Osama bin Laden: Made in USA
john
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/madein.htm
Bush's Press Conference: Into the Abyss by Rick Rozoff
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/rozoff/abyss.htm
"Bin Laden worked hand in glove with the US Central Intelligence Agency
since the early 1980s in establishing his Maktab al-Khidamar network, which
raised money and recruited jehadis - the so-called Afghan Arabs, estimated
to be some 10,000 strong - to overthrow the secular Democratic Republic of
Afghanistan. He was a joint asset of the CIA and Pakistan's Inter-Service
Intelligence, which the Afghan Northern Opposition, Russia and India insist
still supports and controls him and his current Al-Qaida operation. The
latter is supported by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates...all three loyal US and British clients regimes and recipients of
Anglo-American military protection and largesse. So if Bush is looking for
harbors to bomb, he knows where they are located."
New book on NSA sheds light on secrets: U.S. terror plan called Cuba
invasion pretext
WASHINGTON - U.S. military leaders proposed in 1962 a secret plan to commit
terrorist acts against Americans and blame Cuba to create a pretext for
invasion and the ouster of Communist leader Fidel Castro, according to a new
book about the National Security Agency.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/bal-te.md.nsa24apr24.story
Subject: Osama Bin Laden: How the U.S. Helped Midwife a Terrorist
http://www.public-i.org/excerpts_01_091301.htm
Please go to the webpage for maps, photo and links
Osama Bin Laden: How the U.S.
Helped Midwife a Terrorist
Ahmed Rashid of Pakistan is a member of the International Consortium of
Investigative Journalists, a project of the Center for Public Integrity. He
is the Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia correspondent for the Far
Eastern Economic Review and The Daily Telegraph of London. This is an
excerpt from his book "Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in
Central Asia" (Yale University Press).
By Ahmed Rashid
In 1986, CIA chief William Casey had stepped up the war against the Soviet
Union by taking three significant, but at that time highly secret, measures.
He had persuaded the US Congress to provide the Mujaheddin with
American-made Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to shoot down Soviet planes
and provide US advisers to train the guerrillas. Until then, no US-made
weapons or personnel had been used directly in the war effort.
The CIA, Britain's MI6 and the ISI [Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence] also agreed on a provocative plan to launch guerrilla attacks
into the Soviet Socialist Republics of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the soft
Muslim underbelly of the Soviet state from where Soviet troops in
Afghanistan received their supplies. The task was given to the ISI's
favourite Mujaheddin leader, Gulbuddin Hikmetyar. In March 1987, small
units crossed the Amu Darya river from bases in northern Afghanistan and
launched their first rocket attacks against villages in Tajikistan. Casey
was delighted with the news, and on his next secret trip to Pakistan he
crossed the border into Afghanistan with [the late Pakistani] President Zia
[ul-Haq] to review the Mujaheddin groups.
Thirdly, Casey committed CIA support to a long-standing ISI initiative to
recruit radical Muslims from around the world to come to Pakistan and fight
with the Afghan Mujaheddin. The ISI had encouraged this since 1982, and by
now all the other players had their reasons for supporting the idea.
President Zia aimed to cement Islamic unity, turn Pakistan into the leader
of the Muslim world and foster an Islamic opposition in Central Asia.
Washington wanted to demonstrate that the entire Muslim world was fighting
the Soviet Union alongside the Afghans and their American benefactors. And
the Saudis saw an opportunity both to promote Wahabbism [their strict and
austere Wahabbi creed] and to get rid of its disgruntled radicals. None of
the players reckoned on these volunteers having their own agendas, which
would eventually turn their hatred against the Soviets on their own regimes
and the Americans.
Thousands of radicals come to study
. . . Between 1982 and 1992, some 35,000 Muslim radicals from 43 Islamic
countries in the Middle East, North and East Africa, Central Asia and the
Far East would pass their baptism under fire with the Afghan Mujaheddin.
Tens of thousands more foreign Muslim radicals came to study in the
hundreds of new madrassas that Zia's military government began to fund in
Pakistan and along the Afghan border. Eventually more than 100,000 Muslim
radicals were to have direct contact with Pakistan and Afghanistan and be
influenced by the jihad.
In camps near Peshawar and in Afghanistan, these radicals met each other
for the first time and studied, trained and fought together. It was the
first opportunity for most of them to learn about Islamic movements in
other countries, and they forged tactical and ideological links that would
serve them well in the future. The camps became virtual universities for
future Islamic radicalism. None of the intelligence agencies involved
wanted to consider the consequences of bringing together thousands of
Islamic radicals from all over the world. "What was more important in the
world view of history? The Taliban or the fall of the Soviet Empire? A few
stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the
Cold War?" said Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former US National Security Adviser.
American citizens woke up to the consequences only when Afghanistan-trained
Islamic militants blew up the World Trade Center in New York in 1993,
killing six people and injuring 1,000.
"The war," wrote Samuel Huntington, "left behind an uneasy coalition of
Islamist organizations intent on promoting Islam against all non-Muslim
forces. It also left a legacy of expert and experienced fighters, training
camps and logistical facilities, elaborate trans-Islam networks of personal
and organization relationships, a substantial amount of military equipment
including 300 to 500 unaccounted-for Stinger missiles, and, most important,
a heady sense of power and self-confidence over what had been achieved and
a driving desire to move on to other victories."
