Truth and Justice have been a historical anathema to all Empires and the powerful oligarchies throughout history.

From all divine revelations to the necessity of humanity's coexistence in peace, Justice has been the highest and noblest of virtues to ensure that no man, no government, and no nation is above the law of equality of rights for all mankind whereby the weakest, poorest, and oppressed, can exact and restore their freedom, equality of worth, dignity, and receive justice for the ills and evil perpetrated against them. Life, liberty, human rights, freedoms, and free will are divinely endowed, thus humanity's purpose is to allow no man usurp such virtues and blessings.

"There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity - the law of nature and of nations."
--Edmund Burke

For the first time in human history nations came together in a united institution to prevent and resolve conflicts, to settle disputes, and to provide an international venue where injustice and the inhumanity of man against man can be heard and adjudicated

Thus emerged from the ashes of two world wars in Europe, the United Nations, an institution of hope, freedom, justice, equality, and human rights for all, people's right to self determination, freedom from aggression and occupation; an institution that fosters peace; but sadly it became an institution of the powerful, for the powerful, at the expense of the lives of billions of people around the world. Since its inception the U.N. has served the political, economic, military, and social whims of the oligarchy of five Security Council nations each with a vote or veto that can preserve lives and peace, or commit wanton genocides allegedly acting in self defense and in the national interests. Much of these Security Council decisions are dependent on domestic politics and the power of special interests. It seems western appetite for imperialistic power has not been satisfied by centuries of imperial occupation of most of the world.

National interests boils down to money, especially in alleged democracies where elections are bought and paid for by the top one percent of their populations. Politicians and political institutions are held hostage by the very people who paid for their elections.

The most glaring examples in modern history are the illegitimate creation of the State of Israel in Palestine due to the influence and power of Britain and the United States who imposed their will on the United Nations as well as the illegal, immoral, and genocidal invasion of Iraq by the U.S. (and allies) due to the powerful influence of mostly Jewish Neocons operating in the interest of Israel, along with the unquenchable avarice of oil companies. They manufactured false intelligence and mass propaganda that created an unstoppable hysteria in the White House, Congress, and nation.

"The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history."
--Ari Shavit, "White Man's Burden", Haaretz, April 3, 2003

After nine years of death and destruction the U.S. finally pulls out of Iraq (not completely) leaving behind a previously prosperous nation converted into a desert, but which they label as a peaceful, democratic, and prosperous Iraq. They killed to spread democracy. Today Iraq is enduring the most violent sectarian violence that threatens the unity of the nation, thanks to Israel and the United States.

"In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous...Imperialism is the necessary logical consequence of universalism."
--Professor Samuel Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order", p. 310

These two examples showcase the ineptness, failure, and incompetence of the very United Nations created to prevent just such illegal, unjust and immoral genocidal acts by one nation against another committing unimaginable war crime, crimes against humanity, genocide, and aggression.

Our world has indeed become an Israeli-centric planet where Israel's interest have become the focal point and obsession of all governments, no where more so than in the United States where Israel's interests form the basis of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. U.S. Presidents usually appoint Jewish Zionists to the National Security Council to direct MidEast policy. Is it any wonder that with U.S. backing Israel has rejected every U.N. Resolution, every International initiative or peace process, even opposing America's national interests, the very hand that feeds, arms, and protects it.

The U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, speaking to the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) on September 6, 2011 publicly admitted what the entire world already knows; that U.S. foreign policy is an Israeli formulated policy that only serves Israel, not the United States.

He said:

"The first is this: the test of every policy the Administration develops in the Middle East is whether it is consistent with the goal of ensuring Israel's future as a secure, Jewish, democratic state. That is a commitment that runs as a common thread through our entire government, even while approaching the U.S.-Israel relationship and regional challenges from a variety of perspectives.....The test of our policy - that it advances Israel's status as a secure, Jewish, democratic state - also explains our commitment to vigorously battle against those who would attempt to isolate or delegitimize Israel in the international community."

Many American politicians, diplomats, military officials, academicians, journalists and national organizations have been saying this for decades, but they've been denied any media exposure to address the power of Israel and its lobby, mainly AIPAC, on the U.S. government.

"President Bill Clinton," said AIPAC was "better than anyone at lobbying in this town," or former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who called it "the most effective general-interest group ... across the entire planet." Former Senator Fritz Hollings (D-SC) said upon his retirement that "you can't have an Israel policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here," (Quote from Professor Stephen Walt, "The Mythical Power of the Arab Lobby", Dec.9, 2010) Thus for whom the bells toll; they toll for Israel and never for its millions of victimized dispossessed Palestinians. According to Golda Meir "There were no such thing as Palestinians."

The world has been indoctrinated to accept Israel's narrative of history of its creation and its professed innocence toward the suffering of the Palestinians. Israel has attacked Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Libya, and Yemeni - and now next stop: Iran.

All the while the U.N. and international community can only profess "concern"; which is meaningless to the dead and injured.

"Right and wrong are the same in Palestine as anywhere else. What is peculiar about the Palestine conflict is that the world has listened to the party that committed the offence and has turned a deaf ear to the victims."
-- Professor Arnold Toynbee, British Historian

Thus too whom do the victims of western and Zionist imperialism turn to for protection and justice? Who on this planet is courageous and principled enough to tell Israel, one of the smallest nations on earth, that its thievery of Palestine, its unabated ethnic cleansing, its utter destruction of hundreds of Palestinian villages, its demolition of thousands of homes, farms and orchards, its oppression and daily violation of the human rights of its subjugated people, its theft of Palestinian water to fill the settler's swimming pools, and its non stop construction of new settlements on stolen Palestinian land despite the repeated "concern" of the U.N., U.S., E.U., the Quartet, and hundreds of U.N. Resolutions that Israel ignores and stomps on with impunity, even humiliating the President of the United States in the Oval office who dared suggest a "freeze" of new settlements.

No such expressed "concerns" have ever stopped one brick from being laid in what the world calls "illegal settlements", but which the U.S. deems only as "illegitimate" as evidenced by the very pandering and humiliating veto cast by the U.S. in the Security Council against a resolution that identifies these settlements as "illegal".

Although fourteen nations in the Security Council somewhat redeemed themselves recently by criticizing the U.S. for blocking condemnation of Israel's continued settlement activity in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem. Tragically, Israel will once again thumb its nose at the Security Council.

The United Nations has embarrassingly failed in its stated mission and has lost all credibility, with the exception of the U.N. Human Rights Council, that it has any authority or legitimacy to impact Israel's decades of an illegal occupation of over three million Palestinians, much less the status of seven million Palestinian refugees living in squalor camps in neighboring Arab nations. Israel has tried hard to end UNRWA's mission to provide much needed assistance to the Palestinian refugees, even forcing Congress to threaten defunding the organization. According to Israel Palestinian children must not be fed, provided with health care and an education, nor clean drinking water. If it can't kill them with bullets, it'll kill them by starvation and disease.

As long as the world is impotent and cowardly to face Israel there will never be any justice for the Palestinians, or any peace in the region or western hemisphere.

The world has come to accept that Israel is always above the law, that it will never be held accountable for its wars, genocides, and oppression of the Palestinians; that it will continue to rule and act with impunity with American weapons and vetoes against hapless Palestinian and Lebanese civilians.

The world is holding its cowardly breath wondering when will Israel attack Iran, an action with serious consequences for the region, the U.S., Europe, China, and Japan, both militarily and economically.

But let's look at the other side of the coin where the United Nations Security Council flexes its muscle. The UNSC's power is only reflected against weaker nations, in particular in the Arab and Muslim world. Here harsh resolutions with serious political and economic consequences are routinely passed whereby these nations are held accountable and some leaders are sought for prosecution in the ICC.

The independent International Criminal Court, much like the U.N. Security Council, is hampered by its Statute, hypocrisy, double standards, and the political will of the same powerful nations who dominate the U.N. In practice it's a court against southern hemisphere nations and leaders, but never against the U.S., Britain etc, for their illegal invasion and devastation of Iraq; and never against Israel, the world's last colonial power.

According to the Associated Press, December 15, 2011, the International Criminal Court's Prosecutor, Mr. Luis Moreno Ocampo, said this regarding the issue of the potential arrest of the Sudanese President for alleged war crimes:

"The chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (Luis Moreno Ocampo) said Thursday that Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir's "destiny" is clear: he will face justice for alleged genocide and crimes against humanity in Darfur... International justice is here to stay."

How courageous against Sudan, but oh, how cowardly against Israel. Is there no courageous state party member of the ICC. that will refer Israel for possible prosecution for its war crimes? Won't anyone refer the two murderous tyrants of Syria and Yemen for their slaughter of innocent civilians yearning to break free from their dictatorships?

Sadly, in the entire structure of the ICC there is not one single Arab or Muslim judge or prosecutor, a glaring omission of representation of 1.7 billion Muslims in the world residing in 57 Muslim nations representing 30% of all nations.
It is conceivable and inhumane that the entire international community has been watching in horror and silence the daily carnage of Syrian and Yemenie civilians without taking any action to stop the ongoing slaughter. The world is more than satisfied to let the impotent and incompetent Arab League, a league of tyrants, to deal with the Syrian issue and allow the Gulf Cooperation Council to resolve Yemen's potential civil war.

The Arabs are doomed to fail given their internal strife and political loyalties to foreign nations, in particular, to the United States and thus indirectly to Israel.

It is hard to fathom why the west, Russia, and China are still attached to Arab dictators given the Arab Spring which will spread to other nations despite its initial growing pains, unless they all fear the rise of "Islamists" who potentially may challenge their hegemony and economic greed.

The Arab Spring is unstoppable and in its conclusion across the Middle East will surely be antagonistic to all the nations that oppressed them, especially the United States and Israel, occupied them, monopolized their resources, and fought and smeared their beloved faith, Islam, and their beloved and revered Prophet Muhammad. The tragedy in the Arab Muslim world is that in their disunity they are their own worst enemies.

Thus the Arabs can vote, they can have a democracy but only if it's a democracy approved by the United States and Israel, free of Islamist, or else, "Remember Saddam.".

The U.N. must reform its charter regarding the Security Council's membership and abolish the Veto structure and adopt resolutions by majority vote. It must be funded in large part by the southern hemisphere nations, especially the wealthy Arab oil nations, to remove the constant American threat to defund the organization. Perhaps even consider moving its headquarters outside of the U.S.

"The United Nations, whose membership comprises almost all the states in the world, is founded on the principle of the equal worth of every human being."
-- Kofi Annan

* Mohamed Khodr is a political activist who frequently writes on the plight of Palestinians living under the brutal occupation of Israel, U.S. Foreign Policy, Islam, and Arab politics.

By Justin Raimondo* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Illustration by Randy Bish, Pittsburgh, PA - The Tribune Review

Three people are dead because US "pastor" Terry Jones, in collaboration with the American media, staged (or threatened to stage) an anti-Muslim Koran-burning exhibition, which predictably stoked anti-American protests in Afghanistan: also predictably, US troops fired on demonstrators. The result: yet more "collateral damage."

In more 9/11 anniversary news: a rally sponsored by the David Horowitz-affiliated "Jihad Watch," in alliance with Pamela "Shrieking Harpy" Geller's "Stop the Islamization of America" grouplet and the British neo-fascist "English Defense League," attracted a few thousand wackos to a site a few blocks from Ground Zero, where uber-wacko Geert Wilders (Dutch neo-fascist and leading Islamophobe) made the case for banning Islam in the name of ... "Dutch tolerance":

"America, New York and Shariah are incompatible in New York. New York stands for openness and tolerance. Suppose there was a place and it only allowed people of one persuasion within its walls. It would not be New York. It would be Mecca."

Maybe Wilders has been smoking too much of that strong Dutch weed, but to argue that we're too tolerant to tolerate the intolerant seems a bit odd. Then again, Dutch neo-fascism no doubt suffers in translation.

Wilders, Geller, and "Jihad Watch" anti-Islam guru Robert Spencer want to import Europe's Muslim-hating racist fringe to America: their thesis is that Islam is not a religion, but a political conspiracy to impose Sharia law on non-Muslims. They raise the specter of an Islamic States of America, with American women draped in the chador and mandatory mosque attendance - a scenario that doesn't even qualify as credible science fiction.

And if you think it doesn't get any kookier than that, then you didn't listen to John Bolton's speech to the anti-mosque rally, delivered via videotape, wherein he attacked the effort by "politicians" to "impose tolerance and understanding on us, whether we like it or not." He also indirectly attacked his own former boss, George W. Bush, when he lashed out against Imam Feisal Rauf's role as a State Department emissary of good will to Muslim nations. It was Bush's State Department who first sponsored him in that role. Shortly before delivering his remarks, Bolton confirmed he is considering a presidential run: can he ride the wave of hate all the way to the White House?

Another aspiring anti-Muslim Know-Nothing demagogue who spoke at the rally is one Ilario Pantano, whose credentials as a murderous hater are surely impeccable. We last heard about Pantano when Army prosecutors accused him of murdering two Iraqis in some very cold blood, as Mother Jones relates:

"The central facts of the incident that made Ilario Pantano famous are not in dispute. On April 15, 2004, Pantano, a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps, led a small group of Marines to search a suspected insurgent hideout in Mahmudiyah, Iraq, outside of Fallujah. As the patrol neared the house, two men tried to leave in a car. The Marines stopped, searched, and handcuffed the men. A Marine scoured the vehicle, but didn't find anything incriminating. After other Marines found weapons in the house, Pantano had the men uncuffed and ordered them to search the car themselves. At some point during that search, Pantano felt threatened by the two men. He shot them both-pausing to load a second magazine into his M-16 before emptying that clip too. Then he placed a cardboard sign reading 'No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy'-the motto of his Marine battalion-on top of the car. He wanted 'to send a message to these Iraqis and others,' he said later.

"For a time in 2005, it looked like Pantano might be court-martialed for killing the two Iraqis. One of his subordinates claimed the shooting was unjustified. But the prosecution's case collapsed in an early hearing, and Pantano was never even tried. The judge in charge of the hearing recommended non-judicial punishment-but Pantano's commander didn't agree, and he was never disciplined."

This is the kind of person at the head of the "anti-Islamization" movement - an escaped war criminal.

Pantano is now running for Congress in North Carolina - as a Republican, naturally.

