Is The Tipping Point Here ?

You can sense it cant you, the spirit of death approaching our world.

It is distant now, but it is slouching closer daily.

Like a vampyre climbing up the creaking stairs in the middle of the night, you can sense it approaching.

You cannot see it, but you know its coming.

Silent in the darkness and treading oh so slowly, and so carefully, so as not to alert its terrified prey.

I cannot discern its true form just yet.

It is nebulous, almost protean.

Shifting from form to form amidst the connections of the web of fate, it evolves instant by instant.

But you can feel its sinister intent.

It is like the lead up to the 911 attacks, when you could sense this epic event was about to happen and that was approaching us from the future - for the weight of its impact was a burdern upon us long before the actual event.

Jung said that some events are so epic that they cast a shadow forwards in time - long before they ever happen.

Will it be a comet strike, a solar flare that brings down civilisation, an attack on Iran that triggers WW3 or a terrorist event that will change the shape of the future forever - such as a nuclear plant being hijacked and blown up ?

Who knows.

But you can feel this event moving towards us through future time itself.

A darkness that seeks its birth.

I suspect its cradle will be the Middle East, the sand and dirt upon which it will be born.

Will the deserts burn again, where the blood red roses bloom in the night of day ?

Will the old desert gods, their ancient dusty throats parched by time, awake to lap again at the limpid blood pools of fresh sacrifices ?

Will the hill where the shadow of the cross once fell, witness now a new crucifixion, though this time of a nation and a people engulfed in an atomic conflagration ?

Will wild poppies bloom bright on Persian sands, furious as dying suns, and scorch the desert into glass ?

I sense this thing.

The death birth cry of the New World Order.

Israelism, Zionism, 911 and Pavlovs Dogs

The only people as self serving as the Pro-Israelist media are the anti-Israelists that blame everything on Israel.

Take for instance Afghanistan.

Anyone with a brain knows that the reason we are in afghanistan is not to ;

1)Fight terrorism
2)Find Osama Bin Laden
3)Build democracy


We are simply in Afghanistan because the oil and gas the US and UK needs from the Central Asian republics (Eurasia) has to be pumped through Afghanistan and Pakistan in order to avoid the pipelines having to transect Russian or Iranian soil.

Yet the anti-Israel mob still insist on blaming Israel for our being in Afghanistan.

This is simply the biggest load of bollocks I have ever read.

Israel has no strategic interest in Afghanistan. Iran before the invasion of the US regarded Afghanistan as a threat, simply as Iran has the highest number of heroin addicts on the planet and the heroin that supplies the Iranian addicts comes via Afghanistan and because the Taliban and Iran were hostile to each other.

Iran is mainly Shi'ite and the Taliban mostly Sunni ;

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/1998/09/wwwh8915.html

http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/meast/9809/15/iran.afghan.tensions.02/index.html

Iran and the Taliban almost went to war in 1998 - it is only after the Taliban were replaced by Karzai that Iranian and Afghan relations began to improve, leading to a new era in economic co-operation.

In fact the US puppet Karazia who runs Afghanistan is seeking closer co-operation with Iran, whilst the Taliban who were regarded as threat to Iran, are being hunted and killed by karzai's army.

If America and Israel really wanted Afghanistan to be hostile to Iran then they should have left the Taliban in power - instead Karzai wants good relations with Iran ;

http://www.parstimes.com/news/archive/2005/rfe/afghanistan_iran_relations.html

" Iran and Afghanistan are also cooperating in the fight against the trafficking of drugs from Afghanistan.

Iran’s strained relations with the United States have not prevented Tehran from strengthening its economic and trade cooperation with Kabul since the U.S.-led fall of the Taliban in late 2001.

Colonel Christopher Langton, who heads the defense analysis department at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said Iran is an important country in the future reconstruction and development of Afghanistan.

“They are being closely linked by efforts against the Taliban in the past, but also because of the influence that Iran can bring there with the Hazara population [who, like Iranians, are Shi'a Muslims]. And in the development sector, there are already projects which Iran is involved in -- for instance, the road from Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf up through Afghanistan to Central Asia is a very, very important project for the future of Afghanistan," Langton said. "There is a whole list of political, economic, and security issues which connect Afghanistan and Iran.”

Iran and Afghanistan are also connected historically and culturally. And Iran’s strained relations with the United States have not prevented Tehran from strengthening its economic and trade cooperation with Kabul since the U.S.-led fall of the Taliban in late 2001. "


The removal of the Taliban and the election of Karzai have drawn Iran and Afghanistan closer, not further apart.

Therefore where is the payoff for Israel if Iran and Afghanistan are now not wasting time, money, weapons and troops fighting each other ?

The same thing happened in relation to Iraq, where the downfall of Saddam Hussein INCREASED Iranian influence and power in Iraq, not decreased it.

Therefore the idea that Israel wanted the US in Iraq and Afghanistan in order to destabilise Iran was either the most stupid plan in history - or the idea that such plans existed is one of the most stupid ideas in history.

No-one, neither the Pro-Israelists in the media, or the anti-Israelists ever stop to think that perhaps they are being played, and that by defining everything in the terms of Israel, that they are doing exactly what someone wants.

The US is divided into two camps ;

1) The Pro-Israel media

2) The Anti-Israel groups

The former is powerful in relation to what we see on TV and read in our papers whilst the latter is powerful in regard to the Internet.

The Military-Industrial Block therefore has an interest, along with both sides of the 'Israelists' as I define them - to define and frame every issue in the context of Israel.

The Israelists know that by defining every issue in relation to Israel it means they consolidate their own people around that issue - the pro-Israel media can then use the issue of Israel to get their people to support the issue on TV and in the papers, whilst the anti-Israel groups can use the issue to consolidate their own groups around the issue.

Yet who really benefits - it is the Military Industrial Block who sits in the middle, keeping its head down whilst both sides wage war with each other over the issue of Israel.

For instance - the media were told that the Iraq war was designed to protect Israel, so therefore the media beat the war drums to ensure the interests of Israel were protected.

At the same time the anti-Israel groups believed that the Iraq war was about Israel, so when they opposed the war they defined their opposition in relation to Israel.

Meanwhile the real motive for the war, OIL, was cut out of the debate (apart from sections of the far left and far right ) - and the media constantly talked about scuds filled with WMD's hitting Israeli cities and the opposition talked about AIPAC and the US using the war to support Israel.

This how the Israelists have been trained like Pavlovs Dogs - whenever anyone rings the 'Israel Bell' then both sides start barking and they make so much noise that the truth gets lost between them.

The pro-Israel mobs pump out propaganda on the TV to bolster the case for war, whilst the anti-Israel mobs pump out propaganda on the internet to bolster their case against the war.

Both sides allow the truth to be hidden as the entire debate is framed in the context of Israel.

Every now and then some 'ex-insider' of the US government or military will pop into public prominence and announce' I was told the war was about Israel' and then both sides jump on the statement that the war was about Israel in order to bolster their case - whilst the real reason for the war remains hidden.

Both sides never think for themselves ' Hey man, what if this dude is simply telling us what he has been told and paid to say, and that it wasnt really about Israel' instead they accept what they say as gospel and then both start jumping up and down about Israel even more !

Its pathetic.

Of course the media wins the public debate as it the most powerful and the war goes ahead with massive public backing as the public have also been conditioned by the media to support Israel or they are 'antisemites', and the war and the issues around the war are forever defined in relation to Israel and NOT OIL.

An example of how Obama has used this conditioning as regards Israel for his own political benefit is how he has employed so many Zionists and Jews in his administration.

He has done this as the pro-Israel camp will see his appointees their natural allies in defence of Israel and not attack them or Obama's policies on the TV and in the media for fear of being seen as 'anti-semitic', whilst the anti-Israel camp will constantly target Obama and his spokesmen because of their race and support for Israel - and thereby also never focus on their real agenda or attack them on the grounds of their policies.

Therefore the entire issue is dominated by the issue Israel - and this allows the truth to be hidden away whilst both sides adopt reflexive positions either for or against Israel.

This is a superb plan - it utilises Jewish ethno-communalism and Zionist influence in the media to obscure and hide the truth (classic neo-conservative and neo-trotskyite methodology - The Noble Lie ) whilst it allows the opponents of everything Obama says and does if they mention Israel or the Jewishness of his staff to be painted as a rabid anti-semites.

To be frank I am sick of both sides.

The pro-Israel media were suckered into supporting the Iraq and Afghanistan war simply because they believed it was in the interests of Israel - when the end result has been to consolidate the Middle East around the issue of religious and tribal loyalty instead of nationalism - and thereby united Shi'ites in Iran and Iraq and at the same time has led to Iran and Afghanistan drawing closer whilst Iran funds Hamas and Hezbollah to checkmate Israel.

The anti-Israel camp by constantly depicting every issue as about Isarel, rather than simple truth such as OIL in Iraq and the OIL and gas pipelines in Afghanistan, have merely ensured that no real opposition to the plots of the Military Industrial Block can develop for people fear being called 'anti-semitic' if they are heard or seen criticising Israel - each side sits in their own pro/anti Israel bunker masturbating over the issue of Israel whilst the Military Industrial Block is free to do as it wants, invading nations, stealing their land and natural resources.

It is time that the Israelists, those whose loyalty is to Israel or those who hatred is directed at Israel, both fucked off.

The Israelists in the media have been played as fools by the Military-Industrial Block and the Israelists in the anti-Israel camp have also been played as fools by the same Military Industrial Block.

Both have allowed the Military Industrial Block to hide their crimes and duplicity even in events such as 911.

The fools in the 'Truther' movement who see the shadowy figure of Israel behind the 911 attacks simply serve the interests of those within the US Military industrial Block who want their role in the 911 attack to be hidden from public view.

Those who talk about 911 as being the responsibility of the US Military-Industrial Block can then be lumped into the anti-semitic 'Truthers' camp and this alienates the majority of normal people whilst allowing the guilty to hide in plain sight.

Instead of debate we have two wild dogs barking at each other - one pro-Israel dog in the media and one anti-Israel dog on the internet.

Meanwhile the Miliatry Industrial Block knows it can do as it wants as the barking dogs are distracting everyones attention away from what they are doing.

The Israelists are more than just fools, they are dangerous as they provide the smoke and mirrors for the real devils to get on with their work in private.

The Israelists merely allow the guilty to hide in plain sight.


I am an Pro-Israel and anti-Zionist.

I am Pro-America and anti-The US Military Industrial Block.

I am Pro-Palestine and anti-Islamist.

I am anti-Islamism not anti-Islam.

