This is nervous breakdown material for Bushbots.

WASHINGTON, July 7 — A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture senior members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas was aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials.

The target was a meeting of Qaeda leaders that intelligence officials thought included Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy and the man believed to run the terrorist group’s operations.

But the mission was called off after Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, rejected an 11th-hour appeal by Porter J. Goss, then the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, officials said. Members of a Navy Seals unit in parachute gear had already boarded C-130 cargo planes in Afghanistan when the mission was canceled, said a former senior intelligence official involved in the planning.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/washington/08intel.html?hp

Robert Scheer wrote about it at Huffpost:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-scheer/bushs-pakistan-paradox_b_55755.html

In a speech titled "Paul Nitze's Legacy: For a New World", delivered on April 15, 2004 before the Aspen Institute, Paul Wolfowitz revealed that he and Donald Rumsfeld had lunch with members of the 9/11 Commission before the report was complete:

"When Don Rumsfeld and I had lunch with members of the 9/11 commission recently, one member asked what could they do to ensure that their report would make a real difference, that it would be read five or 10 years from now, instead of just filed away on a dusty shelf. I realize now that I gave them a pretty tall order. What I told them, basically, was to write something similar to George Kennan's long telegram or Paul Nitze's NSC-68. I told them that, rarely to my knowledge, has anyone other than historians with a specific interest in the subject, gone back to read the report of the Pearl Harbor Commission. NSC-68, on the other hand, is still studied in colleges and universities, including colleges for strategists like the war colleges of our military services or our National Defense University."

Check out the following two recently added entries from the Complete 9/11 Timeline. These indicate how, prior to 9/11, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were part of a "secret government." As author James Mann says: "Cheney and Rumsfeld were, in a sense, a part of the permanent, though hidden, national security apparatus of the United States."

1981-1992: Cheney and Rumsfeld Practice Secret Continuity of Government Plan, Later Activated on 9/11

Regarding Criminal Mastermind, Donald Rumsfeld

Revised May 30, 2007

By Donald Rumsfeld's own admission, he was unaware of any threats to the Pentagon -- the building where he was located during the September 11th attacks -- until an aircraft crashed into the side of it, and he ran out "into the smoke" to see if it might be a

"A bomb? I had no idea." (ABC News This Week, Interview 9/16/01).

Well, that's a pretty tall tale by any standard. The New York Times reported that by 8:13am, the FAA was aware of the first hijacking out of Boston. The Pentagon explosion, which Donald Rumsfeld claimed he had "no idea," did not occur until approximately 9:37am, nearly an hour and a half later, this after two of the tallest buildings in the world were devastated. Note that a plane hijacked out of Boston can reach Washington D.C. as easily as it can reach New York City.

It was reported that Pentagon personnel were indeed aware of the threats to their security, and they took security measures on that morning. But not the "Secretary of Defense."

Source: onlinejournal.com

By Matthew Everett
May 30, 2007, 00:27

What was Rumsfeld doing on 9/11? He deserted his post. He disappeared. The country was under attack. Where was the guy who controls America’s defense? Out of touch! --A senior White House official

On September 11, 2001, the United States suffered its worst attack since Pearl Harbor. Yet, as evidence shows, the country was in many ways undefended for the entire duration of the assault. The Air Force was nowhere to be seen until it was too late. [1] The commander in chief of the armed forces, President George W. Bush, continued with a pre-planned photo op at a school in Florida, only leaving the place at 9:35, just before the time the Pentagon was struck. [2] The acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers was on Capitol Hill. Despite seeing the television reports of the World Trade Center after it was first hit, he continued with a scheduled meeting there, and supposedly was not notified when the second plane hit at 9:03. He therefore did not head back to the Pentagon until around the time it too was hit, and only joined the critical air threat conference call shortly before 10 a.m. By that time, the attacks were nearly over. [3]

Furthermore, new evidence shows that for the critical two hours in which the attacks occurred, the country was effectively without a secretary of defense. An analysis of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s actions on 9/11 reveals several occasions when he was alerted to the attacks that were taking place. Each time, if he were not already doing so, he should have leapt into action and assumed his responsibilities in coordinating a crisis response, and helping to protect the people of America. Yet, instead, his responses were consistent: He did nothing.

In this hour-long lecture recorded at the Arizona 9/11 Accountability Conference on February 25th, 2007, researcher Peter Dale Scott presents a host of contradicting accounts describing the actions of Vice President Cheney on the morning of 9/11, and how the 9/11 Commission cherry-picked its way through this minefield of contradictions, including contradictions by the Vice President himself!

Scott points out timeline gaps where simultaneously, Cheney & Rumsfeld can't be accounted for, and suggests that it is no coincidence that these old Cold Warriors were nowhere to be seen at a critical juncture on that morning. Rather, it's probable that they were discussing a variety of things, including highly classified procedures dealing with Continuity of Government and that this has been the springboard for the assault on the Constitution, and the roll-out of macabre plans like the establishment of KBR detention camps that go without comment or scrutiny by the Congress.

Scott calls for the questioning of Cheney under oath regarding his actions on the morning of 9/11, and suggests that this could lead to his impeachment.

Mr. St. Clair,

I commend you for openly disagreeing with your co-editor. As global temperature does change all by itself without human intervention -- and I have never seen an accurate accounting to date of the natural vs. manmade contributions to temperature, I'm not 100% convinced that Cockburn is wrong about the reasons for climate change.

I am 100% sure that he's wrong about September 11th. Your own website has supported the allegations of Sibel Edmonds and several others who spoke of protected drug smuggling which has financed terrorism, and probably still does today.

