Bin Laden has always been blamed for orchestrating the horrific attack - in which nearly 3,000 people perished - eight years ago this week. President George W. Bush made his capture a national priority, infamously promising with a Wild West flourish to take him 'dead or alive'.
The U.S. State Department offered a reward of $50million for his whereabouts. The FBI named him one of their ten 'most wanted' fugitives, telling the public to watch out for a left-handed, grey-bearded gentleman who walks with a stick.
Yet this master terrorist remains elusive. He has escaped the most extensive and expensive man-hunt in history, stretching across Waziristan, the 1,500 miles of mountainous badlands on the borders of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Undeterred, Barack Obama has launched a fresh operation to find him. Working with the Pakistani Army, elite squads of U.S. and British special forces were sent into Waziristan this summer to 'hunt and kill' the shadowy figure intelligence officers still call 'the principal target' of the war on terror.
This new offensive is, of course, based on the premise that the 9/11 terrorist is alive. After all, there are the plethora of 'Bin Laden tapes' to prove it.
Yet what if he isn't? What if he has been dead for years, and the British and U.S. intelligence services are actually playing a game of double bluff?
What if everything we have seen or heard of him on video and audio tapes since the early days after 9/11 is a fake - and that he is being kept 'alive' by the Western allies to stir up support for the war on terror?
Incredibly, this is the breathtaking theory that is gaining credence among political commentators, respected academics and even terror experts.
Of course, there have been any number of conspiracy theories concerning 9/11, and it could be this is just another one.
But the weight of opinion now swinging behind the possibility that Bin Laden is dead - and the accumulating evidence that supports it - makes the notion, at the very least, worthy of examination.
The theory first received an airing in the American Spectator magazine earlier this year when former U.S. foreign intelligence officer and senior editor Angelo M. Codevilla, a professor of international relations at Boston University, stated bluntly: 'All the evidence suggests Elvis Presley is more alive today than Osama Bin Laden.'
Prof Codevilla asserted: 'The video and audio tapes alleged to be Osama's never convince the impartial observer,' he asserted. 'The guy just does not look like Osama. Some videos show him with a Semitic, aquiline nose, while others show him with a shorter, broader one. Next to that, differences between the colours and styles of his beard are small stuff.'
There are other doubters, too. Professor Bruce Lawrence, head of Duke University's religious studies' department and the foremost Bin Laden expert, argues that the increasingly secular language in the video and audio tapes of Osama (his earliest ones are littered with references to God and the Prophet Mohammed) are inconsistent with his strict Islamic religion, Wahhabism.
He notes that, on one video, Bin Laden wears golden rings on his fingers, an adornment banned among
Wahhabi followers.
This week, still more questions have been raised with the publication in America and Britain of a book called Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive?
Written by political analyst and philosopher Professor David Ray Griffin, former emeritus professor at California's Claremont School of Theology, it is provoking shock waves - for it goes into far more detail about his supposed death and suggests there has been a cover-up by the West.
The book claims that Bin Laden died of kidney failure, or a linked complaint, on December 13, 2001, while living in Afghanistan's Tora Bora mountains close to the border with Waziristan.
His burial took place within 24 hours, in line with Muslim religious rules, and in an unmarked grave, which is a Wahhabi custom.
The author insists that the many Bin Laden tapes made since that date have been concocted by the West to make the world believe Bin Laden is alive. The purpose? To stoke up waning support for the war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan.
To understand Griffin's thesis, we must remember the West's reaction to 9/11, that fateful sunny September day in 2001. Within a month, on Sunday, October 7, the U.S. and Britain launched massive retaliatory air strikes in the Tora Bora region where they said 'prime suspect' Bin Laden was living 'as a guest of Afghanistan'.
This military offensive ignored the fact that Bin Laden had already insisted four times in official Al Qaeda statements made to the Arab press that he played no role in 9/11.
Indeed, on the fourth occasion, on September 28 and a fortnight after the atrocity, he declared emphatically: 'I have already said I am not involved. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge... nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act.'
Within hours of the October 7 strikes by the U.S. on Tora Bora, Bin Laden made his first ever appearance on video tape. Dressed in Army fatigues, and with an Islamic head-dress, he had an assault rifle propped behind him in a broadly lit mountain hideout. Significantly, he looked pale and gaunt.
Although he called President George W. Bush 'head of the infidels' and poured scorn on the U.S., he once again rejected responsibility for 9/11.
'America was hit by God in one of its softest spots. America is full of fear, from its north to its south, from its west to its east. Thank God for that.'
Then came a second videotape on November 3, 2001. Once again, an ailing Bin Laden lashed out at the United States. He urged true Muslims to celebrate the attacks - but did not at any time acknowledge he had been involved in the atrocity.
And then there was silence until December 13, 2001 - the date Griffin claims Bin Laden died. That very day, the U.S. Government released a new video of the terror chief. In this tape, Bin Laden contradicted all his previous denials, and suddenly admitted to his involvement in the atrocity of 9/11.
The tape had reportedly been found by U.S. troops in a private home in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, after anti-Taliban forces took over the city. A label attached to it claimed that it had been made on November 9,
2001.
The tape shows Bin Laden talking with a visiting sheik. In it, he clearly states that he not only knew about the 9/11 atrocities in advance, but had planned every detail personally.
What manna for the Western authorities! This put the terrorist back in the frame over 9/11. The Washington Post quoted U.S. officials saying that the video 'offers the most convincing evidence of a connection between Bin Laden and the September 11 attacks'.
A euphoric President Bush added: 'For those who see this tape, they realise that not only is he guilty of incredible murder, but he has no conscience and no soul.'
In London, Downing Street said that the video was 'conclusive proof of his involvement'. The then Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, added: 'There is no doubt it is the real thing. People can see Bin Laden there, making those utterly chilling words of admission about his guilt for organising the atrocities of September 11.'
Yet Professor Griffin claims this 'confessional' video provokes more questions than answers. For a start, the Bin Laden in this vital film testimony looks different.
He is a weighty man with a black beard, not a grey one. His pale skin had suddenly become darker, and he had a different shaped nose. His artistic hands with slender fingers had transformed into those of a pugilist. He looked in exceedingly good health.
Furthermore, Bin Laden can be seen writing a note with his right hand, although he is left-handed. Bizarrely, too, he makes statements about 9/11 which Griffin claims would never have come from the mouth of the real Bin Laden - a man with a civil engineering degree who had made his fortune (before moving into terrorism) from building construction in the Middle East.
For example, the Al Qaeda leader trumpets that far more people died in 9/11 than he had expected. He goes on: 'Due to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the explosion from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. That is all we had hoped for.' (In reality the Twin Towers' completely fell down).
The words of the true Bin Laden? No, says Griffin, because of the obvious mistakes. 'Given his experience as a contractor, he would have known the Twin Towers were framed with steel, not iron,' he says.
'He would also known that steel and iron do not begin to melt until they reach 2,800 deg F. Yet a building fire fed by jet fuel is a hydrocarbon fire, and could not have reached above 1,800 deg F.'
