Iraqi Perspectives Project.

Kevin Woods is a defense analyst in Washington, D.C. James Lacey is a military analyst for the U.S. Joint Forces Command. Williamson Murray is Class of 1957 Distinguished Visiting Professor of History at the U.S. Naval Academy. Along with Mark Stout and Michael Pease, they were the principal participants in the USJFCOM Iraqi Perspectives Project.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The fall of Baghdad in April 2003 opened one of the most secretive and brutal governments in history to outside scrutiny. For the first time since the end of World War II, American analysts did not have to guess what had happened on the other side of a conflict but could actually read the defeated enemy’s documents and interrogate its leading figures. To make the most of this unique opportunity, the U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) commissioned a comprehensive study of the inner workings and behavior of Saddam Hussein’s regime based on previously inaccessible primary sources. Drawing on interviews with dozens of captured senior Iraqi military and political leaders and hundreds of thousands of official Iraqi documents (hundreds of them fully translated), this two-year project has changed our understanding of the war from the ground up. The study was partially declassified in late February; its key findings are presented here.

New on March 24, 2006: Today the Pentagon’s Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) released the 230-page report of the Iraq Perspective Project (IPP) on which “Saddam’s Delusions” is based. Essay authors Woods, Lacey, and Williamson were the principal authors of the IPP report. You may download the full IPP report from the Foreign Affairs Website as an Adobe Acrobat file (.pdf, 7.2 MB).

STRATEGIC CALCULUS

Throughout the years of relative external peace for Iraq after Operation Desert Storm, in 1991, Saddam Hussein continued to receive and give credence to optimistic assessments of his regime’s prospects dished up by his top military officers. Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz described the dictator as having been “very confident” that the United States would not dare to attack Iraq, and that if it did, it would be defeated. What was the source of Saddam’s confidence?

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The National Security Archive

The George Washington University

Subsequent to George W. Bush’s assumption of the presidency in January 2001, the U.S. made it clear that it would not accept what had become the status quo with respect to Iraq – a country ruled by Saddam Hussein and free to attempt to reconstitute its assorted weapons of mass destruction programs. As part of their campaign against the status quo, which included the clear threat of the eventual use of military force against the Iraqi regime, the U.S. and Britain published documents and provided briefings detailing their conclusions concerning Iraq’s WMD programs and its attempts to deceive other nations about those programs.

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Remembering the Causes of the Iraq War

http://thismodernage.wordpress.com/category/iraq-war/

President Bill Clinton December 16, 1998:

Saddam has used WMDs against Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the Kurds

“The international community has little doubt then that left unchecked Saddam Hussein will use these weapons again.”

General Wesley Clark Sept. 26, 2002:

“[Saddam Hussein] retains chemical and biological warfare capabilities and is actively pursuing nuclear capabilities…  Saddam has been actively pursuing nuclear weapons for over twenty years.”

David Kay rightly admits that somehow we made some decisions based on bad intelligence.  But it was Saddam Hussein who put forth a great effort to make our bad intelligence on WMDs look good.  UNSCOM was blocked from inspecting sites that they wanted access to in Iraq.  Iraqi escorts forbid UNSCOM from taking any photographs during inspections.  Various Iraqi personnel were not allowed to answer UNSCOM’s questions.  And worst yet, UNSCOM inspectors would be forced to wait outside of building, sometimes for up to twenty-four hours, while trucks would leave filled with who-knows-what.  When they would finally be allowed in the buildings would be empty; no furniture or documents.  Obviously weapons inspectors were never intended to find any evidence of WMDs.  Most of this information is from the testimony of Charles Duelfer, the former vice-chair of UNSCOM.  David Kay filled in this odd gap of “We can’t find weapons” – “Saddam doesn’t seem to have any, yet he acted like he did.”  God Bless him, Saddam thought he had WMDs.  He was paying big money for materials and scientists and he was getting robbed blind.  This means he had every intention of developing these weapons but only through his own dumb fault it didn’t work out.  That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard happen to a tyrant since the seventy straight years of “bad weather” that prevented the Soviet Union from growing any food and being the workers’ paradise it should have been.  Meanwhile, during his testimony Kay made an observation that should have caught everyone’s attention.  Kay believes, “this may be one of those cases where it was even more dangerous than we thought.  [When] we have the complete record, you’re going to discover that after 1998 it became a regime that was totally corrupt.  Individuals were out for their own protection.  And in a world where we know others are seeking WMD, the likelihood… of a seller and a buyer meeting up would have made that a far more dangerous country than even we anticipated…  We know that terrorists were passing through Iraq.  And we now know that there was little control over Iraq’s weapons capabilities. … Iraq was a very dangerous place.”

