Unanswered Questions: Thinking For Ourselves
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THE OBSERVER, LONDON
SUNDAY 27TH OCTOBER 2002, REVIEW SECTION, PAGES 1-4
The Enemy Within
PREVIOUS POSTINGS OF THIS STORY:
Gore Vidal is America’s most controversial writer and a ferocious, often isolated, critic of the Bush administration.
Here, against a backdrop of spreading unease about America’s response to the events of 11 September 2001 and their
aftermath, we publish Vidal’s remarkable personal polemic urging a shocking new interpretation of who was to blame.
On 24 August, 1814, things looked very dark for freedom's land. That was the day the British captured Washington DC and
set fire to the Capitol and the White House. President Madison took refuge in the nearby Virginia woods where he waited
patiently for the notoriously short attention span of the Brits to kick in, which it did. They moved on and what might
have been a Day of Utter Darkness turned out to be something of a bonanza for the DC building trades and up-market
realtors.
One year after 9/11, we still don't know by whom we were struck that infamous Tuesday, or for what true purpose. But it
is fairly plain to many civil-libertarians that 9/11 put paid not only to much of our fragile Bill of Rights but also to
our once-envied system of government which had taken a mortal blow the previous year when the Supreme Court did a little
dance in 5/4 time and replaced a popularly elected president with the oil and gas Cheney/Bush junta.
Meanwhile, our more and more unaccountable government is pursuing all sorts of games around the world that we the spear
carriers (formerly the people) will never learn of. Even so, we have been getting some answers to the question: why
weren't we warned in advance of 9/11? Apparently, we were, repeatedly; for the better part of a year, we were told there
would be unfriendly visitors to our skies some time in September 2001, but the government neither informed nor protected
us despite Mayday warnings from Presidents Putin and Mubarak, from Mossad and even from elements of our own FBI. A joint
panel of congressional intelligence committees reported (19 September 2002, New York Times) that as early as 1996,
Pakistani terrorist Abdul Hakim Murad confessed to federal agents that he was 'learning to fly in order to crash a plane
into CIA HQ'.
Only CIA director George Tenet seemed to take the various threats seriously. In December 1998, he wrote to his deputies
that 'we are at war' with Osama bin Laden. So impressed was the FBI by his warnings that by 20 September 2001, 'the FBI
still had only one analyst assigned full time to al-Qaeda'.
From a briefing prepared for Bush at the beginning of July 2001: 'We believe that OBL [Osama bin Laden] will launch a
significant terrorist attack against US and/or Israeli interests in the coming weeks. The attack will be spectacular and
designed to inflict mass casualties against US facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will
occur with little or no warning.' And so it came to pass; yet Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Advisor, says she
never suspected that this meant anything more than the kidnapping of planes.
Happily, somewhere over the Beltway, there is Europe - recently declared anti-Semitic by the US media because most of
Europe wants no war with Iraq and the junta does, for reasons we may now begin to understand thanks to European and
Asian investigators with their relatively free media.
On the subject 'How and Why America was Attacked on 11 September, 2001', the best, most balanced report, thus far, is by
Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed ... Yes, yes, I know he is one of Them. But they often know things that we don't - particularly
about what we are up to. A political scientist, Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research and
Development 'a think-tank dedicated to the promotion of human rights, justice and peace' in Brighton. His book, 'The War
on Freedom', has just been published in the US by a small but reputable publisher.
Ahmed provides a background for our ongoing war against Afghanistan, a view that in no way coincides with what the
administration has told us. He has drawn on many sources, most tellingly on American whistleblowers who are beginning to
come forth and hear witness - like those FBI agents who warned their supervisors that al-Qaeda was planning a kamikaze
strike against New York and Washington only to be told that if they went public with these warnings they would suffer
under the National Security Act. Several of these agents have engaged David P. Schippers, chief investigative counsel
for the US House Judiciary Committee, to represent them in court. The majestic Schippers managed the successful
impeachment of President Clinton in the House of Representatives. He may, if the Iraqi war should go wrong, be obliged
to perform the same high service for Bush, who allowed the American people to go unwarned about an imminent attack upon
two of our cities as pre-emption of a planned military strike by the US against the Taliban.
The Guardian (26 September 2001) reported that in July 2001, a group of interested parties met in a Berlin hotel to
listen to a former State Department official, Lee Coldren, as he passed on a message from the Bush administration that
'the United States was so disgusted with the Taliban that they might be considering some military action ... the
chilling quality of this private warning was that it came - according to one of those present, the Pakistani diplomat
Niaz Naik - accompanied by specific details of how Bush would succeed ...' Four days earlier, the Guardian had reported
that 'Osama bin Laden and the Taliban received threats of possible American military action against them two months
before the terrorist assaults on New York and Washington ... [which] raises the possibility that bin Laden was launching
a pre-emptive strike in response to what he saw as US threats.' A replay of the 'day of infamy' in the Pacific 62 years
earlier?