Griffin, in his explosive book, says this tape is fake, and he goes further.
'A reason to suspect that all of the post-2001 Bin Laden tapes are fabrications is that they often appeared at times that boosted the Bush presidency or supported a claim by its chief 'war on terror' ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
'The confession tape came exactly when Bush and Blair had failed to prove Bin Laden's responsibility for 9/11 and both men were trying to win international public support, particularly in the Islamic world, for the anti-terrorist campaign.'
Griffin suggests that Western governments used highly sophisticated, special effects film technology to morph together images and vocal recordings of Bin Laden.
So if they are fakes, why has Al Qaeda kept quiet about it? And what exactly happened to the real Bin Laden?
The answer to the first question may be that the amorphous terrorist organisation is happy to wage its own propaganda battle in the face of waning support - and goes along with the myth that its charismatic figurehead is still alive to encourage recruitment to its cause.
As for the matter of what happened to him, hints of Bin Laden's kidney failure, or that he might be dead, first appeared on January 19, 2002, four months after 9/11.
This was when Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf told America's news show CNN: 'I think now, frankly, he is dead for the reason he is a kidney patient. The images of him show he is extremely weak.'
In his book, Professor Griffin also endorses this theory. He says Bin Laden was treated for a urinary infection, often linked to kidney disease, at the American Hospital in Dubai in July 2001, two months before 9/11. At the same time, he ordered a mobile dialysis machine to be delivered to Afghanistan.
How could Bin Laden, on the run in snowy mountain caves, have used the machine that many believe was essential to keep him alive? Doctors whom Griffin cites on the subject think it would have been impossible.
He would have needed to stay in one spot with a team of medics, hygienic conditions, and a regular maintenance programme for the dialysis unit itself.
And what of the telling, small news item that broke on December 26, 2001 in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Wafd? It said a prominent official of the Afghan Taliban had announced that Osama Bin Laden had been buried on or about December 13.
'He suffered serious complications and died a natural, quiet death. He was buried in Tora Bora, a funeral attended by 30 Al Qaeda fighters, close members of his family and friends from the Taliban. By the Wahhabi tradition, no mark was left on the grave,' said the report.
The Taliban official, who was not named, said triumphantly that he had seen Bin Laden's face in his shroud. 'He looked pale, but calm, relaxed and confident.'
It was Christmas in Washington DC and London and the report hardly got a mention. Since then, the Bin
Laden tapes have emerged with clockwork regularity as billions have been spent and much blood spilt on the hunt for him.
Bin Laden has been the central plank of the West's 'war on terror'. Could it be that, for years, he's just been smoke and mirrors?
Reported by Charlie Sheen
Infowars
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Charlie Sheen’s Video Message to President Obama
Alex Jones interviews Charlie Sheen.
I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with our 44th President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama, while he was out promoting his health care reform initiative. I requested 30 minutes given the scope and detail of my inquiry; they said I could have 20. Twenty minutes, 1200 seconds, not a lot of time to question the President about one of the most important events in our nation’s history. The following is a transcript of our remarkable discussion. ———————————————————————————————————————— Charlie Sheen – Good afternoon Mr. President, thank you so much for taking time out of your demanding schedule.
President Barack Obama – My pleasure, the content of your request seemed like something I should carve out a few minutes for.
CS – I should point out that I voted for you, as your promises of hope and change, transparency and accountability, as well as putting government back into the hands of the American people, struck an emotional chord in me that I hadn’t felt in quite some time, perhaps ever.
PBO – And I appreciate that Charlie. Big fan of the show, by the way.
CS – Sir, I can’t imagine when you might find the time to actually watch my show given the measure of what you inherited.
PBO – I have it Tivo’d on Air Force One. Nice break from the traveling press corps. (He glances at his watch) not to be abrupt or to rush you, but you have 19 minutes left.
CS – I’ll take that as an invitation to cut to the chase.
PBO – I’m all ears. Or so I’ve been told.
CS – Sir, in the very near future we will be experiencing our first 9/11 anniversary with you as Commander in Chief.
PBO – Yes. A very solemn day for our Nation. A day of reflection and yet a day of historical consciousness as well.
CS – Very much so sir, very much so indeed…. Now; In researching your position regarding the events of 9/11 and the subsequent investigation that followed, am I correct to understand that you fully support and endorse the findings of the commission report otherwise known as the ‘official story’?
PBO – Do I have any reason not to? Given that most of us are presumably in touch with similar evidence.
CS – I really wish that were the case, sir. Are you aware, Mr. President, of the recent stunning revelations that sixty percentof the 9/11 commissioners have publicly stated that the government agreed not to tell the truth about 9/11 and that the Pentagon was engaged in deliberate deception about their response to the attack?
PBO – I am aware of certain “in fighting” during the course of their very thorough and tireless investigative process.
CS – Mr. President, it’s hard to label this type of friction as “in fighting” or make the irresponsible leap to “thorough,” when the evidence I insist you examine regarding 6 of the 10 members are statements of fact. (At this point one of Obama’s senior aides approaches the President and whispers into his ear. Obama glances quickly at his watch and nods as the aide resumes his post at the doorway, directly behind me.)
PBO – No disrespect Mr. Sheen, but I have to ask; what is it that you seem to be implying with the initial direction of this discussion?
CS – I am not implying anything Mr. President. I am here to present the facts and see what you plan to do with them.
PBO – Let me guess; your ‘facts,’ allegedly supporting these claims are in the folders you brought with you?
CS – Good guess Mr. President. (I hand the first folder of documents to the President)
CS – Again sir, these are not my opinions or assumptions, this is all a matter of public record, reported through mainstream media, painstakingly fact checked and verified. (the President glances into the folder I handed him)
CS – You’ll notice sir on page one of the dossier dated August of ‘06 from the Washington Post, the statements of John Farmer, senior council to the 9/11 commission, his quote stating, “I was shocked how different the truth was from the way it was described.”
PBO – (as he glances down at the report, almost inaudible) …. um hmm….
CS – He goes on to further state “The [NORAD Air Defense] tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years….” (the President continues to view the documents)
CS – On pages two and three, sir, are the statements, as well, from commission co-chairmen Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, commissioners Bob Kerrey, Timothy Roemer and John Lehman, as well as the statements of commissioner Max Cleland, an ex-Senator from Georgia , who resigned, stating:
“It is a national scandal. This investigation is now compromised. One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9/11 issue is so important to America. But this White House wants to cover it up.” He also described President Bush’s desire to delay the process as not to damage the ‘04 re-election bid. They suspected deception to the point where they considered referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation. Mr. President, this information alone is unequivocally grounds for a new investigation!
PBO – Mistakes were clearly made but we as a people and as a country need to move forward. It is obviously in our best interest as a democratic society to focus our efforts and our resources on the future of this great nation and our ability to protect the American people and our allies from this type of terrorism in the coming years.
