Deep Blade Archive

Only one new item has been added to the archive. This is an article on nuclear testing I wrote back in 1986 for the MPAC Newsletter. Last June, I toyed with the idea of a fairly ambitious remembrance of Ronald Reagan. This article was a top choice, since it reveals the duplicity and newsspeak commonly used by the Reagan Administration. It quotes Frank Gaffney, an extreme reactionary war promoter who still bats in the media for the current Bush, as well as high Pentagon advisor Richard Perle.

The blog has been produced through Blogger and hosted at zelter.lunarpages.com since May. I am still working on archiving all of the old posts. Meanwhile, I am just going to keep deep_blade.tripod.com/journal accessible for all posts prior to May 18.

Yesterday, I changed the way the domain deepblade.net opens into Deep Blade Journal. This archive site will open with http://archive.deepblade.net and the blog will open directly from http: //journal.deepblade.net. At http: //deepblade.net, a welcome screen will appear for 15 seconds, allowing a choice to enter this archive site, or to go directly to the blog. After 15 seconds, you forward to the blog automatically.

I’ve been feeling lately that I’d like to redesign Deep Blade Journal and move it to our own hosting site at zelter.lunarpages.com. To accomplish this without losing all of the existing postings, I’ve been busily extracting most of the 100+ entries and setting them up in archive pages.

An essay I wrote on September 14, 2001 has been added to the archive. This has been posted on the old website for a long while. For the upcoming election season, I feel it is essential for campaigners against Bush to present clear alternatives to the Bush 911 war response. This is key. Bush is running on his tough facade of an in-charge wartime president. That old post-911 essay does an important service in this regard—it shows there might be way besides Bush’s of forming a respose to 911.

This version of the Deep Blade website is now designated as an archive. Active postings are now always in Deep Blade Journal. There will be no more “issues” of Deep Blade News. Occasionally, an archive article will be added as a page on this site. For example, our Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine piece on U Maine War Profiteering is a new page placed here in permanent archive. Notice will be added to this index page whenever archives are added.

For people not yet familiar with blogs, they are interactive websites where people post regular dated journal entries and commentaries. Please visit this site to read my insights on events as they unfold and how I see people reacting to these events. A great feature of the blog is the ability of readers to post comments too. If you want to say anything about the posts there or anything else of concern to this site, please hit the “comment” button found at the end of a post. More information is available there.

The third issue of Deep Blade News is completed. I make a few remarks on some of the current conditions in Iraq in the war’s aftermath that were entirely foreseeable. The place is a mess and foreign influence or Saddam loyalist “remnants” cannot account for the entire disaster. People don’t like to be invaded and expectations that the occupiers would be viewed as heroes are long out the window. Continuing a theme of deception by officials, I also look at two areas where public statements by Bush, Powell, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and others appear to be at odds with the actual unfolding of occupation activities in Iraq — control of Iraqi oil and permanent military basing in Iraq.

I must point out an incorrect implication that that is easily derived from Issue #1 Revised: Why the war is wrong, Powell’s diplomatic disaster. The piece on Powell’s diplomatic disaster incorrectly implies that Powell presented remarks before the U.N. Security Council on February 5, 2003 containing the same language about alleged Iraqi attempts to import uranium from the African nation of Niger that President Bush used in his State of the Union address on January 28, 2003. This claim has been proven fraudulent and its absence from Powell’s February 5 remarks is what is truly interesting. Many readers will be familiar with the explosion of concerns over the president’s statement on Iraq, Niger, uranium, and British intelligence that erupted this spring. I regret the incorrect implication concerning Colin Powell and the Security Council.

However, let’s not completely let Powell off the hook for the uranium fraud. A transcript of his remarks before the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on January 26, 2003 contains the following quote:

“Why is Iraq still trying to procure uranium and the special equipment needed to transform it into material for nuclear weapons?

These questions are not academic. They are not trivial. They are questions of life and death, and they must be answered.”

Furthermore, Powell does discuss Iraq’s “revived nuclear program” and effort to enrich uranium in some detail on February 5, alluding to magnets and the famous aluminum tubes to prove his case. It is now clear that these tubes and magnets were useless for uranium enrichment.

The Powell picture is much worse than just the uranium fraud would suggest. Charles Hanley of the Associated Press has produced (August 10, 2003) a detailed refutation of every charge Powell leveled against Iraq on February 5.

In short, then, statements given by Powell clearly advanced the fraud and were designed to help listeners envision “mushroom clouds” unless a pre-emptive war on Iraq was waged.

Now the line is, “So what? These were small inaccuracies.” Outrage! We fought a WAR over this and now we have OCCUPIED a country. This fraud is a high crime in my book. Powell should be ashamed and a Congress with backbone should begin an impeachment investigation. j

Deep Blade News is a news and commentary feature that seeks to make some sense out of current events and the behavior of the United States as a powerful state in the early 21st century. It comes out of a tradition of describing and opposing militarism and imperialism through free speech. The name suggests what the material within seeks to do: cut through the propaganda, misdirection, and obfuscation in order to expose the deep heartwood of U.S. policy.

