UQ Wire: A Controlled Burn

For several weeks now the smart money has been betting that the whirlwind of admissions and apparently damaging leaks about 9/11 has not been an uncontrolled disaster for the Bush Administration but instead has been a managed attempt at a "controlled burn," which refers to the somewhat counter-intuitive firefighters' practice of lighting small blazes in the path of an advancing wildfire in order to stop it. The name of the game is to admit one kind of wrongdoing in order to obscure another that is worse -- in Watergate parlance, a "limited hangout." Obviously a major part of the Bush Administration's strategy in spinning their prior knowledge of 9/11 is to direct attention to failures down the rungs.

In her testimony, FBI agent Colleen Rowley seems to have been willing so far to play softball and stay on the topic of FBI "reform" while steering clear of the more critical issue of the deliberate obstruction of justice in the Moussaoui case (because she violated regulations by revealing actual details of the case, this may have made her vulnerable to pressure and threats of criminal prosecution). Thus she seems useful to the overall strategy.

The testimony of FBI agent Robert Wright, who has not been so warmly received, is much more blunt in focusing on the active and willful resistance to antiterror investigations by FBI management (not to mention Bush's little executive order W-199I forcing agents to back off the bin Laden clan under threat of arrest). I doubt he will be publicly praised by director Mueller anytime soon (however, Wright's handlers, Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch and attorney David Schippers, are both deserving of careful scrutiny because of their past involvement in the stage-managed dog-and-pony show of the Clinton Impeachment, which insiders know was not simply a broadside partisan attack on a sitting president but also was carefully designed to distract public attention away from the truly big Clinton crimes whose exposure would have damaged the Bush camp severely; therefore, both are seen by some as duplicitous inside players, not outsiders. Keep an eye out...).

http://www.infowars.com/jw_transcript.htm

I strongly disagree with the simplistic partisan approach offered by the following article (which has been very popular), but I agree with the points made about the Bush Admin's diversionary tactics:

The Bush Scandal for Dummies, by Bernard Weiner

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/Weiner060402/weiner060402.html

another interesting commentary:

Is It OK To Hate Bush? In which the president's carefully orchestrated dumb-guy shtick proves hollow and dubious

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2002/06/07/notes060702.DTL&nl=fix

The power of the "institutional failure" ruse, which deflects anger and blame towards "bureaucratic incompetence," is that it provides an escape valve for the public's cognitive dissonance, creating a false resolution, or syncretism, between the need for comforting denial in the face of evidence for greater criminality and the simultaneous need to feel that one is still being critically-minded and "sticking it to The Man."

The ultimate goal of the current smoke-mongering is to undermine the drive for an independent investigatory commission into 9/11, which indeed already seems in some danger of fading into myth. No one is naieve enough to believe that a "blue-ribbon" commission would wind up being truly independent or unbiased, but it is the only real chance of getting access to more information which will flesh out and perhaps give final confirmation to the investigatory efforts being made by the public.

No surprise... the Congressional committees "investigating" 9/11 are loaded with corrupt insiders with numerous conflicts of interest:

http://burningbush.netfirms.com/9-11committee.htm

Acting in incongrous congruity with the Bush Administration to deliver a one-two punch against the drive towards widened investigation of 9/11 has been a small group of pundits amongst the establishment "left", who have engaged in the past few weeks in a bizarre overkill campaign to label all of those daring to question the official line on 9/11 and openly discussing the evidence for criminal negligence / complicity as "conspiracy nuts," and threatening such errant progressives with ridicule and excommunication from "The Movement." This is covered in a new special section at questionsquestions.net, "The Magic Bullet Dissidents." From correspondence to questionsquestions, it is clear to me that these tactics are meeting with deep and widespread simmering outrage from the progressive grassroots, from whom the left elite establishment have become desperately disconnected. Whom do they think they are serving?

Even stuffy and conservative military journal Jane's Intelligence Weekly notes that the real questions that need to be asked are not about a failure of intelligence but about the decisions and agendas at the political level:

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/JAN205A.html

Some questions that the Intelligence Committee won't be asking in public:

http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/2002/06/07_Mom.html

Clearly presented timeline of the morning of 9/11 by Cheryl Seal. Just one facet of a body of evidence that cannot be accounted for by an institutional "intelligence failure":

http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=184892&group=webcast

Although heavily partisan, popular site Democrats.com has been fighting hard to keep Bush and his cabinet from wiggling away. Their new BuckStopsThere.com is a convenient summary:

http://democrats.com/display.cfm?id=278

petition:

http://democrats.com/elandslide/petition.cfm?campaign=911

Just at the point when the controlled burn seemed not to be controlling very much, Bush's recent announcement about a plan for a new cabinet-level agency for Homeland Security has upped the ante...