CS – Sir, how can we focus on the future when THE COMMISSION ITSELF is on record stating that they still do not know the truth??
PBO – Even if what you state, might in some capacity, begin to approach an open discussion or balanced debate, I can’t speak for, or about the decisions certain commission members made during an extremely difficult period. Perhaps you should be interviewing them instead of me. Wait, don’t tell me; I was easier to track down than they were?
CS – Not exactly sir, but let’s be honest. You’re the President of the United States, the leader of the free world, the buck stops with you. 9/11 has been the pretext for the systematic dismantling of our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Your administration is reading from the same playbook that the Bush administration foisted on America through documented secrecy and deception.
PBO – Mr. Sheen, I’m having a difficult time sitting here and listening to you draw distorted parallels between the Bush/Cheney regime and mine.
CS – Mr. President the parallels are not distorted just because you say they are. Let’s stick to the facts. You promised to abolish the Patriot Act and then voted to re-authorize it. You pledged to end warrantless wire tapping against the American people and now energetically defend it. You decried the practice of rendition and now continue it. You promised over and over again on the campaign trail, that you would end the practice of indefinite detention and instead, you have expanded it to permanent detention of “detainees” without trial. This far exceeds the outrages of the former administration. Call me crazy Mr. President, but is this not your record?
PBO – Mr. Sheen, my staff and I authorized this interview based on your request to discuss 9/11 and deliver some additional information you’re convinced I’d not previously reviewed. Call me crazy, But it appears as though you’ve blindly wandered off topic.
CS – Sir, the examples I just illustrated are a direct result of 9/11.
PBO – And I’m telling you that we must move forward, we must endure through these dangerous and politically challenging years ahead.
CS – Mr. President, we cannot move forward with a bottomless warren of unanswered questions surrounding that day and its aftermath.
PBO – I read the official report. Every word every page. Perhaps you should do the same.
CS – I have sir, and so have thousands of family members of the victims, and guess what; they have the same questions I do and probably a lot more. I didn’t lose a loved one on that horrific day Mr. President and neither did you. But since then I, along with millions of other Americans lost something we held true and dear for most of our lives in this great country of ours; we lost our hope.
PBO – And I’d like to believe that I am here to restore that hope. To restore confidence in your leaders, in the system that the voting public chose through a peaceful transfer of power. (An odd moment of silence between us. Precious time ticking away).
CS – Mr. President, are you aware of the number of days it took to begin the investigation into JFK’s assassination?
PBO – If memory serves I believe it was two weeks.
CS – Close. Seventeen days to be exact. Are you aware sir, how long it took to begin the investigation into Pearl Harbor?
PBO – I would say again about….two weeks.
CS – Close again sir, eleven days to be exact. Are you aware Mr. President how long it took to begin the investigation into 9/11?
PBO – I know it must have seemed like a very long time for all the grieving families.
CS – It was a very long time Mr. President – four hundred and forty days. Roughly 14 months. Does it bother you Mr. President that it only took FIVE HOURS for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld after the initial attack to recommend and endorse a full scale offensive against Iraq?
PBO – I am not aware of any such purported claim.
CS – I have the proof Mr. President, along with scores of documents and facts I’d like you to take a look at. Here. (I hand him another file – much thicker than the first)
PBO – I see you came prepared Charlie.
CS – No other way to show up Mr. President. When in doubt over prepare I always say.
PBO – Now you sound like the First Lady.
CS – That’s quite a compliment sir.
PBO – As you wish. Please continue.
CS – Sir, I’d like to direct your attention to the stack of documents in the folder I just handed you. The first in from the top is entitled “Operation Northwoods“, a declassified Pentagon plan to stage terror attacks on US soil, to be blamed on Cuba as a pretext for war.
PBO – And I’d like to direct your attention to the fact that the principle draftsman of this improbable blueprint was quickly denied a second term as Joint Chiefs chairman and sent packing to a European NATO garrison. Thank God his otherworldly ambitions never saw the light of day.
CS – I wouldn’t be so certain about that Mr. President.
PBO – I could easily say the same to you Charlie. (the President checks his watch)
Charlie Sheen writing 20 Minutes with the President. Photo by Alex Jones.
CS – The next document reads “Declassified staged provocations.” Now, Honestly Mr. President I wish I was making this stuff up. I’m certain you are familiar with the USS Maine Incident, the sinking of the Lusitania, which we all now know brought us into WW1, and of course the most famous, the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
PBO – Of course I am familiar with these historical events and I’m aware that there’s a measure of controversy surrounding them. But to be quite frank with you, this is all ancient history.
CS – Mr. President, it has been often said; “Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.” And I concede to you sir, these events are the past.
PBO – A vastly different world young man, shouldering a radically disparate state of universal affairs.
CS – No argument sir, I’m merely inviting you to acknowledge some credibility to the pattern or the theme. Case in point; the next document in your folder. It was published by the think-tank, Project For a New American Century and it’s entitled “Rebuilding Americas Defenses“, and was written by Dick Cheney and Jeb Bush. To quote from the document sir – (the President interrupts)
PBO – “Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”
CS – Touche, sir. Your thoughts on this statement Mr. President?
PBO – I would call this a blatant case of misjudgment fueled by an unfortunate milieu of assumption. For some, the uninformed denial of coincidence.
CS – Interesting angle sir. Nevertheless, Vice President Cheney didn’t stop there. In early 2008, Pulitzer prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh and MSNBC, both reported that Cheney had proposed to the Pentagon an outrageous plan to have the U.S. Navy create fake Iranian patrol boats, to be manned by Navy Seals, who would then stage an attack on US destroyers in the Strait of Hormuz. This event was to be blamed on Iran and used as a pretext for war. Does any of this information worry you Mr. President? Should we just ignore it, until these realities can be dismissed years from now by our children, as ancient history as well?
PBO – Of course this information worries me, yet it’s not nearly as worrisome as you sitting here today suspiciously implying that 9/11 was somehow allowed to happen or even orchestrated from the inside.
CS – Mr. President I am not suspiciously implying anything. I am merely exposing the documents and asking the questions that nobody in power will even look at or acknowledge. And as I stated earlier, I voted for you, I believed in your message of hope and change. Mr. President I have come to you specifically hoping for a change. A change in the perception that our government has not yet made itself open and accountable to the people. These are your words Mr. President not mine. The lives of thousands were brutally cut short and those left behind to suffer their infinite pain are with me today Mr. President. They are with me in spirit and flesh, and the message we carry will not be silenced anymore by media fueled mantras insisting how they are supposed to feel. Deciding for them, for 8 long years, what can be thought, what can be said, what can be asked.
PBO – And I appreciate your passion, I appreciate your conviction. In spite of your concerns, in spite of what your data might or might not reveal, what you and the families must understand and accept is that we are doing everything we can to protect you.
CS – Mr. President , I realize were very short on time, so please allow me to run down a list of bullet points that might illuminate some reasons why we don’t embrace the warm hug of Federal protection.
