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strongchick
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Subject: #A Special Forces Master Sergeant speaks to the evidence
> The so called Evidence Is a Farce
> By Stan Goff
> I'm a retired Special Forces Master Sergeant. That doesn't cut much
> for those who will only accept the opinions of former officers on
> military matters, since we enlisted swine are assumed to be incapable
> of grasping the nuances of doctrine.
>
> But I wasn't just in the army. I studied and taught military science
> and doctrine. I was a tactics instructor at the Jungle Operations
> Training Center in Panama, and I taught Military Science at West
> Point. And contrary to the popular image of what Special Forces does,
> SF's mission is to teach. We offer advice and assistance to foreign
> forces. That's everything from teaching marksmanship to a private to
> instructing a Battalion staff on how
to
> coordinate effective air operations with a sister service.
>
> Based on that experience, and operations in eight designated conflict
areas
> from Vietnam to Haiti, I have to say that the story we hear on the
> news and read in the newspapers is simply not believable. The most
> cursory glance at the verifiable facts, before, during, and after
> September 11th,
does
> not support the official line or conform to the current actions of the
> United States government.
>
> But the official line only works if they can get everyone to accept
> its underlying premises. I'm not at all surprised about the Republican
> and Democratic Parties repeating these premises. They are simply two
> factions within a single dominant political class, and both are
> financed by the same economic powerhouses. My biggest disappointment,
> as someone who identifies himself with the left, has been the tacit
> acceptance of those premises by others on the left, sometimes naively,
> and sometimes to score some morality points. Those premises are
> twofold. One, there is the premise that what this de facto
> administration is doing now is a
"response"
> to September 11th. Two, there is the premise that this attack on the
> World Trade Center and the Pentagon was done by people based in
> Afghanistan. In my opinion, neither of these is sound.
>
> To put this in perspective we have to go back not to September 11th,
> but
to
> last year or further.
>
> A man of limited intelligence, George W. Bush, with nothing more than
> his name and the behind-the-scenes pressure of his powerful father-a
> former President, ex-director of Central Intelligence, and an oil
> man-is systematically constructed as a candidate, at tremendous cost.
> Across the country, subtle and not-so-subtle mechanisms are put into
> place to disfranchise a significant fraction of the Democrat's
> African-American voter base. This doesn't come out until Florida
> becomes a battleground for Electoral
College
> votes, and the magnitude of the story has been suppressed by the
> corporate media to this day. In a decision so lacking in legitimacy,
> the Supreme Court will neither by-line the author of the decision nor
> allow
the
> decision to ever be used as a precedent, Bush v. Gore awards the
presidency
> of the United States to a man who loses the popular vote in Florida
> and loses the national popular vote by over 600,000.
>
> This de facto regime then organizes a very interesting cabinet. The
> Vice President is an oil executive and the former Secretary of
> Defense. The National Security Advisor is a director on the board of a
> transnational
oil
> corporation and a Russia scholar. The Secretary of State is a man with
> no diplomatic experience whatsoever, and the former Chair of the Joint
> Chiefs of Staff. The other interesting appointment is Donald Rumsfeld
> as Secretary of Defense. Rumsfeld is the former CEO of Searle
Pharmaceuticals.
> He and Cheney were featured as speakers at the May, 2000,
> Russian-American Business Leaders Forum. So the consistent currents in
this
> cabinet are petroleum, the former Soviet Union, and the military.
>
> Based on the record of Daddy Bush, in all his guises, and the general
> trajectory of US foreign policy as far back as the Carter
> Administration,
I
> feel I
> can reasonably conclude that Middle Eastern and South Asian fossil
> fuels are one of their major preoccupations. Not just because this
> klavern has some very direct financial interests in fossil fuel, but
> because they surely know that worldwide oil production is peaking as
> we speak, and will
soon
> begin a permanent and precipitous decline that will completely change
> the character of civilization as we know it within 20 years. Even the
> left seems to be in deep denial about this, but the math is available.
> And, no, alternative energies and energy technologies will not save
> us. All the alternatives in the world can not begin to provide more
> than a tiny fraction of the energy base now provided by oil. This
> makes it more than a resource, and the drive to control what's left
> more than an economic competition.
>
> I further conclude that the economic colonization of the former Soviet
> Union is probably high on that agenda, and in fact has a powerful
> synergy with the issue of petroleum. Russia not only holds vast
> untapped resources that beckon to imperialism in crisis, it remains a
> credible military and nuclear challenger in the region.
>
> We have not one, but three members of the Bush de facto cabinet with
> military credentials, which makes the cabinet look quite a lot like a
military
> General Staff. All this way before September 11th.
>
> Then there's the subject of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
> NATO might have expected consignment to the dustbin of the Cold War
> after the Eastern Bloc shattered in 1991. Peace dividend and all that.
