Charlie Wilson's War - The Israeli Jihad Connection.

Charlie Wilson's War - The Israeli Jihad Connection.

http://elie-hobeika.blogspot.com/



Charlie Wilson's War:

The Israeli Jihad Connection.

One problem I have had with theories connecting Israel with the
September 11 attacks is the obvious centrality of Pakistan's
intelligence agency, the ISI. This was the agency that
recruited bin Laden and created his persona as an Afghan
warlord and terrorist; it was the ISI that funded the
hijackers. ISI agents predicted the attacks on the World Trade
Center and the collapse of the towers well in advance. Surely
the ISI was pulling the strings, but who was pulling THEIR
strings? Why would leaders of an Islamic state perpetrate an
outrage that could only wreak terrible damage on the Islamic
world? I thought that this lead could only point to the CIA,
which, since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, had cultivated
the ISI as their most important client and agent. A direct
connection from Israel to the ISI seemed highly unlikely to me.
Boy, was I ever wrong.

I just read "Charlie Wilson's War" by George Crile, Grove Press,
NY, 2003. This book presents itself (and has been widely
advertised in the media) as the story of how a wild, womanizing
Texas congressman changed history by becoming the foremost
champion of the CIA campaign against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
However, even a casual reading of the book reveals a completely
different story - the story of how the Mossad used Charlie
Wilson to penetrate the CIA's Afghan campaign, and thereby the
ISI and the Pakistani government at all levels. This is the
story of how Mossad gained control of the artificial Afghan
"jihad" and won that most precious possession a secret service
can obtain - a "controlled opposition."

I should make it very clear that this is not Crile's thesis.
He struggles with a theory of two very different Charlie
Wilsons. One Charlie Wilson "seemed to be little more than
a public joke. He almost never spoke on the House floor. He
wasn't associated with any legislative initiatives." (Crile,
pg. 76) His main claim to fame was as an alcoholic, cocaine-
addicted womanizer. Crile believes that this "persona" was
the "perfect cover" for a second Charlie Wilson, who was a
dedicated, incredibly effective political operator, climbing
the political ladders in Congress at record breaking speed.

While I don't doubt that Wilson is a complex character, the
the elephant in the drawing room has never been more painfully
obvious - in this case so omnipresennt that you can barely
breathe. It's hard even to know where to begin.

Well, let's start with Wilson's very close relationship with
the Israeli embassy's congressional liaison officer, Zvi Rafiah.
According to Crile, "Rafiah is a short, very smart Israeli who
Wilson always believed was a highly placed Mossad agent"
(Crile pg. 31). Wilson's close working relationship with
Rafiah continued even after Rafiah left his diplomatic post
and joined Israeli Military Industries (IMI), Israel's largest
defense company (Crile, pg. 99). There was no doubt about who
was the dominant figure in this partnership:

********** QUOTE ON **********

Rafiah had always acted as if he owned Wilson's office.
One of the staffers kept a list of people he needed to
lobby. He would use the phones, give projects to the
staff, and call on Charlie to intervene whenever he
needed him. (Crile, pg. 144)

********** QUOTE OFF *********

During the late 1970's and early 1980's Charlie Wilson got
a series of appointments to the key Congressional committees
that controlled funding for all major intelligence and military
projects.

********** QUOTE ON **********

Getting the Appropriations assignment as a junior
congressman was an amazing political maneuver because his
own Texas delegation opposed it; they backed a Texan with
more seniority ... It was Wilson's Jewish friends who
made it possible. (Crile, pg. 33)

His Jewish friends had helped get him onto the committee;
once there, Chalie learned from these master politicians
how to influence budgets and policies. When he won a
seat on the Foreign Operations subcommittee, which
allocates all U.S. military and economic assistance, he
was suddenly positioned to champion Israel's annual
$3 billion foreign-aid package. (Crile, pg. 77)

********** QUOTE OFF **********

CIA officer Milton Bearden says that in this period Dick Cheney
played a key role in getting Wilson appointed to the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which may suggest
that Cheney was an important player in the pro-Israeli network
even at this point ("The Main Enemy", Milton Bearden,
Ballantine Books, NY, 2003. pg. 277).

The Israelis may have gained Wilson's allegiance in part by
pandering to his appetites. Charlie Wilson was very close with
at least three very beautiful Israeli women, and at least two
of these were put in his path by the Israeli government. One
was "Ziva, a beautiful Israeli ballerina" (Crile, pg. 2). Then
there was "a raven-haired captain in the Israeli Defense Forces.
She was the congressman's official guide to the war zone, and
Wilson's infatuation began on that first trip into the desert
to see the burning Russian tanks" (Crile, pg. 32). Then he was
introduced to Gila Almagor, Israel's leading movie star (Crile,
pg. 32). "By the time he got back to Washington, Wilson had
become, in his own words, 'an Israeli commando' in the U.S.
Congress" (Crile, pg. 32).

As soon as he had gained access to the key Congressional
positions, the "Israeli commando" became obsessed with funding
and controling the CIA's Afhan jihad against the Soviets. In
the words of Milton Bearden, the CIA Field Officer in
Afghanistan at the time, "More than any other member of either
house, Charlie fashioned Congress into the engine that drove
the CIA's program for Afghanistan." (Bearden, pg. 277). Given
what George Crile has revealed about Charlie Wilson's career,
we can substitute "the Mossad" for "Charlie" in the previous
statement. The fingerprints of the Israelis are all over
Wilson's Afghan projects from start to finish. For example,
the famous anti-helicopter missile system Wilson had
specially built for the Mujahideen was designed by the
Israelis. Crile notes in this respect,

********** QUOTE ON ***********

Charlie Wilson was marching himself into a true
forbidden zone. Congressmen are not allowed to
commission a foreign power to design and construct
a weapons system. Nor do they have the authority
to commit the Pentagon to pay for such a weapon.
But these were minor outrages compared to Wilson's
potentially explosive attempt to bring the Israelis
into the Muslim jihad that the CIA was funding
against the Soviets in Afghanistan. (Crile, pg 142)

********** QUOTE OFF **********

In addition to the missile system, the Israelis also
sold Tanks and other weapons systems to Pakistan for use
in the jihad, using Charlie Wilson as an intermediary.

********** QUOTE ON ***********

The Israelis were hoping this deal [involving T-55 Tanks]
would serve as the beginning of a range of under-the-table
understandings with Pakistan that the congressman would
continue to quietly negotiate for them. (Crile, 142)

********** QUOTE OFF **********

Traveling from Israel to Pakistan, Wilson was successful
in selling president Zia on acquiring massive amounts of
Israeli technology and weaponry (Crile, 140 - 153). These
deals were bitterly opposed by the CIA. Howard Hart, CIA
Station Chief in Islamabad at the time states:

********** QUOTE ON ***********

"It was bad enough for [Pakistani President] Zia to be
dealing with the Americans, even secretly. But the
Israelis were so beyond the pale that it would have
been impossible ... It's beyond comprehension to have
tried to bring the Israelis into it." (Crile, 149)

********** QUOTE OFF **********

Crile adds, "Yet right under Hart's nose, Wilson had proposed
just such an arrangement, and Zia and his high command had
signed on to implement it" (Crile, 149).

Gust Avrakotos, the CIA's acting Chief of South Asia Operations
also strongly opposed the Israeli moves:

********** QUOTE ON ***********

Bringing the Israelis into the CIA's Muslim jihad was not what
Avrakatos considered a reasonable option. There were many
reasons why he was adamantly opposed to dealing with Israel.
To begin with, it would risk alienating the Saudis, who were
putting up half the money for the program. Beyond that, why
risk alienating the legions of Muslim hotheads around the
world who would draw the most extreme conclusions if it
became known that the CIA was sneaking Jewish weapons into
the jihad? (Crile, 391)

********** QUOTE OFF **********

But the Israelis had a trump card in Charlie Wilson in that
he controled the money.

********** QUOTE ON ***********

[Wilson] was certain of one thing: it would be easy to
get more money for the CIA program. In fact, he
suspected that he could get his committee to appropriate
more money whether Langley wanted it or not. In reality,
what he was already plotting with the Pakistanis was far
more radical than anything [CIA Station Chief] Hart could
have imagined. (Crile, 149)

********** QUOTE OFF **********

So in summary, the Israelis were very major players in the
Afghan jihad, providing crucial technology and weaponry.
They accomplished this not by interfacing with the CIA, which
opposed their involvement, but by interfacing their own
intelligence agencies directly with the U.S. Congress, and
using Congressional delegations to establish their own direct
connections to the government and intelligence services of
Pakistan. The Israeli/Pakistan connnection was crucial to the
success of the Afghan campaign against the Soviets, and
provided Israeli intelligence with a very secure footing
inside Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI.

We have always known that Israel had strong motive to perpetrate
an outrage like September 11, provided that blame could be placed
on Arab terrorists. From the Lavon Affair, among other things, we
know that they have an inclination to perpetrate such "false flag"
attacks. Now we know that they had the means and opportunity to
launch the September 11 attacks as well, using their connections
in the ISI.
This is a remarkable piece you posted -- I knew nothing about Charlie
Wilson and his Israeli connections until you posted it. Let me focus on
this point:
So in summary, the Israelis were very major players in the
Afghan jihad, providing crucial technology and weaponry.
They accomplished this not by interfacing with the CIA, which
opposed their involvement, but by interfacing their own
intelligence agencies directly with the U.S. Congress, and
using Congressional delegations to establish their own direct
connections to the government and intelligence services of
Pakistan. The Israeli/Pakistan connection was crucial to the
success of the Afghan campaign against the Soviets, and
provided Israeli intelligence with a very secure footing
inside Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI.


