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Re: FN-FORUM: War on Terror
date posted 23rd August 2003 22:15
Yawn. The New American Millennium conspirancy theory (or whatever it's
called) was on either BBC2 or Channel 4 months ago. Even those three
comedians whose name escapes me did a thing about it.
We know that US and UK ruling politicians are mad, lying scumbags: our top
man wants to be Holy Roman Emperor and theirs presumably wants to be King of
the Jews. Barking, the lot of them.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Kathy
http://www.vendetta.co.uk
+44(0)7005 982 261
DNRC Minister for Useful but Irritating Information and Trivia
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Matt Thomas" [EMAIL REMOVED]
To: [EMAIL REMOVED]
Sent: Saturday, August 23, 2003 10:12 PM
Subject: RE: FN-FORUM: War on Terror
September 11 and the Origins of the 'War on Terrorism': A Revisionist
Account
By Dr Stephen J. Sniegoski
I offer here what might be called a moderate revisionist account of the
September 11 terror and the origin of the U.S. 'war on terrorism.'
The official story permeating the major media runs something like this:
the U.S. war on Afghanistan was simply an ad hoc response to the
horrific events of September 11, which struck as a bolt from the blue,
totally unexpected by American security agencies. The Afghanistan war
emerged overnight as a simple effort to punish, and thus bring to
justice, the perpetrators of the abominable deeds - namely, the al Qaeda
terrorist network masterminded by the infamous Osama Bin Laden,
ensconced in his cave in Afghanistan (accompanied, no doubt, by his
dialysis machine). Presumably, the punishment of the perpetrators would
make America safer from terrorism.
Because the Taliban government of Afghanistan harbored Bin Laden - the
official line goes - it was necessary and just for the United States to
overthrow that regime, which according to the U.S. Department of Justice
was not actually a government at all but simply a vipers' nest of
terrorists, as evil as Bin Ladin and al Qaeda. [1] In the event, the
United States's elimination of the nefarious terrorists had the effect
of liberating the oppressed Afghan people from tyranny.
The media, quoting government sources, identified Bin Laden as the
likely culprit within hours of the attacks on the Twin Towers. It took
more time for the story to evolve to the point where the Taliban became
equivalent in evil with Bin Laden and al Qaeda, but soon enough, the
whole affair was openly presented as a Manichæan conflict between good
and evil, even including the claim that the United States was attacked
because evil folk hate good folk.
Manichæan conflict between good and evil
The official line has finally begun to wear thin, and even such
mouthpieces of Establishment platitudes as Chris Matthews and Michael
Kinsley are now able to discern that the war is directed toward much
broader purposes than a simple effort to punish the actual culprits of
September 11. Kinsley writes: 'But how did the "war on terrorism' change
focus so quickly from rooting out and punishing the perpetrators of 9-11
- a task that is still incomplete - to something (what?) about nuclear
proliferation?' (Parenthesis in original.) [2] In Matthews's view, the
limited punitive war has been 'hijacked' by people with other, broader
aims - including, as he specifies, the proposed effort to prevent
members of the 'axis of evil' from developing weapons of mass
destruction. Matthews writes:
'A month ago, I knew why we were fighting. You knew why we were
fighting. We were getting the killers of Sept. 11 before they could get
us again. If that meant tracking down Osama Bin Laden and his filthy
gang to the ends of the Earth, we were up to the task.
So what happened to that gutsy war of bringing the World Trade Center
and Pentagon killers to justice? Who hijacked that clear-eyed,
all-American front of September-to-January and left our leaders mouthing
this 'axis of evil' line? Who hijacked the firefighters' war of
righteous outrage and got us reciting this weird mantra about Iran, Iraq
- and North Korea, of all places?' [3]
Kinsley and Matthews make significant (though very obvious) observations
here. The war is far different from a simple effort to punish those
responsible for the September 11 atrocities. There is absolutely no
connection between that event and President Bush's current concern with
his 'axis of evil.' In fact, the White House does not even attempt to
make such a connection. As columnist Robert Novak notes, commenting on
the 2002 State of the Union speech, 'Bush abandoned seeking some
connection between the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the next step in
the war on terrorism. Indeed, the nexus between the three rogue nations
and any kind of terrorism was slender, with the president asserting
these countries "could provide" weapons of mass destruction "to
terrorists."' [4]
September 11 events given as an excuse
Even the idea that the war has transmuted from its original intent
represents a revisionist interpretation. And it is a short step from the
transmutation thesis to the position that the war was never intended to
be a simple, straightforward 'firefighters' war of righteous outrage'
and that from the very outset the September 11 events simply gave
America's foreign policy elites the excuse to put their prewar agendas
into action. As I will show, American penetration of energy-rich Central
Asia has been a much-discussed foreign policy objective for some years.
Moreover, there is evidence that, prior to September 11, the United
States had actually been making plans to remove the Taliban regime.
Further, Zionist elements in the American ruling establishment have
always sought to direct the United States against the 'terrorist'
states, which are, not coincidentally, the enemies of Israel. Certainly,
that - - which has had its tentacles in both the Clinton and George W.
Bush administrations - has long talked of taking a tougher line toward
Iran and Iraq, as well as giving greater support to Israel's war on
'terrorists.'
In short, it is apparent that the war was anything but an overnight
improvisation to address the September 11 atrocity; rather, the
September 11 atrocities provided the pretext for the United States to
put her existing war plans into motion.
Anything but an overnight improvisation
There is nothing novel about policymakers taking advantage of certain
events to achieve a pre-existing agenda. In the 1840s James K. Polk
exploited the Mexican army's firing on American troops in the disputed
region of south Texas in order to achieve his goal of acquiring Mexican
territory by military means. In 1898, the explosion of the battle-ship
Maine in Havana harbor provided the pretext for American imperialists to
launch a war to grab overseas colonies, notably including the
far-distant Philippines. And, of course, in 1941 the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor provided Franklin Roosevelt his long-sought opportunity to
enter World War II against Germany. If a real incident doesn't present
itself, it becomes necessary for the crafty politico to fabricate one -
as Lyndon Johnson did with the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Examples could
be provided ad infinitum.
Populace has to be persuaded
So let me simply say that latching onto events to justify the
implementation of a pre-existing militaristic agenda has long been the
standard operating procedure of ruling elites, especially in formal
democracies where a war-averse populace has to be persuaded of the
righteousness of whatever policy of mayhem and murder government leaders
intend to pursue. (I should add that in today's context the word
'persuaded' is too strong a term, since the contemporary American public
needs minimal intellectual persuasion. Instead, like the
less-intelligent creatures of Orwell's Animal Farm, it believes whatever
story the government and the official media feed it.)
