Massive attention has now been given - and rightly so - to the reasons why Britain went to war against Iraq. But far too little attention has focused on why the US went to war, and that throws light on British motives too. The conventional explanation is that after the Twin Towers were hit, retaliation against al-Qaida bases in Afghanistan was a natural first step in launching a global war against terrorism. Then, because Saddam Hussein was alleged by the US and UK governments to retain weapons of mass destruction, the war could be extended to Iraq as well. However this theory does not fit all the facts. The truth may be a great deal murkier.
We now know that a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush's younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC).
The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says "while the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."
The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document attributed to Wolfowitz and Libby which said the US must "discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role". It refers to key allies such as the UK as "the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership". It describes peacekeeping missions as "demanding American political leadership rather than that of the UN". It says "even should Saddam pass from the scene", US bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently... as "Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has". It spotlights China for "regime change", saying "it is time to increase the presence of American forces in SE Asia".
The document also calls for the creation of "US space forces" to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent "enemies" using the internet against the US. It also hints that the US may consider developing biological weapons "that can target specific genotypes [and] may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool".
Finally - written a year before 9/11 - it pinpoints North Korea, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes, and says their existence justifies the creation of a "worldwide command and control system". This is a blueprint for US world domination. But before it is dismissed as an agenda for rightwing fantasists, it is clear it provides a much better explanation of what actually happened before, during and after 9/11 than the global war on terrorism thesis. This can be seen in several ways.
First, it is clear the US authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11. It is known that at least 11 countries provided advance warning to the US of the 9/11 attacks. Two senior Mossad experts were sent to Washington in August 2001 to alert the CIA and FBI to a cell of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation (Daily Telegraph, September 16 2001). The list they provided included the names of four of the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom was arrested.
It had been known as early as 1996 that there were plans to hit Washington targets with aeroplanes. Then in 1999 a US national intelligence council report noted that "al-Qaida suicide bombers could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House".
Fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers obtained their visas in Saudi Arabia. Michael Springman, the former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah, has stated that since 1987 the CIA had been illicitly issuing visas to unqualified applicants from the Middle East and bringing them to the US for training in terrorism for the Afghan war in collaboration with Bin Laden (BBC, November 6 2001). It seems this operation continued after the Afghan war for other purposes. It is also reported that five of the hijackers received training at secure US military installations in the 1990s (Newsweek, September 15 2001).
Instructive leads prior to 9/11 were not followed up. French Moroccan flight student Zacarias Moussaoui (now thought to be the 20th hijacker) was arrested in August 2001 after an instructor reported he showed a suspicious interest in learning how to steer large airliners. When US agents learned from French intelligence he had radical Islamist ties, they sought a warrant to search his computer, which contained clues to the September 11 mission (Times, November 3 2001). But they were turned down by the FBI. One agent wrote, a month before 9/11, that Moussaoui might be planning to crash into the Twin Towers (Newsweek, May 20 2002).
All of this makes it all the more astonishing - on the war on terrorism perspective - that there was such slow reaction on September 11 itself. The first hijacking was suspected at not later than 8.20am, and the last hijacked aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania at 10.06am. Not a single fighter plane was scrambled to investigate from the US Andrews airforce base, just 10 miles from Washington DC, until after the third plane had hit the Pentagon at 9.38 am. Why not? There were standard FAA intercept procedures for hijacked aircraft before 9/11. Between September 2000 and June 2001 the US military launched fighter aircraft on 67 occasions to chase suspicious aircraft (AP, August 13 2002). It is a US legal requirement that once an aircraft has moved significantly off its flight plan, fighter planes are sent up to investigate.
Was this inaction simply the result of key people disregarding, or being ignorant of, the evidence? Or could US air security operations have been deliberately stood down on September 11? If so, why, and on whose authority? The former US federal crimes prosecutor, John Loftus, has said: "The information provided by European intelligence services prior to 9/11 was so extensive that it is no longer possible for either the CIA or FBI to assert a defence of incompetence."
