Originally posted by Caustic LogicWhat next?
Two things: precedent and association.
Although a false flag attack on the scale of 9/11 is without precedent, US involvement in civilian-focussed false flag attacks is well-established.
Anyone familiar with
Operation Gladio and The Strategy of
Tension will know that the CIA was intimately involved with partisan groups across Europe from the early 1950's onwards.
During that time, particularly between 1970 and 1980, terrorist attacks were carried out by CIA and NATO-backed clandestine stay-behind armies against
civilian targets. They included the Bologna Massacre and the Piazza Fontana bombing, to give just two examples. The purpose was simply to prevent
the Italian Communist Party from making political progress in Italy. Vincenzo Vinciguerra, one of the 1972 Peteano car bombers, said he was required
to “
attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game [in order to force] the
public to turn to the state to ask for greater security.”
As for prior association, there's
Operation Cyclone.
This was a plan, basically conceived by Carter's NSA, Zbigniew Brzezinski, to support the mujahideen against the Soviets. As Brzezinski recently
admitted, the support started
before the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, and was provided on the basis that it knowingly increased the probability
of a Soviet invasion. In other words, the US wanted to engineer a Soviet invasion in order to bog them down and bring about a collapse of the Soviet
Union.
During this time, Islamist fundamentalism was promoted and many of them trained in the US, arriving of dubious visas. Recruits, finance and arms
assistance flowed from the US through the ISI and bin Laden's organisation, the MAK before reaching the mujahideen. On his alleged visits to the US,
bin Laden was codenamed Tim Osman.
There are two little snippets of information to help bring these themes together.
1. The CIA's founding principle included scope to carry out covert operations...
…which are conducted or sponsored by this government against hostile foreign states or groups or in support of friendly foreign states or groups but
which are so planned and conducted that any US Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorised persons and that if uncovered the US
Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them. Covert action shall include any covert activities related to: propaganda; economic
warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition, and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states,
including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements
in threatened countries of the free world.
2. KSM recently 'confessed' to the Bali bombing of 2002. It came at a time when the Australian Prime Minister's support for Bush's war on terror
was waning. The then-Indonesian Prime Minister has since said the bombing was orchestrated by elements within the Indonesian authorities.
So, the CIA is founded to carry our plausibly deniable covert operations; they did so, especially in Italy, in conjunction with NATO, killing many
civilians in the process; they backed al Qaeda's predecessor (and almost certainly had a pragmatic relationship with bin Laden) during the
Afghan-Soviet War; and finally we find al Qaeda, acting as hired guns in an act that brought Australian support for the war on terror firmly back on
track.