Even if only this much were true - that the September 11 events served
as a pretext to achieve preexisting aims by military action - the
meaning of the war on Afghanistan would depart radically from the
conventional public presentation. But going even further, there are
intimations that the United States (and her close ally Israel) had prior
knowledge of the impending attack and did nothing to impede it, in order
to obtain the needed justification for war. Since that more-extreme
thesis is more difficult to prove, this article will devote considerable
space to the evidence for it.
I acknowledge that my counter-interpretation of September 11 is hardly
original. While the mainstream media have naturally eschewed it, and
assiduously, it is quite evident on the Web. [5] In its purest
conspiratorial form - that the U. S. government had prior knowledge or
actually facilitated the atrocities - it is most popular on the hard
Left and the conspiratorial far Right. In its milder form - that from
its very outset the purpose of the war was to achieve broader goals than
simply the punishment of those responsible for September 11 - the
revisionist thesis actually seems to predominate outside the United
States.
Cui bono?
What evidence exists for the revisionist thesis? According to the
traditional adage, when a crime is committed, the first question to be
asked is 'Cui bono?' - 'Who benefits?'
The Afghanistan war has obviously been advantageous for American Big Oil
and for policymakers who think in terms of U.S. world hegemony. It has
enabled the United States to position herself so that she can secure the
immense oil and gas reserves of Central Asia. The stabilization of
Afghanistan is a crucial element for the attainment of that prize. [6]
As a consequence of the war on Afghanistan, it appears that U.S.
military and political influence will be a permanent fixture in Central
Asia, a region of key geostrategic importance for American global
hegemony. Later in this article I will develop at greater length the
issue of American resources and geostrategic interests.
Obviously, the other primary beneficiary has been Israel. For Israel the
'war on terrorism' not only provides a green light for the crushing of
the Palestinian people, entailing their expulsion or total
bantustanization[7], but also puts American power on the side of Israel
against her enemies across the entire Middle East. [8] That is because
the officially designated 'terrorists' and countries that 'harbor
terrorists' turn out to be the major enemies of Israel. Note that Iran
and Iraq make up two-thirds of President Bush's diabolical 'axis' and
that North Korea is mainly included because she supplies weapons to
those countries. It is interesting to note that the very phrase 'axis of
evil' was coined by Bush's speechwriter, David Frum, a hyper-Zionist who
holds dual United States/Canadian citizenship. (It is not apparent that
the protection of American national interests is foremost in Mr. Frum's
mind. I think Mr. Frum is one of those people whom the perceptive Joe
Sobran would never accuse of dual loyalty. I also expect that Mr. Frum's
single loyalty would not be to Canada.)
A policy of militarily restraining and diminishing the military strength
of her neighbors serves ipso facto to maintain nuclear-armed Israel's
monopoly of power in the Middle East, which has been the long-standing
fundamental objective of Israeli foreign and military policy. As
illustrated in 1981 by her military strike on the Osiraq reactor in
Iraq, Israel has been willing to use force to maintain her regional
nuclear monopoly. Long before September 11, the United States was
actively helping Israel preserve that monopoly by maintaining a
hypo-critical double standard: ignoring Israel's acquisition of weapons
of mass destruction while opposing the transfer of even peaceful nuclear
technologies to others.
Israel currently views Iran as the neighboring state most likely to
develop nuclear weapons, and she has been pushing to have that blocked,
using the issue of Iran's alleged support of terrorism as the ostensible
justification for a military attack. Hints are even floating about that
if the United States doesn't do something, Israel herself will act. [9]
The initial move of the U.S. military into Afghanistan saw efforts on
Iran's part to improve relations with the United States, but that
tentative rapprochement has now been aborted, and for the fundamental
cause of that one must look at the influence of Israel and her American
supporters.
One crucial point must be clear: a military effort to prevent Iran from
developing nuclear weapons has nothing to do with an effort to punish
the perpetrators of the September 11 atrocities, an operation with which
Iran has cooperated extensively. [10]
Interests of Big Oil and Israel converged on Afghanistan issue
It is significant that the interests of Big Oil and Israel converged on
the Osama/Afghanistan issue. In the past, the interests of the two
groups have often diverged - with the oil interests seeking to placate
Israel's oil-producing enemies. It is not clear that either group could
have achieved success on its own. While the oil interests loom large in
the Bush administration, Zionist influence reigns supreme in the
Establishment media. It is unlikely that any major military action could
succeed without the media's being favorably disposed - witness the
contributions of a hostile media to the Vietnam fiasco.
However, while the interests of Big Oil and Israel coincide on
Afghanistan, their overall interests are not identical. Big Oil seems to
desire a more limited war - restricted largely to Afghanistan and
benefiting from the cooperation of an 'anti-terrorist' coalition of
'moderate' Islamic states. Secretary of State Colin Powell appears to be
the administration spokesman for that position. In contrast, Israel and
her American supporters want a broader war against 'terrorism' - that
is, a war against the enemies of Israel. In that corner, one finds
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol and the
Weekly Standard, Charles Krauthammer, William Safire, Richard Perle, and
neoconservatives in general. [11] Such a 'war against terrorism' would
work against Big Oil's desire to form a coalition of moderate Islamic
governments to counter Islamic 'fundamentalism.' Zionists, for their
part, understand that a coalition of 'moderate' Islamic states in bed
with the United States could be used to put diplomatic pressure on
Israel to moderate her policies toward the Palestinians.
Benefits from September 11
Other important groups have benefited from September 11, especially the
Bush administration itself. With the country going nowhere and the
economy sliding downward, September 11 was a godsend to the beleaguered
regime. Bush's popularity has soared to astronomical heights. More than
that, the entire Republican Party has sought to capitalize on the
popularity of the war. Karl Rove, the president's top political adviser,
has been urging Republicans to focus on the war theme. [12] Paraphrasing
Roosevelt aide Harry Hopkins's notorious election-winning formula -
'Tax, tax; spend, spend; elect, elect' - a Republican activist jokingly
said to me: 'Bomb, bomb; elect, elect.' For that matter, even Franklin
Roosevelt, seeing his popularity flagging, found it necessary to
transform himself from 'Dr. New Deal' to 'Dr. Win-the-War.'
Also benefiting from the war and its accompanying fever is the
once-denigrated military-industrial complex, which naturally will expand
in size and prestige. An influential, though often overlooked, element
of that complex are the old Cold Warriors (and the institutions that
house them), who need an Enemy to justify their existence. Many of those
people would face unemployment should there ever be a 'peace scare.'