> But it
didn't.
> It expanded directly into the former states of the Eastern Bloc toward
> the former Soviet Union, and contributed significant forces to the
> devastation of Iraq-a key country in the world oil market, over which
> control translates into the ability to manipulate oil prices.
>
> NATO is a military formation, and the United States exerts the
> controlling interest in it. It seemed like a form without a function,
> but it remedied
that
> pretty quickly.
>
> Then when Yugoslavia refused to play ball with the International
> Monetary Fund, the US and Germany began a systematic campaign of
> destabilization there, even using some of the veterans of Afghanistan
> in that campaign.
>
> NATO became the military arm of that agenda-the break-up of Yugoslavia
into
> compliant statelets, the further containment of the former Soviet
> Union, and the future pipeline easement for Caspain Sea oil to Western
> European markets through Kosovo.
>
> You see, this is important to understand, and people-even those
> against
the
> war talk-are tending to overlook the significance of it. NATO is not a
> guarantor of international law, and it is not a humanitarian
> organization.
>
> It is a military alliance with one very dominant partner. And it can
> no longer claim to be a defensive alliance against European
> socialists. It is
an
> instrument of military aggression.
>
> NATO is the organization that is now going to thrust further along the
40th
> parallel from the Balkans through the Southern Asian Republics of the
> former Soviet Union. The US military has already taken control of a
> base
in
> Uzbekistan. No one is talking about how what we are doing seems to be
> a very logical extension of a strategy that was already in motion, and
> has been in motion for two decades. Once we recognize the pattern of
> activity designed to simultaneously consolidate control over Middle
> Eastern and South Asian oil, and contain and colonize the former
> Soviet Union, Afghanistan is exactly where they need to go to pursue
> that agenda.
>
> Afghanistan borders Iran, India, and even China but, more importantly,
> the Central Asian Republics of the former Soviet Union, Uzbekistan,
> Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. These border Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan
> borders Russia. Turkmenistan sits on the Southeastern quadrant of the
> Caspian Sea, whose oil the Bush Administration dearly covets.
>
> Afghanistan is necessary for two things: as a base of operations to
> begin the process of destabilizing, breaking off, and establishing
> control over the South Asian Republics, which will begin within the
> next 18-24 months in my opinion, and constructing a pipeline through
> Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan to deliver petroleum to the
> Asian market.
>
> The BBC was recently told by Niaz Naik, a Pakistani Foreign Secretary,
that
> senior American officials were warning them as early as mid-July that
> military action for mid-October was being planned for Afghanistan. In
1996,
> the Department of Energy was issuing reports on the desirability of a
> pipeline through Afghanistan, and in 1998, Unocal testified before the
> House Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific that this pipeline was
> crucial
to
> transport Caspian Basin oil to the Indian Ocean.
>
> Given this evidence that a military operation to secure at least a
> portion of Afghanistan has been on the table, possibly as early as
> five years ago,
I
> can't help but conclude that the actions we are seeing put into motion
> now are part of a pre-September 11th agenda. I'm absolutely sure of
> that, in fact. The planning alone for operations, of this scale, that
> are now
taking
> shape, would take many months. And we are seeing them take shape in
> mere weeks.
>
> It defies common sense. This administration is lying about this whole
thing
> being a "reaction" to September 11th. That leads me, in short order,
> to be very suspicious of their yet-to-be-provided evidence that
> someone in Afghanistan is responsible. It's just too damn convenient.
> Which also leads me to wonder-just for the sake of knowing-what
> actually did happen
on
> September 11th, and who actually is responsible.
>
> The so-called evidence is a farce. The US presented Tony Blair's
> puppet government with the evidence, and of the 70 so-called points of
> evidence, only nine even referred to the attacks on the World Trade
Center,
> and those points were conjectural. This is a bullshit story from
> beginning to end. Presented with the available facts, any 16-year old
> with a liking for courtroom dramas could tear this story apart like a
two-dollar
> shirt. But our corporate press regurgitates it uncritically. But then,
> as we should know by now, their role is to legitimize.
>
> This cartoon heavy they've turned bin Laden into makes no sense, when
> you begin to appreciate the complexity and synchronicity of the
> attacks. As a former military person who's been involved in the
> development of countless operations orders over the years, I can tell
> you that this was a very sophisticated and costly enterprise that
> would have left what we call a huge "signature".
>
> In other words, it would be very hard to effectively conceal.
>
> So there's a real question about why there was no warning of this.
