FAILURE TO PLAN?

 

 

 

By Dennis L. Cuddy, Ph.D.
September 19, 2005
NewsWithViews.com

The United States has been beset by a series of tragedies over the recent years because of a failure to plan. The current tragedy in New Orleans is a result of failure to develop a plan to evacuate 100,000 poor people (and patients in hospitals) who had no transportation, even though there had been repeated warnings the storm surge from a category 4 or 5 hurricane would overflow the levees by several feet. Also, where were all the small boats that obviously would be necessary if the city wasn't completely evacuated before the hurricane hit? And where were the security personnel at night for the tens of thousands of people packed into the unlighted Convention Center so they wouldn't be robbed, raped, or murdered?

Secondly, those with traditional values have complained for decades about the ACLU and activist courts banning school prayer or overturning laws banning partial-birth abortions, for example. However, that problem would be easily solved by planning to have a provision in such laws limiting the appelate jurisdiction of courts on those issues under Article 3, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution. This is what liberals like U.S. Senator Tom Daschle did concerning farm bills of great interest to him. And bills only require a majority vote rather than the far more difficult task of passing a Constitutional Amendment to reverse a court ruling.

Thirdly, the 4th anniversary of terrorists hijacking airliners and crashing them into the World Trade Center and Pentagon has just occurred. The hijackings took place even though the terrorists' Project Bojinka hijacking plan was known years in advance. There was no planning to prevent the hijackings of 9-11, even though Pakistani-British Niaz Khan in April 2000 walked into the FBI office in Newark, NJ, and passed 2 polygraph tests as he told them he was trained by Al-Qaeda in Lahore, Pakistan, for an upcoming hijacking of passenger planes in the U.S. Almost 3 years later, Khan told NBC News he was "surprised that, to this day, the FBI, CIA and Scotland Yard have never asked for his help in identifying the street address of the Lahore safe house where he and dozens of other men were trained." Could it be they didn't ask Khan where the training house was because they already knew? Remember that during the Clinton administration, one of Osama bin Laden's training camps was already located and targeted for attack by cruise missiles.

A cautionary note is in order here regarding the supposed lack of knowledge of the FBI and CIA concerning terrorist activities. On December 4, 1981, President Ronald Reagan signed Executive Order 12333, with Section 1.11(d) directing the Secretary of Defense to "conduct counterintelligence activities in support of Department of Defense components outside the United States in coordination with the CIA, and within the United States in coordination with the FBI pursuant to procedures agreed upon by the Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General." And Section 1.12(d) states that the responsibilities of "the foreign intelligence and counterintelligence elements of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps shall include...collection of national foreign intelligence, such collection within the United States shall be coordinated with the FBI." This may be where Project Able Danger received its authority. And as far as I can tell, Executive Order 12333 has never been rescinded, so Able Danger documents may not have needed to be destroyed as we have been told. Is it possible they have not been destroyed? U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Able Danger begin this coming Wednesday, September 21.

Fourthly, the Bush administration failed to plan for Saddam Hussein's guerrilla warfare in Iraq (e.g., there was not enough armor on vehicles to withstand roadside bombs throughout the nation), even though before the war, I quoted former Iraqi Lt. Gen. Tawfik al-Yassiri about this strategy in my book COVER-UP: GOVERNMENT SPIN OR TRUTH? There was also no plan to get Sunni Muslims to agree to live under majority Shiite (allied with Iran) sectarian Islamic law. Now, all the Sunnis need to do is reject the proposed Constitution by a two-thirds vote in just 3 of Iraq's 18 provinces, and it will fall. And if the Constitution is approved, it looks like women will have less rights than under Saddam. Is this what Americans are fighting and dying for?

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Even more broadly in Iraq, there was no workable plan to secure the safety of Iraqis nor power generation and oil production. Concerning the hundreds of Shiite pilgrims marching to a shrine in Baghdad who were killed on August 30, 2005, anyone should have foreseen that such a concentration of people would be a perfect target for insurgents. And on July 31, 2005, Sharyn Alfonsi of CBS News reported that "investigators found that power generation and oil production in Iraq remain at lower levels than March of 2003. One-third of the money earmarked for power, water or health care projects ends up being shifted to security, and Iraq's oil output---which U.S. officials hoped would pay for some of those re-building projects---has dropped by 500,000 barrels per day in the last two years because of constant attacks and a deteriorating infrastructure."

� 2005 Dennis Cuddy - All Rights Reserved

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