[13]
However, these latter two groups - Republican politicos and the
military-industrial complex - serve largely as auxiliaries in the
pro-war movement, rather than as seminal forces. They would tend to
support any war, anywhere. The point is that while these groups are
predisposed to support war per se, they have not determined the specific
parameters of this particular war with its focus on Central Asia and on
Israel's enemies. [14]
Foreknowledge
How did it happen that the September 11 tragedy led to developments long
sought by Big Oil and by Israel? Were the terrorist attacks really a
bolt from the blue - truly fortuitous - a case of pure serendipity? Or
is there any evidence that the U.S. government and Israel had prior
knowledge of the impending terrorist strikes but allowed them to take
place or perhaps even facilitated them?
Even operatives of the Establishment media recognize the improbability
of September 11's coming as a complete surprise. As Howard Kurtz wrote
in the Washington Post: 'How could we not have known? How is it that
America was totally blindsided by the Sept. 11 attacks?' [15]
As Bill Clinton might put it, it all depends on what 'we' means. In
fact, considerable evidence has come to light suggesting that certain
Americans, and others, were not blindsided at all.
Instant messages to Israel
Employees in the Israel office of the instant-messaging firm Odigo
received messages from the company's New York office warning of the
terrorist aerial strikes about two hours before they occurred.
Originally it was stated that the World Trade Center was specifically
mentioned, but that was later denied. [16]
Stock-market speculation
Just prior to September 11, sudden and unexplained speculation occurred
in the stock of American and United airlines. An inordinate number of
'put' options - bets that a stock will go down - were placed on those
two listings. No other airlines saw such speculation. Similar 'put'
options were placed on the stock of various companies - including
Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley - that were housed in the World Trade
Towers. Since it is common for stocks of companies that suffer tragedies
to plunge, this stock speculation would imply that someone had
foreknowledge of the horrific event. American intelligence should have
been aware of the abnormal speculation, since the CIA and other
intelligence agencies monitor stock trading closely. [17]
It is interesting that many of the 'put' options on United Airlines were
purchased through Deutschebank/AB Brown, a firm managed until 1998 by
the current executive director of the CIA, A.B. 'Buzzy' Krongard. [18]
Private warnings
Some people outside the intelligence organs seem also to have gotten
warnings. For example, San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown was scheduled to
fly to New York City on the morning of September 11, but he claimed
later that he received a call the night before from his 'security people
at the airport' telling him that he should be extra-cautious about air
travel on the eleventh. [19] The FAA prevented the author Salman
Rushdie, who is under special protection because of threats on his life,
from flying to the United States during the week leading up to September
11, and Rushdie connects that prohibition to terror warnings in the
possession of the government. [20] In August 2001, Drs. Garth and Mary
Nicolson, a husband-and-wife medical team who are among the foremost
Gulf War Syndrome investigators, reported to Department of Defense and
National Security Council officials that a number of personal friends in
the intelligence and diplomatic communities had told them that a
terrorist attack on the Pentagon would take place on September 11. [21]
And CounterPunch, the newsletter edited by Alexander Cockburn and
Jeffrey St. Clair, reported that the extremely influential and
well-connected investment firm Goldman Sachs circulated an internal memo
in its Tokyo office on September 10 advising all employees to avoid any
U.S. government buildings because of a possible terrorist attack. [22]
It is highly significant that knowledge of the planned aerial onslaught
seems to have leaked outside the terrorist network, for if outsiders
knew about the planned attack, one would not expect the CIA itself to be
excluded from that knowledge. Bin Laden and his associates had been
funded and trained by the CIA in the war against the Soviet Union. It is
hard to fathom how the CIA, the best-financed intelligence organization
in the world, would be unable to secure information on an organization
made up of its former employees.
Public warnings
The fact of the matter is that it was public knowledge that Osama Bin
Laden was planning terrorist acts in the United States. On June 23,
2001, Reuters dispatched a story headlined 'Bin Laden Fighters Plan
Anti-U.S. attack,' with this lead sentence: 'Followers of exiled Saudi
dissident Osama Bin Laden are planning a major attack on U.S. and
Israeli interests.' And a June 25 UPI dispatch stated: 'Saudi dissident
Osama Bin Laden is planning a terrorist attack against the United
States.' [23]
Warnings to the U.S. government
Dire warnings flowed to the U.S. government from various sources.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak claims to have warned the United States
12 days prior to September 11 that 'something would happen.' [24]
According to Russian news reports, Russian intelligence notified the CIA
during the summer that 25 terrorist pilots had been specifically
training for suicide missions. In an interview September 15 with MSNBC,
Russian -President Vladimir Putin confirmed that in August he had
ordered Russian intelligence to warn the United States 'in the strongest
possible terms' of imminent terrorist strikes on airports and government
buildings. [25] According to a story in the Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung, U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies received warning signals
in the early summer that Middle Eastern terrorists were planning to
hijack commercial aircraft and use them as weapons to destroy important
symbols of American and Israeli culture. [26] German police have
confirmed that an Iranian man phoned the U.S. Secret Service from his
deportation cell in Germany to warn of the planned terrorist assault on
the World Trade Center. [27]
U.S. was aware of hijacked-planes scenario
A key aspect of the official story is that while U.S. authorities did
expect acts of terrorism in the United States, the hijacked-planes
scenario was completely unforeseen. The truth is, however, that
terrorist use of hijacked planes had been talked about for some time. As
columnist Robert Novak pointed out in his column of September 27: 'From
the moment of the September 11th attacks, high-ranking federal officials
insisted that the terrorists' method of operation surprised them. Many
stick to that story. Actually, elements of the hijacking plan were known
to the FBI as early as 1995 and, if coupled with current information,
might have uncovered the plot.' [28]
In January 1995, police in the Philippines arrested Abdul Hakim Murad,
an associate of Ramzi Yousef, leader of the group involved in the 1993
World Trade Towers bombing. Under interrogation, Murad spoke of a plan
by the Ramzi group to hijack a commercial airliner and crash it into CIA
headquarters in Virginia. Murad, who had attended flight schools in the
United States, said that he was going to be the pilot. Filipino
investigators also turned up evidence that commercial buildings in San
Francisco, Chicago, and New York City were to be targeted. That
information was passed on to the FBI. [29]
Notably, U.S. security officials had considered and prepared for
possible attacks by suicide planes during the Atlanta Summer Olympics in
1996. [30] Furthermore, measures to avert suicide airliner crashes were
in effect during the 2000 Olympics in Sydney and were on track for the
2002 winter games in Salt Lake City. As a matter of fact, International
Olympic Committee officials have revealed that suicide plane-crash
scenarios had been considered in their security planning for every
Olympics since 1972. [31] In addition, the FAA's Criminal Acts against
Civil Aviation report for 2000 warned that Bin Laden and his followers
were a threat to U.S. civil aviation. [32] Finally, since 1996 the FBI
had made numerous inquiries about suspected Bin Laden associates' taking
flight training in the United States and abroad. [33]
U.S. monitored Bin Laden's conversations
U.S. authorities acknowledge that they electronically monitored Bin
Laden's conversations in the past, but the official story maintains that
Bin Laden stopped engaging in electronic communication after he learned
that monitored communications had aided the U.S. cruise missile strike
on his Afghanistan training camp in 1998. However, some knowledgeable
observers reject that account. For example, the eminent Egyptian
journalist and former government spokesman Mohammed Heikal, in an
interview with the British newspaper The Guardian, maintained that 'Bin
Laden has been under surveillance for years: every telephone call was
monitored and al Qaeda has been penetrated by American intelligence,
Pakistani intelligence, Saudi intelligence, Egyptian intelligence. They
could not have kept secret an operation that required such a degree of
organisation and sophistication.' [34]
Moreover, in February, 2001, UPI terrorism correspondent Richard Sale
reported that U.S. intelligence agencies were able to monitor some of
Bin Laden's electronic communications. [35] If, as the official story
has it, the September 11 events required long-term planning, it would
seem likely that American intelligence picked up some information about
the plan.
