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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rich4eagle who wrote (249182)	4/19/2002 1:55:05 AM
From: calgal	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 769670

Oliver North April 19, 2002 War then and war now WASHINGTON, D.C. -- An old adage says, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." Some argue that today this maxim is irrelevant, but with war, it's undeniable. Sixty years ago this week -- April 18 to be precise -- Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle led 79 U.S. Army airmen in 16 Army B-25 aircraft from the deck of the Navy carrier the USS Hornet. Their mission: bomb five Japanese cities -- including Tokyo, the Imperial capital -- in the first U.S. counterattack of World War II. The parallels between that attack and the first battle in the first war of the 21st century are remarkable. The Doolittle Raid -- as it came to be known -- was launched 132 days after Japan's savage surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The mission, believed to be technologically impossible at best, and suicidal at worst, is one of history's most extraordinary and heroic feats. When the raiders departed, Tokyo Rose was broadcasting to the world that the Japanese home islands were "invincible." And well the Emperor's military hierarchy might have believed it. By early 1942, the Axis Powers were triumphant. Hitler dominated Europe. Mussolini's troops were marching through ancient African capitals. And after conquering Malaya, Singapore, Java, Guam and Wake Island, the Japanese were threatening Australia. By April 9, the Battling Bastards of Bataan would finally lay down their arms -- and thousands would soon perish on an infamous death march into the Philippine jungle. Amid this despair, President Roosevelt challenged the newly activated Joint Staff to strike back. Navy Captain Francis Low suggested to Admiral Ernest King, the chief of naval operations, that Army bombers might successfully attack Japan if they launched from a Navy carrier -- something never tried before. Although skeptical, King told Army Air Corps Chief of Staff Hap Arnold -- who summoned perhaps the only man in America up to the task. Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle was already a legend. He had a Ph.D. in aeronautical engineering from MIT, and had won nearly every flying trophy in existence, helped develop high-octane aviation fuel and pioneered instrument flying. Doolittle chose the B-25 for the mission -- a relatively new, twin-engine land-based bomber built by California's North American Aviation Company. The charismatic Doolittle turned to the 17th Bombardment Group at Pendleton Field, Ore., ordered them to Columbia, S.C., and, after watching them fly, selected 20 volunteer crews for intensive "short takeoff" training at Florida's Eglin Field. By the end of March, he dispatched them to California -- ordering them to fly cross-country at "low levels." Capt. Marc Mitscher, skipper of the USS Hornet, our newest $31 million carrier, could only take 16 of the B-25's aboard his 809 foot ship. When they sailed from San Francisco Bay on April 1, the crowds gathered on the Golden Gate Bridge thought the vessel was simply ferrying bombers to Hawaii. Not until they were at sea did the ship's crew and most of the Raiders learn they were on a one-way mission to bomb Japan. A dozen of the 23 surviving Doolittle Raiders gathered last Thursday in Columbia, S.C., to salute departed comrades and celebrate their 60th anniversary. I listened as they told how they were forced to launch 12 hours and 250 miles earlier than planned when the task force was discovered by a Japanese picket ship. I marveled at their descriptions of how all the aircraft struck their targets and how all but seven of them survived the mission. I was horrified to hear them tell how the Japanese executed three of their colleagues -- and starved another to death. And I was honored when they asked me to discuss the parallels to today's war. Here's what we concluded: The war they fought began with a sneak attack that killed thousands of Americans. So did this one. The Doolittle Raiders were volunteers. So are those fighting today. They had the Tokyo Rose propaganda. We have Osama bin Laden videotapes. Theirs was the first attack launched by Army aircraft from a Navy carrier, the USS Hornet. In Operation Enduring Freedom, Army pilots flying helicopters from the USS Kittyhawk delivered the first Special Operations strike into Afghanistan. They had colleagues captured and brutally killed by their enemies. That, too, has happened in this fight. Later in their war, suicidal Kamikazes attacked Americans. In this war, that's already happened. Even the hand-inscribed headbands on today's "martyrs" look like those worn by the Emperor's "Divine Wind." Having now met both the courageous airmen of the "Doolittle Raid" and the young Americans fighting in Afghanistan, it's clear that they share admirable qualities -- among them, humility. Lt. Tom Griffin served as navigator on the ninth B-25 off the Hornet's deck. Sixty years ago this week, he was evading Japanese patrols in China trying to get back to America. When he finally returned home, he volunteered with Doolittle in the European theater. He was shot down over Sicily in 1943 and spent the rest of the war in a German POW camp. I asked him how he wanted to be remembered. He said: "As a man who did his duty." ©2002 Creators Syndicate, Inc. townhall.com

