Compiled three easily ignored, but interesting, pieces that came across my inbox on "9/11".

[Another Worldview]

11 Sept 2012 From Ian Henshall, author 9/11 The New Evidence. Copyright asserted 0044 79469 39217 New York Times Revelations Highlight CIA's Role pre-911 Uncomfortably buried in the New York Times today is an "opinion" piece with significant new revelations about the 9/11 attacks. (1) Journalist Kurt Eichenwald has obtained access to a series of top secret summer 2001 Presidential Briefings from the CIA to President Bush and apparently to the top CIA officials who authorised them. The briefings show that as well as being described as "determined to strike in the US" Osama Bin Laden was cited many times by the CIA in ways that made it clear to Bush that there was an imminent threat. (2) This should in itself be a major scandal: for months after 9/11 Washington claimed that the attack was unthinkable, had come out of the blue and that the scant warnings had not mentioned an attack on the US mainland, all lies which if exposed at the time would have made it far harder to invade Afghanistan let alone Iraq. Why start wars abroad when all that is needed is more competent politicians at home? So why were the warnings ignored? Unfortunately Eichenwald, as is customary in the corporate media, goes on to act as a conduit for the CIA's version of events. According to this account Bush and his cabal of neocons ignored the CIA's warnings because they thought they were a hoax organised by Saddam Hussein to distract attention from Iraq. This confusing theory takes on board the awkward, long ignored revelation that the Bush people, along with CIA chief George Tenet, were planning in detail for the invasion of Iraq before 9/11. We know this because a witness, Paul O'Neill the then Treasury Secretary, has stated that the first Bush cabinet meeting in 2001 had little else on the agenda. (3) But the theory has a big drawback. Pretty much every mainstream commentator in the Washington axis agrees about one thing: the invasion of Iraq was only a political possibility after the shock and anger created by 9/11. The obvious possibility this implies has been ignored by the corporate media: 9/11 was allowed to happen (or made to happen) because it was the only way to get public approval for the wars planned before 9/11 Another big problem for the various officially promoted theories is the mountain of evidence from official sources, including the then White House anti-terror co-ordinator Richard Clarke, that officials in the CIA's top secret Osama Bin Laden unit actively intervened to prevent FBI officers in the field from foiling the 9/11 attacks. While Eichenwald laments that we may never know if the attacks could have been prevented Clarke, in a far better position to know, asserts that they probably could have been. (4) There are other theories on the mainstream media circuit. Clarke suggests that the CIA were duped by Saudi intelligence, in league with Osama bin Laden, into thinking the 9/11 hijackers were trusted double agents. However, as Clarke himself suggests in his book "Against All Enemies", it is highly unlikely the CIA would trust the Saudis to the extent of giving known Al Qaeda terrorists a free rein in the US. Besides which, the head of Saudi intelligence Turki Al Faisal Al Sa置d who resigned three weeks before 9/11 and according to Clarke should be a prime suspect, enjoyed the next few years as ambassador to London before moving on to Washington. Journalist Greg Palast and the BBC's Newsnight had a third, equally unlikely explanation: the alleged 9/11 hijackers from Saudi Arabia were allowed into the US with invalid visa applications because the Bush White House wanted to improve relations with Saudi Arabia. So to sum up we have Palast who says that the Bush regime decided to help its Saudi friends by opening the US borders to anyone from Saudi Arabia including jihadists, we have Clarke who says the Saudis conned the CIA into making sure the FBI failed to arrest, or even monitor, the alleged 9/11 hijackers, and we have Eichenwald who has no explanation at all for the CIA organised standdown. For 911 sceptics all these theories have another glaring problem too: many of the hijackers did not seem to be devout Muslims at all, drinking alcohol and using prostitutes, and several seem to have shown up alive after the event, according to reports on the BBC and the Daily Telegraph. So why did they became suicidal and how did they develop such excellent flying skills in just a few months? Hani Hanjour at the Pentagon, who had frightened his instructors with his incompetence on small planes, was now able to navigate at full speed for over a kilometre maintaining a height of just a few metres above ground level, as confirmed by the Pentagon's famous cctv video, reluctantly released in 2003. (7) Could it be, ask the sceptics, that 9/11 as well as being the mother of 10 years of NATO wars, was also the mother of all drone strikes, with the alleged hijackers merely providing cover? In assessing this it would be useful to have the full details of the Pentagon's anti-hijack exercise, initially hidden from the public and even the 911 Commission. By coincidence, we are told, the exercise was running in almost exact tandem with the "real" 9/11 hijackings. (6) Oddly, this would make little difference to the issue of the CIA's role: even if the 9/11 attacks were entirely an inside job, there would still be a need for colorful Islamic militants to fill the role of hijacker and they would still need to be protected from premature arrest by the FBI as happened to the alleged 20th hijacker Zaccarius Moussaoui. Amongst all the smoke and mirrors it is the FBI standdown that stands out. It is based on the testimony of three FBI field offices and the assessment of Richard Clarke. It is supported to some extent by Palast's sources, and confirmed by the meticulous work of author Kevin Fenton based on a string of now partially declassified