The Host
&

The Parasite

How Israel’s Fifth Column
Consumed America

Greg Felton

Bad Bear Press
© 2010

Copyright, 2007, 2010 by Greg Felton

All rights exclusively reserved.  No part of this book may be reproduced or translated into any language or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Bad Bear Press

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Felton, Greg

ISBN 1-450590-34-9

Front cover art/concept/design and interior book design by Greg Felton

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Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent. In such quantities, these chemical agents could also kill untold thousands. He’s not accounted for these materials. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them… We do not know—we do not claim to know all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life, and all of history. May He guide us now. And may God continue to bless the United States of America.

George W. Bush,
State of the Union Address, January 28, 2003

Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the Government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.”

Justice Hugo Black,
U.S. Supreme Court, 1973

Table of Contents

Preface

1. Vietnam’s Long Shadow              1

2. Unholy Trinity              25

3. The Eclipse of Reason              69

4. Bush vs. The Crazies              113

5. Invasion of the Policy Snatchers              127

6. The Jewish Presidency              143

7. Inventing bin Laden              165

8. The Unocal States of America              185

9. American Jihad              207

10. One Nation Under PNAC              237

11. A New Pearl Harbor              261

12. Petropolitics and the Taliban              299

13. Enemies of the State              319

14. Dementia in High Places              353

15. Israel’s Executioner—Palestine and Iraq              391

16. Enemies by Design—Syria and Iran              427

17. The Host and the Parasite              463

Index of Names              483

Preface to the Bad Bear Press Edition

This edition of The Host and the Parasite updates and improves the 2007 edition. Much to my chagrin, the first edition contained numerous typos and other proofreading errors that an honest, competent publisher should have caught. It is unfortunate that the publisher I chose was neither. I owe a great debt to investigative reporter Dave Gahary, who gave the book the meticulous review it should have had the first time.

Even though the White House has changed occupants since the 2007 edition, the book’s arguments have lost none of their relevance. Despite promising reform, Barack Obama has proven to be just as subservient to the Lobby as the previous occupant was. How else to explain his initial appointment of suspected Mossad agent Rahm Emmanuel as Chief of Staff, and rabid zionist Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State?

In many ways the U.S., and the world, is worse off under Obama because he’s an Israeli governor who gives the illusion of intelligence and competence, whereas George W. Bush was so obviously a moron and buffoon that few took him seriously.

The best example of Obama’s spinelessness is the conspicuous lengths to which he and Congress went to cover up Israel’s war crimes during “Operation Cast Lead,” an act of such wanton cruelty that Judge Richard Goldstone, the Jewish head of a UN investigation, concluded that Israel committed atrocities.

Rather than accept the report, which came from an unimpeachable zionist author, the U.S. rejected the Goldstone Report for being biased against Israel, even though Goldstone deliberately understated the magnitude of Israel’s criminality because of his attachment to the state.

I’d like to acknowledge many people who made this book possible. Muhammad Ali Khan has generously allowed me to post my columns on mediamonitors.net since 2001, thereby helping me gain an audience and enough confidence to tackle a large project like this.

Marc Ash and the truthout.com team provided me with valuable research material. Mimi Adams and Phyllis Good read early drafts and gave valuable feedback when nobody else would. Special mention goes to my wife Brenda Ceaser, who created the inside maps, and somehow managed to put up with me.

Greg Felton,
New Westminster, Canada,
February 2010

1

Vietnam’s Long Shadow

One of my earliest memories is sitting around the dinner table watching Lloyd Robertson and Harvey Kirck anchor the CBC Evening News. What I remember most is that each newscast began with one of them listing the origin of the main stories that day, and Southeast Asia was almost always first. Of course, I knew nothing about the Vietnam War—I was only five years old when President Kennedy was shot—but when I saw combat footage I innocently and instinctively rooted for “the good guys.”

Like most everyone of my generation, I grew up internalizing the frame of reference that television gave me: the South Vietnamese were “our” Vietnamese; the United States was a force for justice; democracy, capitalism and freedom were inseparable virtues; and communists were inexplicably bad because they opposed everything we stood for. Even Saturday morning cartoons like Mighty Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Roger Ramjet and Superman reinforced the automatic presumption of U.S. righteousness. Superman’s motto, “Truth, Justice and the American Way,” was so self-evident I never thought to question it.

Similarly, since television and my parents taught me that the good guys always won, it never occurred to me that the U.S. and South Vietnam could lose—an illusion shared by many adults in the Kennedy/Johnson administrations. That innocent illusion was ignominiously dispelled on April 30, 1975, when Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese. In addition, the complementary illusion of the U.S. as a fundamentally law-abiding country collapsed amid the Watergate scandal, which exposed pervasive paranoia, corruption, and criminal misconduct within the Nixon administration.

During testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee in late June 1973, former White House counsel John Dean said that President Richard Nixon had been aware since the previous September of attempts to cover up the break-in at the Democratic Party’s National Committee offices in the Watergate Hotel. On national television, Dean recalled a conversation in which he told Nixon there was “a cancer growing on the presidency,” and if it were not removed it would kill him politically. Indeed, on August 8, 1974, Nixon removed the cancer by resigning to avoid impeachment.

Nixon’s resignation, and the successful prosecution of government officials, seemed to rehabilitate the image of the U.S. as a nation of law and order, and also reaffirm the vitality and relevance of the post-war political order, which the U.S. virtually created. Yet, behind this renewed façade of normalcy the republic was terminally ill, though symptoms of the disease did not manifest themselves immediately. We know that something happened to the U.S. since the 1970s because nobody who looks at the U.S. police state today could possibly mistake it for a democracy. Some of the more conspicuous examples of officially sanctioned unconstitutional misconduct include: rigging elections, endorsing torture, eviscerating the Bill of Rights, gutting environmental and labour laws, and commiting mass murder in the name of fighting terrorism. Dean even wrote a book about politics under George W. Bush—Worse than Watergate. When viewed against the previous eight years of prosperity and general optimism that prevailed under President Bill Clinton, most Americans would understandably date the end of their republic to the 2000 general election that installed Bush in the White House.

Problem is, a 224-year-old republic based on a system of checks and balances simply does not self-destruct within one presidential term. For a police state to take hold, the U.S.’s political culture had to have been weakened to the point where it could not defend itself, much as a person with a weakened immune system becomes susceptible to diseases it used to be able to resist. The real cause of the police state must therefore be found at the point where the U.S. lost the will to fight off anti-democratic pressures—not in recent events like the World Trade Center attack, or the invasion of Iraq, which are mere symptoms of the disease.

This disease consists of three mutually reinforcing political “cancers” that became malignant during the Vietnam War, and then coalesced, and metastasized after the election of Ronald Reagan: neo-conservative economists, evangelical Christians and Zionist Jews. Together, they set the U.S. on a downward spiral into fascism—literally. By the time of the 2000 “election,” Zionists had emerged as the dominant force in the fascist troika, and it is they who bear the greatest responsibility for the corruption of America, the destruction of Iraq, and the “war on terrorism.” That is what this book will prove.

Pathology of a Republic

To appreciate the above-mentioned medical metaphor, a short comparative sketch is in order. A human body is made up of billions of cells, and the DNA in each cell’s nucleus determines its specific characteristics. DNA encodes genes, which proceed to encode the proteins that maintain the cell’s structure and behavior. Some of these proteins (kinases) mediate intracellular communication and direct the behavior of other proteins. These “master-control proteins” can tell a cell to divide, specialize, stop growing, or die. If a gene encodes a defective “division” kinase, it could hyperactivate other proteins to tell the cell to divide uncontrollably. These defective proteins could then transmit this hyperactivity to the nucleus.

If this should happen, the now-mutated DNA would encode a mutated gene associated with the defective kinase. This potentially cancerous “oncogene” could then mass-produce defective kinases, which could start a cancerous cascade that would turn the healthy cell into a tumor. A healthy cell can generate an oncogene at any time, but under normal circumstances one or more tumorsupressor genes would encode defensive proteins to counteract a malignancy. On the other hand, if a defective kinase led to the hyperactivation of three or four oncogenes and inhibited the activity of one or more tumorsupressor genes, the body’s anti-cancer defenses would be overwhelmed.

In the United States, the Constitution (DNA) empowers the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government (genes). These institutions are responsible for passing and upholding laws (proteins) that run the country (body politic) on behalf of the citizenry (cells). In an ideal scenario, all laws would benefit the citizenry, who would then elect the best representatives who would obey and defend the Constitution. In practice, of course, the body politic is susceptible to disease and infection. Corrupt politicians, prejudicial laws, criminal behavior, police violence, and malfeasance in high office, among other ills, require the rule of law to be enforced constantly.

A healthy democracy is a tolerant, open society where the rights of the individual are protected by law and the government serves the public interest. As such, it must bear within itself the seeds of its own destruction.[1] Anti-democratic interests will always seek to turn government to their advantage and exploit the citizenry, and it is up to the elected and appointed democratic institutions (the genes) and a well-educated populace (cells) to eliminate or at least marginalize these threats to public safety.

Table I: Human Body vs. Body Politic

Human Body

United States

DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid)

The Constitution

Genes

Executive, legislative and judicial branches of government

Proteins

Laws

Cells

Citizens

Oncogenes
(potentially carcinogenic)

Anti-democratic interest groups

Tumorsupressors

Separation of church and state

I don’t mean to suggest that the U.S. has ever been a model democracy, or that the three above-mentioned dangers were entirely dormant until the Vietnam era, but the gaping chasm between the mythic U.S. and the real U.S. had not developed. Just as a cancer is not noticed after the first mutated cell division, the U.S. political cancer took time to be noticed. Adding to the problem was the Cold War, which precluded any substantive introspection. So long as we believed that atheistic communists would start nuclear war, eyes were fixated on the great external enemy, not on the incipient internal enemy.

As a result of the Vietnam War, both the Democratic and Republican parties had lost the moral right to govern. Johnson manufactured the “Gulf of Tonkin” incident so he could lie to Congress about the need to attack North Vietnam. Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger engineered the illegal secret bombing of Cambodia to hit Viet Cong supply lines. The My Lai massacre of March 16, 1968, became the symbol of pointless U.S. brutality and moral bankruptcy. The two-year caretaker presidency of Gerald Ford that followed Nixon’s resignation would turn out to be the last gasp of a moribund political culture. That culture was based in rational governance and moderation, so when it collapsed the public’s faith in secular democracy—the great tumorsupressor—went with it.

Those responsible for getting the U.S. into the Vietnam War were collectively known as “the best and the brightest” because they came from the best Eastern universities and embodied the unbridled optimism that attended Kennedy’s victory at the beginning of the 1960s. This optimism was even reflected in military policy. Instead of the Eisenhower administration’s doom-and-gloom reliance on massive nuclear retaliation as the key to national defense, the new liberal intellectuals reaffirmed the primacy of conventional weapons, and gave us rational concepts like “flexible response” and “crisis management.” Whatever threats the U.S. faced could be managed; in the case of Vietnam, that meant adjusting (escalating) military action according to the behavior of the enemy. Problem is, this purposeless military strategy was self-defeating because it was reactive and had no positive political objective.

In fact, failure was known less than a year into John F. Kennedy’s presidency. On November 6, 1961, Asst. Secretary of Defense John T. McNaughton sent the following summary of U.S. war aims to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara:

(a) 70 percent—To avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat (to our reputation as a counter-subversion guarantor).

(b) 20 percent—To keep [South Vietnam] (and then adjacent territory) from Chinese hands.

(c) 10 percent—To permit the people of SVN to enjoy a better, freer way of life. Also—to emerge from crisis without unacceptable taint from methods used. Not to “help a friend,” although it would be hard to stay out if asked.[2]

When military force becomes its own justification, as it was in Vietnam and is again in Iraq, a self-destructive dynamic develops: The longer an insurgency goes on, the greater grows the threat to the U.S.’s ego; the greater the insult, the more violent the retaliation; the more violent the retaliation, the greater the insurgency; the greater the insurgency, the greater the ego investment; the greater the ego investment, the greater the insult; and so on. Even after Kennedy was assassinated, President Lyndon Johnson continued with flexible response because he relied on the same advisors.

The six years between Nixon’s resignation and the 1980 presidential election was a transition period during which the rational World War II-based political order exhausted itself, and a new irrational political order based in religious dogma and economic obscurantism arose. Zionists, evangelical Christians and Straussians all asserted themselves with increasing confidence. Everywhere, the foundations of republican democracy were vulnerable.

Christians mobilized against the equal rights and the 1973 Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision, which made abortion legal on demand. More than anything else, this event galvanized the extremist Christian movement, which is elitist and opposed to distributive principles of democratic equality.

Straussians, followers of the radical anti-statist professor Leo Strauss mobilized against federal social spending and the egalitarianism that marked Johnson’s Great Society reforms of the mid-’60s. Zionists maneuvered themselves into positions of influence to co-opt the U.S. into breaking its own laws to underwrite Israel’s creeping theft of Arab Palestine.

Individually, none of these “cancers” could have brought about the ruination of the U.S. republic. The Christians needed the Straussians’ political platform to get into government and spread their brand of neo-Puritanism. The Straussians needed the Christians to mobilize the electorate to defeat the remnants of the old rational political order. Many of the founding Straussians were Zionist Jews, so as the fortunes of Straussians improved so did the voice of Israel in Washington. For this, an early alliance with like-minded evangelical Christians was absolutely necessary, not only because many Jews rejected Zionism as a blasphemy against the Hebrew Bible and were overwhelmingly liberal, but also because it put an American veneer on subservience to Israel. Moreover, since most Jews vote Democratic, Zionists proceeded to build support within the newly theocratized Republican Party.

The fourth element that destroyed the republic was the electorate. The tumorsupressor that could have prevented the cancer from taking hold—respect for the Constitutional separation of church and state—had faded. Because of the collapse of the political establishment, as well as economic and political turmoil beyond the control of President Jimmy Carter, voters in 1980 were more interested in turning their back on the past rather than in facing up to its consequences. They decided overwhelmingly that the U.S. needed a new brand of leadership, one based in simplistic slogans, jingoism, religious zealotry and unenlightened self-interest. By the time Reagan took office, all four elements were in place—three political “oncogenes” and one inhibited tumorsupressor. The fascist cascade was now unstoppable.

Oil for One and One for Oil

On the other hand, most analyses of Bush’s “war on terrorism” start from recent catastrophic events, like the 2000 “election” or the World Trade Center attack. One of the consequences of this shorter historical perspective is the identification of oil as the driving motive for the Iraq invasion. Since Bush’s first administration was a virtual “oilochracy” the argument seems reasonable.

Bush started his own oil company, Arbusto (“bush” in Spanish), with money from his father’s friends and associates in 1978. He consistently lost money, and three times had to call on his father’s investors to bail him out. Bush was finally saved in 1986 when he merged Arbusto with Harken Energy of Houston, Texas. Bush’s political connection to his father and ability to raise investment was what Harken needed. Two years later, Bush’s connections helped Harken attract Saudi investment and win its first international contract—oil drilling in Bahrain.[3]

Vice-President Dick Cheney, after he left government in 1992, became chairman and chief executive officer of Dallas-based Halliburton Corporation; the world’s largest pipeline services companies. It still pays him a deferred salary. National Security Advisor (now Secretary of State) Condoleezza Rice was a director of Chevron from 1991 until January 15, 2001, when she entered Bush’s government. Before she left, Chevron did her the honor of naming a 136,000-ton tanker after her. In May, the Condoleezza Rice was quietly renamed Altair Voyager. When asked if the White House asked for the name change, Chevron spokesman Fred Gorell declined comment.[4]

Secretary of Commerce Donald Evans and Secretary of Energy Stanley Abraham (the latter of whom has since resigned) both worked for Tom Brown, a Denver-based energy company engaged in the exploration, development, acquisition, production and marketing of natural gas, natural gas liquids and crude oil, mostly in the Rocky Mountains, Texas and Alberta.

Robert Oakley (Ambassador to Pakistan), Richard Armitage (Deputy Secretary of State), Donald Rice (former RAND corporation CEO and Secretary of the Air Force under President George H.W. Bush), and Charles Larson (Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Command) all worked for Union Oil of California (Unocal) as consultants or directors.

During the 2000 election, Big Oil spent $33.9 million on campaign contributions, of which $26.6 million (78 percent) went to the Republicans.[5] Of the top 20 contributors, all but one favored Bush. Halliburton came in at 17th, contributing $420,688, (98 percent Republican). Regarding the presidential candidates themselves, the oil and gas industry collectively gave Bush $1,914,706; Vice-President Al Gore, $138,514.  Bankrupt Texas-based Enron epitomized the corrupting influence of Big Oil. In early 2001, it was among a group of multinationals—Amoco, Chevron, Mobil, Unocal, British Petroleum and others—spending billions to tap Caspian Sea oilfields. Cheney and James Baker III were two major government figures who negotiated deals on their behalf.

Table II: Top-5 Big Oil Contributors
to George W. Bush’s 2000 Campaign

Corporation

Contributions

% To Bush

Enron Corp.

$2,374,298

72

Exxon Mobil Corp.

$1,375,250

89

El Paso Corp.

$1,114,995

83

Chevron Corp.

$1,084,077

72

Koch Industries

$1,062,956

90

Source: Center for Responsive Politics

Among Enron’s ventures was a February 1999 feasibility study of $2.5 billion gas pipeline project involving the government of Turkmenistan, Bechtel Corp. and General Electric Capital Services. Enron’s former Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Lay, now deceased, was a close friend of the Bush family. He was the biggest contributor to Bush’s campaign, and Enron officials met no fewer than six times with Cheney while he was conducting an energy task force to determine long-term U.S. National Energy Policy.

Since April 2001, Rep. Henry Waxman, (D-CA) Minority Leader of the House Committee on Government Reform, has been asking Cheney to give details of these six meetings, but Cheney, through his lawyer David Addington, has refused to identify who met with the task force or who served on its staff. Addington also refused to produce documents connected with its meetings with outside groups.[6] The Government Accountability Office has been rebuffed on this and other requests and is taking legal action against the White House to obtain documents.

According to Waxman, the final report of the National Energy Policy Development Group, which came out on May 17, 2001, contained at least 17 recommendations that benefited Enron. One of these was for U.S. government support for natural gas development in India that directly aided Enron’s controversial and troubled Dabhol power plant. “It appears that [this decision] was absent from the final draft that the State Department circulated during the interagency review process for the energy ban,” wrote Waxman. “Instead, the provision appears to have been added to the plan during the period in which the White House directly controlled the drafting.”[7]

The Dabhol project began in the early years of the Clinton administration. On June 20, 1992, Enron and the government of the Indian state of Maharashtra signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding to build a power plant at Dabhol, 115 miles north of Bombay. The resultant Dabhol Power Company (DPC) became a joint venture among Enron (65 percent ownership), General Electric and Bechtel. In February 1993, a formal agreement was signed to produce 2,450 megawatts at an approximate cost of $3 billion, but two months later the World Bank rejected Enron’s loan application because the plant would produce too much power at too high a cost and therefore was not considered economically sound. Nevertheless, intense lobbying on Enron’s behalf by the government and President Bill Clinton himself, led the Indian government to issue provisional clearance in November 1993. The next year, the Washington based Export-Import Bank approved a $302 million loan, and two years later construction began on the power plant.

The project faltered on May 29, 2001, when the Indian government got into a dispute with Enron over pricing, and stopped buying energy, which was four times more expensive than that of domestic producers. To plead Enron’s case, Cheney approached government officials and Opposition Congress Party president Sonia Gandhi during a June 2001 visit by India’s national security adviser Brajesh Mishra. According to the New York Daily News, Cheney tried to help Enron collect on a $64 million debt. The White House defended Cheney’s actions saying public funds were risked in the Dabhol project, so the investment had to be protected. The public exposure was due to the involvement of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, a federal taxpayer-based agency that provides financial and political risk insurance to projects like Dabhol.[8] Since there was no logical reason for the government to risk public money on a project that was shown to be unsound, the explanation must be due to petropolitics.

Table III: Energy Industry’s Investment

Industry

Contributions (2000 election)

Total benefits
in NESA

Return on Investment

Coal

$3.8 million

$5,844 million

153,800 %

Oil & gas

$33.3

$21,980

66,000

Electric

$18.6

$5,862

31,500

Nuclear

$13.8

$2,666

19,300

TOTALS

$69.5

$36,352

52,300

Enron, though, wasn’t the only energy company influencing policy. Of the top 25 energy corporations that contributed to the Republican Party before the election, 18 sent executives or representatives to meet with Cheney or members of the task force and its staff. On May 3, 2001, two electrical utilities lobbyists—former Montana Governor and now Republican party chairman Marc Racicot and former party chairman Haley Barbour—attended a White House task force meeting with Cheney. As Time reported, the connection between Republican campaign contributions and favorable energy policy was inescapable:

Two weeks later, Cheney’s report gave the lobbyists much of what they wanted, including a re-evaluation of a costly clean-air rule, called the new-source review, which requires new pollution controls when power plants are expanded. While he was lobbying for these energy interests, Barbour was also raising at least $250,000 for a May 21 GOP gala honoring President Bush. The group of utilities Barbour was representing, led by Southern Co., gave $150,000 to the event. The night before the gala, Cheney held a glitzy reception at the vice-presidential mansion for hundreds of the fete’s sponsors and longtime party donors. Another company that had entrée into the Cheney task force was Peabody Energy, a coal behemoth whose holding company and top officer have given nearly $200,000 to the president and his party since Bush took office, including $25,000 for the May gala.[9]

The full scope of the government’s support for energy company contributions is spelled out in H.R. 4 the National Energy Security Act, introduced by Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-AK) on February 26, 2001. The energy interests’ returns on investment are as follows:[10]

Despite Big Oil’s conspicuous power, oil doesn’t look like much of a motive for invasion. As oil analyst Anthony Sampson wrote in the Observer: “Most big American companies, including oil companies, do not see a war as good for business, as falling share prices indicate, while the obvious beneficiaries of war are arms companies. Western oil companies have differing attitudes. The French want to maintain their special relationship with Iraq, while seeking links with Iraqi opposition leaders who may form a post-war government.”[11] Sampson goes on to note that an added disincentive was the threat of another Suez Crisis. After Britain, France and Israel invaded Egypt in 1956, British Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell became targets of nationalist anger, and were pushed out by U.S. firms.

Dollar Dilemma

Another scenario that might auger for an oil-based motive concerns Iraq’s decision in November 2000 to denominate its exports in euros instead of U.S. dollars. A month earlier, Hussein insisted on dropping “the currency of the enemy” for the euro, even though the euro was its all-time low against the U.S. dollar (82 cents). Consensus opinion at the time believed this to be a bizarre move that could cost Iraq up to £270 million.[12] To back up its demand for permission to open a euro-denominated bank account to handle deposits from its oil-for-food sales, Iraq had threatened to disrupt oil exports. On October 30, 2000, the UN assented to Hussein’s request and by 2001 almost all of Iraq’s revenues were paid in euros. Hussein’s tactic turned out to be brilliant, since the euro has risen by almost 50 percent against the U.S. dollar since July 2001.

Table IV: U.S. Average Annual
Crude Oil Imports From Iraq
(1,000 barrels per day)

Year

1980

1981

1982

1983

1984

1985

1986

1987

Imports

28

< 0.5

3

10

12

46

81

82

Year

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

Imports

343

441

514

0

0

0

0

0

Year

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

Imports

1

89

336

725

620

795

459

470

Source: Table 3.3a, Energy Information Administration/Monthly Energy Review,
February 2004, www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/mer/pdf/pages/sec3_8.pdf

In the “oil currency scenario,” the U.S. could have launched the invasion to install a pliant government in Baghdad that would re-establish the dollar as Iraq’s oil currency, thereby forestalling a runaway OPEC flight to the euro. Iran had already converted most of its reserve funds to the euro, and was hinting at adopting the euro for all oil sales. Venezuela, another OPEC member, is also considering conversion, and this factor might explain U.S. covert attempts to oust President Hugo Chavez. The bottom line is that the U.S. is dependent on foreign investors to buy government debt securities to finance the gaping U.S. trade deficit, and strong downward pressure on the dollar might convince these investors to look for better returns elsewhere. Without this foreign investment, it is argued that the U.S. could go into default.[13]

This argument fails on two key points. First, Iraq is a relatively small player in OPEC. In 2003 its export revenues only amounted to an estimated US$9.6 billion (3.97 percent) of OPEC’s total $241.9 billion. That figure is forecast to rise to US$21.2 in 2005, but in the grand scheme of things this is hardly enough to justify war. According to an analysis by Lehman Brothers, non-Japan Asian central banks converted $133 billion from low-yield higher risk U.S. securities to higher yielding currencies like the euro, British pound, and the Australian dollar. These banks financed half of the U.S. current account and fiscal deficits last year.[14] Given the magnitude of this conversion, going to war over Iraq’s conversion made no sense.

Second, the U.S.’s increasing trade deficit actually militates against euro conversion as a casus belli. The U.S. economy is in such decrepit shape thanks to the “war on terrorism” that it needs a lower dollar to boost exports and curtail imports. The Economist makes the case succinctly:

Taking the average forecast of seven American and European banks, the euro is expected to trade at $1.32 in 12 months’ time, and the dollar to be at ¥101. Even if they are right, the buck is unlikely to stop there. For it would still not have fallen by enough to make a significant dent in America’s current-account deficit. The maths behind America’s trade deficit is daunting. The gap between merchandise exports and imports is now so large that, according to J.P. Morgan, exports need to grow almost twice as fast as imports merely to keep the trade deficit constant. Yet the dollar is still far from cheap: in real trade-weighted terms it remains close to its 30-year average. If the deficit is to shrink, then America’s domestic demand has to grow more slowly than that of its trade partners, or the dollar needs to fall further, or a combination of the two.[15]

The article goes on to cite the views of Deutsche Bank, which believes the U.S. could live with a Gross Domestic Product current-account deficit of 2.5 percent (half the current level), but only after a two-stage devaluation. To cut the deficit to 3.6 percent, the dollar–to-euro exchange rate would have to fall to $1.45 by 2005. To bring it to 2.5 percent, the exchange rate would then have to fall to $1.98 by 2008, assuming, ceteris paribus, the dollar fell evenly against all currencies. Clearly, losing ground to the euro as the world’s reserve currency would help the U.S. pull itself out of its economic morass.

Controlling the Supply

By far the most persuasive argument for an oil-first motive comes from investigative journalists Greg Palast and Linda McQuaig, who argue that the objective was not oil per se, but control of oil supplies. In her book It’s the Crude, Dude, McQuaig wrote that U.S. strategists had been planning to take control of Middle East oil since the 1973 oil embargo. Because oil is integral to the U.S. economy and military, she said, the U.S. was determined never again to be vulnerable to a boycott from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, and cited a March 1975 Harper’s article “Seizing Arab Oil” written pseudonymously by Henry Kissinger to this effect. The presence of the Soviet Union made such a brazen attempt at conquest impossible; now that it has collapsed, conquering the Middle East seems like a feasible strategy. With this objective in mind, a cabal group of zealous Republicans and militaristic Democrats calling itself the Project for the New American Century started calling for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. As founding PNAC member Cheney said in a speech to the London Institute of Petroleum in 1999 when he was CEO of Halliburton: “The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world’s oil and lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies.”[16]

Iraq possesses the world’s second largest reserves of easily accessible oil, which is prized for its low sulfur content. The lower the sulfur, the “sweeter” the oil, and the sweeter the oil the less it costs to refine. Moreover, much of Iraq’s capacity is “peak oil” that has gone untapped because of decades of war and sanctions, said McQuaig. “Peak oil” is the upper half of a given oil deposit or country’s reserve. Once this easily accessible amount is gone, extraction goes into irreversible decline and becomes more expensive. The problem for the U.S. and the rest of the industrialized world is that the world’s supply of peak oil will soon run out. According to retired English petroleum geologist Colin Campbell: “About 944 billion barrels of oil has so far been extracted, some 764 billion remains extractable in known fields, or reserves, and a further 142 billion of reserves are classed as ‘yet-to-find’, meaning what oil is expected to be discovered. If this is so, then the overall oil peak arrives next year.”

Less pessimistic are: the U.S. Geological Survey, which said peak production will not come for about 30 years; the International Energy Agency, which puts the high-oil mark between 2013 and 2037; and Deutsche Bank which puts it at 2014.[17] The wide discrepancy in forecasts is due to the fact that companies and governments provide the reserve estimates, which are more self-serving than accurate. Nevertheless, when one considers that 10 percent of all production comes from just four oil fields and 80 percent of these were discovered before 1970, concern about future supply certainly supports McQuaig’s thesis.[18] By 2010, she said, the U.S. will need an additional 50 million barrels per day.

The decision to control Iraq’s oil was taken just months after Bush occupied the White House. Within the government two factions vied to control policy. In this exclusive broadcast excerpt from Democracy Now! Palast described the essential civil war within the Bush administration:

Greg Palast: Some people believe George Bush had a secret plan for Iraq’s oil. It’s not that simple. In fact, we found two plans. While there was a hot war being fought in Iraq, here in Washington, there was a cold war being fought. On one side, the Pentagon and its neo-con friends, and on the other, the State Department and its allies in Big Oil…. January 2001, George Bush waltzes into office on a gusher of oil money, swearing that the U.S. has no plans to remake any nation. Yet at the same time, on the other side of the U.S.A., a secret meeting was in the works to plan for the invasion of Iraq to overthrow Saddam and to decide what to do with Iraq’s oil. Across the bridge from San Francisco, the State Department convened the meeting in this house, a bit of Baghdad in America. Falah Aljibury is an Iraqi exile who acted as Ronald Reagan’s back channel to Saddam’s regime. He hosted those early war councils for the Bush team.

Falah Aljibury: It is an invasion, but it will act like a coup. The original plan was to liberate Iraq from the Saddamists and from the regime, to stabilize the country. A leader, an Iraqi leader known for his decency and ability to work with the allied forces, will step forward.

Greg Palast: Aljibury, a key link between big oil, big finance and OPEC, interviewed the candidates for a strongman to replace Saddam in advance of the invasion.

Falah Aljibury: This transitional leader that we have interviewed before will come in, head all of the government systems, and quickly bring the people back to work.

Greg Palast: In other words, just topple Saddam. Most Ba’athists would stay in power. As for the oil fields, the state would keep ownership. But after September 11, Washington’s power center shifted to the right. Paul Wolfowitz and his neo-cons were now in charge. “News Night” learned they junked plan A, the quick coup. The neo-cons wanted to use the invasion of Iraq to end the Arab stranglehold on oil. They aimed to bring down the criminal OPEC monopoly.[19]

The contentious issue was the privatization of Iraq’s oil fields. The PNACers wanted to sell them off to depress the price of oil and break the OPEC cartel; Big Oil wanted to protect OPEC and keep the oilfields state-run so that prices would remain high. Big Oil ultimately won the battle, which is why Wolfowitz and other PNACers had to be kicked out of government.

McQuaig and Palast make a compelling case. Oil has traditionally been the prime focus of U.S. Middle East policy, and with oil consumption rising in the face of inevitable shortages the fear of running out is certainly motive enough to suggest an oil-first motive for the invasion of Iraq. Compelling though it may be, the argument fails. Hussein may have been a tyrant, but the U.S. has a long history of supporting and working with repressive rulers—the Shah of Iran, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, Suharto—all of whom were no less brutal than Hussein. In fact, the U.S. enjoyed good relations with Iraq throughout the 1980s, even though it knew Hussein was using U.S.-supplied chemical weapons almost daily.[20]

As the New York Times noted on April 11, 1991, uprisings by the Kurds in the north and the Shi’ites in the south during the Gulf War brought the United States and its Arab allies to a common realization: “whatever the sins of the Iraqi leader, he offered the West and the region a better hope for his country’s stability than did those who have suffered his repression.”[21]

Notwithstanding Kissinger’s argument that the U.S. had to seize Middle East oil, there is no proof that the U.S. actively tried to do it. The Times excerpt corresponds with official U.S. policy as set out in National Security Decision Directive 114, issued on November 26, 1983. In the directive, President Reagan spelled out the primacy of oil security:

In our consultations [with key allies] we should assign the highest priority to access arrangements which would facilitate the rapid deployment of those forces necessary to defend the critical oil facilities and transshipment points against air or sapper attacks. … Because of the real and psychological impact of a curtailment in the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf on the international economic system, we must assure our readiness to deal promptly with actions aimed at disrupting that traffic.[22]

To underscore this point, on December 20 Reagan sent special envoy Donald Rumsfeld to meet with Hussein to assure him of U.S. support and assistance to build a pipeline to Aqaba, Jordan.[23] Neither Reagan nor Rumsfeld brought up the subject of Hussein’s use of chemical weapons. We are now left with the following conundrum: Reagan ignored Hussein’s known use of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) for the sake of maintaining the flow of oil, whereas Clinton and later George W. Bush trumped up charges of WMD use that ended up impeding the production of Iraqi oil. Second, if the U.S. were really interested in maintaining a secure oil supply, it would not have imposed crippling sanctions and illegal No-Fly Zones on the Hussein regime throughout the 1990s; in fact, the U.S. wouldn’t have meddled in Iraq at all.

As Defense Secretary Cheney said in April 1991: “Some have suggested that if we had spent another day in combat in the Kuwait theatre, we would have changed the outcome of the subsequent conflict between the Shi’a, and the Kurds in the north, against Iraq. I do not believe that is the case.” His explanation is worth citing in full.

I think that the proposition of going to Baghdad is also fallacious. I think if we were going to remove Saddam Hussein we would have had to go all the way to Baghdad, we would have to commit a lot of force because I do not believe he would wait in the Presidential Palace for us to arrive. I think we’d have had to hunt him down. And once we’d done that and we’d gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and his government, then we’d have had to put another government in its place.  What kind of government? Should it be a Sunni government or Shi’i government or a Kurdish government or Ba’athist regime? Or maybe we want to bring in some of the Islamic fundamentalists? How long would we have had to stay in Baghdad to keep that government in place? What would happen to the government once U.S. forces withdrew? How many casualties should the United States accept in that effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable? I think it is vitally important for a President to know when to use military force. I think it is also very important for him to know when not to commit U.S. military force. And it’s my view that the President got it right both times, that it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq.[24]

Note particularly the last phrase: “It’s my view…that it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq.” Cheney’s 1991 assessment was sober and prescient, yet none of the six rhetorical questions in the above excerpt has received any consideration under George W. Bush. In fact, Vice-President Cheney forcefully repudiated his former, accurate position: “The limits of Bush Administration policy were revealed by the reluctance to engage in land combat and the limit on ground operations within the Kuwait theater.”[25]

Given the foregoing, the short historical perspective clearly seems inadequate. The invasion and the “war on terrorism” in general is so destructive of democracy, justice and the U.S.’s national interest that it cannot even be considered a U.S. policy. It isn’t: It was invented by Israel-firsters in the White House and Pentagon to co-opt the U.S. military in Israel’s subjugation of the Middle East. Nowhere is this theory more evident that in the rationale offered for invading Iraq.

Bizarre Reversals

According to the official version of events, the U.S. invaded because President Saddam Hussein possessed, and was threatening to use, biological or chemical weapons—weapons of mass destruction. Yet, for at least 10 years prior to the invasion the U.S. knew that that Hussein possessed no credible chemical, biological or nuclear weapons capability. Nevertheless, the Bush administration went to preposterous and brazen lengths to bludgeon the world into believing that he did. Let’s let Hussein’s accusers speak for themselves.

Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, April 29, 1991: Saddam Hussein’s offensive military capability, his capacity to threaten his neighbors, has been virtually eliminated. This is a very significant development. Israel, I think, from a military standpoint is more secure today than she’s been at any time in the recent past because of the elimination of Iraq’s offensive military threat—a very significant development.[26]

Secretary of State Colin Powell, February 24, 2001: [Saddam Hussein] has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq, and these are policies that we are going to keep in place, but we are always willing to review them to make sure that they are being carried out in a way that does not affect the Iraqi people but does affect the Iraqi regime’s ambitions and the ability to acquire weapons of mass destruction.[27]

Powell, Senate testimony, May 15, 2001: “Even though we have no doubt in our mind that the Iraqi regime is pursuing programs to develop weapons of mass destruction—chemical, biological and nuclear—I think the best intelligence estimates suggest that they have not been terribly successful. There’s no question that they have some stockpiles of some of these sorts of weapons still under their control, but they have not been able to break out, they have not been able to come out with the capacity to deliver these kinds of systems or to actually have these kinds of systems that is much beyond where they were 10 years ago.[28]

The consistent perspective between Cheney’s 1991 statement and Powell’s two 2001 statements proves beyond doubt that the George W. Bush administration did not believe Hussein had a WMD capability. Nevertheless, within a year of the last statement, Powell and Cheney reversed themselves:

Vice-President Cheney, August 26, 2002: Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us. And there is no doubt that his aggressive regional ambitions will lead him into future confrontations with his neighbors—confrontations that will involve both the weapons he has today, and the ones he will continue to develop with his oil wealth.[29]

Powell, February 5, 2003: “We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep [sic] his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more. Given Saddam Hussein’s history of aggression, given what we know of his grandiose plans, given what we know of his terrorist associations, and given his determination to exact revenge on those who oppose him, should we take the risk that he will not someday use these weapons at a time and a place and in a manner of his choosing, at a time when the world is in a much weaker position to respond? The United States will not and cannot run that risk for the American people. Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a post-September 11th world.”[30]

The issue of weapons of mass destruction, once the subject of dismissive skepticism, was now implicitly assumed and repeatedly asserted as fact, even though no new information had come forth to contradict the previous assessments. This bizarre reversal persuaded few world leaders, as shown by this comment from Russian President Vladimir Putin less than two months after Cheney’s diatribe: “Russia does not have in its possession any trustworthy data that supports the existence of nuclear weapons or any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and we have not received any such information from our partners as yet. This fact has also been supported by the information sent by the CIA to the U.S. Congress.”[31]

The Bush administration was now ignoring evidence and lying to manufacture public and international support for an invasion. Evidence that the WMD pretext was fabricated is overwhelming. In a May 9, 2003, Vanity Fair interview then-Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz admitted that it was a propaganda tool: “For reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason…”[32]

On January 23, 2004, chief U.S. arms hunter David Kay resigned and upheld the original skeptical point of view: “I don’t think they existed. What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the [1991] Gulf War and I don’t think there was a large-scale production program in the ‘90s.”[33] Later, Charles Duelfer, special advisor to the Director of Britain’s MI-6 intelligence service: “There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. The intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”[34]

Cheney’s about-face on the invasion, like his about-face on Hussein’s possession of WMDs, cannot be reconciled with a rational, oil-first theory. It, and the entire “war on terrorism,” is the end result of a coup d’état that occurred in 1980 and has now recreated the U.S. in Israel’s image. To those who are predisposed to dismiss my thesis out of hand, I would remind them of Sherlock Holmes’s famous saying: “When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

2

Unholy Trinity

It seems absurd to suggest that a tiny rogue state like Israel should be able to browbeat, humiliate and coerce history’s greatest superpower, but Zionist domination of the U.S. had been going on for decades. For example, every president since 1967 has told Israel to stop building Jewish colonies in the Occupied Territories, and every Israeli government has responded with open contempt and disregard.  Nothing symbolizes U.S. subservience better than this exclamation from Menachem Begin’s Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan: “I know you Americans think you’re going to force us out of the West Bank, but we’re here and you’re in Washington. What will you do if we maintain settlements? Squawk? What will you do if we keep the army there? Send troops?”[35]

On October 20, 1990, syndicated columnist Patrick Buchanan encapsulated the U.S.’s emasculation in a now famous declaration: “Capitol Hill is an Israeli occupied territory.” One could pick a number of events from which to date the Zionization of the U.S., but the most common starting point is the creation of the “State of Israel” on May 15, 1948.

Original Theft

Contrary to popular belief, Israel was not created by the United Nations. The “Partition Plan” that would have carved up Palestine into Jewish and Arab regions received approval only from the UN General Assembly, which is why it is called UNGA Resolution 181. The Security Council never ratified it, which means that it was never enacted. Arab compliance, therefore, was not compulsory. In fact, Arab states had a right, even a duty, to reject it. The plan would have awarded 56 percent of Palestine to 650,000 Jews, and 44 percent to 1.3 million Muslim and Christian Arabs. The UN does not have the authority to take land from one party and give it to another, which means UNGA Resolution 181 was, and is, ultra vires.

For its part, the U.S. had been preparing to withdraw its support for the resolution because of continued Zionist violence against the Palestinian Arabs. In mid-March 1948, UN ambassador Warren Austin observed that it could not be enacted peacefully, and on orders from President Harry Truman recommended that it be suspended for two months pending a meeting of the General Assembly. Truman advocated a temporary UN trusteeship to prevent further bloodshed.[36]

However, domestic electoral considerations would soon dominate Truman’s thinking. As Gore Vidal writes in his preface to the late Rabbi Israel Shahak’s Jewish History, Jewish Religion:

Sometime in the late 1950s, that world-class gossip and occasional historian, John F. Kennedy, told me how, in 1948, Harry S. Truman had been pretty much abandoned by everyone when he came to run for president. Then an American Zionist brought him two million dollars in cash, in a suitcase, aboard his whistle-stop campaign train. ‘That’s why our recognition of Israel was rushed through so fast.’… I shall not rehearse the wars and alarms of that unhappy region. But I will say that the hasty invention of Israel has poisoned the political and intellectual life of the U.S.A., Israel’s unlikely patron.[37]

Although critics may be tempted to dismiss Vidal’s story as hearsay, there is strong evidence that electoral, not legal or moral, concerns pushed the U.S. to recognize Israel:

Partition was adopted only after ruthless arm-twisting by the U.S. government and by 26 pro-Zionist U.S. senators who, in telegrams to a number of UN member states, warned that U.S. goodwill in rebuilding their World War II-devastated economies might depend on a favorable vote for partition. In a November 10, 1945, meeting with American diplomats brought in from their posts in the Middle East to urge Truman not to heed Zionist urgings, Truman had bluntly explained his motivation: “I’m sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism: I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.”[38]

Within the Truman White House, a virtual war erupted between 67-year-old Secretary of State George C. Marshall and Clark Clifford, a 41-year-old neophyte political advisor who held the distinctly minority view that Truman had to recognize Israel if he expected to capture the Jewish vote.[39] Loy Henderson, Director of Near Eastern and African Affairs, described the importance of courting the Jewish vote during the 1948 election campaign:

Many of the leaders of the Republican Party, including [New York governor Thomas] Dewey... were almost constantly criticizing Truman for failure to give full support to the Zionists. If Truman had taken positions that would have resulted in a failure to establish the Jewish State, he would almost certainly have been defeated in the November elections, since the Zionists had almost the full support of the Congress, the United States media and most of the American people. The new Republican Administration would then have gone along with the Zionists. From the point of view of the Americans, and world opinion, the creation of Israel was a more or less conscious and willful act that was meant to compensate for the Holocaust.[40]

Truman, though, was only interested in re-election, so he allowed himself to be bought off. Zionist intimidation and corruption even extended to smearing members of the administration like Henderson, who opposed recognition of a Jewish “national homeland.” Edwin Wright, Middle East specialist, for Near East-South Asian-African Affairs, recounted the Lobby’s disreputable tactics:

“The Zionists went to various people like Drew Pearson and Walter Winchell and said, “Smear this fellow. Destroy his character and get him out of Government.”… The result was Mr. Henderson became the target of Zionist attacks. All kinds of false stories were told about him in these columns by Walter Winchell and others. I was at that time Mr. Henderson’s assistant and I answered many of the letters because he didn’t have time to do it himself. I was his sort of alter ego in handling much of this correspondence, and I saw the kind of letters that he got. They were vituperative. Walter Winchell accused him of crucifying the Jews the way that the Jews had been crucified earlier, and so forth, and so on…

When the election was coming up in 1946 in New York, [a] group of New York Jews called upon Mr. Truman. Emmanuel Cellar was the head of this committee. Rabbi Steven Wise and several others were in it. They called upon Mr. Truman and said, “We have just been talking with Mr. [Tom] Thomas Dewey. He is willing to come out and declare for a Jewish state, and we are going to turn our money and urge the Jews to vote for him unless you beat him to it.” Then Emmanuel Cellar pounded upon Mr. Truman’s desk and said, “And if you don’t come out for a Jewish state we’ll run you out of town.”[41]

By betraying the Arabs for the Jewish vote, the U.S. became midwife to a war crime. Almost from the outset the UN Charter became a scofflaw, and international bias against Palestinians became institutionalized.

The 1967 War

The key event that enabled Jewish and Christian Zionists to take hold of U.S. Middle East policy was the 1967 War. According to the received wisdom, the war began when Israel launched a pre-emptive strike against Egypt because President Gamel Abdel Nasser had closed the Red Sea port of Eilat and was preparing to attack across the Sinai. This is false. Israel precipitated the conflict by staging border aggressions against Syria and seizing Syrian land in the demilitarized zone between the two countries.

At the time, Syria and Egypt were bound by a mutual defense pact: an attack on one was an attack on both. From 1948 to 1967 the Syrians reported more than 1,000-armed clashes. In a candid 1976 interview, Moshe Dayan admitted that Israel provoked 80 percent of border skirmishes with Syria and erred in occupying the Golan Heights after the war:

We would send a tractor to plow some [disputed] area… and we knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn’t shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that’s how it was…. I made a mistake in allowing the conquest of the Golan Heights. As defense minister I should have stopped it because the Syrians were not threatening us at the time.[42]

In the period leading up to the war, Egypt did move two divisions into the Sinai and it did close Eilat, but the port city was of marginal economic value to Israel. Nevertheless, Israel used the closing as an excuse to attack Egypt and seize the Sinai, which was the objective. Those involved in the attack admit this and dismiss as ludicrous the idea that Israel acted out of self-defense. For example, on August 21, 1982, Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin told the New York Times: “The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves: we decided to attack him.” This statement is supported by the fact that Nasser had already sent his best troops to fight in the Yemeni civil war.

Prime Minister Levi Eshkol also denied that Nasser had any offensive intent. On October 18, 1967, he told the Israel newspaper Yediot Ahronot: “The Egyptian layout in the Sinai and the general military build up there testified to a military defensive Egyptian set-up, south to Israel.”

Israel’s capture of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem from Palestine, and the Golan Heights from Syria, caused an existential crisis. Because Israel attacked first, it was the aggressor, and such an image ran counter to the popular image of Israel as a defensive, peace-loving Western democracy. The acquisition of territory by war is inadmissible under international law, and UN Security Council Resolution 242 compelled Israel to return all lands occupied in the conflict.[43] Unfortunately for the Palestinians and Syrians, the U.S. government has vetoed more than 35 Security Council resolutions to force Israel to comply with Resolution 242. Since the Occupied Territories were never meant to be part of Israel under UN General Assembly Resolution 181, the U.S. refusal to press Israel to return them made no sense unless viewed as a function of domestic politics.

President Lyndon Johnson, like Truman before him, was unpopular. He needed to shore up support for the war, and according to presidential speechwriter Grace Halsell, that meant courting the Zionists:

In 1967, President Johnson felt he needed all the support he could get to “win” in Vietnam. Many American Jews were liberals outspokenly opposed to the war there. Johnson was told if he gave all out support to Israel… influential Jewish Americans would stop opposing his Vietnam policies. In a memo to the president, [speechwriter Ben] Wattenberg, whose parents had moved to the U. S. from Palestine and who was known as a strong supporter of the Jewish state, said flatly that if the president came out with strong support for Israel, he would win American Jewish support for the war in Vietnam. Many American Jewish leaders are “doves” on Vietnam, Wattenberg wrote, but ‘hawks’ on a war with Arab states.[44]

So keen was Johnson to curry favor with Jewish elites that he covered up an unprovoked Israeli attack on a U.S. warship. On June 8, 1967, the intelligence-gathering vessel USS Liberty was stationed off the Gaza Strip when it came under Israeli attack. For 75 minutes its crew withstood torpedoes, rockets, napalm and 30mm gunfire fire, even at life rafts. Thirty-four men died and 171 were wounded. According to the “official” version, Israel mistook the Liberty for the out-of-service Egyptian horse-carrier El Quseir, which was in a war zone and did not display a flag. In fact, the Liberty was in international waters and flew a new American flag.[45]

“While there can be no moral justification for the White House cover-up orders to the Navy after the assault on the Liberty,” wrote Halsell, “from hindsight, Johnson’s political motivation is obvious. It was the same motivation that led him subsequently to listen to the Jewish friends and advisers who urged him not to put any pressure on the Israelis to relinquish territories they had seized in the Six-Day War.”[46]

In fact, Johnson’s inner circle was almost entirely Jewish and pro-Israel, so it is impossible for him to have had a non-Zionist point of view: Walt Rostow at the White House; brother Eugene Rostow at the State Department; UN ambassador Arthur Goldberg; Associate Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas; Democratic Party fundraiser Abraham Feinberg, White House counsels Leo White and Jake Jacobsen; White House writers Richard Goodwin, Ben Wattenberg and Halsell; domestic affairs aide Larry Levinson; and John P. Roche, Johnson’s intellectual-in-residence.[47]

Adding to Israel’s attractiveness was its potential as a strategic asset in the Cold War against Soviet-backed Arab states. For U.S. Jewry and the government, Israel had finally joined the Soviet Union as a centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy.

Jews Rediscover the Nazi Holocaust

The significance of the 1967 War on the mentality of U.S. Jewry cannot be overestimated. Until this time, Israel was at best an afterthought in Jewish minds, and a political inconvenience, if not an embarrassment for American Jewish elites.

Immediately after the war, these elites—especially the American Jewish Congress and the Anti-Defamation League—wanted to avoid any association with Israel lest they and their members be accused of harboring a dual loyalty. They fell lockstep behind U.S. government foreign policy, even to the extent of attacking Jews who wanted to speak about the Nazi holocaust. Today, such conduct would be reflexively slandered as “anti-Semitic,” yet this is what Jewish leaders did to their co-religionists in the name of conformism and political opportunism. Professor Norman Finkelstein’s explanation of this mindset deserves to be cited at length:

American Jewish elites “forgot” the Nazi holocaust because Germany—West Germany by 1949—became a crucial postwar American ally in the U.S. confrontation with the Soviet Union. Dredging up the past served no useful purpose. With minor reservations (soon discarded), major American Jewish organizations quickly fell into line with U.S. support for a rearmed and barely de-Nazified Germany… The Final Solution was a taboo topic of American Jewish elites for yet another reason. Leftist Jews, who were opposed to the Cold War alignment with Germany against the Soviet Union, would not stop harping on it. Remembrance of the Nazi holocaust was tagged as a Communist cause. Strapped with the stereotype that conflated Jews with the Left… American Jewish elites did not shrink from sacrificing fellow Jews on the altar of anti-Communism. Offering their files on alleged Jewish subversives to government agencies, the AJC and the ADL actively collaborated with the McCarthy-era witchhunt. The AJC endorsed the death penalty for the Rosenbergs, while its monthly publication, Commentary, editorialized that they weren’t really Jews…. Anxious to boost their anti-Communist credentials, Jewish elites even enlisted in, and financially sustained, right-wing extremist organizations like the All-American Conference to Combat Communism, and turned a blind eye as veterans of the Nazi SS entered the country.[48]

As late as 1961, the Nazi holocaust was still virtually invisible in North American political culture. Only three scholarly works on it had been published: Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, (New York, 1961); Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, (New York, 1959); and Ella Lingens-Reiner, Prisoners of Fear (London: 1959). After the 1967 War, Israel became, in the words of Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz “the religion of American Jews.”[49]

Finkelstein said this is the time when the Nazi holocaust (a specific historical event) mutated into The Holocaust (an ideology). For Jewish elites, it had become yet another way to ingratiate themselves into the circles of power. Because of its victory, Israel was no longer perceived as weak, which meant that jumping on board to support U.S.–Israeli “unity” was no longer a risk; it was now religiously and politically expedient. The Holocaust, unlike the Nazi holocaust, could be discussed openly and used instrumentally to attack Israel’s critics because the stigma of dual loyalty had vanished.

If Jewish elites were thrilled by Israel’s victory, the vast majority of U.S. society wasn’t. Israel’s occupation of Palestine alienated mainline Protestant, Orthodox and Catholic Christians, as well as liberal Jews. Leading Protestant clergyman Henry P. van Dusen compared Israel’s assault to the Nazi blitzkrieg, where the aim was annihilation, not victory.[50] Some Orthodox Jews to this day deem the State of Israel to be a blasphemy. Within this community, a group called Neturei Karta, Aramaic for “Guardians of the City” (Jerusalem), has since 1938 been fighting to keep Judaism separate from Zionism:

Judaism believes in One G-d who revealed the Torah. It affirms Divine Providence and, accordingly, views Jewish exile as a punishment for sin. Redemption may be achieved solely through prayer and penance. Judaism calls upon all Jews to obey the Torah in its entirety including the commandment to be patriotic citizens.

Zionism rejects the Creator, His Revelation and reward and punishment. Among its fruits are the persecution of the Palestinian people and the spiritual and physical endangering of the Jewish people. It encourages treasonous, dual loyalty among unsuspecting Jews throughout the world. At its root, Zionism sees reality as barren and desacralized. It is the antithesis of Torah Judaism…[51]

Jews are not allowed to dominate, kill, harm or demean another people and are not allowed to have anything to do with the Zionist enterprise, their political meddling and their wars.[52]

Because Zionism violates basic tenets of Mosaic tradition, Jewish elites had difficulty expanding their power within their own community, and so were forced to seek support among Zionist Christians, even though the teleology of evangelical Christianity is decidedly anti-Jewish.[53]

Christian Zionism

Although Zionism is commonly associated with Jews and Theodore Herzl‘s 1896 book Der Judenstaat [The Jewish State], Christians were the first modern Zionists. To all intents and purposes the founder of the movement was the renegade Anglican cleric John Nelson Darby (1800–1882).

In 1826, Darby was ordained deacon of the parish of Calary in County Wicklow, Ireland. The next year he abandoned the Church, declaring: “The Church is in ruins… the entire nature and purpose of the Church has become so perverted that it is diametrically opposed to the fundamental reason for which it is instituted.”[54]

The cause of Darby’s anger was the separation of Church and State and the dual loyalties he had to respect. The bishop instructed Darby that every Catholic he managed to convert had to swear an oath to the reigning monarch, who was the head of the Church of England. Darby considered such an act “unscriptural, and derogatory to the glory of Christ.”[55]

After breaking from the Church, Darby and other apostates formed a fellowship known as the Plymouth Brethren, which propagated an ultra-literalist, pessimistic world view known as “premillennial dispensationalism” or “chiliasm,” from chilioi, the Greek work for thousand. According to Darby, the history of man can be divided into five “dispensations,” each defined as a period of rule by God’s agents: Noah, Moses, Aaron, kings (David, Solomon, Rehoboam, Jeroboam and Manasseh) and Spirit (Jesus).

The key factor of Darby’s chiliasm lies in the role he assigns to “Israel” in connection with the Second Coming. He accepted as literally true the myth that God bequeathed the land of Palestine exclusively to the Jews, and that He will one day gather them from all over the world to dwell therein. The church’s only function was to aid the return of God’s “chosen people,” to the Holy Land.

Once the nation of Israel was reconstituted, Christian believers would be “raptured” up to heaven before the onset of a seven-year tribulation, during which time the “antichrist” would rule. After defeating the antichrist in a great apocalyptic battle at Megiddo (Armageddon), Jesus would return as King of the Jews and reign on Earth for 1,000 years from his throne in the temple. Jews would follow a separate path to salvation.

For eccentrics like Darby, the need to reconstitute biblical Israel was a pressing matter because the rapture was thought to be imminent. This phenomenon occurs periodically throughout history, but the upheavals and uncertainty caused by the American and French revolutions during the last quarter of the 18th century gave it greater impetus. As the calendrial odometer turned from 1799 to 1800, millennial hysteria convinced the Millerites (precursors of the Seventh-Day Adventists) that the end-times were indeed coming. The movement’s founder William Miller even predicted that Jesus would return in 1844.

Darby travelled and preached his apocalyptic message throughout Europe and North America for 60 years. In this excerpt, we see the essence of the anti-Arab bigotry that drives Israel and the U.S.:

The first thing, then, which the Lord will do will be to purify His land (the land which belongs to the Jews) of the Tyrians, the Philistines, the Sidonians; of Edom and Moab, and Amon — of all the wicked, in short from the Nile to the Euphrates. It will be done by the power of Christ in favor of His people re-established by His goodness. The people are put into security in the land, and then will those of them who remain till that time among the nations be gathered together.[56]

In the U.S., Darby managed to convert a generation of Christian leaders, two of whom were responsible for the rapid growth of chiliasm, and hence Christian Zionism. The first of these was businessman-cum-preacher William Eugene Blackstone (1841–1935). After the Civil War in 1866, he claimed to have heard a calling from God to evangelize Darby’s dispensationalism. He did this largely in two ways. The first was through the publication in 1878 of his book Jesus is Coming. The second was through his intense preoccupation with Jews, the reconstitution of “Israel,” and the rapture.

On November 24–25, 1890, Blackstone chaired the Conference on the Past, Present and Future of Israel at the First Methodist Episcopal Church in Chicago. This followed his own work as co-founder of the Chicago Committee for Hebrew Christian Work, essentially an endeavor to proselytize among Chicago’s Jews. Conference participants included some of the best-known Jewish and Christian community leaders. Out of the conference came resolutions—decrying the oppression of Russia’s Jews, for example—but also a call for world leaders to allow Jews to return to Palestine.[57]

The culminating event of the conference was the Blackstone Petition of 1891—a memorial signed by 413 U.S. Christian and Jewish leaders. The petition was sent to President Benjamin Harrison urging him to persuade various European governments “to secure the holding at an early date, of an international conference to consider the condition of the Israelites and their claims to Palestine as their ancient home, and to promote, in all other just and proper ways, the alleviation of their suffering condition.”[58]

The petition failed because the vast majority of American Jews had no interest in Zionism. The best evidence of this came at the Paris Peace Conference on March 4, 1919. Congressman Julius Kahn handed President Woodrow Wilson a statement co-written by three prominent Jews—Dr. Henry Berkowitz, of Philadelphia, Max Senior of Cincinnati, and professor Morris Jastrow Jr. of the University of Pennsylvania. It read in part:

We raise our voices in warning and protest against the demand of the Zionists for the reorganization of the Jews as a national unit, to whom, now or in the future, territorial sovereignty in Palestine shall be committed. This demand not only misrepresents the trend of the history of the Jews, who ceased to be a nation 2000 years ago, but involves the limitation and possible annulment of the larger claims of Jews for full citizenship and human rights in all lands in which those rights are not yet secure. For the very reason that the new era upon which the world is entering aims to establish government everywhere on principles of true democracy, we reject the Zionistic project of a “national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.”…

As to the future of Palestine, it is our fervent hope that what was once a “promised land” for the Jews may become a “land of promise” for all races and creeds, safeguarded by the League of Nations which, it is expected, will be one of the fruits of the Peace Conference to whose deliberations the world now looks forward so anxiously and so full of hope.

We ask that Palestine be constituted as a free and independent state, to be governed under a democratic form of government recognizing no distinctions of creed or race or ethnic descent, and with adequate power to protect the country against oppression of any kind. We do not wish to see Palestine, either now or at any time in the future, organized as a Jewish State.[59]

The second major disciple of Darby was Rev. Cyrus Ingerson Scofield (1843-1921), largely because he wrote The Scofield Reference Bible. Published in 1909 and revised in 1917, it became the Bible of Christian Zionism and was the single greatest disseminator of Darby‘s dispensationalism. In 1890, while a pastor in Dallas and head of the Southwestern School of the Bible—now the Dallas Theological Seminary—Scofield began a comprehensive bible course through which he spread the dispensationalist message to tens of thousands of students. In 1914, the Chicago-based Moody Bible Institute, named for evangelist Dwight Lyman Moody, took over the course, thus making Scofield‘s Bible the dominant influence at the two institutions.

Dispensationalism is still a non-standard belief, and many Christians rightly condemn it as absurd and intolerant, but these defects made it ideal for uniting Zionist Jews and Christians after the 1967 war. Christians saw Israel’s victory as biblical prophecy in action. In July 1967 L. Nelson Bell, Billy Graham‘s father-in-law and editor of Christianity Today wrote: “That for the first time in more than 2,000 years Jerusalem is now completely in the hands of the Jews gives the student of the Bible a thrill and a renewed faith in the accuracy and validity of the Bible.”[60]

Bell and other Zionists could point to various passages in the Hebrew Bible, such as:

Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee:

And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:

And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.

And the LORD appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the LORD, who appeared unto him.[61]

And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.

And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.[62]

If any of thine be driven out unto the outmost parts of heaven, from thence will the LORD thy God gather thee, and from thence will he fetch thee. And the LORD thy God will bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it; and he will do thee good, and multiply thee above thy fathers.[63]

The Christian Bible picks up this theme, although to a much lesser degree and without any specific Jewish references: “And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”[64]

Eclipse of Liberalism

A case could be made that the rise of the evangelical movement coincided with the high-water mark of liberalism—the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade decision. The 7:2 ruling on January 22, 1973, made abortion legal on demand and was hailed as a great victory for women and individual rights. Christian groups (evangelical and otherwise) condemned it as an affront to God, the sanctity of life and “traditional American values.” From the mid-1970s onward, overturning Roe vs. Wade became the cornerstone of a political and moral crusade. Evangelical and charismatic movements become the fastest-growing sects of North American Christianity at the same time that mainstream Protestant and Catholic denominations saw their numbers shrink.

One of the most important of these evangelicals was former Senate aide Paul Weyrich. In the same year that Roe vs. Wade was passed, he created the Heritage Foundation, the first “think-tank” specifically designed to propagate a militant Christian/Straussian political order. Heritage’s influence on the White House would redefine U.S. politics, but Weyrich did not accomplish this feat by himself. He—in fact the entire revolution—owes its success to three politically active philanthropists.[65]

Joseph Coors

The Heritage Foundation began with a $250,000 grant from Colorado brewing tycoon Joseph Coors in late 1972. On the occasion of Coors’s death at 85 on March 16, 2003, Heritage president Edwin J. Feulner eulogized the power and influence of his late patron: “Without Joe Coors, The Heritage Foundation wouldn’t exist—and the conservative movement it nurtures would be immeasurably poorer. Thanks in large part to Joe, though, we can look back on a record of accomplishment that stretches back three decades.”[66]

Coors not only helped bankroll the revolution, he also epitomized the Straussian marriage of elitist statecraft and religion. He was a notoriously exploitative employer who held deeply prejudiced views of women, homosexuals and minorities, and vigorously opposed any act of government that offended his biblical concept of morality, or impeded his ability to milk the last cent of profit from his business. He also opposed the Equal Rights Amendment, supported the John Birch Society, and gave money to the Nicaraguan contras.

Richard Mellon Scaife

Joe Coors may have been the financial founder of the Heritage Institute, but Richard Scaife was the real banking power behind it. In 1973, he donated $900,000 to Weyrich’s enterprise, more than three times what Coors gave. Scaife came by his money through his mother Sarah Mellon Scaife, daughter of Judge Thomas Mellon, creator of the vast Mellon oil industry and banking empire. Upon her death in 1965, Richard Scaife inherited $200 million.

Also in 1973, he became chairman of the Sarah Mellon Scaife foundation and began to direct its money toward right-wing institutions and ideas. Scaife also controls the philosophically similar Carthage and Allegheny foundations.

He was an integral fixture during the Reagan years, but unlike Coors who became deeply involved with policy, Scaife was content to foster the proliferation of “think tanks” that spread anti-statist economic theory. He did, though, sit on the U.S. Advisory Commission for Public Diplomacy, which oversees the U.S. Information Agency. Again, Feulner is the one who testifies to Scaife’s influence. In November 1994, he told a group of supporters after the Republican sweep of the House of Representatives:

The victories we’re celebrating today didn’t begin last Tuesday. They started more than 20 years ago when Dick Scaife had the vision to see the need for a conservative intellectual movement in America. These organizations built the intellectual case that was necessary before political leaders like Newt Gingrich could translate their ideas into practical political alternatives.[67]

R. Randolph Richardson

Little is known about Randolph Richardson, save that his family’s Smith Richardson Foundation started backing the new Straussian economic movement when he became its president in 1973. Early beneficiaries included “supply-side” economics authors Jude Wanniski and George Gilder.

The foundation began in 1935 under father H. Smith Richardson, himself the son of Lunsford Richardson, the inventor of Vicks VapoRub. The fortune generated by that single product was enough to establish a philanthropic foundation dedicated to his principles of hard work, industry and enterprise. The foundation’s philosophy, as described on its website (www.srf.org), could have been lifted out of John Locke‘s Second Treatise:

It was characteristic of [H. Smith Richardson] to capitalize the words “Opportunity” and “Right”: these were key words in his personal creed. He believed that “Opportunity” was something to be pursued with the utmost diligence and seized with zeal. His belief in a personal bill of rights was equally strong: a person rightfully owned what his industry brought him, and the free enterprise system permitted the maximum scope for industry. It was these qualities which enabled him to transform his father’s small mortar-and-pestle drug manufacturing business into an industrial concern of international stature.

In 1974, Coors and Weyrich formed the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, which in 1977 was renamed the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation. According to www.freecongress.org:

Free Congress Foundation is politically conservative, but it is more than that: it is also culturally conservative. Most think tanks talk about tax rates or the environment or welfare policy and occasionally we do also. But our main focus is on the Culture War. Will America return to the culture that made it great, our traditional, Judeo-Christian, Western culture? Or will we continue the long slide into the cultural and moral decay of political correctness? If we do, America, once the greatest nation on earth, will become no less than a third-world country.

Again, we have the Straussian unity of unenlightened self-interest and biblical chauvinism. Out of this comes a hatred for all things Islamic, and since September 11, 2001, Free Congress has pumped out dozens of articles and monographs to this effect. The authors are Weyrich and adjunct fellow Robert Spencer, a 20-year writer and researcher on Islam and director of “Jihad Watch,” which draws attention to jihad theology and ideology, whatever that means. Spencer affects the demeanor of the scholar who approaches his subject dispassionately. He claims not to draw his own conclusions, but merely cites the words of radical Muslims and traditional Islamic sources to show that Islam is inherently a violent religion, but such a view is sheer bigotry.

For example, in 1946, during testimony before the Anglo-American Commission in Jerusalem, Israel’s soon-to-be first president Chaim Weizmann observed that Muslims were not a violent people: “I would not like to do any injustice. The Muslim world has treated the Jews with considerable tolerance. The Ottoman Empire {of which the Arabs were a major part} received the Jews with open arms when they were driven out of Spain and Europe, and the Jews should never forget that.”

Such facts appear alien to Spincer, who spends much of his time cherry-picking passages from the Qur’an to vilify Islam. Significantly, he does not cite negative passages from the Hebrew or Christian bibles to illustrate the bigotry inherent in the West’s Judeo-Christian tradition. Leaving aside the fact that no holy book can be read literally, Spencer’s scholarship is specious. For example:

Many Muslim controversialists and their allies charge Christians with distorting the idea of jihad in order to give Islam a bad name...Left unanswered by this sort of analysis, however, is the question of how these dishonest Christians were able to convince so many Muslims of the accuracy of their distortions. For it is clear that today and throughout Islamic history, millions of Muslims have considered jihad to be a war to establish the supremacy of Islam. Many have believed, and believe today, that they are commanded to fight this war by Allah himself...[68]

First, “Allah” is merely the Arabic word for God—the same as the God of the Hebrew and Christian bibles. To insinuate that Allah is somehow opposed to God is a demonstrable lie. Second, nowhere does Spencer mention the role Israel and Saudi Arabia played in repressing the Muslim world. Thus, Spencer’s attempt to dismiss his critics fails, as does the description of Free Congress as a “research and education foundation.”

Weyrich also established Free Congress’s own satellite network channel National Empowerment Television (NET TV), now called America’s Voice. From this bully pulpit, it rallies evangelicals across the U.S. to lobby the government, and propagate the views of the National Rifle Association, Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition, and the Eagle Forum, which opposes women’s equality.

In 1979, Weyrich and executive director Robert Billings prevailed upon Jerry Falwell to head a new group called the “The Moral Majority,” which was instrumental in marshalling the Christian Zionist vote for the Republicans. This fact led Falwell to boast: “Ronald Reagan would not have been president unless Bible-believing Christians in 1979 and 1980 by the millions said, ‘We’ve had enough,’ and threw Jimmy Carter out and put Ronald Reagan in, to put it bluntly.”[69]

The theocratization of White House became entrenched in 1981 with the founding of the innocuously named Council on National Policy. Comprised of more than 500 evangelical, Pentecostal, charismatic, Catholic and Mormon Christians, the CNP sets political strategy for the religious right and has an international scope. Its members are televangelists, legislators, former military or high-ranking government officers, presidents of “think tanks,” and industry leaders in brewing, lumber, oil, mining, commodities, real estate, the media and education.[70]

Some of these people past and present include: Holland and Jeffrey Coors, Jerry Falwell, Lt.-Col Oliver North (lied to Congress regarding the 1980s Iran/Contra arms-for hostages scandal), Pat Robertson (Christian Broadcast Network), former Attorney-General John Ashcroft, Rich DeVos (Owner of the NBA Orlando Magic), Alan Gottlieb (Chairman, Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms); Congressman Jack Kemp, Richard Scaife, John Sununu (Reagan’s Chief of Staff), Richard Viguerie (Chairman, American Target Advertising.), Paul Weyrich and Don Wildmon (American Family Association).

The CNP imbues selfishness with divine sanction; treats regulatory and civil rights legislation as virtual sins against God; and actively conspires against the Constitution. This perverse marriage of convenience between Jewish and Christian Zionists, though, would not have amounted to much without a political foundation. That assistance came from the “neo-conservative” economic movement, which owes its beginnings to Leo Strauss.

The Great Neo-Con Artist

Leo Strauss, a philosopher at the University of Chicago, was a reactionary moralist at a time when U.S. culture was growing increasingly progressive and égalitarian.[71] As a Jewish German who escaped Hitler‘s Reich, Strauss judged égalitarianism to be a threat to America’s liberal democracy because of what he saw happen to the feeble Weimar Republic. In the name of imposing equality on the country, Strauss thought, the U.S. was losing its creative essence and moral fiber. Without radical change, America would be vulnerable to attack from totalitarian regimes.

To save the U.S., Strauss said égalitarianism and secular government had to be replaced by a regime dedicated to imposing traditional political and religious views. The fact that these views would be based on the prejudices of the leaders did not bother Strauss, who considered égalitarianism itself to be a prejudice, and an inferior one at that.

The key to bringing about this new value-based order, he said, lay in the rediscovery of pre-modern philosophy. He considered Athens and Jerusalem to be the twin pillars of reason and revelation upon which all the values of Western society were built, but he saw modern philosophers undermining these pillars by working hand-in-glove with government to serve the appetites of the lowest common denominator—the masses.

As a result, philosophers were undermining the aristocratic virtues that made philosophy the noblest pursuit of the human mind—tradition, heroism, creativity and excellence. In its place, égalitarianism and historic relativism were breeding a climate in which past virtues and morality were denigrated as old and inferior, and present norms were ennobled as modern and superior. Without objective order and traditional morality, Strauss said, the U.S. was sinking into nihilism. Philosophy and philosophers had to be separated from government, and the proof he said, lay in the trial of Socrates.

Strauss’s connection of nihilism with Socrates is not original. Friedrich Nietzsche argued that Socrates’ dialectical method of reasoning undermined peoples’ belief in religion and the Homeric myths, thus leading ultimately to the relativistic, scientific world of the Enlightenment. Nietzsche (1844-1900) belongs to the late Romantic period, which arose toward the end of the 18th century. The Romantics—in art, literature, music and philosophy—brought creativity, emotion, genius, spiritual truth and transcendent imagination to the forefront of European society. The formalistic, logical world of the Enlightenment left no room for the genius, the hero, or the exceptional individual.

Nietzsche was deeply spiritual, and he condemned the Enlightenment for rationalizing God to death because without God, he said, morality and absolute value had no meaning. To redefine value and morality, Nietzsche posited der Übermensch (“The Superman”)—a gentle, cultured leader like the poet Johann Goethe who would live a life “beyond good and evil”—not bound by the “slave” Christian morality that teaches people to fear death, repress their natural desires, destroy their taste and respect for heroism, and make them afraid to trust their own will.[72]

Although there seems to be a fair amount of agreement between the two, Strauss reads into Socrates something entirely different. Whereas Nietzsche saw Socrates as the despoiler of Western philosophy, Strauss saw in him the possibility of its renewal, and the trial provides the example.

The democratic government of Athens charged Socrates with impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens, and Strauss believed the charges to be valid, but only because Socrates made the error of taking his philosophy into the marketplace. For Strauss, the lesson of the trial was that philosophers must keep higher truths to themselves, not only to save their lives, but to keep the public from losing faith in religion and traditional values. Therefore, Strauss argued that only those equipped to rule should be privy to higher moral truths, and that the government should use religion instrumentally to keep the public in line.

Strauss, it seems, fancied himself a latter-day Plato who thought that the U.S. could become an ideal Republic run by Philosopher Kings and protected by Guardians. Plato, to his credit, understood that his ideal society could never exist; it could only be contemplated.[73] This lesson is utterly lost on Strauss because, unlike Plato, he wasn’t interested in justice; he was trying to manufacture a case against moral relativism.

It should seem axiomatic to any reasoned mind that an authoritarian, pre-Enlightenment governing model like the Republic could not be applied to an Enlightenment-based political society without doing great violence to that society’s liberal character, yet this it precisely what Strauss believed the U.S. had to do. Because Strauss’s obscurantist anti-modernism gave rise to “neo-conservatism,” and hence the Zionist usurpation of the U.S., it needs to be critiqued at some length. The rest of this section concerns Strauss’s use and abuse of the philosophical ideas of Niccolò Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke to give verisimilitude to his eccentric concept of governance. The reader might find this section heavy going, but there’s no easy way to do it.

Maligning Machiavelli

Strauss’s attack on modernity and the Enlightenment can be sourced to his misrepresentation of Machiavelli, the Renaissance Florentine who gave us our foundations of political science and realpolitik. During Machiavelli’s time (1469-1527) Italy was a patchwork of feuding city-states subject to frequent foreign invasion. To end the carnage, Machiavelli argued that Italy needed to unite under a strong leader. Such a leader had to reject the traditional idea of a governing ethos and do whatever was necessary, even practice deceit and cruelty, to ensure the security and survival of the society. In other words, man should serve the state, not the other way around:

The gulf between how one should live and how one does live is so wide that a man who neglects what is actually done for what should be done leans the way to self-destruction rather than self-preservation. The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessary comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous. Therefore, if a prince wants to maintain his rule, he must learn how not to be virtuous and to make use of this or not according to need…. This is because, taking everything into account, he will find that some of the things that appear to be virtues will, if he practices them ruin him, and some of the things that appear to be vices will bring him security and prosperity.[74]

For his impolitic candor, irreligion and embrace of ruthless political power, Christian Europe, especially Tudor England, equated Machiavelli with Satan. However, anti-clerical theorists and followers of the emerging scientific method of inquiry eagerly embraced Machiavelli’s amoral reasoning. If nature could be understood free from biblical sophistry, then so could man and society. Machiavelli’s redefinition of statecraft ultimately laid the foundation for Enlightenment political thought, which is the basis of our political values. With politics now based on pragmatism instead of theology, God was rationalized into irrelevance, and philosophers started to participate in society.

Machiavelli was at heart a republican who wanted justice and order, and in his writing we find the foundations for liberal, republican government.[75] For Strauss, this was Machiavelli’s unpardonable crime because republicanism puts government in the hands of the people: “Machiavelli’s admiration for the political practice of classical antiquity and especially of republican Rome is only the reverse side of his rejection of classical political philosophy. He rejected classical political philosophy, and therewith the whole tradition of political philosophy in the full sense of the term as useless.”[76]

One cannot take seriously Strauss’s charge that Machiavelli rejected classical philosophy, since one is hard-pressed to find any reference to it in either The Prince or The Discourses. This is to be expected, since Machiavelli was concerned with the practice of leadership, not the theory.

Further evidence that Strauss neither respected nor understood Machiavelli comes from this disparaging comment: “When trying to understand the thought of Machiavelli, one does well to remember the saying that [Christopher] Marlowe was inspired to ascribe to him: ‘I… hold that there is no sin but ignorance.’ This is almost a definition of the philosopher.”[77]

The fact that he would consider a Tudor English playwright to be a legitimate critic of Machiavelli speaks volumes about Strauss’s credentials as a philosopher.

A Hobbes of a Different Color

Strauss believed he found the remedy for Machiavelli’s republicanism in the social contractarianism of Thomas Hobbes, who, like Machiavelli, was a philosopher of peace and an analyst of power.

Hobbes (1588-1679) believed that man in “the state of nature” (outside of society) lives a nasty, short, brutish life because each person is driven by natural appetites and is in mutual competition for power and prestige. Since all men are endowed with reason, Hobbes said, they would naturally want to leave this violent, competitive world, to live in peace. To achieve this end they must surrender their right of self-defense and erect a sovereign power to rule over them. Such a sovereign would be the embodiment of peace and order to whom the people would owe absolute obedience. In his seminal 1651 work Leviathan, Hobbes set out the need for a sovereign in language—albeit slightly archaic—that is virtually indistinguishable from that of Strauss:

The final cause, end, or design of men (who naturally love liberty, and dominion over others)… is the foresight of their own preservation, and of a more contented life thereby; that is to say, of getting themselves out from that miserable condition of war which is necessarily consequent, as hath been shown, to the natural passions of men when there is no visible power to keep them in awe, and tie them by fear of punishment to the performance of their covenants…. For the laws of nature, as justice, equity, modesty, mercy, and, in sum, doing to others as we would be done to, of themselves, without the terror of some power to cause them to be observed, are contrary to our natural passions, that carry us to partiality, pride, revenge, and the like. And covenants, without the sword, are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all.

The only way to erect such a common power, as may be able to defend them from the invasion of foreigners, and the injuries of one another, and thereby to secure them in such sort as that by their own industry and by the fruits of the earth they may nourish themselves and live contentedly, is to confer all their power and strength upon one man, or upon one assembly of men, that may reduce all their wills, by plurality of voices, unto one will.

This done, the multitude so united in one person is called a COMMONWEALTH; in Latin, CIVITAS. This is the generation of that great LEVIATHAN, or rather, to speak more reverently, of that mortal god to which we owe, under the immortal God, our peace and defense.[78]

There is much to admire in Hobbes’s clarity and logic, but his view of society is so mechanistic that for the sake of peace citizens must not only surrender their arms, but also their liberty and right to dissent. As we know today, such absolutism is the defining characteristic of a totalitarian regime. Hobbes’s sovereign-ruled state might very well be peaceful, but it is the kind of peace that democracies abhor, but then Hobbes never pretended to be a democrat.

According to Strauss, Hobbes set philosophy back on course by merging natural law with realism to create the entirely new political doctrine of “natural right”: “What Hobbes attempted to do on the basis of Machiavelli’s fundamental objection to the utopian teaching of the tradition, although in opposition to Machiavelli’s own solution, was to maintain the idea of natural law but to divorce it from the classical idea of man’s perfection.”[79] Strauss’s justification for this position consists of the following deductive reasoning.

• If natural law is derived from the need for self-preservation, as Machiavelli said, then self-preservation is the root of all justice and morality.

• Morality equals self-preservation, which is fundamental and inalienable.

• Morality, therefore, is a right, not a duty.

• All duties are derived from morality.

• Duties are binding only to the extent they do not threaten the morality.

• There are only perfect rights, and no perfect duties.

• Since morality is a right, the function and limits of civil society must be defined according to man’s natural rights, not natural duties.

• The state’s function is to safeguard the natural right (morality) of each citizen.

• The power of the state finds its highest expression here and nowhere else.[80]

Strauss’s argument is plainly unsound. For one thing, Machiavelli said nothing about natural law being derived from self-preservation; in fact, he denied the value of any overarching ethos, as we saw above: “The gulf between how one should live and how one does live is so wide that a man who neglects what is actually done for what should be done leans the way to self-destruction rather than self-preservation.”

Second, the conclusion “morality is a right” is a solipsism. Third, the concept of “perfect rights” begs the existence of perfection. Fourth, the link between morality and the function of the state is not proven, and as such the deductive relation been moral right and natural right is baseless.

Strauss gives us a perverse caricature of Machiavelli so that he can manufacture plausibility for an authoritarian doctrine of natural law. On the other hand, he gives us an unrealistically sympathetic view of Hobbes so that he can import authoritarianism into U.S. democratic tradition: “If we may call liberalism that political doctrine which regards as the fundamental political fact the rights, as distinguished from the duties, of man and which identifies the function of the state with the protection or safeguarding of those rights, we must say that the founder of liberalism was Hobbes.”[81]

As the following two excerpts show, Strauss’s views on the divinely guided natural liberty of men, laissez-faire economics, and defense against foreign invasion are virtually lifted from Leviathan.

Liberty Identical to God’s Will

God, that seeth and disposeth all things, seeth also that the liberty of man in doing what he will is accompanied with the necessity of doing that which God will and no more, nor less. For though men may do many things which God does not command, nor is therefore author of them; yet they can have no passion, nor appetite to anything, of which appetite God’s will is not the cause… And this shall suffice, as to the matter in hand, of that natural liberty, which only is properly called liberty.[82]

The State Has No Place in the Economy

A freeman is he that, in those things which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to do what he has a will to…. For seeing there is no Commonwealth in the world wherein there be rules enough set down for the regulating of all the actions and words of men (as being a thing impossible): it followeth necessarily that in all kinds of actions, by the laws pretermitted, men have the liberty of doing what their own reasons shall suggest for the most profitable to themselves….

The liberty of a subject lieth therefore only in those things which, in regulating their actions, the sovereign hath pretermitted: such as is the liberty to buy, and sell, and otherwise contract with one another; to choose their own abode, their own diet, their own trade of life, and institute their children as they themselves think fit; and the like.[83]

Classical liberalism started out as a movement against church authority, which means that Machiavelli is its true founder, but Strauss could never admit that. All he cared about was exploiting Hobbes’s concepts of the minimalist state and negative freedom—all citizens are deemed to be free by nature and any external constraints on personal or economic freedom, like laws or regulations, are deemed to be assaults on liberty. Strauss conflates freedom, liberty and license, thus stripping each of them of any meaning. In his mind, “liberty” becomes a synonym for unbridled self-interest and survival of the fittest. The distinction between this and genuine liberty is best made by Mortimer Adler:

Liberty is freedom exercised under the restraints of justice so that its exercise results in injury to no one. In contrast, licence is freedom exempt from the restraints of justice and, therefore, injurious to others in infringing their freedom as well as violating other rights. When no distinction is made between liberty and licence, the freedom of the strong can destroy the freedom of the weak. For the freedom of any one individual to be compatible with in equal measure of freedom on the part of all others, the freedom of each must be limited and limited precisely for the purpose of preventing the freedom of one from encroaching upon or destroying the freedom of others.[84]

Taking Liberties with Locke

Adler’s concept of limited freedom is the essence of American liberal republicanism. The man who articulated this vision was the Puritan English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704). Thomas Jefferson was said to have plagiarized Locke’s Second Treatise of Government while drafting the Declaration of Independence. This is undoubtedly an overstatement, but the beginning of the second paragraph of the Declaration embodies the essence of Lockean democracy:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.[85]

Locke belongs to the same social contractarian tradition as does Hobbes, but he has an entirely different understanding of freedom and the nature of the social contract. Hobbes speaks of a lawless negative freedom; Lockespeaks ofpositive freedom in which citizens legislate to govern themselves. Hobbes speaks of obedience to an absolute ruler; Locke despises absolutism, and holds that a sovereign power must rule with the consent of the governed.

Since Strauss was sympathetic to Hobbes, one might have expected him to attack Locke with the same vigor as he did Machiavelli, but of course he couldn’t. To attack Locke outright would have meant attacking the moral and spiritual foundation of the U.S. Instead, Strauss had to undermine the main lines of Locke’s political theory to recast the man as a lapsed Hobbesian. Thus, Locke suffered the fate of all whom Strauss co-opted to justify his “natural law” doctrine: if the political theory didn’t fit, it would be made to fit. In the next section, one must keep in mind Hobbes’s definition of Commonwealth: “that mortal god to which we owe, under the immortal God, our peace and defense.”

The Problem of Religion

For Strauss, all political authority must devolve from doctrinaire Christianity and belief in God; else it is relativistic, base and worthless. In Locke, Strauss found a political philosopher who was deeply religious and believed all men to be equal by nature, but unfortunately one who was also wise enough to know the danger of mixing God with government.

Locke held that the essence of Christianity could be reduced to the simple acknowledgment that Christ was the Messiah sent to spread the true knowledge of God. All other doctrines were secondary because they could not be proven. Locke did, however, believe that the miracles recorded in the Bible were proof of its Divine origin, and he accepted as given the facticity of events in Genesis—the birth of Adam, the Fall and the Flood—but beyond these articles of faith, human reason was the sole arbiter of what was true and what wasn’t. Moreover, since everyone was endowed with reason, anyone could read Scripture to discover the essentials of the faith, and this creates the basis for tolerant agreement among Christians. Tolerance, natural equality, and respect for civil rights are the essential elements of Locke’s religious and political writings:

If a Roman Catholic believe that to be really the body of Christ which another man calls bread, he does no injury thereby to his neighbor. If a Jew do not believe the New Testament to be the Word of God, he does not thereby alter anything in men’s civil rights. If a heathen doubt of both Testaments, he is not therefore to be punished as a pernicious citizen. The power of the magistrate and the estates of the people may be equally secure whether any man believe these things or no. I readily grant that these opinions are false and absurd. But the business of laws is not to provide for the truth of opinions, but for the safety and security of the commonwealth and of every particular man’s goods and person. And so it ought to be. For the truth certainly would do well enough if she were once left to shift for herself. She seldom has received and, I fear, never will receive much assistance from the power of great men, to whom she is but rarely known and more rarely welcome. She is not taught by laws, nor has she any need of force to procure her entrance into the minds of men.[86]

As the highlighted passages show, Locke scorned beliefs that ran counter to his Protestant Christianity, but he recognized the folly of forcing his views on others. He applied the same reasoning to state-mandated religion:

• The state was not competent to adjudicate among competing religious truth claims;

• Even if it could make such a decision, the enforcement of one religion over others would not lead to the desired objective of that religion; and

• The effects of coercive religious conformity would be far worse than tolerating religious diversity.[87]

For Leo Strauss, Locke seemed to be two separate people: on the one hand, a fervent Christian who wrote detailed exegeses of the New Testament and argued for its belief; on the other, a social contract theoretician who abhorred authoritarianism. Strauss resolved this dichotomy by creating a false causality between Locke’s religious and political philosophy. In Natural Right and History, Strauss spends an inordinate amount of time on Locke’s chief religious writings—A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), The First Treatise of Government (1689-90), and The Reasonableness of Christianity as Delivered in the Scriptures (1695, published anonymously)—to make the case that Locke’s political beliefs were derived from the Bible. Strauss focused on statements such as these:

The law of nature is a declaration of the will of God. It is “the voice of God” in man. It can therefore be called the “law of God” or “divine law” or even the “eternal law”; it is “the highest law.” It is the law of God not only in fact. It must be known to be the law of God in order to be law. Without such knowledge, man cannot act morally. For “the true ground of morality…can only be the will and law of a God.” The law of nature can be demonstrated because the existence and the attributes of God can be demonstrated. This divine law is promulgated, not only in or by reason, but by revelation as well….

By demonstrating that the New Testament is a document of revelation, one demonstrates that the law promulgated by Jesus is a law in the proper sense of the term. This divine law proves to be in full conformity with reason; it proves to be the absolutely comprehensive and perfect formulation of the law of nature… A comparison of the New Testament teaching with all other moral teaching shows that the entire law of nature is available in the New Testament, and only in the New Testament. The entire law of nature is available only in the New Testament, and is there available in perfect clarity and plainness.[88]

Leaving aside the fanciful assertions about the facticity of God’s will and the idea that God’s existence can be demonstrated; this passage openly misrepresents Locke.[89] Strauss’s truth claims about the New Testament violate Locke’s basic tenets against arbitrariness and religious arrogance. That was the whole point. If Strauss could convince readers that Locke was making a unique claim for the veracity of the New Testament, the property-based political theory of the Second Treatise could be seen as having divine sanction. In other words, it would allow Strauss to turn Lockean liberalism into Hobbesian liberalism, or a least a watered-down facsimile thereof.

Unfortunately for Strauss, Locke had already denied that the Bible could be used to justify authoritarian rule. In fact, his entire First Treatise is a laboriously detailed polemic against Sir Robert Filmer, a royalist political writer who embraced Hobbes‘s absolutist ideas on this point. Filmer believed in the natural inequality of man by nature, the natural power of kings, and the right of parents to hold perpetual despotic authority over their children.

Although Locke wrote against Filmer, not Hobbes, the First Treatise achieved the same end, and delivered what might be called a pre-emptive refutation of Strauss. In Section 14, Locke gives us the essence of Filmer’s theory of deductive despotism:

If God created only Adam, and of a piece of him made the woman, and if by generation from them two, as parts of them all mankind be propagated. If also God gave to Adam not only the dominion over the woman and the children that should issue from them, but also over the whole earth to subdue it, and over all the Creatures on it, so that as long as Adam lived, no man could claim or enjoy anything but by donation, assignation, or permission from him…[90]

Locke’s main points against this theory are recapitulated in Chapter VI (sections 52-76) of the Second Treatise, but only because they have political significance. In this passage Locke states that a parent’s authority over a child ends when the child reaches the age of reason, but in doing so he is also arguing that free men under a Commonwealth are no longer subordinate to the absolute will of king or God:

The law, that was to govern Adam, was the same that was to govern all his posterity, the law of reason. But his offspring having another way of entrance into the world, different from him, by a natural birth, that produced them ignorant and without the use of reason, they were not presently under that law; for no body can be under a law, which is not promulgated to him… and Adam’s children, being not presently as soon as born under this law of reason, were not presently free…but freedom is not, as we are told, a liberty for every man to do what he lists: (For who could be free, when every other man’s humour might domineer over him?) but a liberty to dispose, and order as he lists, his person, actions, possessions, and his whole property, within the allowance of those laws under which he is; and therein not to be subject to the arbitrary will of another, but freely follow his own.[91]

Beyond its applications to political society, the First Treatiseis utterly irrelevant to theSecond. This fact posed a critical problem for Strauss because he desperately needed a religious crutch to prop up his doctrines of economic selfishness and neo-paternalism.

Property and Impropriety

To show that selfishness was God’s will, and that any interference with absolute acquisitiveness was immoral, Strauss spliced together the two important themes from Locke’s writing—strong defense of the New Testament (First Treatise) and a theory of property that extolled individualism and exploitation of nature (Chapter V, Second Treatise):

Locke’s followers in later generations… took for granted what Locke did not take for granted: Locke still thought that he had to prove that the unlimited acquisition of wealth is not unjust or morally wrong. It was indeed easy for Locke to see a problem where later men saw only an occasion for applauding progress or themselves, since in his age most people still adhered to the older view according to which the unlimited acquisition of wealth is unjust or morally wrong.[92]

Locke does indeed extol private property, the accumulation of wealth, and the exploitation of nature.[93] Moreover, he predicates his social contract on the need to regulate and preserve private property,[94] which is explicitly identified as the fruits of one’s labors.[95] But Locke does not make the arguments that Strauss attributes to him. He makes the opposite argument! On the subject of acquisitiveness, he wrote:

He that gathered a hundred bushels of acorns or apples, had thereby a property in them; they were his goods as soon as gathered. He was only to look that he used them before they spoiled, else he took more than his share, and robb’d others. And indeed it was a foolish thing, as well as dishonest, to hoard up more than he could make use of.[96]

This last sentence alone refutes Strauss’s allegation that Locke endorsed unlimited accumulation of wealth, or that such accumulation was moral. In fact, Locke repeatedly stated that such greed was a cause of disputes, which his theory of property was designed to preclude. Amazingly, Strauss acknowledges this point, and even cites the relevant passages, including Locke’s chapter-ending Section 51 where he makes his case most emphatically.[97] Nevertheless, Strauss dismissed Locke’s arguments so that he could invent the idea that criticism of selfishness was merely a tactic for pandering to mass sensibilities, and that Locke didn’t really mean what he said:

In stating his doctrine of property, Locke “so involved his sense, that it is not easy to understand him” or went as much as possible “with the herd.” While therefore concealing the revolutionary character of his doctrine of property from the mass of his readers, he yet indicated it clearly enough. He did this by occasionally mentioning and apparently approving the older view.[98]

The point of this chicanery becomes clear later on in the paragraph:

By building civil society on “the low but solid ground” of selfishness or of certain “private vices,” one will achieve much greater “public benefits” than by futilely appealing to virtue, which is by nature “unendowed.” One must take one’s bearings not by how men should live but by how they do live. Locke almost quotes the words of the apostle, “God who giveth us richly all things to enjoy.”… He says that God is ‘sole lord and proprietor of the whole world,” that men are God’s property, and that man’s propriety in the creatures is nothing but that liberty to use them which God has permitted.[99]

Strauss asserts that Locke embraced selfishness, and then juxtaposes this assertion with non-sequitur citations to show that all property, including man, is God’s property. This union of selfishness and divine bequest is what he needed to justify his case that post-war America needed a Hobbesian government—”that mortal god to which we owe, under the immortal God, our peace and defense.” As we saw above, Locke expressly denied that man was subject to the arbitrary will of king or God.

Second, Strauss actually refutes himself. When he said: “One must take one’s bearings not by how men should live but by how they do live,” he took the words right out of Machiavelli’s mouth. We have come full-circle—Strauss sought to build a new authoritarianism on the bones of Machiavelli, but ends up being the greatest exponent of his ruthless pragmatism.

By rights, Strauss should have been written off as a paranoid philosophaster, but his ideas gave rise to a school of thought—a unique feat at the time for a “conservative.” The popularity of Straussianism is not hard to understand. It dovetailed nicely with the rising authoritarian and intolerant Zionist and evangelical movements. The man most responsible for turning Straussianism into “neo-conservatism” was Irving Kristol.

Kristol Clarity

In 1965, as the executive vice-president of Basic Books, Irving Kristol founded and co-edited The Public Interest, the first organ of Straussian economic thought. For his efforts at evangelizing and expanding the Gospel according to Leo, Kristol became known as the “godfather of neo-conservatism.”

The Public Interest came out during the height of the Civil Rights Movement and the “The Great Society” programs of the Johnson administration. From 1964 to 1965 Johnson signed into law the “War on Poverty” and Medicare; provided aid to education and the arts; and established the Department of Housing and Urban Development. According to the predominantly liberal political ethos of the day, positive federal action like this was needed to redress inequality and prejudice, and bring about a better quality of life for all Americans.

During this time of civil rights and anti-war activism, neo-con thinking was considered outré, so The Public Interest featured academic essays, mostly on economics. Later, Kristol added essays attacking social issues like pornography, homosexuality, drug use and crime. These articles gradually earned a following within the burgeoning evangelical Christian movement. In 1995, to mark the 30th anniversary of The Public Interest, Kristol described how the neo-cons and evangelicals found their common ground:

Active religion-based conservatism did not become a political force in the United States because of either religion or conservatism. Its activism was provoked by militant liberalism and the militant secularism associated with it. This liberalism and this secularism, in the postwar years, came to dominate the Democratic Party, the educational establishment, the media, the law schools, the judiciary, the major schools of divinity, the bishops of the Catholic Church, and the bureaucracies of the “mainline” Protestant denominations.

One day, so to speak, millions of American Christians—most of them, as it happens, registered Democrats—came to the realization that they were institutionally isolated and impotent. They quite naturally wanted their children to be raised as well-behaved Christians but discovered that their authority over their own children had been subverted and usurped by an aggressive, secular liberalism that now dominated our public education system and our popular culture. They looked at our high schools and saw that gay and lesbian organizations were free to distribute their literature to the students but that religious organizations were not. They saw condoms being distributed to adolescent teenagers while the Supreme Court forbade the posting of the Ten Commandments on the classroom wall. And so they rebelled and did the only thing left for them to do–they began to organize politically. In so doing they may very well have initiated a sea change in American politics and American life.

Inevitably, the conservative Christians began to seek links with traditional conservatives, since they shared common enemies—liberal government, a left-liberal educational establishment, a judiciary besotted with liberal dogmas.[100]

As neo-cons firmed up this support base, the journal also found favor among the Democratic Jewish elite, who broke from the civil rights movement after government policy emphasized economic equality instead of political equality:

Soon, The Public Interest no longer stood alone. Commentary, which had for some years flirted with the left, veered sharply in a neo-conservative direction. Even more important was the arrival of Robert Bartley as editor of the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal [in 1972]. He quickly melded the familiar anti-statist views of the Journal with the neo-conservative critique of contemporary liberalism. This trio of publications suddenly became something like a national force, and politicians and editorial writers began to pay attention.[101]

Kristol, like Strauss, fervently believed that reinvigoration of American democracy could not exist without the political use of Christianity. For that reason he titled his 1978 collection of essays Two Cheers for Capitalism because he said capitalism promoted the very sort of individualism that undermined traditional institutions, like the nuclear family and faith in God. Kristol and other Jewish apologists for the Christian right, therefore, maintained that whatever the Framers of the Constitution intended, they did not intend to divest politics of a religious sense, for they said it was the state’s duty to ensure that morality was upheld.

Morality and the State

The man most closely associated with the morality and the state is Thomas Jefferson, the U.S.’s third president, and exponent of John Locke’s liberalism. In a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut in 1802, Jefferson gave his most succinct views on the matter:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building awall of separation between Church & State.[102]

This letter reiterates the First Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1791—”Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”—and this in turn reiterates the principles in Article VI, Paragraph 3 of the Constitution itself:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

Unlike theists, who believe in the revealed truth of the Bible, Jefferson was a deist; that is, he believed God set the universe in motion and left it to unfold without further interference. He considered Christianity to be a perverse superstition, and held the Bible in such contempt that he wrote his own version, The Jefferson Bible, to distill Jesus’s sayings from the embellishments of his biographers. As Jefferson wrote to former president John Adams:

The whole history of these books is so defective and doubtful, that it seems vain to attempt minute inquiry into it; and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right from that cause to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine: In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.[103]

Jefferson was not alone in his distaste for Christianity: Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Paine, to name a few, disparaged it unreservedly. Even George Washington recognized the danger of a state religion and declared that the U.S. was not a Christian country:

As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims]—and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.[104]

So far as the Framers were concerned, religion was purely personal and none of the state’s business. Freedom of religion and freedom from religion were both respected. For the state to take a position in favor of Christianity would have been tantamount to discriminating against non-Christians, thus making the concepts of personal liberty and religious freedom mutually contradictory. Therefore, Jefferson denied any political role for the clergy: “The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man.”[105]

Jefferson’s definitive separation of church and state became accepted as the standard of the American republic, and it is still the standard of its constitutional law. One would have to conclude that any act to violate this separation would be unconstitutional. This brings us back to Kristol’s essay “American Conservatism, 1945-1995”:

There has been the emergence, over the past decades, of religion-based, morally concerned, political conservatism. In the long run, this may be the most important of all. Though the media persist in portraying the religious conservatives as aggressive fanatics, in fact their motivation has been primarily defensive–a reaction against the popular counterculture, against the doctrinaire secularism of the Supreme Court, and against a government that taxes them heavily while removing all traces of morality and religion from public education, for example, even as it subsidizes all sorts of activities and programs that are outrages against traditional morality. The religious faith behind this reaction has been steadily gaining in both intensity and popularity, especially among Protestant evangelicals, and may well now have a dynamism of its own. It is not at all unimaginable that the United States is headed for a bitter and sustained Kulturkampf that could overwhelm conventional notions of what is and what is not political.[106]

When Jefferson wrote about the danger of letting the clergy meddle in politics, it was this kind of religious arrogance and Christian conceit he had in mind.[107] Kristol condemned the government for committing “outrages” against traditional morality, yet Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin and Paine went out of their way to ensure that “traditional morality” did not exist.

The expression “doctrinaire secularism” is similarly bogus. As we saw above, Kristol condemned the Supreme Court for refusing to allow the Ten Commandments to be posted in classrooms, but the Court did nothing less than what the law required. According to the Elementary School Act of 1817: “No religious reading, instruction or exercise, shall be prescribed or practiced inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denomination.”[108]

Kristol’s condemnation of the government for removing “all traces of morality and religion from public education” must be recognized as a deliberate assault on the Constitution. The sedition is confirmed in the second part of the excerpt where Kristol proudly proclaims the intensity and popularity of the rising evangelical movement, as if to endorse the overthrow of the Supreme Court and secular republican government.

Based on what we know about the unholy trinity, certain conclusions are unavoidable. First, “neo-conservative” does not accurately describe Strauss, Kristol or the Jewish elites. These people are not “neo,” because their econo-theology is a distorted pastiche of pre-existing ideas, principally from Hobbes, Filmer and Strauss’s pseudo-Locke. They are not “conservative” because traditional American conservatives are isolationist and fiscally prudent—they do not embrace foreign interventionism, free trade or elephantine defense budgets. Similarly, “democratic” seems inappropriate because Strauss and Kristol both professed to be acting in the best interests of U.S. democracy while actively subverting the nation’s democratic ethos.

If you add up what this unholy trinity stands for—hypernationalism, demagoguery, religious chauvinism, economic elitism and militarism, among other things—you end up with something disturbingly familiar, fascism. Unfortunately, our culture has reduced this word to a meaningless epithet of contempt, such that anyone who tries to discuss the subject rationally runs the risk of being ignored or scurrilously accused of condoning the Third Reich’s atrocities. Yet, fascism is a definable system of social organization. From a study of seven fascist or proto-fascist regimes—Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Papadopoulos’s Greece, Pinochet’s Chile, and Suharto’s Indonesia—Professor Lawrence W. Britt determined 14 general characteristics of fascist or proto-fascist governments. Britt’s findings are worth citing in full:

Powerful and continuing nationalism—Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

Disdain for the recognition of human rights—Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause—The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

Supremacy of the military—Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

Rampant sexism—The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.

Controlled mass media—Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in wartime, is very common.

Obsession with national security—Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

Religion and government are intertwined—Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government’s policies or actions.

Corporate power is protected—The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

Suppressed Labor Power—Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts—Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.

Obsession with Crime and Punishment—Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

Rampant Cronyism and Corruption—Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

Fraudulent Elections—Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.”[109]

The instant Bush occupied the White House in January 2001, the American republic ceased to exist. Quite literally, the White House found itself occupied by a junta that owed its allegiance not to the Constitution, the American people or the law, but to Israel, greed and the Bible. The junta came out of PNAC, a “think tank” founded in spring 1997 designed to promote Israeli expansionism, demonize Muslims and Arabs, and eviscerate legislation protecting civil liberties, environmental laws and any other public goods and services that stood in the way of implementing unenlightened Zionist/Straussian statecraft.

PNAC’s Zionist worldview is obvious from its address: #510–1150 17th St. NW, Washington, D.C., 20036. This is the same location as the Weekly Standard, a propaganda organ churned out by Zionist media baron Rupert Murdoch and run by PNAC chairman and co-founder William Kristol, who is every bit as dedicated to warmongering for Israel as was his father Irving.

Even though the junta is comprised of three specific elements, there is considerable political overlap, so much so that it is often hard to separate them. Regarding Britt’s 14 points, both Straussians and Jewish Zionists see protection of human rights (Point 2) as direct threats to their self-interest—Straussians need to exploit labour, especially abroad, to serve Big Business; Zionists need to sabotage any attempt by the world community to protect the rights of Palestinians because Israel’s very existence, like Zionism itself, is founded on the denial of these rights.

In Point 3, evangelicals and Zionists are united in their prejudice against Muslims, and so form a common front to justify, or at best ignore, violence done to them in the name of Israel. In Point 4, all three elements are in sympathy: Massive military spending serves the defense industry, Israel’s military and the Crusader mentality. Differences and similarities aside, this book will show that these 14 points, without exception, define the U.S. under George W. Bush; hence, it is no longer possible to equate the U.S. with republican government. It is under foreign occupation, and the occupier is Israel.

To demonstrate that serving Israeli aggression, not controlling oil, is the driving motive behind the invasion of Iraq, and the “war on terrorism” in general, we begin with an examination of how the Zionist parasite took hold of its host and how the three elements of U.S. fascism came together toward the end of the 1970s.

3

The Eclipse of Reason

To all intents and purposes, the U.S. political establishment died on August 8, 1974, when Nixon resigned to avoid impeachment for his role in covering up the June 17, 1972, break-in at the Democratic Party’s National Committee offices in the Watergate Hotel. The two-year caretaker presidency of Gerald Ford was the last gasp of a moribund political culture.

In the 1976 presidential election, Ford ran against former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter but faced serious political liabilities, such as: his pardoning of Nixon, the public’s reaction to Watergate and the Vietnam War, and a strong internal challenge from the religious right led by former California governor Ronald Reagan. Nevertheless, Ford nearly pulled off a win.

Carter received only 50 percent of the popular vote compared to Ford’s 48 percent, and Carter’s victory in the Electoral College was a thin 297 to 241, the smallest winning total to date since Woodrow Wilson’s 1916 victory over Charles Evans Hughes (277 to 254). In hindsight, though, Ford might be considered the real winner, since Carter’s term was plagued by domestic and foreign political disasters largely beyond his control, In fact, these disasters overlapped the Carter and Reagan presidencies to such a degree that they should be seen along the same political continuum that led to the end of the republic.

The Last President of the Republic

The previous decade of massive federal overspending—The Great Society, the Cold War and the Vietnam War—had caused runaway inflation. When combined with the effect of the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, the U.S. economy found itself reeling under the then-unthinkable twin dilemmas of rising prices and falling productivity—”stagflation.”

Carter’s prescription for dealing with the malaise gripping the country was bold, aggressive and highly unpopular. In his July 15, 1979, address to the nation—nicknamed “the malaise speech,” even though he never used the term—he said dependency on oil, especially foreign oil, had become the country’s Achilles heel, and the entire nation had to be mobilized to help the U.S. regain control over its energy supply. Presenting himself as a man looking for answers, he discussed at length a meeting at Camp David to which he invited representatives from all corners of society—business and labor, teachers and preachers, governors, mayors, and private citizens.

Three aspects of this speech are key to understanding how fascism would take hold in the U.S. The first is Carter’s assessment of the state of the union:

For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.

As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.

These changes did not happen overnight. They’ve come upon us gradually over the last generation, years that were filled with shocks and tragedy. We were sure that ours was a nation of the ballot, not the bullet, until the murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the Presidency as a place of honor until the shock of Watergate.

We remember when the phrase “sound as a dollar” was an expression of absolute dependability, until 10 years of inflation began to shrink our dollar and our savings. We believed that our Nation’s resources were limitless until 1973, when we had to face a growing dependence on foreign oil. These wounds are still very deep. They have never been healed.[110]

This litany of woe was a direct attack on the national mythology of the U.S. as the epitome of peace, justice, economic prosperity and political integrity. In just 255 words, Carter told his people that the U.S. as they knew it no longer existed. He was right, of course, but being right is not necessarily a virtue in politics. Voters were not prepared to be disabused of their illusions, and they would make that point known in the 1980 election.

The second point is the onus Carter put on the public to help solve the energy crisis:

The solution of our energy crisis can also help us to conquer the crisis of the spirit in our country. It can rekindle our sense of unity, our confidence in the future, and give our nation and all of us individually a new sense of purpose. You know we can do it. We have the natural resources. We have more oil in our shale alone than several Saudi Arabias. We have more coal than any nation on Earth. We have the world’s highest level of technology. We have the most skilled work force, with innovative genius, and I firmly believe that we have the national will to win this war.  I do not promise you that this struggle for freedom will be easy. I do not promise a quick way out of our nation’s problems, when the truth is that the only way out is an all--out effort. What I do promise you is that I will lead our fight, and I will enforce fairness in our struggle, and I will ensure honesty. And above all, I will act. We can manage the short-term shortages more effectively and we will, but there are no short-term solutions to our long-range problems. There is simply no way to avoid sacrifice.

Carter’s linkage of the energy crisis and the crisis of spirit neatly depicted the abyss into which he expected the public to stare. The U.S. national ethos is based in economics—individualism, capitalism and “the pursuit of happiness”—and for a people used to thinking of an ever-rising standard of living as a God-given right, self-sacrifice and conservation, even in the face of the oil crisis, were alien concepts. To admit that such sacrifice was necessary was like admitting the good times were over, that the pursuit of happiness was no longer possible. The third key point is what Carter said he would personally do to lead the nation out of the crisis.

1. Pledge that the U.S. will never use more foreign oil than it did in 1977 and cut dependence on foreign oil by half by the end of the 1980s.

2. Set strict import quotas.

3. Ask for the most massive peacetime commitment of funds and resources in our Nation’s history to develop alternative fuels—coal, oil shale, the Sun, plant products for gasohol, and unconventional gas.

4. Establish an energy security corporation to issue up to $5 billion in small-denomination energy bonds, so that Americans can invest directly in their country’s energy security.

5. Press Congress to pass windfall-profits tax to pay for alternative energy programs.

6. Aim for 20 percent solar energy by the year 2000.

7. Ask Congress to mandate that utility companies cut oil use by 50 percent within the next decade and switch to other fuels, like coal

8. Urge Congress to create an energy mobilization board, like the WWII War Production Board, that would have road power to cut through red tape and delays to completing key energy projects.

9. Propose a nationwide program at all governmental levels to help Americans incorporate conservation into their lives at an affordable cost.

Advocating increased taxation and state intervention in industry was political suicide. Again, notwithstanding the need for some or all of these measures, government activism runs counter to the country’s selfish individualism and ingrained distrust of government. Carter was literally damned if he did something and damned if he didn’t.

For Zionists, Carter’s victory was taken as a good sign because Republicans had never owed anything to the Zionist cause. Most Jews were liberal and voted Democratic overwhelmingly, and therefore presidents Eisenhower and Nixon were able to stand up to the Lobby without ill effect. For example, on October 30, 1956, the day after Israel, France and Great Britain invaded Egypt to capture the Suez Canal, Eisenhower forced Israel to withdraw by threatening to suspend aid.

Zionist optimism at the return of the traditional party of Israel, however, evaporated the moment Carter proved he would not take orders from Tel Aviv. He wanted a comprehensive end to Arab-Israeli violence, and came into office prepared with a two-state proposal. On March 16, 1977, at a town hall meeting in Clinton, Mass., Carter said: “There has to be a homeland provided for the Palestinian refugees, who have suffered for many, many years.”[111] Middle East historian Alfred M. Lilienthal described the fallout:

In and out of Congress, Zionists were up in arms at the mere mention of a Palestinian homeland. The Israeli lobby opened its lines to the White House. [National Security Advisor Zbigniew] Brzezinski was alerted, and told a press briefing at the UN prior to the President’s speech on human rights the next day, that the President had used the word ‘homeland’ generically, and had intended no change in U.S. policy.[112]

Carter tried to backpedal; saying that any state would have to be affiliated with Jordan, but nothing short of total repudiation of a Palestinian state would satisfy the Lobby. Throughout his presidency, Carter labored under the misimpression that his job was to work for peace in the Middle East, but whenever he tried to do something substantive in that regard, such as criticizing settlement construction in the West Bank or speaking about involving the Palestinians in peace negotiations, his government came under withering attack: telegrams to the White House, telephone calls to congressmen, and op/ed pieces in the New York Times and other Zionist organs. Always, there was the all-purpose slur of “anti-Semitism” to intimidate members of Congress, the administration and any other critics of Israeli expansionism.

Zionist influence on the government increased significantly on May 17, 1977, when Menachem Begin, the terrorist who led the Deir Yassin massacre, led Israel’s Likud [Union] Party to its first victory. Likud is an amalgam of the most extreme elements of Jewish dispossessionalism: hawkish military leaders, smaller Orthodox religious parties, and religiously sociopathic “settlers,” principally Jewish Slavs from Russia, Ukraine and Poland. In contrast to the Labor Party, which had ruled Israel from the outset and makes a pretense of being civilized in their treatment of Palestinians, Likud is brutally confrontational. Kiryat Arba, the first Jewish “settlement,” was established in 1968 near Hebron, and three years later spawned the extremist settler organization Gush Emunim, today one of the most powerful voices of Likud support.[113]

Two months after he was elected, Begin came to the U.S. for a state visit, but it was not a meeting of equal heads of state. With all the arrogance and swagger of a disgruntled emperor come to browbeat a disobedient satrap, Begin openly repudiated the U.S.’s stand on settlements, and denied that Israel had any need to abide by UNSC Resolution 242, as Carter and every president since Johnson has maintained. The master had come to set the record straight about Israel and its God-given right to take any land it wants. The U.S. meekly took its punishment.

In early 1979, the Lobby abandoned Carter for Reagan, and the evangelical movement kicked into high gear. Weyrich and executive director Robert Billings prevailed upon Jerry Falwell to head a new group called the “The Moral Majority,” which was instrumental in marshalling Christian Zionists to vote Republican. “Ronald Reagan would not have been president unless Bible-believing Christians in 1979 and 1980 by the millions said, ‘We’ve had enough,’ and threw Jimmy Carter out and put Ronald Reagan in, to put it bluntly,” boasted Falwell.[114]

By 1980, all the elements of the fascist troika were in place. All it needed was a useful idiot to ride it into office.

The Headless Horseman

Ronald Reagan began his race for the presidency armed with a strong sense of Christian rectitude and little else. His election platform consisted of the platitudes: “family, work, neighborhood, peace, and freedom.” He had no firm ideological beliefs and at best had a superficial understanding of domestic and foreign policy.

One of his first acts was to make good on a pledge to cut taxes. Under the “Kemp-Roth” tax cut the bottom tax rate fell from 14 percent to 10 percent and the top rate fell from 70 percent to 50 percent.