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Why The US Needed A Eurasian Adventure
On 9 September 2001, Bush was presented with a draft of a national security presidential directive outlining a global
campaign of military, diplomatic and intelligence action targeting al-Qaeda, buttressed by the threat of war. According
to NBC News: 'President Bush was expected to sign detailed plans for a worldwide war against al-Qaeda ... but did not
have the chance before the terrorist attacks ... The directive, as described to NBC News, was essentially the same war
plan as the one put into action after 11 September. The administration most likely was able to respond so quickly ...
because it simply had to pull the plans "off the shelf".'
Finally, BBC News, 18 September 2001: 'Niak Naik, a former Pakistan foreign secretary, was told by senior American
officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October. It was Naik's
view that Washington would not drop its war for Afghanistan even if bin Laden were to be surrendered immediately by the
Taliban.'
Was Afghanistan then turned to rubble in order to avenge the 3,000 Americans slaughtered by Osama? Hardly. The
administration is convinced that Americans are so simple-minded that they can deal with no scenario more complex than
the venerable lone, crazed killer (this time with zombie helpers) who does evil just for the fun of it 'cause he hates
us, 'cause we're rich 'n free 'n he's not. Osama was chosen on aesthetic grounds to be the most frightening logo for our
long contemplated invasion and conquest of Afghanistan, planning for which had been 'contingency' some years before 9/11
and, again, from 20 December, 2000, when Clinton's out-going team devised a plan to strike at al-Qaeda in retaliation
for the assault on the warship Cole. Clinton's National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, personally briefed his successor
on the plan but Rice, still very much in her role as director of Chevron-Texaco, with special duties regarding Pakistan
and Uzbekistan, now denies any such briefing. A year and a half later (12 August, 2002), fearless Time magazine reported
this odd memory lapse.
Osama, if it was he and not a nation, simply provided the necessary shock to put in train a war of conquest. But
conquest of what? What is there in dismal dry sandy Afghanistan worth conquering? Zbigniew Brzezinski tells us exactly
what in a 1997 Council on Foreign Relations study called 'The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic
Imperatives'.
The Polish-born Brzezinski was the hawkish National Security Advisor to President Carter. In 'The Grand Chessboard',
Brzezinski gives a little history lesson. 'Ever since the continents started interacting politically, some 500 years
ago, Eurasia has been the centre of world power.' Eurasia is all the territory east of Germany. This means Russia, the
Middle East, China and parts of India. Brzezinski acknowledges that Russia and China, bordering oil-rich central Asia,
are the two main powers threatening US hegemony in that area.
He takes it for granted that the US must exert control over the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, known to those
who love them as 'the Stans': Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikstan and Kyrgyzstan all 'of importance from the standpoint
of security and historical ambitions to at least three of their most immediate and most powerful neighbours - Russia,
Turkey and Iran, with China signaling'. Brzezinski notes how the world's energy consumption keeps increasing; hence, who
controls Caspian oil/gas will control the world economy. Brzezinski then, reflexively, goes into the standard American
rationalization for empire;. We want nothing, ever, for ourselves, only to keep bad people from getting good things with
which to hurt good people. 'It follows that America's primary interest is to help ensure that no single [other] power
comes to control the geopolitical space and that the global community has unhindered financial and economic access to
it.'
Brzezinski is quite aware that American leaders are wonderfully ignorant of history and geography so he really lays it
on, stopping just short of invoking politically incorrect 'manifest destiny'. He reminds the Council just how big
Eurasia is. Seventy-five percent of the world's population is Eurasian. If I have done the sums right, that means that
we've only got control, to date, of a mere 25 percent of the world's folks. More! 'Eurasia accounts for 60-per cent of
the world's GNP and three-fourths of the world's known energy resources.' Brzezinski's master plan for 'our' globe has
obviously been accepted by the Cheney-Bush junta. Corporate America, long over-excited by Eurasian mineral wealth, has
been aboard from the beginning.
Ahmed sums up: 'Brzezinski clearly envisaged that the establishment, consolidation and expansion of US military hegemony
over Eurasia through Central Asia would require the unprecedented, open-ended militarisation of foreign policy, coupled
with an unprecedented manufacture of domestic support and consensus on this militarisation campaign.'
Afghanistan is the gateway to all these riches. Will we fight to seize them? It should never be forgotten that the
American people did not want to fight in either of the twentieth century's world wars, but President Wilson maneuvered
us into the First while President Roosevelt maneuvered the Japanese into striking the first blow at Pearl Harbor,
causing us to enter the Second as the result of a massive external attack. Brzezinski understands all this and, in 1997,
he is thinking ahead - as well as backward. 'Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multicultural society, it may
find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive
and widely perceived direct external threat.' Thus was the symbolic gun produced that belched black smoke over Manhattan
and the Pentagon.
