Ten Years Of Murderous Nonsense

WTC6 was hollowed out. What did this?

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the last happy day of my life.

It was an ignorant sort of happy, but I remember it fondly nonetheless.

I may as well; tomorrow will mark ten years of murderous nonsense. The official story of 9/11 is impossible to believe, yet it is promoted more brazenly than any contemporary truth.

My effort to avoid the anniversary propaganda having failed, I started trying to mark the biggest, stupidest, 9/11-related lie I can find.

There are plenty of candidates for the honor.

WTC5 had multiple holes. What did this?

Some serious 9/11 researchers have been trying to compile a list of all the "holes" in the official story: the distortions, the omissions, the contradictions, the outright lies, and all the other bits and pieces of evidence which suggest that the real story behind 9/11 is not the one we have been told.

These people remind me of the Renaissance mathematicians who spent their whole lives trying to find all the prime numbers.

The mathematicians were working for the royal courts, in many cases, whereas the 9/11 researchers are working against the powers of our day.

But the fields of research are more or less equally infinite.

Being somewhat less ambitious, I started a list of the people who used to be, or used to be considered, investigative journalists, or at least honest dissident writers, but who have shown quite clearly that their primary interest in the truth about 9/11 is in bashing those who seek it.

What burned these cars?

My list would certainly have been finite, but I lacked the discipline required to keep adding to it.

At last I settled on a smaller task: finding the undisputed facts in the official story.

My list now contains the date, as well as the names and locations of some of the buildings which were damaged or destroyed on that day.

I do not see any possibility of adding to this list in the future.

And that's the state of play.

Jerome Hauer

What drilled huge holes in WTC5 and WTC6?

What burned hundreds of cars, some more than half a mile away from the WTC?

Why are such questions not allowed even at so-called '9/11 Truth' sites?

I could write at length about such matters, and if I were healthy I would probably do so. But I can't.

Instead I can only point out that the people who disseminated the official story of 9/11, the people who have fabricated new "research" to support it, and the people who mount vicious attacks on those of us who don't buy their murderous nonsense, are all -- by their own choice -- mortal enemies of everything that is true and just and righteous, and therefore of all humanity.

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Wikileaks: US Ambdassador Called Pakistani Military Instructors "Naive" And "Biased"

Anne Patterson, former US Ambassador to Pakistan

The following is old news at best, possibly fictional, and from sources of dubious, if any, integrity. But it is still of some interest to a cold blogger who begs your forebearance as we explore...  

The Pakistani daily Dawn says that according to Wikileaks, in 2008, Anne Patterson, who was then US Ambassador to Pakistan, wrote a memo in which she described instructors at Pakistan's National Defence University (NDU) as "naive" about and "biased" against the USA.

Dawn says Ambassador Patterson attributed this "bias" to the "distance" that had crept in between Pakistani and US military officers following "the discontinuation of the IMET (International Military Education and Training) programmes" during the years when Pakistan was under sanctions because of having developed nuclear weapons.

Dawn quotes the memo which quotes a US army officer, Col. Michael Schleicher, who attended a course at NDU, and who, according to the cable, told Ambassador Patterson:

"One guest lecturer – who is a Pakistani one-star general – claimed the US National Security Agency actively trains correspondents for media organisations. Others thought the CIA was in charge of US media (and that MI-5 was in charge of the BBC)."

And not only that, but:

Students in the junior course ... shared "many of the biases prevalent in the Muslim world, including a belief the US invaded Iraq for its oil and that 9/11 was a staged 'Jewish conspiracy,'"

You can see the bias right away, can't you? Everybody who has done honest research has found that the staged conspiracy of 9/11 was not entirely "Jewish." It contained "Christian" elements as well. And so, of course, does the continuing torrent of nonsense about it.

The problem, according to Dawn, according to Wikileaks, according to Ambassador Patterson, was that the Pakistani military had been been insufficiently propagandized, although she would never think to express herself in such terms. But clearly this is her understanding, and clearly this is why she wrote:

"We need, in particular, to target the 'lost generation' of Pakistan military who missed IMET opportunities..."

The word 'target' is particularly apt in this context.

Ambassador Patterson also wrote, according to Wikileaks:

"Given the bias of the instructors, we also believe it would be beneficial to initiate an exchange program for instructors..."

An exchange program would double the propaganda benefit, of course, because the Pakistani instructors would be whisked off to be indoctrinated in the US, leaving their students to be indoctrinated by visiting Americans.

It goes without saying that if and when all this indoctrination came to pass, the Pakistani military would be even more naive with respect to the United States, and even more biased -- but for rather than against, which after all is the only thing that matters to the masters of the American Empire.

And then, diplomatic tensions would be eased, because future ambassadors would write cables in which Pakistani military officers were all well-informed about American actions and motives, and loyal and keen supporters of the American Imperial Project as well.

The properly trained Pakistanis would have been instructed never to admit that the NSA would be negligent if it failed to actively train correspondents for media organisations; that the CIA would be aghast if it lost charge of the US media; that the Bush-Cheney administration would have lost the support of its "base" had it failed to invade Iraq for its oil; and that MI5 would go ballistic if the BBC ever admitted the obvious truths about these things, or explained to its viewers exactly why Britain came along for the ride.

And then, if the IMET programmes could continue for long enough, eventually nobody in the Pakistani military would ever again be "naive" or "biased" enough to give voice to any of this, or any of the other truths about America which are, shall we say, politically inconvenient to acknowledge.

This is what we would call "winning hearts and minds." And it's a shame that the US neglected to keep the propaganda machine running on the Pakistani military during the sanctions, because had it done so, hoaxes such as the big one nine and a half years ago, and the almost-as-big one earlier this month, would have been a good deal easier to sell.

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Double Bogus When Lit: Obama Campaign Begins, Reality Obliterated

You may have noticed that last week Barack Obama released a document which was purported to be his birth certificate. The document wasn't exactly credible, but then again it didn't need to be. It only needed to exist.

It wasn't supposed to be carefully examined; it was only supposed to be used for political purposes, in much the same way as some other very obvious lies were not supposed to be examined, and have been and continue to be used.

Wherever you look, you see brainless authoritarians spouting ignorant arrogance, from "Anyone who questions Obama's citizenship is a racist" to "This settles the question once and for all, and anyone who still questions Obama's citizenship ought to be ashamed of himself."

Personally, I think anyone striving for the most powerful position in any government ought to be able to provide a full documentary trail of his life, not just a birth certificate, but high school and college transcripts and much more. If a candidate -- let alone a president -- can't do that, it seems suspicious to me, regardless of whether he be black or white, lavender or chartreuse. And if something comes up in national politics that looks suspicious, I think people ought to be able to say so without being called racist.

You may also have noticed Barack Obama several days later, telling a story about the death of Osama bin Laden. That story wasn't credible either, but once again, it didn't need to be.

