Steven Gaal

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(DEBUNKING THE DEBUNKERS RESPOND)

http://911debunkers.blogspot.com/2011/11/911-theories-expert-vs-expert-aluminum.html

9/11 Theories: Expert vs. Expert - Aluminum Water Explosions Took the Towers Down?

see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_YYtF_2Hno&feature=player_embedded

Skeptical Investigations > Investigating Skeptics > Examining Skeptics > A Skeptical Look At James Randi

Recently I picked up Flim-Flam again. Having changed my mind about many things over the past twenty years, I responded to it much differently this time. I was particularly struck by the book's hectoring, sarcastic tone. Randi pictures psychic researchers as medieval fools clad in "caps and bells" and likens the delivery of an announcement at a parapsychology conference to the birth of "Rosemary's Baby." After debunking all manner of alleged frauds, he opens the book's epilogue with the words, "The tumbrels now stand empty but ready for another trip to the square" - a reference to the French Revolution, in which carts ("tumbrels") of victims were driven daily to the guillotine. Randi evidently pictures himself as the executioner who lowers the blade. In passing, two points might be made about this metaphor: the French Revolution was a product of "scientific rationalism" run amok ... and most of its victims were innocent.

Still, the tedious nastiness of Flim-Flam does not tell us anything about its accuracy. Intrigued, I decided to check out a few of Randi's claims in detail.

I chose to focus on Chapter Eight, Randi's dissection of the experiments of Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff, two well-known parapsychologists. Randi calls them "the Laurel and Hardy of psi" and proceeds to argue that their experiments were a tissue of ineptitude, gullibility, and dishonesty.

The first thing I noticed was that Randi never gives any indication that Targ and Puthoff have any scientific credentials or accomplishments. The casual reader could be forgiven for assuming that they are not "real" scientists at all. For the record, Targ is a physicist credited with inventing the FM laser, the high-power gas-tranport laser, and the tunable plasma oscillator. Puthoff, also a physicist, invented the tunable infra-red laser and is widely known for his theoretical work on quantum vacuum states and the zero point field. (see The Field, by Lynne McTaggart, for an overview of Puthoff's work in quantum phyics.) If these two are "Laurel and Hardy," at least they come with good résumés. Randi, by contrast, has no scientific training.

Randi starts off by telling us how Targ and Puthoff took a professed psychic, Ingo Swann, to Stanford University, where, they said, Swann used his psychic abilities to affect the operation of a magnetometer. According to Randi, "the report was all wet." He knows this because he contacted Dr. Arthur Hebard, "the builder of the device, who was present and has excellent recollections of what took place." Hebard, Randi says disputes the Targ-Puthoff account. He is quoted as saying, "It's a lie. You can say it any way you want, but that's what I call a lie."

This is pretty compelling stuff. But is Randi's version of events accurate? Let's take a look.

First, he seems to make a rather basic error when he says that both Targ and Puthoff were present for this experiment. As best I can determine, Puthoff conducted the experiment, which took place in June, 1972, without Targ's assistance. Targ had met Puthoff prior to this time, but their work together apparently did not begin until a few months later.

That's a small point. Far more important is the matter of Dr. Hebard's testimony. There's another side to the story, which I found in Chapter 17 of Psychic Breakthroughs Today ( Quoted by Uri Geller ) by D. Scott Rogo. Rogo, who died in 1990 at the age of forty, was a prolific journalist and researcher of psychic phenomena. He wrote numerous popular books, some of which have been used as college texts. He also published research papers in peer-reviewed parapsychology journals. Although Rogo was sometimes criticized for tackling overly esoteric subjects, he had a reputation for honesty and was respected for his willingness to do hands-on investigation and field work, rather than relying on armchair appraisals. A Scott Rogo tribute and bibliography can be found at www.tricksterbook.com/ArticlesOnline/RogoObit.htm

Rogo writes, "There obviously exist several discrepancies between Dr Puthoff's views on what happened during this experiment, and what Randi claims Dr Hebard told him. So to clarify the matter, I decided to get in touch with Dr Hebard myself. I finally tracked him down at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. He was very willing to discuss the Swann magnetometer demonstration with me, and professed to be very interested in parapsychology." Hebard's interest in the paranormal contradicts Randi's statement that Hebard, "not being a reader of far-out literature," was unaware of Targ and Puthoff's claims.

Rogo acknowledges that Hebard's account differs in some respects from Puthoff's. "Dr Hebard denied in no uncertain terms, however, Randi's claim that Swann was never asked to 'stop the field charge' being recorded from the magnetometer. He easily recalled that he had suggested that it would be a fascinating effect if Swann could produce it . . . which, of course, he actually did soon after the suggestion was made. Randi also directly quotes Dr Hebard as calling some of Targ and Puthoff's claims 'lies'. Dr Hebard was very annoyed by this claim since, as he explained to me, Randi had tried to get him to make this charge and he had refused. Dr Hebard later signed a statement to this effect for me." (ellipsis in original.)

As for the discrepancies between Hebard's and Puthoff's accounts, Rogo reports that in a subsequent meeting with Puthoff, he was shown "the actual graphed print-outs given by the magnetometer during the Swann demonstrations. The records supported Dr Puthoff's contention more than they did Dr Hebard's."

So far, then, the best we can say is that Randi's criticism of Puthoff (and Targ, who apparently wasn't even involved in the magnetometer experiment) is far from the last word on the subject.

Randi proceeds to launch a comprehensive critique of Targ and Puthoff's article "Information Transmission under Conditions of Sensory Shielding," which appeared in the October 18, 1974, issue of the respected journal Nature. The article details experiments involving, among other participants, the professed psychic Uri Geller.

Randi's take on this series of experiments is withering. He skewers Targ and Puthoff as "bunglers." He reports that their experiments were conducted in a chaotic atmosphere conducive to cheating. He says that a hole in the wall of Geller's isolation room enabled him to spy on the scientists during their ESP experiments. He says that Targ and Puthoff falsified the results of the tests by omitting failed experiments that would have lowered Geller's averages to the level of chance. Further, he says that the scoring of Geller's performances was mishandled, generating higher scores than Geller deserved.

The question naturally arises: How does Randi know all this, since, as he admits, "I've never even set foot on the sacred grounds of SRI [stanford Research Institute, where the experiments were conducted"? He explains that he was given inside information by "an individual" who claimed to represent dozens of SRI scientists. This group, which worked in secret and even adopted a code name (Broomhilda), passed the information to Randi.

Unfortunately, Randi never names this individual or any other members of the Broomhilda group. He says that "Broomhilda verified for me much of the information that I had been holding on to for years," but where did he get this earlier information in the first place? "That data," he says, "now moved from the status of hearsay to documented fact." But documented is hardly a term applicable to either the initial information, which is never specified, or the Broomhilda information, which came from an anonymous source. He adds, "Additional facts were elicited during conversations and correspondence with individuals. Many of these persons were not aware of Broomhilda and were acting on their own. Their completely independent input supported Broomhilda's charges. Taken together," he concludes, "the information from all sources amounted to quite an indictment."

Maybe so, but it's an indictment that would never hold up in court. The reader is expected to take Randi's word that his unidentified sources are trustworthy - and that the sources themselves are well-informed about experimental procedures they may or may not have witnessed.

Thus when Randi alleges that "hundreds of [failed] experiments that were done by SRI ... were never reported," we must take the statement on faith, as it is unsupported by any documentation. Similarly, when Randi says definitively, "All the other tests [i.e., the successful ones] lacked proper controls and were useless," we search in vain for any footnote to back up this assertion.

A posting www.psicounsel.com/ I found on a message board sums up the situation nicely: "Claims of poor scientific method leveled at the experimenters have been shown to be mainly unsubstantiated personal opinion and second-hand 'Chinese Whispers.'" (Chinese Whispers is the British equivalent of the American game, 'Telephone'.) It might be worth adding that critics of paranormal phenomena, like Randi, are forever decrying any reliance on "anecdotal evidence," which is precisely what the bulk of Randi's argument consists of.

Randi does produce two individuals willing to go on the record - Charles Rebert and Leon Otis, both of whom were SRI psychologists. Rebert and Otis apparently disagreed with the Targ-Puthoff conclusions; indeed, Randi tells us that "a horrified Rebert also heard that Targ and Puthoff were going to proclaim these erroneous findings before Stanford University's psychology department, and he forbade such a blunder. The talk was canceled." But this only tells us that there was a dispute among the scientists at SRI. Rebert and Otis ran some unsuccessful tests with Geller and decided that he was a fraud. Targ and Puthoff ran what they regarded as successful tests and decided that, in some areas at least, Geller had legitimate psychic powers. Nothing in Randi's text establishes which conclusion was correct.

Randi goes on to report that after he had criticized Geller in an earlier book, Targ and Puthoff "issued a 'fact sheet' in rebuttal to twenty-four" of his points. According to Randi, "This attempt was a failure, and in response to one claim that the SRI tests were done under tight controls, a scientist who was there declared flatly, 'This is b.s. As far as my colleagues and I are concerned, none of the experiments met accepted scientific protocol. "I will not burden you," Randi concludes, "with the other twenty-three points; they are as easily demolished."