This is the same method by which Israel just accomplished a wholesale
purge of their "enemies" in the CIA -- and there has not been a word
about this aspect of the affair in any of establishment American media.
Why? Because Israel substantially controls those media, in the same way
it controls the Congress.

The average American hasn't got a clue about what is going on. Any
insider who dares to spill the beans is instantly shot down by one means
or another, and his or her message never sees the light of day, at least
not in the mass media.

Notice the multiple enticements and inducements the Israelis used to
control and manipulate Wilson. They've expended even greater effort on
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, in cultivating them as useful tools
(useful idiots). This is why we are now in Iraq and are on an apocalyptic
collision course with most of the world. How so many American leaders
can be so weak and dim in looking out for American interests and in
doing the right thing boggles the mind.

I blame Americans more than the Israelis for the current state of
affairs. The Israelis can't be blamed for pursuing what they perceive to be
their best interests, and in outwitting a Charlie Wilson, a Porter Goss
or a George W. Bush. Is it a sin to have a relatively high IQ?

With regard to Israeli connections to 9/11 through ISI -- the hard
evidence is still exceedingly thin, don't you think? One can speculate
reasonably, of course, but it's difficult to get beyond the speculation
phase. If these connections exist, and exist substantially, who is more
to blame: the Israelis or those Americans in the U.S. government who
provided Israel with the means to play the Pakistanis? I vote for the
Americans.

I wonder how central a figure Porter Goss has been in all this, both in
9/11 and in the Israeli-instigated purge of the CIA.

Right - the Charlie Wilson story is yet another window into
the apparently never ending story of just how thoroughly and
completely the Israelis have subjugated the US government to
their will. Media control is crucial. The author of
"Charlie Wilson's War", George Crile, is a case in point
actually. He was a 60 minutes producer who went along to
document some of Wilson's Israeli inspired junkets to
Afghanistan. While he documents the Israeli/Mossad angle
on the whole affair in admirable detail, and even comments
on its manifest illegality, he does not seem to realize that
there is anything in the slightest remarkable that a foreign
government could so completely hijack US foreign policy and
turn it to their own ends. He then even seems to black out
the whole issue somehow as he struggles to understand how
the troubled, ineffectual Charlie Wilson managed to accomplish
so much ALL BY HIMSELF!

This is really incredible to me. Crile describes this phenomena
in great detail, and yet then seems incapable of somehow really
perceiving it. Sort of like visual agnosia, in which a person
can sometimes fully perceive an object and perfectly describe
its appearance, but cannot recognize it for what it is (see "The
Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" by Oliver Sacks). Crile
is an amazing example of the end product of generations of
full bore brainwashing by the US media on the subject of Israel.
They're like an army of zombies now.

This gets into a very tricky area. I don't know if I agree with
Kevin MacDonald on every single point, but I think he navigates
this minefield better than anyone else.

Well, here's where I think things stand. First I think it's
pretty much certain that the Pakistanis (ISI) were involved.
It's certain that there is a massive coverup by the US government
and the US media. Unfortunately, I think pretty much anything
beyond that is speculation at this point.

Now if the situation were different in that there was a vigorous
official investigation in progress really digging into this and
trying to get to the bottom of it, then I would say, "let's not
speculate - just wait for the results of the investigation."

Since obviously this is not the case, I think we are duty bound
to investigate ourselves as best we can, and to try to fill in
the inevitable gaps with speculation as best we can. This is
the only hope to keep this critical issue alive and possible
eventually get to an understanding of what really happened.

So the short answer is, yes this is speculative, but I will not
apologize for that. With this new piece of the puzzle a major
gap in our understanding has been filled in, I believe. I have
now officially moved the Israelis to the top of my list of
suspects, and I firmly believe this is well supported by the
evidence currently available.

I missed out a few very important things here. First, one
other thing that we know for sure: whoever perpetrated
September 11 at the very least had lots of high level, high
powered help inside the U.S. government - Help that continues
to this day, for example mobilizing the FBI and the Attorney
General to assist in the coverup. The FBI, of course had
to be tightly reined in so that the attacks were not prevented
in the first instance.

Secondly, given the nature of covert operations it may not
even be possible to establish the truth with absolute certainty
here. However, as we all well know, major wars have been
started based on far flimsier evidence than that which we
already have to work with in this case.

That's why Bin Laden is, of Not Much Political Value at the Moment ,
U.S. still seeks bin Laden, but he's not top priority... Few thousand US
troops in Afghanistan, But over 150.000 US troops in IRAQ ?


http://elie-hobeika.blogspot.com/


The Enemy Within :

Originally published in The Observer, October 27, 2002.

On 24 August 1814, things looked very dark for freedom's land. That was the day the British captured Washington DC and set fire to the Capitol and the White House. President Madison took refuge in the nearby Virginia woods where he waited patiently for the notoriously short attention span of the Brits to kick in, which it did. They moved on and what might have been a Day of Utter Darkness turned out to be something of a bonanza for the DC building trades and up-market realtors.

One year after 9/11, we still don't know by whom we were struck that infamous Tuesday, or for what true purpose. But it is fairly plain to many civil libertarians that 9/11 put paid not only to much of our fragile Bill of Rights but also to our once-envied system of government, which had taken a mortal blow the previous year when the Supreme Court did a little dance in 5/4 time and replaced a popularly elected president with the oil and gas Cheney-Bush junta.

Meanwhile, our more and more unaccountable government is pursuing all sorts of games around the world that we the spear carriers (formerly the people) will never learn of. Even so, we have been getting some answers to the question: why weren't we warned in advance of 9/11? Apparently, we were, repeatedly; for the better part of a year, we were told there would be unfriendly visitors to our skies some time in September 2001, but the government neither informed nor protected us despite Mayday warnings from Presidents Putin and Mubarak, from Mossad and even from elements of our own FBI. A joint panel of congressional intelligences committees reported (19 September 2002, New York Times) that as early as 1996, Pakistani terrorist Abdul Hakim Murad confessed to federal agents that he was "learning to fly in order to crash a plane into CIA HQ."

Only CIA director George Tenet seemed to take the various threats seriously. In December 1998, he wrote to his deputies that "we are at war" with Osama bin Laden. So impressed was the FBI by his warnings that by 20 September 2001, "the FBI still had only one analyst assigned full time to al-Qaeda."

From a briefing prepared for Bush at the beginning of July 2001: "We believe that OBL [Osama bin Laden] will launch a significant terrorist attack against US and/or Israeli interests in the coming weeks. The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against US facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning." And so it came to pass; yet Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Adviser, says she never suspected that this meant anything more than the kidnapping of planes.

Happily, somewhere over the Beltway, there is Europe-recently declared anti-Semitic by the US media because most of Europe wants no war with Iraq and the junta does, for reasons we may now begin to understand thanks to European and Asian investigators with their relatively free media.

On the subject "How and Why America was Attacked on 11 September 2001," the best, most balanced report, thus far, is by Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed...Yes, yes, I know he is one of Them. But they often know things that we don't-particularly about what we are up to. A political scientist, Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development, "a think-tank dedicated to the promotion of human rights, justice and peace" in Brighton. His book, The War on Freedom, has just been published in the US by a small but reputable publisher.

Ahmed provides a background for our ongoing war against Afghanistan, a view that in no way coincides with what the administration has told us. He has drawn on many sources, most tellingly on American whistle blowers who are beginning to come forth and bear witness-like those FBI agents who warned their superiors that al-Qaeda was planning a kamikaze strike against New York and Washington only to be told that if they went public with these warnings they would suffer under the National Security Act. Several of these agents have engaged David P. Schippers, chief investigative counsel for thes US house Judiciary Committee, to represent them in court. The majestic Schippers managed the successful impeachment of President Clinton in the House of Representatives. He may, if the Iraqi war should go wrong, be obliged to perform the same high service for Bush, who allowed the American people to go unwarned about an imminent attack upon two of our cities as pre-emption of a planned military strike by the US against the Taliban.

The Guardian (26 September 2001) reported that in July 2001, a group of interested parties met in a Berlin hotel to listen to a former State Department official, Leo Coldren, as he passed on a message from the Bush administration that "the United States was so disgusted with the Taliban that they might be considering some military action...the chilling quality of this private warning was that it came-according to one of those present, the Pakistani diplomat Niaz Naik-accompanied by specific details of how Bush would succeed..." Four days earlier, the Guardian had reported that Osama bin Laden and the Taliban received threats of possible American military action against them two months before the terrorist assaults on New York and Washington...[which] raises the possibility that bin Laden was launching a pre-emptive strike in response to what he saw as US threats. A replay of the "day infamy" in the Pacific 62 years earlier?

WHY THE US NEEDED A EURASIAN ADVENTURE

On 9 September 2001, Bush was presented with a draft of a national security presidential directive outlining a global campaign of military, diplomatic and intelligence action targeting al-Qaeda, buttressed by the threat of war. According to NBC News, President Bush was expected to sign detailed plans for a worldwide war against al-Qaeda...but did not have the chance before the terrorist attacks. The directive, as described to NBC News, was essentially the same war plan as the one put into action after 11 September. The administration most likely was able to respond so quickly...because it simply had to pull the plans "off the shelf."

Finally, BBC News, 18 September 2001: "Niaz Naik, a former Pakistan foreign secretary, told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October. It was Naik's view that Washington would not drop its war for Afghanistan even if bin Laden were to be surrendered immediately by the Taliban."