Joe Conason made an important point about this hate movement, and that is its intensely partisan nature. Go here to listen to hate-monger Geller, aka Pamela Oshry, at a pro-Israel rally earlier this year. She ends her ultra-Likudist diatribe - "There is no Israeli occupation: the Arabs are occupying Israel!" - by urging her audience to "Dump Chuck!" Chuck Schumer, that is, the Democratic US Senator from New York who "dared" oppose John Bolton's nomination for UN ambassador: after all, "reasons" Geller, Bolton is "the best friend Israel ever had!" What else do we need to know?

If you think this gathering of pro-Israel fanatics, British football hooligans, and a Dutch neo-fascist is just a fringe phenomenon, ask yourself how many Americans believe Obama is a "secret Muslim"? The answer is depressing: and Republicans like Newt Gingrich are already using the anti-Muslim hysteria to target the President and his party in a display of shameless opportunism that is a new low, even for the GOP.

Part of this is due to internal Republican party politics: with the economics-driven "tea party" faction rapidly overturning the GOP Establishment, the neoconservative remnants are trying to stage a comeback by diverting the movement's energy to anti-Muslim scapegoating - anything other than holding Republicans as well as Democrats accountable for spending us into penury.

The impetus for this comes, as I detailed in last Friday's column, from the pro-Israel lobby, which is moving into high gear with its bomb Iran campaign, with Bolton calling on both the US and Israel to launch an immediate military strike. Millions of dollars are being poured into this effort, with Spencer's "Jihad Watch" and various and sundry other pro-Israel groups on the receiving end of the moolah. Like many right-wing movements, the anti-Islam activists have founded a new industry, marketing books, videos, and t-shirts, and throwing up "celebrities," e.g. the exhibitionistic bikini-wearing Geller, whose nude body painted gold adorns her blog's masthead. Follow the money!

As nutty and improbable as the idea of an "Islamic States of America" might be, there is real potential for a mass anti-Muslim movement in this country. All we need is another terrorist attack, not even one on the scale of 9/11, and the smoldering fires of unfocused anger that burn just beneath the surface of polite society will burst through to the surface. Ask any Japanese-American.

Languishing for the lack of a proper enemy in the post-cold war world, the neoconservative right was saved from extinction by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The specter of militant Islam is, for them, the perfect villain, one who represents a threat not just to the US but also to Israel, a country which is to them as the old Soviet Union was to American Communists: a model and a fatherland. Their strategy is to replicate in the US the anti-Muslim xenophobia that swept Likud into power in Israel, and which has catapulted Avigdor Lieberman, head of an anti-Muslim ultra-nationalist party, into the Foreign Ministry. Bolton is our Lieberman, and hopes to take the same route to power.

"I don't think anybody has a problem with Muslims in America," opines Reason.com editor Nick Gillespie on PBS. Is that why the anti-mosque campaign has gone national, and with some success? Is that why "mainstream" Republican politicians like Newt Gingrich and Speaker John Boehner are weighing in against the Park51 community center? Is it because there's never been a mass political movement in America targeting a vulnerable religious minority?

I'd like to believe these people won't get far: after all, how many Americans feel threatened by the possible imposition of Sharia law? On the other hand, it takes very little to drive people over the edge, especially in these troubled times.

The only way to defeat these bastards is to counter-attack immediately, and mercilessly: don't let them get away with it for one moment. The very idea of forbidding the building of a mosque, or any religious edifice, is anti-American to the core, and must be fought tooth and nail. What could be a clearer confirmation of the libertarian contention that a foreign policy of global intervention necessarily means the rollback of our civil liberties here at home? For libertarians, there is no question but that Muslims must be defended against the gathering lynch mob.

How to do this is another question, but that's a subject for a future column. Suffice to say here that the defense of the Muslim minority in the US is the acid test for all those who claim to believe in "freedom" and "liberty."

* Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com. He is the author of An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement (ISI, 2008), and Into the Bosnian Quagmire: The Case Against U.S. Intervention in the Balkans (1996).He is a contributing editor for The American Conservative, a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute, and an adjunct scholar with the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He writes frequently for Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

Rallies, demonstrations, "Collateral Murder" film screenings, whistle-blowing parties and forums will be held around the world between the 16th and 19th of this month as vital expressions of international solidarity with Bradley Manning. To find out how you can show your support for the brave young man who dared expose US war crimes, go here.

I'm taking my show on the road this autumn, to campuses around the country, talking about some of the ideas expressed in last Wednesday's column on "Anti-Interventionism: The Left-wing Tradition." My talk is entitled "Why Has the Left Sold Out the Antiwar Movement?" - which is sure to provoke a controversy, or at least that's the hope.

If you're interested in booking me at your campus, write wendy@antiwar.com, or call the Antiwar.com office, at: 510-217-8665.

Source: AntiWar

This is Part III of the three-part series, "The Imperial Anatomy of Al-Qaeda"

Part 1: The Imperial Anatomy of Al-Qaeda. The CIA's Drug-Running Terrorists and the "Arc of Crisis"

Part 2: Empire, Energy and Al-Qaeda: The Anglo-American Terror Network

By Andrew Gavin Marshall* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Anticipating An Attack

For several years prior to the events of 9/11, top American strategists had been acknowledging the necessity of what they oft-termed a "new Pearl Harbor", a momentous attack upon America itself, in order to mobilize the American populace for a new global war of domination.

As Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard, "America's primary interest is to help ensure that no single power comes to control this geopolitical space [of Central Asia] and that the global community has unhindered financial and economic access to it."[1] Brzezinski acknowledged in his book that, "the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public's sense of domestic well-being."[2] He also wrote that, "The public supported America's engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor."[3]

In 1999, Andrew Krepinevich, Executive Director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments testified before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities. He stated that the US faces an "unprecedented challenge":

[T]he need to transform our armed forces into a very different kind of military from that which exists today, while sustaining the military's ability to play a very active role in supporting U.S. near-term efforts to preserve global stability within a national security strategy of engagement and enlargement.[4]

After advocating a massive re-imagining of the role and nature of US military might, pushing the notion of a "revolution in military affairs" and an acceleration of imperial ambitions, he told the Senate Committee:

There appears to be general agreement concerning the need to transform the U.S. military into a significantly different kind of force from that which emerged victorious from the Cold and Gulf Wars. Yet this verbal support has not been translated into a defense program supporting transformation. [. . . ] While there is growing support in Congress for transformation, the "critical mass" [i.e., public support] needed to effect it has not yet been achieved. One may conclude that, in the absence of a strong external shock to the United States-a latter-day "Pearl Harbor" of sorts-surmounting the barriers to transformation will likely prove a long, arduous process.[5]

In 1999, Graham Fuller, former Deputy Director of the CIA's National Council on Intelligence, advocated using Muslim forces to further US interests in Central Asia. He stated that, "The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries worked marvelously well in Afghanistan against [the Russians]. The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia."[6]

In June of 2000, the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Pentagon released Joint Vision 2020, outlining the American military strategy that the Department of Defense "will follow in the future." The emphasis in the report was put on the notion of "Full Spectrum Dominance," which means "the ability of U.S. forces, operating alone or with allies, to defeat any adversary and control any situation across the range of military operations":

Joint Vision 2020 addresses full-spectrum dominance across the range of conflicts from nuclear war to major theater wars to smaller-scale contingencies. It also addresses amorphous situations like peacekeeping and noncombat humanitarian relief.[7]

The neoconservative think tank the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) released a report in September of 2000 called Rebuilding America's Defenses in which they advocated for a massive expansion of America's empire and "full spectrum dominance" as well as the necessity to undertake a "Revolution in military affairs," and undertake multiple simultaneous wars in different regions of the world. Several members of the think tank and authors of the report would go on to enter key policy positions within the Bush administration several months later (including, but not limited to Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Zalmay Khalilzad). While acknowledging the massive undertaking this "project" would be, the report stated:

Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor."[8]

In January of 2001, the Rumsfeld Commission, which was set up to analyze the US National Security Space Management and Organization, chaired by incoming US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (who had also been a signatory to and member of the Project for the New American Century at the same time). It advocated an expansion of military capabilities in Space and a total reorganization of the armed forces and intelligence agencies of the United States. The report stated that:

History is replete with instances in which warning signs were ignored and change resisted until an external, "improbable" event forced resistant bureaucracies to take action. The question is whether the US will be wise enough to act responsibly and soon enough to reduce US space vulnerability. Or whether, as in the past, a disabling attack against the country and its people - a "Space Pearl Harbor" - will be the only event able to galvanize the nation and cause the US Government to act.[9]

As early as 1998, the President was warned in his CIA daily briefing that, "bin Laden and his allies are preparing for an attack in the US, including an aircraft hijacking." NORAD, the "North American Aerospace Defense command also conducted an exercise to counter a terrorist attack involving smashing an airplane into a building." In August 1999, "the Federal Aviation Administration's intelligence branch warned of a possible "suicide hijacking operation" by Osama Bin Laden."[10]

In October of 2000, the Pentagon undertook an emergency response exercise in which "there was a mock terrorist incident at the Pentagon Metro stop and a construction accident," and it further envisioned a "downed passenger aircraft" in the Pentagon courtyard.[11]

For years, NORAD had been conducting military exercises and drills in which it envisioned planes being hijacked and flown into buildings in the United States.[12] One of the intended targets in the NORAD drills was the World Trade Center:

In another exercise, jets performed a mock shootdown over the Atlantic Ocean of a jet supposedly laden with chemical poisons headed toward a target in the United States. In a third scenario, the target was the Pentagon - but that drill was not run after Defense officials said it was unrealistic.[13]

As the Guardian revealed in April of 2004:

Five months before the September 11 attacks, US military planners suggested a war game to practise a response to a terrorist attack using a commercial airliner flown into the Pentagon, but senior officers rejected the scenario as "too unrealistic".[14]

In May of 2001, an exercise involving U.S. Central Command, U.S. Special Operations Command and U.S. Joint Forces Command took place in which the military establishment "forecasted" the first war of the 21st century so closely that, "Nostradamus couldn't have nailed the first battle of the next war any closer than we did," as articulated by a former top official with the exercise, Dave Ozolek. The exercise, Unified Vision 2001:

[G]rew out of the realization that the threat was changing. Ozolek said the scenario was a major regional threat emanating from the Middle East. The scenario called for global deployment into a landlocked country with hostile terrain and a lack of basing and agreements with neighboring countries for U.S. access.

[. . . ] The threat we portrayed was an unstable and hostile state, but the primary enemy was not the state itself but a transnational actor based out of that area, globally connected, capable and willing to conduct terrorist attacks in the U.S. as part of that campaign.

[. . . ] "Many of the participants in Unified Vision, 100 days later, were war planners," Ozolek said. They took their experiences in Unified Vision back to their commands and put them to use as the commands created plans for operations Enduring Freedom and Noble Eagle, he said. They had an idea of the tactics, techniques and procedures needed to operate against such an enemy, he noted.

Ozolek said Unified Vision refutes the pundits who make a living out of critiquing the Department of Defense. "The first thing they like to talk about is that we always dwell on the last battle of the last war," he said. "What we're showing them is that this time we got it right: We really were looking at the first battle of the next war, and we nailed it pretty darned close."[15]

After 9/11, in May of 2002, Condoleezza Rice stated that, "I don't think anybody could have predicted that ... they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile."[16] So Condi is a fool or a liar, because that statement is nothing if not entirely and utterly false. The national security apparatus had fully anticipated, and even war gamed and drilled this very scenario. It was expected, planned for, and no less with war plans waiting in the wings.

The 9/11 Commission

Of critical importance in understanding the events of 9/11 is taking note of the funding for the operation. The 9/11 Commission itself stated:

To date the U.S. government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks. Ultimately the question is of little practical significance.[17]

However, one should take issue with this claim. The fact is that any comprehensive investigation, criminal or otherwise, should pay special attention to the role of financing; follow the money. This is not the only failure of the 9/11 Commission, as has been amply documented.

From its inception, the 9/11 Commission was plagued with problems. The Bush administration had resisted attempts to form a commission to investigate the attacks of 9/11 for over a year, even pressuring Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle not to launch an inquiry.[18] In May of 2002, President Bush voiced his opposition to the formation of a 9/11 commission.[19]

In September of 2002, Bush reversed his previous decision and backed the proposal to form an "independent" commission to investigate the attacks.[20] Within a month of this statement, the White House began undermining the process, as "an almost completed Congressional deal was suddenly undone in October after a Republican lawmaker involved in the final negotiations received a call from Vice President Dick Cheney," which led to a stalling of the process.[21]

In mid-November, Congress approved the creation of a bi-partisan 9/11 Commission to investigate the attacks, with 10 Congressmen, 5 Democrats and 5 Republicans, with the Chairman appointed by the Bush administration and the Vice Chair appointed by the Democrats.[22]

The Bush administration chose as the Chairman none other than Henry Kissinger, former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State for Nixon and Ford, "a consummate Washington insider," not to mention war criminal. Even the New York Times had to admit:

Unfortunately, his affinity for power and the commercial interests he has cultivated since leaving government may make him less than the staunchly independent figure that is needed for this critical post. Indeed, it is tempting to wonder if the choice of Mr. Kissinger is not a clever maneuver by the White House to contain an investigation it long opposed.[23]

Two week later, "Facing questions about potential conflicts of interest, Henry Kissinger resigned" as Chairman of the 9/11 Commission.[24] He was replaced with former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean. As of November 2003, one Commissioner, Max Cleland, claimed that the "investigation is now compromised" by the White House.[25]

Shortly after the release of the final 9/11 Commission Report in 2004, Harper's Magazine called it "a cheat and a fraud," declaring the report a "whitewash."[26]

In 2006, the two co-Chairs of the Commission published a book in which they claimed that the Commission was lied to by both the FAA and the Department of Defense, specifically NORAD.[27] Several commissioners are on the record as saying they felt that the Pentagon purposely lied to them in order to mislead them.[28] Further, much of the information the commission received and used in its report "was the product of harsh interrogations of al-Qaida operatives - interrogations that many critics have labeled torture."[29]

As it turned out, the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow, was a man of dubious priorities and connections. He was the ultimate author of the final report and controlled the research staff of the commission. Zelikow, "a former colleague of then-National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, was appointed executive director of the 9/11 Commission despite his close ties to the Bush White House, and he remained in regular contact with [Karl] Rove while overseeing the commission." Zelikow "secretly spoke with President Bush's close adviser Karl Rove and others within the White House while the ostensibly autonomous commission was completing its report." Zelikow had even previously co-authored a book with Condoleezza Rice. Following the publication of the report, Zelikow then went to work as an adviser to Condoleezza Rice in the White House.[30]

The Bin Ladens

There are many fascinating and important revelations regarding the intricate relationship between the CIA, the ISI, and al-Qaeda in the lead-up to the events of 9/11 that deserve to be subjected to more scrutiny.