Washington investigations. Moreover the standdown was deliberate: a "decision" as Clarke puts it and Fenton's researches confirm. Not an omission as the BBC's Conspiracy Files investigation blithely assured us based on, yes you've probably guessed, CIA sources. (5) There are many questions about 9/11, not least the details of the hijack exercise and the mechanism by which buildings built to withstand a jet plane impact collapsed so spectacularly. For the CIA there is one resounding question, echoing into the media silence. The public needs a full answer, on the record, to a simple question: who ordered the standdown that made 9/11 possible and why? Turki Al Faisal Al Sa置d was Saudi intelligence chief for decades but resigned three weeks before 9/11. If CIA inspired leaks are correct he should be a prime suspect in the 9/11 attacks, but instead he was welcomed as ambassador to London and later Washington. (1) http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/opinion/the-bush-white-house-was-deaf-to-9-11-warnings.html?_r=2 (2) Presidential brief referenced in NYT (3) for example see http://articles.cnn.com/2004-01-10/politics/oneill.bush_1_roomful-of-deaf-people-education-of-paul-o-neill-national-security-council-meeting?_s=PM:ALLPOLITICS and book The Price of Loyalty for details (4) http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/08/11/september-11th-anniversary-richard-clarke-s-explosive-cia-cover-up-charge.html (5) Fenton's book "Disconecting the Dots" (is a must read for students of the 9/11 paper trail (6) The 911 Commission went into the field check the Pentagon account and reconstructed some deleted tapes which confirmed that there was an anti-hijack exercise in progress during the 9/11 attacks. (Commission Hearings, Ben Veniste). In this Vanity Fair article the writer admits the story "feeds into conspiracy theories" and then incorrectly claims the times were not the same. www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/08/norad200608 (7) 911 The New Evidence (Constable) has a photocopy of a flight instructor's report -----Inline Attachment Follows----- __________________________________________________________________________   http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2012/09/11/the-11th-anniversary-911-paul-craig-roberts/ Dr. Paul Craig Roberts The 11th Anniversary of 9/11 The article below was written for the Journal of 9/11 Studies for the eleventh anniversary of September 11, 2001, the day that terminated accountable government and American liberty. It is posted here with the agreement of the editors. In order to understand the improbability of the government’s explanation of 9/11, it is not necessary to know anything about what force or forces brought down the three World Trade Center buildings, what hit the Pentagon or caused the explosion, the flying skills or lack thereof of the alleged hijackers, whether the airliner crashed in Pennsylvania or was shot down, whether cell phone calls made at the altitudes could be received, or any other debated aspect of the controversy. You only have to know two things. One is that according to the official story, a handful of Arabs, mainly Saudi Arabians, operating independently of any government and competent intelligence service, men without James Bond and V for Vendetta capabilities, outwitted not only the CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency, but all 16 US intelligence agencies, along with all security agencies of America’s NATO allies and Israel’s Mossad. Not only did the entire intelligence forces of the Western world fail, but on the morning of the attack the entire apparatus of the National Security State simultaneously failed. Airport security failed four times in one hour. NORAD failed. Air Traffic Control failed. The US Air Force failed. The National Security Council failed. Dick Cheney failed. Absolutely nothing worked. The world’s only superpower was helpless at the humiliating mercy of a few undistinguished Arabs. It is hard to image a more far-fetched story–except for the second thing you need to know: The humiliating failure of US National Security did not result in immediate demands from the President of the United States, from Congress, from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and from the media for an investigation of how such improbable total failure could have occurred. No one was held accountable for the greatest failure of national security in world history. Instead, the White House dragged its feet for a year resisting any investigation until the persistent demands from 9/11 families for accountability forced President George W. Bush to appoint a political commission, devoid of any experts, to hold a pretend investigation...CONT, link above ____________________________________________ "Shocked & Horrified" Written on September 15th, 2001 by Larry Mosqueda, Ph.D., Evergreen State College. This is the Best Article I Have Read about the Events of 9-11-01. It is Well Worth Reading Over & Over Again! Just to clarify, I do believe that 9-11 was an inside job. But that belief came some years after 9-11-01. Frank Dorrel www.addictedtowar.com Written on September 15th, 2001 By Larry Mosqueda, Ph.D., Evergreen State College Like all Americans, I was shocked and horrified to watch the WTC Twin Towers attacked by hijacked planes and collapse, resulting in the deaths of thousands of innocent people. I had not been that shocked and horrified since January 16, 1991, when then President Bush attacked Baghdad, and the rest of Iraq and began killing 200,000 people during that “war” (slaughter). This includes the infamous “highway of death” in the last days of the slaughter when US pilots literally shot in the back retreating Iraqi civilians and soldiers. I continue to be horrified by the sanctions on Iraq, which have resulted in the death of over 1,000,000 Iraqis, including over 500,000 children, about whom former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has stated, their