Nor is the US response after 9/11 any better. No serious attempt has ever been made to catch Bin Laden. In late September and early October 2001, leaders of Pakistan's two Islamist parties negotiated Bin Laden's extradition to Pakistan to stand trial for 9/11. However, a US official said, significantly, that "casting our objectives too narrowly" risked "a premature collapse of the international effort if by some lucky chance Mr Bin Laden was captured". The US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Myers, went so far as to say that "the goal has never been to get Bin Laden" (AP, April 5 2002). The whistleblowing FBI agent Robert Wright told ABC News (December 19 2002) that FBI headquarters wanted no arrests. And in November 2001 the US airforce complained it had had al-Qaida and Taliban leaders in its sights as many as 10 times over the previous six weeks, but had been unable to attack because they did not receive permission quickly enough (Time Magazine, May 13 2002). None of this assembled evidence, all of which comes from sources already in the public domain, is compatible with the idea of a real, determined war on terrorism.
The catalogue of evidence does, however, fall into place when set against the PNAC blueprint. From this it seems that the so-called "war on terrorism" is being used largely as bogus cover for achieving wider US strategic geopolitical objectives. Indeed Tony Blair himself hinted at this when he said to the Commons liaison committee: "To be truthful about it, there was no way we could have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a campaign on Afghanistan but for what happened on September 11" (Times, July 17 2002). Similarly Rumsfeld was so determined to obtain a rationale for an attack on Iraq that on 10 separate occasions he asked the CIA to find evidence linking Iraq to 9/11; the CIA repeatedly came back empty-handed (Time Magazine, May 13 2002).
In fact, 9/11 offered an extremely convenient pretext to put the PNAC plan into action. The evidence again is quite clear that plans for military action against Afghanistan and Iraq were in hand well before 9/11. A report prepared for the US government from the Baker Institute of Public Policy stated in April 2001 that "the US remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma. Iraq remains a destabilising influence to... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East". Submitted to Vice-President Cheney's energy task group, the report recommended that because this was an unacceptable risk to the US, "military intervention" was necessary (Sunday Herald, October 6 2002).
Similar evidence exists in regard to Afghanistan. The BBC reported (September 18 2001) that Niaz Niak, a former Pakistan foreign secretary, was told by senior American officials at a meeting in Berlin in mid-July 2001 that "military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October". Until July 2001 the US government saw the Taliban regime as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of hydrocarbon pipelines from the oil and gas fields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean. But, confronted with the Taliban's refusal to accept US conditions, the US representatives told them "either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs" (Inter Press Service, November 15 2001).
Given this background, it is not surprising that some have seen the US failure to avert the 9/11 attacks as creating an invaluable pretext for attacking Afghanistan in a war that had clearly already been well planned in advance. There is a possible precedent for this. The US national archives reveal that President Roosevelt used exactly this approach in relation to Pearl Harbor on December 7 1941. Some advance warning of the attacks was received, but the information never reached the US fleet. The ensuing national outrage persuaded a reluctant US public to join the second world war. Similarly the PNAC blueprint of September 2000 states that the process of transforming the US into "tomorrow's dominant force" is likely to be a long one in the absence of "some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor". The 9/11 attacks allowed the US to press the "go" button for a strategy in accordance with the PNAC agenda which it would otherwise have been politically impossible to implement.
The overriding motivation for this political smokescreen is that the US and the UK are beginning to run out of secure hydrocarbon energy supplies. By 2010 the Muslim world will control as much as 60% of the world's oil production and, even more importantly, 95% of remaining global oil export capacity. As demand is increasing, so supply is decreasing, continually since the 1960s.
This is leading to increasing dependence on foreign oil supplies for both the US and the UK. The US, which in 1990 produced domestically 57% of its total energy demand, is predicted to produce only 39% of its needs by 2010. A DTI minister has admitted that the UK could be facing "severe" gas shortages by 2005. The UK government has confirmed that 70% of our electricity will come from gas by 2020, and 90% of that will be imported. In that context it should be noted that Iraq has 110 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves in addition to its oil.