First, let's take a look at Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden, whose relationship with the CIA in the past had been well documented, reportedly acted as a rogue following the 1991 US Gulf War against Iraq and American stationing of troops and military bases in Saudi Arabia. However, there are reports that would indicate that the relationship between bin Laden and the US intelligence apparatus remained, at least to some degree, for many years.

We must remember the nature of al-Qaeda, as an organization, or network, of intelligence assets funded, armed, trained and dispersed around the world by a complex network of intelligence agencies from the United States, France, Great Britain, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan.

A French court undertook a probe into the financial network of Osama bin Laden, who was widely assumed to simply be independently wealthy, and financed al-Qaeda operations through his own funds. However, it was revealed that Osama maintained a joint bank account with his half-brother Yeslam bin Laden in Switzerland between 1990 and 1997. Of particular interest to investigators was "a 241 million euro transfer made to Pakistan in 2000 from an account belonging to a company called Cambridge, a SBG [Saudi Bin Laden Group] subsidiary, that was opened at Deutsche Bank in Geneva," with the funds "transferred into an account belonging jointly to Osama bin Laden and someone of Pakistani nationality."[31]

Der Spiegel, a major German newspaper, was granted access to thousands of pages of intelligence documents relating to bin Laden and al-Qaeda. In the report on the documents, the authors revealed that when bin Laden needed financing, "The Saudi elite -- and his own family -- came to his assistance." The list of financiers:

is a veritable who's who of the Middle Eastern monarchy, including the signatures of two former cabinet ministers, six bankers and twelve prominent businessmen. The list also mentions "the bin Laden brothers." ... Did "the bin Laden brothers," who first pledged money to Al-Qaida and then, in 1994, issued a joint press statement declaring that they were ejecting Osama from the family as a "black sheep," truly break ties with their blood relatives -- or were they simply pulling the wool over the eyes of the world?[32]

Osama bin Laden's sister-in-law even stated:

I absolutely do not believe that the bin Ladens disowned Osama. In this family, a brother is always a brother, no matter what he has done. I am convinced that the complex and tightly woven network between the bin Laden clan and the Saudi royal family is still in operation.[33]

Following the death of Osama's father, Salem bin Laden, Osama's brother, became head of the company, Saudi Binladen Group (SBG). As Der Spiegel reported:

Salem bin Laden established the company's ties to the American political elite when, according to French intelligence sources, he helped the Reagan administration circumvent the US Senate and funnel $34 million to the right-wing Contra rebels operating in Nicaragua. He also developed close ties with the Bush family in Texas.[34]

While Osama was fighting in Afghanistan against the Soviets, he would often be personally visited by Saudi Prince Turki, the head of Saudi intelligence, and was funded by both the Saudi Binladen Group (SBG) and the Saudi royal family. In 1990, when King Fahd of Saudi Arabia allowed the Americans to establish military bases in Saudi Arabia, the SBG got the contract to build the bases.[35]

Though the Bin Laden family claimed Osama was a "black sheep" and that they cut off ties with him in the early 1990s, the evidence remains strong that not only did Osama maintain ties with his family, but he maintained his ties with Saudi intelligence. While Osama was in Sudan in the early 1990s, Saudi intelligence would so frequently send his family over to meet with him, and kept in such close contact with him, that the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, believed Osama was a Saudi spy. In 1994, under intense public pressure, both Saudi Arabia and the bin Laden family publicly revoked their ties with Osama.[36]

Yet, even after this, when Osama returned to Afghanistan in the mid-1990s to work with the Taliban, Prince Turki of Saudi intelligence would still maintain contact and even visit Osama, even bringing "gifts" such as dozens of trucks:

According to a former member of the Taliban intelligence service, Prince Turki and OBL [Osama bin Laden] made a deal: The Saudis would support al-Qaida financially, but only under the condition that there would be no attacks on Saudi soil.[37]

On January 9, 2001, Osama attended his sons wedding in Afghanistan, accompanied by his mother and two brothers, hardly the actions of a "black sheep". Further, two of Osama's sisters traveled to Abu Dhabi in February of 2001 to "deliver large sums of cash" to an al-Qaeda agent. In the United States, the Bin Laden family had diplomatic passports, so following the 9/11 attacks, they could not be questioned, but instead were flown out of the country. The Bin Ladens were also in business with the Bush family through the investment company, the Carlyle Group.[38] No one ever seemed to question why the bin Laden family had diplomatic passports, a strange occurrence, it would seem, for a Saudi 'business' family who weren't engaged in any official or formal 'diplomacy'.

In March of 2000, it was reported that Osama bin Laden was sick and suffering from kidney and liver disease.[39] A western intelligence source told the Hong-Kong based magazine, Asiaweek, that bin Laden was dying of kidney failure.[40]

In July of 2001, Osama bin Laden spent 10 days at the American hospital in Dubai for treatment. He traveled from Pakistan to Dubai on July 4, 2001, to be treated in the urology department. While he was in the hospital, Osama was visited by several members of his family, Saudi officials, and the CIA. One visitor was Saudi Prince Turki al Faisal, the head of Saudi intelligence, and the CIA station chief in Dubai, who was soon after recalled back to Washington.[41]

On September 10, 2001, the night before the attacks of 9/11, Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan "getting medical treatment with the support of the very military that days later pledged its backing for the U.S. war on terror in Afghanistan." Pakistani intelligence reported that bin Laden was quickly taken to a military hospital in Rawalpindi for kidney dialysis treatment. As one medical worker said, "they moved out all the regular staff in the urology department and sent in a secret team to replace them." Pakistani President Musharraf openly stated in public that Osama suffers from kidney disease and is near death.[42]

The Pakistani ISI and 9/11

Throughout the entire time of overt and covert assistance by Pakistan's ISI to both the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, the CIA had maintained its close ties with the ISI that they had developed during the Soviet-Afghan war in the 1980s, in which they used the ISI as a conduit; as was set up through the Safari Club in the 1970s, which was the organization of western intelligence agencies which used Middle Eastern and Asian intelligence agencies as conduits for their covert activities. Thus, the CIA maintained its extensive contact with the ISI, and so would be well aware of its activities.[43]

A top Indian intelligence official even stated that, "America's Defence Intelligence Agency was aware that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was sponsoring the Taliban and Al Qaeda, but the Bush Administration chose to ignore its findings."[44] Is it inconceivable that since the CIA maintained its extensive contacts with the ISI, and the ISI maintained and expanded its contacts with the Taliban and al-Qaeda, that the CIA was not in fact sponsoring both the Taliban and Al-Qaeda through the ISI as well? We know that the CIA was supporting the Taliban through the same network of the ISI that was supporting al-Qaeda operatives,[45] thus it would take a stretch of the imagination to think that the CIA would be unaware of its subsequent support for al-Qaeda. Whether direct or indirect, the CIA was supporting al-Qaeda.

Shortly after 9/11, Indian intelligence became aware of the fact that General Mahmoud Ahmad, head of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) had wired $100,000 from Saeed Sheikh, a convicted terrorist who had associations with the ISI, to Mohamed Atta, the purported ringleader and one of the 9/11 hijackers. Thus, the ISI in effect, financed the 9/11 attacks. However, there are several more ambiguous facets to this story. It just so happens that General Mahmoud Ahmad went to Washington, D.C. on September 4th, 2001 for a weeklong visit. On September 10, the day before 9/11, a Pakistani newspaper ran a story on Ahmad's visit:

ISI Chief Lt-Gen Mahmood's week-long presence in Washington has triggered speculation about the agenda of his mysterious meetings at the Pentagon and National Security Council. Officially, State Department sources say he is on a routine visit in return to CIA Director George Tenet's earlier visit to Islamabad. Official sources confirm that he met Tenet this week. He also held long parleys with unspecified officials at the White House and the Pentagon. But the most important meeting was with Mark Grossman, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.

... What added interest to his visit is the history of such visits. Last time Ziauddin Butt, Mahmood's predecessor, was here during Nawaz Sharif's government the domestic politics turned topsy-turvy within days. That this is not the first visit by Mahmood in the last three months shows the urgency of the ongoing parleys.[46]

General Ahmad, while in Washington, met with CIA Director George Tenet and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. On the morning of 9/11, General Ahmad was in a meeting with the Chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Senator Bob Graham and Representative Porter Goss, a former 10-year veteran of CIA clandestine operations. Porter Goss was later put in charge of a joint House-Senate investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks, and later became the CIA director.[47]

General Mahmoud, having wired $100,000 to Mohamad Atta, the purported lead 9/11 hijacker, implicates the ISI in the attacks of 9/11, at least from a financial standing. The FBI even confirmed the transaction took place.[48] The ISI's extensive ties to American intelligence and the fact that Ahmad was in D.C. talking to high level legislators, State Department, Pentagon and intelligence officials begs the question of what the precise nature of these secret meetings were.

Michael Meacher, a former British MP and member of Tony Blair's cabinet, wrote in the Guardian that:

Ahmed, the paymaster for the hijackers, was actually in Washington on 9/11, and had a series of pre-9/11 top-level meetings in the White House, the Pentagon, the national security council, and with George Tenet, then head of the CIA, and Marc Grossman, the under-secretary of state for political affairs. When Ahmed was exposed by the Wall Street Journal as having sent the money to the hijackers, he was forced to "retire" by President Pervez Musharraf.[49]

Meacher further discussed the case of Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator-turned-whistleblower who tried to expose evidence of what she saw as collusion between intelligence agencies and the terrorists behind 9/11. She was subsequently gagged by the U.S. Department of Justice:

She is a 33-year-old Turkish-American former FBI translator of intelligence, fluent in Farsi, the language spoken mainly in Iran and Afghanistan, who had top-secret security clearance. She tried to blow the whistle on the cover-up of intelligence that names some of the culprits who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, but is now under two gagging orders that forbid her from testifying in court or mentioning the names of the people or the countries involved. She has been quoted as saying: "My translations of the 9/11 intercepts included [terrorist] money laundering, detailed and date-specific information ... if they were to do real investigations, we would see several significant high-level criminal prosecutions in this country [the US] ... and believe me, they will do everything to cover this up".[50]

In August of 2009, Sibel Edmonds revealed that, "the US was on 'intimate' terms with the Taliban and al-Qaeda using the militants to further certain goals in central Asia," and stated, "With those groups, we had operations in Central Asia." She explained that Washington used those groups "as we did during the Afghan and Soviet conflict."[51] In other words, the US was arming, funding and using al-Qaeda for its own objectives, just as it always had.

On September 11, 2009, 8 years to the day of the events of 9/11, a major British newspaper, the Daily Mail, ran a story critical of the official story regarding Osama bin Laden. In it, the author posed the question:

What if he has been dead for years, and the British and U.S. intelligence services are actually playing a game of double bluff? What if everything we have seen or heard of him on video and audio tapes since the early days after 9/11 is a fake - and that he is being kept 'alive' by the Western allies to stir up support for the war on terror?[52]

The article quoted former U.S. foreign intelligence officer and senior editor Angelo M. Codevilla, a professor of international relations at Boston University as saying, "All the evidence suggests Elvis Presley is more alive today than Osama Bin Laden":

Prof Codevilla asserted: 'The video and audio tapes alleged to be Osama's never convince the impartial observer,' he asserted. 'The guy just does not look like Osama. Some videos show him with a Semitic, aquiline nose, while others show him with a shorter, broader one. Next to that, differences between the colours and styles of his beard are small stuff.'[53]

Interesting to note is that following the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden, in at least four separate statements to Middle Eastern press and media, stated that he did not take part in the 9/11 attacks, while the video in which he supposedly claimed responsibility for the attacks has him wearing gold rings, which is forbidden by his Wahhabist religion, as well as writing with his right hand, whereas the FBI website says that he is left handed, and his face is blurred and difficult to make out. On September 28, 2001, Osama bin Laden said, "'I have already said I am not involved. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge... nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act."[54]

Osama bin Laden was even reported to have died of kidney failure on December 13, 2001, in the mountains of Tora Bora on the Afghan-Pakistan border. On that same day, the U.S. government released the fateful videotape in which Osama claimed responsibility for the attacks. However, the bin Laden in the video was very different from the known images of the real bin Laden, and even had a different shaped nose, his beard was darker, his skin paler, and his fingers were no longer long and thin, as well as the fact that he looked to be in good health.[55]

As the Los Angeles Times reported in November of 2009, the extensive and close relationship between the CIA and the ISI has not diminished since 9/11, but had in fact, accelerated: "the CIA has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Pakistan's intelligence service since the Sept. 11 attacks, accounting for as much as one-third of the foreign spy agency's annual budget." Further, "the payments to Pakistan are authorized under a covert program initially approved by then-President Bush and continued under President Obama." Further, "the CIA has routinely brought ISI operatives to a secret training facility in North Carolina," and as the article pointed out, "the CIA also directs millions of dollars to other foreign spy services. But the magnitude of the payments to the ISI reflect Pakistan's central role." As the report in the Los Angeles Times explained, the CIA financial support to the ISI began during the Afghan-Soviet conflict, and has not stopped since then, and since 9/11, it has actually accelerated.[56]

The Nexus Personified: The Case of Ali Mohamed

Perhaps the perfect example of the complex relationship and nexus between intelligence agencies and al-Qaeda is the case of a man named Ali Mohamed. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported in 2001, "A former U.S. Army sergeant who trained Osama bin Laden's bodyguards and helped plan the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya was a U.S. government informant during much of his terrorist career." Ali Mohamed, an Egyptian-born US citizen had approached the CIA in the mid-1980s to inform for them. He also spent years as an FBI informant, all the while being a top-level al-Qaeda operative, even training Osama bin Laden's bodyguards, as well as training terrorists in camps in Afghanistan and Sudan, and planned the 1998 US Embassy bombing in Kenya.[57]

State Department officials proclaimed this was merely a sign of the problems associated with recruiting informants, that Mohamed was a double agent working for al-Qaeda, and they should have "known better." However, the ignorance plea can only go so far, and considering Mohamed's extensive ties to not one, but several US agencies, there is no doubt he was a double agent, but perhaps it is more likely he was working as an al-Qaeda operative for the US government. After all, it is one thing to say the Ali Mohamed was lucky in his evading being caught, but he was continuously lucky, over and over again. One wonders when 'luck' is organized.