Since the Iran-Iraq wars, Islam has been demonized as a Satanic terrorist cult that encourages suicide attacks -
contrary, it should be noted, to the Islamic religion. Osama has been portrayed, accurately, it would seem, as an
Islamic zealot. In order to bring this evil-doer to justice ('dead or alive'), Afghanistan, the object of the exercise
was made safe not only for democracy but for Union Oil of California whose proposed pipeline from Turkmenistan to
Afghanistan to Pakistan and the Indian Ocean port of Karachi, had been abandoned under the Taliban's chaotic regime.
Currently, the pipeline is a go-project thanks to the junta's installation of a Unocal employee (John J Maresca) as US
envoy to the newly born democracy whose president, Hamid Karzai, is also, according to Le Monde, a former employee of a
Unocal subsidiary. Conspiracy? Coincidence!
Once Afghanistan looked to be within the fold, the junta, which had managed to pull off a complex diplomatic-military
caper, - abruptly replaced Osama, the personification of evil, with Saddam. This has been hard to explain since there is
nothing to connect Iraq with 9/11. Happily, 'evidence' is now being invented. But it is uphill work, not helped by
stories in the press about the vast oil wealth of Iraq which must - for the sake of the free world - be reassigned to US
and European consortiums.
As Brzezinski foretold, 'a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat' made it possible for the President
to dance a war dance before Congress. 'A long war!' he shouted with glee. Then he named an incoherent Axis of Evil to be
fought. Although Congress did not give him the FDR Special - a declaration of war - he did get permission to go after
Osama who may now be skulking in Iraq.
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Bush And The Dog That Did Not Bark
Post-9/11, the American media were filled with pre-emptory denunciations of unpatriotic 'conspiracy theorists', who not
only are always with us but are usually easy for the media to discredit since it is an article of faith that there are
no conspiracies in American life. Yet, a year or so ago, who would have thought that most of corporate America had been
conspiring with accountants to cook their books since - well, at least the bright days of Reagan and deregulation.
Ironically, less than a year after the massive danger from without, we were confronted with an even greater enemy from
within: Golden Calf capitalism. Transparency? One fears that greater transparency will only reveal armies of maggots at
work beneath the skin of a culture that needs a bit of a lie-down in order to collect itself before taking its next
giant step which is to conquer Eurasia, a potentially fatal adventure not only for our frazzled institutions but for us
the presently living.
Complicity. The behavior of President George W. Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to all sorts of not unnatural
suspicions. I can think of no other modern chief of state who would continue to pose for 'warm' pictures of himself
listening to a young girl telling stories about her pet goat while hijacked planes were into three buildings.
Constitutionally, Bush is not only chief of state, he is commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Normally, a commander
in such a crisis would go straight to headquarters and direct operations while receiving the latest intelligence.
This is what Bush actually did - or did not do - according to Stan Goff, a retired US Army veteran who has taught
military science and doctrine at West Point. Goff writes, in 'The So-called Evidence is a Farce': 'I have no idea why
people aren't asking some very specific questions about the actions of Bush and company on the day of the attacks. Four
planes get hijacked and deviate from their flight plan, all the while on FAA radar.'
Goff, incidentally, like the other astonished military experts, cannot fathom why the government's automatic 'standard
order of procedure in the event of a hijacking' was not followed. Once a plane has deviated from its flight-plan,
fighter planes are sent up to find out why. That is law and does not require presidential approval, which only needs to
be given if there is a decision to shoot down a plane. Goff spells it out: 'The planes were hijacked between 7:45 and
8:10am. Who is notified? This is an event already that is unprecedented. But the President is not notified and going to
a Florida elementary school to hear children read.
'By around 8:15am it should be very apparent that something is terribly wrong. The President is glad-handling teachers.
By 8:45am, when American Airlines Flight 11 crashes into the North Tower, Bush is settling in with children for his
photo op. Four planes have obviously been hijacked simultaneously and one has just dived into the twin towers, and still
no one notifies the nominal Commander-in-Chief.
'No one has apparently scrambled [sent aloft] Air Force interceptors either. At 9:03, Flight 175 crashes into the South
Tower. At 9:05 Andrew Card, the Chief of Staff whispers to Bush [who] "briefly turns somber" according to reporters.
Does he cancel the school visit and convene an emergency meeting? No. He resumes listening to second-graders ... and
continues the banality even as American Airlines Flight 77 conducts an unscheduled point turn over Ohio and heads in the
direction of Washington DC.
'Has he instructed Card to scramble the Air Force? No. An excruciating 25 minutes later, he finally deigns to give a
public statement telling the United States what they have already figured out - that there's been an attack on the World
Trade Centre. There's a hijacked plane bee-lining to Washington, but has the Air Force been scrambled to defend anything
yet? No.
