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Michael Moore's Open Letter to the President
marcos
Posts: 2,111
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-m ... 73457.html
I agree but hope PJ doesn't get angry again, Backspacer was so refreshing. I know there's an arguement that we don't want the hurt and killed efforts of the soldiers to be for nothing, but I was hoping that there may be a more adult looking glass situation with this administration, in realization of mistakes and the importance of moving forward.
I agree but hope PJ doesn't get angry again, Backspacer was so refreshing. I know there's an arguement that we don't want the hurt and killed efforts of the soldiers to be for nothing, but I was hoping that there may be a more adult looking glass situation with this administration, in realization of mistakes and the importance of moving forward.
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We as a nation have every right to continue the fight against Bin Laden!! I support a full swing of troops from Iraq to Afghanistan to get back on track.
Michael Moore is great and all, but he is an extreme leftist, and to some degree he is just as bad and dangerous as the extreme right wingers. The majority of us live in the middle, where Obama needs to make his decisions.
Also, michael moore is an idiot.
You make some good points in your letter, namely that the "haters" (or 'Republicans') really WILL NOT be any more accepting of Obama putting one million extra troops than the 34,000 he plans on actually sending. You are 100% right in saying that he shouldn't pander to them, because he can't make them happy-- just as there was nothing that Bush could do to please the Democrats, also known as "the other bullshit-artists-formerly-known-as-the haters." But let's not pretend that Obama was ever about getting troops out of Afghanistan. He had mentioned pulling us out of Iraq to thunderous applause (and still has yet to deliver), but always took a tougher, unpopular, but infrequently mentioned interventionist policy on Afghanistan throughout his campaign. Were you paying attention, or were you just blinded by the "hope?" I think a lot of people were. A lot of true liberals who followed Obama's campaign liked a lot of what he was promising, until he talked about Afghanistan-- now, I don't know if they thought he was trying pander to the "right" for votes, and would soon shift gears once he was elected... I don't know. I do know that neither of these parties were going to present any real solutions with who they nominated.
The other really good point you make in your letter is that Afghanistan is where so many "empires" have fallen. Such simple statements really do speak volumes-- I hope it's enough volume that you're actually heard. Thanks for the letter, and thanks for not waiting any longer to actually put this letter out there-- I was expecting the same 1-year grace period out of you that most of Obama's lukewarm supporters seem to be giving him. Do us all a favor, since people listen to you, be critical of whatever the president says tomorrow night-- don't be sweet-talked. Don't let him, or any of these men ever dance round and round and tell us what we want to hear while they do something completely different. Keep the pressure on.
PEACE,
VINNY GOOMBA
The same methods that you use to pursue any criminal, though I don't think those methods include carpet bombing a country.
Anyway, Afghanistan has nothing to do with Bin Laden.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1550366.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afg ... present%29
U.S. plans to remove the Taliban prior to September 11, 2001
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Special Activities Division paramilitary teams were active in Afghanistan in the 1990s in clandestine operations to locate and kill or capture Osama Bin Laden. These teams planned several operations, but did not receive the order to execute from President Bill Clinton.[33] These efforts did however build many of the relationships that would prove essential in the 2001 U.S. Invasion of Afghanistan.[33]
In August 2001, U.S. State Department official Christina Rocca told the Taliban, at their last negotiation over U.S. energy giant Unocal's planned oil and gas pipeline through Afghanistan, "Accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs."[34]
NBC News reported in May 2002 that a formal National Security Presidential Directive submitted two days before September 11, 2001, had outlined essentially the same war plan that the White House, the CIA and the Pentagon put into action after the Sept. 11 attacks. The plan dealt with all aspects of a war against al-Qaeda, ranging from diplomatic initiatives to military operations in Afghanistan, including outlines to persuade Afghanistan’s Taliban government to turn al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden over to the United States, with provisions to use military force if it refused.[35]
According to a 2004 report by the bipartisan commission of inquiry into 9/11, on the very next day, one day before the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Bush administration agreed on a plan to oust the Taliban regime in Afghanistan by force if it refused to hand over Osama bin Laden. At that September 10 meeting of the Bush administration's top national security officials it was agreed that the Taliban would be presented with a final ultimatum to hand over Bin Laden. Failing that, covert military aid would be channelled by the U.S. to anti-Taliban groups. And, if both those options failed, "the deputies agreed that the United States would seek to overthrow the Taliban regime through more direct action."[36]
However, an article published in March 2001 by Jane's, a media outlet serving the military and intelligence communities, suggests that the United States had already been planning and taking just such action against the Taliban six months before September 11, 2001. According to Jane's, Washington was giving the Northern Alliance information and logistics support as part of concerted action with India, Iran, and Russia against Afghanistan's Taliban regime, with Tajikistan and Uzbekistan being used as bases.[37]
The BBC News reported that, according to a Pakistani diplomat, Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, had been told by senior American officials in mid-July 2001 that military action against Afghanistan would proceed by the middle of October at the latest. The message was conveyed during a meeting on Afghanistan between senior U.S., Russian, Iranian, and Pakistani diplomats. The meeting was the third in a series of meetings on Afghanistan, with the previous meeting having been held in March 2001. During the July 2001 meeting, Mr. Naik was told that Washington would launch its military operation from bases in Tajikistan – where American advisers were already in place – and that the wider objective was to topple the Taliban regime and install another government in place.[38][39]
An article in The Guardian on September 26, 2001, also adds evidence that there were already signs in the first half of 2001 that Washington was moving to threaten Afghanistan militarily from the north, via Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. A U.S. Department of Defense official, Dr. Jeffrey Starr, visited Tajikistan in January 2001 and U.S. General Tommy Franks visited the country in May 2001, conveying a message from the Bush administration that the US considered Tajikistan "a strategically significant country".
