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Post by wanyee on Sept 27, 2009 1:01:38 GMT 3
Einstein / ManK / genius, Would any of you at least support an independent investigation of 9/11, or are you all satisfied with the "official story"?Please note that even the families of the 9/11 victims have been calling for such an investigation, for some years now - www.911independentcommission.org/.Ndugu Einstein, please share your thoughts on this before you go? (By the way, I will be so sad if you go ndugu Einstein sniff) --- Please read the following carefully:Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth Statement Scholars and professionals with various kinds of expertise---including architects, engineers, firefighters, intelligence officers, lawyers, medical professionals, military officers, philosophers, religious leaders, physical scientists, and pilots---have spoken out about radical discrepancies between the official account of the 9/11 attacks and what they, as independent researchers, have learned. They have established beyond any reasonable doubt that the official account of 9/11 is false and that, therefore, the official “investigations” have really been cover-up operations. Thus far, however, there has been no response from political leaders in Washington or, for that matter, in other capitals around the world. Our organization, Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth, has been formed to help bring about such a response. We believe that the truth about 9/11 needs to be exposed now---not in 50 years as a footnote in the history books---so the policies that have been based on the Bush-Cheney administration’s interpretation of the 9/11 attacks can be changed. We are, therefore, calling for a new, independent investigation of 9/11 that takes account of evidence that has been documented by independent researchers but thus far ignored by governments and the mainstream media. An “independent” investigation means, specifically, independent from the U.S. administrations that were in power prior to, and at the time of, the 9/11 attacks, who might have things to hide. As shown by New York Times writer Philip Shenon in his 2008 book, The Commission, the 9/11 Commission was run by its executive director, Philip Zelikow, and he was very closely associated with the Bush administration. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which issued the official reports on the destruction of the World Trade Center, is an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, which means that, while writing these reports, it was an agency of the Bush-Cheney administration. We need an investigation that is free from such conflicts of interest. If you hold, or have held, a political office---whether elected or appointed, whether municipal, state, provincial, national, or international---or have been elected to lead a recognized political party, you are invited to examine our petition (click on “Petition and Members list” under the Main Menu). If you decide to join, go to the Sign the Petition page. Becoming a member of Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth will not require any time beyond that which it takes to sign the petition---although additional activity to spread 9/11 truth is, of course, encouraged. SOURCE: pl911truth.com/--- Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth (pl911truth.com) is today being launched as the latest formal group calling for a new investigation into the events of September 11, 2001. The organization is headed by Councilor (Senator) Yukihisa Fujita of Japan and former Senator Karen Johnson of Arizona. This initiative is formed around a petition asking President Obama "to authorize a new, truly independent, investigation to determine what happened on 9/11." Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth thus joins other concerned citizens’ groups calling for a new investigation, including Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Firefighters for 9/11 Truth, Lawyers for 9/11 Truth, Medical Professionals for 9/11 Truth, Pilots for 9/11 Truth, Religious Leaders for 9/11 Truth, Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice, and Veterans for 9/11 Truth. Independent researchers from these professions have established beyond any reasonable doubt that the official account of 9/11 is false and that the official investigations have been cover-up operations. Senator Yukihisa Fujita explains the new initiative: "Thus far there has been no response from political leaders in Washington or in other capitals around the world. Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth has been formed to encourage such a response." The organization is being launched with 20 charter members, including a former US governor, a former US senator, former US representatives, and former and present members of the British, German, Japanese, Norwegian, and European parliaments. Charter member Robert Bowman, former head of the "Star Wars" program, explains the continuing relevance of the issue: "The 9/11 Tragedy has been used as the excuse for two deadly wars of aggression, for taking away our rights, and for committing war crimes that have undermined America’s reputation. Only by exposing the truth about 9/11 can we end this madness." Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth invites other people who hold, or have held, a political office---whether elected or appointed, whether municipal, state, provincial, national, or international--- to sign the petition at pl911truth.com. Senator Johnson sums it up: "The organization believes that the truth about 9/11 needs to be exposed now---not in 50 years as a footnote in the history books---so the policies that have been based on the Bush-Cheney administration’s interpretation of the 9/11 attacks can be changed." SOURCE: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12565 See also:Senior Military, Intelligence, Law Enforcement, and Government Officials Question the 9/11 Commission Report blog.lege.net/content/PatriotsQuestion9_11.html700+ Engineers and Architects question 9/11 patriotsquestion911.com/engineers.html200+ Pilots and Aviation Professionals question 9/11patriotsquestion911.com/pilots.html400+ Professors question 9/11patriotsquestion911.com/professors.html230+ 9/11 Survivors and Family Memberspatriotsquestion911.com/survivors.html200+ Artists, Entertainers, and Media Professionalspatriotsquestion911.com/media.html#Alten--- PETITION (Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth)WHEREAS the Bush-Cheney administration’s public interpretation of the 9/11 attacks has had radical, largely negative, consequences for the United States of America and the world as a whole; and WHEREAS the official investigations of these attacks that have been carried out thus far were led by individuals closely aligned with, or even employed by, the Bush-Cheney administration; and WHEREAS the conclusions of these investigations differ radically from those that have been reached by independent researchers with various kinds of professional expertise; and WHEREAS organizations of such researchers---including Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Firefighters for 9/11 Truth, Lawyers for 9/11 Truth, Pilots for 9/11 Truth, Religious Leaders for 9/11 Truth, Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice, and Veterans for 9/11 Truth---have called for a new, truly independent, investigation; and WHEREAS we believe it is long past time for political leaders to heed these calls; THEREFORE we, the undersigned members of Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth, ask President Barack Obama to authorize a new, truly independent, investigation to determine what happened on 9/11. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 55 Political Leaders have already signed the petition ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter H. Allen, Representative from Cheshire, New Hampshire State House of Representatives, 2000-present; member, Environment and Agriculture Committee. Brae Antcliffe BA LLB, Elected Alderman to the Council of The City of Sydney, Australia, early 1980s for 3.5 years Berit Ås, former member of Parliament, Norway (Charter Member of PL911Truth) Shirley Bianchi, 1999-2007 District Two San Luis Obispo County Supervisor, California (Retired) Click here to see statement Michael E. J. Blastos, Mayor of Keene, NH, USA, 2000-2008; City Councilor, Keene, NH, 1976-1999. Eric Booth, elected Former Islands Trustee, Salt Spring Island Local Trust Committee (Local Government), 2002-2005 Click here to see statement Dr. Robert M. Bowman, former Director of Advanced Space Programs Development for the U.S. Air Force in the Ford and Carter administrations (Charter Member of PL911Truth) Click here to see statement Andreas von Bülow, former State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Defense, West Germany; former Minister of Research and Technology; former member of the German Parliament (Charter Member of PL911Truth) Donald R. Bustion, former Assistant Attorney General of Texas Giulietto Chiesa, Italian member of the European Parliament; vice chairman, Committee on International Trade; member, Committee on Security and Defense (Charter Member of PL911Truth) Gerard Chevrot, Municipal Councilor, Saint-Sixt, France Matt Cole, Board of Trustees, Town of Alma; Alma, Colorado, USA Wolfram Elsner, PhD, former head of the Planning Division of the Ministry of Economic Affairs of the State of Bremen; director of the Bremen State Economic Research Institute; and Bremen State Official for Industrial Defense Conversion, 1989 - 2001 (Charter Member of PL911Truth) Peter S. Espiefs, Member from Keene, New Hampshire (USA) House of Representatives, 2000-2008; former Judge of the Cheshire Country Probate Court, 1979-1999; former member Keene City Council. Douglas Nixon Everingham, Member, House of Representatives, Australia, 1967-75 and 1977-84, Minister for Health 1972-75, a Vice-President, World Health Assembly 1975, Parliamentary Adviser, UN delegation. Click here to see statement Jeanette Fitzsimons, Co-leader of the New Zealand Green Party since 1995, and member of the House of Representatives since 1999. Click here to see statement Constance Fogal, Canadian Action Party Leader, 2004-2008 (Charter Member of PL911Truth) Egon Frid, elected Member of Swedish Parliament, 2006-- . Member of Committee on Civil Affairs, Deputy Member of the Committee on Transport and Communications. Click here to see statement Yukihisa Fujita, member of the House of Councilors, National Diet of Japan; Chairman, Special Committee on North Korean Abduction Issue and Related Matters; former member of the House of Representatives (Charter Member of PL911Truth) Ole Gerstrom, Member of Parliament, Denmark, 1973-1975. Click here to see statement Bill Goodacre, Smithers, BC, Town Council (12 years); elected Member of the British Columbia (Canada) Legislature, 1996-2001 Click here to see statement Honorable Art Goodtimes, fourth term County Commissioner for San Miguel, Colorado, USA San Miguel, Colorado, USA Click here to see statement Senator Mike Gravel, United States Senator (1969 - 1981) (Charter Member of PL911Truth) Roland Gustafson, Municipal Council, Haninge Municipality, Sweden, 2006-- Click here to see statement Dan Hamburg, former Californian member of the US House of Representatives (Charter Member of PL911Truth) Joel S. Hirschhorn, Senior Staff Member, Congressional Office of Technology Assessment 1978-1990 (Charter Member of PL911Truth) Click here to see statement Barbara Honegger, former White House Policy Analyst and Special Assistant to the Assistant to President Ronald Reagan (1981 - 1983) (Charter Member of PL911Truth) Ferdinando Imposimato, elected Italian Senator, 1987-1992, and 1994-1996. Elected to the Chamber of Deputies (Parliament), 1992-1994 Click here to see statement Tadashi Inuzuka, member of the House of Councilors, National Diet of Japan (Charter Member of PL911Truth) Karen S. Johnson, former member of the Senate of the State of Arizona, where she was chair of the Family Services Committee (Charter Member of PL911Truth) Scott Kennedy, former Mayor and City Council Member (12 years), Santa Cruz, California Senator Prof. Muhammad Ibrahim Khan, member of Pakistan's Senate since 2006; member of Standing committee on Education and Science and Technology; member of Standing Committee on Law, Justice and Human Rights and Parliamentary Affairs; Vice President of Jamaat e Islami (Pakistan) Click here to see statement Dr. Sergey Ivanovic Kolesnikov, Member of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly (Parliament) of the Russian Federation. He is vice president of the Duma Commitee for Eco Defense. Former Deputy Director of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences (RAMN). Paul Lannoye, former Belgian member of the European Parliament, where he was vice chair of the Committee on Energy, Research, and Technology (Charter Member of PL911Truth) Kira Lukiyanova, Member of the Parliament of the Russian Federation (Duma). Vice-Chairman of the Investment Committee of the Duma. Jon Paul McClellan, chief election judge (appointed), Eastside Precinct, Orange County, North Carolina; former elected chair of the precinct organization. Click here to see statement Cynthia McKinney, former Georgian member of the US House of Representatives, where she was a member of the Armed Services Committee and the International Relations Committee (Charter Member of PL911Truth) Michael Meacher, Minister of the British Parliament; former Minister of the Environment; former Undersecretary for Industry (Charter Member of PL911Truth) Per Mohn, deputy representative to the Norwegian Parliament from Akershus, 1989–1993 Dr. Andrew J. Moulden, Leader of the Canadian Action Party (Charter Member of PL911Truth) David Nelson, Hate Crimes Working Group (appointed advisory commission), U.S. Department of Justice, Utah, 1997-2001 Click here to see statement Marty B. O'Malley, elected Democratic member of Council, Forest Hills, PA Click here to see statement Bruce Randall, elected Longmeadow (Massachusetts) Water & Sewer Commissioner, 2002-2003, then Chairman, 2003-2004 Click here to see statement Barbara Hull Richardson, State of New Hampshire, House of Representatives, 1992- . Vice Chairman, Children and Family Law Committee Senator Fernando Rossi, member of the Itallian Parliament (Senato), 2006-2008 Click here to see statement Val Scott, founding member of Canada's New Democratic Party; former Trustee and Vice Chairman of North York Board of Education, Ontario, Canada (Charter Member of PL911Truth) Click here to see statement Prof. David C. Smith, former Town Councillor, Mont Saint Aignan, Normandy, France Simon C. Smith, elected to Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council, Great Bridge Electoral Division, United Kingdom Joel Tyner, third term county legislator for Clinton and Rhinebeck, Dutchess County, New York State; Environmental Committee Chair for Duchess County Legislature. Gianni Vattimo, member of European Parliament, 1999 - 2004 (Italy); Committee on Citizens' Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs; Committee on Employment and Social Affairs; Committee on Culture, Youth, Education, the Media and Sport (Charter Member of PL911Truth) Jesse Ventura, former Governor of Minnesota (Charter Member of PL911Truth) Bruno Vézina, elected Mayor of Irlande, Quebec, Canada, 2003 Terry Wachniak, elected to City Council, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, from 1986 to Suzi Wizowaty, Representative for Chittenden 3-5, Vermont Legislature, USA. Click here to see statement Charles R. Weed, State of New Hampshire House of Representatives, Member for Keene, NH, 2000- . Member, Labor, Industrial and Rehabilitative Services Committee. Professor of Political Science, Keene State College. Click here to see statement SOURCE: pl911truth.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=47&Itemid=53
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Post by mank on Sept 27, 2009 19:02:21 GMT 3
Wanyee,
It would not be fair to ignore you even though you are still out of topic, as always. More importantly I want it to be clear that you and I did not have a discussion of 9/11 in a sense that would warrant you asking me if I ...
I do not think one more explanation will make a difference, but please try to understand that a discussion of our views as to whether there should be an investigation of 9/11 would come under a 9/11 thread.
You have labelled this thread "The Obama Deception", and if you have not gottten the point yet, we got tired of asking you to explain what, if anything, your postings here have to do with Obama, and how they argue "The Obama Deception". So quit making it seem like any of us, besides you, discussed 9/11 issues.
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Post by wanyee on Sept 29, 2009 1:53:58 GMT 3
Ndugu mank, Given "that the Bush-Cheney administration’s public interpretation of the 9/11 attacks has had radical, largely negative, consequences for the United States of America and the world as a whole", what are we left to conclude if Obama continues to use the same interpretation of the 9/11 attacks - which actually was a false-flag operation / www.wanttoknow.info/falseflag - in order to justify the ongoing "war on terror"? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I previously posted the following (from the horse’s mouth):“Imagine, for a moment, what we could have done in those days, and months, and years after 9/11. We could have deployed the full force of American power to hunt down and destroy Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, the Taliban, and all of the terrorists responsible for 9/11, while supporting real security in Afghanistan” ( Obama’s Remarks on Iraq and Afghanistan - www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/us/politics/15text-obama.html?pagewanted=all). --- "Let us renew our resolve against those who perpetrated this barbaric act and who plot against us still. In defense of our nation, we will never waver. In pursuit of al Qaeda and its extremist allies, we will never falter” ( Obama Honors 9/11 Victims, Those Who Serve As Ceremonies Mark Eighth Anniversary of Terror Attacks, President Says U.S. 'Will Never Falter' in Pursuit of al Qaeda - www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/09/11/national/main5302919.shtml). --- In a March 20, 2009 interview with CBS' 60 Minutes Correspondent Steve Kroft, which was broadcast March 22, 2009, Mr. Obama answered questions about Afghanistan: PRESIDENT OBAMA: Speaking of which. Yeah.
STEVE KROFT: What -- what should that mission be?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Making sure that al Qaeda cannot attack the U.S. homeland and U.S. interests and our allies. That's our number one priority. And in service of that priority there may be a whole host of things that we need to do. We may need to build up-- economic capacity in Afghanistan. We may need to-- improve our diplomatic efforts in Pakistan.
We may need to bring a more regional-- diplomatic approach to bear. We may need to coordinate more effectively with our allies. But we can't lose sight of what our central mission is. The same mission that we had when we went in after 9 11. And that is these folks can project-- violence against the United States' citizens. And that is something that we cannot tolerate.
But what we can't do is think that just a military approach in Afghanistan is going to be able to solve our problems. . So what we're looking for is a comprehensive strategy. And there's gotta be an exit strategy. There-- there's gotta be a sense that this is not perpetual drift.
STEVE KROFT: Afghanistan has proven to be very hard to govern. This should not come as news to anybody (LAUGHTER) given its history.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Right.
STEVE KROFT: As the graveyards of empire. And there are people now who are concerned. We need to be careful what we're getting ourselves into in Afghanistan. Because we have come to be looked upon there by-- by people in Afghanistan, and even people now in Pakistan--
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Right.
STEVE KROFT: -as another foreign power coming in, trying to take over the region.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I'm very mindful of that. And so is my national security team. So's the Pentagon.
Afghanistan is not going to be easy in many ways. And this is not I disagreeessment. This is the assessment of -- commanders on the ground.--- In an interview with CFR President Richard N. Haass', on his latest book, War of Necessity, War of Choice: Interviewer: In your new book you talk about the first Iraq war as being one of necessity, and the second Iraq war as being one of choice, although not a very good choice. How do you view the Afghanistan situation right now? It obviously started out as a war of necessity in retaliation for 9/11, but is it now becoming more of a war of choice? Richard N. Haass: The short answer is yes, you're exactly right. After 9/11, what the United States did in Afghanistan against the Taliban was a manifestation of the right of self-defense, and I did describe it in the book as a war of necessity. Since then, over the years, the U.S. position in Afghanistan has gotten broader, and in the most recent [Obama] administration white paper, you have the president and others talking about bringing the fight to the Taliban. So this suggests to me more than a narrow goal in Afghanistan of simply going after al-Qaeda remnants and a larger goal of essentially trying to help the central government in Kabul prevail in what increasingly looks like a civil war. SOURCE: Obama Broadening Afghanistan War Into 'War of Choice' and Not 'Necessity'www.cfr.org/publication/19274/oba...._necessity.html--- Obama lies to defend US War of Aggression in AfghanistanCarl Herman August 19, 2009 The President of the US swears to "faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution (article VI, paragraph 2) states: "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land." One of the most important treaties is that governing when a nation may go to war. After 20th century wars that killed over 100 million human beings, the UN was formed to eliminate war as a foreign policy option The UN Charter is registered in the US State Department as a Treaty in Force. Therefore, one of the most important Constitutional duties of any US President is to follow the law to not unleash the world’s most powerful destructive force and to defend innocent civilians from such onslaught and misery. This is also one of the most important laws for citizens to understand and hold their political leadership accountable for ethical behavior and demand prosecution in its violation. On August 17, 2009 President Obama again defended the US invasion of Afghanistan. He called it "fundamental to the defense of our people," and said, "But we must never forget this is not a war of choice, this is a war of necessity. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans."
The US legal argument that the invasion of Afghanistan is not a War of Aggression is that the US actions in Afghanistan are defensive. A War of Aggression is defined as a non-defensive war that is unauthorized by the UN Security Council. Osama bin Laden was being protected by the Taliban Afghan government, which made them co-terrorists demonstrating intent to inflict another 9/11 upon the US. This legal opinion of "defensive action" supersedes the opinion of the UN Security Council, who did not authorize use of force.
Let’s review the history of the US invasion of Afghanistan before we analyze the US claim that this is a defensive war. After the attacks of 9/11, the US government requested the cooperation of the Afghanistan government for extradition of Osama bid Laden to be charged with the 9/11 attacks. The Afghan government agreed, as per usual cooperative international law, as soon as the US government provided evidence of bin Laden’s involvement.[1] The US government refused to provide any evidence. The Afghan government refused US troops entering their country and extradition until evidence was provided, and made their argument to the world press for the rule of law to apply to the US extradition request. The US invaded Afghanistan without providing evidence and without UN Security Council approval. President Bush stated, "There’s no need to discuss evidence of innocence or guilt. We know he’s guilty."[2] Seven years later, despite promises to do so, the US has not provided any evidence that bin Laden was involved in the 9/11 attacks. Indeed, the FBI does not seek bin Laden for the 9/11 attacks, stating "there is no hard evidence connecting bin Laden to 9/11."[3] Some of you might have heard of a bin Laden "confession video." The Pentagon’s "official translation" seems to indicate foreknowledge of the attacks, but independent translations show that the "official" version is a manipulation and an accurate translation shows no evidence of involvement.[4] Apparently, the FBI is in agreement with the independent translations as they do not seek him for the crime. Indeed, Princeton professor of International Law Richard Falk articulates doubts concerning many aspects of the government’s explanation of 9/11.[5] This view of a counter-government explanation is now shared by over 1,500 reputable scholars and professionals with academic training and professional experience that qualify them as experts in their testimonies.[6]
Facts: The US invaded Afghanistan. The US provided no evidence to the Taliban Afghan government that bin Laden was involved in 9/11 and still have not done so. The US has provided no evidence that the Taliban supported the attacks of 9/11. The UN Security Council did not authorize use of force in Afghanistan. The US has provided no evidence of imminent threat to US national security from the Taliban. With no evidence of imminent threat or attack by Afghanistan, the US invasion is a War of Aggression. And yes, it's just that simple.The words of President Obama are the same as all tyrants: whatever justification to best sell the most horrific crime a nation can commit. They are lies of commission and lies of omission to not give you the context I just provided of the law. The US is engaged in Wars of Aggression with our tax dollars and under our flag. Consider the words of Reichsmarschall Herman Goering, President of the Reichstag in Nazi Germany from 1932-1945, and considered among to top few in Nazi "leadership." "Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship...voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." – Hermann Goering, 1946 Nuremberg Trial. Quoted by Nuremberg prison psychologist, Gilbert Gustave in Nuremberg Diary, page 278, published by Da Capo Press, 1995 ISBN 0306806614, 9780306806612 Let’s consider your role in this. If you want to consider yourself a responsible citizen, you have to upgrade your definition to understand, speak powerfully, and take action concerning violation of your nation’s war powers. If not, your definition of responsibility includes complacency with hundreds of billions of our collective dollars and the most destructive impact upon millions of human beings. I recommend practice of the above information so you can explain it to anyone within two minutes. Allow me two simple analogies: if you consider yourself a sports fan and/or player, you would HAVE to understand the most important few rules of the game. If you didn’t, others would tell you that with that level of ignorance you aren’t serious about the game. If you were in a relationship and your partner spent a lot of time and money with another person, you would ask what your partner is doing with that person. And if all it took to verify your partner’s story was as much time as it took to read this article, and you never verified the story, others would tell you with that level of complacency considering the large amount of time and money involved with your partner that you aren’t serious about having a relationship. Does that help motivate you? What will you do? Please answer your heart and mind’s strongest calling. As for a policy response, unless you have a better idea, I suggest supporting a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as I’ve previously argued. If you appreciate my work, please subscribe at the top of this page just under the title of the article. If you want to end these Wars of Aggression and move this nation to build a brighter future, please share these articles with all who claim they want to be competent citizens. If enough of us are educated, speak powerfully, and take action, these Wars of Aggression will end and we can shift our collective focus to constructive policies. Until such time, we will have more war, destruction and misery in the name of whatever bullshit rhetoric our "leadership" thinks the public will hope and believe. SOURCE: www.uruknet.info/?p=57109
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Post by mank on Sept 29, 2009 4:35:24 GMT 3
Wanyee,
During the campaigns Obama presented it to his constituents that Afghanistan was where US ought to fight [or focus, given they had started there in the first place but digressed later]. He made it clear that he would shift military action from Iraq to Afghanistan. Americans voted him president knowing well that he would do this ---- in fact Americans wanted, and were asking for the shift. Every candidate was jumping on the bandwagon of this shift, but Obama was more convincing because he convinced voters that he had expressed the priority of fighting in Afghanistan even before the attack of Iraq ensued. This was a factor in his being elected. So Obama's policy on Afghanistan cannot signify an Obama deception since it was taken to (and endorsed by) the electorate.
The Bush-like arguments that Obama has used recently, which you mention above, are filthy disgusting. I do not know who is advising him, but still nothing in them points to an Obama deception (given the material of the first paragraph above).
