A few months ago, during a White House visit by President Fox of Mexico, President Bush let slip a curious code name: Operation Desert Badger. The reference was part the President's reply when he was asked "...is it true, as your former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill says, that you started planning for the invasion of Iraq within days of your inauguration? Do you feel betrayed? And should he have released those documents?"

In response, President Bush said "the stated policy of my administration towards Saddam Hussein was very clear. Like the previous administration, we were for regime change. And in the initial stages of the administration, as you might remember, we were dealing with Desert Badger, or fly-overs and fly-betweens and looks, and so we were fashioning policy along those lines. And then, all of a sudden, September the 11th hit. And as the President of the United States, my most solemn obligation is to protect the security of the American people. That's my -- to me that's the most solemn thing an American President -- or any president -- must do. And I took that duty very seriously."

So here we have one of the President's famous instances of equating the September 11th attacks with Saddam Hussein and Iraq. But there's something else. Tonight CNN reports "the secret plan Operation Desert Badger called for escalating air strikes within four to eight hours of a shootdown [of a US/UK fly-over]. Pentagon sources say a long list of targets across the country would be hit, crippling Iraqi air defenses and command and control. The plan went far beyond the Clinton administration's 1998 Operation Desert Fox, which hit 100 targets in four days...And so we were fashioning policy along those lines...One defense official familiar with the plan says, "If a plane got shot down, that was the trigger, we were going in." Over time, the source said, Operation Desert Badger evolved into a more robust plan for attacking the regime...The president would have quickly decided whether to take the next step, approving a small number of ground troops to secure key areas. At the time, only a few thousand troops were in nearby Kuwait. Sources tell CNN Operation Desert Badger was not a plan to invade Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power...Defense Secretary Rumsfeld says the new options were justified by the threat..."We packaged them, we pre-cleared them with the president, and we were cocked and ready to do a variety of different things in the event something occurred that fit one of those possible unfortunate possibilities.""

Desert Badger was a planned retaliation against the Iraqi regime. One that went far beyond Desert Fox. A decapitation strike perhaps? Was Saddam one of the command and control targets? If so, with all this planning and emphasis on Saddam and Iraq ready to be "triggered" by something "that fit one of those possible unfortunate possibilities", can the Administration still say with a straight face that it didn't push Dick Clarke to fabricate a connection between the September 11th attacks and Iraq?

Labels: 9/11, Desert Badger, Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, iraq, Mexico, saddam hussein, Vincente Fox

via boingboing...

It's not quite Crouching Tiger, but I have a difficult time not imagining these things dancing with blades in their hands cutting and slashing their way to global dominance.

Labels: technology

For the subsistence-level, tribal peoples of the world a new age is dawning. It is the age of the worker.

"Developing" nations have been annexed wholly, or in-part, by multi-national corporations seeking new markets, cheap labor, and lax environmental laws. However, these corporations have a problem.

What happens when the villagers don't want your goods, your jobs, or your money? After all, what use is TV to a village with no electricity? A tribe that has spent generations developing a sustainable relationship with nature and culture incompatible with western ideals (i.e. capitalism, democracy, monotheism, etc.) has no need for the trappings of modern life - nor the sweat-shop labor necessary to enjoy them. The solution: Destroy the tribes.

Militias armed by western governments and multi-national corporations stalk these nations systematically killing men and raping women. Ethnic cleansing? Perhaps. But it's also an effective way of depopulating the countryside while flooding urban centers - some next door, some half-way around the globe - with refugees...most of whom are women and children. The result: An instant source of cheap, victimized, terrorized, labor at the mercy of their employers.

The corporations get their workforce, their merchandise, and a dumping ground for their pollution. The murderers and rapists on the ground melt back into the night - all the richer from the spoils. And finally, we - the first-world we - get our campaign pullovers on the cheap.

Labels: Africa, economy, refugees, slavery, UN

Richard A. Clarke, former counterterrorism coordinator to Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush has hit the administration where it hurts. He claims the White House - prior to September 11, 2001 - couldn't be bothered with talk of terrorism. Furthermore, Clarke comments on the administration's obsession with Iraq, not Osama since day one of the administration despite overwhelming intelligence that something big was about to go down.

Before, during, and after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center towers, the White House was hell bent on going to war with Saddam Hussein. So much so that Clarke was pressured to concoct a link between al Qaeda and Iraq. When he refused to do so, he was shuffled off to head a new cyber-terrorism initiative.

As expected the administration has come out with guns blazing. Fortunately for Clarke, he isn't married to a covert CIA agent whose life can be threatened by exposing her identity to the world with a few well placed phone calls. Nevertheless, it's character assassination a-go-go inside the beltway today as the White House fights to keep this story out of American diner conversation. Ain't election years a bitch, George?

Labels: 9/11, al-Qa'eda, bill clinton, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, iraq, Richard A. Clarke, Ronald Reagan, saddam hussein