In 1971, Ali Mohamed joined the Egyptian Army, rising to the rank of major. Well educated in Egypt, he was fluent in English. In 1981, he joined the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, "a group of radical Muslim fundamentalists opposed to the Egyptian government's ties to the United States and Israel that included members of the Egyptian military." The very same year, in 1981, Mohamed traveled to the United States for the first time, "graduating from a special program for foreign officers at the U.S. Army Special Forces school at Fort Bragg, N.C." In 1984, Mohamed left the Egyptian military.[58]

In 1984, Ali Mohamed approached the CIA office in Egypt offering to be a spy. Officially, the CIA then cut off contact with him shortly thereafter, as he made contact with terrorist organizations and informed them he was working with the CIA, supposedly proposing to spy on US intelligence agencies. So the CIA had the State Department add him to a "watch list" so that he could not enter the United States. However, the next year, Ali Mohamed obtained a visa from the American Embassy and went to the United States. He then joined the American Army and "served with one of its most elite units."[59]

From 1986 until 1989, Ali Mohamed served at the Army's Special Forces base in Fort Bragg, N.C., until he was honourably discharged in 1989. While on active duty, he went to New York where he trained local Muslims in military tactics to go fight in the Afghan-Soviet war. One of his students was "El Sayyid A. Nosair, the Egyptian immigrant convicted of killing Rabbi Meir Kahane, the founder of the Jewish Defense League, in 1990," which was the first recorded al-Qaeda operation on U.S. soil.[60]

In the early 1990s, Ali Mohamed began working for the FBI. Mohamed then forged ties with Osama bin Laden as early as 1991, and assisted in a variety of ways, such as helping bin Laden and 'al-Qaeda' obtain fake documents, assisted with logistical tasks, and even helped Osama relocate from Afghanistan to the Sudan in 1991. Many terrorists that Mohamed trained were subsequently involved in the 1993 plot to blow up the World Trade Center. In 1992, Mohamed returned to Afghanistan to continue training militants. That same year, he was detained by officials in Rome, yet was released shortly thereafter.[61]

In 1992, Ali Mohamed created an al-Qaeda terrorist cell in Kenya, and in 1993, bin Laden asked Mohamed to scout for potential terrorist targets in Nairobi, Kenya. He took photos of and scouted the French Embassy, the US AID office and the American Embassy. Bin Laden subsequently chose the American Embassy as the target.[62]

In 1993, he was detained by the RCMP in Vancouver, Canada, "while traveling in the company of a suspected associate of Mr. bin Laden's who was trying to enter the United States using false documents."[63] However, after the RCMP were told to contact his FBI handlers, Mohamed was released.[64] He subsequently masterminded the American Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.[65]

However, there are implications that may suggest that Ali Mohamed's ties to the CIA did not end or evaporate in the 1980s. Following 9/11, several revelations were reported in the media about a covert program of allowing high-level terrorists to enter the United States under a secret CIA program which had the State Department issue visas to terrorists in order to enter the United States.

The CIA Brings Terrorists to America

Michael Springman, former State Department official and head of the US Visa Bureau in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, from 1987 to 1989, went public with his experiences. He stated that, "In Saudi Arabia I was repeatedly ordered by high level State Dept officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants," and that he would complain to an assortment of different departments and agencies, however, his complaints were met with silence. He elaborated, "What I was protesting was, in reality, an effort to bring recruits, rounded up by Osama Bin Laden, to the US for terrorist training by the CIA. They would then be returned to Afghanistan to fight against the then-Soviets." Further:

The attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 did not shake the State Department's faith in the Saudis, nor did the attack on American barracks at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia three years later, in which 19 Americans died. FBI agents began to feel their investigation was being obstructed. Would you be surprised to find out that FBI agents are a bit frustrated that they can't be looking into some Saudi connections?[66]

As Springman further revealed in an interview with the CBC, Sheikh Abdel Rahman, the terrorist widely considered to have played a key role in the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, was issued a visa from a CIA case officer in Sudan, "And that 15 or so of the people who came from Saudi Arabia to participate in the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon [on 9/11] had gotten their visas through the American consular general at Jeddah." The interviewer asked if this suggests that this "pipeline" of visa applications issued by the CIA to terrorists was never wrapped up, and Springman replied:

Exactly. I had thought it had been, because I had raised sufficient hell that I thought they had done it. I had complained to the embassy in Riyadh, I had complained to the diplomatic security in Washington, I had complained to the General Accounting Office, I had complained to the State Department Inspector General's office, and I had complained to the Bureau of Consular Affairs at the State Department. Apparently the reverberations from this where heard all over the State Department.[67]

Eventually, the State Department fired Springman without a sufficient reason. As he explained, the same program in which he was ordered to allow terrorists to enter the United States in the late 1980s had continued and 15 of the 19 suspected 9/11 hijackers were issued visas through this network. It further turned out that Ali Mohamed was "admitted to the United States under a special visa program controlled by the C.I.A.'s clandestine service," and he had claimed to be working for the CIA.[68]

In the mid-1990s, Ali Mohamed helped al-Qaeda's current number two, presumably after Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to come to California and raise money for al-Qaeda operations. In 2000, Ali Mohamed was called in for questioning and was subsequently arrested in relation to involvement with the 1998 embassy bombings and is being kept in an undisclosed location.[69]

Thus, we have a perfect example of the "terror nexus" in Ali Mohamed: simultaneously having connections with the CIA, the FBI, the Army, and al-Qaeda. His high-level status within al-Qaeda could not have taken place without the knowledge and support of his handlers. Mohamed was a double agent, that much is for sure, but for whom was he really working? Considering he has disappeared into the abyss of "National Security", the answers might never be fully known. However, this does provide more evidence as to the covert relationship that the United States maintained with al-Qaeda.

Able Danger: Tracking the 9/11 Terrorists

Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, a military intelligence officer, revealed his in-depth knowledge of having worked with the Pentagon's ultra-secret "Able Danger" program. Able Danger "was begun in 1999 at the request of General Hugh Shelton, then the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and under the direct supervision of General Pete Schoomaker, then the commander of the Special Operations Command (SOCOM)." The CIA, however, had refused to cooperate with the Able Danger program, which was designed to track down terrorists, and developed a specific focus on al-Qaeda. Raytheon, a private military contracting corporation, was involved in this data-mining military intelligence program. Once Schaffer went public with information about the program, the "then deputy director of operations at the Defense Intelligence Agency essentially pulled the plug on his involvement with Able Danger."[70]

In September of 2000, more than a year before 9/11, Able Danger, "a small, highly classified military intelligence unit identified Mohammed Atta and three other future hijackers as likely members of a cell of Al Qaeda operating in the United States," and in the summer of 2000, Able Danger recommended that the information be shared with the FBI to go in and remove the terrorist cell. However, the information was not shared and the recommendation was rejected, apparently because "Mr. Atta, and the others were in the United States on valid entry visas." Further:

A former spokesman for the Sept. 11 commission, Al Felzenberg, confirmed that members of its staff, including Philip Zelikow [a friend of Condi Rice who later joined the Bush administration], the executive director, were told about the program on an overseas trip in October 2003 that included stops in Afghanistan and Pakistan.[71]

A Pentagon spokesman said that the 9/11 Commission looked into the issue during the Commission hearings; however, they "chose not to include it in the final report."[72] Other intelligence officers and sources came forward to reveal and validate the claims made about "Able Danger," including J.D. Smith, a defense contractor who confirmed that Able Danger had identified Atta. Further, Navy Captain Scott Philpott has also gone on record along with Schaffer, claiming that they were "discouraged from looking further into Atta" and their attempts to share information with the FBI were thwarted.[73] Congress then began an investigation into the "Able Danger" program. According to Congressional testimony:

Pentagon lawyers during the Clinton administration ordered the destruction of intelligence reports that identified September 11 leader Mohamed Atta months before the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.[74]

Further, in 2004, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), "destroyed files on the Army's computer data-mining program known as Able Danger to avoid disclosing the information":

Retired Army Maj. Erik Kleinsmith, former director of the Army Land Information Warfare Center, told the panel he was directed by Pentagon lawyers to delete 2 terabytes of computer data -- the equivalent of one-quarter of the information in the Library of Congress -- on Able Danger in May or June 2000 because of legal concerns about information on U.S. citizens.[75]

In September of 2005, as the Senate investigation into Able Danger was underway, several Senators from both parties accused the Defense Department "of obstructing an investigation into whether a highly classified intelligence program known as Able Danger did indeed identify Mohamed Atta and other future hijackers as potential threats well before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001." This occurred after the Pentagon "blocked several witnesses from testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee at a public hearing."[76]

The Pentagon even acknowledged that, "it had blocked several military officers and intelligence analysts from testifying at an open Congressional hearing about a highly classified intelligence program." A Pentagon spokesman said open testimony "would not be appropriate."[77]

The 9/11 Commission, despite testimony from Col. Schaffer and other individuals about the Able Danger program, had dismissed Able Danger as "not historically significant," and justified leaving it out of the final report, which stated that, "American intelligence agencies were unaware of Mr. Atta until the day of the attacks." Louis Freeh, a former FBI Director, wrote in an article in the Wall Street Journal, that this assertion by the 9/11 Commission is "embarrassingly wrong," especially since Commission members had acknowledged in 2005 (a year after the release of the 9/11 Commission Report), that they had met with Able Danger officials who did mention they were tracking Atta prior to 9/11.[78]

Further, more information was revealed regarding the relationship many supposed hijackers had with the US intelligence community, as it was revealed by Newsweek in 2002 that two hijackers were identified by the CIA in January of 2000 when they attended an al-Qaeda meeting in Malaysia. However, the two men then went to San Diego where they attended flight school, where they "moved into the home of a Muslim man who had befriended them at the local Islamic Center. The landlord regularly prayed with them and even helped one open a bank account." However, their landlord also happened to be an "undercover asset" for the FBI, yet nothing was done.[79]

Immediately following the 9/11 attacks, it was reported by Newsweek that the military gave information to the FBI which alleged that 5 of the 9/11 hijackers had "received training at secure U.S. military installations in the 1990s." Further, "three of the alleged hijackers listed their address on drivers licenses and car registrations as the Naval Air Station in Pensacola." Newsweek continued:

But there are slight discrepancies between the military training records and the official FBI list of suspected hijackers-either in the spellings of their names or with their birthdates. One military source said it is possible that the hijackers may have stolen the identities of the foreign nationals who studied at the U.S. installations.[80]

Could the use of false identities or dual identities be the reason why, in late September of 2001, it was reported that four of the alleged 9/11 hijackers had turned out to be alive and well, and living in the Middle East? The FBI released the list of the 19 purported 9/11 hijackers, and some of the names and photographs on the list show people who were still alive, a remarkable feat for someone accused of crashing a plane in a suicide mission. Even the FBI director in late September of 2001 agreed that the identity of many of the hijackers was still in doubt.[81] Yet, these were not questions addressed by the 9/11 Commission.

It must be looked at and addressed much more closely and critically; the role between the U.S. and other Western intelligence agencies to what is known as "al-Qaeda." Given our historical understanding of al-Qaeda as a "database" of intelligence assets, which were recruited to fight the Afghan-Soviet war, and our more recent understanding of the relationships between various intelligence agencies historically and presently to these groups and individuals, does it not seem plausible that the operation of al-Qaeda as a covert branch of U.S. policy has continued? Certainly, more research needs to be undertaken, but what is clear is that any and all official investigations thus far have been nothing but concocted lies: that is, willful and intended deception, designed to hide the truth, not reveal it.

It is also within this context, of understanding the deep nexus of intelligence and terrorism in international relations and imperial stratagems (that is, strategic deception), that we must view the rise, role, evolution and purpose of the "Global War on Terror," now in its 9th year, spending trillions to send poor Americans to kill poor Muslims in nations across the Middle East, Africa, and Central and South Asia.

* Andrew Gavin Marshall is a Research Associate with the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is co-editor, with Michel Chossudovsky, of the recent book, "The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century," available to order at Globalresearch.ca.

Notes

[1] Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives. (Basic Books: 1997), page 148

[2] Ibid, page 36.

[3] Ibid, page 25.

[4] Andrew Krepinevich, Emerging Threats, Revolutionary Capabilities And Military Transformation. Testimony of Andrew Krepinevich, Executive Director, before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities: March 5, 1999:
http://www.csbaonline.org/4Publications/Archive/T.19990305.Emerging_Threats,_/T.19990305.Emerging_Threats,_.htm

[5] Ibid.