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Post by wanyee on Sept 30, 2009 23:16:16 GMT 3
Ndugu mank, Remember the big WMD lie? When the American public rallied behind the Bush administration’s plans to invade Iraq, it was because they had been indoctrinated with the Bush-Cheney interpretation of the 9/11 attacks (that Al-Qaeda was responsible, with the support of Saddam Hussein, who reportedly had “weapons of mass destruction”). When the WMD lie was exposed, the American public was furious, and this is what initiated the calls to pull out of Iraq – or the “shift” as you call it. This “shift”, however, does not represent a significant change in policy, because it is still primarily based on the Bush-Cheney interpretation of the 9/11 attacks, that Al-Qaeda was responsible. The United States Government is still lying to Americans, and the world. This is why an independent investigation into 9/11 is being called for. --- Obama: Reopen the 9/11 Investigation -- Part 1by Melissa Rossi February 10, 2009 Patrick Leahy has a point when he urges President Obama to open investigations about the Bush administration. However, he's not pointing at the issue that we need to start with. Namely, September 11th. What really happened? More than a few people know - and I am not alone in calling for those who know to start talking and fess up. Let's not let this go the way of the JFK assassination - and whether with subpoenas or on their own volition, I demand that Dick Cheney, George W. Bush - both of whom refused to testify under oath during the 9/11 Commission proceedings -- Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Karl Rove, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage, Larry Wilkerson, George Tenet, Robert Mueller and the rest - as well as Bill Clinton and Al Gore (both of whom also refused to testify under oath) -- start talking, and in a public arena. And I'm calling on the Obama administration to open up a probe and unravel the web of deceit.Before we tuck the Bush administration into bed and hiss, "Nighty Night, you lying scoundrels," before we go on to lock the door on that heinous era of American history, we do indeed need to probe what happened under their watch. But the event that most concerns me is what happened on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. Oh yeah, that's history, old news, the 9/11 Commission figured it all out, right? Except that members of the 9/11 Commission say it was "set up to fail" and that the investigation was severely hampered. So do assorted former members of the CIA, who demand a fresh look at the events of that day. So, President Obama - leader of a new era in the United State - serve your people: pull out that can opener and pry open that can of worms. In following posts, I will outline some of the most mysterious coincidences and events that deserve re-examination - and there are many, including how strange things happen whenever Dick Cheney's around and the missile defense program is slated to be cut as I note here and here. But let's start with the premise that all was not told, and we deserve to know the truth about this catastrophic event that so changed the world -- and boosted the military budget to new highs. While the Obama administration is fresh - and even though we're all grappling with this economy - I urge Americans to demand that this be a top priority, and not to let Obama shrug off this "mystery" that was cloaked by his predecessor. To be continued...Obama: Reopen the 9/11 Investigation -- Part 2by Melissa Rossi February 11, 2009 So many dastardly acts were committed during the Bush administration (many of them by the Bush administration) that it's hard to nail down the worst. Senator Patrick Leahy recently suggested formation of a "Truth Commission" to investigate the interrogation, torture, and shredding of civil liberties that occurred as part of the Bush administration's "War on Terror" and as Sam Stein reported here directly approached Obama about opening investigations.
I humbly suggest that the Obama administration should start by investigating the event that set the dominoes tumbling and would so shake the world that it would lead to a panicked Congress giving the previous administration a blank check for military funding (which now chomps more tax dollars than anything else in the government budget including Social Security) and a steadfast nod to questionable military adventures that sucked us into a black hole (Iraq and Afghanistan), while Congress effectively shut its eyes to the erosion of Americans' rights, the boosting of power of the executive office, the gagging of the press, and a nonstop disinformation campaign to hoodwink the American people - as well as the Bush administration's approval of extreme treatment of suspects and prisoners that might constitute war crimes.I'm still troubled by September 11, 2001. Not merely the terrifying events of the attacks that day, but the fact that it still hasn't been fully explained. It could be and it should be. The Bush administration never came clean with "what really happened" - but the Obama administration needs to set history straight on what unfolded that day, and detail the role played by the Bush administration in it. As more new information has emerged contradicting the official 9/11 Commission report or appearing to fill holes in it - reports about finding the black boxes of the hijacked airplanes, inconsistencies about Flight 93 (did it explode from a bomb onboard, was it shot down, or did it indeed crash as a result of the passenger rebellion?), contradictory reports about the identities of the hijackers and other reports that point to a number of Cheney-commissioned war games ongoing that day that the Bush administration never fully brought to light - and as the weakness of the 9/11 commission itself has come into the public arena -- the Obama administration owes it to the American people to reopen that can of vipers and in this sifting through the events try to figure out what really happened to debunk the fallacies - be they conspiracy theories that don't hold water or the suffocating blanket of disinformation continually dropped on Americans by the Bush administration. Only with a new investigation into 9/11 can the needed light be shed on this dark moment. This time we need a commission: • that is properly funded (the previous commission started with a piddly $3 million budget compared to $50 million to investigate the Space Shuttle disaster ), • duly empowered (the previous commission, noted its co-chair Lee Hamilton "had a lot of trouble getting access to documents and to people" and was hesitant to use its subpoena power), • given unfettered access to needed information and parties (Bush, Cheney, Bill Clinton and Gore refused to testify under oath), • with members that owe and want no favors to or from the parties involved (executive director of the 9/11 commission Philip Zelikow had been vying for a job with the Bush administration when he served on their transition team in 2000-2001 and post-investigation was appointed to the weighty federal post of counselor of the State Department in 2005). • willing to "name names" and point fingers • conduct its hearings in the light of day - not behind closed doors - and make interviews part of the public record. To aid future historians and to help the American people understand what truly unfolded over the past eight years, to set the record straight and answer the many unanswered questions, we need to petition Obama to spend but a few million dollars to dig further into the details of 9/11. And as part of that investigation, the investigation needs to look long and hard at how the Bush administration's (particularly Dick Cheney's) preoccupation with missile defense, which it was making the number 1 focus of its lobbying efforts, directly influenced the tragedy that unfolded on that tragic Tuesday in September 2001. Melissa Rossi is the author of What Every American Should Know about the Middle East and What Every American Should Know about Who's Really Running the World, among other books in her series with Plume/Penguin Books. SOURCE: www.huffingtonpost.com/melissa-ro....e_b_165849.html
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Post by mank on Sept 30, 2009 23:38:52 GMT 3
Ndugu mank, Remember the big WMD lie? When the American public rallied behind the Bush administration’s plans to invade Iraq, it was because they had been indoctrinated with the Bush-Cheney interpretation of the 9/11 attacks (that Al-Qaeda was responsible, with the support of Saddam Hussein, who reportedly had “weapons of mass destruction”). When the WMD lie was exposed, the American public was furious, and this is what initiated the calls to pull out of Iraq – or the “shift” as you call it. This “shift”, however, does not represent a significant change in policy, because it is still primarily based on the Bush-Cheney interpretation of the 9/11 attacks, that Al-Qaeda was responsible. Ndugu Wanyee, Dont distort my comments [as in " When the WMD lie was exposed, the American public was furious, and this is what initiated the calls to pull out of Iraq – or the “shift” as you call it.". The shift I talked about, and the pull out from Iraq, are 2 different concepts. Obama was for military action in Afghanistan well before the US public opened its eyes to how 9/11 had been used to justify the attack of Iraq. So, his policy on Afghanistan does not follow the results of Bush's war in Iraq. An an independent investigation of 9/11 is indeed warranted. However, for your thread to fit its title you must be credibly argue not only that 9/11 was a scam (which you cannot simply argue with hypotheticals), but also that Obama has been in on the scam. In my perspective Obama believes that Afghanistan had something to do with 9/11. Remember Clinto too had a thing with Afghanistan. So you need to draw a line between what is real, and what is a scam, and if you think it was all a scam, you have to explain why the drama was put on hold after a small scene started with Clinton. ... no doubt Iraq was a fraud, but you have quite a bit of arguing to do with Afghanistan. ... still, I am not defending any tactics, but arguing against your "Obama Deception". Obama can make bad calls without being a deception ... that is where I stand.
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Post by wanyee on Oct 3, 2009 0:21:25 GMT 3
Ndugu yangu, You said that for this thread to fit its title, I must credibly argue not only that 9/11 was a scam, but also that Obama has been in on the scam. This is precisely what I have been demonstrating all along. The following two articles address the above (Obama's role being more recent): Obama lies to defend US War of Aggression in AfghanistanCarl Herman August 19, 2009 The President of the US swears to "faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution (article VI, paragraph 2) states: "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land." One of the most important treaties is that governing when a nation may go to war. After 20th century wars that killed over 100 million human beings, the UN was formed to eliminate war as a foreign policy option The UN Charter is registered in the US State Department as a Treaty in Force. Therefore, one of the most important Constitutional duties of any US President is to follow the law to not unleash the world’s most powerful destructive force and to defend innocent civilians from such onslaught and misery. This is also one of the most important laws for citizens to understand and hold their political leadership accountable for ethical behavior and demand prosecution in its violation. On August 17, 2009 President Obama again defended the US invasion of Afghanistan. He called it "fundamental to the defense of our people," and said, "But we must never forget this is not a war of choice, this is a war of necessity. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans."
The US legal argument that the invasion of Afghanistan is not a War of Aggression is that the US actions in Afghanistan are defensive. A War of Aggression is defined as a non-defensive war that is unauthorized by the UN Security Council. Osama bin Laden was being protected by the Taliban Afghan government, which made them co-terrorists demonstrating intent to inflict another 9/11 upon the US. This legal opinion of "defensive action" supersedes the opinion of the UN Security Council, who did not authorize use of force.
Let’s review the history of the US invasion of Afghanistan before we analyze the US claim that this is a defensive war. After the attacks of 9/11, the US government requested the cooperation of the Afghanistan government for extradition of Osama bid Laden to be charged with the 9/11 attacks. The Afghan government agreed, as per usual cooperative international law, as soon as the US government provided evidence of bin Laden’s involvement.[1] The US government refused to provide any evidence. The Afghan government refused US troops entering their country and extradition until evidence was provided, and made their argument to the world press for the rule of law to apply to the US extradition request. The US invaded Afghanistan without providing evidence and without UN Security Council approval. President Bush stated, "There’s no need to discuss evidence of innocence or guilt. We know he’s guilty."[2] Seven years later, despite promises to do so, the US has not provided any evidence that bin Laden was involved in the 9/11 attacks. Indeed, the FBI does not seek bin Laden for the 9/11 attacks, stating "there is no hard evidence connecting bin Laden to 9/11."[3] Some of you might have heard of a bin Laden "confession video." The Pentagon’s "official translation" seems to indicate foreknowledge of the attacks, but independent translations show that the "official" version is a manipulation and an accurate translation shows no evidence of involvement.[4] Apparently, the FBI is in agreement with the independent translations as they do not seek him for the crime. Indeed, Princeton professor of International Law Richard Falk articulates doubts concerning many aspects of the government’s explanation of 9/11.[5] This view of a counter-government explanation is now shared by over 1,500 reputable scholars and professionals with academic training and professional experience that qualify them as experts in their testimonies.[6]
Facts: The US invaded Afghanistan. The US provided no evidence to the Taliban Afghan government that bin Laden was involved in 9/11 and still have not done so. The US has provided no evidence that the Taliban supported the attacks of 9/11. The UN Security Council did not authorize use of force in Afghanistan. The US has provided no evidence of imminent threat to US national security from the Taliban. With no evidence of imminent threat or attack by Afghanistan, the US invasion is a War of Aggression. And yes, it's just that simple.The words of President Obama are the same as all tyrants: whatever justification to best sell the most horrific crime a nation can commit. They are lies of commission and lies of omission to not give you the context I just provided of the law. The US is engaged in Wars of Aggression with our tax dollars and under our flag. Consider the words of Reichsmarschall Herman Goering, President of the Reichstag in Nazi Germany from 1932-1945, and considered among to top few in Nazi "leadership." "Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship...voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."– Hermann Goering, 1946 Nuremberg Trial. Quoted by Nuremberg prison psychologist, Gilbert Gustave in Nuremberg Diary, page 278, published by Da Capo Press, 1995 ISBN 0306806614, 9780306806612 Let’s consider your role in this. If you want to consider yourself a responsible citizen, you have to upgrade your definition to understand, speak powerfully, and take action concerning violation of your nation’s war powers. If not, your definition of responsibility includes complacency with hundreds of billions of our collective dollars and the most destructive impact upon millions of human beings. I recommend practice of the above information so you can explain it to anyone within two minutes. Allow me two simple analogies: if you consider yourself a sports fan and/or player, you would HAVE to understand the most important few rules of the game. If you didn’t, others would tell you that with that level of ignorance you aren’t serious about the game. If you were in a relationship and your partner spent a lot of time and money with another person, you would ask what your partner is doing with that person. And if all it took to verify your partner’s story was as much time as it took to read this article, and you never verified the story, others would tell you with that level of complacency considering the large amount of time and money involved with your partner that you aren’t serious about having a relationship. Does that help motivate you? What will you do? Please answer your heart and mind’s strongest calling. As for a policy response, unless you have a better idea, I suggest supporting a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as I’ve previously argued. If you appreciate my work, please subscribe at the top of this page just under the title of the article. If you want to end these Wars of Aggression and move this nation to build a brighter future, please share these articles with all who claim they want to be competent citizens. If enough of us are educated, speak powerfully, and take action, these Wars of Aggression will end and we can shift our collective focus to constructive policies. Until such time, we will have more war, destruction and misery in the name of whatever bullshit rhetoric our "leadership" thinks the public will hope and believe. SOURCE: www.uruknet.info/?p=57109--- The Afghanistan-Pakistan War: Obama's Vietnam?by Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay Global Research, September 2, 2009 "Our interest in Afghanistan is to prevent it from becoming a haven for terrorists bent on attacking us. That does not require the scale of military operations that the incoming administration is contemplating. It does not require wholesale occupation. It does not require the endless funneling of human treasure and countless billions of taxpayer dollars to the Afghan government." Bob Herbert, The New York Times, January 6, 2009
"I don't want to just end the [Iraq] war, but I want to end the mind-set that got us into war in the first place." Presidential candidate Barack Obama, January 31, 2008
“If we are strong, our character will speak for itself. If we are weak, words will be of no help.” John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) 35th U.S. President
“No nation ever profited from a long war.” Sun Tzu, author of “The Art of War” A solid majority of Americans (54 percent) now oppose President Obama's Afghanistan-Pakistan War. In fact, among Democrats, only twenty-six (26) percent support such a foreign war. In other words, by enlarging this conflict, President Obama is governing as if the opinion of a majority of Americans and of his own political base did not matter. In a democracy, a politician can do that for a while, but not for very long. This undeclared war, just like LBJ's Vietnam War (1959–1975) and George W. Bush's Iraq War, is an adventure with no clear objective and no clear exit strategy, but with tremendous costs in lives and money. Nobody can tell if the U.S. and NATO are killing people in Afghanistan and in Pakistan because this is an operation to stop al-Qaeda terrorists from mounting future Sept. 11-type attacks, or because it is part of a larger plan to counter a Taliban insurgency and prevent this Pashtun Islamist party to regain power. But also, it has been said that it is a war waged to protect a pipeline crossing Afghanistan. Such a pipeline would move oil from the Caspian Basin to the coast of Pakistan through Afghanistan. Nevertheless, since this is not clearly explained, the war remains a blur for most people. The reason why such a war brings fewer open protests than the Vietnam War is essentially because it is waged with mercenaries. That may be a reason why such open-ended wars fought with mercenaries can last for so long. For its part, Great Britain, a country used to colonial occupations, says through its incoming military Chief of Staff, General Sir David Richards, that it could stay in Afghanistan for 40 years. Even Germany seems to have regained its taste for military adventures, as its Defense Minister says it could occupy Afghanistan for ten years. With this frame of mind, the world could be back in the nineteenth century, a century characterized by the anarchy of lawless armed conflicts, with militarized empires involved in prolonged wars, if not perpetual wars, with colonial and imperial military occupations. If the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1991 has simply ended the restraining its presence imposed on other empires from being lawless and imperialistic, then the world may be on a very dangerous course. It will be back to the future. All the democratic ideals of the second part of the twentieth century would be gone. One has the feeling that such badly designed military adventures as the Afghanistan war, with no clear objectives in sight, are primarily launched and expanded to keep the military establishment busy and the military-industrial complex prosperous. Mired in financial scandals and plunged into a deep economic recession, many Americans suffer from war exhaustion. There seems to be too many of these endless and costly wars, even though the professional warmongers relish them. For his part, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates declares that the American public is “pretty tired” of the seemingly endless war in Afghanistan, and he believes that the situation has to be turned around in a year. Indeed. Only a few months ago, a substantial majority of Americans thought they had kicked the Bush-Cheney neocon warmongering crowd out of power. Those who favor American-led wars of aggression had a choice in voting for Republican candidate John McCain. But, to no avail. The Obama-Biden soft-neocon crowd seems to be in the same camp as Bush and McCain. Nothing of substance has changed, or hardly. At least in terms of foreign policy, the question can be asked if the Obama-Biden administration is anything more than a third term of the Bush-Cheney administration? The Obama-Biden administration did not arrive in power determined to take control of the government apparatus and to change its direction. In fact, the reverse seems to have happened: It was pre-empted and subdued by the entrenched governing nomenklatura. This reflects a lack of preparedness, dedication and vision. As soon as it was sworn in, the Obama-Biden administration began planning to enlarge the Afghan conflict with more troops and more mercenaries, and, to make its intentions crystal-clear, kept in his post Bush's Secretary of Defense (Robert Gates) while asking Congress for $109 billion more funds to finance the adventure. Then President Obama fired Gen. David McKiernan, who had been in charge in Afghanistan, and replaced him with Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, a former Green Beret who lead the secretive Joint Special Operations Command, an outfit of commando teams that was involved in widespread murder and carnage in Iraq. And, what is strange, Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal proposed to President Obama the adoption of a Soviet Strategy of building bases and troop build-up for Afghanistan. With friends like this, Barack Obama needs no enemies. As a matter of fact, Obama's political enemies, beginning with Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, but also other right-wing corporate media, are salivating at the thought. I wonder how many editorials the WSJ will write supporting candidate Obama in 2012! But the die is cast: President Barack Obama now “owns” the Afghanistan-Pakistan (AfPak) war and he will have to live with the consequences. If the British and Soviet examples of foreign occupations in that part of the world are good indications of things to come, Commander-in-Chief Obama is going to be bogged down in this devastated mountainous land for years to come, and this may very well cost him his presidency in 2012. For a while, the Republicans and some neocon Democrats are going to cheer him. But later on, most Americans are going to turn against him. Let's place things in perspective here. Just as in Vietnam, the U.S. is intervening in a civil war involving Pashtuns (40% of the Afghan population), Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Hazara Shiites, among over ten minority groups sharing a traditional and often repressive and barbaric Islamic culture, in a country called Afghanistan. And it is waging guerrilla warfare in Afghan villages and towns in order to support a corrupt and illegitimate Islamist government. The foreign soldiers are trying to “flush out the Taliban from villages” just as they were trying to flush out the Vietcong from villages. Since such wars cause many civilian deaths, sooner or later, the entire population will turn against the foreign military invaders and they are likely to be kicked out. That was the story in Vietnam and there is little doubt that this will be the story in Afghanistan-Pakistan. Sending more troops to this Asiatic region will only make matters worse. The advantage for the military establishment, besides generals getting a few stars on the shoulder, is that a prolonged conflict will keep the money flowing in their coffers and in those of their suppliers. But wait. Now Obama is enlarging the Afghan conflict, not only by waging a drone war against tribesmen in Pakistan, but he also wants to turn the Afghanistan war into a war against Afghan drug lords. The logic here, I gather, it to multiply your enemies: the Taliban, al-Qaeda, Pakistan tribesmen, Afghan drug lords, etc. The more you have, the more likely the conflict will endure. When you forget that the initial objective in Afghanistan, after the 9/11 attacks, was a narrow one, i.e. to prevent that country from becoming again a haven for terrorists, it is easy to widen a conflict ad nauseam. As a matter of fact, this was tried before in Afghanistan. The Soviets tried it for nine years, from December 1979 to February 1989, and despite sending in hundreds of thousand troops, they did not succeed. It was the Soviet Union's Vietnam War, to paraphrase Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's Security advisor. Similarly, Obama's war in Afghanistan-Pakistan would require hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground. Like the Soviet Union, the U.S. is building large military bases in Afghanistan and its commanders think there are never enough troops. Presently, the U.S. has some 60,000 troops in Afghanistan. Next year, it is easy to predict it will have more than 100,000 troops in that remote country, if the current policy is followed. And under what legal basis? It is stretching quite a bit the terms of the U.N. Security Council's resolution 1368 of September 12, 2001, to justify an open-ended war in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. That resolution was adopted under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter that affirms the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense. Since the 9/11 terrorists had trained in Afghanistan under Taliban control, such training camps had to be dismantled, either by the Afghan government or by external forces. Since the Taliban government refused to comply, the U.S. was in its right to intervene. Thus the overthrow of the Taliban government and the destruction of al-Qaeda training camps in that country. This was done in the fall of 2001. On December 20, 2001, the U.N. Security Council (Resolution 1386) authorized the creation of a NATO-led military international force to assist the newly established Afghan Transitional Authority in creating a secure environment in and around the capital Kabul and to support the reconstruction of Afghanistan. That's the legal reason why there are foreign soldiers in Afghanistan. They operate under the umbrella of the so-called International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), whose mission has been expanded, year after year, to cover most of Afghanistan (see U.N. Security Council Resolution 1510). Later, the U.N. Security Council also authorized a mission of assistance in Afghanistan. In March 2002, the U.N. Security Council organized an Assistance Mission in Afghanistan's (UNAMA) with the adoption of Resolution 1401. UNAMA's primary mandate is “to manage all humanitarian, relief, recovery and reconstruction activities.” That mandate has been renewed in March of each year, the last time on March 23, 2009, extending it until March 23, 2010. But now we are in 2009, eight years after 2001. Is there really a legal basis for the U.S. to drop bombs over villages in Pakistan and to occupy Afghanistan indefinitely with foreign troops? There is some play with words here. For example, the European countries participating in the NATO-U.S.-led mission in Afghanistan talk about a “police mission” to justify the presence of their soldiers in Afghanistan. In fact, this so-called police mission has turned into a permanent military occupation of Afghanistan and into a guerilla war against local militants and insurgents, in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Let's keep in mind that many of the so-called "militants" or “insurgents” in Afghanistan, the Mujahideen and to a certain extent the Taliban, used to be called “Freedom fighters” by President Ronald Reagan (see the Reagan Doctrine) when they were fighting the Soviet invaders, with the help of the American C.I.A., Saudi Arabia and the Pakistani secret police (ISI). This shows how such “freedom fighters” conveniently change names when they switch camp! They have gone from being called “heroic” to being called “insurgents”. Such is the propaganda of war. —An historical fact remains: The unintended consequence of the Reagan Doctrine is the current Afghanistan-Pakistan war, and it may have played an important role in preparing the ground for the 9/11 catastrophe. Nevertheless, let us say that this is stretching the U.N. Charter to the limit to say that it now permits the permanent military occupation of a sovereign country by foreign troops. It is true that the U.N. Charter, under Chapter VII (Action with Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace and Acts of Aggression), can authorize collective action against a country for good reasons. But the intent of such a military intervention is to be short-term and not to be turned into a permanent colonial occupation. In conclusion, let us say that since the Obama administration is clearly enlarging the Afghan conflict and has authorized drone bombings in Pakistan, it would seem that the U.N. Security Council should be called to authorize or condemn such an enlargement of the conflict. It should also indicate that it favors a compromise solution to the conflict. Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.comSOURCE: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15030--- See also:9/11 masterminds hiding in Pakistan, Afghanistan: ObamaMarch 28th, 2009 New York: President Barack Obama Pak-Afghan policy, which could be his signature foreign policy effort, said that al Qaeda terrorists are hiding in Pakistan and Afghanistan and he wants them to defeat them in their safe havens to prevent their return in future. Obama said he would increase aid to Pakistan and would, for the first time, set benchmarks for progress in fighting al Qaeda and the Taliban in both countries, the New York Times reported. “The United States of America did not choose to fight a war in Afghanistan. Nearly 3,000 of our people were killed on Sept. 11, 2001, for doing nothing more than going about their daily lives,” Obama said. “So let me be clear: Al Qaeda and its allies - the terrorists who planned and supported the 9/11 attacks - are in Pakistan and Afghanistan,” he said. “We have a clear and focused goal to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future,” Obama added. Part of Obama’s plan includes sending hundreds of additional diplomats and civilian experts into the region. Admiral Mullen, the Joint Chiefs chairman, submitted a classified review to the president, and among its 13 recommendations were to increase the number of American ground forces, with significant emphasis on “enablers,” such as the new training teams. During the 90-minute debate last Friday afternoon, Obama, flanked by his national security adviser, General James L. Jones, on his left, and Biden on his right, went around the table to elicit the final views of his national security team. During the debate, the senior administration officials said, Biden sought to put strict parameters on the size of the additional force deployed to Afghanistan and to ensure there was a specific mission for them. Biden also cast the debate in terms of what was achievable in Obama’s first term, administration officials said. Obama is dispatching Admiral Mullen and Holbrooke to Afghanistan, Pakistan and India next week to explain his new strategy to leaders there, the NYT reported. SOURCE: blog.apakistannews.com/2009/03/911-masterminds-hiding-in-pakistan.html
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Post by mank on Oct 3, 2009 18:37:14 GMT 3
Ndugu yangu, You said that for this thread to fit its title, I must credibly argue not only that 9/11 was a scam, but also that Obama has been in on the scam. This is precisely what I have been demonstrating all along. The following two articles address the above (Obama's role being more recent): Bw. Wanyee, Could you comb through the articles and bullet out the key points with which you precisely demonstrate that (1) 9/11 was a scam, and (2) that Obama has been in on the scam? This is really bringing the two issues of your discussion together, and you cannot just claim that you are demonstrating something when there is not sign that you are doing so ... this is your last chance to shine. You can leave out the 9/11 as a scam part because I believe you have presented all you would have to present. Now just point out how Obama was in on the scam.