'At 9:35, this plane conducts another turn, 360 [degrees] over the Pentagon, all the while being tracked by radar, and
the Pentagon is not evacuated, and there are still no fast-movers from the Air Force in the sky over Alexandria and DC.
Now the real kicker: a pilot they want us to believe was trained at a Florida puddle-jumper school for Piper Cubs and
Cessnas, conducts a well-controlled downward spiral descending the last 7,000 feet in two-and-a-half minutes, brings the
plane in so low and flat that it clips the electrical wires across the street from the Pentagon, and flies it with
pinpoint accuracy into the side of the building at 460 knots.
'When the theory about learning to fly this well at the puddle-jumper school began to lose ground, it was added that
they received further training on a flight simulator. This is like saying you prepared your teenager for her first drive
on the freeway at rush hour by buying her a video driving game ... There is a story being constructed about these
events.'
There is indeed, and the more it is added to the darker it becomes. The nonchalance of General Richard B. Myers, acting
Joint Chief of Staff, is as puzzling as the President's campaigning-as-usual act. Myers was at the Capitol chatting with
Senator Max Cleland. A sergeant, writing later in the AFPS (American Forces Press Service) describes Myers at the
Capitol. 'While in an outer office, he said, he saw a television report that a plane had hit the World Trade Centre.
"They thought it was a small plane or something like that," Myers said. So the two men went ahead with the office call.'
Whatever Myers and Cleland had to say to each other (more funds for the military?) must have been riveting because,
during their chat, the AFPS reports, 'the second tower was hit by another jet. "Nobody informed us of that," Myers said.
"But when we came out, that was obvious. Then, right at that time, somebody said the Pentagon had been hit."' Finally,
somebody 'thrust a cellphone in Myers' hand' and, as if by magic, the commanding general of Norad - our Airspace Command
- was on the line just as the hijackers mission had been successfully completed except for the failed one in
Pennsylvania. In later testimony to the Senate Armed Forces Committee, Myers said he thinks that, as of his cellphone
talk with Norad, 'the decision was at that point to start launching aircraft'. It was 9:40am. One hour and 20 minutes
after air controllers knew that Flight 11 had been hijacked; 50 minutes after the North Tower was struck.
This statement would have been quite enough in our old serious army/air force to launch a number of courts martial with
an impeachment or two thrown in. First, Myers claims to be uninformed until the third strike. But the Pentagon had been
overseeing the hijacked planes from at least the moment of the strike at the first tower: yet not until the third
strike, at the Pentagon, was the decision made to get the fighter planes up. Finally, this one is the dog that did not
bark. By law, the fighters should have been up at around 8:15. If they had, all the hijacked planes might have been
diverted or shot down. I don't think that Goff is being unduly picky when he wonders who and what kept the Air Force
from following its normal procedure instead of waiting an hour and 20 minutes until the damage was done and only then
launching the fighters. Obviously, somebody had ordered the Air Force to make no move to intercept those hijackings
until ... what?
On 21 January 2002, the Canadian media analyst Barry Zwicker summed up on CBC-TV: 'That morning no interceptors
responded in a timely fashion to the highest alert situation. This includes the Andrews squadrons which ... are 12 miles
from the White House ... Whatever the explanation for the huge failure, there have been no reports, to my knowledge, of
reprimands. This further weakens the "Incompetence Theory". Incompetence usually earns reprimands. This causes me to ask
whether there were "stand down" orders.'?? On 29 August 2002, the BBC reports that on 9/11 there were 'only four
fighters on ready status in the north-eastern US'. Conspiracy? Coincidence? Error?
It is interesting how often in our history, when disaster strikes, incompetence is considered a better alibi than ...
well, yes, there are worse things. After Pearl Harbor, Congress moved to find out why Hawaii's two military commanders,
General Short and Admiral Kimmel, had not anticipated the Japanese attack. But President Roosevelt pre-empted that
investigation with one of his own. Short and Kimmel were broken for incompetence. The 'truth' is still obscure to this
day.
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The Media's Weapons Of Mass Distraction
But Pearl Harbor has been much studied. 11 September, it is plain, is never going to be investigated if Bush has
anything to say about it. In January 2002, CNN reported that 'Bush personally asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle
to limit the Congressional investigation into the events of 11 September ... The request was made at a private meeting
with Congressional leaders ... Sources said Bush initiated the conversation ... He asked that only the House and Senate
intelligence committees look into the potential breakdowns among federal agencies that could have allowed the terrorist
attacks to occur, rather than a broader inquiry .. Tuesday's discussion followed a rare call from Vice President Dick
Cheney last Friday to make the same request ...'