Was Afghanistan then turned to rubble in order to avenge the 3,000 Americans slaughtered by Osama? Hardly. The administration is convinced that Americans are so simple-minded that they can deal with no scenario more complex than the venerable lone, crazed killer (this time with zombie helpers) who does evil just for the fun of it 'cause he hates us, 'cause we're rich 'n free 'n he's not. Osama was chosen on aesthetic grounds to be the frightening logo for our long-contemplated invasion and conquest of Afghanistan, planning for which had been "contingency" some years before 9/11 and, again, from 20 December 2000, when Clinton's out-going team devised a plan to strike at al-Qaeda in retaliation for the assault on the warship Cole. Clinton's National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger, personally briefed his successor on the plan but Rice, still very much in her role as a director Chevron/Texaco, with special duties regarding Pakistan and Uzbekistan, now denies any such briefing. A year and a half later (12 August 2002), fearless Time magazine reported this odd memory lapse.

Osama, if it was he and not a nation, simply provided the necessary shock to put in train a war of conquest. But conquest of what? What is there in dismal dry sandy Afghanistan worth conquering? Zbigniew Brzezinski tells us exactly what in a 1997 Council on Foreign Relations study called The Grand Geostrategic Imperatives.

The Polish-born Brzezinski was the hawkish National Security Adviser to President Carter. In The Grand Chessboard, Brzezinski gives a little history lesson. "Ever since the continents started interacting politically, some 500 years ago, Eurasia has been the centre of world power." Eurasia is all the territory east of Germany. This means Russia, the Middle East, China, and parts of India. Brzezinski acknowledges that Russia and China, bordering oil-rich central Asia, are the two main powers threatening US hegemony in that area.

He takes it for granted that the US must exert control over the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, known to those who love them as "the Stans": Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikstan and Kyrgyzstan, all "of importance from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions to at least three of their most immediate and most powerful neighbours-Russia, Turkey and Iran, with China signaling." Brzezinski notes how the world's energy consumption keeps increasing; hence, who controls Caspian oil/gas will control the world economy. Brzezinski then, reflexively, goes into the standard American rationalisation for empire. We want nothing, ever, for ourselves, only to keep bad people from getting good things with which to hurt good people. "It follows that America's primary interest is to help ensure that no single [other] power comes to control the geopolitical space and that the global community has unhindered financial and economic access to it.

Brzezinski is quite aware that American leaders are wonderfully ignorant of history and geography so he really lays it on, stopping just short of invoking politically incorrect "manifest destiny." He reminds the Council just how big Eurasia is. Seventy-five percent of the world's population is Eurasian. If I have done the sums right, that means we've only got control, to date, of a mere 25 percent of the world's folks. More: "Eurasia accounts for 60 percent of the world's GNP and three-fourths of the world's known energy resources."

Brzezinski's master plan of "our" globe has obviously been accepted by the Cheney-Bush junta. Corporate America, long over-excited by Eurasian mineral wealth, has been aboard from the beginning.

Ahmed sums up: "Brzezinski clearly envisaged that the establishment, consolidation and expansion of US military hegemony over Eurasia through Central Asia would require the unprecedented, open-ended militarisation of foreign policy, coupled with an unprecedented manufacture of domestic support and consensus on this militarisation campaign."

Afghanistan is the gateway to all these riches: Will we fight to seize them? It should never be forgotten that the American people did not want to fight in either of the twentieth century's world wars but President Wilson maneuvered us in the First while President Roosevelt maneuvered the Japanese into striking the first blow at Pearl Harbor, causing us to enter the Second as the result of a massive external attack. Brzezinski understands all this and, in 1997, he is thinking ahead as well as backward. "Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multicultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat." Thus was the symbolic gun produced that belched black smoke over Manhattan and the Pentagon.

Since the Iran-Iraq wars, Islam has been demonised as a Satanic terrorist cult that encourages suicide attacks-contrary, it should be noted, to the Islamic religion. Osama has been portrayed, accurately, it would seem, as an Islamic zealot. In order to bring this evil-doer to justice ("dead or alive"), Afghanistan, the object of the exercise, was made safe not only for democracy but for Union Oil of California, whose proposed pipeline from Turkmenistan to Afghanistan to Pakistan and the Indian Ocean port of Karachi had been abandoned under the Taliban's chaotic regime. Currently, the pipeline is a go-project thanks to the junta's installation of a Unocal employee (John J. Maresea) as US envoy to the newly born democracy whose president, Hamid Karzai, is also, according to Le Monde, a former employee of a Unocal subsidiary. Conspiracy? Coincidence!

Once Afghanistan looked to be within the fold, the junta, which had managed to pull of a complex diplomatic military caper, abruptly replaced Osama, the personification of evil, with Saddam. This has been hard to explain since there is nothing to connect Iraq with 9/11. Happily, "evidence" is now being invented. But it is uphill work, not helped by stories in the press about the vast oil wealth of Iraq which must-for the sake of the free world-be reassigned to US and European consortiums.

As Brzezinski foretold, "a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat" made it possible for the President to dance a war dance before Congress. "A long war!" he shouted with glee. Then he named an incoherent Axis of Evil to be fought. Although Congress did not give him the FDR Special-a declaration of war-he did get permission to go after Osama who may now be skulking in Iraq.

BUSH AND THE DOG THAT DID NOT BARK

Post-9/11, the American media were filled with pre-emptory denunciations of unpatriotic "conspiracy theorists," who not only are always with us but are usually easy for the media to discredit since it is an article of faith that there are no conspiracies in American life. Yes, a year or so ago, who would have thought that most of corporate America had been conspiring with accountants to cook their books since-well, at least the bright dawn of the age of Reagan and deregulation. Ironically, less than a year after the massive danger from without, we were confronted with an even greater enemy from within: Golden Calf capitalism. Transparency? One fears that greater transparency will only reveal armies of maggots at work beneath the skin of a culture that needs a bit of lie-down in order to collect itself before taking its next giant step which is to conquer Eurasia, a potentially fatal adventure not only for our frazzled institutions but for us the presently living.

Complicity. The behavior of President George W. Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to all sorts of not unnatural suspicions. I can think of no other modern chief of state who would continue to pose for "warm" pictures of himself listening to a young girl telling stories about her pet goat while hijacked planes slammed into three famous buildings.

Constitutionally, Bush is not only chief of state, he is commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Normally, a commander in such a crisis would go straight to headquarters and direct operations while receiving the latest intelligence.

This is what Bush actually did-or did not do-according to Stan Goff, a retire US army veteran who has taught military science and doctrine at West Point. Goff writes, in The So-called Evidence is a Farce: "I have no idea why people aren't asking some very specific questions about the actions of Bush and company on the day of the attacks. Four planes get hijacked and deviate from their flight plan, all the while on FAA radar."

Goff, incidentally, like the other astonished military experts, cannot fathom why the government's automatic "standard order of procedure in the event of a hijacking" was not followed. Once a plane has deviated from its flight-plan, fighter planes are sent up to find out why. That is law and does not require presidential approval, which only needs to be given if there is a decision to shoot down a plane. Goff spells it out: "The planes were hijacked between 7:45 and 8:10 am. Who is notified? This is an event already that is unprecedented. But the President is not notified and going to a Florida elementary school to hear children read.

"By around 8:15 am it should be very apparent that something is terribly wrong. The President is glad-handing the teachers. By 8:45, when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower, Bush is settling in with children for his photo op. Four planes have obviously been hijacked simultaneously and one has just dived into the twin towers, and still no one notifies the nominal Commander-in-Chief.

"No one has apparently scrambled [sent aloft] Air Force interceptors either. At 9:03, Flight 175 crashes into the South Tower. At 9:05, Andrew Card, the Chief of Staff, whispers to Bush [who] "briefly turns sombre," according to reporters. Does he cancel the school visit and convene an emergency meeting? No. He resumes listening to second graders...and continues the banality even as American Airlines Flight 77 conducts an unscheduled point turn over Ohio and heads in the direction of Washington, DC.

"Has he instructed Card to scramble the Air Force? No. An excruciating 25 minutes later, he finally deigns to give a public statement telling the United States what they have already figured out-that there's been an attack on the World Trade Centre. There's a hijacked plane bee-lining to Washington, but has the Air Force been scrambled to defend anything yet? No.

"At 9:35, this plane conducts another turn, 360° over the Pentagon, all the while being tracked by radar, and the Pentagon is not evacuated, and there are still no fast-movers from the Air Force in the sky over Alexandria and DC. Now the real kicker: a pilot they want us to believe was trained at a Florida puddle-jumper school for Piper Cubs and Cessnas conducts a well-controlled downward spiral descending the 7,000 feet in two-and-a-half minutes, brings the plane in so low and flat that it clips the electrical wires across the street from the Pentagon, and flies it with pinpoint accuracy in the side of the building at 460 knots.

"When the theory about learning to fly this well at the puddle-jumper school began to lose ground, it was added that they received further training on a flight simulator. This is like saying you prepared your teenager for her first drive on the freeway at rush hour by buying her a video driving game...There is a story being constructed about these events."

There is indeed and the more it is added to, the darker it becomes. The nonchalance of General Richard B. Myers, acting Joint Chief of Staff, is as puzzling as the President's campaigning-as-usual act. Myers was at the Capitol chatting with Senator Max Cleland. A sergeant writer later in the AFPS (American Forces Press Service) describes Myers at the Capitol: "While in an outer office, he said, he saw a television report that a plane had hit the World Trade Centre. They though it was a small plane or something like that, Myers said. So the two men went ahead with their office call."