I am Pro-the Iranian people and pro-the Iranian nation and anti-Iranian Islamist fundamentalism

I am Pro-Christian and anti-Christian Fundamentalism

I am pro-Fatah and anti-Hamas as Fatah are NATIONALISTS and Hamas are Islamists who want a global caliphate which is antithesis of nationalism.

An anti-semite is not someone who is anti-Zionist as Zionism is a political ideology

Anti-Israelism is not a position that any nationalist can take as Israel is a nation and nationalists support the right of all nations to exist.

Any 'nationalist' that says they are against Israel is an anti-semite using nationalism to hide behind.

Anti-Zionism is not anti-Israelism, this is because Zionism, a political ideology, is where the agents of Right Wing Israeli politics have invaded, usurped and comprimised our political, economic and media systems in the US and UK to serve the interests of the Israeli political right wing instead of serving the interests of our own nations.

We must differentiate between Israelism and the Israelists, both pro-Israel and anti-Israel, in order to concentrate our attention on the US and UK Military Industrial Block and the activities of the political Zionists in our nations ( AIPAC, Board of Deputies of British Jews, Searchlight, Christian Zionist groups, evangelical Christian fundamentalist zionist groups, rightwing conservative and left wing Zionists etc ).

It is the US and UK Military Industrial Blocks, the Zionists in our nations, Christian Zionist fundamentalists, the Taliban, the Iranian mullahs and conservative politicians within Iran, Hamas in Palestine and the Islamists in our nations that are the source of our problems, not America and Americans, Jews, Muslims, Israel, Afghanistan, Iran, Christians, Judaism and Islam.

The 911 Saudi / BAE Nexus Becomes Clear

Interesting news from Saudi Arabia that a CIA asset in the royasl family, Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, has been arrested for initiating a coup against the monarch using 200 members of the security services - and from this we can deduce that these are the saudi security network that assisted the 911 terrorists with money and training to undertake the attack.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=102313§ionid=351020205

http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=112832.0;wap2

Now we know who was the 911 Saudi contact man and also the members of the security services he used to run the 911 hijackers. The utter arrogance of the man to send money via his wife direct to the 911 hijackers to pay for their flight training costs is proof that the conspirators thought they were above the law.

A man who is prepared to initiate a coup against his own family for money and power is a man more than capable of organising the 911 hijackers.


http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=102313§ionid=351020205

What is shocking is that not only is Princess Haifa the husband of the Saudi Prince Bandar who directly passed funds to the 911 hijackers passed to her from the BAE slush fund ( worth tens of billions of dollars) that derived from the Al-Yamamah arms deal.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7244051.stm

http://www.armedforces-int.com/news/2008/04/10/sfos-bae-systems-inquiry-drop-unlawful-high-court.asp

The astonishing fact that a British company BAE through its illegal slush fund to bribe members of the Saudi royal family to award them contracts for amrs deals were the ones who funded the 911 hijackers via Princess Haifa is something the British media refuse to even mention. Yet it is a fact.


http://visibility911.com/jongold/?p=137

Late 1990s: CIA Director Tenet Has Direct, Private Channels to Saudi Leaders
George Tenet, appointed as CIA director in 1997, develops close personal relationships with top Saudi officials, especially Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the US. Tenet develops a habit of meeting with Bandar at his home near Washington about once a month. But CIA officers handling Saudi issues complain that Tenet doesn’t tell them what he discusses with Bandar. Often they are only able to learn about Tenet’s deals with the Saudis later and through Saudi contacts, not from their own boss. Tenet also makes one of his closest aides the chief of the CIA station in Saudi Arabia. This aide often communicates directly with Tenet, avoiding the usual chain of command. Apparently as a favor to the Saudis, CIA analysts are discouraged from writing reports raising questions about the Saudi relationship to Islamic extremists. [Risen, 2006, pp. 185]


April 1998: Hijacker Associate Receives Saudi Money; FBI Fails to Investigate
Osama Basnan, a Saudi living in California, claims to write a letter to Saudi Arabian Prince Bandar bin Sultan and his wife, Princess Haifa bint Faisal, asking for financial help because his wife needs thyroid surgery. The Saudi embassy sends Basnan $15,000 and pays the surgical bill. However, according to University of California at San Diego hospital records, Basnan’s wife, Majeda Dweikat, is not treated until April 2000. [Los Angeles Times, 11/24/2002] Basnan will later come under investigation for possibly using some of this money to support two of the 9/11 hijackers who arrive in San Diego, although the 9/11 Commission has concluded that evidence does not support these charges. [9/11 Commission, 6/16/2004] Prior to this time, the FBI had several chances to investigate Basnan, but failed to do so. In 1992, they received information suggesting a connection between him and a militant group later associated with bin Laden. In 1993, they received reports that Basnan hosted a party for al-Qaeda leader Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman the year before, but again they failed to investigate. [US Congress, 7/24/2003 pdf file] According to one US official, Basnan later “celebrate[s] the heroes of September 11” and talks about “what a wonderful, glorious day it had been” at a party shortly after 9/11. [Newsweek, 11/24/2002; San Diego Magazine, 9/2003]

December 4, 1999: Saudi Ambassador’s Wife Gives Funds that Are Possibly Passed to 9/11 Hijackers

Princess Haifa bint Faisal, the wife of Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the US, begins sending monthly cashier’s checks of between $2,000 and $3,500 (accounts differ) to Majeda Dweikat, the Jordanian wife of Osama Basnan, a Saudi living in San Diego. Accounts also differ over when the checks were first sent (between November 1999 and about March 2000; a Saudi government representative has stated December 4, 1999 [Fox News, 11/23/2002] ). Basnan’s wife signs many of the checks over to her friend Manal Bajadr, the wife of Omar al-Bayoumi. The payments are made through Riggs Bank, a bank which appears to have turned a blind eye to Saudi embassy transaction and also has longstanding ties to covert CIA operations (see July 2003). [Newsweek, 11/22/2002; Newsweek, 11/24/2002; Guardian, 11/25/2002; Washington Times, 11/26/2002] Some later suggest that the money from the wife of the Saudi ambassador passes through the al-Bayoumi and Basnan families as intermediaries and ends up in the hands of the two hijackers. The payments from Princess Haifa continue until May 2002 and may total $51,000, or as much as $73,000. [Newsweek, 11/22/2002; MSNBC, 11/27/2002] While living in the San Diego area, al-Bayoumi and Basnan are heavily involved in helping with the relocation of, and offering financial support to, Saudi immigrants in the community. [Los Angeles Times, 11/24/2002] In late 2002, al-Bayoumi claims he did not pass any money along to the hijackers. [Washington Times, 12/4/2002] Basnan has variously claimed to know al-Bayoumi, not to know him at all, or to know him only vaguely. [ABC News, 11/25/2002; Arab News, 11/26/2002; ABC News, 11/26/2002; MSNBC, 11/27/2002] However, earlier reports say Basnan and his wife were “very good friends” of al-Bayoumi and his wife. Both couples lived at the Parkwood Apartments at the same time as the two hijackers; prior to that, the couples lived together in a different apartment complex. In addition, the two wives were arrested together in April 2001 for shoplifting. [San Diego Union-Tribune, 10/22/2002]

911, BAE and the Blair Connection

For a while the press have been making 'conjecture' ( aka assisting in the cover up ) as to why the Labour government and Tony Blair cancelled the investigation into the Saudi and British 'Al Yamamah' arms deal ;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6180945.stm

The government and the media said it was scrapped as it could damage intelligence relations between the UK and Saudi Arabuia.

Now we know the real reason - the inquiry would have revealed that the slush fund used by BAE to bribe corrupt Saudi officials, including members of the Saudi royal family, was used to directly fund the 911 hijackers.

Yes thats right - BAE money was sent to the 911 hijackers by members of the Saudi Royal family in order to fund their flight traning in the US.

911 was an inside job.

It was funded by the Military Industrial Block in the UK, US and Saudi Arabia.

Sections of the US, Israeli, Saudi Arabian and UK governments knew the 911 attacks were on their way and they all allowed it to happen - whilst warning the rich and powerful in New York to stay away from the Twin Towers on the morning of the attack.

They all conspired to allow the attacks to go ahead - and they all have the blood of the innocent thousands who died on their hands.




http://www.rense.com/general86/declass.htm


Declassified Documents On 911 By UK & Saudis

9-11 Cover Is Blown
By Jeffrey Steinberg

7-14-9

In the report that follows, you will discover that some of the most fundamental assumptions that you have been clinging to since Sept. 11, 2001--assumptions that Lyndon LaRouche warned against--have been a total fraud. Much of what you have been told about the events of 9/11 have been a hoax. The truth, which is clearly revealed in newly declassified documents, available through the National Archives, is that two leading presumed U.S. allies--Saudi Arabia and Great Britain--were up to their eyeballs in the attacks on New York City and Washington. The United States was betrayed by leading elements within the Saudi Arabian Royal Family and intelligence services, in league with the British Empire. And top officials of the Bush-Cheney White House, the Justice Department, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were both aware of, and fully complicit in the coverup of the crime of the century.

The Anglo-Saudi alliance behind the 9/11 atrocity is represented, most graphically, by a 25-year-old secret intelligence arrangement, concealed beneath a lucrative arms-for-oil barter deal called ``al-Yamamah.'' There is now sufficient, credible evidence that funds from the offshore al-Yamamah accounts were funneled to at least two of the 9/11 hijackers, to warrant a high-profile Justice Department probe, without delay.

The newly released documents, when cross-gridded with other evidence already in the public domain, confirm the Anglo-Saudi hand behind 9/11, and debunk nearly eight years of conspiracy rubbish, that portrayed the attacks as a scheme by cave-dwellers and ``under the floorboard'' mysterious forces. The writings of a former LaRouche associate, Webster Tarpley, more or less typify the kind of off-course conspiracy mongering that is now thoroughly discredited by the new material and the larger picture assembled by EIR researchers.

Elements of the story have already been reported in EIR, and LaRouche instinctively pointed to the true nature of the operation, in a now-famous radio interview that he gave to the Salt Lake City-based syndicated radio host Dr. Jack Stockwell, as the hijacked planes were crashing into the Twin Towers and the Pentagonon the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

If the full implications of the new, confirming evidence of the Anglo-Saudi hand in the 9/11 attack are comprehended and acted on, by the appropriate U.S. and other government services, one of the root sources of global asymmetric warfare can be wiped out--with many other side benefits as well.

The New Evidence

Early this year, the National Archives released documents from the files of the 9/11 Commission, which were previously classified. Three of those documents, recently obtained by EIR, provide the ``smoking gun,'' proving the central role of Saudi intelligence, and the critical support role of British intelligence in the preparation, execution, and coverup of 9/11. The most significant of the documents, still partly classified, is a ``Memorandum for the Record,'' summarizing an April 23, 2004 interview with a Southern California-based FBI informant, who rented a room in his home to two of the 9/11 hijackers during 2000. Although the memorandum redacted the informant's name, other public sources have identified the man as Abdussattar Shaikh. His FBI handler has also been publicly named as Steven Butler.