[6] Richard Labeviere, Dollars for Terror: The US and Islam. (New York: Algora Publishing, 1999), pages 5-6

[7] Jim Garamone, Joint Vision 2020 Emphasizes Full-spectrum Dominance. American Forces Press Service: June 2, 2000:
http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=45289

[8] PNAC, Rebuilding America's Defenses. Project for the New American Century: September 2000, page 51:
http://www.newamericancentury.org/publicationsreports.htm

[9] David Ray Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor, 2nd ed. (Interlink Books, 2004), page 99

[10] Fred Kaplan, Show Me the Money. Slate: July 22, 2004:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2104208/

[11] Dennis Ryan, Contingency planning Pentagon MASCAL exercise simulates

scenarios in preparing for emergencies. US Army Military District of Washington: November 3, 2000:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/pentagon_preparing.htm

[12] Barbara Starr, NORAD exercise had jet crashing into building. CNN: April 19, 2004:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/04/19/norad.exercise/

[13] Steven Komarow and Tom Squitieri, NORAD had drills of jets as weapons. USA Today: April 19, 2004:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-04-18-norad_x.htm

[4] Julian Borger, Hijackers fly into Pentagon? No chance, said top brass. The Guardian: April 15, 2004:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/apr/15/usa.september11

[15] Jim Garamone, Pre-9-11 Exercise Forecasted First War of 21st Century. American Forces Press Service: July 30, 2002:
http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=43608

[16] Pete Brush, Report Warned Of Suicide Hijackings. CBS News: May 17, 2002:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/18/attack/main509488.shtml

[17] Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. (National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States: 2004), page 172

[18] Howard Fineman, The Battle Back Home. Newsweek: February 4, 2002

[19] Pete Brush, Bush Opposes 9/11 Query Panel. CBS News: May 23, 2002:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/15/attack/main509096.shtml

[20] Bootie Cosgrove-Mather, Bush Backs Independent 9-11 Probe. CBS News: September 20, 2002:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/24/attack/main523156.shtml

[21] Carl Hulse, How a Deal Creating an Independent Commission on Sept. 11 Came Undone. The New York Times: November 2, 2002:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/02/politics/02COMM.html

[22] Dana Bash, Congress OKs 9/11 special commission. CNN: November 15, 2002:
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/11/15/congress.commission/index.html

[23] The Kissinger Commission. The New York Times: November 29, 2002:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/29/opinion/29FRI1.html

[24] Kissinger resigns as head of 9/11 commission. CNN: December 13, 2002:
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/12/13/kissinger.resigns/

[25] Laurence Arnold, 9/11 panel to get access to withheld data. The Boston Globe: November 13, 2003:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2003/11/13/911_panel_to_get_access_to_withheld_data/

[26] Benjamin DeMott, Whitewash as public service: How The 9/11 Commission Report defrauds the nation. Harper's Magazine: October 2004:
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2004/10/0080234

[27] James M Klatell, 9/11 Commissioners Expose Obstructions. CBS News: August 5, 2006:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/05/terror/main1868087.shtml

[28] Dan Eggen, 9/11 Panel Suspected Deception by Pentagon. The Washington Post: August 2, 2006:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/01/AR2006080101300.html?sub=AR

[29] Robert Windrem and Victor Limjoco, 9/11 Commission controversy. MSNBC: January 30, 2008

[30] Nick Juliano, Book: Director of 9/11 commission secretly spoke with Rove, White House. The Raw Story: January 31, 2008:
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/Book_Director_of_911_commission_secretly_0131.html

[31] French Magistrate Widens Bin Laden Finance Probe. Reuters: December 25, 2004:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latest-news/french-magistrate-widens-bin-laden-finance-probe

[32] Georg Mascolo and Erich Follath, Osama's Road to Riches and Terror. Der Spiegel: June 6, 2005:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,359690,00.html

[33] Ibid.

[34] Ibid.

[35] Ibid.

[36] Erich Follath and Georg Mascolo, Tracking Osama's Kin Around the World. Der Spiegel: June 6, 2005:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,359831,00.html

[37] Ibid.

[38] Ibid.

[39] Kathy Gannon, Bin Laden Reportedly Ailing. AP: March 25, 2000:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/911timeline/2000/ap032500.html

[40] Suspected Saudi Terrorist Osama bin Laden Dying, Magazine Says. Deutsche Presse-Agentur: March 16, 2000:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/911timeline/2000/deutschepresseagentur031600.html

[41] Anthony Sampson, CIA agent alleged to have met Bin Laden in July. The Guardian: November 1, 2001:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/nov/01/afghanistan.terrorism

[42] Hospital Worker: I Saw Osama. CBS News: January 28, 2002:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/28/eveningnews/main325887.shtml

[43] ToI, "CIA worked in tandem with Pak to create Taliban". Times of India: March 7, 2001:
http://www.multiline.com.au/~johnm/taliban.htm

[44] PTI, 'US ignored its own agency's reports on ISI backing Al Qaeda'. Rediff: September 25, 2003:
http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/sep/25us.htm

[45] ToI, "CIA worked in tandem with Pak to create Taliban". Times of India: March 7, 2001:
http://www.multiline.com.au/~johnm/taliban.htm

[46] Amir Mateen, ISI Chief's Parleys Continue in Washington. The News: September 10, 2001:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/911timeline/2001/news091001.html

[47] Richard Leiby, A Cloak But No Dagger. The Washington Post: May 18, 2002:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A36091-2002May17&notFound=true

[48] Pepe Escobar, 9-11 AND THE SMOKING GUN. Asia Times: April 8, 2004:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FD08Aa01.html

[49] Michael Meacher, The Pakistan connection. The Guardian: July 22, 2004:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/jul/22/usa.september11

[50] Ibid.

[51] US on 'intimate' terms with extremists in Central Asia. Press TV: August 1, 2009:
http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=102232&sectionid=3510203

[52] Sue Reid, Has Osama Bin Laden been dead for seven years - and are the U.S. and Britain covering it up to continue war on terror? The Daily Mail: September 11, 2009:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1212851/Has-Osama-Bin-Laden-dead-seven-years--U-S-Britain-covering-continue-war-terror.html

[53] Ibid.

[54] Ibid.

[55] Ibid.

[56] Greg Miller, CIA pays for support in Pakistan. Los Angeles Times: November 15, 2009:
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/nov/15/world/fg-cia-pakistan15

[57] Lance Williams and Erin McCormick, Al Qaeda terrorist worked with FBI. San Francisco Chronicle: November 4, 2001:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2001/11/04/MN117081.DTL

[58] Lance Williams and Erin McCormick, Bin Laden's man in Silicon Valley. The San Francisco Chronicle: September 21, 2001:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/09/21/MN224103.DTL&hw=ali+mohamed&sn=003&sc=282

[59] Benjamin Weiser and James Risen, THE MASKING OF A MILITANT: A special report.; A Soldier's Shadowy Trail In U.S. and in the Mideast. The New York Times: December 1, 1998:
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/01/world/masking-militant-special-report-soldier-s-shadowy-trail-us-mideast.html?pagewanted=1

[60] Benjamin Weiser, U.S. Ex-Sergeant Linked To bin Laden Conspiracy. The New York Times: October 30, 1998:
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/30/world/us-ex-sergeant-linked-to-bin-laden-conspiracy.html?pagewanted=1

[61] Benjamin Weiser and James Risen, THE MASKING OF A MILITANT: A special report.; A Soldier's Shadowy Trail In U.S. and in the Mideast. The New York Times: December 1, 1998:
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/01/world/masking-militant-special-report-soldier-s-shadowy-trail-us-mideast.html?pagewanted=1

[62] Lance Williams and Erin McCormick, Bin Laden's man in Silicon Valley. The San Francisco Chronicle: September 21, 2001:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/09/21/MN224103.DTL&hw=ali+mohamed&sn=003&sc=282

[63] Benjamin Weiser and James Risen, THE MASKING OF A MILITANT: A special report.; A Soldier's Shadowy Trail In U.S. and in the Mideast. The New York Times: December 1, 1998:
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/01/world/masking-militant-special-report-soldier-s-shadowy-trail-us-mideast.html?pagewanted=1

[64] ESTANISLAO OZIEWICZ AND TU THANH HA, Canada freed top al-Qaeda operative. The Globe and Mail: November 22, 2001:
http://www.mail-archive.com/hydro@topica.com/msg00224.html

[65] Benjamin Weiser and James Risen, THE MASKING OF A MILITANT: A special report.; A Soldier's Shadowy Trail In U.S. and in the Mideast. The New York Times: December 1, 1998:
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/01/world/masking-militant-special-report-soldier-s-shadowy-trail-us-mideast.html?pagewanted=1

[66] BBC, Has someone been sitting on the FBI? BBC News: November 6, 2001:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/events/newsnight/1645527.stm

[67] CBC, Transcript of CBC (Canada) Interview with Michael Springman. CBC: July 3, 2002:
http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpWESSEX/Documents/springmaninterview.htm

[68] Benjamin Weiser, U.S. Ex-Sergeant Linked To bin Laden Conspiracy. The New York Times: October 30, 1998:
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/30/world/us-ex-sergeant-linked-to-bin-laden-conspiracy.html?pagewanted=1

[69] Ton Hays and Sharon Theimer, Egyptian agent worked with Green Berets, bin Laden. The Associated Press: December 31, 2001:
http://www.angelfire.com/ny5/libertystrikesback/AliMohammed.html

[70] Jacob Goodwin, Inside Able Danger - The Secret Birth, Extraordinary Life and Untimely Death of a U.S. Military Intelligence Program. Global Security News: September 25, 2005:
http://911citizenswatch.org/?p=673

[71] Douglas Jehl, Four in 9/11 Plot Are Called Tied to Qaeda in '00. The New York Times: August 9, 2005:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/09/politics/09intel.html?ex=1281240000&en=bc4d02afa0a46012&ei=5090

[72] Stephen W Smith, New Pre-9/11 Intel Questions. CBS news: August 9, 2005:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/08/09/terror/main769440.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody

[73] Catherine Herridge, Molly Hooper and Liza Porteus, Third Source Backs 'Able Danger' Claims About Atta. Fox News: August 28, 2005:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,167130,00.html

[74] Atta files destroyed by Pentagon. The Washington Times: September 21, 2005:
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2005/sep/21/20050921-102450-4688r/

[75] Ibid.

[76] Douglas Jehl, Senators Accuse Pentagon of Obstructing Inquiry on Sept. 11 Plot. The New York Times: September 22, 2005:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/22/politics/22intel.html

[77] Philip Shenon, Pentagon Bars Military Officers and Analysts From Testifying. The New York Times: September 21, 2005:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/21/politics/21intel.html?ex=1284955200&en=ca91fe8ed7997532&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

[78] Louis Freeh, An Incomplete Investigation. The Wall Street Journal: November 17, 2005:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007559

[79] Michael Isikoff, Exclusive: The Informant Who Lived With The Hijackers. Newsweek: September 16, 2002:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/65649

[80] George Wehrfritz, Catharine Skipp and John Barry, Alleged Hijackers May Have Trained At U.S. Bases. Newsweek: September 15, 2001:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/75797

[81] Hijack 'suspects' alive and well. BBC: September 23, 2001:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1559151.stm

By Michel Chossudovsky* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

This article summarizes earlier writings by the author on 9/11 and the role of Al Qaeda in US foreign policy. For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, America's "War on Terrorism", Global Research, 2005

"The United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings....The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system's core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books,..", (Washington Post, 23 March 2002)

"Advertisements, paid for from CIA funds, were placed in newspapers and newsletters around the world offering inducements and motivations to join the [Islamic] Jihad." (Pervez Hoodbhoy, Peace Research, 1 May 2005)

"Bin Laden recruited 4,000 volunteers from his own country and developed close relations with the most radical mujahideen leaders. He also worked closely with the CIA, ... Since September 11, [2001] CIA officials have been claiming they had no direct link to bin Laden." (Phil Gasper, International Socialist Review, November-December 2001)

• Osama bin Laden, America's bogyman, was recruited by the CIA in 1979 at the very outset of the US sponsored jihad. He was 22 years old and was trained in a CIA sponsored guerilla training camp.
• The architects of the covert operation in support of "Islamic fundamentalism" launched during the Reagan presidency played a key role in launching the "Global War on Terrorism" in the wake of 9/11.
• President Ronald Reagan met the leaders of the Islamic Jihad at the White House in 1983
• Under the Reagan adminstration, US foreign policy evolved towards the unconditional support and endorsement of the Islamic "freedom fighters". In today's World, the "freedom fighters" are labelled "Islamic terrorists".
• In the Pashtun language, the word "Taliban" means "Students", or graduates of the madrasahs (places of learning or coranic schools) set up by the Wahhabi missions from Saudi Arabia, with the support of the CIA. Education in the years preceding the Soviet-Afghan war war largely secular in Afghanistan. The number of CIA sponsored religious schools (madrasahs) increased from 2,500 in 1980 to over 39,000.

The Soviet-Afghan war was part of a CIA covert agenda initiated during the Carter administration, which consisted in actively supporting and financing the Islamic brigades, later known as Al Qaeda.

The Pakistani military regime played from the outset in the late 1970s, a key role in the US sponsored military and intelligence operations in Afghanistan. in the post-Cold war era, this central role of Pakistan in US intelligence operations was extended to the broader Central Asia- Middle East region. From the outset of the Soviet Afghan war in 1979, Pakistan under military rule actively supported the Islamic brigades. In close liaison with the CIA, Pakistan's military intelligence, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), became a powerful organization, a parallel government, wielding tremendous power and influence.

America's covert war in Afghanistan, using Pakistan as a launch pad, was initiated during the Carter administration prior to the Soviet "invasion":

"According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention." (Former National Security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, Interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, 15-21 January 1998)

Defense Secretary Robert Gates

With CIA backing and the funneling of massive amounts of U.S. military aid, the Pakistani ISI had developed into a "parallel structure wielding enormous power over all aspects of government". (Dipankar Banerjee, "Possible Connection of ISI With Drug Industry", India Abroad, 2 December 1994). The ISI had a staff composed of military and intelligence officers, bureaucrats, undercover agents and informers, estimated at 150,000. (Ibid)

Meanwhile, CIA operations had also reinforced the Pakistani military regime led by General Zia Ul Haq:

"Relations between the CIA and the ISI had grown increasingly warm following [General] Zia's ouster of Bhutto and the advent of the military regime. ... During most of the Afghan war, Pakistan was more aggressively anti-Soviet than even the United States. Soon after the Soviet military invaded Afghanistan in 1980, Zia [ul Haq] sent his ISI chief to destabilize the Soviet Central Asian states. The CIA only agreed to this plan in October 1984." (Ibid)

The ISI operating virtually as an affiliate of the CIA, played a central role in channeling support to Islamic paramilitary groups in Afghanistan and subsequently in the Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union.

Acting on behalf of the CIA, the ISI was also involved in the recruitment and training of the Mujahideen. In the ten year period from 1982 to 1992, some 35,000 Muslims from 43 Islamic countries were recruited to fight in the Afghan jihad. The madrassas in Pakistan, financed by Saudi charities, were also set up with US support with a view to "inculcating Islamic values". "The camps became virtual universities for future Islamic radicalism," (Ahmed Rashid, The Taliban). Guerilla training under CIA-ISI auspices included targeted assassinations and car bomb attacks.

"Weapons' shipments "were sent by the Pakistani army and the ISI to rebel camps in the North West Frontier Province near the Afghanistan border. The governor of the province is Lieutenant General Fazle Haq, who [according to Alfred McCoy] . allowed "hundreds of heroin refineries to set up in his province." Beginning around 1982, Pakistani army trucks carrying CIA weapons from Karachi often pick up heroin in Haq's province and return loaded with heroin. They are protected from police search by ISI papers."(1982-1989: US Turns Blind Eye to BCCI and Pakistani Government Involvement in Heroin Trade See also McCoy, 2003, p. 477) .

