Sharon: Hero and Goat of Gaza
By Patrick J. Buchanan
To see Jewish settlers evicted from homes they have lived in for decades, taking weeping wives and children back to Israel, is heart-wrenching. To see Israeli settlers spit in the faces of Israeli soldiers and call them “Nazis” evokes only disgust.
Who do these people think they are? Were it not for the Israeli army, they would not have lasted a week in Gaza. Gratitude isn’t the long suit of the Zionist fanatic, two of whom murdered Palestinians to protest the removal of Jews from lands that do not and have never belonged to Israel.
For his resolve in removing the settlers, despite threats on his life, Ariel Sharon deserves credit. But for the settlers’ being there, where they never belonged, he bears full blame. Both the tragedy and the debacle of this past week are Sharon’s doing.
Gaza was never part of Israel. Its 1.3 million impoverished people are Palestinian refugees from the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, or their children and grandchildren. The Gaza Strip was overrun by Israel in the Six-Day War of June 1967, but never returned to Egypt.
In recent years, Israelis have trickled into Gaza and, though never numbering even 1 percent of the population, came to occupy a third of the land. They are colonizers in every sense of the word.
Israel’s colonization of Gaza, using squatters subsidized by the state, was a violation of international law. The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits military occupiers from moving civilians onto their occupied land. And the Gaza land-grab was carried out in brazen defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions and over the protests of Israel’s great patron, the United States, which once candidly called these Israeli enclaves what they are: “illegal settlements.”
But because the U.S. government lacked the moral courage to tell the Israelis to stop building settlements and start tearing them down—even as we showered Israel with $3 billion in annual aid—the Labor and Likud parties ignored the pathetic peeps of protest from our presidents to please desist.
The rampant animosity against America in the Arab world is but one of the fruits of our outsourcing Middle East policy to Tel Aviv.
What is going to happen now is wearily predictable.
After Sharon has withdrawn the last settler, he will demand $2.2 billion for his heroic achievement. The request, already in, breaks down to $1 million for every family moved out of Gaza. Bush and Congress, who only in May raised the death benefit for families of G.I.s killed in Iraq from $12,000 to $100,000, will fall all over one another expediting the latest tranche of U.S. tax dollars.
Then the scenario will play out as Dov Weisglass, ex-chief of staff to Sharon, mockingly described. Under the deal Weisglass cut with pliant Bush aides in 2004, ratified in Bush’s public letter to Sharon, Israeli disengagement from Gaza and a few outposts on the West Bank “supplies the amount of formaldehyde necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.”
“What I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements would not be dealt with at all,” Weisglass said, “and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns.” The “road map”—the peace plan agreed to by the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia—Weisglass merrily told the paper Haaretz, is dead.
If Sharon now informs President Bush that Israel has made a sacrifice of Gaza, and no more progress toward a viable Palestinian state can be made until all violence ends and Hamas and Islamic Jihad are disarmed, what will Bush do?
Nothing. Should Bush press Sharon to negotiate an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and an enclave in Arab East Jerusalem as a future capital of Palestine, Sharon will howl, the Christian right will accuse Bush of selling out Israel, Tom DeLay will sponsor a joint resolution opposing pressure on Israel and Nancy Pelosi will happily endorse. The neoconservatives will cry “Munich!” and, if Condi Rice—who has shown moxie on the Mideast—pushes too hard, she will be instantly dropped from neocon wish lists of future presidents.
“Bibi” Netanyahu, who resigned as finance minister over Gaza, says the forced removal of settlers is a victory for Hamas. He is right. Had Hamas not attacked settlers in Gaza and civilians in Israel, Sharon would never have relinquished a square inch.
Terrorism is an immoral and illegitimate weapon of war. But the original sin that ignited this war was the illegal—indeed, insane—seizure of and settlement on Palestinian land, and the stubborn refusal by Israel to conclude a peace when they held the whip hand, which they will not hold forever.
As Weisglass warns, they will now behave the same way on the West Bank—and with the same result a decade hence.
Where there is no vision, the people perish.
Saturday, August 20, 2005
Friday, August 19, 2005
Would the FBI Have Heeded "Able Danger"?
By Debbie Schlussel
FrontPageMagazine.com | August 19, 2005
Many people have e-mailed asking for my opinion on the emerging Operation Able Danger story--in which army intelligence personnel were barred from notifying the FBI about Mohammed Atta.
While I agree that the Pentagon lawyers who stopped the Able Danger operatives from notifying the FBI are culpable, and their behavior is an outrage, my take is different from most conservative commentators.
I really don't think the FBI would have acted on the information. Instead, today, we'd be sweeping under the rug yet more ineptitude by the, unfortunately, "lead agency" in the War on Terror.
Let's look at what the FBI has done with other similar information they received before and, even worse, AFTER 9/11. Let's look at what the agency and its sleazy allies have done to harm brave men who did what the Able Danger men did not--men like FBI Special Agent Robert Wright, who warned the FBI to do something about the Al-Qaeda funding network.
Here's the FBI record:
* Warnings about 9/11 hijackers Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaf Al-Hazmi living in San Diego and behaving suspiciously according to their informant landlord. (Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer of Able Danger said his group had info on Al-Midhar and Al-Hazmi, too.)
THE FBI DID . . . NOTHING.
* Warnings by FBI Special Agent Wright about an extensive Al-Qaeda funding network in the U.S. (tied to HAMAS funding network). Wright told his FBI superiors that if something wasn't done to stop them, more people would die. More people did die. Still . . .
THE FBI DID . . . NOTHING. THEN, THE FBI FIRED BOB WRIGHT. (It was Customs, now ICE, that fortunately acted on Wright's info.)
* Warnings by FBI investigators about a man named Zaccarias Moussaoui who wanted to learn how to steer planes but not how to take off or land. Warnings by Canadian and French intelligence that Moussaoui was a terrorist who'd trained in Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. FBI agents, including counsel Coleen Rowley, begged to search the hard drive in Moussaoui's computer.
THE FBI DID . . . NOTHING.
* Warnings by several operators of flight schools that mysterious Middle Eastern men wanted to learn how to steer planes, but again, not how to take-off or land.
THE FBI DID . . . NOTHING.
AFTER 9/11:
* Multiple, repeated requests to the FBI, by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Special Agent in Charge for Houston, Joe Webber, for permission to conduct wire-taps and a full-fledged investigation into Al-Qaeda operatives in Texas. (Senator Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who is investigating this says there are dozens of such investigations.)
THE FBI DID . . . NOTHING. WEBBER IS NOW BEING INVESTIGATED.
* A Southfield, Michigan Islamic "charity," which openly declared on its taxes that it gave millions to HAMAS, has personnel deported for being members of Qaeda, raised money at a Los Angeles fundraiser for "more uprisings like the one in Fallujah."
THE FBI DID . . . NOTHING.
When the FBI did do something, it was equally distressing:
* Planned to give an award to a marriage fraud perpetrator and terrorist PFLP member Imad Hamad, who openly praises Islamic terrorists, is believed to be involved in a money scheme with similarly illicit parties, and is closely tied to various terror-related deportees. After I wrote about it, the FBI revoked the award, but then put out at least five different BS explanations for the revocation.
* FBI Director Robert Mueller announced that he will never use the words "Islamic" and "terrorism" together, according to Paul Sperry's "Infiltration."
* Top FBI brass, including Mueller, declared in lawsuit depositions that they knew little about Bin Laden or terrorism, yet kept a patriotic Arab agent who knew a great deal from getting top terrorism-related jobs.
Given all of this, a very abbreviated list of FBI foul-ups, inaction, and transgressions in the agency's non-War on Terror, do you really believe the FBI would have done a damned thing about Atta with Able Danger's information?
If so, I have some land under a building named after J. Edgar Hoover to sell you.
By Debbie Schlussel
FrontPageMagazine.com | August 19, 2005
Many people have e-mailed asking for my opinion on the emerging Operation Able Danger story--in which army intelligence personnel were barred from notifying the FBI about Mohammed Atta.
While I agree that the Pentagon lawyers who stopped the Able Danger operatives from notifying the FBI are culpable, and their behavior is an outrage, my take is different from most conservative commentators.
I really don't think the FBI would have acted on the information. Instead, today, we'd be sweeping under the rug yet more ineptitude by the, unfortunately, "lead agency" in the War on Terror.
Let's look at what the FBI has done with other similar information they received before and, even worse, AFTER 9/11. Let's look at what the agency and its sleazy allies have done to harm brave men who did what the Able Danger men did not--men like FBI Special Agent Robert Wright, who warned the FBI to do something about the Al-Qaeda funding network.