In the interview, Shaikh provided a detailed account of his first encounter with the two 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar. In April 2000, Shaikh posted an announcement on the bulletin board at the Islamic Center of San Diego (ICSD), offering to rent rooms in his home to ``devout Muslims.'' At the time he posted the ad, Shaikh was already acting as a paid informant for the FBI. According to his account to 9/11 Commission investigators Quinn John Tamm, Jr. and Dietrich Snell, Shaikh was approached after Friday prayers by al-Hazmi, who said he and al-Mihdhar urgently needed housing. By Shaikh's account, the two men moved into his home on May 10, 2000. Al-Mihdhar left after six weeks, claiming that he was returning to Saudi Arabia to visit his wife and young child. Al-Hazmi lived in the room until Dec. 10, 2000, when he moved out to attend pilot school in Arizona.

At one point in the interview, the 9/11 investigators asked Dr. Shaikh about another Saudi, Omar al-Bayoumi. From the Commission document: ``Dr. Xxxxxx[Shaikh] noted that Omar al-Bayoumi also visited al-Hazmi at his house. Dr. Xxxxxx knew al-Bayoumi as a Saudi national who Dr. Xxxxxx met at the ICSD. Al-Bayoumi stated to Dr. Xxxxxx when he visited, that `I referred them (al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar) to you.' Dr. Xxxxxx restated that his was not the case and that he met the two in the hallway of the ICSD after the Friday prayer service.''

The report continued: ``Al-Hazmi did not like al-Bayoumi and told Dr. Xxxxxx that al-Bayoumi was `an agent for the Saudis.' Al-Hazmi complained to Dr. Xxxxxx that al-Bayoumi video taped people associated with the ICSD constantly. Dr. Xxxxxx noted that was his experience when he attended events at the ICSD. Dr. Xxxxxx said that al-Bayoumi always had his videotape recorder and sought comment to the open mike on the videotape recorder. Dr. Xxxxxx stated that, `I have heard that al-Bayoumi is an agent (of the Saudis).''

Dr. Shaikh's candid description of Omar al-Bayoumi as a Saudi intelligence agent, in regular contact with one of the 9/11 hijackers, is stunning in its own right. The fact that Dr. Shaikh was an FBI informant, who, according to several U.S. intelligence sources, regularly received payments from the Bureau to keep tabs on the Muslim community in the San Diego area, and hosted two of the hijackers, is equally stunning. But the full extent of the al-Bayoumi dossier, as known to the FBI and other U.S. government agencies, goes well beyond the surface scandal.

Al-Bayoumi was far more than a ``frequent visitor'' to Dr. Shaikh's home, while al-Hazmi was living there. The essential facts are as follows.

On Jan. 15, 2000, al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar arrived at Los Angeles International Airport on a flight from Kuala Lampur, Malaysia, where they had attended a meeting of number of al-Qaeda members and allies. The two men were met at the airport by al-Bayoumi, who brought them to San Diego, rented them an apartment, co-signed the lease, and even put down $1,500 in deposit and rent. Al-Bayoumi would later arrange for the two men to enroll in flight training school.

Al-Bayoumi's links to three of the 9/11 hijackers (he hosted a third hijacker, Hani Hanjour, at his apartment on a number of occasions in the Spring of 2000, according to FBI and Congressional documents) prompted one Federal government source to tell reporters, ``Some Federal investigators suspect that al-Bayoumi could have been an advance man for the 9/11 hijackers.''

But al-Bayoumi was also, undisputedly, an agent of Saudi intelligence! According to the FBI and CIA dossier on him, and records from both the House-Senate joint intelligence probe and the 9/11 Commission, al-Bayoumi came to the United States in August 1994. He was previously employed by the Saudi Ministry of Defense, and continued to draw a salary of $3,000 a month from the Ministry after he moved to the United States, through 2002. In the U.S., he was formally listed as an employee of Dallah Avco, a Saudi defense company that held lucrative contracts with the Ministry of Defense and Aviation, and was owned by members of the Saudi Royal Family. According to U.S. Federal investigators, al-Bayoumi never actually did any work for Dallah Avco. However, his monthly salary from the firm increased to $3,500 right after al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar arrived in the U.S.A.

Further adding to al-Bayoumi's considerable personal finances, in June 1998, an anonymous contribution arrived from Saudi Arabia. The $500,000 was a down-payment on a new mosque, to be built in San Diego--with the proviso that Omar al-Bayoumi be appointed as director of maintenance, with an office and a guaranteed salary. Eyewitnesses told the FBI and the 9/11 Commission that al-Bayoumi was rarely seen at the mosque.

Al-Bayoumi was, however, in constant communication with top Saudi government officials in the United States and in Riyadh. According to the records of the joint Congressional investigation and the 9/11 Commission, between January 2000--when al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar arrived in California--and May 2000, al-Bayoumi made 32 calls to the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C., 37 calls to the Saudi Cultural Mission in Washington, and 24 calls to the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles. His contact at the Consulate was Fahad Thumairy, who held diplomatic credentials, but was one of the most virulently anti-American imams in the area. He would be deported from the United States after 9/11.

In late June or early July 2001, al-Bayoumi and his wife, Manal Ahmed Bagader, suddenly left San Diego, and moved to England, where al-Bayoumi ostensibly entered business school at Aston University. Within days after the 9/11 attacks, he was detained by Scotland Yard and held for one week. However, he was released for lack of evidence, and he immediately left England for Saudi Arabia.

Osama Basnan

Omar al-Bayoumi was not alone in his liaison work between Saudi intelligence and some of the 9/11 hijackers. He worked closely with another Saudi intelligence officer, Osama Basnan, who entered the United States in 1980 on a short-term tourist visa, but remained in the country until October 2002, when he and his wife were deported as illegal aliens.

An FBI report, written shortly after 9/11, warned that evidence gathered on Osama Basnan ``could indicate that he succeeded Omar al-Bayoumi and may be undertaking activities on behalf of the Government of Saudi Arabia.'' An FBI classified report, dated Oct. 3, 2001, noted that Basnan was in contact with members of the bin Laden family, living in the United States. In the days immediately following 9/11, members of the bin Laden family in the United States, along with other top Saudis, were quietly flown home--at a time when no other non-military flights were being allowed.

Basnan was a subject of FBI interest long before Sept. 11. In 1992, according to news accounts, Basnan was investigated by the Bureau for ties to Eritrean Islamic Jihad (EIJ), an organization that was closely linked to al-Qaeda by no later than 1996. On Oct. 17, 1992, Basnan, then living in Washington, D.C., hosted a party at his home for Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, the so-called ``blind sheikh'' now in jail for plotting terrorist attacks in New York City. At the time, according to U.S. intelligence sources, the FBI produced a still-classified report, detailing Basnan's work for the Saudi government, despite his ties to Islamic radicals.

Indeed, U.S. intelligence sources report that Basnan was arrested on drug charges in the Los Angeles area, but the charges were dropped, after intensive pressure from the Saudi Embassy.


The Ambassador and the Princess

If Omar al-Bayoumi's ties to the Saudi Ministry of Defense and Aviation are firmly established, his personal ties to the former Saudi Ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and his wife, Princess Haifa, are even less in dispute. In April 1998, Prince Bandar, who is also the son of the Saudi Defense Minister, Prince Sultan, sent a check to Basnan in the amount of $15,000. Bandar claims that the check was an ``act of charity,'' in response to a written appeal by Basnan for help in paying medical bills for his wife. Beginning in November 1999, just weeks before the two 9/11 hijackers arrived at the Los Angeles Airport, Princess Haifa began sending monthly cashiers checks, from her account at Riggs National Bank in Washington, to Basnan's wife, Majida Ibrahim Ahmad Dweikat. The checks continued until May 2002. The royal couple sent a total of $53-72,000 to Basnan and his wife. According to the House-Senate joint investigation, many of the cashier checks from Princess Haifa to Basnan's wife were signed over to the wife of Omar al-Bayoumi. Most of these transactions took place while Basnan and al-Bayoumi were ``handling'' the financial affairs of at least two of the 9/11 hijackers, al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar. And the pair of Saudi intelligence officers also had some, as yet not-fully-known ties to a third hijacker, Hani Hanjour.

Prince Bandar's BAE Bounty

At the time that Prince Bandar and Princess Haifa were making their ``charitable'' contributions to Basnan and al-Bayoumi, the then-Saudi Ambassador to the United States was on the receiving end of at least $2 billion in kickbacks from Great Britain's premier defense firm, BAE Systems. The BAE scandal exploded into the public view several years ago, when BBC, the London {Guardian}, and other publications revealed that BAE was making tens of billions of dollars in payouts to Saudi Defense Ministry officials, and other members of the Saudi Royal Family, in return for arms contracts worth a fortune.

The BAE-Saudi scandal dated all the way back to 1985, when Prince Bandar personally brokered a deal with then-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, to sell an initial $40 billion in BAE military hardware and services to Saudi Arabia, in return for Saudi crude oil. The deal, cynically known as ``al-Yamamah'' (``the Dove'') was far more than a barter arrangement. BAE padded the costs of the fighter jets, training planes, air defense systems and support services by an estimated one-third, to launder payoffs to top Saudis--including Prince Bandar. In return, Saudi Arabia delivered the equivalent of one super-tanker of oil {per day} (on average) to BAE, which had a contract with British Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell, to immediately sell the oil on the spot market. For the Saudis, it was a lucrative deal. Even aside from the kickbacks that lined the pockets of many a Saudi prince and ministry official, the crude oil cost the Saudis under $5 a barrel. BP and Royal Dutch Shell sold the oil at fantastic markups.

As the result of this unique arrangement, an offshore Anglo-Saudi intelligence slush fund was amassed, amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars, starting in 1985. In a semi-official biography of Prince Bandar, published several years ago, author William Simpson candidly wrote that al-Yamamah was, first and foremost, a geo-strategic partnership between London and Riyadh, which funneled money covertly to the Afghan mujahideen who were battling the Soviet Army in the 1980s; funded Chad in its border war with Libya; and bypassed the U.S. Congress to deliver American military hardware to the Saudi Air Force.

