Is Bush Camp Preparing Another 'October Surprise' For The 2004 US Election?

"I just wake up in the morning and tell myself, 'There's been a military coup [in the US],' and then it all makes sense,' said one veteran US foreign service officer."
Diplomats on the Defensive
Los Angeles Times, 9 May 2003

"Over the past few days, in the wake of the bombings in Karbala and the ideological disputes that delayed the signing of Iraq's interim constitution, there have been reports that U.S. forces have unloaded a large cargo of parts for constructing long-range missiles and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the southern ports of Iraq. A reliable source from the Iraqi Governing Council, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Mehr News Agency that U.S. forces, with the help of British forces stationed in southern Iraq, had made extensive efforts to conceal their actions. He added that the cargo was unloaded during the night as attention was still focused on the aftermath of the deadly bombings in Karbala and the signing of Iraq's interim constitution. The source said that in order to avoid suspicion, ordinary cargo ships were used to download the cargo, which consisted of weapons produced in the 1980s and 1990s... The source went on to say that the rest of the weapons were probably transferred in vans to an unknown location somewhere in the vicinity of Basra overnight. 'Most of these weapons are of Eastern European origin and some parts are from the former Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. The U.S. obtained them through confiscations during sales of banned arms over the past two decades,' he said."
U.S. Unloading WMD in Iraq
Tehran Times, 13 March 2004

"... witnesses to [former Secretary of State Madeline] Albright's comment said the ambassador did not appear to be joking Tuesday when she suggested President Bush may reveal bin Laden's capture as an 'October surprise' before next November's presidential election. Albright was in the Fox News studio's green room waiting to appear on an evening program when she made the remark. 'She said, 'Do you suppose that the Bush administration has Usama bin Laden hidden away somewhere and will bring him out before the election?' said Fox News analyst and Roll Call executive editor Mort Kondracke. 'She was not smiling.' Two makeup artists who prep the guests before their appearances also reported that Albright did not ask her question in a joking manner.'"
Albright: Bin Laden Comments Were 'Tongue-in-Cheek'
Fox News, 17 December 2003

"Suspicions about a deal between the Reagan campaign and Iran over the hostages have circulated since the day of President Reagan's inaugural, when Iran agreed to release the 52 American hostages exactly five minutes after Mr. Reagan took the oath of office. Later, as it became known that arms started to flow to Iran via Israel only a few days after the inauguration, suspicions deepened that a secret arms-for-hostages deal had been concluded. Five years later, when the Iran-contra affair revealed what seemed to be a similar swap of hostages for arms delivered through Israel, questions were revived about the 1980 election. In a nice, ironic twist, the phrase `October surprise,' which Vice Presidential candidate George Bush had coined to warn of possible political manipulation of the hostages by Jimmy Carter, began to be applied to the suspected secret activities of the 1980 Reagan-Bush campaign... In a Madrid hotel in late July 1980, an important Iranian cleric, Mehdi Karrubi, who is now the speaker of the Iranian Parliament, allegedly met with Mr. Casey [Director of the CIA] and a U.S. intelligence officer who was operating outside authority. The same group met again several weeks later.... From Oct. 15 to Oct. 20, events came to a head in a series of meetings in several hotels in Paris, involving members of the Reagan-Bush campaign and high-level Iranian and Israeli representatives. Accounts of these meetings and the exact number of participants vary considerably among the more than 15 sources who claim direct or indirect knowledge of some aspect of them. There is, however, widespread agreement on three points: William Casey was a key participant: the Iranian representatives agreed that the hostages would not be released prior to the Presidential election on Nov. 4; in return, Israel would serve as a conduit for arms and spare parts to Iran. At least five of the sources who say they were in Paris in connection with these meetings insist that George Bush was present for at least one meeting. Three of the sources say that they saw him there... Immediately after the Paris meetings, things began to happen. On Oct. 21, Iran publicly shifted its position in the negotiations with the Carter Administration, disclaiming any further interest in receiving military equipment.... Between Oct. 21 and Oct. 23, Israel sent a planeload of F-4 fighter aircraft tires to Iran in contravention of the U.S. boycott and without informing Washington. Cyrus Hashemi, using his own contacts began privately organizing military shipments to Iran. On Oct. 22, the hostages were suddenly dispersed to different locations. And a series of delaying tactics in late October by the Iranian Parliament stymied all attempts by the Carter Administration to act on the hostage question until only hours before Election Day... On Jan. 15, Iran did an about-face, offering a series of startling concessions that reignited the talks and resulted in a final agreement in the last few hours of Jimmy Carter's Presidency. The hostages were released on Jan. 21, 1981, minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as President. Almost immediately thereafter, according to Israeli and American former officials, arms began to flow to Iran in substantial quantities... Moshe Arens, the Israeli Ambassador to Washington in 1982, told The Boston Globe in October 1982 that Israeli's arms shipments to Iran at this time were coordinated with the U.S. Government `at almost the highest of levels.' ... The allegations of these individuals have many disturbing implications for the U.S. political system. One is the tampering with foreign policy for partisan benefit. That has, of course, happened before and it may well happen again, but it assumes special poignancy in this case since it would have involved tampering with the lives and freedom of 52 Americans. Another implication is that leaders of the U.S. exposed themselves to the possibility of blackmail by Iran or Israel. Third, the events suggest that the arms-for-hostage deal that in the twilight of the Reagan Presidency became known as the Iran-contra affair, instead of being an aberration, was in fact the re-emergence of a policy that began even before the Reagan-Bush Administration took office."
The Election Story of the Decade
New York Times, 15 April 1991