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Site document terrorist activities of Saddam Hussein

http://regimeofterror.com/

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Miscellaneous:

According to liberal lion, Ted Kennedy in an interview on October 6, 2002…….”Saddam Hussein is a dangerous figure. He’s got dangerous weapons”

The liberal Democrat, Senator Robert Byrd stated around the same time” The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked upon on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities”

During the democratic Clinton administration liberal leader, Nancy Pelosi said ” Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of WMD technology which is a threat to countries in the region and has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process”.

On December 16, 1998 high liberal lord Al Gore said, “If you allow someone like Saddam Hussein to get nuclear weapons, how many people is he going to kill with such weapons? He’s already demonstrated a willingness to use these weapons”.

President Bill Clinton said on February 4, 1998, “One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line”

Before his campaign for the presidency of the United States was official, the last liberal standard bearer of today’s liberal Democrat party, John Kerry said, ” Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime…..He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. And now he is miscalculating America’s response to his continued deceit and consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction….So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real”

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From the Mike Signer campaign:

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK ENDORSES MIKE SIGNER FOR LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR

Arlington, VA – General Wesley Clark (US Army, ret.) endorses Mike Signer for Lieutenant Governor.

“I know Mike from my 2004 presidential campaign in Virginia and his work on national security issues. Mike Signer has the strength and leadership that Virginia needs and I wholeheartedly endorse his candidacy for Lieutenant Governor,” said General Clark.

“The problems facing Virginia and this country are so urgent, that they demand strong, courageous leadership to carry us forward. Mike sees the office of Lieutenant Governor as more than just a placeholder position, but rather an opportunity to seek progress on the most pressing issues. Mike is focused on the future of Virginia, not the past. His approach to the office and his leadership on every issue from jobs and the economy to veterans issues and moves to the strengthen our democracy make Mike the clear choice on June 9th.”

“General Clark has served his country bravely and tirelessly,” said Mike Signer. “General Clark is a model citizen, exemplary public servant, and beacon of honor. I am honored to have his endorsement. As Lieutenant Governor, I will be a public advocate for working Virginians and shine a spotlight on problems we’ve ignored for too long.”

General Wesley Clark (US Army, ret.) was a four star general in the U.S. Army and NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe. He was a 2004 presidential candidate for the Democratic nomination.

Well, this race just got a whole lot more interesting.

THE PERFUMED PRINCE AND OTHER POLITICAL TALES

John Chuckman

The Perfumed Prince declared himself a Democrat. Many Americans may not recognize the nickname bestowed upon Wesley Clark by British colleagues as he strutted around Serbia with his set of platinum-plated general’s stars carefully repositioned each day to a freshly-starched and ironed camouflage cap, wafting a thick vapor trail of cologne. His lack of judgment demonstrated in Serbia – including an order to clear out Russian forces that British general, Sir Michael Jackson, had to ignore for fear of starting World War III – should be enough to utterly disqualify him as a candidate for President. But this is America, land of opportunity.

The former general scents, through the mists of his musky cologne, an opportunity for service. Hell, we’re at war, and any real general is better than a former male cheerleader from Andover who cross-dresses as a combat pilot. Dreams of being the hero on a white horse beckon. A fatal attraction in the American people to used-up generals is how the country managed to elect some of its worst presidents – Grant, Jackson, and Garfield, for example.

Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts announced that he wants the Democratic presidential nomination. He chose to ask for it from the deck of an aircraft carrier. I have no idea why he would repeat any part of Bush’s pathetic stunt, but to my mind it is an immediate strike against his competence. Perhaps he hoped for a promotional deal on a doll in combat gear to memorialize the occasion? That is, after all, a good deal of the country’s idea of war, limited-edition collector dolls with lots of cute little zippers, flaps, and pockets (all handsomely made in China or Indonesia). Never mind real war where pilots drop cluster bombs and napalm on tiny desperate figures far below, and the occupying troops slosh through the resulting human gore, a good deal of it belonging to children in Iraq.

Well, Kerry was awarded some medals during Vietnam, so that does set him apart from Bush. Kerry’s doll could feature cute little medals to set it apart, but then he threw the originals into a trash bin at a veterans’ demonstration in front of the Capitol in 1971. That’s not the kind of association that excites collectors of expensive kitsch in America’s better class of trailer parks.

By the way, does anyone know whether the Bush Elite Aviator doll wets? Perhaps you can change its undies as girls did with Betsy Wetsy decades ago? This would offer opportunities for different editions. Bush Original could chug little water-filled six-packs while Bush Holier-Than-Thou used a miniature pitcher of iced tea.

Senator Kerry’s involvement with Vietnam certainly reflected the war’s extremes. He earned his medals in questionable actions including the shooting of a man who was running away and the killing of a child by a member of his crew. Remember another Kerry, a former Senator, the boyish one from Nebraska who spells his name “Kerrey,” a Medal of Honor winner in Vietnam, much admired until it was learned that his grisly work there had been as a member of one of the night-crawling murder squads? If only Americans could once see what utterly filthy stuff war really is, the world might be spared a lot of needless horrors.

John Kerry, having become an opponent of the war in which he served, made a speech to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971, describing some of what he had witnessed in Vietnam. Americans had “raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephone to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.” I can only admire such truthfulness, but Kerry’s first instinct, years before, had been to contribute to the mayhem. Only when it was politically opportune did he oppose it. I get the same morally confused signals today with a speech delivered from an aircraft carrier while Iraqis suffer miserably from what such killing machines already have inflicted.

The Democrats held their first debate, hoping desperately to find an attractive candidate. Senator Joe Lieberman was there, but you have to wonder why anyone would vote to replace Bush with Lieberman. The pair remind me of one of those 1950’s cheap horror films about a monster with two heads lurching over the countryside.

Lieberman’s many pious-fraud battles over personal expression suggest that the Two Heads may actually have shared a single brain at birth. Just like his Twin Head, Lieberman avoided military service out of personal interests without hint of conscience or principle, and, just like his Twin Head, Lieberman always stands ready to see people blown up in foreign lands, just so it’s “our boyz” doing the blowing up. Capital punishment warms his heart, too, and he has organizational connections with Dick Cheney’s wife, America’s intellectual gorgon.

Even the Rev Al Sharpton, also a candidate, doesn’t bring quite the same rank smell to the nostrils.

Former general Powell, who once could have been President and have had his own fancy soldier doll, instead ends his career as a tiresome door-to-door salesman in shiny-bottomed pin-striped pants, pitching plans nobody wants to the United Nations. That “irrelevant” institution, as it was hotly described by Powell’s sales manager only a short while ago, now is being offered something called “a role” in Iraq. A role, in the weird idiom of Bush’s Washington, consists of sending vast quantities of money and troops to a reeling, miserable country Americans are already sick of hearing about without having anything to say about their use or the country’s fate. Say-so would stay in the Oval Office, the source of the vicious tantrums that created all the destruction. As of this writing, stubborn blockheads in Germany and France had rejected the attractive limited-time offer.

Not only is ethanol proving to be a dud as a fuel substitute but there is increasing evidence that it is destroying engines in large numbers

“Does the average citizen understand what this means? In from 10 to 20 years this country will be dependent entirely upon outside sources for a supply of liquid fuels … paying out vast sums yearly in order to obtain supplies of crude oil from Mexico, Russia, and Persia.”—Yale Professor Harold Hibbert, ethanol promoter, 1925

More than one major transportation-based industry in America besides Detroit is on the ropes. For the fourth time in our history the ethanol industry has come undone and is quickly failing nationally. Of course it’s one thing when Detroit collapsed with the economy; after all, that is a truly free-market enterprise and the economy hasn’t been good. But the fact that the ethanol industry is going bankrupt, when the only reason we use this additive is a massive government mandate, is outrageous at best.