The tax cut was the first step in a thoroughly Straussian strategy called “supply-side” economics. According to this theory, based on the ideas of California economist Arthur Laffer and conservative writer George Gilder, tax cuts would stimulate the economy, which was just coming out of a recession. Businesses would reinvest their huge tax savings in production, technology and jobs, and this in turn would generate more income and help reduce the deficit. This theory of economic rejuvenation also became known as “trickle-down economics” because the benefits that accrued to the economic elite at the top of the income pyramid were expected to trickle down to those at the bottom.

One does not need a PhD in economics to recognize that “supply-side economics,” “trickle-down economics” or “Reaganomics,” as it was variously known, was nonsense. For one thing, there was no moral or legal obligation to compel wealthy corporations or individuals to reinvest their tax cut, nor could there be because that would have run counter to the supply-siders’ Hobbesian/anti-statist mentality.

Reagan’s economic playscript was initially written for the congressional supply-side standard bearer Jack Kemp, but he was a long shot to win the 1980 Republican nomination. In view of Reagan’s popularity, Kemp made a deal not to run if Reagan gave supply-siders the lead in making policy. David Stockman, Reagan’s first budget director and devout supply-sider, thought Reagan to be a preposterous choice to lead the Republicans, but suppressed his misgivings. Stockman’s 1986 book The Triumph of Politics—Why the Reagan Revolution Failed is largely his mea culpa for bringing about the economic disaster:

I knew we were on the precipice of triple-digit deficits, a national debt in the trillions, and destructive and profound dislocations throughout the entire warp and woof of the American economy. By then, all the major errors that would eventually shatter the nation’s fiscal stability were apparent…but I kept quiet and tried to work inside. It proved to be of no avail. After November 1981, the administration locked the door on its own disastrous fiscal policy and threw away the key. The President would not let go of his tax cut. [Defense Secretary] Cap Weinberger hung on for dear life to the $1.46 trillion defense budget. Jim Baker carried a bazooka, firing first and asking questions later of anyone who mentioned the words “social security.” [Mike] Deaver, [Ed] Meese and the others ceaselessly endeavored to keep all the bad news out of the Oval Office and off the tube. The nation’s fiscal imbalance was never addressed or corrected; it just festered and grew. By 1982, I knew the Reagan Revolution was impossible—it was a metaphor with no anchor in political and economic reality.[115]

Table V: Defense Spending and Federal Debt
1980–89 (US$billion, FY1998)

Year

President

Defense Spending

Percent increase

Federal Debt

Percent increase

1980

Carter

$134.0

--

$909

--

1981

Carter

$157.5

17.5

$995

9.4

1982

Reagan

$186.3

18.3

$1,137

14.4

1983

Reagan

$209.9

12.7

$1,371

20.6

1984

Reagan

$227.4

8.3

$1,565

14.1

1985

Reagan

$252.7

11.1

$1,818

16.8

1986

Reagan

$273.4

8.2

$2,121

16.0

1987

Reagan

$282.0

3.1

$2,346

10.7

1988

Reagan

$290.4

3.0

$2,601

10.9

1989

Reagan

$295.3

1.7

$2,868

10.3

Source: U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Historical Tables:
Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 1998 U.S. Bureau of the Census,
Statistical Abstract of the United States, pp. 303, 102.

Nowhere did the imbecility of “trickle-down” economics assert itself more fully than in Reagan’s bizarre promise to increase defense spending and balance the budget in three years without making serious social spending cuts. For good reason, then-presidential rival George Bush called it “voodoo economics.” Because “Reaganomics” was based entirely in ideology, it had no connection to the real-world problems facing the U.S. economy, especially the federal debt. When Reagan came to office, it stood at $909 billion; by the time he left, the debt had nearly tripled to $2,601 billion, despite the fact that Reagan wanted to reduce federal spending.

Part of the cause of this fiscal disaster was Reagan’s Straussian upper-income tax cuts. From 1981 to 1986, his administration slashed taxes by more than $750 billion, but all that did was make the rich much richer, the poor much poorer and the nation more indebted. A second cause was unbridled military spending, a trademark trait of fascist governance. The following 1985 account by Richard Stubbing, deputy chief of the Office of Management and Budget’s National Security division (1974-81) shows how elitism and militarism supplanted rational governance:

Excluding inflation, the 1985 defense budget approved by Congress is 51 percent higher than five years ago, reflecting a remarkable $330 billion in cumulative real growth since 1980. During the same period federal support for domestic programs, excluding interest payments and entitlement programs (retirement, health care, unemployment), declined by over 30 percent…. Following the election in November 1980, former Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird offered the following advice to the incoming Reagan team: ‘The worst thing that could happen is for the nation to go on a defense spending binge that will create economic havoc at home and confusion abroad, and that cannot be dealt with wisely by the Pentagon.” The Reagan Administration chose not to heed Laird’s warning.[116]

Of course, Laird was not the first person to warn that out-of-control defense spending causes economic dislocation and international unease. President Dwight D. Eisenhower did so most famously in his 1961 Farewell Address:

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations…. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.[117]

In the end, “Reaganomics” proved Eisenhower right:

• Rapid defense buildup and the tight monetary policy combined to drive up the U.S. dollar by 50 percent in the early 1980s, thus creating a high demand for imports and undermining domestic industries.

• Before the 1981 tax cut, federal revenues stood at a post-war high of 21 percent of GDP; by 1983, they were less than 19 percent.

• Despite the 1981 tax cut, the national personal savings rate fell from nine percent in 1981 to five percent in 1987, and the growing budget deficit ate up more of the U.S. savings pool.

• From 1981 to 1987, real government spending on goods and services rose by 26 percent, despite an economic plan that called for less spending.[118]

Stockman knew what he was talking about when he called Reagan’s economic policy “a metaphor with no anchor in political and economic reality.” Thus, it came to pass that Reagan, the movie actor-turned-political-actor, was cast in a reality movie written, directed and produced by the Heritage Foundation and supply-side economic theologians. The Reagan Revolution, as this production came to be called, was a critical and financial failure, but the U.S. public was more than ready to imbibe the narcotic of greed, God and jingoism.

Begin Shows Reagan Who’s Boss

On foreign policy, Reagan was an empty vessel. Even his chief advisors—Edwin Meese III, Michael Deaver, Lyn Nofziger, Caspar Weinberger and William Clark (“The California Crowd”)—came to Washington with virtually no background or interest in world affairs. As arms control expert Strobe Talbot wrote in his 1984 book Deadly Gambits:

[Reagan] displayed little knowledge or even curiosity about the interactions of states and forces in the world arena. Even more disturbing, he seemed remarkably blasé about U.S. foreign policy. It was as though long-term strategy was something other people were paid to worry about. Kissinger found that, when he advised Reagan [from time to time] on what the government ought to be doing, the goals it should set and the methods it should apply, Reagan seemed to tune out. The best way to get Reagan’s attention was to suggest to him what he personally should say publicly about a foreign problem or policy. Then the President would sit up, and his eyes would come back into focus. What he cared about was speeches. He knew that his smooth delivery and easy-going, winning manner were huge assets. He would work at fine-tuning a speech with an enthusiasm that he rarely devoted to other duties. It was this aspect of Reagan’s approach to the presidency that led him to see the announcement of the proposal as an end in itself. If the speech worked as a speech, then the policy must be a good one. If the speech came off, the policy could be sustained.[119]

If Reagan had chosen the priesthood, it would be easy to imagine him as a pope delivering sermons from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica and issuing encyclicals to the faithful. To a large extent, that’s what he was—a moral figurehead who left the secular affairs of state to others. For The Lobby, Reagan’s detached governing style would give it the freedom it needed to spread their influence, but at this early date the Christians and Straussians were the dominant influences, as shown by Reagan’s highly developed sense of Christian compassion, which made him bridle at Israel’s murderous excesses. Three times Reagan rebuked Israel and three times he was slapped down.

Iraq

The first instance occurred in June 1981 when Israel used U.S. F-16s to bomb Iraq’s uncompleted Osirik nuclear reactor. It was an act of aggression that clearly violated the U.S.-Israel arms procurement agreement, under which Israel may only use weapons for defensive purposes to highlight “potential direct threats.”  Adm. Bobby Ray Inman, deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, wondered how Israel managed to target the Iraq’s reactor with such accuracy, and proceeded to make inquiries about Israel’s requisitioning of U.S. satellite photographs:

“When I asked what materials had been drawn under that process for the last six months, I found not only a lot of information on Baghdad had been drawn, but also on other countries substantially removed from Israel… Pakistan, Libya. And I made the decision as the deputy director of central intelligence, the acting director, to limit the process, to say that in the future they could draw material within 250 miles of the border, but beyond that, they would have to ask.”[120]

Inman, who enjoyed considerable bipartisan respect, goes on to say that then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon was so furious he came to the U.S. to protest to Reagan’s Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, but neither Weinberger nor CIA Director William Casey would cave in.[121] This display of backbone was a rarity, and would become even rarer. Alexander Haig, Reagan’s Secretary of State, on the other hand, swept the matter under the rug. Reagan, to his credit, sent a protest to Begin, but just got the Nazi holocaust thrown in his face:

A million and half children were poisoned by the Ziklon [sic] gas during the Holocaust. Now Israel’s children were about to be poisoned by radioactivity. For two years we have lived in the shadow of the danger awaiting Israel from nuclear reactor in Iraq. This would have been a new Holocaust. It was prevented by heroism of our pilots to whom we owe so much.[122]

To compound the insult, the first person Begin called after the bombing was Falwell to ask him “[to] explain to the Christian public the reasons for the bombing.”[123] Three months afterwards, Begin visited Reagan, who never once brought up the question of illegal Jewish “settlements,” or the difference between offensive and defensive weapons. Instead, the two leaders signed an agreement proclaiming U.S. “strategic co-operation” with Israel, although “Israeli co-optation of the U.S.” would be more accurate.

During the Reagan era, annual economic aid to Israel rose to $1.2 billion, and military aid to $1.8 billion. As part of the agreement, Israel gained access to the most sophisticated U.S. technology and intelligence gathering systems, including techniques to defeat U.S. weapons and reconnaissance systems. As Alfred Lilienthal pointedly commented: “Henceforth, Israel was not to be the 51st state, as critics had complained, but the first state of the Union.”[124]

Palestine

The second instance occurred when Reagan defined the U.S.’s policy for Palestinian–Israeli peace in a September 1, 1982, nationwide address. The speech was moderate and replete with the requisite paeans to Israel and its history, but its significance lies in Reagan’s compassion for the suffering of Palestinians:

First, as outlined in the Camp David accords, there must be a period of time during which the Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza will have full autonomy over their own affairs. Due consideration must be given to the principle of self-government by the inhabitants of the territories and to the legitimate security concerns of the parties involved. The purpose of the five-year period of transition, which would begin after free elections for a self-governing Palestinian authority, is to prove to the Palestinians that they can run their own affairs and that such Palestinian autonomy poses no threat to Israel’s security.

The United States will not support the use of any additional land for the purpose of settlements during the transitional period. Indeed, the immediate adoption of a settlement freeze by Israel, more than any other action, could create the confidence needed for wider participation in these talks. Further settlement activity is in no way necessary for the security of Israel and only diminishes the confidence of the Arabs that a final outcome can be freely and fairly negotiated.[125]

Within four days of the speech, Israel announced the allocation of $18. 5 million to build the first three of 10 new “settlements.” Approval was given on the same day that Begin wrote a letter of protest to Reagan for his comments about Palestinian statehood. On November 3, five more settlements were approved. Harsh U.S. condemnation led to Israel announcing 15 more settlements. The World Zionist Organization even called for 1.4 million Jews to be living in the West Bank by 2010.[126]

Lebanon

The third instance of Reagan learning foreign policy the hard way concerns a series of events related to Israel’s June 6, 1982, invasion of Lebanon. In the beginning, Begin claimed that Israel invaded solely to stop attacks by the Palestinian Liberation Organization, but he quickly betrayed the true purpose when Israel’s army laid siege to Beirut to push the PLO out of the entire country. On June 14, Israel began a punishing two-month bombardment of Beirut’s civilian neighborhoods. More than 4,000 people were killed and untold numbers injured and buried alive under rubble. In one 14-hour assault, 180,000 shells were fired and American-made bombers flew 200 sorties. The following first-hand account by Jewish author Jacobo Timmerman depicts the inhumanity Israel inflicted on Lebanon.

“Today in Beirut, Arab children have their legs and arms amputated by candlelight in the basements of hospitals destroyed by bombs, without anesthetics, without sterilization. It is eleven days since proud veteran Israeli troops cut the electricity and water, and food and fuel supplies. We’re in August, a hot August. Rats already outnumber children in the city of Beirut, upon which the best pilots in the world, the aviators of the Israeli Air Force, are exercising their marvelous capacity for precision. From their planes they watch how the buildings of Beirut crumble. People in Beirut also observe those who leap from their windows, choosing a different death from those who were caught in buildings that were reduced to dust…. In the second month of the war more children were killed in Beirut than during 30 years of terrorism in Israel.”[127]

For Reagan, the pictures of babies with burnt-off limbs, children dying of starvation and thirst, and weeping mothers were too much to ignore.[128] He threatened to review U.S.–Israel relations because of the carpet-bombing of Beirut, but Begin again hid behind the Nazi holocaust to put the U.S. president in his place:

Now may I tell you, dear Mr. President, how I feel these days when I turn to the creator of my soul in deep gratitude. I feel as a Prime Minister empowered to instruct a valiant army facing Berlin where amongst innocent civilians, Hitler and his henchmen hide in a bunker deep beneath the surface. My generation, dear Ron, swore on the altar of God that whoever proclaims his intent to destroy the Jewish state or the Jewish people, or both, seals his fate, so that which happened once on instruction from Berlin—with or without inverted commas—will never happen again.[129]

On September 16–18, 1982, one of the worst war crimes since World War II occurred when Lebanese Phalangists, the military arm of the Maronite Church, entered the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in South Lebanon, and with Israel’s overt complicity massacred at least 2,000 Palestinians, including women and children.[130] Condemnation was overwhelming, even from Reagan. Despite Begin’s earlier humiliating rebuke, he committed an initial 1,200 marines to a new non-combatant multinational force to bring peace to Lebanon. Unfortunately, Reagan’s decision was emotional, not rational, and would bring disaster upon the U.S.

He labored under the delusion that the violence would end if Israel left, and so he assumed that the U.S. could help by helping the Lebanese government regain sovereignty over Beirut and by facilitating the safe withdrawal of Israel troops. Ultimately, 1,800 marines would be dispatched, but apart from doing valuable humanitarian work, such as providing food and rescuing trapped Lebanese during the harsh winter of 1982-83, they had no defensible mission, and inevitably became caught between the Lebanese Army and the southern militias. In September 1983 Reagan reluctantly changed the rules of engagement from “defensive fire only” to combat in aid of the Lebanese Army.

Problem is, Israel didn’t want to leave, and it didn’t want the U.S. getting in the way of its destruction of the Palestinian resistance. Moreover, it didn’t want the U.S. to be seen improving relations with Arabs. Therefore, Israel did nothing to prevent the U.S. from suffering the single-highest military death toll since 246 soldiers were killed at the start of the Tet offensive in Vietnam. Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad agent, describes the specifics of what happened:

At 6:20 a.m. on October 23, 1983, a large Mercedes truck approached the Beirut airport, passing well within sight of Israeli sentries in their nearby base, going through a Lebanese army checkpoint, and turning left into the parking lot. A U.S. marine guard reported with alarm that the truck was gathering speed, but before he could do anything, the truck road toward the entrance of the four-storey, reinforced concrete Aviation Safety Building, used as headquarters for the Eighth Marine Battalion, crashing through a wrought iron gate, hitting the sand-bagged guard post, smashing through another barrier, and ramming over a wall of sandbags into the lobby, exploding with such a terrific force that the building was instantly reduced to rubble. A few minutes later, another truck smashed into the French paratroopers headquarters at Bir Hason, a seafront residential neighborhood, just two miles from the U.S. compound, hitting it with such an impact that it moved the entire building 30 feet and killed 58 soldiers.[131]

Ostrovsky wrote that the Beirut office of Mossad was tipped off to an attack by a reliable source who said that Shi’ites were refitting a Mercedes truck to carry bombs, much more than usual. From this latter fact, Mossad deduced that they were going after a major target, of which there were only a few, including the U.S. marine compound. The Beirut office passed the information on to headquarters in Tel Aviv to find out if the U.S. should be told to be on particular alert for the truck. Ostrovsky describes the official response:

[Nahum] Admony, then head of Mossad, decided they would simply give the Americans the usual general warning, vague notice that they had reason to believe someone might be planning an operation against them…. Admony in refusing to give the Americans specific information on the truck, said: “No, we’re not there to protect Americans. They’re a big country. Send only the regular information.” At the same time, however, all Israeli installations were given the specific details and warned to watch for a truck matching the description of the Mercedes…. The problem was if we had leaked information and it was traced back, our informant would have been killed. The next time we wouldn’t know if we were on the hit list. The general attitude about the Americans was: “Hey, they wanted to stick their nose into this Lebanon thing; let them pay the price.”[132]

Reagan, like Carter, fundamentally misunderstood the U.S.’s role in the Middle East. It was not to foster peace, but to help Israel to wage unfettered aggression. Control over Southern Lebanon, for example, had been an object of Zionist colonial ambitions since 1948 when David ben Gurion spoke of expanding Israel’s frontier. As historian Tom Segev recounted:

“The Muslims’ rule of Lebanon is artificial and easily undermined. A Christian state ought to be set up whose southern borders would be Litani River. Then we’ll form an alliance with it.” In the coming years [ben Gurion] repeated this idea, and according to Moshe Sharett, Moshe Dayan (who was Israel’s chief of staff in the early 1950s) responded favorably to this idea and who according to Sharett said: “In his [Dayan] view, all we need to do is to find a Christian Lebanese officer, perhaps no higher than a captain, and win him over or buy him with money, so that he would declare himself the savior of Maronite population. Then the Israel army would enter Lebanon, occupy the territory in question and establish a Christian government which would form an alliance with Israel.” Sharett himself considered this an “awful” idea.[133]

Israel first tried to put this “awful idea” into practice on March 14, 1978, when Begin sent more than 25,000 soldiers into Lebanon in the aptly named “Operation Litani.” He claimed that Israel just wanted to push PLO forces away from Israel’s border, and to bolster Israel’s proxy militia the South Lebanon Army, but in the week-long offensive Israel captured a belt of land approximately 10 kilometers deep, and later occupied all land up to the Litani River, except the city of Tyre. The UN Security Council passed resolution 425 and 426 to compel Israel to withdraw from Lebanon. It did so but not before leaving matters in the hands of its surrogates the SLA under the command of Saad Haddad. On March 23, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) arrived to enforce the resolutions and help restore Lebanese sovereignty.

The fact that the PLO was in Lebanon at all was entirely due to the 1967 war. Palestinian refugees flooded into Lebanon, nearly tripling the refugee population from 110,000—those who fled the 1947–48 dispossession—to 300,000, among whom was the PLO. This sudden increase exacerbated tensions with Lebanon’s Muslim communities and its Maronite Christian leadership, and in 1975 would be a major cause of starting a 15-year civil war, which Israel started.

Furthermore, Reagan, like Carter, had to learn that the U.S. could not have a Middle East policy that did not serve Israel’s self-interest. The U.S. national interest no longer mattered. More than any other element of the fascist troika, Zionists would be responsible for the moral, economic and political despoliation of the U.S., which would find ultimate expression in the attack of September 11, 2001; the destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq; the radicalization of Osama bin Laden; and the demonization of Arabs and Muslims.

To understand how this came about, these events must be understood against four foreign events that occurred in 1979, the same year that Carter delivered his “malaise” speech:

February 1—Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returns from Paris exile to establish the Islamic Republic of Iran;

July 16—Saddam Hussein becomes president of Iraq;

November 4—500 Iranians storm the U.S. embassy in Tehran and take 90 workers hostage, and;

December 24—The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan to support the puppet government of Nur Mohammed Taraki.

Iran and Afghanistan

Until the late 1970s, Iran appeared to be a stable outpost of U.S. power and influence in the Persian Gulf. It had been the lynchpin of U.S. Middle East policy since 1953 when the Central Intelligence Agency and Britain’s MI6 destabilized the democratically elected government of Muhammad Mossadeq to reinstall the pro-Western, anti-Communist autocrat Shah Reza Muhammad Pahlevi.

Pahlevi gave the U.S. access to military bases and intelligence facilities, and in return the U.S. provided military assistance. The U.S. and Israel even helped create Pahlevi’s secret police, SAVAK, and provided training in terrorist and torture techniques.

The image of Iran as an indestructible ally and base of operations became an idée fixe, which meant that basic questions about Pahlevi’s rule were never asked, even though the country was collapsing from within. The rich lived in opulence; the poor endured famine; and intellectuals were tortured in SAVAK dungeons. Discontent with Pahlevi accelerated in the early 1970s as oil revenues began to rise and only the wealthy saw any benefits. As Time reported:

The depth of its commitment to the Shah blinded Washington to the growing discontent. U.S. policymakers wanted to believe that their investment was buying stability and friendship; they trusted what they heard from the monarch, who dismissed all opposition as “the blah-blahs of armchair critics.” Even after the revolution began, U.S. officials were convinced that “there is no alternative to the shah.” Carter took time out from the Camp David summit in September 1978 to phone the Iranian monarch and assure him of Washington’s continued support.[134]

On January 16, 1978, Pahlevi fled the country as his corrupt rule finally collapsed. With no domestic political opposition to speak of, the only alternative leadership consisted of the ultra-conservative Shi’ite Muslim clerics led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who was in exile in Paris. If nothing else, the clerics’ unyielding anti-Westernism was highly popular. On February 1, 1979, Khomeini proclaimed the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Despite repeated demands to return Pahlevi to Iran, the Carter administration allowed him into the U.S. to be treated for a liver condition, and froze Iranian assets. In retaliation for not returning the shah, 500 Iranians on November 4, 1979, stormed the U.S. embassy compound in Tehran taking 90 employees hostage, 52 of whom would be held for the full 444 days.[135]

More important than the physical loss of a military foothold on the Persian Gulf, the fall of Iran was the effect it had on the Carter administration’s perceptions of the region, especially after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Brzezinski was telling Carter that the Soviet Union might use it to expand into South Asia and even influence Pakistan, the remaining ally of U.S. containment policy in the region. This scenario was nonsense.

Every administration since Eisenhower had accepted Afghanistan as a Soviet buffer state and paid it little attention. The State Department’s March 9, 1976, Annual Policy Assessment described it as “a militarily and politically neutral nation, effectively dependent on the Soviet Union.” This analysis was still valid, since the Soviet attitude toward Afghanistan had not changed. Brzezinski’s motive was to exploit unrest in Afghanistan to ensnare the Soviet Union in its own “Vietnam.” In language that now seems disturbingly familiar, Brzezinski convinced the Special Coordination Committee of the National Security Council to be “more sympathetic to those Afghans who were determined to preserve their country’s independence.”[136] The day after the first Soviet troops crossed the border; he wrote a memo to Carter that outlined the new “reality”:

As mentioned to you a week or so ago, we are now facing a regional crisis. Both Iran and Afghanistan are in turmoil, and Pakistan is both unstable internally and extremely apprehensive externally. If the Soviets succeed in Afghanistan, and [blacked out] the age-long dream of Moscow to have direct access to the Indian Ocean will have been fulfilled… [The] Iranian crisis has led to the collapse of the balance of power in Southwest Asia, and it could produce Soviet presence right down on the edge of the Arabian and Oman gulfs. Accordingly, the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan poses for us an extremely grave challenge, both internationally and domestically.[137]

Carter, paralyzed by the hostage crisis, accepted Brzezinski’s opportunistic revisionism:

The Soviet effort to dominate Afghanistan has brought Soviet military forces to within 300 miles of the Indian Ocean and close to the Straits of Hormuz, a waterway through which most of the world’s oil must flow. The Soviet Union is now attempting to consolidate a strategic position; therefore, that poses a grave threat to the free movement of Middle East oil…. Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.[138]

This last sentence would become known as “The Carter Doctrine,” but it was an empty boast. The U.S. was in no position to engage the Soviet Union, so Carter sought indirect methods to hinder “Soviet expansionism.” One such method was to increase covert aid to the Muslim resistance fighters, the mujahedin. Although such aid officially began in 1980, Brzezinski admitted in a 1998 interview that the CIA had been involved since the summer of 1979:

According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the mujahedin began during 1980; that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, December 24, 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, on July 3, 1979, President Carter signed the first directive for covert aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul.[139]

Carter’s fixation on Afghanistan also led to a disastrous reversal of policy toward Pakistan. In 1977, the U.S. reduced foreign aid because of strongman Gen. Zia ul-Haq’s atomic bomb program and repressive rule.[140] Carter was the first and last U.S. president to predicate foreign aid upon an ethical principle—respect for human rights—and Zia clearly didn’t measure up. However, after the shah fell, ethics suddenly became a luxury even Carter felt he couldn’t afford. Almost overnight, Pakistan was granted Most Favored Nation trading status, and Carter offered Zia hundreds of millions of dollars in economic and military aid. All Zia had to do was help train the mujahedin.

The Soviet Union’s Dilemma

The invasion of Afghanistan happened largely for the same reason that World War I did—a political assassination set off a chain reaction of military and political events that was beyond anyone’s ability to stop. The analog to the June, 28, 1914, assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the April 11, 1978, murder of Mir Akbar Khyber, one of the founders of The Peoples’ Democratic Party of Afghanistan and vocal critic of the government of President Muhammad Daoud Khan. Eleven days later, the PDPA stormed the presidential palace, killing Daoud and most of his family. On April 25, Nur Mohammed Taraki, leader of the PDPA’s Khalq (People’s) faction, was named chairman of the Revolutionary Council and President of the renamed Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.

The Soviet Union moved quickly to take advantage of the coup, which became known as the Saur [April] Revolution. The plan was to turn Afghanistan into a communist-run buffer state between pro-American Pakistan and Islamic Iran, thereby enhancing Soviet security. In December, Moscow signed a new bilateral treaty of friendship and cooperation, and drastically increased its military assistance program.

Under Daoud, Afghan–Soviet relations had been merely correct because he sought to carve out an independent foreign policy. Even though leftists in 1973 helped him overthrow the monarchy of his cousin Zahir Shah who was in Italy on a European visit—Daoud was not interested in sharing power. By the end of 1975, the two communists who had been appointed to cabinet posts had been purged, and the following year Daoud founded the National Revolutionary Party to control all political affairs. The next year, the Republic of Afghanistan’s new constitution established one-party presidential rule. The assassination of Khyber was part of Daoud’s attempt to destroy the PDPA.

After the coup, Taraki became president and fellow Khalq member Hafizullah Amin became both prime minister and defense minister. Babrak Karmal, leader of the hard-line Parcham (Banner) faction was appointed deputy prime minister. Staunch Soviet support for Taraki is reflected in this May 31, 1978, political letter from Ambassador A. Puzanov in Kabul to the Soviet Foreign Ministry:

Daoud expressed the interests and class position of bourgeois landowners and rightist nationalist forces, and therefore was not capable of carrying out a reformation “in the interests of the broad laboring masses,” primarily agricultural reform.

In conditions of a worsening economic situation in the country and Daoud’s departure from the programmatic declaration of 1973, which led to “a constant growth in the dissatisfaction of broad strata of the population,” Daoud huddled ever more closely with the “domestic reaction,” which was supported by the ‘reactionary Islamic regimes” and by “American imperialism,” and followed a course toward the “strengthening of a regime of personal power.” …

The Taraki government’s program (declaration of 9 May 1978) is worked out on the basis of the PDPA program of 1966. The main task is providing for the interests of the working population on the basis of fundamental perestroika of the social-economic structures of society, and “the liquidation of the influence of neocolonialism and imperialism.”…

The situation in the country “overall is stabilizing more and more,” the government is controlling all its regions and is taking measures ‘to cut off… the demonstrations of the domestic reaction.’ The most important factor for the further strengthening of the new power will be the achievement of unity in the leadership of the PDPA and the government. But “the tension so far has not totally been cleared away.” The embassy jointly with a group of Party advisors is undertaking measures to overcome the disagreements in the Afghan leadership.[141]

Of course, Puzanov’s Marxist-Leninist sloganeering ignored the will of the Afghan people, especially the conservative Muslims, who would never accept rule by atheistic communists. Puzanov did acknowledge factional infighting within the PDPA, but could not appreciate how this fact would doom Soviet policy. The two Marxist factions were supposed to put their differences aside to form a government, but within months Taraki had exiled Parcham government members to ambassadorial posts (Karmal went to Czechoslovakia), and had others killed or imprisoned. Political infighting ensured that the PDPA would never form a stable government.

A second threat to Afghanistan’s political stability was the mujahedin. Taraki’s reforms, such as women’s emancipation and land reform, trampled on centuries of Afghan rural tradition, and in June the mujahedin declared a jihad against the Taraki government. Amin brutally suppressed popular riots and mutinies within the army, thus creating a state of war between the government and the people. Given this virtual absence of popular support, the Taraki regime increasingly looked to Moscow for protection and advice. In March 1979, the townspeople of Herat massacred hundreds of government officials and Soviet advisors who were introducing a women’s literacy program. The townspeople were joined by most of the Afghan army’s 17th Infantry Division.

Taraki’s forces won the battle but at the cost of more than 5,000 dead, including 100 Soviets. That month, he placed a desperate call to Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin.

Taraki: The situation is bad and getting worse.

Kosygin: Do you have support among the workers, city dwellers, the petty bourgeoisie, and the white-collar workers in Herat? Is there still anyone on your side?

Taraki: There is no active support on the part of the population. It is almost wholly under the influence of Shi’ite slogans—follow not the heathens, but follow us. The propaganda is underpinned by this.

Kosygin: Are there many workers there?

Taraki: Very few -- between 1,000 and 2,000 people in all.

Kosygin: What are the prospects?

Taraki: We are convinced that the enemy will form new units and will develop an offensive.

Kosygin: Do you not have the forces to rout them?

Taraki: I wish it were the case. …

Kosygin: Hundreds of Afghan officers were trained in the Soviet Union. Where are they all now?

Taraki: Most of them are Muslim reactionaries. We are unable to rely on them, we have no confidence in them….[142]

On March 20, 1979, Taraki met with Kosygin and other Politburo members, at which time Kosygin articulated the Soviet Union’s position toward Afghanistan:

I would like to emphasize that the friendship between Soviet Union and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan is not conditional, dictated by some temporary viewpoints, but calculated for ages. We have given and will continue to give you assistance in the fight against all enemies which act against you at the present time and against those enemies with which you may clash in the future.[143]

Taraki’s biggest enemy would turn out to be Amin, who also led the 1978 assault against Daoud. Amin, a militant Islamist, is said to have first gained notoriety in Kabul for spraying acid at the faces of young girls who went about unveiled. As defense minister, his brutal repression of dissent within the military and among the population alarmed the Soviets, who asked that he and Taraki cut back reforms to broaden their political base of support.

But Amin ignored Moscow and maintained the repression, even though the PDPA’s survival increasingly became dependent upon Soviet military equipment and advisers. In frustration, Moscow sought out former members of the monarchy and other non-communists to moderate the government. It also kept the U.S. embassy informed of its actions, to avoid any misunderstandings.[144]

The Soviet Union was in an untenable position. It was blindly committed to a government that seemed only capable of terrorizing the people and destroying itself from within. On the other hand, retreat was impossible because of the potential loss of face and the risk of having Afghanistan’s Islamist insurgency expand into the Central Asian Soviet republics. For better or worse, Moscow was stuck with Taraki.

Until now, Moscow had treated Taraki and Amin as a duumvirate; now, Amin had to go. In September, Taraki stopped off in Moscow to discuss Amin’s future en route from a Nonaligned Movement conference in Cuba. Amin learned of the stopover and had Taraki arrested upon his arrival on September 16. He was secretly executed on October 9.

A fact-finding mission on the state of Afghanistan by Gen. Ivan Pavlovsky determined the army’s morale and fighting ability to be low, and that 23 of Afghanistan’s 28 provinces had fallen to anti-government rebels. (By the end of the year, the 90,000-man Afghan army would be reduced to 40,000 and the officer corps halved by purges, executions and defections.) Also that month, Defense Minister Gen. Dimitri Ustinov began preliminary preparations for an invasion.[145] As Gen. Valentin Varennikov, deputy head of the Soviet General Staff from 1979 to 1984 and an architect of the invasion, told CNN in 1997:

[The invasion] was supported first of all by Brezhnev ... [partly] because of Taraki’s murder. ... According to [Nikolai] Ogarkov, who was head of the General Staff, more than once he saw Brezhnev speaking in a very agitated way about Amin having acted very badly, and saying that the cruel murder of the general secretary [Taraki] and his comrade couldn’t be allowed. It was a very savage act, in our opinion; and apart from that, Amin not only killed Taraki, but what was worse, he didn’t meet Brezhnev’s proposals halfway….[146]

In late November, Amin’s demand that Puzanov be replaced as Soviet ambassador convinced the Politburo that Amin had to be eliminated, and on December 12 decided to invade. At 3 a.m. on December 25, the main assault began. Two days later, the palace was taken after heavy fighting, and Amin and his closest aides were executed. Parcham leader Karmal, who had initiated contact with Politburo member Yuri Andropov, was brought back from exile and installed as president. Varennikov summarized the tragic futility of Soviet policy:

We didn’t set ourselves the task of conquering anyone: we wanted to stabilize the situation through our presence and help the warring parties to reconcile and stop the fighting. We wanted to station the garrisons in the main populated areas without engaging in combat activities. But my opinion is that, not without the participation of the CIA, certain forces provoked us—I mean the Afghan rebel forces because they would attack us, they would kill our soldiers, they killed our military advisers…. [We] had to fight back against those who were killing us. And it became like a snowball: provocation, retaliation, and on and on and on. And that wave swept across the whole country.…[147]

Exploiting the Jihad

Under Reagan, Carter’s overreaction became a crusade. Zia received a six-year economic and military aid package that elevated Pakistan to the third-largest recipient of U.S. aid after Israel and Egypt. The fact that Zia was still pursing a nuclear weapons program and had no intention of permitting democratic rule were now irrelevant. To Reagan, Zia was a “freedom fighter” against the atheistic, communist invader. As Reagan said in a famous quote: “No one who disbelieves in God and in an afterlife can possibly be trusted.”

In his February 16, 1985, State of the Union Address, Reagan articulated what would later become known as “The Reagan Doctrine”—rollback of the Soviet Union in the Third World: “We must not break faith with those who are risking their lives--on every continent, from Afghanistan to Nicaragua—to defy Soviet-supported aggression and secure rights which have been ours from birth… Support for freedom fighters is self-defense and totally consistent with the OAS and UN Charters.”[148] This last statement is, of course, fraudulent, and is the same faux reasoning President Bill Clinton and George W. Bush would later use to justify the “war on terrorism,” a term that Reagan coined.

In March that same year, Reagan signed National Security Directive 166, which authorized the largest covert military operation in U.S. history. Until then, the U.S. had been content to fund opponents of the Communist government in Kabul; now the objective was to defeat the Soviet Union. In all, the CIA would provide $3.5 billion to the mujahedin, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars drawn on a secret joint Swiss bank account with Saudi Arabia. In addition, King Fahd ordered billions of dollars worth of unnecessary military hardware to keep U.S. arms producers happy, and deposited more than $100 billion in U.S. banks and government securities instead of spending it on his own people. By 1987, annual supplies of U.S. arms to the mujahedin, including Stinger missiles from 1986 onward, totaled 67,000 tons.

So obsessed was Reagan with defeating the Soviet Union that federal anti-drug policy was utterly hobbled. In 1995, former CIA director of Afghan operations Charles Cogan admitted that the CIA sacrificed the drug war to fight the Cold War. “Our main mission was to do as much damage as possible to the Soviets. We didn’t really have the resources or the time to devote to an investigation of the drug trade...”[149]

When the CIA and Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence agency began to fund the mujahedin in July 1979, the Afghanistan/Pakistan border region grew opium only for regional markets and produced no heroin. Within two years, it became the world’s top source of heroin, supplying 60 percent of U.S. demand.

In 1979 Pakistan had virtually no heroin addicts; by 1981 it had 5,000; by 1985, 1.2 million. The CIA needed the drug revenue to fund its Afghan operation, and when the mujahedin seized territory, peasants were ordered to plant opium as a form of revolutionary tax. In Pakistan, Afghan leaders and ISI-protected local syndicates operated hundreds of heroin laboratories. All this time, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency in Islamabad did not initiate a single major seizure or arrest.[150]

In this mutually exploitive scenario, Pakistan was clearly the decisive partner. The CIA may have provided weapons and funding, but the ISI controlled disbursement and kept absolute control over the training camps. Despite repeated requests, the ISI didn’t allow representatives from the CIA or Pentagon to have any first-hand contact with the mujahedin, lest they find out that these “freedom fighters” were really anti-Western Islamic warlords who hated the U.S. as much they did the Soviet Union.[151] When the pressure finally became too much to bear in the late 1980s, the ISI set-up stage-managed tours so that Americans would only see what the ISI wanted them to see.

The training camps and the mujahedin, however, did not materialize because of the Soviet invasion. They were started in 1973 to address the consequences of an 80-year-old problem—the Durand Line. On November 12, 1893, Sir Henry Mortimer Durand, Britain’s Foreign Secretary to India, coerced the Emir of Afghanistan into defining the country’s eastern border so that more than half of Afghanistan’s Pashtuns would be included in British India. Pashtuns make up half of Afghanistan’s population, and virtually all leaders have been Pashtun.

When Pakistan [Punjab Afghanistan Kashmir-istan] was carved out of the Muslim/Hindu partition of British India in 1947, the Durand Line defined Pakistan’s Western border. The Afghan government declared the boundary null and void, but the world refused to acknowledge the declaration. A simmering sore point between the two countries would be the idea of “Pashtunistan”—a demand that Pakistan grant their Pashtuns autonomy, independence, or the right to join Afghanistan.

After Daoud made the Pashtunistan cause a central theme of his government in 1973, Zia began developing rebel Afghan forces. One of these rebels was Golbuddin Hekmatyar, a Pashtun from northern Afghanistan who wanted to unite Afghans of all ethnic groups under Islamic rule. He was a terrorist, a major heroin manufacturer, and would turn out to a major liability to mujahedin unity, but to Zia he was the perfect protégé. As Robert Kaplan wrote in Soldiers of God: “In addition to being a militant fundamentalist like Zia himself, Hekmatyar was a talented politician backed up by almost no grassroots support and no military base inside [Afghanistan]. He was therefore wholly dependent on Zia’s protection and financial largesse (courtesy of American taxpayers)….”[152] Because Hekmatyar was Zia’s man he of course became the CIA’s favorite mujahid.

Hekmatyar came to Peshawar in 1973 to organize mujahedin to fight the Daoud government because it included “infidel” Communists. He became Zia’s protégé after 1977 because Zia thought his terrorism could keep Daoud off balance. The example of Hekmatyar is clear evidence that true nature of the mujahedin could not have been further from Reagan‘s “freedom fighter” delusion. They were of small militias led by petty religious leaders and warlords who spent as much time fighting among themselves as they did with the Russians. Besides Hekmatyar, the other extremist mujahedin leader was Burhanuddin Rabbani, an ethnic Tadjik. In 1973, Rabbani, recruited Muslim youths to found the Jamiat-i-Islami, which carried out protests and Islamic dissident activities against Daoud. As a result, Rabbani fled Afghanistan.[153]

Throughout the jihad, divisions between extremists and moderates, as well as a general contempt for Hekmatyar and Pakistan’s meddling, rendered unity impossible. As Kaplan wrote:

Hekmatyar wanted personal power first, a mujahedin victory second… A spellbinding demagogue before a crowd, in private he was eerily soft spoken; his mouth flowed with honey that denied all bad intentions. Hekmatyar was forever calling press conferences, accusing the other parties of selling out to the Soviets while claiming credit for military operations that the other parties had carried out. It was a Peshawar truism that the split in the “hopelessly divided mujahedin”—as the media phrased it—was basically six against one. At times it seemed that the only issue all the factions of Westerners at the American Club could agree on was a hatred of Hekmatyar for “giving the mujahedin a bad name” in the outside world.[154]

Unfortunately, the other six leaders were over a barrel because they depended on Zia for training, funds and weapons. Moreover, Zia at any time could have cut a deal with the Communist government in Kabul in exchange for taking back the 3.5 million refuges on Pakistani soil. Putting up with Hekmatyar was the price the other six had to pay.

Osama bin Laden and the Mujahedin

Within two weeks of the invasion, a Saudi building contractor named Osama bin Laden left his home in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on a secret orientation trip to Pakistan. Members ofJamiat-i-Islami [Society of Islam] met him at the port of Karachi and took him to Peshawar to meet Afghan refugees and mujahedin leaders, and to survey the organization. Peshawar was “jihad central.” The capital of Pakistan’s heavily Pashtun Northwest Frontier Province was a veritable mujahedin university town for Muslim volunteers. They came; they trained; they fought. The star attraction was Sheik Azzam, who was persuaded to relinquish his post as lecturer at Islamabad Islamic University to come to Peshawar. The decision was extraordinary because he had always been dissuaded from fighting to concentrate on his teaching.

Azzam helped set up a vast network to help the refugees and inspired Arab youth with his calls to defeat the enemies of Islam:

Jihad must not be abandoned until Allah (SWT) alone is worshipped [by mankind]. Jihad continues until Allah’s Word is raised high. Jihad until all the oppressed peoples are freed. Jihad to protect our dignity and restore our occupied lands. Jihad is the way of everlasting glory. Jihad and the rifle alone: no negotiations, no conferences and no dialogues.[155]

Jihadis a complicated concept on which even most Muslims cannot agree. However, one thingiscertain—it does not mean “holy war,” which in Arabic does not exist. This common misinterpretation is likely born of opportunistic propaganda or a simplistic allusion to the Crusades, which were holy wars—wars of religious aggression. Muslims do not force their faith on others because theQur’an (2:236) says: “There is no compulsion in religion.” We know Muslims show tolerance toward those of other faiths because of testimony from people like Christian missionary and historian Sir Thomas W. Arnold:

[Of] any organized attempt to force the acceptance of Islam on the non-Muslim population, or of any systematic persecution intended to stamp out the Christian religion, we hear nothing. Had the caliphs chosen to adopt either course of action, they might have swept away Christianity as easily as Ferdinand and Isabella drove Islam out of Spain, or Louis XIV made Protestantism penal in France, or the Jews were kept out of England for 350 years. The Eastern Churches in Asia were entirely cut off from communion with the rest of Christiandom throughout which no one would have been found to lift a finger on their behalf, as heretical communions. So that the very survival of these Churches to the present day is a strong proof of the generally tolerant attitude of Mohammedan [sic] governments towards them.[156]

Broadly speaking, jihad means “struggling” or “striving” to purify the body of negative influences that impede one from following the way of God. For that reason, jihad is often followed by fi sabil Allah [in the way of God].[157]The same idea of purification is true in the larger sense of purging negative foreign influences (armies) from the body politic (umma) of the Islamic world.[158]

According to Islamic scholar Douglas E. Streusand, traditional jurists interpret a military jihad as an emergency call to the whole community, but the decision to heed the call is up to each Muslim. The key points to bear in mind are that jihad is defensive, voluntary, and waged in the name of God.

In a more extreme form, ultra-pious Muslims argue that jihad may be waged against any Muslim leader who does not rigorously apply the sharia in its totality. Because jihad against a Muslim is contrary to the Qur’an, such a ruler would first be made “non-Muslim”; that is, declared to be an unbeliever. This is the view of ibn Taymiya, but it is in the minority because the vast majority of Sunni Muslims prefer to compromise sharia doctrine to create a harmonious society.

Still another version comes from the Sufi concept of “greater jihad”—an internal struggle against temptation and polytheism. As Streusand wrote:

Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali (1059–1111), probably the most important figure in Islam’s development after the prophet, describes the body as a city, governed by the soul, and besieged by the lower self. Withdrawal from the world to mystical pursuits constitutes an advance in the greater jihad. Conversely, the greater jihad is a necessary part of the process of gaining spiritual insight. By the eleventh century, sufism had become an extremely influential, and perhaps even the dominant, form of Islamic spirituality.[159]

Despite the differences in these three traditional models—limited war, rebellion against impiety, and moral enlightenment—jihad is always understood as jihad fi sabil Allah. It may not be justified in the name of individual or national aggrandizement, although today that view is no longer absolute.  Jihad in the modern world has taken on the additional form of an anti-colonial/national liberation struggle, like the Palestinian intifada [shaking off] against Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Because jihad is based on voluntary commitment and subject to conflicting interpretations, the call to arms is rarely effective—a fact that should disabuse anyone from believing that jihad is a “holy war” directed at destroying Western culture.

Mujahid in Training

Soon after he arrived in Pakistan, Osama bin Laden returned home to begin a massive fundraising and recruitment drive. His father supported the jihad, and his family responded enthusiastically; however, bin Laden’s presence was needed elsewhere. The activity of East German, Cuban and Russian forces in communist South Yemen was causing much unease for the House of Saud, and bin Laden was asked to help organize mujahedin to bolster local Yemeni insurgency forces.

The Saudi leadership may have had cause to be concerned about the communist military threat, but the recent discovery of new oilfields on the undefined Saudi/Yemeni border might have been a greater motive to get involved in South Yemen.

Bin Laden acquitted himself well, and even took part in battles, but the operation was unsuccessful. Nevertheless, King Fahd was so impressed by bin Laden’s enthusiasm and commitment that he granted him the personal contract to expand the Great Mosque in Medina. Bin Laden respectfully declined, asking instead that his father’s company receive the contract and that the government support the Afghan jihad. Fahd accepted. Until 1982, bin Laden made one or two short trips a year to Peshawar to bring bulldozers and other heavy equipment from the bin Laden company to construct trenches, fortifications, housing, hospitals, tunnels and roads to connect eastern Afghanistan with Pakistan. Bin Laden blasted massive tunnels into the Zazi Mountains of Bakhtiar province for guerrilla hospitals and arms dumps, then cut a trail across the country to within 15 miles of Kabul.[160] The shelters were necessary to protect the mujahedin from Soviet and Afghan government artillery. As a result, bin Laden bulldozers became prime targets.

After 1982, bin Laden began spending more time in Pakistan and by 1984 was spending eight months of the year away from home. One of his first significant achievements was the establishment with Azzam of bait al-ansar[partisans’ guesthouse] in a rented house in the Peshawar suburb of University Town. At the time, volunteers who came to fight or train had no central point of reference, so the guesthouse served as an informal inn/headquarters where people could find funds, training, and logistical support. This excerpt fromThe Observer gives a sense of daily life:

Conditions were Spartan—almost deliberately so. The volunteers, and bin Laden too, used to sleep a dozen to a room on thin pallets laid out on the hard floor of their offices. According to former associates, bin Laden used to sit up late into the night discussing Islam and Middle Eastern history. The young Saudi was yet to develop his radical ideology. Instead his views were a mixture of half-remembered history and heavily skewed, and often ill-informed, analyses of current affairs. Bin Laden was particularly angry about what he called the betrayal of the Arabs by the British after the First World War. He also criticized the Saudi royal family, saying they had exploited the Wahhabi to gain power.[161]

By 1985, the year Reagan signed National Security Council Directive 166, worldwide media coverage, the guesthouse, and improved transportation had inspired thousands of Saudis and other Arabs to join the jihad. Also, Azzam’s recruitment center mushroomed from a single storefront in Peshawar into a network of recruitment centres, mosques and Islamic centres, thanks to financing from Osama bin Laden. Now called al-Maktab al-Khidamat [The Services Office], Azzam’s organization had a presence in more than 50 countries, including 37 U.S. cities, and was responsible for recruiting and training tens of thousands of Arab fighters. Of these, nearly half were Saudis, with others including more than 3,000 Algerians, 2,000 Egyptians, and hundreds of others from Yemen, Sudan, Pakistan, Syria, Palestine and other Muslim states. Saudi dissident Dr. Saad al-Fagih, who was at the Bait al-Ansar with bin Laden, puts the number of visitors at 30,000 to 40,000, of whom 70–80 percent came from Saudi Arabia.

This influx of volunteers created a logistical nightmare for bin Laden because no record was being kept of people’s comings and goings. Typically, visitors would show up, spend a few weeks training or fighting, and then leave. When a relative would call to inquire after someone, bin Laden found himself in the awkward position of having no information. He realized that he had to maintain a proper log of arrivals and departures of all people—mujahedin, charity workers, or visitors—as well as all traffic between the training camps and the house. Al-Fagih said that in 1988 bin Laden established a formal reporting procedure whereby anyone who came to the guesthouse had to sign in and out:

That record, that documentation, was called the record of al-qa’ida. There’s nothing sinister about al-qa’ida. It’s not like an organization—like any other terrorist organization or any other underground group. I don’t think [bin Laden] used any name for his underground group. If you want to name it, you can name it “bin Laden group.”… “al qa’ida” is just a record for the people who came to Peshawar and moved from there back and forth to the guesthouse. And moved back to their country.[162]

Former State Department terrorism expert David Long corroborates this interpretation:

[It’s]… not a terrorist organization in the traditional sense. It’s more a clearing-house from which other groups elicit funds, training, and logistical support. It’s a chameleon, an amoeba, which constantly changes shape according to the whims of its leadership, and that leadership is Osama bin Laden. If you were to kill Osama tomorrow, the Osama organization would disappear, but all the networks would still be there.[163]

Groups in the brotherhood today include: GIA (Armed Islamic Group) (Algeria); Islamic Jihad and Islamic Group (Egypt); Islamic Movement for Change, the Tigers of the Gulf, and the Combatant Partisans of God (Saudi Arabia); and Abu Sayyef Group (the Philippines), as well as an undetermined number of freelance cells. Each group runs its own show with or without bin Laden’s assistance. Mark N. Katz, professor of government and politics at George Mason University, cautions against blowing bin Laden and his followers out of proportion: “As the events of September 11 have shown, bin Laden is a serious threat and an accurate understanding of him and his network is a necessity. Exaggerating the unity and power of the forces behind him and not paying sufficient attention to the important differences among various Muslim actors, though, does not help us in undertaking this vitally important task.[164]

The stark contrast between our common understanding of al-qa’ida and the more sober views of al-Fagih and Long shed some light on the pervasive hostility that drives our understanding of Arabs. Like most Arabic nouns, qa’ida is based on a three-letter root cluster. The qa’ida cluster q-[ayn]-d has the primary meaning of “seat,” “foundation,” or “basis.”[165] When combined with the adjective Harbiya (“military,” from Harb “war”), it gives us the sense of “a military base of operations” (al-qa’idat al-Harbiya), but this interpretation is certainly wrong. The proper interpretation of al-qa’ida is in the sense of “the database” (al-qa’idat al-bayänät), where “ä” indicates a long vowel.

Jalalabad

Throughout the jihad, bin Laden kept a low profile and was very much Azzam’s junior partner, but in 1986 he established his own organization outside of Peshawar. Within two years he had more than six camps in Afghanistan, and his own military command staffed by experienced Syrian and Egyptian military officers. According to al-Fagih, bin Laden not only showed poise and physical courage alongside Afghan fighters, but also directed Arabs in at least five heavy battles against the Red Army, the first of which was at Jaji in Bakhtia province.[166]

Mia Mohammed Aga, a senior Afghan commander at the time told The Observer that bin Laden was in the thick of the fighting: “I watched him with his Kalashnikov in his hand under fire from mortars and the multiple-barrelled rocket launchers.” “You never knew he was so rich or the commander of everyone,” said another veteran. “We used to all sit down together and eat like friends.”[167]

The Soviet Union finally withdrew on February 15, 1989, but the fighting did not end. The mujahedin now directed their efforts against Dr. Muhammad Najibullah’s communist government in Kabul.[168] The CIA convinced Pakistan that Najibullah‘s control over Kabul could be broken by a three-pronged assault against the cities of Jalalabad, Kunduz, and Qandahar. The mujahedin were thrown at Jalalabad. The battle (March–September 1989) would demonstrate more clearly than any other event the true attitude of the U.S. toward their “freedom fighters.”

According to veteran Afghan guerrilla leader Abdul Haq, this was a dreadful idea: “It’s surrounded by a river, mountains and minefields. And if we do take it, what’s going to happen? The Russians will bomb the shit out of us, that’s what.”[169] Nevertheless, Pakistan did as the CIA wanted—it assigned the lightly armed mujahedin, including bin Laden, the task of staging a frontal assault on Jalalabad’s artillery defensive emplacements.

As Haqpredicted, the mujahedin were massacred. Speaking on theMacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, Peter Gill of Britain’s Thames Television said the mujahedin badly underestimated the Afghan army’s defensive resolve and lost up to 10,000 fighters, but this conclusion is based on the false assumption that the U.S. intended the mujahedin to take Jalalabad. The moment the Soviet Red Army began to retreat—making the Persian Gulf “safe from invasion”—the mujahedin became a liability. Pakistani Brig.-Gen. (Ret’d.) Mohammad Yousaf, argues persuasively that the CIA wanted to destroy the mujahedin as a fighting force:

This covert switch of objectives was marked by the removal of General Akhtar, by promotion, from ISI. From then on the strength of the jihad was on the wane; from then on it become more and more obvious to myself, and others, that our American allies had an objective that fell far short of a victory in the field. Had he remained in ISI, I feel certain that the Afghan war would have been won within months of the Soviet’s retreat. Like so many soldiers before him he was sacrificed by politicians for political expediency, only in his case it was political pressure from outside Pakistan that removed him, just at the moment when the mujahedin were poised to capture the fruits of victory.[170]

Support for the view comes from Gill who described the battle for Jalalabad as a contest between the Soviet Union and the U.S. willing to fight to the last Afghan: “The saddest and commonest refrain in Afghanistan that the continuing war is less a conflict among the Afghans than a war of outsiders.”[171]

Azzam learned of the slaughter from bin Laden and other Arabs, and immediately set out to revivify the spirit of jihad, only this time against Pakistan and the U.S. Because of his stature, Azzam had become a danger to the regime in Islamabad. On Friday, November 24, 1989, he and two of his sons were preparing to drive to mosque when a land mine beneath their car was detonated by remote control, killing all inside. The ISI was suspected in the blast but nobody was ever charged.

After his death, theMaktab al-Khidamat split into moderate and extremist factions, the latter of which followed bin Laden. It’s fair to say that the bin Laden organization would not have been possible without the Maktab al-Khidamat because it allowed him to establish vital contacts with Muslims in many different countries. Some of these people were Palestinians who reinforced bin Laden’s sympathy for their suffering. Demanding an end to Israel’s occupation would become a cornerstone of bin Laden’s jihad against the U.S.

After the jihad, bin Laden returned to Jeddah and the family’s construction business, partly because he had grown frustrated trying to stop internecine bickering among the mujahedin. He moved his family into a small apartment, and set about re-entering his former life, but he continued to raise money for the mujahedin. Bin Laden believed that Muslims anywhere in the world deserved his help. He had developed a taste for jihad, but without the Soviet Union, he and his followers would need to find new targets.

Iraq

When the shah fell, so did his U.S.-built army, which meant that Iran lost its chief source of U.S.-made spare parts. The suddenly weakened state of Iran’s army gave new Iraqi President Saddam Hussein an opportunity to redress an old grievance. The issue was the Shatt al-Arab waterway separating the two countries. In 1975, Iraq agreed to share it with Iran in exchange for a promise from the shah to stop funding Iraq’s Kurdish rebels, who had been fighting an insurgency since the early 1970s. As a result of the agreement, the border between the countries was drawn down the middle of the waterway instead of along its eastern (Iranian) bank, as had been the case since 1937.

With the mullahs now in charge of Iran, Hussein saw an opportunity to return to the status quo ante and remove the cause of the Iran-supported Shi’ite insurgency that had been threatening to plunge Iraq into civil war. Also, Hussein could pick up the oil-rich border region of Khuzestan as a bonus.

The U.S. saw in Hussein’s plans a chance to exact revenge against Iran, and so it egged him on. The U.S. even established diplomatic relations with Iraq in the person of Ambassador April Glaspie. Until this time, the U.S. had no formal presence in Baghdad because Iraq had friendly relations with the Soviet Union and was a declared foe of Israel. Now, the U.S. hoped to use diplomacy to supplant the Soviet Union as Hussein’s main military supplier.

The Reagan administration began sending Iraq covert military aid, including the binary components of chemical weapons. Later, Iraq received trade credits and intelligence after Hussein toned down his criticism of Israel. The U.S. also encouraged Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to offer aid, and consequently, on August 5, 1980, then-Crown Prince Fahd welcomed Saddam Hussein to Riyadh for a state visit. This was an extraordinary event; it was the first time Hussein had been invited since he came to power in 1979 as the head of the Ba’ath Party, and was the first invitation for any Iraqi president. The Saudis proceeded to encourage Hussein to invade Iran, as President Carter wanted. Alexander Haig, Reagan‘s first Secretary of State, said that during a 1981 visit to the kingdom, Fahd claimed that Carter, desperate to pressure Iran over the stalled hostage talks, gave Hussein the green light to invade.

For its part, Kuwait lent Hussein US$13 billion. Haig said Fahd was very enthusiastic about Reagan’s foreign policy, and agreed in principle to fund arms sales to the Pakistanis and other states in the region. Fahd also promised to help the U.S. economy through a policy of “no drop in production” of petroleum.[172]

Iraq’s land and air invasion of western Iran began on September 22, 1980. By the end of the year the Shatt al-Arab city of Khorramshahr was in Iraqi hands, but victory was short-lived. Hussein miscalculated the tenacity of Iranian resistance, and by 1982 he had been forced to give back all occupied portions of Iran. Now the initiative shifted to Iran. Khomeini‘s forces recaptured Khorramshahr in 1983, and began to make inroads into Iraq. Hussein’s gamble now looked like a blunder. The specter of an Iranian victory now hung over the Persian Gulf.

The Persian Gulf states, usually wary of appearing to be too friendly with the U.S., now climbed aboard the American military bandwagon despite the obvious un-Islamic implications. In 1985, in the face of increasing Iranian territorial gains, the New York Times reported that Oman “has become a base for Western intelligence operations, military maneuvers and logistical preparations for any defense of the oil-producing Persian Gulf.”[173] By the time the war ended on August 20, 1988, the heavily armed Iraqi military had grossly distorted the balance of power in the Persian Gulf. As was the case in Afghanistan, the U.S. exploited a country to serve its own interest and ended up creating an enemy.

Summary

The U.S.’s willful blindness toward the shah’s repressive rule and unconditional support for him directly caused the February 1979 Shi’ite revolution. The loss of Iran caused the Carter administration to disregard its own intelligence, overreact to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and fund the mujahedin. The religiously and politically blinkered Reagan administration compounded Carter’s error, and as a result radicalized Osama bin Laden and a host of other Muslim resistance fighters.

Notwithstanding the passion and commitment of the mujahedin, the jihad was essentially a proxy war in which the mujahedin served the geopolitical interests of the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. As soon as Afghanistan’s Communist government was defeated, the mujahedin had outlived their usefulness, and thus the CIA set them up to be liquidated at Jalalabad.

The Shi’ite revolution also led the U.S. to goad Iraqi president Saddam Hussein into a revenge attack on Iran. In short, the recent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, in fact the entire “war on terrorism,” can be traced to U.S. meddling and manipulation during the Carter and Reagan administrations.

4

Bush vs. The Crazies

When the Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989, so did the international political order: the Cold War was over, the Soviet Union had disappeared, and the U.S. had no external enemy. This was the world Vice-President (now President) George H. W. Bush inherited. He was a reluctant Reaganaut, but over the previous eight years became a loyal standard-bearer for Christian/Straussian economic and social theology. He had little choice because the theologians now controlled the Republican Party. Unlike Reagan, though, Bush did not suffer from wooly headedness or an abject dependency on advisors. He had spent much of his life in federal politics, including posts as UN ambassador and CIA director under Nixon, and thus was able to think for himself, albeit to a limited degree.

Bush was a pragmatist, not an ideologue, which meant that his Middle East Policy did not serve the uncritical promotion of Israeli expansionism. Because of this, the Lobby would deny him a second term. This fact is remarkable given that Bush was highly popular for putting together an international coalition to redress Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Despite the appearance of victory, the 1991 Gulf War would turn out to be the most important factor in turning the Muslim world against the U.S.

Setting up Hussein

Iraq emerged from its inconclusive and misbegotten war with Iran economically devastated. President Saddam Hussein desperately needed oil revenue to rebuild, but faced a major obstacle—Kuwait. First, it was depressing the world price by producing beyond OPEC quotas. Second, Hussein charged Kuwait with illegally tapping the Rumailah oil field that straddles the two countries. Third, he wanted Kuwait to forgive its US$13 billion in war loans. Given that Iraq was now US$80 billion in debt and fought the Shi’ite Iranians single-handedly, Hussein thought his request reasonable, especially since Kuwait’s economy was strong.  In a 1996 Frontline interview, Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz explained Iraq’s economic dilemma:

Frontline: July 17th, President Hussein appeared on television, and accused Kuwait of waging economic warfare. Why such a strong stand? Why threaten war?

Aziz: Well, that was not the first time President Saddam Hussein spoke about a war being waged against Iraq. In the final session of the Arab summit, that was held late May 1990.... he said I would like to make a short statement. He said, “In the last few months, some Arab countries have increased their oil production superficially, without any economic reason. This has led to a drop in our revenues. Each dollar less in price means to us one billion in revenues for a year. We have fought a very long war, it was a very costly one and in this war we defended your security. If you do not mean waging a war against Iraq, please stop it.” That was said clearly and in a very responsible and quiet manner in the presence of King Fahd, Sheik Jaber of Kuwait, Sheik Said of the Emirates and all the leaders of the Gulf including also Mubarak and the other Arab leaders who attended that summit.

Frontline: What did the Kuwaitis do?

Aziz: They did nothing. And he asked King Fahd, to help end this silly game which was hurting Iraq very severely, and he sent the Deputy Prime Minister to King Fahd to urge him to arrange a limited summit between himself, I mean President Saddam Hussein, King Fahd, Sheik Said and Sheik Jaber in order to discuss this question of the over production by Kuwait and the Emirates. So, we did our best to warn them in a friendly, brotherly, responsible manner that they were hurting Iraq very badly and we wanted them to stop, stop this game.

Frontline: And by July 17th?

Aziz: By July 17th, nothing had changed. Nothing has changed. The Kuwaitis acted in an arrogant, irresponsible provocative manner and that led to the deterioration of the situation.

Frontline: When was the possibility of putting troops into Kuwait first discussed?

Aziz: Kuwait never occurred in the mind of the leadership ‘til the end of June 1990. We still hope that our efforts would succeed. The summit ended sometime the first half of June, the Deputy Prime Minister went to see King Fahd and he promised to do something. He didn’t keep his promise. By the end of June we started to realize that there is a conspiracy against Iraq, a deliberate conspiracy against Iraq by Kuwait, organized, devised by the United States. So when we came to that conclusion, then we started thinking of how to react against the future aggressors on Iraq.[174]

Given these circumstances, Hussein mobilized his forces to invade Kuwait. On August 2, 1990, 150,000 veterans of the Iran/Iraq War overwhelmed Kuwait’s inexperienced 20,000-man army. By August 9, Saddam Hussein had annexed the whole country. That this came as a surprise is incredible because the U.S. knew Hussein was planning to attack, and went out of its way not to dissuade him. President Bush sent a clear message to him through Glaspie that the U.S. sympathized with Hussein’s quest for higher oil prices and that it took no position on matters between Arab states. In Dangerous Liaison, Andrew and Leslie Cockburn neatly summarize this position:

[The] transcript of U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie’s last interview with the Iraqi president, on July 25, [1990,] which was unchivalrously taped and subsequently released by Saddam, indicates a curiously complacent American attitude in the face of his bellicose rhetoric. The U.S., Glaspie told him, took no position on Iraq’s border dispute with Kuwait and wanted better relations with Iraq. On July 28, President Bush was briefed by William Webster, director of the CIA, on Iraq’s threatening moves toward Kuwait. Saddam, Webster said, was going to invade Kuwait in order to seize the Rumailah oil fields that straddled the border, as well as two islands, Warba and Bubiyan, that lie close to the Iraqi coastline. Bush’s reaction was low-key. He cabled Saddam, saying that the U.S. was concerned about Iraq’s threats to use force against its neighbors, but also reiterating that the U.S. wanted better relations with Iraq. On July 31, two days before the Republican Guard chased the Emir of Kuwait into temporary exile, Assistant Secretary of State John Kelly stressed to a congressional committee that the U.S. had no commitment to defend Kuwait.[175]

In fact, a candid exchange with journalists on September 2 outside the U.S. embassy in Baghdad suggests that the U.S. actually approved of the invasion.

Journalist: You encouraged this aggression—his invasion. What were you thinking?

Ambassador Glaspie: Obviously, I didn’t think, and nobody else did, that the Iraqis were going to take all of Kuwait.

Journalist: You thought he was just going to take some of it? But, how could you? Saddam told you that, if negotiations failed, he would give up his Iran (Shatt al Arab waterway) goal for the whole of Iraq, in the shape we wish it to be. You know that includes Kuwait, which the Iraqis have always viewed as an historic part of their country! America green-lighted the invasion. At a minimum, you admit signaling Saddam that some aggression was okay—that the U.S. would not oppose a grab of the al-Rumailah oil field, the disputed border strip and the Gulf Islands (including Bubiyan)— the territories claimed by Iraq?

(Ambassador Glaspie says nothing as a limousine door closed behind her and the car drives off.)[176]

On August 6, 1990, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney gave Fahd the hard sell: pointing to satellite maps, he showed 200,000 Iraqi troops along the Saudi border. Cheney stated that the U.S. had to mobilize immediately to protect the kingdom from Hussein:

We had about a two-hour session, at the end of which there was a short conversation between King Fahd and his associates, the Crown Prince, the Foreign Minister, and then he turned back to me after about five minutes of discussions in Arabic and said through the interpreter, through Prince Bandar, that they were prepared to go ahead to accept the U.S. forces in the Kingdom.[177]

What Cheney did not tell Fahd and other members of the royal family was that these troops were not in an offensive posture, and that Hussein had pulled 10,000 troops out of Kuwait that same day. Iraq did make a few minor breaches of the border, but Hussein had assured the Saudis that he had no designs on their country. Riyadh’s anxiety was not assuaged, but the U.S. had no proof that Hussein intended to invade Saudi Arabia. However, the U.S. did want a pretext to station troops in the Persian Gulf to protect its assets and neutralize Hussein’s U.S.-made army.

A week after Iraq occupied Kuwait, Operation “Desert Shield,” began. Some 400,000 American troops and 200,000 troops from dozens of countries, including the Arab world, gathered in the kingdom. Other countries offered logistical, financial, medical, naval, or air support. In all, more than 48 countries took part. The stated intent of “Desert Shield” was to protect Saudi Arabia from Iraqi aggression, but it was obvious that the real objective was to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. On November 29, 1990, the UN Security Council passed a resolution authorizing member states to use “all necessary means” against Iraq if it did not leave by January 15, 1991. When the deadline came and went, the Western coalition attacked, and “Desert Shield” became “Desert Storm.” The war was over in five weeks.[178]

Pentagon Zionists, whom Bush derisively, though accurately, called “the crazies,” wanted to use the Gulf War to oust Saddam Hussein, but Gen. Colin Powell, (then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) and field commander Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf opposed invasion on legal, political and military grounds. The United States had a UN mandate to liberate Kuwait, not to topple Hussein, and any attempt to do so would also have torn apart the coalition. Regional allies like Turkey and Saudi Arabia, feared that taking out Hussein would fragment Iraq into warring ethnic and religious factions. In one scenario, the Kurds in the north could spread rebellion to Turkey’s own Kurdish population, and Iraq’s majority Shi’ites could find themselves under Iranian influence.

As noted in Chapter 1, even Cheney supported Bush’s decision not to go after Hussein: “I think it is vitally important for a President to know when to use military force. I think it is also very important for him to know when not to commit U.S. military force. And it’s my view that the President got it right both times, that it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq.”[179]

Jihad and ‘Riyadhpolitik’

When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the Saudi government thought it had a tailor-made war to take care of its domestic religious zealots. So long as the jihad continued, the government could indulge the fantasy that it was championing Islam by funding bin Laden’s “Arab Afghans,” but when the war ended, these mujahedin came home, and the Saudi government found itself abruptly evicted from its fool’s paradise.

Contrary to first impressions, the jihad was really a no-win proposition for the Saudi government: if it refused support, it risked exacerbating criticism about its piety; if it offered support, it risked creating more zealots for its domestic Islamic opposition. However, the pros and cons of participation were not debated because the decision had been made in Washington, D.C. The Carter and Reagan administrations needed Saudi money to wage a proxy war against Soviet Union, and the Saudis were in no position to refuse.

When one considers that the Saudi government runs its domestic and foreign affairs according to man-made laws; lives in wasteful opulence; and aligns itself with the enemies of Islam, it represents the very model of impious leadership that it claims should be overthrown. Consequently, the hero of the jihad had outlived his usefulness the moment he returned home: the Saudis did not want an army of devout mujahedin stirring up Islamic passion, and the kingdom had aligned itself with Hussein. To make matters worse, bin Laden detested Hussein because he was a secular Arab leader and therefore a political and religious threat to Saudi Arabia. One could argue that a full-scale rift was coming, but events in the Persian Gulf made it inevitable.

More than any other event, the Gulf War turned Osama bin Laden into an anti-Saudi/anti-U.S. mujahid and laid the foundation for the Zionist/Christian destruction of Iraq. In the spring of 1990, bin Laden still believed that the Saudi government had a principled commitment to Islam, and would support jihad wherever necessary, but events in Yemen proved otherwise. Negotiations to unite North and South Yemen had been underway since 1981 when the government of the Yemen Arab Republic (North) and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (South) signed a draft unification constitution. Sana’a in the YAR would become the political capital, and Aden in the PDRY would become the economic capital. The new Yemen, announced on May 22, would be a parliamentary democracy with a mixed economy and Islam would be the official religion.

Bin Laden, as a disciple of ibn Taymiya, naturally considered the new government to be un-Islamic and thought it should be overthrown on the grounds of impiety, but the Saudi government wanted no part of bin Laden’s agitation.[180] Jihad in Afghanistan was one thing; jihad in the Arab world did not serve the interests of “Riyadhpolitik.”

As the conflict between Iraq and Kuwait became highly public, bin Laden gave speeches warning of an impending attack, and used his ties to the Saudi government to present Defense Minister Prince Sultan with a 10-page document outlining a self-defense plan that included building fortifications and reinforcing Saudi forces with “Afghan Arabs.” After all, if they could defeat the Soviet Red army, Hussein’s army should be a pushover. He made the same appeal to intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal, and added that the mujahedin could also spearhead a jihad in Kuwait.

As he awaited a response from the royal family, bin Laden received news that appalled him—Fahd, the Custodian of the Holy Sites, placed the defense of the kingdom in the hands of Western infidels, who care only about Arab oil. The ulama were also appalled, but Fahd needed a big favor from them—he needed them to issue a fatwah[a formal legal or religious judgment] to legitimize the decision. Fahd proceeded to hold discussions with Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul-Aziz bin Baz, and the result produced an absurdity that brought the office of the Grand Mufti into disrepute. Bin Baz issued a fatwah on behalf of the ulama in support of Fahd’s decision, but cited no Islamic precedent from the Qur’an or Hadith, a narrative of the words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad. Instead, Bin Baz declared the American presence justifiable on the grounds of “necessity.”

Even if Fahd’s decision were militarily “necessary,” this co-optation of the ulama made Saudi Arabia’s religious leaders look like servants of the government, and this perception gave greater strength to government opponents like the Shi’ites and the Islamic Revolutionary Party. Bin Laden said as much:

After this, government began to strike with the cane of bin Baz every corrective program, which the honest scholars put forward. Further, it extracted a fatwah to hand over Palestine to the Jews, and before this, to permit entry into the country of the two sacred mosques to the modern day crusaders under the rule of necessity. Then it relied on a letter from him to the minister for internal affairs and placed the honest scholars in the gaols. The confidence of the people and the youth in bin Baz was therefore shaken… whilst the confidence of the people in the working scholars, particularly those in the prisons, had been increased.[181]

Despite Fahd’s decision, bin Laden was still determined to bring the mujahedin to the defense of the kingdom, but this time he appealed directly to religious scholars and Muslim activists.[182] He secured a fatwah from a senior scholar declaring that every Muslim had a duty to be trained and ready to defend Islam: Bin Laden even offered his training facilities in Afghanistan, and 4,000 Saudis eagerly joined.

Despite his anger, bin Laden remained a loyal Saudi and avoided any criticism of the royal family. He fully believed that King Fahd acted out of haste and panic, and that when the emergency was over he would expel the foreigners and return to the Islamic path. Other Islamic leaders weren’t so circumspect. Sheikh Tamimi said the royal family had forfeited its claim to be the Custodians of the Holy Sites, and that confronting the “infidel” U.S. was more important than coming to the defense of Kuwait.[183]

But the government was not of a mind to draw fine distinctions between pro-Saudi and anti-Saudi criticism—it would not tolerate any opposition to the presence of Western troops or bin Baz’s fatwah. It confiscated bin Laden’s passport, confined him to Jeddah, and twice summoned him to receive warnings about his speeches and activities. Fact is, the royal family didn’t know what to do with him. On the one hand it threatened to cancel his lucrative construction contracts and seize his property. They intimidated his extended family and even sent the National Guard to raid his farm outside of Jeddah. Bin Laden, who was not at home at the time, fired off a letter of protest to then-Prince Abdullah, who apologized and promised to punish those responsible.

On the other hand, Saudi intelligence wanted to maintain close relations with bin Laden, both to ensure that he didn’t take his immense popularity and organization over to anti-government Muslims, and also to have him use his “Afghan” network to drum up support for the government. Bin Laden, though, was growing fed up with Saudi Arabia and decided to leave, but to do that he had to get around the travel ban. Interior Minister Prince Nayef was the obstacle, but one of bin Laden’s brothers was close to the deputy minister, Prince Ahmed. While Nayef was outside the kingdom, bin Laden’s brother secured travel permission from Ahmed on the grounds that Osama had to attend to business matters in Pakistan. In April, bin Laden sent a letter to his brother declaring his intention not to return, and offering his apologies to him and the royal family.

Burning Bush

The more Bush tried to influence politics in the Middle East the more trouble he caused. His siding with the Saudis against Hussein led to the Gulf War, which led to stationing U.S. troops on Saudi soil, which ultimately led to the radicalization of Osama bin Laden, though the effects would not be felt for some time. One area where the fallout was immediate concerned Palestine.

Bush made the fatal error of trying to breathe new life into Carter’s idea of a comprehensive Middle East peace. Together with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, he co-sponsored an October 30–31, 1991, ministerial conference in Madrid to devise an end to the Palestinian intifada. This attempt to put an end to Israeli expansionism in the name of peace put Bush at odds with the crazies.

Letters of invitation went out to the governments of Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan (including Palestine), the European Community, and the Gulf Cooperation Council (observer). At the time, the U.S. still had not recognized the PLO. Former terrorist and assassin Yitzhak Shamir, the Likud leader of Israel at the time, refused to participate. To compel his participation, Bush threatened to withhold $10 billion in loan guarantees to Israel. The threat worked, but the Lobby was furious, to say nothing of Shamir.

So furious was Israel with Bush’s assertion of political independence that Mossad planned an assassination, for which three Muslims would be set up to take the fall. In his book The Other Side of Deception, former Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky recounts how he heard about the plan and managed to thwart it:

Ephraim called me on Tuesday, October 1. I could sense from the tone of his voice that he was extremely stressed. “They’re out to kill Bush…I mean really kill, as in ‘assassinate.’”

“What are you talking about? You can’t be serious. They would never dare do something like that.”

“Don’t go naive on me now,” he said. “They’re going to do it during the Madrid peace talks.”

“Why don’t you call the CIA and tell them? I mean, this isn’t just some little operation you don’t want to be involved in.”

“I’ll call whoever I have in the European intelligence services. I don’t have friends in the American, not people I can trust, anyway.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“We are going to do what we can at our end. But nothing we will do will become public. I want you to make this thing public. If they know that the Americans know about it, there is a good chance they will not go ahead.”[184]

Ostrovsky made the assassination public during a luncheon at the Parliament buildings in Ottawa for a think tank called the Middle East Discussion Group. It was during the question-and-answer session after his speech that he said what he thought Israel would likely do to sabotage the peace talks:

I said that from sources I had, and based on my knowledge of the Mossad, I would not be at all surprised if there was a plot right at this moment to kill the president of the United States and to throw the blame on some extreme Palestinian group. [185]

Ostrovsky’s comment reached the ears of a close Bush friend, former California congressman Pete McCloskey, who in turn contacted the Secret Service. This led to discussions with the State Department, CIA and the U.S. embassy in Ottawa. News of a possible assassination leaked to the press and appeared, for example, in Jack Anderson’s syndicated column. Ostrovsky explains the result:

From Ephraim, I heard later that after the president had landed in Madrid, the American embassy there received a bomb threat on the phone, and that a section of the embassy was evacuated while the president was in the building. But the rest of the plan was called off, and even though the Spanish police received the names and descriptions of the three supposed assassins, they were never let out of the holding facility in the Negev. Later, they were transferred to the Nes Ziyyona research facility, where they were terminated. [186]

Israel had every reason to fear Bush’s speech because it was precisely the sort of rational peace initiative that could spell the end of zionist colonialism:

Our objective must be clear and straightforward. It is not simply to end the state of war in the Middle East and replace it with a state of non-belligerency. This is not enough; this would not last. Rather, we seek peace, real peace. And by real peace I mean treaties. Security. Diplomatic relations. Economic relations. Trade. Investment. Cultural exchange. Even tourism.

What we seek is a Middle East where vast resources are no longer devoted to armaments. A Middle East where young people no longer have to dedicate and, all too often, give their lives to combat. A Middle East no longer victimized by fear and terror. A Middle East where normal men and women lead normal lives….

What we envision is a process of direct negotiations proceeding along two tracks, one between Israel and the Arab states; the other between Israel and the Palestinians. Negotiations are to be conducted on the basis of UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338….

Real peace—lasting peace—must be based upon security for all states and peoples, including Israel. For too long the Israeli people have lived in fear, surrounded by an unaccepting Arab world. Now is the ideal moment for the Arab world to demonstrate that attitudes have changed, that the Arab world is willing to live in peace with Israel and make allowances for Israel’s reasonable security needs.

We know that peace must also be based on fairness. In the absence of fairness, there will be no legitimacy —no stability. This applies above all to the Palestinian people, many of whom have known turmoil and frustration above all else. Israel now has an opportunity to demonstrate that it is willing to enter into a new relationship with its Palestinian neighbors; one predicated upon mutual respect and cooperation.[187]

Showing compassion for Palestinians and arguing for stability in the Middle East was logical, rational and consistent with the U.S. national interest, but it posed a direct threat to the crazies and Israel’s need for perpetual belligerency to justify the Occupation and repression of the Palestinians. Since 1968, Labor and Likud governments alike have supported increasing Jewish colonization of the Occupied Territories. On paper, Labor has been willing to give up land for peace because most Israelis recognize that the occupation is the greatest threat to Israel’s security. Likud governments, however, derive much of their support from thuggish “settler” groups, who overtly terrorize and murder Palestinians. In short, Labor pays lip service to international law and professes to want a political solution, albeit one grossly unfair to the Palestinians, whereas Likud governments care nothing for international law or morality. Bush supported the Labor position, at least rhetorically, and had publicly humiliated Likud. For the sake of Israel, the Lobby had no choice but to push him out of office.

On February 26, 1992, a domestic pressure group calling itself the “The Committee on U.S. Interests in the Middle East” took out a full-page ad in the New York Times to excoriate Bush for “pressuring” Israel to enter into negotiations based on “land for peace.” The attack was gratuitous, since Bush had peremptorily capitulated to Israel, as shown by the letters of assurance Secretary of State James Baker III sent to the two major parties. To the Palestinians he wrote: “‘The U.S. will accept any outcome agreed by the parties,’’ ignoring the fact that UNSC Resolution 242 compels Israel to leave the Occupied Territories unconditionally, and renders the basis of any other agreement null and void. To the Israelis, Baker wrote: “Israel holds its own interpretation of Security Council Resolution 242 alongside other interpretations.”[188]

Nevertheless, the ad signaled the impending end of Bush’s presidency. In a 2002 article Should Israel Retaliate? Avi Davis, a Likudnik writer for the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies, typified the Israel–Lobby anger towards Bush. Ostensibly a discussion of whether Israel would again agree not to retaliate against attack as it did during the Gulf War, the piece was a character assassination of Bush’s administration and a swipe at the Labor Party:

• The last Bush administration was the most unfriendly to Israel since the country’s founding.

• James Baker famously admonished the Israelis: call us when you are serious about peace and repeated the identification of settlements as the major obstacle to achieving it. He turned US- Israeli relations into a bitter slogging match between lobbyists.

• The first Bush Administration, flush with confidence in its new diplomatic muscle, railroaded an unwilling Shamir into a peace conference in Madrid. The conference… succeeded in revealing the depth of hatred for Israel (and, if we are to be truthful, for the U.S. itself) in the Arab world.

• The United States has no better military, political or ideological ally in the Middle East [than Israel].

• [The U.S.] might finally acknowledge that the future of the Middle East lies in a quarantine of the region by a quadrilateral military alliance, linking those democratic countries such as Turkey, India, Israel and the United States, who feel most threatened by the export of militant Islam.[189]

Just as Israel and the Lobby pushed the “special relationship” under Reagan, it now needed to adapt to a post-Cold War world in which that relationship had become obsolete. The new role for Israel would be as a bulwark against the bogeyman of “Islamic fundamentalism.” With the last point we see a shift in Zionist propaganda and the beginnings of the “war on terrorism.”

5

Invasion of the Policy Snatchers

Real power does not lie with the White House or Congress; it lies with the Jewish, Christian and Straussian pressure groups that tell the president and Congress what to do. These lobbyists, academics and “think tanks” constitute the real governing class, as the example of the Heritage Foundation’s dominance over Ronald Reagan showed.

Over the past 25 years, a Zionist-led political infrastructure has usurped power to the point where the U.S. can no longer be called a republic. Some of these “think tanks” display their bias openly, while others carry deceptively neutral names and masquerade as tax-deductible educational foundations, but all of them are part of a fascist network that fosters Straussian econo-theology, Israeli colonialism and anti-Muslim bigotry.

The American Enterprise Institute:
Profile of a Zionist Front

In its promotional blurb, the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research claims to be one of America’s largest and most respected “think tanks”:

[The AEI] is dedicated to preserving and strengthening the foundations of freedom—limited government, private enterprise, vital cultural and political institutions, and a strong foreign policy and national defense—through scholarly research, open debate, and publications…. AEI publications are distributed widely to government officials and legislators, business executives, journalists, and academics; its conferences, seminars, and lectures are regularly covered by national television.

The institute’s 50 resident scholars and fellows include some of America’s foremost economists, legal scholars, political scientists, and foreign policy experts. The resident faculty is augmented by a network of more than one hundred adjunct scholars at universities and policy institutes throughout the United States and abroad. AEI scholars testify frequently before congressional committees, provide expert consultation to all branches of government, and are cited and reprinted in the national media more often than those of any other think tank. [190]

Although the preceding is factually accurate, the implied connotation of public research in the national interest is not. The moniker “think tank,” conveys the comforting illusion of intellectually honest advice and analysis. In plain language, the AEI is a propaganda mill with an inordinate ability to influence government.

The institute began in 1943 in Washington D.C. when Lewis Brown, head of the Denver construction giant Johns-Manville, established it to oppose President Roosevelt’s New Deal policies. The AEI was little more than an eccentric mouthpiece for big business until former White House publicist William Baroody Jr. became president in 1977. It was he who turned the AEI into a well-funded, broad-based institute that could appeal to mainstream conservatives. According to Deborah Toler, a policy analyst at the Washington-based Institute for Public Accuracy:

Baroody started AEI’s massive publicity campaigns, which included press releases about its seminars, forums and policy proposals, sending opinion pieces to newspapers and distributing free radio commentaries to broadcast stations. While the publicity campaign helped improve AEI’s image with the media, Baroody‘s hiring of former Ford administration officials after the Republicans’ 1976 electoral defeat was also instrumental…. Baroody‘s strategy was extremely successful, turning AEI into a $9 million, 154-person Republican government-in-waiting. AEI employees who eventually became high-level Reagan officials included James C. Miller, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Murray Weidenbaum and Antonin Scalia.[191]

With the advent of American fascism under Reagan, however, the AEI found itself increasingly outfunded and outmaneuvered by the likes of Paul Weyrich‘s Heritage Foundation. AEI Chairman William C. Butcher, chief executive officer of Chase Manhattan Bank, decided to jump aboard the bandwagon, and so in December 1986 he replaced Baroody with Christopher DeMuth, a former publicist in Reagan‘s Office of Management and Budget. Since then, the institute has subsumed its former conservative economic and political ideology under a Straussian militancy.

AEI’s Main Financiers

According to its 2002 annual report, the AEI raised $23,567,256 for fiscal year 2001 from individuals (35 percent), foundations (34 percent), corporations (24 percent), and conferences, sales and other sources (7 percent).

However, we’re not given specifics about these donors. All the public sees is: “The institute is an independent, nonprofit organization supported primarily by grants and contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals.” Generally speaking, the AEI benefits from the same largesse as Heritage does, but two major donors deserve special mention.[192]

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation

The Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee, Wisconsin gives generously to numerous cultural, educational, economic and political causes, but especially to institutes and people that advocate a return to absolute laissez-faire capitalism, and by extension oppose business regulation, welfare reform and social spending.[193] It also staunchly supports increased defense spending.

In 1985, the Allen-Bradley Company, a major manufacturer of electronic and radio components, was sold to defense contractor supergiant Rockwell International for $1.65 billion. Assets of the Allen-Bradley foundation jumped from $14 million to $290 million and it was renamed “The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation” in honor of the brothers who founded Allen-Bradley in 1903.

Bradley president Michael Joyce was the main architect of the skein of foundations, institutes and activist organizations that became a self-sustaining propaganda industry. After the Democrats reclaimed the White House in 1992, influential Republican government officials found safe havens in these institutes where millions of dollars-worth of foundation grant money allowed them to influence government policy. With Joyce as its president, the Bradley foundation emerged as the strongest Straussian foundation in the country.

John M. Olin Foundation

The John M. Olin Foundation is a byproduct of the New York-based Olin chemical and munitions fortune. In 2002, the foundation doled out $17,062,603, down from $20,905,961 the year previous. Many of the beneficiaries are the same ones that benefit from the Bradley Foundation, and so will be omitted for brevity’s sake.

Joyce serves as an example of the cross-pollination among these groups. In 1979, he left as president of the Allen-Bradley foundation at the behest of Kristol and William Simon to run the Olin Foundation. In 1985, Joyce returned to Bradley until his retirement in 2001.

Olin funding also shows a connection to Strauss‘s economic élitism. For example, as Toler points out, after DeMuth took over, the AEI created a “race desk,” consisting of Judge Robert H. Bork, (John M. Olin Scholar in Legal Studies); Dinesh D’Souza, (a John M. Olin Research Fellow); and Charles Murray, a Bradley Fellow, who wrote the contentious book The Bell Curve, in which he equated intelligence with race. Murray received a $100,000 grant from the Bradley Foundation, but his views were so objectionable that in 1990 he was obliged to leave his position at the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. Joyce, who oversees Bradley donations to Manhattan, continued Murray’s $100,000 grant when he moved to the AEI.[194]

Also typical of the specious “scholarship” the AEI churns out is Bork‘s essay Civil Liberties after 9/11—a polemic against civil libertarians and critics of the Bush administration, as well as an apologia for racial profiling and the PATRIOT Act’s Orwellian surveillance, search and seizure provisions.[195] As an Olin chair in Legal Studies, Bork has received nearly $163,000 annually since 1984. For his part, Kristol received more than $380,000 between 1992 and 1994 as an Olin fellow. The following table shows how well-funded the Straussian–Zionist propaganda factory is:

Table VI: Sample of Financial Support
for Straussian/Zionist Organizations (FY2002)

RECIPIENT

FOUNDATION DONOR (US$ Thousands)

Brad-
ley

Olin

Sarah Scaife

Carthage

Scaife Family

Smith R’son

Castle Rock

AEI

750

661

25

100

84

625

245

Federalist Society

100

602

300

100

- -

- -

135

Heritage

200

400

1,375

15

100

- -

1,949

Free Congress

200

- -

900

250

- -

- -

1,050

Hoover Institution

375

445

600

- -

- -

265

25

Hudson Institute

510

280

200

85

32

200

55

Manhattan Institute

200

443

150

30

4

231

70

Annual average (1985-2001). †FY2001.
Sources: annual reports, MediaTransparency.org, disinfopedia.org.

• Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies—Founded in the early 1980s, the society is a network of radical libertarian law students, alumni and attorneys that denies the government or the judiciary any role in attenuating a citizen’s or business’s self-interest. Society members believe that any attempt to regulate industry or civil rights is proof of “an activist liberal bias” that aims to create a uniform society. Current Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is a founding member.

• Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace—Founded in 1919 by future president Herbert Hoover, the institution is an exponent of radical laissez-faire economics. It promotes “ideas defining a free society,” in which government activity in education, industry or the environment is seen as a threat to freedom.

• Hudson Institute—Founded in 1961, the institute advocates the abolition of federally funded Social Security and corporate income taxes. Its center on Middle East Studies is led by well-known Zionist Meyrav Wurmser, former executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

• Manhattan Institute for Policy Research—Founded in 1978, the institute advocates privatization of public maintenance services, public education and cuts to social welfare programs.

In addition to the AEI, an understanding of the following three Zionist fronts are integral to understanding how the U.S. began to lose control of its foreign policy in the Reagan–Bush years. In what follows, two items are of particular note. The first is the conspicuous recurrence of key names. Although these groups are nominally different, overlapping memberships demonstrate that they drink from each other’s bathwater. The second point is the connection between these groups and the Reagan administration, which made the infiltration of government possible.

Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA)

In October 1973, Arab armies attacked Israeli forces illegally stationed on Syrian and Egyptian soil. The response from the Nixon Administration was lukewarm. Nixon was avowedly anti-Israel, and as recently released tapes from 1972 have shown, Billy Graham and he held disparaging views about Jews, especially regarding their influence within the media:

Graham: This stranglehold has got to be broken or the country’s going down the drain.

Nixon: You believe that?

Graham: Yes, sir.

Nixon: Oh, boy, so do I. I can’t ever say that, but I believe it.

Graham: No, but if you get elected a second time, then we might be able to do something.[196]

Nixon belatedly agreed to aid Israel after it suffered heavy defeats in the early stages of the war, but only because the Soviet Union was giving military aid to Arab states.[197] Nixon’s response led to the creation of the first overtly pro-Israeli lobby group. According to Herbert Fierst, a founding member of JINSA and a leading Washington attorney: “During the 1973 war, a number of us began meeting with Pentagon officials to discuss getting supplies to Israel. We did it as individuals, not members of a particular group. At that time, JINSA only existed as an idea, not as a functioning effort.”[198]

Other founders were former Reagan-era arms negotiator Max M. Kampelman, State Department Assistant Secretary for Human Rights Richard Schifter, Washington-area businessman Saul Stem, and former member of the White House science board Dr. Lawrence Goldmuntz. JINSA’s primary mission, as stated on its website, is two-fold: to educate the American public about the importance of an effective U.S. defense capability so that our vital interests as Americans can be safeguarded; and  to inform the American defense and foreign affairs community about the important role Israel can and does play in bolstering democratic interests in the Mediterranean and the Middle East.

JINSA’s main activity is the General and Flag Officer’s Program. In collaboration with the Pentagon and the U.S. Department of State, JINSA officials bring retired senior military officers on information visits to Israel and Jordan and sets up meetings with political and military leaders of both countries. JINSA has also recently begun to share counter-terrorism experience and tactics between U.S. law enforcement agencies and the Israeli national police. JINSA also acts as a liaison between the U.S. military, concerned citizens and Congress, and facilitates visits to military bases, holds symposia, and produces papers that highlight trends, and areas of concern regarding U.S. national security.

Serving Two Masters

The interrelation between “JINSANs” and the government has deep roots. In 1977, the founders chose as their executive director Michael Ledeen, who at the time was a visiting professor of history at the University of Rome. Although he is still a board member, Ledeen’s JINSA affiliations do not appear in any of his official biographies.

After serving as executive director, Ledeen entered government on the coattails of Reagan’s presidential victory. From 1982 to 1986 he served as a consultant to the White House, Pentagon, State Department, and the Italian military intelligence service. Ledeen is most infamously remembered as the central figure in the “arms-for-hostages” scandal (Irangate), which exposed the Reagan administration’s involvement in illegal arm sales to Iran via Israel. In 1984, Ledeen served as go-between for Oliver North and Israeli spy David Kimche to gain the release of U.S. hostages in Beirut through Iranian arms dealer and Mossad agent Manucher Ghorbanifar. In congressional testimony, National Security advisor Robert McFarlane stated that Ledeen violated procedure by bypassing the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv to deal directly with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres.[199]

Ledeen’s successor at JINSA was Stephen Bryen, who epitomizes the ease with which pro-Israeli Jews infiltrate the government. In 1978, a North Dakota businessman, Michael Saba, was in a Washington hotel coffee shop ordering breakfast when he overheard Bryen offer a top-secret document on Saudi air bases to a group of visiting officials from the Israel Ministry of Defense. At the time, Bryen was on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Saba was struck by the inclusive “we” tone of the conversation with these agents of a foreign government and began taking notes. According to his account, the conversation concerned strategies Israel could use to reverse the steep decline in administration and congressional support for Israel caused by Menachem Begin‘s religious justifications for holding on to the West Bank:

“We must re-establish credibility,” Bryen told the group in English. “The West Bank can be gained on security grounds. To get [Senator Henry] Jackson and the others back we must push the security issue.” …. An Israeli asked Bryen if certain military information were available. “I have the Pentagon document on the bases, which you are welcome to see,” [said Bryen.][200]

Saba, who is also former executive director of the National Association of Arab Americans, took his concerns to the Justice Department. Subsequently, department and FBI investigators turned up sufficient evidence to consider a charge of espionage. In his book They Dare to Speak Out, former Congressman Paul Findley summarizes the case:

After nine months the investigating attorneys recommended that a grand jury be empanelled to consider the evidence against Bryen. According to the Justice Department, other witnesses testified to Bryen’s Israeli contacts. Indeed, a Justice Department memorandum dated January 26, 1979, discussed “unresolved questions thus far, which suggest that Bryen is (a) gathering classified information for the Israelis, (b) acting as their unregistered agent and (c) lying about it….” The Justice Department studied the complaint for two years. Although it found that Bryen had an “unusually close relationship with Israel,” it made no charges and in late 1979 closed the file.[201]

During the investigation, Bryen was suspended from the committee but was reinstated. Despite a series of successful NAAA appeals, Bryen was never indicted. As Saba wrote, Deputy U.S. Attorney General Philip Heymann was a long-time professional associate and close friend of Bryen’s lawyer. Saba’s book The Armageddon Network is a history of the Bryen investigation, his current activities, and the Justice Department’s role. He raises the possibility that the department might have covered up Israeli espionage.[202]

After his reinstatement, Bryen left the committee to succeed Ledeen at JINSA, where he could work for Israel under the pretext of promoting the “strategic relationship.” He remained as executive director until he resigned in early 1981 in favor of his wife Shoshona. Bryen still kept his membership on the JINSA board of directors when he subsequently took up his new post as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, responsible for regulating military technology transfers to foreign countries.

Thus, at the very onset of the Zionist-dominated Reagan presidency, this member of JINSA and suspected Israeli spy was placed in the highly sensitive position of helping decide which weapons Israel could buy with its annual allotment of military aid, and also which technology Israel could use in its own arms industry. Israel’s abuse of U.S. satellite intelligence to bomb Iraq’s Osirik nuclear reactor also occurred at this time.

The man responsible for Bryen’s appointment was under Assistant Secretary-designate Richard Perle, the most powerful Israeli agent in the government. Perle also had a history in politics as a staff member for hawkish Israeli Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson. He also had more than causal contact with Israeli officials. In 1970, an FBI wiretap summary recorded Perle discussing classified information with the Israeli embassy, and in 1983, while in the government; he received payments to represent the interests of an Israeli weapons company.[203]

Perle is the mentor of Wolfowitz, architect of the Gulf War and George W. Bush’s Assistant Secretary of Defense; a research fellow at the AEI; former member of the Defense Policy Board, and current member of the JINSA advisory board. Other key board members past and present include: Dick Cheney, Douglas Feith (the third-highest executive at the Pentagon), Jeane Kirkpatrick (Reagan’s UN ambassador), John Bolton, Sen. Connie Mack, Congressmen Jack Kemp and Stephen Solarz, Lt.-Gen. Jay Garner (George W. Bush’s first viceroy in post-invasion Iraq), and Ahmad Chalabi (head of the Iraqi National Congress).

Center for Security Policy (CSP)

Formed in 1988, the Center for Security Policy was nominally different from JINSA, but it might as well be considered JINSA’s defense and foreign policy arm, since its leadership features many of the same people—Perle, Ledeen, Kirkpatrick, etc.  Frank Gaffney runs the center, and these highlights from his CSP bio show how fast the Zionists spread throughout the Reagan administration:

• Late 1970s—with Perle on the staff of Sen. Jackson, specializing in defense and foreign policy.

• February 1981 to August 1983—staff member on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

• August 1983 until November 1987—Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy under Perle.

• April to November 1987—Succeeded Perle as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, and chaired the prestigious High Level Group, NATO’s senior politico-military committee.

Whereas JINSA declares its Israeli bias up front, the CSP hides behind an innocuous, generic name. It’s little more than a reflection of Gaffney’s simplistic, militant prejudices, and as such cannot seriously be considered a research institution. If there’s an anti-Arab, anti-UN, pro-Israeli, pro-military or obsequiously pro-Bush position, the CSP will adopt it.

The CSP is less of an independent organization than it is a recycler of writings from other Zionist sources like The National Review, American Spectator, Fox News, New York Post, frontpagemagazine.com and townhall.com. To give an example of the incestuous nature of the Zionist fronts, frontpagemagazine.com managing editor Jamie Glazov offered up a fawning interview with Ledeen in which he affected Ledeen’s “terrorist” vocabulary and asked him leading questions to elicit the proper anti-Arab responses. At no time did Glazov identify Ledeen as a member of JINSA, yet the interview was dutifully reposted on the CSP website as if it were from an outside source.

In all, the CSP supplied 22 people to the incoming Bush administration, including Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith and Secretary of the Air Force James Roche. Of late, though, the CSP may have become a victim of its own arrogance. As Jason Vest wrote in The Nation:

“Gaffney has worn out his welcome by being an overbearing gadfly rather than a serious contributor to policy,” says a senior Pentagon political official. Since earlier this year, White House political adviser Karl Rove has been casting about for someone to start a new, more mainstream defense group that would counter the influence of CSP…. “A lot of us have taken [Gaffney] at face value over the years,” one influential conservative says. “Yet we now know he’s pushed for some of the most flawed missile defense and conventional systems…And since 9/11, he’s been less concerned with the threat to America than to Israel.”[204]

Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP)

Of all these Zionist fronts, the respectable-sounding Washington Institute for Near East Policy most clearly epitomizes the surreptitious hijacking of U.S. policy. WINEP began as an offshoot of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most influential Israeli lobby group in Washington D.C. In February 1985, Martin Indyk, a three-year employee of AIPAC, co-founded WINEP with Barbi Weinstein, former president of the Jewish Federation in Los Angeles and wife of AIPAC chairman emeritus Lawrence Weinberg.

Indyk wanted to model WINEP after the Brookings Institution, and promote it as a “balanced and realistic” voice on the Middle East, but WINEP’s Israel bias and links to AIPAC are transparent. Of the more than 100 members of the institute’s board of trustees, 14 also sat on AIPAC’s board, and in turn, six members of WINEP’s 11 executive committee members, served on AIPAC’s executive committee, or national council, including Weinberg and two of WINEP’s three vice-presidents. Moreover, AIPAC provided office space and services to WINEP during its first year.[205]

Building for Peace

In 1988, WINEP became to President Bush what the Heritage Foundation was to Reagan in 1980—it set the agenda and sent its people into government. Just before the November 1988 election, WINEP issued the 113-page report Building for Peace: An American Strategy for the Middle East, a how-to-manual to stall Israeli–Palestinian peace negotiations to the point where Israel would not have to give up anything. One such tactical recommendation was to follow Israel’s lead in refusing to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization, even though the PLO recognized Israel that same month at a session of the Palestine National Council.

Building for Peace recommended essentially four basic principles it said the Bush government had to achieve before diplomacy could work:

1. The legitimate rights of the Palestinians should be secured through direct negotiations.

2. The principal participants in the negotiations must be Israel, Palestinian representatives and Jordan.

3. Any Palestinian participant must accept UN Resolutions 242 and 338, renounce terror and recognize Israel’s right to exist.

4. There should be a prolonged transitional period in which the intentions of the Palestinians to live in peace with Israel and Jordan could be tested.[206]

Of course, this is exactly the tack Bush adopted at the 1991 Madrid conference, as shown by James Baker‘s differing letters to Arafat and Shamir. Note particularly how the authors of Building for Peace stipulate that only the Palestinians must renounce terror, accept UN resolutions 242 and 338, and recognize Israel’s right to exist. Israel, the great violator of these resolutions, is absolved of any responsibility as implied in Point 1 above.

Jordan has no useful role to play in this affair, but the Israelis want it included because it is utterly dependent on U.S. aid. The second reason is that the Israelis did not recognize the Palestinians’ right to exist, and so it needed to speak over their heads. A Jordanian state with a subject Palestinian population would be easier for Israel to intimidate and control.

The report claims that both sides have an obligation to renounce violence, but this attempt at evenhandedness cannot be taken seriously, especially considering its one-sided recommendations for regional security: “Any Palestinian entity which emerges from such a negotiation would have to have its authority heavily qualified by the security requirements of Israel and Jordan….[and that] preserving Israel’s military superiority is the only way to ensure Israel’s security and discredit the Arab war option.”

In Part V of Building for Peace, “Implementing U.S. Policy: Appointing a Special Emissary,” the actual biases of WINEP are formally laid out:

• Express to the new Israeli government the president’s desire to work in close consultation on the peace process and his unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security. [emphasis added]

• Begin the sensitive process of discussing with the region’s leaders the need to control the arms race.

• Emphasize the new administration’s commitment to a process designed to reshape the political environment rather than seek a procedural breakthrough to negotiations.

• Express to friendly Arab leaders the president’s concern for their interests.

The emissary will need to avoid creating inappropriate expectations in the region or generating plans for grand solutions once he returns.

Given the need to maintain Israel’s military superiority, including its nuclear monopoly, Point 2 must be read as an attempt to prevent other states from developing even a civilian nuclear industry. Point 3 means that Israel and the U.S. want to stall for time until compliant regimes are in place, especially in Iraq, Syria, and Iran. The final sentence essentially confirms this policy, in which the emissary is prohibited from doing anything constructive to bring about a peaceful settlement.

In all, six WINEPers joined the Bush government: Lawrence S. Eagleburger, Dennis Ross, Richard Haass, Francis Fukuyama, Aaron David Miller and Harvey Sicherman. Building for Peace would become the blueprint for the Clinton administration.

Of course, other Zionist fronts also masquerade as objective public policy centers—Hudson Institute, Middle East Media Research Institute and Middle East Forum to name but three—but the four mentioned above are for the moment sufficient to show that the Zionist usurpation of U.S. policy rose in tandem with the ascent of Straussian economic elitism.

By the end of Bush’s term, the chief opposition to repressive regimes in the Arab world had taken religious forms, and Israel-firsters in the media, academia and Middle East “think tanks” were propagating bigoted dogma about a global threat from Muslims who hated Western freedoms, values and prosperity.

6

The Jewish Presidency

The 1992 presidential election began the fifth stage of the Zionist campaign to control the U.S. government. The first stage started with the buying of the Truman White House (1948), which forced the world to recognize the illegal state of Israel. Next came the Johnson administration (1968), which was pre-occupied with the Vietnam War and re-election, and so turned a blind eye to further illegal seizures of Palestinian land in the Occupied Territories as well as to the unprovoked, illegal attack on the USS Liberty. In the third stage (1976), Jimmy Carter tried and failed to impose a rational solution to the oil crisis, and became obsessed with the fallout from the fall of the shah. The perception of Carter as an indecisive, weak president made the eclipse of rational government possible. The fourth stage (1980), thus, began with the election of Reagan and the rise of American fascism.

Even though Zionists strengthened their influence throughout these periods, few if any Israel-first (“warm”) Jews were appointed to senior ministerial positions. In the new Clinton administration, “warm” Jews would fill 90 percent of key federal posts.[1] One notable position was that of Special Liaison to the Jewish Community (Jay Footlik). No other group has a special liaison. This high concentration of Jews was so conspicuous that the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv felt the need to run a 4,000-word article entitled “The Jews Who Run Clinton’s Court”:

As far as the Jews are concerned, President Bill Clinton contributed towards a real change in the administration’s outlook, having concluded a series of changes in enhancing Jewish power beginning under President [Ronald] Reagan and his Secretary of State, [George] Shultz. True, Jewish political influence was also evident in America of the previous decades. We have already seen a Jewish Secretary of State, [Henry] Kissinger, enjoying the confidence of President Richard Nixon, and there were Jewish Cabinet members under [Jimmy] Carter. However, they were usually the exceptions testifying to the rule. Especially, pious Jews were hardly ever appointed to participate in political work concerning the Middle East. …

All the Clinton Administration officials dealing with Israel… may have different views concerning the desired solution for the Israeli-Arab conflict but they are warm Jews in whatever they do. They sometimes disagree among themselves and they sometimes even disagree with the views of the Israeli governments, first and foremost since they are Americans and their primary loyalty is towards America. But they also firmly believe that the shared interests between the two states are fundamental and permanently enduring. It is because of this deeply held belief that they made a huge contribution to the fact that the Clinton Administration has fully adopted their approach on the issue of relations between the U.S. and Israel.

Perhaps because of that belief they claim that they are upset about the Israeli violations of human rights in the Territories, and are even more upset when one or another Israeli minister takes an initiative concerning Iraq, which does not accord with the American line. “If Israel wants American support for all its interests it also must coordinate its steps with us when this concerns the basic interests of the U.S.,” one of the senior officials told me this week, following the news of the initiative of ministers Moshe Shachal and Binyamin Ben-Eliezer to add Iraq to the peace process.[2]

This excerpt contains four observations that deserve special comment to appreciate how Zionists would come to lead the fascist takeover of the U.S. The first concerns the assertion that warm Jews have a “primary loyalty” towards America. One would naturally expect American government officials to have loyalty to their own country; anything else would amount to treason. Yet the phrase “primary loyalty” implies that warm Jews have loyalty to at least one foreign power. This conclusion is validated in the next sentence: “But they also firmly believe that the shared interests between [the U.S. and Israel] are fundamental and permanently enduring.” Thus, warm Jews have divided loyalties, which means they cannot be trusted to act in the U.S.’s best interest. The seemingly positive slant given to “primary loyalty” is an attempt to obscure this fact.

The second observation concerns the expression “shared interests.” It is meant to convey the impression that the U.S. and Israel share a common value system and have similar objectives in the Middle East, yet there is no evidence to suggest such a commonality of interests, much less a “fundamental and permanently enduring” one. The U.S. is founded on republican principles of popular government. It has a Constitution, Bill of Rights, the rule of law, and common citizenship for its people. Israel has none of these democratic traditions. It is a chauvinistic, colonial state that has no regard for international law.

The U.S. could not possibly have a shared interest in the systematic mistreatment of the Palestinians, but the reporter had to imply that it did so that he could draw the following conclusion: “It is because of this deeply held belief that… the Clinton Administration has fully adopted their approach on the issue of relations between the U.S. and Israel.”

The reporter cannot overtly state that Israel and the Lobby run the U.S., so the ventriloquist/dummy relationship must be masked in a faux gentility that supports the appearance of independent American policy. This illusion is borne out by the U.S.’s idle threat of predicating support for Israel on its respect for basic U.S. interests. If this threat had any meaning, settlement construction would have ceased long ago, and Israel would have been forced to abide by Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention: “Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive… The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”[3]

The third observation concerns the general tactical disagreements among warm Jews, and how the Labor/Likud alternations in Israel’s government determined U.S. attitudes toward Middle East. This will be the focus of the following section. The fourth observation concerns the attempt of two Israeli ministers to add Iraq to the Middle East peace negotiations. The date of this statement is September 1994, which means the plan to attack Iraq had been in the works for more than eight years. This observation will be taken up later.

The Farce of Oslo

A major factor in the Likud defeat was the intifada, a spontaneous uprising against Israeli occupation that began in the fall of 1987 in the Gaza Strip. In June 1992, Shamir’s inability to quell the unrest led to a broad rejection of hard-line settlement policy in favor of a Labor government under Yitzhak Rabin, who signaled an apparent willingness to sign a genuine peace treaty. Clinton, like Bush, also seemed to want a peaceful settlement of Israeli–Palestinian violence, so Rabin’s victory was fortuitous.

Clinton capitalized quickly. On September 13, 1993, he was front-and-centre when Arafat and Rabin came to the White House to sign theDeclaration of Principles on Interim Self-government,which signaled the official end of theintifada by beginning the five-year Oslo “peace process,” by which time Israel would pull its military out of the Occupied Territories and a final status agreement would be signed.[4] Arafat’s letter to Rabin four days earlier captured this general mood of optimism.

The PLO considers that the signing of the Declaration of Principles constitutes a historic event, inaugurating a new epoch of peaceful coexistence, free from violence and all other acts which endanger peace and stability. Accordingly, the PLO renounces the use of terrorism and other acts of violence and will assume responsibility over all PLO elements and personnel in order to assure their compliance, prevent violations and discipline violators. In view of the promise of a new era and the signing of the Declaration of Principles and based on Palestinian acceptance of Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the PLO affirms that those articles of the Palestinian Covenant which deny Israel’s right to exist, and the provisions of the Covenant which are inconsistent with the commitments of this letter are now inoperative and no longer valid.[5]

In his return letter, Rabin formally recognized the Palestinian Liberation Organization as the Palestinian people’s representative and Israel’s negotiating partner. Given this long-awaited mutual recognition, it seemed nothing could stop the inexorable move towards a settlement.

Doubtless one reason for Arafat’s optimism was Rabin’s promise to freeze new “settlement” construction and prevent any changes to the status quo in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip during the five years of talks. Also, Arafat needed a personal political victory for himself and his organization. During the Gulf War, he was the only Arab leader to side with Saddam Hussein, and this alienated him from the U.S. and other Arab states. The peace negotiations allowed Arafat to present himself and the PLO positively; in fact, Arafat was now hailed as a partner for peace.

The heady atmosphere hit its zenith on October 14, 1994, when Arafat, Rabin and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Twelve days later, Rabin and King Hussein of Jordan even signed a formal peace treaty. But after a Jewish zealot assassinated Rabin in central Tel Aviv on November 4, 1995, the optimism all but died. A caretaker government under Peres lasted only six months before it was supplanted by a Likud/Labor unity government led by the provocative Benjamin Netanyahu, who did everything he could to sabotage the agreement.

Because of his assassination, Rabin has been virtually canonized as a champion of peace, but such an accolade is wholly undeserved. Rabin agreed to recognize the PLO only because repeated refusals had failed to stop the intifada. As recently as 1988, Rabin ordered the army to intensify violence and break the limbs of Palestinians.[6] Moreover, the fact that Rabin died before the “peace process” was concluded, lends credence to the notion that it might have worked under his leadership. This is also nonsense. As events showed, the Oslo process was little more than a U.S./Israeli feint to disarm Palestinian militants and legitimize the Zionist theft of Arab land.

In fact, Labor betrayed this fact almost immediately after signing the Declaration of Principles. From 1992 to 1996, the West Bank “settler” population expanded by 39 percent to 145,000, of which only 16 percent was due to births. The government also built a major network of access roads in preparation to annex several large settlement blocs.

In East Jerusalem alone, the Jewish population grew by 800 percent over this period to more than 170,000, and the Rabin/Peres governments authorized completion of 10,000 subsidized housing units begun by Shamir. Also in violation of international law and Oslo’s principles, Rabin and Peres reaffirmed Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem.[7]

This kind of treachery is part of Labor’s standard operating procedure. The only real difference between it and Likud is that Labor feigns respect for diplomacy and legal niceties, whereas as Likud commits overt acts of aggression. For example, over the entire period of the Oslo negotiations during which Labor ruled for all but three years, the number of “settlers” in the Occupied Territories quietly doubled to more than 200,000. Since 1993, Israel has imposed a permanent closure on the Occupied Territories, and there was no reduction in the number of Arab houses demolished under the fraudulent pretext of lacking “permits.” These facts prove that Rabin’s promise was worthless.

Nevertheless, Arafat continued to negotiate and sign interim agreements, thereby giving increasing legitimacy to Israel’s dishonest interpretation of UNSC Resolution 242. Moreover, any agreement that he might have signed would have come at the expense of the Palestinians’ right of return and right to compensation for the 1947-48 dispossession. Here, too, Israel had already pledged to honor these commitments (UNGA Resolutions 194 and 273), but would not discuss them. Fact is, Arafat had nothing to gain and everything to lose. U.S. acquiescence toward Israel’s creeping land grab was made clear when Peres declared in 1996: “We have exhausted our requests. President Clinton has answered all our needs. There has been no American president in history like President Clinton, in his support of Israel and the Jewish people.“[8]

Blueprint for Subversion—Clean Break

Netanyahu’s May 1996 victory gave the crazies the opening they needed to mount a coup against their own government. In July, they presented Netanyahu with Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm. The report was prepared by the “Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000” at the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, a right-wing “think tank” with offices in Washington D.C. and Jerusalem.