Here's the FBI record:
* Warnings about 9/11 hijackers Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaf Al-Hazmi living in San Diego and behaving suspiciously according to their informant landlord. (Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer of Able Danger said his group had info on Al-Midhar and Al-Hazmi, too.)
THE FBI DID . . . NOTHING.
* Warnings by FBI Special Agent Wright about an extensive Al-Qaeda funding network in the U.S. (tied to HAMAS funding network). Wright told his FBI superiors that if something wasn't done to stop them, more people would die. More people did die. Still . . .
THE FBI DID . . . NOTHING. THEN, THE FBI FIRED BOB WRIGHT. (It was Customs, now ICE, that fortunately acted on Wright's info.)
* Warnings by FBI investigators about a man named Zaccarias Moussaoui who wanted to learn how to steer planes but not how to take off or land. Warnings by Canadian and French intelligence that Moussaoui was a terrorist who'd trained in Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. FBI agents, including counsel Coleen Rowley, begged to search the hard drive in Moussaoui's computer.
THE FBI DID . . . NOTHING.
* Warnings by several operators of flight schools that mysterious Middle Eastern men wanted to learn how to steer planes, but again, not how to take-off or land.
THE FBI DID . . . NOTHING.
AFTER 9/11:
* Multiple, repeated requests to the FBI, by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Special Agent in Charge for Houston, Joe Webber, for permission to conduct wire-taps and a full-fledged investigation into Al-Qaeda operatives in Texas. (Senator Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who is investigating this says there are dozens of such investigations.)
THE FBI DID . . . NOTHING. WEBBER IS NOW BEING INVESTIGATED.
* A Southfield, Michigan Islamic "charity," which openly declared on its taxes that it gave millions to HAMAS, has personnel deported for being members of Qaeda, raised money at a Los Angeles fundraiser for "more uprisings like the one in Fallujah."
THE FBI DID . . . NOTHING.
When the FBI did do something, it was equally distressing:
* Planned to give an award to a marriage fraud perpetrator and terrorist PFLP member Imad Hamad, who openly praises Islamic terrorists, is believed to be involved in a money scheme with similarly illicit parties, and is closely tied to various terror-related deportees. After I wrote about it, the FBI revoked the award, but then put out at least five different BS explanations for the revocation.
* FBI Director Robert Mueller announced that he will never use the words "Islamic" and "terrorism" together, according to Paul Sperry's "Infiltration."
* Top FBI brass, including Mueller, declared in lawsuit depositions that they knew little about Bin Laden or terrorism, yet kept a patriotic Arab agent who knew a great deal from getting top terrorism-related jobs.
Given all of this, a very abbreviated list of FBI foul-ups, inaction, and transgressions in the agency's non-War on Terror, do you really believe the FBI would have done a damned thing about Atta with Able Danger's information?
If so, I have some land under a building named after J. Edgar Hoover to sell you.
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Roberts dilutes the effectiveness of his argument by quoting lefty wack-job Sheehan, the outrageousness of whose statements diminishes her status as an allegedly grieving mother. However, even given that, the questions he asks deserves to be answered. The Republican Bush government seems more like the Democratic Johnson administration every day in its desire to micromanage a war it has ill-advisedly rushed into, and is not adequately equipped to finish. Now someone can tell us how the media is still just ignoring all the good news.
Get Ready for World War III
By Paul Craig Roberts
With every poll showing majorities of Americans both fed up with Bush’s war against Iraq and convinced that Bush’s invasion of Iraq has made Americans less safe, the White House moron proposes to start another war by attacking Iran. VP Cheney has already ordered the U.S. Strategic Command to come up with plans to strike Iran with tactical nuclear weapons.
Bush refuses to meet with Cindy Sheehan, instead using his vacation time at the Crawford ranch to talk war with Israeli television. In a recent interview with Israeli TV, Bush said, “All options are on the table,” with regard to Iran.
Likudnik Israel is Bush’s last remaining ally, or egger-on, in his war against “Islamic terrorism.” Israel, which is loaded with nuclear weapons and is not a signatory to the nuclear pacts, is the accuser against Iran, asserting that Iran’s nuclear energy program is just a veil behind which to produce weapons. Israel’s Likud Party fears that Iranian weapons would be a check on its plans to complete the dispossession of the Palestinians and further expand Israel’s borders.
Iran has signed the nonproliferation pact and is willing for the International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor the nuclear energy program.
Bush, however, dismisses all facts and assurances, and is willing to attack Iran based on nothing but Israel’s paranoia.
Bush can ignore the American public, because the Democrats, like the Tory Party in the United Kingdom, have completely collapsed as an opposition party. The Republican Party is now increasingly referred to as the Republikud Party.
The only check on Bush is the lack of U.S. troops. Bogged down in the Iraqi quagmire, U.S. commanders are stating that a third rotation of our exhausted and demoralized troops in Iraq can be avoided only by troop withdrawals by next spring.
However, on Aug. 11 Bush nixed the military’s talk of reducing U.S. troops in Iraq. The next day, the commander of U.S. logistics in Iraq announced that the number of insurgent attacks on U.S. forces along supply routes has doubled in the last year, making it clear that, far from winning, the United States is not even holding its own.
Cindy Sheehan has the right question for Bush: What noble cause is being served by all this suffering and destruction?
Bush is in hiding from Sheehan because he knows only ignoble causes are being served. According to the CIA, the main beneficiary of the war is Osama bin Laden’s recruitment drives. While America’s military recruitment falters and U.S. generals announce that the war has broken the Reserves and National Guard, the cause of Islamic extremism basks in the Iraqi war.
Gentle reader, do you realize the danger of having a president so disconnected from reality that he plots to attack Iran—a country three times the size of Iraq—when he lacks sufficient forces to occupy Baghdad and to protect the road from Baghdad to the airport?
Despite all the high profile “sweeps” of U.S. forces through insurgent strongholds, U.S. commanders report a doubling of insurgent attacks.
The Bush administration is insane. If the American people do not decapitate it by demanding Bush’s impeachment, the Bush administration will bring about Armageddon. This may please some Christian evangelicals conned by Rapture predictions, but World War III will please no one else.
COPYRIGHT 2005 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC
Get Ready for World War III
By Paul Craig Roberts
With every poll showing majorities of Americans both fed up with Bush’s war against Iraq and convinced that Bush’s invasion of Iraq has made Americans less safe, the White House moron proposes to start another war by attacking Iran. VP Cheney has already ordered the U.S. Strategic Command to come up with plans to strike Iran with tactical nuclear weapons.
Bush refuses to meet with Cindy Sheehan, instead using his vacation time at the Crawford ranch to talk war with Israeli television. In a recent interview with Israeli TV, Bush said, “All options are on the table,” with regard to Iran.
Likudnik Israel is Bush’s last remaining ally, or egger-on, in his war against “Islamic terrorism.” Israel, which is loaded with nuclear weapons and is not a signatory to the nuclear pacts, is the accuser against Iran, asserting that Iran’s nuclear energy program is just a veil behind which to produce weapons. Israel’s Likud Party fears that Iranian weapons would be a check on its plans to complete the dispossession of the Palestinians and further expand Israel’s borders.
Iran has signed the nonproliferation pact and is willing for the International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor the nuclear energy program.
Bush, however, dismisses all facts and assurances, and is willing to attack Iran based on nothing but Israel’s paranoia.
Bush can ignore the American public, because the Democrats, like the Tory Party in the United Kingdom, have completely collapsed as an opposition party. The Republican Party is now increasingly referred to as the Republikud Party.
The only check on Bush is the lack of U.S. troops. Bogged down in the Iraqi quagmire, U.S. commanders are stating that a third rotation of our exhausted and demoralized troops in Iraq can be avoided only by troop withdrawals by next spring.
However, on Aug. 11 Bush nixed the military’s talk of reducing U.S. troops in Iraq. The next day, the commander of U.S. logistics in Iraq announced that the number of insurgent attacks on U.S. forces along supply routes has doubled in the last year, making it clear that, far from winning, the United States is not even holding its own.
Cindy Sheehan has the right question for Bush: What noble cause is being served by all this suffering and destruction?
Bush is in hiding from Sheehan because he knows only ignoble causes are being served. According to the CIA, the main beneficiary of the war is Osama bin Laden’s recruitment drives. While America’s military recruitment falters and U.S. generals announce that the war has broken the Reserves and National Guard, the cause of Islamic extremism basks in the Iraqi war.
Gentle reader, do you realize the danger of having a president so disconnected from reality that he plots to attack Iran—a country three times the size of Iraq—when he lacks sufficient forces to occupy Baghdad and to protect the road from Baghdad to the airport?