Well, hold on. A quotation from yet another anonymous source ("a scientist who was there") hardly constitutes a demolition job, especially when the scientist's argument consists of an unsupported assertion ("none of the experiments met accepted scientific protocol"). Personally, I would have welcomed the "burden" of the other twenty-three points and of Randi's detailed and carefully documented rebuttals.

Some idea of the counter-arguments to Randi's claims can be obtained by taking another look at D. Scott Rogo, who earlier showed the initiative to track down Dr. Hebard. Unlike Randi, who, as we have seen, had "never even set foot" inside the research facility, Rogo visited SRI on June 12, 1981. He found that Randi had misrepresented the hole in the wall of the isolation room through which Geller was supposedly able to spy on the researchers. The hole, a conduit for cables, is depicted in Flim-Flam as being three and a half inches wide and therefore offering a good view of the experimental area where the researchers were working. Rogo found, however, that the hole "is three-and-a-quarter inches [wide] and extends through a twelve-and-a-half inch wall. This scopes your vision and severely limits what you can see through it. The hole is not left open either, since it is covered by a plate through which cables are routinely run. Dr Puthoff and his colleague were, however, concerned that their subject might be ingenious enough to insert an optical probe through this hole, so they monitored the opening throughout their telepathy experiments."

Randi also indicates that the hole is stationed 34 inches above the floor. Not so, says Rogo. "It isn't three feet above the floor, but is located only a little above floor level. The only thing you can see through it - even under optimal conditions - is a small bit of exterior floor and opposing wall. (The viewing radius is only about 20°, and the targets for the Geller experiments were hung on a different wall completely.) I also discovered during my trip to SRI that an equipment rack was situated in front of the hole throughout the Geller work, which obstructed any view through it even further. I ended my little investigation by talking with two people who were present during these critical experiments. They both agreed that wires were running through the hole - therefore totally blocking it - during the time of the Geller experiments."

It would appear that the hole in the isolation booth's wall poses considerably less of a problem than the holes in Randi's arguments.

By now, I felt that Randi's credibility was in doubt. He had committed careless errors of fact, had quite possibly misrepresented and misquoted Hebard, and had made unsupported assertions based on rumors. I wondered what Targ and Puthoff have to say about all this. The only responses from either of them that I could find online were part of a long essay by Winston Wu, 'Debunking Common Skeptical Arguments Against Paranormal and Psychic Phenomena' www.victorzammit.com/skeptics/winston.html , the relevant part is Argument 18 Puthoff is quoted as saying the following:

"In Flim- Flam, [Randi] gives something like 28 debunking points, if my memory serves me correctly. I had the opportunity to confront Randi at a Parapsychology Association conference with proof in hand, and in tape-recorded interaction he admitted he was wrong on all the points. He even said he would correct them for the upcoming paperback being published by the CSICOP group. [He did not] ...

"The truth of the matter is that none of Randi's claimed suspected inadequate controls actually had anything to do with the experiments, which of course Randi was not there to know of. This has been independently reported by Scott Rogo somewhere in the literature, who came out specifically to check each of Randi's guesses about inadequate controls and found them inapplicable under the conditions in which the tests were conducted. In fact, all of Randi's suggestions were amateurish compared to the sophisticated steps we took, suspecting as we did everything from magician's tricks to an Israeli intelligence scam....

"In case one thinks that it was just a case of our opinions vs. his opinions," Puthoff continues, "we chose for the list of incorrect points only those that could be independently verified. Examples: [Randi] said that in our Nature paper we verified Geller's metal-bending. Go to the paper, and you see that we said we were not able to obtain evidence for this. He said that a film of the Geller experiment made at SRI by famed photographer Zev Pressman was not made by him, but by us and we just put his name on it. We showed up with an affidavit by Pressman saying that indeed he did make the film."

There is no way for me to verify Puthoff's statement that he tape-recorded Randi's concession of defeat "on all the points." This has to stand as an unsupported assertion, just like Randi's own arguments. But it is possible to take a closer look at Puthoff's last two claims.

First, Puthoff insists that his and Targ's Nature article does not endorse Geller's alleged metal-bending. This is accurate, as you can see for yourself by reading the article www.heart7.net/mcf/hambone/g3.html . Puthoff and Targ write, "It has been widely reported that Geller has demonstrated the ability to bend metal by paranormal means. Although metal bending by Geller has been observed in our laboratory, we have not been able to combine such observations with adequately controlled experiments to obtain data sufficient to support the paranormal hypothesis."

On the other hand, I have not found any statement by Randi in Flim-Flam to the effect that Targ and Puthoff "had verified Geller's metal-bending." He attacks the Targ-Puthoff experiments on other grounds. Of course, he may have made this statement elsewhere, but as far as I can tell, Puthoff is rebutting a point Randi never made.

How about Puthoff's second claim, regarding the SRI film? Randi certainly does make this an issue in Flim-Flam. Targ and Puthoff, he writes, "appended to [the film] - without his knowledge or permission - the name of Zev Pressman, the SRI photographer who had shot the film.... Pressman, said Targ and Puthoff, was present during [a particular series of] experiments. Not so, according to Pressman.... Most damning of all, Pressman said to others at SRI that he had been told the successful [tests] were done after he (Pressman) had gone home for the day. So it appears the film was a reenactment ... Pressman did not even know that Targ and Puthoff were issuing a statement, he did not sign it, and he did not give them permission to use his name. He knew nothing about most of what appeared under his name, and he disagreed with the part that he did know about." [italics in original]

Here we have Randi saying that this photographer, Pressman, was duped and used by the experimenters, while Puthoff says that Pressman signed an affidavit swearing that "indeed he did make the film." Is there any way to resolve this?

A further Web search turned up Chapter 14 www.uri-geller.com/geller-effect/tge14.htm of The Geller Effect. Part One of this book is written by Uri Geller. Part Two, which includes Chapter 14, was written by Guy Lyon Playfair. Living up to his name, Playfair offers an even-handed presentation of the various controversies surrounding the flamboyant and eccentric Geller.

Playfair writes, "[Randi] turned, in a later book, Flim-Flam, to the professional photographer who had made the film, a Stanford employee named Zev Pressman, with an extraordinary series of unfounded allegations....

"Pressman flatly denied all of Randi's allegations in two public statements, neither of which was even mentioned in the 1982 re-issue of the book. 'I made the film,' said Pressman, 'and my name appeared with my full knowledge and permission . . . Nothing was restaged or specially created . . . I have never met nor spoken to nor corresponded with Randi. The 'revelations' he attributes to me are pure fiction.'"

It is true that no mention is made of these "two public statements" in Flim-Flam's 1982 edition - the edition I own.

For corroborating testimony, I turned once again to the indefatigable Scott Rogo, who investigated this claim just as he had looked into Dr. Hebard's testimony and the infamous hole in the wall.

Rogo writes, "I spoke directly with Mr Pressman on 5 January 1981 and he was quite interested when I told him about Randi's book. He denied that he had spoken to the magician. When I read him the section of Randi's book dealing with his alleged 'expose' of the Targ-Puthoff film, he became very vexed. He firmly backed up the authenticity of the film, told me how he had taken it on the spot, and labeled Randi's allegation as a total fabrication. [His own descriptive language was a little more colourful!]" Rogo also reports that Puthoff showed him Pressman's signed affidavit.

How could Randi's conversation with Pressman be so different from Rogo's? The truth is, Randi does not appear to have had a conversation with Pressman at all. Take another look at the quote from Flim-Flam. The key words are: "Most damning of all, Pressman said to others at SRI ..."

Evidently, then, Randi's source is not Pressman himself, but unnamed "others at SRI" who passed on this information to Randi. Another round of Chinese Whispers, it seems.

At this point Randi ends his discussion of the Geller experiments and proceeds to criticize Targ and Puthoff's later work, as well as the work of another researcher, Charles Tart. Dealing with these criticisms would require another essay of equal length to this one, so I will stop here. The reader who wants to go further is invited to read Randi's Flim-Flam and then click on any of the links inserted throughout this essay and listed below. Or just search the Web for the keywords Randi, Targ, Puthoff, etc., and see what comes up.

Before I began this modest online research project for a rainy afternoon, I had mixed feelings about Randi. I saw him as closed-minded and supercilious, but I also assumed he was sincere and, by his own lights, honest. Now, having explored his contribution to the Targ-Puthoff controversy in some detail, I am thoroughly unimpressed. Randi comes across as a bullying figure, eager to attack and ridicule, willing to distort and even invent evidence - in short, the sort of person who will do anything to prevail in a debate, whether by fair means or foul.

The title of his book thus takes on a new and unintended meaning. From what I can tell, James Randi really is the Flim-Flam man.

NOTE: James Randi responded to this article, and Michael Prescott then responded to James Randi. To read this ongoing controversy, see http://michaelprescott.freeservers.com/FlimFlam.htm

Michael Prescott is a New York Times bestselling author. His published works include: Comes the Dark, Stealing Faces, The Shadow Hunter, Last Breath, Next Victim and In Dark Places. His latest book is Dangerous Games

More on James Randi
James Randi Biography
The Randi Prize The Challenge
The $1M Challenge So What?
Randi's Dishonest Claims The Research That Never Was
Ted Dace reports on the Amazing 3 Conference Skeptical of the Skeptics

A Skeptical Look At James Randi

by Michael Prescott
Michael Prescott is a well-known novelist based in the United States
© Michael Prescott

Back to...Examining Skeptics

!>

Michael Prescott

Years ago, when I was a full-fledged skeptic, atheist, and rationalist, I read James Randi's 1980 book Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns and other Delusions. Randi is an accomplished magician and a professional skeptic, dedicating to disproving any and all claims of what he considers pseudoscience. In line with this agenda, and as its title suggests, Flim-Flam is a concerted attack on miscellaneous purported irrationalities - everything from the pop-culture writings of Erich von Daniken to the more serious investigations of professional parapsychologists. I enjoyed the book, which reinforced my belief system at the time.