The official story of the 9/11 attacks, in which Osama bin Laden supposedly played a central role and inside help did not, is a multi-threaded one. And not one single thread of that story is even partially credible. But it doesn't matter anymore, because reality has been obliterated.

It doesn't matter where in the 9/11 morass we turn -- whether we concentrate on the planes, the buildings, the hijackers, the phone calls, the response of the military, the response of the president, the response of the vice-president, the official investigations, the documents produced by those investigations, or the arguments of the people who support the government's story. In any of these cases -- in all of these cases -- we are looking at transparently obvious, officially sanctioned, fiction.

It doesn't matter that the fiction is transparently obvious, because the echo chamber repeats it endlessly until it becomes part of the national landscape. That's what happens to officially sanctioned stories, true or otherwise.

The point is: because the fiction is officially sanctioned, it will not go away. Therefore, to the politicians, it might as well be used. The Obama campaign to get re-elected in 2012 has begun.

Can we expect eighteen more months of similar psy-ops? A year and a half of even more obviously politically slanted manure?

Oh yes. We can expect at least that. You don't suppose the timing of all this is a coincidence, do you?

With major distractional nonsense involving both birth and death coming so close together, it seems as though all we're missing is something about marriage. Maybe there's a great big distracting wedding of some kind in the offing. Keep your eyes open, and so will I.

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Can We Still Say 9/11 Was A SCAD?

Was 9/11 a SCAD?

Gloria Tatum of Atlanta Progressive News: For Activists, Architects, 9/11 Questions Linger Ten Years Later

Can we still say that?

Kenny's Sideshow: ‘Fantastical’ 9/11

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Happy Patriot Day? Not Quite: The Saddest 9/11 Anniversary Of All

Here we are again, another September 11th. For me it's more painful than any previous anniversary of the "terrorist attacks" of 2001.

I've been trying to write a major essay about it, but it's not coming together. Oh well. Instead I will confine my comments to a few words and give you an opportunity to say what you wish, if you wish...

I think this is the most painful 9/11 since 2001 because we now know, more certainly than ever before, that the official story of what happened that day, and how it happened, is false in almost EVERY DETAIL.

We also now have -- for the first 9/11 anniversary since the "attacks", a Democratic president and a Democratic congress.

And YET we STILL don't have a SINGLE advocate for real 9/11 truth ANYWHERE near the corridors of power.

There used to be one, until just a few days ago, but he got run out for (among other things) having signed, five years ago, a letter requesting an impartial investigation of the crimes of 9/11 and their coverup. Apparently Obama's staff made a hasty decision and approved a man with a touch of truth in his past.

Guided by his Chief of Staff, a foul-mouthed, quick-tempered Zionist who stands against both electoral integrity and 9/11 truth, Obama has been trying not to allow such "mistakes". But occasionally they do happen, and as we have seen so clearly, they need to be corrected as soon as they are detected.

If we had a real opposition, a viable political process, open discourse, access to information, rule of law, a government whose authority derived from the consent of the governed: if we had any these things that supposedly make America great ...

If we had a major newspaper, a television network, a wire service, a national newsmagazine -- any major media source at all, that was willing to do an investigation, or even report on the investigative work of others, or even to do a series on the obvious and brazen way in which Bush and many others evaded their responsibility to defend the country and their concommitant responsibility to investigate thoroughly and openly the events of the day: if we had any or all of these things ...

The obvious (though horrible) truths about 9/11 would be much more common knowledge than they are already.

The perpetrators and their enablers would no longer be able to hide behind their obvious lies.

And the new administration, rather than running one token "Truther" out of town on a rail, would be FULL of people demanding Truth and Justice.

But it isn't. Far from it. We are as far from that as you could possibly imagine, and still going in the opposite direction.

I find this sadder than almost anything else that has happened in the past seven years and 364 days.

But then again, it's not a sad day for everybody.

It's a day of celebration, a day of victory, for some people, such as ... let's just say ... Jerome Hauer:

One segment of [this frequently unavailable] video [starting at 2:30] documents the following exchange, from the morning of September 11, 2001:

Dan Rather: Based on what you know, and I recognize we’re dealing with so few facts, is it possible that just a plane crash could have collapsed these buildings, or would it have required the, sort of, prior positioning of other explosives in the, uh, in the buildings? I mean, what do you think?

Jerome Hauer: No, I, uh, my sense is just the velocity of the plane and the fact that you have a plane filled with fuel hitting that building, uh, that burned, uh, the velocity of that plane, uh, certainly, uh, uh, had an impact on the structure itself, and then the fact that it burned and you had that intense heat, uh, probably weakened the structure as well, uh, and I think it, uh, was, uh, simply the, uh, the planes hitting the buildings, and, and causing the collapse.

Jerome Hauer is certainly a remarkable guest, isn't he? On the very morning of the event, he had the whole thing figured out.

The collapse was simply due to the planes hitting the buildings, just the velocity of the plane and of course the fact that it was filled with fuel, and the fact that it burned and of course you had that intense heat which must have weakened the structure ... It's incredible, of course. It's also half of the official story!

But let's get back to the attack itself. Who did it? Who could have done it? If you were watching CBS that morning, you would have heard this:

Dan Rather: What perspective can you give us? I mean, there have been these repeated reports that, well, yes, Osama Bin Laden, but some think he’s been over-emphasized as, as responsible for these kinds of events. I know many intelligence, uh, people at very high levels who say, listen, you can’t have these kinds of attacks without having some state, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, somebody involved. Put that into perspective for us.

Jerome Hauer: Yeah, well I’m not sure I agree that, umm, this is necessarily state-sponsored. Umm, it, as I mentioned earlier, certainly has, umm, the, uh, fingerprints of somebody like Bin Laden.

And that, of course, is the other half of the official story.

How did Dan Rather happen to have a guest with him on the morning of 9/11 who knew the entire official story before it became public knowledge?

[...]

The twin disintegrations of the twin towers certainly looked like explosives-driven demolitions to many reporters who covered them live -- but Jerome Hauer assured Dan Rather and his viewers that it was just caused by the intense heat that weakened the structure!

The attack of 9/11 was of such scope and ferocity that it was virtually unimaginable -- except to the people who planned it -- just a day before it happened. But when it did happen, Jerome Hauer was able to contradict the intelligence experts and claim it bore the fingerprints of somebody like Bin Laden!

Jerome Hauer knew the entire official story before it became public knowledge.

Jerome Hauer helped the official story become public knowledge!

Is that how the deal goes down? Do Jerome Hauer and his buddies win, and do we all lose?

That's how it looks to me, but if you have a different opinion you are certainly welcome to share it.

As a matter of fact, you are welcome to share your opinion even if you agree with me!

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Moonwalking To Oblivion Without A Billionaire Sponsor: What's A Blogger To Do?

The early death of Michael Jackson has triggered some powerful memories, very few of which have anything to do with Jackson or his sudden demise. Nonetheless, let me take you back 25 years...