Despite all the high profile “sweeps” of U.S. forces through insurgent strongholds, U.S. commanders report a doubling of insurgent attacks.
The Bush administration is insane. If the American people do not decapitate it by demanding Bush’s impeachment, the Bush administration will bring about Armageddon. This may please some Christian evangelicals conned by Rapture predictions, but World War III will please no one else.
COPYRIGHT 2005 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC
From The New York Times
Officer Says Military Blocked Sharing of Files on Terrorists
By PHILIP SHENON
WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 - A military intelligence team repeatedly contacted the F.B.I. in 2000 to warn about the existence of an American-based terrorist cell that included the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a veteran Army intelligence officer who said he had now decided to risk his career by discussing the information publicly.
The officer, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, said military lawyers later blocked the team from sharing any of its information with the bureau.
Colonel Shaffer said in an interview on Monday night that the small, highly classified intelligence program, known as Able Danger, had identified the terrorist ringleader, Mohamed Atta, and three other future hijackers by name by mid-2000, and tried to arrange a meeting that summer with agents of the Washington field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to share its information.
But he said military lawyers forced members of the intelligence program to cancel three scheduled meetings with the F.B.I. at the last minute, which left the bureau without information that Colonel Shaffer said might have led to Mr. Atta and the other terrorists while the Sept. 11 attacks were still being planned.
"I was at the point of near insubordination over the fact that this was something important, that this was something that should have been pursued," Colonel Shaffer said of his efforts to get the evidence from the intelligence program to the F.B.I. in 2000 and early 2001.
He said he learned later that lawyers associated with the Special Operations Command of the Defense Department had canceled the F.B.I. meetings because they feared controversy if Able Danger was portrayed as a military operation that had violated the privacy of civilians who were legally in the United States.
"It was because of the chain of command saying we're not going to pass on information - if something goes wrong, we'll get blamed," he said.
The Defense Department did not dispute the account from Colonel Shaffer, a 42-year-old native of Kansas City, Mo., who is the first military officer associated with the program to acknowledge his role publicly.
At the same time, the department said in a statement that it was "working to gain more clarity on this issue" and that "it's too early to comment on findings related to the program identified as Able Danger." The F.B.I. referred calls about Colonel Shaffer to the Pentagon.
The account from Colonel Shaffer, a reservist who is also working part time for the Pentagon, corroborates much of the information that the Sept. 11 commission has acknowledged it received about Able Danger last July from a Navy captain who was also involved with the program but whose name has not been made public. In a statement issued last week, the leaders of the commission said the panel had concluded that the intelligence program "did not turn out to be historically significant."
The statement said that while the commission did learn about Able Danger in 2003 and immediately requested Pentagon files about it, none of the documents turned over by the Defense Department referred to Mr. Atta or any of the other hijackers.
Colonel Shaffer said that his role in Able Danger was as liaison with the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, and that he was not an intelligence analyst. The interview with Colonel Shaffer on Monday was arranged for The New York Times and Fox News by Representative Curt Weldon, the Pennsylvania Republican who is vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and a champion of data-mining programs like Able Danger.
Colonel Shaffer's lawyer, Mark Zaid, said in an interview that he was concerned that Colonel Shaffer was facing retaliation from the Defense Department, first for having talked to the Sept. 11 commission staff in October 2003 and now for talking with news organizations.
Mr. Zaid said that Colonel Shaffer's security clearance was suspended last year because of what the lawyer said were a series of "petty allegations" involving $67 in personal charges on a military cellphone. He said that despite the disciplinary action, Colonel Shaffer had been promoted this year from major.
Colonel Shaffer said he had decided to allow his name to be used in part because of his frustration with the statement issued last week by the commission leaders, Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton.
The commission said in its final report last year that American intelligence agencies had not identified Mr. Atta as a terrorist before Sept. 11, 2001, when he flew an American Airlines jet into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York.
A commission spokesman did not return repeated phone calls on Tuesday for comment. A Democratic member of the commission, Richard Ben-Veniste, the former Watergate prosecutor, said in an interview on Tuesday that while he could not judge the credibility of the information from Colonel Shaffer and others, the Pentagon needed to "provide a clear and comprehensive explanation regarding what information it had in its possession regarding Mr. Atta."
"And if these assertions are credible," Mr. Ben-Veniste continued, "the Pentagon would need to explain why it was that the 9/11 commissioners were not provided this information despite requests for all information regarding Able Danger."
Colonel Shaffer said he had provided information about Able Danger and its identification of Mr. Atta in a private meeting in October 2003 with members of the Sept. 11 commission staff when they visited Afghanistan, where he was then serving. Commission members have disputed that, saying that they do not recall hearing Mr. Atta's name during the briefing and that the name did not appear in documents about Able Danger that were later turned over by the Pentagon.
"I would implore the 9/11 commission to support a follow-on investigation to ascertain what the real truth is," Colonel Shaffer said in the interview this week. "I do believe the 9/11 commission should have done that job: figuring out what went wrong with Able Danger."
"This was a good news story because, before 9/11, you had an element of the military - our unit - which was actually out looking for Al Qaeda," he continued. "I can't believe the 9/11 commission would somehow believe that the historical value was not relevant."
Colonel Shaffer said that because he was not an intelligence analyst, he was not involved in the details of the procedures used in Able Danger to glean information from terrorist databases, nor was he aware of which databases had supplied the information that might have led to the name of Mr. Atta or other terrorists so long before the Sept. 11 attacks.
But he said he did know that Able Danger had made use of publicly available information from government immigration agencies, from Internet sites and from paid search engines like LexisNexis.
Officer Says Military Blocked Sharing of Files on Terrorists
By PHILIP SHENON
WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 - A military intelligence team repeatedly contacted the F.B.I. in 2000 to warn about the existence of an American-based terrorist cell that included the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a veteran Army intelligence officer who said he had now decided to risk his career by discussing the information publicly.
The officer, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, said military lawyers later blocked the team from sharing any of its information with the bureau.
Colonel Shaffer said in an interview on Monday night that the small, highly classified intelligence program, known as Able Danger, had identified the terrorist ringleader, Mohamed Atta, and three other future hijackers by name by mid-2000, and tried to arrange a meeting that summer with agents of the Washington field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to share its information.
But he said military lawyers forced members of the intelligence program to cancel three scheduled meetings with the F.B.I. at the last minute, which left the bureau without information that Colonel Shaffer said might have led to Mr. Atta and the other terrorists while the Sept. 11 attacks were still being planned.
"I was at the point of near insubordination over the fact that this was something important, that this was something that should have been pursued," Colonel Shaffer said of his efforts to get the evidence from the intelligence program to the F.B.I. in 2000 and early 2001.
He said he learned later that lawyers associated with the Special Operations Command of the Defense Department had canceled the F.B.I. meetings because they feared controversy if Able Danger was portrayed as a military operation that had violated the privacy of civilians who were legally in the United States.
"It was because of the chain of command saying we're not going to pass on information - if something goes wrong, we'll get blamed," he said.
The Defense Department did not dispute the account from Colonel Shaffer, a 42-year-old native of Kansas City, Mo., who is the first military officer associated with the program to acknowledge his role publicly.
At the same time, the department said in a statement that it was "working to gain more clarity on this issue" and that "it's too early to comment on findings related to the program identified as Able Danger." The F.B.I. referred calls about Colonel Shaffer to the Pentagon.
The account from Colonel Shaffer, a reservist who is also working part time for the Pentagon, corroborates much of the information that the Sept. 11 commission has acknowledged it received about Able Danger last July from a Navy captain who was also involved with the program but whose name has not been made public. In a statement issued last week, the leaders of the commission said the panel had concluded that the intelligence program "did not turn out to be historically significant."
The statement said that while the commission did learn about Able Danger in 2003 and immediately requested Pentagon files about it, none of the documents turned over by the Defense Department referred to Mr. Atta or any of the other hijackers.
Colonel Shaffer said that his role in Able Danger was as liaison with the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, and that he was not an intelligence analyst. The interview with Colonel Shaffer on Monday was arranged for The New York Times and Fox News by Representative Curt Weldon, the Pennsylvania Republican who is vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and a champion of data-mining programs like Able Danger.
Colonel Shaffer's lawyer, Mark Zaid, said in an interview that he was concerned that Colonel Shaffer was facing retaliation from the Defense Department, first for having talked to the Sept. 11 commission staff in October 2003 and now for talking with news organizations.
Mr. Zaid said that Colonel Shaffer's security clearance was suspended last year because of what the lawyer said were a series of "petty allegations" involving $67 in personal charges on a military cellphone. He said that despite the disciplinary action, Colonel Shaffer had been promoted this year from major.