Official claims of an intelligence blackout in the run-up to September
11 seem odd in light of other official claims that U.S. intelligence was
able to successfully monitor the Bin Laden network's electronic
communications immediately after the attacks. According to Newsweek
magazine, the key reason that the authorities identified Bin Laden as
the culprit was that U.S. intelligence picked up communications among
his associates relaying the message: 'We've hit the targets.' [36]
Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah gave a similar account to the Associated
Press on September 11, claiming that U.S. government monitors had
overheard two Bin Laden aides celebrating the successful terrorist
strike. [37] Hatch repeated the story to ABC News the same day, adding
that he had received the information from both CIA and FBI officials.
The validity of Hatch's story was confirmed by the hostile reaction of
Bush administration officials, with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
condemning the unauthorized disclosure of allegedly classified
information. [38]
It's hard to deny that Bin Laden would have to rely heavily upon
electronic communications in order to direct a global terrorist
operation. And if U.S. intelligence agencies were able to monitor his
communications immediately after the September 11 attack, it is
difficult to believe that they were totally unable to do so before that
time.
Hijackers were known to authorities
Interestingly, the suicide hijackers were actually known to U.S.
authorities, and they seem to have made little effort to conceal their
identities. For example, the FBI placed two of the hijackers, Kahlil
Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhamzi, on an FBI 'watch list' on August 23, after
the CIA received information linking the pair to Bin Laden. But the
authorities somehow failed to pass along that information to the
airlines, and the two were able to buy first-class one-way airline
tickets, and then board and hijack a jetliner on September 11. [39]
The case of Ziad Samir Jarrah, one of the suspected hijackers aboard the
United Airlines jet that crashed in Pennsylvania, has its oddities also.
Authorities in the United Arab Emirates detained and questioned Jarrah
at the Dubai International Airport after he arrived there from Pakistan
on January 30, 2001. The request for the interrogation had been made by
the U.S. government. According to an unnamed United Arab Emirates
official: 'The Americans told us that he was a supporter of terrorist
organizations, that he had connections with terrorist organizations.'
Jarrah was allowed to leave the U.A.E., traveling on to Hamburg via
Amsterdam. Later he flew to the United States. Despite the interest of
U.S. authorities in him and his activities and his connections, Jarrah
was allowed to enter the country. He then enrolled in a flight school.
Jarrah was stopped for speeding in Maryland on September 9, two days
before the hijacking. The Maryland State Police apparently ran his name
through their computers but, inexplicably enough, found nothing on him.
They issued him a ticket and allowed him to proceed. [40]
The strange case of Mohammed Atta
Mohammed Atta, the alleged ringleader of the terrorist strike team, was
reportedly an object of attention for Egyptian, German, and American
authorities, and yet managed to travel without hindrance between Europe
and America throughout 2000 and 2001. U.S. agents in Germany had
monitored Atta's group there before September 11; after the attacks,
according to the British paper The Observer, 'A team of agents
dispatched by the FBI to Germany has been focusing on the northern city
of Hamburg, where three of the men who died in the planes and four
others who were on the FBI's initial list of suspects studied at
universities.' Atta 'was under surveillance between January and May last
year [2000] after he was reportedly observed buying large quantities of
chemicals in Frankfurt, apparently for the production of explosives and
for biological warfare.' [41]
Atta came to the attention of U.S. authorities several times in 2001. On
January 10, 2001, he was allowed to enter the United States on a tourist
visa, even though he admitted to immigration officials that he would be
attending flight school, an activity that requires a student visa. The
executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association told
the Washington Post that 'nine times out of ten' a person in that
situation would have been denied entrance. Oddly enough, federal
immigration police overlooked Atta's visa status violation even though
he had previously been under FBI surveillance for stockpiling
bomb-making materials. [42]
During the summer of 2001, the FBI discovered that Atta received a wire
transfer of $100,000 from an account in Pakistan alleged to be
controlled by a representative of Osama Bin Laden. [43] It is difficult
to understand how such a large sum of money could be transmitted with
impunity to someone under FBI surveillance.
The strange case of Zacarias Moussaoui
The government's seeming lack of interest in the case of Zacarias
Moussaoui is also very strange. On January 3, 2002, Moussaoui was
arraigned on terrorism conspiracy charges in connection with the
September 11 attacks. He had been arrested in Minnesota on August 16
after officials of a flight school there alerted the FBI of his
suspicious behavior. Though lacking the most basic flying skills, he was
seeking flight training on a commercial jet simulator. Moreover, he
reportedly did not want to learn how to take off or land, only how to
steer the jet while it was in the air. Moussaoui was detained by the
Immigration and Naturalization Service on charges of violating the terms
of his visa.
Local FBI investigators in Minneapolis immediately viewed Moussaoui as a
terrorist suspect and sought authorization for a special
counterintelligence surveillance warrant in order to search the hard
drive of his home computer. Higher-level officials in Washington
rejected the request, claiming there was insufficient evidence to meet
the legal requirements for the warrant. On August 26, French
intelligence notified FBI headquarters that Moussaoui had connections to
Osama Bin Laden, but even that revelation had little effect. A special
counterterrorism panel of the FBI and CIA concluded that there was
insufficient evidence to show that Moussaoui represented any threat, and
he was not even transferred from INS detention to FBI custody until
after September 11. [44] In an analysis published December 22, the New
York Times commented that the Moussaoui case 'raised new questions about
why the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies did not
prevent the hijackings.' [45]
What did the U.S. government know?