The excuse given, according to Daschle, was that 'resources and personnel would be taken' away from the war on terrorism
in the event of a wider inquiry. So for reasons that we must never know, those 'breakdowns' are to be the goat. That
they were more likely to be not break - but 'stand-downs' is not for us to pry. Certainly the one-hour 20 minute failure
to put fighter planes in the air could not have been due to a breakdown throughout the entire Air Force along the East
Coast. Mandatory standard operational procedure had been told to cease and desist.
Meanwhile, the media were assigned their familiar task of inciting public opinion against bin Laden, still not the
proven mastermind. These media blitzes often resemble the magicians classic gesture of distraction: as you watch the
rippling bright colours of his silk handkerchief in one hand, he is planting the rabbit in your pocket with the other.
We were quickly assured that Osama's enormous family with its enormous wealth had broken with him, as had the royal
family of his native Saudi Arabia. The CIA swore, hand on heart, that Osama had not worked for them in the war against
the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Finally, the rumour that Bush family had in any way profited by its long
involvement with the bin Laden family was - what else? - simply partisan bad taste.
But Bush Jr's involvement goes back at least to 1979 when his first failed attempt to become a player in the big Texas
oil league brought him together with one James Bath of Houston, a family friend, who have Bush Jr. $50,000 for a 5 per
cent stake in Bush's firm Arbusto Energy. At this time, according to Wayne Madsen ('In These Times' - Institute for
Public Affairs No. 25), Bath was 'the sole US business representative for Salem bin Laden, head of the family and a
brother (one of 17) to Osama bin Laden... In a statement issued shortly after the 11 September attacks, the White House
vehemently denied the connection, insisting that Bath invested his own money, not Salem bin Laden's, in Arbusto. In
conflicting statements, Bush at first denied ever knowing Bath, then acknowledged his stake in Arbusto and that he was
aware Bath represented Saudi interests ... after several reincarnations, Arbusto emerged in 1986 as Harken Energy
Corporation.'
Behind the Junior Bush is the senior Bush, gainfully employed by the Carlyle Group which has ownership in at least 164
companies worldwide, inspiring admiration in that staunch friend to the wealthy, the Wall Street Journal, which noted,
as early as 27 September 2001, 'If the US boosts defence spending in its quest to stop Osama bin Laden's alleged
terrorist activities, there may be one unexpected beneficiary: bin Laden's family ... is an investor in a fund
established by Carlyle Group, a well-connected Washington merchant bank specialising in buyouts of defence and aerospace
companies ... Osama is one of more than 50 children of Mohammed bin Laden, who built the family's $5 billion business.'
But Bush pere et fils, in pursuit of wealth and office, are beyond shame or, one cannot help but think, good sense.
There is a suggestion that they are blocking investigation of the bin Laden connection with terrorism. Agent France
Press reported on 4 November 2001: 'FBI agents probing relatives of Saudi-born terror suspect Osama ... were told to
back off soon after George W. Bush became president ...' According to BBC TV's Newsnight (6 Nov 2001), '... just days
after the hijackers took off from Boston aiming for the Twin Towers, a special charter flight out of the same airport
whisked 11 members of Osama's family off to Saudi Arabia. That did not concern the White House, whose official line is
that the bin Ladens are above suspicion.' 'Above the Law' (Green Press, 14 February 2002) sums up: 'We had what looked
like the biggest failure of the intelligence community since Pearl Harbor but what we are learning now is it wasn't a
failure, it was a directive.' True? False? Bush Jr will be under oath during the impeachment interrogation. Will we hear
'What is a directive? What is is?'
Although the US had, for some years, fingered Osama as a mastermind terrorist, no serious attempt had been made pre-9/11
to 'bring him to justice dead or alive, innocent or guilty', as Texan law of the jungle requires. Clinton's plan to act
was given to Condeleezza Rice by Sandy Berger, you will recall, but she says she does not.
As far back as March 1996 when Osama was in Sudan, Major General Elfatih Erwa, Sudanese Minister for Defence, offered to
extradite him. According to the Washington Post (3 October 2001), 'Erwa said he would happily keep close watch on bin
Laden for the United States. But if that would not suffice, the government was prepared to place him in custody and hand
him over ... [US officials] said, "just ask him to leave the country. Just don't let him go to Somalia", where he had
once been given credit for the successful al-Qaeda attack on American forces that in '93 that killed 18 Rangers.' Erwa
said in an interview, 'We said he will go to Afghanistan, and they [US officials] said, "Let him."'
In 1996 Sudan expelled Osama and 3,000 of his associates. Two years later the Clinton administration, in the great
American tradition of never having to say thank you for Sudan's offer to hand over Osama, proceeded to missile-attack
Sudan's al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory on the grounds that Sudan was harboring bin Laden terrorists who were making
chemical and biological weapons when the factory was simply making vaccines for the UN.