Colonel Shaffer said he had decided to allow his name to be used in part because of his frustration with the statement issued last week by the commission leaders, Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton.
The commission said in its final report last year that American intelligence agencies had not identified Mr. Atta as a terrorist before Sept. 11, 2001, when he flew an American Airlines jet into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York.
A commission spokesman did not return repeated phone calls on Tuesday for comment. A Democratic member of the commission, Richard Ben-Veniste, the former Watergate prosecutor, said in an interview on Tuesday that while he could not judge the credibility of the information from Colonel Shaffer and others, the Pentagon needed to "provide a clear and comprehensive explanation regarding what information it had in its possession regarding Mr. Atta."
"And if these assertions are credible," Mr. Ben-Veniste continued, "the Pentagon would need to explain why it was that the 9/11 commissioners were not provided this information despite requests for all information regarding Able Danger."
Colonel Shaffer said he had provided information about Able Danger and its identification of Mr. Atta in a private meeting in October 2003 with members of the Sept. 11 commission staff when they visited Afghanistan, where he was then serving. Commission members have disputed that, saying that they do not recall hearing Mr. Atta's name during the briefing and that the name did not appear in documents about Able Danger that were later turned over by the Pentagon.
"I would implore the 9/11 commission to support a follow-on investigation to ascertain what the real truth is," Colonel Shaffer said in the interview this week. "I do believe the 9/11 commission should have done that job: figuring out what went wrong with Able Danger."
"This was a good news story because, before 9/11, you had an element of the military - our unit - which was actually out looking for Al Qaeda," he continued. "I can't believe the 9/11 commission would somehow believe that the historical value was not relevant."
Colonel Shaffer said that because he was not an intelligence analyst, he was not involved in the details of the procedures used in Able Danger to glean information from terrorist databases, nor was he aware of which databases had supplied the information that might have led to the name of Mr. Atta or other terrorists so long before the Sept. 11 attacks.
But he said he did know that Able Danger had made use of publicly available information from government immigration agencies, from Internet sites and from paid search engines like LexisNexis.
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Why is Cheney Lobbying for a Boost in China’s Nuclear Capability?
By Paul Craig Roberts
What I have noticed about conservatives and Republicans is that they are no longer conservative and Republican. They believe in the efficacy of force. If we are losing in Iraq, it is because we are not using enough force. All we have to do to win in Iraq, they maintain, is to nuke the towel-heads. In case you have forgotten, Rich Lowry, editor of The National Review, suggested that the United States nuke Mecca in retaliation for a terrorist attack.
Conservative Ann Coulter was more mild, no doubt due to her feminine nature. Her solution to Islam was to “invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.”
Determined to win, conservatives and Republicans are willing to nuke Iraq. Precisely what they would be winning, they cannot identify. But they believe that with sufficient force, America can teach those on the receiving end a lesson and make them do what the Bush administration wants. That is the extent of the brainpower that conservatives and Republicans bring to war and diplomacy.
Conservatives and Republicans used to be people who thought it was America’s business to avoid wars and to govern well at home. It was Democrats who involved us in wars — World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam all started under Democratic presidents.
Governing well at home meant being suspicious of government power, not giving government carte blanche with Orwellian legislation called “the Patriot Act.” I can remember when conservatives and Republicans would have gone berserk if Democrats had identified patriotism with the police state legislation called “the Patriot Act.”
You can’t learn a word of this from right-wing talk radio or Fox “News.” According to these warmongering propagandists, Democrats (read Jane Fonda and John Kerry) are squishy pacifists who want the commies to take over the world. Democrats always run away once a shot is fired, say the right-wing crazies, and believe terrorists are people who had bad childhoods.
As a result of the influence of Israel’s neoconservative supporters and evangelicals expecting The Rapture, conservatives and Republicans are focused on the Middle East. They are apoplectic over Iran’s nuclear power program. If Iran has a nuclear power program, Iran might be able to produce a nuclear weapon in 10 years. Vice President Cheney has ordered a plan for the United States to use tactical nuclear weapons to take out Iran’s capability should an excuse arise.
That would be the third Islamic country the United States would have attacked in as many years. All hell would break loose. Meanwhile, the chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has announced that the commission will approve Westinghouse’s sale of two nuclear reactors to China.
Conservatives and Republicans think this is a good idea. Vice President Cheney has lobbied in behalf of the sale. It is good for private business. It means $2.4 billion in revenues for Westinghouse Electric Company.
Iran will never again be a world power, even if it has a few nukes. Persia was a power in ancient times, not today. If we don’t bother Iran, Iran won’t bother us.
China is a different matter. China already is a world power. China holds enough U.S. government debt to have the dollar and U.S. interest rates in its hand. Last month in an official briefing, a top Chinese general, Zhu Chenghu, said that if the United States messes around with China or tries to interfere with China’s reunification with Taiwan, China will nuke the United States: “If the Americans are determined to interfere, then we will be determined to respond. We Chinese will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all the cities east of Xian. Of course, the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese.”
VP Cheney and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission want to make sure China has what it takes to do the job.
The moronic Bush administration is all concerned about “weapons of mass destruction” where they aren’t, not where they are. Why in the world is the Bush administration using up the U.S. military and its weapons systems in Iraq, a country that was no threat whatsoever to the United States, while aiding and abetting China’s rapidly growing economic and military power?
Having asked this question, I will receive 1,000 e-mails from Bush worshippers who will indignantly inquire why I am demonizing China. I am not demonizing China. I am simply asking a question about the intelligence of the Bush administration.
Bush’s supporters, of course, are busy at work demonizing Middle Eastern states that have nothing but fanatical insurgents to ward off U.S. military attacks on their homelands.
The conservative movement has disappeared. The Republican Party has disappeared. The two have morphed into a brownshirt movement that worships coercion and a strutting little marionette who believes he can threaten peoples into submission.
Why does Cheney want to sell nuclear reactors to China, but order the U.S. Strategic Command to prepare to nuke Iran’s nuclear power capability, a capability that would allow Iran to sell more oil to an energy-starved world?
What’s going on here?
By Paul Craig Roberts
What I have noticed about conservatives and Republicans is that they are no longer conservative and Republican. They believe in the efficacy of force. If we are losing in Iraq, it is because we are not using enough force. All we have to do to win in Iraq, they maintain, is to nuke the towel-heads. In case you have forgotten, Rich Lowry, editor of The National Review, suggested that the United States nuke Mecca in retaliation for a terrorist attack.
Conservative Ann Coulter was more mild, no doubt due to her feminine nature. Her solution to Islam was to “invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.”
Determined to win, conservatives and Republicans are willing to nuke Iraq. Precisely what they would be winning, they cannot identify. But they believe that with sufficient force, America can teach those on the receiving end a lesson and make them do what the Bush administration wants. That is the extent of the brainpower that conservatives and Republicans bring to war and diplomacy.
Conservatives and Republicans used to be people who thought it was America’s business to avoid wars and to govern well at home. It was Democrats who involved us in wars — World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam all started under Democratic presidents.
Governing well at home meant being suspicious of government power, not giving government carte blanche with Orwellian legislation called “the Patriot Act.” I can remember when conservatives and Republicans would have gone berserk if Democrats had identified patriotism with the police state legislation called “the Patriot Act.”
You can’t learn a word of this from right-wing talk radio or Fox “News.” According to these warmongering propagandists, Democrats (read Jane Fonda and John Kerry) are squishy pacifists who want the commies to take over the world. Democrats always run away once a shot is fired, say the right-wing crazies, and believe terrorists are people who had bad childhoods.
As a result of the influence of Israel’s neoconservative supporters and evangelicals expecting The Rapture, conservatives and Republicans are focused on the Middle East. They are apoplectic over Iran’s nuclear power program. If Iran has a nuclear power program, Iran might be able to produce a nuclear weapon in 10 years. Vice President Cheney has ordered a plan for the United States to use tactical nuclear weapons to take out Iran’s capability should an excuse arise.
That would be the third Islamic country the United States would have attacked in as many years. All hell would break loose. Meanwhile, the chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has announced that the commission will approve Westinghouse’s sale of two nuclear reactors to China.
Conservatives and Republicans think this is a good idea. Vice President Cheney has lobbied in behalf of the sale. It is good for private business. It means $2.4 billion in revenues for Westinghouse Electric Company.
Iran will never again be a world power, even if it has a few nukes. Persia was a power in ancient times, not today. If we don’t bother Iran, Iran won’t bother us.
China is a different matter. China already is a world power. China holds enough U.S. government debt to have the dollar and U.S. interest rates in its hand. Last month in an official briefing, a top Chinese general, Zhu Chenghu, said that if the United States messes around with China or tries to interfere with China’s reunification with Taiwan, China will nuke the United States: “If the Americans are determined to interfere, then we will be determined to respond. We Chinese will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all the cities east of Xian. Of course, the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese.”
