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January 28, 2002
By Jon Christian Ryter
Copyright © 2002 • All Rights Reserved
It’s
been more than obvious since the first day of “43’s” Administration
that there were, and still are, three separate presidential advisory teams
working in the Executive Branch. First, there are a handful of 41’s
advisors in key State Department slots. That group is headed by former
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell. Powell hand-picked these
loyal underlings and had them slotted before “43” realized what
was happening at Foggy Bottom just off Constitution Avenue eight blocks
from the White House. While claiming to be merely the “father of
President 43,” “41” wields a terrific punch in the Oval
Office—or at least People’s Republic of China thinks so. When
“43” began talking about building a missile shield defense system,
the Chinese and Russians didn’t run to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue screaming
“not fair!” They subtracted “two” and ran to Kennebunkport,
Maine. So did their lobbyist, Henry Kissinger. The message to keep “43”
in line was delivered to “41” in Kennebunkport.
After September 11 when all America—the
liberal media included—wanted a thousand oil barrels full of Islamic
blood—and the head of Osama bin Laden spiked on the city gate for
all the world to see—in retaliation for the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon attacks, Secretary of State Colin Powell wanted to refer
the matter to the United Nations. General Powell believed we should allow
the “international community” to resolve the matter with the
Muslims. If Powell had his way, the UN—which is now largely controlled
by Muslims—would have been delegated the authority to invoke ‘sanctions”
against the Taliban. Powell, you will recall, convinced “41”
that going “for the kill” with Saddam Hussein would not be good
for the Mideast. Powell was the agent behind the idea of sanctions there,
too. (It’s pointless to level sanctions against a nation since sanctions
are never felt by the ruling class of nation—they are felt first
by the poorest members of that society and then they trickle upward to
whatever middle class exists.)
When President Bill Clinton left the White
House on January 20, 2001 (with badly bruised fingertips that were injured
from a death grip on the Oval Office door jam as Clinton used every legal
and extra-legal ploy he could think of to hold office beyond Jan. 20)
he used the liberal media to make it appear as though he was gracefully
surrendering his high office to his successor), When Slick Willy vacated
the White House, he left close to 3,000 key staffers and party loyalists
behind to infiltrate the bureaucracy. To make certain he could still control
the affairs of State after he left office, Clinton buried his most trusted
staffers into key mid- to high-level non-political career job slots in
Justice, State, Commerce, Labor, Education, Treasury, Energy, and Health
and Human Services. Forty-three key appointees went to FEMA. In most cases
those left behind now fill sub-department head positions and have become
the key advisors to “43’s” cabinet heads. In other words,
much of the advise reaching Bush’s ear comes either from Kennebunkport
or New York—and that advise is usually at odds with “43’s”
inner circle advisers: Vice President Dick Cheney, Dr. Condoleezza Rice,
Karl Rove, Commerce Secretary Don Evans, Gov. Tom Ridge, John Ashcroft,
Andrew Card and Donald Rumsfeld the colorful Secretary of Defense whose
press conferences on Fox News carry higher Neilson rating that half of
the prime time network programs.
Confidential Bush Administration information
leaks to the media like water through a sieve. Embarrassing the Bush Administration
is part of the job of the Clinton carryovers who are now institutionalized
within the bureaucracy and cannot be fired. The latest embarrassing flap
concerns an internal argument over whether the al Qaeda detainees housed
at the U.S, Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba are P.O.W.s or are criminal
detainees. The view of 43’s inner circle is that the ad Qaeda fighters
are not, and never were, regular army soldiers entitled to be called prisoners
of war. They are terrorists and they have always been terrorists. Nothing
more, nothing less.
Yet the senior-most military-experienced
presidential advisor, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell,
argued in an internal memo to “43” that the al Qaeda fighters
are not detainees but are, in reality, prisoners of war under the terms
of the Geneva Convention.
In a four page memo White House Special
Counsel Al Gonzales told the President that Powell requested 43 to “reconsider”
his January 18 decision that detainees do not qualify for POW status under
the Geneva Convention. Gonzales note to Bush said: “The Secretary
of State has requested that you reconsider the decision...Specifically,
he has asked that you conclude that GPW (Geneva Convention II on the Treatment
of Prisoners) does apply to both al Qaeda and the Taliban...I understand,
however, that he would agree that al Qaeda and Taliban fighters could
be determined not to be prisoners of war, but only on a case-by-case basis,
following individual hearings before a military board.”
After the memo was leaked, causing an Administration
that appears to be internally divided on a key issue considerable embarrassment,
the White House belatedly initiated damage control. Sean McCormick, chief
spokesman for the National Security Council issued a statement on Saturday
saying that “...All of the president’s advisors, including Secretary
of State Colin Powell, agree they are not POWs.”
The State Department, which since January
20, 2001 has not hesitated to give its view on any subject without first
determining the position of the Oval Office, was surprisingly silent,
declining to comment on the substance of the leaked memo. McCormick declared
that the leaked memo was merely a “draft” that did not accurately
reflect Powell’s position on the detainees. “...Powell’s
position,” he argued to the media, “is that they are not POWs,”
insisting that Powell has consistently held that view. Yet the “draft
memo” shows a considerable amount of disagreement between the State
Department and the Oval Office on this issue. McCormick said that the
final version of the disputed memo (which was never released to the media)
reflects a unified consensus with the president’s position.
