Each year around the anniversary of 9/11, I summarize what we ordinary citizens have learned since that awful day in 2001. This is the sixth annual look backwards, an update based on new information about those horrific events and what followed.
What we now more fully understand is how the CheneyBush Administration utilized the murderous terrorism of 9/11 as the one-size-fits-all justification for their unfolding domestic and foreign agenda.
By and large, one can sum up that overall agenda as: Amass and control power in the U.S. and much of the world, and, in cahoots with their corporate supporters, loot the treasury. All this was to be carried out secretly, with no accountability.
9/11 AND "THE WAR ON TERROR"
1. Iraq Plan Preceeded 9/11. Let's remember the chronology of how we got here: The Administration's far-right domestic agenda was bogged down in 2001 after Jim Jeffords left the Republican caucus and joined the now-majority Democratic one in the Senate. 9/11, and the mysterious anthrax attacks that followed, had the side effect of providing the CheneyBush Administration pretty much a free ride in putting police-state tactics in place (symbolized by the so-called "Patriot Act"), overriding Constitutional protections, and greasing the wheels for all sorts of domestic legislation that otherwise might have been bottled up forever.
Planning for an attack on Iraq, as Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill later told us, already had begun at the first cabinet meetings after Inauguration Day in early 2001; after 9/11, those plans proceeded apace, even when the intelligence indicated that it was not an Iraq operation but an al-Qaida terrorist attack, out of Afghanistan.
It appeared that the U.S. military over time would capture or kill Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and effectively destroy al-Qaida forces that had attacked America on 9/11. But CheneyBush abruptly pulled the U.S. forces from Afghanistan and headed them for Iraq, a country that was no real danger to the U.S. and its allies. (Late Flash: The resurgent Taliban allies of al-Qaida now control a good share of Afghanistan; if the U.S. had stayed in that country and taken care of business, today's reality there might well have been significantly different.)
2. Unanswered 9/11 Questions. There still are unanswered questions about the horrific events of September 11, 2001, mainly centered around: A. Why Bush sat there for seven minutes reading the "Pet Goat" book after he'd been informed of the plane hitting the second tower ("America is under attack," his chief of staff whispered to him), and why the Secret Service, as they are trained to do when the President is believed to be in danger, didn't surround him and get him the hell out of that classroom (the clear implication is that a delay-operation was in progress). B. Why NORAD didn't scramble its fighters in time to do anything (same implication). C. Whether World Trade Center Towers 1, 2 and 7 collapsed into their footprints as a result of fire/structural damage or from pre-set demolition charges (there are reputable scientists on both sides of that one). D. How to explain all the "put" options on American Airlines and United Airlines stocks just prior to the attacks, clearly suggesting someone knew which airlines were going to be hijacked and was trying to profit from the pending attacks?
But regardless of whether CheneyBush were complicit in any degree in the deaths and destruction that day -- and there is no proof that they were -- what we do know is that in the months, weeks and days prior to 9/11, red-hot warnings about a planned terrorist attack, using planes as weapons aimed at buildings in New York and Washington, were coming into the White House from a wide variety of other countries.
At the very least then, CheneyBush and a few other key insiders knew that a "spectacular" attack was coming and did absolutely nothing. Even after Bush was briefed on August 6 with a report entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the U.S." -- which talked about preparations for hijackings, suspected terrorists surveilling federal buildings in New York, teams of terrorists being inside the U.S. with explosives -- there was no heightening of awareness, no alerting airlines, no sending out photos of al-Qaida suspects to be on the lookout for, no calling an urgent meeting of counter-terrorism experts inside the White House to coordinate either a way of minimizing the damage or dealing with a post-attack response. Nothing.
Again, if the above is true, one is left with two alternative explanations. A: These CheneyBush guys in charge were (and remain) totally over their heads in terms of governance. They simply didn't have a clue what was about to happen and what to do about it. Administration actions during the past six and a half years supply more than enough evidence that Bush and his crew are total fuckups. It's a reverse-Midas syndrome: everything they touch turns to excrement. Total bumblers, screwups, incompetent dolts.
B: They knew something major was about to go down (although 3000 deaths may have been way beyond what they imagined) in order to use those attacks as a rallying point to amass power and push their agenda through a Congress that otherwise was antagonistic to them.
3. The Facts of 9/11. We know that the Bush Administration didn't want the public to learn much, if anything, about the events of that day six years ago. Bush&Co. had to be dragged kicking and screaming into agreeing to the appointment of the official 9/11 Commission, and they named as the executive director one of their made men, Philip Zelikow (now an Administration official).