Whatever Myers and Cleland to had to say to each other (more funds for the military?) must have been riveting because, during their chat, the AFPS reports, the second tower was hit by another jet. "Nobody informed us of that," Myers said. "But when we came out, that was obvious. Then, right at that time, somebody said the Pentagon had been hit." Finally, somebody thrust a cellphone in Myers' hand and, as if by magic, the commanding general of Norad-our Airspace Command-was on the line just as the hijackers' mission had been successfully completed except for the failed one in Pennsylvania. In later testimony to the Senate Armed Forces Committee, Myers says he thinks that, as of his cellphone talk with Norad, "the decision was at that point to start launching aircraft." It was 9:40 am. One hour and 20 minutes after air controllers knew that Flight 11 had been hijacked; 50 minutes after the North Tower was struck.

This statement would have been quite enough in our old serious army/air force to launch a number of courts martial with an impeachment or two thrown in. First, Myers claims to be uninformed until the third strike. But the Pentagon had been overseeing the hijacked planes from at least the moment of the strike at the first tower, yet not until the third strike, at the Pentagon, was the decision made to get the fighter planes up. Finally, this one is the dog that did not bark. By law, the fighters should have been up at around 8:15. If they had, all the hijacked planes might have been diverted or shot down. I don't think Doff is being unduly picky when he wonders who and what kept the Air Force from following its normal procedure instead of waiting an hour and 30 minutes until the damage was done, and only then launching the fighters. Obviously, somebody had ordered the Air Force to make no move to intercept those hijackings until...what?

On 21 January 2002, the Canadian media analyst Barry Zwicker summed up on CBC-TV: "That morning no interceptors responded in a timely fashion to the highest alert situation. This includes the Andrews squadrons which...are 12 miles from the White House...Whatever the explanation for this huge failure, there have been no reports, to my knowledge, or reprimands. This further weakens the 'Incompetence Theory.' Incompetence usually earns reprimands. This causes me to ask whether there were 'stand down' orders." ?? On 29 August 2002, the BBC reports that on 9/11 there were "only four fighters on ready status in the north-eastern US." Conspiracy? Coincidence? Error?

It is interesting how often in our history, when disaster strikes, incompetence is considered a better alibi than...well, yes, there are worse things. After Pearl Harbor, Congress moved to find out why Hawaii's two military commanders, General Short and Admiral Kimmel, had not anticipated the Japanese attack. But President Roosevelt pre-empted that investigation with one of his own. Short and Kimmel were broken for incompetence. The "truth" is still obscured to this day.

THE MEDIA'S WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

But Pearl Harbor has been much studied. 11 September, it is plain, is never going to be investigated if Bush has anything to say about it. In January 2002, CNN reported that "Bush personally asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to limit the Congressional investigation into the events of 11 September...The request was made at a private meeting with Congressional leaders...Sources said Bush initiated the conversation...He asked that only the House and Senate intelligence committees look into the potential breakdowns among federal agencies that could have allowed the terrorist attacks to occur, rather than a broader inquiry...Tuesday's discussion followed a rare call from Vice President Dick Cheney last Friday to make the same request..."

The excuse given, according to Daschle, was that "resources and personnel would be taken" away from the war on terrorism in the event of a wider inquiry. So for reasons that we must never know, those "breakdowns" are to be the goat. That they were more likely to be not break- but "stand-downs" is not for us to pry. Certainly the one-hour 20-minute failure to put fighter planes in the air could not have been due to a breakdown throughout the entire Air Force along the East Coast. Mandatory standard operating procedure had been told to cease and desist.

Meanwhile, the media were assigned their familiar task of inciting public opinion against bin Laden, still not the proven mastermind. These media blitzes often resemble the magician's classic gesture of distraction; as you watch the rippling bright colours of his silk handkerchief in one hand, he is planting the rabbit in your pocket with the other. We were quickly assured that Osama's enormous family with its enormous wealth had broken with him, as had the royal family of his native Saudi Arabia. The CIA swore, hand on heart, that Osama had not worked for them in the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Finally, the rumour that Bush family had in any way profited by its long involvement with the bin Laden family was-what else? Simply partisan bad taste.

But Bush Jr.'s involvement goes back at least to 1979 when his first failed attempt to become a player in the big Texas oil league brought him together with one James Bath of Houston, a family friend, who gave Bush Jr. $50,000 for a 5 percent stake in Bush's firm Arbusto Energy. At this time, according to Wayne Madsen (In These Times-Institute for Public Affairs No. 25), Bath was "the sole US business representative for Salem bin Laden, head of the family and a brother (one of 17) to Osama bin Laden...In a statement issued shortly after the 11 September attacks, the White House vehemently denied the connection, insisting that Bath invested his own money, not Salem bin Laden's in Arbusto. In conflicting statements, Bush at first denied ever knowing Bath, then acknowledged his stake in Arbusto and that he was aware Bath represented Saudi interests...after several reincarnations, Arbusto emerged in 1986 as Harken Energy Corporation.

Behind the junior Bush is the senior Bush, gainfully employed by the Carlyle Group which has ownership in at least 164 companies worldwide, inspiring admiration in that staunch friend to the wealthy, the Wall Street Journal, which noted, as early as 27 September 2001, "If the US boosts defence spending in its quest to stop Osama bin Laden's alleged terrorist activities, there may be one unexpected beneficiary: bin Laden's family...is an investor in a fund established by Carlyle Group, a well-connected Washington merchant bank specialising in buyouts of defence and aerospace companies...Osama is one of more than 50 children of Mohammed bin Laden, who built the family's $5 billion business."

But Bush père et fils, in pursuit of wealth and office, are beyond shame or, one cannot help but think, good sense. There is a suggestion that they are blocking investigation of the bin Laden connection with terrorism. Agence France Press reported on 4 November 2001: "FBI agents probing relatives of Saudi-born terror suspect Osama...were told to back off soon after George W. Bush became president..." According to BBC TV's Newsnight (6 November 2001), "...just days after the hijackers took off from Boston aiming for the Twin Towers, a special charter flight out of the same airport whisked 11 members of Osama's family off to Saudi Arabia. That did not concern the White House, whose official line is that the bin Ladens are above suspicion." Above the Law (Green Press, 14 February 2002) sums up: "We had what looked like the biggest failure of the intelligence community since Pearl Harbor but what we are learning now is it wasn't a failure, it was a directive." True? False? Bush Jr. will be under oath during the impeachment interrogation. Will we hear, "What is a directive? What is is?"

Although the US had, for some years, fingered Osama as a mastermind terrorist, no serious attempt had been made pre-9/11 to "bring him to justice, dead or alive, innocent or guilty," as Texan law of the jungle requires. Clinton's plan to act was given to Condoleezza Rice by Sandy Berger, you will recall, but she says she does not.

As far back as March 1996 when Osama was in Sudan, Major General Elfatih Erwa, Sudanese Minister for Defence, offered to extradite him. According to the Washington Post (3 October 2001), "Erwa said he would happily keep close watch on bin Laden for the United States. But if that would not suffice, the government was prepared to place him in custody and hand him over...[US officials] said, "just ask him to leave the country. Just don't let him go to Somalia," where he had once been given credit for the successful al-Qaeda attack on American forces in '93 that killed 18 Rangers." Erwa said in an interview, "We said he will go to Afghanistan, and they [US officials] said, 'Let him.'"

In 1996, Sudan expelled Osama and 3,000 of his associates. Two years later the Clinton administration, in the great American tradition of never having to say thank you for Sudan's offer to hand over Osama, proceeded to missile-attack Sudan's al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory on the grounds that Sudan was harbouring bin Laden terrorists who were making chemical and biological weapons when the factory was simply making vaccines for the UN.

Four years later, John O'Neill, a much-admired FBI agent, complained in the Irish Times a month before the attacks. "The US State Department-and behind it the oil lobby who make up President Bush's entourage-blocked attempts to prove bin Laden's guilt. The US ambassador to Yemen forbade O'Neill (and his FBI team)...from entering Yemen in August 2001. O'Neill resigned in frustration and took on a new job as head of security at the World Trade Centre. He died in the 11 September attack." Obviously, Osama has enjoyed bipartisan American support since his enlistment in the CIA's war to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan. But by 9/11 there was no Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, indeed there was no Soviet Union.

A WORLD MADE SAFE FOR PEACE AND PIPELINES

I watched Bush and Cheney on CNN when the Axis of Evil speech was given and the "long war" proclaimed. Iraq, Iran and North Korea were fingered as enemies to be clobbered because they might or might not be harbouring terrorists who might or might not destroy us in the night. So we must strike first whenever it pleases us. Thus, we declared "war on terrorism"-an abstract noun which cannot be a war at all as you need a country for that. Of course, there was innocent Afghanistan, which was levelled from a great height, but then what's collateral damage-like an entire country-when you're targeting the personification of all evil according to Time and the NY Times and the networks?

As it proved, the conquest of Afghanistan had nothing to do with Osama. He was simply a pretext for replacing the Taliban with a relatively stable government that would allow Union Oil of California to lay its pipeline for the profit of, among others, the Cheney-Bush junta.

Background? All right. The headquarters of Unocal are, as might be expected, in Texas. In December 1997, Taliban representatives were invited to Sugarland, Texas. At that time, Unocal had already begun training Afghan men in pipeline construction, with US government approval. BBC News (4 December 1997): "A spokesman for the company Unocal said the Taliban were expected to spend several days at the company's [Texas] headquarters...a BBC regional correspondent says the proposal to build a pipeline across Afghanistan is part of an international scramble to profit from developing the rich energy resources of the Caspian Sea." The Inter Press Service (IPS) reported, "some Western businesses are warming up to the Taliban despite the movement's institutionalisation of terror, massacres, abductions and impoverishment." CNN (6 October 1996): "The United States wants good ties [with the Taliban] but can't openly seek them while women are being oppressed."