Perle, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, was the group’s leader. Other signatories included James Colbert (JINSA), Douglas Feith (Feith and Zell Associates law firm), Jonathan Torop, (WINEP), David Wurmser (who commissioned the report for IASPS and who is Perle‘s colleague at the AEI) and his wife Meyrav Wurmser (Johns Hopkins University, Hudson Institute).

Clean Break was an opportunistic end-run around the Clintonadministration and a radicalized version of WINEP’s earlier 1998 Labor-ZionistBuilding for Peace.“Clean Break” refers to the need for Israel to “break away” from its 70-year tradition of Labor Zionism, which the authors blame for hobbling the economy and cramping its ability to express its national sovereignty:

Benjamin Netanyahu’s government comes in with a new set of ideas… It can forge a peace process and strategy based on an entirely new intellectual foundation, one that restores strategic initiative and provides the nation the room to engage every possible energy on rebuilding Zionism, the starting point of which must be economic reform.[9]

The authors of Clean Break highlighted four main tactics Netanyahu could use to subvert the U.S.-brokered peace agreement. They even highlighted “text” passages that Netanyahu could use in speeches.

A New Approach to Peace

“Displaying moral ambivalence between the effort to build a Jewish state and the desire to annihilate it by trading ‘land for peace’ will not secure ‘peace now.’ Our claim to the land—to which we have clung for hope for 2000 years—is legitimate and noble. It is not within our own power, no matter how much we concede, to make peace unilaterally. Only the unconditional acceptance by Arabs of our rights, especially in their territorial dimension, ‘peace for peace,’ is a solid basis for the future.” (Text passage)

Peace was no longer a matter to be negotiated; it was to be imposed with no regard for the needs of the Palestinians, which was exactly the attitude of the British government of David Lloyd-George. In language eerily similar to Adolf Hitler’s portrayal of Germany before the outbreak of World War II—see Chapter 14—the authors see Israel as a peace-loving state beset on all sides by foes eager to destroy it, and they invoke chauvinistic allusions to a romanticized past (the biblical state of Israel) to justify the theft of land.

Moving to a Traditional Balance of Power Strategy

“Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq—an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right—as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions. Jordan has challenged Syria’s regional ambitions recently by suggesting the restoration of the Hashemites in Iraq. This has triggered a Jordanian-Syrian rivalry to which Assad has responded by stepping up efforts to destabilize the Hashemite Kingdom, including using infiltrations. Syria recently signaled that it and Iran might prefer a weak, but barely surviving Saddam, if only to undermine and humiliate Jordan in its efforts to remove Saddam.”

“Balance of power” is wholly misleading. Israel wants to redraw the Middle East to suit its interests, and King Hussein‘s reassertion of the Hashemite claim to Iraq is the perfect means. It is important to note that the removal of Saddam Hussein is already being discussed “as an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right.” Although much more will be said about this later, it should be obvious that George W. Bush’s reasons for wanting to remove Hussein had nothing to do with compliance with UN Security Council resolutions, weapons of mass destruction or even oil.

Changing the Nature of Relations with the Palestinians

“Israel has a chance to forge a new relationship between itself and the Palestinians. First and foremost, Israel’s efforts to secure its streets may require hot pursuit into Palestinian-controlled areas, a justifiable practice with which Americans can sympathize… Israel has no obligations under the Oslo agreements if the PLO does not fulfill its obligations. If the PLO cannot comply with these minimal standards, then it can be neither a hope for the future nor a proper interlocutor for [the] present. To prepare for this, Israel may want to cultivate alternatives to Arafat’s base of power. Jordan has ideas on this.”

This section reduced the Oslo agreements to a scofflaw by making compliance a one-way street. If Arafat didn’t play along, he would be removed to make way for a compliant Palestinian leader that would do Israel’s bidding. Under this double standard, Zionist “settlers” are allowed to terrorize Palestinians, but the moment a Palestinian retaliates, Netanyahu could charge non-compliance.

Forging A New U.S.–Israeli Relationship

“In recent years, Israel invited active U.S. intervention in Israel’s domestic and foreign policy for two reasons: to overcome domestic opposition to “land for peace” concessions the Israeli public could not digest, and to lure Arabs — through money, forgiveness of past sins, and access to U.S. weapons — to negotiate. This strategy, which required funneling American money to repressive and aggressive regimes, was risky, expensive, and very costly for both the U.S. and Israel, and placed the United States in roles it should neither have nor want.”

In this section, the authors ostensibly claim that Israel should have independence to effect economic reforms, but the purpose is to push the U.S. out of the picture so that Israel can inflict unfettered terror on Palestinians. That cannot happen quite so easily so long as the U.S. controls the purse strings and values regional stability over Zionist expansionism.

Jebel Abu Ghneim/Har Homa

Israel had been planning for years to build a “settlement” on a densely forested hill overlooking Jerusalem called Jebel Abu Ghneim, but appeals from Palestinian and Israeli landowners, as well as drawn out court cases, had delayed construction. A quick look at this issue shows how Netanyahu put Clean Break into action.

Peres‘s Labor government started the project in early 1996, but because of overwhelming international condemnation he stopped construction. Soon after Netanyahu took office and received Clean Break, he announced that construction of Har Homa would resume. On February 26, 1997, the Ministerial Committee on Jerusalem gave approval to build the first 2,465 of a total of 6,500 units and set off an international furor. The UN Security Council debated this issue for two days, leading to a March 7 vote on a European resolution denouncing Israeli settlement practices in Jerusalem, especially Har Homa. The vote was 14–1. The U.S. exercised its veto even though four days earlier Clinton told Arafat he opposed Har Homa.

On March 13, the UN General Assembly, with a majority vote of 133, reaffirmed the majority sentiment of the Security Council, but to no avail. Bulldozers moved onto Jebel Abu Ghneim five days later. When the Security Council passed an identical condemnatory resolution nine days later, the U.S. again vetoed it. Throughout this period, Israel used Clean Break-style deceptions to defend Har Homa and assail those who challenged its legality. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

The Declaration of Principles of September 1993, the Interim Agreement of 1995, and all related documents, contain no commitment to refrain from the construction of settlements, neighborhoods, houses, roads, or any other such building project. Hence, the approval of the Har Homa project and its implementation do not constitute any violation of these agreements.[10]

In fact, the ministry’s statement flatly contradicted Article I of theDeclaration of Principles, which states that the objective of the current negotiations was to lead to a permanent settlement based on UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338. Since all “settlements” are illegal under these resolutions, the Israeli position is fraudulent. On April 25, at Qatar’s request, the UN General Assembly convened a rare special session to discuss Jebel Abu Ghneim/Har Homa. Israel’s chargé d’affairs David Peleg vehemently denounced the UN’s right to have any say in Israeli-Palestinian affairs, and especially condemned the special session:

It is a relic of the Cold War era, and is particularly unsuited and discordant in the context of the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. The dispute between Israel and the Palestinians over the building of a new neighborhood in Jerusalem and any other dispute that may arise between the two sides, cannot be considered, by any stretch of the imagination, a “threat to international peace and security.”[11]

PLO observer Nasser Kidwa called for the Assembly to impose “collective measures” against Israel, and he defended the Palestinians’ right “to shout and to use their bare hands to confront the Israeli gun and tank.” Peleg declared this statement to be “an incitement to violence” and proof of the PLO’s lack of commitment to curb terrorism, even though Kidwa’s statements are entirely consistent with the Charter of the UN and the right to self defense against aggression.[12]

The U.S.’s refusal to permit the Security Council to condemn Israel, even though the Clinton administration strongly opposed Har Homa, also shows that Israel was dictating policy. The speech by UN Ambassador Bill Richardson .” followed the standard propaganda format—quickly concede U.S. disapproval of Israeli aggression, and then explain at length why nothing should be done about it:

The achievement of a just, lasting and comprehensive peace in the Middle East requires an honest negotiating process. The parties must take special care to avoid preemptive actions that can be seen to prejudge the outcome of negotiations, while working hard to nurture an atmosphere of trust and confidence that will make productive negotiations possible. The decision on Har Homa/Jebel Abu Ghneim did just the opposite. We regret that it was taken. However, our responsibility as a co-sponsor of the peace process requires us to tell our friends in the United Nations frankly: the Security Council and the General Assembly should not insert themselves into issues that the negotiating partners have decided will be addressed in their permanent status talks.[13]

Note the mild rebuke (“We regret”), and how quickly Richardson maneuvered the speech into a lecture on non-intervention. He could not oppose Har Homa lest he give offence to the crazies and the Christian Zionists in Congress. Thus, he avoided the subject:

Mr. President, the United Nations can and has played an important part in supporting the Middle East peace process. This is the right and proper role for the UN to play…. This resolution would have the opposite effect of its advertised intent. Threats of economic boycott, condemnation and harsh rhetoric will only serve to erode the vital trust, confidence and quiet diplomatic efforts that are needed if the peace process is to begin moving forward again.

In other words, Richardson told the UN it had no obligation other than to stand aside while Israel and the U.S. mugged the Charter, even though Article 34 clearly states that the UN had a right to intervene: “The Security Council may investigate any dispute, or any situation which might lead to international friction or give rise to a dispute, in order to determine whether the continuance of the dispute or situation is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security.”

The cruel irony of this debacle is that it was merely a political stunt. According to a poll conducted by the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, only 38 percent of Israelis wanted it built, and 55 percent wanted to wait for the right time or drop the idea altogether. Netanyahu built Har Homa to placate hardliners in his coalition government who merely wanted it built as a symbol of Jewish control.[14] As Ha’aretz reported:

Construction companies have had little success at marketing their large inventory of unsold apartments in the Har Homa neighborhood, which caused Arafat to suspend talks with Israel in 1996 when its construction began. Similarly, the houses of the new Jewish compound situated in the heart of East Jerusalem’s Ras al-Amud neighborhood remain unoccupied. … One Palestinian journalist said last week that the attitude of the Palestinians toward every house and every kindergarten being built in the settlements was identical to the attitude of Israelis to terrorist attacks carried out in the heart of Israel. Palestinian leaders are certain that the stepped-up Israeli pressure—military raids, destruction, mass arrests, tightening siege, continuation of settlement initiatives and daily toll of victims—will ensure a further spiraling up of the circle of violence.[15]

Israel’s Christian Soldiers

While the UN was debating Jebel Abu Ghneim/Har Homa, the Lobby was priming its Zionist forces in the U.S. Congress and Senate. In early March 1997, the White House received 14 letters signed by 140 Senators and Congressmen urging Clinton not to attend a March 15 meeting in Gaza to protest Har Homa. In fact, two main letters—sponsored by Sen. Connie Mack (R-FL) and Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-GA)—were identical, which means they were almost certainly written by the Lobby.[16] At length, Clinton sent a representative—U.S. Consul General in Jerusalem Edward Abington—but this was as much as he could do, since Likud was now calling the shots.

Evangelical Christians had enjoyed warm relations with Netanyahu dating to his time as Israel’s ambassador to the UN. In one of his first acts after taking power Netanyahu convened the Israel Christian Advocacy Council to bring 17 Christian Zionist leaders over for a briefing on the Middle East. These leaders—who included Pat Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting Network; Ralph Reed, then director of the conservative Christian Coalition; Ed McAteer of the Religious Roundtable; and Falwell—returned to the U.S. and proceeded to spread the gospel ofClean Break. Their objective was two-fold—undermine the president’s peace initiative and attack moderate religious groups who support a shared Jerusalem.[17]

Democrats and Republicans alike fell over themselves to ingratiate themselves with Israel and manufacture legality for Har Homa, especially at the annual policy conference of the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee on April 6-8 in Washington, D.C., Gingrich was the most egregious: “Let me be clear. Har Homa is not, as the media attempt to insist, a settlement. It is a Jewish neighborhood in the city Israel has chosen as her capital.” He went on to accuse the media of spreading false images of Israel and being an unwitting dupe of Arafat‘s “information warfare campaign against Israel.”[18]

Ten days after the end of the conference 10 of the U.S.’s top Christian Zionists took out a full-page ad in the New York Times entitled “Christians Call For A United Jerusalem.” Using copious biblical references, the authors repeated the chauvinistic claim that Jerusalem was the political and spiritual capital of the Jews alone and cannot be divided.[19] John Hagee, pastor of the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, and one of the signatories openly equated the settlement of Russian Jews in the West Bank with the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. He looks upon the Clinton administration with the same contempt as John Nelson Darby looked upon the Anglican Church. When asked if he realized that increasing Jewish settlements contradicted U.S. policy, Hagee declared: “I am a Bible scholar and a theologian, and from my perspective the law of God transcends the laws of the United States government and the U.S. State Department.”[20]

The corollary to this religious sedition is the non-existence of the Palestinians as a people. They are seen as enemies of God, as Darby said, and God sanctifies whatever is done to them in the name of reclaiming “biblical Israel.” Similarly, any acts of Palestinian self-defense are anathematized as terrorism.

Manufacturing Dissent

Netanyahu’s government even resorted to outright disinformation to exhort Christians to stoke anti-Muslim hatred within the Zionist community. On October 22, 1997, Israel Radio fraudulently claimed that Palestinian Christians faced relentless and brutal persecution from the predominantly Muslim Palestinian Authority. These acts were said to include the destruction of Christian cemeteries, cutting phone lines to monasteries, and breaking into convents.

The story was parroted two days later by the Jerusalem Post, and on December 4. Oklahoma Rep. J.C. Watts used it as the basis for an inflammatory op/ed piece, in which he called for a review and possible freeze on $307 million in grants pledged to the Palestinian Authority.

He wrote of “abuse suffered by Christians at the hands of Mr. Arafat’s henchmen,” and regurgitated the Netanyahu government’s press release. Christians in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, now account for just 20 percent of the total population and the Christian population of Jerusalem also is steadily declining. The trend is clear: Those Christians living under the Palestinian Authority’s direct control who can afford to leave are doing so. Since the beginning of the Middle East peace process, Christians living under Mr. Arafat’s regime have suffered in a silent state of oppression.”[21]

Against Watts’s unresearched allegations, the following personal account by Donald Wagner, professor of religion and Middle Eastern studies at North Park University in Chicago and executive director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, describes how this elaborate fraud came about:

The campaign grew, thanks in part to publicity generated by the articles of A.M. Rosenthal and William Safire of the New York Times, and pressure exerted on Congress by Michael Horowitz, a pro-Israel lobbyist. Palestinian Christians were quick to denounce the charges. Mayor Hanna Nasser of Bethlehem stated: “Our churches have complete freedom, and I’ve never heard that they’ve been under pressure.”

Together with the international evangelical leader “Brother Andrew,” president of the Netherlands based Open Doors; I led a May 1998 investigation of the Israeli charges on behalf of Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding. We interviewed more than 60 Muslim and Christian leaders, people at the grass roots level throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip and officials and leaders from the PA and Israeli government. We found no evidence of PA or Muslim persecution of Palestinian Christians, although there were three isolated cases of Christian-Muslim family disputes over intermarriage.

The most telling interview was with Uri Mor, the director of the Department of Christian Communities at the Israeli Ministry of Religious Affairs, which oversees all Christian activities in Israel and the Occupied Territories. Mor said the charges were traceable to David Bar-Ilan, Netanyahu’s chief spokesman, and told our team that Bar-Ilan used shreds of information as his “bread and butter” in the propaganda campaign against the Palestinians.

We later interviewed a staff member of the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem, which had previously interviewed Mor and looked into the problem. The consulate had received a report on the persecution of Christian Palestinians as a confidential internal document. Upon investigation, it determined that the basis of the report came from four Palestinians who had been converted to Christianity by a Messianic Jewish evangelist who resided in an Israeli settlement. Two had criminal backgrounds and the others were suspected of collaborating with the Israeli secret services. The PA had imprisoned the converts, based on their criminal activities, not their conversions.

Apparently, Bar-Ilan’s office leaked the report to the International Christian Embassy-Jerusalem, which then published the stories and launched a campaign against the PA. After our investigation, Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding issued a statement clarifying the matter and citing “disturbing indications that political motivations were behind the publicity about Christian persecution” in the Holy Land. The Christian Zionist campaign against the PA came to a halt but undoubtedly the tactic will be pursued again.[22]

Camp David—The Final Indignity

The Wye River Memorandum signed on October 23, 1998, between Arafat and Netanyahu was supposed to restart “the peace process” and expedite its resolution by May—five years after Rabin and Arafat signed the Cairo Agreement. Officially, it constituted a timetable for Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories, but much of it consisted of forcing Arafat to repress his own people. Sections A1-A3 were: “Outlawing and Combating Terrorist Organizations,” “Prohibiting Illegal Weapons” and “Preventing Incitement.” Of course, there was no mention of any reciprocal Israeli obligations.

The memorandum was dead almost as soon as it was signed. In December, Netanyahu reneged on a scheduled December 18 redeployment, and set a series of preposterous conditions for Arafat to meet. Israel was suspending all peace moves until the Palestinians stopped inciting violence against Israelis; handed over 30 Palestinian suspects to Israel; collected illegal weapons held by Palestinians, and ceased threats to declare a state on May 4, when the interim peace accord technically ended. This tactic comes right out of Clean Break, which arrogates to Israel the right to forego its obligations if the Palestinians do not live up to theirs. For this, proof was not necessary; accusation was tantamount to guilt. The real reason for this sabotage was politics—Netanyahu faced a no-confidence vote over the memorandum, and needed to prepare for the upcoming May 1999 elections.

In the face of Netanyahu’s obstructionism, Clinton was vapid and craven: “We now have the means to decide practical means to go forward and I think we’re well on our way to doing that. So, I have achieved what I came here to achieve and expect the Secretary of State to be back here in several weeks, and we’ll just keep at it.”[23]

On May 17, 1999, Labor returned to power under Ehud Barak. Arafat had acceded to Clinton’s request not to declare a sovereign Palestinian state so that talks could continue. Barak and Arafat signed the Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum to extend the deadline for an agreement on all permanent status issues by September 13, 2000. The substance of the memorandum, like all those before, is immaterial since the Palestinians and Israelis had always been negotiating at cross-purposes. Moreover, Israel had consistently found excuses to avoid fulfilling its interim treaty commitments:

• Scheduled military withdrawals from occupied territory had not taken place;

• Indiscriminate killing of Palestinians continued, as did settlement construction and Arab house demolition;

• The Occupied Territories remained under tight siege; and

• Israeli checkpoints and road destruction cut off Palestinian families from their land so they couldn’t make a living or feed themselves. (The same tactic was used in 1947-48 to draw the map of “Israel.”)

Clinton and Barak wanted to coerce Arafat into signing a dishonorable agreement for reasons that had nothing to do with peace. Clinton wanted a treaty to boost his political reputation and avoid alienating the Christian Zionists in Congress, and Barak wanted to legitimize the Zionist dispossession of the Palestinians. Each was interested in only one thing—cajoling and coercing Arafat to end the Palestinian resistance. This was not a peace conference—it was an ambush. Shlomo Ben-Ami, head of Barak’s negotiating team, provides some of the best evidence for U.S.–Israeli collusion and hypocrisy:

Refugees

[Clinton] went toward the Palestinians to the very end of the farthest limit of what we could accept. His formulation was that “the two sides recognize the right of the refugees to return to historic Palestine” or “to return to their homeland,” but on the other hand, he made it clear that “there is no specific right of return to Israel.”[24]

Leaving aside the obvious dishonesty of this passage, note how Clinton is serving Israel: “the farthest limit of what we could accept.” At no time did Clinton show any concern for Arafat’s minimum demands. In any event, the refugee question was not negotiable. The right of return is an individual right, not something that can be bargained away. Wavering on this point was Arafat’s greatest error.

Israel’s ‘Right to Exist’

Morally and conceptually, [Arafat] didn’t recognize Israel’s right to exist. He doesn’t accept the idea of two states for two peoples. He may be able to make some sort of partial, temporary settlement with us— though I have doubts about that, too—but at the deep level, he doesn’t accept us. Neither he nor the Palestinian national movement accepts us.

The fact that Arafat was prepared to negotiate at all proves the dishonesty of Ben-Ami‘s statement. Arafat was prepared to negotiate away the 78 percent of historic Palestine that was seized in 1947-48. In the end, Israel would not even give him that. The real failure of Camp David was Israel’s refusal to recognize Palestine’s right to exist.

Arafat’s Intransigence

When all is said and done, Camp David failed because Arafat refused to put forward proposals of his own and didn’t succeed in conveying to us the feeling that at some point his demands would have an end.

The idea that Arafat had to put forth a counterproposal is absurd, as is the idea that his demands were endless. Ben-Ami‘s statement contains the faulty presumption that Israel had the right to negotiate with land it didn’t rightly own. Arafat did not have to make a counter offer because such an offer would merely have been identical to the very purpose of the negotiations. Arafat and his negotiating team came to Camp David hoping to achieve four objectives:

• The right of return or appropriate compensation under the terms of UNGA Resolution 194;

• Complete Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, under UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338;

• Evacuation of all Israeli settlements; and

• Recognition of East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

All of these are consistent with international law, and are the stated objectives of the peace negotiations. For his part, Barak came with five obstructions that violated international law:

• No withdrawal to pre-1967 borders;

• No division of Jerusalem;

• No Palestinian state west of the Jordan River;

• Most Jewish settlers to remain under Israeli sovereignty, even after a final agreement; and

• No acknowledgement of moral or legal responsibility for Palestinian refugees.

Arafat had no need of a counterproposal; it was already spelled out in the objectives of the negotiations.

Barak’s ‘Generous Offer’

Palestinians don’t want a solution as much as they want to place Israel in the dock of the accused. They want to denounce our state more than they want their own state. At the deepest level they have a negative ethos. This is why unlike Zionism; they are unable to compromise....

The Big Lie that came out of Camp David was that Barak offered Arafat a final “generous offer” of 95 percent of the West Bank, but Arafat rejected it. No such offer was ever made. The canard of Arab rejection is similar to the one that holds the Arabs responsible for Middle East violence because they did not accept the Partition Plan. In each case, though, the deal offered to the Arabs was insulting.

Arafat was expected to agree to a total of four disconnected Bantustan-like enclaves in the West Bank and ostensibly all of the Gaza Strip, but Israel would retain total control over all water, roads, air space, borders, security, the Jordan Valley and East Jerusalem. The Palestinian “capital” in East Jerusalem would have been reduced to three villages: Abu Dis, Al-Aisaria and Sauwahra. The West Bank would become ade facto prison camp, with the Israeli army acting as wardens controlling every aspect of daily life. This is not the viable Palestinian state envisioned by the negotiations, yet the “95 percent” myth persists and is invoked to blame Palestinians for their miserable existence.[25]

Exploiting Violence

The “peace process” all but collapsed on September 28 after Likud leader Ariel Sharon surrounded by 1,000 bodyguards made a deliberately provocative visit to the al-Aqsa Mosque in Arab East Jerusalem. Israeli police violently repressed demonstrations and Arafat called the visit a dangerous affront to Islam’s holy places.

The visit sparked widespread rioting in the Occupied Territories and in the Galilee region, where police clashed with Israeli Arabs staging a sympathy strike. Sharon‘s provocation re-ignited violence, as was intended, and this in turn pushed Clinton and Barak to lean on Arafat even harder. On October 7, Barak gave Arafat a 48-hour ultimatum to end the violence, but this was absurd. Six days earlier, Hamas had called for Arafat’s resignation and for an increase in the resistance. Arafat was fighting a three-front war—against the U.S., Israel and Hamas.

On the same day as Barak issued the ultimatum—the first of two—a mob of Hamas militants overran Joseph’s Temple in the Palestinian city of Nablus. The attack took place just as the Israeli authorities were transferring security to the Palestinians. As the New York Times reported:

Firas al-Amleh, the Palestinian police chief in Nablus, said there was little he could do to stop the raging crowd. “We lost 18 martyrs here and 170 people were wounded,” he said of the week of gun battles around the shrine. “There are people here who have lost their brothers. What do you expect?”[26]

To the UN and Europe, responsibility for the violence was clear. The Security Council passed Resolution 1322, which read in part.

1. [The Security Council] deplores the provocation carried out at Al-Haram Al-Sharif in Jerusalem on 28 September 2000, and the subsequent violence there and at other Holy Places, as well as in other areas throughout the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, resulting in over 80 Palestinian deaths and many other casualties;

2. Condemns acts of violence, especially the excessive use of force against Palestinians, resulting in injury and loss of human life;

3. Calls upon Israel, the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by its legal obligations and its responsibilities under the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 12 August 1949…[27]

The next day, 200 Jews from the town of Upper Nablus attacked the Arab town of Nablus. Israel’s Channel 1 called it a “pogrom.”[28] Nevertheless, all that mattered to Clinton and the U.S. Congress was that Arafat rejected an offer from Israel, and that the violence had again erupted. It didn’t matter that the offer was a travesty, or that Sharon deliberately provoked the violence. Blame was predetermined. On October 13, more than 70 senators signed a letter to Clinton that said:

We are deeply concerned at the continuing, coordinated campaign of Palestinian violence. That campaign leads us to believe that Arafat either seeks to use violence as a negotiating tool to extort even further concessions from the government of Israel, or that he in fact intends to end the peace process in its entirety as a prelude to unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood.[29]

After Sharon came to power in February 2001, the farce of Oslo ended, and Israel had a new excuse to continue the occupation—”everything was Arafat’s fault.” No negotiations would take place until Mahmoud Abbas, who had demonstrated his willingness to deal behind his own peoples’ back to sign a dishonorable agreement, replaced him. Arafat was now demonized and ostracized. The way was now open for a return to Likud heavy-handedness under Sharon and the completion of the Zionist occupation of the White House.

7

Inventing bin Laden

To understand the specifics of the 1980 fascist coup and the creeping Zionization of the U.S. we need not examine Osama bin Laden’s life, development as a mujahid, or his quarrels with the Saudi royal family, yet without a discussion of these topics the events of the past 10 years make little sense. Bin Laden became a household word because of September 11, and as such was the catalyst that made possible the final stage of the Zionization of the U.S., even though he had nothing to do with the events of that day, as we shall see in Chapter 11.

It is fair to say that if bin Laden didn’t exist he would have had to be invented. In fact, he was. The great demiurge of international Islamic terrorism didn’t exist until September 11. A search of the New York Times database shows the following results for “bin Laden” from 1996 to 2000: 1996, 11; 1997, 5; 1998, 211; 1999, 162; and 2000, 170. Even after the high of 211 in the year the embassies were attacked, one would expect to find more, not fewer, hits in succeeding years.

Before September 11, Bush’s attitude toward bin Laden differed little from Clinton’s. From January 1 to September 10, 2001—the day before the attack—the number of hits totaled a mere 187—fewer than one per day. Over that same period, “Taliban” registered 205 hits.

Because the demonized image of bin Laden was integral to manipulating the U.S. into attacking Israel’s enemies, it must be debunked. That is the task of the next three chapters.

Sudan

Soon after he fled Saudi Arabia for Pakistan in 1991, Osama bin Laden crossed into Afghanistan to avoid being turned over to the Saudis. Nevertheless, Saudi and Pakistani intelligence agents pursued him and tried several times to assassinate him. Timely tip-offs from sympathetic sources allowed bin Laden to escape. The combination of political instability and the threats on his life, though, convinced bin Laden he would have to leave Afghanistan. To make matters worse, the mujahedin were not only fighting the communist regime, but also each other. Bin Laden could not abide the sight of Muslims fighting Muslims, and his attempts at mediation failed.

In late 1991, he left for Sudan, which was emerging as a major sponsor of Islamic movements, thanks to the leadership of the charismatic Dr. Hasan Abdullah Dafa’allah al-Turabi, who was admitting Muslims to Sudan without a visa. Bin Laden’s difficulties with the Saudi royal family were not yet public, so Turabi simply welcomed bin Laden as an honored guest. Even in his new location, bin Laden continued to receive frequent directives from the Saudi government warning him not to speak out. It had good reason to fear embarrassment, especially since the royal family was, and still is, locked in a dynastic battle.[1]

Dynastic squabbling aside, the real cause of the embarrassment was the government’s own ineptitude. Had it not harassed bin Laden and made him a virtual prisoner in Jeddah, he would not have had cause to flee to Pakistan. Furthermore, had the Saudis (with U.S. support) not attempted to assassinate bin Laden in Afghanistan, he would not have felt the need to flee to Sudan, and even here they tried to kill him in a Khartoum mosque. From 1992 to 1994, the Saudis also tried to freeze bin Laden’s assets and confiscate most of his property, but by that time most of his money, more than $250 million, was in foreign banks. The effect of the Saudi royal family’s ham-fisted bullying was to push bin Laden deeper into the milieu of political Islam.

All that can be said with any degree of certainty about the five years bin Laden spent in Sudan is that he established some businesses; was a public relations headache for the Saudi government; helped Turabi financially and logistically; and played a supporting role in attacks on U.S. forces in Yemen, Somalia and Saudi Arabia. It’s important to emphasize that at this time, bin Laden didn’t register on the U.S.’s radar. The only country out to get him was Saudi Arabia, principally for reasons of image.

As such, accounts of bin Laden’s activities from 1991 to 1996 must be treated with the utmost skepticism; nevertheless, the period is when the myth of Osama bin Laden as the great demiurge of international terrorism begins, thanks largely to Yossef Bodansky, an Israeli citizen who was a senior terrorism consultant to the U.S. departments of Defense and State.

His 1999 book Bin Laden: the Man Who Declared War on America was one of the first books on bin Laden to come out, yet its accuracy and Bodansky’s credibility are highly suspect. Although he claims to have conducted extensive interviews with “numerous officials, mujahedin, terrorists, commanders, émigrés, defectors and otherwise involved individuals from all sides of the conflict,” he refused to source any of this information out of concern for the safety of his sources.[2] Such secrecy is understandable in some instances, but the total absence of footnotes calls into question the entire book, especially when Bodansky makes questionable assertions.

For example, he credits bin Laden with building the al-Ruseiris Dam, (Sudan’s largest), the al-Rahad Kiananah canals, numerous airports and military installations, and the 310-mile al-Tahaddi (“defiance”) military road.[3]

Abdelwahab el-Affendi, a former Sudanese diplomat and now a senior research fellow at the Center for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster, said these claims are nonsense. For example, al-Ruseiris Dam was built in the 1960s and the most recent work on it was a project to reinforce its capacity, for which the Jeddah-based Islamic Development Bank approved a US$8 million equipment loan. The Saudis control the bank, although officially it reports to all member-states of the Organization of Islamic Conferences. It is therefore far-fetched, he said, to claim that bin Laden exercised any influence over the loan.[4]

Regarding the road construction, the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army was in control of the roads into Juba at this time. As a result, the roads fell into disrepair for want of regular maintenance. Also, a 1998 Oxfam report does not mention a road between Khartoum and Juba—only access by air and Nile barge.[5] In addition, el-Affendi said the road Bodansky claims was built is geographically impossible. “The road goes north, then suddenly jumps to Waw [far to the southwest of Khartoum], and from there to Juba [in the southeast],” he said. “I know some people believe bin Laden and his hosts to be miracle makers, but they would find it difficult to pull this one off.” He said the Iranians have tried to build the “Peace Road” to Juba since the early 1990s, but said not much progress has been made.

In a 1998 interview, Turabi credited bin Laden with building only a road in northern Sudan and the Khartoum Airport—no mention of the dam, terrorist bases or the southern or northern roads.[6] One could argue that Turabi understated bin Laden’s contributions, but he had no motive to do so.

The Shamal Bank

The case of the Shamal Bank in Khartoum shows how unsubstantiated statements about bin Laden generated their own momentum. According to the official version, bin Laden and some rich Sudanese merchants loyal to Turabi helped capitalize the bank to the tune of $50 million. To date, no evidence for this charge has been brought forward. It has merely been asserted.

On the Shamal Bank website (www.alshamalbank.com) bin Laden is nowhere mentioned in the who’s who of the bank’s founders, directors or shareholders going back to 1985.[7] It states that bin Laden’s involvement was limited to two accounts for the al-Hijra Construction & Development Co. Ltd. (opened on March 30, 1992) and a 1993 U.S. dollar account opened in the name of the Saudi-registered Wadi al-Aqiq Holding Co. That account was closed two years later. Moreover, the Shamal Bank’s acting general manager Ismail Mohamed Osman made no mention of the alleged $50 million capitalization in an interview with the Financial Times:

Bin Laden contacted us as a businessman, and opened a foreign currency account in the name of the al-Hijra company [Al-Hijra Construction, which built roads for the Sudanese government]. He never came himself to the bank. The foreign account was replenished from outside Sudan, mainly from Gulf States and from America, through bank transfers. Over three or four years, probably $1 million went through these accounts.[8]

On September 26, 2001, the $50 million claim emerged in the testimony of Sen. Carl Levin before the U.S. Senate Banking Committee. He cited a 1996 State Department fact sheet that said in 1991 bin Laden helped establish a bank in the Sudan called the Al Shamal Islamic Bank, allegedly providing it with initial capital of $50 million. He also cited an article dated March 16, 2000, in the Indigo Publication’s Intelligence Newsletter stating that bin Laden remains the leading shareholder of the bank.

Levin not only misstates the year the Shamal Bank was founded (1990), but makes bin Laden out to be one of the bank’s founders. Moreover, the statement “initial capital of $50 million” is demonstrably false since the bank started business with approximately $3.9 million in paid-up capital. The newsletter’s claim that bin Laden was the largest shareholder of the Shamal Bank as of March 2000 is not supported by any evidence.

Nevertheless, also on September 26, a CNN/Money magazine story “Bin Laden linked to BCCI” dutifully regurgitated Levin‘s testimony, claiming “a bank established by bin Laden” was involved in the collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. The story goes on to state that this “tidbit of information” had been overlooked by U.S. investigators for as long as 10 years because at the time bin Laden was not identified with terrorist attacks on the U.S. This tidbit of retrospection necessarily implies that the U.S. might have had the information as far back as 1991, even though bin Laden opened his al-Hijra accounts in 1992.

Levin based his allegations on an August 14, 1996, State Department document that merely asserted the following: “Bin Laden and wealthy [National Islamic Front] members capitalized al-Shamal Islamic Bank in Khartoum. Bin Laden invested $50 million in the bank.”[9] The source for this statement is almost certainly Bodansky, In is book, he repeats the same $50 million claim in virtually the same language, and with no attribution. That bin Laden used the al-Hijra and Wadi al-Aqiq accounts to finance the jihad are generally accepted. For example, an airplane was bought in 1993 with money wired from the Wadi al-Aqiq account at the Shamal bank via the Bank of New York to the Bank of America account of Egyptian flight instructor Essam al-Ridi in Dallas, Texas. Al-Ridi, who met bin Laden in Pakistan in 1985, subsequently flew the plane to Khartoum.[10] However, if the $50 million story were remotely true, it would have some evidentiary basis, not just rumor and unsubstantiated assertions.

It’s worth noting that Bodansky is also a contributing expert for the Ariel Center for Policy Research. The membership of this Israel-based organization reads like a who’s who of arch-Zionists and anti-Arab propagandists, which shows that the link between Israel, U.S. Israel-firsters and the exaggeration of the threat posed by bin Laden was well underway before the junta took power.

The BCCI Scandal

On July 5, 1991, the Bank of England shut down the Bank of Credit and Commerce International because poor accounting practices and tenuous solvency threatened the stability of other banks. Incorporated in Luxembourg, run by Pakistanis, and funded by Saudi and Gulf Arabs, the BCCI provided a host of clandestine “services,” to Islamist groups, including Turabi’s.[11]

According to the December 1992 report by U.S. senators John Kerry and Hank Brown to the Committee on Foreign Relations:

“BCCI’s criminality included fraud by BCCI and BCCI customers involving billions of dollars; money laundering in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas; BCCI’s bribery of officials in most of those locations; support of terrorism, arms trafficking, and the sale of nuclear technologies; management of prostitution; the commission and facilitation of income tax evasion, smuggling, and illegal immigration; illicit purchases of banks and real estate; and a panoply of financial crimes limited only by the imagination of its officers and customers. Among BCCI’s principal mechanisms for committing crimes were its use of shell corporations and bank confidentiality and secrecy havens; layering of its corporate structure; its use of front-men and nominees, guarantees and buy-back arrangements; back-to-back financial documentation among BCCI controlled entities, kick-backs and bribes, the intimidation of witnesses, and the retention of well-placed insiders to discourage governmental action.[12]

Among the Islamic banks associated with BCCI were the Jordan Islamic Bank, the Dubai Islamic Bank, Taqwa Bank of Algeria and the Faysal Islamic Bank in Khartoum, all of which were controlled by the International Muslim Brotherhood.

It should be noted that the BCCI was not just a bank for Islamic revolutionaries. The Central Intelligence Agency made use of the bank’s “special services” as the primary mechanism to funnel money to the mujahedin during the Soviet/Afghan war. From 1981 to 1988, the CIA holding company Argin Corporation laundered $25 million via Shakarchi Trading Company, a Zurich-based currency-trading firm principally involved in gold bullion trading that was caught up in the BCCI scandal. Monies from Argin and the CIA’s own accounts at BCCI were distributed to the mujahedin via Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence agency, which then used it to buy U.S., Egyptian and Chinese weapons.

With the downfall of BCCI, Turabi asked bin Laden to create a replacement financial network. He agreed and set up a series of accounts at banks to funnel money to Islamic movements. For example, Iranians and Gulf Arabs deposited $12 million into an account at the Faysal Islamic Bank, from where funds were redirected to Algeria to help the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) field candidates in the general election.

Bin Laden’s financial dealings also led him to collaborate with his close friend Ayman al-Zawahiri to establish a banking network in the name of the Brotherhood Group.[13] The group’s task was to obscure the origin of its funding from Western security authorities. The group’s core financing came from 150 wealthy Gulf Arabs who also had a legitimate business presence in the U.S.

In addition to financial help, bin Laden also helped Turabi in a more constructive way. He undertook major infrastructure projects such as a road linking Khartoum to Port Sudan (built by his al-Hijra construction company), an airport near Port Sudan and training centers in the north, the largest two being al-Shambat and al-Mazrah designed for Tunisians, Algerians, French and Belgians.

This may not have been the first time bin Laden aided Turabi’s National Islamic Front. In 1990, he is said to have arranged for hundreds of mujahedin to travel to fight alongside the NIF against non-Muslim guerrillas. According to an ex-Sudanese intelligence agent who knew bin Laden, hundreds more came over in the next few years. Many of them became instructors at his training camps.”[14]

Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, a bin Laden associate turned government witness, has said bin Laden’s business dealings included: Taba Investments, which sold items in Sudanese pounds and then changed them into U.S. dollars or pound sterling; the Wadi al-Aqiq holding company; Laden International import/export company; a bakery; a furniture company; the Bank of Zoological Resource cattle-breeding operation; the International al-Ikhlar Co., which made honey and other sweets; and the Blessed Fruits farming business, which grew peanuts, fruit, sesame, white corn, sunflowers and wheat.[15]

Though bin Laden was in business to make money, profit was not the major concern, testified al-Fadl in broken English: “He say our agenda is bigger than business. We are not going to make business here, but we need to help the government and the government help our group, and this is our purpose.”[16]

Somalia

By the fall of 1992, 500,000 Somalis had died from famine and hundreds of thousands more faced starvation. International famine relief efforts were mounted, but the anarchic political climate hampered efforts and threatened the lives of the workers. In response, U.S. President George Bush authorized the dispatch of U.S. troops to protect the workers, if necessary with military force. On December 3, 1992, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 794 authorizing a U.S.-led multinational force (Operation “Restore Hope”) “to use all necessary means to establish a secure environment for humanitarian relief operations in Somalia as soon as possible.” (In August, the United States in coordination with the Disaster Assistance Response Team at the U.S. Agency for International Development, had begun airlifting emergency supplies from Mombassa, Kenya, under Operation “Provide Relief.”)

Turabi looked upon East Africa, including the Horn of Africa, as fertile ground to export his Islamic philosophy. Somalia, Kenya, Chad, Tanzania, and Uganda all had Islamic parties, and by the fall of 1992 the Somali Islamic Union party was growing. Consequently, the U.S./UN presence in Somalia was seen as a threat, not only to Islam but also possibly to Sudan’s Islamic government.

Bin Laden prevailed upon Sheikh Tariq al-Fadli to return from London exile to lead the assault. (Bin laden first made contact with al-Fadli in 1980 when they fought in the failed Saudi Arabia-sponsored Yemeni jihad.)

Plans were then quickly drawn up to attack the U.S. forces, which were based in the port of Aden, across the Gulf of Aden from the fighting in the north. Islamists belonging to the Yemen Islamic Jihad organization planted bombs in the Aden Hotel and the Golden Moor Hotel because they were known to house U.S. servicemen. The attack left three Americans dead and five wounded, however, a planned rocket attack on a U.S. transport aircraft at the airport was thwarted. Nevertheless, the operation was judged a success.

According to Robert Gersony, a consultant to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 300,000 to 500,000 Somalis arrived in eastern Ethiopia from northern Somalia between the onset of hostilities in May 1988 and January 1989. These figures do not account for those who sought refuge in Kenya or Djibouti, were internally displaced, or the tens of thousands of Ethiopians who were still in Northern Somali refugee camps from a decade earlier.[17]

On January 27, 1991, the Socialist-Islamic Revolutionary Party (SRSP), of Maj.–Gen Mohammed Siad Barre was overthrown by the rival United Somali Congress.[18] According to Horn of Africa specialist Mohamed Sahnoun, the country did not experience major fighting until October, when Gen. Mohammed Farah Aidid and interim president Ali Mahdi Mohammed began fighting for control of Mogadishu.[19]

Mahdi’s faction supported an Italian-style democracy, and was supported by European nations and businesses; Aidid’s favored traditional tribal government. After Aidid declared his faction to be the legitimate national government, Mahdi declared war.

The Somali National Alliance and the Somali Islamic Union Party threw their support behind the pro-Islamist Aidid. Augmenting their numbers were fighters from Yemen, Algeria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, Kenya and Ethiopia, many of whom were battle-hardened veterans of the Afghan jihad. Bin Laden provided logistical support—funding, communications, construction, and appointed Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri as senior field commander.

Their strategy was to draw the U.S.-led force into a Vietnam-style quagmire and to portray it as an imperial colonizer. It worked to perfection, aided in large part by the overweening colonial mentality of the U.S. and the UN. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali wanted the UN to establish a visible leading presence in Somalia, but Sahnoun argued against a major show of force.

I knew how sensitive the situation in Somalia was and urged them not to send troops until the conditions for that had been negotiated. The warlords had been against any UN military force from the beginning and even community leaders had been suspicious. But I had persuaded the community leaders that 500 troops were needed to stop looting and banditry at the port and the airport—really a police force rather than an army. Then in New York, when the 500 soldiers were not even operational, they started making statements about sending 3,000 troops to Somalia. This made the Somalis very nervous—they started asking me what the hell I was up to. “You told us you were going to send 500; these 500 have not even come and you want to send 3,000 more. Are you plotting to put Somalia under UN trusteeship?”[20]

For his caution, Sahnoun was fired and his pro-interventionist successors declared Somalia to be in a state of anarchy, requiring a UN force to disarm the population. The tragedy of the UN involvement is that Boutros-Ghali was more interested in headlines. He rejected a role in a Djibouti-sponsored peace conference on the grounds that the political issues were too complex, but now was ready to commit a major military force. The reason had little to do with Somalia and everything to do with the UN’s ego. In the summer and fall of 1992, pictures of starving Somalis (about one quarter of the population) began to be broadcast, and Boutros-Ghali saw it as a challenge to the UN’s moral authority. In the end, the UN had 30,000 troops in Somalia, but they were completely rejected by the population. At least 6,000 people died in clashes between UN forces and Somalis. Sahnoun said the situation became so dire that it gave rise to the term “Somalia Syndrome,” a general pessimism on collective conflict management.

For the U.S., the intervention degenerated into a vendetta against Aidid. On June 5, 1993, UN troops attempted to shut down Radio South Mogadishu for broadcasting Aidid’s anti-UN propaganda. Aidid’s forces repelled the attack and killed 24 Pakistani troops. Because of these deaths, Aidid was branded a war criminal, and the U.S. waged an expensive, bloody, five-month campaign to capture him.

On October 3, U.S. forces received a tip that Aidid was meeting with two of his senior lieutenants in a house next to the Olympic Hotel in Mogadishu. At 3:30 p.m. 17 Black Hawk helicopters and a ground convoy arrived at the building, but came under immediate fire. The tip had been a ruse to lead the Americans into an ambush. The convoy scurried back to base under fire with many dead and no sign of Aidid. Ninety Rangers were pinned down under withering fire for 17 hours. In all, 18 Americans were killed and 84 wounded.[21] Among the Somalis, 300 died and 700 were wounded, mostly civilians who died in indiscriminate U.S. bombing. Three days later, Clinton abandoned the hunt, and said he would withdraw most U.S. forces by March 31.[22]

Because of the ambush and the U.S. withdrawal, the mujahedin could now claim to have defeated the world’s two greatest military powers. For bin Laden, the Somalia campaign reinforced his belief that his “Afghans” could also evict the U.S. from Saudi Arabia. In a March 1997 interview with CNN’s Peter Arnett, he proudly described the role the mujahedin played in Somalia:

Resistance started against the American invasion because Muslims do not believe the U.S. allegations that they came to save the Somalis. A man with human feelings in his heart does not distinguish between a child killed in Palestine or in Lebanon, in Iraq or in Bosnia. So how can we believe your claims that you came to save our children in Somalia while you kill our children in all of those places? With Allah’s grace, Muslims over there cooperated with some Arab mujahedin who were in Afghanistan. They participated with their brothers in Somalia against the American occupation troops and killed large numbers of them. The American administration was aware of that. After a little resistance, The American troops left after achieving nothing. They left after claiming that they were the largest power on earth….If the U.S. still thinks and brags that it still has this kind of power even after all these successive defeats in Vietnam, Beirut, Aden, and Somalia, then let them go back to those who are awaiting its return.[23]

Out of Africa

Bin Laden’s stay in Sudan ended in May 1996. Again, the reader has a choice of starkly different explanations. According to Bodansky:

In early 1996, bin Laden threatened to withdraw his financial assets from Sudan, even though such a withdrawal would have ruined the economy. With the Saudi pressure and economy-saving inducements, Turabi, Bashir and bin Laden worked out arrangements for his original departure from Sudan. Bin Laden’s departure was not the hasty expulsion Bashir and Turabi sought to portray. Bin Laden’s plane flew out of Khartoum Airport and immediately landed in Wadi Sayna airport, a few miles away. Sudanese Intelligence then moved him to a secret location in Darfur Province in western Sudan, where there is a vast terrorist-training infrastructure. There, bin Laden and his aides organized his forces and assets to be transferred to Pakistan and then on to Afghanistan over a period of a few weeks.[24]

El-Affendi dismisses this entire scenario as pure fiction:

Bin Laden was made to feel so unwelcome that he proposed to leave to relieve pressure on Khartoum. He was, I believe, hoping to be told he need not do so. He was optimistic that Khartoum would stick by him, given what he had done to assist Sudan. He was shocked when told that was a good idea. He had no clue that Khartoum was negotiating behind his back to hand him over to the Americans or the Saudis. He left a very bitter and angry man.

He called in his loans, which were in the region of tens of millions of dollars, mainly for road building, but the insolvent regime had no money, and bin Laden was asked to take some agricultural products in exchange. This angered him even more. ‘How do they expect me to market grain and other stuff while I am on the run?’ he exclaimed angrily to one of his confidants.

Bin Laden had no assets to speak of in Sudan, so a threat to withdraw them was neither made nor could it have been effective if he had. He would have needed government consent to do that. What he had was loans and some minor investments (farms, construction equipments, etc.) Bin Laden therefore arranged his own departure. His entourage was hardly more than 50, and many had left long before he did. [Moreover], Darfur has no infrastructure to speak of, either civil or military, and the government hardly controls the towns in that lawless part, where banditry and armed robbery are endemic.[25]

Of the two versions, El-Affendi’s must be seen as the correct one. Corroborating evidence comes from an October 4, 2001, Washington Post story that dispels any notion that bin Laden’s departure was amicable. The decision to expel bin Laden dates to a February 6, 1996, dinner at the home of Sudan’s Foreign Minister Ali Othman Taha. Concerned about deteriorating relations with the U.S., Taha asked U.S. Ambassador Timothy Carney what Sudan could do to improve matters. Carney had a long list that included evicting bin Laden from Sudan.

After weeks of trying to convince the Saudis to take him, Sudan’s then-Minister of Defense Maj.-Gen. Elfatih Erwa said: “In the end they said, ‘Just ask him to leave the country. Just don’t let him go to Somalia.’ We said he will go to Afghanistan, and they said, ‘Let him.’”[26]

Afghanistan

Under the terms of an April 1992 UN-brokered peace plan, the mujahedin were supposed to form a broad-based coalition government of reconciliation with Najibullah‘s communists. The fact that the UN thought this scheme had any chance of success underscores the facile thinking that drives the Western understanding of the Islamic world. There was no conceivable scenario under which the mujahedin would form a meaningful collaboration with communists. Moreover, the UN scheme failed to account for the collapse of the Soviet Union four months earlier. With former enemies (the U.S. and Russia) now tentative allies, neither of them had any use for the mujahedin or an Islamic Afghanistan.

Peter Tomsen, veteran State Department official and special envoy to Afghanistan, was one of a few critical voices insisting that the U.S. help rebuild Afghanistan, both to prevent extremists from coming to power and to preserve the U.S.’s 10-year investment: “The U.S. mistake was to ignore Afghanistan,” he said. “We walked away.”[27]

On March 7, 1993, after more than eight months of starvation, economic blockades, and anarchic violence, Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd sponsored the Islamabad Accord to reconcile the warring factions. Under the agreement, Rabbani was made president for a term of 18 months and Hekmatyar was made prime minister. This appointment did not sit well with defense minister Ahmad Shah Masoud, and fighting between the two erupted two days later. On June 16, Hekmatyar was sworn in as prime minister, and Masoud resigned. Hekmatyar resigned a week later to launch an assault on Kabul. On January 1, 1994, Uzbek warlord Gen. Abdurrashid Dostum joined Hekmatyar’s attack, and by the end of the year, the capital was reduced to rubble. The death toll in the city would reach 50,000, mostly civilians.[28]

The Islamabad Accord was put together by outsiders to serve their interests, not those of Afghanistan. The Saudi government wanted to keep political Islam from spilling over into other areas, and Pakistan and Iran wanted a quick end to the fighting so that they could take advantage of a new trade route to the newly independent Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union.

Pakistan wanted peace, but on its own terms. It suspected Rabbani’s government of being too friendly with India, and was looking with apprehension at Afghanistan’s improved relations between Iran and Russia. In short, Pakistan foresaw an imminent loss of regional influence. It wanted its own man in Kabul. That man was supposed to be Hekmatyar, who was trained and nurtured in Pakistan-run training camps (with U.S. and Saudi backing), and who was integral to Pakistan’s guerrilla activity in Kashmir. Pakistan expected Hekmatyar and his Hizb-i-Islami to take power once the jihad was over, but Rabbani’s elevation to leader thwarted Pakistan’s grand design.

With Hekmatyar a lost cause, Pakistan searched for a new surrogate, and found the ideal candidate in Mullah Mawlawi Mohammed Omar and his taliban. As the magazine Nida’ul Islam [Call of Islam] reported: “Pakistan found in the movement the object of pursuit in that it preserves its interests represented by the route of trade with the nearby Islamic Republics. Accordingly, the Pakistani army supported the movement by providing fuel and food, and by facilitating the movement of students from Pakistan.”[29]

The Taliban originated in the small town of Sanghisar just north of Qandahar in August 1994. Unlike the mujahedin, which are led by Tajiks and Uzbeks, the Taliban are drawn from the majoritarian Pashtun ethnic group. They follow the conservative Deobandi school, which adheres to a strict interpretation of the Sharia and some traditions of Pashtunwali, the tribal code of the Pashtuns. Deobandis have close ties to the Wahhabi.

According to one version, the movement began when Omar and 11 of his taliban [students] from the madrassas [religious schools] chased down a mujahid who had assaulted three women in Qandahar. According to another, the idea for the movement came to Omar in a dream. He envisaged a pure Islamic state, and so he gathered his closest allies and attacked a mujahedin checkpoint. Whatever the cause, Omar‘s morality militia was greeted warmly. After 15 years of civil war, Afghans desired peace and order as much as the Iranians, Saudis and Pakistanis did, so the Taliban was seen as a vast improvement over the corrupt, power-hungry warlords of the Peshawar Seven.

A comprehensive history of the Taliban and its war with the mujahedin is beyond the scope of this book, but a few events are worth highlighting to give a sense of its rapid rise from obscurity. In October 1994, the Taliban took over Qandahar, and Omar called for 4,000 volunteers from Pakistan. By February 1995, the Taliban had captured half of the southern provinces without meeting any resistance, and forced Hekmatyar to lift the siege of Kabul.

On September 5, the major western town of Herat fell, forcing warlord Ismail Khan to flee to Iran with 8,000 supporters. Capturing Kabul proved to be more difficult, as Rabbani’s forces put up fierce resistance. Rabbani continued to denounce Pakistan supporting the Taliban, but Pakistan consistently denied the charges. Nevertheless, rioting Afghans set fire to the Pakistani Embassy on September 6. In October, the Taliban laid siege to the city and pounded it with rocket fire.

On June 26, 1996, the Rabbani government formed a desperate alliance with Hekmatyar, who resumed his post as prime minister, but the Taliban was already in command of most of the country. On September 5, a year to the day after Herat fell, the Taliban launched an offensive in Eastern Afghanistan, capturing Jalalabad. Three weeks later, Rabbani and Masoud abandoned Kabul and headed north. On September 27, the Taliban took Kabul, hanged Najibullah, and declared Afghanistan to be “completely Islamic.” The victory wasn’t complete, though: three of Afghanistan’s 30 provinces remained under mujahedin control, thus ensuring that hostilities would continue.

Bin Laden and the Taliban

After he arrived from Sudan in the spring of 1996, bin Laden set up his headquarters in Nangarhar province, just across the Khyber Pass from Pakistan. The area and its capital, Jalalabad, were under the control of minor Pashtun warlord Yunis Khalis, who split from Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i Islami to form his own group of the same name. Bin Laden was on good terms with all factions and could count on universal protection despite the chaos. With the coming of Taliban rule, bin Laden’s position strengthened. He needed refuge, and the Taliban needed cash. Bin Laden gave Omar $3 million, and that money helped the Taliban take Jalalabad on September 5, 1996. When the Taliban entered the city, they paid their deepest respects to bin Laden:

O Sheikh! Our lands are not the lands of the Afghans, but it is the lands of Allah; and our jihad was not the jihad of the Afghan, but it is the jihad of the Muslims. Your martyrs that are in every region of Afghanistan, their graves testify to that. You are between your families and kinsmen, and we bless the soil that you walk upon.[30]

However, even in Afghanistan bin Laden had to stay on guard. A failed Saudi kidnapping attempt in early 1997 pushed him into the Taliban stronghold of Qandahar. The Saudis had arranged with Pakistan’s ISI to bring mercenaries to the Afghan border, but bin Laden got wind of the plan from sympathetic sources in Pakistan’s military. When the Saudis paid an official visit to recognize the government, the Taliban representative refused to discuss turning over bin Laden.

Later that same year, the Americans planned a major commando-style kidnapping in which special forces would attack bin Laden’s new Qandahar residence. The plan was tested in the Pakistani desert but proved to be too dangerous. While the Americans were re-evaluating the project, news leaked to bin Laden from the same source, and he made the plan public in the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper. The Americans had no choice but to cancel. Though they acknowledged the plan, they did not acknowledge that there was a leak.[31]

Bin Laden further entrenched himself with the Taliban by marrying his eldest daughter to Omar. As Omar’s father-in-law, bin Laden became a member of the Pashtun tribe, thus ensuring that the family would never give up one of their own, especially to a non-Muslim power.

Of bin Laden’s activities with the Taliban we also know next to nothing; nevertheless, Bodansky manages to come up with more unverifiable allegations of terrorist activity. In October 1996, when bin Laden is supposed to be in Qandahar, Bodansky has him returning from a terrorism summit in Khartoum—a meeting that is not previously mentioned or cited in the book’s index. Bodansky then has bin Laden, among other things, returning home via Tehran where he is supposed to have stopped for consultations with high-ranking terrorists like Abu Nidal: “Bin Laden’s visit to Tehran was significant in the planning of the new wave of Islamist international terrorism that the ISI would support and benefit from.”[32]

Bodansky goes on to say that bin Laden is a high official in Hezbollah; made frequent visits to Tehran; and acted as political go-between for Islamabad and Tehran. Shooting down these assertions is child’s play. First, a Wahhabi would not be caught dead negotiating with Shi’ites. On this score, bin Laden and the Taliban are of one mind.

Second, we have no independent evidence that bin Laden even left Afghanistan. Third, Bodansky’s claim that the ISI would benefit from such terrorism is asserted without evidence or logical foundation. Why should the ISI care what bin Laden did, save as it affected Afghanistan and the region? Given that Islamabad has a vested interest in promoting stability for the sake of economic gain, it is hard to understand why it would advocate terrorist activity.

Without access to Bodansky’s sources, this whole episode must be rejected as an attempt to inflate bin Laden’s importance and give plausibility to the existence of the “al-Qa’ida” with bin Laden at or near the top. Ironically, the one thing about bin Laden that can be said with certainty is that he and the U.S. had the same objective—to support the Taliban.

8

The Unocal States of America

Soon after Kabul fell to the Taliban on September 27, 1996, U.S. congressmen, State Department officials and representatives from Unocal (Union Oil Company of California) rushed to embrace the new government. Enthusiasm was so high that a precipitous offer of official recognition from the State Department had to be hastily rescinded because Rabbani‘s government was still recognized as the legitimate authority. Only Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates recognized the new Taliban regime.[207]

As we now know, the Taliban was arguably the world’s most repressive and regressive regime of its day. Some of the misanthropic absurdities of life under Taliban rule included:

• Banning women from the workplace, even hospitals, as well as all schools and university;

• Requiring women to wear a head-to-toe garment [burqa], and prohibiting them from going out in public unless accompanied by a husband or male blood relative;

•              Subjecting homes and apartments to arbitrary searches by the religious police, who confiscated western cultural materials (books, magazines, videos, records/CDs), and alcohol;

•              Forcing men to wear their hair short, grow full beards and attend mosque five times a day;

•              Permitting radios only for listening to the official Taliban Radio Sharia (“religious law”). Televisions were confiscated;

•              Roving militias and religious police who executed a “street level” form of punishment that included whippings and public beatings. A married couple riding on the same bicycle on the way to the market was beaten for being physically too close in public.[208]

Despite these abominations, the Clinton administration actively pursued good relations with the Taliban from 1995 to 1997. In a speech at a November 1996 closed-door session of the UN, Asst. Secretary of State for South Asia Robin Raphael articulated the official, tolerant U.S. attitude:

The Taliban control more than two-thirds of the country, they are Afghan; they are indigenous; they have demonstrated staying power. The real source of their success has been the willingness of many Afghans, particularly Pashtuns, to tacitly trade unending fighting and chaos for a measure of peace and security, even with severe social restrictions. It is not in the interests of Afghanistan or any of us here that the Taliban be isolated.[209]

Contrary to Raphael, the interests of Afghanistan played no role in the U.S.’s decision to support the Taliban. So long as the U.S. got its pipeline, the Taliban could abuse its people as much as it wanted because it could count on the U.S. to shield it from international criticism and scrutiny. An American diplomat said as much to veteran Pakistani reporter Ahmed Rashid: “The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis did. There will be ARAMCO, pipelines, an emir, no parliament, and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that.”[210] On December 12, 1996, The New York Times gave the following account of the U.S.’s rosy scenario:

From early on, American diplomats in Islamabad had made regular visits to Qandahar to see Taliban leaders. In briefings for reporters, the diplomats cited what they saw as positive aspects of the Taliban, which they listed as a capacity to end the war in Afghanistan and its promises to put an end to the use of Afghanistan as a base for narcotics trafficking and international terrorism.[211]

A bonus for the U.S. was the Taliban’s fanatical hatred of Iran, which was not only an enemy of the U.S. but also a rival transit country for the Turkmenistan gas pipeline. Congress granted the CIA a budget of $20 million to fund covert operations to destabilize Iran, which has alleged, over repeated U.S. denials, that the Taliban was one of the recipients of this money.[212]

It was impossible to tell where Unocal’s interests stopped and those of the U.S. government began. The government lobbied Pakistan to support the Unocal-led Central Asia Gas (CentGas) bid, and Unocal lobbied the government to recognize the Taliban. It even enlisted the services of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former special U.S. ambassador John J. Maresca, who would become Unocal’s vice-president of international relations.

Like Burma, like Afghanistan

Unocal’s disregard for Taliban repression has precedent in its operations in other countries, many of which have repressive regimes. However, a successful lawsuit by villagers in the Tenasserim region at the southeast tip of Burma’s panhandle might embolden Afghan claimants to seek redress for human rights abuses committed because of Unocal’s support of the Taliban.

The Burmese are suing Unocal in California court for violating that state’s constitution and unfair business practice law. The issue is the Yadana Project—a joint venture among Unocal, the Burmese military government and France’s Total/Elfina. The suit charges that Unocal knowingly supported the Burmese army’s use of torture, beatings and forced labor during the building of a 40-mile $1.2 billion natural gas pipeline from the Yadana gas field under the Andaman Sea to Thailand.

On August 21, 2000, Federal District Court Judge Ronald S.W. Lew dismissed the plaintiffs’ case, citing the failure to prove that Unocal specifically sought to employ forced or slave labor. Nevertheless, he did rule that the case could proceed under California State law, and what he said about Unocal was damning. He found that Unocal, the largest investor in the country, not only knew of, and benefited from, these abuses but financially aided the ruling junta, since renamed the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC).

Lew also accepted evidence that the plaintiffs, as well as thousands of other villagers, were forced to serve as porters for military battalions specifically created to protect the pipeline. On August 30, 2001, California Superior Court Judge Victoria Chaney ruled that the plaintiffs would have their day in court.[213]

That day came on September 22, 2003. Chaney ruled that U.S. courts could assert jurisdiction overseas, and in so doing rejected Unocal’s claim that human rights violations fell under Burmese law. Moreover, she wrote that Burma had not had any effective rule of law since the military took over in 1988, leaving any court decisions “radically indeterminate.”[214] Therefore, Chaney found that Unocal was well aware of the likelihood of forced labor before it began its involvement in the Yadana pipeline project. On March 22, 2005, Unocal reached an out-of-court settlement with the Burmese villagers. The terms of the deal are confidential.

Pipeline politics

The Turkmenistan–Afghanistan–Pakistan gas pipeline had been the Clinton administration’s prime foreign policy objective in the region since the spring of 1995. Turkmenistan, the former Soviet republic on the eastern edge of the Caspian Sea, has proven natural gas reserves of 101 trillion cubic feet (Tcf), of which 2 Bcf (billion cubic feet) would be expected to flow per day. The largest natural gas fields are in the Amu-Darya basin, with half of the country’s gas reserves located in the giant Daulatabad-Donmez field. In addition to Amu-Darya, Turkmenistan has large reserves in the Murgab basin, particularly the giant Yashlar deposit, which contains an estimated 27 Tcf. It also has proven oil reserves of 546 million barrels and an estimated 1.7 billion barrels in areas under the Caspian Sea.

Maresca estimated the natural gas reserves of the entire Caspian basin at more than 236 Tcf and oil reserves more than 60 billion barrels, though some estimates place it as high as 200. In 1995, the region produced 870,000 barrels of oil per day, but by 2010, he said that figure could jump five times to about 4.5 million barrels, or five percent of total world production. Unocal wanted to head up a consortium to develop the Turkmenistan gas fields, but was already part of a consortium put together by the Argentinian company Bridas. Bridas had relations with Turkmenistan dating to 1991, during which time it focused mainly on developing the Yashlar field and the Keimir oil and gas field in the southwest. In 1994, it entered into negotiations with the Turkmen and Pakistani governments to build a gas pipeline from Yashlar where Bridas had a 75 percent stake. The Turkmen oil and gas ministry hired Bridas to draw up a feasibility study, and in early 1995 hired it to represent the Turkmen government in negotiations with Pakistan, which was led by Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.[215]

Bridas had an exclusive arrangement with the Turkmen government, but in March 1995 Unocal entered the picture. It approached President Saparmurat Niyazov with the idea of building a 48-inch diameter pipeline from the Daulatabad gas fields, also in the southeast to the central Pakistani town of Multan 1,424 kilometres (890 miles) away. A 640-kilometer (400-mile) extension to India would also be considered. Daulatabad has estimated reserves of 25 Tcf of gas. The cost of the project was estimated at $1.9 billion for the segment to Pakistan and an additional $600 million for the extension.

The Daulatabad field had been delivering natural gas north via Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Russia to markets in the Caspian and Black Sea areas since 1983. However because of Moscow’s demand for high transportation fees, the Turkmen government found that tapping other fields was uneconomical. In contrast, a southern pipeline route through Afghanistan would be cheaper and bring Turkmenistan’s oil and gas closer to world markets.

Niyazov also liked Unocal’s proposal because it came with the promise of more U.S. investment. Closer ties to the U.S. in turn would give Turkmenistan more independence from its more powerful neighbors Iran and Russia. Thus, Niyazov signed a memorandum of understanding with Unocal and Pakistan to form a consortium to build the pipeline. (Although Bhutto remained loyal to Bridas, Pakistan’s official policy was to go with whichever bidder got out of the starting gate first.)

In December 1995, Niyazov showed his exclusive support for Unocal when he arbitrarily and without warning banned Bridas’s oil exports from the Keimiri field and shut down its other operations. In February 1996, Bridas, which thought it had an exclusive pipeline agreement, launched a $15 million lawsuit against its former partner Unocal for interfering in its deal with the Turkmen government to develop the Yashlar Field.[216]

Bridas lost, but it succeeded in having the International Chamber of Commerce pass a binding ruling against the Turkmen government for freezing its assets and stopping its gas and oil exploration and extraction work. Niyazov ignored it.[217]

After being squeezed out of Turkmenistan, Bridas struck a deal with the Taliban, which needed money. On May 4, 1996, the two parties announced that an agreement-in-principle to build the pipeline would be signed by the end of the month. By the time the dust settled in the spring of 1996, Unocal had Turkmenistan and Bridas had Afghanistan, but given Niyazov’s betrayal of Bridas, Unocal clearly had the advantage. All it had to do was convince the Taliban to support the bid, and convince the U.S. and the international community to recognize the Taliban as the official government so that Afghanistan could secure financing from agencies like the World Bank.

Different Priorities

Despite a seeming unanimity of purpose, Unocal was in a more dependant position than the U.S. government was. The pipeline depended on the recognition of the Taliban regime, but for the Clinton administration, recognition was contingent upon proof that the Taliban could end the civil war, which looked less and less likely.

On May 13, 1997, Rabbani became the head of a new government in the northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif, the only major town that didn’t fall to the Taliban. (Eight months earlier, Rabbani, Dostum and Karim Khalili, leader of Hizb-i-Wahdat, [Unity party] had formed the anti-Taliban Council for the Defense of Afghanistan.)

The Taliban responded by trying again to take the city, aided this time by Dostum’s second-in-command. As Human Rights Watch reported:

“Gen. Malik Pahlawan… apparently believed he had struck a deal to share power with the Taliban and ousted Dostum in a coup. When the Taliban reneged on the agreement and began disarming local forces, resistance broke out first in Hazara neighborhoods, and the Taliban found themselves trapped in a city that had turned murderous on them. Hundreds of Taliban were attacked in the streets and killed, and at least 2,000 taken prisoner, only to be summarily executed and their bodies dumped in wells or taken to remote desert sites and left lying in the open. Most analysts appear to agree that General Malik was responsible for many of the summary executions of the Taliban prisoners. However, a large number of Taliban forces were reportedly gunned down in the streets by the Hazara Hizb-i Wahdat. Malik fled to Iran, and Dostum returned. Driven back after a subsequent attack on Mazar in September 1997, retreating Taliban troops who may have included Balkh Pashtuns massacred Hazara civilians in Qizalabad, south of the city on the road to Herat.[218]

The May 1997 uprising convinced Clinton that he should also support geopolitically safer Caspian Sea pipeline routes to hedge his bets. One route, to be built by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), would run west from the Northern Caspian to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossijsk. From there, oil would be transported by tanker through the Bosphorus to the Mediterranean and the world markets.

Another pipeline would run westward from the oil rich Azerbaijani port/capital of Baku through Georgia to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.[219] Even though Unocal was part of the $8 billion, 11-member Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC) consortium, it didn’t believe that these two routes would have enough capacity.

During U.S. Congressional testimony, Maresca said that a direct route south through Afghanistan, despite the political difficulties, would be easier and cheaper to build, and provide access to higher-value markets than the other routes could.[220] Because it represented a higher economic advantage to Unocal, the project was effectively in commercial competition with other pipeline routes. Also, the only other route, through Iran, was prohibited.

Therefore, on July 23, 1997, despite the civil unrest, officials from Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Unocal and Delta Oil (a Saudi company) signed an agreement to build the pipeline and form a consortium by October.[221] CentGas (The Central Asia Gas Consortium) was formed at a signing ceremony in the Turkmen capital of Ashgabat on October 27, 1997.[222] Construction was planned to begin by December 1998 and be completed by 2001. Unocal also proposed building a 1,000-mile, $2.5 billion oil pipeline with a capacity of 1 million barrels per day.

Eight days after the ceremony, the head of Bridas’ Afghan operations Sebastian Otero Asp announced that an agreement with the Taliban was close, civil unrest notwithstanding. Soon afterwards, Unocal Vice-President Martin Miller waxed pessimistic: “It’s uncertain when this project will start. It depends on peace in Afghanistan and a government we can work with. That may be the end of this year, next year or three years from now, or this may be a dry hole if the fighting continues.”[223]

In December 1997, Unocal lobbyist Sen. Hank Brown glad-handed with Taliban ministers and invited three of them for several days of industry/government talks in Washington D.C., and at the company’s headquarters in Sugarland, southwest of Houston, Texas. Although the British media covered the event—The Daily Telegraph and the BBC—a search of the New York Times and Washington Post on-line archives turned up no mention of it. In this excerpt from the Telegraph, the convivial relationship between Unocal and the regime is obvious:

The Taliban ministers and their advisers stayed in a five-star hotel and were chauffeured in a company minibus. Their only requests were to visit Houston’s zoo, the NASA space center and Omaha’s Super Target discount store to buy stockings, toothpaste, combs and soap. The Taliban, which controls two-thirds of Afghanistan and is still fighting for the last third, was also given an insight into how the other half lives.

The men, who are accustomed to life without heating, electricity or running water, were amazed by the luxurious homes of Texan oil barons. Invited to dinner at the palatial home of Martin Miller… they marvelled at his swimming pool, views of the golf course and six bathrooms. After a meal of specially prepared halal meat, rice and Coca-Cola, the hard-line fundamentalists—who have banned women from working and girls from going to school—asked Mr. Miller about his Christmas tree.

‘They were interested to know what it was for and what the star was,’ said Mr. Miller, who hopes that Unocal has clinched the deal. ‘The first day, they were stiff and cautious. But before long they were totally relaxed and happy,’ he said…

It was the homely touches that swayed the Taliban. When the delegation left Texas, one of their entourage stayed behind. Mullah Mohammad Ghaus, the former foreign minister and a leading member of the Taliban ruling council, remained in Texas for medical treatment. Years on the front line damaged his eyesight. Unocal bought him a battery-powered magnifying glass and are paying for him to go to an optician.[224]

A different account of the Sugarland meeting comes from Dev George, managing editor of Oil and Gas International. In the editorial, “Unocal & Afghanistan,” he credits the agreement to political lobbying: “They were offered US$0.15 per 1,000 cubic feet of gas that passed through Afghanistan, and they agreed after U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Robin Raphael lobbied them for the Unocal pipeline.[225]

Differences notwithstanding, there can be no doubt that Unocal actively pursued the Taliban and was willing to do business with them, despite the Taliban’s brutality and taxation of the opium trade. As the CentGas development manager, Unocal even tried to use Delta Oil representatives to influence the Taliban because Saudi Arabia was one of only three countries that recognized the regime. Unocal also donated $900,000 to the Center of Afghanistan Studies at the University of Omaha, Nebraska. However, this act of apparent magnanimity came under criticism for being a front to funnel aid to the Taliban.

The Center set up a training and humanitarian aid program for Afghans—including disaster relief aid after the earthquakes—and opened a school in Qandahar, which began to train 400 Afghan teachers, electricians, carpenters and pipe-fitters to help Unocal lay the pipeline. Unocal aid was over and above the millions of dollars of official U.S. assistance to the Taliban that was labeled “humanitarian assistance.”

Finally, it’s worth noting Pakistan’s participation in the consortium because it was both a founding patron of the Taliban and a supporter of Bridas. One month before Bridas signed its deal with the Taliban, the U.S. was pushing Pakistan to switch sides. “We have an American company which is interested in building a pipeline from Turkmenistan through to Pakistan,” said Raphael at an April 21, 1996, press conference in Islamabad. “This pipeline project will be very good for Turkmenistan, for Pakistan and for Afghanistan.”[226] She forgot to include the United States.

Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto resisted relentless U.S. pressure to support CentGas, but in November 1996 her government was dismissed on charges of corruption. The new government of Nawaz Sharif joined the CentGas consortium, thus abrogating its exclusive support for Bridas, and for the first time putting the country at odds with the Taliban.

Unocal Bails Out

On August 21, 1998, the day after Clinton visited biblical vengeance upon Afghanistan; Unocal issued a release that began:

As a result of sharply deteriorating political conditions in the region, Unocal, which serves as the development manager for the Central Asia Gas (CentGas) pipeline consortium, has suspended all activities involving the proposed pipeline project in Afghanistan. We are discussing this suspension with the other members of the consortium.

This decision to suspend activities is consistent with Unocal’s long-held position concerning its involvement in the project. For the past several months, Unocal has been reviewing this project with CentGas participants. We have consistently informed the other participants that unless and until the United Nations and the United States government recognize a legitimate government in Afghanistan, Unocal would not invest capital in the project. Contrary to some published reports, Unocal has not–and will not—become a party to a commercial agreement with any individual Afghanistan faction.[227]

Given the Sugarland episode, this last statement is at best contentious and at worst fallacious. Also, Clinton’s attack was not the decisive factor Unocal made it out to be. According to an editorial in Oil and Gas International, Unocal found the Taliban’s price to be too steep:

When the Taliban demanded more than the $100 million a year in rent for the pipeline route in the form of the construction of roads, water supplies, telephone lines, and electricity power lines, as well as a tap in the pipeline to provide oil and gas for Afghanistan, Unocal balked, and finally dropped its plans after the East Africa embassy bombings.[228]

In contrast to this “closed pipeline,” Bridas proposed an open line to allow the Taliban to draw gas for local needs. This is why the Taliban signed with Bridas instead of CentGas. On December 4, 1998, Unocal officially withdrew from the consortium, and has steadfastly denied reports that it plans to return. However, Unocal Pakistan Ltd.’s president and general manager Richard Keller was quoted as telling Reuters: “We are hopeful that this is a temporary situation.”[229]

Other members of the consortium hadn’t given up. On April 29, 1999, Pakistan’s Petroleum Minister Nisar Ali Khan, Turkmenistan’s Deputy Prime Minister Batyr Sardjaev, and Afghanistan’s Minister of Energy and Mines Maulvi Ahmedjan met in Islamabad to revive the project. The meeting came just two days after an exchange of international visits between Russia and Pakistan that signaled a warming of relations despite Pakistan’s opposition to Russia’s support for India, and Russia’s opposition to Pakistan’s support of Islamic militants.

In place of Unocal, Delta Oil was reported to be taking over as lead partner, but the plan went nowhere. According to India’s Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses:

The pipeline from Afghanistan may remain a non-starter even in the longer term, for the simple reason that there exists a strong contradiction between the oil pipeline and drug-trafficking in the region of the Golden Crescent. According to Western estimates, the region generates revenue worth $45 billion (some give the figure of $90 billion) from drug-related activities. There are so many stakes involved in the region, which actually become the cause for perpetuating conflict in Afghanistan. In such a situation, it would be highly difficult for anyone to replace drugs with oil, specially when Afghanistan being only a transit state would generate not more $100 million per year as transit fee.[230]

Ostracizing the Taliban—bin Laden

In mid-to-late September 1997, the Taliban charged Iran with conducting more than 170 airdrops of arms and ammunition to anti-government forces in the Northern towns of Mazar-i-Sharif, Bamiyan, and Shebarghan, the region dominated by the Rabbani-led government and the Hezb-i-Wahdat [Unity Party] militia, which Iran supported.

The Taliban warned Iran to cease all recruiting, training, monetary and military assistance to the alliance, or it would reciprocate by arming and promoting local resistance groups inside Iran. Iran had never admitted aiding anti-Taliban forces—just like Pakistan never admitted to aiding and promoting the Taliban—but it couldn’t give in to threats without loss of face. Iran therefore hoped that Rabbani’s forces would be in a position to launch a quick and effective pre-winter offensive to reclaim most of the country.

On August 8, 1998, the Taliban launched another attack on Mazar-i-Sharif. It not only succeeded in taking the town, but also exacted a horrible vengeance on the Hazara, a Farsi-speaking Shi’ite minority who fiercely opposed Taliban rule. The Taliban went on a rampage of rape and mass murder that would be familiar to survivors of the 1982 Israeli/Phalangist massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. According to Human Rights Watch:

A woman who lived in Kamaz camp, where persons who had fled Kabul and other cities were living, stated that a large number of Taliban came searching for men at the camp the first day. Most of the men were beaten and then taken away, but some were shot on the spot. From one tent they took six boys. They were all 17, 18, or 20 years old. They just shot them dead in front of the tent. The bodies lay there for four days until the women could finally bury them. A medical student testified that the Taliban also searched the hospital looking for Hazaras. I saw two Hazara boys, one about thirteen years old and one about twenty. One had a broken arm. The Taliban wanted to take them away, but the director intervened. But they came back the next day and took them. One witness stated that he saw bodies that had been left in the city’s cemeteries. We passed by the cemetery at Dasht-i-Shour. The cemetery is along the main road. There are also shops along the road. These shops were built with the dirt taken in the same area. So there are many holes left along the road. All these holes were filled with bodies.[231]

On the second day of the takeover, the new Taliban governor of the province Mullah Manon Niazi declared open season on Hazaras for their opposition to the Taliban: “Hazaras are not Muslim, they are shi’a. They are kofr [infidels]. The Hazaras killed our force here, and now we have to kill Hazaras. If you do not show your loyalty, we will burn your houses, and we will kill you. You either accept to be Muslims or leave Afghanistan.”[232]

In a UN report, all killings were described as “systematic, planned, and very well organized.” Approximately 3,000 Hazara were murdered in their homes, or indiscriminately shot in the street during the first six days of the Taliban takeover. The total estimated number of dead ranges from 5,000 to 8,000, and 10,000 to 12,000 fled Mazar-i-Sharif on the first day. Later that month, bin Laden was suspected of being behind the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The civil war showed no signs of ending, which meant the Taliban’s time was up. Clinton had thought that the Taliban would improve its humanitarian record and ease up on the repression of women in expectation of receiving a $100 million annual rent from CentGas. Given the austere religious orientation of the Taliban, and the U.S./Unocal hands-off attitude toward domestic repression, this notion was pure delusion.

In late 1997, the U.S. began throwing its support behind the Northern Alliance, which was led by warlords Rabbani, Masoud and Dostum—the same warriors who slaughtered 50,000 people in Kabul during the 1992–1996 civil war, and committed the May 1997 massacre of Taliban fighters at Mazar-i-Sharif. These were also the same warriors the U.S. wanted the Taliban to destroy in the name of Unocal and national stability. To add to the absurdity, the alliance was backed by Iran, Russia and Uzbekistan. After getting involved in Afghanistan to fight Russia because of the fall of the shah, the U.S. was now supporting Russian and Iranian surrogates.

If support for the Taliban were cynical and unethical, it was at least understandable in the context of traditional petropolitics. The decision to ostracize and punish the Taliban when he did made no sense, since Clinton could have acted against bin Laden at any time from 1996 onward. An editorial in Afghanistan’s Omaid Weekly made the point most poignantly:

Is Osama bin Laden all that matters to the U.S. when it comes to Afghanistan? Are the cries of millions of Afghanistan’s orphans, widows and beggars drowned out by the voice of an outcast Saudi hermit? Or is it that Clinton cannot bear to face up to what his administration has helped to create—the near annihilation of Afghanistan at the hands of a barbaric horde mothered by the CIA-trained ISI, fathered by the U.S.-backed Saudis and cheered by Uncle Sam—so he seeks to focus on Osama, a scapegoat of Washington’s own creation?[233]

On February 3, 1999, Assistant Secretary of State Karl E. Inderfurth and State Department counter-terrorism chief Michael Sheehan met the Taliban’s deputy foreign minister Abdul Jalil in Islamabad, and warned that the U.S. would hold the Taliban responsible for any further terrorist acts by bin Laden. On July 10, 1999, Clinton followed up with unilateral trade sanctions against Afghanistan for its refusal to hand over bin Laden. This made no sense, especially since it had not appeared on any U.S. State Department list of terrorism-supporting countries.

Also, Afghanistan is desperately poor and depends on international food relief agencies to fend off starvation. What’s worse, two massive earthquakes struck northern Afghanistan in 1998 (February 4 and May 30). The first quake measured 6.1 on the Richter scale, killed 4,200 people, and destroyed 30 villages; the second, in a more remote region, measured 6.9 and killed 150.[234] The $24 million-worth of exports at stake, mostly gems and carpets, was insignificant to the U.S., but important to Afghanistan. Bullying them would only make them more defensive and dependant on bin Laden’s largesse.

Second, the U.S. Congress had acknowledged that unilateral sanctions have little or no effect. In fact, the House was preparing to deal with 23 pieces of legislation designed to stop precisely this kind of one-sided economic warfare.[235]

Third, Afghanistan is a sovereign nation, and according to Article 2 of the United Nations Charter is guaranteed the same rights of equality and independence as any other state. Punishing the Taliban for something bin Laden might have done only served to fuel bin Laden’s image as a champion of oppressed Muslims. In his Declaration of War, bin Laden made much of the West’s mistreatment of Muslims and the international community’s moral double standard.

On October 15, 1999, Clinton took his crusade against bin Laden and the Taliban to the United Nations. The Security Council unanimously passed U.S.-sponsored Resolution 1267, which compelled the Taliban to surrender bin Laden by November 14. Failure to comply would lead to an international flight ban on any aircraft owned, leased or operated by or on behalf of the Taliban, as well as a freeze on all Taliban-related funds and investment in Afghanistan.

The resolution’s specious moral and legal legitimacy can be seen in the seventh clause to the preamble: “Noting the indictment of Usama bin Laden and his associates by the United States of America for, inter alia, the 7 August 1998 bombings of the United States embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and for conspiring to kill American nationals outside the United States, and noting also the request of the United States of America to the Taliban to surrender them for trial.” The indictment, as we saw earlier, was invalid on its face and built on speculation and imputed guilt.

Resolution 1267 received unanimous support from other council members like Russia and China, both of which have Muslim minorities and therefore a vested interest in suppressing Islamist activism. As expected, the Afghan regime refused to comply with this edict. Four days before the deadline, foreign minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil stated that the U.S. was going to impose sanctions anyway, so talking was a waste of time.[236]

It might appear that by taking his case to the Security Council Clinton showed respect for international law, but that is not the case. Clinton appealed to the world body only after an attempt to assassinate bin Laden failed. As he admitted in September 2001 at a New York news conference: “I authorized the arrest, and, if necessary, the killing of Osama Bin Laden, and we actually made contact with a group in Afghanistan to do it—and they were unsuccessful.”[237]

The U.S. and Pakistan agreed on a joint covert operation to assassinate bin Laden in 1999: the U.S. supplied satellite intelligence, air support and financing; Pakistan supplied the Pashtu-speaking assassins. The attack was aborted on October 12 when Pakistan’s president Nawaz Sharif was overthrown in a military coup by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who halted the operation.[238] Twenty-five years earlier, President Gerald Ford outlawed political assassinations. Clinton had just confessed to attempted murder and violating U.S. law.

Ostracizing the Taliban—Drugs

Just as the Reagan administration followed a covert pro-drug policy in Afghanistan to fund the mujahedin, the Clinton administration sacrificed the “war on drugs” to aid Unocal’s pipeline bid. Officially, the U.S. wanted the Taliban to tear up the poppy fields and have farmers grow substitute crops, like wheat and onions. Officially, the Taliban agreed. Within a month of taking power Mullah Mohammad Omar told the United Nations International Drug Control Program (UNDCP) office in Islamabad that he wanted international aid for crop substitution programs.

Such talk pleased anti-drug and human rights activists, especially in the U.S. State Department, but the project was utterly infeasible. Profit from the opium trade was the primary source of income for the Taliban. In 2001, the total production value of Afghanistan’s opium crop was put at $100 billion, of which the Taliban derived a modest annual tax of $10 million to 75 million during the 1990s.[239]

Without international recognition and the foreign investment that comes with it, the Taliban had no means to offset the loss in revenue. Similarly, the poppy was the only viable cash crop for Afghanistan’s impoverished farmers. A farmer could earn US$8,600 per hectare of opium compared to just $49 per acre for wheat.[240] Moreover, opium dealers pay poppy farmers up front, whereas wheat farmers have to wait until their crop is sold to receive payment. To make matters worse, three years of drought had destroyed Afghanistan’s wheat harvests, so planting more wheat would have made little economic difference.

The Taliban was caught in an impossible situation. The price for destroying the poppy fields was the financial ruin of the country, the impoverishment of farmers, and greater reliance on Pakistan, so consequently the ban was not heavily enforced. According to the drug control program’s Annual Opium Survey, production and plantings increased markedly in Taliban-controlled areas.

Table VII: Opium Production
Under Taliban Rule

Year

Production
(tonnes)

Cultivation (hectares)

World
Output

1999

6,000

91,000

75%

1998

3,750

64,000

60%

1996

2,200–
2,300

55,000–58,000

N/A

Source: “Taliban and Drugs,” Hazara.net, April 7, 2002

Until 2000, 95 percent of Afghanistan’s opium was grown in the southern and eastern Taliban-held provinces of Helmand, Uruzgan, Qandahar and Nangarhar. On July 28, 2000, three weeks after Clinton renewed the U.S.’s unilateral sanctions, Mullah Muhammad Omar decreed a complete ban on poppy growing, and declared it to be contrary to Islam. Few in the State Department took the decree seriously, but within two months, Afghanistan’s opium production was nearly wiped out. From a high of 3,667 tonnes (70 percent of world production), it fell to 74.0 tonnes.[241]

The fall in production shifted demand, especially to the Golden Triangle along the Burma-Thailand border and to the Northern Alliance-held territory of Afghanistan. In the northern provinces of Badakhshan and Takhar, opium plantings grew unchecked over 2,485 and 500 hectares respectively, mostly for the Central Asian market. The arrival of opium traders from the Mashriqi district of Nangarhar, led to a rise in plantings to 6,342 hectares, and also turned Badakhshan into a major conduit for southern opium and heroin. Alliance fields accounted for 83 percent of total Afghan production of 185 tonnes of opium during the ban.[242]

However, as far as the U.S. State Department was concerned, the Taliban’s opium ban and the Northern Alliance’s drug trafficking didn’t exist. In The Taliban And The Afghan Drug Trade, a December 20, 2000, fact sheet released by the Bureau of South Asian Affairs, “Taliban” is mentioned 26 times; the Northern Alliance, not once. The information in the fact sheet is at such variance with published accounts of the Taliban’s opium ban and the UNDCP’s detailed data, that it must be considered disinformation designed to demonize the Taliban while masking the unethical conduct of the U.S.’s new “allies.”

For example, in the section “The Explosion Of Poppy Cultivation Under The Taliban” we read: “Poppy cultivation overall for Afghanistan has climbed from 41,720 hectares in 1998 to 64,510 hectares in 2000, mainly as a result of increases in Helmand. Taliban-controlled Helmand province alone now accounts for 39 percent of the world’s illicit opium.”[243] According to UNDCP, though, 64,510 hectares would represent a decrease of more than 26,000 acres. Although Helmand was a Taliban-held province at the time, it was no longer a major source of opium when the fact sheet came out. The claim that Helmand accounted for 39 percent of world output is unsupportable.

The U.S.’s “war on drugs” is a political weapon of convenience, not a declaration of principle. So long as the CentGas pipeline bid looked viable, the U.S. ignored rocketing opium production on Taliban-held territory and shielded the Taliban from international human rights criticism. After the embassy bombings and the collapse of the CentGas bid, the Taliban’s role in the opium trade suddenly became a major political issue.

Now, the pipeline was on hold and bin Laden became the new obsession. To coerce the Taliban into surrendering him, the U.S. imposed unilateral economic sanctions and sponsored a UN resolution to isolate and punish the Taliban. However, in July 2000 the Taliban destroyed more than 90 percent of its poppy fields, as the U.S. and UNDCP demanded. The anti-bin Laden sanctions made it impossible for the Taliban to earn international recognition, attract investment, or make up for lost revenue.

To show the abject stupidity of U.S. drug policy, opium poppy production exploded right after the Taliban government was ousted in late 2001. A Western anti-narcotics official in Kabul said early estimates indicate 370,650 acres of opium poppy were cultivated in 2006, up 40 percent from 257,000 acres in 2005. The previous record was 323,700 acres in 2004, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. In 2006, Afghanistan’s opium crop yielded 4,500 tons, which translated into 450 tons of heroin—nearly 90 percent of world supply. After being virtually eliminated in 2000, opium in 2005 accounted for 52 percent of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product. President Hamid Karzai even admitted that many of the people in his government benefit from the drug trade. Drug warlords have also joined forces with the Taliban to fight Afghan and international forces.”[244]

When you add up the tens of thousands of Afghan dead and wounded; the millions displaced; the destruction of Afghanistan’s infrastructure; the U.S.’s corrupt drug policy; support for the repressive Taliban for the sake of Unocal; and the ostracism of the Taliban because of Osama bin Laden, U.S. policy in Afghanistan since 1979 has been a contradictory, self-serving disaster that showed wanton disregard for human life.

9

American Jihad

With U.S. forces lingering in Saudi Arabia five years after the end of hostilities, bin Laden decided to liberate the land of the holy sites from “infidel” occupation. From his new mountain sanctuary in the eastern Afghan province of Khurasan, bin Laden wrote a 12-page epistle entitled Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places—Expel the Infidels from the Arab Peninsula. Its essence is best summed up in this passage:

After Belief [imaan] there is no more important duty than pushing the American enemy out of the holy land. No other priority, except Belief, could be considered before it; the people of knowledge, ibn Taymiya, stated: “To fight in defense of religion and Belief is a collective duty; there is no other duty after Belief than fighting the enemy who is corrupting the life and the religion. There is no precondition for this duty, and the enemy should be fought with one’s best abilities. If it is not possible to push back the enemy except by the collective movement of the Muslim people, then there is a duty on the Muslims to ignore the minor differences among themselves; the ill effect of ignoring these differences, at a given period of time, is much less than the ill effect of the occupation of the Muslims’ land by the main Kufr [infidel].”[245]

The Declaration of War is divided into five exhortations, throughout which citations from the Qur’an, invocations to God, and references to liberating the holy sites frequently recur. The first exhortation is a general address to the umma, the world body of Muslims, and an outline of the grounds for the American jihad: a history of injustices and violence committed by the “Zionist-Crusader alliance”; the complicity of the Saudi regime and the security forces in these injustices; and the persecution and humiliation of loyal Saudi Muslims who opposed the government’s conduct before and during the Gulf War. After establishing the religious necessity of jihad, bin Laden implores the umma to put aside their private quarrels and unite to evict the U.S. from Saudi Arabia.

The second calls upon Saudi Arabia’s security and military forces to support the mujahedin. For the first time, bin Laden attacks King Fahd:

The King said that: “The issue is simple, the American and the alliance forces will leave the area in few months.” Today, it is seven years since their arrival and the regime is not able to move them out of the country. The regime made no confession about its inability and carried on lying to the people claiming that the Americans will leave.

The third, only a few paragraphs long, exhorts Muslims on the Arabian Peninsula to boycott American goods:

It is incredible that our country is the world’s largest buyer of arms from the USA and the area’s biggest commercial partner of the Americans who are assisting their Zionist brothers in occupying Palestine and in evicting and killing the Muslims there, by providing arms, men and financial support.

The fourth is addressed to the youth of Islam, whom bin Laden entrusts to execute the jihad:

While some of the well-known individuals had hesitated in their duty of defending Islam and saving themselves and their wealth from the injustice, aggression and terror, exercised by the government, the youths (may Allah protect them) were forthcoming and raised the banner of jihad against the American-Zionist alliance occupying the sanctities of Islam. Others who have been tricked into loving this materialistic world, and those who have been terrorized by the government choose to give legitimacy to the greatest betrayal, the occupation of the land of the two Holy Places.

The final exhortation is a call to all Muslims to liberate the holy sites, and includes a stinging denunciation of ibn Saud for allowing the al-Aqsa mosque in al-Quds (Jerusalem) to fall into Zionist hands:

In … ad 1936 the awakened Muslim nation of Palestine started their great struggle, jihad, against the British occupying forces. Britain was impotent to stop the mujahedin and their jihad, but their devil inspired that there is no way to stop the armed struggle in Palestine unless through their agent King Abdul Aziz, who managed to deceive the mujahedin. King Abdul Aziz carried out his duty to his British masters. He sent his two sons to meet the mujahedin leaders and to inform them that King Abdul Aziz would guarantee the promises made by the British government in leaving the area and responding positively to the demands of the mujahedin if the latter stop their Jihad… I feel still the pain of (the loss) of al-Quds in my internal organs. That loss is like a burning fire in my intestines.[246]

Whether the presence of U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia constituted an attack on Islam is a matter for debate—certainly not every Arab or Arab government agreed—but the Declaration of War cannot be written off as a mindless call to violence. It is a deliberate, cogently argued indictment of the world’s disregard for the welfare of Muslims, written by a devoutly religious man:

It should not be hidden from you [God] that the people of Islam had suffered from aggression, iniquity and injustice imposed on them by the Zionist–Crusader alliance and their collaborators, to the extent that the Muslims’ blood became the cheapest and their wealth as loot in the hands of the enemies. Their blood was spilled in Palestine and Iraq. The horrifying pictures of the massacre of Qana, in Lebanon, are still fresh in our memory. Massacres in Tajikistan, Burma, Kashmir, Assam, the Philippines, Fatani, Ogaden, Somalia, Eritrea, Chechnya and in Bosnia-Herzegovina took place, massacres that send shivers in the body and shake the conscience. All of this and the world watched and heard, and not only didn’t respond to these atrocities, but also with a clear conspiracy between the USA and its allies and under the cover of the iniquitous United Nations, the dispossessed people were even prevented from obtaining arms to defend themselves… Terrorizing you, while you are carrying arms on our land, is a legitimate and morally demanded duty.[247]

Qana

The above-mentioned Qana massacre typifies the double standard that animates Arab and Muslim animosity toward Israel and the U.S. On April 18, 1996, Israeli forces bombed the UN refugee compound in Qana during its “Grapes of Wrath” offensive against Shi’ite Hezbollah bases in Southern Lebanon. More than 800 Lebanese fled the bombardment that killed and mutilated more than 100 Lebanese civilians, including infants. The UN investigation conducted by Maj.-Gen. Frank van Kappen of the Netherlands determined that the attack was deliberate, given that two Israeli helicopters and a drone reconnaissance aircraft were overhead at the time and would have warned of the presence of civilians. He asked Israel to offer evidence to refute the charges, but received no documents. Shortly after the massacre, Robert Fisk wrote this account:

Not since Sabra and Chatila had I seen the innocent slaughtered like this. The Lebanese refugee women and children and men lay in heaps, their heads or arms or legs missing, beheaded or disemboweled. There were well over a hundred of them. A baby lay without a head. The Israeli shells had scythed through them as they lay in the United Nations shelter, believing that they were safe under the world’s protection. Like the Muslims of Srebrenica, the Muslims of Qana were wrong.[248]

“Grapes of Wrath” was ostensibly a response to a Hezbollah rocket attack on an Israeli patrol, but the patrol in question was planting anti-personnel mines and roadside explosives in UN territory. The Israelis gave UN representatives a map showing the location of the devices near the village of Henniyeh, about five miles from Qana. However, a separate minefield near the village of Bradchit had already been sown, and a plastic explosive device along the road had killed a Lebanese teenager the previous month. That death prompted the Hezbollah attack. Despite incontrovertible evidence that Israelis had planted the device, Foreign Minster Shimon Peres denied that Israelis had been in the Bradchit area. On the day of the Qana massacre, Israeli troops were in Bradchit and Henniyeh laying mines.[249]

Bin Laden condemned the massacre as an act of international terrorism, and his demand for justice and trials for the Israelis responsible is consistent with international law. Unfortunately for bin Laden, the U.S. controls the UN and Israel controls the U.S., as Fisk observed:

A U.S./Israeli cover-up immediately took place. However, unexpected hard evidence, including a videotape of the attack, convinced UN investigators that the attack was premeditated. Severe pressure was brought on UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali not to release the report to the Security Council or the public. However, after watering it down as best he could, Boutros-Ghali was forced to release the report, some UN officials going so far as to indicate they would resign if he did not do so. Shamefully, though, the UN Security Council has refused to act on the report or to hold the Israelis accountable. Of course the American veto threat and tremendous pressures upon Boutros-Ghali and member states at the UN was behind this further demonstration of UN impotence and cowardice.[250]

Israel has never been punished or held accountable for this atrocity; in fact, the U.S. rewarded Israel with money, sophisticated weaponry and intelligence-gathering technology:

• Access to real-time satellite data for detecting ballistic missile launchers;

• $200 million for Israel’s Arrow missile project;

• $25 million to perfect the Nautilus Tactical High-Energy Laser system that can destroy small rockets such as the short range Katyushas;

• F-15-I fighter-bombers; the latest version of the world’s leading warplane by McDonnell Douglas;

• AMRAM air-to-air missiles, America’s most advanced weapon for aerial combat;

• Additional access to technology such as super-computers;

• Training Israelis to become astronauts;

• Budgeting the first $50 million promised in March 1996 “to fight terrorism”;

• Formal signing of an anti-terrorism cooperation agreement calling for sharing of information, resources, technology and training;

• Formal signing of a “statement of intent” creating a working group to explore ways to bolster Israel’s military defense; and

• Formation of a high-level steering committee to develop new ways of enhancing bilateral security cooperation, including possibly a formal defense treaty between the U.S. and Israel.[251]

It’s important to note that the Qana massacre did not provoke bin Laden to deliver his Declaration of War, which came just four months thereafter. Because bin Laden’s concept of jihad is religious, not political, violence committed against Allah in the name of “necessity” was far more serious than the political crimes committed against Muslims.

Polite vs. Impolite Terrorism

With the U.S. forces lingering in Saudi Arabia five years after the end of hostilities, bin Laden decided the time had come to “liberate” the land of the holy sites. His depiction of the compromised, dependent nature of the Saudi regime was spot on:

The crusader forces became the main cause of our disastrous condition, particularly in the economical aspect of it due to the unjustified heavy spending on these forces. As a result of the policy imposed on the country, especially in the field of oil industry where production is restricted or expanded and prices are fixed to suit the American economy ignoring the economy of the country. Expensive deals were imposed on the country to purchase arms. People are asking, “What is the justification for the very existence of the regime, then?”[252]

Notwithstanding the essence of bin Laden’s case against the U.S. “occupation,” the bellicose language in the Declaration of War was enough to convince Americans that bin Laden was a maniac, and that Islam was a religion of violent fanatics. Anti-Muslim stereotypes were set in rhetorical granite on February 23, 1998, when the London-based Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper published a fax signed by bin Laden and four others on behalf of a group calling itself the World Islamic Front. In the statement, the signatories present a fatwah, which concluded:

All these crimes and sins committed by the Americans are a clear declaration of war on God, his messenger, and Muslims…. On that basis, and in compliance with God’s order, we issue the following fatwah to all Muslims: 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 do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim….[253]

The language of the fatwah, especially its invocation to kill civilians, foreclosed any possibility that U.S. attitudes toward the Persian Gulf and Islamic militants would be governed by diplomacy or reason. When the U.S. commits violence in its own name or in the name of Israel, it employs euphemisms like “defending democracy,” “liberation,” “fighting terrorism” or “rolling-back communism.” Bin Laden, though, is candid about what he intends to do. Like other Muslim militants he doesn’t share a squeamishness for honest, violent speech. Because he eschews euphemisms, bin Laden has placed himself his followers beyond the pale of polite, “civilized” Western society.

Yet the number of Muslims killed by the polite terrorism of the U.S. and Israel far exceeds the number of Israelis and Americans killed by the Muslims impolite “terrorism.” From now on, bin Laden would be damned because of what he said, more than for any act he may have committed.

Riyadh

On April 9, 1994, the Saudis, possibly at the urging of the U.S., made their opposition to bin Laden public. The House of Saud took the extraordinary step of stripping bin Laden of his citizenship, on the grounds of “irresponsible behavior and his refusal to obey instructions issued to him.”[254] Nevertheless, the Saudis had not given up on diplomacy to earn bin Laden’s co-operation. “As regards the contacts with the Saudi government, I would like to state that the Saudi government initiated contacts during the last period in the Sudan,” said bin Laden. “They sent several delegations to enter into negotiations aimed at convincing me to keep silent on the unjust American occupation of the land of the two mosques.”[255]

After having remained silent for so long, bin Laden issued a long response, stating that he did not need to be defined as “Saudi” and denying that the House of Saud had the right to determine who may or may not live on the Arabian Peninsula. Moreover he joined with Islamic scholars and activists to form the Organization of Advice and Reform, a political group that issued around 17 communiqués attacking the Saudi regime, but stopped short of advocating violence.[256] The committee was a peaceful, moderate organization but its members were jailed, tortured and some fled. It was after this that many in Saudi Arabia concluded that violence was the only way for change.

That violence came around 11:30 a.m. on November 13, 1995, when a white van loaded with 45 pounds of SEMTEX exploded in a parking lot adjacent to the Riyadh headquarters of the Office of the Program Manager/Saudi Arabian National Guard.[257] A few moments later an anti-personnel mine exploded. According to the Saudi Ministry of the Interior, six people were killed and 60 others suffered injuries, most of them minor. Four of the dead were Americans. The U.S. State Department said seven people died in the blast, five of whom were American, and 42 were injured. At least three groups claimed responsibility, including the Islamic Movement for Change, the Tigers of the Gulf, and the Combatant Partisans of God.

Because no C-4 was missing from military inventories, the Saudis believed the bombers were working for a foreign government, like Iran or Sudan. However, a spokesman for the Pentagon said the bombers were likely ideologically driven Saudis. Four Saudi nationals confessed to the bombing and were executed. In a May 1998 interview, bin Laden admitted his role in the attack:

We have roused the nation and the Muslim people and we have communicated to them the fatwahs of our learned scholars who the Saudi government has thrown in jail in order to please the American government for which they are agents…. We have communicated their fatwahs and stirred the nation to drive out the enemy who has occupied our land and usurped our country and suppressed our people and to rid the land of the two Holy Mosques from their presence. Among the young men who responded to our call are Khalid Al Said and Abdul Azeez [Fahd Nasser] and Mahmud Al Hadi and Muslih Al Shamrani.

We hope Allah receives them as holy martyrs. They have raised the nation’s head high and washed away a great part of the shame that has enveloped us as a result of the weakness of the Saudi government and its complicity with the American government…. Yes, we have instigated and they have responded. We hope Allah grants their families solace.[258]

The Riyadh bombing was proof that the war to liberate the Middle East had reached Saudi Arabia, and that the Saudi government faced a strong, committed underground Islamist movement.

Khobar

About a month after bin Laden arrived in Afghanistan, an explosion rocked King Abdul Aziz Airbase near Dhahran in the northeast. Around 10 p.m. on June 25, 1996, a diesel tanker loaded with at least 5,000 pounds of plastic explosives was driven within 80 feet of the eight-story al-Khobar dormitory where 100 U.S. Air Force personnel were housed. A few minutes later, the explosion, equivalent to 20,000 lbs. of TNT, blew off the side of Building 131, leaving a 35 x 85-foot crater. Buildings as far as three miles away also suffered blast damage.[259]

The Khobar bombing was the worst attack against overseas U.S. personnel since the October 23, 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 marines, sailors and soldiers. U.S. sources said 19 servicemen were killed and 270 wounded in the Khobar blast, but Saudi officials said 386 were injured, including 147 Saudis.[260]

The U.S. had to have suspected something was going to happen. U.S. Ambassador Raymond Mabus said the embassy had been receiving faxes from radical groups for three months warning U.S. and British military personnel to leave Saudi Arabia before July. In a public statement, the Islamic Movement for Change vowed, “to exert all available means to evict these foreign forces.” It was one of the three groups that claimed responsibility for the Riyadh bombing seven-and-a half months earlier.[261]

To Americans, the idea that the attacks on the World Trade Center, Riyadh and Khobar could be considered acts of self-defense is absurd. They must be deemed mindless acts of terrorism. Anger, revenge and commiseration are the only appropriate emotional responses because those who would do harm to the U.S. must by definition be driven by hatred and envy. By derationalizing Muslim anger, American culture writ large absolves itself from having to understand it. To do otherwise would necessarily imply that acts of aggression against the U.S. might in some sense be rational, even moral, but this cannot be permitted. After the Khobar blast, the U.S. government wrapped itself in the mantle of victimhood, as shown by President Bill Clinton’s remarks: “The explosion appears to be the work of terrorists. If that’s the case, like all Americans I am outraged by it. The cowards who committed this murderous act must not go unpunished… Our condolences and our prayers go out to the victims, families and their friends.”[262]

What Clinton does not say is that many Muslims consider the lingering U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia to be an occupying force and an insult to Islam. To underscore this point, Secretary of State Warren Christopher pledged that the bombing would not deter the United States from pursuing its mission in Saudi Arabia, but what that mission could be in mid-1996 is a mystery.[263] The U.S. had promised King Fahd that its forces would not stay longer than necessary, and since “Desert Storm” had been over for more than five years, the U.S. and other Western forces should have already left, just as the Islamic Movement for Change demanded.[264]

One does not have to sympathize with bin Laden to reject Clinton’s depiction of the Khobar bombing as a cowardly terrorist act. From the Islamists’ perspective, it was a legitimate act against a foreign occupier. Had the U.S. removed its military from Saudi Arabia as promised, the Riyadh and Khobar bombings would not have occurred; the Declaration of War would not have been issued; and Osama bin Laden would be just another Arab with a big bank account.

Of course, this scenario is utterly implausible. As we know, the U.S. did not send in its military to defend Saudi Arabia against a putative Iraqi threat, but to establish a military presence to safeguard access to Persian Gulf oil. Even if the U.S. had the ability to respect and appreciate Islamic sensitivities, paranoia and economic self-interest precluded it from appreciating the disaster to come. Thus the Riyadh and Khobar bombings—or bombings like them—were inevitable.

East Africa

On the morning of Friday, August 7, 1998, a truck bomb exploded in a parking lot at the rear of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. The blast killed 213 people, including 44 embassy employees—12 Americans and 32 Kenyans. Ten Americans and 11 Kenyans were seriously injured. An estimated 200 Kenyan civilians were killed and 4,000 were injured by the blast in the vicinity of the embassy.

Nine minutes later, another truck bomb exploded in the U.S. embassy in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. No Americans were among the 11 killed, but many were among the 85 injured. In all, the two blasts killed 243 people, injured more than 4,000, and caused serious damage to buildings in the compounds and the surrounding areas. Both U.S. chanceries withstood the blasts but were rendered unusable.[265]

This time, though, the U.S. was not content simply to utter denunciations. Despite having no physical evidence to link bin Laden to the attacks, Clinton selected two sites allegedly affiliated with him to receive America’s wrath—one in Afghanistan, one in Sudan. As a former U.S. intelligence official put it: “It was all rather biblical. The president was very specific: he wanted two targets for the two embassies that were bombed.”[266]

On August 20, within hours of the U.S. reprisal attacks, Clinton addressed the nation to explain what was done and why. The speech consists of three interwoven justifications that betray not only the political and moral baselessness of the attack—and the “war on terrorism”
in general—but also the moral and political validity of bin Laden’s Declaration of War.

The Military Justification

Our forces targeted one of the most active terrorist bases in the world. It contained key elements of the bin Laden network’s infrastructure and has served as a training camp for literally thousands of terrorists from around the globe. We have reason to believe that a gathering of key terrorist leaders was to take place there today, thus underscoring the urgency of our actions. Our forces also attacked a factory in Sudan associated with the bin Laden network. The factory was involved in the production of materials for chemical weapons. (Clinton)

Under Operation “Infinite Reach” the military fired 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles at six alleged terrorist camps near the cities of Khost and Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. Of the four camps near Khost, two were operated by Pakistan, which lost five ISI officers and 20 trainees in the attack. In all, 21 people were killed, including three women and two children—but no “terrorists.” It turns out that the meeting Clinton mentioned took place a month earlier. Bin Laden and other mujahedin were nowhere near the camps. In the end, the U.S. expended $79 million-worth of satellite-guided cruise missiles to destroy an obstacle course, field barracks and a few tents.[267]

The other target was the $100 million al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan, which was deemed to be a site for the manufacture of Empta, a precursor agent in the manufacture of VX nerve gas. The “evidence” for this charge is a soil sample taken near the plant by a CIA operative; however, no independent evidence has substantiated the U.S. government’s claim. This is not surprising because Empta is chemically similar to certain pesticides found in the area, and is highly reactive. A test done during the following February found no evidence of Empta or its breakdown product Empa.[268]

Senior Pentagon officials also alleged that al-Shifa was part of Sudan’s military-industrial complex, to which bin Laden was known to have made financial contributions.[269] But, the U.S. has not proven any connection between bin Laden and the plant. Such a connection would not have even been possible because several months before the attack the plant was sold to Saleh Idris, a millionaire Saudi born in Sudan.

In May 1999, the U.S. unfroze Idris‘s assets, thereby tacitly admitting that it had no case against him. Officially, government spokesmen refused to apologize to Idris, to admit that the attack had no merit, even though at the time senior security and intelligence personnel demonstrated that insufficient evidence existed to justify an attack.[270] In fact, the State Department was preparing a report to that effect, but Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had it stifled.

In July 2000, Idris filed a $50 million compensation lawsuit against the U.S. government. “I have never met nor spoken with Mr. Osama bin Laden nor with any agent of his,” he told the BBC.[271]

But biblical-style retribution, not rational evaluation of scientific data, was uppermost in Washington’s mind. As Clinton said in the address: “[The] risks from inaction to America and the world would be far greater than action, for that would embolden our enemies, leaving their ability and their willingness to strike us intact.” By making a virtue out of necessity, Clinton only proved that the decision to attack was militarily and politically irrational.

The Legal/Political justification

Afghanistan and Sudan have been warned for years to stop harboring and supporting these terrorist groups. But countries that persistently host terrorists have no right to be safe havens… With compelling evidence [sic] that the bin Laden network of terrorist groups was planning to mount further attacks… I decided America must act. America has battled terrorism for many years. Where possible, we’ve used law enforcement and diplomatic tools to wage the fight. The long arm of American law has reached out around the world and brought to trial those guilty of attacks in New York, in Virginia, and in the Pacific… But there have been and will be times when law enforcement and diplomatic tools are simply not enough, when our very national security is challenged, and when we must take extraordinary steps to protect the safety of our citizens. (Clinton)

In trying to make a legal case for bombing Afghanistan and Sudan, Clinton did the opposite, saying, in effect: “If the U.S. can get what it wants through diplomacy and adherence to international law—fine, but when push comes to shove the U.S. will get what it wants by force—international law be damned,” but what qualifies as “law” is a good question. The U.S. to date had not attempted to indict bin Laden, and had no firm evidence linking him to the 1992 attempted bombing of U.S. troops in Yemen, the 1993 attacks on U.S. troops in Somalia, or the 1995 Riyadh bombing. Moreover, federal law enforcement officers were not even close to bringing criminal charges against bin Laden or anyone else related to the embassy bombings.[272]

The only country that did make any serious effort to prosecute bin Laden was Libya. In their book Ben Laden: la vérité intérdite [Bin Laden: the Forbidden Truth], French investigative reporters and intelligence experts Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquié published a confidential March 16, 1998, memo from Libya’s interior minister to Interpol charging bin Laden in the 1994 murders of German intelligence agents Silvan Becker and his wife. Bin Laden wanted to settle in Libya in the early 1990s, but Moammar Qaddafi refused to admit him. Enraged by this refusal, bin Laden supported al-Muqatila, a radical Islamist group comprised of 20 Libyan veterans of the Afghan jihad who considered Qaddafi to be an infidel. Together with British intelligence, al-Muqatila tried to assassinate Qaddafi in 1996.[273]

Dasquié said the London-based Islamic Fighting Group (IFG), the most powerful Libyan dissident organization, has been linked directly to bin Laden. Qaddafi even demanded that Western police institutions, such as Interpol, pursue the IFG and bin Laden, but he never obtained their cooperation. Interpol ignored the arrest warrant because of British collaboration with al-Muqatila, which has since been placed on the U.S.’s list of terrorist groups.

Concerning the bombing and international law, the Charter of the United Nations states that if a dispute arises between member-states that cannot be settled by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means (Article 33), the dispute shall be referred to the Security Council (Article 37).

