The Great 9/11 Coincidence
Jon Rappoport | May 13, 2003
911dossier notes:
The US National Reconnaissance Office, which operates spy satellites, was conducting a simulation of a plane crash into their headquarters (near Dulles Airport in Virginia) on Sept. 11! Here are some articles and further sources. In a nutshell the allegation is: the exercise was deliberately planned as a smokescreen for the 9/11 attacks. Note there are inconsistencies in these reports: was Cheney really in charge? Was the exercise for a hijack or an accidental crash?
The piece by Jon Rappoport is appended with various relevant pieces.
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The Great 9/11 Coincidence
Jon Rappoport
May 13, 2003
[Original page source: http://www.questionsquestions.net/docs04/0514_coincidence.html]
On August 22, 2002, the Associated Press ran a story about 9/11. "Agency planned drill for plane crash last Sept. 11."
"...one US intelligence agency [NRO, National Reconnaissance Office] was planning an exercise last Sept. 11 [2001] in which an errant aircraft crashed into one of its buildings."
The same morning. As. The 9/11 attacks.
According to the NRO, their exercise was canceled when the real thing began. Barbara Honegger, who worked in the White House under Reagan, points out another coincidence. Researching press reports, she found a 9/16/01 Washington Post story about the pilot of AA flight 77 that, on the morning of 9/11, was said to have crashed into the Pentagon.
The pilot, Charles Burlingame, an ex- F4 Navy flyer, had, as his last Navy mission, helped craft Pentagon response plans in the event of a commercial airliner hitting the Pentagon.
Pilot drafts plan for response to Pentagon hit. Pilot winds up on plane that hits Pentagon.
Honegger states that Dick Cheney was ultimately in charge of the NRO exercise on the morning of 9/11. He was in the White House Situation Room for that purpose.
How do you like all these apples?
The limited hangout on this would be: "The hijackers had found out about the upcoming 9/11 mock exercise. They ran their op on top of that, hoping the confusion between Real and Mock would keep the US government from responding to the actual attacks."
Or, one could take this another step: NRO uses many CIA employees. Some element of the CIA was involved in the tactics of the actual 9/11 attacks. All the above coincidences certainly defy the laws of probability. Since AP eventually ran a story right out in the open about the mock exercise, one would think the Hill would have exploded in outrage. A hearing would have been held pronto. The "bizarre coincidence" would have become front-page news for a week or so.
Didn't happen.
The uncanny ability of the press to suppress---by sheer accident---a story that could have taken the lid off Washington---THAT should have become a story in itself as well.
Didn't happen.
Where did AP get its story from? It got it from a classic limited hangout, revealed in an announcement, in 2002, about an upcoming Homeland Security conference to be held in Chicago. One of the key speakers at the conference would be John Fulton, a CIA officer who worked for NRO. The announcement reads: "On the morning of September 11, 2001, Mr Fulton and his team...were running a pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building. Little did they know that the scenario would come true in a dramatic way that day."
Sure.
NRO/CIA/Cheney/the White House were nervous about this story coming to light. So a limited hangout was arranged. The conference brochure would admit to part of the truth. Mayor Rudy of NYC was the main speaker at the conference. Perfect.
As in, "See, we're giving you a fascinating tidbit about 9/11. Why in the world would we do this if there were more to the whole thing? We've got Rudy himself on the podium. Don't you think he would go nuts if there were more to this, if his city had been devastated as part of some plan in which the federal government were actually INVOLVED?"
Worked like a charm.
It should be noted that, right after 9/11, the White House denied that the intelligence community had any clue that a-plane-into-a-building was a possible terrorist scenario. When, in fact, a mock exercise for exactly that eventuality was in progress on the morning of 9/11.
There is one other possibility here we need to consider. On the morning of 9/11, THERE WAS NO MOCK EXERCISE UNDERWAY. The whole idea of such an exercise was fabricated to explain otherwise mind-boggling communications traffic among intelligence and military and civilian agencies of the US government----traffic that would have exposed the complete and casual disregard for the very real events that were underway in the air.
"Oh, all THOSE messages? They were just part of the mock exercise. They had nothing to do with the real thing. We were slow to catch on that the actual attacks were happening, because we had this practice deal running. What a coincidence."
When events like 9/11 occur, if you underestimate the devious quality of the cover stories, you can miss the true thread.
JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com
http://www.questionsquestions.net/topics/question.html
today's question...
Brian Salter, qq editor
5 June 2003: Why were 3000 NRO employees sent home after 9/11? There have been a number of disinfo limited hangouts floating around, all of them designed to offer apparently revealing inside details of 9/11 but actually serving the purpose of whitewashing evidence of US govt. complicity. One which has been hanging around for a while centers on the terrorist training exercise that the NRO (National Reconnaissance Office) had scheduled the same morning of the attacks. The super-secret NRO happens to be the agency which operates US spy satellites.
A mainstream article about it is here:
http://www.boston.com/news/packages/sept11/anniversary/wire_stories/0903_plane_exercise.htm
The limited hangout build around this is that the 9/11 "terrorists" somehow learned about the secret exercise in advance, and "piggybacked" their own attack on the same date in order to confuse US defences. This is used as a supposed explanation for lack of action on prior warnings, failure of air defences to operate, etc, on the assumption that military and intel personnel thought that everything going on was part of the "exercise". I don't know of any serious 9/11 researcher who finds this a credible overall theory, given the fact that there is an abundance of evidence pointing beyond such a scenario, to official complicity and specific prior knowledge.
This has been discussed very thoroughly among researchers.
That aside, there is an interesting detail in the above article:
"The National Reconnaissance Office operates many of the nation's spy satellites. It draws its personnel from the military and the CIA.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, most of the 3,000 people who work at agency headquarters were sent home, save for some essential personnel, Haubold said."
Sent home... why?? Recently, I heard one alternative speculation about this which deserves some inquiry. Namely, that certain high-ranking NRO staff may have needed this time to eliminate or alter satellite surveillance of the Washington, DC area during the attacks. Note that it has been alleged for years that the US has 24 hour high resolution satellite monitoring of the capitol and surrounding regions, where critical government institutions are located. If so, there would then be a record of Flight 77's flight path and impact. Would there be something there to hide?
With the recent 9/11 Commission hearings on 9/11 air defences having stirred up debate, this is perhaps something to consider.
"Amalgam Virgo 01" NORAD exercise just prior to 911
http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/09/149985_comment.php
Amalgam Virgo was a multiagency, bilateral air security exercise sponsored by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)
http://sf.indymedia.org/uploads/tab_01_report_of_ftx_amalgum_virgo_01_30_june_2001.pdf
The one in this pdf report happened just prior to 9/11 in the summer of 2001. They didn't know about the attack? So they say.
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jun2002/n06042002_200206043.html
NORAD-Sponsored Exercise Prepares For Worst-Case Scenarios This year's exercise is a commercial airliner-hijacking scenario -- planned before the Sept. 11 attacks, Snyder said. Last year's exercise, he said, was a scenario involving a cruise missile launched by "a rogue (government) or somebody" from a barge off the East Coast.
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/AVE_STE.html -
more on Amalgam Virgo and other pre-911 war games (military, biowar, financial crash)
from AMALGAM VIRGO 01 military exercise, June 1 - 2, 2001 (unclassified report)
note the obvious implication of a potential terrorist attack against the US Capitol building in the graphic on the right side (most of the report is about the military response to a cruise missile launched by terrorists into the US - the picture of the Capitol building is the only photo of a potential "target" in the report, although there are graphics simulating an attack on Gulf of Mexico area target)
http://www.oilempire.us/graphics/amalgam.jpg
cover page of Amalgam Virgo report
http://www.oilempire.us/graphics/amalgam-virgo.jpg
page 34 of report
Contingency planning Pentagon MASCAL exercise simulates scenarios in preparing for emergencies
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/linkscopy/ContPlanP.html
archive of article by Military District of Washington on emergency response planning for a plane hitting the Pentagon
A plane crash is simulated inside the cardboard courtyard of a surprisingly realistic-looking model Pentagon. This "tabletop" exercise was designed to help emergency relief personnel better prepare for disasters when they occur.
http://www.oilempire.us/graphics/Ex_sim1.jpg
http://www.oilempire.us/graphics/Ex_sim2.jpg
"Feature: The U.S. Government, Not the Hijackers, 'Chose' the Date of the 9-11 Attacks"
by Barbara Honegger http://www.911pi.com/honneger.htm
This is a curious article - it discusses the NRO / CIA "simulation" of the plane crash into the NRO headquarters and supposes that the "terrorists" learned of this exercise and then chose to time their attack when the US air defense system would think that it was merely a simulation, ensuring the real attack's success. It is just as likely that the "simulation" exercise was used by elements in the military / intelligence agencies to distract the air defense apparatus to ensure that the attack would actually succeed. This alternate interpretation is consistent with the theory that the Bush-Cheney administration (and the forces they represent) either saw the attacks coming and chose to let them happen, if not actually planned them.
In other words, the "exercise" could have been the means to confuse those "not in the know" for a critical few minutes in order to let the "American Reichstag Fire" happen. The "piggy back" theory (the hijackers took advantage of the "exercise") doesn't seem to explain the Air Force's curious lethargy during the half-hour between the Second Tower being struck and the Pentagon attack, or why the Pentagon just happened to be hit in the one place that was almost empty ... Andrews AFB is about ten miles from the Pentagon ...
Barbara Honegger gained her 15 minutes of fame in the late 1980s when she quit her post in the Reagan White House and wrote the book "October Surprise," which discussed the 1980 deal between George H.W. Bush and the Iranian revolutionary Islamic regime that was holding US diplomats hostage. Since then, a few other books have been written that talk about the deal, but few politicians have been willing to discuss the "original sin" of the Bush administration - the Reagan/Bush campaign's weapons deal with Ayatollah Khomeini to DELAY the release of the hostages until after the 1980 election to ensure Carter's defeat. In most countries, this would be called a coup d'etat.
book reviews of three books about October Surprise
http://www.namebase.org/books59.html
Honegger, Barbara. October Surprise. New York: Tudor, 1989. 323 pages.
Parry, Robert. Trick or Treason: The October Surprise Mystery. New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1993. 350 pages.
Sick, Gary. October Surprise: America's Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan. New York: Times Books - Random House, 1991. 278 pages.
www.washington-report.org/backissues/0591/9105011.htm 1980 October Surprise (Reagan/Bush deal with Iran to delay hostage release until after the 1980 Reagan-Carter election)
A web search on "Octopus" and "Danny Casolaro" will also add to this. "On October 19, 1980, Bush was dealing with Khomeini!"
http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/xfile.html
several articles on the October Surprise
Subject: [911truthalliance] Vital Context for May 2001 plane-into-Pentagon emergency response exercise
Hi, Paul -- Fri. 3/28 1:30 p.m.
To place your below-attached ) 9-11 Timeline entry on the Pentagon's May 2001 emergency response exercise on what to do if the Pentagon were hit by a plane:
May 2001 (J): U.S. Medicine magazine later reports:
"Though the Department of Defense had no capability in place to protect the Pentagon from an ersatz guided missile in the form of a hijacked 757 airliner, DoD [Department of Defense] medical personnel trained for exactly that scenario in May (2001)." The tri-Service DiLorenzo Health Care Clinic and the Air Force Flight Medicine Clinic train inside the Pentagon this month "to fine-tune their emergency preparedness." [US Medicine, Oct. 2001].
into vital context:
1) Pres. Bush publicly announced the appointment of Vice President Cheney to head a new interagency task force on counterterrorism preparedness and emergency response early that same month--on May 8, 2001 (TIME cover story, "The Secret History of 9-11"); and, therefore, in all probability (which is discoverable), the "May 2001" exercise in the below timeline entry was either the first or one of the first actions of that very Cheney counterterrorism response and preparedness Task Force. It is critical to the importance of this connection to note that, after 9-11, the White House felt compelled to lie and deny what on its face should be seen as a positive "we did the right thing and practiced protecting ourselves", and told TIME magazine that the Cheney counterterrorism response task force 'had never been activated' -- a completely noncredible claim given that a) the World Trade Center had already been attacked once on U.S. soil, in 1993; and b) that top Bush Administration officials had been urgently briefed and warned about the "#1 threat to the U.S." of Al Qaeda, bin Laden, etc. even before taking office in January; and c) that part of this now-known pre-inauguration briefing was almost surely the now-just-being-revealed fact (Judicial Watch lawsuit) that Oklahoma City bombing co-conspirator Terry Nichols met in the Philippines with first WTC bomber Ramzi Yousef, 9-11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's (KSM's) nephew, and therefore that Yousef's and KSM's then-already-well-known massive "Bojinka" plot to bomb eleven U.S. airliners (or "use them as bombs") was surely briefed to incoming NSC adviser Rice, Bush, Cheney, etc.
2) The Washington Post reported, in a page 1 story shortly after 9-11, that a Pentagon medic was reading a new Pentagon emergency response manual for what to do in case the building was struck by a civilian airliner just before the Pentagon plane struck the bldg.;
3) The second emergency response exercise to a plane-into-building scenario was on the morning of 9-11 itself, at (at least) the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) headed by a top CIA officer.
4) the main pilot of the 9-11 Pentagon plane, former Navy and then Navy Reservist pilot Charles Burlingame, had recently, in a Reserve assignment at the Pentagon, been part of a Task Force that drafted the Pentagon's emergency response plan on what to do in case a plane hit the building -- which his own plane then did. It is therefore very possible -- in fact extremely likely, if not certain -- that this 'task force' that Flight 77 pilot "Chick" Burlingame was part of was the Cheney counterterrorism preparedness task force, and that the Pentagon plane pilot, therefore, directly knew and even worked with/for Cheney. and
5) Burlingame's 9-11 Pentagon plane not only hit the Pentagon that morning, it struck a Command and Control center for that morning's counterterrorism 'game' exercise, killing most, if not all, of the 'players'. We know this because Army personnel from Ft. Monmouth, New Jersey were on special duty assignment at the Pentagon that morning for an emergency response exercise and were killed when Burlingame's plane hit. Ft. Monmouth, New Jersey also happens to be the headquarters for White House/Presidential communications, including therefore probably also for Air Force One (this is discoverable) -- and recall the warning "Air Force One is next" and the 'secret code' which was called into the White House that morning which WH press secretary Ari Fleischer revealed as a means of explaining why Pres. Bush left Florida for a military base and did not return to the White House. This 'warning' was probably called into the White House, if true, by either the Ft. Monmouth White House communications headquarters and/or the Ft. Monmouth counterterrorism exercise 'game' players temporarily at the Pentagon that morning.
This nexus is completely and totally beyond coincidence, and is the real reason that all facts that could reveal the context in which it can be easily understood by the public are being ruthlessly classified/hidden, as well as the real reason the White House is trying to stifle/kill the Kean/Hamilton 9-11 Commission by delaying release of the classified House/Senate 9-11 Inquiry report, delay/reduce requested funding, etc.
Barbara
http://www.oilempire.us/graphics/nro-banner.gif
On 9/11, CIA Was Running Simulation of a Plane Crashing into a Building
http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/cia-simulation.htm
Was the NRO drill just a coincidence?
http://www.rumormillnews.net/cgi-bin/config.pl?read=25255
Agency planned exercise on Sept. 11built around a plane crashing into a building
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2002/08/21/national1518EDT0686.DTL
JOHN J. LUMPKIN, Associated Press Writer Wednesday, August 21, 2002
(08-21) 15:08 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --
In what the government describes as a bizarre coincidence, one U.S. intelligence agency was planning an exercise last Sept. 11 in which an errant aircraft would crash into one of its buildings. But the cause wasn't terrorism -- it was to be a simulated accident. ....
911 Dossier : The Great 9/11 Coincidence
Tuesday, May 13, 2003
Filed under
Dick Cheney,
Iran,
Ramzi Yousef
by Winter Patriot
on Tuesday, May 13, 2003
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Washington Monthly : Practice to Deceive
Tuesday, April 15, 2003
Practice to Deceive
Chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks' nightmare scenario--it's their plan
by Joshua Micah Marshall | April 2003
Imagine it's six months from now. The Iraq war is over. After an initial burst of joy and gratitude at being liberated from Saddam's rule, the people of Iraq are watching, and waiting, and beginning to chafe under American occupation. Across the border, in Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, our conquering presence has brought street protests and escalating violence. The United Nations and NATO are in disarray, so America is pretty much on its own. Hemmed in by budget deficits at home and limited financial assistance from allies, the Bush administration is talking again about tapping Iraq's oil reserves to offset some of the costs of the American presence--talk that is further inflaming the region. Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence has discovered fresh evidence that, prior to the war, Saddam moved quantities of biological and chemical weapons to Syria. When Syria denies having such weapons, the administration starts massing troops on the Syrian border. But as they begin to move, there is an explosion: Hezbollah terrorists from southern Lebanon blow themselves up in a Baghdad restaurant, killing dozens of Western aid workers and journalists. Knowing that Hezbollah has cells in America, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge puts the nation back on Orange Alert. FBI agents start sweeping through mosques, with a new round of arrests of Saudis, Pakistanis, Palestinians, and Yemenis.
To most Americans, this would sound like a frightening state of affairs, the kind that would lead them to wonder how and why we had got ourselves into this mess in the first place. But to the Bush administration hawks who are guiding American foreign policy, this isn't the nightmare scenario. It's everything going as anticipated.
In their view, invasion of Iraq was not merely, or even primarily, about getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Nor was it really about weapons of mass destruction, though their elimination was an important benefit. Rather, the administration sees the invasion as only the first move in a wider effort to reorder the power structure of the entire Middle East. Prior to the war, the president himself never quite said this openly. But hawkish neoconservatives within his administration gave strong hints. In February, Undersecretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating Iraq, the United States would "deal with" Iran, Syria, and North Korea. Meanwhile, neoconservative journalists have been channeling the administration's thinking. Late last month, The Weekly Standard's Jeffrey Bell reported that the administration has in mind a "world war between the United States and a political wing of Islamic fundamentalism ... a war of such reach and magnitude [that] the invasion of Iraq, or the capture of top al Qaeda commanders, should be seen as tactical events in a series of moves and countermoves stretching well into the future."
In short, the administration is trying to roll the table--to use U.S. military force, or the threat of it, to reform or topple virtually every regime in the region, from foes like Syria to friends like Egypt, on the theory that it is the undemocratic nature of these regimes that ultimately breeds terrorism. So events that may seem negative--Hezbollah for the first time targeting American civilians; U.S. soldiers preparing for war with Syria--while unfortunate in themselves, are actually part of the hawks' broader agenda. Each crisis will draw U.S. forces further into the region and each countermove in turn will create problems that can only be fixed by still further American involvement, until democratic governments--or, failing that, U.S. troops--rule the entire Middle East.
There is a startling amount of deception in all this--of hawks deceiving the American people, and perhaps in some cases even themselves. While it's conceivable that bold American action could democratize the Middle East, so broad and radical an initiative could also bring chaos and bloodshed on a massive scale. That all too real possibility leads most establishment foreign policy hands, including many in the State Department, to view the Bush plan with alarm. Indeed, the hawks' record so far does not inspire confidence. Prior to the invasion, for instance, they predicted that if the United States simply announced its intention to act against Saddam regardless of how the United Nations voted, most of our allies, eager to be on our good side, would support us. Almost none did. Yet despite such grave miscalculations, the hawks push on with their sweeping new agenda.
Like any group of permanent Washington revolutionaries fueled by visions of a righteous cause, the neocons long ago decided that criticism from the establishment isn't a reason for self-doubt but the surest sign that they're on the right track. But their confidence also comes from the curious fact that much of what could go awry with their plan will also serve to advance it. A full-scale confrontation between the United States and political Islam, they believe, is inevitable, so why not have it now, on our terms, rather than later, on theirs? Actually, there are plenty of good reasons not to purposely provoke a series of crises in the Middle East. But that's what the hawks are setting in motion, partly on the theory that the worse things get, the more their approach becomes the only plausible solution.
Moral Cloudiness
Ever since the neocons burst upon the public policy scene 30 years ago, their movement has been a marriage of moral idealism, military assertiveness, and deception. Back in the early 1970s, this group of then-young and still mostly Democratic political intellectuals grew alarmed by the post-Vietnam Democrats' seeming indifference to the Soviet threat. They were equally appalled, however, by the amoral worldview espoused by establishment Republicans like Henry Kissinger, who sought co-existence with the Soviet Union. As is often the case with ex-socialists, the neocons were too familiar with communist tactics to ignore or romanticize communism's evils. The fact that many neocons were Jewish, and outraged by Moscow's increasingly visible persecution of Jews, also caused them to reject both the McGovernite and Kissingerian tendencies to ignore such abuses.
