FROM THE ARTICLE "NOT EVERYONE BELIEVES BIN LADEN REALLY IS DEAD," BY ROBERT BURNS AND CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press: Seth Jones, a RAND Corp.
political scientist who advised the commander of U.S. special operations forces in Afghanistan, said ... "There are always conspiracy theories. There
are individuals who believe that bin Laden wasn't involved in the 9/11 attacks."
I want to review for the record how Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were identified as the attackers on 9/11. This is not conspiracy theory, it is
simply that they haven't given us any evidence. Apparently, we're supposed to believe that bin Laden did it simply because Bush and his guys said so.
That's authoritarianism, something I thought Americans didn't go in for.
From Webster Tarpley's "9/11 Synthetic Terrorism Made in USA,"
www.naderlibrary.com...
WHAT DO YOU KNOW AND HOW DO YOU KNOW IT?
... if you think you know all about 9/11, how do you know what you think you know?
The first identification of Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda as the perpetrators came during the day on September 11, as various commentators and
announcers for cable, broadcast, and public television began floating the charge that Bin Laden and al Qaeda were behind the attacks. Apparently CNN
was the first to mention Bin Laden, and the other myth-mongers immediately followed its lead. In retrospect, we know that many of these leaks came
from two important functionaries in the Washington bureaucracy. These were George Tenet, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, who should
have been fired that same day, but who was allowed to resign in disgrace in June 2004, on the eve of the publication of a Senate Intelligence
Committee report which pilloried him and his agency for gross incompetence. This was the same Tenet who later assured Bush that the case for weapons
of mass destruction in Iraq as a pretext for a US invasion was a “slam dunk.” The other prime myth-monger was Richard A. Clarke, the former terror
czar of the Clinton administration who had been kept on by Bush. Clarke had a long history, of which many of his gulled victims at those hearings were
unaware....Clarke is a close friend of Israeli defense officials, among them David Ivry of the Israeli Defense Ministry....
On the morning of Sept. 11, as the White House was being evacuated for fear that it could be hit after the strikes against the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon, the first top official to say “This is Al Qaeda!” had been Richard Clarke. (New York Times, December 30, 2001). When Clarke arrived
at the White House a little after 9 AM on 9/11, he found Cheney and Condoleezza Rice alone in Cheney’s office. “What do you think,” asked the
horrified Cheney. Clarke’s immediate reply: “It’s an al Qaeda attack and they like simultaneous attacks. This may not be over.” (Clarke 2)
This is the moment of conception of the 9/11 myth....
Clarke tells us in his memoir that he attempted to collect his thoughts about the events going on around him as he walked from the White House Secure
Videoconferencing Center just off the Situation Room across the White House to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, which was Cheney’s
underground bunker: In the quiet of the walk, I caught my breath for the first time that day: This was the “Big al Qaeda Attack” we had warned was
coming and it was bigger than almost anything we had imagined, short of a nuclear weapon. (Clarke 17)
This is already one of the most fateful snap judgments in world history. Had Clarke utterly forgotten the lessons of Oklahoma City, when leakers had
inspired the report that the explosion was the world of Moslems? Clarke had no proof then, and has come forward with none since.
Rushing to overtake Clarke as the leading hipshot in snap strategic diagnosis was CIA Director Tenet. While Bush was cowering in his spider hole at
Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, he conducted a National Security Council meeting by means of teleconference screens. “Who do you think did this
to us?” Bush asked Tenet. Tenet was emphatic: “Sir, I believe it’s al Qaeda. We’re doing the assessment, but it looks like, it feels like, it
smells like Al Qaeda.” (Bamford 2004 91) In other words, Tenet also had no proof, no evidence, no case – just his crude Lockean sense certainty.
Later, after World Trade Center 7 had gone through its inexplicable and embarrassing collapse at about 5:20 PM, Clarke addressed a high-level
interagency meeting from the Situation Room. Present by video link were Armitage of State, General Meyers of the JCS, and other important officials.