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Post by wanyee on Oct 3, 2009 21:42:39 GMT 3
Ndugu mank, The following paragraph from the first article above, sums up the issue very well: Facts: The US invaded Afghanistan. The US provided no evidence to the Taliban Afghan government that bin Laden was involved in 9/11 and still have not done so. The US has provided no evidence that the Taliban supported the attacks of 9/11. The UN Security Council did not authorize use of force in Afghanistan. The US has provided no evidence of imminent threat to US national security from the Taliban. With no evidence of imminent threat or attack by Afghanistan, the US invasion is a War of Aggression. And yes, it's just that simple - (Obama lies to defend US War of Aggression in Afghanistan - www.uruknet.info/?p=57109)As I have repeatedly stated, and as clearly demonstrated above, Obama's role is based on his adoption of the Bush-Cheney administration’s public interpretation of the 9/11 attacks - that Al-Qaeda was responsible. References:“Imagine, for a moment, what we could have done in those days, and months, and years after 9/11. We could have deployed the full force of American power to hunt down and destroy Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, the Taliban, and all of the terrorists responsible for 9/11, while supporting real security in Afghanistan” ( Obama’s Remarks on Iraq and Afghanistan - www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/us/politics/15text-obama.html?pagewanted=all). --- "Let us renew our resolve against those who perpetrated this barbaric act and who plot against us still. In defense of our nation, we will never waver. In pursuit of al Qaeda and its extremist allies, we will never falter” ( Obama Honors 9/11 Victims, Those Who Serve As Ceremonies Mark Eighth Anniversary of Terror Attacks, President Says U.S. 'Will Never Falter' in Pursuit of al Qaeda - www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/09/11/national/main5302919.shtml). --- In a March 20, 2009 interview with CBS' 60 Minutes Correspondent Steve Kroft, which was broadcast March 22, 2009, Mr. Obama answered questions about Afghanistan: PRESIDENT OBAMA: Speaking of which. Yeah. STEVE KROFT: What -- what should that mission be? PRESIDENT OBAMA: Making sure that al Qaeda cannot attack the U.S. homeland and U.S. interests and our allies. That's our number one priority. And in service of that priority there may be a whole host of things that we need to do. We may need to build up-- economic capacity in Afghanistan. We may need to-- improve our diplomatic efforts in Pakistan. We may need to bring a more regional-- diplomatic approach to bear. We may need to coordinate more effectively with our allies. But we can't lose sight of what our central mission is. The same mission that we had when we went in after 9 11. And that is these folks can project-- violence against the United States' citizens. And that is something that we cannot tolerate. But what we can't do is think that just a military approach in Afghanistan is going to be able to solve our problems. . So what we're looking for is a comprehensive strategy. And there's gotta be an exit strategy. There-- there's gotta be a sense that this is not perpetual drift. STEVE KROFT: Afghanistan has proven to be very hard to govern. This should not come as news to anybody (LAUGHTER) given its history. PRESIDENT OBAMA: Right. STEVE KROFT: As the graveyards of empire. And there are people now who are concerned. We need to be careful what we're getting ourselves into in Afghanistan. Because we have come to be looked upon there by-- by people in Afghanistan, and even people now in Pakistan-- PRESIDENT OBAMA: Right. STEVE KROFT: -as another foreign power coming in, trying to take over the region. PRESIDENT OBAMA: I'm very mindful of that. And so is my national security team. So's the Pentagon. Afghanistan is not going to be easy in many ways. And this is not I disagreeessment. This is the assessment of -- commanders on the ground. --- And in an interview with CFR President Richard N. Haass', on his latest book, War of Necessity, War of Choice: Interviewer: In your new book you talk about the first Iraq war as being one of necessity, and the second Iraq war as being one of choice, although not a very good choice. How do you view the Afghanistan situation right now? It obviously started out as a war of necessity in retaliation for 9/11, but is it now becoming more of a war of choice? Richard N. Haass: The short answer is yes, you're exactly right. After 9/11, what the United States did in Afghanistan against the Taliban was a manifestation of the right of self-defense, and I did describe it in the book as a war of necessity. Since then, over the years, the U.S. position in Afghanistan has gotten broader, and in the most recent [Obama] administration white paper, you have the president and others talking about bringing the fight to the Taliban. So this suggests to me more than a narrow goal in Afghanistan of simply going after al-Qaeda remnants and a larger goal of essentially trying to help the central government in Kabul prevail in what increasingly looks like a civil war. SOURCE: Obama Broadening Afghanistan War Into 'War of Choice' and Not 'Necessity'www.cfr.org/publication/19274/oba...._necessity.html
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Post by mank on Oct 3, 2009 22:21:41 GMT 3
So, is it Obama's justificatioin of the action in Afghanistan that you point out as evidence that he was in on a 9/11 scam, or what? I asked that you bullet out your points because I feel like you are throwing out lots of material hoping there is a relevant argument somewhere there in. ... you could not bullet out your points, and there really do not seem to be any that address the chore elements of the thread.
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Post by wanyee on Oct 5, 2009 0:38:18 GMT 3
Ndugu yangu,
Please do not twist my words: I have always been very clear as far as Obama's role in the 9/11 lie - which is by virtue of his endorsment of the Bush-Cheney administration’s public interpretation of the 9/11 attacks.
By doing this, Obama is playing a crucial role in the 9/11 scam, which is still being used to justify the ongoing "war on terror".
Again, Obama's role as far as the September 11 / "war on terror" scam is in the present.
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Post by mank on Oct 5, 2009 4:26:53 GMT 3
Ndugu yangu, Please do not twist my words: I have always been very clear as far as Obama's role in the 9/11 lie - which is by virtue of his endorsment of the Bush-Cheney administration’s public interpretation of the 9/11 attacks.By doing this, Obama is playing a crucial role in the 9/11 scam, which is still being used to justify the ongoing "war on terror". Again, Obama's role as far as the September 11 / "war on terror" scam is in the present. Sorry Wanyee, I thought we were getting into a logical argument. It seems we are not. Amuse yourself by yourself from here on.
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Post by wanyee on Oct 5, 2009 22:55:34 GMT 3
Ndugu yangu, I can see that you have finally run out of options and are unable to defend Obama's actions anymore. Your latest response does not surprise me at all. As a matter of fact, I would have been MUCH more surprised if you suddenly had a “wake up call” and concurred with me. Verily, it is much easier to save face than shoot yourself in the foot. I knew it was only a matter of time before you did one of Einstein's "convenient", "disappearing" acts. As far as I am concerned, I have been presenting sound logic all along. Do you remember me reiterating the following statements several times, like a mantra? This thread is based on the following argument:1. Obama is pursuing the “war on terror” 2. The “war on terror” is a hoax / deception, because it is based on a “false-flag operation” (http://www.wanttoknow.info/falseflag)In reality, “the US led war in the broader Middle East Central Asian region consists in gaining control over more than sixty percent of the world's reserves of oil and natural gas. The Anglo-American oil giants also seek to gain control over oil and gas pipeline routes out of the region…The ultimate objective, combining military action, covert intelligence operations and war propaganda, is to break down the national fabric and transform sovereign countries into open economic territories, where natural resources can be plundered and confiscated under "free market" supervision. This control also extends to strategic oil and gas pipeline corridors (e.g. Afghanistan)…The collective demonization of Muslims, including the vilification of Islam, applied Worldwide, constitutes at the ideological level, an instrument of conquest of the World's energy resources. It is part of the broader economic, political mechanisms underlying the New World Order” (The "Demonization" of Muslims and the Battle for Oil - www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=4347).
N.B: "By definition, world hydrocarbon (oil and gas) production peaks when half the planet's reserves have been used up. After that point, every barrel of oil will be harder to find, more expensive to obtain, and more valuable to whoever controls it. Many of the world's foremost experts place that peak between 2000 and 2007. We live in a global economic system based on endless growth, and that growth is only possible with endless hydrocarbons to burn. Demand for oil and gas is increasing at staggering rates; after peak, there will be demand that simply cannot be met, and energy prices will rise inexorably. The resulting economic catastrophe may see oil hit $100 per barrel before the end of this decade. Oil not only keeps us warm and moves our cars, it is used to make all plastics and is, together with natural gas, the most important ingredient keeping modern agriculture afloat. It is a little known fact that for every 1 calorie of food energy produced, 10 calories of hydrocarbons are consumed…We eat oil. Without cheap oil, billions of people will freeze or starve and unfortunately, there is no combination of renewable energy sources that can replace oil and gas consumption without massive conservation efforts that are nowhere in sight" (Crossing the Rubicon: Simplifying the case against Dick Cheney - www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/011805_simplify_case.shtml).The fact that Obama is pursuing this “war on terror” / hoax / deception (that is being perpetrated by the global power elite), proves that he is either their puppet or he is very ignorant of the fact that the “war on terror” is in fact a hoax.Those who may wish to challenge this argument must begin by challenging its basis (as stated above), BY EITHER REFUTING THAT OBAMA IS PURSUING THE WAR ON TERROR OR REFUTING THAT 9/11 WAS A FALSE-FLAG OPERATION.--- I truly hope that you will see the light someday, ManK. Meanwhile, I will continue providing crucial information to those who may benefit from it. Wacha watu wengine waelimike, waamke!Kwaheri ndugu yangu. Wanyee --- Please See:Main Japanese Opposition Party Questions 9/11 in Parliament Broadcast on Japanese public TVGlobal Research, January 15, 2008 Japan's prime minister and main opposition rival clashed on Jan. 9th, 2008 over the controversial naval mission in support of U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan as the ruling bloc prepared to force an enabling law through parliament Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, squaring off in parliament with Democratic Party leader Ichiro Ozawa for the first time since taking office, praised the navy's refueling mission as helping the global war on terrorism and urged the opposition-controlled upper house to vote on it before parliament ends on Jan. 15. Ozawa insists the refueling mission violates Japan's pacifist constitution, and has not been approved formally by the United Nationsa position Fukuda flatly rejected. Ozawas Japan Democratic party which is in the opposition tried to block the resumption of the mission, which supplies fuel and water to US-led forces operating in the Indian Ocean. It claims that oil supplied by Japanese ships has been diverted for use in operations in Iraq, an accusation the Americans deny. On January 11th 2008 the opposition-controlled upper house voted down the bill to restart the mission to refuel U.S. and other ships patrolling the Indian Oceanmember of Parliament Yukihisa Fujita of the Japan Democratic party, made a 20 minute long statement at the House of Councillors, the upper house of the Diet (parliament) of Japan, ahead of the voting He questioned the official version of 9/11 presented to the japanese government and the public by the US administration in a session of the defence commission. He asked the current Prime Minister Fukuda who was the Chief Cabinet Secretary under Koizumi cabinet in 2001 . "How could terrorists attacked the Pentagon?" Mr.Yukihisa Fujita stressed that of the 24 people that died on 9/11 only 13 were identified and 11 bodies remain unaccounted for. He pointed out that there was never an official police investigation into the deaths of these japanese nationals. He asked whether terrorism is crime or war. Some Japanese people were killed, so he believes this was a crime and the japanese police should investigate the real suspects. The Japanese government assumed that the suspect was Al-Queda because Bush told then Prime minister Koizumi in 2001 after the attacks of 9/11 had happened and later did send the self-defense force to Iraq based on that assumption. US President George W Bush has recently pressed Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda to ensure Tokyo resumes crucial naval operations to support the war in Afghanistan. Yukihisa Fujita did question Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and Minister of Finance Fukushiro Nukaga about the way in which the US government did inform the japanese government about the people responsible for the 9/11 attacks. He then explained that in the USA many people doubt the official version of 9/11 and numerous websites and scientists have collected evidence that contradicts the governments version. He presented several largescale photographs of: the Pentagon entry and exit hole,the flight path towards the Pentagon, the exploding WTC towers and the WTC 7 collapse. He concluded that the japanese governments support of the "war against terror" is solely based on information provided by the US-administration. He demanded further investigation in the face of the governments drive to support the war more actively. Yukihisa Fujita was elected to the House of Councillors for the first time in 2007. The Democratic Party of Japan (Minshinto) is a social liberal political party founded in 1998 by the merger of several smaller parties. It is the second-largest party in the House of Representatives and the largest party in the House of Councillors, and it constitutes the primary opposition to the long-dominant Liberal Democratic Party. broadcasted on public TV Below is a transcript of testimony in the Japanese Parliament, broadcast live nationwide on NHK television. The Member of Parliament talking about 911 is Yukihisa Fujita from the Democratic Party of Japan. Head of the committee: We will now begin the first session of the defense and foreign affairs committee. We will now start discussing the special anti-terror law. .We now call on Mr. Yukihisa Fujita Fujita standing in front of microphone: This will be the last televised broadcast of this committee for so I would like to talk about the origin of the war on terrorism which was the attacks of 911. On September 11 of 2002 I went to a theater house for a charity concert to help build a school in Afghanistan. They chose to have the charity concert on that day as a gesture of respect for the dead. Normally 911 commemorative events are for the people who died in New York but the people who held this event decided that more innocent people died as a result of 911 in Afghanistan than in New York. So they built a grade school near where the statue of Buddha was destroyed in Bamiyan. The name of the school is "the school of hope." They also lit candles to commemorate the dead both in Afghanistan and in New York in the year 2002, one year after the attacks. So, when discussing these anti-terror laws we should ask ourselves, what was 911, what is terrorism? So today, I would like to talk about the beginning of the war on terror. So, I would like to ask the people who call this law an anti-terror law to realize that the biggest victim of the war on terrorism has been Afghanistan so I believe helping the people of Afghanistan should be our biggest priority. I would like to ask Mr. Inuzuka about this. Tadashi Inuzuka walking to the microphone: As Mr. Fujita says the main purpose of this law is to provide peace and security to Afghanistan. And, as he says, the biggest sufferers have been the people of Afghanistan. Afghanistan has 1.7 times the land area of Japan and 20 some million people live there. Also, because of a drought on the Eurasian continent close to 5 million have died due to water shortages. Even now 1 million people live close to the main battlegrounds. So, the main purpose is to provide stability to those war zones so in that context what should Japan do? However, instead of providing support by providing fuel to the U.S. forces we at the Democratic Party have decided that providing water is more important. The philosophy behind our anti-terror law is to get the ruling party to help deal with this problem. Head of the committee: Mr. FujitaMr. Fujita: I would like to talk about the origins of this war on terrorism. You may recall that in November I asked you if terrorism was war or if it was a crime. And the whole start of this war on terrorism was 911. What I want to know is if this event was caused by Al Qaeda or not. So far the only thing the government has said is that we think it was caused by Al Qaeda because President Bush told us so. We have not seen any real proof that it was Al Qaeda. I would like to know why the Prime Minister thinks it was the Taliban who was responsible for 911. Committee Chief, I want to ask the Prime Minister because he was chief cabinet officer at the time. Prime Minister Fukuda: Since the attacks we have communicated with the U.S. government and other governments at different levels and exchanged information. According to secret information obtained by our government and reports put together by foreign governments the 911 attacks were carried out by the international terrorist organization known as Al Qaeda. Mr. Fujita: So, you are talking about both secret and disclosed information. My question is has the Japanese government carried out its own investigation using the police and other resources? It is a crime so surely an investigation needs to be carried out. When a Japanese journalist was shot in Myanmar you carried out an investigation. In the same way over 20 Japanese people died on 911 so surely the government carried out its own investigation and decided that Al Qaeda was responsible. So, what kind of investigation did you carry out? At the time you were Chief Cabinet Secretary so surely you would know better than anybody so I want to ask you about your investigation. Prime Minister Fukuda: After the 911 attacks the National Police Agency sent an emergency anti-terror team to New York. They met with U.S. government officials and gathered information about missing Japanese. Mr. Fujita: So you are saying over 20 people died as a result of a crime and most of those people were working in New York. Also there were some Japanese who died in the four airplanes that were hijacked. I would like to know exactly how many people died in the buildings and how many died in the airplanes. I also want to know how you confirmed this. I would like the Foreign Minister to answer for me. Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura standing at right in front of microphone: We found the bodies of over a dozen Japanese following the simultaneous terror attacks carried out on September 11 2001. We were also informed about the death of 11 more people by the U.S. authorities. In total 24 Japanese died in those attacks. Of those 2 were in the airplanes. Mr. Fujita: I would like to ask what flights the two Japanese who died in the airplanes were on and how you determined who they were. If the foreign minister does not know it is OK to get a bureaucrat to answer: Foreign Ministry division chief Ryoji Tanizaki: Since this a question of fact, I will answer. As the Foreign Minister said, of the 24 people who died two were on the airplanes. One of them was on United Flight 93 and the other was on American airlines flight 11.As for how we know this, well I do not have the information in front of me but we were told by U.S. authorities and, in general, they use DNA testing. So we believe that is how we know about those two people. Mr. Fujita: So you are saying you do not know because you do not have the documents. Also, you say you believe there was DNA testing but you do not know. So what I want to say today is that this was a crime and crimes are supposed to be investigated. So the government needs to inform the victims families of the results of their investigation. Also, instead of just observing the anniversary of 911 every year you must be gathering information and reacting to it. So, during the past six years have you been supplying the families of the deceased with information? I would like to ask the Foreign Minister to answer. Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura: So you do not want to ask any more about how we confirmed the deaths of Japanese but want to know about reports to the victims families? We provided the families with information about the bodies and about compensation funds. Also, for the 13 Japanese whose remains we found, we helped the families deal with the bodies. We also financial support visits to the World Trade Center site for the families on every anniversary. Mr. Fujita: Since I do not have much time I would like to ask about the suspicious information being uncovered and the doubts people world wide are having about the events of 911. Many of these doubters are very influential people. In such circumstances I believe the Japanese government, which claims the attacks were carried out by Al Qaeda, should be providing the victims families with this new information. In that context I would like to ask several questions. First of all I would like to get all members of the committee to look at this panel and look at the pictures I have provided you with. This is concrete evidence in the form of photographs and other types of information. The first photograph has computer graphics attached to show how large the plane that hit the Pentagon was. A 757 is quite a large airplane with a width of 38 meters. So as you can see even though such a large plane hit the pentagon there is only a hole that is too small for the airplane. This is a photograph taken of firemen at work and you can also see there is no damage of the sort an airplane that large should make. I would also like you to look at the lawn in front and notice that there are no airplane parts on it. Let us now look at the third picture, which is also of the pentagon taken from a U.S. TV news report has captions that show the roof of the Pentagon is still intact. Again even though a huge airplane is supposed to have hit, there is not enough corresponding damage. Now let us move to the next photograph. Here is a photograph of a hole, as Minister Komura knows the Pentagon is a very strong building with many walls. Yet the airplane has pierced them. But as you know, airplanes are made of the lightest possible material. An airplane made of such light material could not make a hole like that. Next I would like to show a photograph of how the airplane hit the building. The airplane made a U-turn, avoiding the Defense Secretary's office and hitting the only part of the Pentagon that had been specially reinforced to withstand a bomb attack. Also, in the middle of page five we have a comment from a U.S. airforce official. He says I have flown the two types of airplane used on 911 and I cannot believe it would be possible for someone who is flying one for the first time to be able to carry out such a maneuver. Also, as you know, they have not recovered the flight recorders from most of these 4 airplanes. Also, there were more than 80 security cameras at the Pentagon but they have refused to release almost all of the footage. In any case, as you have just seen there is no picture of the airplane or of its wreckage in any of these photographs. It is very strange that no such pictures have been shown to us. As you know Japan's self-defense forces have their headquarters in Ichigaya. Can you imagine if an airplane hit a major city, if an hour and a half after an airplane hit New York that an airplane could hit the Pentagon? In such a situation how could our allies allow such an attack to take place. I would like the Defense Minister to answer this. Defense Minister Fuyushiba Ishiba: I have not prepared so I will have to answer ad-lib. If such a situation took place then the airforce would send fighters up to shoot down any airplanes. This is what happened with an attack on the German constitutional court. In the case of Japan our reaction would depend on what kind of airplane it was, who was flying it and what their purpose was. However, according to our laws it might be hard to order an airplane to be shot down just because it was flying at a low level. We would probably have self-defense forces fly with it and ask for a cabinet decision. Since an airplane would have many people on board we would have do discuss what to do. This happened a long time ago but a Cesna airplane was flown into the house of a person called Yoshio Kodama. There was also an All Japan Airways flight bound for Hakodate that was hijacked and had the pilot killed. It would be best if such a thing never happened but we need to prepare new laws for such situations and discuss them in Parliament. Mr. Fujita: Since we are running out of time I would like to present a new piece of evidence. Please look at this panel. The first picture is one you see often of the two towers that were hit by hijacked airplanes. I could understand if this happened right after the airplanes hit but here we can see large piece of material flying a large distance through the air. Some flew 150 meters. You can objects flying in this picture as if there was an explosion. Here is a picture I took from a book. This lets you see how far the objects flew. The third picture is of a fireman who was involved in the rescue talking about a series of explosions in the building that sounded like a professional demolition. We cannot present video today so I have written a translation of what the fireman said. Here his is saying "it went boom boom boom like explosions were going off." Here is something said by a Japanese research team of officials from the fire department and the construction ministry. The interviewed a Japanese survivor who said that while she was fleeing there were explosions. This testimony appears in a report prepared with the aid of the construction ministry and the fire department. Now I would like you to see the following picture. Normally it is said that the twin towers collapsed because they were hit by airplanes. However, one block away from the twin towers is building number 7. It can be seen in the following map a block away from the WTC. This building collapsed 7 hours after the WTC buildings were attacked. If I could show you a video it would be easy to understand but take a look at this photograph. This is a 47 story building that fell in this manner (He drops and object to demonstrate). The building falls in five or six seconds. It is about the same speed as an object would fall in a vacuum. This building falls like something you would see in a Kabuki show. Also if falls while keeping its shape. Remember it was not hit by an airplane. You have to ask yourself if a building could fall in that manner due to a fire after 7 hours. Here we have a copy of the 911 commission report. This is a report put out by the U.S. government in July of 2004 but this report does not mention the collapse of the building I just described. It is not mentioned at all in here (he waves the book). FEMA also issued a report but they also fail to mention this building. Many people believe, especially after seeing the story about building number 7, that something is strange. Since this is an incident where many people died people think is should be investigated. We are running out of time but I would also like to mention the put options. Just before the 911 attacks, ie on September 6th, 7th and 8th there were put options put out on the stocks of the two airlines United and American that were hit by hijackers. There were also put options on Merril Lynch, one of the biggest WTC tenants. In other words somebody had insider information and made a fortune selling put options of these stocks. The head of Germany's Bundesbank at the time, who is equivalent to the Governor of the Bank of Japan, said there are lots of facts to prove the people involved in the terror attacks profited from insider information. He said there was lots of suspicious trading involving financial companies etc prior to the attacks. The had of the Bundesbank was willing to say this much. I would like to ask the Finance Minster about these put options. Did the government of Japan know about this, and what do you think about this? I would like to ask Finance Minister Nukaga about this. Finance Minister Fukushiro Nukaga: I was in Burkina Fasso in Africa when I heard about this incident. I decided to fly immediately to the U.S. but when I got to Paris I was told there were no flights to America. So I only heard what was reported later about the facts. I know there have been reports about the points you raise. So we made it obligatory that people provide ID for securities transactions and for suspicious transactions to be reported and we made it a crime to provide money to terrorist organizations. We believe the international financial system should not be abused. In any case, terrorism is a horrible thing and must be condemned. This type of terrorism cannot be stopped by one country but needs to be stopped by international society. Mr. Fujita: I would like to ask finance specialist Mr. Asao to tell me about put options. A group of people with large amounts of money, clear insider information and financial expertise would have been necessary for such a thing to take place. Could a few terrorists in Afghanistand and Pakistan carry out such a sophisticated and large scale set of transactions? I would like to ask Mr. Asao to respond. Keiichiro Asao: I understand put options are a deal to sell stocks at a fixed price. In this case somebody must have had insider information to carry out such transactions because nobody could normally predict these airlines would have their planes hijacked. So, I believe this was certainly a case of insider trading. Mr. Fujita: Prime Minister, you were Chief Cabinet Secretary at the time and as somebody has already noted, this was an incident of the sort that humanity had never previously experienced. Also, there appears to be a lot more information about this incident coming out now than came out in the months after the attacks. Now that we are an internet and visual society, this information is being made public so if we look at the situation now, the whole starting point for these two laws , the start of the war on terror itself, as you have seen from the information I have presented, has not been properly investigated or analyzed. So I do not believe the government has acted properly by investigating this incident or asking the U.S. government for an explanation. So far we have not started refueling U.S. ships yet so I think we need to go back to the beginning and not just simply and blindly trust the U.S. government explanation and indirect information provided by them. There were too many victims so I think we need to start again from the beginning. We need to ask who the real victims of this war on terrorism are. I think the citizens of the world are its victims. Here in Japan we have disappearing pensions and disappearing records about victims of Hepatitis C contaminated blood but everything I have presented on facts and confirmable evidence. Let us talk about the vanishing black boxes, vanishing airplanes and vanishing remains. Also lots of the remains of these buildings have disappeared. Even FEMA says that prevented it from carrying out a proper investigation. We need to look at this evidence and ask ourselves what the war on terrorism really is. I can see the ministers nodding in agreement but I would like to ask Prime Minister Fukuda. Please look at me. I have heard that when you were Chief Cabinet Minister at the time you felt many strange things about these attacks. Do you not think it was strange? Prime Minister Fukuda: I never said I thought it was strange. Mr. Fujita: Prime Minister what about the origin of the war on terror and the idea of whether it is right or wrong to participate in it? Is there really a reason to participate in this war on terror? Do we really need to participate? I would also like to ask about how to really stop terrorism. Prime Minister Fukuda: We believe based on evidence provided to us by the U.S. government that the attacks of 911 were carried out by Al Qaeda. We need to put an end to Al Qaeda terrorism. That is why international society is united in the fight against terrorism. Here, concerning a law passed by the Democratic Party last year and based on UN resolution 16595. This is a resolution passed in response to the terrorist attacks on the U.S. So you passed the law agreeing with the UN didn't you? Mr Fujita: Did you confirm about the bodies and the facts behind the resolution because that is why you claim to be participating in this war on terrorism. So I believe to end terrorism we need to pass a law that actually helps the people of Afghanistan. I would like Mr. Inuzuka to talk about the law and about the fight against terrorism. Tadashi Inuzuka: Among the many problems raised by MP Fujita the thing we need to worry most about is that the people in Afghanistan can live in peace and without worries. That is the core of the issue of ending terrorism. Without discussing this but just operating behind the back lines by supplying oil and not thinking about the entire situation or the people involved it is nonsense to debate this law. This law should be made for peace and security in Afghanistan. Our country needs to pass a real anti-terror law. SOURCE: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7803
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Post by mank on Oct 6, 2009 1:45:26 GMT 3
ManK, Your latest response does not surprise me at all. As a matter of fact, I would have been MUCH more surprised if you suddenly had a “wake up call” and concurred with me. Verily, it is much easier to save face than shoot yourself in the foot. I knew it was only a matter of time before you did one of Einstein's "disappearing" acts and joined those blind Obama loyalists in hiding. As far as I am concerned, I have been presenting sound logic all along, to support my argument. Do you remember me reiterating the following statements several times, like a mantra? This thread is based on the following argument:Wanyee, I have stuck up with you for a long time, trying to get you to argue your point coherently. But you have no point. Either that, or your concept of logical arguments is not ordinary. Your thread is "The Obama Deception", but I have not seen you argue this title. You retreated to making a case about "what the thread is based on", but what it is based on is not exactly what interests me so much. ... and even in that case it is hard to follow you because you do not articulate your argument ... you just post people's stories, and when asked to bullet out your points you come back and post people's stories again ... you call that arguing logically?. You do not seem to know what your points are, just as you do not seem clear as to what you are arguing. Therefore as you declare your victory it might be a good idea to now point out clearly what the thread has been about, as well as the individual points with which you won ... no more what the thread is based on, or pasting of texts or links to other authors.
