XxXSkull and BonesXxX

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Of skulls and bones: More secrets of the tomb
http://www.yaleherald.com/article.php?Articles2523

Native Americans groups fight to recover lost skulls of Geronimo.
BY NOAM RUDNICK - 24th October 2003

An axe pried open the iron door of the tomb, and Pat[riarch] Bush entered and started to dig...Pat[riarch] James dug deep and pried out the trophy itself...I showered and hit the hay...a happy man...''

So recounts a document thought to be an internal record from the Skull and Bones Society. "Pat[riarch] Bush" is Prescott Bush, father of an American political dynasty. His "trophy" is the skull of Geronimo, the Native American spiritual and military leader laid to rest in 1909 at Fort Still, Oklahoma, where Bush and fellow Bonesmen were stationed nine years later.

Alexandra Robbins, ES '98, has researched Bush's secret society extensively. Her recent book, Secrets of the Tomb, has heightened interest in the activities of Skull and Bones. She attests to the legitimacy of the story, "The text looks to be an authentic Bones document describing Prescott Bush and other Bonesmen robbing Geronimo's grave and cleaning the skull with carbolic acid." In interviews with Robbins, Bonesmen have admitted that there is a skull in the tomb that they call Geronimo.

Current Members of Skull and Bones chose not to comment on the legitimacy of the allegations.

Apache tribal leader Ned Anderson was informed of the alleged theft in 1986. As an ancestor of Geronimo, Anderson petitioned the Federal Bureau of Investigations to force the return of the skull. Noting that Apaches have a "great fear and respect for death," Anderson said that he hoped to honor Geronimo's express wish to be laid to rest in "Arizona acorn country."

Unwilling to remove himself from the case entirely and yield all his evidence to the FBI, Anderson withdrew his request for action. Instead, he arranged to meet with George H. W. Bush's, DC '48, brother Jonathan in New York City. Anderson recounts that Bush sounded "very encouraging" during their initial meeting. Eleven days later, Bush presented the display case. Anderson refused to accept the skull because it appeared to belong to a small child. Bush acknowledged this fact but claimed that it was the only relevant artifact in the society's possession.

He urged Anderson to accept the display and sign a document verifying that the society was not in possession of Geronimo's skull. Anderson refused.

Since the meeting in Manhattan, no further efforts to recover the skull have been made. Anderson puts great faith in the Bonesmen. "I believe that those who are involved need to come clean on this," he said. "I think they'll come around and do what is appropriate."

Jim Adams, managing editor of Indian Country Today, provides an explanation for the notable absence of recovery efforts. "Apache tribal governments seem reluctant to raise the issue because it does violate taboos about speaking about the dead. This doesn't mean they're not concerned; rather they have their own laws of secrecy."

Native Americans are far from unconcerned. Adams' publication, the leading Native American news source, has run several articles on the secret society's alleged possession of the skull. On Oct. 6, 60 Minutes televised a segment on Skull and Bones that briefly addressed the society's posession of Geronimo's skull.

James Craven, an economics professor at Clark College, suggests that such media exposure is leading to action. "In the near future, there will finally be large groups of Natives showing up in front of 'the tomb' to protest this ugly racism and grave robbing by the Bones, and they will not be leaving until that skull and any other Native artifacts have been returned."

Adams expressed similar sentiments. "My sense is that American Indians in general are appalled—outraged by the accusation, but not surprised," he said. "Remains of ancestors have been exploited and desecrated for centuries in the name of anthropology or simply for idle curiosity. But even by these standards, it's bizarre and embarrassing that a supposedly elite group would use the remains of any human being for its own entertainment."

Supposing the grave-robbing allegations are true, why would the Skull and Bones be interested in the head of Geronimo? Robbins suggests that the answer lies in their name. "Bones as a society is preoccupied with death; skulls, skeletons, and artwork depicting death are prevalent in the tomb. When Bonesmen steal things they use the euphemism that they are taking 'gifts to the goddess' whom they honor within the tomb." The focus on death is not arbitrary. The society emphasizes mortality in order to illustrate the necessity of success.

Robbins, herself a member of Scroll and Key, attests to the centrality of ritualized stealing in many of the societies at Yale. Each class attempts to outdo its predecessor in the acquisition of valuables. In addition to Geronimo's skull, the Bonesmen's tomb is rumored to contain the skull of Pancho Villa and Adolf Hitler's silverware.

Robbins expresses outrage at Skull and Bones' behavior. "I think it's ridiculous that Bonesmen's sense of entitlement is broad enough to include items that allegedly don't belong to them. The items they supposedly steal as a prank or competition may be valuable and meaningful to the actual owners. It's appalling that proper authorities have not forced their way into the tomb to retrieve the items that don't belong in there."

The legality of Skull and Bones' behavior is dubious. According to Adams, members of Skull and Bones have violated laws preventing the desecration of graves and should be held responsible as felons. "If it is true that Skull and Bones and its corporate parent RTA Inc., continue to hold these skulls, my belief would be that they are participating in a continuing conspiracy to be in possession of stolen property." Many are quick to cite the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act as grounds for prosecuting Skull and Bones. Ironically, it was George H. W. Bush, DC '48, a member of Skull and Bones, who signed this bill into law in 1990. However, NAGPRA only applies to organizations that receive federal funding. The University, in fact, was forced to return certain artifacts previously held by its Peabody Museum in accordance with the bill. However, secret societies are not directly affiliated with the University, exempting them from NAGPRA jurisdiction.

While the society's exemption from NAGPRA relies on financial independence from Yale, the two organizations are in fact closely intertwined. As Robbins emphasizes, the administration hasn't taken steps against the societies because administrators have historically been members. To this day, prominent figures on the Yale faculty and administration are members of Yale secret societies. There has always been a kinship between society men at the faculty, administration, and undergraduate levels. This close connection may explain Yale's failure to investigate the activity of certain students.

In addition to being high-ranking members of the Yale administration, members of Skull and Bones work in important governmental positions. The upcoming presidential election could potentially pit Bonesman against Bonesman.

George Bush, DC '68, and John Kerry, JE '66, both members of the society, could be hurt by their involvement in an organization that allegedly takes part illegal behavior. "I think these politicians are caught in a real conflict between their loyalty to Bones and their oaths as public servants if they don't take positive steps to return any human remains. The reports about Geronimo certainly poison relations between the Presidency and the tribes," Adams said.
Whatever the repercussions, many see the society's behavior as wholly reprehensible, particularly among those who would run for high public office. "[The theft] is a metaphor for something much bigger and even uglier. It is the ugly racism and hubris of the in-bred power elites who seek to infiltrate positions of power," Craven said.