deaths “are worth the cost.” Over the course of my life I have been shocked and horrified by a variety of US governmental actions, such as the US sponsored coup against democracy in Guatemala in 1954 which resulted in the deaths of over 120,000 Guatemalan peasants by US installed dictatorships over the course of four decades. Events of September 11 reminded me of the horror I felt when the US overthrew the government of the Dominican Republic in 1965 and helped to murder 3,000 people. And it reminded me of the shock I felt in 1973, when the US sponsored a coup in Chile against the democratic government of Salvador Allende and helped to murder another 30,000 people, including US citizens. Events of September 11 reminded me of the shock and horror I felt in 1965 when the US sponsored a coup in Indonesia that resulted in the murder of over 800,000 people, and the subsequent slaughter in 1975 of over 250,000 innocent people in East Timor by the Indonesian regime, with the direct complicity of President Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The World Court declared the US government a war criminal in 1984. I was reminded of the shock and horror I felt during the US sponsored terrorist contra war (the World Court declared the US government a war criminal in 1984 for the mining of the harbors) against Nicaragua in the 1980s which resulted in the deaths of over 30,000 innocent people (or as the US government used to call them before the term “collateral damage” was invented—“soft targets”). I was reminded of being horrified by the US war against the people of El Salvador in the 1980s, which resulted in the brutal deaths of over 80,000 “soft targets.” I was reminded of the shock and horror I felt during the US sponsored terror war against the peoples of southern Africa (especially Angola) that began in the 1970s and continues to this day, and has resulted in the deaths and mutilations of over 1,000,000. I was reminded of the shock and horror I felt as the US invaded Panama over the Christmas season of 1989 and killed over 8,000 in an attempt to capture George H. Bush’s CIA partner, now turned enemy, Manuel Noriega. I was reminded of the horror I felt when I learned about how the Shah of Iran was installed in a US sponsored brutal coup that resulted in the deaths of over 70,000 Iranians from 1952–1979. And the continuing shock as I learned that the Ayatollah Khomeini, who overthrew the Shah in 1979 and who was the US public enemy for the decade of the 1980s was also on the CIA payroll while he was in exile in Paris in the 1970s. But those scenes were not repeated over and over again on the national media to inflame the American public. I was reminded of the shock and horror that I felt as I learned how the US has “manufactured consent” since 1948 for its support of Israel, to the exclusion of virtually any rights for the Palestinians in their native lands. I was shocked as I learned about the hundreds of towns and villages that were literally wiped off the face of the earth in the early days of Israeli colonization. I was horrified in 1982 as the villagers of Sabra and Shatila were massacred by Israeli allies with direct Israeli complicity and direction. The untold thousands who died on that day match the scene of horror that we saw on September 11. But those scenes were not repeated over and over again on the national media to inflame the American public. Of course, the largest and most shocking war crime of the second half of the 20th century was the US assault on Indochina from 1954–1975, especially Vietnam, where over 4,000,000 people were bombed, napalmed, crushed, shot and individually “hands on” murdered in the “Phoenix Program” (this is where Oliver North got his start). Many US Vietnam veterans were also victimized by this war and had the best of intentions, but the policy makers themselves knew the criminality of their actions and policies as revealed in their own words in “The Pentagon Papers.” I was continually shocked and horrified as the US attacked and bombed with impunity the nation of Libya in the 1980s, including killing the infant daughter of Khadafi. I was shocked as the US bombed and invaded Grenada in 1983. I was horrified by US military and CIA actions in Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan, Sudan, Brazil, Argentina, and Yugoslavia. The deaths in these actions ran into the hundreds of thousands. The above list is by no means complete or comprehensive. It has just been conveniently eliminated from the public discourse and public consciousness. And for the most part, the analysis that the US actions have resulted in the deaths of primarily civilians (over 90%) is not unknown to the elites and policy makers. A conservative number for those who have been killed by US terror and military action since World War II is 8,000,000 people. This does not include the wounded, the imprisoned, the displaced, the refugees, etc. A conservative number for those who have been killed by US terror and military action since World War II is 8,000,000 people. Nothing that I have written is meant to disparage or disrespect those who were victims and those who suffered death or the loss of a loved one during this week’s events. It is not meant to “justify” any action by those who bombed the Twin Towers or the Pentagon. It is meant to put it in a context. Ed Herman in his book The Real Terror Network: Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda does not justify any terrorism but points out that states often engage in “wholesale” terror, while those whom governments define as “terrorist” engage in “retail” terrorism. And the seeds of much of the “retail” terror are in fact found in the “wholesale” terror of states. Again this is not to justify, in any way, the actions of September 11, but to put them in a context and suggest an explanation. Perhaps most shocking and horrific, if indeed bin Laden is the mastermind of the actions of September 11, he has clearly had significant training by