Given the gravity of the embassy bombings, such an appeal stood a good chance of earning the sympathy of other council members. However, the UN was set up to regulate affairs among nation-states, and the perpetrators of the Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam bombings were stateless. Nevertheless, under Article 34 the Security Council has the right to investigate any dispute, if asked. Since Afghanistan and Sudan, as member-states of the UN, played no role in the bombings, America’s unilateralism must be deemed to be an aggressive act by a rogue state, and therefore a crime under international law.

Further evidence of the non-legal nature of the attack comes from Clinton‘s failure to inform the government of Pakistan that cruise missiles would violate Pakistani air space en route to Afghanistan. The only Pakistani told was Gen. Jehangir Karamat, who was hosting a dinner for Gen. Joseph Ralston, the vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As Mary Weaver recounted in The New Yorker:

Around 10 o’clock in the evening, as the two men were having dinner, Ralston looked up from his chicken tikka, checked his watch, and informed his host that in ten minutes some sixty Tomahawk cruise missiles would be entering Pakistan’s airspace… “It was a ‘This is happening as we speak’ kind of conversation,” an American intelligence official told me. “Ralston was there, on the ground, to make absolutely certain that when the missiles flew across Pakistan’s radar screen they would not be misconstrued as coming from India and, as a consequence, be shot down.” The intelligence official paused for a moment, and then said, “This is one hell of a way to treat our friends.”[274]

The Moral Justification

The groups associated with [Osama bin Laden] come from diverse places but share a hatred for democracy, a fanatical glorification of violence, and a horrible distortion of their religion to justify the murder of innocents. They have made the United States their adversary precisely because of what we stand for and what we stand against. A few months ago and again this week, bin Laden publicly vowed to wage a terrorist war against America, saying—and I quote—”We do not differentiate between those dressed in military uniforms and civilians. They’re all targets.” Their mission is murder, and their history is bloody. In recent years they killed American, Belgian, and Pakistani peacekeepers in Somalia… This will be a long, ongoing struggle between freedom and fanaticism, between the rule of law and terrorism. We must be prepared to do all that we can for as long as we must. America is and will remain a target of terrorists precisely because we are leaders; because we act to advance peace, democracy and basic human values; because we’re the most open society on earth; and because, as we have shown yet again, we take an uncompromising stand against terrorism. (Clinton)

Before it was destroyed, the al-Shifa plant produced 50 percent of Sudan’s medicine, including 90 percent of the drugs to fight malaria, diarrhea, diabetes, tuberculosis and other treatable diseases, as well as anti-parasitic drugs for livestock. In January 1998, the factory won a $199,000 contract to ship 100,000 cartons of the anti-parasitic drug Shifazole, to Iraq under UN sanction. White cartons of the antibiotic were scattered in the rubble.[275] After the attack, Sudan was forced to import these drugs at considerable cost. As a result, many thousands of Sudanese civilians would die needlessly.

Even if retaliation were justifiable, the quality of intelligence that selected these targets refutes any claim that the bombing had any connection to justice. It amounted to bombing for its own sake against two of the world’s poorest countries, thus qualifying as an act of terrorism. The only beneficiary was bin Laden. As Dr. Saad al-Fagih told Frontline:

After the American attack on Sudan and Afghanistan it became almost shameful to criticize bin Laden. People inside Saudi Arabia and in other Arab countries were full of anger towards America, and whoever can antagonize America would provide a fulfillment to their desire of discharging their anger. The American strike with the associated remarks by Clinton and American officials proved that bin Laden is a big challenge to America. In the mind of [an] average Arab and Muslim, bin Laden appeared as the man who was able to drive America so crazy that it started shooting haphazardly at unjustified targets…. Those who had reservations of the African bombings thought that this arrogance of the Americans is much worse than the embassy bombings. Their view was that while bin Laden or others can make “executive” mistakes because of their difficult circumstances, logistics and communication, America is not supposed to do this mistake, unless it is done on purpose.[276]

Indictment

Three months after the embassy bombings, the U.S. District Court (Southern District of New York) brought down an indictment against bin Laden, charging him with conspiracy to kill Americans, among other things. Yet the indictment was a political document, not a legal one, and based on the same guilt-by-association nonsense as Clinton‘s address was. The New York Times description of the indictment makes this clear:

American officials say that so far firsthand evidence that could be used in court to prove that [bin Laden] commanded the bombings has proven difficult to obtain. According to the public record, none of the informants involved in the case have direct knowledge of bin Laden’s involvement. For now, officials say, federal prosecutors appear to be building a case that his violent words and ideas, broadcast from an Afghan cave, incited terrorist acts thousands of miles away. In their war against bin Laden, American officials portray him as the world’s most dangerous terrorist. But reporters forThe New York Timesand the PBS programFrontline, have found him to be less a commander of terrorists than an inspiration for them… “We can’t say for sure what was going on” with him from 1991 to 1996—most of the years covered in the indictment—one senior official said.[277]

TheTimes story generally accords with bin Laden’s own interpretation of the bombings, which he articulated in the first of a four-part interview with ABC on December 12, 1998.

ABC News: You have been charged with masterminding the bombings of the two U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Are these charges true?

Osama Bin Laden: Praise be to God, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the Worlds. Peace and blessings be upon Prophet Muhammad, his companions and his kin. Let me begin by stating that we, in the World Islamic Front for jihad against Jews and Crusaders, have, by the grace of God Almighty, issued a crystal clear fatwah calling on the Nation to carry on jihad aimed at liberating Islamic holy sites, and the Ancient House (The Holy Ka’aba), and Al-Aqsa Mosque and all Islamic lands.

By the grace of God, Praise and Glory be to him; this Nation, the Nation of Muhammad, God’s peace and blessings be upon him, has responded to this appeal and this instigation. We will continue this course because it is a part of our religion, and because God, Praise and Glory be to him, ordered us to carry out jihad so that the word of God may remain exalted to the heights. If the instigation for jihad against the Jews and the Americans, in order to liberate Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Holy Ka’aba, is considered a crime, let history be a witness that I am a criminal.

ABC News: You warned that Americans would die. Then, two months later, the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar As Salaam were bombed. Were these bombings because of your fatwah (decree) against America?

Bin Laden: By the Grace of God, Praise and Glory be to him, we have repeatedly issued warnings over a number of years. Following these warnings and these calls, anti-American explosions took place in a number of Islamic countries. Most probably, these acts came about as a result of such calls and warnings. But only God knows the truth.

ABC News: If the targets of jihads are Americans, how can the deaths of so many Africans be justified?

Bin Laden: This question pre-supposes that it is me who carried out these explosions. My answer is that I understand the motives of the brothers who carry out acts of jihad against the enemies of the nation, namely the Americans and their supporters… [R]adio reports said that most of those killed were members of the American Embassy in Nairobi, which housed the largest CIA center in the African continent. We do understand what happened. Many people were saddened by the death of some innocent people outside the embassy building.[278]

The day after the bombings, Sheikh Omar Barkri, bin Laden’s spokesman in London, gave an interview to Knight-Ridder Newspapers in which he said bin Laden had no connection to The Islamic Army for Liberating the Holy Sites, the group that claimed responsibility for the bombings: “Bin Laden was not the mastermind behind it. This was definitely not one of his projects. He endorsed it, but he did not order it. He is not a coward. If he had ordered this, he would take responsibility for it… This is a new group, and you can expect a lot of freelance groups to come up. But it is not a bin Laden organization.”[279]

On October 12, 2000, the guided-missile destroyer USS Cole was docked in Aden to refuel en route to the Persian Gulf. At 12:15 p.m., a small harbor boat armed with explosives was steered into its side. The ship, built to withstand a pressure of 51,000 pounds per square inch, sustained a 30 x 40 foot gaping hole, and extensive flooding. Seventeen people were killed and 39 were injured. The response was predictable: Clinton and other administration officials denounced the attackers as “cowardly,” vowed revenge, and tried to link the bombing to bin Laden. According to CNN: “The officials said the evidence suggests some suspects in the Cole attack… were in contact with bin Laden operatives in East Africa. The officials would not be more specific.”[280]

In contrast, the BBC offered sober speculation on bin Laden’s involvement and took what might be called a swipe at the U.S.’s obsession:

Kuwait’s respected newspaper, Al-Rai al-Aam, printed an alleged telephone conversation with Mr. Bin Laden. The paper quotes him as saying that neither he nor his followers have any intention of striking civil or military installations in any Arab country. The world of militant Islamists is a shadowy and confusing one with no shortage of fanatics prepared to die in order to strike at U.S. and Israeli interests. If Osama bin Laden’s denial is confirmed, it removes the most obvious suspect and makes the job of U.S. detectives that much harder.[281]

By the time of the USS Cole bombing, bin Laden had spent two years on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s “10 Most-Wanted” list and been placed under criminal indictment without benefit of evidence. Yet just eight years earlier he did not even register on the U.S.’s terrorist radar. The fact that these years also span the entire presidency of Bill Clinton is significant, for he is responsible for turning bin Laden into a celebrity. Larry Johnson, deputy director of the U.S. State Department Office of Counterterrorism (1989-1993), explained the folly of the Clinton administration’s response to bin Laden:

They’re grossly exaggerating the problem. They are hyping it… Instead of saying “terrorism’s rising,” (it’s not); “Terrorism is spreading,” (it’s not); “More people are dying from terrorism,” (not the case); they should be saying: “There’s one individual out there that really doesn’t like us, and he’s made it his mission in life to kill Americans, and we’ve gotta deal with him.” But we need to have a voice of reason in that process instead of putting ourselves out crying “wolf,” because this is essentially what’s taking place right now. They call it “the administration that cries ‘wolf.’”[282]

The UN’s Double Standard

An example of what bin Laden meant by “a clear conspiracy between the USA and its allies and under the cover of the iniquitous United Nations” is the moral double standard shown toward Iraq during and after the Gulf War. UN Security Council Resolution 662 (August 9, 1990) is typical:

Recalling its resolutions 660 (1990) of 2 August 1990 and 661 (1990) 6 August 1990,

Gravely alarmed by the declaration by Iraq of a ‘comprehensive and eternal merger’ with Kuwait,

Demanding, once again, that Iraq withdraw immediately and unconditionally all its forces to the positions in which they were located on 1 August 1990,

Determined to bring the occupation of Kuwait by Iraq to an end and to restore the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Kuwait,

Determined also to restore the authority of the legitimate Government of Kuwait,

1. Decides that annexation of Kuwait by Iraq under any form and whatever pretext has no legal validity, and is considered null and void;

2. Calls upon all States, international organizations and specialized agencies not to recognize that annexation, and to refrain from any action or dealing that might be interpreted as an indirect recognition of the annexation;

3. Further demands that Iraq rescind its actions purporting to annex Kuwait;

4. Decides to keep this item on its agenda and to continue its efforts to put an early end to the occupation.[283]

If you substitute “Israel” for “Iraq”; “Palestine” for “Kuwait”; and “5 June 1967” for “1 August 1990” you would have the essence of Israel’s occupation of Palestine, but the UN has not imposed sanctions against Israel or threatened it with military reprisals for flouting international law; in fact, the UN has done nothing but issue a blizzard of paper protests. The message is unmistakable—one form of aggression is acceptable and one is not.

Illegal Containment

When the subject of WMDs comes up, invariably so does Halabja, a Kurdish city 260 kilometres northeast of Baghdad. On March 16, 1988, an aerial chemical weapons attack killed 5,000 and left 7,000 injured or with long-term illnesses. Hussein was blamed, and Halabja became a symbol of Hussen’s inhumanity toward its Kurdish minority, even though Hussein likely had nothing to do with it.

Stephen C. Pelletière, the CIA’s senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran/Iraq war has evidence that the gas that killed the Kurds came from Iran. He said the Kurds died, not deliberately, but as the result of a chemical-weapons battle around Halabja. According to a tightly controlled United States Defense Intelligence Agency classified report, Pelletière said each side used gas, but the bodies of the Kurds showed that they had been killed by a blood agent, a cyanide-based gas, which Iran had used. The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas, were not known to have possessed blood agents at the time.[284]

Nevertheless, on April 5, 1991, the Security Council passed Resolution 688, which, among other things, demanded that Iraq end its repression of the Kurds and allow international humanitarian aid organizations into the north. The resolution also requested that the Secretary-General use all available resources and agencies to pursue humanitarian efforts.[285]

Two weeks later, the U.S., U.K. and France used the resolution as a pretext for setting up a “no-fly zone” (NFZ) for Iraqi aircraft north of the 36th parallel, ostensibly to create a “safe haven” for the Kurds. In August 1992, these countries set up a southern no-fly zone south of the 32nd parallel to protect Iraq’s Shi’ite minority. The U.S. extended the zone to the 33rd parallel in September 1996.[286] In total, the two NFZs covered about two thirds of Iraq.

The NFZs were illegal, since nothing in this or any other resolution authorized their existence. Furthermore, their stated humanitarian objectives didn’t stand up to observational scrutiny. For example, in the south, the NFZ did not stop artillery bombardments, the draining and poisoning of marshes, mass arrests and large-scale burning of houses. In fact, the U.S. State Department acknowledged that Hussein’s repression of his opponents had increased since the zone was established.[287] One reason was that the lines of latitude delineating the NFZs did not encompass all Kurdish or Shi’ite areas, so it’s impossible to see how the patrols could have accomplished their mission, or have been an improvement over satellite and human intelligence. Without question, the NFZs were tied into the phantom hunt for WMDs and designed to hobble Iraq’s economy and military.

From 1991 to 1998, the U.S. and U.K. patrolled the NFZs almost daily and bombed Iraq only when they encountered anti-aircraft fire, surface-to-air missiles or acquisition by radar—all of which Iraq had a right to do in the name of national self-defense. Bombings during this period were limited to the sources of national resistance, but in 1998 Clinton authorized “more expansive rules of engagement,” which turned the no-fly zones, illegal as they already were, into a covert air war. Pilots were now no longer limited to firing at Iraqi planes or ground installations; they could now target other parts of the broader air-defense network.[288]

From December 1998 to June 2000, the Royal Air Force dropped 78 tonnes of bombs, compared with 2.5 tonnes between April 1991 and December 1998. The average monthly tonnage dropped on NFZs rose from 0.025 to five tonnes.[289] As the bombings increased so did civilian casualties. In 1999, the results of the most destructive aerial raids were:

• About 20 killed in Basra region (South)—January 25;

• Oil exports cut after attack damages pipeline in Mosul (North)—February 28;

• 12 killed when planes hit residential area (North)—May 13;

• 14 civilians killed (South)—July 18; and

• Eight killed and 26 injured (North)—July 28.[290]

So much for the humanitarian justification for the NFZs.

The UNSCOM Scam

Clinton’s increased bombardment in December 1998 was a direct consequence of the UN weapons inspectors’ decision to leave Iraq. The Australian head of the UNSCOM inspection team Richard Butler declared that Iraq was not co-operating, but this charge does not accord with the views of chief U.S. weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who said the U.S. was trying to provoke a confrontation to justify withdrawal so that an attack could take place.

He recalls a meeting on either February 28 or March 1, 1998, with the U.S.’s UN Ambassador Bill Richardson and Butler at the UN, when Butler told him to provoke a confrontation with Iraq so that the U.S. could start bombing before March 15, the start of a Muslim holy period. After arriving in Baghdad on March 10, Ritter said the inspection teams were barred from searching the Ministry of Defense, but at length the Iraqis admitted them. This acquiescence, said Ritter, forced Albright to cancel plans to explain to the French why the U.S. was planning to take military action.[291]

In December 1998, Australian weapons inspector Roger Hill successfully manufactured a provocation when the Iraqis initially refused entry into one of Saddam Hussein‘s presidential palaces. As Ritter told an audience in Vancouver, Canada, on October 4, 2002, the inspection team asked an Iraqi in the palace if this constituted a formal refusal, and was told “yes,” but then he changed his mind and allowed the team access. The team took the first refusal as the excuse it needed to leave in advance of the long-planned air attack. In a speech to the British parliament Ritter formally debunked the case for war:

As of December 1998, the weapons inspectors had destroyed the factories that could be used to produce chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. They are gone. We backed it up with monitoring and the most stringent controls in history to ensure that Iraq wasn’t reconstituting that ability.

We could not account for everything. But we do know that the factory where, for example, they made liquid bulk anthrax ceased production. We blew it up in 1996. Liquid bulk anthrax cannot survive for more than three years even under ideal storage conditions. So even if Iraq did hide some from us it is no longer viable.

As of December 1998 we came close to zero level in terms of Iraq’s ability to produce or maintain weapons of mass destruction. Biological and chemical weapons must be produced in industrial facilities possessing the highest level of technology. Iraq would have had to procure much of this from abroad to reconstitute facilities.… Even if they got it and attempted to reconstitute a biological, chemical or nuclear factory, it is detectable.[292]

Despite overwhelming evidence that Iraq posed no danger, the U.S. and U.K. would escalate their undeclared war. In April 2002, the RAF dropped 0.3 tonnes of bombs on the no-fly zones; in September the tonnage jumped 180 percent to more than 54. In December, British government officials admitted that the patrols in the south were designed to weaken Iraq’s air defense systems and had nothing to do with defending the marsh Arabs and Shi’ites.[293]

In 1996, the UN began to allow Iraq to sell limited amounts of oil for food, but the effort was wholly inadequate to forestall this man-made humanitarian catastrophe. In 1998, Denis Halliday, head of the UN’s humanitarian relief efforts and overseer of the oil-for-food program in Baghdad, resigned in disgust:

To understand the gravity of the situation in Iraq, one must understand the damage inflicted by the 1991 Gulf War. The allied forces destroyed sewerage systems, water purification plants, electrical grids, hospitals, schools, [and] grain silos—in short, the entire civilian infrastructure. The consequences for Iraq have been disastrous. Raw sewage flows in the streets, contaminating the water, causing an upsurge in diarrhea, typhoid and cholera as the result. Electric power runs at less than 40 percent of pre-1990 levels. A major health problem is the sharp increase in cancers, leukemia and birth defects. This is most likely due to the use of depleted uranium weapons by allied forces during the Gulf War.

Sanctions have wreaked havoc on the economy. To survive, families are forced to sell their belongings and to resort to begging and crime. School dropout rates and childhood illiteracy have soared. Archeological sites, many of them bombed in the Gulf War, have been looted and their treasures sold overseas.

We are destroying an entire society. It is as simple and as terrifying as that…. It may sound too dramatic to call this systematic destruction genocide. But what better word is there? The UN Security Council knows full well the dimensions of the tragedy unfolding in Iraq—even if the American people do not.[294]

The sanctions were felt much more acutely in the strategically sensitive south-central region than in the Kurdish north. For all categories in south-central, under-5 mortality between 1990 and 1998 almost doubled in every category. According to UNICEF, if the substantial reduction in under-five mortality of the 1980s had continued, there would have been half a million fewer deaths overall during 1991 to 1998.[295]

Halliday’s use of “genocide” is not an exaggeration; it fits the definition in Article 6 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court:

Table VIII: Child Mortality per 1,000 Live Births

Years

Newborn

Infant

Child

Newborn

Infant

Child

South-Central Iraq

Northern Iraq

1980

33.2

57.2

18.5

44.6

93.6

37

1985

29.9

45.1

8.1

35.8

71.6

26.2

1990

26.2

46.8

13.2

42.5

72.4

21.1

1991

59.1

98.7

19.2

48.4

103.1

27.9

1992

59.5

99.2

18.8

39.5

68

21.2

1993

63.4

101.3

20.3

31.7

52.5

16.1

1994

67.2

102.8

21.3

36.7

58.6

15.9

1995

66.9

105

26.5

47.3

66.1

15.4

1996

69.2

112.3

28.3

33.2

52

19.6

1997

63.1

108.3

26.5

35.2

51.5

11.1

1998

67.6

113

33.3

41.7

52.2

7.9

Avg. 1980–90

29.8

49.7

13.3

41.0

79.2

28.1

Avg. 1996–98

66.6

111.2

29.4

36.7

51.9

12.9

% Change

124%

124%

121%

–10%

–34%

–54%

Source: Mohamed M. Ali, John Blacker and Gareth Jones, Annual mortality rates and excess deaths of children under five in Iraq, 1991-98, April 2003
www.lshtm.ac.uk/cps/public/excessmortality in Iraq.pdf

For the purpose of this Statute, ‘genocide’ means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, such as:

(a) killing members of the group;

(b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.[296]

On May 12, 1996, in a now infamous exchange on 60 Minutes, Clinton‘s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright conceded that the U.S. was willfully and knowingly killing Iraqi children:

Interviewer Leslie Stahl: We have heard that a half million children have died...I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And—and you know, is the price worth it?

Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price—we think the price is worth it.

Stahl (voice-over): Worth it because she believes the sanctions are working.

Albright: He has in fact come cleaner on some of these weapons programs than we thought before and has recognized Kuwait, which was one of the very important reasons this war was started. It is a moral question, but the moral question here is a large one. Don’t we owe to the American people and to the American military and to the other countries of this region that this man not be a threat.

Stahl: Even with the starvation?

Albright: It is hard for me to say this but I am a humane person, but I think my main responsibility is to make sure that United States forces don’t have to go and refight the Gulf War.[297]

This exchange produced three important facts: First, Albright did not dispute the number of deaths or the fact of starvation; second, the lives of Iraqi civilians did not figure in the larger moral picture of the U.S.; and three, Albright immediately shifted the focus from the U.S.-created catastrophe to Saddam Hussein. Even though, the U.S-led sanctions regime was directly responsible for creating and perpetuating this catastrophe, Hussein had to be made responsible. “It’s Saddam’s fault” would become a catchall mantra to justify the beggaring of Iraqi civilians and the subsequent invasion.

The UN resolutions that caused this humanitarian catastrophe cannot be understood from any rational perspective. Only as an example the self-interest of Israel and the U.S. do the 12 years of sanctions and NFZs make sense. They also prove the accuracy and moral legitimacy of bin Laden’s Declaration of War.

10

One Nation Under PNAC

The Zionization of the U.S., which began with Ronald Reagan’s benighted papacy, now reached its climax. Under the PNAC junta, anyone in government who stood for traditional Eisenhower-style Republicanism, defended the rule of law over governmental arrogance, or put U.S. interests ahead of Israel’s would be purged, intimidated or marginalized. Informed dissent was now heresy, and democratic freedoms were obstacles to be destroyed at will. PNACers believe that the U.S. lost its way in the 1990s because Clinton did not promote Israel’s needs and U.S. imperial expansionism with sufficient zeal:

The history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire. The history of this century should have taught us to embrace the cause of American leadership. Our aim is to remind Americans of these lessons and to draw their consequences for today. Here are four consequences:

• We need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future;

• We need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values;

• We need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad;

• We need to accept responsibility for America’s unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.

Such a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity may not be fashionable today. But it is necessary if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next.[1]

The allusion to Reagan is no accident. Of the 25 people who signed the Statement of Principles many had come to prominence from 1980 to 1988. This fact is important because the Bush/Clinton Labor-Zionist foreign policy establishment ignored PNAC’s warmongering fulminations, even after Benjamin Netanyahu led Israel’s hard-line Likud to power in May 1996. To get the message out, Kristol adopted the Trotskyite tactic of issuing open letters against the government. The letter dated January 26, 1998, warning Clinton about the danger posed by Iraq is easily recognizable as the basis of George W. Bush’s justification for invading Iraq:

“We are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War….The policy of ‘containment’ of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over the past several months. As recent events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections. Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished… The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.[2]

A reader can detect propaganda by the conspicuous repetition of slogans and buzzwords, value-laden assertions, and promotion of an enemy figure. In the letter, we see all three factors. In a mere six paragraphs, “Saddam” or “Saddam Hussein” occurs nine times and “weapons of mass destruction,” four times; Hussein’s “possession” of WMDs is constantly imputed without evidence; and the danger of doing nothing is equated with weakness. The following sentence encompasses all three elements:

It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard.

Note particularly the passing mention of defending Israel. This, not WMDs, was the real objective of the letter. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to claim the assault on Iraq came solely at PNAC’s instigation. An undeclared war to destroy Iraq had been in effect since the invasion of Kuwait.[3]

A cease-fire was declared on February 28, 1991, and Iraq’s army withdrew to its position status quo ante, but not before setting Kuwait’s oilfields ablaze. With hostilities over and the sovereignty of Kuwait re-established, the pretext for economic sanctions had vanished, yet they were not removed. They would remain in place for 12 years. After the war, UNSC Resolution 687 (April 3, 1991) institutionalized a sanctions regime, which was illegal when compared to the terms of Resolution 660. Iraq was banned from buying commodities other than medical and food supplies or for “essential civilian needs.” The Security Council would review the terms of the sanctions every 60 days and decide to reduce or lift them according to Iraq’s compliance with all past council resolutions.

Furthermore, the resolution forced Iraq to adhere to a stringent, internationally supervised disarmament schedule. Under Section C (paragraphs 7 to 14), Iraq had to eliminate all WMDs, ballistic missiles with a range greater than 150 kilometers, related items and production facilities, and agree not to resume their acquisition or production. In addition, Iraq had to agree to accept a UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) that would implement non-nuclear provisions of the resolution and assist the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in nuclear inspections.[4]

Because compliance with all Security Council resolutions was the condition for the lifting of sanctions, economic and military punishments were linked, and so UNSCOM became the billy club by which the U.S. kept Iraq in a perpetually beggared state. If WMDs could not be found, it could always be argued that the Hussein government was not co-operating or that the weapons were “somewhere,” thus ensuring the continuation of the economic sanctions.

Imperial manifesto

In September 2000, PNAC came out with Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century. It is to the U.S. what Clean Break was to Israel; in fact, many of the same people were involved in both documents. Only from this common perspective can the seventh and final stage of the Zionist conquest of America be understood.

Rebuilding America’s Defenses, though written near the end of the Clinton administration, became the policy bible for George W. Bush. It is a politico-theocratic manifesto calculated to reduce the U.S. to a servant of Zionism. (Even though Israel is only mentioned once in passing, its agenda is well represented.) It’s unclear if PNAC would have come to such prominence if Vice-President Al Gore had won the 2000 election, but with George W. Bush in the White House, PNACers had a ventriloquist’s dummy that exceeded Reagan’s capacity for gormless leadership.  As the rest of this chapter will show, Bush‘s bombing of Afghanistan, invasion of Iraq, and assault on the Constitution—all in the name of fighting the “war on terrorism”—can be traced to PNAC, the need for an external Arab enemy, and the need to serve Israel.

Rationalizing Militarism

Rebuilding America’s Defenses is an unselfconscious apologia for world domination. Its underlying conceit of “what’s good for the U.S. is good for the world” is summed up in these two passages from the Introduction:

Today, the United States has an unprecedented strategic opportunity. It faces no immediate great-power challenge; it is blessed with wealthy, powerful and democratic allies in every part of the world; it is in the midst of the longest economic expansion in its history; and its political and economic principles are almost universally embraced. At no time in history has the international security order been as conducive to American interests and ideals. Yet unless the United States maintains sufficient military strength, this opportunity will be lost….

Years of cuts in defense spending have eroded the American military’s combat readiness, and put in jeopardy the Pentagon’s plans for maintaining military superiority in the years ahead. Increasingly, the U.S. military has found itself undermanned, inadequately equipped and trained, straining to handle contingency operations, and ill-prepared to adapt itself to the revolution in military affairs. Without a well-conceived defense policy and an appropriate increase in defense spending, the United States has been letting its ability to take full advantage of the remarkable strategic opportunity at hand slip away.[5]

One needn’t be a specialist in military history to recognize that the rosy scenario in the first part is irreconcilable with the paranoid insecurity in the second. If the world almost universally embraced U.S. political and economic principles what could this “strategic opportunity” be? To mask the true intent of the report, the authors concoct an elaborate illusion of U.S. military weakness that must be reversed.

Since today’s peace is the unique product of American preeminence, a failure to preserve that preeminence allows others an opportunity to shape the world in ways antithetical to American interests and principles. The price of American preeminence is that, just as it was actively obtained, it must be actively maintained.[6]

Furthermore, PNAC—like JINSA, WINEP, AEI, CSP and other “think tanks”—has deep ties to the U.S. and Israeli military establishments, and as such needs an external enemy to justify its demand for bloated defense budgets. In short, PNACers needed to re-orient U.S. military doctrine toward overt, unilateral aggression. Rebuilding America’s Defenses articulates this strategy by disguising aggression and wasteful military spending as defense reforms.

Table IX: Selected Signatories to PNAC’s
Statement of Principles

PNACer

Reagan era post(s)

George W. Bush era post(s)

Elliot Abrams

Ass’t. Secretary of State; Indicted by the Iran-Contra special prosecutor for giving false testimony before Congress

National security council senior director for democracy, human rights and international operations

Dick Cheney (Founding   PNACer)

Six-term congressman from Wyoming;
Defense Secretary (Bush Sr.)

Vice-President

Zalmay Khalilzad

Special State Department advisor on the Iran-Iraq War and the Soviet War in Afghanistan

Head of the Bush-Cheney Transition team for the Department of Defense and advisor to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; Amb. to Afghanistan; Amb. to Iraq.

Lewis “Scooter” Libby

State Dept. Policy Planning Staff; Director of special projects for East Asian and Pacific Affairs; Deputy defense undersecretary for policy (Bush Sr.)

Chief of staff to Cheney; Indicted for role in leaking name of CIA operative

Peter W. Rodman

Director of State Dept. Policy Planning Staff; Deputy Ass’t. National Security Affairs; Special Ass’t. for National Security Affairs and NSC Counselor (Reagan/Bush)

Ass’t. Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs

Frank Gaffney

Ass’t. Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy

Founder of the Centre for Security Policy

Norman Podhoretz

Editor, Commentary

Editor-at-large Commentary; Senior fellow Hudson Institute

Donald Rumsfeld

General Advisory Committee on Arms Control

Presidential envoy to Iraq

Secretary of Defense

Paul Wolfowitz

Ass’t. Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs; Amb. to Indonesia; Head of the State Department Policy Planning Staff

Deputy Secretary of Defense; Advisor to Cheney; Head of World Bank

The following passage is key to understanding the PNAC mentality:

In broad terms, we saw the project as building upon the defense strategy outlined by the Cheney Defense Department in the waning days of the Bush Administration. The Defense Policy Guidance (DPG) drafted in the early months of 1992 provided a blueprint for maintaining U.S. preeminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests. Leaked before it had been formally approved, the document was criticized as an effort by “cold warriors” to keep defense spending high and cuts in forces small despite the collapse of the Soviet Union; not surprisingly, it was subsequently buried by the new administration. Although the experience of the past eight years has modified our understanding of particular military requirements for carrying out such a strategy, the basic tenets of the DPG, in our judgment, remain sound. And what Secretary Cheney said at the time in response to the DPG’s critics remains true today: “We can either sustain the [armed] forces we require and remain in a position to help shape things for the better, or we can throw that advantage away. [But] that would only hasten the day when we face greater threats, at higher costs and further risk to American lives.”[7]

Because the period between Cheney’s statement and the publication of Rebuilding America’s Defenses overlaps the rosy scenario period, the call for a renewed militarism must have an objective other than maintaining the peace. We get a sense of that mission from statements in the report concerning the role of the U.S.’s allies:

The presence of American forces in critical regions around the world is the visible expression of extent of America’s status as a superpower and as the guarantor of liberty, peace and stability. Our role in shaping the peacetime security environment is an essential one, not to be renounced without great cost: it will be difficult, if not impossible, to sustain the role of global guarantor without a substantial overseas presence. Our allies, for whom regional problems are vital security interests, will come to doubt our willingness to defend their interests if U.S. forces withdraw into a Fortress America. Equally important, our worldwide web of alliances provides the most effective and efficient means for exercising American global leadership; the benefits far outweigh the burdens.[8]

This noblesse oblige underscores the primacy U.S. interests; any defense of allied interests is merely a means to this end. The authors assert the need for a substantial overseas presence in “critical regions” based upon the presumption of threats to itself and its allies. On the other hand, they state that an alliance network provides “the most effective and efficient” means of projecting U.S. power. One could argue that the U.S. should abandon a substantial overseas presence in favor of greater reliance on allies, but the image of Fortress America is evoked to pre-empt any such consideration and to remind allies of who’s in control. In fact, “preeminence” or “preeminent” with respect to U.S. power occurs 51 times in 76 pages of text. “Pax Americana” (“American Peace”) occurs 17 times. Such conspicuous repetition of pat phrases indicates that Rebuilding America’s Defenses is propaganda, not analysis.

Plan of Attack

In the report, the authors describe four core military missions of a reformed military:

• Defend the American homeland;

• Fight and win multiple simultaneous major theatre wars;

• Perform “constabulary” duties to shape the security environment in critical regions; and

• Reorganize U.S. forces to exploit the “revolution in military affairs.”

To achieve these goals, the U.S. must:

• Maintain nuclear strategic superiority;

• Increase active-duty personnel from 1.4 million to 1.6 million;

• Reposition permanently based U.S. Forces to southeast Europe, Persian Gulf and Southeast Asia, and change naval deployment patterns to East Asia;

• Modernize, including enhancing our fighter aircraft, submarine and surface fleet capabilities;

• Develop and deploy global missile defenses to defend the American homeland and American allies, and to provide a secure basis for U.S. power projection around the world;

• Control the new “international commons” of space and “cyberspace,” and pave the way for the creation of a new military service, “U.S. space forces.” with the mission of space control;

• Exploit the “revolution in military affairs” to insure the long-term superiority of U.S. conventional forces; and

• Increase defense spending gradually to a minimum level of 3.5 to 3.8 percent of gross domestic product, adding $15 billion to $20 billion to total defense spending annually.[9]

Even if the case for military reform were sound, the recommendations in Rebuilding America’s Defenses go far beyond any reasonable definition of what should be sufficient to maintain U.S. superiority. The strategic opportunity the authors mention, therefore, is not one of preserving U.S. influence but of expanding it to prevent other countries, even allies, from challenging U.S. dominance. Rebuilding America’s Defenses, therefore, is a manifesto of coercion.

Table X shows the magnitude of the planned military build-up in proportion to Clinton-era defense spending (1993-2000), which coincided with the high-water mark of U.S. hegemony. By the end of Clinton’s term, total national defense spending amounted to $330 billion; by FY 2008, that figure would almost double to $647.2 billion, especially in procurement and new weapons programs.

Such aggressive militarism calls into question the underlying presumption of the report: “The American peace has proven itself peaceful, stable and durable. It has, over the past decade, provided the geopolitical framework for widespread economic growth and the spread of American principles of liberty and democracy.”[10] Clearly, the American peace is neither stable nor durable, and for Iraqis, Palestinians, Afghanis and many other nationalities it has been anything but peaceful.

“American principles of liberty and democracy” is Orwellian double-talk for subservience to U.S. economic interests. As we saw above, the U.S. does not want genuine democracy in countries that have valuable raw materials. This asymmetry is characteristic of mercantilist economic practice, in which a

Table X: National Defense Budget Authority Trends
by Appropriations Title, FY1993–2007
(US$Billion FY2003)

DEPARTMENT

Avg. 1993– 2000

Est. 2001–2004

Est. 2005–2007

Real Growth 1985–1990

Real Growth 1990–1998

Real Growth 1998–2003

Military Personnel

91.0

91.0

103.1

0%

-31%

11%

Operation and Maintenance

112.9

135.9

140.2

-4%

-9%

36%

Procurement

52.0

67.2

83.5

-29%

-52%

42%

RDT&E*

40.7

50.6

55.9

-2%

-14%

34%

Military Construction

6.2

5.6

9.7

-23%

-8%

-20%

Family Housing

4.2

4.1

4.7

-7%

3%

2%

Other

3.9

2.4

1.9

NA

NA

NA

Subtotal, Dept. of Defense

310.8

356.7

399.0

-13%

-27%

29%

Dept. of Energy Defense-related

13.5

16.1

15.7

13%

0%

23%

Other Defense-related

1.3

1.7

1.6

4%

37%

49%

Total, National Defense

325.6

374.5

416.3

-12%

-26%

28%

* Research, Development, Testing and Evaluation

Source: Stephen Daggett, Amy Belasco, Defense Budget for FY2003: Data Summary, Table 6, (Congressional Research Service: Washington D.C.: March 29, 2002), pp. 16-17.

central power exploits the resources of colonies to feed the domestic economic machine. To this end, the authors demand permanent U.S. military control of the Persian Gulf under the guise of ensuring “regional security”:

The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. 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.[11]

This seemingly even-tempered recommendation masks profound frustration with Clinton’s policy. Because the sanctions and no-fly zones destroyed Iraq’s economy and military capabilities, they also destroyed the sense of urgency that PNAC needed to justify a full-scale assault. For obvious reasons the authors could not say this, so they did the next best thing—they damned the Clinton administration with faint praise.

Now, the NFZs were only “an essential element” in U.S. strategy and force posture.[12] This diminution of importance indicates preparedness for unilateral military action as presaged in PNAC’s January 26, 1998, open letter to Clinton. As we saw, PNACers fumed over Clinton’s “containment” policy, and declared that Hussein had to be deposed—the law be damned:

We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.[13]

Contrary to the letter-writers’ assertion, Clinton’s containment policy did not fail—it worked too well. From this perspective, the apparent non sequitur between the boast of U.S. hegemony and the lament about U.S. military unpreparedness makes sense. The boast was not an endorsement of the status quo, but a warning that the status quo did not serve PNAC’s military objectives.

The Luntz/Wexner Report—How to Lie with Style

In April 2003, the Virginia-based Luntz Research Companies issued a startlingly frank report on media manipulation entitled Israeli Communications Priorities 2003. It was prepared for the philanthropic Wexner Foundation, which is highly active in the U.S. and Israel. The tactics set out in the report were not new—they had been in effect for at least 10 years—but their publication exposed the degree to which the White House takes its marching orders from Israel and the Lobby. To all intents and purposes, every pro-invasion utterance from the White House, Pentagon, media and Congress could be sourced from this 17-page document. The report concerns the Israeli–Palestinian conflict but exploiting Saddam Hussein is the major tactic:

This document is about language, so let me be blunt. “Saddam Hussein” are the two words that tie Israel to America and are most likely to deliver support in Congress. They also just happen to be two of the most hated words in the English language right now…. A warning—There are some who would say that Saddam Hussein is already old news. They don’t understand history. They don’t understand communication. They don’t understand how to integrate and leverage history and communication for the benefit of Israel. The day we allow Saddam to take his eventual place in the trash heap of history is the day we loose [sic] our strongest weapon in the linguistic defense of Israel.[14]

Of the report’s 11 conclusions, five are significant for our purposes:

Iraq colors all. Saddam is your best defense,
even if he’s dead

For a year—a SOLID YEAR—you should be invoking the name of Saddam Hussein and how Israel was always behind American efforts to rid the world of this ruthless dictator and liberate their people. Saddam will remain a powerful symbol of terror to Americans for a long time to come. A pro-Israeli expression of solidarity with the American people in their successful effort to remove Saddam will be appreciated.[15]

In each paragraph of the mission statement, for example, “Saddam Hussein” is explicitly equated with tyranny, suffering and WMDs; however, it is in the utterances of Bush, Powell, Rumsfeld and others that made the conspicuous repetition of his name commonplace. In his January 29, 2003 speech, Bush invoked “Saddam Hussein” 19 times; in his UN speech, Powell said “Saddam” or Saddam Hussein” 72 times. Of course, the more that the politicians mention his name the more it gets reported, so the Luntz recommendation generated its own dynamic. From January 1, 2001, to December 31, 2001, the New York Times records 363 articles mentioning “Saddam Hussein.” The figures for 2002 and 2003 respectively are 1,081 and 3,303.

Conveying sensitivity and a sense of values is a must;
Link Iraqi liberation with the plight of the Palestinian people

Most of the best-performing sound bites mention children, families, and democratic values. Don’t just say that Israel is morally aligned with the U.S. Show it in your language. The children component is particularly important. It is essential that you talk about ‘the day, not long from now, when Palestinian children and Israeli children will play side-by-side as their parents watch approvingly.’

It is likely that the most effective argument(s) you have right now are those that link the right of the Iraqi people to live in freedom with the right of the Palestinian people to be governed by those who truly represent them. If you express your concern for the plight of the Palestinian people and how it is unfair, unjust and immoral that they should be forced to accept leaders who steal and kill in their name, you will be building credibility for your support of the average Palestinian while undermining the credibility of their leadership…[16]

This faux-linkage enabled Israel to equate Saddam Hussein with Yasser Arafat. After the U.S. ostracized Arafat, it set out to drive a wedge between the Palestinians and their leadership. Only Palestinian quislings who accepted Israeli diktat would be acceptable. The authors of the report warned that not all Americans associated Hussein with Arafat, so they encouraged Wexner to argue that freeing the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein equaled freeing the Palestinian people from Arafat:

Americans want democracy to flourish in the Middle East. There is genuine hope that the Iraqi people will establish a representative government with genuine freedoms. In that vein, remind people that the Iraqi people need not look any further than their Israeli neighbors for an example of such a government.[17]

In the case of Hussein, we have this April 1991 White House endorsement of UNSC Resolution 688:

Saddam Hussein has repeatedly violated these provisions and has: expanded his violence against women and children; continued his horrific torture and execution of innocent Iraqis; continued to violate the basic human rights of the Iraqi people and has continued to control all sources of information (including killing more than 500 journalists and other opinion leaders in the past decade). Saddam Hussein has also harassed humanitarian aid workers; expanded his crimes against Muslims; he has withheld food from families that fail to offer their children to his regime; and he has continued to subject Iraqis to unfair imprisonment.[18]

Whether the charges against Hussein are true is less important than the fact that they are uttered at every opportunity. The more effective and sustained the propaganda, the more likely the public will internalize the point of view, and the success of this tactic is reflected in opinion polls and in the government’s own language.

Of Course Rhetorical Questions Work, Don’t They?

Ask[ing] a question to which there is only one answer is hard to lose. It is essential that your communication be laced with rhetorical questions, which is how Jews talk anyway.[19]

This recommendation is effective because it enhanced the pseudo-equation between Arafat and Hussein; denied the existence of Israel’s criminal conduct toward the Palestinians; and masked security concerns behind a hypocritical concern for their well-being. For example:

• Is it too much to ask that the Palestinian leadership not sponsor terrorists? Are we unreasonable to insist that they stop killing our innocent children before we jeopardize our security and make concessions for peace?

• How can we make peace with a leader that does not believe in or allow free and honest elections?

• How can the Palestinian people end their impoverishment if their leaders continue to steal precious resources from them, which are then used to support terror?

• When will the Palestinian people themselves have a voice at the peace table?[20]

Of course, each charge also applies to the U.S. and Israel, but imputing blame to the Palestinians in this backhanded manner precludes debate. At the UN, Powell often resorted to this tactic to prop up the PNAC propaganda he was forced to utter:

Dr. [Hans] Blix pronounced the 12,200-page declaration “rich in volume [but] poor in information and practically devoid of new evidence.” Could any member of this Council honestly rise in defense of this false declaration?… Given Saddam Hussein’s history of aggression, given what we know of his grandiose plans, given what we know of his terrorist associations, and given his determination to exact revenge on those who oppose him, should we take the risk that he will not someday use these weapons at a time and a place and in a manner of his choosing, at a time when the world is in a much weaker position to respond?[21]

In the first instance the rhetorical question obscures the fact that the U.S. removed 8,000 pages to protect U.S. companies who sold chemical and biological weapons to Hussein and trained his army to use them, and prevent war-crimes charges from being laid against the Reagan–Bush governments.[22]  In the second instance, Powell does an effective job of demonizing Hussein and then using that image to impute a belligerent motive. Powell knew full well that Hussein had no such weapons, but the rhetorical question implied existence.

Security Sells

Security has become the key fundamental principle for all Americans. Security is the context by which you should explain Israeli need for loan guarantees and military aid, as well as why Israel can’t just give up land. The settlements are our Achilles heel, and the best response (which is still quite weak) is the need for security that this buffer creates.[23]

Since Hussein was a political threat to Israel, it was easy to use the scare tactic of WMDs to turn him into a military threat:

“All the arguments about Israel being a democracy, letting Arabs vote and serve in government, protecting religious freedom, etc., won’t deliver the public support you need… You need a national security angle—one that clearly links the interests of both Israel and America. Hussein and the WMDs fit the bill.”

Like Clean Break, the report’s authors, provide advice on propaganda delivery, but the U.S. had already adopted it, as this comparison shows:

When facing a fanatical enemy, you have two options: deter or destroy. Saddam was not deterred by inspections. He was not deterred by threats. He was not even deterred by military action against him in 1991. And if he had possessed nuclear weapons, nothing would have deterred him. For ten years the United Nations talked about deterrence, and for ten years Saddam defied the international community. Just as America had no choice but to remove him from power, Israel has no choice but to protect its borders and its people from terrorists who mean us harm.[24]

Saddam Hussein has had 12 years to disarm. He is deceiving people. This is what’s important for our fellow citizens to realize; that if he really intended to disarm, like the world has asked him to do, we would know whether he was disarming. He’s trying to buy time. I can understand why—he’s been successful with these tactics for 12 years. Saddam Hussein is a threat to our nation. September the 11th changed the strategic thinking, at least, as far as I was concerned, for how to protect our country. My job is to protect the American people.[25]

The security argument is the lynchpin of Israeli propaganda; it is invoked to justify the repression of the Palestinians, violation of international law, and the need to keep the financial “pipeline” flowing.  Luntz gave a picture of “The Israel Aid Message Tree,” showing how Israel uses propaganda about democracy and security to extort money to keep the “pipeline” flowing. Only now, it added removing Hussein to its rhetorical repertoire.

(1) As a democracy, Israel has the right and the responsibility to defend its borders and protect its people.

(2) Prevention works. Even with the collapse of Saddam’s regime, terrorist threats remain throughout our region.

(3) Israel is America’s one and only true ally in the region. In these particularly unstable and dangerous times, Israel should not be forced to go it alone.

(4) With America’s financial assistance, Israel can defend its borders, protect its people, and provide invaluable assistance to the American effort in the war against terrorism.[26]

By far the most dishonest propaganda had to do with Hussein and bin Laden being linked. Not only was there no evidence, but the very idea was politically and religiously impossible. Nevertheless, Cheney and the PNACers successfully browbeat Powell and his speechwriters into asserting that such a connection existed. The basis for the link was the allegation that hijacker Mohamed Atta met with Iraqi Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani in Prague five months before the September 11 attack. The Czech government, which initially claimed the two had met, said there was no proof. The CIA even believed Atta was in the U.S. at the time. Nevertheless, in numerous speeches and television appearances, from 2001 to 2003, Cheney continued to defend this fiction.[27]

This fiction came undone on NBC’sMeet the Press on May 16, 2004, when Powell virtually repudiated his entire UN speech:

When I made that presentation in February 2003, it was based on the best information that the Central Intelligence Agency made available to me. We studied it carefully; we looked at the sourcing in the case of the mobile trucks and trains. There was multiple sourcing for that. Unfortunately, that multiple sourcing over time has turned out to be not accurate. And so I’m deeply disappointed. But I’m also comfortable that at the time that I made the presentation, it reflected the collective judgment, the sound judgment of the intelligence community. But it turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and in some cases, deliberately misleading. And for that, I am disappointed and I regret it.[28]

This attempt at exculpation cannot be taken at face value, though, because the State Department knew full well that the Pentagon-generated information was bogus, and nothing in Powell’s language betrayed any sense of prudence or skepticism:

What I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida lieutenants.[29]

In the end, though, the public bought the lie. AWashington Post poll conducted from August 7 to 11, 2003, found that 69 percent of Americans still thought Hussein had at least something to do with the September 11 attack.[30] Deborah Tannen, a Georgetown University professor of linguistics who studied Bush‘s rhetoric, determined that he deliberately manipulated language to imply a connection between Saddam Hussein and September 11.[31] Typical is this comment by Bush on March 6, 2003: “If the world fails to confront the threat posed by the Iraqi regime, refusing to use force, even as a last resort, free nations would assume immense and unacceptable risks. The attacks of September 11, 2001, showed what the enemies of America did with four airplanes.”[32]

Premeditation

The first inkling that the junta intended to invade Iraq came just hours after the World Trade Center was hit. The source of the information came out of an interview on Meet the Press between Donald Rumsfeld and host Tim Russert, in which Russert showed an embarrassed Rumsfeld proof that he wanted to frame Saddam Hussein:

Tim Russert: In 1998, the Project for the New American Century wrote a letter, which you signed with Bill Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz, your deputy, saying it was time for military action against Saddam Hussein. On September 11, and I’ll show it on the screen, about 2:40 in the afternoon, according to your notes, you said: “Let’s get some info fast, judge whether good enough to hit Saddam Hussein at same time. Not only Osama bin Laden.” You have felt for some time that it was going to be necessary to use military force against Saddam Hussein, haven’t you?

Donald Rumsfeld: You said my notes? I didn’t keep notes. That can’t be my notes.

Russert: They were notes made contemporaneously of conversations you were having on September 11.

Rumsfeld: By whom?

Russert: By people on your staff. It was reported by the Associated Press and by CBS.

Rumsfeld: Well, that doesn’t make it so. I’ve never seen those notes.

Russert: That’s not accurate.

Rumsfeld: I have no idea what I… I don’t remember what I said, but I didn’t keep notes and I have no idea what notes anyone’s referring to.[33]

Richard Clarke, Bush’s top counterterrorism advisor, corroborated the substance of the notes and the premeditated nature of the attack on Iraq. On the evening of September 12, 2001, Clarke said the following scene took place in the White House Situation Room:

The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, “I want you to find whether Iraq did this.” Now he never said, “Make it up,” but the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this. I said, “Mr. President. We’ve done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There’s no connection.” He came back at me and said, “Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there’s a connection.” And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer.[34]

On September 13, 2001, at Camp David, Iraq was a featured topic of discussion in the context of PNAC’s pre-emptive military strategy. As Paul Wolfowitz told Vanity Fair:

Wolfowitz: I know my thinking at that point was that the old approach to terrorism was not acceptable any longer, the old approach being you treat it as a law enforcement problem rather than a national security problem… So there needs to be a campaign, a strategy, a long-term effort, to root out these networks and to get governments out of the business of supporting them. But that wasn’t something that was going to happen overnight.

Question: Right. So Iraq naturally came to the top of the list because of its history and the weapons of mass terror and all the rest, is that right?

Wolfowitz: Yes, plus the fact which seems to go unremarked in most places, that Saddam Hussein was the only international figure other than Osama bin Laden who praised the attacks of September 11…. There was a long discussion during the day about what place if any Iraq should have in a counter-terrorist strategy. On the surface of the debate it at least appeared to be about not whether but when. There seemed to be a kind of agreement that, yes, it should be, but the disagreement was whether it should be in the immediate response or whether you should concentrate simply on Afghanistan first.[35]

The shock of the September 11 attack is still palpable, yet Wolfowitz and Bush are utterly uninterested in Osama bin Laden. According to Federal News Service, which transcribes every public presidential utterance—from impromptu comments to speeches and news conferences—Bush did not say “al-Qaida” once from January 1, 2001, to September 10, 2001.[36] Thus, we have the Bush administration going out of its way to ignore the attack’s most widely touted suspect to manufacture a case against a country that could not possibly have had anything to do with it. The only explanation for this irrational behavior is that the PNACers would not permit facts or reasoned analysis to interfere with its crusade to reinvent Hussein as a military menace. After the encounter in the situation room, Clarke gave CBS’s Lesley Stahl this account of the government’s perverse mentality:

We wrote a report. It was a serious look. We got together all the FBI experts, all the CIA experts. We wrote the report. We sent the report out to CIA and found FBI and said, ‘Will you sign this report?’ They all cleared the report. And we sent it up to the president and it got bounced by the National Security Advisor or Deputy. It got bounced and sent back saying, “Wrong answer.… Do it again.” I have no idea, to this day, if the president saw it because after we did it again, it came to the same conclusion. And frankly, I don’t think the people around the president show him memos like that. I don’t think he sees memos that he doesn’t—wouldn’t like the answer.[37]

Even though the junta was firmly in control and had successfully created a climate of paranoia, it still needed to generate popular support for a premeditated attack on Iraq. The last time the U.S. fought an unpopular war was in Vietnam, and the nation-wide civil strife that erupted between pro-war and anti-war factions defeated the Johnson presidency. When Gen. William Westmoreland asked for an additional 200,000 troops in February 1968, Johnson refused fearing that it would unleash civil war.

To prevent the public’s conscience from impeding its grand design, and to divert attention from Palestine, the junta and Israel engineered a propaganda campaign to fabricate a connection between Hussein and Osama bin laden; turn Hussein into an international demon; and feign support for the people of Palestine and Iraq. If the U.S. public could be made to accept the lie that bin Laden and Hussein were linked, unilateral force in the name of preventive war could be sold. It wouldn’t take much convincing, since Clinton and Bush had already stigmatized Hussein as a clear and present danger because of his supposed possession and manufacture of WMDs.

By late 2002, the junta had decided to destabilize Iraq, and officials from the Bush administration approached PNAC director Bruce Jackson to set up a committee to convince Congress and the U.S. public to go along with an invasion. The result was the Committee to Liberate Iraq, which held frequent meetings with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. The CLI membership included numerous crazies and PNAC illuminati—Richard Perle, James Woolsey, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Gary Schmitt, William Kristol, Leon Wieseltier, New Gingrich and Robert Kagan. Nevertheless, it managed to gain support from non-PNACers like moderate Democratic and Republican legislators like JINSA Congressman Stephen Solarz and Sen. John McCain.

Like PNAC, AEI or any Zionist front, the CLI had a fraudulently virtuous name. Its mission statement epitomized PNAC strategy and Luntz’s tactics:

The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq was formed to promote regional peace, political freedom and international security by replacing the Saddam Hussein regime with a democratic government that respects the rights of the Iraqi people and ceases to threaten the community of nations. The regime of Saddam Hussein has attacked its neighbors, acquired weapons of mass destruction, and directed those weapons against innocent men, women, and children. It has supported international terrorism and has savagely murdered and repressed the Iraqi people. The current government of Iraq poses a clear and present danger to its neighbors, to the United States, and to free peoples throughout the world. The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq will engage in educational and advocacy efforts to mobilize U.S. and international support for policies aimed at ending the aggression of Saddam Hussein and freeing the Iraqi people from tyranny. The Committee is committed to work beyond the liberation of Iraq to the reconstruction of its economy and the establishment of political pluralism, democratic institutions, and the rule of law.

The CLI said the regime supported international terrorism and had savagely murdered and repressed the Iraqi people. Note the unnecessary adjective “savagely,” which serves only to stereotype Hussein and his ruling Ba’ath party.

Against this transparent dishonesty, University of Virginia professor Philip Zelikow, also a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (2001–2003) and director of the commission the 9/11 Commission, provides compelling arguments for an Israel-first motive for the assault on Iraq.[38] As a member of a September 10, 2002, foreign policy panel at the University of Virginia, he artfully debunked the notion that Iraq posed any threat:

Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I’ll tell you what I think the real threat (is), and actually has been since 1990—it’s the threat against Israel. And this is the threat that dare not speak its name because the Europeans don’t care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically because it is not a popular sell.[39]

Zelikow said Hussein began to spend large sums of hard currency in 1990 to harden his country’s command and control bunkers against electromagnetic pulse—a byproduct of a nuclear explosion that cripples radio, electronic and electrical communications: “[It was] a perfectly absurd expenditure unless you were going to ride out a nuclear exchange. [Iraqi officials] were not preparing to ride out a nuclear exchange with us. Those were preparations to ride out a nuclear exchange with the Israelis.”[40] Zelikow said Israel feared that biological weapons from Iraq might get into the hands of Hamas or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. If they did, they would pose a threat to Israel, but not to the U.S.

In May 2004, Gen. Anthony Zinni publicly debunked the WMD excuse for invasion when he told 60 Minutes it was an open secret that the neo-cons pushed for invasion to make the Middle East more democratic and safer for Israel: “Everybody I talk to in Washington has known and fully knows what their agenda was and what they were trying to do.”[41] Then, in December 2005 Bush confirmed it: “If you’re a supporter of Israel, I would strongly urge you to help other countries become democracies. Israel’s long-term survival depends upon the spread of democracy in the Middle East.”[42]

The preceding admissions make sense of a lot of otherwise bizarre U.S. behavior, such as the junta’s fickle attitude toward capturing bin Laden. We already know it sabotaged FBI and CIA efforts to capture him, and deliberately ignored reports of suspicious activity from FBI field officers. Only after the Taliban refused to cave in to U.S. intimidation did Bush officially take notice of bin Laden, and only then as a pretext to bomb Afghanistan and Iraq. Furthermore, we can now understand Rumsfeld‘s hypocrisy toward bin Laden and Afghanistan in general. As Defense Secretary, he had to defend the attack and pledge to capture or kill bin Laden, but in his primary role as an instrument of PNAC, Rumsfeld considered bin Laden to be a distraction. As Clarke said:

Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq, and we all said... no, no. Al-Qaida is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And Rumsfeld said there aren’t any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, “Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it. Initially, I thought when he said, ‘There aren’t enough targets in—in Afghanistan.’” I thought he was joking.[43]

After the Taliban was ousted in mid-March 2002, the U.S. turned its back on Afghanistan, and bin Laden again fell below the U.S.’s radar. The real target had always been Iraq, and the inexorable conclusion of the past decade is that the sanctions and No-Fly Zones were steps to assuage Israeli insecurity, even though beggaring Iraq and undermining Hussein’s regime contradicted the long-standing U.S. view that Hussein should be supported as a force for regional stability.

11

A New Pearl Harbor

On July 22, 2004, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (the 9/11 Commission) issued its report of the whys and wherefores of the September 11 attack. Unfortunately, the commissioners were charged with investigating an act of terrorism that could have implicated the very people who impaneled them. As such, the report was a foregone conclusion based on pre-assigned criteria: Muslim hijackers were solely responsible for the attack; the intelligence community failed to warn of the attack; evidence that contradicted the pre-set frame of reference was excluded; and the “war on terrorism” was defended. It was a cover-up worse than the Warren Commission’s whitewash of the Kennedy assassination. The whole truth of what happened on September 11, 2001, will likely never be known and this chapter will not attempt a comprehensive analysis of every facet of that day, but a detailed discussion of the collapse of the World Trade Center is necessary because it was the seminal event that allowed PNAC to turn the U.S. into a fascist state.

Five Israelis Acting Strangely

During the World Trade Center attack, a Weehawken, N.J., housewife named Maria noticed a strange sight in her parking lot—five young men kneeling on the roof of a white van videotaping the collapse of the Twin Towers. “They seemed to be taking a movie. They were like happy, you know... They didn’t look shocked to me. I thought it was strange,” she said.[298]

She noted the license number and called the FBI, which put out a statewide bulletin. The van was traced to Urban Moving Systems and the van itself was located around 4 p.m. on a service road near Giants Stadium. Inside, police found the five youths. One had $4,700 in a sock, and another had two foreign passports. Also found was a pair of box cutters—the same kind that would later be ascribed to the Muslim “hijackers.”

Brothers Paul and Sivan Kurzberg, Yaron Shmuel, Oded Ellner and Omer Marmari, all aged between 22 and 26, were handcuffed at gunpoint. Bomb-sniffing dogs also discovered traces of white explosive powder. According to the police report, Sivan Kurzberg told the arresting officer: “We are Israeli. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem.”

The FBI launched a Foreign Counterintelligence Investigation after two of the five names turned up on a joint CIA–FBI database of foreign intelligence operatives. The Israelis were detained in the high-security Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn in solitary confinement until mid-October. All underwent two polygraph tests, except one who took seven. Paul Kurzberg refused to take a test for 10 weeks, and then failed it.

At the end of October, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service issued a deportation order that was executed a month later, largely due to heavy pressure from high-ranking Israeli diplomats. In the end, the FBI concluded that Urban Moving Systems was a Mossad front, and the five Israelis were conducting a surveillance mission. The company’s Israeli owner Dominik Otto Suter fled the country and the company hurriedly shut down.[299]

So far, we have three news outlets—ABC News, the Sunday Herald (Scotland) and the New York Jewish newspaper the Forward—identifying Israelis acting suspiciously regarding the September 11 attack. Moreover, we have the FBI concluding that Mossad was conducting spying operations.

Upon their return to Israel the five men appeared on an Israeli talk show, where one of them made the following statement: “The fact of the matter is, we are coming from a country [Israel] that experiences terror daily. Our purpose was to document the event.” How could they be expected to document an event if the people who sent them didn’t know it was going to happen? Not a single mention of these events appears in the commission’s report, even though they are in the public domain.

Israel’s Early Warning System

Two hours before the first plane hit WTC1, two employees in the Israeli office of the New York-based instant-messaging company Odigo received advanced warning. They reported the alert to management who told Israeli security, who then set up a joint investigation with the FBI. The FBI was given the Internet Protocol address of the Odigo user who sent the tip, but no identification was ever made.[300] Odigo CEO Micha Macover had no explanation for what happened, and tried to pass it off as a joke. The following corporate chronology, though, raises legitimate questions about Odigo and possible Israeli involvement.

• On January 9, 2001, Odigo secured $15.35 million in financing. Among the companies forming the private banking syndicate was the Israeli company Comverse Network Systems, a major supplier of software and systems for wireless and wireline communications.[301]

• Odigo and Comverse work with Israel-based Onset Technology, a leading provider of message-conversion equipment. Onset was founded in 1997 by Gadi Mazor, formerly the head of research in an elite group of the Israeli Army’s Intelligence Corps.

• In August 2000, Onset received $3 million from Hollinger Digital, the media management and investment subsidiary of Hollinger International. Digital’s CEO is the notorious Israeli fifth column Richard Perle.[302]

• On September 12, 2001, the Post ran the story: “Thousands of Israelis missing near WTC, Pentagon,” in which it reported that the foreign ministry received the names of 4,000 Israelis thought to be in those areas at the time of the attack.

• In his September 20, 2001, address, George W. Bush paid tribute to the “more than 130 Israelis” who died in the attack. Two days later, the New York Times reported that only three Israelis had died—two on the planes and a visitor.

The fact that an Israeli company (Odigo) with ties to Perle (via Onset, another Israeli company) had been tipped off to the attack, should have prompted the commission to asak a few basic questions:

• Why didIsraelishave warning of an attack against the U.S.?

• How could the number of suspected Israelis killed in the WTC buildings fall from 4,000 to 1?

• Why did this warning not lead to a general evacuation of the WTC area, or at least an “orange” security alert?

• If the FBI knew an attack was coming, why did it not stop people from entering the towers? After the planes hit, witnesses reported that FBI agents showed up within minutes.

• What became of the FBI’s investigation into the Odigo tipster?

• Was there a connection between the warning and Odigo’s relationship with Hollinger, Onset and Comverse?

Ironically, the key to unlocking this puzzle comes from Fox News, the most slavishly Zionist U.S. television network. On December 12, 2001, Special Report with Brit Hume featured the first of a four-part investigative series into Israel’s espionage against the U.S. and Israel’s role in the September 11 attack. Because of its incendiary revelations, Fox pulled the series from its website about a week later.[303] Nevertheless, partial transcripts can still be found at whatreallyhappened.com, informationclearinghouse.info, rense.com, and on YouTube so the commission could not plead ignorance.

Investigators told reporter Carl Cameron that “tie-ins” between the attack and Israel did exist, but refused to elaborate: “Evidence linking these Israelis to 9-11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It’s classified information.”[304]

Parts 2 and 3 of Cameron’s series give a good idea of what some of this evidence might be. At the center of the controversy is U.S.-based Comverse Infosys, a subsidiary of Comverse Network Systems, that provides wiretapping equipment for local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI. Comverse’s customized computers and software have a built-in back-door feature that permits unauthorized parties, including those under surveillance, to intercept wiretaps. In the wake of the September 11 attack, the U.S. Justice Department broke up an elaborate Israeli spy ring that used this feature to conduct “reverse wiretaps” against U.S. intelligence and law enforcement operations. Several informants are thought to have died when planned anti-drug raids on crime syndicates were exposed.[305] In all, 100 Israelis were arrested, included members of organized Israeli crime units, Mossad and employees of two Israeli-owned wiretap supply companies. Clearly, one of them had to be Comverse. As Cameron continued:

Comverse works closely with the Israeli government, and under special programs, gets reimbursed for up to 50 percent of its research and development costs by the Israeli Ministry of Industry and Trade. But investigators within the DEA [Drug Enforcement Agency], INS [Immigration and Naturalization Service] and FBI have all told Fox News that to pursue or even suggest Israeli spying through Comverse is considered career suicide. Israel compromises U.S. security under the pretext of improving it, and the U.S. Congress made this absurdity possible by passing the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). Congress felt that advances in telecommunications technology—cell phones, call forwarding, conference calls and the like—were outpacing the effectiveness of electronic surveillance, especially at the state and local levels, and so it wanted a means to coerce phone carriers into “assisting” law enforcement agencies by becoming part of a nationwide computer-based wiretapping network. The self-described purpose of the Act is: “to amend Title 18, United States Code, to make clear a telecommunications carrier’s duty to cooperate in the interception of communications for Law Enforcement purposes, and for other purposes.”[306]

Companies whose computerized telecom switches were installed before January 1, 1995, must ensure that all new parts and equipment areCALEA-compliant. Other companies must ensure compliance from the outset. Those that comply may apply to the attorney general for reimbursement. Of particular note was the ability of Comverse to convince Congress that it needed its own access to the switching computers for maintenance purposes. According to Brad Jensen, deputy director for technology policy at the Free Congress Foundation, this mass surveillance invites government and police abuse; tells the world that the U.S. is not a secure place to do business; and makes terrorist attacks more likely:

“The current mentality of law enforcement is what failed to protect us from 9/11. CALEA wiretaps will not protect us from terror attacks in the future. The system does not provide better intelligence information. It actually leads to less security and more crime. We get the worst of both worlds.”[307]

The preceding information is all in the public domain and had to be known to the commission, yet in the report’s 567 pages there is barely a mention of Israel. “Israel” or “Israeli” occurs a mere 35 times—30 times in text and five times in footnotes—usually without direct reference to the attack. The only direct references are on pages 147, 154, 362, and 373, and then only in connection with Muslim animosity toward U.S. Middle East policy and support for Israel. By failing to investigate Comverse, Odigo, or the five cheering Israelis, the commission has shown that it was impaneled, not to seek answers, but to prevent the right questions from being asked. This is especially obvious concerning the collapse of WTC1, 2 and 7.

WTC7 + (WTC1 x WTC2) ÷ Evidence = Sabotage

One of the most peculiar events of September 11 is the collapse of WTC7, about which the commission said nothing. At 4:10 p.m. the building was reported on fire; 70 minutes later it was “pulled” (deliberately imploded). In the PBS documentary America Rebuilds, Larry Silverstein, the real-estate magnate who owned the building, explains why he gave the go-ahead: “I remember getting a call from the, uh, fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said: ‘We’ve had such terrible loss of life. Maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.’ And they made that decision to pull, and we watched the building collapse.”[308]

Silverstein’s admission directly contradicts the official explanation in the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s report: “Loss of structural integrity was likely a result of weakening caused by fires on the 5th to 7th floors. The specifics of the fires in WTC7 and how they caused the building to collapse remain unknown at this time.”[309] The report makes no mention of Silverstein’s admission, and its account of the collapse is evasive:

The collapse of WTC7 appears to have initiated on the east side of the building on the interior, as indicated by the disappearance of the east penthouse into the building…. If the collapse initiated at [the] transfer trusses, this would explain why the building imploded, producing a limited debris field as the exterior walls were pulled downward…. Currently there is limited information about the ignition and development of fires at WTC7, as well as about the specific fuels that may have been involved during the course of the fire.[310]

The passage merelydescribesthe building’s collapse, and uses phrases like “appears to have been initiated” and “if the collapse initiated” to create the illusion that firecaused it. Ironically, Appendix A to the report strongly disproves this claim:

British Steel and the Building Research Establishment performed a series of six experiments… in the mid-1990s to investigate the behavior of steel frame buildings. These experiments were conducted on a simulated, eight-story building. Secondary steel beams were not protected. Despite the temperature of the steel beam reaching 800–900ºC (1,500–1,700ºF) in three tests (well above the traditionally assumed critical temperature of 600ºC [1,100ºF]), no collapse was observed in any of the six experiments.[311]

Even though debris from WTC1 did cause fires in WTC7 they were minor and localized. FEMA cites no evidence that they reached sufficient intensity to compromise structural integrity.[312] Nevertheless, the only action taken regarding WTC7 was to demolish it after the first report of fire. The commission made no attempt to explain this bizarre decision, challenge FEMA’s findings, or question the absurd idea that a 47-story building could be rigged for implosion within a mere 70 minutes. The only possible explanation for the collapse of WTC7, therefore, is that it was prerigged with explosives.

Since we can say with absolute certainty that WTC7 was deliberately imploded, it’s logical to suspect that the same might be true of WTC1 and WTC2 given that they collapsed in exactly the same manner, but on this score the commission is also mute, despite copious eyewitness testimony:

New York-based BBC reporter Steve Evans: “I was at the base of the second tower, the second tower that was hit. There was an explosion—I didn’t think it was an explosion—but the base of the building shook. I felt it shake—then when we were outside, the second explosion happened and then there was a series of explosions. We can only wonder at the kind of damage—the kind of human damage—which was caused by those explosions—those series of explosions”[313];

Official (911 emergency calls to Jersey City, N.J.: Battalion 3 to dispatch, we’ve just had another explosion.

Official: Battalion 3 to dispatch, we’ve had additional explosion.

Dispatcher: Received battalion command. Additional explosion.[314]

First-response Harlem firefighter Louie Cacchioli: “We were the first ones in the second tower after the plane struck. I was taking firefighters up in the elevator to the 24th floor to get in position to evacuate workers. On the last trip up a bomb went off. We think there was bombs set in the building. I had just asked another firefighter to stay with me, which was a good thing because we were trapped inside the elevator and he had the tools to get out.”[315]

Capt. Dennis Tarido, Engine 7: “It was as if they had detonators, as if they were planted to take down a building.”[316]

In fact, Appendix A to the FEMA report states that WTC1, 2 and 7 represented the first collapses of steel-framed buildings protected by fire-resistant spray-applied material—in the case of the WTC, asbestos.[317] As proof, the appendix cites fires at the First Interstate Bank Building in Los Angeles (May 4–5, 1988) and at Philadelphia’s One Meridian Plaza (February 23–24, 1991). In each case, the structural integrity of the steel-framed buildings remained intact. Moreover, One Meridian’s columns continued to stabilize the building for several years.[318] Nevertheless, the appendix is deficient in one important respect—it omits mention of a previous fire in WTC1. On February 14, 1975, fire broke out in the B.F. Goodrich offices on the 11th floor and spread to the 9th and 14th floors. It burned for three hours, almost twice as long as the fires that burned on September 11, yet did not compromise the tower’s structural integrity.[319] The only possible explanation for the rapid, symmetrical collapse of the three WTC buildings is controlled demolition.

Steven E. Jones, a professor of physics and astronomy at Brigham Young University, has made a compelling case that sulfur-enhanced thermite was used to bring down WTC 1, 2 and 7. First, molten metal was seen falling from the Twin Towers as they collapsed, and the aircraft that hit them could not have generated sufficient heat to do this. When detonated, thermite, a compound of iron oxide and powdered aluminum, gives aluminum oxide, molten iron and heat of around 4,000ºF. when ignited by a magnesium ribbon. When it reacts with steel, this molten iron can melt and even evaporate it. Observers saw molten metal falling from the towers and initially believed it to be steel, but Jones said it was iron, which is what one would expect from a thermite reaction.

Second, the yellowish color of the falling metal indicates the presence of an additive because the colour of aluminum oxide ash in a standard thermite reaction is a silvery grey. Jones said the colour indicated the presence of sulfur, which makes the thermite burn even hotter and slice through steel in mere seconds. In addition, some of the pieces of structural steel recovered from the rubble were sulfidized.

Third, six weeks after the event, pools of red-hot metal of at least 1,500º F. were still found at the base of WTC1, 2, and even 7, thus disproving the official narrative.[320] As Jones wrote:

The government reports admit that the building fires were insufficient to melt steel beams—then where did the molten metal come from? Metals expert Dr. Frank Gayle (working with NIST [National Institute for Standards and Techology]) stated: “Your gut reaction would be the jet fuel is what made the fire so very intense. A lot of people figured that’s what melted the steel. Indeed it did not. The steel did not melt.”[321]

Then we have this statement from Mark Loizeaux, president of Controlled Demolition, Inc.: “If I were to bring the towers down, I would put explosives in the basement to get the weight of the building to help collapse the structure.”[322] This scenario describes exactly what happened to the WTC. Amid the rubble were the remnants of core columns sheared off at an angle, which is consistent with the way that shaped charges are used to control the way a building falls. Also, around the lip of the severed core column is rehardened molten metal, typical of what one would expect from a thermite reaction.[323] The “explosives in the basement” theory accords with eyewitness reports of explosions low down in the buildings, and can explain both the initial drop of the communication tower (WTC1) and the “kink” in the middle of WTC 7 as its collapse began.[324]

Jones is not alone in attempting to explain the conspicuously symmetrical collapse of the WTC. Another theory posits the additional use of a small-yield hydrogen bomb to account for observational and scientific data at the site, such as: the absence of sufficient coarse rubble; the pulverization of the building into a micron-sized dust aerosol; the heightened occurrence of radiation-related cancers among the emergency responders; and the recording of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) by broadcast cameras.[325]

Nevertheless, Jones is not so much stating conclusions as he is presenting scientific facts that debunk the official narrative:

I call for a serious investigation of the hypothesis that WTC7 and the Twin Towers were brought down, not just by impact damage and fires, but through the use of pre-positioned cutter-charges. I consider the official FEMA, NIST and 9-11 Commission reports that fires plus impact damage alone caused complete collapses of all three buildings, and I present evidence for the controlled-demolition hypothesis, which is suggested by the available data, and can be tested scientifically, and yet has not been analyzed in any of the reports funded by the US government.[326]

Crime Scene Interference

Any hope of proving or disproving the use of thermite at the site vanished after New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani had key evidence destroyed. His office denied FEMA investigators full access to the WTC site, and authorized the removal and recycling of steel beams from the collapsed buildings. Investigators lacked subpoena power, and so could do nothing to stop the removal. Bill Manning, editor of Fire Engineering magazine expressed this frustration passionately:

For more than three months, structural steel from the World Trade Center has been, and continues to be, cut up and sold for scrap. Crucial evidence that could answer many questions about high-rise building design practices and performance under fire conditions is on the slow boat to China, perhaps never to be seen again in America until you buy your next car….Fire Engineering has good reason to believe that the “official investigation” blessed by FEMA and run by the American Society of Civil Engineers is a half-baked farce that may already have been commandeered by political forces whose primary interests, to put it mildly, lie far afield of full disclosure. Except for the marginal benefit obtained from a three-day, visual walk-through of evidence sites conducted by ASCE investigation committee members—described by one close source as a “tourist trip”—no one’s checking the evidence for anything.[327]

Most of the remains of the WTC’s steel girders, up to two-feet thick, were sent across the Hudson River to scrap recycler Hugo Neu Schnitzer East in Jersey City, NJ. In all, the WTC yielded about 300,000 tons of structural steel that was torched and cut for resale to steelmakers, who forged it into new products. Of that amount, 70,000 was sold to Metal Management Northeast in Newark, who promptly recycled it to China and India, where steel goes for five to 10 percent more than the depressed domestic market will bear.[328]

Leaving aside the millions of dollars the city made selling the scrap, any evidence of foul play was now destroyed. Except for brief mentions about Giuliani in the context of emergency operations management, the commission had nothing to say about his role in obstructing the investigation. Giuliani is pro-Bush and staunchly pro-Israel.

Insecurity Complex

If pre-rigged explosives were responsible for the collapse of WTC 1, 2 and 7, Muslims could not have been responsible. Israeli and/or junta saboteurs had to have had access to the buildings before September 11. A suspicious breach of security just before the attack was doubtless one such window of opportunity.

On the weekend of September 8–9, 2001, information technology specialist Scott Forbes was working overtime in the offices of Fiduciary Trust on the 97th floor of WTC2.[329] His company, like all others, was given three weeks to prepare for a “powering down” from the 48th floor on up. The reason given was that the Port Authority was performing a cabling upgrade to increase the WTC’s computer bandwidth. Forbes thought this reasoning strange. First, companies are usually given months to prepare for a power outage, not a few weeks. Computer systems have to be taken out carefully in sequence and then started up in sequence. For Fiduciary, that meant protecting electronic data on billions of dollars. The second reason is that a power cut had never before been necessary. Fiduciary should know—it was one of the WTC’s initial occupants. The last time the WTC experienced a wide power cut was around the time of the 1993 bombing.

With no security cameras or security door locks functioning, WTC2 was left utterly vulnerable. Moreover, a two-week high-security alert had been cancelled just days before the attack. On Thursday September 6, bomb-sniffing dogs were abruptly removed.[330] Forbes said many anonymous technicians came in and out of the tower that day. The floor directly above Fiduciary belonged to Aon Corporation, and that weekend Forbes heard construction sounds despite the fact the floor had been empty for about a month. “There were several ‘powering downs’ on that floor alone because there was some kind of rebuilding going on,” he said. “I know this for a fact because we used to sneak up the fire escape to use their coffee shop, which was better than ours.” Forbes only saw half the floor from his vantage point, but noticed that the acoustic ceiling tiles, furniture, and central heating covers had been removed.

On Monday, September 10, Forbes was again in the office because some of Fiduciary’s computers were still down. No noise came from upstairs. For his overtime and extra effort, Forbes was given the next day off. Forbes awoke to the crash of AA11 into WTC1. From the 15th floor of his Jersey City apartment he had a perfect view of the towers. As he watched the smoke and damage, he turned on the television, which showed the attack from different angles. Now alert and facing the WTC, Forbes was an eyewitness to the attack on WTC2:

I heard the plane speed up before it banked and slammed into the building. Then, about three minutes later, I distinctly remember a military jet coming over my head from behind. I thought, “They were too late.” I called a guy I worked with, and he saw my number come up.

“Scott, what was that?!”

“It looks like a great big, bloody plane hit the tower. You better get out now!”

“Right.”

I immediately thought that this had to be related to what was going on that weekend.

The coincidence is hard to ignore. If a power cut were needed to upgrade computer cables, then one would expect to find a series of such cuts over the history of the WTC, but there is none. Why was there at least no physical security presence on each floor? What was all that construction on the 98th floor in aid of?

On September 12, Forbes went to Fiduciary’s disaster recovery location in New Jersey—an airport hangar that provided temporary accommodation for a number of financial institutions. This assemblage was a fount of knowledge and personal impressions, but not a single U.S. investigator came to the hangar. This lack of interest infuriated Forbes:

There were thousands of people who were witnesses. All the U.S. authorities had to do was send two officers down to interview us. People like me have critical facts and information, and it isn’t being acknowledged. It really bugs me. I was debriefed by Scotland Yard, but never contacted by any authority in the U.S. If you have a murder in a building you gather evidence.

Even beyond these first-hand accounts, the commission ignored published transcripts of relatives’ last words with loved ones who died in the towers. Liz McNally, wife of Fiduciary employee Edmund McNally, describes her last conversation with him:

He said to me, “Liz, this was a terrorist attack. I can hear explosions below me.” He said stuff about the data center. That’s why I think he was on the 97th floor because the data center was on the 97th floor. Then he said the floor was buckled. And he said it was getting really hot and hard to breath. His voice was actually very calm. It wasn’t like someone calling up panicking.[331]

No explanation is sufficient to explain the commission’s egregious failure to seek answers to questions of the highest importance, unless it didn’t want to know the answers. At least three people had to have been involved in the “powering down,” and could have provided them.

Marvin Bush

The younger brother of George W. Bush, was a director of Securacom, the company contracted to provide security for the WTC, United Airlines and Dulles International Airport, from where UA Flight 77 was ostensibly hijacked. Now renamed Stratesec, it is a joint venture of the Bush family and Kuwait’s ruling al-Sabah family. Securacom/Stratesec is funded by the Kuwaiti-American investment firm KuwAm.[332] Marvin Bush has not been linked to the attack, but that doesn’t mean nobody has tried. The thought of the disaster being linked with the White House would be reason enough for the commission to be put under orders to steer clear. Not surprisingly, the report makes no mention of Marvin Bush.

Larry Silverstein and Lewis Eisenberg

Lewis Eisenberg, chairman of the New York and New Jersey Port Authority and head of its security from 1995 to December 2001, was keen to sell 99-year leases on WTC1, 2, 4 and 5. Larry Silverstein had already bought the leases on WTC3 (The Marriott Hotel) WTC6 (U.S. Customs Building) and WTC7 (Solomon Brothers Building). As the WTC landlord, the Port Authority wanted to be rid of responsibility for the buildings, but faced a dilemma:

• The WTC couldn’t be demolished because that would release asbestos fireproofing into the air and create a major health hazard;

• The cost for removing the asbestos was prohibitive; and

• Few people wanted to move into a toxic building.

Selling leases was the only way it could offload responsibility to someone else. In early 2001, Vornado Realty Trust of Paramus, N.J., was named the winning bidder. On February 21, it entered into exclusive negotiations with the authority, but by March 26 it could not finalize its bid. Eisenberg then approached a group led by Silverstein (Silverstein Properties) and Frank Lowy, the Israeli founder of the Australia-based Westfield Holdings.

On July 23, 2001, Eisenberg personally finalized the deal. Silverstein got his lease and Lowy, through his subsidiary Westfield America, got 425,000 square feet of retail space for $400 million, of which Westfield paid $133 million up front. Overall, the deal cost $3.2 billion, even though the value of the WTC site was estimated at $8.2 billion. In addition, the newly purchased buildings were insured for only $3.5 billion, far below the $5.1 billion estimate for replacement and maintenance of lost revenue.[333] Why the commission didn’t question this fire-sale price and Silverstein’s low coverage is a mystery, especially since the attack was extremely beneficial to him.

Soon after the towers fell, Silverstein filed lawsuits with his insurers contending that he was entitled to two payouts of $3.5 billion because each plane constituted a separate attack. For its part, Swiss Reinsurance, which represents a consortium of 20 insurers and reinsurers, argued that both attacks constituted a single act, and that Silverstein was only entitled to one payout of $3.5 billion.

A partial jury verdict handed down on April 28, 2004, sided with the companies. For all except Swiss Re, which itself held a majority 22 percent share of the coverage, the jury decided that the majority of companies were bound by a form from Silverstein‘s own insurance broker that stipulated Silverstein could never recover more than $3.5 billion. That decision was partly overturned on December 6, 2004, when a federal jury ruled that nine insurers who wrote policies for US$1.1 billion of the total $3.55 billion had to pay double. The companies are appealing.[334] Even with the single claim, though, plus an $861 million payout for WTC7, Silverstein has already made a profit.

Now, with insurance money and funds raised through taxpayer-funded Liberty Bonds, Silverstein could start over. According to New York City historian Mike Wallace, Silverstein is eager to provide even more office space, even though supply in New York City far exceeds demand. Already, a 1,776-foot “Freedom Tower” is being built on the WTC site: “All the designers for the site were required to include in their plan millions of square feet of office space, to accommodate him, and millions more of shopping space, to accommodate Westfield America, who had the rights to the old WTC underground mall and wanted to restore the old status quo as much as possible.”[335]

The attack was also a convenient boon for the Port Authority, albeit at the expense of the long-term health of rescue workers, downtown residents and office employees.[336] With these toxic, underused buildings now pulverized into dust, the authority was rid of its two towering headaches, and this fact might be the best evidence that Muslim “hijackers” had nothing to do with the WTC collapse. As Professor Jones perceptively noted:

Why would terrorists undertake straight-down collapses of WTC7 and the Towers, when “toppling-over” falls would require much less work and would do much more damage in downtown Manhattan?  And where would they obtain the necessary skills and access to the buildings for a symmetrical implosion anyway?  The “symmetry data” emphasized here [in my paper], along with other data, provide strong evidence for an “inside job.”[337]

Since Silverstein and Eisenberg were the only people to benefit directly from “a straight-down collapses of WTC7 and the Towers,” could the attack have been, at least in part, something as mundane as real-estate insurance swindle?

Silverstein and Eisenberg should also have been investigated because of their political connections. Eisenberg headed Bush’s New Jersey fundraising committee; was recently elected Finance Chairman of the Republican National Committee; is a director of the Republican Jewish Coalition; and is a former vice-president of AIPAC. Silverstein, like Eisenberg, held a top position in the billion-dollar Zionist charity the United Jewish Appeal, and each has strong ties to Israel’s leadership, a fact that was demonstrated shortly after the attack:

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called Larry Silverstein… a close friend, to ask how he was. Since then, they have spoken a few more times. Two former Prime Ministers—Benjamin Netanyahu, who this week called Silverstein a “friend,” and Ehud Barak, whom Silverstein in the past offered a job as his representative in Israel—also called soon after the disaster.[338]

The commission had a duty to investigate Silverstein and Eisenberg because of the way they conspicuously benefited from the attack. The commission did receive a specific request to investigate Silverstein for the implosion of WTC6 and 7.[339] It did nothing. Given the commission’s lack of curiosity about the Israeli and Republican connections of Silverstein and Eisenberg, or the familial ties between Marvin and George W. Bush, the commission’s report must be dismissed as a whitewash.

War Game for Real

On September 11, 2001, the U.S. military was into Day 4 of a weeklong air-force exercise called Operation “Vigilant Guardian.” This year, the annual war game tested scenarios that included a hijacked airliner, and a Cold War-style bomber attack from Russia over the North Pole. Despite the lengthy questioning of the generals involved, the report mentioned Vigilant Guardian once, and then only in a footnote:

On 9/11, NORAD [North American Aerospace Defense Command] was scheduled to conduct a military exercise, Vigilant Guardian, which postulated a bomber attack from the former Soviet Union. We investigated whether military preparations for the large-scale exercise compromised the military’s response to the real-world terrorist attack on 9/11. According to General Eberhart, “it took about 30 seconds” to make the adjustment to the real-world situation. (Ralph Eberhart testimony, June 17, 2004.) We found that the response was, if anything, expedited by the increased number of staff at the sectors and at NORAD because of the scheduled exercise.[340]

This footnote is misleading. Gen. Eberhart does not utter the phrase “it took about 30 seconds,” so its accuracy is in doubt.[341] Also, the claim that the exercise increased preparedness is obtuse. Air defense cover for the entire continental U.S. consisted of seven coastal bases, each with two Air National Guard fighters on 15-minute scramble alert. This posture contrasts sharply with the U.S. Air Force’s readiness during the Cold War, according to Maj.-Gen. Paul A. Weaver Jr. (Ret.). He said fighters sat fueled and ready to take off at NORAD’s command at more than 100 alert sites.”[342]

At 8:46 a.m., six minutes after receiving notification that something was wrong, the Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) battle commander Col. Robert Marr sent an alarm to the 102nd Fighter Wing at Otis Air National Guard base on Cape Cod, 188 miles from New York. The ANG’s 177th Fighter Wing at Atlantic City International Airport in Pomona, N.J., was only four minutes off UA175’s flight path, but it was unavailable. Since 1998, the two scramble-ready F-16s had been assigned to unarmed bomber practice. These fighters were flying “Vigilant Guardian” bombing runs just eight minutes away at the time the attacks happened, and so could not have been called back, armed and launched in time to be of any use.[343]

By the time WTC2 was hit at 9:03 a.m., the two F-15s from Otis were still eight minutes (150 miles) away. For all of the report’s praise of advanced preparedness, the northeast sector was seriously vulnerable. Therefore, any role the NORAD-run “Vigilant Guardian” might have played in the September 11 attack deserved scrutiny.

Familiar Scenario?

In Rebuilding America’s Defenses, PNAC claims that the realignment of U.S. forces to project power into the Middle East would be a slow transition “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.”[344] Such an event would not only stampede policymakers into rubberstamping the PNAC imperial design but also legislators into approving massive deficit spending to fund this adventurism. Could the September 11 attack have been such a calculated event? On the one hand, if the attack hadn’t happened, PNAC would not have had an emotional trauma to fuel the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq. George W. Bush admitted as much: “You know, when I was running for President, in Chicago, somebody said, would you ever have deficit spending? I said, only if we were at war, or only if we had a recession, or only if we had a national emergency. Never did I dream we’d get the trifecta.” (Laughter.)[345]

On the other hand, the idea that the U.S. would deliberately commit an act of terrorism against itself seems preposterous. Unfortunately, it’s not. An official Pentagon plan to commit acts of terrorism against the U.S. to justify a military invasion of a foreign country has been around for more than 42 years. It’s called “Operation Northwoods.” On March 9, 1962, Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, drafted a Top Secret memorandum to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara outlining a pretext to invade Cuba. Essentially, the strategy involved staging self-inflicted attacks to shock the U.S. public into supporting an act of aggression in the name of fighting Communism. Tactics included blowing up a U.S. ship in Guantánamo Bay, or destroying a drone (unmanned) vessel somewhere in Cuban waters. Operations, though, were not limited to Cuba:

We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington. The terror campaign could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States. We could sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated). We could foster attempts on the lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized. Exploding a few plastic bombs on carefully chosen spots, the arrest of Cuban agents and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement also would be helpful in projecting the idea of an irresponsible government.[346]

This latter example provides a familiar parallel with the September 11 attack. Documents incriminating the Muslim “hijackers” were so conspicuously plentiful and of dubious linguistic accuracy that they must have been planted:

• An Arabic flight-training manual was conveniently found in a car abandoned at an airport;

• A passport belonging to “hijacker” Satam al-Sugami, miraculously survived the fire in WTC1 to land a few blocks away intact;

•              Mohamed Atta allegedly packed a five-page handwritten document that included Islamic prayers, instructions for a last night of life and practical reminders to his colleagues to bring “knives, your will, IDs, your passport,” but then he inexplicably left this suitcase behind.[347]

No Arab name shows up on any passenger list, and Logan Airport security video did not record any of them being present on September 11.[348] In short, we have no visual or documentary evidence to show that any of these “hijackers” even boarded AA11 or UA175. This anomaly leads to the most potentially disturbing parallel between “Operation Northwoods” and the September 11 attack—Lemnitzer’s recommendation to stage a phony aircraft disaster involving a civilian airliner:

An aircraft at Eglin AFB [in northwest Florida] would be painted and numbered as an exact duplicate for a civil registered aircraft belonging to a CIA proprietary organization in the Miami area. At a designated time the duplicate would be substituted for the actual civil aircraft and would be loaded with the selected passengers, all boarded under carefully prepared aliases. The actual registered aircraft would be converted to a drone. Take off times of the drone aircraft and the actual aircraft will be scheduled to allow a rendezvous south of Florida. From the rendezvous point, the passenger-carrying aircraft will descend to minimum altitude and go directly into an auxiliary field at Eglin AFB where arrangements will have been made to evacuate the passengers and return the aircraft to its original status. The drone aircraft meanwhile will continue to fly the filed flight plan. When over Cuba the drone will be transmitting on the international distress frequency a “MAY DAY” message stating he is under attack by Cuban MiG aircraft. The transmission will be interrupted by destruction of the aircraft, which will be triggered by radio signal. This will allow ICAO [International Civil Aviation Organization] radio stations in the Western Hemisphere to tell the U.S. what has happened to the aircraft instead of the U.S. trying to “sell” the incident.[349]

Co-ordinated Failure

A key to executing the September 11 attack might have been multiple transponder failures. On an aircraft, a transponder [“transmitter” + “responder”] sends a coded four-digit signal called a “squawk” after receiving a radar request from an air traffic control center. Using a preset frequency, the transponder relays the plane’s identity and altitude to the center where it is monitored continuously. According to the commission’s report, AA11’s transponder was turned off at 8:21 a.m.; AA77’s at 8:56; and UA93’s at 9:41. UA175’s code was changed twice, the first time at 8:47.[350] Contrary to the report, a transcript of radio communications among R42 (New York Air Route Traffic Control Center), UA175, and other aircraft indicate that UA175’s transponder was also turned off:

8:42:03 R42: UAL 175 just came on my frequency and he said he heard a suspicious transmission when they were leaving BOS everybody stay in your seats that’s what he heard as the suspicious transmission just to let you know.

8:42:50 USA583: Center where do you place him in relation to 583 now?

8:42:55 R42: He’s off about 9 o’clock and about 20 miles looks like he’s heading southbound but there’s no transponder no nothing, and no one’s talking to him.[351]

The commission said that without transponder data, air traffic controllers had to improvise using primary radar returns: “Unlike transponder data, primary radar returns do not show the aircraft’s identity and altitude. Controllers at centers rely so heavily on transponder signals that they usually do not display primary radar returns on their radarscopes. But they can change the configuration of their scopes so they can see primary radar returns.”[352]

The case of UA175 again points up glaring inconsistencies between the report and the evidence. At 8:47, virtually the instant that AA11 hit WTC1, the report said UA175’s transponder code changed to an unassigned signal, and then changed again. These changes were not noticed for several minutes, the report said because one controller was assigned to both AA11 and UA175.[353] Yet, in the above transcript, New York Center reported that UA175 ceased transponder communication at 8:42:55. For the next 9.5 minutes the controller tried in vain to make contact:

8:51:43 R42: UAL175 recycle transponder squawk code 1470.

8:51:53 R42: UAL175 New York.

8:52:09 R42: UAL175 do you read, New York?

8:52:14 R42: DAL1489 do you read, New York?

8:52:16 DAL1489: DAL1489 go ahead.

8:52:20 R42: O.K. just wanted to make sure you were reading New York—United, United 175—do you read, New York?[354]

With no transponders to track the altitude or identification of the aircraft, could some or all of the four planes have been substituted? In the case of UA175, it might explain the strange new transponder readings (different aircraft) and the controller’s failure to raise it (deliberately silent or destroyed). In all of this, 8:47 a.m. (+/- one minute) seems to have some sort of cosmic significance: Col. Marr sends the first alert to Otis ANG base; WTC1 is hit; UA175 switches off its transponder (according to the report); and AA77, a Boeing 757 out of Dulles International Airport, makes its first deviation en route to the Pentagon (according to the report). In the case of AA77 to the Pentagon, primary radar information was lost between 8:56 and 9:05, which means that substitution was a real possibility, given the results of the impact:

•              The hole in the side of the Pentagon was a 16-ft. diameter circle, which is incompatible with a 125-ft. wide 757 aircraft;

•              Television footage showed intact windows and no damage to the upper floors of the Pentagon, even though a 757 is 44 feet high;

• No fuselage, engines, fuel or other debris was found;

• Grass in front of the impact site suffered no scorching or other damage; and

• Hani Hanjour, the alleged hijacker, was a poor student who did not have the skill to maneuver a 757, much less execute a 330-degree turn at more than 500 m.p.h. According to air traffic controller Danielle O’Brien: “The speed, the maneuverability, the way that he turned, we all thought in the radar room, all of us experienced air traffic controllers, that that was a military plane.”[355]

In fact, CNN reporter Jamie McIntyre confirmed the fallacy of the official version:

From my close-up inspection, there’s no evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere near the Pentagon. The only site is the actual side of the building that’s crashed in. And as I said, the only pieces left that you can see are small enough that you pick up in your hand. There are no large tail sections, wing sections, fuselage, nothing like that anywhere around which would indicate that the entire plane crashed into the side of the Pentagon and then caused the side to collapse. Even though if you look at the pictures of the Pentagon you see that the floors have all collapsed, that didn’t happen immediately. It wasn’t until almost about 45 minutes later that the structure was weakened enough that all of the floors collapsed.[356]

We’ll never know the real story of what happened in the control tower because the records were confiscated, the cassette tapes containing the controllers’ evidence were crushed, and the tapes themselves cut to ribbons. Regarding AA77, FBI agents seized security tapes from the rooftop of the Sheraton National Hotel; the Pentagon’s private gas station; and along Interstate 395, which the aircraft crossed. These tapes, like those of the firefighters, have never been made public.[357]

Nevertheless, information about the flight paths of the aircraft is starting to come out. On Dec. 13, 2006, the website www.pilotsfor911truth.org posted an interview with former Boston Center air-traffic controller Robin Hordon, who had first-hand knowledge about the aircraft before they hit the WTC:

On September 11, I’m one of the few people who, really, within quite a few hours of the whole event taking place, just simply knew that it was an inside job, and it wasn’t because of the visuals, the collapses, whatever. I knew that it was an inside job, I think, within about four or five o’clock that afternoon, and the reasons that I knew is because when those aircraft did collide and then we got the news and information somewhere along the line and they could kind of roughly say where the aircraft went… If they knew where the aircraft were and were talking to them at a certain time then normal protocol is to get fighter jet aircraft up to assist.

Regarding the black boxes and three of the four cockpit voice recorders, we are told that UA93’s cockpit voice recorder was the only recorder recovered from all four aircraft—the CVRs and flight data recorders from AA11 and UA175 were not found, and the CVR from AA77 was badly burned and not recoverable.[358] This explanation is patently ludicrous.

First, “black boxes,” which are actually orange, are built to withstand temperatures greater than 2,000ºF; hence, they should have been found. Second, we are expected to believe that a paper passport could survive the WTC1 crash in near mint condition, but a fire-resistant black box could not. Third, first-hand evidence from firefighter Nicholas DeMasi strongly suggests that the 9/11 Commission is engaged in a cover-up. In 2003, he wrote a book published by a group called Trauma Recovery Assistance for Children that debunks the commission’s claim: “At one point, I was asked to take federal agents around the site to search for the black boxes from the planes…. We loaded up about a million dollars worth of equipment and strapped it into the ATV…. There were a total of four black boxes. We found three.”[359]

DeMasi’s account is confirmed by TRAC Team member and recovery site volunteer Mike Bellone, who saw FBI agents walking off with a red-orange, charred device with two white stripes—a description identical to the one depicted on the National Transportation Safety Board’s website.[360]

Seeing is not Believing

Despite incontrovertible proof of sabotage, the 9/11 Commission blamed radical Muslims for the attack, which is not surprising because that is what it was designed to do—reaffirm the official narrative, defend the “war on terrorism” and conduct no meaningful investigation that would debunk the narrative. The conclusion to the report’s first chapter demonstrates the commission’s ingrained prejudice:

But the conflict did not begin on 9/11. It had been publicly declared years earlier, most notably in a declaration faxed early in 1998 to an Arabic-language newspaper in London. Few Americans had noticed it. The fax had been sent from thousands of miles away by the followers of a Saudi exile gathered in one of the most remote and impoverished countries on earth.[361]

Note—Muslim responsibility is based on bin Laden’s words, not anything he may have done. Because nine of the 19 alleged hijackers are still alive and no link between them and the detonation of the WTC is remotely plausible, there has developed a persistent, albeit amateurish, disinformation campaign to blame bin Laden and manufacture credibility of the official narrative. Video hoaxes purporting to show bin Laden or others admitting responsibility for the attack, have mysteriously surfaced, especially around election times, and the compromised North American media has dutifully run them.

One of the most transparently fraudulent of these was the one aired on al-Jazeera on October 29, 2004, just one week before the U.S. general election. Even though other hoaxes have since emerged, this one deserves to be discussed in some detail because it shows the lengths the junta will go to frame Muslims, and how poorly the West understands Muslim culture. First, the general tone and content of the statement is markedly different from bin Laden’s earlier interviews and speeches. Consider these excerpts from the October videotape:

I say to you, Allah knows that it had never occurred to us to strike the towers. But after it became unbearable and we witnessed the oppression and tyranny of the American/Israeli coalition against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, it came to my mind….

The events that affected my soul in a direct way started in 1982 when America permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon and the American Sixth Fleet helped them in that. This bombardment began and many were killed and injured and others were terrorized and displaced….

And as I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted and so that they be deterred from killing our women and children.[362]

These all speak to a political motive—the invasion of Lebanon and the tyranny of the U.S.–Israeli coalition—but bin Laden is not motivated by secular affairs. As we saw earlier, the April 18, 1996, Qana massacre and Muslim suffering in general were not sufficient reason for him to declare jihad on the U.S.

A second anomaly is the absence of religious flourishes. Note the difference between the Spartan political language above and this excerpt from the March 1997 interview with Peter Arnett:

Peter Arnett: Mr. bin Laden, if the Islamic movement takes over Arabia, what kind of society will be created and will Saudi Arabia, for example, return to the laws of the Qur’an at the time of the Prophet?

Osama bin Laden: We are confident, with the permission of God, praise and glory be to Him, that Muslims will be victorious in the Arabian Peninsula and that God’s religion, praise and glory be to Him, will prevail in this peninsula. It is a great pride and a big hope that the revelation unto Muhammad, peace be upon Him, will be resorted to for ruling. When we used to follow Muhammad’s revelation, peace be upon him, we were in great happiness and in great dignity, to God belong credit and praise.[363]

The videotape contains not a single reference to the Prophet Muhammad, and bin Laden’s invocations of God (Allah), though numerous, lack the effusiveness of his earlier speeches.

A third anomaly concerns bin Laden’s perfunctory description of the Afghan jihad:

All that we have to do is to send two mujahedin to the furthest point East to raise a piece of cloth on which is written “al-Qaida,” in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies.

This is in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers, as we, alongside the mujahedin, bled Russia for ten years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat.[364]

“Guerrilla warfare,” “tyrannical superpower,” “bled Russia,” “went bankrupt” are not part of bin Laden’s vocabulary. For him, the jihad was not a war against a superpower; it was a defensive jihad fi sabil Allah [struggle in the service of God]. As he told Arnett:

Praise be to God, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the worlds, that He made it possible for us to aid the mujahedin in Afghanistan without any declaration for jihad. It was rather the news that was broadcast by radio stations that the Soviet Union invaded a Muslim country. This was a sufficient motivation for me to start to aid our brothers in Afghanistan.[365]

The fundamentallyreligiousmotive of the Afghan jihad is obvious from the following three statements by bin Laden from 2001 and 2002:

I address Muslim youths, men and women and urge them to shoulder their responsibility. They should know that the land of Afghanistan and the mujahedin there are really facing an all-out Crusader war which is aimed at eliminating this group which believes in God and fights on the basis of a creed and religion. Thus, the nation must shoulder its responsibility. It would be a disgrace if the Islamic nation fails to do so.[366]

This is a matter of religion and creed; it is not what [George W.] Bush and [British Prime Minister Tony] Blair maintain, that it is a war against terrorism. There is no way to forget the hostility between us and the infidels. It is ideological, so Muslims have to ally themselves with Muslims.[367]

The attacks were “undertaken by sons who are zealous in the defense of their religion,” and that they were “only a reaction in response to what [President] Bush, the pharaoh of the age, is doing by killing our sons in Iraq and what America’s ally Israel is doing, bombarding houses with women and old people and children inside with American planes.”[368]

French television commissioned the Dalle Molle Institute for Perceptual Artificial Intelligence in Lausanne, Switzerland, to analyze the tape, and after a comparison with 20 earlier recordings, the institute’s chairman Professor Hervé Boulard said he was 95 percent certain that the voice did not belong to bin Laden.[369]

Regarding the specifics of September 11 attack, the comments on the videotape are wholly out of character. In past speeches, bin Laden praised it in an impersonal way as if the attack had been carried out by persons unknown:

Three months after the blessed strikes against world atheism and its leader, America, and around two months after the fierce crusade against Islam, we must review the impact of these events. The latest events have proved important truths. It has become clear that the West in general and America in particular have an unspeakable hatred for Islam…. Terrorism against America deserves to be praised because it was a response to injustice, aimed at forcing America to stop its support for Israel, which kills our people.[370]

Bin Laden does not admit responsibility for the attack, but rather blames the U.S. in language that is entirely consistent with the theory of self-sabotage:

The people in the U.S. Drug Enforcement Department are encouraging drug trade so that they could show performance and get millions of dollars worth of budget. General [Manuel] Noriega was made a drug baron by the CIA and, in need, he was made a scapegoat. In the same way, whether it is President Bush or any other U.S. President, they cannot bring Israel to justice for its human rights abuses or to hold it accountable for such crimes. What is this? Is it not that there exists a government within the government in the United States? That secret government must be asked as to who carried out the attacks.[371]

Mohamed Atta and ‘Able Danger’

Finally, a word about the most recent hoax, which purports to show Mohamed Atta, the alleged mastermind of the attack, and Ziad Jarrah, a “hijacker” on UA Flight 93, together in Afghanistan on Jan 18, 2000. The video, which has no sound, also purports to show Atta reading his will in preparation for the upcoming suicide attack, though no such conclusion can be drawn.[372]

Any claim that Atta or any other Muslim was preparing to attack the WTC must be deemed suspect at first glance, since, as noted above, they lacked the aviation skills to carry out such a mission. Furthermore, Atta is one of the nine “surviving hijackers,” and the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency had identified him as a security threat as far back as 2000. His communications were closely monitored as part of the secret surveillance operation “Able Danger,” so if Atta had planned to attack the WTC, the DIA had to have known about it.

Able Danger was a data-mining operation that used open source or other publicly available information to track the movements of transnational terrorists, specifically concerning Bosnia, China and “al-Qa’ida.” No classified information or government databases were used. The gathering and compilation of data was done anonymously by defense contractors like Batelle, Raytheon and Orion Scientific, who may or may not have known they were working on behalf of Able Danger. The operation began in early October 1999 at the suggestion of out-going Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Hugh Shelton and continued under the supervision of Gen. Peter Schoomaker, commander of the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) in Tampa Fl.

Able Danger was a collaborative effort at the Army’s former Land Information Warfare Center (LIWA) at Ft. Belvoir, Va., SOCOM and the DIA. According to those involved with the project, it was an astounding success. Data analysis from Able Danger linked Atta to Brooklyn’s el-Farouq mosque, and identified him as a “terrorist ringleader” on 13 separate occasions before September 11, 2001, although it never placed Atta, himself, on U.S. soil.[373] Erik Kleinsmith, a former major and chief of intelligence at LIWA, testified before the House Armed Services Committee that by April 2000, the program had collected “an immense amount of data for analysis that allowed [Able Danger] to map Al Qaeda as a worldwide threat with a surprisingly significant presence within the United States.”[374]

Then, from May to June 2000, Kleinsmith destroyed all the data, charts and other analytical material pertaining to Able Danger on orders from Army Intelligence and Security Command General Counsel Tony Gentry. “Remember to delete the data— or you’ll go to jail,” Gentry advised jokingly.[375] Weldon puts the amount of data destroyed at 2.5 terabytes—a size equal to one-fourth of the Library of Congress.[376]

This bizarre action by the Pentagon was so abrupt and contrary to the national interest as to defy rational explanation; that is, unless the U.S. national interest was not the prime concern. In explaining his actions to the committee, Kleinsmith said the destruction was done “in compliance with Army regulations that prohibit keeping data related to American citizens and others, including permanent residents who have legal protections, unless the data falls under one of several restrictive categories.” He also denied seeing any information pertaining to Atta. [377]

Kleinsmith‘s answer cannot be taken seriously. Because most of Able Danger’s data was collected from the public domain, it could be stored indefinitely according to Army Regulation 381-10.[378] Second, Gen. Geoffrey Lambert, the head of operations for whom the data was collected, was incensed that the data had been destroyed without his knowledge.[379] Lawyers only advise; they do not have the power to give orders, but the fact that Gentry did give such an order could indicate the presence of a rival chain of command, one for whom the success of Able Danger presented a real and present danger.

It is reasonable to infer that the data was destroyed to cover-up an intelligence operation that was not in the U.S. national interest. First, Able Danger’s brass and lawyers refused to allow information to be shared with the FBI, the one agency that one would think needed to be involved. Second, and the Pentagon sabotaged the career of its Able Danger liaison, Lt.-Col. Anthony Shaffer. Two days before he was set to testify about the program before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 21, his top-secret clearance was revoked, and the Defense Department barred him and two others from testifying.

In an interview with Government Security News magazine, Shaffer reveals details about Able Danger that bear directly on the glaring inadequacies of the 9/11 Commission report, and argue persuasively that the Pentagon knew about the planned attack on the WTC, knew about the alleged Muslim terrorists, and did not want Shaffer or any other Able Danger member getting in the way. Three excerpts of deliberate obstruction deserve detailed mention.

The Lawyers

Government Security News: You’re saying that someone on the legal side of the intelligence community might have said, “We don’t even have the right to do that. You can’t gather that information off the Internet, which is publicly out there, and use it in an intelligence manner.”

Lt.–Col Tony Shaffer: You hit the nub of it, absolutely. That’s what they were concerned about.

GSN: What was the Able Danger program’s response to that legal argument?

Shaffer: Well, we aren’t doing intelligence collection operations; we’re doing operational planning. Therefore, whatever we’re doing should not fall under intelligence guidelines…. If I take information off the Internet and put it into a file, I’m doing that electronically, with the database. That was the issue. You’re doing it electronically. The argument was, “When you take all this information off the Internet, how do you then protect U.S. citizen rights?” The lawyers were looking at all the information that was coming in. They had to vet everything. They were personally looking at it and had a validation process.

GSN: What would they have pointed to and said, “This is a violation. We can’t allow you to do this”?

Shaffer: That’s where the whole issue comes in of lawyers saying, “You can’t look at these guys, who are suspected as being terrorists.” All this information is coming in. They had this vetting process. And then, all this information comes to us regarding these [suspected terrorists] who were here legally, as part of these data runs. But, the lawyers are now saying, “You can’t look at that. We’re going to put that in the ‘U.S person’ category that you can’t look at.” …

GSN: Was there a group of suspected terrorists who had been identified in some other way and now Able Danger was trying to find additional information about them? Or were these guys emerging out of Able Danger’s own data crunching?

Shaffer:  Once these guys had emerged out of the data crunching, there was an interest to try to confirm or refute their linkage to Al Qaeda, and then to do operations to further exploit them… Our focus of the Able Danger oversight fiasco is the fact that this data also identified a cell here in the states. That became the critical issue—the fact that the SOCOM lawyers recommended to the chain of command of SOCOM that we could not share that information with the FBI.[380]

The SOCOM lawyers’ concern for Atta and other suspected terrorists is quaint to say the least, given that the junta is a champion of warrantless wiretaps, illegal confinement and a host other police-state measures. Moreover, from Shaffer’s comments, one gets the distinct feeling that the lawyers were more interested in shielding the “terrorists” from Able Danger than in upholding privacy concerns. Logically, the lawyers should have had no objection to the involvement of the FBI, since its jurisdiction is domestic security. In that spirit Navy Capt. Scott Philpott, who headed Able Danger at LIWA, approached Shaffer. “Based on our internal discussions within Able Danger, we are concerned by the fact that this appears to be a group of terrorists here within the United States,” said Philpott. It was at that point in time that he asked me to broker a relationship or a meeting with the FBI. In all three attempts we made to meet with the FBI and in each case no meeting was allowed to take place.

Change of Command

Schoomaker retired in November 2000, and with him went much of the support for Able Danger, said Shaffer. When the Bush government took over, support fell even lower:

Shaffer: Once the four-star [General Schoomaker] went away, it was pretty much like the world closing around us. There was no political will to continue this at that point in time. Plus, my direct leadership: Colonel [Jerry] York and General [Bob] Harding had moved on as well. Therefore, I had a new chain of command above me. They were very risk adverse….

At one point in time, [Gen. Rod Isler] the then Director of Operations [for the DIA] had me come in and brief him on a series of operations. This was February/March 2001. This general said, “I want you to explain to me every one of your operations in detail.” So, I started going through the laundry list of each operation and describing it to him….

His opinion was, “That’s not part of your job.” As he walked through things, he kept saying, “I don’t see this as your job. This should be done by someone else.”

I tried to explain to him how that’s not their job. We’re human intelligence. This is just an aspect of human intelligence. He disagreed with me. It came to the point where we brought up Able Danger, where I was explaining the operation to him -- as you know it now, plus more -- and he looked at me and he said, “Well, Tony, that’s not your job.”

I said, “Well, sir, with all due respect, this is an important operation focused on the global Al Qaeda target,” and he said, “You’re not hearing me, Tony. This is not your job.”

“Well, sir, this is basically using human methodology, combined with data mining to…”

“Tony, you’re not listening to me. This is not your job.”

“Sir, this is important, I think…”

“Tony, I’m the two star here. I’m the two star. I’m telling you I don’t want you doing anything with Able Danger.”

“Sir, if not us then who?”

“I don’t know, but it’s not your job.”

And that effectively ended my direct support and my unit’s support to Able Danger.

Isler’s posture is belligerently irrational because in 1999 Schoomaker personally selected Shaffer to join Able Danger because he was familiar with Shaffer’s work in the DIA special mission unit “Stratus Ivy.” In no uncertain terms, Able Danger was his job, and Isler’s statement “Tony, you’re not listening to me. This is not your job…. I don’t want you doing anything with Able Danger” must be seen as deliberately obstructionist. Therefore, Isler’s hostility to Shaffer’s loyalty to Able Danger reflects a real concern that a successful operation might present a real and present danger to those who have a vested interest in wanting the September 11 attack go ahead. As such, the string of leaks about junta officials ignoring reports of suspicious activity is important not for what they say about Atta and others, but for what they say about the junta’s deliberate hobbling of its own intelligence network.

9/11 Commission

While Shaffer was stationed in Afghanistan in 2003 overseeing DIA’s collection activities, Philip Zelikow and the 9/11 Commission came on a fact-finding mission:

Shaffer: The 9/11 Commission shows up and announces, through the chain of command … “Is there anyone here assigned to this command who has information that is relevant to the pre-9/11 intelligence or operations environment? Please tell us so we can have you go talk to the commissioners, to Dr. [Philip] Zelikow.”…

GSN: So… you not only gave a thorough briefing on everything that had happened, but also identified—maybe as a throwaway line—that you found these cells and Mohammed Atta?

Shaffer: Correct.

GSN: That would seem to be the “money” line. How does somebody [working for the 9/11 Commission] not have his eyes pop open when you say, “Oh, by the way sir, we also identified Mohammed Atta a year before the attacks.”