A report from the commission on America's national interests in July 2000 noted that the most promising new source of world supplies was the Caspian region, and this would relieve US dependence on Saudi Arabia. To diversify supply routes from the Caspian, one pipeline would run westward via Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. Another would extend eastwards through Afghanistan and Pakistan and terminate near the Indian border. This would rescue Enron's beleaguered power plant at Dabhol on India's west coast, in which Enron had sunk $3bn investment and whose economic survival was dependent on access to cheap gas.
Nor has the UK been disinterested in this scramble for the remaining world supplies of hydrocarbons, and this may partly explain British participation in US military actions. Lord Browne, chief executive of BP, warned Washington not to carve up Iraq for its own oil companies in the aftermath of war (Guardian, October 30 2002). And when a British foreign minister met Gadaffi in his desert tent in August 2002, it was said that "the UK does not want to lose out to other European nations already jostling for advantage when it comes to potentially lucrative oil contracts" with Libya (BBC Online, August 10 2002).
The conclusion of all this analysis must surely be that the "global war on terrorism" has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda - the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project. Is collusion in this myth and junior participation in this project really a proper aspiration for British foreign policy? If there was ever need to justify a more objective British stance, driven by our own independent goals, this whole depressing saga surely provides all the evidence needed for a radical change of course.
· Michael Meacher MP was environment minister from May 1997 to June 2003
That was a good read. I'm sure this is all nothing but a conspiracy theory bull. :o I just not understand why is hard for some of you knuckleheads here to gasp and understand the reasons behind 911. Some of you even have very good knowledge on American foreign policies yet you can’t seem to get the point behind the 911 attacks. Instead of calling names on every single person that has an opposing view how about you try to have a conversation?
gummybear
quote:
Originally posted by evil_cookie
Oh, okay.
Be specific. Point to some credible source which/whom can substantiate your crack-pot theories.
Otherwise, shut the up.
So far you've referenced http://www.rense.com/ as one of your "sources." And you expect us to take you nutcases seriously?
:haha:
What are my crack pot theories? I do believe I have stayed away from voicing my theories...and I'm not going to post a bunch of sources to try to convince YOU of something that you will never, ever be convinced of. Anything I post, you are going to deem as invalid and crazy...
However, since you insist though..why don't you start here..
There are 32 instances on that page where high level officials have gone on record and questioned the statements on 9/11. They also provide links to appropriate sources so you may want to follow the trail just to double check if the information is valid. Who knows, some crackpot like myself MAY have concocted the comments made by former CIA agents and posted them on their website so please, feel free to follow the trail of crumbs. Also, please feel free to go person by person and call each one whatever name you choose in order to vilify and negate their professional and/or personal observations.
Feel free to go through the rest of the site as I find the wealth of information thought inducing to say the least.
Now THIS site, is just caaarazy! All those American millitary officers questioning 9/11 and the official version of events. They actually have STATEMENTS from these people. WHO THE TO THEY THINK THEY ARE? what a bunch of nut jobs..
oooh..you told me to shut the ..you're such an internet bully..RAWR!
See, you can call me as many names as you want but I am confident in my thought process and it really doesn't bother me. I am not some crazy crack pot and I feel that there is so much more to this world than we will EVER be privy to. I do not lose sleep (although at one point I may have) trying to figure it out.
I have come to the conclusion that being aware is good enough for me. I don't get brain washed by watching CNN or put my faith in elected officials. I am fully aware that people in trusted positions can and DO lie to the masses regularly. I believe that this world is controlled by greed and greedy people. I believe that there are people FAR more powerful than Bush and his cronies and that those are the people that run things. There are back room deals and agendas set that WE will never be privy to.
Everything we are fed is controlled and we only receive (in my opinion) a tiny fraction of the truth. I've just trained myself to be tuned into a different frequency and prefer to look at things from my own perspective. I was blessed with the ability to form rational thought and I choose to harness that ability to look at things critically. When I see statements from 220 senior American officials ranging from millitary, intelligence, government and law enforcement, questioning the official version of events, it makes ME question things.
So go yourself and everyone else on here who seems to think that people like me are just a bunch of idiots and losers. I have not resorted to name calling but in my mind, maybe YOU guys are the idiots.
exraver
As I was mentioning in previous threads about politics (G20, F35), a lot of people here, in Canada, remind me of CCCP about 30 years ago. "Yeah, I just saw this on TV or KPCC said so in recent statement, so it must be true, there's no other opinion, right?".