U.S. Army Rangers were training special troops inside Kyrgyzstan, and there were unconfirmed reports that Tajik and Uzbek special troops were training in Alaska and Montana. Reliable western military sources say a U.S. contingency plan existed on paper by the end of the summer to attack Afghanistan from the north, with U.S. military advisors already in place in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.[40]
COINCIDENCE OR CORRUPTION?
There is some evidence that America could have had an economic motive for replacing the government in Afghanistan. Did this influence America's decision to invade Afghanistan and replace the government? The evidence presented below may be sufficient to raise serious questions about the motivations behind U.S. President Bush's decision to invade Afghanistan, especially in light of Bush's substantial links with the oil industry. Furthermore, recent reports indicate that the September the 11th disaster, which triggered the "war on terror" military campaign, could have been prevented. If there is enough public support, we will issue a formal request for a public statement from the American government. In the meantime, we invite you to consider the evidence below and form your own opinions.
IN 1998 AMERICA WANTED NEW GOVERNMENT IN AFGHANISTAN TO ALLOW CONSTRUCTION OF OIL PIPELINE
America has wanted a new government in Afghanistan since at least 1998, three years before the attacks on 11 September 2001. The official report from a meeting of the U.S. Government's foreign policy committee on 12 February 1998, available on the U.S. Government website, confirms that the need for a West-friendly government was recognised long before the War on Terror that followed September 11th:
"The U.S. Government's position is that we support multiple pipelines...The Unocal pipeline is among those pipelines that would receive our support under that policy. I would caution that while we do support the project, the U.S. Government has not at this point recognized any governing regime of the transit country, one of the transit countries, Afghanistan, through which that pipeline would be routed. But we do support the project."
[ U.S. House of Reps., "U.S. Interests in the Central Asian Republics", 12 Feb 1998 ]
http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/in ... 9_0.htm#17
"The only other possible route [for the desired oil pipeline] is across, Afghanistan which has of course its own unique challenges."
[ "U.S. Interests in the Central Asian Republics", 12 Feb 1998 ]
http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/in ... 9_0.htm#33
"CentGas can not begin construction until an internationally recognized Afghanistan Government is in place."
[ "U.S. Interests in the Central Asian Republics", 12 Feb 1998 ]
http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/in ... 9_0.htm#33
The Afghanistan oil pipeline project was finally able to proceed in May 2002. This could not have happened if America had not taken military action to replace the government in Afghanistan.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2017044.stm
THE CONQUEST OF AFGHANISTAN BEGAN BEFORE 9/11
The war on Afghanistan was sold to the public as a reaction to the attacks on 11 September 2001. However, the war was planned before the infamous 9/11 disaster, and the military action began long before the World Trade Center fell. The conquest of Afghanistan had been planned since at least 12 February 1998, and 9/11 happened just in time to secure public support for the attacks.
TIMELINE
3rd November 1998 - attacks stop US oil pipeline:
Up to 80 cruise missiles were fired at Afghanistan and Sudan in August An American-funded training project in Afghanistan has closed down as a result of the US cruise missile attack on the country in August. The programme was funded by the American oil company, Unocal, which was once hoping to be involved in building a gas pipeline across the country from Turkmenistan to Pakistan.
(BBC News, "US attack closes US project", 3 November 1998. )
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/207183.stm
2nd January 1999 - US strikes targets in Afghanistan:
No sooner had the Taleban won a series of victories in the north, than the US launched an attack on camps in Afghanistan run by Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, who had allegedly masterminded the bombing of US embassies in East Africa.
