Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts

Volume 3,  Number 14              May 11 - 17, 2003            Quezon City, Philippines


 





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Hiding Terrorism's Actual Powerful Coddlers - and Failing

With Gracia Burnham's expose, we see in a clearer light the House defense committee's previous finding dismissing any crooked work at Lamitan and the continued inaction on the Senate defense committee's recommendations of court martial proceedings against a handful of military officers. They now look more like a systematic suppression of making accountable criminal handiwork, and damning proof of the utter supremacy of the military over civilian authority in subversion of the 1987 Constitution.

By Joel Garduce
Written for the Center for Anti-Imperialist Studies (CAIS)
Posted by Bulatlat.com


Examining a slew of recent developments here and in the U.S. reveal that the blight of terrorism may well have far more pernicious abettors and coddlers than both the Macapagal-Arroyo and its single most powerful patron, the Bush administration, would want us to believe all along. They're raising as well deeply unsettling questions anew.

I'm referring of course to the explosive revelations of widowed Abu Sayyaf ex-hostage Gracia Burnham in her book "In the Presence of My Enemies." But not only these; an examination of the recently-released 2002 Report on Global Terrorism by the U.S. State Department confirms a systematic cover-up by the Bush regime of a myriad of revelations pointing to a wider web of terrorism with key links to hyperpowerful places.

Discrediting Burnham's exposes - and failing

Much has been said of Gracia Burnham's harrowing exposes telling her side like it is in her book "In the Presence of my Enemies," 10 months after her husband and a Filipina co-hostage fell fatal victim to the worst hostage rescue operation ever against the Abu Sayyaf.

Already, Gloria's spin doctors, including those of her powerful military partners, are setting up the junking of Gracia's expose as mere hearsay. Malacaņang chief of staff Bobi Tiglao has said outright that Abu Sabaya's phone conversation with President Macapagal-Arroyo never happened. Armed Forces publicists are even saying Abu Sabaya may have been trying to deliberately mislead Gracia by inventing phone conversations with the President and an unnamed general.

These counter-claims by Malacaņang and Camp Aguinaldo would have been far easier to swallow - had it not been for that small unerasable incident at Lamitan, buttressed by credible testimonies from other ex-hostages as Raul "Buddy" Recio and Fr. Cirilo Nacorda.

With Burnham's expose, we see in a clearer light the House defense committee's previous finding dismissing any crooked work at Lamitan and the continued inaction on the Senate defense committee's recommendations of court martial proceedings against a handful of military officers. They now look more like a systematic suppression of making accountable criminal handiwork, and damning proof of the utter supremacy of the military over civilian authority in subversion of the 1987 Constitution.

Possible bloody implications

The published revelations expose once again the AFP hierarchy and President Macapagal-Arroyo as deep-seated liars when it comes to fighting terrorism. But not only that. It appears some of our most respectable authorities had profited handsomely as well from this social menace. Well, that's a perfectly logical reason as any for allowing Lamitan to happen, and letting it go. It may well have been the bloody reason for the needless deaths of Martin Burnham and Ediborah Yap. Needless, yes, because a little coordination similar to what occurred at Lamitan should have spared then the loss of any lives at all.

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's unerring monolithic faith on the AFP puts her not only as an abettor of bad, criminal government, but as a key accessory as well to this pernicious terrorist network. She is no different from ousted President Joseph Estrada in abetting this gory business between some of her military partners and this CIA-linked bandit group.

Interestingly, Burnham's revelations may have serious implications on one recent incident of terrorism: the March 4 bombing of Davao International Airport. How come? One of the fatal victims of that airport bombing was a close friend of the Burnhams: William Hyde. He was the sole American casualty in that bombing, and may well have stuck out like a sore thumb in that unlucky crowd. Were the airport bombing masterminds intending as well to scare Gracia Burnham out of going ahead with her published revelations by making an example of the Burnham couple's confidant (who likely was told by Gracia of the couple's harrowing and damning stories)?

Gracia Burnham's revelations render the proposed Anti-Terrorism Bill completely useless for our people's real antiterrorist fight. For nothing in any of the bill's various versions in both houses of Congress address terrorism's intimate linkages to the high and mighty, implied by the ex-hostage's story of an unnamed general haggling for a cut in the ransom demanded by Abu Sayyaf.

Until a full, independent, no-holds-barred and credible investigation into the entire phenomenon of Abu Sayyaf and similar terrorism reveals all that the Filipino people deserve to know about these heinous interrelated networks of terrorism, any Anti-Terrorism legislation is suspect of criminal motivations of hijacking our outrage against this revealed partnership. All proposals currently in the legislative mill ought to be junked pronto.

2002 U.S. state department terrorism report: another can of worms

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's presumptive dismissal of ties of some AFP officers to Abu Sayyaf terrorism goes hand-in-hand with the recent complicit silence of her patrons in the U.S. State Department on the May 16, 2002 bombing fiasco at Davao City's Evergreen Hotel of confirmed American terrorist, CIA operative and Abu Sayyaf cohort Michael Terrence Meiring. Colin Powell's charges perpetrated the crooked omission when they suppressed any mention of Meiring in its 2002 Report on Patterns of Global Terrorism published last month.

That brings us to another can of worms. Characteristic of its suppression of the Meiring terrorism, this 2002 State Department report obscures, more than illuminates, the real, full picture of the workings of global terrorism, specially surrounding 9/11.