Bush Intelligence Plan Meant to Blunt Tough Questions

http://villagevoice.com/issues/0224/ridgeway2.php

Even Newsweek/MSNBC acknowledges that the new Bush plan is a ruse...

http://www.msnbc.com/news/763413.asp

This is not to say that the new plans do not deserve genuine controversy...

Do the dots connect to a police state?

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,53037,00.html?tw=wn_ascii

Building a modern version of the East German Stasi?

http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/06.08A.ash.stasi.htm

Or, if one compares the Patriot Act to Hitler's Enabling Act, then the current Homeland Security plans might be compared to the Reich Security Main Office (especially given the grim inclusion of FEMA, well known for having hosted Ollie North's infamous 80s-era REX-84 provisional plan for rounding up political dissidents and immigrants into detention camps in the event of a full-scale war in Central America)

http://www.topographie.de/e/his_4.htm

There are many layers of deception operating, not just one. The new Homeland Security plan distracts from looking at the fundamental problems of the FBI and CIA; looking at these "fundamental problems" distracts from looking at evidence of willful obstruction of justice by midlevel management; looking at this obstruction of justice distracts from the fact that the Bush Administration already had enough warnings information prior to 9/11 to take additional anti-terrorist measures, but did absolutely nothing in response; looking solely at the failure to respond by the Bush Administration distracts from the fact that the exact identity of all the hijackers and the source of the 9/11 plot are still unconfirmed, and there is a basis to believe that they were assisted from the inside, which adds an entirely larger dimension to the puzzle.

On a much more positive front, a new non-partisan effort has emerged to give enhanced visibility and credibility to the search for real answers about 9/11. UnansweredQuestions.org will be holding a national press conference on Monday, June 10.

The event will be moderated by Catherine Austin Fitts, President of Solari and former Assistant Secretary of Housing during the 1st Bush administration. Her behind-the-scenes role in the cleanup of the huge HUD, BCCI, and S&L scandals, as well as her subsequent private-sector career as an economic reformer (who has suffered years of attacks from the feds) makes her a uniquely credible and important witness to the acute, fundamental criminality of the Bush Administration. In recent months she has made critical contributions to public research into the Enron / Dyncorp scandals, and the fact that she is now putting her weight behind publicly advocating full investigation of 9/11 is a milestone development.

Also of critical importance is the participation of high-level legal representatives of 9/11 victims' families. This issue is now absolutely out of the underground!

The opening keynote will be delivered by investigative journalist Mike Ruppert.

more info:

http://www.unansweredquestions.org/

Recent statement by Catherine Austin Fitts (a must read!)

The Real Deal on 9:11: Rewarding Failure

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0205/S00173.htm

I have high hopes that Fitts' efforts will have long legs, because if we are going to get out of this mess it will require the contributions of many people like her, who not only see through the lies of the "War on Terror" but also see through the lie of the "two party system" and the increasingly outdated concept of left-vs-right, which serves to keep the people divided against each other rather than recognizing the power of the mannipulators at the top who have always played both sides. The criminal connections between the Clintons and Bushes mentioned by Fitts are only one example at the tip of the iceberg of this phenomenon... if there is not a big awakening about this, I fear that Bush's inevitable replacement down the road will turn out to be a wolf in sheep's clothing, and we won't be anywhere close to being out of the woods.

Historical example: When the BCCI scandal broke during the first Bush Administration, it was revealed that this criminal cabal had been financing both left-wing AND right-wing terrorist groups. Manufacturing enemies... creating Hegelian dialectics... this is the way the system REALLY works. As a further example, the Bolsheviks and the Nazis were both secretly funded and aided in their rise to power by many of the same Wall Street elitists. The exposure of "terrorism" as the newest manufactured & manipulated enemy will hopefully go a long way towards destroying many long-standing illusions...

http://www.dcia.com/bcci.html

ENDS

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