In Ronald Reagan, the neocons found a politician they could embrace. Like them, Reagan spoke openly about the evils of communism and, at least on the peripheries of the Cold War, preferred rollback to coexistence. Neocons filled the Reagan administration, and men like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Frank Gaffney, and others provided the intellectual ballast and moral fervor for the sharp turn toward confrontation that the United States adopted in 1981.
But achieving moral clarity often requires hiding certain realities. From the beginning, the neocons took a much more alarmist view of Soviet capacities and intentions than most experts. As late as 1980, the ur-neocon Norman Podhoretz warned of the imminent "Finlandization of America, the political and economic subordination of the United States to superior Soviet power," even raising the possibility that America's only options might be "surrender or war." We now know, of course, that U.S. intelligence estimates, which many neocons thought underestimated the magnitude and durability of Soviet power, in fact wildly overestimated them.
This willingness to deceive--both themselves and others--expanded as neocons grew more comfortable with power. Many spent the Reagan years orchestrating bloody wars against Soviet proxies in the Third World, portraying thugs like the Nicaraguan Contras and plain murderers like Jonas Savimbi of Angola as "freedom fighters." The nadir of this deceit was the Iran-Contra scandal, for which Podhoretz's son-in-law, Elliot Abrams, pled guilty to perjury. Abrams was later pardoned by Bush's father, and today, he runs Middle East policy in the Bush White House.
But in the end, the Soviet Union did fall. And the hawks' policy of confrontation did contribute to its collapse. So too, of course, did the economic and military rot most of the hawks didn't believe in, and the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev, whom neocons such as Richard Perle counseled Reagan not to trust. But the neocons did not dwell on what they got wrong. Rather, the experience of having played a hand in the downfall of so great an evil led them to the opposite belief: that it's okay to be spectacularly wrong, even brazenly deceptive about the details, so long as you have moral vision and a willingness to use force.
What happened in the 1990s further reinforced that mindset. Hawks like Perle and William Kristol pulled their hair out when Kissingerians like Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell left Saddam's regime in place after the first Gulf War. They watched with mounting fury as terrorist attacks by Muslim fundamentalists claimed more and more American and Israeli lives. They considered the Oslo accords an obvious mistake (how can you negotiate with a man like Yasir Arafat?), and as the decade progressed they became increasingly convinced that there was a nexus linking burgeoning terrorism and mounting anti-Semitism with repressive but nominally "pro-American" regimes like Saudi Arabia and Egypt. In 1996, several of the hawks--including Perle--even tried to sell Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the idea that Israel should attack Saddam on its own--advice Netanyahu wisely declined. When the Oslo process crumbled and Saudi Arabian terrorists killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11, the hawks felt, not without some justification, that they had seen this danger coming all along, while others had ignored it. The timing was propitious, because in September 2001 many already held jobs with a new conservative president willing to hear their pitch.
Prime Minister bin Laden
The pitch was this: The Middle East today is like the Soviet Union 30 years ago. Politically warped fundamentalism is the contemporary equivalent of communism or fascism. Terrorists with potential access to weapons of mass destruction are like an arsenal pointed at the United States. The primary cause of all this danger is the Arab world's endemic despotism, corruption, poverty, and economic stagnation. Repressive regimes channel dissent into the mosques, where the hopeless and disenfranchised are taught a brand of Islam that combines anti-modernism, anti-Americanism, and a worship of violence that borders on nihilism. Unable to overthrow their own authoritarian rulers, the citizenry turns its fury against the foreign power that funds and supports these corrupt regimes to maintain stability and access to oil: the United States. As Johns Hopkins University professor Fouad Ajami recently wrote in Foreign Affairs, "The great indulgence granted to the ways and phobias of Arabs has reaped a terrible harvest"--terrorism. Trying to "manage" this dysfunctional Islamic world, as Clinton attempted and Colin Powell counsels us to do, is as foolish, unproductive, and dangerous as détente was with the Soviets, the hawks believe. Nor is it necessary, given the unparalleled power of the American military. Using that power to confront Soviet communism led to the demise of that totalitarianism and the establishment of democratic (or at least non-threatening) regimes from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea to the Bering Strait. Why not use that same power to upend the entire corrupt Middle East edifice and bring liberty, democracy, and the rule of law to the Arab world?
The hawks' grand plan differs depending on whom you speak to, but the basic outline runs like this: The United States establishes a reasonably democratic, pro-Western government in Iraq--assume it falls somewhere between Turkey and Jordan on the spectrum of democracy and the rule of law. Not perfect, representative democracy, certainly, but a system infinitely preferable to Saddam's. The example of a democratic Iraq will radically change the political dynamics of the Middle East. When Palestinians see average Iraqis beginning to enjoy real freedom and economic opportunity, they'll want the same themselves. With that happy prospect on one hand and implacable United States will on the other, they'll demand that the Palestinian Authority reform politically and negotiate with Israel. That in turn will lead to a real peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians. A democratic Iraq will also hasten the fall of the fundamentalist Shi'a mullahs in Iran, whose citizens are gradually adopting anti-fanatic, pro-Western sympathies. A democratized Iran would create a string of democratic, pro-Western governments (Turkey, Iraq, and Iran) stretching across the historical heartland of Islam. Without a hostile Iraq towering over it, Jordan's pro-Western Hashemite monarchy would likely come into full bloom. Syria would be no more than a pale reminder of the bad old days. (If they made trouble, a U.S. invasion would take care of them, too.) And to the tiny Gulf emirates making hesitant steps toward democratization, the corrupt regimes of Saudi Arabia and Egypt would no longer look like examples of stability and strength in a benighted region, but holdouts against the democratic tide. Once the dust settles, we could decide whether to ignore them as harmless throwbacks to the bad old days or deal with them, too. We'd be in a much stronger position to do so since we'd no longer require their friendship to help us manage ugly regimes in Iraq, Iran, and Syria.
The audacious nature of the neocons' plan makes it easy to criticize but strangely difficult to dismiss outright. Like a character in a bad made-for-TV thriller from the 1970s, you can hear yourself saying, "That plan's just crazy enough to work."
But like a TV plot, the hawks' vision rests on a willing suspension of disbelief, in particular, on the premise that every close call will break in our favor: The guard will fall asleep next to the cell so our heroes can pluck the keys from his belt. The hail of enemy bullets will plink-plink-plink over our heroes' heads. And the getaway car in the driveway will have the keys waiting in the ignition. Sure, the hawks' vision could come to pass. But there are at least half a dozen equally plausible alternative scenarios that would be disastrous for us.
To begin with, this whole endeavor is supposed to be about reducing the long-term threat of terrorism, particularly terrorism that employs weapons of mass destruction. But, to date, every time a Western or non-Muslim country has put troops into Arab lands to stamp out violence and terror, it has awakened entire new terrorist organizations and a generation of recruits. Placing U.S. troops in Riyadh after the Gulf War (to protect Saudi Arabia and its oilfields from Saddam) gave Osama bin Laden a cause around which he built al Qaeda. Israel took the West Bank in a war of self-defense, but once there its occupation helped give rise to Hamas. Israel's incursion into southern Lebanon (justified at the time, but transformed into a permanent occupation) led to the rise of Hezbollah. Why do we imagine that our invasion and occupation of Iraq, or whatever countries come next, will turn out any differently?
The Bush administration also insists that our right to act preemptively and unilaterally, with or without the international community's formal approval, rests on the need to protect American lives. But with the exception of al Qaeda, most terrorist organizations in the world, and certainly in the Middle East, do not target Americans. Hamas certainly doesn't. Hezbollah, the most fearsome of terrorist organizations beside al Qaeda, has killed American troops in the Middle East, but not for some years, and it has never targeted American civilians on American soil. Yet like Hamas, Hezbollah has an extensive fundraising cell operation in the States (as do many terrorist organizations, including the Irish Republican Army). If we target them in the Middle East, can't we reasonably assume they will respond by activating these cells and taking the war worldwide?
Next, consider the hawks' plans for those Middle East states that are authoritarian yet "friendly" to the United States--specifically Egypt and Saudi Arabia. No question these are problem countries. Their governments buy our weapons and accept our foreign aid yet allow vicious anti-Semitism to spew from the state run airwaves and tolerate clerics who preach jihad against the West. But is it really in our interests to work for their overthrow? Many hawks clearly think so. I asked Richard Perle last year about the dangers that might flow from the fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. "Mubarak is no great shakes," he quipped. "Surely we can do better than Mubarak." When I asked Perle's friend and fellow Reagan-era neocon Ken Adelman to calculate the costs of having the toppling of Saddam lead to the overthrow of the House of Saud, he shot back: "All the better if you ask me."
This cavalier call for regime change, however, runs into a rather obvious problem. When the communist regimes of Eastern and Central Europe fell after 1989, the people of those nations felt grateful to the United States because we helped liberate them from their Russian colonial masters. They went on to create pro-Western democracies. The same is unlikely to happen, however, if we help "liberate" Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The tyrannies in these countries are home grown, and the U.S. government has supported them, rightly or wrongly, for decades, even as we've ignored (in the eyes of Arabs) the plight of the Palestinians. Consequently, the citizens of these countries generally hate the United States, and show strong sympathy for Islamic radicals. If free elections were held in Saudi Arabia today, Osama bin Laden would probably win more votes than Crown Prince Abdullah. Topple the pro-Western autocracies in these countries, in other words, and you won't get pro-Western democracies but anti-Western tyrannies.
To this dilemma, the hawks offer two responses. One is that eventually the citizens of Egypt and Saudi Arabia will grow disenchanted with their anti-Western Islamic governments, just as the people of Iran have, and become our friends. To which the correct response is, well, sure, that's a nice theory, but do we really want to make the situation for ourselves hugely worse now on the strength of a theoretical future benefit?
The hawks' other response is that if the effort to push these countries toward democracy goes south, we can always use our military might to secure our interests. "We need to be more assertive," argues Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, "and stop letting all these two-bit dictators and rogue regimes push us around and stop being a patsy for our so-called allies, especially in Saudi Arabia." Hopefully, in Boot's view, laying down the law will be enough. But he envisions a worst-case scenario that would involve the United States "occupying the Saudi's oil fields and administering them as a trust for the people of the region."
What Boot is calling for, in other words, is the creation of a de facto American empire in the Middle East. In fact, there's a subset of neocons who believe that given our unparalleled power, empire is our destiny and we might as well embrace it. The problem with this line of thinking is, of course, that it ignores the lengthy and troubling history of imperial ambitions, particularly in the Middle East. The French and the English didn't leave voluntarily; they were driven out. And they left behind a legacy of ignorance, exploitation, and corruption that's largely responsible for the region's current dysfunctional politics.
Another potential snafu for the hawks is Iran, arguably the most dangerous state in the Middle East. The good news is that the fundamentalist Shi'a mullahs who have been running the government, exporting terrorism, and trying to enrich their uranium, are increasingly unpopular. Most experts believe that the mullahs' days are numbered, and that true democracy will come to Iran. That day will arrive sooner, the hawks argue, with a democratic Iraq on Iran's border. But the opposite could happen. If the mullahs are smart, they'll cooperate just enough with the Americans not to provoke an attack, but put themselves forth to their own people as defenders of Iranian independence and Iran's brother Shi'a in southern Iraq who are living under the American jackboot. Such a strategy might keep the fundamentalists in power for years longer than they otherwise might have been.
Then there is the mother of all problems, Iraq. The hawks' whole plan rests on the assumption that we can turn it into a self-governing democracy--that the very presence of that example will transform politics in the Middle East. But what if we can't really create a democratic, self-governing Iraq, at least not very quickly? What if the experience we had after World War II in Germany and Japan, two ethnically homogeneous nations, doesn't quite work in an ethnically divided Iraq where one group, the Sunni Arabs, has spent decades repressing and slaughtering the others? As one former Army officer with long experience with the Iraq file explains it, the "physical analogy to Saddam Hussein's regime is a steel beam in compression." Give it one good hit, and you'll get a violent explosion. One hundred thousand U.S. troops may be able to keep a lid on all the pent-up hatred. But we may soon find that it's unwise to hand off power to the fractious Iraqis. To invoke the ugly but apt metaphor which Jefferson used to describe the American dilemma of slavery, we will have the wolf by the ears. You want to let go. But you dare not.
And what if we do muster the courage to allow elections, but the Iraqis choose a government we can't live with--as the Japanese did in their first post-war election, when the United States purged the man slated to become prime minister? But if we do that in Iraq, how will it look on Al Jazeera? Ultimately, the longer we stay as occupiers, the more Iraq becomes not an example for other Arabs to emulate, but one that helps Islamic fundamentalists make their case that America is just an old-fashioned imperium bent on conquering Arab lands. And that will make worse all the problems set forth above.
None of these problems are inevitable, of course. Luck, fortitude, deft management, and help from allies could bring about very different results. But we can probably only rely on the first three because we are starting this enterprise over the expressed objections of almost every other country in the world. And that's yet another reason why overthrowing the Middle East won't be the same as overthrowing communism. We did the latter, after all, within a tight formal alliance, NATO. Reagan's most effective military move against Moscow, for instance, placing Pershing II missiles in Western Europe, could never have happened, given widespread public protests, except that NATO itself voted to let the weapons in. In the Middle East, however, we're largely alone. If things go badly, what allies we might have left are liable to say to us: You broke it, you fix it.
Whacking the Hornet's Nest
If the Bush administration has thought through these various negative scenarios--and we must presume, or at least pray, that it has--it certainly has not shared them with the American people. More to the point, the president has not even leveled with the public that such a clean-sweep approach to the Middle East is, in fact, their plan. This breaks new ground in the history of pre-war presidential deception. Franklin Roosevelt said he was trying to keep the United States out of World War II even as he--in some key ways--courted a confrontation with the Axis powers that he saw as both inevitable and necessary. History has judged him well for this. Far more brazenly, Lyndon Johnson's administration greatly exaggerated the Gulf of Tonkin incident to gin up support for full-throttle engagement in Vietnam. The war proved to be Johnson's undoing. When President Clinton used American troops to quell the fighting in Bosnia he said publicly that our troops would be there no longer than a year, even though it was widely understood that they would be there far longer. But in the case of these deceptions, the public was at least told what the goals of the wars were and whom and where we would be fighting.
Today, however, the great majority of the American people have no concept of what kind of conflict the president is leading them into. The White House has presented this as a war to depose Saddam Hussein in order to keep him from acquiring weapons of mass destruction--a goal that the majority of Americans support. But the White House really has in mind an enterprise of a scale, cost, and scope that would be almost impossible to sell to the American public. The White House knows that. So it hasn't even tried. Instead, it's focused on getting us into Iraq with the hope of setting off a sequence of events that will draw us inexorably towards the agenda they have in mind.
The brazenness of this approach would be hard to believe if it weren't entirely in line with how the administration has pursued so many of its other policy goals. Its preferred method has been to use deceit to create faits accomplis, facts on the ground that then make the administration's broader agenda almost impossible not to pursue. During and after the 2000 campaign, the president called for major education and prescription drug programs plus a huge tax cut, saying America could easily afford them all because of large budget surpluses. Critics said it wasn't true, and the growing budget deficits have proven them right. But the administration now uses the existence of big budget deficits as a way to put the squeeze on social programs--part of its plan all along. Strip away the presidential seal and the fancy titles, and it's just a straight-up con.
The same strategy seemed to guide the administration's passive-aggressive attitude towards our allies. It spent the months after September 11 signaling its distaste for international agreements and entangling alliances. The president then demanded last September that the same countries he had snubbed support his agenda in Iraq. And last month, when most of those countries refused, hawks spun that refusal as evidence that they were right all along. Recently, a key neoconservative commentator with close ties to the administration told me that the question since the end of the Cold War has been which global force would create the conditions for global peace and security: the United States, NATO, or the United Nations. With NATO now wrecked, he told me, the choice is between the United States and the United Nations. Whether NATO is actually wrecked remains to be seen. But the strategy is clear: push the alliance to the breaking point, and when it snaps, cite it as proof that the alliance was good for nothing anyway. It's the definition of chutzpah, like the kid who kills his parents and begs the judge for sympathy because he's an orphan.
Another president may be able to rebuild NATO or get the budget back in balance. But once America begins the process of remaking the Middle East in the way the hawks have in mind, it will be extremely difficult for any president to pull back. Vietnam analogies have long been overused, and used inappropriately, but this may be one case where the comparison is apt.
Ending Saddam Hussein's regime and replacing it with something stable and democratic was always going to be a difficult task, even with the most able leadership and the broadest coalition. But doing it as the Bush administration now intends is something like going outside and giving a few good whacks to a hornets' nest because you want to get them out in the open and have it out with them once and for all. Ridding the world of Islamic terrorism by rooting out its ultimate sources--Muslim fundamentalism and the Arab world's endemic despotism, corruption, and poverty--might work. But the costs will be immense. Whether the danger is sufficient and the costs worth incurring would make for an interesting public debate. The problem is that once it's just us and the hornets, we really won't have any choice.
Chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks' nightmare scenario--it's their plan
by Joshua Micah Marshall | April 2003
Imagine it's six months from now. The Iraq war is over. After an initial burst of joy and gratitude at being liberated from Saddam's rule, the people of Iraq are watching, and waiting, and beginning to chafe under American occupation. Across the border, in Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, our conquering presence has brought street protests and escalating violence. The United Nations and NATO are in disarray, so America is pretty much on its own. Hemmed in by budget deficits at home and limited financial assistance from allies, the Bush administration is talking again about tapping Iraq's oil reserves to offset some of the costs of the American presence--talk that is further inflaming the region. Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence has discovered fresh evidence that, prior to the war, Saddam moved quantities of biological and chemical weapons to Syria. When Syria denies having such weapons, the administration starts massing troops on the Syrian border. But as they begin to move, there is an explosion: Hezbollah terrorists from southern Lebanon blow themselves up in a Baghdad restaurant, killing dozens of Western aid workers and journalists. Knowing that Hezbollah has cells in America, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge puts the nation back on Orange Alert. FBI agents start sweeping through mosques, with a new round of arrests of Saudis, Pakistanis, Palestinians, and Yemenis.
To most Americans, this would sound like a frightening state of affairs, the kind that would lead them to wonder how and why we had got ourselves into this mess in the first place. But to the Bush administration hawks who are guiding American foreign policy, this isn't the nightmare scenario. It's everything going as anticipated.
In their view, invasion of Iraq was not merely, or even primarily, about getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Nor was it really about weapons of mass destruction, though their elimination was an important benefit. Rather, the administration sees the invasion as only the first move in a wider effort to reorder the power structure of the entire Middle East. Prior to the war, the president himself never quite said this openly. But hawkish neoconservatives within his administration gave strong hints. In February, Undersecretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating Iraq, the United States would "deal with" Iran, Syria, and North Korea. Meanwhile, neoconservative journalists have been channeling the administration's thinking. Late last month, The Weekly Standard's Jeffrey Bell reported that the administration has in mind a "world war between the United States and a political wing of Islamic fundamentalism ... a war of such reach and magnitude [that] the invasion of Iraq, or the capture of top al Qaeda commanders, should be seen as tactical events in a series of moves and countermoves stretching well into the future."
In short, the administration is trying to roll the table--to use U.S. military force, or the threat of it, to reform or topple virtually every regime in the region, from foes like Syria to friends like Egypt, on the theory that it is the undemocratic nature of these regimes that ultimately breeds terrorism. So events that may seem negative--Hezbollah for the first time targeting American civilians; U.S. soldiers preparing for war with Syria--while unfortunate in themselves, are actually part of the hawks' broader agenda. Each crisis will draw U.S. forces further into the region and each countermove in turn will create problems that can only be fixed by still further American involvement, until democratic governments--or, failing that, U.S. troops--rule the entire Middle East.
There is a startling amount of deception in all this--of hawks deceiving the American people, and perhaps in some cases even themselves. While it's conceivable that bold American action could democratize the Middle East, so broad and radical an initiative could also bring chaos and bloodshed on a massive scale. That all too real possibility leads most establishment foreign policy hands, including many in the State Department, to view the Bush plan with alarm. Indeed, the hawks' record so far does not inspire confidence. Prior to the invasion, for instance, they predicted that if the United States simply announced its intention to act against Saddam regardless of how the United Nations voted, most of our allies, eager to be on our good side, would support us. Almost none did. Yet despite such grave miscalculations, the hawks push on with their sweeping new agenda.