"On April 15, former Carter administration staffer Gary Sick gave added weight to the 'October Surprise' theory -- the allegations that officials in the 1980 Reagan-Bush campaign cut a deal with Iranian revolutionaries to delay the release of the fifty-two hostages until after Reagan's inauguration -- with a 2,000-word op-ed piece in The New York Times.... The day Sick's piece appeared in the times, listing dates and participants in suspected meetings between campaign staffers and Iranian clerics, none of the network evening newscasts even mentioned the story... there were a number of newsworthy developments... [including] the State Department considered blocking a visa for former Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, who came to the U.S. to promote his book My Turn To Speak, in which he asserts that the Reagan campaign cut a deal with the Iranians at the height of the hostage crisis; President Bush made his first public denials of the allegations; and eight of the former hostages voiced suspicions about the circumstances surrounding their release. But many of these developments, which were reported by the wire services and picked up by alternative papers and even by the Phil Donahue show, were missed altogether by the major media. And a story that could make [Watergate's] Deep Throat look shallow has yet to make the cover of Time or Newsweek. When the story does appear, the key questions not only go unanswered, they go unasked. "
WHO WILL UNWRAP THE OCTOBER SURPRISE?
Columbia Journalism Review, Sept/Oct 1991

"[Paul Wilcher, the] Attorney investigating corruption at Mena Airport with Casolaro and the 1980 'October Surprise' was found dead on a toilet June 22, 1993 in his Washington, DC apartment. [He] Had delivered a report to [US Attorney General] Janet Reno 3 weeks before his death."
Just A Few People Clinton Didn't Have To Pardon
Afrocentric News, 2000

"McClendon has been told that preliminary autopsy results have found no natural cause of death, and no other cause of death to explain Wilcher's demise. Given that Wilcher, in his 40s, was in apparent good health, this seems fairly astonishing. A much larger issue is also implied here: if critics of our government are found dead in their bathrooms from obscure causes, and the government itself doesn't take steps to find out why, then our freedoms themselves are threatened -- as well as the activities that protect those freedoms. If individual investigation and criticism of government activities is chilled or intimidated into silence, then democracy loses its most important protection."
Letter To Attorney General Janet Reno
Dr Garby Leon, Columbia Pictures, 14 July 1993

'October Surprise'
Election Campaign 1980 - The Reagan/Bush Covert Arms Deal With The Iranians
Click Here

"The most detailed analysis yet of the contested Florida votes from last year's [2000] presidential election - with the potential to question President George Bush's legitimacy - is being withheld by the news organisations that commissioned it. Results of the inspection of more than 170,000 votes rejected as unreadable in the 'hanging chad' chaos of last November's vote count were ready at the end of August [2001]. The study was commissioned early this year by a consortium including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The New York Times and the broadcaster CNN. The cost was more than $A2million. Now, however, spokesmen for the consortium say that they decided to postpone the story of the analysis by the National Opinion Research Centre at the University of Chicago for lack of resources and lack of interest in the face of the enormous story after the September 11 attacks."
Media suppress the news that Bush lost election to Gore
Sydney Morning Herald, 22 October 2001

"Is it O.K. to talk about the recount yet? It wasn't the right time on September 10th, because the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center had only just finished organizing the data gleaned from its meticulous examination of a hundred and seventy-five thousand uncounted Florida ballots. It wasn't on September 12th, because the news organizations that had commissioned the study were otherwise occupied. It was the right time on November 12th, apparently: that was the day the news organizations got around to publishing their analyses of the results. But, judging from the lack of discussion that has ensued, it abruptly became the wrong time again on November 13th. Maybe it'll never be the right time. But what the hell. Let's talk about it anyway. That finding, it turned out, was that, no matter what standard or combination of standards is applied, Al Gore got a handful more votes [in Florida] than George W. Bush..... The third reason [there was no discussion about this], of course, is September 11th, which extinguished the last traces of any appetite for a discussion that might call into question the legitimacy of a President who has his hands full and who needs, and has, the support of a nation united in the struggle against terror. But by then, it must be said, the damage to democracy had already been done."
Recounted Out
New Yorker, 17 December 2001

These results of the media recount of the Florida vote in the 2000 Presidential election were finally released 12 November 2001, the day of the New York Queen's airliner crash whose tail fin fell off shortly after take off. The incident absorbed all the significant news coverage that day and as a result few noticed the Florida 'recount' story.

America In Crisis
THE 2000 - 2002 CREEPING CONSTITUTIONAL COUP
Who, Why, Where, When and How
Click Here

Bush is already trailing in the polls against Kerry and the situation in Iraq may well get even worse before the US Presidential election in November. With the election date creeping ever closer are moves already underway for another 'October Surprise' from the Republicans as the on-going mess in Iraq becomes a vote loser for Bush?

Below are two 'interesting' press reports from Iran 12/13 March claiming that WMDs are being covertly brought into Iraq by US and British troops. The origin of the story is claimed to be "A reliable source from the Iraqi Governing Council".