Shaffer: As I recall, at the end of the meeting, there was silence. People were just silent at what I’d said. Now, I don’t know how to interpret that, but I do know that two things came out of that meeting, some of which are admitted by the 9/11 Commission now. First, Zelikow approached me at the end of the meeting and said, “This is important. We need to continue this dialogue when we get back to the states. Here’s my card.” …

My former deputy was a finance officer. She kept immaculate records of all the legal documents. We had all this. I informed Dr. Zelikow that I had a copy of all this stuff and I offered it to him. I think that was one of the reasons he wanted me to re-contact him; so he could look at it.

GSN: And what happened?

Shaffer: I returned in December [2003], took 30 days of leave, came back off of leave, and I called Dr. Zelikow’s number on his card the first week of January [2004] Someone answers the phone and says, “Yes, we remember you. I will talk to Dr. Zelikow and find out when he wants you to come in.” A week goes by, no phone call back. I called them a week later and said, “Hey, what gives?”

“Yeah, we know who you are. Ummmmm, Dr. Zelikow tells me that he does not see the need for you to come in. We have all the information on Able Danger.”

This is the second week of January. To my knowledge, the Able Danger documentation, which they claimed that they did get, which was about two briefcase-sized containers, didn’t show up until February or March. So, I don’t know what they were looking at or what they’d been told about, but I can tell you, from my understanding, they did not have a full set of information at that point in time.

Just as the 9/11 Commission said nothing about the collapse of WTC 7, it said not a word about Able Danger, yet the information it gleaned may have disrupted—or even prevented—the September 11 attack. Zelikow’s abrupt change of attitude is hard to explain, unless we consider political interference from those who wanted to bury Able Danger and didn’t want Shaffer talking about it.

What happened to Shaffer after he twice tried to have a follow-up meeting with Zelikow in January 2004, strongly points to political interference and a cover up. He was sent back to Afghanistan to lead a special classified program, and upon his return two months later, he was told that his security clearance was being lifted temporarily. That meant he lost access to his Able Danger materials and memos that discussed the briefings he provided to the Clinton and Bush administrations, the latter of which must still exist in some recorded form because they occurred after the great 2.5-terabyte purge. They were destroyed.

Ultimately, the September 11 attack produced precisely the result Israel and the junta wanted: Muslims in the U.S and elsewhere began to be subjected to officially sanctioned racial profiling, arbitrary arrest and detention, state-sanctioned torture and denial of basic constitutional rights, just as happened to Jews under the Nazis. Government spokesmen and media pundits now began speaking of “before September 11/after September 11,” and “the first war of the 21st century,” as if the old world had suddenly ended, and in its place arose a new world where the moral values of post-war America no longer applied. They were right.

12

Petropolitics and the Taliban

Bush may have occupied the White House in January 2001, but he could not shake the taint of his electoral illegitimacy or charges that he was intellectually unfit. Moreover, the junta was having considerable trouble imposing its will on Congress. On May 24, 2001, PNAC’s fortunes were dealt an added blow when 67-year-old Vermont senator Jim Jeffords broke from the Republican Party over the 2002 budget and Bush’s education policy. Instead of a 50-50 split in which Cheney held the deciding vote, the balance in the Senate was now 50 Democrats, 49 Republicans and one independent. After the attack, Bush was suddenly reborn as a war president, and anyone who brought up the subject of his illegitimacy or incompetence now risked immediate and unrelenting censure.

Now begins the highest period of Zionzation, during which the junta set about to turn the U.S. into a clone of Israel. After having established the source and development of the fascist junta that commandeered the government, the rest of this book will focus on how the demonization of Muslims and the premeditated destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan fit into PNAC’s Weltanschauung. First, though, it is important to draw one important distinction: unlike the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the assault on Afghanistan cannot be understood as a function of the “war on terrorism.” The decision to attack was taken before the September 11 attack and for different reasons. The attack on Afghanistan is included here because of its relationship to the demonization of bin Laden and the propagation of the myth of “al-Qa’ida.”

Afghanistan

Until the September 11 attack, the political pecking order toward Afghanistan was still: 1) oil; 2) drugs; 3) bin Laden. At any given time numbers 2 and 3 were switched or sacrificed for the sake of 1, but so far as the public was concerned, 1 didn’t exist. Having commercial dealings with the Taliban at the same time the UN and U.S. were subjecting it to sanctions could not be admitted.

Whereas Clinton was content to let the pipeline deal lie dormant while he went after the Taliban, Bush tried to do both. In public, the U.S. isolated the Taliban and exploited the suffering of the Afghan people to play up the U.S.’s image as a caring, generous state. Typical of this self-serving policy was Secretary of State Colin Powell’s May 17, 2001, press conference, in which he announced $43 million in new humanitarian assistance for “the people of Afghanistan.” The aid consisted of 65,000 tons of wheat, $5 million in complementary food commodities, and $10 million in other livelihood and food security programs [read: “crop substitution”]. After delineating the aid, Powell proceeded to praise the U.S.’s generosity:

Even before this latest commitment, the United States was by far the largest provider of humanitarian assistance for Afghans. Last year, we provided about $114 million in aid. With this new package, our humanitarian assistance to date this year will reach $124 million. This includes over 200,000 tons of wheat. We will continue to look for ways to provide more assistance for Afghans, including those farmers who have felt the impact of the ban on poppy cultivation, a decision by the Taliban that we welcome.[1]

The opium industry was worth in excess of $100 billion annually, so $10 million to promote crop substitution was woefully inadequate, which raised suspicion about the true nature of the aid. Was it “humanitarian aid” as Powell said, or support for the Taliban disguised as humanitarian aid? As columnist Robert Scheer wrote in the Los Angeles Times:

The opium ban will not last unless the U.S. is willing to pour far larger amounts of money into underwriting the Afghan economy. As the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Steven Casteel admitted, ‘The bad side of the ban is that it’s bringing their country—or certain regions of their country—to economic ruin.’ Nor did he hold out much hope for Afghan farmers growing other crops such as wheat, which require a vast infrastructure to supply water and fertilizer that no longer exists in that devastated country.[2]

The example of Jamroz, a farmer in the Black Mountains of Eastern Afghanistan, demonstrates how self-defeating this self-serving policy was. After Omar issued political and religious injunctions against growing poppies, Jamroz switched to wheat and onions, but all he had to show for his obedience was poverty. The worst drought in decades destroyed his wheat crop, and he saw none of the promised international aid meant to compensate him for the loss of income from growing poppies.[3]

So long as the U.S. and UN subjected the Taliban to economic sanctions and refused to recognize its authority, Afghanistan had no hope of attracting the investment needed to diversify its economy and reduce dependency on the opium trade. Moreover, so long as the opium ban was in place, rival producers like Pakistan and Burma threatened to capture Afghanistan’s share of the drug market. The Taliban faced a no-win scenario—grow poppies and suffer isolation and punishment, or grow wheat and starve on U.S. handouts.

Frederick Starr, chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University, stated that without Western, U.S., and UN leadership, Afghanistan would remain dependant on the world’s demand for its opium.[4] However, the concept of leadership presupposed an attitude that didn’t exist. For example, Powell saw no contradiction between upholding sanctions and aiding the Afghan people:

We provide our aid to the people of Afghanistan [through international agencies of the United Nations and non-governmental organizations], not to Afghanistan’s warring factions. Our aid bypasses the Taliban, who have done little to alleviate the suffering of the Afghan people, and indeed have done much to exacerbate it. We hope the Taliban will act on a number of fundamental issues that separate us: their support for terrorism; their violation of internationally recognized human rights standards, especially their treatment of women and girls; and their refusal to resolve Afghanistan’s civil war through a negotiated settlement. UN sanctions against the Taliban are smart sanctions and do not hurt the Afghan people, nor do these sanctions affect the flow of humanitarian assistance for Afghans.[5]

At first glance, Powell’s statement seems absurd, since there is ample empirical evidence to prove that sanctions do hurt the Afghan people. But this passage must also be read in a deeper, more cynical, way. Of the “fundamental issues” to be resolved, the first two—support for terrorism and violations of human rights—can be dismissed as disingenuous because the U.S. only began to care about them after the pipeline bid failed. The third point, “[refusing] to resolve Afghanistan’s civil war through a negotiated settlement,” is the key.

‘Carpet of Gold’

Even though the CentGas bid collapsed, the U.S.’s need for a southern pipeline to carry Central Asian oil and gas remained as acute as ever. Existing routes in the area ran north through Russia, and Bush wanted to establish a U.S.-controlled supply of Caspian/Central Asian oil to offset dependency on the Persian Gulf. Thus, Bush privately continued to treat the Taliban as a “force for stability” in expectation that the regime could be forced to support the U.S.

In Ben Laden: la vérité intérdite, Brisard and Dasquié describe an intense six-month campaign to coerce the Taliban into accepting the U.S. pipeline:

Several meetings took place this year, under the arbitration of Francesc Vendrell, personal representative of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, to discuss the situation in Afghanistan. Representatives of the U.S. government and Russia, and the six countries that border with Afghanistan were present at these meetings. Sometimes, representatives of the Taliban also sat around the table.[6]

The authors trace negotiations with the Taliban to February 2001, almost immediately after Bush took office. In March, the Taliban enlisted the public relations services of Laila Helms, the part-Afghan niece of Richard Helms, former CIA director and former U.S. ambassador to Tehran.

For five days in March she arranged meetings in Washington D.C. between Mullah Omar‘s advisor Sayed Rahmatullah Hashimi, and the Directorate of Intelligence at the CIA and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the State Department. As proof of Bush’s single-minded focus on oil, the meetings took place after the Taliban appalled the world by blowing up the ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan.

By July, the failure to reach an agreement led the U.S. to change tactics. Bush let Vedrell take the lead in the negotiations and appointed Thomas Simons, a former ambassador to Pakistan, to represent the U.S. at an informal four-day “six plus two” meeting in Berlin. (“Six plus two” refers to Afghanistan’s six neighbors—China, Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan—plus the U.S. and Russia.)

The U.S. ceded control of the negotiations to the UN because it had decided to oust the Taliban. The U.S. did, however, leave one last ultimatum: form a coalition government of national unity with the Northern Alliance. As Niaz A. Naik, Pakistan’s former Foreign Secretary said in an interview on French television: “Simons said: ‘either the Taliban behave as they ought to, or Pakistan convinces them to do so, or we will use another option.’ The words Simons used were ‘a military operation.’”[7]

Similarly, Brisard said U.S. representatives told the Taliban: “Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.”[8]

The last direct contact with the Taliban occurred on August 2, 2001, when Christina Rocca, the State Department’s Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, met the Taliban ambassador in Islamabad. Rocca had previously served in the CIA where she oversaw contacts with the mujahedin and delivery of Stinger missiles. Just over two months later, the U.S. delivered its carpet of bombs. “If the Taliban had accepted [the] coalition, they would have immediately received international economic aid, and the pipelines from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan would have come,” said Naik.[9]

Zalmay Khalilzad—Bush‘s Theorist

On May 23, less than a week after Powell made his humanitarian aid speech, and one day before the Republicans lost their majority in the Senate, Zalmay Khalilzad was appointed to the National Security Council as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Southwest Asia, Near East, and North African Affairs. He would ultimately become the brains behind Bush‘s “Afghan policy.”

Khalilzad, an ethnic Pashtun, was born in Mazar-i-Sharif in 1951. His family belonged to the old ruling elite of Afghanistan, and his father was an aide to King Zahir Shah. The family moved to Kabul, where Khalilzad attended English-language schools. Khalilzad spent one year of his high-school education as an exchange student in the U.S., and later received an undergraduate degree from the American University in Beirut. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1979. In 1984, Khalilzad became an American citizen and joined the State Department on a one-year fellowship. His background and language skills earned him a permanent position on the State Department’s Policy Planning Council during the Reagan era, thus beginning a career-long connection to Republican governments:

• 2000-2001, Head of the Bush-Cheney Transition team for the Department of Defense and advisor to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

• 1993–1999, Director of the Strategy, Doctrine and Force Structure program for the hawkish RAND Corporation’s Project Air Force, and founder of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

• 1991–1992, Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning, senior political scientist at RAND, and associate professor at the University of California at San Diego in 1989 and 1991.

• 1985–1989, Special Advisor during the Reagan/Bush presidencies to the Under Secretary of State for Policy working on policy issues on the Iran-Iraq War and the Soviet War in Afghanistan.

Khalilzad was also assistant professor of Political Science at Columbia University from 1979 to 1989.

Though this résumé in the official White House announcement is impressive and doubtless recommends Khalilzad to his position, it is conspicuously incomplete. Lacking from this or other mainstream media reports at the time—New York Times, New York Post, Washington Post— was any mention of Khalilzad’s work on behalf of Unocal.

In the mid 1990s, while writing books and articles on defense and political issues for RAND, Khalilzad worked for the Boston-based Cambridge Energy Research Associates, which was contracted to conduct pipeline risk analyses for Unocal. In an October 7, 1996, opinion piece for the Washington Post, Khalilzad argued that the U.S.’s abandonment of Afghanistan following the Soviet defeat was a mistake, and that it was now time for it to follow a three-step program of “re-engagement.” He recommended three steps: Encourage the Taliban to end the civil war by negotiating a national government with Dostum‘s forces in the North and other major groups; offer the Taliban recognition and humanitarian assistance, and promote international economic reconstruction; and encourage “regional friends” Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to work for the same objectives.

“We should use as a positive incentive the benefits that will accrue to Afghanistan from the construction of oil and gas pipelines across its territory,” he wrote. “These projects will only go forward if Afghanistan has a single authoritative government.” That government would be friendly because the Taliban does not practice “the anti-U.S.” style of fundamentalism practiced by Iran.[10]  It cannot be coincidence that ending the civil war and obtaining international recognition were Unocal’s two prerequisites for building the pipeline. Without them, it could not secure financing. Also, advocating the involvement of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan was tantamount to advocating the interests of CentGas.

The piece was a de facto Unocal policy paper, but the author was identified only as a RAND analyst and a federal government official. Khalilzad was also identified as a RAND analyst when he was one of the American officials who schmoozed Taliban delegates during their visit to Unocal’s Sugarland headquarters in December 1997. Over dinner at a reception, he even got into a deep philosophical debate with the Taliban minister of culture and information Amir Khan Muttaqi over the regime’s treatment of women.[11]

Khalilzad’s pro-Taliban views changed after Clinton attacked Afghanistan in August 1998, which was also when Unocal suspended its participation in CentGas. Now, the Taliban was seen as an obstacle to peace. Khalilzad’s most influential work on this theme was a 2000 essay co-written with RAND colleague Daniel Byman entitled, Afghanistan: The Consolidation of a Rogue State. In it, the authors recommended that the U.S. take the following six steps to stabilize Afghanistan:

1) Aid the Pashtun opposition to create a political stalemate, thus preventing the Taliban from consolidating power;

2) Oppose the Taliban’s ideology by aiding moderate Islamic voices;

3) Press Pakistan to withdraw support for the Taliban;

4) Give humanitarian aid to the victims of the Taliban;

5) Aid moderate Afghan political forces and foster a movement that could act as an accountable government;

6) Elevate the importance of Afghanistan at home, including appointing a high-level envoy for Afghanistan to coordinate overall U.S. policy.[12]

These six steps would form the essence of Bush‘s Afghanistan policy.

Scholastic propaganda

“Afghanistan: The Consolidation of a Rogue State” is not a straightforward analysis piece. It is largely a political tract designed to denigrate the Clinton administration and obscure U.S. support for the Taliban. A few statements are worth examining:

The Clinton administration has ignored the challenge of the Taliban. Some administration officials tacitly favored the group when it emerged between 1994 and 1995, underestimating the threat it posed to regional stability and to U.S. interests.[13]

Khalilzad fails to mention that he was one of these officials, and that favoring the Taliban was not just a minority view—it was government policy. As for the idea that the U.S. supported a regime contrary to regional stability and the national interest, such conduct is standard operating procedure when the regime in question possesses a raw material the U.S. needs. The same could be said of U.S. policy toward Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

“The many states that meddle in Afghanistan complicate any peace settlement and will lead to continued war and instability… Any lasting solution to the Afghan conflict requires working with the Pashtun population; too close a relationship with the Northern Alliance will hinder rather than help this objective.”[14]

Pakistan comes in for particularly harsh criticism because it was responsible for arming the Taliban, and then using it to fight a proxy war with Iran. However, in saying this, Khalilzad repudiated his 1996 Washington Post article where he argued for Pakistani re-engagement. Khalilzad’s and Byman’s statement about the dangerous effects of meddling is undoubtedly accurate, but it’s more relevant to the U.S. and to a lesser degree Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, embracing the Pashtun would likely alienate Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara and other minorities, thus representing the very meddling this measure was supposed to remedy. Khalilzad’s recommendation must be read as a recipe for overthrowing the Taliban.

The tone of this passage also gives the misleading impression that the authors are suggesting a new idea, but since May 2000 the CIA’s Special Activities Division had been inserting specialized case officers from the agency’s Near East Division into Afghanistan. These officers speak the local languages and have previous covert relationships with the Northern Alliance. Prior to 2000, the division was called the Military Support Program, and units of the program had been involved in Afghanistan and making contacts with opposition forces since 1997.[15]

The importance of Afghanistan may grow in the coming years, as Central Asia’s oil and gas reserves, which are estimated to rival those of the North Sea, begin to play a major role in the world energy market. Afghanistan could prove a valuable corridor for this energy as well as for access to markets in Central Asia. In addition, Afghanistan can serve as a trade link between Central and South Asia…So far the United States has taken few steps to secure its interests in Afghanistan and the region. Most U.S. efforts are confined to ad hoc measures to appease domestic critics concerned with terrorism or the treatment of women.[16]

The subjunctive mood in this passage is disingenuous. Khalilzad knows full well that: Afghanistan’s importance has grown; Central Asian oil is playing a major role; and Afghanistan is a valuable corridor. The intent here is to disguise U.S. foreknowledge of these matters.

Afghanistan is ruled by a rogue regime, the Taliban. The outrages that draw headlines in the West stem from its misrule and will continue as long as the movement dominates Afghanistan… Afghanistan is a haven for some of the world’s most lethal anti-U.S. terrorists and their supporters. [Osama] Bin Laden is only the most famous of a large and skilled network of radicals based in Afghanistan.[17]

In this passage we have the essence of Bush’s “war on terrorism,” which he articulated at a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001. What makes this passage significant is the equation of Afghanistan, specifically the Taliban, with terrorist activity.

Since 1996, the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorism-supporting states has contained seven names: Cuba, Libya, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan and Syria. The exclusion of Afghanistan leads to one of two conclusions: 1) Afghanistan isn’t a terrorist-supporting state, and doesn’t belong on the list; or 2), Afghanistan is a terrorist-supporting state, but because of petropolitics could not be included. Given the Taliban’s protection of bin Laden, option 1 is not possible. Option 2 is the only answer, thus proving that Khalilzad’s and Byman’s condemnation of the Taliban was hypocritical.

Who Cares About Osama?

In fact, hypocritical is the best word to describe the U.S.’s general approach to terrorism. Nobody knew that better than FBI Deputy Director John O’Neill. He headed the investigations into the bombings at the World Trade Center (1993), Khobar (1996), the U.S. embassies (1998), and the USS Cole (2000). In Ben Laden—la vérité intérdite, he told Brisard and Dasquié that U.S. oil companies and the Saudi government repeatedly frustrated his efforts to bring bin Laden to justice.

O’Neill said all the information needed to dismantle bin Laden’s organization was in Saudi Arabia, but the government didn’t want to upset the monarchy. In the case of the 1996 Khobar blast, the Saudis interrogated, tried and executed the suspects without letting the FBI speak with them. Similarly, the U.S. State Department obstructed O’Neill’s attempts to prove that bin Laden was behind the USS Cole explosion. He claimed to have evidence of bin Laden’s guilt, but Barbara Bodine, U.S. ambassador to Yemen, refused to allow O’Neill and his team to enter the country. In August 2001, O’Neill resigned in frustration and took a security job in the World Trade Center. He died in the September 11 attack.

Catching bin Laden was never the priority it was made out to be, and there is little evidence to suggest that the U.S. actively tried to compel the Taliban to turn him over, even after Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the Clinton administration that bin Laden posed a danger: “Washington’s reaction at the time really amazed me. They shrugged their shoulders and said matter-of-factly: ‘We can’t do anything because the Taliban does not want to turn him over.’”[18] This apparent lack of urgency is consistent with the exigencies of pro-Taliban petropolitics and explains the obstruction of O’Neill’s investigations. Here, too, Bush follows the advice of Khalilzad and Byman:

The question of bin Laden illustrates the limits of U.S. policy. Clearly, bin Laden is a dangerous terrorist who must be captured and prosecuted. Yet the U.S. focus on him, rather than on the trend he represents, is misguided. Bin Laden is a wealthy, capable, and dedicated foe, but hardly an evil genius or charismatic leader who single-handedly is waging war against the United States. If he dies, the war will continue. As one Taliban officer noted, “What will the Americans do even if they find bin Laden? There are hundreds of bin Ladens just up the road.” Indeed, the U.S. focus on bin Laden has enabled him to increase his recruitment and fund-raising from abroad… To stop bin Laden’s network, Washington must gain the support of the governments that host it.[19]

The importance of this passage cannot be exaggerated. It represents not only a sober refutation of Clinton’s obsession with bin Laden and the “war on terrorism,” but it’s also the most rational assessment of the threat bin Laden posed to the U.S. The strength of this passage comes from its candid tone and different focus. Unlike the previous excerpts, this one is concerned with U.S. policy toward bin Laden, not the Taliban, and it contains the essay’s only citation, thus enhancing the authors’ rational appreciation of his low importance.

Rumsfeld typified official incoherence toward bin Laden in two separate interviews on October 25, 2001. According to the USA Today editorial board:

Rumsfeld has tried to lower expectations for the military campaign by comparing it to the Cold War, which lasted a half-century. In a 50-minute interview, Rumsfeld cautioned repeatedly that it would be ‘very difficult’ to capture or kill bin Laden: “It’s a big world. There are lots of countries. He’s got a lot of money, he’s got a lot of people who support him, and I just don’t know whether we’ll be successful. Clearly, it would be highly desirable to find him.” Even if bin Laden were killed, his terrorist network would carry on, Rumsfeld said. “If he were gone tomorrow, the same problem would exist.”[20]

Later, Rumsfeld told The Guardian a different story:

The U.S. defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, tonight stressed that the U.S. government expects to succeed in killing or capturing Osama bin Laden, apparently rowing back from comments he made earlier. During a Pentagon briefing, Mr. Rumsfeld said, “we hope and we expect to get him” but said he did not know for certain that would happen.[21]

Rumsfeld did not repudiate his earlier statement; rather, he claimed he made a mistake and that the headline was overly pessimistic, despite the fact that it contained a direct quote.

Setting up the Taliban

The USA Today interview is particularly noteworthy because Rumsfeld’s equation of the “war on terrorism” with the Cold War contradicts Pentagon statements that public support for the “war on terrorism” “stemmed not from Cold War geopolitics but from attacks on U.S. soil.”

In one case, the “war on terrorism” is a long, deliberate campaign; in the other, it’s an emotional response to a specific act. The incoherence of these two positions shows that U.S. policy was duplicitous and that bin Laden was not the all-consuming target he was made out to be. Rumsfeld’s early pessimism about the ability to capture bin Laden was validated on April 17, 2002, when the U.S. government accepted an intelligence report stating that bin Laden had left his Tora Bora cave complex during the first 10 days of December.[22]

In fact, Bush’s own statements indicate that the Afghan government, not bin Laden, was his major target. In his September 20 speech, Bush delivered the following ultimatum to the Taliban:

Deliver to United States authorities all the leaders of al-Qaida who hide in your land. (Applause.) Release all foreign nationals, including American citizens, you have unjustly imprisoned. Protect foreign journalists, diplomats and aid workers in your country. Close immediately and permanently every terrorist training camp in Afghanistan, and hand over every terrorist, and every person in their support structure, to appropriate authorities. (Applause.) Give the United States full access to terrorist training camps, so we can make sure they are no longer operating. These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion. (Applause.) The Taliban must act, and act immediately. They will hand over the terrorists, or they will share in their fate.

The impression here is that by giving the Taliban a chance to avoid military reprisals, the U.S. was being fair-minded, but this impression is fraudulent. First, the Taliban was under no obligation to comply with Bush’s diktat because Article 2 of the Charter of the United Nations recognizes the sovereign equality of all member states. In other words, the U.S. has no right to compel obedience from any nation.

Second, Article 51 recognizes the supremacy of the Security Council to resolve disputes, so by threatening to take the law into its own hands, Bush was violating Afghanistan’s sovereignty and declaring to the world that the U.S. was a rogue state.

Third, Bush failed to mention that he had already authorized an extra $1 billion for CIA covert operations, and told the agency to do “whatever necessary” to assassinate bin Laden. This contract on bin Laden’s life was put out despite President Gerald Ford‘s explicit 1976 ban on political assassinations, which Rumsfeld even acknowledged: “There is no question but that that ban does have effect. It restricts certain things that government can and cannot do.”[23]

Fourth, according to some press accounts, Mullah Muhammad Omar was prepared to hand over bin Laden, even to a third country, if the U.S. provided proof of his guilt. This offer, if true, showed that Omar was at least willing to abide by Security Council Resolutions 1267 and 1333, but Bush’s uncompromising tone showed that he cared less about obtaining bin Laden than with destroying the Taliban. The same is true of Rumsfeld’s comments. In the USA Today interview, he said the U.S. likely would not capture bin Laden, but was certain the Taliban would be toppled: “Yes, I think there will be a post-Taliban Afghanistan. That is easier than finding a single person.”

Even after making allowances for vengeance, Bush’s attitude toward the Taliban was so arrogant, punitive and humiliating, that compliance was precluded. Bush had already decided that the Taliban should be destroyed, but the façade of fair-mindedness was necessary to delude the American public, and the world, into believing that the coming onslaught was morally justified.

Bombing Afghanistan would be the first act in the junta’s open-ended crusade against the Muslim world. On the same day Bush spoke, the Pentagon christened the crusade “Infinite Justice.” The overt chauvinism of the name and the invocation of crusade, however, caused the administration severe embarrassment. The names were hastily changed with the excuse and apology that they were unintentionally offensive to Muslims, but these offenses were not gaffes; they accurately reflected the government’s anti-Muslim bigotry. At a press conference two days thereafter, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer backed away from “crusade,” but only for political and diplomatic reasons:

Question: The President used the word crusade last Sunday, which has caused some consternation in a lot of Muslim countries. Can you explain his usage of that word, given the connotation to Muslims?

Ari Fleischer: I think what the President was saying was—had no intended consequences for anybody, Muslim or otherwise, other than to say that this is a broad cause that he is calling on America and the nations around the world to join. That was the point— purpose of what he said.

Question: Does he regret using that word, Ari, and will he not use it again in the context of talking about this effort?

Fleischer: I think to the degree that that word has any connotations that would upset any of our partners, or anybody else in the world, the President would regret if anything like that was conveyed. But the purpose of his conveying it is in the traditional English sense of the word. It’s a broad cause.[24]

Five days after it was created, Operation “Infinite Justice” was smugly renamed Operation “Enduring Freedom,” but the change made little sense. If the White House were genuinely concerned about Muslim sensitivities it should not have taken five days to rename the operation. As Fleisher’s comments showed, politics, not concern about Muslims, was what mattered.

“Infinite” literally described the Pentagon’s warmongering zeal. Toward the end of September, Rumsfeld submitted to Bush two proposals for open-ended war in the Middle East and Central Asia drawn up by Wolfowitz.[25] The attacks on the World Trade Center gave the junta the impetus it needed to launch unfettered war against “terrorist states,” of which Afghanistan would be only the first. “Justice” captured the essence of the vigilante-style retribution to be visited upon Afghanistan for the Taliban’s harboring of bin Laden. In short, “Enduring Freedom” was a cruel euphemism that gave the impression that bombing Afghanistan was in its best interest.

Gas Pipeline Back on the Front Burner

Operation “Infinite Justice/Enduring Freedom” began on Sunday, October 7, 2001. Two days later in Islamabad, U.S. Ambassador Wendy Chamberlain paid a visit to Usman Aminuddin, Pakistan’s petroleum and natural resources minister.[26] The conversation centered on topics like current and future development of oil and gas fields, exploitation of Pakistan’s coal deposits (fifth-largest in the world), and investment in onshore and offshore exploration.

Aminduddin also briefed Chamberlain on the CentGas pipeline. The official Pakistani government statement read: “The pipeline opens up new avenues of multi-dimensional regional cooperation, particularly in view of the recent geopolitical developments in the region.”[27] Chamberlain responded favorably, saying that the U.S. attached great importance to its relations with Pakistan, and that a number of sanctions would be lifted so Pakistan could revive its economy.

Behind the scenes, the U.S. had quietly been laying the groundwork for a pro-pipeline, post-Taliban Afghanistan. Although Rabbani was still officially recognized as head of state, the U.S. was pushing the candidacy of Hamid Karzai, a 44-year-old English-speaking upper-class Pashtun who, like Khalilzad, had connections to former king Zahir Shah. From November 27 to December 5, 2001, the UN was sponsoring talks in Bonn with four Afghan factions to come up with an interim government. At the end of the meetings, the U.S. got its wish, but it was a victory it could not afford to celebrate. As a former senior U.S. diplomat still active in Afghan affairs told the Washington Post: “American officials are just delighted that Karzai is going to be interim leader, but we can’t say that and Karzai can’t show it much either because then he would be called an American puppet back home. And being seen as the puppet of any foreign power is political death in Afghanistan.”[28]

Rabbani and other leaders charged that the U.S. imposed Karzai on Afghanistan, and the conduct of the U.S. at the Bonn negotiations supports the charge. Although the UN ran the proceedings, the U.S. did most of the work to broker an agreement.

While Afghans ultimately made the decision to select Karzai, Afghan, American and UN officials agree that the United States played a central role in creating the conditions that made Karzai’s selection more likely, [reported the Post.] In particular, they delivered the message to Rabbani, a leader of the Northern Alliance, that he had to step aside, and to Abdul Sattar Sirat, who had been nominated by the group representing the former king to become interim leader, that he did not have the necessary support. With those two competitors gone Karzai became the consensus candidate.[28]

Karzai’s affiliation with the U.S. military dates to the mid-’80s, when he served as military liaison between the CIA and the mujahedin during the Afghan jihad. He maintained close relations with CIA Director William Casey and Ronald Reagan‘s Vice-President George Bush, another former CIA director. Karzai studied law in Kabul and India, but completed his education in the U.S., thanks to CIA assistance. While in the U.S. Karzai also worked as consultant to Unocal, which at the time was considering a pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan. In 1994, Karzai aligned himself with the U.S. and supported the Taliban regime.

In 1996, the year Osama bin Laden returned from Sudan, Karzai broke with the Taliban over the inordinate influence of bin Laden and his “Arab Afghans,” but the Taliban was in a thoroughly dependent position. Whether or not it approved of bin Laden’s activities or the domineering conduct of the “Arab Afghans,” it couldn’t afford to alienate bin Laden because his money was running the government.

The next year, Karzai organized a Pashtun resistance in the southern provinces of Qandahar, Zabol, Urozgan and Helmand, but since Clinton was still playing footsie with the Taliban all requests for assistance were rejected. Nevertheless, Karzai made important contacts with Pashtun leaders, and started fomenting rebellion.[29] After the September 11 attack, the U.S. reversed its non-support. An infiltration, co-ordinated with Rumsfeld and CIA Director George Tenet, took place on October 8, 2001, 24 hours after the launch of “Infinite Justice/Enduring Freedom.”

The close co-operation between Karzai and the Bush administration is significant because it proves Bush lied when he said the Taliban could avoid military attack if it handed over bin Laden; explains Rumsfeld’s and Bush’s contradictory assertions about the need to capture or kill bin Laden; and shows how closely Bush followed Khalilzad’s advice.

On December 31, 2001, Bush followed through on another recommendation. He appointed a high-level envoy for Afghanistan because Khalilzad said such an envoy should have sufficient stature, be taken seriously in foreign capitals and by local militias, and shape policy within U.S. bureaucracies. The man Bush chose was Khalilzad. The U.S. press did not cover the appointment and the BBC account failed to mention Khalilzad’s work for Unocal.[30]

Thus, after the U.S. deposed the Taliban, Bush engineered the appointment of a Unocal consultant to lead Afghanistan, and appointed another consultant to be his chief policy advisor.[31] During a one-day visit to Islamabad on February 9, 2002, Karzai and President Pervez Musharraf discussed the CentGas project. They agreed it was in the interests of both countries.

Unfinished Business

The junta may have toppled the Taliban and installed a pro-pipeline satrap in Kabul, but it did not vanquish bin Laden, his followers or the Taliban’s support base. Moreover, the much-desired calm economic climate for the CentGas pipeline is still nowhere in sight. The Pentagon commissioned Col. Hy Rothstein (Ret.) to analyze the situation and his highly critical findings point to the absence of a credible military or political strategy:

What was needed after December 2001 was a greater emphasis on U.S. special operations troops, supported by light infantry, conducting counterinsurgency operations. Aerial bombardment should have become a rare thing…. The failure to adjust U.S. operations in line with the post-Taliban change in theater conditions cost the United States some of the fruits of victory and imposed additional, avoidable humanitarian and stability costs on Afghanistan… Indeed, the war’s inadvertent effects may be more significant than we think.[32]

Rothstein’s findings are hardly surprising, since the U.S. never thought of Afghanistan as anything other than a tethered goat to be slaughtered. Humanitarian consideration toward Afghan civilians was never much of a concern. On January 17, 2004, one aerial attack hit a village killing 10 civilians. Despite confirmation of the fatalities, the U.S. claimed it killed Taliban “militants.” This attack came less than a month after two aerial attacks killed 15 children.[33]

Doubtless one reason for this single-minded reliance on air power was the fear of being drawn into a guerrilla war with the warlords. Not only does the U.S. not want to risk the lives of its own soldiers, but these warlords are in Karzai’s government. Worse, they’re not only cabinet ministers but they fight among themselves, and Karzai can do little if anything about it.

For all the effort the U.S. expended to install Karzai as president, the real power in Afghanistan lies with commanders like Tajik defense minister Mohammed Fahim. Even if Karzai wanted to stand up to the warlords, he couldn’t because he doesn’t have much of an army—one third of the 6,000 newly trained recruits have deserted. As it is, the Afghan army had only 10,000 men under arms as of January 2004 — one-tenth the size of the combined warlord militias.

Karzai’s own situation is precarious. Although nominally the president of Afghanistan, he is little more than a glorified mayor of Kabul and he can’t leave his office without a phalanx of U.S. Special Forces bodyguards. On September 5, 2002, in Qandahar Karzai narrowly escaped assassination by the Taliban. His ministers don’t have the luxury of private bodyguards, though. On February 14, Civil Aviation Minister Abdul Rehman was killed by his political rivals at Kabul airport. On April 8, Fahim narrowly escaped assassination in Kabul. On July 6, Deputy President Haji Abdul Qadir and his driver were shot and killed outside his office. Karzai is therefore dependent on outside funds, some of which he uses to bribe the warlords.[40] Little if any money is used for reconstruction, which makes the population resentful and desperate, and desperation drives the opium industry.

From 2002 to 2003, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy reported that the total area of poppies under cultivation mushroomed 3,600 percent from 4,210 acres in 2001 to 76,900 in 2002 to 152,000 in 2003. Revenues from the drug trade help the warlords finance their armies and frustrate Karzai’s efforts to establish authority.[41]

Thus, we come to the end of the U.S.’s perverse Afghan policy: Backing the mujahedin against the Soviets; backing the Taliban against the warlords; backing the warlords against the Taliban; and now backing drug traffickers, who are not only in government but are waging political and economic war against the U.S.’s handpicked leader. Interestingly, one no longer hears much talk about the “war on drugs.”

13

Enemies of the State

By the time the junta seized power, the Zionization of the U.S. had passed through five stages analogous to those of John Nelson Darby’s dispensationalism; however, instead of Noah, Moses, Aaron, kings and Jesus, we had Truman, Johnson, Carter, Reagan and Clinton.  The most significant of these for the rise of fascism was the Reagan Stage because from 1980 to 1988 the U.S. drifted away from its traditional oil-based Middle East policy toward one that balanced oil security with subordination to Israel. During this time, the crazies effectively commandeered policymaking and expanded their network of extra-governmental “think tanks”: AIPAC created WINEP in 1985; AEI was “Reaganized” in 1986; and the WINEP offshoot CSP was founded in 1988.

Table XI: Lawrence Britt’s 14 Points of Fascism Restated

Powerful and Continuing Nationalism

Suppressed Labor Power

Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights

Protected Corporate Power

Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause

Intertwined Religion and Government

Supremacy of the Military

Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts

Rampant Sexism

Obsession with Crime and Punishment

Controlled Mass Media

Rampant Cronyism and Corruption

Obsession with National Security

Fraudulent Elections

Seizing the Pentagon: A Feith-Based Coup

To stampede the nation into a political war for Israel, the junta had to wage a preliminary war on the Pentagon’s military culture, which was based on the moderate Republican traditions of multilateralism, regional stability and Labor Zionism. The man charged with imposing PNAC’s worldview on the Pentagon was (the now former) Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, the third-highest ranking Pentagon Zionist after Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. He was responsible for purging the Pentagon’s military planners of anyone who didn’t fall lockstep into line with the junta’s imperial agenda.

Out of a sense of duty, some career officers have gone public to denounce the political intimidation, corrupt decision-making and subversion that brought about the fiasco in Iraq. The most famous of these officers is former Air Force Lt.-Col. Karen Kwiatkowski. In May 2002, she joined the Pentagon’s Near East and South Asia policy office, but the office was forced to share space with another occupant, the Office of Special Plans, sometimes referred to as “Plan B.” It was set up by Rumsfeld to disparage CIA and DIA reports, and to concoct sophistries to prove the existence of WMDs and/or a Hussein–bin Laden connection. It was directly answerable to upper-level PNACers in the Pentagon and White House, including Cheney and Rumsfeld.

“This seizure of the reins of U.S. Middle East policy was directly visible to many of us working in the Near East South Asia policy office, and yet there seemed to be little any of us could do about it,” said Kwiatkowski. “I witnessed neo-conservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president.[381]

The man in overall charge of the OSP was Under-Secretary of Defense William Luti, a retired navy captain and former Cheney staffer. Director of operations was Abram Shulsky, a former student of Leo Strauss, who, as Seymour Hersh wrote, wanted to apply Straussian thought to intelligence work:

As it happens, Shulsky himself explored that question in a 1999 essay, written with Gary Schmitt, entitled Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence (By Which We Do Not Mean Nous)—in Greek philosophy the term nous denotes the highest form of rationality…. Echoing one of Strauss‘s major themes, Shulsky and Schmitt criticize America’s intelligence community for its failure to appreciate the duplicitous nature of the regimes it deals with, its susceptibility to social-science notions of proof, and its inability to cope with deliberate concealment…. Strauss‘s idea of hidden meaning, Shulsky and Schmitt added, “alerts one to the possibility that political life may be closely linked to deception. Indeed, it suggests that deception is the norm in political life, and the hope, to say nothing of the expectation, of establishing a politics that can dispense with it is the exception.”[382]

Indeed, in the OSP rational argument and empirical evidence were dismissed as deceptions, but rumor, disinformation and wishful thinking were valued. OSP propaganda was disseminated to Bolton, Cheney, Libby, select people on the National Security Council, various Zionist institutes, and media Zionists like Charles Krauthammer.

[The OSP, reported the Guardian,] functioned like a shadow government, much of it off the official payroll and beyond congressional oversight. But it proved powerful enough to prevail in a struggle with the State Department and the CIA by establishing a justification for war. The OSP was an open and largely unfiltered conduit to the White House not only for the Iraqi opposition. It also forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation inside Ariel Sharon‘s office in Israel specifically to bypass Mossad and provide the Bush administration with more alarmist reports on Saddam’s Iraq than Mossad was prepared to authorize.[383]

For the OSP to manufacture a case against Iraq it had to eviscerate the Pentagon’s professional intelligence establishment, and for this purpose it brought in inexperienced and incompetent ideologues from the Zionist breeding grounds at AEI, WINEP, JINSA and MEMRI. Kwiatkowski remembers a long-time career civil servant warning her that if she hoped to get ahead she shouldn’t say anything positive about the Palestinians. This advice surprised her because official U.S. policy was that of an honest broker between Israelis and Palestinians, and even Bush talked about support for a Palestinian state.

That the Pentagon could have implemented and, worse, was implementing its own foreign policy had not yet occurred to me, [she wrote]…. I shared some of my concerns with a civilian who had been remotely acquainted with the Luti–Feith–Perle political clan in his previous work for one of the senior Pentagon witnesses during the Iran-Contra hearings. He told me these guys were engaged in something worse than Iran-Contra. I was curious but he wouldn’t tell me anything more. I figured he knew what he was talking about. I thought of him when I read much later about the 2002 and 2003 meetings between Michael Ledeen, Reuel Marc Gerecht and Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar—all Iran-Contra figures.[384]

The following account from Kwiatkowski shows just how much authority Israel wielded within the Pentagon:

In early winter… a coworker and I were suddenly directed to go down to the Mall entrance to pick up some Israeli generals. Post-9/11 rules required one escort for every three visitors, and there were six or seven of them waiting. The Navy lieutenant commander and I hustled down. Before we could apologize for the delay, the leader of the pack surged ahead, his colleagues in close formation, leaving us to double-time behind the group as they sped to Undersecretary Feith’s office on the fourth floor.

Two thoughts crossed our minds: are we following close enough to get credit for escorting them, and do they really know where they are going? We did get credit, and they did know. Once in Feith’s waiting room, the leader continued at speed to Feith’s closed door. An alert secretary saw this coming and had leapt from her desk to block the door. “Mr. Feith has a visitor. It will only be a few more minutes.” The leader craned his neck to look around the secretary’s head as he demanded, “Who is in there with him?”….

I asked the secretary, “Do you want these guys to sign in?” She raised her hands, both palms toward me, and waved frantically as she shook her head. “No, no, no, it is not necessary, not at all.” Her body language told me I had committed a faux pas for even asking the question. My fellow escort and I chatted on the way back to our office about how the generals knew where they were going (most foreign visitors to the five-sided asylum don’t) and how the generals didn’t have to sign in.[385]

The generals didn’t have to sign in because they were acting on behalf of the Pentagon’s new masters. Yet, the sight of Israeli officers being allowed to circumvent security to gain privileged access to the civilian hierarchy confirms that the Pentagon was under foreign occupation.

Israel’s influence over U.S. policy toward Iraq began during the Gulf War after Iraq began launching Scud missiles from its Western Desert region. As much as President Bush wanted to restore Kuwait’s independence, he couldn’t afford to have Israel become militarily involved, as this excerpt from Frontline’s 1996 show The Gulf War shows:

Narrator: Israel became the president’s top priority.

President George Bush: [January 19, 1991] We’re going to be redoubling our efforts in the darnedest search-and-destroy effort that’s ever been undertaken in that… out in that area. And I hope that that is very reassuring to the citizens of Israel.

Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf: Washington’s approach to the Scuds was purely a political approach. My approach was purely a military approach. As I told you before, I think Scuds are militarily insignificant. I saw one the other day…

Narrator: In Riyadh, Schwarzkopf rebelled against the new emphasis on Scuds. He wanted to use his air force to win the war, not placate the Israelis.

Schwarzkopf: As you know, the total Scud launches have been…No one in Israel was ever killed by a Scud missile. They did have some people die as a result of putting their gas masks on wrong, but no one was ever killed as a result of Scud missiles.

Richard Cheney, Secretary of Defense: From my perspective, from the strategic perspective and the president’s perspective—and, obviously, I was doing this with the president’s approval—it was vital to keep the Israelis out of the conflict, and that the way you did that was to make certain that they knew we were doing everything humanly possible to deal with that Scud threat.[386]

Israel could not allow Hussein to develop a defense against nuclear attack, which explains why Israel had to destroy Iraq’s command-and-control facilities. During the Iran–Iraq war, Iraq commissioned British, Belgian, French and Yugoslavian contractors to build nearly 600 hardened aircraft bunkers (HABs) and personnel bunkers along its border. Each HAB met or exceeded NATO impregnability standards.[387]

At the heart of the Iraqi airfield network were three strategic “superbases” designed to function during chemical, biological, and even nuclear war. Lt.-Col. Sergei Bezlyudniy, a former MiG-29 flight instructor stationed in Iraq, remarked on their superiority: “ The equipment, shelters, and blast walls—everything was the last word in equipment and of outstanding quality…. As far as I could see, it would have been virtually impossible to destroy this [HAB] with tactical weapons, even super-accurate ones, and probably only by using nuclear warheads.”[388]

The General and the Secretary

The great obstacle for Luti and Shulsky was the Pentagon’s institutional memory and expertise. Those who understood Iraq and could speak with authority on matters of military and political strategy had to be eliminated or co-opted. For the cabal, the two most hated people were Secretary of State Colin Powell and retired four-star general Anthony Zinni, Bush’s Middle East envoy and former head of Central Command.

Zinni, a Vietnam veteran, sees unmistakable parallels between the deceptions that led to the U.S. quagmire in Vietnam and the one in Iraq. “The Gulf of Tonkin [Resolution] and the case for WMD and terrorism is synonymous in my mind…. In my time at Centcom, I watched the intelligence, and never—not once—did it say, ‘He has WMD.’”[389]

Zinni was not a willing critic of the administration. He supported Bush and Cheney in 2000, believing them to be moderates. In August 2002, Zinni was in Nashville to receive the Veterans of Foreign Wars’ “Dwight D. Eisenhower Distinguished Service Award,” in recognition for his 35 years in the Marine Corps. Cheney was also at the ceremony to deliver a foreign policy speech, in which he reiterated the standard PNAC fabrications: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.”[390]

Zinni’s warnings about the dangers of a chaotic Iraq and his preference for Hussein were nothing new, especially to Cheney, but to the PNACers running the Pentagon such rational thought was anathema. In December 2002, Zinni was removed as Bush’s Middle East envoy and Elliot Abrams was appointed to lead the Middle East division of the National Security Council. “Whoops and high-fives erupted from the neo-con cubicles,” said Kwiatkowski.[391] “Before he was removed by Bush, I heard Zinni called a traitor in a staff meeting. They were very anti-anybody who might provide information that affected their paradigm. They were the spin enforcers.”[392]

In January 2003, the Joint Chiefs of Staff expressed concerns that Bush’s determination to go to war would violate the U.S.’s “no first strike” policy and lead to conflict with other Arab states. Therefore they asked Rumsfeld to persuade Bush to give UN weapons inspectors more time: “This is not Desert Storm,” one of the chiefs told Rumsfeld. “We don’t have the backing of other Middle Eastern nations. We don’t have the backing of any of our allies except Britain and we’re advocating a policy that says we will invade another nation that is not currently attacking us or invading any of our allies.”[393] This lack of blind obedience infuriated Rumsfeld who is said to have told the chiefs to get in line or quit.

In August 2003, the PNACers started cleaning house. Rumsfeld chose Gen. Peter Shoomaker, a critic of the military’s cautious approach to the invasion, to replace acting chief of staff Gen. John Keane. Keane, Shoomaker and Rumsfeld selected a list of three-star and four-star generals to be retired—Keane was one of them. In a private statement that became widely circulated, Shoomaker said: “Rumsfeld might think we’re at war with terrorism, but I’ll bet he also thinks he is at war within the Pentagon... It’s a war of the culture.”[394]

“The other shoe fell with a thump,” as Kwiatkowski put it, on February 5, 2003, when Powell capitulated to the junta. To convince the world that Iraq was bent on developing WMDs and that Hussein was in league with al-Qaida, Powell presented the UN Security Council with vague, unauthenticated intercepts of Iraqi conversations, satellite photos of empty buildings and trucks and uncorroborated defectors’ statements.[395] It was an embarrassing fraud. For example:

• The two mobile chemical weapons “decontamination vehicles” Powell claimed were in one of the satellite photos turned out to be water or fire trucks upon inspection.

• The alarming discovery of 12 122-mm chemical warheads turned out to be uncrated, empty leftovers from the 1980s.

• Powell made numerous specific allegations of WMDs (100–500 tons of chemical-weapons agent, up to 25,000 liters of anthrax, and four tons of VX nerve agent) but the Defense Intelligence Agency cannot confirm the nature, amount or condition of any WMDs Iraq may have.

• Powell said, “We have no indication that Saddam Hussein has ever abandoned his nuclear weapons program,” but Spain’s foreign minister said the international community found no proof a nuclear bomb program before the invasion.[396]

• Powell spoke at length about the “sinister nexus” between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network,” through Ansar al-Islam, a 600-man group in the Kurdish north, and a “deadly terrorist network” run by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, supposedly an associate and collaborator of bin Laden‘s. Ansar’s leader Mullah Krekar, a staunch foe of Hussein, dismissed the suggestion, and nobody at the FBI had heard of him. Zarqawi did not even appear on any wanted lists.[397]

Hans Blix, the UN chief weapons inspector, dismissed Powell’s allegations and in numerous interviews condemned the attack as premeditated and unjustified. He assailed the U.S. for conducting a smear campaign against him, hampering the inspectors’ work and withholding intelligence: “The justification for the war—the existence of weapons of mass destruction—was without foundation… Saddam was dangerous to his own people but not a great, and certainly not an immediate, danger to his neighbors and the world.”[398]

Both Zinni and Blix believed the U.S. committed an intelligence failure by relying too heavily on specious evidence. This conclusion is too charitable because it gives the false impression that Bush committed an error in judgment, but there was nothing to judge. The OSP prevented rational consideration of data and Shulsky vetted all talking points emanating from the OSP. Specious evidence is all that Bush received because that was what PNAC wanted.

The Disinformant

A major cause of this “failure” was Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, a London-based umbrella group of anti-Hussein exiles. Chalabi not only supplied the specious intelligence about WMDs but also propagated the fiction that Iraqis would welcome the U.S. army “with open arms.” Using this rosy scenario, Rumsfeld high-handedly rejected the U.S. Army Chief of Staff’s cogent estimate that the invasion would require hundreds of thousands of troops, but Chalabi’s “intelligence” was really irrelevant. The decision to invade had already been taken. A few days after the September 11 attack, Chalabi participated in a secret Defense Policy Board meeting with Perle, PNACer and former CIA director James Woolsey, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to see how it could be used as a pretext for attacking Iraq.[399]

The fight between the Pentagon and the State Department over Chalabi’s credibility highlights the influence of the Cheney cabal and the degenerate decision-making culture of the Bush administration. According to a former Administration official: “Everybody but the Pentagon and the office of the Vice-President [wanted] to ditch the INC.”[400]

For their part, the State Department and CIA were trying to create a broad-based alliance independent of Chalabi’s INC. According to Seymour Hersh, the CIA judged former Iraqi Army chief of staff Nizar Khazraji to be the best prospect because he was Sunni and a former combat general.[401]

Logically and politically, there was no reason to back the INC. Chalabi, a Shi’ite Muslim, hadn’t set foot in Iraq since he left in 1956, had no military background, and was a convicted criminal. A Jordanian court sentenced him to 22 years in prison for bank fraud because of the collapse of Petra Bank, which he founded in 1977.

At the time, the State Department and the intelligence community rightly considered Chalabi to be a shameless self-promoter who was more interested in becoming president of Iraq than in providing the U.S. with useful intelligence. Typical is a June 26, 2002, letter from the Iraqi National Congress to the Senate Appropriations Committee boasting of 108 news articles based on INC information, all of which has been shown to be either false or unsubstantiated. For example:

•              Saddam collaborated for years with bin Laden and was complicit in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Intelligence officials said there is no evidence of operational ties between Iraq and al-Qaida, and no evidence of an Iraqi hand in the attacks;

•              Iraq trained Islamic extremists in the same hijacking techniques used in the September 11 strikes and prepared them for operations against Iraq’s neighbors and possibly the United States. Two senior U.S. officials said that so far no evidence has been found to substantiate the charge;

•              Iraq had mobile biological warfare facilities disguised as yogurt and milk trucks and hid banned weapons production and storage facilities beneath a hospital, fake lead-lined wells and Saddam’s palaces. No such facilities or vehicles have been found so far;

•              Iraq held 80 Kuwaitis captured in the 1991 Gulf War in a secret underground prison in 2000. No Kuwaiti prisoners have been found so far;

•              Iraq could launch toxin-armed Scud missiles at Israel that could kill 100,000 people and was aggressively developing nuclear weapons. No Iraq Scud missiles have been found yet.[402]

The Defense Intelligence Agency states that the INC provided little useful information, and that the source for Hussein’s alleged mobile biological-warfare laboratories was a fabricator, who happened to be the brother of one of Chalabi’s senior aides.[403] In any event, Chalabi was known to be of questionable reliability because he had failed a polygraph test. In May 2002 intelligence agencies were warned that his information, and that of the defectors he brought with him, was unreliable.

In 1998, as if to underscore PNAC’s influence, Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act to fund the INC’s intelligence gathering operations. The budget for the Information Collection Program was $4 million, but internal reviews in 2001 and 2002 found that more than $1 million had been wasted, thus prompting questions about Chalabi’s credibility.[404] Honesty and credibility notwithstanding, Perle, Wolfowitz, Luti and other members of the cabal insisted that he was the only possible choice to lead a post-Hussein Iraq.

Responsibility for the program was moved from the State Department to the Defense Department in 2002, and despite the general uselessness of the intelligence, the INC’s questionable spending habits, and the fact that Hussein had been captured, the Pentagon set aside another $3 million to $4 million in 2004, part of which would go towards training 10,000 INC soldiers to help U.S. invasion forces.[405]

To make sense of PNAC’s peculiar fetish for the INC, it helps to consider Chalabi not as a source of information but as a stooge. PNAC needed someone to enforce its will in Iraq, and Chalabi, who lacked any stature and was universally despised, was beholden to PNAC for what little power and credibility he had. Moreover, he had something none of the other contenders had—strong ties in the American Jewish community.[406] Chalabi was a long-time friend of Richard Perle and had a relationship with JINSA going back 10 years, According to JINSA executive director Tom Neumann, other Jewish groups came out to support Chalabi after the invasion:

There’s no track record of anyone else in Iraqi leadership having a relationship with the Jewish community. Because Saddam [Hussein] was so anti-Israel, the hope is that all of Saddam’s policies will be revisited, including his relationship with Israel and the United States. There’s no reason for the Iraqi people to have a problem with Israel.[407]

The relationship was mutually useful: JINSA and other organizations used Chalabi and other members of the INC to enhance Israel’s relations with the Arab world in post-Hussein Iraq, and the INC used Zionist influence to promote its cause. The symbiosis was made even more overt when retired Lt.-Gen. Jay Garner, a “Jinsan,” was named to oversee the reconstruction and “democratization” of Iraq, until he was removed on May 6, 2003, in favor of civilian Paul Bremer.

Bothered by the gross inconsistency between the rhetoric and reality that led to the invasion, Israeli reserve Brig.-Gen. Shlomo Brom wrote a mea culpa piece for Strategic Assessment, the quarterly bulletin of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. In “The War in Iraq: An Intelligence Failure?” Brom openly admitted that Israel bore an equal share of the blame for distorting intelligence:

In the questioning of the picture painted by coalition intelligence, the third party in this intelligence failure, Israel, has remained in the shadows. And yet, Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by American and British intelligence regarding Iraq’s non-conventional capabilities. In addition to an exaggerated assessment of Iraqi capabilities, it was also assessed that the Iraqis were apt to use these capabilities against Israel. In actuality, of course, Israel was not attacked, either because Iraq did not have the capability or because it had no intention of doing so.[408]

For all of its apparent candor, Brom‘s exposé of Israel’s role in the intelligence “failure,” has a self-serving ring to it. The last sentence of the above citation seems to imply a reality that was hitherto unknown, but a year earlier former Chief of Staff Gen. Moshe Yaalon stated that Israel had nothing to fear from Iraq. The entire tone of Brom‘s piece seems designed to mask the Zionist domination of the OSP behind safe admissions of known failures and criticism of the Bush administration. As an example of the former, Brom said no mass quantities of surface-to-surface missiles, shells or warheads have been found and that concealing them would have been obviously difficult:

“Because weapons of this type are much bulkier and heavier than documents and small items related to projects, it would have been necessary in hiding them to involve a significant number of people. This suggests, therefore, that no operational weapons were hidden, or that if they were hidden, the concealment was on a much smaller scale.”[409]

None of this was news to Blix or his inspection teams, whose first-hand intelligence and access to sites was discounted in preference to Powell‘s ambiguous satellite pictures and Chalabi’s fabrications.

Brom also maintained that Iraq was not Israel’s prime security concern, and that Israel was merely a lucky beneficiary of the Bush government decision to attack:

Once the Bush administration decided to take action against Iraq, it was more difficult for Israel to maintain its position that dealing with Iraq was not the highest priority, especially when it was obvious that the war would serve Israel’s interests. Considering the circumstances, it would therefore be difficult to expect the Israeli government to express its doubts—if any—about Iraq’s capabilities….

Israel has no reason to regret the outcome of the war in Iraq. Saddam’s regime was hostile to Israel, it supported Palestinian terrorism, and there was reason to believe that it would resume developing and producing surface-to-surface missiles and weapons of mass destruction when able. However, regardless of the outcome of the war, there is still a need to examine the functioning of intelligence bodies, their dialogue with political and operational echelons, and the possibility that the intelligence picture was manipulated…. While there may have been political pressure in the U.S. to distort intelligence findings, there is no indication of such pressure in Israel. The best proof of this was Israel’s refusal to participate in the American administration’s efforts to demonstrate a link between Iraq and al-Qaida.[410]

The irony of Brom‘s piece is that it amounts to an excellent condemnation of the very sort of pseudo-analysis the OSP was set up to provide. His condemnation of decision-making based on “a dogmatic conception based on one-dimensional images of the enemy”—in this case, Saddam Hussein as a caricature of evil—and a lack of professional intelligence gathering could have been voiced by Zinni or Kwiatkowski. Yet, nowhere does Brom acknowledge PNAC dominance of the government or the role Zionist Jews played in anti-Iraq propaganda since at least 1990. Had the war ended as the PNACers planned, it’s hard to imagine that Brom would have written this piece.

To accept Brom‘s premise that the invasion of Iraq was not done for Israel’s sake, or that there was no political pressure from Israel to distort intelligence, one would have to discount Zelikow’s frank admissions, which could hardly have been made up. In fact, according to Israeli radio, Cheney admitted to Sharon that the invasion was conducted for Israel’s sake, and that Israel should keep a low profile to avoid upsetting pro-Western Arab governments.

At the National Press Club on August 9, 2004, Gen. Tommy Franks reinforced the U.S.’s Israel-first motive: “We did not want to subject ourselves and Israel to the potential consequence of a long-range missile being fired into Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.”[411]

To no one’s surprise, Sharon expressed whole-hearted support for the invasion, and hoped the defeat of Iraq would demoralize the Palestinians to the point where they would end the intifada. In February 2002, Sharon paid an official visit to Washington ostensibly to discuss the Palestinian conflict, but as Seymour Hersh wrote, an equally important private topic of discussion was the upcoming invasion:

American and Israeli officials told me, the Prime Minister and Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, the Israeli Defense Minister, reached an understanding with Washington on advance notice of any impending invasion, and also urged that the Bush Administration do what was necessary—placing a large number of troops on the ground in western Iraq, for example—in order to destroy potential Scud-launching sites at the outset of an attack.[412]

On the first day of the invasion, units of U.S. Special Operations Forces, the U.K.’s Special Air Service and Royal Marines, and Australia’s Special Air Service Regiment did just that by storming the airfields near the Syrian and Jordanian borders. To give an idea of the non-existent resistance the invasion force met, an officer called western Iraq a “special forces playground.”[413] The objective of this excessive show of force, of course, had nothing to do with any putative threat, as Brom convincingly explained:

How can a professional intelligence officer present an assessment that there is a concrete threat of Iraqi missiles when his own assessment is that the Iraqis have a small number of missiles and launchers that were well hidden, perhaps underground because the Iraqis learned that burying them underground is the only sure way of concealing them? Even if these missiles did in fact exist, they had not been removed from their hiding places for over 10 years, Iraqi forces had not trained with them, and they had not been serviced, due to the fact that any such actions would have emitted detectable signals. The necessary conclusion was that these missiles were of no operational value.[414]

In the end we have copious evidence that Israeli interests drove the junta’s military policy: the OSP was set up to short-circuit the established Pentagon intelligence structure; Powell did not mention Israel’s intelligence-gathering role during his UN speech; Israeli officers have free run of the Pentagon; and the OSP used Chalabi to fabricate a case for war. Clearly, the Pentagon was under new mismanagement.

Hijacking the Nation

The junta seized power in the 2000 election when the U.S. Supreme Court effectively declared George W. Bush the winner over Vice-President Al Gore. The court became involved because Florida’s 25 Electoral College votes were needed to decide the election but had been hotly contested for weeks after Election Day. The cause of the crisis was the state’s use of “butterfly ballots,” which because of their flawed design, caused tens of thousands of votes in highly Democratic counties to be disqualified.

The ballots had a single punch-hole spine between alternating left-and-right choices for President/Vice-president. In many instances, ballots were imperfectly punched, leaving the punched-part of the ballot, the chad, hanging or merely dimpled. Technically these votes didn’t count, but the Gore camp argued that these “undervotes” should count because the will of the voter was clear.

Also, the ballots led to numerous “overvotes,” which occurs when a voter indicates more than one choice for president. Independent candidate Patrick Buchanan acknowledged that most of the 3,000 votes he received in Palm Beach County, six-times more than in any other, were meant for Gore. If a voter wanted to vote for Gore (the name immediately below Bush) he had to punch the third chad because the second referred to the first name on the right (Buchanan). If a voter realized the mistake and then also punched the chad next to Gore and wrote in his name, that would constitute a legal vote under Florida law. Therefore, according to Buchanan at least 1,501 of his votes belonged to Gore, which means that by no stretch of the imagination could Bush have taken the state.

In a final petition to the Florida State Supreme Court, the Gore camp was granted a full hand-recount in the disputed counties. However, the issue was rendered moot when the Republican-dominated federal Supreme Court quashed the recount order on December 9. That decision, not the will of the American public, handed Florida’s 25 Electoral College votes to Bush. By the time the counting was stopped, the final tally was: Bush 2,912,790; Gore 2,912,253—a difference of 537 votes, or 9/1,000ths of one percent. Oddly, neither the Florida Supreme Court nor Gore demanded a recount of overvotes.

To settle the question of Bush’s legitimacy, a consortium of eight major newsgathering organizations—including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and CNN—conducted a post mortem of the Florida recount. After spending almost $1 million examining 175,010 uncounted ballots, they determined that Bush would have won a limited state-wide recount of undervotes by 243 votes, but in a statewide recount of all ballots, including approximately 113,820 rejected overvotes, Gore would have eked out a slim victory of 60 to 171 votes, depending on the counting standards of the particular consortium member.

Gore’s victory was confirmed by Newsweek, which obtained hastily scribbled faxed notes to that effect from recount presiding judge Terry Lewis. In a December 9, 2000, note to Judge W. Wayne Woodard, chairman of the Charlotte County Canvassing Board, Lewis wrote: “Judge, if you would, segregate ‘overvotes’ as you describe and indicate in your final report how many where you determined the clear intent of the voter. I will rule on the issue for all counties.”[415]

Despite evidence showing Gore to be the overall winner in Florida, the Times and virtually every major news organization ran with a “Bush wins” headline, under the false presumption that overvotes would not have been counted. The Times front page declared: “Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote.” Any mention of overvotes was buried at the end of the story. Only the Washington Post gave it prominence..[416]

It seems illogical for the U.S. media to spin their coverage to favor Bush, unless one considers the timing. The consortium rendered its verdict on November 12, 2001. With the country seething from the World Trade Center attack, and with the “war against terrorism” stoked to a full boil, Bush’s legitimacy became a non-issue. In a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll taken soon after the attack:

• 91 percent approved of Bush’s handling of events;

• 92 percent supported retaliatory military action;

• 86 percent approved of Bush’s handling of the presidency, compared to 51 percent between September 7 and September 10;

• 73 percent agreed that the U.S. was at war;

• 49 percent blamed airport security for the attacks;

• Nine percent blamed the Bush administration.[417]

Bush and the junta owed their seizure of power to the “war on terrorism,” and the Supreme Court—not to a popular mandate. In essence, the junta is a gangster government that must resort to coercion, fraud and suppression of dissent to maintain itself in power. Typical was the government’s knee-jerk disparagement of Democratic Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who charged Bush forces with denying the American public a free and fair election, and becoming “an administration of questionable legitimacy [that had] been given unprecedented power.”[418]

“The American people know the facts, and they dismiss such ludicrous, baseless views,” said Bush spokesman Scott McLellan. “The fact that she questions the president’s legitimacy shows a partisan mindset beyond all reason.”[419]

Dishonest Machinations

To avoid a repeat of the conspicuous “hanging chad” fiasco, new equipment was mandated for the 2004 election, but instead of fixing the problem of uncounted or miscounted votes the equipment made matters worse by allowing the junta to perpetrate nationwide electoral fraud, especially in Florida and Ohio.

Table XII: Suspicious Support for Bush
in Select Democratic Florida Counties

NAME

Regist’d Voters

Expected Votes

Actual
Votes

PERCENT Change

% Rep

%
Dem

Rep

Dem

Rep

Dem

Rep

Dem

Baker

24.3

69.3

2,415

6,895

7,738

2,180

+220.4

-68.4

Calhoun

11.9

82.4

709

4,911

3,780

2,116

+433.2

-56.9

Dixie

15.0

77.5

968

4,988

4,433

1,959

+358.1

-60.7

Franklin

15.9

77.3

943

4,586

3,472

2,400

+268.1

-47.7

Hamilton

14.9

78.9

755

3,994

2,786

2,252

+268.9

-43.6

Holmes

21.3

72.7

1,771

6,036

6,410

1,810

+261.9

-70.0

Lafayette

13.2

82.8

440

2,755

2,460

845

+459.3

-69.3

Liberty

7.9

88.3

237

2,667

1,927

1,070

+712.3

-59.9

Madison

14.9

79.5

1,238

6,605

4,195

4,048

+238.8

-38.7

Taylor

18.9

75.6

1,622

6,486

5,466

3,049

+237.1

-53.0

Union

18.3

75.5

855

3,529

3,396

1,251

+297.4

-64.5

Source: http://USCountVotes.org (excerpt)

The Boston Globe reported that more than 30,000 complaints against the election were lodged. The major issues were: registration, 31.9%; polling place, 15%; ballots (shortage, lack of language help and trouble with provisional ballots), 9.2%; voting machines, 6.2%, absentee ballots, 6%; and intimidation 4.8%.[420]

In the 37 states that used new optical scanners to record paper ballots, inaccurate vote counts, registration of the wrong presidential choice, and other eccentric errors radically favored Bush, even to the extent of giving him more votes than were actually cast. In Florida, the pro-Bush tally in heavily Democratic counties was so statistically eccentric that nothing short of fraud could account for it.

In Ohio, which also had highly suspicious results, MSNBC reported that the town of Gahanna just outside of Columbus had 800 registered voters, but gave Bush an additional 3,893 votes. In the northern country of Cuyahoga, which includes Cleveland, the number of votes cast exceeded the number of registered voters by 93,000. In Democratic urban or heavily minority areas, voters waited in line for more than five hours, were intimidated, and had to deal with under-trained polling-station workers and too few or broken voting machines.[421] Some of the most egregious voting-machine irregularities came from precincts in Youngstown, just a few of which were:

St. John’s Greek Orthodox Church, 4955 Glenwood Ave.

Vote for Kerry goes to Bush. On third attempt, the screen showed vote correctly. Poll worker dismissed complaint, saying machine was “temperamental.” Another voter needed two attempts to cast vote for Kerry.

St. Nicholas Byzantine Church, 1898 Wilson Ave.

Machine #V0114343-C repeatedly marked Democratic votes as Republican. Many voters complained and the election worker had to restart and recalibrate the machine.

Hillman Elementary School, 164 West Myrtle,

When voter pressed Kerry, the screen went blank four times. Five attempts were required.

Price Memorial Zion Church, 920 Dryden Ave.

Two voters selected Kerry and Bush’s name came up. They succeeded in voting for Kerry on their second attempts. One voter had to scroll through and vote five times before his votes were finally recorded. Two voters said the presidential vote option never appeared while they were trying to vote. It happened to a third voter at the same time, and on two different machines.[422]

Despite overwhelming evidence that the 2004 vote was fraudulent, the issue is no longer discussed. Congressional silence is especially troublesome since it had first-hand testimony of electoral fraud just six weeks after the vote.

On December 13, 2004, Congress heard testimony from computer programmer Clinton Curtis that in 2000 his employer, Yang Enterprises Inc, was asked to come up with a prototype vote-rigging software program.[423] Curtis said the person who approached Yang was the company’s corporate counsel and registered lobbyist Tom Feeney, who also happened to be a Florida state congressman. Feeney went on to become Speaker of the Florida House and was elected to Congress in 2002. At the time these events took place, he was a member of the House Judiciary Committee.

Curtis told the committee that he thought Feeney wanted Yang to write the program to see if Democrats could use one to steal an election, and if so how it could be detected. Company President Mrs. Li Woan Yang told him, though, that preventing electoral fraud was not the idea: “She said, you don’t understand, we need to hide the fraud in the source. In the source code … to control the vote in South Florida,” Curtis told the committee. Curtis resigned from Yang effective December 2000, but stayed on for two months until a replacement could be found.

In a sworn affidavit, Curtis described in point form how source-code manipulation could rig any election.

…6. During a meeting in late September or October at YEI… [Mr. Feeney] was very specific in the design and specifications required for this program. He detailed in his own words, that: (a) the program needed to be touch-screen capable, (b) the user should be able to trigger the program without any additional equipment, (c) the programming to accomplish this remain hidden even if the source code was inspected.

7. …By clicking the correct order of invisible buttons the candidate selected by the user is compared to other candidates within that same race. If the candidate they selected is leading the race, nothing happens. If the other candidate is leading the race, the vote totals are altered so that the selected candidate is now leading the race with 51% of the vote. The other candidates then share the remaining 49% in exact proportion to the totals they had previously… No amount of testing or simulations could expose the fraud as its activation and process is completely invisible to everyone except the person programming the vote fraud routine.…

10. In my role as technology advisor at YEI, I was present at subsequent meetings between Mr. Feeney and Mrs. Yang. In several of those meetings, prior to the 2000 election, it became clear to me that Mr. Feeney was well aware that by artificially reducing the margin of victory of the opposition party in areas where they were the strongest the overall outcome would then favor his candidate. As well, he bragged that he had already implemented “exclusion lists to reduce the “black vote.” He further mentioned that the “proper placement of police patrols could further reduce the black vote by as much as 25%.” I didn’t know at the time if Mr. Feeney had meant that as a racial joke or actually part of the plan.

In view of this testimony, fraud is the only possible explanation for the eccentric pro-Republican results in heavily Democratic Florida areas. Although Curtis had no experience with the Ohio vote, he told the committee that the gross discrepancy between the exit polls and the electoral results could only be caused by tampering.

Fearmongering

The 2004 election should have been a foregone victory for Sen. John Kerry. No White House incumbent had been as vulnerable or deserving of defeat as Bush. He had not a single success to show for his first four years, was frequently absent from the White House, and could not even answer questions coherently. One of the most damning indictments of his first four years came from an editorial in the Lone-Star Iconoclast, published in Bush’s hometown of Crawford, Texas:

Few Americans would have voted for George W. Bush four years ago if he had promised that, as president, he would:

• Empty the Social Security trust fund by $507 billion to help offset fiscal irresponsibility and at the same time slash Social Security benefits;

• Cut Medicare by 17 percent and reduce veterans’ benefits and military pay;

• Eliminate overtime pay for millions of Americans and raise oil prices by 50 percent;

• Give tax cuts to businesses that sent American jobs overseas, and, in fact, by policy encourage their departure;

• Give away billions of tax dollars in government contracts without competitive bids;

• Involve this country in a deadly and highly questionable war; and

• Take a budget surplus and turn it into the worst deficit in the history of the United States, creating a debt in just four years that will take generations to repay.

To preclude any substantive economic or political discussion from detracting from its crusade, the junta sabotaged the electoral climate by flogging the “war on terrorism” as loudly as possible. So far as anyone could tell, all that mattered to the media and to millions of voters was the relative abilities of Bush and Kerry to protect the country from “terrorists.” Fearmongering was particularly conspicuous in Warren County, Ohio, where Cincinnati is located. For three weeks leading up to the vote, Homeland Security sent a series of memos to the county’s board of commissions warning of a possible terrorist attack. According to board president Pat South:

These memos were sent out statewide, not just to Warren County, and they included a lot of planning tools and resources to use for election-day security. In a face-to-face meeting between the FBI and our Director of Emergency Service, we were informed that on a scale from 1 to 10 the tri-state area of southwest Ohio was ranked at a high 8 to a low 9 in terms of security risk. Warren County in particular was rated at 10.[424]

The Warren County “scare” resembled one in early August when Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge warned that East Coast financial centers could become terrorist targets during the upcoming Republican Convention. Not only did most people dismiss this warning as a transparent pro-Bush publicity stunt, but it also backfired spectacularly. Just days earlier, the U.S. boasted of the arrest of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, a 25-year-old Pakistani computer engineer who had in his possession hundreds of photographs and documents relating to buildings in Philadelphia, New York and Washington, D.C. Pakistani authorities arrested Khan at the request of the CIA, who labeled him an “al-Qaida” operative. Only later did we learn that Khan was a Pakistani undercover agent, and that the U.S. had compromised a deep undercover operation. In the end, Ridge had to admit he had no specific information on which buildings were vulnerable, and that much of the “al-Qaida” surveillance data was four years old. Therefore, one has to question the credibility of the Ohio warning.[425]

That this warning was politically motivated can reasonably be inferred from two key facts—Warren County’s vote count was conducted behind closed doors, and nobody, not even the media, was allowed into the administration building to observe it. Warren County happened to be the last one in Ohio to report its results, which technically made it the one that delivered the state to Bush, or did it? Without an objective evaluation of the count, the public had no way to know which votes were accepted or rejected, or if the result was deliberately falsified. For the record, none of Ohio’s other 87 counties locked down its vote, and Warren had never done so before.

By November 2, a well-orchestrated campaign of fearmongering, anti-Muslim paranoia, character assassination, and computer tampering allowed the junta to steal the White House and turn the republic into a police state.

Implementing Dictatorship

As we have seen, U.S. and German fascism have many parallels factors: One major difference between the two fascisms, though, is the manner in which dictatorship supplanted democratic government. Whereas the Nazis openly eliminated political opposition and made no pretense of being democratic, the junta had to feign respect for the Constitution at the same time it was destroying it. Put simply, the junta’s task was this: if it hoped to force the U.S. to commit premeditated violence, torture and domestic repression for Israel’s sake it had to emasculate Congress’s war-making authority and powers of policy oversight. Capitol Hill had to be turned into Rubber Stamp Hill. Thus, with the September 11 attack fresh in peoples’ minds, the junta used the contrived fear of pervasive Muslim terrorism to stampede Congress into passing the USA PATRIOT Act, which established the rubric under which Congress itself would be rendered impotent.

Table XIII: German vs. U.S. Fascism

NAZI GERMANY

PNAC AMERICA

Reichstag Fire

WTC and Pentagon Attack

Enabling Laws

USA PATRIOT Act

Unprovoked attack on Poland

Unprovoked attack on Iraq

Fraudulent speech justifying the attack as self-defense

Fraudulent speech justifying the attack as self-defense

Jews singled out as national security scapegoats

Muslims singled out as national security scapegoats

Suppression of dissent

Suppression of dissent

Tension between the executive and legislative branches, especially over the power to declare war has been a long-standing feature of U.S. history, and it was a tension the junta exploited to good effect. According to Art. 1, Sec. 1 of the U.S. Constitution, the right to declare war is vested in the Congress: “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” Included “herein” is the power to declare war (clause 11).

Those who argue that the president has the supreme power to declare war cite Art. 2, Sec. 1: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” The point, we are told, is that Congress has a limited grant of power (“Powers herein granted”) whereas there is no qualifier on the term “the executive Power.” Of course, this argument is preposterous—if it were valid, the U.S. would be an elected dictatorship, not a republic because the principle of checks and balances would have no meaning. Yet, this scenario is exactly what the junta needed to accomplish. Nothing—not the Constitution, the courts or Congress—could be allowed to hold it accountable for anything it did. To all intents and purpose the rule of law no longer applied because Bush and his handlers had become a law unto themselves. The U.S. was now a dictatorship in all but name.

In fact, by the end of April 2006 Bush had violated more than 750 laws, all based on the specious argument that he has the power to reject any statute that conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution. Areas where he has violated the law include: military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, “whistle-blower” protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.[426]

The ease with which Congress has been politically emasculated since September 11, 2001, seems shocking, even surreal, until you understand that Congress is largely incapable of defending itself. The economic and religious theocrats that entered politics under Reagan proceeded to spread throughout Congress, the judiciary, and White House.

Although Democratic congressmen and senators did not buy into the simplistic economics that Reagan propounded, at least not to the same degree, they could do little to stop its spread or popularity. To criticize the “Reagan Revolution” branded a congressman, senator or presidential candidate as a liberal—a de facto counter-revolutionary and enemy of the people. Democrats in the 1980s either jumped aboard the Reagan bandwagon or shouted impotently at the wind. During the 1988 election Vice-President George Bush turned “liberal” into a pejorative epithet associated with sexual and criminal permissiveness, big government, taxes and anti-Americanism, and he used it to great effect as he demonized Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. By the end of Bush’s term of office, the Christian/Straussian cancer had colonized so much of the Republican Party that the party of Lincoln and Eisenhower no longer existed.

By the end of Clinton’s second term, U.S. foreign policy also no longer existed. In the second half of the 1990s, the authors of Clean Break and PNAC’s Statement of Principles, had emerged as the new governing class, policy to all intents and purposes was being written in Israel. The subsequent “election” of George W. Bush and the failed Clinton-sponsored Oslo “negotiations” effectively marginalized the Democrats, leaving the path open for the troika to unite under one party and turn the U.S into a police state, where the paramount virtue is loyalty to the leader—not to the country, the Constitution or the law.

Stooges and Thugs

According to the official version of events, the USA PATRIOT Act was passed unread in reaction to the September 11 attack. In other words, the attack created the need for the Act. But this version is nonsense, since we know that the attack was self-inflicted and that the collapse of the WTC had precious little to do with the impact of the aircraft. As was the case for Hitler, the need to pass repressive, anti-democratic legislation created the need for an attack. Armed with the carte blanche power contained in the Act, the junta set to work purging the government of anyone who wasn’t a true believer. Therefore, the junta’s greatest enemy from the outset has been not Iraq, Afghanistan, “al-Qa’ida,” Palestine or Iran, but the U.S. Congress and public. Since September 11, 2001, the junta has been fighting a two-front war—an overt phony war against “terrorism” and a covert real war against U.S. republicanism.

A conspicuous manifestation of this real war is the replacement of moderate and professional public servants with stooges (incompetents, whose only virtue is steadfast loyalty to the junta), and thugs (bullies, who enforce the junta’s edicts through coercion, intimidation and subversion.) Of numerous possible examples, the following two nominations were particularly egregious.

Porter Goss (stooge)

As we saw in the report of the 9/11 Commission, the CIA was made the scapegoat for the September 11 attack, and the recommendations for reforming the intelligence agency gave the junta the ammunition it needed to politicize it. After CIA Director George Tenet resigned in advance of the report’s publication, Bush appointed Florida Congressman Porter Goss. The appointment came during the summer of 2003 when the CIA was vigorously criticizing Bush’s pretexts for attacking Iraq and giving highly negative analyses. Of course, Congress confirmed his appointment. The climate of intimidation created by the “war on terrorism” ensured that anyone opposed to White House on matters of national security would be intimidated or bribed into obedience. In any event, the confirmation hearing couldn’t have been a very thorough. On March 3, 2004, during filming of Fahrenheit 9/11, Goss admitted to filmmaker Michael Moore that he was unfit to work in the agency:

I couldn’t get a job with CIA today. I am not qualified. I don’t have the language skills. I, you know, my language skills were romance languages and stuff. We’re looking for Arabists today. I don’t have the cultural background probably. And I certainly don’t have the technical skills, uh, as my children remind me every day.[427]

By late 2004, morale at the agency was plummeting and key officials rebelled at Goss’s politically motivated assault. “The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House,” said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. “Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president’s agenda.”[428] Goss confirmed his role as a junta stooge in a November 15 memo to staff: “As agency employees we do not identify with, support or champion opposition to the administration or its policies.”[429]

Four days before the memo came out, the Chief of the CIA Counterterrorist Center’s Unit Michael Scheuer resigned. The next day, John E. McLaughlin, a 32-year CIA veteran who was acting director for two months after Tenet resigned warned Goss that his top aide, former Capitol Hill staff member Patrick Murray, was mistreating senior officials and risked widespread resignations. On November 16, the head of clandestine services Stephen R. Kappes, and his deputy Michael Sulick both resigned citing days of clashes with Murray.[430]

Scheuer‘s resignation is perhaps the most significant because of his refusal to keep silent about what he believed were serious problems of competence and integrity regarding the September 11 attack and the administration’s attitude toward the Middle East. The December 2004 issue of the Atlantic Monthly featured a letter he sent to congressional intelligence committees that read in part: “While the 11 September attacks probably were unstoppable, it was decisions by human beings—featuring arrogance, bad judgment, disdain for expertise, and bureaucratic cowardice—that made sure the Intelligence Community did not operate optimally to defend America.”

Scheuer‘s conclusion about the hobbling of the intelligence community’s ability to defend America is entirely consistent with Zionist self-sabotage, but his comments about arrogance and bad judgment still reflect the common misperception that Muslim terrorists from “al-Qa’ida,” were responsible for the attack. In an interview with the BBC, Scheuer went even further and directly attacked the demonized image of Muslims that drives the “war on terrorism.”

Al-Qaeda’s antagonism to the US was based on “a specific set of US policies that have been in gear for 30 years and have not been reviewed, have not been debated, have not been questioned,” he said. Instead, both contenders in the recent US presidential election had told voters that al-Qaeda was opposed to American values on women’s rights or the sale of alcohol, warnings that sidestepped many major issues. Al-Qaeda’s hostility stemmed from US government’s “unqualified support for Israel” and desire “to manipulate the price of oil” in favor of Western consumers, he said.[431]

Goss was appointed not to improve intelligence but to politicize it so that Bush could be told what he wanted to hear. Given that the CIA was already made the scapegoat for the September 11 attack, this deliberate sabotaging of the agency’s professionalism could only further expose it to political recriminations. Goss’s appointment is also consistent with the parasitic rule of the Zionists. The junta will do whatever it wants, no matter how much the U.S. suffers. If appointing a stooge to set the CIA up to be a fall guy when all hell breaks loose, then that’s what must be done.

Of course, the Senate had every reason to reject Goss’s nomination, but competence is not a requirement for service. The prevailing attitude is that the Senate should not reject nominees because Bush has the right to choose the people he wants. To reject Goss would have been a direct challenge to the junta’s authority, and this could not happen because of “war on terrorism” paranoia and the theocratization of the Republican Party. Nevertheless, Goss would not remain in his position for long. He was implicated in an FBI sex and cronyism investigation, and Bush reluctantly fired him in early May 2006.

John Bolton (thug)

In March 2005, Bush nominated John Bolton for the post of UN ambassador, although “saboteur” would be more accurate. At the State Department, Bolton earned himself a reputation as one of the U.S.’s most vigorous detractors of the world body, and an apologist for U.S. unilateralism. Bush nominated Bolton, not to help serve the UN, but to destroy its effectiveness as an independent body and reduce it to an extension of U.S./Israeli foreign policy. During a February 1994 debate at the Institute for Policy Studies, he declared:

“There is no United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be lead by the only real power left in the world, and that’s the United States, when it suits our interests and when we can get others to go along. And I think it would be a real mistake to count on the United Nations as if it’s some disembodied entity out there that can function on its own. When the United Na… when the United States leads, the United Nations will follow. When it suits are [sic] interests to do so, we will lead.”[432]

Clearly, Bolton was unfit to be nominated for the position, but that unfitness was his biggest asset. As a member of PNAC, senior vice-president of PNAC’s farm team at AEI, a JINSA associate, and an unflagging defender of Israel, he was the perfect choice to sabotage the UN’s independence. He had earlier sabotaged a 2001 biological weapons conference because it would have involved inspection of U.S. facilities, and earned exemptions from the International Criminal Court for the conduct of U.S. soldiers.[433]

Bolton established his Zionist credentials in 1991, when, as Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs for President Bush, he led the successful campaign to force the General Assembly to rescind the November 10, 1975, Resolution 3379:

In 1975, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 3379, which branded “Zionism” as a form of “racism.” For an overwhelming majority of Americans, this resolution represented such a fundamental repudiation of the U.N.’s basic principles that U.S. withdrawal became a viable alternative to being subject to endless, repetitive unthinking abuse. Indeed, it took 16 years until, after much effort, the Bush administration in 1991 was able to obtain repeal of the repulsive language of Resolution 3379 in 1991.[434]

Note the a priori condemnation of the resolution and complete disregard of its merits, which, as we have seen, are considerable. Bolton performed a similar act of sabotage in 2004, when he led the junta’s attack on the International Court of Justice’s right to rule on the legality of Israel’s Wall. That the Wall is a flagrant violation of international law and falls within the court’s purview is undeniable, especially since the Wall envelopes whole swaths of land beyond the 1967 cease-fire line. At the request of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), the group Oxford Public Interest Lawyers (OXPIL) from the university’s law faculty provided an opinion on the Wall’s legality. OXPIL found, in part:

“Where the Barrier is constructed on appropriated public land, it violates Article 55 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which requires an Occupying Power to deal with public land in trust for the occupied population [the Palestinians].

• The Barrier violates Israel’s international obligations to ensure the general welfare of the civilian population in Occupied Territory (Hague Regulations, Reg. 43), as well as to ensure medical treatment and public health (Arts. 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 55 and 56), employment (Arts. 39 and 52), the care and education of children (Art. 50), food supplies (Art. 55) and relief schemes (Arts. 59-62).

• By deliberately separating Palestinian communities and subjecting them to unprecedented measures of physical control and criminal suspicion, the Barrier exhibits the characteristics of collective punishment, contrary to Regulation 50 of the Hague Regulations and Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.”[435]

Despite this empirical evidence, Bolton argued that the issue was an internal political matter, and that Israel’s right to self-defense was of paramount importance. Here again, he disregarded the merits of the case to propagandize the standard pro-Israeli frame of reference. In the end, the Court ruled almost unanimously against Israel, but because the junta routinely uses its veto in the Security Council to prevent enforcement against Israel the Court’s decision has been reduced to a nullity.

Bolton’s unfitness extended beyond his overt anti-UN bias. At the State Department, he was known as Powell’s “minder.” Bolton reported to Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Cheney if Powell strayed too far off the Zionist path. To all intents and purposes, Bolton was the Secretary of State and Powell was an emasculated figurehead. Bolton undercut Powell’s authority as a matter of course. Most notoriously, he intercepted a State Department memo for Powell that accused Israel of violating American arms-export laws. The act in question was the July 23, 2000, assassination of Salah Shehada, a senior Hamas activist in Gaza City.[436] Bolton even held unauthorized private meetings with Mossad and other Israeli officials, a fact that demonstrates that he was an independent agent in the State Department and did not answer to Powell. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, even its Republican members, were so disturbed by Bolton‘s conduct, that they held up his nomination for weeks so it could investigate these and other charges of illegal or improper conduct.

Adding to the case against Bolton was damning testimony from US AID project leader Melody Townsel, who exposed his propensity for violence, intimidation and slander. In the summer of 1994, Townsel was employed by the firm of Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly, which was a prime contractor for a US AID project in Kyrgyzstan. She discovered that her employer was not funding the project adequately and presented her concerns to the company and to US AID officials. Here’s how Townsel described the fallout:

Within hours of sending a letter to US AID officials outlining my concerns, I met John Bolton, whom the prime contractor hired as legal counsel to represent them to US AID. And, so, within hours of dispatching that letter, my hell began.

Mr. Bolton proceeded to chase me through the halls of a Russian hotel -- throwing things at me, shoving threatening letters under my door and, generally, behaving like a madman. For nearly two weeks, while I awaited fresh direction from my company and from US AID, John Bolton hounded me in such an appalling way that I eventually retreated to my hotel room and stayed there. Mr. Bolton, of course, then routinely visited me there to pound on the door and shout threats.

When US AID asked me to return to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, in advance of assuming leadership of a project in Kazakstan, [sic] I returned to my project to find that John Bolton had preceded me by two days. Why? To meet with every other AID team leader as well as US foreign-service officials in Bishkek, claiming that I was under investigation for misuse of funds and likely was facing jail time. As US AID can confirm, nothing was further from the truth.…

I’ve learned firsthand the lengths Mr. Bolton will go to accomplish any goal he sets for himself. Truth flew out the window. Decency flew out the window. In his bid to smear me and promote the interests of his client, he went straight for the low road and stayed there. John Bolton put me through hell -- and he did everything he could to intimidate, malign and threaten not just me, but anybody unwilling to go along with his version of events. His behavior back in 1994 wasn’t just unforgivable, it was pathological.… I urge you from the bottom of my heart to use your ability to block Mr. Bolton’s nomination in committee.[437]

Bolton’s interdiction of State Department reports, unauthorized meetings with Mossad, and his violent character caused the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to balk. In addition to the eight Democrats, two of the 10 Republicans—Sen. Lincoln Chafee and Sen. George Voinovich—were strongly disinclined to approve Bolton. Adding to their consternation was the White House’s obstructionist refusal to supply documents pertaining to Bolton’s conduct. By the time the committee met to vote in July 2005, Chafee managed to hold his nose to support the nomination, but not Voinovich, whose rejection of Bolton made the final vote 9 to 9. Nevertheless, he agreed to let the nomination go to the full Senate without a recommendation, which was itself a direct rebuke to the junta.

Yet, even with a Republican majority in the Senate, rejection was still possible, so to ensure that Bolton got to the UN, Bush waited until the Senate went into recess and made the appointment behind its back. Unlike a Senate-approved appointment, a recess appointment like this is time-limited, and so would come up for review in 2007.  Ultimately, Bolton resigned rather than face certain rejection.

Congress asserted itself in this case not because of Bolton’s conspicuous Zionist prejudice or his anti-UN fulminations, but because of his seditious behavior, which transcended the “war on terrorism.” Bolton’s nomination showed how far the junta was prepared to go to place true believers in sensitive positions, and also how far Congress was prepared to go to stand up for itself.

14

Dementia in High Places

T he events of September 11 did for PNAC what the burning of the Reichstag did for the Nazis—it allowed a clique of fascists to mount a coup d’état, suspend the rule of law, and emasculate the national legislature—all in the name of a perverse political doctrine.[438] After the junta’s seizure, not only did the U.S. overtly resemble Nazi Germany, but also Bush displayed behavior distinctly reminiscent of Adolf Hitler.

With the country traumatized by a contrived crisis and indoctrinated with anti-Muslim hysteria, PNAC could now openly subvert the Constitution in the name of fighting the “war on terrorism.” To show that the invasion of Iraq was committed, not for oil, but for Israel, this chapter will show that American fascism (“PNACism”) is closely related both to German fascism (Nazism) and Jewish fascism (Zionism).

The Aryan ‘Master Race’

Hitler’s political Weltanschauung was an amalgam of religion, eugenics and cultural chauvinism formed largely in reaction to Germany’s defeat in World War I. For Hitler, it represented not a military failure but a failure of culture. The German (the Aryan) was the greatest exemplar of individual human genius, believed Hitler, and it was the failure to protect the purity of this genius that caused the defeat:

The Aryan gave up the purity of his blood and, therefore, lost his sojourn in the paradise which he had made for himself. He became submerged in the racial mixture, and gradually, more and more, lost his cultural capacity, until at last, not only mentally but also physically, he began to resemble the subjected aborigines more than his own ancestors.... Thus cultures and empires collapsed to make place for new formations. Blood mixture and the resultant drop in the racial level is the sole cause of the dying out of old cultures; for men do not perish as a result of lost wars, but by the loss of that force of resistance which is contained only in pure blood…. The means with which he seeks to break such reckless but upright souls is not honest warfare, but lies and slander. Here he stops at nothing, and in his vileness he becomes so gigantic that no one need be surprised if among our people the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew…. The ignorance of the broad masses about the inner nature of the Jew, the lack of instinct and narrow-mindedness of our upper classes, make the people an easy victim for this Jewish campaign of lies.[439]

Because the Nazi regime espoused such psychopathic hatred toward Jews—as well as communists, homosexuals, gypsies, Slavs, the handicapped and anyone else who didn’t measure up to the Aryan standard of perfection—it is common practice to condemn Hitler and his kind as “evil”; that is beyond understanding and deserving only of hatred. This practice, understandable though it may be, is just as ignorant as Hitler’s demonization of Jews as “the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil.” However repugnant, indefensible and immoral Nazi doctrine may have been, it was not incomprehensible. It was simply religion at work. In his book The True Believer, American philosopher Eric Hoffer described how a religious fanatic like Hitler could convince himself of any truth, no matter how perverse:

The facts on which the true believer bases his conclusions must not be derived from his experience or observation but from holy writ. … It is the true believer’s ability to ‘shut his eyes and stop his ears’ to facts that do not deserve to be either seen or heard which is the source of his unequaled fortitude and constancy. He cannot be frightened by danger, nor disheartened by obstacle, nor baffled by contradictions because he denies their existence. Strength of faith, as [Henri] Bergson pointed out, manifests itself not in moving mountains but in not seeing mountains to move. And it is the certitude of his infallible doctrine that renders the true believer impervious to the uncertainties, surprises and the unpleasant realities of the world around him.[440]

The previous citation from Mein Kampf shows the non-cognitive nature of Hitler’s racial theory. The “purity of blood” argument is preposterous, and the attacks on Jews are hysterical rants. This is not the language of a rational man; rather, it is the language of a true believer who inhabits a reality of his own devising. Since a true believer bases his conclusions on irrational grounds, it should come as no surprise that Hitler often invoked God and Christian imagery. In the first sentence above, for example, he depicts the “Fall of the Aryan ‘Race’” in a manner that recalls the biblical story of the Fall of Man and his ejection from “Paradise” Also, Jews are seen as threats not to people but to their souls. These examples, though, merely scratch the surface of Hitler’s Christianity:

“The result of all racial crossing is… nothing else but to sin against the will of the eternal creator.”[441]

“I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.”[442]

“Christ was the greatest early fighter in the battle against the world enemy, the Jews… The work that Christ started but could not finish, I—Adolf Hitler—will conclude.”[443]

“Two worlds face one another—the men of God and men of Satan! The Jew is the anti-man, the creature of another god. He must have come from another root of the human race. I set the Aryan and the Jew over and against each other.”[444]

Hitler can arrogate to himself the role of a modern-day Christ (a Jew) yet seek the destruction of the Jewish people because in his mind Christ was only half-Jewish (on his mother’s side) and Hitler believed that Christ rejected Judaism. Moreover, Hitler did not recognize the Jews as a religious group. They were a “race” apart, and as such had no standing in the Christian religious tradition; that is, they were not created or protected by God:

The Jew has always been a people with definite racial characteristics and never a religion; only in order to get ahead he early sought for a means which could distract unpleasant attention from his person. And what would have been more expedient and at the same time more innocent than the “embezzled” concept of a religious community? For here, too, everything is borrowed or rather stolen. Due to his own original special nature, the Jew cannot possess a religious institution, if for no other reason because he lacks idealism in any form, and hence belief in a hereafter is absolutely foreign to him. And a religion in the Aryan sense cannot be imagined which lacks the conviction of survival after death in some form.[445]

Having stripped Jews of their basic humanity, anything done to them, no matter how horrible, was permissible. In the Nazi theocracy—indeed, Hitler did not believe in the separation of church and state—those whom the state deemed to be enemies of the people were by extension enemies of God, and to defend the enemy of God was unthinkable. Goebbels provided the best example of this dehumanization in a February 24, 1942, diary entry after a visit with Hitler in Berlin:

The Fuehrer again voices his determination to remorselessly cleanse Europe of its Jews. There can be no sentimental feelings here. The Jews have deserved the catastrophe that they are now experiencing. They shall experience their own annihilation together with the destruction of our enemies. We must accelerate this process with cold brutality; by doing so we are doing an inestimable service to humanity….[446]

A campaign of terror and murder against Jews, especially Jewish communists, was easy to sell to the German public both because of traditional Christian antipathy but also because of the established myth that the Jewish “stab in the back” caused Germany’s defeat in World War I. All Hitler did was inflame the public’s pre-existing hatred. As Hoffer wrote: “The gifted propagandist brings to a boil ideas and passions already simmering in the minds of his hearers. He echoes their innermost feelings. Where opinion is not coerced, people can be made to believe what they already ‘know.’”[447]

The Jewish ‘Master Race’

The idea that Zionists would have anything to do with a regime dedicated to the annihilation of European Jewry sounds absurd, but Nazis and Zionists shared two fundamental beliefs: Jews constituted a race, and Europe’s great Yiddish culture deserved to be destroyed. To the Zionist, European Yiddisher Jews who lived in the Diaspora willingly and peacefully exemplified everything that was weak, cowardly and unworthy. In 1914, Chaim Weizmann, who would become Israel’s first president, declared: “We…are in agreement with the cultural anti-Semites, in so far as we believe that Germans of the Mosaic faith are an undesirable, demoralizing phenomenon.”[448]

Unlike Nazism, though, Zionism was a thoroughly secular movement because fidelity to Judaism was seen as a cause of Jewish acceptance of life in the Diaspora. The master-race mentality that separated Zionists from Yiddish Jews is best expressed by Vladimir Jabotinsky, founder of right-wing Zionism:

“Because the Jid [the Russian derogatory term for Jew] is ugly, sickly and lacks decorum, we shall endow the ideal image of the Hebrew with masculine beauty, tall stature, mighty shoulders, vigorous movement, radiance of colors and complexion. The Jid is trodden upon and easily frightened and therefore the Hebrew ought to be proud and independent. The Jid is despised by all, and, therefore the Hebrew had to charm all. The Jid had accepted submission and therefore the Hebrew ought to learn how to command. The Jid likes to hide himself with bated breath from strangers and, therefore, the Hebrew has to step with valor and greatness toward the whole world, and to look the world straight in the eye…”[449]

Jabotinsky’s “New Hebrew” is nothing more than the Jewish analog to the pseudo-racial archetype of Hitler’s “New Aryan” or Josef Stalin’s “New Soviet.” In their contempt for Yiddish Jews and their culture, Zionists have more in common with Nazis than with their European co-religionists. This fact is not surprising since the vast majority of Jews considered the creation of a “Jewish state” a blasphemy. In the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), the prophet Jeremiah (29:4–7) tells the Israelites:

Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, unto all that are carried away captives, whom I have caused to be carried away from Jerusalem unto Babylon; Build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them; Take ye wives, and beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; that ye may be increased there, and not diminished. And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the LORD for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace.

According to prophecy, God would indeed call the Jews back to the Holy Land, but only after the arrival of the prophet Elijah: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD.” (Malachi 4:5). Since Elijah has not yet made an appearance, Diaspora Jews who continue to respect local laws honor their religion. Against this position, Weizmann infamously told the first Zionist Congress in August 1897: “There are no English, French, German or American Jews, but only Jews living in England, France, Germany or America.” To hide their Eastern European origins, many Zionists even changed their (mainly) Slavic surnames to sound Hebrew:

Zionists not only shared Nazi attitudes towards Yiddish Jews, but also espoused a similar political ideology. During World War II, the terrorist group Lehi (Lohamei Herut Yisrael—Fighters for the Freedom of Israel) led by Yitzhak Shamir sought to form an alliance with the Nazis:

“The establishment of the historical Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis and bound by a treaty with the German Reich would be in the interests of strengthening the future German position of power in the Near East ... The N[ational] M[ilitary] O[rganization] in Palestine offers to take an active part in the war on Germany’s side ... The cooperation of the Israeli freedom movement would also be in line with one of the recent speeches of the German Reich Chancellor, in which Herr Hitler stressed that any combination and any alliance would be entered into in order to isolate England and defeat it.”[450]

Table XIV: Slavic Origins of Leading Israelis

Real
name

“Hebrew”
Surname

Year and Place of Birth

Shimon Persky

Peres

1923, Vishnevo, Byelorussia

Golda Meyerson

Meir

1898, Kiev, Ukraine

David Green

ben Gurion

1886, Plonsk, Poland

Moshe Shertok

Sharett

1894, Kherson, Ukraine

Ariel Shinerman

Sharon

1928, Kafr Malal, Palestine
(Polish parents)

Yitzhak Jazernicky

Shamir

1915, Ruzinoy, Poland

Levi Shkol’nik

Eshkol

1895, Kiev, Ukraine

Perhaps the most appalling aspect to the Zionist affinity for Nazism was the Zionist leadership’s role in supporting the Third Reich’s economy. By rights, Hitler’s regime should not have survived more than a few years. The ruinously punitive terms of the Treaty of Versailles had forced Germany to become overly dependant on export revenue to make reparations payments. In addition, the stock market crash of October 1929 and the subsequent bank failures caused foreign loans to dry up, industrial production to shrivel, and unemployment to mushroom. At the time of the November 1932 general election more than 5 million Germans were out of work and 17 million were receiving a meager welfare stipend.

Hitler’s Nazi Party won the most seats (one third) but would not share power with the socialists or communists, so to break the impasse President Paul Von Hindenburg appointed Hitler interim chancellor. Among Hitler’s promises to the German people was a better life, and over the next three years the German economy recovered markedly. In 1935, industry exceeded 1929 production records, and unemployment fell below 3 million. By the end of 1936, the number of unemployed stood at less than one million.

All things being equal, though, he should not have been able to keep his promise. Uncensored news reports of brutality towards Jews had spawned a highly effective and impassioned worldwide boycott of German goods led by the U.S. Jewish War Veterans. No amount of bleating about “anti-Hitler propaganda” could prevent the truth of Nazi savagery from shaping world opinion. By March 1933, we have the remarkable sight of the world bringing down a cruel regime simply by collective free will and the free press.

As Edwin Black wrote in his book The Transfer Agreement, an economic boycott was the one weapon that terrified Hitler and the Nazi hierarchy. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels expressed this fear in his diary: “The horrors propaganda abroad gives us much trouble. The many Jews who have left Germany have set all foreign countries against us… We are defenselessly exposed to the attacks of our adversaries.”[451]

On April 26, 1933, the British Embassy in Berlin issued a 22-page economic forecast on Germany that concluded: “The pressures of economic distress may yet prove strong enough to break the political stranglehold which Hitler has put upon the country.”[452] Notwithstanding the accuracy of this assessment, the Nazi regime would prosper, courtesy of the Zionists.

Earlier, on March 25, Reichschancellor Herman Goering called the heads of Germany’s three Jewish organizations into his office to fulminate at them about spreading anti-Nazi propaganda and plotting world domination. Specifically, he demanded they exercise pressure to prevent a planned Jewish anti-Nazi rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden. A fourth, uninvited, leader in the room was Kurt Blumenfeld, president of the German Zionist Federation. He persuaded Goering that only Zionists had the organizational skill to stop the anti-Nazi movement, even though Zionists constituted at most two percent of Germany’s Jewish population. A key tactic was to downplay or deny reports of German atrocities against Jews. Rabbi Joachim Prinz provides insight into the Zionist affinity for Nazism and its attitude toward the boycott during the first half of 1933:

On the foundation of the new state, which has established the principle of race, we wish so to fit our community into the total structure so that for us too, in the sphere assigned to us, fruitful activity for the Fatherland is possible... Our acknowledgement of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and sincere relationship to the German people and its national and racial realities. Precisely because we do not wish to falsify these fundamentals because we, too, are against mixed marriage and are for maintaining the purity of the Jewish group... The realization of Zionism could only be hurt by resentment of Jews abroad against the German development. Boycott propaganda—such as is currently being carried on against Germany in many ways—is in essence un-Zionist because Zionism wants not to do battle but to convince and to build... Our observations, presented herewith, rest on the conviction that, in solving the Jewish problem according to its own lights, the German Government will have full understanding for a candid and clear Jewish posture that harmonizes with the interests of the state.[453]

Among the disturbing aspects in this passage, the most noxious is how Prinz uses euphemism to endorse the Nazi assault on Germany’s Jews. First, there is his duplicitous use of “Jewish.” The first instance clearly refers to Zionists (“the purity of the Jewish group”); the second refers to non-Zionists (“the Jewish problem”); and the third again refers to Zionists (“a candid and clear Jewish posture”). Prinz proceeds to dehumanize non-Zionist Jews as “a problem” and gives the Nazis carte blanche to “solve” it.

In exchange for helping Nazis round up and murder non-Zionist Jews, sabotage Jewish resistance movements, and betray the trust of Jews, Zionists secured for themselves safe passage out of Germany. This arrangement was formalized in a number of emigration agreements signed in 1938. The most notorious case of Zionist collusion concerned Dr. Rudolf Kasztner (or Kastner), Chairman of the Zionist Organization in Hungary from 1943 to 1945. To secure the safe passage of 1,685 Zionists to Palestine, he helped the Nazis send 800,000 Hungarian Jews to their deaths. Adolph Eichmann, the Nazi responsible for the trains that took Jews to the death camps, gave this candid account of Kastner’s collaboration to Life magazine.

I believe that Kastner would have sacrificed a thousand or a hundred thousand of his blood to achieve his political goal. He was not interested in old Jews or those who had become assimilated into Hungarian society. But he was incredibly persistent in trying to save biologically valuable Jewish blood, that is, human material that was capable of reproduction and hard work. “You can have the others,” he would say, “but let me have this group here.” And because Kastner rendered us a great service by helping keep the deportation camps peaceful, I would let his groups escape. [454]

Zionists Exploit Jewish suffering

The greatest obstacle to carving out a Jewish state in Arab Palestine was the affinity of Diaspora Jews for their native countries. The more they prospered and lived in peace within predominately Christian or Muslim societies, the less likely they were to go to Palestine. Zionists, therefore, had no reason to protect Yiddish Jews from Nazi atrocities and every reason to sabotage honest reporting of the Nazi regime. Note particularly how Prinz declared the anti-Nazi boycott to be “un-Zionist.” Zionists supported the Nazi regime precisely because it was cruel to Jews. The fundamentally anti-Jewish character of Zionism, though, predates the rise of Nazism and goes to the heart of the movement, as can be seen in this excerpt from Herzl’s diaries:

It is essential that the sufferings of Jews… become worse… this will assist in realization of our plans… I have an excellent idea… I shall induce anti-Semites to liquidate Jewish wealth… The anti-Semites will assist us thereby in that they will strengthen the persecution and oppression of Jews. The anti-Semites shall be our best friends… So anti-Semitism, which is a deeply imbedded force in the subconscious mind of the masses, will not harm the Jews. I actually find it to be advantageous to building the Jewish character, education by the masses that will lead to assimilation. This education can only happen through suffering, and the Jews will adapt.[455]

But the Jews didn’t adapt. In a stunning rebuke of Zionist dogma, 80 percent of those who survived Nazism wanted to remain in Europe or emigrate to somewhere other than Palestine. Zionists faced the humiliating prospect of creating a Jewish “homeland” that few Jews wanted. Consequently, If Jews wouldn’t come voluntarily; they would have to be terrorized into coming. Zionist agents manufactured acts of violence against Jews, especially in North Africa, Yemen and Iraq, to give the illusion that they were not safe from persecution. In 1950, Zionist terrorist Mordechai Ben Porat threw grenades at the Shem-Tov Synagogue in Baghdad killing and injuring several worshippers. According to Naeim Giladi, a Jewish Iraqi Arab: “About 125,000 Jews left Iraq for Israel in the late 1940s and into 1952, most because they had been lied to and put into a panic by what I came to learn were Zionist bombs.”[456]

On June 11, 1951, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State George McGhee was so appalled that he condemned Israel: “It was one thing to take Jews from all over the world who were in distress, but it was another matter entirely to attempt to create circumstances which would stimulate immigration of Jews from areas where they were living in peace.”[457]

Of all the lies the Zionists told, the most perverse was the causal link between the Nazi holocaust and Israel. Notwithstanding their collaboration with the Nazis, the Zionists cynically and effectively exploited Jewish suffering to blackmail the world into recognizing Israel. “Generally speaking, the Zionists succeeded in persuading large segments of world public opinion to link the Zionist cause with the Holocaust,” wrote Professor Ilan Pappé of Haifa University. “Against such a claim, even able Palestinian diplomats—and there were not many in those days—hardly could win the diplomatic game.”[458]

As the world was being indoctrinated in obligatory guilt for “causing” Jewish suffering, Zionists began the second stage of their fascist program—the Jewish holocaust against Palestine. From November 29, 1947, when UN General Assembly Resolution 181 was passed, until Israel was proclaimed on May 15, 1948, Zionist forces had dispossessed more than 300,000 Palestinians. By the end of the year, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine registered 726,000 refugees. Walter Eytan, Director General of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, referred to the UNRWA’s figure as “meticulous” and believed that the real number was closer to 800,000.[459]

Evidence that Zionists were committing crimes against humanity is enormous, even from Zionist sources. The following candid remark from David Ben Gurion to Nahum Goldmann, future president of the World Jewish Congress, succinctly proves not only Zionist inhumanity but also Israel’s moral illegitimacy:

If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?[460]

Joseph Weitz, who was responsible for Israel’s depopulation of Arab Palestine, wrote:

“[We] must direct our war towards the removal of as many Arabs as possible from the boundaries of our state. The guarding of their property after their removal is a secondary question… I made a summary of a list of the Arab villages which in my opinion must be cleared out in order to complete Jewish regions. I also made a summary of the places that have land disputes and must be settled by military means….”

On June 5 [1948] Weitz met with [David] Ben Gurion, now prime minister, in Tel Aviv and gave to him the Transfer Committee’s Scheme for the Solution of the Arab problem in the State of Israel, contained in a three-page memorandum…[It] called for preventing Arabs from returning to their homes; destroying Arab villages during military operations; preventing cultivation and harvesting of Arab lands; settling Jews in Arab towns and villages; instituting legislation barring the return of the refugees; launching a propaganda campaign designed to discourage the return of refugees; and campaigning for the resettlement of the refugees in other places.[461]

In their zeal to destroy Palestinian society, Zionists committed atrocities that further begged allusion to Nazi Germany. On April 9, 1948, Menachem Begin led the murder of more than 250 men, women and children in the village of Deir Yassin, which was even outside the area that would have been set aside for Jews. Dov Joseph, a later Minister of Justice of Israel called the Deir Yassin massacre a “deliberate and unprovoked attack,” and the noted British historian professor Arnold Toynbee described it as “comparable to crimes committed against the Jews by the Nazis.”[462] After the massacre, Begin extolled his troops in true Hitlerian fashion:

“Accept my congratulations on this splendid act of conquest. Convey my regards to all the commanders and soldiers. We shake your hands. We are all proud of the excellent leadership and the fighting spirit in this great attack ... Tell the soldiers: you have made history in Israel with your attack and your conquest. Continue this until victory. As in Deir Yassin, so everywhere, we will attack and smite the enemy. God, God, Thou has chosen us for conquest.”

Deir Yassin was only one of countless Zionist crimes against humanity. On July 13, 1948, Israeli soldiers forced the entire populations of the towns of Lydda and Ramleh—up to 80,000 people—to leave their homes so that newly arrived European Jews could take them. The event is known as the Lydda Death March. According to Israeli historian Benny Morris:

All the Israelis who witnessed the events agreed that the exodus, under a hot July sun, was an extended episode of suffering for the refugees, especially from Lydda. Some were stripped by soldiers of their valuables as they left town or at checkpoints along the way.... One Israeli soldier ... recorded vivid impressions of the thirst and hunger of the refugees on the roads, and of how “children got lost” and of how a child fell into a well and drowned, ignored, as his fellow refugees fought each other to draw water. Another soldier described the spoon left by the slow-shuffling columns, “to begin with [jettisoning] utensils and furniture and in the end, bodies of men, women and children, scattered along the way!”

Quite a few refugees died—from exhaustion, dehydration and disease—along the roads eastwards, from Lydda and Ramleh, before reaching temporary rest near and in Ramallah. Nimr Khatib put the death toll among the Lydda refugees during the trek eastward at 335; Arab Legion commander John Glubb Pasha more carefully wrote that “nobody will ever know how many children died.”…

[The London Economist reported:] “The Arab refugees were systematically stripped of all their belongings before they were sent on their trek to the frontier. Household belongings, stores, clothing, all had to be left behind. One youthful Palestinian survivor recalled: “Two of my friends were killed in cold blood. One was carrying a box presumed to have money and the other a pillow, which was believed to contain valuables. A friend of mine resisted and was killed in front of me. He had 400 Palestinian pounds in his pocket.”[463]

This systematic destruction of Palestinian civilization differs little from the systematic destruction of European Jewish civilization. The former was committed in the name of Lebensraum (living space) for the Aryan “race,” whereas the latter is still being committed in the name of Lebensraum for the Jewish “race,” which in its maximalist understanding extends from the Nile to the Euphrates.

With the fascist character of Zionism and Israel now established, it is easy to see that the junta’s “war on terrorism” and premeditated invasion of Iraq was not a manifestation of petropolitics, but rather the continuation of Jewish fascism by other means.

