| I have all along had
a feeling that it was just too much of a
coincidence that 911 came along and
fulfilled a dream the neocons had had for
over 12 years... The neoconservative
blueprint for United States military
domination is hardly a secret. A
group called the Project for a New
American Century a think tank founded by
hawks who are now in prominent jobs in
the White House released a version
of it three years ago. The document is
shocking in its candor: it asserts
that the United States should be moving
unilaterally to assert military
control around the globe, and that all
that's necessary to jump-start the effort
is a "new Pearl Harbor."http://www.aawfrance.net/
This is the
first time I've seen it in print...
Carolyn
Released: August
30, 2004 http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=855
Half
of New Yorkers Believe US Leaders Had
Foreknowledge of Impending 9-11 Attacks
and Consciously Failed To
Act; 66% Call For New Probe of Unanswered
Questions by Congress or New Yorks
Attorney General, New Zogby International
Poll Reveals
On the eve of a Republican
National Convention invoking 9/11
symbols, sound bytes and imagery, half
(49.3%) of New York City residents and
41% of New York citizens overall say that
some of our leaders "knew in advance
that attacks were planned on or around
September 11, 2001, and that they
consciously failed to act,"
according to the poll conducted by Zogby
International. The poll of New York
residents was conducted from Tuesday
August 24 through Thursday August 26,
2004. Overall results have a margin of
sampling error of +/-3.5.
The poll is the first of its
kind conducted in America that surveys
attitudes regarding US government
complicity in the 9/11 tragedy. Despite
the acute legal and political
implications of this accusation, nearly
30% of registered Republicans and over
38% of those who described themselves as
"very conservative" supported
the claim.
The charge found very high
support among adults under 30 (62.8%),
African-Americans (62.5%), Hispanics
(60.1%), Asians (59.4%), and "Born
Again" Evangelical Christians
(47.9%).
Less than two in five (36%)
believe that the 9/11 Commission had
"answered all the important
questions about what actually happened on
September 11th," and two in three
(66%) New Yorkers (and 56.2% overall)
called for another full investigation of
the "still unanswered
questions" by Congress or Elliot
Spitzer, New York's Attorney General.
Self-identified "very liberal"
New Yorkers supported a new inquiry by a
margin of three to one, but so did half
(53%) of "very conservative"
citizens across the state. The call for a
deeper probe was especially strong from
Hispanics (75.6%), African-Americans
(75.3%) citizens with income from $15-25K
(74.3%), women (62%) and Evangelicals
(59.9%).
W. David Kubiak, executive
director of 911truth.org, the group that
commissioned the poll, expressed genuine
surprise that New Yorkers' belief in the
administration's complicity is as high or
higher than that seen overseas.
"We're familiar with high levels of
9/11 skepticism abroad where there has
been open debate of the evidence for US
government complicity. On May 26th the
Toronto Star reported a national poll
showing that 63% of Canadians are also
convinced US leaders had 'prior
knowledge' of the attacks yet declined to
act. There was no US coverage of this
startling poll or the facts supporting
the Canadians' conclusions, and there has
been virtually no debate on the victim
families' scores of still unanswered
questions. I think these numbers show
that most New Yorkers are now fed up with
the silence, and that politicians trying
to exploit 9/11 do so at their peril. The
9/11 case is not closed and New York's
questions are not going away."
Nicholas Levis of
NY911truth.org, an advisor on the poll,
agrees, "The 9/11 Commission gave us
a plenty of 'recommendations', but far
more plentiful were the discrepancies,
gaps and omissions in their supposedly
'final' report. How can proposals based
on such deficient findings ever make us
safe? We think these poll numbers are
basically saying, 'Wait just a minute.
What about the scores of still
outstanding questions? What about the
unexplained collapses of WTC 7, our air
defenses, official accountability, the
chain of command on 9/11, the anthrax,
insider trading & FBI field probes?
There's so much more to this story that
we need to know about.' When such a
huge majority of New Yorkers want a new
investigation, it will be interesting to
see how quickly Attorney General Spitzer
and our legislators respond."
SCOPE: The poll covered five
areas of related interest: 1) Iraq - do
New Yorkers think that our leaders
"deliberately misled" us before
the war (51.2% do); 2) the 9/11
Commission - did it answer all the
"important questions" (only 36%
said yes); 3) the inexplicable and
largely unreported collapse of the third
WTC skyscraper on 9/11 - what was its
number (28% of NYC area residents knew);
4) the question on complicity; and 5) how
many wanted a new 9/11 probe. All
inquiries about questions, responses and
demographics should be directed to Zogby
International.