The reports are produced by the Mehr News Agency which last month claimed to have "received an e-mail from the presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry pitching the candidate as one who will 'repair the damage done' to international relations by President Bush" according to a WorldNetDaily report 9 February. The claim was published in the Tehran Times.

Clearly favourable press coverage about the Bush administration cannot be expected from Tehran, but even though the report is likely to be widely dismissed as anti-American propaganda, a claim of a covert US WMD operation in Iraq raises more eyebrows than usual. For the Mehr News Agency to relay this kind of accusation without firm evidence would be a high risk strategy for Iran - it could hardly be seen as smoothing its steadily sliding relations with the Anglo-American occupiers of neighbouring Iraq who now seem to have Iran in their sights. Iran is already almost completely surrounded thanks to a US military presence in most of its neighbours, a presence which has been steadily bolstered since 911 (see map link on our web page 'War And Oil').

However, it is conceivable that Iran might consider it worth spreading the WMD story if it felt that the near term fate of its government had already been decided by the US. This seems increasingly likely.

According to Associated Press 14 March "Secretary of State Colin Powell put Iran on notice Sunday that other countries will not 'just sit by idly' while Tehran pursues building nuclear weapons.... 'If they continue in this manner, to deny and to put out the kind of statements as they did, they'll find that the international community will be prepared to take action' when the agency meets in June, Powell said on 'Fox News Sunday.' 'I won't prejudge now what those actions might be, but the Iranians need to understand that the international community is not going to just sit by idly while they continue to move in the direction of a nuclear weapon,' Powell said."

Whilst the covert Iraq WMD-delivery story from Tehran might also suit those running an anti-American agenda within Iraq, nonetheless the Iranians do in fact have direct experience of the lengths to which the Republican Party is prepared to go in order to secure the US Presidency as happened in the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan. This was the infamous 'October Surprise' stunt carried out by the Republicans which is said to have deprived Jimmy Carter of a second term in the White House.

According to an article by John Dee published by 'Lumpen' January 2001"[The 'October Surprise' sabotage] was a covert operation by the Reagan-Bush campaign that secretly forged a deal with the Iranian radicals who, after overthrowing the US-backed Shah, were holding 52 Americans (including several CIA agents) as hostages. In exchange for holding the hostages until after the [1980 Presidential] election, the Reagan-Bush team offered the Iranians millions of dollars in arms, material, and other considerations. Sure enough, the hostages were held until minutes after Reagan's inauguration, then 'suddenly' released. Bush and [CIA Director] Casey personally participated in the secret negotiations. James Baker, who would be Reagan's chief of staff and Bush's Sec. of State, was also involved. To this day, Bush et al. vehemently deny the plot, but their alibis don't hold up to scrutiny and just such secret arms shipments undeniably took place. Most damning is the fact that other participants, including senior Iranian government officials and intelligence operatives from several countries, have publicly confirmed they were involved in [the] secret deal.... Further confirmation came in 1993, in the form of a six-page Russian intelligence report that corroborated much of the story. The sensitive report was released by Russia's prime minister as a gesture of post-Cold War cooperation, in response to a request for information from a US Congressional task force investigating the charges. But the report was suppressed, task force chairman Rep. Lee Hamilton (backed by Henry Hyde) sandbagged the rest of the inquiry, and the final verdict was that there was 'no credible evidence' of a secret deal. The 'investigation' was such a sham that Hamilton publicly exonerated Bush (by then the president) before it even started. By engaging in renegade 'foreign policy,' the Reagan-Bush team undercut President Carter's own secret efforts to free the hostages and thereby stole the White House. It was, in fact, a coup d'etat ."

The episode, a pre-cursor to the later Iran-Contra scandal, raised a number of difficult questions about the alleged role of George Bush senior, a man who was both former director of the CIA and Vice-Presidential candidate for Reagan in the 1980 election. But the Republicans escaped largely unscathed from the ensuing congressional investigation into 'October Surprise' that stemmed from Sick's allegations in the New York Times.

The chairman of that inquiry was Lee Hamilton, who is also now Vice Chairman of the official Commission charged with investigating the 911 attacks on America in 2001. Controversy surrounds the 911 investigation which so far has failed to secure a commitment from President Bush and Vice President Cheney to testify in public under oath .

A joint agreement by Hamilton and 911-Commission Chairman Republican Thomas Kean would be enough to compel public testimony by Bush and Cheney regarding their actions before and during the 911 attacks. So far this has not happened. But it is becoming a major bone of contention as the 2004 election season gathers momentum, and public pressure on the Commission for this has been building steadily since the beginning of March.