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From the book Secrets of the Tomb by Alexandria Robbins.
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Sometime in the early 1830's, a Yale student named William H. Russell-the future valedictorian of the class of 1833-traveled to Germany to study for a year. Russell came from an inordinately wealthy family that ran one of America's most despicable business organizations of the nineteenth century: Russell and Company, an opium empire. Russell would later become a member of the Connecticut state legislature, a general in the Connecticut National Guard, and the founder of the Collegiate and Commercial Institute in New Haven. While in Germany, Russell befriended the leader of an insidious German secret society that hailed the death's head as its logo; he soon became causght up in this group, itself a sinister outgrowth of the notorious eighteenth century society of the Illuminati. When Russell returned to the United States, he found an atmosphere so Anti-Masonic that even his beloved Phi Beta Kappa, the honor society, had been unceremoniously stripped of its secrecy. Incensed, Russell rounded up the group of the most promising students in his class-including Alphonso Taft, the future secretary of war, attorney general, minister to Austria, ambassador to Russia, and father of future president William Howard Taft-and out of vengeance constructed the most powerful secret society the United States has ever known.---The men called their organization the Brotherhood of Death, or, more informally, the Order of Skull and Bones. They adopted the numerological symbol 322 because their group was the second chapter of the German organization founded in 1832. They worshiped the goddess Eulogia, celebreated pirates, and plotted an underground conspiracy to dominate the world.-
-Fast forward 170 years. Skull and Bones has curled its tentacles into every corner of American society. This timy club has set up networks that have thrust three members into the most powerful political positions in the world. And the group's influence is only increasing-the 2004 presidential election might showcase the first time each ticket has been led by a Bonesman. The secret society is now, as one historian admonishes, "an international mafia,....unregulated and all but unknown." In its quest to create a New World Order that restricts individual freedoms and places ultimate power solely in the hands of a small cult of wealthy, prominent families, Skull and Bones has already succeeded in infiltrating nearly every major research, policy, financial, media, and government institution in the country. Skull and Bones, in fact, has been running the United States for years..

Skull and Bones cultivates its talent by selecting members from the junior class at Yale University, a school known for its strange, Gothic elitism and its rigid devotion to the past. The society screens its candidates carefully, favoring Protestants and, now, white Catholics, with special affection for the children of wealthy East Coast Skull and Bones members. Skull and Bones has been dominated by about two dozen of the country's most prominent families-Bush, Bundy, Harriman, Lord, Phelps, Rockefeller, Taft, and Whitney among them-who are encouraged by the society to intermarry so that its power is consolidated. In fact, Skull and Bones forces members to confess their entire sexual histories so that the club, as a eugenics overlord, can determine whether a new Bonesman will be fit to mingle with the bloodlines of the powerful Skull and Bones dynasties. A rebel will not make Skull and Bones; nor will anywone whose background in any way indicates that he will not sacrifice for the greater good of the larger organization.--
-As soon as initiates are allowed into the "tomb", a dark, windowless crypt in New Haven with a roof that serves as a landing pad for the society's private helicopter, they are sworn to silence and told that they must forever deny that they are members of this organization. During initiation, which involves ritualistic psychological conditioning, the juniors wrestle in mud and are physically beaten-this stage of the ceremony represents their "death" to the world as they have known it. They then lie naked in coffins, masturbate, and reveal to the society their innermost sexual secrets. After this cleasning, the Bonesmen give the initiates robes to represent thier new identities as individuals with higher purpose. The society anoints the initiate with a new name, symbolizing his rebirth and rechristening as Knight X, a member of the Order. It is during this initiation that the new members are introduced to the artifacts in the tomb, among them Nazi memorabilia-incliding a set of Hitler's silverware-dozens of skulls, and an assortment of decorative tchotchkes:coffins, skeletons, and innards. They are also introduced to "the Bones whore," the tomb's only full time resident, who helps to ensure that the Bonesment leave the tomb more mature than when they entered.---
-Members of the SKull and Bones must make some sacrifices to the society-and they are threatened with blackmail so that they remain loyal-but they are remunerated with honors and rewards, including a graduation gift of $15,000 and a wedding gift of a tall grandfather clock. Though they must tithe their extates to the society, each member is guaranteed financial security for life; in theis way, Bones can ensure that no member will feel the need to sell the secrets of the society in order to make a living. And it works: No one has publicly breathed a word about his Skull and Bones membership, ever. Bonesmen are automatically offered jobs at the many investment banks and law firms dominated by their secret society brothers. They are also given exclusive access to the Skull and Bones island, a lush retreat built for millionaires, with a lavish mansion and a bevy of women at the members' disposal.---
The influence of the cabal begins at Yale, where Skull and Bones has appropriated university funds for its own use, leaving the school virtually impoverished. Skull and Bones corporate shell, the Russell Trust Association, owns nearly all of the university's real estate, as well as most of the land in Connecticut. Skull and Bones has controlled Yale's faculty and campus publications so that students cannot speak apenly about it. "Year by year," the campus's only anti-society publication stated during its brief tenure in 1873, " the deadly evil is growing."-
--The year in the tomb at Yale instills within members an unwavering loyalty to Skull and Bones. Members have been known to stab thier Skull and Bones pins into their skin to keep them in place during swimming or bathing. The knights (as the student members are called) learn quickly that thier allegiance to the society must supersede all esle: family, friedships, country, God. They are taught that once they get out into the world, they are expected to reach positions of prominence so that they can fruther elevate the society's status and help promote the standing of fellow Bonesmen.-This purpose has driven Bonesmen to ascend to the top levels of so many fields that , as one historian observes, "at any one time the Order can call on members in any area of American society to do what has to be done." Several Bonesmen have been senators, congressmen, Supreme Court justices, and Cabinet officials. There is a Bones cell in the CIA, which uses the society as a recruiting ground because the members are so obviously adept at keeping secrets. Society members dominate financial institutions such as J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, and Brown Brothers Harriman, where at one time more that a third of the partners were Bonesmen. Through these companies, Skull and Bones provided financial backing to Adolf Hitler because the society then followed a Nazi-and now follows a neo-Nazi-doctrine. At least a dozen Bonesmen have been linked to the Federal Reserve, including the first chairman of the New York Federal Reserve. Skull and Bones members control the wealth of the Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Ford families. -
--Skull and Bones has also taken steps to control the American media. Two of its members founded the law firm that represents the New York Times. Plans for both Time and Newsweek magazines were hatched in the Skull and Bones tomb. The society has controlled publishing houses such as Farrar, Straus & Giroux. In the 1880's, S & B's created the American Historical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Economic Association so that the society could ensure that history would be written under it terms and promote its objectives. The society then installed its own members as the presidents of these associations.---Under the societys direction, Bonesmen developed and dropped the nuclear bomb and choreographed the Bay of Pigs invasion. Skull and Bones members had ties to Watergate and the Kennedy assassination, and now control the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission so that they can push their own political agenda. Skull and Bones government officials have used the number 322 as codes for highly classified diplomatic assignments. The society discriminates against minorities and fought for slavery; indeed eight out of twelve of Yale's residential colleges are named for slave owners while none are named for abolitionists. The society encourages misogyny: it did not admit women until the 1990's because members did not believe women were capable of handling the Skull and Bones experience and because they said they feared incidents of date rape. This society also encoursages grave robbing: deep within the bowels of the tomb are the stolen skulls of the Apache chief Geronimo, Pancho Villa, and former president Martin Van Buren.-
:
http://www.secretsofthetomb.com

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What Sen John Kerry Skull & Bones Member don't want you to know.