Some senior U.S. intelligence officials insist that a full investigation of Prince Bandar's role in the al-Yamamah scheme would reveal that some of the BAE payoffs went from the Bank of England, to Bandar's account at Riggs National Bank--into the hands of Basnan, al-Bayoumi, and the California 9/11 hijackers cell. By Aug. 2, 2003, so many questions had been raised about the Bandar payoffs to Basnan, that the Ambassador was forced to issue a personal statement, through the Saudi Embassy, branding the allegations ``baseless and not true,'' nothing more than ``rumor, innuendo, and untruths.'' He cited President George W. Bush, who ``praised the Saudi commitment to fighting terrorism.''

Bandar's efforts to cover up the Saudi government hand in 9/11 by invoking the words of President Bush only served to further infuriate those U.S. officials who were actually trying to get to the bottom of the Sept. 11 plot. House and Senate intelligence committee investigators knew, for example, that when their final ``Report of the Joint Inquiry into the Terrorist Attacks of Sept. 11, 2001'' was submitted to the White House for final review before publication, the entire text of a 28-page chapter, documenting evidence of Saudi government support for the hijackers--including the Bandar payments to Basnan--was blocked from publication and remains classified to this day. In a recent meeting with the families of the 9/11 victims, President Barack Obama was pressed to declassify the chapter.

Both Presidents Bush were so close to Prince Bandar that the longtime Saudi Ambassador was widely referred to as an ``honorary member of the Bush family.'' The G.W. Bush White House commitment to brutally suppress the evidence of the Anglo-Saudi hand in 9/11 was so deep that Osama Basnan, the Saudi intelligence officer, felt confident enough to be in Houston, Texas, on April 24-25, 2002, when then-Saudi Crown Prince (now King) Abdullah, along with Prince Bandar, visited President Bush at his Crawford, Texas ranch. The Crown Prince's entourage was massive--eight planeloads of aides and hangers-on. Among the crowd were three Saudi officials suspected of ties to al-Qaeda. The ``embarrassing'' incident was suppressed, along with Basnan's presence in nearby Houston, where he was reportedly meeting with a billionaire Saudi prince who was part of the Crawford entourage.

Four months later, Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who chaired the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which conducted the joint Congressional 9/11 probe along with the House Intelligence Committee, declared that, to his knowledge, the CIA had ``incontrovertible evidence that there is support for these terrorists within the Saudi government.'' Hewould later emphasize the point in his book on the joint Congressional probe, Intelligence Matters.

Britain - State Sponsor of Terrorism

In December 2000, the Editors of EI submitted a lengthy memorandum to then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, seeking an investigation of British government sponsorship of international terrorism. The memo, prepared with the assistance of State Department attorneys, who provided EIR with the official criteria for placing a nation on the list of ``state sponsors of terrorism,'' relied exclusively on official government documents, from no fewer than nine nations, that had formally protested British government protection, and, in some cases, financing of active terrorist cells on British soil. The EIR memo was triggered by a rash of asymmetric warfare attacks, many by groups spawned out of the 1979-89 Afghanistan War against the Soviets, a war covertly bankrolled and logistically backed by British, French, American, Saudi, and Israeli intelligence services.

The British government's protection was extended to such terror groups as the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), which had a radio transmitter in Britain that beamed marching orders for terrorist attacks into eastern Turkey; the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which carried out a brutal 1997 attack on Japanese tourists at Luxor, Egypt, and had earlier assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat; the Indian terrorist group Lashkar e-Taibi, which carried out assassinations and hijackings in 1999; and Chechen terrorists, who were recruited out of mosques in England.

Among the charges against the British government: British intelligence had looked the other way, throughout the 1990s, as Osama bin Laden moved between Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, and England. The London Times admitted that, throughout the second half of 1996, bin Laden made frequent trips to London, ''clearly under the protection of British authorities.'' The Times had spotted bin Laden, earlier in the 1990s, at the London estate of Khalid bin Mahfouz, a wealthy Saudi banker who was a leading Muslim Brotherhood funder of a wide array of Jihadi groups, and was a majorshareholder in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). In 1994, the French and Algerian governments filed diplomatic demarches with the British Foreign Office, charging that Osama bin Laden had met with leaders of the Islamic Group of Algeria (GIA), which was then in the middle of a blind terror bombing campaign in both countries. French intelligence tracked the bin Laden/GIA meetings to a bin Laden-owned estate in Wembley. For three months in 1994, according to other French sources, including investigator Roland Jacquard, Osama bin Laden lived on Harrow Road in London. Even after he left the country, bin Laden's leading propagandists operated out of London.

According to ``conventional wisdom,'' the British protection of a worldwide nexus of terrorist organizations was based on an understanding that the groups would not operate on British soil, or target British interests abroad. But, anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the history of the British Empire, from the early days of the British East India Company, through Lord Palmerston's sponsorship of the Young Europe, Young America, and Young Turk operations of the 19th Century, realizes immediately that this is a fraud. Sponsorship of asymmetric warfare is at the very heart of the British/Venetian method. And the Anglo-Saudi al-Yamamah project is the 20th- and 21st-Century equivalent of the British East India Company's sponsorship of legions of ethnic and religious separatist groups, assuring a ready stable of political assassins and perpetrators of ``chaos on demand'' around the globe.

Will the Bush League Coverup End?

Even as investigators for the joint Congressional inquiry and the 9/11 Commission attempted to get at the role of Saudi intelligence in 9/11, a vicious coverup was being imposed directly from the White House, and with full complicity of elements within the FBI and Department of Justice. It became so blatant, that three 9/11 Commission investigators--Kevin Scheid, Col. Lorry Fenner, and Gordon Lederman--drafted a memo to their staff supervisors, Dan Marcus and Steve Dunne, proposing guidelines for FBI and other ``minders.'' The memo bitterly complained that FBI and other ``minders'' sitting in on interviews with Commission witnesses, interfered in the questioning and intimidated the witnesses:

``Minders have positioned themselves physically and have conducted themselves in a manner that we believe intimidates witnesses from giving full and candid responses to our questions. Minders generally sat next to witnesses at the table and across from Commission staff, conveying to witnesses that minders are participants in interviews and are of equal status to witnesses . Moreover, minders take verbatim notes of witnesses' statements and may engage in retribution. We believe that the next effect of minders' conduct, whether intentionally or not, is to intimidate witnesses and to interfere with witnesses providing full and candid responses.''

The memo concluded with a plea: ``We request that you raise the subject of minders' conduct with the Executive Branch in order to prevent minders from comporting themselves in these ways in the future.''

Attached to the memo were ten proposed rules of conduct, to block the intimidation. Apart from the fact that the memorandum was declassified and released at the National Archive earlier this year, no action was taken and the Bush White House coverup--typified by the suppression of the Congressional report section dealing with Saudi government complicity in 9/11--continued to the end.

Condoleezza Rice Lied

The coverup, in at least one case, may have involved contempt of Congress. When a battle erupted between the 9/11 Commission and the White House over the public disclosure of segments of a Presidential Daily Briefing from August 2001, in which President Bush was explicitly warned about a high-probability al-Qaeda attack against the continental United States, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice testified before Congress that there was no ``actionable intelligence'' provided by the intelligence community, and that no one could have anticipated the events of 9/11.

In stark contrast to Rice's sworn testimony, U.S. intelligence had strong indications that, not only was al-Qaeda planning to hijack planes, but was planning to use them as weapons. According to the third document released this year by the 9/11 Commission, the Federal Aviation Administration and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) conducted a series of exercises, as early as October 1998--shortly after the attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa--involving hijackings. The last of the exercises, ``Vigilant Guardian I,'' took place between Sept. 6-10, 2001. In one of the scenarios, described in a 9/11 Commission summary chronology, a London-to-New York flight is hijacked by ``terrorists with explosives who plan to detonate them over NYC.'' Clearly, the idea that terrorists were planning to use aircraft as a weapon against New York City, was on the minds of some Federal counter-terror officials prior to 9/11.

Basnan's Free Ride Home

On Oct. 21, 2002, a Federal judge in California ordered Osama Yousef Basnan and his wife, Majida Ibrahim Ahmad Dweikat, to be deported from the United States--for immigration violations! The Saudi intelligence officer who had been in the country illegally since the early 1980s, who had bankrolled, along with Omar al-Bayoumi, at least two of the 9/11 hijackers, was so pleased with the judge's order to send him back to Saudi Arabia, that he walked up to the Federal prosecutor at the end of the hearing and shook his hand, thanking him profusely for the free ride home.

The message delivered that day in court could not have been clearer: The Anglo-Saudi terror nexus was off limits. The idea that two of America's most trusted so-called allies--Great Britain and Saudi Arabia--had betrayed the United States, and played an indispensible role in the worst terrorist atrocity in history on American soil, was to be buried.

911 - The Smoking Gun is Finally Found

Image - De-classified US military document that reveals a US military plan to enact fake terrorist attacks on US soil in order to allow America to be involved with a war against Cuba and the Soviet Union.




Many people around the world are now beginning to question the US government's narrative of the events of 911.

Every year more and more evidence is being revealed that the official story is not the whole story.

Yes we all know who did the attacks, how they did the attacks and why they the did attacks.

The planes were hijacked by the 19 mainly Saudi Arabian Islamists who also died in the attacks and who were working for Al Qaeda (or thought they were working for Al Qaeda, when in fact Osama Bin Laden was a CIA agent all along).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/nov/01/afghanistan.terrorism

http://www.greenleft.org.au/2001/465/25199

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_assistance_to_Osama_bin_Laden

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda


It is now obvious that both the US security services and Israeli security services were aware the attacks were going to happen - and that they did not just let them happen, but that they both warned the rich and powerful in New York that day that the attacks were on their way.

Therefore ONLY questions left to answer are ;

1) Who knew the attacks were going to occur before they actually happened ?

2) Why were the public not informed of the attacks as being imminent ?

3) Who profited from the attacks ?


It is becoming clear that the CIA in the US and Israel, and both their security services, knew hours beforehand that the attacks were coming.

This information appears to have been sent to many rich and powerful people in New York who have links to Israel, but not to the general public ;

http://theinfounderground.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5367

This is not supposition, this is fact.


But the smoking gun in relation to this assertion is this article here ;


http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=77744

Last update - 00:43 26/09/2001


" Odigo says workers were warned of attack

By Yuval Dror

Odigo, the instant messaging service, says that two of its workers received messages two hours before the Twin Towers attack on September 11 predicting the attack would happen, and the company has been cooperating with Israeli and American law enforcement, including the FBI, in trying to find the original sender of the message predicting the attack.

Micha Macover, CEO of the company, said the two workers received the messages and immediately after the terror attack informed the company's management, which immediately contacted the Israeli security services, which brought in the FBI.