VP Cheney and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission want to make sure China has what it takes to do the job.
The moronic Bush administration is all concerned about “weapons of mass destruction” where they aren’t, not where they are. Why in the world is the Bush administration using up the U.S. military and its weapons systems in Iraq, a country that was no threat whatsoever to the United States, while aiding and abetting China’s rapidly growing economic and military power?
Having asked this question, I will receive 1,000 e-mails from Bush worshippers who will indignantly inquire why I am demonizing China. I am not demonizing China. I am simply asking a question about the intelligence of the Bush administration.
Bush’s supporters, of course, are busy at work demonizing Middle Eastern states that have nothing but fanatical insurgents to ward off U.S. military attacks on their homelands.
The conservative movement has disappeared. The Republican Party has disappeared. The two have morphed into a brownshirt movement that worships coercion and a strutting little marionette who believes he can threaten peoples into submission.
Why does Cheney want to sell nuclear reactors to China, but order the U.S. Strategic Command to prepare to nuke Iran’s nuclear power capability, a capability that would allow Iran to sell more oil to an energy-starved world?
What’s going on here?
Sunday, August 14, 2005
Is This Iran Crisis for Real?
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Are the Iranian mullahs close to acquiring the bomb? Has Iran violated the Non-Proliferation Treaty by restarting its conversion of yellowcake into uranium hexaflouride? The answer to both is no.
By a recent U.S. intelligence review, Iran may be 10 years away from a bomb. And under the NPT, Iran is allowed to enrich uranium for use in her own nuclear power plants.
Why, then, this talk of confrontation and pre-emptive strikes? Even if Iran had a weapon, to give it to a terrorist or to use it on a U.S. target would be an act of suicidal insanity by a regime that, no matter how militant, has shown no desire for war with America.
What is the worry? Just this. If or when Iran goes nuclear, she has a deterrent to intimidation. U.S. freedom of action in the Persian Gulf comes to an end. We would have to behave as gingerly with the mullahs as we do with Kim Jong Il, something intolerable to our neoconservatives and President Bush.
For the Israelis, an Iranian bomb would have the same impact as Stalin’s explosion of a bomb had on us in 1949. Israel’s invulnerability would come to an end. She would enter the world of Mutual Assured Destruction, like the one we had to live in during the Cold War. Thus, for Israel, the sooner the Americans pulverize Iran’s infant nuclear facilities, the better. But herein lies the problem for President Bush.
Britain, France and Germany do not want to take the first step to confrontation by asking the U.N. Security Council to vote sanctions on Iran for restarting the enrichment process. And even if the Europeans agree to go to the Security Council, a resolution calling for sanctions would face vetoes by Russia and China.
If the council then rejects sanctions, but America and her NATO allies impose them, the world will be divided between Russia-China-Iran on one side and the United States and its backers on the other. It would be interesting to see how many U.S. allies are willing to support sanctions on the third largest oil producer on earth when oil is running at $65 a barrel.
Moreover, if the present negotiations end in sanctions on Iran, then, just as North Korea sped up its nuclear program when talks broke down, Iran might do the same. That would leave the United States with the final option: air and missile strikes to destroy all of Iran’s known facilities for the enrichment of uranium.
But as Iran is permitted such facilities as long as it allows absolute freedom for U.N. inspectors, how could we justify such acts of war?
After all, we give a $160 billion trade surplus to China, though she is targeting our cities with nuclear missiles. President Bush cut a deal to help India develop nuclear power, though she has tested bombs. We give foreign aid to Pakistan and Israel, which had clandestine and successful programs that built atomic weapons. And we have a basket of goodies on offer to Kim Jong Il if he will shut down his nuclear facilities and hand over any bombs.
Where is the consistency here?
There is another consideration. Iran’s response to any U.S. strike is unlikely to be to go limp like a peacenik demonstrator. As Michael Mazeer of the U.S. National War College writes in The New Republic, Iran’s best strategy might be to lash out in retaliation.
What could Iran do? Plenty. Send Revolutionary Guards into Iraq to make that country a worse hell for the 135,000 U.S. troops. Incite Hezbollah to launch rockets on Israel to widen the war. Attack U.S. allies in the Gulf. Encourage the Shias in Iraq and Saudi Arabia to attack Americans. Mine the Strait of Hormuz. Activate Islamic loyalists to bring terror home to the United States.
In short, a U.S. attack on Iran could lead to war across the region and interruption of the 15 million barrels of oil a day that come from the Gulf, which would drive the world economy into instant cardiac arrest.
And as the United States lacks the ground forces to invade Iran and topple the regime, U.S. retaliation would be restricted to air and cruise missile strikes. But just as 9-11 united Americans behind President Bush, attacks on Iran might unite the Iranian people behind the mullahs’ regime, enhancing its prestige as it fought America to protect Iran’s equal right to pursue nuclear power and nuclear technology, an issue upon which almost all Iranians agree.
President Bush should think long and hard before yielding to the War Party a second time. Iran is a nation three times the size of Iraq and with three times the population. This would be no cakewal
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Are the Iranian mullahs close to acquiring the bomb? Has Iran violated the Non-Proliferation Treaty by restarting its conversion of yellowcake into uranium hexaflouride? The answer to both is no.
By a recent U.S. intelligence review, Iran may be 10 years away from a bomb. And under the NPT, Iran is allowed to enrich uranium for use in her own nuclear power plants.
Why, then, this talk of confrontation and pre-emptive strikes? Even if Iran had a weapon, to give it to a terrorist or to use it on a U.S. target would be an act of suicidal insanity by a regime that, no matter how militant, has shown no desire for war with America.
What is the worry? Just this. If or when Iran goes nuclear, she has a deterrent to intimidation. U.S. freedom of action in the Persian Gulf comes to an end. We would have to behave as gingerly with the mullahs as we do with Kim Jong Il, something intolerable to our neoconservatives and President Bush.
For the Israelis, an Iranian bomb would have the same impact as Stalin’s explosion of a bomb had on us in 1949. Israel’s invulnerability would come to an end. She would enter the world of Mutual Assured Destruction, like the one we had to live in during the Cold War. Thus, for Israel, the sooner the Americans pulverize Iran’s infant nuclear facilities, the better. But herein lies the problem for President Bush.
Britain, France and Germany do not want to take the first step to confrontation by asking the U.N. Security Council to vote sanctions on Iran for restarting the enrichment process. And even if the Europeans agree to go to the Security Council, a resolution calling for sanctions would face vetoes by Russia and China.
If the council then rejects sanctions, but America and her NATO allies impose them, the world will be divided between Russia-China-Iran on one side and the United States and its backers on the other. It would be interesting to see how many U.S. allies are willing to support sanctions on the third largest oil producer on earth when oil is running at $65 a barrel.
Moreover, if the present negotiations end in sanctions on Iran, then, just as North Korea sped up its nuclear program when talks broke down, Iran might do the same. That would leave the United States with the final option: air and missile strikes to destroy all of Iran’s known facilities for the enrichment of uranium.
But as Iran is permitted such facilities as long as it allows absolute freedom for U.N. inspectors, how could we justify such acts of war?
After all, we give a $160 billion trade surplus to China, though she is targeting our cities with nuclear missiles. President Bush cut a deal to help India develop nuclear power, though she has tested bombs. We give foreign aid to Pakistan and Israel, which had clandestine and successful programs that built atomic weapons. And we have a basket of goodies on offer to Kim Jong Il if he will shut down his nuclear facilities and hand over any bombs.
Where is the consistency here?
There is another consideration. Iran’s response to any U.S. strike is unlikely to be to go limp like a peacenik demonstrator. As Michael Mazeer of the U.S. National War College writes in The New Republic, Iran’s best strategy might be to lash out in retaliation.
What could Iran do? Plenty. Send Revolutionary Guards into Iraq to make that country a worse hell for the 135,000 U.S. troops. Incite Hezbollah to launch rockets on Israel to widen the war. Attack U.S. allies in the Gulf. Encourage the Shias in Iraq and Saudi Arabia to attack Americans. Mine the Strait of Hormuz. Activate Islamic loyalists to bring terror home to the United States.
In short, a U.S. attack on Iran could lead to war across the region and interruption of the 15 million barrels of oil a day that come from the Gulf, which would drive the world economy into instant cardiac arrest.
And as the United States lacks the ground forces to invade Iran and topple the regime, U.S. retaliation would be restricted to air and cruise missile strikes. But just as 9-11 united Americans behind President Bush, attacks on Iran might unite the Iranian people behind the mullahs’ regime, enhancing its prestige as it fought America to protect Iran’s equal right to pursue nuclear power and nuclear technology, an issue upon which almost all Iranians agree.
