Sunday, September 19, 2004

BRAIN OF A BARBARIAN: THE RUMSFELD DIALECTIC

by Rohan Seivwright

Neo-Con Kenneth Adelman wrote a piece on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, where he begins "My longtime mentor, Donald Rumsfeld, is fond of saying: When a particular problem is intractable, enlarge it." By starting with another Adelman quote we'll get to the real world ramifications of Rumsfeld's logic:

"At the beginning of the administration people were talking about Iraq but it wasn't doable. There was no heft. That changed with September 11 because then people were willing to confront the reality of an international terrorist network, and terrorist states such as Iraq. The terrorist states are even worse than terrorist networks because they have so many more resources at their disposal - they have money, they have weapons, and they can send contraband material in diplomatic pouches."

This statement is the kind of Neo-Con hypocrisy that causes ripples of laughter throughout the globe yet goes through the ears of many Americans absent of ridicule. To understand how twisted America's foreign policy has gotten over the years, look Eastward across the globe, and watch with a keen eye the Military Industrial dance between the United States, Pakistan, and North Korea.

The North Koreans have supplied missiles for Pakistan for years, and in 1997, Pakistan due to economic struggles, needed a way to pay for the North Korean hardware. Weapons are currency (contraband) and it didn't take long before Pakistan made North Korea an offer. They offered the fruits of their 20 years of nuclear labor. It is important to understand, to start with a centrifuge and some designs and get to the point where you can actually make bomb-grade material is a 12, 15 year process. The Pakistanis slashed it down between two to five years. They gave North Korea prototypes of the centrifuges that they made. They gave North Korea prototypes of the warheads. They gave North Korea test data.

It wasn't long ago when Pakistan was under economic sanctions imposed in 1998 as a punishment for the country's ambitious nuclear program. But then September 11th happened. The World Trade Center Towers fell and the United States searched for allies. Pakistan welcomed a decision, on September 23, 2001, by the United States to lift the sanctions and join the war on terror.

Recently asked about the New York Times report on the arms exchange between Pakistan and North Korea, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said there was nothing "that has been reported to me that I need to be looking at".

A side note: The head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) at the time was Mahmoud Ahmed. His appointment to the head of the ISI was at the hands of the CIA. On September 11th, 2001, Ahmed was in Washington DC, holding meetings with Senator Bob Graham, Porter Goss, CIA director George Tenet, and Marc grossman, the under-secretary of state for political affairs. When Ahmed was exposed by the Wall street Journal as having sent $100,000 dollars to Mohamed Atta, 'the lead hijacker on September 11th', he was forced to retire. As of now, the United States has not demanded that Mahmoud Ahmed be questioned and tried in court.

Pakistan is our ally against the war on terror.

North Korea is our enemy, a terrorist state.

According to their website, ABB is a leader in power and automation technologies that enable utility and industry customers to improve performance while lowering environmental impact.

The Swiss-based ABB spoke to Swissinfo about Rumsfeld's involvement with the company in early 2000, when it netted a $200 million contract with North Korean leader Pyongyang. The ABB contract was to deliver equipment and services for two nuclear power stations at Kumho, on North Korea’s East Coast.

Rumsfeld - who is one of the Bush administration’s most strident "hardliners" on North Korea – was a member of ABB’s board between 1990 and February 2001, when he left to take up his current post.

Wolfram Eberhardt, a spokesman for ABB, told Swissinfo that Rumsfeld "was at nearly all the board meetings" during his decade-long involvement with the company.

Now where did North Korea get the two nuclear reactors that made business with Pakistan and Rumsfeld possible? Ask Bill Clinton. Former president Clinton, who received the Neo-Con manifesto (Rebuilding America's Defenses), provided light water nuclear reactors to North Korea under a 1994 deal negotiated by the Clinton administration. These reactors have the capacity to generate enough nuclear fuel to produce almost 100 nuclear bombs per year, a 1999 congressional study warned.

Greed is bipartisan, and the rich have the same goals no matter which executives take office. Civilians may have conservative or liberal ideals, but the leaders of the "free world" are secular, do not share common folk ideals, and are willing to risk the safety of citizens in order to feed their piggy banks and power trips. This explains President Bush's bi-polar relationship with North Korea.

President Bush Junior sought $3.5 million for KEDO, an international consortium led by the U.S. government (with South Korea, Japan, the European Union, and others), which was established to implement the agreement of 1994 that granted the two nuclear reactors. They continue to build the two nuclear reactors for North Korea, even as the U.S. confronts the communist regime over nuclear arms.North Korea sent home two International Atomic Energy Agency officials and withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Let's recap. President Clinton gives North Korea two nuclear reactors. Pakistan (U.S. allies who funded 9/11 terrorists) gives North Korea blueprints for cheap and easy Nuclear bombs. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gives North Korea maintenance of the nuclear reactors. In addition, President George Bush Junior gives them the money to continue work on the nuclear reactors. Money, weapons, and contraband material sent in diplomatic pouches, all supplied to North Korea with the helping hands of the United States government. What was Adelman's definition of a terrorist state? This must be what Rumsfeld meant by, "When a particular problem is intractable, enlarge it."