Citizen action will be necessary if we want any possibility of transforming our country towards better behavior with greater concern for the well-being of the planet and the life it supports. Information will be a potent counterweapon in this endeavor. We still have time to limit the damage wrought by the plague of a ruling class with tools of death and destruction that are far too powerful to be in the hands of men with weak consciences, like U.S. President George W. Bush.

No one disagrees that world events of the 20th century since 1945 left the United States in an overwhelming position of power, capable of enforcing its will in myriad destructive ways all over the globe. Yet many truths about U.S. policy and its implementation are hidden from broad public consciousness.

For me, opposition to this power extends back to the late 1970s when I was politicized by events like the the energy crisis, the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, the destructive proposals to build MX missiles, and the anti-1st amendment case against The Progressive magazine when it sought to publish information about the workings of nuclear weapons and the systems that build them.

In the years since, through the Reagan nuclear threats, the first Persian Gulf war, and the obfuscation of the Clinton years, I have developed a deep respect for truth that is so absent from the common discourse in corporate media. Naturally, a people so heavily marketed, propagandized, and fed lies the way the U.S. population has been in recent years unfortunately develops a propensity for violence, devaluation of other human beings, and a destructive approach to nature in general. This feature is to represent an antidote to these attitudes. j

Deep Blade Archive Cutting through the machinations and effects of the U.S. empire