President Bush should think long and hard before yielding to the War Party a second time. Iran is a nation three times the size of Iraq and with three times the population. This would be no cakewal
From Narniaweb.com, an interview with the stepson of C.S. Lewis about the film version of The Chronicles of Narnia:The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,scheduled for release Dec. 9th.
NarniaWeb Exclusive Interview with Douglas Gresham
NarniaWeb had a chance to ask Douglas Gresham some of our burning questions about the upcoming Narnia film The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. He was very gracious and here’s our interview.
NarniaWeb: What were your duties as a co-producer on the film?
Douglas Gresham: One of our producers on set one day was introducing me to someone who asked "What does he do on this project?" His reply was "He’s to blame". (laughs) Actually I am responsible for consultation on all aspects of the production as a sort of in house Narnia expert. This extends to all spin-off materials, like toys, games, books and so forth. I work with the games guys from the companies contracted to Buena Vista, the Merchandising guys from Disney, the Publishing teams at HarperCollins and represent the C.S. Lewis Company as their Creative and Artistic Director. Making the movie has been a dearly held ambition and project for me for about thirty years (my children remember me dreaming, scheming, planning, and talking about it all their lives) so every aspect of it is important to me. I suppose I represent Jack [C.S. Lewis] himself as a sort of creative ambassador. The aim of this is to use my abilities, knowledge and experience to make this movie as good as we can possibly make it.
NW: How much time did you get to spend in New Zealand?
DG: I made three or four trips out there last year spending a total of probably about four or five very enjoyable weeks in all. It’s a bit hard to remember exactly as the time seemed to go past very quickly while I was there, but when I got home after spending a week or so in Narnia, it seemed as if I had been away for ages and yet no time had passed. I suppose I should have expected that.
NW: Knowing C. S. Lewis personally, do you think that he would insist that the books were adapted exactly as he wrote them or that he would be open to the filmmakers’ ideas as long as they did not obscure the meaning of the stories or change anything essential to them?
DG: That’s a tough question. I know that Jack would want to protect the integrity of each of the books, and preserve very carefully the messages that each is intended to convey. I also know that Jack was not enamored of film as a medium of communication because he felt that too little care was taken about what was being said in the movies that he had seen. Also, one of the hardest things to do is to preserve the literary integrity of a book when adapting it to either stage or film, and it is probably far more difficult with film. I think though that Jack would be amazed and fascinated with the wonderful technology that has been developed recently but perhaps less than delighted with the uses to which it has been put. I hope we address that failing to some extent with LWW.
NW: If you could have asked Jack one question about doing the films what would it have been?
DG: That one is impossible! If Jack were around I would have thousands of questions for him. (laughs)
NW: If you think that he would have allowed a little room for other ideas and made allowances for translating the written word to the moving picture, then how does it feel to be in the position he would occupy as the judge of these questions and how do you decide whether he would approve of one idea and disapprove of another?
DG: It’s rather daunting to say the least. As to how I decide; I put together all my memory and love of Jack himself and also of Warnie and my mother (great fans of Narnia not surprisingly), everything that they taught me, my understanding of and love for the book, my understanding of the necessities of the film medium and the needs of modern human society worldwide, and I pray a lot. Once all those and other factors have come together and been thoroughly examined in the light of whatever decision is to be made, I then decide what to say.
NW: Are there any major differences from the book that we can expect?
DG: That depends on what you mean by "major differences". Obviously a lot of what Jack could do with narrative, we have had to translate into action. Jack could tell about it, we have to make it happen. Also, for reasons of character development, balance and pacing, there will be things in the movie that do not appear in the book. I think and hope that we have added more value to it than we have taken from it (oops, now some *&^$%£# will try to charge us VAT on that). However, as a Narnian purist I ’feel’ that any and every change from the original book is bad and thus have to contend with my emotional attachment to the book warring with my intellectual faculties and understanding of filmmaking. I have probably been a pain in the neck at times to my colleagues in the production. (grins)
NW: There have been some rumors put forward by the studio that not all seven movies will be made or that some movies may be combined. What’s your reaction to this?
DG: I didn’t know that. But how many movies are to be made by Walden and distributed by Disney would almost certainly depend on how many folks go to see each movie as it comes out, so really it’s up to you guys. What they call "Franchises" in Hollywood do seem to have varying life spans, the James Bond series is up to about 20 movies now I think. Hollywood dudes do seem to tie themselves into patterns very easily and find them much harder to break out of than to slide into. However, I would like to live long enough to see all seven made into good films. I would certainly not want to see any of them combined, or skipped for that matter.
NW: If there are future movies, do you plan on being as closely involved with them as you have been with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe?
DG: Yes indeed, if not even more so as I would hope to become more useful the more I learn about making movies.
NW: What has it been like working with Son of Adam (Andrew Adamson) and the rest of the film crew?
DG: For the most part it has been a very enjoyable time. The crew was all extremely nice people as also were the cast. I never encountered any nastiness on set or at any of our locations from anyone, and that is pretty rare in film making. Come to think of it, it’s pretty rare in any endeavor. One of my particular friends on set was annoyed by something on one occasion so she went off and sat by herself for a few minutes till she had overcome her annoyance. She did not blaze up at anyone, or inflict her feelings on anyone else. I found that interesting, for while she is a pretty impressive person in her own right, it seemed to me to be what I would expect from members of that crew. An atmosphere of friendship and good-heartedness pervaded the work; in fact it was a bit like being in Narnia during the Golden Age. Andrew is a very nice bloke, and has a way of applying quiet charm to get things done his way.
NW: Which character do you think most matches their description in the books?
DG: Hmm, now that is a tough one because I think they all do - that was part of what we set out to achieve. Will just is Peter, Anna is absolutely Susan, Skandar plays Edmund to perfection (we teased him that when he got to the part where Edmund suddenly turns into a good guy, we would have to teach him how to act, as he had just been himself up until then) and Georgie is perfect as Lucy. Tilda plays the White Witch superbly and James is a brilliantly true to character Tumnus.
NW: Can you tell us about any fun experiences on the set?
DG: My second son Tim brought his family over to join me on set at one stage, when we were about to film the White Witch’s battle camp in a thick, wooded area outside of Auckland. When we arrived early at the location, the set was fully dressed, the crew had everything ready to go but very few people had turned up yet. Smoke machines were drifting a sort of grim, ground mist across the forest floor, and racks of ugly weapons were scattered haphazardly around. My four year old grandson Jack was riding on his father’s shoulders as we approached the set. "Daddy" he said, "This place is EVIL" That was fun!
Really, it was all about as much fun as making movies can be. There was one day when five of us in the crew shared a common birthday, a day when I arrived on set wearing shoes instead of my customary boots and was promptly dragged into the limelight by the four children to show everybody, and there was a memorable helicopter location recce with the CEO of Walden (on which my wife and eldest daughter were invited to come along). But I suppose the most fun of all was meeting the great people involved with all the various aspects of the production.
It’s a strange experience to have a life-long dream slowly come true before your very eyes and to see it not only coming true but exceeding your own expectations. I made a point of trying to thank as many of the folks involved as I could, because they were each, in their own task, a part of making something happen that I have longed to see for most of my life. People forget, or don’t know, that behind every movie there are an army of folks whom no one ever hears about - people who cook, clean, paint, build, weld, service machinery and so on and so forth. They all play a vital role in making a movie happen. Making friends with wonderful people in make-up, wardrobe, production, and so on was a real joy. Making friends is after all one of the most fun parts of life.
NarniaWeb Exclusive Interview with Douglas Gresham
NarniaWeb had a chance to ask Douglas Gresham some of our burning questions about the upcoming Narnia film The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. He was very gracious and here’s our interview.
NarniaWeb: What were your duties as a co-producer on the film?
Douglas Gresham: One of our producers on set one day was introducing me to someone who asked "What does he do on this project?" His reply was "He’s to blame". (laughs) Actually I am responsible for consultation on all aspects of the production as a sort of in house Narnia expert. This extends to all spin-off materials, like toys, games, books and so forth. I work with the games guys from the companies contracted to Buena Vista, the Merchandising guys from Disney, the Publishing teams at HarperCollins and represent the C.S. Lewis Company as their Creative and Artistic Director. Making the movie has been a dearly held ambition and project for me for about thirty years (my children remember me dreaming, scheming, planning, and talking about it all their lives) so every aspect of it is important to me. I suppose I represent Jack [C.S. Lewis] himself as a sort of creative ambassador. The aim of this is to use my abilities, knowledge and experience to make this movie as good as we can possibly make it.