According to freelance journalist Tom Flocco who has been monitoring the Commission's progress "The Commission hearings have yet to publicly address the actions of Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld and [General] Myers -- those with actual operating responsibility during the months prior to and on the day of September 11, but who failed to act for two hours while planes crashed one by one.... Astonishingly, ABC News and Dateline NBC reported that White House officials acknowledge that U.S. intelligence officials delivered a one-and-a-half page document to President Bush on August 6, 2001 that warned that 'bin Laden’s terrorist network might try to hijack American planes.' (ABC News, 5-16-02) and (Dateline NBC, 9-10-02). Yet the Commission has failed to broach the subject at a public hearing.... Newsweek Magazine reported that the day before the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks 'a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning [September 11], apparently because of security concerns. (Newsweek, 9-24-01). This incredible revelation has thus far yielded no official mention at Kean’s hearings and no public testimony by the Pentagon officials who were luckier than the 9-11 victims, airline pilots and flight attendants -- not privy to secret White House and military 'threat assessments.' According to the congressional bill establishing the Commission, either a 6-4 vote in favor of a subpoena or a joint agreement by only the Chairman and Vice-Chairman would provide the power to compel Mr. Bush’s public testimony under oath regarding intelligence received before 9-11. Wide reports indicated warnings about young Arabs taking flight lessons in America and planes used as weapons to be flown into buildings. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney have agreed to meet privately with Kean and Hamilton, but they refuse to meet with all ten members and are steadfast against testifying in public under oath, almost daring the panel to muster the courage to issue subpoenas. And many on the panel have questionable government agency conflicts or direct links to major fundraisers for the President, thus making it difficult to force a subpoena, save immense public pressure, phone calls and other direct contacts... Citizens are calling legislative leaders, Kean and Democratic candidate John Kerry, demanding public testimony so that Kean’s final report contains nothing but uncensored and unedited truth... As one who has attended most of the hearings, they can be aptly described as similar to university history lessons, filled with boredom and lack of preparation or intensity--but tragically, also having the truth regarding the worst attack on U.S. soil in the country’s history hanging in the balance. And in a rather sad testimony to the families, the panel has rarely called a key player in charge of anything on 9-11 to testify." (see also 'Fight Smart' 24 February 'US Air Force Unprepared For 911 Attacks Despite Multiple Warnings' which reported extensively on outstanding questions which need to be addressed by the Commission).

At the time of the earlier Reagan-Bush 'October Surprise' hearings one senior White House correspondent Sarah McClendon pointed out that "Hamilton held a press conference to clear Bush [senior] before the investigation into the deal between the Reagan-Bush candidates for presidential office and the Iranians, had even started."

Despite his Democrat background Hamilton's closeness to the Bush Administration is no secret. A PTI newswire 21 December 2000 states that "According to Republican sources, former Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton's nomination as either Ambassador to the UN or as CIA director is also being considered (by the new Bush Administration)". Hamilton holds Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency awards.

Doubts about the vigour of the earlier investigation into 'October Surprise' were expressed right from the outset. According to the New York Times 26 June 1991 "The very fact that some Democrats are reluctant to open an inquiry, for fear that it might backfire on them, is further reason that it probably would not be a `show trial.' A small, select committee with adequate Republican representation could conduct a discreet investigation, without televised hearings ... This is the second case, for example, in which Republican campaigners have been accused of tampering with foreign policy for political purposes. In 1968, Nixon aides were charged with persuading the South Vietnamese to delay their participation in peace talks to deny possible advantage to Democrats in that year's elections. Some allegations suggest, moreover, that the proven later dealings of the Reagan Administration with Iran [i.e. 'Iran Contra'] grew out of the alleged hostage deal in 1980. Mr. Bush, in denying that he knew of such a deal did not insist that it never happened. Mr. Reagan, as usual, only said he knew of no such arrangement; but he never knew much of what went on around him. The overriding reason for a Congressional investigation is the possibility that the truth might be established. The death of [CIA Director] Mr. Casey, who would have been the key witness, and the unavoidable political aspects of an inquiry, may make that possibility remote."

That ultimately proved to be the case as the scandal was quietly swept under the carpet at the end of a belated congressional 'investigation' which concluded in early 1993. However, the 'October Surprise' of 1980 had simply been the stage setter for the similarly grand scandal of the ensuing Reagan-Bush administration known as 'Iran-Contra'.

Once its covert agreement with the Iranians had enabled it to steal the White House from Carter in 1980, the Bush-Reagan team (whether by design or by now as a victim of blackmail by the Iranians) simply could not bring itself to cease doing illegal arms deals with Tehran. Yet Iran was the very country which Bush junior was to brand part of an 'Axis of Evil' three Presidencies later.

Put simply the Reagan administration secretly sold arms to Iran and diverted the proceeds to the Contra rebels fighting to overthrow the leftist Sandinista government of Nicaragua where the United States was seeking regime change. Both elements were contrary to acts of Congress which prohibited the sale of weapons to Iran, as well as being in violation of UN sanctions. US sponsorship for the Contras was explicitly forbidden by Congress through the 1982-1983 'Boland Amendment'.

In January 1986 Reagan allegedly approved a plan whereby an American intermediary, rather than Israel as had been earlier proposed, would sell arms to Iran in exchange for the release of US hostages, with the profits funnelled to the Contras. In February 1,000 TOW missiles were shipped to Iran. From May to November there were additional shipments of miscellaneous weapons and parts. The proceeds from the arms sales were diverted via Colonel Oliver North, aide to the U.S. National Security Advisor John Poindexter, to provide arms for the Contras.

More recently the Guardian 7 August 2003 produced a potted summary of the Iran-Contra scandal in an article sporting the robust title "Masters of Deceit - Convicted felons responsible for thousands of deaths are calling the shots at the White House". This headline is a reference to the White House today, whose current administration astonishingly has been repopulated once again by many of those involved in Iran-Contra all those years ago.