The Taliban, rather better organized than rumoured, hired for PR one Leila Helms, a niece of Richard Helms, former Director of the CIA. In October 1996, the Frankfurter Rundsehau reported that Unocal "has been given the go-ahead from the new holders of power in Kabul to build a pipeline from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan to Pakistan." This was a real coup for Unocal as well as other candidates for pipelines, including Condoleezza's old employer Chevron. Although the Taliban was already notorious for its imaginative crimes against the human race, the Wall Street Journal, scenting big bucks, fearlessly announced, "Like them or not, the Taliban are the players most capable of achieving peace in Afghanistan at this moment in history." The NY Times (26 May 1997) leapt aboard the pipeline juggernaut: "The Clinton administration has taken the view that a Taliban victory would act as counterweight in Iran...and would offer the possibility of new trade routes that could weaken Russian and Iranian influence in the region."

But by 1999, it was clear that the Taliban could never provide us the security we would need to protect our fragile pipelines. The arrival of Osama as warrior for Allah on the scene refocused, as it were, the bidding. New alliances were now being made. The Bush administration soon buys the idea of an invasion of Afghanistan, Frederick Starr, head of the Central Asia Institute at Johns Hopkins University, wrote in the Washington Post (19 December 2000): "The US has quietly begun to align itself with those in the Russian government calling for military action against Afghanistan and has toyed with the idea of a new raid to wipe out bin Laden."

Although with much fanfare we went forth to wreak our vengeance on the crazed sadistic religious zealot who slaughtered 3,000 American citizens, once that "war" was under way, Osama was dropped as irrelevant and so we are back to the Unocal pipeline, now a go-project. In the light of what we know today, it is unlikely that the junta was ever going to capture Osama alive; he has tales to tell. One of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's best numbers now is: "Where is he? Somewhere? Here? There? Somewhere? Who knows?" And we get his best twinkle. He must also be delighted-and amazed-that the media have bought the absurd story that Osama, if alive, would still be in Afghanistan, underground, waiting to be flushed out instead of in a comfortable mansion in Osama-loving Jakarta, 2,000 miles to the East and easily accessible by Flying Carpet One.

Many commentators of a certain age have noted how Hitlerian our junta sounds as it threatens first one country for harbouring terrorists and then another. It is true that Hitler liked to pretend to be the injured-or threatened-party before he struck. But he had many great predecessors, not least Imperial Rome. Stephen Gowan's War in Afghanistan: A $28 Billion Racket quotes Joseph Schunpeter who, "in 1919, described ancient Rome in a way that sounds eerily like the United States in 2001: 'There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interest were not Roman, they were those of Rome's allies, and if Rome had no allies, the allies would be invented...The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbours.'" We have only outdone the Romans in turning metaphors such as the war on terrorism, or poverty, or AIDS into actual wars on targets we appear, often, to pick at random in order to maintain turbulence in foreign lands.

As of 1 August 2002, trial balloons were going up all over Washington DC to get world opinion used to the idea that "Bush of Afghanistan" had gained a title as mighty as his father's "Bush of the Persian Gulf" and Junior was now eager to add Iraq-Babylon to his diadem. These various balloons fell upon Europe and the Arab world like so many lead weights. But something new has been added since the classic Roman Hitlerian mantra, "they are threatening us, we must attack first." Now everyone is more or less out in the open. The International Herald Tribune wrote in August 2002: "The leaks began in earnest on 5 July, when the New York Times described a tentative Pentagon plan that it said called for an invasion by a US force of up to 250,000 that would attack Iraq from the north, south and west. On 10 July, the Times said that Jordan might be used as a base for the invasion. The Washington Post reported, 28 July, that "many senior US military officers contend that Saddam Hussein poses no immediate threat..." And the status quo should be maintained. Incidentally, this is the sort of debate that the founding fathers intended the Congress, not military bureaucrats, to conduct in the name of we the people. But that sort of debate has, for a long time, been denied us.

One refreshing note is now being struck in a fashion unthinkable in imperial Rome: the cheerful admission that we habitually resort to provocation. The Tribune continues: "Donald Rumsfeld has threatened to jail anyone found to have been behind the leaks. But a retired army general, Fred Woerner, tends to see a method behind the leaks. "We may already be executing a plan," he said recently. "Are we involved in a preliminary psychological dimension of causing Iraq to do something to justify a US attack or make concessions? Somebody knows." That is plain.

Elsewhere in this interesting edition of the Herald Tribune wise William Pfaff writes: "A second Washington debate is whether to make an unprovoked attack on Iran to destroy a nuclear power reactor being built with Russian assistance, under Inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency, within the terms of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty of which Iran is a signatory...No other government would support such an action, other than Israel's (which) would do so not because it expected to be attacked by Iran but because it, not unjustifiably, opposes any nuclear capacity in the hands of any Islamic government."

SUSPECT STATES AND THE TOM-TOMS OF REVENGE

"Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. As the parent of armies, war encourages debts and taxes, the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the executive is extended...and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people..." Thus, James Madison warned us at the dawn of our republic.

Post 9/11, thanks to the domination of the few, Congress and the media are silent while the executive, through propaganda and skewed polls, seduces the public mind as hitherto unthinkable centres of power like Homeland Defence (a new Cabinet post to be placed on top of the Defence Department) are being constructed and 4 percent of the country has recently been invited to join Tips, a civilian spy system to report on anyone who looks suspicious or...who objects to what the executive is doing at home or abroad?

Although every nation knows how-if it has the means and will-to protect itself from things of the sort that brought us 9/11, war is not an option. Wars are for nations, not rootless gangs. You put a price on their heads and hunt them down. In recent years, Italy has been doing that with the Sicilian Mafia; and no one has yet suggested bombing Palermo.

But the Cheney-Bush junta wants a war in order to dominate Afghanistan, build a pipeline, gain control of the oil of Eurasia's Stans for their business associates as well as to do as much damage to Iraq and Iran on the grounds that one day those evil countries may carpet our fields of amber grain with anthrax or something.

The media, never much good at analysis, are more and more breathless and incoherent. On CNN, even the stolid Jim Clancy started to hyperventilate when an Indian academic tried to explain how Iraq was once our ally and "friend" in its war against our Satanic enemy Iran. "None of that conspiracy stuff," snarled Clancy. Apparently, "conspiracy stuff" is now shorthand for unspeakable truth.

As of August, at least among economists, a consensus was growing that, considering our vast national debt (we borrow $2 billion a day to keep the government going) and a tax base seriously reduced by the junta in order to benefit the 1 percent who own most of the national wealth, there is no way that we could ever find the billions needed to destroy Iraq in "a long war" or even a short one, with most of Europe lined up against us. Germany and Japan paid for the Gulf War, reluctantly-with Japan, at the last moment, irritably quarrelling over the exchange rate at the time of the contract. Now Germany's Schroder has said no. Japan is mute.

But the tom toms keep beating revenge, and the fact that most of the world is opposed to our war seems only to bring hectic roses to the cheeks of the Bush administration (Bush Snr of the Carlyle Group, Bush Jnr formerly of Harken, Cheney, formerly of Halliburton, Rice, formerly of Chevron, Rumsfeld, formerly of Occidental). If ever an administration should recuse itself in matters dealing with energy, it is the current junta. But this is unlike any administration in our history. Their hearts are plainly elsewhere, making money, far from our mock Roman temples, while we, alas, are left only with their heads, dreaming of war, preferably against weak peripheral states.

Mohammed Heikal is a brilliant Egyptian journalist-observer, and sometime Foreign Minister. On 10 October 2001, he said to the Guardian: "Bin Laden does not have the capabilities for an operation of this magnitude. When I hear Bush talking about al-Qaeda as if it were Nazi Germany or the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, I laugh because I know what is there. Bin Laden has been under surveillance for years: every telephone call was monitored and al-Qaeda has been penetrated by US intelligence. Pakistani intelligence, Saudi intelligence, Egyptian intelligence. They could not have kept secret an operation that required such a degree of organisation and sophistication."

The former president of Germany's domestic intelligence service, Eckehardt Werthebach (American Free Press, 4 December 2001) spells it out. The 9/11 attacks required "years of planning," while their scale indicates that they were a product of "state-organised actions." There it is. Perhaps, after all, Bush Jnr was right to call it a war. But which state attacked us?

Will the suspects please line up. Saudi Arabia? "No, no. Why we are paying you $50 million a year for training the royal bodyguard on our own holy if arid soil. True, the kingdom contains many wealthy well-educated enemies, but..." Bush Snr and Jnr exchange a knowing look. Egypt? No way. Dead broke despite US baksheesh. Syria? No funds. Iran? Too proud to bother with a parvenu state like the US. Israel? Sharon is capable of anything. But he lacks the gust and the grace of the true Kamikaze. Anyway, Sharon was not in charge when this operation began with the planting of "sleepers" around the US flight schools 5 or 6 years ago. The United States? Elements of corporate America would undeniably prosper from "a massive external attack" that would make it possible for us to go to war whenever the President sees fit while suspending civil liberties. (The 342 pages of the USA Patriot Act were plainly prepared before 9/11.) Bush Snr and Jnr are giggling now. Why? Because Clinton was president back then. As the former president leaves the line of suspects, he says, more in anger than in sorrow: "When we left the White House we had a plan for an all-out war on al-Qaeda. We turned it over to this administration and they did nothing. Why?" Biting his lip, he goes. The Bushes no longer giggle. Pakistan breaks down: "I did it! I confess! I couldn't help myself. Save me, I am an evil-doer!"