Well, guess what? 30 years later turns out it was all brainwashing, so do you think there's slight possibility same can be happening right now?
I don't care who is behind 9/11, arabs, CIA, it could be aliens, for all I care, but question one should ask themselves is, "Who gained from all this happening?"
It's certainly not millions of people in Afghanistan and Iraq, "liberated" in last 9 years. But you guys would not care about some lost lives 10.000 miles from here, you just care about your office job or how you gonna pay mortgage next week.
BTW, dude who wrote this article is a british MP, and was a minister in UK gov. for 6 years, and he's quoting official AMERICAN news outlets (Newsweek, ABC News, Times, US national archives for example), not some shady sites.
If this is not good enough for you, I don't know what is.
geroin
quote:
Originally posted by exraver
If this is not good enough for you, I don't know what is.
definitely not good enough, you don't know what you're talking about you conspiracy theorist! how dare you question anything, didn't you see the official reports and the news!!! you must be wrong!!!!
Originally posted by love_child
I didnt know you guys were friends... I thought he called you a oompa loompa once...
Im laughing at what an idiot he is ;) ;)
shagnew13
quote:
Originally posted by geroin
definitely not good enough, you don't know what you're talking about you conspiracy theorist! how dare you question anything, didn't you see the official reports and the news!!! you must be wrong!!!!
Wait, Wait, hold on a second!!! We are supposed to believe everything the Government & the Media tells us I thought???
No????
hahaha
:haha: :haha: :haha:
love_child
quote:
Originally posted by yankeeBaby
Im laughing at what an idiot he is ;) ;)
I agree
evil_cookie
quote:
Originally posted by gummybear
What are my crack pot theories? I do believe I have stayed away from voicing my theories...and I'm not going to post a bunch of sources to try to convince YOU of something that you will never, ever be convinced of. Anything I post, you are going to deem as invalid and crazy...
However, since you insist though..why don't you start here..
You nutcases just keep digging yourself deeper and deeper.
evil_cookie
quote:
Originally posted by love_child
The place was blown up the planes were used as a distraction to draw attention from the real reason of the WTC's falling down like a rock.
Uh huh. Do tell us more.
:haha: :haha: :haha:
quote:
Originally posted by DigiNut
Goddamn some of you people are ing stupid.
geroin
quote:
Originally posted by evil_cookie
911proof.com eh.
You nutcases just keep digging yourself deeper and deeper.
this guy is hopeless, let him be..
pkcRAISTLIN
quote:
Originally posted by hardcore trancer
That was a good read. I'm sure this is all nothing but a conspiracy theory bull. :o I just not understand why is hard for some of you knuckleheads here to gasp and understand the reasons behind 911. Some of you even have very good knowledge on American foreign policies yet you can’t seem to get the point behind the 911 attacks.
We’re not congenital idiots romanticising our juvenile anti-establishment world view, that’s why. If its all so clear cut and obvious, why have you no peer reviewed articles showing how the NIST analyses are wrong, why is there so second investigation, why are all you s bat insane? I mean, you’ve raised a number of ignorant points that I’ve shat all over, and all you do is move to the next pile of , “asking questions”, ROFL. Like I said before, all you’re doing here is demeaning all the other opinions you’ve ever posted on TA.
quote:
Originally posted by hardcore trancer
Instead of calling names on every single person that has an opposing view how about you try to have a conversation?
Which would achieve what exactly? Would you bother arguing evolution with a creationist? Or the holocaust with a holocaust denier? Of course not. They’ve already shown they are immune to facts and logic. It is impossible to have a rational discussion with moonbats; this implicit assumption, that there are two sides to the story worth discussing, or two sides with equal amounts of evidence and plausibility, is outright false.
pkcRAISTLIN
quote:
Originally posted by exraver
I don't care who is behind 9/11, arabs, CIA, it could be aliens, for all I care, but question one should ask themselves is, "Who gained from all this happening?"
Heaps of governments “gained”, you childish ignorant .