Front row, from left: Major Gen. Hamid Gul, director general of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), Director of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Willian Webster; Deputy Director for Operations Clair George; an ISI colonel; and senior CIA official, Milt Bearden at a mujahedeen training camp in North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan in 1987. (source RAWA)

Osama Bin Laden

Osama bin Laden, America's bogyman, was recruited by the CIA in 1979 at the very outset of the US sponsored jihad. He was 22 years old and was trained in a CIA sponsored guerilla training camp.

During the Reagan administration, Osama, who belonged to the wealthy Saudi Bin Laden family was put in charge of raising money for the Islamic brigades. Numerous charities and foundations were created. The operation was coordinated by Saudi intelligence, headed by Prince Turki al-Faisal, in close liaison with the CIA. The money derived from the various charities were used to finance the recruitment of Mujahieen volunteers. Al Qaeda, the base in Arabic was a data bank of volunteers who had enlisted to fight in the Afghan jihad. That data base was initially held by Osama bin Laden.

The Reagan Administration supports "Islamic Fundamentalism"

Pakistan's ISI was used as a "go-between". CIA covert support to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan operated indirectly through the Pakistani ISI, --i.e. the CIA did not channel its support directly to the Mujahideen. In other words, for these covert operations to be "successful", Washington was careful not to reveal the ultimate objective of the "jihad", which consisted in destroying the Soviet Union.

In December 1984, the Sharia Law (Islamic jurisprudence) was established in Pakistan following a rigged referendum launched by President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. Barely a few months later, in March 1985, President Ronald Reagan issued National Security Decision Directive 166 (NSDD 166), which authorized "stepped-up covert military aid to the Mujahideen" as well a support to religious indoctrination.

The imposition of The Sharia in Pakistan and the promotion of "radical Islam" was a deliberate US policy serving American geopolitical interests in South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. Many present-day "Islamic fundamentalist organizations" in the Middle East and Central Asia, were directly or indirectly the product of US covert support and financing, often channeled through foundations from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. Missions from the Wahhabi sect of conservative Islam in Saudi Arabia were put in charge of running the CIA sponsored madrassas in Northern Pakistan.

Under NSDD 166, a series of covert CIA-ISI operations was launched.

The US supplied weapons to the Islamic brigades through the ISI. CIA and ISI officials would meet at ISI headquarters in Rawalpindi to coordinate US support to the Mujahideen. Under NSDD 166, the procurement of US weapons to the Islamic insurgents increased from 10,000 tons of arms and ammunition in 1983 to 65,000 tons annually by 1987. "In addition to arms, training, extensive military equipment including military satellite maps and state-of-the-art communications equipment" (University Wire, 7 May 2002).

Ronald Reagan meets Afghan Mujahideen Commanders at the White House in 1985 (Reagan Archives)

With William Casey as director of the CIA, NSDD 166 was described as the largest covert operation in US history:

The U.S. supplied support package had three essential components-organization and logistics, military technology, and ideological support for sustaining and encouraging the Afghan resistance....

U.S. counterinsurgency experts worked closely with the Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in organizing Mujahideen groups and in planning operations inside Afghanistan.

... But the most important contribution of the U.S. was to ... bring in men and material from around the Arab world and beyond. The most hardened and ideologically dedicated men were sought on the logic that they would be the best fighters. Advertisements, paid for from CIA funds, were placed in newspapers and newsletters around the world offering inducements and motivations to join the Jihad. (Pervez Hoodbhoy, Afghanistan and the Genesis of the Global Jihad, Peace Research, 1 May 2005)

Religious Indoctrination

Under NSDD 166, US assistance to the Islamic brigades channeled through Pakistan was not limited to bona fide military aid. Washington also supported and financed by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the process of religious indoctrination, largely to secure the demise of secular institutions:

... the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation.

The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system's core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books,..

The White House defends the religious content, saying that Islamic principles permeate Afghan culture and that the books "are fully in compliance with U.S. law and policy." Legal experts, however, question whether the books violate a constitutional ban on using tax dollars to promote religion.

... AID officials said in interviews that they left the Islamic materials intact because they feared Afghan educators would reject books lacking a strong dose of Muslim thought. The agency removed its logo and any mention of the U.S. government from the religious texts, AID spokeswoman Kathryn Stratos said.

"It's not AID's policy to support religious instruction," Stratos said. "But we went ahead with this project because the primary purpose . . . is to educate children, which is predominantly a secular activity."

... Published in the dominant Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtun, the textbooks were developed in the early 1980s under an AID grant to the University of Nebraska -Omaha and its Center for Afghanistan Studies. The agency spent $ 51 million on the university's education programs in Afghanistan from 1984 to 1994." (Washington Post, 23 March 2002)

The Role of the NeoCons

There is continuity. The architects of the covert operation in support of "Islamic fundamentalism" launched during the Reagan presidency played a key role in role in launching the "Global War on Terrorism" in the wake of 9/11.

Several of the NeoCons of the Bush Junior Administration were high ranking officials during the Reagan presidency.

Richard Armitage, was Deputy Secretary of State during George W. Bush's first term (2001-2004). He played a central key role in post 9/11 negotiations with Pakistan leading up to the October 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. During the Reagan era, he held the position of Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy. In this capacity, he played a key role in the implementation of NSDD 163 while also ensuring liaison with the Pakistani military and intelligence apparatus.

Meanwhile, Paul Wolfowitz was at the State Department in charge of a foreign policy team composed, among others, of Lewis Libby, Francis Fukuyama and Zalmay Khalilzad. Wolfowitz's group was also involved in laying the conceptual groundwork of US covert support to Islamic parties and organizations in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Bush's Secretary of Defence Robert Gates also was also involved in setting the groundwork for CIA covert operations. He was appointed Deputy Director for Intelligence by Ronald Reagan in 1982, and Deputy Director of the CIA in 1986, a position which he held until 1989. Gates played a key role in the formulation of NSDD 163, which established a consistent framework for promoting Islamic fundamentalism and channeling covert support to the Islamic brigades. He was also involved in the Iran Contra scandal. .

The Iran Contra Operation

Richard Gates, Colin Powell and Richard Armitage, among others, were also involved in the Iran-Contra operation.

Armitage was in close liaison with Colonel Oliver North. His deputy and chief anti-terrorist official Noel Koch was part of the team set up by Oliver North.

Of significance, the Iran-Contra operation was also tied into the process of channeling covert support to the Islamic brigades in Afghanistan. The Iran Contra scheme served several related foreign policy:

1) Procurement of weapons to Iran thereby feeding the Iraq-Iran war,

2) Support to the Nicaraguan Contras,

3) Support to the Islamic brigades in Afghanistan, channeled via Pakistan's ISI.

Following the delivery of the TOW anti-tank missiles to Iran, the proceeds of these sales were deposited in numbered bank accounts and the money was used to finance the Nicaraguan Contras. and the Mujahideen:

"The Washington Post reported that profits from the Iran arms sales were deposited in one CIA-managed account into which the U.S. and Saudi Arabia had placed $250 million apiece. That money was disbursed not only to the contras in Central America but to the rebels fighting Soviet troops in Afghanistan." (US News & World Report, 15 December 1986).

Although Lieutenant General Colin Powell, was not directly involved in the arms' transfer negotiations, which had been entrusted to Oliver North, he was among "at least five men within the Pentagon who knew arms were being transferred to the CIA." (The Record, 29 December 1986). In this regard, Powell was directly instrumental in giving the "green light" to lower-level officials in blatant violation of Congressional procedures. According to the New York Times, Colin Powell took the decision (at the level of military procurement), to allow the delivery of weapons to Iran:

"Hurriedly, one of the men closest to Secretary of Defense Weinberger, Maj. Gen. Colin Powell, bypassed the written ''focal point system'' procedures and ordered the Defense Logistics Agency [responsible for procurement] to turn over the first of 2,008 TOW missiles to the CIA., which acted as cutout for delivery to Iran" (New York Times, 16 February 1987)

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was also implicated in the Iran-Contra Affair.

The Golden Crescent Drug Trade

The history of the drug trade in Central Asia is intimately related to the CIA's covert operations. Prior to the Soviet-Afghan war, opium production in Afghanistan and Pakistan was directed to small regional markets. There was no local production of heroin. (Alfred McCoy, Drug Fallout: the CIA's Forty Year Complicity in the Narcotics Trade. The Progressive, 1 August 1997).

Alfred McCoy's study confirms that within two years of the onslaught of the CIA operation in Afghanistan, "the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands became the world's top heroin producer." (Ibid) Various Islamic paramilitary groups and organizations were created. The proceeds of the Afghan drug trade, which was protected by the CIA, were used to finance the various insurgencies:

"Under CIA and Pakistani protection, Pakistan military and Afghan resistance opened heroin labs on the Afghan and Pakistani border. According to The Washington Post of May 1990, among the leading heroin manufacturers were Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Afghan leader who received about half of the covert arms that the U.S. shipped to Pakistan. Although there were complaints about Hekmatyar's brutality and drug trafficking within the ranks of the Afghan resistance of the day, the CIA maintained an uncritical alliance and supported him without reservation or restraint.

Once the heroin left these labs in Pakistan's northwest frontier, the Sicilian Mafia imported the drugs into the U.S., where they soon captured sixty percent of the U.S. heroin market. That is to say, sixty percent of the U.S. heroin supply came indirectly from a CIA operation. During the decade of this operation, the 1980s, the substantial DEA contingent in Islamabad made no arrests and participated in no seizures, allowing the syndicates a de facto free hand to export heroin. By contrast, a lone Norwegian detective, following a heroin deal from Oslo to Karachi, mounted an investigation that put a powerful Pakistani banker known as President Zia's surrogate son behind bars. The DEA in Islamabad got nobody, did nothing, stayed away.

Former CIA operatives have admitted that this operation led to an expansion of the Pakistan-Afghanistan heroin trade. In 1995 the former CIA Director of this Afghan operation, Mr. Charles Cogan, admitted sacrificing the drug war to fight the Cold War. "Our main mission was to do as much damage to the Soviets. We didn't really have the resources or the time to devote to an investigation of the drug trade," he told Australian television. "I don't think that we need to apologize for this. Every situation has its fallout. There was fallout in terms of drugs, yes, but the main objective was accomplished. The Soviets left Afghanistan." (Alfred McCoy, Testimony before the Special Seminar focusing on allegations linking CIA secret operations and drug trafficking-convened February 13, 1997, by Rep. John Conyers, Dean of the Congressional Black Caucus)

Lucrative Narcotics Trade in the Post Cold War Era

The drug trade has continued unabated during the post Cold war years. Afghanistan became the major supplier of heroin to Western markets, in fact almost the sole supplier: more than 90 percent of the heroin sold Worldwide originates in Afghanistan. This lucrative contraband is tied into Pakistani politics and the militarization of the Pakistani State. It also has a direct bearing on the structure of the Pakistani economy and its banking and financial institutions, which from the outset of the Golden Crescent drug trade have been involved in extensive money laundering operations, which are protected by the Pakistani military and intelligence apparatus:

According to the US State Department International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (2006) (quoted in Daily Times, 2 March 2006),

"Pakistani criminal networks play a central role in the transshipment of narcotics and smuggled goods from Afghanistan to international markets. Pakistan is a major drug-transit country. The proceeds of narcotics trafficking and funding for terrorist activities are often laundered by means of the alternative system called hawala. ... .

"Repeatedly, a network of private unregulated charities has also emerged as a significant source of illicit funds for international terrorist networks," the report pointed out. ... "

The hawala system and the charities are but the tip of the iceberg. According to the State Department report, "the State Bank of Pakistan has frozen more twenty years] a meager $10.5 million "belonging to 12 entities and individuals linked to Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda or the Taliban". What the report fails to mention is that the bulk of the proceeds of the Afghan drug trade are laundered in bona fide Western banking institutions.

The Taliban Repress the Drug Trade

A major and unexpected turnaround in the CIA sponsored drug trade occurred in 2000.

The Taliban government which came to power in 1996 with Washington's support, implemented in 2000-2001 a far-reaching opium eradication program with the support of the United Nations which served to undermine a multibillion dollar trade. (For further details see, Michel Chossudovsky, America's War on Terrorism, Global Research, 2005).

In 2001 prior to the US-led invasion, opium production under the Taliban eradication program declined by more than 90 percent.

In the immediate wake of the US led invasion, the Bush administration ordered that the opium harvest not be destroyed on the fabricated pretext that this would undermine the military government of Pervez Musharraf.

"Several sources inside Capitol Hill noted that the CIA opposes the destruction of the Afghan opium supply because to do so might destabilize the Pakistani government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf. According to these sources, Pakistani intelligence had threatened to overthrow President Musharraf if the crops were destroyed. ...

'If they [the CIA] are in fact opposing the destruction of the Afghan opium trade, it'll only serve to perpetuate the belief that the CIA is an agency devoid of morals; off on their own program rather than that of our constitutionally elected government'" .(NewsMax.com, 28 March 2002)

Since the US led invasion, opium production has increased 33 fold from 185 tons in 2001 under the Taliban to 6100 tons in 2006. Cultivated areas have increased 21 fold since the 2001 US-led invasion. (Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 6 January 2006)

In 2007, Afghanistan supplied approximately 93% of the global supply of heroin. The proceeds (in terms of retail value) of the Afghanistan drug trade are estimated (2006) to be in excess of 190 billion dollars a year, representing a significant fraction of the global trade in narcotics.(Ibid)

The proceeds of this lucrative multibillion dollar contraband are deposited in Western banks. Almost the totality of the revenues accrue to corporate interests and criminal syndicates outside Afghanistan.

The laundering of drug money constitutes a multibillion dollar activity, which continues to be protected by the CIA and the ISI. In the wake of the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan.

In retrospect, one of the major objectives of the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was to restore the drug trade.

The militarization of Pakistan serves powerful political, financial and criminal interests underlying the drug trade. US foreign policy tends to support these powerful interests. The CIA continues to protect the Golden Crescent narcotics trade. Despite his commitment to eradicating the drug trade, opium production under the regime of Afghan President Hamid Karzai has skyrocketed.

The Assassination of General Zia Ul-Haq

In August 1988, President Zia was killed in an air crash together with US Ambassador to Pakistan Arnold Raphel and several of Pakistan's top generals. The circumstances of the air crash remain shrouded in mystery.