PBO – We’ve come this far. Fire away.
CS – Please keep in mind Mr. President everything I’m about to say is documented as fact and part of the public record. The information you are holding in your hands chronicles and verifies each and every point.
PBO – You have five minutes left. The floor is yours. Brief me.
CS – Thank you Mr. President. Okay, first; On the FBI’s most wanted list Osama Bin Laden is not charged with the crimes of 911. When I called the FBI to ask them why this was the case, they replied: “There’s not enough evidence to link Bin Laden to the crime scene,” I later discovered he had never even been indicted by the D.O.J.
CS – Number 2; FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, was dismissed and gagged by the D.O.J. after she revealed that the government had foreknowledge of plans to attack American cities using planes as bombs as early as April 2001. In July of ‘09, Mrs. Edmonds broke the Federal gag order and went public to reveal that Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda and the Taliban were all working for and with the C.I.A. up until the day of 9/11.
CS – Number 3; The following is a quote from Mayor Giuliani during an interview on 9/11 with Peter Jennings for ABC News. “I went down to the scene and we set up headquarters at 75 Barkley Street, which was right there with the Police Commissioner, the Fire Commissioner, the Head of Emergency Management, and we were operating out of there when we were told that the World Trade Center was going to collapse. And it did collapse before we could actually get out of the building, so we were trapped in the building for 10, 15 minutes, and finally found an exit and got out, walked north, and took a lot of people with us.” WHO TOLD HIM THIS??? To this day, the answer to this question remains unanswered, completely ignored and emphatically DENIED by Mayor Giuliani on several public occasions.
CS – Number 4; In April 2004, USA Today reported, “In the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties.” One of the targets was the World Trade Center.
CS – Number 5; On September 12th 2007, CNN’s ‘Anderson Cooper 360′, reported that the mysterious “white plane” spotted and videotaped by multiple media outlets, flying in restricted airspace over the White House shortly before 10am on the morning of 9/11, was in fact the Air Force’s E-4B, a specially modified Boeing 747 with a communications pod behind the cockpit; otherwise known as “The Doomsday Plane”. Though fully aware of the event, the 9/11 Commission did not deem the appearance of the military plane to be of any interest and did not include it in the final 9/11 Commission report.
CS – Number 6; Three F-16s assigned to Andrews Air Force Base, ten miles from Washington, DC, are conducting training exercises in North Carolina 207 miles away as the first plane crashes into the WTC. Even at significantly less than their top speed of 1500 mph, they could still have defended the skies over Washington well before 9am, more than 37 minutes before Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon, however, they did not return until after 9:55am.
Andrews AFB had no armed fighters on alert and ready to take off on the morning of 9/11.
CS – Number 7; WTC Building 7. Watch the video of its collapse.
CS – Number 8; Flight 93 is fourth plane to crash on 9/11 at 10:03am. V.P. Cheney only gives shoot down order at 10:10-10:20am and this is not communicated to NORAD until 28 minutes after Flight 93 has crashed.
Fueling further suspicion on this front is the fact that three months before the attacks of 9/11, Dick Cheney usurped control of NORAD, and therefore he, and no one else on planet Earth, had the power to call for military sorties on the hijacked airliners on 9/11. He did not exercise that power. Three months after 9/11, he relinquished command of NORAD and returned it to military operation.
CS – Number 9; Scores of main stream news outlets reported that the F.B.I. conducted an investigation of at least FIVE of the 9/11 hijackers being trained at U.S. military flight schools. Those investigations are now sealed and need to be declassified.
CS – Number 10; In 2004, New York firefighters Mike Bellone and Nicholas DeMasi went public to say they had found the black boxes at the World Trade Center, but were told to keep their mouths shut by FBI agents. Nicholas DeMasi said that he escorted federal agents on an all-terrain vehicle in October 2001 and helped them locate the devices, a story backed up by rescue volunteer Mike Bellone.
As the Philadelphia Daily News reported at the time, “Their story raises the question of whether there was a some type of cover-up at Ground Zero.”
CS – Number 11 – Hundreds of eye witnesses including first responders, fire captains, news reporters, and police, all described multiple explosions in both towers before and during the collapse.
CS – Number 12; An astounding video uncovered from the archives shows BBC News correspondent Jane Standley reporting on the collapse of WTC Building 7 over twenty minutes before it fell at 5:20pm on the afternoon of 9/11. Tapes from earlier BBC broadcasts show news anchors discussing the collapse of WTC 7 a full 26 minutes in advance. The BBC at first claimed that their tapes from 9/11 had been “lost” before admitting that they made the “error” of reporting the collapse of WTC 7 before it happened without adequately explaining how they could have obtained advance knowledge of the event.
In addition, over an hour before the collapse of WTC 7, at 4:10pm, CNN’s Aaron Brown reported that the building “has either collapsed, or is collapsing.”
CS – Number 13; Solicitor General Ted Olson’s claim that his wife Barbara Olsen called him twice from Flight 77, describing hijackers with box cutters, was a central plank of the official 9/11 story. However, the credibility of the story was completely undermined after Olsen kept changing his story about whether his wife used her cell phone or the airplane phone. The technology to enable cell phone calls from high-altitude airline flights was not created until 2004. American Airlines confirmed that Flight 77 was a Boeing 757 and that this plane did not have airplane phones on board.
According to the FBI, Barbara Olsen attempted to call her husband only once and the call failed to connect, therefore Olsen must have been lying when he claimed he had spoken to his wife from Flight 77.
CS – Number 14; The size of a Boeing 757 is approximately 125ft in width and yet images of the impact zone at the Pentagon supposedly caused by the crash merely show a hole no more than 16ft in diameter. The engines of the 757 would have punctured a hole bigger than this, never mind the whole plane. Images before the partial collapse of the impact zone show little real impact damage and a sparse debris field completely inconsistent with the crash of a large jetliner, especially when contrasted with other images showing airplane crashes into buildings.
CS – Number 15; What is the meaning behind the following quote attributed to Dick Cheney which came to light during the 9/11 Commission hearings? The passage is taken from testimony given by then Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta.
During the time that the airplane was coming in to the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President, “The plane is 50 miles out.” “The plane is 30 miles out.” And when it got down to “the plane is 10 miles out,” the young man also said to the Vice President, “Do the orders still stand?” And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck around and said, “Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?”
As the plane was not shot down, in addition to the fact that armed fighter jets were nowhere near the plane and the Pentagon defensive system was not activated, are we to take it that the orders were to let the plane find its target?
CS – Number 16; In May 2003, the Miami Herald reported how the Bush administration was refusing to release a 900-page congressional report on 9/11 because it wanted to “avoid enshrining embarrassing details in the report,” particularly regarding pre-9/11 warnings as well as the fact that the hijackers were trained at U.S. flight schools.
CS – Number 17; Top Pentagon officials cancelled their scheduled flights for September 11th on September 10th. San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, following a security warning, cancelled a flight into New York that was scheduled for the morning of 9/11.