Apparently, Pakistan did do it-or some of it. We must now go back to 1997 when "the largest covert operation in the history of the CIA" was launched in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Central Asia specialist Ahmed Rashid wrote (Foreign Affairs, November-December 1999): "With the active encouragement of the CIA and Pakistan's ISI (Inter Services Intelligence) who wanted to turn the Afghan jihad into a global war, waged by all Muslim states against the Soviet Union, some 35,000 Muslim radicals, from 40 Islamic countries joined Afghanistan's fight between 1982 and '92...more than 100,000 foreign Muslim radicals were directly influenced by the Afghanistan jihad." The CIA covertly trained and sponsored these warriors.

In March 1985, President Reagan issued National Security Decision Direction 166, increasing military aid while CIA specialists met with the ISI counterparts near Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Jane's Defence Weekly (14 September 2001) gives the best overview: "The trainers were mainly from Pakistan's ISI agency who learnt their craft from American Green Beret commandos and Navy Seals in various US training establishments."...This explains the reluctance of the administration to explain why so many unqualified persons, over so long a time, got visas to visit our hospitable shores. While in Pakistan, mass training of Afghan [zealots] was subsequently conducted by the Pakistan army under the supervision of the elite Special Services...In 1988, with US knowledge, bin Laden created al-Qaeda (The Base); a conglomerate of quasi-independent Islamic terrorist cells spread across 26 or so countries. Washington turned a blind eye to al-Qaeda.

When Mohamed Atta's plane struck the World Trade Centre's North Tower, George W. Bush and the child at the Florida elementary school were discussing her goat. By coincidence, our word "tragedy" comes from the Greek: for "goat" tragos plus oide for "song." "Goat-song." It is highly suitable that this lament, sung in ancient satyr plays, should have been heard again at the exact moment when we were struck by fire from heaven, and a tragedy whose end is nowhere in sight began for us.

http://nafeez.blogspot.com/


ANNEX:
*******



Hamas is a Palestinian group known both for charitable works benefiting the
Palestinian population and suicide attacks against Israeli targets. Hamas
was formed in 1987, after a Palestinian uprising began the year before. Some
claim that Israel indirectly supported and perhaps even directly funded
Hamas in its early years in order to divide the Palestinians politically.
For instance, a former senior CIA official will later claim that Israel's
support for Hamas "was a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a
strong, secular PLO [Palestinian Liberation Organization] by using a
competing religious alternative." Hamas begins attacks on Israeli military
and civilan targets in 1989 and will begin suicide attacks on these targets
in April 1994. The US will not officially declare Hamas a terrorist
organization until 1995 (see January 1995). This means that funding Hamas is
not a crime in the US before that year, but knowingly participating in or
supporting a violent act overseas outside of the rules of war such as a
suicide bombing could still potentially result in criminal charges in the
US. [United Press International, 6/18/2002; Associated Press, 3/22/2004]
Mohammad Salah, a Palestinian-American living in Chicago as a used car
salesman, was reputedly trained by Hamas in terrorist techniques, including
the use of chemical weapons and poisons, in the late 1980s. Working on the
orders of high-level Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzouk, Salah leads a four day
Hamas training camp in the Chicago area in June 1990. According to one
trainee, the approximately twenty-five trainees study Hamas philosophy,
receive weapons training, and learn how to plant a car bomb. Two of the
trainees are ultimately selected to fly to Syria, where they undergo more
advanced training in making car bombs and throwing grenades. Ultimately,
they are sent into Israel to launch attacks. Similar training camps take
place in Kansas City and Wisconsin from 1989 through early 1991. Then, Salah
is told by Marzouk to change his focus from training to fundraising. In
early 1992, Salah receives about $800,000 from Saudi multimillionaire Yassin
al-Qadi, and he temporarily invests it in a BMI real estate scheme (see
1991). Between June 1991 and December 1992, Salah repeatedly travels to the
Middle East and spends more than $100,000 in direct support of Hamas
military activities. He attempts to spend the $800,000 that is still
invested in BMI, but BMI is unable to quickly liquidate the investment.
Marzouk sends Salah almost $1 million to spend. Salah goes to the West Bank
in January 1993 and begins dispersing that money, but he is arrested before
the end of the month. With Salah arrested, Hamas needs a new point man to
collect and transfer new money raised in the US. Jamil Sarsour, a grocery
store owner in Milwaukee, is chosen. It will be reported in 2003 that
Sarsour is still living openly in Milwaukee (see June 2-5, 2003) [Chicago
Tribune, 10/29/2001; LA Weekly, 8/2/2002; Federal News Service, 6/2/2003]

Mercy International USA's logo. [Source: Mercy International USA]The 1999
book Dollars for Terror will allege that in 1989, Mercy International, a
"subsidiary of the Muslim Brotherhood, was able to establish its
headquarters in the United States, in the state of Michigan, with the
assistance of the CIA. The Agency provided significant logistical and
financial support to this 'humanitarian' organization, enabling it to act
clandestinely in the various Balkan conflicts as well as within the Muslim
communities of several Russian republics." [Labeviere, 1999, pp. 364] Mercy
International will later be tied to al-Qaeda in a number of ways. For
instance, in the mid-1990s its Pakistan branch will be headed by Zahid
Shaikh Mohammed, brother of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (see
1988-Spring 1995). [Los Angeles Times, 9/1/2002] Its Kenya branch will be
tied to the 1998 US embassy bombing there. Its Philippine branch is tied to
Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, bin Laden's brother-in-law. [Burr and Collins, 2006,
pp. 128, 188-189] Branches of this charity in different countries have
slightly different names such as Mercy International-USA and Mercy
International Relief Agency, and it has been claimed that the US branch has
no connection with the terrorism-related branches. However, a 2003 article
will draw links between the US branch and other branches. [National Review,
9/4/2003]

Prior to this year, President George W. Bush is a failed oilman. Three
times, friends and investors have bailed him out to keep his business from
going bankrupt. However, in 1988, the same year his father becomes
president, some Saudis buy a portion of his small company, Harken, which has
never performed work outside of Texas. Later in the year, Harken wins a
contract in the Persian Gulf and starts doing well financially. These
transactions seem so suspicious that the Wall Street Journal in 1991 states
it "raises the question of. an effort to cozy up to a presidential son." Two
major investors in Bush's company during this time are Salem bin Laden and
Khalid bin Mahfouz. [Intelligence Newsletter, 3/2/2000; Salon, 11/19/2001]
Salem bin Laden is Osama's oldest brother; Khalid bin Mahfouz is a Saudi
banker with a 20 percent stake in BCCI. The bank will be shut down a few
years later and bin Mahfouz will have to pay a $225 million fine (while
admitting no wrongdoing) (see October 2001)).

Al-Qaeda bomber Ramzi Yousef is said to be recruited by the CIA, though
details are not known. Author Richard Labeviere reported without elaboration
in a 1999 book, "A classified FBI file indicates that [Yousef] was recruited
by the local branch of the CIA." [Labeviere, 1999, pp. 220-221] In 1995,
Newsday will report, "FBI officials also are considering a probe of whether
the CIA had any relationship with Yousef, who fought with the CIA-financed
mujaheddin in Afghanistan in the 1980s." [Newsday, 4/16/1995] But there
appears to be no further reporting on whether such a probe was conducted.
Yousef is believed to have masterminded a series of bombings in the early
1990s, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the planned Bojinka
attack, before being captured in 1995 (see February 7, 1995). If Yousef was
recruited by the CIA, it may have been in the late 1980s when the CIA
recruited and trained thousands of people around the world to fight in
Afghanistan (see 1986-1992). In the late 1980s, Yousef was studying
engineering at a Wales college, but he'd also joined the Muslim Brotherhood
while there. During a break from school in 1988, he went to one of bin
Laden's
training camps in Afghanistan and spent several months honing his
bomb-making skills. [Miller, Stone, and Mitchell, 2002, pp. 78]

The core of the future Philippine militant group Abu Sayyaf fights with bin
Laden in Afghanistan and its training there is paid for by the CIA and
Pakistani ISI. In 1986, the CIA agreed to support an ISI program of
recruiting radical Muslims from other countries, including the Philippines,
to fight in the Afghan war (see 1986). By one estimate, initially between
300 and 500 radical Muslims from the southern Philippines go to Afghanistan
to fight. [Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College,
/1/2005 ]

In 1987 or 1988, bin Laden dispatches his brother-in-law Mohammed Jamal
Khalifa to the Philippines to find more recruits willing to go to
Afghanistan. It is estimated he finds about 1,000 recruits. One of them is
Abdurajak Janjalani, who emerges as the leader of these recruits in
Afghanistan. When the Afghan war ends in 1989 most of them will return to
the Philippines and form the Abu Sayyaf group, still led by Janjalani (see
Early 1991). [Contemporary Southeast Asia, 12/1/2002; Manila Times,
2/1/2007] Journalist John Cooley will write in a book first published in
1999 that Abu Sayyaf will become "the most violent and radical Islamist
group in the Far East, using its CIA and ISI training to harass, attack, and
murder Christian priests, wealthy non-Muslim plantation-owners, and
merchants and local government in the southern Philippine island of
Mindanao." [Cooley, 2002, pp. 63] After having read Cooley's book and
gathering information from other sources, Senator Aquilino Pimentel,
President of the Philippine Senate, will say in a 2000 speech that the "CIA
has sired a monster" because it helped train this core of the Abu Sayyaf.
[Senator Aquilino Q. Pimentel website, 7/31/2000]