(BBC News, "Afghanistan: Campaign of conflict", 2 January 1999.)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/241477.stm
15th March 2001 - allies invade Afghanistan:
India is believed to have joined Russia, the USA and Iran in a concerted front against Afghanistan's Taliban regime. Military sources in Delhi, claim that the opposition Northern Alliance's capture of the strategic town of Bamiyan, was precipitated by the four countries' collaborative effort.
(Janes International Security News, "India joins anti-Taliban coalition", 15 March 2001.)
http://www.janes.com/security/internati ... _1_n.shtml
16th March 2001 - Bush prepares America to wage war overseas:
“I want to remind the American people that the prime suspect's [Osama Bin Laden] organisation is in a lot of countries,” Mr Bush told reporters on the White House lawn.
(BBC News, "America widens 'crusade' on terror", 16 September 2001. )
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1547561.stm
3rd September 2001 - allies deploy huge task-force for “fictional” conflict:
The aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious has sailed from Portsmouth to lead the biggest Royal Navy and Royal Marine deployment since the Falklands. HMS Illustrious is the flagship of three groups of warships travelling to the Middle East to take part in exercise "Saif Sareea 2". More than 24 surface ships from Britain, plus two nuclear submarines, will be completing the 13,000 mile round trip. The operation, costing nearly £100m, will end with a major excercise before Christmas that will also involve the Army, Royal Air Force and Armed Forces of Oman. The strike force has been put together to take part in a conflict between the fictional forces of the so-called state of 'Alawham' and those of Oman.
(BBC News, Carrier heads for the Middle East, 3 September 2001. )
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1522987.stm
11th September 2001 - the war comes home to America:
*** 9/11 ***
18th September 2001 - diplomat reveals 9/11 “response” began before 9/11:
A former Pakistani diplomat has told the BBC that the US was planning military action against Osama Bin Laden and the Taleban even before last week's attacks. Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October. Mr Naik said US officials told him of the plan at a UN-sponsored international contact group on Afghanistan which took place in Berlin. The wider objective, according to Mr Naik, would be to topple the Taleban regime and install a transitional government of moderate Afghans in its place - possibly under the leadership of the former Afghan King Zahir Shah. Mr Naik was told that Washington would launch its operation from bases in Tajikistan, where American advisers were already in place. He was told that Uzbekistan would also participate in the operation and that 17,000 Russian troops were on standby.Mr Naik was told that if the military action went ahead it would take place before the snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest.
(BBC News, "US 'planned attack on Taleban'", 18 September 2001. )
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1550366.stm
November 1, 2004
CounterPunch
How Bush Was Offered Bin Laden and Blew It
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
'...On the morning of October 12, 2000, Mohabbat was in Washington DC, preparing for an 11am meeting at the State Department , when he got a call from State, telling him to turn on the tv and then come right over. The USS Cole had just been bombed. Mohabbat had a session with the head of State's South East Asia desk and with officials from the NSC. They told him the US was going to "bomb the hell out of Afghanistan". "Give me three weeks," Mohabbat answered, "and I will deliver Osama to your doorstep." They gave him a month.
Mohabbat went to Kandahar and communicated the news of imminent bombing to the Taliban. They asked him to set up a meeting with US officials to arrange the circumstances of their handover of Osama. On November 2, 2000, less than a week before the US election, Mohabbat arranged a face-to-face meeting, in that same Sheraton hotel in Frankfurt, between Taliban leaders and a US government team.
After a rocky start on the first day of the Frankfurt session, Mohabbat says the Taliban realized the gravity of US threats and outlined various ways bin Laden could be dealt with. He could be turned over to the EU, killed by the Taliban, or made available as a target for Cruise missiles. In the end, Mohabbat says, the Taliban promised the "unconditional surrender of bin Laden" . "We all agreed," Mohabbat tells CounterPunch, "the best way was to gather Osama and all his lieutenants in one location and the US would send one or two Cruise missiles."
Up to that time Osama had been living on the outskirts of Kandahar. At some time shortly after the Frankfurt meeting, the Taliban moved Osama and placed him and his retinue under house arrest at Daronta, thirty miles from Kabul.
In the wake of the 2000 election Mohabbat traveled to Islamabad and met with William Milam, US ambassador to Pakistan and the person designated by the Clinton administration to deal with the Taliban on the fate of bin Laden. Milam told Mohabbat that it was a done deal but that the actual handover of bin Laden would have to be handled by the incoming Bush administration.
On November 23, 2000, Mohabbat got a call from the NSC saying they wanted to put him officially on the payroll as the US government's contact man for the Taliban. He agreed. A few weeks later an official from the newly installed Bush NSC asked him to continue in the same role and shortly thereafter he was given a letter from the administration (Mohabbat tells us he has a copy), apologizing to the Taliban for not having dealt with bin Laden, explaining that the new government was still setting in, and asking for a meeting in February 2001.