Four years later, John O'Neill, a much admired FBI agent, complained in the Irish Times a month before the attacks, 'The
US State Department - and behind it the oil lobby who make up President Bush's entourage - blocked attempts to prove bin
Laden's guilt. The US ambassador to Yemen forbade O'Neill (and his FBI team) ... from entering Yemen in August 2001.
O'Neill resigned in frustration and took on a new job as head of security at the World Trade Centre. He died in the 11
September attack.' Obviously, Osama has enjoyed bipartisan American support since his enlistment in the CIA's war to
drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan. But by 9/11 there was no Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, indeed there was no
Soviet Union.
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A World Made Safe For Peace And Pipelines
I watched Bush and Cheney on CNN when the Axis of Evil speech was given and the 'long war' proclaimed. Iraq, Iran and
North Korea were fingered as enemies to be clobbered because they might or might not be harbouring terrorists who might
or might not destroy us in the night. So we must strike first whenever it pleases us. Thus, we declared 'war on
terrorism' - an abstract noun which cannot be a war at all as you need a country for that. Of course, there was innocent
Afghanistan, which was levelled from a great height, but then what's collateral damage - like an entire country - when
you're targeting the personification of all evil according to Time and the NY Times and the networks?
As it proved, the conquest of Afghanistan had nothing to do with Osama. He was simply a pretext for replacing the
Taliban with a relatively stable government that would allow Union Oil of California to lay its pipeline for the profit
of, among others, the Cheney-Bush junta.
Background? All right. The headquarters of Unocal are, as might be expected, in Texas. In December 1997, Taliban
representatives were invited to Sugarland, Texas. At that time, Unocal had already begun training Afghan men in pipeline
construction, with US government approval. BBC News, (4 December 1997): 'A spokesman for the company Unocal said the
Taliban were expected to spend several days at the company's [Texas] headquarters ... a BBC regional correspondent says
the proposal to build a pipeline across Afghanistan is part of an international scramble to profit from developing the
rich energy resources of the Caspian Sea.' The Inter Press Service (IPS) reported: 'some Western businesses are warming
up to the Taliban despite the movement's institutionalisation of terror, massacres, abductions and impoverishment.' CNN
(6 October 1996): 'The United States wants good ties [with the Taliban] but can't openly seek them while women are being
oppressed.'
The Taliban, rather better organised than rumoured, hired for PR one Leila Helms, a niece of Richard Helms, former
director of the CIA. In October 1996, the Frankfurter Rundschau reported that Unocal 'has been given the go-ahead from
the new holders of power in Kabul to build a pipeline from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan to Pakistan ..' This was a real
coup for Unocal as well as other candidates for pipelines, including Condoleezza's old employer Chevron. Although the
Taliban was already notorious for its imaginative crimes against the human race, the Wall Street Journal, scenting big
bucks, fearlessly announced: 'Like them or not, the Taliban are the players most capable of achieving peace in
Afghanistan at this moment in history.' The NY Times (26 May 1997) leapt aboard the pipeline juggernaut. 'The Clinton
administration has taken the view that a Taliban victory would act as counterweight to Iran ... and would offer the
possibility of new trade routes that could weaken Russian and Iranian influence in the region.'
But by 1999, it was clear that the Taliban could not provide the security we would need to protect our fragile
pipelines. The arrival of Osama as warrior for Allah on the scene refocused, as it were, the bidding. New alliances were
now being made. The Bush administration soon buys the idea of an invasion of Afghanistan, Frederick Starr, head of the
Central Asia Institute at Johns Hopkins University, wrote in the Washington Post (19 December 2000): 'The US has quietly
begun to align itself with those in the Russian government calling for military action against Afghanistan and has toyed
with the idea of a new raid to wipe out bin Laden.'
Although with much fanfare we went forth to wreak our vengeance on the crazed sadistic religious zealot who slaughtered
3,000 American citizens, once that 'war' was under way, Osama was dropped as irrelevant and so we are back to the Unocal
pipeline, now a go-project. In the light of what we know today, it is unlikely that the junta was ever going to capture
Osama alive: he has tales to tell. One of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's best numbers now is: 'Where is he?
Somewhere? Here? There? Somewhere? Who knows?' And we get his best twinkle. He must also be delighted - and amazed -
that the media have bought the absurd story that Osama, if alive, would still be in Afghanistan, underground, waiting to
be flushed out instead of in a comfortable mansion in Osama-loving Jakarta, 2,000 miles to the East and easily
accessible by Flying Carpet One.