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Post by johns on Oct 6, 2009 2:10:40 GMT 3
Wanyee.
It would be prudent of you if you could outline Obamas many failures to date to fulfill one hundredth of what he had promised voters instead of concentrating or trying to prove that Obama lies on everything to do with the 9/11. How can you place blame on Obama for not talking truthfully on the 9/11 when you and i know very well that entrenched interests including the military industrial complex would not allow the real truth to be known to the world. Even Presidents of United States acknowledge their limits privately.
Ndugu, i would be glad to engage you in what i consider the spineless leadership from the white house to date. A man who has been endowed with a massive mandate by American people and a majority congress and yet shows nada in achievement so far. Instead he focuses on being liked by people instead of governing. To make matters worse his wife who was supposed to be the "closer" has gone into this crazy binge of being the fashion first lady of America instead of getting her husband to work. President Obama is just a total disappointment to me so far and sooner he will find himself all alone with no foot soldiers to rally to his causes.
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Post by wanyee on Oct 7, 2009 23:03:39 GMT 3
Ndugu, I agree with what you say about the overall failures in the White House so far, and encourage discussions relating to this. As you might have noted, I have posted some articles in a separate thread, to this effect: Barrack Obama’s three misdeeds in Africawww.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14467Obama And U.S. Policy Towards Africawww.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/53257Africa: U.S. Military Holds War Games on Nigeria, Somaliawww.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14783All posted under:OBAMA'S LUNCHEON WITH RAILA & AFRICAN LEADERS jukwaa.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=3484&page=3 --- The reason that I have focused on the 9/11 event / “war on terror” in my argument is because of two main reasons: 1. It is the seminal issue of our time, driving the mainstream political agenda 2. Therefore, it is the ultimate indicator of a one’s position with respect to the agenda of the global power elite for global hegemony Consider the following two quotes:“Citizens in many countries are waging a war on the cover-up of the basis for the so-called war on terror---this basis being the official interpretation of the 9/11 attacks. Along with the Internet, which has equipped both public figures and ordinary citizens to wage this war on the cover-up, David Ray Griffin has revealed dozens of omissions, distortions, and contradictions in the official story in a way that provides undeniable evidence of its falsity. The New Pearl Harbor Revisited presents a powerful exposé of the false narrative that has been driving the mainstream political agenda since 9/11. It is now up to politicians and journalists around the world to expose this truth to our peoples” - Yukihisa Fujita, member of the House of Councilors, the Diet of Japan (The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Exposé David Ray Griffin's latest Book - www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10131)The second statement is by Robert Bowman, former head of the "Star Wars" program (Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth - www.pl911truth.com/), quoted as a signature below my posts. --- Ndugu, all in all, I encourage and welcome any contributions that you might have to make to this discussion, and will do my best to engage you in discussing issues that I might be familiar with.
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Post by wanyee on Oct 15, 2009 0:42:35 GMT 3
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Post by wanyee on Oct 21, 2009 19:54:28 GMT 3
Ndugu zangu, The following quote is taken from a book that is considered to be the best introduction to the subject of 9/11. Dr. David Ray Griffin, who has published over 30 books, is professor of philosophy of religion and theology, emeritus, at Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California, where he remains a co-director of the Center for Process Studies. --- “The…‘war on terror’ is…widely perceived as a pretext for a more aggressive imperialism…9/11 has resulted in ‘foreign policy imposed on the rest of the world through an unchallenged law of empire.’ Of course, a few historians have been pointing out for some time that American leaders have long desired an empire covering the whole world. But most critics of US foreign policy believe that the imperialism…especially since 9/11, has been much more explicit, far-reaching, and arrogant. Richard Falk has, in fact, referred to it as the ‘global domination project.’ Although there was an outpouring of good will toward America after 9/11 and a widespread willingness to accede to its claim that the attacks gave it a mandate to wage a worldwide war on terrorism, this good will was quickly exhausted. American foreign policy is now criticized around the world more widely and severely than ever before, even more so than during the war in Vietnam. The American answer to all criticism however, is 9/11. When Europeans criticized the Bush administration’s intention to go to war against Iraq, for example, several US opinion-makers supportive of the war explained the difference in perception by saying that the Europeans had not suffered the attacks of 9/11” ( The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11, by Dr. David Ray Griffin - www.amazon.com/New-Pearl-Harbor-Disturbing-Administration/dp/1566565529).
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Post by wanyee on Oct 27, 2009 23:48:12 GMT 3
Afghanistan, Central Asia, Caucasus: Key to oil profitsBy Karen Talbot, People's Weekly World, 17 May 2002A picture is emerging of what is behind Bush's “war on terrorism.” The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have provided a qualitatively new opportunity for the U.S., acting especially on behalf of giant oil companies, to permanently entrench its military in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus, where there are vast petroleum reserves - the second-largest in the world. This also positions U.S. armed might on the western doorstep of China, posing an unprecedented threat to South Asia and the entire world. The way is now open to jumpstart oil and gas pipeline projects through western Afghanistan and Pakistan, both of which also have untapped oil and gas reserves. Likewise, the recent deployment of U.S. military personnel in Georgia, ostensibly to fight terrorists, is aimed at guaranteeing and protecting the projected Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (Turkey) pipeline designed to bypass Russia and Iran. Meanwhile, U.S. energy companies have been feverishly exploring a section of the Caspian Sea, flouting legalities and ignoring jurisdiction disputes. Some say Washington merely seeks to guarantee oil supplies for U.S. consumers. But in fact, U.S. consumption relies heavily on domestic sources and on Venezuela, Canada, and Africa. No, this is about oil corporation profits, which can be greatly enhanced by selling to energy-hungry South, East, and Southeast Asia, and by outflanking China and Russia in grabbing Central Asian-Caspian Sea Basin energy resources and the pipelines to transport them to market. Supplies of natural gas and oil, including those from newly discovered huge oil reserves in Kazakhstan, can easily be piped through existing conduits traversing Russia or a proposed pipeline through Iran. But bypassing, and thus hindering, Russian petroleum operations, which rely heavily on European customers, would provide western corporations greater access to the European market. Bypassing Iran would thwart the growing cooperation between Iran, Russia and European oil companies, which have invested heavily in Iran's oil and gas sectors. This is a major factor in the growing rivalry between the U.S. and Europe. The great oil gameWriting in the Hong Kong-based Asia Times, a business-oriented publication, Ranjit Devraj states: “Just as the Gulf War in 1991 was about oil, the new conflict in South and Central Asia is no less about access to the region's abundant petroleum resources.” The very nature of the capitalist system inevitably drives corporations to expand or die - expand at any cost, in human suffering or environmental devastation. Such are the characteristics of today's imperialism, the main source of war, terrorism and violence. Commerce in oil remains paramount in this process. More than ever, these imperial policies are being carried out by top U.S. government leaders, from the President and Vice President to CIA officials, who have direct ties to the corporations and banks which stand to derive superprofits from these policies, particularly the oil, energy, banking and military-aerospace sectors. Unocal and Afghanistan A consortium headed by Unocal had for years sought to build gas and oil pipelines from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea. A major reason for Washington's support of the Taliban between 1994 and 1997 was the expectation that they would swiftly conquer the whole country, enabling Unocal to build a pipeline there. Central Asian expert Ahmed Rashid said: “Impressed by the ruthlessness and willingness of the then-emerging Taliban to cut a pipeline deal, the State Department and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency agreed to funnel arms and funding to the Taliban in their war against the ethnically Tajik Northern Alliance. As recently as 1999, U.S. taxpayers paid the entire annual salary of every single Taliban government official...” “When the Taliban took Kabul in 1996, Washington said nothing,” John Pilger wrote in The British Daily Mirror. “Why? Because Taliban leaders were soon on their way to Houston, Texas, to be entertained by executives of the oil company, Unocal.” “With secret U.S. government approval, the company offered them a generous cut of the profits of the oil and gas pumped through a pipeline that the Americans wanted to build from the Soviet central Asia through Afghanistan...” “Although the deal fell through, it remains an urgent priority of the administration of George W. Bush, which is steeped in the oil industry. Bush's concealed agenda is to exploit the oil and gas reserves in the Caspian basin...Only if the pipeline runs through Afghanistan can the Americans hope to control it.” According to Ishtiaq Ahmad, of Eastern Mediterranean University in Cyprus, the Bush administration held negotiations with the Taliban early in 2001, despite a developing rift over terms of the pipeline scheme. Laila Helms, public relations agent for the Taliban (and niece of Richard Helms, former CIA chief), brought an advisor of Mullah Omar to Washington as recently as March 2001. One of the negotiating meetings was held just one month before Sept. 11. “At one moment during one of the negotiations, U.S. representatives told the Taliban, 'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs',” said Charles Brisard, co-author of the popular French book, “Bin Laden, the Forbidden Truth.” After Sept. 11, it became much easier to win international support for bombing the Taliban. CIA spawns Taliban All the mujahideen forces, and Osama bin Laden's organization, were incubated by the CIA in the 1980's. This largest-ever covert operation was directed against the newly-born government of the Saur Revolution (which gave equal rights to women, set up health care, literacy, housing, job creation and land reform programs) and then against the Soviets. The mujahideen murdered teachers, doctors, and nurses, tortured women for not wearing the veil, and shot down civilian airliners with U.S.-supplied stinger missiles. A revealing 1994 book, “Victory - The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy that Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union,” includes boastful accounts by William Casey, Reagan's CIA Director, of how he convinced the Saudi Arabians to match CIA funding of the mujahideen, and how money, arms and training were funneled through Pakistan. The book says, “The strategy attacked the very heart of the Soviet system and included...substantial financial and military support to the Afghan resistance [sic] as well as supplying the mujahideen personnel to take the war into the Soviet Union itself...[and a] campaign to reduce dramatically Soviet hard currency earnings by driving down the price of oil with Saudi cooperation and limiting natural gas exports to the West...” New made-in-the-USA government - Unocal emerges again The head of the newly established “interim” Afghan government conjured up by the Bush administration, Hamid Karzai, has been a CIA covert operator since the 1980s, according to the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan. Karzai supported the Taliban and was a consultant for Unocal. Bush's envoy to the new government, Zalmay Khalizad, also worked for Unocal. He drew up the risk analysis for the pipeline in 1997, lobbied for the Taliban and took part in negotiations with them. Khalizad was a special advisor to the State Department under Reagan and a key liaison with the mujahideen. He is now on the National Security Council, reporting to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. Enron and other Bush connections The direct connections between Bush administration personnel and the oil, energy, and military-industrial corporations are very intimate. Here are only a few: The proposed Baku-Ceyhan pipeline is represented by the Baker & Botts law firm. The principal attorney is James Baker, former secretary of state and chief Bush campaign spokesman in the Florida vote struggle. In 1994, Cheney, as CEO of Halliburton, was a member of Kazakhstan's Oil Advisory Board and helped broker a deal between Chevron and Kazakhstan. Rice is a member of the board of Chevron. Brown & Root - a unit of Halliburton - will be upgrading the U.S. air base in Uzbekistan. According to an article in Stars and Stripes, “Brown & Root...is expected to take charge of base camp maintenance, airfield services and fuel supplies...run the dining halls and laundry service and oversee the Morale, Welfare and Recreation program.” Brown & Root performs similar lucrative services at other bases, including those in Bosnia and Kosovo, notably the giant permanent Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo conveniently near the soon-to-be constructed trans-Balkan AMBO pipeline. Enron Corp., closely linked with Bush and Cheney, conducted the feasibility study for the $2.5 billion trans-Caspian pipeline, a joint venture with Turkmenistan, Bechtel Corp. and General Electric. Enron had a $3 billion investment in the Dabhol power plant near Bombay, India, the single biggest direct foreign investment in India's history. There was massive opposition to the project in India, due to the huge costs to consumers (700 percent more than from other sources). Enron's survival depended on getting a cheaper source of gas and oil to save the project. This could be solved by the building of a branch of the proposed natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan, to terminate in Multan, Pakistan, near the India border. Also, in 1997 Enron announced it was going to spend over $1 billion building and improving lines within India, so the gas would be piped from Multan to the Bombay Enron plant. Enron was expecting also to cash in on the main spur of the pipeline ending on the Pakistan coast, from which hydrocarbon supplies would be exported to the vast Asian markets. Clearly, developments in Afghanistan were critical to Enron. George W. became president just when the India project was in serious trouble. One month later, Vice President Dick Cheney held his first secret meeting with Enron CEO Kenneth Lay. The Bush administration is refusing to reveal the details of this and subsequent consultations with Lay, even in the face of a GAO suit for release of the papers. Nevertheless, it has been documented that the Vice President's energy task force changed a draft energy proposal to include a provision to boost oil and natural gas production in India, clearly targeted to help Enron's Dabhol plant. These are but some of the machinations by Bush and his cohorts to help Enron regarding the India deal. Some of the negotiations with the Taliban to promote the trans-Afghan pipeline and thus also help save Enron transpired just prior to the Sept. 11 attacks. U.S. bases in Afghanistan and former Soviet republics “If one looks at the map of the big American bases created for the war in Afghanistan, one is struck by the fact that they are completely identical to the route of the projected oil pipelines to the Indian Ocean,” says Uri Averny, a former member of the Israeli Knesset, writing in the Israeli daily Ma'ariv. In the name of conducting the war, in addition to placing troops in Georgia, the U.S. also won agreement to station troops in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and to build a long-term base in Kyrgyzstan. Kazakhstan is next. This entrenchment of a U.S. military presence in Central Asia opens access to another coveted resource-rich region, Siberia. It brings other goals within reach—balkanization of central Asian and trans-Caucasus nations into easily controlled emirate-like entities, lacking any real sovereignty—and further military encirclement of China. Bush's “perpetual war” is taking aim at Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, and Iran—all rich in petroleum. The U.S. backed brutal Israeli war against the Palestinians seeks to maintain U.S. hegemony over the oil-rich Middle East. U.S. military support to Colombia is now openly admitted by the Bush administration to be aimed at protecting pipelines and putting down popular insurgency. Similarly, the recent U.S.-backed coup attempt against the Chavez government of Venezuela had much to do with controlling that country's petroleum riches. Increasingly, U.S. and world public opinion is awakening to the hidden agenda of the “war on terrorism”—the corporate frenzy to plunder oil and other resources in the petroleum-rich arc stretching from the Middle East to southeast Asia. The war in Afghanistan is central to reaping super profits from all that “black gold.” The author can be reached at icpj@igc.org PWW: pww@pww.org 235 West 23rd Street New York NY 10011 ph: 212-924-2523 SOURCE: www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/27c/029.html--- Resources:The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11, by Dr. David Ray Griffin www.amazon.com/New-Pearl-Harbor-Disturbing-Administration/dp/1566565529The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Exposéwww.amazon.com/New-Pearl-Harbor-Revisited-Cover-Up/dp/1566567297The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions And Distortionswww.amazon.com/11-Commission-Report-Omissions-Distortions/dp/1566565847/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256677061&sr=1-1--- I just received these books about two weeks ago, and am presently using them to research further into the 9/11 issue. They are invaluable sources of information, supported by more than enough empirical evidence. I strongly recommend them.
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Post by wanyee on Nov 3, 2009 1:07:34 GMT 3
War and Globalization - The Truth Behind September 11 (9/11)In this lecture by Michel Chossudovsky, he blows away the smokescreen put up by the mainstream media, that 9/11 was an attack on America by "Islamic terrorists". Through meticulous research, he has uncovered a military-intelligence ploy behind the September 11 attacks, and the cover-up and complicity of key members of the Bush Administration. According to Chossudovsky, the "war on terrorism" is a complete fabrication based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden, outwitted the $40 billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus. The "war on terrorism" is a war of conquest. Globalisation is the final march to the "New World Order", dominated by Wall Street and the U.S. military-industrial complex. September 11, 2001 provides a justification for waging a war without borders. Washington's agenda consists in extending the frontiers of the American Empire to facilitate complete U.S. corporate control, while installing within America the institutions of the Homeland Security State. VIDEO LECTURE - video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3117338213439292490&q=chossudovsky&hl=en#BOOK - War and Globalisation: The Truth Behind September 11 - www.amazon.ca/War-Globalisation-Truth-Behind-September/dp/0973110902--- PROFILE: Dr. Michel Chossudovsky is a retired Professor of Economics and international development at the University of Ottawa, as well as the Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is the author of The Globalization of Poverty: Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms, The globalization of poverty and the new world order, America's "War on Terrorism" among other books. Dr. Chossudovsky is considered to be one of the leading intellectuals of the anti-war movement.