In early August, the CIA informed the White House and other high
government officials that Osama Bin Laden intended to mount a terrorist
attack in the United States. [46] In its September 24 issue, Newsweek
made the startling revelation that on September 10, 'A group of top
Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning,
apparently because of security concerns.' [47] That would imply that
some federal officials knew of the exact timing of the attack. It
appears that while federal officials might have made use of such
knowledge to save their own skins, they had no desire to actually
prevent the terrorist attack from taking place; or, to be more precise,
that certain government officials at the highest levels had no desire to
prevent it from taking place.
David P. Schippers, noted Chicago lawyer and the House Judiciary
Committee's chief investigator in the Clinton impeachment trial, has
charged that elements of the U.S. government had foreknowledge of the
September attack. He claims that lower-echelon FBI agents in Chicago and
Minnesota contacted him about a month and a half before September 11 and
told him that a terrorist attack was going to occur in lower Manhattan.
According to Schippers, the agents had been developing extensive
information on the planned attack for many months. However, the FBI
command pulled them off the terrorist investigation and threatened them
with prosecution under the National Security Act if they went public
with the information. As a result, some of them went to Schippers in
hopes of prompting someone influential to persuade the government to
take action. Schippers tried to pass the information on to high
government officials - including some in the attorney general's office -
but his efforts apparently were ignored. One would have thought that
Schippers's background would have made him a credible witness,
especially in the eyes of the intelligence and security appointees of a
Republican regime.
He is now representing at least ten of the FBI agents in a suit against
the U.S. government in an attempt to have their testimony subpoenaed,
which would enable them to legally tell what they know and legally get
it on record. [48]
Alleged terrorists acted like boobs
In an interview that appeared on January 13 in the Berlin daily
Tagesspiegel, Andreas von Bülow - who served on a parliamentary
commission that oversaw the three branches of German intelligence from
1969 to 1994 - finds the modus operandi of the alleged terrorist
highjackers to be very suspicious. In particular, he regards the clues
that they left behind to be very amateurish, if not idiotic. He
describes them as 'assailants who ... leave tracks behind them like a
herd of stampeding elephants. They made payments with credit cards with
their own names; they reported to their flight instructors with their
own names. They left behind rented cars with flight manuals in Arabic
for jumbo jets. They took with them, on their suicide trip, wills and
farewell letters, which fell into the hands of the FBI, because they
were stored in the wrong place and wrongly addressed. Clues were left
like behind like in a child's game of hide-and-seek, which were to be
followed.' [49]
How could terrorists who were capable of secretly carrying out a very
complicated plan, undetected beforehand, leave evidence behind that even
the Keystone Cops could detect? Or was the evidence left behind for the
express purpose of incriminating the Bin Laden network?
Reporter Robert Fisk points out that the alleged evidence does not mesh
with the notion that the terrorist highjackers were devoted Muslims.
Fisk writes: 'If the hand-written, five-page document which the FBI says
it found in the baggage of Mohamed Atta, the suicide bomber from Egypt,
is genuine, then the men who murdered more than 7,000 innocent people
believed in a very exclusive version of Islam - or were surprisingly
unfamiliar with their religion.' [50]
Other strange revelations
Two other pieces of evidence frequently cited by conspiratorial
believers are most intriguing but are of uncertain validity. One odd
case is that of a 35-year-old American by the name of Delmart Edward
'Mike' Vreeland II. Vreeland claims to be a lieutenant in a U.S. Navy
intelligence unit and says he knew in advance about the September 11
attacks. He has been imprisoned in Canada since December 2000, being
initially arrested on fraud-related charges. While in prison, he tried
to warn Canadian authorities about possible terrorist attacks on New
York and the Pentagon, as well as on targets in Ottawa and Toronto, but
was ignored. He then wrote the warning on a piece of paper, sealed it in
an envelope, and handed it to jail guards a month before the attacks.
The guards opened the letter on September 14 and immediately forwarded
the information to Ottawa.
American law-enforcement officials want Vreeland returned to the United
States, where he would face fraud-related criminal charges in five
states. Vreeland and his lawyers are fighting extradition, claiming that
a return to this country could mean his death. [51] The entire story is
fascinating, but Vreeland does appear to be a con artist. [52] That he
was in naval intelligence and was involved in various secret operations
seems implausible. His prediction of the attacks could have been a lucky
guess.
More intriguing are remarks that Tom Kennedy, a member of the Federal
Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) National Urban Search and Rescue
Team, made during a nationally telecast interview with CBS News anchor
Dan Rather on September 13. Kennedy told Rather that FEMA sent the Urban
Search and Rescue Team to New York City on Monday night, which was the
night before the attacks occurred!
Kennedy recounted: 'We're currently one of the first teams that was
deployed to support the City of New York in this disaster. We arrived on
late Monday night [September 10] and went right into action on Tuesday
morning' [September 11]. FEMA officials said Kennedy misstated his
team's arrival date. Kennedy has never been reached for comment. The
easy explanation is that this was a slip of the tongue, but since the
interview took place on September 13, it would seem that Kennedy must
have fallen victim to an extremely poor memory - perhaps signaling
early-onset Alzheimer's Syndrome. [53]
Bush administration hindered Bin Laden probes
FBI and military intelligence officials in Washington have claimed that
they were prevented for political reasons from carrying out full
investigations into members of the Bin Laden family and Saudi activities
in the United States before the attacks of September 11. [54] FBI deputy
director John O'Neill, who for years led U.S. investigations into Bin
Laden's al Qaeda network, resigned in August 2001 in protest over the
obstruction. [55]
Ironically, after his resignation O'Neill took a new job as head of
security at the World Trade Center. He died on September 11.
Big Oil - and Big Policy
Since their motives for war differ, it is necessary to discuss the
actions of Big Oil and Israel separately. (Israel's moves - and movers -
will be examined in the fourth and concluding part of this article.)
President Bush and his top advisors, most significantly Vice President
Dick Cheney, have had close connections with major oil companies. And
major oil interests have for some time been eyeing the vast, largely
untapped oil and gas resources of the Caspian Basin and Central Asia.
The Caspian Sea reserves comprise 10 percent of the world's known supply
- worth about $5 trillion at today's prices. However, Central Asia's oil
and gas reserves are land-locked, which means that the energy wealth
must be sent through long pipelines to reach global markets. Control of
Afghanistan is valuable not because of any oil or gas reserves of her
own but because of her crucial geographic location. Potential transit
routes for oil and natural gas exports from Central Asia to the Arabian
Sea run through Afghanistan. American oil companies have sought to lay
such a pipeline across that country, but political stability must first
be established in the turbulent region.