A young Bin Laden
. . . Among these thousands of foreign recruits was a young Saudi student,
Osama Bin Laden, the son of a Yemeni construction magnate, Mohammed Bin
Laden, who was a close friend of the late King Faisal and whose company had
become fabulously wealthy on the contracts to renovate and expand the Holy
Mosques of Mecca and Medina. The ISI had long wanted Prince Turki Bin
Faisal, the head of Istakhbarat, the Saudi Intelligence Service, to provide
a Royal Prince to lead the Saudi contingent in order to show Muslims the
commitment of the Royal Family to the jihad. Only poorer Saudis, students,
taxi drivers and Bedouin tribesmen had so far arrived to fight. But no
pampered Saudi prince was ready to rough it out in the Afghan mountains.
Bin Laden, although not a royal, was close enough to the royals and
certainly wealthy enough to lead the Saudi contingent. Bin Laden, Prince
Turki and General Gut were to become firm friends and allies in a common
cause.
The centre for the Arab-Afghans [Filipino Moros, Uzbeks from Soviet
Central Asia, Arabs from Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and
Uighurs from Xinjiang in China who had all come to fight with the
Mujaheddin] was the offices of the World Muslim League and the Muslim
Brotherhood in the northern Pakistan city of Peshawar. The center was run
by Abdullah Azam, a Jordanian Palestinian whom Bin Laden had first met at
university in Jeddah and revered as his leader. Azam and his two sons were
assassinated by a bomb blast in Peshawar in 1989.
During the 1980s, Azam had forged close links with Hikmetyar and Abdul
Rasul Sayyaf, the Afghan Islamic scholar, whom the Saudis had sent to
Peshawar to promote Wahabbism. Saudi funds flowed to Azam and the Makhtab
at Khidmat or Services Center, which he created in 1984 to service the new
recruits and receive donations from Islamic charities. Donations from Saudi
Intelligence, the Saudi Red Crescent, the World Muslim League and private
donations from Saudi princes and mosques were channelled through the
Makhtab. A decade later, the Makhtab would emerge at the center of a web of
radical organizations that helped carry out the World Trade Center bombing
and the bombings of US embassies in Africa in 1998.
Until he arrived in Afghanistan, Bin Laden's life had hardly been marked by
anything extraordinary. He was born around 1957, the 17th of 57 children
sired by his Yemeni father and a Saudi mother, one of Mohammed Bin Laden's
many wives. Bin Laden studied for a master's degree in business
administration at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah but soon switched to
Islamic studies. Thin and tall, he is 6 feet 5 inches, with long limbs and
a flowing beard. He towered above his contemporaries, who remember him as a
quiet and pious individual but hardly marked out for greater things.
His father backed the Afghan struggle and helped fund it, so when Bin Laden
decided to join up, his family responded enthusiastically. He first
traveled to Peshawar in 1980 and met the Mujaheddin leaders, returning
frequently with Saudi donations for the cause until 1982, when he decided
to settle in Peshawar. He brought in his company engineers and heavy
construction equipment to help build roads and depots for the Mujaheddin.
In 1986, he helped build the Khost tunnel complex, which the CIA was
funding as a major arms storage depot, training facility and medical center
for the Mujaheddin, deep under the mountains close to the Pakistan border.
For the first time in Khost he set up his own training camp for Arab
Afghans, who now increasingly saw this lanky, wealthy and charismatic Saudi
as their leader.
. . . Bin Laden later claimed to have taken part in ambushes against Soviet
troops, but he mainly used his wealth and Saudi donations to build
Mujaheddin projects and spread Wahabbism among the Afghans. After the death
of Azam in 1989, he took over Azam's organization and set up Al Qaeda or
Military Base as a service center for Arab-Afghans and their families and
to forge a broad-based alliance among them. With the help of Bin Laden,
several thousand Arab militants had established bases in the provinces of
Kunar, Nuristan and Badakhshan, but their extreme Wahabbi practices made
them intensely disliked by the majority of Afghans. Moreover, by allying
themselves with the most extreme pro-Wahabbi Pashtun MuMeddin, the
Arab-Afghans alienated the non-Pashtuns and the Shia Muslims.
Upset by U.S. role in Gulf War
. . . By 1990, Bin Laden was disillusioned by the internal bickering of the
Mujaheddin and he returned to Saudi Arabia to work in the family business.
He founded a welfare organization for Arab-Afghan veterans. Some 4,000 of
them had settled in Mecca and Medina alone, and Bin Laden gave money to the
families of those killed. After Iraq's invasion of Kuwait he lobbied the
Royal Family to organize a popular defense of the kingdom and raise a force
from the Afghan war veterans to fight Iraq. Instead, King Fahd invited in
the Americans. This came as an enormous shock to Bin Laden. As the 540,000
US troops began to arrive, Bin Laden openly criticized the Royal Family,
lobbying the Saudi ulema to issue fatwas, religious rulings, against
non-Muslims being based in the country.