Then again, the ethanol lobby and refiners have a solution to ethanol’s failure in America: Hire retired General Wesley Clark as your point man and lobby the government to increase the amount of ethanol in our fuel to 15%. The problems with that proposition are real—unlike ethanol’s benefits.

Where’s the Logic?

First, the primary job of the Environmental Protection Agency is, dare it be said, to protect our environment. Yet using ethanol actually creates more smog than using regular gas, and the EPA’s own attorneys had to admit that fact in front of the justices presiding over the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in 1995 (API v. EPA).

Second, truly independent studies on ethanol, such as those written by Tad Patzek of Berkeley and David Pimentel of Cornell, show that ethanol is a net energy loser. Other studies suggest there is a small net energy gain from it.

Third, all fuels laced with ethanol reduce the vehicle’s fuel efficiency, and the E85 blend drops gas mileage between 30% and 40%, depending on whether you use the EPA’s fuel mileage standards (fueleconomy.gov) or those of the Dept. of Energy.

Fourth, forget what biofuels have done to the price of foodstuffs worldwide over the past three years; the science seems to suggest that using ethanol increases global warming emissions over the use of straight gasoline. Just these issues should have kept ethanol from being brought back for its fourth run in American history.

Don’t let anybody mislead you: The new push to get a 15% ethanol mandate out of Washington is simply to restore profitability to a failed industry. Only this time around those promoting more ethanol in our gas say there’s no scientific proof that adding more ethanol will damage vehicles or small gas-powered engines. With that statement they’ve gone from shilling the public to outright falsehoods, because ethanol-laced gasoline is already destroying engines across the country in ever larger numbers.

Got a Spare $1,000?

Last July was bad enough for motorists on a budget—gasoline prices had shot up to more than $4 a gallon. But for some the pain in the pocketbook was about to get worse. At City Garage in Euless, Tex., for example, the first of numerous future customers brought in an automobile whose fuel pump was shot. A quick diagnosis determined that that particular car had close to 18% ethanol in the fuel. For that unlucky owner, the repairs came to nearly $900. The ethanol fun was just beginning.

City Garage manager Eric Greathouse has found that adding ethanol to the nation’s gasoline supply may be a foolish government mandate, but it has an upside he’d rather not deal with. It’s supplying his shop with a slow but steady stream of customers whose plastic fuel intakes have been dissolved by the blending of ethanol into our gasoline, or their fuel pumps destroyed. The average cost of repairs is just shy of $1,000.

It gets better.

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A draft rule that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency unveiled Tuesday about how emissions should be measured has the corn ethanol industry in an uproar, while newer next-generation biofuel startups seem to be more welcoming of the move. The rule calls for the inclusion of emissions from “indirect land use change,” which could include the impact of farmers cutting down trees or switching crops to grow corn for ethanol. The additional emissions would be calculated into a total emissions calculation that would determine whether specific biofuels count toward the renewable fuels standard.

The draft rule was announced the day before a show of support from the Obama administration for both corn and cellulosic ethanol. The administration held a call this morning with reporters to discuss not just the EPA rule but also $786.5 million in stimulus funds that will be allocated for biofuel research and commercialization and a task group called the Biofuels Interagency Working Group that will work on development programs and policies.

The EPA rule is the most controversial of the three. While many biofuel advocates favor an emissions standard, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson on Tuesday morning cited an estimate that biofuels only reduce emissions by about 16 percent compared with fossil fuels. Other studies put the number closer to 60 percent, said General Wesley Clark — an enthusiastic ethanol proponent and chairman of ethanol trade group Growth Energy — and Growth Energy CEO Tom Buis, during a conference call today. Growth Energy’s board of directors includes corn-ethanol companies POET, Western Plains Energy, Amaizing Energy, Hawkeye Renewables, and Green Plains Renewable Energy.