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Post by wanyee on Nov 10, 2009 23:56:45 GMT 3
Afghanistan, the Taliban and the Bush Oil Team by Wayne Madsen democrats.com, January 2002
Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), globalresearch.ca, 23rd January 2002-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- According to Afghan, Iranian, and Turkish government sources, Hamid Karzai, the interim Prime Minister of Afghanistan, was a top adviser to the El Segundo, California-based UNOCAL Corporation which was negotiating with the Taliban to construct a Central Asia Gas (CentGas) pipeline from Turkmenistan through western Afghanistan to Pakistan. Karzai, the leader of the southern Afghan Pashtun Durrani tribe, was a member of the mujaheddin that fought the Soviets during the 1980s. He was a top contact for the CIA and maintained close relations with CIA Director William Casey, Vice President George Bush, and their Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) Service interlocutors. Later, Karzai and a number of his brothers moved to the United States under the auspices of the CIA. Karzai continued to serve the agency's interests, as well as those of the Bush Family and their oil friends in negotiating the CentGas deal, according to Middle East and South Asian sources. When one peers beyond all of the rhetoric of the White House and Pentagon concerning the Taliban, a clear pattern emerges showing that construction of the trans-Afghan pipeline was a top priority of the Bush administration from the outset. Although UNOCAL claims it abandoned the pipeline project in December 1998, the series of meetings held between U.S., Pakistani, and Taliban officials after 1998, indicates the project was never off the table. Quite to the contrary, recent meetings between U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlain and that country's oil minister Usman Aminuddin indicate the pipeline project is international Project Number One for the Bush administration. Chamberlain, who maintains close ties to the Saudi ambassador to Pakistan (a one-time chief money conduit for the Taliban), has been pushing Pakistan to begin work on its Arabian Sea oil terminus for the pipeline. Meanwhile, President Bush says that U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan for the long haul. Far from being engaged in Afghan peacekeeping -- the Europeans are doing much of that -- our troops will effectively be guarding pipeline construction personnel that will soon be flooding into the country. Karzai's ties with UNOCAL and the Bush administration are the main reason why the CIA pushed him for Afghan leader over rival Abdul Haq, the assassinated former mujaheddin leader from Jalalabad, and the leadership of the Northern Alliance, seen by Langley as being too close to the Russians and Iranians. Haq had no apparent close ties to the U.S. oil industry and, as both a Pushtun and a northern Afghani, was popular with a wide cross-section of the Afghan people, including the Northern Alliance. Those credentials likely sealed his fate. When Haq entered Afghanistan from Pakistan last October, his position was immediately known to Taliban forces, which subsequently pinned him and his small party down, captured, and executed them. Former Reagan National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, who worked with Haq, vainly attempted to get the CIA to help rescue Haq. The agency claimed it sent a remotely-piloted armed drone to attack the Taliban but its actions were too little and too late. Some observers in Pakistan claim the CIA tipped off the ISI about Haq's journey and the Pakistanis, in turn, informed the Taliban. McFarlane, who runs a K Street oil consulting firm, did not comment on further questions about the circumstances leading to the death of Haq. While Haq was not part of the Bush administration's GOP (Grand Oil Plan) for South Asia, Karzai was a key player on the Bush Oil team. During the late 1990s, Karzai worked with an Afghani-American, Zalmay Khalilzad, on the CentGas project. Khalilzad is President Bush's Special National Security Assistant and recently named presidential Special Envoy for Afghanistan. Interestingly, in the White House press release naming Khalilzad special envoy, no mention was made of his past work for UNOCAL. Khalilzad has worked on Afghan issues under National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, a former member of the board of Chevron, itself no innocent bystander in the future CentGas deal. Rice made an impression on her old colleagues at Chevron. The company has named one of their supertankers the SS Condoleezza Rice. Khalilzad, a fellow Pashtun and the son of a former government official under King Mohammed Zahir Shah, was, in addition to being a consultant to the RAND Corporation, a special liaison between UNOCAL and the Taliban government. Khalilzad also worked on various risk analyses for the project. Khalilzad's efforts complemented those of the Enron Corporation, a major political contributor to the Bush campaign. Enron, which recently filed for bankruptcy in the single biggest corporate collapse in the nation's history, conducted the feasibility study for the CentGas deal. Vice President Cheney held several secret meetings with top Enron officials, including its Chairman Kenneth Lay, earlier in 2001. These meetings were presumably part of Cheney's non-public Energy Task Force sessions. A number of Enron stockholders, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, became officials in the Bush administration. In addition, Thomas White, a former Vice Chairman of Enron and a multimillionaire in Enron stock, currently serves as the Secretary of the Army. A chief benefactor in the CentGas deal would have been Halliburton, the huge oil pipeline construction firm that also had its eye on the Central Asian oil reserves. At the time, Halliburton was headed by Dick Cheney. After Cheney's selection as Bush's Vice Presidential candidate, Halliburton also pumped a huge amount of cash into the Bush-Cheney campaign coffers. And like oil cash cow Enron, there were Wall Street rumors in late December that Halliburton, which suffered a forty per cent drop in share value, might follow Enron into bankruptcy court. Assisting with the CentGas negotiations with the Taliban was Laili Helms, the niece-in-law of former CIA Director Richard Helms. Laili Helms, also a relative of King Zahir Shah, was the Taliban's unofficial envoy to the United States and arranged for various Taliban officials to visit the United States. Laili Helms' base of operations was in her home in Jersey City on the Hudson River. Ironically, most of her work on behalf of the Taliban was practically conducted in the shadows of the World Trade Center, just across the river. Laili Helms' liaison work for the Taliban paid off for Big Oil. In December 1997, the Taliban visited UNOCAL's Houston refinery operations. Interestingly, the chief Taliban leader based in Kandahar, Mullah Mohammed Omar, now on America's international Most Wanted List, was firmly in the UNOCAL camp. His rival Taliban leader in Kabul, Mullah Mohammed Rabbani (not to be confused with the head of the Northern Alliance Burhanuddin Rabbani), favored Bridas, an Argentine oil company, for the pipeline project. But Mullah Omar knew UNOCAL had pumped large sums of money to the Taliban hierarchy in Kandahar and its expatriate Afghan supporters in the United States. Some of those supporters were also close to the Bush campaign and administration. And Kandahar was the city near which the CentGas pipeline was to pass, a lucrative deal for the otherwise desert outpost. While Clinton's State Department omitted Afghanistan from the top foreign policy priority list, the Bush administration, beholden to the oil interests that pumped millions of dollars into the 2000 campaign, restored Afghanistan to the top of the list, but for all the wrong reasons. After Bush's accession to the presidency, various Taliban envoys were received at the State Department, CIA, and National Security Council. The CIA, which appears, more than ever, to be a virtual extended family of the Bush oil interests, facilitated a renewed approach to the Taliban. The CIA agent who helped set up the Afghan mujaheddin, Milt Bearden, continued to defend the interests of the Taliban. He bemoaned the fact that the United States never really bothered to understand the Taliban when he told the Washington Post last October, "We never heard what they were trying to say... We had no common language. Ours was, 'Give up bin Laden.' They were saying, 'Do something to help us give him up.' " There were even reports that the CIA met with their old mujaheddin operative bin Laden in the months before September 11 attacks. The French newspaper Le Figaro quoted an Arab specialist named Antoine Sfeir who postulated that the CIA met with bin Laden in July in a failed attempt to bring him back under its fold. Sfeir said the CIA maintained links with bin Laden before the U.S. attacked his terrorist training camps in Afghanistan in 1998 and, more astonishingly, kept them going even after the attacks. Sfeir told the paper, "Until the last minute, CIA agents hoped bin Laden would return to U.S. command, as was the case before 1998." Bin Laden actually officially broke with the US in 1991 when US troops began arriving in Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Storm. Bin Laden felt this was a violation of the Saudi regime’s responsibility to protect the Islamic Holy Shrines of Mecca and Medina from the infidels. Bin Laden’s anti-American and anti-House of Saud rhetoric soon reached a fever pitch. The Clinton administration made numerous attempts to kill Bin Laden. In August 1998, Al Qaeda operatives blew up several U.S. embassies in Africa. In response, Bill Clinton ordered cruise missiles to be launched from US ships in the Persian Gulf into Afghanistan, which missed Bin Laden by a few hours. The Clinton administration also devised a plan with Pakistan's ISI to send a team of assassins into Afghanistan to kill Bin Laden. But Pakistan's government was overthrown by General Musharraf, who was viewed as particularly close to the Taliban. The CIA cancelled its plans, fearing Musharraf's ISI would tip off the Taliban and Bin Laden. . The CIA's connections to the ISI in the months before September 11 and the weeks after are also worthy of a full-blown investigation. The CIA continues to maintain an unhealthy alliance with the ISI, the organization that groomed bin Laden and the Taliban. Last September, the head of the ISI, General Mahmud Ahmed, was fired by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for his pro-Taliban leanings and reportedly after the U.S. government presented Musharraf with disturbing intelligence linking the general to the terrorist hijackers. General Ahmed was in Washington, DC on the morning of September 11 meeting with CIA and State Department officials as the hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Later, both the Northern Alliance spokesman in Washington, Haron Amin, and Indian intelligence, in an apparent leak to The Times of India, confirmed that General Ahmed ordered a Pakistani-born British citizen and known terrorist named Ahmed Umar Sheik to wire $100,000 from Pakistan to the U.S. bank account of Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker. When the FBI traced calls made between General Ahmed and Sheik's cellular phone - the number having been supplied by Indian intelligence to the FBI - a pattern linking the general with Sheik clearly emerged. According to The Times of India, the revelation that General Ahmed was involved in the Sheik-Atta money transfer was more than enough for a nervous and embarrassed Bush administration. It pressed Musharraf to dump General Ahmed. Musharraf mealy-mouthed the announcement of his general's dismissal by stating Ahmed "requested" early retirement. Sheik was well known to the Indian police. He was arrested in New Delhi in 1994 for plotting to kidnap four foreigners, including an American citizen. Sheik was released by the Indians in 1999 in a swap for passengers on board New Delhi-bound Indian Airlines flight 814, hijacked by Islamic militants from Kathmandu, Nepal to Kandahar, Afghanistan. India continues to believe the ISI played a part in the hijacking since the hijackers were affiliated with the pro-bin Laden Kashmiri terrorist group, Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin, a group only recently and quite belatedly placed on the State Department's terrorist list. The ISI and bin Laden's Al Qaeda reportedly assists the group in its operations against Indian government targets in Kashmir. The FBI, which assisted its Indian counterpart in the investigation of the Indian Airlines hijacking, says it wants information leading to the arrest of those involved in the terrorist attacks. Yet, no move has been made to question General Ahmed or those U.S. government officials, including Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who met with him in September. Clearly, General Ahmed was a major player in terrorist activities across South Asia, yet still had very close ties to the U.S. government. General Ahmed's terrorist-supporting activities - and the U.S. government officials who tolerated those activities - need to be investigated. The Taliban visits to Washington continued up to a few months prior to the September 11 attacks. The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research's South Asian Division maintained constant satellite telephone contact with the Taliban in Kandahar and Kabul. Washington permitted the Taliban to maintain a diplomatic office in Queens, New York headed by Taliban diplomat Abdul Hakim Mojahed. In addition, U.S. officials, including Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Christina Rocca, who is also a former CIA officer, visited Taliban diplomatic officials in Islamabad. In the meantime, the Bush administration took a hostile attitude towards the Islamic State of Afghanistan, otherwise known as the Northern Alliance. Even though the United Nations recognized the alliance as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, the Bush administration, with oil at the forefront of its goals, decided to follow the lead of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and curry favor with the Taliban mullahs of Afghanistan. The visits of Islamist radicals did not end with the Taliban. In July 2001, the head of Pakistan's pro-bin Laden Jamiaat-i-Islami Party, Qazi Hussein Ahmed, also reportedly was received at the George Bush Center for Intelligence (aka, CIA headquarters) in Langley, Virginia. According to the Washington Post, the Special Envoy of Mullah Omar, Rahmatullah Hashami, even came to Washington bearing a gift carpet for President Bush from the one-eyed Taliban leader. The Village Voice reported that Hashami, on behalf of the Taliban, offered the Bush administration to hold on to bin Laden long enough for the United States to capture or kill him but, inexplicably, the administration refused. Meanwhile, Spozhmai Maiwandi, the director of the Voice of America's Pashtun service, jokingly nicknamed "Kandahar Rose" by her colleagues, aired favorable reports on the Taliban, including a controversial interview with Mullah Omar. The Bush administration's dalliances with the Taliban may have even continued after the start of the bombing campaign against their country. According to European intelligence sources, a number of European governments were concerned that the CIA and Big Oil were pressuring the Bush administration not to engage in an initial serious ground war on behalf of the Northern Alliance in order to placate Pakistan and its Taliban compatriots. The early-on decision to stick with an incessant air bombardment, they reasoned, was causing too many civilian deaths and increasing the shakiness of the international coalition. The obvious, and woefully underreported, interfaces between the Bush administration, UNOCAL, the CIA, the Taliban, Enron, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, the groundwork for which was laid when the Bush Oil team was on the sidelines during the Clinton administration, is making the Republicans worried. Vanquished vice presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman is in the ironic position of being the senator who will chair the Senate Government Affairs Committee hearings on the collapse of Enron. The roads from Enron also lead to Afghanistan and murky Bush oil politics. UNOCAL was also clearly concerned about its past ties to the Taliban. On September 14, just three days after terrorists of the Afghan-base al Qaeda movement crashed their planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, UNOCAL issued the following statement: "The company is not supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan in any way whatsoever. Nor do we have any project or involvement in Afghanistan. Beginning in late 1997, Unocal was a member of a multinational consortium that was evaluating construction of a Central Asia Gas pipeline between Turkmenistan and Pakistan [via western Afghanistan]. Our company has had no further role in developing or funding that project or any other project that might involve the Taliban." The Bush Oil Team, which can now rely on the support of the interim Prime Minister of Afghanistan, may think that war and oil profits mix. But there is simply too much evidence that the War in Afghanistan was primarily about building UNOCAL's pipeline, not about fighting terrorism. The Democrats, who control the Senate and its investigation agenda, should investigate the secretive deals between Big Oil, Bush, and the Taliban. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright Wayne Madsen 2002. Reprinted for fair use only. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SOURCE: globalresearch.ca/articles/MAD201A.html
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Post by greatkim on Nov 11, 2009 0:48:04 GMT 3
The author of these videos is Alex Jones and American extremist paranoid right wing conservative. The author of the article posted by Waynee is Wayne Madsen another crazy conspiracist Coincidentally I have posted about this man in another thread here today.
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Post by wanyee on Nov 20, 2009 0:38:47 GMT 3
greatkim, Thank you for your contribution. This thread is not based on Alex Jones video. Rather, “The Obama Deception” clips were intended to stimulate debate. As I previously stated, despite the title of this thread and the links that initiate it, my argument is NOT BASED on Alex Jones' documentary / views. I have chosen to use the title of Alex Jones documentary, primarily because I find it fitting. My argument, even before the release of Alex Jones' film, has always been BASED ON THE 9/11 EVENT. Regarding Wayne Madsen’s article, I actually had read your post under the thread “KIBAKI TAKES FIGHT TO OBAMA'S WASHINGTON DOORSTEPS” (http://jukwaa.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=3520), whereby you quoted one of Wayne Madsen’s articles. The article that I posted by this author (above) was intended to further illustrate 9/11-based petro-geopolitics. --- See also:What, Exactly, is Being Fought in Afghanistan?
Fighting the TalibanBy M. Reza Pirbhai October 14, 2009 "Counterpunch" -- With US and NATO commanders on the battlefield of Afghanistan calling for more troops, how best to defeat the Taliban is being hotly debated by Washington’s policy-makers and their media pundits. Yet, nowhere are the types of questions posed by Arundhati Roy (the acclaimed Indian novelist and social activist) on a recent visit to Pakistan to be heard in the mainstream US discourse. Clarifying the purpose of her trip during an address at the Karachi Press Club, she stated, “I’m here to understand what you mean when you say Taliban…Do you mean a militant? Do you mean an ideology? Exactly what is it that is being fought?” The reason that such questions are not frequently addressed in the US mainstream seems patently clear. The answers require one to move beyond the atrocities of ‘9/11’ and such pat ideas as the ‘threat’ posed the ‘civilized world’ by the Taliban/al-Qaida ‘militant’ and their ‘ideology,’ as well as the ‘human rights’ and ‘anti-woman’ abuses they perpetrate in their ‘Muslim’ homelands. In fact, Roy’s questions require the respondent to first and foremost recall that precursors to the Taliban - groups and leaders with similar ideologies and methods, including Usama bin Laden – were wholehearted supported by the US, with Saudi Arabian and Pakistani assistance, during the 1980’s, when fighting the USSR and its Afghani ally, the Najibullah regime. Of course, acknowledging that the Taliban-style ‘militant’ was an ally and his ‘ideology’ was considered an asset, not to be fought but nurtured and supported, is no great revelation. Even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged exactly this in an appearance before the House Appropriations Committee in late April, 2009. She stated: “Let’s remember here…the people we are fighting today we funded them twenty years ago…and we did it because we were locked in a struggle with the Soviet Union. They invaded Afghanistan…and we did not want to see them control Central Asia and we went to work…and it was President Reagan in partnership with Congress led by Democrats who said you know what it sounds like a pretty good idea…let’s deal with the ISI and the Pakistan military and let’s go recruit these mujahideen. And great, let them come from Saudi Arabia and other countries, importing their Wahhabi brand of Islam so that we can go beat the Soviet Union. And guess what…they (Soviets) retreated… they lost billions of dollars and it led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. So there is a very strong argument which is…it wasn’t a bad investment in terms of Soviet Union but let’s be careful with what we sow…because we will harvest.” What Clinton neglected to mention, however, and Congress avoided asking, is the full extent and duration of that support, as well as the actual date and circumstances under which the ally was reassessed as an enemy, leaving the impression that the US withdrew after the USSR was defeated in 1989, only to return after the atrocious ‘harvest’ of ‘9/11.’ Regarding the extent of support, Washington insiders do not mention that the Taliban’s “harsh form of oppression on women and others,” which everyone from Madeleine Albright to Hillary Clinton have argued provides cause for war, is not a concern when relations with ‘Wahhabi’ Saudi Arabia are pursued, and was not a concern when the US’ closest ally in the region, President (General) Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan, promulgated a version of ‘Islamic Law’ whose intellectual roots were identical to those of Saudi Arabia and the Taliban, as evinced by such ‘anti-woman’ legislation as the removal of all images of women from public spaces (including TV), and such ‘human rights’ violations as public flogging. Zia ul-Haq’s regime entirely changed the complexion of Pakistani society, bringing the religio-political parties that would later instruct the Taliban on ‘Islam’ – that is, the Jama’at-i Ulama-i Islam - firmly into the political arena and leading to an entire generation raised under the impression that at least the social aspects of Taliban-style ‘ideology’ represents the ‘true’ face of ‘Islamic Law,’ whether they stand for or against it. As for the duration of US support for the ‘militant’ and his ‘ideology,’ not even the USSR’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 stemmed activity. In fact, just as the USSR’s withdrawal did not mean an end to its support for the ‘communist’ regime it had left behind, the US found reason to continue supporting the Taliban-style forces arrayed against the Najibullah regime. This was accomplished by continuing to work through Pakistan with Saudi Arabian aid in the support of a coalition of seven Taliban-style outfits, known as the ‘Afghan Interim Government.’ This proxy war did not end until 1992, after the US and the USSR concluded a deal to stop providing military and financial aid to the Afghan Interim Government and the Najibullah regime, respectively. The collapse of the USSR itself only sealed the deal and, consequently, the fate of Najibullah regime; the latter fell by early 1992 and the Afghan Interim Government, held together by the common enemy of Najibullah, soon followed. The fall of Najibullah, however, did not end US entanglement with the Taliban-style ‘militant’ and his ‘ideology’ in Afghanistan, despite Hillary Clinton’s so often repeated claims. Rather, the inauguration of President Bill Clinton in 1992, signalled an emphasis on ties with the ‘Northern Alliance’ – itself a band of Taliban-style groups, sprinkled with regional ‘warlords,’ known for their drug running and human rights abuses. This relationship was actually initiated by Clinton’s predecessor, George Bush (Sr.), in 1989, with the appointment of a US charge d’affair for the Northern Alliance, at the very moment that the charge d’affair for Afghanistan as a whole was withdrawn and the US embassy in Kabul closed. In other words, the US now joined Russia, Pakistan, India, Iran and Saudi Arabia in backing one of the other of the Taliban-style militants and warlords vying for control of Afghanistan, the result of which was the destruction of major cities like Kabul and most of the country’s infrastructure, as well as the continued killing, rape and torture of thousands more civilians. Meanwhile, the official attitude of the US and its NATO allies, who today wage war in the name of ‘human rights’ and ‘women’s emancipation,’ was aptly captured in the following line from a London Times article published in the moment: “The world has no business in that country’s tribal disputes and blood feuds.” As the carnage continued in Afghanistan, across the border in Pakistan, General Zia ul-Haq, the US’ prime conduit for the aid and training provided all the Taliban-style militants during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, had been killed in a mysterious plane crash in 1988, clearing the way for the ‘democratic’ administrations of Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto (1988-90) and Nawaz Sharif (1990-93). Even while continuing to funnel funds and aid to Afghani militants from 1989-1992, these administrations were left to deal with the fallout of the last decade’s hottest front in the Cold War on their own. This not only included the ‘militant’ and his ‘ideology’ bequeathed by the US, Saudi Arabia and Zia ul-Haq, but extended to millions of Afghani refugees, the proliferation of weaponry outside of state control and the infusion of a drug culture driven by the Afghani combatants’ and their backers’ preferred method of funding their exploits. Further hampering the ability of these ‘democratic’ administrations to function, beginning as early as 1990, the Bush (Sr.) administration imposed economic and military sanctions on Pakistan under the Pressler Amendment - a country-specific law that singles out Pakistan on the nuclear issue - a consequence of which was the withholding of Pakistan military equipment contracted and paid for prior to 1990, worth about $1.2 billion, as well as the suspension of military officer training in the US. This was followed in 1992/93, under the Clinton administration, with threats to declare Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism and, in the summer of 1993, the imposition of additional sanctions under the MTCR (Missile Technology Control Regime). Continuous meddling in Afghanistan, despite the USSR’s withdrawal, coupled with the shift in attitude toward Pakistan, should make it apparent that the ‘New World Order’ sought by Bush (Sr.) played an important part in directing the Clinton administration’s policies as well. In particular, the changing relationship between the US and India envisioned in the ‘New World Order,’ is pivotal to understanding the sides taken in Afghanistan and the hostility toward Pakistan described above. During the Cold War, India had leaned toward the USSR, as evinced by military, economic and cultural pacts, despite professions of ‘non-alignment.’ In fact, until the fall of the Afghani Najibullah regime in 1992, India had been one of its major supporters - Najibullah’s family, for example, finding refuge nowhere but in New Delhi. Even before the end of the Cold War, however, the Indian body-politic had begun swinging rightward, thus making room for a new strategic and economic partnership between it and the US; a reflection of which is India’s support, alongside the US, for the Northern Alliance in the Afghani civil war. As this new US-India relationship unfolded, however, Pakistan’s backing of alternative Afghani militants, support for Kashmiri separatists in conflict with India, as well as its nuclear program and array of conventional weaponry (either acquired under US watch or directly procured from the US and other NATO members) stood in the way. A significant ‘down-grade’ in US-Pakistan relations, therefore, was obviously perceived to be required if an ‘up-grade’ in US-India relations was to follow. Thus, as Dr. Maleeha Lodhi, the longest serving Pakistani Ambassador to the US (1994-97; 1999-2002), has written: “The irony about U.S. non-proliferation policy in South Asia was that while the impetus for proliferation at every step came from India, it was Pakistan, and not India, that was subjected to penalties, embargoes and sanctions. Perversely, Pakistan became the victim of penalties for what India had done in 1974 with its explosion of a nuclear device. US non-proliferation laws such as the 1976 Symington Amendment which was later modified by the 1977 Glenn Amendment, called for halting economic or military assistance to any country which delivered or acquired after 1976 nuclear enrichment materials or technology, unless it accepted full-scope safeguards. This meant that India which had already acquired a reprocessing capability was excluded from the ambit of American non-proliferation laws. The Pressler Amendment enacted in 1985, specifically prohibited U.S. assistance or military sales to Pakistan unless annual Presidential certification was issued that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear explosive device. This certification was denied in October 1990, triggering wide-ranging sanctions against Pakistan.” All that needs to be added to Lodhi’s assessment to complete the picture is the fact that the growing depiction of Pakistan as a ‘state sponsor of terror’ was not merely a consequence of Pakistani policy in Afghanistan (discussed below), but also support for militants of a similar bent in Indian-administered Kashmir. Meanwhile, the ‘state terror’ unleashed in Indian-administered Kashmir, like India’s nuclear weapons capabilities and its support for the Northern Alliance ‘militant’ and ‘ideology’ in Afghanistan, did not lead to vociferous protestations from the US, let alone modifications in US policy toward India. While the US played ball with the Northern Alliance, sanctioned Pakistan and fostered bonds with India by turning a blind eye to its nuclear program and activities in Kashmir or Afghanistan, the Taliban movement had begun to coalesce in the refugee camps of Pakistan –their stated goal to rid Afghanistan of its criminal rulers and enforce their own version of ‘Islamic Law.’ Whether or not the Pakistani military establishment had a hand in creating the Taliban may be debated, but it is quite certain that the former played an important part in promoting the latter as part of their own policy of ‘strategic depth’ in the perennial conflict with India. As previously stated, the Taliban’s scriptural training was provided by the very religio-political party that recruited and indoctrinated many of the militants who fought against the USSR in Afghanistan, had begun fighting in Indian-administered Kashmir by 1990, and had benefitted most in Pakistan’s body politic from Zia ul-Haq’s ‘Islamization’ policy; that is, the Jama’at-i Ulama-i Islam. At any rate, by 1994, the Taliban had taken Kandahar, and was pushing north to Kabul to unseat the Northern Alliance President Burhanuddin Rabbani (himself head of the ‘Jama’at-i Islam,’ a political, though not necessarily an ideological, rival of Jama’at-i Ulama-i Islam, both movements being rooted in the Indian ‘Deobandi’ school of Sunni thought). The irony of the entire scenario, however, was that the horse backed in Afghanistan and the censure of Pakistan by the US, soon proved to have been premature given one of the central concerns of the ‘New World Order’ under construction. The collapse of the USSR in 1991 had ushered the independence of the oil-rich Central Asian republics to the north of Afghanistan. The ‘Center for Research on Globalization’ – a Montreal-based, independent organization of scholars, journalists, writers and activists concerned with globalization – is one among many groups to have published extensively on the scramble to harness Central Asian oil reserves. In sum, authors affiliated with such groups reveal that one of the first companies to gain access to the oil fields of Turkmenistan, was the Argentine corporation, Bridas. Soon after, Bridas proposed a pipeline through neighbouring Afghanistan, for which it also negotiated a 30-year agreement with Kabul’s Rabbani regime to build and operate a pipeline, to which was added an accord with Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan (then in her second stint in office) by 1995. Bridas, however, was not the only oil company to be operating in the region. By 1992, Unocal, Amoco, Atlantic Richfield, Chevron, Exxon-Mobil, Pennzoil, Texaco, Enron, Phillips and British Petroleum represented 50% of all investments in the region. Although Bridas offered to negotiate a consortium with some of the latter, the offer was spurned to go directly to regional players with their own plan of action. As one ‘Center for Research on Globalization’ article explains, drawing a great deal from the renowned journalist Rashid Ahmad’s research: “Much to Bridas’ dismay, Unocal went directly to regional leaders with its own proposal. Unocal formed its own competing US-led, Washington-sponsored consortium [CentGas] that included Saudi Arabia’s Delta Oil, aligned with Saudi Prince Abdullah and King Fahd. Other partners included Russia’s Gazprom and Turkmenistan’s state-owned Turkmenrozgas...John Imle, president of Unocal (and member of the US-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce with Armitage, Cheney, Brzezinski and other ubiquitous figures), lobbied Turkmenistan's President Niyazov and Prime Minister Bhutto of Pakistan, offering a Unocal pipeline following the same route as Bridas...Dazzled by the prospect of an alliance with the US, Niyazov asked Bridas to renegotiate its past contract and blocked Bridas’ exports from...[certain oil fields in Turkmenistan]....” Similarly, Unocal’s consortium, CentGas, was able to win over the Pakistani government with a contract to end its pipeline on Pakistan’s Arabian Sea coast. The mention of Richard Armitage (a Pentagon official under Ronald Reagan and the Bush (Jr.) administration’s Deputy Secretary of State, also associated with Unocal and ConocoPhillips), Dick Cheney (most recently Vice President in the Bush (Jr.) administration, also associated with Halliburton), and Zbigniew Brzezinski (National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter, member of various committees under Reagan, co-chairman of the National Security Advisory Taskforce under Bush (Sr.), and also a consultant for Amoco), only refers to those members of the US government (Democrat and Republican) who have had affiliations with oil companies and the US-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce. If the criterion were expanded to US government officials with ties to oil companies active in Central Asia more generally, the list would be too long to reproduce in this context. Thus, it should come as no surprise that once CentGas secured rights to both ends of the proposed pipeline, ‘friendship’ with Pakistan was immediately added to the Clinton administration’s agenda. The first and foremost difficulty for the Clinton administration and Centgas was the fact that Bridas still had the contract with Rabbani’s regime in Afghanistan. The problem would be addressed through the Pakistani-backed Taliban. 1995 was the year in which the Taliban began to be courted by Unocal-led CentGas and Bridas, while the US Congress and Clinton administration softened their stance toward Pakistan in return for promoting the Taliban’s advance in Afghanistan and sidestepping its deal with Bridas. Concerning the latter action, by January 1995, Defence Secretary William Perry had visited Pakistan to mend relations by reviving the ‘Pakistan-US Defence Consultative Group,’ which had not met since 1990. Upon his return to Washington, Perry also declared that the Pressler Amendment was not achieving its objectives, and the Clinton administration followed up the gesture with an April meeting between Clinton and Bhutto. This led Clinton, with bipartisan support from Congress, to promise to revisit the Pressler Amendment, particularly with regard to military sanctions, arguing that a broad, regional approach to nuclear non-proliferation was required. In Lodhi’s words, then serving as the Pakistani Ambassador in Washington: “In May 1995, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee adopted by a near unanimous, bipartisan vote, an amendment moved by Republican Senator Hank Brown to ease Pressler sanctions. This sought to remove from the purview of Pressler all non-military assistance. In the House of Representatives, a similar effort was spearheaded by the newly elected Republican Chairman of the House International Relations Sub-Committee on South Asia, Doug Bereuter, who proposed an amendment to remove Pressler restrictions on all forms of non-military assistance…These actions proved to be vital building blocks in the laborious process of American law making leading to the adoption, later in the year, of the Brown Amendment. The amendment, sponsored by a Republican Senator and promoted by a Democratic Administration, reflected a bipartisan consensus in Washington to repair the bilateral relationship by taking the first significant step towards ending the iniquitous treatment meted out to Pakistan under the discriminatory Pressler Amendment…This modification of the Pressler law removed from its ambit all non-military assistance, as well as provision of IMET (International Military Education Training), while providing, in a one-time waiver of the Pressler Amendment, the release of embargoed military equipment worth about $368 million. Not released under this law were the 28 F-16s for which President Clinton made a good-faith pledge to reimburse Pakistan the money it had paid for the fighter aircraft [during Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Washington visit in 1998].” Across the border in Afghanistan, following US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Robin Raphael’s visit to Kandahar in autumn 1996, the Taliban received a green light to enter Kabul, displacing the Rabbani government and depriving Bridas of its local partner in the oil pipeline it had proposed. Unocal went on to offer ‘humanitarian aid’ to Afghan power-brokers, should they agree to form a council to supervise the pipeline project. A new mobile phone network between Kabul and Kandahar was funded, and promises to help rebuild Kandahar were proffered. As well, the US State Department authorized USAID to provide significant funds for education in Taliban territory. All these efforts culminated in two trips to Dallas and Washington by Taliban officials in 1997. The softening of the Clinton administration’s stance, however, had the unforeseen effect of prompting other US oil companies to challenge Unocal. The same year that Unocal and government officials were wining and dining Taliban representatives in the US, Bridas found a partner in Amoco, with the help of such mainstays of US finance as Chase Manhattan, Morgan Stanley and Arthur Andersen, as well as such towering figures of US policy-making as Zbigniew Brzezinski (a consultant for Amoco). Furthermore, when Amoco merged with British Petroleum a year later, the deal was facilitated by the law firm of Baker & Botts, whose principal attorney is James Baker – the Bush (Sr.) administration’s Secretary of State, and a member of the Carlyle Group. The Taliban regime was clearly unsure which of its suitors to wed. The main stumbling block for Unocal was that its pipeline was closed to Afghanistan (meant for export only), while that proposed by Bridas would also service the local market. Furthermore, tensions between the US and Russia led Gazprom to withdraw from the Unocal-led consortium, CentGas. Thus, as it became clearer that Taliban policy-makers were beginning to lean toward Bridas by late 1997, the Clinton administration responded by suddenly paying heed to human rights/women’s groups who had been protesting Taliban conduct for the past two years. In November 1997, after years of relative quiet, Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright publically condemned the Taliban’s treatment of women during a visit to an Afghani refugee camp in Pakistan. She also made it plain that the US government was ‘opposed’ to the Taliban regime, stating: “It’s very clear why we’re opposed to Taliban. We’re opposed to their approach to human rights, to their despicable treatment of women and children and their lack of respect for human dignity…” By January 1998, the Taliban regime had responded by signing an agreement with Unocal to begin raising funds for a pipeline, but made no commitment to actually engage Unocal in its construction. Thus, Unocal’s Vice President of International Relations appeared before the US Congress in February 1998, basically calling for the removal of the Taliban regime. By March that year, Unocal formally announced that it was delaying the project. While anti-Taliban statements from the Clinton administration grew more frequent in the coming months, matters were not brought to a head until August 1998, when the US embassy bombings in East Africa (attributed to Usama bin Laden) prompted Clinton to launch a barrage of cruise missiles on Afghanistan and Sudan, and call for the Taliban to expel Bin Laden. Interestingly, the latter’s presence in Afghanistan since 1996 had not stalled the courtship of the previous years, despite being implicated in earlier acts of ‘terror’ for which the Sudanese government hounded him out of their country to avoid sanctions. The day after the missile strikes, Unocal announced that it was halting its pipeline project. By December 1998, a formal withdrawal from the project was issued. The Clinton administration then issued an executive order seizing all US-held Taliban assets and prohibiting trade, effectively breaking off diplomatic contacts in the process. Soon after that the UN Security Council passed a resolution imposing sanctions and calling for the Taliban regime to “turn over the terrorist Usama bin Laden.” The Taliban regime offered negotiations on Bin Laden’s handover, particularly with regard to whose custody exactly the ‘terrorist’ would be released, but these overtures were ignored in favour of another UN resolution and further sanctions on the heels of the USS Cole bombing in 2000 (also attributed to Usama bin Laden). As for US-Pakistan relations, cordiality prevailed, as already suggested by Nawaz Sharif’s Washington visit in 1998, but chilled considerably, particularly after the 1999 Kargil Conflict with India in Kashmir, and General Musharraf’s subsequent military coup. Returning to the ultimate question of ‘Exactly what is…being fought,’ the above history confirms that just as in the Cold War period (1979-89) and the era of proxy war (1989-92), so too in the early phase of the Taliban era (1992-1998), neither the ‘militant’ nor his ‘ideology’ was being fought. Rather, he was courted and his ideology utilized for US strategic and economic interests, particularly as both converged in a slick of oil by 1995. Furthermore, considering that it was only when absolute control of that oil was challenged that the Taliban regime was openly discredited, it must be said that although this ‘militant’ and his ‘ideology’ were publically ‘being fought’ from 1998 to 2001, other ‘militants’ with similar ‘ideologies’ continued to find support, and even that could have been dropped in favour of the Taliban at any point if it had compromised on the issue of oil. Confirmation of this hypothesis, in fact, comes with the inauguration of President Bush (Jr.), one of whose first acts in January and February, 2001, was to open negotiations between the US and the Taliban regime, conducted in Washington, Berlin and Islamabad, in which Laila Helms (niece of former CIA Director Richard Helms) was hired by the Taliban to act as go-between; negotiations that ended around May, 2001, according to various sources including a former Foreign Secretary of Pakistan, with the ultimatum that the Unocal pipeline would go ahead or bombs would rain on Afghanistan. From 1998 to 2001, therefore, the Taliban ‘militant’ was fought in the name of his ‘ideology,’ but in the interests of oil. But, what of planes becoming bombs over New York and Washington on September 11, 2001? Did that not change everything? According to Kevin Phillips, author of American Theocracy – a study of the convergence between US Evangelical Christian ‘extremism,’ US geo-political policy and global oil interests – one thing did change. Although the Taliban continued to offer negotiations on the handover of Usama bin Laden, the atrocities of 9/11 “gave Washington [oil] policies a convenient new all-inclusive justification: fighting terror was about everything, and everything was about fighting terror. Oil motivations, rarely a popular or easy foreign-policy justification, could now be submerged within a primal response to a deep-seated national combination of fear, loathing and outrage. Petroleum strategy could now become only a minor facet of an antiterrorist mobilization.” Furthermore, as Bruce Lincoln – professor of religion at the University of Chicago – adds, taking into account Bush’s ‘religious’ affiliations, the pursuit of strategic interests could even transcend the previous rhetoric of ‘human’ and ‘women’s rights,’ to be framed as an eternal, uncompromising struggle between ‘good’ and ‘evil’; a form of rhetoric ironically akin to that of Usama bin Laden himself. And finally, as David Domke – associate professor of communication at the University of Washington – asserts with a chorus of other scholars, in the double-speak of the Bush administration, what this was meant to imply is that by fighting the Taliban and al-Qaida, “the US government…[was] doing God’s work.” That interests on the more worldly ground of US oil strategy lay behind this ratcheting of rhetoric under the Bush (Jr.) administration, is confirmed by a number of other factors, including bipartisan support for the invasion of Iraq on the unfounded accusation of links to 9/11, not to mention ‘WMDs.’ Furthermore, consider the major players post-9/11. Apart from Dick Cheney, Richard Armitage and other prominent Republicans’ affiliated with oil companies active in Central Asia, it can be added that Condolezza Rice (Bush’s National Security Advisor [2000-04] and Secretary of State [2004-09]) had served on the board of Chevron before entering government. As well, Zalmay Khalilzad (appointed US Special Envoy to Afghanistan [2001-03], Ambassador to Afghanistan [2003-05], Ambassador to Iraq [2005-07] and Ambassador to the UN [2007-09]) was a former consultant for Unocal and part of the Unocal team that courted the Taliban in the US. At the time, he wrote, “We [the US government] should...be willing to offer recognition and humanitarian assistance and to promote international economic reconstruction.” Furthermore, Hamid Karzai, whose rise to power was in no small measure facilitated by US aid through the offices of Khalilzad, was also a Unocal consultant who had participated in Unocal’s courtship of the Taliban in the US. One of Karzai’s first acts as President of Afghanistan, in fact, was the signing of a new agreement with Turkmenistan and Pakistan on the building of a pipeline in 2002. The greatest problem in going ahead with pipeline plans during the tenure of the Bush (Jr.) administration, however, was a collective failure in defeating the Taliban to bring about the stability necessary to get down to work in Afghanistan. In fact, the failure was so complete that the Taliban also sprouted a Pakistani chapter that began to threaten the ability of all involved to even consider the Pakistani portion of a pipeline safe for investment in the immediate future. And, what of the election of President Obama and his administration’s ‘new’ plan for the region; has that not changed everything? To be sure, the Obama administration’s abandonment of Bush’s ‘religious’ rhetoric has to some extent succeeded in redressing the impression created by Bush among ordinary Muslims that his was a ‘war against Islam.’ Obama’s rhetorical lumping of Pakistan together with Afghanistan as part of the ‘Af-Pak’ problem is novel, too, but ultimately reflects no more than a response to the failure of the Bush administration to deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan, leading to the destabilization of nuclear-armed Pakistan. The warfront is now bigger and all that the ‘Af-Pak’ strategy reconfirms is that an important element of the ‘New World Order’ now cannot go forward unless the Afghani and Pakistani Taliban is defeated or co-opted. That only his ‘militancy,’ rather than his ‘ideology,’ is at stake, however, continues to be confirmed by various maneuvers. The US-backed Karzai regime in Afghanistan, now as before, accommodates the Taliban-type ‘militant’ and ‘ideology’ within the Afghani body-politic. In fact, Hillary Clinton has even publically endorsed President Karzai’s attempts to open talks with “moderate” members of the Afghani Taliban. The only definition of the “moderate” she provided was those “willing to abandon violence, break with al Qaeda and support the constitution.” As well, the US-backed Zardari regime in Pakistan, now as before, accommodates the Taliban-type ‘militant’ and ‘ideology,’ and Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke met with the leader of Jama’at-i Ulama-i Islam as recently as October, 2009. Most telling, however, is the recent promulgation of the Kerry-Lugar Aid Bill, which includes specific conditions concerning Pakistani support for ‘militants’ in neighbouring countries, but makes no real mention of ‘ideology’ abroad or at home. From 2001 to the present, therefore, just as in the period from 1998-2001, the Taliban ‘militant’ has been fought in the name of his ‘ideology,’ though the failures of Bush (Jr,) have added such immediate concerns as military defeat in Afghanistan and the stabilization of Pakistan to the long-term interests of oil. ‘Exactly what…is being fought’ today, Roy astutely asks. The short answer is that today, as has been the case since 1979, neither a specific ‘militant’ nor ‘ideology’ is ‘being fought.’ Rather, the target of operations, for which more troops are now being sought, is anyone who challenges the interests of an oil-drenched ‘New World Order.’ M. Reza Pirbhai is an Assistant Professor of South Asian History at Louisiana State University. He can be reached at: rpirbhai@lsu.edu SOURCE: www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23728.htm
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Post by wanyee on Nov 25, 2009 21:48:25 GMT 3
9/11: Possible Motives Of The Bush Administrationby Dr. David Ray Griffin Global Research, December 2, 2005 911Truth.org The 9/11 Commission understood that its mandate, as we have seen, was to provide "the fullest possible account" of the "facts and circumstances" surrounding 9/11. Included in those facts and circumstances are ones that, according to some critics of the official account of 9/11, provide evidence that the Bush administration intentionally allowed the attacks of 9/11. Some critics have even suggested that the Bush administration actively helped the attacks succeed. In light of the fact that several books have been written propounding such views, including some in English, the Commission's staff, given its "exacting investigative work," would surely have discovered such books. Or if not, the staff would at least have known about a front-page story on this topic in the Wall Street Journal. Readers of this story learned not only that a poll showed that 20 percent of the German population believed the "U.S. government ordered the attacks itself" but also that similar views were held in some other European countries.1 Also, as we saw in the Introduction, polls show that significant percentages of Americans and Canadians believe that the US Government deliberately allowed the attacks to happen, with some of those believing the Bush administration actually planned the attacks. Knowing that such information is available and such views are held, the Commission, we would assume, would have felt called upon to respond to these suspicions. An adequate response would contain at least the following elements: (1) an acknowledgment that these suspicions exist; (2) a summary of the main kinds of reports and alleged facts cited as evidence by those who have promoted these suspicions; and (3) an explanation of why these reports and alleged facts do not really constitute evidence for complicity by the Bush administration. Finally, the persistence and widespread documentation of these allegations means that an adequate response would need to consider (if only to debunk) the motives that some critics have alleged the Bush administration would have had for facilitating the 9/11 attacks ? just as the Commission properly looked at motives that Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organizations may have had for planning the attacks. For many Americans, of course even considering the possibility that their own government might have had motives for facilitating such attacks would not be pleasant. But an account, if it is to be the fullest possible account, cannot decide in advance to restrict itself to the ideas that are pleasant. In this chapter, accordingly, we will look at The 9/11 Commission Report from this perspective, asking how it has responded to the fact that some critics of the official account have alleged that the Bush administration would have had several motives for allowing the attacks and even helping them succeed. The 9/11 Attacks As "Opportunities"One way to approach this question would be to ask whether these attacks brought benefits to this administration that could reasonably have been anticipated. There is no doubt that the attacks brought benefits. Indeed, several members of the Bush administration publicly said so. The president himself declared that the attacks provide "a great opportunity."2 Donald Rumsfeld stated that 9/11 created "the kind of opportunities that World War II offered, to refashion the world." Condoleeza Rice had said the same thing in mind, telling senior members of the National Security Council to "think about 'how do you capitalize on these opportunities' to fundamentally change...the shape of the world."3 The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, issued by the Bush administration in September 2002, said: "The events of September 11, 2001, opened vast, new opportunities."4 Of course, the fact that these members of the Bush administration described attacks as opportunities after the fact does not necessarily mean that they could have anticipated in advance that attacks of this nature would bring such opportunities. However, all of these statements, except for the last one, were made shortly after 9/11. If the benefits could be seen so soon after the attacks, we can assume that, if these people were thinking about such attacks ahead of time, they could have anticipated that they would create these opportunities. It would seem, therefore, that the Bush administration's description of the attacks as providing opportunities, along with the fact that at least some of these opportunities could have been anticipated, were important parts of the "events surrounding 9/11" that "the fullest possible account" would have included. These descriptions of the attacks of 9/11 as opportunities, however, are not mentioned in The 9/11 Commission Report.5 In any case, the idea that members of the Bush administration could have anticipated benefits from catastrophic attacks of the type that occurred on 9/11 does not rest entirely on inference from the fact that the attacks were seen as opportunities immediately after 9/11. Critics have referred to a pre-9/11 document that speaks of benefits that could accrue from catastrophic attacks. We need to see how the Commission responded to this part of the facts and circumstances surrounding 9/11. "A New Pearl Harbor" To Advance The Pax AmericanaIn the fall of 2000, a year before 9/11, a document entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses was published by an organization calling itself the Project for the New American Century (PNAC).6 This organization was formed by individuals who were members or at least supporters of the Reagan and Bush I administration, some of whom would go on to be central figures in the Bush II administration. These individuals include Richard Armitage, John Bolton, Dick Cheney, Zalmay Khalilzad (closely associated with Paul Wolfowitz7), Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and James Woolsey. Libby (now Cheney's chief of staff) and Wolfowitz (now Rumsfeld's deputy) are listed as having participated directly in the project to produce Rebuilding America's Defenses. Interestingly, John Lehman, a member of the 9/11 Commission, has been a member of the PNAC or at least publicly aligned with it.8 This PNAC document, after bemoaning the fact that spending for military purposes no longer captured as much of the US budget as it once did, argues that it is necessary for defense spending to be greatly increased if the "American peace is to be maintained, and expanded," because this Pax Americana "must have a secure foundation on unquestioned U.S. military preeminence." The way to acquire and retain such military preeminence is to take full advantage of the "revolution in military affairs" made possible by technological advances. Bring about this transformation of US military forces will, however, probably be a long, slow process, partly because it will be very expensive. However, the document suggests, the process could occur more quickly if America suffered "some catastrophic and catalyzing event ? like a new Pearl Harbor."9 This statement, we would think, should have gotten the attention of some members of the 9/11 Commission. After the 9/11 attacks came, moreover, the idea that they constituted a new Pearl Harbor was expressed by the president and some of his supporters. At the end of that very day, President Bush reportedly wrote in his diary: "The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today."10 Also, minutes after the president's address to the nation earlier that day. Henry Kissinger posted an online article in which he said: "The government should be charged with a systematic response that, one hopes, will end the way the attack on Pearl Harbor ended ? with the destruction of the system that is responsible for it."11 One might think that the existence of these statements would have been perceived by the 9/11 Commission as part of the relevant "events surrounding 9/11" that should be included in "the fullest possible account." But there is no mention of any of these statements on any of the 567 pages of the Kean-Zelikow Report. Those pages are largely filled ? in line with the Commission's unquestioned assumption ? with discussions of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, Islamic terrorism more generally, and American responses thereto. Then, after the Commission had disbanded, its staff released another 155-page report on al-Qaeda financing.12 These matters were obviously considered essential for understand-ing the "facts and circumstances relating to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001." But the fact that individuals who are central members and supporters of the Bush-Cheney administration endorsed a document indicating that "a new Pearl Harbor" would be helpful for furthering its aims; that some supporters of this administration and even the president himself then compared the 9/11 attacks to the Pearl Harbor attacks; and that several members of this administration said that 9/11 provided "opportunities" ? this complex fact was not thought worthy of a single sentence in the Commission's "fullest possible account." Indeed, the Commission's report does not even mention the Project for the New American Century. Generating Funds For The US Space CommandOne dimension of the "revolution in military affairs" discussed in the PNAC document is so important as to deserve separate treatment. This dimension is the militarization of space, which is now the province of a new branch of the American military, the US Space Command. The purpose of this branch is to bring about "full spectrum dominance." The idea is that the US military, with its air force, army, and navy, is already dominant in the air and on land and sea. The US Space Command will now ensure dominance in space. "Vision for 2020," a document published by the US Space Command, puts it thus: "The emerging synergy of space superiority with land, sea, and air superiority, will lead to Full Spectrum Dominance."13 The government's description of spending for the US Space Command as spending for "missile defense" makes its mission sound purely defensive ? augmenting "homeland security" by defending the United States from missile attacks. The mission statement in "Vision for 2020," however, states: "U.S. Space Command? dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect US interests and investment."14 Its primary purpose, in other words, is not to protect the American homeland but to protect American investments abroad. Such protection will be needed, it says, because "[t]he globalization of the world economy will continue with a widening between 'haves' and 'have-nots.'" The mission of the US Space Command, it is clear, is to protect the American "haves" from the world's "have-nots," as American-led globalization leaves these "have-nots" with even less. The 9/11 Commission, however, makes no mention of the US Space Command's program and mission. To understand the full significance of this omission, it is necessary to understand that its program involves three parts. The first part involves space-based surveillance technology, through which US military leaders can identify enemies of US forces anywhere on the planet.15 The second part involves putting up space weapons, such as laser cannons, with which the United States will be able to destroy the satellites of other countries. "Vision for 2020" frankly states its desire to be able "to deny others the use of space."16 The third part of the program is usually called, the "missile defense shield," but its purpose, like that of the first two parts, is offensive. As Rebuilding America's Defenses said (in a passage called "a remarkable admission" by Rahul Mahajan): In the post-Cold-War era. America and its allies...have become the primary objects of deterrence and it is states like Iraq, Iran and North Korea who most wish to develop deterrent capabilities. Projecting conventional military forces... will be far more complex and constrained when the American homeland...is subject to attack by otherwise weak rogue regimes capable of cobbling together a minuscule ballistic missile force. Building an effective...system of missile defenses is a prerequisite for maintaining American preeminence.17 The purpose of the "missile defense shield," in other words, is not to deter other countries from launching a first strike against the United States. Its purpose is to prevent other countries from being able to deter the United States from launching a first strike against them.18 The major impediment to making this program operational is that it will be extremely expensive. According to one expert, it will require over $1 trillion from American taxpayers.19 The difficulty of getting Congress and the American people to pony up was the main reason for the PNAC document's statement that the desired transformation will take a long time "absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event ? like a New Pearl Harbor."20 In omitting any mention of this project for achieving global domination, therefore, the 9/11 Commission omitted a project so big that some of its backers, we can imagine, may have been able to rationalize an attack taking a few thousand American lives, if such an attack seemed necessary to get adequate funding for this project. Donald Rumsfeld, as we saw, was a member of PNAC when it produced its document. He was also chairman of the Commission to Assess US National Security Space Management and Organization.21 The task of this commission ? commonly known as the "Rumsfeld Commission" ? was to make proposals with regard to the US Space Command. After making various proposals that would "increase the asymmetry between U.S. forces and those of other military powers," the Rumsfeld Commission Report said that, because its proposals would cost a lot of money and involve significant reorganization, they would probably encounter strong resistance. But, the report ? which was issued January 7, 2001? said: The question is whether the U.S. will be wise enough to act responsibly and soon enough to reduce U.S. space vulnerability. Or