Sheikh Ahmed Yassin forms Hamas as the military arm of his Islamic
Association, which had been licensed by Israel ten years earlier (see
1973-1978). According to Charles Freeman, a former US ambassador to Saudi
Arabia, "Israel started Hamas. It was a project of Shin Bet, which had a
feeling that they could use it to hem in the PLO." [CounterPunch, 1/18/2003;
Dreyfuss, 2005, pp. 191, 208] Anthony Cordesman, a Middle East analyst for
the Center for Strategic Studies, states that Israel "aided Hamas
directly-the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO." A
former senior CIA official speaking to UPI describes Israel's support for
Hamas as "a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong,
secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative." Further, according
to an unnamed US government official, "the thinking on the part of some of
the right-wing Israeli establishment was that Hamas and the other groups, if
they gained control, would refuse to have anything to do with the peace
process and would torpedo any agreements put in place." Larry Johnson, a
counter-terrorism official at the State Department, states: "The Israelis
are their own worst enemies when it comes to fighting terrorism. They are
like a guy who sets fire to his hair and then tries to put it out by hitting
it with a hammer. They do more to incite and sustain terrorism than curb
it." [United Press International, 2/24/2001 Sources: Larry C. Johnson,
Unnamed former CIA official]

During a secret visit to Pakistan CIA Director William Casey commits the CIA
to support the ISI program of recruiting radical Muslims for the Afghan war
from other Muslim countries around the world. In addition to the Gulf
States, these include Turkey, the Philippines, and China. The ISI started
their recruitment of radicals from other countries in 1982 (see 1982). This
CIA cooperation is part of a joint CIA-ISI plan begun the year before to
expand the "Jihad" beyond Afghanistan (see March 1985). [Rashid, 2001, pp.
128-129]

The CIA, ISI, and bin Laden build the Khost tunnel complex in Afghanistan.
This will be a major target of bombing and fighting when the US attacks the
Taliban in 2001. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/23/2001; Hindu, 9/27/2001] It
will be reported in June 2001 that "bin Laden worked closely with Saudi,
Pakistani, and US intelligence services to recruit mujaheddin from many
Muslim countries," but this information has not been reported much since
9/11. [United Press International, 4/10/2004] A CIA spokesperson will later
claim, "For the record, you should know that the CIA never employed, paid,
or maintained any relationship whatsoever with bin Laden." [Ananova,
10/31/2001]

Quoting a French intelligence report posted by PBS Frontline, The New Yorker
reports, "During the nineteen-eighties, when the Reagan administration
secretly arranged for an estimated $34 million to be funneled through Saudi
Arabia to the Contras in Nicaragua, [Osama's eldest brother] Salem bin Laden
aided in this cause." [PBS Frontline, 2001; New Yorker, 11/5/2001]

Afghan opium production rises from 250 tons in 1982 to 2,000 tons in 1991,
coinciding with CIA support and funding of the mujaheddin. Alfred McCoy, a
professor of Southeast Asian history at the University of Wisconsin, says US
and Pakistani intelligence officials sanctioned the rebels' drug trafficking
because of their fierce opposition to the Soviets: "If their local allies
were involved in narcotics trafficking, it didn't trouble [the] CIA. They
were willing to keep working with people who were heavily involved in
narcotics." For instance, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a rebel leader who received
about half of all the CIA's covert weapons, was known to be a major heroin
trafficker. Charles Cogan, who directs the CIA's operation in Afghanistan,
later claims he was unaware of the drug trade: "We found out about it later
on." [Atlantic Monthly, 5/1996; Star-Tribune (Minneapolis), 9/30/2001]
Salem bin Laden, Osama's oldest brother, described by a French secret
intelligence report as one of two closest friends of Saudi Arabia's King
Fahd who often performs important missions for Saudi Arabia, is involved in
secret Paris meetings between US and Iranian emissaries this month,
according to a French report. Frontline, which published the French report,
notes that such meetings have never been confirmed. Rumors of these meetings
have been called the "October Surprise" and some have speculated that in
these meetings, George H. W. Bush negotiated a delay to the release of the
US hostages in Iran, thus helping Ronald Reagan and Bush win the 1980
Presidential election. All of this is highly speculative, but if the French
report is correct, it points to a long-standing connection of highly
improper behavior between the Bush and bin Laden families. [PBS Frontline,
2001]
Journalist Simon Reeve will claim in the 1999 book The New Jackals that US
officials directly met with bin Laden in Afghanistan in the 1980s. He will
write, "American emissaries are understood to have traveled to Pakistan for
meetings with mujaheddin leaders. [A former CIA official] even suggests the
US emissaries met directly with bin Laden, and that it was bin Laden, acting
on advice from his friends in Saudi intelligence, who first suggested the
mujaheddin should be given Stingers." [Reeve, 1999, pp. 167, 176] The CIA
begins supplying Stinger missiles to the mujaheddin in 1986 (see September
1986). After 9/11, the CIA will state, "Numerous comments in the media
recently have reiterated a widely circulated but incorrect notion that the
CIA once had a relationship with Osama bin Laden. For the record, you should
know that the CIA never employed, paid, or maintained any relationship
whatsoever with bin Laden." [US State Department, 1/14/2005]

Osama bin Laden begins providing financial, organizational, and engineering
aid for the mujaheddin in Afghanistan, with the advice and support of the
Saudi royal family. [New Yorker, 11/5/2001] Some, including Richard Clarke,
counterterrorism "tsar" during the Clinton and George W. Bush
administrations, believe he was handpicked for the job by Prince Turki
al-Faisal, head of Saudi Arabia's Secret Service. [New Yorker, 11/5/2001;
Sunday Times (London), 8/25/2002] The Pakistani ISI want a Saudi prince as a
public demonstration of the commitment of the Saudi royal family and as a
way to ensure royal funds for the anti-Soviet forces. The agency fails to
get royalty, but bin Laden, with his family's influential ties, is good
enough for the ISI. [Miami Herald, 9/24/2001] (Clarke will argue later that
the Saudis and other Muslim governments used the Afghan war in an attempt to
get rid of their own misfits and troublemakers.) This multinational force
later coalesces into al-Qaeda. [Clarke, 2004, pp. 52]

The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan. The Russians were initially invited in
by the Afghan government to deal with rising instability and army mutinies,
and they start crossing the border on December 8. But on December 26,
Russian troops storm the presidential palace, kill the country's leader,
Haizullah Amin, and the invitation turns into an invasion. [Blum, 1995, pp.
342] Later declassified high-level Russian documents will show that the
Russian leadership believed that Amin, who took power in a violent coup from
another pro-Soviet leader two months before, had secret contacts with the US
embassy and was probably a US agent. Further, one document from this month
claims that "the right wing Muslim opposition" has "practically established
their control in many provinces. using foreign support." [Cooley, 2002, pp.
8] It has been commonly believed that the invasion was unprovoked, but the
Russians will later be proven largely correct. In a 1998 interview, Zbigniew
Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser, will reveal
that earlier in the year Carter authorized the CIA to destabilize the
government, provoking the Russians to invade (see July 3, 1979). [Le Nouvel
Observateur (Paris), 1/1998; Mirror, 1/29/2002] Further, CIA covert action
in the country actually began in 1978 (see 1978), if not earlier (see
1973-1979). The US and Saudi Arabia will give a huge amount of money
(estimates range up to $40 billion total for the war) to support the
mujaheddin guerrilla fighters opposing the Russians, and a decade-long war
will ensue. [Nation, 2/15/1999]

In the 1960s Osama bin Laden's brother Mahrous bin Laden joined a rebel
group opposed to the Saudi government. With his assistance, in 1979 the
rebels smuggle weapons into Mecca, Saudi Arabia, using trucks belonging to
the bin Laden family company. Five hundred rebels then seize the Grand
Mosque in Medina, Islam's holiest mosque in its holiest city. They try, but
fail, to overthrow the Saudi royal family. All the men who took part are
later beheaded except Mahrous. Eventually he is released from prison because
of the close ties between the bin Ladens and the Saudi royal family. Mahrous
apparently abandons the rebel cause and joins the family business. He is
eventually made a head of the Medina branch and a member of the board. He
will still hold these positions on 9/11. But a newspaper reports that "his
past [is] not forgiven and most important decisions in the [bin Laden family
business] are made without Mahrous' input." [Sunday Herald (Glasgow),
10/7/2001; New Yorker, 11/5/2001; Ha'aretz, 12/18/2002]

At some point in the late 1980s or early 1980s while bin Laden is still
finishing his university degree, he apparently visits the US. Author Peter
Bergen will later claim, "Undoubtedly, bin Laden took his son for medical
treatment to a western country and it's either the United States or the
United Kingdom. There's some kind of controversy about that." Khaled
Batarfi, a close childhood friend to bin Laden, will later recall more
specifically, "In Washington airport, Dulles Airport, people were surprised
at the way he dressed, his wife dressed. Some of them were even taking
photos and he was kind of joking about it. We were like in a zoo." [CNN,
8/23/2006] Apparently, this is bin Laden's only known visit to the US.

The CIA begins covert action against the Communist government in
Afghanistan, which is closely tied to the Soviet Union. Some time this year,
the CIA begins training militants in Pakistan and beaming radio propaganda
into Afghanistan. By April 1979, US officials are meeting with opponents of
the Afghan government to determine their needs. [Blum, 1995, pp. 344] Robert
Gates, who will become CIA Director in the early 1990s, will later recall
that in a meeting on March 30, 1979, Under Secretary of Defense Walter
Slocumbe wonders aloud whether there is "value in keeping the Afghan
insurgency going, 'sucking the Soviets into a Vietnamese quagmire.'" [Gates,
1996, pp. 145] In March 1979, there is a major revolt in Herat province, and
in June and August there are large scale army mutinies. [Cooley, 2002, pp.
5] President Carter will formally approve covert aid to opponents of the
government in July (see July 3, 1979), which will result in a Russian
invasion in December (see December 8, 1979).