The Guardian's summary runs as follows: "The [Reagan-Bush] administration would sell arms to Iran and divert the proceeds to the Contras. Since both ends of the operation were highly illegal - Iran was also under a US arms embargo - it had to be secret.... But ... later the Nicaraguans shot down a CIA supply plane. A month after that, a Lebanese newspaper reported Reagan's arms deals with Iran. A frenzy of shredding and the destruction of emails broke out, and it took a congressional investigation - during which Poindexter, Elliott Abrams, Caspar Weinberger, Colin Powell (now [2003] secretary of state) and Richard Armitage (now [2003] deputy secretary of state) lied - and a specially appointed independent counsel to get the full story. By then, though, as the independent counsel reported, the administration's web of deceit had achieved its objectives - to protect Reagan, vice-president George Bush and the rest from the consequences of their conspiracy. As the independent counsel put it, Poindexter and North were made 'the scapegoats whose sacrifice would protect the Reagan administration in its final two years'.... Poindexter, North and two others were indicted on 23 counts of conspiracy to defraud the US and Poindexter was convicted on five felony counts of conspiracy, false statements, destruction and removal of records and obstruction of Congress. Elliott Abrams later pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress. George Bush senior pardoned him; and Bush junior appointed him director of the National Security Council's office for democracy, human rights and international operations and then to his current job as director of Middle East affairs in the White House. The wars these men promoted had left 75,000 dead in El Salvador and 30,000-40,000 dead in Nicaragua, not to mention many thousands dead in Guatemala and Honduras".

Poindexter, Abrams, Powell and Armitage all returned to positions of power following the 'election' of George Bush junior in 2000. It is, of course, an intense indictment of democracy and political accountability in modern American society, to say nothing of the servile nature of much of its press, that such figures can reappear years later with barely a whimper from the US media.

It would certainly be absurd to believe that such scheming is now suddenly a thing of the past. But vast swathes of American society still don't 'get it' despite all this history and the blatant deceptions of 'Iraqgate 2003'. So what more might be expected from the Bush-Cheney team between now and November?

Prime potential candidates for an 'October Surprise' in 2004 include 'finding' WMDs in Iraq or capturing Bin Laden, although the later would be much lower risk if it can be achieved. Some are already speculating that the Bush administration has known where Bin Laden has been all along, but is waiting for the right moment to produce him before the US public in order to gain maximum political advantage. There is, of course, no greater need for advantage than at the time of a Presidential election.

Current reports of the intensification of the US search for Bin Laden in the Afghanistan-Pakistan borders would not be inconsistent with efforts to prepare public credulity prior to the election. According to an Associated Press report 29 January "The U.S. military is 'sure' it will catch Usama bin Laden this year, perhaps within months, a spokesman declared Thursday... U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty's prediction about capturing bin Laden comes as the Army readied a spring offensive against Taliban and Al Qaeda holdouts.... Earlier this week, the American commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David Barno, told the British Broadcasting Corp. that he expects bin Laden to be brought to justice by year's end."

Indeed a Bin Laden announcement during 2004 may be fast becoming an imperative following the undermining of Bush's 'coalition of the willing' as a result of the terrorists attacks in Spain 11 March.

If the bombings in Spain are ultimately attributed to an Islamic group then the pressure on the Bush administration to demonstrate it is 'winning' the so called 'war against terrorism' will increase accordingly (what is likely to be ignored throughout, however, is the fact that America has already conceded to Bin Laden's principal demand - the withdrawal of US troops from Saudi Arabia. Most of these were removed following the invasion of Iraq, the US having obtained an alternative military basing platform to protect its oil interests in the Persian Gulf - the principal motivation lying behind the invasion and the attendant building of a bogus case against Iraq).

Likewise for Blair who is facing the prospect of an election in 2005. A WMD or Bin Laden 'find' in or before November 2004 would serve both Bush and Blair very nicely.

Meanwhile additional concerns are already arising over possible vote rigging in the US given the number of electronic voting machines supplied from Diebold, a company known to have close links to the Republican party. These machines leave no verifiable audit trail and are therefore wholly dependent on the electronic programming provided by Diebold.

According to an article entitled 'How to Hack an Election' the New York Times 31 January reported that "Concerned citizens have been warning that new electronic voting technology being rolled out nationwide can be used to steal elections. Now there is proof. When the State of Maryland hired a computer security firm to test its new machines, these paid hackers had little trouble casting multiple votes and taking over the machines' vote-recording mechanisms. The Maryland study shows convincingly that more security is needed for electronic voting, starting with voter-verified paper trails. When Maryland decided to buy 16,000 AccuVote-TS voting machines, there was considerable opposition. Critics charged that the new touch-screen machines, which do not create a paper record of votes cast, were vulnerable to vote theft. The state commissioned a staged attack on the machines, in which computer-security experts would try to foil the safeguards and interfere with an election. They were disturbingly successful. It was an 'easy matter,' they reported, to reprogram the access cards used by voters and vote multiple times. They were able to attach a keyboard to a voting terminal and change its vote count. And by exploiting a software flaw and using a modem, they were able to change votes from a remote location. Critics of new voting technology are often accused of being alarmist, but this state-sponsored study contains vulnerabilities that seem almost too bad to be true. Maryland's 16,000 machines all have identical locks on two sensitive mechanisms, which can be opened by any one of 32,000 keys. The security team had no trouble making duplicates of the keys at local hardware stores, although that proved unnecessary since one team member picked the lock in 'approximately 10 seconds....' The Maryland study confirms concerns about electronic voting that are rapidly accumulating from actual elections. In Boone County, Ind., last fall, in a particularly colorful example of unreliability, an electronic system initially recorded more than 144,000 votes in an election with fewer than 19,000 registered voters, County Clerk Lisa Garofolo said. Given the growing body of evidence, it is clear that electronic voting machines cannot be trusted until more safeguards are in place."