	Home Page Established February 2003 in Veazie, Maine by Eric T. Olson By-line Eric T. Olson unless otherwise indicated Deep Blade Journal (current postings) Deep Blade Journal Blog (8/21/2003–5/21/2004) Issue #1 02/11/2003, revised 03/12/2003 Why this war is wrong Powell’s credibility collapse Issue #2 03/12/2003 Why war? The role of oil Aftermath? I Issue #3 08/21/2003 Aftermath II U.S. Bases in Iraq? Archive of 2003 War Resources Alexander Cockburn’s war diary for March 29/30, 2003. U.S.-Iraq Chronology mostly covering the period 1980-1991 Going to War by Doug Allen 02/10/2003 A Failure of Skepticism in Powell Coverage Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) 02/10/2003 Why People Must Stop Bush's "Preemptive" War of Aggression by Carl Messineo and Mara Verheyden-Hilliard 09/29/2002 You Wanted to Believe Him: Colin Powell Does Sam Beckett by Robert Fisk 02/06/2003 UMaine and War Profiteering Op-Ed Bangor Daily News November 8, 2003 Archive of 1991 Gulf War Articles 1. Essay on the first Persian Gulf war, February 1991 2. Story from the Bangor Daily News March 9–10, 1991 by Tom Weber and Steve Kloehn concerning troops returning from the Persian Gulf War 3. The Persian Gulf War as Myth by Doug Allen, April 1991 911 Archive Why? Examining the Roots of the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack on the United States They can't see why they are hated: Americans cannot ignore what their government does abroad
		October 14, 2004 Only one new item has been added to the archive. This is an article on nuclear testing I wrote back in 1986 for the MPAC Newsletter. Last June, I toyed with the idea of a fairly ambitious remembrance of Ronald Reagan. This article was a top choice, since it reveals the duplicity and newsspeak commonly used by the Reagan Administration. It quotes Frank Gaffney, an extreme reactionary war promoter who still bats in the media for the current Bush, as well as high Pentagon advisor Richard Perle. The blog has been produced through Blogger and hosted at zelter.lunarpages.com since May. I am still working on archiving all of the old posts. Meanwhile, I am just going to keep deep_blade.tripod.com/journal accessible for all posts prior to May 18. Yesterday, I changed the way the domain deepblade.net opens into Deep Blade Journal. This archive site will open with http://archive.deepblade.net and the blog will open directly from http: //journal.deepblade.net. At http: //deepblade.net, a welcome screen will appear for 15 seconds, allowing a choice to enter this archive site, or to go directly to the blog. After 15 seconds, you forward to the blog automatically. May 18, 2004: Blog moved & redesigned I’ve been feeling lately that I’d like to redesign Deep Blade Journal and move it to our own hosting site at zelter.lunarpages.com. To accomplish this without losing all of the existing postings, I’ve been busily extracting most of the 100+ entries and setting them up in archive pages. February 19, 2004: 911 Archive added An essay I wrote on September 14, 2001 has been added to the archive. This has been posted on the old website for a long while. For the upcoming election season, I feel it is essential for campaigners against Bush to present clear alternatives to the Bush 911 war response. This is key. Bush is running on his tough facade of an in-charge wartime president. That old post-911 essay does an important service in this regard—it shows there might be way besides Bush’s of forming a respose to 911. December 16, 2003: Site is “Archived” This version of the Deep Blade website is now designated as an archive. Active postings are now always in Deep Blade Journal. There will be no more “issues” of Deep Blade News. Occasionally, an archive article will be added as a page on this site. For example, our Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine piece on U Maine War Profiteering is a new page placed here in permanent archive. Notice will be added to this index page whenever archives are added. August 21, 2003: New Blog Feature Added On 8/21/03 my new blog feature was created. Please click this link to reach the blog: Deep Blade Journal For people not yet familiar with blogs, they are interactive websites where people post regular dated journal entries and commentaries. Please visit this site to read my insights on events as they unfold and how I see people reacting to these events. A great feature of the blog is the ability of readers to post comments too. If you want to say anything about the posts there or anything else of concern to this site, please hit the “comment” button found at the end of a post. More information is available there. Issue #3: August 2003 The third issue of Deep Blade News is completed. I make a few remarks on some of the current conditions in Iraq in the war’s aftermath that were entirely foreseeable. The place is a mess and foreign influence or Saddam loyalist “remnants” cannot account for the entire disaster. People don’t like to be invaded and expectations that the occupiers would be viewed as heroes are long out the window. Continuing a theme of deception by officials, I also look at two areas where public statements by Bush, Powell, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and others appear to be at odds with the actual unfolding of occupation activities in Iraq — control of Iraqi oil and permanent military basing in Iraq. Correction: Powell and Fraud? I must point out an incorrect implication that that is easily derived from Issue #1 Revised: Why the war is wrong, Powell’s diplomatic disaster. The piece on Powell’s diplomatic disaster incorrectly implies that Powell presented remarks before the U.N. Security Council on February 5, 2003 containing the same language about alleged Iraqi attempts to import uranium from the African nation of Niger that President Bush used in his State of the Union address on January 28, 2003. This claim has been proven fraudulent and its absence from Powell’s February 5 remarks is what is truly interesting. Many readers will be familiar with the explosion of concerns over the president’s statement on Iraq, Niger, uranium, and British intelligence that erupted this spring. I regret the incorrect implication concerning Colin Powell and the Security Council. However, let’s not completely let Powell off the hook for the uranium fraud. A transcript of his remarks before the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on January 26, 2003 contains the following quote: “Why is Iraq still trying to procure uranium and the special equipment needed to transform it into material for nuclear weapons? These questions are not academic. They are not trivial. They are questions of life and death, and they must be answered.” Furthermore, Powell does discuss Iraq’s “revived nuclear program” and effort to enrich uranium in some detail on February 5, alluding to magnets and the famous aluminum tubes to prove his case. It is now clear that these tubes and magnets were useless for uranium enrichment. The Powell picture is much worse than just the uranium fraud would suggest. Charles Hanley of the Associated Press has produced (August 10, 2003) a detailed refutation of every charge Powell leveled against Iraq on February 5. In short, then, statements given by Powell clearly advanced the fraud and were designed to help listeners envision “mushroom clouds” unless a pre-emptive war on Iraq was waged. Now the line is, “So what? These were small inaccuracies.” Outrage! We fought a WAR over this and now we have OCCUPIED a country. This fraud is a high crime in my book. Powell should be ashamed and a Congress with backbone should begin an impeachment investigation. j What is Deep Blade? Deep Blade News is a news and commentary feature that seeks to make some sense out of current events and the behavior of the United States as a powerful state in the early 21st century. It comes out of a tradition of describing and opposing militarism and imperialism through free speech. The name suggests what the material within seeks to do: cut through the propaganda, misdirection, and obfuscation in order to expose the deep heartwood of U.S. policy. Citizen action will be necessary if we want any possibility of transforming our country towards better behavior with greater concern for the well-being of the planet and the life it supports. Information will be a potent counterweapon in this endeavor. We still have time to limit the damage wrought by the plague of a ruling class with tools of death and destruction that are far too powerful to be in the hands of men with weak consciences, like U.S. President George W. Bush. No one disagrees that world events of the 20th century since 1945 left the United States in an overwhelming position of power, capable of enforcing its will in myriad destructive ways all over the globe. Yet many truths about U.S. policy and its implementation are hidden from broad public consciousness. For me, opposition to this power extends back to the late 1970s when I was politicized by events like the the energy crisis, the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, the destructive proposals to build MX missiles, and the anti-1st amendment case against The Progressive magazine when it sought to publish information about the workings of nuclear weapons and the systems that build them. In the years since, through the Reagan nuclear threats, the first Persian Gulf war, and the obfuscation of the Clinton years, I have developed a deep respect for truth that is so absent from the common discourse in corporate media. Naturally, a people so heavily marketed, propagandized, and fed lies the way the U.S. population has been in recent years unfortunately develops a propensity for violence, devaluation of other human beings, and a destructive approach to nature in general. This feature is to represent an antidote to these attitudes. j