NOVANEWS
by Jim Fetzer and Yvonne Wachter
Saddam and one of his doubles
“I’m sorry to say this, . . . [but] Mr. Schultz has blood on his hands.” — Yvonne Wachter
On Thursday, 3 May 2012, I was briefly interviewed by Ed Schultz on “The Ed Schultz Show”, which is broadcast here in Madison over 92.1 FM. He had mentioned earlier in the program how the“Mission Accomplished” event on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln off the coast of San Diego had turned into a fiasco, where there had been next to nothing to report. I knew from my interviews and conversations with Yvonne Wachter, however, that Saddam Hussein, his two sons, and around 60 members of his general staff had been taken out by her son, then Major Chris Wachter (whom I had inadvertently reduced in rank to Captain) as the pilot of a B-1 bomber on 7 April 2003, only three weeks into “Operation Iraqi Freedom”. So I explained on the air (to the best of my recollection):
“Ed, the ‘Mission Accomplished’ event was originally planned to announce that USAF Capt. Chris Wachter had taken out Saddam Hussein, his two sons and around 60 members of his general staff at a restaurant in the suburbs of Baghdad with his B-1 bomber.“When he returned to the base, he was lionized, put on CNN, and awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Someone in the administration must have realized that three presidents–Reagan, Carter, and Ford–had signed executive orders prohibiting the assassination of heads of foreign states.“He was brought back to Washington and told that, while they admired his flying skills, officially Saddam Hussein had gotten away, where they used one of his doubles for the trial.”
Ed sounded genuinely excited and said, “Wow! I want you to stay over to talk more after the break. This may be one of those ‘Paul Harvey’ moments where ‘Now you know the rest of the story!”
As I have now explained, although Ed had asked me to “stay over” so we could have “the rest of the story”, I was kept hanging for an hour and fifteen minutes more, which not only interfered with my lunch with a friend, which I had forfeited in order to inform the American people about one of the great “con jobs” of the “war on terror” but also to add significant details about how he had been tracked using British-made Jaguar cell phones, how even Dick Cheney had acknowledged that Saddam had been killed and that Chris Wachter had even been honored byThe Rev. Robert Schiller at The Crystal Cathedral. But apparently that was not the kind of information that Ed Schultz and his handlers wanted to be heard during his broadcast.
The hanging of another of Saddam’s doubles
My faith in Ed Schultz has now been badly shaken. As though I had a thick skull and did not get “the big picture”, I naively supposed that I might here from his staff or even from Ed himself, a sentiment that was shared by Yvonne. After she had listened to the shown on Monday, she wrote to me as follows: “Don’t know if you caught Schultz’s show today. He referred to all the people who want to see Pres. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney tried as war criminals as “conspiracy theorists.” That’s the first time I’ve heard that…and that, of course, would include you and me. Think it has anything to do with your missive against him?” To which I replied, “Well, I agree with Michael Moore who replied, when asked, “Do you believe in conspiracy theories?”, replied, “Only those that are true.”
Ed Schultz, however, appears to have no interest in the truth about some of the most important events of the 21st Century, where he appears to be playing his role along with other left-wing 9/11 gatekeepers. I would have been glad to have elaborated upon the use of a double, where Saddam Hussein, the ruler of a nation with an ancient civilization, who owned many palaces and had the wealth of a wealthy nation at his disposal, sought to preserve his life intact by having many doubles, one of whom was used for the stage-managed “trial” that led to his apparent execution by hanging. But think how easy it would have been to talk him into standing-in for the deceased Saddam by promising him a secure future under a new identity, where it would have been pitifully simple to have convinced him that he would be well-compensated for perpetuating the pretense, assuring him that the hanging, like the rest of the trial, would be staged, where he upheld his part of the bargain only to be betrayed and then be actually hung. What a simple way to dispose of an inconvenient witness? Yvonne was so upset by Ed Schultz that she drafted a letter about him, which I am posting here. And on “The Meria Show” the following day, I pursued some of these issues, where Yvonne has made a transcript of the first hour of the show, where the whole show can be heard here.
Yvonne Wachter’s Letter about Ed Schultz
I wonder if you were watching “The Ed Schultz Show” yesterday, May 7, 2012. After learning of your mistreatment by Mr. Schultz Thursday, which you made public in last Saturday’s issue of “Veterans Today,” I was hoping to hear Mr. Schultz offer an apology and perhaps an invitation to have you speak on his show as he had promised but then backed out of. Instead, I distinctly heard Mr. Schultz take a swipe at those of us who wish to see former President George W. Bush and V.P. Cheney tried as war criminals, calling us “conspiracy theorists.” I am highly offended by Mr. Schultz’s abject degradation of you and me.