Clark called the modeling “science gone wild” and “way out of line with what other studies show,” and pointed out that attributing things like rainforest clearing to ethanol alone is unfair, as governments choose to cut trees for many different reasons. The good news, Clark and Buis said, is that the current model isn’t set in stone. The EPA plans to conduct peer reviews on its emissions analysis and has formed an interagency biofuels group to help come up with policies to make biofuels greener.

Jeff Broin, CEO of corn ethanol maker POET, said in a statement that he is:

[C]oncerned about the preliminary rule issued by the U.S. EPA that included an indirect land use change penalty for corn ethanol. While many scientists have found significant flaws in the models used to calculate indirect land use change, I think the very concept is flawed and stems from a lack of understanding of ethanol and agriculture.

The vastly conflicting studies out there on emissions from ethanol does make the subject confusing. Last month, when the California Air Resources Board delivered a similar call to include indirect land-use numbers in a state standard, more than 175 scientists signed a letter suggesting that those ethanol emissions numbers were flawed.

Speedy improvements in the technology could also render an easily dated emission-calculation model obsolete. An Argonne National Laboratory study last year concluded that ethanol’s water consumption fell 26.6 percent, and energy use fell 21.8 percent, over a five-year period ending in 2006.

But for some of the newer cellulosic ethanol firms, which will be able to create ethanol from waste, and non-food plants that don’t take up farm land, the ruling seems less threatening. Bruce Jamerson, CEO of cellulosic-ethanol company Mascoma, believes this process will help establish a common scientific basis for a much-needed lifecycle analysis, which will help to value biofuels’ carbon-dioxide advantages. A lack of scientific consensus has resulted in widely varying conclusions from different lifecycle studies today (see examples here and here). Jamerson said he’s confident that cellulosic fuels will come out ahead under any scientifically driven lifecycle analysis. “If we’re going to encourage low-carbon fuels, let’s come up with a common independent agreed-upon scientific standard for what constitutes low carbon,” he said.

Bob Walsh, CEO of algae-biofuel startup Aurora Biofuels, said that while the industry and science community doesn’t yet understand the whole equation of how energy plays into biofuels, it all boils down to the same thing for biofuels companies: Reducing your energy use is good for both your emissions numbers and for your economics. “If you’re energy-efficient, you probably have a good greenhouse-gas model and you’re efficient economically, too,” he said.

Even among companies involved in cellulosic ethanol, though, support isn’t universal. Mark Emalfarb, CEO of biofuel-enzyme company Dyadic International, said the rule kicks the ethanol industry when it’s down. “The economy’s unstable enough,” he said. “Either we have to get off oil or not get off oil. This seems to me to be ‘let’s throw more burdens in [biofuels'] way.’” Emalfarb recommends reducing emissions by supporting cellulosic advancements and technologies that turn carbon-dioxide into fuel or electricity, instead of by penalizing corn-based ethanol.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) calls in at 6:30am to discuss her recent battle with breast cancer.

Filmmaker Robert Greenwald (Brave New Films) calls in at 7:30am to talk about his recent trip to Afghanistan.

Actress Sharon Gless calls in at 7:48am to discuss the possibility of a “Cagney & Lacey” reunion on The Stephanie Miller Show.

Gen. Wesley Clark calls in at 8:05am to talk about President Obama’s defense plan, specifically related to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq.

President Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown met for more than two hours in London today, the day before the G-20 summit begins. Both say the G-20 must agree to tough new rules for the banking system to help lift the world out of recession.

In a late afternoon ruling yesterday, a three-judge panel in Minnesota delivered a severe blow to GOPer Norm Coleman’s attempts to return to the Senate in the ongoing recount there. The panel ruled that less than 400 absentee ballots should be opened and recounted. Coleman said there would be an appeal to the full Minnesota Supreme Court.

Kathleen Sebelius, Obama’s nominee to become Health and Human Services secretary, revealed to senators yesterday that she made “unintentional errors” on her taxes and has corrected her returns from three different years.