Like any group of permanent Washington revolutionaries fueled by visions of a righteous cause, the neocons long ago decided that criticism from the establishment isn't a reason for self-doubt but the surest sign that they're on the right track. But their confidence also comes from the curious fact that much of what could go awry with their plan will also serve to advance it. A full-scale confrontation between the United States and political Islam, they believe, is inevitable, so why not have it now, on our terms, rather than later, on theirs? Actually, there are plenty of good reasons not to purposely provoke a series of crises in the Middle East. But that's what the hawks are setting in motion, partly on the theory that the worse things get, the more their approach becomes the only plausible solution.
Moral Cloudiness
Ever since the neocons burst upon the public policy scene 30 years ago, their movement has been a marriage of moral idealism, military assertiveness, and deception. Back in the early 1970s, this group of then-young and still mostly Democratic political intellectuals grew alarmed by the post-Vietnam Democrats' seeming indifference to the Soviet threat. They were equally appalled, however, by the amoral worldview espoused by establishment Republicans like Henry Kissinger, who sought co-existence with the Soviet Union. As is often the case with ex-socialists, the neocons were too familiar with communist tactics to ignore or romanticize communism's evils. The fact that many neocons were Jewish, and outraged by Moscow's increasingly visible persecution of Jews, also caused them to reject both the McGovernite and Kissingerian tendencies to ignore such abuses.
In Ronald Reagan, the neocons found a politician they could embrace. Like them, Reagan spoke openly about the evils of communism and, at least on the peripheries of the Cold War, preferred rollback to coexistence. Neocons filled the Reagan administration, and men like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Frank Gaffney, and others provided the intellectual ballast and moral fervor for the sharp turn toward confrontation that the United States adopted in 1981.
But achieving moral clarity often requires hiding certain realities. From the beginning, the neocons took a much more alarmist view of Soviet capacities and intentions than most experts. As late as 1980, the ur-neocon Norman Podhoretz warned of the imminent "Finlandization of America, the political and economic subordination of the United States to superior Soviet power," even raising the possibility that America's only options might be "surrender or war." We now know, of course, that U.S. intelligence estimates, which many neocons thought underestimated the magnitude and durability of Soviet power, in fact wildly overestimated them.
This willingness to deceive--both themselves and others--expanded as neocons grew more comfortable with power. Many spent the Reagan years orchestrating bloody wars against Soviet proxies in the Third World, portraying thugs like the Nicaraguan Contras and plain murderers like Jonas Savimbi of Angola as "freedom fighters." The nadir of this deceit was the Iran-Contra scandal, for which Podhoretz's son-in-law, Elliot Abrams, pled guilty to perjury. Abrams was later pardoned by Bush's father, and today, he runs Middle East policy in the Bush White House.
But in the end, the Soviet Union did fall. And the hawks' policy of confrontation did contribute to its collapse. So too, of course, did the economic and military rot most of the hawks didn't believe in, and the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev, whom neocons such as Richard Perle counseled Reagan not to trust. But the neocons did not dwell on what they got wrong. Rather, the experience of having played a hand in the downfall of so great an evil led them to the opposite belief: that it's okay to be spectacularly wrong, even brazenly deceptive about the details, so long as you have moral vision and a willingness to use force.
What happened in the 1990s further reinforced that mindset. Hawks like Perle and William Kristol pulled their hair out when Kissingerians like Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell left Saddam's regime in place after the first Gulf War. They watched with mounting fury as terrorist attacks by Muslim fundamentalists claimed more and more American and Israeli lives. They considered the Oslo accords an obvious mistake (how can you negotiate with a man like Yasir Arafat?), and as the decade progressed they became increasingly convinced that there was a nexus linking burgeoning terrorism and mounting anti-Semitism with repressive but nominally "pro-American" regimes like Saudi Arabia and Egypt. In 1996, several of the hawks--including Perle--even tried to sell Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the idea that Israel should attack Saddam on its own--advice Netanyahu wisely declined. When the Oslo process crumbled and Saudi Arabian terrorists killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11, the hawks felt, not without some justification, that they had seen this danger coming all along, while others had ignored it. The timing was propitious, because in September 2001 many already held jobs with a new conservative president willing to hear their pitch.
Prime Minister bin Laden
The pitch was this: The Middle East today is like the Soviet Union 30 years ago. Politically warped fundamentalism is the contemporary equivalent of communism or fascism. Terrorists with potential access to weapons of mass destruction are like an arsenal pointed at the United States. The primary cause of all this danger is the Arab world's endemic despotism, corruption, poverty, and economic stagnation. Repressive regimes channel dissent into the mosques, where the hopeless and disenfranchised are taught a brand of Islam that combines anti-modernism, anti-Americanism, and a worship of violence that borders on nihilism. Unable to overthrow their own authoritarian rulers, the citizenry turns its fury against the foreign power that funds and supports these corrupt regimes to maintain stability and access to oil: the United States. As Johns Hopkins University professor Fouad Ajami recently wrote in Foreign Affairs, "The great indulgence granted to the ways and phobias of Arabs has reaped a terrible harvest"--terrorism. Trying to "manage" this dysfunctional Islamic world, as Clinton attempted and Colin Powell counsels us to do, is as foolish, unproductive, and dangerous as détente was with the Soviets, the hawks believe. Nor is it necessary, given the unparalleled power of the American military. Using that power to confront Soviet communism led to the demise of that totalitarianism and the establishment of democratic (or at least non-threatening) regimes from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea to the Bering Strait. Why not use that same power to upend the entire corrupt Middle East edifice and bring liberty, democracy, and the rule of law to the Arab world?
The hawks' grand plan differs depending on whom you speak to, but the basic outline runs like this: The United States establishes a reasonably democratic, pro-Western government in Iraq--assume it falls somewhere between Turkey and Jordan on the spectrum of democracy and the rule of law. Not perfect, representative democracy, certainly, but a system infinitely preferable to Saddam's. The example of a democratic Iraq will radically change the political dynamics of the Middle East. When Palestinians see average Iraqis beginning to enjoy real freedom and economic opportunity, they'll want the same themselves. With that happy prospect on one hand and implacable United States will on the other, they'll demand that the Palestinian Authority reform politically and negotiate with Israel. That in turn will lead to a real peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians. A democratic Iraq will also hasten the fall of the fundamentalist Shi'a mullahs in Iran, whose citizens are gradually adopting anti-fanatic, pro-Western sympathies. A democratized Iran would create a string of democratic, pro-Western governments (Turkey, Iraq, and Iran) stretching across the historical heartland of Islam. Without a hostile Iraq towering over it, Jordan's pro-Western Hashemite monarchy would likely come into full bloom. Syria would be no more than a pale reminder of the bad old days. (If they made trouble, a U.S. invasion would take care of them, too.) And to the tiny Gulf emirates making hesitant steps toward democratization, the corrupt regimes of Saudi Arabia and Egypt would no longer look like examples of stability and strength in a benighted region, but holdouts against the democratic tide. Once the dust settles, we could decide whether to ignore them as harmless throwbacks to the bad old days or deal with them, too. We'd be in a much stronger position to do so since we'd no longer require their friendship to help us manage ugly regimes in Iraq, Iran, and Syria.
The audacious nature of the neocons' plan makes it easy to criticize but strangely difficult to dismiss outright. Like a character in a bad made-for-TV thriller from the 1970s, you can hear yourself saying, "That plan's just crazy enough to work."
But like a TV plot, the hawks' vision rests on a willing suspension of disbelief, in particular, on the premise that every close call will break in our favor: The guard will fall asleep next to the cell so our heroes can pluck the keys from his belt. The hail of enemy bullets will plink-plink-plink over our heroes' heads. And the getaway car in the driveway will have the keys waiting in the ignition. Sure, the hawks' vision could come to pass. But there are at least half a dozen equally plausible alternative scenarios that would be disastrous for us.
To begin with, this whole endeavor is supposed to be about reducing the long-term threat of terrorism, particularly terrorism that employs weapons of mass destruction. But, to date, every time a Western or non-Muslim country has put troops into Arab lands to stamp out violence and terror, it has awakened entire new terrorist organizations and a generation of recruits. Placing U.S. troops in Riyadh after the Gulf War (to protect Saudi Arabia and its oilfields from Saddam) gave Osama bin Laden a cause around which he built al Qaeda. Israel took the West Bank in a war of self-defense, but once there its occupation helped give rise to Hamas. Israel's incursion into southern Lebanon (justified at the time, but transformed into a permanent occupation) led to the rise of Hezbollah. Why do we imagine that our invasion and occupation of Iraq, or whatever countries come next, will turn out any differently?
The Bush administration also insists that our right to act preemptively and unilaterally, with or without the international community's formal approval, rests on the need to protect American lives. But with the exception of al Qaeda, most terrorist organizations in the world, and certainly in the Middle East, do not target Americans. Hamas certainly doesn't. Hezbollah, the most fearsome of terrorist organizations beside al Qaeda, has killed American troops in the Middle East, but not for some years, and it has never targeted American civilians on American soil. Yet like Hamas, Hezbollah has an extensive fundraising cell operation in the States (as do many terrorist organizations, including the Irish Republican Army). If we target them in the Middle East, can't we reasonably assume they will respond by activating these cells and taking the war worldwide?
Next, consider the hawks' plans for those Middle East states that are authoritarian yet "friendly" to the United States--specifically Egypt and Saudi Arabia. No question these are problem countries. Their governments buy our weapons and accept our foreign aid yet allow vicious anti-Semitism to spew from the state run airwaves and tolerate clerics who preach jihad against the West. But is it really in our interests to work for their overthrow? Many hawks clearly think so. I asked Richard Perle last year about the dangers that might flow from the fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. "Mubarak is no great shakes," he quipped. "Surely we can do better than Mubarak." When I asked Perle's friend and fellow Reagan-era neocon Ken Adelman to calculate the costs of having the toppling of Saddam lead to the overthrow of the House of Saud, he shot back: "All the better if you ask me."
This cavalier call for regime change, however, runs into a rather obvious problem. When the communist regimes of Eastern and Central Europe fell after 1989, the people of those nations felt grateful to the United States because we helped liberate them from their Russian colonial masters. They went on to create pro-Western democracies. The same is unlikely to happen, however, if we help "liberate" Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The tyrannies in these countries are home grown, and the U.S. government has supported them, rightly or wrongly, for decades, even as we've ignored (in the eyes of Arabs) the plight of the Palestinians. Consequently, the citizens of these countries generally hate the United States, and show strong sympathy for Islamic radicals. If free elections were held in Saudi Arabia today, Osama bin Laden would probably win more votes than Crown Prince Abdullah. Topple the pro-Western autocracies in these countries, in other words, and you won't get pro-Western democracies but anti-Western tyrannies.
To this dilemma, the hawks offer two responses. One is that eventually the citizens of Egypt and Saudi Arabia will grow disenchanted with their anti-Western Islamic governments, just as the people of Iran have, and become our friends. To which the correct response is, well, sure, that's a nice theory, but do we really want to make the situation for ourselves hugely worse now on the strength of a theoretical future benefit?
The hawks' other response is that if the effort to push these countries toward democracy goes south, we can always use our military might to secure our interests. "We need to be more assertive," argues Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, "and stop letting all these two-bit dictators and rogue regimes push us around and stop being a patsy for our so-called allies, especially in Saudi Arabia." Hopefully, in Boot's view, laying down the law will be enough. But he envisions a worst-case scenario that would involve the United States "occupying the Saudi's oil fields and administering them as a trust for the people of the region."
What Boot is calling for, in other words, is the creation of a de facto American empire in the Middle East. In fact, there's a subset of neocons who believe that given our unparalleled power, empire is our destiny and we might as well embrace it. The problem with this line of thinking is, of course, that it ignores the lengthy and troubling history of imperial ambitions, particularly in the Middle East. The French and the English didn't leave voluntarily; they were driven out. And they left behind a legacy of ignorance, exploitation, and corruption that's largely responsible for the region's current dysfunctional politics.
Another potential snafu for the hawks is Iran, arguably the most dangerous state in the Middle East. The good news is that the fundamentalist Shi'a mullahs who have been running the government, exporting terrorism, and trying to enrich their uranium, are increasingly unpopular. Most experts believe that the mullahs' days are numbered, and that true democracy will come to Iran. That day will arrive sooner, the hawks argue, with a democratic Iraq on Iran's border. But the opposite could happen. If the mullahs are smart, they'll cooperate just enough with the Americans not to provoke an attack, but put themselves forth to their own people as defenders of Iranian independence and Iran's brother Shi'a in southern Iraq who are living under the American jackboot. Such a strategy might keep the fundamentalists in power for years longer than they otherwise might have been.
Then there is the mother of all problems, Iraq. The hawks' whole plan rests on the assumption that we can turn it into a self-governing democracy--that the very presence of that example will transform politics in the Middle East. But what if we can't really create a democratic, self-governing Iraq, at least not very quickly? What if the experience we had after World War II in Germany and Japan, two ethnically homogeneous nations, doesn't quite work in an ethnically divided Iraq where one group, the Sunni Arabs, has spent decades repressing and slaughtering the others? As one former Army officer with long experience with the Iraq file explains it, the "physical analogy to Saddam Hussein's regime is a steel beam in compression." Give it one good hit, and you'll get a violent explosion. One hundred thousand U.S. troops may be able to keep a lid on all the pent-up hatred. But we may soon find that it's unwise to hand off power to the fractious Iraqis. To invoke the ugly but apt metaphor which Jefferson used to describe the American dilemma of slavery, we will have the wolf by the ears. You want to let go. But you dare not.
And what if we do muster the courage to allow elections, but the Iraqis choose a government we can't live with--as the Japanese did in their first post-war election, when the United States purged the man slated to become prime minister? But if we do that in Iraq, how will it look on Al Jazeera? Ultimately, the longer we stay as occupiers, the more Iraq becomes not an example for other Arabs to emulate, but one that helps Islamic fundamentalists make their case that America is just an old-fashioned imperium bent on conquering Arab lands. And that will make worse all the problems set forth above.
None of these problems are inevitable, of course. Luck, fortitude, deft management, and help from allies could bring about very different results. But we can probably only rely on the first three because we are starting this enterprise over the expressed objections of almost every other country in the world. And that's yet another reason why overthrowing the Middle East won't be the same as overthrowing communism. We did the latter, after all, within a tight formal alliance, NATO. Reagan's most effective military move against Moscow, for instance, placing Pershing II missiles in Western Europe, could never have happened, given widespread public protests, except that NATO itself voted to let the weapons in. In the Middle East, however, we're largely alone. If things go badly, what allies we might have left are liable to say to us: You broke it, you fix it.
Whacking the Hornet's Nest
If the Bush administration has thought through these various negative scenarios--and we must presume, or at least pray, that it has--it certainly has not shared them with the American people. More to the point, the president has not even leveled with the public that such a clean-sweep approach to the Middle East is, in fact, their plan. This breaks new ground in the history of pre-war presidential deception. Franklin Roosevelt said he was trying to keep the United States out of World War II even as he--in some key ways--courted a confrontation with the Axis powers that he saw as both inevitable and necessary. History has judged him well for this. Far more brazenly, Lyndon Johnson's administration greatly exaggerated the Gulf of Tonkin incident to gin up support for full-throttle engagement in Vietnam. The war proved to be Johnson's undoing. When President Clinton used American troops to quell the fighting in Bosnia he said publicly that our troops would be there no longer than a year, even though it was widely understood that they would be there far longer. But in the case of these deceptions, the public was at least told what the goals of the wars were and whom and where we would be fighting.
Today, however, the great majority of the American people have no concept of what kind of conflict the president is leading them into. The White House has presented this as a war to depose Saddam Hussein in order to keep him from acquiring weapons of mass destruction--a goal that the majority of Americans support. But the White House really has in mind an enterprise of a scale, cost, and scope that would be almost impossible to sell to the American public. The White House knows that. So it hasn't even tried. Instead, it's focused on getting us into Iraq with the hope of setting off a sequence of events that will draw us inexorably towards the agenda they have in mind.
The brazenness of this approach would be hard to believe if it weren't entirely in line with how the administration has pursued so many of its other policy goals. Its preferred method has been to use deceit to create faits accomplis, facts on the ground that then make the administration's broader agenda almost impossible not to pursue. During and after the 2000 campaign, the president called for major education and prescription drug programs plus a huge tax cut, saying America could easily afford them all because of large budget surpluses. Critics said it wasn't true, and the growing budget deficits have proven them right. But the administration now uses the existence of big budget deficits as a way to put the squeeze on social programs--part of its plan all along. Strip away the presidential seal and the fancy titles, and it's just a straight-up con.
The same strategy seemed to guide the administration's passive-aggressive attitude towards our allies. It spent the months after September 11 signaling its distaste for international agreements and entangling alliances. The president then demanded last September that the same countries he had snubbed support his agenda in Iraq. And last month, when most of those countries refused, hawks spun that refusal as evidence that they were right all along. Recently, a key neoconservative commentator with close ties to the administration told me that the question since the end of the Cold War has been which global force would create the conditions for global peace and security: the United States, NATO, or the United Nations. With NATO now wrecked, he told me, the choice is between the United States and the United Nations. Whether NATO is actually wrecked remains to be seen. But the strategy is clear: push the alliance to the breaking point, and when it snaps, cite it as proof that the alliance was good for nothing anyway. It's the definition of chutzpah, like the kid who kills his parents and begs the judge for sympathy because he's an orphan.
Another president may be able to rebuild NATO or get the budget back in balance. But once America begins the process of remaking the Middle East in the way the hawks have in mind, it will be extremely difficult for any president to pull back. Vietnam analogies have long been overused, and used inappropriately, but this may be one case where the comparison is apt.
Ending Saddam Hussein's regime and replacing it with something stable and democratic was always going to be a difficult task, even with the most able leadership and the broadest coalition. But doing it as the Bush administration now intends is something like going outside and giving a few good whacks to a hornets' nest because you want to get them out in the open and have it out with them once and for all. Ridding the world of Islamic terrorism by rooting out its ultimate sources--Muslim fundamentalism and the Arab world's endemic despotism, corruption, and poverty--might work. But the costs will be immense. Whether the danger is sufficient and the costs worth incurring would make for an interesting public debate. The problem is that once it's just us and the hornets, we really won't have any choice.
Filed under
Henry Kissinger,
Iran,
Iraq,
Israel
by Winter Patriot
on Tuesday, April 15, 2003
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Pittsburgh Post Gazette : Kissinger resigns 9/11 post
Saturday, December 14, 2002
Kissinger resigns 9/11 post
By Dan Eggen | The Washington Post | December 14, 2002
WASHINGTON -- Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger abruptly resigned yesterday as head of a new commission investigating the Sept. 11 terror attacks, complaining in a bitter letter to President Bush that concerns about conflicts of interest could "significantly" delay the panel's work.
The departure marked the second defection in three days from the high-profile panel, and ended two weeks of intense political infighting over whether Kissinger's controversial past and influential business contacts would sully the commission's eventual findings.
Kissinger had resisted calls from Senate Democrats that he publicly disclose his business clients in order to guard against any conflicts of interest.
The decision to quit was "a moment of disappointment for me," Kissinger wrote to Bush. "For over half a century, I have never refused to respond to the call from a president. Nor have I ever put my personal interests ahead of the country's interests."
He said that "in the end" he would have abided by whatever financial disclosure rules were applied to other members of the commission, but feared that "the controversy would quickly move to the consulting firm I have built and own."
"To liquidate Kissinger Associates cannot be accomplished without significantly delaying" the work of the commission, he wrote, referring to his New York-based company. "I have, therefore, concluded that I cannot accept the responsibility you proposed."
Just two days earlier, former Sen. George Mitchell, D-Maine, had announced his own withdrawal as vice chairman of the commission, citing in part suggestions that he should sever ties to his law firm.
The 10-member, bipartisan commission, which will follow up on a joint House-Senate probe examining intelligence failures prior to Sept. 11, has yet to achieve a full slate of appointments and has been the focus of intense political infighting since it was created by Congress last month.
The withdrawal came as a surprising and disappointing setback for the White House, where officials had been convinced that Kissinger's name would bring credibility to an enterprise they had once resisted.
But the appointment had also prompted a steady stream of objections, including some from relatives of victims in the Sept. 11 attacks who questioned Kissinger's reliability and urged him to fully disclose his client list.
Kissinger met with 11 members of victims' families groups Thursday, telling them he did not believe that he had any conflicts of interest and promising to provide the families personally with details. But, according to several of the meeting's participants, he indicated that he did not intend to release the information publicly.
