Thread: Lets Not Forget: Bush Planned Iraq 'Regime Change' Before Becoming President

LOL, considering bill clinton signed off on the idea of iraqi regime change, this is news how?

in any case, as for american domination...america has been dominating the world since 1945. GB has been implicitly supporting american power since 1896 and openly supporting it since 1941, so again, what's the big news?

Let's not forget that paranoid anti-Bush/anti-U.S. screeds are boring.

-dale

Originally Posted by timhaughton

neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

'

The PNAC document supports a 'blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests'.


The PNAC report also:

Since you hold the PNAC in such high regard, then this must also be true.

May 25, 2005


MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS


FROM: DANIEL MCKIVERGAN, Deputy Director


SUBJECT: Allawi on Iraq and al Qaeda


I would like to draw your attention to a May 23, 2005 Agence France-Presse (AFP) article, “Al-Qaeda Number Two Visited Saddam’s Iraq: Former PM.” AFP reported on a recent interview that former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi gave to the Saudi newspaper Al-Hayat. According to Allawi, bin Ladin’s top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, visited Baghdad in September 1999, and al-Zarqawi entered Iraq “probably around the same time,” “began to set up cells,” and also “forged links with Ansar al-Islam.” AFP further reported:

Allawi, a former Baathist dissident who lived in exile at the time, said he had “confirmation” of Zawahiri's visit to Iraq and that the fugitive Egyptian Islamist had entered “under an assumed name” during the ninth Islamic popular congress held in Baghdad in September 1999. “Islamists who led terrorist networks in the world” met on the sidelines of the congress, he said. Allawi said Saddam's regime maintained contacts with militant groups via “one Faruk Hijazi, who was eventually named ambassador to Turkey and then to a (North African) country.” He said Hijazi was “arrested after the fall of Saddam's regime (in April 2003) while trying to infiltrate into Iraqi territory.”

Allawi’s comments, if accurate, build upon the work of the September 11 Commission Report, which stated:

In March 1998, after Bin Ladin’s public fatwa against the United States, two al Qaeda members reportedly went to Iraq to meet with Iraqi intelligence. In July, an Iraqi delegation traveled to Afghanistan to meet first with the Taliban and then with Bin Ladin. Sources reported that one, or perhaps both, of these meetings was apparently arranged through Bin Ladin’s Egyptian deputy, Zawahiri, who had ties of his own to the Iraqis.

Similar meetings between Iraqi officials and Bin Ladin or his aides may have occurred in 1999 during a period of some reported strains with the Taliban (p. 66).

While the report also stated that “to date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship,” commission chairman Thomas Kean was quick to note that “there was no question in our minds that there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.” Allawi’s remarks, should they hold up to scrutiny, would suggest a more substantial relationship between Iraq and terror groups than is usually portrayed in the major media.

Iraq and Al-Qaeda working together

Originally Posted by astralis

LOL, considering bill clinton signed off on the idea of iraqi regime change, this is news how?

Whatever gave you the idea that Bill Clinton - the darling of the Left around the world - signed off on the idea of a regime change in Iraq?

"It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime."

- President William Jefferson Clinton


Damn!

tophatter,

i know, huh?

to be honest, if one takes a close look at bill clinton's record, he was certainly not the lefty the euros thought he was. he was quite moderate, and alan greenspan called him one of the two most intelligent presidents he served under.

This is an interesting analysis of the intended and announced objectives for DESERT FOX. It addresses in detail the campaign and the political backdrop. Dr. Conversino, a faculty member of the Air War College, also discusses the unintended effects and the correlation between rhetoric about "regime change" and actual preparation (or not, as the case may be) by the Clinton administration.

A very solid look-

Operation DESERT FOX: Effectiveness With Unintended Effects

Lets not forget: America planned to invade Canada

Raiding the Icebox
Behind Its Warm Front, the United States Made Cold Calculations to Subdue Canada

By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 30, 2005; C01

Invading Canada won't be like invading Iraq: When we invade Canada, nobody will be able to grumble that we didn't have a plan.

The United States government does have a plan to invade Canada. It's a 94-page document called "Joint Army and Navy Basic War Plan -- Red," with the word SECRET stamped on the cover. It's a bold plan, a bodacious plan, a step-by-step plan to invade, seize and annex our neighbor to the north. It goes like this:

First, we send a joint Army-Navy overseas force to capture the port city of Halifax, cutting the Canadians off from their British allies.

Then we seize Canadian power plants near Niagara Falls, so they freeze in the dark.