As it turned out, the Administration wasn't all that cooperative in furnishing documents, Bush would not testify under oath and would deign to appear only with Cheney by his side, (here's my imagined transcript of that testimony) ( www.crisispapers.org/essays/911-testimony.htm ) and we later learned that the commission was so angered by the constantly-shifting stories told by the Pentagon/NORAD that they were ready to urge that legal charges be filed. ( www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/01/AR2006080101300.html ) In short, the 9/11 Commision's probe was not exhaustive, leaving many areas of investigation unplumbed, and many questions still unsatisfactorally unanswered.
4. PNAC & the Neo-Cons. We know that a FarRight segment of the conservative movement was dedicated to using America's sole superpower status to move aggressively in the world while, they believed, no other country or international force could put up much resistance. The key neo-con leaders in charge of U.S. foreign/military policy (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bolton, Perle, Khalilzad, et al.) were founders of, and affiliated with, The Project for The New American Century (PNAC).
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked for two decades as a writer-editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org).
I suppose I should identify right off the bat that I am a Canadian rather than an American. People seem to feel offended if I do not.
With all due respect, I don't agree with you that we cannot lay the responsibility for 9/11 firmly on the shoulders of Bush and Cheney. See my OpEdNews article (and comment below the article) "In the Name of All who Died on 9/11, We Must Act Now."
Those who perpetrated 9/11 are going to do, and have done, all in their power to cover their tracks and inhibit investigation. We are therefore not easily going to be able to say "this is what happened on 9/11."
But we can certainly say "this version of events is not credible for this and that reason."
There are so many events that happened on that day which the official story depicts in an implausible, improbable, or impossible fashion that I think we can, with respect, go a long ways further down the road than you do in your article.
The reason this is important is because the same government that (I allege) killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11 is now planning to engage in a war with Iran that could place an impossible burden on the planet's environment.
If the U.S. dumps the same level of radioactive depleted uranium (DU) on Iran that it dumped on Iraq in Gulf War 2 (when combined with that which it dumped on the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq in Gulf War 1), the consequences for this planet will be so far-reaching that, if we really suspected them, we would be shaking in our seats and reaching for our protest signs.
There is so much riding on the American public waking up to what this government has done and is capable of doing that I have to ask you too to go a lot further in your thinking than you do here.
And I respect everything about your intentions and your approach. It's just that too much rides on these matters now to be using kid gloves with the present administation, as your analysis, in my view, does.
Steve Beckow
by
Steve Beckow (11 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 36 comments)
on Tuesday, September 4, 2007 at 4:09:59 PM
However, I want to add that you have done such a superlative job of analyzing events after 9/11 that it would be ungracious of me to imply that your contribution to ourt appreciation of matters is not very great.
by
Steve Beckow (11 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 36 comments)
on Tuesday, September 4, 2007 at 4:55:09 PM
1. The "alleged" hijackers. Who were they, what was their path to 9/11, and where did their money come from? Not much about these questions anywhere, and most people I ask know very little, are completey misinformed, or ignorant. The "alleged" perpetrators and ther stories are unimportant. Since when have perpetrators become unimportant? When you start to research them it gets very interesting.
A place to start is investigative reporter Daniel Hopsicker's site and a couple of his videos. He has uncovered some very disturbing information, which if true is truly staggering. Start with the Flying Circus and sequel Fanning Island videos, then read the rest of his information
2. The real purpose of the Iraq invasion, what was the motive? Remember, it was planned before 9/11 and had nothing to do with 9/11. Well, there's a clue, and it's a good one... OIL. Study the Iraq Hydrocarbon Law, something few Americans have ever heard of:
Taken in its historical context, 9/11 was the great enabler, the event that made possible all that has followed. It was the key to the Iraq candy store. Think about it, would we be in Iraq if 9/11 or a similar event hadn't happened? See, the problem is 9/11 was VERY convenient, just a little TOO convenient. That's the REAL smoking gun.
C.