SPONSOR: 911truth.org is a
coalition of researchers, journalists and
victim family members working to expose
and resolve the hundreds of critical
questions still swirling around 9/11,
especially the nearly 400 questions that
the Family Steering Committee filed with
the 9/11Commission which they fought to
create. Initially welcomed by the
commissioners as a "road map"
for their inquiry, these queries cut to
the heart of 9/11 crimes and
accountability. Specifically, they raised
the central issues of motive, means and
cui bono (who profited?). But the
Commission ignored the majority of these
questions, opting only to explore system
failures, miscommunications and
incompetence. The victim families' most
incisive issues remain unaddressed to
this day. The Zogby International poll
was also cosponsored by Walden Three
(walden3.org) and 9/11 Citizens Watch
(911citizenswatch.org), a watchdog group
which has monitored the Commission since
its inception and will release its
findings, "The 9/11 Omission
Report," in several weeks.
On September 9th and 11th,
911Truth.org will cosponsor two large
successive inquiries in New York, a
preliminary 9/11 Citizens Commission
hearing and "Confronting the
Evidence: 9/11 and the Search for
Truth," a research-focused
evidentiary forum. These inquiries will
examine many of the 9/11
Commission-shunned questions and discuss
preparation of a probable cause complaint
demanding a grand jury and criminal
investigation from the New York Attorney
General. Possible charges range from
criminal negligence and gross dereliction
of duty to foreknowledge, complicity and
subsequent obstruction of justice. For
details and developments, see www.911truth.org.
For press info, contact Kyle Hence
212-243-7787 kylehence@earthlink.net
Zogby International conducted
interviews of 808 adults chosen at random
in New York State. All calls were made
from Zogby International headquarters in
Utica, N.Y., from 8/24/04 through
8/26/04. The margin of error is +/- 3.5
percentage points. Slight weights were
added to region, party, age, race,
religion, and gender to more accurately
reflect the population. Margins of error
are higher in sub-groups.
____________________________________________________
PAUL
KRUGMAN: When I realized there was
something wrong was actually during the
2000 campaign and it was over the issue
of Social Security privatization, which
it actually took me a while. I have
expunged from the book some of my early
attempts where I was actually trying to
desperately trying to find out a way in
which this thing made sense, what
candidate Bush was saying. And I
finally realized it was a scam, pure and
simple, it really was two minus one
equals four, that he was saying something
that was nonsense. It amazing if
the reports are correct, that Thursday
night, he's going to try the whole thing
exactly as before. The -- that having run
on it, having had his own commission
unable to come one a plan because you
know the arithmetic doesn't work, he's
nonetheless going to try it once again
and say here's the magic solution that
will solve -- actually in the case of
social security, solve a problem that
doesn't exist. We're going to create this
great plan. It's an amazing thing. It's
turned out that that's the story all
through. What I saw in social security,
what I saw on fiscal policy is also the
story on science policy, environmental
policy, and of course, in the end
national security and the war.
Couple
of things to say. One thing that I think
is important, and not a criticism of
Green and Alterman, but it's along the
lines of focusing on the
gotcha lies is worthwhile,
but shouldn't focus on it too much. Often
the worst things is when they don't
literally lie. If you go through the
economic statements, you can find, if you
want to find a situation where Bush said,
most of our tax cuts go to people at the
middle or the bottom of the economic
spectrum, you can find that, but you have
to sift through mounds and mounds of Bush
statements. The great -- most of the time
what he and his people say are things
that convey that impression without
actually saying it. So that in
last year, and as you can find it again
in the campaign materials, last year
saying that 92 million Americans will get
an average tax cut of about $1,000. Which
conveys the impression and would actually
find pundits finally said that every
family is going to get $1,000. That's
good. The answer right at -- it's -- the
people don't know what average means. If
Bill Gates walks into a bar, the average
net worth of the patrons is a couple of
billion dollars. But the point
about that is -- that's how it works, but
the point about that is when they say
something that is deliberately misleading
but not -- that is misleading, let me
say, but not literally false, that
actually shows that it is deliberate. If
this the -- the extreme care -- try to
find -- I don't think anybody has found a
statement in which Bush said that Saddam
was responsible for 9/11, but you can
find hundreds of elusive sentences where
9/11, Saddam, are all blurred together
which shows that he and his speechwriters
knew that it wasn't true and were trying
to -- trying to plant the idea in
people's minds. That's the thing that's
worse. It's not the gotcha
moment. It's not the smoking gun of the
sentence where he says something that's
falsifiable. It's the sentences that were
clearly carefully crafted to convince
people of something of something that the
administration knew was not true.
Bush.