Afghanistan's key role
The value of Afghanistan, however, far transcends the oil-pipeline
issue. Elie Krakowski, a former Department of Defense specialist on
Afghanistan, points out that Afghanistan has traditionally been, and
remains, a key area in global power politics:
Why then have so many great nations fought in and over Afghanistan, and
why should we be concerned with it now? In short, because Afghanistan is
the crossroads between what Halford MacKinder called the world's
Heartland and the Indian subcontinent. It owes its importance to its
location at the confluence of major routes. A boundary between land
power and sea power, it is the meeting point between opposing forces
larger than itself. Alexander the Great used it as a path to conquest.
So did the Moghuls. An object of competition between the British and
Russian empires in the 19th century, Afghanistan became a source of
controversy between the American and Soviet superpowers in the 20th.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has become an important
potential opening to the sea for the landlocked new states of Central
Asia. The presence of large oil and gas deposits in that area has
attracted countries and multinational corporations. Russia and China,
not to mention Pakistan and India, are deeply involved in trying to
shape the future of what may be the world's most unchangeable people.
Because Afghanistan is a major strategic pivot what happens there
affects the rest of the world.' [56]
U.S. control over Central Asia
Leftist critics of American imperialism frequently portray American
policy as based simply on the desire for corporate profits - in the case
of Central Asia, profits from oil. And their argument contains an
element of truth. Most Persian Gulf countries place stringent
restrictions on American investment, which means that Central Asia is
one of the few remaining growth regions for U.S. oil companies. [57]
Undoubtedly some individuals profit monetarily from those restrictions;
but the policies that American state officials pursue go far beyond
providing mere personal wealth for themselves or their cronies.
American policies reflect certain geopolitical beliefs - connected to
the economic interests of particular groups, indeed, but not necessarily
related to the immediate financial gain of particular policymakers. The
United States, or at least her foreign-policy elite, sees a need for the
United States to dominate Central Asian energy resources as she
dominates the Persian Gulf oil fields. Obviously, the development of
those energy resources will mean financial gain for American investors.
But control of the area will also enhance U.S. global power, and such
control is thus a critical part of a geostrategic strategy to achieve
global hegemony.
U.S. geostrategic models
Among the higher circles, views differ on how best to achieve the agreed
goal of American dominance of Central Asia. Opinions fall along a
continuum between two contrasting foreign-policy models: competitive and
cooperative. According to the competitive model, other powers are
adversaries in the quest for world power and wealth. It's a zero-sum
game - anything that benefits the United States's adversaries
automatically harms the United States. America's goal is to achieve
world hegemony - any lesser achievement would leave the United States
vulnerable to her enemies. To achieve hegemony America must act
unilaterally. In particular she must monopolize the world's crucial
energy sources to keep that wealth out of the hands of potential enemies
such as Iran, Russia, and China.
One of the foremost articulators of the competitive position is Zbigniew
Brzezinski, national security advisor in the Carter administration. In
his 1997 work The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its
Geostrategic Imperatives, Brzezinski portrays the Eurasian landmass as
the linchpin for world power, with Central Asia being key to the
domination of Eurasia. [58] For the United States to maintain the global
primacy that Brzezinski equates with American security, the United
States must, at the very least, prevent any possible adversary, or
coalition of adversaries, from controlling that crucial region. And, of
course, the best way for the United States to prevent adversaries from
controlling a region is to control it herself. [59] With considerable
prescience, Brzezinski remarks that, because of popular resistance to
U.S. military expansionism, his ambitious strategy could not be
implemented 'except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely
perceived direct external threat.' [60]
The second model envisions cooperation, rather than competition, in
seizing and managing the resources of Central Asia. The idea that
cooperation with Russia and China in an expanded world state-capitalism,
with its (notional) concomitant prosperity, would enhance world peace
closely resembles the old Kissinger/Rockefeller 1970s vision of détente
with the Soviet Union. Better transport and communications links in the
Central Asian region could transform presently isolated countries into
key trading centers at the crossroads of Europe and Asia - reminiscent
of the Silk Road of the Middle Ages. U.S. officials predict the 21st
Century Silk Road running through Central Asia will include railroads,
oil and gas pipelines, and fiberoptic cables. [61]
One twist on the cooperation thesis has it that energy production in
Central Asia, hinging on cooperation between the United States and
Russia, is intended to lessen the industrial world's dependence on the
unstable Middle East. Making Central Asia safe for state-managed
capitalistic development aimed at enhancing the prosperity of the great
powers entails, of course, the suppression of trouble-some destabilizing
elements such as Islamic fundamentalism and ethnic nationalism. [62]
It appears that actual U.S. policy in Central Asia leans toward the
competitive model, but with elements of cooperation.
U.S. policy toward Afghanistan
Whereas U.S. officials now portray the Taliban as the essence of evil,
that was not their prevailing view in the past. It certainly was not
their view in the first part of 2001, when the United States saw the
Taliban as a friendly government, and negotiated with it as such.
Officially the United States condemned the Islamic groups that used
Afghanistan as their base for terrorism, and officially the United
States demanded the extradition of Osama Bin Laden to face trial in the
August 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. (After the
1998 bombings, the Clinton regime even launched missile strikes on Bin
Laden's guerrilla camps.) Although the record is convoluted and murky,
it seems that, while the United States wanted to apprehend Bin Laden,
she also sought to improve relations with the Taliban government, and
that the latter goal often took precedence. Alternatively, one might
argue that although Washington preferred to use negotiation to turn the
Taliban against terrorism and achieve the stability necessary for
regional energy exploitation, she had for some years considered the
military option to remove the Taliban.
U.S.-Taliban relations can be roughly divided into four periods, though
there is much overlap:
* From perhaps two years before the Taliban captured the capital city of
Kabul in 1996 until the embassy bombings in August 1998 the United
States was, at the very least, covertly friendly toward the Taliban.
* From August 1998 to the beginning of the Bush administration in
January 2001, the U.S. attitude toward the Taliban cooled, and
Washington made plans to eliminate Osama Bin Ladin; at the same time,
however, some covert cooperation with the Taliban may have continued.
* After the present U.S. regime took power, it attempted to improve
relations with the Taliban but abandoned that approach in August 2001,
owing to a paucity of results, and made concrete preparations to remove
the Taliban militarily.
* And after the September 11 tragedy, of course, the U.S. regime
implemented the military option to eliminate the Taliban regime.
Oil companies' interests
American oil companies had cozied up to the Taliban from the time it
took over Kabul in 1996. In 1996, the U.S. oil company Unocal (Union Oil
of California) reached an agreement with the Taliban to build a
pipeline, but the continuing Afghan civil war prevented that project
from getting started. According to Ahmed Rashid, a Central Asia
specialist and author of Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and
Fundamentalism in Central Asia, 'Between 1994-96 the U.S. supported the
Taliban politically through its allies Pakistan and Saudi Arabia,
essentially because Washington viewed the Taliban as anti-Iranian,
anti-Shia, and pro-Western.' From 1995 to 1997, Rashid says, 'U.S.
support was driven by the UNOCAL oil/gas pipeline project.' [63] Private
companies conducted the actual negotiating, but their actions were
'encouraged by the U.S. government.' [64]
In May 1997 the New York Times wrote: 'The Clinton Administration has
taken the view that a Taliban victory ... would act as a counterweight
to Iran ... and would offer the possibility of new trade routes that
could weaken Russian and Iranian influence in the region.' [65] The Wall
Street Journal opined that Afghanistan could provide 'a prime
transshipment route for the export of Central Asia's vast oil, gas, and
other natural resources.'