NW: How much time did you get to spend in New Zealand?
DG: I made three or four trips out there last year spending a total of probably about four or five very enjoyable weeks in all. It’s a bit hard to remember exactly as the time seemed to go past very quickly while I was there, but when I got home after spending a week or so in Narnia, it seemed as if I had been away for ages and yet no time had passed. I suppose I should have expected that.
NW: Knowing C. S. Lewis personally, do you think that he would insist that the books were adapted exactly as he wrote them or that he would be open to the filmmakers’ ideas as long as they did not obscure the meaning of the stories or change anything essential to them?
DG: That’s a tough question. I know that Jack would want to protect the integrity of each of the books, and preserve very carefully the messages that each is intended to convey. I also know that Jack was not enamored of film as a medium of communication because he felt that too little care was taken about what was being said in the movies that he had seen. Also, one of the hardest things to do is to preserve the literary integrity of a book when adapting it to either stage or film, and it is probably far more difficult with film. I think though that Jack would be amazed and fascinated with the wonderful technology that has been developed recently but perhaps less than delighted with the uses to which it has been put. I hope we address that failing to some extent with LWW.
NW: If you could have asked Jack one question about doing the films what would it have been?
DG: That one is impossible! If Jack were around I would have thousands of questions for him. (laughs)
NW: If you think that he would have allowed a little room for other ideas and made allowances for translating the written word to the moving picture, then how does it feel to be in the position he would occupy as the judge of these questions and how do you decide whether he would approve of one idea and disapprove of another?
DG: It’s rather daunting to say the least. As to how I decide; I put together all my memory and love of Jack himself and also of Warnie and my mother (great fans of Narnia not surprisingly), everything that they taught me, my understanding of and love for the book, my understanding of the necessities of the film medium and the needs of modern human society worldwide, and I pray a lot. Once all those and other factors have come together and been thoroughly examined in the light of whatever decision is to be made, I then decide what to say.
NW: Are there any major differences from the book that we can expect?
DG: That depends on what you mean by "major differences". Obviously a lot of what Jack could do with narrative, we have had to translate into action. Jack could tell about it, we have to make it happen. Also, for reasons of character development, balance and pacing, there will be things in the movie that do not appear in the book. I think and hope that we have added more value to it than we have taken from it (oops, now some *&^$%£# will try to charge us VAT on that). However, as a Narnian purist I ’feel’ that any and every change from the original book is bad and thus have to contend with my emotional attachment to the book warring with my intellectual faculties and understanding of filmmaking. I have probably been a pain in the neck at times to my colleagues in the production. (grins)
NW: There have been some rumors put forward by the studio that not all seven movies will be made or that some movies may be combined. What’s your reaction to this?
DG: I didn’t know that. But how many movies are to be made by Walden and distributed by Disney would almost certainly depend on how many folks go to see each movie as it comes out, so really it’s up to you guys. What they call "Franchises" in Hollywood do seem to have varying life spans, the James Bond series is up to about 20 movies now I think. Hollywood dudes do seem to tie themselves into patterns very easily and find them much harder to break out of than to slide into. However, I would like to live long enough to see all seven made into good films. I would certainly not want to see any of them combined, or skipped for that matter.
NW: If there are future movies, do you plan on being as closely involved with them as you have been with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe?
DG: Yes indeed, if not even more so as I would hope to become more useful the more I learn about making movies.
NW: What has it been like working with Son of Adam (Andrew Adamson) and the rest of the film crew?
DG: For the most part it has been a very enjoyable time. The crew was all extremely nice people as also were the cast. I never encountered any nastiness on set or at any of our locations from anyone, and that is pretty rare in film making. Come to think of it, it’s pretty rare in any endeavor. One of my particular friends on set was annoyed by something on one occasion so she went off and sat by herself for a few minutes till she had overcome her annoyance. She did not blaze up at anyone, or inflict her feelings on anyone else. I found that interesting, for while she is a pretty impressive person in her own right, it seemed to me to be what I would expect from members of that crew. An atmosphere of friendship and good-heartedness pervaded the work; in fact it was a bit like being in Narnia during the Golden Age. Andrew is a very nice bloke, and has a way of applying quiet charm to get things done his way.
NW: Which character do you think most matches their description in the books?
DG: Hmm, now that is a tough one because I think they all do - that was part of what we set out to achieve. Will just is Peter, Anna is absolutely Susan, Skandar plays Edmund to perfection (we teased him that when he got to the part where Edmund suddenly turns into a good guy, we would have to teach him how to act, as he had just been himself up until then) and Georgie is perfect as Lucy. Tilda plays the White Witch superbly and James is a brilliantly true to character Tumnus.
NW: Can you tell us about any fun experiences on the set?
DG: My second son Tim brought his family over to join me on set at one stage, when we were about to film the White Witch’s battle camp in a thick, wooded area outside of Auckland. When we arrived early at the location, the set was fully dressed, the crew had everything ready to go but very few people had turned up yet. Smoke machines were drifting a sort of grim, ground mist across the forest floor, and racks of ugly weapons were scattered haphazardly around. My four year old grandson Jack was riding on his father’s shoulders as we approached the set. "Daddy" he said, "This place is EVIL" That was fun!
Really, it was all about as much fun as making movies can be. There was one day when five of us in the crew shared a common birthday, a day when I arrived on set wearing shoes instead of my customary boots and was promptly dragged into the limelight by the four children to show everybody, and there was a memorable helicopter location recce with the CEO of Walden (on which my wife and eldest daughter were invited to come along). But I suppose the most fun of all was meeting the great people involved with all the various aspects of the production.
It’s a strange experience to have a life-long dream slowly come true before your very eyes and to see it not only coming true but exceeding your own expectations. I made a point of trying to thank as many of the folks involved as I could, because they were each, in their own task, a part of making something happen that I have longed to see for most of my life. People forget, or don’t know, that behind every movie there are an army of folks whom no one ever hears about - people who cook, clean, paint, build, weld, service machinery and so on and so forth. They all play a vital role in making a movie happen. Making friends with wonderful people in make-up, wardrobe, production, and so on was a real joy. Making friends is after all one of the most fun parts of life.
From The Chicago Sun-Times:
Atta way to blow 9/11 panel's credibility
By Mark Steyn
If you want to know everything wrong with the 9/11 Commission in a single sound bite, consider this from Al Felzenberg, its official spokesman, speaking Wednesday:
''There was no way that Atta could have been in the United States at that time, which is why the staff didn't give this tremendous weight when they were writing the report. This information was not meshing with the other information that we had.''
In fairness to Felzenberg, he was having a bad week, and a hard time staying on top of the commission's ever-shifting version of events. It emerged that the U.S. military had fingered Mohammed Atta -- the guy who plowed Flight 11 into the first World Trade Center tower -- well over a year before before 9/11. Or as the Associated Press puts it:
"A classified military intelligence unit called 'Able Danger' identified Atta and three other hijackers in 1999 as potential members of a terrorist cell in New York City."
At first, the commission denied that it knew anything about "Able Danger": "The Sept. 11 Commission did not learn of any U.S. government knowledge prior to 9/11 of surveillance of Mohammed Atta or of his cell," insisted Lee Hamilton, the Democratic co-chair. "Had we learned of it, obviously, it would've been a major focus of our investigation."
But within 48 hours this version was non-operative. As the AP subsequently reported:
"The Sept. 11 Commission knew military intelligence officials had identified lead hijacker Mohamed Atta as a member of al-Qaida who might be part of U.S.-based terror cell more than a year before the terror attacks but decided not to include that in its final report, a spokesman acknowledged Thursday."
So, far from being a "major focus" that they just happened to miss -- coulda happened to anyone -- it turns out they knew about it but "decided not to include" it.
How'd that happen? Well, as Felzenberg says so disarmingly, "this information was not meshing with the other information.'' As a glimpse into the mindset of the commission, that's astonishing. Sept. 11 happened, in part, because the various federal bureaucracies involved were unable to process information that didn't "mesh" with conventional wisdom. Now we find that the official commission intended to identify those problems and ensure they don't recur is, in fact, guilty of the very same fatal flaw. The new information didn't "mesh" with the old information, so they disregarded it.
But, hey, let's not have a philosophical discussion, let's keep it practical: There was "no way" that Atta could have been in the United States except when the official INS record says he was? No INS paper trail, "no way" he could have got in?