CS – Number 18; The technology to enable cell phone calls from high-altitude airline flights was not created until 2004, and even by that point it was only in the trial phase. Calls from cell phones which formed an integral part of the official government version of events were technologically impossible at the time.
CS – Number 19: On April 29, 2004, President Bush and V.P. Cheney would only meet with the commission under specific clandestine conditions. They insisted on testifying together and not under oath. They also demanded that their testimony be treated as a matter of “state secret.” To date, nothing they spoke of that day exists in the public domain.
CS – And finally Mr. President – Number 20; A few days after the attack, several newspapers as well as the FBI reported that a paper passport had been found in the ruins of the WTC. In August 2004, CNN reported that 9/11 hijacker Ziad Jarrah’s visa was found in the remains of Flight 93 which went down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
At least a third of the WTC victim’s bodies were vaporized and many of the victims of the Pentagon incident were burned beyond recognition. And yet visas and paper passports which identify the perpetrators and back up the official version of events miraculously survive explosions and fires that we are told melted steel buildings.
(The Senior aide appears again beside the President whispering in his ear. He then quickly moves off).
PBO – Well Charlie I can’t say this hasn’t been interesting. As I said earlier you’ve showed up today focused and organized. Regardless how I feel about the material you’ve presented, I must commend your dedication and zeal. However, our time here is up.
(the President rises from his chair , I do the same).
CS – Mr. President! One more second!
(The President starts towards the door – I follow him quickly step for step).
CS – Mr. President, I implore you based on the evidence you now possess, to use your Executive Power. Prove to us all Sir, that you do, in fact, care. Create a truly comprehensive and open Congressional investigation of 9/11 and its aftermath. The families deserve the truth, the American people and the rest of the free world deserve the truth. Mr. President -
(He pauses. We shake hands).
CS – Make sure you’re on the right side of history.
(ThePresident breaks the handshake).
PBO – I am on the right side of history. Thank you Charlie, my staff and I will be in touch. (I watch as he strides gracefully out of the room, the truth I provided him held firmly by his side; in the hand of providence.)
America suffered its deadliest terrorist attack eight years ago, on September 11, 2001. Nearly three thousand people, mostly Americans, were murdered, and thousands more wounded. The great institution of American and global capitalism, the World Trade Center, was destroyed.
Americans agree that we should remember 9/11. The current president has declared it a "National Day of Service and Remembrance" on which we should honor community service. This has been criticized by many conservatives as "statist" politicization of that horrific day. Some might respond that it was politicized by the last president too.
Indeed, within 24 hours of the planes hitting the Twin Towers, many Americans mourned but also reacted quickly with their thoughts of the event's political implications. Many on the right said that the attack showed the need for a more aggressive foreign policy. Others on the left said that it was time to stop being critical of big government. Calls for restricting civil liberties could be heard before the Pentagon fire was extinguished, and they continue to this day.
If it is fair game for people to politicize 9/11 in this way, as an argument for more government and less liberty, people should also feel free to advance different conclusions about terrorism. We must never forget that day, and it is also important, if we want to prevent such attacks in the future, to understand what led up to the event and what has transpired since.
Understanding the Atrocity
Why did it happen? One answer given was that the terrorists simply hated America for its freedom. Those who believed this tended to feel that war was the only answer -- war to punish the evildoers and war to rebuild foreign societies so they would be free and no longer resent us. Another answer given was that the terrorists, although murderous criminals, were exploiting genuine grievances that many people in Muslim countries had against U.S. foreign policy.
Osama bin Laden repeatedly stressed the major objections: The U.S. had been supporting apostate dictatorships in the Muslim world, given one-sided support to Israel, occupied holy land such as the Arabian Peninsula, and enforced brutal sanctions on the Iraqi people that had left hundreds of thousands of Muslims, mostly children, dead.
Americans are warned not to forget what happened eight years ago, but we must not assume history began on that date. Those in the Muslim world tend to have a much longer memory.
In 1953, the CIA helped to oust the once-democratically elected leader of Iran, a man who had been featured as Time Magazine's "Man of the Year" just a year before, and replaced him with the corrupt and brutal Shah, a dictator who ushered in a period of torture, terror and mass inflation. Twenty-six years later we saw the "blowback" -- a term the CIA uses to describe the unintended reaction from American policy abroad -- in the form of the Islamic Revolution. Iran fell under the grip of fundamentalists, but most of the nation would not rally against America for purely cultural reasons. What united them was resentment toward the U.S. meddling in their country.
Meanwhile, as part of the Cold War, the U.S. began supporting agitators in Afghanistan so as to incite a Soviet invasion and bring about an overstretch of the Soviet military. Although today most Americans think of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan at the time as purely defensive against Soviet belligerence, President Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski admitted this was far from the case in a 1998 interview:
"According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention."
These U.S.-allied Mujahideen in Afghanistan were championed as "freedom fighters," but many went on to form the basis of the Taliban and al Qaeda. The Taliban became one of the most brutal and backwards regimes on the planet, but as late as May of 2001, the U.S. was sending tens of millions of dollars to the Taliban to finance its war on opium.
Throughout the 1980s, the fundamentalist Iranian regime, which had come about in reaction to the U.S.-installed Shah, was seen as the greatest threat in the region. Thus did the United States throw its support behind Saddam Hussein, who, along with his Baathist party, had been a U.S.-sponsored operative for decades in Iraq. An Iran-Iraq war ensued, wherein the U.S. sent weaponry, material support, money and intelligence to the Iraqi dictatorship. At the same time, the Reagan administration secretly sold weapons to Iran, as well.
In 1990, the U.S. went to war with Iraq after Saddam invaded Kuwait, although a U.S. diplomat had indicated to him that the U.S. would stay out of such a conflict. Propaganda about Kuwaiti babies being torn from their incubators, and an impending threat from Saddam to Saudi Arabia, got most of the American people on board. But it was a short war, and by 1992 the popular war was a faded memory as the recession and Perot took the presidential throne from the incumbent commander in chief.
At the end of the war, the U.S. had troops stationed in Saudi Arabia and, after destroying much of Iraq's sanitation infrastructure, implemented sanctions to be enforced through the United Nations, that cut off the Iraqi people from getting food and medicine from the outside world. Throughout the 1990s, the U.S. perennially bombed Iraq to enforce "no-fly" zones in the name of protecting the Kurds.
In May of 1996, UN ambassador Madeline Albright, soon to be elevated to become Secretary of State, was asked on 60 Minutes about this the trade sanctions on Iraq. This exchange echoed ominously throughout the Muslim world:
Lesley Stahl: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?
Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it.
Most Americans don't know about this exchange, or other grievances foreigners have against the U.S. empire, but the nonchalant way in which Albright weighed the lives of hundreds of thousands of children against the U.S. goal of undermining Saddam's government resonated far and wide. This dismissive attitude toward the foreigners affected by U.S. foreign policy still permeates American policy through and through.