In the summer of 1984, Michael Jackson was on his "Victory Tour", moonwalking his way through cuts from "Thriller" in his first public performances after he "set his hair on fire for Pepsi" in late January of that year.

I had spent the early months of '84 trying to piece together the remnants of a jazzy-punky rock band which had finally gelled after months of preparation, played a fantastic set on New Year's Eve, and then imploded -- in my own living room, on the same weekend when Michael's hair was burning.

In our case, the fragments which were not mortally wounded in the implosion eventually reunited, wrote some new material, and played in public together again just a few times before a second implosion. And one of those performances fell on a hot and humid Saturday night almost exactly 25 years ago, a night when Michael Jackson was in town.

Were we crazy to play opposite such a huge concert? Not at all. None of the people who went to see Michael Jackson could be bothered with us, and none of the people who came to see us could be bothered with moonwalking or "Thriller" or any of the other very popular, totally inane artefacts of the little dude who somehow became "The King of Pop".

Forgive me if a bit of disrespect is showing. I will not for a moment deny that Michael Jackson was a fantastic singer, especially as a youngster, or that we would have been very lucky to have such a talented vocalist in our band.

On the other hand, I remain convinced that we made a good move by scheduling a gig when his fans were elsewhere. Our music was direct and honest, often too raw but never too polished, not commercially marketed or even amenable to such treatment. Michael could not have said this of his material, in 1984 or at any stage of his long and very successful career.

We once wrote a song that (among other things) made fun of him. But he never mentioned us. So there's another point of asymmetry.

On the Monday morning after our simultaneous concerts, while I was returning the PA gear we'd rented from a local music store, I heard this on the radio: Scalpers had been getting more for a pair of tickets to see Michael Jackson than it cost us to stage our entire show.

He drew about a hundred thousand fans. We might have drawn a hundred. And we didn't even play well that night. I remember being disappointed about that.

But on the other hand, the people who came to see us that night, the people who came to hear us, the people who came with their eyes and ears open ... they got something they couldn't have found on the Victory Tour, or anywhere else, for that matter. Some of them still talk about that show -- in complimentary terms! It wouldn't have mattered whether we played well or not. What we were doing -- what we were trying to do -- appealed to a few people, maybe one in a thousand, maybe less. But it touched them in a much deeper way than the "King of Pop" -- or anything "pop" -- could have done.

There's a lesson in all this, or a moral to the story, and I'm still not sure what it is, but I wouldn't be surprised if it helps to explain why my blog readership never seems to grow, no matter how much or how well I write; neither does it seem to shrink, no matter how rarely I post and no matter what I choose to write about.

What you get here is direct and honest, often too raw but never too polished, not commercially marketed or even amenable to such treatment. It's no wonder so few people are interested. But you can't get it -- or anything similar -- anywhere else.

Maybe it's no big deal, but I got thinking of all this when I heard of Jackson's death, and it all came back to me again when I read this piece from Scholars and Rogues, and even more especially when I considered an earlier, related piece there which deals with a pointed political question: Why don't progressive billionaires fund progressive bloggers (in much the same way that conservative billionaires fund conservative bloggers)?

I would argue that such funding is neither to be expected nor to be welcomed. I would argue that there's no such thing as a progressive billionaire, although there are a few billionaires who might pretend to be leaders and/or funders of a "progressive" opposition.

The earlier S&R post -- "Devil, meet Deep Blue Sea: how much should progressives spend reaching out to progressives?" -- quotes Jane Hamsher of FiredogLake, Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos, and John Aravosis of AmericaBlog, all of whom are upset that major Democratic organizations are asking for (and receiving) their support, but aren't supporting them in any tangible way, not even by advertising on their sites.

It may be pointed out that those who obtain support for free have no incentive to pay for it.

Much more importantly, in my view, the sites in question share a common approach to all the most important issues: they bury them if they can't ignore them altogether. This tendency is unfortunately prevalent at all high-traffic "progressive" websites, including the one where I used to volunteer my services.

Markos Moulitsas, the founder and chief director of censorship at DailyKos, was trained by the CIA and makes no bones about the fact that posters who entertain conspiracy theories regarding 9/11 are not welcome at his site.

The other sites mentioned above are a bit less pointed and a touch more subtle but they are nevertheless written by and for people who are not much interested in certain very inconvenient facts: facts about 9/11 in particular; facts about bogus terrorism in general; facts about how the entire "global war on terror" (or whatever Obama wants us to call it this week) is based on a fictional view of history and our role in it; facts about how the Democrats have been complicit in selling both the fictional history and the endless, limitless war it entails.

Would I want to see these sites better funded? Would I want to see them drawing even larger audiences? Would I want their reporting even more constrained by vague doubts about what the billionaire sponsor might think? Dare I even hint of the possibility of explicit instructions from such a sponsor? Or, conversely, can anyone imagine a billionaire-sponsored website without an explicit list of instructions?

An alliance between faux-progressive billionaires and faux-progressive bloggers would be a powerful way to destroy any hope of a meaningful political opposition arising in 21st-century America. But then again, there's no need to destroy things that don't exist.

And that's why it won't happen. There's no need for it. And it wouldn't matter anyway, because 99% of all Americans surveyed have already said ... that given the choice ... they'd prefer moonwalking!

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Home Improvement, Post-9/11; Part II: Jackhammers? Who Needs 'Em?

My wife and I had a problem with the "steps" outside our "back door", if you don't mind what you say.

We call it the "back door", but it's at the side of the house, near the back corner. And we called them "steps" but they were actually concrete slabs, stacked and broken.

They were never properly grounded; they had shifted over the years and they were tilted in, toward the house. So water collected there, and the steps were always wet and moldy, except when they were icy, and we'd been hoping they would fix themselves, but that didn't happen, so we decided to do something about them.

At first we thought if we poured a cement cap over them and slanted it away from the house, that would do the trick, but then we had a home building specialist come and look at them and he could see that they were still moving. He told us pouring more concrete over the problem would only make it worse. And it was hard to argue with that.

But I did argue when he said the best thing we could do would be to rent a dumpster, score the concrete with a diamond-tipped saw, bust it up with a jackhammer, and haul it to the dumpster one piece at a time in a wheelbarrow.

"You could do it in a weekend," he said, "but you'd be sore by the time you were done!"

I couldn't believe it! That is so September 10th thinking! It was as if he had never seen the World Trade Center collapse.

I said, "Why don't we just crash an airplane into them?"

He laughed and said "That would be dangerous. What about the neighbors?"

I said, "Look, it's not as if we're trying to bring down a skyscraper. It's probably not even a yard of concrete. We could do it with a little remote-controlled toy. Fill it with kerosene, crash it into the steps. The concrete disintegrates, the wind blows it away. We don't have to carry anything anywhere."

He said, "No, no. You can't do it with fire alone, or with fire and a little bump. You need high-speed impact and a fire. And you don't have a good clear approach here, unless you fly through your neighbor's house. So that's really not a good idea."

I thought I was out of options but then I had a brainstorm. "Let's use the Building 7 method," I said. "We can pulverize the concrete by burning office supplies near it."