The following is a Portion of John Kerry remarks on NBC's "Meet the Press" May 6, 2001

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- Mr.Russert: You mentioned you're a military guy. There's been a lot of discussion about Bob Kerrey, your former Democratic colleague in the Senate, about his talking about his anguish about what happened in Vietnam. You were on this program 30 years ago as a leader of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

And we went back and have an audiotape of that and some still photos. And your comments are particularly timely in this overall discussion of Bob Kerrey. And I'd like for you to listen to those with our audience and then try to put that war into some context:

(Audiotape, April 18, 1971):

MR. CROSBY NOYES (Washington Evening Star): Mr. Kerry, you said at one time or another that you think our policies in Vietnam are tantamount to genocide and that the responsibility lies at all chains of command over there. Do you consider that you personally as a Naval officer committed atrocities in Vietnam or crimes punishable by law in this country?


Sen. John F. Kerry - Long time Council on Foreign Relations Member and Skull and Bones man

KERRY: There are all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50 calibre machine guns, which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search and destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare, all of this is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and all of this is ordered as a matter of written established policy by the government of the United States from the top down. And I believe that the men who designed these, the men who designed the free fire zone, the men who ordered us, the men who signed off the air raid strike areas, I think these men, by the letter of the law, the same letter of the law that tried Lieutenant Calley, are war criminals.

(End audiotape)

Here is some more info about Kerry from former VIETNAM POW Michael Benge...

John Kerry's war record

When Mr. Kerry pontificated at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Veterans Day, a group of veterans turned their backs on him and walked away. They remembered Mr. Kerry as the anti-war activist who testified before Congress during the war, accusing veterans of being war criminals. The dust jacket of Mr. Kerry's pro-Hanoi book, "The New Soldier," features a photograph of his ragged band of radicals mocking the U.S. Marine Corps Memorial, which depicts the flag-raising on Iwo Jima, with an upside-down American flag. Retired Gen. George S. Patton III charged that Mr. Kerry's actions as an anti-war activist had "given aid and comfort to the enemy," as had the actions of Ramsey Clark and Jane Fonda. Also, Mr. Kerry lied when he threw what he claimed were his war medals over the White House fence; he later admitted they weren't his. Now they are displayed on his office wall. Long after he changed sides in congressional hearings, Mr. Kerry lobbied for renewed trade relations with Hanoi. At the same time, his cousin C. Stewart Forbes, chief executive for Colliers International, assisted in brokering a $905 million deal to develop a deep-sea port at Vung Tau, Vietnam ? an odd coincidence.

As noted in the Inside Politics column of Nov. 14 (Nation), historian Douglas Brinkley is writing Mr. Kerry's biography. Hopefully, he'll include the senator's latest ignominious feat: preventing the Vietnam Human Rights Act (HR2833) from coming to a vote in the Senate, claiming human rights would deteriorate as a result. His actions sent a clear signal to Hanoi that Congress cares little about the human rights for which so many Americans fought and died.

The State Department ranked Vietnam among the 10 regimes worldwide least tolerant of religious freedom. Recently, 354 churches of the Montagnards, a Christian ethnic minority, were forcibly disbanded, and by mid-October, more than 50 Christian pastors and elders had been arrested in Dak Lak province alone. On Oct. 29, the secret police executed three Montagnards by lethal injection simply for protesting religious repression. The communists are conducting a pogrom against the Montagnards, forcing Christians to drink a mixture of goat's blood and alcohol and renounce Christianity. Thousands have been killed or imprisoned or have just "disappeared." The Montagnards lost one-half of their adult male population fighting for the United States, and without them, there might be thousands more American names on that somber black granite wall at the Vietnam memorial. As Mr. Kerry contemplates a run for the presidency, people must remember that he has fought harder for Hanoi as an anti-war activist and a senator than he did against the Vietnamese communists while serving in the Navy in Vietnam.

MICHAEL BENGE
Foreign Service officer and former Vietnam POW (1968 to 1973) - Here is a bit of info about Kerry and his Skull & Bones connections...

Kerry made his Bones in secret club - like Bush

WASHINGTON - Sen. John F. Kerry expounds on many issues in his presidential campaign, but he's completely silent on one topic: his membership in Skull and Bones, Yale's infamous secret society.``John Kerry has absolutely nothing to say on that subject. Sorry,'' said Kerry spokeswoman Kelley Benander.Kerry is a respected senator and a decorated Vietnam War combat veteran, but 36 years after he was initiated into what has been called the ``ultimate old boy network,'' he's wary of breaking the ultra-exclusive club's strict secrecy code.There's also another high-profile member of the club: President Bush.Bonesmen already are buzzing over the prospect of the first Bones vs.

Bones presidential race should Kerry win his party's nomination and face Bush in 2004.``Bones don't care who wins,'' said author Alexandra Robbins, whose book ``Secrets of the Tomb'' pierced the secrecy shrouding the 171-year-old society. ``If Kerry wins, it's still a Bones presidency.''Robbins calls the group ``probably the most secretive and successful club in America,'' and adds, ``It's also pretty bizarre.'' Every year, 15 Yale juniors are tapped for the club, which holds meetings twice a week in a crypt-like building known as the ``Tomb.'' Robbins described the interior, replete with skulls and skeletons, as a cross between the ``Addams Family'' and a slightly shabby English men's club.

There are bizarre initiation rites, including a ceremony where new members must spend an evening before a roaring fire in the Tomb recounting details of their sexual history to fellow members. Kerry was tapped for the club in 1968, two years after Bush, whose father and grandfather were also Bonesmen. Kerry's brother-in-law from his first marriage, David Thorne, was Bones. So was the late husband of Kerry's current wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry. The Bones alumni roster is flush with CIA officials, business moguls, congressmen and Supreme Court justices. The club owns a secluded 40-acre island retreat on the St. Lawrence River. In 1986, Kerry allegedly tried to recruit Jacob Weisberg, then a college-age intern at ``The New Republic'' magazine. Weisberg, now Slate magazine editor, said Kerry made his pitch during a private meeting in his Senate office. Weisberg declined, pointedly asking Kerry how he squared his liberalism with membership in such an elitist club that refused to admit women. ``Kerry got sort of flustered and said, `I've marched with battered women,' '' Weisberg told the Herald. Five years later, Kerry was among those voting to force the club to admit women after a bitter court fight.

---
http://pub31.ezboard.com/bthedoorwaycave

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Secrets and ties of the Bonesmen

Scotsman | March 20 2004
http://www.propagandamatrix.com

Secret societies have a problem; they depend on publicity to earn their mystique. The Skull and Bones Society at Yale University need have no fears on that front at least. One of the oddities of this year’s Presidential election is not that George W Bush and Senator John Kerry were near contemporaries at Yale - although their privileged backgrounds are worth noting in a country that prides itself on its democratic, meritocratic traditions - but that they were also members of the same "secret" society.

The Skull and Bones, which dates from 1832, may now be the most famous such institution in the United States. It is perhaps unsurprising therefore that the myth should have begun to outstrip its comparatively humdrum present-day reality. In the past Skull and Bones had close connections with the CIA and many of the architects of post-war American foreign policy, such as Averill Harriman, were Bonesmen. "The only agenda of Skull and Bones is to get its members into positions of power and then to have those members hire others to positions of prominence. The organisation has an enormous superiority complex that partly fuels their secrecy," argues Alexandra Robbins, author of Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power.

As Ron Rosenbaum, a classmate of Bush’s, wrote in a famous Esquire article in 1977 the idea behind Skull and Bones was once that of "converting the idle progeny of the ruling class into morally serious leaders of the establishment".