Following Zia's death, parliamentary elections were held and Benazir Bhutto was sworn in as Prime Minister in December 1988. She was subsequently removed from office by Zia's successor, President Ghulam Ishaq Khan on the grounds of alleged corruption. In 1993, she was re-elected and was again removed from office in 1996 on the orders of President Farooq Leghari.

Continuity has been maintained throughout. Under the short-lived post-Zia elected governments of Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, the central role of the military-intelligence establishment and its links to Washington were never challenged.

Both Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif served US foreign policy interests. While in power, both democratically elected leaders, nonetheless supported the continuity of military rule. As prime minister from 1993 to 1996, Benazir Bhutto "advocated a conciliatory policy toward Islamists, especially the Taliban in Afghanistan" which were being supported by Pakistan's ISI (See F. William Engdahl, Global Research, January 2008)

Benazir Bhutto's successor as Prime Minister, Mia Muhammad Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) was deposed in 1999 in a US supported coup d'Etat led by General Pervez Musharraf.

The 1999 coup was instigated by General Pervez Musharaf, with the support of the Chief of General Staff, Lieutenant General Mahmoud Ahmad, who was subsequently appointed to the key position of head of military intelligence (ISI).

Chief of General Staff, Lieutenant General Mahmoud Ahmad

Concluding Remarks

These various "terrorist" organizations were created as a result of CIA support. They are not the product of religion. The project to establish "a pan-Islamic Caliphate" is part of a carefully devised intelligence operation.

CIA support to Al Qaeda was not in any way curtailed at the end of the Cold War. In fact quite the opposite. The earlier pattern of covert support not only extended, it took on a global thrust and became increasingly sophisticated.

The "Global War on Terrorism" is a complex and intricate intelligence construct. The covert support provided to "Islamic extremist groups" is part of an imperial agenda. It purports to weaken and eventually destroy secular and civilian governmental institutions, while also contributing to vilifying Islam. It is an instrument of colonization which seeks to undermine sovereign nation-states and transform countries into territories.

For the intelligence operation to be successful, however, the various Islamic organizations created and trained by the CIA must remain unaware of the role they are performing on geopolitical chessboard, on behalf of Washington.

Over the years, these organizations have indeed acquired a certain degree of autonomy and independence, in relation to their US-Pakistani sponsors. That appearance of "independence", however, is crucial; it is an integral part of the covert intelligence operation. According to former CIA agent Milton Beardman the Mujahideen were invariably unaware of the role they were performing on behalf of Washington. In the words of bin Laden (quoted by Beardman): "neither I, nor my brothers saw evidence of American help". (Weekend Sunday (NPR); Eric Weiner, Ted Clark; 16 August 1998).

"Motivated by nationalism and religious fervor, the Islamic warriors were unaware that they were fighting the Soviet Army on behalf of Uncle Sam. While there were contacts at the upper levels of the intelligence hierarchy, Islamic rebel leaders in theatre had no contacts with Washington or the CIA." (Michel Chossudovsky, America's War on Terrorism, Chapter 2).

The fabrication of "terrorism" --including covert support to terrorists-- is required to provide legitimacy to the "war on terrorism".

The various fundamentalist and paramilitary groups involved in US sponsored "terrorist" activities are "intelligence assets". In the wake of 9/11, their designated function as "intelligence assets" is to perform their role as credible "enemies of America".

Under the Bush administration, the CIA continued to support (via Pakistan's ISI) several Pakistani based Islamic groups. The ISI is known to support Jamaat a-Islami, which is also present in South East Asia, Lashkar-e-Tayya­ba, Jehad a-Kashmiri, Hizbul-Mujahidin and Jaish-e-Mohammed.

The Islamic groups created by the CIA are also intended to rally public support in Muslim countries. The underlying objective is to create divisions within national societies throughout the Middle East and Central Asia, while also triggering sectarian strife within Islam, ultimately with a view to curbing the development of a broad based secular mass resistance, which would challenge US imperial ambitions.

This function of an outside enemy is also an essential part of war propaganda required to galvanize Western public opinion. Without an enemy, a war cannot be fought. US foreign policy needs to fabricate an enemy, to justify its various military interventions in the Middle East and Central Asia. An enemy is required to justify a military agenda, which consists in " going after Al Qaeda". The fabrication and vilification of the enemy are required to justify military action.

The existence of an outside enemy sustains the illusion that the "war on terrorism" is real. It justifies and presents military intervention as a humanitarian operation based on the right to self-defense. It upholds the illusion of a "conflict of civilizations". The underlying purpose ultimately is to conceal the real economic and strategic objectives behind the broader Middle East Central Asian war.

Historically, Pakistan has played a central role in "war on terrorism". Pakistan constitutes from Washington's standpoint a geopolitical hub. It borders onto Afghanistan and Iran. It has played a crucial role in the conduct of US and allied military operations in Afghanistan as well as in the context of the Pentagon's war plans in relation to Iran.

* Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal. He is the author of The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003) and America's "War on Terrorism" (2005). He is also a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages.

By Dr. Stephen Sniegoski* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Two articles, one by anti-war conservative commentator Patrick Buchanan and the other by neoconservative Daniel Pipes, deal with the issue of Obama moving toward war on Iran for political reasons. In "Will Obama Play the War Card?," Patrick Buchanan points out that this option is certainly a political temptation for Obama especially since Congress is pushing him in that direction. Buchanan cites Congress' effort to impose very stiff sanctions on refined petroleum exports to Iran as a move toward war.

[On January 28, 2010, the U.S. Senate passed by voice vote the "Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act of 2009" (S. 2799). The bill now goes to conference committee to be reconciled with a similar bill from the House of Representatives, the "Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act" (H.R. 2194), which passed the House in December 2009. Because of the similarity of the two bills and the strong bipartisan support in both Houses of Congress, a final bill incorporating the essence of the Senate bill is almost guaranteed to be passed by both houses of Congress. The Obama administration has expressed objections, but there is no indication that Obama would dare to veto the final bill-and given the overwhelming congressional support, any presidential veto could be easily over-ridden.]

"Senate bill 2799," Buchanan writes, "would punish any company exporting gasoline to Iran. Though swimming in oil, Iran has a limited refining capacity and must import 40 percent of the gas to operate its cars and trucks and heat its homes." He argues that "cutting off a country's oil or gas is a proven path to war." And he cites the examples of Japan attacking the US in 1941 after the US embargo on oil supplies and Israel attacking Egypt in 1967 after Nasser threatened to close the Straits of Tiran through which Israel received 95 percent of its oil. While the implementation of the current sanctions would not cause Iran to attack the United States, it certainly would increase tensions and help to lead to war. Iran will certainly try to get around the sanctions and any American naval efforts to prevent gasoline from entering Iran could precipitate war.

"The Senate," Buchanan writes, "is trying to force Obama's hand, box him in, restrict his freedom of action, by making him impose sanctions that would cut off the negotiating track and put us on a track to war."

Buchanan also hits the mark by pointing out that "U.S. interests would seem to dictate supporting those elements in Iran who wish to be rid of the regime and re-engage the West. But if that is our goal, the Senate bill, and a House version that passed 412 to 12, seem almost diabolically perverse." The sanctions obviously will tend to unify the country behind the regime. Of course, the neocon/Israel goal is not to bring in the reformers-who also tend to support the Palestine resistance and seek to develop nuclear power-but to destabilize the country by war. This can best be achieved by keeping the demonized Ahmadinejad in power.

In the second article, "How to Save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran," neocon Daniel Pipes naturally encourages Obama to opt for war. "He [Obama] needs a dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a light-weight, bumbling ideologue, preferably in an arena where the stakes are high, where he can take charge, and where he can trump expectations.

"Such an opportunity does exist: Obama can give orders for the U.S. military to destroy Iran's nuclear-weapon capacity."

Pipes candidly admits that the imposition of "crippling" sanctions on Iran would not contribute to a peaceful settlement but would help to put the United States "on an escalator to confrontation that could lead straight to war."

Pipes correctly observes that "Obama's attempts to 'reset' his presidency will likely fail if he focuses on economics." There are no simply no easy answers for the economic problems that beset America.

Now Pipes is obviously not out to help Obama, but what he says about the political benefits of war are certainly true. If Republican Party leaders were half-way intelligent, they would realize that pushing the country to war is not in their political interest. But the Republican Party is not called the "stupid party" for nothing, and it is in the thrall of the neoconservatives-at least indirectly, since the neocons control Murdoch's Fox News and strongly influence the popular right-wing radio broadcasters such as Rush Limbaugh. Republicans already did irreparable damage to their party by giving whole-hearted support for the war on Iraq, so the Republicans are quite likely to snatch defeat from the hands of victory.

Pipes presents something on the order of the spurious claim of Saddam's super dangerous WMD to justify the need for a US bombing attack on Iran. "Eventually, they [Iran] could launch an electromagnetic pulse attack on the United States, utterly devastating the country. By eliminating the Iranian nuclear threat, Obama protects the homeland and sends a message to American's friends and enemies." Of course, an Iranian electromagnetic pulse attack is highly theoretical. A high altitude explosion would cause damage to electronic communication devices (a nuclear atmospheric test explosion 800 miles from Hawaii in 1962 knocked out a small percentage of the island's civilian electronic devices) but that it would disrupt all communications devices to the point of preventing a devastating counter strike is highly questionable. Perhaps China, Russia, and the US possess the capability of developing a weapon that could deliver a knockout blow that would prevent nuclear retaliation (though tests to determine this with certitude would seem almost impossible to conduct), but the likelihood that Iran could do this or would dare to take such a risk would seem very remote compared to threats from other countries against the US that would increase every time the US made an unprovoked attack on another country-the more the US engages in allegedly preventive wars, the more likely it is for a fearful nuclear power to launch a preventive war against the US.

Despite the fantasy aspect of an Iranian electromagnetic pulse threat, it is reasonable to believe that such a claim, if publicized widely, could resonate with a substantial proportion of the American public and help to cause the US to launch a preventive war. In fact, this would seem to be the element that is currently lacking in the existing war propaganda -the American people have not yet been made to believe that Iran really threatens the US homeland.

* Dr. Stephen J. Sniegoski is a historian and author of The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel.

By Maidhc Ó Cathail* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Worried about the global economic crisis? It's all in your head, says a leading financial expert.
 
And that's the problem, according to Jeff Gates, author of the highly-regarded Democracy At Risk: Rescuing Main Street From Wall Street, a sequel to The Ownership Solution: Toward A Shared Capitalism For The 21st Century. The latter book was described by one reviewer as "the best book on economics for a generation," and praised by Ralph Nader as "a Capitalist Manifesto, a blueprint for spreading the benefits of capitalism more equitably."  

Gates, a former counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance (1980-87), identifies the source of the current economic crisis as a "shared mindset" into which we have been induced to put our faith, to the grave detriment of the majority – but to the immense benefit of a very few.

While the events of September 2008 on Wall Street may have come as a shock to many – not least those who suddenly found themselves out of work or on the streets – they were "perfectly predictable" to a close-knit group of "financial sophisticates," Jeff Gates maintains.

But is there any evidence that this was a deliberate fraud?

"Systems analysts offer an acronym ("POSIWID") to identify systemic flaws: the purpose of a system is what it does," Gates says.

"In financial systems, results are downstream of the 'Chicago model' – a shared mindset from which today's results flow. Over the past half-century, this market-fundamentalist perspective evolved into the 'Washington' consensus to emerge as the guiding principle of the World Trade Organization (WTO) now taking this model to global scale."

What exactly does he mean by the "Chicago model"?

"At the core of this worldview lies a premise whose purpose is easily stated: 'maximize financial returns and – trust us – all else will be fine.' Faith in that perspective ensured today's results," Gates explains.

"As this 'Chicago' frame of mind gained the force of law through the 'law and economics' movement, the result became a globalized operating system best described as 'money-on-autopilot.' There lies the blame for this collapse – in that narrow 'consensus' perspective."

The "law and economics" movement referred to by Gates also traces its origins to the University of Chicago. As key opponents of financial regulation, this movement was heavily funded by the same Olin Foundation that also supported neoconservatism through its funding of neocon think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute.

This "Chicago" state of mind, Gates argues, had far-reaching consequences that could have been easily foreseen by its advocates. "The results of this purpose-driven 'operating system' were guaranteed to concentrate wealth and income and thereby undermine both democracies and markets. By equating personal freedom with financial freedom, we were induced to freely embrace the very forces that now jeopardize freedom," Gates says.

"Nowhere in this operating system is there any provision for the values essential to the long-term health of communities: fiscal foresight, civil cohesion and environmental sustainability. Money is the only value granted a voice."

Jeff Gates' latest book, Guilt by Association: How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War, traces the corruption that plagues American politics to a network who "share an ideological bias sympathetic to Israel." It should be read by concerned citizens everywhere, but especially in the United States, where the "Chicago" mindset has been most deeply embedded in its economic and foreign policy-making.

Endorsed by former U.S. Ambassador Edward Peck and Illinois Congressman Paul Findley (1961–1983), Guilt by Association identifies those who have promoted aggressive economic and foreign policies that have been "ruinous" not only to America's reputation but also to "moderate and secular Jews." The latter, Gates points out, are often unfairly portrayed as "guilty by association" with the behaviour of these "elites and extremists."

Who are these "elites and extremists," and how do they make America appear "guilty by association"?

"When waging unconventional warfare, Defense Secretary Robert Gates points to the perilous role of 'the people in between.' Thus, for instance, while pro-Israelis induced the U.S. to wage war in Iraq with false and flawed intelligence, 'the people in between' created, promoted and reported intelligence 'fixed' around that pre-determined goal," Gates explains.

"In the financial domain, 'the people in between' are securities bundlers, rating agencies and, most fundamentally, those who induce "the mark" (the public) to put their faith in the financial premise that enables this ongoing fraud.

"All flows downstream from a 'consensus' perspective – regardless whether the deception is a shared belief in Iraqi weapons of mass destruction or a consensus faith in the infallibility of unfettered financial markets. The modus operandi is identical – the displacement of facts with beliefs."

Perhaps not coincidentally, the intellectual roots of neoconservatism can also be traced to Chicago, where University of Chicago Professor Albert Wohlstetter's cadre of students included Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz. Wohlstetter himself had been a protégé of another University of Chicago Professor, Leo Strauss. Considered to be the "intellectual godfather" of the neocons, Strauss significantly advocated a "philosophy of deception."