To: rich4eagle who wrote (249182)	4/19/2002 11:17:39 AM
From: jlallen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

The legacy of the Clinton years.... Trulock: CIA Director Aided Cover-up of Clinton-China Scandal Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com Friday, April 19, 2002 WASHINGTON – CIA Director George Tenet "pulled the trigger” that silenced a senior CIA official who tried to warn of the Chinese weapons buildup during the Clinton administration, Notra Trulock, the former intelligence director in the Energy Department, revealed this week. Speaking at a meeting in Washington of Accuracy in Media, Trulock also criticized current White House aides who have rebuffed efforts to alert President Bush of the role played by Clinton holdover Tenet in assisting the Clinton administration in the cover-up. Trulock, himself a victim of punishment for whistle-blowing on the Chinese spy scandal, told the gathering that Gordon Oehler, then director of the CIA’s Nuclear Proliferation Center, tried to warn Congress that the Chinese buildup was far more alarming than the diplomats had indicated. "What happened,” Trulock told NewsMax after the meeting, "is that diplomats were going to China. The Chinese were telling them, ‘Oh, we’re not doing this, and we’re not doing that.’ And the diplomats were coming home and saying, ‘Well, the Chinese were telling us that they’re getting out of this [nuclear weapons proliferation] business.’ And Oehler was saying: ‘No, they’re not. Our information to the contrary is [based on intelligence sources]’” Silenced "What the [Clinton] administration finally did was just order Oehler, ‘Shut up!’ Particularly, stop telling the [Capitol] Hill.” Oehler’s information concerned proliferation of weapons technologies in general, and missile and nuclear technologies in particular. Oehler thought it was his responsibility to tell the congressional oversight committees what was going on, "which it was,” added Trulock. Trulock himself tried to "tell this stuff in ’97 and ’98, and we just got shut down.” In Trulock’s case, the FBI raided his home in an obvious attempt to intimidate him. Oehler was shafted in a different manner. "Oehler wouldn’t stop [talking to Congress]. And [State Department official] Winston Wiley told the NSC [the White House's National Security Council] that Oehler will not appear on the Hill again.” Trulock added in the interview with NewsMax that "Oehler came back from vacation. His desk was cleaned out.” CIA Director Tenet had shut him down. Trulock, who replaces the legendary founder of AIM, Reed Irvine, on the latter’s 80th birthday in September (an announcement made at the meeting by Irvine) says his spill-the-beans book "Codename: Kindred Spirit - The Inside Story of the Chinese Nuclear Espionage Scandal” would be released next month. Trulock says this volume will blow the lid off the attempts to hide from the American people how they have been betrayed for years. Some would argue that the word for what has been happening is "treason.” Like a Hollywood Thriller Trulock’s account of Wen Ho Lee’s activities as a scientist and the FBI's investigation of him reads like a James Bond movie script. No one is certain which side others are on because so many have been so badly compromised. Even some characters themselves may have forgotten where their ultimate loyalties lie, if indeed such loyalties ever existed in the dog-eat-dog world of undercover espionage. Security officials wanted to deny security clearances to Los Alamos nuclear laboratory scientist Wen Ho Lee and his wife, Sylvia, (also an employee at Los Alamos) and fire them. They had discovered Lee had kept on an unprotected computer a personal library "exactly the [nuclear weapons] material the Chinese were seeking,” as Trulock said at the AIM luncheon. But the FBI talked Los Alamos officials out of acting against Lee. Trulock’s expose will likely discredit Wen Ho Lee’s self-serving book "My Country vs. Me.” Lee was paid to report on their contacts with nuclear scientists from the People’s Republic of China. The CIA, says Trulock, "played a role in managing and ‘tasking’ the Lees from 1984 on." Blacked Out Much of the story was blacked out or "redacted” in government reports on the case. President Bush and the Ashcroft Justice Department show no desire to tackle the scandal, apparently wishing to "move on” and not tangle with the Clinton smear apparatus, even though that spin machine no longer commands the White House bully pulpit. Trulock faults the current regime for not pursuing the matter. Oehler’s story of his unceremonious firing for blowing the whistle on the Chinese weapons buildup was discussed behind close doors to the intelligence oversight committees of Congress. "And they didn’t release any of it?” NewsMax.com wanted to know. "They released some of it,” answered Trulock, who soon added, "And I was even there at the last visit he made. And no [member of either party on the committee] made a big deal about it. All they said was ‘OK, you’re retiring. Good luck. We appreciate everything you’ve done.” It appears neither party wants to rock the boat on the China missile threat or the communist Chinese spying.