The Ninth Crusade

Like Hitler, Bush labors under the delusion that God has chosen him to champion justice and commit violence against a specific people. At a peace negotiation at Aqaba, Jordan, in March 2004, Palestinian foreign minister Nabil Shaath said Bush proclaimed his divine commission:

President Bush said to all of us: “I am driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, ‘George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan.’ And I did. And then God would tell me ‘George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq.’ And I did. And now, again, I feel God’s words coming to me, ‘Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East. And, by God, I’m gonna do it.”[464]

A meeting between Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin in Mexico in early January 2004 corroborates this delusional mentality:

Mr. Bush let the Prime Minister know that he believed himself to be on the side of God and tending to God’s mission…. After the meeting, he was barely out the door before he was asking someone in his entourage what was to be made of all the God stuff. In meetings of presidents and prime ministers, religion has rarely been at the forefront. Business is conducted on the basis of knowledge and logic. With the Bush White House, the visitors must bear in mind that there is a third force. It was a Martin question on the President’s worldview that sent Mr. Bush off on his sermon. It wasn’t, Canadian officials say, a gratuitous rant. Whether or not he was presenting himself as God’s agent depends on whose version of the meeting one listens to.[465]

Bush developed his religious mania after a life-altering weekend in 1985 with Rev. Billy Graham. The 39-year-old Bush, who had been an alcoholic and drug user for more than 20 years, emerged as a true-believing, “born-again” Christian. He proceeded to begin two years of Bible study, which helped him conquer his addictions and refocus his life. He abandoned his family’s Episcopalianism for his wife’s Methodism, and embraced “compassionate conservatism.” Jim Wallis, editor-in-chief of the Christian magazine Sojourners describes how Bush subsequently turned into an imperial crusader:

Then came September 11, 2001. Bush’s compassionate conservatism and faith-based initiative rapidly gave way to his newfound vocation as the commander-in-chief of the “war against terrorism.” Close friends say that after September 11 Bush found “his mission in life.” The self-help Methodist slowly became a messianic Calvinist promoting America’s mission to “rid the world of evil.” The Bush theology was undergoing a critical transformation.

In an October 2000 presidential debate, candidate Bush warned against an over-active American foreign policy and the negative reception it would receive around the world. Bush cautioned restraint. “If we are an arrogant nation, they will resent us,” he said. “If we’re a humble nation, but strong, they’ll welcome us.”

The president has come a long way since then. His administration has launched a new doctrine of pre-emptive war, has fought two wars (in Afghanistan and Iraq), and now issues regular demands and threats against other potential enemies….

The Bush policy has become one of potentially endless wars abroad and a domestic agenda that mostly consists of tax cuts, primarily for the rich. “Bush promised us a foreign policy of humility and a domestic policy of compassion,” Joe Klein wrote in Time magazine. “He has given us a foreign policy of arrogance and a domestic policy that is cynical, myopic and cruel.” What happened?[466]

“A foreign policy of arrogance and a domestic policy that is cynical, myopic, and cruel” is not accidental, as Wallis’s final rhetorical question would seem to suggest. It succinctly depicts the junta’s objective, and how Bush’s religiosity and inferiority complex were exploited to remake the U.S. in Israel’s image.

A key point to note is the way the September 11 attack transformed Bush—gave him his “mission in life.” Until this time, he had none to speak of; in fact, his “presidency” had been shaping up to be yet another in a string of professional failures. What jobs he did throughout his life he owed to his father and his father’s investors. As late as 1990, when he was in his mid-40s, Bush still had no career to speak of. David Rubenstein, co-founder and Managing Director of the Carlyle Group, the world’s largest private equity firm, paints this less-than-flattering picture of Bush during Carlyle’s early days:

When we were putting the board together, somebody [Fred Malek] came to me and said, “Look there is a guy who would like to be on the board. He’s kind of down on his luck a bit. Needs a job. Needs a board position. Needs some board positions. Could you put him on the board? Pay him a salary and he’ll be a good board member and be a loyal vote for the management,” and so forth.

I said, “Well we’re not usually in that business, but okay. Let me meet the guy.” I met the guy. I said, “I don’t think he adds that much value. We’ll put him on the board because—you know— we’ll do a favor for this guy; he’s done a favor for us.”

We put him on the board and [he] spent three years. Came to all the meetings. Told a lot of jokes. Not that many clean ones. And after a while I kind of said to him, after about three years - you know, “I’m not sure this is really for you. Maybe you should do something else. Because I don’t think you’re adding that much value to the board. You don’t know that much about the company.”

He said, “Well I think I’m getting out of this business anyway. And I don’t really like it that much. So I’m probably going to resign from the board” And I said, “Thanks”—didn’t think I’d ever see him again. His name is George W. Bush.[467]

The September 11 attack engendered a climate of fear and revenge that stifled political dissent and led to the passage of the pre-planned USA PATRIOT Act, the repressive unconstitutionality of which betrays the fascist continuity from Nazi Germany to Israel to the U.S. The late Rabbi Israel Shahak, who survived the Bergen Belsen concentration camp, makes the point most eloquently:

“Hitler’s legal power was based upon the Enabling Act, which was passed quite legally by the Reichstag and which allowed the Fuehrer and his representatives, in plain language, to be what they wanted, or in legal language, to issue regulations having the force of law. Exactly the same type of act was passed by the Knesset [Israeli’s Parliament] immediately after the 1967 conquest granting the Israeli governor and his representatives the power of Hitler, which they use in Hitlerian manner.” [468]

Like Reagan who played at being president, Bush played at being a warrior pope. In finding his mission in life Bush found a way to become a full-time crusader against those who opposed the divine right of the U.S. and Israel to act wherever and whenever they damn well pleased. With neither the intelligence nor the ambition to govern, Bush needed the “war on terrorism” to define himself, just as the junta still needs it to maintain official repression of Muslims.

The term “warrior pope” is apt because sacred violence against Muslims has been a feature of Christianity since at least the First Crusade. In 1095, Alexios I Komnenos, emperor of the Byzantine Empire, sent an urgent call to Pope Urban II for help to repel the Seljuk Turks, who were conquering increasing areas of Asia Minor. Despite the schism that had split the Eastern and Western Christian Churches, Urban II answered the call.

It’s unlikely that Urban acted out of compassion for the beleaguered emperor. A crusade meant that Christians could be sent abroad to fight a common foe, instead of killing each other in Europe; in short, it was a convenient way to export violence, as this account by Fulcher of Chartres shows:

[The Turks and Arabs] have occupied more and more of the lands of those Christians, and have overcome them in seven battles. They have killed and captured many, and have destroyed the churches and devastated the empire. If you permit them to continue thus for awhile with impunity, the faithful of God will be much more widely attacked by them.

On this account I, or rather the Lord, beseech you as Christ’s heralds to publish this everywhere and to persuade all people of whatever rank, foot-soldiers and knights, poor and rich, to carry aid promptly to those Christians and to destroy that vile race from the lands of our friends. I say this to those who are present, it [is] meant also for those who are absent. Moreover, Christ commands it. All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins. This I grant them through the power of God with which I am invested. O what a disgrace if such a despised and base race, which worships demons, should conquer a people which has the faith of omnipotent God and is made glorious with the name of Christ! With what reproaches will the Lord overwhelm us if you do not aid those who, with us, profess the Christian religion!

Let those who have been accustomed unjustly to wage private warfare against the faithful now go against the infidels and end with victory this war which should have been begun long ago. Let those who for a long time, have been robbers, now become knights. Let those who have been fighting against their brothers and relatives now fight in a proper way against the barbarians. Let those who have been serving as mercenaries for small pay now obtain the eternal reward.

Let those who have been wearing themselves out in both body and soul now work for a double honor. Behold! On this side will be the sorrowful and poor, on that, the rich; on this side, the enemies of the Lord, on that, his friends. Let those who go not put off the journey, but rent their lands and collect money for their expenses; and as soon as winter is over and spring comes, let them eagerly set out on the way with God as their guide.[469]

Note the following themes:

•              Killing Turks and Arabs are equated with peace and the rights of the church, and are commanded by Christ. This is so because they are said to belong to “a despised and base race, which worships demons,” as if to say that these Muslims were sub-human and not worthy of respect. A robber, after all, can become a knight just by fighting them.

•              Turks and Arabs are condemned as pagans—a ludicrous charge since Muslims belong to the same monotheistic tradition as do Jews and Christians.[470]

•              The Crusade is an excuse to halt internecine warfare among Christians (“Let those who have been accustomed unjustly to wage private warfare against the faithful now go against the infidels…”) Better to kill a non-Christian than a Christian. In other words, the life of a Christian is more valuable.

•              Muslims are portrayed as attackers and Christians as virtuous defenders who have “the faith of omnipotent God and is made glorious with the name of Christ!”

•              Those who die in battle against Turks and Arabs receive heavenly rewards.

After the September 11 attack, Bush’s speeches became rife with a similar good vs. evil absolutism. In a televised address that evening, he used “evil” four times, and five days later, he used “evil” or “evil-doer” nine times, and even charged bin Laden with wanting to destroy the Western democratic way of life. [34] Actually, neither bin Laden nor any of his spokesmen have ever done or said anything to justify this charge. On the contrary their lament for the suffering of Muslims and condemnation of U.S. and Israeli terrorism is perfectly legitimate and intelligently delivered. Similarly, their military actions have been consistently limited to the U.S. presence in the Middle East, U.S./Israeli treatment of Muslims, and the world’s double standard toward terrorism. On October 9, 2001, al-Jazeera broadcast a videotaped speech by bin Laden spokesman Sulaiman abu Ghaith that made this very point.

We now live under this Crusader bombardment that targets the entire nation. The Islamic nation should know that we defend a just cause. The Islamic nation has been groaning in pain for more than 80 years under the yoke of the joint Jewish-Crusader aggression. Palestine is living under the yoke of the Jewish occupation and its people groan from this repression and persecution while no one lifts a finger. The Arabian Peninsula is being defiled by the feet of those who came to occupy these lands, usurp these holy places, and plunder these resources.

The Islamic nation must also know that the U.S. version of terrorism is a kind of deception. Is it logical for the United States and its allies to carry out this repression, persecution, plundering, and bloodletting over these long years without this being called terrorism, while when the victim tries to seek justice, he is described as terrorist?…

The actions by [the] young men who destroyed the United States and launched the storm of planes against it have done a good deed. They transferred the battle into the U.S heartland. Let the United States know that with God’s permission, the battle will continue to be waged on its territory until it leaves our lands, stops its support for the Jews, and lifts the unjust embargo on the Iraqi people who have lost more than one million children.[471]

Not surprisingly, neither Bush nor the media has been able to present any evidence that bin Laden wanted to destroy the Western way of life. From August 1 to September 10, 2001, The New York Times database shows no matches for “evil + bin Laden”; however, from September 11 to December 31, 2001, it registers 57 hits. It also registers 1,820 hits for “bin Laden” compared with 187 up to September 10. The underlying problem is this: if bin Laden’s jihad against the U.S. is legitimate, it must also be rational; if bin Laden is rational, he cannot be evil; yet, the portrayal of him and his supporters as evil was absolutely necessary to stampede the nation into war and demonize all Muslims as potential terrorists. Therefore, no rational discussion of bin Laden can be permitted.

It takes little effort to see the crusader mentality in the “war on terrorism,” which more accurately should be called the “pogrom on heresy.” According to the American Heritage Dictionary (Fourth Edition, 2000), terrorism is defined as: “the unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.” Implicit in this definition is the unique equation of terrorism with anti-state activity, but the definition begs the existence of “state terrorism,” such as that committed by the Catholic Church.

In 1208, Pope Innocent III declared a Crusade against the Cathars, a highly popular, ultra-pious sect of Christians in Southeastern France who rejected papal authority and doctrine. The following year the town of Béziers were massacred by Catholic forces. The Abbot of Citeaux, was asked how to distinguish Catholics from Cathars, he is said to have uttered the infamous reply: “Kill them all. God will know his own.” In 1229, Innocent established the Inquisition specifically to destroy the Cathar movement. After decades of persecution, the Cathar citadel of Montségur surrendered in March 1244 after a 10-month siege. On March 16, Cathar leaders and more than 200 of their followers were thrown into an enormous fire near the foot of the castle. The Cathar movement was destroyed, but not Catharism, which was the object of Innocent’s holy wrath.

Even though the Church’s homicidal mania predates fascism, it is similar to the Nazi persecution of Jews, the Israeli persecution of Palestinians, and the U.S. persecution of Iraqis and Afghanis. In each case, a clique of autocratic true believers committed mass murder and inflicted great destruction in the name of an ideology.

In psychiatry, sociopath is the term used to describe those who inflict sadistic violence without any moral reservations. Dr. Robert Hare, professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia who has spent more than three decades researching such aberrant behavior, has developed a checklist of traits common to the sociopathic character. These traits include: parasitic lifestyle, egocentricity, shallow emotions, manipulativeness, glibness, low frustration tolerance, lying, and lack of remorse or empathy. As the next three chapters will show, all these qualities apply to Bush and are highly useful to the junta.

George W. Bush: Portrait of a Sociopath

One could argue that all aspects of sociopathic behavior come down to lying, either to others or to one’s self. Unlike the moral person, who has the capacity to commiserate with innocent victims or even an enemy, the sociopath’s egoism and grandiose sense of himself estrange him from the suffering of others, who are seen as lesser beings. Bush’s proclivity for dishonesty is perfectly illustrated in the way he manipulated Congress and the American people into believing the U.S. had to invade Iraq:

In this century, the ideology of power and domination has appeared again, and seeks to gain the ultimate weapons of terror. Once again, this nation and all our friends are all that stand between a world at peace, and a world of chaos and constant alarm. Once again, we are called to defend the safety of our people, and the hopes of all mankind. And we accept this responsibility. (Applause.)…

Whatever action is required, whenever action is necessary, I will defend the freedom and security of the American people. (Applause.) Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent. In such quantities, these chemical agents could also kill untold thousands. He’s not accounted for these materials. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them. …

We Americans have faith in ourselves, but not in ourselves alone. We do not know —we do not claim to know all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life, and all of history. May He guide us now. And may God continue to bless the United States of America.[472]

As we now know, not one word of this was true. Cheney and others knew full well that Hussein had little or no chemical or biological weapons capability. Bush, though, either didn’t know or didn’t care to know, since facts and reason are irrelevant to a crusader bent on stampeding the nation into a quasi-religious war. Bush had to mask predetermined U.S. aggression as self-defense and play upon peoples’ fear of “The Islamic Menace.” They had to believe that an implacably evil foe was threatening their very existence, and that a pre-emptive attack was justified and necessary. Therefore, Saddam Hussein had to be reinvented not only as a danger to the U.S., but to the entire world: “Once again, we are called to defend the safety of our people, and the hopes of all mankind.”

Even though Bush lied about having incontrovertible proof of an attack, an audience predisposed to believe the worst about Arabs was neither willing nor able to challenge baseless claims like “Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent,” or “He’s not accounted for these materials.” Finally, Bush invoked God and Christian imagery to unify the people with him to sanctify his grand crusade, to make the public believe that the human and material sacrifices would be for a just cause.

To underscore the non-rational nature of the attack, Bush held a private meeting with 141 evangelical Christian leaders eight days after the invasion began. The invitees included: Jerry Falwell, who had called the Prophet Mohammed a terrorist; radio evangelist Marlin Maddoux, who claimed to have found an “irrefutable connection” between Islam and terror; and Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Mohler epitomizes the Judeo-Christian superiority complex and contempt for other beliefs. As he told Time magazine: “The secular world tends to look at Iraq and say, well, it’s Muslim, and that’s just a fact, and any Christian influence would just be a form of Western imperialism. The Christian has to look at Iraq and see persons desperately in need of the gospel.”[473]

Now, let’s compare Bush’s speech with the one Hitler gave to the Reichstag regarding his reasons for invading the Soviet Union:

The German people and its soldiers work and fight today not only for themselves and their own age, but also for many generations to come. A historical task of unique dimensions has been entrusted to us by the Creator which we are now obliged to carry out…. I have not sought war. To the contrary, I have done everything to avoid conflict. But I would forget my duty and my conscience if I were to do nothing in spite of the realization that a conflict had become unavoidable. Because I regarded Soviet Russia as a danger not only for the German Reich but for all of Europe, I decided, if possible, to give the order myself to attack a few days before the outbreak of this conflict.

A truly impressive amount of authentic material is now available which confirms that a Soviet Russian attack was intended. We are also sure about when this attack was to take place. In view of this danger, the extent of which we are perhaps only now truly aware, I can only thank the Lord God that He enlightened me in time and has given me the strength to do what must be done. Millions of German soldiers may thank Him for their lives, and all of Europe for its existence.[474]

Again, not one word of this was true. The Red Army was woefully unprepared for a major offensive, as shown by the fact it lost 4.5 million soldiers from June 22, 1941 to the end of the year. Under Stalin’s paranoid control, the army was badly trained, badly equipped and badly led. Hitler, though, knew that facts and reason were irrelevant to the task of stampeding the nation into sanctioning war. He had to mask pending Nazi aggression as self-defense and play upon the people’s fear of “The Red Menace.” The German public had to believe that an implacably evil foe was threatening them, and that a pre-emptive attack on the Soviet Union was justified and necessary. Therefore, the Soviet Union had to be raised to the level of a universal enemy—”a danger not only for the German Reich but for all of Europe….”

Even though Hitler lied about having incontrovertible proof of an attack, an audience predisposed to believe the worst about communists, especially Jewish communists, was neither willing nor able to challenge baseless claims like “a truly impressive amount of authentic material,” or “we are also sure about when.” Finally, Hitler invoked God and Christian imagery to unify the people with him and sanctify his grand crusade. In contrast to Hitler, nobody could ever accuse Bush of being an inspiring leader or even a coherent one, but he and the people who tell him what to say have an equally good understanding of how to use hate propaganda and religious fanaticism to justify endless war. For Israel’s part, we have already seen how ben Gurion and other leading Zionists have attacked Arabs based on lies about Arab aggression (1948) and pending Arab aggression (1967), so there is no need to repeat it.

Given the well-known cognitive impairments of the true believer and the behavioral pathology of the sociopath, it should not seem strange that true belief and neurological disorder should go together. Hitler, for example, was known to have suffered from Parkinson’s disease, the mental and temperamental effects of which were obvious to the generals who tried to advise him.[475]

As early as 1943, certain high-ranking generals realized that Germany’s best hope lay in a negotiated end to the war but Hitler was incapable of rational thought. Inasmuch as this trait is a general symptom of true believers, his Parkinson’s had by 1944 made his movements and reactions markedly slower and his trembling nearly constant. Dr. Tom Hutton, a Texas physician who treats Parkinson’s patients, said up to 40 percent of Parkinson sufferers lose the ability to make decisions and become mentally inflexible, and in Hitler’s case this was obvious by December 25, 1944, even though it was a carefully guarded secret. Colonel-General Heinz Guderian, head of the Wehrmacht’s supreme command, asked Hitler for more divisions to defend against a coming Soviet offensive, but the very idea sent Hitler into a rage: “It is the greatest imposture scheme since Genghis Khan. Who is responsible for producing this rubbish?” In fact, three Soviet army groups did launch an attack as Guderian and other generals predicted. By 1945, all Guderian could do was lament Hitler’s growing mental deterioration: “He had lost his mental flexibility and imagination.”

Given this previous discussion of true belief and sociopathic behavior, it’s worth revisiting Richard Clarke’s description of what was said in the White House Situation Room on September 12, 2001:

The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, “I want you to find whether Iraq did this.” Now he never said, “Make it up,” but the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this. I said, “Mr. President. We’ve done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There’s no connection.” He came back at me and said, “Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there’s a connection.” And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer.[476]

Although a direct parallel between the examples of Guderian and Hitler and Clarke and Bush would be a serious oversimplification, the idea that Bush has a neurological impairment is impossible to ignore. One likely candidate could well be Asperger’s Syndrome, which has characteristics in common with high-functioning autism (IQ 70).[54] People who suffer from Asperger’s manifest the following general traits:

Severely Impaired Interpersonal Skills

On October 19, 2000, Bush was a guest on Late Night with David Letterman. During a commercial break executive producer Maria Pope came over to discuss something with Letterman. As she leaned over Letterman’s desks, Bush casually cleaned his glasses on the hem of her green jacket, unbeknownst to her.[477]

Obsessive Preoccupation With a Narrow Field of Interest

We have already seen how Bush habitually uses “the war on terrorism” to justify the premeditated carnage in the Middle East and Afghanistan, among other things. In a similar vein, the staunchly pro-U.S. European writer and author Niall Fergusson wrote a cautionary column in 2004 warning of the connection between Bush and Asperger’s:

In his smart new novel Transmission, Hari Kunzri quotes a questionnaire designed to help people establish whether or not they suffer from Asperger’s syndrome. Here are the key questions:

a)Do you find it difficult to develop or maintain relationships?

b)Do people accuse you of failing to share their interests?

c)Do others get angry or upset at you for reasons that appear illogical?

d)Do you have to remember to modulate your voice when speaking?

e)Do you have difficulty decoding social behavior?

f)Do you have any repetitive motor mannerisms (tics, gestures, rocking, etc)?

Well, if you substitute “air strikes, invasions, bombing etc.” for “tics, gestures, rocking, etc,” it does sound rather familiar, doesn’t it? The dispiriting possibility is, I am afraid, that America is itself suffering from Asperger’s syndrome.[478]

Imposition of Routines and Interests on Self and Others

In early 2004, the Washington newspaper Capitol Hill Blue depicted the dogmatic rigidity and intolerance of dissent between Bush and his inner circle.

“The mood here is that we’re under siege, there’s no doubt about it,” says one troubled [White House] aide who admits he is looking for work elsewhere. “In this administration, you don’t have to wear a turban or speak Farsi to be an enemy of the United States. All you have to do is disagree with the President.” West Wing staffers said Bush and [now former] Attorney-General John Ashcroft are privately referred to as “The Blues Brothers” because they think they’re on a mission from God.[479]

Unnatural Speech Patterns and Voice Inflections

Bush’s speech is peppered with sentences that begin with “See,” so much so that is must be considered an oral tic. The record for “See” sentences is 18, during an August 28, 2004, speech in Lima, Ohio.[480]

During a stop in Denmark en route to Scotland, Bush asked to take a question from the “Reuters man, Toby.” Unfortunately for Bush, “Toby” is Tabassum Zakaria, a woman. After correcting himself, Bush gave an example of the inappropriate glibness that not only marks Asperger’s but also sociopathic behavior: “Woman—excuse me, I can see that. So, how long have you been on the presidential beat?” Zakaria said she had been on the White House beat since February, whereupon Bush said: “Yes, well, make yourself less scarce.”

Of course, the most outrageous example of inappropriate speech was Bush’s July 2, 2003, ejaculation regarding the violence in Iraq: “There are some who feel like that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is bring them on.” Sen. Frank Lautenberg told USA Today that the president’s language was “irresponsible and inciteful”: “I am shaking my head in disbelief. When I served in the Army in Europe during World War II, I never heard any military commander — let alone the commander in chief — invite enemies to attack U.S. troops.”[481]

Bush’s inability to speak coherently has also given rise to a diagnosis of presenile dementia, as shown by these excerpts:

“You can’t see what you think is a threat and hope it goes away. You used to could when the oceans protected us, but the lesson of September the 11th is, is when the President sees a threat, we must deal with it before it—before it comes to fruition through death on our own soils, for example.”

Albuquerque, New Mexico, Mar. 26, 2004

“I laid out a doctrine that said, if you harbor a terrorist, you’re just as guilty as the terrorist. By the way, when the President says something, you better mean it. It turns out in this job—I, of course, meant it.”

Appleton, Wisconsin, Mar. 30, 2004[482]

In an October 2004 letter to the Atlantic regarding James Fallows’ July/August article “When George Meets John,” Joseph M. Price MD wrote:

Fallows… was 100 percent correct in suggesting that Bush’s problem cannot be “a learning disability, a reading problem [or] dyslexia,” because patients with those problems have always had them. Slowly developing cognitive deficits, as demonstrated so clearly by the president, can represent only one diagnosis, and that is “presenile dementia!” Presenile dementia is best described to non-medical persons as a fairly typical Alzheimer’s situation that develops significantly earlier in life, well before what is usually considered old age. It runs about the same course as typical senile dementias, such as classical Alzheimer’s--to incapacitation and, eventually, death, as with President Ronald Reagan, but at a relatively earlier age, President Bush’s “mangled” words are a demonstration of what physicians call “confabulation,” and are almost specific to the diagnosis of a true dementia. Bush should immediately be given the advantage of a considered professional diagnosis, and started on drugs that offer the possibility of retarding the slow by inexorable course of the disease.”

A specific manifestation of Bush’s defective mental state is the way glibness and superficial charm pass for morality and compassion. When Bush speaks, “freedom,” democracy” and “values” become lexical shells—slogans bereft of meaning and freighted with religiosity. Typical is his infamous January 29, 2003, address justifying the invasion of Iraq:

We will free people. This great, powerful nation is motivated not by power for power’s sake, but because of our values. If everybody matters, if every life counts, then we should hope everybody has the great God’s gift of freedom. We go into Iraq to disarm the country. We will also go in to make sure that those who are hungry are fed, those who need health care will have health care; those youngsters who need education will get education. But most of all, we will uphold our values. And the biggest value we hold dear is the value of freedom. (Applause.) As I said last night, freedom and liberty, they are not America’s gifts to the world. They are God’s gift to humanity. We hold that thought dear to our hearts.[483]

Later that year, in a sermon dripping with chauvinism and condescension, Bush portrayed U.S. Middle East policy as a mission civilisatrice designed to bring enlightenment to a backward people:

In many nations of the Middle East—countries of great strategic importance—democracy has not yet taken root. And the questions arise: Are the peoples of the Middle East somehow beyond the reach of liberty? Are millions of men and women and children condemned by history or culture to live in despotism? Are they alone never to know freedom, and never even to have a choice in the matter? I, for one, do not believe it. I believe every person has the ability and the right to be free. This is a massive and difficult undertaking—it is worth our effort, it is worth our sacrifice because we know the stakes. The failure of Iraqi democracy would embolden terrorists around the world, increase dangers to the American people, and extinguish the hopes of millions in the region. Iraqi democracy will succeed—and that success will send forth the news, from Damascus to Teheran—that freedom can be the future of every nation. The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution.[484]

This chasm between Bush’s rhetoric and political reality led Dr. Justin Frank, director of psychiatry at George Washington University, to conclude that Bush is an untreated ex-alcoholic (“dry drunk”) who sees himself, the U.S. and God as interchangeable:[485]

If one of my patients frequently said one thing and did another, I would want to know why. If I found that he often used words that hid their true meaning and affected a persona that obscured the nature of his actions, I would grow more concerned. If he presented an inflexible worldview characterized by an oversimplified distinction between right and wrong, good and evil, allies and enemies, I would question his ability to grasp reality. And if his actions revealed an unacknowledged—even sadistic—indifference to human suffering, wrapped in pious claims of compassion, I would worry about the safety of the people whose lives he touched. For the past three years, I have observed with increasing alarm the inconsistencies and denials of such an individual. But he is not one of my patients. He is our president.[486]

Dr. Carolyn Williams, a psychoanalyst who specializes in paranoid personalities, supports Frank’s findings, and notes that Bush’s behavior is rooted in a stern upbringing and feelings of inadequacy:

President Bush grew up dealing with an absent but demanding father, a tough mother and an overachieving brother. All left indelible impressions on him, along with a desire to prove himself at all costs because he feels surrounded by disapproval. His behavior suggests a classic paranoid personality. Additionally, his stated belief that certain actions are ‘God’s Will’ is symptomatic of delusional behavior.[487]

Bush first exhibited signs of religious dementia when, while governor of Texas, he said God “called” him to run for president. Later, Bush said God “called” him to vanquish “evil men” [read: Muslims who oppose the U.S. and Israel]:

Our founders dedicated this country to the cause of human dignity, the rights of every person, and the possibilities of every life. This conviction leads us into the world to help the afflicted, and defend the peace, and confound the designs of evil men…. As our nation moves troops and builds alliances to make our world safer, we must also remember our calling as a blessed country is to make this world better.[488]

Again we see the disconnect between rhetoric (“the cause of human dignity, the rights of every person, and the possibilities of every life”) and reality (Bush’s denial of these qualities to Muslims at home and abroad). Fascists need an omnipresent devil-figure to keep the people in a constant state of fear so that abuses of state power and acts of cruelty in the name of “salvation” will be tolerated. For this to happen, the violence to be inflicted on the enemy must be stripped of all rational context and recast as an abstract moral battle between good and evil. Hence, it becomes possible for Bush to spout platitudes about human dignity at the same time he inflicts mass suffering on people deemed to be not of “the political faith.” People along the Louisiana Coast who suffered through Hurricane Katrina experienced first-hand Bush’s indifference for the welfare of his own people.

Storm of Controversy

Before the September 11 attack, FEMA warned the White House that the inundation of New Orleans was one of the three most likely catastrophes to face the U.S. Three years later, it reinforced this conclusion by conducting a five-day hurricane disaster exercise at Louisiana’s Emergency Operations Center in Baton Rouge. The hypothetical hurricane “Pam” brought sustained winds of 120 m.p.h. and up to 20 inches of rain to the southeastern parishes of Louisiana. Storm surges topped levees around New Orleans, and 500,000-600,000 homes were destroyed.

The information used to model this scenario came from the National Weather Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center.[489] Despite these warnings, all of which were based on sound scientific research, Bush annually cut funding to the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project (SELA), a 10-year project established in 1995 to protect the region’s population, port and oil refineries. In 2003, funds earmarked for SELA were siphoned off to pay for the anti-Iraq crusade, leaving the Army Corps of Engineers with only 20 percent of funding needed to protect New Orleans from flooding from Lake Pontchartrain. “About $300,000 in federal money was proposed for the 2005 fiscal-year budget, and the state had agreed to match that amount, but the cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes the needed money,” said project manager Al Naomi.[490] Even after the 2004 hurricane season, which was one of the worst in decades, SELA funding was further slashed from $36.5 million to $10.4 million. Katrina, though, was not solely responsible for the devastation. The junta had sabotaged Louisiana’s defenses by repealing environmental protection for 20 million acres of wetlands, which are not only fragile ecosystems but also a natural water filter and barrier against storms.[491]

If these scientific models didn’t convince Bush, two alarms on August 28 should have. The first came from the National Weather Center:

“A hurricane warning is in effect for the north central gulf coast from Morgan City, Louisiana, eastward to the Alabama/Florida border, including the city of New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain. Maximum sustained winds are near 160 m.p.h. with higher gusts. Katrina is a large hurricane. Coastal storm surge flooding of 18 to 22 feet above normal tide levels, locally as high as 28 feet, along with large and dangerous battering waves, can be expected near and to the east of where the center makes landfall. Some levees in the greater New Orleans area could be overtopped.”

The second was an emergency four-page plea for help from Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco:

Under the provisions of… [The Stafford Act}… I request that you declare: an expedited major disaster for the State of Louisiana as Hurricane Katrina, a Category V Hurricane approaches our coast south of New Orleans; beginning on August 28, 2005 and continuing. The affected areas include all the southeastern parishes including the City of New Orleans directly impacted by the brunt of the storm and the mid state and northern parishes accepting the thousands of citizens forced to evacuate from the impacted areas directly affected by Hurricane Katrina…. In response to the situation, I have taken appropriate action under State law and directed the execution of the State Emergency Plan on August 26, 2005, in accordance with Section 401 of the Stafford Act. A State of Emergency has been issued for the State in order to support the evacuations of the coastal areas and the remainder of the state to support the State Evacuation and Sheltering Plan.

Bush’s response? Absolutely nothing. Despite knowing of the looming threat to life and property, his priority was having Congress repeal the estate tax to benefit the U.S.’s wealthiest citizens.[492] Only after a week had passed did we see any action from FEMA, which had been urging action to protect New Orleans for four years. Perhaps part of the reason for this lethargy and the inept performance of its head Michael Brown, who was later fired, can be ascribed to the takeover of FEMA in March 2003 by the Department of Homeland Security.

In all, Katrina devastated almost 90,000 square miles (an area larger than the U.K.); killed more than 1,300 Americans; and caused $38.1 billion in insured losses. Even though nothing could have prevented Katrina from hitting the Northern Gulf Coast, Bush’s fixation on his anti-Iraq crusade and the junta’s hatred of federal social spending were directly responsible for the magnitude of the death and destruction it caused.

Rep. Mike Pence, (R-Ind) who chairs a caucus of more than 100 other Republicans, typified the junta’s callous disregard for the victims of Katrina by depicting humanitarian relief as a financial burden: “Congress must do everything the American people expect us to do to meet the needs of families and communities affected by Katrina. But we must not let Katrina break the bank for our children and grandchildren.”[493] Breaking the bank in the name of fighting the “war on terrorism,” now estimated at $2 trillion, however, is defensible. For his part, Bush blamed the disaster on an impersonal, anonymous “federal government” and then portrayed himself as a champion of government reform:

Four years after the frightening experience of September the 11th, Americans have every right to expect a more effective response in a time of emergency. When the federal government fails to meet such an obligation, I, as President, am responsible for the problem, and for the solution. So I’ve ordered every Cabinet Secretary to participate in a comprehensive review of the government response to the hurricane. This government will learn the lessons of Hurricane Katrina. We’re going to review every action and make necessary changes, so that we are better prepared for any challenge of nature, or act of evil men, that could threaten our people. [494]

Bush proposed the creation of a Gulf Opportunity Zone, which gave the impression that he saw Katrina as an opportune land-clearing operation for developers. In fact, Bush said he wanted the evacuees to return home because they now have “a real chance at a better life in a place they love.”[495] It can’t be coincidence that the parishes flooded by Katrina were overwhelmingly poor, black and Democratic, whereas the well-to-do, white, Republican areas further inland were largely spared. Local businessman James Rice, who lives in the city’s only gated community, also summed up the junta’s socio-economic selfishness: “Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way, demographically, geographically and politically. I’m not just speaking for myself here. The way we have been living is not going to happen again or we’re out.”[496]

Persistence of Fascism

Given the mentality of the fascist leader and the similarities between U.S. and German fascism, the September 11 attack looks more familiar than strange, as this comparison with the Reichstag Fire of February 27, 1933, shows:

Blame for the fire fell solely on a deranged, mostly blind, Dutch Communist named Marinus van der Lubbe, who was found cowering behind the building as it was burning. He had earlier declared his intention to burn the Reichstag as a personal protest against capitalism, but the Nazi leadership charged him with acting on behalf of “International Communism,” and demanded the arrest and trial of the leaders of Communist Party leaders. The day after the fire, Chancellor Adolf Hitler convinced Germany’s senile president Paul von Hindenberg to issue the emergency Reichstag Fire Decree, which suspended civil liberties in the name of national security. The decree read:

Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124 and 153 of the constitution of the German Empire are suspended until further notice. It is therefore permissible to restrict the rights to personal freedom [habeas corpus], freedom of speech, including the freedom of the press, the freedom to organize and assemble, the privacy of letters, mail, telegraphs and telephones, order searches and confiscations and restrict property, even if this is not otherwise provided for by present law.

Hitler formally established his dictatorship by having the Reichstag pass the Enabling Act (Ermächtigungsgesetz) on March 23, which made the Reichstag Fire Decree permanent.

On December 23, 1933, in Leipzig, the two-month Reichstag Fire Trial ended with the German Imperial Court acquitting most of the Communist leaders. In fact, one of the defendants presented convincing evidence against high officials in the National Socialist (Nazi) German Workers’ Party. Upon hearing of the acquittals, a furious Hitler decreed that a newly established Nazi-run “People’s Court” would hear cases of treason, among other crimes.

Although van der Lubbe was clearly involved, historians generally agree that the Nazi hierarchy used him as a cover to commit an act of sabotage for political gain. Testimony at the post-war Nuremberg Trial revealed that Hitler’s paramilitary stormtroopers accelerated the fire by applying a self-igniting liquid throughout the assembly hall. We don’t know the names of the Nazi arsonists, but we do know that the Nazis were the only ones who benefited from the fire.

Blame for the September 11 attack fell solely on radical Muslims who were said to have hijacked passenger jets and flown them into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Even though isolated attempts to fly aircraft into buildings had been tried before, the U.S. leadership declared the September 11 attack to be the work of international terrorists (“al-Qa’ida”) and demanded the Afghanistan government hand over Osama bin Laden, who was the suspected mastermind because he had issued a declaration of war against the U.S.

Nineteen days thereafter, Bush declared the U.S. to be at war with terror [sic] and established the Office of Homeland Security, which is two synonyms away from “Committee of State Security,” or in Russian “KGB” (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti).

On October 25, Bush seized on the attack to stampede a panicked and cowed Congress into passing, unread, theUSA PATRIOTAct, which gave Bush virtually dictatorial power to violate civil liberties, including the right to counsel, protection from arbitrary arrest, habeas corpus, and protection against illegal search and seizure. Five years later, he would sign the Military Commissions Act, by which any U.S. citizen who opposed Bush, could be deemed “an enemy combatant” and subject to arbitrary arrest and possibly sentenced to death based on hearsay evidence and coerced testimony.

Although aircraft were clearly involved in the WTC attack, it is empirically provable that the collapse of the buildings was too orderly to have been solely the result of their impact, and aircraft fuel does not burn hot enough to melt steel. We don’t know who specifically wired the WTC to implode, but we do know that the junta and Israel were the only two entities to benefit from it.

15

Israel’s Executioner:

Palestine and Iraq

The 1991 Gulf War marked the last time a U.S. president ordered an invasion of the Persian Gulf in the name of U.S. geopolitical self-interest. President Bush’s official reason was to force Iraq to pull out of Kuwait and protect oil supplies, but the real motive, of course, was to destroy Saddam Hussein’s U.S.-built army. As Chapter 5 showed, Saudi paranoia about Hussein’s army, as well as U.S. misrepresentation of Hussein’s motives to King Fahd, led to the establishment of U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia, which led to the radicalization of Osama bin Laden.

Had it not been for Kuwait’s deliberate overproduction of oil to frustrate Hussein’s ability to rebuild Iraq’s economy—a tactic that Saudi Arabia did nothing to stop—Kuwait would not have been invaded and there would have been no Gulf War. Bush’s decision to go to war against Iraq was particularly perverse because that same year Rumsfeld asserted that Hussein was a force for stability in the region. For that reason, Bush reneged on his support for Kurdish and Shi’a Arab rebels for fear that a less hospitable government than Hussein’s would emerge.

Behind the duplicity and betrayal, oil still seemed to be the determinant of U.S. Persian Gulf policy; however, from the end of Bush’s presidency through the Clinton administration, oil came second to serving Israel’s self-interest. Unless we acknowledge this fact, the 12 years of crippling economic and military sanctions and NFZs against Iraq make no sense. If the U.S. were dead set on turning Hussein from an ally into a pariah, the decision to destabilize his country and deprive his people of food and medicine was hardly conducive to a stable political and economic climate. Fact is, as Israeli journalist Oded Yinon wrote, Israel had been looking to dismember Iraq since at least 1982, less than two years into Reagan’s first term:

Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run, it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon.[497]

Table XV: U.S. Financial Aid to Israel
(1949 to November 1, 1997)

Benefits to Israel

Cost to U.S. Taxpayers

Foreign Aid Grants & Loans

$74,157,600,000

Other (12.2% of Foreign Aid)

$9,047,227,200

Interest to Israel from Advanced Payments

$1,650,000,000

Grand Total

$84,854,827,200

Total benefits per Israeli

$14,630

Plus: Interest borne by U.S.

$49,936,680,000

Total Cost

$134,791,507,200

Total taxpayer cost per Israeli

$23,240

Source: Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

Rather than consider Iraq in isolation as oil-firsters do, it must be placed in the more complete context of Israeli subjugation of the Middle East, especially Palestine. Not only does this larger picture reinforce the fact of U.S. subservience to Israel, but it further militates against considering oil as the prime determinant of U.S. policy.

The price the U.S. pays for Israel’s parasitic exploitation is revealed in the relationship between lines 5 and 8 in Table XV. Not only has the U.S. government diverted trillions of taxpayer dollars to Israel, but also it forces U.S. taxpayers to pay a premium to do so:

line 8

line 5

Total taxpayer cost per Israeli —$23,240

Total benefits per Israeli—$14,630

=

$1.58

In truth, the above figures represent extortion, not aid, and do not include countless billions in non-monetary forms of Israeli parasitism. Thomas Stauffer, a Washington, D.C.-based engineer who taught Middle East economics at Harvard University and Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, puts the cumulative economy drain from 1949 to November 1, 1997 at $3 trillion, of which $1.5 trillion (2002 dollars) is directly due to Israel’s wars and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve:

At a minimum, [the 1973 war] cost the U.S. between $750 billion and $1 trillion. This was the price tag for the rescue of Israel when President Richard Nixon agreed to resupply Israel with U.S. arms as it was losing the war against its neighbors. Washington’s intervention triggered the Arab oil embargo which cost the U.S. doubly: first, due to the oil shortfall, the US lost about $300 billion to $600 billion in GDP; and, second, the U.S. was saddled with another $450 billion in higher oil import costs.1[498]

In the larger picture, Stauffer estimates that U.S. support for Israel and sanctions against Middle Eastern regimes reduce exports by about $5 billion a year, which costs approximately 70,000 American jobs. In one particular instance, U.S. taxpayers are bilked twice. They subsidized the creation of the Israeli arms industry and now U.S. defense contractors are required to “buy-Israeli” to support Israel’s economy, of which arms sales account for half of all export revenue. Not requiring Israel to use its U.S. aid to buy American goods, as is usual in foreign aid, costs another 125,000 jobs.[499] Per capita, this open one-way pipeline from the U.S. Treasury to Israel, a failed state, costs every American more than $5,700 annually.[500]

Israel’s parasitism was made officially legal by passage of the 1984 Cranston Amendment. Sen. Alan Cranston (D-CA), a staunch supporter of Israel, sponsored an amendment to require all annual economic aid to Israel to be at least equal to its annual loan repayments (principal and interest) of its debt to the United States. In other words, all loans to Israel now amount to outright gifts. The Cranston Amendment dates to Reagan’s first term, and confirms the essential point that after 1980, Israel’s needs were becoming the prime determinant of U.S. Middle East policy.

Up against The Wall

On October 3, 2001, the Israeli radio station Kol Yisrael reported that Sharon reacted testily to complaints from Peres and other cabinet ministers who said that refusal to heed “incessant American requests for a cease-fire with the Palestinians” would endanger Israeli interests and turn the U.S. against Israel: “Every time we do something you tell me Americans will do this and will do that,” said Sharon. “I want to tell you something very clear. Don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.”[501]

Sharon’s use of “we” is significant for three reasons. First because it speaks to the ugly truth of The Lobby’s power and puts into perspective the corruption of the 2000 and 2004 elections. Even though Jews comprise only two percent of the U.S. population, they are concentrated in key swing states with large Electoral College votes. As newspaper editor Jeffrey S. Helmreich wrote:

A study of American Jewish voting habits over the past five decades suggests that some 55 to 60 percent of the Jewish electorate pick Democrats almost automatically, while 10 percent are similarly loyal Republicans. But the remaining 30 to 35 percent can be lured by any party depending on its position. That adds up to a swing vote representing up to two percent of the electorate in states like Florida and Pennsylvania. In both cases, a shift of that amount (or less) would have changed the result in that state and, in all probability, single-handedly crowned the American president. Put another way, the Jewish swing vote, mobilized behind a particular candidate, would have given him the 2000 election.[502]

Second, Sharon’s depiction of “the Jewish people” as an undifferentiated, monolithic bloc serves to fuel the canonical fiction that all Jews are Zionists. To debunk this assertion, take the example of what happened to Daniel Kurtzer after he was appointed PNAC’s ambassador to Israel. In early January 2002, Kurtzer, a veteran diplomat, reiterated the oft-heard U.S. plea for Israel to stop financing “settlers” and put the money toward helping the poor and handicapped. The rebuff he received was so outrageous that the Israeli government had to repudiate it. Zvi Hendel, a leader of Gaza Strip “settlers” called Kurtzer “a little Jewboy” who was meddling in Israel’s internal affairs.[503]

Third, despite official condemnation of the remark as “anti-Semitic” and Hendel’s subsequent retraction, the insult accurately depicted the U.S. subordinate status. In April, Israel invaded Bethlehem, Nablus and other towns in the West Bank in the name of the standard excuse of stopping sacrifice bombings. Powell told Israel to get out immediately and Bush spent 20 minutes on the phone with Sharon insisting he pull out immediately. Sharon ignored them.[504]

Given the history of this exploitive relationship, it was inevitable that the U.S.’s initial opposition to Israel’s Wall should end in another humiliating retreat. The following brief chronology shows what happened when Bush tried to make his own decisions.

July 25, 2003—Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas arrived at the White House for an official visit. In a Rose Garden address, Bush uttered the requisite boilerplate, such as: the U.S. opposes settlement construction; the U.S. insists on an end to Palestinian (but not Israeli) terrorist attacks; and the U.S. supports improving the lives of the Palestinian people. It was an unremarkable speech, but in response to a reporter’s question about the Wall, he said something off-script:

I think the Wall is a problem, and I discussed this with Ariel Sharon. It is very difficult to develop confidence between the Palestinians and Israel with a Wall snaking through the West Bank. And I will continue to discuss this issue very clearly with the Prime Minister. As I said in my statement today, he has issued a statement saying he is willing to come and discuss that with us. And I appreciate the willingness to discuss it.[505]

July 29—Throughout the summer, Bush labored under the delusion that his “road map” could be the key to resolving the Israel-Palestine dispute. Like the Oslo Accords, it was a heavily biased non-starter that imposed conditions on the Palestinians, disregarded international law, and did nothing to arrest Israeli expansionism. After a White House meeting to “discuss” their differences, Bush and Sharon stated their respective positions at another Rose Garden press conference. Despite Bush’s public opposition, Sharon disingenuously declared: “The security fence [sic] will continue to be built, with every effort to minimize the infringement on the daily life of the Palestinian population.”[506]

After this emasculating rebuke, literally in his own back yard, Bush changed his tune: “The fence is a sensitive issue, I understand. And the Prime Minister made it very clear to me that it was a sensitive issue. And my promise to him is we’ll continue to discuss and to dialogue how best to make sure that the fence sends the right signal that not only is security important, but the ability for the Palestinians to live a normal life is important as well.”[507]

Note that the Wall is no longer “a problem” to be stopped, but “a sensitive issue” to be discussed. Moreover, the idea that Palestinians could lead normal “daily lives” is preposterous, since the Wall destroys whole villages and cuts Palestinians off from farms, homes, schools and workplaces.

August 4—Despite being upbraided the week before, Bush still had notions of political independence, and considered reducing the $9 billion in loan guarantees to Israel that had been approved by Congress in the spring. The funds were slated for residential and commercial projects, and included $1 billion in military aid. According to U.S. law, no part of a loan guarantee may be used for settlement construction, which is illegal. If it is, that money must be deducted from the guarantee. The New York Times reported that many in the Bush government were concerned that the Wall might also be illegal, at least the part that extended deep into Occupied Palestine beyond the 1967 Green Line: “An administration official said today that a growing consensus in the administration has led to the conclusion that the loan guarantees must not be used to pay for the barrier or to free other Israeli funds to build it. “The feeling is that we do need to do something about the fence,” said an administration official.”[508]

August 22—Flouting U.S. and Palestinian objections, Israel broke ground deep inside the West Bank to build the latest section of the Wall between Occupied East Jerusalem and the Arab village of Abu Dis. Land confiscations had been completed weeks earlier. A seven-kilometer wall between Egypt and the Gaza Strip was also begun.

September 7—Mahmoud Abbas resigned as prime minister, citing Israel’s unwillingness to implement its “road map” commitments, and the U.S.’s unwillingness to exert any influence on Israel. He also cited a lack of support within the Palestinian Authority.

September 19—Israeli leaders decide to send a high-ranking delegation to Washington to come to a compromise on the segment of the Wall near the major settlement of Ariel, even though the U.S. had already objected to extending the Wall into Occupied Palestine.

October 24—Bush dropped all objections to the Wall and claimed that Israel was justified in building it, even deep into the West Bank. Bush now parroted the official Israeli line of self-defense against Palestinian attacks. For Bush, the resignation of Abbas signaled the end of the “road map,” because he spent considerable political capital cultivating him as a compliant Palestinian leader over Yasser Arafat. So long as Abbas was around, the Wall threatened to undermine investment and Bush’s leadership, and so had to be opposed. With Abbas gone, the “road map” became irrelevant, and Bush saw no reason to oppose the Lobby, which was mounting an offensive in Washington.[509] Bush’s tepid four-month fling with independence was over.

December 8—In an Emergency Special Session, The UN General Assembly passes Resolution ES-10/14 formally asking the International Court of Justice for a ruling on the Wall, specifically:

What are the legal consequences arising from the construction of the Wall being built by Israel, the occupying Power, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem, as described in the report of the Secretary General, considering the rules and principles of international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, and relevant Security Council and General Assembly resolutions?[510]

July 9, 2004—The International Court of Justice in The Hague rendered its advisory opinion on the legality of the Wall. It rejected all of Israel’s arguments about defensive necessity, and specifically condemned Israel for humanitarian and legal violations. Its key findings included:

• Rejection of Israel’s claim that the ICJ had no jurisdiction to rule on a political matter (Paras. 36–41)

As is clear from its long-standing jurisprudence on this point, the Court considers that the fact that a legal question also has political aspects, “as, in the nature of things, is the case with so many questions which arise in international life, does not suffice to deprive it of its character as a ‘legal question’ and to ‘deprive the Court of a competence expressly conferred on it by its Statute.’” (Para. 41)[511]

• The Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War does apply to Palestinians under Israeli Occupation, contrary to Israel’s claim. (Paras. 86–101)

After the occupation of the West Bank in 1967, the Israeli authorities issued an order No. 3 stating in its Article 35 that: “the Military Court… must apply the provisions of the Geneva Convention dated 12 August 1949 Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War with respect to judicial procedures. In case of conflict between this Order and the said Convention, the Convention shall prevail.” Subsequently, the Israeli authorities have indicated on a number of occasions that in fact they generally apply the humanitarian provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention within the occupied territories. (Para. 93)

• The Wall is illegal and amounts to a de facto annexation of Palestinian land. (Paras. 115–122)

The route chosen for the wall gives expression in loco to the illegal measures taken by Israel with regard to Jerusalem and the settlements, as deplored by the Security Council. There is also a risk of further alterations to the demographic composition of the Occupied Palestinian Territory resulting from the construction of the wall inasmuch as it is contributing… to the departure of Palestinian populations from certain areas. (Para. 122)

• The Wall has led to the illegal destruction or requisition of Palestinian property. (Paras. 132–137)

The wall, along the route chosen, and its associated regime gravely infringe a number of rights of Palestinians residing in the territory occupied by Israel, and the infringements resulting from that route cannot be justified by military exigencies or by the requirements of national security or public order. The construction of such a wall accordingly constitutes breaches by Israel of various of its obligations under the applicable international humanitarian law and human rights instruments. (Para. 137)

Not only did the ICJ denounce the Wall, but also it instructed the UN to do something about it:

The Court is of the view that the United Nations, and especially the General Assembly and the Security Council, should consider what further action is required to bring to an end the illegal situation resulting from the construction of the wall and the associated regime, taking due account of the present Advisory Opinion. (Para. 160)

Israel refused to recognize the court’s decision, but then it has always shown contempt for international law, as in this infamous boast by Foreign Minister Abba Eban: “If the General Assembly were to vote by 121 votes to 1 in favor of ‘Israel’ returning to the armistice lines [pre June 1967 borders) ‘Israel’ would refuse to comply with the decision.”[512] In a similar vein, the U.S., led by Bolton, vigorously denounced the judgment and challenged the Court’s jurisdiction, implicitly declaring to the world that it, like Israel, was an outlaw state.

It’s tempting to think that if the 2004 election had been honest, U.S. policy toward Palestine would show some semblance of sanity, but of course that would be highly fanciful. Sen. Kerry himself is a perfect example of Congress’s bipartisan bias against Palestine and subservience toward Israel. A little more than a year before the election, he delivered a highly sympathetic speech to the Arab American Institute in Washington D.C. He condemned the religious bigotry of Attorney-General John Ashcroft, denounced the “Clash of Civilizations” dogma, and spoke of peace between Palestinians and Israelis. He made no mention of the historical injustices done to the Palestinians, which means that the Jewish elites had no reason to find fault with his comments, except for the following off-script comment:

I know how disheartened Palestinians are by the Israeli government’s decision to build the barrier off of the Green Line—cutting deep into Palestinian areas. We don’t need another barrier to peace. Provocative and counterproductive measures only harm Israel’s security over the long term, increase the hardships to the Palestinian people, and make the process of negotiating an eventual settlement that much harder.[513]

Eight months later, a leaked draft of the Democratic Party platform showed that Kerry had reversed himself and would continue Bush’s blind support for Sharon. When the ICJ handed down its decision on July 9, 2004, Kerry issued his own condemnation, which read as if it had been written by a Bush propagandist: “I am deeply disappointed by today’s International Court of Justice ruling related to Israel’s security fence. Israel’s fence is a legitimate response to terror that only exists in response to the wave of terror attacks against Israel. The fence is an important tool in Israel’s fight against terrorism. It is not a matter for the ICJ.”[514] Not only did Kerry embrace Bush’s capitulationism, he even endorsed the repudiation of UNSC Resolution 242.

An excellent place to view The Lobby’s control over U.S. politics is at the annual AIPAC conference, where Democrats and Republicans alike display abject fealty to Israel and intone the requisite verities of Zionist propaganda, as these two brief excerpts show:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: “The United States and Israel share much in common. We both affirm the innate freedom and dignity of every human life, not as prizes that people confer to one another, but as divine gifts of the Almighty. As Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “The God that gave us liberty and life gave them to us at the same time.”[515]

Sen. Nancy Pelosi (Dem-Cal): “America’s commitment to the safety and security of the State of Israel is unwavering. America and Israel share an unbreakable bond: in peace and war; and in prosperity and in hardship… There are those who contend that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all about Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. This is absolute nonsense. In truth, the history of the conflict is not over occupation, and never has been: it is over the fundamental right of Israel to exist.”[516]

For both parties, Israel can do no wrong and Palestinians have no right of self-defense. On this subject, Israel tolerates no ad libbing from its client state. The junta also followed to the letter the deceitful rhetoric recommended in the Luntz/Wexner report Israeli Communications Priorities 2003: constantly invoke anti-Hussein propaganda, link his regime with Yasser Arafat’s, and use the image of Hussein to link Israel’s security interests with those of the U.S. For this reason, Palestine and Iraq must be seen as complementary parts of a single whole, and nowhere is the similarity more painfully obvious than in the torture of Muslims in U.S. custody.

Tortured Reasoning

In the notorious Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad, Iraqi prisoners were beaten, forced to strip, masturbate and submit to humiliating indignities at the hands of male and female U.S. soldiers and civilians. Pornography and public nudity especially in the presence of women are especially embarrassing and humiliating to Muslim men, so to enforce such conduct and domination is one of the most horrific tortures the jailers could inflict. The world only learned of this treatment because of the moral courage of soldiers like Sgt. Samuel Provance and Specialist Joseph Darby, but reports of serious abuses at Abu Ghraib had been known to the Pentagon since at least October 2003.[517]

Beyond these abuses, some of which are discussed below, the real perversity consists in the U.S. behaving sadistically toward a people it claimed to be helping, and whose help it ostensibly needed to build a post-Hussein Iraq for the sake of oil.

Israel inflicts mental and physical abuse on Arabs as a matter of policy. To kill an Arab; to destroy his livelihood; to humiliate him; to torture him; to force him and his family out of their homes—these are state policies deliberately designed to rid Palestine of its native population. To Zionists, Arabs are sub-humans (Untermenchen)—not worthy of dignity, respect or legal protection under the law. This attitude is nurtured through the Israeli school system, the media and military indoctrination, and differs little from the Nazi treatment of Jews. A sampling of two Zionist pronouncements should suffice to make this point:

“The only good Arab is a dead Arab...When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.” Israeli Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan. 1981.[518]

“It is forbidden to be merciful to them. You must give them missiles, with relish—annihilate them. Evil ones, damnable ones. May the Holy Name visit retribution on the Arabs’ heads, and cause their seed to be lost, and annihilate them, and cause them to be vanquished and cause them to be cast from the world.” Ovadia Yosef, founder and spiritual leader of the ultra-religious Shas party.[519]

Similarities between Israeli and U.S. sadism show that the junta has brought the U.S. down to Israel’s level. Examples abound of U.S. officials making trips to Israel to learn police and military tactics, and of Israelis coming to the U.S. to conduct seminars on interrogation tactics.[520] One frustrated former senior U.S. intelligence official explained the absurdity of this collusion: “It is bonkers, insane. Here we are—we’re already being compared to Sharon in the Arab world, and we’ve just confirmed it by bringing in the Israelis….”[521]

He was referring to assassination teams, but his comments can also apply to torture. The techniques of sleep deprivation, hooding, extreme temperatures, sexual humiliation and forced public nakedness were developed in Israel, the only country where such humiliation is a matter of policy, and where torture is formally approved. One such event took place on November 25, 2002, in Nablus.

Multiple witnesses told Reuters that Israeli soldiers stopped 25-year-old Yasser Sharar for violating curfew and ordered him at gunpoint to strip in the street: “They forced Yasser to take off all his clothes including his underwear,” a witness said. “They ordered him to walk like a dog and then he burst into tears. He kept crying and was in a very stressful situation… Many residents, including women watched him and he was very embarrassed.”[522]

The same sort of humiliation was also inflicted on medical workers with the Red Crescent Society. According to Mohammed Rafi‘, director of society’s youth development programs in Jenin:

[The soldiers] did not allow anyone in or out. If one of us wanted to leave to the hospital across the street, it would take two hours of telephone calls and deliberation. Ambulance drivers would be forced to wait for two hours with people bleeding inside before they were allowed entry to the hospital, they would take our volunteers or drivers, have them stripped naked, and interrogated and insulted.[523]

The Taguba Report

The humiliation, beating and psychological torture of Iraqis had been a long-established practice, here and elsewhere. According to Sgt. Greg Ford, a California National Guardsman assigned to the 223rd Military Intelligence Battalion, three of his fellow soldiers severely abused detainees in Samara north of Baghdad from April to June 2003. He said they threatened the Iraqis with guns, stuck lit cigarettes in their ears and choked them until they collapsed, after which his job was to revive them. In June, Ford reported the abuses to his commanding officers and requested an investigation, but was met with stonewalling and intimidation: “The command said, ‘Nope, you’re delusional, you’re crazy, it never happened.’ They gave me 30 seconds to withdraw my request for an investigation. I stood my ground.”[524] Ford was sent back to the U.S. for psychiatric evaluation.

In January 2004, Maj.-Gen. Antonio Taguba was assigned to conduct a detailed investigation into the army’s prison system in Iraq. He found incompetence and ignorance of standard operating procedures:

I find that the 800th MP Brigade was not adequately trained for a mission that included operating a prison or penal institution at Abu Ghraib Prison Complex… [W]ithout adequate training for a civilian internee detention mission, Brigade personnel relied heavily on individuals within the Brigade who had civilian corrections experience, including many who worked as prison guards or corrections officials in their civilian jobs. Almost every witness we interviewed had no familiarity with the provisions of A[rmy] R[egulation] 190-8 [Enemy Prisoners of War, Retained Personnel, Civilian Internees and Other Detainees] or F[ield] M[anual] 3-19.40 [Military Police Internment/Resettlement Operations]. It does not appear that a Mission Essential Task List (METL) based on in-theater missions was ever developed nor was a training plan implemented throughout the Brigade.[525]

Sgt. Ivan Frederick and Cpl. Charles A. Graner are typical examples of the unqualified staff assigned to Abu Ghraib. They and the other members of the 372nd MP Company, a component of the 800th MP Brigade, had been assigned to traffic detail upon arrival in the spring of 2003. In October, the same month that the abuse started, the company was assigned to prison detail at Abu Ghraib. Frederick and Graner were civilian prison guards in Virginia, and so were put in charge. During questioning at a military hearing, Frederick stated that neither he nor any of his colleagues had been given training guidelines.[526] Two such guidelines from AR 190-8 are:

4b. All prisoners will receive humane treatment without regard to race, nationality, religion, political opinion, sex, or other criteria. The following acts are prohibited: murder, torture, corporal punishment, mutilation, the taking of hostages, sensory deprivation, collective punishments, execution without trial by proper authority, and all cruel and degrading treatment.

c. All persons will be respected as human beings. They will be protected against all acts of violence to include rape, forced prostitution, assault and theft, insults, public curiosity, bodily injury, and reprisals of any kind. They will not be subjected to medical or scientific experiments. This list is not exclusive. E[nemy] P[risoner(s) of] W[ar] R[etained] P[ersonnel] are to be protected from all threats or acts of violence.[527]

In January 2004, the same month that Taguba began his investigation, the commander of the 800th MP Brigade Brig-Gen. (Res.) Janis Karpinski was admonished and quietly relieved of command because of the abuses committed during the fall of 2003. Taguba was particularly disturbed that Karpinski failed to comprehend that poor leadership and the absence of basic standards and principles led directly to the abuses at Abu Ghraib.[528] He cited as an example her failure to impress upon the brigade the need to observe the Geneva conventions, even after she agreed that four members of the 320th Military Police Battalion should stand a General Court Martial for abusing detainees at Camp Bucca on May 12, 2003.

For her part Karpinski had never run a prison, and as such was a poor choice to be put in charge of Abu Ghraib. Fact is, she wasn’t really in charge, and her dismissal was done largely for cosmetic reasons. She has since told the BBC that she is being made a scapegoat for the conduct of senior generals and politicians. Karpinski assumed command in June 2003, but within a couple of months her authority was undermined. At the end of August 2003, the Pentagon dispatched Maj.-Gen. Geoffrey Miller at the head of a 10-member task force to find ways to “soften up” Iraqi detainees and improve the flow of intelligence. Miller was commander of Guantánamo Bay Naval Station (GTMO) and was told to introduce inhumane “Gitmo” interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib and other prisons, despite their inadmissibility under the Geneva conventions. This fact is confirmed by Karpinski and Taguba, the latter of whom noted that Miller used unmuzzled military dogs to intimidate and frighten detainees. In one case, Taguba reported one detainee was severely bitten.[529]

During his visit, Miller began undercutting Karpinski’s authority by putting Col. Thomas M. Pappas, commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, in charge of the two wings of cellblock Tier 1-A, which housed the “High-Value Targets.” Karpinski was not even allowed in this area.[530] Furthermore, Miller contaminated the command structure by involving MPs in “setting the conditions for successful exploitation of the internees.” Under AR 190-8, MPs are not permitted to participate in Military Intelligence-supervised interrogations.[531]

From Pappas and Miller the torture of detainees and violations of the Geneva conventions can be traced upward to Lt.-Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, Miller’s immediate superior in Iraq. On November 19, 2003, Sanchez issued FRAGO (Fragmentary Order) 1108, which put Pappas and his 205th MI Brigade in overall command of Abu Ghraib. In essence, the torturers now ran the prison, leaving Karpinski’s 800th MP Brigade in charge of routine detainee operations.

Sanchez, himself, authorized interrogators to use dogs, temperature extremes, reversed sleep patterns and sensory deprivation at will. A memo dated October 9, 2003, enumerated the wide range of pressure tactics interrogators could use, including stress positions and solitary confinement for more than 30 days.[532] Placing MPs under the command of MI, was contrary to established procedure, and Taguba condemned this state of affairs as unsound:

There was clear friction and lack of effective communication between the commander[s]…There was no clear delineation of responsibility between commands, little coordination at the command level, and no integration of the two functions. Coordination occurred at the lowest possible levels with little oversight by commanders…. This effectively made an MI officer, rather than an MP officer, responsible for the MP units conducting detainee operations at that facility. This is not doctrinally sound due to the different missions and agendas assigned to each of these respective specialties.[533]

Taguba’s condemnation of abuse as doctrinally unsound is similar to the views of numerous Judge Advocates General, who said the torture scandals could have been avoided if their advice had been heeded. “The military lawyers have always been the ones speaking for greater protections and recognitions of rights for detainees —and the political appointees have argued for no recognition of rights and careful control of the process. That’s an argument, to date, that the political appointees have won.”[534]

In May and October 2003 senior JAGs were so concerned that Pentagon civilian lawyers were deliberately fostering legal ambiguity that they took their concerns to the New York Bar Association. This ambiguity began on January 18, 2002, when Bush accepted a Department of Justice ruling stating that Taliban and “al-Qaida” detainees did not merit protection under the Third Geneva Convention because they did not meet the definition of prisoners of war. Powell vigorously opposed this ruling, but a week later, White House head counsel (later Attorney-General) Alberto Gonzales, laid out the arguments for and against reconsideration, and recommended that Bush reject Powell’s advice:

As you have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of war. It is not the traditional clash between nations adhering to the laws of war that formed the backdrop for GPW. The nature of the new war places a high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians, and the need to try terrorists for war crimes such as wantonly killing civilians. In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners….[535]

Not only did Gonzales concoct an apologia for torture—”the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists”—his interpretation of the Third Geneva Convention is fraudulent. According to Section C, Article 5, any doubt regarding the hostile status of detainees must be determined by a competent tribunal.[536] The U.S. does not have the right to determine who does or does not fall under the protection of the convention. Moreover, humane treatment of detainees should not depend on legalistic technicalities.

A second leaked memorandum, prepared under the supervision of Pentagon general counsel William Haynes II, enhances Gonzales’s argument and demonstrates that the idea of mistreating Muslims originated with the junta:

[I]t is the position of the U.S. Government that none of the provisions of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War of August 12, 1949 (Third Geneva Convention) apply to al-Qaida detainees because, inter alia, al-Qaida is not a High Contracting Party to the Convention. As to the Taliban, the U.S. Position is that the provisions of Geneva apply to our present conflict with the Taliban, but that Taliban detainees do not qualify as prisoners of war under Article 4 of the Geneva Convention. The Department of Justice has opined that the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Personnel in time of War (Fourth Geneva Convention) does not apply to unlawful combatants.[537]

Among the tendentious casuistry is this paragraph is the expression “unlawful combatants,” which has no standing in international law. Ironically, by using this term to deny detainees protection, Haynes not only exposed the vacuity of the Department of Justice ruling, but also showed that the junta deliberately manufactured a legal justification for torture contrary to government policy at the time. Two months before he accepted the ruling, Bush articulated humane treatment of international terrorists in light of the September 11 attack:

Any individual subject to this order shall be:…

treated humanely, without any adverse distinction based on race, color, religion, gender, birth, wealth, or any similar criteria;

afforded adequate food, drinking water, shelter, clothing, and medical treatment; [and]

allowed the free exercise of religion consistent with the requirements of such detention…[538]

This lament from an embittered State Department official sums up the damage the junta has done the U.S.: “Not only have we validated and emboldened our enemies, but we have shamed our friends. Arab moderates who trusted our ideals feel betrayed and abandoned.”[539]

Gitmo, Baghram and Abu Ghraib

The CIA training manual describes an entirely different attitude toward torture than does the Army’s manual. Rather than inflict physical pain, CIA interrogators are instructed to employ Israeli “no touch” torture techniques such as hooding or sleep deprivation to disorient the subject, as well as sexual humiliation. From here they proceed to self-inflicted discomfort such as forcing a detainee to stand for hours with arms extended.

Alfred W. McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison said the use of these torture manuals ceased in the early 1990s, but after the “war on terrorism” was declared, they resumed, beginning at Baghram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.[540]

According to Human Rights Watch, U.S. troops use excessive force to make arrests, destroy property, and use overwhelming firepower against people who turn out to be law-abiding citizens. As in the Occupied Territories, little or no attempt is made to distinguish enemies from non-combatants.[541] In the Baghram detention center in Afghanistan, for example, Afghans and internationals alike are held without right to counsel, legal protection, or visitation rights.

In his documentary Breaking the Silence, John Pilger describes the arrest of Wazir Mohamad, a taxi driver who ended up in Baghram merely for asking why one of his fellow drivers had been jailed. On January 10, 2002, the U.S. began flying detainees like Mohamad to Guantánamo Bay for interrogation. “Gitmo” is declared by statute to be within the Special Maritime Territorial Jurisdiction of the U.S., which means that military and civilian personnel fall under the extended criminal jurisdiction of federal district courts.

Because of this jurisdictional contrivance, U.S. citizens and detainees are deemed to be within the U.S., and therefore not subject to the Third Geneva Convention’s ban on mistreatment of Prisoners of War, the Fourth Geneva Convention’s ban on mistreatment of civilians, or the Torture Statute as defined in Title 18, Part I, Chapter 113c, Sec. 2340 of the United States Code.[542] Barbara Olshansky, a lawyer for Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal, two Britons abused at Gitmo, describes the treatment detainees received:

They were very clear that they were shackled for hours on end, and made to stand in stressed positions when being questioned by the military interrogators. They were subjected to threatening dogs, freezing cold temperatures, being made to stand naked, the same type of humiliation and stress techniques that were used in Iraq.[543]

Similarly at Baghram, detainees were sexually humiliated, kept in isolation, hooded, and had their hands chained to the ceiling for prolonged periods. Given that detainees at Gitmo had no recourse to the Geneva conventions, one would have expected the conventions to protect those held in Afghanistan and Iraq. They did, but the Pentagon and White House deliberately concocted sophistries to rationalize torture in the name of the “war on terrorism.” This is why Miller was sent to “Gitmoize” Abu Ghraib prison and why the junta adopted a laissez-faire attitude toward torture.

In December 2001, two detainee deaths at Baghram were officially ruled homicides. An American pathologist determined they were due in part to blunt force injuries to the legs that complicated coronary artery disease. The U.S. soldiers who committed these abuses were supervised by Company A, 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, which moved to Iraq the next year. Some of its members would later take part in the atrocities at Abu Ghraib, where the mistreatment of detainees followed the CIA manual.

In a statement promising reforms, Miller virtually admitted that the U.S. had used Israeli torture techniques: “We will no longer, in any circumstances, hood any of the detainees. We will no longer use stress positions in any of our interrogations. And we will no longer use sleep deprivation in any of our interrogations.”[544]

Israel in the Shadows

The “war on terrorism” allowed the junta to invent a new category of enemy, one that it could argue wasn’t covered by the conventions. Since the junta’s “war on terrorism” is a direct product of the September 11 attack, we can say that the attack made the systematic torture of Muslims possible, but why should the U.S. go to such lengths to justify the maltreatment of civilian Iraqis (and Afghanistanis) if oil were the purpose of the invasion?

Taguba even noted that a large number of prisoners at Abu Ghraib were common criminals, not members of international terrorists organizations, and so torturing them to extract information about “al-Qa’ida” was gratuitously sadistic. The U.S. is already distrusted throughout the Muslim world because of its subservience to Israel. Torturing Iraqis—or anybody, for that matter—was clearly not in the U.S. national interest or in the interest of the oil industry.

The only people who wanted to torture Muslims were Israelis, and junta wanted to keep Israel’s role in the tortures hidden at all costs, but the leak of the Taguba Report to the New Yorker made that task impossible. Even the mainstream press was acknowledging the Israeli origin of U.S. torture techniques. A recent article in Jane’s Foreign Review disclosed that the U.S. knew it needed help conducting mass interrogations of Arabic-speaking detainees and so employed linguists from Shin Bet, the Israeli security service, to help “break” the Iraqi captives.”[545]

Nevertheless, Israel’s fifth column in the Pentagon went to absurd lengths to slam the barn door after the horse had bolted. Daniel R. Dunn, an information officer in Feith’s office, sent a frantic memo to all Pentagon staff warning them not to go to the Fox News website to read it or get a copy. Dunn even deliberately misspelled “Taguba” as “Tugabe,” to sabotage Internet searches.[546]

The junta was right to be afraid because Taguba connected the Pentagon to U.S. civilian contractors that have strong ties to Israel:

In general, U.S. civilian contract personnel (Titan Corporation, CACI, etc…), third country nationals, and local contractors do not appear to be properly supervised within the detention facility at Abu Ghraib. During our on-site inspection, they wandered about with too much unsupervised free access in the detainee area.[547]

This free access, similar to the free access Israeli officers enjoy in the Pentagon, resulted in the particularly brutal rape of a teenaged boy by a man thought to be a army translator from Titan. As detainee Kasim Hilas recounted:

I saw [name blacked out] fucking a kid, his age would be about 15–18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard the screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [blacked out], who was wearing the military uniform putting his dick in the little kid’s ass. I couldn’t see the face of the kid because his face wasn’t in front of the door. And the female soldier was taking pictures.[548]

Titan has deep ties to Israel and the junta, as shown by the connection to James Woolsey, former CIA Director and charter member of PNAC. He served on Titan’s board of directors, was an architect of the Iraq invasion, and was a staunch backer of Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress. Woolsey is now a pro-Israel lobbyist with affiliations to Zionist fronts, including the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, JINSA, and the Center for Security Policy. In his report, Taguba singled out two contractors attached to the 205th MI Brigade for dismissal and formal reprimands—Steven Stephanowicz, a civilian interrogator with CACI, and John Israel an interpreter with Titan:

•              [Stephanowicz] made a false statement to the investigation team regarding the locations of his interrogations, the activities during his interrogations, and his knowledge of abuses.

•              Allowed and/or instructed MPs, who were not trained in interrogation techniques, to facilitate interrogations by ‘setting conditions’ which were neither authorized and in accordance with applicable regulations/policy. He clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse.

•              [Israel] denied ever having seen interrogation processes in violation of the IROE, [Interrogation Rules of Engagement] which is contrary to several witness statements.

•              Did not have a security clearance.[549]

The fact that he did not have a security clearance fuelled speculation that “John Israel,” a Christian Iraqi-American born in Baghdad in 1955, was a pseudonym for an Israeli intelligence agent. In his conclusion, Taguba found sufficient evidence to warrant an inquiry into the conduct of the 205th MI Brigade and the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center (JIDC) at Abu Ghraib:

Specifically, I suspect that Col Thomas M. Pappas, LTC Steve L. Jordan, Mr. Steven Stephanowicz, and Mr. John Israel were either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib (BCCF) and strongly recommend immediate disciplinary action as described in the preceding paragraphs as well as the initiation of a Procedure 15 Inquiry to determine the full extent of their culpability.[550]

The Haynes memorandum also implicates the White House in the torture policy. As Jane Mayer wrote in the New Yorker, the ideology of the junta’s culture of torture goes back decades and is rooted in the dogma of presidential dictatorship:

Haynes is a protégé of Cheney’s influential chief of staff David Addington. Addington’s relationship with Cheney goes back to the Reagan years, when Cheney, who was then a representative from Wyoming, was the ranking Republican on a House select committee investigating the Iran-Contra scandal. Addington, a congressional aide, helped to write a report for the committee’s Republican minority, arguing that the law banning covert aid to the Contras—the heart of the scandal—was an unconstitutional infringement of Presidential prerogatives. Both men continue to embrace an extraordinarily expansive view of executive power. In 1989, when Cheney was named Secretary of Defense by George H. W. Bush, he hired Addington as a special assistant, and eventually appointed him to be his general counsel.… Haynes rarely discussed his alliance with Cheney’s office, but his colleagues, as one of them told me, noticed that “stuff moved back and forth fast” between the two power centers. Haynes was not considered to be a particularly ideological thinker, but he was seen as “pliant,” as one former Pentagon colleague put it, when it came to serving the agenda of Cheney and Addington.[551]

Mayer’s essay is centered on the efforts of Alberto J. Mora, former general counsel of the United States Navy, to fight Haynes (and by extension Cheney) over the administration’s decision to permit the abuse of detainees. A key piece of evidence was Rumsfeld’s December 2, 2002, memo in which he questioned why detainees were forced to stand for only four hours a day when he himself stood for eight to 10. Mora was worried that whatever the motive lay behind Rumsfeld’s comment, it could be taken as license to abuse. It was. Rumsfeld authorized 16 interrogation techniques in addition to 17 already permitted. At this time, Rumsfeld was also in weekly contact with Gitmo Commander Miller regarding the torture of Mohammed al-Kahtani, believed to be “the 20th hijacker” on September 11, 2001. Pursuant to Rumsfeld’s directive, al-Kahtani was forced to stand naked before a female interrogator, was accused of being a homosexual, was forced to wear women’s underwear, made to perform “dog tricks” on a leash, and forcibly given enemas. He received 18-to-20-hour interrogations during 48 of 54 days.[552]

Despite the revelations of abuse at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib—and over the objections of the CIA, FBI and the Defense Intelligence Agency—the torture of detainees in U.S. custody continued. An internal FBI memo from dated May 10, 2004, expressed the agency’s profound disagreement with the tactics used by Gitmo commanders Miller and Gen. Michael Dunlavey. The memo reported that Miller and Dunlavey said the Pentagon “has their marching orders from the SECDEF [Rumsfeld],” and that the FBI was given a deadline to use “traditional methods” to get information out of al-Kahtani.[553] The best evidence that abuse was widespread and tolerated comes from the officers and soldiers who served in Iraq. According to Lt.–Gen. Randall M. Schmidt:

“There were no limits. There was [sic] no limits put on this and there [sic] no boundaries. How loud was the music? You know how long did you play it? You know, did you play it just to where it was decibels earbreaking and you back it off a notch, and then leave it on forever. No end. When was this special interrogation plan going to end? It was never going to end. Okay? It ended because the SECDEF rescinded his guidance from the policy level and then it shot right down to the JTF, the interrogation level. There was no boundary and there was no limit on all these little creative [techniques]—and that’s what I said in my report.”[554]

Apocalypse New[555]

On March 16, 1968, 80 men of First Battalion, 20th Infantry, 11th Light Infantry Brigade, C Company entered a cluster of huts known as My Lai 4 on a retaliatory “search and destroy” mission against Vietcong guerillas. No Vietcong were in the village and C Company did not face a single shot of enemy fire. Nevertheless, U.S. soldiers massacred hundreds of Vietnamese civilians as collective punishment. Ex-Pvt Paul Meadlo of Lt. William Calley Jr.’s platoon, which led the attack, gave the following account to CBS News:

“There was about 40, 45 people that we gathered in the center of the village. And we placed them in there, and it was like a little island, right there in the center of the village, I’d say. Men, women, children. Babies. And we all huddled them up. We made them squat down, and Lieutenant Calley came over and said, ‘You know what to do with them, don’t you?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ So I took it for granted that he just wanted us to watch them. And he left, and came back about 10 or 15 minutes later, and said, ‘How come you ain’t killed them yet?’ And I told him ‘I didn’t think you wanted us to kill them, that you just wanted us to guard them.’ He said, ‘No, I want them dead.” He stepped back about 10, 15 feet, and he started shooting them. And he told me to start shooting. So I started shooting, I poured about four clips into the group. I fired them on automatic—you just spray the area and so you can’t know how many you killed ‘cause they were going fast. …And babies. And so we started shooting them, and somebody told us to switch off to single shot so that we could save ammo. So we switched off to single shot, and shot a few more rounds.” [556]

The My Lai massacre would never have come to light had it not been for former soldier Ron Riddenhour, who learned about it from former comrades, and wrote his findings to Members of Congress. As a result of congressional pressure, a court martial was convened on November 17, 1970. Calley did not deny murdering civilians, including the babies, but said he was only following orders. The trial ended on March 29, 1971, with Calley being convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labour. The army reduced his sentence to 20 years, and later that year President Richard Nixon ordered him released from prison and placed under house arrest. A federal judge later threw out all charges against Calley and ordered him freed. The charges were reinstated on appeal, but Calley never returned to jail. In all, he served 3.5 years for a war crime.

Despite the inadequacy of Calley’s punishment, the fact that Congress brought charges at all showed that it recognized collective punishment to be war crime, even though then-staff Army Major Colin Powell tried to suppress any inquiry into the massacre and other Vietnam-era atrocities.[557]

The Invisible Enemy

Like the Vietcong, resistance fighters in Afghanistan and Iraq do not wear uniforms, march in formation, or fight on a battlefield. They wage a determined insurgency against U.S. occupation and the U.S.’s puppet governments. Now as then, the U.S. has no coherent political strategy for the country it’s occupying, does not understand the enemy it faces, and does not care about civilian populations. Inasmuch as the U.S. fought the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese Army, these were but manifestations of the real enemy—political nationalism—and an army can’t fight an “ism.” It has no physical existence. Only people may or may not subscribe to it, which means that a “terrorist” could be anyone or no one. A soldier can’t point to someone and say, “he’s a terrorist,” or “he’s a civilian,” so why bother trying? Varnado Simpson, a 19-year-old assistant platoon leader at My Lai, showed how this mentality lay behind the My Lai massacre:

“To us they were no [sic] civilians. You don’t call them civilians. To us they were VC. They showed no ways or means that they wasn’t. You don’t have any alternatives. You got to do something. If they were VC and got away, then they could turn around and kill you. You’re risking your life doing that work. And if someone kills you, those people aren’t going to feel sorry for you.”[558]

The mentality of soldiers in Iraq is exactly the same, as former sniper Jody Casey recounted: “I have seen innocent people being killed. IEDs [Improvised Explosive Devices] go off and [you] just zap any farmer that is close to you. You know, those people were out there trying to make a living, but on the other hand, you get hit by four or five of those IEDs and you get pretty tired of that, too.”[559]

To destroy the invisible enemy—whether in Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq—the U.S. murdered people and destroyed villages. In an earlier time, such violence was called a pogrom or crusade, like the Catholic Church’s massacre of the Cathars for posing a political threat to papal absolutism. U.S. policy toward Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine follows a similar pattern, in that Muslims are being murdered and their cities destroyed because they are manifestations of opposition to Israel/U.S. colonialism. Thomas Brinson, a soldier who survived the 1968 Tet offensive, said: “Iraq is just Arabic for Vietnam, like the poster says—the same horror, the same tears.”[560]

By December 15, 2006, the U.S. military death toll in Iraq had reached 2,940—2,801 since the U.S. ended offensive operations in May 2003. The number of wounded U.S. soldiers number in the tens of thousands, and more than 40,000 have deserted since 2000. Speaking to the Washington Post, Army strategist Col. Paul Hughes epitomized the anguish of the soldiers who have been forced to fight “Israel’s war” and die the death of 1,000 cuts: “I lost my brother in Vietnam. I promised myself, when I came on active duty, that I would do everything in my power to prevent that [sort of strategic loss] from happening again. Here I am, 30 years later, thinking we will win every fight and lose the war because we don’t understand the war we’re in.”[561]

Even U.S. military leaders can’t shake the ghost of Vietnam. On March 4, 2002, during a Washington press briefing to discuss the combat deaths of eight Americans in Afghanistan, Gen. Tommy Franks offered his prayers for the families of those killed “in [the] ongoing operations in Vietnam,” He later corrected himself—”Vietnam was a long time ago, and not at all like what we’re seeing now.”[562]—but this reflexive denial did little to obscure the truth of his Freudian slip.

As far as the effect of U.S. violence toward native peoples goes, comparing Iraq and Afghanistan to Vietnam is certainly valid, but the cause is different. Today, committing war crimes is national policy. On March 31, 2004, four mercenaries from the private security company Blackwater USA were killed in an ambush in Falluja. Their bodies were burned and mutilated, and two were strung up on a bridge over the Euphrates. The ambushers made their own video of the attack and the images were shown around the world. It was a gruesome act of violence, but nothing compared to the premeditated U.S. reprisal, which not only was a war crime, but also  gave further proof of Israel’s hand in the Iraq occupation.

Marines, accompanied by F-16 fighters and assault helicopters, under the code name ‘Vigilant Resolve’ subjected Falluja to sustained bombardment and siege. In the first two weeks of April, 600 Iraqis—including 450 elderly people, women and children—were murdered. An article in the Israeli daily Ha’aretz called it a war crime:

“The sight of decapitated children, the rows of dead women and the shocking pictures of the soccer stadium that was turned into a temporary grave for hundreds of the slain—all were broadcast to the world only by the Al Jazeera network. During the operation in Falluja, according to the organization Doctors Without Borders, U.S. Marines even occupied the hospitals and prevented hundreds of the wounded from receiving medical treatment. Snipers fired from the rooftops at anyone who tried to approach.”[563]

The massacre of Falluja was premeditated, and here is where analogies with Vietnam break down: as horrific as the My Lai massacre was, there is no evidence that the U.S. government ordered it or approved of it. To understand this and other acts of premeditated cruelty toward Muslims, we need to start with the 1949 Geneva Convention, to which the U.S. is a signatory.

According to Article 33: “No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed,” and “collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.” The Article was created in response to the common Nazi practice of inflicting collective punishment on towns. On June 4, 1942, for example, Czech partisans assassinated mass murderer Reinhard Heydrich, and in retaliation, Hitler ordered the village of Lidice to be razed. In all, 173 men and boys were murdered, 198 women were sent to a concentration camp in Ravensbrueck, and another 256 Czechs were murdered because they aided the assassination. Thousands of others were deported to concentration camps in Austria and Germany. The Nazi practice of persecuting families or of people suspected of working against the regime was known as sippenhaft.

Sippenhaft is an integral part of Israel’s policy to terrorize Palestinians into acquiescing in their own destruction. Anyone who engages in sacrifice bombings or other any other action against Israel invites premeditated collective punishment. In Chapter 10, we saw how Israel launched “Grapes of Wrath” against a UN refugee compound in Qana in southern Lebanon after Hezbollah attacked an Israeli patrol, an act that was itself a retaliation for Israel’s laying of anti-personnel landmines. Here, it’s worth reiterating the account of journalist Robert Fisk:

Not since Sabra and Chatila had I seen the innocent slaughtered like this. The Lebanese refugee women and children and men lay in heaps, their heads or arms or legs missing, beheaded or disemboweled. There were well over a hundred of them. A baby lay without a head. The Israeli shells had scythed through them as they lay in the United Nations shelter, believing that they were safe under the world’s protection. Like the Muslims of Srebrenica, the Muslims of Qana were wrong.[564]

Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne told USA Today that 95 percent of the dead were “military age males”—as if that somehow legitimized the bombardment and siege of an entire city--and that only 600 Iraqis were killed, thus attesting to the Marines’ precision in targeting insurgents. This was a deliberate lie to cover up a war crime in progress, and was exposed by al-Jazeera.[565] It reported that U.S. helicopters and snipers fired on ambulances and civilian vehicles carrying the wounded to overcrowded clinics or the hospital. It also reported that trucks carrying aid, including medicine, food and water were being barred from the city. Al-Jazeera should know, since it has the only television crew in the city—cameramen Layf Muftaq and Hasan Walid, sound engineer Sayf al-Din and correspondent Hamid Hadid.[566]

Al-Jazeera’s reporting unnerved the U.S. so much so that the crew was told it had to leave Falluja before any steps could be taken to end the siege. Nothing proves the effectiveness of al-Jazeera’s reporting and the criminality of the U.S. assault better than this excerpt from islamonline.net.

As Brig.-Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the deputy director of U.S. military operations in Iraq, was speaking by phone on al-Jazeera and insisting that American forces declared a unilateral ceasefire in Fallujah, the channel was airing live images of continued air raids by F16 fighter jets on residential neighborhoods of the town. Kimmitt later dismissed the coverage of the channel for the crisis as a “series of lies.” However, asked by al-Jazeera anchor about the live images, the U.S. commander said he was not accusing al-Jazeera of faking the images, but rather “looked at things differently.” He said the attacks by F16 fighter jets and helicopters were meant to take out ‘armed insurgents firing at our troops’. The anchor reminded Kimmitt, however, that “live coverage showed children and women killed by the missiles, not armed insurgents.”[567]

Nine months later, Falluja was subjected to an even more gruesome example of U.S. sippenhaft, and the following account from the Guardian deserves to be reproduced in full:

One year ago this week, U.S.-led occupying forces launched a devastating assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja. The mood was set by Lt.-Col. Gary Brandl: “The enemy has got a face. He’s called Satan. He’s in Falluja. And we’re going to destroy him.”

The assault was preceded by eight weeks of aerial bombardment. U.S. troops cut off the city’s water, power and food supplies, condemned as a violation of the Geneva Convention by a UN special rapporteur, who accused occupying forces of “using hunger and deprivation of water as a weapon of war against the civilian population.” Two-thirds of the city’s 300,000 residents fled, many to squatters’ camps without basic facilities.

As the siege tightened, the Red Cross, Red Crescent and the media were kept out, while males between the ages of 15 and 55 were kept in. U.S sources claimed between 600 and 6,000 insurgents were holed up inside the city—which means that the vast majority of the remaining inhabitants were non-combatants. On November 8, 10,000 U.S. troops, supported by 2,000 Iraqi recruits, equipped with artillery and tanks, supported from the air by bombers and helicopter gunships, blasted their way into a city the size of Leicester. It took a week to establish control of the main roads; another two before victory was claimed.

The city’s main hospital was selected as the first target, the New York Times reported, “because the US military believed it was the source of rumors about heavy casualties.” An AP photographer described U.S. helicopters killing a family of five trying to ford a river to safety. “There were American snipers on top of the hospital shooting everyone,” said Burhan Fasa’am, a photographer with the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation. “With no medical supplies, people died from their wounds. Everyone in the street was a target for the Americans.”

The U.S. also deployed incendiary weapons, including white phosphorous. “Usually we keep the gloves on,” Captain Erik Krivda said, but “for this operation, we took the gloves off”. By the end of operations, the city lay in ruins. Falluja’s compensation commissioner has reported that 36,000 of the city’s 50,000 homes were destroyed, along with 60 schools and 65 mosques and shrines.

The US claims that 2,000 died, most of them fighters. Other sources disagree. When medical teams arrived in January they collected more than 700 bodies in only one third of the city. Iraqi NGOs and medical workers estimate between 4,000 and 6,000 dead, mostly civilians—a proportionately higher death rate than in Coventry and London during the blitz.

The collective punishment inflicted on Falluja—with logistical and political support from Britain—was largely masked by the US and British media, which relied on reporters embedded with US troops. The BBC, in particular, offered a sanitized version of the assault: civilian suffering was minimized and the ethics and strategic logic of the attack largely unscrutinized.

Falluja proved to be yet another of the war’s phantom turning points. Violent resistance spread to other cities. In the last two months, Tal-Afar, Haditha, Husaybah—all alleged terrorist havens heavily populated by civilians—have come under the hammer. Falluja is still so heavily patrolled that visitors have described it as “a giant prison.” Only a fraction of the promised reconstruction and compensation has materialized.

Like Jallianwallah Bagh, Guernica, My Lai, Halabja and Grozny, Falluja is a place name that has become a symbol of unconscionable brutality. As the war in Iraq claims more lives, we need to ensure that this atrocity—so recent, so easily erased from public memory—is recognized as an example of the barbarism of nations that call themselves civilized.[568]

Note how Brandl declared his intention to destroy “Satan” (the invisible enemy) and proceeded to massacre people. How is his crime different from Calley’s? What value are we supposed to put on the estimate of “600 to 6,000” insurgents? What does an Iraqi “insurgent” look like? If this were a military operation, why did “civilized” Christians target hospitals and schools, and prevent non-combatants from leaving? There are no rational answers to these questions if we operate under the assumption that the U.S. is in Iraq for the sake of oil. After the first siege, Falluja resident Nada Rabee, told Reuters: “When the Americans arrived there were only about 50 guerrillas. By the end of the week there were a few thousand. They are just making the situation worse.”[569] There are answers if we recognize U.S. sippenhaft to be of the same nature as Nazi/Israeli sippenhaft.

From Falluja to Haditha

Of all the massacres committed by U.S. forces in Iraq, the killing of 24 civilians in Haditha has been most closely equated with the My Lai massacre. In the fall of 2005, 1st Marine Regiment, 3rd Battalion, K Company led by Capt. Lucas McConnell was deployed near the town of Haditha, 220 kilometers northwest of Baghdad along the Euphrates River. The battalion had lost 17 men in 10 days during the second siege of Falluja and by the time the troops arrived in Haditha, morale and discipline had disintegrated. A Daily Telegraph reporter described the area as “feral.”[570] Like the soldiers at My Lai, the marines at Haditha had been brutalized by violence to the point where they lost all sense of the morality and honor that is supposed to be the foundation of military service.

On November 19, 2005, a roadside bomb killed a marine near the town and within hours the U.S. murdered 24 civilians in revenge. The next day, the marines issued a statement claiming that a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol came under small-arms fire, and eight insurgents and 15 civilians died in the ensuing battle, but this cover-up was exposed four months later when a videotape shot by an Iraqi journalism student surfaced. It showed the bodies of women and children, some in their nightclothes.

Other Iraqis came forward with stories of Marines entering two homes and killing 15 people, including a three-year-old girl and a 76-year-old man, more than four hours after the bombing. The most compelling evidence of a deliberate massacre was the taped interview of 12-year-old Safa Younis, the only one of her family to survive:

“‘They knocked at the door. My father went to open it. They shot him dead from behind the door, and then they shot him again after they opened the door.’ She describes hearing the marines go through the rest of the house, shooting and setting off a grenade before getting to the bedroom where she was with her mother and siblings. ‘Then comes one American soldier and shot [at] us all,’ she says. ‘I pretended to be dead … and he did not know about me.’”[571]

“What happened at Haditha appears to be outright murder,” said Marc Garlasco of Human Rights Watch. “[It] will go down as Iraq’s My Lai.”’[572] Baghdad-based independent journalist Dahr Jamail wrote that it was not an isolated case because the U.S. has committed countless My Lais.[573] Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said violence against civilians is a regular occurrence, and many U.S. troops do not respect the Iraqi people. “They crush them with their vehicles and kill them just on suspicion.”[574]

In mid-August 2006, the essential truth of Garlasco’s and Jamail’s My Lai analogies was confirmed when a high-level military investigation led by Army Maj.–Gen. Eldon A. Bargewell determined that the marines who were involved in the massacre destroyed or withheld evidence. Furthermore the authors of the Bargewell report said the commanders of the Second Marine Division created a climate that minimized the importance of Iraqi lives, particularly in Haditha: “In their eyes, they didn’t believe anyone was innocent,” said one of the officials, describing the attitude of the marines in the unit toward Iraqis. “Either you were an active participant, or you were complicit.”[575] On Saturday June 3, 2006, just as the horrors of Haditha were coming to light, the Iraqi government rejected the findings of a U.S. inquiry into the deaths of nine civilians in a U.S. raid in the town of Ishaqi.

The only other power that murders indiscriminately and does not respect Arab lives is Israel. Just six days after the Ishaqi raid, seven members of a Palestinian family having a beach picnic on the Gaza Strip were killed in an explosion. The only survivor was an 11-year-old girl Huda Ghalia. Israeli military leaders tried to sell the feeble cover story that the explosion was caused by an Islamic Jihad IED and that Israeli shelling of the beach had stopped hours earlier, but it collapsed almost immediately after it was learned that shrapnel fragments belonged to a 155mm Israeli artillery shell.[576] Israel said it was trying to kill militants who were planning a Qassam rocket attack, but this rationalization for murder-at-will cannot excuse the wanton disregard for civilian life.

The Haditha and Gaza massacres show identical savagery and dishonesty, and given Israel’s connection to U.S. torturers at Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and Baghram, it’s logical, even necessary, to see the invasion of Iraq as part of Israel’s campaign to subjugate the Middle East.

16

Enemies by Design:

Syria and Iran

With the U.S. military mired in not one but two quagmires—“Afghanistnam” and “Iraqnam”—the army has had to resort to unethical means to fill its ranks. In late September 2004 in southern Ohio, Army recruiters signed up a man three weeks out of a mental institution fully aware of his condition. The recruitment was overturned but the recruiters, reported the New York Times, were not punished; in fact, throughout the U.S., officers responsible for recruitment encourage acts of fraud like hiding police records and medical histories, falsifying documents, giving out answers to aptitude tests, and in the case of a Denver high school student, giving instructions on how to create a fake graduation certificate, and mask the effects of narcotics. “The problem is that no one wants to join,” the recruiter said. “We have to play fast and loose with the rules just to get by.” [577]

Retired Army officer Andrew Krepinevich wrote a 136-page report for the Pentagon and concluded that the Army could not defeat the Iraqi insurgency given the pace of troop deployments.  He referred to the Army as “a thin green line” that could snap, and cited the Pentagon’s decision to cut back deployments as recognition that the military was over-extended.[578]

Adding to this dire scenario are increasing numbers of veterans who fought in Iraq are actively protesting the war, and growing discontent among reservists who are being forced to remain in Iraq long after their tour is over. When the Iraq invasion began in March 2003, troops came predominantly from the active duty military; by the end of 2004, National Guard and Army Reserve units made up about 40 percent of the force. Over this same period, desertions rose to 5,500.[579]

The geopolitical ramifications of the Iraq quagmire were set out in an eight-page report by Lawrence Korb, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, and Brian Katulis, its Director of Democracy and Public Diplomacy. Writing in November 2005, they argued that unless the 140,000-odd force in Iraq is reduced it would develop into a national security liability. Specifically, they recommended that 80,000 troops leave in 2006 and the rest by the end of 2007. Some would be redeployed to Kuwait, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia, and all National Guard and reserve troops would return home.[580]

The above-cited data and the premeditated sadism described in Chapter 15, prove that the two quagmires are destroying the U.S. militarily, politically and psychologically. The rational response—for the sake of national security if nothing else—would be to follow the advice of Krepinevich, Korb and Katulis, yet the junta is going out of its way to fabricate a case for more hostilities, this time against Syria and Iran. This statement by GOP activist Bruce Blakeman shows how the Big Picture of Israel’s domination of the Middle East now dictates U.S. militarism: “The president realized not only that Saddam Hussein was a danger to America, but that Saddam Hussein had designs on attacking Israel. There was a concern that an attack on Israel would turn into a regional war, with Syria and Iran joining in on Iraq’s side.”[581]

As this chapter will show, the campaigns to destabilize Syria and Iran are identical to the campaign to destabilize Iraq—invent a threat; demonize the head of state; dredge up the specter of weapons of mass destruction; coerce the UN into acquiescence; and reject every offer of peaceful resolution.  Given that the invasion of Iraq has been a folly worse than the Vietnam War, the same result can be expected with respect to Syria and Iran. Clearly, the U.S. is on Zionist autopilot and flying into a mountain.

Syria

One of the clearest exponents of the junta’s unbounded bloodlust is Michael Ledeen, who holds the American Enterprise Institute’s ironically named Freedom Chair. He is a devout Likudnik who advocates nothing less than the de facto U.S.–Israeli conquest of the Middle East:

Unable or unwilling to recognize that it is impossible to bring about a serious peace between Israel and the Palestinians unless Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia support it (and the current leaders of those countries will never support it, which is why they are the targets of the war against terrorism), the Bush administration, egged on by the Saudis, the Egyptians, and the Europeans, is desperately looking for a magic formula. They have bought into the big lie that we can’t wage war against the terror states until there is peace between Israel and the Palestinians. They have it backwards. If we destroy the terror masters in Baghdad, Damascus, Tehran, and Riyadh, we might have a chance of brokering a durable peace. Without that, it’s hopeless. The terror now afflicting Israel is not a purely Palestinian operation. Iran, Iraq, and Syria are all deeply involved, and Saudi Arabia foots many of the bills. Therefore there can be no “peace” until and unless we win the war... first. So let’s get on with the war. Faster, please.[582]

Just four months earlier on February 19, 2003, Sharon said virtually the same thing to a group of visiting U.S. Congressmen: “[Iran, Libya and Syria] are irresponsible states, which must be disarmed of weapons of mass destruction, and a successful American move in Iraq as a model will make that easier to achieve.” After meeting with Israeli officials, Bolton, when he was Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, reported that the U.S. would certainly attack Iraq, and that it would then be necessary to deal with threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea, even though such widening of the conflict ran counter to the U.S.’s traditional interest in promoting stability in the oil-rich region.[583]  Ledeen’s castigation of Syria as part of the “target masters” is simply hatemongering that conspicuously omits proof that Israel manipulates campaigns against Middle Eastern regimes.

Three days before the U.S. formally ended offensive operations against Iraq on May 1, 2003, Israel’s U.S. ambassador Daniel Ayalon said the defeat of Saddam Hussein “helped create great opportunities for Israel,” but more had to be done. It was now time to apply economic and psychological pressure to isolate and overthrow regimes in Syria and Iran. Suddenly, Syria became a major U.S. focus, even though Bush did not include it in his infamous “axis of evil” speech. The new political and economic offensive would be driven by the same rumors and fabrications that were used to justify the invasion of Iraq—”weapons of mass destruction.” “Significant equipment, assets and perhaps even expertise was transferred, the first signs of which appeared in August or September 2002,” a Bush administration official told The Telegraph in early April 2003. “It is quite possible that Iraqi nuclear scientists went to Syria and that Saddam’s regime may retain part of its army there.”[584]

In that same news story, Sharon declared that Israel “was certain” Iraq had recently moved chemical or biological weapons into Syria.” Further down, though, we read a week-old comment in which then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said the U.S. didn’t know if Hussein had exported weapons to Syria.

Israel asserted control over the Syrian campaign on October 5, 2003, when it bombed the Ein Saheb camp 22 kilometres northwest of Damascus, ostensibly in reprisal for a Haifa restaurant bombing. It claimed Islamic Jihad used the camp to train terrorists, but the camp had never belonged to Islamic Jihad but to the Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command, and even then it had been abandoned. Abu Emad El-Refaei, an Islamic Jihad spokesman in Beirut, told al-Jazeera that all the group’s military bases were inside the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The only casualty of the bombing was an injured civilian guard.[585]

To keep up the propaganda barrage, Israel’s UN ambassador Dan Gillerman that same day called Israel’s attack a “measured defensive response” that did not violate international law. This was a blatant lie because Article 51 of the UN Charter, which Gillerman cited, does not condone pre-emptive attacks, and Articles 33 to 38 rule out unilateral aggression as an acceptable tactic. Moreover, the target in question was not a threat.[586]

Gillerman also justified the attack by claiming that Syria provided “safe harbor, training facilities, funding, logistical support” to terrorist groups, but this is also an illegitimate excuse because it happens to be the same one Nixon employed to justify the secret bombing of Cambodia. That bombing, which began on February 22, 1969, led to the 1973 War Powers Act by which Congress banned the bombing of Cambodia and compelled the president to consult Congress before committing troops. If Congress recognized the bombing of Cambodia to be illegal, it must do the same in the case of Syria. Nevertheless, on November 11, 2003, the Senate passed the gratuitously punitive H.R. 1828, The Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act, which reads in part:

“A bill to halt Syrian support for terrorism, end its occupation of Lebanon, stop its development of weapons of mass destruction, cease its illegal importation of Iraqi oil and illegal shipments of weapons and other military items to Iraq, and by so doing hold Syria accountable for the serious international security problems it has caused in the Middle East, and for other purposes.”[587]

The Act also bans exports of dual-use technology; allows the U.S. to freeze Syria’s assets in the United States; and restricts overflight rights for Syrian aircraft inside U.S. airspace. The vote passed by 89 votes to four with seven Senators not voting. Sen. Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia) told Agence France-Presse he feared the bill could be used to manufacture a pretext for military intervention:

The bill speaks of “hostile actions” by Syria against US-led forces in Iraq. I have not seen any evidence that would lead me to believe that it is the government of Syria that is responsible for the attacks against our troops in Iraq. Such insinuations can only build the case for military action against Syria, which, unfortunately, is a very real possibility because of the dangerous doctrine of pre-emption created by the Bush administration.[588]

Meanwhile, a U.S. team investigating multiple reports of banned weapons or weapons-related substances moving from Iraq into Syria, Iran and Jordan turned up nothing. Then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice conceded this point three days after the Syria Accountability Act was passed: “I’ve seen reports, as everyone has. We don’t have any evidence at this point that that’s what happened.”[589]

The U.S. case against Syria is worse than threadbare, but it serves Israel’s interests by putting Syrian President Bashar Assad in an untenable position, especially because of the Israeli attack. If he stands up to the U.S./Israeli aggression, he invites the destruction of his country; if he does nothing, he risks undermining his own legitimacy. None of this reasoning appears anywhere in Ledeen’s alleged analysis.

Another player on the junta’s anti-Arab farm team is David Wurmser, whom Cheney would bring to the White House as a Middle East advisor. In a flagrantly dishonest screed against Syria that predates the 2000 presidential “election,” Wurmser shows that the junta’s current decision to ostracize and attack the Assad regime is steeped in bigotry and subservience to Israel.[590]

After a section that claims Syria had rejected repeated Israeli overtures for peace—there have none been—Wurmser launches into a propaganda attack laced with unsubstantiated allegations: “Ever since Mr. Assad‘s secular Baathist regime took control of Syria, it has behaved consistently. Since its Stalinist system bars it from accomplishing anything constructively, it vindicates and enriches itself by creating problems and then reaping the benefits of ‘solving’ them.” These problems include “launching” Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border and then working out a ceasefire.

Then without a sense of irony, Wurmser writes: “After all, it is not often that a tiny country with a collapsing economy and few global allies can so easily tweak the world’s only superpower.” The reason for the allusion to the Syrian government as “secular” and “Stalinist” becomes clear in the next section:

In fact, conditions have never been riper for a challenge to the Baathist Syrian regime. Syria’s lordship over Lebanon is shaky. The Christian community harbors seething hatred for Syria.… Israel should realize that it will have peace only after it destroys Syria’s Baathist regime. Then it could view each round of conflict with Syria as an opportunity to strike Syria’s forces and fragile infrastructure in Lebanon. The Lebanese, many of whom are waiting impatiently for the day in which Syria is weakened or shows signs of cracking, will take matters into their own hands, and Syria will slowly bleed to death there. The Baathist regime in Syria is addicted to conflict. If Israel raises the cost of this addiction, it will trap Mr. Assad’s government in a death spiral from which it cannot extract itself.

Nowhere does Wurmser mention that the Christian community in Lebanon included Maronites, who are anti-Muslim Israeli proxies. Their leader was the notorious Elie Hobeika, whose Phalangist army along with Israel committed the 1982 massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Furthermore, Wurmser does not mention that Syrian control of Lebanon maintained peace and order after years of Israel-provoked civil war. Israeli operative Mahmoud Rafeh recently admitted to having assassinated several Palestinian and Hezbollah officials for Israeli intelligence over seven years.[591] Note also Wurmser’s use of violent imagery: “Syria will slowly bleed to death,” “addicted to conflict” and “death spiral.”

Following on his assertion that Israel will have peace only after it destroys Syria’s Baathist regime, Wurmser writes a plea for meddling in Syria’s politics in the name of peace. “If there is ever to be peace, it will have to be preceded by a serious spring cleaning both in the United States and in Israel. The real question is, how much more anguish in Israel and Lebanon will it take for Israel’s Labor Party and the Clinton administration to understand how much war this peace process is causing?”

Ledeen and Wurmser are but two examples of how the junta parroted Israel’s view that Syria is a threat to peace because of its support for Palestinian resistance groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and the Lebanon-based resistance organization Hezbollah. Journalist Kurt Nimmo sums up the essence of Israel’s grand imperial design:

Israel is determined to take revenge on Hezbollah, which defeated its attempts to turn Lebanon into an Israeli protectorate and drove Israeli occupation forces from Lebanon, a small but vicious war this writer saw firsthand. …Israel and the venal Strausscons want chaos, misery, death, starvation, ethnic strife, and endless violence in not only Syria and Iran but the entire Arab and Muslim Middle East.[592]

Nimmo’s assessment also brings to mind the original name for the attack on Afghanistan (“Infinite Justice”) and the junta’s lust for limitless violence, crusader mentality and belligerent rhetoric.

The West Carves Up Arabia

Western hostility to Syria dates to the end of World War I. Like all countries of the Middle East, Syria is an artificial creation designed to serve Western interests, of which Britain’s need for Kuwaiti oil was the dominant factor. From the 1890s onwards, Britain maintained a pro-Turkish Middle East policy for the sake of the status quo. According to Sir Louis Mallet, Britain’s ambassador to the empire in March 1914:

If the Arabs are eventually successful in defeating the Ottoman armies the loss of the Caliphate would probably follow, where, shorn of a further large portion of territory and of the religious leadership, Turkish rule, as it exists today, would presumably disappear. Europe might then be faced with the question of a partition of the Turkish Empire which might easily produce complications of a serious nature, whilst it is difficult to estimate what might be the effects on India of a prolonged struggle for the possession of the Caliphate.[593]

Only after the Sultan formally sided with Germany and Austria-Hungary on October 28, 1914, was Britain forced to seek the help of Sharif Hussein bin Ali, Emir of Mecca (1908–1916) and King of Hijaz (1916–1924). This was an ironic request, given the nature of Britain’s first encounter with the Hashemite dynasty. On February 5, 1914, Hussein’s son Abdullah met Lord Kitchener in Cairo to sound out British support for the Arabs who were rebelling against increasingly bureaucratic Ottoman rule and its attempts to reduce the authority of the Sharifate:

When I asked him to tell me whether, in the event of a rupture, the Sharif could count upon any support from Great Britain, Kitchener replied negatively, on the plea that British relations with Turkey were friendly and that, in any case, the dispute was an internal matter in which it would not be proper for a foreign Power to intervene. I could not refrain from pointing out that those friendly relations had not prevented Great Britain from intervening in the dispute between Turkey and the Sheikh of Kuwait, which was likewise an internal matter. Kitchener laughed and rose to depart. As he was leaving, he said that he would make a point of reporting our conversation to his Government.[594]

Nevertheless, Hussein agreed to have his army harass and divert the Turks as Britain requested provided that Britain supported a post-war Hashemite Caliphate over all of Arabia bounded by: the 37th parallel in the north; Persia and the Persian Gulf on the east; the Indian Ocean on the south; and the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea on the West. Subject to minor amendments Britain’s High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon did just that, and signaled His Majesty’s approval to Hussein in a letter dated October 24, 1915.[595]

Hussein lived up to his end of the bargain, but Britain had no intention of reciprocating. It didn’t want a partner in Arabia; it wanted a lackey the Crown could exploit, and such a lackey had been on the payroll for decades—a bedouin chieftain named Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud.[596] Even though this early support for ibn Saud contradicted official pro-Ottoman policy, Britain maintained secret contacts with ibn Saud and advanced him small sums to keep him “in reserve,” should events warrant. By 1911, when war seemed inevitable, contacts and money increased, despite opposition. In March 1914, Mallet wrote to Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey: “I have always felt that the policy we are pursuing towards ibn Saud is fraught with grave danger to the integrity of Turkey, and I was always personally strongly opposed to the interviews which took place between him and our officials.”[597]

In December 1915, Britain and ibn Saud signed a friendship and cooperation treaty that, if nothing else, confirmed that ibn Saud possessed the unsophisticated servility Britain wanted. In exchange for arms, a monthly subsidy of £5,000 and an agreement to wage war on the ibn Rashids—a rival Bedouin family allied with Turkey—ibn Saud turned his eastern and central Arabian lands into a British protectorate, over which he was made governor.[598]

Britain’s betrayal of Hussein and promise to support Arab independence were formalized in May 1916 by the duplicitous Sykes-Picot agreement, which carved up the former Ottoman-controlled Middle East into British and French spheres of influence.[599] It contained three mandate territories created by the newly formed League of Nations: Palestine and Iraq, which were controlled by Britain, and Syria, which was given to France. Soon after the mandate was established, though, Maronite Christians in the five western provinces of Syria demanded the creation of an independent state called “Lebanon,” with close ties to France.

The Maronites’ special relationship with France began in the late 11th century when members of this sect, named for the fourth-century ascetic priest Marion, came down from the mountains to give aid and counsel to Jerusalem-bound Crusaders. This service, and the Maronites’ staunch support for the Church of Rome endeared them to the papacy, and in 1205 Louis IV placed them under his personal protection. Around 1640, France declared itself to be the protector of all Christians, especially Catholics, in the Asian part of the Ottoman Empire. In 1649 Louis XIV formally adopted the Maronites, and placed them under the full protection of France.

The merits of the case for independence aside, the hiving off of Lebanon from Syria was done without regard for the wishes of the local people. The only people pushing for it, and the only ones consulted on the matter, were the Maronites, who also demanded territorial expansion. Originally, Lebanon was a region that comprised an area around Mount Lebanon, and the Maronites wanted the new state expanded to its “natural and historic boundaries.” These date to the emirate of 1590-1697, particularly the rule of Fakhr al-Din II, when the borders encompassed present-day Lebanon, Syria, and northern Palestine as far south as Safad.

Meanwhile, Orthodox and Protestant Christians, to say nothing of the Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims, vehemently opposed independence because they feared domination by the Maronites and the French. They wanted the five provinces to remain part of Syria and if Syria had to have a mandate power at all, they preferred it be Britain or the U.S. Nevertheless, in 1920 the League of Nations made Greater Lebanon the fourth mandate territory, thereby introducing a political and religious instability into the Middle East.

Pan-Arabism and Nasser

After World War II, political instability spread throughout the Middle East, as Arabs rebelled against pro-Western monarchies and foreign influence. The path to political reform essentially pointed in two directions—communism or pan-Arabism. Communism, of course, was a priori unacceptable to the U.S., as President Dwight D. Eisenhower stated on January 5, 1957: “Many, if not all, of the nations of the Middle East are aware of the danger that stems from international communism and welcome closer cooperation with the United States to realize for themselves the United Nations goals of independence, economic well-being and spiritual growth.”[600] Pan-Arabism, though, was little better, since the U.S. and Saudi Arabia had no more interest in promoting a strong, united Arab world than did the British in the 1920s. The U.S. built its Middle East policy around Israel, the Shah’s Iran and Saudi Arabia—the most repressive, pro-Western, anti-Arab regimes imaginable.

Pan-Arabism began in the early 1940s when Syrian intellectuals Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar founded the Harakat al-Ba’ath al-Arabi [Movement of the Arab Resurrection]. Through the revolutionary transformation [inqilab] of the intellectual, economic and social aspects of society, Ba’athists hoped to create one Arab nation based on secularism, socialism, and pan-Arab union extending from the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf. Unlike the theocratic Caliphate, this decidedly modern, nationalist movement included all peoples of the Middle East, regardless of ethnic origin, tribe or religion.