Many commentators of a certain age have noted how Hitlerian our junta sounds as it threatens first one country for
harbouring terrorists and then another. It is true that Hitler liked to pretend to be the injured - or threatened -
party before he struck. But he had many great predecessors not least Imperial Rome. Stephen Gowan's War in Afghanistan:
A $28 Billion Racket quotes Joseph Schumpeter who, 'in 1919, described ancient Rome in a way that sounds eerily like the
United States in 2001: "There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or
under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome's allies; and if Rome had no allies, the
allies would be invented ... The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always being attacked by
evil-minded neighbours."' We have only outdone the Romans in turning metaphors such as the war on terrorism, or poverty,
or Aids into actual wars on targets we appear, often, to pick at random in order to maintain turbulence in foreign
lands.
As of 1 August 2002, trial balloons were going up all over Washington DC to get world opinion used to the idea that
'Bush of Afghanistan' had gained a title as mighty as his father's 'Bush of the Persian Gulf' and Junior was now eager
to add Iraq-Babylon to his diadem. These various balloons fell upon Europe and the Arab world like so many lead weights.
But something new has been added since the classic Roman Hitlerian mantra, 'they are threatening us, we must attack
first'. Now everything is more of less out in the open. The International Herald Tribune wrote in August 2002: 'The
leaks began in earnest on 5 July, when the New York Times described a tentative Pentagon plan that it said called for an
invasion by a US force of up to 250,000 that would attack Iraq from the north, south and west. On 10 July, the Times
said that Jordan might be used as a base for the invasion. The Washington Post reported, 28 July, that "many senior US
military officers contend that Saddam Hussein poses no immediate threat ..."' And the status quo should be maintained.
Incidentally, this is the sort of debate that the founding fathers intended the Congress, not military bureaucrats, to
conduct in the name of we the people. But that sort of debate has, for a long time, been denied us.
One refreshing note is now being struck in a fashion unthinkable in imperial Rome: the cheerful admission that we
habitually resort to provocation. The Tribunecontinues: 'Donald Rumsfeld has threatened to jail any one found to have
been behind the leaks. But a retired army general, Fred Woerner, tends to see a method behind the leaks. "We may already
be executing a plan," he said recently. "Are we involved in a preliminary psychological dimension of causing Iraq to do
something to justify a US attack or make concessions? Somebody knows.' That is plain.
Elsewhere in this interesting edition of the Herald Tribune wise William Pfaff writes: 'A second Washington debate is
whether to make an unprovoked attack on Iran to destroy a nuclear power reactor being built with Russian assistance,
under inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency, within the terms of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty of
which Iran is a signatory ... No other government would support such an action, other than Israel's (which) would do so
not because it expected to be attacked by Iran but because it, not unjustifiably, opposes any nuclear capacity in the
hands of any Islamic government.'
********************
Suspect States And The Tom-Toms Of Revenge
'Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it compromises and develops the
germ of every other. As the parent of armies, war encourages debts and taxes, the known instruments for bringing the
many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the executive is extended ... and all the
means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people ...' Thus, James Madison warned us
at the dawn of our republic.
Post 9/11, thanks to the 'domination of the few', Congress and the media are silent while the executive, through
propaganda and skewed polls, seduces the public mind as hitherto unthinkable centers of power like Homeland Defence (a
new Cabinet post to be placed on top of the Defence Department) are being constructed and 4 per cent of the country has
recently been invited to join Tips, a civilian spy system to report on anyone who looks suspicious or ... who objects to
what the executive is doing at home or abroad?
Although every nation knows how - if it has the means and the will - to protect itself from thugs of the sort that
brought us 9/11, war is not an option. Wars are for nations not root-less gangs. You put a price on their heads and hunt
them down. In recent years, Italy has been doing that with the Sicilian Mafia; and no one has yet suggested bombing
Palermo.
But the Cheney-Bush junta wants a war in order to dominate Afghanistan, build a pipeline, gain control of the oil of
Eurasia's Stans for their business associates as well as to do as much damage to Iraq and Iran on the grounds that one
day those evil countries may carpet our fields of amber grain with anthrax or something.
The media, never much good a analysis, are more and more breathless and incoherent. On CNN, even the stolid Jim Clancy
started to hyperventilate when an Indian academic tried to explain how Iraq was once our ally and 'friend' in its war
against our Satanic enemy Iran. 'None of that conspiracy stuff,' snuffed Clancy. Apparently, 'conspiracy stuff' is now
shorthand for unspeakable truth.
As of August, at least among economists, a consensus was growing that, considering our vast national debt (we borrow $2
billion a day to keep the government going) and a tax base seriously reduced by the junta in order to benefit the 1 per
cent who own most of the national wealth, there is no way that we could ever find the billions needed to destroy Iraq in
'a long war' or even a short one, with most of Europe lined up against us. Germany and Japan paid for the Gulf War,
reluctantly - with Japan, at the last moment, irritably quarrelling over the exchange rate at the time of the contract.
Now Germany's Schroder has said no. Japan is mute.