whether, as in the past, a disabling attack against the country and its people ? a "Space Pearl Harbor"? will be the only event able to galvanize the nation and cause the U.S. Government to act.22 In speaking of a "Space Pearl Harbor," the report meant an attack on its military satellites in space. The 9/11 attacks were obviously not of this nature. It is interesting, nevertheless, that only a few months after PNAC had issued its statement about "a new Pearl Harbor," the Rumsfeld Commission also pointed out that a Pearl Harbor type of attack might be needed to "galvanize the nation." When the new Pearl Harbor came, Rumsfeld, having been made secretary of defense, was in position to use it to get more money for the US Space Command. Before TV cameras on the evening of 9/11 itself, Rumsfeld said to Senator Carl Levin, then chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee: Senator Levin, you and other Democrats in Congress have voiced fear that you simply don't have enough money for the large increase in defense that the Pentagon is seeking, especially for missile defense...Does this sort of thing convince you that an emergency exists in this country to increase defense spending, to dip into Social Security, if necessary, to pay for defense spending ? increase defense spending?23 Earlier that day, the Pentagon, which by then had been under Rumsfeld's leadership for almost seven months, failed to prevent airplane attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon itself. Now that very evening Rumsfeld was using the success of those attacks to get more money from Congress for the Pentagon and, in particular, for the US Space Command. One might think that this rather remarkable coincidence would have gotten the attention of the 9/11 Commission, because it suggests that the secretary of defense may not have wanted to prevent this "new Pearl Harbor." But the Commission's report, focusing exclusively on al-Qaeda terrorists, makes no mention of this possible motive. Rumsfeld was, moreover, not the only person highly committed to promoting the US Space Command who was in charge of military affairs on 9/11. Another was General Ralph E. Eberhart, the current head of the US Space Command, who is also the commander of NORAD.24 General Richard Myers, the former head of the US Space Command, was on 9/11 the Acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Of Staff. A truly "independent" and "impartial" commission would surely comment on this remarkable coincidence ? that three of the men in charge of the US military response on 9/11 were outspoken advocates of the US Space Command, that the US military under their control failed to prevent the attacks, and that one of these men then used the success of the attacks to obtain billions of dollars more for this branch of the military. Coincidence does not, of course, prove complicity. Sometimes when events coincide in an improbable way, the coincidence is exactly what the term has generally come to mean; simply coincidental. It is well know, however, that after a crime the first question to be asked is cui bono? ? who benefits? A truly independent commission would at least have proceeded on the assumption that Rumsfeld, Myers, and Eberhart had to be regarded as possible suspects, whose actions that day were to be rigorously investigated. Instead, the testimonies of these three men were treated as unquestionable sources of truth as to what really happened? despite, as we will see later, the contradictions in their stories.25 The Plan To Attack AfghanistanCritics have alleged that another possible motive on the part of the Bush administration was its desire to attack Afghanistan so as to replace the Taliban with a US-friendly government in order to further US economic and geopolitical aims. The 9/11 Commission does recognize that the US war in Afghanistan ? which began on October 7, less than a month after 9/11 ? was a war to produce "regime change". According to the Commission, however, the United States wanted to change the regime because the Taliban, besides being incapable of providing peace by ending the civil war, was perpetrating human rights abuses and providing a "safe haven" for al-Qaeda. In limiting the US motives to these, however, the Commission ignored abundant evidence that the motives were more complex, more self-interested, and more ambitious. At the center of these motives was the desire to enable the building of a multibillion dollar pipeline route by a consortium known as CentGas (Central Asia Gas Pipeline), which was formed by US oil giant Unocal. The planned route would bring oil and gas from the land-locked Caspian region, with its enormous reserves, to the sea through Afghanistan and Pakistan. By 2001, the Taliban had come to be perceived as an obstacle to this project. The Taliban was originally supported by the United States, working together with Pakistan's ISI. The pipeline project had become the crucial issue in what Ahmed Rashid in 1997 dubbed "The New Great Game."26 One issue in this game was who would construct the pipeline route ? the Unocal-dominated CentGas Consortium or Argentina's Bridas Corporation. The other issue was which countries the route would go through. The United States promoted Unocal and backed its plan to build the route through Afghanistan and Pakistan, since this route would avoid both Iran and Russia.27 The main obstacle to this plan was the civil war that had been going on in Afghanistan since the withdrawal of the Soviet Union in 1989. The US government supported the Taliban in the late 1990s on the basis of hope that it would be able to unify the country through its military strength and then provide a stable government. The centrality of this issue is shown by the title Rashid gave to two of his chapters: "Romancing the Taliban: The Battle for Pipelines."28 With regard to the United States in particular, Rashid says that "the strategy over pipelines had become the driving force behind Washington's interest in the Taliban."29 However, although the Kean-Zelikow Commission cites Rashid's well-known book several times, it makes no reference to his discussion of the centrality of the pipelines to Washington's perspective. From reading the Commission's report, in fact, one would never suspect that "pipeline war" (as it became called) was a major US concern. The pipeline project in general and Unocal in particular are mentioned in only one paragraph (along with its accompanying note). And the Commission here suggests that the US State Department was interested in Unocal's pipeline project only insofar as "the prospect of shared pipeline profits might lure faction leaders to a conference table". The United States, in other words, regarded the pipeline project only as a means to peace. That may indeed have been the view of some of the American participants. But the dominant hope within Unocal and the US government was that the Taliban would bring peace by defeating its opponents, primarily Ahmad Shah Masood ? after which the US government and the United Nations would recognize the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan, which in turn would allow Unocal to get the loans it would need to finance the project.30 The Commission's report, by contrast, suggests that neither the US government nor Unocal took the side of the Taliban in the civil war. The Commission tells us that Marty Miller, who had been in charge of the pipeline project for Unocal, "denied working exclusively with the Taliban and told us that his company sought to work with all Afghan factions to bring about the necessary stability to proceed with the project". As is often the case, the Commission's "exacting investigative work" consisted primarily of interviewing people and recording their answers. Had the Commission consulted Steve Coll's Ghost Wars, which the Commission quotes elsewhere, it could have learned that although "Marty Miller insisted publicly that Unocal remained 'fanatically neutral' about Afghan politics, " in reality "Marty Miller and his colleagues hoped the Taliban takeover of Kabul would speed their pipeline negotiations."31 Coll is here referring to September 1996, when the Taliban, heavily financed by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, took over Kabul, the capital, by forcing Masood to flee. As soon as this occurred, Rashid reports, a Unocal executive "told wire agencies that the pipeline project would be easier to implement now that the Taliban had capture Kabul."32 We are again left wondering if the Kean-Zelikow Commission's research was simply inadequate or if it deliberately left out information that did not fit its narrative. There is a similar problem with the Commission's statement about US neutrality. The Commission says flatly: "U.S. diplomats did not favor the Taliban over the rival factions but were simply willing to 'give the Taliban a chance'". Interviews are again the only support offered. Had the Commission consulted Rashid's book on this issue, it would have read that the United States "accepted the ISI's analysis...that a Taliban victory in Afghanistan would make Unocal's job much easier."33 Rashid also reports that "within house of Kabul's capture by the Taliban" ? when much of the country still remained under the control of other factions ? "the US State Department announced it would establish diplomatic relations with the Taliban."34 The lack of US neutrality is likewise shown by Steve Coll, who says: "The State Department had taken up Unocal's agenda as its own" ? which meant, of course, support for the Taliban.35 Rashid, summarizing the situation, says that "the US-Unocal partnership was backing the Taliban and wanted an all-out Taliban victory ? even as the US and Unocal claimed they had no favourites in Afghanistan."36 The Kean-Zelikow Commission, by contrast, simply gives us public relations statements of some of the US and Unocal actors, repeated in recent interviews, as actual history. Why is it important to point out this distortion? Because the Commission's portrayal of US interests in Afghanistan suggests that the United States had no imperialistic or crass material interests in the area ? the kind of interests that might lead a government to devise a pretext for going to war. This issue becomes more important as we move to the point in the story at which the United States comes to think of the Taliban as an obstacle rather than a vehicle of the Unocal (CEntGas) pipeline project. In July 1998, the Taliban, after having failed in 1997 to take the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, finally succeeded, giving it control of most of Afghanistan, including the entire pipeline route. After this victory CentGas immediately announced that it was "ready to proceed."37 Shortly thereafter, however, the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were blown up, leading the United States to launch cruse missile strikes against OBL's camps in Afghanistan. These and related developments led Unocal to withdraw from CentGas, convinced that Afghanistan under the Taliban would never have the peace and stability needed for the pipeline project.38 Rashid, finishing his book in mid-1999, wrote that the Clinton Administration had shifted its support to the pipeline route from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey, adding that "by now nobody wanted to touch Afghanistan and the Taliban."39 When the Bush administration came to power, however, it decided to give the Taliban one last chance. This last chance occurred at a four-day meeting in Berlin in July 2001, which would need to be mentioned in any realistic account of how the US war in Afghanistan came about. According to the Pakistani representative at this meeting, Niaz Naik, US representatives, trying to convince the Taliban to share power with US-friendly factions, said: "Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs."40 Naik said that he was told by Americans that "military action against Afghanistan would go ahead...before the snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest."41 The US attack on Afghanistan began, in fact, on October 7, which was as soon as the US military could get ready after 9/11.42 The 9/11 Commission's discussion of what transpired in July is much milder. Some members of the Bush administration, we are told, were "moving toward agreement that some last effort should be made to convince the Taliban to shift position and then, if that failed,...the United States would try covert action to topple the Taliban's leadership from within". There is no mention of Niaz Naik or the meeting in Berlin. The Commission's reference to the fact that the United States wanted the Taliban to "shift position" does not mention that this shift involved not simply turning over OBL but joining a "unity government" that would allow Unocal's pipeline project to go forward. Nor does the Commission mention the statement by US officials that if the Taliban refused, the United States would use military force (not merely covert action). And yet all this information was available in books and newspapers articles that the Commission's staff should have been able to locate. In any case, there was still further evidence, ignored by the Commission, that the US war against the Taliban was related more to the pipeline project than to 9/11. For one thing, President Bush's special envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad (mentioned previously as a member of PNAC), and the new Prime Minister, Hamid Karzai, were previously on Unocal's payroll. As Chalmers Johnson wrote: "The continued collaboration of Khalilzad and Karzai in post-9/11 Afghanistan strongly suggests that the Bush administration was and remains as interested in oil as in terrorism in that region."43 As early as October 10, moreover, the US Department of State had informed the Pakistani Minister of Oil that "in view of recent geopolitical developments," Unocal was again ready to go ahead with the pipeline project.44 Finally, as one Israeli writer put it: "If one looks at the map of the big American bases created, one is struck by the fact that they are completely identical to the route of the projected oil pipeline to the Indian Ocean."45 There is considerable evidence, therefore, that, in Chalmer Johnson's words, "Support for [the dual oil and gas pipelines from Turkmenistan south through Afghanistan to the Arabian Sea coast of Pakistan] appears to have been a major consideration in the Bush administration's decision to attack Afghanistan on October 7, 2001" ? a point that Johnson makes apart from any allegation that the Bush administration orchestrated the attacks of 9/11.46 But the 9/11 Commission does not even mention the fact that many people share Johnson's view, according to which the US war in Afghanistan was motivated by a concern much larger than those mentioned by the Commission. This larger concern, furthermore, "was not just to make money," suggests Johnson, "but to establish an American presence in Central Asia." Evidence for this view is provided by the fact that the United States, besides establishing long-term bases in Afghanistan, had within a month after 9/11 arranged for long-term bases in Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan.47 The United States could thereby be seen to be carrying out the prescription of Zbigniew Brzezinski in his 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, in which he portrayed Central Asia, with its vast oil reserves, as the key to world power. Brzezinksi, who had been the National Security Advisor in the Carter administration, argued that America, to ensure its continued "primacy," must get control of this region. The Bush administration's use of 9/11 to establish bases in several countries in this region provided an essential step in that direction. In The 9/11 Commission Report, however, there is no hint of this development. The United States simply wanted to stop the war, bring an end to the Taliban's human rights abuses, and prevent Afghanistan from being used as a haven for terrorists. In the world of the Kean-Zelikow Commission, the United States had no larger ambitions. The omission of Brzezinksi's book means, furthermore, the omission of an earlier suggestion that a new Pearl Harbor could be helpful. Brzezinski, having argued that the present "window of historical opportunity for America's constructive exploitation of its global power could prove to be relatively brief,"48 bemoans the fact that the American public might be unwilling to use its power for imperial purposes. The problem according to Brzezinski's analysis, is that: America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad. This limits the use of America's power, especially its capacity for military intimidation...The economic self-denial (that is, defense spending) and the human sacrifice (casualities even among professional soldiers) required in the effort are uncongenial to democratic instincts. Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization.49 Brzezinski suggests, however, that this weakness in democracy can be overcome. Having said that "the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion," he then adds: "except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public's sense of domestic well being."50 What would make the American public willing to make the economic and human sacrifices needed for "imperial mobilization," he suggests, would be "a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat." This passage, near the end of the book, is parallel to an earlier passage, in which Brzezinski said that the public was willing to support "America's engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor."51 A new Pearl Harbor would, accordingly, allow America to ensure its continued primacy by gaining control of Central Asia. In deciding which events belonged to the category of "events surrounding 9/11"a ? meaning events relevant to understanding why and how the attacks of 9/11 occurred ? the Commission chose to include OBL's 1998 statement that Muslims should kill Americans (47). That was considered obviously relevant. But the 9/11 Commission did not include Brzezinski's 1997 suggestion that a new Pearl Harbor would prod Americans to support the increased money for the military needed to support imperial mobilization ? even though the Commission points out that 9/11 had exactly the result that Brzezinski predicted saying: The nation has committed enormous resources to national security and to countering terrorism. Between fiscal year 2001, the last budget adopted before 9/11, and the present fiscal year 2004, total federal spending on defense (including expenditures on both Iraq and Afghanistan), homeland security, and international affairs rose more than 50 percent, from $345 billion to about $547 billion. The United States has not experienced such a rapid surge in national security spending since the Korean War. (361) But the Commissioners evidently thought it too much of a stretch to ask whether motive might be inferred from effect. We see again how the Commission's unquestioned assumption ? that the 9/11 attacks were planned and executed entirely by al-Qaeda under the guidance of Osama bin Laden ? determined in advance its selection of which events constituted "events surrounding 9/11." In line with this assumption, the 9/11 Commission has given us an extremely simplistic picture of US motivations behind the attack on Afghanistan. The Commission has, in particular, omitted all those facts suggesting that 9/11 was more the pretext than the basis for the war in Afghanistan. The Plan To Attack IraqThe Bush administration's attack on Iraq in 2003 is probably the issue on which the 9/11 Commission has been regarded as the most critical, stating that it found no evidence of "collaborative operational relationship" between OBL and Saddam Hussein's Iraq and no evidence, in particular, "that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States" (66). This statement, released in a staff report about a month before the publication of the final report, created much discussion in the press. The quantity and the intensity of this discussion was increased by the fact that the president and especially the vice president reacted strongly, with the latter calling "outrageous" a front-page story in the New York Times headed "Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie."52 The resulting commentary ranged from William Safire's column, in which he lashed out at the Commission's chairman and vice chairman for letting themselves be "jerked around by a manipulative staff," to a New York Times story headed "Political Uproar: 9/11 Panel Members Debate Qaeda-Iraq 'Tie,'" to Joe Conason's article entitled "9/11 Panel Becomes Cheney's Nightmare."53 This commentary gave the appearance that the 9/11 Commission, perhaps especially its staff, was truly independent, telling the truth no matter how embarrassing it might be to the White House. That, of course, was mere appearance. Nevertheless, given the fact that Bush and Cheney continued to insist on the existence of ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda, the Commission did in this case report something contrary to the public position of the White House. The Commission was furthermore, forthcoming about the extent to which certain members of the Bush administration pushed for attacking Iraq immediately after 9/11. It pointed out that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld instructed General Myers to find out as much as he could about Saddam Hussein's possible responsibility for 9/11. It also cited a report according to which, at the first session at Camp David after 9/11, Rumsfeld began by asking what should be done about Iraq (334-35). The Commission even portrayed Rumsfeld's deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, as arguing that Saddam should be attacked even if there were only a 10 percent chance that he was behind the 9/11 attacks (335-36).54 Finally, the Commission reported Richard Clarke's statement that the president told him the day after 9/11 to see if Saddam was linked to the attacks in any way (334). The Commission was, therefore, quite frank about the fact that some leaders of the Bush administration were ready from the outset to attack Iraq because of its possible connections to 9/11 or at least al-Qaeda-connections for which the Commission said that it could find no credible evidence. The Commission has, nevertheless, omitted facts about the decision to attack Iraq that should have been included in a "fullest possible account." These facts are important because their omission means that readers of The 9/11 Commission Report are shielded from evidence about how deep and long-standing the desire to attack Iraq had been among some members of the Bush administration. Some of these omitted facts support the claim that the plan to attack Iraq had, in Chalmers Johnson's words, "been in the works for at least a decade."55 In pushing it back that far, Johnson is referring to the fact that after the Gulf War of 1991, several individuals in the White House and the Pentagon believed that the United States should have gone to Baghdad and taken out Saddam Hussein, as they indicated "in reports written for then Secretary of Defense Cheney."56 In 1996, a document entitled "A Clean Break" was produced by a study group led by Richard Perle (who would the following year become a founding member of PNAC). Recommending that Israel adopt a policy of "preemption," Perle and his colleagues suggested that Israel begin "rolling back Syria," an effort that should "focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq." Advocating that Israel invade Lebanon and then Syria, this document included texts to be used for speeches justifying the action in a way that would win sympathy in America. Besides "drawing attention to [Syria's] weapons of mass destruction," Israel should say: Negotiations with repressive regimes like Syria's require cautious realism...It is dangerous for Israel to deal naively with a regime murderous of its own people, openly aggressive toward its neighbors...and supportive of the most deadly terrorist organizations.57 As James Bamford points out in A Pretext For War, these justifications were very similar to those that would be used in later years to justify America's attack on Iraq.58 The argument for this American attack on Iraq became more visible the following year, after PNAC was formed. In December 1997, Paul Wolfowitz and Zalmay Khalilzad published an article in the Weekly Standard ? which is edited by the chairman of PNAC, William Kristol ? entitled "Saddam Must Go."59 A month later, these three and fifteen other members of PNAC ? including Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton, and Richard Perle ? sent a letter to President Clinton urging him to use military force to "remove Saddam Hussein and his regime from power" and thereby "to protect our vital interests in the Gulf." In May 1997, they sent a letter to Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott ? the Speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader, respectively. Complaining that Clinton had not listened to them, these letter-writers said that the United States "should establish and maintain a strong U.S. military presence in the region, and be prepared to use that force to protect our vital interests in the Gulf ? and, if necessary, to help remove Saddam from power."60 Finally, Rebuilding America's Defenses, published by PNAC in September 2000, emphasized that Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a threat to American interests in the region.61 When the Bush administration took office in 2001, Chalmers Johnson points out, "ten of the eighteen signers of the letters to Clinton and Republican congressional leaders became members of the administration."62 It was no mere coincidence, therefore, that ? as both Paul O'Neil and Richard Clarke have emphasized ? the Bush administration was already intent on removing Saddam Hussein when it took office.63 And it is also not surprising to learn that immediately after the 9/11 attacks, some members of the Bush administration wanted to use those attacks as the basis for their long-desired invasion to bring about regime change in Iraq. But the Kean-Zelikow Commission, having left out that background, provides no context for readers to understand why and how strongly some members of the Bush administration wanted to attack Iraq. Indeed, the Commission fails to make clear just how ready some of them were to go to war against Iraq even if there was no evidence of its complicity in the attacks. A crucial omission in this respect is the failure to quote notes of Rumsfeld's conversations on 9/11 that were jotted down by an aide. These notes, which were later revealed by CBS News, indicate that Rumsfeld wanted the "best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time. Not only UBL [Usama Bin Laden]. Go massive. Sweet it all up. Things related and not."64 James Bamford, after quoting these notes, says: "From the notes it was clear that the attacks would be used as a pretext for war against Saddam Hussein."65 The Commission, by contrast, merely tells us that notes from that day indicate that "Secretary Rumsfeld instructed Myers to obtain quickly as much information as possible" and to consider "a wide range of options and possibilities". The Commission then adds: The secretary said his instinct was to hit Saddam Hussein at the same time ? not only Bin Laden. Secretary Rumsfeld later explained that at the time, he had been considering either one of them or perhaps someone else, as the responsible party. (335) From the Commission's account alone, we would assume that Rumsfeld was thinking of hitting Saddam if and only if there was good evidence that he was "the responsible party." As the notes quoted by CBS and Bamford show, however, Rumsfeld wanted to use 9/11 as the basis for a "massive" response that would take care of many threats to American interests ("Sweep It Up"), especially Saddam Hussein, whether he was responsible or not ("Things related and not"). The Kean-Zelikow Commission, with its omission and distortions, hides this fact from us. Furthermore, just as the Commission failed to point out the centrality of oil and military bases in the Bush administration's interest in Afghanistan, it does the same in relation to Iraq ? even though this country has the second largest known oil reserves in the world. The Commission does say that at a National Security Council meeting on September 17, "President Bush ordered the Defense Department to be ready to deal with Iraq if Baghdad acted against U.S. interests, with plans to include possibly occupying Iraqi oil fields" (335). But this is the sole hint in the Kean-Zelikow Report that the Bush administration might have had an interest in getting control of Iraqi oil. Even this statement, moreover, is doubly qualified. Far from suggesting that Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and other members of the Bush administration were chomping at the bit to attack Iraq, as the PNAC letters reveal, the Commission suggests that the Bush administration would have thought of acting against Saddam only if he "acted against U.S. interests." And far from suggesting that getting control of Iraq's oil would be a central motivation, the Commission suggests that the plans for attack might only "possibly" include occupying Iraqi oil fields. From other sources, however, we get quite a different pictures. Within months after 9/11, Paul O'Neill reports, the Defense Intelligence Agency, which works for Rumsfeld, had begun mapping Iraq's oil fields. It also provided a document, entitled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts," which suggested how Iraq's huge reserves might be divided up.66 The centrality of oil was also pointed out by Stephen Gowans, who wrote: [T]he top item on the Pentagon's agenda, once it gave the order for jackboots to begin marching on Baghdad, was to secure the oil fields in southern Iraq. And when chaos broke out in Baghdad, US forces let gangs of looters and arsonists run riot through "the Ministry of Planning, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Irrigation, the Ministry of Trade, the Ministry of Industry, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Information."...But at the Ministry of Oil, where archives and files related to all the oil wealth Washington has been itching to get its hands on, all was calm, for ringing the Ministry was a phalanx of tanks and armored personnel carriers.67 These accounts reveal the distorted picture provided by the 9/11 Commissioners, whose solitary mention of Iraq's oil suggests that US troops, if they attacked Iraq, might or might not occupy the oil fields. A more realistic account is also given by Chalmers Johnson, who emphasizes that in relation to oil-rich regions, the US interest in oil and its interest in bases go hand in hand. [The] renewed interest in Central, South, and Southwest Asia included the opening of military-to-military ties with the independent Central Asian republics of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan and support for a Taliban government in Afghanistan as a way to obtain gas and oil pipeline rights for an American-led consortium. But the jewel in the crown of this grand strategy was a plan to replace the Ba'ath regime in Iraq with a pro-American puppet government and build permanent military bases there.68 Johnson's emphasis on the motivation to establish more military bases is supported by PNAC itself, which said in its 2000 document: [T]he United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.69 As this statement indicates, the plan was for the American military to remain in Iraq long after Saddam Hussein was deposed-perhaps until the exhaustion of the Iraqi oil reserves. If we move beyond the 9/11 Commission's simplistic and noncontextual account of the Bush administration's reasons for attacking Iraq, we can see that the stakes were immense, involving not only trillions of dollars but also global geopolitical control. (For example, even if the United States will not need Iraqi oil in the near future, East Asia and Europe will, so that the United States, by controlling their oil supply, will be able to exert strong influence over their political-economic life.) Accordingly, we can see that the desire to attack an occupy Iraq, expressed by the same people who suggested that a "new Pearl Harbor" could be helpful, might have provided a motive for facilitating the attacks of 9/11. The 9/11 Commission Report, however, omits all the parts of the story that might lead to this thought. We receive no idea that Iraq might have been "the jewel in the crown" of the US master plan. In the world of the Kean-Zelikow Report, in fact, America has no imperialistic master plan. It is simply an altruistic nation struggling to defend itself against enemies who hate its freedoms. SummaryAs I pointed out in the Introduction, The 9/11 Commission Report endorses the official conspiracy theory, according to which the attacks of 9/11 were carried out solely by al-Qaeda, under the direction of Osama bin Laden. I am looking at this report from the perspective of the alternative conspiracy theory, according to which officials of the US government were involved. Although the Commission did not mention this alternative hypothesis, it was clearly seeking to undermine its plausibility. One way to do this would be to show that, contrary to those who hold this hypothesis, the Bush administration did not have any interests or plans that could have provided a sufficient motive for arranging or at least allowing such murderous attacks on its own citizens. The Commission did not do this directly, by explicitly addressing the motives alleged by those who endorse the alternative hypothesis. But it did not do it indirectly, by portraying the Bush administration, and the US government more generally, as devoid of motives in question. The Kean-Zelikow Commission, however, could provide this portrayal only by means of numerous omissions and distortions. Besides omitting the Bush administration's reference to the 9/11 attacks as "opportunities," it omitted any discussion of the US Space Command, with its mission to solidify global dominance, and of the PNAC document, with its suggestion that a new Pearl Harbor would be helpful. It omitted historical facts showing that the Bush administration had plans to attack both Afghanistan and Iraq before 9/11, so that the attacks served as a pretext rather than a cause. And the Commission distorted US motives in those attacks, portraying US leaders as interested only in self-defense, human rights, and peace, not oil, bases, and geopolitical primacy. EndNotes:Ian Johnson, "Conspiracy Theories about Sept. 11 Get Hearing in Germany," Wall Street Journal, September 29th, 2003. Bob Woodward, Bush at War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 32. "Secretary Rumsfeld Interview with the New York Times," New York Times, October 12, 2001. For Rice's statement, see Chalmers Johnson, "The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (New York: Henry Hold, 2004), 229. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, September 2002 (available at www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html) The only statement I have seen that even comes close is the Commission's statement that "[t]he President noted that the attacks provided a great opportunity to engage Russia and China" (330). The Project for the New American Century (henceforth PNAC) Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century, September 2000 (www.newamericancentury.org). Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire, 178. Lehman, who was secretary of the navy during two Reagan administrations, signed PNAC's "Letter to President Bush on the War on Terrorism, " September 20, 2001 (www.newamericancenturty.org/Bushletter.htm). PNAC, Rebuilding America's Defenses, 51. Washington Post, January 27, 2002. Henry Kissinger, "Destroy the Network," Washington Post, September 11, 2001. Greg Miller, "Al Qaeda Finances Down, Panel Says," Los Angeles Times, August 22, 2004. This document, which I downloaded in 2003, gives www.spacecom.af.mil/usspace as the website for the US Space Command. But in August 2004, I found that I could no longer access this site. An earlier version of this document, entitled "Joint Vision 2010," is discussed in Jack Hitt, "The Next Battlefield May Be in Outer Space," New York Times Magazine, August 5, 2001, and in Karl Grossman, Weapons in Space (New York: Seven Stories, 2001). The developments that had been achieved already by 1998 are decribed in George Friedman and Meredith Friedman, The Future of War: Power, Technology and American World Dominance in the 21st Century (New York: St. Martin's, 1998) For a brief overview of this project, see Grossman, Weapons in Space. PNAC, Rebuilding America's Defenses, 54, quoted and discussed in Rahul Mahajan, Full Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003), 53-54. The idea is that if some country the United States wishes to attack has a modest number of nuclear missiles, we could eliminate most of them with a first strike. If the country then launched its few surviving missiles at the United States, they would probably not get through our missile defense shield. Although this shield would probably not protect America from a first strike in which many missiles were fired, it would, the theory is, knock down all the missiles in a small-scale attack. The foreign country would have good reason to believe, therefore, that the United States might go ahead and attack it in spite of its possession of nuclear weapons. It would, therefore, realize that its efforts to deter the United States with threats to retaliate would be futile. As a result, the United States could simply take over the country without needing to attack its nuclear missiles. Paul O'Neill, the first Secretary of the Treasury in the Bush-Cheney administration, reports that a memo written by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, a member of PNAC, said that threats to US security were being created by the fact that regional powers hostile to the United States were "arming to deter us." See Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 81. This figure is reported in the Global Network Space Newsletter #14 (Fall, 2003), which is posted on the website of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space (www.space4peace.org). Any possible doubt about the statement's meaning was reportedly dispelled by Christopher Maletz, assistant director of PNAC. Christopher Bollyn says that when he asked Maletz what was meant by the need for "a new Pearl Harbor," he replied: "They need more money to up the defense budget for raises, new arms, and future capabilities," and neither the politicians nor the military would have approved "without some disaster or catastrophic event." Christopher Bollyn, "America 'Pearl Harbored,'" American Free Press, updated April 12, 2004 (http://www.americanfreepress.net/12_24_02/American_Pearl_Harbored/america_pearl_harbored.html). Report of the Commission to Assess U.S. National Security Space Management and Organization (www.defenselink.mil/cgi-bin/dlprint.cgi). Ibid., quoted in Thierry Meyssan 9/11: The Big Lie (London: Carnot, 2002), 151-52. Department of Defense News Briefing on Pentagon Attack (www.defenselink.mil/cgi-bin/dlprint.cgi), quoted in Meyssan, 9/11: The Big Lie, 152. This point is emphasized by Meyssan, 9/11: The Big Lie, 154. An examination of the Commission’s report shows that Rumsfeld is mentioned in 53 paragraphs, Myers in 18 and Eberhart in 8. Many of these places site interviews with them as sources of information. None of them reflect any questions implying that any aspects of their behavior that day might have been less than exemplary, or that any of their statements may have been less than fully truthful. See Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001),145. Rashid first used this name in “The New Great Game: The Battle for Central Asia’s Oil,” Far Eastern Economic Review, April 10, 1997. He also uses it for Part 3 of The Taliban. Chalmers Johnson refers to Rashid as “the preeminent authority on the politics of Central Asia” (The Sorrows of Empire, 179). See Steve Coll, Ghost Wars, 305 Rashid, Taliban, Chs. 12 and 13. Ibid., 163. Coll, Ghost Wars, 308; Rashid, Taliban, 167, 171; Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire, 177. Coll, Ghost Wars, 338. Rashid, 166. Rashid, Taliban, 168. Ibid., 166. Although, as Rashid reports, the State Department quickly retracted this announcement, the revelation of its true sympathies had been made. Coll, Ghost Wars, 330. Rashid, Taliban, 166. Telegraph, August 13, 1998, quoted in NPH 90. Rashid, Taliban, 75-79, 175. Ibid., 175. Quoted in Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, Forbidden Truth: U.S. Secret Oil Diplomacy and the Failed Hunt for Bin Laden (New York: Nation Books/Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2002), and NPH 91. George Arney, “U.S. ‘Planned Attack on Taleban’,” BBC News, September 18, 2001 (“Taleban” is a spelling preferred by some British writers). The basis for this attack was provided on 9/11 itself. In the president’s statement to the nation that evening, he declared,: “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.” Then in a meeting of the National Security Council, which followed immediately, CIA Director Tenet reportedly said that al-Qaeda and the Taliban are essentially one and the same, after which Bush said to tell the Taliban that we were finished with them (Washington Post, January 27, 2002). Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire, 178-79. The Frontier Post, October 10, 2001, cited in Ahmed, The War on Freedom, 227. Chicago Tribune, March 18, 2002, quoting from the Israeli newspaper, Ma’ariv. Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire, 176. Ibid., 182-83. Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 210. Ibid., 35-36. Ibid., 36. Ibid., 212, 24-25. Reported in David E. Sanger and Robin Toner, Bush Cheney Talk of Iraq and al-Qaida Link,” New York Times, June 18, 2004. William Safire, New York Times, June 21, 2004; Susan Jo Keller, “Political Uproar: 9/11 Panel Members Debate Qaeda-Iraq ‘Tie,’” New York Times, June21, 2004 (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/21/politics/21PANE.html); Joe Conason, “9/11 Panel Becomes Cheney’s Nightmare” (available at www.911citizenswatch.org/modules.php?op=modload&nam=News&file=article&sid=319). The Commission added that Wolfowitz said that the chances of Saddam’s involvement were hig partly because he suspected that Saddam was behind the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center – a theory for which the Commission says it found no credible evidence (336, 559n73). Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire, 227. Although Johnson does not name it, he probably has in mind the Pentagon's 1992 "Defense Planning Guidance" (DPG), authored primarily by Paul Wolfowitz, then the undersecretary of defense for policy, and Lewis "Scooter" Libby. The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," July 8, 1996 (http://www.israeleconomy.org/stratl.hrm). James Bamford, A Pretext for War (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 263. Paul D. Wolfowitz and Zalmay M. Khalilzad, "Saddam Must Go," Weekly Standard (December 1997). PNAC, "Letter to President Clinton on Iraq," January 26, 1998 (www.newamericancentury.org); PNAC, "Letter to Gingrich and Lott," May 29, 1998 (www.newamericancentury.org). PNAC, Rebuilding America's Defenses, 14, 17. Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire, 228-29. See Ron Susskind, The Price of Loyalty, 75, 91. In an interview on CBS's "60 Minutes" in January 2004, O'Neill, who as Secretary of the Treasury was a member of the National Security Council, said that the main topic within days of the inauguration was going after Saddam, with the question being not "Why Saddam?" or "Why Now?" but merely "finding a way to do it" (www.cbsnews.comlstories/2004/0 1/09/60minutesl main592330.shtml). "[H]e is right," says Richard Clarke about O'Neill's claim. "The administration of the second George Bush did begin with Iraq on its agenda." Richard A Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America's war on Terror (New York: Free Press, 2004), 264. These notes were quoted These notes were quoted in "Plans for Iraq Attack Began on 9/11," CBS News, September 4, 2002. Bamford, A Pretext for War, 285. Susskind, The Price of Loyalty, 96. Stephen Gowans, "Regime Change in Iraq: A New Government by and for US Capital," ZNet, April 20, 2003; the internal quote is from Robert Fisk, Independent, April 14, 2003. Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire, 226. PNAC, Rebuilding America's Defenses, 14
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Post by wanyee on Dec 6, 2009 3:58:10 GMT 3
John Pilger - Obama and Empireato.smartcapital.ca/actcity?go=2270139--- [Author, journalist, film maker John Pilger speaks at Socialism 2009 wwwhaymarketbooks.org Filmed by Paul Hubbard at the Womens Building in San Francisco 7-4-09. Text from talk below...] Two years ago, at Socialism in Chicago, I spoke about an "invisible government", a term used by Edward Bernays, one of the founders of modern propaganda. It was Bernays who, in the 1920s, invented "public relations" as a euphemism for propaganda. Deploying the ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud, Bernays campaigned on behalf of the tobacco industry for American women to take up smoking as an act of feminist liberation; he called cigarettes "torches of freedom". The invisible government that Bernays had in mind brought together the power of all media - PR, the press, broadcasting, advertising. It was the power of form: of branding and image-making over substance and truth - and I would like to talk today about this invisible government's most recent achievement: the rise of Barack Obama and the silencing of the left. First, I would like to go back some 40 years to a sultry day in Vietnam. I was a young war correspondent who had just arrived in a village called Tuylon. I disagreeignment was to write about a company of US Marines who had been sent to this village to win hearts and minds. "My orders", said the Marine sergeant, "are to sell the American Way of Liberty as stated in the Pacification Handbook. This is designed to win the hearts and minds of folks as stated on page 86." Page 86 was headed WHAM: Winning Hearts and Minds. The marine unit was a Combined Action Company which, explained the sergeant, "means that we attack these folks on Mondays and win their hearts and minds on Tuesdays". He was joking, though not quite. The sergeant, who didn't speak Vietnamese, had arrived in the village, stood up in a jeep and said through a bullhorn: "Come on out everybody, we got rice and candy and toothbrushes to give you!..." There was silence. "Now listen, either you gooks come on out, or we're going to come right in there and get you!" The people of Tuylon finally came out, and stood in line to receive packets of Uncle Ben's Miracle Rice, Hershey bars, party balloons and several thousand toothbrushes. Three portable, battery-operated, yellow flush lavatories were held back for the arrival of the colonel. And when the colonel arrived that evening, the district chief was summoned, and the yellow flush lavatories were unveiled. The colonel cleared his throat and produced a hand-written speech. "Mr. District Chief and all you nice people," he said, "what these gifts represent is more than the sum of their parts. They carry the spirit of America. Ladies and gentlemen, there's no place on earth like America. It's the land where miracles happen. It's a guiding light for me, and for you. In America, you see, we count ourselves as real lucky having the greatest democracy the world has ever known, and we want you nice people to share in our good fortune." Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, even John Winthrop's "city upon a hill" got a mention. All that was missing was the Star Spangled Banner playing in the background. Of course, the villagers had no idea what the colonel was talking about. When the Marines clapped, they clapped. When the colonel waved, the children waved. As he departed, the colonel shook the sergeant's hand and said : "You've got plenty of hearts and minds here. Carry on, Sergeant?" "Yessir." In Vietnam, I witnessed many spectacles like that. I had grown up in faraway Australia on a steady cinematic diet of John Wayne, Randolph Scott, Walt Disney, the Three Stooges and Ronald Reagan. The American Way of Liberty they portrayed might well have been lifted from the WHAM handbook. I learned that the United States had won World War Two on its own and now led the "free world" as the "chosen" society. It was only much latter when I read Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion that I understood something of the power of emotions attached to false ideas and bad history. Historians call this "exceptionalism" - the notion that the United States has a divine right to bring what it calls liberty to the rest of humanity. Of course, this is a very old refrain; the French and British created and celebrated their own "civilising mission" while imposing colonial regimes that denied basic civil liberties. However, the power of the American message is different. Whereas the Europeans were proud imperialists, Americans are trained to deny their imperialism. As Mexico was conquered and the Marines sent to rule Nicaragua, American text books referred to an "age of innocence". American motives were well meaning, moral, exceptional, as the colonel said. There was no ideology, they said; and this is still the received wisdom. Indeed, Americanism is an ideology that is unique because its main element is its denial that it is an ideology. It is both conservative and liberal, both right and left. All else is heresy. Barack Obama is the embodiment of this "ism". Since Obama was elected, leading liberals have talked about America returning to its true status as a "nation of moral ideals" - the words of Paul Krugman in the New York Times. In the San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford wrote that "spiritually advanced people regard the new president as 'a Lightworker'... who can help usher in a new way of being on the planet". Tell that to an Afghan child whose family has been blown away by Obama's bombs, or a Pakistani child whose family are among the 700 civilians killed by Obama's drones. Or Tell it to a child in the carnage of Gaza caused by American smart weapons which, disclosed Seymour Hersh, were re-supplied to Israel for use in the slaughter "only after the Obama team let it be known it would not object". The man who stayed silent on Gaza is the man who now condemns Iran. Obama's is the myth that is America's last taboo. His most consistent theme was never change; it was power. The United States, he said, "leads the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good ... We must lead by building a 21st century military to ensure the security of our people and advance the security of all people." And there is this remarkable statement: "At moments of great peril in the past century our leaders ensured that America, by deed and by example, led and lifted the world, that a we stood and fought for the freedom sought by billions of people beyond their borders." At the National Archives on May 21, he said: "From Europe to the Pacific, we've been the nation that has shut down torture chambers and replaced tyranny with the rule of law." Since 1945, "by deed and by example", the United States has overthrown fifty governments, including democracies, and crushed some 30 liberation movements, and supported tyrannies and set up torture chambers from Egypt to Guatemala. Countless men, women and children have been bombed to death. Bombing is apple pie. And yet, here is the 44th President of the United States, having stacked his government with warmongers and corporate fraudsters and polluters from the Bush and Clinton eras, teasing us while promising more of the same. Here is the House of Representatives, controlled by Obama's Democrats, voting to approve $16 billion for three wars and a coming presidential military budget which, in 2009, will exceed any year since the end of World War Two, including the spending peaks of the Korean and Vietnam wars. And here is a peace movement, not all of it but much of it, prepared to look the other way and believe or hope that Obama will restore, as Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times, the "nation of moral ideals". Not long ago, I visited the American Museum of History in the celebrated Smithsonian Institute in Washington. One of the most popular exhibitions was called The Price of Freedom: Americans at War. It was holiday time and lines of happy people, including many children, shuffled through a Santa's grotto of war and conquest, where messages about their nation's "great mission" were lit up. These included tributes to the quote "exceptional Americans [who] saved a million lives" in Vietnam where they were quote "determined to stop communist expansion". In Iraq, other brave Americans quote "employed air strikes of unprecedented precision". What was shocking was not so much the revisionism of two of the epic crimes of modern times but the sheer routine scale of omission. Like all US presidents, Bush and Obama have much in common. The wars of both presidents, and the wars of Clinton and Reagan, Carter and Ford, Nixon and Kennedy, are justified by the enduring myth of exceptional America - a myth the late Harold Pinter described as "a brilliant, witty, highly successful act of hypnosis". The clever young man who recently made it to the White House is a very fine hypnotist, partly because it is so extraordinary to see an African-American at the pinnacle of power in the land of slavery. However, this is the 21st century, and race - together with gender and even class -- can be very seductive tools of propaganda. For what matters, above race and gender, is the class one serves. George Bush's inner circle - from the State Department to the Supreme Court - was perhaps the most multi racial in presidential history. It was PC par excellence. Think Condaleeza Rice and Colin Powell. It was also the most reactionary. To many, Obama's very presence in the White House reaffirms the moral nation. He is a marketing dream. Like Calvin Klein or Beneton, he is a brand that promises something special - something exciting, almost risqué, as if he might be a radical, as if he might enact change. He makes people feel good. He's post-modern man with no political baggage. In his book, Dreams From My Father, Obama refers to the job he took after he graduated from Columbia University in 1983. He describes his employer as "a consulting house to multinational corporations". For some reason, he does not say who his employer was or what he did there. The employer was Business International Corporation, which has a long history of providing cover for the CIA with covert action, and infiltrating unions and the left. I know this because it was especially active in my own country, Australia. Obama does not say what he did at Business International; and there may be nothing sinister, but it seems worthy of enquiry, and debate, surely, as a clue to whom the man is. During his brief period in the Senate, Obama voted to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He voted for the Patriot Act. He refused to support a bill for single-payer health care. He supported the death penalty. As a presidential candidate, he received more corporate backing than John McCain. He promised to close Guantanamo as a priority and has not. Instead, he has excused the perpetrators of torture, re-instated the infamous military commissions, kept the Bush gulag intact and opposed habeus corpus. Daniel Ellsberg was right when he said that, under Bush, a military coup had taken place in the United States, giving the Pentagon unprecedented powers. These powers have been reinforced by the presence of Robert Gates, a Bush family crony and George W. Bush's secretary of defence, and by all the Bush Pentagon officials and generals who have kept their jobs under Obama. In Colombia, Obama is planning to spend $46 million on a new military base that will support a regime backed by death squads and further the tragic history of Washington's intervention in Latin America. In a pseudo-event staged in Prague, Obama promised a world without nuclear weapons to a global audience mostly unaware that America is building new tactical nuclear weapons designed to blur the distinction between nuclear and conventional war. Like George Bush, he used the absurdity of Europe threatened by Iran to justify building a missile system aimed at Russia and China. In a pseudo-event at the Annapolis Naval Academy, decked with flags and uniforms, Obama lied that the troops were coming home. The head of the army, General George Casey, says America will be in Iraq for up to a decade; other generals say fifteen years. Units will be re-labelled as trainers; mercenaries will take their place. That is how the Vietnam war endured past the American "withdrawal". Chris Hedges, author of Empire of Illusion puts it well. "President Obama," he wrote, "does one thing and Brand Obama gets you to believe another. This is the essence of successful advertising. You buy or do what the advertiser wants because of how they can make you feel." And so you are kept in "a perpetual state of childishness". He calls this "junk politics". The tragedy is that Brand Obama appears to have crippled or absorbed the anti war movement, the peace movement. Out of 256 Democrats in Congress, thirty are willing to stand against Obama's and Nancy Pelosi's war party. On June 16, they voted for $106 billion for more war. In Washington, the Out of Iraq Caucus is out of action. Its members can't even come up with a form of words of why they are silent. On March 21, a demonstration at the Pentagon by the once mighty United for Peace and Justice drew only a few thousand. The outgoing president of UPJ, Leslie Cagan, says her people aren't turning up because, "it's enough for many of them that Obama has a plan to end the war and that things are moving in the right direction". And where is the mighty MoveOn these days? Where is its campaign against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? And what exactly was said when, in February, MoveOn's executive director, Jason Ruben, met President Obama? Yes, a lot of good people mobilised for Obama. But what did they demand of him - apart from the amorphous "change"? That isn't activism. Activism doesn't give up. Activism is not about identity politics. Activism doesn't wait to be told. Activism doesn't rely on the opiate of hope. Woody Allen once said, "I felt a lot better when I gave up hope". Real activism has little time for identity politics, a distraction that confuses and suckers good people everywhere. I write for the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto, or rather I used to write for it. In February, I sent the foreign editor an article which raised questions about Obama as a progressive force. The article was rejected. Why? I asked. "For the moment," wrote the editor, "we prefer to maintain a more 'positive' approach to the novelty presented by Obama... we will take on specific issues... but we would not like to say that he will make no difference." In other words, an American president drafted to promote the most rapacious system in history is ordained and de-politicised by the left. What is remarkable about this state of affairs is that the so-called radical left has never been more aware, more conscious, of the iniquities of power. The Green Movement, for example, has raised the consciousness of millions of people, so that almost every child knows something about global warming; and yet there is a resistance within the green movement to the notion of power as a military project. Similar observations can be made of the gay and feminist movements; as for the labour movement, is it still breathing? One of my favourite quotations is from Milan Kundera: "The struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." We should never forget that the primary goal of great power is to distract and limit our natural desire for social justice and equity and real democracy. Long ago, Bernays's invisible government of propaganda elevated big business from its unpopular status as a kind of mafia to that of a patriotic driving force. The American Way of Life began as an advertising slogan. The modern image of Santa Claus was an invention of Coca Cola. Today, we are presented with an extraordinary opportunity, thanks to the crash of Wall Street and the revelation, for ordinary people, that the free market has nothing to do with freedom. The opportunity is to recognise a stirring in America that is unfamiliar to many on the left, but is related to a great popular movement growing all over the world. In Latin America, less than 20 years ago, there was the usual despair, the usual divisions of poverty and freedom, the usual thugs in uniforms running unspeakable regimes. There is now a people's movement based on the revival of indigenous cultures and languages, and a history of popular and revolutionary struggle less affected by ideological distortions than anywhere else. The recent, amazing achievements in Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, El Salvador, Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay represent a struggle for community and political rights that is truly historic, with implications for all of us. These successes are expressed perversely in the overthrow of the government of Honduras, for the smaller the country the greater the threat that the contagion of emancipation will follow. Across the world, social movements and grass-roots organisations have emerged to fight free market dogma. They have educated governments in the south that food for export is a problem rather than a solution to global poverty. They have politicised ordinary people to stand up for their rights, as in the Philippines and South Africa. An authentic globalization is growing as never before, and this is exciting. Consider the remarkable boycott, disinvestment and sanctions campaign - BDS for short - aimed at Israel, that is sweeping the world. Israeli ships have been turned away from South Africa and western Australia. A French company has been forced to abandon plans to built a railway connecting Jerusalem with illegal Israeli settlements. Israeli sporting bodies find themselves isolated. Universities have begun to sever ties with Israel, and students are active for the first time in a generation. Thanks to them, Israel's South Africa moment is approaching, for this is, partly, how apartheid was defeated. In the 1950s, we never expected the great wind of the 1960s to blow. Feel the breeze today. In the last eight months millions of angry emails, sent by ordinary Americans, have flooded Washington. This has not happened before. People are outraged as their lives are attacked; they bear no resemblance to the massive mass presented by the media. Look at the polls that are seldom reported. More than two thirds of Americans say the government should care for those who cannot care for themselves; 64 per cent would pay higher taxes to guarantee health care for everyone; 59 per cent are favourable towards unions; 70 per cent want nuclear disarmament; 72 per cent want the US completely out of Iraq; and so on. For too long, ordinary Americans have been cast in stereotypes that are contemptuous. That is why the progressive attitudes of ordinary people are seldom reported in the media. They are not ignorant. They are subversive. They are informed. And they are "anti-American". I once asked a friend, the great American war correspondent and humanitarian, Martha Gellhorn, to explain "anti-American" to me. "I'll tell you what 'anti-American' is," she said. "It's what governments and their vested interested call those who honour America by objecting to war and the theft of resources and believing in all of humanity. There are millions of these anti-Americans in the United States. They are ordinary people who belong to no elite and who judge their government in moral terms, though they would call it common decency. They are not vain. They are the people with a wakeful conscience, the best of America's citizens. They can be counted on. They were in the south with the Civil Rights movement, ending slavery. They were in the streets, demanding an end to the wars in Asia. Sure, they disappear from view now and then, but they are like seeds beneath the snow. I would say they are truly exceptional." A certain populism is once again growing in America and which has a proud, if forgotten past. In the nineteenth century, an authentic grass-roots Americanism was expressed in populism's achievements: women's suffrage, the campaign for an eight-hour day, graduated income tax and public ownership of railways and communications, and breaking the power of corporate lobbyists. The American populists were far from perfect; at times they would keep bad company, but they spoke from the ground up, not from the top down. They were betrayed by leaders who urged them to compromise and merge with the Democratic Party. Does that sound familiar? What Obama and the bankers and the generals, and the IMF and the CIA and CNN fear is ordinary people coming together and acting together. It is a fear as old as democracy: a fear that suddenly people convert their anger to action and are guided by the truth. "At a time of universal deceit," wrote George Orwell, "telling the truth a revolutionary act." www.johnpilger.comExternal URL: www.zmag.org/zvideo/3227
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