REPOSTED IN FAIR USE

Sorry dude most major universities in the US do research for the USG.

And get back to us when you understand what an ad hom is. What you are engaging is an ad hom by proxy three times removed. If you claimed a debunking post on JREF was suspect because its author had done work for NIST that would be an ad hom but you don't even have that rather one guy who has provided financial support to the forum works for a university that has done research for NIST. It seems only half a dozen people are following this thread, you have yet to expalin how any of your assinine BS disqualifies posts made on JREF so my furthur participation would be a waste of time.

So adios (and don't forget you begged me to come back here).

And get back to us when you understand what an ad hom is //COLBY

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Golly when you cited the arrest of a 911 Truther in New York City for drugs ,I thought that "ad hom".(Charges were dropped BTW ,which I brought up not you.) BTW the drugged up Punk Rock band you promoted in an interview stated "YOU" were the big druggie. I found it inconsistant that you posted ultra fast about drugs and a "truther". When you called me MALODOROUS and STUPID I thought that was "ad hom". Guess your right , I dont understand what an ad hom is , and you do.

===========

you have yet to expalin how any of your assinine BS disqualifies posts made on JREF // Colby

=

First as the title of the post states there is connection between prime foundation funder of JREF and the military and documentation is presented in first article. (YOU JUST ATTACKED THE AUTHOR OF THE ARTICLE)

• Second one of the officers of the foundation has worked on military connected research via ultra secret DARPA. Documentation presented connecting JERF "officer" Denman and DARPA.Seem you also forgot I posted this.
• • OH BTW this type of false argument of

  Shoddy Construction

  is found at RANDY'S site. (AKA JERF SITE)
  http://911review.com...asy/shoddy.html
• Third ,"So adios (and don't forget you begged me to come back here)".,Colby posted. Golly you dont know a joke when you here one ?????? (Gaal)
• As
  Mikhail Prokhorov stated Don't let the door hit you were god split you. His accent is heavy and it just sounds funny when you hear the audio (adios).
• #################

• NEW YORK -- There's nothing lost in translation about how Brooklyn Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov feels concerning the team's split with former coach Jason Kidd over the summer.

  "I think there is a nice proverb in English: Don't let the door hit you where the good Lord has split you," think that each side, we did what we thought was the best and I like what we have now.

  see/hear http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQzPNXWA2yc

Szamboti is a mechanical engineer who works with aerospace, thus he is not especially qualified to critique multi-thousand page exhaustively researched reports prepared by qualified structural engineers. Last I checked the truthers had only signed up about 2 dozen SE about half of whom worked on things like ships,oil rigs, bridges etc, of the half or so who actually had BUILDING design experience with only one or two exceptions none made any claim to have designed anything more than a couple stories tall. But they gave no indication of having actually read the NIST executive reports,let alone the dozens of supporting ones. Of the 3 or 4 (or was it 5?) who mentioned the report none claimed relevant expertise. Gaal get back to us if you can find atruther SE who has read at least one of the NIST reports AND has RELEVANT (i.e. highrise) design experience.

• by qualified structural engineers COUNTER (3 people dominated report)
• AE911Truth Structural Engineer Dismantles the NIST Analysis of WTC 7 Thursday, 06 May 2010 18:26

  

  Structural engineer Ron Brookman probes the NIST analyses of World Trade Center Seven (WTC 7). This article titled The NIST Analyses: A Close Look at WTC 7 is available free as a download, or can be purchased as a spiral-bound hardcopy in the AE911Truth online store. Brookman‘s careful examination of the NIST final reports regarding WTC 7 reveals an abundance of deficiencies and discrepancies. These come in many varieties. Some are erroneous, in that they conflict with scientific findings reported in the open literature. Others are inconsistencies internal to the NIST reports. And finally, others are incomplete with respect to failure to investigate matters that had been flagged as needing further investigation in official reports from other government agencies.

  Once the final edits were complete, Brookman offered the following comment to accompany the article’s announcement.:

  “We still have the law on our side. The National Construction Safety Team Act requires NIST to establish the likely technical cause of the building failure. It also requires a public report including the analysis demonstrating the likely cause of failure. Upon reading the final NCSTAR reports issued in November 2008 regarding WTC 7, I could not find a complete analysis that proved the NIST hypothesis was correct. Instead I found numerous inconsistencies and unfinished business. Read the article if you are curious, and keep the NCSTAR reports handy for reference.”

  Brookman is one of over 40 structural engineers who have signed the AE911Truth petition calling for a truly independent investigation of the events of 9/11, with emphasis on the destruction of the WTC Towers and WTC building 7. He is also one of the interviewees in the article, 29 Structural & Civil Engineers Cite Evidence for Controlled Explosive Demolition in Collapses of All 3 WTC High–Rises on 9/11. For a broader book–length exposé on WTC 7 see also David Ray Griffin’s The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center7 — Why the Final Official Report about 9/11 is Unscientific and False.

  Brookman received his M.S. in Structural Engineering (1986) from the University of California at Davis, following a B.S. in Civil Engineering from the same school in 1984. He has over 23 years experience in structural analysis, design, evaluation and rehabilitation of buildings in northern California.

===========================

Well golly dem dare skeptics look at best explanation and it seems machine gun fire really the best. "DUDE"

Non experts said it "looked like" bullets vs. experts who say it was a missile, the loons of course think the former is "conclusive".

Colby

++++++++++++++++++++

• OCSE monitor mentions bullet holes in MH17 - YouTube
  

  ► 0:55
  www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ze9BNGDyk4Jul 30, 2014 - 55 sec - Uploaded by Harry Dillema
  Original source http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/malaysia... - OCSE monitor Michael Bociurkiw ...

OSCE Monitor Mentions Machine Gun “Bullet ... - Global Research

25 Points of Specific Concern in the NIST WTC Reports

Written by Tony Szamboti

The End of the Road for NIST

By Tony Szamboti

Editor's Note: In recent years, various members of the AE911Truth team have been working on a white paper titled “Areas of Specific Concern in the NIST WTC Reports.” Last month they finally completed the document. Its 25 concise points offer the most convincing proof that the reports produced by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on the September 11, 2001, destruction of the three World Trade Center buildings were unscientific and fraudulent. The authors of "The 25 Points" designed the document to provide material that would compel the convening of a grand jury. Whether or not a grand jury is ever impaneled in any jurisdiction, though, readers of this white paper have the duty and privilege of acting as a virtual grand jury in all jurisdictions. After weighing the evidence meticulously laid out in "The 25 Points," readers can, by their resulting actions, help determine whether there will one day be a new, fully funded, truly independent, wholly transparent, and unimpeachably honest investigation of 9/11.

Areas of Specific Concern in the NIST WTC Reports

Below is a series of twenty-five provable points which clearly demonstrate that the reports produced by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on the destruction of the World Trade Center (WTC) were unscientific and fraudulent. Therefore NIST itself – including its lead authors, Shyam Sunder and John Gross - should be investigated.

Table of Contents WTC 7 – THE THIRD SKYSCRAPER

2 1. OMISSION OF GIRDER STIFFENERS SHOWN ON FRANKEL DRAWING #9114 2 2. OMISSION OF THREE LATERAL SUPPORT BEAMS ON THE 13TH FLOOR G3005 BEAM 2 3. WTC 7 COLLAPSE AT FREE-FALL ACCELERATION IS NOT EXPLAINED 3 4. VIDEOS OF THE COLLAPSE OF WTC 7 BETRAY NIST’S COMPUTER MODEL 3 5. CLAIMS OF INVESTIGATING CONTROLLED DEMOLITION WITHOUT TESTING FOR EXPLOSIVE RESIDUES 4 6. CHANGES OF STATEMENTS ON COMPOSITE BEAMS AND SHEAR STUD USE BETWEEN DRAFTS 5 7. REFUSING OF FOIA REQUESTS 6 ALL THREE BUILDINGS 6 8. NEGLIGENCE IN SALVAGING STEEL 6 9. IGNORING THE RESULTS OF FEMA 403, APPENDIX C 6 10. INVOLVEMENT IN NOT SAVING STEEL FOR INVESTIGATION 7 11. FIRE SIMULATIONS AND DURATIONS ARE EXAGGERATED 8 12. NO DISCUSSION OF THE MOLTEN METAL FOUND IN THE RUBBLE OF THE THREE COLLAPSED BUILDINGS. 8 13. REFUSAL TO TEST FOR EXPLOSIVE RESIDUE 9 14. FAILURE TO FOLLOW STANDARD FIRE INVESTIGATION PROTOCOL 10 THE TWIN TOWERS