'Like them or not,' the Journal continued, 'the Taliban are the players
most capable of achieving peace in Afghanistan at this moment in
history.' [66]
The U.S. government's main objective in Afghanistan was to consolidate
the position of the Taliban regime, which would be friendly to the
United States, in order to exploit the oil and gas reserves in Central
Asia. Moreover, Washington saw the Taliban as the enemy of Iran, which
had her own proxy in Afghanistan - the Northern Alliance.
Military support for the Taliban came from Pakistan's intelligence
agency, the ISI (Inter Services Intelligence). In fact, the Taliban was
a virtual creation of Pakistani intelligence, which viewed Afghanistan
as a potential client state. [67] The United States, in turn, supported
Pakistan as a counterweight to Iran.
Throughout the period when the United States took a favorable stance
toward the Taliban, the Taliban was massacring civilians, oppressing
women, and, in general, depriving the Afghan people of their basic
liberties. It was those very same horrors that the United States, after
September 11, 2001, would cite as justification for her use of military
force to overthrow the tyrannical regime and, presumably, liberate the
downtrodden populace.
Amnesty International, which was concerned not with gas and oil
concessions but rather with the Taliban's violations of human rights,
commented negatively about Washington's apparent friendliness toward
that regime. According to Amnesty International, 'Many Afghanistan
analysts believe that the United States has had close political links
with the Taliban militia. They refer to visits by Taliban
representatives to the United States in recent months and several visits
by senior U.S. State Department officials to Kandahar including one
immediately before the Taliban took over Jalalabad.' [68]
U.S. backing of the Taliban
After the 1998 embassy bombings, the Clinton administration does seem to
have moved to a position of opposition to the Taliban, pushing the UN
Security Council to adopt UN Resolution 1267, which called on the
Taliban to hand over indicted terrorist Osama Bin Laden and to deal with
the issue of terrorism. Economic sanctions were imposed to pressure the
Taliban to comply. The United States also engaged in some covert
operations on Afghanistan's borders and within the country itself, aimed
at ultimately removing the regime. [69]
But still Washington seems to have mixed its opposition with covert
support. The International Herald Tribune reported that in the summer of
1998, 'the Clinton administration was talking with the Taliban about
potential pipeline routes to carry oil and natural gas out of
Turkmenistan to the Indian Ocean by crossing Afghanistan and Pakistan.'
[70]
In 1999, Rep. Dan Rohrabacher, a Republican who was a senior member of
the House international relations committee, with oversight
responsibility on policy toward Afghanistan, complained that 'there is
and has been a covert policy by this [Clinton] administration to support
the Taliban movement's control of Afghanistan.' Rohrabacher surmised
that U.S. policy was 'based on the assumption that the Taliban would
bring stability to Afghanistan and permit the building of oil pipelines
from Central Asia through Afghanistan to Pakistan.' [71]
In July 2000, Rohrabacher pressed his charge that the United States was
aiding the Taliban in his testimony on global terrorism before the
committee. Rohrabacher said: 'We have been supporting the Taliban
because all of our aid goes to the Taliban areas, and when people from
the outside try to put aid into areas not controlled by the Taliban,
they are thwarted by our own State Department.'
He continued: 'Let me state for the record [that] at a time when the
Taliban were vulnerable, the top person in this administration, Mr.
[Karl F.] Inderfurth [assistant secretary of state for South Asian
affairs], and [Secretary of Energy] Bill Richardson personally went to
Afghanistan and convinced the anti-Taliban forces not to go on the
offensive. Further-more, they convinced all of the anti-Taliban forces
and their supporters to disarm and to cease their flow of support for
the anti-Taliban forces.' [72]
U.S. humanitarian aid to Afghanistan did help prop up the Taliban
regime. The United States provided an estimated $113 million in
humanitarian aid to Afghanistan in 2000 and a comparable sum in 2001
prior to September 11. [73]
Taliban do not submit
In 2001, the new Bush administration greatly expanded American efforts
to come to terms with the Taliban on oil and terrorism. From February to
August, the Bush regime conducted detailed negotiations with Taliban
diplomatic representatives, meeting several times in Washington, Berlin,
and Islamabad. A recent book by French intelligence analysts
Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, Bin Laden: The Forbidden
Truth, tells that story and tells it well. [74]
But the Taliban balked at any pipeline deal and refused to eliminate the
terrorist camps in their country. Instead of serving as a pliable
government that could provide requisite stability for American
exploitation of energy resources, the Taliban were exporting their
revolutionary Islamic fundamentalism to nearby Central Asian countries,
thus destabilizing the entire energy-rich region. According to Brisard
and Dasquie, U.S. negotiations with the Taliban broke down in August
after a U.S. negotiator threatened military action against the Taliban,
telling them to accept the American offer of 'a carpet of gold, or
you'll get a carpet of bombs.' [75]
Preparations for military action
Months before August 2001, however, the United States had been making
plans to remove the Taliban. In this connection, note that it is not
unusual for a country to have a multifacted foreign policy, with
contingency plans that vary widely. In any case, the United States seems
to have sought to solve her differences with the Taliban through
negotiations, while at the same time making plans to remove the regime
if negotiations failed.
Washington had considered projecting its military power into the Central
Asian region for some years. For example, in 1997, U.S. Special Forces
took part in the longest-range airborne operation in American history,
to reach Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in order to engage in joint military
operations with military forces from Russia and the former Soviet
Central Asian republics. U.S. News and World Report opined that this
demonstration of America's military muscle was primarily aimed at
'Iran's Islamic-fundamentalist regime. But it also could be seen as a
warning to other potential rivals, including China and the
fundamentalist Taliban militia of Afghanistan.' [76]
After the September 11 attack, it transpired that the United States and
Uzbekistan had been sharing intelligence and conducting joint covert
operations against the Taliban for two to three years. That prior secret
relationship helps explain the rapid emergence of the post-September 11
military partnership between the two countries, making Uzbekistan a base
for launching attacks on Afghanistan. [77] Furthermore, since 1997
special military units of the CIA had been inside Afghanistan, working
with Taliban opposition forces. Not only did the CIA work with the
anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, it also helped establish an anti-Taliban
network in southern Afghanistan, the area of the Taliban's greatest
support. [78]
With the advent of the Bush administration in 2001, U.S. officials
settled on concrete plans for military action, in cooperation with other
countries, to remove the Taliban regime. Significantly, some information
on those plans leaked to the public before September 11. On March 15,
2001, the British-based Jane's International Security reported that the
new U.S. regime was working with India, Iran, and Russia 'in a concerted
front against Afghanistan's Taliban regime.' India was supplying the
Northern Alliance with military equipment, advisors, and helicopter
technicians, the magazine said, and both India and Russia were using
bases in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan for their operations.