Clarke stated: “Okay, we all know this was al Qaeda. FBI and CIA will develop the case and see if I’m right. We want the truth but, in the
meantime, let’s go with the assumption it’s al Qaeda. What’s next.?” (Clarke 23) Before he went to bed in the White House, Bush jotted a note
to himself: “The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today. We think it’s Osama Bin Laden.” (Bamford 2004 92) ...
Already voices of caution were being raised about another ill- prepared rush to judgment. Professor Paul Rogers, of Bradford University's peace
department, warned against assuming Middle East extremists were behind the tragedy. “We've been here before. With Oklahoma, everybody assumed it was
Middle East [terrorists], then it turned out to be home-grown Timothy McVeigh,” he said. “Again with the pipe bomb in Atlanta, it turned out to be
domestic.” (Guardian, September 11, 2001)
On September 14, the FBI, which had known nothing about anything before the attacks, published its infamous list of nineteen hijackers. As we will
soon see, the mortality rate among those supposed kamikazes was less than 100%, with no less than seven of the suspects named turning up alive and
well in the days after this list was published. ... This is the same agency which, over the previous months, in the words of Governor Kean of the
9/11 Commission, “failed and failed and failed and failed and failed.” Are we then to believe that on September 14 this troubled and incompetent
agency enjoyed a brief interlude of success, as represented by the list of the 19? ...This was the same FBI whose main activity after 9/11 seemed to
consist in confiscating relevant evidence and tampering with witnesses, telling them that had not seen what they knew they had. Anyone familiar with
the record will have a very hard time taking seriously such allegations coming from the discredited, dysfunctional FBI.
BUSH AS INVETERATE LIAR
The definitive identification of Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda as the authors of the atrocity came only on September 20, in Bush’s address to a joint
session of Congress. Bush stated:
The evidence we have gathered all points to a collection of loosely affiliated terrorist organizations known as al Qaeda.... The leadership of al
Qaeda has great influence in Afghanistan and supports the Taliban regime in controlling most of that country. In Afghanistan, we see al Qaeda’s
vision for the world. […] And tonight, the United States of America makes the following demands on the Taliban: deliver to the United States
authorities all the leaders of al Qaeda who hide in your land. […] These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion. The Taliban must act,
and act immediately. They will hand over the terrorists, or they will share their fate. […] Our war on terror beings with al Qaeda, but it does not
end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated. (Bush 10-11) ...
The internet teems with web sites dedicated primarily to keeping up with Bush’s legendary, picaresque mendacity.... The tenant of the White House
has a troubled relation to the very concept of truth. This is the man who has acquired an unparalleled at home and abroad reputation as a liar... This
is an administration in which blatant lying has become part of the daily routine – in part because of neocon guru Leo Strauss’s theory that truth
is dangerous for the masses, and rulers therefore have to be esoteric, that is, lie through their teeth. But whether Bush is a cretin or a liar, his
statements offer no sufficient basis for falling in with the neocons in their march towards endless war against the entire world. Knowing what we knew
as of late 2004, no person of good judgment could ever accept statements from the current regime at face value. Nevertheless, otherwise intelligent
people who would not dream believing Bush about Iraq or other issues are content to swallow his biggest whopper of them all: his 9/11 story. This
doublethink must end. The Bush regime is a castle of lies and fabrications, and the keystone of all of them is the 9/11 myth.
It is now proverbial in Washington to remark that there is no proof linking Saddam Hussein to 9/11, and this is certainly true. But, by the very same
token, there is also no proof in the public domain anywhere that adds up to a case against Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda. .... Taken by themselves, Bin
Laden and his band represent supermarket-caliber terrorists, capable of bombing a shopping center, or of destroying a bus. Any capabilities above and
beyond this can only be explained through assistance provided by intelligence agencies, primarily but not limited to the American ones. ... Bin Laden
and company emerge perhaps as actors in the plot, but playing the parts of patsies, dupes, fall-guys, or useful idiots. The main point remains that
Tenet, Clarke, Powell, the FBI, and Bush have produced no convincing evidence to establish the 19 Moslem men, al Qaeda, and Bin Laden as the authors
of the crimes.
edit on 11-5-2011 by RastaChick because: (no reason given)