10 15. STRIPPING OF THE FIRE PROOFING IS EXAGGERATED 10 16. PRE-COLLAPSE STEEL TEMPERATURES ARE EXAGGERATED 11 17. TESTED FLOOR ASSEMBLIES DID NOT FAIL 11 18. INITIATION OF COLLAPSE – “INWARD BOWING” WAS INDUCED ARTIFICIALLY 12 19. COLUMN STRESS DUE TO LOAD REDISTRIBUTION IS NOT SUFFICIENT TO CAUSE FAILURE 12 20. NO EXPLANATION GIVEN FOR HORIZONTAL PROPAGATION OF COLLAPSE 12 21. WTC 1 TILT OCCURRED AFTER SYMMETRICAL COLLAPSE FOR AT LEAST TWO STORIES 13 22. NO JOLT – CONTINUOUS ACCELERATION OF COLLAPSE WAS IGNORED 14 23. NO PILE DRIVER IS OBSERVED IN VIDEOS 16 24. COLUMN LOADS WERE CALCULATED FOR WORST CASE, NOT ACTUAL IN-SERVICE LOADS 17 25. MOLTEN METAL OBSERVED POURING OUT OF THE CORNER OF WTC 2 REMAINS UNRESOLVED 17 WTC 7 – THE THIRD SKYSCRAPER 1. OMISSION OF GIRDER STIFFENERS SHOWN ON FRANKEL DRAWING #9114

Technical Statement: NIST maintains that WTC 7 collapsed due to fire acting upon the 13th floor A2001 girder between columns 79 and 44 and the beams framing into it from the east. They said that the beams expanded by 5.5” (revised in June 2012 to 6.25”), broke the girder erection bolts, and pushed this girder off its column 79 seat. This girder fell to floor 12, which then precipitated a cascade of floor failures from floor 12 down to floor 5, and column 79 then became unsupported laterally, causing it to buckle. It is then said that column 79's buckling caused the upper floors to cascade down, which started a

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So Gaal got any evidence other than what you got from the lying neo-Nazi fugative Bollyn? So the prof supposedly didn't want to talk to the creep, why would anyone want to? And the crazy moron got Denman's title, nothing in his CV suggests ties to the NSA, NIST or anyother gov't agency.

http://www.it.umd.edu/division_staff/bios/old0512/denman.pdf

Very close relationship University Maryland IT and NSA/NIST.(GAAL)

Very close relationship Randy site 911 debunking and University Maryland IT ....coincidence ???????????????

=

COLBY DOES NOT ADDRESS THIS JREF and NSA NEXUS. IN TROLLISH BEHAVIOR Colby CALLS IT, "incoherrent drivel"

++++++++++++++

I asked you for a reliable citation, see if you come up with one/any.

• WEll thank you Colby you got me to dig deeper. Put in Denmans name at what was called PUB Med and found some intriguing items that connects said DENMAN to the defense establishment. His article listed there (PUB MED) referred to signals (electromagnetic) effecting blood coagulation by DARPA (the D stands for Defense (as in DOD) if you dont know.) A make you bleed ray ???? Maybe because I then searched at PUB MED using the lead scientific author in said DENMAM article - putting in my search Jonas WB and Biowarfare and got 3 articles at bottom. The middle 3 articles is something PUB MED does in showing related articles ( Related citations in PubMed) an interpretation of said articles would be in military terms as use for an electromagnetic weapon. So Colby contends that DENMAMS just makes everyones PC work without problems at the university ????? IMHO, no he is more than that.
• ================================================================================
• Can specific biological signals be digitized?

  Jonas WB¹, Ives JA, Rollwagen F, Denman DW, Hintz K, Hammer M, Crawford C, Henry K.

  Author information

  • ¹Samueli Institute for Information Biology, Alexandria, Virginia, 22314, USA. wjonas@siib.org

  Abstract

  At the request of the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, we attempted to replicate the data of Professor Jacques Benveniste that digital signals recorded on a computer disc produce specific biological effects. The hypothesis was that a digitized thrombin inhibitor signal would inhibit the fibrinogen-thrombin coagulation pathway. Because of the controversies associated with previous research of Prof. Benveniste, we developed a system for the management of social controversy in science that incorporated an expert in social communication and conflict management. The social management approach was an adaptation of interactional communication theory, for management of areas that interfere with the conduct of good science. This process allowed us to successfully complete a coordinated effort by a multidisciplinary team, including Prof. Benveniste, a hematologist, engineer, skeptic, statistician, neuroscientist and conflict management expert. Our team found no replicable effects from digital signals.

  +++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Uuuh NO, apparently some guy named Benveniste claimed that signals generated when data is recorded to disc could "inhibit the fibrinogen-thrombin coagulation pathway" this team of which Deaman was 3rd listed of six authors (thus he was a minor player) concluded this was BS.

Related citations in PubMed

(to the side related article on )

Effects of low-energy electromagnetic fields (pulsed and DC) on membrane signal transduction processes in biological systems.

Luben RA.

Health Phys. 1991 Jul;61(1):15-28. Review.

PMID: 2061045 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Molecular recognition and processing of periodic signals in cells: study of activation of membrane ATPases by alternating electric fields.

Tsong TY.

Biochim Biophys Acta. 1992 Mar 26;1113(1):53-70. Review.

PMID: 1532330 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] ++++++++++++++++++++++

Risk management frameworks for human health and environmental risks.

Jardine C, Hrudey S, Shortreed J, Craig L, Krewski D, Furgal C, McColl S.

J Toxicol Environ Health B Crit Rev. 2003 Nov-Dec;6(6):569-720. Review.

PMID: 14698953 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

###########################

Jonas WB

Rapid induction of protective tolerance to potential terrorist agents: a systematic review of low- and ultra-low dose research.

Szeto AL, Rollwagen F, Jonas WB.

Homeopathy. 2004 Oct;93(4):173-8. Review.

PMID: 15532694 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Related citations

Select item 118903822.

Directions for research in complementary medicine and bioterrorism.

Jonas WB.

Altern Ther Health Med. 2002 Mar-Apr;8(2):30-1. No abstract available.

PMID: 11890382 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Related citations

How exactly are these article tied to him

ANSWER

Uuuh NO, apparently some guy named Benveniste claimed that signals generated when data is recorded to disc could "inhibit the fibrinogen-thrombin coagulation pathway" this team of which Deaman was 3rd listed of six authors (thus he was a minor player) concluded this was BS // Colby

Gee you found 3rd you must have thus seen first...and I wrote

=============

Maybe because I then searched at PUB MED using the lead scientific author in said DENMAM article - putting in my search Jonas WB and Biowarfare and got 3 articles at bottom. The middle 3 articles is something PUB MED does in showing related articles ( Related citations in PubMed) an interpretation of said articles would be in military terms as use for an electromagnetic weapon. So Colby contends that DENMAMS just makes everyones PC work without problems at the university ????? IMHO, no he is more than that. // GAAL

++++++++++

THUS YOU IGNORED WHAT I WROTE THUS YOUR RESPONSE IS NON-RESPONSIVE = Colby TROLLISH.

++++++++++

Uuuh NO, apparently some guy named Benveniste claimed that signals generated when data is recorded to disc could "inhibit the fibrinogen-thrombin coagulation pathway" this team of which Deaman was 3rd listed of six authors (thus he was a minor player) concluded this was BS.// Colby

===============

How could passive recording have an effect ???? Dont you get it ?? You record then resend the data back. IF you dont understand ?? Well I will be polite but if you pretend not to understand = Colby TROLLISH. Lead author of Denman article has worked on electromagnetic effects on people which I sighted in my post (repeated below)

Molecular recognition and processing of periodic signals in cells: study of activation of membrane ATPases by alternating electric fields.

Nice own goal (own Gaal?) yes according to Der Speigel the BND concluded the Russian's puppets not the Ukranine gov't were responsible for the shootdown

see

Somebody explain to Wally World what these words mean>>> "this is Hasso Thorsten of the Deutsche National Zeitung, I AM CALLING FROM GERMANY".

Contrary to Walt's claim that Walker made the phone call TO Germany.

I guess you weren't paying attention, Steven. I was asked for my opinion, which is that the call from the fictitious Hasso Thorsten (a pen-name for Helmet Muench) was SCRIPTED.

SCRIPTED. Get it? It was political theater.

Who scripted it? I say it was Ex-General Walker himself. He called Helmet Muench about 5pm, I reckon, and gave him the script. Then Muench called at 7AM and read the script that began:

"This is Hasso Thorsten of the Deutsche National Zeitung, I AM CALLING FROM GERMANY".

A SCRIPT, Steven. It was a SCRIPT. Read the whole interview again -- and realize that the whole thing sounds scripted because it WAS scripted.

Walker was confessing to the JFK murder -- actually he was BOASTING about it. He was in his glory moment. He had to tell SOMEBODY. Why not tell the Germans -- because he sure couldn't tell the Americans.

Sincerely,

--Paul Trejo

...Gee he implicated Oswald not himself as a violent person ,its not "connfession" but insinuating mental stability in LHO Sg

Steven Gaal, on 04 Nov 2014 - 7:02 PM, said:

How did Hasso Thorsten know that Edwin Walker would be at the Captain Shreve Hotel at 7:00 a.m. on the morning of Nov 24th and from whom did Mr. Thorsten get the telephone number of the hotel that Walker was staying in?
++++++++++++++
Surrey monitors Walker then reports to CIA. CIA contact their assets at German newspaper. Walker being played...Walker the Patsy. HE is outside looking in.
But at least you're getting WARMER, Paul Keep trying !!!