> That
can
> be a question about the efficacy of the government's intelligence
> apparatus. That can be a question about various policies in the
> various agencies that had to be duped to orchestrate this action. And
> it can also
be
> a question about whether or not there was foreknowledge of the event,
> and that foreknowledge is being covered up. To dismiss this concern
> out of hand as the rantings of conspiracy nuts is premature. And there
> is a history of this kind of thing being done by national political
> bosses, including the darling of liberals, Franklin Roosevelt. The
> evidence is very compelling that the Roosevelt Administration
> deliberately failed to act to stop Pearl
> Harbor in order to mobilize enough national anger to enter the World War
II.
>
> 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.
>
> Follow along:
>
> Four planes get hijacked and deviate from their flight plans, all the
while
> on FAA radar. The planes are all hijacked between 7:45 and 8:10 AM
> Eastern Daylight Time.
>
> 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 teachers.
>
> By 8:45, when American Airlines Flight 11 crashes into the World Trade
> Center, Bush is settling in with children for his photo ops at Booker
> Elementary. Four planes have obviously been hijacked simultaneously,
> an event never before seen in history, and one has just dived into the
> worlds best know twin towers, and still no one notifies the nominal
> Commander in Chief.
>
> No one has apparently scrambled any Air Force interceptors either.
>
> At 9:03, United Flight 175 crashes into the remaining World Trade
> Center building. At 9:05, Andrew Card, the Presidential Chief of Staff
> whispers
to
> George W. Bush. Bush "briefly turns somber" according to reporters.
>
> Does he cancel the school visit and convene an emergency meeting? No.
>
> He resumes listening to second graders read about a little girl's pet
> fucking goat, and continues this 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 Chief of Staff 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 already have figured
> out;
that
> there's been an attack by hijacked planes on the World Trade Center.
>
> There's a hijacked plane bee-lining to Washington, but has the Air
> Force been scrambled to defend anything yet? No.
>
> At 9:30, when he makes his announcement, American Flight 77 is still
> ten minutes from its target, the Pentagon.
>
> The Administration will later claim they had no way of knowing that
> the Pentagon might be a target, and that they thought Flight 77 was
> headed to the White House, but the fact is that the plane has already
> flown South
and
> past the White House no-fly zone, and is in fact tearing through the
> sky at over 400 nauts.
>
> At 9:35, this plane conducts another turn, 360 degrees 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 last 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 into the side of this building at 460 nauts.
>
> 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
> I-40 at rush hour by buying her a video driving game. It's horse shit!
>
> There is a story being constructed about these events. My crystal ball
> is not working today, so I can't say why.
>
> But at the least, this so-called Commander-in-Chief and his staff that
> we are all supposed to follow blindly into some ill-defined war on
> terrorism
is
> criminally negligent or unspeakably stupid. And at the worst, if more
> is known or was known, and there is an effort to conceal the facts,
> there is
a
> criminal conspiracy going on.
>
> Certainly, the Bush de facto administration was facing a confluence of
> crises from which they were temporarily rescued by this event. Whether
they
> played a sinister role or not, there is little doubt that they have at
> the very least opportunistically pounced on this attack to overcome
> their lack
of
> legitimacy, to shift the blame for the encroaching recession from
> capitalism to the September 11th terror attack, to legitimize their
> pre-existing foreign policy agenda, and to establish and consolidate
> repressive
measures
> domestically and silence dissent. In many ways, September 11th pulled
> the Bush cookies out of the fire.
>
> And given them the green light to begin constructing a long-term
> scenario within which to establish fascistic control measures at home
> and abroad as a citadel for the ruling class in the catastrophic
> conjuncture that we are entering based on the end of oil.
>
> This elephant in the living room is being studiously ignored. In fact,
> the domestic repression has already begun, officially and
> unofficially. It's
kind
> of a latter day McCarthyism. I participated in a teach-in at Chapel
> Hill, North Carolina, on the 17th of September, and though not a
> single person
on
> the panel excused or justified the attacks, and every person there
> offered either condolences and prayers for the victims, we were
> excoriated within two days as "enemies of America." Yesterday an op-ed
> called for my deportation (to where, one can only guess). Now Herr
> Ashcroft is fast
tracking
> the biggest abrogation of US civil liberties since the so-called
> anti-terrorism legislation after the Oklahoma City bombing - which by
> the way hasn't resulted in anti-terrorism but in the acceleration of
> the application of the racist death penalty. The FBI has defined
> terrorist groups not by
whether
> any given group has ever acted as terrorists, but by their beliefs.
> Some socialists and anti-globalization groups have already been
> identified by name as terrorist groups, even though there is not a
> single shred of evidence that they have ever participated in any
> criminal activity. It reminds me of the Smith Act that was finally
> declared unconstitutional, but only
after
> a hell of a lot of people served a hell of a long time in jail for the
crime of
> thinking.