Interest in the society’s activities could only be piqued by the revelation that the 15 members recruited - or tapped - each year would have to lie in an open coffin while recounting their life story and deepest, most personal existential fears and phobias.

As an article in Bush’s 1968 yearbook recounted, "the initiate faces the delegation and the alumni alone and is physically beaten. Next he is stripped and made to engage in some form of naked wrestling." Later in the year the fledgling Bonesman would be "quite brutally evaluated by the others".

Both Bush’s father and grandfather had been Bonesmen - as had another future President, William Howard Taft - and it was widely assumed that young George would follow in the family tradition. For a while however it appeared that George W might join an open, blithely jolly and hedonistic society, the "Gin and Tonic" instead. But, according to his biographer Bill Minutaglio, his father, then a US Congressman, visited his son at Yale and asked him to join Skull and Bones.

Yet even then, however, the societies were in decline. The Yale Daily News reported that "even social prestige is declining as a reason to join a society ... the number of undergraduates who regard society members with suspicion rather than fear and admiration has been growing." Yale in the 1960s was changing fast, trying to shake off its preppy, privileged past and opening its doors to students from all kinds of backgrounds, many of whom had little time and often much contempt for the old days and ways.

Bush maintained a "gentleman’s C" grade average throughout his time at Yale and never became involved in campus politics. But although the future President would say in his ghost-written "autobiography," that: "We were young men trying to enjoy what should have been the last carefree days of youth," his time in New Haven played a part in his future rejection of his New England ancestry as he reinvented himself as a bona fide Texan.

"What angered me was the way such people at Yale felt so intellectually superior and so righteous," he has said, and it seems reasonable to conclude that Yale, however inadvertently, played a part in convincing the younger Bush to reject, at least outwardly, the trappings of privilege.

Kerry was not so quick to shrink from Yale’s high society. A champion debater at the university Kerry was, as his diplomat father would have expected, involved in political life on campus. He was leader of the University Liberal club and Kerry’s ponderous gravity made it clear that this was a serious young man intent on a serious future.

The future Senator retained an affection for the club well beyond graduation. In 1986 he tapped Jacob Weisberg, now the editor of the online magazine slate.com, for membership. Weisberg was appalled that a liberal Senator from Massachusetts would countenance and encourage membership of a secret society that at that point still did not admit women. He turned down the opportunity to join.

By 1992 Skull and Bones had finally decided to admit women. Black and Jewish students had been admitted, albeit in comparatively small numbers, for decades, but now the final frontier fell. Since then, Yalies report, the society has become less significant; not, they stress, because women have been admitted but because the secret societies are seen as an anachronism. Indeed, few think they even necessarily attract the best and the brightest any more, being concerned with ensuring that they have a sufficiently diverse membership that comes close to mirroring the student body as a whole. In the Ivy League these days even secrets have to be politically correct.

In recent interviews, NBC’s Tim Russert has asked both men about their membership in the society. "Is there a secret handshake? Is there a secret code?" he asked Kerry.

"I wish there were something secret I could manifest there," replied the Democratic candidate. Bush for his part, quipped, "It’s so secret we can’t talk about it."

In replying to these questions, both men were breaking a cardinal Bonesman rule - namely that when the club was mentioned in conversation a Bonesman should leave the room or deny membership in such a way that his denial both confirmed his membership and brought the discussion to an end.

As Rosenbaum argues, "The preoccupation with bones, mortality, with coffins, lying in coffins, standing around coffins, all this sort of thing, I think, is designed to give them the sense that - and it’s very true - life is short. You can spend it, if you have a privileged background, enjoying yourself, contributing nothing, or you can spend it making a contribution."


http://pub31.ezboard.com/bthedoorwaycave

[mickydoolittle]

holy crist shiiit, prez....

that damn thing went on ... and ... on ... and ... on ... and ... on

interesting tho.

[prezhorusin04]

:grin :deal:
Thanks Mick..Sorry it's so long, but there is alot of info out there!!!!

Here are some other good ones!!!
http://www.freedomdomain.com/secretsocieties/skull02.html
http://www.loper.org/~george/archives/2004/Feb/996.html
http://www.nolajbs.net/editorial/monolithic.presidency.shtml
http://www.unmuseum.org/cryskull.htm
http://www.olivebranch.com/isreal/galgoitha.htm

twosidesofthesamecoin

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Through these doors pass the members of the Order of Skull & Bones, a small secret society founded at Yale University in 1832 that has risen to the top of American political and economic power. Three U.S. Presidents, two Chief Justices of the United States, over twenty U.S. Senators, and many congressmen, cabinet officers, judges and state officials are testimony to the power, privilege and prestige of Bones.

What do these elite secret society members have over us regular folks? Who are they? What do they do? Did members of Skull & Bones really finance Hitler? Do they hold the bones of Geronimo in their Tomb? This book is your chance to investigate these questions and more.

“These secret societies are behind it all,” my father told me many years ago, During the early ‘50s he was a CIA branch chief, head of the East Asia intelligence analysis office. “The Vietnam War,” he said soberly, “is about drugs.” Many years later I finally had some understanding of what Dad was talking about. I wish I had asked more questions. Such as, was he talking about the Order of Skull and Bones?

It’s a symbol used by pirates, poisons and the Nazis but it’s also a “fraternity” at Yale University. College kids having fun? Well, … ?

Fifteen juniors are tapped each year. Around 2,500 Yale graduates have been members, mostly white males from wealthy Northeastern families: Bush, Bundy, Cheney, Dodge, Ford, Goodyear, Harriman, Heinz, Kellogg, Phelps, Pillsbury, Rockefeller, Taft, Vanderbilt, Weyerhaeuser and Whitney are some of the names on its roster. Minorities were brought into membership in the 1950s, and the first women were admitted in 1991,

The Order of Skull and Bones is a secret society begun at Yale by William Huntington Russell. His cousin Samuel Russell’s family enterprise was the largest American opium smuggler. When Russell & Co. worked with the world’s largest smuggler, the Scottish firm Jardine-Matheson, they were known as the Combination.

Many New England and Southern families in the “China Trade” sent their sons to Yale, and many were tapped into Skull and Bones. From Yale, Bonesmen went into and were very influential in the worlds of commerce, communications, diplomacy, education, intelligence, finance, law and politics.
HTTP://www.fleshingoutskullandbones.com

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http://www.theundergroundfiles.com/investigations/secret_societies/skull_and_bones.htm

http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/NWO/Skull_Bones_1.htm

http://www.bilderberg-mirror.org.uk/skulbone.htm



Mr. Grim Reaper/Poison/Do not Touch

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http://msn.ancestry.com/landing/strange/bush4/tree.htm

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CFR site, BUSH /KERRY comparison..!
http://www.cfr.org/campaign2004/

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http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=49118

THE OVERTHROW OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC,

Part 56
Bush-Kerry Scandal May Trigger "Military Coup" and "Overthrow of the U.S. Government"

by Sherman H. Skolnick
www.skolnicksreport.com
www.cloakanddagger.ca
www.rense.com/Datapages/skolnickdatapage.html

5/20/4

A spokesperson for the Bush Family has apparently been pleading with a major worldwide news
organization, not to proceed with a story they have.
The reason given? "Because it may trigger a military coup" and may cause "The Overthrow of the U.S.
Government".