Then the U.S. Army invades on three fronts -- marching from Vermont to take Montreal and Quebec, charging out of North Dakota to grab the railroad center at Winnipeg, and storming out of the Midwest to capture the strategic nickel mines of Ontario.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy seizes the Great Lakes and blockades Canada's Atlantic and Pacific ports.

At that point, it's only a matter of time before we bring these Molson-swigging, maple-mongering Zamboni drivers to their knees! Or, as the official planners wrote, stating their objective in bold capital letters: "ULTIMATELY TO GAIN COMPLETE CONTROL."

* * *

It sounds like a joke but it's not. War Plan Red is real. It was drawn up and approved by the War Department in 1930, then updated in 1934 and 1935. It was declassified in 1974 and the word "SECRET" crossed out with a heavy pencil. Now it sits in a little gray box in the National Archives in College Park, available to anybody, even Canadian spies. They can photocopy it for 15 cents a page.

War Plan Red was actually designed for a war with England. In the late 1920s, American military strategists developed plans for a war with Japan (code name Orange), Germany (Black), Mexico (Green) and England (Red). The Americans imagined a conflict between the United States (Blue) and England over international trade: "The war aim of RED in a war with BLUE is conceived to be the definite elimination of BLUE as an important economic and commercial rival."

In the event of war, the American planners figured that England would use Canada (Crimson) -- then a quasi-pseudo-semi-independent British dominion -- as a launching pad for "a direct invasion of BLUE territory." That invasion might come overland, with British and Canadian troops attacking Buffalo, Detroit and Albany. Or it might come by sea, with amphibious landings on various American beaches -- including Rehoboth and Ocean City, both of which were identified by the planners as "excellent" sites for a Brit beachhead.

The planners anticipated a war "of long duration" because "the RED race" is "more or less phlegmatic" but "noted for its ability to fight to a finish." Also, the Brits could be reinforced by "colored" troops from their colonies: "Some of the colored races however come of good fighting stock, and, under white leadership, can be made into very efficient troops."

The stakes were high: If the British and Canadians won the war, the planners predicted, "CRIMSON will demand that Alaska be awarded to her."

Imagine that! Canada demanding a huge chunk of U.S. territory! Them's fightin' words! And so the American strategists planned to fight England by seizing Canada. (Also Jamaica, Barbados and Bermuda.) And they didn't plan to give them back.

"Blue intentions are to hold in perpetuity all CRIMSON and RED territory gained," Army planners wrote in an appendix to the war plan. "The policy will be to prepare the provinces and territories of CRIMSON and RED to become states and territories of the BLUE union upon the declaration of peace."
The Sudbury Offensive

None of this information is new. After the plan was declassified in 1974, several historians and journalists wrote about War Plan Red. But still it remains virtually unknown on both sides of the world's largest undefended border.

"I've never heard of it," said David Biette, director of the Canada Institute in Washington, which thinks about Canada.

"I remember sort of hearing about this," said Bernard Etzinger, spokesman for the Canadian Embassy in Washington.

"It's the first I've heard of it," said David Courtemanche, mayor of Sudbury, Ontario, whose nickel mines were targeted in the war plan.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said he'd never heard of the plan. He also said he wouldn't admit to knowing about such a plan if he did.

"We don't talk about any of our contingency plans," he said.

Has the Pentagon updated War Plan Red since the '30s?

"The Defense Department never talks about its contingency plans for any countries," Whitman said. "We don't acknowledge which countries we have contingency plans for."

Out in Winnipeg -- the Manitoba capital, whose rail yards were slated to be seized in the plan -- Brad Salyn, the city's director of communications, said he didn't think Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz knew anything about War Plan Red: "You know he would have no clue about what you're talking about, eh?"

"I'm sure Winnipeggers will stand up tall in defense of our country," Mayor Katz said later. "We have many, many weapons."

What kind of weapons?

"We have peashooters, slingshots and snowballs," he said, laughing.

But the Canadians' best weapon, Katz added, is their weather. "It gets to about minus-50 Celsius with a wind chill," he said. "It will be like Napoleon's invasion of Russia. I'm quite convinced that you'll meet your Waterloo on the banks of the Assiniboine River."
Gas Station Strategy

As it turns out, Katz isn't the first Canadian to speculate on how to fight the U.S.A. In fact, Canadian military strategists developed a plan to invade the United States in 1921 -- nine years before their American counterparts created War Plan Red.