"I have no idea why the message was sent to these two workers, who don't know the sender. It may just have been someone who was joking and turned out they accidentally got it right. And I don't know if our information was useful in any of the arrests the FBI has made," said Macover. Odigo is a U.S.-based company whose headquarters are in New York, with offices in Herzliya.

As an instant messaging service, Odigo users are not limited to sending messages only to people on their "buddy" list, as is the case with ICQ, the other well-known Israeli instant messaging application.

Odigo usually zealously protects the privacy of its registered users, said Macover, but in this case the company took the initiative to provide the law enforcement services with the originating Internet Presence address of the message, so the FBI could track down the Internet Service Provider, and the actual sender of the original message "



This article conculsively proves that some people were made aware that the attacks were underway, where they were going to hit and that these people were busy warning people that they knew to vacate New York and the Twin Towers.

Goldman Sachs were also forewarned of the attacks – On Sep 10, 2001, the Tokyo branch of Goldman Sachs warned its American employees to steer clear of American buildings.

Larry Silverstein who owned the Twin Towers had breakfast in "Windows on the World" restaurant every single morning. On 9/11 he never showed up. Neither did his daughter who worked in building 7.

It appears that the rich and powerful in New York were made aware that the attacks were going to happen days before they did happen and that on the morning of the attacks they were sent actual text messages on their mobile phones warning them the attacks were underway and that they should vacate both New York and the Twin Towers.

But this information was not passed to the US military - or was it ?.

Many people believe that 911 was a 'Managed Attack', that the US military and government knew the attacks were going to happen and also where and when the attackers were going to hit, and that they allowed the attacks to go ahead as it suited their plans for a catastrophic event in order to fulfill the Neo-Conservatives plans to start their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and to dominate both the worlds last oil supplies and the Middle East.

Flight 73 was shot down by the US military as it appeared to be heading to Three Mile Island, and as this would have acused immense economic damage to the US, it was shot down before it could reach its target.

The other planes were allowed to reach their targets as the damage, though large in terms of the dead victims of the attacks, was not 'mortal damage' to the economic system of the US itself.


This Neo-Conservative plan was called Project For The American New Century ;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century

Section V of Rebuilding America's Defenses, entitled "Creating Tomorrow's Dominant Force", includes the sentence: "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor"

This plan for a 'new pearl harbour' was based on a previous US military project called Operation Northwoods which espoused similar US military staged terrorist attacks on the US to allow the US government to manipulate US public anger into a mandate for an expansionist foreign policy led by the US military ;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/northwoods.html

The 911 attacks have never really ended.

Their effect will be felt for generations, not just in terms of the bereaved families devastated by the attacks themselves, but in relation to the Geo-Political impact of the events.

It is time that the truth was known.

No-one can trust any 'independent' inquiry that is enacted by the US government.

There must be an independent inquiry into 911 outside the US conducted by a nation that is not under the dominion of the US itself.

Governments do not tell the truth to the people, they merely spin useful lies.

The 911 Smoking Gun

http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Rumsfeld_Updated_Army%27s_Continuity_of_Operations_Plan_before_9/11





Rumsfeld Updated Army's Continuity of Operations Plan before 9/11

From Wikileaks

Tom Burghardt (Global Research, Canada)
October 6, 2008

Ten months before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved an updated version of the U.S. Army's secret operational Continuity of Government (COG) plans.

A draft document published by the whistleblowing website Wikileaks entitled, "Army Regulation 500-3, Emergency Employment of Army and Other Resources. Army Continuity of Operations (COOP) Program," dated 19 January 2001, spells out changes in Army doctrine.

Issued by Headquarters, Department of the Army and signed off by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Secretary of the Army, the document is affixed with a warning: "Destruction Notice: Destroy by any method that will prevent disclosure of contents or reconstruction of the document." The restricted document as published by Wikileaks states:

History. This regulation is a revision of the original regulation that was effective on 10 July 1989. Since that time, no changes have been published to amend the original.

Summary. This regulation on the Army Continuity of Operations (COOP) Program has been revised to update Army COOP policy and extend the requirement for all-hazards COOP planning to all Army organizations. Classified information contained in the 1989 version of this AR has been removed and placed in a classified HQDA Operations Plan (OPLAN).

Applicability. This regulation applies to the Active Army, the U.S. Army Reserve (USAR), and when federalized to the Army National Guard (ARNG). In the event of conflict between this regulation and approved OSD or JCS publications, the provisions of the latter will apply. ("Army Regulation 500-3, Emergency Employment of Army and Other Resources. Army Continuity of Operations (COOP) Program," 19 January 2001, p. 3) [emphasis added]

"All-hazards COOP planning" is described as the means by which "the Army remains capable of continuing mission-essential operations during any situation, including military attack, terrorist activities, and natural or man-made disasters." While the Army stresses the updates described in AR 500-3 relate to chemical, biological, nuclear attacks, "natural disasters" and "technical or man-made disasters or accidents," current Army doctrine is also heavily weighted towards contingency planning for "civil disturbances."

Two national "civil disturbance" plans, Garden Plot and Cable Splicer have been operational since the 1960s. Researcher Frank Morales has detailed how,

Under the heading of "civil disturbance planning," the U.S. military is training troops and police to suppress democratic opposition in America. The master plan, Department of Defense Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2, is code-named, "Operation Garden Plot". Originated in 1968, the "operational plan" has been updated over the last three decades, most recently in 1991, and was activated during the Los Angeles "riots" of 1992, and more than likely during the recent anti-WTO "Battle in Seattle." ...

Equipped with flexible "military operations in urban terrain" and "operations other than war" doctrine, lethal and "less-than-lethal" high-tech weaponry, US "armed forces" and "elite" militarized police units are being trained to eradicate "disorder", "disturbance" and "civil disobedience" in America. Further, it may very well be that police/military "civil disturbance" planning is the animating force and the overarching logic behind the incredible nationwide growth of police paramilitary units, a growth which coincidentally mirrors rising levels of police violence directed at the American people, particularly "non-white" poor and working people. (Frank Morales, "U.S. Military Civil Disturbance Planning: The War at Home," in Police State America, ed. Tom Burghardt, Toronto/Montreal: Arm The Spirit/Solidarity, 2002, P. 59)

AR 500-3 should be viewed in this context. Plans for Continuity of Government have been in place since the 1950s. Originally conceived during the Cold War when fears of a nuclear strike envisaged by atomic war-gamers at the RAND Corporation, believed that an immobilization of government functions and a breakdown of civilian rule would follow a nuclear attack. But from their inception, COG planning has been shrouded in secrecy.

In addition to constructing nuclear-proof underground facilities where the civilian leadership could escape a decapitation strike, other COG provisions included a series of executive orders designating which officials would assume Cabinet-level posts and other Executive Branch positions. Officials so designated would constitute a "shadow government" should office holders be killed in an attack "or otherwise incapacitated."

However, when these and other Pentagon "civil disturbance" plans surfaced in the 1980s during the Iran-Contra hearings, they were roundly criticized by members of Congress, civil liberties groups and the media before disappearing once again, down Orwell's "memory hole." The inherent dangers implicit in such plans are that unelected Executive Branch officers could assume the Presidency and other appointed offices subject neither to congressional scrutiny nor judicial oversight.

Exercising sweeping emergency powers buried within Presidential Decision Directives (PDDs), unelected officials could suspend the Constitution, declare martial law and create an Executive Branch dictatorship that rests solely on the power of the U.S. military.

Most troubling, Executive Branch officials under secret rules of a COG regime could suppress and usurp the lawful powers of Congress and the Judicial Branch (by force of arms if deemed necessary) as a means of ensuring "cooperation" under a "unitary executive."

As we have seen, the "unitary executive" theory has been a salient feature of Bushist rule since the December 2000 judicial coup d'état, when the Supreme Court's Bush v. Gore decision handed a contested election to George W. Bush by stopping the vote count in Florida.

Since assuming office, the administration has ruthlessly wielded executive power in order to achieve their antidemocratic agenda: from the looting of the economy through "deregulation," massive deficit spending and tax cuts for their corporate "clients," to waging a preemptive war of conquest in Iraq, the "unitary executive" has systematically shredded America's constitutional system of checks and balances.

The Bush administration put COG plans into operation for the first time in U.S. history in the hours directly following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. They have never been rescinded.

Their implementation involves a rotating staff of 75-150 senior government officials and others from every Cabinet department in two "secure, undisclosed locations" on the East Coast. However, key congressional representatives have been kept out of the loop and House and Senate leaders have said they were not informed the "shadow government" had "gone live."

So secretive are Bush administration plans that Peter DeFazio (D-OR), a member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, was denied access in 2007 to the classified version of the COG plans contained in top secret Presidential Decision Directive annexes. This too, is unprecedented.

While the Bush administration admitted that COG was activated in 2001, their disclosure came only after The Washington Post broke the story based on confidential administration sources troubled by the scope of the program and its secretive implementation.

Since the late 1980s, Rumsfeld was a habitué of COG exercises along with Vice President Dick Cheney. Indeed early COG drills had been organized by the right-wing Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). As investigative journalist Andrew Cockburn revealed in his definitive political biography of the former Defense Secretary:

This highly secret program was known as Project 908, and among the individuals earmarked to take power when disaster struck was Donald Rumsfeld. ... There, for several days, he would be immured in artificial caverns, staring at electronic displays streaming data of disaster and confusion, sleeping on cots and subsisting on the most austere rations. ...

Insofar as the COG games gave the illusion of reality, they taught Rumsfeld and his fellow players some dangerous lessons, particularly when the fall of the Soviet Union induced some changes in the usual scenarios. Although the exercises continued, still budgeted at over $200 million in the Clinton era, the vanished Soviets were now customarily replaced by terrorists. The terrorism envisaged however, was almost always state-sponsored. ...

"There were other changes, too. In earlier times the specialists selected to run the "shadow government" had been drawn from across the political spectrum, Democrats and Republicans alike. But now, down in the bunkers, Rumsfeld found himself in politically congenial company, the players' roster being filled almost exclusively with Republican hawks. (Andrew Cockburn, Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy, New York: Scribner, 2007, pp. 85-86, 88)

As researcher Peter Dale Scott revealed, in early 2006 the Department of Homeland Security awarded a $385 million contract to a Halliburton subsidiary, KBR, to provide "temporary detention and processing facilities." Scott wrote,

The contract--announced Jan. 24 by the engineering and construction firm KBR--calls for preparing for "an emergency influx of immigrants, or to support the rapid development of new programs" in the event of other emergencies, such as "a natural disaster." The release offered no details about where Halliburton was to build these facilities, or when. ...