Great question about Hasso Thorsten, Steven.

In my honest opinion, Hasso Thorsten (which was a pen name, not an actual name) did not call Edwin Walker, as testified. Instead, Edwin Walker called HIM. Walker was close pals with the editor of the Deutsche Nationalzeitung -- probably since his Augsburg days. // Trejo

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

++++++++++++++++
SURREY penetration agent of CIA into ANP. (BTW this was ANP-Surrey interaction seems all post Dallas)

So Gaal got any evidence other than what you got from the lying neo-Nazi fugative Bollyn? So the prof supposedly didn't want to talk to the creep, why would anyone want to? And the crazy moron got Denman's title, nothing in his CV suggests ties to the NSA, NIST or anyother gov't agency.

http://www.it.umd.edu/division_staff/bios/old0512/denman.pdf

Very close relationship University Maryland IT and NSA/NIST.(GAAL)

Very close relationship Randy site 911 debunking and University Maryland IT ....coincidence ???????????????

=

COLBY DOES NOT ADDRESS THIS JREF and NSA NEXUS. IN TROLLISH BEHAVIOR Colby CALLS IT, "incoherrent drivel"

++++++++++++++

• WEll thank you Colby you got me to dig deeper. Put in Denmans name at what was called PUB Med and found some intriguing items that connects said DENMAN to the defense establishment. His article listed there (PUB MED) referred to signals (electromagnetic) effecting blood coagulation by DARPA (the D stands for Defense (as in DOD) if you dont know.) A make you bleed ray ???? Maybe because I then searched at PUB MED using the lead scientific author in said DENMAM article - putting in my search Jonas WB and Biowarfare and got 3 articles at bottom. The middle 3 articles is something PUB MED does in showing related articles ( Related citations in PubMed) an interpretation of said articles would be in military terms as use for an electromagnetic weapon. So Colby contends that DENMAMS just makes everyones PC work without problems at the university ????? IMHO, no he is more than that.
• ================================================================================
• Can specific biological signals be digitized?

  Jonas WB¹, Ives JA, Rollwagen F, Denman DW, Hintz K, Hammer M, Crawford C, Henry K.

  Author information

  • ¹Samueli Institute for Information Biology, Alexandria, Virginia, 22314, USA. wjonas@siib.org

  Abstract

  At the request of the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, we attempted to replicate the data of Professor Jacques Benveniste that digital signals recorded on a computer disc produce specific biological effects. The hypothesis was that a digitized thrombin inhibitor signal would inhibit the fibrinogen-thrombin coagulation pathway. Because of the controversies associated with previous research of Prof. Benveniste, we developed a system for the management of social controversy in science that incorporated an expert in social communication and conflict management. The social management approach was an adaptation of interactional communication theory, for management of areas that interfere with the conduct of good science. This process allowed us to successfully complete a coordinated effort by a multidisciplinary team, including Prof. Benveniste, a hematologist, engineer, skeptic, statistician, neuroscientist and conflict management expert. Our team found no replicable effects from digital signals.

  +++++++++++++++++++++++++++

  Related citations in PubMed

  (to the side related article on )

  Effects of low-energy electromagnetic fields (pulsed and DC) on membrane signal transduction processes in biological systems.

  Luben RA.

  Health Phys. 1991 Jul;61(1):15-28. Review.

  PMID: 2061045 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

  Molecular recognition and processing of periodic signals in cells: study of activation of membrane ATPases by alternating electric fields.

  Tsong TY.

  Biochim Biophys Acta. 1992 Mar 26;1113(1):53-70. Review.

  PMID: 1532330 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] ++++++++++++++++++++++

  Risk management frameworks for human health and environmental risks.

  Jardine C, Hrudey S, Shortreed J, Craig L, Krewski D, Furgal C, McColl S.

  J Toxicol Environ Health B Crit Rev. 2003 Nov-Dec;6(6):569-720. Review.

  PMID: 14698953 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

  +++++++++++++++++++++++++++

  ###########################

  Jonas WB

  Rapid induction of protective tolerance to potential terrorist agents: a systematic review of low- and ultra-low dose research.

  Szeto AL, Rollwagen F, Jonas WB.

  Homeopathy. 2004 Oct;93(4):173-8. Review.

  PMID: 15532694 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

  Related citations

  Select item 118903822.

  Directions for research in complementary medicine and bioterrorism.

  Jonas WB.

  Altern Ther Health Med. 2002 Mar-Apr;8(2):30-1. No abstract available.

  PMID: 11890382 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

  Related citations

How did Hasso Thorsten know that Edwin Walker would be at the Captain Shreve Hotel at 7:00 a.m. on the morning of Nov 24th and from whom did Mr. Thorsten get the telephone number of the hotel that Walker was staying in?
++++++++++++++
Surrey monitors Walker then reports to CIA. CIA contact their assets at German newspaper. Walker being played...Walker the Patsy. HE is outside looking in.
But at least you're getting WARMER, Paul Keep trying !!!

******************************************
******************************************

Walker financed by U.S. intel­li­gence ???????????????????? via Robert A. Surrey........... !!?!!

NO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (no its someone else saying the NO !!!!!!!!!! ,yup bet you, you ....you can you guess who is saying NO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! )

word to wise...things are not as simple as they seem.

#################################

Interesting parallels between the Armas killing and the assassination of Louisiana governor Huey Long, though Long was pre-CIA and pointing up parallels is as far as I can go regarding Long.

Long's assassination has been discussed in past Forum threads.

Yes parallels exist.

==

dont worry ,be happy, one day you will find out who you are (this above is a Education Forum monitors response to facts presented)

On related issue see POST # 4 above

Posted 30 October 2014 - 04:15 PM

Part 9 == Dulles previously used a patsy in assassination and patsy died before investigation , said operation was a success.

++++

The United States of Genocide: Putting the US on Trial for Genocide Against the Peoples of Korea, Laos, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Iraq, and Elsewhere

================================================================================

The United States of America was built on a foundation of genocide against the Indigenous peoples of North America. In fact, all successful settler colonial societies are founded in genocide. The process is one of dispossession – the erasure of one group identity and the imposition of another on the people and/or on the land. But genocide is not merely the foundation of the US nation state, it is also the foundation of the US empire. The US habit of genocide has not died, but has transformed. The US has become a serial perpetrator of genocide with the blood of many millions of innocents spilled in pursuit of imperial hegemony.

There is a fight going on for the very meaning of the term “genocide”. Western powers assert their right to accuse enemies of committing genocide using the broadest possible definitions whilst also touting a twisted undefined sense of “genocide” which can never, ever be applied to their own actions. Aotearoa (New Zealand) Prime Minister John Key, apparently taking his cue from the US, is currently pushing for reform of the UN Security Council such that the veto power would be unavailable. The UNSC is a political body and “genocide” will simply become a political term cited by powerful states to rationalise aggression against the weak. Key notoriously said that his country was “missing in action” because it did not invade Iraq in 2003, reminding Kiwis that “blood is thicker than water”. If his desired reforms existed now, the US would probably have a UN Security Council resolution authorising the use of force against Syria on the grounds of “genocide”.

All of those who oppose Western aggression justified as humanitarian intervention under the “responsibility to protect” must stop burying their heads in the sand over this matter. This is a very real fight for the future of humanity. We can either learn and propagate the understanding that US imperial interventions are, by nature, genocidal. Or we can just pretend the word has no meaning; indulge our childish moral impulses and the lazy fatuousness of our scholars and pundits and let Western mass-murderers use this Orwellian buzzword (for that is what “genocide” currently is) to commit heinous acts of horrific violence which ensure the continued domination of the world’s masses by a tiny imperialist elite.

(An aside: apparently people like a pragmatic focus to accompany a call to action. So, am I making the most obvious appeal – that US officials be tried for committing genocide? No I am not. They can be tried for war crimes if people really think that “holding people accountable” is more important than preventing suffering and protecting the vulnerable. But it has been a terrible mistake to construct genocide as being an aggravated crime against humanity, as if it were simply a vicious felony writ large. This has played completely into the hands of those propagandists for whom every new enemy of the West is the new Hitler. The means by which genocides are perpetrated are the crimes of individuals – war crimes, for example – but genocide itself is the crime of a state or para-state regime. That is the proper target of inquisition and censure. Though the attempt was tragically abortive, the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal recently began hearing charges of genocide against Israel. We need this sort of process to hear charges of genocide against the US. I fully support such efforts, but my real call to action is a call for thought, for clarity, and for self-discipline. People are drawn to using woolly thinking over genocide, wishing to use it as the ultimate condemnation of mass violence without reference to any actual meaning of the term. We must not tolerate it in ourselves or others. We are a hair’s breadth away from the point where “genocide prevention” will be used by major Western powers to justify genocidal mass violence.)