. . . In 1992, Bin Laden left for Sudan to take part in the Islamic
revolution under way there under the charismatic Sudanese leader Hassan
Turabi. Bin Laden's continued criticism of the Saudi Royal Family
eventually annoyed them so much that they took the unprecedented step of
revoking his citizenship in 1994. It was in Sudan, with his wealth and
contacts, that Bin Laden gathered around him more veterans of the Afghan
war, who were all disgusted by the American victory over Iraq and the
attitude of the Arab ruling elites who allowed the US military to remain in
the Gulf. As US and Saudi pressure mounted against Sudan for harboring Bin
Laden, the Sudanese authorities asked him to leave.
In May 1996, Bin Laden travelled back to Afghanistan, arriving in Jalalabad
in a chartered jet with an entourage of dozens of Arab militants,
bodyguards and family members, including three wives and 13 children. Here
he lived under the protection of the Jalalabad Shura [an advisory body or
assembly], until the conquest of Kabul and Jalalabad by the Taliban in
September 1996. In August 1996, he had issued his first declaration of
jihad against the Americans, whom he said were occupying Saudi Arabia.
"The walls of oppression and humiliation cannot be demolished except in a
rain of bullets," the declaration read. Striking up a friendship with
Mullah Omar, in 1997 he moved to Kandahar, Afghanistan, and came under the
protection of the Taliban.
By now, the CIA had set up a special cell to monitor his activities and his
links with other Islamic militants. A US State Department report in August
1996 noted that Bin Laden was "one of the most significant financial
sponsors of Islamic extremist activities in the world." The report said
that Bin Laden was financing terrorist camps in Somalia, Egypt, Sudan,
Yemen, Egypt and Afghanistan. In April 1996, President Clinton signed the
Anti-Terrorism Act, which allowed the US to block assets of terrorist
organizations. It was first used to block Bin Laden's access to his fortune
of an estimated US$250-300 million. A few months later, Egyptian
intelligence declared that Bin Laden was training 1,000 militants, a second
generation of Arab-Afghans, to bring about an Islamic revolution in Arab
countries.
CIA tries snatch operation
In early 1997, the CIA constituted a squad that arrived in Peshawar to try
to carry out a snatch operation to get Bin Laden out of Afghanistan. The
Americans enlisted Afghans and Pakistanis to help them but aborted the
operation. The US activity in Peshawar helped persuade Bin Laden to move to
the safer confines of Kandahar. On 23 February 1998, at a meeting in the
original Khost camp, all the groups associated with Al Qaeda issued a
manifesto under the aegis of "The International Islamic Front for Jihad
against Jews and Crusaders." The manifesto stated "for more than seven
years the US has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of
places, the Arabian peninsular, plundering its riches, dictating to its
rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbours, and turning its
bases in the peninsular into a spearhead through which to fight the
neighbouring Muslim peoples."
The meeting issued a fatwa. "The ruling to kill the Americans and their
allies -- civilians and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim
who can do it in any country in which it is possible to." Bin Laden had now
formulated a policy that was not just aimed at the Saudi Royal Family or
the Americans, but called for the liberation of the entire Muslim Middle
East. As the American air war against Iraq escalated in 1998, Bin Laden
called on all Muslims to "confront, fight and kill, Americans and Britons."
1998 U.S. Embassy bombings
However, it was the bombings in August 1998 of the US Embassies in Kenya
and Tanzania that killed 220 people which made Bin Laden a household name
in the Muslim world and the West. Just 13 days later, after accusing Bin
Laden of perpetrating the attack, the USA retaliated by firing 70 cruise
missiles against Bin Laden's camps around Khost and Jalalabad. Several
camps which had been handed over by the Taliban to the Arab-Afghans and
Pakistani radical groups were hit. The Al Badr camp controlled by Bin Laden
and the Khalid bin Walid and Muawia camps run by the Pakistani Harakat ul
Ansar were the main targets. Harakat used their camps to train militants
for fighting Indian troops in Kashmir. Seven outsiders were killed in the
strike -- three Yemenis, two Egyptians, one Saudi and one Turk. Also killed
were seven Pakistanis and 20 Afghans.
In November 1998 the USA offered a US$5-million reward for Bin Laden's
capture. The Americans were further galvanized when Bin Laden claimed that
it was his Islamic duty to acquire chemical and nuclear weapons to use
against the USA. "It would be a sin for Muslims not to try to possess the
weapons that would prevent infidels from inflicting harm on Muslims.
Hostility toward America is a religious duty and we hope to be rewarded for
it by God," he said.
. . . After the Africa bombings, the US launched a truly global operation.
More than 80 Islamic militants were arrested in a dozen different
countries. Militants were picked up in a crescent running from Tanzania,
Kenya, Sudan and Yemen to Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and the
Phillipines."
In December 1998, Indian authorities detained Bangladeshi militants for
plotting to bomb the US Consulate in Calcutta. Seven Afghan nationals using
false Italian passports were arrested in Malaysia and accused of trying to
start a bombing campaign." According to the FBI, militants in Yemen who
kidnapped 16 Western tourists in December 1998 were funded by Bin Laden. In
February 1999, Bangladeshi authorities said Bin Laden had sent US$l million
to the Harkat-ul-Jihad (HJ) in Dhaka, Bangladesh, some of whose members had
trained and fought in Afghanistan. HJ leaders said they wanted to turn
Bangladesh into a Taliban-style Islamic state.