'Several recent meetings between the newly instituted Indo-U.S. and
Indo-Russian joint working groups on terrorism led to this effort to
tactically and logistically counter the Taliban', Jane's reported.
'Intelligence sources in Delhi said that while India, Russia, and Iran
were leading the anti-Taliban campaign on the ground, Washington was
giving the Northern Alliance information and logistic support.' [79]
According to a June 26, 2001, article in the Indian public-affairs Web
magazine Indiareacts.com, the United States, Russia, Pakistan, and India
made a pact for war against the Taliban. Iran was considered a covert
participant. The powers planned to begin the war in mid October. [80]
A similar story, reported by the BBC on September 18, was provided by
Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani foreign secretary. He said he was told by
senior U.S. officials in mid July that military action against
Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October. The broader goal
was the removal of the Taliban and the installation of a compliant
pro-American regime. According to Naik, he was told that the United
States would launch her operation from bases in Tajikistan, where
American military advisors were already in place. [81]
Four days later, on September 22, The Guardian newspaper confirmed
Naik's account and added that Pakistan had passed a warning of the
impending attack to the Taliban. The story implied that the warning may
have spurred Osama Bin Laden to launch his attacks, stating that 'Bin
Laden, far from launching the attacks on the World Trade Centre in New
York and the Pentagon out of the blue 10 days ago, was launching a
preemptive strike in response to what he saw as U.S. threats.' The
warning to Afghanistan came out of a meeting of senior U.S., Russian,
Iranian, and Pakistani officials at a hotel in Berlin in mid July. [82]
Pretext
Despite her preparations for war, the United States couldn't just launch
an attack on Afghanistan; U.S. officials required a compelling pretext
in order to mobilize the American public into supporting a war in that
faraway, and, to most people, unknown land. As Brzezinski had
acknowledged, American military expansion into Central Asia could not be
undertaken 'except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely
perceived direct external threat.' [83] Even more importantly, an
irresistible provocation was needed to prevent strong opposition to such
a war in Iran and Pakistan. Support - or, in the case of Iran,
acquiescence - was seen as necessary to allow for the successful conduct
of such a war.
Was September 11 just a fortuitous event that meshed perfectly with U.S.
strategic designs for foreign oil resources and with actual U.S.
military planning? Such serendipity does occasionally occur. However,
even if the 9-11 attacks were such a case, they would still deserve to
be placed in historical and political context, since they allowed the
United States to capitalize upon them by implementing a preexisting
military agenda. Hitler may not have started the Reichstag fire, but he
certainly intended to become dictator and was able to exploit the fire
to achieve his goal; and that would be worth putting in context. But the
official media portrayal of the 'war on terrorism' as simply an effort
to remove the evil people who attacked America is contextless. The aims
of the war are quite different. If the terrible tragedy of September 11
had not served as a pretext for America's war policy, something else
probably would have, though undoubtedly less effectively.
But given the evidence presented in this article, it is also conceivable
that high U.S. officials had advance knowledge of a terrorist attack and
decided to let it proceed, perhaps without envisioning the magnitude of
the destruction, in order to provide a catalyst for their already
planned war in Afghanistan. (We can probably exclude from that knowing
circle President Dodo, who doesn't seem to have a clue as to what's
going on beyond believing that we are good and they are bad.)
Israel's involvement
As important as the interest of Big Oil is, the success of America's
foreign policy requires the backing of the supporters of Israel, who
hold a dominant place in the official media. Israel's supporters in
America, unsurprisingly, constitute the vanguard of those who are
working to enlarge the war into one against Israel's enemies. But Israel
is more than simply a beneficiary of the 9-11 attack. Considerable
evidence exists that Israel had some connection to the attack, at least
to the extent that her intelligence agents possessed prior knowledge of
it.
For years stories have circulated that Israeli agents - especially those
of Israel's foreign intelligence agency, the Mossad - have infiltrated
Arab terrorist networks and have sometimes actually involved themselves
in deceptive terroristic activities designed to appear as the work of
Arabs. For example, it has been claimed - by Victor Ostrovsky, for one -
that the Mossad had foreknowledge of the attack on the U.S. Marine
Barracks in Lebanon in 1983. [84]
Other observers allege that the Mossad thoroughly infiltrated the
nefarious terrorist group Abu Nidal and even turned some of its
terrorist activities to Israel's benefit. [85]
Anent the notorious Lavon Affair, even mainstream writers - and, to some
extent, the Israeli government itself - have acknowledged Israel's
deceptive terrorism. In July 1954, Egypt was plagued by a series of bomb
outrages directed mainly against American and British property in Cairo
and Alexandria. The bombings, generally assumed to be the work of Arab
nationalists, had the effect of heightening tensions at a time when
Egypt was negotiating with Britain over the evacuation of Britain's
military bases in the Suez Canal Zone. Ultimately, the bombings
contributed to the attack on Egypt by the British and French (and
Israel) in the Suez crisis of 1956. The terrorist bombings were actually
carried out by Egyptian Jews in the service of Israel. [86]
The belief that Israel might engage in such deceptive terrorism against
the United States is expressed in a recent study by the Army's School of
Advanced Military Studies (SAMS). A reference to this study appeared,
poignantly, in a frontpage article in the Washington Times on September
10, 2001 - one day before the horrific attacks. According to the
article, 'Of the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, the SAMS
officers say: "Wildcard. Ruthless and cunning. Has capability to target
U.S. forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act."' [87]
Intimations of a possible Israeli connection emerged immediately after
the September 11 tragedy (and, naturally, were publicized by Islamic
sources). Initial reports from Israel said that 4,000 Israelis worked in
the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon, or in their vicinity. However,
it turned out that only one Israeli (or at most a very few Israelis)
died. The Islamic media inferred from this that Israelis in the target
areas had received prior warning. Jewish groups and the Establishment
media have labeled that inference 'anti-Semitic.' It is undeniable that
the Islamic media did embellish the story; they have offered no evidence
that Israel actually provided a warning. On the other hand, unless the
initial figure of 4,000 Israelis has been credibly recanted or refuted,
the minute death ratio would seem to seriously challenge the laws of
probability. [88 |
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