>
> I think this also points to yet another huge problems that the Bush
> regime was facing. Worldwide resistance to the whole so-called
> neoliberal agenda, which is a prettied up term for debt-leverage
> imperialism. While debt and the threat of sanctions has been used to
> coerce nations in the periphery, we have to understand that the final
> guarantor of compliance remains military action. For a global economic
> agenda, there is always a corresponding political and military agenda.
>
> The focal point of these actions in the short term is Southern Asia,
> but they have already scripted this as a worldwide and protracted
> fight
against
> terrorism.
>
> It's far better than drug wars as a rationalization, and the drug war
thing
> was being discredited in any case. Leftists are regaining power and
> popularity in Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Colombia,
> the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Brazil, and Argentina. Cuba has gained
> immense prestige over the last few years. The empire is beginning to
> unravel. We can hardly justify intervention in these places by saying
> they
are
> not towing the economic line by allowing the absolute domination of
> their societies by transnational corporations. That exposes the
> agenda. So we simply claim they are supporting terrorism.
>
> It's for all these reasons I say the left has missed the boat on this
> one, by allowing them to get away with rushing past the question of
> who did
what
> on September 11th. If the official story is a lie, and I think the
> circumstantial case is strong enough to stay with this question, then
> we really do need to know what happened. And we need to understand
> concretely what the motives of this administration are.
>
> And we need to understand more than just their immediate motives, but
where
> the larger social forces that underwrite our situation right now are
> headed. I do not think this administration is engaged in the
> deliberative process of a political grouping that is on top of their
> game. They are
putting
> together some very deliberative technical solutions in response to a
larger
> situation that it slipping rapidly out of their control. Like clear
cutting.
> There's a very smart technology being employed to do a very dumb
> thing.
>
> What they are responding to is not September 11th, but the beginning
> of a permanent and precipitous decline in worldwide oil production,
> the beginning of a deep and protracted worldwide recession, and the
> unraveling of the empire.
>
> This brings me to a point about what all this means for Americans'
> security, which they are perfectly justified to worry about. The
> actions
being
> prepared by this administration will not only not enhance our
> security, it will significantly degrade it. Military action against
> many groups across
the
> globe, which is what the administration is telling us quite openly
> they
are
> planning to do, will put a lot of backs against the wall. That can't
> be
very
> secure.
>
> The concept of war being touted here is a violation of the principles
> of war on several counts, and will inevitably lead to military
> catastrophes,
if
> you're inclined to view this from a position of moral and political
neutrality.
>
> And the people who are now in possession of half the world's remaining
> oil reserves are subject to destabilization for which we can't even
> pretend to predict the consequences-but loss of access to critical
> energy supplies is certainly within the realm of possibility. Worst of
> all, we will be destabilizing Pakistan, a nuclear power in an active
> conflict with its neighbor, and we will be provoking Russia, another
> nuclear power. The
security
> stakes don't get any higher, and Americans can ill afford to ignore
> nukes.
>
> And I think that this domestic agenda is a tremendous threat to the
> security of anyone who is critical of the government or their
> corporate financiers, and we already know that the real threats are
> against populations that can easily be scapegoated as the domestic
> crisis deepens.
>
> There is a very real threat right now of creeping fascism in this
> country, and that phenomenon requires its domestic enemies.
> Historically those enemies have included leftists, trade unionists,
> and racially and nationally oppressed sectors. This whole "state of
> emergency" mentality is already being used to quiet the public
> discourses of anti-racism, of feminism, of environmentalism, and of
> both socialism and anarchism. And
while
> there is token resistance by officials to anti-Muslim xenophobia, the
> stereotypical images have saturated the media, and the government is
already
> beginning to openly re-instate racial profiling. It is only a short
> step from there to go after other groups. We have long been prepared
> by the ideologies of overt and covert racism, and racism as both
> institution and corresponding psychology in the United States is
> nearly intractable.
>
> It's for all these reasons that I say emphatically that we can not
> accept anything from this administration; not their policies nor their
> bullshit stories. What they are doing is very, very dangerous, and the
> time to fight back against them, openly, is right now, before they can
> consolidate their
power
> and their agenda. Once they have done that, our job becomes much more
> difficult.
>
> The left, if it has the capacity to self-organize out of its oblivion,
> needs to understand its critical roles here. We have to play the role
> of credible, hard-working, and non-sectarian partners in a broader
> peace-movement. We have to study, synthesize, and describe our current
> historical conjuncture. And we have to prepare leadership for the
> decisive conflict that will emerge to first defeat fascism then take
> political power.
>
> Rosa Luxemburg's words are truer than ever right now. We are not faced
with
> a choice between socialism and capitalism, but socialism or barbarism.
>
> And what we can least afford are denial and timidity.
>
> ***************
> "Who are we calling terrorists here? Outsiders can destroy airplanes
> and buildings, but it is only we, the people, who have the power to
> demolish our own ideals."