While proferring to hew to a clinical definition of terrorism being "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience," it immediately sets the narrowest of limits to this definition by qualifying terrorism as having an "impact on U.S. interests," which are nothing more than actually the interests of the Bush ruling clique, and have nothing to do with the highest interests of the American people at all. Worse, it even qualifies "noncombatants" to include U.S. military personnel. That subverts altogether the whole idea of noncombatants!

Terrorism should only encompass those that "impact U.S. interests"
So, that definition of terrorism disqualifies the megacorporations that manufacture for the Bush government cluster bombs, landmines; Agent Orange, napalm and other biological and chemical weapons; depleted uranium (DU) weapons, hydrogen and neutron bombs, and countless other covert weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) that arbitrarily inflict unspeakable harm on wide swaths of populations which have always turned up to be civilians. The State Department definition disqualifies as well manufacturers of aircraft and missile systems that deliver this awesome firepower to "collateral damage" targets. These companies include some of the biggest contributors to the Republican Party: Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Alliant Techsystems, Honeywell, United Defense Industries and United Technologies.

That definition disqualifies as well the entire U.S. politico-military state, including the covert establishment at its core, which has the biggest arsenal of the most powerful weapons ever foisted on mankind, the same organization that has actually inflicted nuclear terrorism on civilians for five times now in history (World War II, Gulf War I, Balkan war, 2001-2002 Afghan war, and the recent war against Iraq).

That definition disqualifies the Israeli fascist government currently lorded over by that thug Ariel Sharon, even if Israel actually has the biggest arsenal of WMDs in the Middle East, has undertaken an unprecedented spree of murdering Palestinian civilians right in their own homes through bloody mass demolitions, and has even been found to be behind that famed terrorist Abu Nidal and the Hamas suicide bombers.

These megacriminal corporations and establishments will not be defined as terrorists by the U.S. State Department because they heftily serve the interests of the Bush ruling clique, even at the cost of countless lives of civilian noncombatants everywhere who just had to be caught by the premeditated, political violence these powerful entities manufacture and unleash "for U.S. interests"!

Between Meiring and Sison: muddle over who's the real terrorist

It gets better. Since the killer clause in the "terrorism" definition is "impact on U.S. interests," national liberation movements that expose and resist imperialist terrorism, specially those working toward an armed government independent of the U.S. war establishment, will have to be lumped together with suicide bombers, kidnap-for-ransom gangs, bandits, warlord armies and protectors of the illegal drugs and prostitution trades, along with veterans of CIA-instigated armies, even if in fact national liberation movements are diametrically opposed to the latter motley group of criminals.

That explains perfectly why leading Filipino revolutionary Jose Ma. Sison, the New People's Army and the Communist Party of the Philippines - mainstays in the Filipino armed resistance to imperialism since the Marcos dictatorship - are included in the U.S. State Department's list of terrorists, while Abu Sayyaf cohort and CIA operative Michael Terrence Meiring's May 2002 misadventure merits not a single word in this oh-so-authoritative 2002 report on global terrorism.

The best part isn't over yet. The worst omission in the 2002 U.S. State Department report is the biggest breakthrough against the 9/11 terrorists, the network that pulled off the millennium's biggest terror attacks so far and authentically defined terrorism for millions of world citizens.

Best thing going for the people's 9/11 fight

It's nothing else but the full emergence of the 9/11 international grassroots inquiry movement that is rejecting the suppression by the Bush regime of a full, no-holds-barred, independent and credible investigation of 9/11. A key event last year of this Internet-aided mass movement - probably the biggest underreported U.S. political event of 2002 - was the 9/11 and Public Safety Conference press meeting held last June 10, 2002 at Washington, D.C. attended by relatives of 9/11 victims, political researchers, former U.S. government officials, investigative journalists, and concerned citizens.

The Conference likewise launched the UnansweredQuestions.org website, a key Internet hub in a loose network of 9/11 inquiry websites, which lists key 9/11 public concerns left unaddressed by the Bush government. These include the derailment by high U.S. government offices of promising investigations that could have foiled the 9/11 attacks as revealed by FBI whistleblowers Coleen Rowley, Kenneth Williams, Robert Wright and John O'Neill; suspicious pre-9/11 stock market trading that clearly indicated detailed foreknowledge of the attacks; links of the CIA-affiliated Pakistan intelligence agency ISI to 9/11 terrorist Mohammed Atta, as well as the Bush family's business ties to the bin Laden family; collapse of standard procedures against hijackings on 9/11; and the absence of major firings or reprimands over 9/11 despite obvious government failures to ensure public safety.

Rather than Bush-Blair's war on Afghanistan, their illegal unilateral war against Iraq, the USA Patriot Act or its copycat legislation here and elsewhere, and the Balikatan combat operations - rather than any or all of these, the 9/11 inquiry mass movement was and is among the best things going for the antiterrorist democratic fight of the peoples of the world. It's key to retaking the 9/11 fight from undemocratic hijackers with a war megaprofit agenda; unveiling the entire network that feeds and abets 9/11- and similar terrorism; and lastly, in forging a solid international grassroots-based unity that will take unprecedented democratic action to compel the masters of terrorism to abandon their positions of power.

That's the kind of real antiterrorist action we expect the U.S. State Department to never, ever endorse. Bulatlat.com

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