Stephen Push, a leader of Families of Sept. 11th, yesterday said he found "very puzzling" Kissinger's stated reason for resigning. "He told us that he had no conflicts, yet he's apparently resigning from an opportunity to serve his country so his clients can remain anonymous," Push said.
But another relative active in the follow-up investigations to Sept. 11, Kristen Breitweiser, said it was "admirable for him to acknowledge that he couldn't get around the conflict issue."
Kissinger called White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card yesterday afternoon to inform him of the decision, sources said. Bush said in a statement that he accepted Kissinger's resignation "with regret," and that "his chairmanship would have provided the insights and analysis the government needs to understand the methods of our enemies and the nature of the threats we face."
A senior aide said the administration hopes to find a replacement by Christmas, with a search to be conducted by Card, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Clay Johnson, the presidential personnel director.
Democrats have already named their five appointments to the panel, including former Indiana Rep. Lee Hamilton as vice chairman to replace Mitchell. Congressional Republicans have named only former Sen. Slade Gorton of Washington and have until tomorrow to appoint three more.
One senior White House official complained that the departures of both Mitchell and Kissinger show that onerous disclosure demands by Congress provide a "disincentive for good people to serve in government."
Kissinger's appointment, announced Nov. 27, was immediately attacked by some Democrats and liberal commentators, who argued that Kissinger's polarizing role in directing foreign policy during the Nixon and Ford years made him unfit to lead a panel aimed at unearthing unpleasant truths.
In the weeks that followed, debate on Capitol Hill shifted to whether Kissinger and other commission members should be required to publicly disclose their recent business contacts to avoid potential conflicts of interest. Some suggested that members should sever ties to their current businesses as well.
The fight came to a head this week, when the White House informed the Senate Select Committee on Ethics that administration lawyers concluded that Kissinger, as an unpaid presidential appointee, did not have to abide by congressional disclosure rules.
The Congressional Research Service issued a report last week concluding that all the panel's members, including Kissinger, would be required to identify clients who paid them more than $5,000 over the last two years.
Hamilton yesterday said "all five Democratic members support complete disclosure, and we will each comply fully" with congressional requirements for conflicts-of-interest disclosures.
By Dan Eggen | The Washington Post | December 14, 2002
WASHINGTON -- Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger abruptly resigned yesterday as head of a new commission investigating the Sept. 11 terror attacks, complaining in a bitter letter to President Bush that concerns about conflicts of interest could "significantly" delay the panel's work.
The departure marked the second defection in three days from the high-profile panel, and ended two weeks of intense political infighting over whether Kissinger's controversial past and influential business contacts would sully the commission's eventual findings.
Kissinger had resisted calls from Senate Democrats that he publicly disclose his business clients in order to guard against any conflicts of interest.
The decision to quit was "a moment of disappointment for me," Kissinger wrote to Bush. "For over half a century, I have never refused to respond to the call from a president. Nor have I ever put my personal interests ahead of the country's interests."
He said that "in the end" he would have abided by whatever financial disclosure rules were applied to other members of the commission, but feared that "the controversy would quickly move to the consulting firm I have built and own."
"To liquidate Kissinger Associates cannot be accomplished without significantly delaying" the work of the commission, he wrote, referring to his New York-based company. "I have, therefore, concluded that I cannot accept the responsibility you proposed."
Just two days earlier, former Sen. George Mitchell, D-Maine, had announced his own withdrawal as vice chairman of the commission, citing in part suggestions that he should sever ties to his law firm.
The 10-member, bipartisan commission, which will follow up on a joint House-Senate probe examining intelligence failures prior to Sept. 11, has yet to achieve a full slate of appointments and has been the focus of intense political infighting since it was created by Congress last month.
The withdrawal came as a surprising and disappointing setback for the White House, where officials had been convinced that Kissinger's name would bring credibility to an enterprise they had once resisted.
But the appointment had also prompted a steady stream of objections, including some from relatives of victims in the Sept. 11 attacks who questioned Kissinger's reliability and urged him to fully disclose his client list.
Kissinger met with 11 members of victims' families groups Thursday, telling them he did not believe that he had any conflicts of interest and promising to provide the families personally with details. But, according to several of the meeting's participants, he indicated that he did not intend to release the information publicly.
Stephen Push, a leader of Families of Sept. 11th, yesterday said he found "very puzzling" Kissinger's stated reason for resigning. "He told us that he had no conflicts, yet he's apparently resigning from an opportunity to serve his country so his clients can remain anonymous," Push said.
But another relative active in the follow-up investigations to Sept. 11, Kristen Breitweiser, said it was "admirable for him to acknowledge that he couldn't get around the conflict issue."
Kissinger called White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card yesterday afternoon to inform him of the decision, sources said. Bush said in a statement that he accepted Kissinger's resignation "with regret," and that "his chairmanship would have provided the insights and analysis the government needs to understand the methods of our enemies and the nature of the threats we face."
A senior aide said the administration hopes to find a replacement by Christmas, with a search to be conducted by Card, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Clay Johnson, the presidential personnel director.
Democrats have already named their five appointments to the panel, including former Indiana Rep. Lee Hamilton as vice chairman to replace Mitchell. Congressional Republicans have named only former Sen. Slade Gorton of Washington and have until tomorrow to appoint three more.
One senior White House official complained that the departures of both Mitchell and Kissinger show that onerous disclosure demands by Congress provide a "disincentive for good people to serve in government."
Kissinger's appointment, announced Nov. 27, was immediately attacked by some Democrats and liberal commentators, who argued that Kissinger's polarizing role in directing foreign policy during the Nixon and Ford years made him unfit to lead a panel aimed at unearthing unpleasant truths.
In the weeks that followed, debate on Capitol Hill shifted to whether Kissinger and other commission members should be required to publicly disclose their recent business contacts to avoid potential conflicts of interest. Some suggested that members should sever ties to their current businesses as well.
The fight came to a head this week, when the White House informed the Senate Select Committee on Ethics that administration lawyers concluded that Kissinger, as an unpaid presidential appointee, did not have to abide by congressional disclosure rules.
The Congressional Research Service issued a report last week concluding that all the panel's members, including Kissinger, would be required to identify clients who paid them more than $5,000 over the last two years.
Hamilton yesterday said "all five Democratic members support complete disclosure, and we will each comply fully" with congressional requirements for conflicts-of-interest disclosures.
Filed under
Congress,
Henry Kissinger
by Winter Patriot
on Saturday, December 14, 2002
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SMH : Israeli agents accused of creating fake al-Qaeda cell
Monday, December 09, 2002
Israeli agents accused of creating fake al-Qaeda cell
By Sophie Claudet in Gaza City | December 9, 2002
A senior Palestinian security official says his services have uncovered an Israeli plot to create a fake al-Qaeda cell in the Gaza Strip, a charge Israel has dismissed as absurd.
The head of preventive security in Gaza, Rashid Abu Shbak, said Israeli agents posing as operatives of al-Qaeda recruited Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
"Over the past nine months we've been investigating eight [such] cases," Mr Abu Shbak said.
His claims came after the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, said al-Qaeda militants were operating in the Gaza Strip and in Lebanon, raising fears of an intensification of Israeli military occupations.
A spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry branded the Palestinian claim as ridiculous and "some kind of propaganda campaign", adding that "the Palestinian territories have become a breeding ground for terrorism".
"There is no need for Israel to make up something like this because [the hardline Islamic movements] are all the same as al-Qaeda," the spokesman said.
Mr Abu Shbak said three Palestinians used by Israeli intelligence had been arrested, while another 11 were released "because they came and informed us of this Israeli plot".
Mr Abu Shbak said his services had traced back to Israel mobile phone calls and emails - purportedly from Germany and Lebanon - asking Palestinians to join al-Qaeda. One email had even been "signed" by the al-Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden.
"We investigated the origin of those calls and found out they all came from Israel."
The Palestinians recruited were then paired, unbeknown to them, with Israeli collaborators in Gaza, and received money and weapons, "although most of these weapons did not even work".
The money was provided by "Palestinian collaborators with Israel" directly to the recruits or "was transferred from bank accounts in Jerusalem or Israel", said Mr Abu Shbak, who did not dispute that as many as 11 Palestinians had welcomed the call to join al-Qaeda.
"Those who accepted were mostly members of the military wing of Palestinian organisations," he said, adding that although he could not say "there will never be al-Qaeda here, but at least not for now".
The Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, has called Mr Sharon's al-Qaeda claim "a big, big, big lie to cover [his] attacks and his crimes against our people everywhere".
The Lebanese Government and Hezbollah have also dismissed the accusations.
Mr Sharon's announcement marked the first time Israel has officially claimed that al-Qaeda was operating in the Palestinian territories, and came as a surprise because the Gaza Strip is virtually sealed off by Israeli troops.
Israel has came under heavy international criticism for a raid on a Gaza Strip refugee camp on Friday that left 10 Palestinians dead, including two United Nations employees. The European Union and Arab states joined the UN in condemning the incursion into the densely populated Al-Bureij camp.
Agence France-Presse
By Sophie Claudet in Gaza City | December 9, 2002
A senior Palestinian security official says his services have uncovered an Israeli plot to create a fake al-Qaeda cell in the Gaza Strip, a charge Israel has dismissed as absurd.
The head of preventive security in Gaza, Rashid Abu Shbak, said Israeli agents posing as operatives of al-Qaeda recruited Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
"Over the past nine months we've been investigating eight [such] cases," Mr Abu Shbak said.
His claims came after the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, said al-Qaeda militants were operating in the Gaza Strip and in Lebanon, raising fears of an intensification of Israeli military occupations.
A spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry branded the Palestinian claim as ridiculous and "some kind of propaganda campaign", adding that "the Palestinian territories have become a breeding ground for terrorism".
"There is no need for Israel to make up something like this because [the hardline Islamic movements] are all the same as al-Qaeda," the spokesman said.
Mr Abu Shbak said three Palestinians used by Israeli intelligence had been arrested, while another 11 were released "because they came and informed us of this Israeli plot".
Mr Abu Shbak said his services had traced back to Israel mobile phone calls and emails - purportedly from Germany and Lebanon - asking Palestinians to join al-Qaeda. One email had even been "signed" by the al-Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden.
"We investigated the origin of those calls and found out they all came from Israel."
The Palestinians recruited were then paired, unbeknown to them, with Israeli collaborators in Gaza, and received money and weapons, "although most of these weapons did not even work".
The money was provided by "Palestinian collaborators with Israel" directly to the recruits or "was transferred from bank accounts in Jerusalem or Israel", said Mr Abu Shbak, who did not dispute that as many as 11 Palestinians had welcomed the call to join al-Qaeda.
"Those who accepted were mostly members of the military wing of Palestinian organisations," he said, adding that although he could not say "there will never be al-Qaeda here, but at least not for now".
The Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, has called Mr Sharon's al-Qaeda claim "a big, big, big lie to cover [his] attacks and his crimes against our people everywhere".
The Lebanese Government and Hezbollah have also dismissed the accusations.
Mr Sharon's announcement marked the first time Israel has officially claimed that al-Qaeda was operating in the Palestinian territories, and came as a surprise because the Gaza Strip is virtually sealed off by Israeli troops.
Israel has came under heavy international criticism for a raid on a Gaza Strip refugee camp on Friday that left 10 Palestinians dead, including two United Nations employees. The European Union and Arab states joined the UN in condemning the incursion into the densely populated Al-Bureij camp.
Agence France-Presse
Daily Times : Kissinger worst possible choice for investigation against state
Tuesday, December 03, 2002
Kissinger worst possible choice for investigation against state
By David Corn | December 3, 2002
Asking Henry Kissinger to investigate government malfeasance or nonfeasance is akin to asking Slobodan Milosevic to investigate war crimes. Pretty damn akin, since Kissinger has been accused, with cause, of engaging in war crimes of his own. Moreover, he has been a poster-child for the worst excesses of secret government and secret warfare.
Yet George W. Bush has named him to head a supposedly independent commission to investigate the nightmarish attacks of Sept.11, 2001, a commission intended to tell the public what went wrong on and before that day. This is a sick, black-is-white, war-is-peace joke – a cruel insult to the memory of those killed on 9/11 and a screw-you affront to any American who believes the public deserves a full accounting of government actions or lack thereof. It’s as if Bush instructed his advisers to come up with the name of the person who literally would be the absolute worst choice for the post and, once they had, said, “sign him up.”
Hyperbole? Consider the record.
Vietnam: Kissinger participated in a GOP plot to undermine the 1968 Paris peace talks in order to assist Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign. Once in office, Nixon named Kissinger his national security adviser, and later appointed him secretary of state. As co-architect of Nixon’s war in Vietnam, Kissinger oversaw the secret bombing campaign in Cambodia, an arguably illegal operation estimated to have claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Chile: In the early 1970s, Kissinger oversaw the CIA’s extensive covert campaign that assisted coup-plotters, some of whom eventually overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende and installed the murderous military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. On June 8, 1976, at the height of Pinochet’s repression, Kissinger had a meeting with Pinochet and behind closed doors told him that “we are sympathetic to what you are trying to do here,” according to minutes of the session (which are quoted in Peter Kornbluh’s forthcoming book, “The Pinochet File.”)
East Timor: In 1975, President Gerald Ford and Kissinger, still serving as secretary of state, offered advance approval of Indonesia’s brutal invasion of East Timor, which took the lives of tens of thousands of East Timorese. For years afterward, Kissinger denied the subject ever came up during the Dec. 6, 1975, meeting he and Ford held with General Suharto, Indonesia’s military ruler, in Jarkata.
But a classified US cable obtained by the National Security Archive shows otherwise. It notes that Suharto asked for “understanding if we deem it necessary to take rapid or drastic action” in East Timor. Ford said, “We will understand and will not press you on the issue. We understand the problem you have and the intentions you have.” The next day, Suharto struck East Timor. Kissinger is an outright liar on this subject.
Argentina: In 1976, as a fascistic and anti-Semitic military junta was beginning its so-called “dirty war” against supposed subversives – between 9,000 and 30,000 people would be “disappeared” by the military over the next seven years – Argentina’s foreign minister met with Kissinger and received what he believed was tacit encouragement for his government’s violent efforts.
According to a US cable released earlier this year, the foreign minister was convinced after his chat with Kissinger that the United States wanted the Argentine terror campaign to end soon – not that Washington was dead-set against it. The cable said that the minister had left his meeting with Kissinger “euphoric.” Two years later, Kissinger, then a private citizen, traveled to Buenos Aires as the guest of dictator General Jorge Rafael Videla and praised the junta for having done, as one cable put it, “an outstanding job in wiping out terrorist forces.”
As Raul Castro, the US ambassador to Argentina, noted at the time in a message to the State Department, “My only concern is that Kissinger’s repeated high praise for Argentina’s action in wiping out terrorism...may have gone to some considerable extent to his hosts’ heads....There is some danger that Argentines may use Kissinger’s laudatory statements as justification for hardening their human rights stance.” That is, Kissinger was, in a way, enabling torture, kidnapping and murder.
Appropriately, Kissinger is a man on the run for his past misdeeds. He is the target of two lawsuits, and judges overseas have sought him for questioning in war-crimes-related legal actions. In the United States, the family of Chilean General Rene Schneider sued Kissinger last year. Schneider was shot on Oct. 22, 1970, by would-be coup-makers working with CIA operatives.
These CIA assets were part of a secret plan authorized by Nixon – and supervised by Kissinger – to foment a coup before Allende, a Socialist, could be inaugurated as president. Schneider, a constitutionalist who opposed a coup, died three days later. This secret CIA program in Chile – dubbed “Track Two” – gave $35,000 to Schneider’s assassins after the slaying. Michael Tigar, an attorney for the Schneider family, claims, “Our case shows, document by document, that [Kissinger] was involved in great detail in supporting the people who killed General Schneider, and then paid them off.”
On Sept. 9, 2001, 60 Minutes aired a segment on the Schneider family’s charges against Kissinger. The former secretary of state came across as partly responsible for what is the Chilean equivalent of the JFK assassination. It was a major blow to his public image: Kissinger cast as a supporter of terrorists. Two days later, Osama bin Laden struck. Immediately, Kissinger was again on television, but now as a much-in-demand expert on terrorism.
In another lawsuit, filed earlier this month, 11 Chilean human rights victims – including relatives of people murdered after Pinochet’s coup – claimed Kissinger knowingly provided practical assistance and encouragement to the Pinochet regime. Kissinger’s codefendant in the case is Michael Townley, an American-born Chilean agent who was a leading international terrorist in the mid-1970s. In his most notorious operation, Townley in 1976 planted a car-bomb that killed Orlando Letelier, Allende’s ambassador to the United States, and Ronni Moffitt, Letelier’s colleague, on Washington’s embassy row.
Kissinger has more trouble than these lawsuits. The Chilean Supreme Court sent the State Department questions for Kissinger about the death of Charles Horman, an American journalist killed during the 1973 coup in Chile. (Horman’s murder was the subject of the 1982 film “Missing.”) A criminal judge in Chile has said he might include Kissinger in his investigation of Operation Condor, a now infamous secret project, in which the security services of Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina worked together to kidnap and murder political opponents. (Letelier was killed in a Condor operation.)
The Spanish judge who requested the 1998 arrest of Pinochet in Great Britain has declared he wants to question Kissinger as a witness in his inquiry into crimes against humanity committed by Pinochet and other Latin American military dictators. In France, a judge probing the disappearance of five French citizens in Chile during the Pinochet years wants to talk to Kissinger. Last May, he sent police to a Paris hotel, where Kissinger was staying, to serve him questions. In February, Kissinger canceled a trip to Brazil, where he was to be awarded a medal by President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. His would-be hosts said he had pulled out to avoid protests by human rights groups.
A fellow who has coddled state-sponsored terrorism has been put in charge of this terrorism investigation. A proven liar has been assigned the task of finding the truth. By the way, in 1976, when Kissinger was secretary of state, he was informed by his chief aide for Latin America that South American military regimes were intending to use Operation Condor “to find and kill” political opponents. Kissinger quickly dispatched a cable instructing US ambassadors in the Condor countries to note Washington’s “deep concern.”
But it seems no such warnings were actually conveyed. And a month later, this order was rescinded. The next day, Letelier and Moffit were murdered. (Peter Kornbluh and journalist John Dinges recently chronicled this sad Kissinger episode in The Washington Post.) Kissinger’s State Department had not responded with the force needed to thwart the official terrorism of its friends in South America. Perhaps this provides Kissinger experience useful for examining the government’s failure to prevent more recent acts of terrorism.
Other qualifications for the job, as Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney might see it? A leaks-obsessed Kissinger, when he served as Nixon’s national security adviser, wiretapped his own staff. (One of his targets, Morton Halperin, sued and eventually won an apology.)
And when he left office, Kissinger took tens of thousands of pages of documents – created by government employees on government time – and treated them as his personal records, using them for his own memoirs and keeping the material for years from the prying eyes of historians and journalists. He and the Bush-Cheney White House agree on open government: the less the better.
Remember, the White House was never keen on setting up an independent commission that would answer to the public. Cheney at one point reportedly intervened to block a compromise that had been painstakingly worked out in Congress regarding the composition and rules of the commission. Finally, the White House said okay, as long as it could pick the chairman and subpoenas would only be issued with the support of at least six of the commission’s 10 members.
With Kissinger in control, the secret-keepers of the White House – who already have succeeded in preventing the House and Senate intelligence committees’ investigation of 9/ll from releasing embarrassing and uncomfortable information – will have little reason to fear.
The Bush-Cheney administration has been a rehab center for tainted Republicans. Retired Admiral John Poindexter, a leading Iran-contra player, was placed in charge of a sensitive, high-tech, Pentagon intelligence-gathering operation aimed at reviewing massive amounts of individual personal data in order to uncover possible terrorists. Elliott Abrams, who pled guilty to lying to Congress in the Iran-contra scandal, was warmly embraced and handed a staff position in Bush’s National Security Council. But the Kissinger selection is the most outrageous of these acts of compassion and forgiveness. It is a move of defiance and hubris.
For many in the world, Kissinger is a symbol of US arrogance and the misuse of American might. In power, he cared more for US credibility and geostrategic advantage than for human rights and open government. His has been a career of covertly moving chips, not one of letting them fall. He is not a truth-seeker. In fact, he has prevaricated about his own actions and tried to limit access to government information. He should be subpoenaed, not handed the right to subpoena. He is a target, not an investigator.