Thousands of miles away in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania in West
Africa, several militants were arrested who had also trained under Bin
Laden in Afghanistan and were suspected of plotting bomb explosions.
Meanwhile, during the trial of 107 Al-Jihad members at a military court in
Cairo, Egyptian intelligence officers testified that Bin Laden had
bankrolled Al-Jihad. In February 1999, the CIA claimed that through
monitoring Bin Laden's communication network by satellite, they had
prevented his supporters from carrying out seven bomb attacks against US
overseas facilities in Saudi Arabia, Albania, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan,
Uganda, Uruguay and the Ivory Coast -- emphasizing the reach of the Afghan
veterans.
. . . But it was Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the original sponsors of the
Arab-Afghans, who suffered the most as their activities rebounded. In March
1997, three Arab and two Tajik militants [from Tajikistan] were shot dead
after a 36-hour gun battle between them and the police in an Afghan refugee
camp near Peshawar. Belonging to the Wahabbi radical Tafkir group, they
were planning to bomb an Islamic heads of state meeting in Islamabad.
Fighting in Kashmir against India
With the encouragement of Pakistan, the Taliban and Bin Laden, Arab-Afghans
had enlisted in the Pakistani party Harkat-ut-Ansar to fight in Kashmir
against Indian troops. By inducting Arabs who introduced Wahabbi-style
rules in the Kashmir valley, genuine Kashmiri militants felt insulted. The
US government had declared Ansar a terrorist organization in 1996 and it
had subsequently changed its name to Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin. All the
Pakistani victims of the US missile strikes on Khost belonged to Ansar. In
1999, Ansar said it would impose a strict Wahabbi-style dress code in the
Kashmir valley and banned jeans and jackets. On 15 February 1999, they shot
and wounded three Kashmiri cable television operators for relaying Western
satellite broadcasts. Ansar had previously respected the liberal traditions
of Kashmiri Muslims, but the activities of the Arab-Afghans hurt the
legitimacy of the Kashmiri movement and gave India a propaganda coup.
Pakistan faced a problem when Washington urged Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif
to help arrest Bin Laden. The ISI's close contacts with Bin Laden, and the
fact that he was helping fund and train Kashmiri militants who were using
the Khost camps, created a dilemma for Sharif when he visited Washington in
December 1998. Sharif sidestepped the issue but other Pakistani officials
were more brazen, reminding their American counterparts how they had both
helped midwife Bin Laden in the 1980s and the Taliban in the 1990s. Bin
Laden himself pointed to continued support from some elements in the
Pakistani intelligence services in an interview. "As for Pakistan there are
some governmental departments, which, by the Grace of God, respond to the
Islamic sentiments of the masses in Pakistan. This is reflected in sympathy
and co-operation. However, some other governmental departments fell into
the trap of the infidels. We pray to God to return them to the right path,"
said Bin Laden.
Conundrums for Pakistan, Saudi Arabia
Support for Bin Laden by elements within the Pakistani establishment was
another contradiction in Pakistan's Afghan policy. . . . The US was
Pakistan's closest ally, with deep links to the military and the ISI. But
both the Taliban and Bin Laden provided sanctuary and training facilities
for Kashmiri militants who were backed by Pakistan, and Islamabad had
little interest in drying up that support. Even though the Americans
repeatedly tried to persuade the ISI to cooperate in delivering Bin Laden,
the ISI declined, although it did help the US arrest several of Bin Laden's
supporters. Without Pakistan's support, the United States could not hope to
launch a snatch by US commandos or more accurate bombing strikes, because
it needed Pakistani territory to launch such raids. At the same time, the
USA dared not expose Pakistan's support for the Taliban, because it still
hoped for ISI cooperation in catching Bin Laden.
The Saudi conundrum was even worse. In July 1998 Prince Turki had visited
Kandahar and a few weeks later 400 new pick-up trucks arrived in Kandahar
for the Taliban, still bearing their Dubai license plates. The Saudis also
gave cash for the Taliban's cheque book conquest of the north in the
autumn. Until the Africa bombings and despite US pressure to end their
support for the Taliban, the Saudis continued funding the Taliban and were
silent on the need to extradite Bin Laden.
The truth about the Saudi silence was even more complicated. The Saudis
preferred to leave Bin Laden alone in Afghanistan because his arrest and
trial by the Americans could expose the deep relationship that Bin Laden
continued to have with sympathetic members of the Royal Family and elements
within Saudi intelligence, which could prove deeply embarrassing. The
Saudis wanted Bin Laden either dead or a captive of the Taliban -- they did
not want him captured by the Americans.
. . . By now Bin Laden had developed considerable influence with the
Taliban, but that had not always been the case. The Taliban's contact with
the Arab-Afghans and their Pan-Islamic ideology was non-existent until the
Taliban captured Kabul in 1996. Pakistan was closely involved in
introducing Bin Laden to the Taliban leaders in Kandahar, because it wanted
to retain the Khost training camps for Kashmiri militants, which were now
in Taliban hands. Persuasion by Pakistan, the Taliban's better-educated
cadres, who also had Pan-Islamic ideas, and the lure of financial benefits
from Bin Laden, encouraged the Taliban leaders to meet with Bin Laden and
hand him back the Khost camps.