The explosive details may turn out to be the biggest scandal in the new millennium.

The news group has eyewitnesses, kept in security and so far concealed, already interviewed on
videotape, who confirm that there was a joint pact and plot, in which George W. Bush and John F.
Kerry participated. That this was done under the auspices of the super-secret satanic cult,
operating under code number "322", the Skull & Bones Society, of which Bush and Kerry are members.
Kerry, as the older member, initiated Bush into the cult using their traditional cavorting, au
naturel, in a windowless building on the Yale University campus, called "The Tomb", while both were
in a large size casket filled with mud.

Among the matters contained in the so far embargoed story, are the following:

[1] As supervised by Daddy Bush, George W. Bush was instructed to follow orders and "to stay out of
it" that is, to defer action as Commander-in-Chief, permitting a military stand-down and other
contradictions to what a President/Commander-in-Chief should immediately do upon being informed of
a great disaster.

[2] The scheme, like the pre-knowledge of the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, was to
disregard the resultant bloodshed of Americans, since it was for a profound purpose. As to Pearl
Harbor, to wake up Americans and force them into a war to save England and British interests from
being over-run in Asia by the Japanese, and in England itself, by the Germans.

As to the home-grown events of September 11, 2001, among the purposes, while disregarding the
resulting bloodshed of Americans (about the same number as died on December 7, 1941), was to
galvanize common Americans into action to supposedly fight back the encroachment on the U.S. of
"Arabs".

[3] As supervised by Daddy Bush, once head of America's secret political police, George W. Bush and
John F. Kerry were to assist in creating what in espionage parlance is called "a legend", that is
an entirely made up and fake story to blame onto patsies operating on a parallel track.

[4] As confirmed by the so far embargoed news group story, a renegade member of Israeli
intelligence, The Mossad, was to assist the plan. Nicholas Berg was groomed as a "penetration
agent", although purportedly a Jew, to pretend to be sympathetic to Saudi Arabs in particular.
Berg befriended various Saudi and other Arabs being trained for very low level, very routine
airplane flying, under the auspices of U.S. Military facilities in Florida, Oklahoma, and
California, among other places.

[5] A sort of "spark-plug" for this work was Mohammed Atta, purportedly a "ring-leader" befriended
by Nicholas Berg. Atta was financed in part by large sums funneled by Daddy Bush and others via
ISI, the Pakistan Secret Political Police, originally set up by Daddy Bush.

[6] On behalf of Daddy Bush, George W. Bush, and John F. Kerry, penetration agent Berg purchased an
airplane ticket in the name of Atta, by way of setting up Atta and other Arabs for the "legend",
the spy trick, as patsies.

[7] The ticket was purchased through Oklahoma with the ostensible assistance of a former Chairman
of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, former U.S. Senator David L. Boren.

Boren was a graduate of Yale University and reportedly like Daddy Bush, George W. Bush, and John F.
Kerry, is a member of the super-secret Skull & Bones Society. Boren was Oklahoma Governor 1975-79,
and U.S. Senator 1979-94. He was the longest serving Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence.

Boren was forced out of the U.S. Senate as a result of an attempted hush-up of a homosexual
scandal, wherein pictures were made available to the monopoly press showing him in homosexual
cavorting with other members of Congress, the executice branch of the U.S. Government, and the
homosexual underground in the monopoly press.

Boren is a close associate of George J. Tenet (like other Directors of Central Intelligence, he
does not use his real name). Prior to 9-11, Tenet's CIA helped obstruct FBI agents in Minneapolis
who sought in August, 2001, to examine the computer of Zacarias Moussaoui, later accused with the
purported Arabs of planning 9-11 tragedies. Moussaoui is reportedly actually a U.S. Government
espionage operative. He spent six months in Norman, Oklahoma. He was not only an associate of
Nicholas Berg, who allowed him to use his computer with its password, but Moussaoui was also an
associate of the co-pilot who later was on the fatal flight by which Minnesota U.S. Senator Paul
Wellstone was assassinated, October, 2002 by a sabotaged plane crash (he was expected to be
re-elected and Wellstone was considered Anti-CIA).

Boren's close associate has been CIA officer David Edger who had been in charge of CIA surveillance
over the Hamburg, Germany Al Qaeda cell which included Atta. The FBI and American CIA obstructed
the German authorities in the Hamburg matter by arranging key American witnesses not to be
available for evidentiary hearings and trials.

Boren has been a Director of ConocoPhillips, overlapping the interests of the Bush Crime Family,
through Pennzoil-Texaco and the worldwide war-mongers and profiteers, the Carlyle Group.

Boren has also been a Director of AMR Corporation, parent firm of American Airlines, Inc. Boren has
been in a position to reportedly conceal and withhold data as to flights on 9-11 as to American Air
Lines, which may contradict the official position of the Bush White House and the oil-soaked,
spy-riddled American monopoly press. Boren was in a position to seek to hold back data as to
Mohammed Atta, and as to ticket procurer Nicholas Berg for Daddy Bush, George W. Bush, and John F.
Kerry, in a joint treasonous pact to inflict bloodshed on fellow Americans and falsely blame the
same on to "Arab" so-called "hi-jackers".

[8] George W. Bush, Daddy Bush, and John F. Kerry are gravely concerned that the news group, so far
sitting on this story, has reputed proof that for Bush-Kerry and the apparent treasonous plot,
that Nicholas Berg, for their plan and scheme, arranged to plant, in the middle of the street near
the attacked twin towers of the World Trade Center, the alleged passport of Mohammed Atta, somehow
in pristine and undamaged condition.

[9] There is some doubt as to whether Nicholas Berg is dead as represented by a purported video
beamed up from London. Berg's role in this, and data he turned over to The Mossad, has enabled them
to apparently continue blackmailing large sums out of the Bush White House, to be used for Israel's
military defense. From a candid position, Israel finds themselves in a perpetual struggle with
Arabs, by the slim piece of land being set up in 1948 by British divide and conquer policy, to
control the oil-soaked areas in surrounding places occupied by Arabs and Persians.

[10] Unanswered questions:

===Is the person known as Nicholas Berg really dead? If so, was he murdered, not by Arabs, but by a
special assassins' team arranged by Daddy Bush to attempt to cover up the foregoing?

===Will the news group succumb to the pleading of the Bushies, that these matters, if widely and
publicly revealed, would bring down the American Central Government and may set off a patriotic
military coup to rescue the American common people from a bloody murderous faction of "the powers
that be", the Establishment, the Aristocracy, the Ruling Class---plainly, THEM?

===Other than a devastating profound scandal, WHAT will rescue the Bill of Rights and the U.S.
Constitution from its current condition as having been cancelled because of false tales that "the
Arabs" attacked us on September 11, 2001?

===Under the circumstances, can reasonably informed people actually believe a Presidential Election
is possible, in the traditional way, in the year 2004? Both expected Presidential candidates have
committed treason, which is apparent to anyone knowing the details of the story a major news group
is sitting on, while America burns to the ground. Only fools and those who hate this previously
blessed Land, can stay silent in the face of treachery.