So that's what we did. But it took a few tries.

At first, we drilled little holes in the steps, and filled them with pens, pencils and sticky notes, plus some upholstery that I pulled out of an old chair. We lit it all on fire, but nothing happened.

"What have we done wrong?" I wondered, but just for a second. Then I had another brainstorm. "We forgot the diesel fuel!"

We went to a truck stop and bought a container of diesel fuel, sprayed it all over the steps, lit them again ... and again nothing! The fuel burned off, but the steps were still there.

"What else have we forgotten?" It took me a couple of minutes to figure it out.

Then we went to the local mosque, brought a couple of Muslims back with us, set it all up again and got them to light it. It burned a little better, but nothing spectacular, and they watched for a while and left, saying, "It's not happening."

For a while it looked like they were right. We couldn't put the fire out, but it didn't get any bigger, and we figured nothing special was going to happen.

But then a remote studio truck arrived from the BBC, and they did a live broadcast in which a reporter stood in front of our burning steps and announced that they had collapsed!

About ten minutes later the police came along and evacuated the neighborhood, and we all heard what sounded like strings of firecrackers going off, except they were a lot louder than firecrackers. Then we saw a big plume of dust, and it blew away in the wind, and when the police let us come back home, our steps were completely gone!

Unfortunately, most of our neighbors are now dead or dying of lung disease, and we can't use our basement anymore because it contains pools of molten steel. Also, the cops called the feds, who destroyed the mosque and apparently killed a large number of innocent people. But nothing about any of this ever made the news, so who cares?

All in all it worked out pretty well. We didn't have to rent a dumpster, we didn't have to carry anything, and we are now rebuilding our steps. Plus, the mosque is gone.

You don't believe me, do you?

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First Principles ... or Why I Cannot Support Barack Obama

Let us begin with the fact that George Bush and Dick Cheney were never legitimately elected to the Oval Office: not in 2000, and not in 2004.

In the American system, the authority of our government is based on the consent of the governed. This consent was not earned in either "election".

Therefore, the Bush-Cheney administrations of 2001-2009 were illegitimate, and the policies implemented by these illegitimate administrations are themselves illegitimate. Period.

If somebody steals your credit card and you report the theft, you are not responsible for purchases made on that card after it was stolen. We reported the theft in 2000; we screamed about the theft in 2004; but it did us no good at all.

The most destructive "terrorist attack" that ever took place on American soil occurred during the first Bush-Cheney administration, and it was never legitimately investigated. The story that was told to explain it is not only false; it's impossible.

Therefore the policies implemented as "reactions" to the "terrorist attack of September 11, 2001" would be illegitimate even if they had been enacted by a legitimately elected government. But they weren't.

Furthermore, many of these same policies contravene both national and international law, and for this reason they would be illegal, and indefensible, even if they were enacted by a legitimately elected government in response to a legitimate threat.

But they were not: all these illegal, immoral, and deeply detrimental policies were enacted by an illegitimate government in "response" to a bogus event.

If we had legitimate opposition politics in this country, it would would begin by calling these policies what they are.

And if we had a legitimate successor government, it would begin by repealing every single one of them, holding accountable those responsible for their implementation, and making amends insofar as possible to those who have suffered the most.

In other words, if a legitimate opposition government had taken power in January, American use of torture against "terror suspects" would be history. All the secret prisons would now be closed. There would be no more extraordinary renditions, and no more military tribunals.

Warrantless surveillance would have been stopped. All American troops would have been removed from both Iraq and Afghanistan, including the "defense" and "security" contractors and clandestine special forces. Rather than propping up puppet governments and blackmailing them at the same time, we would now be financing -- but others would be building -- new infrastructure in both countries. We would also be paying reparations on a scale that would make the bank bailouts look like a drop in the ocean.

And the people most responsible for the abomination that America has become would be in prison by now, if they were allowed to remain alive.

But none of this has happened, and none of it is about to happen, soon or ever.

Instead we have a president who has declared that his first priority is the defense of Israel, and a vice president who has declared that during his 36 years in the Senate, no one has been a better friend to Israel than he has.

Why can't we have a president whose first priority is the defense of our own country?

Why can't we have a vice president who is prouder of having befriended his own nation than of having befriended a foreign one?

And why can't we find a single columnist in a single national publication asking questions like these? Because the system is broken.

We know that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. We know that the story about the Iraqi WMDs was chosen for "bureaucratic reasons" -- in other words not because it was true but because it was the story we were most likely to believe. We didn't believe it, on the whole. But the war went ahead anyway.

Far more people believed the 9/11 story about Muslim hijackers and Osama bin Laden and skyscrapers "collapsing" due to "impact and fire", but some of us knew it was false on the day, and it has turned out that we were absolutely correct.

And yet the transparently false story about 9/11 has been used to "justify" all manner of abuses, from illegal surveillance to homeland "security", to an endless limitless war against the rest of the world. No matter how obviously false that story is, no matter how many people have learned since then that the story is false, all this has gone ahead anyway.

I cannot support any of it. I cannot support any politician who supports any of it, let alone a president who continues the worst of it. And I cannot support any journalist who supports that president, or who tells those murderous lies.

In my opinion, the people who support Obama now are at least as bad as -- if not much worse than -- the people who supported Bush when he was doing the things that Obama is now continuing, and expanding. It pains me to think of how much time and energy I spent trying to help some of them.

Even George Bush and Dick Cheney never managed to blackmail the Pakistani army into attacking its own people. And the Obama misery is just beginning.

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Thoughts On The War Between The USA And Pakistan

Scrub towers in the distance,
Riders cross the blasted moor
Against the horizon.
Fickle promises of treaty,
Fatal harbingers of war;
Futile orizons…
-- Van Der Graaf Generator: "Arrow"

Signs and omens, suddenly everywhere, tell us war between the USA and Pakistan is imminent.

Chris Floyd has been doing his usual fine job in covering the recent developments and reading the tea leaves. Particularly disappointing is the flow of war propaganda from McClatchy, in the person of Jonathan Landay. McClatchy and Landay were among the few voices of skeptical reason on the national media scene during Bush's pre-Iraq propaganda campaign. But apparently they are now on board with Obama's pre-Pakistan propaganda campaign. Success at last! This must be the change we were hoping for, just as Obama's marketers promised!

As you might expect if you've been paying attention for any of the previous six years, or six decades, all the reasons given for war by US politicians and media types are quite false, and transparently so -- yet no one in the national media can tackle any of them head-on. It's a remarkably dangerous situation, of course: the world's most heavily armed nation is still under a media blackout against certain aspects of reality, just as if Obama's election and inauguration had never happened. Fancy that!

The signs are misleading. War between the US and Pakistan is not imminent. It's ongoing. So far the US has made more than 60 airstrikes against Pakistan using unmanned aircraft, and one commando raid using ground troops and attack helicopters. These attacks have killed more than 700 people, and even the most "optimistic" government reports count only 14 al Qaeda leaders among the dead.