Skeptical reporters asked McCormick how
such “inaccuracies” were included in the first draft of the
memo if Powell stood in accord with the President’s views. McCormick
replied that it was a misunderstanding between lawyers. Under the Geneva
Convention there is a section that deals with combatants who are not regular
army troops. It is now being argued by the White House that Powell’s
position is that the al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in custody should be
viewed as non-army combatants under the terms of the Geneva Convention,
not that he felt they should be classified as POWs.
McCormick was grabbing at nonexistent straws
since the version that was leaked to the media was the same memo that
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice distributed to senior Administration
officials on Friday, Jan. 25, asking them to respond by 11 a.m. on Saturday.
There may have been another memo issued by the National Security Council
to the President, Vice President and senior staff after each had an opportunity
to assess the views expressed in the Jan. 25 memo concerning whether or
not to “upgrade” the detainees status to “prisoner of war.”
Clearly, what was going on behind the scenes
was a battle of the lawyers. This is not the first time this has happened
since September 11—and it is not the first time it has had adverse
affects on the Bush Administration. In October, you will recall, Gen.
Tommy Franks’ special ops people located Muhammed Atef, Osama bin
Laden’s number two man. However, before he could launch a missile
and bomb strike to take Atef out, an argument ensued between lawyers for
the State Department, Defense Department, National Security Council, the
Justice Department and eventually the Solicitor General. As they argued
whether striking Atef could be construed by the liberals in the Senate
as the assassination of a national leader, Atef vanished.
Atef, who was related to bin Laden by marriage, was later killed in another
bomb strike. The difference in the bomb run that ultimately killed him
and the planned attack in October was that when he was finally killed,
Atef was the random victim in a bombing attack. In October, he was specifically
targeted.
In October it was the State Department which
stopped the attack claiming it would open the White House to charges that
it had authorized the assassination of a national leader. (And under current
UN guidelines, that was a possibility.) Now the State Department is, for
the same reasons, attempting to classify the captured Taliban and al Qaeda
fighters as “covered” combatants under the protective umbrella
of the Geneva Convention.
What is most disturbing at Powell’s
attempts to force Bush to reconsider the White House position is that
his “allies” in this endeavor are [1] the liberal international
media that is currently slamming the Bush Administration’s “care”
of the detainees, arguing that they are suffering inhumane treatment because
they are “housed” out-of-doors, [2] the heads of the Islamic
nations in the Mideast who don’t want the US Marines and the National
Security Council to have unbridled access to the 158 Taliban and al Qaeda
fighters who are being held at Gitmo, and [3] the socialist liberals in
the Congress of the United States that need to tarnish 43’s war record
as they attempt to blame the current economic recession of Bush’s
tax cut in preparation for the midterm elections which will be held in
November. At stake in November is control of both the House and Senate.
If the detainees are classified as prisoners
of war instead of terrorist detainees, then the United States military
is greatly limited in the methods they may use to question them—and
the detainees can answer by providing only their names and ranks, if any.
In addition, since they are Islamic, the American government would be
forced to allow members of the Red Crescent (the Muslim equivalent to
the Red Cross) to visit and examine the containment facilities. The biggest
problem with that is that the Red Crescent is one of the Islamic charities
that has been caught financing terrorism, and is a conduit that has been
used to funnel money to the al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Furthermore,
if the detainees are classified as POWs, they must be able to mingle freely
together in a compound. The problem with that at Gitmo is that the detainees,
restricted as they are in separate 8’ X 8’ cubicles, are already
forming a leadership hierarchy and command structure. Clearly since most
of these fighters have pledged suicide, if they were confined in a common
area, there is no doubt they would attempt to overpower their armed guards
in order to kill them before they themselves were killed.
If the al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are
classified as terrorist detainees, they may be treated as criminals and
questioned repeatedly not only by the military but by NSA officials, the
CIA and the FBI.
There is much more at stake here than the
treatment the detainees are getting at Club Gitmo.
At stake here is how much authority the
international community has over the sovereign affairs of the United States
of America. Powell knows that. So does 43. And, so does 41 who believed
in the New World Order so much that he was willing to surrender America’s
external sovereign rights (its right to control its own international
diplomacy without interference from the European Union and the transnationalist
industrialist and bankers who need to maintain a smooth working rapport
with the oil patch in the Mideast) believing that all of the economic
and political problems in the world would be solved with world government.
Powell, who was offered a shot at the Oval
Office by the Bilderbergers in 1999 when George W. Bush seemed to be wavering
about throwing his own hat in the ring, is clearly in bed with the globalists.
Every decision he has made since becoming Secretary of State has been
based on the utopian ideals of the New World Order. And most of those
decisions appear to be at odds with 43’s inner circle. Powell has
clashed with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at least twice on policy
matters dealing with the War on Terrorism and has lost both arguments.
There should not be any public division
at the senior level of any President’s administration, particularly
when that division weighs America’s right to make sovereign decisions
concerning its internal security without kowtowing to the international
consensus of transnationalists with a monetary interest in manipulating
political policy.
It’s time for Colin Powell to go.
Once again, you have my two cents worth
on this matter.