More coming. Stay tuned.
==========================================
Mr. Skolnick's articles, on behalf of research and investigation of his group, can be viewed at
www.skolnicksreport.com Also some are archived at www.cloakanddagger.ca Further, a large group of
such articles are archived at www.rense.com/Datapages/skolnickdatapage.html

Skolnick is a co-host with Lenny Bloom on an internet radio program, through audiostreaming, can be
heard several nights per week ON-LINE, www.cloakanddagger.ca Check the schedule on that website.

[prezhorusin04]

Let's put it this way people, Chapter 322 is only ONE chapter out of nearly 1000 in the world. These tentacles are everywhere..

[humanhybrid]

prezhorusin04 THANKS! your posts are well received and appreciated. Lots of new info. Ive read David Ickes book " Children of the Matrix " And says the same of the skull and bones society, anybody intrested should buy the book. It will astound you, and keep you for hours glued to the pages. good day!

[prezhorusin04]

Human Hybrid..Thank You! And Children of the Matrix is a really great book!
http://www.bridgeoflove.com/bookstore/products/com501.jpg
http://www.davidicke.com

[prezhorusin04]

THIS JUST IN!: KERRY BLOWS GOATS!

Here we see the ad campaign banner of demoncratic Presidential hopeful (and Skull and Bones man) John Forbes Kerry. Notice the Satanic Pentagram in the flag symbol?
http://www.johnkerry.com/images/header.gif
http://www.luckymojo.com/baphometpentagram.gif
http://www.luckymojo.com/levibaphomet.gif

The same emblem of the Satanic goat headed god of the Knights Templars/Freemasons in Baphomet.
No doubt about it, Kerry is a dangerous man..Possibly more so then Bush since Kerry can actually talk..(Plus he's got that chin that wants to lead people)
www.geocities.com/theawakeningnews/Religion-Satanists_Photos.html

[prezhorusin04]

http://www.phaseiii.org
The Democrat’s president candidate John Kerry is related to King Harald of Norway, and according to one expert, royal relation ensures that he will win the election this fall.

Not only did Kerry live a couple of years in Oslo during his youth, he is also related with the Norwegian King, according to Harold Brooks-Baker, director of Burke’s Peerage, the «bible» of the European royal families.

Nettavisen Article
Av Carin Pettersson og Øyvind Ludt 22.04.04 13:14
http://pub.tv2.no/nettavisen/english/article216009.ece

«He is not only related to the Queen of England on his mother’s side, but also to the Queen of the Netherlands, the Queen of Denmark and the King of Norway, and other European royal families,» stated Brooks-Baker. «Even Princess Diana was a distant relative.»

And it is precisely Kerry’s connections to the royal families that may ensure him the victory in this falls presidential election, according to Brooks-Baker. According to the expert, the candidate who has the most royal blood pulsing in his veins has won every American presidential election since the time of George Washington.

Also President George W. Bush is of blue blood, but not as much as Kerry. Bush is a descendent of Edward I of England.

«But on his mother’s side, Kerry is the direct descendent of John Winthrop, the first governor of the Bay Colony in Massachusetts. And through this Winthrop connection, Kerry has more royal and aristocratic relatives than Bush,» Brooks-Baker stated.

«Even if many think that Bush is going to win, I would bet my money on Kerry. The royal rule always works. The candidate who has the most royal connections always wins. It is the most particular pattern, and this can’t be accidental,» Brooks-Baker said

[prezhorusin04]

http://dr-atomic.hypermart.net/images/resist/rallysignb_k5.jpg
:dead:

[prezhorusin04]

http://www.struat.com/justin/skullbones2004.gif
http://www.oilempire.us/kerry.html

[playmaker88]

Bush is a descendent of Edward I of England.


:crs: That is nothing to boast about believe me.

[prezhorusin04]

http://www.surfingtheapocalypse.net/pix/pic14618.jpg
http://www.surfingtheapocalypse.net/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=14618
"The list that follows is only the first of an upcoming series of historic exposes of these secret societies. If you have any biographical information on any of these individuals, your sharing will be appreciated and reciprocated. Any suggestions or corrections appreciated."

Eric Samuelson, J.D.
janeric@concentric.net

Interesting names that appear on his "97% complete list":

Buckley, Jr. William Frank 1950
Goodyear Robert M. 1949
Taft William Howard 1878

The Secret Origins of Skull & Bones
http://www.crystalinks.com/skullbones.html

Everything you wanted to know about Skull & Bones,
http://www.wealth4freedom.com/truth/3/skullandbones.htm

The Boodle Boys
http://www.ctrl.org/boodleboys/

http://www.wealth4freedom.com/truth/3/skullroster.htm

[Juliëtte]

If you have any biographical information on any of these individuals, your sharing will be appreciated and reciprocated. Any suggestions or corrections appreciated."

I just watched this video :

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3995.htm

about the Carlyle group and the connections to the Bush famely /bin Laden famely ,and found what was revealed there very disturbing...would like to
know what you think of this.
Hope i post this on the right threat....i couldn't find a threat with info
on the Carlyle Group

more video's about this Carlyle group here: http://www.vpro.nl/programma/tegenlicht/zoeken/?qr=the+carlyle+group%2Bspecial&scope=Tegenlicht
it's a dutch site , but many video's are spoken in Englisch

Groetjes Juliëtte

[prezhorusin04]

Thanks for the links Julliette. I will watch that Carlyle Group video soon..As well, i'll find you some good info on the Carlyle group to post in the next couple days..:)

In the meantime maybe you will like this video:
Operation Hollywood
http://www.netvid.tv/revradio/oph.ram

[Juliëtte]

thank you prezhorusin04 , I'll be very interested what you think off the
Carlyle group and will watch your video tonight (when my kids are sleeping :wink: )

groetjes Juliette

[prezhorusin04]

Hello Juliette, i still haven't gotten to watch the Carlyle vid, but i will try to catch it tonight. The Carlyle Group is corrupt with stench to high heaven. Carlyle is to the Bush's what Halliburton is to Cheney. I found it ironic that the Carlyle group bought out Lowells Theatres earlier this year, while it was playing Michael Moores Farhenheit 911, and they ended up making many millions of dollars off of a film that is exposing their involvment in the Iraq war..

Hope to talk again Juliette.. :bubble:

Here are some oldies but goodies on the Carlyle Group:
http://www.linkthing.com/scereed/carlyle_group.cluster.html
http://sheepwaker.tripod.com/greed.html
http://www.davidcogswell.com/Political/CarlyleFortuneUp.html

[Juliëtte]

Hi Prez,

yes indeed , this Carlyle group very is bad...did you know that all off them
(the highest top) including Bush seniour and the famely Bin Laden also
included; had a 'comming together' at 9/11(2001) in a VERY expensive hotel
....where they had a beautifull vieuw of the 2 planes crashing into the world
trade center???? what a wonderfull coïnsedence , uh??? (i don't think so , do you?)
I saw the Hollywood video ; I always felt there was a connection between
the militairy and hollywood...very interesting to know how they do this .
Thanks for giving me the link!
I will see your other links later this week...bit by bit...the thrut isn't very
plesant to 'dygest' for me

http://www.vpro.nl/programma/tegenlicht/afleveringen/19115612/items/19355076/

http://www.vpro.nl/programma/tegenlicht/afleveringen/19115612/

these links are some us soldiers , wounded by the war in Irac ..they
tell what they have been through...the us goverment tried to stop
this documantary from being aired on dutch television...one story
was banned , but you still can watch it on the internet :thumbs:

http://207.44.245.159/article5365.htm

http://www.abolkhaseb.net/media/vedio/shot6.wmv

http://www.infowars.net/Pages/Nov_04/121104_perspective.html
these links show some awfull truths / images , so only if you're feeling
up for it.