The greatest champion of pan-Arabism was Gamel Abdel Nasser. In 1952, as a colonel in the Egyptian army, he led a coup that overthrew the country’s pro-Western monarchy. He immediately set about negotiating the end of Britain’s 72-year presence in Egypt, and in 1956 became Egypt’s president. His political system, Arab socialism, took aim at the old culture of Western privilege. He confiscated 243,000 hectares (2.43 million square meters) of farmland from a small group of rich landowners, and nationalized banks and industries, and in so doing set off a chain of international hysterics.

The U.S. and Britain withdrew promised financial support for the planned Aswan High Dam, and that led Nasser on July 26, 1956, to nationalize the Suez Canal so that he could finance the dam through the collection of shipping tolls. That move led Israel, Great Britain and France to attack Egypt three months later on the pretext of re-opening the canal to all traffic, but Israel wanted to punish Nasser for his support of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The United States and the USSR demanded an immediate cease-fire, and the British, French, and Israelis withdrew immediately. A United Nations resolution worked out by Canada’s Foreign Minister Lester Pearson established the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF), which stationed troops along the frontier between Israel and Egypt, and at Sharm el-Sheikh overlooking the Strait of Tiran, thus ensuring quiet for 10 years.

The “Suez Crisis” added tremendously to Nasser’s stature in the Arab world. By standing up to the West, he became its paramount leader, and as such he posed a serious threat to the Saudis. Nasser was young, educated, charismatic and well-liked among the Arab masses—everything King Saud was not.

Nasserism found fertile ground throughout the Arab world. On February 21, 1958, Egypt and Syria formed the United Arab Republic (UAR), with Nasser as president. To make the union possible, the Syrian Ba’ath Party agreed to disband, leaving political control almost exclusively in Egyptian hands. The following month Nasser dissolved all Syrian political parties, including the Communist Party, and dismissed pro-Soviet army officers. However, the UAR would not last. Syria’s resentment at its subordinate status led to a break-up on September 29, 1961, when radical Baath Party members re-established Syria’s independence. Nasser nevertheless retained the name UAR to inspire Arabs.

In 1962, after the minor setback of the Syrian secession, pan-Arabism received renewed strength from a pro-Nasser revolution against Yemen’s monarchy. Whether Nasser approved of it is debatable, but he couldn’t refuse to support it, and sent in 100,000 elite troops.[601] However, a Nasserite government on the peninsula was something the Saudis and Americans could not tolerate. Saudi foreign minister Prince Faisal supported the deposed monarchy and with American support sponsored armed resistance to the new republican régime. The Yemeni adventure would prove fatal for Nasser because the Soviets couldn’t match the anti-Nasser Saudi/American aid. Moreover, Nasser had to cope with resistance from Jordan and Iraq, a civil war in neighboring Sudan, and assisting anti-French rebels in North Africa.

In Iraq, meanwhile, a revolution led by Gen. Abdel Karem Qassem and local communists led to the murder of the pro-American Iraqi royal family of King Faisal II on July 14, 1958. Qassem became the first prime minister of the new republic of Iraq—the presidency was shared among a three-member sovereignty council, comprised of Sunni, Shi’ite and Kurdish leaders. Although pan-Arabists had a strong presence in the country, Qassem did not support pan-Arabism. Nevertheless, many Iraqis did, and he was executed in a Baathist coup in February 1963. The last Baathist president of Iraq, of course, was Saddam Hussein.

The Saudi/U.S effort to promote Islam to undermine Nasser’s secular power began in the period 1958-1960. Foreign Minister Prince Faisal established the World Muslim League to promote Saudi Arabia’s Islamic identity, and the CIA in Beirut, Cairo and ARAMCO, which had its own department, began promoting and funding various Islamic groups, especially Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. As Aburish wrote in The Rise, Corruption and Coming Fall of the House of Saud:

[This] open subordination of Arabism to Islam gained the wholehearted support of America. An open campaign which accused Nasser of being anti-Islamic followed, and so did attacks on Nasser’s backer, the USSR, for its treatment of its Muslims. This coincided with a generous Saudi aid programme to Jordan and a move by Faisal to create a special relationship with the only Muslim country capable of providing him with military help, Pakistan… To historians, promoting Islam was a dangerous long-term solution, but in American terms it was a broader, sounder approach than the previous efforts of the CIA’s crypto-diplomats.[602]

At first, the Brotherhood supported the 1952 revolution that brought Nasser to power, but it was quickly outlawed and thousands of its members imprisoned. Its leader was the ideologue and prolific author Sayyid Qutb, a professional teacher who dedicated himself to ridding Egypt of Western influences. From 1948–1950, Qutb lived in the U.S. studying educational curricula, and came away with even greater contempt for the West’s worship of materialism and lack of spirituality. In language that we now associate with Osama bin Laden, Qutb believed that a revolutionary vanguard should establish Islamic rule in Egypt and then impose Islamic law on the country, which after 1952 he judged to be under the sway of the an un-Islamic nationalist ideology.

He was arrested in 1954 on charges of attempting to overthrow the government. After spending 10 years in a Cairo prison he was released due to poor health and the intercession of Iraqi president Abdul Salam Arif. Qutb was again arrested in 1966 on conspiracy charges and hanged on August 29. Qutb and his writings—24 books on religion, education, as well as novels—inspired many of the radical Islamic movements of the 1970s and ‘80s, as well as generations of Egyptian and Arab intellectuals, including Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s most trusted colleague.

Events in Iraq caused jubilation among anti-government forces in Lebanon, especially the politically marginalized Muslims. Fearing a coup against his Maronite-led government, President Camille Shamun appealed to Eisenhower, who reluctantly sent in 5,000 Marines to put down the uprising. The existence in the Middle East of this pro-Western Christian-led state, albeit shaky and unpopular, allowed the U.S. and Britain to target Muslim-led, pro-Soviet Syria—literally. According to a September 1957 report drawn up by a high-level working group in Washington D.C., Eisenhower and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan planned to topple the Syrian government by assassinating three major political figures—Abd al-Hamid Sarraj, head of Syrian military intelligence; Afif al-Bizri, chief of the Syrian general staff; and Khalid Bakdash, leader of the Syrian Communist party:

“In order to facilitate the action of liberative forces, reduce the capabilities of the Syrian regime to organize and direct its military actions, to hold losses and destruction to a minimum, and to bring about desired results in the shortest possible time, a special effort should be made to eliminate certain key individuals. Their removal should be accomplished early in the course of the uprising and intervention and in the light of circumstances existing at the time.”[603]

The document said the CIA and SIS (now MI6) should conduct sabotage, national conspiracies and various strong-arm activities in Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon, and ensure that Damascus got the blame. In addition, the plan called for funding a “Free Syria Committee,” and arming local political factions with paramilitary or other military capabilities. The CIA and SIS would, for example, instigate internal uprisings by the Muslim Druze in the south, help free political prisoners, and stir up the Muslim Brotherhood in Damascus.

Israel, Hezbollah and the Big Picture

On October 22, 1989, The Taif Agreement officially brought an end to Lebanon’s 15-year civil war, but Israel maintained its occupation of Southern Lebanon in continued violation of UN Security Council Resolution 425. Under the agreement all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias had to disband, and the border with Israel would be patrolled by the Lebanese Army. Hezbollah, though, refused to disband, and vowed to continue the resistance until Lebanon was entirely free from Israeli occupation. Despite this refusal, the Lebanese government took no action because Hezbollah was, and still is, a legitimate national resistance force.

Israel finally withdrew in 2000, except for a border area known as Shebaa Farms. Because of this continued occupation, Hezbollah had no intention of disarming, and Israel would have to wait to find another excuse to lay waste to Southern Lebanon. That opportunity came on June 25, 2006, when Hezbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers, though this event was, typically, blown out of proportion.

According to official sources, the soldiers were captured inside Israel and taken back to Lebanon, but initial reports from the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and the Christian Science Monitor place the capture inside Lebanon. This latter scenario is more plausible, since the exposed terrain makes border crossings highly risky and Hezbollah guerrillas only fire Katyusha rockets into Israel in retaliation for attacks on Lebanon or Hezbollah’s leadership.

In fact, the UN reported that Israel had been staging repeated border violations since May 2000. In February 2006, for example, 15-year-old Yusuf Rahil was killed by unprovoked Israeli cross-border fire as he tended his flock of sheep. In the June 25, 2006, event, Israeli soldiers were captured as they were trying to infiltrate the village of Ayta Al-Chaab.[604] This was an act of war against Lebanon, yet Israel brazenly declared Hezbollah’s capture of its soldiers to be an act of war, based on the lie that they were “kidnapped” in Israel. Therefore, on June 11, Israel launched a savage air assault on southern Lebanon and Beirut that begged allusions to Hitler’s bombing of London, and the Allied leveling of Dresden. Power plants, schools, shelters, hospitals, children and UN workers were deliberately targeted. Some of the ordinance included depleted uranium “bunker busters,” white phosphorous, and chemical bombs, all of which are expressly outlawed.[605]

Linking Israel’s assault to Hezbollah’s capture, though, would be a mistake because it would play into the illusion that Israel acted out of self-defense. Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon betrayed the essential Nazi-like contempt for humanity that animated the attack: “All those in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah. In order to prevent casualties among Israeli soldiers battling Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon, villages should be flattened by the Israeli air force before ground troops move in.”[606] Emphasizing the irrelevance of the capture, Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, said Israel had long been spoiling for a fight:

Of all of Israel’s wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared. In a sense, the preparation began in May 2000, immediately after the Israeli withdrawal, when it became clear the international community was not going to prevent Hezbollah from stockpiling missiles and attacking Israel. By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we’re seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it’s been simulated and rehearsed across the board.[607]

For its part, the junta had been planning for an anti-Syrian offensive in Lebanon at least as far back as 1996 when Richard Perle et al. wrote the subversive Clean Break:

“Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil. An effective approach would be… if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hezbollah, Syria and Iran as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon, including by ... establishing the precedent that Syrian territory is not immune to attacks emanating from Lebanon by Israeli proxy forces [and] striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and should that prove insufficient, striking at select targets in Syria proper.”[608]

The full scope of the junta’s subservience to Israel was revealed in 2003 by retired general Wesley Clark in his book Winning Modern Wars:

“As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan…. I left the Pentagon that afternoon deeply concerned.”[609]

Clark’s citation is especially significant for two reasons: it singles out Iraq, not Afghanistan, for retribution just two months after the World Trade Center was destroyed, and it directly links Iraq to the Big Picture of Israel’s subjugation of the Middle East.

Bashar Assad’s No-Win Predicament

As mentioned above, Lebanon and Syria are geopolitically linked, and to a large extent Israel’s aggression against Lebanon is directed at Syria for its support of Hezbollah. Bashar Assad, who became president of Syria upon the death of his father Hafez Assad, has every reason to support it, especially because, as a Shi’ite party, it is a useful ally against the Muslim Brotherhood, the radical Sunni Islamic group that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia nurtured to sabotage Syria’s secular government.

Syria has no grievance against the U.S., and the U.S.’s animus against Syria is based in prejudice and servitude to Israel. For this reason, the U.S. State Department includes Syria on its list of states that sponsor terrorism. Assad wants his country off the list and after the September 11 attack saw an opportunity to improve relations with the U.S. He instructed his government to share Syria’s considerable intelligence on “al-Qaida.” As Seymour Hersh detailed in the New Yorker, Syrian intelligence on past and future terrorist activity was of the highest caliber and exceeded CIA expectations:

In one instance, the Syrians learned that Al Qaeda had penetrated the security services of Bahrain and had arranged for a glider loaded with explosives to be flown into a building at the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet headquarters there. Flynt Leverett, a former CIA analyst who served until early this year on the National Security Council and is now a fellow at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, told me that Syria’s help “let us thwart an operation that, if carried out, would have killed a lot of Americans.” The Syrians also helped the United States avert a suspected plot against an American target in Ottawa.[610]

Hersh said that by early 2002 Syria had emerged as one of the CIA’s most effective intelligence sources in the fight against “al-Qaida,” but that ended with the invasion of Iraq. Then-CIA director George Tenet championed Syria’s cause to get off the terrorism list, but was shot down by the junta’s Israel-firsters in the Pentagon, ostensibly because Syria refuses to close down the Damascus offices of Palestinian groups on the terrorism list, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and its continued support for Hezbollah.[611] These “reasons” have nothing to do with the U.S. and everything to do with Israel. Particularly suspect is the excuse of Syria’s support for Hezbollah, as this excerpt from Hersh demonstrates:

Michel Samaha, Lebanon’s minister of information, told me that Hezbollah has stabilized daily life in southern Lebanon, by controlling and monitoring the sometimes violent activities of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in squalid refugee camps scattered through the area. He argued that America was making “a foolish mistake” by not trying to engage Hezbollah. The group, Samaha said, complied with Syria’s insistence that it prevent would-be Palestinian suicide bombers from crossing the border into Israel. [Former Israeli Ambassador to Washington Itamar] Rabinovich also said that Hezbollah had become more “careful” in its actions against Israel.[612]

Another Convenient Killing

Israel’s campaign to destabilize Syria entered a new phase with the February 2005 assassination in Beirut of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. As planned, blame fell immediately on Syria because Hariri was said to be a threat to Lebanon’s pro-Syrian regime. In the face of international condemnation, led by Israel and the U.S., Assad abruptly ordered Syria’s 18,000 soldiers out of Lebanon, an action that takes on added relevance in view of Israel’s renewed attack.

Problem is, the evidence against Assad was fabricated and implausible. First, the idea that Hariri posed a threat to Syria is absurd since he willingly served as prime minister under pro-Israel President Emile Lahoud for 10 of the last 12 years. Second, Hariri was immensely popular in Lebanon, and Assad had to have known that Syria would be blamed if any harm came to him. Third, killing Hariri cannot be reconciled with Assad’s previous attempts to improve relations with the U.S. Fourth, Assad learned from bitter experience not to meddle in Lebanese politics. It was his attempt to force a change to the Lebanese constitution to extend Lahoud’s mandate that caused Hariri to resign. Soon thereafter, Assad fired his head of military intelligence, in recognition that he had blundered.[613] In short, Assad had no motive to kill Hariri.

Table XVI:  Chronology of Key Events
Leading to Rafiq Hariri’s Assassination

August 26, 2004

Rafiq Hariri meets in Damascus with Syrian President Bashar Assad to discuss the extension of the term of pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud.

September 2, 2004

The UN Security Council adopts Resolution 1559 calling for the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Lebanon.

September 3, 2004

The Hariri bloc approves the extension law for President Lahoud, the Lebanese parliament adopts it and forwards it to the Lebanese government for execution.

September 7, 2004

Economy Minister Marwan Hamadeh, Culture Minister Ghazi Aridi, Minister of Refugee Affairs Abdullah Farhat and Environment Minister Fares Boueiz, resign from cabinet in protest.

October 1, 2004

Assassination attempt on Marwan Hamadeh, in Beirut.

October 4, 2004

Hariri resigns as prime minister.

October 11, 2004

Syrian President Bashar Assad delivers a speech condemning his critics within Lebanon and the United Nations.

October 20, 2004,

President Lahoud accepts Hariri’s resignation and names Omar Karame to form the new government.

February 14, 2005

Hariri and 22 others are killed in a massive blast in a seafront area of central Beirut.

The “evidence” that constituted the case against Assad was contained in a UN report written by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, who headed the commission of inquiry. The report, though, was hardly a model of investigative efficiency. According to the October 22, 2005, edition of the German Magazine Der Spiegel:

• Zuheir al-Siddiq, the chief witness against Syria, was known to have lied to the UN commission;

• The Commission had doubts about his testimony;

• Al-Siddiq was paid for his testimony; and

•              He was recommended to Mehlis by Assad’s uncle Rifaat, who has designs on the presidency for himself.

Veteran Associated Press and Newsweek reporter Robert Parry confirmed these conclusions and added that Mehlis came under intense international pressure to find Syria responsible. Parry also noted numerous investigative discrepancies in the report, such as the one regarding the white Mitsubishi Canter van that contained the bomb that killed Hariri and 22 others:

“On page 42, the UN report states that the Japanese forensic team reported that the van was traced back to Sagamihara City, Japan, where on October 12, 2004, it was stolen. The UN report contains no details about the Japanese investigation of the theft, nor does it indicate what Japanese police may have discovered about the identity of the thieves or how they may have shipped the van from a suburb of Tokyo to the Middle East in the four months before the Hariri attack...Investigators might get much closer to the truth if they could determine what happened to the van between the moment it disappeared off the streets of a Japanese city and reappeared almost four months later, rolling toward Rafiq Hariri’s motorcade.”[614]

As if the preceding weren’t enough, at least one witness who appeared before the inquiry has come forward to state that his testimony was coerced. On Syrian television, Hosam Taher Hosam, who worked with Syrian and Lebanese intelligence, said he had been tortured, injected with drugs and offered $1.3 million by Lebanese Interior Minister Hassan al-Sabaa to tell investigators he saw the white van in a Syrian-controlled military facility.[615] Whether or not we choose to believe Hosam, we can say for certain that the Mehlis report is designed to blame Syria, just as the report of the 9/11 Commission was designed to blame Muslims. The best proof that the search for truth was irrelevant can be seen is this excerpt of an interview between journalist Trish Schuh and Ziad Abdel Nour, president of the United States Committee for a Free Lebanon (USCFL):

Trish Schuh: I didn’t see forensic proof in the Mehlis report that would legally convict Assad of Hariri’s death in a court of law.

Ziad Abdel Nour: I don’t give a damn. I don’t give a damn, frankly. This Bashar Al Assad–Emil Lahoud regime is going to go whether it’s true or not. When we went to Iraq whether there were weapons of mass destruction or not, the key is -- we won. …

Schuh: When will this regime change take place?

Nour: Within 6 months, in both Lebanon and Syria.

Schuh: Some names of replacements?

Nour: It is classified. There are going to be replacements and we know who they are, but I cannot mention the names.

Schuh: Will this be done peacefully?

Nour: It doesn’t matter. The end justifies the means. I don’t care about how it’s done. The important thing is that it is done. I don’t rule out force. I’m not against force. If it’s an option, it will be an option.

Schuh: But if it’s just trading Syrian control for American or Israeli control?

Nour: I have—we have—absolutely no problem with heavy U.S. involvement in Lebanon. On an economic level, military level, political level, security level... whatever it is. Israel is the 51st state of the United States. Let Lebanon be the 52nd state. And if the Arabs [read: “Muslims”] don’t like it, tough luck.[616]

We must take Nour’s rant as symptomatic of the junta’s support for Israel’s aggression against Lebanon because the USCFL is deeply affiliated with Zionist pressure groups like the American Enterprise Institute (created by Lebanese-American William Baroody Jr.), the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, JINSA, Republican Jewish Coalition, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Middle East Forum, and the Hudson Institute. The USCFL’s board of directors also includes well-know PNACers—Elliot Abrams, Douglas Feith, Frank Gaffney, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Michael Ledeen, Richard Perle, Daniel Pipes, David Wurmser—as well as Arabs, who, like Nour, are Christian and Zionist: Joseph Boohaker, Samir Bustany, Nabil El Hage, Joseph Hakim and Joseph Farah.

Inasmuch as the junta and Israel both see Assad as an enemy, they do differ over what to do with him, and this disagreement reminds us that the junta is not monolithically Zionist. Straussians in Washington want Assad’s regime toppled, but Israel believes that a weak, impotent Assad regime is the best option for maintaining stability. Alternative scenarios are all deemed to be much worse for Israel: Iraq’s burgeoning sectarian conflict engulfing Syria and even Lebanon; the seizure of power by the Muslim Brotherhood; or a more authoritarian leader from within Assad’s minority Alawite sect of Islam.[617] In the end, the following chain of events explains U.S. hostile policy toward Syria:

• The U.S. blames “al-Qa’ida” for the September 11 attack, and launches a renewed “war on terrorism.”

• The U.S. needs intelligence to catch those it believes were responsible.

• Syria willingly shares top-quality intelligence with the U.S. to improve relations.

• The U.S. uses the intelligence but continues to ostracize Syria and push for the overthrow of the Assad government for, among other things, its support of Hezbollah, which has only one enemy—Israel.

• The Lebanese government credits Hezbollah with stabilizing South Lebanon and providing water, food, education, security, and infrastructure; and only attacks in self-defense.

•              The U.S., which faces no threat from Hezbollah, deliberately sabotages its “war on terrorism” to pass punitive legislation against Syria, and endorses the Christian Zionist USCFL.

Given these facts, the oil motive for the invasion of Iraq looks more and more implausible, but if oil for the U.S.’s sake was not a motive, oil for Israel’s sake might be. In 1975, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger signed a Memorandum of Understanding guaranteeing that the U.S. would meet all of Israel’s oil needs in the event of a crisis. This memorandum, which has been quietly renewed every five years, commits the U.S. to build and maintain a strategic petroleum reserve for Israel, even to the extent of creating shortages for its own citizens.

Moreover, the U.S. guarantees to deliver this oil in its own tankers if commercial shippers cannot or will not deliver it to Israel. In all, this arrangement is worth $3 billion in 2002 dollars, and has required special legislation to exempt Israel from oil export restrictions. U.S. citizens will do without food, medical coverage, employment or education, but Israel will never want for oil.

Until 1979, oil wasn’t a problem. Iranian tankers unloaded at the Red Sea port of Eilat, and from there the oil was piped through the Trans-Israel Pipeline (“Tipline”) to Ashkelon on the Mediterranean coast, and then by tanker on to Haifa. In 2002, Israel imported nearly all its oil (237,000 bbl/d) from Egypt, the North Sea, West Africa and Mexico, but in recent years most of its oil has come from Russia and other Caspian Sea states, like Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Before the Iraq invasion, Chalabi met with U.S. and Israeli officials and promised that Iraq would recognize Israel and reopen the old Mosul—Haifa pipeline.[618] The first promise was predictable, given Chalabi’s relationship with JINSA; the second was absurd.

The British built the Mosul–Haifa pipeline in the 1930s, and at its peak it carried 100,000 barrels of oil per day. It has been inactive since Israel was established in 1948. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the Iraqi section of the pipeline is completely rusted, and the Jordanian section was torn up and sold for scrap several years ago. Rebuilding it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and in any event Jordan has no interest in the project. Moreover, the pipeline’s diameter, what may be left of it, is a mere eight inches.[619] The Tipline’s diameter, in contrast, is 42 inches. In short, there’s no pipeline to reactivate, yet Israel’s National Infrastructure Minister Joseph Paritzky told Ha’aretz, that he endorsed “reactivation.” This statement has been repeated in the media in phrases like: “reopening the long-defunct oil pipeline from Mosul to the Mediterranean port of Haifa”; and “the resuscitation of the old pipeline.”[620]

By speaking this way, Chalabi and Paritzky were engaging in useful propaganda. The image of an existing pipeline suggested that the cost of pumping oil from Iraq to Israel would be only a matter of reparation. The truth of the matter is that discussions have been underway to build a new 42-inch pipeline from Mosul to Haifa at a cost of $400,000 per kilometer. Paritzky’s ministry puts the total cost at $0.5 billion to $1.5 billion.[621]

The Israel-first aspect of this project is unmistakable. First, there is no shortage of pipelines out of Iraq, so the U.S. doesn’t need another terminal. Washington D.C.-based engineer Thomas Stauffer said the line from Kirkuk to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, as well as its refining facility, could be expanded for far less than the cost of a new pipeline: “Space is no constraint. There is adequate room in the port, and potential additional capacity to accommodate any likely volumes of oil from Iraq, as well as expected flows from Baku in Azerbaijan.”[622]

Second, Israel’s much-touted need for a pipeline, per se, is specious, since it can buy what it needs from Russia and the Caspian Sea states. One could argue that these states could turn off the taps for political reasons, but that would not prevent the U.S. from buying the oil and reselling (or giving) it to Israel. Third, and here’s the point, a pipeline of cheap, top-quality oil from Iraq to Israel would absolve the U.S. from having to maintain the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

What does this have to do with Syria? Nikolai Leonov a member of the Russian parliament’s security committee noted the U.S.’s self-interest in accusing Syria of murdering Hariri: “Indeed, Syria is an excellent oil corridor with access to deep-water Mediterranean ports. Besides, this is a good pretext to distract the world community’s attention from the events in Iraq.”[623]

Iran

The junta’s belligerence toward Iran is a nothing more than a reprise of its campaign to destabilize Iraq, and as such it is a Pavlovian reflex, not a policy. Like Iraq, Iran is caricatured as a rogue state that threatens to use weapons of mass destruction against Israel, and the libel is regurgitated ad infinitum in the style of the repetition-equals-reality propaganda tactic used against Saddam Hussein described in the Luntz/Wexner analysis. (See Chapter 10.) Typical is the following non-cognitive ramble from Bush: “The threat from Iran is, of course, their stated objective to destroy our strong ally Israel. It’s a threat to world peace; it’s a threat, in essence, to a strong alliance. I made it clear, I’ll make it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally, Israel.”[624]

In truth, Israel isn’t worried about an attack, just as it didn’t lose sleep over any putative threat from Iraq. Shai Feldman, director of Brandeis University’s Crown Center for Middle East Studies, said many Israeli analysts do not believe that Iran poses an “existential threat.” On the contrary, they see Iran as a risk-averse country that is well aware of Israel’s second-strike capability:

It’s not that the day after Iran gets the nuclear bomb they drop it on Tel-Aviv. It is rather, the many “general geopolitical implications” of a nuclear Iran that concern Israel. One is that it would lead other countries [in the region] to follow suit [with their own nuclear arms programs]. Two is that an Iran equipped with nuclear weapons would throw its weight around the region to a much greater extent than is currently the case.[625]

In other words, the “threat” that Iran poses is political, not military, and is explicable only in the broader context of Israel’s repression of the Palestinians and need for regional domination. This is essentially the assessment of Abba Eban, Israel’s former UN ambassador and inventor of the false history of the 1967 War. In 1995, he said the conditions that made the Arab-Israeli wars possible, and threatened Israel’s existence, no longer existed. Israel’s interests in the region, he said, were now hegemonic, not existential, and that Israel’s strategic thinking had been taken over by right-wing ideologues.[626]

On January 20, 2003, the Dutch magazine Elsevier published an interview with Hebrew University professor of military history Martin van Creveld, who laid out in calculated, sociopathic detail the ideological connection between the intifada, Israel’s fear of impending defeat, its final solution for Palestine, and nuclear blackmail to intimidate Europe into acquiescence:

“If [the intifada] went on much longer, the Israeli government [would] lose control of the people. In campaigns like this, the anti-terror forces lose because they don’t win, and the rebels win by not losing. I regard a total Israeli defeat as unavoidable. That will mean the collapse of the Israeli state and society. We’ll destroy ourselves.” In this situation, [van Creveld] went on, more and more Israelis were coming to regard the “transfer” of the Palestinians as the only salvation; resort to it was growing “more probable” with each passing day. Sharon “wants to escalate the conflict and knows that nothing else will succeed.” But would the world permit such ethnic cleansing? “That depends on who does it and how quickly it happens. We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force. Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: ‘Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.’ I consider it all hopeless at this point. We shall have to try to prevent things from coming to that, if at all possible. Our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.”[627]

Israel, therefore, wants to attack Iran sooner rather than later because a nuclear Iran would destroy Israel’s nuclear monopoly, be an inspiration to the rest of the Muslim world, and prevent Israel and the junta from “transforming” the Middle East to their liking. In short, a nuclear Iran would be a force for peace and stability, and Israel cannot allow that to happen.

Nuclear Brinkmanship

Since Israel faces no military threat from Iran, and since Iran poses no threat to the U.S., Bush’s “we will use military might to protect our ally, Israel” is delusional nonsense. As we have seen throughout this book, this kind of nonsense has been used to legitimize fabricated evidence, and cover up premeditated Zionist-driven aggression, as in the cases of the September 11 attack, the invasion of Iraq and the bombing of Afghanistan. Therefore, it is logical to look for more of this aggression behind the junta’s defensive posturing. Proof of this appeared on June 11, 2003, when Michael Ledeen wrote a screed for the Wall Street Journal in which he tried to link Iran with Iraq and Palestine.

“Iran’s support of the hard-core Palestinian terrorists, from Hamas to Islamic Jihad, is one of the major obstacles to any hopes for a viable peace settlement. Iraq’s support of terrorism was miniscule compared to Iran’s activities. If we are serious about winning the war against the terror masters, the Tehran regime must fall.[628]

The absurdity of Iranian aggression is transparently obvious because any nuclear first strike against Israel would kill far more Palestinians than Zionists, and achieve nothing but retribution. Nevertheless, the decision to attack Iran in the name of Israel’s self-defense is a fait accompli, as one member of Congress told Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker:

“The people they’re briefing are the same ones who led the charge on Iraq. At most, questions are raised: How are you going to hit all the sites at once? How are you going to get deep enough?” (Iran is building facilities underground.) “There’s no pressure from Congress” not to take military action, the House member added. “The only political pressure is from the guys who want to do it.” Speaking of President Bush, the House member said, “The most worrisome thing is that this guy has a messianic vision.”[629]

Even if an anti-Iranian position were defensible, the junta’s overheated rhetoric betrays no intelligent threat assessment. A 2005 National Intelligence Estimate projected that Iran was a decade away from manufacturing key fissile material—twice as long as stated in the previous 1995 estimate. The NIE’s authors did acknowledge that the Iranian military is conducting clandestine work, but the sources of this information said there was no information linking those projects directly to a nuclear weapons program. A decade, one would think, would be sufficient time to work out a diplomatic solution, yet seven months before the estimate came out, Cheney told MSNBC radio host Don Imus that Iran had “a robust new nuclear program” and that Israel might well decide to attack Iran the way it did Iraq in 1981. In which case, he said, the world would then worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess.[630]

On the same day that Ledeen’s rant appeared, Rumsfeld ratcheted up the government’s rhetoric against Iran: “The intelligence community in the United States and around the world currently assess that Iran does not have nuclear weapons. The assessment is that they do have a very active program and are likely to have nuclear weapons in a relatively short period of time.”[631]

The odds of an Israeli fifth columnist at the AEI and a spokesman for the junta coming out with similar statements on the same day is not as much of a coincidence as it might seem; it’s a clear example of how the junta and the extra-governmental propaganda factories discussed in Chapter 5 reinforce each other. The most specific link between the junta and the AEI is Tom Donnelly.

Donnelly, a former resident fellow at AEI, was PNAC’s deputy executive director from 1999 to 2002 and the main author of Rebuilding America’s Defenses, the junta’s blueprint for U.S. imperial arrogance discussed in Chapter 10. His view is almost identical to Feldman’s: a nuclear-capable Iran poses no real military threat to Israel, but could frustrate what he called the Bush administration’s project of “transforming” the Middle East. In a worst-case scenario, Donnelly said, realists in the U.S. would come to respect a nuclear Iran and try to work out a balance of power arrangement, and such rational thinking would make subversion of the Iranian regime nearly impossible. To date, he said, the U.S. has managed to project itself into the Persian Gulf and the broader region at will, and that the invasion of Iraq completed the U.S. military’s “near-encirclement of Iran.” [632]

Donnelly writes from the point of view of U.S. self-interest, but, as this book has shown, U.S. self-interest no longer exists. Erich Marquardt, Middle East analyst for the Power and Interest News Report, effectively refutes the idea that encircling Iran is in the interests of peace or stability:

After establishing military bases in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Bush administration had engineered the successful projection of U.S. power and influence into Central Asia that could then be used to achieve U.S. interests in the region. This sudden change of the geopolitical map on both Iran’s western and eastern borders has led to the conclusion in Tehran that it must make itself militarily powerful in order to continue to secure its interests and, most importantly, its territorial and governmental integrity. This explains why in recent days Iran has continued to focus attention on its Shahab-3 missile, which was fully and successfully tested on July 15, 2000. According to the Federation of American Scientists, these missiles have the ability to strike targets within a 1,350 to 1,500 kilometer range, putting them well within striking capability of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and also within striking distance of Israel.[633]

The junta was pushing the international community to act as soon as possible against Iran’s nuclear program, said Marquardt because when Iran’s main reactor at Bushehr is loaded with nuclear fuel, any attempt to destroy it from the air would risk nuclear fallout. Cheney and others had already been “crying wolf” about Iran for years. As the Washington Post reported in August 2005: “At no time in the past three years has the White House attributed its assertions about Iran to U.S. intelligence, as it did about Iraq in the run-up to the March 2003 invasion. Instead, it has pointed to years of Iranian concealment and questioned why a country with as much oil as Iran would require a large-scale nuclear energy program.”[634] The vacuity and hypocrisy in that last sentence are breathtaking.

In the mid-’70s, the U.S. looked upon Iran’s nuclear program as a lucrative commercial venture. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger signed and circulated National Security Decision Memorandum 292 (“U.S.-Iran Nuclear Cooperation”) which detailed the Ford administration’s negotiating strategy to sell the shah nuclear energy equipment. U.S. corporations, led by Westinghouse, stood to make $6.4 billion, and Iran was also prepared in pay $1 billion for a 20 percent stake in a private United States-based uranium enrichment facility. The shah wanted nuclear power because he deemed oil to be a “noble fuel,” too important to waste on domestic consumption. Thus, the memorandum said: “introduction of nuclear power will both provide for the growing needs of Iran’s economy and free remaining oil reserves for export or conversion to petrochemicals.”[635]

Concerns about proliferation lost out to economic self-interest, and among those who were in a position to influence policy in favor of Iran’s nuclear program were none other than Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld. Now, these men led the campaign to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear power, even if that should entail a unilateral military attack. In Tel Aviv, Emily Landau, director of the Jaffee Center’s Project on Security and Arms Control in the Middle East, acknowledged that any nuclear attack on Iran would have to be carried out at with the knowledge and collaboration of the U.S.[636]

This volte-face came about because of trust, or lack thereof. The shah was an ally; the clerics aren’t, even though they espouse the same rationale as the shah for needing nuclear power. “The shah made a big convincing case that Iran was going to run out of gas and oil and they had a growing population and a rapidly increasing demand for energy,” said Gary Sick, principal White House aide for Persian Gulf affairs from 1976 to 1981. “The mullahs make the same argument today, but we don’t trust them.”[637]

Thus far, we have Israel and the U.S. alleging a nuclear threat from Iran; the U.S. encircling Iran with military bases in the name of regional security; and that same encirclement giving Iran even more reason to develop nuclear power. Moreover, the U.S. knows Iran’s desire for nuclear power is politically and economically legitimate, and Israeli analysts know that Iran is a status quo power not given to irresponsible military belligerence. The logical diplomatic solution to the problem of geopolitical uncertainty would be a regional security arrangement acceptable to all parties. Yet this is precisely what Israel does not want, and the junta is doing everything it can to sabotage a peaceful resolution. We see this sabotage in the instrumental way the junta, Israel’s proxy, is using the UN Security Council to set up Iran for attack.

To justify an attack, the junta again sought to discredit all forms of diplomacy. As it did with Afghanistan and Iraq, it put forth a preposterous resolution that Iran would be forced to reject. Following the expected rejection, the junta would put together a rationale for sanctions and possibly military assault. This happened on August 22, 2006, when the UN ambassadors of the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China put forth an offer for Iran to give up its nuclear program in exchange for a multilateral security agreement. As a prerequisite, however, Iran was expected to suspend indefinitely its enrichment program, agree to resolve all of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s outstanding concerns, and resume full implementation of the “Additional Protocol,” which calls for very tight monitoring of all suspected nuclear sites by the IAEA.

Moreover, the U.S. has refused to accept any scenario that would allow Iran to participate in regional security. In fact, it refuses to offer any positive incentives to Iran. Clearly, concern over nuclear weapons has nothing to do with the junta’s obstructionism. This is the finding of Flynt Leverett, who held senior posts at the National Security Council, the State Department and the CIA. In a candid interview with Bernard Gwertzman of the Council on Foreign Relations, Leverett revealed that Bush not only had no policy to deal with Iran’s nuclear program, but that he had made up his mind that the Iranian government had to be replaced:

Bernard Gwertzman: Is this one of these clichés that the neo-cons in the Bush administration wanted regime change and nothing else and didn’t want to talk to the Iranians?

Flynt Leverett: I think you’re right. That’s the basic motivation, that you had a bunch of neo-cons, and even the president himself [against dialogue], it’s not just the neo-cons who wanted regime change and nothing else. Ultimately the president is, on this issue, very, very resistant to the idea of doing a deal, even a deal that would solve the nuclear problem. You don’t do a deal that would effectively legitimate this regime that he considers fundamentally illegitimate. I think that’s the real issue… He is not going to do a deal that lets this regime off the hook, even if that deal would solve our problem with them over the nuclear issue.[638]

As the junta planned, Iran rejected the proposal. In fact, the junta was so confident of rejection that it held a conference call with French, German and British officials regarding sanctions the day before the proposal was made.[639] The conspicuous exclusion of Russia and China, countries that are not under the thumb of the Israel Lobby, was no accident. Russian Defense Minister Sergei B. Ivanov, for example, dismissed sanctions as counter productive and premature:

I do not know cases in international practice or the whole of the previous experience when sanctions reached their goals or were efficient. Apart from this, I do not think that the issue is so urgent that the U.N. Security Council or the group of six countries should consider the introduction of sanctions. In any case Russia continues to advocate a political and diplomatic solution to the problem.[640]

As the above-mentioned conference call demonstrated, the junta had no intention of allowing Russia or China to frustrate its plans to set up Iran for attack. If the Security Council refused to go along, the junta’s UN ambassador John Bolton said the U.S. would have introduced a resolution to impose penalties such as banning travel and freezing assets for key Iranian leaders soon after the August 31 deadline—but to what end? The junta has gone out of its way to create a hostile climate in the Middle East and deliberately sabotage diplomatic solutions to the question of Iran’s nuclear power, yet its threat of sanctions is centered around the issue of nuclear power.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, Iran and its leadership are being stigmatized as a threat to world peace, and the myth of an Iranian first-strike nuclear weapons program is being dogmatized into reality. The only beneficiary of this insanity is Israel, the only Middle East state insane enough to start a nuclear war. As former Mossad chief, Efraim Halevy said in April 2005:

“Israel, for its part, could not hope for a better combination of players and circumstances in the political campaign that is underway in relation to Iran’s nuclear project.” This would result in the containment of Iran and the neutralization of the danger it poses to Israel — “without Israel having to consider whether to cope alone” with the threat.[641]

The examples of Syria and Iran in this chapter demonstrate one indisputable fact: each country was willing to help the U.S. with the “war on terrorism” in exchange for some measure of improved relations, yet the junta sabotaged any attempt at reconciliation and went out of its way to foment belligerency. If we are to believe that the “war on terrorism” represents the be-all and end-all of U.S. foreign policy, these actions make no sense. Nevertheless, they did happen, which means they are factual. Since these facts are incompatible with the “war on terrorism” rhetoric, they refute the theory that the junta is acting in the name of U.S. national interest. Since the junta’s belligerence toward Syria and Iran is tactically identical to its premeditated hostility toward Iraq, we must also conclude that the junta invaded Iraq for reasons unrelated to U.S. self-interest.

17

The Host and the Parasite

Chapter one ended with this maxim from Sherlock Holmes: “When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Fifteen chapters later, we can identify the impossible that must be excluded—oil as the motive for the invasion of Iraq. Because destabilizing Iraq and other Middle Eastern regimes in the name of “democracy” and “the war on terrorism” is so incompatible with traditional U.S. policy, we come to the improbable truth that remains:

the U.S. invaded Iraq
for the sake of a foreign power—israel.

Despite a plethora of evidence for this thesis, I could not have started the book from this point. It is one thing to say that U.S. Middle East policy is self-defeating and belligerent—on this score, most reasonable people would agree—but it is quite another to assume broad initial agreement on the premise that a cabal of fascists took control of the U.S. government to commit premeditated genocide. To do this, the reader would have to reject what his senses tell him and admit that his judgments about September 11, the ‘war on terrorism’ and other events of the last decade are all unsound.

I had to persuade the reader to accept the idea that appearance and reality are not necessarily compatible, and to accept the idea that another frame of reference can make sense of the eight years of Bush’s totalitarian misrule. To borrow a metaphor from The Matrix, I had to persuade the reader to take “the red pill”:

Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere, it is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, or when go to church or when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

Neo: What truth?

Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind. (long pause, sighs) Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back.

(In his left hand, Morpheus shows a blue pill.)

Morpheus: You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. (a red pill is shown in his other hand) You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. (Long pause; Neo begins to reach for the red pill) Remember—all I am offering is the truth, nothing more.

The first 14 chapters of this book serve to expose the false “blue pill” reality, which is based on the official narrative of September 11 and the oil-first motive. People who live in this “prison” accept the world as presented, and have implicit faith in the a priori certainties that support it. After all, the persistence of symbols, rituals and shared memories create the illusion of historical continuity. For the purposes of this book, the key a priori certainty that underlies the blue-pill reality is this:

The U.S. that exists today
is the same U.S. that has always existed.

In this reality, the perversities of the Bush government are understood as transient, political phenomena because to all appearances the U.S.’s slide into paranoia and tyranny began after Clinton left office; therefore, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the country itself.

Unfortunately, the blue-pill reality differs little from the fanciful God-centered reality propounded by the Medieval Church. In this pre-scientific, pre-literate era, “reality” was whatever the church—the mainstream media and imperial power of the time—said it was, and what the church said included the following: the Sun revolved around the Earth; the Earth was flat; and Adam and Eve produced mankind. There was little need for anyone to question these “facts” since they accorded perfectly with a person’s common-sense view of the world: The sun moved across the sky from sunrise to sunset; a person walked in straight lines; and since children came from parents, it stood to reason that there had to be an original man and woman. Similarly, a person who subscribes to the “common sense” world of the official narrative of the last decade, does not question the notion that jet aircraft brought down the Twin Towers, that the U.S. invaded Iraq for oil, or that al Qa’ida exists.

Those who do dare to challenge the revealed truth of the Matrix risk ridicule, ostracism, and character assassination. Take the case of Polish astronomer and mathematician Nicolas Copernicus, who proved the fallacy of the generally accepted geocentric model of the universe. Using the periodic retrograde motion of Mars’s orbit, among other observational data, Copernicus proved that the Sun lay at the center of the known universe, and that the Earth was just a planet in orbit around it. He proved the superiority of his theory by showing that Ptolemy’s geocentric theory was incompatible with the evidence.  Less well known is that Copernicus was so petrified of ridicule and ostracism that he never articulated the heliocentric theory during his lifetime (1473–1543). Only on his deathbed did he give permission for one of his students to publish his great work De Revolutionibus posthumously. Copernicus had every reason to fear retribution, as Giordano Bruno, Galileo Galilei and other courageous people would discover.

Similarly, those who defend the Matrix narrative are dismissive or hostile toward its critics. Like the Church’s “reality,” the Matrix is founded on a Creation Myth: any current understanding of the U.S. must start with September 11, 2001. The question that cannot be asked is this:

Why did the U.S.,
with all of its democratic ideals  and more than 200 years of republican tradition,
commit political suicide?

A person who tries to answer the question would have to accept that the 14 points Professor Lawrence W. Britt cited as symptomatic of fascist or proto-fascist societies now define the U.S. Then the person must investigate the relationship between the September 11 attack and the role it played in the rise of the junta, but such an investigation would expose myriad incongruities between the official narrative and the evidence. To avoid facing them, a person in this reality engages his denial mechanism—”conspiracy theory!”—and attacks anyone who challenges the verisimilitude of the Creation myth and the artificial mentality it nurtures.  The persistent illusion that the U.S. is still run by a national government precludes consideration of any theory that might prove otherwise. To pre-empt this non-cognitive response, I had to convince the reader to accept an alternative reality:

The U.S. that exists today
is not the same U.S. that has always existed

This is “the red pill” I ask the reader to take in order to see the totalitarian reality behind the U.S.’s moribund democratic façade. In other words:

If a rational frame of reference
based on political continuity
leads to irrational conclusions
about U.S. behaviour,  we must adopt
an irrational frame of reference
based on political discontinuity.

From this vantage point, the last six years represent not the beginning of fascism but its highest expression: the September 11 attack, invasion of Iraq, torture of Arabs, demonization of bin Laden and Hussein, secret prisons, electoral fraud, warrantless domestic spying, lying to Congress, open contempt for the Bill of Rights and the rule of law—all this and more can be explained rationally as a function of a decades-long political degeneration. The republic did not spontaneously combust after September 11; it was already terminally ill. Re-establishing civil society based on the rule of law depends on healing the disjuncture between appearance and reality, and ending the government’s undeclared war on its own people. The first step in this healing lies with the acceptance that the republic is dead because only then will the American people be able to acknowledge that Israel’s fifth column is the real enemy.

The Junta Becomes the Hunted

On March 23, 2006, The London Review of Books published an essay by two esteemed U.S. academics— John Mearsheimer, the Wendell Harrison Professor of Political Science at Chicago, and Stephen Walt, the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Affairs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Entitled “The Israel Lobby” it was nothing less than a public alarm about the Israel-first nature of U.S. aggression in the Middle East.

Beginning in the 1990s, and even more after 9/11, U.S. support [for Israel] has been justified by the claim that both states are threatened by terrorist groups originating in the Arab and Muslim world, and by “rogue states” that back these groups and seek weapons of mass destruction. This is taken to mean not only that Washington should give Israel a free hand in dealing with the Palestinians and not press it to make concessions until all Palestinian terrorists are imprisoned or dead, but that the U.S. should go after countries like Iran and Syria. Israel is thus seen as a crucial ally in the war on terror because its enemies are America’s enemies. In fact, Israel is a liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue states…. As for so-called rogue states in the Middle East, they are not a dire threat to vital U.S. interests, except inasmuch as they are a threat to Israel.[642]

The authors expose numerous aspects of The Lobby’s parasitism, including: spying on the U.S., the Lobby’s control and censorship of Congress, the structure of the Lobby and the network of the Lobby’s “think tanks,” and Israel’s financial and political extortion. They also debunk fundamental myths such as: Israel and the U.S. have shared interests and morals; Israel is an asset to the U.S; and Israel wants peace.

What made the essay so powerful is the reputation of its authors and their sober presentation, since nothing they said was actually new. Many of the conclusions in “The Israel Lobby,” for example, are found throughout this book and have been said many times before by others. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, said the essay conveyed “blinding flashes of the obvious, [ideas] that were whispered in corners rather than said out loud at cocktail parties where someone else could hear you.”[643]  On May 20, 2004, retiring Sen. Ernest Hollings unleashed a fusillade from the Senate floor denouncing the coercive and corrosive power of The Lobby:

You can’t have an Israel policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here… I can tell you, no President takes office—I don’t care whether it is a Republican or a Democrat—that all of a sudden AIPAC will tell him exactly what the policy is, and Senators and members of Congress ought to sign letters… I just read about President Bush’s appearance before the AIPAC. He confirmed his support of the Jewish vote, referring to adopting Ariel Sharon’s policy, and the dickens with the 1967 borders; the heck with negotiating the return of refugees; the heck with the settlements he had objected to originally. They had those borders, Resolution No. 242—no, no, President Bush said I am going along with Sharon, and he was going to get that and he got the wonderful reception he got with the Jewish vote… As my friend from Virginia, Senator Allen, says—it is an anti-Semitic, political, conspiracy statement. That is not a conspiracy. That is the policy. I didn’t like to keep it a secret, maybe; but I can tell you now, I will challenge any one of the other 99 Senators to tell us why we are in Iraq, other than what this policy is here. It is an adopted policy, a domino theory of The Project For The New American Century.[644]

In a letter to radio host Jeff Blankfort, former Senator James Abourezk, depicted a Congress utterly cowed by the Lobby’s terrorism:

I can tell you from personal experience that, at least in the Congress, the support Israel has in that body is based completely on political fear—fear of defeat by anyone who does not do what Israel wants done. I can also tell you that very few members of Congress--at least when I served there--have any affection for Israel or for its Lobby. What they have is contempt, but it is silenced by fear of being found out exactly how they feel. I’ve heard too many cloakroom conversations in which members of the Senate will voice their bitter feelings about how they’re pushed around by the Lobby to think otherwise. In private one hears the dislike of Israel and the tactics of the Lobby, but not one of them is willing to risk the Lobby’s animosity by making their feelings public.[645]

Mearsheimer and Walt write that The Lobby is not a monolithic Leninist-style organization, but rather a constellation of numerous groups diffused throughout the political culture led by AIPAC, the core of The Lobby’s influence in Congress. Anyone who opposes Israel is subjected to an orchestrated campaign of propaganda and defamation. As they wrote in “The Israel Lobby”:

In the 1984 elections, AIPAC helped defeat Senator Charles Percy from Illinois, who, according to a prominent Lobby figure, had “displayed insensitivity and even hostility to our concerns.” Thomas Dine, the head of AIPAC at the time, explained what happened: “All the Jews in America, from coast to coast, gathered to oust Percy. And the American politicians – those who hold public positions now, and those who aspire—got the message.” AIPAC’s influence on Capitol Hill goes even further. According to Douglas Bloomfield, a former AIPAC staff member, “it is common for members of Congress and their staffs to turn to AIPAC first when they need information, before calling the Library of Congress, the Congressional Research Service, committee staff or administration experts.” More important, he notes that AIPAC is “often called on to draft speeches, work on legislation, advise on tactics, perform research, collect co-sponsors and marshal votes.”

Given this coercive influence, changing the majority party in Congress, as happened on December 2, 2006, amounts to little more than a cosmetic change that does nothing to inhibit the Lobby’s control over politicians and its ability to dictate policy. Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the new majority leader in the House of Representatives, proves the truth of this observation since she is as much a puppet of the Lobby as anyone in the Republican junta. In an dishonest, servile speech to AIPAC on May 24, 2005, she claimed: Israel’s survival, not the illegal Occupation of Palestine to be the cause of violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip; the greatest threat to Israel’s right to exist [sic] comes from Iran; and that Israel’s nuclear monopoly was a good thing.[646] Moreover, she preemptively stated that she would not call for Bush’s impeachment, a statement shocking in its absurdity, since Bush has committed two prima facie impeachable acts.

Vendetta for 16 Words

On July 6, 2003, the New York Times ran a commentary article by former ambassador and Africa expert Joseph C. Wilson IV, in which he said Cheney‘s office asked him to go to Niger in February 2002 to investigate a claim that the country sold uranium yellowcake—a form of lightly processed ore—to Iraq in the late 1990s. Wilson found that no sale took place because regulatory complexities would not have permitted it:

Given the structure of the consortiums that operated the mines, it would be exceedingly difficult for Niger to transfer uranium to Iraq. Niger’s uranium business consists of two mines, Somair and Cominak, which are run by French, Spanish, Japanese, German and Nigerian interests. If the government wanted to remove uranium from a mine, it would have to notify the consortium, which in turn is strictly monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Moreover because the two mines are closely regulated, quasi-governmental entities, selling uranium would require the approval of the minister of mines, the prime minister and probably the president. In short, there’s simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired.[647]

The memorandum that made the claim, which Wilson never saw, was a sloppy forgery from the Niger embassy in Rome. It came to Cheney‘s attention after Nicolo Pollari, chief of Italy’s military intelligence service (Sismi) in the pro-Bush government of Silvio Berlusconi, took it directly to Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley. Pollari tried to interest the CIA in the story but was repeatedly turned away, according to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, which broke the story of the “yellowcake” memorandum. The timing of the memorandum is significant because it comes at a time when the junta was trying to fabricate a case to invade Iraq, and Berlusconi saw a way to ingratiate himself with Bush.[648] According to La Repubblica: “Berlusconi wants Sismi to be big players on the international security scene, to prove themselves to their ally, the United States, and the world. Washington is looking for proof of Saddam’s involvement … and wants info immediately.”[649]

Despite the CIA’s repeated refusal to take Pollari’s bait and in the face of Wilson‘s negative finding, Bush asserted the sale as fact in his infamous January 28, 2003, State of the Union address: “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” Lying to Congress is an impeachable offence, and Wilson‘s New York Times commentary article proved that the case for invading Iraq was fraudulent. The junta went berserk, and orchestrated a vendetta to smear and discredit not only Wilson, but also to expose his wife Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA agent. Exposing an undercover agent is a federal crime and also an impeachable offence.

On October 28, 2005, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who was tasked with finding out who gave the order to blow her cover, indicted Lewis “Scooter” Libby on charges of obstruction of justice, making a false statement and perjury. Libby resigned and ultimately told Fitzgerald that the order to leak Plame‘s name came from Cheney. The individuals who leaked the name to syndicated columnist Robert Novak are now known to be presidential advisor Karl Rove and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. In addition to Fitzgerald’s inquiry, Wilson and Plame have filed a civil suit against Cheney, Rove and Libby. [650]

The attack on Plame was reckless and unrelated to her husband’s report or the need to invade Iraq, but is typical of the junta’s hubris and visceral contempt for criticism. The CIA refused to accept the phony yellowcake story and had steadfastly resisted the junta’s campaign to politicize Iraq intelligence; therefore, the junta punished the agency by exposing one of its agents, even if that meant sabotaging the junta’s own work! Plame was chief of operations for the Joint Task Force on Iraq—part of the Counterproliferation Division of the agency’s clandestine Directorate of Operations—and was leading the effort to dig up evidence to support the junta’s contention that Saddam Hussein did have WMDs.[651]

The fallout from this fiasco is impossible to calculate. Not only does it implicate the junta hierarchy in criminal misconduct that dwarfs the Watergate scandal, but demands answers about the need to fabricate evidence to invade, since both Cheney and Powell had publicly stated that Hussein posed no threat. From here it’s only a short step to asking why the junta, especially Cheney, persistently lied about Saddam Hussein being involved in the September 11 attack. Since destroying Iraq was not in the U.S. national interest, as Mearsheimer and Walt observed, all eyes will turn to the only parties that did have an interest in destroying Iraq—Israel and its fifth column. Despite Pelosi’s refusal to defend the Constitution and call for Bush’s impeachment, outgoing Rep. Cynthia McKinney introduced a bill on December 8, 2006, containing three articles of impeachment against Bush.[652]

AIPAC of Wolves

While the junta is paying the price for the Iraq invasion, and its domestic police state apparatus, Israel and The Lobby have been implicated in a spy scandal that corroborates the preceding evidence about the extent of The Lobby’s control over U.S. policy. On August 27, 2004, the FBI learned that a high-ranking Pentagon official had passed classified defense information on Iran to two members of AIPAC—policy director Steve Rosen, and senior Iran analyst Keith Weissman. The official, later identified as Larry Franklin, an Iran policy expert in Feith’s office, said he passed the information to AIPAC because he was “frustrated” with the U.S.’s less-than-zealous “anti-Iran” policy and thought he could influence it by having Rosen and Weissman relay data through “back channels” to officials on the National Security Council.[653] Franklin was certain Israel already had the information, and said he did not intend to harm the U.S., but this is beside the point.

Inasmuch as the FBI wanted to prosecute Franklin, it was more interested in catching Rosen and Weissman because AIPAC had been suspected of spying on the Pentagon since at least 1999.[654] Under the terms of a plea bargain, Franklin pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy and a third charge of possessing classified documents, and agreed to help federal prosecutors build a case against Rosen and Weisman. On October 6, 2005, in his allocution to a District Court Judge in Alexandria, VA, Franklin disclosed for the first time that he also passed on classified information directly to the Israeli embassy’s political affairs officer Naor Gilon, with whom he met eight times over the summer of 2004. Since Israel’s attitude toward its host is wholly exploitive, as this book has shown, the idea is not far-fetched in the least.

Rosen and Weissman were fired from AIPAC in April 2005 and indicted four months later by a grand jury for conspiring to receive and transfer classified information.[655] Franklin was sentenced to 12 years in prison on January 20, 2006, but the ramifications of his betrayal will implicate the Lobby for many years. As Ha’aretz reported:

The FBI investigation into the Pentagon mole affair has expanded beyond data analyst Larry Franklin’s immediate circle to encompass the entire issue of Jewish influence on the neoconservative part of the administration. The FBI queries have recently been focusing on a number of officials, all from the neoconservative wing, who had access to the debates on Iranian affairs, the Washington Post reported yesterday. The officials include Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith; Pentagon adviser Richard Perle; adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, David Wurmser; and Iran specialist Harold Rhode, all of them Jews.[656]

Not since U.S. Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan J. Pollard admitted to spying for Israel in 1987 and was sentenced to life in prison has a spy scandal damaged Israel’s image so badly. This time, the conspicuous meddling of AIPAC could extend into the greater Jewish community. According to the Jewish newspaper Forward:

Critics say, with its increasing focus on Iran, AIPAC risks fueling the claims of those who would accuse the Jewish community of working with Washington neoconservatives to convince the White House to pursue regime change in Tehran. “AIPAC is obsessed with Iran,” said a Washington executive with a major Jewish organization, suggesting that high profile lobbying on Iran may foment anti-Jewish and anti-Israel sentiments.[657]

Such sentiments are also foremost in the mind of Israelis because Zionist influence on Middle East policy has now become a legitimate topic of debate. As we saw above, 9/11 Commission chairman Philip Zelikow openly equated the invasion of Iraq with Israel, as did Gen. Anthony Zinni. In addition, the overt equation of spreading “democracy” in the Middle East is a euphemism for destroying Arab regimes hostile to Israel. Yet, the more the junta sacrifices U.S. lives in the name of Israel’s security, the more Israel will be exposed as the greatest threat to the U.S. national interest. Thus, servitude to Israel has to be officially denied and repackaged as “bringing democracy to the Middle East,” as in this monstrosity of mendacity from Bush:

As I stated in a speech in the lead-up to the war, a liberated Iraq could show the power of freedom to transform the Middle East by bringing hope and progress to the lives of millions. So we’re helping the Iraqi—Iraqi people build a lasting democracy that is peaceful and prosperous and an example for the broader Middle East. The terrorists understand this, and that is why they have now made Iraq the central front in the war on terror… [Critics] say that we act because of oil, that we act in Iraq because of Israel, or because we misled the American people. Some of the most irresponsible comments about manipulating intelligence have come from politicians who saw the same intelligence we saw, and then voted to authorize the use of force against Saddam Hussein. These charges are pure politics.[658]

The Franklin scandal and lying about Iraq have compromised the junta’s ability to rally support for a pre-emptive military strike on Iran. Just as Israel wants to restrain the junta’s ambitions toward Syria, it has been hectoring the junta for years to move faster to stop Iran’s nuclear power program. As Chapter 16 showed, Iran poses no military threat—only a political threat to Israel’s nuclear monopoly. If Iran should develop a nuclear weapons capability, Israel would be forced to accept a balance of power in the region, so the U.S. is coming under intense pressure to bomb or threaten to bomb Iran if it does not stop its uranium enrichment program, even though Iran poses no threat.

Twilight of the Fascists

The effect of the Democratic electoral gains was immediate. Rumsfeld announced his resignation, as did his torture advisor at the Pentagon, Stephen Cambone. John Bolton, temporarily installed as UN ambassador over the objections of the Senate, announced he would not seek official confirmation. Two months earlier, Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Sen. Richard Lugar called off a planned confirmation vote after Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee announced he would not support Bolton until he answered certain questions about Middle East policy.

These three resignations of key Zionists follow those of Feith, Perle, Wolfowitz and Libby among others. Bush is all but isolated, now that the main cheerleaders for invasion have resigned or been reassigned. In a cowardly attempt at self-exculpation, warmongers Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, David Frum, Michael Ledeen, Frank Gaffney and others, are now trying to heap all the blame for the Iraq quagmire on Bush and his incompetent administration, as if to say they had nothing to do with it.[659]

That the rats should be deserting the ship is understandable. Bush’s criminal “presidency” is an abject failure and Iraq is a festering sore that won’t heal. As with his past failures, daddy’s advisors have again been sent in to bail Bush out. The sight of James Baker III advising on Middle East policy, and Robert Gates being confirmed as the new Defense Secretary signals an unmistakable reversal of fascism, at least to some degree. This new thinking was embodied in the recently released report of the Iraq Study Group. Also known as the Baker-Hamilton Commission after its co-chairmen Baker and former congressman Lee Hamilton, the group was a 10-person bipartisan panel appointed by Congress on March 15, 2006, to analyze the deteriorating state of Iraq and U.S. involvement. Of the 79 recommendations in the final report, the following three are noteworthy:

Rec. 9: The United States should engage Iran and Syria to try to obtain their commitment to constructive policies toward Iraq and other regional issues.

Rec. 39: All U.S. combat brigades must be out of Iraq by the first quarter of 2008, though many critics of the report say this is not nearly soon enough.

Rec. 71: The White House must include funding for Iraq in the budget, and not continue to subvert Congress by writing blank cheques.[660]

Baker even went so far as to warn Bush not to cherry-pick the ISG’s recommendations but to implement all of them.[661] Bush, though, continued to display a pathological hatred for rational criticism. He all but dismissed the ISG report out of hand, and asked for a $468.9 billion defense budget for the 2008 fiscal year—6.3 percent higher than the $441.2 billion requested for 2007. The only aspect of the ISG report that he did embrace is the recommendation for a short-term military build-up to allow the Iraqi army to take over the war:

The Iraqi government should accelerate the urgently needed national reconciliation program to which it has already committed. And it should accelerate assuming responsibility for Iraqi security by increasing the number and quality of Iraqi Army brigades. As the Iraqi Army increases in size and capability, the Iraqi government should be able to take real responsibility for governance. While this process is under way, and to facilitate it, the United States should significantly increase the number of U.S. military personnel, including combat troops, imbedded in and supporting Iraqi Army units. As these actions proceed, we could begin to move combat forces out of Iraq. The primary mission of U.S. forces in Iraq should evolve to one of supporting the Iraqi army, which would take over primary responsibility for combat operations. We should continue to maintain support forces, rapid-reaction forces, special operations forces, intelligence units, search-and-rescue units, and force protection units.[662]

The military, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff vehemently opposed this “military surge” strategy, since they saw no possible good coming from sacrificing more U.S. lives for no definable or defensible purpose. It would also push the U.S. past the point of no return, as the following excerpt from the Miami Herald made clear:

Any conceivable “surge” would not turn the tide - would not even stem it. We saw that last summer when the dispatch of 7,000 U.S. troops to reinforce Baghdad brought a fierce counter-surge - the highest level of violence since the Pentagon began issuing quarterly reports in 2005. A major buildup would commit the U.S. Army and Marine Corps to decisive combat in which there would be no more strategic reserves to be sent to the front. As Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway pointed out Monday, “If you commit your reserve for something other than a decisive win, or to stave off defeat, then you have essentially shot your bolt.” It will be a matter of win or die in the attempt. In that situation, everyone in uniform on the ground will commit every ounce of their being to “victory,” and few measures will be shrunk from. Analogies come to mind: Stalingrad, the Bulge, Dien Bien Phu, the Battle of Algiers.

It will be total war with the likelihood of all the excesses and mass casualties that come with total war. To force such a strategy on our armed forces would be nothing short of immoral, in view of predictable troop losses and the huge number of Iraqis who would meet violent injury and death. If adopted, the “surge” strategy will turn out to be something we will spend a generation living down.[663]

Even active soldiers didn’t believe a short-term troop increase would do any good: “This is a civil war, and we’re just making things worse,” said Sgt. Justin Thompson. “We’re losing. I’m not afraid to say it.”[664]

Unlike the early days of “the war on terrorism” when almost everyone in Congress bought into the junta’s warmongering paranoia, acquiescence in infinite war is now no longer automatic in either party. Republican Sen. Gordon Smith said in the Senate that U.S. policy on Iraq may be “criminal,” and then-senior Democratic Sen. Joe Biden, refused to support any increase in troop strength. The same defiance is expected toward other aspects of the junta’s unconstitutional agenda. The result will be a virtual war between Congressional and “presidential” interpretations of constitutional supremacy; that is, between the republican and totalitarian versions of democracy, as discussed in Chapter 13.

To all appearances, then, the junta’s reign of terror is coming to an end, but such a conclusion would be unwarranted because the junta is just a manifestation of the fascist cancer. Just as a cancer that goes into remission can engender false hope of a recovery, a Congress that merely addresses the symptoms of the junta’s abuse of power—military tribunals, torture of detainees, domestic spying, corporate cronyism and infinite war—generates a false optimism. Only a Congress that is prepared to de-Zionize the country could hope to address the cause of the abuse, but such a scenario is unthinkable since, as we saw above, The Lobby terrorizes both parties into subservience to Israel. Even before the ISG report was made public, Israeli Prime Minster Ehud Olmert expressed confidence it would be sabotaged:

On his way home from Los Angeles, the prime minister “calmed” the reporters—and perhaps even himself—by saying there is no danger of U.S. President George W. Bush accepting the expected recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton panel, and attempting to move Syria out of the axis of evil and into a coalition to extricate America from Iraq. The prime minister hopes the Jewish lobby can rally a Democratic majority in the new Congress to counter any diversion from the status quo on the Palestinians.[665]

Reform is out of the question since a cancer cannot cure itself. A return to constitutional government requires more radical measures—the creation of a new republic, and for that to happen the existing parasitized U.S. political system must be allowed to die. In an ideal scenario, the military would stage a coup, arrest the junta’s leadership, and set up a provisional government to oversee the drafting of a new Constitution. Such a military government could:

• Institute a Nuremberg-style war crimes tribunal to prosecute the leaders of the Lobby and the junta for treason and crimes against humanity;

• Declare null and void the Supreme Court confirmations of justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito, and void all fascist legislation passed over the last six years, including the USA PATRIOT Act;

• Call for a proper investigation into the September 11 attack;

• Freeze and liquidate the assets of every Zionist Jewish and Christian organization and place the proceeds into a bank account for distribution to Palestinians, Iraqis and Lebanese; and

• Declare military, economic and political war on Israel.

Since the Constitution is to all intents and purposes null and void, citizens already have little or no protection against anti-democratic measures like arbitrary arrest, indefinite detention, or warrantless search-and-seizure, so life under military rule would make little difference. In fact, armed insurrection would help close the gap between political appearance and reality, and focus attention on the zionist enemy within. Whether or not this scenario comes to pass does not alter the fact that the military is the best hope for ending the fascist reign of terror, in all its aspects. It has arguably suffered the most from the junta’s militarism and has been one of the consistently strongest voices against the Iraq invasion.

Now, thanks to the junta’s reckless disregard for the U.S. national interest, the Army and Marine Corps are broken, bleeding, demoralized and stretched so thinly that they cannot defend U.S. interests, much less continue to fight Israel’s wars. Reservists and national guardsmen have been forcibly conscripted into multiple tours of duty at the expense of their families and civilian jobs because the army and marines cannot maintain troop levels, despite resorting to unethical recruitment practices.[666] By August 5, 2006, the Pentagon was forced to admit that 40,000 servicemen had deserted from all branches of the service since 2000, some of them fleeing to Canada.[667] Tens of thousands of soldiers are returning from Iraq physically and psychologically damaged. As early as December 2004, an Army study showed that 16 percent of returning soldiers reported symptoms of major depression, serious anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder, and predicted that the percentage could rise to the Vietnam War level of 33 percent. The number of soldiers requiring mental health treatment could exceed 100,000.[668] The following letter from a soldier’s mother to journalist Dahr Jamail paints a typical picture of what the junta has done to the military:

My son cannot bear what he is forced to do, and has probably through sheer terror, confusion, and split-second decisions, killed innocent civilians. He is well aware of this, and I have witnessed the consequences first hand. He probably carries innocent blood on his hands. The killing of innocent people is virtually unavoidable. He is in Al-Anbar region. You are the only person in the media who has responded to my e-mails. The other e-mails I sent to news organizations questioning why so little news out of Al-Anbar were unanswered. I believe that it is because the U.S. has lost that region, and is suppressing that news to the American public. My son called me last week from Ramadi and said the war is lost—they are just going thru the motions, again, forced to carry out orders and risk their lives for an unobtainable and unjust goal. I continue to read your web site, as well as others, while I pray for my son’s safe homecoming in spring.[669]

Anti-war sentiment among active-duty U.S. military personnel reached a new height in October 2006, after 29-year-old Navy seaman Jonathan Hutto started the website Appeal for Redress (www.appealforredress.org). Almost 2,250 soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen, including dozens of officers joined his website to petition Congress to withdraw from Iraq. As The Nation reported, “Not since 1969, when some 1,300 active-duty military personnel signed an open letter in the New York Times opposing the war in Vietnam, has there been such a dramatic barometer of rising military dissent.”[670]

Military opposition to the war has also reached some of the highest-ranking officers, including those who served in Iraq. The dissenters include Maj.-Gen. Charles Swannack Jr., who commanded the 82nd Airborne Division, and Maj.-Gen. John Batiste, who led the First Infantry Division. Although their protest is non-confrontational, it is without precedent in wartime. Their anger was directed at Rumsfeld, whom they demanded be fired for arrogance and incompetence.[671] Though their wish has come true, it does not mean that the dissenting generals have won, or that the U.S. is any closer to extricating itself from Iraq. Whether the armed forces would ever mount a coup for the sake of the nation is debatable, but any attempt to reclaim independence from The Lobby and put an end to decades of Israel’s political and economic extortion would need military support.

To conclude, I’ll leave you with this citation attributed to Marcus Tullius Cicero, the great Roman senator, lawyer and orator who was assassinated for his opposition to tyranny. Although the quote is likely not authentic, it is nevertheless widely known and stands as the best, most powerful indictment of Israelʼs fifth column and how it consumed the U.S. republic:

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation. He works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared.

Index of Names

Abbas, Mahmoud, 395, 397, 398

Abbot of Citeaux, 373

Abdul Aziz, King, 209, 215

Abington, Edward, 155

Abourezk, Sen. James, 468

Abraham, Stanley, 8

Abrams, Elliot, 242, 325, 450

abu Ghaith, Sulaiman, 372

Adams, John, 63, 64

Addington, David, 9, 414, 415

Adelman, Kenneth, 475

Adler, Mortimer, 52

Aflaq, Michel, 438

Aga, Mia Mohammed, 107

Ahmed, Prince, 121

Ahmedjan, Maulvi, 197

Aidid, Mohammed Farah, 176

Akhtar, Abdur Rahman, 108

Albright, Madeleine, 220, 230, 234

Alexios I Komnenos, 370

Alito, Samuel, 479

Aljibury, Falah, 17

al-Kahtani, Mohammed, 415

Amin, Hafizullah, 91, 95

Aminuddin, Usman, 314

Amleh, Firas al-, 163

Andropov, Yuri, 95

Ani, Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-, 253

Annan, Kofi, 302

Arafat, Yasser, 139, 149, 152, 155, 156, 249, 250

Aridi, Ghazi, 447

Arif, Abdul Salam, 441

Armitage, Richard, 8, 471

Arnett, Peter, 176, 288, 289

Arnold, Sir Thomas W., 101

Ashcroft, John, 44, 379, 400

Assad, Bashar al-, 150, 432, 433, 445, 446, 447, 450

Assad, Hafez al-, 445

Assad, Rifaat, 448

Atta, Mohamed, 253, 281, 290, 291, 294

Ayalon, Daniel, 430

Azeez, Abdul, 215

Aziz, Tariq, 115

Azzam, Sheik Abdullah, 104, 108

Baker III, James, 9, 76, 125, 139, 476

Bandar, Prince, 116

Barak, Ehud, 160, 163

Barbour, Haley, 11, 12

Bar-Ilan, David, 158

Barkri, Sheikh Omar, 225

Baroody Jr., William, 128, 129, 449

Bartley, Robert, 61

Bashir, Omar Hassan Ahmad al-, 177

Batiste, Maj-Gen. John, 480

Becker, Silvan, 221

Begin, Menachem, 29, 73, 74, 80, 81, 82, 135, 365

Bell, Nelson, 38, 130

ben Gurion, David, 85, 364

Ben-Ami, Shlomo, 160, 161

Ben-Eliezer, Binyamin, 144, 333

Bergson, Henri, 355

Berkowitz, Henry, 37

Berlusconi, Silvio, 470

Bhutto, Benazir, 195

Biden, Sen. Joe, 478

Billings, Robert, 43, 74

bin Baz, Sheikh Abdul-Aziz, 120

bin Laden, Osama, 106, 118, 119, 126, 166, 174, 178, 200, 202, 204, 205, 255, 256, 257, 260, 287, 288, 290, 300, 308, 316, 317, 320, 327, 328, 372, 373, 391, 441, 466

Bitar, Salah al-Din al-, 438

Black, Edwin, 360

Blackstone, William Eugene, 36

Blair, Tony, 289

Blankfort, Jeff, 468

Blix, Hans, 251, 327, 331

Bloomfield, Douglas, 469

Bodansky, Yossef, 177, 183

Bolton, John, 136, 238, 321, 348, 349, 350, 351, 352, 475

Boohaker, Joseph, 450

Bork, Robert H., 130, 131

Boueiz, Fares, 447

Boulard, Hervé, 290

Boutros-Ghali, Boutros, 175, 211

Brandl, Lt.–Col. Gary, 422, 423

Bremer, Paul, 330

Brezhnev, Leonid, 95

Brisard, Jean-Charles, 221, 303

Britt, Lawrence W., 66

Brom, Gen. Shlomo, 331, 332, 333, 334

Brown, Hank, 171, 193

Brown, Lewis, 8, 128

Bruno, Giordano, 465

Bryen, Stephen, 136

Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 73, 88

Buchanan, Patrick, 25

Bush, George H.W., 8, 77, 115, 125, 139, 140, 141, 173, 242, 251, 315, 323, 344

Bush, George W., 9, 16, 19, 20, 21, 22, 67, 68, 96, 131, 132, 146, 151, 238, 240, 242, 243, 248, 254, 257, 258, 264, 275, 278, 289, 299, 300, 303, 304, 305, 306, 313, 325, 328, 333, 334, 344, 352, 353, 370, 372, 384, 396, 401, 408, 430, 432, 453, 456, 468, 475

Bush, Marvin, 278

Bustany, Samir, 450

Butcher, William C., 129

Butler, Richard, 230

Byman, Daniel, 306, 309, 310

Byrd, Robert, 432

Byrne, Lt.–Col. Brennan, 421

Calley, Lt. William, 416

Cambone, Stephen, 475

Cameron, Carl, 264, 265

Campbell, Colin, 16

Carney, Timothy, 178

Carter, Jimmy, 43, 69, 70, 71, 72, 74, 90, 111, 122, 143, 144, 171, 319

Casey, William, 80, 315

Casteel, Steven, 300

Cellar, Emmanuel, 28

Chafee, Sen. Lincoln, 351, 475

Chalabi, Ahmad, 136, 330, 332, 334, 413, 452

Chamberlain, Wendy, 314

Chaney, Victoria, 188

Chavez, Hugo, 14

Cheney, Dick, 8, 9, 12, 15, 19, 20, 21, 22, 116, 117, 136, 242, 243, 254, 258, 299, 304, 320, 321, 323, 324, 325, 328, 332, 350, 414, 458, 470, 471, 473

Christopher, Warren, 217

Clark, William, 79

Clarke, Richard, 255, 257, 260, 378

Clifford, Clark, 27

Clinton, Bill, 2, 10, 73, 96, 138, 140, 143, 144, 146, 149, 153, 155, 156, 161, 164, 176, 186, 188, 192, 196, 203, 219, 220, 222, 223, 224, 230, 234, 238, 240, 258, 300, 307, 316, 319, 391, 434, 464

Cockburn, Andrew, 115

Cockburn, Leslie, 115

Colbert, James, 149

Conway, Gen. James, 477

Coors, Joseph, 41, 44

Copernicus, Nicolas, 465

Curtis, Clinton, 339

D’Souza, Dinesh, 130

Daoud Khan, Muhammad, 92, 94, 98, 99

Darby, John Nelson, 36, 37, 156, 157, 319

Darby, Spct. Joseph, 402

Dasquié, Guillaume, 221, 302, 309

Davis, Avi, 125

Dayan, Moshe, 25, 29, 86

de Bunsen, Maurice, 437

Dean, John, 2

Deaver, Michael, 76, 79

DeMasi, Nicholas, 286

DeMuth, Christopher, 129, 130

DeVos, Rich, 44

Dewey, Thomas, 27, 28

Dine, Thomas, 469

Donnelly, Tom, 456

Dostum, Abdurrashid, 179, 192, 199, 305

Duelfer, Charles, 22

Dukakis, Michael, 344

Dunlavey, Gen. Michael, 415

Dunn, Daniel R., 412

Durand, Sir Henry Mortimer, 98

Eagleburger, Lawrence S., 140

Eban, Abba, 400, 453

Eberhart, Gen. Ralph, 279

Eisenberg, Lewis, 278

Eisenhower, Dwight, 72, 77, 89, 237, 325, 344, 438, 441

Eitan, Rafael, 403

El Hage, Nabil, 450

El-Affendi, Abdelwahab, 168, 178

Ellner, Oded, 262

El-Refaei, Abu Emad, 431

Erwa, Elfatih, 178

Eshkol, Levi, 29

Evans, Donald, 8

Eytan, Walter, 364

Fadl, Jamal Ahmed al-, 173

Fagih, Saad al-, 105, 106, 223

Fahd, King, 97, 103, 110, 115, 117, 120, 179, 208, 217, 391, 436

Fahim, Mohammed, 317, 318

Faisal II, King, 440

Faisal, Turki al-, 119

Falwell, Jerry, 44, 81, 156, 375

Farah, Joseph, 450

Fasa'am, Burhan, 423

Feeney, Tom, 339, 340

Feinberg, Abraham, 31

Feith, Douglas, 138, 149, 320, 322, 450, 472, 473, 475

Ferdinand, Archduke Franz, 91, 101

Feulner, Edwin J., 41

Fierst, Herbert, 133

Filmer, Sir Robert, 56

Findley, Rep. Paul, 135

Finkelstein, Norman, 33, 364

Fisk, Robert, 104, 210, 211, 403, 421

Fitzgerald, Patrick, 471

Fleischer, Ari, 313

Footlik, Jay, 143

Ford, Gerald, 5, 69, 128, 202, 312

Ford, Sgt. Greg, 404

Fortas, Abe, 31

Franco, Francisco, 65

Frank, Justin, 382

Franklin, Benjamin, 63, 64

Franklin, Larry, 472, 473, 475

Franks, Gen. Tommy, 333, 419

Frederick, Sgt. Ivan, 405

Frum, David, 475

Fukuyama, Francis, 140

Fulcher of Chartres, 370

Gaffney, Frank, 138, 242, 450, 475

Gailani, Pir Sayed Ahmed, 99

Galilei, Galileo, 465

Gandhi, Sonia, 10

Garlasco, Marc, 425

Garner, Jay, 136, 330

Gates, Robert, 476

Gayle, Frank, 270

George, Dev, 194

Gerecht, Reuel Marc, 322

Gersony, Robert, 174

Ghaus, Mullah Mohammad, 194

Ghazali, Abu Hamid Muhammad al-, 102

Ghorbanifar, Manucher, 134, 322

Gilder, George, 41, 75

Gill, Peter, 108

Gillerman, Dan, 431

Gilon, Naor, 473

Gingrich, Newt, 41, 155, 156, 258, 328

Giuliani, Mayor Rudolph, 272

Glaspie, April, 109, 115, 116

Glazov, Jamie, 137

Glubb, Sir John Bagot, 366

Goebbels, Joseph, 356

Goering, Herman, 360

Goethe, Johann, 45

Goldberg, Arthur, 31

Goldmann, Nahum, 364

Goldmuntz, Lawrence, 133

Gonzales, Alberto, 408

Gorbachev, Mikhail, 122

Gore, Al, 9, 240, 334

Gorell, Fred, 8

Goss, Porter, 345, 347

Gottlieb, Alan, 44

Graham, Billy, 38, 132, 133, 367

Graner, Spct. Charles A., 405

Grey, Sir Edward, 436

Haass, Richard, 140

Hadi, Mahmud Al, 215

Hadley, Stephen, 470

Hagee, John, 156

Haig, Alexander, 80, 110

Hakim, Joseph, 450

Halevy, Efraim, 461

Halliday, Denis, 232

Hamadeh, Marwan, 447

Hamilton, Lee, 476

Hanjour, Hani, 284

Haq, Abdul, 107

Harding.. Gen. Bob, 295

Hariri, Rafiq, 446

Harrison, Benjamin, 36

Hashimi, Sayed Rahmatullah, 303

Haynes II, William, 408, 415

Hekmatyar, Golbuddin, 99, 181

Helmreich, Jeffrey S., 394

Helms, Richard, 303

Hendel, Zvi, 395

Henderson, Loy, 27

Hersh, Seymour, 320, 328, 333, 445, 455

Herzl, Theodore, 34

Heydrich, Reinhard, 420

Heymann, Philip, 135

Hilas, Kasim, 413

Hill, Roger, 231

Hitler, Adolf, 44, 65, 83, 150, 353, 354, 356, 357, 360, 364, 366, 375, 376, 388, 420

Hobbes, Thomas, 46, 52, 53, 56, 65

Hoffer, Eric, 354

Hollings, Sen. Ernest, 468

Holmes, Sherlock, 23

Hoover, Herbert, 132

Horowitz, Michael, 158

Hosam, Hosam Taher, 448

Hughes, Charles Evans, 69

Hughes, Paul, 419

Hume, Brit, 264

Hussein, King, 151

Hussein, Saddam, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 87, 109, 111, 115, 117, 118, 147, 150, 151, 231, 239, 240, 247, 248, 253, 254, 256, 320, 325, 327, 330, 332, 391, 431, 440, 453, 466, 472, 474

Hussein, Sharif, 435

Hutto, Jonathan, 480

ibn Saud, Abd al-Aziz, 209, 436

Idris, Saleh, 219, 220

Indyk, Martin, 138

Inman, Bobby Ray, 80

Iqbal, Asif, 411

Isler, Maj-Gen. Rod, 295, 296

Israel, John, 414

Jaber, Sheik, 114

Jackson, Bruce, 258

Jackson, Sen. Henry, 135

Jacobsen, Jake, 31

Jamail, Dahr, 425, 480

Jamroz, 301

Jastrow Jr., Morris, 37

Jefferson, Thomas, 52, 64

Jeffords, Jim, 299

Jensen, Brad, 266

Johnson, Larry, 227

Johnson, Lyndon, 5, 6, 60, 74, 143, 257, 319

Jones, Steven E., 270

Joseph, Dov, 365

Kagan, Robert, 258

Kahn, Julius, 36

Kampelman, Max M., 133

Kaplan, Robert, 99

Kappes, Stephen, 346

Karamat, Jehangir, 222

Karame, Omar, 447

Karmal, Babrak, 95

Karpinski, Brig.-Gen. Janis, 406

Katulis, Brian, 428

Katz, Mark N., 106

Kay, David, 22

Keane, Gen. John, 326

Keller, Richard, 196

Kelly, John, 116

Kemp, Jack, 44, 75, 136

Kennedy, John, 1, 26, 70, 261

Kennedy, Robert, 70

Kerry, Sen. John, 171, 400, 401

Khalili, Karim, 191

Khalilzad, Zalmay, 242, 309, 310, 314, 316

Khalis, Yunus, 181

Khan, Muhammad Naeem Noor, 341, 342

Khan, Nisar Ali, 197

Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah, 87, 88, 110, 111

Khyber, Mir Akbar, 91

Kidwa, Nasser, 153

Kimche, David, 134

Kimmitt, Brig.–Gen. Mark, 421

King, Jr., Martin Luther, 70

Kirck, Harvey, 1

Kirkpatrick, Jeane, 128, 136, 137, 258, 450

Kissinger, Henry, 5, 15, 79, 144, 187, 450, 458

Klein, Joe, 368

Kleinsmith, Erik, 291, 292

Korb, Lawrwence, 428

Kosygin, Alexei, 93, 94

Krauthammer, Charles, 321

Krekar, Mullah, 327

Krepinevich, Andrew, 427, 428

Kristol, Irving, 60, 61, 65

Kristol, William, 68, 238, 255, 258

Krivda, Capt. Erik, 423

Kurzberg, Paul, 262

Kurzberg, Sivan, 262

Kwiatkowski, Karen, 320, 321, 326, 332

Laffer, Arthur, 75

Lahoud, Emile, 446, 447

Laird, Melvin R., 77

Landau, Emily, 458

Larson, Charles, 8

Lautenberg, Sen. Frank, 380

Lay, Kenneth, 9

Ledeen, Michael, 137, 322, 429, 430, 432, 450, 475

Lemnitzer, Gen. Lyman L., 281, 282

Leonov, Nikolai, 452

Leverett, Flynt, 445

Levin, Carl, 169, 170

Levinson, Larry, 31

Lew, Ronald S.W., 187, 188

Lewis, Terry, 335

Libby, Lewis, 242, 321

Lilienthal, Alfred M., 73, 81

Lincoln, Abraham, 344

Locke, John, 41, 46, 53, 54, 56, 58, 62, 65

Long, David, 105

Lowy, Frank, 276

Lugar, Sen. Richard, 475

Luti, William, 324, 329

Mabus, Raymond, 216

Machiavelli, Niccolo, 52, 53, 59

Mack, Connie, 136, 155

Macmillan, Harold, 441

Macover, Micha, 263

Maddoux, Marlin, 375

Mahdi, Ali, 176

Maliki, Nuri  Kamal -al, 425

Mallet, Sir Louis, 434

Manning, Bill, 272

Maresca, John J., 187, 189, 193

Marlowe, Christopher, 48

Marmari, Omer, 262

Marquardt, Erich, 457

Marr, Col. Robert, 284

Marshall, George C., 27

Masoud, Ahmad Shah, 179, 181, 199

Mayer, Jane, 414

Mazor, Gadi, 263

McAteer, Ed, 156

McCain, John, 258

McConnell, Capt. Lucas, 424

McCoy, Alfred W., 410

McFarlane, Robert, 134

McKinney, Cynthia, 336, 472

McLaughlin, John E., 346

McLellan, Scott, 336

McMahon, Sir Henry, 436

McNally, Liz, 275

McNally. Edmund, 275

McNamara, Robert, 5, 281

McNaughton, John T., 5

McQuaig, Linda, 15, 16, 17

Meadlo, Paul, 416

Mearsheimer, John, 467, 469, 472

Meese, Edwin, 76, 79

Mehlis, Detlev, 447

Miller, Aaron David, 140

Miller, James C., 128

Miller, Maj.-Gen. Geoffrey, 406, 411, 415

Miller, Martin, 194

Miller, William, 35

Mishra, Brajesh, 10

Mohamad, Wazir, 410

Mohammedi, Mohammed Nabi, 99

Mohjadedi, Sibghatullah, 99

Mohler, Albert, 375

Moody, Dwight Lyman, 37

Moore, Michael, 346

Mor, Uri, 158

Mora, Alberto J., 415

Morris, Benny, 365

Mossadeq, Muhammad, 87

Murdoch, Rupert, 68

Murkowski, Frank, 12

Murray, Charles, 130

Musharraf, Pervez, 202, 316

Mussolini, Benito, 65

Muttaqi, Amir Khan, 306

Naik, Niaz A., 303, 304

Najibullah, Muhammad, 107, 179, 181

Nasser, Gamel Abdel, 30

Nasser, Hanna, 158

Nayef, Prince, 121

Netanyahu, Benjamin, 147, 150, 152, 156, 157, 159, 238, 278

Neumann, Tom, 330

Niazi, Mullah Manon, 198

Nidal, Abu, 183

Nietzsche, Friedrich, 46

Nimmo, Kurt, 434

Nixon, Richard, 2, 69, 72, 113, 132, 133, 144, 431

Nofziger, Lyn, 79

Noriega, Gen. Manuel, 290

North, Lt.-Col. Oliver, 44, 134

Nour, Ziad Abdel, 449

Novak, Robert, 471

O’Brien, Danielle, 284

Oakley, Robert, 8

Ogarkov, Nikolai, 95

Olmert, Ehud, 478

Olshansky, Barbara, 411

Omar, Mullah Muhammad, 180, 182, 203, 303, 312

O'Neill, John, 310

Osman, Ismail Mohamed, 169

Pahlawan, Malik, 192

Pahlevi, Shah Reza Muhammad, 87

Paine, Thomas, 63, 64

Palast, Greg, 15, 16, 17

Papadopoulos, George, 65

Pappas, Col. Thomas M., 406, 414

Pappé, Ilan, 363

Paritzky, Joseph, 451, 452

Parry, Robert, 448

Pavlovsky, Ivan, 95

Pearson, Drew, 28

Pelosi, Nancy, 472

Pence, Mike, 386

Percy, Sen. Charles, 469

Peres, Shimon, 134, 149, 152, 211, 394

Perle, Richard, 137, 149, 258, 263, 322, 327, 330, 450, 473, 475

Pilger, John, 410

Pinochet, Augusto, 18, 66

Pipes, Daniel, 450

Plame, Valerie, 471, 472

Plato, 46

Podhoretz, Norman, 61, 242

Pollard, Jonathan, 474

Pollari, Nicolo, 470

Pope Urban II, 370

Powell, Colin, 20, 117, 248, 254, 259, 302, 304, 324, 327, 331, 334, 350, 395, 467, 472

Provance, Sgt. Samuel, 402

Putin, Vladimir, 22, 309

Puzanov, A., 95

Qaddafi, Moammar, 221

Qadir, Haji Abdul, 318

Qassem, Abdel Karem, 440

Qutb, Sayyid, 441

Rabbani, Burhanuddin, 99, 181, 185, 191, 199, 316

Rabin, Yitzhak, 148, 159

Racicot, Marc, 11

Rafi, Mohammed, 404

Ralston, Joseph, 222

Raphael, Robin, 186, 195

Rasul, Shafiq, 99, 411

Reagan, Ronald, 3, 7, 17, 18, 40, 74, 88, 96, 99, 104, 109, 110, 113, 126, 127, 128, 129, 134, 137, 139, 143, 144, 202, 238, 240, 251, 304, 305, 315, 319

Reed, Ralph, 156

Rehman, Abdul, 318

Rhode, Harold, 473

Rice, Condoleezza, 8, 258, 432

Rice, Donald, 8

Richardson, Bill, 153, 230

Richardson, H. Smith, 41

Richardson, Lunsford, 41

Richardson, R. Randolph, 41, 154

Ridi, Essam al-, 170

Ritter, Scott, 230, 231

Roberts, John, 479

Robertson, Lloyd, 1

Robertson, Pat, 156

Rocca, Christina, 304

Roche, John P., 31, 138

Rodman, Peter W., 242

Rosen, Steve, 472, 473

Rosenthal, A.M., 157

Ross, Dennis, 140

Rostow, Eugene, 31

Rostow, Walt, 31

Rothstein, Hy, 317

Rove, Karl, 471

Rumsfeld, Donald, 18, 238, 242, 248, 255, 260, 304, 311, 312, 313, 316, 320, 325, 326, 327, 350, 391, 415, 456, 458, 475, 480

Russert, Tim, 255

Saba, Michael, 136

Safire, William, 157

Sahnoun, Mohamed, 175

Said, Khalid Al, 215

Salazar, AntÛnio de Oliveira, 65

Samaha, Michel, 446

Sampson, Anthony, 12

Sanchez, Lt.-Gen. Ricardo, 407

Sardjaev, Batyr, 197

Saud, Faisal, 440

Saud, King, 439

Scaife, Richard Mellon, 41, 44

Scalia, Antonin, 128, 132

Scheer, Robert, 300

Scheuer, Michael, 346, 347

Schifter, Richard, 133

Schmidt, Lt.–Gen. Randall M., 416

Schmitt, Gary, 258, 321

Schoomaker, Gen. Peter, 291, 295, 296

Schuh, Trish, 449

Schwarzkopf, Gen. Norman, 117, 323

Scofield, Cyrus Ingerson, 37

Segev, Tom, 85

Senior, Max, 37

Shachal, Moshe, 144

Shaffer, Lt.-Col. Anthony, 295, 296, 297

Shaffer, Lt.-Col.. Anthony, 295, 296

Shah, Zahir, 91, 304, 314

Shahak, Israel, 26

Shakarchi, Mohammed, 171

Shamir, Yitzhak, 122, 125, 139, 146, 148

Shamrani, Muslih Al, 215

Shamun, Camille, 441

Sharar, Yasser, 404

Sharett, Moshe, 86

Sharon, Ariel, 80, 163, 164, 278, 321, 333, 359, 394, 395, 396, 399, 401, 403, 429, 430, 454, 468

Sheehan, Michael, 200

Shelton, Gen. Hugh, 291

Shmuel, Yaron, 262

Shoomaker, Gen. Peter, 326

Shulsky, Abram, 320, 321, 324, 327

Shultz, George, 144

Sicherman, Harvey, 140

Sick, Gary, 458

Silverstein, Larry, 267, 276, 277

Simon, William, 130

Simons, Thomas, 303

Sirat, Abdul Sattar, 315

Smith, Sen. Gordon, 478

Socrates, 45, 46

Solarz, Stephen, 136, 258

South, Pat, 341

Spencer, Robert, 43

Stahl, Leslie, 234, 257

Stalin, Josef, 376

Starr, Frederick, 301

Stauffer, Thomas, 393, 452

Stem, Saul, 133

Stephanowicz, Steven, 413, 414

Stockman, David, 75, 78

Strauss, Leo, 6, 52, 53, 55, 58, 59, 60, 61, 65, 130, 320, 321

Streusand, Douglas E., 103

Stubbing, Richard, 77

Sugami. Satam al-, 281

Suharto, 18, 66

Sulick, Michael, 346

Sununu, John, 44

Suter, Dominik Otto, 262

Swannack Jr., Maj.-Gen. Charles, 480

Taguba, Maj.-Gen. Antonio, 404, 406, 412, 413

Taha, Ali Othman, 178

Talbot, Strobe, 79

Tamimi, Sheikh, 121

Tannen, Deborah, 254

Taraki, Nur Mohammed, 87, 91, 92, 93, 95

Taymiya, Ibn, 102, 119, 207

Tenet, George, 316, 345

Toler, Deborah, 128, 130

Tomsen, Peter, 179

Torop, Jonathan, 149

Townsel, Melody, 350

Toynbee, Arnold, 365

Truman, Harry, 28, 30, 143, 319

Turabi, Hasan Abdullah dafa'allah al-, 166, 169, 173, 177

Ustinov, Dimitri, 95

van Creveld, Martin, 454

van der Lubbe, Marinus, 387, 388

Van Dusen, Henry P., 33

Van Kappen, Frank, 210

Varennikov, Gen. Valentin, 96

Vendrell, Francesc, 302

Vest, Jason, 138

Vidal, Gore, 26

Voinovich, Sen. George, 351

von Hindenberg, Paul, 387

Wagner, Donald, 157

Wallace, Mike, 277

Walt, Stephen, 467, 469, 472

Wanniski, Jude, 41

Washington, George, 63

Wattenberg, Ben, 30

Watts, J.C., 157

Waxman, Rep. Henry, 9, 10

Weaver, Mary, 222

Weidenbaum, Murray, 128

Weinberg, Lawrence, 138

Weinberger, Caspar, 76, 79, 80

Weissman, Keith, 472, 473

Weitz, Joseph, 364, 365

Weldon, Curt, 291, 292

Westmoreland, Gen. William, 257

Weyrich, Paul, 39, 40, 74, 129

White, Leo, 31

Wieseltier, Leon, 258

Wildmon, Don, 44

Wilkerson, Col. Lawrence, 467

Williams, Carolyn, 383

Wilson, Joseph C., 470, 471

Wilson, Woodrow, 36, 69

Winchell, Walter, 28

Wise, Rabbi Steven, 28

Wolfowitz, Paul, 17, 22, 136, 242, 255, 256, 314, 320, 329, 350, 430, 458, 473, 475

Woodard, W. Wayne, 335

Woolsey, James, 258, 327, 413

Wright, Edwin, 28

Wurmser, David, 149, 432, 433, 434, 450, 473

Wurmser, Meyrav, 132, 149

Yaalon, Moshe, 331

Yang, Li Woan, 339

Yinon, Oded, 392

York, Col. Jerry, 295

Yosef, Ovadia, 403

Yousaf, Mohammad, 108

Zakaria, Tabassum, 380

Zarqawi, Abu Musab al-, 254, 327

Zawahiri, Ayman al-, 172, 175, 441

Zelikow, Philip, 260, 297, 332, 474

Zia, ul-Haq, 90, 96, 98, 99, 100

Zinni, Gen. Anthony, 259, 324, 325, 327, 332, 474

[1]. Former seminarian Robert Welch, founder of the jingoistic John Birch Society, coined this expression to refer to the domestic communist threat that he believed threatened U.S. democracy. Ironically, the society and numerous other obscurantist Christian organizations would be the seeds that would grow to destroy American democracy.

[2]. Cited in The Pentagon Papers, (New York: Bantam, 1971), pp. 255, 365.

[3]. Damien Cave, “The United States of Oil,” salon.com, November 19, 2001. Bush received 212,000 shares of Harken stock in 1986, and sold it on June 20, 1990, for $848,000. Harken suffered a serious setback when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, leading some to suspect that George W. Bush used inside information for personal gain. See Rick Wiles “Bush’s Former Oil Company Linked To bin Laden Family,” American Freedom News, October 3, 2001, www.rense.com/general14/bushsformer.htm; and George W. Bush Jr.—The Dark Side www.realchange.org/bushjr.htm#financing.

[4]. “Condi Rice Renamed,” Multinational Monitor, June 2001, multinationalmonitor.org/mm2001/01june/june01names.html

[5]. Unless otherwise noted, all campaign statistics come from www.opensecrets.org, the website for The Washington, DC-based Center for Responsive Politics.

[6]. The Bush White House’s Refusal to Cooperate with a Congressional Investigation of the Energy Task Force—Chronology, House Committee on Government Reform, Minority Office, U.S. Congress. At the time of writing, Cheney still has not complied. www.house.gov/reform/min/inves_energy/energy_cheney_chrono.htm

[7]. Letter, Rep. Henry Waxman to Vice-President Dick Cheney, January 25, 2002. www.house.gov/reform/min/pdfs/pdf_inves/pdf_energy_cheney_jan_25_let.pdf

[8]. At its height, Enron was the seventh largest corporation in the U.S., (16th largest in the world) and worth $70 billion. On December 31, 2001, it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Enron executives were forced to admit that they inflated profits by $600 million and hid $1 billion worth of debt in thousands of offshore partnerships. When news of the hidden debt first aired in October 2001, Enron’s share value and credit rating plummeted, leaving the company unable to raise money to stay afloat. The collapse of Enron is the greatest failure of a private company in history. The full extent of the Bush administration’s role in the collapse and the Dabhol fiasco is not yet known. For a summary of major events and confidential e-mails related to the Enron collapse and the government’s involvement, see “Chronology of Administration Dealings With Enron’s Dabhol Power Plant in India,” Washington Post, January 22, 2002.

[9]. Michael Weisskopf and Adam Zagorin, “Getting the Ear Of Dick Cheney,” Time, February 3, 2002.

[10]. Hitting the Jackpot: How the House Energy Bill (H.R. 4) Rewards Millions in Contributions with Billions in Returns Paper prepared for Rep. Henry A. Waxman, Minority Staff Special Investigations Division Committee on Government Reform U.S. House of Representatives August 1, 2001, p.2. The figures for industry sector contributions are approximately 10 percent higher than those given by opensecrets.org.

[11]. Anthony Sampson, “Oilmen don’t want another Suez,” Observer, December 22, 2002.

[12]. Ibid.

[13]. For a representative discussion of this theory see William Clark, “The Real Reasons For The Upcoming War In Iraq,” www.rense.com, March 2, 2003

[14]. Faisal Islam, “Asian banks dump dollar,” Observer, Feb. 22, 2004.

[15]. “Competitive sport in Boca Raton,” The Economist, Feb. 5, 2004.

[16]. For video excerpts from her October 24, 2004, book launch in Vancouver see http://www.workingtv.com/itsthecrudedude.html

[17]. Cited in John Vidal, “ The end of oil is closer than you think,” The Guardian, April 21, 2005.

[18]. Ibid.

[19]. Greg Palast, “U.S. Broadcast Exclusive: Secret U.S. Plans For Iraq’s Oil Spark Political Fight Between Neocons and Big Oil,” Democracy Now!, aired March 21, 2003.

[20]. Declassified State Department information memorandum, November 1, 1983, at www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq24.pdf.

[21]. Alan Cowell, The New York Times, April 11, 1991.

[22]. President Ronald Reagan, National Security Decision Directive 114, November 26, 1983,

[23]. Robert Scheer, “U.S. to Hussein: WMD A–OK,” The Nation, December 30, 2003.

[24]. Dick Cheney, The Gulf War: A First Assessment, Soref Symposium, Washington Institute for Middle East Policy, April 29, 1991.

[25]. Donald Kagan, Gary Schmit, Thomas Donnelly, et al., Rebuilding America’s Defenses—Strategy, Forces And Resources For A New Century, (Washington, D.C.: PNAC, September 2000), p. 22.

[26]. Dick Cheney, The Gulf War: A First Assessment, op. cit.

[27]. Colin Powell, Press Remarks with Foreign Minister of Egypt Amre Moussa, U.S. Department of State, February. 24, 2001.

[28]. Colin Powell, Testimony to the Foreign Operations, Export Financing and Related Programs Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, May 15, 2001 (excerpts). www.thememoryhole.org/war/powell-no-wmd.htm

[29]. Dick Cheney, Address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars 103rd National Convention, White House documents, August 26, 2002.

[30]. Remarks by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell To The United Nations Security Council, U.S. State Department, February. 7, 2003.

[31]. Cited in Michael White “Putin demands proof over Iraqi weapons” Guardian, October 12, 2002.

[32]. Critics of the Iraq invasion trumpeted this statement as proof that the WMD rationale was a fraud, but defenders of the war charged that Wolfowitz had been misquoted, and that newspapers like Britain’s The Independent distorted his meaning (See David Usborne, “WMD Just a Convenient Excuse for War, Admits Wolfowitz,” May, 30, 2003.) This semantic nitpicking obscures the fact that the U.S. knew full well that Iraq had no WMDs. Whether Wolfowitz actually believed Iraq had WMDs, and it’s impossible to see how he could, The Independent headline accurately reflected the underlying dishonesty in the Bush administration’s rush to war.

[33]. Cited in Tabassum Zakaria, “Ex-Arms Hunter Says Iraq Had No Banned Stockpiles,” Reuters, January 24, 2004.

[34]. Warren P. Strobel and John Walcott, “Memo: Bush made intel fit Iraq policy,” Knight-Ridder News Service, May 6, 2005.

[35]. Cited in Paul Findley, Deliberate Deceptions—Facing the Facts About the U.S. Israeli Relationship, (New York: Lawrence Hill, 1993), p. 235.

[36]. Warren Austin, United States Position on the Palestine Problem, March 19, 1948; President Harry S. Truman, United States Proposal for Temporary United Nations Trusteeship for Palestine, March 25, 1948.

[37]. Israel Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, (London: Pluto Press, 1994), preface, pp. vii-viii.

[38]. Richard H. Curtiss, “Truman Adviser Recalls May 14, 1948, U.S. Decision to Recognize Israel,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May 1991.

[39]. “Marshall firmly opposed American recognition of the new Jewish state; I did not. Marshall’s opposition was shared by almost every member of the brilliant and now legendary group of presidential advisers, later referred to as the Wise Men, who were then in the process of creating a post-war foreign policy that would endure for more than 40 years. The opposition included the respected Under Secretary of State Robert Lovett; his predecessor, Dean Acheson; the No. 3 man in the State Department, Charles Bohlen; the brilliant chief of the Policy Planning Staff George Kennan; (Navy Secretary James V.) Forrestal; and... Dean Rusk, then the director of the Office of United Nations Affairs... Officials in the State Department had done everything in their power to prevent, thwart, or delay the President’s Palestine policy in 1947 and 1948, while I had fought for assistance to the Jewish Agency.” Clifford, cited in ibid.

[40]. Cited in President Harry S. Truman and U.S. Support for Israeli Statehood. www.mideastweb.org/us_supportforstate.htm

[41]. Richard D. McKinzie, Oral History Interview with Edwin M. Wright, Wooster, Ohio, July 26, 1974, Truman Presidential Museum and Library, www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/wright.htm.

[42]. Stephen S. Rosenfeld, “Israel and Syria: Correcting the Record” Washington Post, December 24, 1999. Before he died in 1981, Dayan embargoed the interview. His daughter, Knesset member Yael Dayan, released it on April 27, 1997. It provoked no surprise in Israel.

[43]. United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, November 22, 1967, UNSC Res. 242 was passed unanimously 15–0. Zionists argue that the absence of “all” before “occupied territories” gives Israel the right to some of this land, but this is a lie. Great Britain’s UN ambassador Hugh Foot, the resolution’s drafter, has affirmed its comprehensive intent. (Paul Foot “Still waiting for No 242,” Guardian, November 13, 2002. Moreover, the Zionist interpretation would make the resolution self-contradictory and contempt of the UN Charter).

[44]. Grace Halsell “How LBJ’s Vietnam War Paralyzed His Mideast Policymakers,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June 1993, page 20.

[45]. Ibid, and Jim Ennes and Joe Meadows, The USS Liberty Memorial, May 1, 2001, ussliberty.org. This site also contains the following statement from he late Adm. Moorer: “I am confident that Israel knew the Liberty could intercept radio messages from all parties and potential parties to the ongoing war, then in its fourth day, and that Israel was preparing to seize the Golan Heights from Syria despite President Johnson’s known opposition to such a move. I think they realized that if we learned in advance of their plan, there would be a tremendous amount of negotiating between Tel Aviv and Washington. And I believe Moshe Dayan concluded that he could prevent Washington from becoming aware of what Israel was up to by destroying the primary source of acquiring that information, the USS Liberty.”

[46]. Ibid, Halsell. See also Charles D. Smith, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1988) p. 203. In an October 2003 affidavit, “Capt. Ward Boston said Johnson ordered that the attack be covered up. According to the Associated Press: “Ward Boston said Johnson and McNamara told those heading the navy’s inquiry to ‘conclude that the attack was a case of “mistaken identity” despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.’” The report said Boston came forth after years of silence to counter the book The Liberty Incident, which depicted the attack as unintentional. See “Lyndon Johnson ordered cover-up: Former navy lawyer,” Toronto Star, October 22, 2003.

[47]. Ibid, Halsell.

[48]. Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry—Reflections on the exploitation of Jewish Suffering, (London: Verso), pp. 14-15.

[49]. Ibid, p. 7 and note 5; p. 20.

[50]. Peter Grose, Israel in the Mind of America, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), p. 310.

[51]. Judaism vs. Zionism, Neturei Karta www.nkusa.org/AboutUs/Zionism/judaism_v_zionism.cfm

[52]. What is the Neturei Karta? in ibid.

[53]. For a clear statement of Jewish Zionist dependency on evangelical Christians see Rabbi Yehiel Eckstein, “ We need evangelical Christian support.” Ha’aretz. March 7,2005

[54]. Stephen Sizer, John Nelson Darby (1800-1882) The Father of Premillennial Dispensationalism, www.virginiawater.co.uk/christchurch/articles/darby1.html

[55]. Ibid.

[56]. J.N. Darby, “The Hopes,” The Collected Writings, Prophetic I, Vol. II, p. 380, cited in ibid.

[57]. William E. Currie, God’s Little Errand Boy, 1987, www.amfi.org/errandboy.htm.

[58]. The Blackstone Memorial, 1891: Presented to the president of the United States in favor of the restoration of Palestine to the Jews. www.amfi.org/blackmem.htm

[59]. A Statement to the Peace Conference by prominent U.S. Jews, annex to Roselle Tekiner, Samir Abed-Rabbo and Norton Mezvinsky, eds., Anti-Zionism–Analytical Reflections, (New York: Amana Books, 1988). www.codoh.com/zionweb/ziondark/zionopp01.html

[60]. Cited in Donald Wagner, “Evangelicals and Israel: Theological Roots of a Political Alliance,” The Christian Century, (November 4, 1998) pp. 120-1026, www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showarticle?item_id=216.

[61]. Genesis, 12:1-3, 7.

[62]. Ibid., 17:7-8.

[63]. Deuteronomy, 30: 4-5.

[64]. Matthew 24:31.

[65]. Background material for the following section comes from Media Transparency www.mediatransparency.org and People for the American Way www.pfaw.org unless otherwise noted.

[66]. Edwin J. Feulner, Heritage Foundation President Mourns Death of Joseph Coors, Heritage Foundation, March 16, 2003. www.heritage.org/Press/NewsReleases/nr031603.cfm

[67]. Karen Rothmyer, “The Man Behind The Mask,” Salon.com, April 7, 1998.

[68]. Robert Spencer, Jihad in Context, excerpted at www.freecongress.org/media/030826.asp

[69]. “Controversial Falwell statements cut by SBC agency radio show,” Biblical Recorder, July 28, 2000.

[70]. Marc J. Ambinder, “Vast, right-wing cabal?” ABC News, May 2, 2002; The independent Christian research and apologetics ministry Seekgod has compiled an extensive biographical list of all CNP members www.Seekgod.ca/topiccnp.htm

[71]. The following summary of Leo Strauss’s philosophy is compiled from: Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953); Karl Jahn, “Leo Strauss and the Straussians,” home.earthlink.net/~karljahn/Strauss.htm; Jim Lobe, Leo Strauss’ Philosophy of Deception May 19, 2003, www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15935 Neil Robertson Leo Strauss’s Platonism mun.ca/animus/1999vol4/roberts4.htm; Peter Berkowitz, “What Hath Strauss Wrought?—Misreading a political philosopher,” Weekly Standard, June 2, 2003.

[72]. Nietzsche held Christianity in contempt, but esteemed Judaism for being strong and masculine. This is an important note because a common libel against him is that he was anti-Jewish and that Adolf Hitler is the real manifestation of Nietzsche’s Übermensch (Superman). The ascription of anti-Jewish prejudice should be directed at Nietzsche’s sister Elizabeth and his publisher.

[73]. Republic, Book IX, lines 593-4, in Plato: The Collected Dialogues, Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns eds., (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), p. 819.

[74]. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, in The Prince and the Discourses, (New York: Random House, 1950), p. 56.

[75]. “A people that governs and is well-regulated by laws will be stable, prudent and grateful, as much so, and even more, according to my opinion, than a prince, although he be esteemed wise…We furthermore see that cities where the people are masters make the greatest progress in the least possible time and much greater than such as have always been governed by princes... As to the people’s capacity of judging of things, it is exceedingly rare that, when they hear two orators of equal talents advocate different measures, they do not decide in favour of the best of the two; which proves their ability to discern the truth of what they hear. And if occasionally they are misled in questions of courage or seeming utility, so is a prince also many times misled by his own passions, which are much greater then those of the people.” Machiavelli, Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius, Book I, Ch. LVIII, in ibid., pp. 263, 264.

[76]. Ibid. p. 178.

[77]. Strauss, Natural Right and History, p. 177.

[78]. Thomas Hobbes, “Of Commonwealth,” Leviathan, (London: Pelican, 1980), pp. 223, 227.

[79]. Strauss, p. 180.

[80]. Ibid. p. 181.

[81]. Ibid.

[82]. Hobbes, p. 263.

[83]. Ibid., pp. 262, 264.

[84].Excerpt from Mortimer J. Adler, “On the nature of liberty and license,” Chapter X, The Common Sense of Politics, (New York: Fordham University Press, 1996) reproduced at www.cooperativeindividualism.org/adler_on_liberty_and_license.html

[85]. U.S. Declaration of Independence, Philadelphia, Pa, July 4, 1776.

[86]. John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), reproduced at From Revolution to Reconstruction: A Hypertext on American History from the Colonial Period until Modern Times, University of Groningen, The Netherlands. (Italics not in original.) odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/D/1651-1700/locke/ECT/toleraxx.htm

[87]. “In vain… do princes compel their subjects to come into their Church communion, under pretence of saving their souls. If they believe, they will come of their own accord, if they believe not, their coming will nothing avail them. How great soever, in fine, may be the pretence of good-will and charity, and concern for the salvation of men’s souls, men cannot be forced to be saved whether they will or no. And therefore, when all is done, they must be left to their own consciences.” Ibid.

[88]. Strauss, op. cit., pp. 202-203, 204-205.

[89]. The demonstrability of God’s existence was conclusively refuted in 1787 by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. In his seminal Critique of Pure Reason, he wrote: “It may be allowable to admit the existence of a Being entirely to serve as the cause of all possible effects, simply in order to assist reason in her search for the unity of causes. But to go so far as to say that such a Being exists necessarily, is no longer the modest language of an admissible hypothesis, but the bold assurance of apodictic certainty; for the knowledge of that which is absolutely necessary must itself possess absolute necessity.” Kritik der reinen Vernunft (trans. F. Max Müller. (New York: Anchor Books, 1966), pp. 408-409. Kant also refuted St. Anselm’s argument that existence could be an attribute (predicate) of an object, including God. He showed that existence, unlike length or color, cannot be removed without negating the object itself. “By whatever...predicates I may think a thing...nothing is really added to it, if I add that the thing exists. Otherwise, it would not be the same that exists, but something more than was contained in the concept, and I could not say that the exact object of my concept existed.” p. 402.

[90]. John Locke, The First Treatise of Government, Section 14, cited John Locke—Two Treatises of Government, intro’d by Peter Laslett, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1963) p. 185. He is recapitulating the beginning of Filmer’s Observations Concerning the Original of Government upon Mr. Hobbes Leviathan (1652).

[91]. John Locke, The Second Treatise of Government, sections 52-76, esp. section 57 (citation), in ibid., pp. 347-348. (In all citations of Locke, the italics are retained but the capitalization of common nouns is removed.)

[92]. Strauss, p. 246.

[93]. “‘Tis labor then which puts the greatest part of value upon land, without which it would scarcely be worth any thing: ‘tis to that we owe the greatest part of all its useful products; for all that the straw, bran, bread, of that acre of wheat, is more worth than the product of an acre of as good land, which lies waste, is all the effect of labor.” Second Treatise, Section 43.

[94]. Ibid, Sections 3. See also Section 94, where Locke declares that the failure of government to protect property signifies the end of civil society.