I had always admired Mr. Schultz and considered him a tough-talking, hard-hitting, prize-fighting champion of truth. To dismiss us both and to then “dis” us, without listening to or reading all the evidence we have to show that Saddam Hussein was killed on April 7, 2003 by the crew of Swede 72 flying their B1-B Lancer bomber, of which my son Lt. Col. Chris Wachter was at that time Maj. Chris Wachter, Commander/Pilot of the aircraft, is more than absurd; it is utterly ignorant. I was hoping to avoid a confrontation over this, but I think it’s now time for the “bomba mamma” to vent.
Has Mr. Schultz forgotten that we were lied into Operation Iraqi Freedom by President George W. Bush?
Has Mr. Schultz forgotten that on May 1, 2003, President George W. Bush left everybody wondering what the hell he was talking about on board the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, standing under a banner that said, “Mission Accomplished,” yet seeming to not really say directly what the mission was and what was accomplished?
Did Mr. Schultz – as a seasoned journalist – not know what most of us were at that time unfamiliar with, that being a new word being added to our daily lexicon: fallen?
Did Mr. Schultz not hear President George W. Bush say in his speech on May 1, 2003, three full weeks after the April 7, 2003 bombing and after sufficient time had passed to confirm DNA tests on a lifeless body of Saddam Hussein, “The tyrant has FALLEN”?
Does Mr. Schultz not know what “fallen” means?
Was Mr. Schultz so oblivious at the time that he failed to read The New York Times article on June 4, 2003 entitled “AFTER THE WAR: BAGHDAD; U.S. Begins to Excavate Bomb Crater in Search for Hussein’s Remains” wherein V.P. Cheney is quoted as saying a month earlier, “I think we did get Saddam Hussein. He was seen being dug out of the rubble and wasn’t able to breathe”?
Did Mr. Schultz not heard the sickening roll calls of the names of all our FALLEN soldiers played every day of Operation Iraqi Freedom, so that there can be no question of what “fallen” means? Or would Mr. Schultz have us equivocate over what “fallen” means? You know, one of those ridiculous “It depends on what ‘Is is’ argumentations? FYI, Mr. Schultz: none of those fallen soldiers simply “fell down and went boom” and Saddam Hussein didn’t simply trip and fall on April 7, 2003. Regimes fall, meaning “topple”; people fall, meaning “die.”
Does Mr. Schultz not care that because George W. Bush failed to take responsibility for directly ordering the assassination of Saddam Hussein, the Mission which WAS accomplished by all accounts and believed by top military leaders for TWO FULL MONTHS AFTER THE EVENT (Saddam was assassinated by U.S. forces), that President George W. Bush has allowed my son and his crew members to have fatwas put upon their very lives due to the story circulated by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on or about the middle of July that Saddam got away and they killed all innocent civilians that day, when the truth should have been told and the crew of Swede 72 all should have been openly treated as national heroes for carrying out a flawless mission to kill Saddam Hussein?
George W. Bush desperately wanted to kill the man who tried to kill his father. You’d think he’d be bursting with pride at doing just that. But that would mean risking his own neck and the prospect of facing a tribunal in the Hague for ordering someone else to do his killing for him, the killing of a person who was protected under Executive Order 12333 and other restrictive orders governing rules of engagement as relating to protected leaders of sovereign nations. Saddam was evil, no doubt. And the crew of Swede 72 had no idea who their target was or that he was a protected person not to be targeted; nonetheless, they are all heroes to most everyone the world round for taking down Saddam Hussein. But it is George W. Bush who gave an illegal order to kill him, and it is George W. Bush who dare not stand tall and claim responsibility for giving that very order.
I’m sorry to say this, because it is a strong statement based on what I believe is the only reasonable conclusion of the position on this that Mr. Schultz has chosen to take: It would appear that by supporting President George W. Bush and his disinformation campaign, which allowed the war in Iraq to carry on past “Mission Accomplished” to the detriment of countless thousands of families who have been shattered by the DEATHS of their soldiers and Iraqi families, as the world foolishly believed we needed to continue to wage war and hunt for Saddam, Mr. Schultz has blood on his hands.