Would the Bush camp resort to electronic vote rigging if it could get away from it? Almost certainly.

A BBC Newsnight documentary broadcast 16 February 2001 and produced by investigative reporter Greg Palast, himself an American, exposed how voter lists in Florida were purged of black largely Democrat citizens under Jeb Bush's governorship in the run up to the 2000 Presidential election (a copy of the broadcast can viewed over the internet, which even includes footage of Palast being removed from the office of one of Jeb Bush's officials by state troopers after his interview started raising difficult questions).

The San Francisco Bay Guardian 5 June 2002 later described the exercise as follows: "Here's how they did it: A few months before the election, [State Secretary] Katherine Harris's office used computer systems to make up a list of people to purge from the voter rolls of people who were supposedly felons - people who committed serious crimes and therefore in Florida were not allowed to vote. We now know those lists were as phony as a three-dollar bill. That maybe approximately 90% of the people on those lists, and there were 57,700 people on that list, approximately 90% were not felons and had the right to vote. Surprise, surprise. At least 54% of the names on that list were black. We know that because Florida is one of the few states under the U.S. Civil Rights Act that actually has to track the race of each voter. They used this racial targeting system as a way to target and purge black voters. This was a very sophisticated Jim Crow operation done by computers, completely hidden from the public eye. And when they were asked about it they basically lied. The Governor, the Secretary of State, and the head of the Florida Department of Elections all lied under oath to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission about how that was done. Now that was completely covered in the British and European press. That is one of the reasons why when Bush came over to Europe he was seen as a usurper and a pretender to the presidency - not elected, but a guy who had conducted a sort of racial coup d'etat. He was not seen as legitimate. The U.S. press did little bits of the story and then buried it."

The logic of this exercise appears to have been that the 54% of black voters purged will have been largely Democrat voters whereas the non-black balance will have been more evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. The overall effect would have been to skew the purge to the detriment of the Democrat vote in Florida. Given the closeness of the vote in Florida, the impact was sufficient to fraudulently give George Bush the state (at least according to the official count, even though that was later found to be erroneous) and ultimately the Presidency.

Moreover according to the Washington Post 12 November 2001"Something very strange happened on election night to Deborah Tannenbaum, a Democratic Party official in Volusia County [Florida]. At 10 p.m., she called the county elections department and learned that Al Gore was leading George W. Bush 83,000 votes to 62,000. But when she checked the county's Web site for an update half an hour later, she found a startling development: Gore's count had dropped by 16,000 votes, while an obscure Socialist candidate had picked up 10,000--all because of a single precinct with only 600 voters." The company that supplied the voting machines concerned is reported to have since been purchased by Diebold.

However, according to an article entitled 'Diebold's Political Machine' published in US magazine 'Mother Jones' 5 March 2004 "While Diebold has received the most attention, it actually isn't the biggest maker of computerized election machines. That honor goes to Omaha-based ES&S, and its Republican roots may be even stronger than Diebold's... If the Republican ties at Diebold and ES&S aren't enough to cause concern, argues election reform activist Bev Harris, the companies' past performances and current practices should be.... Harris has posted a series of internal Diebold memos relating to the Volusia County miscount on her website, blackboxvoting.com. One memo from Lana Hires of Global Election Systems, now part of Diebold, complains, 'I need some answers! Our department is being audited by the County. I have been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16,022 [votes] when it was uploaded.' Another, from Talbot Ireland, Senior VP of Research and Development for Diebold, refers to key 'replacement' votes in Volusia County as 'unauthorized.'.... What's particularly troubling, Harris says, is that the errors were caught only because an alert poll monitor noticed Gore's vote count going down through the evening, which of course is impossible. Diebold blamed the bizarre swing on a 'faulty memory chip,' which Harris claims is simply not credible. The whole episode, she contends, could easily have been consciously programmed by someone with a partisan agenda. Such claims might seem far-fetched, were it not for the fact that a cadre of computer scientists showed a year ago that the software running Diebold's new machines can be hacked with relative ease".

But post-Iraq let's not delude ourselves that stopping the Bush deception juggernaut is going to solve America's ongoing problem of legitimate governance. Indeed, with even Democrat Presidential candidate John Kerry having the distinction of being the largest recipient of corporate financial sponsorship in the US Senate over the last 15 years, is it going too far to ask whether modern democracy in the US is now largely a fraud?

Indeed have we learnt nothing from the Iraqgate 2003 scam that the Democrats did so little to try and stop?

TIME magazine 15 March tells us that Kerry "voted to authorize the Iraq war and... would expand the U.S Army by 40,000 troops". In other words the Bush war machine plus more. The same article tells us that "Bush argues that because we're fighting terrorists over there [in Iraq], we don't have to fight them here at home".

The BBC has been blunt in its assessment of this political bankruptcy. On 19 March it observed that "Nato's bombing campaign of 1999 has been held up as a successful humanitarian intervention. But the renewed unrest raises more awkward questions about the value of military force as a response to conflicts and crises".