It goes without saying that if any foreign country flew just one bombing mission against the USA, or mounted a single commando raid, it would be regarded as an act of war and treated accordingly. Of course this sort of analysis, putting the shoe on the other foot as it were, is missing from our national political discourse, because in mainstream American political analysis, there is no other shoe; there is no other foot; and anyone who suggests otherwise is promptly banished.

In any case, "imminent" is the wrong word. The war is not imminent. What's imminent is a grave escalation. And the escalation, in my view, is not only imminent but inevitable.

A major, horrific war between the USA and Pakistan is, as I understand it, not only inevitable now; it has been inevitable for many years. I'm quite certain about this. The only question remaining in my mind is: How many is "many"?

If you're with me so far, you may be wondering: How do I know the reasons given for the war are false? And if the reasons are all false, why is the war imminent, much less inevitable? And why has this war been inevitable for many years?

If you'll stay with me for a few more minutes, I'll try to explain. But it's not easy, because we have to untangle a pack of interwoven lies.

Tell me lies
Tell me sweet little lies
-- Fleetwood Mac: "Little Lies"

Depending on which warmongers you listen to, you may be hearing that America must wage war against Pakistan in order to prevent the Taliban from conquering (or at least destabilizing) Pakistan and seizing the country's arsenal of nuclear weapons, and/or to ensure that terrorists can never attack the United States as they did on September 11, 2001, and/or to eliminate the "safe havens" from which "insurgents" are attacking American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, and/or because the Pakistani army hasn't been able to defeat the scourge of terrorism all by itself.

But none of this makes any sense. Pakistan's nuclear weapons are under American control, as they have been since September of 2001. The "loose nukes" scenario, which the war against Pakistan is supposedly designed to prevent, is not only a thoroughly fictional argument, but a thoroughly cynical one as well.

If Pakistan's nukes were not under American control, the Americans wouldn't dream of attacking Pakistan. (If you've been paying attention for any of the previous six years, or six decades, you may recall that the US only attacks countries which have no chance to defend themselves, or to retaliate.)

Furthermore, an all-out attack on Pakistan by the US is more likely to cause fragmentation and destabilization in Pakistan than to bring peace and democracy. (Think of Iraq; think of Afghanistan.) So the idea that an American intervention is necessary to prevent a horrific outcome is equally false, and equally cynical. In fact, a horrific outcome -- fragmentation and destabilization -- is much preferred by the American warmongers, and that's why they're so intent on waging this war. It's really quite simple, once you cut through all the propaganda.

Meanwhile, the only way to ensure that terrorists cannot attack us as they did on 9/11 would be to run a complete and open investigation of the attacks of that day, and who made them possible, and who benefited from them ... and to hold the guilty parties accountable. This has manifestly not been done, and clearly, had it been done, we would be in a much different position today. Significantly, president Obama has no intention of allowing an independent investigation into the so-called "terrorist" attacks, so the official fiction remains in place now and is poised to remain in place forever.

The myths of 9/11, monstrous and murderous though they may be, carve out a space in which all manner of other monstrous and murderous fictions can thrive. And these other lies create an environment in which endless war is inevitable. So it's not easy to answer questions such as: How long has this war been in the cards? Has it in fact been inevitable for "many years"? And what do we mean by "many"? But we do need to try.

"Many" is a word
That only leaves you guessin'
Guessin' 'bout a thing
You really ought to know
-- Led Zeppelin: "Over The Hills And Far Away"

If you take a short-term view, you might say President General Pervez Musharraf signed Pakistan's death warrant in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

It was all quite simple. George Bush declared the attacks of 9/11, which he and his administration had done so much to enable, "an act of war". Then he blamed it on "terrorists of global reach" and he asked the world's leaders, "Are you with us, or are you with the terrorists?"

Pervez Musharraf, no dummy in situations of this type, said "We're with you!"

Choosing any other option, of course, would have ensured Pakistan's immediate destruction.

But by choosing as he did, Musharraf allied himself with a lie, and made Pakistan complicit in the war crimes and crimes against humanity that were about to unfold in Afghanistan.

The American and NATO invasion and occupation of Afghanistan has sparked the inevitable reaction, from people we know as "terrorists" and "insurgents". Our terminology implies, falsely, that the US and NATO troops and the puppet government they installed and support are there legitimately. But this is not true, or even close to the truth.

In fact, the resistance to American subjugation, no matter what we call it, correctly sees Pakistan both as America's number one ally in an effort to destroy Afghanistan, and as America's primary regional source of logistical and other support. So counter-attacking in Pakistan makes at least some strategic and tactical sense, from the Afghan point of view. Most Americans know little or nothing about any of this. So we guess about the things we really ought to know.

Suppose -- here's that other shoe again -- Russia bombed, invaded and occupied the US, in a campaign based in and supplied from Mexico. Would an American resistance spring up? Would the resistance attack Russian installations in Mexico? Would it also attack Mexican institutions that supported the Russians? One could only hope so.

The shoe's on the other foot now
Bet you're wondering how.
And it's just something you're going through...
You'd better keep your eyes open
-- Graham Parker : "Something You're Going Through"

If only the truth were that simple. The reality is much worse than the hypothetical. Since a semi-plausible rationale exists for Afghan attacks against Pakistan, the Americans in Afghanistan, always eager to foment a little terrorism which then requires a reaction, have been using Afghan proxies to attack Pakistan, according to reports from Asia which you will never read in any American newspaper.

It's no coincidence that spectacular bombings and gory suicide attacks keep happening in Pakistan whenever it seems the government is approaching a condition of peaceful co-existence with the so-called militants who live in the mountains near the border with Afghanistan. Or is it?

It's no coincidence that American forces were moving freely, un-hampered by the usual security precautions, in Islamabad's Marriott Hotel just before the hotel was the site of a spectacular bombing attack. Or is it?

It's no coincidence that Baithulla Mehsud, Pakistan's public enemy number one, who has recently been blamed for virtually everything, and who has made outrageous public threats against the American homeland, eludes the Pakistan security forces whenever they get close to him, while communicating using encryption they cannot crack. Or is it?

It doesn't take a genius to connect these dots. Or does it?

And I have met my destiny
In quite a similar way
The history book on the shelf
Is always repeating itself
-- ABBA: "Waterloo"

A longer-term view of Pakistan's current problem would show that its roots were planted almost exactly 30 years ago. In the mid-70s, Afghanistan had shaken off its long-standing feudal monarchy and was beginning to move in progressive directions. A democratic election had empowered a legitimate, representative government, for the first time in Afghanistan's history, and a new social and economic awakening seemed imminent.

Unfortunately for the people of Afghanistan, these developments provided an opportunity certain Americans had been waiting for. They called their plan "Operation Cyclone" and they implemented it in secret. It involved recruiting the baddest bad-guys they could find in the Muslim world, and bringing them to the US for training in terrorist techniques such as murder and sabotage. Once trained, they were sent to Pakistan, were infiltrated into Afghanistan, and began to wreak havoc.