After 9/11, new martial law plans began to surface similar to those of FEMA in the 1980s. In January 2002 the Pentagon submitted a proposal for deploying troops on American streets. One month later John Brinkerhoff, the author of the 1982 FEMA memo, published an article arguing for the legality of using U.S. troops for purposes of domestic security. (Peter Dale Scott, "Homeland Security Contracts for Vast New Detention Camps," Pacific News Service, February 8, 2006)

The DHS contract to KBR had been preceded by the April 2002 creation of the Pentagon's Northern Command (NORTHCOM), specifically empowered by the Bush administration for domestic U.S. military operations in direct violation of Posse Comitatus prohibitions forbidding the use of the military for domestic law enforcement. At the time, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld called NORTHCOM's launch "the most sweeping set of changes since the unified command system was set up in 1946."

Sweeping indeed! Last month Army Times reported that the Army's "3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team [BCT] has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys. Now they're training for the same mission--with a twist--at home." According to Army Times],

Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks. ...

But this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities. ...

They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack. ...

The 1st BCT's soldiers also will learn how to use "the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded," 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.

"It's a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they're fielding. They've been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we're undertaking we were the first to get it."

The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets. (Gina Cavallaro, "Brigade Homeland Tours Start Oct. 1," Army Times, September 8, 2008)

While senior Pentagon brass have downplayed the significance of deploying a BCT that has taken part in aggressive occupation duties to suppress the Iraqi people's resistance, Col. Lou Vogler, NORTHCOM's chief of future operations said in an interview that the military "will integrate with law enforcement to understand the situation and make sure we're aware of any threats." An article published by the Army News Service disclosed,

During the exercise, commanders and staff of the force will train, rehearse and exercise--from academic classes to making decisions and executing orders--all to help prepare them for the mission they will assume on Oct. 1, said Vogler.

"It's an opportunity for network building in an unprecedented assignment of forces," said [Marine Corps Lt. Col.] Shores. "DOD always had allocated contingency sourced forces--but this is precedent-setting network building with the forces that we ultimately will go out and execute with. It's an opportunity to get to know our forces, to see them in execution, to mission-orient them and be that much better--to be that much more responsive."

One goal of the exercise is to exercise with partners from the civilian agencies they would support. To that end, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other interagency representatives are participating to ensure integration with civilian consequence managers who would lead a response, said Vogler.

"The overall federal response builds on the local and state response in accordance with the incident command system and existing plans and processes that are out there," said Vogler. "The response force would supplement local efforts." ("Consequence Management Response Force to join Army Northern Command," Army News Service, September 15, 2008)

Vogler and Shores were discussing an exercise code-named Vibrant Response, that took place September 8-19 at Fort Stewart in Georgia. Three brigades form the core of NORTHCOM's Consequence Management Response Force: the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Army Division; the 1st Medical Brigade, Fort Hood, Texas, and the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. All three units participated in Vibrant Response.

As researcher and analyst Michel Chossudovsky comments:

The BCT is an army combat unit designed to confront an enemy within a war theater.

With US forces overstretched in Iraq, why would the Pentagon decide to undertake this redeployment within the USA, barely one month before the presidential elections?

The new mission of the 1st Brigade on US soil is to participate in "defense" efforts as well as provide "support to civilian authorities".

What is significant in this redeployment of a US infantry unit is the presumption that North America could, in the case of a national emergency, constitute a "war theater" thereby justifying the deployment of combat units.

The new skills to be imparted consist in training 1st BCT in repressing civil unrest, a task normally assumed by civilian law enforcement.

What we are dealing with is a militarization of civilian police activities in derogation of the Posse Comitatus Act. ("Pre-election Militarization of the North American Homeland. US Combat Troops in Iraq repatriated to 'help with civil unrest'," Global Research, September 26, 2008)

One scenario envisaged by Chossudovsky is that "civil unrest resulting from from the financial meltdown is a distinct possibility, given the broad impacts of financial collapse on lifelong savings, pension funds, homeownership, etc."

One might reasonably inquire, what "precedent-setting network" does the Army have in mind that would "ensure integration" with "civilian agencies" such as FEMA (a branch of Homeland Security)? As the World Socialist Web Site reports:

It is noteworthy that the deployment of US combat troops "as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters"--in the words of the Army Times--coincides with the eruption of the greatest economic emergency and financial disaster since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Justified as a response to terrorist threats, the real source of the growing preparations for the use of US military force within America's borders lies not in the events of September 11, 2001 or the danger that they will be repeated. Rather, the domestic mobilization of the armed forces is a response by the US ruling establishment to the growing threat to political stability. (Bill Van Auken, "Army deploys combat unit in U.S. for possible civil unrest," World Socialist Web Site, 25 September 2008)

As the 2001 COOP planning document describes, a host of on-going Army plans and exercises have been revised by the Bush administration. In addition to Vibrant Response discussed above, they include: Plan EXCALIBUR, a COG Army training exercise; ADOBE, described by investigative journalist William M. Arkin as a "FEMA continuity of government special access program designation." Arkin describes special access programs or SAPs as,

Classified research and development, acquisition program, operation, intelligence activity, or plan that is so sensitive or critical that the value of the information warrants enhanced protection beyond that normally provided for access to Confidential, Secret, or Top Secret information. (William M. Arkin, Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs, and Operations in the 9/11 World, Hanover, NH: Steerforth Press, 2005, p. 598)

The impetus for revising Army COOP was, according to AR 500-3 primarily because,

The end of the Cold War and the breakup of the former Soviet Union significantly reduced the probability of a major nuclear attack on CONUS but the probability of other threats has increased. Army organizations must be prepared for any contingency with a potential for interruption of normal operations. To emphasize that Army continuity of operations planning is now focused on the full all-hazards threat spectrum, the name "ASRRS" has been replaced by the more generic title "Continuity of Operations (COOP) Program." (p. 13)

Towards this end, the Rumsfeld-era document states that the Army's new "mission-critical" functions will be restructured so that, "Army COOP plans must ensure that the Army remains capable of continuing mission-essential operations during any situation, including military attack, terrorist activities, and natural or man-made disasters." (p. 13) The Army, following various contingencies analyzed in the document will "coordinate with mission-essential external organizations and agencies." (p. 14)

So sensitive are the political ramifications of these plans that under the heading, 3-12 Operational Security (OPSEC), the Army avers,

a. The success of COOP planning relies on denying access by unauthorized parties to information on COOP plans, procedures, capabilities and facilities.

b. Overhead imagery, signals intelligence, human sources, and exploitation of open literature during peacetime are threat capabilities used to gain knowledge of Army emergency plans, command and control systems, and facilities.

c. See Appendix B, Security Classification Guide, for guidance on the level of classification of COOP-related information. (COOP, op. cit., p. 20)

Appendix A of AR 500-3 lists relevant references for changes included in the COOP planning document. These include:

Section I
Required Publications

HQDA Operations Plan EXCALIBUR, 30 April 1999 (Being Revised)
HQDA Continuity of Operations Plan (cited in para 1-4.f)

Section II

Related Publications a related publication is merely a source of additional information. The user does not have to read it to understand this publication.

Executive Order 12656
National Security Emergency Preparedness (NSEP), 18 November 1988

DoD Directive (Dodd) 2000.12
DoD Antiterrorism/Force Protection (AT/FP) Program, 13 April 1999

CJCSM 3410.01
Continuity of Operations Plan for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (COOP-CJCS), 1 March 1999

Executive Order 12787
Prescribing the Order of Succession of Officers to Act as Secretary of Defense, 31 December 1991

DoDD 3020.26
Continuity of Operations (COOP) Policy and Planning, 26 May 1995

DoD 3020.26P
Continuity of Operations Plan, 21 June 2000 (Classified SECRET)

DoDD 3020.36
Assignment of National Security Emergency Preparedness (NSEP) Responsibilities to DoD Components, 2 November 1988

DoDD 3025.15
Military Support to Civil Authorities (MSCA), 18 February 1997

The Federal Response Plan, April 1999

Presidential Decision Directive (PDD) 67, (Top Secret) Enduring Constitutional Government (ECG) and Continuity of Government (COG) Operations, Oct 21, 1998

Federal Preparedness Circular 65, Federal Executive Branch Continuity of Operations, (COOP), July 26, 1999

As Peter Dale Scott reported in CounterPunch, apparently members of Congress are considered "unauthorized parties" to be denied access "to information on COOP plans, procedures, capabilities and facilities." Congressman DeFazio had been denied access to the classified annexes of National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive (NSPD 51/HSPD 20) Scott wrote,

NSPD 51 contains "classified Continuity Annexes" which shall "be protected from unauthorized disclosure." Congressman DeFazio twice requested to see these Annexes, the second time in a letter cosigned by House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson and Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Christopher Carney. It was these requests that the White House denied. ...

DeFazio's inability to get access to the NSPD Annexes is less than reassuring. If members of the Homeland Security Committee cannot enforce their right to read secret plans of the Executive Branch, then the systems of checks and balances established by the U.S. Constitution would seem to be failing.

To put it another way, if the White House is successful in frustrating DeFazio, then Continuity of Government planning has arguably already superseded the Constitution as a higher authority. (Peter Dale Scott, "The Showdown," CounterPunch, March 31, 2008)

With the stunning revelations published by Wikileaks, it is abundantly clear that top Bush administration officials were busily revising Continuity of Government plans, including "civil disturbance" contingencies for suspending the Constitution and imposing martial law, long before the 9/11 attacks.

Since that fatal and tragic day seven long years ago, we have been told repeatedly by the government and their media sycophants that 9/11 was the day "when everything changed."

We now know thanks to Wikileaks, that as with the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the unprecedented and lawless surveillance of Americans, the illegal detention and torture of prisoners of war, that Bush administration assertions are no more than a pack of murderous lies.

One fact is abundantly clear from the mass of conflicting evidence and assertions made by proponents of various theories surrounding the 9/11 events: AR 500-3 demonstrates that from the very first moments after being installed in office, the Bush regime was involved in a "controlled demolition" of the U.S. Constitution.

The Islamist Max Headroom

I am beginning to think that Osama Bin Laden is the Islamist version of Max Headroom, a computer generated construct from whose mouth can be spouted the latest propaganda required for the advancement of the US Oil Imperialism agenda.

Bin Laden is a puppet of the US Shadow Government, and he is used to target areas of the world for Jihadist attacks that the US has a strategic interest in invading or having a presence in.

I think this is the reason why he has not been caught or killed by the US.

As long as he is not caught or dead then the sections of Al Qaeda that are under the control of the puppets and double agents of the US Shadow Government can still be deployed and ordered to attack targets in line with the agenda of the US Shadow Government.

Here is an article about how Bush refused to allow US troops to kill Bin Laden ;

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,304306,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/aug/20/alqaida.terrorism


Here is an article on how Osama Bin Laden appears to have a variety of faces and appearences in the many videos he has supposedly released.