I will post some written stories in a second post right after i posted this one,
also about what is really happening in Irac

Groetjes Juliette

PS : you have a great site! i will be doing some reading there also in the comming days :2thumbs:

[Juliëtte]

As soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 41st Infantry Regiment approached the burning vehicle, they did not find insurgents. The victims were mainly teenagers, hired to work the late shift picking up trash for about $5 a night, witnesses said. .Medics scrambled to treat the half a dozen people strewn around the scene. A dispute broke out among soldiers standing over one severely wounded young man who was moaning in pain. An unwounded Iraqi claiming to be a relative of the victim pleaded in broken English for soldiers to help him. But to the horror of bystanders, Alban, 29, a boyish-faced sergeant who joined the Army in 1997, retrieved an M-231 assault rifle and fired into the wounded man’s body. Seconds later, another soldier, Staff Sgt. Johnny Horne Jr., 30, of Winston-Salem, N.C., grabbed an M-16 rifle and also shot the victim.

http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=news_international&Number=293084833
************************************************** ************************************************** **********
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/nov2004/vet-n11.shtml

Iraq veteran Jimmy Massey speaks to the WSWS
“We’re committing genocide in Iraq”
By Jeff Riedel
11 November 2004
Former Staff Sergeant Jimmy Massey, a 12-year Marine veteran, lives in Waynesville, North Carolina, a small town in the Smoky Mountains just outside of Ashville, where he spoke to the World Socialist Web Site. He is one of a growing number of American soldiers returning from Iraq who have become outspoken opponents of the war.

Massey entered Iraq as part of the initial US invasion in March 2003. He witnessed—and in some cases participated in—the killing of innocent civilians. During a single 48-hour period, he says, he saw as many as 30 civilians killed by US gunfire at highway checkpoints.

The brutality of the US military’s retaliation against the growing resistance of the Iraqi people transformed his view of the occupation and changed him for life. Massey, horrified and unable to reconcile himself to what was taking place, began to speak out to his superiors. He was eventually medi-vaced out of Iraq and diagnosed with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Labeled as a conscientious objector by his commanders, Massey sought legal counsel and won his honorable discharge in December 2003.

Massey grew up in the mountains of western North Carolina. His father was a truck driver who was shot and killed during a confrontation with the Florida State Police when Massey was still in his early teens. He then moved with his mother to Texas, where she took a job with the Texas Board of Corrections. He grew up in a household where at times there was very little money and little to eat. He would eventually join the Marines and became a recruiter himself in the late 1990s. He was sent to Kuwait in December 2002, in preparation for the invasion of Iraq.

Massey’s disillusionment with the military began as a recruiter, when he started to question the methods used by the Marines in preying on young people from economically depressed areas. His feelings would soon be deepened by his experience in Iraq.

“When I was on recruiting duty, I really began to question what was going on,” he said. “I’m not going to say that the Marine Corps is all flat-out lies, but it is very misleading the way we enlist recruits. A lot of the kids joining the military are from the ‘barrios’ and ‘hoods,’ or the poor parts of the Appalachian Mountains, where we’re sitting right here. Appalachia has some of the poorest counties in the country—so they’re sweeping them up.

“You know, these kids are just thankful that they’ve got some health care—for a lot of them, the first time they even went to the dentist is when they joined the Marine Corps. Then you pump them full of patriotism and intangible benefits—self-confidence and what not—and now you’re indoctrinating a young person with an ideology.

“Boot camp is designed to dehumanize and desensitize a person to violence. I was a Marine Corps boot camp instructor for two-and-a-half years, and I know that it is designed to strip you down and rebuild you. The only purpose of the Marine Corps is to meet the enemy on the battlefield and destroy them.”

Massey asserted that, given the economic conditions in the US today, there exists what amounts to an economic draft of young Americans into the military.

“Here’s the problem in America, what we’re living in is becoming an increasingly militaristic society, where poor people have been encouraged to sign up as the front line,” Massey said.

“A large percentage of the so-called growth in this country is associated with the military. The bottom line is, for the Halliburtons and Enrons war is good, but for the poor and for all of the soldiers coming home, especially the ones coming home wounded, there’s not much of a future. But for a lot of the kids getting ready to graduate high-school, the military is looking pretty good because their families have no money to send them to college.”

Massey’s career as a recruiter ended after he wrote a mission statement to his commanding officers, outlining his personal concerns with the issues of recruitment. The process of reaching the point of speaking out was not an easy one, he recalled.

“I’ll be honest with you, when you’re in the military, it’s a lot like being in a mafia family. You don’t step outside the family, and it’s a very sheltered environment. I mean, you’re taken care of. You’ve got a guaranteed paycheck on the 1st and the 15th, and when you’re living on a Marine base, it’s a bit like a utopia. But with the utopia comes the conformity to the ideology, which allows the utopia to continue. If you break away from the family, they’re going to do whatever they can to keep you quiet.

“It’s very hard to break away from—you have to reach down deep in your soul for answers to questions that begin to come up. And what happened with me was, I was coming into contact with groups like the War Resisters League while I was out on recruitment duty. They were out there counter-recruiting. I started reading some of the literature that they were passing out at the high schools. I became curious and started doing my own research, finding out certain things about America’s involvement in other countries.”

In Iraq, Massey was brought face to face with this involvement. The initial invasion took on the character of a one-sided slaughter, with the world’s strongest military power armed with the most technologically advanced weapons, on the one hand, and a disarmed and virtually defenseless military of a country already devastated by a decade of sanctions, on the other.

“You have to look at what was the overall goal of the mission. That was pretty evident when, eight months before we even left to go to Kuwait, the Marines were training to shut down and take over the Ar Rumaylah oil fields. We had detailed schematics and terrain models of all of the oil fields outside of Basra, and once we took care of those, all that was left was the ride into Baghdad.

“We were like a bunch of cowboys who rode into town shooting up the place. I saw charred bodies in vehicles that were clearly not military vehicles. I saw people dead on the side of the road in civilian clothes. As a matter of fact, I only remember seeing a couple of bodies in military uniform the whole time.

“There wasn’t a whole lot of direct fighting to speak of. There were some firefights—I mean I had bullet holes in the side of my Humvee—but it wasn’t like major combat action. We took the highway the whole way up to Baghdad. They had no artillery; they had no air support. They were so weakened by all the sanctions. All of their equipment was in very bad shape. Most of their hardware was left over from the war against Iran. The first Gulf War just devastated them. I don’t think they had the will or the opportunity to fight.”

Massey said that the hostility of the Iraqi people to the presence of the US military grew exponentially over the time he was there in direct response to the brutal methods employed by American troops against the entire Iraqi population.

[Juliëtte]

“As far as I’m concerned, the real war did not begin until they saw us murdering innocent civilians,” he said. “I mean, they were witnessing their loved ones being murdered by US Marines. It’s kind of hard to tell someone that they are being liberated when they just saw their child shot or lost their husband or grandmother.”