The new government of Afghanistan -- still trying to figure out how to make social democracy work in an Islamic context -- was not at all prepared to deal with terrorists, and asked the Soviet Union for help with security. The Soviets wanted no part of Afghanistan's problem, but neither could they sit back and watch while terrorists destabilized a neighboring country. And the Afghans kept begging for help.

In December of 1979, six months after "Operation Cyclone" went into effect, the Soviets sent troops to assist the Afghan security services -- just what the Americans had hoped for. Immediately, propaganda organs around the world began to trumpet the "fact" that the Soviets had "invaded" Afghanistan. The terrorists who had been sent to attack Afghanistan now turned their attentions to the Soviet troops, and suddenly what had been an internal security problem became the trigger for a major war.

The war raged for almost a decade, killed more than a million people, and destroyed what little infrastructure there was to destroy in Afghanistan; it also did untold damage to the already-crumbling Soviet Union. This was all to the good, according to American policy-makers.

The USSR was at the time America's most powerful "competitor" in the "grand game" of global domination; its fall was a blessing to those American leaders who had been yearning to become the world's only superpower.

And as for Afghanistan, the experiment with social democracy there could not be allowed to stand, much less succeed, for the same reason that similar experiments cannot be allowed to stand anywhere else in the world that American military power can reach: to preserve the myth that capitalism -- unbridled dog-eat-dog militarized capitalism -- is the only path that can possibly lead to prosperity.

There were other factors involved, to be sure. We shouldn't say anything about Afghan poppies and CIA heroin trafficking. We shouldn't say anything about natural resources or pipeline routes either. To do so would put us off the map -- well beyond the limits imposed on "polite" political analysis and far too close to the reality behind the American occupation of Afghanistan today.

Thirty years ago the Soviet Union was the target, Afghanistan was an expendable battlefield, and Pakistan provided the logistical base. Now the situation is slightly different: China is the target, Afghanistan is the logistical base, and as for Pakistan ...

In terms of the "grand chessboard", one might be tempted to say that turnabout is fair play for Pakistan. Those who do the bully's dirty-work always end up as victims themselves. And what's been happening to Pakistan lately, and what's about to happen to Pakistan in the near-term Obama-driven future, could be seen as blowback: retribution for the crimes Pakistan has committed, in complicity with the Americans, against Afghanistan.

But the "grand game" is simply an abstraction, one that "justifies" mass murder on a horrific scale in defense of dimly perceived "national interests". In reality, we're talking about hundreds of millions of people whose lives are about to be destroyed, or in the process of being destroyed, as the "players" continue to see strategic advantage in the destruction and destabilization of foreign countries.

And -- for the most part, and as always -- the victims, and the soon-to-be victims, have done nothing wrong. They've been trying to live their lives and provide for their families under a repressive government which came to power with American support, and which, for most of the past several decades, has been doing America's bidding. Is it a coincidence that the people of Iraq can say the very same thing?

"Operation Cyclone", which filled Afghanistan with terrorists and planted the roots that grew into both the Taliban and al Qaeda, was started during the presidency of Jimmy Carter. The Carter administration's marketing slogan -- "Human Rights" -- gave it perfect cover for a clandestine program of fomenting terrorism in one country in order to destabilize another. And the chief architect behind the plan, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was Carter's National Security Advisor, is now one of Barack Obama's inner circle. That's no coincidence, either.

And this, ultimately, is what makes a major escalation of the war between the US and Pakistan inevitable. The Obama administration embodies none of the change we were hoping for. We are still governed by Bush/Clinton retreads, neo-con chicken hawks, friends and agents of Israel, and Wall Street bankers. None of these people see anything wrong with the American imperial project. The destruction of Pakistan is, and always has been, essential to that project. And the movers and shakers don't care how much pain and suffering they cause.

To prevent a disastrous war between the USA and Pakistan, it would be necessary to dismantle the American imperial system, and this -- as we keep seeing over and over and over -- is not about to happen.

We are all on the run
On our knees
The sundial draws a line upon eternity
Across every number.
-- Van Der Graaf Generator: "Arrow"

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From The Mouths Of Terrorists: The Poisonous Truth

Two weeks ago we were talking about the most recent terror propaganda from friends of Mossad and the CIA, an "al Qaeda video" in which al Qaeda's purported number two man, Ayman al-Zawahri, spoke some uncomfortable truths about our transformative new President-elect, Barack Obama.

Zawahri [whose name often appears as Zawahiri in our bizarre western media], referred to Obama as a "house slave". It was a historical reference to pre-Civil War days when white Americans in the land of the free could legally own black Americans; those who worked in the mansions were typically more docile, and more inclined to do the bidding of their owners, than those who worked in the fields.

The video came to us via Rita Katz and the SITE Intelligence Group, which was called the SITE Institute until Katz' only partner left her holding the phony intelligence bag. It was the latest in a long line of questionable videos, some of which Katz has obtained before they appeared on the Islamist websites which SITE allegedly monitors.

Zawahri's comments about Obama were portrayed as racial insults, whereas the criticisms themselves were political in nature. Zawahri wasn't putting Obama down for being black; he was talking about Obama's agenda, his loyalties, his plans for our future -- all of which Obama has spelled out very clearly. Unfortunately, most of Obama's supporters haven't been listening very closely; otherwise Zawahri's comments would have been seen as insightful rather than insulting.

The Zawahri video was apparently intended to mark territory: now anyone who points out the various ways in which Barack Obama is doing the bidding of his owners can be branded a terrorist sympathizer, if not an outright terrorist.

Furthermore, the ties that bind Katz and SITE to the Bush administration, Israeli intelligence and the American media are becoming increasingly clear. But still -- even with all this in full view -- the propaganda is apparently having the desired effect.

Thus, shortly after the video was released, CNN reported: U.S. Muslim leaders denounce al Qaeda's slur toward Obama

Spiritual leaders of New York's African-American Muslim communities lashed out Friday at a purported al Qaeda message attacking President-elect Barack Obama and, using racist language, comparing him unfavorably to the late Malcolm X.

The imams called the recorded comments from al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri "an insult" from people who have "historically been disconnected from the African-American community generally and Muslim African-Americans in particular."

"We find it insulting when anyone speaks for our community instead of giving us the dignity and the honor of speaking for ourselves," they said in a statement read during a news conference at the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial, Educational and Cultural Center.

The al Qaeda statement, an 11-minute, 23-second audio message in Arabic with subtitles in English, appeared on the Internet on Wednesday [November 19]. Its authenticity has not been confirmed.

Heh! That's a laugh! None of the purported al Qaeda videos have ever been confirmed -- nor can they be -- because they are all so clearly bogus.

We're routinely told that al Qaeda hides out in caves in the mountains of Pakistan, and their operational leaders apparently cannot even use cell phones without being targeted; but somehow their chief propaganda agent has regular access to high-tech production studios?

