Jerome

THE paparazzi photographer at the centre of investigations into Princess Diana's death died with two bullet holes in his head, it is claimed.

From the page: "James Andanson, who followed the Princess's every move in the week before her death, was thought to have committed suicide when his burnt corpse was found in the wreckage of a car in the French countryside.

But now the fireman who discovered the body, Christophe Pelat, has said: "I saw him at close range and I'm absolutely convinced that he had been shot in the head, twice."

The revelation threatens to blow apart the inquest on Diana, which will have another preliminary hearing today in the London High Court.

Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed, whose son Dodi, 42, died with Diana in a Paris crash, is now demanding that Mr Pelat be called to give evidence at the inquest - or at least that his account is heard.

Andanson, 54, has been one of the key figures in the mystery surrounding the fatal crash, which happened 10 years ago next month. [...]

Police are certain that Andanson, a millionaire, was a regular informer for both MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service, and French agencies. But he was never properly interviewed by the authorities, and less than three years after the tragedy, he was also found dead. His body, found in thick woodland near Montpellier, was so badly charred that it took police nearly a month before DNA and dental records confirmed his identity."

Scooter Libby's Pardon and 9/11

From the page: "Scooter Libby's pardon begs the question of what he would have talked about had he been truly faced with prison. Whatever it was, it was important enough for Bush to grant Libby a last-second reprieve so he wouldn't have to go to jail.

I thought back to something I had tripped upon a while ago, something that involved Libby, which happened on September 10, 2001, the day before the twin towers were struck.

On the CNN site, in a timeline available from this page, I found this stunning entry:

SEPTEMBER 10, 2001 A CIA plan to strike at al Qaeda in Afghanistan, including support for the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, is given to the White House. Sen. Dianne Feinstein asks for a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney. The California Democrat is told that Cheney's staff would need six months to prepare for a meeting.

When I read this, I was stunned on two levels.

First, read that again. The CIA was going to do BEFORE 9/11 exactly what it did AFTER 9/11 - strike at al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Since we hadn't been attacked yet, 9/11 provided a nifty justification for this plan.

But second, Feinstein is a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, a group that works closely with intelligence agencies and--ostensibly--provides oversight of intelligence activities. (I say ostensibly because the committee does not know of, and therefore has no option to approve or disapprove all intelligence activities). How could it be that, as the 9/11 Commission report states, when the "system was blinking red" on a possible terrorist attack on the country, and ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee comes to say hey, something serious is afoot and we need to talk, the VP's office could blow off Feinstein by saying they couldn't review her plans for six months?

Curious, I called Senator Feinstein's office and asked, is it normal for the VP to blow off a meeting with Senator Feinstein for six months? The four people I spoke to in her office all said and did the same thing. They said no, that's not usual, what is this about? I said this is about the Senator's 9/10 visit to Cheney, the day before 9/11. At this, each staffer got nervous and transferred me to the next person. None of them would even confirm that this conversation had transpired, but in the end, I found it on a press release on Feinstein's senate site: [...]

This just begs the question. Did Scooter Libby know what was going to happen? Did he know just how busy they really would be over the next six months due to the coming attack the next day? It's hard not to see that as a possibility.

I was particularly interested that it was I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby who put Feinstein off. Libby was one of the co-signers to the seminal document, "Rebuilding America's Defenses," from the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). In contrast to JFK's call that we seek a true peaceful co-existence with other countries, rather than a "pax Americana," the PNAC report calls for just that - ensuring a pax Americana. This is the same report that said,

...the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor.

That quote gave rise to the notion that perhaps 9/11 was made or allowed to happen by the government as an excuse to get us back into a war. We know now that the administration tried hard to make that war one in Iraq, despite the fact that no evidence from 9/11 linked Iraq to the attack in any way. And the CIA already had plans to strike Afghanistan (as the CNN site showed) so instead we made a great show of taking down the Taliban, even as we let Osama Bin Laden slip through our fingers at Tora Bora."

More here.

Joe Wilson blasts President over Libby decision (and takes a whack at CNN in the process).

Poll: Even More Americans Blame Saddam for 9/11

From the page: "As distrustful as I am of polls conducted by the corporate media, I had to take note of the following. "A new Newsweek poll out this weekend exposed `gaps' in America's knowledge of history and current events," writes Josh Catone for Raw Story. "Perhaps most alarmingly, 41% of Americans answered `Yes' to the question `Do you think Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq was directly involved in planning, financing, or carrying out the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001?' That total is actually up 5 points since September 2004."

I wouldn't call this lack of knowledge a "gap" but rather a chasm, the result of years of brainwashing--indeed, a process instituted from grade school onward, right up the present as millions of Americans sit idly before the tube with their brains disengaged, absorbing the incessant propaganda dispensed by Fox News and CNN."