A life with the Taliban in Kandahar
Partly for his own safety and partly to keep control over him, the Taliban
shifted Bin Laden to Kandahar in 1997. At first he lived as a paying guest.
He built a house for Mullah Omar's family and provided funds to other
Taliban leaders. He promised to pave the road from Kandahar airport to the
city and build mosques, schools and dams, but his civic works never got
started as his funds were frozen. While Bin Laden lived in enormous style
in a huge mansion in Kandahar with his family, servants and fellow
militants, the arrogant behaviour of the Arab-Afghans who arrived with him
and their failure to fulfill any of their civic projects antagonized the
local population. The Kandaharis saw the Taliban leaders as beneficiaries
of Arab largesse rather than the people.
Bin Laden endeared himself further to the leadership by sending several
hundred Arab-Afghans to participate in the 1997 and 1998 Taliban offensives
in the north. These Wahabbi fighters helped the Taliban carry out massacres
of the Shia Hazaras in the north. Several hundred Arab-Afghans, based in
the Rishkor army garrison outside Kabul, fought on the Kabul front against
[the Mujaheddin leader Ahmad Shah] Masud. Increasingly, Bin Laden's world
view appeared to dominate the thinking of senior Taliban leaders. All-night
conversations between Bin Laden and the Taliban leaders paid off. Until his
arrival, the Taliban leadership had not been particularly antagonistic to
the USA or the West but demanded recognition for their government. However,
after the Africa bombings the Taliban became increasingly vociferous
against the Americans, the UN, the Saudis and Muslim regimes around the
world. Their statements increasingly reflected the language of defiance Bin
Laden had adopted and which was not an original Taliban trait.
As US pressure on the Taliban to expel Bin Laden intensified, the Taliban
said he was a guest and it was against Afghan tradition to expel guests.
When it appeared that Washington was planning another military strike
against Bin Laden, the Taliban tried to cut a deal with Washington -- to
allow him to leave the country in exchange for US recognition. Thus, until
the winter of 1998 the Taliban saw Bin Laden as an asset, a bargaining chip
over whom they could negotiate with the Americans.
The US State Department opened a satellite telephone connection to speak to
Mullah Omar directly. The Afghanistan desk officers, helped by a Pushto
translator, held lengthy conversations with Omar in which both sides
explored various options, but to no avail. By early 1999 it began to dawn
on the Taliban that no compromise with the US was possible and they began
to see Bin Laden as a liability. A US deadline in February 1999 to the
Tatiban to either hand over Bin Laden or face the consequences forced the
Taliban to make him disappear discreetly from Kandahar. The move bought the
Taliban some time, but the issue was still nowhere near being resolved.
The Arab-Afghans had come full circle. From being mere appendages to the
Afghan jihad and the Cold War in the 1980s they had taken centre stage for
the Afghans, neighbouring countries and the West in the 1990s. . . .
Afghanistan was now truly a haven for Islamic internationalism and
terrorism and the Americans and the West were at a loss as to how to handle
it.
© 2000 by Ahmed Rashid. Reprinted by permission
To write a letter to the editor for publication, send to
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Webster
john <wh...@whaleto.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:9o027q$fjp$1...@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk...
nothing whatsoever to do with uk agriculture or fmd
--
Jim Webster
"The pasture of stupidity is unwholesome to mankind"
'Abd-ar-Rahman b. Muhammad b. Khaldun al-Hadrami'
Jill
Jim Webster wrote in message <9o057h$d0u$1...@news6.svr.pol.co.uk>...
>
>john <wh...@whaleto.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
>news:9o027q$fjp$1...@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk...
>
>nothing whatsoever to do with uk agriculture or fmd
nothing new there then for John - even still posting to a group
uk.c.e.f.a.m. that now longer exists:~{
Jill
john
Towers collapse "too methodical" CHARGES PLANTED http://www.psyopnews.com
Photo of 2nd plane.
Shallow angle of impact.
A PsyOpNews.com Alert
Van Romero, vice president for research at New Mexico Institute of Mining
and Technology says the collapse of the twin towers resembled those of
controlled implosions used in planned demolition.
"My opinion is, based on the videotapes, that after the airplanes hit the
World Trade Center there were some explosive devices inside the buildings
that caused the towers to collapse," Romero said.
A demolition expert, Romero is a former director of the Energetic Materials
Research and Testing Center at Tech, which studies explosive materials and
the effects of explosions on buildings, aircraft and other structures.
He said he and Denny Peterson, vice president for administration and
finance, were en route to an office building near the Pentagon to discuss
defense-funded research programs at Tech. Romero told the Albequerque
Journal that he based his opinion on video aired on national television
broadcasts.
The detonations could have been caused by a small amount of explosive put in
more than two points in each of the towers, he said. "It could have been a
relatively small amount of explosives placed in strategic points," Romero
said.
"IT WAS DESIGNED FOR A PLANE IMPACT"
Aaron Swirski, one of the architects of the World Trade Center,
says they designed the towers to withstand something like
a plane flying into the side.
Interview HERE, Media Player
JpRadio item ...Now working.