The Canadian plan was developed by the country's director of military operations and intelligence, a World War I hero named James Sutherland "Buster" Brown. Apparently Buster believed that the best defense was a good offense: His "Defence Scheme No. 1" called for Canadian soldiers to invade the United States, charging toward Albany, Minneapolis, Seattle and Great Falls, Mont., at the first signs of a possible U.S. invasion.

"His plan was to start sending people south quickly because surprise would be more important than preparation," said Floyd Rudmin, a Canadian psychology professor and author of "Bordering on Aggression: Evidence of U.S. Military Preparations Against Canada," a 1993 book about both nations' war plans. "At a certain point, he figured they'd be stopped and then retreat, blowing up bridges and tearing up railroad tracks to slow the Americans down."

Brown's idea was to buy time for the British to come to Canada's rescue. Buster even entered the United States in civilian clothing to do some reconnaissance.

"He had a total annual budget of $1,200," said Rudmin, "so he himself would drive to the areas where they were going to invade and take pictures and pick up free maps at gas stations."

Rudmin got interested in these war plans in the 1980s when he was living in Kingston, Ontario, just across the St. Lawrence River from Fort Drum, the huge Army base in Upstate New York. Why would the Americans put an Army base in such a wretched, frigid wilderness? he wondered. Could it be there to . . . fight Canada?

He did some digging. He found "War Plan Red" and "Defence Scheme No. 1." At the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., he found a 1935 update of War Plan Red, which specified which roads to use in the invasion ("The best practicable route to Vancouver is via Route 99").

Rudmin also learned about an American plan from 1935 to build three military airfields near the Canadian border and disguise them as civilian airports. The secret scheme was revealed after the testimony of two generals in a closed-door session of the House Military Affairs Committee was published by mistake. When the Canadian government protested the plan, President Franklin Roosevelt reassured it that he wasn't contemplating war. The whole brouhaha made the front page of the New York Times on May 1, 1935.

That summer, however, the Army held what were the biggest war games in American history on the site of what is now Fort Drum, Rudmin said.

Is he worried that the Yanks will invade his country from Fort Drum?

"Not now ," he said. "Now the U.S. is kind of busy in Iraq. But I wouldn't put it past them."

He's not paranoid, he hastened to add, and he doesn't think the States will simply invade Canada the way Hitler invaded Russia.

But if some kind of crisis -- perhaps something involving the perennially grumpy French Canadians -- destabilized Canada, then . . . well, Fort Drum is just across the river.

"We most certainly are not preparing to invade Canada," said Ben Abel, the official spokesman for Fort Drum.

The fort, he added, is home to the legendary 10th Mountain Division, which is training for its third deployment in Afghanistan. There are also 1,200 Canadian troops in Afghanistan.

"I find it very hard to believe that we'd be planning to invade Canada," Abel said. "We have a lot of Canadian soldiers training here. I bumped into a Canadian officer in the bathroom the other day."
Going North, Heading South

Invading Canada is an old American tradition. Invading Canada successfully is not.

During the American Revolution, Benedict Arnold -- then in his pre-traitor days -- led an invasion of Canada from Maine. It failed.

During the War of 1812, American troops invaded Canada several times. They were driven back.

In 1839, Americans from Maine confronted Canadians in a border dispute known as the Aroostook War.

"There were never any shots fired," said Etzinger, the Canadian Embassy spokesman, "but I think an American cow was injured -- and a Canadian pig."

In 1866, about 800 Irish Americans in the Fenian Brotherhood decided to strike a blow for Irish independence by invading Canada. They crossed the Niagara River into Ontario, where they defeated a Canadian militia. But when British troops approached, the Fenians fled back to the United States, where many were arrested.

After that, Americans stopped invading Canada and took up other hobbies, such as invading Mexico, Haiti, Nicaragua, Grenada and, of course, Iraq.

But the dream of invading Canada lives on in the American psyche, occasionally manifesting itself in bizarre ways. Movies, for instance.

In the 1995 movie "Canadian Bacon," the U.S. president, played by Alan Alda, decides to jump-start the economy by picking a fight with Canada. His battle cry: "Surrender pronto or we'll level Toronto."

In the 1999 movie "South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut," Americans, angered that their kids have been corrupted by a pair of foulmouthed, flatulent Canadian comedians, go to war. Canada responds by sending its air force to bomb the Hollywood home of the Baldwin brothers -- a far more popular defensive strategy than anything Buster Brown devised. Moviegoers left theaters humming the film's theme:

Blame Canada! Blame Canada!

With all their hockey hullabaloo

And that ***** Anne Murray too!

Blame Canada! Shame on Canada!

But it's not just movies. The urge to invade Canada comes in myriad forms.