If this tragedy is not to deepen further, then it is time to transform America. It is also time to transform the Middle East.

US Backed Islamic Terrorism in the Balkans
Press Reports
Click here for access to these categories

1. Oil and US Geopolitical Objectives in the Balkans

2. US backed terrorism in Croatia

3. US backed terrorism in Bosnia

4. US backed terrorism in Kosovo

5. US backed terrorism in Macedonia

6. The human cost of US backed terrorism in the Balkans

"A new paradigm must be introduced to bring about a solution to this senseless use of violence as a means to achieve lasting peace. In fact, that paradigm is present today, but the leaders of the Free World choose not to recognize it. Shortly after Sept. 11, 2001 changed the landscape of our lives so cruelly, John Hagelin, a renowned quantum physicist, spent time on Capitol Hill. There he met with congressional leaders, senior military officials from the Pentagon, and members of the White House staff, such as Tom Ridge, then the special assistant to the president for homeland defense. At some of the meetings he was accompanied by Peter Salk, a biomedical researcher, and David Edwards, a highly respected professor of political science at the University of Texas... Dr. Hagelin went ....with a proposal to bring about an immediate reduction in world hostilities. The cost of this plan in perpetuity is $1 billion -- a fraction of what is being spent on weapons systems that function only to bring about peace through death. To be more exact, the amount is half the cost of one B-2 bomber, a gargantuan relic of Cold War military strategy.... Unfortunately, while our government's leaders initially seemed to listen to Dr. Hagelin's proposal, their inability to think outside the box has obscured their capacity to act for the public's welfare. Despite the efforts of leaders such as Congressmen Dennis Kucinich (D.-Ohio) to use their influence in support of Dr. Hagelin's proposal, no funds have materialized for such a project. Its simplicity, its elegance has been lost in the maze of conflicting interests. That our representatives could not even agree to invest in a scientifically verified program to create peace during a war on terrorism shows the confusion and gridlock in Washington."
A plan for permanent world peace
Providence Journal, 18 March 2003

Figure 2. Estimated mean daily level of a composite Peace/War Index for the Lebanon War for each of the seven experimental periods between June 1983 and August 1985. Time series intervention analysis indicates significant progress towards peace during each experimental period, and for all seven combined (p < 10^-19) (Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, in press).

"'We have an important message for the people of the Middle East,' said Dr. John Hagelin, a quantum physicist and author, and recipient of the prestigious Kilby Award for scientific research.... 'This practical approach, known as Invincible Defense Technology, applies cutting-edge discoveries in quantum mechanics, neuroscience, and human consciousness to diffuse stress, effectively disarming aggressors,' he said. 'It targets the root cause of violence acute stress resulting from religious and ethnic tensions. Just as anger can spread through a population, so can calm. Humanity is connected at the deepest level of human interaction an abstract, quiet communication so that collective consciousness can be influenced in a tangible and measurable way. There is a proven correlation between meditation and reduced social stress,' he claimed, pointing to 19 published research studies."
Transcendental Meditation: The solution to terrorism?
Jerusalem Post, 2 July 2002

Can we permanently stop
terrorism and war?

If 50 demonstration projects and 23 published scientific studies can be believed, the answer is Yes.
Please Click Here

"An Arizona state legislative committee has approved a resolution calling for the dissolution of the federal government in the event that it abolishes the U.S. Constitution, declares martial law or confiscates firearms -- scenarios some say are not unrealistic."
Arizona Prepares For Secession From US
WorldNet Daily, 14 January 2004

America In Crisis
THE 2000 - 2002 CREEPING CONSTITUTIONAL COUP
Who, Why, Where, When and How
Click Here

"Little did the Russians know that not only did the [October Surprise] House task force ignore the Stepashin report, but actually stuck it in a box that was piled unceremoniously on the floor of a former Ladies Room off a congressional parking garage."
Russia's Prime Minister and October Surprise
Online Journal 1999

"On Dec. 17, 1992, former Iranian president Abolhassan Bani-Sadr sent the [US congressional] task force a detailed letter describing the conflict within the Iranian government over the secret hostage deal with the Republicans. Bani-Sadr said... 'Passendideh told me that if I do not accept this proposal, they [the Republicans] would make the same offer to my [radical Iranian] rivals. He further said that they [the Republicans] have enormous influence in the CIA."
Russia's Prime Minister and October Surprise
Consortium News, 15 May 1999

TEHRAN, March 12 (Mehr News Agency) - Over the past few days, in the wake of the bombings in Karbala and the ideological disputes that delayed the signing of Iraq's interim constitution, there have been reports that U.S. forces have unloaded a large cargo of parts for constructing long-range missiles and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the southern ports of Iraq.

A reliable source from the Iraqi Governing Council, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Mehr News Agency that U.S. forces, with the help of British forces stationed in southern Iraq, had made extensive efforts to conceal their actions. He added that the cargo was unloaded during the night as attention was still focused on the aftermath of the deadly bombings in Karbala and the signing of Iraq's interim constitution.

The source said that in order to avoid suspicion, ordinary cargo ships were used to download the cargo, which consisted of weapons produced in the 1980s and 1990s.

He mentioned the fact that the United States had facilitated Iraq's WMD program during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq and said that some of the weapons being downloaded are similar to those weapons, although international inspectors had announced Saddam Hussein's Baath regime had destroyed all its WMD.