The idea that a government would use falsified film footage to bolster the war effort is a ridiculous suggestion isnt it ?

In the article below note how on the 28th september 2001 Osama Bin Laden first issued a statement denying anything to do with the 911 attacks.



13 December 2005


Bin Laden's script: ghost-written in the West

One thing is clear from the new book Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden - the al-Qaeda leader doesn't have an original thought in his head.

by Brendan O'Neill


Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden, edited by Bruce Lawrence, Verso, 2005.


How long before Osama bin Laden gets invited to something like the Edinburgh Book Festival, to rub shoulders with the likes of Julian Barnes, wolf down canapés and win polite applause from the chattering classes for his poetic ramblings?


One of his statements has already been published as a bona fide opinion piece in that liberal bible the Guardian (under the heading 'Resist the new Rome' in January 2004), and now there's this new book from the leftish literary publishing house Verso. It's a collection of bin Laden's statements from 1994 to 2004 with a handsome and serious jacket cover and discoloured, raggedy-edged pages to give it the look and feel of an instant classic. Reviewers have fawned over its 'magnificent, eloquent, at times even poetic Arabic prose', and claim that it shows the 'author' bin Laden (he's not really the author, being stuck in a cave and all and with few means to receive royalties) as a 'charismatic man of action, an eloquent preacher, a teacher of literature and a resilient, cunning, wonderfully briefed politician' (1).


If it were not for the fact that bin Laden is the most wanted man in the world, and a mass murderer, and possibly dead, and apparently painfully shy (but then, aren't all great poets?), surely the book festival circuit would not be far behind. I can picture him in the Speakers' Tent in Edinburgh, all ethnically coiffured and clutching a copy of this, his life's work, surrounded by wide-eyed journalists inquiring about his writing style and what inspires him to put pen to paper.


How did this happen? Why has Verso brought out a book of bin Laden's statements and why is it being treated so seriously, complete with a promotional push in Waterstone's in Piccadilly, one of the biggest bookstores in Europe? I don't know much about Arabic prose so I will have to suspend my disbelief that bin Laden does it 'magnificently' and 'eloquently'. I do know, however, that something must definitely get lost in translation, because this English end product is turgid, repetitive and irritatingly religious: bin Laden can't get through a sentence without mentioning God, peace, mercy or blessings. Is it that the dumbing down of public life is now so complete that even a loon like bin Laden can get five stars from literary pundits for saying things like 'kill the Americans and seize their money wherever and whenever [you] find them' (December 1998) and 'My kidneys are all right' (November 2001)?


I think there's more to it than that. I reckon the reason why some commentators in the West seem drawn to bin Laden's prose is because at times - and I'm not going to beat around the bush here - he sounds an awful lot like them. Seriously, it is uncanny. What comes across most clearly in this 10 years' worth of rants is the extent to which bin Laden borrows and steals from Western media coverage to justify his nihilistic actions. From his cynical adoption of the Palestinian issue to his explanations for why he okayed 9/11 to his opposition to the American venture in Iraq, virtually everything bin Laden says is a rip-off of arguments and claims made in the mainstream media over here. He has taken the justifications offered by left-leaning pundits for al-Qaeda's existence and actions (in the words of one commentator: 'There is a simple reason why they attack the US: American imperialism') and made them his own (2). And now these pundits have returned the favour by giving him his own book and glowing reviews to boot. It is the unholiest of marriages.


Exploiting Palestine


Take Palestine. It is widely assumed that al-Qaeda's violence is primarily motivated by Israel's oppression of the Palestinians and will continue until that issue is resolved. Yet bin Laden's nods to Palestine over the past 10 years tell a different story.


In 1994 he only mentions Palestine as a way of having a pop at the rulers of Saudi Arabia, whom he really despises for 'betraying' Islam and for having the nerve to expel him from Saudi territory (his birthplace) in 1991 and revoke his citizenship in 1994. Bruce Lawrence, editor of this collection, has given bin Laden's first major public pronouncement - made on 29 December 1994 - the heading 'The betrayal of Palestine'; but when you read it, Palestine is cynically mentioned as part of bin Laden's spat with Saudi rulers. The statement is in fact a letter to Chief Mufti bin Baz, the Head of the Council of the ulema in Saudi Arabia, issued by the Advice and Reform Committee set up by bin Laden to 'promote peaceful and constructive reform with regard to the way Arabia is governed' and whose offices were in Dollis Hill, north London (!).


That the editor has headlined the statement 'The betrayal of Palestine' points to a political agenda on his and the publisher's part - even suggesting that their aim is to give consistency and coherence to bin Laden's rants where neither exists. This early statement would have been better headlined 'The betrayal of Osama bin Laden….by those Saudi bastards!' It is an obscurantist screed about how Saudi rulers have put big business before pure Islam, such as by allowing 'the practice of usury, which is now widespread in the country thanks to the usurious state institutions and banks whose towers are competing with the minarets of the two Holy Sanctuaries'. The stuff about Palestine comes a poor second to bin Laden's boring complaints about usury, some Saudi royal wearing a crucifix (sacrilege!), and Saudi support for 'the leaders of apostasy, the Communist Socialists in Yemen'.


Bin Laden sounds like a spoilt middle-class brat sticking two fingers up at his family and former friends (he was once close to various Saudi rulers) for getting all money-obsessed, dude. In fact, that's exactly what he is: the son of a Saudi billionaire who in the 1970s made a fortune from running one of daddy's construction firms and drove a white Chrysler, but then went all religious and decided that capitalism is not very nice. If he'd been born in the Home Counties instead of Riyadh, he would probably have been one of those Eton-educated types who turn their backs on privilege and piss off their parents by becoming smelly hippies who smash up McDonald's.


Fast forward 10 years to 15 April 2004, and bin Laden is describing Palestine as the 'real' issue. If his big issue in 1994 was that backward Saudi Arabia wasn't quite backward enough for his tastes, then in 2004 it is 'the destruction and murder of our people' in Palestine and elsewhere. What changed? It wasn't that bin Laden suddenly became a selfless warrior fighting for Palestinian freedom but rather that many in the West presumed that 9/11 and other attacks must have been motivated by Palestine and bin Laden took such views on board. Look at how he talks about Palestine in 2004: 'As for your leaders and their followers, who persistently ignore the real problem, which is the occupation of Palestine….' That could have come, verbatim, from any number of editorials, comment pieces or blog entries of the post-9/11 period which claimed that Bush and Blair should resolve the 'real' issue of the Middle East if they want to do something about al-Qaeda. And what exactly is bin Laden calling for when he accuses Western leaders of 'ignoring' the real problem of Palestine? More Western intervention? A better peace process? What?


Even when bin Laden's statements are liberally peppered with references to Palestine (as often they are), he only mentions it opportunistically and symbolically; there is no real or practical input into Palestinian politics. In 2001, his second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri said: 'The fact that must be acknowledged is that the issue of Palestine is the cause that has been firing up the feelings of the Muslim nation from Morocco to Indonesia for the past 50 years.' (3) By 2004, bin Laden has recognised that it also fires up feelings in the West. Indeed, he rather bizarrely calls 'upon just men [in Europe], especially scholars, media and businessmen, to form a permanent commission to raise awareness among Europeans of the justice of our causes, primarily Palestine, making use of the enormous potential of the media'. That sentence sums up how cynical is bin Laden's focus on Palestine: it's an attempt to make an impact on the Western consciousness rather than on the ground in Ramallah. It also shows how much he's driven by Western-style lingo and politics: he wants a 'commission' to 'raise awareness' about Palestine through the 'media'….just what kind of warrior for God is he?


(Bin Laden is directly challenged over his latter adoption of the Palestinian issue. At the start of this collection the editor, Lawrence, claims that 'Palestine, far from being a late addition to bin Laden's agenda, was at the centre from the start'. He should have paid closer attention to the Al-Jazeera interview with bin Laden on 21 October 2001, republished in this collection on pages 106-129. The quick-witted al-Jazeera journalist asks why, recently, bin Laden has 'foregrounded the Palestinian issue and relegated, so to speak, the issue of Saudi Arabia', which he previously had 'concentrated' on. Ever the wily media operator, bin Laden replies: 'Some of the events of recent times might foreground a certain issue, so we move in that direction, without ignoring the other…' It is almost as if Lawrence, and perhaps others at Verso, want bin Laden to be a warrior for Palestine, even as the evidence reveals otherwise.)


The shifting justifications for 9/11


Likewise, bin Laden's justifications for 9/11 are continually moulded and shaped by Western media coverage. At first - on 28 September 2001 - he disavows responsibility for the attacks, instead trying to pin the blame on some dastardly conspiracy within America itself: 'The United States should trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself….persons who want to make the present century as a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity so that their own civilisation, nation, country or ideology could survive…. Then there are intelligence agencies in the US, which require billions of dollars of funds from the Congress and the government every year. This [funding issue] was not a big problem [with] the existence of the former Soviet Union but after that the budget of these agencies has been in danger. They needed an enemy…. Is it not that there exists a government within the government in the United States? That secret government must be asked as to who carried out the attacks.' (Quoted in Faisal Devji, Landscapes of the Jihad.)

A secret government that may have executed the attacks itself in order to get more funding for foreign wars of intervention…sound familiar? Bin Laden could have lifted these explanations from any number of blogs or conspiracy sites that swung into action in the days and weeks after 9/11. Later he claims that 9/11 was in retaliation for Palestine (see above). Later still, he starts banging on about 9/11 as part of a bigger 'plan to bleed America to the point of bankruptcy, with God's will'. And guess how he tries to prove that this plan has been a success? Yes, by once again pilfering Western media coverage. On 21 October 2001, he says:


'I say that the events that happened on 11 September are truly great events by any measure…. The daily income of the American nation is $20 billion. The first week [after the attack] they didn't work at all as a result of the psychological shock of the attack, and even today some still don't work because of it. So if you multiply $20 billion by one week, it comes to $140 billion…. The cost of building and construction losses? Let us say more than $30 billion. So far they have fired or liquidated more than 170,000 employees from airline companies, including airfreight companies and commercial airlines…. One of the well-known American hotel companies, Intercontinental, has fired 20,000 employees, thanks to God's grace….'