None of it makes any sense, except as a black op. And yet ... ABC's Brian Ross, who -- when he's not lying about anthrax -- leaks Katz' videos to the media, told us once that we don't need to be concerned about the authenticity of al Qaeda videos because none of them have ever been shown to be fake.

Ross was speaking about the Osama bin Laden video in which a still image of bin Laden appears for 19 of the 22 minutes.

We could laugh if it weren't so tragic. CNN continues:

The message said Obama represents the "direct opposite of honorable black Americans" like Malcolm X.

The speaker also said Obama, former and current Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice and "your likes" fit Malcolm X's description of "house slaves."

The description is a bit lame, though, since Malcolm X never said anything about "house slaves" being war criminals. Obama, Rice and Powell, with their support of the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, and various other aspects of the Glorious War on Terror, have done more damage to more people than all the "house slaves" combined could ever have dreamt of. CNN goes on to spin a little on the history of Malcolm X, and why not? Most of CNN's readers never knew anything about him.

Malcolm X, the fiery African-American Muslim activist from the 1950s and 1960s, was an early member and leader of the Nation of Islam. He left that group in 1963 over disillusionment with its then-leader, Elijah Muhammed, but remained a Muslim.

After months of death threats, he was assassinated in 1965 by members of the Nation of Islam, who shot him 16 times at close range. The three men who were convicted of the crime have been paroled.

As well as being a "fiery leader", Malcolm X was also an honorable man, who worked to improve the lot of others. Like many "radical leaders" of his time, Malcolm X was horrified about the role his country had chosen for itself on the world stage. Standing up against state-sponsored mass murder was seen as "radical" in those days. And some things haven't changed a bit. But CNN won't tell you that.

There is also substantial evidence implicating government agents in the murder of Malcolm X. CNN won't tell you about that, either.

On Friday, Imam Al-Hajj Talib 'Abdur-Rashid, recalling Malcolm X's legacy, said that he "stood for human rights and the principle of self defense ... international law. He would have rejected, and we who are Muslim African-Americans leaders reject, acts of political extremism."

The Council on American-Islamic Relations also condemned Zawahiri's comments in a statement issued Thursday.

"As Muslims and as Americans, we will never let terrorist groups or terror leaders falsely claim to represent us or our faith," the statement said. "We once again repudiate al Qaeda's actions, rhetoric and world view and re-state our condemnation of all forms of terrorism and religious extremism."

You can see the American Muslim leaders squirming in their boots. They can't repudiate what Zawarhi actually said without exposing themselves as "house negroes", so they attack on false premises, saying things such as "We find it insulting when anyone speaks for our community instead of giving us the dignity and the honor of speaking for ourselves" and "We will never let terrorist groups or terror leaders falsely claim to represent us or our faith".

Zawarhi wasn't speaking for any community, nor was he claiming to represent anyone. He was just telling the truth about the President-elect. But that truth is obviously poisonous.

The Nature Of The Poison

Zawahri himself (accidentally) threw a bright light on the nature of the poison, in an interview which Juan Cole quoted on September 11, 2008. [I've added emphasis and inserted comments in square brackets]:

[Q:] Do you have any advice or any words to refute the argument of the theoreticians [conspiracy theorists] who claim that 9/11 was an internal action [inside job] carried out by the Israeli Government?

Al-Zawahiri: My answer: It is enough to reply to this suspicion by saying that it is not based on any evidence. [denial]

The first side that released this suspicion was Al-Manar Television, which is affiliated with the Lebanese Hizballah. It claimed that it cited a certain website. [shoot the messenger] The objective behind this lie is clear. The objective is to deny that the Sunnis have heroes who harm America as no one has harmed it throughout its history. [sheer speculation, based on a story we know is false] This lie was then circulated by the Iranian news media and they continued to repeat it until today for the same objective. [shoot the messenger again] Perhaps, they guided Al-Manar Television to begin these lies. [more speculation] Iran's objective is clear. It is to cover its collusion with America in invading the homelands of Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq. [another red herring]

I gave examples of this collusion in my recent interview with Al-Sahab under the title "reading in the events." This lie was then repeated by some of the psychologically defeated ones in our Islamic world, whose minds, which were distorted by Western exaggeration, refuse to believe that some Muslims can cause this harm to America. [ad hominem] These poor minds have thus far not been able to understand why America is defeated in Afghanistan and Iraq in front of the simple mujahidin [red herring], and, in fact, why America has failed to arrest Mulla Mohammad Omar and Shaykh Usama Bin Ladin, may God watch over them, after more than six years of fierce war, during which it used all means of technology, which caused us a headache about its legendary capabilities. [au contraire! The weak-minded theoreticians understand very well that the American terror warriors have no interest in acting against Mullah Omar or Osama bin Laden, who are both, after all, their allies in this massive fraud -- a fraud which would have to stop if they were somehow defeated.] Furthermore, why the power of the mujahidin is growing against it day by day despite this world war that is being launched against them?' [another red herring]

You will note that virtually none of Zawahri's statement has anything to do with the question he was asked.

About this exchange, Juan Cole wrote:

No more eloquent testament to the defeat of the original al-Qaeda could be found than the pitiful inability of Zawahiri to name any genuine accomplishments in recent times save the ability of the top leadership to elude capture!

The Bush administration over-reacted to September 11, misunderstanding it as the action of a traditional state rather than of a small asymmetrical terrorist group. [...]

No kidding? Just an over-reaction? Just a misunderstanding?

Juan Cole is no more willing than Zawahri to discuss the evidence of Israeli complicity in 9/11.

Neither is he willing to call the Bush administration's "over-reaction" what it obviously was: not a reaction at all, but an action -- one that was obviously planned well in advance of the event that "caused it".

It's no wonder Juan Cole has become such a popular and well-respected blogger.

More Poison

If you're looking for more poison, you can get some from At Largely, where on April 16, 2008, Larisa Alexandrovna quoted the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz in a post called "Netanyahu spreading sunshine wherever he goes..."

The Ha'aretz headline reads: "Report: Netanyahu says 9/11 terror attacks good for Israel", and the article says:

"The Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv on Wednesday reported that Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu told an audience at Bar Ilan university that the September 11, 2001 terror attacks had been beneficial for Israel.

"We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq," Ma'ariv quoted the former prime minister as saying. He reportedly added that these events "swung American public opinion in our favor."

About this rather blunt admission of Israeli priorities, Larisa wrote:

Very nice. It is bad enough that Antisemites around the world have used the tragedy of 9/11 for their own propaganda purposes to push the lie that Israel was in actuality behind the attacks of September 11. Now Netanyahu has all but underwritten these dangerous talking points with this one, single, and shocking comment. Aside from this, most obvious issue, there are two small problems with Benji's assertions:

1. That 9/11 was good for Israel
2. That US public opinion is with Israel

As I have already noted, antisemitism is on the rise the world over, which is hardly good for Jews in general or Israel in particular. But in addition to that, American Jews are pulling further and further back from Israel thanks in large part to Likud's extremism and its lock-step relationship with Dick Cheney. Joe Lieberman, for example, was a contender for VP before 9/11. Now he is a political outcast by-and-large because of his bed-sharing with Likud and Dick Cheney.