We -- we also probably make a mistake if
we make too much emphasis on Bush, the
individual. I know that there's a
particular thing that can drive you wild,
which is the description of all of these
virtues to a man who manifestly does not
possess them, right? The idea of that
this guy of all guys is treated as a
heroic figure, and is really baffling,
but this really is not about Bush. Bush
is the guy that the movement found to
take them over the top. But it didn't
start with him. And it won't end with
him, either. What's going on in this
country is that a radical movement -- I
think we do, mark is entirely right, a
radical movement that has been building
for several decades finally found their
moment and their man in Bush, but you
shouldn't think of it as just being him.
There's a complete continuity between
what's going on now and the campaign of
slander and innuendo against Bill
Clinton. There's complete
continuity going back, really, I think
that this is my next book; you need to go
back to Goldwater. A lot of this has its
roots actually in civil rights. And the
people don't like them. So, you really --
but you really have to understand that
this is not about one guy. It's not even
about one dynasty, although that's a
story itself. It's about the coalition
between the malefactors of great wealth
and the religious right and how they
found their man. Don't think of it about
as just being about this one guy. How can
they get away with it? This is one of the
biggest for risk, I think. You may want
to know what does the -- what does the Times
think about what I write? By and large,
they're extremely protective, but they
get antsy when I talk about the media.
Because they're part of it but it's not
possible to deny that the media are a
very essential -- or central part of
this.
Actually
-- if you can get hold of it, the American
Journalism Review has an interview
with Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay,
the two Knight-Ridder reporters, who
during the buildup to the war were
providing, by far, the best account. I
was going back and saying why did I know
that the case for an active Iraqi nuclear
program was being cooked up? Why did I
know that this was being sold and
analysts were being pressured? All of the
stuff that many people won't admit but is
being treated as a revelation? I think it
was actually reading the Knight-Ridder
stories above all. They say in talking
about it that the story of media failure
here is as important as the story of
intelligence failure. It is central to
it. Couple of things to say on that. One
is, of course, that substantial chunks of
the media are part of this same movement.
With Robert Greenwald here, we don't need
to say much more about that. Yes, FOX
News and the Washington Timesand
all of that are part of it. The rest is
very much -- is very difficult. The --
most of the media -- Im not sure if
that's still true. I have been watching
the sad decline of CNN. But anyway, most
of the media is still trying to be even
handed, is still mainstream, but they
have lost the sense of what it means,
what the job of being an even-handed
media really is. It's not -- what they
have -- it should be, well, okay, here's
what people are saying, and we have
checked the facts, and here's what the
truth is. Instead, it has become here's
what one side says, here's what the other
side says. We report, you decide.
Another
one of my people who have heard me before
and will know -- but if Bush says that
the earth was flat, the headlines on the
mainstream media stories is, The
Shape of the Earth: Views Differ." I
saw that in 2000 over social security. I
couldnt believe it was happening I
could not get anyone at my organization
or any other to write a straight story
saying what does it take to privatize
social security. It was always, here's
what Bush says, here's what the other
side says. It sounds good. He's promising
great stuff. You can find it more
recently, unemployment reports, Swift
Boat is the most horrible story. In this
case, the last jobs report was really,
really crummy. It was crummy enough if
you were watching CNBC, which has the
8:30 in the morning when they have the
traders in Chicago pit when the number
came out, the traders starting chant,
Kerry, Kerry, Kerry. But to read all of
the newspaper stories the next day, it
was well, the Bush people say it's a good
number, it's a good report and the other
said says it was a bad report and you
never would have known the difference.
What
do we do? This is really a -- it's much
bigger than Bush. It's a movement that's
been building. The one thing that I think
you really have to day is that people --
say is that people -- on the left, the
position formerly known as the center,
people like myself -- people like myself
have been asleep for a long, long time.
We just didn't -- we didn't take it
seriously. We sat through the Clinton
scandals and said, probably, you know,
funny stuff going on there. Didn't really
understand that the extent to which this
movement was being built, which I have
one minute, I believe. In the long run,
there has to be the creation of
institutions. My great beef with Bill
Clinton, who I thought did a terrific job
in the office, but he did not build the
institutional basis for rolling this
thing back. That's in the long run. How
are we ever going to get time to do that?
Given that this onslaught is there, and
it will come, they're getting rid of one
man is not in itself. It's necessary, but
not sufficient, as we say in the academy.
The answer, I think, my great hope now is
what we need is an enormous unearthing of
the scandals that we know have taken
place. We need a mega Watergate
that rocks them back for enough time so
that we can build a counterweight to this
thing. Otherwise, this won't be the
country we grew up in.
To
download an audio or video copy of this
entire program,
click
here
for
our new online ordering
click
here
or
call 1 (800) 881-2359.
When
the tyrant has disposed of foreign
enemies by conquest or treaty, and there
is nothing more to fear from them, then
he is always stirring up some war or
other, in order that the people may
require a leader.
--Plato
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|