Sorrowfully,
Yvonne Wachter
Jim Fetzer on “The Meria Show”
Here is a transcript of the first hour of my show with Meria Heller, which was broadcast Tuesday, 8 May 2012, on “The Meria Show”, where Yvonne has provide an abbreviated text of the show in progress from the first hour of our conversation as follows:
Prof. Fetzer: Last Thursday I had a very unsettling experience. I was listening to Ed Schultz, whom I’ve long admired. He was talking about the Mission Accomplished fiasco and how it hadn’t made any sense at all. So because I know what had happened from my interviews with Yvonne Wachter, who is the mother of the Air Force B1-bomber pilot who had actually taken out Saddam, his two sons and about 60 members of his general staff on 7 April 2003, I called in to the show. I told the screener what I wanted to say, and this was about 11:25. He kept me on hold until about just a few minutes before noon when he put me on.
And I sketched out to Ed how what had happened was that the “Mission Accomplished” event had been organized in order to announce that Chris Wachter had taken out Saddam Hussein and his two sons and so forth, but someone had — when he returned to base he’d been lionized, he was put on CNN, he was given the Distinguished Flying Cross, but that someone had realized that three presidents — Reagan, Carter and Ford — had signed Executive Orders prohibiting the assassination of heads of foreign states, which meant that if they had announced it Bush would have been subjected to severe international criticism.
The double used for the fake trial of Saddam Husseain
So they called Chris Wachter back to Washington and they told him that while they admired his flying skills, that officially Saddam had gotten away. They had used one of his doubles to try to presumably hand him. Ed was initially very excited, Meria. He said, “Wow!” He said, “I got to keep you on over the break. This may be one of those Paul Harvey moments where now you know the rest of the story.”
Meria: Right.
Prof. Fetzer: I thought that sounded fine. And we went to the break and then he came back and started talking to Alan Grayson, a Congressman running for office out of Florida, which didn’t bother me at all. But then when he was done, after a couple more commercials, he started to take calls from other people. And would you believe, Meria, from noon to 1:15 I stayed for an hour and fifteen minutes waiting for Ed to bring me back on before I got the message?
Meria: Right.
Prof. Fetzer: He was just hanging me out to dry.
Meria: Right, that you weren’t going back on. And I remember –
Prof. Fetzer: I was rather appalled by this. And I published an article about it entitled, “Ouch! Ed Schultz is a Phony and a Fraud,” because I mean here I’m exposing one of the great con jobs of the war on terrorism –
Meria: Right.
Prof. Fetzer: — about Saddam Hussein, which happened after only about three weeks into the war, and if this had been announced Americans would have known there was really no good reason for this to continue. And yet, it’s gone on and on and on and on and thousands of American young men and women have been killed in the meanwhile, with all the fakery and phony trial. I mean even one of Saddam’s wives had visited him and explained — you know, arranged by the Red Cross — and explained this was not her husband.
Major Chris Wachter at The Crystal Cathedral
Meria: Right.
Prof. Fetzer: What had they done with her husband? Even Dick Cheney had been quoted as saying his lifeless body had been dragged out of the rubble and they were confident he was dead. I mean I sent Ed a letter about this and just enumerated item after item after item of proof that what Yvonne had told me was true. And it’s shocking and appalling. Chris Wachter was even honored in The Crystal Cathedral by the Reverend Robert Schuller. And while I believe they are doing everything they can to eliminate all these links, some of which even go to articles in The New York Times quoting Cheney, Meria, I had made sure we downloaded that footage off line so that we can still watch Robert Schuller praising Capt. Chris Wachter for taking out Saddam Hussein, his sons and the members of his general — in the Crystal Cathedral! If you go to that article, you can watch it for yourself.
Meria: Right. Now I remember because you had come on my show with Yvonne.
Prof. Fetzer: That’s exactly right, Meria. We were so pleased when you invited us to come on.
Meria: How could I turn down a story like that? Are you kidding me?
Prof. Fetzer: But Meria, are you the only journalist with integrity in the United States? I mean this was so shocking about Ed Schultz because I always thought he was one of the good guys. And Yvonne has just let me know — we talked today — that yesterday Ed Schultz came on the air and she said he was in a very foul mood and he apparently, in an attempt to dismiss my call from Friday, and where I had sent him a link to my article inVeterans Today, he said that there are some people who are going after Bush and Cheney and want them to be tried as war criminals. And then he really sneered and described them as “conspiracy theorists.” Meria, can you believe that?
Meria: What does that tell you?
Prof. Fetzer: I mean that’s the only verbal club that’s being used to dismiss anyone who explains how the government has been lying to us.
Meria: Exactly.
Prof. Fetzer: I would rather say we are conspiracy realists because we are actually studying the evidence and exposing falsehoods and revealing truths. I agree with Michael Moore when he was asked whether he believed in conspiracy theories replied, “Only those that are true.”