>
> --Barbara Kingsolver
> ****************
> The so called Evidence Is a Farce
> By Stan Goff
> I'm a retired Special Forces Master Sergeant. That doesn't cut much
> for those who will only accept the opinions of former officers on
> military matters, since we enlisted swine are assumed to be incapable
> of grasping the nuances of doctrine.
>
> But I wasn't just in the army. I studied and taught military science
> and doctrine. I was a tactics instructor at the Jungle Operations
> Training Center in Panama, and I taught Military Science at West
> Point. And contrary to the popular image of what Special Forces does,
> SF's mission is to teach. We offer advice and assistance to foreign
> forces. That's everything from teaching marksmanship to a private to
> instructing a Battalion staff on how
to
> coordinate effective air operations with a sister service.
>
> Based on that experience, and operations in eight designated conflict
areas
> from Vietnam to Haiti, I have to say that the story we hear on the
> news and read in the newspapers is simply not believable. The most
> cursory glance at the verifiable facts, before, during, and after
> September 11th,
does
> not support the official line or conform to the current actions of the
> United States government.
>
> But the official line only works if they can get everyone to accept
> its underlying premises. I'm not at all surprised about the Republican
> and Democratic Parties repeating these premises. They are simply two
> factions within a single dominant political class, and both are
> financed by the same economic powerhouses. My biggest disappointment,
> as someone who identifies himself with the left, has been the tacit
> acceptance of those premises by others on the left, sometimes naively,
> and sometimes to score some morality points. Those premises are
> twofold. One, there is the premise that what this de facto
> administration is doing now is a
"response"
> to September 11th. Two, there is the premise that this attack on the
> World Trade Center and the Pentagon was done by people based in
> Afghanistan. In my opinion, neither of these is sound.
>
> To put this in perspective we have to go back not to September 11th,
> but
to
> last year or further.
>
> A man of limited intelligence, George W. Bush, with nothing more than
> his name and the behind-the-scenes pressure of his powerful father-a
> former President, ex-director of Central Intelligence, and an oil
> man-is systematically constructed as a candidate, at tremendous cost.
> Across the country, subtle and not-so-subtle mechanisms are put into
> place to disfranchise a significant fraction of the Democrat's
> African-American voter base. This doesn't come out until Florida
> becomes a battleground for Electoral
College
> votes, and the magnitude of the story has been suppressed by the
> corporate media to this day. In a decision so lacking in legitimacy,
> the Supreme Court will neither by-line the author of the decision nor
> allow
the
> decision to ever be used as a precedent, Bush v. Gore awards the
presidency
> of the United States to a man who loses the popular vote in Florida
> and loses the national popular vote by over 600,000.
>
> This de facto regime then organizes a very interesting cabinet. The
> Vice President is an oil executive and the former Secretary of
> Defense. The National Security Advisor is a director on the board of a
> transnational
oil
> corporation and a Russia scholar. The Secretary of State is a man with
> no diplomatic experience whatsoever, and the former Chair of the Joint
> Chiefs of Staff. The other interesting appointment is Donald Rumsfeld
> as Secretary of Defense. Rumsfeld is the former CEO of Searle
Pharmaceuticals.
> He and Cheney were featured as speakers at the May, 2000,
> Russian-American Business Leaders Forum. So the consistent currents in
this
> cabinet are petroleum, the former Soviet Union, and the military.
>
> Based on the record of Daddy Bush, in all his guises, and the general
> trajectory of US foreign policy as far back as the Carter
> Administration,
I
> feel I
> can reasonably conclude that Middle Eastern and South Asian fossil
> fuels are one of their major preoccupations. Not just because this
> klavern has some very direct financial interests in fossil fuel, but
> because they surely know that worldwide oil production is peaking as
> we speak, and will
soon
> begin a permanent and precipitous decline that will completely change
> the character of civilization as we know it within 20 years. Even the
> left seems to be in deep denial about this, but the math is available.
> And, no, alternative energies and energy technologies will not save
> us. All the alternatives in the world can not begin to provide more
> than a tiny fraction of the energy base now provided by oil. This
> makes it more than a resource, and the drive to control what's left
> more than an economic competition.
>
> I further conclude that the economic colonization of the former Soviet
> Union is probably high on that agenda, and in fact has a powerful
> synergy with the issue of petroleum. Russia not only holds vast
> untapped resources that beckon to imperialism in crisis, it remains a
> credible military and nuclear challenger in the region.
>
> We have not one, but three members of the Bush de facto cabinet with
> military credentials, which makes the cabinet look quite a lot like a
military
> General Staff. All this way before September 11th.
>
> Then there's the subject of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
> NATO might have expected consignment to the dustbin of the Cold War
> after the Eastern Bloc shattered in 1991. Peace dividend and all that.