"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger." -- Hermann Goering
by
Co6aka (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 68 comments)
on Tuesday, September 4, 2007 at 6:52:29 PM
It is literally suicidal to depend on the Democrats to save us. The example of their performance after the 2006 election is only the latest disappointment from the Democratic Party. After the Democrats regained a majority in both houses of Congress, they continued to vote yes on Bush's request for more funds for the Iraq war. They gave the excuse that they didn't have enough votes to override a Bush veto. But all they needed to do to stop further war funding would have been to keep the war appropriations bill from getting 50% plus one of the vote. And there is ABSOLUTELY NO EXCUSE for them voting for even more ways for the President to spy on the American people and violate civil liberties than were given to Bush by the Patriot Act.
The ruling class in this country has quite cleverly arranged to have two ruling class parties, with one, the Democrats, being slightly less right wing than the other, the Republicans. Thus it is always possible to argue at any particular point in time that the Democrats are slightly less bad or the lesser evil to the Republicans. This enables the Democrats and their supporters to launch hysterical accusations, whenever a significant number of people show signs of breaking out of the two party system, that those who are breaking are responsible for all the evil things the Republicans implement.
However, once people have announced publicly that they are supporting the Democrats as the lesser evil, the Democrats know that they can afford to become more evi and further to the right because the lesser evil voters don't have any other place to go. This gives the Republicans room to move even further to the right and more evil which gives the Democrats room to move even further to the right and more evil which... Although at any particular point in time the Democrats are always the lesser evil, the dynamic of the whole process is always to the right and more evil, unless their is a countervailing mass protest movement, such as the civil rights movement in the 1960's or the labor movement in the 1930's.
If you are on a run-a-way train hurtling towards the edge of a cliff, it makes little difference whether you are in the Republican front car or the Democratic rear car. Your ultimate destination will be the same -- a precipitous plunge over the cliff!
Thus its is not surprising that post 2006 was not the first time the Democrats have disappointed us. It's a good thing that Bush, Sr. didn't defeat Clinton in 1992 or Bob Dole in 1996. Because if either had defeated Clinton, Bush, Sr. or Dole would have ended wellfare as we know it!
At least Clinton told us before he was elected that he would end wellfare as we know it. But Clinton also promised to admit the Haitian boat people to the U.S. and end the ban on Gays and Lesbians in the military. After he was elected, Clinton reneged on both promises. He kept the Haitian boat people confined in camps outside the U.S. Some of the Haitians were dying of AIDS while they were denyed access to medical care in the United States and ACT-UP had to picket Clinton at his every public appearance until he finally allowed the Haitians with AIDS into the country. And instead of ending the ban on Gays and Lesbians in the military, Clinton gave us "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," which led to an INCREASE in the number of Gays and Lesbians thrown out of the military. On that particular issue, Clinton turned out to be theGREATER EVIL instead of the lesser evil!
John Kennedy had promised to desegregate all federally owned housing if he was elected. After he was elected, the Congress Of Racial Equality (CORE) has to picket Kennedy's every public appearance until he finally issued an executive order desegregating ONLY ONE-FOURTH of federally owned housing.
And after World War II, the MAJORITY of Democrats in Congress voted for the Taft-Hartley Act, so that even if all the greater evil Republicans had magically disappeared from Congress, the Democrats would still have passed it.
The Democrats have always disappointed us on the promises they made when out of power once they were in power. To depend on the Democrats to save us from a threatening dictatorship post 9/11 instead of supporting a real opposition third party like the Greens, is nothing short of suicidal!
In point number 2 Mr. Weiner lists two possible explanations for the unexplained events of 9-11 of which there are many:
Again, if the above is true, one is left with two alternative explanations. A: These CheneyBush guys in charge were (and remain) totally over their heads in terms of governance. They simply didn't have a clue what was about to happen and what to do about it. Administration actions during the past six and a half years supply more than enough evidence that Bush and his crew are total fuckups. It's a reverse-Midas syndrome: everything they touch turns to excrement. Total bumblers, screwups, incompetent dolts.
B: They knew something major was about to go down (although 3000 deaths may have been way beyond what they imagined) in order to use those attacks as a rallying point to amass power and push their agenda through a Congress that otherwise was antagonistic to them.
The third explanation (which is supported by the most evidence) C: They not only knew, but they engineered, implemented, and led the false flag attacks on America. They had many motives, including consolidation of political and real power, manufacturing consent to wage a never-ending war against a war tactic instead of a single enemy, and redirection (read: theft) of hundreds of billions of US taxpayer dollars into the hands of contractors while subsidizing their cohorts in the oil industry.
by
Tim Riley (7 articles, 5 quicklinks, 7 diaries, 130 comments)
on Wednesday, September 5, 2007 at 10:10:00 AM
6 comments
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