Larisa seems to have missed the larger point, which is that Israel depends on the support of the American government much more than the support of American Jews. Netanyahu can conflate the two; in fact, he must. Americans (and Israelis too) like to pride themselves on the thought that they live in a democracy, so politicians such as Netanyahu must speak of "public opinion" as if it mattered. But it doesn't. Power matters. Military might matters. Israel doesn't care what you think -- as long as you keep electing politicians who swear allegiance to the Israeli flag.

And Israel no longer needs Joe Lieberman -- in the White House, or anywhere else -- since it has benefitted from eight years of "lock-step relationship with Dick Cheney", and can now look forward to a fully pro-Israel Democratic administration, run by the likes of Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Rahm Emanuel.

The missing link from this analysis is the obvious fact that 9/11 was good for the Israeli hard-liners, who until that point had been told quite regularly by their American supporters to restrain their ongoing orgy of violence against the Palestinians. As soon as 9/11 happened, the Israeli gloves came off. And they've been off ever since.

Many of Larisa's readers commented about the evidence of Israeli complicity in 9/11, beginning with Damien, who (among other things) wrote:

There are significant questions about what Israeli Intelligence knew prior to 911 (see 1 | 2 | 3).

There are various accounts of Israeli owned trucks detained on 911 in the Lincoln Tunnel with traces of explosives(1 | 2 | 3 | 4)

There appears to be at least one instance where Israeli Intelligence had previously impersonated al Qaeda operatives:

In February of 2000, Indian intelligence officials detained 11 members of what they thought was an Al Qaeda hijacking conspiracy. It was then discovered that these 11 "Muslim preachers" were all Israeli nationals.

Damien continued:

I have no idea of any Israeli awareness of or participation in 911, but I do know there are significant unanswered questions. If the topic is taboo then the public debate passes immediately into the hands of the rabid Israel haters. I think that would be a tragic outcome for everyone. We need all the answers about 911 and a full, independent inquiry.

I would go quite a bit farther than Damien, and in fact I have done so. See this post for more: Gatekeepers Bury Dancing Israeli Movers And Bogus Art Students On DN!

(See this blog for even more: Plunger Speaks.)

A Double Dose To Start

I now return you to the second week of September, 2001. On September 12, the day after the attacks, the Washington Post ran the following piece by a serial mass murderer, former Secretary of State and National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger:

Kissinger: Destroy The Network

An attack such as yesterday's requires systematic planning, a good organization, a lot of money and a base. You cannot improvise something like this, and you cannot plan it when you're constantly on the move. Heretofore our response to attacks, and understandably so, has been to carry out some retaliatory act that was supposed to even the scales while hunting down the actual people who did it.

This, however, is an attack on the territorial United States, which is a threat to our social way of life and to our existence as a free society. It therefore has to be dealt with in a different way -- with an attack on the system that produces it.

The immediate response, of course, has to be taking care of casualties and restoring some sort of normal life. We must get back to work almost immediately, to show that our life cannot be disrupted. And we should henceforth show more sympathy for people who are daily exposed to this kind of attack, whom we keep telling to be very measured in their individual responses.

But then the government should be charged with a systematic response that, one hopes, will end the way that the attack on Pearl Harbor ended -- with the destruction of the system that is responsible for it. That system is a network of terrorist organizations sheltered in capitals of certain countries. In many cases we do not penalize those countries for sheltering the organizations; in other cases, we maintain something close to normal relations with them.

It is hard to say at this point what should be done in detail. If a week ago I had been asked whether such a coordinated attack as yesterday's was possible, I, no more than most people, would have thought so, so nothing I say is meant as a criticism. But until now we have been trying to do this as a police matter, and now it has to be done in a different way.

Of course there should be some act of retaliation, and I would certainly support it, but it cannot be the end of the process and should not even be the principal part of it. The principal part has to be to get the terrorist system on the run, and by the terrorist system I mean those parts of it that are organized on a global basis and can operate by synchronized means.

We do not yet know whether Osama bin Laden did this, although it appears to have the earmarks of a bin Laden-type operation. But any government that shelters groups capable of this kind of attack, whether or not they can be shown to have been involved in this attack, must pay an exorbitant price.

The question is not so much what kind of blow we can deliver this week or next. And the response, since our own security was threatened, cannot be made dependent on consensus, though this is an issue on which we and our allies must find a cooperative means of resistance that is not simply the lowest common denominator.

It is something we should do calmly, carefully and inexorably.

If you read this calmly and carefully, especially in light of the events which followed, you can see quite clearly the lies at the heart of our current situation, and who helped to put them there.

When Kissinger says, "any government that shelters groups capable of this kind of attack" must be made to "pay an exorbitant price", he is legitimizing the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive war, especially with his insistence that this price must be paid "whether or not they can be shown to have been involved in this attack".

When he says, "until now we have been trying to do this as a police matter, and now it has to be done in a different way", he is laying the groundwork for the militarization of America, regardless of the facts that 9/11 was a crime, not an act of war, and that it could have been prevented with normal police actions, if the Bush administration hadn't gone to great lengths to prevent any investigation of the impending terrorist attack.

When he talks about "a network of terrorist organizations sheltered in capitals of certain countries", he knows what he's saying. America helped put those organizations in those capitals. But he wouldn't want you to know that.

It turned out that the "threat to our social way of life and to our existence as a free society" has come from our government, not from any "terrorists", and Kissinger's characterization of the attacks as a threat "to our existence as a free society" is as much exaggeration as you are likely to get ... until two sentences later, when Kissinger writes:

And we should henceforth show more sympathy for people who are daily exposed to this kind of attack, whom we keep telling to be very measured in their individual responses.

Aside from the fact that there are no people anywhere who are "daily exposed to this kind of attack", Kissinger's purpose is clear: Hands off Israel!

And it has worked! Israeli leaders came to Washington and said, "There? You see what it's like? We're on the front line of this war. We have to deal with this stuff every day!" And Bush said "We sympathize! You're on the front line of this war. You have to deal with this stuff every day. We sympathize!"

It was a remarkable performance, just what Kissinger had asked for. And rightly so. After all, when you're on a path to global domination, and it's all based on lies, you have to proceed "calmly, carefully and inexorably."

For me, there's only one surprise in the entire piece, and that's the tortured bit of syntax that runs:

If a week ago I had been asked whether such a coordinated attack as yesterday's was possible, I, no more than most people, would have thought so...

His performance on the previous day had been one of the telltale signs that everything was bogus. And then, as we can see, he couldn't even put together a coherent denial.

I always thought Kissinger was a better liar than that. But then again, with all the help he gets, he doesn't really have to be, does he?

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