If I could prove that there were indeed laws broken intentionally, to the benefit of the 9/11 terrorists -- would it matter over at Counterpunch? Cockburn doesn't seem willing to look at any evidence, no matter the source, no matter the damning implications.

I can prove criminal behavior by US government operatives easily in a dozen ways. I'll cite two incontrovertible cases.

Al Mindhar and Al Hazmi

You may remember DoD staffer, Stephen Cambone, during a meeting with Rumsfeld on 9/11 jotted down "best info fast...judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time - not only UBL [Usama Bin Laden]." What we weren't told about at the time was that he also jotted down, "Hard to get a good case." To me, Rummy acted like a child with a $1,000,000 gift certificate to Toys R' Us. "I want that one, and that one, and that one." Certainly not someone concerned about the well-being of Americans affected by that tragic day. More like someone waiting for the opportunity. - Jon

NBC's Pentagon reporter weighs in on Tenet book

Source: projo.com

By Tom Mooney
Journal Staff Writer
12:36 AM EDT on Wednesday, May 2, 2007

PROVIDENCE - Just hours after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Bush administration officials began talking of including Iraq in any retaliatory attack, even though all indications pointed at al-Qaida as the guilty party.

This is an interesting short video — "The NeoConservative Manifesto".

Very well done, by Barry from http://www.knife-party.com

Also mirrored for posterity here: ftp://ftp.die.net/mirror/misc/barry.mov

(NOTE: There is an error in the following. Please see the correction in the comments below.)

Andrew Cockburn, I was going to challenge you to a debate, but I see now you do an even better job of dismantling yourself.

One week you attack 9/11 skepticism using every cheap shot worthy of a Limbaugh, reducing it all to a laughable caricature that you yourself must recognize as unfair. (The families who lobbied for the 9/11 Commission ended up condemning it? Really? How would a busy fellow like you know that?)

The next week, you try to compensate - for the lost subscriptions, perhaps? - by reaching for the "Art Students," as though the only intelligence agencies who could have known that 9/11 was in the works would have had to be Israeli.

Now you present this great profile of Rumsfeld in the 1990s, the little emperor of a self-appointed Shadow Government who enjoyed nothing more than playing Strangelove in a bunker, firing off all his missiles and killing everyone. (READ MORE...)

"It should be remembered here that Rummy spent the duration of the attacks on 9-11 in his office at the Pentagon: without even trying to communicate with his department"never mind the fact, that all of this blood that spilled after the first tower, was by law, his responsibility. Is this one of the reasons that Rice is reluctant to testify under oath? Because when this gets out that the Bushites violated their own twisted revisions of national defense procedures, and then dropped the ball completely: then there may well be a demand for heads to roll!"

"...in light of current events now unfolding from London to the Korean peninsula (the Pacific fleet is on a heightened alert status), coupled with the impending attacks upon Iran and possibly Syria: Someone "big needs to locate the Secretary of War and track his every move"before and during whatever is about to happen"because according to the documents above
it will be Robert M. Gates who shall be responsible for protecting America, not the President or the VP, nor will it be Chertoff and HOMELAND Security. As a matter of interest, either the president or the vice president is supposed to remain in the country at all times"especially during moments of high international tensions"so why are they both going to be abroad at the same time NOW?

The Chain of Command is Busted!
Jim Kirwan
2-23-7

http://www.rense.com/general75/busted.htm

The Vice-President is on an American aircraft carrier off Japan, and the Decider has a scheduled trip that will take him out-of-the-country. He,ll probably be aboard Air Force One, but that plane is only used to collect money"as an extension of his political machine"it is doubtful that he could ever even pretend to operate the world's most sophisticated flying-combat-operations-center that Air Force One was designed to be. So what's the problem?

I was born in 69, the tail end of the "love" era. I can still remember the multi-colored yellow and orange flowers that made up the design on the living room sofa as I was growing up. Captain Kangaroo, Speed Racer, and Land of the lost topped my television favorites.

My father died when I was 7 and I grew up kind of rebellious. I had my first apartment at 15 and worked part time for the apartments I lived in to pay the rent. I was never really into fads or trends. I was the only guy in my entire school with long hair, which I dealt with a tremendous level of mental and physical abuse by the other kids. I put up with it for years just doing my thing, taking it as it came, and moving on.

One day, when I was about 15 a girl passed me a note in class. It was from one of the best looking girls in my school, very popular and sought after by many of the jock type guys. The note from her said that she liked me and wanted me to call her.

I called her and even went over to her house a couple of times when her parents were not home. I was pretty happy that for the first time in my life I was actually dating a girl from my school. I went to an upper class school and all the girls I had ever met were from another neighboring school with not so upper class people.

This might be of interest - a new weekly comic strip occasionally dealing with 911 mysteries...

Most of official Washington has long believed that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld needed to be sacked. Unfortunately it took a major Republican loss at the polls to finally prompt George W. Bush to cut loose a key player from his inner circle.

The removal of Rumsfeld signals that Bush is listening to the voters and elected officials. However, the nomination of Robert Gates—a Bush family crony and former Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) under his father’s administration—to replace Rumsfeld will only create new problems for the president.

President Ronald Reagan had to withdraw Gates’ nomination for DCI in 1987 because of Gates’ involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal. By 1991, after the heat had died down on the whole affair, President George H.W. Bush re-nominated Gates for the post, and he was confirmed.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1557842,00.html

Charges Sought Against Rumsfeld Over Prison Abuse