With Kissinger’s appointment, Bush has rendered the independent commission a sham. Democrats should have immediately announced they would refuse to fill their allotted five slots. But after Bush picked Kissinger, the Democrats tapped former Democratic Senator George Mitchell to be vice-chairman of the panel, signaling that Kissinger was fine by them. How unfortunate. The public would be better served and the victims of 9/11 better honored by no commission rather than one headed by Kissinger.
—The Nation Magazine, USA
By David Corn | December 3, 2002
Asking Henry Kissinger to investigate government malfeasance or nonfeasance is akin to asking Slobodan Milosevic to investigate war crimes. Pretty damn akin, since Kissinger has been accused, with cause, of engaging in war crimes of his own. Moreover, he has been a poster-child for the worst excesses of secret government and secret warfare.
Yet George W. Bush has named him to head a supposedly independent commission to investigate the nightmarish attacks of Sept.11, 2001, a commission intended to tell the public what went wrong on and before that day. This is a sick, black-is-white, war-is-peace joke – a cruel insult to the memory of those killed on 9/11 and a screw-you affront to any American who believes the public deserves a full accounting of government actions or lack thereof. It’s as if Bush instructed his advisers to come up with the name of the person who literally would be the absolute worst choice for the post and, once they had, said, “sign him up.”
Hyperbole? Consider the record.
Vietnam: Kissinger participated in a GOP plot to undermine the 1968 Paris peace talks in order to assist Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign. Once in office, Nixon named Kissinger his national security adviser, and later appointed him secretary of state. As co-architect of Nixon’s war in Vietnam, Kissinger oversaw the secret bombing campaign in Cambodia, an arguably illegal operation estimated to have claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Chile: In the early 1970s, Kissinger oversaw the CIA’s extensive covert campaign that assisted coup-plotters, some of whom eventually overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende and installed the murderous military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. On June 8, 1976, at the height of Pinochet’s repression, Kissinger had a meeting with Pinochet and behind closed doors told him that “we are sympathetic to what you are trying to do here,” according to minutes of the session (which are quoted in Peter Kornbluh’s forthcoming book, “The Pinochet File.”)
East Timor: In 1975, President Gerald Ford and Kissinger, still serving as secretary of state, offered advance approval of Indonesia’s brutal invasion of East Timor, which took the lives of tens of thousands of East Timorese. For years afterward, Kissinger denied the subject ever came up during the Dec. 6, 1975, meeting he and Ford held with General Suharto, Indonesia’s military ruler, in Jarkata.
But a classified US cable obtained by the National Security Archive shows otherwise. It notes that Suharto asked for “understanding if we deem it necessary to take rapid or drastic action” in East Timor. Ford said, “We will understand and will not press you on the issue. We understand the problem you have and the intentions you have.” The next day, Suharto struck East Timor. Kissinger is an outright liar on this subject.
Argentina: In 1976, as a fascistic and anti-Semitic military junta was beginning its so-called “dirty war” against supposed subversives – between 9,000 and 30,000 people would be “disappeared” by the military over the next seven years – Argentina’s foreign minister met with Kissinger and received what he believed was tacit encouragement for his government’s violent efforts.
According to a US cable released earlier this year, the foreign minister was convinced after his chat with Kissinger that the United States wanted the Argentine terror campaign to end soon – not that Washington was dead-set against it. The cable said that the minister had left his meeting with Kissinger “euphoric.” Two years later, Kissinger, then a private citizen, traveled to Buenos Aires as the guest of dictator General Jorge Rafael Videla and praised the junta for having done, as one cable put it, “an outstanding job in wiping out terrorist forces.”
As Raul Castro, the US ambassador to Argentina, noted at the time in a message to the State Department, “My only concern is that Kissinger’s repeated high praise for Argentina’s action in wiping out terrorism...may have gone to some considerable extent to his hosts’ heads....There is some danger that Argentines may use Kissinger’s laudatory statements as justification for hardening their human rights stance.” That is, Kissinger was, in a way, enabling torture, kidnapping and murder.
Appropriately, Kissinger is a man on the run for his past misdeeds. He is the target of two lawsuits, and judges overseas have sought him for questioning in war-crimes-related legal actions. In the United States, the family of Chilean General Rene Schneider sued Kissinger last year. Schneider was shot on Oct. 22, 1970, by would-be coup-makers working with CIA operatives.
These CIA assets were part of a secret plan authorized by Nixon – and supervised by Kissinger – to foment a coup before Allende, a Socialist, could be inaugurated as president. Schneider, a constitutionalist who opposed a coup, died three days later. This secret CIA program in Chile – dubbed “Track Two” – gave $35,000 to Schneider’s assassins after the slaying. Michael Tigar, an attorney for the Schneider family, claims, “Our case shows, document by document, that [Kissinger] was involved in great detail in supporting the people who killed General Schneider, and then paid them off.”
On Sept. 9, 2001, 60 Minutes aired a segment on the Schneider family’s charges against Kissinger. The former secretary of state came across as partly responsible for what is the Chilean equivalent of the JFK assassination. It was a major blow to his public image: Kissinger cast as a supporter of terrorists. Two days later, Osama bin Laden struck. Immediately, Kissinger was again on television, but now as a much-in-demand expert on terrorism.
In another lawsuit, filed earlier this month, 11 Chilean human rights victims – including relatives of people murdered after Pinochet’s coup – claimed Kissinger knowingly provided practical assistance and encouragement to the Pinochet regime. Kissinger’s codefendant in the case is Michael Townley, an American-born Chilean agent who was a leading international terrorist in the mid-1970s. In his most notorious operation, Townley in 1976 planted a car-bomb that killed Orlando Letelier, Allende’s ambassador to the United States, and Ronni Moffitt, Letelier’s colleague, on Washington’s embassy row.
Kissinger has more trouble than these lawsuits. The Chilean Supreme Court sent the State Department questions for Kissinger about the death of Charles Horman, an American journalist killed during the 1973 coup in Chile. (Horman’s murder was the subject of the 1982 film “Missing.”) A criminal judge in Chile has said he might include Kissinger in his investigation of Operation Condor, a now infamous secret project, in which the security services of Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina worked together to kidnap and murder political opponents. (Letelier was killed in a Condor operation.)
The Spanish judge who requested the 1998 arrest of Pinochet in Great Britain has declared he wants to question Kissinger as a witness in his inquiry into crimes against humanity committed by Pinochet and other Latin American military dictators. In France, a judge probing the disappearance of five French citizens in Chile during the Pinochet years wants to talk to Kissinger. Last May, he sent police to a Paris hotel, where Kissinger was staying, to serve him questions. In February, Kissinger canceled a trip to Brazil, where he was to be awarded a medal by President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. His would-be hosts said he had pulled out to avoid protests by human rights groups.
A fellow who has coddled state-sponsored terrorism has been put in charge of this terrorism investigation. A proven liar has been assigned the task of finding the truth. By the way, in 1976, when Kissinger was secretary of state, he was informed by his chief aide for Latin America that South American military regimes were intending to use Operation Condor “to find and kill” political opponents. Kissinger quickly dispatched a cable instructing US ambassadors in the Condor countries to note Washington’s “deep concern.”
But it seems no such warnings were actually conveyed. And a month later, this order was rescinded. The next day, Letelier and Moffit were murdered. (Peter Kornbluh and journalist John Dinges recently chronicled this sad Kissinger episode in The Washington Post.) Kissinger’s State Department had not responded with the force needed to thwart the official terrorism of its friends in South America. Perhaps this provides Kissinger experience useful for examining the government’s failure to prevent more recent acts of terrorism.
Other qualifications for the job, as Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney might see it? A leaks-obsessed Kissinger, when he served as Nixon’s national security adviser, wiretapped his own staff. (One of his targets, Morton Halperin, sued and eventually won an apology.)
And when he left office, Kissinger took tens of thousands of pages of documents – created by government employees on government time – and treated them as his personal records, using them for his own memoirs and keeping the material for years from the prying eyes of historians and journalists. He and the Bush-Cheney White House agree on open government: the less the better.
Remember, the White House was never keen on setting up an independent commission that would answer to the public. Cheney at one point reportedly intervened to block a compromise that had been painstakingly worked out in Congress regarding the composition and rules of the commission. Finally, the White House said okay, as long as it could pick the chairman and subpoenas would only be issued with the support of at least six of the commission’s 10 members.
With Kissinger in control, the secret-keepers of the White House – who already have succeeded in preventing the House and Senate intelligence committees’ investigation of 9/ll from releasing embarrassing and uncomfortable information – will have little reason to fear.
The Bush-Cheney administration has been a rehab center for tainted Republicans. Retired Admiral John Poindexter, a leading Iran-contra player, was placed in charge of a sensitive, high-tech, Pentagon intelligence-gathering operation aimed at reviewing massive amounts of individual personal data in order to uncover possible terrorists. Elliott Abrams, who pled guilty to lying to Congress in the Iran-contra scandal, was warmly embraced and handed a staff position in Bush’s National Security Council. But the Kissinger selection is the most outrageous of these acts of compassion and forgiveness. It is a move of defiance and hubris.
For many in the world, Kissinger is a symbol of US arrogance and the misuse of American might. In power, he cared more for US credibility and geostrategic advantage than for human rights and open government. His has been a career of covertly moving chips, not one of letting them fall. He is not a truth-seeker. In fact, he has prevaricated about his own actions and tried to limit access to government information. He should be subpoenaed, not handed the right to subpoena. He is a target, not an investigator.
With Kissinger’s appointment, Bush has rendered the independent commission a sham. Democrats should have immediately announced they would refuse to fill their allotted five slots. But after Bush picked Kissinger, the Democrats tapped former Democratic Senator George Mitchell to be vice-chairman of the panel, signaling that Kissinger was fine by them. How unfortunate. The public would be better served and the victims of 9/11 better honored by no commission rather than one headed by Kissinger.
—The Nation Magazine, USA
Filed under
Congress,
Dick Cheney,
Henry Kissinger,
Iran
by Winter Patriot
on Tuesday, December 03, 2002
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Newsweek : The Saudi Money Trail
Sunday, December 01, 2002
The Saudi Money Trail
By Michael Isikoff / December 1, 2002
When the two Qaeda operatives arrived at Los Angeles International Airport around New Year's 2000, they were warmly welcomed. Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar would help hijack American Airlines Flight 77 and crash it into the Pentagon a year and a half later, but that January in Los Angeles, they were just a couple of young Saudi men who barely spoke English and needed a place to stay. At the airport, they were swept up by a gregarious fellow Saudi, Omar al-Bayoumi, who had been living in the United States for several years. Al-Bayoumi drove the two men to San Diego, threw a welcoming party and arranged for the visitors to get an apartment next to his. He guaranteed the lease, and plunked down $1,550 in cash to cover the first two months' rent. His hospitality did not end there.
Al-Bayoumi also aided Alhazmi and Almihdhar as they opened a bank account, and recruited a friend to help them obtain Social Security cards and call flight schools in Florida to arrange flying lessons, according to law-enforcement officials. Two months before 9-11, al-Bayoumi moved to England; several months later, he disappeared. He is believed to be somewhere in Saudi Arabia.
Who is al-Bayoumi? At various times, the affable father of four told people that he was getting his doctorate at San Diego State, though the school has no record he ever attended. He told others that he was a pilot for the Saudi national airline. He apparently did work for Dallah Avco, an aviation-services company with extensive contracts with the Saudi Ministry of Defense and Aviation, headed by Prince Sultan, the father of the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar. According to informed sources, some federal investigators suspect that al-Bayoumi could have been an advance man for the 9-11 hijackers, sent by Al Qaeda to assist the plot that ultimately claimed 3,000 lives.
The Feds' interest in al-Bayoumi has been heightened by a money trail that could be perfectly innocent, but is nonetheless intriguing--and could ultimately expose the Saudi government to some of the blame for 9-11 and seriously strain U.S.-Saudi ties. It is too soon to say where the trail will wind up, but it begins with a very surprising name on a Washington bank account.
About two months after al-Bayoumi began aiding Alhazmi and Almihdhar, NEWSWEEK has learned, al-Bayoumi's wife began receiving regular stipends, often monthly and usually around $2,000, totaling tens of thousands of dollars. The money came in the form of cashier's checks, purchased from Washington's Riggs Bank by Princess Haifa bint Faisal, the daughter of the late King Faisal and wife of Prince Bandar, the Saudi envoy who is a prominent Washington figure and personal friend of the Bush family. The checks were sent to a woman named Majeda Ibrahin Dweikat, who in turn signed over many of them to al-Bayoumi's wife (and her friend), Manal Ahmed Bagader. The Feds want to know: Was this well-meaning charity gone awry? Or some elaborate money-laundering scheme? A scam? Or just a coincidence?
A spokesperson for Princess Haifa told NEWSWEEK that she had no idea the money was going to the al-Bayoumi family or that it might in any way be used for some nefarious purpose. Saudi officials and members of the royal family routinely give money to supplicants who need medical or financial help and write the embassy. Dwei-kat's husband, Osama Basnan, had first pleaded to the Saudi Embassy for help in 1998, saying that he needed money to treat his wife's thyroid condition. At the time, Prince Bandar wrote Basnan a $15,000 check. The monthly payments to his wife, Majeda, began in January 1999 and ended only last summer. Until she was contacted late last week by NEWSWEEK, Princess Haifa was unaware that the payments are being investigated by U.S. authorities, according to the spokesperson.
Questions over the money trail have enflamed a fierce, behind-the-scenes struggle between two congressional committees looking into 9-11 and the Bush administration. Senate Intelligence Committee co-chairman Robert Graham of Florida, a Democrat, and Richard Shelby of Alabama, a Republican, believe that the FBI failed to fully investigate 9-11. The lawmakers suspect that the administration does not want to look too closely at Saudi connections to the hijackers. The White House clearly fears jeopardizing U.S.-Saudi relations. In addition to Saudi oil, the United States needs Saudi bases to stage a possible invasion of Iraq. Administration officials reluctantly confirmed to NEWSWEEK that money had moved from Princess Haifa's account to al-Bayoumi, but they stressed that they do not know the purpose of the payments or whether any Saudi officials were even aware of them. "The facts are unclear, and there's no need to rush to judgment," said one administration official. In meetings with intelligence committee leaders, Vice President Dick Cheney, Attorney General John Ashcroft and others have adamantly rejected attempts to declassify the information, citing national-security concerns.
There have long been persistent suspicions of Saudi financial involvement with Al Qaeda. Of the 9-11 hijackers themselves, 15 of 19 came from Saudi Arabia. Some American intelligence officials say the Saudis have been less than fully cooperative in the war on terror. Some wealthy Saudis have long been known to fund charities that are used as fronts to support terrorists. It would be shocking indeed if the Saudi government or members of the royal family were supporting Al Qaeda. Saudi officials insist that any such suggestion is preposterous. After all, Osama bin Laden's stated aim is to overthrow the House of Saud as lackeys for the Americans. But many investigators suspect that the Saudi royals wish to hold their enemies close, to learn what they are up to and, possibly, to buy insurance. The Saudi government, as well as many wealthy Saudi businessmen with close ties to the government, generously support radical imams who preach Wahhabism, a very conservative form of Islam, not just in Saudi Arabia but all over the world, including in the United States. The potential for mischief is great. Rogue elements could be secretly funding terrorists, perhaps by scamming unwitting members of the royal family. There is a thin line between militant Islam and terrorism, and the Saudis have not always been mindful of the difference. --Saudi intelligence officials scoff, however, at the suggestion that Prince Bandar's wife is being used to provide a slush fund for black ops. "To think that my government uses the bank account of the ambassadress to pay informants is both ludicrous and insulting," said Turki Al Faisal, former chief of Saudi intelligence.
The FBI is still trying to figure out if al-Bayoumi played a role in the 9-11 plot. Within a few days of the attacks last fall, New Scotland Yard, working with the FBI, had found him enrolled in a business graduate program at Birmingham, England's Aston University. The British investigators arrested al-Bayoumi, and tore up the floorboards in his house. They discovered records of phone calls to two diplomats in the Saudi Embassy in Washington. The officials, who worked in the Islamic section of the embassy, which supports mosques and Islamic charities, apparently offered innocent explanations to FBI investigators. Al-Bayoumi, who adamantly denied any connection to the attacks or knowledge of the hijackers' links to Al Qaeda, was released after a week without charge, and is believed to have disappeared to Saudi Arabia. Now the gumshoes "are desperate to find out whatever they can about this guy," says Kerry Steigerwalt, a lawyer for a young Yemeni student recently grilled by the FBI about al-Bayoumi.
Before he vanished, al-Bayoumi offered a benign explanation of how he met with Almihdhar and Alhazmi. He told investigators that he just happened to be in a restaurant at the Los Angeles airport and overheard the two men talking in Arabic. He introduced himself and offered to help the two newcomers get settled and adjust to life in southern California. It was a chance meeting, he insisted to the skeptical agents. His offer of help was nothing more than the usual charity extended by one Muslim "brother" to another.
Al-Bayoumi was a familiar figure in San Diego's burgeoning Islamic community. He was often seen at the mosque or at social functions, chatting amiably, almost always holding a video camera. Al-Bayoumi seemed to pay so much attention to the comings and goings of young Saudi college students that some were convinced that he was a Saudi government spy. "He was always watching them, always checking up on them, literally following them around and then apparently reporting their activities back to Saudi Arabia," said Henry Bagadan, a Pakistani businessman who worships at the San Diego Islamic Center.
After al-Bayoumi left San Diego in July 2001, the cashier's checks purchased by Princess Haifa continued to flow to Majeda Dweikat, who in turn signed many of them over to her husband, Osama. Basnan also befriended the two hijackers, Almihdhar and Alhazmi. After the terrorist attacks, Basnan, who was known as a vocal Qaeda sympathizer, "celebrated the heroes of September 11" and talked about "what a wonderful, glorious day it had been," according to a law-enforcement official. Wife Dweikat appears to have been at least a minor scamster. She was convicted of marriage fraud to obtain immigration papers and pleaded guilty--along with al-Bayoumi's wife, Manal--to shoplifting in April 2001. The checks from Princess Haifa stopped when Basnan was arrested for visa fraud last August. (He told a judge, "I love this country," but was ordered deported to Saudi Arabia.) Interestingly, Osama Basnan showed up in Houston last April when Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah came to town with a vast entourage en route to President George W. Bush's ranch. According to informed sources, Basnan met with a high Saudi prince who has responsibilities for intelligence matters and is known to bring suitcases full of cash into the United States--a practice not unheard-of among the Saudi elite. A Houston police report obtained by NEWSWEEK shows that Basnan complained he had been robbed of his Saudi passport and $400. It is dated April 25, the same week the crown prince was in town.
The congressional investigators looking into 9-11 argue that the Feds aren't doing enough to stop another attack. The FBI's failure to thoroughly investigate the Saudi connection reveals the bureau's inherent weakness as a counterterror organization, these investigators tell NEWSWEEK. Senator Graham has been pushing for a new domestic-intelligence service, modeled on Britain's M.I.5, to track terror cells in this country. Graham says he fears that a concealed terrorist "infrastructure" set up to support the 19 hijackers is still in place--waiting for a new call to action.
The Bush administration has been reluctant to give the congressional committee investigating 9-11 everything it asks for. Cheney and others believe that Congress is intruding on the executive branch's intelligence-gathering and foreign-policy-making powers and that a "witch hunt" will distract and hobble the CIA and FBI. But the administration may also worry that if investigators keep digging, the U.S.-Saudi relationship will wind up in a deep hole.
By Michael Isikoff / December 1, 2002
When the two Qaeda operatives arrived at Los Angeles International Airport around New Year's 2000, they were warmly welcomed. Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar would help hijack American Airlines Flight 77 and crash it into the Pentagon a year and a half later, but that January in Los Angeles, they were just a couple of young Saudi men who barely spoke English and needed a place to stay. At the airport, they were swept up by a gregarious fellow Saudi, Omar al-Bayoumi, who had been living in the United States for several years. Al-Bayoumi drove the two men to San Diego, threw a welcoming party and arranged for the visitors to get an apartment next to his. He guaranteed the lease, and plunked down $1,550 in cash to cover the first two months' rent. His hospitality did not end there.
Al-Bayoumi also aided Alhazmi and Almihdhar as they opened a bank account, and recruited a friend to help them obtain Social Security cards and call flight schools in Florida to arrange flying lessons, according to law-enforcement officials. Two months before 9-11, al-Bayoumi moved to England; several months later, he disappeared. He is believed to be somewhere in Saudi Arabia.