"I DESIGNED IT FOR A 707 HIT"
BUILDING COLLAPSE SHOCKS TOWERS ENGINEER, ARCHITECT
BUILDING COLLAPSE SHOCKS
WORLD TRADE CENTER
ENGINEER, ARCHITECT
"I DESIGNED IT FOR A 707 HIT"
DETROIT, Sept. 11 (UPI) -- Lee Robertson, the project's structural engineer,
addressed the problem of terrorism on high-rises at a conference in
Frankfurt, Germany, LAST WEEK (!!!), Chicago engineer Joseph Burns told the
Chicago Tribune. Burns said Robertson told the conference, "I designed it
for a (Boeing)707 to hit it."
UPI REPORT
DETROIT, Sept. 11 (UPI) -- A lead engineer who worked on New York's World
Trade Center Towers expressed shock Tuesday that the 110-story lanmarks in
Lower Manhattan collapsed after each tower was struck by a hijacked
passenger jetliner.
Constructed and operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey,
the 3.8 million square foot World Trade Center was built as a seven-building
complex on 16 acres. The towers destroyed -- One and Two World Trade
Center -- rose over 100 feet higher than the Empire State Building from the
center of the complex.
Built without masonry, the towers were the first of such buildings to face
problems from intense air pressure caused by high-speed elevators. To
circumvent problems, a drywall system was attached to the reinforced steel
core.
One of the towers had survived a 1993 attack by terrorists in an
explosives-filled van that killed six people and injured more than 1,000
others.
Lee Robertson, the project's structural engineer, addressed the problem of
terrorism on high-rises at a conference in Frankfurt, Germany, last week,
Chicago engineer Joseph Burns told the Chicago Tribune.
Burns said Robertson told the conference, "I designed it for a (Boeing)
707 to hit it."
"Fire melts steel," Burns told the Tribune, speculating that the impact
from the planes had damaged sprinkler systems in both towers.
"You never know in an explosion like that whether they get cut off," Burns
said.
The World Trade Center was designed by architect Minour Yamasaki of the
Rochester Hills, Mich., firm, Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, was known for
its sweeping use of glass.
Because of the buildings' heights, engineers used tubular construction of
tightly spaced steel columns. The floor trusses were built across to this
central core.
Yamasaki, who died in 1986, also designed the McGregor Memorial Conference
Center at Wayne State University, the Reynolds Aluminum building in
Southfield, Mich., and the 30-story Consolidated Gas Co. Building in
downtown Detroit.
Militants who carried out the 1993 attack on the symbol of America's
financial prowess said they had wanted to bring the New York tower to the
ground.
Near Washington, part of the 6.5 million-square-foot Pentagon collapsed
after the nerve center of U.S. military forces was hit by a plane, causing a
huge fire.
High rises, office buildings, courts, city halls, museums, sports stadiums
and other public buildings were closed coast-to-coast as a precaution. The
Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., the largest shopping mall in the
United States, was evacuated after the morning attacks.
"While we have not received any threats we believe this is a prudent
precaution," said Maureen Bausch, vice president of marketing and business
development.
The Fitzgerald Theater in Minneapolis canceled a Talking Volumes Book Club
event featuring author Salmon Rushdie. Rushdie, who was marked for death by
Islamic fundamentalists several years ago, was unable to travel because of
the nationwide ground stop that halted commercial air traffic ordered by the
Federal Aviation Administration.
--
Copyright 2001 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.
More coverage soon. PsyOpNews.com
john
By John Pilger
http://www.psyopnews.com http://www.zmag.org/pilgercalam.htm
If the attacks on America have their source in the Islamic world, who can
really be surprised?
Two days earlier, eight people were killed in southern Iraq when British
and American planes bombed civilian areas. To my knowledge, not a word
appeared in the mainstream media in Britain.
An estimated 200,000 Iraqis, according to the Health Education Trust in
London, died during and in the immediate aftermath of the slaughter known as
the Gulf War.
This was never news that touched public consciousness in the west.
At least a million civilians, half of them children, have since died in
Iraq as a result of a medieval embargo imposed by the United States and
Britain.
In Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Mujadeen, which gave birth to the
fanatical Taliban, was largely the creation of the CIA.
The terrorist training camps where Osama bin Laden, now "America's most
wanted man", allegedly planned his attacks, were built with American money
and backing.
In Palestine, the enduring illegal occupation by Israel would have
collapsed long ago were it not for US backing.
Far from being the terrorists of the world, the Islamic peoples have been
its victims - principally the victims of US fundamentalism, whose power, in
all its forms, military, strategic and economic, is the greatest source of
terrorism on earth.
This fact is censored from the Western media, whose "coverage" at best
minimises the culpability of imperial powers. Richard Falk, professor of
international relations at Princeton, put it this way: "Western foreign
policy is presented almost exclusively through a self-righteous, one-way
legal/moral screen (with) positive images of Western values and innocence
portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted political
violence."
That Tony Blair, whose government sells lethal weapons to Israel and has
sprayed Iraq and Yugoslavia with cluster bombs and depleted uranium and was
the greatest arms supplier to the genocidists in Indonesia, can be taken
seriously when he now speaks about the "shame" of the "new evil of mass
terrorism" says much about the censorship of our collective sense of how the
world is managed.