> But it
didn't.
> It expanded directly into the former states of the Eastern Bloc toward
> the former Soviet Union, and contributed significant forces to the
> devastation of Iraq-a key country in the world oil market, over which
> control translates into the ability to manipulate oil prices.
>
> NATO is a military formation, and the United States exerts the
> controlling interest in it. It seemed like a form without a function,
> but it remedied
that
> pretty quickly.
>
> Then when Yugoslavia refused to play ball with the International
> Monetary Fund, the US and Germany began a systematic campaign of
> destabilization there, even using some of the veterans of Afghanistan
> in that campaign.
>
> NATO became the military arm of that agenda-the break-up of Yugoslavia
into
> compliant statelets, the further containment of the former Soviet
> Union, and the future pipeline easement for Caspain Sea oil to Western
> European markets through Kosovo.
>
> You see, this is important to understand, and people-even those
> against
the
> war talk-are tending to overlook the significance of it. NATO is not a
> guarantor of international law, and it is not a humanitarian
> organization.
>
> It is a military alliance with one very dominant partner. And it can
> no longer claim to be a defensive alliance against European
> socialists. It is
an
> instrument of military aggression.
>
> NATO is the organization that is now going to thrust further along the
40th
> parallel from the Balkans through the Southern Asian Republics of the
> former Soviet Union. The US military has already taken control of a
> base
in
> Uzbekistan. No one is talking about how what we are doing seems to be
> a very logical extension of a strategy that was already in motion, and
> has been in motion for two decades. Once we recognize the pattern of
> activity designed to simultaneously consolidate control over Middle
> Eastern and South Asian oil, and contain and colonize the former
> Soviet Union, Afghanistan is exactly where they need to go to pursue
> that agenda.
>
> Afghanistan borders Iran, India, and even China but, more importantly,
> the Central Asian Republics of the former Soviet Union, Uzbekistan,
> Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. These border Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan
> borders Russia. Turkmenistan sits on the Southeastern quadrant of the
> Caspian Sea, whose oil the Bush Administration dearly covets.
>
> Afghanistan is necessary for two things: as a base of operations to
> begin the process of destabilizing, breaking off, and establishing
> control over the South Asian Republics, which will begin within the
> next 18-24 months in my opinion, and constructing a pipeline through
> Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan to deliver petroleum to the
> Asian market.
>
> The BBC was recently told by Niaz Naik, a Pakistani Foreign Secretary,
that
> senior American officials were warning them as early as mid-July that
> military action for mid-October was being planned for Afghanistan. In
1996,
> the Department of Energy was issuing reports on the desirability of a
> pipeline through Afghanistan, and in 1998, Unocal testified before the
> House Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific that this pipeline was
> crucial
to
> transport Caspian Basin oil to the Indian Ocean.
>
> Given this evidence that a military operation to secure at least a
> portion of Afghanistan has been on the table, possibly as early as
> five years ago,
I
> can't help but conclude that the actions we are seeing put into motion
> now are part of a pre-September 11th agenda. I'm absolutely sure of
> that, in fact. The planning alone for operations, of this scale, that
> are now
taking
> shape, would take many months. And we are seeing them take shape in
> mere weeks.
>
> It defies common sense. This administration is lying about this whole
thing
> being a "reaction" to September 11th. That leads me, in short order,
> to be very suspicious of their yet-to-be-provided evidence that
> someone in Afghanistan is responsible. It's just too damn convenient.
> Which also leads me to wonder-just for the sake of knowing-what
> actually did happen
on
> September 11th, and who actually is responsible.
>
> The so-called evidence is a farce. The US presented Tony Blair's
> puppet government with the evidence, and of the 70 so-called points of
> evidence, only nine even referred to the attacks on the World Trade
Center,
> and those points were conjectural. This is a bullshit story from
> beginning to end. Presented with the available facts, any 16-year old
> with a liking for courtroom dramas could tear this story apart like a
two-dollar
> shirt. But our corporate press regurgitates it uncritically. But then,
> as we should know by now, their role is to legitimize.
>
> This cartoon heavy they've turned bin Laden into makes no sense, when
> you begin to appreciate the complexity and synchronicity of the
> attacks. As a former military person who's been involved in the
> development of countless operations orders over the years, I can tell
> you that this was a very sophisticated and costly enterprise that
> would have left what we call a huge "signature".
>
> In other words, it would be very hard to effectively conceal.
>
> So there's a real question about why there was no warning of this.
> That
can
> be a question about the efficacy of the government's intelligence
> apparatus. That can be a question about various policies in the
> various agencies that had to be duped to orchestrate this action. And
> it can also
be
> a question about whether or not there was foreknowledge of the event,
> and that foreknowledge is being covered up. To dismiss this concern
> out of hand as the rantings of conspiracy nuts is premature. And there
> is a history of this kind of thing being done by national political
> bosses, including the darling of liberals, Franklin Roosevelt. The
> evidence is very compelling that the Roosevelt Administration
> deliberately failed to act to stop Pearl
> Harbor in order to mobilize enough national anger to enter the World War
II.