It is such grievances that most directly led to 9/11. This is the conclusion of Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA bin Laden Unit. Robert Pape, who conducted the most comprehensive survey of suicide terrorist attacks from 1980 to 2003, also agrees that the major factor behind such terrorism, by far, is resistance to an occupying power.
This understanding of foreign animosity is completely consistent with the thoughts of candidate George W. Bush, sparring in a presidential debate in October 2000, saying that foreigners resent U.S. intervention in their lands. "If we're an arrogant nation, they'll resent us," Bush said. "If we're a humble nation, but strong, they'll welcome us."
Candidate Al Gore was clearly much more rhetorically devoted to the U.S. intervening abroad:
"Like it or not, we are now...the United States is now the natural leader of the world. All of the other countries are looking to us. Now just because we cannot be involved everywhere, and shouldn't be, doesn't mean that we should shy away from going in anywhere. And we have a fundamental choice to make. Are we going to step up to the plate as a nation, the way we did after World War II, the way that generation of heroes said, okay, the United States is going to be the leader -- and the world benefited tremendously from the courage that they showed in those post-war years."
To which Bush replied,
"I'm not so sure the role of the United States is to go around the world and say this is the way it's got to be. We can help. And maybe it's just our difference in government, the way we view government. I mean I want to empower people. I want to help people help themselves, not have government tell people what to do. I just don't think it's the role of the United States to walk into a country and say, we do it this way, so should you."
After 9/11, the position Gore summarizes here became as popular as ever. But the original George Bush position became very taboo and politically incorrect.
In May 2007, at the Republican presidential debate in North Carolina, Ron Paul defended non-intervention, and was asked if such a posture is still relevant after 9/11. He noted that in order to understand 9/11, we must understand that U.S. foreign policy was a
"major contributing factor. Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attacked us because we've been over there; we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East -- I think Reagan was right. We don't understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we're building an embassy in Iraq that's bigger than the Vatican. We're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us."
When asked if the U.S. "invited" the attacks, Ron Paul answered clearly:
"I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it, and they are delighted that we're over there because Osama bin Laden has said, "I am glad you're over on our sand because we can target you so much easier." They have already now since that time -- have killed 3,400 of our men, and I don't think it was necessary."
Candidate Rudy Giuliani responded:
"That's really an extraordinary statement. That's an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I've heard that before, and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th."
Ron Paul answered back, explaining that the Golden Rule had something to do with this:
"I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback. When we went into Iran in 1953 and installed the shah, yes, there was blowback. A reaction to that was the taking of our hostages and that persists. And if we ignore that, we ignore that at our own risk. If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem. They don't come here to attack us because we're rich and we're free. They come and they attack us because we're over there. I mean, what would we think if we were -- if other foreign countries were doing that to us?"
That was in 2007, but a similar narrative explaining the motivations for the 9/11 terrorists could be understood in 2001 as well.
The Response to 9/11
What should have been done in response to September 11? Ron Paul recommended the most proper response to an attack by a stateless enemy, one worthy of our republic: Actually target the terror masterminds and principals through the Constitutional process of the Letters of Marque and Reprisal. Treat the terrorists like pirates. Go after them directly, instead of waging endless and unwinnable wars to recreate the Middle East. Another reasonable course of action would have been to recognize the difference between the Taliban and al Qaeda and go after the latter. There were indeed "training grounds" in Afghanistan, but the planning for 9/11 occurred mostly in the United States and Germany -- the training in Afghanistan was mostly training for ground combat. When the Taliban offered up Osama bin Laden in October 2001, perhaps the U.S. should have negotiated.
But this is not the path we went down. Instead, the Bush administration took us into a war with Afghanistan and then Iraq. Osama bin Laden fled from Afghanistan before the end of 2001, according to most experts, and now the goal has apparently shifted to promoting democracy, stamping out opium and keeping Pakistan in line. Many, many thousands of Afghans have died, millions have been displaced, and 821 Americans have fallen in that theater of war, with no end in sight and no discernable mission.
President Bush also took us to war with Iraq on the basis of propaganda that has turned out to be totally false: Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction, no operational ties to al Qaeda and no involvement with 9/11. The declared American goal soon became one of bringing democracy and stability to Iraq. A socialist Iraqi constitution was drafted and a new U.S.-allied regime in Iraq with friendly ties to Iran and deference to Sharia law was born. Alliances would shift over the next several years, culminating in the celebrated U.S. "surge" of 2007 that cynically involved paying off Iraqi militias to fight "al Qaeda in Iraq" rather than U.S. forces. Such bribery, as well as the fact that the Sunnis had effectively lost the civil war by then and Iranian intervention had reduced Sadrist belligerence, was probably what really stemmed the bloodshed temporarily.
And of course, Osama bin Laden has yet to be found. This should be no surprise. As early as March of 2002, only six months after 9/11, President Bush made it clear that finding Osama was no longer a major priority:
"As I say, we hadn't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, you know, again, I don't know where he is. I'll repeat what I said: I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban. But, you know, once we set out the policy and started executing the plan, he became -- we shoved him out more and more on the margins. He has no place to train his al Qaeda killers anymore. And if we find a training camp, we'll take care of it -- either we will or our friends will."
But Bush did say he was "deeply concerned about Iraq, and so should the American people be concerned about Iraq. And so should people who love freedom be concerned about Iraq."
Osama is not in Afghanistan. Saddam, who did not turn out to be nearly the threat he was made out to be, has been dead for years, and Iraq never attacked or plausibly threatened to attack America. Why are U.S. forces still in either country? Neither nation is going to be turned into the type of democracy imagined by the neoconservatives in the foreseeable future. A few more years and a few thousand more American deaths isn't going to make or break those countries, and practically everyone knows it. There are, however, far more potential recruits for the anti-American terrorist cause than ever before, and according to our own government, al Qaeda and the Taliban are more closely linked than ever.
Such paradoxes typify current U.S. policy. In Iraq, the U.S. supported the Islamists who soon came to head up the new Iraqi government and ally it with the interests of Iran. In the midst of the civil war that followed the U.S. invasion, the balance of power between factions has led to bizarre de facto alliances with the U.S. The American mission in Iraq became increasingly unclear over time, as the administration boasted a meaningless "handover" in April 2004, prided itself on the elections of 2005 that were followed by mass violence, ignored the Baker report and launched its "surge," paid off the Sunni militants that had previously offered a ceasefire in exchange for a bribe, and eventually capitulated to the Iraqi government with the Status of Forces Agreement last year, which gives Obama a couple more years to withdraw before we know whether we're leaving at all. Meanwhile, the U.S. is supporting the two major Kurdish factions in the North, who are united and at relative peace now, but may find themselves at war with the Iraqi government over oil-rich Kirkuk in the future. Throughout the 1990s, the U.S. backed the Kurds against Saddam with its "No-Fly Zones," even as America also supported the Turks against the Kurds.