The source went on to say that the rest of the weapons were probably transferred in vans to an unknown location somewhere in the vicinity of Basra overnight. 'Most of these weapons are of Eastern European origin and some parts are from the former Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. The U.S. obtained them through confiscations during sales of banned arms over the past two decades,' he said. This action comes as certain U.S. and Western officials have been pointing out the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been discovered in Iraq and the issue of Saddam's trial begins to take center stage.

In addition, former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix has emphasized that the U.S. and British intelligence agencies issued false reports on Iraq leading to the U.S. attack. Meanwhile, the suspicious death of weapons inspector David Kelly is also an unresolved issue in Britain.

BAGHDAD, March 12 (Mehr News Agency) -- A security official for the coalition forces in Iraq said that he has not received any information about the unloading of weapons of mass destruction in ports in southern Iraq.

Shane Wolf told the Mehr News Agency that the occupation forces have received no reports on such events, but said he hoped that the coalition forces would find the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction one day.

A member of the Iraqi Governing Council, who spoke on condition of anonymity, has said that over the past few days as Iraqis were still preoccupied with the bombings in Karbala and the ideological disputes that delayed the signing of Iraq&rsquos interim constitution, U.S. forces unloaded a large cargo of parts for constructing long-range missiles and weapons of mass destruction in the ports of southern Iraq.

Coalition forces and inspectors have so far been unable to find any Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. invaded Iraq under the pretext that Iraq possessed a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.

"We now know that a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush's younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC). The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says 'while the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.'... In late September and early October 2001, leaders of Pakistan's two Islamist parties negotiated Bin Laden's extradition to Pakistan to stand trial for 9/11. However, a US official said, significantly, that 'casting our objectives too narrowly' risked 'a premature collapse of the international effort if by some lucky chance Mr Bin Laden was captured'.... The whistleblowing FBI agent Robert Wright told ABC News that FBI headquarters wanted no arrests.... The evidence again is quite clear that plans for military action against Afghanistan and Iraq were in hand well before 9/11. A report prepared for the US government from the Baker Institute of Public Policy stated in April 2001 that 'the US remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma. Iraq remains a destabilising influence to... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East'. Submitted to Vice-President Cheney's energy task group, the report recommended that because this was an unacceptable risk to the US, 'military intervention' was necessary. Similar evidence exists in regard to Afghanistan. The BBC reported that Niaz Niak, a former Pakistan foreign secretary, was told by senior American officials at a meeting in Berlin in mid-July 2001 that 'military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October'. Until July 2001 the US government saw the Taliban regime as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of hydrocarbon pipelines from the oil and gas fields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean. But, confronted with the Taliban's refusal to accept US conditions, the US representatives told them 'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs' .... The 9/11 attacks allowed the US to press the 'go' button for a strategy in accordance with the PNAC agenda which it would otherwise have been politically impossible to implement. The overriding motivation for this political smokescreen is that the US and the UK are beginning to run out of secure hydrocarbon energy supplies.... A report from the commission on America's national interests in July 2000 noted that the most promising new source of world supplies was the Caspian region, and this would relieve US dependence on Saudi Arabia. To diversify supply routes from the Caspian, one pipeline would run westward via Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. Another would extend eastwards through Afghanistan and Pakistan and terminate near the Indian border. This would rescue Enron's beleaguered power plant at Dabhol on India's west coast, in which Enron had sunk $3bn investment and whose economic survival was dependent on access to cheap gas... The conclusion of all this analysis must surely be that the 'global war on terrorism' has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda - the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project. Is collusion in this myth and junior participation in this project really a proper aspiration for British foreign policy? If there was ever need to justify a more objective British stance, driven by our own independent goals, this whole depressing saga surely provides all the evidence needed for a radical change of course."
Michael Meacher, former Blair government Minister - 'This war on terrorism is bogus'
The Guardian, 6 September 2003

Bogus War Against Terrorism - Why They Are Really Doing It
GLOBAL ENERGY CRISIS LOOMING
Click Here

London Times - 26 January 2004
World's Top Ten Oil Companies
Unable To Replenish Reserves
www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/oilsectorfailstoreplenishreserves.htm
Sector Finding Less Oil - Pull Outs Anticipated

911 Inquiry Must Investigate US Military Command, Intelligence Services, and Cheney - 24 Feb 2004
Hutton And The Libyan Black Gold Rush - 8 Feb 2004
Hussein Kamel And The Big Anglo-American Deception - 4 Jan 2004
Iraq: British Government admits to 'Operation Mass Appeal' - 28 Dec 2003
Iraqgate 2003 - Dr Kelly and 'Operation Rockingham' - 19 Oct 2003
A Vision For Transforming America - 24 March 2003
This Is Our Prime Minister - 23 Feb 2003
What Is Happening To Britain And America? - 9 Feb 2003
The 911 Omar Sheikh Files - 2 Jan 2003
'October Surprise 2002' - Life After The US Constitutional Coup - 31 Oct 2002
What Did Britain Know About 911? - 28 Aug 2002
Why Did Bush Not Act On Sept 11? - 9 May 2002
World Peace Offered From Hiroshima - 22 April 2002
Did Sept 11 victims die for Enron? - 8 March 2002
CIA provided funds to financiers of Sept 11 bomber - 18 Nov 2001