Who is al-Bayoumi? At various times, the affable father of four told people that he was getting his doctorate at San Diego State, though the school has no record he ever attended. He told others that he was a pilot for the Saudi national airline. He apparently did work for Dallah Avco, an aviation-services company with extensive contracts with the Saudi Ministry of Defense and Aviation, headed by Prince Sultan, the father of the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar. According to informed sources, some federal investigators suspect that al-Bayoumi could have been an advance man for the 9-11 hijackers, sent by Al Qaeda to assist the plot that ultimately claimed 3,000 lives.
The Feds' interest in al-Bayoumi has been heightened by a money trail that could be perfectly innocent, but is nonetheless intriguing--and could ultimately expose the Saudi government to some of the blame for 9-11 and seriously strain U.S.-Saudi ties. It is too soon to say where the trail will wind up, but it begins with a very surprising name on a Washington bank account.
About two months after al-Bayoumi began aiding Alhazmi and Almihdhar, NEWSWEEK has learned, al-Bayoumi's wife began receiving regular stipends, often monthly and usually around $2,000, totaling tens of thousands of dollars. The money came in the form of cashier's checks, purchased from Washington's Riggs Bank by Princess Haifa bint Faisal, the daughter of the late King Faisal and wife of Prince Bandar, the Saudi envoy who is a prominent Washington figure and personal friend of the Bush family. The checks were sent to a woman named Majeda Ibrahin Dweikat, who in turn signed over many of them to al-Bayoumi's wife (and her friend), Manal Ahmed Bagader. The Feds want to know: Was this well-meaning charity gone awry? Or some elaborate money-laundering scheme? A scam? Or just a coincidence?
A spokesperson for Princess Haifa told NEWSWEEK that she had no idea the money was going to the al-Bayoumi family or that it might in any way be used for some nefarious purpose. Saudi officials and members of the royal family routinely give money to supplicants who need medical or financial help and write the embassy. Dwei-kat's husband, Osama Basnan, had first pleaded to the Saudi Embassy for help in 1998, saying that he needed money to treat his wife's thyroid condition. At the time, Prince Bandar wrote Basnan a $15,000 check. The monthly payments to his wife, Majeda, began in January 1999 and ended only last summer. Until she was contacted late last week by NEWSWEEK, Princess Haifa was unaware that the payments are being investigated by U.S. authorities, according to the spokesperson.
Questions over the money trail have enflamed a fierce, behind-the-scenes struggle between two congressional committees looking into 9-11 and the Bush administration. Senate Intelligence Committee co-chairman Robert Graham of Florida, a Democrat, and Richard Shelby of Alabama, a Republican, believe that the FBI failed to fully investigate 9-11. The lawmakers suspect that the administration does not want to look too closely at Saudi connections to the hijackers. The White House clearly fears jeopardizing U.S.-Saudi relations. In addition to Saudi oil, the United States needs Saudi bases to stage a possible invasion of Iraq. Administration officials reluctantly confirmed to NEWSWEEK that money had moved from Princess Haifa's account to al-Bayoumi, but they stressed that they do not know the purpose of the payments or whether any Saudi officials were even aware of them. "The facts are unclear, and there's no need to rush to judgment," said one administration official. In meetings with intelligence committee leaders, Vice President Dick Cheney, Attorney General John Ashcroft and others have adamantly rejected attempts to declassify the information, citing national-security concerns.
There have long been persistent suspicions of Saudi financial involvement with Al Qaeda. Of the 9-11 hijackers themselves, 15 of 19 came from Saudi Arabia. Some American intelligence officials say the Saudis have been less than fully cooperative in the war on terror. Some wealthy Saudis have long been known to fund charities that are used as fronts to support terrorists. It would be shocking indeed if the Saudi government or members of the royal family were supporting Al Qaeda. Saudi officials insist that any such suggestion is preposterous. After all, Osama bin Laden's stated aim is to overthrow the House of Saud as lackeys for the Americans. But many investigators suspect that the Saudi royals wish to hold their enemies close, to learn what they are up to and, possibly, to buy insurance. The Saudi government, as well as many wealthy Saudi businessmen with close ties to the government, generously support radical imams who preach Wahhabism, a very conservative form of Islam, not just in Saudi Arabia but all over the world, including in the United States. The potential for mischief is great. Rogue elements could be secretly funding terrorists, perhaps by scamming unwitting members of the royal family. There is a thin line between militant Islam and terrorism, and the Saudis have not always been mindful of the difference. --Saudi intelligence officials scoff, however, at the suggestion that Prince Bandar's wife is being used to provide a slush fund for black ops. "To think that my government uses the bank account of the ambassadress to pay informants is both ludicrous and insulting," said Turki Al Faisal, former chief of Saudi intelligence.
The FBI is still trying to figure out if al-Bayoumi played a role in the 9-11 plot. Within a few days of the attacks last fall, New Scotland Yard, working with the FBI, had found him enrolled in a business graduate program at Birmingham, England's Aston University. The British investigators arrested al-Bayoumi, and tore up the floorboards in his house. They discovered records of phone calls to two diplomats in the Saudi Embassy in Washington. The officials, who worked in the Islamic section of the embassy, which supports mosques and Islamic charities, apparently offered innocent explanations to FBI investigators. Al-Bayoumi, who adamantly denied any connection to the attacks or knowledge of the hijackers' links to Al Qaeda, was released after a week without charge, and is believed to have disappeared to Saudi Arabia. Now the gumshoes "are desperate to find out whatever they can about this guy," says Kerry Steigerwalt, a lawyer for a young Yemeni student recently grilled by the FBI about al-Bayoumi.
Before he vanished, al-Bayoumi offered a benign explanation of how he met with Almihdhar and Alhazmi. He told investigators that he just happened to be in a restaurant at the Los Angeles airport and overheard the two men talking in Arabic. He introduced himself and offered to help the two newcomers get settled and adjust to life in southern California. It was a chance meeting, he insisted to the skeptical agents. His offer of help was nothing more than the usual charity extended by one Muslim "brother" to another.
Al-Bayoumi was a familiar figure in San Diego's burgeoning Islamic community. He was often seen at the mosque or at social functions, chatting amiably, almost always holding a video camera. Al-Bayoumi seemed to pay so much attention to the comings and goings of young Saudi college students that some were convinced that he was a Saudi government spy. "He was always watching them, always checking up on them, literally following them around and then apparently reporting their activities back to Saudi Arabia," said Henry Bagadan, a Pakistani businessman who worships at the San Diego Islamic Center.
After al-Bayoumi left San Diego in July 2001, the cashier's checks purchased by Princess Haifa continued to flow to Majeda Dweikat, who in turn signed many of them over to her husband, Osama. Basnan also befriended the two hijackers, Almihdhar and Alhazmi. After the terrorist attacks, Basnan, who was known as a vocal Qaeda sympathizer, "celebrated the heroes of September 11" and talked about "what a wonderful, glorious day it had been," according to a law-enforcement official. Wife Dweikat appears to have been at least a minor scamster. She was convicted of marriage fraud to obtain immigration papers and pleaded guilty--along with al-Bayoumi's wife, Manal--to shoplifting in April 2001. The checks from Princess Haifa stopped when Basnan was arrested for visa fraud last August. (He told a judge, "I love this country," but was ordered deported to Saudi Arabia.) Interestingly, Osama Basnan showed up in Houston last April when Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah came to town with a vast entourage en route to President George W. Bush's ranch. According to informed sources, Basnan met with a high Saudi prince who has responsibilities for intelligence matters and is known to bring suitcases full of cash into the United States--a practice not unheard-of among the Saudi elite. A Houston police report obtained by NEWSWEEK shows that Basnan complained he had been robbed of his Saudi passport and $400. It is dated April 25, the same week the crown prince was in town.
The congressional investigators looking into 9-11 argue that the Feds aren't doing enough to stop another attack. The FBI's failure to thoroughly investigate the Saudi connection reveals the bureau's inherent weakness as a counterterror organization, these investigators tell NEWSWEEK. Senator Graham has been pushing for a new domestic-intelligence service, modeled on Britain's M.I.5, to track terror cells in this country. Graham says he fears that a concealed terrorist "infrastructure" set up to support the 19 hijackers is still in place--waiting for a new call to action.
The Bush administration has been reluctant to give the congressional committee investigating 9-11 everything it asks for. Cheney and others believe that Congress is intruding on the executive branch's intelligence-gathering and foreign-policy-making powers and that a "witch hunt" will distract and hobble the CIA and FBI. But the administration may also worry that if investigators keep digging, the U.S.-Saudi relationship will wind up in a deep hole.
Filed under
Bandar bin Sultan,
Bob Graham,
Khalid Almihdhar,
Majeda Ibrahin Dweikat,
Nawaf Alhazmi,
Omar al-Bayoumi,
Osama Basnan,
Princess Haifa bint Faisal,
Richard Shelby
by Winter Patriot
on Sunday, December 01, 2002
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BBC : American killed in CIA's Yemen attack
Thursday, November 07, 2002
American killed in CIA's Yemen attack
November 7, 2002
An American citizen was among the six al Qaeda suspects killed in a car explosion in Yemen over the weekend, according to a Yemeni official.
All the men who died were described by the official as "dangerous".
The six were killed when their car exploded in Marib province east of the capital Sanaa on Sunday.
US officials said the blast was caused by a rocket from an unmanned aircraft operated by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
One of the dead, Qaed Senyan al-Harthi, also known as Abu Ali, was a major suspect in an attack bombing two years ago on the US warship Cole in a Yemeni port that left 17 US sailors dead.
"Investigations by Yemeni authorities found that Harthi was accompanied by five dangerous members of the al Qaeda network who were not ordinary passengers," the Yemeni official said.
The US national was identified by a government newspaper as Ahmed Hijazi.
Weapons found
Personal documents, weapons and satellite telecommunication devices were said to have been discovered in the ruined car, the official said.
The government September 26 weekly newspaper said the men had participated in "planning and executing acts of sabotage that harmed Yemeni national interests.
"The six were involved in the attack on the USS Cole in Aden harbour in 2000," the paper added.
Washington holds Osama Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network responsible for the attack on the Cole.
Earlier this year, US military trainers went to Yemen to offer advice on tracking down al-Qaeda fighters believed to be in hiding.
Yemen, keen to cast off its image as a haven for Muslim militants, says it has arrested 85 people in its hunt for suspected members of al-Qaeda and other militant groups.
November 7, 2002
An American citizen was among the six al Qaeda suspects killed in a car explosion in Yemen over the weekend, according to a Yemeni official.
All the men who died were described by the official as "dangerous".
The six were killed when their car exploded in Marib province east of the capital Sanaa on Sunday.
US officials said the blast was caused by a rocket from an unmanned aircraft operated by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
One of the dead, Qaed Senyan al-Harthi, also known as Abu Ali, was a major suspect in an attack bombing two years ago on the US warship Cole in a Yemeni port that left 17 US sailors dead.
"Investigations by Yemeni authorities found that Harthi was accompanied by five dangerous members of the al Qaeda network who were not ordinary passengers," the Yemeni official said.
The US national was identified by a government newspaper as Ahmed Hijazi.
Weapons found
Personal documents, weapons and satellite telecommunication devices were said to have been discovered in the ruined car, the official said.
The government September 26 weekly newspaper said the men had participated in "planning and executing acts of sabotage that harmed Yemeni national interests.
"The six were involved in the attack on the USS Cole in Aden harbour in 2000," the paper added.
Washington holds Osama Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network responsible for the attack on the Cole.
Earlier this year, US military trainers went to Yemen to offer advice on tracking down al-Qaeda fighters believed to be in hiding.
Yemen, keen to cast off its image as a haven for Muslim militants, says it has arrested 85 people in its hunt for suspected members of al-Qaeda and other militant groups.
Chris Floyd : Into the Dark: The Pentagon Plan to Foment Terrorism
Friday, November 01, 2002
Into the Dark: The Pentagon Plan to Foment Terrorism
by Chris Floyd | the Moscow Times | November 1, 2002
This piece was chosen as number 4 in Project Censored's "Top Censored Stories of 2002".
Because these attacks will be instigated at the order of the Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense.
This astonishing admission was buried deep in a story which was itself submerged by mounds of gray newsprint and glossy underwear ads in last Sunday's Los Angeles Times. There – in an article by military analyst William Arkin, detailing the vast expansion of the secret armies being massed by the former Nixon bureaucrat now lording it over the Pentagon – came the revelation of Rumsfeld's plan to create "a super-Intelligence Support Activity" that will "bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception." According to a classified document prepared for Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, the new organization – the "Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)" – will carry out secret missions designed to "stimulate reactions" among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to "counterattack" by U.S. forces.
In other words – and let's say this plainly, clearly and soberly, so that no one can mistake the intention of Rumsfeld's plan – the United States government is planning to use "cover and deception" and secret military operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people. Let's say it again: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the other members of the unelected regime in Washington plan to deliberately foment the murder of innocent people – your family, your friends, your lovers, you – in order to further their geopolitical ambitions.
For P2OG is not designed solely to flush out terrorists and bring them to justice – a laudable goal in itself, although the Rumsfeld way of combating terrorism by causing it is pure moral lunacy. (Or should we use the Regime's own preferred terminology and just call it "evil"?) No, it seems the Pee-Twos have bigger fish to fry. Once they have sparked terrorists into action – by killing their family members? luring them with loot? fueling them with drugs? plying them with jihad propaganda? messing with their mamas? or with agents provocateurs, perhaps, who infiltrate groups then plan and direct the attacks themselves? – they can then take measures against the "states/sub-state actors accountable" for "harboring" the Rumsfeld-roused gangs. What kind of measures exactly? Well, the classified Pentagon program puts it this way: "Their sovereignty will be at risk."
The Pee-Twos will thus come in handy whenever the Regime hankers to add a little oil-laden real estate or a new military base to the Empire's burgeoning portfolio. Just find a nest of violent malcontents, stir 'em with a stick, and presto: instant "justification" for whatever level of intervention/conquest/rapine you might desire. And what if the territory you fancy doesn't actually harbor any convenient marauders to use for fun and profit? Well, surely a God-like "super-Intelligence Support Activity" is capable of creation ex nihilo, yes?
The Rumsfeld-Bush plan to employ murder and terrorism for political, financial and ideological gain does have historical roots (besides al Qaeda, the Stern Gang, the SA, the SS, the KGB, the IRA, the UDF, Eta, Hamas, Shining Path and countless other upholders of Bushian morality, decency and freedom). We refer of course to Operation Northwoods, oft mentioned in these pages: the plan that America's top military brass presented to President John Kennedy in 1963, calling for a phony terrorist campaign – complete with bombings, hijackings, plane crashes and dead Americans – to provide "justification" for an invasion of Cuba, the Mafia/Corporate fiefdom which had recently been lost to Castro.
Kennedy rejected the plan, and was killed a few months later. Now Rumsfeld has resurrected Northwoods, but on a far grander scale, with resources at his disposal undreamed of by those brass of yore, with no counterbalancing global rival to restrain him – and with an ignorant, corrupt president who has shown himself all too eager to embrace any means whatsoever that will augment the wealth and power of his own narrow, undemocratic, elitist clique.
There is genuine transgression here, a stepping-over – deliberately, with open eyes, with forethought, planning, and conscious will – of lines that should never be crossed. Acting in deadly symbiosis with their supposed enemies, the terrorist mafias, Bush and his cohorts are plunging the world into an abyss, an endless night of black ops, retribution, blowback, deceit, of murder and terror – wholesale, retail, state-sponsored, privatized; of fear and degradation, servility, chaos: the perversion of all that's best in us, of all that we've won from the bestiality of our primal nature, all that we've raised above the mindless ravening urges and impulses still boiling in the mud of our monkey brains.
It's not a fight for freedom; it's a retreat into darkness.
And the day will be a long time coming.
by Chris Floyd | the Moscow Times | November 1, 2002
This piece was chosen as number 4 in Project Censored's "Top Censored Stories of 2002".
"This age: layers of lime harden in the sick son's blood…This column stands foursquare with the Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, when he warns that there will be more terrorist attacks against the American people and civilization at large. We know, as does the Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, that this statement is an incontrovertible fact, a matter of scientific certainty. And how can we and the Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, be so sure that there will be more terrorist attacks against the American people and civilization at large?
There's nowhere to run from the tyrant-epoch…
Who else will you kill? Who else glorify?
What other lies will you invent?"
— Osip Mandelshtam, "1 January 1924"
Because these attacks will be instigated at the order of the Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense.
This astonishing admission was buried deep in a story which was itself submerged by mounds of gray newsprint and glossy underwear ads in last Sunday's Los Angeles Times. There – in an article by military analyst William Arkin, detailing the vast expansion of the secret armies being massed by the former Nixon bureaucrat now lording it over the Pentagon – came the revelation of Rumsfeld's plan to create "a super-Intelligence Support Activity" that will "bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception." According to a classified document prepared for Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, the new organization – the "Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)" – will carry out secret missions designed to "stimulate reactions" among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to "counterattack" by U.S. forces.
In other words – and let's say this plainly, clearly and soberly, so that no one can mistake the intention of Rumsfeld's plan – the United States government is planning to use "cover and deception" and secret military operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people. Let's say it again: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the other members of the unelected regime in Washington plan to deliberately foment the murder of innocent people – your family, your friends, your lovers, you – in order to further their geopolitical ambitions.
For P2OG is not designed solely to flush out terrorists and bring them to justice – a laudable goal in itself, although the Rumsfeld way of combating terrorism by causing it is pure moral lunacy. (Or should we use the Regime's own preferred terminology and just call it "evil"?) No, it seems the Pee-Twos have bigger fish to fry. Once they have sparked terrorists into action – by killing their family members? luring them with loot? fueling them with drugs? plying them with jihad propaganda? messing with their mamas? or with agents provocateurs, perhaps, who infiltrate groups then plan and direct the attacks themselves? – they can then take measures against the "states/sub-state actors accountable" for "harboring" the Rumsfeld-roused gangs. What kind of measures exactly? Well, the classified Pentagon program puts it this way: "Their sovereignty will be at risk."
The Pee-Twos will thus come in handy whenever the Regime hankers to add a little oil-laden real estate or a new military base to the Empire's burgeoning portfolio. Just find a nest of violent malcontents, stir 'em with a stick, and presto: instant "justification" for whatever level of intervention/conquest/rapine you might desire. And what if the territory you fancy doesn't actually harbor any convenient marauders to use for fun and profit? Well, surely a God-like "super-Intelligence Support Activity" is capable of creation ex nihilo, yes?
The Rumsfeld-Bush plan to employ murder and terrorism for political, financial and ideological gain does have historical roots (besides al Qaeda, the Stern Gang, the SA, the SS, the KGB, the IRA, the UDF, Eta, Hamas, Shining Path and countless other upholders of Bushian morality, decency and freedom). We refer of course to Operation Northwoods, oft mentioned in these pages: the plan that America's top military brass presented to President John Kennedy in 1963, calling for a phony terrorist campaign – complete with bombings, hijackings, plane crashes and dead Americans – to provide "justification" for an invasion of Cuba, the Mafia/Corporate fiefdom which had recently been lost to Castro.
Kennedy rejected the plan, and was killed a few months later. Now Rumsfeld has resurrected Northwoods, but on a far grander scale, with resources at his disposal undreamed of by those brass of yore, with no counterbalancing global rival to restrain him – and with an ignorant, corrupt president who has shown himself all too eager to embrace any means whatsoever that will augment the wealth and power of his own narrow, undemocratic, elitist clique.
There is genuine transgression here, a stepping-over – deliberately, with open eyes, with forethought, planning, and conscious will – of lines that should never be crossed. Acting in deadly symbiosis with their supposed enemies, the terrorist mafias, Bush and his cohorts are plunging the world into an abyss, an endless night of black ops, retribution, blowback, deceit, of murder and terror – wholesale, retail, state-sponsored, privatized; of fear and degradation, servility, chaos: the perversion of all that's best in us, of all that we've won from the bestiality of our primal nature, all that we've raised above the mindless ravening urges and impulses still boiling in the mud of our monkey brains.
It's not a fight for freedom; it's a retreat into darkness.
And the day will be a long time coming.
Filed under
Dick Cheney,
Rumsfeld,
science
by Winter Patriot
on Friday, November 01, 2002
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Counterpunch : Somebody Blew Up America
Thursday, October 03, 2002
Somebody Blew Up America
by AMIRI BARAKA | October 3, 2002
They say its some terrorist,
some barbaric
A Rab,
in Afghanistan
It wasn't our American terrorists
It wasn't the Klan or the Skin heads
Or the them that blows up nigger
Churches, or reincarnates us on Death Row
It wasn't Trent Lott
Or David Duke or Giuliani
Or Schundler, Helms retiring
It wasn't
The gonorrhea in costume
The white sheet diseases
That have murdered black people
Terrorized reason and sanity
Most of humanity, as they pleases
They say (who say?)