The foreign policy paradoxes after 9/11 get stranger than that. The U.S. has apparently been supporting the fanatical Mujahideen-e-Khalq in Iraq, an Iranian Marxist faction that had been allied with the Atatollah Khomeni, only to then side with Saddam Hussein against Iran. In Pakistan, America is reportedly backing Jundallah, an organization with probable ties to al Qaeda and likely once led by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, 9-11 mastermind.
What's more, all this violent intervention is counterproductive to American security. Michael Scheuer has said that U.S. foreign policy has played right into the hands of America's enemies. Although Osama's longterm goal is to get the U.S. out of the Middle East, his strategy to do this was to lure us into a counterinsurgency sand trap, bleed us dry and bankrupt us. So long as the wars continue, Osama will be winning.
The Post-9/11 Assault on Liberty
In light of the attacks, most Americans came together, and most rallied behind the president and federal government. Polls taken in the weeks after 9/11 revealed a dramatic resurgence in trust and approval in the federal government. This was despite the fact that 9/11 was the largest government failure in living memory. The U.S. government had spent about forty billion a year in intelligence gathering and processing, and failed to prevent the attacks.
For one example of many mishaps, the FBI refused to allow a criminal investigation of two of the hijackers weeks before 9/11. A high official at the agency denied a warrant to Minneapolis agents who wanted to search Zacarias Moussaoui's computer. He had come to flight school, paid cash and wanted to learn how to fly a 747, but not take off and land, and had lots of fishy questions about the airplane's mechanics and how much damage could be expected from its crashing. The FBI, misapplying the FISA law, denied the search warrant in the face of tons of evidence satisfying the standards under FISA, even after a flight school official pointed out to the FBI "that a 747 loaded with fuel can be used as a bomb," and after one of the head Minneapolis agents warned the main FBI office that Moussaoiu might "take control of a plane and fly it into the World Trade Center."
This was just one mishap out of many. As Peter Lance has reported, the FBI had been infiltrating al Qaeda operatives in the United States since 1989. Intelligence failure after intelligence failure, in the midst of the assassination of Rabbi Kahane in 1990, the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers, the 1998 African embassy bombings and the attack on the USS Cole in 2000, typified the gross ineptitude of America's massively financed and empowered federal intelligence apparatus prior to 9/11.
But one ironic result from 9/11 has been that, insofar as the terrorists truly hate our freedom, the government has given the terrorists what they wanted. Our freedom has been under continual attack for the last eight years in the name of fighting terrorism. While proponents of a militaristic society do not want to sacrifice the interventionist foreign policy that motivates America's enemies, they do seem willing to sacrifice those very liberties they claim are the real reason we are hated. However, whereas relinquishing the empire, despite being agreeable with some of our enemies, would be of no long-term harm to our country (indeed, a constitutional republic cannot survive long as an empire), the sacrifice of our freedoms has been something that only America's enemies should want to see.
First came a roundup of hundreds of suspected terrorists and "material witnesses," now long forgotten, who were denied due process for months. Next came the Patriot Act, which empowered the federal government to spy on communications with even fewer safeguards than existed under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, itself a deviation from Constitutional due process. The Act also allowed for sneak and peak surveillance -- searching people's property without letting them know for months on end -- and the issuance of National Security Letters that violated the First Amendment by prohibiting their recipients from informing anyone, including their own lawyer, that they got them. This provision was overturned as unconstitutional in 2004.
In April 2004, Bush asserted:
"[B]y the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution."
And yet, at the end of 2005, we learned that the National Security Agency, an organ of the military, had been spying on American telecommunications without even the safeguards guaranteed by the newly amended FISA. This illegal surveillance was legalized -- at least by statute; the program is still unconstitutional -- last year, with Senator Obama voting for it.
Shortly after 9/11, we saw the birth of a detention policy completely at odds with the principles of habeas corpus. Citizens were stripped of their right to a trial, and foreigners were rounded up and deprived of both the protections of prisoners of war and the legal privileges afforded to criminals. The Geneva Conventions and Bill of Rights were abandoned. Thousands of foreigners have been unjustly detained and tortured, many who were apprehended by warlords in exchange for a cash reward. Hundreds were released from Guantanamo when it became clear they were innocent of anything but being in the wrong place (Afghanistan or Pakistan) at the wrong time (after the U.S. had gone to war). This was after officials had assured the American public that only the "worst of the worst" were being detained. While the Court has extended some protections to Guantanamo, President Obama is now seeking to preserve indefinite and lawless detention at Bagram in Afghanistan.
A policy of "extraordinary renditioning" came to life, whereby suspects are transferred to foreign regimes like Syria or Morocco to be interrogated brutally. This policy has ensnared a number of innocent people, such as Canadian citizen Maher Ahar. Under Obama, renditioning has apparently been expanded to include non-terror suspects.
All-out war has been waged on the Bill of Rights since 9/11, accompanied by the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the militarization of domestic police, the nationalization of airline security (which fails to keep weapons off planes but harasses normal Americans daily), a "no-fly list" that prevents more than a million Americans from traveling freely (which some in the current administration want to use to disarm those Americans), "fusion centers" that chill free political speech, and a ridiculous color-coded terror alert system that we now know was a political farce. A series of supposed foiled terror plots have turned out to be similarly dubious.
Economic freedom has also taken a hit. We have seen financial privacy eroded in the name of stopping terrorism and a military response to 9/11 that has cost, in direct terms, at least a trillion dollars, and whose long-term costs are probably many times that. Furthermore, the fog of war has allowed the domestic leviathan to advance. Under the false patriotism, President Bush was able to push through his expansion of Medicare, his enormous farm bill, and record-busting deficits with a Republican Congress afraid to confront their president at wartime. The monetary and fiscal response to 9/11 coincided with the economic response to the dotcom bust: Credit expansion to keep Americans shopping, building and buying homes and living it up, so as to reinflate the economic bubble, only to see it all collapse last year and bring on the greatest economic depression of a lifetime.
Moving Forward
It is considered crass in some circles to point out all this horror that surrounds the events of 9/11, both before and after. Yet to truly honor those Americans who were peacefully living their lives, working in the great system of global capitalism, only to be slaughtered on that Tuesday morning eight years ago, we must appreciate why it happened, what the full implications of the attack and the U.S. response to it have been, and what will truly keep Americans safer in the future. The answer is not to keep sacrificing the freedoms and values that some Americans believe are the reasons we were attacked. The answer is to abandon the policy of foreign intervention and rely on our liberties -- our right to bear arms, for example -- to protect us.
The U.S. has been an interventionist empire under both parties for the better part of a century. September 11 occurred after years of such interventions. The current administration is virtually identical to the last administration in clinging to this counterproductive and unconstitutional foreign policy. At the core of this continuity is a philosophical problem, a dedication to intervention in our national culture that must be questioned and confronted. Our true hope for security and freedom lies in restoring the constitutional limits on presidential power, bringing the troops home from around the world, and restoring the republic.
What does the war in Afghanistan and Iraq have to do with 911?