US “Wars” are Actually Genocides

Every major military action by the US since World War II has first and foremost been an act of genocide. I do not state this as a moral condemnation. If I were seeking to condemn I would try to convey the enormous scale of suffering, death, loss and misery caused by US mass violence. My purpose instead is to correct a terrible misconception of US actions – their nature, their meaning and their strategic utility. This understanding which I am trying to convey is a very dangerous notion with an inescapable moral dimension because the US has always maintained that the suffering, death and destruction it causes are incidental to military purposes – they are instances of “collateral damage”. But, with all due respect to the fact that US personnel may face real dangers, these are not real wars. These are genocides and it is the military aspect that is incidental. In fact, it is straining credulity to continue believing in a string of military defeats being sustained by the most powerful military in the history of the world at the hands of impoverished Third World combatants. The US hasn’t really been defeated in any real sense. They committed genocide in Indochina, increasing the level of killing as much as possible right through to the clearly foreseen inevitable conclusion which was a cessation of direct mass violence, not a defeat. The US signed a peace agreement which they completely ignored. The Vietnamese did not occupy US territory and force the US to disarm and pay crippling reparations.

There is no question that the US has committed actions which fit the description of genocide. Genocide does not mean the successful extermination of a defined group (there is no such thing as “attempted genocide”). It was never conceived that way, but rather as any systematic attack on “a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” Those who deny US genocides usually only deny that there is any intent to commit genocide. The UN definition of genocide (recognised by 142 states) is:

The US has committed these acts many times and in many different countries. Some people object that this is some watered down version of genocide that risks diluting the significance of this “ultimate crime”. However, bear in mind that the victims of US armed violence are not usually combatants and are not engaged in some sort of contested combat that gives them some ability to defend themselves or to kill or be killed. They are helpless as they die of incineration, asphyxiation, dismemberment, cancer, starvation, disease. People of all ages die in terror unable to protect themselves from the machinery of death. Make no mistake, that is what it is: a large complex co-ordinated machinery of mass killing. There is nothing watered down about the horrors of the genocides committed by the US, and their victims number many millions. The violence is mostly impersonal, implacable, arbitrary and industrial.

There are at least three specific times at which US mass violence has taken lives in the millions through direct killing: the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the wars and sanctions against Iraq in combination with the occupation of Iraq. I refer to them as the Korea Genocide (which was against both South and North Koreans), the Indochina Genocide (against Laotians, Cambodians, and Vietnamese), and the Iraq Genocide (which took place over at least a 20 year period).

There are many ways to show that the US committed genocides in these cases. On one level the case is straightforward. For example, if the US commits acts of “strategic bombing” which systematically kills civilians by the hundreds of thousands, and it turns out that not only is there no rational proportionate military reason, but that US military and intelligence analysis is clear that these are in fact militarily counter-productive acts of gratuitous mass-murder, then by any reasonable definition these must be acts of genocide. The logic is simple and inescapable. I have written lengthy pieces showing in detail that these were large scale systematic and intentional genocides which you can read.¹

For a long time I have tried to think of ways to condense this in a readable form. The problem in many respects lies with the necessity of overcoming misapprehensions. Genocide is an emotive topic; people are very reluctant to read that those who rule in their name (with whom they sometimes actively identify) are in the moral vicinity of the Nazi leaders of Germany. Permeating every level of the discourse is the constant position (whether as the unspoken assumption or as the active assertion) that the US has never acted with genocidal intent. Intentionality is a topic in its own right, but to be brief I will point out that intent does not require that “genocide” be its own motive. If I kill someone because I want their watch, I can’t turn around and say it isn’t murder because I didn’t intend to kill them because I was really just intending to take their watch. It may seem a ridiculous example, but the discourse of genocide is so twisted that it is the norm even amongst genocide scholars. Primed by our political leaders and various media, we keep looking for the people, the bloodthirsty psychopathic monsters, who kill people just for the fun of it and grab their watch afterwards as an afterthought. Unsurprisingly, most Westerners find those people among the leaders of those countries who oppose Western political power. Now our leaders are trying to persuade us that that includes Syria’s Bashar al-Assad (though many are becoming skeptical of this “Hitler-of-the-month” propaganda).

The best way of demonstrating US intentionality is to demonstrate the consistency of their approach in different times and places. However, this is a necessarily exhaustive approach, so I have decided to take a different tack here. I wish to sketch a fragment of autobiography here – an outline of the process by which I came to my current understanding of the topic. I didn’t seek these conclusions out, but had it made clear to me, by rather comfortably embedded scholars, that they think that I am being provocative out of ambition. It is a testament to the self-satisfaction of such people that they somehow think that being provocative is some advantage. Academia thrives on the journal-filling peer-reviewed “controversies” of rival schools and scholars, but they aren’t really keen on anything that might actually be of any interest to anyone else. The fact is that I didn’t seek this out and it certainly has not endeared me to anyone that I can think of. On the other hand, I have had people act as if I had smeared my own faeces all over myself for using the g-word with respect to Iraq, and I have had many metaphorical doors slammed in my face. As I hope the following will indicate, at least partially, I cannot but characterise US genocides as such and I cannot but view the subject of absolute urgent fundamental importance.

Coming to Understand

The Vietnam War loomed large in my childhood. I was five when it ended. I watched the critical documentary series Vietnam: The 10,000 Day War when I was ten or eleven years old. During the 1980s Vietnam War movie craze I was sucked into that powerful quagmire of pathos and adrenaline – not to mention the evocative music. But even then, as a teen, I could not abide the apologism and the way in which American lives and American suffering were privileged. The US personnel were portrayed as the victims, even in films which showed US atrocities. I knew far too much about things such as the nature of the atrocities carried out by the Contras to find that sort of propaganda palatable. For one thing, I had read William Blum’s The CIA: A Forgotten History. This book (now titled Killing Hope) doesn’t leave the reader much room for illusions about the US role in international politics. Perhaps if I had been a little older I might have been “educated” enough to be blind to the obvious, but I wasn’t. While most people managed to avoid facing the facts, I knew from this book and others like it that although the atrocities of the Soviet Bloc were substantial, they were dwarfed by those of the US and its closest clients. If Cuba, for example, has been repressive, then what words remain to describe the US installed regimes in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, El Salvador, or Chile?

How could one characterise a state that backed and created death squad regimes that massacred entire villages, that tortured children to death in front of parents? How does one describe a militarised country whose meticulously planned and executed bombing raids systematically visited untold death and suffering on innocents as an intended purpose. Any informed person who had an objective proportionate viewpoint could only conclude, as Martin Luther King Jr. had already concluded, that the US government and the wider US corporate state were “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” Fred Branfman, who saw the results of US bombing first-hand in Laos, has more recently concluded that the executive branch of the US government is “the world’s most evil and lawless institution.”

On moral terms I could not have been more condemnatory of the US government. I considered the US government and military-corporate-intelligence complex to be the worst thing in the world since the demise of the Third Reich. I believed this on the basis that they had demonstrably brought about more suffering, death and destruction than anyone else. If someone had tried to claim that it was for “freedom,” I would have laughed bitterly, thinking of the brutally crushed democracies and popular movements that were victims of the US. But if someone had said to me that the US had committed genocide in Korea and Indochina I would have most likely dismissed the claim as emotive overstatement. I didn’t actually know what the word genocide meant precisely, but I would still have seen its use as being a form of exaggeration. Implicitly, I took the word “genocide” to be a form of subjective moral condemnation, as if it were an inchoate scream rather than a word that might have a consistent meaning. (You can’t exaggerate by calling something “arson,” for example. It is either a lie or it is the truth. Genocide is the same). However, “genocide,” as a word, has been subjected to the ideological processes (described so well by Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four) which destroy the meaning of words. Here is how I put it in an academicpiece:

===========================================

Certain words are so highly politicised in their usage that, in Orwellian fashion, they are stripped of all meaning and become merely signals designed to provoke in impassioned unreasoning involuntary response. In this fashion ‘democracy’means ‘double-plus good’ and the Party members² respond with cheers and tears of joy. Equally, ‘terrorism’ means ‘double-plus bad’ provoking among Party members, ‘[a] hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, totorture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer….’³ Genocide plays a starring role in an entire discourse shaped in such a way as to not only excuse but to facilitate the perpetration of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Stripped of any actual meaning but given the significance of being the ‘ultimate crime’ it becomes a tool by which powerful Western states are able to threaten or carry out attacks against weaker states – attacks which are in themselves criminal andwhich in some instances are actually genocidal. The emotive misuse of the term genocide has become a powerful political tool. As Jeremy Scahill reveals after accusations of genocide by Arabs against black Africans, “even at antiwar rallies, scores of protesters held signs reading, ‘Out of Iraq, into Darfur.’” Scahill adds that, ‘[a] quick survey of Sudan’s vast natural resources dispels any notion that U.S./corporate desires to move into Sudan derive from purely humanitarian motives.’⁴

So, US violence mostly caused civilian deaths and the vast majority of those civilians were, in fact, subjects of the US installed puppet [sic] regime in Saigon. They were killing their own supposed allies. I have read all of the rationalisations for why the US thought it was a good idea to kill the civilians of their own client state, and they are all completely insane. I don’t even believe that killing the civilian populations of enemy countries is militarily effective, and in that belief I am supported by the strategic analyses of the US itself going back to 1944. Killing the civilian population of an allied state makes no military sense whatsoever. Often killing civilians was rationalised in terms of counterinsurgency (usually crudely reversing Maoist doctrine about the relationship between the guerrilla and the rural population) despite the fact that it was recognised from very early on that the civilian deaths were recruiting and strengthening the enemy.