Meria: Right. Well, how many people get convicted of conspiracy in this country?
Book by yet another of Saddam’s doubles
Prof. Fetzer: Yes, it’s one of the most widely prosecuted crimes in the country and only requires two or more individuals collaborating together to bring about a crime. That’s conspiracy.
Meria: Right.
Prof. Fetzer: So to me it’s a stunning confirmation in two respects, Meria. Can you believe this? After I went on the air with him and told Yvonne about it, she was excited about it so she went searching through the Internet to find that brief clip where I had been on just in the few minutes before noon on Friday. And she reported back that they had all been scrubbed. They’d been taken off of the Internet.
And then, number two, for him to come back and try to indirectly dismiss me and her as conspiracy theorists, that was further outrage. That actually confirms that Ed Schultz is part of the mass media cover up. I mean William Colby told us years ago that the CIA holds everyone of any significance in the major media. I just didn’t expect that that would include Ed Schultz.
Meria: Well, you got to look at — he’s on GCN, isn’t he?
Prof. Fetzer: Maybe. Here he’s on a progressive radio station, 92.1FM.
Meria: But people have to get this, you know. There’s so many bullshitters out there that claim to be alternative media. But you’ve got to do the homework to see. Are they left gatekeepers? Who’s supporting them Who’s paying for their show? Is it The Ford Foundation? Is it some gold baron funding their shows? Even if those people pretend to be real, alternative media, their mouths are tied because they won’t get paid if they actually cover real news.
Prof. Fetzer: Well you know, Meria, Ed has done so much good in supporting the labor movement when we were having all of the protests here in the Capitol and coincidentally today is the day we have the primary to decide who’s going to run against Scott Walker in our recall election a few weeks hence. He was here to cover it. He was the only major media figure to do that. I’ve only had very positive feelings toward Ed Schultz.
But for him to cover up, you know, on events like this — in fact, a friend I know here who runs a restaurant, a wonderful restaurant called The Weary Traveler right here in Madison, told me that when Ed Schultz had come to Madison – before he had a conversation with his producer, and his producer explained to him that they weren’t in town to cover what he called “New World Order issues,” including 9/11.
It seems to me that when you have public events, like the “Mission Accomplished” thing, which was so strange –
Meria: Right.
(Partial) double’s book jacket blurb
Prof. Fetzer: — when you hear an explanation for it that involved a massive con job and misleading the American people, where thousands of young American men and women have died after Saddam was already taken out and the false belief that he was still alive, this to me is morally corrupt and intellectually outrageous and I am just ashamed that Ed Schultz is a part of it.
Meria: Well, you know, I always tell my listeners because I don’t like to talk bad about other people because you know what Jim? I figure everybody finds their audience, okay? And I just tell my listeners – and I have for 12 years now on the ‘Net — “Don’t just pay attention to who I put on my show. But specifically pay attention to the people that Inever have on my show.”
Prof. Fetzer: Hahahahaha!
Meria: Okay? So that’s my way of saying, “Those people are full of shit and they are never going to be on my show. But if you still think they’re telling you something good because it’s half truth — To me, I’ve always said the same thing: half truth is still half lies.
Prof. Fetzer: That’s right. That’s right. We need to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, especially about our own history. I mean we have been given such massive lies about JFK, for example, about 9/11, for another, even about the plane crash that took the life of Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota who was an outspoken critic of the Bush-Cheney Administration. And then, Meria, he was warned by Dick Cheney personally that if he opposed them on Iraq there would be severe ramifications for him and for the State of Minnesota.
What could be more severe than actually taking him out in a plane crash so that Minnesota loses its senator and then pushing this mediocrity who had been the Mayor of St. Paul to the fore and largely trashing the memorial service for Paul Wellstone that inevitably would have aspects of a political campaign about it because it was only days before the election where one of his campaign managers had said, “We want to get on a bus and win this for Paul.”
And so people like Noonan — you know, the speech writer for Reagan — had trashed this as having been a political event instead of a memorial service. But of course everyone who would have participated would have been a mixture of both. There was nothing wrong with it all. But Peggy Noonan and other Rep political operatives all virtually in unison trashed the Democrats for betraying the legacy of Paul Wellstone when they were doing precisely the opposite: they were seeking to perpetuate it.
Meria: Right. Jim, we’re going to go to a short break. But stay with me because I’ve got plenty more stuff I want to talk to you about.
Stay with us. Jim Fetzer and I will be right back.
(commercial break)
(continuation of second hour of the show–if you want to know “the rest of the story”)