Massey manned a number of US military checkpoints on Iraqi highways in the months following the invasion. He described how, when cars failed to stop, out of confusion or otherwise, the order was to ‘light them up’ or open fire. It was at one of the checkpoints that Massey’s attitude toward the war reached its turning point.

“We signaled a car to stop and when it didn’t we opened fire. They were innocent civilians. We found no weapons, no explosives—nothing. Somehow, and I have no idea how he could have done it, but one guy got out of the car and he wasn’t badly wounded. He was the brother of one of the men bleeding to death in the car. He looked at me and asked, ‘Why did you kill my brother. What did he do to you?’ There were 30-plus civilians killed over two days at these checkpoints.”

Massey described the chaotic and reckless character of the roadside checkpoints and the indifference of the military leadership to the culture of the people that they were there supposedly to help.

“When you put your hand up in the air with a closed fist, in the Marines it means you want them to stop,” he said. “But, as we later learned, it’s actually the international sign of solidarity. It has a totally different meaning for the Iraqis—to them it was a sign like hello. And that was just one example of how we were not trained properly to understand the cultural differences between us and them.

“The bottom line is they [the military command] don’t see the need to teach culture and humanity to men whose singular purpose is to kill. And that was just one of the cultural miscues. I blame the top of the chain of command, from the President down to Tommy Franks [the former commander-in-chief of US occupation forces] to General [James] Mattis [commander of the First Marine Division]. They all knew that the military was not trained properly when it comes to dealing with Muslim culture and a foreign land. But that was not our purpose for being there.”

In the midst of the widespread killing of civilians, Massey was struck by the callousness of the military command and the lack of humanitarian assistance they were offering the Iraqi people. This further deepened his doubts about the true purpose of the war.

“We actually left all of the humanitarian MRE’s [Meals Ready to Eat] in Kuwait,” he recalled. “We were supposed to give these out for relief, and we left them in Kuwait. They were just for show when the film crews came into the camps. We also had this big show with the medical supplies that we were prepping for Iraqi casualties. We were supposed to get in there and take care of them.

“But I’ll give you an example of what we actually did. After we shot up this car with civilians, I called in the corpsmen to bring in stretchers. They came in and put two men on stretchers. Five minutes later, they brought them back and dumped their bodies on the side of the road. They were still alive. They were riddled with bullets—one guy was just rolling in agony on the side of the road.”

At the time, intelligence reports were streaming in describing insurgents and rebels driving ambulances and civilian cars. In a growing atmosphere of fear within US military ranks, the entire Iraqi population was now viewed as the enemy.

“We’re thinking everyone is a terrorist,” Massey recalled. “Here we are on no sleep, and there are intelligence reports coming in right and left about suicide attacks and the Republican Guard and so on—attacks being mounted against American forces. So cars come driving through our checkpoints, and our orders are to light them up. The amazing thing about it is that we were telling the Iraqis the exact opposite. We were telling them to keep their schools open, keep the hospitals open, to go about their normal routine—‘we’re not here to hurt you, we’re just here to overthrow Saddam.’ So these people were just doing their normal routines, and they were getting frickin’ blasted for it.”

A recent study estimated the number of Iraqi deaths since the start of the war in March 2003 at around 100,000. When asked if this number seemed accurate, Massey responded:

“Yes, but that of course does not include the thousands more who will be dying from disease because of a lack of medical supplies, clean water, or proper sanitation. It does not include the hundreds of thousands that died in Iraq before the war even began from the sanctions. We are committing genocide in Iraq, and that is the intention.”

It is now well established that all of the pretexts for launching the unprovoked war in Iraq were based on manipulated intelligence and lies. In its drive toward war, the Bush administration fraudulently exploited the September 11 attacks to spread fear and panic throughout the country, and this, as Massey notes, was very effective in the South, where he is from.

“This started with Nixon,” he said. “The South was always predominantly Democratic, but Nixon began this campaign to turn the Southern mentality into Republican mentality, which he did very successfully by taking advantage of the religious orientation of the southern population—the Southern Baptists and what not. And Bush has been able to tap into the religious base here and get into the minds of Southerners, using Christianity, where anything he says is considered the gospel.

“He used this influence in part to sell the war in Iraq, based on fear. But the tide is turning. I think a lot of Southerners are saying ‘enough is enough - it’s time to get out of Iraq.’ I just read a letter to the editor in the Mountaineer, a small local newspaper down here. The lead article on the front page is about a high school football game—I mean this is a small-town paper. The letter is called ‘Country needs to get out of Iraq’ and here’s what it says:

“‘Hindsight is 20/20 and this is a war that should have never been fought. As a Navy veteran with more than 20 years of service, I would be the first one to step forward in the defense of our country. This is not the case here—President Bush has a personal agenda. Arab oil is not worth any American life. We need to get our troops home now! Let’s redirect our talents and energies to finding alternate energy sources.’”

Diagnosed with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, Massey was sent home to argue his case against a dishonorable discharge in the summer of 2003.

“I told them, ‘If you want to label me a conscientious objector for not wanting to kill innocent civilians, then I’ll see you in court.’ The psychologist that I went to see said ‘Well, I don’t deal with conscientious objectors, that’s something the chaplain’s going have to do.’ So the next day I had a meeting with the regimental Sergeant Major—who’s pretty high ranking, in charge of about 4,000 Marines.

“I had a seat in his office, and he said that the Sergeant Major over in Iraq had sent him an e-mail explaining everything, and that I should stop worrying, that he was going to fix everything and it would all be okay. But just before I started to speak, I saw him reach into his desk drawer and pressed what I know was the record button on a tape recorder, and then he closed the drawer really fast and acted all nonchalant. I was thinking, ‘Damn, if you’re going to entrap me then at least try to cover it up a little.’

“So I sat there saying nothing, and finally he says, ‘You know, you only have another seven years to retire—we’re going to move you to a nice little office somewhere or passing out basketballs or something like that...you’ve got a lot vested in the Marine Corps and you need to think about your retirement.’

“I stood up and said ‘Well, Sergeant Major, I don’t want your retirement and I don’t want your benefits. We killed innocent civilians, and you have to face that responsibility, and I’m going to tell everybody what happened.’ I remember his face turned red, and he said that there was going to be legal repercussions that go along with that decision. I told him that I would not expect anything less from the Marine Corps.”

Massey recalls walking directly from the meeting to the Base Exchange, where he picked up a copy of the Marine Corps Times and called a lawyer who was listed in the back. The lawyer was Gary Meyers, whose practice dates back to the My Lai trials during the Vietnam War. There was no trial for Massey. In the end, the Marines backed down and agreed to his honorable discharge. He is currently working on a book and plans on using whatever proceeds there are from it to start a post-traumatic stress disorder foundation.

“What do you tell a kid that just came back from war with the economy the way it is and the lack of jobs, who’s just got finished murdering innocent civilians because his government has violated every law in the Geneva Conventions?” Massey asked. “You expect him to come back to the US and be a productive citizen? What do you do? For me, I keep hanging on to one thing that my grandfather used to say: ‘The truth shall set you free.’ I’ll keep talking as long as people listen.”

See Also:
Mike Hoffman of Iraq Veterans Against War speaks to the WSWS
"We're fighting average Iraqis who don't want the US there"

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