What brought me around to using the term genocide was realising that there was no other word to describe what the US did in South Viet Nam. I had been aware that the vast majority of victims of the US military were civilians. It was commonplace to say that 90% of casualties were civilian. (Tellingly Western commentators, including those in the peace movement, would vouch that the figure of 90% civilian casualties was proof of how cruel and deadly “modern war” had become – as if US practices were some sort of universal standard and as if the fact that other belligerents did not produce such high rates of civilian death was not of any interest whatsoever.)

That was the other striking thing about US activities in Indochina – they were systematically killing civilians without apparent purpose, but they were also undermining their own political and military efforts. This happened at all levels. As I was reading and coming to grips with this aspect of history, it seemed that exactly the same thing was playing out in Iraq. In 2003, as invasion loomed, I had initially expected that the US would conduct a fast vicious campaign particularly aimed at inflicting maximum damage to economic infrastructure. They would then leave, crowing about their surgical use of force and minuscule US fatalities. The US would continue to enhance the perceived legitimacy of its acts of aggression and would be able to use economic blackmail to exert neocolonial control. However, I was woefully naïve for believing that. In contrast, Paul Wolfowitz was absolutely clear on this point – you cannot use normal neocolonial power on Iraq: “…[W]e just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil.” Instead, the US invaded, occupied and then acted repeatedly and systematically in ways which would very predictably cause armed resistance, just as they had in Indochina. But without that resistance they could not have justified a major military presence and the proconsular rule of the occupation imposed on Iraq.

In 2006 I was able to devote quite a lot of time to the subject of genocide in Indochina as it was the topic of my Honours research paper. My initial understanding of genocide was pretty thin and one-dimensional, but it was sound in the given context. The most important aspect for me was that genocide matched means with ends. War is always a matter of uncertain outcome. To wage war is to wager (the words are cognates). Indeed that is why we use such terms as “wage” and “adventure” for military action. Carl von Clausewitz wrote that a belligerent will never be able to attain their intended war aims because the war they pursue will itself change matters and impose its own realities. In that sense, war is a gamble which will always be lost. Genocide is not a gamble.

Genocide was an attack on the peoples of Indochina which avoided the uncertainties of waging military war. The maximal aim of the genocide was the eventual neocolonial domination of Indochina. It worked. In Viet Nam the war and subsequent US economic sanctions were devastating. By 1990 the per capita GDP was only $114.⁵ Under doi moi liberalisation, Viet Nam has achieved much greater formal economic activity (GDP), but only by submitting to the Washington Consensus, which means no price supports for staples such as rice, which in turn means that the real income of the poorest urban dwellers has dropped.⁶ Genocide doesn’t need an end goal such as such as submitting to neoliberal WTO regulations and IMF conditions. Chomsky called Vietnamese poverty “a vivid refutation of the claim that the US lost.”⁷Similar stories could be related with regard to Laos and Cambodia. Whether these nation states are considered enemies or vanquished vassals or friends is of no relevance, the weakness of their populations is a gain in relative power for the US empire, and empires intrinsically function on relative gains.

This is what I wrote in 2006:

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…[A]clever strategist, where possible, matches means and ends, thus making results more predictable. In a situation where there is a stated end and a given means are employed and continue to be employed despite continued demonstrable “failure” and are then employed elsewhere under the same rationale with the same results – in such a situation it is possibly worth considering that the “means” are themselves the end. In the case of the Second Indochina War, I will argue the means were widespread general destruction, employed on as many of the people and as much of the societal fabric or infrastructure as was physically and politically feasible. If those were the means, I will suggest, they were also the end. The results are predictable. The dead stay dead.

When Raphäel Lemkin first coined the word “genocide,” he wrote “genocide is a new technique of occupation aimed at winning the peace even though the war itself is lost.” He also wrote: “Genocide is the antithesis of the … doctrine [which] holds that war is directed against sovereigns and armies, not against subjects and civilians. In its modern application in civilized society, the doctrine means that war is conducted against states and armed forces and not against populations. … [T]he Germans prepared, waged, and continued a war not merely against states and their armies but against peoples. For the German occupying authorities war thus appears to offer the most appropriate occasion for carrying out their policy of genocide.”

(At this point I would like to urge people to read what Lemkin actually wrote when trying to describe genocide. It is not a time consuming task. You can find the chapter here.)

The US was maintaining the “war.” It helped to recruit its enemies, to arm them, finance them, and to supply them. Just as I was researching this,Endless War? by David Keen was published about the War on Terror which claimed that it was a self-perpetuating endless “war system”. It focused on clearly “counterproductive” actions undertaken by the US, belying its stated aims:

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When it comes to war in other words, winning is not everything; it may be the taking part that counts. Indeed, as Orwell saw in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, certain kinds of regimes may thrive off energies and perpetual war. The irrationality of counterproductive tactics, in short, may be more apparent than real, and even an endless war may not be endless in the sense of lacking aims or functions.⁸

Keen never mentioned Indochina. The precedents he cited of were civil wars in Africa. However it was as if the idea of a war system was, in a sense, on the tip of people’s tongues towards the end of the US involevment in Indochina, as if they knew deep-down that the US was not trying to win the war. It seems almost the implicit subtext of Magnum photographer Philip Jones Griffiths’ book, Vietnam Inc., which by its title alone suggests an enterprise quite differently conceived than war. Even the orthodox political discourse (with talk of quagmires and a “stab in the back” story of brave soldiers hamstrung by politicians) hints at a war system. What the US did in Indochina was an absolute textbook example of what Keen was describing.

From this way of understanding the past, I was also viewing events in Iraq with the same apprehension. What was occurring on a daily basis was very clearly indicating a parallel process. Captured weapons were dumped unsecured in the countryside. Efforts to secure borders (to at least impede the flow of weapons, resistance fighters and money) were systematically undermined. Just as in Viet Nam, diverted cash sloshed through networks of corruption and was available to resistance groups. People were driven into the arms of the resistance by the random brutality of US personnel, the murderous use of indiscriminate ordnance, and the systematic degradation of the civilian economic sphere. On top of this, the US fomented a civil war.

It is a pity that Keen did not know of the Indochina precedent because what we know of it goes much deeper and reaches much higher than the what we know of the “War on Terror” (which Keen takes to include Iraq and Afghanistan interventions). Keen discusses various tactics and policies which are counterproductive. But it is not just the counterproductive things which sustain US enemies, it is the ways in which US leaders ensure that they cannot ever achieve a victory. This is what I wrote:

Numerous people, including Jeffrey Record⁹ and Harry Summers¹⁰ have in effect suggested that the US lacked any winning strategy. In fact, what they had were three no-win strategies – strategies which did not, even in theory, have an end point at which a military victory would be obtained. These were the fire-power/attrition, the graduated response and the enclave strategies. The only strategy by which the US could have attained its stated objective was the pacification strategy, but this too was no threat because the pacification strategy was only weakly implemented while being misapplied, subverted, sabotaged and contravened – not least by the more vigorous application of the fire-power/attrition and graduated response strategies.

You can read all about that stuff in detail if you want, otherwise you’ll just have to take my word for it. The US systematically ensured that it could never achieve “victory” in Indochina. Perhaps the most blatant example was the brutal genocide unleashed on Cambodia from 1970 until 1975. Not the “genocide” or “autogenocide” of the Khmer Rouge, but the genocide before that, without which there would never have been a Khmer Rouge takeover. Here’s a long excerpt from my Honours piece:

It was pretty clear that the US was maintaining the situation of armed conflict in order to commit genocide. This was a comprehensive act of genocide which did not merely involve the systematic killing of the target populations, it also involved every other “technique of genocide” described by Lemkin. There was systematic economic, social, cultural, political, and religious destruction. There was the systematic and deliberate ecocidal poisoning of the land and people with defoliants. There was very raw brutality. People were slaughtered by bombs, but there was also murder, rape and torture on a scale beyond imagining. In one book co-written by Nick Turse he finds that when he sets out to find the site of a massacre in Vietnam it becomes like trying to find a needle in a haystack of massacre sites.²² In his next book Kill Anything that Moves Turse tries to show that haystack for what it is. The results would be hard to believe if they were not so well documented. I cannot reduce its contents here, I can only recommend that people acquire and read the book. It is a litany of slaughter that seems almost endless and through it all the command structure and the political structure provide the framework for the personnel to commit atrocities.

This is not just about the choice of tactics – it is also about “grand tactics”, strategy, doctrine, and indoctrination. Psychiatrist and author Robert Jay Lifton famously discussed “atrocity producing situations” as a driving factor behind US war crimes, and I believe we can now conclude these situations were deliberately created, not just because we have other evidence that atrocities were tacitly encouraged, but because the US went to great lengths to replicate these these “atrocity producing situations” in Iraq.

Why Genocide and Not War?

By the end of my honours thesis I was convinced that both the second Indochina War and the “Iraq War” were “genocidal war systems”. Since then I have learnt a great deal more, and my thinking has developed a great deal more. I won’t bore you with the detail, but I came to realise the the “war system” appellation was largely redundant. Genocides are “war systems” by nature. Almost every perpetrator of genocide explains their violence as fighting war.

Genocide was a key means by which the US secured global hegemony in the post-WWII era. I learnt that Korea was also a case of US genocide. US actions there were as shocking, as deadly and as militarily nonsensical as they were in Indochina. Hundreds of thousands were massacred and hundreds of thousands incinerated. 25% of the entire population of North Korea was killed and we should not forget that many hundreds of thousands of the ostensibly allied South Koreans died at US hands or those of US commanded troops. The whole war became widely recognised as a pointless killing machine (described as “the meatgrinder”) while the US needlessly sabotaged and prolonged armistice negotiations.