competent and expert military personnel. During the 1980s, he was recruited, trained and funded by the CIA in Afghanistan to fight against the Russians. As long as he visited his terror on Russians and his enemies in Afghanistan, he was “our man” in that country. The same is true of Saddam Hussein of Iraq, who was a CIA asset in Iraq during the 1980s. Hussein could gas his own people, repress the population, and invade his neighbor Iran as long as he did it with US approval. The same was true of Manuel Noriega of Panama, who was a contemporary and CIA partner of George H. Bush in the 1980s. Noriega’s main crime for Bush, the father, was not that he dealt drugs (he did, but the US and Bush knew this before 1989), but that Noriega was no longer going to cooperate in the ongoing US terrorist contra war against Nicaragua. This information is not unknown or really controversial among elite policy makers. To repeat, this is not to justify any of the actions of September 11, but to put it in its horrifying context. …States often engage in “wholesale” terror, while those whom governments define as “terrorist” engage in “retail” terrorism. As shocking as the events of September 11 were, they are likely to generate even more horrific actions by the US government that will add significantly to the 8,000,000 figure stated above. This response may well be qualitatively and quantitatively worse than the events of Tuesday. The New York Times headline of 9/14/01 states that, “Bush And Top Aides Proclaim Policy of Ending States That Back Terror” as if that was a rational, measured, or even sane option. States that have been identified for possible elimination are “a number of Asian and African countries, like Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, and even Pakistan.” This is beyond shocking and horrific—it is just as potentially suicidal, homicidal, and more insane than the hijackers themselves. The retail terror is that of desperate and sometimes fanatical small groups and individuals who often have legitimate grievances, but engage in individual criminal and illegitimate activities; the wholesale terror is that of “rational” educated men where the pain, suffering, and deaths of millions of people are contemplated, planned, and too often executed, for the purpose of furthering a nebulous concept called the “national interest.” Space does not allow a full explanation of the elites’ Orwellian concept of the “national interest,” but it can be summarized as the protection and expansion of hegemony and an empire. The American public is being prepared for war while being fed a continuous stream of shocking and horrific repeated images of the events of September 11, and heartfelt stories from the survivors and the loved ones of those who lost family members. These stories are real and should not be diminished. In fact, those who lost family members can be considered a representative sample of the 8,000,000 who have been lost previously. If we multiply by 800–1000 times the amount of pain, angst, and anger being currently felt by the American public, we might begin to understand how much of the rest of the world feels as they are continually victimized. Some particularly poignant images are the heart-wrenching public stories that we are seeing and hearing of family members with pictures and flyers searching for their loved ones. These images are virtually the same as those of the “Mothers of the Disappeared” who searched for their (primarily) adult children in places such as Argentina, where over 11,000 were “disappeared” in 1976–1982, again with US approval. Just as the mothers of Argentina deserved our respect and compassion, so do those who are searching for their relatives now. However we should not allow ourselves to be manipulated by the media and US government into turning real grief and anger into a national policy of wholesale terror and genocide against innocent civilians in Asia and Africa. What we are seeing in military terms is called “softening the target”. The target here is the American public and we are being ideologically and emotionally prepared for the slaughter. However we should not allow ourselves to be manipulated by the media and US government into turning real grief and anger into a national policy of wholesale terror… None of the previously identified Asian and African countries are democracies, which mean that the people of these countries have virtually no impact on developing the policies of their governments, even if we assume that these governments are complicit in the actions of September 11. When one examines the recent history of these countries, one will find that the American government had direct and indirect influences on creating the conditions for the existence of some of these governments. This is especially true of the Taliban government of Afghanistan itself. If there is a great war, the crimes of that war will be revisited upon the US over the next generation. That is not some kind of religious prophecy or threat, it is merely a straightforward political analysis. If indeed it is bin Laden, the world must not deal only with him as an individual criminal, but eliminate the conditions that create the injustices and war crimes that will inevitably lead to more of these types of attacks in the future. The phrase “No Justice, No Peace” is more than a slogan used in a march, it is an observable historical fact. It is time to end the horror. ‘Shocked & Horrified’ by Larry Mosqueda, Ph.D. Evergreen State College *************************************************************************************   "Cowardice asks the question: Is it Safe? Expediency asks the question: Is it politic? Vanity asks the question: Is it popular? But conscience asks the question: Is it Right? And there comes a time one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular -- but one must take it simply because it is right." -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." Arthur Schopenhauer 1788- 1860