And on it goes. Can you see what bin Laden is doing here? He has not been 'wonderfully briefed' by al-Qaeda's resident economist, if it has such a thing; rather, he is cherry-picking from the various scare stories and predictions of doom - and indeed real job losses - that were splashed across the media in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and claiming ownership of them, as if they were all part of his plot. Also in October 2001, he cites 'American studies and analysis [which] have mentioned that 70 per cent of the American people are still suffering from depression and psychological trauma as a result of the [attacks]'. Here, he takes a very contemporary Western phenomenon - the notion that post-traumatic stress disorder necessarily follows all tragic events - and celebrates it as part of his effort to 'degrade' the United States. He attempts to attach meaning to his nihilistic assault retrospectively - first by borrowing the Palestine explanation from Western commentators, and then by citing the economic handwringing that also was widespread in the Western media.




Hilariously, bin Laden even favourably quotes the Royal Institute for International Affairs - the heart of British diplomatic and foreign policy circles. On 29 October 2004, he argues that Bush officials, by going to war in Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11 and therefore inflicting further hardship on their own military and economy, are actually helping al-Qaeda to bleed America dry, saying: 'To some analysts and diplomats, it seems as if we and the White House are on the same team shooting at the United States' own goal, despite our different intentions. These and other such ideas were referred to by a British diplomat at the Royal Institute for International Affairs….'


Suddenly, on 15 April 2004, in a message headlined in this collection 'To the peoples of Europe', bin Laden starts talking about security. He says, 'It is well known that security is a vital necessity for every human being', and says 'sensible people would not let their leaders compromise their security'. These are weird words indeed from a man who okays the planting of bombs in civilian-populated areas - until you realise that this statement is made shortly after the Madrid train bombings of 11 March 2004, when European officials and commentators kickstarted a debate about tightening security around the continent. Bin Laden again feeds off Western concerns. In this same statement he also mentions 'opinion polls showing that most people in Europe want peace' in contrast to the 'White House gang…making billions of dollars for the big corporations'. Once again: what kind of fighter for Allah needs to cite Western opinion polls to justify his war against Mammon?


Bin Laden and the Bush-bashers


Bin Laden's parroting of Western views is most stark in his later statements about Iraq. Here, he sounds like a cross between Michael Moore and Robert Fisk, with a bit of Koran-bashing thrown in for good measure. In a statement dated 29 October 2004, one bit in particular made me laugh: bin Laden seems to suggest that the weapons inspectors in Iraq should have been given more time before the rush to war! He says:


'…American thinkers and intellectuals warned Bush before the war that everything he needed to guarantee America's security by removing weapons of mass destruction - assuming they existed - was at his disposal, that all countries were with him when it came to inspections, and that America's interest did not require him to launch into a groundless war with unknown repercussions. But the black gold blinded him and he put his own private interests ahead of the American public interest….'


The above statement is like a microcosm of the trendy liberal argument against the war in Iraq: we should have let the weapons inspectors continue their job (bin Laden for Blix!) but because Bush is so addicted to oil (the 'black gold') he went ahead with the war anyway. Bin Laden even worries about the war having 'unknown repercussions', an echo of debates in the West about the unpredictability of war in Iraq and the concern that it might make all of us less rather than more safe. No wonder bin Laden namechecks 'American thinkers and intellectuals' - he got his political position on Iraq directly from them.


By the time of Iraq, bin Laden - who started out as a Saudi obsessive who wanted to make Saudi society even more chokingly religious - has become a fully-fledged Bush-basher, virtually indistinguishable from a new generation of journos and bloggers who see Bush as the most evil president ever and Iraq as the wickedest war of all time (they have short historical memories). He rants that 'this war is making billions of dollars for the big corporations, whether it be those who manufacture weapons or reconstruction firms like Halliburton and its offshoot and sister companies'. Halliburton has, of course, become the bete noir of the anti-capitalist-cum-anti-war movement. Bin Laden says: 'It is all too clear, then, who benefits most from stirring up this war and bloodshed: the merchants of war, the bloodsuckers who direct world policy from behind the scenes.' This is also a popular idea on today's anti-war left: that a wicked cabal led by Paul Wolfowtiz and Dick Cheney (both of whom have big business links) is leading America to war. (Indeed, I tried my best to find some differences between that sentence uttered by bin Laden and this one uttered by anti-Bush actor Woody Harrelson - 'the epidemic of all human rights violations all stems from the same sick source, and that is The Beast: these giant frigging industries that control the body politic, our society and certainly our economy' - but I had no luck.) (4)


Also on Iraq, Bin Laden rails against 'big media' (a term created on the Blogosphere to describe news corporations and mainstream newspapers) and describes Bush as 'the liar in the White House'. He also denounces the nepotism of the Bush clan, saying 'Bush Snr saw the benefits of making his sons state governors', and criticises George W Bush for 'falsifying elections' in Florida. This doesn't quite add up, does it? After all, bin Laden got his fortune courtesy of family connections, and he's hardly in a position to lecture anybody about democracy: he's never been elected by anyone and often complains about the thick Muslim masses who fail to rise up against their American and local oppressors. Indeed, al-Qaeda was born of a distinctly anti-masses sentiment among former Arab Mujahideen and Egyptian Islamists. Bin Laden is such a shameless plagiarist that he will even take up the popular pastime of bashing the Bushes over the Florida thing and their political-family ties even though similar accusations of anti-democracy and nepotism could be made against him (and then some).


So many of bin Laden's statements are peppered with references to 'intellectuals', 'thinkers', 'analysts', 'diplomats', 'writers' and so on - most of them Western, rather than Eastern mystics, and all of whose work he has ripped off. Indeed, he gives the game away with two statements in particular. In the first (on 29 October 2004) he advises the White House to read 'Robert Fisk, who is a fellow [Westerner] and a co-religionist of yours, but one whom I consider unbiased'. Indeed, he 'dares' the White House to 'interview [Fisk], so that he could explain to the American people everything he has learned from us about the reasons for our struggle'. Note that this Islamic warrior doesn't encourage the White House to read the Koran if they want to know the truth, but Robert Fisk: the Independent columnist who is known for his (often shrill) anti-war arguments.


In the second statement (also on 29 October 2004) bin Laden chastises Bush for leaving '50,000 of his citizens in the two towers to face this great horror on their own', because he considered 'a little girl's story about a goat and its butting [to be] more important than dealing with aeroplanes and their butting into skyscrapers'. What is he rabbiting on about? You'll know if you've seen, or read about, Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11, which opens with painful footage of Bush reading a story called 'My Pet Goat' to a classroom of kids on the morning of 9/11 while the planes hit the twin towers. Maybe bin Laden watched a pirate DVD of Fahrenheit 9/11; maybe he just read about the opening scene somewhere on the web. Either way, he seems yet again to borrow from an anti-Americanism that has its origins in the West.


Bin Laden's cynical shift from anti-Crusader to Bush-basher is summed up in the contrast between a statement made on 3 November 2001 (here titled 'Crusader wars') and one made on 29 October 2004 ('The towers of Lebanon'). In the first he talks in broad terms about the Crusader West, including the United Nations, and how they are trying to reconquer Islamic lands; in the second, made three years later, he barks on about Bush, Bush, Bush, this evil man and his evil family who are trying to bleed the world dry. His political posturing is very clearly and directly shaped by changes among the oppositional left in the West, which transformed between 9/11 and Iraq into a narrowly anti-Bush camp, laying the blame for the world's ill at the foot of one man.


Al-Qaeda: sustained by a cynical left


Bin Laden is not an 'eloquent preacher' or 'teacher' or 'wonderfully briefed politician': he is a glorified blogger - a blogger with bombs on, if you like. Like bloggers he is parasitical on the media (while at the same time slating 'big media') and he's always commenting on others' comments rather than saying anything original or distinct; where bloggers spend too much time in their bedrooms and communicate with the world through proclamations on their websites, bin Laden spends his days in a cave or hovel somewhere and communicates with the world through video or audio messages (which often are reproduced on pro-al-Qaeda websites).


In a nutshell, bin Laden steals from and quotes Western commentators in his justifications for al-Qaeda violence, and then Western commentators re-quote bin Laden's rehashing of their own arguments as evidence that al-Qaeda is a rational political organisation. Talk about a vicious cycle. In the process, some commentators get dangerously close to being apologists for al-Qaeda. In the introduction to this collection, editor Bruce Lawrence asks 'Should bin Laden…be described as a contemporary anti-imperialist fighter adaptive to the Information Age?' He answers his own question by quoting Michael Mann (whom he describes as 'one of the most level-headed of sociologists'). Mann says: 'Despite the religious rhetoric and the bloody means, bin Laden is a rational man. There is a simple reason why he attacked the US: American imperialism. As long as America seeks to control the Middle East, he and people like him will be its enemy.'


What these commentators don't seem to realise is that they provided bin Laden with the cloak of rationality and political reasoning. Their own arguments, often cynically made, about al-Qaeda being an understandable (if bloody and murderous) response to American imperialism have been co-opted - explicitly so - by bin Laden. Indeed, if the Bush administration's scaremongering about al-Qaeda provided bin Laden with the kind of notoriety that made him a global player (in short, the Bushies' warnings about a terrible terror threat to Western civilisation became a self-fulfilling prophecy), then the anti-war left's opportunistic claims about al-Qaeda being some kind of rational resistance provided him with the moral authority to continue his bloody campaign. As I argued on spiked in November 2003, 'Fearful Western officials made "al-Qaeda" - whatever that might be - into an instantly recognisable, frightening, global phenomenon' (see Does al-Qaeda exist?, by Brendan O'Neill). Now we have a situation where the critics and opponents of those Western officials are helping to keep al-Qaeda chugging along by handing it a rationale for its terrorism and apologising for its antics.


Instead of exposing the glaring contradictions in bin Laden's statements - all the better to undermine al-Qaeda's violent outbursts and put the real case for a Palestinian homeland and an end to Western intervention in the Middle East - too many on the left read meaning and consistency into his statements, projecting their own political prejudices on to the ranting of a bearded man in a cave. As a result, what is in truth a disparate nihilistic campaign, an incoherent lashing out against modernity, is given the cloth of 'anti-imperialism' with which to dress up its crimes.


It is no longer enough to see al-Qaeda as the creation of the pro-war right, who blew the group out of proportion and gave it a place on the world stage. Al-Qaeda is also sustained by sections of the anti-war left who provide it with moral and political substance. This collection of bin Laden's statements reveals that al-Qaeda is the bastard child of a fearmongering right and an opportunistic left.


Visit Brendan O'Neill's website.





Read on:

spiked-issue: War on terror

spiked-issue: War on Iraq

(1) Evil yes, mad no, Peter Preston, Guardian, 13 November 2005

(2) Michael Mann, quoted in Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden, Verso, 2005

(3) See Osama bin Laden: more media whore than guerrilla warrior, by Brendan O'Neill

(4) Woody Harrelson, quoted in 'Hollywood's angry young man', Benjamin Davis, New Statesman, 5 December 2005