[95]. “It is evident, that though the things of nature are given in common, yet man (by being master of himself, and proprietor of his own person, and the actions or labor of it) had still in himself the great foundation of property; and that which made up the great part of what he applied to the support or comfort of his being, when invention and arts had improved the conveniencies of life, was perfectly his own, and did not belong in common to others. Thus labor, in the beginning, gave a right of property, wherever any one was pleased to employ it upon what was common…” Ibid, sections 44-45.

[96]. Ibid, Section 46.

[97]. “It is very easy to conceive, without any difficulty, how labor could at first begin a title of property in the common things of nature, and how the spending it upon our uses bounded it. So that there could then be no reason of quarrelling about title, nor any doubt about the largeness of possession it gave… what portion a man carved to himself, was easily seen; and it was useless, as well as dishonest, to carve himself too much, or take more than he needed. Ibid., Section 51.

[98]. Strauss, p. 246.

[99]. Ibid., p. 247.

[100]. Irving Kristol, “American Conservatism, 1945-1995,” Public Interest, No. 121, Fall 1995, Part IV.

[101]. Ibid., Part III. Kristol was managing editor of Commentary from 1947 to 1952.

[102]. Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Danbury Baptists, January 1, 1802, www.au.org/resources/foundingdocs/Thomas_Jeffersons_Letter_To_The_Danburry_Baptists.pdf

[103]. Thomas Jefferson Letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814, in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson ed. Albert Ellery Bergh Vol. XIV, pp. 71-72 reproduced at www.constitution.org/tj/jeff.htm.

[104]. The Barbary Treaties: Treaty of Peace and Friendship, Article 11, November 4, 1796, www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/diplomacy/barbary/bar1796t.htm Washington’s support for this position may be inferred from the treaty’s passage, which took place during his presidency. Further support comes again from Jefferson: “Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law,” Letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814, reproduced at From Revolution to Reconstruction, op. cit., odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/jefl227.htm and at The Writings of Thomas Jefferson Vol. XIV, p. 91.

[105]. Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Jeremiah Moor, August 14, 1800, reproduced in Thomas Jefferson Political Writings, eds. Joyce Appelby and Terrence Ball, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 172.

[106]. Kristol, “American Conservatism, 1945-1995,” Public Interest, No. 121, Fall 1995, Part I.

[107]. “I am for freedom of religion, & against all manoeuvres to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another”: Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Elbridge Gerry, January 26, 1799, at From Revolution to Reconstruction. op. cit. odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/jefl125.htm

[108]. Thomas Jefferson, Plan for Elementary Schools, September 9,1817, in Bergh, Vol. XVII p.425. at www.constitution.org/tj/jeff17.txt

[109]. Lawrence W. Britt, “Fascism Anyone?” Free Inquiry, Vol. 23, No. 2, www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/britt_23_2.htm Another excellent source is Umberto Eco’s essay on Ur-Fascism: “Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt,” New York Review of Books, June 22, 1995, pp.12-15. Excerpted in Utne Reader, November–December 1995, pp. 57-59.

[110]. President Jimmy Carter, Address to the Nation (“Malaise” speech), July 15, 1979, http://www.bluemud.org/article/12717. All quotes come from this source.

[111]. Cited in Alfred M. Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection II—What Price Peace? (New Jersey: North American Inc, 1982), p. 681.

[112]. Ibid.

[113]. Likud’s victory, though, did not represent all of Israel. Many Jews objected to the settlements in the belief that a smaller Israel at peace with its neighbours was preferable to a “Greater Israel” in a state of permanent war. One such protest was a 1977 open letter to Begin signed by 348 reservist Army officers and soldiers. “Real security can be achieved only in peace,” they wrote. “The real strength of the Israel army grows out of the citizenry-soldiers’ identification with state policy.” Begin denounced the signatories as traitors but their protest drew 40,000 supporters, and the next year, the “Peace Now” movement was founded. The question of the occupation is today the single greatest issue dividing Israel today. A poll published in the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv on June 1, 2003, reported that 62 percent of Israelis are fed up with the violence and want to end the occupation.

[114]. “Controversial Falwell statements cut by SBC agency radio show,” Biblical Recorder, July 28, 2000.

[115]. David Stockman, The Triumph of Politics—Why the Reagan Revolution Failed, (New York: Harper and Row, 1986) pp. 13, 49.

[116]. Richard Stubbing, “The Defense Program: Buildup or Binge?” Foreign Affairs, Spring 1985, p. 848.

[117]. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Military–Industrial Complex Speech, November 1960, www.yale.edu/lawwebavalon/presiden/speeches/eisenhower001.htm.

[118]. Michael Mandel, “Lessons Of The Reagan Years,” Business Week, August 19, 1996.

[119]. Strobe Talbott, Deadly Gambits, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), pp. 75-76.

[120]. Excerpts from transcript of televised news conference by Adm. Bobby Ray Inman, January 18, 1994, cited in “Safire Media Attacks Began When Inman Blocked Israeli Access to U.S. Satellite Intelligence,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, February/March 1994, p. 29.

[121]. Adm. Inman won easy Senate confirmation for his nomination, and became the first naval intelligence specialist ever to become a four-star admiral. Oklahoma Democratic Senator David Boren said of him: “It was principally Admiral Inman who first showed that the congressional oversight process could work. Cited in Biography of Bobby Ray Inman, White House documents, December 16, 1993. fas.org/irp/news/1993/931216i.htm

[122]. Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall–Israel and the Arab World Since 1948, (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999), p. 387.

[123]. That same year, Falwell become the first non-Jew to receive the Jabotinsky Award for Zionist Excellence. Two years earlier, Begin gave Falwell a Learjet. Donald Wagner, “Bible and sword: U.S. Christian Zionists discover Israel,” Daily Star (Lebanon) October 9, 2003.

[124]. Lilienthal op. cit., p. 732.

[125]. President Ronald Reagan, Address to the Nation on United States Policy for Peace in the Middle East, September 1, 1982. (www.reagan.utexas.edu/resource/speeches/1982/90182d.htm)

[126]. “West Bank: Settlements Galore,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November 15, 1982. p. 3.

[127]. Jacobo Timmerman, The Longest War—Israel in Lebanon, (New York: Vintage, 1982), p. 162.

[128]. “Horror For Lebanon,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, August 23, 1982, p. 2.

[129]. Shlaim, op. cit., pp. 404-405.

[130]. The figure is the Red Cross estimate. The upper limit is 3,500 according to Le Monde Diplomatique reporter Amnon Kapeliouk. For more see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_and_Shatila and http://electronicintifada.net/bytopic/145.shtml.

[131]. Claire Hoy and Victor Ostrovsky, By Way of Deception—A Devastating Insider’s Portrait of the Mossad, (Toronto: Stoddard, 1990) p. 322.

[132]. Ibid., pp. 321, 322, 323. To this day, the vast majority of Americans do not know that the attack on the marine barracks was carried out in retaliation for an offshore bombardment by the battleship USS New Jersey that destroyed Arab villages in Lebanon’s Shouf mountains. One could argue that no attack would have taken place had the U.S. not sided with the Lebanese Army.

[133]. Tom Segev, 1949—The First Israelis, (New York: Henry Holt, 1998), p. 10. See also Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians, (Institute for Palestine Studies: Washington, D.C., 1992), p. 87.

[134]. “Ayatullah Khomeini: The Mystic Who Lit the Fires of Hatred,” Time, January 7, 1980

[135]. The hostage-taking would end on January 20, 1981, the day Ronald Reagan was sworn in. The timing was no coincidence. In the run-up to the 1980 election, the Reagan campaign team feared that Carter could score a political coup by securing the release of the hostages before the election. The possibility of such an “October Surprise” led Reagan’s campaign staff to commit one of the most disreputable acts in American history. Reagan’s campaign manager William Casey, who would become CIA director, ran an intelligence operation against Carter that involved stealing debate briefing books and questioning military and intelligence officers about the October Surprise. Richard Allen head of the “October Surprise Working Group” and Robert McFarlane—both future national security advisors—met with an emissary from the Khomeini regime in Washington in early October 1980 to delay the release of the hostages until after the 1980 election. The moment Reagan was sworn in and the hostages were released, Iran’s assets were unfrozen, and a shipment of U.S. arms left Israel for Iran. In 1984, the U.S. would again involve Israel in an arms-for-hostages backroom deal with Iran that would lead to one of the greatest scandals in U.S. history.

[136]. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1983, p. 427), nsarchive.chadwyck.com/afessayx.htm#10

[137]. Memo from Zbigniew Brzezinski to President Jimmy Carter, December 26, 1979, Cold War, Episode 20, op. cit.

[138]. President Jimmy Carter, State of the Union Address, January 21, 1980.

[139]. “The CIA’s Intervention in Afghanistan —Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski,” Le Nouvel Observateur, January15-21 1998, www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html

[140]. Zia declared martial law on July 5, 1977, on the pretext that President Zulfikar Ali-Bhutto’s ruling socialist Pakistan People’s Party had rigged the March 7 vote. Under the new pro-Western régime, the private sector prospered, and Zia set about Islamicizing the country’s political, legal and economic structures. Zia cancelled elections planned for October 15, and promised new ones within 90 days. They were indefinitely postponed, and Bhutto was executed.

[141]. “About the Domestic Political Situation in the DRA,” May, 31, 1978, The Soviet Union and Afghanistan, 1978-1989: Documents from the Russian and East German Archives—Cold War International History Project. (CWIHP). gwis.circ.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/CWIHP/BULLETINS/b8-9a13.htm

[142]. “Transcript of telephone conversation between Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin and Afghan Prime Minister Nur Mohammed Taraki,” March 1979, Cold War, Episode 20, CNN, September. 1998–April 1999. europe.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/20/documents/Moscow

[143]. “Record of meeting of A.N.Kosygin, A.A.Gromyko, D.F.Ustinov and B.N.Ponomarev with N.M.Taraki,” March 20, 1979, in CWIHP, op. cit. Although the telephone conversation between Taraki and Kosygin is undated, it’s logical to conclude that it occurred before this meeting, given Kosygin’s reassuring tone.

[144]. “Afghanistan: The Making of U.S. Policy (1973-1990),” Digital National Security Archive, George Washington University. nsarchive.chadwyck.com/afessayx.htm#1

[145]. Odd Arne Westad, “Concerning the situation in ‘A’—New Russian Evidence on the Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan,” CWIHP Bulletin 128-132. www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/CWIHP/BULLETINS/b8-9a12.htm

[146]. Interview with CNN in Cold War, Episode 20.

[147]. Ibid.

[148]. President Ronald Reagan, State of the Union Address, Feb. 16, 1985. The address speaks more to the Contras’ opposition to Nicaragua’s Sandinista government, than to the mujahedin and their jihad, but Reagan clearly places both on the same moral plane.

[149]. Alfred McCoy, “Drug fallout: the CIA’s Forty Year Complicity in the Narcotics Trade,” The Progressive, August 1997. The U.S. government didn’t really sacrifice anything, since it had long been involved in the region’s drug trade. On July 17, 1973, the National Security Council sent a memo to Henry Kissinger stating that the U.S. should not be concerned about Daoud’s coup d’état:

“For the U.S., Daoud may be a little harder to deal with than was Prime Minister Shafiq or the King, He is likely to be more suspicious of U.S. motives, somewhat less co-operative, and a bit more pro-Soviet. Nevertheless, on the issues that affect U.S. interests—continued Afghan independence, stability in the region and narcotics—there is no reason to think he will reverse Afghan policies.” (Harold H. Saunders, Henry R. Appelbaum, “Coup in Afghanistan,” National Security Council Memorandum, July 17, 1973. www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB59/zahir15.pdf) (Spelling edited for consistency)

[150]. Ibid., McCoy.

[151]. The principles in the relationship were ISI Director-General Gen. Akhtar Abdur Rahman, CIA Director William Casey, and Chief of Saudi Intelligence Prince Turki al-Faisal. On August 17, 1988, Rahman, Zia and U.S. ambassador Arnold Raphael were among 33 who died when their Hercules C-30B suddenly crashed. Akhtar would be replaced by Gen. Hamid Gul.

[152]. Robert D Kaplan, Soldiers of God, (New York: Vintage, 2001), p. 69

[153]. Hekmatyar broke with the Jamiat-i-Islami to form Hezb-i-Islami (Party of Islam). In all there were seven leaders collectively called “the Peshawar Seven.” The others and their founding organizations were:

• Pashtun Sufi spiritual leader Sibghatullah Mohjadedi (Afghan National Liberation Front);

• Anti-secular parliamentarian and teacher of Islamic law Maulawi Mohammed Nabi Mohammedi (Islamic Revolutionary Movement);

• Sufi spiritual leader and former Peugot dealer Pir Sayed Ahmed Gailani (National Islamic Front of Afghanistan);

• Pashtun Islamist Yunus Khalis (an independent Party of Islam, after breaking from Hekmatyar’s); and

• Abdul Rasul Abu Sayyaf (no party), financed by Saudi Arabia.

[154] . Kaplan, op. cit., p. 69.

[155] . Cited in Abdullah Bin Omar, [trans. Mohammed Saeed], “The Striving Sheik: Abdullah Azzam.” Nida’ul Islam, July-September 1996. www.islam.org.au/articles/14/Azzam.htm

[156]. Sir Thomas W. Arnold, The Preaching Of Islam, A History Of The Propagation Of The Muslim Faith, (London: A. Constable & Co., London, 1896) p. 80.

[157]. Douglas E. Streusand, “What Does Jihad Mean?” Middle East Quarterly, September 1997.

[158]. The various contexts of jihad according to the Qur’an and Hadith , the traditions and saying of the prophet Muhammed, are:

• Recognizing the Creator and loving him most:

• Resisting pressure of parents, peers, and society:

• Staying on the straight path steadfastly:

• Striving for righteous deeds:

• Having courage and steadfastness to convey the message of Islam:

• Defending Islam and the community:

• Helping allied people who may not be Muslim:

• Removing treacherous people from power:

• Defending through preemptive strikes:

• Gaining freedom to inform, educate and convey the message of Islam in an open and free environment

• Freeing people from tyranny

[159]. Ibid., Streusand.

[160]. Robert Fisk interview with bin Laden, “Anti-Soviet warrior puts his army on the road to peace,” The Independent, December 6, 1993.

[161]. Jason Burke “The making of Osama bin Laden,” The Observer, October 28, 2001.

[162]. “Interview with Dr. Saad al-Fagih,” Frontline—Hunting bin Laden, PBS, September 13, 2001.

[163]. Mary Anne Weaver, “The Real bin Laden.” New Yorker, January 24, 2000.

[164].. Mark N. Katz, “Bin Laden Biography Raises Doubts,” Eurasianet.org, October 27, 2001. www.eurasianet.org/departments/culture/articles/eav102701.shtml

[165]. The voiced pharyngial fricative consonant [ayn] is made by constricting the larynx and is very difficult for non-Arabic speakers. This sound is untranslatable and in this section is represented by an inverted comma. The comma is omitted in the rest of the book for the sake of convention. The [ayn] in qa’ida carries a short “i” as in “pin.”

[166]. Milt Bearden, the CIA’s former station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989 depreciates the value of this battle and claims it was the only important one in which bin Laden fought. “The Soviets ran out of steam just before we ran out of supplies. There were perhaps 20 or 25 Saudi shaheeds [martyrs]…. [Bin Laden] spent most of the war as a fund-raiser, in Peshawar. He was not a valiant warrior on the battlefield.” (Mary Anne Weaver, “The Real bin Laden,” New Yorker, January 24, 2000). However, this view is impossible to reconcile with bin Laden’s combat experience in the Yemeni conflict and numerous first-hand accounts of his military skill.

[167]. Burke, op. cit.

[168]. New Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev installed Najibullah in 1986 over dissatisfaction and impatience with Karmal’s leadership. Najib changed his name to Najibullah (Noble of God) to make himself seem religious.

[169]. Kaplan, op. cit., p. 166.

[170]. Brig. Gen. (Ret’d.) Mohammed Yousaf, “Introduction,” Silent Soldier: The Man Behind the Afghan Jehad, 1998, www.afghanbooks.com.

[171]. “Rebels Without a Cause,” MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, PBS, August 29, 1989.

[172]. Robert Parry, “Saddam’s Green Light,” The Consortium, January 31, 1996.

[173]. Judith Miller and Jeff Gerth, “U.S.Is Said to Develop Oman as Its major Ally in the Gulf,” The New York Times, March 25, 1985.

[174]. “Interview with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz,” Frontline—The Gulf War, PBS, January 9, 1996.

[175]. Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, Dangerous Liaison, (Stoddart: 1991), p. 353. Transcript of April Glaspie’s meeting with Saddam Hussein, July 25, 1990. www.whatreallyhappened.com/ARTICLE5/april.html Further evidence of American acquiescence comes from John Bulloch and Harvey Morrris, Saddam’s War: The Origins of the Kuwait Conflict and the International Response, (Faber & Faber, 1991). www.casi.org.uk/discuss/1999/msg00009.html

[176]. Ibid., Glaspie.

[177]. “Interview with Richard Cheney,” Frontline—The Gulf War, PBS, January 9, 1996. In fact, this was not the first time that the Saudis offered their bases to the Americans. A secret U.S. report was leaked indicating that Saudi Arabia had agreed to allow the United States to use bases during the Iran/Iraq war if needed. Bernard Gwertzman, “Saudis To Let U.S. Use Bases in Crisis,” The New York Times September 5, 1985, pp. A1, A10.

[178]. The term “war” is somewhat of a misnomer, because Iraq was so thoroughly outmatched. Coalition aircraft flew 100,000 sorties and carpet-bombed whole sections of southern Iraq, causing soldiers to surrender by the thousands. On Feb. 24, the coalition sent in the ground troops; two days later, Hussein announced his intention to leave Kuwait. By the end, Iraq sustained between 20,000 and 35,000 casualties; the coalition suffered 240 killed and 776 wounded, 60 percent of whom were Americans. Given the rapidity of the Iraqi surrender, it is worth wondering how many Iraqi lives could have been saved had the ground war started earlier.

[179]. See Chapter 1, note 20.

[180]. The Yemeni Socialist party, with the support of some Gulf States would try to redivide the country on May 5, 1994, but two months later they would be defeated by the unification army. With the defeat, the communists fled the country.

[181]. Interview with Nida’ul Islam magazine, October–November 1996. www.islam.org.au/articles/15/ladin.htm

[182]. The two most outspoken critics were the renowned scholars Sheikh Safar ibn Abdul-Rahman al-Hawal and Sheikh Salman al-Audah. Each was careful to avoid direct criticism of the House of Saud or the ulama, but their condemnation of Fahd’s decision and Bin Baz’s fatwah was unmistakable. See The Gulf Crisis and the Islamic Revival, www.islah.org/chap3.html.

[183]. Cited in Yossef Bodansky, Bin Laden—The Man who declared War on America, (New York: Forum: 1999), p. 30.

[184]. Victor Ostrovsky, The Other Side of Deception—A Rogue Agent Exposes The Mossad’s Secret Agenda, (New York: HarperCollins, 1994) p. 280.

[185]. Ibid.

[186]. Ibid.

[187]. President George Bush, Madrid Conference Opening Speeches, October 30-31, 1991. www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0bvp0.

[188]. Elaine C. Hagopian, “The Pope’s emphasis on Palestinian rights,” Boston Globe, May 16, 2001, p. 15.

[189]. Avi Davis, Should Israel Retaliate? Freeman Center for Strategic Studies, November 2002 www.freeman.org/m_online/nov02/davis1.htm.

[190]. See the institute’s website www.aei.org.

[191]. Deborah Toler, “‘The Right’s ‘Race Desk’—American Enterprise Institute finds profit in prejudice,” Extra! March/April 1999. www.fair.org/extra/9903/aei.html

[192]. Background data for these foundations come from Media Transparency (mediatransparency.org.), People for the American Way (pfaw.org), and individual annual reports, unless otherwise noted.

[193]. Last year, Bradley Foundation assets fell to $500 million, from a high of $715 million in 2000 due to a declining stock market. (Alan J Borsuk, “Funding’s new heavy-hitter,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel online, Feb. 9, 2003.)

[194]. “Buying a Movement—The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation,” www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=2068.

[195]. Robert H. Bork, “Civil Liberties after 9/11,”Commentary (Vol. 116, No. 1, July-August 2003), pp. 29-35.

[196]. James Warren, “Nixon, Graham anti-Semitism on tape,” Chicago Tribune, March 1, 2002.

[197]. See Chapter 2 and note 9.

[198]. Mark H. Milstein “Strategic Ties or Tentacles? Institute for National Security Affairs,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October 1991, p. 27.

[199]. Ibid. Ledeen affirms that his meetings had been approved.

[200]. Richard H. Curtiss, “Book Review” Michael P. Saba, The Armageddon Network, (Brattleboro, VT: Amana Books, 1984), WRMEA, November 26, 1984, p.10.

[201]. Paul Findley, They Dare to Speak Out, (Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1989), Ch. 5.

[202]. Ibid.

[203]. Ibid. Perle said the fees were for work done before he entered government.

[204]. Jason Vest, “The Men From JINSA and CSP,” The Nation, September 2, 2002.

[205]. Mark H. Milstein, “Washington Institute for Near East Policy: An AIPAC ‘Image Problem,’” WRMEA, July 1991, p 30; Grace Halsell, “Clinton‘s Indyk Appointment One of Many From Pro-Israel Think Tank,” WRMEA, March 1993, p. 30.

[206]. Building for Peace: An American Strategy for the Middle East—Executive Summary, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, April 1993. All citations come from this source. www.washingtoninstitute.org/pubs/exec/buildexe.htm

[1]. For a list of the 64 Jews in the administration as of January 4, 1998, see The Jews in Clinton’s Cabinet. abbc.com/islam/english/toread/collect.htm

[2]. See the reproduction at www.mideastfacts.com/js_rn_cort.html translated and annotated by Rabbi Israel Shahak.

[3]. Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, October 21, 1950, www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/92.htm

[4]. The French newspaper Le Monde provides an excellent summary of the Oslo documentation in its series: “Middle-East: The Faultline,” mondediplo.com/focus/mideast/r1279. The term comes from back-channel meetings between Israel and the Palestinians in Oslo that formed the basis of the agreement. The five-year interim period officially began with the signing of the Agreement on the Gaza Strip and the Jericho Area on May 4, 1994, in Cairo.

[5]. “Exchange of letters between PLO chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin,” cited in ibid.

[6]. Ha’aretz, January 21, 1988, cited in Issa Nakhleh ed., Encyclopedia of the Palestine Problem, Vol II (New York: Intercontinental Books, 1991) p. 744.

[7]. Joel Beinin, “The Demise of the Oslo Process,” Middle East Report, March 26, 1999.

[8]. Khaled Al-.Maeena, “Is the U.S. Government’s First Obligation to Americans or to Israelis?” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July 1996, p. 17.

[9]. Richard Perle et al., A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, July 1996 www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm. All italics in original.

[10]. Har Homa, Legal Aspects, Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, March 3, 1997. www.israel-mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH01gi0

[11]. Marilyn Henry, “Israel slams UN emergency debate,” Jerusalem Post, April 25.

[12]. Ibid.

[13]. UN Ambassador Richardson, Speech on Israeli Settlements, April 25, 1997. www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/mideast/mid039.htm

[14]. Kurt Holden “Clinton’s Tilt Toward Israel Losing Public Opinion Support,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June/July 1997, pp. 50-54.

[15]. Danny Rubinstein, “Sticking to the Pinciples of the Intifada,” Ha’aretz, June 10, 2002.

[16]. Shirl McArthur, “Congress Launches Fawning Frenzy Over Netanyahu’s Har Homa Decision,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June/July 1997, pp. 14–17. MacArthur said the only exception to the pro-Likud pressure was a bi-partisan letter from rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV) calling upon President Clinton “to prevail upon Israel to refrain from undertaking the construction of the Har Homa settlement on Jabal Abu Ghneim until the status of Jerusalem is resolved through negotiations.” The letter received 17 other signatures by the end of April. Ibid.

[17]. Donald Wagner, “The interregnum: Christian Zionism in the Clinton years,” Daily Star (Lebanon), October 10, 2003.

[18]. McArthur, op. cit.

[19]. “Christians Call For A United Jerusalem,” The New York Times, April 18, 1997.

[20]. Ibid. Wagner.

[21]. J.C. Watts, “Yasser Arafat vs. Christians,” The Washington Times, December 4, 1997.

[22]. Ibid., Wagner.

[23]. Cited in “Arafat, Netanyahu, Clinton gather to seek Mideast Peace,” CNN.com, December 15, 1998.

[24]. “Insider Reflects on Failure of 2000 Camp David Summit,” Ha’aretz, September 13, 2001, www.us-israel.org/jsource/Peace/benami2.html. All of Ben-Ami’s citations come from this source.

[25]. For a summary of the Palestinian Negotiating Team’s refutation of U.S.–Israeli claims, see www.mediamonitors.net/pnt1.html.

[26]. Joel Greenberg, “Palestinians Destroy Israeli Site That Was Scene of Many Clashes,” The New York Times, October 8, 2000.

[27]. UN Security Council Res. 1322, October 7, 2000. The U.S. abstained.

[28]. Ibid, “Timeline” in Le Monde—Middle East: The Faultline.

[29]. “Senators Support Israel,” Reuters, October 13, 2000.

[1]. The late King Fahd and his six full brothers all belong to the Sudairi clan (named after their mother Hassa bint Ahmad al-Sudairi), and consider Abdullah to be an outsider “The Sudairi Seven” are or were Fahd, Sultan (Second Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense), Abd al-Rahman (Deputy Minister of Defense), Nayif (Minister of the Interior), Salman (Governor of Riyadh Province), Ahman and Turki. The Sudairis consider Abdullah, Fahd’s half-brother to be an outsider, and the question of who will follow Abdullah is a matter of intense rivalry. Moreover, Defense Minister Prince Sultan al-Sudairi, one year younger than Abdullah and second in line, is manoeuvering with his brothers to have his son Bandar, the former U.S. ambassador, succeed Abdullah. Because Abdullah would have the right to name his successor without regard to seniority, any attempt to bypass Sultan would almost certainly set off a power struggle. Abdullah commands the 57,000-member National Guard, but the leadership of the 105,000-strong Armed Forces is clearly aligned with Sultan. Abdullah, the son of ibn Saud and Al Fadha bint Asi al-Shuraim, is a problem for the Sudairis because he puts the interests of the Saudi people ahead of catering to the U.S. Although Abdullah values Saudi Arabia’s relationship with the U.S. he wants it to be based more on equality than subservience. Thus, the Sudairis could not afford to have bin Laden enhancing Abdullah’s reputation by pointing out the current king’s conspicuously un-Islamic conduct during the Gulf War.

[2]. Yossef Bodansky, Bin Laden: The Man who Declared War on America, (New York: Forum, 1999) p. xxi.

[3]. Bodansky, op. cit., p. 46.

[4]. Correspondance between el-Affendi and the author.

[5]. “Drought in Sudan,” Emergency Briefing—The South of Sudan, Oxfam, May 1998. www.oxfam.org.uk/atwork/emerg/begsit.htm

[6]. “El-Torabi: World media made Bin Laden symbol of Islamic struggle,” Arabicnews.com, September 12, 1998. www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/980912/1998091207.html

[7]. According to the website, the banks founders are the Northern State Government (Sudan); Al Baraka for investment & development, Jeddah; Sheikh Salih Abdallah Al Kamil, Jeddah; Sheikh Omer Abdallah Kamil, Jeddah; and Faisal Islamic Bank (Sudan), 19 percent of which is owned by the Dar Al-Maal Al-Islami Trust, headed by Saudi Prince Mohammed al-Faisal al-Saud. (This website has since been changed and the link identifying the founders has been deleted)

[8]. Finance Watch/Inner City Press, December 3, 2001. www.innercitypress.org/finwatch.html

[9]. State Department Fact Sheet On Bin Laden, August 14, 1996. www.usis-israel.org.il/publish/press/state/archive/august/sd4_8-15.htm Note that this URL designates a U.S.–Israeli source, so the credibility of $50 million figure is immediately suspect.

[10]. See note 27.

[11]. Abu Dhabi’s ruling family owned 77.4 percent of the bank. In June 1994, 11 of the 12 former BCCI executives accused of fraud are convicted in Abu Dhabi, given prison sentences and ordered to pay compensation.

[12]. Sen. John Kerry and Sen. Hank Brown, The BCCI Affair—A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations United States Senate December 1992, 102nd Congress 2nd Session. The citation comes from the executive summary. fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/

[13]. Zawahiri, an upper-class Cairo pediatrician, became a member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad in 1981, and on October 6 of that year he helped lead the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat. Zawahiri served three years in prison, and subsequently tried to assassinate current President Hosni Mubarak. He has been sentenced to death in absentia.

[14]. Frank Smyth and Jason Vest, “One Man’s Private Jihad,” Village Voice,” August 19–25, 1998.

[15]. “Bin Laden Draws on Global Financing,” Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, September 19, 2001.

[16]. Ibid. This citation is from 1992.

[17]. Robert Gersony, “Why Somalis Flee: Conflict In Northern Somalia,” Cultural Survival Quarterly, Vol. 13 (4), (1993), pp. 45–58.

[18]. Barre tried twice to regain power but left the country in 1992. He died in exile in Lagos, Nigeria, on January 2, 1995.

[19]. Mohamed Sahnoun, “Flashlights over Mogadishu,” New Internationalist No. 262, December 1994.

[20]. Ibid

[21]. Other sources state that the firefight lasted 12 hours and that the number of U.S. wounded totaled 77 (Frontline—Ambush in Mogadishu, PBS, September 29, 1998.)

[22]. Aidid proclaimed himself president in 1995 after the UN troops left. He died on August 1, 1996, of a heart attack related to bullet wounds suffered during the conflict.

[23]. “Transcript of Osama Bin Ladin interview by Peter Arnett,” CNN, late March 1997, www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7204.htm.

[24]. Bodansky, op. cit., p. 186.

[25]. Correspondence between El-Affendi and the author.

[26]. Barton Gellman “Sudan offered to turn bin Laden over to the Saudis in ‘96,” Washington Post, (printed in the Seattle Times) October 4, 2001.

[27]. Cited in Mary Pat Flaherty, David B. Ottaway and James V. Grimaldi, “How Afghanistan Went Unlisted as Terrorist Sponsor,” Washington Post, November 5, 2001.

[28]. On November 11, 1994, The United Nations appealed for $106.4 million to meet the humanitarian requirements of Afghanistan for the next twelve months. Fighting during the year killed 7,000, injured around 100,000 and made more than half a million people homeless, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

[29]. Abu Abdul Aziz Al-Afghani, “The Islamic Taliban Movement And The Dangers of Regional Assimilation,” Nida’ul Islam, April–May 1997. www.islam.org.au/articles/18/taliban1.htm

[30]. Ibid.

[31]. “Hunting Bin Laden,” September 13, 2001, op. cit.

[32]. Bodansky, op. cit. pp. 196-197.

[207]. On May 25, 1997, Pakistan became the first state to offer diplomatic recognition.

[208]. “Taliban Abuses Ignored for oil, Money, Drug War,” American Atheists, July 19, 1998, www.atheists.org/flash.line/taliban3.htm.

[209]. Peter Symonds, “The Taliban, the US and the resources of Central Asia,” World Socialist Website, October 24, 2001, www.wsws.org/articles/2001/oct2001/tal1-o24.shtml.

[210] . Cited in “Unocal & Afghanistan,” Oil and Gas International, October 29, 2001m www.oilandgasinternational.com/departments/from_editor/10_29_01.html.

[211]. “Workers Freed, U.N. Resumes Afghan Aid,” The New York Times, December 12, 1996.

[212]. Symonds, op. cit.

[213]. “Burmese Workers Suing Unocal in Los Angeles Will Have Their Day in Court,” International Labor Rights Fund, August 30, 2001. www.laborrights.org/ On January 23, 2004 Judge Chaney ruled that Unocal, as the parent company, was not liable for the rape, murder, torture and forced labor that occurred during construction of Yadana pipeline. She said Unocal’s subsidiary, Burma’s SPDC, had the financial resources to be accountable under California law. However, she also said the villagers, whose testimony she said was honest and well-documented concerning Unocal’s knowledge of these atrocities, could proceed if their attorneys could prove liability by other means. Daniel J. Hughes “Unocal Off the Hook?” inthesetimes.com, Feb. 17, 2004.

[214]. Andrew Gumbel, “US oil firm on trial over Burma abuses,” The Independent, August 2, 2003,

[215]. Symonds, op. cit.

[216]. According to Unocal’s 1997 Annual Report: “Bridas seeks actual damages as well as punitive damages, plus interest. Bridas’ expert witnesses have stated in pre-trial discovery that Bridas’ total actual damages for loss of future profits are approximately $1.7 billion. In the alternative, Bridas is expected to seek an award of approximately $430 million with respect to its total expenditures in Turkmenistan. The company believes the assertions made by Bridas are without merit and is vigorously defending the lawsuit.” www.unocal.com/investor/97ar/notes/note19.htm

[217]. Ishtiaq Ahmad, U.S.-Taliban relations: Friend turns fiend as pipeline politics fail, tehekla.com, October 3, 2001. www.tehelka.com/channels/currentaffairs/2001/oct/3/ca100301us1.htm

[218]. “Background,” Afghanistan: The Massacre in Mazar-i-Sharif, Human Rights Watch, November 1998, Vol. 10, No. 7 (C) www.hrw.org/reports98/afghan/Afrepor0-02.htm#P98_20660

[219]. In August 1996, President Bill Clinton became personally involved with Amoco (American Oil Company) and other U.S. oil companies in this project. (See Dan Morgan and David B. Ottaway, “Azerbaijan’s Riches Alter the Chessboard,” (First of three articles) Washington Post October 4, 1998; Page A1. However, for Clinton to make this gesture, Section 907 of the 1992 Freedom Support Act had to be repealed. Government-to-government dealings with Azerbaijan had been banned because of its blockade of its internal Armenian enclave Nagorno-Karabakh. Because of intense lobbying by past and present politicians on behalf of Azerbaijan, the section was repealed. See Christopher Hitchens, “Greasing the Wheels,” salon.com, September 29, 1997. archive.salon.com/sept97/columnists/hitchens970929.html

[220]. John J. Maresca speaking before the Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives on U.S. interests in the Central Asian Republics 105th Congress, Second Session, Washington D.C., Feb. 12, 1998. www.house.gov/international_relations/105th/ap/wsap212982.htm

[221]. International Energy Annual, 1997. www.eia.doe.gov/iea/chron97.html

[222]. Unocal’s share of CentGas was 46.5 percent; Delta Oil of Saudi Arabia 15 percent; Government of Turkmenistan, 7 percent; Indonesia Petroleum, LTD. (INPEX) (Japan), 6.5 percent; ITOCHU Oil Exploration Co., Ltd. (CIECO) (Japan), 6.5 percent; Hyundai Engineering & Construction Co., Ltd. (Korea), 5 percent; and The Crescent Group (Pakistan), 3.5 percent. RAO Gazprom (Russia) indicated an interest in a 10 percent share. Unocal would later merge with Phillips 66 of Tulsa, Okla, which would announce a merger with Conoco on November 19, 2001. The new entity, ConocoPhillips, would become the third-largest integrated U.S. energy company based on market capitalization and oil and gas reserves and production; the sixth-largest energy company based on hydrocarbon reserves; and the fifth-largest global refiner.

[223]. Cited in Symonds, op. cit.

[224]. Caroline Lees, “Oil barons court Taliban in Texas,” The Telegraph, December 14, 1997.

[225]. “Unocal & Afghanistan,” editorial, Oil and Gas International, October 29, 2001.

[226]. Cited in “Pipeline Dreams: One of the factors which led to throwing Ms Benazir Bhutto out of Power,” The Herald, (Pakistan), June 1997.

[227]. “Unocal Statement: Suspension of activities related to proposed natural gas pipeline across Afghanistan,” August 21, 1998, www.unocal.com/uclnews/98news/082198.htm.

[228]. Oil and Gas International, October 29, 2001, op. cit.

[229]. Cited in “U.S. seeks Pakistan’s oil nod,” pakwatan.com, January 26, 2002, www.pakwatan.com/main/article_detail.php3?t1=402.

[230]. P. Stobdan, “The Afghan Conflict and Regional Security,” IDSA, (August 1999) pp.719-747.

[231]. “The First Day of the Takeover,” Afghanistan: The Massacre in Mazar-i-Sharif, Human Rights Watch, November 1998, Vol. 10, No. 7 (C) www.hrw.org/reports98/afghan/Afrepor0-02.htm#P98_20660

[232]. “Incitement to Violence against Hazaras by Governor Niazi,” in ibid.

[233]. Clinton Draws a Blank on Afghanistan, editorial, Omaid Weekly, March 27, 2000.

[234]. “Afghanistan quake survivors face new peril,”, Feb. 10, 1998, and “Earthquake hits northern Afghanistan,”, May 31, 1998, Seattle Times.

[235]. “Clinton bucks the trend with Taliban sanctions,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 10, 1999.

[236]. Cited in Ajith Abeysinghe, “US intrigues and the imposition of United Nations sanctions on Afghanistan,” World Socialist Website, November 23, 1999. www.wsws.org/articles/1999/nov1999/afgh-n22.shtml

[237]. “Clinton ordered bin Laden killing,” BBC, September 23, 2001.

[238]. Patrick Martin, “U.S. planned War In Afghanistan,” rense.com. November 20, 2001. www.rense.com/general17/spp.htm

[239]. James Ridgeway, “Bush’s Opium Bender,” Village Voice, June 20-26, 2001.

[240]. Paul Harris, “Victorious warlords set to open the opium floodgates,” Sunday Observer, November 25, 2001. The Observer figures give £6,000 per hectare and £34 per hectare respectively.

[241]. Tim Golden “Afghan Ban On Growing Of Opium Is Unraveling,” The New York Times, October 22, 2001; Anthony Davis “Afghan drug output wanes – but only under Taliban,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, October, 2001. Davis estimates the 2000 crop at 3,300 tonnes.

[242]. Ibid., Jane’s; Sunday Observer, op. cit.

[243]. Fact Sheet—The Taliban And The Afghan Drug Trade, Bureau of South Asian Affairs, U.S. Department of State, December 9, 2000. www.state.gov/www/regions/sa/facts_taliban_drugs.html

[244]. “Afghan Opium Cultivation Hits a Record,” Associated Press, August 16, 2006.

[245]. Osama bin Laden, Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying The Land of the Two Holy Places, October 23, 1996, p. 4. msanews.mynet.net/MSANEWS/199610/19961012.3.html. All citations come from this source.

[246]. Al-Aqsa is integral to Islam because it is here that Muhammad, the seventh and final prophet, led all prophets in prayer, and then ascended to heaven to receive God’s commandment to pray five times a day. Al-Aqsa is also the first qibla [direction of prayer], because in the early years of Islam, Muslims prayed toward Jerusalem. Muhammad later received a revelation from Archangel Jibril [Gabriel] telling him that the congregations should pray east towards Mecca, not west towards Jerusalem.

[247]. Ibid. To this list, bin Laden included the suffering of Iraq to date: “More than 600,000 Iraqi children have died due to lack of food and medicine, and as a result of the unjustifiable aggression (sanction) imposed on Iraq and its nation. The children of Iraq are our children. You, the U.S.A., together with the Saudi regime are responsible for the shedding of the blood of these innocent children. Due to all of that, whatever treaty you have with our country is now null and void.”

[248]. Robert Fisk, “Massacre in sanctuary; Eyewitness,” The Independent, April 19, 1996.

[249]. Robert Fisk, “The Deadly Secret That Led To Bloodbath At Qana,” The Independent, June 1, 1996, re-printed in Mid-East Realities.

[250]. Robert Fisk, “Qana massacre coverup successful,” The Independent, July 2, 1996, re-printed in Mid-East Realities.

[251]. The Qana massacre, op. cit.

[252]. Declaration, op. cit.

[253]. “Bin-Laden, Others Sign Fatwa To ‘Kill Americans’ Everywhere,” Al-Quds al-Arabi, reprinted in English by ERRI, Feb. 23, 1998, www.emergency.com/bladen98.htm. See also Chapter 9, note 26.

[254]. Mary Anne Weaver “The Real bin Laden,” New Yorker, January 24, 2000. For URL, See Chapter 3, note 30.

[255]. “Rahimullah Yousafsai interview with Osama bin Laden (Part II),” ABC, December 28, 1998.

[256]. Frontline—Hunting bin Laden, PBS, September 13, 2001.

[257]. 1995 Patterns of Global Terrorism, Office of Co-ordination for Counterterrorism, U.S. State Department, April 1996. www.fas.org/irp/threat/terror_95/termid.htm

[258]. John Miller, “Interview with Osama bin Laden,” May 1998 in Hunting Bin Laden, op. cit. Omitted from the quote is reference to the bombing in Dhahran the following year. That will be taken up in Chapter 5.

[259]. Federal Bureau of Investigation press release, June 21, 2001. www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel01/khobar.htm

[260]. “Christopher Tours Saudi Bomb Wreckage,” CNN, June 26, 1996. However, in its June 30, 1998, Special Report on Terrorism, the Chicago-based Emergency Research and Response Institute (ERRI) put the casualty numbers at 19 servicemen killed and at least 300 others injured, www.emergency.com/bldn0798.htm.

[261]. Ibid, ERRI.

[262]. “President Clinton’s Remarks,” CNN, June, 26, 1996.

[263]. See CNN June 26, 1996 op. cit.

[264]. At an August 8, 1990, press conference, Pres. George H.W. Bush strongly indicated that the U.S. military commitment was designed specifically to address the Iraqi military build-up, though not in such plain English:

Terence Hunt, Associated Press: “Is this an open-ended commitment? I mean, could this drag on for years?”

The President: “Nothing is open-ended, but I’m not worrying about that there at all. I’m worrying about getting them there and doing what I indicated in our speech in there is necessary: the defense of the Saudis and trying through concerted international means to reverse out this aggression.” President George Bush’s Press Conference, The Bush Library, August 8, 1990, bushlibrary.tamu.edu/papers/1990/90080801.html.

[265]. Report of the Accountability Review Boards on the Embassy Bombings in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam on August 7, 1998, www.terrorism.com/state/accountability_report.html; James C. McKinley Jr., “Security Flaws Left Nairobi Embassy Open to Attack,” The New York Times, September 9, 1998.

[266]. Cited in Mary Anne Weaver, “The Real bin Laden,” New Yorker, January 24, 2000. For URL, see Ch. III note 30.

[267]. Ibid. According to Frontline, the number of missiles was 75. Other sources put the total number of camps at four.

[268]. James Risen and David Johnston, “Experts Find No Arms Chemicals at Bombed Sudan Plant,” The New York Times, Feb. 9, 1999. The number of missiles fired at the plant is either six (Weaver) or 13 (Frontline).

[269]. Vernon Loeb and Michael Grunwald, “U.S. fails to provide evidence against bin Laden,” The Washington Post, August 20, 1998.

[270]. Tony Karon, “Did U.S. Bomb Sudan in Error?” Time, October 27, 1999.

[271]. “US sued over Sudan strikes,” BBC News July 27, 2000.

[272]. Ibid., “U.S. fails to provide evidence against bin Laden,” The Washington Post, August 20, 1998.

[273]. Cited in “U.S. efforts to make peace summed up by ‘oil’,” an interview with the Irish Times, November 19, 2001.

[274]. Ibid., Weaver.

[275]. “Questions remain about Sudan factory,” USA Today, 1999.

[276]. Hunting bin Laden, PBS, September 13, 2001, op. cit.

[277]. Tim Weiner, “U.S. Case Against bin Laden in Embasy [sic] Blasts Seems to Rest on Ideas,” The New York Times, April 13, 1999.

[278]. “Terror Suspect—An interview with Osama bin Laden,” ABC News, December 28, 1998.

[279]. Joyce M. Davis, “Bin Laden asks Muslims worldwide to retaliate against the United States,” The Charlotte Observer, August 22, 1998.

[280].”U.S. finds link between bin Laden and Cole bombing,” CNN, December 7, 2000.

[281]. Frank Gardner, “Bin Laden ‘denies’ Yemen blast,”, BBC News, November 13.

[282]. “Interview with Larry Johnson,” Frontline—Hunting bin Laden, PBS, September 13, 2001. The Bush administration would turn gross exaggerations of terrorist threats and crying “wolf” into official government policy and a re-election platform.

[283]. Security Council resolutions 1990, op. cit.

[284]. Stephen C. Pelletière, “A War Crime or an Act of War?” The New York Times, January 31, 2003.

[285]. Security Council Resolutions, 1991, op. cit.

[286]. France withdrew from the northern NFZ in December 1996 and from the southern NFZ in December 1998. The northern NFZ was first established to protect coalition aircraft during airdrops of aid to Kurdish refugees on the Turkish border and then to protect coalition ground troops advancing into northern Iraq as part of Operation “Provide Comfort.”

[287]. For an excellent history and analysis of the NFZs, see Teisha Leigh The No Fly Zones Over Iraq: A Review, CAABU Briefings, No. 68, 2001, at The Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding www.caabu.org/press/briefings/no-fly-zones.html

[288]. Paul Richter, “Clinton OKs More Aggressive Response to Iraqi Attacks,” Los Angeles Times, Jan 27, 1999.

[289]. Sarah Graham-Brown No-Fly Zones: Rhetoric And Real Intentions, MERIP (Middle East Research and Information Project), Press Information Note 49, Feb. 20, 2001. www.iraqwatch.org/perspectives/merip-pin49-022001.htm

[290]. No-fly zones: The legal position, BBC, Feb. 19 2001, news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1175950.stm.

[291]. Edith M. Lederer, “Former UN Inspector Accuses U.S.,” Newsday, July 19, 2001; Ronni Berke, “Ex-U.N. inspector in Iraq: U.S. set up air raids,” CNN.com, July 19, 2001.

[292]. Scott Ritter, “The time to stop the war on Iraq is now,” Speech to the British Houses of Parliament, July 2002, www.web.net/sworker/384-06-ritter.html

[293]. Richard Norton-Taylor, “Britain and US step up bombing in Iraq,” Guardian, December 4, 2002.

[294]. Dennis Halliday, “End the catastrophe of sanctions against Iraq,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Feb. 12, 1999; “The Catastrophe of Sanctions Against Iraq,” Seattle Times, Feb. 19, 1999.

[295]. Under-5 mortality (UNICEF, July 23, 1999 www.unicef.org/reseval/pdfs/irqu5est.pdf.

[296]. Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court www.un.org/law/icc/statute/romefra.htm.

[297]. See excerpts at www.thestruggle.org/mecc_11/Albrightx.html

[1]. Statement of Principles, (Washington, D.C.: The Project for the New American Century, June 3, 1997), hereinafter cited as PNAC.

[2]. Letter to President Clinton, PNAC, January 26, 1998. Signatories included Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, William Kristol, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz.

[3]. “Security Council resolutions, 1990,” www.un.org/Docs/scres/1990/scres90.htm.

[4]. “Security Council resolutions, 1991” www.un.org/Docs/scres/1991/scres91.htm United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM). www.un.org/Depts/unscom/unscom.htm - ESTABLISH

[5]. Donald Kagan, Gary Schmitt, Thomas Donnelly et al., Rebuilding America’s Defenses—Strategy, Forces And Resources For A New Century, (Washington, D.C.: PNAC, September 2000) pp. iv; i-ii. Even though the first of these citations comes after the second in the report, there is no change in meaning or context. All pages refer to the print document, not the PDF version on PNAC’s website.

[6]. Ibid.

[7]. Ibid,. p. ii. For a detailed treatment of the DPG, see Chapter 14.

[8]. Ibid., p. 14

[9]. Ibid., pp. iv-v, 23.

[10]. Ibid., p. 1

[11]. Ibid., p. 14.

[12]. Ibid., p. 23.

[13]. Letter to President Clinton, PNAC, January 26, 1998. www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm

[14]. Wexner Analysis: Israeli Communication Priorities 2003, April 2003. www.adc.org/luntzwexleranalysis.pdf

[15]. Ibid., p. 2.

[16]. Ibid., pp. 2, 3.

[17]. Ibid. p. 10.

[18]. “Saddam Hussein’s repression of the Iraq People,” A Decade of Deception and Defiance, September 12, 2002, www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/decade/sect4.html

[19]. Wexler Analysis, op. cit., p. 3.

[20]. Ibid. p. 16.

[21]. Colin Powell, Remarks to the United Nations Security Council, February 5, 2003. www.cnn.com/2003/US/02/05/sprj.irq.powell.transcript

[22]. Michael I. Niman, “What Bush didn’t want you to know about Iraq,” The Humanist, March/April 2003, www.projectcensored.org/publications/2004/3.html Some of the companies Niman mentioned were Bechtel, Dupont, Eastman Kodak, Halliburton, Hewlett-Packard, Honeywell, Rockwell, and Sperry. From 1983 onwards, he also notes that the U.S. was involved in 80 shipments of biological and chemical components, including strains of botulism toxin, anthrax, gangrene bacteria, West Nile fever virus, and Dengue fever virus.

[23]. Ibid., p. 2

[24]. Ibid., p. 6.

[25]. George W. Bush, “Press Conference,” March 6, 2003. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030306-8.html

[26]. Wexler Analysis, op. cit., p. 4.

[27]. For a summary of comments on this and other disproven positions see “Administration Comments on Saddam Hussein and the September 11 Attack,” Washington Post, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/9-11_saddam_quotes.html. For Cheney on Hussein and bin Laden, see also Dana Priest and Glenn Kessler, “Iraq, 9/11 Still Linked By Cheney,” Washington Post, September 29, 2003.

[28]. Transcript of Meet the Press, MSNBC, May 16, 2004. So damaging was Powell’s admission that his own press aide tried to cut him off while he was being interviewed. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4992558. See also, Steven R. Weisman, “Powell Calls His U.N. Speech a Lasting Blot on His Record,” The New York Times, September 9, 2005.

[29]. Powell, Remarks, op. cit.

[30]. That figure is at least down from 82 percent just after the attack. See Table X.

[31]. Dana Milbank and Claudia Deane, “Hussein Link to 9/11 Lingers in Many Minds,” Washington Post, September 6, 2003 .

[32] . Bush, “Press Conference,” op. cit. In the end, not even Bush could keep up the charade. On September 18, four days after Cheney appeared on Meet the Press, he conceded he had no proof of a connection between Hussein and the September 11 attack. By this time, though, the invasion was over and official lies about WMDs and the Hussein–bin Laden link were no longer needed.

[33]. Tim Russert interview with Donald Rumsfeld, Meet the Press, NBC, March 23, 2003. According to CBS, Rumsfeld’s notes at 2:40 p.m. read: “best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H. at same time. Not only UBL…. Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not.” Plans For Iraq Attack Began On 9/11, CBS, September 5, 2002. Rumsfeld lied again On January 19 when he told a reporter that there was no way to know if force would have to used. (“Media stakeout at Fox News” www.defenselink.mil/news/Jan2003/t01212003_t019sdstakeoutfox.html.

[34]. “Clarke’s Take On Terror”, 60 Minutes, CBS, March 21, 2004. www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/19/60minutes/main607356.shtml

[35]. Wolfowitz interview with Sam Tannenhaus, Vanity Fair, May, 2003. www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030509-depsecdef0223.html

[36] . Marie Cocco, “‘Al-Qaida’ didn’t rush to Bush’s lips,” Newsday, March 30, 2004.

[37]. Clarke, op. cit.

[38]. Zelikow is a controversial figure because he has close ties to the Bush government. Families of the victims of the September 11 attack charged that he was in a conflict of interest and had to step down.

[39]. Emad Mekay, “9/11 Commission Director: Iraq War Launched to Protect Israel,” Antiwar.com, March 30, 2004. See also M. Marshall, “Foreign Policy Experts Assess War on Terrorism, Saber Rattling Toward Iraq,” Virginia Journal, Fall 2002. www.law.virginia.edu/home2002/html/news/2002_fall/terrorismforum.htm

[40]. Ibid., Mekay.

[41]. Cited in “The Ground Shifts,” editorial, The Forward, May 28, 2004.

[42]. Cited in “Bush Says Iraq War Is Good for Israel,” The Forward, December 16, 2005.

[43]. Clarke, op. cit.

[298]. Neil Mackay, “Five Israelis were seen filming as jet liners ploughed into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001...,” Sunday Herald, November 2, 2003; “The White Van Were Israelis Detained on September 11 Spies?” ABC News, June 21, 2002; Marc Perelman, “Spy Rumors Fly on Gusts of Truth—Americans Probing Reports of Israeli Espionage,” Forward, March 15, 2002. To protect her anonymity, Maria would not give her last name. The facts of this story are well known, and are compiled from these three sources.

[299]. Nevertheless, a search on superpages.com still turns up two New Jersey outlets for Urban Moving Systems, one of which is at 1720 Willow Ave. Weehawken, 07086 (212) 732-9747. The company has since moved but is still in New York.

[300]. Yuval Dror, “Odigo says workers were warned of attack,” Ha’aretz, December 27, 2002. The only North American source to pick up the story was the Washington Post.

[301]. “Odigo, Inc., The Leading Instant Messaging Solutions Provider, Secures $15.35 Million In Private Placement,” Media Center, Comverse Inc, Jan, 9, 2001. Comverse bought Odigo outright for $20 million in May 2002.

[302]. Jack Shafer, “Richard Perle Libel Watch, 20 Days to Expiration,” Slate.com, Feb. 19, 2004.

[303]. See Justin Raimondo, “Now You See It, Now You Don’t—A Note to My Readers,” antiwar.com, December 22, 2001, where he explains why the links in his latest column no longer work.

[304]. Citations regarding all four parts of the Carl Cameron series can be found at www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5133.htm. The information is taken from the originals before they were pulled.

[305]. See also Charles R. Smith, “U.S. Police and Intelligence Hit by Spy Network—Spies Tap Police and Government Phones, newsmax.com, December 19, 2001.

[306]. Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, H.R. 4922, 103rd Congress, Second Session, October 25, 1994, at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, www.epic.org/privacy/wiretap/calea/calea_law.html.

[307]. Smith, newsmax.com, op. cit. According to Smith and Cameron, Attorney-General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller were warned on October 18, 2001, in a hand-delivered letter from 15 local, state and federal law enforcement officials that electronic surveillance capabilities were less effective than they were when CALEA was enacted.

[308]. Cited in America Rebuilds, PBS, September 10, 2002. In the same show, Luis Mendes from the Dept of Design and Construction said WTC 6 was also imploded: “We had to be very careful how we demolished Building 6. We were worried about the Building 6 coming down and then damaging… there’s 30 walls… We wanted that building to fall within a certain area.” For an excellent presentation on the inadequacies of the Commission’s report, see the analysis by Enver Masud, founder of The Wisdom Fund at www.twf.org/Gallery/Fatally Flawed.ppt.htm.

[309]. Ramon Gilsanz et al., “Chapter 5,” World Trade Center Building Performance Study: Data Collection, Preminary Observations and Recommendations, (hereinafter FEMA) (New York: FEMA, May 2002), Sec. 5.7, p. 31 (Emphasis added.)

[310]. Ibid., Sec. 5.6.2, p. 30; Sec. 5.5.3, p. 20.

[311]. Ibid.

[312]. Ibid., p. 20.

[313]. Cited in Christopher Bollyn, “Feds Withhold Crucial WTC Evidence,” American Free Press, August 8, 2002 www.rense.com/general28/FEDswithholdcrucial.htm.

[314]. “Exclusive: 911 Tapes Tell Horror Of 9/11 (Part 2),” WNBC News, June 17, 2002 www.wnbc.com/news/1315651/detail.html.

[315]. Cited in “Hell on Earth,” People, September 24. 2001.

[316]. Cited in the documentary 9/11, prod. Goldfish Pictures and Silverstar Productions, dirs. Jules Naudet, Gedeon Naudet, James Hanlon, 2001.

[317]. FEMA, Sec. A.3.1.5, p. A-14, ~/fema403_apa.pdf.

[318]. Ibid., Sec. A.3.1.3, p. A-9.

[319]. “Trade Center hit by 6-Floor Fire,” The New York Times, Feb. 14, 1975.

[320]. Molten Metal found at the WTC months after 9/11, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPsHEkdJ294&NR This is a live interview with a fireman amid the rubble of the towers.

[321]. Steven E. Jones, “Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse?” Journal of 911 Studies, Vol. 3, September 2006.

[322]. Cited in ibid. See also See also Steven E. Jones, About Finding Thermite in WTC-steel, American Scholars Symposium, Los Angeles, June 24, 2006.

[323]. “See “Thermite and the WTC Collapses,” at whatreallyhappened.com. At the bottom of the article is a video that shows how shaped charges work and how the cuts used in a demolition are identical to the ones found in the WTC towers.

[324]. “Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse?” op. cit.

[325]. See Ed Ward MD, “The US Government’s Usage of Atomic Bombs - Domestic - WTC,” www.thepriceof liberty.org, September 25, 2006.

[326]. “Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse?” op. cit. So incendiary to the official narrative has been Jones’s work that, under pressure from the junta, BYU launched a disinformation and intimidation campaign against him, and put him on paid leave from the university. In October 2006, Jones took early retirement.

[327]. Bill Manning, “$elling out the Investigation,” Fire Engineering, January 2002.

[328]. Ron Callari, “9/11 Update Ground Zero For Sale,” San Antonio Current, March 21, 2002; “World Trade Center Scrap Sails to India,” China Radio International News, January 2002.

[329]. Unless otherwise stated, all background and citations in this section come from an interview between the author and Scott Forbes, 10 a.m. PDT, September 23, 2004.

[330]. Curtis L. Taylor and Sean Gardiner, “Heightened Security Alert Had Just Been Lifted,” Newsday, September 12, 2001.

[331]. “Accounts From the South Tower—Transcripts,” The New York Times, May 26, 2002.

[332]. Craig Cox, “Secrecy Surrounds 9/11 Investigation,” Utne.com, February 2003.

[333].”Complex insurance issues emerge in wake of World Trade Center tragedy,” Insurance Times. October 30, 2001, Vol. XX No. 22.

[334]. “WTC Jury Deals Leaseholder A Blow,” Associated Press, April 29, 2004; Charles E. Boyle, “Swiss Re, Developer Continue to Dispute WTC Cost,” Insurance Journal, August 19, 2002. Charles V. Bagli, “Towers’ Insurers Must Pay Double,” The New York Times, December 7, 2004.

[335]. Cited in New York: A Documentary Film, “The Centre of the World,” PBS, September 8, 2003.

[336]. See. “WTC Cleanup Workers File Suit,” American Press, September 14, 2004.

[337] . “Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse?” op. cit.

[338]. Sara Leibovich-Dar, “Up in smoke,” Ha’aretz, September 17, 2004. Silverstein’s spokesman Howard Rubenstein, is one of a number of high-priced public relations experts who’ve agreed to donate their services to burnishing Israel’s media image. Eisenberg has since become a member of the Lower Manhattan Redevelopment Authority, which is spearheading the reconstruction.

[339]. Hector Carreon, “Open Letter to the 9/11 Commission re: The controlled demolitions of buildings WTC 6 & 7 on 9-11-2001,” La Voz de Aztlan, January 29, 2004. www.aztlan.net/911_commission.htm.

[340]. Thomas H. Kean, and Lee Hamilton, et al. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (9/11 Commission) Final Report, July 22, 2004, p. 458. (Hereinafter 9/11 Commission.) Parentheses in text added for clarity.

[341]. “Transcript: 9/11 Commission Hearings for June 17, 2004,” Washington Post, June 17, 2004.

[342]. Adam J. Hebert, “The Return of NORAD,” Air Force Magazine, February 2002, Vol. 85, No. 2.

[343]. Ibid. and James Bamford, A Pretext for War (New York: Doubleday, 2004) excerpted at “Inside the failed Air Force scramble to prevent the September 11 attacks,” MSNBC.com, June 28, 2004.

[344]. Rebuilding America’s Defenses—Strategy, Forces And Resources For A New Century, p. 51. For full citation, see Chapter 13, note 28.

[345]. George W. Bush, Remarks by the President at Taft for Governor Luncheon, Columbus, Ohio, May 10, 2002. This was the second time in two weeks that Bush made this explicit cause-and-effect statement. See President Comments on New Economic Numbers and Middle East, Crawford, Texas, April 26, 2002. The use of “dream” seems significant, because the tone of the passage gives the impression that the “trifecta” was a “dream come true.”

[346]. Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer, Chmn. Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Annex to Appendix to Enclosure A,” Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense—Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba, March 13, 1962.paras 3, 4. (herinafter, Operation Northwoods). A copy is archived at http://emperors-clothes.com/images/north-i.htm.

[347]. Bob Woodward, “Bring ‘knives, your will, IDs, your passport,’” Washington Post, September 28, 2001.

[348]. AA11 www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/victims/AA11.victims.html; UA175, ~/victims/UA175.victims.html; AA77, ~/victims/AA77.victims.html; and UA93, ~/victims/UA93.victims.html.

[349]. Operation Northwoods, op cit. “Annex,” para 8.

[350]. 9/11 Commission, op cit., p. 454.

[351]. “Transcript of United Airlines Flight 175,” The New York Times, October 16, 2001.

[352]. 9/11 Commission, op. cit., p. 16.

[353]. Ibid., p. 21.

[354]. “Transcript of United Airlines Flight 175,” op. cit.

[355]. “‘Get These Planes on the Ground’—Air Traffic Controllers Recall September 11,” ABCNews, October 24, 2001.

[356] Source: http://www.twf.org/News/Y2005/0307-Pentagon.html.

[357]. Line-of-sight vantage points to the Pentagon from these positions can be found at http://perso.wanadoo.fr/jpdesm/pentagon/pages-en/fct-videos.html. The CVR from UA 93 was made available during the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, alleged to have been the “20th hijacker.”

[358]. 9/11 Commission, op cit. p. 456 (footnote 76 to Chapter 1)

[359]. Cited in William Bunch, “2 say they found 9/11 ‘black boxes’,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 28, 2004.

[360]. Ibid. For the NTSB website see www.ntsb.gov/aviation/cvr_fdr.htm.

[361]. 9/11 Commission, op cit., p. 46.

[362]. “Transcript of Osama bin Laden’s speech,” al-Jazeera, October 29, 2004. (Some spellings corrected for consistency.) www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7201.htm.

[363]. “Transcript of Osama Bin Ladin interview by Peter Arnett,” CNN, late March 1997. www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7204.htm.

[364]. “Bin Laden speech,” October 29, 2004 op. cit..

[365]. “Interview with Peter Arnett,” op. cit.

[366]. “Al-Qaida statement,” BBC, October 10, 2001.

[367]. Neil MacFarquhar, “Bin Laden, in a Taped Speech, Says Attacks in Afghanistan Are a War Against Islam,” The New York Times, November 4, 2001.

[368]. “Al-Jazeera TV Airs ‘bin Laden’ Tape,” Associated Press, November 12, 2002.

[369]. “Bin Laden tape a fake, Swiss lab says,” Associated Press, October 31, 2004. Former dean of U.S. news broadcasting Walter Cronkite suggests that Karl Rove, Bush’s chief strategist, might have put bin Laden up to it. (Larry King Live, CNN, October 29, 2004)

[370]. “Excerpts From Osama bin Laden’s Address on al-Jazeera,” Agence France-Presse, December 27, 2001.

[371]. Interview with Ummat, op cit.

[372]. Steve Watson and Paul Watson, “Atta’s Father Says Video Fake, Credibility of ‘Hijackers Tape’ Crumbles,” infowars.net, October 3, 2006.

[373]. Mark S. Zaid, “Able Danger And Intelligence Information Sharing” Prepared Statement Before The Committee On Judiciary, United States Senate, September 21, 2005; Weldon: ‘Able Danger’ identified Atta 13 times,” Associated Press, Feb. 15, 2006

[374]. Cited in Douglas Jehl, “Senators Accuse Pentagon of Obstructing Inquiry into September 11 Plot,” The New York Times, September 22, 2005.

[375]. Cited in Sarah Lai Stirland, “DoD employees barred from testifying about terrorist data-mining effort.” Government Executive, September 21, 2005.

[376]. Kurt Nimmo, “Weldon: Government Had 2.5 Terabytes of Data on Atta,” Another Day in the Empire, September 16, 2005, archived at www.uruknet.info/?s=2&p=15815&s2=17.

[377]. The New York Times, September 22, 2005, op cit.

[378]. Times Herald, October 25, 2005, op cit.

[379] . A thorough history of Able Danger that includes links to interviews, government documents and media articles can be found at http://cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a1298abledangersetup.

[380]. Jacob Goodwin, “Inside Able Danger—The Secret Birth, Extraordinary Life and Untimely Death of a U.S. Military Intelligence Program,” Government Security News, September 2005. (my italics).

[1]. Colin L. Powell, Humanitarian Assistance to Afghans, U.S. State Department, Washington, D.C. May 17, 2001.

[2]. Robert Scheer, “Bush’s Faustian Deal With the Taliban,” Los Angeles Times, May 22, 2001.

[3]. Jim Teeple Taleban Wipes out Afghanistan’s Opium Production, Institute for Afghan Studies, April 8, 2001. www.institute-for-afghan-studies.org/AFGHAN CONFLICT/Drugs/Taleban Wipes Out Opium.htm

[4]. Cited in James Ridgeway, “Bush’s Opium Bender,” Village Voice, June 20-26, 2001.

[5]. Ibid, Powell.

[6]. Cited in Julio Godoy, “US policy on Taliban influenced by oil—authors,” Asia Times, November 20, 2001.

[7]. Cited in ibid. See also Jonathan Steele et al. “Threat of US strikes passed to Taliban weeks before N.Y. attack, Guardian, September 22, 2001.

[8]. Ibid.

[9]. Ibid.

[10]. Zalmay Khalilzad, “Afghanistan: Time To Reengage,” Washington Post, October 7, 1996.

[11]. Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway, “Consultant’s Policy Influence Goes Back to the Reagan Era,” Washington Post, November 23, 2001.

[12]. Zalmay Khalilzad and Daniel Byman “Afghanistan: The Consolidation of a Rogue State,” The Washington Quarterly (Winter 2000), pp. 65–78.

[13]. Ibid., p. 66.

[14]. Ibid, pp. 69, 74.

[15]. Bob Woodward, “Secret CIA Units Playing A Central Combat Role,” Washington Post, November 18, 2001, p. A1.

[16]. Khalilzad and Byman, pp. 70–71.

[17]. Ibid., pp. 65, 69.

[18]. Cited in Jonathan Steele, et al., “Threat of US strikes passed to Taliban weeks before NY attack,” The Guardian, September 22, 2001.

[19]. Khalilzad and Byman, pp. 71–72.

[20]. Jonathan Weisman and Andrea Stone, “Rumsfeld: Bin Laden may get away; ‘It’s a big world,’ he says, but predicts the Taliban regime will be toppled,” USA Today, Oct 25, 2001.

[21]. “US: We hope to catch Bin Laden,” The Guardian, October 25, 2001.

[22]. Barton Gellman and Thomas E. Ricks, “U.S. concludes bin Laden survived Tora Bora fight,” Washington Post, April 17, 2002.

[23]. Ibid, News Briefing, September 18, 2001.

[24]. Ari Fleisher, Press Briefing, White House Documents, Sept 18, 2001.

[25]. Ed Vulliamy “Hawks and doves fight for control of campaign,” The Observer, September 30, 2001.

[26]. Virtually the only newspaper to cover this event was Pakistan’s Frontier Post “U.S. envoy calls on Petroleum Minister,” October 10, 2001. The meeting got no mention in the The New York Times, or the Washington Post.

[27]. “Pipelineistan: The rules of the game,” Alexander’s Gas and Oil Connections, volume 7, issue #4, Feb. 21, 2002.

[28]. Marc Kaufman, “Karzai’s Ties to U.S. Are a Mixed Blessing; Pashtun Leader Trades Carefully on U.S. Bond,” Washington Post, December 22, 2001, p. A16.

[28]. Ibid.

[29]. Wayne Madsen, “Afghanistan, the Taliban and the Bush Oil Team,” Centre for Research on Globalisation, January 2002. globalresearch.ca/articles/MAD201A.html; “Saudi paper profiles new Afghan leader,” al-Watan, December 11, 2001, translated by the BBC December 15, 2001.

[30]. Khalilzad and Byman, p. 77; Mike Fox, “Bush appoints Afghan envoy,” BBC, January 1, 2002. On November 24, 2003, Khalilzad was sworn in as ambassador to Afghanistan.

[31]. Karzai took up his duties as interim leader, on December 22, 2001. The following June 14, a loya jirga [grand assembly] of representatives of ethnic, regional and religious groups appointed him for an additional 18 months, after which time elections would be held. Karzai won the October 2004 election.

[32]. Cited in Seymour M. Hersh, “The Other War,” The New Yorker, April 12, 2004.

[33]. “Karzai: 10 Civilians Died in U.S. Attack,” Associated Press, Feb. 1, 2004.

[40]. Isabel Hilton, “Now we pay the warlords to tyrannize the Afghan people,” The Guardian , July 31, 2003.

[41]. “U.S.: Afghan poppy production doubles,” CNN, November 28, 2003.

[381]. Karen Kwiatkowski “The New Pentagon Papers,” Salon.com, March 10, 2004, p.1.

[382]. Seymour M. Hersh, “Selective Intelligence,” New Yorker, May 12, 2003.

[383]. Julian Borger, “The spies who pushed for war,” Guardian, July 17, 2003.

[384]. Kwiatkowski, Salon.com., op. cit., pp 2, 5. See also Chapter 4 and note 2. Reuel Marc Gerecht is a senior fellow and Director of the Middle East Initiative at PNAC, and writes for William Kristol’s Weekly Standard.

[385]. Kwiatkowski Salon.com, op. cit.

[386]. Frontline—The Gulf War, PBS, January 9, 1996. Cheney‘s comment is disingenuous, since it still boils down to doing what Israel wants.

[387]. Christopher M. Centner, “Ignorance Is Risk—The Big Lesson From Desert Storm Air Base Attacks,” Airpower Journal, 1992. “Each base in this network contained 12 widely dispersed HABs with half-meter-thick concrete walls, eight fuel tanks, two power stations, and squadron operations facilities. Buried and hardened airfield support components were scattered throughout each air base, many of which covered 5,000 acres.”

[388]. Cited in ibid.

[389]. Cited in Thomas E. Ricks, “For Vietnam Vet Anthony Zinni, Another War on Shaky Territory,” Washington Post December 23, 2003.

[390]. Ibid.

[391]. Kwiatkowski “Open Door Policy, American Conservative, January 19, 2004.

[392]. Kwiatkowski, cited in Marc Cooper, “Soldier for the Truth—Exposing Bush’s talking-points war,” LA Weekly, Feb. 20–26, 2004.

[393]. Doug Thompson, “Role reversal: Bush wants war, Pentagon urges caution,” Capitol Hill Blue, Jan 22, 2003.

[394]. “The Army Cleans House,” Newsweek, August 3, 2003.

[395]. See Colin Powell, Remarks to the United Nations Security Council, February. 5, 2003. www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2003/17300.htm

[396]. Charles J. Hanley, “Powell’s battle cry fails test of time,” Associated Press, August 10, 2003.

[397]. Excerpted from Charles Hanley, “Powell’s battle cry fails test of time,” Associated Press, Philadelphia Enquirer, August 10, 2003.

[398]. “Hans Blix Says Iraq War Was Unfounded,” Associated Press, Feb. 24, 2004.

[399]. Jim Lobe “Chalabi, Garner Provide New Clues to War,” antiwar.com, Feb. 21, 2004.

[400]. Cited in Hersh, op. cit.

[401]. These groups, known as the “gang of four” were: The Union of Kurdistan, its archrival, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the pro-Iran Supreme Islamic Council for Revolution in Iraq, and the Iraqi National Accord. Ibid.

[402]. Jonathan S. Landay and Tish Wells, “Iraqi exile group fed false information to news media,” Knight Ridder News Service, March 15, 2004 www.mcclatchydc.com/128/story/10176.html. More specifically, the “mobile labs” were found to be hydrogen generators for weather balloons. As if to underscore Chalabi’s self-serving character, he was thoroughly blasé when accused of deliberately misleading the U.S. “We are heroes in error. As far as we’re concerned we’ve been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important. The Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat. We’re ready to fall on our swords if he wants.” Jack Fairweather and Anton La Guardia, “Chalabi stands by faulty intelligence that toppled Saddam’s regime,” The Telegraph, Feb. 19, 2004.

[403]. Andrew Gumbel, “Iraqi defector behind America’s WMD claims exposed as ‘out-and-out fabricator,’” Independent, March 29, 2004.

[404]. Dan Morgan and David B. Ottaway, “In Iraqi War Scenario, Oil Is Key Issue—U.S. Drillers Eye Huge Petroleum Pool,” Washington Post, September 15, 2002.

[405]. Jonathan S. Landay, Warren P. Strobel and John Walco, “Iraqi exiles still getting paid, despite false intelligence,” Seattle Times, Feb. 22, 2004.

[406]. Collaboration with Zionists seems to run in the family. Chalabi’s nephew Sam Chalabi, made headlines in October 2003 when the partner for his new law practice in Baghdad turned out to be Israeli settler lawyer Marc Zell. Also, Swiss authorities have convicted Chalabi’s brothers Jawad and Hazem of false accounting in connection with the collapse of Socofi, an investment firm in Ahmad Chalabi’s widespread financial empire. The charges are similar to the ones associated with Petra Bank. “Fresh bank scandals hit Iraq’s leader in waiting,” Sydney Morning Herald, April 18, 2003.

[407]. Matthew E. Berger “Pro-Israel activists courting Iraqi opposition leader,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, April 18, 2003.

[408]. Shlomo Brom, “The War in Iraq: An Intelligence Failure?” Strategic Assessment, (Tel Aviv: Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies) Vol. 6, No. 3, November 2003.

[409]. Ibid.

[410]. Ibid.

[411]. “Gen. Tommy Franks: Threat on Israel justified pre-emption,” Jewish Telegraph Agency, August 10, 2004.

[412]. Seymour Hersh, “The Debate Within,” The New Yorker, March 11, 2002. In confirming this general scenario, Voice of America radio said Sharon received a 90-minute advance warning of the invasion, and that Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said Israel would stay out of it: “The Israeli government has been highly supportive of President Bush’s campaign against Iraq, dubbing it an important part of the global war on terrorism. But officials also know Washington wants Israel to keep a low profile so as not to enflame Arab anger about the war.” (Sonja Pace, VOA, March 20, 2003. www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2003/iraq-030320-2a18cae7.htm

[413]. Tim Ripley, “Iraq’s western desert a ‘special forces playground’“ Jane’s Defense Weekly, April 3, 2003.

[414]. Brom, op.cit.

[415]. Cited in Michael Isikoff, “The Final Word?” Newsweek, November 19, 2001.

[416]. Dan Keating and Dan Balz, “Florida Recounts Would Have Favored Bush, But Study Finds Gore Might Have Won Statewide Tally of All Uncounted Ballots,” Washington Post, November 12, 2001.

[417]. “USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll results,” USA Today, September 16, 2001.

[418]. Cited in Juliet Eilperin, “Democrat Implies September 11 Administration Plot,” Washington Post, April 12, 2002.

[419] Ibid.

[420]. Brian C. Mooney, “Voting Errors Tallied Nationwide,” Boston Globe, December 1, 2004.

[421]. Reginal Fields, Ohio voters tell of Election Day troubles at hearing,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, November 14, 2004.

[422]. Richard Hayes Phillips, “Default settings in Mahoning County,” The Free Press, December 23, 2004.

[423]. Video footage of Clinton Curtis’s testimony can be found at http://www.iwilltryit.com/fixed1.htm. All information for this section is taken from Curtis’s direct testimony and his December 6, 2004, sworn affidavit. Reproter Brad Friedman has compiled a comprehnsive history of Clint Curtis’s attempts to expose the truth about the 2004 vote. See http://www.bradblog.com.

[424]. Cited in Countdown, MSNBC, November 11, 2004.

[425]. On August 21, 2007, BBC News reported that Khan had been released due to lack of evidence. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6956712.stm

[426]. Charlie Savage, “Bush Challenges Hundreds of Laws,” The Boston Globe, April 30, 2006.

[427]. Cited in, “Filmmaker Moore Quotes Goss on Lack of CIA Credentials,” Reuters, August 11, 2004.

[428]. Knut Royce, “CIA plans to purge its agency,” Newsday.com, November 14, 2004.

[429]. Douglas Jehl, “New C.I.A. Chief Tells Workers to Back Administration Policies,” The New York Times, November 17, 2004.

[430]. “CIA Critic of U.S. War on Terror Resigns,” Reuters, November 11, 2004; Dana Priest and Walter Pincus, “Deputy Chief Resigns from CIA,” Washington Post, November 13, 2004; Douglas Jehl, “C.I.A. Churning Continues as 2 Top Officials Resign,” The New York Times, November 16, 2004.

[431]. “CIA whistleblower sees ‘long war’” BBCNews, November 15, 2004.

[432]. Cited in Transcript, “Human Rights, Global Governance, and Strengthening the United Nations,” Global Structure Convocation, Institute For Policy Studies, February 1994.

[433]. Barbara Slavin and Bill Nichols Bolton, “A ‘guided missile,’” USA Today, Dec 1, 2003.

[434]. John Bolton, “America’s Skepticism about the United Nations,” (USIA Electronic Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2,) May 1997.

[435]. “Executive Summary,” Legal Consequences of Israel’s Construction of a Separation Barrier in the Occupied Territories, (Oxford Public Interest Lawyers: Oxford University Press, February 2004), Paras. 7-9.

[436]. Ori Nir, “Senate Probes Bolton‘s Pro-Israel Efforts,” Forward, May 6, 2005.

[437]. Melody Townsel, letter, at http://daveweigel.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/15/101542/050

[438]. The following section is taken from Greg Felton, “Coverage of September 11 anniversary fosters cult of martyrdom and manipulation,” Canadian Arab News, September 16, 2004. (Reposted at mediamonitors.net and www.gregfelton.com)

[439]. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. I, Ch. 11, July, 1925 (www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/index.html). In Nazi dogma, “Aryan” means a Caucasian of a Nordic type, but this is propaganda. For one, Aryans do not constitute a race, and ethnologically “Aryan” refers to Indo-Iranians.

[440]. Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, (Chicago: Time-Life Books, 1966), pp. 82-83.

[441]. Mein Kampf, Vol. I, Ch. 11.

[442]. Ibid., Vol. I, Ch. 2

[443]. “Christmas speech,” December 18, 1926, cited in John Toland, Adolf Hitler Vol. 1., (New York: Doubleday, 1954), p. 233.

[444]. Cited in Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Speaks, (London, 1939) p. 238 www2.ca.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/b/ftp.py?people/b//baron.al/1996/baron.0196. The last line seems to be a patterned after something Christ is supposed to have said: “For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s foes will be those of his own household… Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. (Matt: 10:35–36; Luke 14:26)

[445] Mein Kampf, Vol. I Ch. 11.

[446] Cited in Louis P. Lochner, ed., The Goebbels Diaries, (New York: Doubleday, 1948).

[447]. Hoffer, p. 109.

[448]. The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, “Letters,” vol. VII, p.81, cited in Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators—A Reappraisal,(Kent, Great Britain: Croom Helm, 1983) Ch. 3.

[449]. Cited in Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, Original Sins—Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel, (New York: Olive Branch Press, 1993), p. 131.

[450]. Cited at True Torah Jews Against Zionism (http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/zionism/zanda.cfm). The NMO is the English translation of Irgun Zeva’i Le’umi, an armed Zionist underground organization led by Menachem Begin that followed the ideas of Jabotinsky. The Lehi developed out of the Irgun in 1940 and was originally led by Avraham Stern.

[451]. Cited in Edwin Black, The Transfer Agreement, (New York: Carroll and Graf, 2001) p. 13.

[452]. Cited in ibid., p. 106.

[453]. Cited in Lenni Brenner, Ch. 5 “German Zionism Offers to Collaborate with Nazism,” Zionism in the Age of Dictators (out of print), http://www.marxists.de/middleast/brenner/ch05.htm. Brenner notes that Prinz’s recollections are based on a memorandum the Zionist Association for Germany (ZVfD) sent to the Nazi Party on June 21, 1933.

[454]. Cited in Seán Mac Mathúna, “Hannah Arendt on Kastner and the fate of Hungary’s Jews,” Facts and Logic About the Middle East (FLAME), http://www.fantompowa.net/Flame/arendt.htm. See also Leora Bilsky, “Judging Evil in the Trial of Kastner,” http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/19.1/bilsky.html.

[455]. Theodore Herzl, Diary, Part I, pp. 16, 68. www.jewsagainstzionism.com/news/newsletters/jaz111803.htm.

[456]. Naeim Giladi, “The Jews of Iraq,” The Link, Vol. 31, Issue 2, April–May 1998. (www.inminds.co.uk/jews-of-iraq.html).

[457]. Cited in John Quigley, Palestine and Israel–A Challenge to Justice, (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1990) p.101.

[458]. Ilan Pappé, “Post-Zionist Critique on Israel and the Palestinians, Part I: The Academic Debate,” Journal of Palestine Studies (Winter, 1997), pp. 33–34.

[459]. Dr. Norman Finkelstein, “Debate on the 1948 Exodus,” Journal of Palestine Studies, (Autumn 1991), note 4, p. 86.

[460]. Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Hirsh Goldberg, The Jewish Paradox (Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), p. 121.

[461]. Joseph Weitz, My Diary and letters to the Children (1965) as cited in Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians, (Institute for Palestine Studies: Washington, D.C., 1992), p. 186.

[462]. Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History, Vol. VIII, p.290, in Deir Yassin Remembered April 9, 2003, www.miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=1926&CategoryId=11.

[463]. Cited in Donald Neff , “Expulsion of the Palestinians—Lydda and Ramleh in 1948,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July/August 1994, page 72.

[464]. Cited in Ewen MacAskill. “George Bush: ‘God Told Me to End the Tyranny in Iraq,’” Guardian. October 7, 2005.

[465]. Lawrence Martin, “Christian soldier Bush swears by the Lord,” Globe and Mail, Feb. 5, 2004.

[466]. Jim Wallis, “Dangerous Religion—George W. Bush’s theology of empire“ Sojourners, September–October 2003.

[467]. Cited in Susan Mazur, “How Bush Got Bounced From Carlyle Board,” Progressive Review, .http://prorev.com/bushcarlyle.htm.

[468]. Dr. Israel Shahak, “Is Israel on the Road to Nazism?” Journal of Palestine Studies, vol. 12, December 1983.

[469]. “Urban II: Speech at Council of Clermont, 1095, according to Fulcher of Chartres,” Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham University, New York, NY. www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/urban2-fulcher.html

[470]. For evidence that Jews, Christians and Muslims pray to the same God, see John Kearney, “My God is your God,” The New York Times, January 28, 2004.

[34]. George Bush, Address to the Nation, September 11, 2001; Remarks upon arrival at the South Lawn, September 16, 2001. Sen. John McCain was closer to the mark when he called the bombings an act of war, not an act of terrorism.

[471]. Al-Qa’ida statement, BBC, October 10, 2001. (Italics added) Although bin Laden, through abu Ghaith, expressed admiration for the September 11 attack, he said nothing to intimate that he had anything to do with it.

[472]. George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, January 28, 2003.

[473]. Dana Milbank, “An Answer? Out of the Question,” Washington Post, April, 21 2003; Broward Liston, “Interview: Missionary work in Iraq,” Time, April 15, 2003

[474]. “The Reichstag speech of December 11, 1941: Hitler’s declaration of war against the United States,” translated by Mark Weber, The Journal of Historical Review, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 389-416. www.ihr.org/jhr/v08/v08p389_Hitler.html

[475]. Cited in Pamela Fayerman. “Hitler’s defeat after Allied invasion attributed to Parkinson’s disease,” The Vancouver Sun, July 27, 1999.

[476]. See Chapter 14, note 2.

[54]. Although this section does not provide clinical proof that Bush does suffer from Asperger’s Syndrome, the fact that he manifests many if not all of its symptoms suggests that the connection may be more than hypothetical. For more specific information see www.aspergers.com.

[477]. The website www.dubyaspeak.com, from which this and other examples are taken, is a comprehensive compendium of Bush’s eccentric behavior and mangled speech habits. All examples are linked to their original sources, and many include audio-visual clips.

[478]. Niall Ferguson, “America has got Asperger’s Syndrome,” The Daily Telegraph, Feb. 25, 2004.

[479]. Doug Thompson, “Bush’s Erratic Behavior Worries White House Aides,” Capitol Hill Blue, Jun 4, 2004.

[480]. Ibid., www.dubyaspeak.com.

[481]. “Bush: ‘Bring on’ attackers of U.S. troops,” Associated Press, July 2, 2003.

[482]. Cited at www.dubyaspeak.com/presidency.phtml.

[483]. Excerpt from speech at Grand Rapids, Mich., January 29, 2003, http://www.bitsberlin.de/public/documents/iraq/excerpts/us-29-01.03htm (The on-line White House copy of the speech no longer exists.)

[484]. George W. Bush, Freedom in Iraq and Middle East, (Remarks at the 20th Anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy) November 6, 2003. http://www.cdi.anu.edu.au/CDIwebsite_1998-2004/activities/activities_downloads/NED%20George%20Bush%20speech.rtf Despite its title, the NED is a front set up by the Reagan administration to mask counterrevolutionary subversive activities previously done covertly by the CIA. (The on-line State Department copy of the speech no longer exists.)

[485]. Cited in Richard Leiby, “Rx for W: Electoral Surgery,” Washington Post, June 10, 2004.

[486]. From the introduction to Justin Frank, Bush On The Couch: Inside the Mind of the President (New York: Harper Collins, 2004) excerpted at www.amazon.com/review/R2A4B2Z5VDLTTH Originally cited HarperCollins page no longer exists.)

[487]. Teresa Hampton, “New Information Shows Bush Indecisive, Paranoid, Delusional,” Capitol Hill Blue, June 17, 2004.

[488]. State of the Union, 2003 op. cit. (Italics added.).

[489]. “Hurricane Pam Exercise Concludes,” FEMA, July 23, 2004, www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=13051

[490]. Will Bunch, “Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen?” www.globalresearch.ca, August 31, 2005. See also Sidney Blumenthal, “No One Can Say They Didn’t See It Coming,” Salon.com, August 31, 2005.

[491]. Molly Ivins, “Why New Orleans is in deep water,” Creators Syndicate, September 1, 2005.

[492]. William Rivers Pitt, “Washing Away the Conservative Movement,” truthout.com, September 6, 2005.

[493]. Carl Hulse, “G.O.P. Split Over Big Plans for Storm Spending, The New York Times, September 16, 2005.

[494]. George W. Bush, President Discusses Hurricane Relief in Address to the Nation, September 15, 2005. (emphasis added) www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2005/09/mil-050915-whitehouse01.htm White House link no longer exists.

[495]. Ibid.

[496]. See Jeremy Scahill, “The Militarization of New Orleans,” Democracy Now! September 16, 2005. The original source of the quote is the Wall Street Journal.

[497]. Oded Yinon, “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties,” Kivunim (Directions), No. 14, February 1982, trans. Israel Shahak (Italics in original) www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1025.htm.

[498]. Thomas R. Stauffer, “The Costs to American Taxpayers of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: $3 Trillion,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June 2003.

[499]. David R. Francis, “Economist tallies swelling cost of Israel to U.S.,” The Christian Science Monitor, December 9, 2002.

[500]. For a more discursive, detailed analysis of legislated Israeli plunder see Richard Curtiss, “U.S. Aid to Israel: The Subject No One Mentions, The Link, Vol. 30, Issue 4, (New York: Americans for Middle East Understanding, September–October 1997) (www.ameu.org/printer.asp?iid=97&aid=134)

[501]. “Sharon to Peres: ‘Don’t worry about American pressure; we control America’,” IAP news, October 3, 2001, www.wrmea.com/html/newsitem_s.htm.

[502]. Jeffrey S. Helmreich, “The Israel swing factor: How the American Jewish vote influences U.S. elections,” Jerusalem Letter/Viewpoints (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs: Jerusalem), No. 446, January 15, 2001. www.jcpa.org/jl/vp446.htm.

[503]. Uri Dan, “Israeli pol rips U.S. envoy,” New York Post, January 9, 2002.

[504]. “Israel defies US pressure to withdraw,” BBCNews, April 8, 2002.

[505]. Remarks by President Bush and Prime Minister Abbas, White House Documents, July 25, 2003 www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-13170624.html. White House on-line copy no longer exists.

[506]. President Discusses Middle East Peace with Prime Minister Sharon, White House documents, July 29, 2003. http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/07/20030729-2.html.

[507]. Ibid.

[508]. Steven R. Weisman, “U.S. May Reduce Aid to Get Israel to Halt Barrier,” The New York Times, August 5, 2003.

[509]. Ori Nir, “Bush Drops Opposition To Building Of Barrier,” Forward, October 24, 2003.

[510]. “Request for Advisory Opinion,” Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, (The Hague: International Court of Justice, July 9, 2004). All ICJ citations come from this source; however, the original link no longer exists. For individual opinions, go to
www.icj-cij.org/docket/index.php?p1=3&p2=4&k=5a&case=131&code=mwp&p3=4

[511]. “Advisory Opinion,” in ibid.

[512]. Cited in The New York Times, June 19, 1967.

[513]. Sen. John Kerry, Remarks at the Arab American Institute, October 17, 2003. www.cfr.org/campaign2004/pub6497/john_kerry/remarks_at_the_arab_american_institute.php?issue=26

[514]. Statement by John Kerry on International Court of Justice Ruling Regarding Israel’s Security Fence, July 9, 2004. www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/releases/pr_2004_0709a.html.

[515]. Condoleezza Rice, Remarks at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s Annual Policy Conference, Washington Convention Centre, Washington D.C., May 23, 2005, http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2005/46625.htm

[516]. Sen. Nancy Pelosi, “Text of Remarks Delivered to AIPAC,” May 23, 2005. http://democraticleader.house.gov/press/releases.cfm?pressReleaseID=999

[517]. Maj.–Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, Article 15-6 Investigation Of The 800th Military Police Brigade, February 2004, p. 40 (Hereafter Taguba Report), www.npr.org/iraq/2004/prison_abuse_report.pdf. In all, Taguba’s report covered four detention centers: Camp Bucca, Camp Ashraf, Abu Ghraib, and the High Value Detainee (HVD) Complex/Camp Cropper. Taguba reported that the first instance of abuse occurred at Camp Bucca in May 2003, but found no cause-and-effect between this case and subsequent cases at Abu Ghraib. The investigation into Abu Ghraib began after Graner gave Darby a CD depicting pictures of naked detainees. According to Scott Bobec, a member of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division: “[Darby] had initially put an anonymous letter under our door, then he later came forward and gave a sworn statement. He felt very bad about it and thought it was very wrong.” Cited in Seymour M. Hersh, “Torture At Abu Ghraib,” New Yorker, May 10, 2004.

[518]. Cited in Noam Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, (Cambridge: South End Press, 1983), pp 129, 130.

[519]. Cited in “Rabbi calls for annihilation of Arabs,” BBC, April 10, 2001.

[520]. See, for example: Esther Schrader and Josh Meyer, “As violence in Iraq surges, U.S. quietly turns to Israel,” Baltimore Sun, November 23, 2003 (Originally published in L.A. Times): Robert Fisk, “Follow torture trail at Abu Ghraib,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 26, 2004; and Wayne Madsen, “The Israeli torture template—Rape, feces and urine-dipped cloth sacks,” Counterpunch.org, May 10, 2004.

[521]. Julian Borger, “Israel trains US assassination squads in Iraq,” Guardian, December 9, 2003. Speaking on CBC Television’s National News, on May 4, 2004, retired U.S. diplomat Eugene Bird wondered allowed about the Israeli connection to the torture: “We know that the Israeli intelligence was operating in Baghdad after the war was over. The question should be: Were there any foreign interrogators among those that were recommending very, very bad treatment for the prisoners?”

[522]. Suzanne Russ, “Stripping Palestinians has Become Common Practice: Eyewitness Accounts,” Palestine Chronicle, November 26, 2002.

[523]. Ibid.

[524]. “Calif. Guardsman Alleges Abuse in Iraq,” Associated Press, June 9, 2004.

[525]. Taguba Report, p. 37.

[526]. Hersh, op cit.

[527]. Secretary of the Army Togo D. West Jr. et al. “General Protection Policy,” AR 190-8 Enemy Prisoners of War, Retained Personnel, Civilian Internees and Other Detainees, October 1, 1997, p. 2 www.usapa.army.mil/pdffiles/r190_8.pdf. Page refers to the document, not the pdf.

[528]. Taguba Report, p. 40.

[529]. Ibid. p. 7. For a list of 13 sexual, mental and physical types of abuses committed during the fall of 2003 see pp. 16-17.

[530]. David DeBatto, “Find Out Who Got the MPs Involved.” Military.com, May 17, 2004.

[531]. Taguba Report, p. 9.

[532]. Julian Coman, “Interrogation abuses were ‘approved at highest levels,’” The Telegraph, June 13, 2004.

[533]. Taguba Report, pp. 38-39.

[534]. Cited in Jake Tapper and Clayton Sandell, “Advice Rejected—JAG Lawyers Say Political Appointees Ignored Their Warnings on Prisoner Treatment,” ABCNews, May 16, 2004.

[535]. Alberto R. Gonzalez, Decision Re Application of the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War to the Conflict with al Qaeda and the Taliban, January 25, 2002, p.2 Excerpted at www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/torture/etc/faqs.html

[536]. Geneva Convention (III) Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. Geneva, August 12 1949 www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/0/6fef854a3517b75ac125641e004a9e68?OpenDocument.

[537]. Working Group Report On Detainee Interrogations in the Global War on Terrorism; Assessment of Legal, Historical, Policy, and Operational Considerations. Pentagon, Washington D.C., March 6, 2003. Although, this memo was written just prior to the invasion of Iraq, it is also applicable to Afghan detainees.

[538]. George W. Bush, Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism, Sec. 3 (b–d), White House, November 13, 2001.

[539]. Cited in Joshua Hammer, Richard Wolffe and Christopher Dickey, “The Wars through Arab Eyes,” Newsweek, May 31, 2004.

[540]. Alfred W. McCoy, “Torture at Abu Ghraib Followed CIA’s Manual,” Boston Globe, May 14, 2004.

[541]. Cited in Brian Whitaker, “American troops are killing and abusing Afghans, rights body says,” Guardian, March 8, 2004.

[542]. The United States Code consists of 50 Titles listed by subject, and represents the general and permanent laws of the United States. For the section on torture, see www.access.gpo.gov/uscode/title18/parti_chapter113c_.html.

[543]. Cited in John Deane, “Guantanamo Britons tell Bush of torture ordeal,” The Independent, May 14, 2004.

[544]. Ibid. For sworn statements about the torture from the victims themselves see “Sworn Statements by Abu Ghraib Detainees,” Washington Post, April 21, 2004.

[545]. Glenn Frankel, “Prison Tactics A Longtime Dilemma For Israel,” Washington Post, June 16; “Israeli interrogators in Iraq —An exclusive report,” Jane’s Foreign Review, July 7, 2004.

[546]. “Pentagon Email Warning,” Time, May 8, 2004.

[547]. Taguba Report, p. 26.

[548] Cited in Julian Borger, US general linked to Abu Ghraib abuse,” Guardian, May 22, 2004.

[549]. Taguba Report, pp. 48-49. In the pdf version of report, Taguba mentions “Israel” four times, but on one occasion has him working for CACI. This appears to be an error. Also, Titan denies that Israel worked for them and was merely a sub-contractor.

[550]. Ibid.

[551]. Jane Mayer, “The Memo,” New Yorker,” Feb. 27, 2006.

[552]. Neil A. Lewis, Fresh Details Emerge on Harsh Methods at Guantánamo, The New York Times, January 1, 2005; Michael Scherer and Mark Benjamin, “What Rumsfeld knew,” Salon.com, April 14, 2006.

[553]. Joe Conason, “Torture Begins at the Top,” Salon.com, December 17, 2004. Soldiers, though, weren’t the only Americans involved in torture. University of Minnesota professor Steven Miles wrote in The Lancet that military doctors, nurses and medics grossly violated medical ethics and international treaties on human rights. They falsified death certificates for detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq to read “natural causes… during his sleep” despite glaring evidence of torture. (Sandro Contenta, “U.S. doctors tied to prisoner abuse,” Toronto Star, August 20.2004.

[554]. “Testimony of, Lt.–Gen. Randall M. Schmidt,” Davis Mountain AFB AZ, August 24, 2005, Records Released in Response to Torture FOIA Request (released by the government 12/15/04, released by the ACLU 12/20/04) http://www.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/fbi.html. The ACLU site has numerous accounts of soldiers regarding military and medical abuse.

[555]. Parts of this section is taken from Greg Felton, “Israel leads U.S. back to Vietnam—Part II,” mediamonitors.net, October 5, 2001; and Greg Felton, “Abu Ghraib and Falluja--a familiar kind of terror,” Canadian Arab News and ibid, May 13, 2004.

[556]. Joseph Eszterhas, et al. “The Massacre at Mylai,” Life, December 5, 1969.

[557]. See Christopher Hitchens, “The Case Against Colin Powell,” Globe and Mail, December 26, 2000.

[558]. Eszterhas, op cit.

[559]. Cited in Inigo Gilmore and Teresa Smith, “‘If you start looking at them as humans, then how are you gonna kill them?’” Guardian, March 29, 2006.

[560]. Ibid.

[561]. Cited in Thomas E. Ricks, “Dissension Grows In Senior Ranks On War Strategy,” Washington Post, May 9, 2004.

[562]. Cited in Jonathan Weisman, “Battle is fiercest yet, and it won’t be last,” USA Today, March 5, 2002.

[563]. Orit Shohat, “Remember Falluja,” Ha’aretz, April 28, 2004.

[564]. Robert Fisk, “Massacre in sanctuary; Eyewitness,” The Independent, April 19, 1996.

[565]. “Fallujah death toll for week more than 600,” USA Today, April 11, 2004.

[566]. “Plea to Lift Siege as toll mounts,” www.aljazeera.net, April 8, 2004. The pictures of dead children debunk Byrne’s assertions.

[567]. Mustafa Abdel-Halim, “U.S. Forces Want al-Jazeera Out of Fallujah,” islamonline.net, April 9, 2004.

[568]. Mike Marqusee, “A Name that Lives in Infamy,” Guardian, November 10, 2005.

[569]. “Scale of Falluja violence emerges,” BBC News, April 12, 2004.

[570]. Julian Borger, “Marine’s wife paints portrait of U.S. troops out of control in Haditha,” Guardian, June 5, 2006.

[571]. Jonathan Karl, “New Witness Describes Alleged Iraq Atrocity,” ABC News, June 4, 2006.

[572]. “Analysis: U.S. Braces for Marine Scandal,” Associated Press, May 28, 2006.

[573]. Dahr Jamail, “Countless My Lai Massacres in Iraq,” truthout.org, May 30, 2006. See also, for example, Robert McNamara, “It’s just wrong what we’re doing,” interviewed by Douglas Saunders in the Globe and Mail, January 24, 2004; Erich Marquardt, “Parallels Between U.S. Occupation of Iraq and U.S. Involvement in Vietnam,” Power and Interest News Report, November 28, 2003; Patrick Cockburn, “Iraq’s resistance: A new Vietnam for the White House?” The Independent, July 2, 2003.

[574]. Richard A Oppel Jr., “Iraqi Assails U.S. for Strikes on Civilians,” The New York Times, June 2, 2006

[575]. David S. Cloud, “Inquiry Suggests Marines Excised Files on Killings,” The New York Times, August 18, 2006.

[576]. The best account is Donald Macintyre, “Revealed: the shrapnel evidence that points to Israel’s guilt,” The Independent, June 14, 2006.

[577]. Damien Cave, “Army Recruiters Say They Feel Pressure to Bend Rules,” The New York Times, May 3, 2005.

[578]. Robert Burns, “Study: Army Stretched to Breaking Point,” Associated Press, January 24, 2006.

[579]. Tom Raum, “Analysis: Discontent Plaguing Military,” Associated Press, December 10 2004; Scott Pelley, “Deserters: We Won’t Go to Iraq,” CBSNews.com, December 8, 2004.

[580]. John P. Gramlich, “U.S. ‘Can’t Maintain Iraq Troop Levels,’” United Press International, November 11, 2005.

[581]. “Bush Says Iraq War Is Good for Israel,” Forward, December 16, 2005. Blakeman’s brother Brad was an aide to Bush.

[582]. Michael Ledeen, “What Is George Tenet Doing Anyway?” National Review, June 3, 2002.

[583]. Aluf Benn, “Sharon says U.S. should also disarm Iran, Libya and Syria,” Ha’aretz, Feb. 20, 2003.

[584]. Toby Harnden, “Syria now top U.S. target for ‘regime change’,” The Telegraph, April 8, 2003.

[585]. “Israel Bombs Alleged Terror Base in Syria; U.N. to Meet on Israeli Strike in Syria,” Associated Press, October 5, 2003.

[586]. Fionnuala Sweeney, Brent Sadler and Rula Amin, “Syria asks UN to condemn Israel,” CNN.com, October 5, 2003.

[587]. H.R. 1828 (as amended), U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 108th Congress–1st Session, November 11, 2003, www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/ roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=108&session=1&vote=00445

[588]. “Sen Byrd: U.S. Syria bill could lead to an invasion,”. Agence France Press, November 12, 2003.

[589]. “U.S. Has No Evidence Iraq Hid Banned Arms in Syria,” Reuters, November 14, 2003.

[590]. David Wurmser, “Let’s Defeat Syria, Not Appease It,” AEIonline, Feb. 25, 2000. All citations come from this source.

[591]. “Lebanese man confesses to killings on behalf of Israel,” Reuters, June 13, 2006. Hobeika was killed by a car bomb after he announced he was going to expose Ariel Sharon’s direct role in the massacre.

[592] Kurt Nimmo, “Did Israel Kill al-Hariri to Set the Stage for a Confrontation with Hezbollah?” Informationclearinghouse.com, Feb. 22, 2005.

[593]. Dispatch from British Ambassador to Constantinople Sir Louis Mallet to Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, Foreign Office 13871/4688/14/44. (No. 193) Constantinople, March 18, 1914. www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/1914m/arabetuk.html

[594]. “Emir Abdullah’s account of his conversations with Lord Kitchener, transmitted with notes by Arab historian George Antonius,” Jerusalem, May 1, 1936. www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/1914m/arabetuk.html

[595]. “The Hussein-McMahon Correspondence,” October 24, 1915.

[596]. Saïd K Aburish, The Rise, Corruption and Coming Fall of the House of Saud, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), p. 18. He dates first Saudi contact to 1865, the same year the dynasty fell into civil war, but nothing came of this contact.

[597]. Mallet to Grey, op. cit.

[598]. Although the ibn Rashids were also Bedouin, Aburish describes them as the antithesis of the al-Saud clan: “The ibn Rashids belonged to the noble tribe of Shamar, [in the northwest Najd region of Jamal Shamar], too big and too proud to depend on raids in the ibn Saud fashion. They were educated people refined enough to sign friendship treaties with the Sultanate of Turkey, and ample evidence exists that they conducted their court affairs in a civilized manner. To establish the differences between the ibn Rashids and the al-Sauds, all one has to do is examine contemporaneous pictures of the former looking regal and romantic and compare them with pictures of the disheveled ibn Saud and his barefoot children, including the present King Fahd looking desperately dusty and in need of a bath.” Aburish op. cit., p. 17.

[599]. Six months before McMahon wrote his letter, Britain had decided to betray Hussein. In April, the government commissioned its ambassador in Vienna, Maurice de Bunsen, to head a committee to investigate. The Bunsen Report, issued two months later, determined essential British spheres of influence, which included the Red Sea and Iraq, both of which Hussein claimed for the Caliphate.

[600]. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Special Message To The Congress On The Situation In The Middle East, Public Papers of the Presidents, January 5, 1957. coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/eisen.html

[601]. The presence of these troops in Yemen is further proof that Nasser was in no position to start the 1967 War.

[602]. Aburish, op. cit., pp. 160, 161.

[603]. Cited in Ben Fenton, “Macmillan backed Syria assassination plot,” Guardian, September 27, 2003.

[604]. Anders Strindberg, “Hizbullah’s attacks stem from Israeli incursions into Lebanon,” Christian Science Monitor, August 1, 2006.

[605]. See Greg Felton, “As you behold the destruction of Lebanon, you may think it looks disturbingly familiar,” Canadian Arab News, at www.gregfelton.com/middle/2006_07_20a.htm and ~/2006_07_20b.htm.

[606]. Cited in Dahr Jamail “Supporters of Hezbollah,” Truthout.com, July 31, 2006.

[607] Cited in, Matthew Kalman, “Israel set war plan more than a year ago—Strategy was put in motion as Hezbollah began gaining military strength in Lebanon,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 21, 2006.

[608]. Richard Perle et al., A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, July 1996 www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm. Italics in original.

[609]. Cited in Sydney H. Schanberg, “The Secrets Clark Kept—What the General Never Told Us About the Bush Plan for Serial War,” The Village Voice, September 29, 2003.

[610]. Seymour Hersh, “The Syrian Bet,” New Yorker, July 28, 2003.

[611]. Michael Young, “Syria, the U.S. and Terrorism,” Terrorism Monitor. Vol. 2 Issue 19, October 7, 2004.

[612]. Hersh, op. cit.

[613]. Patrick Seale, “Who killed Rafik Hariri?” Guardian, Feb. 23, 2005.

[614]. Robert Parry, The Dangerously Incomplete Hariri Report, October 23, 2005. (http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/102205.html) (My emphasis.)

[615]. “Syrian witness says Hariri’s son forced him to lie,” Reuters, November 28, 2005. Another controversial witness is the half-Syrian/half-Lebanese Ibrahim Michel Jarjoura, who told Syrian TV that he had been threatened and pressured by Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamada to give false testimony to the inquiry. His account can be found at http://lebop.blogspot.com/2006/01/ibrahim-jarjoura-marwan-hmadeh-forced.html and at “Another Witness Testifies with Perjury into Assassination of Hariri,” Syrian Arab News Agency, Jan 18, 2006.

[616]. Trish Schuh, “Faking the Case Against Syria,” Counterpunch, December 18, 2005.

[617] Jim Lobe, “Israel Troubled by Bush’s Priorities,” Inter-Press Service, December 14, 2005.

[618]. Ed Vuillamy, “Israel seeks pipeline for Iraqi oil,” Observer, April 20, 2003.

[619]. Lowell Feld, “Israel—Country Analysis Brief,” Energy Information Administration, Department of Energy, April 2004.

[620]. “Oil from Iraq: An Israeli pipedream?” Jane’s Defense Weekly, April 16, 2003; “Israel stands to benefit greatly from U.S. conquest of Iraq,” Alexander’s Gas & Oil Connection, Vol. 8, No. 14, July 10, 2003; Douglas Davis, “New Iraq may recognize Israel, bring financial relief,” Jerusalem Post, April 25, 2003. In addition the terminus of the Trans-Arabian Pipeline (“Tapline”) was changed from Haifa to Sidon, Lebanon.

[621]. Amiram Cohen, “U.S. Checking Possibility of Pumping Oil from Northern Iraq to Haifa, via Jordan,” Ha’aretz, August 25, 2003. www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0825-03.htm

[622]. Thomas R. Stauffer, “Pipeline or Pipe Dream? The Kirkuk–Haifa Scheme,” WRMEA, March 2004.

[623]. “Russia to take Syria’s side if conflict with U.S. arises - Russian MPs,” Novosti, 12/20/05.

[624]. Cited in James D. Besser And Larry Cohler-Esses, “Iran-Israel Linkage By Bush Seen As Threat,” The Jewish Week, April 21, 2006.

[625]. Cited in Ibid.

[626]. Hamid Ansari, “The un-stated major premise,” The Hindu, October 20, 2005.

[627]. This English version was taken from David Hirst’s The Gun and the Olive Branch, (2003) pp. 118-119, excerpted in “The war game,” The Observer, September 21, 2003. (My emphases.) The excerpt is also available in German: “Wir vernichten uns selbst,” (“We are destroying ourselves”) www.de.indymedia.org/2003/01/39170.shtml.

[628]. Michael Ledeen, “The Tehran Regime Must Fall,” Wall Street Journal, June 11, 2003.

[629]. Seymour Hersh, “The Iran Plans,” New Yorker, April 17, 2006.

[630]. Dafna Linzer, “Iran Is Judged 10 Years From Nuclear Bomb,” Washington Post, August 2, 2005; David E. Sanger, “Cheney Says Israel Might ‘Act First’ on Iran,’ The New York Times, January 21, 2005;

[631]. Richard Bernstein, “Rumsfeld Says Iran Is Developing Nuclear Arms Under Guise of Civilian Program,” The New York Times, June 12, 2003.

[632]. Gareth Porter, “Iranian nukes not the real issue,” Asia Times, May 13, 2006.

[633]. Erich Marquardt, “Iran’s Race for Nuclear Weapons” The Power and Interest News Report, September 29, 2003.

[634]. Ibid. (my emphasis)

[635]. Dafna Linzer, “Past Arguments Don’t Square, With Current Iran Policy,” Washington Post, March 27, 2005.

[636]. See Chris McGreal, “Israel could launch air strikes if talks fail,” Guardian, January 13, 2006.

[637]. Cited in Linzer, Washington Post, August 2, 2005

[638]. Flynt Leverett: “Bush Administration “Not Serious” About Dealing With Iran,” Council On Foreign Relations, March 31, 2006.

[639]. Gareth Porter, “Bush ensured Iran Offer Would Be Rejected,” Inter Press Service, August 22, 2006.

[640]. Cited in Maggie Farley, “U.S. May Curb Iran,” Los Angeles Times, August 26, 2006.

[641]. Cited in Ibid.

[642]. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, “The Israel Lobby,” London Review of Books, March 23, 2006. (emphasis added.)

[643] Philip Weiss, “Ferment Over ‘The Israel Lobby’” The Nation, May 15, 2006.

[644]. Sen. Ernest Hollings, Floor Statement Setting the Record Straight on his Mideast Newspaper Column, May 20, 2004. www.theshalomcenter.org/index.php?q=node/620 Mearsheiner and Walt made reference to Hollings’s speech. Hollings’s original webpage is defunct.

[645]. James Abourezk, Support for Israel in Congress is Based on Fear, letter to Jeff Blankfort, Dec. 12, 2006.

[646]. Nancy Pelosi Speech to American Israel Public Affairs Committee, May 24, 2005, www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Israel/Pelosi_AIPAC_Speech.html

[647].Joseph C. Wilson IV, “What I didn’t Find in Africa,” The New York Times, July 6, 2003.

[648]. Laura Rozen, “La Repubblica’s Scoop, Confirmed,” The American Prospect, October 25, 2005.

[649]. Cited in translation in ibid.

[650]. Libby would be convicted and sentenced to 30 months in prision and fined $250,000. In June 2007, George W. Bush commuted Libby’s sentence after one year to two years probation, but stopped short of issuing a full pardon or excusing the fine.

[651]. David Corn, “What Valerie Plame Really did at the CIA,” www.thenation.com, September 6, 2006.

[652]. Matt Pascarella, “Congresswoman McKinney Files Articles of Impeachment,” truthout.org, Dec. 8, 2006 www.truthout.org/docs_2006/120806Z.shtml.

[653]. Jerry Markon, “Defense Analyst Guilty in Israeli Espionage Case,” Washington Post, October 6, 2005.

[654]. For a summary of Israel’s spy operations against the U.S. see Sam Husseini “A Long History—Israeli Espionage Against the U.S.” Counterpunch.org, Aug 30, 2004. For a description of AIPAC and its influence on U.S. policy and appointments see Andrew I. Killgore, “According to Indictment, AIPAC Has Been Under Investigation Since Early 1999,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. November 2005.

[655]. On May 1, 2009, the case collapsed when a lower-court judge required that the prosecution not only prove that Rosen and Weissman passed state secrets to Israel, but that they knew that the information in question would harm the United States. Because this point is extremely hard to prove, and the fact that the defendants had earlier been told they could use classified information in their defence, the government asked the judge to dismiss the case.

[656]. Nathan Guttman, “FBI probes Jewish sway on Bush government,” Ha’aretz, September 05, 2004.

[657]. Ori Nir, “Questions Raised Over Aipac’s Tactics,” Forward, September 3, 2005.

[658]. George W. Bush, “President Discusses Iraqi Elections, Victory in the War on Terror,” December 14, 2005, www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/20051214-1.html.

[659]. “Neo Culpa,” VanityFair,com Nov. 3, 2006. A conspicuous and inexcusable omission is Paul Wolfowitz. See also Rupert Cornwell, “At last, the warmongers are prepared to face the facts and admit they were wrong,” The Independent, March 9, 2006.

[660]. James Baker III and Lee Hamilton et al. The Iraq Study Group Report, December 6, 2006.

[661]. For an excellent summary of Baker’s politics see Mike Whitney, “Baker vs. ‘The Lobby’” informationclearinghouse.info, December 9, 2006.

[662]. The Iraq Study Group Report, p. 48.

[663]. W. Patrick Lang and Ray McGovern, “Troop ‘Surge’ in Iraq Would Be Another Mistake,” Miami Herald, December 24, 2006.

[664]. Cited in Will Weissert, “Many soldiers say troop surge a bad idea,” Associated Press, December 28, 2006.

[665]. Akiva Eldar, “The Gewalt Agenda” Ha’aretz, November 20, 2006.

[666]. See the opening section to Chapter 16.

[667]. Ana Radelat, “Thousands of Troops Say They Won’t Fight” Gannett News Service, August 5, 2006.

[668]. Scott Shane, “A Flood of Troubled Soldiers Is in the Offing, Experts Predict,” The New York Times, December 16, 2004.

[669]. Cited in Dahr Jamail, “A Broken, De-Humanized Military in Iraq,” truthout.com, September 26, 2006.

[670]. Marc Cooper, “About Face: Soldiers Call for Iraq Withdrawal,” thenation.com, December 16, 2006.

[671]. See Richard J, Whalen, “Revolt of the Generals,” The Nation, September 28, 2006.