Who do the saying
Who is them paying
Who tell the lies
Who in disguise
Who had the slaves
Who got the bux out the Bucks
Who got fat from plantations
Who genocided Indians
Tried to waste the Black nation
Who live on Wall Street
The first plantation
Who cut your nuts off
Who rape your ma
Who lynched your pa
Who got the tar, who got the feathers
Who had the match, who set the fires
Who killed and hired
Who say they God & still be the Devil
Who the biggest only
Who the most goodest
Who do Jesus resemble
Who created everything
Who the smartest
Who the greatest
Who the richest
Who say you ugly and they the goodlookingest
Who define art
Who define science
Who made the bombs
Who made the guns
Who bought the slaves, who sold them
Who called you them names
Who say Dahmer wasn't insane
Who? Who? Who?
Who stole Puerto Rico
Who stole the Indies, the Philipines, Manhattan
Australia & The Hebrides
Who forced opium on the Chinese
Who own them buildings
Who got the money
Who think you funny
Who locked you up
Who own the papers
Who owned the slave ship
Who run the army
Who the fake president
Who the ruler
Who the banker
Who? Who? Who?
Who own the mine
Who twist your mind
Who got bread
Who need peace
Who you think need war
Who own the oil
Who do no toil
Who own the soil
Who is not a nigger
Who is so great ain't nobody bigger
Who own this city
Who own the air
Who own the water
Who own your crib
Who rob and steal and cheat and murder
and make lies the truth
Who call you uncouth
Who live in the biggest house
Who do the biggest crime
Who go on vacation anytime
Who killed the most niggers
Who killed the most Jews
Who killed the most Italians
Who killed the most Irish
Who killed the most Africans
Who killed the most Japanese
Who killed the most Latinos
Who? Who? Who?
Who own the ocean
Who own the airplanes
Who own the malls
Who own television
Who own radio
Who own what ain't even known to be owned
Who own the owners that ain't the real owners
Who own the suburbs
Who suck the cities
Who make the laws
Who made Bush president
Who believe the confederate flag need to be flying
Who talk about democracy and be lying
Who the Beast in Revelations
Who 666
Who know who decide
Jesus get crucified
Who the Devil on the real side
Who got rich from Armenian genocide
Who the biggest terrorist
Who change the bible
Who killed the most people
Who do the most evil
Who don't worry about survival
Who have the colonies
Who stole the most land
Who rule the world
Who say they good but only do evil
Who the biggest executioner
Who? Who? Who?
Who own the oil
Who want more oil
Who told you what you think that later you find out a lie
Who? Who? Who?
Who found Bin Laden, maybe they Satan
Who pay the CIA,
Who knew the bomb was gonna blow
Who know why the terrorists
Learned to fly in Florida, San Diego
Who know why Five Israelis was filming the explosion
And cracking they sides at the notion
Who need fossil fuel when the sun ain't goin' nowhere
Who make the credit cards
Who get the biggest tax cut
Who walked out of the Conference
Against Racism
Who killed Malcolm, Kennedy & his Brother
Who killed Dr King, Who would want such a thing?
Are they linked to the murder of Lincoln?
Who invaded Grenada
Who made money from apartheid
Who keep the Irish a colony
Who overthrow Chile and Nicaragua later
Who killed David Sibeko, Chris Hani,
the same ones who killed Biko, Cabral,
Neruda, Allende, Che Guevara, Sandino,
Who killed Kabila, the ones who wasted Lumumba, Mondlane,
Betty Shabazz, Die, Princess Di, Ralph Featherstone,
Little Bobby
Who locked up Mandela, Dhoruba, Geronimo,
Assata, Mumia, Garvey, Dashiell Hammett, Alphaeus Hutton
Who killed Huey Newton, Fred Hampton,
Medgar Evers, Mikey Smith, Walter Rodney,
Was it the ones who tried to poison Fidel
Who tried to keep the Vietnamese Oppressed
Who put a price on Lenin's head
Who put the Jews in ovens,
and who helped them do it
Who said "America First"
and ok'd the yellow stars
Who killed Rosa Luxembourg, Liebneckt
Who murdered the Rosenbergs
And all the good people iced,
tortured, assassinated, vanished
Who got rich from Algeria, Libya, Haiti,
Iran, Iraq, Saudi, Kuwait, Lebanon,
Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine,
Who cut off peoples hands in the Congo
Who invented Aids
Who put the germs
In the Indians' blankets
Who thought up "The Trail of Tears"
Who blew up the Maine
& started the Spanish American War
Who got Sharon back in Power
Who backed Batista, Hitler, Bilbo,
Chiang kai Chek
Who decided Affirmative Action had to go
Reconstruction, The New Deal,
The New Frontier, The Great Society,
Who do Tom Ass Clarence Work for
Who doo doo come out the Colon's mouth
Who know what kind of Skeeza is a Condoleeza
Who pay Connelly to be a wooden negro
Who give Genius Awards to Homo Locus
Subsidere
Who overthrew Nkrumah, Bishop,
Who poison Robeson,
who try to put DuBois in Jail
Who frame Rap Jamil al Amin, Who frame the Rosenbergs,
Garvey,
The Scottsboro Boys,
The Hollywood Ten
Who set the Reichstag Fire
Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed
Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers
To stay home that day
Why did Sharon stay away?
Who? Who? Who?
Explosion of Owl the newspaper say
The devil face cd be seen
Who make money from war
Who make dough from fear and lies
Who want the world like it is
Who want the world to be ruled by imperialism and national
oppression and terror violence, and hunger and poverty.
Who is the ruler of Hell?
Who is the most powerful
Who you know ever
Seen God?
But everybody seen
The Devil
Like an Owl exploding
In your life in your brain in your self
Like an Owl who know the devil
All night, all day if you listen, Like an Owl
Exploding in fire. We hear the questions rise
In terrible flame like the whistle of a crazy dog
Like the acid vomit of the fire of Hell
Who and Who and WHO who who
Whoooo and Whooooooooooooooooooooo!
Copyright 2002. Amiri Baraka.
by AMIRI BARAKA | October 3, 2002
They say its some terrorist,
some barbaric
A Rab,
in Afghanistan
It wasn't our American terrorists
It wasn't the Klan or the Skin heads
Or the them that blows up nigger
Churches, or reincarnates us on Death Row
It wasn't Trent Lott
Or David Duke or Giuliani
Or Schundler, Helms retiring
It wasn't
The gonorrhea in costume
The white sheet diseases
That have murdered black people
Terrorized reason and sanity
Most of humanity, as they pleases
They say (who say?)
Who do the saying
Who is them paying
Who tell the lies
Who in disguise
Who had the slaves
Who got the bux out the Bucks
Who got fat from plantations
Who genocided Indians
Tried to waste the Black nation
Who live on Wall Street
The first plantation
Who cut your nuts off
Who rape your ma
Who lynched your pa
Who got the tar, who got the feathers
Who had the match, who set the fires
Who killed and hired
Who say they God & still be the Devil
Who the biggest only
Who the most goodest
Who do Jesus resemble
Who created everything
Who the smartest
Who the greatest
Who the richest
Who say you ugly and they the goodlookingest
Who define art
Who define science
Who made the bombs
Who made the guns
Who bought the slaves, who sold them
Who called you them names
Who say Dahmer wasn't insane
Who? Who? Who?
Who stole Puerto Rico
Who stole the Indies, the Philipines, Manhattan
Australia & The Hebrides
Who forced opium on the Chinese
Who own them buildings
Who got the money
Who think you funny
Who locked you up
Who own the papers
Who owned the slave ship
Who run the army
Who the fake president
Who the ruler
Who the banker
Who? Who? Who?
Who own the mine
Who twist your mind
Who got bread
Who need peace
Who you think need war
Who own the oil
Who do no toil
Who own the soil
Who is not a nigger
Who is so great ain't nobody bigger
Who own this city
Who own the air
Who own the water
Who own your crib
Who rob and steal and cheat and murder
and make lies the truth
Who call you uncouth
Who live in the biggest house
Who do the biggest crime
Who go on vacation anytime
Who killed the most niggers
Who killed the most Jews
Who killed the most Italians
Who killed the most Irish
Who killed the most Africans
Who killed the most Japanese
Who killed the most Latinos
Who? Who? Who?
Who own the ocean
Who own the airplanes
Who own the malls
Who own television
Who own radio
Who own what ain't even known to be owned
Who own the owners that ain't the real owners
Who own the suburbs
Who suck the cities
Who make the laws
Who made Bush president
Who believe the confederate flag need to be flying
Who talk about democracy and be lying
Who the Beast in Revelations
Who 666
Who know who decide
Jesus get crucified
Who the Devil on the real side
Who got rich from Armenian genocide
Who the biggest terrorist
Who change the bible
Who killed the most people
Who do the most evil
Who don't worry about survival
Who have the colonies
Who stole the most land
Who rule the world
Who say they good but only do evil
Who the biggest executioner
Who? Who? Who?
Who own the oil
Who want more oil
Who told you what you think that later you find out a lie
Who? Who? Who?
Who found Bin Laden, maybe they Satan
Who pay the CIA,
Who knew the bomb was gonna blow
Who know why the terrorists
Learned to fly in Florida, San Diego
Who know why Five Israelis was filming the explosion
And cracking they sides at the notion
Who need fossil fuel when the sun ain't goin' nowhere
Who make the credit cards
Who get the biggest tax cut
Who walked out of the Conference
Against Racism
Who killed Malcolm, Kennedy & his Brother
Who killed Dr King, Who would want such a thing?
Are they linked to the murder of Lincoln?
Who invaded Grenada
Who made money from apartheid
Who keep the Irish a colony
Who overthrow Chile and Nicaragua later
Who killed David Sibeko, Chris Hani,
the same ones who killed Biko, Cabral,
Neruda, Allende, Che Guevara, Sandino,
Who killed Kabila, the ones who wasted Lumumba, Mondlane,
Betty Shabazz, Die, Princess Di, Ralph Featherstone,
Little Bobby
Who locked up Mandela, Dhoruba, Geronimo,
Assata, Mumia, Garvey, Dashiell Hammett, Alphaeus Hutton
Who killed Huey Newton, Fred Hampton,
Medgar Evers, Mikey Smith, Walter Rodney,
Was it the ones who tried to poison Fidel
Who tried to keep the Vietnamese Oppressed
Who put a price on Lenin's head
Who put the Jews in ovens,
and who helped them do it
Who said "America First"
and ok'd the yellow stars
Who killed Rosa Luxembourg, Liebneckt
Who murdered the Rosenbergs
And all the good people iced,
tortured, assassinated, vanished
Who got rich from Algeria, Libya, Haiti,
Iran, Iraq, Saudi, Kuwait, Lebanon,
Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine,
Who cut off peoples hands in the Congo
Who invented Aids
Who put the germs
In the Indians' blankets
Who thought up "The Trail of Tears"
Who blew up the Maine
& started the Spanish American War
Who got Sharon back in Power
Who backed Batista, Hitler, Bilbo,
Chiang kai Chek
Who decided Affirmative Action had to go
Reconstruction, The New Deal,
The New Frontier, The Great Society,
Who do Tom Ass Clarence Work for
Who doo doo come out the Colon's mouth
Who know what kind of Skeeza is a Condoleeza
Who pay Connelly to be a wooden negro
Who give Genius Awards to Homo Locus
Subsidere
Who overthrew Nkrumah, Bishop,
Who poison Robeson,
who try to put DuBois in Jail
Who frame Rap Jamil al Amin, Who frame the Rosenbergs,
Garvey,
The Scottsboro Boys,
The Hollywood Ten
Who set the Reichstag Fire
Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed
Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers
To stay home that day
Why did Sharon stay away?
Who? Who? Who?
Explosion of Owl the newspaper say
The devil face cd be seen
Who make money from war
Who make dough from fear and lies
Who want the world like it is
Who want the world to be ruled by imperialism and national
oppression and terror violence, and hunger and poverty.
Who is the ruler of Hell?
Who is the most powerful
Who you know ever
Seen God?
But everybody seen
The Devil
Like an Owl exploding
In your life in your brain in your self
Like an Owl who know the devil
All night, all day if you listen, Like an Owl
Exploding in fire. We hear the questions rise
In terrible flame like the whistle of a crazy dog
Like the acid vomit of the fire of Hell
Who and Who and WHO who who
Whoooo and Whooooooooooooooooooooo!
Copyright 2002. Amiri Baraka.
Filed under
Afghanistan,
Condoleezza Rice,
Iran,
Iraq,
science
by Winter Patriot
on Thursday, October 03, 2002
[
link |
| home
]
| home
]
CSM : Interview with Pervez Musharraf
Tuesday, September 10, 2002
Interview with Pervez Musharraf
September 10, 2002
Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf met with Monitor editors in Boston Sunday. Here are excerpts from his remarks.
CSM: Do you feel like Afghanistan is firmly on a path to produce greater stability on your border, or should the United States and the West be doing more?
Musharraf: I think the situation remains fluid. It's improving, but it remains fluid. We have to bring stability into Afghanistan, and that stability has not yet come...there are seven power centers in Afghanistan – seven or eight – which are dominated by warlords.
The writ of the government has to extend to all these seven or eight power centers. And the warlords' writ in those areas needs to be reduced and the center's impact and stature needs to be enhanced...
Now, the reconstruction element has not even taken off. There is a Tokyo Accord which has promised I think $4 billion or $4.5 billion. But this assistance is not coming because ...probably [they are] looking for political stability in Afghanistan. But this is a chicken-and-egg situation. Do you want political stability first, and then bring money? Or, money itself will bring political stability?...We must inject this money, and give the Karzai government the clout to spend this money and extend their writ through allocation of funds to these power centers that I'm talking of...Pakistan is totally supportive of the Karzai government. Whatever he's doing, I think he's the hope for the future of Afghanistan.
CSM: What do you anticipate to be the reactions of the militant communities of the Muslim world, if the United States takes action in Iraq?
Musharraf: Short answer is yes, it will have a negative impact...
CSM: That sounds like it would be counterproductive to the war on terror. You have said the Iraqi fight is not your fight, but you are part of the war on the terror, and it sounds to me like you're suggesting that action in Iraq is going to make the war on terror more difficult. Is that true?
Musharraf: Well, I've been saying that we don't want to get involved in Iraq, because we've got so much on our hands really in our own region...that we don't want to really too much to get involved [elsewhere]. One would like to say that [in] the world community, consensus needs to be generated on whatever has to be done...But, certainly the agenda in Afghanistan is not over. I only hope that our involvement and commitment to Afghanistan and that region does not get diluted because of attention going somewhere else...
CSM: We know you have very good relations with Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, and you will be meeting with him at the UN. But we've been hearing reports from the Afghan intelligence service that Al Qaeda has been in various pockets around Pakistan. They've named the cities of Gilgit and Chitral. What do you think is the next step for Pakistan to take in terms of getting rid of Al Qaeda in the region, and how soon do you think you can do it?
Musharraf: We are taking steps all over Pakistan...and we have made it very clear that we don't want any foreign element without valid documents in Pakistan. That includes Al Qaeda or any foreign element...
But many of these reports are exaggerated...we get information that there [are] some Al Qaeda elements hiding here and there, and we go and we launch an operation...and find nothing. So many reports are exaggerated...But in many areas we've met successes....we have recovered a lot of weapons, and I think we have arrested 400 Al Qaeda members...So it's disheartening when sometimes you read that we are going back, maybe we are going soft. No, we are acting fully....
I don't think there are elements in Chitral – it's being reported in Chitral and in Gilgit area. Whenever we get information we move against them.
CSM: You've checked out those places?
Musharraf: Yes, indeed.
Gilgit has headquarters of our frontier corps northern area. This is my division headquarters with a major general sitting there. I'd have a very poor impression of this army division if there were some members of Al Qaeda in his area operating there...
[In] the tribal belt of Pakistan...we could not intrude [until now]. The writ of government could not get inside. This is known as FATA, Federally Administered Tribal Area. [Troops have entered this area] for the first time in 150 years, maybe...
Now we are operating in that area, and the army has gone in in a humanitarian role. It is making roads there, it is running dispensaries and schools. Thousands of children are now studying in those schools. Hundreds of thousands of people have been treated [for] free.
[The troops]...are being welcomed by the tribal elders in this belt...Therefore, we are very sure that wherever there is Al Qaeda, we will get assistance and we will get information also. But, having said that, there may be some elements in this area, some extremist elements, who may be harboring small groups of Al Qaeda...
But whenever we get this information...we move. And the tribal elders go along with the troops now to ensure. And we've laid down certain rules and regulations of dealing with anybody who is harboring these people, according to tribal laws...their houses will be demolished and they have to pay a certain amount of money...if there is...any tribe harboring them, that tribe will suffer these penalties...
CSM: Do you think bin Laden is still alive?
Musharraf: [Laughter]
CSM: You mentioned a standoff with India. What do you see as the next steps necessary in Kashmir, and what progress do you see on the question of infiltration and incursions across the Line of Control? ( Editor's note: The current Line of Control, established in 1972, divides Kashmir into two sections: the north controlled by Pakistan, the south by India.)
Musharraf: ...I have said many times, that there is nothing happening on the Line of Control. And I mean it. But having said that, it was very clear that this should lead to reciprocation, that this must lead to responses from the Indian side...I personally have taken a number of decisions, we have taken a number of actions – which have been very sensitive to our country, to myself, to my government, and the reciprocation has not come. No reciprocation whatsoever has come from the Indian side. This is unfortunate, and this is not sustainable...
So when you ask what progress can be made...India must accept that they need to talk to us, and they need to talk about all issues with Kashmir as the focus...And I would say that the United States is playing a role and they need to play a stronger role in realizing this progress on the issue of Kashmir between India and Pakistan....
CSM: Is India waiting for the US to verify that infiltration has fully stopped?
Musharraf: ...There cannot be a 100 percent guarantee of stopping infiltration. That guarantee is not possible because of the nature of the terrain there. But, everyone said, even the Indians themselves said that...infiltration has gone down, even though they didn't say that it has stopped.... Let's move forward, I keep saying. Let us not stop, let's move forward, let's initiate the dialogue, and things will keep moving forward.
I think their strategy is really to gain time...then, they want to hold elections in Kashmir. In whatever form they are going to declare them successful, and then they are going to say that: 'Kashmir dispute does not exist and that is all, thank you very much.' This is their strategy, probably, which is very clear to us.
Now the world must understand that this strategy will not work...so India should be told actually not to play games really, it can't be done...
CSM: There's some talk of a consideration of making the Line of Control permanent. Is that something that you would ever consider?
Musharraf: No, we can't take that. That is not a solution because we keep saying that is the problem...we have been fighting the wars over this Line of Control. So how can the problem be the solution?...
CSM: We understand you're trying to establish a new kind of democracy in Pakistan: you want clean candidates, clean government. From what you've seen so far, will that happen in this election? Will there be better candidates, better politicians?
Musharraf: Yes...there will be a lot of change in the faces that we will see in our assemblies and in the senate...With the imposition of the [university] graduation standard...41percent of the previously elected members have gone. They are disqualified....We have given women 60 seats, reserved seats. [They'll also fight for open seats], so hopefully there will be about 75 women in the assemblies to bring some kind of sobriety into the assemblies...
Now...what are we trying to do? I'm carrying out...constitutional amendments. Now theoretically, in the West, it appears rather odd that we have done that. But let me say that the Supreme Court authorized us to do it, and for very good reasons...
First...we need to ensure that there are checks and balances on the power brokers. We must ensure that...martial law is never imposed, and military government is never imposed on the country. We need to ensure that these reforms and restructuring that we are doing have permanence...and therefore...a sustainable democracy is brought in. So...I'm not taking power, I'm giving power, in fact...
I'm giving away that power to the national security council. Let an institution [m]ake the decision. Because...I think that this is the key to the issue –what had been happening in the past ...there was mis-governance, there was root plunder, corruption. Now what could an efficient president do? He could sort of reprimand the prime minister...But it always ended with that prime minister retorting...And a one-to-one confrontation between the president and the prime minister used to take place.
So the result used to be either the president getting rid of the prime minister, or the prime minister impeaching the president. Because of this sort of one-to-one fight between two individuals. And this happened I think thrice or four times in these 12 years. Every time a government changed, it was a president versus a prime minister. And the third element that used to get injected was the chief of army staff.
...The army in Pakistan is the most stable organization; [it] has the faith of the people of Pakistan. Whatever Pakistan suffers, the people run straight to the chief of army staff. "What are you doing? You take some action. You improve the situation..."