>
> 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.
>
> Follow along:
>
> Four planes get hijacked and deviate from their flight plans, all the
while
> on FAA radar. The planes are all hijacked between 7:45 and 8:10 AM
> Eastern Daylight Time.
>
> 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 teachers.
>
> By 8:45, when American Airlines Flight 11 crashes into the World Trade
> Center, Bush is settling in with children for his photo ops at Booker
> Elementary. Four planes have obviously been hijacked simultaneously,
> an event never before seen in history, and one has just dived into the
> worlds best know twin towers, and still no one notifies the nominal
> Commander in Chief.
>
> No one has apparently scrambled any Air Force interceptors either.
>
> At 9:03, United Flight 175 crashes into the remaining World Trade
> Center building. At 9:05, Andrew Card, the Presidential Chief of Staff
> whispers
to
> George W. Bush. Bush "briefly turns somber" according to reporters.
>
> Does he cancel the school visit and convene an emergency meeting? No.
>
> He resumes listening to second graders read about a little girl's pet
> fucking goat, and continues this 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 Chief of Staff 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 already have figured
> out;
that
> there's been an attack by hijacked planes on the World Trade Center.
>
> There's a hijacked plane bee-lining to Washington, but has the Air
> Force been scrambled to defend anything yet? No.
>
> At 9:30, when he makes his announcement, American Flight 77 is still
> ten minutes from its target, the Pentagon.
>
> The Administration will later claim they had no way of knowing that
> the Pentagon might be a target, and that they thought Flight 77 was
> headed to the White House, but the fact is that the plane has already
> flown South
and
> past the White House no-fly zone, and is in fact tearing through the
> sky at over 400 nauts.
>
> At 9:35, this plane conducts another turn, 360 degrees 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 last 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 into the side of this building at 460 nauts.
>
> 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
> I-40 at rush hour by buying her a video driving game. It's horse shit!
>
> There is a story being constructed about these events. My crystal ball
> is not working today, so I can't say why.
>
> But at the least, this so-called Commander-in-Chief and his staff that
> we are all supposed to follow blindly into some ill-defined war on
> terrorism
is
> criminally negligent or unspeakably stupid. And at the worst, if more
> is known or was known, and there is an effort to conceal the facts,
> there is
a
> criminal conspiracy going on.
>
> Certainly, the Bush de facto administration was facing a confluence of
> crises from which they were temporarily rescued by this event. Whether
they
> played a sinister role or not, there is little doubt that they have at
> the very least opportunistically pounced on this attack to overcome
> their lack
of
> legitimacy, to shift the blame for the encroaching recession from
> capitalism to the September 11th terror attack, to legitimize their
> pre-existing foreign policy agenda, and to establish and consolidate
> repressive
measures
> domestically and silence dissent. In many ways, September 11th pulled
> the Bush cookies out of the fire.
>
> And given them the green light to begin constructing a long-term
> scenario within which to establish fascistic control measures at home
> and abroad as a citadel for the ruling class in the catastrophic
> conjuncture that we are entering based on the end of oil.
>
> This elephant in the living room is being studiously ignored. In fact,
> the domestic repression has already begun, officially and
> unofficially. It's
kind
> of a latter day McCarthyism. I participated in a teach-in at Chapel
> Hill, North Carolina, on the 17th of September, and though not a
> single person
on
> the panel excused or justified the attacks, and every person there
> offered either condolences and prayers for the victims, we were
> excoriated within two days as "enemies of America." Yesterday an op-ed
> called for my deportation (to where, one can only guess). Now Herr
> Ashcroft is fast
tracking
> the biggest abrogation of US civil liberties since the so-called
> anti-terrorism legislation after the Oklahoma City bombing - which by
> the way hasn't resulted in anti-terrorism but in the acceleration of
> the application of the racist death penalty. The FBI has defined
> terrorist groups not by
whether
> any given group has ever acted as terrorists, but by their beliefs.
> Some socialists and anti-globalization groups have already been
> identified by name as terrorist groups, even though there is not a
> single shred of evidence that they have ever participated in any
> criminal activity. It reminds me of the Smith Act that was finally
> declared unconstitutional, but only
after
> a hell of a lot of people served a hell of a long time in jail for the
crime of
> thinking.
>
> I think this also points to yet another huge problems that the Bush
> regime was facing. Worldwide resistance to the whole so-called
> neoliberal agenda, which is a prettied up term for debt-leverage
> imperialism. While debt and the threat of sanctions has been used to
> coerce nations in the periphery, we have to understand that the final
> guarantor of compliance remains military action. For a global economic
> agenda, there is always a corresponding political and military agenda.