But the tom-toms keep beating revenge; and the fact that most of the world is opposed to our war seems only to bring
hectic roses to the cheeks of the Bush administration (Bush Snr of the Carlyle Group, Bush Jnr formerly of Harken,
Cheney, formerly of Halliburton, Rice, formerly of Chevron, Rumsfeld, formerly of Occidental). If ever an administration
should recuse itself in matters dealing with energy, it is the current junta. But this is unlike any administration in
our history. Their hearts are plainly elsewhere, making money, far from our mock Roman temples, while we, alas, are left
only with their heads, dreaming of war, preferably against weak peripheral states.
Mohammed Heikal is a brilliant Egyptian journalist-observer, and sometime Foreign Minister. On 10 October 2001, he said
to the Guardian: 'Bin Laden does not have the capabilities for an operation of this magnitude. When I hear Bush talking
about al-Qaeda as if it were Nazi Germany or the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, I laugh because I know what is
there. Bin Laden has been under surveillance for years: every telephone call was monitored and al-Qaeda has been
penetrated by US intelligence, Pakistani intelligence, Saudi intelligence, Egyptian intelligence. They could not have
kept secret an operation that required such a degree of organisation and sophistication.
The former president of Germany's domestic intelligence service, Eckehardt Werthebach (American Free Press, 4 December
2001) spells it out. The 9/11 attacks required 'years of planning' while their scale indicates that they were a product
of 'state-organised actions'. There it is. Perhaps, after all, Bush Jnr was right to call it a war. But which state
attacked us?
Will the suspects please line up. Saudi Arabia? 'No, no. Why we are paying you $50 million a year for training the royal
bodyguard on our own holy if arid soil. True the kingdom contains many wealthy well-educated enemies but ...' Bush Snr
and Jnr exchange a knowing look. Egypt? No way. Dead broke despite US baksheesh. Syria? No funds. Iran? Too proud to
bother with a parvenu state like the US. Israel? Sharon is capable of anything. But he lacks the guts and the grace of
the true Kamikaze. Anyway, Sharon was not in charge when this operation began with the planting of 'sleepers' around the
US flight schools 5 or 6 years ago. The United States? Elements of corporate America would undeniably prosper from a
'massive external attack' that would make it possible for us to go to war whenever the President sees fit while
suspending civil liberties. (The 342 pages of the USA Patriot Act were plainly prepared before 9/11.) Bush Snr and Jnr
are giggling now. Why? Because Clinton was president back then. As the former president leaves the line of suspects, he
says, more in anger than in sorrow: 'When we left the White House we had a plan for an all-out war on al-Qaeda. We
turned it over to this administration and they did nothing. Why?' Biting his lip, he goes. The Bushes no longer giggle.
Pakistan breaks down: 'I did it! I confess! I couldn't help myself. Save me. I am an evil-doer!'
Apparently, Pakistan did do it - or some of it. We must now go back to 1979 when 'the largest covert operation in the
history of the CIA' was launched in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Central Asia specialist Ahmed Rashid
wrote (Foreign Affairs, November-December 1999): 'With the active encouragement of the CIA and Pakistan's ISI (Inter
Services Intelligence) who wanted to turn the Afghan jihad into a global war, waged by all Muslim states against the
Soviet Union, some 35,000 Muslim radicals, from 40 Islamic countries joined Afghanistan's fight between 1982 and '92 ...
more than 100,000 foreign Muslim radicals were directly influenced by the Afghanistan jihad.' The CIA covertly trained
and sponsored these warriors.
In March 1985, President Reagan issued National Security Decision Directive 166, increasing military aid while CIA
specialists met with the ISI counterparts near Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Jane's Defence Weekly (14 September 2001) gives the
best overview: 'The trainers were mainly from Pakistan's ISI agency who learnt their craft from American Green Beret
commandos and Navy Seals in various US training establishments.' This explains the reluctance of the administration to
explain why so many unqualified persons, over so long a time, got visas to visit our hospitable shores. While in
Pakistan, 'mass training of Afghan [zealots] was subsequently conducted by the Pakistan army under the supervision of
the elite Special Services ... In 1988, with US knowledge, bin Laden created al-Qaeda (The Base); a conglomerate of
quasi-independent Islamic terrorist cells spread across 26 or so countries. Washington turned a blind eye to al-Qaeda.'
When Mohamed Atta's plane struck the World Trade Centre's North Tower, George W. Bush and the child at the Florida
elementary school were discussing her goat. By coincidence, our word 'tragedy' comes from the Greek: for 'goat' tragos
plus oide for 'song'. 'Goat-song'. It is highly suitable that this lament, sung in ancient satyr plays, should have been
heard again at the exact moment when we were struck by fire from heaven, and a tragedy whose end is nowhere in sight
began for us.
© Gore Vidal 2002
******** ENDS ********
(NOTE: The above is a retyping of the article in The Observer. Typos may have seeped in. Thanks to J.H.)
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