We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Thursday, August 18, 2016

Bush Administration Official: Saudi Ties to 9/11 Hidden to Protect Iraq War Narrative

Click here to access article by Brian P. McGlinchey from 28Pages.org.

I believe that it was the unceasing pressure from this organization and others allied to it that finally forced the ruling class directorate to release the heavily redacted 28 missing pages of the report issued by the 9/11 Commission. The author quotes extensively from statements of Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Chief of Staff to retired General Colin Powell whose testimony to the UN was full of phony statements connecting Iraq with weapons of mass destruction.
As they prepared that pivotal address, Wilkerson says he and Powell were under constant pressure to include claims that al Qaeda was linked to the Iraqi government.

“You couldn’t kill it. We tried. We put a stake in that ten times, and it kept raising its head. The vice president would not turn it loose,” says Wilkerson. “That’s part of why they tortured people to try to and get more information on the connections between al Qaeda and Baghdad. It’s part of why they shifted their interrogation focus away from another attack on the United States to connections between al Qaeda and Baghdad—and anything that reinforced that, anything that made their case for war more ‘legitimate’ and more acceptable to the American people, they wanted.”