In 2002, the conservative magazine National Review published an essay called "Bomb Canada: The Case for War." The author, Jonah Goldberg, suggested that the United States "launch a quick raid into Canada" and blow something up -- "perhaps an empty hockey stadium." That would cause Canada to stop wasting its money on universal health insurance and instead fund a military worthy of the name, so that "Canada's neurotic anti-Americanism would be transformed into manly resolve."

And let's not forget the Web site InvadeCanada.US , which lists many compelling reasons for doing do: "let's make Alaska actually connected to the U.S. again!" and "they're just a little too proud" and "the surrender will come quickly, they're French after all."

The site also sells T-shirts, buttons, teddy bears and thong underwear, all of them decorated with the classic picture of Uncle Sam atop the slogan "I WANT YOU to Invade Canada."

What's going on here? Why do Americans love to joke about invading Canada?

Because Americans see Canadians as goody-goodies, said Biette, the Canada Institute director. Canadians didn't rebel against the British, remaining loyal colonial subjects. They didn't have a Wild West, settling their land without the kind of theatrical gunfights that make for good movies. And they like to hector us about our misbehavior.

"We're 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' and they're 'peace, order and good government,' " Biette said. "So if you're a wild American, you look at them and say, 'They're just a bunch of Boy Scouts.' "
The C-Bomb

Canadians are well aware of our invasion talk. Not surprisingly, they take it a bit more seriously than we do.

When "The West Wing" had a subplot last winter about a U.S.-Canada border incident, Canadian newspapers took note.

When Jon Stewart joked about invading Canada on "The Daily Show" last March, Canadian newspapers covered the story.

When the Toronto Star interviewed comedian Jimmy Kimmel last year, the reporter asked him: "Is it only a matter of time before America invades Canada?"

"I'm not sure," Kimmel replied.

In 2003, the Canadian army set up an Internet chat room where soldiers and civilians could discuss defense issues. "One of the hottest topics on the site discusses whether the U.S. will invade Canada to seize its natural resources," the Ottawa Citizen reported. "If the attack did come, Canada could rely on a scorched-earth policy similar to what Russia did when invaded by Nazi Germany, one participant recommends. 'With such emmense [sic] land, and with our cold climates, we may be able to hold them off, even though we have the much weaker military,' the individual concludes."

Etzinger, the Canadian Embassy spokesman, isn't worried about an American invasion because Canada has a secret weapon -- actually thousands of secret weapons.

"We've got thousands of Canadians in the U.S. right now, in place secretly," he said. "They could be on your street. We've sent people like Celine Dion and Mike Myers to secretly infiltrate American society."

Pretty funny, Mr. Etzinger. But the strategists who wrote War Plan Red were prepared for that problem. They noted that "it would be necessary to deal internally" with the "large number" of Brits and Canadians living in the United States -- and also with "a small number of professional pacifists and communists."

The planners did not specify exactly what would be done with those undesirables. But it would be kinda fun to see Celine Dion and Mike Myers wearing orange jumpsuits down in Guantanamo.

Eh?

Gee. I dunno, but I've seen fair number of Canadian Army LAVs tooling around on I-5 near Ft. Lewis and over in Yakima. Been here forever, it seems.

Sorta arrogant, ya know. All high and mighty in their great big armored vehicles.

Damn, I hate this occupation.)

"We've got thousands of Canadians in the U.S. right now, in place secretly," he said. "They could be on your street. We've sent people like Celine Dion and Mike Myers to secretly infiltrate American society."

Hahahahahahahahahahah - TAKE THAT YOU DAMNED YANKEE IMPERIALISTS!!!!!!

..and with a few languistic lessons we con not only look like, but sound like Americans! We will penitrate deep into the enemy's heartland and sow confusion!!! Mwaahahaha!

*Emagine a Quebecois trying to sound like a southerner!*

"a small number of professional pacifists and communists." Worth more then the Canadian army.

Originally Posted by Officer of Engineers

Hahahahahahahahahahah - TAKE THAT YOU DAMNED YANKEE IMPERIALISTS!!!!!!

I just knew you'd love that one...

...it's only a matter of time before we bring these Molson-swigging, maple-mongering Zamboni drivers to their knees!

YES!! )

This should be filed under "conspiracy theories" along with the Apollo moon landing hoax and the 12 gnomes of Zurich controlling the world's economy.

Just think about this for a while. The stupid, incompetent, bumbling moron named George W. Bush, can secretly plan an invasion of Iraq more than 4 years before he became the president? He didn't even know he wanted to be president until he started running about a year before the election.