One of Blair's favourite words - "fatuous" - comes to mind. Alas, it is no
comfort to the families of thousands of ordinary Americans who have died so
terribly that the perpetrators of their suffering may be the product of
Western policies. Did the American establishment believe that it could
bankroll and manipulate events in the Middle East without cost to itself, or
rather its own innocent people?
The attacks on Tuesday come at the end of a long history of betrayal of the
Islamic and Arab peoples: the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the foundation
of the state of Israel, four Arab-Israeli wars and 34 years of Israel's
brutal occupation of an Arab nation: all, it seems, obliterated within hours
by Tuesday's acts of awesome cruelty by those who say they represent the
victims of the West's intervention in their homelands.
"America, which has never known modern war, now has her own terrible league
table: perhaps as many as 20,000 victims."
As Robert Fisk points out, in the Middle East, people will grieve the loss
of innocent life, but they will ask if the newspapers and television
networks of the west ever devoted a fraction of the present coverage to the
half-a-million dead children of Iraq, and the 17,500 civilians killed in
Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. The answer is no. There are deeper roots
to the atrocities in the US, which made them almost inevitable.
It is not only the rage and grievance in the Middle East and south Asia.
Since the end of the cold war, the US and its sidekicks, principally
Britain, have exercised, flaunted, and abused their wealth and power while
the divisions imposed on human beings by them and their agents have grown as
never before.
An elite group of less than a billion people now take more than 80 per cent
of the world's wealth.
In defence of this power and privilege, known by the euphemisms "free
market" and "free trade", the injustices are legion: from the illegal
blockade of Cuba, to the murderous arms trade, dominated by the US, to its
trashing of basic environmental decencies, to the assault on fragile
economies by institutions such as the World Trade Organisation that are
little more than agents of the US Treasury and the European central banks,
and the demands of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in
forcing the poorest nations to repay unrepayable debts; to a new US
"Vietnam" in Colombia and the sabotage of peace talks between North and
South Korea (in order to shore up North Korea's "rogue nation" status).
Western terror is part of the recent history of imperialism, a word that
journalists dare not speak or write.
The expulsion of the population of Diego Darcia in the 1960s by the Wilson
government received almost no press coverage.
Their homeland is now an American nuclear arms dump and base from which US
bombers patrol the Middle East.
In Indonesia, in 1965/6, a million people were killed with the complicity
of the US and British governments: the Americans supplying General Suharto
with assassination lists, then ticking off names as people were killed.
"Getting British companies and the World Bank back in there was part of the
deal", says Roland Challis, who was the BBC's south east Asia correspondent.
British behaviour in Malaya was no different from the American record in
Vietnam, for which it proved inspirational: the withholding of food,
villages turned into concentration camps and more than half a million people
forcibly dispossessed.
In Vietnam, the dispossession, maiming and poisoning of an entire nation
was apocalyptic, yet diminished in our memory by Hollywood movies and by
what Edward Said rightly calls cultural imperialism.
In Operation Phoenix, in Vietnam, the CIA arranged the homicide of around
50,000 people. As official documents now reveal, this was the model for the
terror in Chile that climaxed with the murder of the democratically elected
leader Salvador Allende, and within 10 years, the crushing of Nicaragua.
All of it was lawless. The list is too long for this piece.
Now imperialism is being rehabilitated. American forces currently operate
with impunity from bases in 50 countries.
"Full spectrum dominance" is Washington's clearly stated aim.
Read the documents of the US Space Command, which leaves us in no doubt.
In this country, the eager Blair government has embarked on four violent
adventures, in pursuit of "British interests" (dressed up as
"peacekeeping"), and which have little or no basis in international law: a
record matched by no other British government for half a century.
What has this to do with this week's atrocities in America? If you travel
among the impoverished majority of humanity, you understand that it has
everything to do with it.
People are neither still, nor stupid. They see their independence
compromised, their resources and land and the lives of their children taken
away, and their accusing fingers increasingly point north: to the great
enclaves of plunder and privilege. Inevitably, terror breeds terror and more
fanaticism.
But how patient the oppressed have been.
It is only a few years ago that the Islamic fundamentalist groups, willing
to blow themselves up in Israel and New York, were formed, and only after
Israel and the US had rejected outright the hope of a Palestinian state, and
justice for a people scarred by imperialism.
Their distant voices of rage are now heard; the daily horrors in faraway
brutalised places have at last come home.
John Pilger is an award-winning, campaigning journalist.
September 13, 2001
sean dempsey
bit instead of head up bum.
Jon
"sean dempsey" <se...@gamesnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:3ba73356...@news.newsguy.com...
> You want to get out more mate. Take up shooting or riding and live a
> bit instead of head up bum.
>
You have top-posted (tut, tut) and you have proved John Pilger's point.
Anybody who concerns themselves about people who exist outside their
privileged Western lifestyle, "ought to get out more".
John Pilger is a bit of an extremist but I think his article was a good one.
--
Jon
Robert Groom
john wrote:
>
> Inevitable ring to the unimaginable
> By John Pilger
>
> http://www.psyopnews.com http://www.zmag.org/pilgercalam.htm
> If the attacks on America have their source in the Islamic world, who can
> really be surprised?