Here's one way just for a start. Forget the southern border, insofar as there is such a thing. Fact: On America's northern border, no record is kept of individual visitors to the United States. All that happens is that a photo scanner snaps your rear license plate. The scanner is said to be state-of-the-art, which is to say, as one Customs & Border official told me, it's "officially" 75 percent accurate. On the one occasion my own license plate was queried, it turned out the scanner had misread it. So, just for a start, without any particular difficulty, a friend of Mohammed Atta could have rented a car for him in Montreal and driven him down to New York -- and there would be never be any record to connect him to the vehicle anywhere in the United States or Canada.
Would al-Qaida types have such contacts in Montreal? Absolutely. The city's a hotbed of Islamist cells and sympathizers.
Fact: The only Islamist terrorist attack prevented by the U.S. government in the period before 9/11 was the attempt to blow up LAX by Ahmed Ressam, a Montrealer caught on the Washington/British Columbia frontier by an alert official who happened to notice he seemed to be a little sweaty. A different guard, a cooler Islamist, and it might just have been yet another routine unrecorded border crossing.
So, when the 9/11 Commission starts saying that there's "no way" something can happen when it happens every single day of the week, you start to wonder what exactly is the point of an official investigation so locked in to pre-set conclusions.
For example, they seemed oddly determined to fix June 3, 2000, as the official date of Atta's first landing on American soil -- even though there were several alleged sightings of him before that date, including a bizarre story that he'd trained at Maxwell/Gunter Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala. Atta was a very mobile guy in the years before 9/11, shuttling between Germany, Spain, Afghanistan, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, the Philippines with effortless ease. I've no hard evidence of where he was in, say, April 2000. The period between late 1999 and May 2000 is, in many ways, a big blur. He might have been in Germany, he might have been in Florida, attempting to get a U.S. Farm Service Agency loan for the world's biggest cropduster, as reported by USDA official Johnell Bryant.
But I do know it's absurd to suggest he was never in the United States until June 3, 2000, simply because that's what the INS says -- especially when U.S. military intelligence says something quite different.
Sept. 11 was a total government fiasco: CIA, FBI, INS, FAA, all the hot shot acronyms failed spectacularly. But appoint an official commission and let them issue an official report and suddenly everyone says, oh, well, this is the official version of 9/11; if they say something didn't happen, it can't possibly have happened.
Readers may recall that I never cared for the commission. There were too many showboating partisan hacks -- Richard ben Veniste, Bob Kerrey -- who seemed more interested in playing to the rhythms of election season. There was at least one person with an outrageous conflict of interest: Clinton Justice Department honcho Jamie Gorelick, who shouldn't have been on the commission but instead a key witness appearing in front of it. And there were far too many areas where the members appeared to be interested only in facts that supported a predetermined outcome.
Maybe we need a 9/11 Commission Commission to investigate the 9/11 Commission. A body intended to reassure Americans that the lessons of that terrible day had been learned instead engaged in what at best was transparent politicking and collusion in posterior-covering and at worst was something a whole lot darker and more disturbing.
The problem pre-9/11 was always political: that's to say, no matter how savvy individual operatives in various agencies may have been, the political culture of the day meant that nothing would happen except a memo would get typed up and shoveled into a filing cabinet. Together with other never fully explained episodes -- like Sandy Berger's pants-stuffing at the national archives -- the Able Danger story makes one thing plain: The problem is still political.
Atta way to blow 9/11 panel's credibility
By Mark Steyn
If you want to know everything wrong with the 9/11 Commission in a single sound bite, consider this from Al Felzenberg, its official spokesman, speaking Wednesday:
''There was no way that Atta could have been in the United States at that time, which is why the staff didn't give this tremendous weight when they were writing the report. This information was not meshing with the other information that we had.''
In fairness to Felzenberg, he was having a bad week, and a hard time staying on top of the commission's ever-shifting version of events. It emerged that the U.S. military had fingered Mohammed Atta -- the guy who plowed Flight 11 into the first World Trade Center tower -- well over a year before before 9/11. Or as the Associated Press puts it:
"A classified military intelligence unit called 'Able Danger' identified Atta and three other hijackers in 1999 as potential members of a terrorist cell in New York City."
At first, the commission denied that it knew anything about "Able Danger": "The Sept. 11 Commission did not learn of any U.S. government knowledge prior to 9/11 of surveillance of Mohammed Atta or of his cell," insisted Lee Hamilton, the Democratic co-chair. "Had we learned of it, obviously, it would've been a major focus of our investigation."
But within 48 hours this version was non-operative. As the AP subsequently reported:
"The Sept. 11 Commission knew military intelligence officials had identified lead hijacker Mohamed Atta as a member of al-Qaida who might be part of U.S.-based terror cell more than a year before the terror attacks but decided not to include that in its final report, a spokesman acknowledged Thursday."
So, far from being a "major focus" that they just happened to miss -- coulda happened to anyone -- it turns out they knew about it but "decided not to include" it.
How'd that happen? Well, as Felzenberg says so disarmingly, "this information was not meshing with the other information.'' As a glimpse into the mindset of the commission, that's astonishing. Sept. 11 happened, in part, because the various federal bureaucracies involved were unable to process information that didn't "mesh" with conventional wisdom. Now we find that the official commission intended to identify those problems and ensure they don't recur is, in fact, guilty of the very same fatal flaw. The new information didn't "mesh" with the old information, so they disregarded it.
But, hey, let's not have a philosophical discussion, let's keep it practical: There was "no way" that Atta could have been in the United States except when the official INS record says he was? No INS paper trail, "no way" he could have got in?
Here's one way just for a start. Forget the southern border, insofar as there is such a thing. Fact: On America's northern border, no record is kept of individual visitors to the United States. All that happens is that a photo scanner snaps your rear license plate. The scanner is said to be state-of-the-art, which is to say, as one Customs & Border official told me, it's "officially" 75 percent accurate. On the one occasion my own license plate was queried, it turned out the scanner had misread it. So, just for a start, without any particular difficulty, a friend of Mohammed Atta could have rented a car for him in Montreal and driven him down to New York -- and there would be never be any record to connect him to the vehicle anywhere in the United States or Canada.
Would al-Qaida types have such contacts in Montreal? Absolutely. The city's a hotbed of Islamist cells and sympathizers.
Fact: The only Islamist terrorist attack prevented by the U.S. government in the period before 9/11 was the attempt to blow up LAX by Ahmed Ressam, a Montrealer caught on the Washington/British Columbia frontier by an alert official who happened to notice he seemed to be a little sweaty. A different guard, a cooler Islamist, and it might just have been yet another routine unrecorded border crossing.
So, when the 9/11 Commission starts saying that there's "no way" something can happen when it happens every single day of the week, you start to wonder what exactly is the point of an official investigation so locked in to pre-set conclusions.
For example, they seemed oddly determined to fix June 3, 2000, as the official date of Atta's first landing on American soil -- even though there were several alleged sightings of him before that date, including a bizarre story that he'd trained at Maxwell/Gunter Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala. Atta was a very mobile guy in the years before 9/11, shuttling between Germany, Spain, Afghanistan, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, the Philippines with effortless ease. I've no hard evidence of where he was in, say, April 2000. The period between late 1999 and May 2000 is, in many ways, a big blur. He might have been in Germany, he might have been in Florida, attempting to get a U.S. Farm Service Agency loan for the world's biggest cropduster, as reported by USDA official Johnell Bryant.
But I do know it's absurd to suggest he was never in the United States until June 3, 2000, simply because that's what the INS says -- especially when U.S. military intelligence says something quite different.
Sept. 11 was a total government fiasco: CIA, FBI, INS, FAA, all the hot shot acronyms failed spectacularly. But appoint an official commission and let them issue an official report and suddenly everyone says, oh, well, this is the official version of 9/11; if they say something didn't happen, it can't possibly have happened.
Readers may recall that I never cared for the commission. There were too many showboating partisan hacks -- Richard ben Veniste, Bob Kerrey -- who seemed more interested in playing to the rhythms of election season. There was at least one person with an outrageous conflict of interest: Clinton Justice Department honcho Jamie Gorelick, who shouldn't have been on the commission but instead a key witness appearing in front of it. And there were far too many areas where the members appeared to be interested only in facts that supported a predetermined outcome.
Maybe we need a 9/11 Commission Commission to investigate the 9/11 Commission. A body intended to reassure Americans that the lessons of that terrible day had been learned instead engaged in what at best was transparent politicking and collusion in posterior-covering and at worst was something a whole lot darker and more disturbing.
The problem pre-9/11 was always political: that's to say, no matter how savvy individual operatives in various agencies may have been, the political culture of the day meant that nothing would happen except a memo would get typed up and shoveled into a filing cabinet. Together with other never fully explained episodes -- like Sandy Berger's pants-stuffing at the national archives -- the Able Danger story makes one thing plain: The problem is still political.
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