>
> The focal point of these actions in the short term is Southern Asia,
> but they have already scripted this as a worldwide and protracted
> fight
against
> terrorism.
>
> It's far better than drug wars as a rationalization, and the drug war
thing
> was being discredited in any case. Leftists are regaining power and
> popularity in Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Colombia,
> the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Brazil, and Argentina. Cuba has gained
> immense prestige over the last few years. The empire is beginning to
> unravel. We can hardly justify intervention in these places by saying
> they
are
> not towing the economic line by allowing the absolute domination of
> their societies by transnational corporations. That exposes the
> agenda. So we simply claim they are supporting terrorism.
>
> It's for all these reasons I say the left has missed the boat on this
> one, by allowing them to get away with rushing past the question of
> who did
what
> on September 11th. If the official story is a lie, and I think the
> circumstantial case is strong enough to stay with this question, then
> we really do need to know what happened. And we need to understand
> concretely what the motives of this administration are.
>
> And we need to understand more than just their immediate motives, but
where
> the larger social forces that underwrite our situation right now are
> headed. I do not think this administration is engaged in the
> deliberative process of a political grouping that is on top of their
> game. They are
putting
> together some very deliberative technical solutions in response to a
larger
> situation that it slipping rapidly out of their control. Like clear
cutting.
> There's a very smart technology being employed to do a very dumb
> thing.
>
> What they are responding to is not September 11th, but the beginning
> of a permanent and precipitous decline in worldwide oil production,
> the beginning of a deep and protracted worldwide recession, and the
> unraveling of the empire.
>
> This brings me to a point about what all this means for Americans'
> security, which they are perfectly justified to worry about. The
> actions
being
> prepared by this administration will not only not enhance our
> security, it will significantly degrade it. Military action against
> many groups across
the
> globe, which is what the administration is telling us quite openly
> they
are
> planning to do, will put a lot of backs against the wall. That can't
> be
very
> secure.
>
> The concept of war being touted here is a violation of the principles
> of war on several counts, and will inevitably lead to military
> catastrophes,
if
> you're inclined to view this from a position of moral and political
neutrality.
>
> And the people who are now in possession of half the world's remaining
> oil reserves are subject to destabilization for which we can't even
> pretend to predict the consequences-but loss of access to critical
> energy supplies is certainly within the realm of possibility. Worst of
> all, we will be destabilizing Pakistan, a nuclear power in an active
> conflict with its neighbor, and we will be provoking Russia, another
> nuclear power. The
security
> stakes don't get any higher, and Americans can ill afford to ignore
> nukes.
>
> And I think that this domestic agenda is a tremendous threat to the
> security of anyone who is critical of the government or their
> corporate financiers, and we already know that the real threats are
> against populations that can easily be scapegoated as the domestic
> crisis deepens.
>
> There is a very real threat right now of creeping fascism in this
> country, and that phenomenon requires its domestic enemies.
> Historically those enemies have included leftists, trade unionists,
> and racially and nationally oppressed sectors. This whole "state of
> emergency" mentality is already being used to quiet the public
> discourses of anti-racism, of feminism, of environmentalism, and of
> both socialism and anarchism. And
while
> there is token resistance by officials to anti-Muslim xenophobia, the
> stereotypical images have saturated the media, and the government is
already
> beginning to openly re-instate racial profiling. It is only a short
> step from there to go after other groups. We have long been prepared
> by the ideologies of overt and covert racism, and racism as both
> institution and corresponding psychology in the United States is
> nearly intractable.
>
> It's for all these reasons that I say emphatically that we can not
> accept anything from this administration; not their policies nor their
> bullshit stories. What they are doing is very, very dangerous, and the
> time to fight back against them, openly, is right now, before they can
> consolidate their
power
> and their agenda. Once they have done that, our job becomes much more
> difficult.
>
> The left, if it has the capacity to self-organize out of its oblivion,
> needs to understand its critical roles here. We have to play the role
> of credible, hard-working, and non-sectarian partners in a broader
> peace-movement. We have to study, synthesize, and describe our current
> historical conjuncture. And we have to prepare leadership for the
> decisive conflict that will emerge to first defeat fascism then take
> political power.
>
> Rosa Luxemburg's words are truer than ever right now. We are not faced
with
> a choice between socialism and capitalism, but socialism or barbarism.
>
> And what we can least afford are denial and timidity.
>
> ***************
> "Who are we calling terrorists here? Outsiders can destroy airplanes
> and buildings, but it is only we, the people, who have the power to
> demolish our own ideals."
>
> --Barbara Kingsolver
> ****************