> Two days earlier, eight people were killed in southern Iraq when British
> and American planes bombed civilian areas. To my knowledge, not a word
> appeared in the mainstream media in Britain.
> An estimated 200,000 Iraqis, according to the Health Education Trust in
> London, died during and in the immediate aftermath of the slaughter known as
> the Gulf War.
> This was never news that touched public consciousness in the west.
> At least a million civilians, half of them children, have since died in
> Iraq as a result of a medieval embargo imposed by the United States and
> Britain.snip
The western alliance has never prevented humaitarian aid and food from
going into Iraq. Sadddam however chooses to put his armed forces above
the welfare of his people. they suffer because of his decisions and
actions not those of the UK and USA.
> In Palestine, the enduring illegal occupation by Israel would have
> collapsed long ago were it not for US backing.
Bullshit. If the State of Israel had not been reigned back by the USA
over the past 25 years we might not be seeing the terrorism now being
enacted as people such as Sharon would have erminated them. If you care
to read a little history of the Arab-Israeli conflict you would find
that every time the Arabs attacked them the Iraelis not only repelled
that attack but gained even more territory. All the wailing from Arafat
and others about the West Bank and Gaza Strip is because they lost that
land in conflict and don't have the will to try and retake it by force
because they know the consequences.
Robert Groom
>snip
nss
"Robert Groom" <rnlg...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3BA7A7B4...@hotmail.com...
>
>
> john wrote:
> >
> > Inevitable ring to the unimaginable
> > By John Pilger
If it looks like an elephant and sounds like an elephant then it probably is
an elephant! But in WAR the first casualty is always TRUTH. If it looks like
JON PILGER then its probably a WAR.
nss
"nss" <n...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:9odv9i$j7c$1...@uranium.btinternet.com...
If it looks like JON PILGER and sounds like WAR it might be an ELEPHANT.
Kelly and Sandy
Secret Service was told: 'Air Force One is next'
------------------------------------------------
by Jeremy Laurance
Friday 14 September 2001
As the second airliner slammed into the south tower of the World Trade
Centre, Vice-President Dick Cheney was staring at a television in the
White House. It was 9.03am. His Secret Service men grabbed him and
hurried him down to the President's emergency operations centre, an
underground bunker hardened to withstand a nuclear attack.
The dramatic events were revealed by William Safire, the respected
New York Times columnist who is close to the Republicans.
On the way to the bunker, Mr Cheney was told that another plane, or
a helicopter loaded with explosives, was heading for the White House.
He called the President in Florida and urged him not to come back to
Washington immediately.
In the bunker, the Vice-President was joined by Condoleezza Rice,
the national security adviser, and the Transportation Secretary, Norman
Mineta, among others. They were told six commercial aircraft were
unaccounted for, all of which were potential missiles. One had
supposedly crashed in Kentucky (not true), and another in Pennsylvania
(accurate; its passengers or crew, apparently struggling with the
hijackers, may have saved the White House).
The airliner that had taken off at Dulles -- AA Flight 77 -- did a
turn away from the White House and, at 9.45am, slammed into the
Pentagon.
At about that time, accounts began coming into the White House
bunker that four international flights were heading toward Washington
over the Atlantic and another from Korea. Whether they were hostile
could not be determined.
A threatening message received by the Secret Service that "Air Force
One is next" was relayed to agents accompanying the President. The use
of American codewords made the threat credible.
Karl Rove, the President's senior adviser, told Mr Safire: "When the
President said 'I don't want some tinhorn terrorists keeping me out of
Washington,' the Secret Service informed him the threat contained
language showing the terrorists had knowledge of his procedures and
whereabouts. It was decided to get airborne with a fighter escort."
After the President landed at an air force base in Louisiana and
made a tape for broadcast, he was, in Mr Rove's words, "pretty antsy"
about not being at the centre of command.
Mr Cheney, a former defence secretary, suggested Air Force One go to
Offutt base in Nebraska, headquarters of the Strategic Air Command,
where the President could convene the National Security Council.
A threatening message received by the Secret Service that "Air Force
One is next" was relayed to agents accompanying the President. The use
of American codewords made the threat credible.
Karl Rove, the President's senior adviser, told Mr Safire: "When
the President said 'I don't want some tinhorn terrorists keeping me out
of Washington,' the Secret Service informed him the threat contained
language showing the terrorists had knowledge of his procedures and
whereabouts. It was decided to get airborne with a fighter escort."
After the President landed at an air force base in Louisiana and
made a tape for broadcast, he was, in Mr Rove's words, "pretty antsy"
about not being at the centre of command.
Mr Cheney, a former defence secretary, suggested Air Force One go to
Offutt base in Nebraska, headquarters of the Strategic Air Command,
where the President could convene the National Security Council.
The worry now must be that knowledge of codewords, presidential
whereabouts and secret procedures indicates the terrorists may have a
mole in the White House -- or the Secret Service, FBI, FAA or CIA. If
so, America's war on terror may well have to start in its own front
room.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=93993
( The Indepenent )
Steve Walker
"Kelly and Sandy" <ju...@almide.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:QjtRoYAG...@almide.demon.co.uk...
>
> Secret Service was told: 'Air Force One is next'
> ------------------------------------------------
Or : Hasty story concocted to excuse Bush's absence during crisis.....