I can’t explain in this space why Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq posed such great threats to US imperial hegemony, but they did, and the US successfully dealt with those dangers by committing genocide. These are successful uses of genocide to establish, deepen, and maintain imperialist hegemony, but we have wilfully blinded ourselves to their nature. Critics of US interventions have evidently been scared to entertain the notion that there was some successfully applied rationale to US behaviour. They have joined with the lovers of war, the nationalists, the racists and the fanatics in declaring over and over and over again the wrong-headedness and failures of US military endeavours. The victims of US genocide quite understandably prefer to see themselves as the plucky Davids that beat the Pentagon Goliath. These are all lies.

US forces storm into one house after another, claiming to be trying to kill flies with sledgehammers. Given that they have entirely demolished several houses and severely damaged many others; and given that they have been caught red-handed releasing flies into targeted houses; and given that they forcibly try to make people buy very expensive fly “insurance”; maybe it is time we consider that neither they, nor their sledgehammers, are concerned in any way with flies (except as a pretext).

Where people might once have been terrified that to suggest any cogent purpose to US actions for fear of giving credit to warmongers, we need not be so worried now. It is very clear that the US does not exert imperialist hegemony for the sake of peace and stability or even for the sake of the enrichment of the US and its people. They never protected us from the nefarious existential evil threat of communism and they don’t protect us from the nefarious existential evil threat of Islam. A very narrow group of imperialists who share a cohesive long-term hegemonic programme have successfully concentrated power and wealth levels of disparity akin to those in slavery-based economies. They have also created a neofeudal framework of privatised regnal rights. No doubt many of these people have noble intentions, believing that only by such ruthless action can they exert enough control to save humanity from its self-destructive impulses. Many elitists will openly express such opinions and we can certainly understand having concern over the future of the planet. But such people are, in fact, completely insane and they should be taken out of circulation and treated exactly like any other dangerous megalomaniac who believes that they are the new Napoleon. It is not the masses that are threatening the planet. It is not the masses who bring about wars. And though communal violence seems almost the epitome of the mob in action, I know of no genocide that did not result from the actions of a narrow elite.

The reason that we must view US genocides as being genocides and not wars is that we cannot ever understand the logic of their actions in any other way. People shy away from the term genocide and people react violently to what they perceive as its misuse. That indicates just how important it is. I mentioned Nick Turse’s Kill Anything that Moves which is an entire book devoted primarily to the systematic killing of non-combatants. He never uses the term “genocide”. In a work based on veteran testimony, Chris Hedges and Laila al-Arian explain that the very nature of the Iraq occupation is that of an atrocity producing situation and that US personnel have gone “from killing – the shooting of someone who [can] harm you – to murder. The war in Iraq is primarily about murder. There is very little killing.”²³ They are talking about the systematic murder of civilians in small increments multiplied many times over, but they never use the term “genocide”. This despite the fact that US actions in Indochina have widely been adjudged genocidal and despite the fact that it was very strongly argued that the US and UK controlled sanctions against Iraq were genocidal. Ask yourself this: if someone was documenting the same thing being perpetrated by Sudan, or by Zimbabwe do you think the word “genocide” would be left out of such works?

Above all we must end the continuing fatuous nonsense spouted by security geeks (including high ranking military and civilian personnel) who seem to believe every exaggerated claim about threats from the Cubans, the Iranians, the Soviets, Al Qaeda in the Falklands (AQIF) or whomever. The morons with their clichés about “fighting the last war” will never ever tire of telling us how the US just doesn’t know how to do counterinsurgency. Really? The question must be, then how did they manage to remain so bad at counterinsurgency when they have spent more person hours on counterinsurgency and counter-guerilla warfare that all other states throughout the entirety of humanity added together? (I could list a few examples here starting with the “Indian” Wars, mentioning 200 years of interventions in the Western hemisphere, Cuba, Philippines, Pacific War, Korea and Indochina. Then there is also the institutional knowledge built and disseminated by “security co-operation”. Moreover, the US is trains many of the rest of the world’s military leaders to conduct counterinsurgency at Fort Benning.)

The point is that you can’t understand what the US does through the lens of war. It is very satisfying, no doubt, for young liberal reporters to outsmart generals (who clearly have no idea how to fight wars because they are just stupid Republicans), but it is seriously delusional. There is an instant exculpation given when these genocides are misrepresented as wars. It is very, very important for perpetrators of aggression or genocide (or both) to conceal their intentionality. The UK government and Tony Blair, in particular, showed far more concern with convincing people that they themselves believed in their fictitious casus belli, than with convincing people that Iraq really did have pose a threat. All of the British media seemed to echo the mantra that you might not agree with Blair but, “no one can doubt his sincerity”. So for moral reasons, in order to end the impunity of the worlds worst war criminals, as well as for intellectual reasons we must grasp the nettle and begin using the term genocide.

Textbook Cases

There are many problematic areas in the subject of genocide. Sometimes it is hard to tell when war ends and genocide begins. It can be hard to tell where state repression becomes persecution and when persecution becomes genocide. Were not the Nuremburg Laws an epitome of what we now call apartheid? Is apartheid a form of slow genocide? Is there structural genocide? Should something only be called genocide if there are mass fatalities?

These are all important considerations and questions, but none of them are relevant here. The genocides I have referenced are absolute textbook cases of genocide. It is impossible to create a coherent and rational definition of the term “genocide” which does not include these genocides.

These genocides were more demonstrably genocidal in nature than the Armenian Holocaust. We should always remember that for the Turkish government, and for most Turks, there was no such thing as a genocide of Armenians. In their own eyes they were fighting a war against Armenian insurgents. Sound familiar?

Notes

1. Beyond Stalemate, Context of Iraq Genocide, Genocide Scholarship, Korean Genocide before the US Occupation: Part 1, Korean Genocide before the US Occupation: Part 2, and Korean Genocide before the US Occupation: Part 3, and Korean Genocide before the US Occupation: Part 4.
2. In Orwell’s allegory the ‘Party’ represented the ‘educated’ sector of society – people such as the central character Winston Smith, who worked as a journalist.
3. George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four. London: Penguin, 1983.
4. Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, London: Serpent’s Tail, 2007, p 350.
5. Hy V. Luong, ‘Postwar Vietnamese Society: An Overview of Transformational Dynamic’ in Hy V. Luong (ed.), Postwar Vietnam: Dynamics of a Transforming Society. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003, pp 12, 14.
6. Nicholas Minot; Francesco Goletti, ‘Export Liberalization and Household Welfare: The Case of Rice in Vietnam’ in American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Vol. 80, No. 4. (Nov., 1998), p 743. Minot and Goletti actually (to their own evident surprise) projected a slight overall drop in poverty, but they do so on the basis of changes in real income which do not take into account that rural persons are better able to acquire food without income expenditure. They also slightly underestimate the level of urbanisation – they use the 1990 figure of 20 per cent, when by the time of their writing the figure was over 23 per cent (Michael DiGregorio, A. Terry Rambo, Masayuki Yanagisawa, ‘Clean, Green, and Beautiful: Environment and Development under the Renovation Economy’ in Hy V. Luong (ed.), Postwar Vietnam: Dynamics of a Transforming Society. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003, p 189.) and do not account for future urbanisation. Michel Chossudovsky suggests that the Vietnamese did, in the actual event, become considerably poorer (Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalisation of Poverty and the New World Order. Shanty Bay, Ontario: Global Outlook, 2003, p 168).
7. Marc Jason Gilbert, “Introduction”, in Marc Jason Gilbert (ed), Why the North Won the Vietnam War. New York: Palgrave, 2002, p 26.
8. David Keen, Endless War? Hidden functions of the ‘War on Terror’. London, Ann Arbor: Pluto Press, 2006, p 51.>
9. Record, “How America’s Military Performance…”, in Gilbert (ed.), Why the North Won the Vietnam War, p 117.
10. Harry G. Summers Jr., On Strategy: A critical analysis of the Vietnam War. New York: Presidio Press, 1995 (1982), p 103.
11. William Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia. London: Fontana, 1980 (1979), p 220.
12. Shawcross, 317-9.
13. Shawcross, 149.
14. Sorpong Peou, Intervention & Change in Cambodia: Towards Democracy? Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2000, p 127.
15. Shawcross, 163.
16. Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996, p 24.
17. Kiernan, 19.
18. Shawcross, 186.
19. Shawcross, 254-5.
20. Shawcross, 169.
21. Nigel Cawthorne, Vietnam: A War Lost and Won. London: Arcturus Publishing, 2003, p 213; Westmoreland, ‘A Look Back’.
22. Deborah Nelson, The War Behind Me: Vietnam Veterans Confront the Truth about U.S. War Crimes, New York: Basic Books, 2008, p 127.
23. Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian, Collateral Damage: America’s War against Iraqi Civilians, New York: Nation Books, 2008, p xiii.

• Science/AAAS: Science Magazine: Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan
  www.sciencemag.org/site/feature/data/hottopics/afghanistan/

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  growing death toll for Afghan civilians is coming into focus. As of August 2014, ...