How does the chief of army staff act in the face of nothing?...He has two choices. He goes to the prime minister and he says, "You're not doing well and you'd better improve yourself..."
The second option he has is to take over. So, how to avoid that? We can avoid that through this institution, the national security council. I have not done it to take over myself. I have done it to check the prime minister, check the president, check the chief of army staff. Let them come and sit together. And this institution has 13 members. Eight of them are civilian elected members. The ninth is the president. Hopefully the ninth one will be a civilian person, and four will be in uniform. Now, all of these nine are elected members, so there will be a balance.
If the chief of army staff is being pushed by anybody that the nation is going down and the prime minister is misgoverning, he'll have this forum to come to...there will never be a need of imposing martial law...And if the president is unnecessarily doing something to the prime minister, the prime minister will have this forum to act, also. And when we say, "What is the check on the president?" the check on the president, first of all, will be the mandate of the legislature...It's not been removed. They can impeach him, exactly as it was before...
So the president cannot impose his will when there are seven or eight members of the national security council saying something else. So there will be, I think, a lot of checks and balances on every one.
CSM: Do you see a long-term role, a political role, for the military in the security council?
Musharraf: No. The security council, another important thing to be understood is, that they will not have, repeat, will not have any executive or legislative authority. Executive and legislative authority rests with the prime minister and the assembly...
So the entire authority lies with the prime minister. But there is a requirement of checking him...So we will have an institutional method of checks...
CSM: This is the fullest explanation we've had of the changes that you've made to date, and we appreciate it. But you know that most people are going to ask you, still, When is there going to be an election next? Have you decided on that? Before they say, "OK, now it's a democracy."
Musharraf: When are we going to have the election? The tenth of October we fixed it. The date is fixed, everything is fixed...
CSM: And if someone like Benazir Bhutto shows up?
Musharraf: No. She's been disqualified. This is another issue:...a lot of people keep talking about my acting against her. She left Pakistan on her own will before I was on the scene...there were a number of cases against her...[in two cases] she's been convicted... and there are 12 more cases I know of loot, plunder...So, she has to face trial if she comes back. And similarly, [the Nawaz] Sharif family...the ex-prime minister, they left of their own sweet will...and they are not coming.
CSM: Can we take you back to May of this year when India appeared to be threatening war with Pakistan, and your country does not rule out the first strike option, and you gave a speech in which you said that if India did attack, Pakistan would "respond with its full might." What was it like during those days? Was it tense?
Musharraf: Yes, it was extremely tense because there were war clouds and they appeared to be bent on attack[ing] us. But, let me honestly tell you that my military judgment was that they would not attack us... it was based on the deterrence of our conventional forces.
...The force levels that we maintain, in the army, navy, air force is of a level which deters aggression. Militarily ... there is a certain ratio required for an offensive force to succeed. The ratios that we maintain are far above that –far above what a defensive force requires to defend itself. Therefore, you may have noticed I keep saying that we are going to defend offensively, because we can launch an offensive also...
So I was very sure that militarily, conventionally, they are not going to attack us. It would be silly, because it's going to end in a stalemate. We are both going to suffer tremendous damage and loss unnecessarily, economic damage. It's going to be terrible for both the countries... The avoidance of war was not because of our banking on our nuclear capability. Let me assure you, I think it would be most senseless, and most unbalanced view if one was to even really think of using the nuclear...But thank God at the moment there is a conventional balance which deters aggression, which deters war in the region...
CSM: Do you feel the level of tension with India is as high as ever at the moment? Our impression here is that things have subsided, it's quieter, but there really hasn't been a massive pullback on either side. Is it as tense as ever?
Musharraf: No, it's not. But I, as a military man, we judge the enemy's intention – and here I mean the enemy is India, of course, as far as we are concerned – through intentions and capabilities. Now intentions, initially they were talking a lot and we knew nothing [would] happen, because the capability was not there. Their forces were not moved into their assemblies for offensive. But then gradually, come May, the forces moved forward. Now they developed the capability. So the high mark of India was when they were showing the intention, as well as the capability. Now, the intention has receded, but the capability is there. So, therefore, intentions can change overnight...
To a degree the capability has receded in that they've moved their high-tech assets back, air force, and some military units. But I keep saying when you take the aircraft back, aircraft can come back in 12 hours. It's the logistic support elements of the air force. And if you take some military elements back, unless you take the offensive military elements back, it's not de-escalating. So the Indians should know that they can't be clever on the military side. We understand everything that they are doing. They are moving some forces, but they are not really de-escalating.
CSM: What military assets will you be seeking from the United States now that sanctions have either been phased out or will be phased out? What will you be seeking in terms of military assistance and what is your rationale for what you are seeking?
Musharraf: Yes, indeed, as a military man, I think it is a very important question. As I've just said, conventional deterrence must never get compromised. Futuristically, it will be extremely dangerous if the conventional balance of forces is destroyed between India and Pakistan...We see that India is...chasing weapons worth four-and-a-half billion dollars this year...
[If they are successful], they are going to be the highest arms importers in the world...We are seeing that they are getting high-tech aircraft from Russia, from the United Kingdom, from France, and they are getting surveillance equipment [and] electronic warfare equipment from Israel also. So, gradually we are seeing a definite tilt in the conventional balance of forces. This is very dangerous. So, therefore, the United States must understand that this is dangerous and know what our requirements, certainly, would be to restore this conventional balance in two ways.
One, proactively deny India the access to this high-technology increase in their conventional potential. And secondly, whatever we were getting initially in the form of purchase of arms and – also may I add – F-16s, which we had paid for, in fact. That would be required to reestablish balance in the conventional forces.
CSM: Is your view that those F-16s were in fact not repaid? Because there are those in the US government who say that that was actually repaid when they were not delivered.
Musharraf: They were repaid after I don't know how many years and if I told you the whole story, I don't know if you'd believe it.
CSM: Paid in soybeans?
Musharraf: Yes, and wheat – and in the most expensive manner. The soybean that we got was much more expensive than we could have gotten from Malaysia, and elsewhere. The transportation cost was maybe double the cost.
In fact, there was a time when – you won't believe it – but the F-16s that were ours, we were told that 'You'll have to pay demerit charges for them' – parking fees for these F-16s. Why are you demanding parking fees from Pakistan? We are asking you for the F-16s! This is one of the issues which every man in the street in Pakistan knows...
September 10, 2002
Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf met with Monitor editors in Boston Sunday. Here are excerpts from his remarks.
CSM: Do you feel like Afghanistan is firmly on a path to produce greater stability on your border, or should the United States and the West be doing more?
Musharraf: I think the situation remains fluid. It's improving, but it remains fluid. We have to bring stability into Afghanistan, and that stability has not yet come...there are seven power centers in Afghanistan – seven or eight – which are dominated by warlords.
The writ of the government has to extend to all these seven or eight power centers. And the warlords' writ in those areas needs to be reduced and the center's impact and stature needs to be enhanced...
Now, the reconstruction element has not even taken off. There is a Tokyo Accord which has promised I think $4 billion or $4.5 billion. But this assistance is not coming because ...probably [they are] looking for political stability in Afghanistan. But this is a chicken-and-egg situation. Do you want political stability first, and then bring money? Or, money itself will bring political stability?...We must inject this money, and give the Karzai government the clout to spend this money and extend their writ through allocation of funds to these power centers that I'm talking of...Pakistan is totally supportive of the Karzai government. Whatever he's doing, I think he's the hope for the future of Afghanistan.
CSM: What do you anticipate to be the reactions of the militant communities of the Muslim world, if the United States takes action in Iraq?
Musharraf: Short answer is yes, it will have a negative impact...
CSM: That sounds like it would be counterproductive to the war on terror. You have said the Iraqi fight is not your fight, but you are part of the war on the terror, and it sounds to me like you're suggesting that action in Iraq is going to make the war on terror more difficult. Is that true?
Musharraf: Well, I've been saying that we don't want to get involved in Iraq, because we've got so much on our hands really in our own region...that we don't want to really too much to get involved [elsewhere]. One would like to say that [in] the world community, consensus needs to be generated on whatever has to be done...But, certainly the agenda in Afghanistan is not over. I only hope that our involvement and commitment to Afghanistan and that region does not get diluted because of attention going somewhere else...
CSM: We know you have very good relations with Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, and you will be meeting with him at the UN. But we've been hearing reports from the Afghan intelligence service that Al Qaeda has been in various pockets around Pakistan. They've named the cities of Gilgit and Chitral. What do you think is the next step for Pakistan to take in terms of getting rid of Al Qaeda in the region, and how soon do you think you can do it?
Musharraf: We are taking steps all over Pakistan...and we have made it very clear that we don't want any foreign element without valid documents in Pakistan. That includes Al Qaeda or any foreign element...
But many of these reports are exaggerated...we get information that there [are] some Al Qaeda elements hiding here and there, and we go and we launch an operation...and find nothing. So many reports are exaggerated...But in many areas we've met successes....we have recovered a lot of weapons, and I think we have arrested 400 Al Qaeda members...So it's disheartening when sometimes you read that we are going back, maybe we are going soft. No, we are acting fully....
I don't think there are elements in Chitral – it's being reported in Chitral and in Gilgit area. Whenever we get information we move against them.
CSM: You've checked out those places?
Musharraf: Yes, indeed.
Gilgit has headquarters of our frontier corps northern area. This is my division headquarters with a major general sitting there. I'd have a very poor impression of this army division if there were some members of Al Qaeda in his area operating there...
[In] the tribal belt of Pakistan...we could not intrude [until now]. The writ of government could not get inside. This is known as FATA, Federally Administered Tribal Area. [Troops have entered this area] for the first time in 150 years, maybe...
Now we are operating in that area, and the army has gone in in a humanitarian role. It is making roads there, it is running dispensaries and schools. Thousands of children are now studying in those schools. Hundreds of thousands of people have been treated [for] free.
[The troops]...are being welcomed by the tribal elders in this belt...Therefore, we are very sure that wherever there is Al Qaeda, we will get assistance and we will get information also. But, having said that, there may be some elements in this area, some extremist elements, who may be harboring small groups of Al Qaeda...
But whenever we get this information...we move. And the tribal elders go along with the troops now to ensure. And we've laid down certain rules and regulations of dealing with anybody who is harboring these people, according to tribal laws...their houses will be demolished and they have to pay a certain amount of money...if there is...any tribe harboring them, that tribe will suffer these penalties...
CSM: Do you think bin Laden is still alive?
Musharraf: [Laughter]
CSM: You mentioned a standoff with India. What do you see as the next steps necessary in Kashmir, and what progress do you see on the question of infiltration and incursions across the Line of Control? ( Editor's note: The current Line of Control, established in 1972, divides Kashmir into two sections: the north controlled by Pakistan, the south by India.)
Musharraf: ...I have said many times, that there is nothing happening on the Line of Control. And I mean it. But having said that, it was very clear that this should lead to reciprocation, that this must lead to responses from the Indian side...I personally have taken a number of decisions, we have taken a number of actions – which have been very sensitive to our country, to myself, to my government, and the reciprocation has not come. No reciprocation whatsoever has come from the Indian side. This is unfortunate, and this is not sustainable...
So when you ask what progress can be made...India must accept that they need to talk to us, and they need to talk about all issues with Kashmir as the focus...And I would say that the United States is playing a role and they need to play a stronger role in realizing this progress on the issue of Kashmir between India and Pakistan....
CSM: Is India waiting for the US to verify that infiltration has fully stopped?
Musharraf: ...There cannot be a 100 percent guarantee of stopping infiltration. That guarantee is not possible because of the nature of the terrain there. But, everyone said, even the Indians themselves said that...infiltration has gone down, even though they didn't say that it has stopped.... Let's move forward, I keep saying. Let us not stop, let's move forward, let's initiate the dialogue, and things will keep moving forward.
I think their strategy is really to gain time...then, they want to hold elections in Kashmir. In whatever form they are going to declare them successful, and then they are going to say that: 'Kashmir dispute does not exist and that is all, thank you very much.' This is their strategy, probably, which is very clear to us.
Now the world must understand that this strategy will not work...so India should be told actually not to play games really, it can't be done...
CSM: There's some talk of a consideration of making the Line of Control permanent. Is that something that you would ever consider?
Musharraf: No, we can't take that. That is not a solution because we keep saying that is the problem...we have been fighting the wars over this Line of Control. So how can the problem be the solution?...
CSM: We understand you're trying to establish a new kind of democracy in Pakistan: you want clean candidates, clean government. From what you've seen so far, will that happen in this election? Will there be better candidates, better politicians?
Musharraf: Yes...there will be a lot of change in the faces that we will see in our assemblies and in the senate...With the imposition of the [university] graduation standard...41percent of the previously elected members have gone. They are disqualified....We have given women 60 seats, reserved seats. [They'll also fight for open seats], so hopefully there will be about 75 women in the assemblies to bring some kind of sobriety into the assemblies...
Now...what are we trying to do? I'm carrying out...constitutional amendments. Now theoretically, in the West, it appears rather odd that we have done that. But let me say that the Supreme Court authorized us to do it, and for very good reasons...
First...we need to ensure that there are checks and balances on the power brokers. We must ensure that...martial law is never imposed, and military government is never imposed on the country. We need to ensure that these reforms and restructuring that we are doing have permanence...and therefore...a sustainable democracy is brought in. So...I'm not taking power, I'm giving power, in fact...
I'm giving away that power to the national security council. Let an institution [m]ake the decision. Because...I think that this is the key to the issue –what had been happening in the past ...there was mis-governance, there was root plunder, corruption. Now what could an efficient president do? He could sort of reprimand the prime minister...But it always ended with that prime minister retorting...And a one-to-one confrontation between the president and the prime minister used to take place.
So the result used to be either the president getting rid of the prime minister, or the prime minister impeaching the president. Because of this sort of one-to-one fight between two individuals. And this happened I think thrice or four times in these 12 years. Every time a government changed, it was a president versus a prime minister. And the third element that used to get injected was the chief of army staff.
...The army in Pakistan is the most stable organization; [it] has the faith of the people of Pakistan. Whatever Pakistan suffers, the people run straight to the chief of army staff. "What are you doing? You take some action. You improve the situation..."
How does the chief of army staff act in the face of nothing?...He has two choices. He goes to the prime minister and he says, "You're not doing well and you'd better improve yourself..."
The second option he has is to take over. So, how to avoid that? We can avoid that through this institution, the national security council. I have not done it to take over myself. I have done it to check the prime minister, check the president, check the chief of army staff. Let them come and sit together. And this institution has 13 members. Eight of them are civilian elected members. The ninth is the president. Hopefully the ninth one will be a civilian person, and four will be in uniform. Now, all of these nine are elected members, so there will be a balance.
If the chief of army staff is being pushed by anybody that the nation is going down and the prime minister is misgoverning, he'll have this forum to come to...there will never be a need of imposing martial law...And if the president is unnecessarily doing something to the prime minister, the prime minister will have this forum to act, also. And when we say, "What is the check on the president?" the check on the president, first of all, will be the mandate of the legislature...It's not been removed. They can impeach him, exactly as it was before...
So the president cannot impose his will when there are seven or eight members of the national security council saying something else. So there will be, I think, a lot of checks and balances on every one.
CSM: Do you see a long-term role, a political role, for the military in the security council?
Musharraf: No. The security council, another important thing to be understood is, that they will not have, repeat, will not have any executive or legislative authority. Executive and legislative authority rests with the prime minister and the assembly...
So the entire authority lies with the prime minister. But there is a requirement of checking him...So we will have an institutional method of checks...
CSM: This is the fullest explanation we've had of the changes that you've made to date, and we appreciate it. But you know that most people are going to ask you, still, When is there going to be an election next? Have you decided on that? Before they say, "OK, now it's a democracy."
Musharraf: When are we going to have the election? The tenth of October we fixed it. The date is fixed, everything is fixed...
CSM: And if someone like Benazir Bhutto shows up?
Musharraf: No. She's been disqualified. This is another issue:...a lot of people keep talking about my acting against her. She left Pakistan on her own will before I was on the scene...there were a number of cases against her...[in two cases] she's been convicted... and there are 12 more cases I know of loot, plunder...So, she has to face trial if she comes back. And similarly, [the Nawaz] Sharif family...the ex-prime minister, they left of their own sweet will...and they are not coming.
CSM: Can we take you back to May of this year when India appeared to be threatening war with Pakistan, and your country does not rule out the first strike option, and you gave a speech in which you said that if India did attack, Pakistan would "respond with its full might." What was it like during those days? Was it tense?
Musharraf: Yes, it was extremely tense because there were war clouds and they appeared to be bent on attack[ing] us. But, let me honestly tell you that my military judgment was that they would not attack us... it was based on the deterrence of our conventional forces.
...The force levels that we maintain, in the army, navy, air force is of a level which deters aggression. Militarily ... there is a certain ratio required for an offensive force to succeed. The ratios that we maintain are far above that –far above what a defensive force requires to defend itself. Therefore, you may have noticed I keep saying that we are going to defend offensively, because we can launch an offensive also...
So I was very sure that militarily, conventionally, they are not going to attack us. It would be silly, because it's going to end in a stalemate. We are both going to suffer tremendous damage and loss unnecessarily, economic damage. It's going to be terrible for both the countries... The avoidance of war was not because of our banking on our nuclear capability. Let me assure you, I think it would be most senseless, and most unbalanced view if one was to even really think of using the nuclear...But thank God at the moment there is a conventional balance which deters aggression, which deters war in the region...
CSM: Do you feel the level of tension with India is as high as ever at the moment? Our impression here is that things have subsided, it's quieter, but there really hasn't been a massive pullback on either side. Is it as tense as ever?
Musharraf: No, it's not. But I, as a military man, we judge the enemy's intention – and here I mean the enemy is India, of course, as far as we are concerned – through intentions and capabilities. Now intentions, initially they were talking a lot and we knew nothing [would] happen, because the capability was not there. Their forces were not moved into their assemblies for offensive. But then gradually, come May, the forces moved forward. Now they developed the capability. So the high mark of India was when they were showing the intention, as well as the capability. Now, the intention has receded, but the capability is there. So, therefore, intentions can change overnight...
To a degree the capability has receded in that they've moved their high-tech assets back, air force, and some military units. But I keep saying when you take the aircraft back, aircraft can come back in 12 hours. It's the logistic support elements of the air force. And if you take some military elements back, unless you take the offensive military elements back, it's not de-escalating. So the Indians should know that they can't be clever on the military side. We understand everything that they are doing. They are moving some forces, but they are not really de-escalating.
CSM: What military assets will you be seeking from the United States now that sanctions have either been phased out or will be phased out? What will you be seeking in terms of military assistance and what is your rationale for what you are seeking?
Musharraf: Yes, indeed, as a military man, I think it is a very important question. As I've just said, conventional deterrence must never get compromised. Futuristically, it will be extremely dangerous if the conventional balance of forces is destroyed between India and Pakistan...We see that India is...chasing weapons worth four-and-a-half billion dollars this year...
[If they are successful], they are going to be the highest arms importers in the world...We are seeing that they are getting high-tech aircraft from Russia, from the United Kingdom, from France, and they are getting surveillance equipment [and] electronic warfare equipment from Israel also. So, gradually we are seeing a definite tilt in the conventional balance of forces. This is very dangerous. So, therefore, the United States must understand that this is dangerous and know what our requirements, certainly, would be to restore this conventional balance in two ways.
One, proactively deny India the access to this high-technology increase in their conventional potential. And secondly, whatever we were getting initially in the form of purchase of arms and – also may I add – F-16s, which we had paid for, in fact. That would be required to reestablish balance in the conventional forces.
CSM: Is your view that those F-16s were in fact not repaid? Because there are those in the US government who say that that was actually repaid when they were not delivered.
Musharraf: They were repaid after I don't know how many years and if I told you the whole story, I don't know if you'd believe it.
CSM: Paid in soybeans?
Musharraf: Yes, and wheat – and in the most expensive manner. The soybean that we got was much more expensive than we could have gotten from Malaysia, and elsewhere. The transportation cost was maybe double the cost.
In fact, there was a time when – you won't believe it – but the F-16s that were ours, we were told that 'You'll have to pay demerit charges for them' – parking fees for these F-16s. Why are you demanding parking fees from Pakistan? We are asking you for the F-16s! This is one of the issues which every man in the street in Pakistan knows...
Filed under
Afghanistan,
Iraq,
Israel,
Pakistan,
Russia
by Winter Patriot
on Tuesday, September 10, 2002
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