Through their failure to identify the source of the problem, government responses to the ongoing economic crisis will only make matters worse, maintains Gates.

"Lawmakers seek to solve a systemic problem well downstream of its source. By piling on more interest-bearing debt without addressing the underlying problem, they are unleashing long-term financial forces destined to make a bad situation worse – at a staggering cost," he says. "We can anticipate stagnation and inflation while 'the people in between' continue to amass more assets (at distressed prices) and collect more interest on more taxpayer-secured debt. The pace is poised to quicken in this policy-enabled redistribution of wealth – from the bottom to the top."

* Maidhc Ó Cathail is a widely published writer based in Japan.

An equitable distribution of Collateral Language!

Why this fanatical preference for waging the 'war on terror' against only 'Islamofascism' today? [An earlier version of this essay appeared here.]

Personally, I think that the fanatics of all 'religions' can be equally fascists.

It would not bother me so much if all such 'fundamentalist' fascist fanatics would be thusly labeled using the English language's choicest words, and equitably hung and then burnt at stake as monumental criminals after a stint in Guantanamo Bay with vicious dogs grabbing at their genitals and entirely reenacting for them the barbarisms that transpired in Abu Garib prison for good measure!

However, as a rather straightforward and ordinary Muslim, I do find it deeply offensive that:

a) only uniquely label our 'pirates' thusly disparaging only Islam unjustly after these 'pirates' have been deftly created/nurtured by the 'emperor' and now have germinated,

b) use them as a convenient excuse for "imperial mobilization" in the pretext of fighting an endless "War on Terror" as otherwise, "democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization", and "that exercise requires a high degree of doctrinal motivation, intellectual commitment", including a "sudden threat or challenge to the public's sense of domestic well-being" and "truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat" such as a "new pearl harbor",

c) profound morons on the planet, mostly the educated ones, and almost all of them living in the West - the supposed 'enlightened civilization' - and including some indigenously well placed 'Native Informants', continue echoing 'a', and conveniently ignore 'b' as the proverbial dancing/trumpeting/shitting monstrous elephant right in the nuptial bed that needs 'a' as much as fish need water!

So to equalize the 'American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives" on 'the Grand Chessboard', and as a plebeian computer scientist but well versed in identifying the 'most significant bits' of complex issues - just as the old wise man of antiquity, St. Augustine - let's call a spade a spade, shall we?

Fight Zionofascism (fascism of the Zionists - too well known to need an explanation), and Christofascism (fascism of the Evangelical Christians hell bent on bringing on 'Armageddon'), and Judeofascism (fascism of the Jews hell bent on asserting their 'god's chosen peoples' mantra that puts them beyond the pale of ordinary people's morality), and Neofascism (fascism of the neo-cons to conquer the world regardless of the cost to anyone else), and Atheofascism (fascism of godless atheists who seem to be in the majority among the imperialists du jour who play realpolitik with other peoples' blood), and last but not least, Uberfascism (fascism of all the Nietzscheian supermen in all cultures who think they are better than human beings and can run rough-shod upon ordinary mortals as their 'god-given' primacy imperative), in your own backyards in this holy "War on terror" - the 'highest order bits' upon which the real 'page faults' (in computer science geek-speak) - and the threat of 'Islamofascism' 20,000 miles away will automatically melt away without spending an additional dime as the insignificant and dependent 'lower order bit'.

Indeed, 'Islamofascism' will magically disappear from the international scene just as it was deliberately brought into existence by "God on your side" with people in foreign 'suits and ties' as noted in this open letter to the veritable 'ubermensch' Middle East Scholar Daniel Pipes.

Then we shall be left with the more harmless and normative struggle for Renaissance within cultures and societies - a social struggle normal for every generation in every epoch as human beings attempt to keep up with the 'modernity' of their times and continually attempt to overcome their demons of history and its concomitant cultural baggage - as opposed to the fabricated 'synthetic terror' that is criminally and most audaciously being cultivated for "imperial mobilization" today!

To rationally and efficaciously eradicate the synthetic curse of the 'islamofascists' and the attendant suicide bombers, requires first and foremost, to nullify with extreme and ruthless prejudice, its highest level gardeners, and their deliberate aiders and abettors and exponents in all guises. The weeds, without its deft cultivation and nurturing, will die out in due course. It is a monumental crime against humanity to kill the weed with the most inhuman 'shock and awe' and blithely call the shattering of the tabula rasa of innocent civilians surrounding them 'collateral damage', while leaving not only their mastermind covert-patrons to cultivate more, but the very act of 'shock and awe' in itself being its rather obvious deft cultivator. If someone ever kills my loved ones in a 'shock and awe' as 'collateral damage', they better kill me too, or in my abject insanity, I will surely loose my gift of being a human being first and become the worst criminal - an easy recruit for a gardener! Let me know if there is another human being on this planet who would remain immune from such insanity. In the statistical law of large numbers, one can harvest a thousand a day!

And what of the so called 'misanthropic' statements or doctrines in the Islamic scriptures? Well, let's begin with the far more blatantly misanthropic and tortuous content in the Rabbinical Talmudic literature first as noted by the Jewish 'native informants' themselves, shall we? Followed surely by the Zionist and Christian Zionist doctrinal literature of hate and 'Armageddon', and then of course the neo-cons' blatantly chauvinistic 'American Mein-Kampfs' in duplicate and triplicate editions. Surely the Islamic literature must also not escape full-spectrum scrutiny-in-context either. If there are doctrines in 'Islamic' literature which are misanthropic, as in any influential doctrinal system, let's expunge them, for any god that is selective, racist, particularistic, misanthropic, iniquitous, and preaches hateful doctrines of 'primacy' and 'might makes right', can only be man-made and therefore, can easily be eradicated in the 'civilized' modernity du jour!

Thus we should be able to not only equitably excise all such misanthropic garbage in all fascist doctrines - be they emanating from the minds of White House National Security Council, or from the penmanship of imperial thinkers, or the crooked fingers of mullahs, priests, and rabbis and the assorted self-righteous 'ubermensch' deviants of all stripes - but also charge their authors and exponents, whether alive or dead, and whether self-proclaimed prophets, presidents, emperors, professors, editors, think tankers, journalists, or national security advisers, as the worst monumental criminals to ever poison mankind's thoughts and acts and thus accordingly deposit the living among them into Guantanamo Bay with full military 'enemy-combatant' protocol.

For good measure, we can pass equitable global laws outlawing all misanthropic doctrines, be they practiced by the Jews, Christians, Muslims, Atheists, Neo-cons, Hindus, Europeans, Americans, Free Masons, et. al.

Indeed, to equitably identify, adjudicate, and suitably consign all such forms of hateful doctrinal fascism and their fascist exponents who continually hide behind 'legal cover' of powerful nations, a radical free-thinking dialog algorithm is proposed in "Dialog Among Civilizations: Whytalksfail?".

I suspect most everyone with an ounce of moral imagination would subscribe to such equitable distribution of collateral language and agree for a perpetual 'holy jihad' against all fascism. Even the erstwhile ZioNeoConoFascist literati cabal who possess imagination by the bucketful - moral or not - and love 'perpetual war', will surely join in. Nothing inspiringly new or terribly profound here beyond simple self-evident moral truths and obvious empiricism!

And the only point of rehearsing this ad nauseam by the non-fascists is because the manifest Machiavellian deceit is also rehearsed ad nauseam by the 'ubermensch' fascists and their academic exponents who are almost always beyond the pale of any 'earthly' justice system. To take down and refute one sentence of their lie almost takes 10 paragraphs. And they blithely go on synthesizing new ones - as an infinite number of lies are possible on any topic - all it takes is some Straussian imagination. And to bring to book even a single one of these monumental criminals seems to require the 'victors' justice' and an unconditional surrender in an Apocalyptic World War!

Okay, so having done all that hard intellectual work, i.e., dispelled the myths, unraveled the deceptions, and identified all the terror philosophies in ancient texts and their modern exponents, then what? Who will equitably implement the actual excising of these doctrines from among mankind?

We are merely defenseless civilians, we don't possess vast armies of conquest, or even for our self-defense against the fascists, nor 'WMDs', nor other means of initiating détente through any 'MAD' checks! And nor do we have any resources to reach the mainstream audience in the world's most powerful 'populist democracy' who are indeed the accomplice prime-movers of this 'imperial mobilization' by virtue of their zombie-like 'United We Stand' as 'Good Germans' behavior of continually 'looking from the side', as atrocities upon atrocities upon the ordinary 'lesser' human beings continue to mount while the 'populist democracy' stays veritably busy pursuing its "American Dreams"!

So one mostly ends up preaching to the equally impotent choir - with some cheerleading here and there - and then all of us go home after a day's worth of hard loquacious workout on the treadmill of in-efficacious protests as noted in "History is great fun to rehearse - what does it do for us today?" and in this open challenge of courage thrown to Amnesty International, USA.

What has changed since October 7, 2001 when Afghanistan was bombed into pre-history and today 6 years later? Iraq was still bombed in the interim! And this time around, Iran may be bombed with Nuclear Weapons! And us, the so called 'voice of conscience', are still occupied dispelling and unraveling the lies ad infinitum - while Muslims across the world continue to die in large numbers from ZioCon inspired American and British peoples' own horrendous weapons of mass destruction bought and paid for by the American and British tax payers! It's better to not mention the soldiers of economic conscription also needlessly dying at the behest of their masters wrapped in the false flag of patriotism, for they are, after all, bombing and killing another peoples on their own indigenous land and are thus the aggressors. They do have the choice to say no! I'll be content mentioning only their victims, for those are my peoples as human beings first - regardless of their race and religion and nationality.

As per the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, all blame for aggression, and for "all the evil that follows", is laid upon those who initiate the first aggression. Yes even under the euphemistic but well worn mantra of "preemptive self-defense" - an idea deftly exploited by Hitler as he went in search and annexation mission for his 'Lebensraum' that caused the destruction of much of Europe, most of it due to Allied bombing of civilian centers to free the European cities from the clutches of the occupiers! Before you send your precious sons and daughters off to fight the fictional "War on Terror" - do remember these veritable lessons of 'victor's justice' subsequently enshrined into International Law not too long ago!

The author, an ordinary researcher and writer on contemporary geopolitics, a minor justice activist, grew up in Pakistan, studied EECS at MIT, engineered for a while in high-tech Silicon Valley (patents here), and retired early to pursue other responsible interests. His maiden 2003 book was rejected by six publishers and can be read on the web at http://PrisonersoftheCave.org. He may be reached at http://Humanbeingsfirst.org.

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ladybroadoak writes:

Well, knowing what I know, seeing what I see.. I was not in the least surprised to see this item today. This was the WORST day I have had EVER in posting global headlines - I have the rarest of ideas of what is actually transpiring while people debate US elections.

RATCHET UP THE IMPEACHMENT ACTIVITIES, prepare to take off work and get BUSY.

I can't agree more.

UN rejects water as basic human right

Mike De Souza , Canwest News Service
Published: Tuesday, March 25, 2008

OTTAWA - The Harper government can declare victory after a United Nations meeting rejected calls for water to be recognized as a basic human right.

Instead, a special resolution proposed by Germany and Spain at the UN human rights council was stripped of references that recognized access to water as a human right. The countries also chose to scrap the idea of creating an international watchdog to investigate the issue, choosing instead to appoint a new consultant that would make recommendations over the next three years.

Federal officials in Canada said last week that the government wanted to ensure the meeting's outcome reflected the fact that access to water is not formally recognized as a human right in international law. But a social advocacy group said that the position was designed to protect the right to sell water under the North American Free Trade Agreement.

"Clearly (the Harper government is) happy with the status quo: They're not going to be an agent for change, and they're not going to support the right to water," said Maude Barlow, chair of the Council of Canadians. "About every eight seconds, a child somewhere in the world is dying from dirty water, and it's just shocking that our government has taken this position."

The opposition Liberals supported the government's position last week, arguing that the original UN resolution could open the door to bulk water exports to the U.S. because of NAFTA. Liberal water critic Francis Scarpaleggia said he planned to introduce a private member's bill to restrict large transfers of water within Canada to ensure that bulk exports abroad would also be forbidden.

The UN's high commissioner for human rights, Louise Arbour, said last week that the position doesn't reflect Canada's traditional role on the international stage.

"Canada is taking a position that is not the more classic perceived, Canada as the kind of the bridge builder, peacemaker, consensus maker," Arbour told the CBC.

Meantime, Barlow denied that the resolution would require Canada to make bulk water exports to the U.S.

"The requirement in the United States would be for them to conserve first," said Barlow. "There's no requirement as a human right for us to provide water for swimming pools and golf courses and fountains in Las Vegas."

A spokesperson for the Foreign Affairs Department said in an e-mail that there was "no consensus among states regarding the existence, scope or content of such a right."

mdesouza@canwest.com

A must see George Galloway and David Frum debate about Israel/US/Iran nuclear issue.

BBC Broadcast 10/01/08:

A conference of cowboys
By Alon Liel

In the absence of a nightingale, even a raven is a songbird - or is it? The international conference initiated by U.S. President George W. Bush in the twilight of his term in office is definitely no songbird. It is more of a raven than a nightingale. After seven years of destroying the peace process in the Middle East, the U.S. administration is trying to hold a regional farewell party, the aim of which is to perpetuate the neoconservative order America has created here. All the good "cowboys" have been invited to the meeting...

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/896914.html

A remarkable piece - considering its source was head of the American Jewish Congress and fellow at the neocon dominated CFR. The Great Middle East Peace Process Scam, by Henry Siegman, London Review of Books.

...

Just one year after the 1967 war, Moshe Dayan, a former IDF chief of staff who at the time was minister of defence, described his plan for the future as 'the current reality in the territories'. 'The plan,' he said, 'is being implemented in actual fact. What exists today must remain as a permanent arrangement in the West Bank.' Ten years later, at a conference in Tel Aviv, Dayan said: 'The question is not "What is the solution?" but "How do we live without a solution?" Geoffrey Aronson, who has monitored the settlement enterprise from its beginnings, summarises the situation as follows:

Living without a solution, then as now, was understood by Israel as the key to maximising the benefits of conquest while minimising the burdens and dangers of retreat or formal annexation. This commitment to the status quo, however, disguised a programme of expansion that generations of Israeli leaders supported as enabling, through Israeli settlement, the dynamic transformation of the territories and the expansion of effective Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan River.