In 1977 Zbigniew Brzezinski, as President Carter's National Security
Adviser, forms the Nationalities Working Group (NWG) dedicated to the idea
of weakening the Soviet Union by inflaming its ethnic tensions. The Islamic
populations are regarded as prime targets. Richard Pipes, the father of
Daniel Pipes, takes over the leadership of the NWG in 1981. Pipes predicts
that with the right encouragement Soviet Muslims will "explode into
genocidal fury" against Moscow. According to Richard Cottam, a former CIA
official who advised the Carter administration at the time, after the fall
of the Shah of Iran in 1978, Brzezinski favored a "de facto alliance with
the forces of Islamic resurgence, and with the Republic of Iran." [Dreyfuss,
2005, pp. 241, 251 - 256]


ISRAELIS vs ARABS
WHO ARE THE REAL TERRORISTS?
By: Hal Turner

North Bergen, NJ USA -- For years, we in America have supported Israel
both financially and militarily because we perceived they were the
innocent victims of hostile and violent neighbors. The US media has,
for years, provided extensive coverage of every incident involving
Arab-against-Israeli violence. From shootings, to car bombs to suicide
bombers, we in America have seen it all. Or have we?
Why would rational human beings, given a choice, choose to attack their
neighbors rather than live together in peace? More pertinent, why
would a rational human being choose to blow himself up rather than
live? The Israelis, the US media and our politicians would have us
believe that the Arabs are simply not rational. They routinely tell us
that Arabs are "religious fanatics" who "hate freedom" or "hate our way
of life" to quote George W. Bush. These arguments are fallacious and
intellectually bankrupt.
The reason for Arab against Israeli violence is simple: The Israelis
have been systematically repressing and brutalizing hundreds of
thousands of Arabs on a scale unparalleled since World War 2. I have
the proof.
Below are photographs of the victims of Israeli violence. They depict
brutal, violent death, horrific personal injury and devastation of
property which is simply unfathomable. ALL of it was perpetrated by
Israelis against Arabs. ALL of the victims are civilians.

As you view these pictures ask yourself this question: What would YOU
or YOUR LOVED ONES do in retaliation for these things?
DANGER: SEVENTY-SEVEN GRAPHIC PICTURES OF BRUTAL
VIOLENCE, DEATH AND INJURY.
NOT FOR VIEWING BY PERSONS WITH WEAK HEARTS!

http://www.halturnershow.com/IsraeliAtrocities.html


Genocide Advocated by The Talmud

Minor Tractates. Soferim 15, Rule 10. This is the saying of Rabbi

Simon ben Yohai: Tob shebe goyyim harog ("Even the best of the

Gentiles should all be killed").

This passage is not from the Soncino edition but is from the original

Hebrew of the Babylonian Talmud as quoted by the 1907 Jewish

Encyclopedia, published by Funk and Wagnalls and compiled by

Isidore Singer, under the entry, "Gentile," (p. 617).

This original Talmud passage has been concealed in translation.

The Jewish Encyclopedia states that, "...in the various versions the

reading has been altered, 'The best among the Egyptians' being

generally substituted." In the Soncino version: "the best of the

heathens" (Minor Tractates, Soferim 41a-b].

Israelis annually take part in a national pilgrimage to the grave of

Simon ben Yohai, to honor this rabbi who advocated the

extermination of non-Jews. (Jewish Press of June 9, 1989, p. 56B).

On Purim, Feb. 25, 1994, Israeli army officer Baruch Goldstein,

an orthodox Khazar from Brooklyn, massacred 40 Palestinian

civilians, including children, while they knelt in prayer in a mosque.

Goldstein was a disciple of the late Rabbi Kahane who has stated

that his view of Arabs as "dogs" is "from the Talmud." (Cf. CBS 60

Minutes, "Kahane").

Univ. of Jerusalem Prof. Ehud Sprinzak described Kahane and

Goldstein's philosophy: "They believe it's God's will that they commit

violence against 'goyim,' a Hebrew term for non-Jews." (NY Daily

News, Feb. 26, 1994, p. 5).

Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg declared, "We have to recognize that Jewish

blood and the blood of a goy are not the same thing." (NY Times,

June 6, 1989, p.5).

Rabbi Yaacov Perrin says, "One million Arabs are not worth a

Jewish fingernail." (NY Daily News, Feb. 28, 1994, p.6).
------------------------------------------------------------------


Israel/MOSSAD/CIA/NI, In Charge Of The US Military Dictatorship.

If "Terror" attacks were to stop, then Israel would lack any viable
excuse to continue killing Arabs. The bulldozers would fall silent.
For Israel, that would be the worst thing that could happen. Even
worse than the so-called "Road Map." In America, the Religious Right
mandates Bush that the "Holy Land" must be purged of all Muslim Arabs.
They cite that act as a Christian Religious Edict, supported by their
interpretation of Biblical Scripture. Bush cannot be reelected without
their support, nor can he be reelected without Jewish support.

Ariel Sharon is not a Religious man, he is a violent psychopath, a butcher,
murderer and serial Killer from his teens, and he has stated that he would
not form a Government if he had to form a coalition with Orthodox
Religious Jews, or any other Jewish Religious groups. Obviously,
Sharon is ruthless, controls Israeli Intelligence, and that Service
readily admits it has "operatives" inside all Arab Organizations.
Israeli Intelligence is rated the best in the world, with complete!
access to American Intelligence, and they are not shackled by any sort
of morality.

The time has come to put 2+2 together and understand where "World
Terrorism" is originating or being exploited, and the purpose it
serves. Bin Laden may have started this process, but Israelis
understand how to use it to further their ambitions. Suicide bombers
can be either manipulated, or used as "scapegoats" for any explosion.
( Israelis claimed the last Bus bombing was caused by a bomber
entering the front of the Bus, yet the photographs show the roof of
the Bus pealed back from the rear, where the charge was set) Their
first step was to equate Palestinian resistance, doubted "Terrorism"
to 9-11 as being a "Terrorist" act, rather than its actual purpose of
being an act of retaliation for America's support of years of Israeli
Atrocities.

Bin Laden gave the Israelis, unwittingly, exactly what they needed, to
expand their naming of "Terrorism" to include 9-11, as well as
Palestinian resistance. With most Americans unaware of Israeli
atrocities against Palestinians, Israeli theft of Palestinian homes
and farms and only understanding Palestinians only as "Terrorists,"
rather than in a Resistance Movement. The stage was set.

The War against "World Terrorism," as it is now called, had the flags
flying, and the full support of the American People. For Americans,
Pearl Harbor was back. Not many Flags for Iraq, are people catching
on?

Sharon was left with the simple task of mobilizing a simpler-minded
Bush into an all-out Christian Crusade: First Afghanistan, then Iraq,
Lebanon,Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and finally Iran. "Terrorism"
could have been stopped in its tracks by reining in Israel, and
although Bush did try, Sharon is far too clever and powerful vis-a-vis
Bush Jr. Just to teach Bush a lesson, Sharon made him cough-up 10
billion, a 400% increase in US aid to Israel.

Israel's stock-pile of Nuclear Weapons may not be needed after all.
"World Terrorism" has caused the United States to form the Office of
"Homeland Security" which allows the US Government to suspend all
civil rights and Constitutional Protections of American Citizens. At
that point, the United States has become a Military Dictatorship, and
with the Zionists in control of American Politics, Israel becomes, de
facto, the World's only Superpower. The worst thing, that could
happen, is happening.
Remember that a dictatorship starts with the phrase "the powerful
eventually enslave themselves.." from a Dr. Who episode of Warrior's
gate. If we really want the United States to keep a constitutional
country of law, then we need to drop the religious discussion. In the
constitution, it is stated that Church and State are to remain
separate. From my reading, it also means that church and state are to
stay at arm's length. So, the first we need to do is speak
specifically on what legal issues of the constitution are being abated
or diminished and how to restore them. In Freedom, the constitution
come first not the Bible as the law of the land. I will gladly defend
Lebanon and the New Civil Constitution, but I will not defend a
theocratic or religious, sectarian state....

American Military Versus Israel Firsters
As the White House and Congress escalate their economic sanctions
and military threats against Iran, top military commanders and
Pentagon officials have launched a counter-offensive, concocting a new
Middle East War.... with FDDC.
While some commentators and journalists, like Chris Hedges (Truthdig,
November 13, 2007), privy to this high stakes inter-elite conflict,
attribute this to a White House cabal led by Vice President Cheney, a
more stringent and accurate assessment pits the Zionist Power
Configuration (ZPC) in the center of the Iran war debate. There is a
great deal riding in this conflict – the future of the American empire
as well as the balance of power in the Middle East. Equally important
is the future of the US military and our already heavily constrained
democratic freedoms. The outcome of the continuous and deepening
confrontation between top US military officials and the Israel
Firsters over US foreign policy in the Middle East has raised
fundamental questions over self-determination, colonization, civilian
primacy and military political intervention, empire or republic. These
and related issues are far from being of academic interest only; they
concern the future of America.
Read article [PDF] FDDC.

http://www.lahaine.org/petras/b2-img/petras_iran.pdf

The Official James Petras Website

http://petras.lahaine.org/index.php