The Bush administration sent Mohabbat back, carrying kindred tidings of delay and regret to the Taliban three more times in 2001, the last in September after the 9/11 attack. Each time he was asked to communicate similar regrets about the failure to act on the plan agreed to in Frankfurt. This procrastination became a standing joke with the Taliban, Mohabbat tells CounterPunch "They made an offer to me that if the US didn't have fuel for the Cruise missiles to attack Osama in Daronta, where he was under house arrest, they would pay for it."
Kabir Mohabbat's final trip to Afghanistan on the US government payroll took place on September 3, 2001. On September 11 Mohabbat acted as translator for some of the Taliban leadership in Kabul as they watched tv coverage of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Four days later the US State Department asked Mohabbat to set up a meeting with the Taliban. Mohabbat says the Taliban were flown to Quetta in two C-130s. There they agreed to the three demands sought by the US team: 1. Immediate handover of bin Laden; 2. Extradition of foreigners in Al Qaeda who were wanted in their home countries; 3. shut-down of bin Laden's bases and training camps. Mohabbat says the Taliban agreed to all three demands.
This meeting in Quetta was reported in carefully vague terms by Pizzey on September 25, where Mohabbat was mentioned by name. He tells us that the Bush administration was far more exercised by this story than by any other event in the whole delayed and ultimately abandoned schedule of killing Osama.
On October 18, Mohabbat tells us, he was invited to the US embassy in Islamabad and told that "there was light at the end of the tunnel for him", which translated into an invitation to occupy the role later assigned to Karzai. Mohabbat declined, saying he had no desire for the role of puppet and probable fall guy.
A few days later the Pizzey story was aired and Mohabbat drew the ire of the Bush administration where he already had an enemy in the form of Zalmay Khalilzad, appointed on September 22 as the US special envoy to Afghanistan. After giving him a dressing down, US officials told Mohabbat the game had changed, and he should tell the Taliban the new terms: surrender or be killed. Mohabbat declined to be the bearer of this news and went off the US government payroll.
Towards the end of that same month of October, 2001 Mohabbat was successfully negotiating with the Taliban for the release of Heather Mercer (acting in a private capacity at the request of her father) when the Taliban once again said they would hand over Osama Bin Laden unconditionally. Mohabbat tells us he relayed the offer to David Donahue, the US consulate general in Islamabad. He was told, in his words,that "the train had moved". Shortly thereafter the US bombing of Afghanistan began...'
Also, does anyone know what the accuracy is of this statement: "there are less than 100 members of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan" ??? (Moore)
I've always felt that the original Al-Queda BRASS, the big dogs, were never that great in number-- maybe there were a few thousand of them at some point, but I'm sure that most of them are either dead, incapacitated, or on the run right now. Ask Sean Hannity the same question and he'll tell you that there are a million of them. He's wrong that there are a million Al-Queda members out there to get us. What he's right about is that there are millions of people in that region that do hate our government-- if they hate our citizens, it's because we refuse to force our government to change their foreign policy. After all, what do they believe to "know" about us? They know the same lie that we keep telling ourselves: They know that we have a "democracy" where majority rules, and that the people run our government. If we run the government (which we really don't, but again, how would the Iraqi and Afghan people know otherwise?), and our military is on their soil nation-building, you better believe that people who weren't "extremists" are going to start leaning that way.
It's just like if China or Russia started storming our shores in the interests of "protecting" their country-- I would think that everyone on this board who is currently against gun ownership, and even semi-automatic and automatic weapons ownership may start to change their minds. How quickly can we go from peace-loving citizens to "insurgent extremists" if we were under attack? This is what is happening on the otherside of the world right now. I'm not saying this is going to happen, I'm just using an example, here.
In short, I believe that the original, small, group of Al Queada leaders are weakened right now. However, there are everyday citizens of these countries unofficially signing up to protect what is theirs, and I'm sure some are even considering taking pre-emptive measures to do so-- it's not like they don't see our influence coming from a mile away. Who is going to lead them? It's usually whoever speaks the loudest, and he's probably the crazy guy.
We've come to the point where we need to try a truly controlled experiment: pull all of our troops from everywhere around the globe and bring them back here. Let people elsewhere run their countries the way they want, with no opposition from us. Trade with all of them. If they then feel the need to attack us, after we truly have no more influence over how they govern themselves, we can say for sure that it was an unprovoked attack. Then we declare war through Congress as outlined in the Constitution, and let them have it. I firmly believe that we won't need to do it.
pshh Michael Moore doesnt have a wife and two kids that he will miss if he doesnt do what the "government" or the real people in charge want him to do.