It is suppose to be a war on terrorism.
Would you regard someone who just killed your family as a benevolent liberator? Wouldn’t you rather despise them? This would be fertile ground for the growth of terrorism. When you indiscriminately bomb cities, killing and maiming tens of thousands of people who had nothing to do with 911, the survivors will become people who hate you. When you round up people in a dragnet and ship them off to torture them, what you get is people who will say anything you want to hear to get you to stop hurting them, and you turn them and their families into people who hate you. A logically thinking person knows this.
The only way for the supposed war on terror to work is to kill everyone, then there will be no one left to hate you.
The Bush administration is not so clueless that they didn’t know this. It is as if the war was designed to create more enemies and more terrorism. Calling it a war on terror is their way of getting us to support the looting of foriegn countries. Money is power. Jesus said, “the love of money is the root of all evil.” Evil is not a fruit of the Spirit. These people are all heavily invested in the defense industry and the oil industry. They give their own companies no-bid defense contracts. They have stolen the resources of two countries and have their sights on Iran. If they don’t have conflicts of interest, no one ever has. Marvin Bush, George W.'s younger brother, was director of Securacom/Stratesec (likely a CIA front), a company that ran security for the World Trade Center, United Airlines and Dulles International Airport. That is an unbelievable coincidence. Ask yourself who had the motive and the opportunity and what is the root of all evil.
Another motive was the implementation of a police state which they euphemistically call Homeland Security so we will feel warm and fuzzy about it, including U.S.A. Patriot Act I and II, The Intelligence Reform Act and The Military Commissions Act all designed to destroy the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and our freedom. Destroy our freedom is the very thing the President told us the “terrorists” were trying to do. It appears they are succeeding. So who had more to gain from the attacks of 911, Al-Qaeda or the new world order Neocons?
They told us 9-11 happened because we were unprepared. They said we never considered the possibility of terrorists hijacking jetliners and using them as weapons. This excuse was a lie. It came out later that NORAD, the Pentagon, the CIA, and various other federal agencies, during the two years prior to 9-11, were running drills precisely about hijackers flying planes into buildings, implicating the Clinton administration as well. On the very morning of September 11, 2001 they were running drills of over twenty scenarios of hijacked planes crashing into buildings. One scenario was the World Trade Center and another the Pentagon. That is another incredible coincidence.
NORAD, the North American Air Defense Command, has been protecting America from such possibilities as 9-11 for over fifty years. Why did it fail on that day? The very drills that were supposed to train them to protect us were what prevented them from being able to protect us. The drills were a diversion. For two years, NORAD was mentally conditioned and on 9-11, they saw everything that was happening as part of the drills. Due to confusion from all of the false blips on the radar, they were unable to distinguish the drills from real life. Someone was pulling those strings, and it was not some crazy bearded Arab living in a cave in Afghanistan.
In 1999, pro golfer Payne Stewart and five companions left Orlando, Florida on a Lear jet bound for Dallas, Texas. Four hours later, it crashed in a field in South Dakota. Within minutes of take off, the Lear jet began to veer off course and air traffic controllers were unable to contact the pilot. NORAD was immediately contacted (standard procedure) and F-16s were scrambled. Within minutes of the Lear jets take off, F-16s had caught up with it. During the year prior to 9-11, NORAD had scrambled 67 times for various air traffic infractions. What does this have to do with 9-11?
Why were there no planes scrambled on 9-11 until after the third plane hit the Pentagon? The first plane that hit the World Trade Center had been off course for well over an hour before the last plane hit the Pentagon. Where was our air defense? We all should have asked these questions instead of blindly accepting whatever they tell us.
“The first thing that went through my mind was, Is this part of the exercise? Is this some kind of screw up?”
Major Larry Arnold
NORAD commander
And what about flight 93 which came down in Pennsylvania? It’s likely target would have been World Trade Center 7. Witnesses on the ground in Pennsylvania will tell you it exploded in the sky and the debris was scattered over an eight mile area. That is why they had no good excuse for building 7 coming down. Their excuse was shot down. Larry Silverstein, the lease holder of the World Trade Center complex, lied and said that the fire department commander and he “made that decision to pull." Many people believe he was using a demolition term for bringing down the building. What do you think?
Common sense and logic are the only resources you need to decide that 911 was an inside job. All you need to know is that three skyscrapers in NYC came down at the speed of gravity, defying the laws of physics and conservation of motion. One of them was not even hit. It is impossible for floor after floor to crash through the one below it without slowing the momentum of the collapse. According to physics, the collapses should have taken minutes not seconds. That could only happen if there was a force working ahead of the collapse to cut the mass out of the way. The logical conclusion is explosives and an inside job. You don’t need and expert to help you figure that out. When you compound all of the other evidence of an inside job on top of that, the conclusion is inescapable. There are too many coincidences to accommodate the laws of probability and too many unanswered questions. We all believe in a 911 conspiracy theory.The question is, which one do you believe, the one featuring Osama Been Forgotten and plastic knives or one substantiated by facts?
We know that Osama Bin Laden at least did exist and he was used in much the same way as Goldstein. They gave us the perfect Disneyesque villain to fill our imaginations - complete with turban, beard and flowing robes. He certainly is a slippery character. I think he has magical powers like Jafar in Aladdin. He just disappears.
And where did Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction go anyway? Well, they were destroyed in the early 1990’s after the first gulf war. Where did they come from in the first place? Well, they were given to them before, during and after the Iran-Iraq war (1980 - 1988). Iran was also fighting with American arms which we gave them during the tenure of the Shah and after. Remember Iran-Contra? I guess the joke was on them…divide, conquer and we pick up the pieces. How Iran, Iraq, ironic!
Try to extend your focus beyond the particulars, and focus on the big picture. That is what they do. They aren’t concerned with what they can accomplish in Iraq with 20,000 more troops. They are plotting the demise of Iran and beyond.
Coming up on the eight year anniversary of the largest single terrorist attack on American soil, Osama bin Laden remains close to the headlines, as the Obama Administration uses the specter of the reclusive leader’s al-Qaeda organization as the primary justification for continuing its war in Afghanistan.
But as for bin Laden himself, he hasn’t been heard from since June, and apart from a vague promise of a “present” for Muslims coming at some point during Ramadan, there appears to be no sign of him.
Eight years of war in Afghanistan have left the US no closer to capturing him, and officials continue to speculate that he is in Pakistan, though they appear to have no clue exactly where he might be found, and indeed most of the US drone attacks are targeting Paksitan’s own domestic insurgency rather than foreign militants.
Bin Laden and his organization appear quite capable of launching attacks, and to the extent that perception remains he will likely continue to loom large in foreign policy discussions. At the same time, it seems that nearly a decade of American warfare focused at least ostensibly around him has done little good, and created many new problems across the world.
But as for bin Laden himself, he hasn’t been heard from since June, and apart from a vague promise of a “present” for Muslims coming at some point during Ramadan, there appears to be no sign of him.
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